#I hate pushing and leaning on people for answers and contact info and being given the rounaround. I can only endure so much of it
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My company claims to have tuition reimbursement but when you call the Benefits department they're like "??? Never heard of it. Ask your manager or try HR."
The in-office managers don't know anything abt it either, other than that our company handbook says the company offers it 😒
I'm sure if I email a bazillion people and lean hard on some people I can get answers (maybe) but for fuck's sake, why should it be this hard? At HD it was simple af--"download this form, have your professor sign it, turn it into ______"
And it's like this with SO MANY THINGS in life. You have to fight like the devil for the smallest things. It's so discouraging. No one knows anything, no phone numbers lead to anything, just dead-end after dead-end.
#tuition#benefits#mental health#college#vent#ranting#negative#op#personal#“contact HR!” how? i dont have their phone numbers or email and if I did it would probably be another voicemail or disconnected phoneline 😑#I hate pushing and leaning on people for answers and contact info and being given the rounaround. I can only endure so much of it#I think I'm throwing in the towel on this one#I think too that reaching out for help and answers and getting nothing is a trigger for my attachment wounds as a DA#DAs literally become DAs bc whenever they wanted help/knowledge/support as kids they got told to f***k off or otherwise shamed
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where you lead, i will follow
previous chapter / chapter nine / next chapter
start from the beginning!
ao3 | read my other fics | coffee?
warnings: hospitals, needle/ivs, coughing, fever, sick stuff, pneumonia, arguing, classism, pregnancy scare (in a flashback), mentions of dysphoria, death mentions (only mentions, don’t worry!) please let me know if i’ve missed any!
pairings: moxiety, logince
word count: 22,124
notes: hoo boy this chapter was a DOOZY and i’m v curious to know how it’s gonna go over, so, fingers crossed y’all like it!
virgil hates hospitals. well, arguably, patton hates them more, he always hates going to the doctor even if it's just for a check-up, but the fact that patton is alone back there and delirious and in a place he's afraid of without anyone who knows him to comfort him kind of makes virgil want to put his fist through a wall, so he doesn't think about that, and instead he keeps pacing this stupidly tiny waiting room, clutching his hoodie, not even putting it on properly, because he'd given it to patton when he started shivering and shaking and succumbing to his chills and not breathing a word of complaint about the cold he must have been feeling and virgil had given him his hoodie and patton had sniffled and looked at virgil like he'd made everything okay, so he can't put it on until everything's okay again. right? (it makes sense to him.)
he keeps thinking about patton. not even worrying about him, though there's plenty of that, but memories keep flashing through his head, and it's almost unbearable, to think about patton happy and healthy when the memory of patton lying on his face in his dark house is right there and virgil left him, he left him—
("i've figured it out," patton says triumphantly. he's twenty-two, and virgil's twenty-eight, and logan's freshly six, on his way to the diner to meet with patton after school, when he'll decide if he wants to stay and do homework at virgil's or go with patton to the inn.
"figured out what?" virgil asks, amused despite himself, seeing how smug and satisfied with himself patton is right now.
"The Hugging Problem," patton says, and his grin grows wider. "i've figured it out."
ah, yes. The Hugging Problem. it had been discussed between virgil and patton so often that it warranted the capital letters. The Hugging Problem was that logan had decided he was a big boy now, and didn't need hugs or comfort, even when he was upset and clearly really, really needed a hug and some comfort.
"you did?" virgil says, intrigued despite himself. "how?"
patton taps his finger to his lips, grinning. "that'd be telling."
"patton," virgil whines, "you can't just tell me you have a solution to The Hugging Problem and not tell me what it is—"
"well, i can't just tell you the solution to The Hugging Problem," patton says conspiratorially. "i'll show you. when he needs it.")
"virgil!"
virgil pivots, then, to see logan, in an exquisite, bespoke, expensive suit, rushing toward him, face drawn and tight and worried.
"is he—?"
virgil's already shaking his head, crossing his arms tight over his stomach. "no news. they took him back there to run some tests, or get the fever down, or both, but—"
logan's nodding, and then brushing past him, immediately, to the welcome desk, staffed by a nurse or at least a someone in scrubs.
"excuse me," logan says, voice threaded through with a sense of authority that reminds virgil so strongly of the first time he met emily sanders that it sends a chill up his spine, "my father's been admitted here, patton sanders, would you happen to have any information on him, a room number, maybe, or what tests are being run on him?"
the nurse checks something, glances at virgil (who'd filled out patton's paperwork when they'd gotten there, and he knows all of patton's insurance info because virgil helped him set his up back in the day and virgil's been his emergency contact since that time patton thought he had appendicitis but it was really just a terrible stomach ache because he got food poisoning from al's pancake world) and nods.
"i'll have someone check on that for you," she says, in the tone that means maybe, eventually.
"do," logan says tightly, and comes back toward virgil. virgil reaches out and carefully squeezes his shoulder. for some reason, he feels like something is missing. he dismisses that thought, because the something is probably behind the doors he's forbidden to cross into, it’s the something that he just left behind and he can't—
"hey," he says, and squeezes again. "look at me."
logan looks him in the eyes—tormented and worried and anxious in a way a kid never really should have to be, ever.
"your dad's gonna be fine," he says, trying to make his voice sound gentle, but with some kind of authority.
"you can't know—" logan begins, adam's apple bobbing.
"logan," virgil says, holds both his shoulders now. "look at me. i'm saying that. me, who always thinks every worse scenario is one thousand percent guaranteed to happen. i am. and patton's gonna be okay."
logan takes in a shuddering breath. "but—you're panicking."
"i'm always panicking," virgil says softly. "and i'm panicking right now because we don't know what's going on, not because i think there's any chance of something happening to your dad."
logan surveys him for a few seconds, eyes sweeping up and down his face, staring into his eyes, and virgil's expression must present the answer he's looking for because he relaxes, just a little, slumping into virgil's touch, and virgil knows better than to pull him into a hug right now so he just compensates by squeezing his shoulders a little harder before letting go. logan's arms cross in front of his stomach, too.
"not because i think anything's—going to go wrong," logan says, haltingly, "but... dad has a will, doesn't he?"
"yes," virgil says cautiously.
logan licks his lips nervously, before he says, "if something—if dad didn't—look. i'd want my guardian to be you."
virgil's arms drop from where they're wrapped around his stomach, and he turns to face logan more fully, mouth hanging open in awe, just a little.
"it has to be you," logan says. "if something happens."
"nothing's happening."
"i know," logan says, and he sounds like he really does know it, the way he knows nellie bly had her pencil confiscated from her in blackwell's and was told she never brought one, the way he knows anne royall blackmailed president adams into an interview by catching him skinny-dipping, the way he knows the new york times printed, the day after the launch of the apollo 11, a retraction of an article about no rocket conceivably leaving the atmosphere and reaching the moon. just fact. "just... so you know."
virgil swallows past the sudden lump in his throat.
(—dead on his feet, even as patton pushes a mug of (plain) coffee into his hands, leaning against the counter.
"thanks for helping me with him," patton says wearily. "i love him, he's so smart, he just gets so... nervous. you know?"
"i know," virgil says dryly, and patton winces a little. virgil waves it off. "and you don't need to say thank you, anyway, not when it comes to helping logan. i'll always try and help him. i know he's yours but—" barely a pause, and then, a sleepless tumble of a confession—"i always thought he was a little mine, too."
patton doesn't take offense. he just smiles, a secretive little thing, and takes a sip of coffee.
"well," patton says. "of course he's a little yours. you're a little ours too, you know.")
"yeah," virgil croaks, and clears his throat. "yeah, okay."
"good," logan says stiffly.
"right, good," virgil echoes.
they'd probably stand there saying "good" "good" back and forth and back and forth until a nurse finally appeared to wave them back into patton's room if it wasn't for the burst of noise a good way down the hall.
"but why can't i see him?!"
"they're running some tests."
"well, we would like to meet this doctor who's testing him."
"you will."
"some strange man is working on our son, we have a right to meet this person!"
"you will."
"and i want to see the room you're going to put him in."
"you will."
"and stop saying 'you will,' put together a proper sentence, for god's sake!"
"ma'am, sir, please just wait here."
—and a harried nurse leads emily and richard sanders into the waiting room.
oh. great. just what he needs. patton's fucking parents.
(—patton's eighteen, virgil's nearly twenty-four, and logan's nearly two, and patton has given logan over for virgil to babysit for a while with a written list of instructions and a packed bag, and virgil's only a little terrified, partially because logan's never spent the night at virgil's before without patton there and partially because logan is pre-emptively putting the terrible in 'terrible twos' and partially because patton got his top surgery today and he's being looked after by his parents, and virgil certainly has some Opinions after hearing about the way patton was raised and the environment that surrounded him until he ran away to sideshire.
everything's going fine until virgil realizes that logan's favorite jupiter toy isn't in the bag.
he has seen the meltdowns logan has without that thing. he needs to get it. he can only really hope that the room's empty and he can go right in, go right out, and logan will be reunited with his toy and no one will be any the wiser.
fucking alas.
he walks into the room juggling logan and the duffle bag and the spare key maria gave him, because patton had panickedly rented a room rather than let his parents have any idea about him living in the poolhouse, only to walk in to two very finely-dressed people turning from the bed where patton's lying to see the door.
"papapapapapapapapapa," logan babbles happily as soon as he sees patton, reaching out and opening and closing his chubby little fists, as if to say to virgil hand me over immediately! and virgil can't help but smile a little at the sound of it. logan's been doing this thing lately where he adds thirty more syllables to a word than is necessary, if he's excited about it. it's real cute.
"who are you?" demands the woman suspiciously, the woman who must be patton's mother. patton looks nothing like her. or the tall man with the tie on, who must be patton's father.
"virgil danes," virgil bites out. "i'm babysitting logan, just need to grab a toy of his, so. i'll be right out of your hair."
"oh, well, that's not necessary," emily says briskly, walking forward and holding out her arms expectantly. "we can look after him."
without thinking, virgil shifts so that he's more clearly between her and logan, so that she would have to step around him to grab logan. her eyes narrow.
"yeah, well, patton told me to watch him," virgil says. "so i'm gonna watch him."
"papa," logan says, and tugs at virgil's hoodie. "virgil, papa."
virgil winces. "i know, kid, sorry. he's taking a nap right now, okay? we gotta be quiet. shhhh."
logan frowns at him. if there is one thing he doesn't like (the things logan doesn't like are very numerous) it's being told to be quiet. which is fair, really, virgil doesn't like it much either.
virgil spies the jupiter toy, half-hidden under the wardrobe, and goes over to grab it, handing it over to logan, who takes it with a pacified, cheery little babble and immediately sticks it into his mouth. god, virgil dreads the day a toy won't work as a distraction for him anymore.
"don't be ridiculous," emily tells him. "he's our grandson."
"no offense, lady," virgil says, "but you could be the queen of england. patton told me to watch him, so i'm gonna watch him. end of story. besides, patton's going to be a handful medicine-wise and i don't particularly trust you very much anyway."
"i beg your pardon?!" richard says, flabbergasted.
"consider it begged," virgil says. "and to be perfectly honest, knowing you're patton's parents doesn't endear me to you, like, at all, knowing what i know, so."
"how dare you," emily snarls.
"yeah, i'll dare, because your son is one of the best people i've ever met, and you don't seem to understand that whatsoever—")
virgil's violently yanked from his reverie when emily starts up, again.
"my great-uncle founded this hospital! his portrait is hanging in the lobby, go look, it's right above the sign that says 'founder!'"
"holy shit," virgil says, and quickly steps between emily and the nurse that she's harassing. "i'm so sorry about her, seriously, you're doing a great job and any news whatsoever would be appreciated, please ignore her."
the nurse spares a look for emily, gives him a grateful look, and they hurry off.
"ignore me?!" she fumes. "ignore me?!"
"yeah," virgil says, pivoting, "i know you're pretty good at ignoring any of your kid's boundaries, but you also seem to like flooring over them without any regard for his welfare, so i'm sure treating people like they're actual people instead of like they're scum beneath your shoe is gonna be a great big moral dilemma for you. i'd say i live in hope that you'll let people be on their own, but you seem to have a lot of trouble letting people exist on their own terms, so."
oh shit. okay, so, he's started it. fuck. patton's gonna hate that.
"how dare you speak to my wife in that way," richard begins indignantly, puffing himself up like a bullfrog.
"yeah, i got plenty for you too, buddy," virgil begins heatedly, but he sees a flash of a brand new, costly suit, and forces himself to fucking cool it, jesus christ, "but that's not helping right now, none of this is helping, i get that i snapped and i'm a hypocrite, my bad, but can we put aside tearing each other apart the way i know we all want to until we know what's wrong with patton?"
virgil punctuates it with a very significant glance toward logan, who was not old enough to retain and remember the first round of this particular throwdown. emily seethes, richard glowers, but they cluster off together, in their own little corner.
emily reaches to make logan a part of that, make it sanders family vs random diner outsider, but quicker than a flash and slicker than oil, logan slips from her grasp and goes to stand at virgil's side. sideshire vs grandparents.
and suddenly, virgil's brain catches up to where logan's made the logical leap. patton has a will. he must have outlined who logan's guardian or guardians would be in case of his untimely demise. and since patton asks him whenever he involves virgil in anything legal—being made an emergency contact, for example—and he'd definitely ask virgil before penning him down for something so significant without so much as virgil's say-so.
and if virgil wouldn't be logan's guardian...
"and for god's sake, don't harass them for doing their jobs," virgil can't help but tack on, and turns to look away from—them.
("—virgil, did you, um?"
"yeah?" virgil asks, struggling to hand over logan, the duffle bag, and patton's to-go order of hot cocoa/coffee without spilling or dropping anything or anyone. logan's really mostly squirming to get back to his dad, anyway, and patton quickly takes him before he can squirm himself straight to the ground.
"i just," patton says, and frowns, shifting logan so he's on his hip. "i thought you came over when i was recovering. i dunno, it was probably an anesthesia dream, or something."
it wasn't, virgil thinks, but, well. what good would that do? he dressed down patton's parents, they tried to dress him down back, patton had cracked his eyes open enough to, in his drugged haze, coo at logan, who bopped him softly on the nose with a closed, slobbery fist, before virgil booked it before the sanders' shouting could wake patton up permanently. what good would it do to tell him all that? he'd hate that he was being argued over, anyway. so virgil just makes sure that everything's all handed over and doesn't say anything about it.
"you recovered all okay, then?" virgil says.
patton puffs himself up proudly. "yep," he says happily. "all cleared to work and lift logan," he tilts the hip with logan on it, trying not to wince, as logan has started tugging his hair, "as long as i'm careful about it."
virgil smiles. "good."
"it is, isn't it?" patton says, looking down at his own chest, finally flat without any help from a binder, and virgil reaches out to clap his shoulder. logan takes the opportunity to start babbling for attention at virgil, tugging his hoodie sleeve, as if virgil hasn't been waiting on logan's every whim for the past three days.
"lookin' good, man," virgil says, sincere, and patton beams at him. it just solidifies the belief virgil's had since the first night he met him: that patton's parents don't deserve him.)
"patton sanders?" a nurse calls, and, identically, all four of them advance on him.
"we've gotten the fever down to a point where seizures are less of a concern, but he's still pretty out of it," the nurse says, brusque. "he's in a test room right now, but we'll take him to his room shortly. we've run an x-ray and we're waiting on those results and some culture results before we—"
"pneumonia," logan says hollowly. "you think it's pneumonia."
virgil hadn't known what any of it could be, hadn't even remotely thought to prepare himself for it, but it still hits him like a blow to the chest.
("—they could give you some medicine to keep that fever down," virgil says. "make sure it isn't anything worse."
"virgil," patton says patiently, "it isn't anything worse."
"how do you know?"
"because i just feel sick, not like i'm at death's door," patton says, and sneezes into his kleenex. "crummy but not crumbling—")
i am literally never listening to your refusals about going to a doctor to see if it's anything worse ever again, virgil thinks, half furious, half scared-out-of-his-mind. left him, you left him, something in his brain hisses at him, accusatory, he’d left patton and now he’s in the hospital with fucking pneumonia—
"it's the most likely result, but it hasn't been confirmed yet," the nurse says. logan sways a little.
"can we see him?" virgil asks, putting his hand on logan's shoulder again, trying to steady him.
"we're still running a test, but once that's done—"
"well, can we see his room, then?" emily says.
the nurse gestures them forward, and virgil's about to follow when logan swivels to face him, eyes wild.
"i need to do something," he says.
"do what?" virgil says stupidly.
"i don't know, anything," logan says, clearly about .05 seconds from tearing his hair out. "get coffee or make phone calls or do something that isn't just—standing here."
"okay," virgil says, getting it, a little. logan's not exactly patient, virgil's known this for years, and logan's about as well-suited to fretting as he is to smiling and demurring during a debate (that is, not at all.) "okay, um—you got your phone?"
logan nods.
"call some people at the inn and let them know that patton's gonna be out sick for a bit. after that, get some—" he nearly says coffee but he takes stock of himself and how fast his heart's racing and also remembers half of patton's favorite drink and can't, "—tea, peppermint, preferably. and then go get a paper."
logan's brow creases in confusion, and virgil tries for a smile.
"every morning at breakfast, your dad's been complaining you're not there to interpret current events for him," virgil explains. "he likes it when you do that. maybe get something with a comic section, he likes those."
logan breathes, shoulders slumping a little with the relief of a series of set tasks. "okay. got it."
"right," virgil says. "i'll text you the room number as soon as i've got it, okay?"
logan nods, and sets off at a brisk pace down the hall, woe betide anyone who gets in his way.
virgil picks up the pace so he can catch up, and spots the nurse, who bustles after him, looking even more harried.
"where's...?"
"your in-laws are currently seeing to it that your husband gets the room with the good view," she says, and virgil shakes himself.
"oh, he's not my—"
then something catches up to him and he realizes that if they think he's patton's husband, he'll have the same family visiting rights as the rest of them.
"—uh, i mean, sorry. yeah. how long until they bring him back?"
"very soon," she promises. "i can appreciate that this is hard for you, sir."
you have no idea, virgil thinks, catching onto what kind of wrath emily sanders might bring down upon this hospital if she realizes that the nurses think her son's married to someone without the right pedigree or a summer house by the coast or an aspiring career as a senator or something.
"thanks so much for all your hard work," virgil says instead.
emily sweeps down the hall, nearly bowling over some poor man on a gurney.
"we've secured him the room but those pillows are completely unacceptable," she declares. "i'm going to see if i can find him some down ones and some slippers, richard is ensuring the room stays private—" she frowns, as if realizing he's the sole member of her audience right now. "where's logan?"
"he wanted to be useful, so he's going to get his dad a paper and call some people," virgil says. "is patton in the room yet?"
"they're bringing him back very soon, which is an incredible indefinite timespan," emily says. "i'll be back."
off she goes, and virgil thinks down pillows?! with only a slight amount of hysteria. he turns back to the nurse. "which room?"
"202," she says, and he texts logan the room number on the way there, and—
oh, huh. it does have a nice view, all lit up at night like this. there's no bed in the room, though, which virgil thinks is kinda weird, and richard's standing silently at the window, which virgil thinks is also kinda weird.
virgil coughs awkwardly to announce his presence.
"oh," richard says, "it's you."
"uh, yeah," virgil says.
"emily went to get pillows."
"i ran into her on the way here," virgil says, and offers, "logan went to get some tea and a paper, i can text him if you want coffee, or something."
"oh," richard says. "thank you, but no. that won't be necessary."
("—dad wants to take logan to some kind of take-your-kid-to-work-day thing next week, so i'm guessing we'll probably be in here for an early breakfast before i drop him off."
virgil spins patton's plate so that his untouched pile of leafy greens is now directly in front of him. he hopes that logan's eating whatever balanced meal isadora prince has decided to cook up for her son and his new bestest friend without too much complaint.
"what, seven’s just the right age to be introduced to the thrilling world of the insurance business?"
"i guess," patton says with a shrug. "i dunno, dad's always been very—" he adopts a sterner facial expression. "go to work, come home, read the paper, go to bed kinda guy. whereas i, you know. snuck out the window as soon as he was distracted."
virgil hands patton his fork. patton rolls his eyes and obligingly stabs his salad.
"he lives his life the way he thinks he's supposed to," patton says. "worked hard, bought a nice house, provided for my mom. very by-the-numbers guy and i've never been good at numbers. think it gave him the shock of a lifetime that i ended up, well. the way i am."
"but you get along with him better than your mom?"
"dad's disapproval tends to be a lot less shouty than mom's," patton says, with a little sigh. "but yeah, i guess i get along with him better than i get along with my mom.")
"your meatloaf was quite good."
virgil startles, grabbing for the hoodie he's tied around his waist like it's falling to cover for it.
"oh," virgil says, remembering logan's phone call that feels like a century ago. back when patton was healthy enough to pop by the diner and he was conscious and before virgil left him alone when he was sick. "um. thanks. i guess."
richard peers at him. "i know we've met before all this, but i can't quite recall when."
"uh," virgil says. "i mean, i egged your car."
("—oh. it's you."
virgil's spine stiffens, and he turns from where he's been handing over a coffee at the stall of the town-wide easter festival.
"yep," virgil says to emily and richard fucking sanders, who have parked their very fancy car right over there and have decided to come to his stall. "it's me. is there a particular reason you're here, or...?"
she sniffs. "patton said to meet him and logan by the gazebo." she gestures to the gazebo, just to the right of his stall, where the railings are lined with pastel wicker baskets of fresh-painted eggs are waiting to be hidden for all the kiddos to run after and hunt.
"right," virgil says. "well. i've got work to do, so."
"we can wait," richard says.
they wait for about a minute.
"so, you're still acquaintances with my son," emily says, and virgil scoffs without meaning to.
"if you mean we're best friends, sure," virgil says, stacking cups and wondering if he should send one of the part-timers back to the diner to get some more. "then i'm acquaintances with your son."
"don't you think that logan should have a," richard says, casts a discerning eye over virgil's stall, "a better role model?"
virgil, calmly, sets down his cups, and says, "what do you mean by that?"
"well, it's all well and good he comes by the diner sometimes," richard says. "but don't you think he, well."
"don't i think he what?" virgil asks, interlocking his fingers and calmly, calmly presses outward, cracking his knuckles.
"don't you think you might influence him to a, well," he says, "substandard way of life."
virgil's blood's roaring in his ears. "substandard," he repeats.
"well, patton's has done an all right job with him so far, but logan certainly has enough negative influence on that side of things," richard says.
"what, you think patton is a bad influence?" virgil asks disbelievingly.
"when it comes to certain delinquent behaviors, yes," richard says. "he has a history."
delinquent. virgil wants to grab him by his fancy bowtie and yank him close and and choke him, how could he possibly think that patton, whose idea of a fun past-time is walking rescue dogs at the local shelter, is a bad influence?
"so," virgil says, "let's get one thing straight. you know nothing about me, and you know nothing about the influence that patton has on logan, because logan's a good kid and patton is a good man."
virgil's eyes slide to the nearest pastel basket. almost as an afterthought, he snags the handle, which has a pretty ribbon woven around it.
"but you know what? you think i'm some kind of devil on logan's shoulder, pushing him to become a delinquent? i can show you fucking delinquent."
before he can even think, he has two of the eggs in his hands, and with an aim he didn't know he possessed, he lobs them both straight for their fancy, fancy car.
they smack and shatter against the windshield with a satisfying thwack. they aren't quite as messy as regular eggs, being hardboiled, but the paint smears, and the egg remnants litter the trunk of his car, and virgil can't help but laugh at the looks on their faces, and he grabs another egg and throws, and again, and again—
"cool!" logan shouts, from where he's emerged from the prince studio, roman in tow, and patton stares, slack-jawed, and it startles emily into wailing into action.
"richard—richard, stop him, richard—!")
"oh," richard says. "oh, dear me."
virgil's not sure what richard's going to say—i'll send you an old receipt for the cleaning, how did such a delinquent continue to be friends with my son, what kind of example are you setting for my grandson—when the door opens, and there's a rattle of wheels, and—
and there he is. there's patton.
the absence of a bed makes sense now, because they're wheeling him in on one—he's all tucked into too-white, too-starched sheets, with a feeble little blue fleecey thing tossed over the top. he's wearing one of those hospital shirts with the blue dots, and he has on an oxygen mask and an iv and one of those things that clamps down on his pointer finger, and he's—
"is he okay?"
virgil's somehow right beside the orderly, staring down at patton's face. when had he moved?
"he's out of it, right now," the orderly says patiently, "he'll be groggy when he wakes up."
"when's that going to happen?" virgil asks, voice a bit too high-pitched. "the tests? did the tests end up—?"
"the doctor's going to have to tell you that, i'm just the transport guy," the orderly demurs, parking patton's bed and checking on his iv and god, patton looks so pale, so small, the bags under eyes massive, his skin too pale for comfort with the only exception being the flush of his fever high in his cheeks, sweating, his his curls tousled and somehow flatter than usual.
"when's the doctor coming?" virgil asks, digging his fingernails into the hoodie at his waist to keep himself from reaching out and touching patton, from getting in the orderly's way.
"i'm not sure, but she'll come right to the room when she gets here," the orderly says, and, with one last check of patton's vitals, he's off, and virgil—
"i'm going to go find emily and logan and tell them he's here," richard says, and virgil just barely manages to tear his eyes away from patton's face to look at him.
richard looks—faint, he guesses, would be the right word. pale and unsettled and spooked, generally. virgil guesses he understands—if he had to see logan or roman in a hospital bed, he'd be pretty spooked, too.
and not in the way he likes to be spooked. not in the fun halloween way of spooking. the genuinely really fucking scary kind of spooked.
"right," virgil says, and turns back to patton's bed, staring at him. he wants to push his hair back. he wants to hold his hand. he wants—
"i'll, um, i'll be here."
you weren’t, the voice in his head rumbles, you weren’t here, you weren’t here, now look at him—
(and now we hit rewind to see what logan has been doing in the hospital. in a tv show this would be cut scenes, but this is a fic, so. you're getting it in a big chunk.)
logan, meanwhile, has skulked the halls of the hospital. he has been successful finding various newspapers with a funnies section (six separate editions, actually) and successful in finding virgil's tea, but it's—
well, it's the phone calls that are giving him trouble.
see, first he called michel, who's the... you know what, logan's not fully sure what michel does at the inn, he just knows that he's the one who presents dour disapproval to any troublemaking clients and employees who aren't quite up to snuff. he's the bad cop to patton's good cop. michel, unsurprisingly, does not answer. logan really doesn't know what he expected.
then he calls sookie st. james, who's the chef at the inn, and waits impatiently for her glad tidings of a good holiday and at her "how's it going?" he says "dad's in the hospital with pneumonia," and then he has to try to comfort her, which is... something he's Not Good At.
then he calls drella, the harpist, for most of the reason that drella is the only person at the inn scarier than michel, and somehow michel picks up her phone, which is something he doesn't want to contemplate, so he hangs up immediately.
and then...
"you've reached roman prince. i'm so very sorry that you're going to have to settle for my recorded dulcet tones, but leave a message and you'll get the live rendition soon."
"um, hey," logan says, wincing at the sound of his own voice. "i know that you're—that you're probably at the first show of the nutcracker. i nearly forgot that it's still thanksgiving. good luck on all that, by the way, not that you need it, i'm sure you're doing wonderfully. or, well, by the time you listen to this, i'm sure you did wonderfully, but, um, i—"
he takes in a deep breath, glances around to ensure the hallway behind him is still empty, and presses his forehead against the wall.
"dad's in the hospital," he says, and his voice wobbles, just a bit. "i—my dad's in the hospital, roman. they think it's pneumonia. virgil found him on the floor and he couldn't breathe and i just—" he forces himself to breathe.
"i just—dad's going to be back at the room any minute, but i haven't seen him, and i just. can't. so i'm calling people as an excuse not to. which is—foolish. i'm going to have to see him eventually. he'd be confused and upset if i just refused to see him. and it's foolish that i'm leaving you such a long message at all, but i just... i don't know. i don't know, roman."
i don't know what's happening, he doesn't say. i don't know what happened to him, it was a cold, i don't know what happened when he was unconscious, i don't know how he's going to recover, i didn't know until virgil called me, how could i have possibly not known?!
i need my best friend, he doesn't say. i need you. i want to hear your voice.
what he does say is, "but, um. call me back, whenever you can? you can tell me all about the performance, and i... i don't know what i'll do."
i don't know what i'm doing right now, he thinks to himself in a kind of hiss. what benefit can come from this?!
"sorry," he blurts out. "i'm—apologies. i know you can't do anything about it. i—i'm going to hang up now. bye."
logan removes his head from the wall, "accidentally" spills virgil's tea, and goes to find him a new cup. as well as a snack. and maybe another newspaper.
just. just to be prepared.
(and now we're back to a hospital room where virgil's dragged a chair by patton's bedside, and sits hunched over and staring and worrying the sleeve of his still unworn hoodie between the fingers of one hand and holding patton's hand in the other, pressed against virgil's chest, and he waits and waits and waits to see if he'll wake up. patton doesn't do much more than wrinkle his nose and make soft snuffling noises in his sleep and try to knock off his oxygen mask.)
there's the sound of footsteps behind him, and virgil doesn't turn to look.
"has the doctor come yet?" richard asks.
"no, not yet," virgil says, squeezing patton's hand. they've never actually held hands before, he doesn't think. he wishes this was happening under a different circumstance. it's kind of funny and kind of terrible, when he thinks about how he's known patton for sixteen goddamn years and has only ever held his hand once.
"richard, i've gotten joshua on the way," emily says, and then they fall into talking about joshua, who is—god, virgil doesn't know, some kind of family doctor or physician or something, but if this joshua dude is going to be able to help patton virgil is absolutely ten thousand percent for joshua getting here, go joshua, go rich people stuff, as long as patton recovers as quickly and painlessly as possible.
patton has fluid in his lungs right now. or something. virgil's not super clear on what pneumonia actually does, but he's pretty sure fluid in the lungs is part of it, and he does not want that for patton. he doesn’t want patton to be here, in a hospital bed, right now. he wants a time machine to be able to go back and slap himself for leaving patton when he was so clearly sick.
virgil's fully resigned to whatever rich people nonsense has gotta happen for that to no longer be anything close to what's going on with patton's health. god, virgil should really learn more about this. which—
virgil turns enough to see patton's parents. emily has set two pillows on a counter, but they're standing close next to each other, still in their holiday best, and virgil feels absurdly out of place in his jeans and t-shirt and abandoned hoodie. he asks, "have either of you seen logan?"
they exchange looks—one of those Married Couple looks that is so clearly a conversation that no one else in the room can understand—and richard says, "i believe he was going to find some more newspapers."
something in virgil's brain wars with leaving patton alone with these people, the way it did fourteen years ago, or leaving him at all, when the last time virgil left him it turned out like this, but the same thing wins out that won then. the same someone, really.
he clears his throat, getting to his feet. he squeezes patton's hand, hard, before carefully lying it back down on the mattress.
"i'll get him," virgil says. "just—let me know if there's any change. text logan or something."
"right," emily says, and virgil walks out of the room, trying his hardest not to glance back at him over his shoulder.
he doesn't succeed.
...
patton's nose. has something. on it. he snuffles experimentally and when that doesn't move it, he reaches to move it himself.
"oh, for heaven's sake," a familiar voice tuts, and a hand closes around his wrist.
patton blinks, and narrows his eyes. ugh, it's so bright.
wait. it definitely hadn't been bright the last place he'd been. he'd been... home. hadn't he? he'd been home. he'd been hot and it had hurt and he'd wanted hot chocolate and he'd been home. and he's not now. so where is he?
he tunes in with the rest of his body, then. head like a bowling ball, chest like a whole rack of bowling balls is resting on it, thoughts... for some reason not really able to keep a thread. or keeping too much of a thread. bowling balls. weird. he's so sweaty and uncomfortable that he figures he'll give himself a bit of a pass on making much sense, though. it's probably the cold medicine. oh, a cold shower sounded wonderful, get him all nice and cooled down and get rid of all this sweat and—
ugh, he's so... icky.
"oh," the voice says, startled, "oh, richard, he's waking up!"
and patton swivels his head a little to squint at where his mother is standing, his father bustling in to stand beside her.
"where?" patton rasps at his parents, and his mother sits on the edge of his bed, wide-eyed.
"you're at st. luke's," his mother says. "joshua's on his way, so is the doctor here, and dr. reynolds, you remember her."
gosh, joshua plus dr. reynolds plus the hospital for a cough? that seems kinda excessive.
"mkay," patton murmurs, and closes his eyes again.
"patton, do you think you can lift your head at all?" his mother asks. "i found you some decent pillows. they're not down, but they at least give a little."
ooh, pillows. patton likes pillows. virgil keeps joking that he collects them. virgil doesn't understand interior design. they give pops of color.
there's a cool, moisturized hand at the nape of his neck, though, urging him up, and ouch that rack of bowling balls on his chest, before he's settled back onto the nice new cool pillow.
"better, yes?" his mother asks, and patton hums sleepily. he's ready to go back to sleep. sleep sounds awesome.
"and one more time."
ouch oh ooh nice.
"now if we could just find you some different sheets," his mom says.
oh. these sheets are kinda nice, though. a bit stiff but not bad. he doesn't wanna move. and if she gets him new sheets he's gonna have to move.
"s'okay, mom," patton murmurs.
"maybe you could get dava to bring some from home," his dad suggests.
"s'really okay," patton says.
"oh, of course," emily says. "why didn't i think of that?"
"don't need new sheets," patton tries to insist.
"they're completely unacceptable," emily says.
oh, now she's done it, patton's gotta open his eyes now.
"the sheets are fine," patton says, a little louder, or he tries to, because he breaks down into coughs when he says fine, harsh and loud, and patton tries to sit up or curl on his side but that same cool hand's at his shoulder, fluttering nervously, before he sucks in a breath and there's that pain in his chest that's been there for the past—however long?—and patton tries to catch his breath.
"—call button must be broken or something—"
"m'okay," patton wheezes.
"don't be ridiculous," richard says.
"i'm not," patton says. "m'an adult, i can handle it."
"it's the fever talking," emily says. "they really don't have that down, whatever that nurse said, feel how warm he is."
a different but still-cool hand, dry and wrinkled, rests on his forehead.
"i don't have a fever," patton sulks.
"you were at risk for seizures," his father says.
sounds fake, but okay.
"i really am okay," patton murmurs, eyes slipping shut again.
"no," emily tells him. "no, you are not."
"i'm fine," patton says, and yawns. "you can go home, you don't have to deal with me anymore."
there's a silence but it doesn't feel like the end of a conversation. patton doesn't wanna open his eyes again, though. he's so tired. but he can't go to sleep yet. but he really wants to. so he'll just let his eyelids rest. that'll work. right? he'll just keep his eyes nice and closed and explain it and they can get on home.
"fine?" his mother repeats, strangled.
"it's just a cold," patton mumbles.
she sighs, irritated. "patton—"
"know we fought last week," patton says, trying to talk as loud as he can without risking a cough, or without having to breathe too deep. "and m'sorry i made life so hard on you then, n'm'sorry i'm such a disappointment, an' i'm'sorry i took logan away, an'—"
"oh, patton, hush," his mother says, sounding a little strange. "it's hardly the time for all—"
"and i'm sorry, okay," patton insists, cracking his eyes open, because that's important, "m'sorry i can't fix it. but m'an adult now and i can handle things and stuff. so you don't gotta stay jus' for a cold."
"young man, you have pneumonia," his father says gruffly.
"oh," patton says, startled. "do i?"
"well, we're waiting for the doctor to confirm it."
"oh," patton repeats, quiet. pneumonia. that's not good. that's always the illness that kills people in old timey books. that's the illness that they always look out for when things go bad for old people. that's... that sounds serious. really serious.
that's scary.
"patton?" his mother asks, sounding slightly alarmed, and patton tries to inhale a shaky breath, and then another one. he might be panicking, he thinks.
"i—" he swallows, hard, and says, "is logan okay?"
"what?" she asks, distracted. "yes, of course. he's getting some newspapers and some tea."
"are you sure?" he asks, because logan has to be okay—logan has to be okay. logan's got to be taken care of, he has to be okay.
"yes, of course i'm sure," she says.
"you have to make sure he's going to be okay," he insists.
"he's fine."
"logan's—logan always acts fine, that's his default state," patton says. "but he always hides his emotions. so he'll always get snappy, and sometimes you just have to let him let off steam, and sometimes you kind of have to poke him into it, but after he rants for a while it helps calm him down enough that he can talk about what's really bothering him and—"
"patton," she says, awkwardly, a little helplessly, and patton swallows hard.
"he always overworks himself," he tells her intently. "so you gotta lure him out with new books, or an opportunity to shred the courant or just a newspaper or a publication in general, or a trip to a planetarium or a museum, preferably a science one but if he goes with roman he likes art ones too, or you gotta sit him down with a crofter's jam sandwich and tell him to take a break, because he always ignores it if he needs a break, because he thinks he's a lean mean study machine who doesn't need to do fun things, but he does, because he's—"
"patton, you don't need to tell us all this—" his father tries to intercede.
he ignores him. they need to know these things about him, in case patton isn't in a place to take care of him, they need to be able to take care of him.
"—i know that you know logan pretty well, especially over the past couple months, but i think that virgil's the best source on all things logan, especially if he's ever confusing or if he's moping or needs anything, so if you're ever lost, and i know you've had your differences, but virgil knows logan just about better than anyone else, except me, and virgil's always happy to help logan, and sometimes logan just needs to talk to someone who isn't related to him so he'll usually go to virgil or roman and that's a-okay, because they're his best friends, and you have to make sure that he gets to stay in contact with them because i never ever want logan to feel lonely or unloved, never ever ever, and if i die—"
"patton, stop!" she snaps, and patton shuts his mouth, immediate, shrinking into his pillows as she looms over his bed.
"now," she says, "there may be many things happening in this hospital tonight, but your dying is not one of them, am i clear?!"
"i—"
"no!" she snarls. "i did not sign onto your dying when i became your mother, so it is not going to happen. not tonight, not for a very long time. i demand to go first. of all the things you have done to us, you will not put us through burying you first, do i make myself clear?"
patton stares up at his mom, and oh. oh, this isn't just scary for him. this is scary for all of them. and patton freaking out isn't helping things.
"okay," he says, very quiet. "okay, mom. i promise i won't die."
she nods, swallows. "good."
patton reaches over and, hesitantly, takes her hand. her free hand flutters up to her mouth, and his mom looks like she's about to cry, and patton squeezes a little, and closes his eyes. things drop off and go a little dark and blurry around the edges before everything goes dark and blurry and—
...
this hospital is a maze, but it doesn't take him nearly as long as he thought it would to find a mostly-empty hall containing just who he's looking for.
"hey," virgil says, coming to a stop next to him, and logan shudders out of whatever train of thought he'd locked himself into.
"hi," logan says, and passes over a to-go cup. "tea. peppermint, even. i found some newspapers and i called sookie. well, i called michel too, but he didn't answer, and then i called drella, and then michel answered. did you know that was—?"
virgil's already reflexively pulling a face.
"thought not," logan murmurs. not quite as smugly as he might be on a normal day after figuring out some kind of secret.
"okay," virgil says. "well, thanks. they brought your dad back and a doctor's due at any minute."
logan nods. virgil hesitates, before he fiddles with the little heat-protecting cardboard ring on the cup for something to do with his hands.
("—hate doctors, hate them, hate them, hate them," patton says, pulling a face.
"i'm the one going to a doctor," eight-year-old logan eludicates. "and it's just a check-up."
"and i have hated going to all of your check-ups since the time you were born," patton says, ruffling his hair.
"he has," virgil says dryly. "i've heard this series of complaints since your six-week check-up. eat your eggs."
"tell him he could just wait in the waiting room," logan says, but he spears some eggs on his fork anyway. "i keep telling him to stay in the waiting room."
patton looks aghast. "and miss any health updates?!"
"but you hate the doctor," logan says. "wouldn't it be better if you just... didn't? since all of that scares you?"
"me being scared isn't the point," patton says. "it's about me being there for you."
"you don't need to be," logan says.
"yeah, but i want to be," patton says. "that's what a dad does—")
"you can't avoid going in the room forever," he says gently, and logan rears back.
"i'm not," he says.
"it's okay to be a bit freaked out right now—"
"i'm not."
"logan," virgil says, keeping his voice gentle and soft and calm.
logan slumps. just a little.
"thank you for getting tea and making those calls and getting all those newspapers," virgil says, making his voice keep the same tone. "but your dad's in the room now and the doctor's due any minute. i know it'll probably make you feel a bit more at ease to hear what's going on. right?"
logan hesitates, before he nods.
"okay," virgil says. "so. if you really really want, you can wait outside the room until the doctor gets here. we just want to know where you are."
logan nods, and then he follows virgil back, where he comes to a stop just by the door.
("—not scared," twelve-year-old logan sulks at the counter of the diner. "honestly. me, scared."
"well," virgil says, leaning forward on his elbows, "it'd be okay if you were scared of snakes, you know."
"roman's not scared of snakes," he says. "it's not about me being scared, anyway, it's about—"
"why are we talking about snakes?" patton asks, sitting back down in his counter chair.
"tell your son it's okay to be afraid of snakes," virgil says.
"it's not about me being scared, which i'm not," logan says. "i just don't want to hold a massive boa constrictor on the field trip."
"and no one can make you do anything you don't want to do," patton says firmly. "if a teacher bugs you about it at the zoo tomorrow, you tell them i said that—")
"you sure?" virgil checks, and logan only holds out a pile of newspapers for virgil to take in.
he sighs but takes them and goes in, to where emily is sitting on the bed and caressing back patton's hair with—
it shouldn't shock virgil that she's doing it with maternal fondness. patton is her son, after all, but after all these years of seeing their fighting and patton falling apart after each of them, it feels like... virgil doesn't know. it feels like she should be just as stern and cold now as virgil knows she can be.
"he woke up," richard says, and virgil's eyes snap to him, and to the now-definitely-unconscious patton. "just for a little while."
"was he—" virgil struggles to find words. of course something happened when virgil left. of course. but at least this one seems to be a good thing.
"not quite lucid," richard says.
"a bit more lucid than we'd like him to be, you mean," emily says archly, and turns to frown at virgil. "where's logan?"
"just outside," virgil says. "keeping an eye out for the—"
"—but he's going to be here for how long?" logan asks a doctor who comes in with a short little man in a suit, and virgil can't help but take a step closer.
"well," the doctor says to the room at large. "the cultures we took and his chest x-ray came back, and i'm afraid that it is pneumonia. he'll have to stay at the hospital for a couple days to ensure that fever stays down and to get him started on some antibiotics."
"how long?" logan repeats.
"difficult to say at this point," she says. "two or three days, at least, maybe longer if it's necessary. but," she says, and turns to virgil. "i believe you managed to catch him before his condition could have gotten much worse. you certainly brought him in before the fever could do any permanent damage."
virgil does not feel like this is particularly praise-worthy. it had mostly just been a terrifying experience. if virgil hadn’t left patton never would have gotten to this state at all.
"but he'll be just fine," the doctor says. "i'm sure it was a bit of a scare, but once he gets started on antibiotics, he'll be okay."
it's like the whole room breathes a sigh of relief.
"now," the doctor says, "i hear he woke up?"
"a little while ago," emily says, and moves aside a little so the doctor can get a closer look at patton. "he went right back to sleep, though."
"that'll be common," she says. "he'll be in and out of sleep, at varying levels of lucidity—"
virgil sees the flash of a bespoke, expensive suit jacket flutter around the door frame.
("—logan," virgil gasps, and scoops him up into his arms. "oh, my god, we were worried sick about you, you can't just run off like that, buddy—"
logan blinks too-big, watery three-year-old eyes up at him, clutching at virgil's shirt contentedly. "didn't run off."
"yeah, okay, nice try, kid," virgil says, trying to hug him close without looking like he was hugging him close. god, that had been the most terrifying five minutes of his whole life. "when we tell you to stay somewhere and you do not stay in that somewhere, that's running off."
"didn't," logan insists, kicking his bare feet. "i was following—"
"logan!" patton shout-sobs, and rushes over, and before virgil can even make a move to hand him over patton crashes into them both, hugging logan between their bodies, hugging virgil by extension, and—
"oh, my god, honey, you can't do that," patton says, semi-hysterically, pushing logan's hair back from his forehead so he could lean in and kiss him on the forehead. "i was so scared something happened to you, you can't just run away like that!"
"didn't!" logan insists again. "i was following a star bug!"
"star bug?" virgil mouths at patton.
"logan," patton says, high-pitched, "if you want to go follow the fireflies, you gotta tell one of us, okay? something could have happened to you!"
"nothing woulda happened," logan says, and, with all the belief of a three-year-old, "virgil was lookin' after me, i was okay the whole time."
patton lets out a sigh, one of the we're not done talking about this but i'll accept it for now ones, and presses his lips against logan's head again, looking up at virgil as he did, and virgil tries to pretend like logan's absolute faith in him hasn't moved him to the core—)
logan's slumped against a wall, hand over his eyes.
"hey," virgil says, soft, and logan sniffs, standing up straight, trying to pretend like he wasn't five seconds from starting to cry.
"so, um, he's gonna be okay."
"yeah," logan says, and swallows hard, fiddling with his fancy new suit coat.
"they're gonna keep him for a couple days, but he's gonna be fine."
"yeah," logan repeats.
an idea occurs to virgil. a really fucking stupid idea.
("—you might have to see The Hugging Solution put into action today," patton says grimly.
"oh, god," virgil says, freezing and turning from where he's wiping down one of the booth tables. "what happened?!"
"apparently logan found out about the library of alexandria today at school," patton says, "and mrs. donnely called to tell me logan was really upset about it."
"how does a six-year-old even find out about—?!"
"picture book, i guess," patton says with a helpless little shrug. "but, just—play along, okay?"
"uh, okay?" virgil says, but then the door opens and a familiar tiny boy sulks his way to the booth, lip trapped under teeth, probably to keep it from trembling, and eyes watery.
another familiar tiny boy has followed after him, loyally toting two pairs of backpacks.
"hello, mister prince," virgil says, snatching both backpacks and setting them by patton in the booth, where—patton has slumped over, and he lets out an overexaggerated, sad sigh, staring forlornly at the grilled cheese he'd been eagerly eating thirty seconds ago.
"i'm supposta go home," roman says, "but logan was really sad boutta book so i decided to walk him here!"
"well, that's really nice of you," virgil says seriously.
roman puffs up his small chest. "m'bein—shiv-all—shiv-all-rus!"
"wow," virgil says, trying not to laugh. "that's really cool of you, roman. do you want an after-school snack?"
"please!" roman sings, and patton helps lift him into the booth so he's opposite logan, and then sits back down with another long, sad sigh.
"how about you, logan?" virgil asks.
"no," logan sulks in the corner.
"not even a crofter's sandwich?" virgil cajoles.
logan wavers.
"tell you what," virgil says. "i'll make one for you, and one for roman, and if you decide you don't want it, i can send it home with your dad for later, yeah?"
"...fine," logan says, arms crossed, still staring at the wall. patton, mimicking him, crosses his arms and stares at the wall, too.
"i'll let your mom know you're on the way in a bit, roman," virgil says, and reaches out to ruffle his hair mostly because of the tiny squawk of indignation when he does.
by the time virgil comes out with two plates of crofter's sandwiches, patton has progressed to sniffling with his head down on the table, roman petting his hair, and logan looking grudgingly curious from where he's still sitting with his arms crossed.
"okay, i've got two crofter's sandwiches here," virgil starts, but roman looks up at him.
"leave us alone, can't you see he's having a day," roman scolds.
"where'd you learn that?" virgil says, bemused, and roman grins.
"mrs. torres," he says—one of the old women who frequents the studio for sunrise yoga. "did i do it right?"
"you'd do her proud," virgil says, and remembers patton's play along, and pats patton's hair, too. "i know. he's been very sad since he got here."
logan's arms loosen. just a little. "he has?"
"he has," virgil confirms, somber as the grave.
"oh," logan says.
"mr. patton," roman says, still petting his hair, "is there anything we can do?"
"oh," patton says, and affects a mopey look on his face when he lifts his head from his arms. "well... mayy-be. but i don't know if you three would want to."
"we'll do it!" roman declares immediately.
patton sighs, and shakes his head.
"i dunno, it might be a little silly."
"well," virgil says, a little louder, conscious of how logan's staring, "i think a little silly's okay, if it makes you not as sad."
patton nods, and slides out of the booth.
"virgil," he says, and spreads his arms. "can i have a hug? to make me feel better?"
all at once, patton's plan coalesces in virgil's head.
"oh, yeah, sure thing," virgil says, when he realizes he hesitated a moment too long. he opens his arms. "get in here."
patton steps forward, and virgil wraps his arms around him, a little awkwardly—but patton's warm and soft and he fits neatly against virgil, and he smells nice, so it's not like it's the worst hug he's ever gotten. pretty far from it, actually.
he steps back, and pats patton on the shoulder, for good measure.
"did that help?" virgil asks.
"i think so," patton says, and turns. "i might need another—"
patton is very nearly tackled to the floor by a pint-sized blur of white and red and gold.
"isthishelpingmisterpatton?!" roman demands, and patton lets out a little "oof, gosh, you're so strong!"
roman squeezes patton harder, as if squeezing hard enough will get rid of all the sadness in the world.
patton pats him on the shoulder, and says, "that was very helpful, thank you. you should eat your crofter's as a reward."
"okay!" roman says brightly, and clambers back up into the booth.
patton crouches in front of the booth where logan's dropped his crossed arms at last, but is biting his lip even more ferociously.
"can i have a hug?" patton asks him gently.
"you've gotten two," logan sniffs.
"yeah, but i haven't gotten any from my favorite son, yet."
"i'm your only son."
"that too," patton says, and spreads his arms. "so? i'm feeling very upset, and i'd really like it if you gave me a hug right now."
logan hesitates, eyes darting to where roman is stuffing his face and to where virgil is standing. "this is a hug for you," he declares imperiously.
"of course it is," patton says, and as soon as he says it, logan squirms off the booth and straight into patton's arms, wrapping his arms tight around patton's neck and burying his face into patton's shoulder.
"hey, there we go," patton murmurs, shifting a little, and when he's sure roman isn't looking, he winks at virgil, who suppresses his smile the best he can and—)
so it's a stupid idea, but it's the only one he has.
virgil heaves a sigh, and resigns himself to looking like an idiot.
"i'm feeling very upset," virgil says stiffly, and lifts his arms a little. "i'd really like it if someone gave me a hug right now."
logan sends him the world's most withering glare. the effect is slightly spoiled by the way he sniffs, smears his hand under his nose, and looks away.
"i'm not six anymore," logan says, and redirects his glare at virgil. "that won't work on me."
"look, kid, this hug isn't for your benefit," virgil says, lying through his goddamn teeth. "i have had a hard day. i had a big family gathering and then i had to drive home for hours and then i found your dad unconscious on the ground and had to bring him to the hospital, plus i've had to deal with your grandparents. so."
he lifts his arms higher. "i am upset. i would like a hug."
"you're way worse at this than dad is," logan says.
"yeah, i know," virgil says, "you know one way to put us both out of this misery?"
"are you seriously trying to embarrass me into hugging you?"
"i can keep going," virgil bluffs immediately, even though logan knows full well about this social anxiety.
logan sighs, loudly. "fine," he grumbles. "fine, if it'll get you to stop."
so virgil steps forward and wraps his arms around the kid, heart panging—when did he get so big? virgil used to be able to practically hold him in one arm, just the space between his hand and his elbow. and now there's this young man, all gawky and gangly and still growing somehow, it's like he looked down and looked up and there he was, sixteen years flown by, except not really, because time was long, but also kind of really? being a parent person who watches a kid grows up is confusing.
he keeps rubbing a hand up and down logan's back, the way patton does when he hugs people. he's picked up a lot of things from patton, over the years. he couldn't say how many.
"he's going to be fine," logan says, and oh, god, his voice wobbles.
"i know," virgil whispers, and keeps rubbing a hand up and down his back. "hey, i know. i promised he would be, and now we know for a fact he is, right?"
"right," logan says, and sniffs, loudly, and virgil holds onto him tighter.
"it's okay," virgil murmurs. "it's okay, logan. it's okay."
it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, virgil says, choking up himself, vision blurry and then failing as he gives in to the hectic emotion of this whole day, but he keeps talking to logan, and he keeps saying it’s okay, logan, it’s okay and loses track of the amount of times he says it, it's okay, logan, and logan's shoulders shudder and virgil feels his shirt soak through.
"it's okay," virgil murmurs, sniffs, and keeps running his hand across logan's back. "there we go, l, it's okay."
"don't tell him," logan sobs into his shirt.
"oh, hey, i'd never," virgil says, as soft and comforting as he can. "patton can't know that we both lost it when he was out of the picture for one second, so it's our secret, yeah?"
"yeah," logan gasps, and draws back, smearing a sleeve under his nose, sniffing one last time. "yeah. our secret."
"okay," virgil says, and reaches forward with both hands to frame logan's ever-sharpening cheekbones in his hands, losing all that baby fat he'd been born with, swiping the tears off his face before starting in on his own face. "you okay?"
"yeah."
"you sure?" virgil checks, dropping his hands to logan's shoulders.
"yeah," logan says, and swallows, following the tracks of virgil's thumbs with his own hands, as if to make sure that virgil hasn't missed any. "yeah, i'm okay, i'm good. do i look like i've been crying?"
"nah," virgil says. “do i?”
"no. i don't want anyone to know i—"
"hey, our secret," virgil says.
(there is an eavesdropped neither logan or virgil notice. emily sanders frowns.)
"right," logan says, and scrubs at his face one last time. "this week has sucked."
if it was any other day, virgil would have laughed. logan hasn't used the phrase 'this sucks' since he was about nine. as it stands, though—
"yeah," virgil says. "i mean, your dad told me something really smart once, wanna hear it?"
"i have a feeling you'll tell me anyway," logan says, a solid attempt at a joke.
"even though today—or this week, i guess, in your case—has sucked, you wanna know the bright side?" virgil says, remembering patton's words from sixteen years ago, on the night they met. "i'll never have to do today again."
logan breathes, and says, "i never want to stay with them for that long ever again."
"i know," virgil says.
"i hated it there," he says.
(emily flinches.)
"i know," virgil says. "hey, we can tell your dad about the will thing once he's up and at 'em again, if it makes you feel better."
"it would," logan says fervently. "i fully understand why dad ran away now. you can't—you can't let me stay there anymore, virgil."
(emily flinches harder.)
"i won't," virgil says. "i promise, i won't. i mean, i know your dad only did it because it was a last resort kind of situation—"
"i know that too," logan says, and then, quieter, more miserably, "i yelled at him about it."
all virgil can say to that is "aw, kid," and tug him back into the hug.
"i yelled at him," logan repeats, voice waterclogged, like he's about to start crying again.
"hey, i know he's not mad at you," virgil says. "he gets it, you know? he gets that you yelled because you were upset at the situation, not at him. i bet as soon as we walk in there, it's gonna make his day that you're there."
logan snuffles, and virgil draws back so that he can look him in the face. "really?"
"really," virgil promises, and he's been promising logan a lot tonight, but the kid deserves some promises that things would be okay, okay, his dad's in the hospital, because virgil left him alone, it’s the least he can do to help the kid feel better. "you know your dad, he's the softest little puffball we got."
logan snort-laughs, snotty and kind of gross, and wipes under his eyes again. "yeah. yeah, he is."
"you're, like, his whole world."
logan shifts, uncomfortable with so many displays of emotion in such a close time span, but he's saved by his grandfather.
"oh, he's waking up," virgil hears richard say, startled, and virgil claps logan's shoulder.
"you ready?"
logan lets out a shaky breath, straightens his tie, and tilts up his chin—proud, confident, a little arrogant. looking a bit more like himself, then, virgil thinks, relieved. he gestures logan to go ahead of him, and they enter the room to see patton, who turns at the sound of the door opening, and patton—
patton lights up.
his face brightens, his dimples appear in full, he beams—hey, wait, was he supposed to take off the oxygen mask?—and he reaches out both hands for logan, as if logan's still little enough that patton can pick him up.
"hey!" he says. "oh, my gosh, hi!"
"hi, dad," logan says, approaching the bed, and patton's smile doesn't falter as logan takes one of his hands, hovering at his bedside.
"can i get a hug?" patton asks. "just this once."
logan hesitates. "if i hug you, won't it hurt?"
"what's life without a bit of pain?" patton jokes, and then, more seriously, "as long as you're gentle, it'll be okay, kiddo."
logan hesitates, and then, stiffly, bends so that he gives patton the softest, least-squeezy hug he can possibly execute, before sitting at patton's bedside again.
"i've missed you," patton says, picking up logan's hand to squeeze it again, "so much."
logan's lip quirks up, just a little, and virgil's heart feels lighter, seeing two of the people he loves most in the world all together again—all that's missing is an obnoxious teenage dance instructor.
"i missed you too, dad," logan says.
patton's smile is blinding, and virgil's knees go a little weak, to the point where he sits in the chair next to logan.
"okay, so," patton says, and pats logan's hand. "me and virgil have been dying without you to tell us everything that's going on in the world every day, let me tell you, dying."
logan's lips twitch. "don't exaggerate," he scolds.
"we aren't," virgil said. "i told you he'd want to hear you talk about current events, that's why i had you get all those newspapers."
logan rolls his eyes, and patton smiles at him, like logan's done something very charming and sweet instead of just made the quintessential teenage facial expression, and virgil can't help but smile a little, too.
"so," patton says. "tell us all about it. tell us about the news, and about your last couple days at chilton before the break, and how your week's been going, i want to hear everything."
so they listen as logan sticks to the safe and relatively unemotional topic of the news, explaining every headline he can, fishing example articles out of his newspaper pile when he has to, nearly crawling onto the bed in order to fully show the articles to patton. it reminds virgil of when he was little, so eager to investigate the whole world, so eager to show it off to anyone who would listen.
patton, even listening as raptly as he is, is still very sick, so can't help but slip off a little. which means that every time logan will trail off experimentally, staring to see if his dad's falling asleep, patton will start and grumble "m'wake, i'm awake, keep goin', i'm paying attention," and virgil will exchange a look with logan and logan will keep going until patton starts nodding off again.
eventually, logan keeps talking, and talking, and talking, even as he notices patton slip deeper and deeper into sleep until—
"i think he's finally asleep," logan says, hushed.
"i think you're right," virgil says. "good work, kid."
"speaking of sleep," richard says, "perhaps we should consider getting home."
"well, i'm not leaving," emily and virgil say in unison, who both jump and glare at each other.
"me either," logan says.
"you need sleep, you're a teenager, you need more sleep than a baby," virgil says.
"that's actually inaccurate," logan begins.
"okay, well, you still need to sleep," virgil says, frowning. "you should go home, to sideshire."
logan brightens at that, just a little.
what ensues is a solid bickering session: on if logan should go home to sideshire or back to his grandparent's house, on if virgil or emily should stay, on who would take which car and on who would bring logan back to visit if he wanted, and eventually it settled out to—
"bye, virgil," logan says. "thanks for looking after him."
"always do," virgil says. "i texted sarah, she's opening tomorrow, but would you mind swinging by the diner to let people know, just in case?"
"of course," logan says. "i'll even pick up breakfast there before i visit tomorrow."
virgil nods, and gives logan a hug goodnight, just because.
"you're sure you'll be all right?" richard's asking emily, in the background.
"i'll be fine," she says.
"you can call if you'd like me to come back, or if you need something."
"go," emily says, and kisses her husband on the cheek. "i'll look after patton."
richard smiles, squeezes her shoulder, and then logan and richard are gone.
an incredibly awkward silence descends on the hospital room.
emily sniffs, and drags one of the chairs to the opposite side of patton's bed. virgil settles into his—he notes, with slight relief, that his side does not show patton's iv.
"you don't trust me with my own son," she says, coldly, and virgil crosses his arms, leaning back in his chair.
"was i too subtle, the first time?" he deadpans.
she sniffs again, and sits up even straighter, looking away from him. for a second, he thinks that might be the end of it, and they'll sit quietly in awkward silence until one of them falls asleep or the sun has risen.
of course not.
"i don't know what gives you the right—"
virgil sighs, loudly, and pinches the bridge of his nose.
"oh, my god, okay," virgil says, and leans back in his chair again, worrying his hoodie between his fingers. "there are so many goddamn reasons i don't like you. i have a list in my head that's been sixteen years in the making. do you seriously want me to spend the whole night going through it?"
she arches a brow at him. that is literally all it takes.
"fine," virgil says. "i don't like your smug rich person attitude. i don't like the way you look down at me because i run a diner for a living. i don't like the way you think your privilege is a goddamn god-given right, like you're some kind of medieval king or something—"
"are you quite finished?"
"like i said, sixteen years, don't rush me," virgil says, kicking back in his chair and starting to tick things off his fingers. "i don't like your tacky rich people hair or your tacky rich people outfit. i don't like how you apparently think the bus is for drug dealers. i don't like most of the things you say about people who aren't as rich as you, actually, but that's a whole other thing. i don't like the car that you had that i egged that one time. i don't like how you think having a lot of money automatically makes you better than other people, i don't like the way you treat your son—"
"how dare you," she begins indignantly, loudly, and patton mumbles, shifting in his sleep. they both freeze.
"look," virgil hisses, "i am fully willing to fight with you, we just have to keep the volume low so that we don't wake patton up, clear?"
they both stare at patton for a few seconds. when she's satisfied that patton isn't waking up, she leans forward, and snarls, "how dare you," at a satisfactory volume.
"i dare because you and your husband are shit to him," virgil snarls. back, at a similarly quiet volume. "because you say fucking terrible things to him, and he's sensitive, and soft, and a good man, and he deserves better than you two jumping on him every time you get the chance—"
"you know nothing—"
"i know nothing?!" virgil snaps. "are you fucking kidding me?!"
"no, i most certainly am not!" she declares. "you know nothing about the way our lives have gone, you know nothing about the way our family works, and you have no right to pretend to know."
"oh, i don't?"
"no, you don't!" she says, strident. "it's none of your business how—"
"none of my business?!"
"it most certainly is not!"
"it is when patton shows up crying in my diner!" virgil hisses, fingernails digging into his hoodie. "it is when that's what's been happening after family gatherings with you for years! it's my business because sixteen years ago a kid holding a baby showed up and started sobbing in my diner and decided to stick around town, just because the first place he pulled into someone showed him some goddamn kindness for the first time in months, it is when you're messing with the life of my best friend and our fucking kid—"
"you are not logan's father—"
"look, i might not have contributed anything to logan's dna makeup, but that doesn't change that he's our kid," virgil says roughly. "patton's known that for years and logan has too."
there's a flicker of what might be surprise on her face, before she angrily sets her jaw.
"they're the ones whose opinion i care about, so i don't particularly give a fuck what you think about the fact that i've basically adopted your grandson," virgil says. "and i might not be one of logan's biological parents, but jesus christ, i'd never call him a disappointment, not in a million years. so all things considered, i'm pretty sure that makes me a better parent than you."
patton makes a soft snuffling noise in his sleep, and his head tilts a bit in virgil's direction. virgil tries not to feel too victorious about it.
"you have no idea what he did to us," emily says.
"yeah, i do," virgil says. "i was there. i saw how much it tore him apart. still does."
she stares at him, and says, quietly, "i wasn't just talking about him running away."
oh. virgil leans back a little more. right. patton's rebellious teenage years.
("okay, so, you gotta be careful when you try this, right?" virgil says, holding a shot of vodka a bit like it is a nuclear bomb. "drink it all down at once, then you drink this sprite right after or else it'll feel like your throat is burning—"
patton, freshly twenty-one, only stares at him, amused, and downs the shot like a pro, barely pausing to sip his sprite and grin at virgil, to the cheers of the other attendants of patton's fairly sparse birthday party.
"virgil," he says patiently. "this isn't the first drink of alcohol i've ever had."
"oh," he says lamely. "right."
patton snorts and pats him fondly on the cheek. "maybe when i get drunker i'll tell you all about my various teenage shenanigans."
"will it give me a heart attack?"
patton's grin turns a little vicious. "probably," he says. "i mean, it nearly did for my parents. would you say being a teen parent or riding along with chris when he crashed his porsche two hours after his parents got it for his sixteenth birthday is more heart-attack inducing? or the times i shoplifted from department stores? or my five separate fake ids? or maybe my boyfriend who referred to himself as 'the dragon witch' and got me an honorary place in a biker gang? or—"
"patton, oh my god—"
"i'm just warming up, here, we're not even in the good stuff yet," patton chirps teasingly.
"the good stuff? good stuff as in, like, bible study, right?" virgil says, trying to make it a joke to cover that he's about to hyperventilate, but patton laughs and accepts another shot from maria with a nod of thanks before he can get really into it, and then when he surfaces from that shot he demands the music be turned up so he can dance, c'mon, virgil, dance with me dance with me dance with me it's my birthday you gotta dance with me—!)
"okay," virgil says, "as someone who was also pretty stupid when they were a teenager—"
she narrows her eyes at him suspiciously, and he rolls his eyes in return.
"you cannot seriously tell me you haven't done a few dumb things in life you regret," virgil says. "i hung around some kids who weren't the best influences—we called ourselves The Others, i know, it's stupid—and do i regret a lot of the stuff i did with them? yeah, i do. but i've bettered myself, i've moved on, and i've grown. patton has too."
"oh, he has," emily says doubtfully. "of course he has. suddenly, my eyes are open. you've delivered me nirvana. of course patton is no longer a teenager, why, i must have been confused because he insists on continuing to act like one."
"act like one?" virgil repeats cluelessly.
"it clearly isn't news to you that we and patton argue often."
"yeah, no, it isn't," virgil says. "i mean, patton's defending himself, but sure, whatever."
"through asking logan to treat us like lepers?" she snaps. "that doesn't strike you as immature behavior?"
asking logan to treat us like lepers, virgil mouths, and then, "you think patton asked logan to give you a hard time? are we talking about the same patton and logan?"
"well, why else would he—?"
"because logan is a smart, stubborn kid who hates the fact that patton has to sit through you two bullying him in order to secure money for his schooling, holy shit," virgil says. "because logan picks arguments like florists pick flowers, and if someone messes with one of His People it basically means free reign for him to fight back."
"well—"
"logan's literally a debate champion," virgil says. "you're telling me you think it's more likely that patton, your son, the same patton who didn't want to bother anyone when he came down with fucking pneumonia, that patton, you think it's more likely that that patton asked logan, who once got into a full-on argument with a four-year-old who told him that newspapers were stupid when he was fifteen, to be mean to you. you think that patton asked that logan to pick a fight? seriously?"
she crosses her arms and huffs, and suddenly, it clicks.
"oh, my god," virgil says. "you wanna know what your problem is?! you still think that patton's sixteen."
"of course i don't—"
"no, listen," virgil says, warming up to this theory. "patton runs away, and that sucks, i get it, i'm not arguing that. but the only times you see him after that until pretty recently are, what, holidays? so you don't see him on a day-to-day basis anymore. so you didn't see him grow up and grow up fast. and you still refuse to see him grow up, because he's your kid, and on one level i get that because logan becoming an actual adult scares me a lot, but on the other, seriously, lady, patton's thirty-two. he has a house and a good job and he's getting his degree and he has done a great job raising logan, who is, i think we can both agree, while being incredibly infuriating sometimes, is also one of the best teenagers on the face of this planet."
her nod is really more of a jerk of her chin.
"honestly, if anyone would be telling logan to pick a fight with you, it'd be me," virgil muses.
her eyes sharpen.
"you told logan to—" emily begins, and virgil rolls his eyes.
"no," virgil says, "because when i don't like someone, i don't tell a sixteen-year-old kid to pass on the message for me, god. i'm just saying that if it was between me or patton telling logan to pick a fight, it'd be me."
a pause, a sniff, a "well, that i can believe."
"in the interest of honesty, or whatever, i have been telling patton to not let you into his life anymore for years," virgil says.
the look on her face isn't what virgil's expecting. virgil's expecting her nostrils to flare, her jaw to clench, her eyes to ignite with fury. he's expecting a loud outburst. he's expecting rage. what flickers across her face isn't that.
virgil thinks it might be fear.
why would she be afraid of—oh.
oh, that's why patton won't hear about cutting them out whenever virgil brings it up. that's why patton won't hear about leaving them. because he did it once, didn't he? he did it when he ran away to sideshire.
"he won't listen to me, obviously," virgil says, refusing to acknowledge that he might be saying this to comfort her, but just to establish where they're at, in the fight. because, like, obviously patton wouldn't do that, but she clearly has a skewed idea of who her son is, so.
"but it's a whole routine. you all fight, you upset patton, patton comes to me, i tell him to cut you two out. he makes excuses. you two... i dunno, god, patton apologizes for whyever you chose to fight him, or he at least smooths things over enough so that you guys get together for the next holiday, the cycle starts again." virgil waves a hand. "he gets irritated if i bring it up too much, so i don't. he's entirely too optimistic about you."
she's quiet. virgil waits a few seconds, before he continues.
"and you realize that i'm definitely not the one who'd convince patton about cutting you out, but you know the one person he'd do anything for, even if it broke his heart?"
she's gone a little paler. "logan," she says.
"yeah," virgil says. "logan."
"logan wouldn't," she begins, but falters.
"if you keep fighting with patton like this, he might," virgil says. "logan hates it when his dad is upset. he hates it."
"he hates my house," she says, sharp. "he hates me and my husband."
virgil gawks at her.
"what?" she demands. "weren't you going to throw that in my face? weren't you going to lord it over me that he'd rather you be his guardian than us?!"
"i'm not that much of an asshole, jesus," virgil says. "i didn't—i didn't know you'd overheard that."
"yes, well," she scoffs, and fiddles with some of her bracelets. "when patton woke up, then, he kept trying to tell us how we could better take care of logan. even then he said that if we were at a loss, we should contact you."
"i," virgil begins, and shakes himself. "he said all that?"
"when we told him he had pneumonia, he seemed to be under the impression that he was—" her voice cracks. she does not have to say dying out loud—it's written all over her face.
virgil swallows hard, and looks to patton, slumbering peacefully, the beep of his heart monitor, the reassuring rise and fall of his chest. i left him, i left him, and he thought he was dying, he got so sick that he thought he might die because i left him—
"oh."
"he promised he wouldn't."
"he better not," virgil says hoarsely.
"hmph. yes."
"i—" virgil looks at her, then back at patton. "i mean, he's right. i do know a lot in the whole 'care and keeping of logan' thing."
"oh, i'm sure," she mutters sarcastically.
"i could make it a whole lot clearer, lady," virgil mutters right back.
she looks away from him, nostrils flaring.
"i just—look," virgil says. "you realize you have to stop fighting with him, right? all it does it push them both away."
she might be about to say something, but before she can, patton makes a mumbling noise. they both freeze.
patton's head nods down, sharply, before it tilts back up again. he squints.
"virgil?"
"yeah," virgil says, inching forward in his chair, itching to grab his hand again. "yeah, pat, it's me."
"mkay," patton murmurs, and yawns. "s'logan down for the night?"
oh, gosh, virgil hasn't been asked that question for at least twelve years. virgil figures he may as well play along, let patton get back to sleep faster.
"yeah," virgil whispers back. "yeah, he's out like a light."
well, hopefully true, when logan gets home.
"how many stories did it take?"
"oh, you know logan," virgil sighs, remembering how many storybooks logan would tug from his expansive, second-hand collection and stack them in his arms up to his chin, looking up at virgil expectantly, as if to say we both know you're a softie, you're going to read me all these, let's skip the argument, except virgil would pose a slight argument anyways and convince logan to let go of maybe three of them, because logan had always had virgil pinned on that whole softie thing.
"about a million. i made one up for him, too."
"was it about cecil the space pirate?"
"cecil the space pirate," virgil confirms, lips twitching. wow, the things patton's fever-addled brain thought up. virgil's nearly forgotten about cecil the space pirate, one of the only make-believe stories logan continued to tolerate even as he grew older and older and older. virgil's pretty sure that the second birthday story roman ever wrote for logan was about cecil the space pirate.
"mkay," patton murmurs. "i got work in the morning, don't i?"
"nah," virgil says. "nah, you get to sleep in tomorrow, lucky you."
"you'll be at the diner for breakfast?"
"'course i'll be at the diner for breakfast," virgil says. "i own it."
"want waffles," patton murmurs sleepily.
"if you're nice to me," virgil says.
"m'always nice to you," patton slurs.
"yeah, that's true," virgil concedes. "okay. if you're extra nice to me, how bout that?"
patton lets out what might be a giggle, but he's so close to dropping off again that it's hard to tell.
"get some rest," virgil murmurs, and hesitates, before he reaches over to brush patton's hair back. he promised he wouldn't. i’m not leaving you again. "you just go ahead and go to sleep, patton. i’ll be right here."
patton sighs, head tilting a little further into virgil's touch. he's not nearly as warm as he'd been when virgil found him, which is good, but still too warm for virgil's taste.
he can see emily, out of the corner of his eyes, looking a little more relaxed.
"i'm not finished with you, your days are numbered," virgil hisses in her direction.
patton hums at him quizzically, mumbles, "wha'?"
"i said, do you want some water?" virgil covers quickly, smiling falsely at him. it turns a bit more real as patton squints an eye at him.
"you don't gotta fuss 'bout my hydration all the time, you know."
"ah, but fussing's what i do best," virgil says gently, smiling at patton as he combs his fingers through patton's curls in a slow, repetitive motion. "go on, close your eyes again, there you go. go to sleep."
"you don't gotta fuss about how much sleep i get either," patton sighs, but closes his eyes obediently. his breathing evens out, soon enough.
she's silent. virgil's thought about this fight—how it might go, where it might happen, who would win—for years. exactly none of it has gone according to how his brain said it might go. virgil has a lot of opinions on emily and richard sanders and the way they treat their son—on days where they've been behaving themselves relatively well, he thinks they're stuck-up, snobbish assholes, and on days where they haven't been behaving well virgil thinks about the things that patton tells him that they say to him and thinks about how they're something that starts with "emotionally" and ends with "abusive," and how patton would be so absolutely in his rights to cut them off, and he has wanted to fight emily or richard sanders for years. and now it's here.
and now it's... off.
"we want the best for him," emily says.
"that's exactly what he says, yeah," virgil says tiredly, and runs his fingers through patton's curls again. "the trouble is, what you think is best for him and what's actually best for him are two entirely different things."
her lips twitch, with bitter humor. "that's exactly what he says."
and here's the crux of it: "but you don't agree," virgil says.
"no," emily says. her chin tilts up, proud. "no, we don't."
any sympathy virgil has toward her is gone. he kind of wants to reach across patton's bed and throttle her. they're in a hospital, they're in the right place for it.
"why the fuck not," virgil manages to hiss it and not shriek it. she's so close to understanding, so close to actually catching on and getting it and maybe, miracle of miracles, patching up her and her husband's relationship with patton, but now she doesn't get it?!
"because what he thinks is best for him is not the same as what is actually best for him," emily says.
"okay, then, what do you think is actually best for him?" virgil asks, with a twirl of his free hand he realizes with muted horror he probably picked up from roman.
so she lays it out for him. patton getting his degree is all well and good, but he should get it from a "better" establishment. patton being a manager is all well and good, but not in the inn business—if he adds a bit onto his degree, why, he could go into insurance too, and be a manager there soon enough. and patton having a little country home is all well and good, but he should move into a neighborhood more fitting for him—a house that would be closer to chilton. a house that would be closer to her. and, well, if patton stumbles across a few friends of hers—the sons of members of the dar, the kind of sons who have privilege and strong savings and investments and would be able to take care of him, and if they just so happened fit emily's bill of approval to a t—well, that certainly wouldn't be too bad for him, either. and with logan going off to an ivy soon, well, he might get lonely, it would be good for him to have someone, and maybe, just maybe, there could be other little perfect grandbabies on the way, and—
"okay, so, what i'm hearing is," virgil cuts in, "basically, you want to redesign his whole life."
"well, not his whole life," emily says.
"what are you leaving him from the life he's managed to build in this 'donna reed' style daydream, just logan?" virgil says incredulously. "a little small-town summer house he can escape to?"
she blinks at him. "that seems reasonable."
"that seems like patton would be miserable," virgil says.
she looks at him, blank. "why?"
"well, one," virgil says pointedly, "sure, patton's open to having other kids, but the only way they'd be biologically his is if he'd donate an egg. he never wants to be pregnant again, you do realize that's what messed up his brain to the point it did, back then?"
she looks at him, gobsmacked. "and how would you know that?"
(—patton's nineteen, and starting to go on the occasional date, which is kinda weird but patton's an adult and he can do what we wants, and currently he's going slightly steady with one of the businessmen who swings into town every other week or so, and it's going pretty well, or so virgil's heard and thought until patton careens into the diner one night, eyes huge and watery and gasping, and virgil's out from behind the counter before he can even think.
"hey," he says, and "hey—" and patton's face is crumpling up, and no, patton doesn't want to cry in the middle of the diner in dinner rush, so virgil says, "c'mere, c'mon," and puts an arm around his shoulders, trying to shield him from sight of everyone in the diner, quickly getting him through the back and patton bursts into tears as soon as the door to virgil's apartment shuts behind him.
"patton, patton, patton," he says, hushed, and patton, red-faced and crying, just holds out a shopping bag. virgil blinks, takes it, and takes out one of the three identical things that's in there and—
"oh shit," virgil says before he can really temper his reaction, and patton starts crying harder, and virgil curses, dropping the unopened pregnancy test on the ground, stepping forward and opening his arms in invitation and patton buries his face into virgil's chest, sobbing.
"i don't wanna be pregnant again," he gasps. "i don't wanna be—"
"okay, okay, it's okay," virgil says. "it's okay—do you know if—?"
"not yet, i was too—" patton gulps, and croaks, "i can barely afford logan, and i love him so much, but i can't—i can't do that again, i can't—"
"it's really rare for trans guys on t to get pregnant, right?" virgil says gently, and patton sniffs, louder, and nods.
"okay," virgil says. "okay. here's what we're going to do, okay? we're going to sit down on my couch."
they do.
"we're gonna get you calmed down," virgil says. "next, you're gonna drink some water, and you'll take it."
"and if i—?"
"we can talk about your options if the test's positive," virgil says gently. "but take the test first. okay? then we can cross that bridge if we get to it."
patton snuggles harder into virgil, hiccuping, and virgil runs his hand through patton's hair, over and over, until his shoulders stop shaking as much.
virgil gets him some water. virgil waits when patton goes into the restroom. virgil waits as patton comes back, buries his face into virgil's lap and curls up hard, hiding from the world.
"why do you think you're—?" virgil begins.
"i got really bad morning sickness, with logan," patton whispers. "migraines too. and i'm—i just, my period's been irregular since i started t, and it's mostly stopped, but there's been some spotting and i looked it up and that's a symptom too and i—"
"okay," virgil murmurs, trying to mentally sort what each of those might be—summer flu, dehydration, he admittedly doesn't know much about periods so he can't really say much about that—"okay. um. have you guys been, um...?"
"using protection, yeah," patton says miserably. "but apparently that's not very useful when it comes to me, so."
"huh," virgil says. "with logan?"
"condom broke, we think," patton says, and wearily runs a hand over his eyes. "or at least that's the most likely explanation."
"yeah," virgil says, and runs a hand over patton's hair again. he's about to ask patton if he's doing okay, except the timer goes off, and patton lets out a keening, horrible whine.
"i can't look," he whispers. "virgil, could you—?"
"yeah," virgil says, heart in his throat. impulsively, he kisses patton's head. "yeah, of course, i'll look."
he checks the guide. he takes a breath. he looks at all three tests. and then he double-checks them, and double-checks the guide, and he walks out of the bathroom to see patton hugging a pillow to his stomach, hunched over it.
"well?" patton whispers.
"well," virgil says, "i think you have the summer flu, or something, and you should probably make a doctor's appointment to ask about spotting, because you've got three nopes in there."
"oh," patton chokes out, and buries his face in his hands. "oh, thank god."
"yeah," virgil says, and goes over to the couch, hugging patton again. "yeah, buddy, you're okay."
"i just—god," patton manages. "i mean, i want another kid at some point, probably, but i can't—i can't be pregnant again. i can't do that. i mean, i love logan, i love him so much, but being pregnant with him—what it did to my brain, what it did to my mental health, i can't—"
he chokes up, and can't go on, and virgil's heart breaks a little.
"that's totally understandable and you do not have to justify yourself to me, or to anyone else," virgil says firmly. "hey, do you want me to get you a brownie, or something? i think you just put the 'scary' in 'pregnancy scare.'"
patton lets out what might be a giggle, a bit too hysterical to make virgil actually happy, but it's a giggle, nonetheless, and—)
"we talked about it once," virgil says evasively, fingers twitching through patton's hair as if to comfort distress that's thirteen years past. "look, just—none of what you just said would make patton happy, are you serious?"
"i wasn't talking about patton being happy, i was talking about what would be best for him," emily says.
virgil blinks. "i'm not following."
she lets out a long sigh, as if he is being deliberately obtuse. "it would make patton happy if he were able to eat nothing but waffles and pasta and sweets all day. it would be best for him if he ate fruits and vegetables and maintained a balanced diet."
"that's an entirely different thing," virgil says hotly, withdrawing his hand from patton's hair and starting to pick at a loose thread in his hoodie.
"is it?" she challenges.
"yeah, it is," virgil says, "because his life isn't as temporary as a meal. what's best for him in his diet is nowhere near the same way you should treat your life."
"that is where we disagree," she says, terse. "i believe what is best for him is not necessarily what makes him happy. there are procedures put in place, proper plans to be followed."
"doesn't what he want matter to you?" virgil says.
"what he wants is immaterial. sacrifices are often necessary in order to what is right."
virgil stares at her for a few moments, lets her words sink in, lets himself reflect on what following that might have been like, and—
"i am really indescribably sorry for you, right now," virgil tells her, and she sniffs.
"you hardly need to be. i was perfectly happy to follow the life i had set out for me."
virgil stares at her for a few more seconds, and she huffs.
"save your emotions," she says. "i've had just about my fill of them tonight."
virgil snorts. "finally, somewhere we agree," he mutters.
they're quiet for another long stretch of time.
"you genuinely think you know what's best for him?" she says, and virgil starts.
"i," virgil says. "yeah. better than you do, anyway."
"why?" she says, and then, derisively, "because you're in love with him?"
virgil doesn't quite reel back like she's smacked him, which is kind of how it feels, but he does pinch the fabric of his hoodie between his fingernails.
"no," he says. before he can say anything else, she plows over him.
"you look at him like he's a porterhouse steak!" she says, vindictive.
"i do not," he says.
"oh, please, you look at him like he's about to give you a lapdance."
virgil just about chokes on air.
"i do not," virgil insists, "and anyway, that's not what i was about to say, i wasn't about to deny being in love with him, of course i'm in love with him."
she falters.
"i was going to say that me being in love with him doesn't change that i know what makes him happy better than you do," virgil says.
"fine, then," emily says. "please tell me what you think would make him happy."
"his life, now, for the most part," virgil says. "living in sideshire, managing the inn. waiting for logan to get home from chilton, logan telling him about working at the courant, supervising roman and logan sleepovers. i think the biggest change would be if he got along with his parents."
she stares at him for one second. two.
virgil shrugs. "that's what would make him happy," he says simply. "that's what he wants. when he came home from lunch or brunch or whatever it was with you guys and logan and you guys managed not to fight the whole time, he was so happy."
she's silent.
"and i think that's what you want too," virgil says quietly.
she's silent for a long time—enough time for patton to stir again, and, slightly hilariously and slightly heartbreakingly, seems to be stuck firmly in the headspace of logan still being a baby, and virgil soothes patton's mumbled worries about how logan's colic should be acting up by now before patton drops back off again. and by then, emily seems to have gotten control of her emotions again.
"you haven't put yourself into that little scenario of yours," emily says.
"the way we are now makes him happy," virgil says simply. "and that's enough for me."
she snorts. "idiots. the both of you."
virgil snorts a little, too, ducking his head. he rubs his thumb and forefinger against the worn spot on the cuff of his hoodie.
her eyes zero in on it. "did you," she begins, and then, almost suspiciously, "did you make that?"
"oh," virgil says, and awkwardly, "um, i mean, i bought the hoodie. but all the extra stitching and fabric and stuff, yeah. i did that."
"hm."
"i gave it to patton when we were on the way here," falls out of his mouth before he can stop it.
she looks at him a little closer. "you did?"
virgil coughs, awkward, and redirects his glance back to the sleeve he's worrying between his fingers. "he was, um. he had pretty bad chills, and i kept turning the heat up in the car, but it didn't help. and he wasn't saying anything, but i knew he was cold, so i gave it to him, but the orderlies had to take it off before he could go back in the test room, but i—i haven't been able to put it back on since."
his mouth snaps shut, and he's fully aware of his cheeks burning, fully aware of her eyes on him, and he stares even harder at the little imperfect faded oval he's rubbed into the fabric over the years, rendering that section of cuff a shade lighter than the rest of it.
"stupid, i know," he mutters.
she's quiet, for a moment, before she says, "i haven't been able to bring myself to change any of the decoration or furniture in patton's room since he left home."
he doesn't really know what to say to that. it feels like... he doesn't know. if it was any other person than one of patton's two parents, he'd say it feels like an olive branch. but with them, virgil's so used to hearing about arguments and bickering and favors offered with full knowledge they'd be paid back in full later, so it doesn't. it feels like a business deal. or like one of the faeries in the stories that virgil used to read to logan, before he insisted he outgrew such things—the kinds of sneaky wishes that would come back to bite you, in some way. it feels like a rabbit's foot. it feels like a monkey's paw.
"he has a way," virgil says at last.
"he does, doesn't he," she says musingly.
"yeah," virgil says, awkward.
there's another pause, a long stretch of quiet. enough time for a nurse to come and check patton's vitals, update his data, smile benevolently at them both, and leave.
"not that i'm asking your opinion," she says severely. "but your... idea. of how patton would like to lead his life."
virgil looks up, blinking at her. "yeah?"
she lifts an eyebrow at him imperiously. "do you think it's possible?"
"oh," virgil says. "i think—i mean, i don't really believe in you all that much, but patton does, so. if you keep fighting him and don't, like, remove your head from your ass, you're definitely going to push him and logan away, you know that, right?"
she doesn't really respond, and virgil huffs out an exasperated breath.
"look," virgil says. "you know what would patch all this up?"
"what?"
"if you and your husband apologized," for once. "if you and him apologized to patton, he'd forgive you in a heartbeat, you know. because again, he's way too optimistic about you."
"well, i hardly—"
"holy shit, you started it," virgil says. "you always start it. you cannot seriously expect your son, who is bedridden with pneumonia, to put in his usual work of trying to smooth it over between you three, the way he always does. for once, can you please just fucking set aside your pride for five seconds and apologize?"
"what he did—"
"sucked, i know," virgil says impatiently. "it sucks that he ran away, he knows that, he regrets doing that to you the way he did, but jesus christ, it's been sixteen years. he's apologized, hasn't he?"
she barely inclines her head.
"okay, so," virgil says. "can you just see that this is kind of a special circumstance and say the words i'm sorry? just one time. and he'll forgive you basically instantly. even if you don't understand why, just say it, and then you can playact at being a big happy family again."
emily chews at her lip.
...
"you're quite certain you don't want me to stay the night here?"
"i'll be fine, grandpa," logan says wearily as they turn down the street to home, even as something in him delights at being so, so close to home again. "you should go back to your house, in case they need anything. you're closer to the hospital than i am here."
"well," he begins, about to turn into the drive, but he stops the car as the lights illuminate a familiar figure.
"who the devil," he begins, moving to lock the doors, but logan's flinging the door open before he can, unbuckling and nearly skidding on the icy driveway as he speedwalks to the front stoop, where the familiar figure is standing up, shivering.
"roman," logan says, and roman steps forward and hugs him tight, so tight, and logan closes his eyes, buries his face into roman's shoulder where he still smells like hairspray and the stage makeup he hadn't bothered to wipe off his face and sweat, still wearing the massive button-down he wears to cover his costumes while backstage at a show under his big, puffy winter jacket, and logan's home, he's home, and—
"oh my god, i'm so sorry i didn't call back," roman says, and draws back. he'd barely made a cursory smear of a makeup wipe on his face, so his stage makeup remains on his face, smeared with sweat. he still has purple glitter on his eyelids and sharp cateye eyeliner, and smudged, faded lipstick. "i didn't know what to do, i didn't know where you were, i didn't know if you were coming home for the night or not, so i just—"
"logan?" his grandfather calls, and logan turns, still holding roman in his arms.
"it's okay," logan calls. "it's okay, it's just roman. i'll see you tomorrow?"
richard surveys this, frowns, grunts a little, waves in farewell, and gets back in his car. logan opens the front door to the house, nudging roman in ahead of him and flicking on the light, turning back to lock the door. roman barely waits until he's turned the key until he's tugging at logan's suit jacket, and logan turns to face him again, and god, there he is, that's his best friend.
"is your dad okay?" roman asks, frantic.
"he'll be fine," logan says. "i—the doctors said it was pneumonia and he'll be at the hospital for a few days, but they said he'd be okay."
"god, logan," roman says, and reaches to hug him again. logan closes his eyes tight, and leans into it, hard. for once, he won't deny that he maybe needs hugs right now.
they draw back, and logan, a little in disbelief, picks at collar of roman's button-up.
"you came," logan says.
"well, yeah," roman says, like it's obvious. "you were upset, of course i came."
i love you, logan thinks.
"i mean, admittedly, it wasn't like, straight to the hospital, or anything," roman says. "i tried, but i wasn't sure which one, and—"
"i'm going back to visit in the morning," logan says, tentative. "if you'd—if you'd join me?"
"yeah, of course," roman says, and takes logan's hand. he tugs logan into the living room, where the detritus of one of his father's blanket nests is in an armchair. they sit on the couch, where a collection of empty mugs sits on the coffee table. there is so much of patton in this house. logan cannot look anywhere without thinking about his dad.
suddenly, he realizes that roman's been talking this whole time.
"—but oh my god, l, that must have been so scary."
logan wants to deny that it was scary. logan wants to lie. logan wants to say objectively, the risks of pneumonia are relatively low, here are the survival rates and here are the usual methods of treatment and here is what will happen, and here is proof that my dad will be okay, and here are all the reasons why it is illogical to be upset, because he will be okay, and i know he will be okay, because virgil promised he would be okay and the doctor said he would be okay and the family physician said he would be okay, so there is no reason why my brain is still stuck at a point where i should think that he wouldn't be okay, because that is not true, because he will be okay.
instead, logan's lip trembles, and he catches it between his teeth with a groan, pressing his elbows against his thighs and bending to meet his hands, sliding off his glasses to press the heels of his hands against his stinging, hot eyes.
there's a body against him, then, a cheek pressed to the back of his neck, arms wrapping around him again, and logan swallows hard.
"i've gotcha," roman whispers. "i've got you, logan. i'm right here."
and logan buries his face in his best friend's lap, and for the second time that night, he starts to cry.
...
there's a weight on patton's hip.
that's the first thing he's aware of, swimming out of the dark gray sludge of sleep, waking up slowly and not particularly liking it very much. there is a weight against his hip, and when at last he cracks open his eyes, the first thing he does is look to see what it is.
it's a familiar head. the face is mostly obscured by the hair flopping into patton's line of vision, but the hoodie that's been spread out over patton like a blanket and the t-shirt and worn jeans the familiar person is wearing are big enough identifiers that patton doesn't really have to wait for any of his reasoning skills to come back online.
virgil's got a hand close to patton's hand, where it's resting on the mattress, and an arm slung out across patton's stomach, not even pillowing his head. it's as if he'd reached out to make sure that patton would stay put.
patton's heart swells with a nearly unimaginable amount of fondness. he carefully moves the hand that virgil had nearly been touching to virgil's head. his hair, feathery and floppy and soft, is familiar under his hand. the hard curve of his skull is, too. patton doesn't get to touch him very much, but they're familiar anyways. he swipes an admiring thumb slowly down, tracing the line of virgil's jaw.
virgil nuzzles against patton's belly in his sleep. in doing so, a bit of his hair slips, and it reveals a bit of virgil's closed eye, bangs parting like curtains. the ever-present bags look slightly darker than usual. that must be why virgil fell asleep on him. well, patton certainly isn't complaining. as a matter of fact, he smiles, and covers virgil's hand with his own, feeling something in his stomach flutter.
he can go back to sleep, now.
when he wakes again, it's to the clicking of high heels, and a voice he's known all his life.
"—did you say he'd be here, again?"
another voice—familiar, beloved, feels like he's known him all his life.
"logan's text said 9:30, so they're probably just parking and getting up to the room now."
"hmph. or the traffic's acting up again."
huh. he must be dreaming. there is no actual world where his mother and virgil are being so civil.
"look, they said they'd be here soon. with roman, too."
"the dance boy? patton says logan has a crush on him."
"oh, yeah, logan definitely has a crush on him. but patton really likes him, he's practically another kid. he's my neighbor, plus he's logan's best friend, so. logan probably told him about it and roman wanted to come wish him well."
"he was very well-behaved at logan's birthday get-together," his mother muses.
"yeah, he can be a real little charmer," virgil says darkly.
"he's a prince, it's practically in the name that he's charming," patton mumbles, trying to complete the old joke.
"oh, right on time," his mother says, pleased, and patton cracks open his eyes.
his mother's standing, holding a to-go cup of coffee, and virgil's still sitting at patton's bedside, where he dimly remembers virgil being a few times he'd woken up before. his hand's under patton's, and patton squeezes before he can really help himself. he's never really held virgil's hand before—this isn't exactly holding his hand, just his hand over virgil's, but it's close enough that patton's kind of unreasonably excited
"what were you saying?" patton asks, shifting against the pillows, trying to sit up a bit straighter.
"logan, roman, and your dad are all coming," virgil tells him. "should be here any minute."
patton nods, and makes the mistake of looking down at himself, only to suck in a breath and look up at the ceiling.
"what?" virgil asks, alert.
"needles," patton says, strangled. "i can see it, virge. i can feel it."
ivs! are! the! worst! sure, he's a bit more used to needles now because of his shots of testosterone, but with those he can at least aim and then look away and jab himself, and it's over relatively quickly, but he can feel it now and it is Bad—
"oh," virgil says, scrambling, "um—"
"here," his mother says, and patton turns his head away from the arm that has tubing coming out of it, to see his mother holding out her silk handkerchief.
"oh!" patton says, and takes it, carefully draping it over the injection site as much as he can without looking at it, and risks a glance. yes, he can still see the tubing, and feel the iv, but as long as he doesn't move his arm and the handkerchief stays there, he should be... okay.
patton offers a tentative smile to his mom—she's been here, patton knows that, his memories are really fuzzy but he knows she's been here, but patton also knows that they've been freezing each other out for the past week, so. "um, thanks, mom."
she nods, once, and virgil says, "you doing okay, pat?"
"i think so," patton says uncertainly. "i mean, i still feel pretty—bleh."
"the doctor said you probably would be feeling pretty bleh for the next couple days, sorry," virgil says sympathetically. "but you're going to be just fine, patton. you're going to be okay."
a wave of relief sweeps through patton. he remembers, distantly, almost like it's a dream, the suddenly more aggressive and more pervasive fear of dying, but—but if a doctor said he'd be okay, and if virgil says he's going to be okay, then patton's going to be okay.
"okay," patton says, and nods, absorbing this. "okay. um, good."
"uh, so, i think i might go out to the waiting room, wait for logan and roman to get here, if that's... if that's okay."
no that is not okay why are you leaving me alone with her?! patton wants to ask, but virgil's giving him a Look, a it's okay look, so patton lets out a little breath, and trusts him. obviously. it's not even a choice, he just does.
"you can keep an eye on my hoodie for me," virgil adds, flicking one of the sleeves so it folds over patton's lap, and patton looks up at him, blinking.
"you sure?" he says, tentatively running his thumb over a worn little bit of hoodie that he's seen virgil run his fingers over, too. "you never take this off."
"i think i can manage to trust you with it," virgil says, amused. "besides, that way you know i'm gonna be coming back, right?"
patton weighs these options. he fiddles with virgil's hoodie again, runs his fingers over the white stitching, feeling the variance of textures under his fingers.
"okay," patton says. "yeah."
"cool," virgil says.
and then virgil and his mom share their own little Look. patton has literally no hope of unparsing it if he tried—they still aren't fond of each other, obviously, but they look... they look understanding, almost. almost. not quite. but like they've reached some kind of point of agreement, maybe. not necessarily that they entirely agree, but just one point of agreement.
well, that's more than they had, so. patton's all for it.
his mother takes virgil's abandoned seat, and scoots a little closer, crossing her legs primly.
"well," she says, and fiddles with his blanket, pointedly avoiding touching virgil's hoodie, pulling the blanket over him a little more snugly. "how are you feeling?"
okay, so this is... weird. but patton can go with it. at least it's not yelling.
"um," patton says. "not my best?"
her face tightens.
"what?" patton asks in a tiny voice.
"young man," she says. "you were brought into the hospital between having actually collapsed and being on the verge of another one, with a fever so high you could have risked serious brain damage if you continued to refuse to seek treatment, and a case of pneumonia so serious that you have to stay in the hospital for at least three days, and all you have to say is that you don't feel at your best?"
"well, you see," patton says, "i'm really not at my best."
his mother looks five seconds from lovingly smothering him with his own hospital pillow when the door opens, and—
okay, virgil seriously isn't mean enough to leave him to get yelled at while he was bedridden and couldn't escape, right? had he really annoyed virgil recently?
"hello, patton," his father says.
"um, hi, dad," patton says, trying not to fidget, in case it jostled his arm and he had to be reminded about needles again. "are, um. are logan and roman here?"
"virgil took them to get coffee," his dad says.
(actually, virgil is leaning against the wall just outside the door, out of sight of anyone in the room, monitoring this conversation just in case anything goes wrong, and what he said to roman and logan was "here's ten bucks, scram," and roman had wrinkled his nose at him and said "why?" and virgil said "privacy reasons, there's going to be an emotional moment," and logan had declared "gross" incredibly loudly and grabbed roman by the hand and dragged him in the direction of the hospital cafeteria, roman looking a bit too excited about logan holding his hand to really protest, but sure, the sanders' could all think that virgil took the kids to get coffee.)
richard pulls up a chair to sit beside his mother, and patton—patton is very suddenly reminded of the two other times in his life where he had to stay in the hospital for a period of time, when he gave birth, and when he had top surgery.
they were both there then, too.
neither time, though, had they had a fight quite as bad as the one they'd had last week.
"you don't," patton begins haltingly, and twists virgil's hoodie in his free hand. "you don't have to stay, you know."
they look at each other.
"it was very nice of you to drive roman and logan here," patton says to his dad, quietly, "but i don't—you two don't have to stick around, really. i'm going to be fine, and i can patch things up when—"
"we wanted to apologize," his mother says stiffly, and patton's mouth snaps shut.
"you," patton says, and swallows hard. "you, um. you what?"
"we wanted to apologize," his dad says. patton kind of wants to clean out his ears, and ask them both to repeat themselves one more time, or maybe page a doctor, please, because he thinks he might be hallucinating, but—
"we were out of line," richard continues. "i was out of line. i shouldn't have come down on you as hard as i did—for reopening an argument we've had before."
"oh, dad, that's not—" patton starts.
"will you be quiet and let us finish?" his mother says, snappish, and that almost kind of soothes patton, because if his mother's snappish even if she says she's in the middle of an apology it means his parents probably haven't been bodysnatched, so that's good.
"we are sorry," his mother continues, dignified and refined, and not particularly heartfelt, but that's actually kind of okay, because this was already so weird that if his mom started being the emotional one patton would—well, he doesn't know, really, he just knows it would be very strange. "we are sorry that you were upset, and we are sorry that we upset you further."
"please consider forgiving us," his dad says formally, and patton quashes the urge to giggle. please consider forgiving us in the same way he'd say please consider opening an insurance policy with our company to a client.
"yes," emily says. "we are sorry for yelling at you, and for aggravating you when you were clearly upset and needed support, and for—"
she hesitates. she adjusts her jacket sleeves.
"and for putting you down," she says, and makes a slight moue of distaste. "for... bullying you."
patton, who is very uncomfortable, cannot help but laugh awkwardly. "i—i mean, i wouldn't say—"
"what else would you call telling you your reasoning wasn't good enough and saying you were a disappointment?" richard asks wearily, and patton shuts his mouth, directing his glance to his lap. he's fisted virgil's hoodie into a bunch he keeps curled in his free hand, with a white-knuckled grip.
"i," patton says, and swallows hard, trying to stop his voice from trembling. he can't say anything at all, and it reminds him unpleasantly of the argument, where he was lost for words, and he couldn't say anything, and he tried so hard to say something and when he did it wasn't good enough, and he swallows again, trying to search for something to say—
"you did nothing to deserve that," his dad says, and patton looks up, then, and oh. oh, his dad's eyes are... suspiciously shiny. "you did nothing to earn that."
"dad," patton barely manages to say around how choked up he is. the only time he ever saw his dad shed a tear was at his grandfather's funeral—and even then, it had only been a few, before he'd wiped off his face and continued stolidly onward.
"i was being unfair," he says, rigid and unyielding. "i shouldn't have taken out my frustrations on you, much less in such an extreme way. i lost my composure."
"yes," emily says. "so. we are sorry that we were upset, and we made it so that you were upset you, too."
it dawns on patton, then.
they're so bad at this. like, genuinely, they're terrible at apologizing. they've hit almost everything on the stereotypical "what not to do while apologizing list." they apologized that he got upset, not for the things they said that made him upset. they've been snappy and irritable, and sure, a little emotional, but he's pretty sure telling the person you're apologizing to to be quiet is also a thing not to do. they've been uncomfortable, not with their past actions, but with the words they're saying now.
but honestly? it's the first time they've apologized to him. so no wonder they're bad at it. baby steps, he supposes, and this is a big one. it's the first one. plus, being bad at being humble and nice is kind of quintessential to the way the elder sanders' are. it's comforting, in a really weird way.
"why are you smiling like that?" emily says suspiciously.
patton smiles wider. "nothing," he says reassuringly.
"well, you're certainly smiling for some reason," she says peevishly. "the least you could do is sit and listen politely without looking like the cat that's gotten the cream, patton, for goodness' sake—oh!"
the reason she's said oh! is because patton's leaned almost all the way off the bed to hug her around the shoulders with his free arm. he sets his chin on her shoulder.
"i love you, mom," he says sincerely.
"oh," she says, and her hand flutters uselessly somewhere along his shoulder blade. "oh, well, that's—how nice."
patton grins even wider, because it's just such a mom thing of her to do, to be so at a loss during an emotional moment. he draws back, and grins at his dad. "i won't hug you, but i hope you know i'm thinking about it."
"it's appreciated," his father says solemnly.
patton settles back on his pillows, cheeks hurting. "i forgive you, by the way," he adds. "if it needs to be said."
"well, good," emily says, self-satisfied, as if she's succeeded in auctioning for a particularly rare piece of antique furniture. or, well. as if she's the cat that got the cream.
"how was it?" he asks, curious. "having logan spend the week over."
richard and emily exchange a glance.
"eventful," emily decides, and richard nods in agreement, before he reaches to take one of the abandoned newspapers from the pile logan's compiled for him, and patton almost laughs.
it doesn't take very long for the kid in question to show up at the door, with a diner owner and his best friend in tow, virgil adjusting the chairs in patton's room, before taking a seat himself.
virgil reaches out and takes patton's hand, like it's habit, before he freezes. patton smiles at him, though, and squeezes back, flipping their hands a little so that he can stare at virgil's hand.
he guesses they must have held hands for the first time last night, when he was too feverish to really tune into it. but he takes the time now to marvel quietly at virgil's hands.
logan and roman start talking about roman's opening show of the nutcracker last night, so everyone else is paying attention to that, and patton's absorbing the information, really, but he's a bit preoccupied with virgil's long, bony fingers, his expansive palm, the way he keeps stealing looks at patton out of the corners of his eyes, like he's checking that patton's alright.
there's dozens of tiny little shiny white burns dotting his fingers, from points where the heat must have leaked through a mitt or he'd forgotten a mitt altogether, or something. there's a longer one, along his wrist. it kind of surprises patton, because he knows how cautious virgil is with heat in the kitchen. he's got calluses and his hand’s a bit sweaty, but warm, and patton squeezes his hand again—an it's okay, an i'm okay, an everything's going to be okay, an i'm really happy you're here right now. a thank you. an i love you.
and virgil squeezes back.
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Aww Shit...{w/@V_Bloodletter}
Vishous
I was in hideout motion and it was all going rather well. Wrath knew of my location, I had imparted that info to him before I left. But the rest of the Brotherhood was clueless to my whereabouts. And for now I planned on keeping it that way for a while. I needed the seclusion, the down time away from people, all people, even the Doggen. Although I did bring a male Doggen with me to my new residence. As of yet I hadn’t decided if this was going to be a full time thing or just until I finally finish pulling my head out of my ass. But for the time being I didn’t need to make that decision. I made sure that I could be reached when needed and that I was on the streets when it was my time to work patrol. It was imperative that I stay low-key right now. No one else needed to understand that but myself. I had managed to stay away from the Manse as well as my Penthouse. Although I had it all wired to feed into my system here in the middle of BFE. And that was why I was able to have a front row seat to all the wondrous things that Doc was up to at the Commodore. The night she decided to break into my place, an alarm went off and at first I was up and ready to demat to the high-rise but then I saw who it was. So I grabbed a bottle of Goose along with some beef jerky then sat back and watched the show. That was up until the end and I knew that Doc wasn’t really hurt or did any extreme damage to my property. Although that didn’t diminish the fact that she intruded where she had no business intruding. And that shit would be fucking dealt with. I wasted a few minutes in gearing up and locking my place down before I vanished into thin air. When I came to form on my balcony it was like the place knew I was there. The glass doors slid open gracefully, black pillar candles lit up to full flames and as I stepped inside the doors closed and locked down.
Piper
::Every inch of my body ached in so many ways I couldn’t figure out what sound to make first, so in a exhale of breath they all came out at once. I chuckled darkly catching my breath again before I finally let my eyes open to take in my surroundings now that the sedative had released me from it’s grip, I hadn’t forgotten where I was by any stretch of the imagination. It was more to check that no one was waiting with a weapon close enough to do damage. Scribe knows Vishous could be the one doing so for all I knew, rightfully so given what I’d just done to his penthouse and his trust by my intrusion. I shifted my position a simple inch which caused nothing but sheer pain to radiate outwards but I needed to get out of this fucking tub then figure a way out of this place before the man himself showed up to exact revenge only to find the neighborhood doc half dressed and covered in blood waving at him like some retarded seal. The image alone had me laughing to myself as I found my feet and stepped out of the tub to tuck my gun back into its holster. Before I gazed into the mirror and gave myself the once over. My wounds weren’t healing as fast as I liked which meant the daggers were laced with more than just a heavy sedative, he was a sneaky bastard I’d give him that. He liked to torture more than I gave him credit for. Just when you thought you were safe and far away you’d realize he still had you. I took another minute to gather myself before I’d start working on an desperately needed exit plan. It was then I noticed the candles scattered throughout light up almost on cue with the sound of the locks I’d known to the the remaining windows slam into place. There was only one person who could make such a thing happen without setting off the alarms I had earlier::
Shit. Shit. Shit.
::There was no way I could run and hide anywhere in this penthouse that he couldn’t find me, I wasn’t going to turn this into a cat and mouse game for many reasons. The biggest one being, he wouldn’t tolerate it anymore than I wanted it to happen.. I swallowed the contents of my stomach that had suddenly decided that now was the best time to crawl their way up my throat. Cautiously I half wondered if I should at least pretend to be surprised? Or act like I would have in the past and played the foolish stupid doc but I couldn’t. I did this of my own free will. I knew what I was doing every single step of the way and I wasn’t, for once, going to let that scare me.::
You watched me the entire time didn’t you?
Vishous
I leaned my shoulder against the bathroom door frame and watched as Doc tried to collect herself, at least somewhat. With a tatted brow cocked, I shook my head and still I didn’t speak. I pretty much knew if I spoke right now, none of it would be without cursing or growling and who knew what the fuck else. I would never bodily hurt Doc. She was family. But she also betrayed me and my trust. Even though I had no desire to step foot in my Penthouse, that didn’t mean that it was open to any fucking person that wanted to trespass on my property. Actually it pissed me off more with the fact that I even had to come here when I didn’t want to. I glanced around before letting my eyes finally settle on the female. “What do you think?” Again I just shook my head and pushed away from the wall, to stand fully up. “I will go with sixty seconds of whatever excuse you have for doing what you did and then…” My shoulders came up in a nonchalant shrug. “And then you stay a safe distance from me until we get you back to the Manse, to Wrath and Rhage. They can deal with this fucking shit.” I didn’t even attempt to hide the frustration and anger from my tone. What would be the point to? Not even my Brothers had ever tried or thought to not only come to the Commodore but to destroy my property and break into it.
Piper
::My first immediate thought was at least he gave me sixty seconds, it was shortly followed with an inner cringe by just the thought of Wrath and Rhage knowing what I had just done. I felt a bone deep shudder follow before I even opened my mouth to speak my peace::
I’m not going to make excuses, Vishous. I have two valid reasons for coming here.
::I was trying not to get frustrated at the looks I was getting or the anger that was flowing off the brother in waves thick enough to push me over, he had every right to be giving them. For now my only choice was to speak what I had to say and hope that he saw that it wasn’t in some malicious intent that I came busting in. I didn’t move from where I stood just pushed my shoulders back a little and stood to face him a little more, hoping he’d at least appreciate the gesture::
You just left, Vishous, without a single word to anyone. That in itself is none of my business but it was something completely out of character in all the years I’ve known you. I run, you don’t. You stand and fight till you’re bloody and raw then you fight harder. So when I went to find you, to ask you for help and no one had seen you in weeks, yeah I came looking for you. Besides Rhage, you’re the one person I’d sacrifice everything for. The guards you left in place weren’t exactly going to let me in, you weren’t answering your cell and panic had set in. If you were up here in trouble what would you have me do? Leave you?
::I stopped talking at that point, there was nothing else I could say I was exhausted and I ached in places that I didn’t even know I had. Punishment was coming no matter how hard I prayed otherwise. I wasn’t going to beg for for it to be any different.::
If or when I get a change I’ll ask Fritz to make arrangements to have everything fixed at my expense however you wish it to be done. I wouldn’t change what I did, Vishous and I’d do it again without fail.
Vishous
I made my way into the living room, obviously watching Doc as she stumbled her way from the bathroom. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on or why she was here or what the hell happened to her. I shook my head and shot a text message to #Fritz . ‘At the Commodore, send a car to pick up the Doc ASAP and she will need medical treatment.’ I slipped my phone back in my pocket and headed to the bathroom again. It took a few moments to retrieve the first aid kit and to retrieve a bottle of Goose from the kitchen. Once I had everything that I needed for the situation at hand, I went back to where Piper was and started barking out orders. “Sit down…” I shot a glance around the spacious room and shrugged. “It would appear that my table is the only suitable place to have a seat.” I had emptied my Penthouse out almost completely over a year ago and to date, I still didn’t want to be here. But unfortunately I had no fucking choice in the matter. I placed the kit on the flat surface and started unpacking the few items that I would need. “I contacted #Fritz and he will be sending a car to pick you up soon.” I didn’t want to delve too deep into the things I was being asked. Answering questions was not high at the top of my list right now or any time for that matter. But this was Doc and she deserved some info. I blew out a breath and gave a dead look. “I needed to go MIA. I had given Wrath a head’s up on what I was doing. But yeah, no I didn’t post it on the Brotherhood bulletin…” I shook my head, glanced at you for a moment. “Next time maybe I will shoot you a text to let ya know that I am on the lamb. As for your question, my eyes are everywhere. Never doubt that.”
Piper
::I moved somewhat slowly towards the table nearly jumping out of my skin when I heard the order barked at me, it wasn’t so much the order it shook me from the haze I momentarily found myself in again. Then once again I found myself staring at Vishous as I sat on the table before him, hating myself for the millionth time since I started this adventure. Once I heard his confession I knew exactly how he felt, it was why I ran, why I left.. All he wanted was space, plain and simple yet I forced him out of that in some foolish attempt to find him on my own. I glanced down at the kit, cautiously pushing it away before placing my hand on his and finding his gaze again.::
I deserve every ounce of this pain I’m feeling right now, Vishous and you can cancel Fritz. I have a ride downstairs that if I leave here Rhage will fucking kill me for. I mean, even more than he will for the rest of this shit. Which he will and Wrath? Fuck me, those two are going to ...I don’t even want to think about it. So, no, Vishous, you don’t owe me any explanations as to why you left, Guess just remember I’m a little more emotional than the rest of them?
::I chuckled hoping to ease the tension in the room but failed horribly, the pain it caused nearly knocked the air right out of me. I took a chance and punched his shoulder, before I even another cautious joke. He was taking things a little too lightly for my liking. It was all too weird.::
As for your security, I’d like to know what the fuck you had those daggers laced with. Also, I’m pretty impressed. I expected explosions and fireworks but you came with nothing but stealth.
::I glanced at Vishous again, arching a brow::
You’re being far too quiet. Too reserved, Vishous. If this was anyone else you’d have torn them a new one by now. I destroyed your penthouse, your trust. Yet you’re sitting here trying to tend to my wounds?
Vishous
I snorted out a grunt and shook my head. “I assume that your ride downstairs is Rhage? Because yeah, I’m not letting you bail out with anyone else tonight. No fucking matter how irritated I am with you right now.” I flinched at first when I felt you rest your hand on mine and I had to remind myself in the next breath that it was okay...For the moment. “No, I don’t owe you any explanations but for now, I will tell you that I am good with where I’m at. The Manse and all that goes with it, you make sure that they are all good. And if you need me, I will work...a little better on replying to messages.” The corner of my lips turned up in a half grin. That was doing pretty good for me, considering that I had no desire to be within the city. “As for the rest, no.” I looked at you sitting there and narrowed my eyes a little. “Come now, do you really think that I will let you or anyone make repairs to this place? No, I will take care of it myself and obviously beef up my system that you completely destroyed.” I gave you a pointed look. “Right now, I need to be quiet but no fucking matter how pissed I am at you for destroying whatever property I have or even betraying me, you are my friend and we will deal with it. I might not want to speak with you or see you for a while but that doesn’t mean I’m cutting you out of my life.” I nodded at the barrage of marks covering the areas that I could see. “Show me where to start.”
Piper
I can handle however you want to deal with me, V. Quiet or loud or hell even throwing things at me, I just couldn’t handle you cutting me out completely. That would probably kill me. Just like it would if any of the others did and I shouldn’t have done it you when I left without a word if I would ever return and for than I truly am sorry. As for my ride downstairs being Rhage..
::I paused for a moment closing my eyes as I sat up a little straighter despite the burning pain it caused, he’d have to look at the gashes no matter how much I protested otherwise. I’d also have to confess that I did this without letting anyone else know and I already knew Fritz was probably letting my male know of my whereabouts and condition as we spoke. That was going to be a conversation I knew I would have to sit and simply take without saying a single word.::
Rhage has no idea I’ve left, I mean I did leave a note that told him but whether he's actually found it yet is unknown. I can tell you one thing, he’s going to be a whole lot more agitated than you are, also a fuckton more vocal about it, he was actually the reason I was looking for you. Or at least the scalier part of him was. You should probably take a look at the wounds where those damn small daggers that lined the railing got me, they didn’t go too deep but whatever they were laced with are making it really hard to stay awake and don't even get me started on the pain right now. The rest I can handle later or have someone at the manse look at.
Vishous
I just shook my head and gave a chuckle. I glanced at you a moment before I went to work on cleaning each bloody wound. “I see some things never change. You running out and doing things that you shouldn’t be and of course doing them on your note while leaving a note behind.” My grin widened a little when you mentioned about parts of my security system that did cause you some issues. “At least I know that it all wasn’t a fucking a waste. And yes, you are more than likely right, you will hear much more from Rhage than you will from me.” I snorted out a grunt once i cleaned most of the blood away and started in with bandaging the areas. “That is not a yes or a no as to who is picking you up…”One black brow rose almost to my hairline and I locked my diamond eyes on your face. “What exactly do you mean that you came looking for me because of Rhage? I know I have been MIA and no, I am not living within the Manse but I do still keep nightly contact with Wrath. And nothing has been said or relaid to me that there is an issue with any of the Brothers. So yes, you will need to explain what the hell is going on.”
Piper
I am fully capable of taking care of myself, if this doesn’t prove that face than I don’t know how the hell else to prove it to any of you. I mean I could have gone out hunting Lesser or something but I chose to do this.
::I hissed out a breath, glaring at you when the disinfectant hit some of the larger wounds. Sometimes I wanted nothing more than to be looked at as more than just the Doc but I guess that day wasn’t going to be today, besides I wasn’t about to argue with the man whose house I just broke into or who was currently helping me out. Besides, Vishous so far hadn’t torn my ass apart when he rightfully could have. Sighing I bit down into my lip to suppress the slight twinge of shoulder pain as I sat up straight again::
There is nothing wrong with him, I just have a few questions or maybe I’m more curious? The beast seems to be acting a little weird around me, not like I want to eat you weird but the complete opposite. Infact…
.
::I nearly jumped clean out of my skin glancing over my shoulder at the doors when I heard the pound coming from the opposite side, groaning loudly:
You weren’t by chance expecting company were you?
#TBC
#AwwShit
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Mouthy Broad
Fandom: Avengers
Summary: You and Bucky try to go out on a date only to get waylaid by some pathetic wanna-be vigilantes. There are no words for how fucking stupid this is. You’re going to try to find some, regardless.
Quick facts: Romance – Bucky/Reader – Female Reader
Warnings: Side story for “On the Run” (though I put in enough info that you don’t have to read that first), abrasive/sarcastic Reader, language, sex joke, established Bucky/Reader, Reader and Steve have a friendship based on friendly antagonism (they don’t actually hate each other they just act like it), Reader recovering from traumatic event.
Words: 2470
A/N: The idea made me laugh, and then when I wrote it I got infected with feels, so here, have the fruits of my labor. A little one-shot for “On the Run” that takes place after that series, though I did my best to make it comprehensible to people who don’t wanna go through a sixteen part series to understand a 2k+ story. I think it worked, but only time can tell.
“On the Run” Masterlist Here (if you’re interested)
This is some bullshit.
You open your mouth to say just that when Bucky lifts his hand. “Please, whatever you’re going to say, just…don’t.”
You scowl at the back of his head. It’s impossible for him to see you, since he’s too busy trying to crush you between his back and the wall. Still he says, “I know. I know.”
You let out a sigh and try to make yourself as small behind him as you can. This was supposed to be easy. You and Bucky have been cohabitating for a couple of weeks now and aside from the new luxury rent-free digs courtesy of Tony Stark, you’ve been getting on as you always have. Well, mostly. Getting kidnapped and tortured would make anyone shy about leaving their heavily-fortified house, (‘house’, ‘giant tower protected by superheroes and mad genius, to-may-to, to-mah-to), and you’re still in the land of New Relationship Bliss. Getting dressed and going outside will always be less fun than sitting in your PJs on the couch with Bucky, alternating between making fun of whatever you’re watching and just plain making out.
Living your best life indeed.
Still, you don’t plan to play Rapunzel forever. You intend to get a job and you’d like to go outside without looking over your shoulder constantly. You’re very aware of why you avoid going out and it has made you more determined to get out on the town. Fuck Hydra; you’re not going to let them get to you so much that you stay inside eating snacks forever. So you decided, while having a particularly good day, that you and Bucky were going to go on a date in the outside world, dammit.
(Because after accomplishing that you can stay inside eating snacks forever if you want but with a sense of superiority, which really makes all the difference in the world.)
So earlier you basically told Bucky ‘get up asshole we’re going to see a movie and get dinner,’ (okay maybe not ‘basically’ maybe it was ‘literally’; what do you know), and with a remarkably light amount of grumbling, he got dressed and presentable and you both went out with the best of intentions.
Only to get crowded down a side street and trapped in a loading dock by a bunch of idiots with guns. For fuck’s sake, it’s barely even dark out and these guys are just–
“Let the girl go, Winter Soldier!”
You poke your head out. “Hey dickweed, the only danger to me is you and your wanna-be vigilante dickweed friends!”
Bucky hisses your name. You huff and go back into hiding. Admittedly, you’ve seen enough guns to last a lifetime, thanks, but these morons are…well…morons. Also, young, which is probably the only thing saving them from Bucky’s lethal force. Once they started tossing around ‘war criminal’ accusations Bucky went heavy on the defense while you have never wanted to punch someone more in your life (with maybe one exception).
“An idiot with a firearm is still an idiot with a firearm,” Bucky says and lets out his own sigh.
“Among other things,” you mutter. You peer around him again. “Hey! Idiot Number One!”
Idiot #1 looks around like you must be talking to someone else. Idiot #1– with a bullet. “Who, me?”
“Yeah, you! Barry with the Bad Hair–” Seriously, this fucker looks like he stepped off the off-off Broadway stage for “Amadeus”. “Where’d you get the cell signal blocker?”
Bucky says your name like he’s trying to talk himself out of knocking you unconscious. Or maybe he’s reconsidering who, out of the two of you, gets to be the human shield. Whatever it is, it definitely involves Bruce’s breathing exercises.
Idiot #1 pats his hair self-consciously and then scowls at you. “I’ll answer that if you tell me why you’re standing behind the Winter Soldier.”
“Deal!” What a fucking moron.
He nods like he has any sense of dignity or decorum when the only reason he and his friends are conscious is because they have murder tools and you are soft and squishy and have no sense of self-preservation. It was even on your list of ‘Cons’ for your ‘Going Outside’ list which you are clearly going to have to revisit.
“Let’s just say a friend of the people has a vested interest in shutting down Stark–” he tries to spit on Tony’s name but it’s a bit too drooly and oh god this is pathetic and gross now, “–tech.” He swallows and points. “Now you.”
“Well I was out on a date and some asshole morons started waving guns around so this jerkwad shoved me here to help keep my cute ass sans bullet holes.” You flip your hair. “Sorry; I’m on a ‘no lead’ diet.”
“That’s not– I didn’t s–” He turns a little red when he realizes, yeah, that is what he said. “I meant why are you defending him?! He’s a killer!”
“And you waving a gun around is just for funsies? Does it pop out a flag that says ‘bang!’?” You probably come off a little too angry, given the way Bucky squeezes your arm reassuringly, but really, ‘sick of this shit’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.
“We are correcting an oversight of the law,” Idiot #1 says, sounding so snooty it’s almost unbelievable that some butler or nanny isn’t coming to collect him for bedtime. He’s not your main concern anymore though. The kid to your extreme left is shaking like a leaf and you can’t really see, but you doubt he’s practicing proper gun safety.
“Hey, Judge Dredd.” You point at Shaky. “If you’re not out to get innocent people shot then maybe tell Hair Trigger to lay off, yeah? The guy’s just as likely to shoot you as he is to shoot us.”
Idiot #1 looks over and sighs, like his friend is just being embarrassing and not like he’s being embarrassing while holding a deadly weapon. It’d serve him right to get grazed by friendly fire. “Jerry, we talked about this. If you can’t–”
“No, I– I got this,” Shake-us Maximus says and takes a deep breath. He steadies only slightly. “I got this!” He looks like he’s imagining a music swell play under his triumph. You can’t help but roll your eyes.
“Oh my god!” Token Girl gasps. “They rolled their eyes at the exact same time!”
What a shock, that Bucky would also find that lame guy super lame. Idiot #2 has a giant Adam’s apple that you can see move with his swallow. He stammers, “Wha-what if she’s an android designed to be an extension of him?”
You burst out laughing. “Wow! Wow.” You can’t form any other words at first. They come eventually. “That is the dumbest conspiracy theory I have ever heard, and I once went on a date with a moon-landing denier.” That’s a fun memory. By comparison. “You think I’m some high-tech ventriloquist dummy?” Though you think maybe, considering the circumstances and relationship, ‘Real Doll’ might be a more accurate comparison. You poke Bucky. “By the way, sorry to disappoint, but fisting is not an achievement unlocked on a first date.”
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters and squishes you more against the wall. “Why do I always find the tiny idiots who want to fight everything? Why is this my life?”
“I am not tiny,” you say. “Take that back.”
Bucky looks at you, and then looks at himself. “You’re not bigger than me. And you don’t know how to fight. So, yeah– tiny idiot.”
“I swear to god if you are lumping me in with Steve again I’m going to dump your ass on your own couch.”
Bucky rolls his eyes and looks back at them. But you cross your arms and add, “Maybe one of these losers will let you sleep on theirs. Maybe you can find out what’s killing their brain cells that they think this is a good idea.”
Bucky sighs a little more roughly. “Can’t you be serious for five minutes?”
“With guns pointed at me? Fuck that; if I’m going out I wanna make it hard to pick out which zinger goes on my headstone.”
Bucky is quiet for a moment, stealing little glances at you. Then he spins and pins you to the wall so securely that you have to take shallow breaths. “Bucky?”
“Nothing’s gonna happen to you. All right?” he says, keeping eye contact and staying almost in kissing distance. You could close it if you want, but you’re honestly not in the mood. Which blows because Bucky shoving you up against the wall is supposed to be really hot.
“Don’t– don’t turn your back on them, you idiot.” You try to push him back but he just presses his forehead to yours.
“Shh,” he says. “Don’t look at them, don’t listen to them. Just focus on me. People like that’ll kill your brain cells if you’re not careful.”
The Brooklyn is coming out strong, which normally only happens when he’s relaxed. However, you find yourself at a loss to make fun of him for it. Well, right now, anyways. “Seriously, turning your back on a bunch of guns? You’re not Steve; you don’t have a shield to turtle under!”
“Oh my god, is that Captain America?!”
You blink and peek as the Armed Idiot Brigade start to fan over an annoyed and cautious Steve Rogers.
You lean back against the wall and consider. Well, it’s worth a shot. “You’re not rich; you don’t have a million dollars waiting to rain down on you!” You wait. Nothing. Drat. Bucky huffs and you shrug as he lets up. “Hey, can’t blame a girl for trying.”
“Oh, are we interrupting?” Tony says as he floats down in his suit.
You smirk at Bucky and he rolls his eyes. “Doesn’t count,” he says.
“Eh. Close enough,” you say and look around the combined wall of Tony Stark as Ironman and Bucky Barnes as Moron Who Thinks His Metal Arm Is the Same as a Suit of Armor. Thankfully, Steve has negotiated the idiots into at least lowering their weapons.
“I’m confused,” Tony says.
“It’s okay. You just look like a million bucks, Stark,” you say and flash him a smile.
“Only a million?” he asks as though mortally offended.
“Fine. A thousand.”
“But–”
“Keep going and it’ll be a hundred.” You smooth out your clothes and go back to paying attention to the goings-on. Steve is talking to Idiot #1 and looking like he’d rather deal with anyone else. It’s sort of hilarious already. “Hey Steve! I will be nice to you for an entire day if you punch that guy!”
Steve immediately looks thoughtful. “An entire day?”
“Wh-what?!” Idiot #1 goes pale and jerks back. “Y-you wouldn’t!”
“Twenty-four hours, no more, no less,” you say and delight in the way the little asshole shakes. Good. Let him be terrified for a few minutes. Fair is fair.
“Hey, if you knew her like I do then you’d be tempted too.” Steve takes one step, not even giving any real weight to it, but Idiot #1 falls on his ass. His friends stand around, stunned. Well at least they won't shoot Captain America.
“But– but you hate bullies!” Idiot #1 whimpers.
“Yeah. I really do.” Steve kneels down and rips the gun away. The weenie gasps and holds his hand. Please. Steve has stolen a pack of cookies from you with more force; there’s no way that hurt. “I really hate watching a group of people aim weapons on a couple just trying to enjoy a nice night out.”
Idiot #1 stammers, but shuts up when Steve holds up his hand and stands. “I’m not a cop, so I can’t read you your rights, but the authorities are on their way, so you might want to stay quiet regardless.”
At that, the idiot minions try to run. Tony lifts up and drops down in front of Shaky. Natasha creepily appears in front of Idiot #2, and Token Girl jumps back with a shriek when she almost slams into Clint. You take count of the guns lying on the ground and you finally, finally can breathe again. Once they’re all secured Tony takes off with whatever they used to block your call for help, muttering something about…hammers? You don’t really care, as long as Pepper doesn’t blame you for him locking himself in the lab again. You maintain that hovering coffee cups seemed like a really great idea at the time.
Anyways. Due to the motive, the intended victim, and the dumbasses’ previous loud claims to be vigilantes, the morons are going to be taken into SHIELD’s custody rather than the police’s. Coulson’s creepy bland smile freaks them out, which you approve of, and after taking statements and grabbing the evidence, he and Steve go off together talking about how they’re going to scare them straight, which you whole-heartedly approve of.
However at the end of it all you’re frazzled, hungry, and wondering why you thought leaving your room was a good idea.
“Hey.” Bucky slides his arm around you and you lean into him. “We missed the movie but we can still get dinner.”
It sounds good in theory. Everything is fine now, you’re starving, and Steve can’t crash your date to ‘chaperone’ like he threatened to when you left the tower earlier. You want to, you really want to…
…but what if something else happens?
Bucky looks at you like he knows what you’re thinking. Or maybe he’s zoning out and running through his own doomsday scenarios. It’s hard to tell with this guy, sometimes. Eventually he says, “I got an idea,” and pulls you along to where Natasha and Clint are talking. They look up when you approach and Bucky says, “We’re gonna hit up that diner near the tower before we head back. You two wanna join us?”
“Oh, I love that place!” Clint says, eyes bright and wide until Natasha elbows him.
“We don’t want to crash your date,” she says, looking at you.
You like where Bucky is going with this, though. “You’re not; we’re inviting you.”
“All right then,” Natasha says with a nod.
“Yes!” Clint says and falls in next to you as you walk, Natasha on his other side, and Bucky on yours. “They have the best pies, let me tell you…”
And he does, much to your amusement and Bucky and Natasha’s annoyance. You all settle into a booth and Natasha starts ribbing Clint, as is right and normal. It feels a little less like a date and more like a night out with friends, but when Bucky’s hand settles on yours on the cracked vinyl bench, you think that taking baby steps might be all right after all.
Tag List: @howdoesoneadult @grey-stardancer @projectxhappiness @jadepc (If you don’t want to be tagged just let me know; thought this might be relevant to your interests :) )
#bucky x reader#james bucky barnes x reader#james bucky barnes x you#bucky x you#avengers reader insert#on the run
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2.03, Bad Moon Rising
Welp I accidentally took a month-long hiatus but I’m back! This semester has been kicking my ass, so I’ll do the best I can with getting one of these up each week, but go easy on me.
Damon, Stefan, and Elena convince Rick to help them go through Isobel’s research at Duke University – which is all still there, because apparently her only being missing and not dead means she gets to keep her office?? Tenure is one hell of a drug. The plan is to find anything on the Lockwood family, because for some reason Damon feels threatened by their very existence, and also Katherine.
“So are you sure you wanna do this?” Stefan asks. “Which part?” Elena retorts, pouting while she packs her road trip stuff. “Digging through my birth mother’s life work or –” she pauses, says with perfect derisive scorn, “going to Duke with Damon?” Stefan snorts a little, answers, “Either? Both?” “Well, I’m sure about the first part,” Elena answers, “but then again Rick is a good buffer, so we can bond in our anti-Damon solidarity. I wish you were coming, though.” “You know what?” says Stefan, “Why don’t we hold off a couple days? Wait until Caroline’s less of a danger and then I can go with you.” “It’s okay that I’m going right?” Elena asks. “And be honest because if it’s not then I can just stay here and we can take care of Caroline!” She’s warming to the idea as she suggests it, but Stefan says, “No, listen, I want you to go, okay, I do. You have questions about your lineage, about Katherine, and look, I’m not gonna let the fact that Damon is going keep you from an opportunity to get some answers.” Elena nods, looks at him, says: “You hate it though.”
“I hate it,” Stefan confirms.
“But I love you,” he says. “I love you, too,” Elena answers. They kiss. And with that, this very ambiguous conversation is over; does Stefan hate it because he doesn’t trust Damon (as established in 1.22)? or because Damon killed Jeremy and he’s siding with Elena in her unforgiveness? Why must they go to Duke now? Why is Damon going? Is Alaric really in anti-Damon solidarity with them, because last I checked they were on fine terms, and we never got a Jeremy-murder reaction from him so why assume otherwise? Where IS Jeremy? Is Damon giving him whittling lessons yet? So many questions left unanswered. Ah well.
Downstairs, Alaric and Jenna are being Super Mature about the fact that they’re interacting: Rick makes an excuse about how busy he’s been, Jenna tells him she’s grateful he’s giving Elena this connection to her birth mother. I’m proud of them both, but I’m especially proud of Jenna; Rick offers her an apology for their relationship being start and stop and says “Maybe once I”, and Jenna cuts him off with an “Uhhh, no. Don’t do that,” she says, not unkindly. “Not the half apology, maybe, hope-for-the-future thing.” He smiles wryly. “Do what you need to do, okay?” Jenna says. YOU GO, JENNA!! YOU ARE KIND AND PATIENT BUT YOU WILL NOT BE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF!! Elena asks her if she’s okay as she heads out the door; “Yeah,” Jenna answers, “just, men and their baggage!”
Now, this next scene is absolute gold. Damon leans against the car, says while pouting mightily, “Sorry you can’t come too, Stef.” Stefan ignores him, but Elena throws her bag into the car extra violently and glares.
Stefan tries to sidetrack her: “Call me if you need anything.” “Oh,” Damon says, inserting himself again, “I’ll take really good care of her.”
And Elena!! While maintaining eye contact with him!!! Grabs Stefan around the neck and makes out with him. Is this fucking Twilight?? I don’t know but it’s ridiculous and spiteful and I love it.
And then: they both turn around and look at Damon again? Stefan kind of…smacks his lips???
“Okay, time to go,” Damon says. Having adequately antagonized the person who literally killed Jeremy because Elena chose Stefan over him, they pile into the car and boogie on out.
Stefan sits down with Bonnie to convince her to make Caroline a daylight ring; it’s important, he says, to keep Caroline in contact with the people that connect her to her humanity, and that requires being able to go out in the sun. Bonnie’s not so sure she can trust new vampire-Car; Stefan says, “Then trust me.”
Sighhhhh.
In the car, Damon reaches back and appears to jiggle Elena’s knee?? “How you doin’ back there?” he asks. “You know, this whole pretending to hate me thing is getting a little silly.” Alaric, stuck in the middle of a classic Damon/Elena mess-around yet again, scoffs. “I don’t think she’s pretending. You did kill her brother.” “There is a HUGE asterisk next to that statement,” Damon protests, “he came back to life.” “Yeah,” says Elena flatly, “thanks to a ring you didn’t know he was wearing.” “Why are you so sure I didn’t know?” Damon says. “Did you?” Elena says. “Yes,” he says. Her eyes narrow; “You’re lying,” she says, unsurprised. “Elena!” Damon says, “I saw the ring! It’s a big, tacky thing, it’s hard to miss.”
Bonnie makes Caroline a daylight ring. “So I don’t get to choose the ring I wear the rest of my life?” Caroline complains. No, Car, of course you don’t!! Haven’t you ever heard of engagement rings? But for serious, I think this line is on purpose. This is the beginning of a love story between Caroline and vampirism. Also, this is her “skeptical about spell-casting face”:
Over at Duke, Alaric’s hair is doing something awful.
Vanessa, a research assistant, gets them the keys to Isobel’s office, and then attempts to shoot Elena with a crossbow. Three guesses how that turns out.
Yep, Damon vamps over and takes the arrow for her. Last episode he spared Caroline for her and she stopped Bonnie from killing him; now he’s risked his life to save hers. And what do you know? While Alaric is subduing the unfortunate academic,
Elena’s fallen to her knees at Damon’s side to check on him. This episode has a bunch of purposeful callbacks to Bloodlines – they’re on a road trip, looking for info on Elena’s ancestors, Damon steps in to save her from danger and then she acts worried for his well-being. But this is where the similarity ends. When we return from the commercial, Damon is nagging at Elena to pull the arrow out of his back and she’s making faces like she wants to pull it out and then immediately re-stake him with it. She pulls it out, and then while he’s yelling in pain reaches over his shoulder to drop it, presumably just to be annoying.
Damon blows out a breath, raises his eyebrows (you thought I forgot the eyebrows didn’t you), and announces, “that bitch is deaaaaad.” Elena’s eyes widen – how dare he talk about killing people when he’s trying to make amends for killing her brother – and she says, “Uh, you’re not gonna kill her.” He adopts a weird sultry voice: “Watch me.”
“You touch her and I swear I will never speak to you again,” Elena says.
“What makes you think that has any power over me?” Damon challenges. Elena blinks.
“Because I took an arrow in the back for you?” Damon says, mockingly. He slings an arm over her shoulder, which she immediately pushes off with disgust; “You are severely overestimating yourself,” he says, gleeful. “Right,” says Elena, “I forgot I was speaking to a psychotic mind who snaps and kills people impulsively. Fine. Go ahead. Do whatever you want.”
“You’re trying to manipulate me!” Damon says indignantly. “If by manipulate you mean tell the truth, okay,” Elena says, “guilty.” Damon, for whom manipulation is all tied up with love, kind of stares at her lips.
“Okay!” says Elena, and makes her exit.
Archery-happy research-assistant tells Rick she freaked because she thought Elena was Katherine Pierce, and then everyone digs through Isobel’s giant office holy crap how has Duke not given this office to someone else?? Damon makes a crack about Vanessa wanting to see him naked, and Elena tells her that he can be a first-rate jackass. Damon smiles; this is familiar, this is the way she talked to Jenna about him before everything happened. A bit later, he comes up behind Elena and tells her it’s too bad they’re not friends anymore, because he knows something she doesn’t know that would help her find more about Katherine. “Now who’s manipulating who?” she retorts. Vanessa explains the Aztec legend of the Curse of the Sun and Moon, which will become more or less significant later, and that werewolves in this mythology are hardwired to hunt vampires, who can be killed by a single bite.
Stefan takes Caroline wabbit hunting. He explains to her that vampirism amplifies natural behaviors and traits. “So you’re saying that now I’m basically an insecure, neurotic control-freak…on crack?” she asks.
“Well, I wasn’t gonna say it like that,” Stefan says lightly, and then offers to go with her to Tyler’s swimming hole party to meet up with Matt. Seriously, they both shine in this episode. Stefan’s “that-guy” awkwardness is perfectly foiled by Caroline’s sincerity.
They literally….cribbed this shot……..from a Twilight movie
Anyway…
“Why are you looking at him with your serious vampire look?” Caroline asks.
“My what – my serious vampire look?” Stefan repeats, aghast. “Mmhmm,” says Caroline, “I mean, it’s different than your worried vampire look.”
“Neither of which stray too far from your ‘hey! It’s Tuesday’ look.”
“Oh, okay, I get it,” Stefan says, “you think I’m too serious.” “Well,” says Caroline, “I wasn’t gonna say it like thaaaat.”
Did you notice how many emotions Stefan expressed in that conversation? I’m so proud of him. Real Eleanor from The Good Place flirts with Matt until Caroline compels her away; Matt gets angry at Caroline’s jealousy-drama and wanders off, and Stefan gets angry that Caroline used her compulsion for shallow reason. “So now I have magnified jealousy issues?” she says. “I might as well have stayed dead, my whole personality is killing me.” Stefan finds this freaking delightful:
“Shut up,” she tells him.
They hang out at the party together until it gets dark and everyone starts to pack up (on Mason’s orders), and Stefan tells Caroline to go talk to Matt. Caroline promises Matt no more drama, and they scamper off into the woods to kiss. This coincides with Stefan getting a call from Elena to fill him in on all the new werewolf lore – he looks around for Caroline as soon as he hears a werewolf bite can kill a vampire, but she’s nowhere to be found. Mason Lockwood is in the middle of transforming into a werewolf. Welcome, A plot.
Vanessa informs Elena that a doppelganger is a living, breathing double of oneself, who usually torments the person they look like, tries to undo their life. “More things we already know,” Elena says flatly. “I just wanna know why we look alike.” “Headscratcher, isn’t it?” says Damon, from over by the bookcase. “Do you know something or are you just being yourself?” Elena asks with more sass than you would think would fit in her tiny body. “Well, if I knew anything, I’m not gonna tell you,” Damon says, “not with that attitude.” Alaric looks like he needs a drink, but also a little bit like he’s trying not to laugh?
“That’s good, Damon,” Elena says, dropping the attitude down a notch, “and that’s coming from someone who wants to be my friend. Friends don’t manipulate friends, they help each other.”
This does not compute.
Back in the woods, Tyler gets the brush-off from Real Eleanor, Mason-wolf jumps out of his car at Stefan, Caroline bites Matt, and everyone runs around a lot. Thank goodness it’s not more complicated than that, because this recap is getting really long.
Elena refuses to admit that Alaric’s car is locked and stands fighting with the door handle like a petulant child; it’s been a long day. Damon arrives as the shining knight and unlocks it, and then opens her door for good measure. Then, good deed done, he gets all up in her personal space.
“You’re not going to be able to hate me forever,” he says. She rolls her eyes, says, “Can we just go?” He sighs and hands over a text labeled “Petrova”, for Katherine’s real name: Katerina Petrova. “Let me know what you find, I’m very curious myself,” he tells her; he’s trusting her with the truth, trusting that she’ll share it. She goes to move past him, he says, “You have every right to hate me. I understand. But you hated me before and we became friends.”
“It would suck,” he admits, “if that was gone forever.”
“So,” he says, with forced lightness, “is it?” She meets his eyes, but her face is more closed than it’s ever been. “Have I lost you forever?” Damon asks, like it’s a joke, like it doesn’t matter or like it’s impossible.
“Thank you for the book, Damon,” she says. He gives the smallest of nods, and motions her into the car.
Caroline compels away Matt’s memories of her biting him, and then she and Stefan have a heart-to-heart about their human significant others. “If I followed my own advice I would have walked out on Elena a long time ago,” Stefan says. “You think you should’ve?” Caroline asks. “I know I should have,” Stefan says, “I just can’t.”
Tyler confirms with his (very naked) uncle that he was in fact the wolf that almost killed all of them. Another secret, out. I’m resisting making a very stupid joke here, but I’ll probably succumb and post it separately later.
Caroline walks into the Grille and purposely starts shit with Real Eleanor so that Matt walks out on her. “So what, are you like, breaking up with me?” she calls after him. “Yeah,” he says, wearily, “yeah I guess that’s what I’m doing.” He waits, expecting her to fight him, but she only stares back and lifts her chin defiantly. Caroline is strong enough to walk away, and kind enough to let Matt think that he knows why. As, @itspileofgoodthings pointed out in these tags, she did what Stefan couldn’t do.
Having warned Vanessa against getting caught up in all the supernatural nonsense, Alaric realizes he doesn’t want to get totally caught up in it either, and is able to make good on his half apology maybe hope for the future.
Damon trails Elena up to her porch, exclaiming, “Road trips work well for us!” “This doesn’t mean things are back to the way they used to be, Damon,” says Elena. “Oh, come on,” Damon says, “you know I chipped a little bit off of your wall of hatred.” Elena turns to look at him, says seriously, “I need to know the truth.”
“When you broke Jeremy’s neck, did you know he was wearing the ring?” she asks.
“No,” he says, his voice so strained. “No, I didn’t.”
“Katherine really pissed me off, and I snapped, and I –” He stops, looks at her intently. “I got lucky with the ring,” he admits. “And I don’t know what I would’ve done if he wasn’t wearing it.”
She nods, slightly. “Elena,” he says, “I’m sorry.” She nods again, says, “Thank you for being honest with me. And the answer to your question, about our friendship?”
“Is yes…you have lost me forever.”
She turns to go into the house. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?” Damon says, bitter. She pauses, he accuses, “You used me today.” She looks at him, unrepentant.
“You had information about Katherine that I needed to know.” “I thought friends don’t manipulate friends,” he replies. She looks back at him, her response left unspoken: they’re not friends, and so it doesn’t matter. He swallows, tells her, “You and Katherine have a lot more in common than just your looks.”
Both women stood on this porch with him and pretended to be something they weren’t so that he would pour his heart out to them, and then turned around and rejected him. Living, breathing mirror of oneself indeed.
Katherine wakes Caroline, tells her not to be frightened. “We’re gonna have so much fun together.”
Music Moments: A Fine Frenzy’s “Ashes and Wine” plays over the final scenes, and wow that song doesn’t fuck around: “don't know what to do anymore / I've lost the only love worth fighting for”, “is there a chance / a fragment of light at the end of the tunnel / a reason to fight? / is there a chance you may change your mind / or are we ashes and wine?”
previous episode
#2.03#bad moon rising#tvd#rewatch#I KNOW I WENT OVERBOARD#BUT THERE'S SOME DAMN GOOD FACE ACTING IN THIS EPISODE#long post
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Melancholia- Chapter 5
AN: Hi everyone. Once again, I’d like to thank all of my amazing followers old and new. You guys are just the best and make my day all of the time. Thank you. <3 Also, I have to apologize so hard, I realized that one of my followers asked to be tagged in my posts and I totally missed it somehow? I’m so sorry, I’m trying to be better. Anyways, I hope you like this chapter?
Masterlist:
“Why is this necessary?” I huffed, slouching in the seat of the limo despite the fact that I was wearing and potentially wrinkling a 2000-dollar dress.
“Scarlette,” Alexander sighed.
“After your father died unexpectedly, you disappeared for a year. You didn’t expect people to notice? This is your first appearance back into society, and this event is the perfect one. There will be cameras, and many people who have known your family for many years. So, stop rolling those eyes, and put on a pleasant smile before this car moves an inch.”
I knew that he was right. I wasn’t a little 14-year old girl anymore, but now 17-year-old girl now with no parents. I was essentially an adult now and had to act like one. But I still hated these parties.
Although, when I had signed up to essentially be a spy of sorts, living a double life wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
As I tried to appear like my mood was picking up, that all went downhill when Emelia walked into the car. She wore a long, silk dress with a low neckline, making sure that her boobs were pushed out. I think that she had a great amount of satisfaction in knowing that she was the one between us with boobs, and I was one with a pretty unimpressive pair. Her competitive streak had literally come to this.
The tension in the car thickened within an instant of her walking in. There was no other form of communication other than quick death threatening stares between the two of us.
She had been especially angry at me today because I kicked her ass again in training in front of a bunch of people. Getting her ass kicked multiple times in training sessions by the brand-new person who hadn’t even gone on her first mission yet had definitely put a huge dent in her incredibly large ego.
There was a moment where I was almost sure that she was going to kill me when she pulled a knife out and pressed it against my neck. Real weapons in our non-specialized training sessions were against the rules, so it was obvious that it was a very impulsive move on her part. Had the trainer not been there to yell at her to get off of me, I might have been a very injured Scarlette.
“Seriously, girls. When are you guys going to start getting along?” Alexander protested after watching us mentally murder each other for 10 minutes.
Emelia snorted, letting that be the last word in the car before arriving at our destination.
As the car slowed down, and we had arrived at the party my hands started to sweat. This was my introduction back into society as a young woman, and I knew that the press was going to have a field day with taking my photo everywhere I went, analyzing everything I did. I was more nervous about this event than I was imagining my first assignment. I had already been told what to say when I was being questioned, so besides that, I just had to smile and act pretty.
When I walked out of the car, it felt like a war zone. Cameras flashed nonstop in my face as tons of press members swarmed around me with question after question. It was all incredibly overwhelming. Somehow maintained my composure and answered questions with the story that I had been given to tell, and smiled for pictures as Alexander and Emelia walked into the party unbothered.
~Present day~
Of course, I was busted. I had been somewhat of a public figure since I was born; it was so stupid of me to think that I could stay hidden away forever just because I wasn’t a Kardashian or something.
When Tony had turned the tablet to face me, it featured an article with the headline, ’17-Year-old Billionaire, Scarlette Dalton return from Neverland?’
It was a very old article with photos taken from my first event in Washington since I had come back from Russia when I was 17. An article with a pretty shitty title in my honest opinion.
It was my debut back into society after a year of being MIA after the death of my father. The story was that I went out of the country to travel, and have some peace and quiet for figure my life out. Unbeknownst to everyone else, I had been away being trained to be an assassin.
My demeanor had changed instantly, and I had to let the innocent stance go. For the first time since Stark showed up at my door, Lola was dead in an instant. I was Scarlette again.
“Alright, what do you want to know?” I sighed, slouching over the table.
The two men across from me looked at each other, raising an eyebrow in sync before turning back to me.
“Everything.”
…
My heart raced, my hands shook, and I was leaning over a trash can in the far corner, throwing up. This was especially fun since it had been over 24 hours since I had actually eaten anything.
I felt raw. Every part of my body hurt, and yet nobody had laid a finger on me. I had spent 3 hours being interrogated about my past. Even though I was talking nonstop about my own story for this amount of time, it felt as though I had barely scratched the surface.
I had to talk about why I joined, when I joined, how many people I had killed, why I left, who I knew, who I was still in contact with. It was all so draining. So much of that stuff I wasn’t ready nor had talked to one single person about.
Every one of those subjects that I had to talk about, I could go on for days about if I had to go into detail. Which I had no intention of doing with Stark.
Going back to those incredibly dark places that put me into the situation I was in now with someone who could have me locked up for the rest of my life was a completely different experience than talking to someone I was in love with who had been in similar situations.
I knew that going back to those life-altering moments would be tough, but I had no clue that it would feel as though my insides were being ripped apart by guilt. The more I talked, the more pathetic I felt, and the more I hated myself. It really sunk in how horrible, ruthless, but naïve I was in those days.
Now, the weight of every single thing that was said to me, and everything that I had to confess was weighing on me to the point of physical illness.
I stood back up after almost 5 minutes of leaning over a trash can letting go of last week’s lunch, feeling even more humiliated that I already had before, and sat back down.
After about 2 hours Rhodes had decided that he was no longer useful since Tony and I did most of the back and forth talk.
“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Tony huffed.
I sniffled, narrowing my eyes. That was not what I was expecting to hear from him.
“What?”
Tony rolled his eyes.
“Rogers spilled the beans that you and Barnes were fucking. Are. You. Pregnant?”
“No,” I responded quickly, allowing myself to sound annoyed.
“Are you sure?” I continued on suspiciously.
“Hydra made sure that would never happen so, I’m sure.”
He nodded, tilting his head as if he were confused.
“We’re going to get back to that, but I digress-”
“So what’s next?” I interrupted.
My voice was so shaken and defeated at this point.
“For you?” Tony replied.
“Yeah. For me. I just confessed a bunch of shit, and unlike someone else who is in your custody, I did it all voluntarily. So, yes! I want to know what the fuck is next. Prison? Execution?”
He raised an eyebrow. Maybe it was my tone. I hadn’t realized that I had gotten pretty aggressive with how I spoke. But it was all coming out of pure fear and desperation.
“Do you think that you’re just going to sit here for 3 hours and that’s it?” He inquired.
My body went numb. A million different possibilities went through my mind and none of them were good. What else did they want to do to me? I knew the idea of being interrogated for a few hours and just being let go was not part of the plan at all. But the way he said what he had just said push me even farther off the edge.
“I think that you have key info, and stories that you’re not letting up on. And honestly…I think that we could use you. In fact, I think that we will use it. It’s official.”
I paused for a moment, taking in the words that had just escaped his mouth. I processed what he said, and started laughing.
I laughed in hysterics. It was the type of laughter that happens when you’re so incredibly devoid of emotion that you can’t even cry. The kind of laugh that doesn’t even come from your soul, because you’re pretty sure that it was ripped away from you. That type of laugh that makes you want to say, ‘Just fucking kill me already.’
“Use me?”
He took in a deep breath, maintaining a serious face as he leaned forward on his elbows speaking in a very low tone.
“Dalton, do you think that we didn’t know that Hydra was rearing a couple of its ugly heads back?”
I blinked, still dumbfounded.
“What if I told you that we have a pretty significant number of people on this compound who are in the exact same position as you that are in. Ex-Hydra members who are helping us narrow down how Hydra works, and how to take them down when the time comes?”
I continued to stare at him as if he had just grown an extra two heads from his neck on command. This was absolutely insane. There was no way that the words that I had heard were the actual words that came out of his mouth.
“Ex-Hydra members?” I exhaled shakily.
“Yes,” he replied as if I had just asked him a stupid question.
I looked away, feeling as if I had just been punched in the lungs.
“No,” I mumbled, shaking my head like a mad woman.
“No?” He responded.
“No, I’m not playing this little game!” I spat.
“This isn’t happening. This is a bad idea. Shut it down. Now!”
What the hell were they thinking, acting as though it was a good idea to have supposedly ex-hydra members working with them? This was like Hydra members being within S.H.I.E.L.D all over again, except they were just being invited in like some Weekend at Bernie’s.
He leaned back, chuckling to himself.
“What’s so funny?” I continued shaking my head, looking him dead in the eye.
“Trust me. We keep a very close eye.” He replied, still not answering my question.
“Yeah, sure. Until someone finds a way to hide plans!” I exclaimed.
“No. There is no way I’m joining your little secret club. There is no fucking way.”
He shook his head. I knew that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He didn’t like being around people who did that.
“Scarlette…” He sighed.
“After everything you’ve confessed to. Do you really think that you have much of a choice?”
I sat for a good two minutes not saying anything. Most of that time I was just focused on not bursting into tears, or vomiting all over the table.
“So you’re holding me as a prisoner here is what you’re saying.” I managed to choke out, holding back tears.
“I didn’t say that specifically.” He said, folding his hands together on the table.
“How you choose to interpret it is your choice.”
I took in a deep breath, telling myself that maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad. Not that I had much of a choice. I couldn’t go back home, whatever that meant. But perhaps giving myself the illusion that I had a choice was better than putting up a fight at this point. So, I chose to at least try to listen to what Tony had to say about it all.
“Okay.” I exhaled.
“What’s next?”
Tagged: @a-heart-attack-ow @fantasticimpaladoctor @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked @sexysamsungl @carryonmyswansong
#bucky barnes#bucky barnes fanfiction#bucky barnes fanfic#winter solldier#winter soldier fanfic#winter soldier fanfiction#winter soldierxoccharacter#winter soldier x original character#winter soldierxoc#melancholia#ineffable#fanfiction#avengers fanfiction#avengers fanfic#tony stark#tony stark fanfiction
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Backwash | Commission Piece
This is a commission piece for anon, who commissioned a sequel to The Backwaters.
Commission Info
Title: Backwash
Summary: Five years after the Backwaters Incident, a reformed Bucky comes back to Shuri with the hopes that they can turn over a new leaf and start something new together.
Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha!Bucky, Omega!Shuri, AU
A03 | Read the Backwaters on Tumblr | A03
<< Previous Chapter | Last Chapter >>
Trigger Warning - Miscarriage and heavy grief
Backwash | Chapter Three | Word Count: 5506
Shuri feels different when she returns to work - self conscious of the mark still on her neck and the lingering smell of an alpha that clings to her. Even as she walks, her body is tucked in, smaller, more uncertain than usual. She can feel the eyes that wander to her, the ones that linger on her neck. She spots a few curious looks and open, gaping mouths that have questions on their tongues. She dodges those people as much as she can. She doesn’t even think she could face Wanda - who has grown to be a very liberated omega with a warranted hatred for alphas.
But there is one specific redhead that she does need to face. She spots Nat in a nearby empty training space and slips in, immediately taking the chance given to her to speak to Nat in private. Bucky’s words about staying with Nat have lingered with her in a way that she feels she needs to address.
Nat slows down on the poor punching bag that she’s been using, sweat beading down her forehead as she acknowledges Shuri’s entrance. When Shuri doesn’t make a move to join her in training, instead opting to stand nearby with her arms crossed tightly to her chest, Nat’s lips thin as she realizes just why her friend has joined her. She stops, taking mercy on the swinging bag, and sits down at the nearby bench beside Shuri.
From the corner of her eyes, Nat can see the change in Shuri. She doesn’t meet Nat’s gaze, holding her head down somberly, arms still crossed as she leans against the wall beside the bench. She can spot the dark mark on Shuri’s exposed neck, the way that Shuri tries to tuck her head in a vain attempt to make it less noticable.
“He visited you, didn’t he,” Nat asks, her voice even as she starts to undo the wrappings on her hands.
Unless Shuri opts to settle this out in one of the training rings, she figures that she won’t be getting back to practice for now. Despite the way that her heart begins to pound at her chest, Nat’s expressions are neutral and don’t give away to her growing panic. It was one of the first things that she learned from Shuri.
“He did,” Shuri confirms, her voice softer and she looks up toward the ceiling with a tired sigh. “He had a lot to say.”
Nat leans back against the wall, glancing up toward Shuri who has yet to even look at her. She doesn’t blame her - not really. She isn’t even sure that Shuri wants to look at her, see her, even talk to her again after this. Talking to Bucky was a risk - a risk that she had to take, knowing in her heart the potential there was for him to become a good man again. Sending him to Shuri, however, was an even bigger risk - a risk that could have a high reward and a high loss potential. If it didn’t go well, she would lose Shuri. Possibly forever. If it did, there is potential for her to gain a sister-in-law of sorts. She still can’t tell which way it went.
“-And,” Nat presses gently, treading through dangerous waters, “Did you listen to what he had to say? Or did you just punch him and call it a night?”
She pauses briefly before continuing, “I wouldn’t blame you for telling him off and calling it… I wouldn’t blame you for doing the same to me either.”
Shuri had thought about it. She thought about storming in, cursing Nat for disclosing her location, for abusing her trust, for putting her in that situation in the first place. She can’t lie, it still hurts thinking about it. Thinking of Nat going behind her back like that. Talking to her cousin is one thing - something that a part of her would understand - but sending him directly to her, with no warning, no guarantee for safety or for it going well. But the angry fire in her chest has dwindled to that of a small, painful spark.
Frankly though, Shuri doesn’t really think that she has the energy in her to be that angry.
“If it didn’t go so well, I might’ve. But as of right now, he’s in the process of taking some of his bags to my apartment.”
Shuri snorts and glances toward Nat with tired eyes, “But that doesn’t get you off the hook. Nat - you gave my location out, you disclosed private information and you violated my trust by sending him over.”
Nat doesn’t argue, she doesn’t dispute the claims. She agrees with Shuri instead, nodding along solemnly as she prepares herself to face whatever punishment Shuri wants to dish out. It would be completely warranted and to be frank, despite the fact that it went well, she would deserve it. She can’t say anything that would excuse her disclosing Shuri’s location during such a private, intimate, and vulnerable time. Especially without warning.
Shuri slides down, taking a spot beside Nat on the bench. Up close, she looks older than Nat expected. Over the past few years, Nat had noticed the gray hairs that peak out at her hairline from the stress of the job or the creases forming at her eyes, but seeing her now, she looks even more exposed, softer, tired. She looks like a completely different person than the one that saved her.
“That hurts, you know,” Shuri starts, her voice soft and Nat can see the way that Shuri’s eyes begin to water. “But I’ve thought of you as my closest friend these past years, but you’ve been speaking to Bucky for a good while now. I don’t know if you talked to him while he was still in containment and if you did, what you discussed. So I just need to know one thing, Nat.”
She turns to look at her, meeting her gaze evenly with wide, wet eyes. Shuri absently dabs at her eyes with the back of her hand, her throat swelling as she tries to swallow down the onslaught of emotions.
“Was our friendship part of a scheme to get Bucky and I together? Were you a friend only because you wanted me to trust you - to trust him?”
The declaration is off-putting, taking Nat off guard enough that she sits there in silence a bit longer than she should have. Out of all the responses she had expected from Shuri - from curses to punches to the silent treatment - having Shuri break down in front of her, accusing her of being that manipulative isn’t one of the things that she had prepared for.
Nat is manipulative, she’s woman enough to admit it. She knows how to work people, how to achieve her goals. She knows what people see when they look at her and she uses it to her advantage. It started as a survival method when she was trapped with a man with anger issues that could lash out if she pushed too hard, but adapted into a habit that she’s since molded into one of her biggest assets as an agent.
But manipulating friends? Yes, she actually does that too, but only sometimes and usually accidentally on reflex. Always with the little things though. Never for something so big, never so intentionally for one of the one few people that she trusts and holds close to her heart. She never does it to hurt the people she cares about and while she cares about Bucky and Shuri, while she does want to see them have a chance together, she would never falsify a friendship with the woman who saved her from that backwater town.
“No,” Nat finally speaks up, her voice wavering with honesty as she wishes that she carried blunts to work. “It was never fake with you Shuri. A few other people, maybe, but you saved me from that town. You saved me and Wanda. We wouldn’t be here without you, we wouldn’t be safe if it weren’t you. Hell, who knows if we would even still be alive?”
“-I was your friend, first and his cousin, second.” Nat continues, “And as your friend I hated Bucky for a while too. Used to even hate him for leaving me with Bruce, for never sitting down and actually asking if I was happy. But he is my family and out of all our family, I always saw the most good in him and when he proved that he had the potential to be as good as I thought, to be a better man, I eventually saw the chance for him and you to give it a shot.”
“I wouldn’t have even thought about sending him your way if I didn’t know that you still thought about him,” Nat presses, “I know that you went to the cells after you heard about some of them leaving for rehab. I know that you went there looking for him. I saw that look on your face when you went in and the look on your face when you came out. As much as I think that you wanted him to still be there, to validate your hatred for him, you were relieved when you saw he wasn’t.”
Shuri can’t deny that, as much as she really wants to. She sighs and leans, resting her head on Nat’s shoulder. Nat leans into the contact, resting her own head against Shuri’s in response. Nat’s hand slithers around Shuri until it reaches her shoulder, rubbing comforting circles on her skin.
“I know the confusion you’re growing through.” Nat quietly admits, “Maybe it’s not exactly the same, but it was definitely similar. Sometimes I think about the what ifs. What if I had followed him to college and ignored everyone trying to stop me? What if I just went out to college by myself without him? Or what if we left and never returned to that fucking town? What if I visited him in the cells and he begged for mercy and forgiveness? What if he got out and we started a life together?”
“I go through a lot of what ifs,” Nat continues, “That all got answered when Bruce didn’t pass his psych exam and was labeled ineligible for rehab… But Bucky did pass and it’s time for you to at least get your answer on your what if.”
“I want to,” Shuri confesses, “I want to at least try, see what may happen. I know that I can hold my own if something goes wrong. I know that if he ever does anything shady then I’ll get the pleasure of slamming his jail cell myself. I want to see where this goes, see if I can trust him, and if he’s really changed. But I know that not everyone will like my decision.”
Everyone is vague, but they both know the most worrying prospect that would fit right into that sentence. The one person with the most hatred on alphas, who has worked to become one of the biggest rescue-relief agents for injured and abused omegas and betas. Wanda. Their liberated mutual friend whom they both love, but know her well enough that due to her own trauma and abuse, she would never fully understand the concept of anyone forgiving ant of the men from that town - even if it is Bucky.
“I’ll contain her,” Nat reassures, “I’ll make sure that she doesn’t find anything out by Bucky. In the meantime, you better do something about that mark on your neck if you don’t want an earful from her.”
Shuri’s lips turn into an amused smile, though the idea of Wanda chewing her out for letting an alpha claim her. I can’t imagine what her reaction may be if I showed up to work one day to announce that I’m pregnant. Shuri laughs a bit at the thought, but it dies off as a thread of terror shoots through her.
____________________________________
It’s been just over two months. A month of moving in, of learning each other in a mundane, normal way that they were robbed of before. A full month of tension while they learned how to compromise, what words are better left unsaid, what fights are better to walk away from, and sometimes, you don’t have to win - you just have to hold the other person close, apologize, and remember to not to do it again.
They’re doing well, Shuri likes to think. Well enough. They both have their moments, but they’re trying. As long as they’re trying - as long as he is putting in as much effort as she is, she will stay. She thinks that’s what love is sometimes - after the excitement dies down, after you settle in, love is a decision you make every time you wake up. It’s not all clouds and warm hearts. A part of love is work. Compromise. Doing something for their benefit instead of your own. Not expecting things in return, except for their own love and warm hands.
But they’re still in that awkward in-between stage of moving in together. The stage where it doesn’t feel like it’s her apartment anymore, but it doesn’t quite feel like its theirs either. Her stuff is still plastered everywhere - from the fancy furniture that holds her favorite blanket to security system to make an FBI agent nervous. She still has her favorite stuffed animals on a small shelf in the bedroom.
But she’s still working on getting used to finding men’s clothes left on the floor by the bed that had been discarded in the middle of a hot night. She used to dust on a regular basis, but she can see streaks on the windowsill from where the blinds have rubbed against the small window ledge. There are times where the grocery list has foods on it that she doesn’t recognize, but she is willing to at least try, but she’s still learning his favorite foods and how to incorporate them into her meal plans while he’s still learning that she prefers the left side of the bed and needs room to stretch out her legs.
It’s that adjustment, for the both of them, of learning how to live with someone else. She stayed with him in the town, for a while, but that was such a different circumstance that it doesn’t count. They stayed together in the cabin during her heat too - but that was passionate, love making full of a fire that could have burned them.
The fire is out now. They have to get used to the mundane. The everyday. The part that’s left out of every romance movie and is skipped over in every romantic book. The part that is the most real thing that every single person has to understand and go through if they’re in a relationship.
Just like every single relationship, when sex is involved and children are possible, there tends to be at least pregnancy scare. It depends on who you are, whether you’re the person who cries from happiness from two positive marks or the one who feels their heart rip from their chest as they sit in the bathroom in silence, hovered over the counter as they wait for the results. The one who screams or the one that throws up. The one that has to tell everyone, or the one that doesn’t want to tell anyone.
Shuri isn’t sure which one she is yet. The idea of being pregnant had always been a somewhat happy idea, but the idea of it and going through it are very different things. She doesn’t know how she feels about the idea of having children right now - she’s still employed, she’s in a somewhat stable but rocky relationship, and there’s a million other things that she didn’t expect to be or go through whenever she would have to pee on a stick.
She can’t even bring herself to move, sitting on the edge of the tub, pants pulled up after taking the test. She counts the seconds, her chest heaving as she can feel her stomach turn. She feels like her heart is being torn apart. Her foot taps against the tile floor impatiently, her hands clasps together under her chin as she rests her elbows on her knees. It takes everything that she has to finally glance at the test results.
Positive.
Odd. She thought that she would feel happier. Then, without warning, she promptly throws up into the tin.
_______________________________________
Bucky is thrilled when she tells him. He practically swoops her into his arms, grinning ear to ear, and then gently sets her down. When the words start flowing from his mouth, they don’t stop and she can’t bring herself to interrupt him. He doesn’t experience the same nerves that wreck through her veins or the stress that makes her head throb. He immediately starts talking about the possibility of them moving out, buying a house more suited for a family, going to see his folks to tell them the good news, the colors of a nursery.
He doesn’t say anything about the possibility of her not surviving the birth or the medical bills that this all would bring. She’s done the reading and he doesn’t ask her about how she’ll feel about possibly wearing adult diapers after giving birth. What will she do when she passes a blood clot the size of a baseball after passing a baby. The fact that she knows she will not look very pretty in any birthing videos or after-birth pictures. That during pregnancy her joints will swell, her feet will be huge. She’ll look like any moving truck that he wants to rent while not even asking her if she wants to move in the first place.
He is already talking about sending out cards to announce the pregnancy. He admits that he doesn’t know much about baby showers, but that his mom will and that she will absolutely be thrilled about planning it. He asks her if she’d be okay with his mom organizing the party and all she can do is dumbly nod as she sits down at the table, her eyes becoming more and more vacant as he drifts on and not everyone will be alright with them having a child before they’re properly married.
“- ‘course we could always have a wedding before ya start to show,” Bucky proposes, “And I’ve got all that family wealth to support us. Enough to get a house and get us started. I’ll take care of you and the baby, pay for anything we may need. Maybe spend a bit on that wedding, but I don’t think we’ll be needing any big ol’ honeymoon or grand ol’ party. Not sure about what your work will think about you quitting your job with such a short notice though.”
Her head is spinning. She can already feel her ears ringing, but when he mentions weddings and quitting her job, she finds her voice. It comes out in a venomous fire that spews at him, spitting at him for giving her knot while knowing that she was in heat.
“Slow down, darling.” Bucky’s brows furrow as his stance becomes stiff, “I think you’re forgetting that someone begged me for my knot. Someone wanted this just as much as I did.”
“-I didn’t want this,” Shuri stresses, her words hissing through her teeth, “I’m not ready for a babe and I’m sure not ready for all that nonsense you’re spewing about us moving, having a wedding, buying a house! Quitting my job!”
Her venom makes him almost take a step back, but he plants his feet firmly on the ground and stands up tall and stiff. Shuri’s eyes are frantic, emotional, and are burning with a type of fire that he hasn’t seen from her in a while.
Bucky frowns deeply, “Pa always said that pregnancy makes women emotional, but is this really necessary, darling? We both knew this was going to happen eventually, sugar. You’re claimed, remember?”
Oh she remembers - her neck still itches from where he bit into her. She doesn’t regret that mark, not entirely, but she is regretting doing it so soon. Letting her heat drive her, tossing out logic through the nearest window and throwing herself onto him like a needy bitch.
“We may not be married yet, hell, we may not have really talked about weddings yet and I’ll give you a point for throwing that on you. But kids are bound to happen with you going to heat and me going through a rut. Kids are natural. Just like you quitting your job. It’s bound to happen at some point with us settling in together. Having a kid just seems like the perfect reason to finally do it though, don’t you think?”
Shuri’s anger eats away at her skin, her veins warming from her chest and igniting her clenched fists as she resists the urge to act. She used to be so good at hiding it - at acting calm under pressure, at holding in her emotions to spit out witty remarks and coy smiles. But she’s older. Her nerves are worn and stretched out - but her last one has finally snapped and it has acted like a spring, pole vaulting her forward at a momentum that she is struggling to slow down.
“No, I do not bloody think so. You made a promise you better uphold, you will not tell me what I will and won’t do. I will not quit work and I most certainly will not marry you just because I’m bloody pregnant!”
She wants to spew more curses at him but she bites her tongue and turns, heading out the apartment as she ignores his calls for her to come back. When she comes back, she decides to let him really know just how bad a silent treatment can be.
________________________________
(Trigger Warning - Miscarriage)
She still comes back home after work, makes him dinner and they eat it together in the thinly held together illusion of a family. He asks her how work was, if anything interesting happened, while poking at his plate with a frown. She tells him good and no. For every question he throws at her, she answers him curtly, if at all.
He tells her that the house needs some more cleaning one night and she dials a service for it with a petty aggression. When she burns his food, he doesn’t make a comment on it and eats it. On the days that she feels too nauseous to eat, he notices and brings her whatever takeout he knows that she likes. When she complains about the smell of pickles, she came out to find all the pickle jars in the trash.
They gradually start to sleep in the same room again. Bucky moves from his place on the couch - the place where she threw his pillow and her least favorite blanket, he had taken the message without complaint. It took a while before she allowed him to have his hand wrap around her waist while they slept.
When he whispers apologies into her ear with a roaming hand, she defies him. When he apologizes over breakfast, she accepts it and for a while, the tension that had build up in their little home had thinned enough to walk through, to speak through, and when it fades away, she can kiss him goodbye when he leaves for work and smile as she packs lunch for her own workday.
She tells him that she plans on quitting work eventually and he agrees that she should do it when she’s ready. But they started to talk about weddings, gradually, casually. What colors the nursery should be. Possible names. His parents start to send over baby clothes before she’s far along enough to know the gender. Nat even gave her the biggest hug that she’s ever had.
But she hasn’t begun to show yet. Not as much as she thought she would be, but she supposes everyone is different. What is her baby bump could pass off as some extra weight. It hides under flowy shirts, sweats and skirts. She’s not even 20 weeks along and the doctor tells her that her size is normal. A few more weeks and she would be able to feel the baby kick.
But then she spots. Lightly. A few drops that don’t worry her at first - she’s pregnant, a lot of weird things happen during pregnancy. But then the cramps come. Cramps that start to seize her muscles, holding onto her so tight that she feels like she is going to be ripped apart from the inside out.
She rushes to the restroom and she screams.
_______________________________________
The doctor’s office is quiet. Deafening. Despite the pristine white walls, Shuri feels dirty. Cold. Gross. She’s reminded of cold nights in abandoned buildings. When Fury sent her on missions that were dark and in caves that she had trouble navigating. Missions that sent her home covered in dust, ash, and blood.
It’s that feeling you have in the field. When you know that something bad has happened and you’re waiting for the aftermath. It’s the tension of waiting for the enemy to finally pop out and strike.
But when the enemy finally hits her, it’s a sharp knife that goes right through her heart. It leaves her speechless. Empty. Hurt. Surreal. Like she’s dreaming, that this is a twisted nightmare. A simulation. Alone.
She barely registers when the doctor is gone, when she’s left alone with Bucky whose hand is so tight on her shoulder that his knuckles are white. She feels like her heart has stopped. She isn’t sure if she even remembers how to breathe. She doesn’t even know that she’s crying until he finally reaches down and wipes them away. Once she realizes it, she can’t stop the flood gates that wash through her.
“I - I wasn’t -,” Shuri starts, unsure of how to explain the emotions cruising through her, the heartbreak of losing a baby that she knows she wasn’t ready for, but she was trying to get used to. “ - I didn’t want this to happen.”
Bucky knows - she was vocal on not being ready for a baby. He doesn’t think that she wanted any of this to happen, but he knows, deeply, that she wouldn’t stoop this low. That she would never endanger herself or their baby this way.
No one is ready for a baby, he had realized that when he had to start reading all the parenting books that Nat shoved his way. When he had started to worry about the little things that he missed like baby locks, but then finding something else he missed every time that he thought he had prepared for everything. Then he had started to wonder just how he was supposed to have ‘the talk’ with his son - and he was convinced it would be a boy and he realized that you can’t prepare for everything.
Just like they never prepared for this.
_______________________________________
Shuri quits work the day after their baby died. She tells Fury that she can’t come in that day or any day. He doesn’t argue and a part of her knows that he already knows everything about what happened. Fury has always had ears everywhere, always knew everything. She receives therapy pamphlets anonymously in the mail and she tells him thank you, but the brochures have started their own stack by the waffle maker.
Bucky tells her that it’s a good thing that she quit - that he is proud of her for wanting to put herself first, for taking some time off to be a good housewife. But the truth is, her quitting is selfish. She couldn’t go in and face everyone, she couldn’t even accept the wounds to heal enough for her to go work after a break. She knows that she couldn’t. She needs some time - time to process, time to grieve, and time to accept things.
She feels awful, her heart feels empty and hollow. She feels old and soft and spends too long in what would have been a nursery and can’t bring herself to clean up the paint cans that they had already opened. Her stomach never returns to the right shape, not in the way that pleases her and when his hand touches her stomach at night, she opts to spend the night on the couch herself. Sometimes she wakes up with her favorite blanket tucked in or she will wake up in the bed alone to find Bucky curled up on the sofa.
She never voices it to Bucky, but she thinks this is her fault. She can tell how heavy the weight on his shoulders are and can’t risk starting another fight when she barely even has the energy to do the everyday things that need to be done. But a part of her feels like maybe if she was happy if she saw the positive sign then it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe instead of fighting with her boyfriend, instead of spewing venom and cursing herself for getting pregnant, she should have rejoiced with him instead.
Bucky, for his part, lives up to his promises of taking care of her. As he works and pays off their rent, bills, and other necessities, he also is careful with her. Less stubborn. He holds her gently at night and whispers, in a half asleep daze, that they will get through this and it will be okay.
Through grieving heartaches, they have to break the news to everyone that they told. They realize this when one of his parents’ gifts arrive and Shuri spends a good twenty minutes weeping over the children's booties and bottles. But telling his parents is the hardest thing that Bucky ever has to do. Shuri can’t even begin to imagine how the conversation goes. When she explains that she didn’t even have a family to tell in the first place, she offers to be the one to break the news to Nat.
Telling Nat is one of the hardest things that Shuri has ever done. She stared down the barrels of shotguns, fought against enemies who wanted to gut her like a fish, and survived more than she probably should have. But telling the woman who can’t have children, the woman who was her best friend, who had been happier about the pregnancy than even she was, and had already dubbed herself an aunt that the child that didn’t even make it to this world yet is gone... Looking that woman in the eyes and telling her that she won’t be aunt - not now at least, maybe not for a while. It was one of the few times that Shuri saw Nat cry and Shuri came home that day with a tear-stained shirt and streaks rolling down her cheeks.
It’s a slow progress, but each night that Bucky comes home, he finds one more thing changed. The nursery slowly starts to shift into an office as the opened paint cans disappear. Bucky takes it upon himself to paint the walls back to their original color and silently, Shuri comes in and helps. He doesn’t ask her where everything went, he can’t bring himself too. He finds everything from the unopened cradle box to the clothes and bottles all shoved deep into the closet.
Then one night, they finally find their voice and the more that they talk, the more that their hearts mend.
“We never picked out a name,” Shuri muses quietly, stirring absently at a cup of coffee as she joins him on the couch, “We never found out the gender, but what would you have named them?”
Bucky isn’t sure if there’s a right or wrong answer so he goes for the honest one, carefully telling her that he always felt in his gut that it was going to be a boy. He planned on talking to her about naming him.
“Buchanan,” Shuri muses, repeating the name and mulling it over with a look in her eyes that he can’t quite read. “Buchanan.”
They do not talk about it again. They don’t have to. Putting a name to their child, to the one that they have been grieving over, a name that was a whisper when they cried, the one that Shuri had dug out from clots of blood to hold until Bucky found her. It puts a name to what they have been through, validating it in a way that they can’t explain. It makes it all real, but in a way that they can grasp.
It fills in a part of the void in their hearts that they were missing. Even though they know that the rest can never be filled in, even if they have another child. Buchanan will always be the slight tear in their lungs from when they wore out their voices through tears and Buchanan will always be that one spot in their hearts.
#marvel#alpha beta omega dynamics#alpha beta omega#omega#alpha#dynamics#shuri#bucky#miscarriage#tw: miscarriage#myworks#backwash
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If Only...
This is a new chapter in my Ginger Twins series, and it takes place early in ME2. You can read the entire series here. A huge thank you to @normandystarlight for being an amazing beta as well as an amazing person.
If only….
Those two simple words became his mantra. The quiet repetition hid the undercurrent of pain and desperation steadily built up over days, weeks, months. It had been over two years since…
If only he’d followed orders.
If only he’d abandoned ship.
If only Shepard hadn’t come after him.
If only Shepard hadn’t…
He still couldn’t finish that sentence in his head, let alone say those words aloud, but that didn’t make it any less real. The nightmare over Alchera waited patiently in the recesses of his mind, every minute detail seared into his brain ready to burst forth the moment his eyes closed. There was still no escape from that angry red beam as it sliced through the Normandy, no escape from the cold, dark space pressing in on them through the twisted hull, no escape from the helpless dread as he watched the worst moments play out yet again. Every night Shepard grabbed his wrist and tossed him to safety, the resulting pain radiating from the wound and through his crumpled body. Every night the final explosion sent his escape pod careening wildly off course, the spin so violent even the gyroscopic stabilizers were unable to compensate until he was little more than a weeping pile of shattered bones. Just like when they found him the first time. Alone. There was no way she…
Jeff pushed that thought away with a violent shake of his head. It didn’t matter anymore, and amazingly he had Cerberus to thank. Cerberus, the black-ops group they spent a year fighting. They approached him in that bar, promising the impossible, and his drunk ass followed them blindly, desperately, just on the off chance that they’d be able to follow through. The fact that they let him fly again was a distant second to the mere possibility...
Raiden Shepard, his best friend, de-facto sister, and partner in crime for decades was back and they did it. Somehow, some way, Cerberus brought her back. They found her and made her whole. And now his world was restored again. Almost.
New leather squeaked as Joker shifted in his chair. The soft material molded to his body, embracing him in warmth, but there was no real comfort. Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with the annoying orb pulsing at his side, recording and commenting on his every move. This was deeper, more personal. Though the gaping hole in his heart was filled, the edges were cold and painful. His best friend was back, but things never completely return to how they once were. Their most recent short, formal conversation was proof of that. Her clipped responses were fresh in his mind though the echo of her retreating footsteps were long silent. In fact, she’d barely spoken to him at all, and there was no physical contact after their initial embrace when he made his dramatic entrance. The silence said everything he needed to know, though.
Two years may have passed, but the familiar signs were as obvious as the beard on his face. The slumped shoulders, the nails chewed down to scabby stumps, the bloodshot eyes and dark circles standing in sharp contrast the frighteningly pale skin...
Something was wrong with Shepard, and he was damned sure he was going to find out what. There wasn’t much he could do if it required more than listening, piloting, or making a smart-ass remark, but at least he was an expert in those three areas. That had to count for something. And now was as good a time as any.
The annoying, blue, wanna-be overlord pulsed as Jeff stood and limped away from the helm, but for once it didn’t remark on his actions. That was a first, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to draw any more attention by remarking on it. There were only so many places Shepard could hide, even in a ship this size, and he certainly didn’t need help from an AI to track her down. Especially since it would probably turn around and report everything back to that icy brunette in the catsuit, if not the big boss with the creepy eyes.
“Commander Shepard is in the hallway outside her quarters. She hasn’t moved in 17 minutes,” the automated voice reported quietly as he passed. “I will maintain course while you are gone.”
Jeff paused to glance at the orb from the corner of his eye. There was no way EDI should’ve known where he was going. Then again, AI thought processes were completely foreign to him. That’s why it’s constant presence creeped him the hell out. Maybe it had a few redeeming qualities after all. Maybe. The verdict was still out and chances were slim, though. He acknowledged the info with a subtle nod and moved slowly towards his destination.
Though lightyears faster than the original Normandy, the elevator ascended in slow motion. Every beat of his heart marked an hour of utter torture in his mind until the doors finally slid open. In that moment his stomach dropped to his knees.
Shepard slumped against the cold metal wall. Her heavy-lidded, red-rimmed eyes stared into nothingness as her body shook and shuddered. Only her uneven, labored breaths shattered the silence.
“Holy shit,” Joker gasped as he stumbled to her side, his shaky hands searching for a pulse and any signs of trauma. “Don’t do this to me Shepard. Don’t make me tell your parents I lost you again.”
“You’d have to tell them I came back first,” she mumbled. Her tired, pale eyes locked with his as she gently pushed his hand away. “That’s a job I’m more than happy to delegate and you’re the perfect person to do it. My mom likes you better anyway.” Shepard smiled feebly, but it did little to hide the fact that her voice quaked in time with the tremors still wracking her body.
“Yeah? Well I’m pretty sure your dad would throw me from an airlock if given half a chance, so that’s a firm pass.” Jeff leaned heavily against the wall and slid down, his eyes never leaving his friend. There was a wild look in her eye that reminded him of a cornered, wounded animal. The reassuring smile she tried to muster looked forced and didn’t fool him for a second. Her smile withered under his even stare until she dropped it completely. Being this close, it was impossible to deny what happened over Alchera. A bright orange glow flashed in time with the rapid beat of her heart, the cybernetics illuminating the complex web of scars that was her skin. And none of that was as gut-wrenching as the exhausted, pained look in her eyes. She looked like she’d been through hell, and things were only getting started. It was too much to handle. Jeff looked away, fixing his eyes on the bare wall across from them. He’d be as patient as she needed him to be.
Old habits took over almost instantly. Shepard rested her head on Jeff’s shoulder with a resigned sigh, but she was still worked up. Hair along the right side of his body stood on end from her biotics pulling at him as they sat in silence, her body shaking against his. Eventually his patience paid off. Her head gradually became heavier and the tremors softened until they eventually stilled. Her breath slowed to a steady, shallow rhythm punctuated by snores so soft they almost sounded like a kitten’s purr.
“Hey, this is no place for a nap,” Jeff murmured as he dug in with his elbow. He hated to wake her, but his ass was already falling asleep and there was no way he could carry her. She had to get her own scrawny butt to bed. “If my chair’s any indication, you have something much nicer waiting for you on the other side of this door.”
Shepard sat up so fast Jeff slid sideways and landed on the floor. It would’ve been funny if he hadn’t seen the look of utter panic on her face as she shook her head violently. “I can’t do it,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Sure you can,” he replied automatically. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you can help me up off this floor while you’re at it.”
Her doubt was obvious - a sheen of fresh sweat covered her paled features and her nostrils flared as she stared at him with overly dilated eyes, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she nodded while her teeth bit at her bottom lip until crimson droplets appeared. She wiped the moisture away then reached forward, her outstretched hand shaking as she pulled him to his feet, but she didn’t speak. Instead, she turned on one heel and opened the door to her cabin, then gestured for him to enter with a quick jerk of the head.
A low whistle of amazement echoed through the quarters as Jeff stepped in. “Man, Cerberus wasn’t fooling around. Your quarters are larger than my last two apartments. Combined. And is that a… you have a fish tank wall? These people clearly overestimate your abilities to take care of pets. Need I remind you of snuggles the lizard? Didn’t you accidentally space him? Or the fish you swore would live off the plant you floated on top of their water. They were piranhas, right? That worked out so well...” He turned around, shit-eating grin firmly in place, but there was no reaction. In fact, Shepard remained planted in the stark space outside her cabin door with her back to the expansive quarters. He frowned as he turned back around and took the few steps down into the proper living space. There was no reason for her to react to her cabin like this. It was beautiful, comfortable, spacious… Space. Realization hit him like a ton of bricks as he stared out into the dark void.
“Those slimy mother fuckers,” he hissed through clenched teeth. He hobbled back up the stairs and towards Shepard. No wonder she freaked out and didn’t want to enter. Leave it to Cerberus to place a giant window to the universe over the bed of someone who was spaced. “Can you close it?” he asked gently once he was at her side again. Shepard shook her head almost imperceptibly. “And you aren’t sleeping, are you?” That wasn’t a question. The answer was clear as day in those dark circles and bloodshot eyes.
“What kind of sadistic asshole…” Words faltered as the reality of the situation became clear. Anger swelled from deep within, the years of desperate sadness from her absence only adding fuel to the fire. “Right. Well that icy bitch and her creepy-eyed boss are going to hear about this,” he seethed.
“No, don’t,” she begged quietly, her hand on his arm holding him still. “If you say something then they'll know they got to me. They’ll know they found another weakness and use it to exploit me even more.”
“But you can’t keep going like this, Rai. Your body can’t handle this - you need to sleep.”
Shepard nodded. He was right and they both knew it. “Can you just sit with me? Out here in the hall, just a few minutes ago… that’s the first time I’ve felt comfortable since... “ She sighed heavily, her sad eyes saying everything she couldn’t.
“Now was that so hard? All you had to do was ask,” he teased gently. “I’ll do it…” he began, then paused dramatically for effect, going so far as to hold up one hand to keep her silent, “but only if our old rules from childhood still apply. You provide all the snacks, I get to pick the shows, and first one asleep gets the warm water treatment.”
“How can I turn that down?” Shepard replied through a genuine smile.Her eyes focused on Joker as she took his outstretched hand and let him guide her down the steps. He was her anchor, just as he’d been when they were kids. Together they could get through anything.
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