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just-jordie-things · 3 years

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The Crown - Steve Harrington

word count: 4462 warnings: dedicated to @high-functioning-fangirl02 <3

You’d give your life to protect these kids.

These kids you’ve known since you started babysitting them in the sixth grade. Back when Mrs Henderson hired you to watch Dustin. Which essentially meant that you’d watch all of them. But that was alright, over the past seven years of being their designated babysitter, you’d grown to love them all.

Mike Wheeler, the snarky little love-struck shit that you spent grieving with since losing Eleven. Lucas Sinclair, the sweet boy with the occasional attitude whom you helped construct his Ghostbusters costume. Will Byers, the full time sweetheart that made you cookies for Valentine’s Day after hearing you complain about being dateless. And of course Dustin, cute little button nosed Dusty with a trash mouthing tendency, whom looked up to you like a role model.

Hell, you were their role model. Driving them to and from school, covering for them on late nights so they could finish their D&D tournaments. Fiercely protecting them a year ago when Hawkins was Demogorgon infested. Standing up for them when you’d see some upperclassmen picking on them.

Those who dared glance the wrong way towards The Party in your presence, were rumored to run home crying with a bleeding nose and terrified shriek. You never put down the rumors… because maybe it had happened once or twice…

Over time The Party was no longer just a band of middle schoolers. It had opened up to their babysitter, being you, a senior girl who had not many other friends. Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers, which the boys always claimed was strictly because of family relations. Not because Dustin was still harbouring a crush for Mike’s older sister. The town Sheriff, Jim Hopper, who’d proved himself not to be an asshole, and turned out an alright guy. Joyce Byers, whom you loved like a mother and whom treated you like her own daughter. You’d frequently been titled ‘the daughter she wished to have had’ which always raised a snarky response from her sons. Maxine (just Max. Never Maxine) Hargrove, a high spirited and not your typical girl that you grew fond of easily. Especially since she was nothing like her big brother.

And then there was Steve Harrington. Who… really just was at the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up getting roped into the mess that Hawkins Lab had created. King Steve, as you’d known him before you’d officially met last year by fluke accident, was always the popular boy that had a pretty girl hanging off his arm. You weren’t sure why that changed so quickly, why he didn’t put himself out there as much as he used to, didn’t party hard anymore, wasn’t bragging about the new girl he was with that week like he was known for. Maybe that day, when he walked into the Wheeler’s house right as you Nancy and Jonathan were awaiting the Demogorgon’s arrival, maybe he changed then.

Or maybe it was after he’d been sucked into… whatever this all was… and he changed to keep the secret. Or maybe it was after Nancy had broken up with him, around the same time he started growing closer to Dustin.

But right now as you watched him directing the kids, you were more aware that he wasn’t King Steve anymore, that you had been before. Sure, you’d realized somewhere along the way he was different. But it wasn’t until now that you noticed it completely as it was.

“No listen you little shits, no one, is going anywhere” Steve ordered, holding a wash rag in his hand and pointing it between each of the boys, and girl, that stood in front of him.

“Friggin’ pointless just staying here” Dustin grumbled, walking out of the room whilst still muttering. Mike groaned loudly, dramatically, and left to the living room with Max and Lucas. You knew that he was still plotting you get out there tonight. Consequences and dangers be damned.

You looked to Steve with a sigh, a lazy smile on your lips as you walked past him to go after Dustin. He watched you go, letting out a breath as well as he put his hands on his hips and standing alone in the hall with his thoughts.

He’d give his life to protect these kids.

“Dusty?” You called gently as you walked into the kitchen, seeing Dustin sitting on the floor against the dishwasher. Your brows furrowed as you sat across from him by the cabinets. “You alright kiddo?”

“Would I be sitting in here brooding if I was?” He quipped, though you knew he meant well.

“Sweetheart you’re too adorable to be a brooder” You laughed softly, pulling your knees up slightly. “A pouter maybe, but not a brooder”

“Thanks y/n” He responded dryly. You rolled your eyes in response to his sarcasm.

“Come on kid, open up a little. It’s me” Your words were soft, which did prompt Dustin to consider explaining to you his thoughts. “Please? If we make it out of this alive I’ll take you to the arcade. I’ve got a big jar full of quarters I’ve saved up-”

“Okay okay I’ll take the bribe” Dustin caved with a laugh that made your mood lighten. “Look it’s gonna sound lame and cheesy but… everyone else is helping. Jonathan and Nance and Mrs Byers and Hopper and Elle, but what am I doing?”

“You’re staying safe” Your answer came out instantly, but it didn’t seem to be the one the boy was looking for.

“No I’m not, I’m sitting on the sidelines, watching everyone else go be heroes and getting hurt. I’m not doing a damn thing!”

“Hey” You hummed softly, and scooted over closer to put your head on his shoulder. “You’re a hero Dustin. Don’t tell yourself any differently. All of you are, Mike too, and Lucas, and Max, and-”

“Steve?” Dustin offered, and you nodded, looking at him confusedly by the strange tone of voice he used.

“Of course, why’re you looking at me like that?”

“No reason” Dustin shrugged nonchalantly, brushing off the uncomfortable air between you both.

“Alright well, you should believe me” You continued. “Even if you don’t think so, you’re all my heroes, got it Henderson?” The boy smiled and nodded, prompting you to push the cap of his hat down playfully before he could get up and leave the room.

“Mike’s probably still planning his attack” He told you, but you shrugged and waved a hand.

“Let him plot and brood” You said, and Dustin’s mouth fell open.

“How come Mike can brood but I can’t?” You rolled your eyes, still waving your hand for him to get out of here.

“Just go plot with him, I know you’re itching to” You said, and he grinned wide at you, glad you were letting him go plan their escape and attack.

“Thanks y/n!” He called, already racing out of the room. “You’re the best!” You laughed, shaking your head as you stood back up and dusted off the pants of your overalls. Steve came in a few moments later, watching you almost suspiciously.

“What?” You questioned, and he shrugged, shaking his head.

“Nothing. Just wondering why you’re permitting them to conspire against us” He said.

“They’re not conspiring, they’re just discussing. No harm in that”

“Um, every harm in that. As in all of us, being harmed, because of that” He said, but you didn’t really seem to care what he thought about it.

“They’re fine, we’re all fine, don’t freak out so much mom” You said, walking out towards the kids and seeing them all circled up and discussing their big plan.

“I’m not a mom” Steve argued, and you chuckled, turning to see him, his dish rag on his shoulder, hands on hips. It only made you laugh more.

“Mhm, alright. Well then what would you call yourself?” You replied sarcastically, nodding towards his own stance, and making Steve second guess himself.

“This- you-! Alright whatever just stay away from the windows and go be safe somewhere” He muttered, walking into the living room where the kids were. You rolled your eyes again, but couldn’t help the smile on your lips.

Perhaps, you thought, King Steve was the king of something else now.

You watched as he was waving his rag at the kids again, yelling at them for plotting behind his back, and reminding them that no one was going anywhere. But even as Dustin pouted, Steve was rubbing his hand over the thirteen year old’s head. Almost soothingly, like he felt bad for ending their little meeting.

“What a mom” You mumbled, and headed back into the kitchen for something to eat.

You used to resent Steve, back when he was the king of school and didn’t care about anything more than he cared about his popularity and his hair. Back when he didn’t give a shit about pretty much anything. And looking at him now and seeing him watch over these kids, you could physically feel your heart swelling. If that isn’t character development, you weren’t sure what was.

You weren’t sure why it made you feel so bubbly either.

“Listen runts, we’re staying here, we’re staying safe, and we’re not dying!” Steve said, for what felt like the fifth time. But Mike kept arguing back at him.

“Everyone else is out there!”

“Everyone else knows how to fight all that shit!” Steve retorted. “We are staying, here” He repeated slowly, waving his rag between each word. “You got that?”

“You’re just saying that cause y/n’s here. If she wasn’t here, we’d all be getting in your car and going!” Lucas spoke up. Your brows furrowed at that.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You asked, ignoring your search for food and now strutting into the room where everyone else was. “Am I dragging you down?” You asked, almost sarcastic, but wondering what he’d actually meant by his announcement. Were you dragging them down?

“No, Steve would just protect your ass over our asses” Max shrugged, and the others nodded.

“What the hell? Everyone here is protecting their own asses, I’m not getting killed for a bunch of kids!” Steve said, making flustered and jerky movements. You brushed off their newly sprung argument over where Steve’s bat is swinging and who it’s swinging for.

Apparently, The Party was certain that he’d die for you, rather die for them. But you didn’t care much about what they thought. They’d always thought that you and Steve were meant to be some power couple, but you supposed it was just cause you were the same age and the kids only ever saw you two together. There was no real evidence (as far as they showed) towards the ‘chemistry’ you and Steve supposedly had.

You wandered to the window, curiously looking out it with your arms wrapped around yourself.

“Will you just shut up?” Mike’s yelling made you jump a little, and you turned to see your friends all still arguing with each other. You smiled slightly, meeting Steve’s eyes as he gave you a bored look. You just laughed a little bit back at him. Steve’s expression softened into a small smile. Your face flushed with heat, and you nervously turned away from him to look back out the window again.

A light blinded you almost instantly, making you squint your eyes and put a hand over them to try and clear your vision.

“What the hell?” You muttered, leaning closer to the glass to see what was going on. Headlights, there was a car here. Someone was here. “Steve?” You called, not turning away from the window. He came over right away, looking outside to see a familiar Camaro parked in the driveway.

“Shit” He grumbled, walking towards the front door.

“What- where are you going? Who is it?” You asked, following quickly after him, but Steve quickly turned to make you stay back.

“Just stay in here-”

“Sinclair!” A voice hollered from outside, and you jumped, eyes widening as you recognized it. “I know you’re in there!”

“Billy?” You whispered to Steve, who nodded. You stepped backwards, eyes never leaving Steve’s. “What’s he doing here?” Your voice was quiet.

Billy Hargrove, was the most vile, horrible person you’d ever met. And his wicked ways of bending people to his will, shook you intensely to your core. It was no secret to the others that Billy not only terrified you, but would seductively torture you every day. Sure, you’d been picked on before, but this was different. Every day he’d come to you, hoping to get something out of you, just to mess with you.

“Come on babe, a little kiss, just a little one, we can discuss the rest later”

“You don’t want to get a ride home with me and have some fun?”

“When’re you finally gonna give this up and just put out?”

You shuddered slightly, practically feeling his hot breath against your skin just thinking about the things he’s said to you. Stopping you in the hallways, finding you at your locker, approaching you while you waited at Steve’s car for a ride home.

“I know you’re in there you little pig! Come out here or I’ll have to go in!” His voice was dangerous, threatening. And you felt a legitimate fear for your life, and the kids’.

“It’s fine, you’re fine, I promise” Steve said quietly, out of earshot of the others. “All of you stay here, stay away from the windows” He ordered, giving you one last look before you turned and went to The Party. They needed you right now, all huddled around Lucas and Max to make sure if Billy were to look inside, he wouldn’t see them.

“Come on guys” You said softly, ushering them as far away from the window as you could. Steve, on the other hand, opened the door and stepped outside.

Instead of hiding in a room, completely out of sight of the maniac, you all ducked under the windowsill to see what was happening.

“Am I dreaming or is that really you Harrington?” You felt your entire body quivering upon hearing Billy’s voice. Dustin, who was crouched next to you, turned and gave you a worried look, but your eyes were dead set on the outside.

“Yeah it’s me, don’t cream your pants” Steve responded, walking out towards him as he pulled off his leather jacket.

“What’re you doing here amigo?” Billy asked, the cigarette hanging off his lips moving as he spoke.

“I could ask you the same thing” Steve responded, void of emotion. “Amigo”

“Lookin’ for my step sister. Little birdie told me she was here”

“Huh, that’s weird I don’t know her” Steve lied easily, and convincingly. You prayed to God that Billy believed him.

“Small? Redhead?” Billy replied disbelievingly. “Bit of a bitch?”

“Ashole” Max muttered to herself inside.

“Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry buddy” Steve replied, still not sounding like he cared even an inkling. Billy nodded, taking out his cigarette.

“You know… I don’t how this, this whole situation Harrington is um.., it’s giving me the heebie jeebies” Billy said, looking at Steve a little more threateningly.

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“My thirteen year old sister goes missing all day, and then I find her with you” Billy pointed accusatory hands towards Steve, giving him a disgusted look. “In a strangers house” He continued. “And you lie to me about it” Steve chuckled bitterly, shaking his head and looking away for a moment.

“Yeah, maybe you were dropped too much as a child or what” Steve said snarkily. But Billy just grinned his twisted grin and licked his tongue over the front of his teeth. “I don’t know what you don’t understand about what I just said”

You felt a chill go down your spine as Steve’s protectiveness took over his tone. Dustin beside you mumbling a quiet, “Holy shit”

“She’s not here” Steve said carefully. Billy nodded, looking pointedly towards the window where you and The Party were all huddled and looking out of.

“Then who’s that?” He asked, pointing his cigarette towards his sister.

“Down!” You hissed, and the five of you dropped to the floor so fast you all groaned from the impact of the floor.

“Shit!” Dustin cursed. “Did he see us?”

“Oh shit” Steve grumbled. “Okay listen-” Billy pushed him to the ground before he could explain anything. The boy kicked him, before storming up into the house.

“Well well well” Billy smirked, seeing you and The Party standing there together, you in front of all of them. “y/n l/n, what a lovely little surprise” You grimaced, but he didn’t seem to care. “And Lucas Sinclair, not so much a surprise at all” You moved over more in front of Lucas, who’s hands grabbed onto your arm out of fear. “I thought I told you to stay away from him Max”

“Billy, go away” Max retorted, but her voice wavered.

“You disobeyed me” Billy leaned over his step sister tauntingly. “And you know what happens when you disobey me” He added in a hushed, volatile voice.

“Billy-”

“I break things” He uttered, before pushing you aside, crashing your body into the wall. Before slamming Lucas up against the cupboards.

“Billy stop!” Max and the others began to yell, Dustin rushing over to help you up, but you were already standing up on your own.

“Get off of me!” Lucas cried.

“Since Maxine won’t listen to me, maybe you will” Billy muttered. “You stay away from her. Stay-! Away from her” He yelled awkwardly. “Do you hear me?”

“I said get off me!” Lucas screamed again, followed by a knee between Billy’s legs. You gasped, feeling a moment of pride as Billy stumbled back and released him.

“You are so dead Sinclair!” Billy hollered. “You’re dead-”

“No” Steve grabbed Billy by the shoulder, spinning him around roughly. “You are” And with that he swung his fist and planted it hard enough against Billy’s jaw to make him topple over.

“Steve!” You yelped out of surprise. He looked at you for a moment, nodding in reassurance as he shook out his hand. It’d been a while since he’d hit anybody. Billy stood back up, laughing menacingly. “You’re a fucking psycho!” You screeched before you could stop yourself.

“Looks like you got some fire in you after all huh!?” He yelled at Steve. “I’ve been waiting to meet this King Steve everybody’s been telling me so much about” He stepped closer to Steve, glaring at him.

“Get out” Steve muttered, pushing Billy’s chest lightly to move him away from him. Billy stepped back and stood there for a moment. And after a few seconds passed you were certain that he was going to stay back.

Until he swung swiftly at Steve, but missed as Steve ducked just in time. You gasped, clapping your hands over your mouth in terror. Steve stood back up and swung his fist again, hitting Billy and making him stumble again.

“Yes! Get him Steve!” Dustin cheered, and the others began to as well. You couldn’t find yourself to say anything, just wince every time a punch was made. Steve hit him two more times, and Billy ran into the kitchen sink. Leaning back and wincing in pain.

“Kill him! Kill him!” Mike was yelling. But Billy grabbed a plate of the counter, smashing it over Steve’s head, and making him fall to the ground.

“Steve!” You screamed now, taking long strides to get over to him, only to be pushed away by Billy. Who hit Steve as soon as he stood up again. He grabbed Steve by the shoulders, staring him down.

“No one. Tells me what to do” He muttered angrily, and threw his head forward hard into Steve’s knocking him down again.

“Fucking hell” You mumbled, tears beginning to prick your eyes in fear that Billy was actually going to kill Steve. The mullet wearing psycho leapt onto Steve, pinning him down and swinging punch after punch against his face.

“Stop it!” Mike yelled at the top of his lungs, but it did nothing to end Billy’s attack.

“Steve!” Dustin hollered.

You stood frozen, every scene in front of you soundless, and moving slowly. You could only feel your heart in your chest, sending you into an anxiety attack, you were sure. But it barely mattered to you in that moment. You turned away, and your eyes landed on something.

The syringe used on Will earlier.

Sleep… put him to sleep… your thoughts were broken as you reached for it, looking at it in your hands for a few seconds, before stepping forward and slamming the needle into Billy’s neck without a hesitation. Mike and Dustin gasped, standing back. Everyone’s eyes stuck on the syringe hanging out of BIlly’s neck now. A disgust filling them up at the sight.

“Shit y/n” Dustin mumbled, his hand covering his mouth to stop vomit from flowing.

Billy stood up, wobbling slightly as he turned to look at you. He pulled the needle out of his neck, vision beginning to fail. “The hell is this?” He asked, trying to step towards you threateningly, but he was wobbling so much you didn’t even move. No longer afraid of him.

“You’re fucking done Hargrove” You muttered, and before thinking twice to second guess yourself, punching him across the jaw, and sending him back on his ass. Billy groaned, staying down where he’d fallen against the couch.

“Shit what did you do” He mumbled, growing dizzy from the mix of drug and pain.

A few moments later he completely passed out.

“Fuck” You hissed in pain, putting your bruising knuckles against your mouth. You didn’t think punching someone would hurt so damn much.

“y/n holy shit”

“Are you okay?”

“That was badass!”

The Party was fussing and cheering for you, but you didn’t respond, kneeling down by Steve next and counting up all the cuts and bruises he was beginning to sport. He was unconscious, that was for sure. But he’d be in for a world of hurt when he woke up.

“Come on, help me get him back to Jon’s bed” You called to the kids.

It was difficult moving him, but after ten minutes you’d managed to get him into Jonathan’s room to lie on the bed there. You were sat next to him, a cold wet rag in your hand, and the open first aid kit on the ground. It took you awhile to clean off all the blood and apply bandages where you thought they were necessary. There was a frozen bag of peas you’d put over one of his eyes to stop the swelling, but so far it still looked pretty bad.

The Party had sat with you for what felt like a long time before you told them to go back to the living room and wait for the others to return home. Dustin put up a small fight about it, but eventually gave in and listened to your order. And now it was just you kneeling on the ground by Steve, watching over him carefully. Making sure he was breathing okay, and that nothing would begin to bleed again.

“Well King Steve, you got quite the ass kicking” You mumbled, just to yourself. Your fingers placed a few stray hairs on his forehead back into place. “But your crown is still there” You smiled to yourself, fingertips gently brushing his hair.

“y/n?” Your eyes looked back at him as he mumbled, almost incoherently. “What happened?” The poor boy’s eyes weren’t even open.

“You put up a really good fight” You told him softly. He winced, the pain probably beginning to settle in.

“Did I win?” He groaned, eyes clenching shut momentarily. You bit down on your lip and shook your head, even though he couldn’t see you.

“You put up a really good fight” You repeated yourself, playing with his hair again. Steve sighed, knowing the answer.

“Is he gone?” He asked, eyes finally beginning to flutter open.

“Yeah… yeah he won’t be back any time soon, I’m sure” You answered. Steve looked up at you, smiling down gently at him. He smiled back instantly, and moved his arm to push your hair back, but even at it’s slight movement you winced in pain. “You’re in pretty bad shape” You told him quietly. “But you’ll heal up alright”

“Are you okay?” He asked, and you nodded.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine” You shrugged slightly. “We’re all really worried about you. Dustin thought you were dead” Steve chuckled painfully, shaking his head a little bit.

“Are they alright? Max and Lucas?”

“Yeah, we’re all good Steve” You hummed with a slight nod. You leaned forward, a little closer to him to check on the eye swelled under the bag of peas. You frowned, seeing the black and blue bruise that only seemed to be spreading.

“I’m alright, don’t fuss so much” Steve said, putting his hand over the bag and pushing it back against his face. Your eyes met his for a moment.

“You’re pretty bruised up Harrington” You sighed, taking the wet rag in your hand and dabbing it gently on his bruised cheek. “There’s not an inch of your face spared”

“It’ll be fine, I’ll heal up”

“Years from now, maybe” You replied sarcastically, and he smiled at you while you carefully pressed the cold cloth to his face.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” He murmured, and you looked at him for the briefest of seconds before going back to work. Now is not the time to talk about feelings, you thought to yourself.

“Yeah? Go play hero some more and you’ll never see anything again” You told him, and he shrugged slightly, not having a response to that.

“I just wanted to remind you. In case you haven’t been told in a while” He said. You bit on the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling too much. You looked down at him, your eyes softening slightly.

You leaned over closer to him, pausing for a moment before pressing your lips lightly against his. It was a chaste kiss, only lasting a few seconds as you didn’t want to hurt him anymore than he already was. When you pulled back, you smiled nervously at him, and he only smiled back at you.

“You’re lucky you didn’t die Harrington” You said, and got right back to work on pressing the rag to his wounds.

“That I am” He replied cheekily.

You giggled softly, smiling down at him and wondering just when he’d changed so much.

You knew he’d give his life for these kids too, just like you would.

love me some babysitter steve

xoxo ~ jordie

#stranger things #stranger things x reader #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things imagine #stranger things scenario #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington scenario #steve harrington imagine

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one-more-offbeat-anthem · 3 years

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I. “Sorry,” the guy says, his voice deep and sun-warmed. Dean steps back, extending his hands as if to say no problem, and then he recognizes the guy--it’s Castiel, the dude from the campus coffeeshop with the weird name that made a bunch of people look up, Dean included.

“You’re Castiel,” Dean says. “I’m Dean.”

“I’ve never been introduced to myself before,” Castiel replies, but he’s grinning, and he sticks out his hand for Dean to shake. Dean helps Castiel pick up the papers he dropped when Dean ran into him, and they walk to their next class together, because it turns out Religion 101 and Intro to Philosophy are in the same building. Castiel tosses Dean a peace sign as he turns towards his classroom, and Dean waves back.

II. A week later, Dean's outside his history professor’s office to get feedback on a paper when Castiel walks up, his head buried in a book. He looks up when Dean coughs, and then a smile grows on his face.

“How are you, Dean?” Castiel asks, as if there hasn’t been a gap in their conversation at all.

“I’ve been better. Dr. Turner is about to ream me over this essay. I may have...left it until the last minute.” Dean paused. “How are you?”

“Trying to finish reading this book before my next class. I may have...also left it until the last minute.” Castiel’s smile grows broader.

Just then, Dr. Turner opens his office door, and Dean smiles at Castiel ruefully.

“Hey, Dean,” Castiel says, just as Dean follows Dr. Turner into the office and is about to close the door, “I never got a last name.”

“Winchester. You?”

“Novak.”

III. “Who the hell would drive this monstrosity?” Benny, Dean’s coworker at the auto shop he works at after class, asks. They’re both staring at a massive gold Lincoln Continental from the seventies that has a popped tire and is, according to their boss, making “funny noises.”

“That would be me,” a familiar voice says, and Dean turns to see the shock of dark hair and vibrant blue gaze that indicates Castiel Novak.

“Oh, hey, Cas--Castiel,” Dean says.

“Cas is fine. But yes, I drive this...’monstrosity.’” Cas uses finger quotes and everything.

“You and Dean should get along, then,” Benny quips, “He acts like his car was God’s gift to mankind.”

“Hey!” Dean protests. “Baby demands respect.”

Cas quirks an eyebrow. “You call your car Baby?”

“So what?” Dean frowns at Cas, although it’s difficult, what with the twinkle he can see in the other guy’s eye.

“So can you fix my car?”

“We can,” Benny says. “For sure.”

After Cas leaves, Benny elbows Dean and winks at him. Dean decides to pretend not to know Benny for the rest of their shift.

IV. They see each other all the time after that, almost like the universe is pushing them together. When Cas sees Dean’s car, his dad’s old 1967 Chevy Impala, he tells Dean it’s a “ridiculous” car, and Dean only doesn’t write him off completely because he’s starting to like Cas.

They run into each other in the student union or the library and do homework. If they’re both at the coffeeshop where Dean first heard Cas’ name, they sit together. Cas shows Dean pictures of his cats and Dean tells Cas stories about what his little brother, Sam, who’s still in high school, has been up to. He learns that Cas’ whole family lives over five hundred miles away, that Cas chose this university to get away from them. Cas learns in turn that Dean is only thirty minutes from his hometown on purpose, in case his mom or brother need him.

Cas is a member of their university’s beekeeping club and he’s double majoring in philosophy and English. Dean doesn’t know what he wants to major in yet, maybe social work, so he’s getting all his pre-reqs out of the way. Cas says that it’s okay to not know what he wants to do, and Dean believes him.

This goes on for a couple of months, and at some point hardly a day goes by where they don’t see each other, and it’s kind of the best thing that’s ever happened to Dean.

V. Dean doesn’t often go to parties, but his friend Charlie who he met in DnD club found out about some frat having one this weekend and apparently they had to go, which is how he’s found himself standing awkwardly in the hallway of a random fraternity, nursing a potentially hazardous red Solo cup of jungle juice.

“Well hey there, stranger.”

Dean turns to see Cas holding a beer. “Hey,” Dean replies, feeling his face warm. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t attracted to Cas, but Cas is his friend, and besides, Cas is cool. Interesting. He writes poetry and wears vintage button-down shirts and paints his own Converse. Dean feels like he himself is what would happen if you made the midwest a person: flannel, leather, ripped jeans, work boots, none of it to be aesthetic. This is just what he looks like.

He runs a hand through his hair nervously, takes a sip of his drink.

“Come here often?” Cas asks after a moment. The hallway is dark, the music audible even though they aren’t in the main room.

“Ha.” Dean swirls his jungle juice. “Charlie--I’ve told you about her, I think--she dragged me here. Pretty sure she’s making out with her girlfriend on a couch as we speak.”

“She threw you to the wolves?”

“A little.” Dean smiles ruefully. “I’m usually reading mystery novels on the weekends and she told me I was boring.” “That’s funny.” Cas smiles with just his eyes. “I would say you’re anything but boring.”

Dean shrugs. He’s glad for the dim lighting because he just knows his face is getting redder the longer this conversation goes on. He fidgets with the cuff of his flannel with the hand not holding his drink and stares off into space.

“Hey Dean?” Cas says suddenly.

“Hm?”

“Do you like me?” Cas tilts his head slightly, like he always does.

“What?” Dean sets his cup on the windowsill next to him. “Do I--what?”

“Just wondering. It’s alright if you don’t.”

Dean furrows his brow. “Do you...like me?” God, this feels like he’s in eighth grade again, crushing on the guy that would always let him borrow a pen in science class.

Cas considers for a moment. “Definitely.”

Dean’s eyes widen. “Oh.”

Cas somehow tilts his head further. “Well?”

“Uh, yes. I, uh--” Dean fumbles, but he can’t take his eyes off Cas, who knocks back the rest of his beer and sets the bottle on the floor before stepping into Dean’s personal space.

“Can I kiss you?” Cas is smiling.

“Please.”

At first, it’s gentle--just a tentative press of lips, Dean can feel the upward curve of Cas’ lips. Then it turns into something a little heavier as Dean’s brain gets back online and he remembers that he has hands, and that’s Cas’ tongue, tentatively exploring, and then not-so-tentatively exploring, and Dean’s pretty sure he might explode.

Eventually they part--Cas has backed Dean against the nearest wall, and Dean has his hands on Cas’ hips, pulling them together, and then Cas leans his forehead against Dean’s.

“Hey Dean?”

“Mmm-hmm?” “Do you think I could get your phone number?”

#ahh please no one hate that I kinda made dean shy here but shy dorky college au dean is my 1 weakness #destiel #mutual tags pls tell me if I'm annoying anhhhh bye #cillabee #usersheya #userstarry #casthyelle #offbeatwrites

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marauderundercover · 3 years

Text

Taking Chances Ch. 18: Girl’s Night (Heroes/Villains)

AO3

First

Teleporting back into her room in Gotham, Marinette flops onto her bed. Passing Kaalki sugar cubes and Tikki a cookie, she suppresses the urge to scream into her pillow. She was sick and tired of Hawkmoth. Sick and tired of being the one who has to fix everything. She just wanted one week with no Hawkmoth, no akuma attacks. But no. Of course not. Of course he just had to send out a stupid akuma every single day. Because why not. How’re people supposed to know he’s still being the main villain of Paris if he takes a freaking day off? Once she finds out who he is, she’s going to punch him in his stupid face. A knock on her door pulls her from her plotting ways to get back at Hawkmoth.

“Come in.” She sighs, sitting up and forcing a tired smile on her face.

“Marinette, your father wanted-” Selina starts, pausing as she looks her over. “Come on kitten, we’re having a girls day.” She says. Marinette raises an eyebrow. Sure she’d met Selina before, but they hadn’t really hung out yet.

“What?” She asks.

“You look exhausted and angry, sweetheart. Spending too much time with these boys isn’t going to help. So you’re gonna grab anything you need for an overnight trip and we’re going to go watch movies and eat junk food til we’re sick.” Selina instructs. Marinette grins, jumping up and shoving stuff into her backpack. She puts Kaalki’s glasses into her purse and lets her and Tikki fly in before she turns to Selina.

“Ready!” She says, practically bouncing up and down in excitement. It’d been ages since she’d had a girls day with anyone. She was so ready to just take a break and be silly.

“Well come on then. Harley and Ivy are going to adore you.” Selina says, slinging her arm around Marinette’s shoulders. Somehow, they manage to not see anyone on the way to Selina’s car. Which is weird, but it is a weekday so everyone probably had something to do besides sit around the manor. Pulling away from the manor, Selina flips on the radio, the new Jagged Stone song blasting full volume.

“Nice taste in music.” Marinette says with a wide grin. Selina smirks.

“I have to like the man at least a little, his designer is one of my kids after all.” She says. Marinette smiles, a warm feeling flooding through her. Selina didn’t have to accept her with open arms, she didn’t have to treat her like she was her own daughter. But she did, and Marinette was so thankful for that. Thankful that even so far away from her Maman, she still had a Mom there for her. The two nod along to the music, scream singing the chorus together as the car pulls to a stop in front of an apartment building. Marinette glances at the building, suddenly nervous. Would Harley and Ivy like her? Or would they just tolerate her for Selina.

“Don’t make yourself nervous, sweetheart. Harley and Ivy are two of the sweetest people I know. They’re gonna love you.” Selina says reassuringly, reaching over and squeezing Marinette’s shoulder. Marinette lets out a breath before nodding.

“Okay, let’s go.” She says, grabbing her bag and jumping out of the car. She follows closely behind Selina, not wanting to give anyone the chance to get between them. You could never be too careful in Gotham. They walk into the building and go straight into the elevator, Selina pushing the button and leaning up against the wall while they wait. Marinette bounces on the balls of her feet, excitement and nerves bundling together. The second the elevator stops, Marinette’s out, following Selina down the hall. She pulls out a key, winking at Marinette before turning and unlocking the door.

“Honey, I’m home!” She calls, and Marinette’s jaw drops. The apartment was quite literally covered in plants and vines. They were beautiful. She grins as one of the vines near her leans towards her, a small flower blooming at the end of it.

“And who did you bring with you?” A tall woman with red hair asks, walking into the room. The designer inside of Marinette instantly has a million questions about the woman’s outfit. It seemed to be made entirely of plants, but she could also tell that they were still alive. She had no idea how the woman had managed that, but she guessed that it was something that couldn’t be replicated for someone else.

“I’m Marinette. Nice to meet you!” She says with a wide smile. The woman, who Marinette assumes is Ivy, grins back.

“Nice to meet you, Flower. I see you’ve already made a friend.” She says, gesturing to the vine which was now wrapped around Marinette’s wrist. Marinette giggles.

“Well, I was hoping they liked me and that’s what this was. I have a garden back in Paris, and I’d hate to find out plants actually hate me.” She says. Ivy shakes her head.

“No worries there. They adore you, it’s a little odd if I’m honest.” Ivy says, dodging Selina who tries to flick her.

“Did I hear Selina?” Another voice asks, a short blonde woman walking into the room. Her hair was short and choppy, the small pigtails at the top of her head dyed pink. Marinette grinned at the woman’s outfit- a Gotham Amusement Pier t-shirt, Batman pajama pants, and hot pink fuzzy socks. She wondered if her dad knows that Harley Quinn has Batman pj pants….probably not.

“Yes, with a guest.” Selina says, plopping onto the couch and gesturing over to Marinette, who was still standing by her new vine friend.

“Hi! I’m Marinette, it’s nice to meet you.” She says, smiling and waving with her free hand. Ivy whispers something and the vine squeezes a bit before letting go, letting her move away from the door.

“Well aren’t ya just the cutest!” Harley squeals, running forward and giving her a big hug. “Didjya finally join your boytoy’s adopting habits?” Harley adds, still clutching onto Marinette. Selina snorts.

“No, he beat me to her. But she’s definitely mine, too.” She says, making Marinette’s face turn red. Harley coos at her, ruffling her hair before stepping back.

“So what brings ya here? Get annoyed with Bats already?” Harley asks. Marinette blinks in shock. Harley knows? She thinks about it for a minute, and realizes it just makes sense. They’d been fighting long enough and then he started his relationship with Selina, who was one of Harley’s best friends. It just made sense that Harley (who was extremely smart) would put two and two together.

“No, just thought that Mari could use a girl’s day. She’s been stuck with just the boys for over a week.” Selina explains. Harley gasps.

“The horror!” She says, making Marinette giggle. “Come on pumpkin, I’ve got the comfiest jammies ever. Oooo, and we can paint our nails! Ivy, find the movies, Selina, you’re on snacks. This is gonna be so much fun!” Harley orders, grabbing Marinette’s hand and tugging her along to one of the bedrooms, Selina’s laugh echoing throughout the apartment.

“I did bring pjs, ma’am.” Marinette says, once Harley stops tugging her and starts searching through a drawer.

“Bet that can’t be comfier than the ones I’ve got for ya! And call me Harley kiddo, or Auntie Harley if ya wanna.” She says, looking up from the drawer to smile widely. She looks back and cheers in victory, pulling out a pair of bright red pajama pants. Marinette snorts when she notices the logo all over the pants.

“Really?” She asks, giggling. Harley smirks.

“We’ll have to take a picture of us and send it to your old man. Really get ‘im riled up.” She says. Marinette nods excitedly, taking the Robin pants from Harley. This was gonna be awesome.

---

Bruce sighs, looking at the news report from Paris from earlier. The damned butterflies were hard to track. He was used to figuring out problems quickly, and this one was taking too long for comfort. It wouldn’t bother him as much if it was anywhere else, but it was directly impacting his daughter. She was being hurt daily, and she’d even died and now she was plagued with nightmares. All because of a man with some magic jewelry. God, he hated magic. A knock on the study door stirs him from his thoughts.

“Come in.” He says.

“Hey B, have you seen Mari? I was gonna ask her if she wanted to go get ice cream with me and Little D.” Dick asks, leaning against the door frame, Damian standing next to him with his arms crossed.

“Not since breakfast. There was another akuma attack earlier, but it wasn’t a bad one. She wasn’t injured.” He says, remembering the completely strange battle from earlier. It was some man with pigeons, and apparently this was the 34th time the man had been akumatized over pigeons.

“Did you not check her room after the battle?” Damian asks, eyebrow quirked. Bruce sighs.

“It was the pigeon one again. I assumed that she’d want to take a nap, if anything. She still hasn’t been sleeping well. Tim said she’s awake every morning when he comes up for coffee, whether it’s three or five, she’s up.” Bruce explains, frowning at the thought of his youngest daughter’s sleep habits. He certainly didn’t need another sleep deprived coffee addict like Tim. It wasn’t healthy.

“Well I already checked her room. She wasn’t there.” Dick says, and Bruce frowns, pulling out his phone to send a text to Tim and call Jason. One of them had to have seen her. She never left the house without telling one of the family, unless it was for a battle.

“What.” Jason says gruffly, Bruce is just grateful he answered. Up until a couple of months ago, Jason would have rather thrown his phone in the river than answer one of Bruce’s calls.

“Have you seen Marinette?” He asks, getting straight to the point.

“No? Why? What’s wrong?” Jason asks, and Bruce hears shuffling as Jason rushes around wherever it is he is.

“Nothing. I’ll call you back.” He says, hanging up. He glances down at his texts and notices Tim hasn’t seen her either. He frowns, but doesn’t panic yet. Pulling out his computer, he pulls up the tracker that was on each of his children’s phones. He scans the map, frowning when he sees that her phone is still in the manor. In her room. He stands and swiftly moves past his sons to get to his daughter’s room. He knocks, waiting for an answer. None.

“Marinette?” He calls, knocking again. “I’m opening the door.” He warns, pushing it open. He frowns at the empty room, nothing appearing out of place.

“Do you think she had to pop back to Paris for something?” Dick asks, coming up behind him. Bruce shakes his head.

“No, she would have told us. Suit up, she has to be somewhere in-” He stops as his phone chimes. He looks at it and feels all of the tension leave his shoulders.

Took our youngest daughter for a girl’s day, back tomorrow XO. Of course Selina had her.

“She’s with the Sirens. She’ll be back tomorrow.” Bruce says, suppressing a smile at the annoyed look on his youngest’s face. She was safe, and that’s what matters. Even if he was certain he’d have to listen to Damian complain for the entirety of patrol.

---

“Make all the boy moose go WAAAAAAAAA!” Harley says with the movie, laughing loudly. Marinette chuckles, passing Tikki a cookie in her purse before sticking another spoonful of ice cream in her mouth.

“I still like the first one more.” Selina says, taking a sip of her wine. Harley sticks her tongue out at her before turning her attention back to the movie.

“Do you think Mia is secretly a superhero?” Marinette asks, frowning in thought.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Ivy asks, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Even Harley pauses the movie to turn and stare at her.

“Stan Lee.” Marinette says with a shrug.

“Is that s’posed to mean something to me, kid? Cause I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” Harley says, obviously confused. Marinette huffs.

“Stan Lee makes a cameo in this movie. And Stan Lee is the creator of Marvel, right? He’s made a cameo in like, every single Marvel movie. So is Mia secretly a superhero? Is that why he’s in the movie?” Marinette rambles, almost flinging ice cream at Selina as she gestures crazily.

“Sweetie, how much sleep have you had in the past three days?” Selina asks after a few moments of silence.

“Not important. Is Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi, Princess of Genovia, also a superhero? Does she secretly work for SHIELD? Or is she more like Iron Man, like a freelance superhero? Was she a hero in San Francisco too? Or did she take over a hero's mantle when she moved to Genovia? Cause she was really clumsy in the first movie and also super awkward, but now she’s less clumsy and she seems to be more put together, but are heroes really put together? I don’t think so. I think sometimes heroes pretend that they’re put together to make everyone else feel better when in all reality they’re seconds away from a breakdown themselves. Is Stan Lee coming to recruit her for SHIELD? Is that why he’s in Genovia? Does SHIELD have any jurisdiction there? Is there a Genovian branch of SHIELD?” Marinette rambles, suddenly stuck on the topic. Seriously, why is Stan Lee in Princess Diaries 2 if Mia isn’t a hero? Why would he-

“Kitten, take a breath.” Selina says, her hands on Marinette’s shoulders helping her to ground herself. Marinette takes in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. She blinks a few times, instantly feeling bad.

“I’m so sorry.” She says, frowning.

“What for?” Harley asks, looking confused.

“For ruining girl’s night.” She says quietly. Selina pulls her into a tight hug and Marinette sinks into it.

“Sweetheart, you didn’t ruin anything. I don’t know everything that’s going on. But what I do know, is that you rambling out a conspiracy theory about the movie we’re watching is not ruining girl’s night. Trust me. One time, we invited your brother Dick, and he ate all of the cookies by himself.” Selina says, Marinette snorts. Of course he did. “Now that’s a way to ruin girl’s night.” She adds, squeezing her once more before leaning back.

“Let's watch something that we can just get lost in and not have to think at all.” Ivy suggests, looking through the stack of dvd’s. Marinette glances over, eyes instantly catching one of her favorite movies.

“Legally Blonde?” She suggests, Harley squeals.

“That’s it, you’re officially ours. Brucie can fight me.” She says, putting in the dvd. Marinette laughs, laying her head on Selina’s shoulder, grabbing a handful of popcorn. She could get used to nights like these.

Next Chapter

Bonus chapter: Harley Vs Bruce

Drawing of Harley and Mari’s pajamas

Tag list: @maribat-bdbwm @vixen-uchiha @stainedglassm @liquid-luck-00 @jayjayspixiepop @jjmjjktth @mizzy-pop @trippingovermyfeet @queenz-z @thepaceperson @iloontjeboontje @waiting247 @laurcad123 @toodaloo-kangaroo @ritacrow-blog @deathssilentapproach-blog @kittenmywaythrulife @nerd-nowandforever @tazanna-blythe @jaybird-and-co @jumpingjoy82

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notdonesimpin · 3 years

Text

Point Of View ~k.b.~

katsuki bakugou x gn!reader

warnings: fluff

synopsis: no one believes that katsuki is a good boyfriend until they see if for themselves AKA the three times people how sweet bakugou can be.

a/n: ah so i’ve neglected bnha quite a bit.. debated keeping this to myself but everyone needs a bit of soft and respectful bakugou. hope you enjoy :)

You weren’t oblivious to the worry and concern in people’s eyes when you told them that Bakugou was your boyfriend. The two most infamous things said in response were: “You’re joking, right?” and “Are you okay? Does he get violent with you?”

It was quite frustrating to reassure people that being with him was okay. You know he's a good guy. Why does everyone assume that he’d be a shitty boyfriend? Why doesn’t Bakugou want other people to see the more tame side of him that he’d developed the past two years you’d been together?

Everyone learned to just take your word for it, though they’d never really seen him be affectionate with you. That’s why it was so shocking once they actually saw the true nature of your relationship with him.

1: Your Parents

“Bakugo!” your little sister yelled, running up to hold onto his leg.

His eyes widened as he looked down at her, confused as to where she came from. “Hey, Rugrat. What are you doing running around by yourself?”

“Mom and Dad are over there!” she points to a store in the distance and continues talking, “Are you here with my sibling?”

She stepped back, grabbing onto his extended hand as they walked towards your parents.

“Not right now. They’re here somewhere with their friends.”

“I thought you were their friend,” she pouted, “Are you guys not friends anymore?”

Bakugou sighed, “I’m a different kind of friend, Rugrat.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tenshi! There you are!” your mom says, rushing over to the two of them.

“She saw me and ran over. Sorry about that,” Bakugou awkwardly scratched the back of his head, feeling uncomfortable with the apology passing through his lips.

“She must really like you, then. She never does this with anyone,” you mom notes, slightly impressed that he won your sister over within a few short months.

He softly smiles, looking down at her, “I think we just understand each other.”

“You still haven’t told me what’s so different about you being friends with Y/N!” she points at him.

He squats down to chat with her, “It’s the kind of friend that gets to hang out with a cool kid like you in their free time.”

“That’s the best!” she exclaims.

Bakugou’s phone buzzes, and he pulls it out to see a text from you that asked where he was. “I have to go, but I’ll see you at your birthday party.”

“Promise?” She sticks out her pinky.

“Promise.”

He clasps his pinky who hers quickly before getting up and saying a quick goodbye to your mother and rushing off.

Tenshi grabbed your mother’s hand as they watched him.

You came into view with a few bags on your arms and he immediately took them from you despite your apparent protest and gave you a quick kiss before walking in the opposite direction.

Your mother realized that she may have had the wrong idea about Bakugo this entire time.

2: Class 1-A

“How are you not sore from weight training yesterday?” you whine as you both walk towards the classroom.

“I train all the time. You just aren’t used to it,” he smirks, nudging you slightly with his arm.

“Whatever. You didn’t even go easy on me, a beginner.”

“I’ve never gone easy on you. Why would I start now?”

“Fair point,” you shrug as you walk through the classroom door and all eyes immediately fall on the two of you.

“There’s the cutest couple in school!” Mina exclaims.

You both look at her bewildered by her statement.

“I didn’t know Bakugou actually had a heart,” Iida muttered, looking at something on Kirishima’s desk.

“What did you do?” Bakugou whispers with a hint of agitation in his voice.

“I didn’t do anything. I have no clue what they’re talking about!”

“Kirishima saw you guys at the New Year’s Festival. He took a really cute picture of you guys!” Kaminari explained, walking over to show you both the picture on his phone.

You both looked at it to see your little sister, Tenshi, on his shoulders with a smile on her face as she pointed at one of the booths. Bakugo had one hand keeping her stable on his shoulder and the other was laced with yours. He had a large smile on his face as if he was laughing at something you said.

“What were you guys talking about?” Mina asks.

“None of your fucking business,” Bakugou grumbled, pushing past all of them to his seat with you in tow as he continued, “If you ask us another question, I will kill all of you.”

“Bakubro, they wouldn’t let you kill us even if you wanted to,” Kirishima laughed.

“You even gave them your jacket!” Sero exclaimed, “I remember when you tried to fight me for even trying to borrow a blanket when we were in your room!”

“He can’t let his precious girl get cold,” Kaminari sang.

Bakugou grumbled, crossing his arms as he sat down, knowing that anything he said would only fuel the fire.

3: His Parents

“Holy shit!” you exclaimed as your umbrella bent backwards, officially breaking after three long years of service.

The rain didn’t even have a chance to touch your body before Bakugo quietly handed his umbrella over to you, taking the broken one from you. “Don’t need you catching a cold.”

As soon as you took it from him, he took his jacket off and wrapped it around your backpack. He forced your broken one closed and held onto it to throw away later.

“Katsuki, you’re going to get soaked,” you tried to argue.

“I’ll be fine. My backpack is waterproof.”

“At least get under the umbrella. What if you catch a cold?”

“It isn’t big enough to even cover your backpack, dumbass. I’ll be fine. I haven’t gotten sick in years.”

“I’ll just put my hood on until we get to your house and then walk home from there with the umbrella.”

“Not happening, I’m taking you home. I can’t let you walk by yourself.”

Thirty minutes later, Bakugou walked through the door absolutely soaked from head to toe with two broken umbrellas in his hand and his jacket wrapped around his waist..

He let out a huge sigh as he dropped his backpack and took off his shoes.

“Katsuki, I need-” Mitsuki’s eyes widened as she looked at him.”Go get out of those clothes and take a shower! You’re going to catch a cold in those if you stay in them any longer!”

“You don’t have to yell, you old hag!” he snapped as he walked to the bathroom.

After he showered and put on some warmer clothes, he was met with the curious eyes of his mother and father as he took his towels and clothes to the washing machine.

“What?” he questioned, pausing on his way.

“You had two broken umbrellas and were absolutely soaked. What happened?”

“Y/N’s umbrella broke, so I gave them mine. It’s too small to do anything but cover their body, so I wrapped my jacket around their backpack so their stuff didn’t get wet. I was soaked by the time we got to their house, so there was no point in putting my jacket back on, but I promised them that I’d use the umbrella on the way back and it broke from the wind.”

Their jaws dropped.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he grumbled and justified himself, “I didn’t want them getting sick. They don't take good care of themself when they feel bad. Can I go to my room?”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll let you know when dinner’s ready,” Masaru said.

Katsuki walks off without another word.

The next morning, Mitsuki was yelling at Katsuki to get up from the other side of the house, but she wasn’t getting the usual response back.

She paused outside his door when he heard the low murmur of his voice as if he was on the phone and slowly cracked the door open.

“Do you want me to come over?” she heard you ask.

“No, I can’t take care of you and me. If you catch my cold, you won’t eat like you’re supposed to. I swear you’re like an annoying little child when you’re sick.”

“Always so mean,” you laugh, “I can take care of myself, Katsuki.”

“I know you can, but I want to take care of you, so shut up,” he coughed, “And don’t hang up on me until you are inside of the school safe!”

“I feel so bad. You got sick because of me.”

“Well, make it up to me by kicking ass in class today, okay?”

“Don’t I always?” you tease, causing him to softly laugh.

Mitsuki smiled to herself as she quietly closed the door, hoping that you’d be in her son’s life forever.

#katsuki bakugo #bakugou katsuki x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugo #katsuki #mha #bnha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bakugou katsuki x you #katsuki bakugo x you #mha masterfind

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hargrove-mayfields · 3 years

Text

Day one of the Horror on Cherry Lane Challenge! I’ll be participating this month as a writer! The prompt for today is Knife!

warnings for mentions of suicidal ideation and attempts, death, child abuse, and blood.

Billy met Steve in the psych ward.

Well, they met officially at Tina’s party, but that wasn’t the real Steve. That was the King Steve. Deeper than that though, even the Steve Harrington everyone else saw even after the breakup and the fall from grace still wasn’t the real thing.

That was fake smiles, overdone nonchalance to cover up the wound from his fallen status. Now he was stripped down to himself, all bloody bandages and tired eyes, the boy he was pretending to be finally broken down to reveal this.

Apparently, Ruthie Harrington found her son with his grandfather's switchblade- all the other objects in the house sharper than a spoon and with less sentimental value had already been tossed -bleeding all over her freshly polished linoleum floors. She dropped him off at the hospital a night ago and nobody’s been by to see him since.

Now, it’s by pure coincidence that Billy’s already in on the same day Steve’s admitted.

He’s been locked up the past three days compared to Steve’s one. These small town hicks are jumpier (ha) than he thought, and don’t think doing the walk and turn test on the edge of the quarry after downing a bottle and a half of fireball is as funny as he does. Whatever. Cid would’ve thought that was badass as hell.

So he was admitted, on suicide watch for a stupid joke that wasn’t really worth it, or even really a joke. Max came to visit once. She punched him in the chest as hard as she could and cursed him out for an hour. She’d never done that before. By the time she left they were both in tears, and maybe Billy realized a thing or too about his carelessness. Realized for the first time that someone cared.

But he’s still in here for another week and a half by law, so. He’s not going to mope about it. And while Steve Harrington showing up is about the last thing he’s expecting, he decides that’s at least something he can work with. Definitely brings a little life to the place.

He waits until Steve’s intense watch period is over to bug him, once they’re out of their cramped little rooms for a couple of hours to “socialize” (see, the more sound of mind keep an eye on the other patients while the nurses take their smoke breaks) Billy goes straight to Steve. Him and Harrington are far from friends, but that’s pretty much irrelevant when the only other choices for company are kids younger than them too scared to approach them and people too deep in their midlife crises to bother with teenage drama.

Throwing himself down in the blue plastic chair across from where Steve settled in, Billy kicks his feet up on the table,, “What’s up Harrington? Didn’t expect to see a familiar face in here.”

But Steve, poor Steve, takes one look at Billy with those haunted brown eyes, and his face just falls completely apart. There are tears on his way too pale cheeks before Billy even has a chance to breathe.

The smile drops off of Billy’s face, “Jesus Harrington, I know m’not looking my best surviving on hospital food and cigarettes without a hairbrush, but that’s a little unwarranted.”

“Shut up. Not everything’s about you, Hargrove.”

“Oh I disagree with that. But I get the point. I’ll let ya be.” Billy hums, scooting his chair back and getting up. He stops when Steve starts to speak, “Y-You outta be careful saying that kinda stuff in here.”

“What?”

“That the world revolves around you. They’ll come up with a diagnosis for that and keep you here forever. Drug you ‘til you forget your own name, let alone your status.” Steve tells him with humor, wiping the tears off his face.

Billy nods in understanding, sits back down with an interested smirk, “This ain’t your first time here, is it?”

“Is it yours?”

“Nah. I’ve done some shit on purpose, some on accident. Once it wasn’t even me. But s’never done anything to help so far.”

Steve puffs out a sigh, “Don’t I know it.. I’ve been in and outta this place since I was like, ten. Clearly nothing’s changed.”

“Why? What’s your dirty little secret, Harrington?”

“I cut myself, dumbass.” He deadpans, looking at Billy with a bluntness in his expression that reads more concerning, more like indifference to what he just said than matter-of-fact.

“No shit. But that ain’t the secret.” Billy probes further, can tell he’s getting under that mask Steve wears, “Why do you do it?”

“Legally, I can't tell you. And I don’t think I would anyways.”

“What about if I tell you all about me first? I got no reservations ‘cept the one that got me a bed here.”

“It’s not a hotel, Hargrove.”

“Eh, might as well be. Feels like the damn hotel California.”

“Is that why?”

“Huh? Oh no, I been pullin’ stunts like this long before we left Cali.”

“Like what?”

“Like downing two full bottles of my mother’s meds after she left. Not at the same time obviously, or I wouldn’t be here. Mostly ‘cause my dad didn’t even wanna take me to the hospital either time.” Billy doesn’t look at Steve while he elaborates. Not because he cares, he’s an open book, if a random old woman at the grocery store asked about his last attempt, he’d tell her.

But. He doesn’t like watching people’s faces. Seeing sympathy and concern there. It makes him feel all stupid and guilty. It’s usually not like that with other kids like him, but Steve’s different. He’s got a big heart. Even if there’s no room for himself.

And Billy hurt Steve before. He doesn’t want to see someone he caused pain caring so much about him. He already cracked when Max came to see him. This could be what splits him open, spills out all the things he’s covered up.

So he keeps going, “And like runnin’ out in front of traffic with my friends. They thought we were just playin’ chicken ‘til I stopped dead in front of a station wagon. Metal rims’d done me in for sure if one ‘a the older boys hadn’t pulled me outta the way. Damn near ripped my shirt in half how fast he grabbed me.”

“I’m guessing your parents are the reason why then?”

“Yessir.” Billy deflects, not good at getting deeper into it, “You wanna tell me yours then?”

“I started cutting because Tommy Hagan told me about it. He thought it was freaky, but when he ran his mouth about how they found the neighbor kid in his room, drained of all his blood from his wrists, I wanted to try it. I’ve tried liquor and drugs and all kinds ‘a shit I shouldn’t, but nothin’ stuck like cutting.” Steve pauses for a long time, his eyes going blank, staring right past Billy, “When my mom found out she.. she.. Forget it.”

“Hey, you seen my skeletons. Can’t I see yours?”

“No. I don’t wanna fucking talk about it anymore.” Steve answers, despite his assuredness, his tone wobbling with some unidentifiable emotion.

Talk about mood swings. Billy doesn’t get how nobody would’ve noticed something was up before Steve started carving into himself. Really, he knows someone would have seen it and just ignored it.

It only gets worse though, the reservedness turning to sadness and frustration. None of the words are coming out, but he can tell Steve’s thinking of the stories, reliving all that got him to the here and now. Billy can also tell there’s nothing he can do no to stop him from doomsdaying.

So when Steve is inevitably in the thralls of a panic attack, he tries to hug him tight, to try to get it to stop maybe, that always worked for him at least, but Steve swats him away. Judging from the way he winces, it’s not easy for him to do either, with those thick ass bandages constricting his wrists, but the tears and the pain on his face are buried behind his resolution.

He’s hiding something from Billy.

In hindsight, talking to a new patient about past attempts probably wasn’t his brightest idea anyways, so he switches the subject while Steve works on coming down from his panic attack. He brings up Max and her little nerds, trying to bridge the healthier connections between him and Steve that they’d both been ignoring since the fight. He mentions basketball too, another something they have in common other than trying to kill themselves.

It doesn’t really work, though Steve does stop shaking as bad, just curling up in his little chair and sniffling, pretending not to listen while Billy rambles on and on. But he doesn’t talk. It’s probably better for him not to anyway. Billy himself has been known to say some dumb shit when he’s in distress.

Ultimately, even once the conversation runs out, he stays with Steve until dark. He can tell from the way his gaze sticks to the floor that Steve recovered from his fit a while ago, but he’s embarrassed by having a breakdown in front of him, as if he isn’t in here for the same reason. It helps that he gets it though, and they sit in a comfortable, albeit very prolonged, silence.

Long after Steve gets xanned up and knocked out though, while Billy is still free to wander until the midnight curfew as a low risk patient, he decides to stick with him in his room. Billy’ll never admit it, but he gets nightmares, and he doesn’t want to face that just yet, so with a new friend as an excuse, he’s up half the night watching Steve sleep.

He remembers what happened earlier, how focused Steve was on keeping him away from him, despite his panic, and decides, with a glance at how deeply Steve is sleeping, his greasy hair all strewn about on stiff pillows, that he’s going to figure out what it was.

He snoops around in his bedside drawers, in the bathroom, in the locker in the corner. It’s there he notices the knitted jacket Steve was wearing before, hanging heavy to one side, like there’s something in its pocket. He touches it and feels the outline of something small, so he pulls it out.

He regrets checking though, because it’s a knife. Judging from the old looking engravings on its handle, and the coppery stains within the grooves, it’s specifically the very same one that got Steve hospitalized.

He shoves it in his own back pocket and keeps looking, with a quick glance at Steve, finding a note tucked where the knife had been. Written in perfect scrawl on bond paper that’s been folded a dozen times and stained with tears,

“Do it right next time, why don’t you? Your mother is too soft on you. I’m not paying for this again.

- J.Harrington.”

Billy doesn’t know what to do but throw the note in the trash. Not really in shock, but definitely more than a little fucked up from reading that, he sits on the end of Steve’s bed. His own dad, who'd more than once been the one putting him in the hospital, had never even said anything like that to him.

He didn’t get to talk to Steve much today, but they’ve got as long as Billy’s stuck in here together to fix that. Longer if he just pulls something in front of a nurse. And he wants to, really really wants to.

Because he knows he just met the real Steve, can recognize another broken boy when he sees one, and he knows too, that he never wants to meet a pretty boy like this again.

And if that’s his declaration to get clean, then so fucking be it.

But. He never promised not to hurt anyone. Ultimately he’d still need that outlet.

He keeps the knife. To make sure his pretty boy doesn’t get hurt again.

#CherryLaneChallenge #harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #ej writer #story by ej!#tw self harm #tw attempted suicide #tw blood #happy October!#I’m so excited!#I’m gonna try to do all of this but I’m real busy coming up!#im not sure what vibe I’m goin got in this challenge #but I think it’s mostly haunting?#not scary but like that oh moment y’know

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inkslingersworld · 3 years

Text

Zusammen: Part I

The setting sun illuminated the city of Paris with a warm orange glow, and although the rest of Adrien’s friends had gone home already, Kagami had made the proposition that the two of them should take a walk along the Seine before night fell. Adrien felt inclined to agree, seeing as he had canceled several of their previous dates for superhero reasons, and even though he’d since told Kagami of his identity as Chat Noir and she’d acted as though the date cancellations didn’t bother her, Adrien could see beneath the happy facial expression she put on to find the disappointment.

It was only fair to partially make it up to Kagami by taking a walk with her - besides, the weather was fantastic. There weren’t many people out. They’d stopped by a little cafe they enjoyed going to and purchased coffees for themselves. The atmosphere was near-perfect.

Kagami didn’t say anything until they approached the Eiffel Tower.

“Adrien?”

He turned his head towards hers. “Yeah?”

She opened her mouth, but then closed it again. “Never mind.”

“What is it?” Adrien asked.

“I don’t want to intrude upon your privacy,” said Kagami flatly.

“Kagami, anything you want to ask me, I’ll tell you the answer.”

Kagami stared into his eyes and sighed. “What happened to your mother?”

This was not what Adrien had expected. It was now his turn to sigh.

“I wish I could tell you,” he said, “but the truth is, I don’t know myself.”

“She just disappeared?” asked Kagami.

Adrien sighed again. “Not exactly.”

He stopped walking. Kagami stopped as well, gazing at him with a concerned expression. Adrien looked back gravely.

“What I’m about to tell you, I haven’t told anyone,” he said solemnly. “Not Nino, not Marinette, not any of my friends. I’m not ready for them to know yet, so you don’t repeat this to anyone, okay?”

Kagami nodded. Adrien sighed a third time.

“I was at a photoshoot with Nathalie. Father said he couldn’t make it, said he had some important business to attend to. After we’d wrapped up, we returned to see police cars outside my house. Someone had tried to assassinate my father.”

Kagami let out a small gasp.

“He was fine,” Adrien continued, starting to walk again, with Kagami joining him. “He’d knocked out the would-be assassinator and took his gun, tied him up so he couldn’t escape.”

“Who was it?” Kagami asked fearfully.

“A mentally disturbed fan of his,” said Adrien. “I never did learn his name, but Father had apparently had experience with him in the past. The fan started getting paranoid, said my father was stealing his designs. Anyways, according to my father, the fan opened fire on the house. Father told Mother to run, and so she ran.”

After ten seconds of silence, Kagami said, “That’s all you ever found out?”

Adrien nodded. “She never came home.”

A few more seconds passed.

“I’m so sorry,” said Kagami. “I really am. Nobody ever found out about the assassination attempt?”

“Nope,” said Adrien, sniffing. “It was gonna be on the news, but Father made a few deals to keep it from going public. Said that someone trying to shoot him was bad publicity. All anybody ever found out was that my mother had vanished off the face of the Earth.”

“Did you ever, like, hate the shooter?” Kagami asked softly.

“Strangely enough, no,” said Adrien contemplatively. “I felt sorry for him, actually. I mean, yeah, I did kinda loath him, cause he was indirectly responsible for my mother’s disappearance, but you should’ve seen the guy. Most pitiful person I’ve ever seen. At his criminal trial, he actually asked to be put on death row.”

“He what?”

“I know, right?” Adrien said. “In the end, he received a fifteen year prison sentence.”

They walked in silence for a while, letting Adrien’s tale soak in. After a couple minutes, Kagami spoke.

“Would you like to hear about my father?”

“Sorry?”

“My father,” repeated Kagami. “You told me about your mom, so I should tell you about my dad.”

Adrien had a bad feeling that the story of Kagami’s father would be a sad one indeed, but got the impression that Kagami wanted to tell him. So, he voiced that.

“Do you want to tell me?”

Kagami took a deep breath. “It might be nice to get it off of my chest, but I wouldn’t want to burden you with the story if you’re not willing.”

“I wouldn’t be burdened,” said Adrien quickly. “In fact, I was curious as to why I’ve only seen your mother.”

“I used to live with my father,” Kagami said sorrowfully. “He was a painter. When I was four years old, he took me to an art museum in Sapporo, which was where we lived in Japan. I remember my feelings of awe at the sight of such beautiful artwork, and I asked him whether we could go there every day. We did not end up going there daily, but the two of us would head there every Tuesday, because they’d have a guest speaker there on that day of the week.”

They were crossing the Pont Marie now. The sun was only a half-circle in the distance.

“When I was nine,” Kagami went on, “he experienced his first psychotic break. He was convinced that he was on a boat that was sinking, and he was admitted to a psychiatric institution the following day. The doctors told my mother that my father possessed a previously unknown psychological disorder, and that he may need to stay at the institution permanently.”

“Is he still there?” Adrien asked worriedly.

Kagami shook her head. “No, um, he stayed at the institution for another five years. My mother and I visited him regularly. Most of the time, he didn’t recognize us and mistook us for someone else. Sometimes he didn’t see us at all. His last night at the institution, he recognized me. He let me ride piggyback on his shoulders, like he used to. While we were walking, he said to me, ‘Gami, look at those sculptures! Aren’t they exquisite?’”

Kagami let out a shaky breath. “There were no sculptures.”

“Then what happened?” asked Adrien.

A single tear slid down Kagami’s cheek. “Our visit ended, we went home, and the next morning, he hung himself with his own clothes.”

“Oh my god,” Adrien said, horrified. “I’m so sorry.”

Kagami wiped her face. “The last words he said to me were, ‘Tomorrow’s Tuesday. I hear they’re going to have a very prolific photographer at the museum. Won’t that be fun?’”

More tears spilled out of Kagami’s eyes, and she hugged Adrien at the same time he hugged her. They stood there for what felt like days.

When they finally parted, Adrien asked, “Is that why you moved to Paris?”

Kagami nodded.

“How did you survive something like that?”

Kagami gave him a watery smile. “I met you.”

Adrien could almost hear his heart go ping. He smiled back and placed his lips on hers.

“I’m never going to leave you,” he whispered into her mouth.

It was nighttime now. The stars were unusually bright in the sky as Adrien and Kagami made their way through the streets of Paris. They were nearing the Louvre when Kagami pointed to their right.

“Look!”

Adrien turned. She was pointing at the Pont des Arts.

“Do you want to go that way?” he asked her.

Kagami nodded.

As they crossed the bridge, Kagami said, “Did you know couples used to attach padlocks with their initials carved into them on this bridge?”

“That does sound familiar, yeah,” said Adrien. “Wouldn’t they throw the key into the Seine?”

“Yep,” said Kagami. “Too bad all those locks posed a safety hazard due to extra weight on the bridge and the city prevented other people from doing it. Otherwise, I would’ve brought one with me.”

Adrien stopped walking. “Hang on.”

Without warning, he trotted off in the opposite direction.

“Adrien?” called Kagami. “What are you doing?”

“Just hang on a sec!” Adrien called back.

Kagami saw a flash of green light. Another flash came about five seconds later, and she saw Adrien come running back.

“What was that?” Kagami asked.

Adrien only smiled. “I’ll tell you in the morning. It’s late now. Let’s go home.”

===========

Long after Adrien and Kagami had returned to their respective dwellings, just as the sun was preparing to rise after a good night’s sleep, a woman decided to walk across the Pont des Arts. She was used to getting up early in the morning and enjoyed picking up any litter night owls had left behind. However, when she got to the bridge, she didn’t see any litter. She saw something quite different.

Someone had carved something into the bridge’s wood. The letters weren’t particularly large, but passersby would have a hard time not seeing them.

A+K.

The woman frowned. She wondered who those two were.

An Adrigami piece for the end of monday. Hope you enjoyed it! (For those who don’t know, “zusammen” is German for “together”.

Hi again! I’ve decided to build on this for my own AU!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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onelastbreath-writes · 3 years

Text

I Spy

Pairing: Frankie “Catfish” Morales/Fem!Reader (AFAB, no y/n)

Word Count: 1.7K

Warnings: Brief mention of bad(abusive/manipulative) parents, general adult topics, swearing.

Summary: You meet a cute guy at a bar, you date, you fall in love, and oops, it turns out you’ve both been lying about your careers. Classified only stays classified until you get assigned a mission together. (SpecOps&Spies, with Young!Frankie)

A/N: Hey guys, I was bad and started another fic. Whoops. This one is for Triple Frontier because I love that soft boi Francisco. The flavour of this fic, the vibe if you will, is basically the spiderman pointing meme. I’ve vaguely set the timeline to like mid-2000s? so I’ll be trying my best to stay true to technology and aesthetic of the era. There was so much denim. Anyways, that means I’m trying to write for about a 27-33 year old Frankie and a similarly aged reader. I don’t see this series being more than a couple chapters at best, so it’ll be short and sweet. Also, like, very little angst if I can help it; I just want this one to be a good, cute, fun read. Hope y’all enjoy! Xoxo

[AO3][Masterlist]

“So, you’re coming out tonight, right? You’re not busy or anything?”

“Please don’t say it like that, you know how busy work actually is. And I’m a grown woman; if I didn’t want to go to a shady dive bar with you and your very loud friends from the office, I’d say so,” You loved your best friend, and you missed spending time together, but you really couldn’t say the same for her co-workers.

You had nothing against the women she worked with, and you found that they were all perfectly lovely and usually quite fun to be around… it was just that when the alcohol came out, the volume control and verbal filters disappeared.

You wouldn’t say that barhopping was what you’d prefer to be doing tonight, along with more or less babysitting your friend and her friends, but you didn’t know when you’d next be able to squeeze in a night off to just hang out and have fun, so this was happening. You would laugh and smile and keep the drunk secretaries from going home with questionable people, and then you would look back on your ladies’ night with fond memories until you could eventually attend another.

You had known when you picked your career that it would be an around-the-clock, all-day, every-day sort of thing. You never deluded yourself into thinking you would have much of a social life or long-term relationships. Most partners, hell even most friends, would have a problem with you jetting off for weekends, or disappearing for days at a time under mountains of paperwork and appointments.

It just made your best friend that much more important to you. You’d met as kids, went through years of school beside each other, hung out, did stupid teenager things and then stupid young adult things together. You’d cried and laughed and fought and made up a million times, you’d gone to different colleges and still kept in touch, moved away, moved back, and you were still going strong. She was your ride-or-die, your anchor and your parachute and everything in between, so if you could use some of your precious, hoarded, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it time off to see her, that’s just what you’d do.

“You should take some of that fire, and direct it at your boss. Tell him no for a change. I’d love to see his face at that!” She meant well, always trying to look out for you and your health when it came to your beyond demanding job. You weren’t even allowed to tell her a fraction of what you were doing in your professional life, and she knew it, but that didn’t stop her from being ready to throw fists at your employer at a moment’s notice.

“One does not simply tell the über-rich that they don’t need to fly to Paris, again. Being a PA is a full-time nannying gig, except your charge is an adult who can argue when you say no, and you cannot put them on timeout when they’re being a brat. Where he goes, I go, and unless something drastic happens, it will probably continue on like that for a while.” She laughed at your jokes, and your heart hurt a little less at her glee. You knew she would never give up on you or blame you for your work being unpredictable, but that didn’t make the sting of last-minute cancels and missed outings hurt any less, for either of you.

“But it must be nice, just getting on a plane and going somewhere amazing at the drop of a hat. Travelling the world like a superstar, meeting people, having amazing adventures with mysterious strangers…”

“Easy there, Mamma Mia, your wanderlust is showing. And I’d take you with me in a heartbeat if I could. You were born to be a jetsetter, not to be stuck in this town with nothing but the office cubicle beside you to stare at. And I still think you should apply for one of those immersive culture grants you keep mooning over. They’d be fools not to fund your writing expedition!” She was an incredible person, three full degrees to her name in the time it took a normal student to get one, and a brain that could run miles around the rest of the professionals in her field. But she was tethered to this quiet backwater town, and she wasn’t free to fly like she deserved.

“You know I can’t just… go, like you can. My mom, it’d just break her heart… I don’t want to leave her alone, not after Dad,” You honestly doubted that you’d ever meet a woman more horrible and undeserving of her own daughter’s kindness. Helen was a parasite full of lies and manipulations and greed, and she had attached herself like a bad rash to your friend after she’d chased away the rest of her family members.

Your friend searched for the good in everyone, but you wished she’d stop looking for it at that home.

“You deserve your own happiness and freedom, and she should be encouraging you to spread your wings if and when you’re ready.” Politicking your friend was never something you enjoyed. She was the last person you wanted to use your negotiating credentials and sly subterfuge tactics against, but you wanted, needed, her safety and health more. You considered it almost bribery; dangling her dream future in front of her in exchange of being rid of the garbage in her life.

“Hey now, we’re getting way too deep into sad-drunk night conversations, and this is strictly a happy-fun-drunk night. Please leave all baggage and woes at the door, thank you!” You admitted your defeat and surrendered your verbal power point on Why Helen Needs to Disappear. You would get her next time for sure, give her the accelerant to burn down that bridge. “Anyways, the reason I called was to remind you of our haunt for the night. One of the girls, Kelly, you remember Kelly, found this adorable little hole in the wall. A total boys’ club apparently: darts, pool, sports games on the TV, but Kelly’s sister’s friend’s brother Tyler said the place was a favourite of the local army guys. So, if nothing else, we’ll at least have some hunks to look at for a while. It’ll be great!”

You jotted down the directions to the bar as she listed them, and the time you were expected to arrive there.

“Oh! And wear that cute little blue number you bought last spring; I know you still have it so don’t you dare lie. It makes your ass and legs look divine, and I think you could stand to make a new acquaintance tonight.” That Little Blue Number was buried in the back of your closet where you had hoped it would remain forever, but luck was not on your side tonight it seemed. But it did make you look, and feel, fantastic. It was just so… breezy. “And heels! Real ones, not your cute little personal assistant kitten heels. Those black strappy ones would work like a dream!” You just sighed dramatically into the receiver and agreed to her demands.

“I’ll let you go now, and yes, I suppose I can be presentable tonight, dress and all. See-ya later!”

---

Hole in the wall was right. This place was basically underground it was so on the D.L. It was warm inside though, and in the middle of autumn with so much skin on display, you could not be more pleased to get away from the chilled outside air.

You would describe the interior as comfortable with a hint of rustic; lots of warm dark wood and low lights, mixed with the soft Latin music crooning in the background and the few patrons’ conversations adding to the ambience.

All in all, it was probably the nicest dive bar you’d been to in your hometown.

Your party was easy to spot where they had claimed a group of pushed together tables towards the far side of the establishment, and you carefully made your way over to them in your tricky high heels.

You said your hellos to returning faces and introduced yourself to the new additions, and accepted the chair you were pointed to and the drink pressed into your hand.

And so, the hours rolled.

You had enjoyed two fruity cocktails and a flaming shot before you called it quits on the alcohol for the night. You still had a few hours to sober up enough to drive home safely, and you would be able to help the girls get to their rides and ways home too. You appreciated having a social drink or two, but you didn’t care for hangovers and would happily take slightly tipsy over party-hard drunk anytime. Plus, your contract stated you were on-call, always, and you could be required to navigate high-stress negotiations at the drop of a hat. It was just better to cut yourself off, then reap the consequences of your actions later.

You tapped your friend’s shoulder as you walked past and leaned over to talk into her ear. “I’m getting some water for the table; do you want anything else?”

“Mmmm, no I think we’re good for now, thanks!” She was plastered already, but she had a huge grin on her face and was laughing at her co-workers’ stories, so you considered it a win of a night. You gave her a pat goodbye and swayed your way to the bar.

But you just were not accounting for the uneven floorboards, or how much your heels affected your currently less than steady equilibrium, and before you could blink you were teetering over into a nasty fall.

“Whoa there, easy does it, muñequita” Arms wrapped around you and pulled you back into a warm chest. “Careful now, don’t go twisting an ankle in those fancy shoes.”

You certainly did not account for the man you turned around to face. Wow.

His hands glided respectfully from where he had caught you around the waist to your still bent and held out elbows, steadying you as you swayed dangerously again.

Warm brown eyes, soft brown curls, and the sweetest smile you’d ever seen. It felt like your heart was going to beat out of your chest, and you knew that it wasn’t left over adrenaline from your near wipeout. He was gorgeous and handling you so gently, and you wanted to spend forever in that moment.

“Hey there, palomita, I’m Frankie, can I buy you a drink?”

[Next Part]

#triple frontier #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales #frankie morales x you #Pedro Pascal #triple frontier fanfiction #pedro pascal x reader

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sapphicmsmarvel · 4 years

Text

EP: Siren Queen

masterlist

Premise: Y/N L/N is a part of the world's biggest girl group. A stalker starts harassing her and her band mates so their label calls in the BAU.

The case was weird for the BAU. It was a stalker case for a famous girl, Y/N L/N, she was part of the worlds most successful girl group. Garcia was all too excited to be involved in the case. Of course, she hated that you were being stalked but she was a huge fan.

“You better tell me everything!” She squealed, “If she’s nice, if she’s as hot as she is on camera, if the other girls are nice, if they are ‘just like us’ please!”

“If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were the stalker, Garcia.” JJ joked.

“If someone hurts that ray of sunshine I will stalk them!” She shouted through the video call and then hung up.

JJ flipped through the file, “we have five days to catch this guy before they go on tour. And the girls are refusing to cancel.” “Even if their lives are at stake?”

“They said that they will not cancel because it’s the opening to their world tour and they won’t risk disappointing fans because they know people are flying in from all over the country.” Prentiss explained.

“Shouldn’t the label put the girls first?” Morgan asked.

“Usually labels tend not to care about artists.” Reid said, “the amount of label abuse that’s been coming to light is horrific you guys should read up on it.”

He looked up as everyone looked at him confused, he explained, “Simon Cowell for example, there are claims against him because of abuse towards clients. Overworking them, homophobic comments, racist comments, sexist comments you name it.”

“What groups?” JJ asked.

“Little Mix and One Direction are the two most prominent ones.” Reid said flicking through the file.

“How do you know all this?” “Garcia.” He answered. “Then I did my own research because I was fascinated by the music industry. It never hurts to learn even if I don’t know anything about it.”

The team left it at that, and continued digging through the evidence of your stalker.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The team was currently sitting in one of the rehearsal rooms. There were couches, a snack bar, a coffee stand, everything except the girls they were meeting.

Their publicist Ramona looked at them all apologetically, “I’m so sorry, the girls seem to be in traffic. They’re with trusted drivers and security guards.”

“Have they been background checked?” Hotch asked.

Ramona nodded, “we all were when we were taken on, we were when this stalker showed up as well. The dancers, the crew, everybody those girls come into contact with are background checked.”

“Even interviewers?” Reid asked. Ramona nodded, “without their knowledge, just like you advised. If this got leaked…” Ramona shook her head, “we all know what happens to victims of stalkers, it isn’t foreign in this business.”

At that moment the girls all came in, Emily recognized them from the files. Apparently, even your bandmates got checked. Zoey came in first, snuggled in her hoodie, her jeans were rumpled and her heels were clacking. Her smile falling off her face the second she walked into the room. Her blonde hair was tousled as if she was running her hands through it a lot. Her green eyes were tired.

Leaning on her was Brooke, who was also looking exhausted. Ramona told them that they had been up since 4 am doing press, it was now 4pm. They had a two hour rehearsal next, then dinner, then vocal rehearsal, then they could go to their hotel. Apparently it was an easy day for them. Brooke's black hair was in it’s natural curls, she wore heels as well as a dress.

The two were holding hands.

Then came in Liz, she was wearing a black long sleeve shirt, shorts and a beanie as well as heeled boots. She didn’t look as tired, she looked fiercely protective as she was holding your hand.

You looked anxious, you were also in a hoodie, jeans and heeled boots, all black. Your eyes were darting around the room as you took in everyone around you. Your eyes startled when they landed on Emily, Emily wasn’t sure why.

Ramona introduced all of them to the girls then said “Sit down girls.”

Three of them did, you had other ideas and went and got coffee. “Y/N, that’s your fourth cup.”

You held up a finger, “I don’t want to hear it, Ramona. I have a stalker out there and I have to act like everythings normal, if Marcus has a problem with it, he can suck my dick.”

Morgan looked at Emily with wide eyes. Emily shrugged. Then looked at Reid, “who’s Marcus?” She asked him.

“Their choreographer.” “Why does it matter what he says?”

“Because he cares about us and is a fitness nut.” You answered, “you’re not very good at whispering.” You deadpanned, sipping your coffee.

“Y/N!” Ramona scolded.

You rolled your eyes, and Zoey spoke up, “give her a break Ramona. She never gives you issues, let her live.”

“It’s okay,” Emily spoke up, “I understand what it’s like to be afraid of looking over your shoulder.”

You nodded, avoiding eye contact. You felt guilty for snapping, that much she could tell.

“Okay, let’s get started.” Hotch said, “do you have any particular fans you’d like to tell us about, people have stood out?”

“We have a lot of...dedicated fans.” Zoey said, to put it gently. “Some good, some bad, some that are really intense.”

You scoffed from where you were standing, “that's putting it lightly.” You grabbed a mini chocolate chip cookie..

“Do girl groups have groupies?” Morgan asked.

“Of course we do,” Liz said, her tan cheeks gaining a rosy color. You sat in between her and Zoey, Brooke was next to Zoey. You had three other cookies in your hand and handed them to the others.

“We recognize the line between fans and stalkers as well as people who don't agree with who we are. But there’s been nothing like this.” Brooke shuddered.

“Don’t agree with who you are?” JJ asked.

You held up a hand, “queer.”

Brooke raised her hand, “black.”

Liz raised hers, “philipino and black. So mixed race.”

Then Zoey raised hers as well, “I’m ‘too skinny’ so everyone thinks I have an eating disorder.”

You piped up, “I’ve also been fat shamed by the worlds biggest media outlets, it’s nothing new to find hate online.”

Emily grimaced and she knew her team was doing the exact same thing.

“Do you have any ideas as to who it could be?” Rossi asked.

“There’s one,” Zoey said, “but Y/N insists it can’t be him.”

“You need to tell us.” Emily said, everyone looked at you.

You sighed, “he went to jail when we were teens for sexual misconduct. I was the first person he assaulted and harassed consistently. But I didn’t press charges.” “Why not?” Morgan asked.

“Because I was a fourteen year old girl who didn’t recognize that it was sexual assault.” You snapped, then sighed, “I’m sorry Agent Morgan. It’s touchy.” Zoey took your hand, Liz took your other one, Brooke reached over and put her hand on top of Zoeys. “To be honest, I don’t know where I would be without these three.” You admitted. Emily admired it, the sisterhood between you four.

“How long have you guys been friends?” JJ asked.

“We met in high school, then formed the band.” Brooke answered.

“Do you know if he’s out?”

You sighed, “he is. But he lacks the brain cells to pull this stuff off.”

“It’s not that hard to mail letters.” JJ said.

“Yeah but, he shouldn’t know the exact times we show up at venues, interviews, he isn’t smart enough to think of how to obtain that information. As kids he was not smart, at all.” You said, letting go of your friends’ hands and you started rubbing your hands on your jeans.

Emily noticed how all of them kept their hands on you, as a way of comfort.

“Unless he was following the bus,” Zoey said.

“He’s too lazy.” You said, “never had energy for thorough shit.”

“What’s his name? We’re gonna send it to our technical analyst.” Morgan said.

You nodded and spoke the name you’ve feared for far too long. “Peter Brady, he was born in my home state

“Okay,” Hotch started, “I want all of you to be shadowing the girls, they are not to be left alone, we don’t know how organized this guy is and what he knows.” He looked at Rossi, “we’ll contact Garcia and run through possible people. Do you have anywhere to set up?”

Ramona began directing them to rooms, then told all of you to get changed and do rehearsals for the tour.

JJ and Reid sat in during the rehearsals, meanwhile Emily and Morgan helped Hotch and Rossi with going through all the names that Garcia flagged as potentially dangerous.

Two hours later, Emily was eating dinner, she was planning to eat alone, but then she found you. You were sitting on the floor backstage, by a bunch of wires and such eating your pizza. You were alone.

“Hey,” Emily said.

“Hi, did Ramona send you because I’m alone?” You asked, smiling slightly.

“No,” Emily said sitting next to you, “I can recognize when someone needs someone to talk to. Where are your friends?”

“They’re talking to their partners, I insisted they do. They haven’t been the past couple of nights because of all this. Part of being….’famous’ is that you have to leave your loved ones for long periods of time.” “My field is the same way. I don’t see my mom more than twice a year.”

You shuddered, “I can barely handle not seeing my mom as much as I used to before ‘fame’. I can’t imagine it in your shoes.” You sighed.

Emily popped open her salad box, “do you mind if I eat with you?” She smiled.

And she smiled wider when you smiled back, “feel free. By the way, I’m sorry about snapping at you. It’s been rough.”

“I know how you feel.” Emily would tell you about Doyle if it helped you open up more about this guy.

“Have you been stalked?”

Emily nodded, “by an abusive ex.” Was all she said.

You grimaced, “so we’ve gone through similar things.” “Was this guy an ex?” You shook your head, “we were thirteen and fourteen, as kids navigating those feelings can be hard. I’d say we were close to dating then he...he pushed too far. I wasn’t raped, but he touched me inappropriately, then harassed me over text. Then continued for three years, he’s been silent ever since and now all of a sudden 12 years later he’s back.” You laughed bitterly, “and I have no doubts he’s done things to other women. Do you think because I didn’t report, it’s my fault that this is happening? And he’s most likely doing this to other women?” You asked her.

Emily shook her head, “It’s not your fault Y/N, it never will be. He’s a sick creep, and we’re gonna get him.” She assured you. “Can we talk about something else?” You asked.

“Sure.” Emily smiled.

You felt your heart stutter.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the next few days, you and Emily had fallen into a routine.

You ate all your meals together. Breakfast at 6am in the hotel lobby, lunch in the dance rehearsal room, dinner in the backstage area.

Of course, your friends teased you relentlessly. And her team teased her relentlessly.

But you two didn’t care, you found solitude in each other's company, considering both of your worlds were hectic and crazy.

You two were eating chicken tenders for lunch before vocal and dance rehearsal in the dance room when Marcus walked in, “hey, some fanmail was left for you.” He handed you a blue box.

“I’m surprised you can bring it to me.” You said grabbing it.

“It went through security first.”

That was a good sign, you opened it and saw a diamond necklace, “holy shit.” You murmured, it was stunning and sparkly.

Emily thought it described you personally.

You took it out of the box and set the box on the ground. Emily saw a tag in the box. She grabbed it. She pulled it and it revealed a bigger note. She picked it up and read it.

“Y/N….” Emily started.

“What?” You asked, scared.

Emily cleared her throat, “for you my love, it matches your smile. Remember that night under the stars at that restaurant our parents took us to as kids? It’s one of my fondest memories.” You dropped the necklace as if it had burned you.

It had.

It clattered against the floor, you shot off the ground. “Get it away from me! Get the box away from me! Get it all away!” You started crying. “No, no, no, no.”

“Go get my team, now!” She ordered Marcus who ran off with his concern and protectiveness in his eyes.

She approached you, “can I touch you?” She asked.

You fell into her arms, “he found me. He actually fucking found a way to torment me. After all these years, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Please don’t let him get me.” You sobbed into her arms.

She looked at the diamonds on the ground, the sparkling contrasted against the dull gray floor, she stroked your hair as she said, “I won’t, he will never touch you again.”

And she would die to ensure that that promise was kept.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two hours later, you were in vocal rehearsals. You had to do questioning as well as calm down from your panic attack.

You would only allow Emily near you.

You two walked side by side to vocal rehearsals, the girls immediately rushed to hug you. Emily stepped back as the three of them hugged you. It was a huge group hug.

“Oh sweetheart.” Brooke said and kissed your head. “Baby, we tried to get in there but they wouldn’t let us.” Zoey said, “I almost kicked that damn door down but Ramona pulled me away.”

“We got you, that bastard isn’t going anywhere near you,” Liz declared.

Emily heard a sniffle from you, and the girls all “aww’d.”

“Babyyy.” Liz cooed as they all held you tighter.

After about three minutes of you trying to calm down, you four separated, all of you were wiping your eyes. “God, we really do feed off each other huh?” You tried to lighten the mood. They all smiled, trying to keep the light mood going.

They all said hi to Emily, then headed towards a couch. You four then sat down and began singing.

Okay, she had heard your records, after all your band was one of the biggest bands in the world, the biggest girl group.

But God, she did not expect you to not have an auto-tuned voice. None of you do. All four of you have amazing voices but yours…

It was rich like dark chocolate, she wanted to hear you sing all. the. time. It was like a siren, captivating and lustful. You were calm while singing, nobody would know that your stalker had just dropped off a box with diamonds in it two hours ago.

Then to make you laugh Zoey broke out with an off key note and made you burst out laughing.

That laugh warmed Emily, she realized how much she loved your company and what she would do to make you laugh like that at her.

Oh God, she was falling for you. And she was falling hard.

Shit.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two hours before the show was supposed to go on, they caught him.

He was staking out before the show, Garcia had his picture sent to all the guards and they found him.

Everyone else went to question him, while Emily stayed with you. It was a few minutes before showtime, makeup artists and hair stylists were doing final touches. As well as the stylists.

“Twitters blowing up.” Ramona said from her chair.

“About?” You asked, jumping to shake the nerves.

“The guy who got arrested in front of the venue.”

You looked at Emily, “dear god.”

“JJ will handle it.” She assured you all.

“Good.” Zoey said.

You nodded to a corner at Emily, she nodded and followed you over. “I just wanna say, thank you for helping me and spending time with me. I know it’s your job but,” you sighed, “if you’d allow me, I’d like to take you out on a date when we have a show in DC. We’re staying for a couple days doing press and I’d like to go out on a date with you, if you’d like?” Emily smiled and blushed hard, “I would be honored, Y/N.”

The smile you had could light up the night sky, “thank you, Emily. You won’t regret it.”

“Ramona called, “Y/N! Show time!”

“One sec!” Then shoved a piece of paper into her hand, “I hope to hear from you.” Then you kissed her cheek and ran off to stage.

She opened the piece of paper, “to my hero, I hope to hear from you.” Then underneath was your number.

She sighed happily, then went to find her seat in the stadium so she could watch her siren queen perform.

#Criminal Minds #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x you #criminal minds x y/n #jj criminal minds #emily prentiss #emily prentiss x reader #emily prentiss x you #Paget Brewster #paget brewster x reader #Jennifer Jareau #jennifer jareau x reader #jennifer jareau x you #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch x reader #david rossi #derek morgan #derek morgan x reader

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luci-in-trenchcoats · 4 years

Text

A Place To Call Home: Dark Roads

Summary: The reader and Jensen are up in Vancouver doing some work for the brewery and Jensen has an audition to attend to. After the work day is over though, Jensen decides to surprise the reader with a mini-vacation with plenty of fun before they head home. But not all surprises are good and not all nights end well...

Masterlist

Pairing: Jensen x foster daughter!reader

Square: Domestic!AU

Word Count: 10,100ish

Warnings: language, angst (so much angst), fluff

A/N: This part takes place after the Christmas Vacation timestamp. Enjoy! Don’t hate me!

A/N #2: Also written for @spndeanbingo

________

“So, what do you think?” asked the man in the suit on the other side of the conference table. You looked to your left, your dad looking over at you.

“It is a good offer, Mr. Hamilton, but unfortunately we can’t accept,” you said. He balked at you before looking over to your dad.

“She’s the boss, not me,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like we have a deal.”

“Mr. Ackles-”

“Are you disrespecting her because she’s a woman or my child? I’m not quite sure which one it is,” said your dad with a smile. The man’s face went blank and you kept a smirk off your own. “I am here as an owner. If this is how your grocery store deals with heads of distribution for breweries then I’ll tell you right now, never call us again,” said your dad. You gathered up your papers and slid them back in your portfolio, the man taking a deep breath.

“What if we did 5% better than the number on that page?” he asked.

“No,” you said, your dad echoing the sentiment.

“That’s an amazing deal,” he said as he stood up. You clenched your jaw and shoved your portfolio in your bag as your dad leaned back in his seat.

“Actually, Mr. Hamilton, it’s not. You offered the least desirable shelf space, a very small amount of shelf space at that, placement in your outer region stores, not in the city or suburbs surrounding Vancouver, and you wanted an absurd percent of profits. People in this area want our products and we are more than happy to find a seller that suits our needs,” you said. You nodded and your dad stood up. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Hamilton.”

Mr. Hamilton grumbled as you walked out of the conference room, your dad smiling wide as you walked through the hall.

“Alright. I’m impressed. You more than earned that promotion,” he said.

“Negotiating distribution deals is strangely a lot like college,” you said. “But easier.”

“These guys weren’t even your first choice,” he said once you were in the elevator alone.

“Nope but they didn’t need to know that,” you said. “I wanted the other deal as soon as I saw it.”

“Well let’s send it out to the lawyer to review and then we can sign the paperwork,” he said.

“I already did,” you said with a smile.

“You did huh. What if I wanted to go with this guy?” he asked.

“You may be the head owner but I’m head of distribution. I want your input but if you’re going to second guess me, I don’t want that job. I told you that when you gave it to me,” you said. He nodded and leaned back against the wall. “What?”

“S’nice to see you confident is all,” he said. “You know what you’re doing.”

“I really don’t. I just kinda try my best and hope it works out,” you said.

“Pretty much the definition of being an adult,” he chuckled.

“Does that feeling ever go away?” you asked.

“Well, I’m fifty one and I don’t feel much different than a twenty year old kid if I’m being honest. You learn not to sweat the small stuff as much I suppose but not really,” he said.

“Like you getting gray hair,” you smirked. You earned a headlock for that comment, your dad only releasing you from your noogie when you got to the lobby. “Hey, at least you have hair still!”

“You are being such a little shit,” he laughed.

“I won’t tell anyone you dye it,” you said, humming as you headed for the exit.

“I do not! It’s a few specks and that’s it. Plus mom thinks it’s hot so I see no problems with it,” he said, pulling you into another noogie once you were outside. You fixed your hair, getting a peck on the temple. “Alright, alright. I got my audition I have to run to. You want to head back to the hotel and change and I can meet you back there later before I take you out for dinner?”

“Actually, could I go with you? I’ve never seen one of those,” you said. He winced and cocked his head. “I can go somewhere else, that’s-”

“It’s not a problem, munchkin. It’s just...it’s kind of an intense audition. It’s a drama. It’s a pretty dark scene,” he said.

“I’ve seen all of Supernatural though and the movie. I even read the other movie I wasn’t supposed to know about yet and that one goes way dark,” you said. He bit his bottom lip and you smiled. “It’s cool dad. You need to do your audition thing anyways.”

“You sure?” he asked. “If you want to-”

“Probably a better idea for me to wait until the movie,” you said. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel then?”

“Sounds like a plan, kiddo.”

“So how’d it go?” you asked when your dad walked in the hotel room three hours later. He sighed and you frowned. “You didn’t get it?”

“Oh, I got it,” he said, plopping down in the chair. You raised an eyebrow and he smiled. “I turned it down though, took a different part in the movie.”

“But why would you turn down the lead?” you asked.

“You know how I said it’s supposed to be dark? But there’s that bit of love story?” he asked.

“Yeah. That’s what was cool to you about it you said.”

“Yeah. I met the lead actress who would be my romantic interest,” he said.

“She not so great?”

“She was very lovely,” he said. “She’s also nineteen years old.”

“So...thirty two years age difference?” you said with a wince as he nodded. “Who thought that was a good idea?”

“Hollywood is...I am very happy you never wanted to be an actress, let’s put it that way,” he said. “Now I’m playing her dad in the movie. I would have walked completely but my manager is gonna kill me as is for walking from a lead roll,” he said.

“Do you really need it though?” you asked.

“No. I wanted to try out something new and interesting though,” he said. “That story was different.”

“Yeah but I see red flags all over it. Who’s even the target audience besides pervy old guys?” you asked. He laughed and nodded, getting to his feet.

“You have a very good point,” he said. “Besides, I got another album I want to work on in the meantime and there’s plenty of other stories out there.”

“Told you so,” you said. “Now where are we going for dinner cause last time it was that really fancy steakhouse downtown and-”

“Pack up your bag and we’ll head up,” he said with a smirk. You narrowed your eyes and he padded into the bathroom. “Oh, we’re staying somewhere else tonight. Maybe we can go visit the canyon-”

“I love the canyon park!” you said, hopping up from the bed. “Are the winter lights still up?”

“Yes,” he said with a big smile. “We got a three hour drive up there and then we’re gonna have a nice dinner and then we can go check it out before we fly home tomorrow. How’s that sound?”

“It sounds like, really nice. What’s the occasion?” you asked.

“No occasion other than to see you get all excited,” he said. “You know mom and your brother are off having a fun little weekend together while your sisters drive TJ insane. I figured we could have one night of fun.”

“Are you kidding me? They love him. He texted me that they ordered a pizza each for themselves for dinner,” you said. “They were gonna stay up late and watch rom coms apparently.”

“You found a pretty good guy,” he chuckled, as he walked back out of the bathroom and stuck his small bag in his backpack. You gave him a quick smile and nod, your dad returning it. “You two doing good?”

“Yeah. I just…” you said, starting to pack up. “I don’t know.”

“Something going on?” he asked. You shrugged and put your heels in your suitcase. “Y/N.”

“You know how his parents were in town last week?” you asked. He nodded and you took a deep breath. “Well, Allie was doing something she wasn’t supposed to and his dad was watching her and so we said timeout time was what we do and everything was going fine and then she comes running in from the playroom crying cause he’d tried spanking her.”

“TJ doesn’t strike me as the kind of parent that would be okay with spanking. It doesn’t do any good,” he said.

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t just spanking. It was you know...old school spanking,” you said.

“With…” he said, pointing at his belt. You nodded and he rolled his eyes. “No offense but his father is a fucking idiot. I’ve always thought so.”

“Well, if you thought I was pissed, you should have seen TJ. I’ve never seen him that angry before. He got in a huge shouting match with his dad. I took the kids outside to the park and then his parents were gone by the time we got back. They’re not speaking at the moment,” you said. “I was just...why doesn’t his dad just talk to him? Talk to his grandkids? I know you guys would never do something like that and...I just don’t understand some men and their need to be the tough guy and the asshole all the time.”

“You grew up with a couple of those yourself,” he said. You finished with your clothes and gave him a glance before he grabbed some more relaxing clothes to change into. “If I knew why, I would tell you. Strength doesn’t belong to men and emotions don’t belong to women. I pity anyone who thinks experiencing their life fully is weakness.”

“Mom told me once, when I first came to the house that you were a bit closed off when you were younger,” you said.

“I was. In a way I still am. I always will be. I’m like you in that way. I always felt things but it’s scarier to show it. You feel like you have to be strong, you don’t want to bother other people, you think it goes away on it’s own,” he said. “Then you fall in love and then you have children and you realize there is nothing more badass than playing princesses with your daughter and knowing that you are part of the reason why she has pure happiness at that moment. I only ever wanted my family to felt the love that I did. It’s a pretty decent way to live. If somebody out there doesn’t think I’m man enough, that’s their problem, not mine.”

“TJ thinks of you as his real dad, you know. He says you’ve never put him down or belittled him. He’s never questioned what you think of him.”

“Why would I hurt some innocent kid, especially one that’s one of mine?” he asked. “You know better than anyone, kiddo, blood doesn’t make you family.”

“No, it doesn’t. Go change so we can get on the road. I’m starving already.”

“Did you get lost?” you asked two and a half hours later as your dad drove the SUV he’d rented for the weekend.

“No, I’m not lost. The hotel is just a few miles up the road I think,” he said. You stared out the dark window, rain coming down hard on the January night.

“If you tell me the name I can-” you said, a hand reaching out in front of you before you crashed head on into something. You suspected the SUV had flipped but it was too hard to tell, especially once you hit your head on something and went out cold.

You woke up a few seconds later, gaining your bearings, turning to your right and finding your dad upside down and covered in blood.

“Dad,” you said, undoing your seatbelt. You shoved on him but he was still, his jacket turning a crimson color. “No, no, no.”

You dropped down and undid his seatbelt too, catching him as he slipped. You kicked away the glass in the broken windshield and dragged him outside into the rain. You felt pain in your back but ignored it and got him out where you could see in the headlights. You glanced past the truck and saw what looked like a dead moose in the middle of the road.

“Dad,” you said, laying him down. He had a cut on his head in his hair, his chest was soaked and his left leg looked funny. You tugged up his shirt and got a face full of blood for it, falling backwards and wiping it away.

You stared at him before you put a shaky hand against his neck. There wasn’t anything there and you moved your fingers again, over and over and over.

“Dad, no,” you said, shaking him, unable to find a pulse. “You promised me. You don’t…”

He didn’t move and you sat back on your heels, looking around for help but there were no other cars, nothing around but trees and a wet road. You reached a hand into your pocket for your phone but it was shattered, pieces of metal and glass falling out. You found his in his back pocket but it was broken and wouldn’t turn on.

“No, no, no!” you shouted, throwing the phone against the truck. “No! You don’t get to die! You don’t die...you promised. Dad, you promised. You said 102. I can’t...I can’t, please I can’t. Please wake up. Please, please, please, dad. Please. I love you. You can’t go yet. Please, daddy, please, wake up.”

You tried for a pulse again but there was nothing and the rain was beginning to stain the ground pink. You stared at it long enough for your stomach to swirl. You ran over to the side of the road and threw up, slowly coming back before you fell down to your knees. You looked at him, a heaving sob leaving you as you clenched your fists.

“What did I ever do to you?” you shouted at the dark sky. “What did I do to you! Stop killing my parents! I never did anything wrong! Why do you keep hurting them! Why!”

You turned to your dad and you could barely see you were crying so hard.

“Wake up,” you said. He was motionless and you took your fist, beating on his chest hard. “I said wake up!”

You slammed it down again, over and over until your hand was throbbing but you didn’t care. All you wanted was for him to be okay.

“WAKE UP!” you screamed, bringing your fist down hard.

“Y/N!” he said as he shot up, gasping for air before he plopped back down. You scurried next to him, your dad taking a few deep breaths as he looked up at you. “You okay, tall munchkin?”

“I’m fine,” you said, putting a hand on his head. “Dad, don’t move. You’re really hurt.”

“I feel really hurt so can do,” he said, shutting his eyes.

“Stay awake!” you shouted, his eyes flying open.

“No closing eyes, understood,” he said. You squeezed yours shut and took off your jacket, shaking the phone piece away before you balled the thing up and pressed it against his stomach. You threw his hands over top of it, and took off your flannel, folding it up and tying it around his leg. You sat back at his head again, taking over for putting pressure on his stomach. “Y/N, look at me.”

You glanced down, finding a look on his face you’d not seen since he found you on the highway, walking in the rain the night of your seventeenth birthday.

He was afraid.

“Did you think I died?” he asked. You couldn’t speak but nodded, trying to stop the tears that were mixing in with the rain. “Oh, honey. Honey, I’m okay. Dad’s okay.”

“You didn’t have a pulse,” you choked out. “And our phones are broken and there’s no one out here and you can’t move and now I have to watch you die.”

You cried hard, sobbing as you tried to get a hold on the bleeding.

“You’re hurt,” he said, a stray finger tracing over a cut on your arm.

“I don’t care!” you shouted. “I can’t fix this. I don’t want to watch my dad die again. Don’t make me do that again, please, dad, please.”

“Y/N, breathe, kiddo,” he said when you felt yourself gasping for air. You shook your head and felt him reach a shaky hand up and wipe off your face. “Honey, it’s gonna be okay. No matter what happens.”

“I don’t want to be alone again. Don’t leave me here by myself,” you said.

“I’m gonna do my best,” he said but he was looking even paler and you winced. “But you’re a smart girl. You’re an amazing young woman and I know you don’t want to hear this right now but I don’t...I don’t feel right inside and I don’t think...I don’t want to die, munchkin. I’m not done with you yet either. But odds are, I’m not making it off this road and if that happens, you’re gonna promise me you’re gonna go be happy and have a really great life and I’m gonna be upstairs watching your back okay?”

You nodded, not even bothering trying to not cry anymore.

“I love you so much and I’m so proud of you and I’m really happy we got to a place where I know you love me back just as much. Oh, and there’s boxes in the storage container for all you guys. Letters. There’s one for this too. Just read it. It’s gonna sound a hell of a lot better than whatever this blubbering mess is.”

“Stop crying,” you said to him.

“Can’t really help it at the moment,” he said, pursing his lips.

“Can I make you feel better?” you asked quietly.

“Just stay...maybe don’t tell mom about the crying,” he said with a laugh and a wince.

“Okay,” you said. You took a deep breath, spotting your purse nearby. You stared at him and back at the bag.

“What?”

“How much do you trust me?” you asked.

“With my life,” he said.

“Hold this,” you said. You put his hands on your jacket again, feeling him put less pressure than before. You reached over and grabbed your purse, dumping it on the ground and picking up your hand sanitizer. You squeezed it all over your hands and rubbed them together, taking a deep breath. You moved his hands away and took a deep breath. You grabbed your hat from your bag on the ground nearby and rolled it up, shoving it in his mouth. “Whatever I do, don’t yank my hand away, okay?”

He nodded and saw you peel the jacket back quick to get a look.

“I really hope you pass out from this,” you said. He gave you a thumbs up and squeezed his eyes shut before you moved the jacket away and shoved your fingers into the tear in his torso. He shouted into the hat, your fingers trying to find the spot inside that was gushing the blood out. You shuddered when the sound escaping him turned into some kind of scream you were positive he shouldn’t have been capable of making. The hat fell out of his mouth and he threw his head back, squirming as he grabbed your arm.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “You’re gonna die right here if we don’t stop the bleeding right now.”

“Stop!” he shouted, body tensing up, his voice quiet. “Please, stop. Please, Y/N.”

“Almost,” you said, his hand tightening around your wrist but never pulling away. You felt something different inside and pinched with your fingertips, your dad trying to get away from it. You peeled up the jacket from around your hand and saw the blood was much slower, stopping to a trickle eventually. “Hey! I think I stopped it!”

“Great,” he winced, slamming his hand against the pavement. “Everything in me wants to just rip your hand out of my insides. God, you have no idea how badly I want to do that right now.”

“S’kinda how period cramps feel,” you said. “This is a little more extreme though.”

“I would hope so,” he said. You leaned over and looked at his leg but it looked decent for the moment. “So, we’re just gonna sit here then until a car comes.”

“I think that’s the plan considering either of us moves and you’re dead,” you said.

“Okay. Good plan,” he said. He rested his hand on your arm and pushed up your short sleeve. “Is you shoulder dislocated?”

“Yeah,” you said. He frowned and you laughed. “Dad, I’ll live.”

“You’re hurt.”

“Yeah but you’re way worse so I’m in charge. It’s pain. I’ve dealt with it before. I can deal with it now,” you said. He leaned his head back against the pavement, looking up at the sky. “Don’t go and die on me now.”

“I’m okay. The searing pain is keeping me awake,” he said. You looked around for a car but saw no headlights in either direction. “If a car doesn’t come, it’s okay, munchkin. You’re giving me a shot I shouldn’t have right now.”

“I’m not letting go until I pass out or you’re...a car will come,” you said.

“Honey, be realistic. I’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said. “Odds-”

“I get it. You’re very likely going to die. Now stop talking like that and tell me you’re gonna be fine,” you said.

“I’m gonna be alright,” he said with a smile. “So. Anything on your mind you want to talk about?”

“I wish I went to med school but no, not really,” you said. He chuckled, shivering a bit when he stopped. You leaned over top of him, the rain hitting your back and giving him some relief from it.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“Are you always this grumpy when someone tries to take care of you?” you asked.

“Quite possibly,” he said. “Well, while I have you as a captive audience, I might as well tell you now.”

“Tell me what?” you asked.

“I had no idea what I was doing most of the time when it came to you. We made it up as we went,” he said.

“You knew exactly what to do,” you said.

“I slept outside your room once. I was afraid you’d try running away again,” he said.

“Dad.”

“I didn’t even want this many kids and then we had the three and it was all good. You were never in the picture,” he said.

“Why did you want to adopt?” you asked. You were freezing and hiding the shake in your body, your dad not looking so hot himself.

“There was this young guy at the brewery at the time. He went on and became a lawyer I think. He um, we were talking one day and he told me he grew up in foster care during his teenage years. I got the jist that it really sucked. It wasn’t really even that big of a deal and I thought it over at home that night and I looked around the house and thought, we got the space. We have the means. We could do something good,” he said. “It was just an idea for a while and then one day I said to De, let’s do this and that’s how we started.”

“I’m glad you did,” you said.

“Me too,” he said. He pushed up the back of your shirt and you knew he saw the blood you felt there. “Let me see.”

“No, I’m fine,” you said, twisting your body farther away.

“You need to get help for yourself,” he said. You shook your head and he scoffed. “I wasn’t asking.”

“Make me. Oh wait, you can’t.”

“I know I can’t,” he grit out. “If something happens to you because you were trying to save me, I can’t live with that.”

“It’s a cut! I have lots of cuts and my shoulder is killing me and I know I have a concussion and my whole body hurts and I’m freezing but it doesn’t matter. Why do you not-”

“If you were where I am right now and Allie or Colin was hurt, more hurt than they’re letting on, barely keeping you alive, you think you’d tell them to save you over themselves?”

“No,” you said quietly.

“Then you know exactly why.”

“But I’m not a parent right now. I’m the kid in this situation and I am terrified. I feel like that ten year old girl that watched her parents die slow and in pain and she couldn’t help them. All I did was get bigger. I didn’t learn a damn thing in case it happened again,” you said.

“Y/N. I’m alive right now because you are saving my life. You pulled me out, you got me breathing again, you wrapped up my leg and you quite literally have your hand inside of me piecing me together. You’re doing all of this in the middle of winter, trying to keep me warm and getting hypothermia yourself, pushing through wanting to fall apart all while you are very, very hurt. You want to know what you learned?”

“What?” you breathed out.

“Even if it’s hard and it hurts, you don’t give up. What have I always said? Just try for me. It’s all I wanted. I am more than okay if this is it for me because right now, when it’s probably the hardest it’s ever been for us, you’re trying. You’re trying harder than I’ve ever seen you and that’s all you gotta do the rest of your life. Just try and it’ll work out how it’s supposed to.”

“You’re not supposed to die,” you said. Your head got dizzy and your stomach churned, your dad staring up at you. “I’m gonna throw up.”

You turned your head away quickly, avoiding him and getting the pavement beside you. Thankfully most of it was clear after you’d emptied your stomach before.

“Concussion,” he said as you got your bearings back and took the brunt of the rain again. “Y/N.”

“I’m okay,” you said, taking a deep breath. “I’m okay.”

“I think you’re in shock.”

“Probably but you’re in it too,” you said. You were shivering harder now and you saw your arm start to shake. You grabbed it with your free hand, steadying it as best you could.

“Get in the car.”

“No.”

“You’re going to freeze and go into shock if you don’t get out of the rain. Get in the car.”

“No.”

“Get in the damn car!”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” you said, his face in a scowl. “I’m not leaving, you goddamn idiot. I never was. Get that through your thick fucking skull!”

“Why won’t you get in the fucking car!” he shouted. “You fucking little shit, just get in the car. Don’t make me beg you. Get in the car. Please get in the car!”

“No. I’m not giving up on you. I’m not saving myself. I’m not and you can barely lift a finger. You don’t get to choose. I do.”

“You’re going into shock. You’re gonna die if you don’t get warm right now. Get in the car,” he said, closing his eyes. “Please, tall munchkin. Please. I can’t watch you die either. It’s not how it works. Don’t make me watch that.”

“Yet it’s perfectly fine for me to have to?”

“Because kids are stronger than their parents you dumbass,” he said. “Go. Please. You did your best. You still saved me. Why won’t you listen to me?”

“Because I was the person screaming and shouting on the side of the road on a cold rainy night once. I was the person that pushed and pushed and tried so hard to get you to go away. But you wouldn’t give up on me. You were never going to give up on me. It’s a decade later and now it’s your turn to learn that I was never walking away from you either. I don’t care what you want. I don’t care if this is scary for you. I was terrified of you and I believed you. For a split second I let myself believe you and that was the start for me. So you can be as scared as you need to be because I’m not giving up on you. Trust me. Please.”

“Okay,” he said quietly, nodding his head. He was silent for a beat, nothing but sniffles in the air. “I’m gonna wait as long as I can but the next time I ask you to get in the car, will you get in there?”

“Yes.”

“Are you lying?”

“I don’t know,” you said.

“S’okay.”

He gave you a smile and you tried to return it, focusing on keeping your fingers clamped tight around the artery.

“I wrote you a song,” he said. “It was gonna be on the album.”

“You want to sing it?” you asked, another round of tears hitting you.

“I’m getting kinda of tired, kiddo,” he said, closing his eyes again.

“Dad,” you said, a light flickering off the pavement. You looked behind you and saw headlights headed your direction. “Dad! There’s a car!”

“Love you,” he mumbled.

“No, you don’t,” you said, pinching his insides tighter, getting a small wince from him. “Awake.”

“Trying to,” he mumbled again. You heard the vehicle slow down and drive around the moose, stopping when it saw you. Someone got out of the pickup, another door opening up.

“Shit,” said the one guy, running over to you. He looked at you and your dad, staring at your hand. “Okay, there’s a hospital like five minutes from here. Tony! Get my snowboard!”

The other guy grabbed a board from the back of the pickup, rushing over with it. You got what he had in mind and moved aside as best you could, the two men rolling your dad on top of it to use as a makeshift stretcher.

“Up on 3. 1, 2, 3,” said the first guy. You groaned as you stood up, your back killing you but they were walking to the back of the truck bed, having you carefully climb up as they pushed him in. Tony climbed in the back with you before the other guy got behind the wheel and took off.

“You okay?” he asked you.

“Not really,” you said, Tony holding the board from moving as best he could.

“I’m Tony. That’s Ray. That your dad?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you said. “I’m Y/N. Please tell your friend to hurry.”

“Ray! Floor it!” he said through the back window. The truck went far faster than it should have been going but soon you saw lights and civilization again, the truck fishtailing around into a parking lot. Your dad grunted which you took as a good sign.

“We need help right now!” said Ray as he ran out of the truck and over to an entrance. A few people in scrubs came rushing out with a stretcher, Tony jumping out of the way as they got a backboard under your dad.

“You need to move, sweetie,” said a doctor but his eyes quickly went down to your hand and back up. “Get on.”

“What?” you asked.

“Straddle and get on the board,” he said. You climbed over top of your dad, someone holding your shoulders and making you yelp as you were moved backwards onto a stretcher.

“What happened?” asked a nurse as you were pushed inside.

“We hit a moose,” you said, nearly throwing up again when you saw him in the light of the building. He was covered in blood and you caught your reflection in the glass, sporting a similar look. “He was out cold for a while. I couldn’t find a pulse so I hit his chest real hard and he popped up. I think his leg is broken and he had a cut on the side of his head and his torso was gushing and he lost a lot of blood, like a lot, and I couldn’t stop it so I shoved my hand inside and that was kind of working but he’s not talking anymore.”

“Okay, people let’s focus on that torso and get some blood in our friend here. What’s his name, sweetie?” asked the doctor in charge.

“Is that Jensen Ackles?” asked one of the nurses. You nodded and she dropped her jaw. “Oh my God. You’re Y/N. That’s his daughter.”

“Okay, Y/N,” said the doctor as someone wrapped you up in the world’s warmest blanket. You sighed and smiled for a brief moment, the doctor snapping his fingers. “Y/N, I need you to pay very special attention to me.”

“Okay,” you said, the blanket peeled away as someone started cutting off your shirt. “Excuse me. Buy me dinner first.”

“I’ll take that as a good sign,” said the doctor, your eyes going to a bag of blood flowing into your dad. “Whatever you do, do not unclamp your fingers inside of him, understand? I bet it’s getting painful and you might start cramping. You gotta hold on a little while longer for us, okay?”

“Not a problem,” you said. You felt a table be moved behind you and you were guided to kneel back on it. They started cutting off your dad’s clothes and you shut your eyes. “A little warning would be nice.”

“Keep ‘em closed,” he said. You were too worried to notice much when you felt your own clothes go, a gown tugged and buttoned on you. “Alright.”

You opened your eyes, a blanket over your dad’s lap. The main doctor examined the wound your hand was in, some other ones looking at his leg and head. You saw your dad flutter open his eyeballs, jerking his whole body when he looked around.

“Jensen. I’m Dr. Bradwick. You were in an accident. Your daughter, Y/N, is right here with us and she’s helping us help you right now so let’s keep the moving to a minimum and he’s out again,” said the doctor, your dad’s eyes closing once more. “Y/N, climb back on if you’re able to. I want a scan and then send these two up to the OR. Y/N, you’re going to have to go into the operating room like this and when the surgeon tells you to remove your hand, that’s when you do it, not a second before, understand?”

“Yes,” you said.

“You have some extensive injuries yourself. You’re in shock right now which is why you’re not feeling them. Your shoulder is dislocated, you’ve suffered blood loss yourself and have signs of a high grade concussion. When you let go, you’re going to get put back on a stretcher and then we’re going to take you for a few scans yourself, alright?”

“Is he gonna die?” you asked, wrapped up in the warm blanket once again, one tossed over the bottom half of your dad.

“We’ll do our best,” he said. You nodded and after a few bandages were slapped on the two of you, you went down a few hallways, someone on either side of you keeping you steady. The shakes in your body were dying down as you warmed up some and you took your hand away from your wrist and gave one of your dad’s a squeeze.

It was small but you felt a finger move slightly.

You smiled to yourself as the blankets were taken away and someone put a big lead vest on you, covering most of your body and neck. You heard a buzzing and they took a picture of his torso, taking a few more of his leg and head too before you felt one of your shoulder be done.

“Alright, let’s send these two up,” said a nurse that stepped out. Five minutes later you were sat in the middle of an OR, people hooking up leads and things to your dad as he got more fresh blood in him. He was pale still and you squeezed his hand, not feeling any response. You scrunched up your face but a nurse directed you to look at a monitor. His heart rate and breathing were slow but they were still there.

“Good evening, everybody,” said a woman in a pair of dark blue scrubs. A pair of gloves were snapped on her and she smiled as she walked over. “Nice, cold, gloomy night out. So you must be the smart cookie, Y/N. I’m Dr. Bradwick.”

“I thought he was downstairs,” you said as she went over to a set of scans on the wall and started looking them over.

“That’s my husband,” she said with a hum. “Freddie, how’s the leg look?”

“Clean break,” said a younger man in light blue scrubs. “Needs to be set, a think a few pins and a stitch will do.”

“I agree. Bleeding?” she asked.

“Under control,” he said.

“Good. Once we have Jensen’s torso available, you can take lead on fixing the leg,” she said. “Head wound is superficial. We have a severed artery, right side of body. Let’s open, clamp what we can and then give Y/N’s hand a break,” she said. She wandered back over to the operating table, examining the wound. “Did you have any hand injuries?”

“Scratches was all. I put hand sanitizer on first if that helps,” you said.

“It actually does some. Y/N, you’re gonna sit right there until I tell you otherwise, alright? It’s probably gonna be a little bit longer but hopefully we can get your dad feeling better,” she said. “Let’s put him under.”

“What are his odds?” you asked. “Honestly.”

“The amount of time you’ve been holding him together, the previous blood loss, the lack of blood flow...real talk, it really depends on how much of a mess he is in there and how much he fights for it. He’s in the beginning stages of hypothermia which may hurt him or may help him. The human body is tricky. We will do what we can but I can’t guarantee he gets up from this table. He’s still awake. If you want to say anything before he goes under, say it now,” she said.

“Remember when I said I didn’t want a dad? But I’d take a Jensen? I wanted one. I was afraid. But then I wasn’t, because I tried, for you and for me. If you can’t do this dad, it’s okay. If I don’t, if I don’t talk to you for a really, really long time again or ever again, it’s okay. All you have to do right now is try. Just try to stick around as hard as you can. I love you,” you said. The room was quiet and you sniffled, giving the doctor a nod.

“Alright. Let’s get to work.”

Twenty minutes later your hand was shaking, cramps rippling through it, the doctor giving you a sideways glance.

“Y/N. In a moment I’m going to have you release your hand,” she said. “When that happens, I want you to remove your hand as quickly but gently as you can. Don’t touch any of the other clamps. Owen and Derren here are then going to move you onto the table right by my right side. They’re going to move you away quickly and then you’ll be taken to the OR across the hall to repair your injuries. Understand?”

“Yeah,” you said, squeezing your eyes shut. “I’m dizzy.”

“I know. One more minute,” she said. “Everyone in your positions.”

She looked around for a moment before looking up at you.

“On three, let go. One, two, three.”

You unsqueezed your fingers and pulled your hand out, wincing at the sudden pain. You felt yourself get moved and collapsed onto the table, your head swimming. The last thing you caught sight of was the floor before you were passing out completely.

When you woke up, you were in a room, a doctor writing something down on the chart at the end of the bed. You were alone aside from the other empty bed, your arm in a sling and it felt like you were laying on a wad of bandages.

“I wasn’t expecting you awake so soon,” he said. He took out a flashlight from his pocket and held up a finger. You followed it and he smiled. “Good. Your concussion appears to be doing better.”

“I passed out,” you said.

“From exhaustion, not a head injury. Your shoulder was put back in place and we discovered a few deep lacerations along your back that required stitches. You were treated for hypothermia, shock and a concussion as well. You got close to the hairy edge, Y/N,” he said. “You need extensive rest.”

“Where’s my dad,” you said.

“He’s recovering from surgery in the ICU. He’s quite weak,” he said. You sat up and closed your eyes. “You can see him later.”

“Buddy, I’m seeing him right now,” you said, swinging your legs off the edge of the bed.

“No, you’re not. He’s not even conscious at the moment.”

“Where’s Dr. Bradwick?”

“In the ER.”

“The other one. The surgeon,” you said. You tried to stand but he put his hand on your shoulder. “Buddy. Back off.”

“Dr. Kappers. A word,” said Dr. Bradwick as she popped in the door. She left with him and returned after a moment, giving you a smile. “Sorry about that. He’s not known for his bedside manner.”

“Can I see my dad?”

“I’ll do you one better. We’ll get you set up in his room,” she said.

“Thanks,” you said. You sat back on the bed and she undid a few things, soon pushing you out of the room and over to some elevators. “Is he okay?”

“He’s not great but surgery was a success. He’s going to need to take things slow for the next while,” she said. “You saved his life you know.”

“A physician’s assistant came to my school once to talk about careers. He told us a story about clamping an artery shut with his fingers. I guess I kind of remembered,” you said.

“I think Jensen owes you one for that,” she said, pushing you inside. She hit a button to go up and smiled. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” you said. “Tired.”

“Those men that brought you in showed the police where your vehicle was. I believe your belongings are at the local sheriff’s office,” she said. “Oh and we were able to get your father’s contact information. Your mom was called and she let your husband know. They’re both on their way up from the states,” she said.

“Oh God, TJ,” you said, running your hands over your face. “He’s gotta be a nervous wreck right now.”

“Nothing wrong with having a husband that cares,” she said, the door dinging open. “Alright, I know you’re gonna jump out of bed and go over to your dad the second I leave the room but I don’t want you sleeping in a chair tonight. Got it? I will send my husband to come check on his lunch break if I have to.”

“I maybe promise?” you said.

“I like you,” she said, pushing you down the hall, pausing outside a door. “He should look a lot better than last time you saw him.”

She moved the bed inside a room, your dad asleep in the bed by the window. He had a cast on his right leg and a bandage around his head, a lot of leads and tubes running from him to machines close by but the blood was gone and he did look a lot more alive now.

“Thanks, Dr. Bradwick,” you said.

“I was in a car accident with my dad when I was a kid. I get it,” she said. She plugged in a few things for you and said a nurse would be in soon to get an IV in you. You hummed when she left, getting out of bed and grabbing a chair by the window, pulling it over to him.

“Hey, dad,” you said, grabbing his hand. “Mom’s on her way and TJ too. They’re gonna smother us. That’s okay. I’m gonna stay right here until they get here though.”

For a moment you felt extremely tired and rested your head down on his unharmed leg. You used your good arm as a cushion as well, closing your eyes. Something tickled your head and your turned, seeing his hand trying to move on top of it. He didn’t open his eyes but you moved it for him, a brief smile crossing his lips.

“S’okay. Go back to sleep, dad.”

He half hummed and you felt yourself drifting off, a small gasp of air above you occurring.

“Not dead?” he murmured.

“No, not dead,” you said.

“Good.”

He was out like a light again and you smiled, a nurse walking in. She shook her head and got you up to your feet, helping you back in bed.

“Can he have an extra blanket?” you asked as she stuck the needle in. She went to a closet in the room and took one out, spread it out over him lightly, finding another one and putting it over you. She pressed a button on the little machine for the IV and you felt the pain meds kick in, sending you to sleep quickly.

When you woke up, it was morning and your leg felt very hot. You blinked a few times, spotting a black tuft of hair curled up by it. You blinked again, recognizing the navy henley and the way the hair stuck up in the back. You smiled as you ran your hand over his head, TJ slowly waking up before jolting upright and giving you the biggest hug he dared.

“Hey, babe,” you said with a quiet laugh. “Miss me?”

“Never do that again,” he said. You cupped his cheek and smiled, a wave of relief crashing over him.

“I’ll try,” you said. You looked to your right, your mom sitting by your dad’s side, watching him sleep. She got up when she saw you awake, walking over and hugging you. “Hi, mom.”

“TJ’s right. Never do that again,” she said.

“We’re fine,” you said. “It looks worse than it is.”

“The doctors told us what happened,” she said. You turned away, smiling at TJ.

“Where are the kids?” you asked.

“JJ watched them last night and the Pads were taking them today,” he said. “Zepp flew home. Jared picked him up at the airport.”

“Sorry for ruining your guys trip,” you said, your mom shaking her head.

“It’s fine. We’ll go on another one. I’m just glad you two are still here,” she said.

“We’re fine.”

“He should be dead. Maybe even you,” she said. “Please do not say you’re fine.”

“Mom. Last night was quite possibly the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t even know how to describe...I’m not gonna tell you everything that went down or was said. Dad is alive and so am I. We’ll get better. I’ll be better really soon even. It’s all there is to it.”

“They said you had your hand in him,” said TJ.

“Yes, I did. Not as exciting as it sounds,” you said.

“Hurt like a bitch though,” you heard chuckled from the bed nearby. All three of you turned towards him, getting a sleepy smile in response. “I’m starving. We never got dinner.”

“I will go find you guys some food, pronto,” said TJ. He gave you a kiss before he left, your mom returning to her seat and staring at your dad.

“I’m fine,” he said, getting a hug and kiss from her.

“Don’t go yet,” she said quietly.

“Not going anywhere, honey,” he said. He looked over at you and smiled. “Not if I can help it.”

Two Months Later

“I’m going to grab another beer,” said TJ. He got up from his seat around the fire pit in the backyard and you waved a finger, your dad giving one as well.

“De, mind grabbing some stuff to make hotdogs?” he asked.

“Not at all,” she said. They both head inside the house, your dad quiet as you both watched the fire. He scratched his stomach and you saw him lift up his shirt, glancing at the red line across his abdomen.

“You could get a tattoo,” you said. “To cover it up.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” he said. “What does bother me is the fact you risked your life for mine. You have children.”

“So do you.”

“Y/N. You’re young. You have your entire life ahead of you.”

“Adults have feelings, dad. You don’t get to love me more than I love you. You don’t get to put a cap on that for me. I am a parent. I do understand where you’re coming from. I do. But abandoning and giving up on you was not going to happen.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because you didn’t give up on me.”

He looked down to his lap, pursing his lips.

“I hope we’re never in that kind of situation again but dad, I can’t promise you how I’m going to act. I know it’s your job to protect me. Don’t be mad at me for doing it back every once in a while is all.”

“I’m not mad, kiddo. I just want you safe.”

“Me too,” you said. He gave a quick smile, slumping down in his chair. “You busy tomorrow night?”

“No. Why?”

“I’m gonna take you out for our dinner we never had,” you said.

“Just us?”

“Just us,” you said. “That okay?”

“Yeah. I’m looking forward to it,” he said. You tucked your feet up under you, closing your eyes briefly. “Thanks for saving me.”

“You did it first,” you said.

“There’s my sap,” he chuckled.

“Shut up, dork,” you said, rolling your eyes.

“You’re still smiling,” he said, hearing the backdoor open. “You good, kiddo?”

“Yeah. I’m good, dad.”

You smiled and looked down, spotting a big looking bug by your feet. You jumped out of your chair and he laughed, getting to his feet and stepping on it with his shoe. You looked around for any more, a grin spreading across his cheeks.

“What?” you said, brushing yourself off.

“I still got it,” he said, taking a seat and pulling you down into the chair with him. “No creepy crawlies over here.”

“There better not be,” you said as TJ and your mom returned.

You weren’t too hungry for a hotdog but you took a bite of TJ’s after he’d cooked one over the fire. After a little while the four of you grew quiet and a few crackles of the fire filled the night air.

“I’m exhausted. I’m going to head up to bed,” said your mom with a yawn.

“Night,” you said.

“We won’t keep Jensen up too long,” said TJ.

“Rascals,” he said. “I’ll be in soon, honey.”

Your mom hummed as she headed up into the house and TJ slumped down in his chair, watching the fire. He wiped at his face after a moment and started rubbing his eyes. You shifted a bit to get a better view but he kept rubbing.

“Get some ash in there?” asked your dad. He just shook his head and you sat up.

“Babe,” you said as it hit you. “He’s crying.”

“Am not,” said TJ, his voice giving him away.

“Hey,” said your dad. “Come here.”

TJ shook his head and your dad got up, dragging TJ over to the other side of the oversized chair. You turned to your side, TJ looking out to the yard.

“Hey,” said your dad again. “If you won’t look at me, at least look at your wife.”

TJ sniffled and turned his head over to you with a swallow. He looked at your dad quickly before settling back on you.

“What’s wrong, buddy?” asked your dad, putting his arm around his shoulders.

“It just hit me right then that if that truck hadn’t shown up, neither one of you would have been in that chair and I’d...you guys can’t leave De and me alone like that. We’d be wrecks and there’s no way my parents would ever...my dad would be yelling at me for crying right now,” said TJ, wiping off his face again.

“It’s alright,” said your dad, giving him a hug. TJ started to calm down and you cleaned off your face, finding TJ’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “Boys...guys...there ain’t nothing manly or tough about not crying. It’s healthy. Don’t be embarrassed, TJ. You never have to be afraid to do that in front of me, okay? I love you kid. We like to rag on one another but we love each other too. You have an amazing girl. She’s stronger than she looks. You’re stronger than you think you are too. So if it ever went bad, you’re gonna be okay. I promise.”

TJ nodded and your dad moved his other arm back around you, pulling you both into his sides.

“You feel any better?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said TJ. “Y/N’s been telling me it’s okay to get upset over the accident. I should have listened.”

“Normally it’s a wise move to listen to your wife,” he chuckled. “Thomas.”

He looked up at that, your dad’s face a little more hard.

“Are you still not speaking to your dad?” he asked.

“Not really. He asked if you guys were okay about a month ago but that was it.”

“TJ...I think it’s time you, me and your dad sat down and had a talk.”

“Why?”

“Because somehow he helped make you and a part of me has to believe that if he’s half as good as you are, it’s worth having a hard conversation.”

“He’s not like you,” said TJ, shaking his head. “He won’t be happy.”

“It doesn’t matter if he’s happy or not. I will make that very clear to him. You want to disagree with your child, that is okay. But Y/N, she’s not afraid to talk to me. A long time ago, before you were around, she was. She was afraid of me and I was afraid of her. There was a lot of crying and a lot of hard conversations, TJ. But that is why we got to the place where we are. You and I had one of those once and after that, things started to change between us, didn’t it. We’ve had conversations since about the big stuff and the little stuff. I am happy to be your dad, TJ. I am and I’m proud to be that to you. But as a dad, we’re going to have that talk with your dad, the three of us, and we’re going to give him an opportunity that he might not understand that he needs with you right now. Understand?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod.

“Good boy,” he said, kissing his temple and giving you one as well.

“I can’t imagine what he was saying when you guys were like, dying,” said TJ. You looked at your dad and smiled, getting one in return.

“Oh, we were totally cool,” he said. You rolled your eyes and rested your head on his shoulder. “Weren’t we?”

“Oh, totally,” you said.

“Liars,” said TJ. You laughed and heard him let out a quiet chuckle.

“Okay?” asked your dad. TJ nodded and you heard him shift, your dad leaning back in the seat. “TJ.”

“Hm?”

“Go take your girl to bed. She’s worried and wants to cuddle you,” he said.

“Dad,” you said.

“It’s true.”

“In a minute,” you said, giving him a hug. TJ reached over and gave him one as well, you dad ruffling both your heads.

“I love you guys too. Now shoo,” he said. “It’s pretty late.”

TJ hopped up and took care of the fire with your dad. He helped him slowly make his way up to the house while you held the door open.

“How’s your leg today?” you asked.

“Glad to be out of the cast,” he said. “I gotta start a running plan next week or something to work the muscles back up. I’m so not looking forward to it.”

“I bet you are,” you said. “Night dad.”

“Night kiddos,” he said. “Y/N.”

You held back as TJ headed for your old bedroom, your dad grabbing a book off the coffee table.

“Have TJ read this. It’s for a spouse when their partner goes through a traumatic event. Spouses can get a form of PTSD without realizing it,” he said.

“You think…” you said, nodding back.

“I’m not sure. I got it for mom and it made her feel a little better. It might help him too,” he said.

“Thanks,” you said. “Dad.”

“Mhm?”

“Go let mom take care of you, hm? Maybe not be a grump about it?” you said.

“Back at ya,” he said. “Night, tall munchkin.”

“Night, dad. Love you.”

“Love you too, kiddo.”

_________

A/N: Read the TJ’s Talk timestamp here!

#spndeanbingo #spn #supernatural #jensen x daughter!reader #rpf #au #spn reader insert #supernatural reader insert #reader insert #spn fanfiction #jensen x

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there-must-be-a-lock · 3 years

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wings & the way down - part 5

Derek Morgan x Spencer Reid

Word count: 1465

Warnings: One scraped knee, one cranky Spencer, and several mentions of homophobic high school bullying.

Catch up right over here!

Thursday, January 9

Of course they chose today, Spencer thinks bitterly, inspecting the damage to his bike chain.

At least there wasn’t anybody around to see the fall; no sports practices on Thursday, and chess club ran late. There are only a couple cars left in the senior lot.

So, yeah, no witnesses, but…god, that stings. No broken bones, but there’s plenty of broken skin, and the knees of his favorite jeans are shredded and bloodstained.

His eyes feel hot and itchy, but there’s no way he’s going to cry, not here, not now. He has things to do. He can handle it. He’s fine.

And in a few months, he can leave, and he’ll never have to see Charlie fucking Hankel ever again.

Spencer grits his teeth as he gets gingerly to his feet. His knee throbs when he moves, and Spencer hisses at the pain, trying to bend down and pick up the bike without putting too much weight on it.

Someone’s coming out of the school doors, and Spencer almost ducks his head and starts walking before he realizes it’s Emily.

“Spence!” she calls. Just behind her, looking up from his phone as he hears her shout, is Derek.

Of course.

Emily winces sympathetically when she sees the damage, but she doesn’t look surprised. Derek, though, goes all wide-eyed when he realizes Spencer’s hurt; he half-jogs over.

“Shit, you okay? What happened?” He reaches out and puts a hand on Spencer’s shoulder in a gesture that’s probably supposed to be comforting. Spencer shrugs it off. He’s standing close enough that Spencer can smell him, and that’s —

Nope. Not gonna think about it.

He looks down at his ratty Chucks so he doesn’t have to see the genuine concern in Derek’s eyes.

“The usual?” Emily asks Spencer, which, duh. “Hey, wait, how do you guys know each other?”

“We met in the park the other day,” Spencer mutters.

Emily waits, one eyebrow raised, but he doesn’t volunteer any more information. She looks between the two of them shrewdly — Derek’s got his hands in his pockets, hunched a little like he’s anxious — and Spencer wonders what she sees. She’s gotten herself a reputation for being the rebellious, no-fucks-given type, but she’s a hell of a lot sharper than most people give her credit for.

“Do you need a ride?” she asks, before the pause can get too awkward. “I gotta get home to my French tutor or my mom’ll shit bricks, but I could drop you somewhere on the way.”

“No worries, I’m fine. Don’t think my bike would fit.”

Emily drives a cherry-red convertible Bug that’s basically the same size as his bike. She also drives like an idiot.

“Suit yourself,” she says, and waves at both of them as she goes. “See you Saturday, new kid!”

“We’re working on a project together,” Derek tells Spencer, even though he didn’t ask. “Hey, I’ve got the truck, we can just throw your bike in the back and I’ll give you a lift.”

“I’m okay.”

He is. He will be. He can take care of himself just fine.

“Your knee looks rough, man, you really shouldn’t walk on that.”

Spencer stares at him. He’s about a second from screaming, he’s so done, and maybe some of that shows in his face, because Derek recoils slightly, hands raised in surrender.

“Shit, sorry, I was just trying to help.”

Aaaand now Spencer’s an asshole.

“Yeah, okay,” he sighs. “That’s — sure.”

He walks (limps) his bike over to the truck he remembers seeing at the Morgan’s, Derek slowing his pace so that Spencer can keep up, which is infuriating. Derek lifts the bike into the bed of the truck like it weighs nothing.

It’s not until they’re pulling out of the school lot that Spencer mumbles, “Sorry. Just been a rough week.”

“Yeah? You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” Spencer says, attempting a smile, but he’s never been very good at hiding his feelings — which is even more problematic than usual, right now, because he can’t stop staring at Derek’s profile as he drives, or the confident, capable way he shifts gears as the old truck wheezes onto the main road.

“Fair enough.”

The fact that he’s not pushing for answers makes Spencer feel like even more of a dick.

“Turn up there, by the way,” Spencer tells him, and then, when the silence starts to stretch awkwardly, he asks, “How’s your first week going?”

“Not bad. Met a couple cool people. Emily’s a badass.”

Spencer snorts. “Yeah. She really is.”

“You guys hang out a lot?”

“Not really,” Spencer says, because they don’t, at least not outside of school; he doesn’t really hang out with anyone. “We usually sat together at lunch, last semester, but we don’t have the same lunch period any more.” He doesn’t want to admit how much he misses that. Emily’s one of the few people who’s always been nice to him — other than JJ, which doesn’t count, because JJ is nice to everyone — and beyond that, she’s the only person who’s ever really stuck up for him.

“Apparently we have a friend in common. She used to go to school with my girl Penelope, I guess, and we’re gonna all hang out this weekend. You wanna join?”

He comes to a stop at a red light and shoots Spencer a sweet, easy grin, and Spencer just blinks at him for a second.

“Why?” he blurts out.

Derek laughs. “What do you mean, why?”

“Why do you want to hang out with me?” Spencer sputters, and when Derek gives him a blank look, he gives an exasperated sigh. “You’re new. And you’re — I mean, you’re good-looking —”

“Aw, shucks.”

“— and you’re a jock and you’re cool. And you’ll have it easy, you’ll have friends, you’ll have girls falling all over you, but — not if you hang out with people like me and Emily.”

He says quietly, “You two are the most genuine people I’ve met since I got here.”

“Yeah? You know what genuine gets you around here?” Spencer snaps, before he can stop himself. “Messed-up bike chains and a whole lot of time shut in lockers. Not to mention —”

“Wait, really? Somebody did that on purpose?”

Spencer rolls his eyes and barrels on. “Emily gets by, because she’s loaded and she’s pretty and she knows how to fight back. But I — the second day of high school, when I was a freshman… this guy was making fun of my clothes, and he said, ‘What, are you gay or something?’ and I said yes. Because I didn’t know it was something you were supposed to hide, and —”

“Oh,” Derek says quietly.

“Yeah. And I’m not — I’m no good at hiding, and it wasn’t like I’d be cool anyway, it’s not like the kids who run things around here would be inviting me to parties even if that hadn’t happened, but it’s not —” Spencer is babbling, and he makes himself stop, take a breath, before he continues. “Just… trust me, okay? You could have it so easy.”

Derek’s quiet for a long moment, and Spencer realizes they just missed the turn to get to his house. Maybe it’s better that Derek doesn’t pull up out front, though. He doesn’t know what kind of day his mom is having.

“Turn right up here,” Spencer mutters. “You can just drop me at the end of the block.”

Derek parks there without a word, and then he parks and gets out to help Spencer with his bike. Spencer goes to take the handlebars, but Derek doesn’t let go, at first. There’s a fierce, intense expression on his face that Spencer can’t quite read.

“I’ve been one of the cool kids, and it’s not — I don’t care. That’s not me.” Spencer opens his mouth to argue, but Derek cuts him off angrily. “No. I’m sick of hiding shit, it doesn’t get you anywhere, and — fuck it. Just cause people think I look or act a certain way… I’m not interested in those people.”

It’s Spencer’s turn to let out a soft, “Oh.”

Derek sighs. He seems to shake himself out of it, and his voice is calm when he asks, “So how about it? Will you come over Saturday?”

What the hell is Spencer supposed to say to that?

“Yeah, okay,” he mumbles, and Derek gives him one of those disorientingly bright smiles as he steps back, releasing the bike.

“Cool.” He gets back in the drivers seat as Spencer stands there, just watching, but before he closes the door he calls, “See you soon, pretty boy.”

Spencer raises a hand in a wave before wheeling his bike around and starting to limp home.

#moreid #criminal minds fic

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alarawriting · 3 years

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52 Project #30 (Writeober #15: Mortality): Everybody’s Happy As The Dead Come Home

Ever since my mother died of breast cancer a few years ago, I’ve been making time to go visit my elderly father about once a month. That may be conjuring up the wrong image in your head, so let me clarify. My father’s over 70, but he still has a lot of the energy he had as a younger man. He works as a consultant for the big corporation he spent his entire adult pre-retirement life working for, for about three or four times as much money, and he enjoys it. He’s got an active social life, spending time with friends he had shared with Mom as a couple, and new friends he’s made from his bereavement group or his consulting work. And my sister, the baby of the family, lives with him, and my two younger brothers come to visit him a lot more often, since they live a lot closer than I do. So if you’re imagining a lonely, stooped old man pining away in a house that smells like stale cat food – that’s not my dad, and I can’t imagine it would ever be.

I arrived late on a Friday night, as usual. My sister met me at the door, and actually looked me directly in the eye. Stephanie’s autistic; she never looks anyone in the eye. “Eleanor,” she said, and that was another strange thing, because she almost never calls anyone by name… unless she’s doing it for emphasis. “When you find out, don’t say anything about it,” she said.

“About what?” Most of the time Stephanie makes sense, but every so often she says something that sounds like her mind has jumped ahead in the conversation without realizing all the missing pieces she never bothered to say.

“You’ll know,” she said. “And you’ll want to ask ‘why’ and ‘how’, and I’m telling you that you can’t do that. Don’t ask any questions. Just come talk to me after you’re done.”

“Done with what?” I asked.

And then a voice called me from the TV room. “Lennie? Lennie, is that you?”

Only my mom and dad are allowed to call me Lennie. And that was a woman’s voice. I froze in place.

“Go see her,” Stephanie said, and headed off to her room.

I turned toward the TV room, slowly. “Lennie! Come out and see me!” my mom’s voice called.

I didn’t know whether to be terrified, or to start crying and fling myself into her arms. I walked very slowly, very cautiously, to the edge of the kitchen, where I could see my parents in the TV room. Both of my parents. My dad was smiling.

“Lennie!” my mom said, standing up. She hadn’t been able to stand up without help for months before she died, but here she was, standing up easily. She didn’t look any younger than she had when she died, but she looked healthier. The extreme thinness she’d suffered from at the end after it had metastasized and she’d barely been able to eat was gone; her flesh was filled out, her skin as taut as you could expect from a woman her age, and healthy-looking. Pale, but her natural paleness, not the weird, sallow, almost yellow color it had been at the very end.

“Mom?” I whispered.

“Come here. I need a hug,” Mom said, sounding exactly like she always had – joking, but there was always that note of truth under it. She didn’t wait for me to make my way to her – she never had, not until she was too ill to get up – but came straight for me and gave me a hug, and she smelled like herself. Not like a rotting corpse, not like ozone or nothing or whatever a ghost is supposed to smell like.

When I was a kid, my brother Jeff and I watched the miniseries version of “The Martian Chronicles”. In particular, he was always impressed (and terrified) by the part where the astronauts meet their long-lost loved ones, who turn out to be Martian shapechangers luring them to their deaths. I always wondered, if the people they saw on Mars were dead, how did they fall for it? How did they not know that dead people could not somehow be on Mars?

As I held my mom, who’d been dead a few years now, I understood. They’d wanted to believe. I wanted to believe. Stephanie had warned me not to ask anything – no “how are you not dead”, “how can you be here”, “why are you alive,” nothing like that. I assumed that was what she’d meant, anyway.

“Mom, I’ve been trying to trace some of my past that I’ve forgotten. Do you remember the name of my third grade teacher?”

“Huh.” My mom seemed to be thinking about it. “I think it was Mrs. Wilder, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. Second grade was Ms. Jenner, right? And fourth was Mrs. White?”

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t, in fact, remember my third grade teacher’s name, and neither did my dad. The Martians in the story had been telepaths; they’d been able to perfectly impersonate the astronauts’ loved ones because they could read the astronauts’ minds. Now I had a piece of information whose answer I didn’t know, and no way to easily confirm it unless Jeff remembered; he was only two years younger than me and had had some of the same teachers. But some of the people I had friended on Facebook were high school classmates, and a tiny number of my high school classmates had also been with me in elementary school, and might remember my third grade teacher’s name.

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” my mom said. “What’s going on in your life?”

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Things are going okay. Mom, if I’d known you were here I’d have brought the kids.”

“You can bring them up next time,” Mom said.

This was so weird. My mom was definitely dead. I had seen her body in the coffin, lying in state, looking nothing like she had in life. But here she was, impossibly, and I was holding an almost normal conversation with her. “Have Jeff or Aaron come over since you’ve… been here?”

“Jeff was here last weekend,” Dad said. “And Aaron lives next door, so he’s been over nearly every day.”

My grandparents used to live next door. When they died, my mom and my uncle inherited the house. My uncle bought out my mom’s share and rented the house out, and my youngest brother ended up renting it. My other brother lives in an apartment down in the city; I’m the odd one out, living in a completely different state, with a husband and kids.

So all of them had known, and none of them had told me. I expected Stephanie and Aaron to never tell me anything, but I was more than a little irritated with Jeff.

“Let me go drop off my stuff,” I said, since I was still carrying my bag.

I went back to Stephanie’s room, which used to be my room, a long time ago. The boys used to room together, but my room was too small for Stephanie to share with me, and she had needed a lot of space of her own… so they’d converted the loft in the garage into a bedroom. It had never been warm in the winter, though, so as soon as I moved out, Stephanie had moved in.

Stephanie was, as usual, on her computer. I shut the door behind me. “Okay. What the hell is going on?”

“She’s not the only one,” Stephanie said, without looking away from her computer. “I’ve been doing research. They’re all over the place. There’s no explanation yet, and apparently none of them will talk about it. I asked Mom and she said I was really rude, and sulked and was really passive-aggressive.”

“So we’re not worried about Mom turning into a Martian shapechanger or vanishing, we’re just worried that she’ll get mad?” To be fair, making Mom mad had always been a thing worth avoiding at all costs. “When did she come back?”

“I don’t know exactly, but presuming that she came to see me right after she came back, it would have been Monday around 3 pm.”

“And no one told me? You have my email address!”

“…It just didn’t feel right, telling you something like this in email. I felt like I should wait for you to be here.”

“And Jeff didn’t? And Aaron didn’t?”

Stephanie shrugged. She still didn’t look away from her computer. “They probably felt the same way.”

“Does Dad… know? Like, does he even remember that Mom is dead, or does he think this is normal?”

“I didn’t ask him.”

I sat down on her bed. “Steph, I’m asking you to make an informed guess. Has he said anything to you that would either suggest that he’s aware this is abnormal, or that he isn’t?”

“I don’t read minds, but I haven’t heard anything from him one way or the other. He’s very happy, though.”

“I got that impression,” I told her. I went to the guest room, which used to belong to the boys, opened up my laptop, and sent Jeff a question on Facebook about my third grade teacher.

Mom appeared while I was debating whether or not to also ask him why the hell he hadn’t told me about her. “Lennie, don’t hide in your room. Come out and talk to me and your dad. You need to catch me up on your life!”

Part of me wanted to break down crying. Part of me wanted to run to the car. Part of me was annoyed the way I always used to be annoyed when my mom wanted to spend time with me and I had stuff to do. And part of me hated myself for being annoyed by my mom for any reason at all. She was back from the dead and I wanted to hide in my room? But I wanted to hide in my room because I wanted to do research to figure out if this was really my mom or not. And what had Stephanie meant by “all over the place”? People all over the place had returned from the dead? Why wasn’t this all over the news?

What I said was, “Okay, mom,” and I went out to the TV room to talk to her.

***

Here I was, having a completely mundane conversation with a dead woman.

Yes, my husband was doing well at his consulting business. Yes, my oldest daughter was doing well in college. My youngest daughter had a rough spot a few years ago but was doing better. The daughter in the middle was putting a lot of time into her music, and was getting really good. I didn’t mention that my oldest daughter had gotten a diagnosis of autism like her aunt, or that my middle daughter was failing all her subjects because all she cared about was music, or that my youngest daughter was openly bisexual and dating a nonbinary teen in her class, because those would be fraught topics around here. My mother would be openly disapproving of the failing in school – as was I, but I wasn’t here to listen to a lecture about what I should be doing differently to make sure Rhiannon passed her classes – and she’d be what she thought counted as supportive about the other things. Are you sure it’s a good idea for Janie to have an autism diagnosis on her medical record? Lots of people will discriminate against her, just ask Stephanie, it’s not a good thing to admit to the world. And if Lori wanted to date a person who claimed to have no gender, good for her, but was she sure it was a good idea to admit to the world that she was bi when the world is so prejudiced? Blah blah blah. No. I wasn’t going there, not with my mother back from the dead.

All the questions I wanted to ask. How? How was she back? Why? Was there an afterlife after all? What was it like? Are you absolutely sure you’re not a telepathic shapechanger who wants to eat us? Is anyone else coming back or is it just you? But I couldn’t do it. My mouth wouldn’t make the words, and I felt like Mom being alive was a soap bubble that might burst any moment. If I said she was dead, would she disappear? I couldn’t take the risk.

Now I knew why Jeff and Aaron hadn’t told me. The compulsion not to talk about it, the fear that talking about the circumstances of her death and her apparently-no-longer-deadness would cause her to stop being no-longer-dead. I wouldn’t be able to tell my husband about this, or my kids, not unless they came here. Not without feeling like Mom might disappear if I did.

Which was probably how Stephanie had gotten away with it, in the beginning. If this was some kind of emotional pressure, something emanating from the presence of a dead woman... Stephanie was typically immune to emotional pressure. Or pretended she was, anyway. She hid behind her monotone and her face that barely expressed anything until she couldn’t, and then she’d go and have a meltdown in the bathroom. But she wanted to please Mom. We all wanted to please Mom. So if Mom had told her she was rude for mentioning the death thing, Stephanie would be unable to mention it again. Because she wouldn’t want Mom to think she was rude.

This felt very much like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Dead mother back to life, check. Weird inexplicable pressure not to talk about it, check. But Mom clearly remembered things that had happened shortly before her death, and showed no evidence of knowing about anything that had happened since, unless it was public knowledge. She talked about interests the girls had had three years ago, interests they’d all outgrown since. She talked about my plan to remodel my own garage – I had completely forgotten that was even a thing we’d planned at one point, because I’d lost my job shortly after Mom died and then the money wasn’t there for the remodel. She didn’t know I was working with my husband in the consulting business now, which a telepath would obviously know because it dominates my life nowadays. Obviously a Martian telepathic shapechanger would have to pretend not to know things that supposedly happened while they were dead, but if I’d forgotten about the garage, what were the odds a telepath could pull it out of my head? There had to be more accessible thoughts in there, after all.

I didn’t know what to ask Mom. How do you feel? That was always a good one, back in the day, because Mom’s chronic illnesses meant there was always something she could complain about, but she wouldn’t do it until she was asked… she’d just quietly resent the fact that no one had asked her. But did dead people still feel things? Would that intrude on the topic I wasn’t supposed to talk about? What’s going on in your life? Oh, nothing much, Lennie, I’m back from the dead, how about you?

So I talked about myself. I was learning to work leather and I’d made myself a wallet, but I left it at home, I could bring it to show her next time. I was also learning to repair dolls. The girls had all abandoned theirs and I felt bad about it, so I was cleaning them up and repairing them and putting them in dioramas. Mom was very interested in both topics, and asked if I could repair some old dolls she had up in the attic. I was pretty sure I’d already done it – if it was the dolls I was thinking of, Dad had given them to me right after Mom died, and they were the ones I’d learned on. But was it safe to talk about? Dad wasn’t saying anything; had he forgotten he gave me the dolls, which was entirely possible, or did he think it wasn’t safe to talk about either?

I’d wanted for three years to be able to tell my mom that she was wrong about all the weight loss advice she’d given me because now it had come out that scientists had never proven that fat made you fat and the low-carb diets were probably better for you than the low-fat ones, but I didn’t know if she could still eat. Also, my mom was back from the dead and I wanted to start an argument with her about a topic I’d always hated when she talked about? Didn’t I have anything better to do? That really kind of made me a shitty person, didn’t it?

When Mom had been dying, I couldn’t talk to her about the future. I didn’t know how to bring myself to talk about things she’d never see. I’d never known how much my conversations with her consisted of me talking about future plans until I couldn’t any more. Now I couldn’t talk about the future or the past, at least not the past three years, and large parts of the present had to be left out too, because I didn’t know what would remind her that she was dead and make her go back to her grave. Even though, logically, I knew that was unlikely to happen because Stephanie had done it and had just gotten a rebuke that that was rude.

At the same time… I knew I had to say something that Mom could talk about, because if I just talked about myself all night, later on she’d probably make some passive-aggressive remarks about how everything always had to be about me. In desperation, I asked her if she’d seen anything good on television lately.

“Oh, I haven’t been watching anything in a while,” Mom said. “It’s been so long since I felt well enough to go anywhere, so I’ve been going for walks, and your father and I have been taking trips to museums and historic sites. We’re going to be going up to Boston next week.”

“I have a client up there,” Dad said, “and they want me to do a training thing. And I was telling them, no, no, Boston’s too far, but I remembered how much your mom loved Boston, so I asked her if she wanted to go and she said yes, so now we’re going. We’re going to fly, though. The days I was willing to drive that kind of distance are long over.”

“You could take the Amtrak.”

Dad made a dismissive gesture. “It’s gotten so expensive. Flying’s actually cheaper.”

“When are you going?”

“Next Wednesday we’re going to fly up there,” Mom said, which said something about her opinion of the future, at least. “Your dad’s got his presentations to do on Thursday and Friday, and I’ll wander around the city, and then we’ll spend Saturday seeing the sights together.”

“There’s this fantastic restaurant I went to last time I was up there on business,” Dad said, “and I checked their web page, and they’re still open. So we’re going to go there.”

So Mom could eat. Or Dad wasn’t afraid of talking about eating with her, anyway. Maybe ruled out vampire, but Martian shapechanger was still on the table.

I didn’t literally believe my mom – or the entity that appeared to be my mom – was a telepathic shapechanger from Mars like in The Martian Chronicles. But it was obvious that something so far outside the norm that it was only imaginable by making references to fantasy and science fiction was happening.

I tried, very carefully, “How have you been feeling, Mom?”

“I’m great!” She laughed. “I haven’t felt this good in ages. Sugar’s under control, I can see pretty well, none of the usual aches and pains… I’m doing pretty good!”

Did she remember she had died of cancer? Did she even remember that she’d died?

It was 2 am before I got to go to bed.

***

6 am and I was up and out the door before there was any chance of my mother or father being awake, assuming my mom even slept anymore. But at the very least, she was in her bedroom with the door closed and no view of the driveway I’d parked my car in.

Do I sound like a terrible daughter when I tell you I’ve never visited my mom’s grave? I haven’t been back there since the funeral. I always knew my mother wasn’t really there – that if any part of her had still existed in any form, it wasn’t trapped in a coffin under six feet of dirt. It made it somewhat difficult to find the graveyard, though, because I couldn’t remember where it was, or its name, or which church it was associated with, and it wasn’t exactly like I could ask my mom. When I finally found the place– it wasn’t that hard in the end, my parents live in a small town and there aren’t many graveyards – it took me half an hour to find her grave.

It seemed undisturbed. But if Mom had been back from the dead since Monday, that would have been time to fill in a grave. I went looking for the caretaker.

They get to work early in the graveyard caretaking business, I guess; I found him pushing a lawnmower over on the other side of the graveyard.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“This is going to sound stupid,” I said. “But I got an email from a jerk I used to know in high school claiming he was going to dig up my mother’s grave, and I just wanted to make sure nobody’s touched it.”

“Nobody’s touched any of the graves, ma’am,” he assured me. “Aside from a couple of funerals we’ve had this week, no one’s done anything to disturb the ground here at all.”

“Thanks,” I said, “that’s reassuring. He was talking like he was actually going to do it, but I guess he was all talk.”

“Well, if anyone comes by and disturbs any of the graves, we’ll have them arrested,” he said.

I had my answer. My mother had not climbed out of her grave. Which seemed impossible anyway, now that I knew enough about the funeral industry to know exactly how hard it would be to smash a coffin open, let alone dig through six feet of dirt. I couldn’t rule out her turning immaterial and floating out of her grave, but my mom had seemed very material and biological when she’d hugged me. I’d always thought of ghosts as something that were almost never solid enough to interact with the world, if they even existed.

***

If I was going to get up this early, I was going to get a pancake breakfast at the diner. My parents still think sugarless cold cereal is a reasonable thing to eat for breakfast. They were always night owls; I made myself breakfast and school lunch every morning but the first day of school, every year after about third grade. I was also a night owl, once I didn’t have to get up for school anymore, but I used to make my girls a lunch every night and store it in the fridge for them. Now they’re too old and too cool for Mom lunches. They’re eating something, but it might be cafeteria food, lunch they pack for themselves, or for all I know sandwiches from 7-11 or Starbucks with their allowance.

The point is, I hardly ever get a nice breakfast, because I am hardly ever willing to wake up early enough to cook myself one, and my parents certainly weren’t going to. So I went to the diner.

Normally I don’t talk to anyone at a diner, beyond smiling at them and telling them my order in an upbeat, cheerful voice because waitresses get too much shit from too many people for me to add to it inadvertently. Also because I don’t want them to think I’m eating alone because I’m a sad, lonely bitch no one would love; I want them to know I’m doing this because I really, really enjoy not having to socialize. But today I had something I needed to know.

“I’m a writer,” I told the waitress, “and I’m doing research on ghost stories in the area. Have you heard anything, you know, Halloweeny or spooky? Ghosts appearing, dead people walking around, poltergeists, that kind of thing?”

“Can’t say I have, but I’ll ask around, see if any of the girls know any good stories,” the waitress told me.

And then she took my order back to the kitchen, and I surfed the net on my phone while I waited, and then I got my pancakes, and I ate them. I was chasing the last blueberry around on the plate when another waitress approached me. “Stacy told me you were collecting creepy stories for a book?”

“From the local area, yeah.”

“I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you’re looking for, but… my cousin says that a lady on her street, her husband died a few years ago? But she just saw the guy walking with the lady down the street, having a conversation like the guy never died.”

“Do you think you’d be able to give my email to your cousin and have her reach out to me? That sounds like exactly the kind of story I’m looking for.”

“Uh, sure.”

I gave the waitress my email address. This was probably going to come to nothing; I doubted the waitress would even remember to give it to her cousin. But it’d be really good if I could get the details from someone who knew more about it.

***

Jeff’s more of a morning person than I am. I got a response on Facebook, but I had to wait to get back to my parents’ house, where my laptop was, to read it. On mobile, Facebook will only let you read messages if you have the app, which tells Mark Zuckerberg exactly where you are and what you’re doing with your phone, all the time. I don’t have the app. Sometimes this means I can’t read messages on mobile, but I prefer that to having an evil data empire know everything about my movements.

My parents weren’t awake when I got home. Or they were still in their bedroom. They used to do that a lot. Mom’s desk was in there, and Dad had a laptop… which he usually used on Mom’s desk, since she died. I wondered where her machine was, and if she had made a thing about it once she came back.

“I’m not sure I remember what your third grade teacher’s name was… I can barely remember my own third grade teacher. Were they the same? I can’t remember. I think my own teacher’s name was… Wil-something? Wilber? Wilkins? You’d be better off… well, you’re at the house now, or are you back at your home? Kind of important to know, because I could give you some advice about who to ask, but it’d be a different thing if you were at Dad’s house.”

He meant, “You’d be better off asking Mom, but I don’t know if you know Mom is back from the dead or not.” I was pretty sure, anyway.

I responded. “I’m at Dad’s house. Wondering how I’d be able to tell the difference between someone who’s real and a Martian shapechanger. Could the name have been Wilder?”

Five minutes later I got my answer. “Mom isn’t a Martian shapechanger. It was the first thing I thought of, so I checked.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

That answer I didn’t get until half an hour later. “I… just didn’t feel right, talking about it in an impersonal medium like the internet. I know you have a cell phone and I probably even have your number somewhere, but I remember you’re not the biggest fan of actual phone calls, so I didn’t want to disturb you.”

I replied with my phone number and the message “Call me.”

And then I had to sit by my phone, doing nothing important, nothing that would engage my attention in any serious way, waiting for him to call. Which took twenty minutes, despite the fact that I could see that he was online.

Finally the phone rang. “You raaaaang?” I answered in my best parody of The Addams Family.

“I’m pretty sure I must have, or you wouldn’t have known to pick up,” Jeff said. “Of course, I might have buzzed. You could have your phone on vibrate. Or maybe I sang, depending on what you have for a ringtone.”

“’You saaaaang?’ doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi to it.”

“Wow, how long has it been since I heard someone put je ne sais quoi in a sentence? I think we’re old. I think that’s an old person expression now.”

“What’s going on with Mom?” I asked, quietly, in case anyone might be in the hallway to hear me.

Jeff sighed. “I don’t know what is, but I can tell you what isn’t,” he said. “Stephanie confirmed that she eats, sleeps and goes to the bathroom normally, and I confirmed all of that for myself. The toilet in their bedroom is still broken enough that they don’t flush it unless they have to.”

I winced. That was a level of detail I could have done without. “So, not vampire or undead. How did you solve the Martian thing?”

“On Monday, Dad woke up and she was laying next to him in bed. If the goal was to kill him, it would have made more sense to do it then, before he woke up, than to put on this whole elaborate performance.”

“You’re taking me too literally. I’m not worried about aliens trying to take our family off guard so they can kill us. There’s any number of things they could be up to, and they don’t have to be aliens. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Stepford Wives. My Little Pony.”

“…My Little Pony?”

“There’s creatures called Changelings that feed on love. They impersonate ponies and take the love that other ponies feel for the ones they’re impersonating, as food.”

“Kind of psychic vampires mashed up with Martian shapechangers.”

“Yeah, but without the telepathy, so they’re not as good at it as you’d think. It’s a children’s show; they have to telegraph to the kids that these aren’t the real ponies. In real life, anyone who did something like that would be more competent.”

“How much verisimilitude do we need, though? She’s got moles in the same places Mom had moles. She’s missing a toenail just like Mom. Things I didn’t consciously think about, things I might not have remembered if you asked me to describe Mom.”

“That just means that if it’s not Mom, it has the ability to rummage deeper into our memories than we’re consciously aware of. That’s why I asked you my third grade teacher’s name. I genuinely don’t remember. Mom would, I’m pretty sure. Dad wouldn’t and Stephanie and Aaron were both too young.”

“I’m not sure I remember, but when you said Wilder, that sounded like it could be right. Do you know anyone from elementary school? Some of them went to high school with us.”

“I have some Facebook friends from high school, and maybe one or two went to the same elementary we did, but I haven’t been able to locate any actual people that I remember from elementary school. They don’t have a Classmates.com thing that works for elementary—”

“It says it does.”

“It lies, there’s nowhere to enter your elementary in your profile. All it lets you put in is high school, and it’s from a drop-down, not even freeform.”

“Huh. Guess I never tried it. I’m still in touch with anyone I cared about from back then.”

“I literally don’t care about anyone from back then, but that makes it hard when you’re trying to figure out your third grade teacher’s name.”

“If she can probe our memories,” Jeff said, “then nothing you or I know, or ever knew, would be safe. You’d have to come up with something to ask her that Dad wouldn’t know, or me, or Aaron, or Steph, or yourself, but that you know Mom would know and that you know someone else who would know it too.”

“I could ask Mariana for something.” My mom’s close friend and high school classmate was one of my Facebook friends. We don’t generally communicate directly with each other, but I follow her posts.

“That’s a good idea.” I heard the sound of a whistling teapot in the background. “That’d be my hot water for my oatmeal. If you get anything from Mariana, can you tell me about it?”

“Yeah.” I’d wanted to tell him about the story I’d heard in the diner, but no one got between Jeff and his oatmeal. “I’ll talk to you later. Probably online. Voice is making me paranoid.”

“I know what you mean. Do you need me to come up this weekend? I could make a day trip tomorrow.”

“That might be a good idea. I want to talk to Aaron, do you know what schedule he’s on?”

“He works nights now, so you’ll want to get him around 2 pm or so.”

“All right. Enjoy your oatmeal.”

“I will!” he said, putting a ridiculous amount of emphasis into it as a joke.

***

Before I could finish writing a message to Mariana – before I could really start, honestly, because how could I explain why I needed what I needed without admitting Mom was back from the dead? – someone knocked on my door. It was Mom. She was wearing one of her usual kind of shapeless but colorful nightgowns, and her hair was not brushed, so it was kind of a wreck. I noticed for the first time that it was grey. Mom had always dyed her hair since she started going grey, and it had still been auburn when she’d died. I’d never seen it fully grey. “Your dad and I are going to the arboretum,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

“Since when have you been into trees, Mom?” My mother had always been fascinated by history, and to some extent natural history like dinosaurs, but I’d never seen her express an interest in nature per se.

“I never was, much,” she admitted, “but the world is so beautiful. I was always more interested in the way humans shape the world than the way it came out of the box, but things like arboretums, Japanese gardens, zoos and aquariums… they’re made of nature, but they’re made by humans, and they say something about the people who chose to make them the way they are. And you know that your dad has always enjoyed nature.” My dad was interested in science, in general, and considered the natural world part of that. He was not exactly the kind of guy who would go camping.

In the past, I would have said “no, thanks.” I was never all that interested in nature myself, certainly not trees – maybe beautiful rocks or interesting landscapes, but looking at trees wouldn’t have seemed interesting to me. I still didn’t care much about trees… but my mom was back from the dead. I’ve gone much stupider and more boring places than an arboretum with her in the past, and now… if this was really her, if she was really alive again, I was going to spend all the time with her that I reasonably could.

“Sure, I’ll go,” I said. “I’ll take my own car, though. Just give me the address.” I always took my own car if I possibly could, because I’d get carsick if I wasn’t the one driving. “Should I ask Stephanie if she wants to come?”

“Sure, you can ask. I doubt she will, though.”

Stephanie, however, surprised me. “Yeah, I’ll go with you. We’ll meet Mom and Dad there?”

“Yeah.” Dad had texted me the address, so I pulled it up in my GPS. “About half an hour from here.”

In the car, she asked me, “Have you found anything out? I know you were looking into the whole Mom thing.”

“Jeff thinks she’s really Mom. We have a plan to get Mariana to give us a question that we don’t know the answer to, but that Mom and Mariana both would, so we can confirm she really knows things and isn’t just reading our minds. And a waitress at the diner said her cousin has seen what looks like someone else coming back from the dead.”

“It’s all over the place, actually,” Stephanie said. “I’m finding reports from everywhere.”

I glanced at her. “Why wouldn’t this be making the news, then? People coming back from the dead!”

“I feel like maybe no one wants to go on the record.” Stephanie looked out the window. “Nothing on Twitter or Facebook. No pictures of dead people on Instagram. I’m seeing things on Reddit and Tumblr – places where people use a consistent pseudonym, not like 4chan, but where that pseudonym can’t be tied to their actual identity. I’ve posted about it in both places, but I can’t make myself tweet about it.”

“Any idea why not?”

“It—” She shrugged, hands exaggeratedly widespread and head canted forward slightly. “It just feels wrong,” she said. “Like… we’re getting away with something. There’s a natural law we’re breaking here. I can post as toomanymushrooms or u/catonahottinroofsundae and no one knows who I am, but if I post as Stephanie Robbins and I tell everyone that my mom Suky Robbins is back from the dead…”

“What if that brought it to the attention of, what, some kind of authorities?”

“Yeah, pretty much. And even if I was just posting under my own name… I don’t have to say Mom’s name. I don’t have to put a mention to her Facebook in a post. But everyone knows my mother’s name, or they could find out from my name if they wanted to.”

“And you think maybe there are a lot of people with these weird feelings?”

“I don’t think so, I know so. A lot of posts explicitly talk about the fact that they can’t bring themselves to say anything in public, or talk about it with their real names on it.”

“Are they all parents?”

“No. It’s all kinds of people. Best friends, siblings, spouses, children… the only pattern I see is that nobody died a long time ago. It’s all, ‘my brother who died last year’ or ‘my aunt who died two years ago’ or something. Longest I’ve seen anyone talk about was a son who died five years ago.”

A thought occurs to me. “I can add something to your pattern, though.”

“Yeah?”

“You’d expect that, even if everyone with a resurrected relative feels this sense of dread about telling anyone about it with their name attached, because they feel it will, I don’t know, maybe cause the dead person to disappear back into their grave… you’d think somebody would do it anyway because they don’t care. Someone whose alcoholic abusive father came back and they wish he’d go away again, someone’s asshole brother, someone’s former best friend who betrayed them. But so far, no one has. How many people have you seen talking about this?”

“It’s hard to say because no one’s using their real names. Someone might post from their main blog and their side blog, or maybe they have a different name on tumblr vs reddit but they posted to both. But I’ve tracked thirteen separate names, and of those, I can tell for a fact there are at least nine unique ones because they talk about different people.”

“Thirteen isn’t ‘all over the place’.”

“I didn’t mean all over the Internet, I meant people coming from all over. I’ve tracked the UK, California, North Dakota, Ontario, France, India and New Zealand. Nobody’s tagging their posts and no one is willing to contribute to a master list, so it’s hard to find anyone outside of the people I follow or the subreddits I’m in, and I don’t know where everyone comes from. But it’s geographically widespread. I suspect it may also be happening in other places where people don’t generally speak English or maybe don’t have Internet access.”

“And what’s their sentiment? Like, are people frightened? Upset? Excited? Weirded out?”

She took a moment to think about it. “They’re happy. People are happy it happened. Weirded out, yes. But happy.”

“No whacked-out conspiracy theories about how it’s the contrails raining down adenochrome or something?”

“Not from the people it’s happened to. There was one flame war I saw where a religious person was saying that the person whose sister was back from the dead had to repudiate her. She’s not really your sister, she’s a demon from Hell sent to trick you, et cetera. And the person whose sister was back turned out to be just as religious, and they threw a holy fit. Literally. A holy fit.” She giggled. “A whole lot of stuff about how the righteous were coming back and Jesus had granted some people eternal life and this was that, and how dare you call these beings demons when they’re obviously blessed by Jesus himself and you’re the kind of person who would have called for Jesus’s crucifixion if you’d been alive then, and all that kind of thing.”

“Did anyone else who’d had returned people say anything?”

“This was Tumblr. None of the people who have had returns are communicating with each other in any way I can see. I reached out to a few on Tumblr private messaging but no one has answered. The only places I’m seeing conversations about it between people with returns have been on Reddit, because it has a forum structure. Tumblr is more like a whole hanging web of disconnected strings.”

“Still, you’d think that someone would be publishing a news article about it. Even if no one is willing to go on the record with their real name…”

“Maybe it’s not enough people. Nine unique instances, maybe up to thirteen, maybe more in places I haven’t surveyed. It’s not like I have access to literally all of Tumblr, after all. But that’s all I can confirm, and what if there isn’t any more?”

“If anyone came back from the dead I would expect the news to take notice.” I turned onto the final road; the arboretum was at the end of this stretch. “I went to the graveyard today. Mom’s grave hasn’t been disturbed. I checked with the groundskeeper. So either Mom’s body floated ethereally through the grave dirt, and her coffin, or her original body is still in there and whatever she is now, it’s not the same as what she was then.”

“It’s too bad we can’t have her exhumed,” Stephanie said.

“It probably wouldn’t tell us much anyway.”

“She’s younger-looking than she was before. Not by much, and the grey hair hides it, but she’s healthier-looking and less wrinkly. And I don’t see any evidence that she still has diabetes, or that she’s taking any pills at all. I haven’t seen her take any insulin shots, or anything.”

“Huh.” She wasn’t restored to her youth, or her hair wouldn’t be grey and there would be no wrinkles at all. She wasn’t restored to what she was at the moment of death, obviously. She wasn’t restored to what she’d have been at the moment of death without the cancer that killed her, if she didn’t have diabetes anymore. I felt like there had to be a pattern here I wasn’t seeing. I really wanted to talk to some of these other people having this experience.

I pulled in to the arboretum’s parking lot. Mom and Dad weren’t there yet; Dad doesn’t drive like an old man, but he doesn’t drive as fast as he used to, either. “Do they do this kind of thing a lot? Arboretums, parks, et cetera?”

“They don’t usually invite me, and I wouldn’t usually come if they did, so I don’t know. They do leave the house a lot.”

Dad’s car pulled in, and he and Mom got out. For the first time I could remember, Mom was actually moving a bit faster than him. Both Mom and Dad were the kind of people who walked quickly everywhere they went, but for a long time, Mom was slowed down by her various illnesses. Dad was still healthy for his age, but he’d slowed down a good bit since Mom’s death – grief was hard on his health, it seemed – and now Mom seemed healthier than he was.

“Did you know there are people who come here from all over just to see our leaves in the autumn?” Mom said.

I did know that; it was typically a factor in making it hard for me to come visit during the autumn. “I think it’s the mountainsides. There’s leaves turning colors all over the country, but not on mountainsides.”

“In California they don’t even consider these mountains,” Mom said. “They call them hills when they come visit.”

“No respect for the elderly,” Dad said.

“Yeah, these young mountains think they’re all that, but wait 100,000 years and see how tall they are then,” Stephanie said.

We strolled around, looking at the trees, reading what it said on the plaques in front of them. American Elm. Yellow Birch. Eastern White Pine. I’d seen trees just like these my whole life, and a good number of them, I’d never known the names.

“You never think about how beautiful the world is,” Mom said. “We’re all rushing through it, trying to accomplish the next thing. Or entertain ourselves. Read a book, watch TV. So few of us really want to interact with nature.”

“Careful, mom, your hippie roots are showing,” I said, teasing.

“I think if my generation had remembered what we were back when we were the hippies, the world would be better off.”

“We didn’t forget, Suky. The hippies were always big news, but you know as well as I do how many people our age just wanted to go punch a clock, buy a house, vote for Ronald Fucking Reagan… We thought we were the generation that would change the world, but it wasn’t our generation, it was us. People like us, who wanted to see a better world and weren’t content to just live like the sheep our parents were… but there’s people like that in every generation. And they’re always outnumbered by the assholes.”

“Actually, they’ve done a study,” Stephanie said. “The reason generations get more conservative as they get older is that at every point, the poor are more likely to die than the rich, and the rich are more conservative than the poor. So by the time you get to middle age, a lot of the people looking for social justice and diversity are dead. And there’s a lot more dead by the time they’re elderly.”

“I don’t buy it,” my dad said. “There’s entirely too many stupid poor people in this country who are brainwashed into supporting causes that help out the rich people and screw themselves over. They’re not living longer than anyone else in this country. The math doesn’t work.”

“Let’s not talk about politics,” Mom said. “I think we all know there’s something more important we ought to be discussing.”

“Mom?” Stephanie said, and looked at her, which is not a thing Stephanie does very often.

“Suky?” Dad said.

I didn’t say anything. I watched as Mom looked up at a tree and said, “It’s time we dealt with the elephant in the room, don’t you think?”

“Are you going to tell us about—” I couldn’t say anything more. I couldn’t bring myself to make the words.

“About the fact that I was dead, and now I’m not?” She looked at all of us. “I think we should talk about it, yes.”

It felt like there were eyes, watching us. I wanted to yell to my mother, to tell her not to talk about it, that someone might hear… but who? And why would it matter?

“Is that something you’re okay with, Suky?” Dad asked.

“I’m fine, but I’m getting the impression the rest of you aren’t,” she said. “Why haven’t any of you brought it up, except Stephanie, the once?”

“Well, you told me it was rude,” Stephanie said.

Mom sighed. “I guess I did. I’m sorry. This isn’t really easy for me either.”

She sat down on a bench, and Dad sat with her. Stephanie and I sat on a short stone wall around a tree. “I suppose I should start by saying, I don’t really know much more than you do. I don’t have any memories of being dead. I woke up in bed, next to your dad, on Monday morning, and for a while I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there… I assumed I went to bed the previous night, but I couldn’t remember what had happened the night before. I couldn’t pin down anything I remembered as to exactly when it happened, not in the recent past. And when your father woke up, the shock on his face and the fact that he kept asking me if I was really here made me think, wait, the last thing I remember was that I was in a hospital dying of cancer, so why am I here now?”

“So you don’t remember any kind of afterlife?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I believe I had some sort of existence, but I don’t remember anything about it. When I wake up, I have flashes, feelings that I dreamed something about it, but I can’t hold it in my head long enough to write it down or even talk about it. It just… disappears, leaving behind only the memory that something was there a few minutes ago.”

“You know how unlikely the idea that an afterlife exists is, scientifically, though. Right?” Dad said. “Consciousness is an emergent property of a trillion neurons working together. Imagining that there could be some sort of construct that exists outside the brain and body is like imagining that a video game character could be waltzing around in front of us.”

“And yet I’m here,” Mom said.

“Time travel or a Star Trek transporter with some modifications would make more sense than something supernatural, like an afterlife,” Dad said stubbornly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stephanie said. “If Mom doesn’t remember…”

“Have you had a medical exam?” I asked.

Mom laughed. “I don’t have health insurance anymore. I’m dead, remember? I can’t even begin to figure out how we’re going to address getting me a legal identity again, and to be honest… I can’t know I’ll be around long enough for it to matter.”

“None of us know that,” I said, “about ourselves or anyone else.”

“True, and it’s going to be hard to travel if I don’t have a legal identity. So I suppose I’ll have to address it eventually, if I last that long.”

“Thank God your state ID hasn’t actually expired yet, or there’d be no way we could fly to Boston. The passport’s expired,” Dad said. Mom had been legally blind when she died, so she’d had a state ID rather than a driver’s license.

“Is there any reason you might not? Aside from the things that could kill anyone?” I asked.

Dad said, “Your mother and I discussed… when she first appeared, I found it nearly impossible to talk about the fact that she’d been dead. When she broached the topic, I could talk about it to her, but I couldn’t tell you kids.” He shrugged. “My working theory is that there’s some kind of alien experiment going on or that time travel is somehow involved, but the fact that none of you kids were able to tell each other about it until you knew the other one knew suggests to me that someone with the ability to directly affect human emotions or thought is, for some reason, making it hard to talk about this. Maybe that means it’s a short-lived experiment.”

“Maybe I escaped from hell and no one wants to talk about it for fear the devil will take me back,” Mom said, but she was laughing. Mom had never believed in hell. Dad was an atheist; Mom definitely had strong spiritual beliefs, but they were kind of a package of woo that included reincarnation and ghosts, even though she’d been raised Catholic.

“There are others like you,” Stephanie said. “None of them have talked about it themselves, but family members or friends have talked about it online, under pseudonyms. I haven’t found any evidence that anyone has mentioned anything under their real names.”

“A lot?” Mom was surprised.

“So far I count between nine and thirteen unique individuals, plus Eleanor heard a rumor that someone who might live in town might have come back. We don’t know any details, though.”

“We need to find them,” Mom said. “I need to find them. I have a second chance at life, and I’m not ashamed of it. I won’t be silenced about the fact that I exist.”

“It might not be the best idea, Suky,” Dad said. “There are a lot more crazies out there than there were when you died—”

“—there were plenty of crazies then, Dee—”

“—right, and even then it wouldn’t have been a good idea. There might be some religious nut job who thinks that if you were dead you should stay that way. Or someone else thinks that you know how you came back, and wants to force you to tell them.”

“Those are valid points,” Mom said, nodding. “And to all of those people who might want to harm me because they think I shouldn’t be alive or they think I know how I came back, I say a hearty ‘fuck you.’ I won’t be silent because there are crazy people in the world. I’m not afraid of death, not anymore.”

“You’re going to risk Eleanor’s kids?” Dad asked sharply.

“I agree with Mom,” I said, standing up. “Nobody should have to keep quiet about the fact that they exist. But I have to tell Will.”

Stephanie made a face. My family doesn’t like my husband. They have justifications, but in the past few years, since Mom died, Will’s gone to therapy and has done a lot of work on himself. Mom was the only one in the family ever willing to forgive anything, though, so I’ve never tried to get them to change their minds.

Mom said, “Well, is he still a total asshole?”

“He’s… been trying not to be. He’s in therapy, and we’re doing couples counseling, and he’s working through a lot of baggage from his upbringing.”

“Why not tell him to bring the kids up and join you here, then. Coming back to life, might as well start a clean slate and see where things go from there. And you’re right, he needs to be involved in the discussion. Your girls, too. They all are old enough to understand what’s going on here, and what could happen.”

“You know I will never stand in the way of anything you want,” Dad said, which is the kind of thing Dad says rather than “I love you”. Things like, “If they ever fail to respect you, I will smite them” – talking about us and our treatment of Mom – or “You have always been my worthy opponent.” Yes. Sometimes my father talks like a comic book character.

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea,” Stephanie said, “but I know you taught me to be who I am to the world and fuck anyone who gives me shit about it, so… same principle. I don’t think you could be you and lie about who you are.”

“And we need to involve Jeff and Aaron,” Mom said. “I’ll call them and get them to come here.”

“We turned off your cell phone ages ago,” Dad objected.

“Dee, we still have a land line. I know we do because I hear it ring, and sometimes you even answer it.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s right, we do.” Dad shook his head. “This world where everyone carries around their phone in their pocket all the time… it’s strange how you get so used to a technological or societal change that you forget that you did it a different way for 67 years.”

Nothing ever stopped my mother when she wanted something strongly enough, if she believed it was right. I hadn’t even thought of the considerations my father brought up before he talked about them, but I’ve never believed it’s okay to hide in conformity and live in fear. I didn’t think Will had ever believed in doing that, either, and my daughters had grown up going to political protests.

“We need to find out more about these other people,” I said to Stephanie on the way home. “See if we can contact them directly, find out if any of the actual returned people are planning on going public like Mom. We could coordinate if they are. Strength in numbers.”

“The religious right are going to crap their pants,” Stephanie said, laughing. “A Deist who believes in reincarnation, is married to an atheist, and has a gay son, came back to life. Jesus Christ hasn’t got a monopoly anymore.”

“That is probably going to be the most fun part of this going public thing,” I said.

***

So now I don’t know what will happen. My husband’s driving up from home with our girls, my oldest younger brother’s on a train, and Mom’s been looking up contact information for journalist friends she had once, checking which ones are still alive, using Facebook – we never deactivated her account – and my dad’s LinkedIn. Stephanie’s found two other people who have family members who came back from the dead, and one of them’s been willing to talk to her in private messaging on Tumblr.

I still have a hard time telling anyone who doesn’t already know, but it turns out, I can write about it without feeling the pressure, the fear. Don’t know if I can post it, yet. I guess we’ll see. I’m hoping that if I can get more information from more people who’ve been through something similar, maybe we’ll find a pattern, a point of commonality… maybe even an explanation for why we all feel this pressure not to talk about it.

Tomorrow we’re all going to talk about whether we’re going to do this or not, but I know my family. What my mom wants, she gets, if it’s possible and if it’s ethical. My husband and my kids are going to be in favor of her going public, and my brothers won’t stand in her way any more than my dad would. So we’re going to do this. The thing we’re really going to talk about is how to keep ourselves safe when we do.

Everything in the world is going to change. I just don’t know exactly how yet.

***

Obligatory notes because I’m so fucking late with this piece:

I have fucked up royally. I went into this without an outline and about 6,000 words in I realized I had attempted to consume a ball of energy larger than my head. This is going to end up being novel length, most likely. I struggled really hard to find a place I could reasonably end it as a short story, and yeah, it is absolutely not an ending. No followup on the Martian shapechanger thing, new idea is brought in and then treated like it’s the climax, protagonist is almost entirely reactive and passive. As a short story, it’s shit.

Unfortunately I found this out after I was already late. Not going to bore everyone with why this was a week late except that it’s allergy season and I’ve been exhausted lately. So there was no time to try to write something else. I hope you found it entertaining, if somewhat frustrating; it’s shit as a short story because it’s plainly a piece of a novel. Which I’m not going to write real soon because I have like 3 novels ahead of this one in the queue, but if I live long enough it will get done.

It’s kinda cute that story #30 falls on the 30th now because I’m late and story #31 is the last of my Spooky 5 Halloween-appropriate stories. But not cute enough to justify how late this is.

BTW, while this is not as autobiographical as “Radio” from Inktober, it is heavily drawn from real life. I altered some things because this is fiction, but the mother and the father in this story are pretty close to real life. Except that my mother hasn’t come back.

#52 project #writeober 2020 #alara's october 2020 prompt fics #spooky5 #late!

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pinktintedmonocle · 3 years

Text

Dedicated Followers of Fashion - A Cobra Kai Lawrusso Fanfic - Chapter 2

“I found that shirt”, Daniel said, feigning casualness.

“What shirt?” asked Johnny, plonking himself down in his own chair.

“The pink one”, Daniel replied. He stood up slowly, bracing himself against the desk as the room threatened to start spinning. “The one you said – that you said – ah – from the photo album.”

When a look through an old photo album leads to Daniel unearthing a certain pink shirt, things heat up between him and Johnny when they both get drunk at the dojo.

Trigger warning: some description of one of the characters having issues accepting their sexuality.

May 1985

“So I’ve gotta go into the office this morning, just for an hour or two, but I’ll be back by lunch so we can go to the mall, get you some new clothes.”

Daniel made a noise of protest around his mouthful of eggs. He swallowed and took a gulp of orange juice.

“But I’ve got plans, Ma! I was gonna go round to Mr Miyagi’s, learn some new moves, feed the fish. And the clothes I got are fine, honest.”

“Your clothes are not fine, Daniel; all of your pants are about an inch too short in the leg, and look at that shirt!” said Lucille, gesturing to Daniel’s red checked plaid, “Those cuffs are supposed to come down to your wrists, not your elbows!”

Daniel slumped back in his chair, clamped a hand to his heart dramatically and groaned.

“But I don’t wanna go shopping, Ma!”

“Then quit growing”, said Lucille with a grin. “Come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll treat you to a burger and a milkshake from that place you like. Hey, why don’t you invite Ali? I haven’t seen her around in a while. Everything OK with you two?”

“Oh yeah, we’re just peachy. But she’s – er – she’s got family stuff on this weekend”, Daniel lied.

“Alright, well it’ll just be the two of us then. It’ll be nice to have a bit of mother-son bonding time, you can fill me in on everything that’s been going on with you lately.”

“There’s nothing going on with me”, Daniel said shortly, a slight flush on his cheeks. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Look, I better go tell Mr Miyagi I can’t make it this afternoon. I’ll see you later, Ma.” He barrelled out of the door, leaving it open.

Lucille shouted after him, exasperated. “Alright, but we’ll meet back here at 12. And don’t be late!”

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

“Alright, so you need some new pants and shirts. And what about underwear, do you need new underwear?”

“Ma-”

“Well do you?”

Daniel shrugged, looking down at his feet and scuffing the floor with his shoe. “Yeah, I guess”, he muttered.

Lucille pulled his head up by the chin, looking at him with concern. “Are you OK, Daniel? You’ve been in a mood all day, didn’t even finish your milkshake. Those Cobra Kai boys aren’t giving you a hard time at school again, are they?”

“No, Ma. They’re not even in Cobra Kai anymore-”

“Then what is it, huh?”

“What it is is that my mother is stood in the middle of a store with people all around tryin’ to talk to talk to me about underwear.”

Lucille dropped his chin and rolled her eyes. “Alright, smartass, I’ll shut up. Come on, quicker this is over with quicker we can go home and not worry about shopping again until you hit another growth spurt.”

They walked through the store, picking out a new wardrobe. (Daniel had tried to fill the basket with nothing but camo pants and plaid shirts, but Lucille had laughed and put most of them back. “How about we try and get you a few clothes that you can wear together that actually match?” she had suggested. “Matching, matching, who cares about matching?” Daniel had protested, but had still allowed his mom to pick out a few pairs of jeans and a couple of plain shirts.)

“OK, I think that’s nearly everything we need – oh, look at that!”, exclaimed Lucille, smiling brightly as her eyes caught on something over Daniel’s shoulder. “That shirt would look so nice on you.”

She walked past Daniel and he turned to see her picking out a rose pink shirt and peering at the label. “And it’s your size too, perfect! Alright, let’s find the cashier’s desk and then get outta here-”

Daniel reached into the basket and plucked out the shirt. “I’m not wearing that, Ma. Aren’t there any other colours, like, um, blue or something?”

Lucille looked at him, brow furrowed. “Well yeah, there might be – but look, what’s wrong with this colour? It brings out your eyes-”

“But it’s pink ma, and I’m – I’m not – look, I can choose my own clothes, OK!” yelled Daniel, hands curling into fists.

Several people in the store turned to stare.

Lucille took a step back, shock etched onto her features. “Hey, hey, don’t you talk to me like that, young man!” she shouted back, voice steely. “I don’t know what’s got into you lately but I don’t like it, you hear me?”

Daniel suddenly deflated, fists uncurling, shoulders dropping, and for a second he looked as if he was about to cry.

“It’s nothing”, he said, swiping at his eyes fiercely with the back of one hand. “I’m sorry Ma, really I am.” He put the shirt back in the basket. “It’s just a shirt, it’s fine, it’ll be fine. Oh hey, I think the cashier’s desk is this way-”

He lolloped off on his long legs and Lucille had to almost run to catch up with him.

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

They loaded up the car with their purchases and drove home in silence, Daniel fidgeting with a loose thread on his shirt and staring out of the window. When they were nearly home, Lucille spoke.

“I wish you’d tell me what’s going on, Daniel”, she said softly. “You know you can tell me anything.”

I can’t, Daniel thought, I can’t tell you this. He looked at his mom and smiled tightly. “Yeah, I know mom, but it’s nothing. Really.”

“OK”, said Lucille. “OK”.

Daniel could see that she didn’t believe him, but mercifully she didn’t ask him any more questions.

May 2019

“Oh, you’re so tiny!” laughed Carmen, taking a sip of wine as she giggled. “And that outfit! That’s certainly something…”

Amanda grinned. “Yeah, thankfully he outgrew his plaid and camo phase before we met. Not sure we would’ve got past the first date if he had shown up wearing that.”

“Hey, it was a look!” Daniel protested. “I’ll have you know I got plenty of dates in that outfit back in Jersey!”

The two women laughed, leaning against each other as they continued to study the photo album, while Johnny smirked. Daniel rolled his eyes and took another sip of wine.

It was two weeks until the tournament, and Daniel and Amanda had invited Johnny and the students round to their house for a meal to blow off a little steam after months of intense training. Amanda had also invited Carmen (“I need another person here who isn’t a teenager or a man-child, otherwise the evening will end with me throwing someone through a window, never mind Kreese), and they had all sat outside, enjoying the late evening sun and eating and laughing.

Eventually the kids had sloped off to Daniel’s home dojo to admire Hawk’s new hair colour (purple), and discuss teen drama (Daniel had gathered from the conversation over dinner that Demetri was in a relationship with a blonde girl called Yasmine despite the fact that they apparently hated each other and spent most of their time denying they had anything to do with each other. He had caught Johnny’s eye while Demetri told his story and Johnny had held his gaze for just a moment before they both quickly looked away).

The adults had then retreated to the kitchen to polish off a bottle of wine or two (or beer, in Johnny’s case), and after a while Daniel’s childhood photo albums had somehow materialised. After laughing themselves silly over the plaid/camo combo, Amanda and Carmen had continued to make their way through the album, getting to prom (“Look at that suit!” cackled Amanda), and then to Daniel’s trip to Okinawa.

“I thought the village I grew up in in Ecuador was rural, but this is something else”, said Carmen, flicking through the photos. She paused at a picture of Daniel and Mr Miyagi, standing outside Yukie’s house. “I like your shirt here, Daniel. Definitely an improvement on the plaid”.

“Oh yeah, pink is definitely your colour, LaRusso”, said Johnny, and Carmen nudged him.

“Don’t be mean, Johnny”, she said.

“I wasn’t!” protested Johnny. “I meant it!”

“Really?” Daniel asked lightly, taking another sip of wine, tone casual even though his heart was hammering in his chest. “Not like you to compliment me, Johnny.”

Johnny’s face flushed. “No, I just – I just meant it’s not completely awful. Not like most of the clothes you wore back then. Or now, to be honest.”

“How about we talk about something that isn’t my fashion sense”, said Daniel, picking up the album and closing it firmly.

“I think you mean ‘lack of fashion sense’”, said Amanda teasingly, leaning in to kiss him on the check. She stretched her neck and grimaced. “Why don’t we go and sit somewhere more comfortable?”

“Good idea!” Daniel said brightly. “You all go into the living room and I’ll grab some more drinks.”

As soon as the others were out of sight the smile slid off Daniel’s face and he leant heavily against the kitchen counter.

“But it’s pink ma, and I’m – I’m not -”

“Oh yeah, pink is definitely your colour, LaRusso”

It had been over a month since the almost-kiss and he and Johnny hadn’t talked about it. There had been a few times when Daniel had thought Johnny was on the verge of mentioning it, but he had always just opened and closed his mouth a few times before clearing his throat and starting to talk about something else entirely. Daniel, for his part, had no idea how to even approach the subject. Hey Johnny, remember when you put on that ridiculous jacket that made your arms look amazing and then rubbed up against me and spun me round and then freaked out when I leant in to kiss you? You wanna talk about that?

“Hey babe”, said Amanda, and Daniel started as he looked up to see her in the doorway. “Just thought I’d come and give you a hand with the drinks.”

He looked at his wife, the woman who had stuck by him through thick and thin for the last twenty years, and felt a surge of guilt. He pushed it away and clapped his hands together. “Right, what do you and Carmen want? Another bottle of the Cabernet Sauvignon?”

“Yes please”, said Amanda, picking up the glasses while Daniel fetched the bottle. “And grab another Coors from the refrigerator for Johnny.”

Daniel took out the beer and followed Amanda into the living room, plastering on a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

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

A few days later Daniel told Amanda over breakfast that he wasn’t feeling so good. Amanda had taken his temperature with the back of her hand and frowned.

“Well, it doesn’t feel like you’ve got a fever, babe, but maybe you should take a day off from the dealership.

“Thanks”, he said, smiling weakly. “I’m sure it’s nothing, probably just a twenty-four hour bug or something.”

“OK, well, just take it easy, yeah?”

“I will. I’ll just go back to bed, try and get some sleep.”

Daniel had lain in bed until he heard Amanda leave for work and the kids leave for school before he jumped up and made his way to the storage room at the back of the house. It was packed full since he had moved everything out of the dojo and into this one room, and he spent a good half hour clambering over old chairs, kids’ toys and pool noodles before he found the two cardboard boxes he was looking for, tucked away in a dusty corner.

Both boxes had ‘1985’ scrawled on the side in black sharpie, and Daniel picked them up in turn before pushing the lighter box back into its corner. He knew what he’d find there – a white gi with a faded black snake on the back and blood stains on the sleeves – and he wasn’t quite ready to deal with that one yet. He would have to, one day, but currently there were more pressing demons he had to face.

He opened the heavier box and started to pull out piles of clothes. He had kept almost every bit of clothing from his first trip to Okinawa, folded up neatly and all stored away together, every piece infused with a memory he never wanted to forget. He smiled fondly as he took out the jeans, red shirt and black vest that he wore down at the docks with Mr Miyagi when they practised the drum technique, followed by his red silk kimono with the black and yellow embroidered bonsai trees, thinking of the O-ben festival and the fight with Chozen. Eventually he found the rose pink shirt and held it up, shaking it out.

It was paler than when he’d first worn it, bleached by the sun. There were a few loose threads but overall it still in fairly good shape. He stared at it as the memories came flooding back. There were the good ones; mooching through Tomi village with Mr Miyagi and waving to Kumiko as the little girls giggled shrilly, and then there were the bad; the department store, the feeling of panic that had welled up in his chest when his mom had picked it out, the irrational fear that somehow she knew the secret he had tried so hard to conceal. After a minute Daniel placed it down on the floor, then re-folded all of the other clothes and packed them away until only the pink shirt remained. He knew the sensible thing to do would’ve been to pack it up as well, push the feelings back down, but instead he left it out and put the box back into its corner without it. Then he washed, dried and ironed it and placed it in his gym bag.

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

The week before the tournament Daniel and Johnny stayed late at the dojo, sitting on the deck and sorting out some last minute details while munching on burgers. (“I get to pick the food tonight”, Johnny had said, “and I don’t want any green stuff.” “You’ve got a pickle in that burger”, Daniel had pointed out. Johnny had removed the pickle and thrown it at him).

After eating they did a final assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of their students (Miguel had eventually convinced Johnny to let him fight with the blessing of Carmen, and he and Sam were placed in joint first in their rankings, with Hawk coming in a close second. “I think Demetri could stand a good chance” Daniel had said and Johnny had rolled his eyes. “A good chance at what, getting his arm broken again? I think Bert’s got a shot though; he may be small but that kid can kick”. “Oh yeah?” Daniel had grinned. “Remind you of anyone?” “No”, said Johnny), and after an hour of furious scribbling (on Daniel’s part), Johnny had stood up and stretched, his t-shirt riding up a little to expose a strip of taut stomach (Daniel had turned his head, pretending to be very interested in a rock).

“I need a drink”, Johnny declared, walking towards the house.

Daniel thought of the pink shirt in his bag. “I’ll have one too”, he called after Johnny.

A minute later Johnny emerged with two stubby brown bottles clutched in his hands. He sat back down on the deck and handed one to Daniel.

“Thought my taste in beer was beneath you, LaRusso”, said Johnny as Daniel twisted off the cap and took a gulp.

Daniel grimaced, nose wrinkling in distaste. “Yeah well, you’ve worn me down. It is disgusting though; I don’t know how you drink this stuff.”

Johnny barked a laugh. “It’s an acquired taste.”

“Acquired through what?”

“Through drinking nothing else for thirty years”, Johnny replied with a shrug, uncapping his own bottle and flipping the lid behind him. It landed in a bush.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “I hope you’re going to pick that up later, Johnny.”

“What? No, its fine, I’m sure it’s recyclable or some shit.”

“You mean degradable and no, it’s not.”

Johnny just shrugged and took a long pull at his Banquet.

Daniel side-eyed Johnny as they both drank their beers, watching as Johnny swiped a strand of tousled blond hair out of his too-blue eyes before his gaze tracked lower, noting the way Johnny’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, then lower still to take in the broad shoulders, muscular arms and firm chest visible under a tightly fitted t-shirt. He looked away, feeling his cheeks redden.

They spent another hour or so grading students and discussing tactics, during which Daniel managed to drink another three beers (those tiny bottles don’t last long) and it was almost dark in the garden when Johnny drained his own beer and rubbed his eyes.

“I should go”, Johnny said, although he didn’t move.

“You’re not driving”, Daniel said firmly, lips pursed.

“I’m barely drunk!”, Johnny protested. “I’ve only had six beers!” He waggled a finger under Daniel’s nose. “And don’t talk to me about drunk driving, LaRusso, you’ve gotten into a car with me when I’ve had way more than this. I don’t know why you suddenly care so much.”

“I care because we’ve got the tournament in a week from now, and if you end up dead and the kids are too grief stricken too fight and Kreese takes over the valley it’ll be all your fault.”

“Whatever”, said Johnny, “you can just say you’d miss me, LaRusso.”

“In your dreams, Johnny”, Daniel answered, rolling his eyes.

I do miss you, I’ve always missed you. I missed you thirty-five years ago, and I’m missing you now, even though you’re right here.

Daniel felt something brush his hand and he looked down to see Johnny’s own hand resting next to his on the deck, pinky fingers touching. He glanced up and they stared at each other for a beat before they both pulled back at the same time.

“I’ll call us both a cab”, said Daniel, clearing his throat. “You can leave your car here and I’ll pick you up tomorrow before training.” He half expected Johnny to protest, but instead the blonde just nodded.

“Right. Well, we should go inside”, Daniel continued. “It’s getting cold out here.”

Johnny got up and Daniel followed suit, but he had only taken two steps before his feet seemed to stop working and he nearly fell off the decking. Johnny caught him, strong arms encircling his waist, chest pressed flush to Daniel’s back, and Daniel was reminded of the night a month ago; the way the denim scratched over his skin, the warmth of Johnny’s body.

“Easy, LaRusso”, Johnny murmured in his ear and Daniel shivered slightly at the sensation of Johnny’s breath on his neck. “Banquet will do that to you when you’re not used to it.”

“I’m fine”, Daniel insisted, head spinning, suddenly aware of how drunk he was, “You can let go of me.”

“You sure?”, Johnny asked, and Daniel briefly considered feigning another dizzy spell to stay in Johnny’s embrace for a little longer, before firmly shaking his head and pushing Johnny’s hands away.

“I’m good, really”, Daniel said, vaguely aware that his speech was a little slurred.

Johnny moved away and Daniel just about stayed upright, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Jesus, Johnny, how do you drink that stuff every day and still have a functioning liver?”

“You’ll get used to it, LaRusso”, said Johnny, walking into the house.

“I seriously hope I don’t”, Daniel muttered, following Johnny inside.

Johnny headed for the bathroom while Daniel stumbled over to his desk and sat down heavily. He fished his phone out of his pocket, squinting against the glare of the screen, and pulled up the number for a taxi company. Then Johnny walked back into the room and Daniel found himself placing the phone face down on the desk without making the call.

“I found that shirt”, he said, feigning casualness.

“What shirt?” asked Johnny, plonking himself down in his own chair.

Johnny frowned. “The one from the 80’s?”

Daniel licked his lips. “Yeah.”

Johnny scoffed. “Oh yeah? You gave me shit for having my old clothes and you’re still hoarding all of yours?”

“For sentimental reasons only, Johnny. I don’t wear them on a regular basis.”

Johnny pointed a finger at him. “Hey, my clothes are timeless. Did it fit?”

“Did what fit?”

“The shirt”, Johnny said, swinging his legs up onto his desk and leaning back, hands behind his head. “It probably does, you’re still as much of a shrimp as you were back then.”

“I don’t know, I didn’t try it on”, Daniel replied, and he knew he should go, call a cab and get out of there, but the cheap beer was making his tongue loose. “But I could do.”

Johnny fixed him with ice blue eyes. “You got it here?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Johnny was silent for a moment as his tongue darted out to wet his lips. There was an expression on his face that Daniel struggled to read in his hazy state, half fear and half something else, as if he was trying to decide whether to run away from something or towards it.

“Go get it then”, Johnny said eventually, and Daniel just nodded and walked unsteadily into the next room to fetch it, making a detour to the bathroom on the way. He half expected Johnny to be gone by the time he got back, but the blonde was still there. Daniel stood awkwardly in the middle of the room and waved the shirt around lamely in one hand.

“You gonna put it on?” Johnny asked.

“I will if you take your dirty shoes off my desk”, Daniel shot back.

“It’s my desk!”

“Yeah, but I bought it.”

Johnny grumbled but removed his feet, and Daniel unzipped his tracksuit jacket and pulled on the shirt over his workout top. He stretched out his arms, waggling his fingers and feeling a little smug in spite of himself. “Still fits!”

“Yeah, but can you button it?” asked Johnny.

“Yeah, I think so. It might be a little snug with this top on underneath-”

“Then take it off”, Johnny instructed, and his voice was so direct, so commanding, that Daniel obeyed without thinking, tugging off both the shirt and his top.

I wonder if that’s a trick he learned from Kreese, Daniel mused, before he suddenly realised that he was topless in front of Johnny Lawrence who was staring at him, eyes wide. He quickly pulled the pink shirt back on and hurriedly buttoned it up. It was loose when he got it and it still mostly fitted, but he was also a beanpole with an almost concave stomach when he was sixteen, and he’s definitely filled out a little since then.

Johnny just looked at him for moment and Daniel fidgeted with the hem of the shirt, not quite able to meet Johnny’s eyes. He heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back and when he glanced up Johnny was standing, that fight or flight look on his face again. He moved forwards and Daniel followed suit, closing the gap between them until Johnny was close enough to reach out and touch Daniel’s chest, dragging his fingers down to where the buttons were a little snug around Daniel’s waist.

“It’s nice”, Johnny murmured. “It’s soft.”

“Yeah”, Daniel whispered, leaning into Johnny’s touch. He swayed dangerously as he did so and gripped Johnny’s arm to steady himself.

“It’s different, for you”, Johnny breathed. “Not blue.”

“That”, Daniel said, prodding a finger into Johnny’s chest with his free hand, “is your fault.”

“What is?”

“The blue.”

“How can a colour be my fault, LaRusso?”

But Daniel didn’t answer; he just made a noise in the back of this throat and pressed their foreheads together, feeling Johnny’s hot breath on his face as he moved just a little closer, lips almost touching-

Daniel’s phone rang shrilly, and he and Johnny sprang apart. Daniel threw himself across the room to his desk and grabbed it, breath hitching as he saw the name on the screen.

“It’s Amanda”, he said hoarsely, and glanced up at Johnny.

Johnny looked nauseous. “You should get it.”

Daniel answered the call.

“Hey babe”, said Amanda, and Daniel tried to respond but his throat was suddenly tight and he couldn’t quite form the words.

“Daniel?” asked Amanda, and there was a hint of panic in her voice. He cleared his throat and forced the words out.

“Hey. Everything OK?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing. It’s pretty late; I was starting to get worried, thought Kreese might’ve decided to pay you a visit.”

“God, no, I’m fine, really. Just – just had a few beers with Johnny, lost track of time. I was just about to get us both a cab.”

“OK, well, see you soon. Love you.”

“Yeah”, said Daniel, turning away from Johnny. “Love you too.”

He hung up and immediately ordered two taxis. He walked over to the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of water and took a long drink from it, trying to clear the alcohol induced fuzz from his mind.

Johnny was stood against the wall opposite Daniel, pressing himself into it as if he hoped it would magically open and swallow him up. Silence hung between them, heavy and oppressive, and Daniel knew that if he didn’t say anything Johnny wouldn’t either. But he also knew that if they didn’t deal with this soon the next time they were alone with a few drinks in their system would likely end with either him or Johnny just pinning the other to the floor, and not in a way that had anything to do with karate.

“We need to talk about this”, he said softly, and Johnny’s eyes met his.

“The cabs will be here in a minute-”

“Not now”, Daniel replied. “But soon. After the tournament.” He half expected Johnny to deny there was anything to talk about, but instead the blonde just nodded.

“Yeah. After the tournament.”

Daniel looked down and realised with a jolt that he was still wearing the pink shirt. He turned away, quickly taking it off and pulling his workout clothes back on.

He had just finished changing when the glare of headlights shone through the doors. He and Johnny made their way outside and got into the two cars, exchanging a brief lingering glance before they went their separate ways.

Daniel slumped down in his seat as the car wound its way out of the driveway. He stared out of the window as the city lights flashed by and found himself thinking about that day at the mall with his mom all those years ago and a similarly awkward car ride home, looking out at the same streets and trying and failing to not think about the same thing, of blue eyes and blonde hair and strong arms that would pick him up and pull him in and never let him go.

#cobra kai #Daniel LaRusso #Johnny Lawrence #lawrusso #cobrakaifanfic #cobrakaifanfiction

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cindersandroses · 4 years

Text

Digital Get Down, Chapter 4

AUTHORS: cindersandroses ( losille2000 and cinderella1181)

CHAPTERS: 4/?

PAIRING: Actor!Henry Cavill/ Plus-Size OFC

GENRE: Romance/Fluff/HUMOR

FIC SUMMARY: When SuperHank met OrcPrincessPeach on the World of Warcraft message boards, it was love at first raid. Now, almost a year later, they’re ready to take the next step and meet in person. Half a world away from each other, both decide to meet in Atlanta for DragonCon, since she was already going to be there for her work as a game designer at Blizzard… never mind that she is a devout nerd. They both have to face the fact that reality is very different from a digital world.

RATING: Mature

AUTHORS NOTES: Thank you all! We meant this romp to be short, but as we get into it, it seems to be growing. We hope you are all enjoying it!

Also on AO3!

Chapter 4

Henry sat on the bed, happily watching Opal as she meticulously pulled out garment after garment and hung them up in the closet. She hummed softly as she worked, every so often stopping to squint at the yards of fabric on this skirt or that, pulling at loose threads and muttering something about needing to steam press one of them. There was something so domestic about this, even though they were in a hotel room in an unfamiliar place and still--despite getting to know each other online—trying to figure each other out.

It amazed him how much being in person changed everything; the reality had settled in that they may have talked a lot about anything and everything, but that was far different than being in person and having the physical connection with someone. They both still had a lot to learn about each other and he planned on spending every possible minute with her doing just that. There was no doubt in his mind that this was right; the feeling of peace as he watched her move around the room was like nothing he’d ever experienced with another woman.

Opal finished with her last piece—a voluminous peachy pink ball gown skirt--and moved back to the foot of the bed to sit down beside him. She was close, but not touching him; he wondered at that and all the times he noticed the almost imperceptible flinch when he reached out to touch her. Of course, he understood she didn’t have the experience with the opposite sex he did, but the reaction made him wonder if she was scared of his touch for some other reason.

Was she? Scared of him? He couldn’t imagine scaring someone, but he supposed he came on strong at times. And in this situation, he was a believer of instituting a bit of aversion therapy in that he tried to insinuate himself in her space. He wasn’t going to let her run away; she herself had admitted to running on more than one occasion with others.

To that end, he did not let her sit too far away for long. He gathered her in his arms and pressed his lips to her forehead, right at her hairline, smelling the coconut shampoo in her hair. She was tense for a moment, then her body relaxed, moulding against him. He wanted to kiss her—really kiss her—but considering the reaction, he knew he had to wait.

“This is going to be an excellent weekend,” he murmured. Reassurance… for her and, honestly, for him.

She chuckled. “Says the guy who only has two costumes and like twenty-five geeky shirts. We’re not going to be able to go out much incognito.”

“You’d be surprised how a guy can blend in with the crowd,” he said. “Even me.”

Opal eyed him in suspicion. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“You know how busy these weekends are,” he said. “People don’t really stop to look unless you’re flashy and in an impressive cosplay. And I will have you know I walked around San Diego Comic Con with a Guy mask and a geek shirt and no one cared. Literally, not even Will when I took a photo with him.”

“Will?”

“Smith,” Henry said. “Deadshot? Suicide Squad?”

“I know who Will Smith is!” she scoffed and playfully smacked his arm. “By the way, I am happy that you agreed to do the steampunk one with me. I know Amber thought I was crazy when I had her make you the cloak.”

“I’m glad she did it. She really made all these costumes?” Henry asked.

Opal nodded and smiled. “She taught herself to sew when she was pre-transition. Her mom and dad wouldn’t buy her girl clothes, so she saved up money for an old sewing machine from the thrift shop and started making her own.”

Though he wasn’t Amber’s greatest fan—there were some things Opal had related to him he didn’t particularly agree with—he understood their relationship was long and deep and he could no sooner understand the bond they shared as friends of twenty years than Amber could understand the bond he and Opal shared.

“Oh.” He smiled. “Well, I’m glad she did all the sewing. I did make my Phantom mask and it’s pretty badass. It was like putting a computer together, all intricate moving parts with gears and such. I was so worried about it in my luggage, I carried it on the plane.”

“Can I see it?”

“Eventually. I want you to be surprised.”

“And did you remember the signet ring?”

He wiggled his pinky by way of showing off where he would wear the aforementioned ring. “Yes, it’s in my bag.”

Opal laughed. “Who the heck has a signet ring, anyway? It’s so impossibly crusty British upper class.”

“You said it was the sexiest thing on the Phantom!”

“Sure, on the Phantom,” Opal teased. “You, my good sir, don’t need a ring to be sexy.”

She reached out for him, as though to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him down to her, but she awkwardly stopped herself mid-movement, hesitating, then resting her hands in her lap instead.

He reached out and took her hands into his, wrapping her arms around his neck to pull her closer yet. She craned her neck to look up at him. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

“Stop apologizing,” he instructed. “You shouldn’t have to apologize for anything you want. I refuse to apologize for anything I want.”

Opal huffed. “I know. I’m just awkward.”

“You know you can touch me.” He smiled. “I will never tell you to not touch my hand or my arm or my neck or my— ”

“I get it,” she said, an edge of attitude in her tone. “Like I said, I’m awkward and I always feel like I should ask permission.”

He frowned. “Why?”

Opal looked up again, meeting his eyes for a long time without speaking. She wanted to say something, to divulge some important piece of information. He could see it on her face, but she shook it away and went another direction. “I just keep worrying that if I touch you, you’re going to be nothing more than an apparition.”

“You’re going to have to kill me to get rid of me at this point,” he admitted. “But seriously, Opal, Princess, you have my tacit permission to touch me wherever and whenever you want. If I don’t want to be touched, you’ll know. Got it?”

“Got it,” she said shakily.

She licked her lips and it took everything in his power to not devour her mouth in that moment. Maybe she wanted him to, with that reaction, but he wasn’t sure it was the right time. In fact, if he went that route, they weren’t going to be leaving the bedroom for some time, and he had already made appointments for them elsewhere.

Henry let go of her. “Good. Come on! We have a long day of pampering to get to at the spa.”

“Henry, you didn’t have to do that,” she said. “I would be perfectly happy just hanging out up here.”

“Nonsense, I wanted to. You’ll find that acts of service and gifts are one part of my love language.” He leaned in close to her ear, brushing his lips across her cheek, then the shell of her ear, before whispering, “As is physical touch.”

He delighted at the shiver that vibrated her body against his. As he moved away, he noted how her pupils had dilated in obvious lust. Never to be one to pass up the opportunity, he moved to the other and kissed that ear before purring again, “And trust me, Opal. I plan on touching you a lot.”

Opal shivered more violently, and only stopped when a moan escaped her plump lips. “Curse you and your sex on legs.”

Henry laughed and stood up, holding his hand out to her. “Come on, Princess. We’re going to be late.”

“Heh,” she murmured, now breathless. “I suppose I never considered how disarming real-life dirty talk was going to be.”

“Princess, you’re in for a big surprise if you think that’s the extent of what you’ll hear out of my mouth.”

Opal rolled her eyes at him, straightening her shirt and smoothing out her hair, though it looked perfectly fine. It wasn’t like he’d wrecked her like he truly wanted. Because he was a gentleman. Yes. A gentleman.

A gentleman who needed a cold shower at some point.

God help him during the couples massage he’d booked.

###

The spa itself was like any other spa Henry had ever been to—sedate taupe walls with muted lighting and the softest flute music floating through the air. Nothing special. However, Opal breathed in deeply as they entered, and he turned to see her eyes flutter closed for a brief second. Her lips quirked up in a beatific smile.

“Already enjoying it?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It just seems relaxing. I’ve never been to a fancy spa before.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” she said, glancing around the room again. “Apparently this is going to be a weekend of firsts.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but an overeager woman came out from behind the front desk.

“Oh, Mr. Cavill,” interrupted the woman, already effusive in her manufactured charm. “Welcome! We’ve been expecting you. We do hope your trip to Atlanta was uneventful.”

He inclined his head in recognition. “It was fine, but I’ve already been here for work. My girlfriend is the one who just arrived this morning.”

At the mention of the word “girlfriend,” the brunette clerk turned her wide, starstruck eyes to the woman beside him. Opal’s grip on his hand loosened, as if she meant to pull away from him, but he squeezed tighter to reassure her. Clearly, the interaction at check in hadn’t helped issues any. What’s more, he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed the slight change in the clerk’s demeanor when she looked at their clasped hands and then at Opal. Opal wasn’t imagining things.

But this, also, wasn’t something new to him. He could be with any woman and other heterosexual women always did the doubletake, sizing up their competition. It was natural and unfortunately overrepresented in the land of celebrity when the public saw public figures as their commodity, and not as a real person.

A real person who could care less about a brunette flipping her hair flirtatiously over a shoulder. He wasn’t going to mess around with a hamburger when he already had a steak, just like Paul Newman once said.

Opal wasn’t used to it, however, and the previously relaxed grin on her lips flattened into a hard line. The small muscles in her hand had tensed at the other woman’s worsening reaction. There was a split second where he thought Opal might bolt, so he quickly switched tactics, wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to his side. He kissed the top of her head, again feeling her tense.

When he looked again for the clerk, he found her back behind the desk, pulling something up on her computer. Business as usual, then. “Right, Mr. Cavill, we have you both down for the couple’s package?

“That’s right,” he said, pressing his hand lightly to the small part of Opal’s back to guide her forward.

“Okay, great.” The clerk’s fake smile was back on her face. “They will call for you momentarily.”

He nodded in understanding and glanced down at Opal again. She turned her face up to look at him, her bright eyes blinking at him. “Does that include massages?”

“That’s generally like the number one thing to do at a spa,” he explained.

“There’s not going to be, uh—” she paused and swallowed hard around a lump in her throat. “What if my massage therapist is male?”

Henry snorted a laugh and lifted his hands up in front of her, flexing his fingers. “Princess, these are the only male hands that are going to be touching you this weekend.”

“What if there’s a woma—”

“Will you stop worrying?” he chided good-naturedly. “I requested one female and one male. They do this on purpose just for this reason. Though, there are those that don’t care.”

“I just…”

He frowned. “What is it?”

“I’m not naturally good with people touching me,” she admitted, though it was soft and breathy, as though said without enough air in her lungs.

He desperately wanted to push further into that discussion, but their attendants came out to guide them to the changing rooms. Opal smiled shyly, blushed, but instead of retreating from him, she curled herself against his side as though he were her protector from the Big Bad Massage Therapists.

And he really liked that. It played to that caveman hindbrain of his; he could play the protector. No, scratch that he wanted to be Protector, with a capital P.

Whoever or whatever created this touch shyness in her would need to be dealt with, too. However, it did lend important context to her unluckiness in love. Most guys would take her reactions as turn offs or too much work and run, but he didn’t see it like that. Maybe it was because they’d had more time to develop such a strong emotional connection online. He wanted to make it work. He wanted to make it all better. So, he planned to put in the effort it required to understand.

“I’ll see you in a few, darling,” he murmured.

“Okay,” she said, the shakiness of nerves evident in her tone. He watched her walk, forgetting just a moment of his concern and instead zeroed in on the way her hips moved in the tight denim that encased them. A thought quickly floated across his mind that he must find the underlying cause of Opal’s touch shyness as soon as was humanly possible. He wasn’t sure how long he could abstain from truly touching her the way he wanted to—or feeling guilty each time she recoiled.

The female therapist must have said something funny because Opal tossed her head back and laughed, defusing her nerves and snapping his attention to the situation. Opal and the therapist turned for one last glance back at him. It relaxed him to see the smile return to Opal’s lips.

When they were finally behind a closed door, Henry followed the slight male massage therapist back into the changing room. When he initially made the appointment, he specifically requested a male and female therapist team; he did it at first because he didn’t want Opal to get the wrong impression about another woman’s hands on him. And though it was unlikely she would have had a male therapist anyway, as there were so few in the profession, he certainly didn’t want to see another man’s hands rubbing all over her. Now he was glad he thought ahead.

He stripped down and replaced his clothes with the robe and slippers provided by the spa. As with all standard sized robes he’d ever worn, the sleeves were tight against his biceps and the tie barely closed the robe, but it did the job. When he entered the warm, lowly lit treatment room, he sat in one of the chairs and waited for Opal. He smiled when she walked in, noting how tightly she clutched the edges of the soft robe between her breasts.

“Ready for this?” he asked.

Her eyes snapped to his, and she gave him a manic little chuckle. “Did you know you have to be completely naked?”

Henry grinned. “I did.”

“They let me keep my undies on, but still,” she said.

Henry stood up and went over to her. “Opal, maybe I should have said this before… if you don’t want to do the massage, you can choose anything else from their services. This is supposed to be a fun, relaxing experience. If it’s not—”

She quickly pressed her fingers to his lips, stopping him mid-sentence. “Stop, I’m fine. Really. If I can’t take my clothes off for this, how am I going to in 24… 48… whatever hours?”

“Well, you’d be more comfortable with me after more time together, for one,” he said after taking her hand away from his lips.

She sighed. “I just don’t have the body to be showing my curves off to everyone, you know?”

“I think your curves are lovely. There are a few I want to become better acquainted with,” he said.

The visible part of her chest flushed bright red as he slid his fingers down the open edge of her robe. He teased her by pulling it away from her body slightly, testing how far he could take this without her fainting. Her breathing had already become shallow, her eyes had closed, and even though he wasn’t touching her body, he felt the soft rhythmic whisper of fabric against his fingers as her heart pounded against it.

“As a matter of fact,” he started, “I plan on getting to know these curves better this evening. If you’ll let me, of course.”

Her long eyelashes fluttered open to reveal sky blue eyes that glittered in the low light. There was a mixture of lust and fear there, wrestling with each other. She gave him a slight nod and bit her lower lip, no doubt as a nervous reaction, but he had no control over the pleasure signal it created in his own body. Henry smiled and stepped back, granting her a brief reprieve as he moved strategically behind the massage table.

Her assessing gaze dropped down the length of his robed body, her lips slightly parted, still breathing shallowly. He took the opportunity, holding her gaze with his, to let his robe drop. She might have issues with her body, but he had no problem showing off all that God gave him, as well as all the parts he had worked very long hours in the gym to develop over the years.

Her squeak and deeper blush were worth it, but to her credit, she didn’t turn away. He turned so she could get a better eyeful of his arse as he slid under the warm sheets on the table. He turned his head to find her frozen in place.

He nodded at the tie on her robe… the one her fingers clutched like a lifeline. “Go ahead, Princess,” he purred. “Your turn.”

“Not a chance, Cavill. Turn your head,” she said.

He let out an exasperated sigh and did as she asked. He wanted so badly to look at her, to drink in her curves, but he had to be true to his word and follow her lead. It was the only way she was going to trust him—that much was clear. So, he rested his head on his folded arms with eyes closed and listened to her shimmy under her own blanket.

When she finished, he opened his eyes. “You doing okay?”

She nodded. “I am. I know I don’t seem like it, but I really am thrilled to be here with you. It’s a lot to take in all at once. You, all the months of talking and not working out who you were, and just, I don’t know. Like I said before, I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and you won’t be real, and you’ll just evaporate like a dream.”

He reached his hand out to take hers. He kissed the back of it. “I’m very much here, and I’m very much into being with you. I’m glad you didn’t leave this morning when you found out who I was.”

She laughed. “I don’t think my legs would have worked well enough to leave, anyway. But, still, I’m not that cruel. I’m not just going to get up and leave. I may be hella nervous, but I’m made of stronger stuff than that.”

“I know you are,” he said finally, squeezing her hand.

Opal shrugged and grinned mischievously. “Besides, where would I get a hotel room at this point in the game? You’re pretty much stuck with me, roomie.”

Henry laughed. “There’s no other person I’d rather be stuck with.”

“You say that now…” she teased.

“Unless there are hidden tentacles under that blanket, you’re not going anywhere,” he said. “And even then, I’d think twice.”

Opal giggled for a long time at that, finally settling down, but not before saying to him, “No one would believe me if I told them I was waiting for a couples massage with you and we were talking about tentacle porn.”

He meant to respond to that, but one of the therapists knocked on the door to begin their massages, effectively ending their conversation. At least they had conversation to fall back on—good conversation, fun conversation. That had always been their strength as they got to know each other online.

If there was communication, then anything was possible.

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