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redgillan · 4 years

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Under Pastel Skies - 6

Sugar daddy!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Modern!AU Bucky doesn’t need anyone, especially not a sugar baby. He isn’t that desperate… but she smiles so sweetly and she’s endearingly awkward, and he’s so lonely. She’s an artist, a painter, the type of person who always puts others before herself. Throwing caution to the wind Bucky offers her a place to live, a place where she can finally paint whatever her heart desires. He doesn’t need much in return; a friend, a muse.

Word Count: 4,327

Warnings: panic attacks, Bucky recalls his accident

A/N: I don’t have much to say, Bucky’s real emotional in this one. I hope you enjoy this chapter :’)

Wannabe sugar daddies don’t interact, idc if you have money, eat it and leave me be.

Everywhere Bucky looked his eyes and ears were assaulted by a cacophony of sounds and colours. Red and green baubles hung from the ceiling, shimmering like disco balls and sending sparkles around the mall.

The air smelled like pine and cinnamon, something he usually liked, but it was so pungent and unpleasant that it made his stomach churn and bile rise up his throat. He tried to breathe through his mouth, forcing oxygen into his lungs.

Flashes of silver and gold momentarily blinded him, and as someone walked past him, their shopping bag knocked against his leg. It didn’t hurt but it made him seethe with misplaced anger. Beads of sweat broke out on the back of his neck.

Christmas carols played over the mall speakers, more specifically Jingle Bells which they played three times in less than an hour. Enough, enough, enough. He was suffocating, unable to breathe. He felt too big for his own skin, he needed to escape.

Then he felt your hand at the small of his back, guiding him toward what looked like a furniture store. He followed blindly, his vision blurry and unfocused, and sat down when you gently pushed him down onto a sofa.

Bucky shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the cushion. A woman came up and asked if you needed help but you told her that everything was fine. The buzzing in his ears made the voices around him strangely soothing, as if he was underwater. Now that he was sitting down, he felt a lot better.

You didn’t try to touch him, something he was very grateful for. He could feel your weight shift next to him and knowing you were there was enough. He focused on you –your heat, your voice, the smell of your shampoo- and his breathing slowly returned to normal.

“Sorry,” he breathed out with a small smile, his head lolling to one side to look at you. “I ruined our shopping spree.”

The fear and panic had dissipated, leaving him cold, exhausted and craving skin to skin contact. He took your hand and linked your fingers together. Your hands were freezing cold.

“You didn’t ruin anything.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I did.” A sad smile curved his lips, he needed to change the subject. “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

You sank further into the sofa cushion sitting shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand.

“We celebrated so many different holidays,” you said. “Perks of growing up in a multicultural family. Christmas was wild though. One tree, five kids. That poor thing never stood a chance. Now I don’t really celebrate anything. December used to be so much fun, now it’s just not the same.”

“We should create our own holiday,” Bucky suggested, squeezing your hand.

“Aren’t you going to see your family?”

“Nah,” he replied with a yawn. “My sister is taking her kids somewhere warm, and my parents are traveling the country in their RV. You can invite your siblings if you want.”

“They’re not available.”

Bucky tried to decipher the expression on your face. Every time you talked about your siblings, you had a faraway look in your eyes, as though you were reliving a memory. He couldn’t tell what you were thinking but your face twisted into a painful grimace. Then suddenly it was gone.

“I want a tree.”

He watched you with a lazy smile. “I’ll get you a tree.”

You pulled him up to his feet and decided it was time to go home. Home. It still made Bucky weirdly warm inside when you called his apartment ‘home’. You crossed the mall, your arm looped through his as you walked, and took a cab to Brooklyn.

He almost fell asleep from the gentle rocking of the car moving through the streets of Manhattan. When he glanced at you, you were looking out your window watching the snow fall.

You’d been living together for almost two months now and Bucky couldn’t have picked a better roommate. He liked the way you sang in the shower, loud, cheerful and most definitely off-key. He liked that you had more pyjamas than every day clothes. He liked watching you paint from the living room, and it always made him laugh when you added weird things to his grocery list.

He could go to bed and sleep the whole night without waking up, feeling safer knowing someone else was there. Of course, not everything was perfect but it was close enough.

He woke up on the sofa a few hours later, still dressed and with a fluffy blanket thrown over him. The sun was setting, painting the sky with reds and oranges. He basked in the setting sun, a content smile on his face, before he sat up.

The TV was on, the volume low, and you were sitting cross-legged on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table going through a bunch of old photographs. Bucky looked around the room, taking in the new furniture and decor.

There was a comfortable armchair in front of the gas burning fireplace. Your book was resting on the seat of the armchair. You had also bought a lot of decorative pillows, some were pretty funny like the one that looked like a giant cookie.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked, his voice gruff with sleep.

You looked over your shoulder at him. “Hey, you’re awake! I bought some picture frames. I thought it’d make this place look less like a high end furniture store.”

“I liked it better when you thought this apartment was amazing.”

You laughed. “I still do, but it’s a bit... soulless.” You tilted your head back, looking at him upside down. “Sorry.”

“Gotta call a spade a spade,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “All right, well, while you do that I’m going to start dinner.”

He pushed off the sofa but you caught his wrist before he could leave. “I’m already done. I’ve left some frames for you.”

“I already have lots of pictures upstairs.”

“I know, but no one ever goes upstairs,” you replied, letting go of his wrist. “And you’re not in any of the photos.”

Bucky’s eyes were drawn to the picture you were holding. It must have been taken on the day of your high school graduation, you were dressed in a cap and gown, smiling with your whole face. He’d never seen you smile like that. He recognized Peggy Carter right away, her hair was more silver-white than brown and there were deep wrinkles around her eyes.

Your mom wasn’t looking at the camera, she was scolding the young man who was giving you bunny ears. The man was grinning mischievously at the camera. Bucky couldn’t tell how old he was, he appeared to be either twenty or fifty.

There were two other women wearing sundresses, one had long brown hair, the other had twisted her hair into Bantu knots. A young man with dyed silver hair and dark roots was squatting in front of you, his arms crossed over his chest à la Backstreet Boys.

“You should frame this one,” he said, sitting on the floor next to you.

You shrugged. “I don’t know. It makes me kinda sad.”

Bucky learned not to dwell on the past. It hadn’t been easy but it would have been impossible to heal without the support of his friends and family. Grief manifests itself in a number of ways, it’s raw and complex, and comes from your soul.

Bucky had a deep love for his childhood, especially his college years, but while he would cherish this time forever, he had accepted that he was a different person. He wasn’t the same naïve, youthful man he used to be, and it wasn’t a bad thing.

But he also knew that some people live in the past. It makes them feel alive.

“Y’know,” he started, meeting your eyes with a smile. “My hair used to be pretty long. I think I still have some photos in a folder somewhere.”

You clasped your hands together in a silent prayer. “Bucky, I’m going to be honest with you,” you deadpanned. “I need to see those pictures. I need them now. It’s a matter of life and death.”

He rolled his eyes while he got to his feet. “You’re so dramatic. I’ll go get ‘em.”

Bucky took the stairs up to his office and came back a few minutes later with a laptop under his arm. He sat on the floor next to you and set the laptop on his lap.

“You promise you won’t make fun of me?”

“Absolutely,” you replied, mimicking a Cheshire cat grin.

He sighed and tried to look stern but it was nearly impossible. You were too lovely, and he couldn’t help but smile. He opened up the laptop and glanced at you from the corner of his eye; you were practically vibrating.

He started going through the photos when he found one of himself at a party. He was in his early twenties, slumped in a chair, his eyes glassy and unfocused. In the next one he had been joined by two equally drunk women, and he was now roaring at the camera.

“Early twenties, two arms, and not a care in the world,” he said with a little sigh.

You leaned forward, your elbow resting on the coffee table. “Looks like you were having fun.”

“College was a lot of fun,” Bucky said, grinning to himself.

“What was your major?”

“English,” he replied. “I was a really good student, I could have chosen anything but there were more girls studying literature so I enrolled as an English major.”

“Wait!” You recoiled as if you had misheard him. “Did you really choose English because there were more girls?”

He made a funny grimace, and his nose scrunched up a bit as he mulled it over. “Yeah... my priorities were a bit mixed up. Hormones and all.”

You lowered your face into your hand and laughed. When you looked up at him, he was sporting his boyish grin and you shook your head at him.

In the next picture, he was clad in a black university graduation gown standing next to a blond man also dressed in a black gown. They were smiling, sunglasses perched on their nose.

“When I graduated, I had no idea what to do with a BA in English,” Bucky said after taking a long look at the photo. “The thing is, I never found my life’s calling. In high school I didn’t know what job I wanted to do, or what really motivated me, and to be honest I never really thought about it. I figured I’d find my passion in college but...” he trailed off with a shrug. “You’re lucky to have found your passion.”

“Is that why you want to help me?” you asked. “Because I found my calling and I wasn’t pursuing it.”

He tilted his head to one side, considering. “Yes, I guess that’s part of the reason why I want to help you.” He took a shuddering breath.

“Turns out I wasn’t the only one struggling to keep my head above water.” He pressed his index finger to the computer screen. “This is Steve, my oldest friend. He had just started working as a professional freelance photographer. I had nothing to do so I decided to help him build his portfolio. You’re an artist, I’m sure you know that a portfolio will make or break you.”

“It shows what you’ve accomplished, the skills you mastered,” you said, nodding. “Your potential employers will want to see your portfolio.”

“Exactly, and you have to show them your best work. In Steve’s case, it meant taking risks. No matter how talented you are, no one’s gonna pay you for a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s gorgeous but it’s not rare.”

“So what did he do?”

“We decided to climb Mount Everest.” He mechanically rubbed his stump and your eyes followed his movement. “It might’ve been the dumbest idea we’ve ever had but it sort of made sense at the time. Steve needed a challenging project and I was trying to find my purpose. We trained for a year, put money aside and took a loan. We were young, we thought we were invincible.

“The thing is,” he continued, “Mount Everest is the most famous mountain in the world. It’s crowded and only half the climbers reach the summit. A lot of people die.” He took a small pause. “Sometimes they can’t remove their bodies and they become landmarks. Our Sherpa told us about this man, they call him Green Boots. He’s sort of curled up in a fetal position near what they call Green Boots’ cave. When you walk past him, it looks like he’s just sleeping and because it’s so cold out there he’s actually well-preserved.”

“Oh, God.”

“Yeah, it’s awful,” Bucky let out a small, humourless laugh. “When I fell, I dislocated my arm and it pinched my axillary artery completely closed. It cut off circulation. That’s why they had to amputate. I was just lying there, too weak to call for help, watching people walk past me. They thought I was dead. And I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to die here. I’m going to die here and people will refer to me as Blue Jacket.’ Then Steve and the Sherpa found me, and Steve carried me on his back until they found a shelter. When the rescue team arrived, it was too late to save my arm.”

He went through the photos in silence and glared at the screen without really seeing it, his mind far away. On the screen, there was an endless stream of blurry smiles and blue eyes but he couldn’t look away. His thoughts cleared up when he felt the back of your knuckles along his cheek and jaw.

He unclenched his teeth, feeling the pain in his jaw. You brushed your fingers through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. You mindlessly played with the curl on top of his head and raked your fingernails gently over his scalp. When you spoke, your voice was just a soft whisper.

“Come back to me.”

Bucky forced his eyes shut and swallowed past the lump in his throat, tears pooling on his lower lashes. He took a deep breath and released it slowly. After a moment, he felt his body beginning to relax.

“How do you do that?” he asked in a pleading voice, turning his head to look at you. “How do you quiet the noise in my head?”

The question caught you off guard but you recovered quickly. You took his arm and draped it over your shoulders. “I don’t know,” you said, snuggling into his side. “It’s your second panic attack today. Did I push you too hard?”

“No.” His response was immediate. “I don’t like winter. It’s freezing cold and it gets dark at three thirty. Not my favorite time of the year.”

“But this helps, right?” you asked, waving your hand back and forth in the space between you.

He chuckled. “Yeah, it helps a lot.”

“Good.” You snuggled a little closer.

“But since you’re hoarding my arm, you’re gonna have to go through the pictures yourself,” he added, grinning down at you.

“Sorry,” you laughed. You reached out and slid two fingers over the touchpad guiding the cursor over the arrow icon. “So where are those pictures of you with long hair, uh?”

He knew you were trying to distract him but still made him blush. Those photos were in a folder titled: recovery spring 2010. He gave you directions to find it and waited for your reaction, wondering if you would burst into laughter at the sight of him with long hair and a lot more weight on.

“Wow.”

Bucky turned his attention to the screen to see which one had caught your interest. It was a selfie Steve had taken one sunny afternoon after he had forced Bucky to go out with him and Sam. They were sitting outside drinking iced tea.

Steve’s smile was blinding. He was wearing that stupid baseball cap he loved so much. Bucky sat hunched over in his seat behind Steve, his smile small but genuine. It was the kind of smile that said ‘my friends forced me to join them but I’m secretly glad they did’. Sam was leaning sideways against Bucky, his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses.

“You look like a completely different person,” you said. “So... strong.”

“Hey!” he gasped in mock offense. “How dare you? I’m still strong.” He removed his arm from behind your shoulders and raised it to flex his biceps. “Look at that!”

With a roll of your eyes, you let your hand roam over his muscular arm slightly squeezing his biceps. “Okay, I’m impressed.”

“Ah! Thank you,” he said with a pleased smile. “Now, c’mon, s’ time to eat.”

Bucky got to his feet and extended his hand to help you up. You trailed behind him as you walked toward the kitchen. “I bet Steve could rip a log in half with his bare hands.”

“I’ll ask him.”

“Where is he?”

“Hard to say. He works for National Geographic now. I think he’s supposed to be in Siberia.”

You spent the next few days like tourists. You showed Bucky your favourite museums, stayed way too long in front of several artworks but he never complained. Bucky took you to the movies. You sat together in the dark for several hours watching foreign films, and you only fell asleep once. Then the two of you would walk around Manhattan speaking in a made-up language and pretending to be characters in a movie.

Bucky couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so carefree. A little voice in the back of his head kept repeating ‘enjoy it while it lasts’ but he chose to ignore it.

“Thanks for helping me with this,” Bucky said, gesturing at the tree in the living room. “She went to the store to buy some ornaments.”

He handed Sam a bottle of beer which he took with a smile before tipping it to his lips for a long drink. Bucky hit his beer bottle on the counter to uncap it and followed Sam into the living room.

“She’s excited, uh,” Sam said with a grin. “You guys are spending Christmas together?”

“Liss,” Bucky replied after taking a swig of beer. “We’re celebrating Liss this year.”

“’The hell is that?”

Bucky shrugged. “It’s an old word. It means comfort, happiness.” A respite from pain. “We decided to make our own holiday. We’re going to spend two days in our fanciest loungewear, eating junk food and playing board games.”

“Cute,” Sam drawled out. “When’s the wedding?”

“Don’t say that.” Bucky glared at him. “Why do you always do that? I finally feel at peace with myself. I’m happy, I’m ready to take on new challenges. Why do you always have to make fun of me?”

Sam’s eyes widened at this. “Woah, I’m joking. It’s what we do. You tease me, I tease you. C’mon, I know things have been hard for you. I’m proud of you,” he rushed to say, afraid he might have hurt his friend’s feelings, but then he caught Bucky’s barely concealed smirk behind his beer bottle. “You’re messing with me.”

“Of course, man. Can you say ‘I’m proud of you’ again? Wanna make it my ringtone.”

“Screw you.” They sipped their beer in silence, each deep in thought. “But you like her, right?”

Bucky twirled the neck of the bottle between two fingers. “I do, she’s nice.”

Sam shook his head like he was frustrated with the answer “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not in love with her, Sam.”

“I never said anything about being in love.” He was silent for a moment before he added, “Beside there’s an entire world between like and love.”

Bucky caught a glimpse of hurt and fear in the depths of Sam’s eyes. He reminded him of Steve: strong yet vulnerable, generous and righteous. Bucky had a feeling Sam wasn’t talking about you.

“Is this about Natasha?”

Sam hung his head and stared at the beer bottle he rolled between his hands. “Sometimes I feel like it was inevitable. These sugar daddy relationships are complicated; at first it’s fun and easy, we both get what we want.” He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. “And then it changes, so fast you barely see it coming, and it becomes the only thing you look forward to.” He took another swig of beer.

“These few hours with her mean more to me than anything else in this goddamn world. But it’s not real, none of this is real.”

“How do you know it’s not real?” Bucky asked, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

“I pay her.” Sam gave him a sad smile. “She spends time with me because I pay her. Sex wasn’t part of our deal but it came naturally. It’s going to end, one way or another. And If my time with her is limited, why make things complicated, y’see?”

An uneasy feeling gnawed at Bucky’s stomach, taunting him, trying to make him see something he wasn’t ready to see yet. “What if she feels the same way ‘bout you?”

“I don’t know,” Sam sighed. “To know that I’d have to talk to her, and I’d rather not take my chances. I’m happy with the way things are right now. It hurts, but I’m okay.” He leaned back and made himself comfortable. “You gotta be careful, Bucky. I see the way you look at your angel. You’re skating on thin fucking ice.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Like, love,” Sam said, weighing the two words. “And everything in between.”

They mulled over Sam’s words while they finished their beer. A million thoughts raged through Bucky’s head, circling around like wasps, buzzing and annoying. He was relieved when he heard the front door open.

“Italian leather loafers, mmh is Sam here?” you called out from the kitchen where you set your shopping bag down on the table before you joined them in the living room. “Hey guys! What’s the matter? You both look like someone kicked your puppy-OH MY GOD! LOOK AT THAT TREE!”

While you ran across the living room, Sam cast Bucky a look. The message was clear; be careful. They got to their feet and acted like nothing happened. Sam put on his coat and gave you a quick hug before he left.

Bucky was silent while you were decorating the tree. He let you decide where you wanted to put the tinsel and baubles. He just sat there with a vacant look in his eyes, handing baubles. A smile curled his lips when you cupped his cheek and ran the pad of your thumb along his cheekbone. He looked up at you.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Bucky said with a small smile. “Just old and moody.”

You laughed. “Come here, help me with this. It’s actually super boring when no one’s fighting for the baubles.”

“Oh, you wanna fight, angel,” he said with a smirk while he played with a tinsel garland. “Ok, let’s fight.”

You took a step back. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“Too late!”

You shrieked when he launched himself at you. He wrapped the tinsel garland around you, loosely pinning your arms to your sides. You laughed so hard your eyes watered and your shoulders shook. He used it to his advantage and looped two baubles over your ears like giant earrings.

Still laughing, you tugged one of your hands free and threw a handful of tinsel all over Bucky before you ran away. He chased you around the living room, using one of the fairy lights as a lasso.

Soon, the living room was a giant mess. There was more tinsel in Bucky’s hair than on the tree, and you had managed to wrap the fairy lights around his body. You look pretty ridiculous with your giant earrings and dishevelled hair.

You and Bucky collapsed on the floor, out of breath and euphoric. The sun was starting to set behind the skyscrapers casting a warm golden glow over the room. You turned on the fairy lights and burst out laughing when Bucky sparkled like a tree.

He found his phone on the sofa and handed it to you. You opened up the camera app and nestled closer to him. The first photo was blurry because you couldn’t stop laughing. Bucky thought the second photo was nice but you didn’t like it.

“My smile is too wild,” you said.

“You look beautiful,” he argued. “I look like a Christmas tree.”

Bucky felt a pleasant stir in his belly when you placed your head on his shoulder. Be careful. He could practically hear Sam’s voice in his head. His chest was hurting. It wasn’t unpleasant, just peculiar and unexpected. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek on top of your head.

“Bucky! You have to open your eyes,” you scolded him after looking at the picture, unaware of his inner turmoil.

He wasn’t sure he could; tears were welling up in his eyes. He was terrified of his feelings for you, but his body was screaming at him to stop burying his head in the sand. He didn’t want you to see the tears in his eyes, he didn’t want to alarm you, because the truth was, he hadn’t been careful.

“Can’t. I’m comfy,” he replied, masking his true feelings behind a joke.

“Open them or I’ll tickle you.”

He chuckled. “Okay, okay, no need to use force.”

He soldiered on and opened his eyes, smiling at the camera. He liked you, and he promised himself he would never tell you. His feelings didn’t matter, it wasn’t part of your deal.

Part 7

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #marvel #marvel fanfiction #marvel imagines #bucky barnes imagines #bucky barnes fanfiction #marvel imagine #bucky barnes imagine #redgillan #redgillanwrites

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stereksecretsanta · 3 years

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Merry Christmas, hazelestelle!

For @hazelestelle <3

Read On AO3

*****

It's Always Something, Even at Christmas

Chapter 1

“I need you to be my date.”

Stiles turned so quickly he fell out of his chair and cursed as he hit the floor and landed directly on his elbow. He glared up at Derek from the floor and gave him a look as he rolled his eyes and said, “Could you at least try to come in through the front door like a normal person?” while Derek stood there just inside his window, hands inside his leather coat, looking entirely undisturbed at the fact that he’d scared the crap out of his emissary.

“I need you to be my date,” he repeated, looking thoroughly annoyed, but Stiles, being far too attuned to the Alpha’s moods, noticed the slight hint of desperation in his tone. “The stupid firm I’m working for is having a Christmas party and if I don’t come with a date, specifically you, then that woman who works across from me is going to jump me.”

Stiles snorted as he got to his feet, rubbing his elbow, tossing the man a look as he went back to his laptop and said, “You could just not go to the party, you know that, right?”

Derek let out an exasperated sigh and threw himself onto Stiles’ bed and uncharacteristically rubbed his hands over his face and said, “God, I wish it were that easy. This stupid architecture degree was supposed to make my job easier, not harder,” he complained, and then said, “The thing is, I just finished helping the partners with a big project and they personally invited me to their private Christmas party. At their house,” he explained. “If I say no, I’ll look like the world’s biggest asshole…”

“As opposed to…?”

Derek shot him a bitch face and Stiles couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Seriously, dude. I still don’t know how you convinced them that you were a nice guy,” he commented, turning his attention back to the research that he’d been doing before Derek had so rudely interrupted him.

Something had been hunting the local pets in the area and Stiles had narrowed it down to a few supernatural beings. Being the Hale pack’s emissary wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The pack still had him pulling all nighters to help them out, on top of his normal job, which was working out of the new local FBI offices. When he’d finally finished his training, he’d put in a request and they had gladly let him set up a new office just outside of Beacon Hills. Anything for the new wunderkid agent who was making the agents back in D.C. look bad.

When he’d finally gotten back home, however, he discovered that Derek had returned back, as well, and with a degree in architecture, which was downright baffling to him because he had assumed that when the man had disappeared back in the Mexican desert that he’d gone off to do werewolf stuff…apparently, not so much. From what he had gleaned through secondhand information, Derek had gone off to New York and settled in and gotten his degree at NYU.

To think that they had both been on the east coast at the same time, only an hour and a half train ride away from each other for nearly five years…Stiles sometimes wondered if Derek had known that he was in D.C. but hadn’t cared enough to do anything about it.

And then Stiles had found out that the man was an alpha again. That had thrown him for a loop.

When he’d gotten back, he’d found out that Deaton was planning on leaving, so Stiles had used up all of his spare time picking his brain about what it meant to be an emissary, and suddenly found himself with a second job when Derek had asked him in the most formal way possible if he was willing to be the pack’s emissary.

He’d said yes.

And then Erica and Boyd had rolled back into town after hearing that Derek was back and an alpha, yet again, despite having left back in junior year when things had gone to hell in a handbasket around Beacon Hills. And Derek had himself a little pack consisting of those two, Isaac, and a new kid named Liam, who Isaac was incredibly protective over.

So now Stiles was living back at home in his old room with his dad, just like in high school, and Derek was still breaking in through his window.

Considering that they were both adults, it was more than a little bit weird. But, at the same time, it was familiar and safe, so he kind of enjoyed it. Despite being twenty-four years old and still living at home, his dad let him keep whatever hours he wanted and he and came and went as he pleased…and Derek still couldn’t use the front door.

“Look,” Derek said, sounding tired, “They said I could bring a date and I told them that I would bring you, and they all…”

When his voice suddenly dropped off, Stiles looked over at him, trying to figure out why the heck Derek looked guilty as hell. He was now looking at the floor and had shoved his hands so deep into his pockets that Stiles was certain that they were about to rip at the seams.

“They what, Derek?” he prompted him.

He finally looked back up at him.

“They’ve apparently all assumed that you’re my boyfriend because I’ve talked about you so much.” Stiles’ eyebrow shot up and he opened his mouth to say something, but then Derek cut him off with an eyeroll and said, “Look, I talk about you because you’re our pack’s emissary, but I can’t tell them that, so they get a highly edited version of my weekend events and your name comes up a lot, and they all just assumed, and please don’t make this any harder than this is for me.”

He was sorely tempted to make fun of him, but he instead withheld the impulse and licked his lips and said, “If I say yes, what will I be expected to do at this party?”

Derek huffed, but then answered, “I don’t know…act…boyfriend-like. Do whatever it is couples do, I guess.” He shrugged his shoulders and Stiles took some perverse pleasure at seeing how uncomfortable he was, but also felt a faint twinge of regret. “Hold hands, kisses on the cheek, pet names…stuff like that.”

The picture he gave him was one that Stiles had secretly wanted for years. He’d fallen for him back in high school but had known that someone as gorgeous and amazing as Derek was way out of his league, even more so considering his werewolf status and all of his abilities. He consistently attracted older women to him and so Stiles knew that he would never have a chance, but it was nice to know that Derek had talked about him enough at work and in such a way that his coworkers thought that Stiles was his boyfriend.

He thought about torturing him a bit longer, but instead capitulated and said, “Sure, why not. When and where is it?”

Derek’s shoulders slumped in relief.

“Next weekend. I’ll pick you up Saturday night, don’t worry about it.”

“Dress code?”

Derek gave him another look.

“Uh…don’t know. I’ll find out. Just…thank you, Stiles,” he said, and the emissary nodded, keeping his emotions in check, even though he kinda wanted to shout from the rooftops that he was going on a date with Derek Hale. So, what if it was a fake date, it was better than nothing.

Derek moved to leave through the window, and Stiles couldn’t help but say, “Does that mean I can call you Der Bear?”

He heard him growl as he dropped to the ground and he laughed.

Yeah, this was gonna be fun.

“So, I hear you and Derek are going out on a date,” said Erica as she sprawled out on his office couch, kicking her legs out behind her as she lay on her stomach, staring intently at her nails as Stiles finished up a report for the head office, thoroughly entrenched in getting through it before he called it quits and went to lunch, which was the reason why she was there.

“It’s not a real date, it’s just to keep his coworkers off his back,” he said, still staring at his screen as he typed.

She let out a snort, rolled over to her back and shot him a look.

“Yeah, fake, right. You do know that Mr. Grumpycat has been pining after you for years, now, right?” she shot back at him and Stiles shook his head, knowing better than to take anything of what she said as serious. “He’s been all broody and serious ever since you came back to Beacon Hills,” she complained.

Stiles rolled his eyes.

“So, no different than usual, then?” he couldn’t help but retort, flipping a page on the papers that he was referencing as he wrote his report.

But at that, Erica sat back up, her hair spilling around her shoulders in that effortless way that most models would kill for and gave him a look and said, “Actually, before you showed up, he seemed to have really changed. He was wearing more normal clothes, like sweaters and stuff, not a leather jacket to be seen. He was even smiling more, acting like a person, you know?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “It was like seeing the human side of him for once. But then you showed up and he becomes all Broody McBrooderson again…”

Stiles sighed, though slightly amused at her description of the alpha, but ignored her just long enough so that he could finish his report, and then stood up, reached over and grabbed his coat and said, “Can we just go to lunch?”

She rolled her eyes at him a second time, but then smiled.

“Fine. Lunch it is.”

And with that they walked out arm in arm from his office, and Stiles smirked when he saw a few of the other agents sneak glances at her, most of them unaware of the fact that she was taken. He was fairly certain that quite a few of them thought that Erica was his girlfriend, but he didn’t really care.

She wore her skinny jeans, thigh high black boots, and her usual too-tight low-cut top with a leather jacket thrown over it for good measure. Stiles looked like a worn-out door to door salesman next to her in his rumpled suit, but he didn’t mind. Ever since he had come back, the two of them had bonded in a way that Stiles had always wished they had and now she was like the best friend that he’d never had…she had even beat out his old best friend, Scott. Scott had left Beacon Hills to go to vet school and, according to his mom, he wasn’t coming back.

He still kept in touch with him, but it was sort of an unspoken understanding between the two of them that Scott wanted nothing more to do with the goings-on of Beacon Hills and the supernatural drama that came with it. Stiles was fine with that, and still kept in close contact with Melissa…who had been spending a suspicious amount of time with his dad, recently.

He didn’t want to think about it too much, so he turned his attention to Erica as they sat down in the booth at the diner and ordered their usual. As soon as their food arrived, he changed the subject.

“So…how’s Boyd doing?”

At the question, she lit up and Stiles smiled as she began to jabber away.

“Oh my god, he’s doing so good. Ever since he found that job at the hospital as an orderly, he’s been doing so good. He really loves helping people, you know?” she said with a bright smile, dipping one of her fries into her milkshake and taking a bite. “I’m still working on trying to finish my GED, which is a serious pain in the ass, but as soon as I get it, I’m looking into becoming a volunteer counselor at the youth center,” she admitted, sounding a bit shy as she did, and Stiles smiled.

She was amazing with teenagers, especially the girls, and Stiles thought it was a perfect fit for her.

“I’m happy for the two of you,” he said, completely sincere. He didn’t have any romantic prospects, male or female, but he was okay with it. He was just happy to see his friends finally happy.

Erica gave him another blinding smile…but then it turned devious as she said, “So…this ‘fake’ date that you and Derek are having. I hear it’s for the private Christmas party that he was invited to, right?” Stiles groaned, but she didn’t let up. “I bet there’s gonna be mistletoe there. I don’t care what it takes, you need to drag that boy under it and get it on with him already!”

He threw a french fry at her, but she caught it between her teeth and continued to grin at him.

Finally, he said, “I’m not dragging him anywhere, let alone towards something that could potentially kill him. Look, I know you think that he likes me, too, but trust me when I say that it’s barely concealed annoyance. At best.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m serious! I mean, when he asked me to be emissary, of course I said yes, but that’s all I am to him. I am a tool that helps keep the pack safe and that’s it, Erica. That’s all it’s ever going to be. And I’m fine with that, seriously. I love being someone that can help the pack, the person that you guys can turn to when the going gets rough. Hell, that’s why I joined the FBI,” he added, eating one of his own fries.

She arched an eyebrow at him, and he could see the look all over her face.

“Stiles. He likes you. As in, he likes likes you.”

He gave her a look right back and said, “Oh, so we’re reverting to middle school terms, now? What next? You gonna hand me note from him that says, ‘do you like me? Check yes or no’?”

She rolled her eyes and practically pouted as she said, “Look, he’s my alpha and I can tell when he’s not acting right and ever since you came back his scent gets all weird whenever you’re around or any time that he’s thought that you might be in trouble, and Isaac and Liam have both been worried about him, too,” she admitted, and Stiles was taken off guard by the naked honesty in her tone.

He licked his lips, put down the burger that he was about to take a bite of and said, “You…you’re serious?”

She nodded.

“Yeah. So…don’t fuck this up, okay? He may act like you’re just doing him a favor, going to the Christmas party and all, but I know that this means a lot to him,” she muttered, picking at the edge of the table, chipping off a piece of the flaking formica with one perfectly manicured fingernail. “He acts all tough around you, and only you, and I may not know why…but I know that he has feelings for you, Stiles. So, don’t fuck this up.”

He took a deep breath…but then nodded. At that, she seemed to relax, and they went back to their lunch, him talking about his research on the creature that was going after the local pets (most likely a lamia, though he had no idea how it had made its way to Beacon Hills), and Erica chiming it about the online college classes that both Isaac and Liam were taking, and how the additions onto the Hale house were coming. According to Erica, both of the boys wanted their own rooms, but Derek was insisting that they share because he was not adding two bedrooms.

By the time they were done, and Erica was walking him back to his office, he was feeling a bit better.

She lightly squeezed his waist before she left and whispered into his ear right before lightly pecking his cheek, “Don’t fuck it up.”

He snorted and hugged her right back and returned the gesture.

“I’ll try not to,” he replied with a fake put-upon look, and she gave him a wry smile in return before turning around and heading back down the street.

It was the day before the Christmas party, and Stiles was running through the backyard of Mrs. Newton’s house in the middle of the night, trying his hardest to not get caught by the nosy old lady who had a tendency to spy on her neighbors through her back windows. He had found the lamia. Which wasn’t a lamia. Instead, it was a rogue were-coyote, and Stiles was looking like an idiot with dirt-stained jeans with the left leg completely soaked through. He had almost cornered it a few houses down, near a bird bath in someone else’s backyard, but then it had bolted at the last second and he now had a ruined pair of pants.

He panted, trying to catch his breath. Sure, he was fitter than he used to be, but he’d been chasing it for over an hour at that point.

Bent over at the waist, still catching his breath, Stiles begrudgingly pulled out his small pouch of mountain ash, hating that he had to use it, but knowing that it was necessary.

“Okay, you little fucker,” he muttered, pulling out the smallest amount needed because he hated wasting it. “I’m going to track you properly and find your goddamn den if it’s the last thing I do, because you are seriously ruining my night.”

He closed his eyes, concentrated, and then let out a trickle of it from between his first finger and thumb…and let out a sigh of relief as it glowed slightly and drifted in a straight line back through the backyards until it headed for the woods. He followed it, letting out small amounts each time he ran out of glowing ash to follow, and was grateful that he’d decided to wear his boots as he ended up going deep into the woods just beyond the Hale property.

He followed it to a small den where he found a young boy, no more than ten, curled up back in the corner of his roughshod den. He was wearing only a small pair of blue shorts, the rest of his body covered in dirt and grime, and small bones littered the ground around him; what was left of the pets.

He seemed to be shaking, so Stiles gently reached out with one hand and said, “Hey, kid, I’m not here to hurt you…are you just hungry?” he asked and was taken aback when bright gold eyes snapped up to meet his.

The boy then nodded.

Making a quick decision, Stiles helped him out of his den and put his own jacket around the boy’s shoulders and walked him back to his house.

As soon as he’d settled him down, gotten him into some clean clothes and gotten him some food, he started to feel less anxious. However, just as the kid (Lance, he had told him in a voice barely above a whisper) was finally settled, he heard the front door open, so he quickly went to cut off whoever it was…and his eyes went wide when he saw that it was Derek.

“Where is he?” the alpha growled, his eyes flashing red, and Stiles stopped him with a hand on his chest, and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, big guy! It’s not what you think! It’s a kid!” he hissed, glancing over his shoulder, trying to keep his voice down, unsure of how much the young were-coyote could hear. “His name’s Lance and he’s only around ten and he was only going after people’s pets because it was easier for him to hunt and get food…I think he’s been abandoned…”

Stiles watched as Derek went from full-metal-alpha to suddenly looking worried, his brow furrowed and his eyes glancing back towards where he could obviously smell the kid was, back in the kitchen.

“Abandoned? Who would do that to a kid?”

“Some pretty shitty people, that’s who,” Stiles replied, noticing how Derek’s entire body language had shifted from attack-mode to protective-alpha mode.

He went silent and watched as Derek seemed to be listening in on the kid and then couldn’t help but ask, “So…sense anything wrong with him?” and Derek shook his head and answered, “No, just…he smells like anxiety. I think he’s been alone a long time. But he only just got here. He doesn’t smell like the preserve,” he commented. “More like…diesel.”

At that, Stiles nodded and said, “Probably sneaking onto long-distance hauling trucks. Easy to hide on and gets you plenty of miles away from a previous hunting ground. Smart kid.”

Derek nodded as well, and they stood there for a moment in the front foyer, Stiles’ hand still on Derek’s chest. He seemed to realize what he was doing and pulled it back, rubbing it on the thighs of his jeans, and then Derek looked at him, gave him a once over, and he snorted.

“What happened to you?”

Stiles rolled his eyes.

“I was chasing after a were-coyote in the middle of the night and a birdbath accosted me, that’s what happened,” he quipped, just remembering the clinging wetness of the left side of his jeans. He absently tugged at it and said, “Gotta say, that kid is fast. Faster than you, that’s for sure,” he added, knowing it would irritate the alpha.

True to form, Derek gave him a look, his equivalent of a bitch-face, and Stiles smirked, but then asked him on a more serious note, “Hey, can you watch after him? I’ll introduce you two, but I need to go upstairs and change because this is starting to seriously chafe…”

Derek nodded, and Stiles walked back into the kitchen with the alpha right behind his shoulder and cautiously approached the table, silently grateful that his dad was on the night shift.

“Hey, Lance…this is Derek. He’s a werewolf, he’s an alpha, and he’s my friend,” he softly explained, putting his hand carefully in front of the bowl of cereal that he was eating. “I don’t want to leave you alone, just yet, so would it be okay if he spends some time with you while I go and change out of these wet and dirty clothes?”

Lance looked back up at him with his now hazel eyes, his gaze slightly confused, and nodded.

“Okay, then.”

He motioned for Derek to sit down across from him and went upstairs and quickly stripped out of his ruined clothes and hopped into the shower. He cleaned out the grime, rinsed off as best he could, and as soon as he was out of the shower, before he had even put on any clothes, he threw a towel around his waist and went and checked the missing persons database on his work laptop, putting in the first name Lance and looking for kids around his age. He couldn’t have come from nowhere.

While it searched, he threw on sweats, an academy shirt, and ran his fingers through his hair, drying it as best he could, ignoring the fact that his stomach had flipped when he’d seen Derek look at the kid with such soft affection that it had made his heart ache.

God, he’d be a great dad.

His computer dinged, and he hopped over on one foot, pulling a sock over the other one, and squinted as he looked at the information that had popped up onto the screen.

Lance Santiago. Thirteen years old, missing for the last nine months ago from Ogunquit, Maine. Parents murdered in a home invasion, no other living relatives.

Swallowing around the knot that had formed in his throat, Stiles pulled up the police report from the home invasion and closed his eyes for a brief second at what he saw on the screen in front of him…and then opened them again and made himself look at the crime scene photos in the way that the academy had trained him to.

Each of their necks had been viciously ripped open, and the coroner’s report had said that the intruders had used several different tools to make the marks, but he knew what they really were: they were from the claws of a werewolf. And the kid had apparently witnessed the whole thing, but then had inexplicably escaped from the foster home that they had put him in. They had tried to find him for the first three months, but then had given up, and now he was here, in Beacon Hills.

He let out a long sigh and headed back downstairs and stilled in the doorway to the kitchen…

Derek was flicking pieces of cereal in Lance’s face and Lance was smiling and laughing and throwing cereal right back at him while Lance was talking in rapid-fire Spanish and Stiles was baffled when Derek was speaking fluently right back at him, grinning almost the entire time. The alpha had taken off his jacket and thrown it over the back of his chair and sat there in just a dark red sweater with the sleeves rolled up, eyes sparkling, lips effortlessly wrapping around the foreign syllables, while Sam chattered excitedly right back at him.

It was like something out of a movie.

He watched them for a moment longer and then said, “Hey, you two, quit making a mess,” and Lance looked up, wide-eyed, but Derek just shook his head and said, “It’s no worse than what you do.”

The kid still seemed scared for a moment, but then Derek reached out his hand and put it on his shoulder and said, “Está bien, Lance. Está bien.”

He then stood up and walked over to Stiles and said in a low voice as they both moved closer to the fridge, away from the table, “He knows some English, but not much. I can speak with him, fine, and he seems to trust me. So, if it’s easier for you and your dad, he can stay with me and the pack, if you’d like.”

Okay, so maybe Stiles just fell a little bit more in love with the man.

He nodded.

“It’s a good idea but be careful. I found him on file, and he’s gone through a pretty bad trauma. If anyone can help, though, it’d be you guys,” he conceded, though a little wary to have him out of his sight for too long, the kid’s dark brown hair flopping into his eyes and reminding Stiles of just how young and vulnerable he was.

He then looked at Derek and said, “Uh, when did you learn Spanish, by the way?”

Derek ducked his eyes, not quite meeting them, and said, “Uh, I, uh…I started to learn as a kid. Mom and dad insisted. I kept up with it over the years, mainly because of the other packs down south, but…yeah. It comes in handy a lot.”

He seemed thoroughly embarrassed at being put on the spot, so Stiles dragged his eyes away from him, looked back over at Lance who was finally finishing his cereal, and asked, “Think the pack will like him?”

The alpha smiled.

“When we were talking, I found out he loves Star Wars. I think he and Isaac and Liam will get along really well. Boyd is more of a Trekkie, but they’ll get along,” he said, looking at the kid with a soft, almost find look. “It seems we’ve got another mouth to feed for Christmas.” As he said that, however, his eyes went wide and he said, “Oh, shit. The party. Tomorrow night.”

“Well, tonight, really,” Stiles supplied, looking at the time on the microwave. Two-thirty-six in the morning.

Derek rolled his head on his neck and said, “I don’t want the kid to have his first night with the pack all alone, I shouldn’t do that to him. I can call Erik and tell him that I can’t come to the--”

“Hold up there, big guy,” Stiles interjected, putting a hand to his shoulder. “You have to go to that thing, and you know it. They personally invited you, and, as much as even I hate to say it, you need to make good with these guys so that they can see just how valuable you are. You’ve got a pack to feed, buddy, and even if you do already have a shit ton of money, I know you care about this job, and I think Lance can handle one night alone with the pack. It’s a Friday night, right? They can order in a few pizzas, watch some movies…he’ll probably feel more comfortable around some weres closer to his own age, anyway,” he added, trying to make Derek see sense.

Derek looked at the kid and then back at Stiles. And then back at the kid, who was now looking at the two of them with those wide, hazel eyes of his, his brow slightly furrowed as if he was trying to understand what they were saying about him. Derek looked at Stiles one last time.

He then walked over to Lance and said something in Spanish that Stiles didn’t catch, Lance said something back to him, and then they both smiled.

Derek grabbed his jacket from where he left it and then said, “Okay, that settles it. I’m taking him back to the house for the night, he’s going to spend the day with the pack…and then I am coming over to pick you up at seven, Stiles.”

He then threw him a smile and said, “By the way, it’s dressy casual…but don’t wear the reindeer tie, please, I beg of you,” and Stiles grinned.

“But it goes with everything, Derek!”

He rolled his eyes and lightly tugged on Lance’s shoulder, who followed him to the front door. Stiles gave the kid’s shoulder one last squeeze and then watched as the two of them walked down the road, heading off in the direction of the Hale house. It was a good fit for him, Stiles thought to himself, wondering how he was going to deal with the fact that Derek was obviously already attached to the kid. Lance needed to not have anyone looking for him…and Stiles might have a solution for that.

Chapter 2

After getting four hours of sleep, Stiles was back down in the kitchen rifling through the cabinets, this time with his dad giving him judgmental looks over the edge of his newspaper.

“You’re telling me you went after a were-coyote on your own last night?” he said in a tone that Stiles was all too familiar with.

“Yes, but I wasn’t in any danger, pops,” he griped, finally finding the pop-tarts, ignoring the second judgmental look that he got as he pulled one out of the foil and took a bite out of it. “This kid is thirteen years old and no danger to people, he was just hungry, alright? The pets were easy hunting.”

The sheriff put down the paper, reached for his coffee and asked, “You say he’s been missing for nine months?”

Stiles nodded as he dropped into the chair across from him.

“Yeah. No family to speak of, just…a lot of horrible trauma.” His dad nodded. “I’m just glad that we found him first before anyone else did. Derek and his pack are a good fit for him, right now,” he thought out loud. “If anyone’s going to be able to help Lance figure out how to deal with it all, it’ll be those four and Derek.”

His dad nodded, took a long sip of his coffee and then said, “So, he’s staying with Derek and the pack. That’s good, I guess, but it’s not a permanent solution, you know that, right?”

Stiles gave his dad a look and reached across and stole a sip of his dad’s coffee, ignoring the glare that he gave him as he did.

“Yeah, I know it’s not a solution, but don’t worry about it, I’m already looking into what I can do,” he explained, handing his father’s coffee back to him, pushing it across the table. “I looked into the criminal file of what happened to his parents and it looks like they never even had any suspects for the murders, and if I let him go back, he’ll just end up with a foster family who doesn’t know about the supernatural and I can’t do that to the kid. I figure both of his parents were just like he is, and so the attack was most likely something personal, which means that there’s a werewolf out there looking to hunt this kid down and kill him. Lance most likely only got away because of how fast he is. I don’t think even Derek could keep up with him, even if he wanted to,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, feeling worn out and wishing he could figure out how to help him.

They shared a look, both of them aware of just how hard it was going to be for the kid unless they could make sure that he was safe. So, Stiles came to decision that he would warn the pack that someone might be tracking the kid, even with everything that he’d done to get away from the werewolf that had killed his parents.

Stiles pulled another pop-tart out of the packet and took a bite, and then said, with his mouth full, “By the way, going to a Christmas party with Derek tonight, so don’t wait up,” and at that, his dad’s brow shot up and he threw him a smirk.

“You and Derek, huh?” he drawled, taking another sip of his coffee, and Stiles rolled his eyes and stood back up, saying, “Oh, don’t you start, pops. It’s not like that. Derek’s coworkers are convinced that I’m his boyfriend because he’s always talking about me because of the time we spend together on the weekends with my emissary duties. Complaining, mostly. He can’t exactly tell them the truth, so he’s been dragged into taking me to the party as his date. It’s not real, it’s just to keep the higher ups happy.”

His dad nodded, not saying anything more, but Stiles could see the faint humor that still lingered on the corner of his lips and he knew that his dad was probably going to be laughing about the situation for a long time, getting a kick out of his seeing his son like this.

He shrugged it off and went and got dressed and headed off to the office.

As soon as walked inside, Agent Katherine Richards greeted him with a coffee and a cheery, “Morning, Agent Stilinski!”

“For the last time, Katie, if you don’t start calling me Stiles, I’m going to put you on filing duty for the next two weeks,” he playfully griped, grabbing the coffee that she gave to him every single morning without fail. He then yawned as he asked, “Now, did you get me a copy of that file that I e-mailed you about this morning?”

She gave him a look and said, “You mean that e-mail that you sent me at five am? Yeah, I did, and you’re welcome,” she said with an arch tone, tossing it onto his desk as they both walked into his office. “Let’s just say that the local authorities in Maine don’t like it when someone from the FBI wants their files for a case that they couldn’t solve. Something about it making them look bad, I guess,” she mused, leaning her hip against his desk and throwing him a knowing grin. “Why’d you want it?”

Knowing he could trust her, he said, “I found the kid.”

Her eyes went wide.

“You mean the kid who saw who killed his parents? He’s the only witness, Stiles! Where did you find him?”

He trusted her, but not that much, so he avoided answering by instead saying, “That’s not important, what’s important is that he’s safe and secured and we don’t have to worry about him right now. Now, I need to make sure that I am out of here by five today, because I have to go and be a fake boyfriend for a friend of mine,” he explained and was amused when Katie’s eyes lit up.

“Fake boyfriend?” she repeated, her tone sounding all too eager. “Oooh, is it for that girl that you have lunch with a couple of times a week? The stunning blonde with legs for days that looks like she should be walking a Victoria’s Secret runway?”

Stiles chuckled at that apt description of Erica, knowing she would love it, but shook his head.

“No, no, not her. She’s already got a boyfriend,” he quickly said. “This is for my friend, Derek. He got dragged into it and so I’m trying to help make it a little easier on him,” he explained, already turning his attention to the file that she’d given him.

Katie gave him a look…and then said in a carefully measured tone, “Is this the Derek that you mentioned before?”

Stiles glared up at her, annoyed with himself for forgetting that he’d mentioned the alpha more than a few times to his own coworkers, and said, “Yes, it’s that Derek. No, we’re not actually dating, and no, it’s not anything serious. I’m just covering his ass for his bosses,” to which she retorted, “Yeah, I bet you’re covering his ass.”

“Excuse me?”

She laughed and the patted the file that she put on his desk and said, “As fun as this conversation has been, don’t think you’ve distracted me from this, Stiles. While I am incredibly curious about this Derek guy, I am not forgetting that you just found the key witness in a brutal murder that has yet to be solved. You’ll bring me in if you need help, right?” she asked, looking and sounding genuinely concerned, and Stiles nodded and patted her hand.

“I promise, Agent Richards.”

With that, she left the room, and Stiles went back to his work. He dug through the file to figure out exactly who to contact and how to keep everything intact so that they wouldn’t find out…while also keeping a close eye on the time, making sure that he didn’t work too hard. He needed to be able to leave by five so that he would be ready to go by seven.

Of course, things didn’t go as planned. He shot off a quick message to the pack, did some paperwork, and then the next thing he knew, he was looking at the clock and it said six thirty and he was twenty minutes from home.

Shit.

Slipping the file into his bag, he ran out of the building, shouting a quick, “See you tomorrow!” over his shoulder as he did, and probably broke a couple of laws as he raced home, trying to figure out how many he could get away with breaking to make sure that he had enough time to shower.

He ran into his house as quickly as he could, grateful that his dad had already left for his night shift about an hour before, and then scrambled up the stairs and threw his bag onto his desk and looked into his closet helplessly, trying to figure just what the hell dressy casual was.

However, before he could even look in his closet, let alone get a shower like he’d originally planned, he heard a knock at the front door.

Shit.

He turned and ran back down the stairs and as he swung the door open, the first words out of his mouth were, “Please, please, please don’t be mad, but I am not dressed, yet, I only just got home, and…why are you looking at me like that?”

Derek was staring at him, mouth slightly open, looking like he was struggling to catch his breath. Stiles looked down at himself, trying to see what was wrong, wondering if he had dropped food or coffee on himself earlier in the day without noticing, but only saw his usual work clothes: a white dress shirt, the top couple of buttons undone, his rumpled black pants and jacket, military issued FBI boots, along with his shoulder holster, which was slightly askew because he’d already removed his weapon, and he was baffled as to why Derek was staring at him.

“Uh, Derek?” he said, snapping his fingers, and the alpha shook his head and said, “Yeah, I’m…you’re fine. What you’re wearing is just fine.”

Stiles looked back down at himself a second time, baffled, and then looked at what Derek was wearing and couldn’t help but smile and say as he noticed his outfit, “And you are looking like a dad going to a PTA meeting, oh my god, are you wearing loafers?” he exclaimed, unable to stifle a giggle as he saw the black leather on the man’s feet. Derek rolled his eyes, but before he could say anything, Stiles kept going.

“Not only loafers, but you’re wearing a belt that matches them, and is that a tailored sport coat that doesn’t quite match your pants with a pink shirt? Dude,” he put his hand on his shoulder, “I thought someone like you with a ton of money would be wearing Armani or something. But this…?”

He gestured up and down at his outfit and Derek glared at him, no longer staring at Stiles’ clothes and bit out, “I’m not Peter, I don’t care about expensive clothes. Now, get your ass in my car so we can go already. Like I said, what you’re wearing is fine. Though you might want to lose the shoulder holster,” he added, looking at his shoulder distractedly.

Stiles glanced down and shrugged, stepped back into the hallway to take off the holster and grab his phone and house keys, and then followed Derek out to his car. He still had the Camaro.

As soon as they had pulled out onto the main road, he asked, “So…Erik’s your boss, right?”

Derek nodded, eyes focused on the road.

“Yep. Good man, great architect. His partner’s name is Geoff, and they’ve been running the architecture firm for over fifteen years now. And they’re looking to take on a third partner,” he added lightly, and Stiles knew exactly what he meant.

“So, tonight is about showing off how amazing you are?” he said, trying to ease the tension that he could feel coming from him, but then saw his hands tighten on the wheel, so he quickly backpedaled with, “I’m not going to make fun of you tonight, Derek, I promise. I mean, I knew this was kind of serious, but I had no idea that you were trying to make partner. Now that I know, I will make sure to be on my best behavior, no matter what. Only good things, I promise.”

Derek’s fingers released their death grip on the wheel and Stiles breathed out a sigh of relief. Now that he knew just how serious he was about the evening, he quickly put aside any thoughts that he had of telling some of the man’s more embarrassing stories, instead focused on how he could show his bosses just how amazing he was.

When they pulled up the driveway to the house, Stiles let out a low whistle.

“Holy shit, they got money,” he said, slightly awed at the large, A-frame cabin that stretched out into one of those cabin McMansions that he’d only ever seen on Hallmark movies.

Derek nodded, pulled up behind a black Rolls Royce, and put the Camaro in park and then let out a long, nervous breath, glancing up at the windows of the house apprehensively. From where they sat, Stiles could hear the faint strains of holiday music on piano and could see the glimmer of Christmas lights in the windows. He watched as Derek swallowed, looking more nervous than he’d ever seen him before, so Stiles reached out and put his hand over his, trying to calm him down.

Derek’s eyes suddenly dropped to where Stiles had his fingers wrapped around his…and then took another breath and lightly squeezed his hand.

“Okay. I can do this,” he said, still sounding nervous, and Stiles corrected him, “We can do this, Der. Trust me. I’m going to be the best fake boyfriend you’ve ever had.”

At that, the tension was broken and the alpha chuckled and shook his head and said, “Yeah, well you better, or else I’m gonna make your life a living hell. Now,” he squeezed his hand a second time, “How about we go on inside? Honey.”

Stiles let out a sound that was close to a laugh and gave him a fake, sweet look and said, “Of course, Der Bear.”

Derek groaned and Stiles grinned.

They pulled apart long enough to get out of the car, and then Stiles plastered himself to Derek’s side, tucking his right arm through Derek’s left and leaned into him as much as he could, enjoying every single second of being able to touch Derek as much as he’d always wanted to.

Just before they walked through the front door, though, Derek turned his head just enough to look Stiles in the eye and said, “You ready to be affectionate with me? ‘Cause as soon as we walk in there, they are going to be expecting us to act like a couple. So…you going to be okay with that?” and Stiles scoffed, arched an eyebrow at him and said, “Dude, listen to my heartbeat as I say these words: this is the best idea that you’ve ever come up and I can’t wait to pretend to be your boyfriend.”

He watched in amusement as Derek’s eyes widened at hearing the honesty and Stiles grinned and said, “Now take me inside, honeybuns.”

Derek laughed and pulled the door open, moving out of Stiles’ grip so that he could put his hand on his lower back to usher him through the door ahead of him, and Stiles preened under the intimate touch, wishing with all of his heart that it was real.

Erica’s words echoed in his head… I know he has feelings for you, Stiles. So, don’t fuck this up.

He swallowed, feeling his first twinge of nervousness.

He could do this.

The foyer alone was intimidating. The ceilings were, of course, vaulted, and swept up nearly twenty feet. He let Derek move him to the main room, where a whole lot of people in dressy clothes mingled. Before Stiles could take it all in, however, a man in a dark blue sport coat with a nicely trimmed beard walked over to them and said in a loud, friendly voice, “Hale! So glad you made it!” and then reached out and pulled Derek into a half hug.

Stiles watched in amusement as Derek tried to return it, though it was obvious to him that he was uncomfortable with it, patting him on the shoulder and saying, “Thanks for inviting me, Erik.”

Suddenly, Erik pulled back and said, “Oh, right, I forgot…no hugs. Sorry about that, just caught up in the holiday cheer. Is this the boyfriend we’ve heard so much about?” he asked, pointing at Stiles with the glass in his hand, looking curious.

Before Derek could say a word, Stiles stepped forward and said, “Stiles Stilinski, pleased to meet you.”

Erik gave him a solid handshake, looked him up and down and then looked back over at Derek and said, “You have good taste, Hale. Also,” he turned his attention back to Stiles, “Pleased to meet you. Feel free to tell us as many embarrassing stories about this man as possible. He’s so closed-lipped around the office, it’s a miracle that we even knew that he had a boyfriend. Of course,” he said giving a short chuckle, “That wasn’t too hard to figure out considering how much he talked about you.”

He lifted his glass to him in acknowledgement and Stiles couldn’t help but share a smile and say, “Yeah, well, not too surprised. I am a big part of his life, after all,” and gave Derek a shit-eating grin.

Derek just shook his head and reached over and gently tugged at his hand and Stiles found it remarkably easy to fall in next to him and let him lead him into the rest of the room, where he was introduced to at least twenty different people in under ten minutes, and he was pretty proud of the fact that he could remember all of their names.

Part of his training as an FBI agent was to be able to hold onto a lot of information in a short amount of time, and it was finally coming in handy.

Eventually, he let himself be split off from Derek and watched with a fond smile as Erik and Geoff flanked him on either side and started to talk with him in hushed tones, both of them smiling, while Derek attempted to smile, though he still looked like he had just been thrown into the lion’s den.

Stiles stifled a laugh at the sight, took a sip of the apple cider in his hand, and was taken off guard when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“You must be Stiles, the boyfriend,” a feminine voice said, turning him around, and he found himself levelling his eyes at a lovely woman wearing a dark violet dress, and thick blonde hair spilled over shapely shoulders, showing off her stunning warm complexion and blue eyes. “I’m Jane Caruso, I work in Interior Design at the firm. My desk is right across from Derek’s,” she said, and Stiles could see the way that she was assessing him, a sharp glint in her eye as she looked him up and down.

He took another sip of his drink, making her wait for his response, putting her on the defensive (using his FBI training, yet again) and saw her shift uncomfortably as she waited for him to speak.

Finally, he said, “Yeah, I’m the boyfriend,” and extended his hand and gave her a polite handshake.

Not missing a beat, she held his hand for a moment longer than necessary and then leaned in and, glancing at him and then shooting a look over at Derek as she asked conspiratorially, “So, how the hell did someone like you snag a specimen like him?”

Without hesitation, he pulled his hand back and replied, “Oh, we’ve known each other since high school,” and then looked down at his drink, smirked, and the looked back up at her and said, as if he was embarrassed (though far from it), “Actually, I was the one in high school. I was sixteen, he was twenty…things really didn’t start until after I graduated, of course, but…you know how these things go,” he finished, taking another sip of the cider, enjoying the way her eyes widened and she leaned slightly away from him.

He had to withhold a laugh when Jane then said, sounding completely off-balance, “Oh, that’s…so you two have known each other a long time, then.”

He nodded.

“Yeah. I mean, when we first met, we hated each other. I even got him arrested for something he didn’t do,” he said, laughing, looking over at Derek, knowing that the werewolf could hear every word of his conversation, and could see his jaw twitch, even from a distance, and he bit his lip, wondering how much he could get away with.

“You got him arrested?”

Stiles chuckled and then quickly amended, “Yeah, but I didn’t mean to. My dad can tell you what happened better than I can, anyway,” he said, knowing exactly what she was going to ask next.

“Your dad?” she asked predictably, and Stiles answered, “Yeah, the Sheriff. Noah Stilinski.” He threw her an easy smile, once more pleased at seeing her even more wary of him.

She then took a sip of her own cider and bit her lip…and after a moment she asked, “Son of the sheriff. That sounds like you had a lot of pressure on you growing up in Beacon Hills,” and he nodded, and then she said, obviously trying to throw him off balance once more, “What career path did you follow? Are you a deputy, on your way to follow in your dad’s footsteps?”

Jane then gave him a smug look and Stiles saw her once more eyeing Derek discreetly from the corner of her eye, and he withheld his idiotic grin and managed to maintain an almost bored tone as he answered, “Oh, no, local law enforcement wasn’t for me.” She smirked, looking like she’d won…and then he knocked her down with, “I’m a special agent for the FBI. We just started a new office right outside of Beacon Hills, and I run it with a few select agents. We cover mostly federal cases, but we help out the local law enforcement when they need it.”

He swore she went three shades paler and saw her almost choke on her sip and he shot a glance in his fake boyfriend’s direction and saw him roll his eyes up towards the ceiling, and Stiles knew that Derek was on the edge of coming over and pulling him away from her.

She managed to recover and then say, “You seem rather young for an FBI agent, let alone a special agent.”

He nodded, understanding, and explained, “I got into a training program right out of high school, so I did my schooling and training out at Quantico. Lot of work, but Derek was only a couple of hours away by train at NYU, so we made it work.”

He knew that Derek was still listening and felt a bit bad about saying it, but also thought it was a good reminder to the werewolf that he could have visited him and let him know he was alive.

Sure, it was petty, but ever since Stiles had found out, he’d felt like Derek had deliberately chosen to not contact him and it hurt.

He turned all of his attention to Jane, and gave her a smile as he said, “He’s kind of the best thing that’s ever happened to me, you know? I feel really lucky that we found each other when we did. I don’t think I would have gone into the FBI if I’d never met him,” he admitted, knowing that even from that distance, Derek could hear his heartbeat and how steady it was. “After getting him into so much trouble when I was in high school, like, so many times, I realized that I wanted to help innocent people stay out of trouble, so…I became a bit ambitious.”

At that, Jane seemed to soften a bit, giving him a hint of a smile, and then she commented, tapping her finger on the edge of her glass, “He does seem to bring the best out in people.”

Stiles nodded and smiled widely and said, unable to keep the pride from his tone, “He’s a hell of a great guy, and one of the best men I’ve ever known in my life.”

From where he stood, he could see Derek go a bit pink, and he smiled. Jane gave him one last look, said a polite goodbye, and then walked away back into the crowd, leaving Stiles to mingle with everyone else. He felt that he’d done a good job at keeping her at bay, so he turned up his charm as he mingled with the rest of Derek’s coworkers, finding out that a few of them knew Danny through a tech firm that the architects worked with.

Soon, he wasn’t even putting on any airs and was joking back and forth with a guy named Adam who worked security at the building, finding out that they were both die hard fans of DC and Marvel.

Right while they were in the middle of a discussion over the chemistry of Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck (which they both agreed was more than just platonic), Derek was right up behind him slipping an arm around his waist as if he’d done it a thousand times before, saying, “Please don’t tell me you’re talking about how Superman and Batman are gay for each other, again,” and Stiles grinned.

“Oh, we totally were, and we agree that Superman is definitely a bottom,” he admitted, and shared a laughing smile with Adam, who politely tipped his cup towards him and nodded in agreement.

Derek groaned and shook his head.

Stiles then asked, before he forgot, “So, how was it talking with Erik and Geoff?” and Derek let out a long sigh and Adam gave them both a knowing look, nodded and said, “Yeah, those two are intense. Amazingly brilliant, but intense. I’ll leave you two lovebirds, alone. See you at D&D night next Wednesday?” Adam asked as he stepped away, and Stiles nodded.

“Count on it, man!”

Derek shot him a look.

“D&D night? Do I want to know?”

Stiles gently nudged him with is elbow and said, “Dungeons and dragons, you plebe. Found out that they have a group that meets every week on Wednesdays, from seven to ten in the evening, and Danny is a part of it, too, so they invited me. It sounded like fun, so I said yes. Is, uh…is that a bad thing? Me making friends with people at your work?”

Derek opened his mouth as if to say something…but then he closed it.

And then he said, “No, not at all.”

There was a long moment of silence and then Stiles observed, “Uh, you still have your arm around my waist, Der…”

Derek’s eyes went wide, and it seemed that he was about to move, but then he just lightly squeezed Stiles’ hip and muttered, looking down at the cider in his hand, “Yeah, well…people are still here. Watching,” he added unnecessarily, unconsciously moving Stiles closer to him. He bit his lip, making sure not to point out what Derek was doing as he really didn’t want to stop it and wanted to savor the closeness for as long as he could, basking in the physical affection, even if it was fake.

Derek then said, “I noticed that you dealt with Jane. You handled that pretty well,” he said with a grin teasing at the corner of his lips.

Stiles chuckled.

“I totally got your back, Derek. She won’t be bothering you, anymore. Promise.”

He looked across the room, easily spotting her blonde hair and violet dress in the crowd…and made a sound of disbelief in the back of his throat as he saw her flirting with a pretty brunette in a blue dress. He nudged Derek a second time and discreetly pointed her out and snorted at the expression on Derek’s face.

And then he said, “Well…looks like I don’t have to worry about her, after all.”

Stiles laughed and let himself a little bit closer into Derek’s side, knowing that it wasn’t going to last forever. He saw several looks sent in their direction, but all of them were approving, as if they all liked Derek’s choice of boyfriend, and that made Stiles feel warm in his chest and wish even more that it was all real. Even though it wasn’t.

Still, as the evening progressed he became more and more comfortable with the way that he was allowed to reach out and touch the usually taciturn alpha, and he got to see Derek actually smile, and the first few times it was completely disorienting, but then he started to get used to it and was now determined to make sure that he was the one who was always making Derek smile, even if it was only as a friend, because it was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

It was really nice to see that most of the people that Derek worked with all seemed to like him, and they all seemed to like Stiles along with him, and it was rather refreshing to not have the usual side-eye that Stiles had seen in the past from people who looked down on ‘alternative’ lifestyles.

Eventually, the evening started to wind down and Stiles was grateful that Erik and Geoff had kept the gathering non-alcoholic, which meant that no one was stumbling outside, and everyone was safe to drive home.

He and Derek were the last two to leave, as it was nearly thirteen thirty, Erik and Geoff leading them to the front door, thanking them both for coming. When Geoff pulled the door open for them, however, Stiles was surprised to see that it was snowing, and that a good inch was already on the ground.

Derek didn’t seem the least bit phased and so Stiles quickly deduced that he’d been aware of it because of his werewolf senses.

“Oh, wow, it’s really coming down out there, isn’t it?” said Geoff, the tall, burly man leaning out the front door and looking up at the snow as it heavily fell, some of it landing on his head. He ducked back in, brushed it off his salt and pepper hair, and then remarked, sounding concerned, “Maybe it’s not all that safe to drive back. Derek, you have a Camaro, right?”

Stiles smiled when Derek nodded and then said politely, “Yes, but don’t worry, I have the snow tires on. I checked the weather before I came over tonight and knew what to expect.”

He then turned to Stiles and leaned in and pressed his lips to his temple and his left hand skated over Stiles’ hip, his thumb absently tracing the inside of his hipbone, an intimate gesture if he’d ever felt one, Stiles thought to himself.

“I’ll go get the car, you wait here,” Derek muttered, giving him a soft smile, and then he disappeared out into the snow-covered blackness, leaving Stiles to wait in the foyer with his two bosses, feeling even more off-kilter than before, butterflies suddenly flapping hard against the inside of his ribs.

Geoff chuckled at him and said, “Oh, I know that look. Totally besotted, am I right?”

Stiles shook his head, ducked his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck, and then responded with, “Oh, you know…can’t get enough of him, right?”

Erik smiled and said, “Considering you guys have been together for a while, it’s rather refreshing to see that the spark still seems to be there. Hale’s a great guy, and I can easily see him becoming a more important part of the company down the road.” Stiles heard what he was implying, and he couldn’t help but feel excited for Derek. Erik then added, “He really came through on our last project. He thinks outside of the box and we need that kind of mindset to keep us from getting too stagnant in our work.”

Stiles couldn’t help but comment, “Yeah, that’s Derek, alright. He’s good at seeing new perspectives.”

They both nodded back at him.

Before anything else could be said, Derek had pulled up to the front door and Stiles couldn’t help but grin as he bolted out of the car and jogged up the steps to where Stiles stood and offered him his arm. Stiles felt his cheeks warm, and so he quickly followed after him, relieved when he settled warm and only slightly damp into the passenger’s seat.

Derek shifted the car into gear and as he navigated the roads that were just starting to get slippery, Stiles said, “Hey, so, Erik and Geoff pretty much told me without telling me that they’re definitely going to make you a partner at some point,” and was confused when Derek just simply hummed, “Oh, that’s nice,” his gaze still focused on the snow dusted road in front of him, and Stiles did a double take at his reaction, wondering what was going on with him.

What the heck? The whole point of Stiles going with him was to make sure that they made a good impression on the partners, and Derek was acting like he didn’t care.

Trying to get his attention, he reached out and squeezed Derek’s knee, and was amused when all Derek did was take one hand off the wheel to reach down and link his fingers with Stiles’.

He tried to brush it off like it was nothing, even though his heartrate had just jumped up to twice its normal speed, and said, “Not that the hand-holding isn’t great, Der, but…you do realize that we’re not back at the party anymore, right?” and it was rather amusing to see Derek glance down at his leg and then suddenly try to decide whether or not he should let go, and then finally say as he unlinked his fingers and patted Stiles on the back of the hand, “Sorry, just…habit already, I guess.”

At that, Stiles chuckled and couldn’t help but quip, “Aww, only one night and you’re addicted to me? Not that I blame you,” he drawled. “I was an amazing boyfriend, tonight. In fact, according to most of the people I talked to at the party, I am certifiably the best boyfriend ever,” he added, discreetly drawing his hand back over to his side.

Derek rolled his eyes and looked annoyed, but Stiles saw the smile at the corner of his mouth.

Deciding to push it a little bit further, he said, “Doug, the guy who helped with the electrical on your last project, said that you talked about me just a few days ago, saying something about my amazing test scores at the Academy?”

The alpha immediately countered with, “Hey, no, I was talking about how it was a freakin’ miracle that you even got into the Academy! Let’s clarify that,” he added, pointing a finger in the air.

Stiles just shook his head.

“Nah, you like me too much to complain about me,” and Derek bantered back, “Correction: you annoy me enough that I complain about you enough at work that they all think that I’m dating you.”

He laughed a second time and knocked his knee into his door and said, “They probably just think that you sound like an irritated boyfriend. Like, you complain all the time about me, but the way that you complain implies that you actually still really like me…”

His voice drifted, and then Derek said after a long moment, “I was ready to kill you tonight when I heard you tell Jane that you once got me arrested.” Stiles quickly went to defend himself, but then Derek cut him off with, “If I wasn’t so scared of her, I would have walked over there and dragged you out by the back your neck and tossed you out into the snow.”

Stiles snorted.

“I’m sorry, but I just find it hilarious that you, mister werewolf alpha, someone who has stared down an alpha pack and just about all of the scariest creatures that have ever gone bump in the night…are scared of a woman.”

Derek gave him a look, but turned his attention back to the road as he said, “You met Jane, right? She’s worse than an alpha pack all on her own,” and Stiles made a noise of agreement and said, “Okay, okay, no argument there. She was pretty terrifying…but I think I handled her pretty well, if I do say so myself.”

Derek nodded.

“Sure did. Thanks for that, by the way.”

Stiles waved his hand and said, “Ah, don’t mention it. It was kinda fun, actually. Never seen someone go pale so fast in my life, and I’ve intimidated wanted criminals in holding cells. This was definitely more fun,” he said with a grin.

He leaned further back in his seat and the two of them fell into a comfortable silence as Derek drove the rest of the way to his house. Stiles, though still a little bit worried about the snow, found his thoughts drifting to the young were-coyote staying with Derek’s pack, and wondered what they were going to be doing for Christmas, since it was only two days away. He thought about asking, but one glance at Derek’s profile had him questioning himself, so he said nothing.

The Camaro pulled up in front of the house and Stiles glanced at his phone and couldn’t help but say, “Hey, you even got me home before midnight. Such a gentleman.”

Derek rolled his eyes, but the effect was ruined by the way his lips twisted up into a fond smile as he did.

Stiles grinned, feeling smug, but then Derek reached across the seat, his shoulder and upper back pressed firmly into Stiles’ chest as he opened his door for him, and said, “Get out before I toss you and your glass slippers out into the snow, Stilinski.”

Once he felt his heartbeat pick back up (because he was positive that it had stopped when Derek was pressed up against him), he nodded and got out of the car. Before he closed the door, however, he braced his hands against and leaned down and said, “In all honesty, I had a great time tonight, Derek. I’ll gladly be your fake boyfriend anytime you need it, man. Just give me at least a few days’ notice and I’ll be the best fake boyfriend ever.”

Derek gave him a look, using just his eyebrows, and Stiles quickly pulled back.

“Alright, alright! I’m going! Drive safe!”

He slammed the door and then jogged up the front walk and sighed in equal parts relief and disappointment when he closed the front door behind him, leaning against it as soon as he stepped inside.

It had been both the best and worst night of his life. He had been surrounded by Derek’s scent the entire evening, as well as his touch, and the memories of those soft, intimate touches would linger with him for a long time afterwards…but at the same time, it had been a living hell, knowing that the alpha was only doing it because he had made a promise to his bosses.

“God, you royally fucked up this time, didn’t you, Stiles?” he muttered to himself, dragging himself up the stairs to his room.

Just as he stepped inside, however, his phone buzzed in his pocket. Who the hell was texting him at midnight?

He looked at his glowing screen and groaned.

Erica.

He swiped the screen and looked at her message and smiled, despite his annoyance, when he read, did u kiss him under the mistletoe? if u didn’t, I will totally kill u and blame it on Liam. bdubs, the new kid, Lance, is a total sweetheart, but super scared of me…, and in a second text, he likes everyone else, tho, and Stiles’ finger hovered over the screen as he thought about how to answer her.

Finally, he texted back, didn’t kiss him, but there was groping of a sort. glad Lance is getting along with everyone. give him time, he’ll love you, too, I’m sure of it.

He then put his phone down long enough for him to strip down and then flopped on top of his covers in his boxers and the undershirt that he’d worn under his dress shirt all day and that entire evening, settling in for at least a half hour of texting. He could have showered, and probably should have, but he didn’t want to remove the smell of Derek’s cologne, just yet, and he knew that made him come across as weird and possibly slightly creepy, but he didn’t care. He lifted part of the shirt to his face and took a deep breath.

It smelled like pine and woodsmoke, with just a faint hint of spearmint and apple cider. The scent was permanently etched into his memory.

A minute or so later, Erica texted back.

how could u not kiss him??? r u mentally ill?? he dressed up for u!!! he even wore nice smelling stuff, and Stiles snorted at the way she texted. She was a year older than him, and still texted like a thirteen-year-old girl and he found it simultaneously annoying yet endearing.

He waited a moment, trying to figure out what to say, and then typed back, can you just not push it? he was a total gentleman and I helped with a couple of problems. but he doesn’t see me that way, woman, my life is not a hallmark christmas movie, and he smiled at his witty response. He made himself more comfortable on the bed and started to flip through a couple of other apps as he waited for her reply, knowing she would probably blow up at him in spectacular fashion, as she usually did when he pushed her buttons like that.

So, he wasn’t all too surprised when she texted back a few minutes later with, but it *could* be a hallmark christmas movie! just a little nudge and u 2 could be fucking like bunnies in ur childhood bedroom on christmas morning!

Stiles rolled his eyes.

“Seriously, Erica?” he muttered to himself as he finished off the conversation with, thank you so much for that disturbing image of my childhood bed, with that, i am going to bed. night.

His phoned dinged one more time.

Coward.

He rolled his eyes again, but then turned off his phone and settled in to go to sleep. He didn’t have work in the morning, and so he was going to sleep in as late he wanted to.

Chapter 3

He slogged down to breakfast at nearly eleven and his dad shot him an amused look as he poured him a cup of coffee, and then said as he handed it to him, “Late night?”

Stiles heard the tone in his voice and rolled his eyes and said, “For your information, I was back by midnight, and I went to bed shortly after. There was no drinking, just a lot of socializing,” he explained, and then yelped as his dad suddenly took the mug away from him.

“What the hell was that for?” he said, his voice far too high-pitched for his liking, and his dad shot him yet another look and replied, “I only gave it to you because I thought that you were hungover. Since you’re not, you can pour your own coffee,” and then went and sat down at the table with a plate loaded with food that he definitely shouldn’t be eating, but Stiles couldn’t find the energy within himself to argue about it, so he decided to simply ignore it and get on with what was left of his morning.

Just as he was finishing breakfast, his dad asked, “Have you figured out what to do with the kid?”

Stiles let out an aggrieved sigh.

“More or less, yeah.”

He pushed his mug to the side and explained what he had gotten done the day before.

“Instead of trying to go through official channels, I dug through the werewolf leads and think I found who the werewolf was that killed Lance’s parents,” he said, and he saw his dad’s eyes widen in shock that he’d found it out so quickly. Stiles really didn’t want to explain the dirty details, so he waved a hand and said, “Yeah, I know, it’s freaky that I found it out so quick, but let’s just say that emissaries keep track of that sort of thing, and there aren’t that many packs left east of the Rockies, so it wasn’t all that hard to find out.”

He rolled his head on his neck and added, “Ever since Deaton left, he left me a list of emissaries around the country that I could contact should the need arise, and I managed to find out that there isn’t a pack in the northeast…but that there is one just over the border in Canada. So, I did a little bit of searching and think I found the rogue werewolf. His name’s Reynault.”

His dad simply gave him a long look and then said, sounding nervous, “Please don’t tell me you’re going after him yourself,” and Stiles quickly shook his head.

“Oh, hell no. Don’t worry about me, pops. He’s already being tracked by the pack in Tennessee. Talked to Heather, their emissary,” he said, picking at the edge of the table with his thumb, “And she said that they’re closing in on him. Apparently, Reynault is a rogue from a Canadian pack that used to have land that went down into the northeastern part of the U.S. and he is determined to keep it as part of the original land, though no one else from his previous pack approved of it.”

His dad then leaned forward, wrapping his hands around his coffee mug, and said, “Aren’t territory disputes meant for emissaries? Like, what you’re supposed to be doing? I mean, why go after a couple and their kid? They weren’t even werewolves. What’s the logic behind that?”

Stiles let out a long sigh and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Werecoyotes’ territory constantly shifts from place to place, unlike werewolves, who settle and put down roots.” He began to motion with his hands, and said, “Usually the packs ignore them because they’re so transitory, nomadic, and tolerate them being on their land without any issues…but Reynault has it in his head that they were infringing on land that belonged to his pack. Apparently, the Quebec pack found out what he did and kicked him out. He didn’t care.”

The silence that stretched between them was tense, and Stiles knew that his dad was about to say something about staying safe.

He wasn’t disappointed.

“Kid, I know that you’re an agent in the FBI and an emissary and all that amazing stuff that makes me incredibly proud to be your father, but this…this sounds really, really dangerous.”

Without missing a beat, Stiles said, “That’s why I’m handing it off to the Tennessee pack. Heather, their emissary, is going to help them take care of it. She’s an old hand at this sort of thing, and I trust that she can catch him and put him in his place. They have a good alpha, too. Rachel Heartwood. They’ll find him.”

His dad nodded, and then stood and moved to walk out of the kitchen, but then paused and stood next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder, and then squeezed it tightly.

“You’re doing good, kid,” he murmured, and then walked out, leaving Stiles with a faint smile on his lips.

They weren’t huge on affection, but Stiles knew how his father showed how much he loved him and that was more than enough. He smiled to himself and then got up and put together a plate from the leftovers of what his dad had already cooked. It was nearly noon, so he considered it a brunch, so he purposely decided to finish off the rest of the bacon so that there was nothing left for his dad. He didn’t need to clog his arteries anymore and Stiles wasn’t going to let him put himself in an early grave.

Just as he was finishing up his food, his mind still flashing back to the night before, remembering every touch on his skin…his phone buzzed.

He checked the screen.

Erica.

Oh, boy, he wasn’t sure if he had the energy for her on the Eve before Christmas…but he answered it, anyway, immediately regretting saying hello when the first words out of her mouth were, “Stiles! You have everything you need to make cookies, right?” Dear god, what was it now? “Oh, who am I talking to, of course you have cookie mix. Right, well, Derek, Lance, and I are coming over! See you in a few minutes!” she rambled out before he could get in a word edgewise.

Just as he was about to reply, she hung up and Stiles groaned.

He leaned back in his chair and yelled up to his dad, who had gone upstairs, “Yo, pops! Erica and Derek are coming over, along with the kid, and, apparently, we’re baking cookies. You don’t mind us taking over the kitchen for a few hours, right?”

“As long as you clean up after yourselves and save me a few!” he yelled back down to him, and Stiles nodded.

Fair enough.

He ambled back into the kitchen and checked the pantry and let out a sigh of relief when he saw that they had everything they needed to make cookies from scratch. Rubbing a hand over his face, he started to pull it all out and had only just started to set it up when he heard the front door open and close, and couldn’t help but yell out, “Erica, you have to learn how to knock!”

She appeared in the kitchen doorway, hanging off the frame with a shit-eating grin on her face and said, “Aw, but what would be the fun in that? Oooh, is that the stuff for the cookies?”

Lance was right behind her, sticking close to Derek’s side and he gave the kid a reassuring smile before looking up at Derek and giving him a smile, as well. The alpha returned his look and patted Lance on the shoulder as they shuffled into the kitchen, Derek then saying, “I apologize for her. But it’s not like I really have any control over her,” he said sounding genuinely frustrated, giving her a slight glare, to which she replied with sticking her tongue out at him and Lance giggled at her.

Stiles smiled at seeing the kid already relaxing and then showed him where the baking sheets were and had him help with making the cookie dough.

As they started pulling everything out for the cookies, Stiles couldn’t help but ask, “Is there a reason why you aren’t doing this back at the house?”

Derek and Erica shared a look over Lance’s head, and then Derek explained, irritation in his voice, “Well, we would have, but it seems that Isaac and Liam got into the frozen cookie dough in the freezer two nights ago and ate it all. So, we had nothing left to make the Christmas cookies with, and I didn’t have the ingredients to make them from scratch. When we went out for ingredients, we found that most of the grocery stores are closed already, so Erica suggested that we call you. Next thing I know,” he added, sounding thoroughly annoyed, “She’s making me drive over to your house.”

He then shrugged and apologized.

“Sorry for crashing in on you like this,” and Stiles quickly brushed it off and said, “Hey, don’t worry ‘bout it, sourwolf.”

He then looked back down at Lance, who had finished mixing the ingredients and was looking up at Stiles questioningly, as if asking him what he was supposed to do next. With a smile, Stiles showed him how to roll out the dough and then cut out the different shapes with the cookie cutters.

Pretty soon, Erica and Derek were helping the kid, as well, and Stiles pulled back slightly so that the three of them could spend more time bonding with the young werecoyote.

He found it amusing that every time that Lance said something, or Erica did, Derek was translating for each of them, and Stiles tried very hard to tamp down on his reaction to hearing him speak Spanish so fluently. He never knew he had a thing for other languages. Or maybe it wasn’t languages, but Derek. Watching the alpha gently reprimand Erica as she tried to steal a bite from the batter and then gently say something to Lance in Spanish…well, it was definitely doing something to him, somewhere in the vicinity of his chest.

His dad poked his head in at once point to tell him he was going to do a couple of hours of paperwork back at the station, and Stiles nodded him off.

By that point, they had the first batch in the oven and had already started making the next batch. They had to make enough for the entire pack, of course, so Stiles estimated that they would be making at least three more batches, because he knew what the wolves’ appetites were like.

He eventually pulled out a couple of phrases he remembered from a Spanish class that he had taken way back in his freshman year of high school and laughed when Lance had to correct his pronunciation.

At some point while they were making cookies, Stiles ended up between Derek at Lance at the kitchen island, while Erica stood on the other side of Lance, getting Spanish lessons.

“Una galleta,” Lance said, pointing at one of the cookies on the tray and Stiles chuckled when he heard Erica try to repeat the word, not even coming close to rolling the double L sound correctly, and Lance laughed, and then Erica said, “Cookie.”

They were surprised when Lance smiled, picked it up and looked at her and said, “Good cookie?”

She smiled and nodded.

Without thinking about it, Stiles leaned slightly into Derek’s shoulder, forgetting that the closeness that they had shared last night at the party wasn’t allowed anymore, and he was just about to apologize and pull back, but then Derek’s hand reached up and stroked his lower back, so he took a risk and stayed where he was. Derek didn’t seem to notice that anything was amiss, so Stiles said nothing, just soaking it in as much as he could until the alpha came to his senses.

And then Erica looked over at them and shot a smirk in Stiles’ direction. He felt his cheeks heat up, and so he ducked his eyes and quickly pulled away from the casual embrace under the guise of going to the fridge to get something to drink, and then offered everyone else something as well in order to keep himself occupied.

Eventually, they had done five batches in total. Stiles threw them all into two large tupperware containers (with a few set aside for him and his dad), with the promise that they would be returned to him.

Just as they left, Stiles held Derek back for a moment and asked, “Is he doing okay? I mean, is the pack treating him right?”

Derek nodded.

“Yeah, they really seem to like him. Apparently last night was a huge success because when I got home, I found them all sprawled over the couch in a massive pile, Lance right in the middle, watching the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He seems to like Liam the most,” he added with a soft smile. “I’m just glad he feels safe with us.”

Stiles nodded back at him and then lightly punched him on the shoulder and said, “Now get out of here and go celebrate the holiday with your pack. I’ll bring by your present sometime tomorrow, after dad and I open up our own presents, okay?”

Derek nodded and then quickly headed back to the Camaro, where Stiles could hear Erica and Lance arguing, Lance going off in rapid Spanish while she just shook her head and yelled back at him in English.

Yeah, he was going to be just fine.

Stiles had thought about telling Derek about what he’d found out but had then decided that it could wait until after Christmas. Besides, he wanted to get a confirmation from Heather before telling him what he knew, because he knew that if he told the alpha about Reynault then he wouldn’t care whether or not it was Christmas, he would leave to go and hunt him down himself, and Stiles didn’t want to take away from their well-deserved holiday cheer.

Instead, he finished putting the last couple of presents for his dad under the tree, and then made up a batch of eggnog that would appeal to both of them.

At around four, his dad was back home, and Stiles managed to convince him to sit down for a while to relax and have some eggnog and a couple of cookies.

When the sheriff coughed at the first sip, he smirked, knowing that he’d made it just right.

They then did their usual tradition and ordered a meat lovers pizza and put Die Hard into the blu-ray player, which they both firmly believed was definitely a Christmas movie. It had become a tradition back when Stiles was only twelve, and it was something that they enjoyed doing together every single Christmas Eve. Their biggest meal of the holiday, though, was always lunch on Christmas day.

They always piled up with heavy foods and it was the one time of year where Stiles didn’t get on his dad’s case about his diet. Instead, he let him indulge, and though they had never invited anyone to their exclusive Christmas lunch, Stiles had the faint inkling that this year his dad wanted to invite Melissa over. He knew that it should bother him a little bit, but the truth was that he was thrilled that his dad had found someone special in his life, and he couldn’t think of anyone better than Melissa. She had practically been a second mother to him over the years, after all.

Just as they had completely settled and were more than halfway through the movie, Bruce Willis giving his famous line from the vents, Stiles phone buzzed insistently in his pocket, and he looked at the number and recognized the Tennessee area code and quickly stood up and said, “Dad, I have to take this.”

He quickly ducked into the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Stiles, this is Heather. I thought about e-mailing or texting you, but I then I realized that a phone call would be best. We’ve got him.”

Suddenly his shoulders dropped, and tension that Stiles didn’t even realized he was holding fell from him almost instantly and he let out a sigh of relief and slumped against the fridge, resting his forehead on the cool metal, and breathed out, “Oh, thank god. You have him contained?” he couldn’t help but ask.

She quickly answered, “Inside a room made from mountain ash, inside of a mountain ash circle, with mistletoe vines in the ground. Reynault isn’t going anywhere, Emissary Stiles,” she added with a smile in her tone, and he chuckled at the way she so formally addressed him, and he smiled and replied, “You have no idea how good this makes me feel. Knowing that he’s locked up and not getting out is the best Christmas present you could have given me. By the way, did you contact--?”

“Yes, we contacted him. He says he’s taking care of everything back in Maine and in D.C., and that it should all be taken care of before tomorrow morning.”

Stiles let out another sigh of relief and slowly stood back up, lightly tapping the palm of his hand to the counter, and then he said, “I’ll tell Derek and Lance tomorrow. They’ll be so relieved. I mean, he only just got here, but I think Derek really likes this kid. And he really likes Derek, too.”

He could hear the smile in her voice as she said, “Well, like I said. It’ll all be taken care of. Have a Merry Christmas, Emissary Stiles.”

“Please, call me Stiles. You keep calling me by my title and it’ll go straight to my head, just ask my fellow FBI agents,” and at that, she laughed and politely replied, “Fine, then. Stiles. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

And with that, they hung up, and Stiles felt a lightness that he hadn’t felt in a couple of days…except perhaps at the party the night before. He couldn’t wait to tell Derek, but he didn’t want to ruin their pack Christmas, so he would wait until he dropped by later tomorrow with his presents. They deserved to at least have a little bit more time together. He wasn’t sure how Lance would react to hearing the Reynault was no longer a problem, so he decided to play it safe for now.

He walked back into the living room and was surprised to see that his dad had paused the movie. He looked up at him curiously when he walked back in and asked, “Who was that? Sounded serious.”

Stiles nodded and then sat back down.

“Yeah, that was Heather, the emissary for that Tennessee pack I told you about. They, uh…they caught him. They have Reynault completely secure and he will face charges properly in werewolf style law,” he answered, knowing that that most likely meant that he was either going to be killed or permanently contained, though it all depended on him.

The sheriff arched an eyebrow, but instead of saying anything about it, he nodded and started the movie back up. Traditions had to be upheld, after all.

Stiles was startled out of his sleep at three am on Christmas morning, his phone buzzing insistently on the nightstand, and he blearily reached for it, silently praying that it wasn’t Erica calling. He could probably deal with anyone but Erica at that point. He loved her, but she was a menace.

“’lo?” he said, rubbing the heel of his hand over his eyes, rolling back over to his back.

“Hey, Stilinski. Have some good news for you.”

Oh, he knew that voice.

He blinked a couple of times, and then said, “Agent Davis? Is that you?”

“Yeah, sorry for waking you up at…oh, god, three am, I’m sorry, I totally forgot how early it is back in California,” his friend back at Quantico said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “But I took care of handling the information about Reynault. According to the FBI, he no longer exists and the attack on the parents was an animal attack, and the child has been declared dead. How does Lance Hale, sound?”

At that, Stiles shot up in his bed and stared straight ahead in shock, not quite sure that he had heard what he’d just heard. He knew that Agent Connor Davis was good, but this was far above and beyond what he had expected.

He gaped for a moment, and then finally got out, “Oh my god, Connor, I don’t know how the hell you did this, but this…this is freakin’ amazing, man! He’s, he’s…he’s already connecting with Derek and the pack and now he has a place if he wants it, and…seriously! How the hell did you pull this off so fast?” he asked a second time, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that his emissary friend at the FBI had just pulled off the biggest Christmas miracle of all time.

Connor answered, “Well, let’s just say that I friends that owe me quite a few favors and I cashed them in because this seemed like a good time for it. Lance deserves to have someplace where he can feel safe. No one deserves to go through that kind of trauma…”

His voiced drifted and Stiles couldn’t help but say, “Yeah, tell me about it.”

The line went quiet for a moment, taking it all in, and suddenly he felt like he needed to tell Derek at that very moment…but it was still just after three in the morning, and he had the feeling that the werewolf wouldn’t appreciate being woken up in the dead of night right before Christmas morning. He bit his lip, worrying it between his teeth, trying to figure out just what to do.

Before he could get too worked up about it, however, Connor said, “I’m sure that he’s exactly where he needs to be, Stiles. I know you and I trust your judgment. Besides,” he drawled, sounding far too smug, “From what I’ve heard about the Hale pack and from what you’ve told me about Derek, I bet Lance is making friends quickly. As are you.”

He heard the intonation in his voice and groaned and wondered if nearly everyone he knew was aware of the fact that he had a crush on Derek Hale.

Finally, he said, “Okay, look, yes, I like Derek but it’s not like that. I don’t know how many times I’ve told people this, but he doesn’t like me that way, so if you could just--”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Stilinski, just chill. I just think that you’re a little bit close minded and that it might not all just be on your side, you know? I keep in touch with other packs and other leaders, and quite a few of them have met Derek and have heard the way that he talks about you, and I’m just, you know…putting the pieces together,” Connor finished, and Stiles’ hackles lowered.

Oh. Wait…Derek talked about him? To other packs? How was he not aware of that?

Deciding he’d had enough emotional turmoil, he said, “Well, thanks for calling me. This is the best news, and I can’t wait to tell him. Thanks again, Connor.”

“No problem, Stilinski. By the way, don’t forget to check your e-mail.”

They hung up, and Stiles knew that he should go back to sleep, but he was suddenly wide awake and wired, and so he threw off his blanket and pulled on his old lacrosse hoodie and wandered over to his work laptop, pulling it out and flipping it open. He skimmed through his work e-mails, ignoring all of them except for the one that Agent Davis had just sent him.

He smiled as he read it, realizing that he needed to do something especially nice for the man because he had just somehow pulled off the impossible. He drafted a reply, trying to put as much gratitude into it as he could, needing Connor to know just how amazing he was. He’d met Agent Davis when he’d first gotten his job and the guy had immediately recognized a fellow emissary. Stiles had been startled to discover that there was someone else in the supernatural world that had chosen a job in law enforcement, but they’d quickly become friends.

He now had connections with the few packs that were out east because of the man and he was grateful for it, because they had all been far more helpful that Deaton had ever been and he stayed in touch with them through secure channels and used them as resources when things went weird in Beacon Hills, which happened more often than not.

After going through a few personal e-mails to a couple of emissaries, one in North Carolina and one in Ohio, he glanced at his phone to check the time.

It was just after six am. Too late to try and get more sleep, he knew, because his dad typically woke him up at around seven on Christmas morning, every year, without fail.

Letting out a long sigh, he leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes, wondering what his dad had gotten for him that year. Last year had been a set of leather holsters that he had ordered from a professional leather worker up in Wyoming, and he still used them. He wouldn’t be surprised if he got another gift that was in the same vein as the one before. Though his dad didn’t say it, he knew that he was proud of him getting into the FBI, and show tried to show it through the gifts he got him throughout the year.

Just as he felt himself starting to drift, though, he heard from his window--

“Hey, I need to talk to you--”

He opened his eyes just in time to reach out and catch the edge of his desk with his fingertips to keep himself from falling over, and then swung accusing eyes over in the direction of the voice, wondering what the hell Derek was doing there in his room at six fifteen in the morning. On Christmas morning. When he was supposed to be with his pack.

“Dude, what the hell, man?” he hissed out, keeping in mind that his dad was still asleep only a couple of doors down from his room. “How many times do I have to tell you that we have a front door and that you should use it? Also…what the hell?? It’s Christmas morning! Is there a reason why you’re over here scaring me out of my skin instead of back with your pack, dealing with sugary, hyped-up pups tearing into their stockings and presents and driving you up the wall??”

He evened out his breathing as much as he could as he brought the chair back to the floor, once more level, but he knew that he couldn’t hide from Derek just how fast his heart was racing. Normally, he would have been embarrassed, but considering what the alpha had just done, he felt it was entirely Derek’s fault.

Derek just gave him a once over and said, “Like I said, I need to talk to you. I’m worried about who went after Lance’s parents, and I think I should--”

Stiles quickly cut him off, waving a hand in the air and saying, “Dude, don’t worry about it, I’ve already taken care of it,” and at that, Derek’s brow furrowed, and he gave him a curious look, and Stiles realized how it sounded, so he quickly explained.

“Look, I was worried, too, so yesterday I used department resources, as well as a few of my own, and I tracked down the werewolf that killed his parents.”

Derek’s eyebrows shot up at that.

“Turns out he was a rogue from one of the Quebec packs who was acting outside the authority of the alpha, trying to claim it as a territory dispute. I managed to track him down to Tennessee and contacted the emissary there, and she just called me this evening to say that they’ve got him contained.” He paused to yawn, and then scratched his neck and said, “Also, I got a call from an agent friend back at Quantico who cut through all the shitty red tape and made it so that Lance Santiago and the man who killed his parents no longer exist.”

Derek, still partially perched on the sill of Stiles’ window, just looked at him with wide eyes, his mouth partly open, and Stiles was fairly certain that that had been his own expression when Connor had told him the news.

Finally, Derek breathed out, sounding incredulous, “How…how did you do all of this so quickly? I mean, tracking him down means…you would need…”

Stiles rolled his eyes and couldn’t help but quip, “Dude, did you never wonder how the hell I became a full-fledged field agent with their own field office at just twenty-four? With three paid agents who work under me, all of them older than I am?”

Derek came the rest of the way into the room and sat on the edge of Stiles’ bed, his brow still furrowed, and Stiles let out a long sigh, flipped his laptop closed, and then said, “Okay, apparently you had no clue, so looks like I’m gonna have to explain it to you,” and went and joined Derek on his bed, trying not to pay too close attention to the fact that all he wore was his boxers and that he hadn’t showered since the night that they had gone to the party.

“As soon as I started the internship, one of the agents took an interest in me and I quickly found out that he was an emissary.” Derek gave him a wide-eyed look and Stiles chuckled and said, “Yeah, I know, it totally took me off guard, too, but because he recognized my spark, don’t ask me how,” he quickly said, throwing a hand up to stop the alpha’s inevitable question, “I still don’t get it, myself. But he recognized it and immediately put me on the fast track to becoming an agent. Luckily, I passed most of the tests simply because I had the experience thanks to my dad and all of my adventurous teenage years in Beacon Hills.”

Derek then finally said, “Is he the same agent that you just mentioned? The one who cut through all the red tape?”

Stiles nodded.

“Yep. Connor’s a great guy,” he said, smiling fondly. “It’s because of him that I got this amazing job in the first place. It’s because of him I was able to come back home to work, instead of spending ten to twelve years back in D.C., trying to work my way up the daisy chain of bureaucrats to get to a job where I could finally choose where I wanted to work.”

Derek looked up at him at that, drawing his gaze away from the floor, and said a low tone, “I didn’t know that. I just…I guess I just thought you were that good, I guess.”

At that, Stiles laughed, though tried to still keep his voice down, remembering his dad was asleep, and said, “Wow, that’s, uh…super flattering, I guess, but no, sourwolf. Just got really lucky with the right person who got me where I could do the most good for the Agency. Not gonna lie, a lot of the cases I take I have to run supernatural interference, so my agents don’t wise up and find out what’s really going on out here near Beacon Hills.”

Derek’s brow softened and he gave Stiles a look that he couldn’t quite nail down.

Feeling a bit exposed, he quickly stood back up and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and said, “So, yeah. Lance is officially off the grid, so if you want to take him in, you can. In fact, how does Lance Hale, sound?”

At that, Derek looked up at him in shock.

“Lance…Hale? Do you mean…?”

Stiles shrugged, a bit nervous as he admitted, “Connor managed to change some records so that you have a baby brother who was adopted right before the fire.” He quickly told him everything that he’d read in the detailed e-mail that Connor had sent him right after their conversation. “He lives with you here in Beacon Hills and is now currently registered at Beacon Hills Middle School.”

Derek gaped up at him, and Stiles was even more confused when he suddenly surged to his feet in front of him and said in a breathless voice, “I don’t know how to thank you, or him, but I need to find a way…”

Stiles felt completely off-balance as Derek leaned into his personal space, their mouths shockingly close.

“Stiles…” Derek then suddenly stopped and took a deep breath, and then he leaned his head down and took another long deep breath through his nose, practically nuzzling into his neck, and then murmured into Stiles’ ear, “You’re still wearing the shirt that you wore under what you wore to the party,” and Stiles swallowed, unsure of what to do, so he remained stock still as Derek proceeded to do whatever he was doing. He then said, his lips brushing against Stiles’ jaw, “I wanted it to be real…”

What was he talking about? What did he meant that he wanted it to be real? He wanted what to be real--oh. Oh.

Oh.

As if he was acting on instinct, he brought his hands up and slipped them around the back of Derek’s neck and said, “Oh, god, so did I, but I thought that was probably pretty damn obvious, by now.” He heard Derek swallow and the alpha said in a voice barely above a whisper, “I wasn’t sure if it was real or if I was just imagining it, you know? I thought maybe because I wanted you to want me in the same way so bad, that I was imagining things…”

Stiles shook his head and slipped his fingers into the hair at the base of Derek’s neck and murmured right back at him, “You weren’t imagining things…”

That seemed to be the trigger, because suddenly Derek had pulled his head back and was pressing his lips to Stiles and he was melting under the sheer heat of him, turning his entire body so that he was pressed up against him from shoulder to thigh, and he didn’t think that he’d ever felt more comforted yet turned on at the exact same time.

And then, through a series of events that quickly became a blur, Stiles found himself on his back on his bed with Derek on top of him, hands sliding under his sweater to pull it over his head, and then was nuzzling his mouth and nose into his neck and down the center of the shirt, letting out these small little sounds that made Stiles think that he was fully embracing his wolf side and scenting him up and down like a wolf trying to claim its territory on a mate.

He was more than a little bit turned on, and then just about lost it when Derek’s tongue darted out and licked at his nipple through the shirt, and then sharply nipped at it, causing Stiles to yelp and squirm.

“Ah, Derek! What are you, what are doing,” he breathed out as he slid further down and traced his tongue across his exposed hip bone.

“I’m claiming you as mine,” he muttered into his skin. “I’m gonna mark you up and make you the prettiest present I’ve ever had in my life,” and Stiles’ eyes rolled up in the back of his head at the sheer amount of desire in his words. God, the threat of being bitten into and marked up by claws and teeth should not be that hot, Stiles thought to himself as Derek then lightly tugged on his boxers, exposing even more skin to his ever-questing tongue.

He slid his hand under Stiles’ hips and forced his legs apart and nosed down into the crevice of his hip and then let out a low hum that sounded like he was enjoying himself.

Stiles reached down and ran his fingers through the alpha’s hair and breathed out, “This is easily the best Christmas present I’ve ever gotten, but Der…you’ve got pups waiting for you back at home,” but his admonishment went unnoticed as Derek reached between them and pressed warm fingers to Stiles’ erection, causing his brain to short circuit.

He bucked up into the grip, eyes rolling towards the ceiling, and then nearly passed out when he felt Derek’s tongue trace over him through the fabric of his boxers, and he heard him inhale deeply once more, and Stiles wondered what he smelled like to the alpha wolf, because however he smelled, it seemed to be bringing out every single part of Derek’s possessive side, because he growled, “Mine,” and then lightly suckled at the tip of his cock through his boxers and Stiles was certain that he was going to die from it.

But then the pressure suddenly went away, and he looked down, wondering why Derek had changed his mind and was blown away by look in his eyes as he stared up at him from between his legs.

“God, Stiles…you have no idea how long I’ve wanted you,” he said, sounding completely breathless.

And then he moved up, his thighs still resting between Stiles’ legs, but now his chest covered Stiles’ as he reached back up for another kiss, and as he wrapped his arms around the alpha’s shoulders, he realized he never wanted to stop kissing him. Despite the promise of something more, all he really wanted to do at that moment was to continue to kiss him and hold him in his arms for as long as he could.

Derek slowly undulated against him, their cocks rubbing in just the right way, and Stiles gasped while Derek continued to kiss him, running his tongue down and over his neck, playfully nipping the entire time and he knew that he was going to end up with so many marks that it was going to look like he had barely won a fight against a very determined vampire with blunt teeth. Part of him, the part of his brain that was still working, was telling him to push Derek off and make sure he got back home, but another part of his brain, the much more selfish part, was telling him to never let him go and hold onto him as tightly as he could.

Torn between the two, he simply slid his hands down Derek’s back and then lightly squeezed when they got to their targeted destination.

Derek grunted and then thrusted hard against him when he did, causing Stiles to moan more loudly than he meant to.

He bit his lip and tried to remember that his dad was still asleep.

But then--

“Hey, kiddo, it’s time to get up for…”

They both froze and Stiles slowly turned his head to see his dad standing in the doorway of his room, one hand still raised as if he’d knocked on the door. Stiles then realized that he probably had, but he hadn’t heard it because he had been…occupied.

All three of them were frozen. And then his dad coughed, raised an eyebrow at them and said, “Uh, why don’t you come down a bit later. I’ll put some coffee on,” and he turned and left, muttering something under his breath as he walked back down the hall to the stairs, and Stiles was confused when Derek suddenly snorted then pressed his forehead to Stiles’ shoulder as his body shook with laughter, as if he was trying to contain his mirth at the whole situation.

Amused, but also annoyed, Stiles tapped his shoulder and said, “Alright, what gives? Being caught by my dad isn’t that funny, man…”

Finally, Derek caught his breath and looked back up at him and explained, “When your dad left, he said that he owed Melissa money.” Derek arched an eyebrow at him, as if trying to tell him to put the pieces together…which Stiles finally did.

“Hold up, are you telling me that…that the two of them were betting on when the two of us were going to get together?!”

Derek nodded and slowly rose up to his knees, so that his weight was no longer on top of his, and Stiles already missed it. He quickly sat up, as well, and then reached out and pulled Derek back to him with a hand around the back of his neck, stealing yet another kiss from him, and was pleased when the werewolf seemed almost breathless when they both pulled back from it what felt like ages later. He didn’t really want to stop kissing him, but he knew that he had to.

“So, uh…Merry Christmas,” he said, not sure of what else to say.

Derek gave him a long look…and then he reached over and cupped his jaw and Stiles couldn’t help but lean into the touch.

And then Derek said, “You were right, before. I need to be back with my pack. But…you’re still coming over later, though, right?” he asked, his tone unsure and Stiles quickly reassured him with, “Of course, I’m still coming over, sourwolf. I’ll just also be bringing an overnight bag,” he added with a smirk and Derek’s smile widened.

“Sounds great,” he murmured, leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to his lips. He then said, “By the way, I’m sorry I never told you I was okay or tried to visit you when you were at the Academy,” and Stiles felt his heart clench, and he just shook his head and said, “Hey, don’t worry about it, Derek. It wasn’t either of our faults. Just…bad timing.”

Derek nodded.

And then he moved to go back out the window, and Stiles rolled his eyes.

“Seriously?” he drawled, gesturing widely with his hands. “After all this, and you’re still going to go out through the window? We are fully grown adults, Derek, you can go out through the front door like a big boy,” he said, arching an eyebrow at him, and Derek gave him a look over his shoulder and replied, “I like doing it this way. Makes me feel like I’m making for the years we lost when neither of us acted on our feelings. We have time to be adults later,” he said, completely taking Stiles off guard.

Feeling a sudden surge of affection towards him, he bolted to his window and planted a hot, wet kiss right on Derek’s mouth, feeling a rush of hormones as he then whispered against his lips, “In that case, when can we park your car on some back road and christen the back seat of the Camaro?”

Derek grinned.

“How about New Year’s Eve?”

Stiles grinned.

“It’s a date.”

And with that, Derek lightly jumped to the ground and Stiles stared for a moment, watching him take off back home, looking forward to going over later in the day to see him and the pack. This was the best Christmas ever, he thought to himself as he tugged on a pair of sweatpants over his boxers, noting the stain on the front from where Derek had…yeah.

Shaking his head, trying to rid himself of the inappropriate thoughts before he went to spend the morning with his dad, he grabbed his phone and tucked it into his hoodie and sauntered down the stairs, ignoring the smug smirk on the corner of his dad’s lips as he handed him a mug of coffee. The two of them sat on the floor next to the tree and Stiles handed over his present and eagerly ripped at the paper on his own, wondering what his dad had gotten him that year.

“Are you serious?” he said as he pulled out the matching hat and jacket, both with the Mets logo on them, and he saw the scrawl of a familiar signature on the back of the cap and the shoulder of the jacket. “How the hell did you get this?”

His dad shrugged and grinned and answered, “Let’s just say that you’re not the only one who knows people, kid.”

Stiles laughed, pulled his dad into a strong, back breaking hug, and then slid the jacket on, thrilled with how well it fit him.

He then gestured at his dad as he tugged on the cap and said, “C’mon, open up your present, don’t leave me hangin’,” and then smiled when his dad finally pulled off the wrapping on the present that Stiles had spent a total of two minutes wrapping. He smiled even wider when his dad let out a sound of surprise at what he found.

“I’m not going to ask how you got it, I’m just going to say thank you,” he said, pulling out his pocketknife and opening the box, pulling out the brand-new leather jacket with a blue and red leather stripe down the front right side. It was an exact replica of one from a tv show that he’d loved when he was younger, and Stiles was glad that he was finally able to afford to spoil his dad for once. The look on his face as he put the jacket on over his t-shirt was priceless.

But then his dad’s smile turned into a smirk and he said, “So, you and Derek…”

Stiles rolled his eyes.

“Oh, god, do we have to have this conversation right now? It’s bad enough that you saw us…you know, the way that you saw us. By the way,” he quickly added, pulling the coat and hat back off and putting them back into the box, “Derek told me what you said, about how you owe Melissa money. You two bet on us?”

He wasn’t proud of how his voice cracked slightly as he said it, but then his dad chuckled and shook his head and said, “Yeah, we did. I know you, Stiles. I’ve known for years that you’ve had a crush on the guy. Why do you think I was on your case when you and Scott first met him? I know all the signs of a repressed crush turned into fake anger. You kept on going on and on about how you hated him, and then when you came back and Derek asked you to be his emissary, well…I knew it was just a matter of time.”

Stiles smiled at that, but ducked his eyes, feeling his face go slightly warm.

And then his dad added, pointing a finger at him, “That doesn’t mean I want to walk into what I just saw earlier, again. If you’re gonna do…that…then do it somewhere else. Understood?”

Unable to help himself, Stiles said, “Oh, we’ve already got a date tonight, and for New Year’s Eve, we’re christening the Camaro,” and grinned when he saw his dad make a face and let out a disgusted sound. He may have been an adult, but that didn’t mean he had to be mature.

“Gee, thanks for that imagery, kid.”

“You’re welcome, pops,” he said, reaching out and playfully batting him on the arm.

They then shared one last smile and headed off to the kitchen for breakfast.

Yeah.

Best Christmas ever.

#hazelestelle #stereksanta20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

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euaxel · 3 years

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heyyy, eonia. i’m reid, i’m twenty-three, still can’t read, and all i know about pjo is that it fucking rocks and the protag has the same learning disabilities that i do! also, i picked hypnos for this punk mainly to be mean to him and because in the hades game hypnos bullies me every time i die and i’m kiiiinda into it. hmu on discord one on one for the best plotting experience, but i’ll be around plenty to bug y’all in the gc too. you can read about bastard boy number one right here and under the cut we’ll get down to business.

⟨ ELLIOT FLETCHER. TRANS MALE. HE/HIM. ⟩ though the mist might prevent some from seeing it, AXEL EVERETT is actually a descendent of H Y P N O S. it’s still a question of whether or not the TWENTY-TWO year old VIDEO GAME DEVELOPMENT & COMBAT TACTICS MAJOR from BROOKLYN, USA has taken after their godly parent completely, but the demigod is still known to be quite WITTY & SELF-DEPRICATING.

be advised, axel’s a pretty heavy character. i’m gonna keep it brief for the bio & need-to-knows, tag around the parts with bold applicable triggers so you can skip around as needed, and tag this post accordingly, but just let me know if i miss anything and i’ll fix it & be safe reading. godspeed and i apologize in advance for bringing you all my personal punching bag as my first muse.

the main triggers that are gonna come up are: parental abuse, alcoholism * major, mentions of bullying, drowning * major, religious trauma, and drug abuse with some harder drugs ( particularly, weed, pills and cocaine / nothing with needles. )

general stats.

— full name , axel harley everett. — nicknames/alias , axe, ax, wolverine jr, tyler durden jr, trouble, Who? - every professor he’s ever had. — house, ��hypnos and mad about it. — age, 22, as of today. also mad about it. — gender, trans male. — pronouns, he/him. — sexual orientation, bisexual with a somewhat heavy masc lean. — d.o.b, january 1st, 1999. ( generally unknown to anyone but maybe siblings, he will probably lie and say Nobody Knows... I Just Am unless he really fucks with you. ) — hometown,

phys.

— height, 5′0ft even. furious about it. — eyes, brown. — hair, brown. — face claim, elliot fletcher.

misc.

— zodiac, capricorn. — alignment, chaotic good. — character inspo, lip gallagher, steve rogers ( young ), ellie from tlou1, logan howlett, stiles stilinski ( if anyone says shit i will scream ), probably someone from euphoria but i’m too scared to watch that, peter parker ( andrew garfield ), shinsou hitoshi, finn mertens, marceline the vampire queen, dipper pines, this is all over the place but it’s there. — most played spotify songs, passion for publication by anarbor, sober haha jk unless by hospital bracelet, nobody by mitski, class of 2013 by mitski, king princess’ cover of monster from adventure time, way too much phoebe bridgers, in love or whatever by future teens, and the entire front bottoms discography but especially in sickness & in flames with the hard way & bus beat well at the top of his loop. — aesthetics, bloody knuckles, left open and tipped over prescription bottles, walking on the carpet with socks to get that tingly feeling, skateboarding inside, dozing off at the bar, tangled legs in messy sheets, ten pillows on a twin sized mattress, laying down in the shower, brian sella’s cracky singing voice.

bio.

— axel was born and raised in brooklyn, new york, and he was claimed at thirteen, on his thirteenth birthday, by hypnos. — the day he was claimed, axel ceased contact with his human mother and his step-dad, and he attended a camp for half-bloods that wasn’t far from home. he spent his adolescence there year round for safety from monsters at home and abroad, then moved on to eonia. — ( parental abuse tw, drowning tw begin ) i don’t want to be too graphic here so i’m going to plainly say that axel’s mother was a very, very bad person, and the man she married was absent at his best, physically abusive at worst. axel’s powers ( hypnokinesis, namely ) were potent and difficult to control at a young age, and as a deeply religious catholic woman, this scared his mother and influenced most of the animosity in their relationship. she was convinced that the defensive visions he created and his ability to put her to sleep ( an attempt to help her, on his end; insomnia plagued her and later, it would him, too ) were of demonic origin, and tried to drown him more than once; cleansing, she claimed. the worst instance was the day he was claimed, actually — new years day, 2012; his life was saved by hypnos, and that was the last he saw of her. ( parental abuse tw, drowning tw end. ) — that said, he’s a little ( very ) hydrophobic. poseidon kids do NOT fucking interact ( i’m kidding. kind of. he Will avoid a little though ) — anyway! moving on. all of this aside, axel did his best to put his past behind him, and he was actually super stoked to learn that his powers came from somewhere good and that there was places out there for kids like him; to learn he wasn’t any kind of monster. ( still working on believing that, though.. marcelines monster.mp3 right here ) — he’s less stoked when he starts having trouble falling asleep, and really, it feels like a more cruel twist than any other fate has thrown at him ( his upbringing was chock full of mean twists, so that’s saying something ); and really, it’s more like insomnia just full on kicks in, but he can put other people to sleep. great, right? whatever, though — combat classes are kickass and he’s surrounded by babes that think he’s hilarious so things could be totally, way worse. — ( bullying tw (brief) ) for the most part, axel was pretty well liked among his peers. he was bullied as a young kid (pre-claim), but he bit back and he bit back hard, and sure, some of that followed him into his teen years but he’s more confident by then; less fun to poke at, and absolutely unhinged when provoked, so people learn better of it. the only real lasting effect was one instant that hit him a little too deep in the inferiority, when he was seventeen — he fell in love with a girl, told her that, and found himself at the end of a very mean spirited prank. he shook it off like he did anything else, or at least — he told himself he did, even if the hurt hit him somewhere a little too deep rooted ( ie. being god’s most unlovable son would naturally land him here, right? ) love’s kinda stupid anyways, so what the hell, right? (bullying tw end.)

— ( alcoholism tw, drug use tw begin ) this is already obscenely long so i’m just going to keep it to the point here and say he began drinking when he was sneaking booze in to camp at fifteen, and it just never stopped there. he’s also a massive stoner, which is all well, harmless and good for the most part; he’s always grinning, half-lidded, and has a room full of smoke at any given time. it’s the pills that do him in, and he did them at first just so he could get some shut eye, and... well. after that, because he’s dependent on them. but he keeps this part under wraps for the most part; it doesn’t have to be anyone’s problem but his, and it’s not a problem until it is one. partying’s fun, so is coke; so is taking a few too many xan’s, mdma. ( alcoholism tw, drug use tw end )

FUN FACTS!!!

— i swear he is not as doom and gloom as he sounds from the bio, and yeah, writing that made me so sad i feel like we absolutely must hone in on the fun and cute things about him!?! — he loves dnd. he can talk about it for HOURS and if you let him, he absolutely will. — adventure time makes him cry. he’s a baby don’t let him fool you. — very into cryptids, aliens, horror stories, conspiracy theories, in love with ryan from watcher, wanna be shane medej. — he loves to draw! the one thing he loves about his power is what it’s done for his imagination, and sure, he mostly draws horror things, but it’s why he went into video game development. he wants to be a concept artist. — his double major is in combat tactics because he loves fighting. he thinks it’s so fun. he’s a little nuts, actually — i mean, get hit in the face and come up grinning. all he’s ever wanted is to run a fight club and be the shortest, baddest little bitch on the planet. — he tends to nod off in weird places because he doesn’t sleep enough at night, which is sad, but; he can seriously fall asleep anywhere. standing up, in a tree, you name it. — he’s a hobby musician! he loves singing and playing guitar. — he’s a huge flirt. — loves to scare people. he’s harmless, though. like, honestly. he might make you think you’re seeing a walking toadstool but he’ll probably apologize later. — he’s very much a singing in the shower type? — clothes thief. friends and significant others beware. — actually, just kind of a thief? but of weird, little things. like, just the left shoe. puts them in a little corner in his room that he has set up like an exhibit. “things you thought you lost lol” is written on the whiteboard on the wall above it. he likes collecting rocks too. he’s a little freak!! — he’s better at the memory retrieval part of his power than the rest. naturally, as this mostly applies for other people.

WANTED CONNECTIONS. im literally so tired of hearing myself talk...

friends/squad. self explanatory!!! he’s friendly, a class clown, and a loyal friend through and through; he’s also adaptable, and his demeanor is very relaxed and inviting. he’s probably gonna have 2-3 people that he’s really close with, and he’d do quite literally anything for them. seriously, don’t tempt him. a best friend. so this is kind of vague but. i’d really love for him to have one person that is just a tier above the rest? they’d know things about him that are like pulling teeth to find out ( aka, anything deeper than his most recommended podcasts and loudmouth opinions on non important things ), someone who will call him on his shit, and maybe take care of his stupid little self when he gets too fucked up, because they’d be someone he trusts enough to let them. enemies? he probably gets along with most people until given a reason not to? but he is a loud mouth and if one of his friends gets into drama, he will stick his nose where it doesn’t belong and he will throw hands, so it could happen.

harmless rivalries. maybe even steamy ones. he’s a little shit and he likes banter so, so, so much? if given the opportunity and if someone rubs him a certain type of way, he’s so not above being a menace, although never super maliciously. just, you know, annoying the shit out of them on purpose, for fun. he’s also not above blowing a few kisses their way.

current hookups. self explanatory too. he’s a little harlot. HFBHVFNJ. it’s gonna be kinda hard to go beyond sex with him because he’s very deep in his own insecurity but he does catch feelings, he’s just mad about it when he does. i’m mostly gonna go off chem for that though! an ex. could be on friendly terms? but, it should be noted that he could’ve ghosted someone too; or pulled from the relationship when things got serious and he couldn’t choke out that ‘i love you’, even if he felt it. worse, if he did choke it out, but they didn’t feel the same way. siblings. hypnos kids he is gonna be so protective of all of u... family is hard for axel, i’m ngl, but he really wants one is the tragedy of it all, i guess? so he just really wants to be a good brother. he thinks hypnos is kind of a dick for making him but he tries not to fault him for his existence. fuck u dad i dont wanna be alive feels a little unfair. HDBHFDSJ. anyways he’s a good brother even if he is absolutely so reckless and terrifying in regards to himself but his siblings. his siblings he will do anything for. ALSO!!! FOUND FAMILY!!!! it would be kinda nice if he bonded with someone a little older maybe, could be outside of the hypnos house even, someone he’s kind of a bratty-little-brother type with.... or bratty older brother that takes your things and makes you laugh, y’know.

PERSONALITY. just tacking this part of the app on at the end too to highlight parts that i think are important for understanding who he is, and just so it’s all in one place!

toothy grins, half-lidded eyes, and keepin’ them laughing is what it’s all about, baby. axel walks with more confidence in his posture than he’s earned ( or claimed, for that matter ), and it’s the backbone of what gets him by. he’s a glowing example of the fake it ‘til you make it mentality, and he knows what he wants, usually how to get it, and doesn’t mind letting you know that. there’s an ever present mischievous glint in his eyes that says more about what to expect from him than he does, and that’s still not much? he likes to have fun, and there isn’t a whole lot of regard for righteousness or responsibility on his end, but hey! it’s usually only ever at his own expense, so what’s the damage? he’s an absolute clown and he knows it.

axel loves people. he does — you might not guess that with how elusive he is, but it’s true. there’s nothing he likes more than a good conversation with someone interesting, or maybe not even then; if there’s a sparkle in you, he’ll see it. ( might even draw it, not that you’d ever know. ) he’s warm, loyal, compassionate, relaxed, and understanding; and none of that is at the cost of being passive, or lacking passion.

as long as the vibes are right, he’s happy to just be; though, he’s known to have a fuse for certain provocations, and will jump readily at chance to fight in someone else’s honor. also, it’s not unlike him to spar for the sake of sparring; but that’s all in good fun, no worries.

there’s no way to sugarcoat it — axel has an inferiority complex. where that stems from is something he’s more self-aware of than he’s willing to admit, but he doesn’t have the patience or the will to dissect it; much less do anything about it, and he’s as bull-headed as they come — especially regarding anything related to the psyche. how much this impacts his demeanor and relationships with others varies on the situation, but one constant is that he’s going to retreat before things get bad; even if ‘things are getting bad’ exists only as his own paranoia-born hypothetical.

things can’t go bad if you don’t let them, and he’s content to keep it that way; even if it means being stuck in the stasis of missed opportunities. it’s when he’s retreating into himself that he can get irritable, anxious, jumpy; secretive, defensive, even. he’s personable until he isn’t, essentially.

#euintro #ik elliots like 5'7 but i've never let this kid be taller than me and i will not start now #parental abuse tw #bullying tw #drug use tw #alcoholism tw #drowning tw #religious trauma tw #jesus christ whats wrong with me #anyway who wants him #Because I Dont #anyway im not fucking proofreading it JBFGHBFJFBDJSKNMA im so sorry this is a monster in length

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sheerfreesia007 · 4 years

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WIP List

**This is just to show you guys what pops up into my head and what I plan on working on. I’ve got all of the requests up until today. I’m excited for all of these just need to get cracking on my keyboard!**

Fallin’ All In You Side Pieces: So many planned!

Stiles x Reader Series: In Love With Someone Else 7 parts. Angsty Romance. In Progress!!

Blue Jones x Innocent!Reader Series: He’s a club owner and she shows up at his club for one of her friend’s bachelorette parties. She is enchanted by the dancers at his club and when Blue sees her he knows he has to have her as his own. Smut insues.

Poe Dameron x Prisoner!Reader Series: Poe is captured by the First Order and is thrown in a cell. While he’s there he befriends a fellow prisoner that he can’t see but they talk all the time to distract themselves from being captured. When Finn and Rey come to save him Poe sees the Reader and is unable to save her as the First Order is coming but she tells him it’s okay. She’ll see him again.

Whiskey x Readers Series: Whiskey and Reader have a relationship like Roz and Mike Wazoski from Monster’s Inc. Reader is constantly hounding him for his reports that he keeps turning in late which puts her in a bind with her surperiors. Whiskey keeps dodging her and she finally gets fed up and slams him against the wall in the hallway and threatens him. Whiskey is shook and suddenly he’s like a puppy dog tailing her trying to get on her good side. Reader is confused now and is exasperated with the underfoot agent.

Stiles x Reader Series: Operation Open Their Eyes. 9 parts. The pack can see that Stiles and Reader are head over heels for each other but they can’t see it. So the pack decides that they’re going to help them see it.

Whiskey x British!Reader Series: Sex around the globe. Whiskey and Reader have been working on taking down an international terrorist group that has multiple locations and along the way things get a little heated between the two. Places they hit UK (England), Wales, Ireland, Australia, Hawaii, Kentucky/New York.

Whiskey x Reader Series: Inspired by The Mummy. Whiskey is O’Connell and Tequila is Jonathan.

Whiskey x Reader Series: Tangled inspired. Whiskey is sent on a mission to retrieve “something precious” from a secluded island. Only to come find out that this “something precious” is actually a woman who has never been off the island since she was captured by the baddie. Whiskey has to get her back home and it’s a long trek and he slowly falls in love with her during it.

Whiskey x Reader AU Series: Whiskey is a single dad who lives in your neighborhood. You're kinda like a community leader and are always looking for everyone, i.e. always doing grocery runs for the elderly neighbors, cooking freezer meals for the tired work moms, mowing your neighbors lawn while they're away on vacation. So when Whiskey puts out an ad for a babysitter for his 8year old daughter you answer it and offer to babysit while he goes away on business trips. His daughter slowly warms up to you and Whiskey easily becomes smitten because his daughter likes you. He tries to get close to you but you only let him so far because you're worried he'll be like your ex husband and only want you bc you take care of his kid.

Tequila x Reader Series: Tequila starts a relationship with a woman and when it gets serious he makes the decision to tell her about his career choice. Only problem being is that she doesn’t believe him! Just a cute little series of the times that Tequila tries to get her to believe him and the time she finally does believe him.

Raymond Smith x Reader Series: Reader is American and begins working for Rosalyn at the garage. Rosalyn likes her so much that she promotes the reader fairly quickly to become her admin assistant. When she finds out from the reader that she's being harassed on her way home she tells Mickey and Mickey sends Ray. Ray comes across the reader yelling at the toddlers as Ernie is on the ground in pain bc she maced him. Ray is shocked and impressed and the reader almost maces him too but she stops when he tells her he knows her boss.

Rewrite of Golden Circle: Using Wip’s as chapters. Do it like a choose your own path series. Reader is a medic.

Catfish x Reader: Song fic “Love me like you” – Little Mix. Reader is babysitting Rosalita for Frankie while he runs errands. When he comes homes he finds you dancing and singing with Rosalita in your arms and he just stands there watching before coming to join you two.

Catfish x Reader: Song fic “Bullet in a gun” –Imagine Dragons. Catfish thinks of you when he’s out on a camping trip with the boys. He thinks about you watching Rosalita back at his place. He thinks about how easy it is with you in his life now. Pope looks over and sees him deep in thought and pulls him back asking if he’s ok. Catfish says yeah and that he’s just thinking about his girls. Ben teases him by making kissing noises and they all chuckle after Will hits Ben.

Stiles x Reader: Song fic “Invisible” –Taylor Swift. Reader POV as she watches Stiles fawn over Lydia. Scott holds her as it gets too much one day and is just close to make sure she’s ok. Stiles notices and asks what’s wrong but the Reader refuses to tell him and Scott won’t say anything either. Then Lydia walks by and Stiles is back to fawning over her making the reader cry.

Marcus Pike x Reader: Song Fic “Lightning” – Little Mix. The reader watches Marcus flirt with Lisbon. Super sad.

Isaac Lahey x Reader: “Lightning” –Little Mix. Scott’s POV. Reader is Isaac’s best friend (even before he was bitten) and Scott hears her heartbeat whenever she’s around Isaac, whenever she sees Isaac with Allison, whenever Stiles teases/messes with Isaac. Scott talks to the reader about it and she confesses that she’s in love with Isaac and that she’s coming to terms with not being as important to Isaac. Isaac overhears and is devastated because he saw Scott comfort the reader.

Fic Request: Choose your own adventure type fic. Tequila x Reader/Whiskey x Reader. The boys are crushing on the reader and decide they are both going to take reader out on dates to see who she chooses.

Fic Request: Whiskey x Reader. Whiskey has a crush on reader who is into pop culture which he knows nothing about or very little. So he asks Tequila for help and he teaches Whiskey all about Pop culture.

Fic Request: Whiskey x Reader. Whiskey is crushing on reader and tries to flirt with her but she brushes him off and he’s thrown for a loop. He asks Tequila about her. So when he’s got more info on her he tries again.

Song Fic: “I found you” Andy Grammer. Stiles x Reader.

Stiles x Reader Song Fic: “Story of us” Taylor Swift Stiles and the Reader’s relationship broke down because he kept trying to hide the supernatural from her and when Theo came he told her everything to hopefully get her on his side. The two of them are at a party after being broken up for a little bit and he’s standing there with Scott, Lydia, Malia, Liam, Mason, Peyton and Kira. The reader is standing with some of her friends when she spots Stiles and he’s staring at her as Lydia tries to talk to him. The reader gets upset and walks out of the party to get some fresh air. Stiles follows her and asks her how she is and she scoffs angrily at him asking if he’s asking cuz he feels guilty or because he actually cares. They argue and the two of them burst out saying that they’re still in love with each other. When they both stare at each other with wide eyes they lunge at each other and begin kissing. Stiles apologizes through kisses and the reader reassures him telling him to shut up and that she loves hi

Fic Request: Statesman x Reader. Agent has to go undercover for a big baking competition as a pro pastry chef. For research she starts baking and researching recipes. Tequila gets all up in this by declaring weekly baking nights for research! He helps research recipes and helps with the baking part. Whiskey and Ginger hear about this and everyone gets roped in somehow either with ideas for recipes and how to stand out, taste testings, etc.

Fic Request: Whiskey x British!Reader. She transfers to Statesman and needs a place to stay. Ginger is helping her with house hunting but when Whiskey hears that she needs a place ASAP he offers for her to stay with him since he’s got a large ranch. They become roommates and she just never leaves. Whiskey has NO problem with this.

Fic Request: Whiskey x Reader. Treasure hunt where Whiskey’s the treasure! Reader is big into puzzles and is a bit like Riley from National Treasure. She gets stumped a little bit on one clue but when she finally figures it out and gets to Whiskey she’s sarcastic and a little frazzled. In her state she doesn’t think and just grabs him and plants one on him. Could possibly be a training exercise??

Fic Request: Whiskey x Genius!Reader. “Sucker” – Jonas Bros. Whiskey is assigned to protect the reader. In the briefing there’s no picture to protect her identity and Whiskey immediately assumes that she’s just a nerd with coke bottle glasses. When he sees her she’s nothing like how he pictured, she’s got glasses but that’s all that’s shared from his assumption. Whiskey is weak.

Fic Request: Whiskey x Kingsman!Reader. After being on assignment with Reader as a married couple Whiskey caves into the attraction he has with the reader and they blow each other’s minds. This happens just as the assignment is ending. She’s on a plane back to England and when Whiskey tries to stop it he’s too late! A month later Kingsman throw a celebratory black tie event to celebrate their work and when Whiskey sees her again he’s over come with need and desire. She’s working the room easily and he’s brooding until she comes over to him with a sweet soft smile. Whiskey takes no time in telling her that he’s thought of nothing but her since she’s left and that he tried to stop her. She confesses that she’s done the same and that she’s put in a transfer for the NY office to try and reconnect with him. Whiskey sneaks her away from the party before their commemorative speech happens (Eggsy has to give their regrets for not being there while Tequila laughs.). SMUT

Fic Request: Whiskey x Medic!Reader. Whiskey’s heard the rumors about the new Head of Medical Department and how she’s as competent as she is gorgeous but he’s not prepared for her at all. He meets her and is instantly taken with how proficient she is with her job and her looks are just a bonus. But as he gets to know her he finds feelings are taken hold. When he winds up in her Department due to a stray bullet that grazes to close he wakes up knowing that he has to say something since he almost DIED. She teases that she saved his life and he owes her and he’s quick with a response that just sets the mood for the two of them.

Tequila x Sad!Reader: “a little too much” - shawn Mendes. Tequila and reader are together as a couple and she mellows him out while he uplifts her. She has depression that comes and goes. On a rainy day she is cuddled up in Tequila’s arms as he softly lets her hair and kisses her temples until she turns and buries herself in his hold. She then softly makes out with him.

Stiles x Reader: Song Fic “I Found” - Amber Run

Fic Request: Do you think you could write something Whiskey-centric (I’m obsessed and the girls will thank you for it😊), along the lines of an agent exchange where Whiskey stays with reader at her home. That’s a really good idea and for some reason I’m getting Love Actually vibes with the Colin Firth couple part when he goes after his woman in her city and he’s clueless. Oooo good idea!

Fic Request: Fight Club with different weapons for different agents. Reader kicks all of their asses. Ok, so my husband made me watch fight club with him last night and it got me thinking... we all know that each statesman agent had a particular style of fighting (tequila with his guns and presumably his fists, whiskey with his lasso and whip etc). What if there was a challenge issued whereby all the agents could fight each other in a controlled environment - possibly a simulation to provide different scenes (non lethal, point scoring style) and awesome sexy reader kicks all their asses!

Mitch Rapp x Reader: Prompt "Those who can’t do teach" The reader is a trainer and Mitch gets cocky by saying the prompt. She lays him flat on his ass and he's instantly interested. Harley snips in the background for Mitch to get his head out of his ass. Reader teases Mitch and he asks her out she refuses saying until he can beat her she won’t go out with him.

Stiles x Reader: study session. Stiles is studying with the reader and scott and hes growing distracted by his crush on her. Scott teases and the reader is oblivious.

Isaac x Reader: Best friends who are exploring each other. They are making out and Isaac goes a little over board and leaves one lone hickey that she can’t cover. Lydia and Allison see it. They vow to find out who left it.

Isaac x Reader: Song fic “Best of You” - Andy Grammer

Isaac x Reader: Song fic “West Coast” - Imagine Dragons “Oh my love please don’t give up” lyrics inspiration. Isaac and Reader are dating before his bite. When he gets bit he starts to distance himself and then he gets arrested. The reader is heart broken and tries to be there for him. When she’s at the station with Stile she sees Isaac as werewolf. Isaac comes to find her and confess all and confesses that he loves her and can’t be without her. She tells she’s always gonna be by his side no matter what.

Isaac x Reader: Song fic “Fight For My Survival” - Phantoms. The reader helps Isaac through the abuse from his dad. When he gets bit he tells her while he feels more powerful now what she did for him will always be greater.

Isaac x Reader: Song fic “On My Way” - Sheppard. Peter holds the reader hostage to get at Isaac. She manages to break free and runs straight for Isaac. When she finds him fighting Peter at Derek’s she crashes into him while he finishes. He holds her close and confesses to her as he kisses her.

Stiles x Reader: Song fic “My Own Hero” - Andy Grammer. The reader is fed up that Stiles has been more focused on protecting Lydia lately. When Stiles and Lydia are in trouble it’s the Reader who comes to their rescue. Stiles starts to see her differently and when he tries to tell her that she tells him she’s able to protect herself and doesn’t need him to and he can go back to protecting Lydia. Stiles is gutted and regretful.

Kingsman vs Statesman: Pick up line competition. Eggsy runs his mouth while out at the bar with the Statesman crew saying that Brits have the better chat up lines. Tequila takes that bet while reader, Whiskey, Harry and Merlin all roll their eyes. They all participate though. Reader takes the win when she uses her line on Whiskey in front of all of ‘em. Making him tongue tied.

Whiskey x Reader: Whiskey’s a sweetheart with the manners of a saint. He’ll open doors, stand until you sit at the table, say yes ma’am. Super soft and sweet date. He even walks you to your door at the end of the night. Summer love inspiration.

Thanksgiving w/ Kingsman and Statesman

TeaCup Chronicles: Each character gets their own fic. These revolve around a cafe.

Strangers on the Street: Each guy gets a fic of seeing the same woman walking along the street for a good amount of time. Do they approach her? Do they just watch? Do they fantasize about her? Or is she just another face in the crowd?

#my writing #wip list

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out-of-jams · 4 years

Text

Airplane Mode | Track 10: So What | jhs

Summary: Set in the same universe as Love at First Touch by bagelswrites.

In a world where a bruise marks the first touch of your soulmate, time is the only thing that matters. The marks take hours to appear, sometimes even days if you're really unlucky. Once First Touch is initiated, both parties only have a few weeks to find the other. From then on, the body begins to reject any form of sustenance other than the touch of the other. If one fails to find their soulmate, they starve to death.

So what happens when your soulmate is an internationally famous idol?

And you're just one fan in a sea of many who can't even speak the same language.

Pairing: Hoseok x Fem Character

Word Count: 3.1k

Genre: Fluff. Angst. Idol!au. Smut. Soulmate!au.

Warnings: Explicit language (you already know).

Words written like this are spoken in Korean.

“Eunjae-ssi!”

The high-pitched yell of her name made Eunjae shrink into herself with fear. With a grimace, she debated whether or not to answer the call or hide inside the room she’d just passed. In her defense, it was barely past 9:30am and she was already sweating with how much work was being forced on her poor, tired body.

Eunjae had arrived at Big Hit bright and early, just like Soyeon had requested. She’d reported to the stylist department shortly after being shown there by an overly helpful, much too awake for the time receptionist. Immediately, the lead stylist that Eunjae was appointed to shadow, Tiffany, had put her to work. Luckily, she’d been born in America before her parents moved them back to Korea a few years after. So she spoke enough English for Eunjae to be able to understand the gist of it.

The stylist department wasn’t overly large. Not that she’d expected it to be seeing as how Big Hit only had one group debuted under them. Though there were rumors flowing through the grapevine that Bang PD was training a new set of boys to debut sooner or later. How reliable that source was, Eunjae wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter to her either way.

Not when she was too busy running back and forth between the production department and stylist department. With the boy’s comeback rapidly approaching, it was one of the busiest times for the stylists. Not only did they have to relay important concepts between production in order to coordinate themes, but they had to create and prepare the looks for each stage and award show for each boy as well.

Long story short, Eunjae had gotten her soulmate at the wrong time.

Wiping a sleeve of her sweater across her brow, she paused in the middle of the hallway. Bodies passed by her without a second glance, each and every one of them rushing to get to wherever they were going. The air in the whole place was tense in the most subtle way. Like right before a drop on a rollercoaster.

“Eunjae-ssi!” The call was closer this time and Eunjae had to force herself not to jump in front of the cart of props being pushed her way.

And so, with a sigh pushed through pursed lips, she turned with an armful of rolls of fabric. Tiffany was walking towards her with an arm thrown out, like that could somehow stop Eunjae in her tracks.

Well, she supposed, I guess it kinda did.

With her reddish-brown hair thrown into a neat french braid, Tiffany puckered her pink painted lips with an expression that Eunjae couldn’t discern. The stylist was only two years older than her, but with the whole “respect your elders” Korea had going on, all Eunjae could do was bite her tongue as the older girl came to a stop in front of her with her hands on her hips.

“Where have you been?” The tone in Tiffany’s accented voice was punctuated by a raise of her brow.

“Taking these fabrics to--”

“I sent you off to do that fifteen minutes ago.” The girl raised both brows now with a huff. She waved a hand around in exasperation. “You need to move faster.”

Tongue in cheek, Eunjae shifted the bundles of fabric in her arms to get a better grip. Why they’d felt the need to pile it so high that she could barely see was beyond her. “Sorry, I--”

“No sorries!” Tiffany pointed a finger back down the hall, just narrowly missing nailing a passing staff member in the face. “Hurry up and drop that off and then get back. We have a lot more work to do.”

The girl spun on her heel and took off back towards the stylist department before Eunjae even got the chance to respond. And boy, did it take all of her self control to not throw the rolls of fabric under the girl’s feet to make her trip like some kind of cartoon character. While not someone who angered easily, Eunjae found herself having to contain the urge to snap at the other girl.

Miles would be proud of her patience.

And so with a sigh, she turned back around and continued her journey to the correct department. What she wouldn’t give to be back in bed.

A few hours ago

Paradise.

That was the first thought that came to mind with eyes still shut somewhere on the precipice between sleep and waking. It wasn’t the annoying fight-or-flight inspiring iphone alarm that roused her from dreamland. No, with senses trained to ignore the ringing of an alarm, Eunjae would have had no problem staying asleep. But the constant tickle on her cheek slowly dragged her from the deep embrace of slumber.

A noise sounded in the back of her throat as she turned her face further into the warmth beneath her head. The scent of fresh laundry mixed with something else that she couldn’t put her finger on almost lulled her back to sleep. Eunjae didn’t want to move. Why would she, when she was the most comfortable that she’d ever been?

Between the softness of the blanket pulled halfway up over her head and the feeling of fullness, of comfort, of god-I-want-to-stay-here-forever. If someone were to tell her right then and there that she’d died and gone to heaven, Eunjae would have believed it without hesitation.

At least if it weren’t for that annoying tickle that feathered across her cheek yet again.

She was closer to waking now and the complaining groan that emerged from deep within her chest warned the tickling to stop. But stop it did not. In fact, Eunjae could have sworn that she heard a melodic, breathy laugh from somewhere above her. That paired with the slight shaking of her pillow sent off faint alarm bells in the back of her mind.

“Wakey, wakey.”

The words were whispered, voice deep with a vocal fry that sounded like it wasn’t quite awake yet either. That, accompanied by another tickle to her cheek had Eunjae squinting her dry eyes open in a glare. Sunlight filtered in through the curtains drawn around the window in her bedroom and a stream nailed her right in the face.

“Ugh.” A gremlin like grumble passed her lips as she blinked rapidly to bring the world into focus.

It took a minute too long for the memories to rush back to her. Cuddling up next to Hoseok. Eyes drifting shut. Falling into the dark embrace of sleep.

Ah, shit. Well, that would certainly explain the constant bump-bump-bump of a heartbeat playing on a loop through the ear pressed against the firm, yet giving, cushion of Hoseok’s chest. With a glance upward from the safety of her blanket burrito, Eunjae caught his eye.

Hoseok blinked down at her, drowsiness evident in the way he drew a hand down his face, like he could wipe the sleep away. His hair was a mess, but he somehow managed to make bed head look like a fashion statement. And Eunjae would be lying if she said she wasn’t slightly envious of his way to look front cover ready first thing in the morning. Hell, she definitely didn’t want to look at herself in a mirror.

And it was right at that moment when another round of the obnoxious, triggering iphone alarm played from somewhere behind her. Blindly reaching back, Eunjae’s fingers trailed the soft sheets on the bed before finally hitting the cool glass of her phone screen. And if you asked her, she’d blame her half-alert state on the fact that she had yet to remove herself from Hoseok’s person.

In her defense, it wasn’t like he was moving either.

In fact, Hoseok was still trying to blink himself more into consciousness when Eunjae switched her alarm off with a glare at the time displayed. Whoever invented mornings really needed to be fired. Groaning, she dropped her phone back onto the mattress. It bounced once, twice, three times, before finally falling to the floor with a muffled thud.

With a sigh, Eunjae turned back to squint up at the man she was stealing warmth from. Hoseok glanced down at her from his own phone clutched in his hand as she mumbled out a, “Morning.”

God, she really hoped she didn’t have morning breath. Talk about embarrassing.

“Morning.” Hoseok’s lips twitched in amusement. Whether it was because of what she knew she must have looked like fresh out of sleep, or because of something else, Eunjae wasn’t sure. But for her sanity, she chose to ignore it.

She covered her mouth as she broke out into a jaw splitting yawn and politely extracted herself from Hoseok’s side. His arm slid from her without complaint and she couldn’t resist extending her arms above her to stretch her muscles. It wasn’t that she was sore or her body was at all in pain from the way she’d slept. Quite the opposite in fact. Eunjae felt refreshed in a way that she hadn’t ever before. The short nap in the back of the van and the brief moments of skinship didn’t measure up to the way she felt after a whole night of being together.

Maybe she could get used to a life without coffee if that was how she’d always feel in the morning.

Or maybe she was just being delusional.

“Sleep well?” She couldn’t help but ask the man lying next to her.

Hoseok was tapping away on his phone in a way that made Eunjae assume he was texting. But he looked up at her question and nodded with a soft smile. “Yeah. You?”

Eunjae gifted him with a smile of her own. “Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I was tired.”

Hoseok cocked his head to the side and wet his lips with a flicker of his tongue, tasting the words before they left his mouth. “It’s okay. I was...also.”

“I don’t blame you.” Sadly, it was too early for Eunjae’s brain to be able to translate to Korean. She could only hope that he’d understand what she was saying, or at least get the gist of it. “You had a long day."

As he went to reply, the alarm on her phone screeched to life and she felt her eye literally twitch in irritation. “Mother fucker.”

She could have sworn that she turned the damn thing off.

With a string of mumbled expletives, Eunjae turned and dove for the device lying innocently on the floor. Hoseok’s raspy laughter followed her the whole way down.

Present time

“Finally!” Tiffany’s voice greeted Eunjae’s ears the second she entered the room.

The older girl was standing all the way across the spacious area in front of a mannequin’s torso. She had fabric of different textures and colors draped over one shoulder as she narrowed her eyes at the mannequin she was shoving pins into. It was wearing an untailored piece of clothing that had yet to take shape. Instead, it just hung off the mannequin like a giant poncho. A line of measuring tape was thrown around Tiffany’s neck, not that she needed it. Seeing as how she’d worked as Hoseok’s personal stylist for multiple years, she had to have had his current measurements memorized by now.

“Come over here and hold this.” The words were spoken without looking up, the girl just assuming that Eunjae would obey without hesitation.

And obey she did.

She did really want to keep the internship, afterall. Besides, what was a little hard work in the face of things? Though it wasn’t really the work that was getting under her skin.

But like a person who wanted to not anger their superior, Eunjae crossed the room filled to the brim with fabrics and crafting supplies and half naked mannequins. There were a handful of other stylists in the room, but they were all busy doing their own tasks and didn’t even look up as she maneuvered around them.

Luckily, Tiffany was only a wardrobe stylist, meaning that they wouldn’t have to touch makeup. But that also meant that they had to design the wardrobe. Which Eunjae absolutely loved. From the way a measly sketch would turn into a beautifully crafted piece of clothing, to the sights, sounds, smells that came from warping a strip of fabric into shape.

“Right here.” Tiffany nodded at where two different pieces were slowly unravelling from the placement needle shoved between them.

Eunjae held them together without hesitation and watched intently as the girl resumed tapering off the collar of what might have been some kind of grey...jumpsuit? She wasn’t sure. But either way, Eunjae was there to learn . And while pushy and rude, Tiffany knew what she was doing. She’d been at it for years and Eunjae still hadn’t finished college. So it would be stupid of her to not take advantage of the opportunity while it lasted.

With one last push of a pin, Tiffany stepped back and nodded at Eunjae to let go. Appearing satisfied, the brunette haired girl slipped a pack of gum out from the pocket of her work apron. She outstretched the package towards Eunjae in a silent offer, but she had to decline. Not because she didn’t like gum, but well, she’d learned her lesson.

Just that morning, after Hoseok had returned back to the dorm to get ready for the day and Eunjae stumbled out of the shower to brush her teeth, she’d discovered a problem. Well, maybe not a problem per se, but it’d definitally been a learning experience. Because apparently when every type of food and drink (besides water) turned to garbage on her tongue, that extended to toothpaste as well. Eunjae had almost thrown up right into the sink at the discovery.

Which only sent her on a downward spiral of confusion. How would she brush her teeth if the taste of toothpaste made her sick? Would she still need to brush her teeth, as disgusting as that sounded. Since the soulbond made it so Hoseok’s touch, the energy exchanged between them, kept their bodies nourished with the exact amount of vitamins and nutrients necessary for a perfectly healthy body, did that extend to dental hygiene as well? It wasn’t like her breath smelled or anything. So perhaps the science of soulbond got rid of bacteria in the mouth also? Eunjae had no idea, and she’d only given herself a headache.

“Suit yourself.” Tiffany shrugged and popped a piece of gum into her mouth before returning the package to its original place.

She nodded at a pile of sketches littered on the long work table stretched from one end of the room to the other. It was piled with stray pieces of cloth, pencils, scissors, piles of measuring tape, bundles of needles and a plethora of other sewing supplies. “I need you to take those sketches over to Production and have them approve them before they’re made.”

“Gotcha.” Eunjae crossed the room and scooped the sketches up, ignoring the papercut she got on her finger as a result.

“And try not to take forever. We have a lot of things to do.”

“Of course.” Eunjae clenched her jaw around the sharp retort that threatened to fly from her tongue and headed for the exit instead. Her words were mumbled under her breath as the door closed behind her. “Back to production I go. Dashi run, run, run.”

Eunjae’s phone was going off like crazy.

Literally every second it was vibrating with yet another text message and she had to implore all of her self control not to look at it. Not that she had time anyway, with how much she was still running around like a crazy person. Though Eunjae could already guess who it was exactly that was blowing up her phone.

Yesterday she’d been added to a group chat between the maknae line. So it was more than likely that Jimin and Taehyung were sending memes back and forth to each other again. Either that, or Miles had finally overcome his shock at being introduced to them via FaceTime last night. He’d refused to speak to her after that (“Why would you call me when I didn’t even look presentable ? Jesus, Jae, you’re the worst. And you made Jimin, my future husband by the way, see me at my worst. I’m not talking to you.”)

Not only was her phone burning a hole into the pocket of her jeans, but her stomach was growling like a woman starved. It was way past noon and Eunjae was starting to get hangry. Especially with the way Tiffany was becoming harsher and harsher with the way she barked out her orders. Which was really making Eunjae wonder what it was that she’d done wrong to get on her bad side.

It wasn’t until she was halfway between the wardrobe department and the elevators that her phone began vibrating in a cadence that differed from her texts. And with a glance at her surroundings, Eunjae made sure that there was no one around who would snitch to Tiffany for her being on her phone. Luckily the clothes that she held could be easily swung over one arm as she wrangeled her phone free.

Hoseok’s name flashed across the screen and, with one last look around her, she slipped into a hall closet.

“Hello?” Eunjae whispered into the darkness of the cramped, stale smelling closet.

She could have sworn that a broom was digging harshly into her back, but ignored it in favor of the rare occurance of Hoseok calling. In fact, it was the only time that he’d bothered calling her. Normally he would just resort to text messages if he needed to communicate when they weren’t face-to-face.

The scratchy noise of Hoseok clearing his throat sounded in her ear before he greeted her with a cheerful, “Hello!”

When he didn’t add anything else, Eunjae prodded. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes! I tried to...text. But, uh,” He paused for a moment and the only noise Eunjae could hear were the footsteps of people passing by in the hallway outside of her closet. “Hungry?”

Ah, so it wasn’t just the maknae line who had been texting her then. Eunjae almost facepalmed at the realization and then felt a sliver of guilt at inadvertently ignoring his messages, before remembering that she hadn’t really had a choice. She nodded at his question as if he could see her. “Yeah. I’m guessing you are too?”

“Yeah.” Hoseok said something else into his end of the line, but it’d been too fast for her to discern. After failing to receive a response, he tried again, but slower. “Meet in studio? Mine. You remember where?”

Running her tongue over her bottom lip in thought, Eunjae found herself agreeing to his words before she could think too hard on it. Hopefully Tiffany would let her have a lunch break. She’d have to, right? “I remember. I’ll meet you there soon.”

#bts #bts fic #bangtanarmynet #hoseok fic #hoseok

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sunmoonandeddie · 5 years

Text

feelings are fatal (13/24)

pairing: bucky barnes x reader, past steve rogers x reader

word count: 3,586

summary: After the events of Endgame, you struggle to come to terms with what you’ve lost, though you’re learning that you still have something to gain.

chapter warnings: swearing

masterlist

a/n: Oblivious!reader is slowly becoming... less oblivious. At least to her own feelings. Also, holy shit, guys. We’re over halfway through the series now. Anyways, let me know what you think!

You were about to lose your god damn mind. In the days since The Kiss, you hadn’t been able to get it out of your head. Every other second of the day, you found yourself wondering about it.

Or, more specifically, wondering about Bucky.

He occupied your every thought, even when he was sitting right beside you. You found yourself wanting to know if he was busy, if you should go talk to him, if you should not talk to him because what if you made things awkward because you couldn’t get that stupid kiss out of your head and—

And if Natasha was here, she’d be smacking you upside the head and telling you to get it together. She’d tell you to stop working yourself into a tizzy.

She’d also probably tell you to talk to Bucky how you were feeling, but whatever. That was beside the point. And anyway, it wasn’t like you could actually bring it up to him. He’d think you liked him!

And, okay, yeah—you did like him. As in, like like him.

And while you knew that he wouldn’t make you feel bad about it, you just couldn’t bring yourself to bring it up. Because what would happen to your friendship? It would change everything and you didn’t think you could handle losing him as your best friend.

There was also the little fact that you had been his best friend’s girlfriend just a few months before, but for some reason, that didn’t seem as big of a problem as of late.

“You’re distracted.”

You jumped as you turned to see Pepper standing beside you and wondered when the hell she got there. Exactly how long had you been staring into space?

“Everything okay?” The older woman asked, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at you. She looked incredibly well put together, even though she’d been running a birthday party for the past two hours.

“Yeah,” you reassured her as you looked out at the yard. You’d decided to hold Morgan’s fifth birthday party at the cabin, not wanting to invite the few friends she had to the compound. “Just a little tired.”

Pepper raised her eyebrows as she followed your gaze, finding it resting on Bucky. She didn’t even think you had realized that you were openly staring at the man.

Not that he had noticed yet. He was busy carting around her daughter on his shoulders while she yanked on his hair like a horse.

“Onward!” She said, pointing towards the lake. Her pretty little face was set with determination.

“Of course, princess!” Bucky said with as much gusto as he mustered. He ambled towards the lake, Morgan’s friends following after with loud giggles.

She’d met Allison, Brandan, Mason, Lilah, Caroline, and Mariah at the support group that Pepper went to for mothers who had lost their spouse. There were about nine women in it, all dealing with the struggle of raising a kid without a partner. And the matriarch of the two-member family knew she was lucky. She had a handful of superheroes always looking out for her daughter while the other women that she met often had no one. Often times, they also couldn’t afford the high rates of good babysitters in the city.

It’s what led to her offering to have some of the children over at the compound when their mothers were at work or just needed some time to themselves. She’d send Happy to go pick them up, Morgan sitting in the backseat with a bunch of toys for all of them to play with.

The three kids that weren’t there were babies, too young to make the trip out to the cabin without their mother, even though they often were found at the compound with the best babysitters available.

It was good, knowing that Morgan had friends. She’d spent most of her childhood with only her parents and her small extended family.

And as much as her little family loved her, it wasn’t the same as having peers her own age.

“So, anything happen recently that you haven’t told me about?” Pepper asked, crossing her arms over her chest. You still had that look in your eyes, the one that said you’d be willing to do anything for the man currently playing in the yard. “You’ve been a little weird since the day Bucky took you to the aquarium.”

“Huh?” You finally turned to look at her, e/c eyes widening slightly as you realized she’d been talking. “I’m so sorry,” you said as your cheeks went a soft shade of crimson. “I’m a little out of it.”

“Come on, Y/N. What’s going on?” She asked as she leaned against the wooden column at the top of the stairs that led up to the cabin porch. “You’ve been out of it since you got back from the aquarium with Bucky a few days ago.”

“Nothing!” You squeaked out, wincing when you realized that your quick answer might not be too convincing. The way that she raised her eyebrow let you know that she didn’t think so either. “I…” Huffing, you covered your face with your hands and turned away from her. “I kissed him.”

Pepper’s eyes widened as she heard your mumbles. She was sure that you’d said that you had kissed Bucky, but she had to be sure. “You… You kissed him?!”

“Shhh!” You hurried over to her, covering her mouth with your hands. The last thing you needed was everyone else hearing you, let alone the man in question. “Yes!” You hissed, eyes darting around you. “Yes, okay?! I kissed him! And then I ran!”

She yanked your hands away, eyes getting even wider. “YOU RAN AWAY?!”

“Pepper! Keep it down!” Your cheeks were flaming, visible even underneath the makeup you’d deigned to put on for the party. “He’s gonna hear you!”

“He’s at the lake with the kids! He won’t hear anything over their screaming!”

“Still!”

“You’re being overdramatic!”

“I am not!”

“Yes, you are! Just like how running away was overdramatic!”

You let out a loud grown, gripping your hair in your fingers as you tried to make sense of the mess in your head. “Yes, I kissed him. And, yes, I ran.” Biting your lip, you turned to look at your semi-mentor, kinda-mother figure. “But we talked about it before we drove home, and it’s cool!”

The strawberry-blonde crossed her arms over her chest. “And by ‘cool,’ you mean…”

“We decided to forget about it,” you said. You were doing your best to appear nonchalant, but you were probably completely failing at it.

“Okay—but why?”

“What do you mean, ‘but why?’”

“Do you not like him?” She asked, though she already knew the answer. Hell, she knew your emotions better than you did, and she was also aware of the fact that you were head over heels for him.

Even if you weren’t willing to admit it yet.

Bottom lip trapped between your teeth, your eyes slid over to where Bucky was still playing with the kids out by the lake. It was just like the Fourth of July, if only a little more peaceful since you’d made good with the Rogers. Your heart had felt calm for what felt like five minutes before being thrown back into a loop.

“Y/N?” Her voice had softened considerably, realizing just how badly it had thrown you. Sure, she had expected this, and she had expected that you would be confused, but this was… This was something else.

“I do,” you finally said. And god, that fucking scared you.

Could you put your heart on the line again? Could you risk going through all the heartache that came from loving someone like James Buchanan Barnes? Hell, could you risk losing James Buchanan Barnes if it all went to shit? If it all went up in flames? You’d thought that Steve was worth the risk, hadn’t even thought about it before giving yourself over to him, heart and soul.

When he’d finally given it back, it’d been a little more damaged than it had been, a little more cracked.

And sure, you’d learned some shit from your relationship. You’d learned more about what you needed and what you wanted in a partner.

But it still hurt like a bitch.

And, anyways, it had only been a few months since the breakup. Wasn’t it bad for you to have moved on so quickly?

Then again, your relationship had kind of been dead for a while before it had officially ended. You two lived like ghosts, pretending to be okay while crying in the shower where the other couldn’t see. Both of you had put up fronts for each other, not wanting to worry the other.

“Steve, have you seen my wallet?” You called out, searching the couch cushions. You were supposed to be driving out to Tony and Pepper’s to see them and sweet baby Morgan with Natasha.

That is, if you could find your god damn keys.

“Steve!”

“No, I haven’t,” he said blankly as he came out of the shower. His skin was a bright pink, and you knew that he’d spent the last forty-five minutes trying to scrub away what he considered to be his failures. His hair was dripping onto his t-shirt, and it hit you.

You couldn’t remember the last time you’d seen him naked, let alone the last time you’d had sex. Hell, the two of you didn’t even cuddle at night. You slept on opposite sides of the bed, like the Red Sea parting for Moses. But the only thing between you two at night was a mess of sheets and the ghosts of those you’d lost. Both of you lost in mourning your little family.

You were lost in mourning the man you had never thought you’d see again. The Asset, the Soldat, who you had learned was named James Buchanan Barnes. You’d learned that he had been your boyfriend’s best friend before World War II, before his best friend had fallen from a train and before he’d gone down in the ice.

You had never thought you’d see him again after Natasha got you out of the Red Room.

And even if you had gotten over your little seventeen-year-old crush, it had been nice seeing him out of the chains that HYDRA kept him in, the mask gone for good.

“Well, can you help me find them?” You asked, shoving the couch cushion back in place. You were getting more and more frustrated by the minute as you walked to the bedroom. The little apartment that you called your home felt so foreign. The two of you only ever spent time there to sleep and get ready for the day.

You spent most of your time at the compound with Natasha, despite how much Steve hated it. He never said it, but you knew he did. He hated watching you leave in the morning to go and help your pseudo-older sister with searching the world for answers, for some kind of way to bring everyone back.

He hated it because he considered it ‘holding onto the past’ instead of moving on. And, yeah, okay. He was a fucking hypocrite. Because he spent hours every day telling other survivors that they needed to try to move on when he himself couldn’t do it.

“I don’t know where they are,” Steve said, running his fingers through his wet hair.

“I don’t understand how that affects your ability to help me look, but okay,” you muttered under your breath as you tore through your desk. The both of you were being unfair, but you couldn’t help it. You just wanted to get out of this god damn hell hole and get to your sister.

The blond rolled his eyes as he stood in the doorway. “There’s no need to fucking snap at me.”

You raised your eyebrows as you stood back up, hands going to your hips. “Is there something you want to say to me? Because, if so, just say it instead of sitting there and watching me instead of helping.”

“Fine,” he said, shifting his weight. His jaw was clenched dangerously tight. “I don’t like how much time you spend at Tony’s.” He probably should’ve said that it was because he missed you, because he never got to see you for more than probably five minutes at a time unless you were sleeping, but he didn’t.

“They’re my family, Steve,” you said, shaking your head as you turned back to searching for your keys.

“And I’m your boyfriend. Can’t you just stay home for one fucking day?”

You rolled your eyes, anger boiling in your veins. You knew you were about to say something you didn’t mean, but you couldn’t bring yourself to stop your big, fat mouth from opening. “I already chose you over my family once. Isn’t that enough for you?”

Silence fell over the room and you looked up. Steve was staring at you as though you’d physically slapped him.

Taking a deep breath, you stepped towards him, only to have him step back. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry,” you said, your breathing shaky. You didn’t regret choosing Steve’s sides of the Accords. Hell, you agreed with him.

But you had known that making him think that you regretted it would hurt him. It would hurt him deep. He’d felt so guilty when you chose him over Tony and had spent the entire time you two were on the run apologizing.

“No, I get it,” he snapped, baby blues narrowed. “Go spend your time with your fucking family.”

You held your breath as you watched him storm out of your bedroom. A few seconds later you heard the door of his office slam shut. You let out a disbelieving huff as you saw your keys resting on the bedside table on your side, right next to your wallet.

Grabbing them, you headed for the front door, but you hesitated. You raised your hand to knock on Steve’s office door but let it fall before you could bring yourself to do it.

If he was going to be an ass, then so be it.

“I don’t know what to do, Pep,” you said, eyes teary as you turned to look at her. “I can’t get my heart broken again. I can’t do it. I won’t be able to handle it.”

She sighed as she cupped your cheek, taking in your distraught face. “I understand, sweetheart,” she said, her motherly instincts taking over. “When I first got with Tony, I was terrified. He was such a player and I didn’t want to be just another girl in his bed.” Her own eyes watered as she remembered her late husband and all the shit he used to get up to. “But it was worth it. The risk was worth it. And, honey, I think you know by now that what you feel for Bucky is real and not just a crush, and I think that’s what truly scares you. Because if it fails, it’s going to hurt that much more.” She nodded towards the man in question, watching as his eyes met yours across the yard. His brows furrowed as he took in your expression, and he immediately began to head for you. “But I know for a fact that he’s worth it. That you could have something so beautiful together.” She went quiet as he got closer, watching as he jogged up to the steps.

“Malen’kaya… Are you okay?” He asked, voice going soft as he stopped halfway up the stairs. He seemed hesitant to head all the way up, and you knew in that moment that he was just as scared of losing you as you were of losing him.

“Yeah,” you said, wiping under your eyes. A small smile tugged at your lips. “Just thinking about how grateful I am for everyone.” After a moment, you added, “For you.”

“Any reason you’re getting all sentimental?” He asked as he moved up another step, so he was eye level with you.

You shook your head with a soft smile, trying your best to ignore the butterflies that were bursting in your stomach from being so close to him. “No reason.” You nodded towards the kids that were still playing in the yard. “I see you’ve finally found your true peers.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” he said with a teasing eye roll.

“I’m serious!” You said, an impish glint in your eyes. “You don’t fit in with the other old men, you say that you don’t fit in with people my age. It only makes sense that you’d find true kinship with actual children.”

Bucky smirked as he nudged you towards the door. “Come on, sugar. I think it’s almost time for cake.”

The Asset stared down at the envelope in his hand. He knew this was risky. This could end in the both of you getting killed, but he had to risk it.

It would be worth it, as long as you were safe.

His target was still lying dead in a pool of his own blood on the living room floor, mere feet from him. He knew he’d have to be quick about the cleanup, or his handler would get suspicious over what was taking him so long.

But the second he had seen the stack of envelopes, he knew he had to take the chance. He’d found the legal pad mere seconds after searching the desk, snatching a pen and scribbling out a note.

Your sister is in trouble. You need to get her out now.

And yeah, it was fucking cryptic. But he knew that she would understand. Or, it would at least scare her enough to do what was needed to be done.

And that meant that she would come for you.

Finding the address of the Avengers Tower was easy. A little too easy. But then again, if security simply thought it was a piece of fan mail, it would make it that much easier to get to her.

And so, he scribbled ‘Natalia Romanov’ across the middle of the envelope, as well as her address, before slipping the note inside. With a swipe of his tongue, it was shut and almost ready to be sent.

Now all he needed was a stamp. Stamps, stamps, stamps…

There was only two left, and he used both of them, unsure how many it would take to get to New York City. Hell, he didn’t even know what city he was in.

The Asset’s heart was pounding against his ribcage as he finished cleaning up his target. Once that was done and he was sure no one would find him for a few days, he headed out of the house and slipped the envelope into the mailbox for the mailman to pick up the next day.

As he drove away, he felt a weight lift off of his shoulders. It was done. It would reach the assassin-turned-Avenger within a few days, and he could guarantee that you’d be safe from the clutches of the Red Room and HYDRA soon after. There was no way that Natasha would risk your life.

But there was a deep sadness inside his chest. He knew that as soon as Natasha rescued you, there was no going back. He’d never get to see you again. He’d never get to see his precious malen’kaya again.

And he had to be okay with that. He had to be okay with simply knowing that you were safe, even if it wasn’t with him.

Because what mattered most was that you were alive.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Morgan! Happy birthday to you!” Everyone sang as they gathered around the dining room table, cheering as the now five-year-old blew out her candles. She struggled with the last two, having to blow four more times before they finally went out.

The other party-goers were scrambling to get a piece of the huge sheet cake that had been laid out. The kids were all calling out the different pieces that they wanted.

And Bucky was in the middle of it all, hoisting the birthday girl onto his hip as her mother passed out plates.

There was a strange sort of happiness in the air. Like, you all were having a good time, but there was still the cloud hanging over your head that was HYDRA. You knew you were going to have to deal with it sooner than later, even if you didn’t want to.

But for now, you’d do your best to enjoy the festivities.

“You put ideas in my head.”

Steve raised his eyebrows at you, the wrinkles in his forehead much more pronounced with his age. “What kind of ideas are we talking about?”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes. “About Bucky.”

“When did I do that?” He asked in confusion.

“When I came over a few weeks ago,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest. You two were standing a little off to the side, out of the way of everyone. Peggy was helping serve the cake, happy to help with the little ones. “You said all the stuff about finding the person I’m meant to be with. The one who’ll love me like I deserve.”

The old man couldn’t help but grin at your frustration. “Y/N, I never said anything about Bucky when I said all that.”

Well, fuck.

#bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x you #bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes imagine

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offrankies · 4 years

Text

New Beginnings || Graham & Frankie

TIMING: A few days ago PARTIES: @grahamstoker & @offrankies SUMMARY: An anxious, homeless lesbian with lots of questions convinces a hematophobic vampire to let her be his roommate, and gets some answers in the process.

Rushing in to a new town with nothing but a backpack filled with things hadn’t been one of her brightest choices. Frankie knew her grandma had to butter up to her parents into accepting her decision and that would mean eventually getting most of her stuff from her house, but until then, she couldn’t afford a place to live on her own as she only had enough money for a month’s worth of rent and food. Her first day in town had been spent driving around, in hopes of finding Layla walking around, but also to start learning her way around. She’d eventually found a grocery store, a board on the entrance with different kinds of ads. One in particular had stood out, a simple “room for rent” with a scribbled address. Her grandma would’ve argued it was sketchy, but at this point she was desperate for a roof to sleep under. A knot had formed on her throat as she stood outside of the apartment, her hands clenched in fists against her chest. She had no job, no education other than school; just hopes and dreams that she knew White Crest would fulfill. With a deep breath, heart pounding on her chest, Frankie placed two knocks on the door.

The city of Rome wasn’t built in a day, they said, but Graham found himself absently wondering if it was built by vampires as he sat splayed on his couch, one leg over the arm as he lazily flipped through the channels on his TV. It probably wasn’t; thank god he wasted thought on that. He finally had a day off both his jobs, which he seemed to have worked every day since he arrived in this weird-ass town and dammit, he was going to enjoy his nothing-to-do. So it was odd that that would be the one day he received a couple knocks on the door and he frowned to himself, wondering who it could’ve been. He stretched and got to his feet slowly, trudging over to the door and not bothering to look through the peephole before opening it to regard a… girl. Teenager. It took him just one short moment to mask his confusion and his expression softened. “Hey there,” He said lightly. “What can I do for you?” He never was one to shy away from temporarily entertaining (and maybe even trolling) passing salespeople; she was no different.

Frankie’s hands started fidgeting, mindlessly pulling the broken skin on her nails as she waited for the door to open. It hadn’t been even a minute, but the seconds stretched like years in front of her, and the moment the door opened, she braced herself to the shiny colors that would greet her… except nothing came, just the voice of an older man. Her mouth opened and then closed again, in shock. There was absolutely nothing surrounding the other, at least nothing other than air, and she had to fight the urge to raise her hand and touch him to know that he was real. It wasn’t possible, never in her life she’d seen a person without an aura - at least, not one that was breathing and staring at her with bright eyes. There were times where she’d met people with small, almost concealed auras, but there was always a hint, a glimpse of colorful shadows around them. His voice made her blink a few times rapidly, snapping out of her thoughts, and she quickly straightened her back, clearing her throat, ignoring her heartbeat on her ears. If she had been nervous before, it had turned into excitement. Who- no, What was he? “Hi, I’m-- I’m Frankie, I just moved here. Uh---” Her shaking hands reached into her backpack, pulling a creased piece of paper and extending it to him. “ I was wondering if you-- if the room offer is still there?” Out of all the things Graham was expecting the girl named Frankie to try to sell him on, asking for his spare room wasn’t on that list. Part of him forgot that he had even offered the room out. Only part, mind, but it was still enough for him to stand there for a second or two to process what exactly he wrote. He remembered soon enough, though, and he gave her a small nod, taking the paper from her gently and noting her… presumed nervousness. “Yeah! Yeah, c’mon in, Frankie.” He offered, standing aside to allow the girl passage. He was thinking of someone a little older, perhaps, but he had moved out of his house by the time he was 18 so he knew it was possible. “Don’t be scared,” He added, his tone casual and approachable. “I promise I’m not one of those weirdos that post stuff to lure girls in. Not my style.” Hopefully she would believe him on that.

In all honesty, the possibility of him being a predator hadn’t crossed Frankie’s mind until he mentioned it, and she couldn’t help but laugh at that. Normally she’d know if he had such intentions, but for the first time in her life she was completely clueless with what and who she was dealing with. Still, she was way too interested to let the opportunity pass. She made her way inside, looking around the room. “I’m not scared.” She reassured him, turning around to give him another look, the lack of aura once again making her breath catch in her throat. Maybe she needed glasses? Maybe the place was somehow locking the auras from showing? “This is… all new for me, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.” She didn’t know if she was referring to finding a place to live or the lack of flowing colors everywhere, but she guessed it was true for both. “It’s a lovely place though, … uhm.” Her lips pressed together, waiting for a name. “Well… start by taking a seat anywhere you think’s comfortable,” Graham replied, closing the door behind her and going over to the bar that separated his kitchen from the living room, keeping his eyes on her not warily but just to show that he was giving her his attention. “Oh, it’s Graham,” He gave her the name as he got out a glass and filled it with ice and water. “Tell me about you, Frankie; how old are you, what do you like to do, things like that.” He suggested, going back over to her and offering the glass to her. At least she wasn’t afraid; good. He tried to avoid giving that impression when he could avoid it.

Her eyes moved around the room, and Frankie wasn’t completely sure if she should sit down on the couch or not. “Nice to meet you Graham.” Oh, fuck it, if she was going to live here she needed to see if the couch was comfortable or not. Taking her backpack off her back, she sat down, now focused on the man. “Well, I’m nineteen, soon to be twenty. Or not so soon, really. My birthday’s in November. I want to get a bachelor’s in childhood education so I really need to look into colleges around here. Uhm, I also kinda need a job but I have enough money for rent until I get one.” Was she rambling? Oh god she started rambling. She wiped the sweat of her hands on her black jeans, a nervous laugh escaping her. What are you supposed to say in these things? “I like animals and I have my own motorcycle...?” As the girl situated herself, Graham studied her movements, her speech patterns and, of course, the information she gave him about herself and he couldn’t help but scoff when she told him that she didn’t have a job but did have a motorcycle. “So you’re from out of town,” He assumed. “Your only education is high school and you need a job,” He basically repeated her though he noted that she had money. Part of him wondered for a moment if it was because her parents were rich, that she was a thief or she had a job before but that was then and this was now so it didn’t matter too much to him. “And you like animals. That’s good, at least.” He chuckled, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms. “So I gotta ask; what made you come to White Crest?” Relatively speaking, White Crest DID have the weird ability to draw people to it for some reason or another. He had gotten a suggestion but he was learning that a lot of people just… showed up. He felt like that might’ve been the case with this girl.

“I know it doesn’t look good, but I can’t get a job or enroll in college unless I find a place to live first.” Frankie’s hands were once again fidgeting on her lap, the realization that she was blowing the interview. However, his question made her freeze on her seat. The image of Layla crying and telling her all the secrets she had kept from her filled her mind, and she had to bite down her lower lip to keep herself from tearing up. “I’m … I’m looking for my girlfriend.” Her voice was awfully quiet in comparison with her previous outburst, and once more she found herself fishing inside her backpack, grabbing the tape to show it to him, her lips tightly pressed together. For a minute, she didn’t say anything, pondering. She could lie, come up with a pitiful excuse and use emotional leverage to convince him to let her stay; or she could be honest, and risk sleeping on the streets yet another night. “Her parents told me she was dead, but she sent me this two days ago so I’m- I’m trying to find her.” He was thrown for another loop and Graham’s expression got more gentle almost immediately when Frankie came clean about why she was there. His thoughts nowadays seemed to occur in short bursts of memory and the briefest of contemplations and for that moment, he recalled the face of a woman, with a warm smile and an infectious laugh. Her hand on his shoulder, her lips against his, the smell of expensive wine tingeing her breath as-- He blinked and he gave a small sigh as he took the tape from her shaking hands. He would’ve been lying if he thought to deny her request, to tell her she’d have more luck somewhere else and to not get involved but he couldn’t bring himself to and he turned the tape in his hands carefully before handing it back. “Okay,” He relinquished. “Okay, just… calm down, it’s okay.” He assured, putting his hands on his hips. He exhaled through his nose. This changed a couple things up. “So… since we’re being honest, what’s going on with your girlfriend? Why did her parents sign her off as dead?”

Frankie's lips were once more tightly pressed, a knot on her throat forming as the other stood quietly. She had flunked it, and she quietly closed her backpack and grabbed it as she stood up, ready to be kicked out. However, his answer and question made her open her eyes wide, carefully taking the tape. Once again, she was at a crossroad, needing to decide whether to lie or not. A nervous laugh escaped her, and she shoved the tape back with her belongings, not daring to meet his eye, the lack of aura still making her nervous, but what she was about to admit made her even more anxious. "You won't believe me if I tell you." Her eyes filled with tears as she looked up to him, an apologetic smile painting her lips. "She's- she's a werewolf-- and her family wanted her dead because they're hunters and hunters kill werewolves, and she was supposed to be one of them but then she wasn't---" Taking a deep breath to slow down her babbling, she hadn't realized the tears were willing down her face. "I- I know this sounds taken straight out of a lame 90's movie like Teen Wolf but I swear I'm being honest." Though he could feel Frankie’s anxiety radiating off of her, Graham was determined to keep his eyes on her with no impression that he was about to toss her out. However, from the moment she said ‘werewolf’, he smothered the immediate scoff that wanted so badly to escape his body and he inhaled sharply through his nose as a compromise. He remained steadfast in his gaze as she continued to be upfront with him, or at least upfront enough that he didn’t think she was actually lying - rather, he found Frankie’s very evident attachment to this girl to be endearing. He was realising as she talked that he probably wasn’t the best person to deal with teenage drama. He got another short memory of the woman from before, thinking she would’ve been much better at this. “Oh, sweetie,” He did scoff this time as he gently reached forward and wiped a tear from her face with a thumb, giving her a smile. “I believe you.” He said, stroking the side of her face briefly in what he hoped was a warm gesture (her skin certainly was) before pulling away and reaching over to retrieve the decorative box of tissues from the side table in the corner and offering it out to her. “That’s awful, though. I can’t imagine being killed or hunted by your own family. And so young to be given such a curse.” He lied this time, easily but he still meant what he said. “No more crying on the couch. Just take a deeeep breath.” He had to lighten the mood if only for his own sake.

The moment Graham's hand touched her, Frankie took a sharp intake and let out a sharp yet soft scream. He was colder than the ice cream she used to share with Layla, and the seconds his finger lingered on her face stretched dlike eternity, her heart sinking on her chest. "You're cold." She whispered, swallowing to get rid of the knot the crying had formed in her throat, and for a moment, Frankie felt small, and alone, realizing that she had left everything and everyone chasing something that sounded like a dream. Without a warning, she closed the distance between them and burrowed her face on his chest, her sobs filling the room. Nevermind that he was a complete stranger with no aura and honestly a potential murderer - he believed her, and for a second that's all she needed. "Please let me stay here." Her voice was muffled by the clothes and her sobs, and Frankie was too desperate and broken to realize that not only his hands were cold, but that his whole body felt like a big human shaped rock. One moment Graham was offering out tissues and the next he was standing there with a teenage girl burying her face in his shirt, feeling her fingers grasping at his clothes like she was drowning and scrabbling to grab onto anything to keep her from going under. He gulped and his eyes darted around the room under furrowed brows for a few moments, as if he were the butt of some hidden-camera show. Well… he knew, he knew that it didn’t matter if he was being secretly recorded or not; he used to be a surgeon. That part of his brain kickstarted for the situation and though he experienced hesitancy, his mind still seeming to want to determine whether or not he was actually sympathetic to her plight or just eager to get this over with, what empathy he had retained from his old life sparked back to life and he placed a strong hand on the top of her head. He started weighing the pros and cons….. and figuring out that there weren’t a whole lot of pros. Baby steps. He pet the top of her head gently. “Okay.” He said softly. He wanted to add some levity again but he left his response as it was and simply stood there, steadfast for her to cry herself out.

Frankie felt like her whole mind was spiraling without control, flashing images of Layla and her watching bad movies in her bed with their legs tangled together, her grandmother teaching her the importance of meaning behind the different colors surrounding a person, her mother softly caressing her hair when life became too hard one day to another. It felt like years had passed, her whole life changing in a matter of hours. She’d struggled, she was still struggling, and even though she took pride in being a smart, strong woman, it took times like this to remember she was still only a kid. The feeling of Graham’s hand trying to comfort her mixed with his soft answer took more muffled crying from her, and it took several minutes for her to calm down. Eventually, her shoulders were no longer shaking and her fists weren’t clenched on his shirt, but instead cradled against her own chest as she took a few steps back from him, puffy eyes and rosy cheeks from her sudden outburst. Her breathing was still irregular, but at least she felt a little better. “I’m sorry-- I didn’t mean to do that.” And like that, she let herself drop back on the couch. “My- My grandma told me stories when I was a kid and I never thought they’d be real, about werewolves and fairies and vampires, and now Layla just throws this bomb at me and I left my home to find her and I don’t--” She stopped to take a deep breath, wiping her face with both her hands in frustration, but also to wipe the tears that were still there. “I don’t even care if it’s real or not, I just need to find her.” All things considered, Graham thought he was treating this situation like a boss. He waited patiently until she pulled away from him in which he removed his hand from her head. the sudden separation of her body heat from him almost prompting a sigh but he kept it under wraps. He examined the tears on his shirt briefly - bigger fish to fry, don’t worry about it - and he offered the box of tissues again. “Yeah, it can be a little… jarring,” He agreed, sitting on the arm of the couch lightly. “You said she sent you that message, what, two days ago? The likelihood of her still being here is pretty good,” He said before his expression shifted. “But I’ll be honest with you - werewolves aren’t nice creatures to fuck around with. Have you figured out what you’re gonna do after you find her?”

“I hope you’re right.” She mumbled, sinking even more on the couch. His question made Frankie’s mouth hung open for a few seconds as she thought, before she clenched her teeth, a frustrated groan leaving her as she burrowed her face in her hands. There were just too many things going on through her head and Graham, though blessed for not kicking her out the second she opened her mouth, wasn’t helping. Honestly, Frankie hadn’t thought that far ahead and had hoped that things would sort out on their own once they happened. She could worry about what she would tell Layla after and if she found her. But his previous statement floated around her head, and she turned her face towards him, one eye peeping from between her fingers. “How… How do you know so much about werewolves? And why aren’t you freaking out?” And she put her face in her hands again. Graham felt his eyebrows do a dance on his forehead as they went from raised in worry to half-quirked with some other emotion. He guessed he didn’t say the right thing but he felt it was important to at least think about future plans before jumping in even deeper. The look carried through into his mulling over her question when she asked between her fingers. She was being honest so far but would she believe him? He was far less concerned with her leaving if she didn’t like what or how he was but given that she dropped everything to come running to her werewolf girlfriend, he decided to go out on a limb and he started to rub his hands together absently, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’ve been told a lot of things and I’ve done a lot of reading,” He replied honestly. “As I’m sure you’ve been able to figure out, this town is hella weird. I dunno what all was in those stories your grandma told you but at least half of it is probably true.” He explained. “This is the part where I should probably tell you that I’m a vampire.” Well, there it was. He didn’t adjust his form at all as he spoke, wondering how the girl was going to react to that information.

Her mouth formed a perfect circle, her hands slowly sliding down her face to her lap. Her face felt weird because of the dried tears and her eyes still stinging with a burning sensation, but it didn’t quite matter when he had dropped yet another bomb. The Frankie from six months ago would’ve laughed in his face, grabbed her stuff and walked out of the apartment without a second doubt, but after everything that had happened in her life, and after Graham so easily believing what she was saying, it would be hypocritical of her. A small voice told her than, maybe, he was messing with her and joking after the werewolf bit, but the feeling of his cold hands and hard body was still lingering in her skin. A vampire. Unconsciously, her body shifted slightly away from him. Vampires were… bad, right? At least most movies portrayed them like that. Then again there was Twilight where vampires were good--- Oh, What if he was like Bella? And that was why she couldn’t see his aura? “Um. I’m- You won’t drink my blood if I live here, right? I mean I guess I could--- maybe-- if it doesn’t hurt too much but it would be just super weird and-- ” “Oh no no, that’s not my intention,” Graham replied quickly, keeping his blue eyes on her steadily and noticing her subtle body language, distancing herself from him as he expected; good, she had some form of self-preservation. “You’re a little young and…” He did actually consider withholding the following information but decided to go all the way since they were already there. “The sight and smell of blood makes me… nauseous. Freaks me out.” He DID decide not to add the part where he would’ve said ‘I might kill you’ - there was a line so he decided to hide it behind the good ol’ hematophobia. “I don’t feed in front of other, uh… people.” He wasn’t lying about this part; he already dropped the ball with the whole ‘vampire’ bit. “UNLESS-- unless… well, no. I still don’t plan on it.” He shrugged. “If your girlfriend is over and she wolfs out, then all bets are off.” He felt the need to specify. “I draw the line at being attacked in my own apartment.” He gave her a clever smile. “BUT that being said, you’re off my menu. Just… warn me if you’re planning on getting blood anywhere.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Any more questions so far?”

“How often do you feed?” The question was out of Frankie’s mouth before she even noticed what she was doing, her lips pressing together to keep her from spilling any more blabbering or stupid questions. Honestly, at this point she had no idea what she was anxious about, but she couldn’t seem to find the off button. “Sorry. Uhm. Don’t answer that. I’m sorry your only food source makes you sick.” She remained quiet for a moment, thinking. “What does wolfing out mean? Do werewolves turn into actual wolves? I thought they just… grew more hair and… I don’t know, got claws and stuff? And Is the alpha beta thing an actual thing? And-- do they have, like, insane senses? Can they turn them off?” She stopped to take a deep breath, suddenly standing up to face him better. “Sorry. We can, uhm, I guess you can fill me out on the wolf department later. I-- I kinda need to come clean about something too.” Her mouth was like a faucet the way she just spilled question after question but Graham kept in mind every one of them until she finished with a taper and she realised that she was unloading her curiosity onto him. He didn’t necessarily mind but that was what he HAD in mind when he asked about questions. He found it curious for a moment that she was inherently more interested in the ‘wolf’ part than the ‘vampire’ part but that was to be expected - she WAS the girlfriend of a werewolf, after all. “How ‘bout this, then - I’ll answer your veritable onslaught once you tell me what’s on your mind.” He compromised, looking at her patiently.

Frankie was silently thankful of how calm Graham was, taking each outburst better than the last. She licked her lips as she figured out the best way of telling him, as it was the first time she ever confessed her gift to someone outside her family. “Okay so---” Her left hand reached forward to him, not touching him but rather lingering a few inches away, tracing where his aura would be if he had one. “-- there’s absolutely nothing here. You have no aura. And I kinda think it’s because you’re, uhm, dead, but I can’t really tell because I’ve only dealt with people before?” Blabbering. She was blabbering again. Another deep breath, her hand dropping, fingers toying with each other. “What I mean is --- I can see auras. And they’re annoying for the most part because they’re super bright sometimes. So it’s nice that you don’t have one.” “Ah, you’re an aura reader,” Graham replied casually, lying through his teeth - he honestly didn’t know that aura readers were a thing but she didn’t need to know that. He didn’t find it surprising that she could read auras though he did find himself slightly surprised at his own lack of aura… he didn’t have one? He was undead but he was still a-- well, maybe he didn’t qualify as a person anymore. That thought made him… “Well! Happy to help; I can imagine how annoying that could be.” He painted over his brief expression with a smile. “Guess it works out in our favour.” He said, reaching forward with a finger and poking her palm gently, feeling her heat against his skin. “Okay, my turn.” He cleared his throat, going back to rubbing his hands together. “I try to only feed once or twice a week. I call when werewolves involuntarily transform ‘wolfing out’. Like someone ‘freaking out’ but with a wolf,” He looked up as he recalled the questions in order. “Only werewolves who have achieved some sort of equilibrium turn into actual wolves, to my knowledge. Most of the time, they take on quadrupedal beasts with wolf features. Alphas and such are mostly a myth but I THINK the wolves that were born with it prefer running in packs. The “alpha” thing isn’t much more of a thing to werewolves than humans who want leaders. Annnnnd… They have enhanced senses that get stronger nearer to the full moon.” He furrowed his brow. “I didn’t miss any questions, did I?”

His reaction made Frankie smile in relief. Oh, thank God he knew what she was on about, because she didn’t have the slightest idea on how to explain how, less alone why she could see auras, and in all honesty, even if she knew how, she didn’t want to do it either. Her eyes looked down to his finger poking her fidgeting hands, and because she was a curious teen, she reached forward to take his hands in hers, the cold touch completely foreign to her but, now that she knew what to expect, it didn’t bother her. For the first time since she had entered the room, she remained quiet, letting him speak, her fingers playing with his and letting her warmth conquer his tundra. It was amazing how Graham could recall every single question she had asked, even the ones she didn’t even remember saying. Even after he had stopped talking, she remained silent. It was way too much information, and by the way her brows were furrowed, she was clearly struggling to process everything. “I need to write this down somewhere before I forget.” And like that, she let go of his hands, a sigh escaping her. “Thank you. For, like, everything, not just the not having an aura and.. answering my shi--- stuff.” Was she allowed to swear? “Uhm, I promise I’m not always a mess ...? Maybe sometimes--- but you won’t regret taking me in.” The space between them was quiet for a moment following his string of answers as Graham felt her fingers touching his hand, almost childlike in their curiosity. He had to admit that the warmth was one of the things he missed the most and he got another brief memory before it faded back out and he saw the look on her face - maybe he answered too many of her questions at once. She was a teenage human and this was a lot to take in. He chuckled when she censored herself and shook his head. “I can write everything down for you and you can curse - you’re a grown-ass adult who can make her own decisions.” He quirked an eyebrow. “That’s why you’re here, after all.” He pulled to his feet from sitting on the arm of the couch. “Just take a few days to get settled in, just relax. One step at a time.” He pulled the front of his shirt away from his chest to keep it from sticking subconsciously. “C’mon, lemme show you around. You can have the guest bathroom - keep it clean,” He motioned for her to gather her things and follow her. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

#p: New Beginnings #p: graham #❪ ⋅ ⋆ —— ❛ para ❜ ❫

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angrylilfic · 4 years

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On the Wild Side chap. 8

SORRRRRYYYY! I know I keep flaking on you guys but @bihoodnerd has actually been posting chapters of the fic on AO3 for me, so you can check that out too. In the meantime, here’s the second to last chapter :)

The team rolled out of the garage and made their way through the countryside. Trini was in front, watching the horizon for anything out of the ordinary. They were running at a quick pace, trying to find any sign of Astronema or her minions.

“Guys I think I found where Astronema is transmitting the signal from. It seems to be coming from one of the old radio towers on the other side of town,” Billy said over his mic.

“Take Jason with you. Kim, Zack, and I’ll take on Astronema and buy you some time to take it down,” Trini commanded.

The team parted as Trini’s team took off headed downtown while Jason and Billy went uptown. The zords came to a screeching halt as they saw the destruction that led into the city. Buildings were completely destroyed and others were on fire. Smoke was everywhere and there seemed to be nowhere that wasn’t covered in a thick layer of dust.

“We gotta stop her or Angel Grove is gonna be completely destroyed,” Zack said as they climbed out of the zords to get a better view from the ground.

People were rushing to get out of buildings and to safety. In front of the buildings was a giant nano monster. As soon as they stepped into the square, the smoke cleared and Astronema stepped out from a portal.

Astronema laughed as the rangers stood in front of her. “So glad you could join us rangers. Now that you’re here, the party can really start.”

She snapped her fingers and a large, blue portal opened behind her. Dozens of nano monsters and rows of children with identical ranger armor on, except all of theirs was black with blue accent lines. They stood without their helmets on, emotionless and awaiting command. The nano monster towered over them, ready to attack.

Astronema raised a clawed hand. “Kill them.” The children and nanos ran out of the portal, charging at the team with no hesitation.

“Okay new plan, kill the nanos and subdue the kids,” Trini yelled over the chaos.

“What about jumbo over here?” Zack said trying to fight his way through the kids and monsters.

“Leave him to me!”

A little girl jumped on Kim’s back, putting her in a chokehold.

“Watch out Kim!” Zack yelled as he ripped the kid off her back and threw her a few feet away. The girl landed on her feet effortlessly. She swung her arm out and a sword made of fire emerged.

“Aw shit, we’re screwed,” Zack sighed, pulling his ax out.

Trini climbed her way up a building, not yet sure how she was gonna take the monster down.

“Tri- Trini can you hear me?” Billy said through the coms, his voice cutting in and out.

“Kind of, what’s wrong?”

“We nee- time. There’s- can- get through.” He cut out.

_____

“Bil, you’re gonna have to hurry up!” Jason yelled as he used a shield to try and keep the ranger kids from breaking down the door to the radio tower.

“I’m going as fast as I can, but it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The whole thing is written in some kind of alien code.”

Jason grunted as he used his body to hold the shield in place. The force on the other side of the door eased up for a moment, until the kids used their weapons to break the door down completely.

“Jason!” Billy cried as his friend flew through the room, landing with a loud thump. The kids moved into the room and closed in on Billy. Jason groaned as the kids pinned him against the wall.

“Get off him!” the boy yelled as he hurled a ball of electricity towards them. The ball hit the kids directly and they fell to the ground, unconscious. Jason stared at Billy in wonder as the other boy kept working.

“You okay Jase?” The blue ranger called over his shoulder.

“Yeah I’m good, focus on taking the signal down,” Jason said as he checked on the kids. He took the chips out and made sure they were all breathing. Billy pumped his fist as the tower signal came down, in the distance they could hear Trini roar.

“Where am I? Stay back!” One of the kids woke up and threw up a shield around her and the other kids.

“Bill, get Trini on the line. I’ve got an idea.”

_____

“Billy? Billy! Shit,” she said out loud, “guys, Billy and Jason need more time to bring the tower down.”

“We’ve kinda got our hands tied down here Trini!” Zack said, trying to take down two kids that were attacking his left side. Zack felt his control slipping away and as the next thing he knew, the kids were knocked out.

“Zack! Remember how you were able to heal Kevin? Maybe your healing powers can be used to knock them out too!” Kim said panting.

From Trini’s position, she could see Astronema move away from the square and make her way towards Krispy Kreme. Running out of options, Trini whistled for the zords.

“Guys get out the way; I have an idea!”

Kim and Zack jumped up to higher positions as the zords came crashing through the town square. Trini jumped from the roof and into her cockpit. Her zord opened its mouth and roared. The ranger kids’ chips shattered as they fell to their knees.

“C’mon, Astronema’s getting close to the crystal,” Zack said, jumping into his zord.

“What about the kids?” Kim said as her pterodactyl hovered above them.

“Leave them, we’ll come back.” Trini instructed as they all made their way after the mega nano.

The three made their way to the crystal, where Astronema’s monster was digging a hole where the Krispy Kreme used to be. The nano was slow in its movements, as though it didn’t exactly understand her command.

“Work faster you idiot!” Astronema yelled frantically as they approached. She turned her head and gave a sinister smile, “Rangers! I’m so glad you could be here to witness the beginning of a new earth. As we speak, my rangers are being driven out of Angel Grove and to government facilities all over the country. When they wake, they have instructions to covertly hypnotize all other personnel in the facilities, then make their way through every major city in the country. With the zeo crystal and an army of minions, not even you will be able to stop me!” The enchantress cackled.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Trini said as Kim’s pterodactyl swooped low and fired missiles at the mega nano.

Zack rushed behind her and used his zord to push Astronema’s monster back from the pit. Trini followed, using the Sabertooth and slashed at them.

“Enough!” Astronema yelled. The monster got back up and with a roar, pushing all the zords back. Astronema’s eyes took on an icy blue and dozens of nano monsters came running out through a portal.

The monsters weren’t as sturdy as before, they were confused and were fighting sloppily. They began flinging themselves at the zords, ripping into them and trying to take them down. Trini looked up, Kim’s pterodactyl was being swarmed with nanos on the wings.

“Kim do a loop!” Trini said through the mic. Kimberly tried her best to shake the nanos, but the majority of them hung on.

“Shit look out!” Zack yelled as Astronema’s monster began flinging balls of fire at them.

Kim was doing her best to fly through the chaos, but the monster threw a large fireball at her and the pterodactyl began losing altitude, “I need some help over here!” she screamed as the zord dipped lower.

Trini used the Sabertooth to chase after Kimberly, when she was low enough, the tiger jumped into the air to cushion Kim’s landing. Kim’s left wing was hanging on by a couple steel beams, with the cockpit almost completely torn out. Zack screamed behind them as the mega dragged his zord into the pit which was now on fire.

“Zack hold on,” Trini said as Kim jumped into the Sabertooth with her. The tiger rammed into the mega’s side, making it lose hold of Zack.

They were locked in a hold, Trini and Zack’s zords using all their strength to hold back the mega nano. They could feel themselves sliding back as they heard Billy over their comms.

“Trini! We got the signal disrupted, her powers should be weakened. Jason and I have an idea.”

Billy’s zord ran to them as a high pitched screeching noise filled the air. The nano monsters all shrieked as their body’s began to crumble to the ground.

“Guys go down, I think we can take them from the ground,” Zack said, ejecting himself from the Mastodon.

Astronema watched as her monsters began to fall apart, desperately trying to use her powers to get them to move. The rangers closed in on her as she struggled to regain control.

“It’s over Astronema, you lost.” Trini said as she stood to her full height.

“Lost? Oh no children, you’ve only delayed the inevitable. You see, even without my rangers, even without my nanobot monsters, I am still an alpha, still a ranger. That kind of power can’t be taken away.”

Astronema brushed herself off as she took a deep breath. Immediately, Trini’s hair stood on end as her alpha sensed something, “Grab her!”

Trini lunged at her as Astronema’s body began levitating in an eerie blue light, a forcefield shielded her and Trini got thrown back. As the enchantress opened her eyes, an evil smile stretched her face, fangs poking out. A silhouette began forming around her, taking on the shape of a giant blue wolf almost two times the size of an elephant. The shadow engulfed the enchantress and in her place stood only the wolf.

“Now you will see what a true alpha looks like!” She cackled as the wolf let out a howl that left the others clutching their ears.

Astronema charged at them, fangs drawn as the team moved to get out of the way. Astronema leaped at Trini, jaws snapping at her throat. Trini wrestled with the wolf, trying to push her off when an arrow lodged itself in its back. The wolf snarled as she turned around.

“Hey bitch! Get off my girlfriend,” Kim yells, bow drawn with a pink arrow already knocked in place to shoot again.

The wolf growled as it jumped off Trini and headed for Kim, a ball of electricity hit her in the side. Billy raised his hands as the electricity flowed from one hand to the other. The others surrounded her, weapons raised. Zack with his axe and Trini with her claws out.

Astronema laughed as a puff of blue smoke surrounded them. A scream was heard through the smoke, but Trini couldn’t see anything in front of her, “Guys! Where is she?” Trini stumbled forward, feeling around for her team. A yellow light covered Trini head to toe.

Her hands bumped into a body, “Kim? Guys, is that you?” She said getting closer.

“Trin- Trini I can’t move” Zack said, coughing. Trini looked down, Zack had deep cuts running down his torso, his legs were being pinned in place by the blue smoke and his armor had dematerialized. Next to him, Billy groaned as the smoke pinned him down on his back, his shirt torn up and covered in blood. A cough alerted Trini to someone behind them.

“Trini, help me,” Kimberly sputtered out. Trini crawled her way to her girlfriend, Kim was laying on her back, a large cut ran from her forehead to just below her eyebrow.

“Jesus, Kim what happened?” Trini kneeled over her, pressing her hand over the wound.

Kim groaned underneath her, “She jumped me before the smoke spread.”

A large paw emerged from the smoke and clawed at Trini’s back, slashing through her undershirt and ripping into her skin. Trini let out a shriek that made Kimberly’s blood run cold. The alpha dropped to the floor as Astronema pulled her claws out from Trini’s body.

“Trini!” Kim screamed as the wolf stepped over Trini’s body and walked towards Kim.

“Leave them alone! Get away from them.” Zack yelled as he fought against the weight of the smoke.

“I have grown tired of the games little rangers. You will submit to me, or you will die trying to save this pathetic town.” Astronema paced in front of her with a wolfish grin.

Astronema raised a giant paw, setting it down on Kimberly’s wound. “Such a shame really, I thought your little alpha would’ve put up more of a fight. Guess she didn’t love you as much as you thought.”

Astronema ripped her claws down the side of Kimberly’s head. Kimberly and the boys screamed as Astronema put a hand on Kim’s windpipe. “After I kill you and your team, there will be no one left to stand in my w-”

A thunderous roar boomed through the street. Astronema whipped her head around as a gigantic yellow Sabertooth jumped on her back, large teeth sinking into her neck. The two rolled around before Trini pinned Astronema to the ground.

“Enough! You think I'm weak? You think I won’t kill you? How dare you threaten my family.” Trini growled.

Astronema shifted one of her paws into a hand and threw a hard punch to Trini’s jaw. Trini stumbled back as the enchantress circled her.

“I’ve defeated much stronger alpha’s than you Trinity Gomez. I have watched the very best ranger teams fall. What makes you different?” The wolf said, grinning. Trini shook her head and gave the villain a toothy smile.

“Because you just fell for our trap, bitch.” A large explosion came from behind them, the ranger kids came running towards them with Jason leading them. Jason threw up shields around Astronema, boxing her in. Trini jumped into the ring as Jason and the kids held them up. The kids who didn’t have shield abilities had weapons drawn. Trini circled the enchantress, her eyes blazing yellow.

Astronema lunged at Trini, sinking her teeth into the girl's shoulder. Trini cried out in pain as she tried to get away. Trini snapped her teeth at the wolf’s hind leg and Astronema tumbled to the ground. She took several steps back, a deep growl coming from her throat. They stared each other down, eyes blazing. Blue and Yellow lasers shot from their eyes, blinding Jason and the kids.

“You think you’re more powerful than me? I’ve had worlds bow before me!” The wolf growled out.

“You’re weak. We know you’re weak, you know you’re weak. Last time you fought one of our teams they left you scrambling.”

“Silence!” Astronema yelled as she lunged at Trini, Trini dodged as Astronema hit the side of Jason’s shield. A bright light flashed and suddenly there were three people in the ring: the wolf, the sabertooth, and Trini in her human form.

Trini pulled her claws out and beat the wolf repeatedly into the shield wall. Astronema gnashed her teeth as Trini whipped her claws across the wolf’s face and neck while her sabertooth circled them.

“You’re weak and everyone knows it.” Trini dragged Astronema to the middle of the ring and threw the wolf down into the dirt. The sabertooth pinned Astronema to the ground as Trini’s hands wrapped around her neck. Trini felt her eyes turn yellow.

Astronema’s eyes glowed blue, and as Trini kept her eyes locked. “Your time as alpha has come to an end, I am the alpha ranger and you will submit to me!” Trini yelled as the sabertooth roared. A ball of light encased them, a mysterious wind blew as they levitated into the air.

Trini ripped her claws across the wolf’s chest, her Sabertooth bit hard into its wolf’s shoulder. Trini reached into the wound and pulled Astronema’s spirit out. The wind and the light died down as they drifted down to the floor. Trini’s Sabertooth stood at her side as Astronema tried desperately to merge with the wolf, who was on the floor whimpering as though it were dying.

“What have you done? What have you done!” She shrieked.

Trini and her alpha merged. “I’ve stripped you of your alpha and taken your powers. You’re nothing more than a human now.”

The wolf stood and walked to Trini’s feet. Trini looked at it as the wolf bowed its head and disappeared into a ball of light. Finally defeated.

#hehehe i love this series #on the wild side #power rangers 2017 #trimberly fic

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evans-maxed-out · 4 years

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The Weight Of Our Sins-Samcedes

Who: Mercedes Jones and Sam Evans

Where: School Library

When: February 2010

Notes: Mercedes has some life-changing new to tell Sam..

Sam: It had taken weeks for him to be back in the same room with her-not his choice of course but pretty much because she'd avoided him since that night when all their inhibitions had been thrown out of the window, owing in no small part to the amount of drink they'd both consumed. His memories of that night were slightly hazy but what did seem stuck on a loop inside his head was the breathy cry of his name she had uttered as he had slid instead her for the first time. He was taking this slow, no need to spook her, but he had a goal in mind- them both together, dating, everything out in the open and on an even keel. He pushed the paper back towards her and hummed noncommittally before looking across at her. "The future? I guess.." he shrugged, the only real interest he had in the future was where he was going to take her for their first date, after he'd gotten her to agree of course.

Mercedes: “Yes, the future.” She replied slowly looking over the answers he had given on the practice quiz. Her head full of thoughts she tried so hard to will away. Would he feel trapped? Would he yell, would he hate her. Did he regret what they did the night of that party? The last one was louder than the rest cause she had asked herself that same exact thing over and over and the answer was always the same. No. Not for a second. For so long she had fought him about the type of relationship they had which was strictly associates, friends at best but they crossed that line and she loved it. Every second of it. Despite the fact that they both had way too much to drink she would get bits and pieces of that might back in tiny flashbacks and shortly after butterflies in the heart of her belly would come. Sometimes she could still feel his touch on her skin hot, wet kisses, from her neck all the way down to the spread of her thighs. She cleared her throat willing the visual away and granted Sam a small smile. “Good job. You only missed one. Maybe you’ll be that doctor after all.” She proved hoping for more entry to his thoughts.

Sam: "Maybe," he shrugged, uncertain for once of what the future held. Since he could remember he'd wanted to be like his father, a respected doctor, financially wealth and secure..but now? After one night with her...He knew she wanted to get out to LA as soon as she graduated high school..she wouldn't be sticking around and he'd be going to college to climb on the first rug of the ladder that would be his medical career..but the more he thought about it, the more he felt that maybe he ought to go with her..There were colleges in LA..and hell, being a doctor wasn't the be all and end all of everything right? His dad would be disappointed sure, but he'd followed Sam's mother across the country when she 'd left for college, so surely he'd understand right? No, he'd never understand-it wasn't like they were even dating-she wouldn't even give him five minutes of her time, as for allowing him to tag along with her to LA..he didn't stand a hope in hell's chance of convincing her to agree. "So what's with the questions? I thought you had your future all wrapped up in a neat bow?" he said, raising a blonde eyebrow at her.

Mercedes: “I was just curious is all.” She shrugged off the feeling that maybe she was annoying him with the talks of the future. “I do, or at least I thought I did. I don’t know recently I’ve been thinking about things and maybe now I want to change. It’s really hard to make it in the music industry and I can’t put all my eggs in one basket.” This was silly, she would just tell him and get it over with but she was nervous. She’s never really nervous. Maybe it was more fear than nerves. She didn’t want to be rejected. Not by him, but maybe she deserved it for all the times she rejected him. “Did you hear the rumor about Tina? About her possibly being pregnant?” She asked studying his face. “I bet she is scared. How would someone go about handling that type of thing at such a young age?”

Sam: “Wait...what? I thought your plan was to go out to LA?” he said, confused. “What would you do if you didn’t do that? Are you thinking of going to college?” His mind was racing, if she went to college, he needed to find out where...now that would be much easier..his dad would never need to know that his choice of where to go was based on where SHE was going. “Tina? Really..no I hadn’t heard that..” he replied, brow furrowing. “For sure, Mike has no idea...I think he would’ve said...D’ya know he’s taken up with Kitty Wilde? “ he shook his head, thinking about his friend. “I’m kinda hoping it’s some sort of rebound thing after breaking up with Tina and he’ll see the light..But pregnant? Wow..” He shifted in his chair, considering. “ Look..I know she’s your friend, but Mike’s a decent guy..so if that’s the case she needs to tell him..At least she won’t be handling it on her own..And honestly...they did the crime...so if there are consequences they need to be prepared to do the time..”

Mercedes: “It has always been my plan but things have changed to where I don’t know.” She could the words on the tip of her tongue yet every time she opened her mouth something different came out. “I doubt college is in the works, maybe. If I have the time.” Her eyes went wide and her jaw fell. “Mike dumped Tina for Kitty? Say what? Eww why? Kitty is the most valid soulless person I’ve ever met. At least Tina has a personality.” She was pleasantly surprised by his response half expecting him to call the situation reckless and irresponsible. Perhaps she was overreacting about letting him. “So would you do that? Step up. Be prepared to do whatever if you found out you’re going to be a dad? How would you go about it with being so close to starting your dreams?”

Sam: Ok, now he was officially confused. "Changed how? What could've changed that much that it would derail your plans?" he asked, bewildered. "If you have the time? What else are you gonna do?" There was definitely something up with her, no doubt about it, but he was in two minds whether to press any further, he knew how quickly she could shut down and he wanted to keep her talking for as long as possible. "Not exactly..He and Tina split and then he started dating Kitty. There was no cheating, Mike's not that kind of guy. Yeah..you're right about Kitty..she puts in me in mind of a deadly viper." He shrugged, considering her question. "Well what else is there to do..If i got a girl in trouble..then yeah..I guess I'd owe it to her and the kid to step up..The way I see it, as an adult, you have obligations..and there's no escaping some of them, so what good would acting out or running away do?" He leaned forward grabbing her hand. " I don't know..I'd have to cross that bridge when I came to it..But I'm not in that situation and there's no point borrowing trouble..Look..I get you're worried about Tina, Mercedes but asking me how I'd handle things isn't gonna help. This is Mike we're talking about and I can't say 100% how he'd react. Best thing Tina can do is tell him. Leastways, I can definitely tell you, that if it was me, I'd want to know, hands down."

Mercedes: Mercedes: WOW. He really seemed to be more level headed than she imagined. “It’s me.” She looked down at her hands folded in her lap took a deep breath and looked back up again. “Tina isn’t pregnant. It’s me. I’m pregnant.” She stood nerves all of sudden coming back to her and began to pace. “I know this isn’t what you wanted nor expected but hell neither did I. We were careful. I mean weren’t we? I know we had been drinking and things are a little hazy but then I missed my period and I never miss my period and guess what? A baby. A freaking baby. I am freaking out. Are you freaking out? This is crazy. We are 17.” She continued pacing and ranting. “You have plans to be a doctor and me a singer and can we do that with a baby? I swear I didn’t try to trap you. I’m not that type of girl. This is crazy. I took test after test and they’re all positive...”

Sam: He sat, completely poleaxed, her words echoing in his ears..pregnant, she was pregnant, he’d knocked her up and fuck..fuck...He knew better than to ask if it was his- she wasn’t like that, there was no way it could be anyone else’s but his. “Shit..I don’t understand...I wore a condom...I might have been drunk but I remember that much...It is crazy..but ok..ok..don’t freak out..we need to think Cedes...Fuck my plans..” he stood moving around to drop down to his knees in front of her. “What about you? You’ve always wanted to be a big star..” He but his lip hard, struggling not to panic, knowing he needed to be strong for her. “ I know you wouldn’t do that, that’s not even in question...I’m just..oh fuck..I’m so sorry, Cedes...I got you pregnant...” Taking a deep breath he struggled for control. “ Ok..we need to think baby...we need to think..calmly..We have options..what do you want to do..” He forced the words past his lips, wincing as he looked at her face. “We could give it up for adoption..we could abort it...”

Mercedes: Oh boy, he was panicking just like she was. This was a hot mess. They were a hot mess. She watched as he kinda mimicked her flying off the rails routine and this actually calmed her. She shook her head at the boy kneeling in front her a slight bit of fear rising. He better not pull a ring from his pockets or anywhere else. She thought to herself. “Sam,” she reached out cupping his cheeks. “This isn’t all on you. We both were there when this baby was made. This is on us. I’ve had a days to think about things clearly. One, I know this is sudden. Two, I’m not doing adoption or abortion. I’m keeping it. If you don’t want to be apart of this, I understand. I can do it alone. I just wanted you to know. Lastly, This is your out. You can walk away right now and I swear I you won’t ever have to worry about me or this baby ever again.” She took her seat and waited for him to respond.

Sam: What? She was keeping it and she was giving him an out? Sam thought about his dad, how disappointed he’s be and the tiniest, most cowardly part of him wondered if he shouldn’t just grab the opportunity and run...Hell no. This was Mercedes, the girl he’d told one day that he was going to marry her, his long ago playmate and the girl he’d been trying so hard to connect with over the past couple of years. She had hopes and dreams- and she was going to give them all up to become a mom to HIS baby. He thought if her facing the wrath of her parents, the censure and whispers of their peers and shook his head. “You’re not doing this alone. No way. Like you said, this is on US. Not you, US. If you think I’m just gonna walk away, pretend like this has nothing to do with me then you’re crazy. Whichever way you look at it, I got you pregnant. You wanna keep it?” he asked, his hands rising to grip hers, fingers sliding through her smaller ones. A curious glow seemed to light his chest as he thought of her wanting to keep their baby. He realized with a jolt that yes, while abortion and adoption were both valid ways out of this situation, he would have struggled with either one of those outcomes. “ Then fine, we keep it. Emphasis on the WE, Cedes. I’m not going anywhere, so please don’t tell me that mess again. You have every right to demand everything from me for gig and the baby, don’t think you don’t, just like I have every right to stand by you and take care of you. I’m not leaving, and we’re gonna do this.” He disentangled one hand gently, moving it to rest on her stomach lightly. “It’s not what we would’ve chosen but we’ll deal.There’s no choice.”

Mercedes: He was stepping up, being responsible and she couldn’t help the feeling of relief that washed over her in that moment. She’d go about it alone if she had but she didn’t. Sam was different. She should’ve known he would stand by her side no matter what. Believe it or not he was someone she could always depend on even when they were little and ran about no worries or cares in the world. “I feel a lot silly now,” she admitted. “I’m sorry for avoiding you all this time I was just scared of how you would react to finding out.” She gave him a smile as he placed one hand on her stomach. “You’re right, we will deal but first we have to do something.” Her face serious as she spoke to him. “We have to tell our parents.”

#The Weight Of Our Sins #Samcedes #Samcedes RP #ATCTHGB

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sweetdreamstrilogy · 5 years

Text

Chapter 1

Once Upon a Time

…there was a stupid boy and his stupid name was Derrick. That’s me.

I guess it all started when I first laid eyes on her, but it wouldn’t make sense to tell you that yet. We have to go back and talk about Chicago first.

I had just turned seventeen and my junior year of high school was coming to a slow and restless end. It was nearly summer when fate intervened, on the best and worst day of my life.

Angela was the catalyst - Angela who’d been my first everything. Angela who smoked and drank and partied, went home, got thrown around by her dad and then did it all over again. Angela who was always trying to destroy herself. Angela who was always trying to destroy me.

She called me at three in the morning that night, sobbing into the phone while a party raged in the background. “Something bad happened.”

I was already out of bed and pulling on my jeans. “Where are you? What happened?”

She didn’t answer.

“Angela! What the hell is going on?”

“It’s Dan,” She cried, but it almost sounded like laughter. I should’ve known then but all I could think was who's Dan? Where could she be? Who the fuck is having a party tonight? “He took advantage of me, I swear I didn’t do anything, I swear...”

“What did he do?” It felt like an arrow thrummed through the air, straight into my chest. I knew this was gonna happen one of these nights, hanging out with these fucking people I didn't know, getting so drunk she couldn't see straight...

"I don't know..." She sobbed. In the living room, I tip-toed in the dark, searching the kitchen counter for my mom’s car keys.

“It’s okay. I’m coming to get you, I’m on my way.”

“No!” She yelped into the phone. I went still at the sound. “Don’t come, Sarah is taking me home.”

“Dammit, Angela, tell me where you are.”

But she’d already hung up.

I stared at the dark screen of my phone for a minute, wanting to slam it onto the counter and break the damn thing to pieces. She was always doing this to me, calling with a crisis that kept me up all night, one way or another - worrying about her or coming to the rescue. I almost got in the car and drove to her house but...the last time I showed up while her dad was home she came to school the next day with a brand new shiner. I couldn't go there, risk him taking it out on her again. No, I'd have to wait to see her until school - if she even showed up - and that was still hours off.

I thought about trying to go back to sleep but I knew I'd just lay there, wondering what happened, how bad it was. So, like many sleepless nights before, I climbed up to the roof of the trailer and waited for the sky to lighten. I tried calling her back, once, twice, smoked three cigarettes in a row waiting to see if she'd call back but she never did. Soon the golden rays of sunrise put the color back in the world, illuminating the trailer park in which I lived, the neighbor's overflowing trash, Cliff's rusty truck parked in the dirt, my mom's ancient looking Geo Metro next to it. Another damn day, I thought, looking at it all.

Below me I heard them waking up and knew it was time to go. As I slid down off the roof, I realized my mom's keys were still in my back pocket and rushed to get back to the kitchen before-

"Where you goin' so early?" There was Cliff in his yellowed wife-beater, bottom lip already puckered with chew. I grimaced at the sight of him.

"Nowhere."

He spat into an empty cup on the counter. "Not to save that little bitch again."

"Cliff-" My mom had appeared behind him, her blonde hair a mess, grey robe hanging loose around her. Seemed like she was wasting away right before my eyes.

"What? What else do I call her?" Cliff laughed, showing his blackened teeth.

"Shut your fucking mouth." I pushed past him, heading for my room.

"What'd you say?"

He tried to grab my arm, pull me back around but I shrugged him off hard - hard enough that he had to take a step back not to lose his balance. "I said shut your fucking mouth."

"Derrick-" My mom's voice matched her nightgown, faded and stretched thin, and that took all the fight out of me. I went for my room before he could say anything else, but not before catching her exchange a nervous glance with his furious one.

Dammit, all I wanted to do was make a run for it, get to school early and catch Angela before homeroom but I couldn't leave them alone, not like this. No doubt she'd have new bruises by the time I got home from school, always "slipping" in those non-slip shoes of hers. No, I wasn't going anywhere until one of them left for work, so I just sat on my bed with the door cracked and tried not to listen. Course that's kinda hard when the walls are thinner than a sheet of paper.

"Ungrateful little shit." I could even hear him spitting into his spit cup between clattering from the kitchen, where my mom was no doubt busying herself doing the dishes, making him a breakfast he didn't deserve. "Who the hell does he think he is? Talking to me like that, I'll give him a taste of his own fucking medicine..."

I wished he would try but he knew better than that - three years of hell and the only time my mom ever came close to leaving him was when he gave me those stitches. I traced the path of the scar across my eyebrow, a familiar habit now, a gesture that would always bring to mind the taste of blood and failure. I was the only one who remembered how easily she took him back.

So yeah, the truth was it probably wouldn't matter if he beat me to death with his bare hands, she wasn't going anywhere. But he didn't know that and he wasn't gonna risk losing his caretaker, his punching bag. All I could do was keep hoping he'd go out like my dad did, crash into a tree some foggy night after too many drinks. Poof, gone from our lives forever. Maybe then we could go back to the way things were...she was happy once wasn't she? I tried to remember back before the relapses, before Cliff, before any of it but all I could find were the things I had to bury.

"Breakfast is ready!" Her voice brought me back.

"Not hungry!" I yelled back, even though my stomach felt empty. I couldn't stand the thought of sitting at the table together like some fucked up little family. Through the wall, Cliff was still complaining;

"What is this crap, Marla? Burnt shit, your cooking's worthless as you are-" This brought me to my feet. Something crashed.

Out in the living room he'd swept his plate off the table like a toddler throwing a tantrum and she was on hands and knees, picking up bacon and bits of egg from molding linoleum. I wanted to lunge across the table, bloody my knuckles until this feeling left me but one look at her reminded me every blow would hit her just as hard. I went to my knees instead, picking up the mess.

"It's okay, Derrick, I got it. You get off to school now." She said, not meeting my eyes but I could see her hands were shaking.

"Yeah, shouldn't you get walking?" Cliff sneered, looking down at us from his throne at the kitchen table. It took all I had not to yank him out of his chair.

"Can I get a ride?" I said to my mom, helping her to her feet. Cliff's grin fell.

"Sure, honey. Just gimme a minute, gotta get dressed."

She set the broken plate down on the counter and disappeared into the back bedroom, leaving Cliff and I alone, a rare occasion. He was watching me, I turned to face him.

"You think you're something tough." He said with a chuckle, stuffing more snuff into his cheek.

"I could kill you." God knows I'd thought of a hundred ways to do it but she'd just find someone else.

"Huh, like to see you try." He spat into his cup and wiped the black drool off his chin with the back of a hand.

"Maybe one of these days you will." I swallowed down wave after wave of rage, knowing that's what he wanted - an outburst, a reason to turn my mom against me, separate us more than he and the alcohol already had. And I couldn't let that happen, the thread was thin enough already, one more hard tug and it was gonna break for good.

"You really think you can save her?" He said and I wasn't sure if he meant Angela or my mom. I ground my teeth together so I wouldn't take the bait. "You can't save nobody."

The punch to the gut was that he was right. He knew it and I knew it. There was nothing I could do, there never had been, she was lost to me from day one and I was stuck in an endless loop, watching her kill herself slowly, slowly in any way she could, leaving me to do the same because I didn't know any other way.

"You ready to go?" My mom emerged in her pin-striped dress and not-so-white apron, stained from two years running around in the same grease trap.

"Yeah, one sec." I grabbed my backpack from my room and when I came back she was kissing him on the head like nothing happened and he was grabbing her waist with dirt under his nails and fingers blackened in every crevice and crease, stained in years of dirt and oil and grease. These were the subtle things that broke my back. The screen door shook as it slammed shut behind me.

But outside wasn't much better, I could still hear every word.

"-trying to break the damn door. I should kick his ass out, he can live on the street-"

I almost started for the train-tracks, a familiar walk through tangled woods. I could always lose myself there, playing chicken with the train, walking for miles, knowing I was lost but also knowing that the tracks would lead me home. Problem was I never wanted to go home, if was up to me I would've spent every night lying in a field with only the stars and the crickets. It was peaceful there, nothing could go wrong. But before long I'd start to wonder what was happening at home, knowing every minute I wasn't there was another chance to lose it all.

The screen door whined as it opened - too late to make a run for it - and my mom emerged a second later, looking stamped out like the butt of a cigarette. She didn't meet my eyes as she unlocked her car door and then leaned over to unlock my side. She turned the key, once, twice, trying to get the engine to start. On the third try it groaned to life and we started down the dirt road that would lead us out of here, if only we could just keep driving.

We sat in silence but my head was busy thinking of a thousand things I could say to her. Problem was I'd said them all before and it never changed a damn thing, so I just kept my mouth shut for once, saving up my breath to waste on Angela later.

"You working tonight?" My mom filled the tense silence as we turned out onto the main road, content to pretend like nothing happened as usual.

"Yeah, at five."

"Well, I could see if anybody wants to give away a shift. Do a double, keep you company?" She said hopefully, her way of making up for this morning without saying a word about it. I wanted to tell her she should just go home and relax for once, but the only way to make a Friday night shift longer would be standing there scrubbing dishes, wondering if tonight was the night Cliff lost his shit again, if tonight was the night she relapsed again. At least at work I could keep an eye on her.

"Yeah, that'd be cool."

She gave a faint smile.

"Here." I slid a depressingly thin wad of cash out of my wallet and held it out to her. I'd been bussing tables after school almost a year and the money never got better, but at least it was something.

"Derrick, you keep it, it's your money. You worked hard for it."

"I don't want it." I kept enough for cigarettes but the rest went to her, no matter how many times she tried to refuse it. I just hoped it was helping somehow and not contributing to Cliff's beer fund. "It's for you, for bills or whatever. The air conditioner. Tires."

She sighed, tucking the bills into her apron. "Thank you."

"I just wish I had more to give you."

She squeezed my hand but still couldn't look at me. "I know the feeling." She put her hand back on the steering wheel and went quiet for a long moment, then said softly, "Sorry about this morning."

I turned away from the window to look at her. She finally cast me a sorry glance and I almost let it go...but dammit, there had to be some combination of words that would convince her and I was never going to quit trying to find them.

"It's not your fault, mom." Reasoning, the first stage. "It's him, he's the asshole, why can't you see that?"

"He doesn't mean it." Her lips dug little graves at the edges of her mouth. "He's tired, he goes through a lot at work, you don't see that."

There were a thousand cuts in every word she used to defend him. I sank into my seat.

"He's a piece of shit." Anger.

"Derrick-" She sighed, lips settling into a thin stubborn line. “He agreed to go to counseling with me. At the church.”

“Again? Yeah cause that worked so well the last time.”

"Things are different now."

“Since when?” More anger. “Since he dropped out of rehab? He still drinks every day. It's not good for you to be around that."

"It doesn't bother me-"

"Mom, he hit you, he made you relapse, he-"

"That was my fault-"

"No, it wasn't. Stop telling yourself that." She just stared out the windshield. Could she even hear me? I was already to begging. "Mom, I know you get lonely but you don't need him. We can leave, move back to the city-"

She just shook her head no, like it was a sad fact of life, an immutable truth. "Someday you'll understand."

"No. I won't." Depression.

"When you're in love."

I folded my arms over my chest, thinking about Angela. "Maybe I am."

"You wouldn't say maybe."

I shook my head, finally at the last stage - giving up - and punched the radio on. She kept on driving like nothing happened. I stared out the window as a train passed in the opposite direction and wished I was on the tracks. Soon McKinley High was looming on the horizon. She stopped the car in front of the main entrance and looked over at me, her mouth twisted up in resolute, weary sadness.

“Have a good day at school.” She said. I wanted to say something, to ease the tension between us, lighten the look on her face but I just nodded and got out of the car.

The usual morning chaos dragged me through crowded halls, thrashing with a thousand sounds, voices, faces I didn't know that didn't know me but regarded me with eyes hostile or wanting or empty. I found Angela by her locker, looking hungover and despondent. She frowned when she saw me.

"Ang, what the hell happened last night? Are you okay?" She just slammed her locker door shut and started down the hall, saying;

"It's nothing, sorry I even called."

"What the fuck does that mean?" I wove through the chaos, trying to keep up with her. "Hey," I grabbed her hand and pulled her off to the side. "What happened? Tell me."

She just shrugged, shaking her head. "I don't remember."

"You said some guy Dan took advantage of you. Who the fuck is Dan?"

She rolled her eyes. "Just this guy on the football team."

"What did he do? I swear to God-"

"Nothing."

"Then why-"

"I don't know, I was trashed."

"So nothing happened?"

"I mean, we hooked up I guess-"

"And you said no, you didn't want to?"

"Of course!" She swatted my shoulder. "I'm with you, idiot. Look, I just wanna forget it-"

"Fuck that, he's not just gonna get away with it."

"Seriously, just let it go." The bell rang and she tugged on my hand. "Come on."

My chance came at lunch. The football players were always hanging around under the bleachers smoking and that’s where I found him.

There were three of them, passing around a cigarette. Anyone else would’ve walked away, waited until he was alone to start something. Not me. Not stupid Derrick. They didn’t even look up when I approached them.

’“Dan?” I said, looking between the three of them, hoping one of them would give me a clue. A stocky guy in the middle looked up, taking a drag of his cigarette.

“Yeah.” He regarded me with lazy eyes and didn't have a chance to dodge when my fist collided with his face. His neck jerked back and with a crack blood began to gush from his nose. Then his friends were on me.

Before long I was lying on my back in the damp grass, blood in my mouth, watching a cloud float by in an otherwise empty blue sky. My chest felt too heavy, I couldn’t take a breath or hear anything but ringing in my ears where one of them had socked me.

I couldn't see them anymore so thought they might’ve left. No such luck. Two of them pulled me up and my knees flapped beneath me, useless. Dan came into blurry view. He was licking at his split lip, which made me grin, showing a mouthful of blood.

“You piece of shit.” Dan wiped his face with the back of his hand. His knuckles came away bloody. “Angela is a fucking slut, you can have her.”

“Fuck you,” I spat, lunging but the jackets held me back. “She told me everything, you asshole, she was drunk.”

“Yeah, she was.” Dan smirked, “But I can promise you one thing,” He stepped closer to me, so close I could feel his breath on my face. “She wanted it.”

His fist barreled into my gut, my knees gave out and struck the ground. The two jackets released me suddenly and I went face-first into the grass. A boot struck out and connected with my ribs - something cracked, I lost my breath.

“Tell her thanks for a great night.” I flinched as warm spit ran down my cheek and watched their shoes stomp away in the grass.

They didn’t get very far though. A fourth set of shoes had joined them on the horizon and these shoes were recognizably polished - the principal. Shit, what the hell was he doing out here? I pushed myself up to my knees and spat blood into the grass.

“Help him up!” Principal Khol was saying to the jackets, who were looking sheepish now.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” I growled, bringing myself to my feet at last. The world tilted precariously for a long moment and then fell into back place.

“He started it!” Dan whined. “Look, I'm bleeding!” Principal Khol ignored him, surveying me with a disappointed frown.

“Yeah, so is he. Do you need to see the nurse?” Principal Khol asked me. I shook my head, spitting more blood into the grass, where it congealed like some kind of macabre morning dew. “Good. You three, I’ll deal with you shortly. Derrick, in my office.” Dan and I exchanged a glare. “NOW.”

I followed Principal Khol across the football field, where girls paused from their lunches to watch me, through the halls, where kids peered at me from behind their lockers, and into his office, where the receptionist shook her head at the sight of me.

I collapsed into Principal Khol’s office chair, which I’d been in so many times it seemed molded to fit me. He sat across from me, shifting papers from one side of the desk to another so he had a place to fold his hands.

“Derrick.” Principal Khol shook his head, looking disappointed. I didn’t see why, I wasn’t his kid. Sometimes I was his problem but definitely not his responsibility. If he wanted me to feel bad for bloodying the face of the guy who hurt Angela, then he was going to be very disappointed. I only felt relief and a satisfaction that ran as deep as my bones. “There’s nothing I can do for you now but I need to know why.”

“What are you even talking about?” I said, shaking my head. Things were swimming, I wondered if I had a concussion. One ear was still ringing.

“I’m responsible for the kids here, you understand that much at least, right?” I had to stop from rolling my eyes. Now he was gonna be a condescending asshole, on top of everything else. “If I can figure out why you squandered all your potential for cigarettes and partying and fighting then maybe I can stop someone else from doing it.”

“I didn’t squander shit.” I needed to spit blood again, it was welling up between my teeth.

“You did and you are. Your scores when you transferred here, they were enough to get you into a four year college easily. You could’ve gone Ivy League if you’d tried.” Principal Khol shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“Not this again.” I shook my head, swallowing blood.

“No, not again. There’s nothing I can do to help you anymore Derrick.” He took a deep breath and looked at me. “You’re expelled.”

For a minute I didn’t fully understand him. The words made it to my ears but not to my brain.

“Expelled.” I repeated.

“Yes. Kicked out, expelled.”

“Can you do that?”

“Yes. And I have to. This is your third strike and we have a no violence policy. I’ve told you that again and again.”

“Hear me out! Dan took advantage of a girl, my girlfriend at a party while she was drunk! Is he going to be expelled too?”

“Dan is a separate matter that is none of your business. I assure you all of this will be investigated and dealt with. If you focused on your own business for once then maybe this wouldn’t be happening.”

“Well…what the fuck.”

“Language.”

“Sorry. Fuck. Sorry. Do I have to go to another school?”

“That will be up to you and your family.”

“Just my mom.”

“Yes, you and your mother.”

“Can I go home then?”

“Your mother is on her way to pick you up, Trudy called her already.”

“Jesus is she on speed dial or something? I can just walk.”

“She has to sign a few things before we can let you leave.”

“I’ll bring the forms to her, I need to get out of here.”

“Just sit Derrick, there’s something else you and I and your mother need to discuss.”

“Fine, but can I go to the bathroom at least?”

Principal Khol rolled his eyes, threw up his hands, given up. “Go for it.”

I stumbled out of the room and across the hall, into the nearest boy’s bathroom, which was blessedly empty. I locked myself in the farthest stall, closest to the window and sat on the toilet.

“Fuck.” I whispered to myself. What the fuck was going on? Expelled? I couldn’t think straight. My ears were still ringing and my head ached and my skin felt tight from nicotine deprivation. I pulled a squashed pack of cigarettes from my back pocket and withdrew the lucky, the only one that hadn't split. My hands shook as I flicked the lighter but the first inhale made me go still.

Breathe. I inhaled again, exhaling in the direction of the cracked bathroom window. Breathe. It wasn’t so bad. I didn’t like school anyway, wasn’t any good at it no matter what Principal Khol seemed to think. Those scores were from years ago anyway - before weed and alcohol and one or two minor concussions. It wasn’t so bad. At least I would still have Angela, I wouldn’t see her at school as much but I hardly did anyway except during lunch. Maybe I could drop out all together, get a job and save up enough to get us a place in the city when she graduated, get her away from her dad, get me away from Cliff…

I made it halfway through my cigarette before the bathroom door squealed opened, followed by the patter of shoes which disappeared into a stall. I took one last drag of my cigarette and flushed the rest. Time was up.

Outside the stall a dirty mirror greeted me - I cautiously raised my eyes to look at myself. Well, I was still bloody and the bruises were starting to rise already, colorful little continents pushing their way up through my skin. I ran the tap and splashed it over my face, rinsed my mouth out, staining the sink in pink. I didn’t look much better but that was the best I could do.

The halls were still empty. I started back toward the office but didn’t quite make it before I heard my name.

“Derrick!” My mother called, her work shoes squealing on the linoleum as she broke into a jog toward me. I took two long steps forward and then she’d reached me and was holding my face, examining the bruises and shaking her head. “God, Derrick.” She’d come straight from shift at the diner - her eyes were all bloodshot and she smelled like sweat and grease. She started to choke up, looking at me.

“Mom, it’s ok, it doesn’t even hurt.” I lied, trying to crack a grin, hoping there wasn’t blood in my teeth anymore. She shook her head, exhaling loudly.

“What happened?” The look on her face, her lips sewn together in a grim line, her eyes tearing, frustrated, made me go quiet. “You knew they weren’t gonna give you another chance!” She stamped a foot. “Dammit.” She rubbed her eyes.

“I…I didn’t think, I-” It was true. The consequences of going after Dan had never crossed my mind. All I could think of was Angela crying into the phone, all I could imagine was what he might’ve done to her. The rest was simple.

“Ah, there you are.” Principal Khol’s voice came from behind me. “Hello, Ms. Woods.” He said, nodding toward my mother. “Let’s take a seat in my office.”

Both my mother and I followed him sheepishly, the screw-up kid and the screw-up mom bracing for a lecture. Principal Khol pulled out a chair for her. She sat, crossing her legs at the ankle, where a tear in her panty-hose was widening. There was silence for a long moment as everyone settled in. Principal Khol folded his hands on top of his desk, his eyes going between the two of us. He cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry to bring you all the way down here, Marla.” Principal Khol said. “But if we’re going to go through with this, we need to act now.”

“Is there still a possibility he could get in?” My mom asked him. I looked between the two of them - what the fuck were they talking about?

“What are you talking about?” I directed this toward my mother, but she just stared pointedly at Principal Khol, who went on,

“There is. I’ve prepared all the paperwork but we need signatures,” He pulled a drawer open and thumbed through the files. “And we need to fax it off to them as quickly as possible, their deadline for the fall semester is rapidly approaching.” He produced a stack of papers and leafed through them, ignoring me completely.

“What is all that? What’s going on?”

No one answered. My mom was biting her lip. She and Principal Khol exchanged a look.

“Listen, Derrick.” She leaned forward. “I…we…Mr. Khol and I discussed what might happen if you were to be expelled and we set up a…”

“A contingency plan.” Principal Khol finished for her. “There is a very elite preparatory school in Kent, England and we may have found a way for you to spend your Senior year there.”

My ears were ringing. Kent? England?

“What?” That was all I could manage.

“They have a special program…” My mom was trying to explain but she couldn’t seem to finish. The look of betrayal on my face silenced her. Principal Khol stepped in.

“Yes, a special acceptance program designed to help you and other kids like you fulfill your potential. You meet all the requirements and I’ll be sending along a copy of your test scores, there’s no reason to think you won’t be accepted, although we will have to wait for an official response.”

“You’re shipping me away?” I didn’t blink, didn’t take my eyes off her. “I bet Cliff is gonna love this,” A laugh started in my throat but got caught halfway up.

“No, Derrick,” The desperation in her voice sliced through me. “This is a chance for you to…” She was starting to cry, I could feel tears burning behind my eyes too.

“Your mother is trying to do what’s best for you, this academy is a rare opportunity-” Principal Khol said sternly.

“You went behind my back, you just assumed I’d fuck up again…”

My face was hot. Of course I’d fucked up again, proved her right. A tear was catching the afternoon light on her cheek. I wanted to hate her - for being with Cliff, for moving me here, for this - but I just felt empty and stretched thin, a balloon ready to pop.

“We wanted to make sure there was a way you could graduate, even if it can’t be here,”

“Fuck graduating, I don’t care about that, I’m not leaving…”

“Just look at this,” Principal Khol sifted through his paperwork. He passed a shiny, folded brochure to me. I stared at it but didn’t pick it up. “You’d have excellent teachers and peers of your own caliber, the rooms are spacious and there’s plenty of extracurricular activities to keep you busy, they have every club you can imagine and…”

All the sound in the room faded into the ringing in my ears. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear. He was unfolding the brochure and pointing at pictures of shiny, smiling teenagers in their pressed uniforms. England? I’d never left Chicago. It seemed impossibly far, out of the reach of my imagination, another world, another dimension.

“-to a lot of trouble to arrange this for you.” Principal Khol was saying. “If you did well, there’s a chance you could be accepted into a good college.” He could see that I wasn’t listening. He sat up straighter and gave an exasperated sigh. “At the very least, consider it.” He slid the brochure further across the desk. He and my mother exchanged a long look and then their eyes settled on me, waiting for an answer.

My mouth wouldn’t open. All I could see was Cliff’s smiling face when he finally got rid of me. Was that the real reason she’d done this to me? To make Cliff happy? The thought made my stomach turn so violently I actually tasted bile at the back of my throat. She was staring at me, her eyebrows knitted together in concern, as if she cared.

“I need air…” I stood before either of them could respond.

“Derrick…” My mom called but the door was already swinging shut. Trudy glanced up at me with contempt as I fled the office.

I didn’t make it far before the next lunch bell rang and suddenly the halls were flooded. Those nearest to me eyed my fresh bruises and glared as I pushed through the throng toward the exit. I needed a cigarette, and then another and another and another.

Outside the sun was clearing the sky of clouds and baking the skin of so many adolescent shoulders. The bleachers had already filled and that’s where I saw Angela. She was laughing with two other girls I sort of recognized. She looked so happy - the sun soaking into her pale skin, her laugh carried to me by the wind.

I wanted to tell her what happened, what they wanted to do with me but somehow my feet wouldn’t move. They wouldn’t ruin her day with bruises and blood and ultimatums, like I wanted to. But it was too late, one of her friends caught sight of me and said something to Angela, who pushed her bleached hair from her shoulder and turned in my direction. I waved a hand sheepishly and she smiled, sending waves of warmth over me just to see something familiar and good. She nodded toward the space beneath the bleachers and we both started in that direction.

“What the hell happened to you?” She asked, coming around the corner. I just shook my head, not even sure I wanted to explain. “You look like shit.” She was wiggled two cigarettes from her pack and handed one to me.

“Thanks…” I lit it and sucked in, my lungs hungry for the smoke. She watched me, smoking her own cigarette, waiting for me to talk. She shuffled her feet in the dirt, I said; “I’m getting expelled.”

At first there was no reaction from her, except she narrowed her eyes and examined my bruised face. It must’ve dawned on her - the reason why - because her eyes widened and she stepped back, shaking her head.

“Shit.” And then she started to laugh. It was a laugh that couldn’t be stifled, though she tried. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She was saying, still laughing. I could only stare. I didn’t know what to think anymore, my mom was shipping me off to another fucking country and Angela, the only person I could say I was remotely close to, was laughing about it. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t think…” She inhaled on her cigarette, trying not to smile. “I didn’t think you’d really go after him.”

“What are you talking about?” I couldn’t hold it in anymore, my voice rose. “Of course I went after him! He took advantage of you, I’m not just gonna let that happen!” She was staring at me, her eyebrows raised, a look of comic disbelief on her face. “He raped you!”

“Derrick…” Angela shook her head, her blonde hair falling into her eyes. “No, he didn’t.” She said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“You called me at three in the fucking morning last night-”

“I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“God, Derrick you really are an idiot…” She waited for me to understand, but still, I didn’t. “He didn’t rape me! For god’s sake, we had sex and I didn’t know how to tell you so I made that shit up but I didn’t think you’d go and get your ass kicked…”

There was a long moment of stillness for me. I’m not sure how it felt to Angela, but to me time stretched and twisted like putty. A hundred possible reactions and paths opened up to me - I could run away or lose my mind or wrap my hands around her neck.

Then her lips lifted in a grin and the facade dropped, a curtain falling. Whoosh. I saw her how she must’ve seen herself - pale, skinny, make-up smearing, her natural dark hair eating up the bleach she’d smothered it with. A liar, a fuck-up, a worthless piece of shit. I’d always believed there was something more than that, something that she hid beneath sarcasm and bitterness. But now I knew there wasn’t.

I dropped the cigarette under my shoe and crushed it. Angela was still staring with her lopsided grin.

“Derrick, come on.” She said, laughing.

I turned and started back across the field toward the school and that was the last time I saw her.

Distantly I could feel my ribs aching, my face throbbing, my ears ringing, my stomach twisting. I could feel the chasm opening inside my chest, waiting for me to be alone so it could tug me in over the edge and into darkness. But this was all far away - inside me there was a still place, numb to the pain.

Back in Principal Khol’s office they were chatting, having a polite conversation. My mom looked up when I entered, her face hopeful and sorry. I couldn’t look at her.

“I’ll go.” I said, to Principal Khol. He nodded and motioned for me to sit.

The next half hour was an excruciatingly slow blur of signatures and details.

“We’ll know if you’ve been accepted by mid-June.” I nodded, over and over, hardly hearing him. “You’ll need to have your choice of classes in by the end of July, and make sure you choose from the requirements or they could kick it back.” The adrenaline or stillness or whatever was wearing off. I wanted to throw up or throw myself off a roof. I kept seeing Angela grinning behind my eyes, Cliff grinning. They’d gotten rid of me, they’d done me in.

“Extracurriculars aren’t required but I highly recommend you sign up with your other classes, they fill quickly.” The pain was starting to make everything blur at the edges. “Here is a list of recommended items to bring for your dorm room.”

At last, after signing and reviewing and faxing, Principal Khol stood and organized the papers into a folder. He looked down at me really sadly, like I was his kid again. “I wish you the best, Derrick.” He said.

The folder found its way into my numb fingers. “Thanks.” I was too exhausted to really mean it.

My mom and I walked silently through the halls, the only sound was her work shoes squealing on the floors. Everyone was in class and this was the last time I was going to walk through these halls. I didn’t care - I hadn’t made made a single real friend in my two years at McKinley. There were people that knew my name, people that waved to me in the halls, girls that wanted to hook up, guys that wanted to fight me or be me, there were people I bummed cigarettes from and people I felt bad for. But I didn’t know anyone, and no one knew me.

In the parking lot, my mom’s car looked sad and rusty in the afternoon light. I wanted to walk home, be alone with my thoughts, maybe lie down on the train tracks but I was too tired to argue with her about it.

The inside of the car was burning up. There were cigarette butts stinking in the ash tray. We both sat and waited as she cranked the engine again and again, wondering if this was the last insult of the day, until at last it came to life. We rumbled out of the gated parking lot in silence and out onto the street.

“Derrick…” My mom started.

“Don’t.” I said. I pushed the button for the radio and a crooning voice filled the car. The corners of her lips trembled and I felt a pang of guilt, but I couldn’t open my mouth. All my words, everything was being sucked into the black hole in my gut. So began the longest summer of my life.

Tag List: @danielleslayer @writeblrconnections @thewriteblrarchives

#sweetdreams #chapter 1 #writeblr #wip #writblr #amwriting #writing #writers of tumblr #creative writing #original fiction #writers on tumblr

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kdenbibi · 6 years

Text

Let this flower bloom

Requested: Can I request Tim Drake or Jason Todd’s reaction to the Black!reader going off to a Ivy League college far from them, coming back looking like an entire meal?

Warnings: My extra ass getting carried away, slight cursing, drinking

Author’s note: Bitch what the fuck i’m so sorry this took as long as it did, to the sweet anon who requested this I really hope you like it hun!!!!!- Admin A :”D

It took Tim about a week to realize he liked you a little more than a friend was supposed to, okay a lot more than he was supposed to, but with his luck, he realized this a few days before you were set to leave thousands of miles away for a once in a lifetime scholarship opportunity. It hit him out of the blue, well there was always an inkling of something more than friendship bubbling under the surface, like whenever your hands brushed and heat would shoot up his arm,or the way butterflies would explode whenever your eyes would meet from across the classroom.

The moment there wasn't a doubt, that 'holy fucking shit I’m in love with you' moment happened a few days after you showed him your acceptance letter, there you were, sitting inches away from him on your bed, he'd spent so many nights here, stray articles of his wardrobe managed to find their way on your body an god did he notice how good you looked in his clothes. His over sized sweats bunched up around your hips, your face was concentrated deeply on your phone, you were talking about something but he couldn't focus on it, all he could pay attention to was how good you looked in his shirt, and boy did it look like it belonged there draped over your shoulders, his mouth went dry, he couldn't begin to describe this feeling, all he knew was the way his stomach did somersaults wasn't normal, it briefly crossed his mind he could be sick but no, this felt way too good to be the flu, he froze when your deep brown eyes flicked up from the tiny screen in front of you.

"-are you even listening to me Tim?"

"Yes?" You snorted,"Then why did that sound like more of a question than an answer?" He shrugged unable to recover from that electric feeling still rolling over him in waves every time he so much as glanced in your direction. You smiled leaning over to flick his leg. "I said," you rolled those perfect eyes at having to repeat yourself, "-what kinda' pizza we getting? I don't care as long as it's not pineapple, we don't allow that disrespect in this household." He forced himself to look at the TV praying you couldn't tell something was off and muttered out a random request.

That night as he lay in his bed, and even though he’d left your place hours ago, the moment was still on a loop in his head, all the ways it could have gone differently, he knew what this meant and if it were any other situation he'd tell you.

But he couldn't, not now.

Not when your dream was so close to becoming reality.

Now Tim was a smart guy, he knew if he told you and if by chance you felt the same way he did, there was a very strong possibility you'd throw away your dream for whatever future you two could have, he wasn't willing to take your dream away from you.

So he played his role, years of vigilante work had come in useful with the way he masked his emotions, He smiled though your goodbye party, Alfred insisted it be at the manor since they had more than enough room for your family and his combined, you looked so in place among everyone else, so much so he had to take a step back before he did something he'd regret, he left when Barbra pulled out her camera, knowing her, you'd be too preoccupied to notice him slip away, he sulked down the vast hallways he passed up his room, that be the first place someone would look for him.

He made his way to the nearest balcony, quietly shuffling outside to the bone chilling air, the wind whipped against his face almost immediately, the momentary pain brought a sense of clarity to the troubled young man. He couldn't help but laugh at his situation, knowing all his worries would vanish if he simply told you the truth.

"Why are you so stupid?" He asked himself leaning against the stone railing.

"You know, I find myself asking that question a lot." Your teasing voice chimed in from behind scaring him half to death. He tried to hide his surprise at your sudden entrance with a casual shrug of his shoulders. "Some queries are best left unanswered I guess."

You scoffed but the sound was still sweet to his ears, the air fell silent but it was far from uncomfortable, there was a lot to be said, things you couldn't say in front of the crowd downstairs, things meant to be shared like secrets between just the two of you, but the right words never came.

"The crowd get to you too?" He spoke breaking the comfortable silence, he felt you shrug against him. "My mom started telling embarrassing stories I had to get outta there." Tim laughed, he couldn't help but take a glance at the girl beside him, he tried to take in the moment, face to face, skin to skin, so close he could see the smallest of freckles hiding out against her rich skin. "What? Do I have something on my face?" "Yeah," he leaned over to swipe his thumb across her cheek. "-looks like a whole bunch of nerd."

"Oh fuck you." She swiped at his hand ignoring the loud laugh that came from him. Once things calmed down again it was her who broke the silence. "So you gonna miss me?" He shrugged pretending to think about it. "Eh, I guess. Maybe a little." She gave him a hard look which only brought another laugh. "Don't be stupid, I'm gonna miss you like crazy (Y/n)- unfortunately, you happen to be my best friend." She brought a hand to her chest, dramatically pulling him in for a side hug.

"I'm gonna miss you too Tim- more than you think."

But he didn't have a chance to question her, because the next second the balcony doors was thrown open by a wide eyed Dick Grayson. "There you two are! Come on Alfred made you cake- Oops! I wasn't supposed to say that, okay just act surprised when you get down there."

And just like that he was dragging her off. The rest of the night was a blur of pictures, tears and goodbyes. Tim walked her to her parents car, they were already inside so the two took their time walking up to the vehicle. "Don't make any weird friends okay?" He spoke shoving his hands in his pocket to shield from the cold, she laughed linking their arms, "Right, I think I'm good on the weird friends category, have you looked at yourself recently?." Tim found himself unable to respond, trying to soak up the familiar feeling of just being with her as they walked, and much too soon they were at the car, he found himself thinking about kissing her, after all it be a perfect movie moment to lean forward just a few inches more and steal a kiss, he knew it be simple and fast, and it would manage to tell her everything he was too scared to vocalize, but he didn't, instead he fought his instincts and instead wrapped her in a hug, when he found himself pulling away, he nearly fell over when the softest pair of lips gently pressed against the corner of his mouth, she pulled away with a small smile and got in her car.

Over the two years she'd been away Tim had grown a lot, he'd gotten stronger, smarter, faster, and he'd never admit this out loud but he couldn't wait to show off in front of the girl, it was her first time home since she'd left, and to say he was excited was an understatement, anyone who'd listen to him could easily tell whoever was coming over today, had him on edge, his teammate and good friend Conner had the unfortunate job of dealing with the wired boy.

"Wait let me get this straight, you still love this girl right?" Tim nodded not looking away from the computer screen displaying flight schedules, your flight schedule to be specific.

"And you've never told her because?" Tim glanced at his friend before starting back at the screen like it would magically change the harder he stared at it.

"Never the right time."

"I may have been born a few years ago but that seems stupid to me, if you really care about someone you should tell them." Tim made a noise of disapproval, spinning to face his stone faced friend. "It's complicated Con, you can't just go around confessing to people."

"Why not."

"Because- it's just-"

"For such a good detective you're actually pretty stupid."

"Remind me why we're friends again?"

"I'm the only one who’s willing to put up with your shit- besides your girlfriend, oh wait no my bad, she's not your girlfriend because you're a pussy-" Tim threw the controller he had near by at his friends face which only made the boy laugh, the soon to be Smack Down was interrupted by three sharp knocks at the door, after a quick game of rock paper scissors Tim turned back to his laptop, headphones now on so he could block out the world, Conner rose to get the door expecting Alfred with lunch.

"Uh hello?" Conner spoke out in confusion at the stranger standing in front of him, she was definitely not Alfred. "Hey is Tim here?" It took Conner about two seconds to realize what was happening, he gave you a smile, "You're (Y/n) right?"

"Yeah! How'd you know?" Conner motioned to the clueless Tim behind him. "He has a big mouth." With that the he stepped aside to let you in, closing the door behind him. You made your way to the hunched over figure, waiting for him to turn around. "Conner you shit head I can hear you- knock it off." Tim spoke yanking off his earphones, he swiveled around to be met with quite the sight.

There you stood, your blue jeans clinging to your legs like a second skin, and all at once his throat was dry, and his skin was on fire, his eyes raked over your form trying to soak up the meal he had in front of him, your hair was loose, it framed your face, my god your face, you stared at him expectantly, waiting for his brain to kick back into gear, the smile you wore was the same one from years ago, just as playful but somehow more mature, before he could stop himself he was up, arms wrapped around your waist pulling you against him in a bone crushing hug, you laughed into his shoulder as he tried to handle all that was placed before him. "You asshole you said your flight would get here later!" "That's one way to say you missed me." He had grown a few inches taller than you so he had to lean down to meet your eye. "I did miss you." He spoke, in a light voice, "But a heads up would have been nice, you caught me in my troll form." A smile stretched out on your cheeks so bright it knocked the wind out of him, you let out a laugh he'd only had the chance to hear though fuzzy Skype calls, "Shut up Tim you look good and you know it." Soft fingers found themselves in his overgrown hair, he'd been meaning to cut it for a while but he thanked the Lord he didn't when your fingers lightly tugged at it. "I missed you too, did you forget what a barber was while I was gone? Or are you just going for that Midwestern mom look?" His hands settled pulled away from you, landing on the back of his neck and he plopped down on his couch. "I'm too happy to care about the fact that you just roasted me in my own home." You joined him, the cushions bouncing with you, he shot you a smile, "So how have you been? Any wild school stories? Binge drinking? Weird sexual experiments?" You smacked a hand against his chest, that laugh that made his stomach flip resonated through the room.

"Actually no, I took a page from your book and kinda shut myself in."

"I'm not the best example on how to life your life." She rose a brow glancing around the cluttered room. "Really? I had no idea." The sarcasm dripped from her voice.

The two old friends sat there for hours, trading stories, laughing, it was like no time had passed at all between the two, only now they could drink while they did it. Somewhere along the way her legs found themselves draped across his lap, and their conversation was reaching that point when all restraint fell out the window.

The whiskey helped with that a bit.

"All i’m saying is all that crap woulda’ been way more fun with you there."

"Cheers to that."

She clinked her glass against his, he tried not to stare, he really did, but the way the sun outside his bedroom windows had began to fall, pinks and reds seeped in through the glass painting the scene, painting her, in a beautiful glow. It seemed criminal not to appreciate the art in front of him, he laughed at the thought catching her attention.

“What’s so funny?”

He shook his head, long hair falling in front of his face.

“Nothing-You just look really- really beautiful.”

“Woah, someone went and got some game while I was gone.” This caused another laugh to bubble from his lips.

“This isn’t groundbreaking information, you’ve always been beautiful to me.”

Her wide grin grew shy the more he blabbered.

“We’re telling secrets now?” he simply nodded, she hummed, her fingernails tapping against her glass as she thought of a response.

“Okay I got one, remember the night I left?”

"Mhm." He nodded taking a long sip from his own cup. "When we were up there, on that balcony I mean, I really wanted to kiss you." She laughed out pressing a hand against her head.

It may have been the building tension between them, or the fact that she was looking at him like, well that, or perhaps the alcohol running through his veins, but he didn't hesitate with his response.

"Why didn't you?" She paused for a moment, her mouth opening and closing in shock, "I dunno' guess I was scared you'd be freaked out, I've always wished I did it though." He sat up straighter, grin stretched out across his face, mirroring her own, his body now the slightest bit closer to her, but roomy enough to give her space to run.

"What's stopping you now?"

She paused, her familiar smile gracing her features, she sat up now facing her best friend, the coil that been building between them for years ready to snap.

"Not a damn thing I suppose."

#dc #dc imagine #dc x reader #tim drake #tim drake x reader #tim drake imagine #poc reader #poc reader insert #black reader #requested

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lovemesomerafael · 4 years

Text

Destroying The Planet To Save It Chapter 7: Anderson Cooper Hates Me

Source: @teradragonlady

Chapters 1-5 Chapter 6 Read it on AO3

Santiago wasn’t a bad guy. Natasha could have actually liked him; you know, if he wasn’t a flunkie working for a douche canoe possibly bent on mass destruction. He led her right to an entrance to Arias’s “Site B”, about a quarter-mile from the industrial park entrance Sam and Anita had been brought through. First objective accomplished. This entrance was in back of a vacant storefront, a nondescript but heavy metal door that led to a simple stairway down into the complex below. Pleased that it had been so easy, Natasha nonetheless gave Santi a skeptical look.

“Wait, where are you taking me? What kind of place is this? I don’t know about this…”

“Relax, Mami, it’s all good. My boss is a paranoid rich dude. This is just one of his facilities. You can trust me, I’m a security guard,” he smiled.

“Promise?”

“Of course.”

From his perch on a rooftop down the alleyway, Clint watched and waited. He knew he was going to lose comms with Natasha soon as they traveled very far underground, and he would need to enter the complex. But he wanted to give them a good head start. After that, remaining undetected would be a matter of luck.

The stairway was long and dim. Sam hadn’t been wrong about how far underground this place was. When they finally emerged at the bottom, Natasha saw that they were in the garage-like space Sam had described.

“OK, listen,” Santi said, turning to her so he could speak quietly. “Like I said, you’re not supposed to be here. So Imma have to hide you somewhere. Follow me.”

Santi led her along one concrete wall of the vast space, past trucks painted to look like Con Ed service trucks, a couple of panel vans with logos of businesses on their sides, and several cars. The metal door he approached opened with a combination Natasha instantly memorized, and she followed Santi down a bare concrete hallway lined with the pipes and conduits Anita Herrera had described. Natasha saw what Anita had meant. There was an inordinate amount of electricity running through this hallway.

Natasha was glad to note that the door to which Santi led her didn’t squeak, and did have a lock that could be thrown from the inside. It looked like a little employee lounge of some kind, sad and spartan, but apparently well-used. She took a moment to be grateful that, as annoying as Tony Stark was, the work environment he provided the Avengers beat the shit out of this painted-concrete cellar.

“OK. You’ll be all right here. Just lock the door after I leave. Most of the people are gone this weekend, so there’s just a few of us guards. I’ll think of a reason to tell them not to come in here.”

“Wait, no- you’re not leaving me alone here, are you? I mean…” Natasha put on a vulnerable look she knew from long experience to be irresistible.

“I gotta. I’m supposed to be patrolling. There’s cameras. Mostly, nobody watches ‘em but, I mean, they’ll notice I’m missing after a while.”

“But what if they catch me here?”

“You lock the door, and let me take care of the rest.” Natasha had taken a seat on a stained, utilitarian sofa against one wall of the small room, and Santi actually knelt down beside her. It was a sweet, protective move. She supposed she’d feel guilty for what she was about to do, if she bothered with things like guilt anymore.

“Well, how many other guys are here? Are they gonna try to get in?”

“There’s only five of us, and I told you, I’ll make up some excuse for them not to come in here.”

Natasha didn’t look convinced. “Do you think it would be OK if I smoked a little weed? It’ll calm me down.”

“Sure, that’s fine. We do in here, sometimes. No cameras.”

She pulled a small plastic container from a pocket of her jacket and set it on the table, popping open the lid to reveal a tiny one-hitter lying in a bed of what was technically marijuana, although Tony Stark had objected loudly to even allowing anything that weak in his building. Plucking the tiny pipe out carefully, Natasha looked up at Santi with a grin as she packed a hit. “Here. You deserve it, after what you did for me. Careful, though. This stuff’ll knock you on your ass.”

“I don’t know, man, weed makes me sleepy,” Santi objected, but not very strongly.

“Huh,” Natasha shrugged, taking her hand back from where she’d offered the one-hitter to him. “Makes me horny,” she murmured just before setting it between her lips and lighting it, sucking in the smoke.

As expected, that got Santi’s attention. “Yeah, that, too.”

“You smoke before? Because, like I said, this stuff is kinda strong.”

“Don’t worry, Mami, I can handle it.”

When she offered it to him a second time, he took the small metal pipe, seeing nothing but the promising little smile she gave him. Certainly he didn’t notice her switch the one-hitter with another that had been up her sleeve.

They each took two hits before Santi was unconscious. Natasha laid him down – he seemed like an OK guy, really, and it had to look like he’d just fallen asleep from the marijuana – before she spoke to Clint.

“You in?” She asked, the microphone in her earring picking up everything.

“Yeah,” she heard him respond in her earpiece. “I’m on the stairs, just outside the door.”

“It opens into the underground garage Sam told us about. Hang on. I’m gonna go up there. I’ll let you in when it’s clear.”

“Copy that.”

The drug she’d used on Santi would keep him unconscious for around four hours. This part had been easy, but the rest was pure improvisation. Natasha smiled. She was good at improvisation.

There were no sounds in the hallway as she cracked the door and listened. Since she didn’t have a key, she smiled as she used the specially-designed jewelry Clint had given her for her navel piercing to lock the door behind her. Dang, that thing came in handy. She’d have to remember to thank him for it again.

Maybe. Or maybe he’d think she was trying to remind him of their time together on Eleuthera, where she’d gotten the piercing to begin with. Holy shit, but they’d been drunk. Much of that week after Budapest was a blur, although not enough of it. Not the part where she’d told him she loved him, too. Not the look in his eyes when she’d later pretended not to remember.

The door to the garage area was open, which gave Natasha time to spot the guy coming toward her and plaster a huge smile on her face.

“Hi!” She called to him when he noticed her, her unexpected greeting stopping the motion of his hand as he reached for something on his belt.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Natasha. I came down here with Santi? But, um, we were partying and” - she giggled drunkenly - “he passed out.”

“He what? He brought you down here? And now he’s - Where is he, that hijueputa?”

“Break room. But don’t be mad. C’mon, we were just having a little fun. I mean, this place is a drag, you know?”

The guy, short and barrel-shaped, marched right past Natasha, grabbing her wrist on the way and beginning to drag her into the hallway toward the room where Santi was. She let him, continuing to giggle softly.

“Don’t be mad. Hey, what’s your name? I’m Natasha. Oh, wait, I told you that already.”

They reached the door and the guy tried to pull at it, surprised to find it locked.

“Oh, oops! I think I musta done that.” More giggles.

The guy pulled a key ring from his pocket, fastened with a long, drooping chain to his belt loop. He kept iron fingers around Natasha’s wrist as he roughly unlocked and yanked the door open. Santi lay peacefully sleeping on the couch, even as the guy began cursing him in Spanish and trying to shake him awake.

“No, c’mon… let him sleep. He’s just stoned. He’ll be fine. You can see he’s breathing and stuff.”

The guy turned to Natasha. “You gotta get out of here. You’re not supposed to be here.”

Natasha smiled beatifically. “I know. Santi told me. But we weren’t doing anything, and he said your boss wasn’t here right now, so no one would care. Are you mad at me?”

“I just gotta get you out of here. Come on.”

“At least tell me your name.”

“Alejandro. You sure he’s just stoned?”

“Yeah. We were smoking this.” Natasha pulled out her plastic container. “You want some?”

“No. Come on.”

“Please, Alejandro? Because I got dumped by my boyfriend tonight, and if I go back to our apartment, he’s gonna hit me. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and Santi was nice to me. I just needed someplace to sort of hang out, get my head together, you know? Please don’t make me leave. I’ll stay right here. And I’ll share my weed with you.”

“I don’t think I want any of your weed. Look what it did to poor Santi,” Alejandro said, but he was grinning. Natasha knew then that she had him. Clint would just need to be a little patient.

Twenty minutes later, Clint was sitting on the bottom stair, chin in hand, when Natasha opened the door from the garage area. “’Bout time,” he groused.

“I know, but there are only three left. And if we’re lucky, we won’t meet any of them. Let’s get going.”

For twenty or thirty minutes, Clint and Natasha had free rein to look wherever they liked. Natasha would enter a room, find the cameras, and make sure she and her unhappy countenance were very visible to whoever might be monitoring them as she disabled them. After that, Clint would enter the room and they would investigate it thoroughly. Everything they found was in Spanish, which wouldn’t have been much of a problem, except it was also in some sort of code. There was really no way to tell what this place was for from what they’d found so far. All they could do was photograph everything and hope they could figure it out later.

And then there was a loud commotion as two men came running down the concrete hallway toward the room in which Clint melted into the shadows under a desk and Natasha stood, seemingly alone, gazing around.

“Who the hell are you?” One of the men asked in heavily-accented English. “’The fuck you doin’ to our cameras?”

“Hi! I’m Natasha.”

“What the hell are you doing here? How’d you get in here?”

“It’s kind of a long story. I was partying with Santi and Alejandro? But they passed out and now I’m bored and I don’t know how to get out of here.”

“Why the hell are you trashin’ all our cameras?”

“I don’t like them. There’s no privacy in the twenty-first century. We’re all too comfortable being watched every second. You wanna help me with the revolution?”

The two men held an incredulous, furious conversation in Spanish while Natasha stood a few feet away, a perplexed look on her face.

“Hey, guys, I don’t speak Spanish, you know? I’m not trying to steal anything. I just came down here because me and my boyfriend had a fight, and I met Santi, and I didn’t have anywhere to go…”

Clint was cramped and impatient waiting under the desk, but he was at least mildly entertained by how easy it was for Natasha to work her spell on these idiots, too. When they were both passed out on the floor, he was actually a little embarrassed on behalf of his gender.

They found the fifth and last guy after another half hour of exploration. This guy wasn’t about to fall for Natasha’s weed trick, however, because he was behind a door with an electronic lock she should not have been able to open. He ended up getting Clint’s knee in his face, which meant that they had to dose him with the drug Clint had brought in a case attached to his belt. The poor guy wouldn’t remember anything about how he ended up in the bunkroom Clint and Natasha found. They could only hope he would deduce - from the stories the other guys would tell and, of course, from his nudity and the position in which he found himself - that he, too, had met Natasha. He could probably claim bragging rights, because it would appear that he had gotten further with her than the other guys had before he passed out, fell off the cot, and broke his nose.

The machine he was there to guard made absolutely no sense to either Clint or Natasha. It filled the cavernous room, and was clearly the destination for all that power. It was shaped like a square, stepped pyramid, which caused Clint to dub it the Chichen Itza machine, with a level of panels near the top glowing a sickly green. The dry, ozone-scented heat in the room explained why the machine had its own cooling system, which was one of the reasons it was housed behind locked doors. There was nothing that indicated to Clint or Natasha what it did, though. All they could do was take video and photo after photo of it from every angle, both close up and panoramic, and hope Bruce and Tony could make some sense of it.

Once they’d finished that, they just had to find the place where the cameras were monitored, to make sure they left no video evidence of their escapades for anyone to find later. Finding the monitoring station wasn’t much of a challenge, nor was reprogramming the system to double-record the next few hours and replace all the recordings in which Clint or Natasha appeared.

The problem came when they discovered there was a sixth guard.

*****

Jarman Arias’s plane wasn’t as nice as Tony Stark’s. Sam made a little face at the thought of a guy like him having preferences in private jets. Anita noticed the look and leaned in. “What’s the joke?”

Sam smiled. “I was just thinkin’ I like Stark’s jets better.”

She looked around. “Oh, I don’t know. This one doesn’t suck.”

There were only four other people on the plane. All of them were Hispanic, and they all clearly knew each other. The six passengers were sitting together in a group, enjoying a sumptuous lunch served impeccably by the cabin attendant. The other four seemed happy to include Sam and Anita in their conversation, speaking English for Sam’s benefit. They laughed and carried on as though the party had already started which, in fact, it already had in that they were all drinking a Colombian ale that went perfectly with their broiled whitefish. There was plenty of flirtation, although the flight hadn’t been long enough for the others to determine how far they could go with Sam and Anita. Some couples were more exclusive than others, after all.

“We haven’t been to one of Jarman’s parties before,” Anita said to the group, just after feeding Sam a bite of perfectly-seared asparagus. “What should we expect?”

The other four laughed knowingly. “Hope you’ve gotten some sleep, and have healthy livers,” one man answered with a wink. “Because you’re about to learn why God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Sam whistled. “Always wondered what those folks got up to,” he grinned.

Sam and Anita learned nothing about whatever Arias might be up to on the flight. The group wasn��t in the mood to talk about anything substantive. They only wanted to flirt and laugh. What little the two were able to learn suggested that these people, at least, weren’t expecting anything big or world-changing to happen anytime soon.

In the meantime, Sam found himself falling naturally and easily into a habit of sitting close enough to Anita that they were always touching. For her part, Anita created several searing moments of meaningful eye contact between them combined with a soft, secret smile that Sam felt south of his belt line. The effect was outwardly a very convincing picture of an established couple who were very attracted to one another. Inwardly, for Sam at least, the effect was to turn him way the fuck on and make him wish desperately that they were going to the Keys to be alone together.

The group was met at the tiny private airport on Marathon Key by a sleek, white limousine that whisked them quickly to a set of ornate, manned gates in a long wall made of rock and shell. Inside the wall, Arias’s villa proved to be exactly that. It was massive, with balconies everywhere, and the fact that it had its own private beach was immediately obvious. The eight-foot-tall wall surrounded the entire property, extending all the way into the water. Sam and Anita shared a look that, to others, would appear to be just silently communicating their awe at the scene. Sam knew they were both noticing the overwhelming security.

There were people everywhere, wearing bright colors and carrying drinks. Many of the women were scantily dressed – there was an abundance of bikinis – while the men tended to skew older and wore more business casual clothing. Sam wasn’t surprised by that. He was surprised by the fact that there were probably as many armed security guards as there were uniformed waiters. Why’s a guy need armed security guards at a party, if he’s legit?

Almost instantly, Arias emerged from the house and walked over to the limo to greet his newly-arrived guests, specifically Anita. He welcomed her in rapid, jovial Spanish with an overly-friendly embrace and a double-cheek kiss. Only when he’d spent long minutes slobbering over her did he turn to Sam and his other guests.

“Mr. Wilson, how delightful you could make it,” he said, slapping him heartily on the back. “One of my staff will be out soon to show you to your room, and they’ll take care of your luggage. My home is yours, please take advantage of my hospitality. Would you like a drink?”

Arias waved a waiter over. Sam said, “Thank you for flying us out. Your jet is… something.”

“Yes, isn’t it? I grew up in a portazo, a slum, and I’ve never forgotten where I come from. That’s why I like the finer things now, and I like to share them with my friends.”

“Well, then,” Sam smiled, “I’m glad to be considered a friend.”

The oily simper he received in return raised the hair on the back of Sam’s neck. “Nonsense. It’s something of a coup to be able to call the Falcon my friend, and to welcome him to my home. So the pleasure is mine, parcero.”

Only after Anita coyly suggested that she was wearing too much clothing for the Keys did Arias reluctantly allow her to accompany Sam to the room assigned to them. Her slacks and gauzy, sleeveless top were actually very attractive and entirely appropriate for the weather, but not for a young woman in this crowd. In this crowd, she really was overdressed.

Their room was as ostentatiously luxurious as the rest of the huge house promised. Sam thought the bed could have comfortably slept 5 or 6 people and, given the environment, wondered whether it ever had. Anita stood near the center of the room, seemingly checking email on her cell phone. What she was actually doing was scanning for surveillance equipment, which she was not surprised to find.

“Anything going on?” Sam asked as he unpacked the few days’ worth of clothes he’d brought.

“Someone sent me a funny video,” she answered. “Wanna see? It’s got audio, too.”

“Nah. You and your cat videos,” he responded, seemingly absently, acknowledging her message that the room was under both video and audio surveillance.

She went into the bathroom, still looking at the screen of her phone. “Bad news, Sam,” she called from inside.

“What’s that, Babe?”

“I got no signal in here.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Well, you’ll live. You’re too attached to that thing, anyway.”

So. No surveillance in the bathroom. Good to know for several reasons, Sam thought.

From the moment she and Sam re-appeared, Arias kept Anita plastered to his side. She wore a red bikini which Sam knew was going to fuel his dreams, covered by an open, lacy, white robe that swirled around her when she walked in her matching kitten-heeled mules. Sam’s loose board shorts were far less revealing, but his short-sleeved, button-down shirt hung open to reveal a firm chest and abs that Anita had commented on very favorably.

It was, of course, the plan that Anita would stay close to Arias, but Sam found himself deeply concerned, and even more jealous. He and Anita had just started… whatever it was they’d started. He wasn’t remotely in the mood to see some other guy all over her. And Arias was all over her. He plied her with drinks (which she was very good at discreetly spilling) and kept an arm around her and a hand on her waist or hip almost continuously. Although it made Sam furious, he did notice that Arias made sure to introduce her to everyone they spoke to, and he’d overheard enough of the introductions to know that he usually added some tidbit about how he knew them. It was intended to impress her with the width of his influence and his impressive social contacts, and she was playing along beautifully. The more dazzled she seemed, the more he bragged, making it that much easier for her to gain information.

Meahwhile, Sam went into party mode, and began to meet people. It wasn’t hard. Everyone was drinking, and many of the guests recognized him, which made for an easy icebreaker. More than a few of the guests made overt passes at him, and Sam smirked to think how easy it would have been to fill up the bed in the room he was sharing with Anita. Given his natural charm, he had no trouble gently putting off amorous advances while still managing to gather a great deal of information. Between Sam and Anita, the afternoon and evening were very productive.

*****

Joss blinked her eyes open, squinting against the afternoon light coming in the window. Hmmm. Hospital room. Why… Oh, yeah. She looked down and immediately saw the cast on her right forearm and hand. No surprise there, she’d known something was broken. She also felt the pain in her left side as soon as she moved to shift position. Which is when she turned her head to see Bucky asleep in a chair next to her hospital bed and holding her left hand. She couldn’t help it. She gasped in surprise, waking him.

“Bucky,” she mumbled, finding her throat scratchy and her voice weak.

He grinned sleepily at her. “How you feelin’, Kiddo?”

Joss noticed with a slight shiver that he didn’t let go of her hand, but rather squeezed it. She thought for a moment before answering. “A little sore, I guess. How’s Singer?”

“He’s in ICU. Expected to be OK, but he lost part of his right leg.”

“Damn,” she hissed. “That’s rough.”

“You’ve been out of it for a while. What do you remember?”

Joss squinted. “I remember that President Lattimore is dead. I remember needing to stay with his body, and you telling me to go to the hospital, but then you got very blurry, and… Nothing after that.”

“That’s because you were all busted up inside. You had surgery. They had to take out your spleen.”

“My… Wait, I was usin’ my spleen. I don’t want it out. I like my spleen.”

“Yeah, well, you had a broken floating rib that stabbed into it. Damn near killed you. Which is why I’m pissed as hell at you. You felt a hell of a lot worse than you told me, Joss. If you woulda bled to death because you were trying to be a hero, you’d have died of stupidity.”

She smiled wanly. “Well. It’s nice to know you care, even if you can’t land a plane for shit.”

“I am not joking around here! I been sitting here for hours waiting for you to wake up so I can yell at you about how reckless that was.” He certainly didn’t look like he was kidding. The thundercloud in his face rivaled those that had brought down the Quinjet.

Joss frowned. “Singer and Lattimore were in trouble. There were only four paramedics on site at the time. They needed our help.”

“We would’ve done all right. Woulda maybe cost Singer a few minutes, but that wouldn’t have changed anything for him. Obviously, it wouldn’t have changed things for Lattimore. It wasn’t worth you lying to me.”

“I didn’t lie to you. I never said I was fine.”

“You never said you were bleeding to death, either. You had to know how bad -“

A nurse came in at that moment, making Bucky and Joss realize their voices had risen a bit.

“Well, Ms. Emerson, you’re awake. Good. I’ll let the doctor know. How do you feel?”

“Suddenly like a four-year-old,” she muttered, glaring at Bucky.

“Well.” The nurse said, and now she turned to glare at Bucky, too. “I need to examine my patient, Sir. I’m going to have to ask you to excuse us.”

“I’ll just wait outside,” he said, standing and letting go of Joss’s hand.

“Maybe you could come back tomorrow,” the nurse said, disapproval dripping from every syllable. “Ms. Emerson needs her rest.”

Joss was a little woozy to begin with, and the idea that Bucky looked disappointed that he couldn’t stay with her made her stomach swoop like she’d crested a hill too fast in her car. But before she could think of a way to ask him to stay, he left without a word. The nurse leaned down and began to take back Joss’s sheets, which blocked her from seeing Bucky’s regretful backward glance.

Joss endured the nurse’s exam in resentful silence. That was not the way she’d wanted to end her last conversation with Bucky. She knew he wouldn’t be back; he obviously had better things to do. He’d just hung around so he could tell her what an idiot she was for not admitting how hurt she’d been. As if she’d had a choice.

There’d been things that needed to be done at the crash site. It wasn’t like she had never planned to go to the hospital. Of course she had. She wasn’t stupid. But she didn’t get a chance to tell him that, which meant that now she’d be going through the rest of her life knowing that Bucky Barnes, stupendously hot and surprisingly sweet superhero, thought she was a careless twit. Great.

“Can you rate your pain for me?” The nurse asked. “Give me a number between one and ten.”

Joss wanted to ask whether she was talking about her stupid wounds or her heart. Either way, the answer was the same. “Maybe a six. Seven.”

“Sounds like you better let me give you some pain medicine.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

While the nurse was gone, Joss sat staring at the blank white wall facing her hospital bed. Her head was reeling, but she had no way to judge how much was blood loss and how much was everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours. The President had died on her watch. She was going to have to answer a lot of questions about that. They would no doubt be asked politely, and she’d probably be buried under endless platitudes about how she’d done everything right, and it wasn’t her fault, and it could have happened on anyone’s watch, blah, blah, blah. It would all be the most transparent bullshit. Every single person who had ever heard of Adam Lattimore – basically the entire planet – would blame her, and they’d be right.

Not to mention the fact that Joss actually found herself mourning the smarmy old perv. She was surprised as hell to realize that she’d actually kind of liked him. Damn. Worse, she knew she’d have to face Mrs. Lattimore. The woman was entitled to an apology, at the very least. She deserved to hear Joss acknowledge that she’d failed him. Joss wondered if her nurse would give her a shot of morphine before she had to have that conversation.

And what the hell was going on with these storms and tornadoes and that earthquake? There was no way the storm they’d been caught in was natural, which meant there was somebody out there who could create a freaking tornado. That was just fucking terrifying. She understood now why S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers were involved, although not what any of this had to do with the President or that event. And, by the way, had she actually just woken up holding hands with Bucky Barnes?

The nurse returned with a syringe, which she quickly and efficiently screwed into a port in Joss’s IV. Not two seconds later, Joss could feel the effects of whatever the drug was.

“Whoo,” she said. “That’s, um… that’s… wow. I forgot to tell you I’m a lightweight.”

“Don’t worry. It’s only half of what you can have, if you need it. We want to be sure your pain is well controlled.”

“I’m not worried about pain. I’m worried about seeing flying elephants and shit.”

“Well, if you do see any, let me know. I’ll have them removed.”

“Appreciate it.” Joss settled back against her pillows and watched in fascination as the nurse squiggled and walked on a floor that was definitely at a strange angle. She giggled a little as she found herself alone and, suddenly, very stoned.

She didn’t notice Bucky come back in a moment later.

“What’s funny?”

Joss was probably surprised to hear his voice next to her, but she was too high to know for sure. “You… Hey. You’re Bucky,” she drawled, grinning crookedly.

“I get that all the time,” he smiled, taking the chair next to her bed again. “Did we just have some narcotics?”

“I did. I don’t know about you.” Joss giggled again at her own joke, then became suddenly overly serious. “I didn’t expect to see you back in here.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“I thought you already did. I thought you’d already be on your way back to New York.”

Bucky frowned. “Why’d you think that?”

“Well, because. You’re all gorgeous and famous and stuff, and you got your chance to tell me what a dumbass I am, so I just figured you’d be...” She extended her arm, rolling her hand in a way Bucky guessed was intended to convey, uh, leaving maybe?

“I want to make sure you’re all right. That OK with you?”

Joss tilted her head, scowling adorably and clearly trying to figure out the answer to his question. “I don’t know.”

Bucky wasn’t sure what to do with that. “What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know how good an idea that is. For me. Because I really have a thing for you. Like, bigtime.”

Bucky blushed and looked down at Joss’s blanket, smiling almost shyly and giving an embarrassed laugh.

“Is it because you crashed me in a plane?” Joss asked, oblivious. “Because I didn’t really mean what I said. I’m sure you can land a plane. I’m sure you can do pretty much anything, I mean… look at you. Why do you look like that, anyway?”

“Uh…”

“You got those big, pretty blue eyes, and that ridiculous jaw, and holy fuck don’t get me started on those lips. You should see what people on YouTube say about your hair. It’s graphic, Bucky. Gra. Phic.”

“OK, Joss, let’s maybe talk about something else now. That medicine work? You still hurting?”

“What, you don’t want to hear about how beautiful you are? Don’t pretend you don’t know. Of course you do. How come I can’t say it?”

“Because you’re gonna be mad at me for hearing it, that’s why.”

“Do you know what I think you should do? Oh, this is a good idea. It is. I think you should kiss me. Then when I never see you again except on TV, at least I’ll be able to remember that you kissed me once.”

“I’m not so sure you’re gonna remember any of this…” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. OK, I’ll kiss you. But not right now. Later. When you’re not quite so medicated.”

“It’s OK. I know. I’m inse- inconta- interconti- No, that’s not it.” She frowned in concentration. “In-con-se-quen-tial. Inconsequential. That’s why you don’t want to kiss me. I don’t blame you. You can lift entire airplanes and I don’t even have a spleen.”

“What? You’re not inconsequential.”

“Compared to you, I am. You’re on cereal boxes with that guy. You know, that, um… Steve. Steve America. No, that’s not right…” Joss’s voice faded as she tried valiantly to figure out what she was trying to say.

“Joss, you are not inconsequential.”

“By next week, you probably won’t remember we even met. I’ll be back to obscurity, and you’ll be dating a Kardashian.”

“I don’t even know what that is. And that’s not fair, to either one of us.” Bucky reminded himself that she was wasted on pain meds and didn’t know what she was saying. He couldn’t be mad at her, although he didn’t appreciate her implication.

“Plus I let the President die. Am I on CNN yet? Does Anderson Cooper hate me? I know those jackholes at Fox News hate me. I can just imagine what they’re saying about me. But I feel bad if you don’t want to kiss me and Anderson Cooper hates me.”

“I do want to kiss you, and I’m sure Anderson Cooper doesn’t hate you.”

“Do you think Rachel Maddow would take my calls? She seems cool. She might let me explain.”

Bucky laughed. “I’m sure she will.”

Joss looked at him again. “Damn, you’re cute. You really want to kiss me?”

“Yes. I really do.”

“You’re humoring me because you crashed me in a plane.”

“A little. But I also think you’re cute, and I truly want to kiss you.”

“Then do it.”

“Not when you’re soused on painkillers.”

“See? You don’t want to. You’re all buff and supersoldiery and pretty and you’re too cool to even be in my hospital room. Why are you in here again?”

“Maybe we should watch TV.”

“OK. But not Anderson Cooper. He hates me.”

#The Avengers #Captain America #The Winter Soldier #Natasha Romanoff #The Black Widow #Clint Barton #Hawkeye #Sam Wilson #The Falcon #Bucky Barnes

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