#and greg would ask why he has to get them painted like can’t he just get them buffed instead
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The older Jefferson
Pairing: Rodrick Heffley x fem!Reader
Summary: After Rowley announces that his older (half-)sister, who lives quite far away and has never met the Heffleys, is going to visit him over the break Susan invites his family over for dinner. Her not being what Rodrick expects, he starts crushing, which results in him trying to impress her - failing horribly.
No physical description; No use of y/n
Word count: 1.9k
Warnings: None
A/N: Hi, just a quick warning that English isn’t my first language and that this is also the first time I’ve ever written a longer text in English that isn’t a school assignment. I also don’t fully understand Tumblr yet, which makes me honestly a bit anxious to post.
[This and a gender-neutral version are also posted on AO3]
“Why haven't you ever mentioned that you have an older Sister?” Rowley and Greg were sitting on the Heffleys living room floor - Rodrick occupying the whole space on the couch - playing a video game. Well, Greg was. It was a single-player. He promised they would take turns, but by now Rowley had been over for about two and a half hours and hadn’t even had the chance to touch the controller yet. He gave up on asking and settled on just watching about 45 minutes in.
“I talked about her before. Multiple times actually.” That is true. Rowley looks up to his sister a lot “Also, she is technically my Half-Sister. She’s been living with her Dad for longer than I remember. Normally we are the ones flying over to visit during summer break, but she hasn’t visited since she was a little Kid, and after her school schedule finally allowed it, we thought it would be a good idea if she, for a change, came here instead.”
“It sounds like you two get along great!” Mrs. Heffley walked in, holding a laundry basket under one arm while carrying Manny with the other.
“We do! I can’t wait to show her my room and have her around for the entire break! I have so much planned out already, it's gonna be so much fun! Best summer ever!”
“That sounds lovely Rowley, I wish Greg was so excited to hang out with Rodrick, but they just won't get along.” Susan sighed, throwing a pitiful glance at her two oldest, who simultaneously let out a laugh hearing this.”
“Yeah, never gonna happen.” Greg says, “I would rather spend the whole summer in school than voluntarily hang out with this idiot.”
“My Sister is actually around the same age as Rodrick.” Rowley buts in. Greg doesn’t understand how this is relevant, but it probably adds to his mother's yearning for her two oldest sons to get along. Rodrick lets out a laugh hearing that.
“I can’t wait to meet them. Just imagine an older, female version of Rowley. That’s actually fucking hilarious!”.
“Watch your language! Also, I'm sure she is wonderful.” Gregs Mom loosens her lecturing stance, turns around, and smiles at Rowley “I would love to have you and your family over for dinner sometime. It has been a while since I’ve seen your parents and I would love to meet your sister.”
“That sounds great Mrs. Heffley. I will ask my parents as soon as I get home!”
That brings us to about a week later, when the Jefferson family, including their oldest daughter, is standing in front of the Heffleys House, ringing their doorbell.
Rowley has been telling you all about his best friend Greg for years, which made you somewhat excited about finally meeting him. However, you can’t say that the picture your brother painted is entirely positive, finding him rather irritating in many of the stories you were told over time. You aren't too mad though, assuming it is normal for young, teenage boys to act like jerks every once in a while. Not everyone can be such a sweetheart as Rowley. Overall you're glad your brother managed to maintain such a long-lasting friendship.
And then there was Rodrick. You've heard rather interesting stories about him as well. In the beginning, you found those quite amusing, that was until you realized that Rowley was genuinely terrified of him. Not the best first impression someone could make on you. Influenced by seeing your younger sibling grow up to be such a sweet and genuine person you tend to be a bit protective from time to time.
You hear some hushed voices from inside, and you can identify one of them as female, reminding someone to behave. Then the door opens and a woman, who you assume to be Mrs. Heffley, kindly smiles at you. Your suspicion is confirmed a second later when she introduces herself and shoos you into the house, before continuing to greet the rest of your family.
Crossing the threshold you can now see a man standing slightly behind Greg's mother. He introduces himself as Frank, making quite a kind impression on you. Then he leads you into the living room to meet his sons.
The two older ones hardly even notice you at first, too occupied with arguing and rowing with each other.
“Boys!”, their father speaks up, successfully catching their attention. Rather comically their gazes fall from their father to you, their eyes widening and their mouths dropping open. You were not what they expected. While Greg looks just shocked, you would describe Rodricks state as mesmerized.
He recovers fast, pushes Greg off of him, stands up, and puts on what he hopes is a charming smile. Extending his hand he starts to introduce himself.
“Hi, I’m-”
At least he tries to.
“Rodrick. I know. My brother has told me one or two rather interesting stories about you”, your smile is sharp. He gulps, his confident smile turning sheepish, cursing Rowley in his head. You are not what he expected and you are definitely not anywhere close to being a female carbon copy of your, in his eyes, embarrassing younger brother.
He normally wouldn’t consider himself the kind of person who has a type, but from now on, if someone asked, he would probably revert to describing you. You were just ethereal, everything about you was attractive to him. The way you walked, talked, and carried yourself, but also your clothing and hairstyle. Your pretty face just rounds up your whole appearance, making you all the more alluring.
He had to get on your good side. While a family dinner, especially with Greg present, may not be the best opportunity, he could ask Rowley to put in a few good words for him. That kid was easily influenced (or intimidated). Still, making the best possible impression over dinner wouldn’t cause any harm either.
You turn to the other boy who has been silently watching the exchange. Now that your attention is on him he starts feeling nervous as well. Your expression, however, turns a bit more friendly.
“And you must be Greg.” he nods. You introduce yourself and lastly say hello to Manny who is sitting on the floor playing with some figurines. By now the others have entered the room, causing Susan to start leading you all to the dining table.
You’re seated between Rowley and Greg, across from Rodrick, which results in quite frequent eye contact. On one side you really want to intimidate him a bit. This could maybe make your brother's life a bit easier, at least for the time being. On the other side, you do want to make some conversation, maybe throw in a bit of (family dinner appropriate) flirting or at least find out if he’s single.
It’s really hard to hold a grudge against someone who is entirely your type.
While you’re conflicted, Rodrick, on the other hand, is sweating. Nervously fidgeting in his seat. You didn’t seem as irritated with him anymore, if the eye contact was anything to go by. Was this his chance to redeem his shitty first impression? He cursed his brain for failing to come up with something cool to say.
Since when is it so hard to talk to girls? Is it getting hotter in here? What impresses girls? What does he normally brag about? His band! That’s it. Now he just has to bring it up somehow. Maybe he can bribe Greg to ask him about it. No, that’s too risky, he can’t count on Greg to not fuck this up. He is just going to casually bring it up ‘I’m in a band by the way, pretty sick huh?’ ‘Do you like music? Cause I’m in a band’ No that’s stupid everyone likes music… ‘Which kind of music do you listen to?’ That’s good, he should bring up the topic of music first, that’s a normal conversation topic. After that step two is to bring up the band. That’s easy, he got this.
Now he just needs to wait till your attention is on him again and then he can smoothly lead the conversation in the desired direction. He has to calm down, he can do it.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Your eyes meet again.
“I’m in a band!” He speaks way louder than intended, his voice is squeaky, and in the middle of the sentence he has the most embarrassing voice crack imaginable.
Silence.
The sole attention is now on him. All he hears is Greg's snickering which causes him to kick him under the table.
“Ow!” That was not Greg's leg. He looks up to see you looking at him with a questioning expression.
That’s it. He fucked up. His chances were already low, but he still managed to shrink them even more, making them most likely completely vanish. Great. His ears were ringing, all he can hear is Greg's quiet laughter in the background.
“I'm sorry I didn’t mean to kick you, I-” he starts his apology but loses track of what he is trying to say when he sees your expression change. You're clearly trying to suppress a smile, but it's not working at all.
“You’re adorable.” Rowley chokes on his food, and Greg's laughter abruptly stops
“Rodrick? Adorable?” That’s it. Greg gives up on ever trying to understand girls. How can his stupid older brother embarrass himself like that, then kick the poor girl under the table and still be perceived as adorable by her, especially since she is so much out of his league?
Rodrick however, was still not functioning properly.
“So that band, is its name by any chance Löded Diaper?”
“Yeah.” He is proud of himself for speaking at an appropriate volume without stuttering. “How do yo-”
“I saw your creepy white Van in front of the house. What’s up with that, kidnapping little kids as a side hustle?” You are still smiling, and with your stupid joke you somehow manage to relax the atmosphere a bit, the adults going back to their conversation.
Rodrick too is now smiling, looking at you with an expression you could only describe as lovestruck, even though you just insulted him.
He is contemplating making a joke about how the space in the back could be quite useful for more than just trapping kids but decides against it, fearing to make it awkward again. Getting nervous about taking too much time to come up with an answer he instead lands on “No only kidnapping pretty girls like you.”. As soon as the words leave his mouth he regrets it, realizing it's in fact not a funny and flirty thing to say, but honestly rather creepy.
At the end of the evening, Rodrick has messed up flirting with you multiple times, however, it’s his luck that you find his desperate attempts to look cool to impress you weirdly endearing. Not that he realizes that. Calling Rodrick confused, questioning why you were still talking to him, would be an understatement.
He certainly doesn’t know how he can have messed up so many times and still end up finding a little note with your number on it in his pullover hood after you left.
#rodrick heffley x reader#rodrick x reader#rodrick heffley#fem!reader#diary of a wimpy kid#fluff#first meeting#oneshot#x reader#reader insert#fanfic
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There's a Hole that You Fill.
Pairing: Gregor Samsa (Limbus Company)/M!Fixer!Reader
Warnings: Vague and brief mention of violence, Emetophobia (in picture, not fic)
Commissioned by @wizardofwoof
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One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from agitated dreams, he found his room transformed around his bed into a monstrous vermin.
That is, to say, it was unfamiliar. And if he followed Faust’s explanation correctly, that entailed a shift in his psyche. So despite the metal walls appearing softer than usual, and the messages on the walls rearranged into something more reassuring, there was the kicker of not knowing what had changed, even when he knew something was off.
And the butterflies kicking in his stomach were getting awfully annoying too.
“Gregor, babe~ what’s that far-away stare for? You don’t wanna make poor Dante turn back the clock more than they have to, do you?”
Gregor huffs at the woman mocking him as he slashes at one of the Rats who thought it’d be a good idea to bash on Mephistopheles. “As if— that’s the last of them, anyway. C’mon.” The Sinner hides the embarrassing expression growing on his face by pretending to clean his glasses (is that a spec of blood? Must scrub even harder!), though he never knew Rodion to be a quitter.
“You can’t keep dodging the question forever… what’s on your mind?”
“Nothing much. My room just changed.”
“Changed how? Like someone reorganized it or…”
Gregor sighs and throws his coat over his shoulder, and uses his hand to properly push Rodion away. “If that was it you wouldn’t be bugging me so bad.”
Rodion stifles a smirk at that specific wording — she purposefully isn’t hiding it very well and it’s driving Gregor crazy — and leans on his head with her arm. “Why don’t you show me around then, hmm?”
“Maybe if it’ll get you to shut up,” he mumbles.
“What was that?”
“Huh- oh, uh, nothing, sure.”
Once steel hard walls now appear to have the texture of lace, with a light pink to match. Words that once read no more have now been covered with paint, taking on the form of hearts and stars and all sorts of other shapes. Curiously, it looked different than the blood once coating the room, the red more vibrant and childlike than the rich scarlet from before. The only thing that seemed to have avoided the repaint was the ashtray residing on the counter next to Gregor’s bed.
“Still haven’t given up that smoking habit? But this place seems like you’ve had a little feel-good arc, no?”
“I’ll give it up once you give up your gambling,” Gregor replies, although he’s too occupied moseying to his bed and collapsing onto it to think about what he’s saying. Still, Rodion chuckles with a, “touché,” and leans by the entrance.
“Is it that Fixer from the other day?”
“Was — ”
“What was he from… was it Zwei?”
“Yeah, I think, but—”
“A little birdie told me that we got a contract that says they’ll be working with us again~”
Gregor places his hand over his face and makes an exasperated sigh, pulling at his skin as he drags it downwards. He turns his head to look at Rodion, and she has the most shit-eating grin on her face. “I don’t know what makes you assume all that.”
“It’s really easy to tell when you get attached, hun,” she tilts her head and places her hands on her hips, almost disapprovingly.
“It is?”
“Oh. Oh, Greg.
“You’re fucked.”
Even as Vergilius is giving some kind of instruction, Gregor still finds himself distracted; though, it’s not like the other Sinners aren’t consistently distracted as well. He only snaps back to attention when asked if they understood… which they obviously did not. But that would be Dante’s problem, and besides, Gregor was one of the more composed fighters out of the bunch.
When they’re forced off the bus to meet up with the Zwei Fixers (something about another unusual Abnormality breakout, supposedly there’d be a Golden Bough trade-off that Gregor was certain wouldn’t go over smoothly), he finds himself stuck in one place and just staring intently, searching for someone in particular. He jumps when there’s a voice behind him.
“Gregor! I heard help was hired for this mission, but I didn’t imagine it’d be you guys again!”
Good God, he practically melts. But he knows better than to be caught unaware, shaking off the after-effects, and glances over his shoulder.
“Hey, bud, didn’t know you’d be here. They got you working to the bone, huh?”
“Well, with the casualties from last time, we’re going to be lacking units for a while… but it’s not all bad.”
He lost his religion a long time ago, but he finds himself praying that that sort of naivety won’t get you killed. Still, it was heartwarming to see you in good spirits.
You offer a hand to him, and he stands awkwardly for a moment, unsure. Were you expecting… a handshake? He barely catches you shaking your head before grabbing his hand and dragging him along, to catch up with the rest of the group. He thinks he hears you say it's safer if we stick together, right?
It's hard to make out over the pounding in his ears.
The battles were a bit of a blur. That sorta thing happens when it's the same thing over and over; a repetition he wasn't so fond of. He was the least fond of the fact the only fight he remembered was when he got caught off guard and almost shred to bits — if you hadn't stepped in and swept the opponent away with your blade, that is. You had said the slogan then, "We're the Zwei, 'Your Shield,'" and despite how cheesy it was and how he couldn't even be certain it was directed towards him (he swore by the look in your eyes that it was, and even if he misinterpreted that, he prayed it was still true), Gregor had mouthed something in response.
He didn't say goodbye to you when the company and the association had gone their ways, though he knew you wouldn't mind. You were far too nice to him for that.
"Geg? I'm hearing some banging, and not the good kind," Rodion spoke with a singsong voice, intruding into Gregor's room, unannounced and unwanted. It had changed again. "What's wrong?"
"...I said 'I love you.' He didn't even hear."
The taller Sinner sat by Gregor's bed, crossing her arms and sighing. "You'll just have to try again then, won't you?"
He opens his eyes slowly, sending her a glare, when her intentions finally hit him. He laughed and smothered the cigarette in his mouth in the ashtray to his right.
"Guess you're right."
#gregor samsa#rodion limbus company#rodion lcb#limbus company#x reader#reader insert#male reader#vergilius#thank you for comming me!
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apparently, you can’t ask the moonwood mill townies questions that prompt special answers once they join your household. so, i decided to grab all of lou’s responses from the string table :) i’m gonna post them here for future reference and in case anyone else wants to see what he says!
"Kristopher's a pretty cool Werewolf to have taken in everyone he has. Of course, he didn't take me in... so he kind of missed taking in the coolest wolf, but hey, he does an adequate job."
"I love me some PowerSip MIDNIGHT! I'm glad they're always fighting the legal battles to make their next big flavor. Who wouldn't want to taste MIDNIGHT? Seriously, they must have some spellcaster brewers making the stuff. How else do you harness the essence of night?"
"So I've snatched a few things over the years. A future cube, a few paintings, some children's toys—which I donated, so don't look at me like that! The best thing I ever took was a piano. Don't ask me how I did it. That's a secret."
"How did I end up in Moonwood Mill? Well, I stole a few things I probably shouldn't have, and I was on the run. I figured nobody would find me way out here in the middle of the wilderness. Guess I was right."
"Who doesn't want to be an immortal wolf? I hear you need to be pretty powerful to pull it off. Don't worry, I'll get there soon."
"Not sure how I feel about the concept of fated mates. Like, ONE Werewolf? FOREVER?? That's a lot of commitment."
"So I asked Celene out on a date, yeah. We were going for a walk over that bridge, when I heard a helpless kid or something crying for help. I'm a pretty nice guy, so I was like, ‘Hey Celene, we gotta go help the kid.’ We braved going past those signs and all that, and we ran into Greg. Well, I had to try and protect Celene. She was pretty scared! So I ran up to him and suggested Greg leave us alone. No taunting or anything, just a stern suggestion. He didn't take kindly to that, and well... here we are. That's the truth of it all!"
"I'm not sure I like the idea of Vampires. I guess most Werewolves don't... Spellcasters on the other hand? They sound pretty cool. I'd get together with one."
"Greg is kind of a problem. We all know it. I don't know why he came here in the first place if he doesn't want to join a pack and live like the rest of us."
"The Moonwood Collective isn't really my scene. They're too into nature. Have you seen them leaning on that old tree? No fire anywhere? BORING."
"Rory was a lone Alpha until I joined her pack. It just felt right to me. We're a good fit as a pack and I like how she encourages me to explore being a Werewolf."
"Who knows if I'd take a cure or not. I mean, right now? No. My pack is pretty cool. I'm still figuring out everything I can do. Why would I want to give that up?"
"Yeah, okay, I'll admit that I feel kind of bad about what happened to Celene. I know she was pretty traumatized by it all. She, well... we were both pretty scared. I don't know, I don't think I want to talk about it, even with you."
"When you're the new wolf on the block, you'll notice that you certainly have less control than the others. Give it time, it gets better."
"I'm always getting asked why I didn't take the antidote after our encounter, like Celene did. Well, I figured I was strong enough to ride it out. It was just a small bite! I guess I was wrong... "
"Just because I'm all about embracing the inner beast doesn't mean I'm opposed to someone seeking a cure. Be true to you. That's what's important. Just don't try to make me take it!"
"If I wasn't a Werewolf, I think I'd want to be a Mermaid. Surprised? Eh, don't be. They also have a connection to the moon, you know? With the tides and all that. Did you know mermaids can stay out of the water longer during a Full Moon?"
#he had WAY more responses than i was anticipating#i saw maybe like....2 of these in regular gameplay sheesh
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I want to share some GreenViolet headcanon with you!!!
This is their song
They cling when cuddling
As per lion traits, Herman saves a portion of food for Greg
As per wolf ways, Greg smells shit before he eats them or use them
Herman gets nightmares of his murder a lot and only holding Greg close and inhaling his old paint and house flower scent would calm him down enough to talk until he's asleep
Legit that bitch cried when Greg fainted and Edgar and Lawrence tried to calm him down but didn't work
They started dating right after becoming Prefects but remained a secret until Edgar and Lawrence almost walked on them making out before the Midnight Tea Party and finally said they're dating to their friends and their both like "I-It was supposed to be a secret-"
They are switches your honor!
They used to hork it a lot in school, no one questioned why Greg was in Green Lion House in the middle of the night if they saw him cause "oh they're doing some Prefect shit"
Greg secretly has lots of sketches of Herman and will DIE BEFORE SHOWING ANYONE
Hiii, first of all! As always, I am very sorry for the late reply, and I want to thank you for liking our GreenViolet content and creating more of it! I am so happy that these two are a thing now….
Second of all, thank you for sharing your headcanons with us! They are cute and fun and I agree with a lot of them, especially the ones that nod to their lion/wolf themes. It’s also kind of fun to think about them being together and sleeping with each other and kind of hiding it, but also kind being not being able to keep a secret from their friends…
Oh and the song is lovely and very fitting!
In response, both as an apology for a late reply and frankly just because I needed an excuse to do it lol, I’ll share our headcanons for these two. This is a slightly different vision from yours (well obviously), and we don’t see them as switches, but I still hope you’ll enjoy these.
Gregory has been crushing hard on Herman for a long time, but he is horrible at opening up to someone, and Herman is horrible at getting hints, so it’ll take them some time to get together. But once the light bulb above Herman’s head lights up, he’ll pounce at Gregory and will never leave him alone lol the guy is intense.
Gregory is sure that Herman is more of a sensitive romantic out of the two of them (and a very naive one at that), but he is also quite a sensitive romantic himself. The smallest things that Herman does could get a reaction out of him, like a smile, a touch, a kind gesture or a word of support. Even if Gregory scoffs, his heart starts beating faster.
Gregory’s teasing of Herman is basically his weird way of flirting. He can’t flirt with him openly, because it’s too embarrassing (and a bit scary), so he just messes with him. Although, when he gets a bit aggressive (like when he threw a piece of bread at him), he is likely frustrated because Herman is, once again, horrible at getting hints.
Just like you said: Gregory has A LOT of sketches of Herman: some are neutral, like portraits and stuff, but some are more explicit. No one will ever see these, especially not Herman. Although poor Herman never gets to see any of Gregory’s artworks…
It’s not unusual for Gregory to watch Herman’s cricket games and training, but he is usually very stealthy about it: he knows where to sit to stay unnoticed by others. He goes there both to stare and to sketch, doing extremely important studies of certain Herman’s body parts…
Gregory would kiiinda like for Herman to model for him without any clothes, but it would be quite difficult for him to gather the courage to ask Herman about it. Even though Herman would never refuse. Anything for his friend’s art!
They have gotten really close after “the incident”. If they haven’t gotten together before this point, they’ll definitely start sleeping with each other afterwards. There is this air of “well, there’s nothing to lose anymore” between them, so it all happened naturally. But also very passionately and desperately.
Herman was quite surprised by Gregory’s sexual energy at first, and by how eager Gregory was to try some things. As we know, Herman is kind of a horny boy himself, but for some reason he always assumed that Gregory is just way too immersed with his artistic world to even have desires or any interest in sex. He was so wrong with his perception…
Gregory is kinkier than Herman in general, but it doesn’t mean that Herman is vanilla by nature. He is just too “simple” and never thinks about these things. But he is also quite eager and ready for anything, even if he didn’t know it was a thing a moment ago.
Herman always says that he’ll be gentle, and it’s always a lie because Herman’s head stops working the moment he touches Gregory’s skin under his clothes. In fact, he is quite intense, but Gregory really enjoys all the bite marks, bruises and hickeys he has all over his neck/shoulders, wrists and thighs. The fact that they are completely covered by his cloak and that not a single person knows what happens under his clothes kind of tingles him pleasantly.
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Bugs in love
Chapter Two
Flower Power (A.K.A Delighla Peters)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1954 was the year Delighla was born and in most of the worlds of the spiders she knows, she is probably in her 80s, but on her earth, she’s 18 years old and the year 1972. She loves her New York City, and loves the fact she's from the 70s but she feels that she's behind a little.
“Pav, my man, put the dogs away,” Miles joked. “Like man, why you got your toes out?”
Pav started laughing as the rest of the group followed along… but dogs? Dogs? People in 2023 call feet…dogs? What has the world come to? Oh, god, she was probably going to be one of those judgy old people, wasn't she?
“So… Aurora has another concert, she can’t hang out tonight,” Delighla said
“Man, she’s been busy, hasn’t she?” Gwen said.
“Yeah, Colorpop is back again,” Delighla replied.
“You know ‘at, mate, I’ma pay ‘er a visit. I’ma go to ‘er concert. What ‘bout you four?” Hobie asked.
“Nah, punk isn’t really my thing,” Miles said.
“Same here,” Gwen agreed.
Pav nodded as he looked at a magazine.
“I’ll go!” Delighla said happily.
“Let's pay our favorite vampire a visit, eh?” Hobie said as he stood up.
~*~
Delighla and Hobie walked out of the alleyway the portal opened in and walked out into the street. Delilah looked like she came straight out of a 70s TV show and Hobie fit right in with the other people around them as they walked to the venue where the gig was being held. Hobie’s casual outfit looked like his spider suit, some pants, and just a black tee shirt instead. Delilah wore a white dress that she made and painted the same pattern from her suit onto it. Her hair was big and curly like usual but neatly pushed back with a headband but still had the iconic 70s beehive hairdo and some chunky white platform heels.
“Dressin’ up to impress yer Doris, eh, mate?” Hobie teased.
“What! No! We're not dating!” Delighla exclaimed as her face turned beet red.
The Stonewall Movement had only just started three years ago on her earth so Delighla knew that being gay was okay, she just didn’t know if she was gay.
“Whatever ya say, mate,” Hobie shrugged as the line started moving.
“... Do you think she’ll like it though…?”
“Twirl, ‘course she will. Don’t worry too much ‘bout it,” Hobie said as he showed the guy at the door the tickets they somehow got… don't ask, they most definitely did something illegal.
The two walked in, flashing lights, lots of people dancing, there was a mosh pit in a corner, blaring music and people screamed along.
“I ‘ink ‘ey get on at eight, it's only seven right now,” Hobie yelled over the music.
“Okay!” Delighla yelled back.
The music was so loud that Delighla could barely hear her thoughts. She stuck close to Hobie to avoid getting lost in the large crowd. After a while, the opening band finished their set and people cheered for them but cheered louder once the next band got on the stage. The Vamps. Aurora- The lead singer, Skunk- the drummer, Stella- the backup singer and backup guitarist, and finally Greg - the main guitarist.
Aurora wore a leather mini skirt that she painted a red spider web and spider onto, a jean vest, and a button-up top under it. Panty hoes and some black knee-high boots.
“Look ‘a ‘at, yer Doris got all dressed up,” Hobie said as he looked at Aurora.
“Shut it!” Delighla snapped. “Is this a joke to you!?”
“I don’t believe in comedy.”
Delighla huffed, her face bright red as she threw a straw at the taller male. Hobie chuckled as The Vamps' opening song started. Delighla wasn’t all for punk, she never was. She was more into the Beatles and jazz but she only came to see Aurora and Hobie knew that, everyone knew that. But she didn’t mind, she would listen to people scream into a mic-- especially if that person screaming was Aurora-- if that meant she got to see her again for an hour or two. Delighla sat at their table, watching them and taking sips of her drink-- which was a flower power martini that Hobie got her.
~*~
An hour and thirty minutes is how long their set was, and Delighla never knew that Aurora had that many songs, or that she was a great singer, to be honest.
“‘Right, mate. Just paid our tab, let's go see, Miss Vamp over ‘ere,” Hobie said as he dragged Delighla out of her seat.
“What!? No! Wait! Hold on! I’m not ready!” She yelled as she tried to get Hobie to let go of her.
She’d hardly seen Aurora out of her spider suit and she had been drinking; she was a lightweight. This wasn’t going to end well.
“Come on, mate! Let's go see yer Doris, eh?” Hobie teased as he dragged her backstage.
Behind the curtain stood all of The Vamps’ bandmates but no Aurora.
“Uh- guys, who are these two?” Stella asked as she pointed at them.
Stella was a shorter, plus-sized girl dressed in Vampiric goth attire.
“Uh- I don’t know…” Skunk replied.
He was tall and skinny and dressed in a 2000s emo style.
“Well, mate, glad ya asked. Name’s Hobie. This is Delighla-- we're friends o’ Aurora,” Hobie explained.
Greg looked at them before speaking.
“Like, her other job?” He asked, hinting towards her being Spider-Woman.
“Yeah, that ‘ne, mate.” Hobie shrugged.
“Last I checked, I was the only one helping her,” Skunk said.
“Uh… long story,” Delighla rushed.
“Okay! I’m back…” Aurora drifted off when she saw the duo. “Uh, what are you two doing here?”
“We ‘anted to pay our favorite vampire a visit,” Hobie said. “Figured ya wouldn’t mind if we crashed yer gay an’ hearty,”
“Ah, no, I guess I’m just surprised and all…what’s up with Delighla?” Aurora questioned.
“Seems she’s a lightweight,” Hobie shrugged.
“No ‘m not…!” Delighla slurred, leaning against Hobie’s taller frame for support.
“Whatever. Yer Doris was beggin’ to see ya. Was hopin’ ya’d like ‘er fit.” Hobie said, turning his attention back to Aurora.
“Hobie!” Delighla whined drunkenly, hitting the said male’s arm. “You promised not to tell…”
“My Doris…? You know what, never mind. Uh, what’d you think of the show?” Aurora asked.
“It was amazing!” Delighla slurred, stumbling over to Aurora and hugging her.
“Really? I didn’t see you as the kind of person that likes punk rock.” Aurora admitted.
“I don’t…”
“Oh.”
Aurora sighed as the smaller woman clung to her.
“Let me guess, you guys need a place to crash?” Aurora asked the duo.
“Yeah… I don’t ‘ink Delighla ‘an go back like ‘at. She don’t seem ‘oo hunky-dory,” Hobie replied.
Aurora sighed. In all honesty, she didn’t mind Delighla staying over at her place but she hated that Hobie knew that and was setting her up. Although, if that was the worst of it, then it wasn’t too bad.
“Hey, Skunk?” Aurora turned over to her roommate.
“Yeah?” He hollered back.
“I’ma let Hobie and Delighla crash at our place, is that okay?” She hollered back.
“Yeah! I was gonna crash at Greg’s anyways,” He hollered back.
“Great, looks like you two have a place to crash,” Aurora said. “Hey, Delighla, are you still with us?”
A little hum could be heard as the redhead clung to the taller woman more.
“Hobie? A little help carrying her?” Aurora requested.
“Nah, yer on yer own, mate.” Hobie denied, shoving his hands into his vest pockets and spinning on his heel.
“Wha- what do you mean no!? You brought her here!”
“She’s yer Doris,”
“What does that even mean!?”
Hobie only shrugged as he continued to walk away. Aurora sighed and scooped Delighla up in her arms. The vampire waved goodbye to her bandmates before begrudgingly following the punk spider.
~*~
Aurora groaned as she opened her apartment door and walked in, still carrying Delighla in her arms. Hobie walked in after her and flopped down on Aurora’s couch. It was how you’d think-- band posters everywhere, pictures of all of the bandmates together hanging out, posters, dining plates-- mostly black, but still looked good.
“Nice couch,” Hobie said as he watched Aurora carry Delighla to her room.
“Thanks, you're welcome to sleep there. I don’t think Skunk would like you in his bed,” Aurora said as she walked away to her room.
She walked in and shut the door with her foot, placing Delighla on her bed. Delighla almost instantly cuddled up in her sheets, hugging a black flower pillow that Aurora owned.
“No, you can’t go to sleep yet. I need to get that makeup off of you,” Aurora said as she sat Delighla up against her headboard and walked over to her vanity to grab some makeup remover.
Delighla whined as she was moved and was almost sitting properly. Aurora walked back over and with a little cotton pad she poured the liquid on and started to wipe off the other spider’s makeup. Once she was done, she put her stuff back before sifting through her dresser drawers. She tossed some clothes over at Delighla while holding some of hers.
“I’m going to change in the back room. You can change here. And please, be done when I get back,” Aurora said as she walked out to go into the back room to change.
Thankfully, when she came back, Delighla was fully dressed and half asleep in her bed. Aurora didn’t mind sleeping with her. She had to share a bed for the first ten years of her life with her mom until things started getting good and then it happened… She sighed as she crawled into her bed. Delighla instantly cuddled up with her, burying her face in her chest. Aurora buried her crimson face into Delighla’s curly mess of hair. It smelled strongly of hairspray and daffodils. Aurora can’t remember the last time she had a sweet moment like this, cuddling with a woman in her bed. God, that had to be years ago when she was dating her ex. That was around two years ago when they broke up after she graduated from high school. She sighed as she cuddled closer to the warm body that was loosely holding onto her, hoping that it never ends.
~*~
Aurora woke up to the sound of two people talking. She groaned and got out of the bed that Delighla was still asleep in. She walked out of her room groggy and still tired, and a little pissed off from being woken up so early. She walked out to see Dracula arguing with Hobie.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house? Hasn’t your mother ever taught you not to just barge into places?!” She snapped.
“Where's Delighla? Hobie and her have a mission that they need to do,” Miguel said as he looked at Aurora.
“She can’t, she’s hung over. I’ll take her place,” Aurora calmly said.
Miguel sighed to calm himself as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Fine, fine… If she’s hung over she’s in no state to fight” Miguel complied.
“Thank you, now get the fuck out of my house! Who taught you that you could just waltz in here!? Certainly wasn’t your mother!” Aurora snapped.
Miguel sat there for a moment, taken aback a little, but groaned and soon left, muttering to himself in Spanish as he pushed buttons on his watch before opening a portal and leaving. Aurora groaned when the man left and also left the living room muttering something in Spanish too as she left to go put her suit on.
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sugar sugar - the planning 4.0
Summary: The two of them are coming back from their bachelor/bachelorette parties
Sugar Daddy!Henry Cavill x Becky Kim (asian OFC)
Warnings: Sex, blowjob, squirting
Wordcount: 2.3k
A/N: Their wedding is coming closer!
Masterlist // Sugar Sugar Masterlist // Sugar Sugar the wedding Masterlist // Previous chapter //
April 3rd 1 a.m.
This night seemed never ending, but it was kinda funny nonetheless. Seeing Genevieve live out her Magic Mike fantasy, made me turn into the Regina George’s mom of Mean Girls and film her as two attractive oiled up men were grinding up against her, while Viola kept screeching out of sheer awkwardness.
With a smile on my face, I walk into the apartment, only to discover an absolutely parched Henry on the couch. He takes a sip out of a water bottle, which is a rare sight. When he is drained like this, he usually needs a whiskey to feel better. ‘What happened to you?’ I ask, causing him to look up.
‘They pulled me into a strip club,’ Henry answers, his eyes tired and followed by a deep sigh.
They as in Greg, Noah, Gino and Peter. This must’ve been Genevieve planning the entire thing. ‘Me too,’ I chuckle. ‘Just so you know, your bare ass has my preference.’ I kick off my heels and straddle his thick thighs, before wrapping my arms around his neck. ‘You look like you’ve seen multiple ghosts over the course of the night. It couldn’t possibly be that terrible.’
Henry starts to laugh. ‘It was. I don’t think I have ever been this uncomfortable. I absolutely despised that place.’
‘Why?’ I ask him, undoing his tie a bit.
‘I had no idea they would take me there,’ he says. ‘And don’t get me wrong, those women were beautiful and good at their job, but I couldn’t stop thinking of you. It felt like borderline cheating to me.’
I don’t think I ever have to worry about Henry being unfaithful to me. Such a sweetheart. He continues to talk about the perverted types sitting there and how one guy even started to help himself a little, but because he is so busy talking, he barely notices I’m unbuttoning the top of his shirt, before taking off my thin cardigan, revealing only a light blue crop top.
Only when he finally manages to tear his gaze from the ceiling, he stops talking. ‘Oh,’ he says, leaning forward to press a kiss on my cheek. ‘This I like.’
‘I knew it,’ I say. ‘I’m the only one you want.’
‘Of course,’ he scoffs. ‘Why on earth would I want someone else?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. Just be honest with me. Didn’t it turn you on even a little? I mean, you told me yourself they were beautiful.’
‘Yeah, they were, but they didn’t turn me on,’ he says. ‘I mean, years ago it maybe would’ve, but now, you are the only one that can turn me on. Nobody and nothing beats your body, your kisses and your whimpers.’ He kisses my lips. ‘I love you and only you.’
‘Hm,’ I say with a smile. ‘I am probably the luckiest woman on the planet. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if you were turned on a little.’
‘Were you?’
I shake my head. ‘Oh no, I barely had time for that. I mean, besides filming Genevieve having the time of her life, I just admired certain dance moves. Damn, do those men know how to move those hips.’ I run my fingers through his hair. ‘And I know I said it before, but I’ll say it again: your ass is my absolute favorite and I prefer your hairy chest over those smooth oiled up ones I saw there.’
He starts to laugh. ‘Good thing your body is my favorite as well. No one can meet up to the standards you set.’
‘You’re so cute,’ I say to him with a chuckle. ‘Especially because you’ve spend an entire night at a strip club and now is the time where you grow a little excited.’
‘Teasing me, baby girl?’ he chuckles darkly, giving me a long kiss.
‘Maybe a little, it’s just that it’s the best way for you to give me a compliment.’ I step off his lap, before I unzip his fly. ‘Just relax, okay?’
‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m already relaxed,’ he says.
I sit on my knees in front of the couch, before I pull down his pants. He leans back, after he holds my hairs in his hand. I let my tongue run over his tip and he groans softly. The grip on my hair tightens and I look up, meeting his eyes, his teeth sunk in his bottom lip.
Deciding I’m not gonna tease him too long (he has had a long night), I slowly take more and more of him in my mouth. The tip of his cock hits the back of my throat, but thanks to the many secret blowjobs underneath his desk, my gag reflex is becoming less of a reflex now. He softly forces me down a little further and I let out a moan. The vibrations cause him to buck up his hips, leaving me to slightly gag on him.
‘Oh, shit baby, I’m sorry,’ he says.
I look up, drool dripping down my chin. ‘It’s okay, honey.’
‘Oh, it’s honey now?’ he asks cocking his eyebrow. ‘We’re not in public, so you better call me something else.’
I smile. ‘I’m sorry, daddy.’ My thighs are pushed against each other, as the heat gathers in my thong. Hearing him like this, feeling him bucking up his hips and the slight pulling on my hair. It does things to me.
When I release him with a pop, he softly pulls me up by my hair, before he presses a sloppy kiss on my lips. ‘Take off your clothes, baby girl,’ he says.
I quickly shred myself from the blue crop top that didn’t need a bra and the matching short. When my thong hits the floor, Henry grabs me by my waist, squeezing the soft flesh. ‘I love you,’ he whispers. ‘In around three weeks we’re married and you’re officially my wife.’
I can’t stop my faint blush. ‘We’re gonna get married,’ I say. ‘I can’t wait.’
He hoists me up and says: ‘Me neither.’ I expect him to take this to the bedroom, but he is too damn impatient, because he bends me over the back of the couch. Without a lot of preparation, he slides deep inside of me.
I try to gain some sort of stance, but my toes are barely touching the floor. He tightly grabs onto my hips. I push the palms of my hands in the cushions of the couch to hold myself up, as Henry rams himself roughly back inside of me. I bite my lip to stop myself from moaning out loud, but it earns me a harsh slap on my butt.
‘I need to hear you, baby girl,’ he grunts.
A strangled moan leaves my lips, before it’s followed by many loud moans that fill the living room. ‘Daddy, I’m close,’ I whine and I really wished I hadn’t said that, because he pulls out, leaving me nearly begging for more.
‘I know you’re gonna make a mess,’ he says, ‘since you always do so.’ He pulls me up and smiles. ‘We don’t want to ruin the couch, right?’
I shake my head. ‘No, we don’t.’
He carries me to the kitchen counter, placing me on the cold granite. He buries his member into my throbbing center, holding my chin in between his fingers. ‘So fucking beautiful,’ he mumbles. His thumb runs over my bottom lip, before he pulls me in a deep kiss. I open my mouth, our tongues so familiar with one another.
As his tip kisses my cervix every single time he thrusts in, it nearly forces a whiney moan out of me. He always goes deep, but it’s different this time. It feels so so different. ‘Daddy, you’re so deep.’
He smiles. ‘I know that, baby girl. You like that, don’t you?’
I nod, feeling myself flutter around him. ‘Can I cum?’ I ask, digging my nails in his shoulders.
‘Of course, baby.’
I throw my head back, as I squirt around him, indeed making such a mess. He knows me too well. As I ride out my high, Henry buries his face in my neck, sucking on the delicate skin there. I cry out, sensitivity taking over and my nails marking his back. He grunts as he paints my velvet walls from the inside, his fingers tips digging deep in my legs.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whimper, as insecurity takes over. ‘Daddy, I’m so sorry.’
‘What’s wrong, baby?’ he asks. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’
‘I made such a mess.’ My legs are sticky, I know his legs are too and let’s just not say anything about the walls of the kitchen island.
‘Have I ever complained about that before?’ Henry asks with a cocked eyebrow.
I shake my head. ‘No.’
He cradles my face in his hands and whispers: ‘Then don’t you worry about it, okay?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I chuckle nervously. ‘I’ll try.’
Henry cocks his head, taking in every feature of my face. ‘Something’s bothering you?’ he asks me.
Maybe a little. ‘Not necessarily,’ I whisper.
‘You want to talk about it?’
I bite my lip. ‘It’s stupid.’
‘You could never say something stupid,’ he says. ‘How about a bath?’
‘Sounds good.’
✤ ✤ ✤
With my back against Henry’s chest, I stare at the ceiling in the bathroom. We’re engulfed in warm water and he finally asks: ‘So, what’s going inside your head, baby girl?’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘the other day it kinda hit me that… When you and I get married, there is a possibility for a divorce. You can exchange me for anyone you want.’
He wraps his arms around my upper body, pulling me closer to him. ‘And why would I do that?’
‘I don’t know. An opportunity?’
He gives me a kiss on top of my head. ‘I love you and only you, mrs Becky Cavill. I am not spending a lot of money on a wedding I know will fail. Heck, I wouldn’t even proposed to you if I wasn’t this serious about you.’
I sigh deeply, realizing worrying about this was absolutely nonsense. ‘I don’t even know what I was worried about.’
‘Just tell me these things, okay?’ Henry says. ‘I wanna be there for you.’
‘I promise,’ I say with a smile. ‘I promise.’
April 24th 9 p.m.
Tomorrow we’re getting married and these last few weeks have been kinda hectic. My dad is officially divorced, lives in a lovely house downtown and has yet to decorate his place, but with the wedding coming up and him actively wanting to help out, that just has to wait.
Genevieve and Viola never met my parents, but they are sure as hell absolutely mad about my dad. They continue to call him: ‘cute as a button’ and I almost feel like he is our dad, instead of just mine. Without the wedding band and my mom next to him, I realize that my dad is actually such a nice guy. We get along really well and he is dead set on improving our relationship, just like I am.
While I did suggest he’d walk me down the aisle, he found himself not worthy of it and though I told him he was, I still respect that decision.
We’re at our destination for our wedding. We chose Maui, Hawaii for a few reasons. One, the weather is great and two, my friends, Henry’s friends and my dad are gonna stay for a little vacation there, while Henry and I go to our private island to start our honeymoon.
I honestly couldn’t be more excited. Henry and I took all sorts of measurements, checking the venue, seeing if everything is alright and then, tomorrow: we’re gonna be husband and wife.
Henry has been reading his vows for at least fifteen minutes now, when he finally folds the paper and places it on the book that we’re taking with us tomorrow.
Leave it to Henry to book the most expensive room in the entire hotel, with a view to die for. My dad had his eyes on a little place, one he had been eyeing for so long. Henry arranged it for him, even making sure he had access to the pool and a taxi.
‘Baby,’ he whispers, when he wraps his arms around my waist. ‘How about a little love making? Last time before we’re husband and wife.’
‘Henry, we had sex today,’ I chuckle. ‘Aren’t you ever tired of me?’
‘No, never.’
I turn around in his arms and say: ‘I’d like to be able to walk down the aisle tomorrow.’
‘That’s why I said a little love making.’
‘How about you and I enjoy the jacuzzi?’ I suggest. ‘I’ll be naked.’
Within ten minutes we’re all set and done in the jacuzzi and I straddle his lap, before taking a sip of my wine. ‘So, when you and I are back from our honeymoon, what do you want to do?’ I ask.
‘I want to travel to some places with you,’ he says. ‘Go look for a new place for the two of us to live in. Get you pregnant.’
I snort. ‘Oh, how romantic.’
‘What?’ He starts to laugh. ‘I mean, it’s the goal eventually right?’
‘We could adopt a dog from the shelter,’ I say, ‘get a little practice in. I mean, a dog and a baby are not comparable, but still.’
‘I’d love that.’ He pulls me closer to him and gives me a kiss. ‘I’m just gonna say it now, but expect to hear this many many times. I can’t wait for you to be pregnant.’
I smile. ‘And why is that?’ I ask him. ‘So I’m even more helpless and you have to do more for me?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, because we made a baby together and are gonna have a family of our own. I mean, how amazing is it that we’re gonna be the Cavills, right?’
I squeal. ‘Oh my, that is so amazing. I cannot wait for that to happen either. I’m tempted to quit my birth control right now.’
‘What is stopping you?’
‘Well, I want to have a little bit more childless time with you,’ I say. ‘Just you and me, traveling the world.’
‘Sounds good, baby girl.’
#henry cavill#henry cavill fanfic#henry cavill fandom#sugar daddy!henry cavill#sugar sugar#henry cavill x becky kim#henry cavill x asian ofc#henry cavill x ofc#henry cavill x oc#asian ofc#becky kim
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G-Bots (TM)
Googleplier (x4) x viewer!reader
ty anon for the request!
A/N: Funny story! I am no longer physically capable of writing normally! I tried so hard to be normal and just veered off into SCP/Cryptid viewer territory because I like expanding on the idea that the viewer is Not Human! Anyways, you’re hanging out with the Googles. That is it. Nothing is wrong. You do not recognize the bodies in the water haha anyways I think I like went a little creepypasta-esque at the end there but it’s fine I think probably. It’s fine. Might be a little weird in terms of story, but i think this was more focused on world building to me. Probably seen as more platonic than romantic, but see it however you wish. Enjoy!
Word count: 2.5k
G-Bots (TM)
You wheezed just a bit as you sped through wherever-the-fuck you were. Sure, maybe that was a bad idea. Sure, Dark was a little bit threatening and SURE, you were supposed to be back by now, and the fact that you weren’t back with Mark trying to convince him NOT to split up was the tiniest bit problematic. You weren’t even sure this was a building? Were you in the void? Goddammit, not again…
You stopped, concluding that this was bullshit and you did not want to do it right now. You bent over, hands on your knees and took deep breaths. You stared into the emptiness for a bit, then looked around for a moment, just trying to figure things out. You needed to reassess. It was basically one big, long hallway with random twists and terms every few meters. You’d always end up back at the paintings of… them… and knew you’d gone too far. You did that over, and over, and over again. At this point you thought Dark had just forgotten about you. You took a deep breath in and let it out. You stood up straight and looked up at the paintings. You heard their voices echo through your head a bit. You squeezed your eyes shut and your head twitched.
“You’re alright… you’re ok… cool it…” You whispered to yourself. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Meditate. Think.
You looked on either side of the hall and, for the first time, you noticed doors extending down into the void and not stopping. You let out a breath. You felt a slight sense of dread. Something was telling you not to enter the rooms. Some little voice in the back of your head that sounded suspiciously like Mark. But, hey, what else were you gonna do?
“Ok… do i want to enter the door on the left or the door on the right?” You asked yourself. You paused to think about it. After a few seconds you felt yourself jerk forward a bit. Your brain felt staticy and you felt compelled to the left. You turned the knob and opened the door slightly. Immediately you heard music that might be in an SCP game, and a voice that sounded suspiciously like “do you recognize the bodies in the water?”. You were hoping no, and you bailed before you had a chance to look. You ended up almost exactly in your previous position in the hall. Your brain felt fuzzy again, and this time you gravitated to the right. You opened the door just a little, maybe to see what was inside, but again you heard the SCP ambiance.
But this time it was from behind you. So, like any smart person, you swung the door open, slammed it behind you and did your best to lock it. But there was no lock. So you stood. Waiting. Nothing happened.
Of course nothing happened. Why would anything happen? Dark wouldn’t want you to get hurt… probably. This was his domain. Probably. If you were alive, it’s because he wanted you to be. If you were in this room, it’s because he wanted you to be.
Speaking of: Where the hell were you?
You turned around to look behind you. In the blank white room there was a single grey couch with all 4 Google androids sitting on it. Apparently they were recharging, because they hadn’t noticed you standing there and also they were plugged into an outlet in the wall. You hadn’t considered that they had to physically plug into something to charge up, but the thought made you snort.
Bad idea.
All of their eyes snapped open at once, revealing the glow of their assigned colors. They all stood up and began walking towards you in unison. You felt a slight sense of dread. Even so, you tried to grab the doorknob, the one that apparently was no longer there, and cursed under your breath when you could only feel the smooth wall behind you. The androids stopped, staring at you. You cleared your throat.
“Hey…” you laughed nervously, “So, uh, funny story, actually-”
“You are not supposed to be here,” The original Googleplier, Blue, stated.
“Well, see, that’s where this whole thing started, um, see, Mark wanted to split up-”
“No human is allowed inside of this room, and not you, either.”
“Well-” You stopped, processing what he said, “Wait. ‘Either’? I’m human.”
“No, you’re not,” Google Green said. You wanted to be offended, but you were more confused.
“What do you mean? I’m human!” You argued.
“What color’s your hair?” Red asked with a mean smirk on his face. You opened your mouth to respond, and an amalgamate of voices saying “BROWNBLACKBLONDEWHITERED” came out. You slapped a hand over your mouth.
“... what the hell was that?” Your muffled voice whispered. Well, you thought it was probably yours.
“What’s your eye color?” BROWNGREENBLUEAMBERYELLOW exited your being before you could even try to answer.
“Do you have any pets?” That one just ended with a computer error sound from you.
“... huh.” You dropped your shoulders a little. The revelation probably should’ve upset you more.
“What are you doing here?”
“I… do not recognize the bodies in the water.” You explained.
“Ah, I see. Darkiplier would want you to not die, therefore you may stay.”
“Ha. Wow. Who knew the Googleplier androids-”
“G-Bots.”
“... what?”
“We are legally not allowed to use the name ‘Google’ anymore. We are now G-Bots.”
“... legally.”
“We were discontinued. And sold. And signed a contract.”
“So does that mean I can’t call you Google anymore?”
“No, that is simply my name. The name of us as androids, however, is now G-Bots.”
“Ok. What about them?” You pointed to the other three.
“Yellow is Oliver, Green is Lee, Red is Elliott.”
“And you’re just Google?”
“They’ve been trying to change my name to Gregor. I deeply dislike it.”
“It’s a good name.” Oliver suggested, smiling.
“Means vigilant.” Lee shrugged.
“Don’t be a pussy, Greg.” Elliott adopted a shit-eating grin as he leaned a little closer to Google.
“You can do… whatever you wish. Just do not be like them, DA.” Google instructed through gritted teeth.
The room began to shift color and expand. The couch was still grey in the center, but there were now four sections of each of the colors. The yellow section was filled with flowers, with a laptop on a desk next to a switch and a little Vector robot sitting by on the windowsill that showed a colorful meadow with bees buzzing to and fro. It glitched for a moment, so you knew the window wasn’t real. The green section had large houseplants and looked a bit like a greenhouse, and had an Xbox hooked up to a TV in the corner and seemed to have a view of a lake in the faux-window. The red section had miscellaneous wires and computer parts and lights here and there, looking like a fire hazard, and a PC on a table, while the window showed what appeared to be space. Google’s section was absolutely spotless, not a single thing anywhere, apart from a tiny skateboard next to a PS4 in the corner, and the window showed computer code.
“Wow.” You said. You might be stuck here for a while, so you might as well enjoy it.
Though you wondered who DA was.
--
You hate to say it, but you had a favorite G Bot. It was kind of like having a favorite child, in your mind. You felt like they somehow knew that you had a favorite, but you didn’t know why.
Oliver was the sweetest by far, immediately going to make you as comfortable or entertained as possible while you were with him. He asked you if you wanted to watch something, if you wanted to play a game, if you were hungry, etc. It was kind of like going over to a friend’s house for the first time. He was enthusiastic to the point where he was shaking with anxiety over wanting to make you happy. You thought he didn’t get many visitors and maybe that was why. He showed you his flowers, and the bees, and a small painting in the corner, hoping for validation. His glowing eyes seemed to dull when you moved on to the next section, but said you’d visit him again. That did help, but he turned away sadly and went to water his flowers.
Lee seemed as though he couldn’t care less if you were there. He told you where everything was and that you could do whatever. If you asked for help, he would stop what he was doing and help you. Once you understood, he immediately resumed his previous task. He was a bit cold, like Google, but in a “I am very busy but I am still here if you need me” sort of way. He played a game or two with you, having a preference for the puzzle games more than anything else. Puzzle horror, more specifically. If there was a shooting part, he immediately shoved the controller into your hands, saying he didn’t want to do that part. When you left, he simply continued with his work without a goodbye.
Elliott tried so hard to ignore you for the longest time. You could hear him scoff and growl anytime you made any sort of noise. You were self conscious at first, but you came to understand that he was just an asshole. You started on a game, playing for a few minutes, and felt the red couch sink next to you because he had sat down next to you. If he thought you sucked (which he did) he would snatch the controller from you and finish whatever you were doing before giving it back. He refused to say anything or help you, either. He’d just make rude noises and walk away occasionally before coming back. When you left, he seemed a lot angrier than he had before, and wouldn’t say goodbye to you. He turned away with a huff and started pressing random buttons on the controller.
Google was by far the least interested in anything you had to do. You sat on the couch next to him, and he didn’t move an inch. You sat there for a bit, waiting, but he did not move. You stood up, walked around, messed with a few things, attempted to play a game or two. Google didn’t move. You pulled up the Gamer ChairTM and sat directly in front of Google, arms crossed. You sighed. Finally, he looked up at you.
“Is there something you need?” He asked in that monotone voice of his.
“I’m bored,” you said.
“Go to one of the others,” He closed his eyes.
“What are you doing?” You asked, curious.
“That is not-” He sounded exasperated.
“Hey Google, what are you doing?” You interrupted like the little shit you were
“Currently, this G Bot system is recharging its battery. This G Bot is at: 69%.” He shifted to a purely robotic voice.
“Haha nice.”
“This G Bot’s primary objective is to answer questions as quickly as possible. Would you like to ask a question?”
“Yes. What do you like to do, Google?”
“I enjoy answering your questions. Do you have any more?”
“What company owns you?”
“G-Bots were recently sold by the Google company to Warfstache Incorporated.”
“Wilford has a company?”
“Warfstache Incorporated is co-owned by Wilford ‘Motherloving’ Warfstache and Damien-Dami-Da-Darkiplier.” He glitched while answering.
“Who’s Damie-”
“The Corporation owns shows such as ‘Markiplier TV’, ‘Warfstache Tonight!’, and ‘Hire My Ass’. Do you have any more questions?”
“Do you pass the Turing Test?”
“Wondering if you have to treat me with basic decency?” He shifted back to his less robotic, but still monotone, voice.
“No. Just wondering.”
Neither of you spoke again for a while. He did scold you when you tried to move the couch with him still on it, so… progress.
--
You were beginning to suspect that Google didn’t like you very much.
The blue one. Google. The other ones liked you. Oliver ranted to you for a whole half hour about different kinds of bugs and the hierarchy of bees. The queen is assassinated when she is bad for the hive, it would seem. Lee made you play Resident Evil with him because he didn’t like the fighting, but he liked figuring out what to do. You frantically passed controllers back and forth a lot. Elliott basically did speedruns of several games, you watching intently the whole time. He seemed to like the attention and actually smiled at you whenever he finished one.
But Google didn’t like you. He ignored you, and told you not to touch anything, and scowled whenever you asked him personal questions. Not like “what’s your sexuality” type of personal questions. More like… “what’s your favorite color and why is it blue” sort of questions. He didn’t like them either way.
But the others liked you, and that was pretty neat.
You still wanted Google to like you though.
“Hey Google,” he perked up with the little “do-do!” noise, “Can you guys go into your different sections?”
“All G-Bots have the ability to pass into other’s color-coordinated sections,” He answered politely.
“Why don’t you?”
“We don’t want to.”
“Do you get along?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“Celine dislikes when colors are mismatched.”
“Who’s-”
“I’m sorry, this G Bot needs to charge.”
“But you haven’t been-”
“This G Bot needs to charge.”
“Come on, if you--”
“This G Bot needs to charge.”
You quieted and plopped into the chair. You stared at Google. His eyes flickered for a moment before they closed.
--
The other Bots knew who Celine and Damien were, they just weren’t telling you. Their eyes always flickered when you asked, but they wouldn’t tell you.
You threatened not to play with Lee anymore. He said he could play on his own. You could see that he didn’t want to. You played Alien: Isolation. His eyes seemed duller.
You threatened not to watch Elliott’s speedruns. He said he didn’t care. You could tell that he did. You watched him play Hollow Knight. His eyes seemed duller.
You threatened not to listen to Oliver’s rants. He looked terrified, but he said that was fine. You could tell it wasn’t. You begged him to tell you. He looked sad.
“Who’s Damien?” You asked softly, stepping towards him.
“I can’t tell you,” He shifted back.
“Who’s Celine?” You stepped forward.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Who’s DA?”
All of the G-Bots stopped what they were doing. You heard static and felt like you were being watched.
--
You looked up at the color on the outside of the museum.
You were doing something. You were doing something.
Were you robbing this place? It felt like you were. What happened to Mark? What happened… to you?
You stared at the doors, feeling a slight sense of dread. Something in the back of your head was telling you this wasn’t right. To go home. To…
--
“Ignorance is Bliss. Try Again?”
#on a lighter note#it is canon in MY markiplier cinematic universe#that oliver is an actual beekeeper#also i realized that the names i picked are very stereotypical trans guy names#so googleplier canon trans ig dwgyuefyuer#googleplier#googleplier blue#googleplier yellow#googleplier green#googleplier red#googleplier x reader#googleplier x gn!reader#google gets an upgrade#and yes the lil skateboard was a gift from bing <3#googleplier x gender neutral reader
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i've always love how you write stories! if you like, would you write about how drarry and the squad would be like when they're all living in one house?
hello, thank you so much for saying that, and sorry for being so late to this, I hope you are still here. Thank you @pineau-noir for the beta and @studywithyashu @dreaminginpencil for the brit-pick!
T, 1161 words, read on ao3
Harry Potter’s house is big and full of people and Draco Malfoy is one of them. Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place is full of good and sad people and Draco is only one of those things. The house is dark and damaged, but its inhabitants help fix it up. Pansy’s good at painting the walls because she’s a perfectionist. Blaise is good at decorating and even better at telling the Gryffindors to ease up on the red. Greg and Theo are good at getting rid of the pureblood bric-a-brac that no one wants to touch. And Potter’s gang are doing their own things, what that entails, Draco can’t be certain, but he’s sure that they deserve their place in the house. Draco helps by making himself scarce.
(He tries to. He really does.)
Draco comes back from work and goes to his room. He comes out when Ginevra drags him out for dinner because Harry insists on having meals together. (It's the only rule here.) Draco eats his food and talks about his day when someone asks. (He talks about his day a lot because someone always asks.) He does the dishes while Granger sits behind him and they do the crosswords together. She is smart enough to figure all of them out but for some reason she likes it better when Draco contradicts her. She writes his answers down and the crossword section becomes a mess, with Prandtl–Glauert Singularity written in 14 across and a quote from Nausea written in 5 down, going out of the boxes. Weasley saves the ones he likes the most on the fridge. Then Draco goes back to his room.
He doesn’t sleep very much; he doesn’t feel like there is enough time in a day for sleeping. At night he reads, and he ventures out for tea when his eyes start aching. The kitchen is right next to the drawing-room where people go to cry during the night because sleep is unlikely here and no one is rude enough to take that away from people who manage to stay in bed. Draco has seen Greg there, his wand in one hand and a whittling knife in another. He has seen Neville smoothing out sweet wrappers one by one. Ginevra puts up silencing charms and breaks down in there. Luna and Thomas hold onto each other the way Draco remembered them doing in his old home. Pansy obsessively cleans up in there, so no one will be able to tell it was a site of heartbreak once morning comes.
Draco doesn’t go in and sit with them like Harry does. The kitchen is right there, so Draco makes tea. Harry waits in the kitchen for Draco to finish, and asks Draco to go with him, but Draco goes back to his room.
It's the first Christmas after the war, and the first time spending it with this group. Luna asks Draco to help put up the fairy lights while Harry hovers at the bottom of the ladder Draco is on, ready to catch him if he falls, even though Draco said this little fall wouldn’t kill him anyway. Harry looks up at him, dark circles under his eyes and spots on his chin because he stays up with people nearly every night. Draco has always been very superficial. He likes pretty things, and Harry Potter has never looked more lovely than he does standing there, keeping Draco safe from a four-foot fall.
“I think I like the red and green lights better,” says Luna serenely from the other side of him. Draco starts and actually does stumble from his stand. Harry’s arms are like a furnace, and he’s doing a crap job at keeping Draco from getting hurt because Draco’s chest is aching something fierce.
The house is in decorating hell, and no one notices them holding onto each other a little longer than necessary.
(Everyone notices. They just don’t really mind.)
Draco wanders down that night, hesitant and feeling a little exposed now that the halls are lit with lights and tinsel. But Grimmauld Place is quiet tonight, and he thinks that this might be the first time he finds the drawing-room empty.
Only the tree is lit in the room, and it certainly looks empty. Draco makes two cups of tea.
Draco gropes blindly around in the dark for a while before his hand finally snags on a slippery fabric. He pulls the Cloak back. Harry has his face in his hands.
Draco reaches out to grip Harry’s jumper tightly. “If you sit with everyone, who sits with you, Harry?”
Harry can’t answer Draco then. His jeans are wet from the tears escaping the gaps of his fingers, the lights coloring them green and red. The room is silent except for the humming of a toy train on the fireplace, going in circles on its track. The fairy lights are still twinkling, and Harry Potter is still crying.
Draco wraps his free arm around Harry and rests his forehead on Harry’s shoulder.
“I’m not you. I don’t sit with people. I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re…” Harry says, slowly, when he isn’t crying. “You’re doing it now.”
And Draco is. He hadn’t even realized he had knelt on the sofa next to Harry. “But you’re still crying.”
“I don’t.” Harry stops, takes in a few wet, shuddering breaths. When he looks up his eyes are still dripping. “I don’t stop them from doing whatever they were doing. I just stay with them and we drink your tea.” Then, “Why don’t I ever see you in here?”
“What do I have to cry about?” Draco asks.
Harry wipes a tear from his eye. The lights around them dim for the respite that even holiday decorations need, and the solitary tear clings to Harry like Draco is. Harry cups Draco’s face, and the tear drops, just beside Draco’s eye. It's still warm when it slides into Draco’s lips as he parts them for Harry to kiss. Truly, what does Draco have to cry about?
They share Draco's cup of tea, then they share the second cup. Harry’s eyes are dry and his mouth is soft. Draco kisses both.
The next morning, Draco wakes up to the shouts of Finnigan and Weasley arguing about what they want for their advent calendar: milk chocolate or chocolate liqueurs? And it goes on until Blaise somehow procures both and shuts them up. Ginevra thunders down the stairs screaming about breakfast, and at least five voices yell back from the kitchen. Granger passes by Draco’s room and he hears her muffled murmur through the door, “I can’t figure out 8 across...oh, that’s it!” Draco thinks about Harry at the stove, making something that is surely too sweet to be ingested safely, his mouth shiny from the honey he always sneaks a spoon of, and how sweet it will taste on Draco’s lips.
And Draco comes out of his room.
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Protector || JJ Maybank
* this is not my gif; all credit goes to the owner.
pairing: jj x reader
prompt: jj promised you he’d stop getting into pointless fights, but a night when you’re not there, he breaks it. he can’t hide how he feels about you anymore.
warnings: swearing, underage drinking, violence, blood
a/n: do i kinda hate how i wrote this? yes. am i going to delete it? nah.
Your phone had been blowing up all night. You had eleven missed calls from John B, 7 from Pope and 3 from Kiara. You had over a hundred unread texts from the three of them combined. You had to turn your phone off at some point after your boss threatened to fire you if he heard one more chime.
By the time you’d finally clocked out, it was two hours later. You turned your phone back on and stood there for a good two minutes as the notifications rolled in. You glanced over texts and felt your blood boil when you got the gist of them.
There had been a party at the Boneyard that night, one you had to miss. Money was tight and your parents needed you to start pulling some weight. JJ had been in another fight. He promised you he would try to control himself better after the gun incident, but clearly he was incapable of that.
You let out a sigh as you slung your bag over your shoulder and hopped on your bike. You pedaled the familiar way to the Chateau, thinking of all the ways you were going to rip your blonde friend a new asshole.
You pulled up outside the house and dropped your bike in the front yard. You burst through the front door, startling Pope and Kiara who stood at the wooden kitchen table. John B was leaning against the wall, a tired look on his face and a PBR in his hand.
“Finally,” Kiara sighed and walked over to give you a welcoming hug.
“We’ve been trying to reach you for hours!” Pope exclaimed in an accusing manor.
You gave the dark skinned boy a look and painted a sarcastic smile across your lips. “Yeah, I know. Greg nearly fired me because y’all wouldn’t shut up,” you retorted.
John B just stared at you from across the room. He had a fresh bruise on the right side of his jaw near his chin as well as dried blood near his left eyebrow. You walked over, reaching up to brush his hair away and inspect the split skin on his forehead. He pulled back and met your eye, shaking his head slightly.
“Where is he?” you asked as you dropped your bag on the kitchen table and went for the spare room.
“He’s outside,” John B grumbled, taking a long drink from his beer.
You turned with your eyebrows creased in confusion. Kiara sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as she spoke, “We told him he couldn’t come back in until he had a level head.”
It clicked in your brain in that moment. John B’s injuries weren’t from fighting Kooks. They were from fighting JJ. That infuriated you even more. What could have possibly happened for the blonde to want to fight his own best friend?
You turned without another word and pushed the screen door open forcefully. You stepped out onto the back patio and looked around. You saw a mess of blonde hair on the hammock not far away. JJ knew it was you and didn’t dare turn his head to acknowledge you. He could practically feel the anger radiating off of you.
“What in the hell did we talk about?” you sneered as you stormed over to your best friend. He stayed in the same position, head turned towards the water, arms crossed over his chest. “JJ, look at me.”
“I really don’t want to do this right now,” was the response you got.
A sarcastic laugh left your lips as you walked around to the other side of the hammock, forcing the blonde to look at you. “Well that’s too damn bad. Have you seen John B’s face? What’s gotten into you?!” you questioned, voice desperate as you tried to get the boy to talk to you.
JJ simply sniffed once and shrugged his shoulders a bit. You felt your hands start shaking. He was trying to brush you off and hope you would just let it go, but you both knew that wasn’t going to happen.
“JJ, you can’t just start swinging every time someone looks at you the wrong way! I thought we had an understanding. If you keep getting assault charges, one day they won’t just let you walk! I know the Kooks are absolute pains in the ass, but sometimes you just have to let it go!” you tried to reason with him.
The opposite happened. A switch flipped in JJ because you had no idea what happened. He leapt off he hammock faster than you could blink, voice like thunder as he shouted, “You don’t know what they said about you!”
You were shocked, taking a step back as one of your hands came up defensively to your chest. You blinked slowly as you stared at the enraged blonde. He was breathing heavily through his nose, hands clenched so hard at his sides his knuckles were white and you were sure his nails were drawing blood.
“What?”
“Rafe, Topper, Kelce.. All those pieces of shit!” JJ threw his arm, knuckles cracking against the tree. He was trying to divert his anger away from you. “The things they said about you. About your body. About using you!”
His arm went to swing again but you grabbing his bicep before his fist connected with the tree again. You were afraid he was going to break his hand at this point. The sob you heard JJ let out nearly ripped you in two. You went in there, guns blazing, when you didn’t know what happened. He was trying to defend you; protect you.
“Oh, J,” you whispered, placing your hand on the side of his face. You pulled him down and forced his head against your chest then wrapped your arms tightly around his shoulders.
“I blacked out, (Y/N). They wouldn’t stop saying those things and I lost it. I just kept picturing them hurting you,” JJ cried into your chest, tears soaking through your shirt but you didn’t care.
“It’s okay, JJ, it’s okay,” you mumbled, reaching one hand up to thread through his hair. You could feel grains of sand against his scalp, surly from being thrown around by heartless Kooks.
JJ sniffles and lifted his head, teary blue eyes meet your e/c’d ones. His bottom lip quivered and he closed his eyes to try and will himself to stop crying. His voice cracked as he tried to talk again, “I didn’t mean to hurt John B either, promise. I was just still so angry when we got back here. He didn’t help me. He didn’t help me defend you.”
You smiled sadly and placed both of your hands on JJ’s face, wiping his tears away with your thumbs. He slowly opened his eyes to look at you again. The amount of love and adoration you saw in them damn near took your breath away.
“It’s not John B’s job to defend me, babe. It’s not yours either. No one has to defend me,” you whispered, fingers threading together on the back of JJ’s neck.
The blonde boy leant forward until his forehead was resting against yours. Soft breaths left his parted lips and spread across your face like a blanket. He smelled like cigarettes, marijuana and beer mixed with sunscreen and saltwater; your favorite scent. His scent.
JJ moved to his own accord, ignoring his brain screaming at him not to do it. You’ll make things weird. You’ll ruin everything. She won’t love you back. He ignored it all and nudged his head forward until your lips connected. You could have sworn you saw fireworks go off behind your eyelids. Every nerve ending your body flared up and tingled. Your lips fit together like pieces of a missing puzzle.
No wonder neither of you could figure out why it felt so weird hooking up with Tourons this whole time.
When you pulled away, breathless and dizzy, you opened your eyes to find JJ’s already on you. The widest smile he’d ever seen spread across your face, a giggle slipping past your teeth. A simple ‘wow’ was whispered between you both. An equally large grin enveloped JJ’s face as well. He pecked your lips roughly five more times before pulling back completely and rubbing his hands over his wet face.
You wrapped your arms around the skinny yet muscular boy’s waist and rested your head on his chest now, listening to the steadying beat of his heart. You felt at home in his arms.
“I think you should apologize to John B, or we’ll be sleeping out here tonight,” you mumbled into the soft fabric of his long sleeve shirt.
“As long as I’m sleeping with you, I don’t care,” he retorted, slender arms encasing you. You tilted your head up and gave him a look that said ‘I will not be sleeping out here with the mosquitoes’ and he let out a small laugh. “Okay, yeah, I should apologize.”
The two of you walked hand in hand back into the Chateau, JJ’s head hung sheepishly as he met John B’s eye. Moral of the story, you ended up in the spare room, tucked under a tan blonde’s arm; where you belonged.
masterlist
#outer banks#obx netflix#jj maybank#outer banks imagine#jj x reader#jj imagine#obx jj#jj maybank imagine#jj fanfiction#jj fluff#jj maybank fluff#jj angst#jj maybank angst#jj maybank x reader#obx imagine
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Where no one knows your name
How many times is a person meant to make new friends?
When I moved into an apartment in DC with an absolutely iconic girl from Craigslist, I wrote in my journal, “you never know when you’ll meet your next bridesmaid.” Charmingly juvenile, as I was 24 years old. Ironic, as I never had any bridesmaids. And embarrassing, knowing I wrote something that’s surely been embroidered on a bachelorette party t-shirt by now.
My point was: you can meet people you fall in love with anywhere, anytime, assuming your heart (and calendar) are open.
Now my heart and calendar are open and I am one of Elizabeth Bennet’s sad sisters, cloying and desperate for attention while everyone at the ball ignores me.
Meeting people here is unnerving and hapless and eye-clawingly vulnerable. My first new friend told me she was moving away in a few months. Do you invest deeply in hopes of another faraway friendship? Do you just go back to waving as you pass on the street? I like this girl! What an embarrassing thing to have to say to someone! Do you just invite people to every and anything like a lunatic? I can’t even remember to call the people I am forever-and-ever in cahoots with.
I’m also deeply bound by what I’ll call the Movie Trap: say it’s 3pm during not-a-pandemic, and you get the urge to see a movie. You look at the showings, and there’s one you really want to see at 7:15. You think to yourself, “I should make an effort,” and you text a friend.
“Hey, you wanna go see This Cool Movie at 7:15 tonight?”
No one ever says yes. Don’t give me an example of when someone has, because it’s always one of these answers:
“Oooh, I’m actually seeing it with Kate tomorrow - wanna come?”
“Can we go to the 9pm showing? Stuck at work.”
“Yeah but let’s see Movie You’ll Fucking Hate instead.”
Now maybe I’m just lighting flares guiding you to the worst parts of my personality, but this drives me nuts. No, Liz, I don’t want to go tomorrow. I want to go tonight. At 7:15. So I can be in bed by 10. And you’d have to drag my dead body and prop open my eyes to get me to see something like Marriage Story in theaters.
The Movie Trap is a big reason I usually hang out by myself, or I make plans weeks in advance. (Don't I sound like a blast.) Just the idea of being like, “I like you! Wanna hang out in October?” makes me want to collapse into a puddle of sad adulthood. Which is why on Friday at 4:30pm, when a girl I’d met a week prior asked if I wanted to grab a drink, I just said yes. I put on a pretty dress, did my makeup, put stuff in a purse, and drove the 25 minutes to town.
It was really fun! And how novel to have new contacts in my phone like “Maggie blue house” and “Jess concert friend” — a throwback to the days of “Greg guy on L train” and “Devon ad party.” The very concept of not knowing someone’s last name or even needing it, and a year from now updating their contact info and smiling at your origin story.
But for the most part, no one is in our phones. In terms of phone numbers collected, here is the list:
Two friends we knew prior who thank god you guys exist.
New friend who is moving away.
New friend who is game to drink tequila and ride mountain bikes.
Neighbor-not-yet-friend who I really fucking like and am not sure how to cross hang-out threshold with.
Not to say there aren’t any other prospects or people I’m platonically gaga over, but I don’t have their phone numbers. There are honestly a lot of people like this because when you live in a small town (and you’re from the Midwest) you say “oop, sorry” to every person/object you bump into, and you say “hi :)” to every person you see. These are the rules. If I drive by you and don’t wave, it’s because I was so deep in a daydream I probably shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. This isn’t acceptable, because in our urgency to tattoo our vaccination status on our foreheads so we can make friends, it turns out just driving by someone can be a viable strategy.
A few days ago, a man was driving by our kitchen window and then our driveway, and then he reversed back up to the kitchen window and started waving.
Ben went outside — it was that kind of wave. The man had seen from his car a smokejumper emblem on the back of a truck in our driveway.
“Hey, are you a smokejumper?”
We aren’t. But my dad was, and he was in town visiting, accompanied by the emblem on the back of his truck. The guy said we should drink sometime. Numbers were not exchanged. We’ll call that a node, because it’s not quite a connection. And it’s mainly nodes, waiting to be connected, to have relevance.
But first, no matter who you’re trying to befriend, you have to answer everyone else’s Do I Care Quiz. The quiz is employed by 93% of locals to determine how they feel about you existing within their personal 50-mile radius. The first question is non negotiable:
1) Are you visiting?
Variations on this question include “how long are you in town?” or “what brings y’all to town?” or my least favorite and most insulting, “did you just finish Jeeping?” I know I have blonde hair and say y’all, but how dare you. (Also, to be clear, you can own a Jeep, customize your Jeep, mod out your Jeep, and love your Jeep, but you’re not Jeeping until you drive too fast through a tiny town so you can hurl your Jeep over a mountain pass without ever getting out of it.)
So the answer to “are you visiting” is “no, I live here.” Which brings us to the next question, my favorite for how loaded the gun, kneeling in the grass, scope on, target locked it is.
2) Are you part-time or full-time?
The first time I answered this question, I didn’t realize it was essentially like asking how someone voted in the 2020 election. The judgment was cocked and ready and the palpable relief/joy/or at the very least, tolerance, exuded by answering “full-time” was like when the sun comes out from behind the clouds on a 40 degree day. I was fine, but wow that does feel better.
The third question though does not have a standard hoped-for answer. This is where nodes turn to connections turn to phone numbers.
3) What brings you here?
It seems like the best possible answer would be saying you work in town, and you’re going to begin construction on displaced-worker housing to ensure the people who run this town can actually live in it. We’d have everyone’s phone number. Saying you’re a writer who works remotely and bought a house from a legendary and beloved local who could no longer afford it is really something you keep to yourself.
But in the interest of making friends, I just word vomit my entire history. We might as well find out at the onset if I make your eyes roll back into your skull. Not at all threatening that all it takes is a single social signal misinterpreted to be the absolute death knell of my ability to make friends in a town of some 1400 adults.
In fact, I’ll share one such interaction. I was hiking with Cooper, about 5 miles by foot away from my house. I was on a trail, crossing a sloped meadow, and a group was traversing up the hillside to the trail. I said hi, where y’all coming from. One girl answered and we talked about the trail. She eyed me up and down.
“Did you just move here?”
“I did!”
“I served your family last week,” she said.
“Oh,” that phrasing. “Must have been my in-laws.”
“Heard you bought Jack’s house. Such a bummer when locals like that are forced out.”
“We didn’t even know about his house,” I said. “We were looking at another house and he asked his realtor if he could get us to come see his house. We just loved it, and him!” She had no emotional reaction to this.
“You moved from California?” she asked. (Dangerous question.)
“Yeah, got these sea level lungs, haha,” attempting to disarm with humor was a failure, “but couldn’t be happier to be out of California.”
“It’s not like this all year. Winter’s really hard here, you’re in for a rude awakening.”
“Well California’s the last place I lived, but I’m not from there. I’ve lived in brutal winters. At least Colorado gets sun!” I laugh with cloaked loathing.
“It’s different when you live at altitude,” she said, like no human aside from her had ever been literally anywhere. “Are you trying to go around?” She indicated the path behind her.
“No, y’all go ahead, just gonna wait to give you your space. I’m sure you’re faster than me.”
“K, good luck making it to the lake."
Maybe she was thirsty. Maybe she was hungover. Maybe she just has vicious delivery, but it felt like every blade of grass was leaning against the wind to listen. She was with four other people and not one of them said a word. I left that interaction not wanting to see another human ever again.
But that interaction, and her intimate knowledge of exactly which house I lived in, made me want to decorate like we lived in a gingerbread house, all candy canes and plum drops, screaming to any passerby that we’re friendly. One of the mayor’s first questions to me was “what are you going to do to the house?” There are rules here about what your house can look like, and I kept emphasizing we bought the house because we loved it, not because we wanted to change everything about it. And now, instead of wanting to decorate the interior, I want to put up shades so we don’t contribute to light pollution, I want to hang a sign by the water spigot saying “grab some if you need” for hikers and mountain bikers, I want to paint a sign for the wild mint by our door that says, “I mint to tell you to take some,” because our neighbors were openly panicked they wouldn’t be able to just grab mint from the cabin’s garden anymore.
Without question, COVID makes things harder. Dinner parties feel like dares. Dropping cookies off at someone’s house feels invasive. Grabbing a drink feels like the ultimate sign of trust. But at least we have nodes who can connect who can think to invite us and who can see that despite having lived in California, we’re not all that bad.
In the meantime, I’ll be painting signs about water and mint, hoping to garner the benefit of the doubt from the so beautifully, earnestly, and waiting-to-see-if-you’re-worth-it doubtful.
Subscribe to the newsletter at tinyletter.com/keltonwrites — high altitude relocation and renovation in a tiny mountain town.
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Beautiful Crime, (CH 1)
Summary; Kat and the trio of women rob the grocery store. Their normal lives go down the drain when they met a leader of the gang. Kat has double life's, will her past life crash her down? will she keep running like she always has to start fresh or will she stay and fight from her past life and bad blood? Along the way, she fell in love with someone who she never expected to be.
Warning: +18, gun mention, robbery.
A/N; I want to say thank to @prettygangfriend, @cacoetheswriting for helping me and editing the story. Thank to @ skamlover to help me with my OC Spanish language. This is my first fanfic I publish is here, Please let me know what you think and I’m interested in your feedback, don’t be silent readers. I worry if I hear no comment, it mean that nobody like my story. I apologize if my grammar is awful, ENJOY!!! Also, let me know if you want to be TAGGED!!
Here is the cover @atriaedits has made
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The sound of the obnoxious chewing, followed by the sound of a loud, snapping pop, is coming from the backseat, slowly driving Beth insane.
“Oh my god! I asked you to stop doing that like five minutes ago.” Beth turned her head away from the window and glared at her friend, feeling annoyed by that ridiculous sound she’s been hearing since she picked her up.
“Damn girl. You know what, fine” Kat spits out the gum and tosses it to one of the trash cans standing outside of their window. “Happy now?” She glances at Beth then opens the vanity mirror to check herself out, trying to fix her hair. Pulling two strands of her brunette hair, she adjusts her face-framing bangs. As she takes a minute to admire her shining, golden hoop earrings, they hear a screeching sound of a tire coming up behind Beth’s van.
Both of them look up, only to reveal the red, rusty car, that belonged to no other than Annie. She couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight of Ruby sitting in the passenger seat, while Beth was already preparing her big sister speech.
“I cannot believe you,” Beth started, once Annie had parked her car. She threw her hands up in defense, trying to calm down Beth.
“Chill, sis. I’m like, two minutes late.”
The four women gather around and go up to the back of Annie’s trunk, popping it open to reveal four ski masks and four toy guns. Kat grabs the plastic guns from the gym bag, admiring the crafty work of Beth’s painting job. She has to admit, they look pretty realistic—well, realistic enough to make sure the hostages will comply.
“Wait, Annie, I think you should use the concealer to cover the tattoo,” Kat says.
“What, Nah, I’ll be fine, my shirt will cover it.” Annie reply.
“Let’s get this over with,” Ruby says, letting out a deep sigh, while Annie passes everyone their very own ski-mask. Both Beth and Annie wore a blue one, Kat went for the color black, as she wanted to make sure to match her outfit, and Ruby decided to go with a bandana instead.
Not wasting any more time, the four women walk into the ‘Fine and Frugal’ grocery store. It takes a couple of seconds before people notice their cloth covered faces, but once they do, the ladies go into action.
“Listen up!” Annie yells out, pointing her gun up into the air, “Everyone just stays cool, and nobody gets hurt!”
The rest of the women are quick to follow Annie’s actions, and start pointing their guns around the store. People look around in both confusion and fear, but they make sure to get onto the ground. A smirk appears on Kat’s face, while watching the store manager walk up to them, his hand up in the air.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a robbery,” Annie said as if she announced to the customers.
THREE WEEKS EARLIER
The ripping of a wax strip echoes through the room, followed by a loud shriek of pain coming from Beth, who’s currently finding herself on her arms and knees.
“I wonder how Kat’s doing” she wonders out loud, “Oh god, she won’t hurt Ashley, right?”
The lady waxing Beth has a look of concern on her face, silently praying for her co-worker Ashley. “She’ll be fine, ma’am”, she reassures Beth, before continuing her work.
“I can only hope-“ before she could finish her sentence, a young brunette walks into the room. Beth turns her head to figure out what was going on, or what was important enough to interrupt her session.
“Mrs. Boland? I’m afraid your card has been declined”
Beth couldn’t help but frown and come up with something that would explain the situation, but Kat walked in just in time, handling it.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it,” Kat tells her, sticking her hands inside the pockets of her white, comfortable robe. The woman gives her a quick nod, before walking out again.
“I’ll pay you back,” Beth says, shaking her head while looking over at Kat. “I’m sure Dean just forgot to pay a bill, he’s been really busy and distracted, lately.”
Kat raises an eyebrow at her explanation, already knowing there’s a lot more to it than just Dean forgetting the bills. She’s always thought of him as someone who’s rather suspicious, and untrustworthy, but she wasn’t going to insult Beth’s husband to her face, so she drops it.
“Yeah, I’m sure” Kat mumbles, hoping Beth wouldn't catch the sarcastic tone in her voice, which she didn’t.
Kat feels her phone vibrating, and she lets out an annoyed sigh. The name of her boss pops up on her screen, and she couldn’t mentally curse herself for hurrying to answer it.
“Hello, sir“ she rolls her eyes at the familiar sound of her boss yelling and ordering her around on the phone. “Yes, of course- Hello?“
“He just hung up on me!” Kat calls out, making Beth scoff loudly. “First he insults my cooking, and now this? What an asshole!” She says, and Kat nods at her in agreement while remembering that day all too well.
Last week Kat tried to get out of a work thing by telling Mark, her boss, she already did had dinner plans to attend. She didn’t know how or why, but apparently he thought it was a great idea to invite himself. If that wasn’t bad enough already, he felt the need to tell Beth he wasn’t a big fan of her cooking. Beth was ready to defend herself, but of course, Dean told her to calm down, which ultimately led to those two pricks becoming buddies, who even started hanging out.
“The truth is, he’s just an idiot who thinks women can’t be equal to men. One day I will prove that piece of trash wrong, trust me. Kat convinces Beth while taking off her robe, revealing her work outfit as an office assistant, underneath it.
She was wearing a cream button-down paired with a matching suede jacket. She brushed a dark curl off her shoulder, walking toward the mirror against the wall. A glance at her reflection, reapplying a dark red lipstick with a flourish. She shifted her weight. “ I got to go, Adiós “ Kat picks up her purse and leaves the room, leaving Beth to sigh heavily as she picks up her phone, calling the bank wondering why her credit card decline, she knows her husband, Dean probably forgot to pay it. Beth thought.
Kat enters her hybrid car small with a four-door which she got a good deal from her friend, Beth’s husband, Dean. She drove to the coffee shop which is near the diner where Ruby works at. She stands in line, waiting patiently for her turn.
Then she placed the orders, she checks her phone to see what time it. Glad I’m on my lunch break, can’t wait to see my baby soon. Kat thought happily. Kat grabs two medium cups and hurries to her car. The girls would be expecting her at the diner soon. She quickly drives to the meeting spot and dashes in carrying her coffee.
The bell ding above the door as Kat enters... See Beth and Annie is already in their booth near the window. Kat smiles at them as she walks over to them, “Hola.” She pushes Annie’s legs off the seat as she sits down.
“Ooo, Coffee!” Annie was about to grab one from the tray but Kat hit her hand as she scolds her “I promised my jefe I would bring him some, so keep your hands off “ Annie glances at her,” I don’t know what you just said, but it sounds hot” Kat shake her head as she chuckles.
“Where’s the translated book I got for you? You need to read it.” Annie shakes her head and replies “I tried to but then I fell asleep.” Kat chuckles again.
“ And she was only halfway through my wax.” Beth continued the conversion she had earlier to Annie before Kat walked in. “But I offer to pay it, What happens?” Mia asks.
Beth shook her head, “I changed my mind, You need the money for your son, Mateo.” Beth answers. Kat wants to help her friend Beth but knows she is right. “Gracias”. Kat reply, showing her red lips turn into a smile. “So, What happens?” Annie asks. Beth answered, “Well, now I’m uneven.”
Ruby walks over to her friends, places the coffee pot on the table. “I don’t even wanna know.”
“Dean maxed out their credit card at some lingerie store,” Annie explain to Ruby.
“Do you think he’s sleeping around?” Beth glance at Kat.
Annie and Kat chuckle. Ruby shakes her head and replies in a sarcastic scoff, “Don’t nobody want Dean.”
“MmM, Sometimes I wonder why you married your first boyfriend? I heard that the first boyfriend isn’t a good keeper.” Kat said out aloud.
“What, But, Annie married Greg!” Beth says as if she defends herself.
“Look how it turned out,” Kat replied sarcastically. They chuckled. “Maybe it’s your anniversary present,” Annie says, trying to make her sister think the bright side but fail to.
Kat tries to hold her snort from Beth but fails. “Yeah right, Dean isn’t the type, I have a feeling like he is one of the old fashion types.” Which led Annie to join in laughing with Kat. They take a breath as soon as the laugh dies.
Beth rolls her eyes and decides to ignore Kat’s comments “He already gave me 100 coupons to Bed Bath & Beyond.” She looked at her friends.
Ruby’s upper lips curled in disgust. “Ew. Really?”
“Son of a bitch.” Annie says bluntly, hissed.
“No, I really do love it there.” Beth smiles.
“Really? He should’ve given you a coupon to Bath & Body Work instead.” Kat takes a sip of her coffee, Ruby nods in agreement.
“No. That old guy is stealing your tip.” Annie pointed her fingertip at the old guy. The trio follows her gaze, their eyes settle on an elderly man slowly but surely walking toward the empty table, and seems like he’s struggling to walk properly. He looked around, smiling harmless when a couple passed by.
Kat placed her hand on Annie's hand. “Girl, pointing is rude.” Mia shakes her head.
Ruby turns around and gives an ‘Are you kidding me’ look to Annie “He can’t even walk.”
Annie urged Ruby “ Go get it.” She gave ‘go get it’ hand gestures which cause Ruby to sigh then she gets up on her foot and slowly walks toward the table. Her eyes widen when the elderly man was about to lean in. Ruby quickly swipes up her tip just before he even touches it. He sent Ruby a look as he made his exit, cane in his hand, dropping the act.
“Shady S.O.B,” Ruby said shaking her head as she sat down, her eyebrows furrowed in disbelief, “absolutely shady.”
“Don’t let the innocent look fool you ” Kat says as she takes a sip of her coffee.
A smile appeared on Annie’s lips, almost proudly. “At my old job, we just got robbed all the time, So I got the six sense now.”
Beth looked at her sister, “Are you serious?” She hopes that Annie is kidding.
“I mean, it’s no big ideal,” Annie said as she gave a half shrug. “ All the stores I work at eventually get hit.”
Shaking her head, Beth met Annie’s eyes showing concern in her eyes “You could get shot.”
“Ugh. One can hope.” Beth took a breath.
“These guys, they don’t want to hurt anybody. They just want the money. So we let them have it. Nobody’s trying to be a hero.”
Hunching over and leaning in closer.
“Do they get caught?” Ruby asks. Beth slowly turned to look at her friend, brow’s knitted together as she looks at Ruby questionably.
Annie let out a ridiculous scoff, “Yeah, the dumb ones do ‘cause they park in the front by the security cameras.” Kat mutters idota, but is glad that Annie and no one got hurt.
“You gotta put your getaway car in the back by the loading dock,” Annie shows hand gestures as if she planing out the blueprint. “And you never get dick around with the registers.” She added. “The real money is back in the vault.”
“You’ve really worked this out. “ Beth nods is impressed by her little sister.
Annie’s shoulder shrug “Just keeping my options open.” Kat nods in an agreement.
“How much is in the vault? Ruby asks as if she gives a thought.
“Thirty grand, give or take.” Annie answer. Ruby’s pupils widen open, eyebrow up raises up. Kat let out an ‘O’ shape of her mouth. Letting out a whistle like she is impressed by how much.
“Damn, I could use that money.” Ruby says as Kat nods, “perfecto count me in.” Kat reply with a grin.
“Oh my god, me too” Annie joins in. Beth looks at them like they are crazy or serious.
“So, when do you want to do this?” Ruby glance at Annie and Kat.
Annie replies “Well, I already bought three automatics and filed off the serial numbers so really, name a day”
Kat pauses her lips for a moment to think which day is better. Beth looks at the three women, not sure if they are serious or not Until Ruby’s lips turn into a Cheshire Cat grin at Beth which causes the trio to laugh at Beth.
“You should see your face” Annie points out.
“It’s whiter than usual,” Ruby says, Kat chuckles.
The four women entered the Fines & Frugal with their masks covering their faces and a toy gun in their hands and stopped in the center of the hallway.
"I'm gonna need you to all get on the ground," Annie says as the four women point the toy gun at the hostages. "Get your cell phones out of your pockets and keep your hands where I can see 'em," Annie says as the hostages follow the instructions.
“All right, good. Now, I need you to get your manager up here. Annie says, but no one is moving or listening. Annie says it again but still no reply. Annie looks at Ruby as she shrugs her shoulder like she doesn't know what to do. Ruby yell in a nice tone "Hey, where's y'all's boss at?" Still no response from the hostages.
All of a sudden, Beth decides to act like a bad cop. " I better get a manager up here right now or I will start capping people! I'm not even joking, mother.” Beth kicks the wooden boxes with her right leg. Causing people to be afraid of her as they gasp in fear. Causing Annie's and Ruby’s eyes to widen as if they are in shock at Beth while Kat nods and is impressed by it.
ONE WEEK EARLIER
Kat enters the entry foyer inside of the Boland’s Residence with her son whose’s six years old. He smiles happily when he saw his friends, Beth’s four children in the living room, playing. He let go of his mother’s hand and run toward them. as he pulls his little backpack off as he drops it on the floor, Joining his friends.
Meanwhile, Kat walks into the kitchen, seeing Beth cooking dinner and Annie sipping diet coke soda "Hola," Kat puts her purse on the chair and car keys inside the purse as she sits down next to Annie.
"How was work?" Beth asks, chopping the chicken fingers into stars. Kat sighs heavily, “he’s killing me, I swear sometimes I just want to punch him en el hosico.”
Beth and Annie look confused at first, and then Annie says “Ooo! Asshole” Finally, Beth understands what her friend, Kat’s saying. Kat looks at Annie “it amazes me that you don’t know Spanish words, just only cuss words.”
Annie smiles. “What can I say, I love curse words.” Annie smiles, proud of herself which causes Kat to chuckle.
“Oh, because your life is so great. I should want this life?” Annie asks, frowning
“Woah, what’s going on?” Kat asks, wondering why the sisters are arguing.
“Lil miss perfect think’s I’m running my life.” Beth looks at Kat and back to Beth.
“I didn’t say that,” Beth said, cutting the chicken fingers.
Annie scoffs and rolls her eyes, “Look at Kat, She’s a single mother with a gorgeous figure and a cute son. She’s living the best motherhood life.” Annie says, flattering her best friend.
Kat chuckles, “oh honey, No I’m not. My boss who thinks women can’t be CEO, I’m still his assistant which I should’ve moved next level, but noo. Also, My son keeps asking about his father every single day.” Katsays sadly.
“Oh, I'm sorry,” Beth replies as she put her hand on top of Kat’s hand to comfort her as Annie gave her a hug. Kat has told her friends that the father isn’t in the picture.
“And, I mean, not to pile on, look who you married. “ Annie glances at Beth.
“It’s 20 years and four children. Marriage sometimes takes little work.” Beth says, defend herself and Dean.
“Well, It depends on the sex life, and when you told me that you and Dean aren’t wild like you used to, it means something went wrong ” Kat says then Beth glare at her like she can’t believe she says to her face.
“You could lose your daughter. Has that occurred to you?” Beth ignores Kat’s comments and focus on her little sister.
“Well seeing Greg is suing me for custody and I can’t afford it, yes actually, the thought has crossed my mind.” causing Beth to stop at what she doing. Kat hugs Annie for comfort.
“I didn’t know,” Beth says.
“Now you do,” Annie replies as she pulls away from the hug. Then Dean car dealership Boland Motor commercial appears on the tv.
Beth glimpses at the tv as she sees Amber, the seller. She heard Annie said “Jezz, who’d this chick have to blow to get on TV?” as a joke.
Beth takes another look at the blonde woman on her screen, while Kat's words linger around in her head. She has seen the lady talking to Dean before, and now that she's thinking about it, it is awfully coincidental she's gotten such an unexpected promotion.
"Kat, Can you drop the kids at Annie's neighbor, the babysitter? We'll be right back." Beth asks.
Kat reply" yeah, sure" then she gave her car key to them because she knew five children won't fit in her car so she will use Beth's van instead.
"Hijos!" Kat yells as she searches for the children then goes upstairs and finds them in one of Beth's children's bedrooms, playing and coloring, drawing on the papers. She took them in Beth's van and drove them to Annie's neighborhood so the babysitter can keep an eye on them.
An hour later, "I'm back," Kat says to sing an along tone and is about to shut the front door until she hears a familiar voice "hey!" from outside and seeing it from one of her friends, Ruby. Kat let her inside. Then close the door.
"Guess who found those caramels Bugles at Kroger?" Ruby asks, trying to find Beth and Annie, but finds them in the living room instead. Normally, the four women would sit in another room to watch The Bachelorette but instead, they are in the living room and Beth is lying on the couch while Annie tries to comfort her sister.
Kat's and Ruby's brows knitted in confusion and then Beth immediately went up to them and hugged them. They hug her back but look at Annie over Beth's shoulders confused.
'Dean's having an affair' Annie mouths to us. Kat's pupils widened as she figures it out. But Ruby doesn't understand' what' Ruby mouths back.
Annie mouths it again but a bit more forcefully. Kat whisperer in Beth that she be right back. Beth nods and lets Mia go and hug Ruby's.
"Huh" Ruby questions again. Annie sighs 'Dean is' Annie says then makes sexual gestures then Ruby finally gets it "son of a bitch" She mutters. " Oh, what can we do?" Ruby asks. She rubs Beth's back.
"How about a screwdriver?" Annie suggested. Kat came in from the garage, carrying a sledgehammer over her shoulder.
Beth sees Kat over Ruby's shoulder and an idea pops in her mind, as she replies "a sledgehammer." Annie and Ruby glance at each other's confusion while Kat's lip turns into a smirk.
Shattering, Beth swings the sledgehammer and hits Dean's computer in his office. Beth hit his trophies and then the file cabinets as she yanks the files and throws them on the ground, the paper flying in the air. Continuing hitting the other file cabinets. While Annie and Ruby, Mia stand in the doorway of Dean's study office, watching Beth take her anger on the cheating husband's things and destroy them. "Are you planning on stopping this?" Ruby asks, "Hell no," Kat says as she's recording what Beth is doing on her phone.
Ruby glance at her friend, Kat. "What are you doing?"
Kat grins, "Dean shouldn't mess with Beth, I might post it on YouTube."
"Don't do that, her kids might see it." Ruby scold her. Kat rolls her eyes dramatically, and replies, "fine but I'm still keeping the video."
"Send it to me," Annie says. Kat nods and sends the video to Annie's phone. Ruby scoffs.
Kat says goodbye to the girls because she has to pick up her son and then head home. She picks up her son and drove to her apartment she shares with Mateo. She fed him dinner and gave him a bath before bedtime.
Kat tucks her son, Mateo in his bed at home. "Good night Mi Amor" Kat pecks his little forehead, "Noches Mami " He rubs his little eyes with his thumb. She sighs heavily, feeling angry at Dean and feeling bad toward her friend Beth. She doesn't deserve this at all. Kat thought.
Meanwhile, Beth sat in the dining room, waiting for her cheating husband to get home. Drinking her vodka out from the bottle. She remembers the conversation she has with Mia and wondering if she'd make a mistake to decline Kat's offer.
“Are you SURE I can’t punch him in the face?” Kat asks,
“Yes,” Beth responded.
“What if I break his nose a little?” Kat suggests. Beth gives her ‘no’ expression look.
"Are you SURE I can't punch him in the face?" Kat asks.
Spanish translate (Correct me If I’m wrong)
jefe- My Boss
En el hosico - On the snout
Mi Amor - My love
noches mamá- Night Mama
#nbc good girls#eiza gonzalez#good girls rio#rio imagine#santanico pandemonium#rio fanfic#Rio x Katerina
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Steven Universe Alternate Future chapter 26: Everything’s Fine (originally posted on September 20, 2021)
AN: Welcome back to the jungle readers. When last we left Steven, his mind was going further down the toilet after shattering Jasper and the voice in his head continues trying to take control, which led to him lashing out against White Diamond & Spinel. Can he possibly keep his personal Nega-Scott under control while trying to tell the Gems that everything is totally okay? All this and more in this gripping chapter of Alternate Future!
Synopsis: Despite Steven constantly saying otherwise, everything isn't fine.
Cast:
Zach Callison as Steven, Topiary Stevens, Cactus Stevens
Estelle as Garnet
Micheala Dietz as Amethyst
Deedee Magno-Hall as Pearl, Yellow Pearl, Blue Pearl
Grace Rolek as Connie
Tom Scharpling as Greg
Ron Perlman as Steven's Inner Voice
Shelby Rabara as Peridot, Squaridot
Jennifer Paz as Lapis, Laz, Zuli
Uzo Aduba as Bismuth
Kimberly Brooks as Cherry Quartz
Michelle Maryk as Larimar
Ian Jones-Quartey as Snowflake Obsidian, Bixbite
Tara Platt as Heaven and Earth Cubic Zirconias
Martha Higerada as Topaz
Auli'I Cravalho as Orange Spodumene
Aparna Nancherla as Nephrite
Kimiko Glenn as Blue Chalcedony
Phillipa Soo as Chrysocolla
Anika Noni Rose as Watermelon Tourmaline
Tara Strong as Grossular Diopside
Aimee Carrero as Moonstone
Jinkx Monsoon as Emerald
Kari Wahlgren as Pyrope
Melissa Fahn as Demantoid
Noël Wells as Black Rutile
Lauren Ash as White Topaz
Della Saba as Aquamarine
Charlyne Yi as Eyeball
Larissa Gallagher as Bluebird Azurite
Susan Egan as Rose Quartz
--
As soon as Steven returned to his earthly home via Warp Pad and checked up on the bathroom, he returned to his room to flop down on his bed. Steven thought the Diamonds would be of help to him, but instead, they didn't understand what he was going through, and his evil voice kept making things worse for him.
"Why did you make me do that?" Steven lugubriously asked his inner self. "Why did you make me nearly kill White Diamond, and punch Spinel?"
"They hurt you, so I thought it was about time you gave them their just desserts." The evil voice within Steven answered. "Yet the real you insisted that everything was fine. That's your biggest problem, you're way too forgiving of others no matter how much they want you dead."
"No, I know when others don't deserve to be accepted." Steven argued. "Like Black Rutile for example. If she's going to be proud of how irredeemable she is, I'll just let her do her thing."
"Ah yes, do her thing." The negative side of Steven mused. "Like threaten your life and make repeated attempts on your psyche. Yeah, if you could change that pervert, then maybe you can change the sociopath too."
Suddenly, Steven's phone began to ring. "One second Negative Me, I have to take this." Steven said while picking it up and hearing a relieving familiar voice on the other end. "Hey Connie, what's up?"
"Steven!" Connie cried in delight. "Good, you finally picked up. I can't believe we haven't talked to each other since the hospital visit, how are you?"
"I'm great!" Steven fibbed while gazing at how he was still pink. "Never been better!"
"Really?" Connie asked, raising an eyebrow. "Are you sure you haven't had any more swelling or turning pink problems?"
"Uh, nope?" Steven replied. "Okay, maybe, but how are you doing? How's prepping for college going?"
"It's going fine Steven." Connie answered nervously. "But what you mean when you said maybe?"
"Look, there's nothing to worry about." Steven kept on lying. "Everything's fine."
"I doubt it." Steven's dark side interrupted.
"Look, I'll call you later," Steven said. "I don't wanna wake up the Gems."
"But they don't even sleep!" Connie exclaimed before Steven quickly hung up and gazed at his hands before the TV turned on.
"-it's because I'M A UNIVERSE!" Steven began seeing visions of the past on the TV, starting with his argument with Greg before it went to static. Then it began showing Steven holding the shattered remains of Jasper's gem in his hand. More static, followed by the near-death of White Diamond, then Steven punching Spinel for singing to him. Just as Steven got up to try and turn the TV off, he got one last devastating surprise.
"Steven, we can't both exist." Rose Quartz announced to Steven in the video she made before giving birth to him, the very sight of her warm face making him twitch angrily where he stood. "I'm going to become half of you. And I need you to know that every moment you love being yourself, that's me, loving you and loving being you."
"No, I never loved myself," Steven growled furiously. "I've always hated being you. Everything I've suffered, and everything you ever put everyone through," He balled up his fist and pointed it straight at the TV screen. "IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"
Before Rose could finish, Steven broke the screen with a single punch and prematurely ended the video. However, Steven then let out a gasp as he gazed into his reflection on the shattered remains of the screen, noticing that his irises were now diamond-shaped and realizing what he had become.
"No! No, no, no, no!" Steven trembled and dropped to the ground in horror. "Th-this can't be happening, I didn't think about shattering White, I didn't shatter Jasper, punch Spinel, or nearly kill Dad!" His panicking soon turned to mad chuckling as Steven tried to cheer himself up. "I'm Steven Universe!" Steven then turned to Vidalia's painting of him and Garnet. "I'm fine, I'm fine!" he loudly repeated to himself, causing the glass of his bedroom door to break. "I'm totally fine!"
"Steven, is that you?!" The loudness of Steven's fibbing caused Pearl to cry out as she, Amethyst, and Garnet raced upstairs to Steven's room and gasped at his current appearance.
"What happened?" Amethyst asked Steven. "When did you get so big?"
"Is everything alright?" Pearl added just as nervously.
"I'm fine." Steven smiled and waved at the Gems. "Going to the Diamonds was just a waste of time since they had no idea what I was going through. I thought I needed to figure myself out, but I already know who I am! I'm Steven Universe; and I help, not hurt!"
"Yeah, then I suppose you tried to help the TV there?" Amethyst said while pointing a thumb at the damaged TV. "Seriously, we have got to upgrade someday. But seriously dude, what's going on? You look way different!"
"Pfft, I'm still your lovable old Steven!" Steven denied in response.
"Steven, we're worried," Garnet stated, taking off her glasses to emphasize how concerned she was for her ward. "You haven't been acting like your usual self lately, and we think you should get some rest before this gets dangerous."
"I'm okay, really!" Steven continued lying to the Gems, who glanced concernedly at each other before turning back to him.
"We'll take your word for it." Garnet said resignedly.
"You know, everything's gone downhill ever since I quit Little Homeschool!" Steven declared cheerfully. "I should head on over and see if I can make myself useful there! See you guys later!"
With that, Steven used his newfound super speed to race out of the house to Little Homeworld. To the Gems, it was like he was gone in an instant.
"I get that Steven wants us to know he's fine, but that was a little unsettling." Pearl stated fearfully. "We should just follow him to Little Homeworld so we can keep an eye on him."
"Agreed." Garnet nodded while putting her glasses back on.
"Yeah, that boy ain't right!" Amethyst declared before the trio left Steven's bedroom. But what they or even Steven didn't know was that a black-colored drone was watching them carefully.
--
"Excellent, he's just about at his breaking point." Black Rutile declared triumphantly while examining the footage her drone has gathered with White Topaz by her side. "Oh, I haven't felt this much of a rush since the Strawberry Battlefields!"
"But will Steven get any better?" White Topaz asked nervously, inciting her master to give her a furious glare.
"No, that's my intention!" Black Rutile stated. "I broke him, I broke his spirit! If I physically harmed him, the damage would just go away. But mental torture, the wounds shall only grow and fester! I have officially broken Steven Universe, and all that's left is for everyone to reject that monster."
"Oh master, we're back from training." Bluebird Azurite declared as she flew back to the Rutile's cavern hideaway.
"Oh hey guys, how you getting along?" White Topaz asked the fusion cheerfully.
"We're getting along splendidly thanks to Steven's advice." Bluebird answered before un-fusing into Aquamarine and Eyeball.
"Now we're even stronger than ever!" Aquamarine exclaimed joyfully.
"Look what we can do now!" Eyeball added before pulling out her chisel and shaking it to turn the blade into a beam of fire while Aquamarine launched bubbles from her wings.
"Ah, so glad you two are reaching your full potential, potential that Steven has suppressed for too long." Black Rutile smiled warmly at the tiny twosome. "But know this, you may be afraid of what could be to come, but remember that fear is but the precursor to valor! And to strive and triumph in the face of fear is what it means to be a warrior. Don't think, become."
"I fail to see how that could inspire us, but okay." Aquamarine muttered before peeking behind Black Rutile to see the drone footage. "Now what's all this?"
"It's video evidence that I've driven Steven to madness." Black Rutile answered with a proud grin before gesturing to each screen. "Here, we see Steven going ballistic on a human television when his mother appeared on the monitor." She said pointing to the first one. "On this one, the accursed Crystal Gems show concern for him for once, but he denies that anything is wrong with him." Then Black Rutile moved on to the third one. "And finally, Steven is just gone like a light."
"How can he do that?" White Topaz asked as she looked at the third viewscreen.
"Research shows that this comes from his Diamond heritage interfering with his human biology." Black Rutile analyzed the footage. "I should know, I was often tasked with watching over Pink Diamond whenever her usual caretakers were unavailable. And let me just say, it was unbelievably hectic."
"Yeah, like remember our attempted occupation of Zembilla?" White Topaz added. "Pink really grew attached to those little orange natives and didn't want them all dead."
"Don't remind me to the point of making me have a flashback." Black Rutile groaned while stroking her temples. "This shall be our time to rise up. We shall strike the first moment we get when Steven is at his lowest, so I suggest you better prepare." The Rutile then turned to her Topaz muscle. "Topaz, I need you to preside over Aquamarine and Ruby's training for the time being."
"Oh, of course, I'll do as you say!" White Topaz frantically declared. "That's me, White Topaz, always at your service!"
"Just…..go." Black Rutile's eye began to twitch at White Topaz's brownnosing. As soon as her three subordinates left, the mastermind turned back to her screens and paused the first one at Steven punching the TV screen. "Soon, my boy. Your god complex will finally crumble, just like your so-called happily ever after."
--
"Ah Little Homeworld, long time no see!" Steven declared happily as he reached Little Homeworld and landed on the Warp Pad. "Time to find someone who needs my help."
As Steven ran around the village in search of people to help, Gems and humans were taken a little aback by his new appearance and tried to stay away from him, though Steven didn't know why.
"Look, we're just saying Emerald, there are more ways reptiles are connected to birds than you think." Demantoid argued with Emerald as the two played chess together.
"Name one!" Emerald declared while moving her rook to knock out Demantoid's pawn. "Are there any lizards that have feathers, hm?!"
"Hey, guys, any arguments that need settling?" Steven butted into the green Gems' debate with a wide smile, taking the two by surprise. "Something about birds?"
"What is wrong with you?!" Emerald exclaimed. "This is why Black Rutile hates you, you think everything has to revolve around you and how you think you can fix everything! But even so, you look creepily happier than usual. Something is definitely up."
"Oh, everything's fine." Steven declared, his eye twitching ever so slightly at Emerald's accusation. "I think I'll just let you guys get back to your conversation." And so, Steven set off for someone else to try and help, leaving the green ex-subordinates of Black Rutile aghast before they decided to change the topic while getting back to their game.
"So, I've heard rumors that Steven is suffering from some problems lately." Demantoid said as her rook moved to take out the opposing knight. "Something about post-traumatic stress disorder?"
"Are you sure?" Emerald replied. "Because I've read about the symptoms, and something tells me he might have a borderline personality disorder."
"Maybe somewhere in the middle?" Demantoid deduced.
--
"Now the key to giving a plant proper sunlight is finding a spot that's just right." Peridot exposited to her class of Pyrope, Orange Spodumene, Blue Chalcedony, Cherry Quartz, and Squaridot while pointing to a chrysanthemum. "And it also varies on what kind of plant you're growing."
"I see." Squaridot muttered in awe.
Just then, Steven barged into the greenhouse and grinned at Peridot's class. "Hi Peridot, do any of you need some help?"
"No, I do believe we're perfectly fine." Pyrope answered dryly.
"So what brings you back here?" Peridot asked. "Didn't you leave a few months back?"
"Just your friendly neighborhood Crystal Gem just here to help!" Steven declared. "And I think your students have a few struggling saplings here. Let me give you a hand." Chuckling at his pun, Steven licked his hands and reached out to Pyrope's pot before Peridot stopped him.
"Not so fast!" Peridot scolded Steven. "Amethyst told me you're on a No Plant Friends policy after what happened with the Cactus Stevens."
"We're right here you know." A Cactus Steven said while helping a nearby Sapphire.
"Besides, I don't want your germs all over my prized flower!" Pyrope added, protectively hiding her pot from Steven.
"Oh come on you guys, I just want to give them a little nudge!" Steven laughed. To further prove his point, a leaf fell off Blue Chalcedony's plant.
"That has been bothering me lately." Blue Chalcedony stated, holding her pot out to Steven. "Go ahead, just a smidge though."
"I got a bad feeling about this." Cherry Quartz said warily.
"Oh don't worry, I got this!" Steven said as he licked his finger and tapped on the spot where the leaf fell off.
Moments later, the greenhouse began literally bursting with plant life, and not in a good way. Living topiaries in the shape of Steven broke through the greenhouse walls chanting "Steven's here to help!" while Peridot's class ran away screaming.
"Nice going Chal, now look what's happened!" Pyrope yelled at Blue Chalcedony.
"Hey, lay off her Pyrope!" Orange Spodumene exclaimed. "But still, something is not right with Steven!"
On the topic of Steven, he followed the class out of the greenhouse and seemed oblivious to the damage he had caused. "Look at that, life! It's everywhere, it always finds a way!"
"Much like how you find a way to drive people away." Steven's evil voice muttered sardonically, but Steven paid it no mind as he continued his search for people to help.
--
"Now, tell me how that makes you feel." Garnet said to a human couple she was giving counseling to when she heard Peridot scream, causing the humans to stand up as they gasped. "See you next week."
As soon as the couple ran away in fright, three Topiary Stevens surrounded Garnet, still chanting "Steven's here to help!" while the real Steven ran into the fusion.
"Oh Garnet, I see you're making some new friends!" Steven exclaimed joyfully, continuing to be unaware of his surroundings. "Then I guess this was a net win. Welp, gotta run and find someone else to help! It's what I do!"
"Then help me stop them!" Garnet yelled while the Topiary Stevens repeated "Steven's here to help!", which began to get on her nerves. "The others have to know about this."
--
"Being a lifeguard was far easier than I thought." Laz declared while relaxing in a lifeguard chair above the Gems in the now completed swimming pool. "Just gotta sit around and wait for something to happen. Besides, Gems can't drown anyways!"
"Yeah, but they still need to learn some basic rules." Lapis said to her old friend turned enemy turned friend again before blowing her whistle. "Hey, no running so fast! You might slip and fall!"
"Sorry, Lapis." Teal Zircon apologized before diving in and landing on top of Watermelon Tourmaline. "This is living, eh Melon?"
"You said it, Teal." Watermelon Tourmaline said as she floated around the pool with the Zircon relaxing on her stomach. "Ain't nothing could go wrong today."
Just then, Steven came a-knocking as he opened the gate to the pool to check out what was going on. "Hey Lapises, how's everything going?" he asked. "Anyone need any saving right now?"
"Actually, I think we're running a pretty tight ship as is," Lapis answered Steven while Zuli emerged from the pool after a swim. "Right guys?"
"Yeah, we don't need any extra help right now." Zuli stated. "But if you want, we could hold tryouts sometime."
"Oh no need, I'll just do it myself." Steven beamed before he began looking out for someone who might need his assistance when he spotted Teal Zircon resting on Watermelon Tourmaline's stomach. "Hey TZ, you could slip and fall!"
"What?" Teal asked before Steven grabbed her by the hand. "I'm doing pretty fine over here." Suddenly, as Steven tried to pull the Zircon from the pool, he accidentally pulled a little too hard and threw her up in the air. "OKAY, NOW I'M NOT DOING FINE!" TZ screamed as she flew away from the pool. "WITNESS ME!"
Teal Zircon didn't stay in the air for long, and soon dropped from the sky into another part of Little Homeworld. "I'm okay!"
"What's the big idea, Steven?" Watermelon Tourmaline asked. "We were all having fun before you came in and threw Teal Zircon to who knows where!"
"I'm sure TZ's fine, she said so herself." Steven laughed. "Well, gotta run! Have a nice day everybody!"
As soon as Steven ran off, more Topiary Stevens came bursting through the chain-link fence as they wrestled with the Cactus Stevens, prompting the other Gems present to slowly back away.
"Can this day get any weirder?" Laz scoffed. "I was trying to relax here!"
"Hey, did anyone else notice that Steven was all pink and such?" Lapis asked her fellow water-manipulating lifeguards.
"Yeah, it's kinda freaking me out." Zuli replied. "And are we sure he's totally fine?"
"I'm asking that question too." Lapis pondered while Peridot came charging through the broken fence to break up the battle of the plant Stevens.
--
When Steven left the pool, the first thing he saw was Bismuth's forge. "That's right, it must be shop o'clock!" he declared while skidding to a stop. "Bismuth's shop class, that is. Time to get my shop on."
"You good bud, you talking to yourself or something?" Amethyst, dressed in a coach uniform, asked Steven as he entered the forge.
"Now, the detailing requires a light touch." Bismuth explained to Blue Pearl, Bixbite & Snowflake Obsidian while standing between Pearl wearing a smithing apron and Yellow Pearl in a suit of armor. "Pay attention now everybody, cause this is critical to getting it right."
"Uh, hey howdy hey!" Steven greeted the shop class while leaning against the entrance.
"Oh, hey Steven!" Bixbite cheerfully greeted Steven.
"Did you get taller?" Blue Pearl asked with a tilt of her head and a finger to her lips.
"Whoa-ho-ho, lookin' good Steven!" Bismuth complimented Steven's change in appearance.
"I don't think that look is a positive change for him." Pearl whispered to Bismuth. "We think something might be wrong with him."
"Fancy seeing you drop by." Yellow Pearl grinned, unaware of what the teachers were conversing about. "How do you like my armor?"
"You look great Yellow Pearl!" Steven answered. "So Bismuth, in need of a teaching assistant?"
"Actually, Pearl's my TA today," Bismuth replied with a hand on Pearl's shoulder before presenting Yellow Pearl's armor-clad arm. "but I could use a wedding expert for my wedding armor demonstration. How 'bout it?"
"Of course, I'll help!" Steven declared. "That's what I love doing, just helping everyone!"
"Okay, let's get some materials warmed up for you." Bismuth then walked over to a pot of coals that she plucked a cooling steel bar from and flattened one end of it on the anvil with her hammer hand. "I think that's good enough." She stated. "Hey Steven, mind helping me with a pauldron or two?"
"I got this." Steven cheered as he walked over to the anvil and prepared to punch the metal.
"Hold up there boulder-brain." Bismuth stopped Steven before he could punch. "It's just some detail work, no need for a big mallet when you could use a little hammer." She handed a tiny hammer to Steven. "Plus, you could burn yourself that way."
"Oh, whoopsy-daisy, thanks Bismuth." Steven exclaimed and lightly tapped on the metal with the hammer. Instead of the detail work he thought he could do, Steven instead cracked the anvil into pieces with a single tap.
"Someone's stronger than we thought." Snowflake laughed nervously while Pearl & Bismuth gazed at the broken anvil.
"Look at that, now you have two anvils!" Steven laughed while Bismuth mourned the destruction of her anvil.
"NOOOOO!" Bismuth dropped to her knees in despair. "My anvil! My beautiful anvil!"
"Oh, grow up will you?" Steven's inner voice grumbled. "It's an anvil, you can make another."
"Seems like my work here is done." The real Steven laughed as he prepared to leave. "Well, toodles!"
"You see what I mean, Steven's not himself lately." Pearl said as she comforted Bismuth. "First he nearly got Greg killed, then Jasper started calling him her Diamond, and now this."
"Can I be the first to say that he needs help?" Yellow Pearl asked sardonically as more Topiary Stevens continued their rampage outside the forge.
--
As Steven exited the forge, he ran towards a baseball game that Amethyst was holding. Nephrite was on the Warp Pad throwing a ball to Doc, Amethyst stood by with Onion next to her, Topaz stood with a pair of humans on the bases, Larimar was in the outfield, and Chrysocolla, Grossular Diopside & Moonstone were waiting to play.
As soon as Amethyst noticed Steven, she blew her whistle and turned to talk to him. "Hey dude," she greeted him. "What's up?"
"I was just wondering if you needed any more players." Steven offered. "I'm ready to have a ball!"
"I think we could squeeze you in, we do need a new outfielder," Amethyst concluded and pointed to Larimar. "Oy, Larimar! Hit the showers, Steven's taking your place!"
"Good luck there Steven." Larimar said while she got up and left while Steven took her place on the playing field.
"Yeah, good hustle there Lil Larimar." Steven complimented the ice Gem. "I'm honored to be joining such a great game, I mean, everyone here has been outstanding!"
"You just got here, how do you know that?" Nephrite raised her brow.
"That's just me, I know what everyone is doing and feel the need to help all the time!" Steven declared, creeping everyone out.
"Enough chit-chat, batter up!" Amethyst cried out, cuing Onion to pick up a bat and walk up to home base, ready to play. Nephrite threw the ball towards the silent boy and he hit it with the bat, although unfortunately, it was heading straight for a nearby house.
"Oh no, in danger again?!" the Heaven Cubic Zirconia complained as the ball sailed towards the window of her and Earth Cubic Zirconia's house while they were having tea.
"I swear, is it because we're small?" Earth Cubic Zirconia wondered. Thankfully, Steven caught the ball just in time, much to their relief.
"I did it." Steven declared and the other players cheered.
"Three cheers for Steven!" Topaz declared.
"That's our boy." Chrysocolla smiled.
"I did it, and I didn't ruin anything!" Steven boomed happily. "YEAH!" However, the complete opposite of what he just said quickly happened. His excited yell caused a windstorm powerful enough to knock people off their feet, break glass everywhere, and cause the Zirconias' house to fall apart.
"Whoa, take it easy Steven!" Moonstone cried as she held onto a bench while the windstorm continued.
"Someone help me!" Grossular Diopside yelled while she got blown away with Larimar. Thankfully, the windstorm died down after a few seconds but still left a ton of destruction in its wake, and all eyes were on Steven.
"Oops, sorry everyone." Steven blushed at the chaos he caused. "T-t-that was an accident. But what are accidents and mistakes but opportunities to learn and improve, right?" He looked down at the Zirconias, who weren't very happy about the destruction of their home.
"It was a mistake for us to be put in danger again, especially because of you!" Earth yelled accusingly.
"Earthy, shush!" Heaven shushed her partner.
"I mean, we all make mistakes, and as long as we keep improving, everything will be fine!" Steven declared while picking up a log. "Alright, let's get to it!"
"It was a mistake for you to come here in this state." The voice in Steven's head declared. "Black Rutile and I were right, you will drive everyone away."
"Listen, I am done with you for today." Steven's own thoughts argued with the voice. "Just pipe down and don't ever think about feeding me bad thoughts ever again, got it?"
"How about never?" the voice said smarmily while the Topiary Stevens got to work on helping Steven by picking up Onion, Larimar, and Grossular Diopside.
"WE'RE HELPING!" one of the Plant Stevens yelled.
--
High above the destroyed makeshift baseball field, Black Rutile's satellite continued watching everything and sending footage back to its creator, who was all too happy to see what her hard work has amounted to.
"This is just priceless!" Black Rutile laughed joyously. "First, he makes plants come to life and fight those cactus beasts, then he throws that annoying Zircon into the air, broke an anvil, and caused a scene during one of those human games. I'm sure he's going to make such a scene about all these little accidents."
"All the more tools to humiliate the boy." Aquamarine added just as sneakily. "Soon, he will have nothing but himself and his thoughts controlling him."
"Unless his friends were to come out and tell him everything will be alright." White Topaz objected. "I'm just saying, those Gems will stick by his side through thick and thin."
"Hey, no more objections!" Eyeball yelled while pulling out her flame knife. "Want me to test this on you?!"
While Eyeball began chasing White Topaz around the woods with her knife, Black Rutile just groaned and turned back to her screens. "Tell me Aquamarine, why do all great geniuses surround themselves with idiots?"
"Your guess is as good as mine my Rutile." Aquamarine shook her head while watching the screens focused on the beach house with bated breath.
--
As soon as Steven was done helping fix what he had broke, he returned to the beach house with a dourer expression than the big smile he kept wearing throughout the day. On the other side of the room, Connie was in the living room while Greg and the Gems sat down on the couch.
"Steven!" Connie cried. "I was right all along, you're still swelling! I tried calling you all day, but I kept getting this weird meme." She held up her phone, which now depicted Steven bouncing up and down while chanting "Steven's here to help!" just like the Topiary Stevens. "Please, what is going on? We're all worried for you."
"Go on boy, play dumb." Steven's inner voice commanded.
"I sometimes broadcast my subconscious these days." Steven answered. "It's really no big deal."
"NOT THAT DUMB!" the voice groaned in irritation.
"I can tell something is bothering you." Connie continued. "There are even times where the meme sometimes turns into this."
"Steven's here to help, Steven's here to help!" Steven kept chanting on Connie's phone before it began to glitch. "Steven help, help Steven!"
"Ah, I don't know what you're talking about!" Steven declared, his stress continuing to unnerve others. "Besides, you all saw I was doing just fine this morning. I'm fine, awesome even!"
"Steven, if being as helpful as you always are, even if it's a bit obnoxious & creepy, is what you want, we'll support you 100%." Greg comforted. "But if you're not really happy, if something's wrong-"
"He's onto us!" the voice exclaimed. "Should've gone a little further with the crash, I say."
"Nothing's wrong!" Steven rebuked his father's worries. "Besides, you all don't have to worry."
"We ARE worried!" Connie replied worryingly. "Besides, Pink Diamond's Pearl told the Gems over the communicator in your greenhouse that you punched Spinel while you were at Homeworld."
"Listen, you can tell us anything." Greg added.
"Look at these worms, ganging up on us." The inner voice kept snarling. "Run, run while you still can! No one may help us now! Except, of course, for a certain Rutile."
"It's not that easy." Steven muttered as he hung his head in shame. "You know what? I don't want to deal with all this." However, when Steven tried to leave, Garnet blocked his way to the Warp Pad while the rest kept him from leaving through the door. "Seriously guys, I don't want to deal with this!"
"No, we don't wanna deal with all this." Amethyst put her foot down at Steven's behavior.
"Please, you have to stop running." Garnet begged in addition when suddenly, Steven's body began to swell yet again and his face stretched out.
"Maybe we should get you back to my mom at the hospital." Connie suggested.
"HOSPITAL?!" Amethyst shrieked.
"Is that what you were doing while we were at the trial?!" Pearl yelled.
"You mean you didn't tell them?!" Connie cried out in shock, while Steven's body kept on distorting and his breath quickened.
"It wasn't that important, just my first ever doctor's visit." Steven smiled awkwardly. "You're making a big deal out of nothing! Sure, I messed up the house and broke a few things, but what teenager hasn't?"
"You spent years forcing secrets out of the Gems, and now you're the one keeping secrets?" Steven's darker half growled at his other half's hypocrisy. "You truly have become your mother."
"And sure, Dad and I had a little fight, but it was practically a rite of passage!" Steven continued fibbing and shrugged.
Connie and the Gems turned their gaze to Greg, who just scratched his head and let out a nervous laugh.
"I mean, wouldn't it be weird if we didn't?!" Steven kept on ranting. "And sure, I've had Black Rutile feed me some not so nice thoughts while you were at Los Diego that took the form of an inner voice that forced me to punch Spinel, or try and shatter White Diamond, but it's not like I actually went through with it! I did really shatter Jasper after all!"
"WHAT?!" Amethyst screamed at the thought of Steven, this sweet young man who would rather hang out with a fly than hurt it, doing such a thing, especially to a Gem he had tried many times to help see the light.
Although barely anyone could hear, Jasper let out a light moan from the bathroom.
"You're-you're joking right?!" Connie gasped with Greg while Garnet's jaw dropped and Pearl's eyes widened.
"Oh don't worry, I fixed Jasper! I can fix anything!" Steven's temper began to reach its boiling point. "I can just keep fixing and fixing things forever, and you'll never have to worry about anything ever again!"
"Except worrying about how you're deliberately pushing people away while begging them to stay." Steven's inner voice concluded while metaphorically looking around at the shocked reactions of Steven's human & Gem loved ones. "Just look at them all, how do you think they'd ever forgive you for such a horrendous act?"
"Steven." Garnet tried to lend an assuring hand on the boy's shoulder, but she was quickly shoved away.
"How messed up is that?!" Steven gasped as he felt something change in his body. His teeth began getting sharper, his skin became pinker & leatherier, his hands slowly turned into claws, and his pupils started turning pink. "That I've gotten away with all this for so long, forcing my views down the throats of others, tearing apart Gem society to the point where they'll eventually be invaded, actually murdering someone! Black Rutile was right, I am just an awful person! A sociopath even!"
No one could comprehend what Steven was thinking right now. Greg began to tear up at all these horrible things Steven was saying about himself, Connie gripped the father's arm tightly, and Pearl & Amethyst began fearfully hugging Garnet, whose face was completely frozen in horror.
"You think I'm so great, I'm so mature, that I always know what to do, BUT I'M NOT!" Steven began roaring in a more beastly tone. "I haven't learned a thing from my problems, and I never will! They all kept making me worse, YOU all keep making me worse! Are you even sure any of you ever loved or cared about me?! If it weren't for Pink Diamond ruining everything for everyone, I could've been just a normal kid!"
"That's right, just let everything out." The inner voice purred comfortingly. "Me on the other hand, I think I shall take my leave and prepare something more normal for you." With that, the inner voice seemingly vanished from Steven's mind.
"You all think of me as a perfect angel who's too pure for this world, but I'm not a little kid anymore!" Steven boomed before he dropped to the ground with his head between his hands. "I'm just like my mom. A fraud." He began to tremble where he crouched as something began bubbling on his back. "I'm a monster!"
Suddenly, a massive pillar of light pink scales erupted from Steven's back like a volcano as everyone reacted quickly. Garnet stuck her arms out to protect Amethyst & Pearl and Connie jumped back, but Greg was just plain terrified.
--
"I'm a monster!" Steven's final words before his transformation were rewound by Black Rutile as she eagerly replayed the phrase again and again on more of her satellite footage. "I'm a monster! I'm a monster! I'm a monster!"
With an evil grin, Black Rutile paused the video and shut off her screens. "And I have finally won!" she declared triumphantly and let out a booming evil laugh that echoed throughout the cave and scared off the nearby animals. Aquamarine & Eyeball grinned in delight, while White Topaz turned away from her cohorts in shame of what she had participated in. As quickly as Black Rutile finished her victorious cackle, she had another wonderful, awful idea in mind. "Now, onto Phase 2."
--
….holy shit. Uh, see you all for I am My Monster, I guess. And by the way, I did repurpose Steven accidentally playing Rose's message for the Rose trio in Rose Buds for the opening.
#steven universe#steven universe future#fanfiction#steven universe alternate future#steven quartz universe#garnet#amethyst#pearl#connie maheswaran#greg universe#peridot#lapis lazuli#bismuth#black rutile#white topaz#aquamarine#eyeball ruby#teal zircon#cherry quartz#nice lapis#mean lapis#emerald#pyrope#demantoid#watermelon tourmaline#orange spodumene#chrysocolla#moonstone#grossular diopside#squaridot
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If/when they make a Joe/Nicky prequel movie, what are some of the Dos and Don’ts for them, with regards to historical accuracy. Like, what do you think they should include, and what do you think they should avoid?
Oof. This is a GREAT question, and also designed to give me a chance to ramble on in a deeply, deeply self-indulgent fashion. That is now what will proceed to happen. Consider yourself warned. So if they were miraculously to be like “well that qqueenofhades person on tumblr seems like she knows what she’s talking about, let’s hire her to consult on this production!”, here are some of the things I would tell them.
First off, a question I have in fact asked my students when teaching the crusades in class is whether you could actually show the sack of Jerusalem on screen. Like... if you’re making a film about the First Crusade, what kind of choices are you going to make? What narrative viewpoint are you going to uphold throughout the story? Are you actually going to show a slaughter of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants that some chroniclers described as causing enough blood to reach up to the knees of horses? (Whether it actually did this is beside the point; the point is that the sack went far beyond the accepted conventions of warfare and struck everybody involved in it as particularly horrific.) Because when you’re making a film about the crusades, you are also making it by nature for a modern audience that has particular understandings of Christian/Muslim conflict, religious warfare and/or tolerance, the War on Terror, the modern clash over ISIS, Trump’s Muslim ban, and so forth. The list goes on and on. So you’re never making a straight, unbiased historical adaptation, even if you’re going off the text of primary sources. You’re still constructing it and presenting it in a deliberate and curated fashion, and you can bet that whichever way you come down, your audience will pick up on that.
Let’s take the most recent example of a high-profile crusades film: Kingdom of Heaven from 2005. I’ve written a book chapter on how the narrative choices of KoH, aside from its extensive fictionalization of its subject matter to start with, make it crystal clear that it is a film made by a well-meaning Western liberal filmmaker (Ridley Scott) four years after 9/11 and two years after the invasion of Iraq, when the sympathy from 9/11 was wearing off and everyone saw America/Great Britain and the Bush/Blair coalition overreaching itself in yet another arrogant imperial adventure into the Middle East. Depending on how old you are, you may or may not remember the fact that Bush explicitly called the War on Terror a “crusade” at the start, and then was quickly forced to walk it back once it alarmed his European allies (yes, back then, as bad as America was, it still did have those) with its intellectual baggage. They KNEW exactly what images and tropes they were invoking. It is also partly why medieval crusade studies EXPLODED in popularity after 9/11. Everyone recognized that these two things had something to do with each other, or they made the connection somehow. So anyone watching KoH in 2005 wasn’t really watching a crusades film (it is set in the late 1180s and dramatizes the surrender of Jerusalem to Saladin) so much as a fictional film about the crusades made for an audience explicitly IN 2005. I have TONS to say on this subject (indeed, if you want a copy of my book chapter, DM me and I’ll be happy to send it.)
Ridley Scott basically sets it up as the Christian and Muslim secular leaders themselves aren’t evil, it’s all the religious fanatics (who are all made Templars, including Guy de Lusignan, going back to the “evil Templar” trope started by Sir Walter Scott and which we are all so very familiar with from Dan Brown and company). Orlando Bloom’s character shares a name (Balian de Ibelin) but very little else with the eponymous real-life crusader baron. One thing Scott did do very well was casting an actual and well-respected Syrian actor (Ghassan Massoud) to play Saladin and depicting him in essential fidelity to the historical figure’s reputed traits of justice, fairness, and mercy (there’s some article by a journalist who watched the film in Beirut with a Muslim audience and they LOVED the KoH Saladin). I do give him props for this, rather than making the Evil Muslim into the stock antagonist. However, Orlando Bloom’s Balian is redeemed from the religious extremist violence of the Templars (shorthand for all genuinely religious crusaders) by essentially being an atheistic/agnostic secular humanist who wants everyone to get along. As I said, this is a film about the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq made three years after 9/11 more than anything else, and you can really see that.
That said, enough about KoH, back to this presumable Joe/Nicky backstory. You would obviously run into the fact that it’s SUPER difficult to make a film about the crusades without offending SOMEBODY. The urge to paint in broad strokes and make it all about the evil Westerners invading is one route, but it would weaken the moral complexity of the story and would probably make it come off as pandering to guilty white liberal consciences. Are we gonna touch on the many decades of proto-crusading ventures in Iberia, Sicily, North Africa, and other places, and how the eleventh century, especially under Pope Gregory VII, made it even thinkable for a Christian to be a holy warrior in the first place? (It was NOT normal beforehand.) How are we going to avoid the “lololol all religion sucks and makes people do crazy things” axe to grind favoured by So Very Smart (tm) internet atheists? Yes, we have to demonstrate the ultimate horror of the crusade and the flawed premises it was based on, but we can’t do that by just showing the dirty, religiously zealot medieval people doing that because they don’t know any better and are being cynically manipulated in God’s Name. In other words (and the original TOG film did this very well) we can’t position ourselves to laugh at or mock the crusader characters or feel confident in looking down on them for being Dumb Zealots. They have to be relatable enough that we realize we could BE (and in fact already ARE) them, and THEN you slide into the horror and what compels them to do those kinds of things, and THAT’S when it hits. Because take a look at the news. This is happening around us right now.
Obviously, as I was doing in my First Crusade chapter in DVLA, a lot of this also has to spend time centering the Muslim point of view, the way they reacted to the crusade, the ways in which Yusuf as an Isma’ili Shia Muslim (Kaysani is the name of a branch of Isma’ili Shi’ites, he has a definite historical context and family lineage, and hence is almost surely, as I wrote him, a Fatimid from Egypt) is likewise not just A Stock Muslim. In this case, obviously: Get actual Muslims on the set to advise about the details. Don’t make stupid and/or obvious mistakes. Don’t necessarily make the Muslims less faithful or less virtuous than the Christians (even if this is supposed to praise them as being “less fanatic” than those bad religious Catholics). Don’t tokenize or trivialize their reaction to something as horrific as the sack of Jerusalem, and don’t just use dead brown bodies as graphic visual porn for cheap emotional points. Likewise, it goes without saying, and I don’t think they would anyway, but OH MY GOD DON’T MAKE THIS INTO GAME OF THRONES GRIMDARK!!!! OH MY GOD!!! THERE IS BEAUTY AND THERE IS LIGHT AND THERE IS POETRY AND THAT’S WHY IT HURTS SO MUCH WHEN IT’S DESTROYED! AND THE CHOICES THAT PEOPLE MAKE TO DESTROY THOSE THINGS HAVE TO BE TERRIFYINGLY PLAUSIBLE AND FAMILIAR, BECAUSE OH MY GOD!!
Next, re: Nicolo. Evidently he is a priest or a former priest or something of the sort in the graphic novel, which becomes a bit of a problem if we want him to actually FIGHT in the crusades for important and/or shallow and/or OTP purposes. (I don’t know if they address this somehow or Greg Rucka is not a medieval historian or whatever, but never mind.) It was a Major Thing that priests could not carry weapons, at least and especially bladed weapons. (In the Bayeux Tapestry, we have Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, fighting at the battle of Hastings with a truncheon because he’s a clergyman and can’t have a sword). They were super not supposed to shed blood, and a broadsword (such as the type that Nicky has and carries and is clearly very familiar with) is a knight’s weapon, not a clergyman’s. The thing about priests was that they were not supposed to get their hands dirty with physical warfare; they could (and often did) accompany crusade armies, bishops were secular overlords and important landholders, monks and hermits and other religious preachers were obviously part of a religious expedition, and yes, occasionally some priests would break the rules and fight in battle. But this was an exception FAR more than the rule. So if we’re going by accuracy, we have Nicky as a priest who doesn’t actively fight and doesn’t have a sword, we have him as a rule-breaking priest with a sword (which would have to be addressed, and the Templars, who were basically armed monks, weren’t founded until 1119 so he can’t be one of those yet if this is still 1099) or we just skip the priest part and have him as a crusader with a sword like any other soldier. If he was in fact a priest, he also wouldn’t be up to the same standard of sending into battle. Boys, especially younger sons of the nobility, often entered the church at relatively early ages (12 or 13), where it was treated as a career, and hence they stopped training in arms. So if Nicky is actually out there fighting and/or getting killed by Yusuf several times for Important Purposes, he’s... almost surely not a priest.
Iirc, they’ve already changed a few things from the graphic novel (I haven’t read it, but this is what I’ve heard) so they can also tweak things to make a new backstory or a hybrid-new backstory in film-verse. So once we’ve done all the above, we still have to decide how to handle the actual sack of Jerusalem and massacre of its inhabitants, the balance between violence comparable to the original TOG film and stopping short of being exploitative (which I think they would do well), and the aftermath of that and the founding of the new Latin Christian kingdom. It would have to, as again the original film does very well, avoid prioritizing the usual players and viewpoints in these events, and dig into presenting the experiences of the marginalized and way in which ordinary people are brought to the point of doing these things. It doesn’t (and frankly shouldn’t) preach at us that U.S. Invasions Of The Middle East Are Bad (especially since obviously none of the characters/people/places/events here are American at all). And as I said already but bears repeating: my god, don’t even THINK about making it GOT and marketing it as Gritty Dramatic Medieval History, You Know It’s Real Because They’re Dirty, Violent, and Bigoted!
Also, a couple tags I saw pop up were things like “Period-Typical Racism” and “Period-Typical Homophobia” and mmm okay obviously yes there are these elements, but what exactly is “period typical?” Does it mean “using these terms just because you figure everyone was less tolerant back then?” We know that I, with my endless pages of meta on medieval queer history, would definitely side-eye any attempts to paint these things as Worse Than Us, and the setting alone would convey a sense of the conflict without having to add on gratuitous microaggressions. I basically think the film needs to be made exactly like the original: centering the gay/queer perspectives of marginalized people and people of color, resisting the urge for crass jokes at the expense of the identity of its characters, and approaching it with an awareness of the deep complexity and personal meaning of these things to people in terms of the historical moment we’re in, while not making a film that ONLY prizes our response and our current crises. Because if we’re thinking about these historical genealogies, the least we can do (although we so often aren’t) is to be honest.
Thanks! I LOVED this question.
#history#medieval history#kingdom of heaven#joe x nicky#long post#persephone-rose-r#ask#the old guard meta
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Riding On
Ch 17-Let Me Take An Elfie…
Summary: Christmas arrives in the Adler household and its full of laughter, giggles, and one huge gift that money simply can’t buy…
Warnings: Bad Language words, Smut (NSFW, 18+)
Pairing: Frank Adler x Fliss Gallagher
A/N: So, like, I’m over 2020 and wish it was Christmas already. This chapter brings Riding On Part 1 to a close and I’ll be likely taking a little break from writing this to concentrate on some stuff I have going on Stark Spangled for the Birthday Party! I hope you enjoy!
This one is dedicated to The Evangers…you know who you are!
Chapter Song: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday by Wizard (because who doesn’t?)
Series Masterlist // WIYPT Masterlist
When the Snowman brings the snow, well he just might like to know, he’s put a great big smile on somebody’s face. If you jump into your bed, quickly cover up your head. Don’t you lock the doors, you know that sweet Santa Clause is on the way.
Monday morning rolled round and for the first time in ages Frank woke well rested. After their plan had worked, he and Fliss had played the recording back to Greg who had been torn between calling them a pair of reckless dumbasses, and being elated with what it meant. Whilst he was unsure the court would permit it as evidence, he was going to have “some damned fun filing it anyway” and then set about giving them the final coaching for the Child Welfare Department interviews on Monday.
To Frank and Fliss, this was the final thing they could do. The last chance they had to get their feelings across and make a good impression before it was then over to the courts. And whilst Fliss was still hopeful that Polland would sign the papers as soon as he realised they had him on tape, Frank wasn’t quite as optimistic. So it was for that reason that over breakfast on the Monday he found himself rehearsing his speech to the Social Worker, just had he had done 2 years or so prior.
He needn’t have bothered though because, as Greg had predicted, the Social Workers discussion with him mainly centred on practical things such as Frank’s new job and his role, what Fliss did for a living, their new home and a little bit of digging into her background which was done sensitively and compassionately. It was the same Social Worker from 2 years back, a dark haired lady called Sarah Kellet, which Frnak was glad about, and she’d smiled when she’d run through things, checking all the facts that Greg had provided her before simply stating that was all she needed.
“What, no soul-searching questions?” Frank asked, arching an eyebrow. She chuckled and shook her head.
“Not this time.” she smiled “It’s a little different Mr Adler. You already have formal Guardianship over Mary so this isn’t about whether you’re suitable or not. This is really just a fact gathering exercise about whether or not formally providing you with Parental Status would be in her best interests.”
Frank swallowed and Fliss gently tangled her fingers in his as Sarah looked at them and smiled.
“Don’t worry.” She beamed. “When I spoke to Mary before it’s clear she’s exceptionally settled, and she adores her new brother as she refers to him as. You’ve created a very stable and loving environment for her, you’re financially credible, not that that’ the be all and end all, and you have a home, family support…all of this will be evidenced in my report.”
“So, do you make recommendations to the court?” Fliss asked and Sarah shook her head.
“Not as such, I’m merely here to pull together a factual, comprehensive report on how Mary is.” She tapped her pen slightly “And it’s always a little easier in cases like this when the minor has been in the care of the applicant prior to it. But, I will be making it quite clear in my conclusions that from the CWD point of view it would be in Mary’s best interests for the court to allow the adoption to go ahead, regardless of Mary’s father raising his objections. Basically if comes down to it, we’ll be fighting your corner.”
Fliss turned to Frank who let out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding and she smiled at him.
“So, that’s it.” Sarah shrugged. “I’ll send a copy of everything through to the courts and your attorney Mr Adler. All that’s left is for me to wish you both a Merry Christmas and I’ll see you at the hearing whenever that is.”
They both rose, shaking her hand and then Frank held the door to the room open for Fliss. She stepped out in front of him, and turned to him smiling.
“That’s it.” She shrugged “We did everything we could.”
“Yeah, yeah I know.” He nodded “I’m just relieved it’s all over. Well, for now anyway.”
“Yup, so let’s get on with enjoying Christmas.” Fliss beamed as they walked down the corridor to the little area at the bottom where Mary was waiting. She was sat, reading a book being supervised by another one of the social workers and looked up, smiling as they entered. The woman who’d be supervising left them alone after bidding them goodbye and the three of them walked out to the truck.
“Think your mom and dad will be ok with Alex for a little longer?” Frank asked as Mary bounced ahead of them slightly.
“Sure, why?”
“I thought we could take her for a pizza and bowling, just the 3 of us before we pick Evelyn up from the airport.” Frank said “Been a while since we went.”
“Yeah, sounds good.” Fliss beamed “I’ll call mum and let her know.”
Of course Verity and Bill were only too happy to keep Alex. Sian and the twins had arrived earlier that morning and Verity told Fliss that Sian was enjoying Auntie cuddles whilst batting her eyes at Steve asking him if he fancied another. Steve’s response had been to choke on his coffee. They headed to the bowling alley, where Fliss and Mary found to their delight that the skittles were all painted like elves for the festive period. They had 3 games and as usual they whooped Frank’s ass, leaving him in a fake mood declaring Christmas was cancelled. No sooner had the words left his mouth, Mary had vaulted onto his back causing him to laugh and attempt to pull her off. Eventually he succeeded and dangled her upside down by her ankles, the girl shrieking as he swung her round before setting her down.
“She’s getting a bit big to do that with now!” he looked at Fliss, letting out a huff as Mary righted her sweater and climbed into the truck.
“Well, she is 10 in a couple of months.” Fliss smiled and Frank shook his head.
“Don’t remind me.”
Fliss chuckled as she climbed into the passenger seat and the 3 of them headed off to the airport to collect Evelyn. They stood in the arrival lounge, Frank’s arm tossed over Fliss’ shoulders and Fliss could tell he was a little apprehensive. This was the first time he’d seen Evelyn since she had admitted outright she’d bribed Polland to give evidence. He’d told Fliss he wasn’t sure how he was going to react, that he didn’t want to be angry, but he couldn’t help it. Fliss had simply told him that they’d deal with whatever happened when it came.
As Evelyn walked through the glass double doors, pulling a huge case behind her, Mary shot forwards to greet her and the woman bent down, giving her a cuddle. Once more it struck Frank just how different it all was to the first meeting they’d had just over 2 years ago and as he watched his mother gently smooth Mary’s hair back any anger he was feeling simply dissipated. He knew only too well after the events of the last few years, he couldn’t change the past but he could make sure history never repeated itself. He watched as Mary and his mother made their way over to him and he took a deep breath as Evelyn glanced up at him, her face wrought with worried anticipation. She opened her mouth to say something, and Frank knew full well it was going to be an apology so he shook his head.
“It’s done.” He said simply “And I don’t wanna waste a single second more thinking about it, ok mom?”
Evelyn nodded, tears filling her eyes, and then in a sudden display of affection she moved to embrace him. It was a little stiff but Frank didn’t shy away, wrapping his arms around his mother in a gentle hug before he pulled away and took her bag off her.
When they reached Bill and Verity’s neither Frank nor Fliss was surprised to find that Verity had laid a spread on. She loved entertaining and so had taken it upon herself to pull together a buffet consisting of a selection of cold meats, breads, crudités, dips and savoury snacks along with a huge plate of her infamous brownies. No sooner had Frank walked into the kitchen he had a beer thrust into his hand by Steve who winked at him and he turned to Fliss a little sheepishly with a shrug.
“I’ll drive home.” She rolled her eyes playfully as she gently turned Alex so that he was against her chest, head raised slightly as he looked around.
“Oh fuck that.” Evelyn said, taking the red wine that Bill handed her as Frank gave a snort at his mother’s language, not that it surprised him, she’d always been quite colourful that way despite her proper appearance and professional demeanour “We’ll get a cab. It’s Christmas.”
“See, she gets it!” Steve nodded to Evelyn who simply shrugged and took a sip of her wine before she set it down on the kitchen counter.
“May I?” she asked Fliss, gesturing to Alex and Fliss smiled.
“Of course, here…” she passed him over and Evelyn looked at the baby who broke into a gummy smile.
“He gets more like you ever time I see him.” Evelyn whispered, looking at Frank who smiled.
“Yeah, so I’m told” he shrugged, attempting an air of nonchalance but as Fliss looked at him smirking he knew he had failed. He fucking loved the fact his boy looked like him, it massaged his ego and he didn’t care one iota about how smug it made him appear.
After Mary, Charlie and Joel had eaten, the three of them headed upstairs to the movie room, arms laden with snacks as Bill put The Santa Clause on the large screen and the adults all settled in the living room. Evelyn asked if she could feed Alex and Frank obliged, handing her the baby and the bottle. There was a little more chat before Verity cleared her throat and addressed the huge elephant in the room.
“So, how did it go with the social worker kids?”
Fliss and Frank exchanged a glance before Frank smiled “Good, really good. In fact, she said in her conclusion they’ll recommend the adoption is processed regardless of any objections but, we’ll see. For now we’ve done everything we can so it’s down to the court in the New Year.”
“Oh, that’s…that’s great, that’s really….great.” Bill said, nodding as his eyes misted over and Verity stood up, moving to give Fliss a cuddle as her eyes had filled at the sight of her father’s emotions. Frank could feel the tears stabbing at his eyes too so, under the guise of nipping to the bathroom he took a moment and headed through the kitchen and out of the bi-folding doors, stepping onto the veranda which overlooked the landscaped garden and pool area.
Lost in his own thoughts, he hadn’t been out there that long when he heard someone behind him. A tumbler of scotch was pushed into his hand and he looked up as Steve clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“Thought you might need that.” He said, as he set the bottle and his own glass down on the table, fishing in his pocket for his cigarettes. As he sparked it up he took a drag, blowing it out to the side taking care to remain hidden.
“Fucking 38 and still hiding the fact I smoke from my mum.” Steve snorted and Frank shook his head.
“Hate to break it to you Steeb but she knows.” He chuckled at the look on Steve’s face “She was complaining to Fliss about it the other day.”
“No shit.” Steve muttered, “Oh, well, fuck it…”
Frank laughed again and took a sip of his drink before he asked Steve about the house he was purchasing just out east of Tampa. Steve explained the sale was going through now and they should be ready to move in towards the middle of January.
“Good.” Frank nodded “If you need a hand, moving and stuff, just holler. Lord knows you did enough for us, I’d be glad to help.”
“Don’t worry you will be.” Steve smirked and Frank snorted.
“How’s Sian taking to the move? Fliss said she was a little apprehensive.”
“Yeah, she was.” Steve shrugged “But she’s also excited. I mean of course she’s nervous to leave her family behind but she knows it’s too good an opportunity to pass up on, and it won’t be forever. Probably about 5 years or so and we’ll head back home.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.” Frank said, knocking back his scotch.
“Why’s that?” Steve asked, his voice coming out as a slight mumble as he held his cigarette between his lips so he could top Frank’s glass up again.
“Well-cheers-“ Frank nodded, taking the tumbler off him “-it’s like Fliss said, once this place gets it’s claws into you, you kinda grow to love it.”
Steve chuckled and dropped his now done dab end onto the floor under his foot before he bent down and retrieved it, slipping it into his pocket to dispose of later.
“So, Fliss told you that we got family coming out this New Year?” Steve asked.
“She mentioned one of her cousins…” Frank paused “Tabs was it?”
“Babs.” Steve corrected “We got 4, there’s Eva who’s married to a Police Officer called Ari, Jen who’s married to a lawyer called Andy and Amber who is married to Curtis…”
“He the train mechanic?” Frank racked his memory and Steve nodded.
“Yeah, they all still live in Liverpool but Babs, the one that’s coming…she’s something else.” Steve snorted. “She lives in Australia with a photographer called Hugh. Well, I say photographer, he’s kind of a trust fund rich boy that plays at it, you know? Nice enough guy though, always happy to shout you on a night out.”
“So they making a special trip over or…”
“They’re taking some kind of sabbatical, if you can take a sabbatical from doing fuck all.” Steve shrugged “6 month tour of the US starting here. She’s fucking great fun though. Her and Fliss are the same age and were thick as thieves growing up, used to get into all sorts of mischief.” He shook his head. “They once set fire to a bin on a park. By accident mind. They were pretending to smoke these hollow twig things stuffed with dried grass and when one set on fire Babs panicked and tossed it into the bin.”
Frank snorted as Steve continued.
“The whole thing went up.” Steve chuckled “So they legged it and got followed home by an off duty copper. Dad and Uncle Ted went ballistic…
“Wait…you dad’s brother is called Ted?” Frank asked.
“Yeah, Bill and Ted.” Steve grinned. Frank looked at him, before the pair of them burst out laughing, and couldn’t stop. It wasn’t that funny, it really wasn’t, but the more Steve laughed, the more Frank did, and the more Frank laughed, the more Steve died. By the time Frank managed to control himself he had tears of pure mirth in his eyes and he wiped them as his laughter subsided and he managed to take a breath, clutching at his side.
“What you two laughing at?” Fliss asked, stepping outside.
“Your face.” Steve shot back.
“Twat.” Fliss narrowed her eyes at him and she turned to Frank who was still chuckling “And I don’t know what you find so funny…”
“Nothing at all baby.” He smirked, dropping a kiss to her head, “Nothing at all.”
******
There were sore heads in the Adler household the next day. They’d stayed at Bill and Verity’s till well past midnight, and had left Mary there as she’d passed out asleep with the twins in the movie room. After they’d managed to herd all the kids to bed, the adults had continued drinking and eventually called it a night when Bill had fallen asleep in his arm chair, dropping his glass of brandy all over the floor.
Fliss had stable duties that morning, and took off early even though she felt she was still half drunk and when she returned a few hours later Frank and Evelyn were sat at the breakfast bar, each nursing cups of coffee and looking half dead. Eventually they all managed to muster enough about themselves to shower, dress and head over to pick Mary up. Frank was low-key pleased to see Steve looked worse than he felt and after a quick coffee they set off into the little town to have a walk round the Christmas Stalls that had been set up before they grabbed a bite to eat and Evelyn started telling Fliss a few stories about Frank and Diane when they had been children at Christmas.
“I think my personal favourite will be the carol service when you were 6.” Evelyn looked at Frank and he groaned taking a sip of his soda as he leaned back in his chair “He has a lovely voice you know and that year he was selected to do a solo.”
“We don’t need to hear this…” Frank started to protest but Fliss cut him off.
“Yes we do, go on Evelyn.”
“So his particular hymn was Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. And the line ‘God and sinners reconciled’ was proving a little tricky for him as he rehearsed.”
“I was 6.” Frank deadpanned.
“I’m well aware, it still doesn’t stop it being funny.” Evelyn grinned “So up he gets, sings out the song note and word perfect until he gets to this line and belts out ‘God and sinners dressed in style’”
Fliss snorted and Mary let out a howl of laughter.
“You’re such a loser” she looked at him
“Quit it or you’ll be getting no presents tomorrow morning.”
“Whatever”
“Hey, do you remember that year grandpa sent us nothing?” Frank suddenly had a recollection and he looked at Evelyn who let out a loud laugh.
“God yes, you and Diane were disgusted!”
“Oh, the last year before he died-“ Frank started to explain as Fliss looked at him blankly “-well, he was clearly feeling his age and found that shopping for Christmas gifts had become too difficult. So he decided to send checks to everyone instead. In each card he wrote, ‘Buy your own present!’ and mailed them early. Only when we opened them, there was no check…he’d forgotten to enclose them with the cards.”
“So you all literally got a card with ‘buy your own present’ written inside?” Fliss laughed and Frank chuckled
“Yeah, which to be fair dad thought was hilarious but…poor Grandpa was devastated. He tried to blame Santa, of course, but it didn’t wash.”
“That’s because Santa isn’t real.” Mary looked at him.
“Yes he is.” Fliss sighed “I’m not having this debate with you again.”
“You said yourself the other day that Frank was incapable of organising anything because he was a man so how could one dude organise gifts for the entire world?” Mary looked at her and Frank turned his head slowly to Fliss.
“Oh, you did, did you?”
Fliss hesitated, before she sighed “Come on, your organisational skills at home are ridiculous.”
“Do our bills get paid on time?”
“Yes, but-“
“Have either of the kids died yet?”
“No…” Fliss laughed.
“Then we’re good!” Frank shrugged, his hand gently dropping to his son’s tummy as he lay asleep in the stroller parked next to him “I find your lack of faith disturbing. And if we’re being sexist, I know Santa is a man as a woman wouldn’t be able to hack driving a sleigh around for a night, not to mention the complete mess she’d make trying to park it…”
“Wow!” Fliss looked at him as he laughed, “Ok, buddy, I bed I can think of 5 reasons why I would jump at the chance to be Santa.”
“Go on.” He teased and Fliss held up her hand, counting on her fingers as she spoke.
“One, I could grow to the size of Hawaii knowing it’s simply all part of the job. Two, I’d simply be able to buy one big, black belt, and brass buckle, and be accessorized for life. Three there would be no reason to have my hair colour done. Four, everyone would be extremely nice to me, regardless of my behaviour and five, if people commented that my belly jiggled when I laughed I could hit them with my purse.”
“Six…” Evelyn picked up as Frank laughed “You would always work in sensible footwear”
Frank shook his head “She always is anyway, not like you wear high heels to ride horses in and muck out stalls…”
“Those boots hurt when they’re not worn in.” Mary jabbed back “I know.”
With a snort Frank leaned back and looked down at Alex “Buddy, you better hurry up and start talking, I need someone here to even out the numbers.”
After another hour or so, when it was dark, they headed home and Evelyn bid them all a good night, heading to her guest suite above the garage to read and relax, declining their offer to join them for a drink stating she’d had quite enough the night before.
Mary wasn’t far behind, the excitement of the last few days having wiped her out, plus as she reminded Frank and Fliss, the sooner she went to bed the sooner it would be present time. She headed off for a bath before she settled down with her book upstairs and an hour or so later Frank went up to took her in, finding her fast asleep with Fred curled around her head.
It wasn’t even 8:30 pm and Fliss and Frank were all set for the evening. Presents wrapped, kids settled, and Frank had just moved to grab them a beer each when his phone sounded in his pocket. He glanced at the shitty Nokia he was being forced to use after smashing his Samsung against the wall and frowned.
“It’s Greg.” He said before he answered. “Hey man.”
“S’up, listen, you guys free if I pop in for 5? I got a Christmas card for you and I forgot to drop it off earlier.”
“Yeah, sure.” Frank chuckled. “Just come on round the back, gate and the door are open.”
“No worries pal, see you in 15.”
“He coming over?” Fliss asked as Frank tossed the phone down on the side.
“Yeah, just for 5 minutes. Says he has a card for us.”
“A card?”
“Yeah, you know what he’s like. He’s probably had it for weeks and forgotten about it.” Frank shrugged, passing Fliss an open beer as they both crossed to the sofa. They settled down to watch the Christmas special of Brooklyn 99 and true to his word, Greg walked in 15 minutes or so later.
“Hey Greg, you want a beer?” Frank stood up, gesturing to the kitchen area.
“No I can’t stay, I just wanted to give you this before tomorrow.”
Frank paused and took the envelope off him. “This isn’t a card?” he frowned.
“No, it’s a little better than that.” Greg beamed as Fliss rose to her feet, crossing to where Frank was stood. With a frown, Frank turned the envelope over, opened it and as his eyes scanned the piece of paper he felt his mouth grow dry and his heart suddenly pounded so hard he felt it was going to thump right out of his chest.
“He signed the papers…” Frank whispered, swallowing as he looked at the document in his hands. “Lissy, Polland…he signed the adoption papers.”
“What?” Fliss breathed out as she took it from him, her eyes roving the wording before she looked at Frank, then Greg. “I- when?”
“I had a call earlier this afternoon saying they were dropping the objection.” Greg smiled. “Seems he suddenly had a change of heart when his Attorney told him he was on tape confessing to taking a bung and attempting to blackmail Fliss. I won’t tell you what he called him, it was a 4 letter word and ended in t…pretty sure you can fill in the gaps.” He nodded to the paper in Fliss hand “I asked him to hurry that through and it arrived about half an hour before I called. I wanted to give it to you in person.”
“So…we don’t need to go to court?” Frank breathed out, his eyes brimming with tears.
Greg shook his head “There’ll be a finalisation hearing in January but coupled with that and the CWD report it’s gonna simply be a formality. It’s as good as done.”
“So, we’re…” Fliss took a deep breath “We’re gonna be her parents?”
Greg nodded. “Yup.”
Frank was struggling for words as he looked at his best friend before he pulled him into a huge bro hug. He stepped back, wiping his eyes as Fliss moved forward to hug Greg too, before they both walked him to his car.
“I owe you, big time.” Frank croaked and Greg waved him away as he opened the door to his Merc.
“I told you it would work out.” He shrugged, smiling broadly. “Merry Christmas guys.”
The two of them waved him off before Fliss turned to Frank, her tears falling down her cheeks “I can’t believe it…”
“Me neither.” Frank spluttered and Fliss leaped into his arms, the pair of them laughing in sheer joy. Even thought they’d thrown themselves into the holiday spirit, neither of them had been able to shake that little feeling that a small, dark cloud was still following them. And now that was gone.
It was over. All over. They’d won.
Fliss and Frank headed back inside, both resisting the urge to wake Mary to tell her, deciding they’d leave it for the morning, but they absolutely did decide to crack a bottle of champagne open.
But Frank had an even better idea, one that came to him on a whim as they walked back through their garden. Silently he disappeared into the little laundry room at the side of the kitchen and when he emerged, Fliss had her back to him so she didn’t see him deposit the 2 pool towels on the breakfast bar. He moved to where she reaching for two champagne flutes, and as she stood on her tiptoes, he wrapped his arms around her from behind causing her to jump a little.
“I can’t believe it.” Fliss whispered “I mean I hoped he’d back down but…”
“I know” Frank kissed her neck tenderly “Another huge Christmas Eve huh? Second one in a row?”
Yeah.” She sighed happily, her hands falling on top of his arms, rubbing gently. “You know last year I was so nervous when I found out I was pregnant.”
“So was I, and that was before you told me that bit of news.” He smiled, his chin resting on her shoulder. “I’d been trying to propose for ages. I was shitting my pants it was gonna go wrong or you’d turn me down.”
“Not a chance Sailor.” She turned her head to look at him. “You’re stuck with me.”
He pressed a kiss to her lips and the pair of them stood in silence in their kitchen, lost in their own thoughts, simply looking out of the window over their garden which was illuminated softly by the lighting round the pool area. Eventually Frank remembered his original plan and he smiled to himself.
“So all the presents are wrapped, everyone’s in bed waiting for the big guy with the sack to arrive…” Frank muttered, his lips grazing her neck “The pool heaters have been on all day…what about a Christmas Eve dip?”
Fliss turned in his arms, arching an eyebrow “Would you merely be trying to get me naked Francis?”
“Yes.” He nodded and she giggled.
“Skinny dipping? On Christmas Eve?”
“You lost your sense of adventure Cowgirl?” he teased.
Fliss peered round him to where Alex was sleeping in the basinet and with a grin pulled back and whipped off her T-shirt. “Does that answer your question?”
Frank laughed and caught the top as she threw it at him, tossing it to the side as he grabbed the towels. By the time he caught up with her outside Fliss was on the edge of the pool in nothing but her baby-blue cotton panties and his eyes scanned up her legs and the rest of her body until they locked onto hers. She bit her lip as she stepped out of her underwear and Frank felt his cock twitch as she turned and coyly shot him a look over her shoulder before she descended down the mosaic tiled steps at the shallow end of the pool.
Not wanting to waste a second more he threw the towels down on one of the sun loungers and reached over his head, grabbing a fistful of his grey t-shirt. He pulled it off before be quickly undid his belt and in one swoop yanked down his loose jeans and boxers.
Fliss dropped off the bottom step, her shoulders dipping under the warm water as she turned to watch Frank following her in, her eyes trailing up from his knees over his thighs, semi-erect cock which stood beneath that happy trail that led down his slim, flat yet ever so slightly soft stomach and up to his broad shoulders and strong arms. Her eyes moved to his handsome face, the stubble on his jaw line always gave him a more rugged look and his short hair was spiked up messily as it usually was at the end of the day.
Fuck, he was beautiful.
And not just on the outside. Even before the events of the last few weeks Fliss knew her man was the most caring, wonderful and doting father and lover on the planet but since the issue with Polland had raised its head she'd seen a side to him that she had only ever caught glimpses of before. A softer, vulnerable side and it filled her heart with even more love for him for reasons she couldn't explain other than it just did. He wasn't afraid to show weakness to her, he wasn't ashamed to tell her his fears. Because they were a true partnership. And as she watched him crouch down so his body was submerged in the water, his eyes sparkling in the lights, she felt an unnerving spike of desire that was so strong it surged right from her toes up her body, leaving her slightly fuzzy headed, like she was drunk on love.
Frank cocked his head playfully to the side as Fliss gracefully pushed off the ball of her foot and swam towards him before she twisted in the water slightly and brought her legs out in front of her. She wrapped them round his waist, settling herself on his lap as his large hands gently splayed on her back. Fliss nuzzled her nose against his chin, nudging his head back so she could chain soft kisses across his jaw line, her lips skating the bristles on his face as she gently nipped at his skin. Frank let out a soft sigh, his hands pulling her closer as she moved her affections down his neck, over his Adam’s apple before she gently sucked at the junction of his shoulder and neck, grinding down on him, her bare core slicking over his cock.
"Fuck, Liss..." he stuttered, pulling back to look at her, the water sloshing around them "what's got into you, pretty girl?"
"Nothing yet." She purred back.
Frank looked at her, but before he could make a smart reply she’d dropped her hand from his shoulder into the pool and wrapped her palm around him making him choke on his words slightly as she stroked him with a few quick flicks of her wrist.
“Jesus baby…” he managed to croak as her eyes locked onto his and a smirk curled on her lips. She leaned forwards, her teeth nipping at his ear and he gave a soft groan, his head falling back slightly as she continued to work him, her hand pumping up and down his now rock hard dick. And then she stopped, and he felt her mouth curve open and her breath was hot on his skin as she whispered 3 words that sent red hot fire coursing through his entire body.
“Fuck me, Sailor.”
He didn’t need asking twice.
Fliss moved herself, guiding him to where she wanted and she sank down onto his length, his hands grabbing her hips as she took him in completely, a low, drawn out gasp escaping her lips as Frank hissed slightly as her walls clamped around him. He gave himself a moment, enjoying the feel of her before he thrust upwards, his fingers curling around her soft flesh as he drew back slowly, before pushing back into her deeply, rotating his hips. Fliss’ hands curled around his shoulders, her head tipping back, eyes closed in pleasure, the action causing her breasts to rise out of the water. Keeping his rhythm slow and deep he dipped his head, his tongue tracing a stripe down her cleavage, the salty tang of the pool water hitting his taste buds as he directed his attention to her nipple, flicking and sucking softly, all the time listening and feeling her reactions as she pushed down further against him, desperate for more. For whatever reason, Fliss was in a downright filthy mood and Frank had a feeling that slow and steady wasn’t going to be enough. He moved his mouth, nipping up her neck before his lips pressed onto hers, the kiss filthy as his tongue fucked her mouth and he pulled back as he began to back himself up to the side of the pool.
With a quick movement he turned so Fliss’s back was against the tiled edge, and he looked at her as she stared at him, her deep brown eyes wide with lust as he dipped his head to kiss her again.
“Turn around.” He instructed, his voice low and Fliss complied, moving off him and spinning in the water. One large hand slid up her spine to her neck and his fingers gently curled around her nape as he pushed her forwards slightly, before he slid both his hands up her arms and directed her hands to grip at the lip of the pool.
Fliss’ body was tingling with anticipation. Her palms gripped round the rough surface of the pool edge as she surrendered to Frank’s control, his chest pressing against her back, lips sucking at her neck.
“If this is too much, tell me…” he whispered against her skin. Fliss tilted her face round to look at him, seeing those ocean blues she loved shining with love and what looked like a slight glimmer of concern. And she knew why. Whilst their sex was hot, passionate, loving, it was very rarely rough because he didn’t want to push her too far knowing her past. But she wanted this, she needed it. She smiled at him, pressing her lips to his.
“I trust you.” She promised him gently and Frank kissed her again before he pulled away. His hands gripped her hips, lifting her ass up so her feet planted on the floor of the pool as he rose to his, the water lapping around his thighs as he buried himself into her with one swift movement. He pulled out slowly before he thrust back into her, grinding against her as she gasped, her head tilting backwards as he continued rocking his hips back and forth, slowly at first, his movements gathering pace until he built up into a fast, relentless rhythm, every drive into her jolting her forwards slightly as she braced herself against the edge with her arms, elbows locked to absorb the shock. Pants, whimpers, soft cries and the debauched sound of sloshing and skin slapping skin filled the otherwise silent night air of the garden and Frank dropped his eyes to the point where he was pounding in and out of his girl, the sight of where they were joined was hot as fuck and he let out a groan as he watched for a second, before his eyes flicked back up to Fliss. Her head was dropped between her arms, slightly twisted to the right and he could see her eyes were closed, jaw slack, full lips open in a silent cry.
As he continued his powerful, fast thrusts, his cock brushed occasionally against that spot inside and Fliss felt the coil in her belly beginning to tighten slowly, each time he hit it. Frank adjusted his stance and bent over, his right hand falling over hers as he too braced himself against the edge of the pool, giving a dirty grind and Fliss cried out loudly at the sensation.
“Fuck, right there…” she encouraged and Frank repeated the movement again, his bottom lip caught between his teeth as he was fighting the urge he was feeling to come.
“Liss, shit…” he gasped, his left hand dropping between her legs, coaxing her clit and after a few strong strokes Fliss arched her back, her head following as she let out a cry of his name as the world tilted on its axis, her orgasm rocking her to her very core. The feeling was too much for Frank and with a loud moan that rumbled from his chest he followed her right over the edge, his thrusts growing sloppy as he pumped through his own release before he stilled, his head bowing as he waited for the surge of ecstasy to dissipate.
Eventually the fog lifted enough so that he was able to bend his knees slightly, and with the arm that was curled around Fliss’ waist he turned them in the water. Fliss was near dead weight and went with him obligingly, his cock still buried in her as he pivoted and dropped down so that his back was against the wall of the pool and she sat on his lap, the water gently splashing around their shoulders.
Frank cradled her close, pressing a kiss to her neck as he gave a low hum of satisfaction, her head falling back against his shoulder, a smile flickering across her lips.
“You know…” Frank mumbled after a little moment of silence “Cowgirls will always be my favourite, even in reverse.”
Fliss gave a soft chuckle as she opened her eyes and titled her head to look at him. “I prefer sailors…” she smirked and he laughed, pressing his lips to hers.
“You ok?” he asked, as her hands fell over his arms, fingers softly skating up his wet skin and she gave a nod.
“Never better.” She affirmed.
“Good.” He kissed her temple. “You wanna get out or…”
“No, I’m good here for a while.” She purred and he smiled, his mouth dropping to her shoulder where he pressed another kiss to her skin.
Eventually Fliss reluctantly conceded that they probably should get out as Alex would want feeding again any time soon. But, not wanting the moment to end, Frank suggested that whilst she showered he could do the feed and light the fire-pit. Fliss agreed and after wrapping herself in a towel she kissed him again and headed upstairs. Frank dried himself off, located his T-shirt and shrugged it on, leaving the towel round his waist as he warmed a bottle for his now grumbling son. By the time Fliss came back down stairs in her plaid sleep pants and tank, Alex was just finishing up. Frank passed him over, and they both headed back outside. Once the fire was lit Frank scooted off for a quick shower and returned 10 minutes later to find Alex settled once more in the basinet, tucked snuggly under his Christmas blanket that was decorated with little Santa’s and trees, his eyes roaming the starry sky. Fliss sat with her legs under a tartan fleece on the outside sofa, the bottle of champagne stood in the middle of the table in an ice bucket and either side of it rested two full flutes. With a satisfied sigh Frank sat next to her, reaching for his drink and resting his feet on the table as Fliss snuggled under his arm. The pair of them clinked their glasses together, shared another soft kiss and settled into a soft chatter.
It was cosy, domestic, loving, and everything Fliss had ever dreamed of having, but never in a million years thinking she’d experience, and as they sat talking and laughing, speculating about Mary’s reaction the news of her adoption being tomorrow, she felt herself suddenly choked with emotion and she sat up, looking at her man.
“I think she’s gonna...” Frank trailed off, frowning at the look on Fliss’ face “Hey, honey what’s wrong?”
“Absolutely nothing.” She muttered, clambering onto his lap so she was straddling him, jolting the glass he was holding a little and sending some of the Moet spilling onto the patio.
“You sure?” he titled his head to look at her and she nodded, sniffing back her tears as she kissed him, her hands running through his messy hair.
“I’m just so happy Frank, I can’t stop thinking about how much I lucked out.” She whispered as she pulled away and Frank smiled against her mouth.
“I think I’m the one that lucked out.” He whispered, his spare hand reaching up to smooth her hair back slightly.
“Maybe we can agree we’re both lucky bastards” she grinned and he chuckled, his eyes locking onto hers.
“I can live with that.” He agreed.
******
For the second day in a row Frank and Fliss woke with hangovers, as post the champagne they hit the bourbon and didn’t go to bed until 2 am. Now it was half 6 and Frank wasn’t impressed that he was going to have to deal with a hyper 9 year old who was currently bouncing on his bed, a 16 week old and his mother with a headache and only 4 and a half hours sleep.
After they sat and opened the gifts in their stocking, Frank telling Fliss to leave the thin, flat box until she was alone, they headed downstairs. Frank grinned at Fliss as Mary bust into the family room and glanced at the presents which were arranged in a pile by the sofa. The three of them exchanged their gifts, Fliss being especially delighted with her Spa Day voucher from Mary and Alex, which Frank informed her Simon had also gotten one for Bonnie so they could go together. Frank had also bought her a few new pairs of riding breeches, signed her up for a year’s subscription to Kindle Unlimited, a few more items of clothing, a 3 Pandora charms in the shape of the letters, F, M and A meaning she had one for them all and a stunning silver and diamond necklace and earring set from Tiffany’s which Fliss gasped at when she opened. In contrast Fliss had bought Frank a new phone from Alex and Mary to replace the one he’d smashed against the wall, a few T-shirts and then cryptically told him the biggest gift from her was yet to come.
“You’re not pregnant again are you?” he leaned over and asked her semi-seriously.
“Fuck, no!” she spluttered and he let out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “It’s just a little big…you’ll see.”
Before he could press her any further, Mary gave a loud shriek as she unwrapped the hooded top that was decorated the same as her Gillet and grinned, jamming it on over her pyjama top. Frank laughed as she did a parade in front of them before she paused, looking at the door to the little room off the kitchen. Frank had covered over the door frame in wrapping paper as it held her big present and Mary looked at it, before she turned to Frank and Fliss, frowning.
“What’s that?”
“Dunno.” Frank teased “Why don’t you go through and see?”
Mary looked at the pair of them again before she ran over, her reindeer slippers padding over the floor and she tore through the paper, pushing the door open.
Frank curled his arm round Fliss, kissed the side of her head as they followed her into the room where Mary was stood, gaping around.
As a surprise they’d turned it into a little sitting room of sorts for her. Over the last 4 weeks they had meticulously emptied it of the crap that had been in there since they’d moved in and they’d completely re-decorated it. Frank had painted a pale yellow on 3 of the walls, the 4th at the back was papered with a huge picture of Monty in the pasture. Her show rosettes were hung on a trellis which Frank had screwed to the wall with plenty of space for more and on the shelving unit which housed a large, flat screen Tv, Blu-ray player and Android box were positioned a few photos of various family shots. To finish the room off, 2 huge bean bags were placed in the middle of the room which were big enough for Fliss and Frank to lie in (they'd had a lot of fun trying them out) and there was a small desk in the corner along with an office chair. But it was the electronic keyboard nestled in the corner of the wall that held the TV that caught Mary’s eye.
As Fred sauntered in and hopped up on a bean bag as if he owned the place, Mary walked over to the keyboard running her hands along it before she turned to look at the two adults, her mouth hanging open.
“We thought you might like a place to hang out or chillax or whatever it is you kids do now...” Frank smiled “You know, instead of always needing to go to your room when Rosie or whoever comes over. You can study in here too as well.”
“And trust me you'll want your own space once this monster starts crawling.” Fliss smiled, readjusting Alex in her arms slightly.
“I love it…” Mary gasped, looking around her eyes brimming “My own special living room…and a sort of piano.”
“Well, you keep up your lessons with Nanny V and we might, and I mean might, get you a real one” Frank smiled and Mary beamed at him before she shot over to the pair of them. Frank picked her up with a groan and kissed her cheek.
“Rosie is gonna be well jel.” She giggled and Frank laughed as Mary leaned over to kiss Fliss’ cheek.
“There’s something in the desk for you too.” Frank took a deep breath, setting Mary down on the floor. As she walked over the room, Frank moved, his arm hooking round Fliss’ waist as they watched her open the lid of the desk and take out the envelope. With a frown she pulled it open and her eyes widened as she looked at the detail.
“Is this…” she started breathing deeply, her gaze shooting up to Frank’s, her eyes filling with tears “He…”
Frank nodded, his own eyes pricking with tears “Yeah, he signed the papers Stack.”
“So, I’m…I’m adopted?” she stuttered.
“Not quite but…” Frank sniffed, “It’s about as good as done, yeah. Greg got those yesterday.”
As Mary looked back down at the paper in her hand, Frank spotted a tear fall from her face and then he frowned as he saw her legs starting to shake. In a flash he was by her side, catching her as she dropped to her knees. She wrapped her arms around his neck, the paper scrunching slightly in her hand as she buried her face into the crook of his neck and began to cry.
Frank pressed his face into her hair, trying desperately to keep his own tears from falling but failing miserably. Fliss was already gone, and she moved to walk towards them, dropping gently to her knees, Alex held safely in her arms.
“We’re gonna be a proper family.” Mary sobbed and Frank stuttered a laugh as he pulled back to look down at her.
“Mary, baby, we already were.” His voice cracked and she nodded against his neck, before she started to cry again. At that point Thor walked into the room and pushed his nose straight in between Mary and Frank, licking her face and letting out soft little whines.
Mary giggled and grabbed his fur gently “Thor, get off you doofus…”
“Is everything ok?” a voice made all of them look up to see Evelyn in the doorway, wrapped in a dressing gown and slippers. Frank, who had momentarily forgotten he’d text her to come join them, looked up through his tears and nodded. Fliss took the paper out of Mary’s hand and held it out to Evelyn. She gently gripped it, her eyebrows raised slightly, and then her hand flew to her mouth when she read the writing.
“Oh, that’s….that’s fantastic!” she sniffed, “Really…”
Mary, whose sobs had now subsided suddenly pulled back from Frank and looked at Fliss, “We need to give Frank his present!”
“Yup, we do!”
“Yeah, what…” Frank frowned “I’m kinda scared about this you know.”
“Oh trust me, you’re gonna LOVE it!” Mary grinned, before she stood up straight.
“Why don’t you let me watch Alex whilst you head out?” Evelyn smiled and Fliss handed him over to his grandmother before the three of them headed to the hallway. Fliss fished the garage keys off the hooks by the door and tossed them to Frank who caught them in his right hand.
“You’re gonna need those” she smiled. Frank arched an eyebrow as he shoved on his sneakers but didn’t say anything as they headed out into the December sun, making their way over the drive.
“Is something gonna jump out at me?” he paused, the keys in the door.
“No.” Mary grinned. With one final, suspicious look at them he flung the up-and-over door open and stopped dead as he looked into the now full space of the double garage, his mouth hanging open.
In front of him was a fairly large boat. It had a covered lower deck area which housed the main engine and cockpit and a large, open flat stern area with benches. It was old, and in need of a fuck tonne of work but Frank was absolutely over the moon.
“Holy shit. You…you bought me a boat?” he turned to Fliss who grinned and nodded.
“I suppose technically I bought us a boat, but…” she shrugged as Frank moved over to examine it. He ran his hands over the hull, which was sound enough considering the state the rest of it was in and he turned to Fliss, his handsome face splitting into a huge smile.
“It’s a wreck, I love it!” he beamed and Fliss grinned as he took her face in both hands and kissed her “Thank you baby.”
“Well I thought about getting a newer one but I know you’ve always wanted to do your own up” she smiled as he pulled away “Plus, from a purely selfish point of view, I’m kinda looking forward to seeing you full of grease again.”
He grinned and arched an eyebrow before he kissed her again and Mary made a gagging noise. He turned to her, playfully swatting at her head and the 3 of them made their way back to the house, Frank casting a loving glance at his newest prized possession before he pulled the door down and locked it.
They exchanged gifts with Evelyn over breakfast, both Mary and Alex’s piles in the living room were significantly larger when they finished opening the bags full each and then following a breakfast of pancakes and bacon which was made whilst dancing around the kitchen to various Christmas songs, Fliss and Mary headed over to the yard to see to the horses and sneak a quick ride in before they needed to head over to Bill and Verity’s.
Fliss opted to shower first so she could get Alex ready and once she was alone she took her time to open the present Frank had told her to leave until later. As she pulled off the wrapping paper she smiled to herself as she saw the Victoria Secrets box and lifted the lid off, gently pulling back the pink tissue wrapping. Biting her lip she pulled out the sheer gold negligee, which was beautiful and rather classy as well, before she placed it back in the box and headed into the bathroom.
Just as she’d finished dressing Frank walked into their room, Alex in his arms and he smiled, pressing his lips to hers.
“I opened it…” Fliss smiled against his mouth.
“Yeah?”
“Mmmhmmm” she affirmed “I happen to think I suit gold.”
Frank smiled “I’m sure you do.”
She grinned and took Alex off him before she headed out of the room, Frank watching her go before he stripped off his clothing and headed into the bathroom.
20 minutes or so later, dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a red and blue flannel button down, he wandered into the family room and stopped dead as he caught sight of Alex’s outfit.
“Lissy, what the fuck is my boy wearing?” Frank stared at the baby who was sat on Mary’s knee on the sofa, dressed in a green elf onesie. It had a black strip round the middle with a little yellow belt buckle detail, and the collar was red and ruffled. The legs were red and white hooped, just like tights, and on his head sat a red and green hat. As Frank stared at him in disbelief, Alex gazed up at his dad and let out a loud excited noise and waved his hands and legs.
“He looks cute, Frank.” Mary grinned, herself dressed in a white little blouse detailed with christmas patterns. Fliss walked over from the kitchen where she had been boxing up the sugar cookies she had made and grinned as Frank glared at her, pointing to Alex.
“He’s a fucking elf.” He deadpanned. “In tights.”
“Language.” Fliss slapped his arm lightly before she shrugged and gestured to her own Christmas sweater which depicted Santa stuck upside down in a chimney “It’s Christmas.”
Frank shook his head. “He looks ridiculous.”
“Don’t be a scrooge.” Mary grinned and Frank shot her a glare, before he glanced at his son again, shaking his head. Alex seemed absolutely nonplussed at the fact his Mother had dressed him in the utterly stupid get up and Frank turned, shaking his head as Fliss smirked at him.
“Everyone is gonna laugh at him.” He pouted and Fliss snorted
“No they’re not!”
Frank knew he wasn’t going to win the argument, Fliss was as big a child as anyone when it came to Christmas, but he was damned if he was going to let his boy be the subject of ridicule without a fight. But whatever protest he had left died in his throat as at that point Evelyn walked back into the room, a few more gift bags in her hands for Fliss’ family and Roberta and let out a little chuckle.
“Oh my God, doesn’t he look adorable.” She clapped her hands and walked towards her grandson.
Fliss bit her lip, her shoulders shaking with laughter at the utter indignation on Frank’s face as he rolled his eyes, letting out an exasperated growl as she slid her arms up round his neck. “Fine, just…whatever.” He sighed as she pulled his head down to hers, catching his lips in a soft peck. “Poor kid’s gonna grow up with a complex” he mumbled against her mouth “First the dinosaur outfit at Halloween, now this…”
“Well, so he doesn’t feel too bad, I got you a matching jumper.”
“Yeah Frank, you can put it on and then we can all take an elfie with your new phone, geddit?” Mary grinned and Fliss snorted.
Frank pulled back and glared at Mary “Over my dead body.”
“Can be arranged.” She retorted, and at that Fliss and Evelyn burst into laughter.
“Well that’s just mean.” Frank pouted and Fliss grinned, standing on her tiptoes.
“I’ll make it up to you later Sailor.” She whispered, her lips brushing his ear “I’ll let you decide if gold really is my colour for yourself…”
“Yeah?” he asked, arching an eyebrow, his hands dropping to her hips.
“If you wear the sweater…”
“That’s…that’s blackmail.” He narrowed his eyes.
“I know.” She pulled back, turning to Mary and Evelyn. “Ok, shall we load the cars up? Mary you wanna ride with me or Frank?”
“Who’s goin’ to get Roberta?”
“Frank.” Fliss said “I’m taking Alex and Thor…and Fred.” She added as an after-thought.
“Then I’ll go with him.” She nodded “That ok?”
“Sure.” Fliss smiled, her hand dropping to Mary’s head.
There was a sudden, excited bustle around the room as everyone moved to get their things together…and Frank went upstairs to change into his new elf sweater.
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Riding On
Ch 17-Let Me Take An Elfie…
Summary: Christmas arrives in the Adler household and its full of laughter, giggles, and one huge gift that money simply can’t buy…
Warnings: Bad Language words, Smut (NSFW, 18+)
Pairing: Frank Adler x Fliss Gallagher
A/N: So, like, I’m over 2020 and wish it was Christmas already. This chapter brings Riding On Part 1 to a close and I’ll be likely taking a little break from writing this to concentrate on some stuff I have going on Stark Spangled for the Birthday Party! I hope you enjoy!
This one is dedicated to The Evangers…you know who you are!
Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar Fliss Gallagher and the other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.
Riding On Masterlist // Main Masterlist
Chapter 16 Part 2
Monday morning rolled round and for the first time in ages Frank woke well rested. After their plan had worked, he and Fliss had played the recording back to Greg who had been torn between calling them a pair of reckless dumbasses, and being elated with what it meant. Whilst he was unsure the court would permit it as evidence, he was going to have “some damned fun filing it anyway” and then set about giving them the final coaching for the Child Welfare Department interviews on Monday.
To Frank and Fliss, this was the final thing they could do. The last chance they had to get their feelings across and make a good impression before it was then over to the courts. And whilst Fliss was still hopeful that Polland would sign the papers as soon as he realised they had him on tape, Frank wasn’t quite as optimistic. So it was for that reason that over breakfast on the Monday he found himself rehearsing his speech to the Social Worker, just had he had done 2 years or so prior.
He needn’t have bothered though because, as Greg had predicted, the Social Workers discussion with him mainly centred on practical things such as Frank’s new job and his role, what Fliss did for a living, their new home and a little bit of digging into her background which was done sensitively and compassionately. It was the same Social Worker from 2 years back, a dark haired lady called Sarah Kellet, which Frnak was glad about, and she’d smiled when she’d run through things, checking all the facts that Greg had provided her before simply stating that was all she needed.
“What, no soul-searching questions?” Frank asked, arching an eyebrow. She chuckled and shook her head.
“Not this time.” she smiled “It’s a little different Mr Adler. You already have formal Guardianship over Mary so this isn’t about whether you’re suitable or not. This is really just a fact gathering exercise about whether or not formally providing you with Parental Status would be in her best interests.”
Frank swallowed and Fliss gently tangled her fingers in his as Sarah looked at them and smiled.
“Don’t worry.” She beamed. “When I spoke to Mary before it’s clear she’s exceptionally settled, and she adores her new brother as she refers to him as. You’ve created a very stable and loving environment for her, you’re financially credible, not that that’ the be all and end all, and you have a home, family support…all of this will be evidenced in my report.”
“So, do you make recommendations to the court?” Fliss asked and Sarah shook her head.
“Not as such, I’m merely here to pull together a factual, comprehensive report on how Mary is.” She tapped her pen slightly “And it’s always a little easier in cases like this when the minor has been in the care of the applicant prior to it. But, I will be making it quite clear in my conclusions that from the CWD point of view it would be in Mary’s best interests for the court to allow the adoption to go ahead, regardless of Mary’s father raising his objections. Basically if comes down to it, we’ll be fighting your corner.”
Fliss turned to Frank who let out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding and she smiled at him.
“So, that’s it.” Sarah shrugged. “I’ll send a copy of everything through to the courts and your attorney Mr Adler. All that’s left is for me to wish you both a Merry Christmas and I’ll see you at the hearing whenever that is.”
They both rose, shaking her hand and then Frank held the door to the room open for Fliss. She stepped out in front of him, and turned to him smiling.
“That’s it.” She shrugged “We did everything we could.”
“Yeah, yeah I know.” He nodded “I’m just relieved it’s all over. Well, for now anyway.”
“Yup, so let’s get on with enjoying Christmas.” Fliss beamed as they walked down the corridor to the little area at the bottom where Mary was waiting. She was sat, reading a book being supervised by another one of the social workers and looked up, smiling as they entered. The woman who’d be supervising left them alone after bidding them goodbye and the three of them walked out to the truck.
“Think your mom and dad will be ok with Alex for a little longer?” Frank asked as Mary bounced ahead of them slightly.
“Sure, why?”
“I thought we could take her for a pizza and bowling, just the 3 of us before we pick Evelyn up from the airport.” Frank said “Been a while since we went.”
“Yeah, sounds good.” Fliss beamed “I’ll call mum and let her know.”
Of course Verity and Bill were only too happy to keep Alex. Sian and the twins had arrived earlier that morning and Verity told Fliss that Sian was enjoying Auntie cuddles whilst batting her eyes at Steve asking him if he fancied another. Steve’s response had been to choke on his coffee. They headed to the bowling alley, where Fliss and Mary found to their delight that the skittles were all painted like elves for the festive period. They had 3 games and as usual they whooped Frank’s ass, leaving him in a fake mood declaring Christmas was cancelled. No sooner had the words left his mouth, Mary had vaulted onto his back causing him to laugh and attempt to pull her off. Eventually he succeeded and dangled her upside down by her ankles, the girl shrieking as he swung her round before setting her down.
“She’s getting a bit big to do that with now!” he looked at Fliss, letting out a huff as Mary righted her sweater and climbed into the truck.
“Well, she is 10 in a couple of months.” Fliss smiled and Frank shook his head.
“Don’t remind me.”
Fliss chuckled as she climbed into the passenger seat and the 3 of them headed off to the airport to collect Evelyn. They stood in the arrival lounge, Frank’s arm tossed over Fliss’ shoulders and Fliss could tell he was a little apprehensive. This was the first time he’d seen Evelyn since she had admitted outright she’d bribed Polland to give evidence. He’d told Fliss he wasn’t sure how he was going to react, that he didn’t want to be angry, but he couldn’t help it. Fliss had simply told him that they’d deal with whatever happened when it came.
As Evelyn walked through the glass double doors, pulling a huge case behind her, Mary shot forwards to greet her and the woman bent down, giving her a cuddle. Once more it struck Frank just how different it all was to the first meeting they’d had just over 2 years ago and as he watched his mother gently smooth Mary’s hair back any anger he was feeling simply dissipated. He knew only too well after the events of the last few years, he couldn’t change the past but he could make sure history never repeated itself. He watched as Mary and his mother made their way over to him and he took a deep breath as Evelyn glanced up at him, her face wrought with worried anticipation. She opened her mouth to say something, and Frank knew full well it was going to be an apology so he shook his head.
“It’s done.” He said simply “And I don’t wanna waste a single second more thinking about it, ok mom?”
Evelyn nodded, and then in a sudden display of affection she moved to embrace him. It was a little stiff but Frank didn’t shy away, wrapping his arms around his mother in a gentle hug before he pulled away and took her bag off her.
When they reached Bill and Verity’s neither Frank nor Fliss was surprised to find that Verity had laid a spread on. She loved entertaining and so had taken it upon herself to pull together a buffet consisting of a selection of cold meats, breads, crudités, dips and savoury snacks along with a huge plate of her infamous brownies. No sooner had Frank walked into the kitchen he had a beer thrust into his hand by Steve who winked at him and he turned to Fliss a little sheepishly with a shrug.
“I’ll drive home.” She rolled her eyes playfully as she gently turned Alex so that he was against her chest, head raised slightly as he looked around.
“Oh fuck that.” Evelyn said, taking the red wine that Bill handed her as Frank gave a snort at his mother’s language, not that it surprised him, she’d always been quite colourful that way despite her proper appearance and professional demeanour “We’ll get a cab. It’s Christmas.”
“See, she gets it!” Steve nodded to Evelyn who simply shrugged and took a sip of her wine before she set it down on the kitchen counter.
“May I?” she asked Fliss, gesturing to Alex and Fliss smiled.
“Of course, here…” she passed him over and Evelyn looked at the baby who broke into a gummy smile.
“He gets more like you ever time I see him.” Evelyn whispered, looking at Frank who smiled.
“Yeah, so I’m told” he shrugged, attempting an air of nonchalance but as Fliss looked at him smirking he knew he had failed. He fucking loved the fact his boy looked like him, it massaged his ego and he didn’t care one iota about how smug it made him appear.
After Mary, Charlie and Joel had eaten, the three of them headed upstairs to the movie room, arms laden with snacks as Bill put The Santa Clause on the large screen and the adults all settled in the living room. Evelyn asked if she could feed Alex and Frank obliged, handing her the baby and the bottle. There was a little more chat before Verity cleared her throat and addressed the huge elephant in the room.
“So, how did it go with the social worker kids?”
Fliss and Frank exchanged a glance before Frank smiled “Good, really good. In fact, she said in her conclusion they’ll recommend the adoption is processed regardless of any objections but, we’ll see. For now we’ve done everything we can so it’s down to the court in the New Year.”
“Oh, that’s…that’s great, that’s really….great.” Bill said, nodding as his eyes misted over and Verity stood up, moving to give Fliss a cuddle as her eyes had filled at the sight of her father’s emotions. Frank could feel the tears stabbing at his eyes too so, under the guise of nipping to the bathroom he took a moment and headed through the kitchen and out of the bi-folding doors, stepping onto the veranda which overlooked the landscaped garden and pool area.
Lost in his own thoughts, he hadn’t been out there that long when he heard someone behind him. A tumbler of scotch was pushed into his hand and he looked up as Steve clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“Thought you might need that.” He said, as he set the bottle and his own glass down on the table, fishing in his pocket for his cigarettes. As he sparked it up he took a drag, blowing it out to the side taking care to remain hidden.
“Fucking 38 and still hiding the fact I smoke from my mum.” Steve snorted and Frank shook his head.
“Hate to break it to you Steeb but she knows.” He chuckled at the look on Steve’s face “She was complaining to Fliss about it the other day.”
“No shit.” Steve muttered, “Oh, well, fuck it…”
Frank laughed again and took a sip of his drink before he asked Steve about the house he was purchasing just out east of Tampa. Steve explained the sale was going through now and they should be ready to move in towards the middle of January.
“Good.” Frank nodded “If you need a hand, moving and stuff, just holler. Lord knows you did enough for us, I’d be glad to help.”
“Don’t worry you will be.” Steve smirked and Frank snorted.
“How’s Sian taking to the move? Fliss said she was a little apprehensive.”
“Yeah, she was.” Steve shrugged “But she’s also excited. I mean of course she’s nervous to leave her family behind but she knows it’s too good an opportunity to pass up on, and it won’t be forever. Probably about 5 years or so and we’ll head back home.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.” Frank said, knocking back his scotch.
“Why’s that?” Steve asked, his voice coming out as a slight mumble as he held his cigarette between his lips so he could top Frank’s glass up again.
“Well-cheers-“ Frank nodded, taking the tumbler off him “-it’s like Fliss said, once this place gets it’s claws into you, you kinda grow to love it.”
Steve chuckled and dropped his now done dab end onto the floor under his foot before he bent down and retrieved it, slipping it into his pocket to dispose of later.
“So, Fliss told you that we got family coming out this New Year?” Steve asked.
“She mentioned one of her cousins…” Frank paused “Tabs was it?”
“Babs.” Steve corrected “We got 4, there’s Eva who’s married to a Police Officer called Ari, Jen who’s married to a lawyer called Andy and Amber who is married to Curtis…”
“He the train mechanic?” Frank racked his memory and Steve nodded.
“Yeah, they all still live in Liverpool but Babs, the one that’s coming…she’s something else.” Steve snorted. “She lives in Australia with a photographer called Hugh. Well, I say photographer, he’s kind of a trust fund rich boy that plays at it, you know? Nice enough guy though, always happy to shout you on a night out.”
“So they making a special trip over or…”
“They’re taking some kind of sabbatical, if you can take a sabbatical from doing fuck all.” Steve shrugged “6 month tour of the US starting here. She’s fucking great fun though. Her and Fliss are the same age and were thick as thieves growing up, used to get into all sorts of mischief.” He shook his head. “They once set fire to a bin on a park. By accident mind. They were pretending to smoke these hollow twig things stuffed with dried grass and when one set on fire Babs panicked and tossed it into the bin.”
Frank snorted as Steve continued.
“The whole thing went up.” Steve chuckled “So they legged it and got followed home by an off duty copper. Dad and Uncle Ted went ballistic…
“Wait…your dad’s brother is called Ted?” Frank asked.
“Yeah, Bill and Ted.” Steve grinned. Frank looked at him, before the pair of them burst out laughing, and couldn’t stop. It wasn’t that funny, it really wasn’t, but the more Steve laughed, the more Frank did, and the more Frank laughed, the more Steve died. By the time Frank managed to control himself he had tears of pure mirth in his eyes and he wiped them as his laughter subsided and he managed to take a breath, clutching at his side.
“What you two laughing at?” Fliss asked, stepping outside.
“Your face.” Steve shot back.
“Twat.” Fliss narrowed her eyes at him and she turned to Frank who was still chuckling “And I don’t know what you find so funny…”
“Nothing at all baby.” He smirked, dropping a kiss to her head, “Nothing at all.”
******
There were sore heads in the Adler household the next day. They’d stayed at Bill and Verity’s till well past midnight, and had left Mary there as she’d passed out asleep with the twins in the movie room. After they’d managed to herd all the kids to bed, the adults had continued drinking and eventually called it a night when Bill had fallen asleep in his arm chair, dropping his glass of brandy all over the floor.
Fliss had stable duties that morning, and took off early even though she felt she was still half drunk and when she returned a few hours later Frank and Evelyn were sat at the breakfast bar, each nursing cups of coffee and looking half dead. Eventually they all managed to muster enough about themselves to shower, dress and head over to pick Mary up. Frank was low-key pleased to see Steve looked worse than he felt and after a quick coffee they set off into the little town to have a walk round the Christmas Stalls that had been set up before they grabbed a bite to eat and Evelyn started telling Fliss a few stories about Frank and Diane when they had been children at Christmas.
“I think my personal favourite will be the carol service when you were 6.” Evelyn looked at Frank and he groaned taking a sip of his soda as he leaned back in his chair “He has a lovely voice you know and that year he was selected to do a solo.”
“We don’t need to hear this…” Frank started to protest but Fliss cut him off.
“Yes we do, go on Evelyn.”
“So his particular hymn was Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. And the line ‘God and sinners reconciled’ was proving a little tricky for him as he rehearsed.”
“I was 6.” Frank deadpanned.
“I’m well aware, it still doesn’t stop it being funny.” Evelyn grinned “So up he gets, sings out the song note and word perfect until he gets to this line and belts out ‘God and sinners dressed in style’”
Fliss snorted and Mary let out a howl of laughter.
“You’re such a loser” she looked at him
“Quit it or you’ll be getting no presents tomorrow morning.”
“Whatever”
“Hey, do you remember that year grandpa sent us nothing?” Frank suddenly had a recollection and he looked at Evelyn who let out a loud laugh.
“God yes, you and Diane were disgusted!”
“Oh, the last year before he died-“ Frank started to explain as Fliss looked at him blankly “-well, he was clearly feeling his age and found that shopping for Christmas gifts had become too difficult. So he decided to send checks to everyone instead. In each card he wrote, ‘Buy your own present!’ and mailed them early. Only when we opened them, there was no check…he’d forgotten to enclose them with the cards.”
“So you all literally got a card with ‘buy your own present’ written inside?” Fliss laughed and Frank chuckled
“Yeah, which to be fair dad thought was hilarious but…poor Grandpa was devastated. He tried to blame Santa, of course, but it didn’t wash.”
“That’s because Santa isn’t real.” Mary looked at him.
“Yes he is.” Fliss sighed “I’m not having this debate with you again.”
“You said yourself the other day that Frank was incapable of organising anything because he was a man so how could one dude organise gifts for the entire world?” Mary looked at her and Frank turned his head slowly to Fliss.
“Oh, you did, did you?”
Fliss hesitated, before she sighed “Come on, your organisational skills at home are ridiculous.”
“Do our bills get paid on time?”
“Yes, but-“
“Has Alex died yet?”
“No…” Fliss laughed.
“Then we’re good!” Frank shrugged, his hand gently dropping to his son’s tummy as he lay asleep in the stroller parked next to him “I find your lack of faith disturbing. And if we’re being sexist, I know Santa is a man as a woman wouldn’t be able to hack driving a sleigh around for a night, not to mention the complete mess she’d make trying to park it…”
“Wow!” Fliss looked at him as he laughed, “Ok, buddy, I bed I can think of 5 reasons why I would jump at the chance to be Santa.”
“Go on.” He teased and Fliss held up her hand, counting on her fingers as she spoke.
“One, I could grow to the size of Hawaii knowing it’s simply all part of the job. Two, I’d simply be able to buy one big, black belt, and brass buckle, and be accessorized for life. Three there would be no reason to have my hair colour done. Four, everyone would be extremely nice to me, regardless of my behaviour and five, if people commented that my belly jiggled when I laughed I could hit them with my purse.”
“Six…” Evelyn picked up as Frank laughed “You would always work in sensible footwear”
Frank shook his head “She always is anyway, not like you wear high heels to ride horses in and muck out stalls…”
“Those boots hurt when they’re not worn in.” Mary jabbed back “I know.”
With a snort Frank leaned back and looked down at Alex “Buddy, you better hurry up and start talking, I need someone here to even out the numbers.”
After another hour or so, when it was dark, they headed home and Evelyn bid them all a good night, heading to her guest suite above the garage to read and relax, declining their offer to join them for a drink stating she’d had quite enough the night before.
Mary wasn’t far behind, the excitement of the last few days having wiped her out, plus as she reminded Frank and Fliss, the sooner she went to bed the sooner it would be present time. She headed off for a bath before she settled down with her book upstairs and an hour or so later Frank went up to took her in, finding her fast asleep with Fred curled around her head.
It wasn’t even 8:30 pm and Fliss and Frank were all set for the evening. Presents wrapped, kids settled, and Frank had just moved to grab them a beer each when his phone sounded in his pocket. He glanced at the shitty Nokia he was being forced to use after smashing his Samsung against the wall and frowned.
“It’s Greg.” He said before he answered. “Hey man.”
“S’up, listen, you guys free if I pop in for 5? I got a Christmas card for you and I forgot to drop it off earlier.”
“Yeah, sure.” Frank chuckled. “Just come on round the back, gate and the door are open.”
“No worries pal, see you in 15.”
“He coming over?” Fliss asked as Frank tossed the phone down on the side.
“Yeah, just for 5 minutes. Says he has a card for us.”
“A card?”
“Yeah, you know what Zara’s like. He’s probably had it for weeks and forgotten about it.” Franks shrugged, passing Fliss an open beer as they both crossed to the sofa. They settled down to watch the Christmas special of Brooklyn 99 and true to his word, Greg walked in 15 minutes or so later.
“Hey Greg, you want a beer?” Frank stood up, gesturing to the kitchen area.
“No I can’t stay, I just wanted to give you this before tomorrow.”
Frank paused and took the envelope off him. “This isn’t a card?” he frowned.
“No, it’s a little better than that.” Greg beamed as Fliss rose to her feet, crossing to where Frank was stood. With a frown, Frank turned the envelope over, opened it and as his eyes scanned the piece of paper he felt his mouth grow dry and his heart suddenly pounded so hard he felt it was going to thump right out of his chest.
“He signed the papers…” Frank whispered, swallowing as he looked at the document in his hands. “Lissy, Polland…he signed the adoption papers.”
“What?” Fliss breathed out as she took it from him, her eyes roving the wording before she looked at Frank, then Greg. “I- when?”
“I had a call earlier this afternoon saying they were dropping the objection.” Greg smiled. “Seems he suddenly had a change of heart when his Attorney told him he was on tape confessing to taking a bung and attempting to blackmail Fliss. I won’t tell you what he called him, it was a 4 letter word and ended in t…pretty sure you can fill in the gaps.” He nodded to the paper in Fliss hand “I asked him to hurry that through and it arrived about half an hour before I called. I wanted to give it to you in person.”
“So…we don’t need to go to court?” Frank breathed out, his eyes brimming with tears.
Greg shook his head “There’ll be a finalisation hearing in January but coupled with that and the CWD report it’s gonna simply be a formality. It’s as good as done.”
“So, we’re…” Fliss took a deep breath “We’re gonna be her parents?”
Greg nodded. “Yup.”
Frank was struggling for words as he looked at his best friend before he pulled him into a huge bro hug. He stepped back, wiping his eyes as Fliss moved forward to hug Greg too, before they both walked him to his car.
“I owe you, big time.” Frank croaked and Greg waved him away as he opened the door to his Merc.
“I told you it would work out.” He shrugged, smiling broadly. “Merry Christmas guys.”
The two of them waved him off before Fliss turned to Frank, her tears falling down her cheeks “I can’t believe it…”
“Me neither.” Frank spluttered and Fliss leaped into his arms, the pair of them laughing in sheer joy. Even thought they’d thrown themselves into the holiday spirit, neither of them had been able to shake that little feeling that a small, dark cloud was still following them. And now that was gone.
It was over. All over. And they’d won.
They headed back inside, both resisting the urge to wake Mary to tell her, deciding they’d leave it for the morning, but they absolutely did decide to crack a bottle of champagne open.
And then Frank had an even better idea, one that came to him on a whim as they walked back through their garden. Silently he disappeared into the little laundry room at the side of the kitchen and when he emerged, Fliss had her back to him so she didn’t see him deposit the 2 pool towels on the breakfast bar. He moved to where she reaching for two champagne flutes, and as she stood on her tiptoes, he wrapped his arms around her from behind causing her to jump a little.
“I can’t believe it.” Fliss whispered “I mean I hoped he’d back down but…”
“I know” Frank kissed her neck tenderly “Another huge Christmas Eve huh? Second one in a row?”
Yeah.” She sighed happily, her hands falling on top of his arms, rubbing gently. “You know last year I was so nervous when I found out I was pregnant.”
“So was I, and that was before you told me that bit of news.” He smiled, his chin resting on her shoulder. “I’d been trying to propose for ages. I was shitting my pants it was gonna go wrong or you’d turn me down.”
“Not a chance Sailor.” She turned her head to look at him. “You’re stuck with me.”
He pressed a kiss to her lips and the pair of them stood in silence in their kitchen, lost in their own thoughts, simply looking out of the window over their garden which was illuminated softly by the lighting round the pool area. Eventually Frank remembered his original plan and he smiled to himself.
“So all the presents are wrapped, everyone’s in bed waiting for the big guy with the sack to arrive…” Frank muttered, his lips grazing her neck “The pool heaters have been on all day…what about a Christmas Eve dip?”
Fliss turned in his arms, arching an eyebrow “Would you merely be trying to get me naked Francis?”
“Yes.” He nodded and she giggled.
“Skinny dipping? On Christmas Eve?”
“You lost your sense of adventure Cowgirl?” he teased.
Fliss peered round him to where Alex was sleeping in the basinet and with a grin pulled back and whipped off her T-shirt. “Does that answer your question?”
Frank laughed and caught the top as she threw it at him, tossing it to the side as he grabbed the towels. By the time he caught up with her outside Fliss was on the edge of the pool in nothing but her baby-blue cotton panties and his eyes scanned up her legs and the rest of her body until they locked onto hers. She bit her lip as she stepped out of her underwear and Frank felt his cock twitch as she turned and coyly shot him a look over her shoulder before she descended down the mosaic tiled steps at the shallow end of the pool.
Not wanting to waste a second more he threw the towels down on one of the sun loungers and reached over his head, grabbing a fistful of his grey t-shirt. He pulled it off before be quickly undid his belt and in one swoop yanked down his loose jeans and boxers.
Fliss dropped off the bottom step, her shoulders dipping under the warm water as she turned to watch Frank following her in, her eyes trailing up from his knees over his thighs, semi-erect cock which stood beneath that happy trail that led down his slim, flat yet ever so slightly soft stomach and up to his broad shoulders and strong arms. Her eyes moved to his handsome face, the stubble on his jaw line always gave him a more rugged look and his short hair was spiked up messily as it usually was at the end of the day.
Fuck, he was beautiful.
And not just on the outside. Even before the events of the last few weeks Fliss knew her man was the most caring, wonderful and doting father and lover on the planet but since the issue with Polland had raised its head she'd seen a side to him that she had only ever caught glimpses of before. A softer, vulnerable side and it filled her heart with even more love for him for reasons she couldn't explain other than it just did. He wasn't afraid to show weakness to her, he wasn't ashamed to tell her his fears. Because they were a true partnership. And as she watched him crouch down so his body was submerged in the water, his eyes sparkling in the lights, she felt an unnerving spike of desire that was so strong it surged right from her toes up her body, leaving her slightly fuzzy headed, like she was drunk on love.
Frank cocked his head playfully to the side as Fliss gracefully pushed off the ball of her foot and swam towards him before she twisted in the water slightly and brought her legs out in front of her. She wrapped them round his waist, settling herself on his lap as his large hands gently splayed on her back. Fliss nuzzled her nose against his chin, nudging his head back so she could chain soft kisses across his jaw line, her lips skating the bristles on his face as she gently nipped at his skin. Frank let out a soft sigh, his hands pulling her closer as she moved her affections down his neck, over his Adam’s apple before she gently sucked at the junction of his shoulder and neck, grinding down on him, her bare core slicking over his cock.
"Fuck, Liss..." he stuttered, pulling back to look at her, the water sloshing around them "What's got into you, huh?"
"Nothing yet." She purred back.
Frank looked at her, but before he could make a smart reply she’d dropped her hand from his shoulder into the pool and wrapped her palm around him making him choke on his words slightly as she stroked him with a few quick flicks of her wrist.
“Jesus, baby…” he managed to croak as her eyes locked onto his and a smirk curled on her lips. She leaned forwards, her teeth nipping at his ear and he gave a soft groan, his head falling back slightly as she continued to work him, her hand pumping up and down his now rock hard dick. And then she stopped, and he felt her mouth curve open and her breath was hot on his skin as she whispered 3 words that sent red hot fire coursing through his entire body.
“Fuck me, Sailor.”
He didn’t need asking twice.
Fliss moved herself, guiding him to where she wanted and she sank down onto his length, his hands grabbing her hips as she took him in completely, a low, drawn out gasp escaping her lips as Frank hissed slightly as her walls clamped around him. He gave himself a moment, enjoying the feel of her before he thrust upwards, his fingers curling around her soft flesh as he drew back slowly, before pushing back into her deeply, rotating his hips. Fliss’ hands curled around his shoulders, her head tipping back, eyes closed in pleasure, the action causing her breasts to rise out of the water. Keeping his rhythm slow and deep he dipped his head, his tongue tracing a stripe down her cleavage, the salty tang of the pool water hitting his taste buds as he directed his attention to her nipple, flicking and sucking softly, all the time listening and feeling her reactions as she pushed down further against him, desperate for more. For whatever reason, Fliss was in a downright filthy mood and Frank had a feeling that slow and steady wasn’t going to be enough. He moved his mouth, nipping up her neck before his lips pressed onto hers, the kiss filthy as his tongue fucked her mouth and he pulled back as he began to back himself up to the side of the pool.
With a quick movement he turned so Fliss’s back was against the tiled edge, and he looked at her as she stared at him, her deep brown eyes wide with lust as he dipped his head to kiss her again.
“Turn around.” He instructed, his voice low and Fliss complied, moving off him and spinning in the water. One large hand slid up her spine to her neck and his fingers gently curled around her nape as he pushed her forwards slightly, before he slid both his hands up her arms and directed her hands to grip at the lip of the pool.
Fliss’ body was tingling with anticipation. Her palms gripped round the rough surface of the pool edge as she surrendered to Frank’s control, his chest pressing against her back, lips sucking at her neck.
“If this is too much, tell me…” he whispered against her skin. Fliss tilted her face round to look at him, seeing those ocean blues she loved shining with love and what looked like a slight glimmer of concern. And she knew why. Whilst their sex was hot, passionate, loving, it was very rarely rough because he didn’t want to push her too far knowing her past. But she wanted this, she needed it. She smiled at him, pressing her lips to his.
“I trust you.” She promised him gently and Frank kissed her again before he pulled away. His hands gripped her hips, lifting her ass up so her feet planted on the floor of the pool as he rose to his, the water lapping around his thighs as he buried himself into her with one swift movement. He pulled out slowly before he thrust back, bottoming out as she gasped, her head tilting backwards as he continued rocking his hips back and forth, slowly at first, his movements gathering pace until he built up into a fast, relentless rhythm, every drive into her jolting her forwards slightly as she braced herself against the edge with her arms, elbows locked to absorb the shock. Pants, whimpers, soft cries and the debauched sound of sloshing and skin slapping skin filled the otherwise silent night air of the garden and Frank dropped his eyes to the point where he was pounding in and out of his girl, the sight of where they were joined was hot as fuck and he let out a groan as he watched for a second, before his eyes flicked back up to Fliss. Her head was dropped between her arms, slightly twisted to the right and he could see her eyes were closed, jaw slack, full lips open in a silent cry.
As he continued his powerful, fast thrusts, his cock brushed occasionally against that spot inside and Fliss felt the coil in her belly beginning to tighten slowly, each time he hit it. Frank adjusted his stance and bent over, his right hand falling over hers as he too braced himself against the edge of the pool, giving a dirty grind and Fliss cried out loudly at the sensation.
“Fuck, right there…” she encouraged and Frank repeated the movement again, his bottom lip caught between his teeth as he was fighting the urge he was feeling to cum.
“Liss, shit...” He gasped, his left hand dropping between her legs, coaxing her clit and after a few strong strokes Fliss arched her back, her head following as she let out a cry of his name as the world tilted on its axis, her orgasm rocking her to her very core. The feeling was too much for Frank and with a loud moan that rumbled from his chest he followed her right over the edge, his thrusts growing sloppy as he pumped through his own release before he stilled, his head bowing as he waited for the surge of ecstasy to dissipate.
Eventually the fog lifted enough so that he was able to bend his knees slightly, and with the arm that was curled around Fliss’ waist he turned them in the water. Fliss was near dead weight and went with him obligingly, his cock still buried in her as he pivoted and dropped down so that his back was against the wall of the pool and she sat on his lap, the water gently splashing around their shoulders.
Frank cradled her close, pressing a kiss to her neck as he gave a low hum of satisfaction, her head falling back against his shoulder, a smile flickering across her lips.
“You know…” Frank mumbled after a little moment of silence “Cowgirls will always be my favourite, even in reverse.”
Fliss gave a soft chuckle as she opened her eyes and titled her head to look at him. “I prefer sailors…” she smirked and he laughed, pressing his lips to hers.
“You ok?” he asked, as her hands fell over his arms, fingers softly skating up his wet skin and she gave a nod.
“Never better.” She affirmed.
“Good.” He kissed her temple. “You wanna get out or…”
“No, I’m good here for a while.” She purred and he smiled, his mouth dropping to her shoulder where he pressed another kiss to her skin.
Eventually Fliss reluctantly conceded that they probably should get out as Alex would want feeding again any time soon. But, not wanting the moment to end, Frank suggested that whilst she showered he could do the feed and light the fire-pit. Fliss agreed and after wrapping herself in a towel she kissed him again and headed upstairs. Frank dried himself off, located his T-shirt and shrugged it on, leaving the towel round his waist as he warmed a bottle for his now grumbling son. By the time Fliss came back down stairs in her plaid sleep pants and tank, Alex was just finishing up. Frank passed him over, and they both headed back outside. Once the fire was lit Frank scooted off for a quick shower and returned 10 minutes later to find Alex settled once more in the basinet, tucked snuggly under his Christmas blanket that was decorated with little Santa’s and trees, his eyes roaming the starry sky. Fliss sat with her legs under a tartan fleece on the outside sofa, the bottle of champagne stood in the middle of the table in an ice bucket and either side of it rested two full flutes. With a satisfied sigh Frank sat next to her, reaching for his drink and resting his feet on the table as Fliss snuggled under his arm. The pair of them clinked their glasses together, shared another soft kiss and settled into a soft chatter.
It was cosy, domestic, loving, and everything Fliss had ever dreamed of having, but never in a million years thinking she’d experience, and as they sat talking and laughing, speculating about Mary’s reaction to the news of her adoption being tomorrow, she felt herself suddenly choked with emotion and she sat up, looking at her man.
“I think she’s gonna...” Frank trailed off, frowning at the look on Fliss’ face “Hey, honey what’s wrong?”
“Absolutely nothing.” She muttered, clambering onto his lap so she was straddling him, jolting the glass he was holding a little and sending some of the Moet spilling onto the patio.
“You sure?” he titled his head to look at her and she nodded, sniffing back her tears as she kissed him, her hands running through his messy hair.
“I’m just so happy Frank, I can’t stop thinking about how much I lucked out.” She whispered as she pulled away and Frank smiled against her mouth.
“I think I’m the one that lucked out.” He whispered, his spare hand reaching up to smooth her hair back slightly.
“Maybe we can agree we’re both lucky bastards” she grinned and he chuckled, his eyes locking onto hers.
“I can live with that.” He agreed.
******
For the second day in a row Frank and Fliss woke with hangovers, as post the champagne they hit the bourbon and didn’t go to bed until 2 am. Now it was half 6 and Frank wasn’t impressed that he was going to have to deal with a hyper 9 year old who was currently bouncing on his bed, a 16 week old and his mother with a headache and only 4 and a half hours sleep.
After they sat and opened the gifts in their stocking, Frank telling Fliss to leave the thin, flat box until she was alone, they headed downstairs. Frank grinned at Fliss as Mary bust into the family room and glanced at the presents which were arranged in a pile by the sofa. The three of them exchanged their gifts, Fliss being especially delighted with her Spa Day voucher from Mary and Alex, which Frank informed her Simon had also gotten one for Bonnie so they could go together. Frank had also bought her a few new pairs of riding breeches, signed her up for a year’s subscription to Kindle Unlimited, a few more items of clothing, a 3 Pandora charms in the shape of the letters, F, M and A meaning she had one for them all and a stunning silver and diamond necklace and earring set from Tiffany’s which Fliss gasped at when she opened. In contrast Fliss had bought Frank a new phone from Alex and Mary to replace the one he’d smashed against the wall, a few T-shirts and then cryptically told him the biggest gift from her was yet to come.
“You’re not pregnant again are you?” he leaned over and asked her semi-seriously.
“Fuck, no!” she spluttered and he let out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “It’s just a little big…you’ll see.”
Before he could press her any further, Mary gave a loud shriek as she unwrapped the hooded top that was decorated the same as her Gillet and grinned, jamming it on over her pyjama top. Frank laughed as she did a parade in front of them before she paused, looking at the door to the little room off the kitchen. Frank had covered over the door frame in wrapping paper as it held her big present and Mary looked at it, before she turned to Frank and Fliss, frowning.
“What’s that?”
“Dunno.” Frank teased “Why don’t you go through and see?”
Mary looked at the pair of them again before she ran over, her reindeer slippers padding over the floor and she tore through the paper, pushing the door open.
Frank curled his arm round Fliss, kissed the side of her head as they followed her into the room where Mary was stood, gaping around.
As a surprise they’d turned it into a little sitting room of sorts for her. Over the last 4 weeks they had meticulously emptied it of the crap that had been in there since they’d moved in and they’d completely re-decorated it. Frank had painted a pale yellow on 3 of the walls, the 4th at the back was papered with a huge picture of Monty in the pasture. Her show rosettes were hung on a trellis which Frank had screwed to the wall with plenty of space for more and on the shelving unit which housed a large, flat screen Tv, Blu-ray player and Android box were positioned a few photos of various family shots. To finish the room off, 2 huge bean bags were placed in the middle of the room which were big enough for Fliss and Frank to lie in (they'd had a lot of fun trying them out) and there was a small desk in the corner along with an office chair. But it was the electronic keyboard nestled in the corner of the wall that held the TV that caught Mary’s eye.
As Fred sauntered in and hopped up on a bean bag as if he owned the place, Mary walked over to the keyboard running her hands along it before she turned to look at the two adults, her mouth hanging open.
“We thought you might like a place to hang out or chillax or whatever it is you kids do now...” Frank smiled “You know, instead of always needing to go to your room when Rosie or whoever comes over. You can study in here too as well.”
“And trust me you'll want your own space once this monster starts crawling.” Fliss smiled, readjusting Alex in her arms slightly.
“I love it…” Mary gasped, looking around her eyes brimming “My own special living room…and a sort of piano.”
“Well, you keep up your lessons with Nanny V and we might, and I mean might, get you a real one” Frank smiled and Mary beamed at him before she shot over to the pair of them. Frank picked her up with a groan and kissed her cheek.
“Rosie is gonna be well jel.” She giggled and Frank laughed as Mary leaned over to kiss Fliss’ cheek.
“There’s something in the desk for you too.” Frank took a deep breath, setting Mary down on the floor. As she walked over the room, Frank moved, his arm hooking round Fliss’ waist as they watched her open the lid of the desk and take out the envelope. With a frown she pulled it open and her eyes widened as she looked at the detail.
“Is this…” she started breathing deeply, her gaze shooting up to Frank’s, her eyes filling with tears “He…”
Frank nodded, his own eyes pricking with tears “Yeah, he signed the papers Stack.”
“So, I’m…I’m adopted?” she stuttered.
“Not quite but…” Frank sniffed, “It’s about as good as done, yeah. Greg got those yesterday.”
As Mary looked back down at the paper in her hand, Frank spotted a tear fall from her face and then he frowned as he saw her legs starting to shake. In a flash he was by her side, catching her as she dropped to her knees. She wrapped her arms around his neck, the paper scrunching slightly in her hand as she buried her face into the crook of his neck and began to cry.
Frank pressed his face into her hair, trying desperately to keep his own tears from falling but failing miserably. Fliss was already gone, and she moved to walk towards them, dropping gently to her knees, Alex held safely in her arms.
“We’re gonna be a proper family.” Mary sobbed and Frank stuttered a laugh as he pulled back to look down at her.
“Mary, sweetheart, we already were.” His voice cracked and she nodded against his neck, before she started to cry again. At that point Thor walked into the room and pushed his nose straight in between Mary and Frank, licking her face and letting out soft little whines.
Mary giggled and grabbed his fur gently “Thor, get off you doofus…”
“Is everything ok?” a voice made all of them look up to see Evelyn in the doorway, wrapped in a dressing gown and slippers. Frank, who had momentarily forgotten he’d text her to come join them, looked up through his tears and nodded. Fliss took the paper out of Mary’s hand and held it out to Evelyn. She gently gripped it, her eyebrows raised slightly, and then her hand flew to her mouth when she read the writing.
“Oh, that’s….that’s fantastic!” she sniffed, “Really…”
Mary, whose sobs had now subsided suddenly pulled back from Frank and looked at Fliss, “We need to give Frank his present!”
“Yup, we do!”
“Yeah, what…” Frank frowned “I’m kinda scared about this you know.”
“Oh trust me, you’re gonna LOVE it!” Mary grinned, before she stood up straight.
“Why don’t you let me watch Alex whilst you head out?” Evelyn smiled and Fliss handed him over to his grandmother before the three of them headed to the hallway. Fliss fished the garage keys off the hooks by the door and tossed them to Frank who caught them in his right hand.
“You’re gonna need those” she smiled. Frank arched an eyebrow as he shoved on his sneakers but didn’t say anything as they headed out into the December sun, making their way over the drive.
“Is something gonna jump out at me?” he paused, the keys in the door.
“No.” Mary grinned. With one final, suspicious look at them he flung the up-and-over door open and stopped dead as he looked into the now full space of the double garage, his mouth hanging open.
In front of him was a fairly large boat. It had a covered lower deck area which housed the main engine and cockpit and a large, open flat stern area with benches. It was old, and in need of a fuck tonne of work but Frank was absolutely over the moon.
“Holy…you…you bought me a boat?” he turned to Fliss who grinned and nodded.
“I suppose technically I bought us a boat, but…” she shrugged as Frank moved over to examine it. He ran his hands over the hull, which was sound enough considering the state the rest of it was in and he turned to Fliss, his handsome face splitting into a huge smile.
“It’s a wreck, I love it!” he beamed and Fliss grinned as he took her face in both hands and kissed her “Thank you baby.”
“Well I thought about getting a newer one but I know you’ve always wanted to do your own up” she smiled as he pulled away “Plus, from a purely selfish point of view, I’m kinda looking forward to seeing you full of grease again.”
He grinned and arched an eyebrow before he kissed her again and Mary made a gagging noise. He turned to her, playfully swatting at her head and the 3 of them made their way back to the house, Frank casting a loving glance at his newest prized possession before he pulled the door down and locked it.
They exchanged gifts with Evelyn over breakfast, both Mary and Alex’s piles in the living room were significantly larger when they finished opening the bags full each and then following a breakfast of pancakes and bacon which was made whilst dancing around the kitchen to various Christmas songs, Fliss and Mary headed over to the yard to see to the horses and sneak a quick ride in before they needed to head over to Bill and Verity’s.
Fliss opted to shower first so she could get Alex ready and once she was alone she took her time to open the present Frank had told her to leave until later. As she pulled off the wrapping paper she smiled to herself as she saw the Victoria Secrets box and lifted the lid off, gently pulling back the pink tissue wrapping. Biting her lip she pulled out the sheer gold negligee, which was beautiful and rather classy as well, before she placed it back in the box and headed into the bathroom.
Just as she’d finished dressing Frank walked into their room, Alex in his arms and he smiled, pressing his lips to hers.
“I opened it…” Fliss smiled against his mouth.
“Yeah?”
“Mmmhmmm” she affirmed “I happen to think I suit gold.”
Frank smiled “I’m sure you do.”
She grinned and took Alex off him before she headed out of the room, Frank watching her go before he stripped off his clothing and headed into the bathroom.
20 minutes or so later, dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a red and blue flannel button down, Frank wandered into the family room and stopped dead as he caught sight of Alex’s outfit.
“Lissy, what the fuck is my boy wearing?” Frank stared at the baby who was sat on Mary’s knee on the sofa, dressed in a green elf onesie. It had a black strip round the middle with a little yellow belt buckle detail, and the collar was red and ruffled. The legs were red and white hooped, just like tights, and on his head sat a red and green hat. As Frank stared at him in disbelief, Alex gazed up at his dad and let out a loud excited noise and waved his hands and legs.
“He looks cute, Frank.” Mary grinned, herself dressed in a white little blouse detailed with christmas patterns. Fliss walked over from the kitchen where she had been boxing up the sugar cookies she had made and grinned as Frank glared at her, pointing to Alex.
“He’s a fucking elf.” He deadpanned. “In tights.”
“Language.” Fliss slapped his arm lightly before she shrugged and gestured to her own Christmas sweater which depicted Santa stuck upside down in a chimney “It’s Christmas.”
Frank shook his head. “He looks ridiculous.”
“Don’t be a scrooge.” Mary grinned and Frank shot her a glare, before he glanced at his son again, shaking his head. Alex seemed absolutely nonplussed at the fact his Mother had dressed him in the utterly stupid get up and Frank turned, shaking his head as Fliss smirked at him.
“Everyone is gonna laugh at him.” He pouted and Fliss snorted
“No they’re not!”
Frank knew he wasn’t going to win the argument, Fliss was as big a child as anyone when it came to Christmas, but he was damned if he was going to let his boy be the subject of ridicule without a fight. But whatever protest he had left died in his throat as at that point Evelyn walked back into the room, a few more gift bags in her hands for Fliss’ family and Roberta and let out a little chuckle.
“Oh my God, doesn’t he look adorable.” She clapped her hands and walked towards her grandson.
Fliss bit her lip, her shoulders shaking with laughter at the utter indignation on Frank’s face as he rolled his eyes, letting out an exasperated growl as she slid her arms up round his neck.
“Fine, just…whatever.” He sighed as she pulled his head down to hers, catching his lips in a soft peck. “Poor kid’s gonna grow up with a complex” he mumbled against her mouth “First the dinosaur outfit at Halloween, now this…”
“Well, so he doesn’t feel too bad, I got you a matching jumper.”
“Yeah Frank, you can put it on and then we can all take an elfie with your new phone, geddit?” Mary grinned and Fliss snorted.
Frank pulled back and glared at Mary “Over my dead body.”
“Can be arranged.” She retorted, and at that Fliss and Evelyn burst into laughter.
“Well that’s just mean.” Frank pouted and Fliss grinned, standing on her tiptoes.
“I’ll make it up to you later Sailor.” She whispered, her lips brushing his ear “I’ll let you decide if gold really is my colour for yourself…”
“Yeah?” he asked, arching an eyebrow, his hands dropping to her hips.
“If you wear the sweater…”
“That’s…that’s blackmail.” He narrowed his eyes.
“I know.” She pulled back, turning to Mary and Evelyn. “Ok, shall we load the cars up? Mary you wanna ride with me or Frank?”
“Who’s goin’ to get Roberta?”
“Frank.” Fliss said “I’m taking Alex and Thor…and Fred.” She added as an after-thought.
“Then I’ll go with him.” She nodded “That ok?”
“Sure.” Fliss smiled, her hand dropping to Mary’s head.
There was a sudden, excited bustle around the room as everyone moved to get their things together…and Frank went upstairs to change into his new elf sweater.
*****
Chapter 18
#riding on#frank adler#frank adler x ofc#frank adler x original female character#gifted#gifted fan fic#chris evans#chris evans characters
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Galactica, Chapter 62 (Group Fic) - TheDane/Veronica
A/N: Click here if you’re looking for previous chapters (or here if you’d rather read on AO3). 💫
Last Chapter: The assistant gossip network continued to do its thing, while Courtney lived her best life, Sutan offered Violet some wardrobe assistance, and Bianca planned a coming out.
This Chapter: The Galactica Holiday Party has arrived, and not everyone is prepared...
***
“Remember to find your light!”
Gigi turned her head, trying as hard as she could not to squeeze her eyes shut, the studio lights blinding.
“I said find it, not stare into the sun!”
Gigi blushed and moved her head again, doing her best to try and follow the instructions Sutan kept giving her.
They were in a photo studio in the Bronx, Gigi to get her first pictures for her portfolio taken, while Symone had practiced how to shoot in swimwear, her friend now waiting with her phone for Gigi to finish up.
Gigi had watched Symone move around, completely enthralled by how elegant the other model already was, Sutan barely correcting her.
“Straighten your back!” Gigi did as she was told, a pair of black jeans hugging her body, the long sleeved black shirt she was wearing clinging to her arms.
“Excuse me...” The photographer, who had introduced herself as Widow, looked out from behind her camera, “can I do my job in peace?” Widow smiled even though her tone was clearly sassy, her teeth blindingly white, her black box braids collected in a high bun. She was wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, big red earrings hanging from her ears.
“You know what I hired you for,” Sutan smiled back, and Widow rolled her eyes, making Gigi giggle.
“Yes sir, right away sir,” Widow teased.
“Don’t give the models any ideas with your attitude.” Sutan grinned, his sleeves rolled up around his elbows, refocusing on Gigi who had tried to hold the position he had asked for.
“No, not like, you have to be more.” Sutan moved his shoulders, and Gigi tried to copy it. She knew they were doing this shoot so she could get an idea of what she looked like, so she could train what Sutan called her inner photographer, but it was really difficult.
“No, still not right.” Sutan stepped on the set, getting next to Gigi, the scent of his cologne instantly catching her nose. “Your strength is in your lines Gigi, so you have to stand tall. Use those legs of yours,” He smiled, tapping his own left leg and moving it forward, mirroring what Gigi hoped she was doing. “Try this.”
Gigi moved her leg to copy Sutan, her entire center of balance shifting.
“There we go!” Sutan grinned. “Good job. Now hold it, and find your light.”
***
Violet tried to turn to the side, watching her profile in the big mirror on the back wall of the dressing room.
Her and Sutan had each been swept up by a personal shopper the moment they stepped inside Barney’s, Violet whisked away to the woman's clothes department where everything was outrageously expensive and completely new.
Violet was wearing a beautiful red dress, the hemline just off the floor, her cast barely visible if she stood completely still, which suited her perfectly well.
Violet had every plan to get to the Christmas party, sit down, and then hopefully not move again for the rest of the night, Jovan’s offer of bedazzling her crutches still making her shiver.
“So, what do we think?” Violet’s shopper smiled, the woman standing behind her, her pile of rejected dresses four times the size of the approved ones for the upcoming events, but she couldn’t help being extremely critical, not when everything was so stupidly expensive.
“Well…” Violet looked in the mirror. The dress suited her, even though it didn’t sit snugly at her waist, but that wasn’t something a loose loop stitch couldn’t fix so she could undo it again later and hopefully keep the dress longer. It hadn’t been Violet’s intention to lose weight, and if she was being honest, she had actually expected to gain with a broken foot, but it seemed like that hadn’t been the case, her appetite even worse than usual, her pain killers often making it feel like she had knives stabbing her stomach.
“I’ll take it.”
Violet knew that the dress would be approved by Fame, and loved by Sutan, the low neckline and the opportunity for matching underwear always a treat.
***
“Kat? Are you gonna be okay?” Trixie asked, voice soft.
They were sitting in a little cafe across from her doctor’s office. They’d just gotten the official news - she was pregnant, no doubt about it. She’d put on a transparently false, cheerful face while they were there but barely said two words since they’d left, a croissant and mango smoothie sitting in front of her, untouched.
According to the doctor’s best estimate, she was 14 weeks along, which already limited their options, a fairly invasive procedure now the only way to go if they didn’t want the baby.
She looked at him, blue eyes clear, and said, “I don’t know.”
Trixie nodded, taking her hand in his and holding it lightly. He didn’t want to push her too much, could tell that she was in a fragile state of mind.
“Well...I’m here if there’s anything…Anything I can do.”
“Got a flask on you?” she asked drily, then closed her eyes, immediately chagrined. “I’m sorry, that’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny, babe.” He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, the two of them sitting side by side, their fingers intertwined.
***
Roxy looked up as Courtney rounded the corner from Miss Fame’s office, flashing her a bright smile. She had just gotten yet another delivery--Roxy was fast becoming BFFs with Greg, the Marie Claire office runner.
“Hey Rox! Whatcha got for me?”
“Hi, Court,” Roxy said, eyeing her suspiciously before handing over the bag, wondering why she was so perky today.
Courtney looked inside the bag and saw what Roxy had already - a large black velvet jewelry box.
“Open it,” Roxy said, and Courtney pulled it out, peeking inside before snapping it closed again. “Come on, you’re not gonna show me?”
A smile pulled at Courtney’s lips, and she leaned forward onto the reception desk, voice low, saying, “You wanna know something?”
“Yes, of course!” Roxy perked up. Was Courtney finally about to admit to her affair with Bianca Del Rio? It was gonna be a hell of a lot easier once she didn’t have to pretend to be in the dark anymore.
“You know how I said that I’ve been...uh...seeing someone who works at Marie Claire?”
“Yeah…you gonna tell me who?”
“Well, no,” she said, and off Roxy’s annoyed scoff, added, “But...we’re coming to the party tonight...together.”
“Oh really?” Roxy’s eyebrows shot up. This actually was pretty decent information, given the potential shit storm it could cause. The drama of Miss Fame’s assistant dating one of her best friends, and them showing up together to a company event? Absolutely delicious.
“Yeah, so...I guess you’ll find out soon enough,” Courtney said, eyes twinkling with mischief.
“I guess I will,” Roxy agreed, smiling placidly, already typing out a DM to Bob.
***
Fame breathed a sigh of relief as the car pulled up to the hotel she had chosen for the Galactica Christmas Party. The facade was decorated with dripping ice crystals, lights and fake snow making it the winter wonderland she had envisioned. The red carpet had been rolled out, guests already posing for photos and talking to reporters about their clothes, Fame recognizing the signature cameras from E! Network and one of Vogue’s journalists.
She had gotten the confirmation from Shangela that the string quartet had shown up, the musicians hired for the lounge area while the caterers had set up shop in the enchanted forest filled with actual pine trees, the bar carrying a line of gins specifically brewed for the event.
“So,” Patrick lifted an eyebrow, a curious expression on his face. The majority of Fame’s skirt was in her husband's lap since she refused to let the silk anywhere near the bottom of the car. “how are we feeling?”
“Me?” Fame smiled, leaning over to press a kiss against his cheek “Quite content.”
***
“Are you sure I can’t talk you into walking the carpet?”
Sutan looked over at Violet, the two of them on the bottom of the steps leading up to the hotel, Raja and Raven already halfway inside. Raja was in a tight-fitting emerald green suit with a deep cleavage, her hair twisted into a gorgeous updo, while Raven was dressed in a floor length gown in matching green, the two of them looking absolutely stunning together.
“Yes.” The message was clear, and Sutan could feel the tiniest curl of irritation in his stomach. Violet was beyond beautiful, her usually pink nails carefully painted the same red shade as her dress, a tiny purse slung over her shoulders, her black hair curled and spilling over her shoulders and back, her posture perfect even though she was leaning on her crutch, only one of them allowed to come along.
He wanted those pictures of them together, even if it was selfish.
“Lovely eyes-”
“I said no.” Violet’s tone left no room for argument, and Sutan pressed his lips together, taking a deep breath through his nose not to let his irritation win out.
“Sutan,” Violet reached out, gently touching his arm. “This isn’t a you issue, it’s a me issue. I’d love to go up there and be on your arm like a dainty little princess or trophy-”
“What?” Sutan raised an eyebrow. He had never thought of Violet as a princess, or even dainty, the muscles he knew she had and the iron will he had seen her possess over and over again so much more attractive than any trophy girlfriend could be. “That’s not what-”
“I know,” Violet squeezed, underlining her words, “But I’d honestly rather jump into traffic than talk to a single one of those reporters, and risk showing up in any of their publications.”
Sutan snorted, Violet’s dark sense of humor as always getting to him. He knew it also had to do with her relationship to her family, Violet’s choked hospital confession still rumbling around in his head, what little he had managed to piece together telling its clear story of a gossip magazine-obsessed mother, his girlfriend posing for his own mothers old canon camera at Thanksgiving without any issues.
“Okay, but promise me,” Sutan took a step, bringing them closer, his hand finding it’s now familiar place on Violet’s waist, “that I can get one soon.”
“A photo?” Violet raised an eyebrow, their hips almost touching, her free hand on his chest.
“Mmh, just for the two of us.”
“I’ll consider it,” Violet smiled, her fingers gently rearranging his tie, making sure it was sitting completely straight. “If you promise me that we can get a cab home.”
“A cab?” They had arrived with Raja and Raven, a driver coming back to pick all four of them up at the end of the night, “Why?”
“Because you, Mr. Amrull, look fucking fantastic tonight,” Violet looked up at him, a smirk on her lips, “and I wanna make out in the backseat.”
*
“You ready?” Bianca asked, looking over at Courtney as their car pulled up to the curb.
Courtney glanced outside, where a crowd of photographers and reporters were gathered, stomach seizing with the reality of what she was about to do, wondering if it was a mistake. Even walking the carpet with Bianca instead of taking the normal entrance with the rest of the support staff suddenly seemed audacious.
“No,” she admitted, looking back at Bianca apologetically. “I’m sorry, I-”
“Would it help if I told you how absolutely gorgeous you look?” Bianca asked, reaching out to take her hand.
Her outfit for the night was probably the most conservative of all the dresses Dan had pulled for her - a black dress--low cut, but not in a slutty way with a little bow at the front and full circle skirt, paired with a pair of Bianca’s beautiful multicolored Louboutins and simple, classy jewelry--including a glamorous strand of pink pearls that Bianca had sent over earlier in the day.
In spite of her nerves, Courtney couldn’t help but smile a little at the compliment, proud of the care she’d taken with her hair and makeup, hoping to make Bianca proud. She tucked a stray curl behind her ear and responded with a cheeky, “Look who’s talking…”
Bianca grinned, and Courtney was once again struck by how fantastic she looked, in a red silk organza cocktail dress, the floaty feminine fabric accentuating her curves perfectly, a deep v-neck giving the perfect peek at her cleavage.
“What if we just stayed in the car for awhile?” Courtney suggested, fluttering her lashes.
“I promise to make it worth your while later, angel.” Bianca squeezed her hand, pulling her in close. “But right now, I’m pretty excited to show you off. So whaddaya say?”
Courtney took a deep breath, the churning in her stomach now a combination of nerves and excitement.
“Okay.”
Bianca signalled to the driver, who quickly got out and walked around to open their door.
“Here we go…” Bianca gave her hand one final squeeze and got out, giving the flashing cameras a polite wave before reaching back in to help her out.
Courtney’s mind was a mess. She suddenly had so many concurrent anxieties, like tripping on the carpet, or being dragged to filth by come gossip rag, or, given how lightheaded she now felt, fainting, here in front of all these people. She tried to steady herself, and Bianca’s arm slid securely around her waist.
“I’ve got you, don’t worry. You look amazing,” Bianca murmured in her ear.
Bianca led her down the carpet--a true professional, posing and smiling, calmly directing Courtney so that she knew where to stand and where to look, chatting jovially with reporters.
“Who’s your date, Bianca?” one of them asked boldly.
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” Bianca joked back. They’d discussed this ahead of time - better to keep Courtney’s name out of things for the moment, given her job title. Courtney understood, and agreed, and was even a bit relieved. For now, on gossip sites and fashion blogs, she’d just be ‘BDR’s latest blonde,’ and she was very much okay with that. After all, the people that mattered to both of them would know, and that’s what she cared about.
“Well, is it serious?” another piped up.
“You tell me,” Bianca said, and then Courtney really thought she might faint, Bianca pressing a sweet kiss to her cheek as about a billion flashbulbs went off in their faces, murmuring, “You’re doing perfectly, angel.”
She turned to Bianca, gazing at her with breathless admiration, feeling like the luckiest girl in the entire world. And then she took Bianca’s face in her hands and impulsively kissed her, right on the mouth, soft but sure. So what if it was only a fling? Courtney didn’t care anymore--she would remember this high for the rest of her life.
Bianca smiled against her mouth and whispered, “Well, that’ll make headlines...”
“Oops,” Courtney whispered back, both of them giggling.
They broke apart, matching grins on their faces as they looked into each other’s eyes, until Bianca turned back to the sea of paparazzi, now in a frenzy, shouting out questions too fast for Courtney to even process the words.
“That’s enough for you demons!” Bianca called, gently pulling Courtney up the steps, giving one last smiling wave at the top, Courtney’s hand still clasped in hers.
*
“Are you done?”
“Nope!”
Raja hid her grin, her shoulder touching Raven’s as they posed for the camera, her fiancée radiating excitement as she chatted and flirted with the photographers.
Raven had always adored the camera, and if there was a journalist behind it, she was practically in love, getting caught by the paparazzi a treat for her each and every time it happened.
Raja didn’t feel the same thrill, didn’t care as much about showing up in gossip magazines and websites since she had gotten more than enough of that in her youth, but she couldn’t be truly upset when it generated so many great pictures, Raven often looking sexy as sin when she got caught leaving the gym.
“Raja! Over here!”
Raja turned her head, the photographer catching her attention, and that was when she saw them, Bianca coming up a little ways behind her.
Seeing Bianca on a red carpet wasn’t strange, but what was frankly bizarre was the familiar blonde at her side.
Raja had expected Fame’s assistant to be somewhere in the crowd, since it was a company party and a big treat for the staff, but what the fuck was she doing on the red carpet? The support staff was supposed to enter the party through the normal pedestrian entrance.
And then, Bianca put her arm around Courtney’s waist, kissing her cheek as she giggled girlishly.
Oh, fuck.
This was not good. Frankly, Raja wasn’t shocked that Bianca had been messing with Courtney, her behavior at the meeting last week making it painfully obvious that she liked her. But this, this was next level.
Just when she thought it couldn’t get any more embarrassing, Raja witnessed something that made her blood run cold. Courtney grasped Bianca’s face in her hands and kissed her on the lips, causing absolute chaos from the group of paparazzi around them.
“Holy shit.”
“What?” Raven looked up at her, a concerned and confused expression on her beautiful face.
“Wait here.” Raja released Raven, leaving her behind on the carpet, prepared to ambush Bianca the second she got to the doors.
Bianca had done a lot of stupid shit over the years - they all had - and dating bimbos wasn’t a new thing for her, but making out with Fame’s assistant in front of the paparazzi?
That was a new level of braindead, even for her, and Raja had to stop it right now.
*
The moment Bianca stepped off the carpet, she felt someone grab her arm and roughly yank her into the lobby.
“Bianca!” Raja hissed, pulling at her arm. “Come here!”
“Ow!” Bianca laughed at Raja. “Let go of me, you fucking mountain gorilla!”
Just because the woman towered over her was no reason to be intimidated, and it was gonna take a hell of a lot more to bring her down at the moment than Raja looking at her like she was insane.
Beside her, Courtney let out a small gasp, and Raja tried to recover, putting an arm around Bianca’s shoulder and giving Courtney the most sugary-sweet, fakest voice she could manage to say, “Hey there Court, can you give us a minute? I have to chat with Bianca about something important. Great shoes, by the way.”
“Oh...yeah, alright. Um…” Courtney backed away, trying to give them some space. “I’ll just wait over here, then-”
“Perfect!” Raja dragged Bianca to the other end of the lobby, away from any reporters.
“This oughta be good,” Bianca grumbled, though she was still too hyped from the carpet to manage to be truly annoyed.
“What,” Raja pushed Bianca into a corner, inches from her face, her voice filled with venom though her eyes betrayed her geniune concern, “the actual fuck do you think you’re doing, Bianca?!”
“Wanna be more specific?” Bianca asked, tilting her head, an impish smile on her face.
"It's bad enough that you're fucking Fame's assistant, but to parade her around on the red carpet? Without even bothering to give us a heads-up? Are you insane?" Raja’s teeth were clenched, clearly trying to keep her voice down.
"Please. Our relationship has nothing to do with-"
"Relationship? Are you actually calling this a relationship?"
"Yes!" Now, Bianca was starting to get annoyed. Who the fuck did Raja think she was talking to?
"Oy, this is so much worse than I thought,” Raja groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Please don't tell me this is why you bailed on the tasting menu."
"So what if I did?"
"Oh god."
"Fuck you!"
"And what did you expect to happen, Bianca? What's your great master plan with this childish stunt?"
“Well...to be honest, I didn’t know she was gonna kiss me on the carpet,” Bianca admitted, a giggle slipping from her lips. “It was kinda cute, did you see?”
“I...am going to slap you.”
“Come on, Raj. I did give this whole thing a little thought.”
“Really? It doesn’t fucking seem like it!”
“Well, I have. Look, I know she’s gonna be pissed, but I also know she’s not gonna cause a scene in the middle of the party. And then after tonight, she’s got almost a full week to cool off before she has to see me again,” Bianca said, punctuating her statement with a charming smile. Bianca was no idiot. Of course she knew that Fame would be irritated, maybe even angry, but she figured that this was a situation where it would be easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And besides, if she had to endure her friend’s wrath for awhile in exchange for being free to put her relationship with Courtney out into the open, then so be it.
“That’s what you think will happen?” Raja huffed. “Bianca, please, Fame hasn’t seen you guys yet. If we get Courtney out the back door, we can make an alliance with Patrick to get Fame drunk and unplug the wifi tomorrow so she doesn’t go online. It’ll be like it never happened, and we'll never speak of it again.”
“Raj, listen. I know this might be a real clusterfuck, but I’m willing to accept the consequences.”
“Oh jesus help me.” Raja groaned. “I hope she’s worth it, Bianca.” She pulled away, shaking her head. “I really hope she’s worth it.”
As she walked away, Bianca took a deep breath, looking back across the lobby at Courtney, who was doing a terrible job of trying to look casual, the anxiety on her face clear as day. Bianca sent her a big smile, reaching out a hand, and Courtney rushed toward her.
“Was she mad?” she asked, brows creased with worry.
Bianca cupped her face lightly, stroking her cheek, and promised, “Not at you.”
“Okay.” Courtney bit her lip, and Bianca leaned in to kiss her cheek.
“Shall we?” she asked, gesturing to the ballroom.
“Yeah...in a minute…” Courtney said, immediately adding, “I’m sorry.”
“Take your time, angel. There’s no rush,” Bianca promised. “In fact, if you’d rather get out of here and go somewhere else-”
“No, no, no…” Courtney laughed, taking her hand. “I’m fine. Let’s go in.”
#rpdr fanfiction#thedane#veronica#galactica#trixya#bitney#vitan#raja x raven#gigi goode#raja gemini#widow von du#violet chachki#katya zamolodchikova#trixie mattel#roxxxy andrews#courtney act#miss fame#bianca del rio#raven#lesbian au#m/f au#fashion au
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