#anyway every time i think about the jacket i grin deliriously for no reason | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ratmonky · 3 years

Text

Blockbuster

Word Count: 3.6K

Warnings: dub-con, obsession

AO3 Link

“This week’s movie is…” you paused for the dramatic effect and met each one of your club members’ eyes before pulling out the DVD case from your bag. “Sweet Blossoms!”

Everyone groaned.

“Hey!” you laughed, putting the movie down on the desk. A gorgeous smile tugged at your lips. “It’s my turn so I get to choose!”

“You always choose the worst ones,” your classmate mumbled. “I’m sick of watching romantic comedies. Besides, this is one of the last times we’ll watch a movie in our club.”

Yeah, the graduation was close.

You pouted, giving one person, in particular, the puppy eyes. “Junpei,” you said. “Tell them something, you’re the president.”

Junpei chuckled nervously when you put him on the spot like that. “Haha, I… We made a promise to let one of us choose a movie each week, we should keep our promise.”

“I’m not watching that,” the other club member said. “We’re here to watch movies we appreciate, not whatever dumpster trash you like.”

Although the other two members were being mean, they were right.

“Guys,” Junpei was unsure to say something. He could see how your smile vanished, your shoulders slackened as you flipped the DVD to its back so you wouldn’t need to see the cover title. “It’s her turn to choose.”

“Nevermind,” you uttered, putting the DVD back in your bag. “They’re right. I was being selfish. You can skip my turn.”

“But-”

“Great! I rented Pulp Fiction yesterday and brought it with me.” Your classmate dove his hand inside his bag to fish out the DVD.

Junpei noticed the way your lower lip trembled and you pressing your lips together to hide it. When your gaze met him, you forced a smile on your face, mouthing that it was alright.

You were just like him.

He got up from his seat to sit next to you as your classmate put the movie in the DVD player. It was nothing unusual, most of you sat together to make small comments during a movie.

You pushed your stuff on the desk to the side so he could have some space to put his bag.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the movie had already started.

“There’s no reason for you to apologize,” you softly stated, leaning closer to keep your voice down and not disturb the movie. “It was my fault.”

“Still, we gather here to watch movies our members enjoyed. We’re not actual film critics or anything.” He was trying not to lower his gaze to your chest. One of the buttons had come undone on your shirt, he could see your bra. “Next week is my turn, I can rent the movie you wanted to watch so we can watch it. They won’t complain then.”

Your eyes widened and he could swear that he saw them sparkle. A second later, you dropped your gaze to your lap to fidget with your fingers. “Nevermind, it’ll cause trouble. It’s passive-aggressive and I don’t wanna cause trouble for anyone. Nobody wanna watch the movie I chose anyway.”

“I do,” he whispered, cheeks flushing. While you weren’t looking he had gotten a chance to peek inside your shirt.

Lifting your head, you looked up at him with the prettiest and the most genuine smile he had ever seen. “Really?”

He nodded in affirmation, “We can watch it together after school if y-you wanna.”

“Shh!” The oldest club member turned and pointed two fingers at you and then to his eyes. “No flirting in the losers club.”

Both of you got quiet and it took you a long moment before leaning closer to tell Junpei something.

“So, where will we watch the movie?”

That was how he ended up bringing you to his place. You awkwardly sat on his bed and he tried to stop his shaking hands.

“I wish I had a television in my room too,” you said, starting a conversation to ease the mood. “You’re so lucky, Jun!”

Calling him nicknames like that… you were trying to make him delirious. “I-it’s nothing, it’s some old thing I got from second hand.”

“Still!”

He heard a rustling sound. Once he was done with putting the movie in the DVD player, he whipped his head around to check what you were doing.

His breathing almost stopped when he saw you laying on his bed and checking your phone. You were moving your legs up on the air as you scrolled down some social media platform. Your skirt wasn’t long enough to cover the supple flesh of your thighs, they were squished together and because you were laying on your chest, the skirt’s fabric was relaxed on your ass, leaving not much to the imagination.

Junpei gulped audibly and averted his gaze. “The movie.” That was all he managed to say.

You hummed and sat up on his bed as he took a place next to you. He couldn’t understand why you were so careless, didn’t you think of him as a man?

No, you were purely naive. Not at all aware of the real dangers of the world. Not at all aware of what kind of thoughts about you went through his mind every single day.

The movie opened with the female lead who from her first appearance stated that she was the manic pixie dream girl getting some flowers from a secret admirer despite having a boyfriend.

It was simply trash. That was the only way he could describe the storyline or the mood of the movie. On his own, under any condition, Junpei wouldn’t pick this garbage up and sit through it but since you wanted to watch it… he had to endure it.

You, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy the movie. Hands on your lap, gasping every now and then when the male lead encouraged the female lead to dump her boyfriend with his shitty compliments.

He found it kind of amusing to watch you react to the movie rather than watch it himself. Soon enough his gaze dropped to your lap. Under the skirt were your bare legs and you were sitting on his bed. Your ass was placed on his bed. The thought of your panties touching the sheets of his bed made his thoughts go south. If you got wet right now, you could soak his sheets.

Slowly, you shifted on his bed, getting in a more comfortable position to watch the movie. Unbeknownst to you, he had a better view of your cleavage now, it was only natural that he couldn’t look away. As vulnerable you were, he was still a man and like any other man, Junpei couldn’t stop himself from fantasizing.

What color panties were you wearing? If he lifted your skirt up to check, would you be surprised? You wouldn’t push him away, that was for sure. You came here all on your own after all, laying on his bed like that and looking like this… There was no doubt you were basically inviting him to fuck you.

The credits rolled sooner than he would have wanted.

You stretched your arms over your head and let out a soft groan. “Thank you, Jun.”

“For what?” He got up from his bed to take the DVD out from the player.

“For watching this with me. I’m so lucky to have a friend like you!” A friend, huh? He thought of you more than a friend but you were probably playing hard to get. The two of you were the same, you just had to be embarrassed to admit your feelings for him. Yeah, that had to be it.

“I liked the movie.” Liar. He didn’t watch it.

Silence.

“I should get going,” you sighed, retrieving your bag and jacket from the floor.

By the time you stood up, Junpei was holding the DVD case towards you. “I hope you had fun.”

“I did.” You smiled, taking it from him. “Thank you again.”

Junpei was languidly nodding, lost in his own thoughts.

As soon as you left his room and apartment, Junpei hurried back to his room. Getting on his knees, he pressed his face into the exact spot you sat on for two full hours. He took a deep inhale, filling his lungs to their limit.

So this was your scent.

Unbuckling his belt, he kept inhaling the smell of your pussy absorbed on his sheets. He was already impossibly hard, if it weren’t for the way he was slouching when you were beside him, you would definitely notice.

His hand wrapped around his cock and he stroked it from the base to the tip, using your smell and his own fantasies about you as his material for today.

Oh, how he wished he could smell you directly.

~~~

The next day, he couldn’t look you in the eye during the club meeting to talk about the movie everyone watched yesterday.

While you were debating with the two other members about how although the cinematography and the dialogue were great you didn’t enjoy the excessive amount of cursing.

“You just don’t understand cinema,” one of them grumbled.

“Couldn’t agree more, I mean… Do you even watch anything other than your weird romance movies?” The other one grinned.

“Let’s not take it too far,” Junpei mumbled, his words went unheard.

“I didn’t say anything bad about the movie,” you argued. “It was well written but the dialogue was too vulgar for my taste.”

“And since when do you have taste?”

Laughter.

“Yeah, she’s such a scatterbrained normie.”

“Guys.” Junpei stood up on his seat to stop the hassle.

“At least I’m not a pathetic loser.” It slipped. As if you had been wanting to say it out loud for so long. “You know that this is why nobody likes any of you, right?”

It became silent.

Junpei sat back on his chair and the other two who had been grinning from ear to ear as they were teasing you frowned.

You clapped a hand over your mouth, realizing what you had said but the deed was done.

“Sorry.” Mumbling, you gathered your stuff and left the clubroom.

~~~

Getting bullied wasn’t the worst part. It was the way other people treated him because he was getting bullied.

People looked at him with pity, sometimes talked to him because they wanted to include him. They were all doing these things to feel better about themselves. It was never about him.

He could let the cigarette burns, all the times he got beaten and the countless lies others spread about him slip but not the fake kindness.

He hated the fakes.

~~~

It was two days after the incident when you finally decided to approach Junpei before he exited the school garden.

“Hey, Jun.”

A shiver rose up his spine and he stopped walking momentarily. “(name), good to see you.” He turned around to face you but you were looking down onto the pavement. You didn’t want to look him in the face.

“Yeah...” You took a deep breath to calm your senses before speaking. “I just wanted to apologize for the other day. I didn’t mean any of the things I said.”

He said nothing.

“I’m really sorry about it, I was being bitter because of the way they talked to me but I shouldn’t have reacted that way.”

He proceeded to stay quiet, though you had a lot to say to him, it was impossible to find the courage or the words to speak when he was being like this. However, you came prepared for anything.

Reaching inside your bag, you pulled out a DVD case with a movie title Junpei had been looking forward to watching. You had heard him talk about it nonstop for months until it got released recently. He couldn’t get his hands on the DVD itself because of how the movie was always rented out but now, you were holding it.

“Wanna watch it together? My treat.”

How could he possibly say no?

“Okay.”

Your nerves eased when he put on a smile.

Thankfully, the walk to his place was short. In his room, you took off your jacket and grabbed the DVD case to put it on yourself. “I tipped the cashier a couple of extra bucks to get my hands on this,” you giggled and turned on his television with the remote control, the player lit up instantly.

“You didn’t have to.”

“Well, it’s just my way of apologizing, don’t sweat it!” Pressing the button for the disc slot, you opened the case to grab the CD. “Besides, I wanted to watch this for a long time too.”

He could tell you were lying but he wasn’t sure if you were trying to be nice to him out of pity or not. Gradually, he realized he couldn’t put you in a box. You two were alike. Exactly like him, you didn’t know where you fit in but he started to get an idea about where might fit in just fine.

As you were standing with the remote control in your hands and waiting for the movie title to show up on the screen, a set of hands were placed on your hips, making you flinch.

“Jun?”

Junpei couldn’t help but press himself against you, his hands on your hips moved to your stomach, and grabbed the remote control out of your grasp. He threw the device to the side.

“Jun?” you tried calling him again, not realizing he needed a hug this badly. “Are-are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, you felt him bury his face into your hair and heard him take a sniff. His hands moved in different ways. One slid up to cup your breast over your shirt and the other slid down your stomach.

“Um, if you wanna hug me, I can face you. This position is… weird....” You merely comprehended that he wasn’t hugging you when his hand soothed the fabric of your skirt and went under it to grab you by your pussy.

Your thighs pressed together at the same time a surprised gasp left your lips. His hand was pushing you towards him as he was pressing against you, urging you to feel everything.

“Wait,” you tried to say, but when his hips snapped forward it broke into another gasp. A finger pressed on your slit over the fabric of your panties, he dragged it up while his hand harshly groped your breast.

“W-what are you doing?”

“What do you think?” Junpei nosed some hair out of his way and placed his lips on your nape, grazing his lips on the sensitive skin before moving to kiss your neck. “I thought you were here to spend time with me.” His teeth nibbled on the thin flesh and your legs turned to jelly.

“B-but the movie.”

Hooking a finger under the elastic on the edge of your panties, he pulled them to the side and let his middle finger slip inside.

“We can watch it later.”

“Jun, wait.” You squirmed and tried to move away from his fingers but you were trapped. If you moved backward you were going to press harder against his erection and moving forward meant his finger going deeper inside you. The latter was the worst option, so you moved your hips away from his hand.

What you hadn’t calculated was the way you were rocking back on forth with Junpei as he was grinding his clothed cock against the soft flesh of your ass. When you pressed yourself against him harder, it didn’t leave any more space for you to move away from his fingers.

Thanks to your dumb decision, Junpei had you right where he wanted.

“You’re so cute, always trying to act smarter than you actually are,” he whispered, lips brushing against your neck. “When you left that day after we watched your stupid movie, I jerked off to you.”

His hand on your breast moved between your bodies and placed on the front of his pants. He tugged them down while drawing small circles on your neck with his tongue and two of his fingers thrust inside your slick heat.

“I shoved my nose into the exact spot you sat to inhale your scent.”

The revelation of what he did after you left made you tremble. His hot and wet tongue pressed flat against the side of your neck and his fingers moving in a scissoring motion distracted you from his free hand guiding his cock between your legs.

“From the moment we met, I knew we were made for each other, (name).”

Nevertheless the awkward positioning, he slipped his fingers out of you and moved to grab your leg from the back of your knee. He lifted your leg until his cock had enough space to move and his hips surged forward.

A panicked sound left your lips when his cock moved between your folds rather than going inside like he had planned.

Before you could struggle, he pulled his hips back and thrust forward, angling his hips in the right direction. This time, it was a success.

Both of you moaned in unison.

Junpei buried his face into your neck and groaned loudly to the sensation of your warm cunt. Your gummy walls were sucking him right in. He couldn’t help slamming his hips into your pussy with a little too much force. You shook in his arms, nearly losing your balance “J-Jun,” you breathed, tone faint. “T-the movie.”

“Is that what you really want right now?” he whispered into your ear, thrusting in your cunt agitatedly.

You wanted to say something and shove him away so the two of you could focus on the movie that was playing on the screen instead but his cock stroked a sweet spot inside made you melt in his hold. You moaned instead, giving him the answer he wanted to hear.

He picked up a pace to fuck into you in a smooth motion and roughly pound into your pussy to steal cute little moans out of you. He was too lost in pleasure to be able to think. All he wanted was to feel your pussy clench around his cock.

His kisses on your neck turned into biting and you felt him lift your leg higher, launching both of you forward when you lost your balance. You managed to hold onto the TV stand while Junpei didn’t let the small accident interrupt him.

Letting go of your leg, he placed his hand on your back and pushed until you arched your back.

Now, he could thrust deeper inside you. Almost frantically, he started hammering his cock into your pussy. The impact caused you to place both hands on the furniture in front of you and hold onto it for dear life. Your clenching walls around him felt heavenly, he couldn’t stop moving his hips.

A shaky moan escaped your lips when the tip of his cock kissed your cervix. Your hands gripped the furniture and your toes curled at the sensation. At some point, your attention suddenly averted to Junpei’s wandering hands pulling your back flush against his chest as every thrust of his hips left you shaking and begging for more.

“J-Jun,” you whined.

He knew exactly what it meant. If he couldn’t tell from the neediness in your voice, he could tell it from the way your gummy walls started pulsating around his cock. Instead of picking up his pace and fucking you like an animal in heat like you thought he would do, Junpei tried to thrust deeper, stroking your sensitive spot with his cock until your vision turned white and you started rocking yourself back on Junpei’s cock. Only then his thrusts became harder, almost as if he wanted to claim you as his only.

“Can I do it inside?” Junpei didn’t need an answer but you gave him one anyway.

“Y-yeah.”

His pace suddenly slackened, he was close to his own orgasm. He pushed his cock in your pussy down to the base and you felt the slight twitch of his balls on your ass as thick spurts of seed filled your womb.

He lowly grunted, continuing to move his hips and fucking his seed into you with disgustingly wet sounds. Your legs started to shake under you, his hands on your hips were the only things keeping you standing up but once he let go of you, the support disappeared. You dropped on the floor, his cum oozed out of you and stained the carpet.

None of you said anything. Not when you were catching your breaths or when you were fixing your clothes.

It took you a full minute before you asked something so utterly idiotic. “Should I go home?”

At that exact moment, he understood why people enjoyed bullying others who were weaker than them.

“I thought you came here to watch the movie with me.” He dared to say.

You stared at him blankly, your gaze slowly turned to the movie that had been playing the whole time and a faint smile tugged at your lips as you reached for the remote control on the other side of the carpet to restart the movie.

~~~

In the next club meeting, Junpei brought the movie you had wanted to watch last week.

Although the other two groaned in unison, they sat through the entire movie once Junpei told them they owed you this.

As for you, watching the movie you had already seen a week ago was boring but the anticipation to watch another new release you had rented with Junpei after school was enough to keep you on the edge.

#wrote this for a reader after they said junpei was their fave and gifted it to them lol #idk if they follow me on tumblr but if they do... i love you <3 #reader is a leetle dumb #junpei x reader #junpei yoshino x reader

372 notes · View notes

novelconcepts · 4 years

Text

fic: (could be dreadfully) boring

Boring gets a bad rap, really. Boring can be the best thing in the world.

“Could be kinda boring, right?” Dani says one Thursday morning, cold breath and hot hope mingling in the words, and Jamie laughs a little. She says it like it’s the best idea in the world: could be kind of boring, like all the songs say it shouldn’t be, like every movie tries to dismiss. But Dani says it, and Jamie thinks she’s only partly doing so to make her smile. Maybe she’s saying it for other reasons, too. Real ones. Ones that have nothing at all to do with Jamie, and how much she knows about the allure of boring.

Jamie didn’t grow up bored. Jamie walked the line between bad and worse most of her life, between one poor decision and the next, and Jamie found out all too fast what it was like to live out an adventure. The storybooks make adventure sound like something to chase, something hot-blooded and excitable, a rush.

In real life? In real life, adventure is hot-blooded, and excitable, a rabid thing with teeth. You grab hold, it swings around and bites you right back.

Spend enough time with enough idiots who think I want is a perfectly fine life philosophy, spend enough time far from freedom, spend enough time picking up after someone else’s catastrophe, and adventure starts to sound something like a dirty word. She doesn’t want adventure. Her life, as it stands, makes sense. Get up. Get ready in a little flat made up with a little bed, a little couch, a little table. Drive to the house. Grow. Go home at the end of the night, ready to start it all again.

It’s not easy, but it is simple. And simple, from where Jamie’s standing, is a good thing. You can make sense of simple. Of when to plant, when to harvest. How much to prune away, and how long to let something linger before it’s ready to be picked. Simple, scheduled life. Nothing wrong with it.

And then here comes Dani Clayton, and Jamie doesn’t have the words to explain why she knows, but she does: Dani isn’t simple. Dani blows in with her strange American accent and her big blue eyes and a smile that doesn’t quite reach them, not all the way, and she’s not...simple. At first, Jamie can’t say what she is. Bigger than she looks, somehow. Like there’s something too expansive behind her ribcage to fit under the pastel blouses and the denim jackets. Like she spends all that time puffing her hair up and puffing her chest out because if she were to let her guard down for one minute, something on the underside of Dani Clayton would come unmoored.

And it’s not Jamie’s problem.

Not supposed to be, anyway.

She did this once, sort of. This caring about an au pair thing. Rebecca Jessel was different, but there was something about her that clicked with Jamie--something like a younger sister, someone with such ambition and so little self-preservation at the same time--and Jamie had thought, sure. Sure, this is worth the time, the energy, the stress. Family is what you make of it, and say what you will about Hannah and Owen, but they are family. The kids, too. Wee monsters, the pair of them, but they’re hers, somehow.

Rebecca was almost hers, too. She thinks some nights about that far-away look in dark eyes, the way Rebecca turned her head sharply away near the end, like looking at Jamie--at any of them--was too near a mirror she couldn’t bear peering into. Rebecca was something special, and Jamie couldn’t see her pulling away until she was too far out to swim to.

And here: Dani Clayton. Also something special. Also something...something about her Jamie can’t quite put a finger on. Like walking into a room and inhaling the scent of the last good day of summer vacation, and thinking, yes. This one’s right.

But she’s also twitchy as all get-out, and her eyes do this funny jig any time Jamie meets them, and her mouth goes tight around the corners, and Jamie thinks: not this time. Not again. Not my problem.

Until it is.

And she didn’t plan it, certainly. Didn’t plan to stay the night, with the kids all wound up and the rain pattering outside and Dani bunched up on the couch beside her using words like love and possession like she’s intimately acquainted with both. Didn’t plan on the way Dani’s breath hitched around the words. Didn’t plan the way her own throat swallowed like it was trying to force down the first spark of true honesty.

Just for safety, she tells herself, setting up on that couch with a thin blanket and a shake of her head. Just in case.

And on it went: a grab of the hand; a sudden understanding; a flirtatious banter exchanged under guise of mourning. All of it innocent enough.

And then there’s Dani Clayton, telling her she sees ghosts. Telling her she sees the ghost of her ex-fiance. Telling her, with eyes clenched shut and thumbs jammed into her fists, like she doesn’t want to say the words, but she needs Jamie to hear them. And Jamie, she thinks, this isn’t boring, with a lurch of the stomach that says it shouldn’t be an attractive quality in a person. The idea of not being boring. It’s a bad goddamn idea.

Like it’s a bad idea when Dani surges into her. Like it’s a bad idea when she’s got Dani’s hair wound around her hands, her thumbs dragging arcs across Dani’s cheekbones, her mouth pulling into a delirious grin as Dani kisses her. It’s a bad idea. She knows it, and she doesn’t care in the least as Dani presses in and groans softly against her lips, and--

Jerks away.

Always, with the jerking away.

This isn’t how you do the thing, Jamie thinks for the next several days. This isn’t how you get involved in something like this. People are so goddamn much. And Dani is maybe more than most, maybe more than anyone she’s ever run up against in her entire life, and she tries not to think of it. Tries not to feel Dani’s small hands clutching her jacket. Tries not to taste the way Dani almost laughed with relief into her mouth. She tries.

Few days away, she tells herself. That’ll do the trick. Few days to get her head on straight again, and then she’ll go back. Go home. Get back to the schedule of plant and tend and harvest, and it’ll be like it never happened.

“Could be kinda boring,” Dani says, and Jamie looks at her. Wants to tell her no. Wants to want to tell her no.

Smiles anyway.

“Could be dreadfully boring.”

And even then, she thinks it won’t make a difference. Dani’s already shown her cards. Dani’s carrying something bigger than the both of them, and Jamie knows all too well how someone else’s baggage can upend a person’s life. It can ruin a person, to stand too close to someone else’s bonfire. Can singe you straight down to the bone.

And yet...here she comes, anyway. Back for Dani that night. Back to take her hand, feeling the slide of cautious fingers knitting with her own. Back to lead her into a damp, dreary grove where only Jamie has ever stepped foot, and she tells her. Everything. How it is. How the world is. How her world is. She tells her more than she’s told anyone in years, and never all at once like this, and even as the words are spilling out of her, she thinks, this isn’t simple.

Dani doesn’t seem to mind. Dani looks at her for the longest heartbeat in the world, and she is looking at her. Not with eyes darting, not with jaw tensing, but with the most open-hearted want Jamie has stood near in maybe her entire life.

It burns. It burns in the absolute best way.

And it isn’t simple, and it isn’t easy, but it’s right, she thinks, as they stand in the drizzling rain with Dani’s arms wrapped almost double around her shoulders. As she lets Dani hold her and kiss her and sigh like this is what finally letting go feels like.

It isn’t simple, and maybe it isn’t smart, because Dani Clayton isn’t boring. And, suddenly, Jamie doesn’t want her to be. Or, rather, she doesn’t want Dani Clayton to be anything shy of what Dani is: selfless, silly, hopeful Dani, who touches her like she’s never touched anything worthwhile in her whole life and is a bit terrified Jamie’s going to fade away under her fingertips. Dani, who walks back to the house with her like she’s on a goddamn mission, head up, eyes more certain that Jamie’s ever seen them. When she smiles in that bedroom, it reaches those eyes. When she lets Jamie slide with her beneath the blankets, with nothing between them, there’s no sign of ghosts or goblins or guilt.

She gasps when Jamie touches her, and burrows closer, and Jamie thinks, oh, we’re in this, now.

Her blood sings, her heart racing, and it feels like adventure, and something in Jamie sits back and sighs. All right, that something says. All right, you’ve made your call. When’s it ever gone right for you, to choose something like this?

She shakes her head, helpless, unable to explain to this core of self-restraint that this is...everything. That Dani being less than simple isn’t enough to negate all the rest. That Dani being less than simple is, in fact, integral to how desperately Jamie needs to keep her close.

The day comes and goes, Jamie still wearing yesterday’s t-shirt, Dani smelling faintly of Jamie’s shampoo somehow. No one calls them on how close they sit, on how Dani’s hand is always brushing Jamie’s, a constant reminder that last night happened, that Jamie is still here. No one calls them on how Dani’s laugh is louder now, dizzy-giddy as she gasps for breath, or on Jamie’s leg angling of its own accord to press against Dani’s thigh from the next chair over. She looks up once, sees Hannah’s knowing brow rise, and thinks, this could be you, you know. Hannah, for all her clever glances, doesn’t seem to read her mind. She only lifts her mug of untouched tea very slightly, nods, smiles.

The day comes and goes, and it isn't easy, and it isn’t simple: Flora’s acting strange again, coming and going in that unpredictable way children sometimes have, and Miles is strung tight at the table, and there’s a strange distance that seems to be growing up between Hannah and the rest of them. The price of family, Jamie thinks with a stab of regret--and then Dani is slipping away with her to the hall, pressing her gently against a low table, kissing her with the already-easy fervor of someone who would gladly do this every day for the rest of her life.

That thought, above all else, should scare her. To think of a life not lived in that little flat, with the little bed, the little couch, the little table. To think of a life lived, instead, sharing someone else’s baggage.

She almost stays another night. Almost. If Dani had tried a little harder, she thinks she would have lost all measure of restraint. If Dani had kept making that tiny noise, the one that unbinds everything calm in Jamie’s chest, her tongue brushing Jamie’s in the sweetest invitation. If Dani had taken her hand and led her back down the hall. She almost does it, anyway.

Simple, she reminds herself, breaking the kiss, her skin humming beneath the splay of Dani’s fingers around her ribs. Boring. Boring and simple and let it blossom on its own time, why don’t you.

She goes home. She goes back to that little flat, where she showers and lays down with a book she can’t seem to read, her head buzzing with the nearly tactile energy of Dani’s smile. Eventually, she sleeps.

She wakes already reaching for a body she knows isn’t there, and the only thought in her head is, trouble.

Her phone is ringing, she realizes belatedly. For a bleary second, she’s sure it’ll be Peter Quint on the other end, breathing deep, taunting--but it’s Owen’s voice, shaggy with sleep, saying, “The house. Something at the house, Jamie. Do you feel it?”

She’s already screaming Dani’s name before she reaches that lake, before she has any idea why talons of terror are scraping down her back. She’s plunging into the waves in great hitching leaps, moving as fast as she can to catch Dani up before she--and Flora, Flora’s out here in a nightgown and shuddering fear, her eyes older than any eight-year-old’s have a right to be--can tip over into the restless water. Dani is shaking like she’s going to come apart right here in Jamie’s arms, shaking and clutching Flora close and muttering, “It’s us. It’s us. It’s us.”

There’s something wrong with her eyes. Jamie won’t be able to tell for almost an hour what it is--the moonlight isn’t bright enough, the shadows too thick around them, and even when everyone is back on solid ground, Dani curled in her arms, she holds them shut against Jamie’s searching worry. As if she thinks Jamie seeing her up close tonight will undo all the careful, hopeful, wonderful work they did together over the last two days.

“D’you want some company?” Jamie asks her, when the dust has settled enough to make clear the road that led them all to this point--Henry, here; Hannah, not; Owen, drifting. It’s a mess, she thinks, just the biggest goddamn mess she’s ever come across, and the simple answer would be to walk now. To drive back into Bly, back to the little flat with its little world bunched up behind little walls. Close down, start over when things regain proper equilibrium.

“D’you want some company?” she asks, and she’s sure Dani will say no. Dani’s head is already shaking--and then, slowly, reversing course. Dani, looking at her with swollen eyes--one the blue Jamie fell into that very first day, the other a soft brown made up of all the sorrow one woman could possibly carry without falling down dead of it. Dani, letting her kiss their joined hands, a silent promise that other nights are coming--as many of them as Jamie can scrounge together--and that Jamie isn’t going anywhere.

And now they’re here: in America. In another life altogether from au pairs and gardeners and ghosts. They’re here, and Jamie thinks, not simple. But boring?

Yes, in its own way, she supposes it is.

It takes her by surprise, honestly. This sort of behavior is textbook adventure. To up and leave the only place she’s ever known for a land as alternately thrilling and scandalizing as America. To do so with Dani’s hand in hers, holding tight like if she lets go for even a second, she’s sure she’ll turn around to find Jamie gone and the beast in the jungle standing in her place. Jamie doesn’t mind the way Dani’s grip grinds her bones together some nights. The way Dani just sits back and looks at her, searching her face for something, anything, of the monster she feels lurking in the shadows.

Jamie does her best to give only what she has, and what she has is apparently enough, because Dani slowly...slowly comes back. There are moments, yes, afternoons that start out perfectly sunny and swing without warning to Dani sitting with her back against the wall, her breath coming in shallow gulps as she chokes on her own terror. There are nights Jamie wakes to find Dani clambering atop her with a child’s grace, legs and arms clutching, heart racing so hard, Jamie can feel it beneath her lips. Those nights aren’t good ones, and Jamie wonders each time if she’ll wake the next morning to find Dani has fled under cover of moonlight. If Dani has decided the terror is greater than the reward of working on this with her.

But each morning, Dani is there. And, slowly, slowly, the tension slides out of her grasp. The look in her eyes, the one that says she’s been staring inward too long to see Jamie at all, fades. They’re still mismatched, those eyes, and sometimes, Jamie misses when they were both that mesmerizing blue--but the longer Dani looks at her, the more she thinks, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what color they are at all, s’long as it’s her looking back from behind them.

They build a routine. Jamie wonders if this will get old, if this will wear at them; the songs all say it, the movies all insist: routine is cousin to death. Got to keep it fresh, everyone insists. Got to keep it moving.

But what they don’t seem to get, what they don’t seem to see, what Jamie believes with her whole heart is this:

Anything worth growing takes time. And patience. And routine. Anything worth growing needs a person to give every ounce of devotion they can muster, not the ragtag chaos of the brand-new.

They build a routine. Find a place. Build a shop. And with every passing day, Dani comes back to herself a little more. She’s making jokes now--bad ones, ones even Owen would cringe away from--and Jamie’s laughing every time because it’s not the words that count. It’s the delight in Dani’s eyes when she lands one that makes water stream out of Jamie’s nose. It’s the sheer open-hearted bliss of knowing someone so well, you can’t help but make them laugh with the stupidest things.

Jamie’s out of bed first each morning. When it was Dani, at the beginning, it made her uneasy; waking in bed with one arm reaching toward Dani’s side always felt like an omen of uncertainty for the day ahead. Would she walk out of the bedroom to find Dani pacing the apartment, wearing tracks into the carpet as she muttered under her breath? Would she find, instead, Dani struggling over the morning coffee? Would she find Dani gone altogether, only to come stumbling through the door hours later, arms laden with grocery bags and strange decorative bits and bobs?

Jamie likes it better this way. Out of bed at six, sitting on the edge of the mattress, watching Dani breathe. At the beginning, this was the only time she ever saw Dani truly relaxed. It still feels like a gift now, a stolen moment unshared with anyone else. Dani curls toward Jamie’s pillow, her hand sleep-sneaking over to rest beneath it, and Jamie leans to kiss her brow.

She’ll sleep another hour or two, probably, and in the meantime, Jamie breathes. Brews tea. Waters plants. Plans out orders to keep the shop stocked. Every day like this feels clean in some strange way, like by getting up with the sun, she’s allowed a chance to wash away the past. If she didn’t, if she slept later, maybe she’d wake to find the ghosts had followed them after all. Better this way. Better to keep vigil so Dani doesn’t have to.

“You’re not sick of this, yet?”

Those same words come weighted with different meaning. Sometimes, Dani says them laughingly--usually when they’ve both managed to botch a meal so badly, the only recourse is pizza. Other times, her voice is stiff with swallowed tears. On those days, Jamie knows, she’s thinking about the concept of borrowed time. Wondering how much she’s earned with good behavior. Wondering how Jamie could possibly stand starting every day not knowing what might pop out at them from the corners of Dani’s anxiety.

“Not sick of it, Poppins,” she says every time. Sometimes, she says it and pins Dani against the nearest bit of furniture, ensuring they’ll both be breathless and giggling with irritation when the pizza finally does interrupt. Sometimes, she says it into the crown of Dani’s hair, hands stroking calm, repeat patterns down Dani’s back. It doesn’t matter how she says it. It’s always true.

It’s boring, she wants to tell Dani, but can’t quite find the right way to say it. It’s boring, and it’s right. It’s the good kind of stable, the kind where you know for a fact that no matter what happens, your reaching hand will never come up empty. It’s the right kind of natural, the organic state of live and flourish that comes from tending something with earnest care. It’s boring, and I could never be sick of it, she wants to say, because it’s you. It’s me. It’s us.

Their home is the good kind of cluttered, and their bickering is the good kind of stupid, and every time she finds herself tucked under Dani in bed, or tucked into Dani on the couch, or tucked close to Dani in a moment of perfect bliss, she thinks, this was always how it was supposed to go. I knew it, somehow. First time I saw her at that lunch table, I knew it.

But there are words, and then there are words, and Jamie isn’t really designed for pretty language. She presents Dani with a flower--one carefully tended moonflower, grown in secret--and she says with shaking certainty, “We’ve got a problem, Poppins.” The problem, of course, being that she’s not sick of it. Not sick of Dani’s legs tangling smooth against her own after a shower, not sick of Dani’s heaving laughter when they slip on an icy Vermont sidewalk and go down in a heap of limbs, not sick of waking to Dani’s hands tracing, gently, the raised tissue of the scar on her back. She knows her life inside and out, knows the good days and the bad, and above all, she knows the thing that counts most:

It’s boring. It’s the right kind of boring. Dreadfully, perfectly, wonderfully boring.

And she is so in love. Has been, if she’s honest with herself, for ages. Has been since Dani was scolding her for a bedframe gone unbuilt, since pinning Dani against an upright mattress and sliding a thigh between her legs and hearing her groan against her ear. Has been since Dani was sitting beside her in that weathered diner, talking about realism and one-day-at-a-time. Has been since Dani reached for her hand without looking in the Bly Manor foyer, has been since Dani shuddered and shook in her arms after the lake, has been since Dani kissed her in the hall, in the grove, in the greenhouse.

It makes sense in all the ways that Dani has from the very start, and it makes no sense at all in the way Jamie thinks good things in her life never do. And it’s right. Dani, looking at her over the counter with such affection, like she’s questioned so much, but never this. Never Jamie. Not really, deep down, where it counts.

They’re in the back room, all hands and mouths and laughing sighs, and Jamie knows boring gets a bad rap. Knows that every kind of narrative insists this is the thing to be avoided. Keep moving. Keep dancing. Keep it fresh and new and hot-blooded and ready to bite.

But this...this is what people don’t understand. What people could be so much happier, if they could only wrap their heads around the concept. Boring doesn’t mean stagnant. Boring doesn’t mean stuck in place. Theirs isn’t a photograph, all arc and angle and line frozen in time.

Theirs is a story. Growing. Shifting. Ever-evolving. Blooming and fading and blooming again. Dani’s hands, always finding hers. Dani’s eyes, mismatched but so full of adoration, whether she’s spent the day worrying about dinner or demons. Dani, who once stood with her back to a greenhouse counter and said, “Could be kinda boring, right?”

Boring is good. Boring is perfect.

Jamie thinks she could do boring for the rest of her life.

#the haunting of bly manor #the haunting of bly manor spoilers #dani x jamie #fanfiction #this got a wee bit out of control in terms of length

244 notes · View notes

langdxn · 4 years

Note

Could I please get some Outpost!Michael where he comes into his room after an annoying day of interviews and dealing with Venable and his lover just sinks right to her knees as soon as he walks in? Desperate to change his mood. Lots of praise for reader pls. Love your writing btw. Great stuff 🖤🖤🖤🖤

Oh of course you can darling, thank you for your kind words! 🖤🖤🖤

“What did she do this time, baby?” You chimed as you placed both palms on Michael’s chest, gently nudging him back until he pressed against the bedroom door.

“Oh, the usual,” Michael groaned, sweeping his hand through his cascading curls as if the weight of the destroyed world above ground had fallen square on his shoulders. “Abuse of power contrary to Cooperative guidelines, physical torture of her so-called ‘grey’ underclass, clicking that fucking cane whenever she breathes.”

You rolled your eyes sympathetically, a pout eking across the corner of your lips as your fingers danced down his black velour shirt, stalling at the waistband of his dress pants.

“Why don’t you tell me all about it,” you purred, slipping a finger beneath his belt and unhooking the buckle as a soft groan tumbled from his parted lips. “And I’ll help you forget about it?”

“Well if you insist,” Michael hummed, shrugging off his suit jacket and tossing it across the room just as you dropped his pants to pool at his feet. “How can I resist when you sound so sweet?”

“I aim to please, Mr Langdon,” you husked with a wink before deftly sinking to your knees, the silk of your dress scuffing against the floorboards. A broken gasp accompanied your fingers gently curling around his shaft.

“You’re such a good girl,” he moaned as your anticipating breaths ghosted over his sensitive length, twitching in your grasp as you hovered your lips over his tip. His hands wandered to weave through your hair as you licked a soft, flat stripe up from his base.

“So get talking, Langdon.”

“Yes mistress,” he sighed, hips bucking into you as your lips latched onto his tip. “Fuck, I can’t think straight when you do that.”

A satisfied groan thrummed against his length as you lowered down onto him, signalling your patience wearing thin.

“I found her verbally abusing Gallant,” Michael swallowed thickly, his head swinging back against the door as your nose bumped his abdomen, taking him down the back of your throat with ease. “For no other reason than tying his cravat—fuck—in the shape of a dick.”

A strained chuckle erupted in your throat, determined to keep his focus on you. You ramped up your pace bobbing on his length, flattening your tongue to guide him further down and revelling in the growls he tried in vain to mask.

“You take me so well, baby,” he praised in a hushed tone, stroking your hair and smiling down at you warmly. “Any—anyway, she went to his quarters to interrogate him but she found him and a grey—“

You couldn’t resist sharply thrusting down onto his shaft, cutting him off as you nuzzled your nose into his pelvis to reach your absolute limit. You shifted uncomfortably on your knees as a bolt of heat chased toward your core, wetness gathering at your folds with every moan of pornographic ecstasy leaving his lips.

“That’s my girl,” Michael gasped, keening frantically as you hollowed your cheeks around his trembling cock. “Keep sucking me like that, make me cum down that pretty little throat of yours.”

Michael convulsed wildly at the sensation of your lips curving into a smile against his balls, your head bobbing down onto him at a blistering pace. Venturing to look up at him unravelling before you, you shot Michael a sultry grin and held his gaze as you worked down onto his cock, laving lazy circles around the underside of his length with every thrust.

“Just like that, baby,” he drawled as his hand softly pressed your head further down, his hips rocking into your touch, his length twitching eagerly as he released the pressure building fervently in his core. “You’re such a good girl—such a good girl for daddy.”

That name stole the breath from your lungs as his pulsing length pumped ropes of cum onto your waiting tongue, jerking faster while his breathless moans broke into a feral growl. Back arched, hips stuttering recklessly as he rode out his delirious release, Michael began grinding his hips into you to ensure you milked every drop from his aching cock.

Withdrawing gently, you swallowed eagerly and loudly, an obscene sound breaking the silence between Michael’s laboured pants.

“What did she see?” You enquired innocently, settling back on your knees to gaze up at the blown-out blonde towering over you, curls clinging to his forehead and hands spasming blissfully as they returned to his side.

“Wha—what did who see?”

You chuckled softly, wiping your lips with a finger before dipping it onto your tongue. “Venable, what did she find Gallant and the grey doing?”

“Oh screw Venable and the grey,” he snapped, yanking you to your feet by your elbows and guiding you toward your bed. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how much that was turning you on.”

“What exactly are you gonna do to me, baby?” Your tone laced with devilish curiosity, Michael gestured you toward the middle of your sprawling bed, demolishing your dress as you crawled over the magenta satin sheets to take a position as Michael rested between your parted knees, a hungry growl bursting from his throat.

“Exactly what Gallant was doing to the grey.”

#Outpost!Michael #outpost!michael smut #Michael Langdon fanfiction #Michael Langdon imagines #Michael Langdon #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x reader smut

283 notes · View notes

searchingwardrobes · 4 years

Text

Start of Time: 8/9

Can you believe this fic is almost over? The slow burn heats up a lot again in this chapter, but by the end, well . . . don’t hate me! *ducks and hides* And have you ever imagined Killian Jones doing the “cha cha slide”? No? Well, now you may not be able to forget it. You’re welcome. And this is the last time I have to say this (yay!), but Emma has amnesia and is going by the name Wendy.

Summary: Killian and his son are driving through a bad snow storm when they find a disoriented woman walking down the road. The question is, how can they help her get home when she has no idea who she is? Written for @teamhook on her birthday.

Rating: T

Trigger warning: Alice Jones appears in this fic and Alice and Henry are both Killian’s adopted children with Milah. Henry isn’t Emma’s. Positive past Millian. No Neal.

Words: about 3,500 in this chapter

Also on Ao3

Tagging the usuals: @snowbellewells @kmomof4@jennjenn615 @kday426 @let-it-raines @bethacaciakay @profdanglaisstuff @resident-of-storybrooke @thislassishooked @tiganasummertree@whimsicallyenchantedrose @snidgetsafan @delirious-latenight-laughs @winterbaby89 @distant-rose@shireness-says @xhookswenchx @optomisticgirl @spartanguard @branlovestowrite @welllpthisishappening @stahlop @hollyethecurious @ekr032-blog-blog @scientificapricot @wellhellotragic @vvbooklady1256 @sherlockianwhovian @superchocovian @nikkiemms @lfh1226-linda @ultraluckycatnd @ohmakemeahercules

Louder than the screams you hear; it’s like the sun came out.

“How do I look?”

Wendy spun around from where she was tying the blue ribbon into Alice’s blonde hair. Her throat went dry when she saw Killian standing before her in leather pants of all things. It was topped with a billowy black shirt and a red leather vest. He had his arms out at his sides, his brows arched.

“Well?”

Alice burst out laughing, and Killian’s face fell. Wendy bit her lip as she struggled not to laugh as well. His expression was just so crestfallen.

“Um. I thought you were supposed to be a pirate, not a rock star,” she finally told him.

His expression turned playful at her words, and a smirk played upon his lips as he sauntered towards her. “Well, love, I warned you I wasn’t going to be caught dead in a feathered cap and a permed wig.”

“I see,” Wendy replied, struggling to breathe at his close proximity. He’d left an awful lot of his buttons undone.

“And I’m wearing the hook you ladies bought for me,” he added, waving the plastic appendage before her face.

Wendy took a slightly wobbly step back. “Well, now that I see the full affect . . . it’s definitely more Johnny Depp than Captain Hook, but it’ll work.”

He made a dramatic bow and offered her his hand. “M’lady.”

“Daddy,” Alice giggled, “she’s s’posed to be afraid of you.”

“Oh no,” Killian argued, “the novel specifically says that Hook charmed Wendy.”

When he lifted her hand to his lips to press a kiss there, Wendy wasn’t thinking of the book at all. She was thinking that this Wendy was certainly charmed by this Hook.

“Well?” he prompted again with an arch of one brow.

She shrugged her shoulders and said coyly, “I suppose it will do.”

“You, on the other hand,” he told her, spreading her arms wide to take in the long, satin nightgown that hugged her curves, “are lovely.”

“I think the costume has gone to your dad’s head,” Wendy told Alice.

“I’m not flattering, love, it’s absolutely true.”

Wendy tilted her head, her cheeks blushing. Her curled ponytail bounced against her shoulder, and Killian reached out to twirl it around his fingers. Henry’s voice caused them to jump apart.

“Are the girls ready yet?” the boy whined.

“Yes,” Alice retorted saucily.

“Then let’s go.”

“Not yet,” said Wendy, snatching up the pile of makeup she and Alice had bought at the drugstore. She turned to Killian. “I have to do one more thing for your dad.”

****************************************************

“Is this really necessary,” Killian grumbled.

“Yes. It completes the look.” Wendy grasped his chin in her hand and forced him to be still. She leaned closer with the eyeliner held steady in her other hand. Killian leaned away.

“You’re going to poke my eye out!”

“Don’t be such a baby! If you’d be still, I could do it. Now widen your eyes and look up.”

Killian tilted his head up, and Wendy yanked on his chin again.

“Just move your eyes, not your whole head.”

“Well, I’ve never worn makeup before, believe it or not.” He obeyed anyway.

Wendy narrowed her eyes as she carefully swiped the eyeliner across his upper lids. To do the lower ones, she had to cup his head and stretch the skin around his eyes with her thumb.

“There,” she breathed when she was done. She was so intent on examining her handiwork, that she kept her thumb resting against the top of his cheek, the rest of her fingers threaded into his hair.

“How does it look?”

She realized how close they were when his words came out hot against her skin. Her

gaze focused on the blue of his eyes instead of the eyeliner, and every thought fled her brain. Her hand stroked his cheek, and her thumb traced the scar below his right eye. They both moved closer, their noses brushing, and Killian sighed deeply as his eyes fluttered closed.

“We shouldn’t -”

“I know.”

“You could be married.”

“I’m not wearing a ring.”

“A boyfriend then.”

“I don’t care.”

A groan reverberated in the back of his throat as her lips brushed against his, and his fingers dug into her hip. She couldn’t tell who was trembling from the exquisite torture: her or Killian.

“Dad!” Henry’s irritated shout from downstairs made them leap apart. “What’s taking so long?”

Killian loosened his grip on Wendy and let his forehead collapse against hers. “Coming,” he called back, irritation lacing his voice.

Wendy couldn’t help it - she started to laugh. It came out as an inelegant snort and she dropped her head to Killian’s shoulder, partly from embarrassment, and partly because the laughter seemed to have taken over and she just couldn’t stop. Killian started to laugh too, and his fingers found their way back to her waist. He tried to grasp her with both hands, but the plastic hook impeded him.

“Stupid hook,” he muttered, and for some reason that made Wendy laugh even harder.

“Seriously, Dad!” Henry shouted again. “What are you two doing up there?”

The boy only succeeded in making the two adults in the guest bath fall into complete hysterics. Wendy rolled her eyes, and yanked Killian away from the sink by the lapel of his leather jacket. They came down the stairs, still laughing, and the kids looked at them in confusion.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” they said at the exact same time, and started laughing all over again.

“Grown ups,” Alice groaned with a shake of her head.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Storybrooke Town Hall was decorated in an explosion of pink and red crepe paper, glitter, hearts, and cupids. Henry rolled his eyes while Alice bounced in excitement.

“Oh my goodness, you all look adorable!”

Killian and Wendy turned around to find themselves face to face with Snow White and Prince Charming. Wendy blinked and shook her head at how perfectly suited Mary Margaret was to the roll with her flawless skin. She had a red ribbon tied in her dark hair and wore an exquisite dress exactly like the one in the movie.

“And you look amazing!” Wendy exclaimed, giving her friend a hug. “I’m sorry, Alice, but your dad and I might not be able to compete with these two.”

“Is that a real sword, David?” Henry asked.

David grinned as he pulled it from its scabbard. “Afraid not, it’s just plastic.”

“Why didn’t I get a sword?” Killian asked, giving first his daughter and then Emma an exaggerated pout.

“Pirates carry a cutlass,” Alice informed him primly, “and we didn’t have enough in the budget for a hook and a cutlass.”

“How old are you again?” Killian teased, tipping his daughter’s chin. “Thirty-five?”

Alice giggled, and Killian bopped her on the nose.

“Well, I’m manning the photo booth, and the four of you have to get yours made,” Mary Margaret told them motioning for them to follow her to the opposite wall where someone had hung a large white sheet for a backdrop. “Everyone who wants to enter the costume contest has to be photographed anyway for the judges.”

Killian shrugged at Wendy. “Is that okay?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You have to,” Alice insisted, “or you can’t win the prize.”

Wendy felt a little awkward standing with Killian and his kids like they were having a family portrait made, but she followed Mary Margaret dutifully to the x marked with tape on the floor. Several of the small town’s citizens eyed them as they walked past, some of them whispering, and Wendy felt her face grow hot under their scrutiny. Then Alice threw her skinny arms around her waist, Killian slung his arm around her shoulder, Henry leaned in, and Wendy let herself get lost in the fantasy that this really was her life.

“Say cupid!” Mary Margaret told them, and they repeated the word with wide smiles. The flash went off, and a sharp pain sliced across Wendy’s eyes. She stumbled backwards, and held her forehead as what felt like a thousand flashbulbs went off behind her closed eyes. She was remembering something, she was sure of it, but all she could grasp were voices.

“Over here! Look this way! Smile, look sexy, that’s it!”

Wendy shook her head, trying to rid herself of the voices. She remembered them making her feel exposed, insecure, and pressured . . . pressured for what? Pressured to be . . . to be . . . . they wanted her to be something, but she couldn’t remember what.

“Wendy,” Killian said gently, rubbing his hands soothingly up and down her arms. “Are you okay? Is it another headache?”

“Yeah,” she blinked, and the bright flashes faded away. The voices were muffled, and anything she was trying to remember dissipated like fog. “I . . . almost remembered something.”

“Okay. Was it good? Did it help?”

Wendy shook her head in frustration. “No, it didn’t make any sense.”

“It’s okay,” he soothed her, “don’t try and push it. It’ll come when you’re ready. Don’t try to force it.”

“Come sit down,” Mary Margaret told her, ushering her behind the photo booth table. David pulled out a chair for her and handed her a bottle of water. Wendy pressed it to her pounding temple.

“Thank you,” she told them all.

“Are you okay?” Henry asked worriedly. Alice picked up her hand and patted it the way she did her favorite white rabbit.

Wendy smiled up at the kids and squeezed Alice’s hand. “I’m fine, really. Why don’t you two go get some food?”

The kids looked up at their dad, and Killian nodded his approval. After they had scurried off, he kneeled next to Wendy and took the hand Alice had relinquished.

“How about you? Are you hungry?”

Killian looked so worried, that even though she wasn’t, she nodded. “I wouldn’t say no to one of those cupcakes I saw over there.”

She gave him a wobbly smile, and he gave her a hesitant one in return. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it before dashing off. He seemed to do it without thinking, but Wendy felt a tingle go down her arm at the simple gesture.

“You know, David, I could use a cupcake myself.” Mary Margaret told her husband.

David’s brow furrowed. “Really? Because I thought -”

“Don’t think, David, just get me a cupcake,” Mary Margaret cut him off with an arch of her brows.

“Ohh, right. I’ll, uh - be right back.”

Wendy laughed as he headed for the refreshment table and glanced up at Mary Margaret. “Real smooth.”

Mary Margaret shrugged. “Men are so dense sometimes.” She pulled a chair close to Wendy and sat down, taking both of Wendy’s hands in hers. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Wendy chewed on her lower lip. “There isn’t really anything to tell. Just like everything else, it’s so little, just bits and pieces. None of it makes sense.”

“How is your head now?”

“Better.”

“Okay, well, drink the water anyway. It can’t hurt to hydrate.”

“Yes mom,” Wendy teased with a smile before taking a drink.

When Killian got back, he insisted that Wendy not only eat her cupcake but also a small plate of cheese and crackers before he was satisfied that she was fine. He stayed right by her side, even though Wendy noticed several single women eying him with jealousy. He could be dancing with any number of them, but instead he was waiting to make sure her headache was gone.

Alice was on the dance floor with a group of girls from her school, and Wendy and Killian laughed at their silly antics. They also watched with fondness when Henry shyly shuffled up to a dark haired girl from his class.

“That’s Violet,” Killian informed her, “you met her at one of the farms I took you to.”

“Oh, I remember. She seems like a sweet girl.”

“She is, and Henry’s had a bit of a crush since school started,” Killian leaned closer and whispered in her ear, “but I don’t think I’m supposed to know about it.”

Henry didn’t ask the girl to dance, but he did pull his cell phone and some ear buds out of his pocket and say something to her. Violet nodded shyly, taking one of the ear buds and sticking it in her ear.

“Aw, they’re listening to a song together,” Wendy said, poking Killian in the side.

“Why? The DJs already playing music. Why the bloody hell didn’t he ask her to dance?”

“Oh come on, don’t sound like an old man. It’s sweet.”

Alice popped up seemingly out of nowhere with a huge grin on her face. “Did you hear the DJ? They’re about to do the cha-cha slide. You’ve got to come out here and do it!”

Alice grabbed both of their hands and pulled. Killian’s face immediately turned red.

“I don’t think that dance is really my style . . . “

“Oh come on,” Wendy teased, “the song tells you exactly what to do, Jones.”

“Please Daddy, please?”

“Well, I can never say no to that.”

Wendy and Killian followed the little girl onto the dance floor and lined up with other members of the town. The song started up, and the crowd cheered. “Everybody clap your hands!”

“Well, I can handle this, I guess,” Killian quipped, and Wendy laughed.

“To the left, take it back now, ya’ll.”

The crowd on the dance floor followed the song’s instructions, and Killian kept laughing as he looked over at Wendy. Alice cheered her father on, which was adorable.

“Hands on your knees, hands on your knees. Get funky with it!”

“Um, why is this so awkward?” Killian muttered.

“Probably because of those tight pants,” Wendy laughed.

“Come on, cha cha now ya’ll.”

“You girls have much better moves than I do.”

“Of course we do, Daddy!” Alice giggled.

“Wow, what a vote of confidence,” Killian said dryly.

Wendy’s cheeks ached from laughing so hard by the time the dance was over. The crowd cheered. Killian wiped his forehead in an exaggerated fashion.

“Come on, old man,” Wendy teased, “you not jiggy with it?”

Killian’s eyebrows rose to his hairline. “Now who sounds old?”

“I have amnesia.”

“Oh, that’s your excuse.”

“Okay, all you lovers out there,” the DJ announced, “this one’s for you.”

The musical intro of a slow song began to play, and Killian turned to Wendy with a tender smile and an outstretched hand. “May I have this dance?”

“Ew gross,” Alice announced with a wrinkled nose, “I’m gonna go get another cupcake.”

Wendy laughed as she took Killian’s hand. He pulled her close and placed his plastic hook at her waist. They started to sway to the music.

“This hook makes slow dancing a little awkward. I’d much rather feel something with my left hand -” he stuttered to a stop, his face turning bright red. “I mean, I didn’t - that . . . I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

Wendy laughed and shook her head. “I know what you meant.”

“Good.”

Wendy tilted her head as she took in his pink tinged cheeks. She relinquished his hand and rested hers on his shoulder, then she slid both arms around his neck. Killian’s other hand fell to her waist.

“Is this better?” she asked.

“Much better.”

They both fell silent as the words to the song washed over them. “There’s a ghost upon the moor tonight. Now it’s in our house. When you walked into the room just then, it’s like the sun came out.”

Wendy couldn’t seem to look away from the deep pools of his blue eyes, and Killian’s arms wrapped tighter around her. His face bent closer, inch by agonizing inch, until their noses were brushing and their breaths mingled. The music around them swelled in intensity.

“And the day is clear. My voice is just a whisper louder than the screams you hear. It’s

like the sun came out.”

“Killian,” she whispered, her voice breaking as her eyes fluttered closed. His lips brushed hesitantly over hers, and she melted against him.

“Emma, thank God we found you!”

Wendy’s head spun with confusion, as one moment she was awaiting Killian’s lips being pressed against hers, and the next a no-nonsense brunette was pulling her away from him. The woman narrowed her eyes as she clasped Wendy by both elbows and gave her a tiny shake.

“Emma, it’s me, Regina.”

“Emma!” another voice cried out, and before Wendy could process anything else, a man

was crushing her to him in an embrace.

“Wait,” Killian spoke up, “who the hell are you?”

“I’m her fiance,” the sandy-haired man snapped, “the better question is who are you?”

“She doesn’t have a ring.”

Wendy, still confused, looked down at her bare ring finger. “I don’t have a ring.” All around them, there were whispers from the other townspeople. The music still played, but no one was dancing anymore.

“Well, we hadn’t gotten around to that part yet,” the man - her fiance? - grumbled.

Wendy looked dazedly up at Killian. Mary Margaret and David were just behind him. Alice had come up and put her arms around him. Henry was on his other side.

“My . . . my name is Emma. Emma Swan.”

Killian searched her face as his lips ticked up just a bit in one corner. “Swan. Emma Swan.”

“Yes, Emma Swan,” the brunette snapped, “we’ve established that’s her name, and I’m Regina Mills, her agent. Emma, we’ve got to get you back to New York. This solo album won’t happen if you don’t get back to the studio. Not to mention the interviews I’ve got lined up.”

Killian blinked rapidly. “Agent? Solo album?”

“That’s right. She’s Emma Swan, singer and rhythm guitarist for the band Wendy Sewed it On.” It was Zelena, smirking behind Regina Mills, with Sheriff Graham at her side. She shoved a magazine in Killian’s face. Killian scanned it, then looked up in shock at Emma.

“Violet said she thought you looked familiar,” he said softly.

“We found your car Ms. Swan,” Sheriff Graham spoke up, “it’s totalled, but we have your luggage, your purse, and your phone down at the station.

“So come on, Emma,” Regina insisted.

“Let’s go home Emma,” Walsh said slowly to her, as if she were a child.

Emma shook her head and backed away from both of them. “Wait - just a minute. I . . . I have to say goodbye.”

Tears gathered in her eyes as she turned to Killian and the kids. She smiled as she reached for Killian’s hand. It still held the magazine, but he let it flutter to the floor when she took his hand.

“This is my life I guess,” she told him.

He searched her face, lines furrowing his brow. “You remember?”

A single tear slipped down her face, but she forced nonchalance as she half-shrugged. “I remember my name finally. I guess the rest will come.”

He glanced hesitantly over her shoulder at Regina and Walsh, then he leaned closer and lowered his voice. “You know you’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need to.”

“Don’t go!” Alice cried out, flinging herself at Emma and wrapping her arms around her waist. Emma bent down and kissed the top of the girl’s head.

“I’ll miss you all, and you’ve been so kind to me, but . . . maybe if I go home, I’ll remember my life. I have to try.”

Killian’s shoulders sagged as he nodded slowly. “I understand.” He stepped closer and cupped her cheek. “Your heart’s desire - that’s all I want for you.”

Emma reached up and clasped his hand in hers, then reached forward and brushed a

chaste kiss to his cheek.

“I’ll think about you,” Emma choked, “all of you, everyday.”

Killian forced a smile, tears welling up in his blue eyes. “Good.” Then he forced a wink, and Emma choked on a half sob, half laugh.

“Goodbye,” she whispered, then let Regina and Walsh - who still felt like strangers - usher her quickly from the room.

#cs ff #cs modern au #snowed in #daddy!killian #knightrook #amnesia #angst #pining

37 notes · View notes

headoverhiddles · 5 years

Text

Chasing Rabbits (Elias Grodin x Reader) [Fluff]

Synopsis: Unwanted flirtation and the stress of working the front causes stars to align, and you meet one gentle soldier in a million.

Words: 3.8k

Warnings: PLEASE be careful reading this-- this fic has sexual harassment, assault intent, and just generally guys being misogynistic creeps. Except for Elias. He’s sweet boi :3 Eeeee I love him so much.

Tagging: @this-is-mysuperwholockd-design @thevideonasty

There'll always be one.

Every nurse has one, that's what they told you. Nurses always fall in love with soldiers. Plus, it makes for something to write home about. It would be nice, of course. You just didn't see how walking into this hell with your head in the clouds would help.

Patricia Arden, your fellow nurse and the only other nurse to accompany you to the front lines in the mobile M*A*S*H unit, hangs by your side as you sling your pack higher onto your shoulder. She's from a small town in Mississippi-- joined the war as a nurse to find a boyfriend, which isn't the smartest place to look, but hey, you're not about to judge.

The dust kicks up from the chopper blades, and you can already feel the humidity, as well as the bugs feasting on your skin.

"Look at all these men in uniform," she grins, “So groovy.”

"Yeah. You'll be seeing a lot of that, I think," you reply. She makes a face at you.

"I'd love to see what's under that one's shirt."

"Tish, the most you'll be seeing of any of these men are the fingers you're going to have to stitch back on them."

"Why do you have to be like that?" she pouts. You look away. If you didn't maintain your cynicism, the guys would treat you two like delicate little girls. That's not who you are, nor who you want to be.

After your introductions to your head medics and the breakdown of the platoon you'll be working with, you congregate again.

"That Sergeant Barnes..." Tish whispers to you, "He's cute."

"He scares me," you say.

"It's the scars, isn't it?" she tuts. "Hasn't anyone ever told you not to judge a book by its cover?" she mutters, "He could be the nicest man on Earth." You take another look over at Barnes, and shiver under his scowl.

"You can keep him, and his scars. He doesn't look like he'd cuddle anything but an AK 47."

"What about that one?" She points to a smoking man with curly auburn hair. Taller than Barnes, not as buff but reasonably muscular. Freckled, has a mustache.

"Mm," you consider, "Not the worst... but not my type."

From across the barracks, some of the men get a good look at you.

Chris Taylor's mouth hangs open, slack jawed as he adjusts his helmet. "Are those the new mobile nurses?"

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," Elias grins, and a playful slap on the back sends Chris on his way. But then he makes the mistake of looking over himself. You catch his eyes, and smile at him. He smiles back, giving a dopey little wave, and you giggle with Tish as you're lead away. Elias watches you walk off, running a hand through his mop of golden hair in awe. When he turns, he's met with Chris' smirk.

"You were saying, sir?"

"Get going."

After setting up in your quarters, you get the idea to go for a walk to see where you’ll be living for the next couple months, until your two woman unit is on the move again. Unbuttoning your jacket for a little relief, you tie your hair back in a ponytail, and step out.

About half-way to the mess tent, you're stopped by a tall body in your way. You look up from the chest you’ve bumped into.

"You a newbie?"

It’s the redhead from earlier blocking your sun. He's got eyes running up and down your body, and it makes you want to button your jacket back up.

"You could say that."

"Very nice, very nice," he says, continuing to admire you, "Red O'Neill. What's your name, baby?"

"(y/n)."

"Mind if I join you?"

The last thing you want is this motormouth accompanying you. "I was enjoying the quiet, but thanks."

"You know, I hate to cut right to the chase, but you're not making it easy for me, honey." He takes another step to walk with you. "Us guys out here get pretty lonely."

"Why?" you snark, "You have the pleasure of each other's company."

"Nah-nah-nah babe, you don't get it. Not like that! I for one miss feelin' a woman. Like really feelin' her. You must miss feelin' a man... huh?"

"Look... I might not be the right person to ask," you try to back out, "My friend Tish--"

"Your friend don't look like you do," he says, and you finally manage to shake him, changing direction.

"It was nice to meet you, Sergeant O'Neill."

As you're walking past him, you focus in on a group of men talking strategy. One looks over, and does a double take when he sees you. It's the cute one from earlier. He goes to give another wave, but someone in the group nudges him. His face changes, and he's back to business.

You stare after him, unable to stop yourself from dreaming about the handsome soldier. Sgt. O'Neill sees your gaze, and he looks between you two anxiously and with no small amount of jealousy.

The meeting breaks, and the man walks over, blushing a little. Your eyes fall to his open chest, where his dog tags are hanging against sculpted, lean muscle.

"Hi." He sets his hands on his hips, squinting in the sun. "I, uh... see you around a lot."

"Yeah, I'm just trying to get my bearings. Once I know the layout I'll stop wandering."

"Wandering is good for the soul," he says, "Never stop wandering." He blushes deeper. "Sorry. Geez. I sound like a damn croan, and I'm not even baked. I'm Elias."

"Nice to meet you, Elias," you smile, shaking his hand firmly, "I'm (y/n). What's your rank?"

"Sergeant. But you don't gotta call me that."

"According to army regulations I do," you giggle, and he falls a little in love. Realizing he can't just stand and stare at you, that he has work to do, he straightens up.

"I hope to see you around, (y/n)."

You watch him walk off with a confident gait, and admire his arms and physique. He's pretty tall, with lithe muscles and a wiry frame. You try your hardest not to fixate on his body in your mind as you keep going... but that's getting harder by the minute.

A week goes by, and you start to really see how hard the job is. Back at the static M*A*S*H unit you had shadowed in, you knew when wounded were coming from the choppers. Here at the front, the Viet Kong could strike against any of the boys-- even you-- at any moment.

After a particularly tough day filled with casualties, you enter the mess to find a group of enlisted men playing cards.

"You're out!" O'Neill yells obnoxiously, "Full house, motherfuckers!" You sigh. Maybe if you turned around and just--

"Newbie! Babe! Over here!" he calls. You pretend not to hear, so he gets up, and physically walks you over. Barnes sees clearly how uncomfortable you look in O'Neill's arms, but he looks down and ignores it, indifferent. "(y/n)," Red says, "Meet the big boys."

You want to tell him to shove off. You want to tell him just where he can stick that cigarette that's always dangling out of his mouth. But you're a nurse, and you're scared what could happen to you.

"Hello," you say. A kid named Junior sizes you up.

"Thank you for your service, ma'am," a young guy you think is named Bunny grins, "You offer any other kinds of service?" O'Neill laughs.

"Heh, that's what I've been trying to find out! Wouldn't we like to know, hey Bobarooni?"

Barnes glances up briefly. "That's enough." Red immediately shuts up, and sits back down, smile dropping.

"So, uh... you gonna play or not, honey?"

You shake your head, managing a smile for appearances. "I need some rest. Plus, I really shouldn't be here with all of you, especially playing cards with enlisted officers."

"Least one other person in this tent's got some goddamn sense," Barnes mutters, and you take that opportunity to head out. Thinking of hazel eyes and a wide grin, you wonder where Elias is.

Over the course of the month, you have trouble on and off with O'Neill. You see Elias occasionally, but he's busy leading his platoon, making decisions and generally, as O'Neill really wasn't, doing his duty. You did see him around one day while you were prepping to head over to the OR.

"Sergeant," you nod, trying not to stare at his shiny biceps. He must have been training his men, cause he looks dirty, sweaty, and everything you'd love to see on top of you.

"It's Elias," he says, blushing, (he never seemed to be able to hold a straight face around you) "I never did like to be called by rank. Even by my men."

You walk up to him. "Okay. How's the day, Elias?"

"Shit. But seeing you is already making it better." He ducks his head. "You have a nice smile."

That smile shows through. "Thanks."

He grins at you, and you drop something from your belt as you latch it up. He leans down at the same time as you, and your fingertips brush. He looks into your eyes, then down at your lips...

He stands back up, passing you what you dropped. It's a charm, a little silver peace sign.

"Where's the rest of the bracelet, flower child?" he jokes, and you smile.

"The rest of my charms are back home. This one felt appropriate to take with me."

"You know, I'm something of a hippie myself," he begins, "Out in the..." He's about to go on before he sees O'Neill marching around, torturing the new kids with a fellow soldier. He sighs, thinking of the rumors involving you and the other man. "Anyway. Nice charm. See ya around."

"Yeah," you nod, watching him go. Your thumb slides around the smooth surface of the charm.

That afternoon, your heart nearly stops when you see Elias being carried into the nursing tent, a little bloody and delirious.

"Out of the way," you mutter, and push through to him. "What happened?"

"River water got into his drink pack, same river a great big pig decided to die in. ‘Lias got sick, started hallucinating, got torn all to hell in the brush when he tripped."

"It's just a scratch," Elias gives you that stupid, infectious grin, “Although I’ve had better hallucinations than these ones.”

It is just scratch... but that didn't stop the nightmares of losing him that night.

"You keep smiling," Tish says as you both wash blood off your hands the week after. "Who is it?"

You look down. "Nobody."

"It's gotta be somebody." She smirks. "Sergeant O'Neill, right?"

You frown. "What makes you say him?"

"It's not just me. Everybody's saying it," she whispers, "They say that other guy... Sergeant Eliott Grodin?" Your breath quickens.

"Elias."

"Elias. Guy’s got a thing for you. But O'Neill got to you first, they're saying. That Elias is heartbroken, I hear." She shrugs. "News carries fast in places like these. At least you didn't have to tell Elias yourself." Unaware of your trembling hands, she goes on. "Anyway, I haven't had any luck with Sergeant Barnes. He's tough as a nail to sof--"

"Sorry Tish, I have to go," you whisper, and head out, tearing your hair out of its cap. You need to drown your sorrows... the thought of hurting Elias pains you.

Inside the mess, you sit at the makeshift bar, and someone gives you a beer. You pop it open, and the guy who passed it to you laughs.

"You drink like a man, sweetheart." You slam the can down.

"I also suture like one too. If you get your leg blown off, have fun getting your friends to treat you."

You sigh, turning away from him. It's an empty threat, of course. This job is just hard in itself-- you didn't need all the comments as well.

"Weeeell, well well well well, look who came to see me." You freeze, eyes sliding shut. Hands fall to your shoulders, and begin to massage. "Little (y/n). Cheers, babe!" He clinks your can with his, and you feel sick to your stomach. "Wanna dance?"

"I'd rather not."

"Come on, stop being such a buzzkill!" He takes your hand, and you take it back, standing up.

"Why me?" you snap, "Huh? Why'd you pick me to bother?!"

This leaves him stunned, and more than a little embarrassed. He looks around at everyone, laughing nervously.

Dashing outside, you look behind you. He's not following. You consider putting in for a transfer, but then you'd have to leave... him.

"Everything okay?"

You turn. "Elias."

"You don't look so good. And I mean that in the best of ways." His kind smile falters as he realizes how upset you are. "(y/n), what's wrong?"

"God, I had to get away from him."

Elias looks over his shoulder, then back to you. Then he sits down on a log, patting the spot next to him. "O'Neill? What happened?" His voice softens. "Did you two have a fight or something?"

You frown. "I wouldn't even call it that. A proper fight requires someone to be emotionally invested."

Elias sparks up a cigarette, and offers you a drag. "But you and O'Neill, aren't you...?"

By Elias' confused expression, you slowly start to realize what he means.

"Aren't we what?"

He smirks. "You gonna make me say it?"

"What gives everyone the idea that we were?"

"Are you kidding?" Elias huffs, "O'Neill's been telling the whole camp you're his girl, and that you two... well, every time he's got R&R, you... keep his bed warm." You make a face, and Elias nods. "I take it you don't. Figures. He'd have to pay someone to like him."

"I don't even want anything to do with the man, but he's the deafest son of a bitch in this platoon when it comes to someone telling him no."

Elias slides in closer to you. "That is probably the best description of Sergeant O'Neill I've heard yet."

You laugh. Elias' eyes close as he revels in the sound of your laughter. A strong, protective urge cocoons him.

During an NVA raid the next day, Elias finds himself the perfect opportunity to speak his mind.

"Hey, O'Neill."

The redhead turns back in the little hut, stalking over to Elias with a patronizing glare.

"What, sweetheart?"

"Lay off her."

"I'm sorry?" he frowns.

"Don't tell me, tell her." Elias leans against the wall. "You know exactly who I mean."

"You," O'Neill points at him, chewing his gum loudly in Elias' face, "Are meddling in shit you don't wanna meddle in, buddy. I could toss you into a raveen and say Charlie got ya, okay, I can do all of that without barely flexing."

"I invite you to," Elias says, stepping up in the other man's space and unfolding his arms. O'Neill's eyes cast down, and he stutters.

"Just... stay out of my fuckin’ personal life, Elias. Or I'll fuckin’ report you."

Elias watches him go, and shakes his head. Men like O'Neill never learn.

As the sun goes down and darkness falls over the valleys of Vietnam, you walk from the medical tent toward the nurses' quarters on the other side of the quiet barracks. No matter how beautiful the sunsets were here, you rarely enjoyed them with the screaming of the soldiers you treat still ringing in your ears.

A few twigs snap behind you, and you turn to see a tall man stumble out of a tent. Irrational fear courses through you.

"Running to Elias with your problems, now?" The sloshing flask of bourbon is clenched in O'Neill's hand, and he takes one last drag on his cigarette before whipping it into a puddle.

"Sergeant--"

"Don't Sergeant O'Neill me, honey, I'm not in the mood." He keeps walking forward, and you back up as he slurs at you. "I-I don't even see how I'm a problem! I'm a great guy, what's-- what's not to love?!"

"Sergeant--" He keeps walking.

"Just answer the goddamn question!"

"Get out of my way!"

"Get BACK here, you little bitch!" O'Neill snaps, and grabs your wrist, jerking you back with force. When he realizes what he did, he lets go and covers his mouth like a frightened little boy. He looks like he's about to cry.

"I'm... s... look, I just-- I need love too, ya know! I-I'm not a heartless prick like some of these other assholes here, I... I deserve love! I'm just..." He breaks down into a blubbery mess. "I-I'm just so fucking scared!" He cries for a minute, before taking you by your arms, walking you backward toward the forest. You try to jerk your arm away, but he wraps you in an uncomfortable hug.

“Hey--!”

"What the FUCK do you think you're doing with her?!" You both turn, and see Elias storming angrily from the far tent, where his group of friends congregated after hours. You'd never been so happy to see anyone. "Get your hands off her," Elias all but growls, and, seeing how furious the man looks, O'Neill complies, holding his hands up. "You're a fucking piece of work, you know that?" Elias says, voice so low that you can tell just how hard it is for him to contain his anger.

"H-hey, you don't know what the hell you're talking about," O'Neill warns, "Walking around like the caped crusader of the nurses. Hey, get back here and be a man!"

"You want me to be a man?" Elias nods. O'Neill gets in close, so close Elias can smell the liquor on his breath. His eyes dart around in the dark, flickering with a mixture of nerves and desperation.

"Hey... n-nobody'll know, man. You and me? We could just take her back there, and--" Elias' fist ends that proposition, with a swift punch to O'Neill's jaw. You hold onto his arm, and, leaving the tall man lying in the mud, he takes you by the hand, leading you back to the tent.

Warmth cascades over you as you enter it, the sound of laughter, the blissful vibe, clouds of smoke, and psychedelic music overtaking you. It's a welcome change from the outside.

"A chick?" King asks, grinning.

“A nurse,” Lerner corrects playfully.

"Lay off guys, it's her first time in here," Elias says.

"You mean we're not allowed to scare her?" Rhah jokes, baring his teeth, “It is the Underworld, man. Baaaaah!”

"She ain't even supposed to be here," Lerner laughs, strumming his guitar, and Elias turns.

"You gonna report me, ya little weasel?" Both of their tones are light-- you can tell already that arguments never get far in here, and every man here is a friend of the others. The young man just smiles easily, taking another hit of whatever he's smoking, and Elias brings you over to a hammock in the corner. You're immediately at ease.

"You okay?" he asks you softly. You nod, but he presses. "Are you sure, (y/n)? Are you really sure?”

“Yeah.”

“It took everything I had not to fry that bastard to a crisp out there, swear to Christ. Men in this war... we think we can do whatever we want out here, no consequences. They ignore the fact that you're a fucking human being."

"Thank you," you say, voice trembling, and he wraps you in a hug. It's nothing like O'Neill's forced contact-- it's gentle, and protective, and you feel eternal just sitting there with him, swinging back and forth.

"You don't need to thank me for being there, flower child," he murmurs back, "...I'll always be there."

Your heart skips a beat. For some reason, that hits home, and makes you feel safer than you've ever felt in your life. Something inside of you aches with longing as you stare at his lips, and you place your hand on his leg. Something in his face changes when he sees you looking at him the way you are, and he tentatively moves in closer. You make no move to evade, so he clutches the back of your head, pressing your lips together. It's sweet, barely there, but you want more, and you kiss him back, reciprocating against his soft lips with a little more passion. You both finally break for air, and he seems surprised. The look you give him tells him not to be, so he relaxes a little.

Your head rests against the nape of his neck, and he takes to softly stroking the base of your head, resting his head against yours. Everyone in the room is half watching, out of the corners of their eyes. Elias still outranks most of them, even after hours, and none of them want to intrude on his privacy. Elias doesn't seem to care, though. He threads his fingers with yours, rocking you both on the hammock, eyes blissfully closed.

"Would you look at that?" Lerner hisses.

King smacks Chris in the arm. "Ain't it cute? Shit, if all I gotta do is bring a chick back to the Underworld to get some pussy, how come I ain't done it yet?"

“Well cause uh, you’re not Elias, and you don’t look like a motherfuckin’ angel like he does,” Chris grins. King gives him a look.

“You wan’ go trade places with her, Chris, suck his dick?” Chris topples backward into Lerner, giggling uncontrollably from the weed and waving his hands wildly.

"I always said it," Rhah hisses back to the group, philosophizing as usual, "If anyone was going to get a girl, it would be one Elias Grodin. The soldier... the man... the legend."

Your eyelids grow heavy as well over on the hammock, but when he goes to lay you both down, you hesitate.

"’Lias. I'm a nurse," you whisper, "I can't be seen with an officer like this. I'll lose my position. You could lose yours too."

Elias gazes around at everyone. They finally look over now, with confidence.

"Hey," Chris says quietly, laughter subsided, "We won't say anything, man." You two look into the earnest faces of every nodding man in the tent, and rest assured, reclining to hold each other for the rest of the night.

Elias found himself, as he stared down at the pretty girl in his arms, wishing he never had to let go-- of you, or of this night.

The next day, you can't shake the good feeling you've had since the night before. Even just the memory of sleeping on top of Elias' chest, while breaking every rule in the handbook, would make this whole thing bearable.

Waking you from your daydream, O'Neill comes up to you, looking extremely unsettled. He's got a bruise forming from where Elias punched him last night, and a slight stagger. He puts his hands up.

"I'd just like to, uh..." he starts, "I'd like to say how sorry I am, (y/n). Ma’am. For last night.”

“Did you get threatened with a court martial?” You quirk an eyebrow. You wouldn’t put it past Elias to report that incident.

O’Neill looks down. “Look. I just... got out of hand. I'm not myself when I drink."

You stare him straight in the eyes, refusing to be passive.

"Noted. Red... I know how hard this must be for you. I'm a nurse; I see what you have to deal with first hand. But my responsibilities end at your physical well being. I'm not a comfort girl." You step in closer. "Now stay away from me. If you ever touch me again, I'll give you a bruise bigger than that one you have." Elias comes up behind you, and puts a hand on your shoulder. O'Neill gets the message, and leaves.

Elias' hand then drops down your arm, and he curls his pinky finger around yours. It's not much, but for now-- it's enough.

282 notes · View notes

thefoldings · 6 years

Text

One of Many

A new story! Bitemebat bought my fic offer for the Rupert Graves birthday auction run by the epic Wastingyourgum on the gravesdiggers blog. She asked for sweet fluff with Micah and Jasper involving this particular situation.

This is a one-shot! The first Foldings one-shot, I think! And it is not “Ten Years Earlier,” either, so there may be kissing. Maybe the ghostly hint of something more.

If you prefer to read it on AO3, here you go!

“Micah.” He waited until he was sure he had Micah’s full attention, and set his palms gently against Micah’s cheeks. “Darlin’. I love you. We can do whatever you’d like.”

Micah’s face twisted, his lips pressed together, brows scrunching down but then lifting over the bridge of his nose. “But…but you should like it, too.”

He could do this.

It was going to be fine.

He could do this.

He was married, for the love of Meg—Had been for two years now, too. This wasn’t their first anniversary. Two solid years of working together, sleeping together, living together…how much more pressure could there be after someone had seen you naked?

Lots, apparently.

Jasper paced the lab, absently straightening and rearranging things as he passed. It looked neater if the bottle with the longer pliers was at the back, but then he remembered Micah was working inside the new alembics and using those pliers a lot, so he returned it to its original position. Then he reversed the order, putting the short pot with the oil stubs on the end, but that just looked awkward. He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced some more, reminding himself that Micah wouldn’t even notice, he wouldn’t think about it, he’d glance and grab, and if it needed moving, he’d move it. It wasn’t that he didn’t care that Jasper tidied—Micah appreciated it on an almost obscene level and had said so, and he’d pointed out how much faster he worked after Jasper reorganised things. But there was a functional, helpful level of tidying, and then there was nervous fidgeting while he waited for his lover to return to their rooms after the last meeting of the morning on the fifth anniversary of having declared in public that they intended to be together for the rest of their days.

Jasper was a positively tragic excuse for a human being.

He’d changed clothes, then changed back. After all, that morning he’d dressed a little better than usual for a morning of overseeing chores, cleaning the bakery pantry, and going over the kitchen accounts. Nothing fussy, but he’d taken his jacket off in the pantry. Then he’d come back upstairs, paced a bit, changed, realised he was dithering like an idiot, and still didn’t know what Micah himself might have in mind for the day. So he’d changed back. That was less pressure, wasn’t it? Micah had seen him this morning, he knew what Jasper was wearing. What if he came back up and saw Jasper in his fanciest formal gear, and felt awkward proposing they go to Micah’s favourite beach? Or what if Jasper greeted him wearing nothing but a rose, and Micah had hoped to whisk him away to a night at the theatre and the performance started in half an hour? Granted, it never took him as long to get dressed as it took Micah, but the way he was dithering, it’d take two hours just to decide what to wear.

He shook out his hands, jumped in place for a bit, and groaned. The hard part was over already—his gifts were perfect. Just thinking about them made him grin even now, while his heart was trying to squirm out of his chest. Stupid lump of meat. He banged at his chest with his fist, wondering if it responded to threats from other body parts, like if the hands and brain ganged up on it.

“Swallow wrong?”

Of course. Jasper gasped, stomping one foot hard before turning to see his bastard of a husband crossing to meet him, smiling. “You think you’re so clever,” Jasper muttered, taking two hurried steps to catch Micah up, setting his hands on Micah’s hips and hoisting him into the air, catching him in a tight hug.

“Well I actually am,” Micah said, feigning offence for only a moment before bending for a kiss, letting himself be held. “You think you’re so strong,” he added when they broke apart.

Jasper set him down on his feet. “Yeah, that’s all a lie. Mirrors. Lots of mirrors. So many mirrors.”

“I knew you weren’t null.”

He couldn’t have held back his grin if he’d tried. His heart was still a bit wriggly, but now he had Micah to look at, so everything would be all right. “Lies. All of it. I’m telling you.”

Micah just snorted and turned away. “Oh. Er, you’ve…” He waved a hand at the worktable.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jasper sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets again.

“I know you always say—”

“It’s all right, darlin’. How many times?”

“But—”

“But, but, but…” Jasper wrapped him into a hug again. “I’ve stopped apologising for tidying. And what was your end of the bargain, again? Remind me.”

“I’ll stop apologising for actually using my work space,” Micah sighed, not meeting Jasper’s eyes.

“Yes, you will. And it won’t cost you a drop of blood.”

“It does hurt, though,” Micah said quickly.

“Yeah, same pain I get not apologising, though.”

“You’re right, I know, I know…”

“Okay, best way out of this is leaving the room,” Jasper said, releasing Micah and stepping back. “I’m dying to know. What’d you pick?”

“Ah.” Micah shifted a bit, drawing his arms back and stepping away. “We have a few choices—”

“I’m up for anything,” Jasper said quickly, flapping his arms uselessly at his sides. “Seriously. You name it, I’m happy. So long as I get to do it with you, I’m…delirious.” He couldn’t stop grinning. Why was he even trying? And that bright little hint of colour on Micah’s cheeks made it impossible anyway.

“Well, I’d thought of a few options,” Micah said, pausing, scratching his lip with his middle finger.

“Honestly, Micah, whatever you’d like.”

“I—yes. Well. I’m not really sure, now.” The same finger was now rubbing one eyebrow as he looked up, head tilted.

“Micah.” He waited until he was sure he had Micah’s full attention, and set his palms gently against Micah’s cheeks. “Darlin’. I love you. We can do whatever you’d like.”

Micah’s face twisted, his lips pressed together, brows scrunching down but then lifting over the bridge of his nose. “But…but you should like it, too.”

“I will. I’ll love it. Just don’t make me stay there alone. If there’s room for two, I don’t care. We could…curl up on a shelf in the wine cellar. Honestly.”

Jasper realised his heart had stopped squirming back around the time Micah had entered the room, and it suddenly made sense. He’d been so anxious a few moments ago, and since then, the only thing that had changed was Micah’s presence. Jasper hadn’t changed clothes (again), he hadn’t given Micah a single one of the gifts, he didn’t know where they were going or what they were doing. He’d received nothing that had alleviated any of his nameless worries, whatever they were, but then Micah had come in, and Micah was worried. Whatever it was that Jasper was so worried about was nothing next to seeing his husband in distress, no matter how ridiculous the reason. Micah was upset, therefore his job was comforting him. He had no time for his own body’s ridiculous predicament. All that mattered was calm—finding some, and giving it to Micah.

And, for that matter, what had he been worried about? He knew to his bones that Micah would love his actual gifts, and wasn’t too shy to ask Jasper to wear any particular thing in their wardrobes—or stop wearing it, either. He wouldn’t give a toss about any rearranging of accessories on the worktop. He simply wanted to make Jasper happy.

He slid his hands down Micah’s arms and grabbed his hips, pulling him close. “Hey. We spend all our days rushin’ around, taking care of everybody, then snatching our own minutes and moments around schedules. We only take a few days in a year to focus on us. The only thing we have to do right now is enjoy each other, right? And we both want that. So whatever you had in mind, whatever you’ve chosen, whatever decision you can’t make, it’s fine. All of it. If I’m somehow—and I cannot stress enough how stunningly unlikely this is—not in the mood for it, I will say so. But really, right now I’m just…so excited to see you. There was a time when both of us thought this was never gonna happen, remember?” He waved a hand between them, his wrist flopping loosely. “But we did it. We got it. Two years, Micah—two whole years. A couple of months of sheer lunacy, but we’ve made it. We’ve made it this far. And I still love you—” He paused, savouring the words, the chance to actually say them, remembering the time back when he’d somehow believed this glorious man wouldn’t be interested in him. His throat tightened, but even that just spread his grin wider for a moment. “I still love you, Micah. We’re always gonna love each other. And today is just…that. Nothin’ else. Doesn’t change, not gonna change, no matter where we go.” A happy thought occurred—no, an even happier one, to be honest. “It’s not like this is gonna be our only one, yeah? We’ve got loads more anniversaries ahead of us. Just…gobs of them. So if we get halfway to dinner and think, ‘oh, bollocks, wish we’d thought of that this morning,’ well, we’ll try that next year. Or the one after. Or the one after that.” He bit his lip and ducked his chin a little, coaxing Micah to meet his eyes steadily.

And Micah did, his skin now flushed an even, rosy pink, his eyes bright and wide, flicking back and forth between Jasper’s own. “You are, without a doubt, the sweetest human being I have ever slept with.”

Jasper snapped his teeth an inch away from Micah’s nose. “Ahh, bollocks to that. Come on, if you’re still undecided, how about we start with presents?” Jasper took a step back toward the door of his cupboard. He knew exactly what was about to happen.

“No!” Micah said, fervent, reaching out. “No, you know those come at the end!”

As Micah had insisted on every formal gift-giving occasion. Presents to be unwrapped came at the end of the day, sitting together, after they’d already done the active part of the day. Usually in bed. Jasper was fairly sure that that last part of the tradition had started with him, at least—he couldn’t imagine Micah somehow gathering all his closest friends around his own bed on the evening of his naming day.

“Y’know,” Jasper said trying to sound thoughtful, “Considering how these nights usually end, some might say you’re making the kissing bit at the end seem a little anti-climactic.”

“Oh, no,” Micah said, solemn, puzzled, baffled to the edge of hurt. “You have it backwards. We have a day of making memories, then gifts that are tangible souvenirs of the day and tied to those pleasant memories, anchoring them, and then the last is sharing the gift we always share, the one that’s always with us no matter where we are or what we’re doing. It isn’t less special for being constant, but it puts the day in perspective—memories are intangible, gifts might not last, but what we have, what we feel…” He waved his hand between their chests, unconsciously imitating the same gesture Jasper had made earlier. “This is with us forever.”

Jasper stood for a moment, just looking at this beautiful, clever, wise man who’d found him and fit into his life like the second beat of his heart. “We’d better get started, then,” Jasper finally said, his voice just as soft as Micah’s had been. “We’ve got ourselves a climax to build towards.”

He did change clothes: the gorgeous black suede coat that was becoming Jasper’s favourite thing—and people weren’t things, so that was fair—in the world, the tall black boots with ornate silver work matching the coat, a shirt so white it almost seemed to glow with a harsh light of its own, and a black brocade waistcoat that was worthy of being the centrepiece of any other outfit. Micah swirled a length of thin, dull grey silk around his collar that actually made Jasper frown, until he’d finished tucking and looping it into a strangely simple masterpiece under his chin, and settling Jasper’s locator crystal into the folds. He’d been a little in awe when he’d caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. Maybe all the praise Micah flung at him wasn’t completely unwarranted. He looked like the sort of person he would have imagined at Micah’s side, a few years ago.

Micah had worn a new suit of his own, the coat far more structured than his usual robes. Light blue silk shimmered with periwinkle when the light struck it right, trimmed in gold and darker blue. The colour swept down from a substantial collar to tails reaching low on his calves, and framed the white shirt with lace that made Jasper want to bite, and soft grey trousers above low grey boots.

They’d strolled through some of the Dimnoson gardens, Jasper having to be stopped from stroking some of the flowers along the way. It wasn’t his fault that he’d never noticed the furry petals before, but after Micah showed him what happened to a pebble he threw into the soft burgundy folds, he was happy to stay away.

Lunch at a hanging-pod restaurant had followed. Jasper watched as their cozy nest was dragged close enough to the boardwalk that they could step straight into the cushioned interior, and then it was carefully lowered back into place, swinging only gently. Tray after tray of small, simple dishes floated in with no intrusion from staff, gliding into place between them on the table that was barely a handspan higher than their “floor,” which was a lot more like an extremely generous mattress than it was any surface Jasper had walked on before. They scooped together piles of the other pillows and built their own supports, lounging next to each other, not lying and not sitting, legs stretched out but food in easy reach, able to trade bites and feed each other as the mood struck. Round glass walls gave them a spectacular view of the gardens they’d walked through. They’d spent a lazy few hours, nibbling and just talking with no interruptions in a way they never seemed to get to do at home.

After lunch was another stroll, this one along a rocky shoreline through a portal using settings Jasper had never seen before. It seemed to be morning, wherever they were, with the sun low on the horizon but inching higher. A rough, fresh breeze helped wake them up, and Micah watched for a while as Jasper flung pebbles into the waves from a low cliff, teasing the kelpies in the waves below into biting at the splashes. When Micah joined in, it grew competitive. They soon had the lithe, sinuous animals spinning in circles and almost knotting themselves in excitement, and then things devolved to Jasper and Micah bickering like children over who had more horse-heads circling below them.

A gust caught Micah’s coat, flaring it around him and nudging him a step back from the cliff. Jasper fell silent, staring in awe at a creature more graceful than all the kelpies combined, and he wondered how he’d been so lucky. The white lace of Micah’s jabot fluttered up against his lips, the curl on his forehead falling loose as he tipped his head aside. When Micah looked over at the sudden silence, all Jasper could do was smile.

The ground was too sharply rocky for lying down on, so Jasper held him up against a wind-shaped tree, watching Micah’s back arch against the curves of the trunk, one arm draped along a branch as Jasper kissed and kissed and kissed some more. There was nothing urgent; it was gentle and patient, sweet and steady. It was enough of a pleasure for him to lead Micah along, bringing soft sounds from his smooth, pale throat until the light washed through Micah’s pores. He caught his breath against Jasper’s shoulder and Jasper simply held him, stroking his back for long moments as his breathing slowed.

When they returned to Lunule, Micah took them through a short chain of portals that had them back at the castle before the smell of the sea air was gone from their clothes.

“I had intended—a concert,” Micah admitted, toying with Jasper’s fingers as they strolled arm-in-arm through what was now known as “Jasper’s portal,” the one in the East Hall that led to the lab.

“What time is the concert?” Jasper asked, all of his attention focused on the foot-and-a-half area that contained Micah’s face and fingers.

“Oh, nine o’clock. If I’ve regrown any bones in my body by then, that is. We’ve plenty of time,” he added, glancing at the late afternoon sunlight coming in the tall windows of the lab.

“Ohh, bones. Pff. Those are optional,” Jasper declared, flopping down on the bed and then crawling backwards to make room for Micah, who folded himself neatly at the edge. “It’s all the squidgy bits in the middle that do the work.”

Micah snorted, a grudging smile of amusement breaking through his flush of tenderness. “You know, for someone who grew up on a goat farm, your understanding of basic biological mechanics is astoundingly lacking.”

“No, because bones aren’t what keeps you alive. That’s all the squishy stuff. We’ve got animals without bones, right? Underwater things. All the squiggly ones. They’ve got no bones, but they do just fine.”

Micah laughed, tipping his head back, his eyes crinkling with it. “And to think you write up notes for a Vedouci. ‘Squidgy bits.’ ‘Squishy stuff.’ ‘Squiggly ones.’ Very erudite. Very learned.”

“You love my notes,” Jasper said, pulling him down onto his chest and holding him there. “You love everything about me, you pretty thing. Try to deny it.”

“No. I shan’t. I can’t.”

Jasper sucked a breath in through his teeth, staring at Micah in pure adoration as he felt his heart split apart, overwhelmed by the force of his love. “Darlin’, we are the two luckiest people alive, you know that?”

“The things you say…”

“That’s nothing to the things I wanna do.”

In spite of his words, they spent another hour simply lying in bed, chatting, kissing, and laughing, enjoying the luxury of time. Micah summoned tea from the kitchen, which arrived with unexpected extras.

“Is this a joke?” Jasper asked, seeing the tray floating toward them. He’d heard Micah specify tea, but all he could see were bowls as the tray was too far above their eye level, where they were reclining on a mattress on the floor.

“I’m not sure,” Micah admitted, flicking his finger at the tray. It lowered as it neared, and as the green appeared over the edge of a bowl like the sun over the horizon, Jasper began to grin.

“Playing at derbies again, eh?”

Micah sat up, shaking his head as he caught the tray in his hands. He lowered it, giving Jasper a significant look. “No, I think this is all Sally’s own idea,” he said.

The broccoli florets were arranged as the greenery of a small tree. The trunk was a miniature loaf of bread, the crust scored and carefully painted with butter and egg to darken in the oven so that it looked like bark. The branches were smaller shards of bread fitted into slots in the trunk, and a tiny fringe of the smallest florets ringed the base, surrounded by a pâté of chicken tinted blue with Micah’s favourite blue apples. The small ducks sitting on the surface of the imitation pond intrigued Jasper.

“She holds back when she does the formal banquets, doesn’t she?” Micah murmured, touching the tips of the branches lightly with a fingertip.

“’Course,” Jasper said, plucking off one of the florets and dipping it into the pond, scooping up one of the ducks. He chewed carefully for a moment, considering the texture and taste before identifying it. “Rice. Toasted rice. That’s kind of lovely, actually.”

“But why?” Micah asked, carefully removing the branch Jasper had left behind and nipping off the end.

“They’re too big,” Jasper said, then wrinkling his nose at the inaccuracy. “No, it’s more…there’s all those people, and the food is either a detail, in which case stuff like this is overlooked in favour of dancing and politics and whatnot, or the food is a huge centrepiece, and something like this is too small to be noticed—like if she’s doing Pandora’s bedspread, or something. Or each plate is presented individually and there’s no way to do something this perfect on every single one.”

“She could do it on a few,” Micah said, a hint of sadness in his tone.

“What do you mean?”

“She never really gets credit,” Micah said, settling back against Jasper’s upraised knee. “So many fine chefs in the city, and she is easily in the top tier, but she goes unrecognised.”

“Why does she need recognition?” Jasper asked, seeing where this was going and realising Micah still didn’t.

“Her reputation. She deserves more.”

“I see she’s paid pretty well, you know—”

“Oh, yes, I know that,” Micah said, waving his words aside. “But—”

“No, Micah, listen—she is paid well. And you’d better believe I make sure she gets the best from the markets, and we provide a lot of things from our own gardens and farms. If she wants the kitchens altered, I see that it happens. What use is a reputation, really? It’s to make sure you get what you want, really. And she does. Plus she’s not really a one for the crowd, remember? Happy to cook for one, but she’s not gonna get up in front of one to do it. She’s got a home she loves and the best staff I can get her. And she knows she’s appreciated.”

Micah hummed, thoughtful for a moment, digging up one of the ducks on a finger and admiring it for a moment. “I suppose.”

“Honestly, darlin’. She did this for us,” he said, pointing at the tree where it was listing across the pond now. “Just because she wanted to. That says a lot.”

Micah smiled finally and turned to the pot and cups they’d been ignoring. “I suppose. Let me know if there’s ever anything I can do for her myself, though, will you, Druhy?”

“I will, Vedouci.”

The concert Micah had passed off so lightly turned out to be a performance by some of Jasper’s favourite singers. He knew it must have involved some conspiracy on Micah’s part, as not a single one of the pieces involved any kind of acoustic magic that Jasper couldn’t hear, yet it was a full house in the large auditorium at Grossman Hall. No one else seemed to notice the theme of the repertoire, and Jasper clutched Micah’s hand tightly right through to the end.

Afterwards, Micah seemed in no rush to leave, tugging Jasper aside from the crowd washing toward the exits. He assumed they were simply avoiding the crush until Micah pulled him through a side door that lead not to the foyer, but into a quiet corridor. A woman in the formal staff uniform smiled as they appeared, and opened another door ahead of them which led, to Jasper’s surprise, up a short flight of stairs and into a loud, crowded press of a different kind.

The backstage area erupted into a louder buzz and people surged toward them. Micah let go of his hand and moved forward to take someone else’s, laughing.

“Thank you for coming, Vedouci,” a deep, rich female voice said, and Jasper blinked over his lover’s shoulder for a moment before believing that the star alto of the Lunule Opera was shaking his husband’s hand.

“That was amazing,” Micah told her. “Truly amazing. You should perform the whole of Vexité sometime soon.”

“I’ll see what I can do to encourage that,” she said. “After tonight, you may have some surprising luck, there.”

“I know the storyline is a bit complex, but it’s simply the most beautiful opera written. I don’t think I’ve ever loved it more.” He stepped aside, reaching back to take Jasper’s arm and lead him forward.

Jasper knew he was staring, but couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to, which he didn’t. The woman’s long, blue hair spilled over her broad shoulders in a mass of curls that reached her ample waist, and her smile widened amazingly as she reached for his hand.

“Śi Jasper, this is Śe Kinni fe Takka. Kinni, my Druhy of Foldings.”

Her hand was soft and warm, and Jasper had the urge to kiss it. He resisted only because he couldn’t stop grinning enough to manage it. “It is the greatest pleasure of my life to meet you,” Jasper said fervently, bringing his other hand on top of hers.

“I beg your pardon,” Micah said, drawing a laugh from her.

“I’m flattered and honoured, Druhy,” Kinni said, her eyes creasing happily. “Let me introduce you to everyone, please—or would you rather have that pleasure, Micah?”

Jasper glanced away from the greenest eyes he’d ever seen, too dazed to speak as he met Micah’s smiling gaze. “No, please, go ahead.”

Their dinner was a candlelit, cheerful party on the stage, where Śe Kinni fe Takka sat on his right and Micah sat on his left. The food was plentiful and so was the wine, and Jasper had to keep touching Micah’s knee as they ate, trying to convince himself that this was really happening. He was beyond delight when a discussion of possible future repertoire turned into an argument over favourites complete with demonstrations. Hearing Kinni arguing about popular music with Śe Dolpho, singer of “She Knows I’m in Love with You,” complete with imitations of each other, almost had him choking on his chocolate cake.

Jasper was still grinning and babbling with excitement when they got home well after midnight. “I never even thought about Kinni fe Takka and Dolpho singing together before, and now… feck it, Micah—do you really think they’re going to do it?”

“The Opera isn’t above a little publicity,” Micah said mildly, already wearing his pyjamas as he gathered their clothes and tossed them into the laundry basket. “Casting Dolpho as the comic friend is absolutely possible. It might be ambitious to hope they give him the role of Numkha, but there’s no denying he has the range.”

Jasper wrapped his arms around Micah’s waist and dragged him onto his lap, kissing away his protests until Micah had stopped laughing and was kissing him back.

“Thank you for today,” Jasper said, staring into his lover’s smoky blue eyes. “Really.”

“I promise you, it was my pleasure. Entirely my pleasure,” Micah said softly, stroking Jasper’s cheek.

“Remember this morning?” Jasper ran his finger along Micah’s hairline at his temple, down the edge of his cheek and around his jawline. “We were both all nervous about today?”

Micah tipped his head and kissed Jasper’s finger. “I certainly was. You were all calm reassurance, as I remember.”

“Nah, I was a complete mess a minute before you walked in,” Jasper assured him. “I don’t even remem—oh!” He’d forgotten all about the gifts he had for Micah. “Wait here!”

“Where are you going?” Micah called plaintively after him.

“Just wait!”

Jasper came back with a large basket in his arms, letting Micah see the colourful bows topping the wrapped boxes jumbled inside. The blue eyes widened and Micah blinked for a moment before finding his voice. “Oh! I—Jasper, you needn’t…”

“Agreed.” Jasper set the basket beside him and crawled past him to the far side of the mattress. “I wanted to, though.”

It didn’t take much to coax Micah into opening them, and he was surprisingly vicious when shredding the paper around his gifts. He examined the clamps, callipers, and crucibles closely before making the connection and staring up at Jasper. “Where did you get these? They’re utterly amazing. Perfect. I’ve never seen work like this.”

“I knew what you needed better than anyone, I figured, so I…made them. With a bit of help from Nisko, of course.”

Micah’s eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together. “You… you made them?”

“Yeah.” Jasper knew he was blushing now, but it was worth it. “It just took so long trying to explain all the details, you know? And I knew what you liked, and what you were trying to do, so…” He shrugged and gestured at the small pile of tools. “There you go.”.

“When did you even have time?” Micah picked up the nearest square steel bowl, running his fingers along the surface and turning it over in his hands. “Jasper, the smoothness of this, the regularity… how?”

“A bit of patience, plus I have access to the best, remember?”

Micah shook his head, his mouth opening and closing silently for a moment as he waved the crucible toward the lab, then gave up and set it inside the basket. “You are amazing,” he said weakly. “You’ve…amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Jasper scooped the equipment up and dumped all of it into the basket on top of the crumpled paper, then pulled Micah back into his arms for the last time that day. “You’re the only daft twirl-artist in the whole of the worlds who’ll get teary-eyed over a couple of tools, you know that?”

“Fine. I am. I—thank you, my love. Thank you so much.”

“Happy anniversary, darlin’. Lots more to come.”

#The Foldings #Steampunk #magic #Rupert Graves Birthday 2018 #rupert graves birthday

23 notes · View notes

lunarfanfics · 6 years

Text

Downtime

Series: The 100 Rating: T Pair: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin (set directly after the Season 3 finale) Words: 3720

A year old fluffy fanfic, and one of my first for this ship! Just putting it out there to sort my tags.

[Also on Ao3]

Clarke hardly had the time to breathe after she was yanked back into the real world. Figures of her people coiling in pain blurred into her vision- hands that were too warm, covered in blood, clutched her arms, hoisted her out of the throne- The IV ripped from her veins. She had been delirious- her head throbbed painfully as if she’d taken a hit with a hammer to her skull.

But then she’d remembered the flame- Lexa was once again in her palm, and she clutched it to her chest, right above her heart. Clarke had the chance to see her one more time; before she’d been taken away all over again. Though it didn’t matter, not anymore. Because Lexa will always be with her, along with other past commanders, watching over her, so as long as the flame was with the right person.

Clarke traced the ridges of the small chip with her thumb- mulling over Luna’s refusal to become the next commander- Ontari’s abrupt death, ALIE’s warning of Earth’s imminent Armageddon, and the chaos that they’d nearly succumb too.

Six months, the AI had warned her. In six months the earth would no longer be inhabitable- There would be another radioactive fallout due to melting nuclear reactors in the remaining power plants around the earth. What would happen to her people than? What would become of the grounders?

This wasn’t an enemy she was used too handling- one that could be fought- or reasoned with, or even killed. This was nature- and machines, and chemicals. This was earth.

Clarke wasn’t a prophet- she couldn’t tell time, she couldn’t see into the near future and watch the destruction happen beforehand, just so she could warn everyone before it wiped them all out. She was at a plight, and it was gradually taking its toll on her nerves.

Time was most definitely not on her side. Six months, Clarke sighed exasperatedly, sliding down onto floor beside the bed that once belonged to the commander. It’d been stripped bare of the bloodied sheets and cushions- but Clarke still refused to bask in its comfort.

Rolling the flame in her hand, she let her head hit the side of the mattress, bringing her gaze up to the bumpy ceiling. Clarke felt a familiar presence at the door of the commander’s chambers- but didn’t bother to move from her spot on the floor. The door was shut with an audible click, and just as soon as he leaned his gun carefully against the wall- he dropped down to sit beside her, his long legs bumping against her own.

His voice came, deep and worn from battle cries. “What are you thinking about?”

Bellamy rested his arms on his knees, similar to Clarke, he didn’t look at her right away, but he didn’t have too. Clarke could see the grime caked on his face in her periphery- his shaggy hair looking more disheveled than ever. The Arkadia jacket he donned before was now missing- and the faint scars on his arms were more visible in the gray light of the afternoon.

She shrugged offishly, “Of solutions?” Clarke sighed, running a black stained hand down her face, “I don’t know—I just—I saved the world only too—just to come back to square one.”

She dropped her hand with a huff, looking over to Bellamy, only to find he was already staring at her in that intense way of his, meaning he was listening, hanging on every word she said.

Clarke felt panic swell within her- the adrenaline momentarily causing a shortness of breath, “It was all for nothing.” She whispered, more to herself than to him. Immediately Bellamy’s eyes flared the way they do whenever Clarke or Octavia- or anyone of the Skaikru found themselves in grave danger- and selfless Bellamy was there to stop it.

“Don’t.” He placed a heavy hand on her knee, and Clarke noticed the dirt encrusted between his finger nails. He gave her a reassuring squeeze, and she brought her gaze to meet his own again- “You rescued everyone from a goddamn AI that tried to force us into a fake reality.” Bellamy shook his head, wisps of curls swaying with the movement.

“That’s something, if you ask me.”

Clarke turned away with a grimace, “The earth is dying, Bellamy.”

He scoffed, “It’s been dead for years, what else is new?”

She couldn’t argue with him there, but even so that very notion that the inevitable end was creeping up on them and she didn’t have an already prepared plan drove her to a maddening state. Clarke had always been the one with the plan- since day one. But now she was at loss of what to do. This problem was far bigger than her- bigger than anything.

Thinking back to what ALIE and Becca had told her in the City of light- she could only salvage what little information the AI provided. It wasn’t enough- she needed to go to the main root. She needed to dig deeper- think harder, solve faster. Millions of lives were at stake here. Their only home was at stake.

“I can’t stop now,” Clarke mumbled, and looked him in the eye trying to hide behind a façade of false determination but she’s so damn tired- and he could see right through her anyway.

“I know that I’ve got to think of—something, anything. It’s eating away at me. I haven’t told anyone else about it. I mean, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

The hand on her knee disappeared, and Clarke missed the warmth he’d been emitting onto her, instead Bellamy shuffled closer, till her shoulder brushed against his bicep. His proximity made her just little bit anxious- she could see the purplish hue under his brown eyes, and the cuts on his forehead, the nasty finger- shaped bruises blooming across his throat.

She swallowed, looked away- but his hand came back to rest just below her knee, and it was even warmer this time.

“Hey,” Bellamy breathed- his breath hot against her cheek. “right now, everyone is still recovering from the aftereffects of ALIE, telling them now would only cause more tension.”

Clarke said nothing- biting into the bottom plush of her lip, nervous. Bellamy sighed. “Look, Don’t worry, when the time comes to tell them—I’ll be there, for you, okay? They’ll understand. They’ll help.”

His hand squeezed her thigh than, and Clarke felt a feathery sort of thrill in her chest.

“We’ll figure something out, we always do.”

She smiled at him, though it wasn’t quite happy one. It was a for-the-moment smile. An only-for-Bellamy kind of smile, but his condoling efforts wasn’t all lost on her. She clung tight to his words- her words. She kept them close, and kept him closer.

“Yeah.”

Then without thinking- which was nearly impossible because Clarke was always thinking- she reached up, and brushed away some of the dark colored fringes that clung to his forehead- hearing a hitch in his breath while she did. Bellamy’s hair was wild and untamed- sticking in every direction. Clarke caressed the curls that stuck out the side of his head, threading her hand through it delicately and watching the waves bounce back into place.

It’s only when she heard Bellamy audibly clear his throat, and see his eyes sheepishly avert hers- that she yanked her hand away like it’d been scalded.

She stammered, a rosy hue staining her cheeks. “Sorry—I, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

Oh god. Had she crossed the line there? Had there been a line to cross in the first place? It’s just Bellamy, Clarke reassured, there shouldn’t be any awkwardness between them just from a simple affectionate touch.

Besides it wouldn’t be the first time she’d shown some affection for him- though it would be a first she acted on a whim, rather than with her head, or with her heart.

It shouldn’t bother her this much- it should be natural by now.

Bellamy’s low rumble of her name snapped her out of reverie, and she swiveled to look at his confused face, mouth hanging open- she quickly thought of a response for her actions.

“It’s just…your hair.”

“What about it?”

Clarke shrugged, “It’s really… soft?”

There was a long pause before Bellamy let out rough chuckle, mouth tilting in that sideways grin of his.

“Seriously,” He thumbed one of his curls that stuck out, “I haven’t washed it in days.”

Clarke hummed in agreement, smoothing out the frayed ends of her blonde hair, “Hey, same here.”

“I said days, you haven’t washed your hair in months.”

Clarke scoffed, shoving at his shoulder playfully. “You don’t know that.”

He laughed heartily (a rare pleasant sound that certainly did not make her heart back flip), lifting the hand on her thigh to twirl a tendril of her straw blonde hair around his finger. “Clarke, I can see it.”

A teasing smirk played at the edges of his lips- and even with all his imperfections, all his compact flaws, his heavy burdens, and the shameful guilt he carried with him; Clarke would always see him as the most radiant of their people. The Sky people’s own burning flame, and he would always burn the brightest, in her eyes.

She felt an overwhelming urge to comfort him; to touch and hold him. He’s done so much for her- for them, though more so for her.

She grasped onto his large hand with her own before it slipped away from her golden tangles of hair- he snapped his head to peer down at her, the mirth vanishing from his face, replaced by puzzling expression.

“Clarke?”

She licked the dryness from her lips before speaking- resting their intertwined hands between them, she turned to him, “Why don’t you come here?”

Bellamy raised an eyebrow in question- dropping his gaze to where her hand lay atop his, implying he was already right there with her.

Clarke shook her head, “No—I mean, lay down.”

He only appeared more confused, so she huffed dramatically.

“Just put your head on my lap.”

The astonished look on Bellamy’s face almost made Clarke lapse into fit of giggles. As if he’d never expect such a tender request from her, she met his warm eyes only to see he was studying her fastidiously- brows furrowing in concern- he tilted his body to inspect the crown of her head for any bumps.

Of course Bellamy would worry- it was his job to so. But this was ridiculous. Clarke scooted away from him, unfurling out her legs in front of her, she motioned for him to come closer, and patted her thigh invitingly.

“That’s an order, Blake.”

Now with both eyebrows raised, Bellamy gave her an incredulous look- reeling back somewhat to show her just how flabbergasted he was. Clarke beckoned him with her finger; and he turned away with an amusing grin, tongue prodding the inside of his cheeks.

The freckles dusted across the bridge of his nose became more prominent with the blood rushing to his cheeks- he coughed- though it sounded more like a strained laugh, then he turned to her- a twinkle in his brown eyes, and he was smiling dismissively, shaking his head.

“Alright, I won’t argue.”

Bellamy slid over to her side, twisting so he could lay himself down carefully- he shifted into a more comfortable position on Clarke’s lap- resting his hands on his lower abdomen.

He seemed pretty content, though a bit stiff. Looking everywhere but at the woman he was currently using as a human pillow. Clarke couldn’t help but snicker at his shyness- big bad Bellamy, turned to a nervous mess at her provocation. It made her feel tingly- like phantom fingers trailing up her spine, and the sensation wasn’t lost on Bellamy either.

Hesitant, his eyes flickered to her face, she smiled reassuringly, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “It’s okay, just relax.”

He did as she told him, releasing a breath when her hand came down to run through the cluster of curls at the top of his head, smoothing them down. She watched the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed- averting his gaze, eventually shutting his eyes, breathing evenly as she continued her soothing ministrations.

Clarke was fascinated by Bellamy’s hair- even if it was slightly matted with debris and dust she brushed off. She liked watching his curls bounce back into place, she loved how soft his hair felt between her fingers as she combed through his tangles- she adored the way his facial features would twitch then soften each time she passed her hand through a particular knot.

Of course, this was a far cry from solving the fate of the world; but to Clarke, her sensibility and state of mind where two of the most important factors in her ability to deduce a problem, and come up with a rational plan.

So what better way to calm her frayed nerves then playing with her respected partners hair? It really was loosening her up; and Bellamy appeared to be in some kind of bliss, looking about ready to doze off on her lap. The corners of her lips quirked as she toyed with a lock of his dark hair- leaning down just a bit more so a long curtain of wavy blonde cascaded over her shoulder and just barely brushed over his cheekbone.

He mumbled something so low, her ears could hardly pick it up, even being this close to him.

“What was that?”

“Feels nice…”

Clarke smiled, then broke into an all-out grin.

“Yeah?” She raked a hand through his curls, pushing back his bangs.

“Yeah,” Bellamy swallowed, turning his head to lock eyes with her, amusement tugging one corner of his mouth. “Feel a bit like a dog though, but that’s fine.”

Clarke chuckled, “Well you’re loyal like one.”

Bellamy snorted, turning away from her- she quickly backtracked, not meaning to offend him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean... you’re not a dog, I just— “

“It’s alright,” He sighed. “I know what I’m about.”

Clarke shook her head, biting back another sassy retort- focusing more on the warm weight of Bellamy on her thighs, and the attempt to tame his wild curls (or more like make it even messier). The light of dusk was now approaching- the setting sun’s rays shone through the tall glass windows of the chamber, bathing the two in a luminescent orange glow.

She noticed how the dull light of the sunset on Bellamy’s face erased all his battle scars- made him appear softer, younger. Clarke tucked a curl behind his ear- realizing that they’re both going to have to evacuate Polis with the rest of Arkadia’s people soon. They’re both going to have to step into leadership- whether the people wanted them to or not. Whether they wanted to or not. She needed Bellamy for this- if they were going to survive this ordeal, she needed her equal.

Before her mind could finish processing her thoughts, her mouth was already forming the sentence.

“You know; they were going to hang you.”

Bellamy stirred in his wake, looking up at her through half-lidded eyes.

“When they were trying to break me—they, ALIE used my mother instead, but it was you they wanted.”

Clarke stopped her ministrations, leaning against the rail of the bed- swallowing back her words, she hadn’t meant to spill it to him, but it slipped off her tongue, Bellamy had that effect on her.

He was already sitting up, features contorting into his usual look of worry. He cocked his head to the side, his face just inches from her own, she could see better the scar on his lip, she could almost count every single freckle on his nose.

“Clarke…”

When she found herself drowning in depths of summery brown, Clarke quietly mumbled the truth she was hoping she’d never have to face again. “I was willing to let my mother die.”

She said it like an epiphany had come over her- and it had, in all honesty. Clarke had been prepared to watch Abby Griffin die in front of her own eyes- the woman who raised her, nurtured her- she recalled steeling herself for the inevitable, never looking away.

“You had to protect the passcode.” Bellamy voiced what raced through her head at that moment, and yes she did. Clarke always saw the bigger picture- for the greater good of their people.

Whatever it took, she thought, to protect them. But did that not make her a murderer in its own right?

“I know, but having to sacrifice her—watching her hang herself, Bellamy— “Clarke broke off with a deprecating laugh, “She’s my mother, my family. And I was going to kill her.”

“Clarke.”

The finality in his deep tone made her lips clamp shut. She felt tears prickling the corners of her eyes, and hastily blinked them away. No time to cry—they would be leaving soon, and if she was going to lead, she needed to be strong. Leaders don’t cry, they cope.

Bellamy lifted his hand, cupping the side of her cheek in such an uncharacteristically gentle way- Clarke’s heart thrummed in its cage. He wiped away the few tears that had managed to escape.

“I don’t want to go through that again.” She whispered, feeling the rough pads of his thumb on her cheek.

“You won’t have too.” He said, then paused. “I won’t let that happen.”

“What if it had been you?”

Bellamy dropped his hand to her neck, then her shoulder, then her arm. Each touch more tender than the last.

“What if it was you tying a rope around your neck—you that I was forced to watch… die.”

At that he shrugged, without a care in the world. It pissed her off more than anything.

“Then you let me die.”

Clarke huffed, blowing air out her nose, and swatting his hands away from her. “Of course you would say that.”

Bellamy took ahold of one her hands in his own, and she’s had just about enough to push him away- but decided against it.

“I’m serious Clarke—Hey, look at me.” He grabbed her chin, forcing her head still. She had the right mind to glare at him, narrowing dangeriously blue eyes.

“When it’s only sacrificing one life to save millions of others. You do it—without hesitation, you understand the consequences, and are willing to face them head on. You don’t give up, you’ll pull through. I know you.”

His gaze was heavy, and smoldering. His hands were too big, and too warm on her skin- he was crowding her. Clarke knew he was only referring to himself in that statement- because of course he is. He’s selfless, he’s brave—and no one else was more willing to face death head on if it meant better for the survivability of their people.

Clarke sniffed, “And what if it’s somebody I love?”

Bellamy was silent than, mouth opening then closing tightly in a grim line. He turned away, the warmth of his hands leaving her.

“Sometimes…” he clenched his jaw, a tick that happened whenever he didn’t fully agree with something. “Sometimes those decisions are painful to make—but if it’s for the better of keeping our people safe.”

Clarke figured she’d heard enough. “Bellamy— “

“Hey!”

The chamber door was thrown open, startling the two of their moment, Bellamy jumped to a stand in front of her, hands flying to the pistol strapped to his waist. Clarke’s voice stuck in her throat. Two Arkadian guards shuffled in, one of them looking more sheepish than the other at disturbing both Bellamy and Clarke from whatever it was they thought the two were doing.

Bellamy relaxed at the sight of familiar faces, “Miller, Harper. What’s going on?”

Miller stepped forward, not all fazed at the fact his own friend very nearly shot him. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

“Kane and Murphy gathered the rest of our people around Polis—Abby is already treating the rest that were taken down from the crucifixes.”

Bellamy swiftly glanced down to Clarke at the mention of the older Griffin.

“And Jaha?”

“Currently locked up in one of the dungeons,” Harper quipped from behind Miller, “We’ll set him free once we’re ready to leave.”

Bellamy nodded, “Alright, thanks for the update.”

Miller clapped a hand on his shoulder, “I’ll let you two know when it's time to evacuate the tower.”

“Roger that.”

Harper was the first out the door, Bellamy was just about to take a seat near Clarke once more before Miller called for him again, standing awkwardly near the door way.

Bellamy came over to him, “What is it?”

“Um—your sister, Octavia she—We couldn’t stop her from leaving, she— “

Bellamy stopped him with a wave of his hand, “It’s okay, I know.”

Clarke snapped her head up, even Miller appeared shocked—but noticing his friends pained expression, it quickly changed to one of sympathy.

“I’m sorry, man.”

Bellamy exhaled a long breath, “It’s okay, It’s Octavia. She can take care of herself.”

It sounded more as if he was trying to convince himself than the other. Miller kept his eyes cast down, patting him reassuringly on the back, before turning to leave.

Once the door was shut, Bellamy walked over to where Clarke lounged, dropping to sit by her side, his expression unreadable. They stayed like that for the next couple of minutes, basking in the heat of the dying sun rays, before Clarke broke the silence.

“Are you really okay?”

“Are you?” Came his gruff reply. Then he turned to face her, and the shield he was hiding behind slowly came down, because it was Clarke.

“I’m okay.” He said, then added more firmly. “I’ll be okay.”

And they lapsed into a comfortable silence once more. Both Co-leaders taking shelter in each other’s presence. Clarke rested her head upon his shoulder; and he turned to breath her in.

“I think we should get going.” Bellamy rumbled against her hair, to which she made a non-committal sound.

“… Or do you want to stay here and play with my hair some more?”

Clarke hid her smile against the fabric of his shirt, and she nodded.

#t100fic #t100oneshot #bellarke #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #i wonder if they'll ever be canon #whens season 5 it's been a year and a half

22 notes · View notes

sasha-whos-askin-racket · 7 years

Note

For the third part: Becker/Jess 12. "Let's get married!"

(I don’t know why Emily seems quite modern here, but she just is for some reason.)

Matt tensed instinctively, but his eyes remained trained on the floor. “T-That was Emily,” he said quietly, and in a split-second, Becker had turned on his heel and sprinted down the corridor.“Abby, with me. Connor, stay here and watch that little freak.” Matt said, before turning and following his friend.Abby glanced at Connor over her shoulder, and then walked after Matt.

Connor glanced down at Ethan, no, Patrick, who was sat leaning against the wall, and eventually spoke. “You know what?”Patrick looked up at him, brown eyes slightly softening. “What?”“I think, that if your brother could see you now, he’d be really disappointed in you.”Patrick gave a quiet hum of agreement. “You know, maybe he’s not quite as bad as I thought.”The boy’s eyes widened suddenly, and he scrambled to his feet. “Not as bad as I thought…That-That’s it.” And then he too was off down the corridor.Connor stared dumbly at the space where Patrick had been standing, before calling. “Hey! Wait up!” and chasing after him.

Becker was shoved into the wall, winding him.He blinked to clear his vision and found he was level with Matt’s wide hazel eyes.“Get a grip Becker.” The Irishman hissed. “You go in there all worked up and all you’re going to do is scare Emily. Calm down, compose yourself, take a breath, count to ten, do whatever you gotta do, and then go in there. Alright? Just breathe. You’re no good to anybody in this state, especially not Jess.”Becker nodded breathlessly, and tipped his head back until it was touching the wall, his brown eyes looking up at the cracked ceiling as though it held all the secrets of the universe, the feel of Matt’s hands heavy on his shoulders.He nodded again. “Alright. I’m okay.” he sighed, taking a deep breath. “I’m okay,” he said again, more to convince himself than Matt.The hands left his shoulders, and he straightened up, stepping over the threshold into the room.He’d anticipated what the sight before him would have been, but it still hadn’t exactly managed to prepare him.

Emily, sitting with her back to him, cross-legged, her head bowed so her curtain of brown hair hung in loose ringlets over her face, her shoulders shaking quietly.The room was nearly silent, so the whispered words of comfort she was providing sounded like the tolling of a church bell to Becker’s ears, as they had been tuned to the slightest of sounds by military precision.“Shhh. It’s okay. Jess. Jess, you’re going to be fine. Come on, just give me a smile, alright? Calm down… You know how much Becker loves you; he’s not going to let anything happen to you, I promise. This’ll all be over soon, and you’ll wake up in your own apartment and all of this will just seem like a bad, bad dream.”

He could just see Jess behind her, the field-coordinators head resting in the Victorian’s lap, her blue eyes focused on Emily’s face, their hands intertwined and sprawled haphazardly across Jess’s stomach.Jess said something, something that Becker couldn’t quite hear, but Emily laughed, a broken laugh, a laugh mixed with barely choked back tears and a weak smile.Jess reached up, and tucked a strand of Emily’s hair back behind the Victorian’s ear, the movement deliberate and careful.Emily brought her hand up to Jess’s and laced their fingers together, dragging their hand down until it rested on Emily’s knee.

Patrick practically burst in through the doorway, hitting his shoulder on the old wooden frame and causing it to shudder.Becker turned to face the sound, and suddenly Connor skidded to an untidy stop, the soles of his trainers kicking up a cloud of dust as he braced himself and tried to stay on his feet.“Sorry,” Connor panted. “He…He’s really fast.”“Don’t worry.” Becker remarked gruffly, knowing full well that Connor’s athletic prowess was somewhat lacking. “Anyway, what’s he want?”Becker seemed slightly more accommodating towards Ethan having learnt that he was actually Danny’s little brother; the exact brother whom had been presumed dead for the past sixteen years.

The more Becker watched him, the more similarities he noticed between the two.They had the same vaguely wild look in their eyes, the corner of their mouth pulled up to the side the same way when they smiled; and they even stood the same - one hand half in a pocket, the other fiddling with the hem of their jacket, right foot turned outwards with the leg bent slightly at the knee as they put more weight on their left side, head titled slightly forwards.

Patrick smiled, the smile that looked so unnatural on his face because it was Danny’s smile.“I just remembered something. Hand me your EMD?”Becker raised an eyebrow. “Absolutely not.”Patrick rolled his eyes. “Alright, Matt, hand me yours, I’m certain you’ll find this interesting.”

Fully aware that Becker was watching him, Matt reached to his waist and pulled out his EMD, extending it out towards Patrick.Patrick pulled out the one he used, and held them up next to each other, looking straight at Matt. “You see the difference, my friend?”Matt’s hazel eyes widened slightly, and a smile appeared on his face as he pointed to the one Patrick was holding in his right hand. “That…That’s the prototype. The one that accommodates for accidental misfires?”Patrick nodded, “Yeah. The very same. With a few modifications, of course.”Matt grinned, and turned to Becker. “You know what this means? No, no of course you don’t- Wait, modifications? What kind of modifications?”“Oh, nothing major. Just a few of the most basic effects of the gun wear off slower, and I changed the morality rate a little bit, but nothing super destructive.”

Becker glanced between the two men. “Would you two like to stop geeking out and explain what’s going on?”Matt nodded. “Ethan somehow got hold of the original version of the EMD, the first one I ever made. There were a few… how to put this…restrictions, that I’d put in place to try and stop any deaths in the case of misfires.”“Which means?”“Which means-” Patrick continued “-That when the barrel of the gun comes into contact with human skin, the effects of the blasts are somewhat diminished, making it more likely that the subject will survive the shot.”“It’s a 50/50 chance, isn’t it mate?” Asked Matt.Patrick shook his head. “No, that was one of the modifications. I didn’t intend to be firing at any humans, so I dropped the survival rate to 40%.”Matt shrugged. “Not ideal, but still a better chance than she would have had normally.”He turned to Becker. “This is great news, I don’t see why you aren’t happier about this.”Becker shrugged. “I don’t really understand it.”Matt rolled his eyes. “Jess is going to be okay. She’s not going to die, she’ll be no worse for wear than you after Ethan shot you last week.”“Well…”Matt sighed. “I know. I know. Height, weight differentiation and all that. Wait… You modified the symptoms, right?”“Er..” Patrick looked vaguely sheepish. “Well, I mean, your instructions weren’t very clear, so I was kinda flying blind on the whole, you know, changing the settings and, trying not to kill anything, and I made a few mistakes, but managed to test it out on a few people while travelling through gateways.”“And…?”

Patrick began to pace, his hand clenching and unclenching in his pocket.“She’ll lose consciousness again in a moment, that’s completely normal, her body’s trying to adjust because it can’t deal with the information being suddenly presented to it. She’s a small girl, so it’s a lot for her body to cope with. She’ll regain consciousness a few hours from now-” He turned on the spot, and then began to pace in the other direction, rubbing his hands together nervously, not meeting Becker’s eyes. “-But there’s a small chance she’ll be mildly delirious. Worst case scenario is that she possibly wont know where she is, or recognise anybody. Best case, is that she’ll babble on about nothing to you for hours on end. If that occurs, it should begin to subside in a few hours, and she’ll be back to normal - if a bit subdued and sore - by this time tomorrow, at the earliest.”

Becker nodded, though he still looked slightly displeased. “Alright. I’ll be staying with Jess tonight then. And you-”He turned to Patrick. “Why are you helping us?”Patrick glanced over at Connor, smiling sheepishly. “Something your friend said about my brother made me realise a few things.”Becker sighed. “Okay, well…I want you to go through the first anomaly you find. Your brother’s not here, he’s lost in time somewhere.”Patrick nodded, and then turned and strode away, vanishing into thin-air in the same unnatural way that Helen used to.

X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X

Becker sat on the bar stool in Jess’s kitchen, a mug of rapidly cooling black coffee held tightly in his hands as he carefully studied the Jess-sized lump curled up on her sofa.He had originally unwrapped her threaded Disney blanket that she normally used as a balance for her wobbly coffee table and thrown it over her, but after he’d made a cup of coffee and come back to find that she’d sweated right through it, he’d tucked his jacket around her shoulders instead, and that was how she was lying now; facing him, his black jacket covering her upper-body, her hair falling across her pale face, her expression pained, as though she was dreaming of being pricked by a pin.And Becker sat, watching her, almost studying her, memorising every line on her face, since he knew in his heart of hearts that she’d never look so vulnerable in front of him again.She shifted slightly, and his jacket slipped off her body, landing with a soft thump on the floor.

Becker stood, and placing his mug on the desk next to him, carefully stepped across the room.He reached the sofa, bent down, picked up his jacket, shook it out as though trying to get off any dust and then draped it back over Jess, kneeling down in front of her as he fiddled with the zip of his jacket so it didn’t stick into her, a soft smile gracing his face as he tugged the dark fabric around her slender frame, resisting the urge to lean forwards and kiss her forehead.

He settled instead for smoothing down her hair with a vaguely shaking hand, and the second he touched her, her blue eyes flickered open, and she swallowed thickly.Becker instinctively recoiled, hoping the darkness of her living room hid the blush creeping up his usually place face.“B-Becker? Is that you?”He swallowed back his smile, and tried to keep his voice neutral as he spoke. “Yeah,” Jess closed her eyes again, sighing deeply. “Wh-Where are we?”“Your apartment.”She opened one eye, glancing up at him and then around the room. “Are we?”“Uh, yeah. Do you want to sit up?”“Sure.” She pushed herself up gently, Becker holding her gently by the hands.

She smiled at him, and Becker noticed she look vaguely dazed, gazing around her in pleasant surprise.She giggled suddenly, and Becker almost gave a sigh of exasperation, “What?” he asked her.She turned to him. “Oh, nothing.” and then she drew her legs up to her body. “Have you ever thought about how weird spiders are?”Becker sighed. “Oh, I should have let Emily come look after you instead.”“No, seriously. I mean. they’re so weird. They have eight legs. Why do they need eight legs? Imagine if we had eight legs. Hey Becker, imagine Lester with eight legs.” She giggled again. “Are you listening to me Becker? I don’t think you are. Spiders are kinda freaky, but they’re better than insects. I don’t like insects. Did you know insects can bite? I did. Hey Becker? Would it be weird if I said that I thought you were kinda cute?”“Yes.”Jess continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “Because you are. You’re cute when you wrinkle your nose when Connor does something stupid. And you’re cute when you do that thing with your eyebrows when Matt annoys you. And you’ve got nice hair. I think I love you. Is that weird? I think we should get married. Let’s get married. Can we get married?”He turned to glance at her. “We’ll see if you still feel like it in the morning.”“Okay. I’ll still want to get married to you then. Because we’re in love.”

Becker sighed, leaning back on the sofa, closing his eyes and letting Jess’s excited babble wash over him like an ocean wave.Boy, this sure would be a long night.

#my writing

1 note · View note

askaphmaine · 5 years

Text

Anthony had heard the stories about the mansion on the hill. Everyone in their city had. It was something right out of a horror movie, making it often the subject of schoolyard tales. Not that he cared. It was just some abandoned house. Sure, it was strange that the city hadn’t taken the land and used it but he was sure that was only due to how expensive it would be to knock it down. Anthony was sure that the house was completely normal. So why was he sweating when Hudson dared him to spend the night? Why did he shake as he approached the door? Pushing the door open, he repeated over and over that the house was just that, a house.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting but the interior of the house didn’t look too bad. There were even a few candles illuminating the entryway. He carefully closed the door behind him, walking towards the grand staircase leading deeper into the house.

“Wasn’t expecting a visitor this All Hallows Eve. Not sure if I want one, to be honest.” Anthony jumped, looking around for the voice. Nothing. A cold chill ran down his spine as the candles slowly flickered out until only the door was lit.

“Uh, sorry. I can lea-” A pair of violet eyes stared at him from the top of the stairs. For once in his life, Anthony couldn’t say a word or even move. He couldn’t tell if it was pure fear or if the strange eyes were doing...something to him. A gust left him in total darkness, the eyes watching him. A blink, then nothing. Pitch black darkness. And...breathing? Anthony blinked feeling the warm air on his face before panic set in. He felt everything go dark.

When he awoke, the first thing Anthony noticed was just how soft everything felt. A cloud wrapped in velvet. The second was a pair of blurry violet eyes staring down at him in an obviously lit room.

“BY EVERYTHING HOLY, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.” Scrambling back, he felt his head slam into something wooden.

“Wow, rude.” A hand moved into view, holding what seemed to be his glasses. “I help you after you break in and pass out and that’s how you thank me?” Anthony carefully took the glasses, looking up at the strange boy sitting at the foot of the bed.

“I-I thought this house was abandoned. You really freaked me out.”

“Not my fault, bud. Maybe you should blindly listen to rumors.” The odd boy leaned back, picking at his nails. “Don’t we have a chemistry class together? Any reason you broke in? Or should I just call the cops?”

“I’m sorry. It was a dare from my brother. I can leave now if you’d like. It didn’t sound like you were happy to see me earlier.” Aaron gave him a weird look.

“Earlier?”

“At the door?”

“Dude, I found you blacked out. You’re lucky I’m home alone.” Anthony paled. If it wasn’t Aaron or his family at the door, then who? “Are you going to pass out again? Damn, you’re not drunk or something, right?” Anthony shook his head.

“No, I’m not. Just a bit out of it, I guess. Really though, I’ll leave. It might be best for me to get home anyway.” As Anthony moved to get out of the bed he suddenly felt a weight on his torso, pushing him back down. As his vision began to fade, he could hear Aaron trying to talk to him, trying to shake him, then nothing.

This time, he woke up alone, with only the moon shining through the window. Cobwebs littered the room as if it hadn’t been occupied in a couple of decades, the air heavy with age. But, he had only been out for an hour at most, right? How could it go from a normal, warm, comfortable bedroom to this? And where was Aaron? Anthony knew he was real. He had touched the other boy, hadn’t he? And someone had to have moved him from the entryway. Shakily, he made his way to the door. Opening it made his hand feel as cold as ice. What’s worse was the sight in front of him. Etched into the wallpaper was his own name. Anthony thought about simply turning around and trying to sleep on the bed once more. Unless Hudson really wanted him to have a panic attack, Anthony doubted he would go this far. And he was honestly afraid of what lay farther into the house. With a deep breath, he began to move through the house.

Anthony felt like he had fallen into another world. The house groaned with every step he took and the hallways began to loop. No matter what way he went, he ended up right back at his name, carved into the wall. There was no way this was just some sick joke. Where ever he was wasn’t letting him out anytime soon. Leaning next to the door, he felt a wave of emotions rush over him. Anger, fear, panic, and worst of all, defeat. Whatever was in the house, that ‘Aaron’, won. Anthony slowly slid down to the floor, staring back at his name.

“You mortals are boring. You entered the house to get scared, right? So why aren’t you freaking out?” Anthony blinked. Turning his head, he saw those eyes staring at him from the end of the hallway. “Honestly, I went through so much work and you didn’t even scream.” Aaron walked forward, frowning.

“I didn’t want to be scared. I just wanted my brother to leave me alone about this place.” He whispered. “Do you want my soul? Is that it?” Aaron ignored the questions, moving to sit next to him.

“Who doesn’t want to be scared? Isn’t that the point of All Hallows Eve? You mortals are an odd bunch.”

“Demon? Devil? Ghost?”

“Fairy.” Anthony blinked.

“What?”

“I’m a fairy. Got the wings and everything. I just don’t feel like having them out.” Aaron shrugged, glancing over. “You know, I go to your school. Pretty stupid, if you ask me. I’m almost immortal, so why do I need to learn stupid things like math? I think the reasoning was ‘something something socialize’ or whatever. Not my thing.”

“Can I see them?” Aaron jumped, looking over at the taller boy. “Your wings?”

“I...guess? I doubt they’ll look like you think they do.” Aaron stood, taking off his jacket. Slowly, two lumps began to form, taking the shape of chickadee wings. “See.”

“They’re pretty…” Anthony murmured, reaching out slightly.

“Okay, you’re getting delirious. I guess this joke went on long enough. Sleep tight, kitten, or the big bad bird might just get ya.”

Anthony didn’t know what to do. He had been woken up by the sun, right in front of the door, effectively winning him the bet but he was in shock. A classmate of his was an immortal fairy who thought it was fun to terrify people. And now that he knew, it seemed like he was seeing Aaron everywhere. The shorter boy seemed to notice this, sending smirks his way when no one was looking. By the end of the school day, Anthony was ready to sprint home but found himself instead walking towards the almost empty music classroom. Aaron sat alone in the room, fiddling with something before turning to give Anthony a confused look.

“Thought you would’ve left. Unless you...want to be scared? Or to try and threaten me?” Anthony only blinked in response. He honestly wasn’t sure why he came back inside. “Listen, I was only teasing today. As I said, I’m almost immortal. It’s rare to find something interesting now and your reactions to me are so odd. Most people either run like hell or try to fight. You just… don’t react.”

“I’m not mad. I think. But I do have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why?”

“Why what? Why did I trap you? Why did I tell you what I am? Simple. I wanted to. No more reason than that.”

“Why not just trap me? I know you think I’m,” Anthony paused, looking away. “Interesting. But wouldn’t trapping me forever be more...fun?” Aaron rolled his eyes.

“You mortals are a weird bunch. You’d get used to being trapped. Your reactions would get boring again. No, you being free is better. I get to see how you react to so many different things, things I would never think to throw at you. A caged mouse is a lot less interesting than a free one. Besides, I can always trap you later.” A toothy grin followed that sentence. Anthony winced. “I’m joking. I mean, I do find your reactions interesting but…” Aaron paused, looking down at whatever he was holding. Anthony glanced closer before realizing it was a violin of some kind.

“But what?” Aaron sighed, lifting the instrument to his shoulder.

“Mortals shouldn’t ask so many questions. That’s how you get tricked. Now, I’m going to begin to play and you’re going to leave this room like nothing happened. Like this entire conversation, never happened.” Anthony opened his mouth to argue but the soft melody that drifted through the air shut him up faster than he thought a song could.

But he refused to move. He could tell there was more. Even if Aaron refused to admit it. Suddenly the older boy sighed and stopped playing. “Do you know what happens when a fairy feels love for a mortal? It’s dangerous. A dangerous, dangerous game for both parties. And I should know. I had to watch as my love gave up his soul to become immortal. To be with me. And you know what? He can’t be. Ever. He lost everything that day. His immortality is rebirth. When he remembers, he loses it all over again. And again and again and again. Each time, I watch him descend into madness and each time, I fail to save him. I could cage him but he’d just die and the cycle would start again. I’m the loser in the game. Every one of his names is etched into my heart, Anthony. And if you question deeper, I may just trap you. If only to be selfish for once.” He gulped, reeling from the answers he had finally been given.

“Then do it.” He felt warm lips cover his in the blink of an eye, icy tears dropping onto his face. Maybe he was just a tragedy in the form of man but hell did it feel like heaven right now.

#albgusta #aph albany #aph augusta

1 note · View note

searchingwardrobes · 4 years

Text

Self-Promo Sunday: A Pirate’s Life

Summary:Emma and Killian have agreed that no matter what, their daughters won't have to grow up the way they did. But Emma isn't letting them grow up without a father, either.

I wrote this speculation fic back before season seven aired. If only A&E had asked me what I wanted . . .

Words: 2,500 and some change

Rating: G for nauseating fairy tale romance, cute kids, and happy endings

On Ao3 until Sunday, December 15th, 2019

Tagging the usuals: @snowbellewells @kmomof4 @xhookswenchx @welllpthisishappening @let-it-raines @teamhook @bethacaciakay @whimsicallyenchantedrose @jennjenn615 @distant-rose @delirious-latenight-laughs @optomisticgirl @spartanguard @profdanglaisstuff @tiganasummertree @resident-of-storybrooke @snidgetsafan @thislassishooked @branlovestowrite @scientificapricot @stahlop @hollyethecurious @shireness-says @winterbaby89

As they watched the dark, swirling clouds building on the horizon, Emma grasped Killian’s hook tightly in her hand. Killian knew it was impossible, but he could swear sometimes he could feel her touch through the cool metal. He tugged on her hand as he turned towards her. When her frightened eyes met his, he cupped her cheek.

“Emma, love, I want you to get back to the girls as fast as you can.”

Her jade eyes widened a fraction, then her mouth set in a firm line as she shook her head. “No, Killian, we’ll face this the same way we do everything: together.”

He gave her a wobbly smile as he caressed her cheek with his thumb. “But we have no idea what this darkness will do, my love. Did we not make a vow that our daughters would never have to grow up the way we did?”

Tears welled in her eyes, and Killian could plainly see that she had no argument against his logic. He pressed his forehead to hers, and they both closed their eyes against the pain. “You’ll find us,” she whispered, and his heart soared as he heard the same conviction in her voice that her mother always had.

“Aye,” he replied, then brushed a kiss to her forehead, “don’t I always?”

Emma pulled back to give him a reluctant smile, then turned to Henry. She cupped his face in both her hands and pulled his forehead down so she could brush a kiss to his temple. “I love you, Henry, and I am so proud of you.”

“I love you too, Mom,” the young man replied, his voice breaking as he swallowed thickly. He glanced at Killian, “Dad’s right, my sisters need you.”

Tears spilled down Emma’s cheeks as she pulled away, the title Henry used breaking the last vestiges of her control. She spun then and flung herself into Killian’s arms, pulling him to her in a searing kiss.

“They need you, too,” she choked when she finally broke the kiss.

“Do you really think I’ll let you miss out on one minute of raising them?” Killian asked. He thumbed away one of Emma’s tears even as tears of his own tracked down his face. He kissed her again, hard and fierce, then pushed her away gently. “Go, Swan, please. Before it’s too late.”

Emma gave each of her men one last, longing gaze, then turned and raced deeper into the forest. Killian and Henry gave one another grim nods, then turned with swords raised to face the darkness.

*********************************************************

“Hook isn’t going to like this.”

Emma looked up from where she knelt by her daughters’ bed and gave Tiger Lily a wry grin. “Well, too bad. He’ll get over it.” She rose, giving both girls a feather light kiss across their brows, and turned towards the window. “Killian will forgive me; he always does. My stubbornness is one of the reasons he fell in love with me, after all.”

Tiger Lily chuckled as she joined Emma at the window. Emma hugged her arms to her chest as she regarded the dark-haired woman who had become a dear friend. She took a deep shuddering breath, and Tiger Lily seemed to sense her apprehension.

“Hey,” she encouraged, resting her hand on Emma’s elbow, “just because I know Hook won’t like it doesn’t mean I think it’s a bad idea.”

Emma gave Tiger Lily a half-smile in response and a brief nod. “I’m casting the spell, but I’m relying on you for protection. We can’t have just anyone wandering in.”

In answer, Tiger Lily threw her arms around Emma’s neck. “I would die before I let anything happen to Hook’s girls.” She drew back and the two women exchanged smiles before Tiger Lily turned and descended the stairs.

Once she was gone, Emma turned to the window. She gazed out for a long moment, then lifted her hands.

“I’m sorry, Killian,” she said as a blue mist shimmered and then began to descend around the castle, “but I can’t let them grow up without you, either.”

*****************************************************

Officer Rogers rubbed his stubbled jaw as he read back over the case file on his desk. He didn’t know why he kept thinking that he had missed something. He had gone over all the physical evidence in the locker downstairs with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. He had read over witness transcripts dozens of times. And the photograph . . .

He picked up the glossy five by seven of the missing four year old twins and gazed at it for what felt like the millionth time. Everyone else in the precinct told him he had to let it go. The girls had been missing for far too long; most likely they were dead. Even if they were still living, it was the FBI’s case now, not there’s. But Officer Rogers couldn’t let it go. Something about those faces . . . every time he looked into the two sets of eyes in that photograph – one a bright blue and the other a sea green – an urgency rose up in him to find those little girls.

They were out there, somewhere, and he had the oddest sense that they were waiting on him to find them . . .

**************************************************

“A sleeping curse!”

Tinkerbell flinched at his red-faced outburst, but Tiger Lily stood calmly. “I told her you wouldn’t like it, but you know how Emma is.”

“Bloody hell,” Killian muttered, running his hand through his dark hair agitatedly. “You mean to tell me they’ve been suffering in that fiery red room for the last eight years?”

Tink rolled her eyes, and Killian clenched his fist in frustration. Did these fairies not see the seriousness of the situation?

“Please, Hook, do you really think Emma would do something that would harm the girls? This sleeping spell came from light magic, not dark. They’ve been peacefully slumbering with pleasant dreams awaiting your kiss –“

“Then the sooner I get there the better,” Killian cut the fairy off as he strode to the stables. It would be but a few hours ride, but he didn’t want to waste a single second. The fairies scurried behind him.

“Take the white one,” Tiger Lily instructed, “it’s more romantic.”

Killian rolled his eyes, but saddled the white stallion anyway.

“And your clothes are all wrong,” she continued as her eyes examined his dark wash jeans and leather motorcycle jacket. She produced her fairy wand and waved it at him. He was momentarily enveloped in a cloud of smoke, and when it cleared, he was wearing blue velvet breeches and a white and gold doublet with a blue velvet cape. “That’s better,” Tiger Lily said with a satisfied nod.

“No, that’s completely wrong,” argued Tink. She wrinkled her nose at Killian’s princely garments. “Emma won’t like that at all.” She waved her own wand, and this time when the smoke cleared, Killian was wearing his old pirate duster, leather pants, and a leather vest with wide, ornate silver buckles.

Killian glanced down at the familiar clothes then locked eyes with the blonde fairy. He nodded and gave her a smirk. “You know me so well, Tink.”

Tink crossed her arms and gave Tiger Lily a satisfied look, but her brunette compatriot only rolled her eyes. Killian mounted his horse and galloped out of the stables and towards the castle in the distance.

“Think I should have told him about the dragon?” Tiger Lily mused as they watched him ride off.

Tink gave Tiger Lily a mischievous smile. “Nah. It’s about time we had a little fun at his expense.”

*************************************************************

Killian wasn’t surprised to find the castle surrounded by thorny vines; Tiger Lily had explained her protection spell. If it worked correctly, the vines should part for him. And only him.

He slid from his mount and hastened towards the drawbridge, but before he could cross, a shriek split the air and he heard the familiar heavy, flapping sound of leathery wings.

“A dragon,” Killian groaned, “of course there’s a bloody dragon.”

He pulled his sword as the dragon landed heavily on the other side of the moat. All David had to do was gallop down the road and traipse through the forest to kiss his true love. But he and Emma? Oh no, they had to have deadly thorns and fiery dragons thrown into the mix.

The moat was bone dry as if it hadn’t been filled with water in many long years. Killian took advantage of that fact and scrambled down its banks. The dragon roared as it circled about, clearly unsure about where Killian had disappeared to. Once Killian scrambled up the opposite side of the moat, the dragon’s back was to him. He swung with his sword, and though the steel barely made a dent in the giant beast’s armor, the creature still reared up on its hind legs and howled in pain. Killian raced around to the dragon’s front, hoping for a clear shot at its chest, but the reptile had anticipated this. Its chest filled with fire, its head rearing back, and Killian ducked down, waiting for the blast of fire.

He heard the dragon release a stream of flames, but he felt nothing. At first he thought maybe his body was numb in its last moments before death, but then he lifted his head hesitantly. The fire streamed around him, as if he were encased in a force field of magic. He grinned suddenly, thinking of Tiger Lily, then he stood to his full height.

The flames ceased, and Killian still stood there staring confidently at the dragon. The beast sat back on its haunches regarding him with cool, glittering eyes. The fierce eyes seemed to soften, and then the creature curled in on itself, its wings covering its body. Before Killian’s eyes, it seemed to shrink, then shift. Then the wings fell away, and standing before him was a woman.

Killian blinked and shook his head. “Lily?”

The woman smiled as she walked forward. “Yeah, it’s me. Sorry about all that. Tiger Lily asked me to help her protect the castle. Said I wouldn’t be able to hurt you even if I tried. Glad to see she was right.”

Killian chuckled awkwardly as he reached out his hand to shake hers. “And I apologize for attacking you – for the second time.”

Lily shrugged, then leaned towards him conspiratorially, “You would never have beaten me anyway, pirate.” She straightened, then turned to gesture towards the castle. “Well, it’s all yours then. Tell Emma sorry I didn’t stay to chat. I got a date on Lonely Mountain.”

With one last wave and a parting wink, Lily jogged across the drawbridge, transforming as she went. Then she was in the sky, wheeling on the breeze with a loud shriek.

Killian re-sheathed his sword and turned towards the castle. The wall of thorny vines surrounding it were at least six feet deep, but just as Tiger Lily said they would, they parted automatically at the slightest touch of his hook. He grasped the heavy ornate door knob, but he barely had to turn it before the door swung gently open.

The room he stepped into was eerily quiet and covered in a layer of dust and cobwebs. The wall sconces and chandeliers were rusted and hanging at precarious angles, all of it speaking of death and decay. Except for the exquisite, angelic creature laying on a dais in the center of the room. A shaft of light shone through a skylight, bathing his Swan in its light.

He approached the dais slowly, reverently, and gazed down upon Emma, who slept with a peaceful smile upon her face. She was dressed in a long, shimmery white gown, and a circlet of pearls rested atop her golden tresses.

“Emma,” Killian breathed as he bent over her, his knuckles softly caressing her cheek. The minute his lips brushed hers, light pulsed outward from the contact. Then Emma’s eyes flew open and she surged upward with a gasp. She turned to him, smiling brightly.

“You found me.”

“I told you I – “ but Emma broke his words off with a kiss of her own. It was much like their kiss in Neverland, her hands fisted around the lapels of his jacket, her lips pillaging his hungrily, and he responding in kind.

When they parted they gazed at each other in ecstasy for a moment – one brief moment. Then Emma looked around her, scowling.

“What the hell? This isn’t how I went to sleep!”

Killian chuckled as he helped her down from the ornate dais where she had spent the last eight years slumbering. “I believe this was Tinkerbell’s contribution to the spell. She and Tiger Lily both insisted on a maximum amount of romance.”

“But the girls are all the way upstairs in the tower!” Emma exclaimed, pulling him by his hook towards the stairs.

“The girls!” Without another word spoken, Killian raced after her.

When they reached the top of the spiral staircase, they both had to shove the door open. The bed Emma had originally gone to sleep in was wedged against it.

“You wanted me to shove you to the floor in order to get in?” Killian asked her wryly.

Emma rolled her eyes, “Mama bear always puts herself between danger and her cubs, okay pirate? I’m going to kill Tinkerbell. Romance my ass!”

It didn’t take long for them to get the door open and burst into the room. Tink had done a number here, too. The girls were sleeping atop satin sheets, and a gauzy sleeping curtain surrounded them. Killian pushed the curtain aside and fell to his knees beside the bed. Emma hurried to the other side and knelt as well.

Killian brushed aside the blonde hair that fell across his daughter’s forehead. Across the bed, Emma did the same to their other daughter’s dark hair. Their eyes met.

“Together?” he asked. Emma nodded.

“Leia, I love you,” Killian breathed as he bent to kiss the child’s forehead.

“I love you, Lizzie,” Emma whispered on the other side of the bed.

The sleeping curtain rustled sharply as the wave of magic burst forth. Killian watched as Leia’s blue eyes fluttered open. She looked up at him with a small smile and a tiny wrinkle in her forehead.

“Daddy?”

Killian’s grin threatened to split both his cheeks at the sight of his little girl. She jumped up and threw her arms around his neck. He held her tight, marveling at how much he had missed her even though he had no memory of her as Officer Rogers. On the other side of the bed, Emma caught his eye as she embraced Lizzie, a beatific smile upon her face.

Lizzie turned and squealed, “Daddy!” and then all four of them were tumbling upon the bed in a giggling mass of hugs and kisses. At one point, Lizzie grasped her father’s face in her little hands and pressed her tiny nose to his. Her green eyes bore into him as she gazed at him seriously. “I dreamed I was a princess, Daddy, and you were my prince.”

He locked eyes with Emma again as tears threatened to spill over. “Well,” Emma managed to say, voice thick with emotion, “I would say that dream came true, sweetie.”

Lizzie showered her father’s face with kisses as Leia began to jump on the bed. The child suddenly stopped, scowling down at her lace trimmed, satin dress. She reached a hand up to touch the diamond-encrusted tiara atop her head.

She wrinkled her nose in a perfect imitation of her mother, and then said in a saucy voice, “What the bloody hell am I wearing?”

Emma and Killian laughed at that until their sides ached, and then each rose from the bed, gathering a twin each. Emma flicked her wrist towards Killian and Lizzie, changing their clothes back to those of the Land Without Magic. Then she did the same to herself and Leia.

“Well, Joneses,” Emma said with a tilt of her head, “I’d say it’s time to go home.”

The other three agreed with a hearty aye. Emma tossed the magic bean she held in her hand, and the Joneses jumped into the portal that would take them home.

#cs ff #cs spec #spec originally anyway #now canon divergence #self-promo sunday

31 notes · View notes