#every story should end with Mallory somehow saving the day | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mascwhump · 3 years

Text

Plotting (Chapter 15.5?)

Canon!

Crow opened his eyes to see a pair of boots. He rolled onto his back and rubbed his head.

“Hey, mate. You’ve got to move. You can’t sleep here.”

He looked up to see a man staring at him with a look of slight annoyance. Crow got to his feet and leaned on the cinder lock wall behind him.

“Sorry, I’m leaving,” Crow mumbled.

“Must’ve been a hell of a night,” the man said, “Need me to call you a cab?”

“Could... could I call my mate, actually?” Crow asked.

The man pulled out his cell phone and handed it to him. Crow dialed Deke’s number and looked around as it rang. They had dropped him off, unconscious from the drugs they had given him, in some alley.

“Hello?”

“Deke, hey,” Crow said.

“Crow?! Holy shit, where are you?” Deke practically yelled into the phone. Adrian and Ethan began talking in the background.

“I’m, uh- hey, where are we?” Crow asked the man.

“7th and Polar,” the man replied.

“7th and Polar,” Crow repeated into the phone.

“That’s uh... right, okay. We’re coming. Is Charlie with you?”

“No,” Crow mumbled.

“Okay. Shit, okay. We’re coming. Hang tight.”

Crow handed the phone back to the man after hanging up.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t mention it. This is my restaurant right here, why don’t you come inside and have some tea while you wait? It’s about to rain,” the man said.

Crow followed him around to the front. He sat at a table near the window, watching as raindrops began to trickle down the glass. The man soon brought a cup of tea and set it in front of him.

“My name’s Beck, by the way,” he said.

“Crow,” he replied, extending his hand, “Nice place you’ve got here.”

“Thanks, it’s been in our family for years. It’s usually pretty busy, but as you can see, there’s not a lot of business at midnight on a Wednesday,” Beck laughed.

“Why stay open so late, then?” Crow asked.

“I get the occasional drunk crowd that orders enough to make it worth it,” Beck said.

Crow sipped on the tea. His head was pounding, but the hot liquid helped a bit. He noticed Beck was staring at the bandage on his arm, and rolled his sleeve down.

“I’ve got to finish cleaning the back,” Beck said, “but feel free to grab a newspaper from the rack to keep yourself occupied.”

After he was out of sight, Crow took him up on the offer and took a newspaper. He made it about halfway through the second page before he fell asleep with his head on the table.

“Hey, I think your mates are here,” Beck said.

Crow startled awake and looked out the window. The jeep was parked out front, and the three of them were piling out of it. He stood and walked outside to meet them.

“Crow,” Adrian said, walking up to him with a slight limp.

“Your leg,” Crow said.

“It’s fine. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Crow reached into Adrian’s shirt pocket and took his wallet. He pulled out a £10 note and turned back to hand it to Beck.

“Thank you for your help,” he said.

“Anytime. Be safe,” Beck said, smiling.

Crow climbed into the passenger seat. Deke was driving, and Adrian and Ethan were in the back.

“So, what the hell happened? How’d you get out? Where’s Charlie?” Deke asked.

“Long story short, Mallory took Charlie to his house, and I was brought there a few days later. He made this mind control drug, and he almost made me shoot myself. From what I understand, he didn’t intend the gun to actually be loaded. So, for some reason, he let me go. I don’t know if it was to somehow apologize, or what, but I wouldn’t have gone if I wasn’t under that damn drug.”

It was silent for a moment as the group considered what he said. Crow’s chest began to ache as he remembered Charlie’s reaction in that moment.

“That seems... unlike him,” Adrian spoke.

“I know, I don’t understand it,” Crow said.

“We’re going back for Charlie, right?” Ethan asked.

“Of course we are,” Crow replied, “Even though he begged me not to. Once we get home, I’m doing everything I can to figure out that bastard’s address.”

The rest of the drive was talk of miscellaneous details, intel, and ideas. Deke parked the Jeep in front of the house, and they soon went inside. Crow went straight to the shower. He was careful with the cut on his arm, and knew Ethan needed to look at it. He put on clean clothes and went out to the dining table, where the others were waiting. Without saying anything, Ethan went to retrieve his kit and started inspecting his arm.

“I was drugged during the trips to and from his house. I don’t remember how far it was from the compound. I do know that you only need a car to get there,” Crow said.

Ethan put some antibiotic cream on his arm before wrapping it in a new bandage. He didn’t seem too concerned about it, for which Crow was relieved.

“I’ll talk to command. They should be able to find us an address,” Adrian said.

“I hope so. Command doesn’t seem too interested in helping us with this,” Crow replied.

“It’s shite. It’s like they’re acting as if this is no big deal. I had a meeting with them yesterday, and they want this entire mission dropped,” Adrian said, voice slightly raised.

“They’re probably the ones investing in this, especially the Americans. I mean, think about it. What he’s creating would be invaluable to our militaries. Maybe they sent us out there to save face,” Deke said.

Crow stared at him for a moment before sighing. He couldn’t entertain the idea, as much sense as it made. Ethan handed him a couple of paracetamol tablets and a glass of water.

“We all need to get some rest,” Crow said, “we can discuss this more in the morning.”

He took the pills and drank the rest of the water. They said their goodnights and filed into their rooms, while Deke got comfortable on the couch. Crow crawled under his sheets. The relief his muscles felt from the plush bed was immense. He stared at the ceiling for a while, mind racing as he tried to come up with a plan. He ended up falling asleep eventually, but woke from every small noise.

#easton’s unnamed story #oc

12 notes · View notes

this-is-freeridge · 4 years

Text

The Air Between Us

Chapter Nineteen: Mari finally faces her family.

Warning: this fic deals with dark themes, including but not limited to teen pregnancy, rape, drug abuse, murder, abortion, underage drinking and underage sex. Read at your own risk.

Find all the other chapters here.

Read the better-edited and revised version here.

The chicken tasted like cardboard, the pudding tasted like sawdust. Mari stopped trying to eat after the first couple of days. The upside to this was that the lack of food made it a lot easier to spend most of her days in blissful unconsciousness.

The downside was that it also meant she wasn’t healing as she should be.

Mari ended up being kept in that hospital room going on two weeks. Doctor O’Connor said it was to allow her to heal, but the way Latisha looked at Mari said otherwise. The way Latisha looked at Mari said she was worried what the girl might do if she weren’t there.

So every day for almost two weeks, Mari spent hours with Latisha relearning how to walk, how to eat, how to go to the bathroom.

And every day for almost two weeks, she tried to call Oscar.

And every day for almost two weeks, he didn’t answer.

The radio silence was killing her, and it was getting harder and harder to even pick up the phone and try every day. But she couldn’t do this without someone, and she wanted that someone to be him. She didn’t know if he was even listening to the messages she was leaving, and part of her hoped he wasn’t because she was well aware how desperate she sounded in the vast majority of them.

Although she hadn’t truly expected him to stick around, not for the long-term anyway, this wasn’t how she had anticipated it ending between them. At least, she thought, it would be a clean break. This way, she thought, it’ll be so much easier to get over him. (Or that’s what she told herself, every night for almost two weeks, as she lay in bed and tried not to cry.)

And every day for almost two weeks, Ruben and Geny came to visit, but Mari turned them away each time. She couldn’t let them see her like this; weak and bruised and beaten down, barely able to stand on her own.

After everything she had survived with Mallory, she was strong enough to get out; to run away and save herself. But she wasn’t strong enough to deal with this. How could she face the people she had run to?

Mari hated the thought of disappointing Ruben. She hated the thought of proving Geny right about her and of being a bad role model for Olivia and Monse (and even Ruby, Cesar and Jamal, to some extent).

She hated that she had probably lost whatever good thing she had going on with Oscar.

She hated that she couldn’t even bring herself to see the baby; the baby, who was still in critical condition, and who Mari still hadn’t given a name. The deadline coming up on that, too. Just another thing on the list of things that were suffocating her, she supposed.

Doctor O’Connor had come to see her, birth certificate in hand, sometime around the first few days. She hadn’t pushed anything, remained neutral and unbiased as she had given Mari all the information she needed.

“By California law,” she had said, “you have two weeks from the date of birth to complete the birth certificate. Given that this baby was so premature and we weren’t sure if he would even survive out of the womb, I didn’t want to bother you with this but he is stable now. It’s looking good for him, so I do think you need to decide what you’re going to do,”

Mari could only shake her head and shrug in response.

“I don’t know. I haven’t even seen him, I don’t want to. The other women in the ward,” (Mari refused to label herself a mother,) “they keep telling me: he’s beautiful and strong, just like you, dear. They say I can’t choose until I meet him,”

She hadn’t been expecting Doctor O’Connor to turn around and say: “No. You have to do it for you, forget what everyone else is saying and ask yourself; what do you need?"

But that was part of the problem; almost two weeks later and Mari was still a jumbled mess of hurt and sad and confused. She didn’t know what she needed.

Well, she did know one thing: she needed to face her family.

. : ♱ : .

It was like clockwork at this point, really. Every morning, right before nine a.m. when visiting hours started, Latisha would come to her room and tell her that her family was waiting. And every morning, Mari turned them away.

But not today.

Today, she was sitting up in bed, had been up for hours trying to prepare herself. She had forced herself to finish her toast-with-jam breakfast, had changed into a new hospital gown and brushed her hair for a solid thirty minutes all in an attempt to look a little more alive.

The roughly three minutes it took for Latisha to leave the room and bring back a handful of Martinezes felt like far longer to Mari. Time slowed down the moment the nurse left the room and Mari’s throat immediately closed up.

Her palms were clammy, her breath short as she gasped for air and tried not to think about the disappointment that will paint Ruben’s face when he sees her, or the way Geny will shake her head, or the way Ruben and Olivia will judge her.

She was trying not to think about it too much, but she expected it.

What she didn’t expect was for Ruben to look at her and break into a wide smile, tears shining in his eyes. She wasn’t expecting the small but relieved smile Abuelita shot her way, or for Ruby and Olivia to run to her bedside and wrap their arms around her, or for Geny to rush forward with a cry of “Mija! Your father and I were so worried about you!”

Four pairs of arms were around her and suddenly that seemed to be the only thing suffocating her (but she didn’t mind). Almost two weeks (though probably longer, if she thought too hard on it) worth of tension left her shoulders as she breathed out a sigh of relief. A painful lump made its way to her throat and no matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t able to swallow it down. Tears stung at her eyes and she blinked hard, trying to make the tears stop to no avail.

They didn’t let go of her until her body began to shake and she let out a loud sob.

The family immediately shot back, afraid they’d hurt her, and Mari, for the first time in almost two weeks, let out a laugh. Head thrown back, a mess of curls falling over shoulders as her body shook with every giggle that bubbled out of her chest, Mari didn’t realise until this moment just how much she had missed them, how lonely and isolated she had been.

All of that isolation, the loneliness went away as she was engulfed by lightness and a sense of freedom. Freedom from the pain and the darkness and the shadows she kept as company. And some part of her, a part she tried to keep hidden away in the depths of her mind, wanted it to stop. It was too unfamiliar, the brightness, the liberation, the weight that had lifted from her shoulders and her chest and throat.

The darkness, the pain, the weight on her shoulders and the invisible hands that tightened around her throat; they were familiar, they were safe. She knew what that felt like and how to deal with it but this...

It’d been so long since she felt truly happy, truly free, and she had no idea what to do with it.

“Did we hurt you?” Ruben asked, eyes wide with fear that they had somehow made her worse.

Mari only huffed another laugh at that. They had always been careful with her, hesitant like she was a deer caught in the headlights, a rabbit ready to run at the slightest movement.

But she wasn’t a rabbit. She wasn’t going to run and right now, more than ever, she was desperate not to be treated like fine china; she had been through far too much to break now.

(Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice told her Oscar doesn’t treat me like that, but she pushed it away. She didn’t want to miss him and she didn’t need him here. And even if she did, well…)

Finally calm enough to speak, Mari took a deep breath and plastered on the most genuine smile she could muster. It’d been so long since she’d smiled that the action almost felt like a grimace. Lips spread wide and teeth bared, she hoped it at least reached her eyes.

When no one moved to say anything, Mari asked, “So, what have I missed?”

There was only a brief pause, and then Abuelita dove straight into a recap of everything Mari had missed in their favourite telenovela. Mari welcomed the ease in tension, it was as though the whole room let out a collective sigh of relief.

And Mari relaxed as she spoke. Laughing and gasping in shock as she was drawn into the story Abuelita was so passionately retelling. Abuelita’s face lit up each time Mari laughed, grabbed her hand each time she gasped and asked: “What happened next?”.

She was having fun. But, maybe she jinxed herself by admitting it because soon enough Abuelita’s retelling was over, and Olivia was announcing: “I’m dating Cesar,”

And maybe it was selfish, maybe Mari really was a bad person, but her first thought wasn’t wow, Olivia, I’m so happy for you! or damn, how must Ruby feel? Her first thought was have you seen Oscar?

But she didn’t ask. Instead, she swallowed the lump that was rising in her throat and she bit her lip and she smiled and nodded like a good friend, a good sister, as Olivia recounted their time together.

She smiled and she nodded and she pretended her heart wasn’t breaking because all she could think about was Oscar Oscar Oscar and the fact that he wasn’t here.

And he should be because he said he was in this. He said he would be there for her and he promised that she wouldn’t be alone. She trusted him. She had cracked open her chest and let him see every scar on her heart, every negative word she had breathed in and was etched into her lungs. She had handed him all of her fears and all of her demons and he had promised that he would take care of them, but he wasn’t there to fulfil that promise.

Ruby’s voice - strained, desperate to change the subject - cut through her distress.

“It’s Olivia’s quince tomorrow!”

“Oh my god, Olivia, that’s so exciting!” Mari responded, flashing the girl a wide smile, and this time, that was her first thought.

Olivia smiled, almost bashfully, and said, “I wanted you to be one of my damas, but…”

Mari glanced down, feeling like she had just let everyone down, again. Like she had messed up, again.

“We had to ask Jasmine to fill in,” Ruby said, “‘cause, you know, the dance,”

And no, in all honesty, Mari didn’t know. Growing up, Mari didn’t get to explore the Latino side of herself; she didn’t speak any Spanish beyond the few phrases Oscar had been teaching her, she never celebrated Grito de Dolores, and she never had a quinceañera. Until recently, until coming into the Martinez household, she didn’t mind, didn’t know any better. Now she was mourning all the tradition, the culture, the family she missed out on.

But she didn’t say that. She wasn’t about to play the pity card, not when they were already staring at her with enough sympathy to fill one hundred Hallmark cards.

“Of course,” she said instead, smiling and nodding like she knew anything about quince traditions. “No hard feelings,”

“Your doctor,” Olivia started, wringing her hands and biting her lower lip before continuing, “she said you were getting discharged tomorrow,”

She had been trying not to think about it, trying not to think about having to reenter society and accept reality and figure out what the fuck she was going to do with the kid, but she couldn’t deny it.

“Uh, yeah, I am,”

“I know you’ve been through a lot, but it would really mean a lot to me if you would come. I mean, the reception is going to be at home anyway, but like, the ceremony. I’d love for you to be there,"

Mari opened her mouth to say of course, I’ll be there but a sob escaped her lips instead. A sob that she didn’t even know was coming, though the way her chest had been slowly growing tighter and tighter and tighter should’ve been warning enough.

“Oh no, Mari I’m sorry! You don’t have to, I was being selfish!” Olivia cried, reaching out like she wanted to hug the older girl but her arm just hovered.

Mari shook her head.

“No, you weren’t,” she uttered between weak gasps, “I just…I love all of you and I’m so, so sorry!”

“Mari, sweetie,” Geny’s voice reached Mari’s ears, softer than Mari had ever heard her, “you have nothing to be sorry for,”

“No I do,” she said, nodding hysterically and bringing her knees up to her chest like armour, “I do. I just came into your life, into your home, then I don’t-

“I just work and then I go out and do whatever I can to not be home and it’s not…it’s not because I don’t want to be there, because I do! I love you and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me I just…I don’t feel like I belong.

“I wasn’t raised like you all were. I don’t speak Spanish, I don’t know anything about your culture or what it's been like to grow up in this neighbourhood, I’m not religious and now I’ve had a fucking baby and I-I have none of my shit together and I’m just…” her sentence trailed off as she wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms and sucked in a shaky breath. “You must be so disappointed in me,”

Sheer heartbreak painted Ruben’s face and he didn’t say a word as he lowered himself onto Mari’s bed, but the moment he wrapped his arms around her she knew. She never should’ve expected anything but acceptance from the man who had only ever tried to show her love.

“Mija, how could you even think that?”

Mari sniffled and buried her face further into his shoulder.

“You didn’t sign up for this!” Mari could feel her voice getting tighter, a little higher. She tried to slow her breathing but she was already too worked up, both mind and body on edge and cowering from something no one else could see.

Ruben held her steady, his arms tightening around her like a shield, ready to defend against any invisible enemies.

“Neither did you,” he replied, his voice calm and steady, anchoring her down.

No matter how good his intentions were, Mari realised that he wasn’t going to get it. He loved her and he accepted her, but she had seen what happened to someone who was stuck raising a baby they didn’t want, and Mari was terrified of turning out like her mother.

But she had brought them all down long enough. Taking in a deep breath, Mari forced a smile back onto her face and tried to ignore the way her cheeks were already hurting and her heart was racing at a million miles an hour. She tried to ignore the intense, knowing stare Geny had trained on her.

Mari shook her head. “You’re right. I’m being ridiculous,”

“You know,” Geny cut in, “I’m getting hungry. Ruben, why don’t you take Abuelita and the kids to get us some lunch, I’ll wait here with Mari,”

Ruben released Mari from his grip, looked at his watch and frowned a little. “It’s just gone ten a.m.,”

Geny’s hands flew to her hips and her eyes narrowed as she ordered: “Go get us some coffee, then,”

And then she cocked her head toward the door; subtlety had never really been her strongest trait. Ruben’s face contorted as understanding hit him, and he quickly ushered Ruby, Olivia and Abuelita out of the room, stopping only to press a soft kiss to the crown of Mari’s head and tell her they’ll be back soon.

The moment they were out of the room Geny moved in closer, taking the now-empty seat beside her bed that Abuelita had occupied. Her hand came to rest on Mari’s and for the first time, Mari felt like Geny truly cared.

Geny grabbed Mari’s hand and tugged lightly as she said: “come with me,”

Mari followed, standing from the bed on shaky legs, holding on tight to Geny’s hand for stability and let the older woman lead the way.

“Tell me, Mija; how are you really?” Geny asked as she led Mari down the almost-empty halls of the hospital. “Because you gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, who is so strong, just like you are, but childbirth is hard, even when you’re ready for it,”

The lump in her throat was back. So were the invisible hands which seemed to be squeezing her neck even tighter than before.

“You’ve seen him?” Was all she could bear to ask, the words quiet over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.

“Of course!” Geny’s said, almost as if to say why wouldn’t we? “Ruben and I wanted to see our first grandchild! And Ruby is so excited to be an uncle!”

Her voice was innocent, light, unaware of just how much fear her words were drilling into Mari. If they’ve seen him, been visiting him as much as they had tried to visit her, then that made it real. The kid, her circumstances, the decisions she still had to make; it was all real and it wasn’t just her own life she would be affecting.

“But I want to talk about you right now,” Geny brought her back to reality.

Mari sighed, swallowed hard and looked away. It was easier to speak when she didn’t have to make eye contact, and she wanted to speak; to confess the fears that’d been haunting her for almost two weeks.

“You told me once that, after Mario, you were depressed. I don’t know if the way I’m feeling has anything to do with the baby, or if it’s always kinda been there, but I…I don’t remember what it feels like to be happy,”

Geny’s hand gave hers a small squeeze as they rounded a corner.

“I know I have been,” Mari continued, throat aching and eyes stinging as tears pooled. She was tired of crying, but she didn’t have the energy to fight it. “I know I was happy just ten minutes ago but it's like…I don’t remember how it feels. I can’t imagine it ever happening again. All I remember is all the bad stuff that’s happening; I shouldn’t have a baby, I shouldn’t be hiding from my own mother, and Oscar-”

She cut herself off, not wanting to bring him into this, not wanting Geny to get the wrong idea and blame him for the mess that Mari is in.

“How did you deal with it?” Mari asked.

Geny offered a small smile and they came to a halt outside a light wooden door. A door that was adorned only by a small, black cross.

“I prayed,” she answered and pushed the door open.

The room was small; one small, stained glass window to the left, four plain wooden chairs before an altar. The lights were dim, the room illuminated by only a standing lamp in the far corner of the room and the scattering of tea light candles surrounding the statue of Jesus on the cross that stood in the middle of the altar.

Mari was glad that no one else was here, because her skin was crawling like there were bugs under her skin itching to get out.

“I’m not really religious,” she confessed. If there was a God, he hadn’t done her any favours.

“Neither was I,” Geny said, leading Mari forward to one of the chairs, “but it’s not about believing, not really. It’s about having someone to talk to, accepting that whatever’s happened is out of your hands now, and it’s about having faith that things will work out in the end,”

And maybe she had a point. Maybe Mari did just need to put everything in someone else’s hands, let the universe take the wheel for a bit.

So she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply and...

God, or Jesus, or whoever, she thought, I...

Her mind was blank.

But she sat for a few more minutes, trying to no avail.

With a huff, she opened her eyes. “I don’t know how to do this,”

“There’s no right or wrong way, Mija,” Geny said, “just...talk,”

Warm breath ghosted over her lips as she let out a tentative breath. She licked her lips before speaking.

“I’m…so angry, all the time,” she confessed, the words leaving her lips and hanging in the air between them, “and I’ve never been an angry person. No matter how bad Mallory treated me, I was never angry, but I’m angry now. I wake up every damn day and I’m angry, and that scares me. I don’t wanna live like that.

“And now I have a whole other person’s life to think about. I need to decide what’s best for him when I can’t even give him a name. I haven’t even seen him, do you know that? I can’t bring myself to see him because I’m afraid that if I do I’ll fall in love and I’ll keep him. And there’s a part of me that wants to keep him, to raise him right and prove I’m nothing like my mother. But spite is no reason to have a kid.

“But what if I give him away and I regret it? I’m too young to be making these decisions! I’m too young to have to worry about this! Why the fuck did this happen to me? If there is a God, why did he let this happen? Because I just don’t understand!”

Maybe it was wrong to scream and curse and cry in a place of worship, but Mari didn’t care. She didn’t care that she was sobbing or that her voice was raw from shouting or that she had just let Geny into the deepest parts of her soul. She didn’t care when Geny wrapped her arms around her and pulled her into a hug.

Mari cried, sobbing into Geny’s shoulder as the woman ran her hands through her hair. Mari felt small, like a child herself, but she felt safe and she felt accepted and right now, that was all she could ask for.

Geny didn’t say anything as they walked back to the hospital room, but she didn’t let go of Mari’s hand the entire time.

“You’re not welcome here,” Ruben’s voice boomed as they approached the room, deeper than Mari had heard it before. “You need to leave,”

“She’s my daughter too,” Mallory’s voice chimed. Mari’s stomach churned.

“Oh, no she-” Geny hissed under her breath, then stormed towards the room and hissed, “get out, now,”

“Excuse you? I am Mari’s mother and I need to speak to my daughter, so I think you’re the one who needs to get out,”

The girl in question felt like she was about to vomit, but she swallowed it down as she stepped into the room.

The sight of Mallory made her stomach flip. The sight of Doyle beside her made her head scream. She fought the urge to run.

Ruben and Abuelita were standing before them, faces twisted into uncharacteristic frowns. Olivia and Ruby were hiding behind them.

“There you are, sweetheart!” Doyle smiled, his dark eyes gleaming and a wicked grin slowly spreading across his face. The pet name made her shiver, her mind replaying the night he had crept into her room, the way he had whispered sweetheart with so much sugar in his voice as he violated her. “Your mother and I need a word,”

Mari closed her hands into fists, desperate for them to stop shaking, desperate to stop being terrified.

“No,” she said, though she didn’t sound very sure, “you both need to go,”

“You heard her,” Geny said, holding Mari by the arm and all but guarding her as they crossed the room. Mari took a seat on the hospital bed and closed her eyes as though that would will them away.

Mallory scoffed. “You spent the better part of eighteen years with me, yet you’re siding with them?”

Mari shook her head, angry that Mallory would dare play the victim.

“Because I know they love me,”

“Yeah?” Mallory inched forward, her smile not quite meeting her eyes. “Do they know who the father of that baby is?”

Mari froze. Mallory knew?

“Do you think they’ll still love you when they find out who that baby belongs to, huh? When they find out who you let fuck you,”

She flinched as her mother spat the words, but she couldn’t respond. She was right; Mari was dirty and disgusting and she was tainted. She wasn’t the innocent daughter they thought she was.

“Mari, ignore her,” Ruben cut in, “you don’t have to tell us anything,”

But Mari could barely hear him; he was just another noise in the background behind Mallory’s taunts.

“Go on,” Mallory urged, “tell them who your baby daddy is,”

“I am,”

Mari’s eyes snapped up and for a minute she thought she was hallucinating because there, in the doorway was Oscar.

Her heart stopped as she drank him in; white socks and dirty converse, dark cargo shorts and a white tee under a plaid shirt only buttoned at the top. He looked good, if a little sleep deprived, judging by the deep bags under his eyes. One hand clenched into a fist, the other was grasping a small bunch of limp flowers; deep red and pink carnations with small white flowers peppered throughout.

His brow was furrowed, nostrils flared and his eyes were hard on her as he crossed the threshold and made his way to Mari.

It took him less than a second to cross the room. He pushed past Mallory and Doyle and he pushed past Ruben and Geny and he dropped the flowers on the bed beside Mari. Then, in front of everyone Mari cared about, everyone Oscar knew would never approve of him, he held Mari’s face between harsh, brutal hands that’d learned to be soft only for her, and he kissed her.

He kissed her in a way that he hoped made up for all the times he wasn’t there to kiss her in almost two weeks.

Taglist: @robinsdolan @lostgirl219 @kseniainneverland @ravengreystone @weediskindabad @moistdollerbills@javoqetal @kenzie44469 @goddessate @blackdepressoexpresso @classyputa @babygirl-htx@wonderlandlovelove @cacapoodlepoo @agent-femmefatale @elliesshitofablog @daydreamer0307 @lucyfuh @harduy @elizabeth-santana-98@lonelyyblues

#on my block #Netflix omb #netflix #Oscar diaz #spooky diaz #on my block spooky #Oscar Diaz fanfic #on my block fanfic

7 notes · View notes

writingforjoy · 5 years

Text

Chapter One: The Interview

At long last, ladies and gentlemen, I give you a very rough draft of the first chapter of (Im)Mortal! I hope you enjoy~

p.s I promise it looks better in docs💀🤦🏽‍♀️

@orchidalienscribbler @alexprompts @rhikasa @morganwriteblr @stephrawlingwrites @wiseauthorowl @givethispromptatry

Mallory and I were over my cousin Cassidy’s house one weekend, working on a project that neither of us like and only Cassidy had experience with. We were in Cas’ room when Mallory shot up from Cas’ bed and looked at me with a huge grin on her face. “Hey bruh, let’s do something while we wait on Chef.”

The smile on her face told me that whatever she was planning had to be worth getting into trouble. “What is it my bold and bored friend?”

“Let me interview you.”

“Seriously? Right now?”

“Yeahp. Just tell me your life story…okay maybe not, like, yo whole life but the um...most eventful? Yeah we’ll go with that.”

I shook my head and laughed. “Wooow, okay then. Should I include Skyla or nah?”

“Was the meeting eventful?”

“I found her in the woods. She liked me. I liked her. Then she became my precious baby lamb.”

“Save it for our next interview. It’ll be our pet edition.”

“Alright, cool. Ssoooo...how am I starting this off?”

Mallory rolled her eyes and tossed one of Cas’ pillows at me. “Witcha name ya dumb duck!”

“Rruuuuuude. ...But what about her?”

She sat quietly on the bed, thinking about the question. “Ummm...I don’t know? Just roll with it I guess?” She took her phone out and started recording me as I fidgeted around on the floor messing with our dying project.

“Okay then, here goes nothing.” I took a deep breath to relax myself. “Now, this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down and I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, I’ll tell you how I became the demon of a town called Easthaven.”

“Okay, Will, let’s get it then!” She said laughing.

My name is Helouise. I was born with clay-red skin, eyes the color of golden topazes, and raven black hair. I’ve been told a few times that ‘Helouise’ wasn’t supposed to be my name, but ‘ELouise’ instead to kinda match my mom’s name ‘Ellen’. So whoever wrote my name on my birth certificate misheard her completely. Lucky for them I had a great grandmother with that name. So my whole name is ‘Helouise Nevaeh Piercemen’, which I think is kinda amusing. My middle name, ‘Nevaeh’, is ‘Heaven’ spelled backwards.

Growing up I was known as the ‘Problem Child’, as most other parents called me. I honestly was a hot-headed little girl. Whenever I would throw a tantrum, my parents would often give me ‘soothing potions’ calm me down. To some parents’ disbelief, I wasn’t as spoiled as they thought I might’ve been. My parents raised me just as like any other parents would raise their own children (just a little bit overprotective), but I didn’t feel as if they actually loved me all the time. So I would call them ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ to irritate them often. It didn’t bother them much as I had hoped though, they just laughed it off.

“Pfft, but why would you do that?” Mallory asked through her giggles.

“Bruh I don’t know! I was an evil lil shit I guess.” I said laughing with her.

When I first started school in fourth grade, all the other kids there just stared or stayed away from me. I could tell that they were afraid of me. I was afraid of them too honestly. I was homeschooled at first, and had never been to a school before until then. Someone had talked my parents into thinking that I should go out and make friends, prove to people that I’m not as weird or awkward as they thought I was. So, I was just as scared of my classmates as they were of me. I wasn’t wearing my shades back then, so I believe that it was mostly the color of my eyes that either scared people away or was the reason I got bullied a lot. No one stood up for me except my new teacher Ms. Wrangler. The old one mysteriously disappeared one day and she was there the next day. She was always there to comfort and protect me from the other kids, she was the nicest person to me in to whole school. She had always made me feel special at the end of the day, telling me that I had nothing to worry about as long as I stayed with her. On days when I didn’t eat in the cafeteria, she would go out and buy me food to eat and we’d eat in the classroom together. She would even buy me things ‘just because’, and told me not to tell anyone. I really liked her, I felt more love from her than I did either of my parents, so I did what I was told. Then one day she told me that she wanted to take me somewhere special and that I would need permission from my parents to go. So, she handed me a slip saying that the class was going to the local science museum.

On the day of the ‘field trip’, we didn’t go to the science museum. She took me to a park outside of town and said that we were going on a nature walk. Whenever she looked at me, I thought it was funny that her eyes had changed from their normal bright blue color to red, but I was young and didn’t know better. Later that evening she said that today was going to be my last day with her. I didn’t understand what she meant and couldn’t ask, somehow I had blacked out after that. All I remember after that is waking up in my dad’s car, being held tightly by my mom with her crying ‘I won’t…not again’, then I went back to sleep. We moved from our first home later that week with the help of my uncle. I tried asking them what happened to my teacher, but all they would say was ‘We’ll explain it when you’re older’.

After being homeschooled again for a few years, and after being told some strict rules and to never take off my shades for anyone, I was allowed back into school. I was in high school by then, and I was lucky enough to make a few friends, even though others continued to stare and judge me whenever they thought I wasn’t around or couldn’t hear them, but I didn’t care as much as I did when I was little. So I thought things were finally looking up for me. Then again, what would high school be without a few surprises?

One day while I was in biology class, I was called into the office and was told that my dad was coming to pick me up. Since it was close to Christmas break, I thought we were taking an early vacation, but as soon as my dad got there and we made it to the hospital, all thoughts of any vacations were gone. For fourteen years, I’ve been alone and gotten used to being an only child, then my parents decided to go and add a new kid in the mix. I was never fond of the thought of having a sibling, let alone a sister, and this one caught me by surprise. I never noticed mama’s stomach getting big (even though she was a ‘stay at home mom’) and they never told me. They said that they wanted to surprise everyone. When I first saw the baby, she had deep blue eyes and rosy cheeks, and small tufts of hair that looked so shiny at the time they thought it was golden. She was such a beautiful baby…I didn’t like her. I hated how normal and happy she looked. Then they told me her name. They named her Rose.

A beautiful name for a baby girl. Was I so ugly when I was born that my parents let me have an ugly name? I thought to myself. Is she even that pretty to deserve a name like that?

I was so angry that I started to hate Rose. She looked normal and they gave her a normal name, and the way that they were looking at her, with so much love and affection, made me hate her even more. Mama tried giving Rose to me, but I didn’t take her. I was too angry. Then my dad rushed over to me, held me close while brushing my hair back, and told me to calm down before I set off the alarms. I pushed him away and ran out the room, I ran into the nearest bathroom I could find and curled up in the corner of it and cried. I cried from the anger and from the feeling that my parents weren’t happy with me, let alone loved me. A moment later, my dad opened the door and peeped in. When he saw me, he came and hugged me, saying things like ‘We still love you’ and ‘We thought you’d be happy to have a little sister or brother’ and other things that I barely heard. Once I stopped crying, I noticed a burned hole on his jacket and asked how that happened. He laughed and said his stupid cigarette lighter button had been pressed earlier when he wasn’t paying attention. Daddy was a frequent smoker, so I believed him. He brought me back into mama’s freezing room. I still didn’t want to hold Rose, but I was curious about her cheeks. So I asked mama if I could touch them, and she said yes. I placed a finger on one of her cheeks and jumped back a little as she laughed at me. Rose’s cheeks were ice cold. She said that it was just the room, but it didn’t matter. I still didn’t like her, and I had already made up my mind that I wouldn’t have anything to do with her (as less as possible anyway).

The next surprise, which I’d like to call ‘The Train Wreck’, happened almost immediately after I turned sixteen a few months ago. The first thing was that Rose’s hair wasn’t blonde after all, but instead it was white like our dad’s hair. I figured that it was some genetic mutation like the color of me and Mama’s eyes. Another thing was that I actually kind of liked the idea of having a sister and I kinda liked her, even though she was a brat at times. The last thing happened one day after school. My parents, Rose, and I were meditating in the basement (well Rose was half-asleep holding her new, blueberry scented teddy bear). I was really thinking about the ugly sofa that Mama had bought last week. For the first time ever, I had a few friends coming over to study and hang out in a few days, and the first thing they would see when they came in would be that disgusting, over brightly dyed hippie couch. My parents needed a new couch, but couldn’t really afford one after they had redecorated Rose’s room. I knew and understood that, but the couch was so damn hideous that the neighborhood cat my parents like to let in every so often wouldn’t even piss on it.

There has to be a way to talk them into getting new couch! I’ll be embarrassed for life if my friends saw that hideous thing. They need to get rid of it! Uugh, I hate that stupid looking couch!

If you hate the couch as much as you say you do, then do something about it. I jolted my head up and scanned the room, but no one else was there other than my folks, so I thought that I was just imagining things. You’re not imagining it, I’m the…’other’ you, I’ve just woken up from a peaceful sleep. If you hate the couch then get rid of it.

What do you mean ‘the other me’? And just how am I gonna to get rid of it?

Haven’t you figured it out yet? The reason why you look the way you do. Don’t you think you were destined to do something great in your life? I’m the…’special’ side of you. An active subconscious, if you like. We’re a special girl Helouise. Did you know that we can manipulate fire?

“I can do what?!” I blurted out. Mom and Dad looked at me with startled faces and Rose fell over backwards. I quickly apologized and went back to trying to meditate.

The subconscious giggled. Of course we can, all you have to do is concentrate on the couch, speed up the molecules, and imagine it bursting into flames… or something along the lines like that at least.

I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean, what if instead of burning the couch I, and I hope it doesn’t happen, burn down the house?

What do you have to lose? Our parents got the extended warranty or whatever on it anyway and if something does happen to it, they have the money to get a new one! You could even convince them to get something better than that. And what if the house burns down? It’ll be even better since you’ll be able to get a better house than this dump we’re in now. Besides, no one will get hurt in the process, we’re not that strong yet, promise~

I thought it over on what she said and decided to give it a shot. If she’s right then no one will get hurt and we’ll be getting a new couch. I wished that I was going crazy, but I hated the couch so much that I started imagining myself setting fire to it. It’d be a win-win for me if everything went ok. Minutes later, the smoke alarm went off. We rushed upstairs into the living room and saw that the sofa was on fire. Daddy rushed to get the fire extinguisher in the kitchen while Mama set Rose down and ran to the hallway to try and activate the sprinklers and yelled for me to watch Rose who was already stumbling towards the blazing couch. I, on the other hand, stood there watching in amazement.

See?! You did it! Don’t try to stop it now, just let the couch burn!

I can’t just let it burn! I’m gonna try to stop it now, it’s burned enough anyway. And besides, Rose will get hurt if she gets to close. I thought after I yanked Rose away from the couch and set her beside me.

Then let her burn too. You never liked her anyway; she’s nothing but a pest. Remember, she’s the one that replaced you and took what little love your parents had for you. It’ll be all over quickly if you push her into the fire. Just push her towards it and hold her there. She’ll be the only one being burned if that’s what you’re worried about. Haven’t you realized yet that temperature doesn’t affect you? So if you touch it, you won’t get burned genius.

Are you insane?! It doesn’t matter if I like the little brat or not, she’s my sister! I can’t kill her, Mama and Daddy would kill me if I did!

ONLY because you killed what was precious to them! Think about it: they don’t love you anymore, they don’t care about you, and you know it. That’s why they replaced you. …Look at you, if you really couldn’t kill her like you said, then why are you slowly pushing her towards the fire?

I looked down to see that Rose was only inches away from the fire again, but it was me pushing her towards it. “Rose you little idiot!” I yanked her back again and took several steps back from the couch.

Why don’t you just go ahead and do it? You were almost there; she could’ve been dead by now! You can’t deny the fact that you want to kill her.

“Shut up and leave me alone!” I said loudly. Okay Helouise, just take some deep breaths, and concentrate on the fire…and don’t touch Rose. I concentrated on the fire on the sofa, and imagined the flames getting smaller. Then Mama and Daddy finally came back just in time to see that I was already making the fire go away. They stood there with a worried look for a moment, and then asked me calmly if I was the one who put the fire out.

“Yes, but I caused it too. The thing is I don’t know exactly how I did it, I just” -Maybe I shouldn’t tell them about the voice…maybe I’m just going insane- “I just thought about burning the sofa like the voice said at first and then making the fire small. But why did this have to happen in my junior year, just when everyone was thinking I was normal, just when they finally accepted me? Why am I hearing this cynical voice inside me head?!” I cried while looking at them. They told me that they knew I was going to have my powers fully awakened, just didn’t know when. Then they told me that I had fire-powers since I was young and that I just couldn’t remember them. Then I showed signs of it when I was about three and threw terrible tantrums. Then I remember the day that Rose was born, when Daddy was telling me about the alarms and came into the bathroom with the hole on his jacket, and then I became angry.

“So that day when Rose was born, tell me Father, what did you mean about the alarms? And what really happened to your jacket?” I asked looking directly at him. His face went from a calm expression to a shocked one as he mumble something about my eyes. “I didn’t ask about my eyes, tell me what really happened the day that Rose was born!” I yelled. He told me that when I was upset, my hair was slowly turning into flames and I was standing by some posters that were right under the smoke detector. Then he told me that when I pushed him away, I burned a hole through his jacket and almost his shirt. Then Mama started speaking, but I couldn’t hear her, my mind was too busy processing what I just heard. They lied to me, that’s why they kept giving me those potions when I was younger; they knew something was wrong about me from the very beginning! I’m just a weird accident to them; they never loved me enough to tell me the truth.

To be honest, they probably never really loved you at all. Why else do you think they had her Helouise? Don’t you remember how they were looking at her and how pretty she was?

I remembered how they were looking at Rose in that hospital room and became infuriated. That’s why they had another child, they never loved me, they probably never even wanted me in the first place, they wanted a normal, beautiful girl! Another little girl that they could truly love! I felt Rose trying to give me her teddy bear, but I was too angry and knocked it away from her and she began to cry.

“Helouise, look what you’ve done!” Mama called out rushing past me.

“So what if the stupid bear is burning?!” I cried wiping the tears from my face. “You two lied to me almost all my life and then tried to replace me with that stupid brat! And now all you care about is some stupid bear and-” I looked behind myself to point at Rose, but I stopped as mama rushed past me again with Rose in her arms, holding and kissing on her hand. I noticed a small burn mark on Rose’s wrist as she did. I just burned my sister. “Oh my god, I’m sorry! It was an accident, I swear!” I can’t believe I burned my little sister.

It felt good, didn’t it Helouise?

What did?

Setting things on fire, and of course, burning your sister. Feel a little proud of yourself, don’tcha?

…Just leave me alone.

I knew you’d enjoy that. You can’t hide it from me.

Will just go away already?!

Just think of how great you’d feel if you would just kill the lil brat already! It’d be fun, you’d-…wait a minute…do you smell that Helouise? It smells like we’re not the only one with magic in here. Helouise, we gotta have that power.

Suddenly my dad came up behind me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t touch me!” I yelled, bumping into the hanging fern and causing it to burn too. Then I moved away from him and the fern.

That’s it! That’s where the power is coming from! You can take his power for yourself if you touch him. Drain his power. That’s all it takes.

I do want that power. Why haven’t I noticed it before?

You never noticed because he knows how to conceal his power, and you couldn’t sense it, you didn’t know how to sense other people's magic. But now that I’m awake, we can sense other peeps magic a little!. All you have to do to get their power is drain it from them.

…I really do want that power; it smells sooo good. Whatever it is, I need that power.

Then drain him. I reached for my dad’s hand pretending to want to hold it for comfort. Kill Daddy for his magic. I drew my hand back quickly before grabbing his hand. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

ARE YOU CRAZY?! “Dad get away from me!”

JUST KILL HIM!!

“I can’t kill my Dad!” As bad as I wanted his power, I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t kill my own dad. He told me to calm down but I couldn’t. “Daddy, I just made our couch and our fern get on fire, and I burned my little sister and her bear! I can’t calm down! And look,” I pointed frantically towards the couch and the fern. “The couch is burning again and the fern is still on fire! I can’t control them!” I said panicking. He stepped towards me again with his hands out saying that everything was going to be ok.

He’s practically giving you his hands, just take them and kill him!!

“NO!!”

His power could be ours and we could be stronger!

“Daddy get back! I know you have powers I can smell it and the voice is trying to make me kill you for it and I’m trying not to so please just stay back!” We looked at the smoke alarm that finally went off and the built-in sprinklers turned on, but when I looked at the flames on the couch, nothing happened to the flames.

Quick! Do it now while he’s distracted!

“WILL YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?!” I shouted out flailing my hand out, pushing nothing away, and letting a fireball fly out of my once empty hands onto the faded blue curtains. Still the water from the sprinklers couldn’t make the fire die out. “See?! Even the water can’t put it out! What if the fire spread? What’s going to happen if the firefighters come and they can’t put it out? What if-” Then he swiftly approached me again and grabbed my shoulders, and an immense chill overcame me that caused my knees to buckle. Then he told me to calm down again, only more sternly. He told me that they know it was an accident. It was their fault for not telling me about my magic sooner. He let me go and told me to look back at the couch. I looked at the smoldering couch and then turned quickly to see the burnt fern and the burnt curtain. He told me that I could do anything as long as I was calm. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out his lighter and tossed it towards the couch. He said that if the firefighters did come, they‘d find that, so I could stop worrying about them trying to find out who did it or what would happen if they stayed to long.

I looked back towards the kitchen where my mom and Rose were coming from and saw she had put some of the homemade healing salve on Rose’s wrist. I looked back to my dad and he told me that everything would be all right, then Mama said that we would start practicing to control my emotions and magic tomorrow.

The next day, to make sure that Rose didn’t get hurt or learn about our magic ‘too early’, my parents called and told my grandmother, my dad’s mother, what happened and asked if she could keep Rose for a while. She agreed, and she when she came over she smelled the same way as daddy did; just slightly different, but definitely stronger. The same urge came over me to drain her too as she and my dad walked in the house, but mama held on to me, and told me to focus on her scent and to tell her what it smelled like. Then Granny looked over at us with disgust as Daddy showed her to Rose’s room, and to tell her what was going on. I could feel the anger building up as she glared at us, but Mama covered my eyes and nose and told me repeatedly to calm down as she rocked me. A moment after she did that, we could hear Rose crying upstairs. She wasn’t willing to leave at first, but soon they convinced her that it was only for a little while, and that she was going to have a lot of fun with our granny. So she left with her, and it was just me and my parents once.

Afterwards, my parents told me the truth. The whole truth. First, they told me about the color of my eyes. Mom said that everyone on her side, including me, had the exact same eyes and that we’re demons, and the voice I heard was actually my inner demon, like an active conscious of sorts, that was implanted, given, or something by our many great grandfather, Guidry. She also said that some demons were born with the natural instinct to kill, to be truly ‘evil’, and they were mostly always the ‘upper level’ ones, but for us it was different and she couldn’t exactly explain why. Daddy said he wasn’t a demon, but he wasn’t a witch (or warlock…wizard, whichever they classify themselves as) either, but he could subdue people with a single touch. They didn’t know about Rose yet, and only time would tell if she’s was going to grow up to be normal or like one of them. Then Mama told me what happened Ms. Wrangler, and why I had to start wearing shades in public. Ms. Wrangler was a demon too. Everyone on mama’s side of the family were being hunted by other demons. They feared that we would become over powerful or somehow immortal, so they would catch and take us to the Upper Council where we’d either die from enslavement or something else entirely. So for whatever reason Ms. Wrangler had tried to kidnap me for, the end result wasn’t going to be good.

When Mama noticed that my scent had gone outside the city, they came after me. They saved me and had to kill Ms. Wrangler and the other demons that was there, and that’s why we had to move. Then Mama started blaming herself for not going to meet the woman herself when she first came into town.

After that, she helped me to gain control of my new ability and to quiet the voice inside. They had me to train with my power everyday. Soon, I was able to create fires and make them go away at will. The voice was still there, but she didn’t talk as much after that.

But still my grandmother didn’t bring Rose back. Mama called and asked her why, then I heard her gasp from the kitchen and I went to see what happened. I watched her as she was listening to whatever Granny was saying, and then she finally said that she understood and hung up the phone. Mama never told me what happened, but only said that we could visit her whenever we wanted. I thought that Rose had either gotten really sick or this had somehow became a custody battle. Even though I never really liked the brat at times, it still hurt to hear that Rose wasn’t coming home, and it made me feel that with my power being ‘fully awakened’, my granny didn’t trust for me to be around her. I regretted being a demon at all that day despite what the voice said otherwise. I saw no point in having this power if it only caused my parents pain and having my sister taken away. I could tell that her not being able to come back home yet had broken their heart. Then I promised myself that when she comes back, I would be the best big sister ever.

“Wow...just wow. Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess I don’t like talking about it much.”

“Fair enough. Now just a few questions. Just two, I think, if you don’t mind ma’am?”

“Shoot.”

“You said that your Dad’s power had a scent? Is it just him or what?”

“Well, it’s more of a scent for him and not his magic? Like, I can smell it even when he’s not using it. And no, everyone has their own scent. I think I’m just now...paying attention to it? I mean, I probably noticed his and Mama’s scents before but never just...thought about it, if that makes sense?”

“Cool. So what’s my scent?”

“A sweet little cupcake.” I laughed as she groaned. “It’s not chocolate though, friend~”

“Thank you Jesus.” She mumbled. “Now, what about Rose? When was the last time you saw her?”

“We see each other everyday, sometimes Granny would bring her over, or we’d go over there to visit. Sometimes I don’t go though, cause I still don’t think she likes me.”

“That sucks. Do you still feel like you want to...you know, take their magic? Or anyone else’s?”

I shifted around the floor. “No comment.”

“Damn bruh...savage.” I snorted at her attempt to make things better. “So, final question! Do you think this is the end of your epic adventure? Has everything finally calmed the fuck down for you?”

“Oh my God yes and I hope it stays just like this forever.”

Silly girl, if you believe that then you should really know better. This is just the beginning of our adventure.

#writingforjoy #writeblr #(Im)Mortal #Helouise Pierceman #Mallory O'Neil #alexprompts #alexpromptswipweekly #tumblr needs more formatting options #istfG

19 notes · View notes

sapphicscholar · 5 years

Text

Pride Month Prompts Day 15: Sleepover (Grace/Frankie)

From this Pride Month Prompts post! I’m taking the opportunity to write some short fics for a variety of pairings that I haven’t written for as much, maybe at all. They won’t be going on AO3, so I’ll be sure to tag them all with #pride month prompts so you can find them later if you want.

Day 15: Sleepover

Pairing: Grace/Frankie

A/N: Set post-S5, so some spoilers as a heads up

Grace’s second sleepover is just as unexpected as her first one had been. Her first, a night of squatting in a home that had, until so recently, been hers, was filled with floor mattresses and squealing pigs and lukewarm vodka and secret sharing that Frankie had insisted was part of the quintessential sleepover experience. Her second comes after a teary beach confession. Her knees ache from the attempt at running across the sand to a woman she’d once sworn she’d never voluntarily spend a single minute with; a sense of betrayal and loss still hang heavy in the air between them; and the night is filled with chilled vodka and apologies and explanations Grace feels compelled to provide even though she’s made it a policy ever since starting her own business never to justify her personal choices to anyone but herself—and sometimes she doesn’t even like to think too hard on her own about her life choices.

The third sleepover doesn’t arrive until the night the divorce is finalized, even though Grace has slept in the beach house plenty of times since then. But on the day everything goes through, Frankie meets her with a joint and a pile of Brat Pack movies that neither of them really want to see but Frankie insists are slumber party classics. The mattresses are already set up in the living room, though this time there’s an extra pillow for Grace’s knee, and there’s enough electricity to go around without siphoning it off the neighbors’ grid. Frankie is considerate enough to pretend not to notice the small sob quickly stifled in Grace’s sleeve as they’re both falling asleep.

From then on, the sleepovers become a semi-regular occurrence almost every month, with Frankie insisting that Grace was deprived of a very important adolescent ritual. Grace finds herself becoming accustomed to a whole host of party games that she can sometimes admit are fun, particularly when they’re played with a martini in hand.

During the fourth sleepover, after vetoing Twister by reminding Frankie about their afternoon spent as floor people together, Grace plays Truth or Dare for the first time (everyone in college had insisted they were much too mature for it by then). Among other dares, Grace ends up drinking an awful concoction of the first three things Frankie puts her hands on in the fridge while blindfolded, and Frankie, in turn, experiences the joys of one of her first martinis, though she insists the olives are the only decent part of the whole thing. Grace talks more about her first kiss with a girl, while Frankie regales Grace with tales of her first time getting stoned. The game skids to an abrupt end when a rather tipsy Frankie—“How do you drink more than one of these? The whole world’s staring backwards at me, Grace!”—asks Grace to talk about her best sexual experience for a truth.

At sleepover number five, Frankie introduces Grace to the joys of prank phone calls. Frankie goes first to show her how it’s done, calling Bud and asking in a lower voice if his refrigerator is running. Only, while she’s giggling, he lets out a loud sigh: “We’ve all got caller ID these days, Mom. I’m going, alright?” After that, a google search reveals the magic of *67, then a long rabbit hole of all the other * extensions, and Grace, several martinis in, rolls her eyes but still gives in to Frankie’s pleading and manages a whole phone call to a San Diego bar asking if a Seymour Butts is there. Frankie tries Bud again when Coyote doesn’t answer, but Grace draws the line at her own daughters. She hasn’t told them about the sleepovers yet. She isn’t sure why, but she doesn’t want to share this…thing just yet. Like the handful of Say Yes nights, the sleepovers are something private. Something fun in a genuine way that stands so at odds with the kind of person Grace Hanson presents herself as to the rest of society. Something reserved for her and Frankie and no one else—them against the world.

Sleepover six is postponed by a week thanks to a family gathering, but Frankie makes up for lost time by coming down wholly prepared with tiny books and a handful of pens Grace recognizes as having gone missing from her purse and desk and bedside table over the past few weeks. They spend the night playing Mad Libs that Frankie delights in making as filthy as she can, cackling as Grace reads each half-nonsensical story back to her. She saves a particularly explicit one where scissoring had been her verb of choice because it had actually gotten a reaction out of Grace other than an eye roll or a deep sigh—though both of those had happened too. Grace is too distracted by Frankie’s cries of excitement to notice that Frankie cuts her off after two martinis. The night doesn’t seem any less fun for the loss.

It’s at their seventh sleepover that Grace learns the joys of MASH and homemade fortune tellers. She’s quite pleased to learn that George Clooney will be her next husband and listens patiently as Frankie explains that they’ll live in a mansion and drive a Jeep—“You’re gonna have to use a whole can of hairspray every ride. I’ll light a candle for the poor Earth.”—and somehow manage to have another two children. Grace furrows her brow in confusion when Frankie appears just as delighted to learn that Grace will be her wife, even though they’ll be living in a shack with a pet snake and no car. Frankie had shrugged off Grace’s confusion, ready with an answer for every question. “We’re basically married now.” (Grace doesn’t question why the thought makes her stomach swoop, not unlike the sensation of cresting up and over a steep hill too fast in her car.) “Can’t be worse than Walden Villas, and we got through that together.” “Better than those wild fuckers in Santa Fe. Everywhere you went: surprise snakes!” “Cars are bad for the Earth. I need to make up for all your hairspray, Grace!”

One night, Grace arrives home after dinner with Brianna and Mallory to find a note waiting on the kitchen table that says nothing more than: “In the studio. Come over when home.”

There’s also a text waiting for her: “Plz bring cheese curls. Thnx!”

When she gets out to the studio, a bag of cheese curls tucked under her arm and her phone clutched in her hand, she finds that the whole space has been taken over by pillows and mattresses and colorful, draped sheets and swaths of fabric that she’d only vaguely registered Frankie bringing home over the past few months. Some of them shimmer with gold and silver threads embedded in the fabric, and the smell of incense wafts through the air.

“It looks like an opium den in here,” Grace mutters to herself.

A moment later, Frankie’s head pops out from a side entrance. “Really? Oh good, I was worried I might have gone too mainstream and hit hipster coffee shop.”

“No, no, solidly opium den.”

“Come in?”

And it’s going to hurt her knees and probably muss her hair, and she’d only voluntarily done this for her own grandchildren one time before deciding it was enough for a lifetime, but Frankie has done this for her, Frankie is waiting in there for her, so Grace will go.

Inside, Frankie waits with two glasses of wine, only half-filled, and a small plate of snacks that are a step up from the typical junk food fare on these nights that Grace refuses to touch until she’s too distracted to keep all of her attention focused on calories and sugar and fat.

“Have extra time today?” Grace asks, casting a glance around at the ornate decorations.

“You don’t just miss the one-year anniversary of your first ever intentional, non-squatting slumber party, now do you?” It’s said in that tone of voice that suggests everything is fine and light and breezy, that nothing matters more or less than anything else, which so easily slides into the idea that nothing matters to Frankie at all, but Grace catches the sense of sincerity lurking in the background. Some old memory pulls at the back of her mind—something about grand gestures and how important they were, something about their uses…

After a few minutes and a few false starts with Frankie attempting to ask something only to trail down on those long, winding tangents that lead her back to where she began only about half of the time, Frankie finally proposes that they play a good game of Truth or Dare.

It takes three rounds for Grace to choose dare, and Frankie takes a deep breath when she does. “I dare you to dare me to ask you something important next round.”

Grace may not have ever played the game before Frankie, but she’s fairly certain that isn’t how the rules work. Still, she nods anyway. It’s better not to disagree with Frankie, even when she does things like insisting that the entire phrase, “got to scissoring,” should count as a past tense verb for Mad Libs. So she asks Frankie, “Truth or dare?” and isn’t the least bit surprised when Frankie answers, “Dare.”

Frankie sits in silence, looking expectantly back at Grace.

“What?”

“Don’t you have something to dare me?”

Grace fixes Frankie with a disbelieving look, one eyebrow arched and her lips slightly pursed. “You already know what it is.”

“You have to dare me, though. Otherwise we might as well be playing the mind-reading game, and you know I’m always up to try it, but you never seem to be thinking about any of the things that I can see.”

“That’s because you always guess Del Taco burritos, martinis, and vibrators!” Just because two of those are true more often than she’d like them to be doesn’t make it a great guess.

“Grace,” Frankie nearly whines. “Are you going to dare me?”

“Fine.” Grace holds up her hands, trying to preempt an explanation about the ethics of accepting a dare and then reneging on the dared action. “I dare you to ask me something important.”

Frankie clasps her hands together in her lap, twisting at a chunky ring adorning her middle finger. “We’ve gone through a lot of shit together these past few years. And at our first ever sleepover, you asked me if I wanted to do something. I said no because, you know, we’re Grace and Frankie!” Grace nods along because she thinks she gets it, gets what it means to go from being Grace and Robert, and Frankie and Sol, to Grace and Frankie, and fuck Robert and Sol. “I squatted you until we were best friends, and now we have our thing. That thing where we get our house back and fight the bureaucratic machine that is the post office and make vibrators for people like us.”

“Okay.”

“But I can’t stop thinking about…that other thing. That thing that might make Grace and Frankie a different kind of thing. Well, we could still be amateur sleuths and fight the system and sell vibrators because how could we give any of that up when there are still so many Harriets out there that need us? Did you know—”

“Frankie!”

“Right. Anyway, if you don’t believe me that I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve got a whole bunch of paintings that aren’t as abstract as they should have been for Coyote’s last visit.” She gestures with her thumb somewhere behind her, which Grace has learned over years spent looking for ringing phones and TV remotes and bags of cheese curls doesn’t actually mean directly behind her but instead anywhere that isn’t directly in front of her. “So I thought maybe I could try asking myself. Eh, well, not quite, but Grace Hanson, do you want to kiss me? No joking or pranks or take-backsies. Just…just me asking.”

Grace blinks. Pauses. Doesn’t wait long enough to parse through why it was that her heart and body screamed yes before her head had registered the implications of the question. For once, she lets herself act on an impulse that she suspects won’t be anything like the destructive ones born of too many drinks and not enough food. She leans forward, finds Frankie meeting her halfway. Her lips are a little chapped, though her mouth blessedly does not yet taste like cheese curl dust, and the first few seconds are clumsy as they try to figure out angles and noses and long hair that seems to find its way between their lips again and again. But even still, before they’ve found their rhythm, Grace knows without a doubt that it’s the best first kiss she’s ever had. She doesn’t pull back until they’ve gotten the hang of things well enough that her breathing is shallow and fast.

Frankie beams up at her—wide and unconcerned and exultant. “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t thrilled about the snake on that last MASH game, but maybe—and hear me out on this one—have you considered chickens?”

#pride month prompts #grace x frankie #grace hanson #frankie bergstein #grace and frankie #fanfic

43 notes · View notes