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#hes so HEFTY my guy and its pretty neat
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So now's as good a time as any to talk about how much I love my Big Daddy plush and how he's been altered to be different and weighted!
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I couldn't stop myself from taking creative liberty to make him more unique than others by surgically implanting two large beanbags inside of him, plus some stuffing from other stuffed things to puff him up where he got flat from me resting my head on him. The bean bags were decently large:
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On top of that, I did a practice craft of hand-drawing my own art to turn into the hanging things that I tend to make:
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So now I have a weighted and well-stuffed bouncer plush and a nifty little hanging decoration of one!
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Bonus: his surgical scars and one of the four(?) miscellaneous fallen toys that contributed to his inner mass:
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My Mr. Bubbles is now legitimately a weighted grafted monster and I LOVE him.
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yaekiss · 9 months
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#MailroomOpen! hi hi my darling qi this is the promised letter to my Special Little Guy!! letter delivery for yandere tartaglia with a nsfw reply back and also a meme reference for number 25 if it's alright? pet names are a-ok, encouraged even. ok here goes, thank you so much for doing this!!! i am cringe but i am free ♡
(The letter that arrives is black with gold borders and purple ink, with a purple lipstick kiss mark on the back of it. There are doodles of stars, moons, skulls, and hearts in the margins. The penmanship is neat and playful, every i and j dotted with either stars or hearts, depending on the subject matter. A small box of the same color as the letter comes with it, inside is an ocean-blue collar with a tag that says "My Ajax". It looks expensive.)
My lovely Ajax,
It's only been a few weeks since you left, but in my opinion, any time away from you is too long. I miss your presence, your conversation, your cooking, and some more...intimate things. I'm sure you feel the same. I really wish you didn't have to leave so often, sometimes I think you might care for your Tsaritsa more than me~ Hehe, I'm only joking, of course. I know you're very loyal, and love me very much... (There's a furious scribble over the next words, but you can just barely make out that it says "maybe more than you should") Anyway, moving on, this letter should arrive with a collar. I picked them out special just for you; blue like your eyes! There's a matching leash, but I kept it with me so we can use it when you get back, hehe ♡. Make sure to show me how pretty you look with it on, okay puppy~? ...And come back safe. I'll be patiently awaiting your return, hopefully soon.
~Your darling
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꩜ Letter Content: Dom! GN! Reader x Yan! Sub! Tartaglia, no gendered terms for reader, Tartaglia calls you "dearest exalted", mentions of blood, unhealthy and obsessive relationship from Tartaglia, worshipping (reader receiving), collar and leash (used on Tartaglia), masochistic Tartaglia, mentions of mirror sex, Tartaglia calls himself puppy once, lmk if I missed out anything ! ꩜ Delivery Notes: Weird, as soon as he handed his parcel to me, he started booking it to your address, like damn it's not a race?! ꩜ Wanna write a love letter yourself? Check out it out here!
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A medium-sized parcel finds its way into your possession, placed in front of your doorstep. The box is made of smooth varnished timber and the intricate details are inlaid with gems and shards that match the stunning shade of your eyes. Judging by all the elaborate carvings and the overall quality of the trunk, it must have cost him a pretty penny, especially if it was commissioned just for you. 
Flipping the lid of the box open at its hinge, your eyes are greeted by the sight of the sheer amount of items he sent to you. Ajax is nothing but a generous lover and it's definitely evident with all the gifts he prepared for you this time. Starting out, there are a few neatly packed food containers imbued with a charm that helped to preserve their contents perfectly over the lengthy delivery trip. Each one is labelled with the name of the dish it holds and after looking through the various containers, you realise they’re all your favourite dishes, lovingly made from scratch by Ajax.
To a side, there’s a hefty drawstring pouch. Tugging the bag open, a large pile of mora shimmers back at you. You should’ve known he would spoil you like this even if he were away. Tucked underneath the bag of mora, is his letter.
The envelope is a version of the one typically used for fatui matters, except this one is a lot gaudier than usual. …It’s the kind used for letters addressed exclusively to Her Royal Highness, the Tsaritsa. Just the look of it is expensive: A frosted gold border lines the front of the envelope and his wax stamp seals the letter shut at the back, away from prying eyes. Surely using an envelope reserved for the Tsaritsa for you is more than a bit… blasphemous. Nonetheless, you try not to think too much about it and gingerly open the letter up to read his reply.
His handwriting is scrawling and slightly messy as always but you know that it’s just from the eagerness that he seems to constantly have while around you, like some sort of oversized puppy. Present is a tangible tenderness in all his words and you can just about picture the silly little smile he had on his face while he wrote this letter to you. Additionally, there are hearts blotchily drawn in a rusty red around in the margins to match your love letter sent to him. His response reads:
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“To my highest divinity, my owner,
It’s so so so good to hear from you, dearest exalted! Ah, I can’t believe you’d miss me, I’m swooning, at least now I know I’m not the only one left longing. I saw you mention that you missed my cooking so to remedy that, I prepared some of your favourite dishes, I didn’t quite know which one would be the best to send to you, so I just sent all of them, haha. Please let me know if they’re to your liking, dearest exalted. Regarding missing my presence… there’s only 1 solution for that which you’ll see soon enough!
I saw your scribbled-out words. ‘Maybe more than you should.’ My reverence for you must not be enough, and that’s why you still doubt me, doubt my love for you, right, dearest exalted? Although the Tsaritsa may be important to me, however, even the loyalty I have for her cannot hold a candle to the utmost adoration that I have for you. Far, far, far from it. What you see right now is but a mere glimpse of my endless devotion and love for you, dearest exalted. There is so much more that I would do for you. Just say the word, that’s all you’ll ever need to do, and I’ll carry out any of your orders till the end of my days. Even in death, I’d still be yours to command. Beyond the grave, that’s how much you deserved to be loved, dearest exalted. (His paragraph drips with festering lovesickness in the way the ink looks to be redder than the one in his inkwell.)
Ahem, moving on! Thank you for the collar, it sits wonderfully around my neck and fits like a glove. Really brings out my eyes too, was that intentional? And the tag… oh, the tag. I must confess, I’ve imagined what it would be like, to have you attach the leash to it and tug me in front of the mirror, making me watch through the reflection as you have your way with me. I would let out all the sounds you said you liked hearing from me, my moans or whines or screams, I’d give you anything you want. You could be as rough as you’d like to too, pulling harshly on the leash as you take your frustrations out on me, you know I love whatever you grace me with, dearest exalted.
I’ll end my letter here, my remaining words can be relayed when I’m back soonest, I promise! Remember to tell me if anyone has wronged you, I’ll gladly rid you of them, dearest exalted. Can’t wait to be under you again! 
Your most devoted puppy,
- Your Ajax -”
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That’s certainly… a reply worthy of your contemplation, to say the least. Inserting his reply back into the envelope, you wonder what else he could’ve left unsaid in a letter that’s already chock full of the rawest form of veneration towards you. Sitting in pensive silence, your mind reels. Fortunately for you (or perhaps it’s the contrary), your answer arrives frighteningly fast, disrupting the stillness. 
There’s a knock at your door, a familiar keening whine bleeding through the wood.
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Thanks for reading! Consider supporting me on kofi if you enjoyed this or check out my other works hehe ♡
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kvetchlandia · 3 years
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Richard Meltzer     Lester Bangs Passed Out on Meltzer’s “Highly Uncomfortable Living Rm. Chair,” 104 Perry St., Apt. 4, West Village, New York City     1972
On December 14th, this December 14th, Lester Conway Bangs, while probably not the greatest writer of his generation, arguably its most vital so far to die, would have been 36. Haunted and driven by demons, so- called, a cheerless many of whom/what/ which — or their kindred ilk — he directly sought, found cum stumbled upon, or was inadvertently ensnared by on the demon picnic grounds of Rock and Roll, he never made it to 34.
Following the lead of a handful of babes in the rock-critical woods, one of which I'll admit (if sometimes reluctantly) to having been. Bangs at the dawn of the seventies played as prominent a role as anyone in both expanding the expressive boundaries of rockwriting as a form and giving it a voice that played the newer, more mannered and cautious, mass-market rockmags like Rolling Stone and Creem — the latter of which he even edited for awhile — as on the dime as it had played the catch-as-catch-can, limited-edition fanzines whence it came. Though he also served as the burgeoning genre’s most prolific scribbler, a mission he sustained with relative ease for the bulk of his days, it is to the man’s lasting credit that he rarely delivered copy on anyone’s dotted line. In fact, he probably “got away with more’’ in major- publication print than all his rockwrite brethren combined, conceivably (however) because it merely simplified matters to have a single Designated Outlaw, one entrusted with a blanche enough carte — and unmonitored options galore — to spike with “authenticity ’’ a rock-media stew of bogus Freedom and ersatz Candor.
Retrospectively cliched or not, there was an existential purity to the sheer commitment evinced by Lester’s prolonged wallow in (and about) the rock- and-roll Thing-in-itself. It was, in many ways, the critical headbang to end all critical headbangs; it would be hard to even imagine, for instance, a professional art-film bozo, a jock-sniffing sports jerk, or a food-review lunatic more uninsulatedy gung-ho vis-a-vis x — either as primary experience or typewrite wankery. His patented shameless multipage gush, coupled with an unswerving advocacy of certain conspicuously over- the-top rock genera (Velvet Underground offshoots; Heavy Metal; Punk Rock), made him a must-read favorite with both cognoscenti and dipshits alike, and he came as close to encountering idolatry per se as any non-musician in R&R. A good deal of which — natch —could not help hitting the self-consciousness fan, but while a man’s life was ultimately undone in the process (“I’m Lester — buy me a drink! ’’), the integrity of his art/craft was essentially unaffected. For, while he might have been a tad too glib-messianic those last couple years, he was by no stretch of things an opportunist, never really giving a hoot for what in squaresville would be known as a career. (Or, perhaps, unlike his role model Kerouac, he simply didn’t live long enough for that, too, to be strenuously tested.)
In any event: dead, cremated, literal ashes. California born (Escondido ’48), bred (El Cajon, ages 9-23), and traveled (I first hung with him in San Francisco, last in L.A.), Lester bought the big one on the opposite coast — his final home, the fabled Apple — April 30/82, ostensibly from a hefty pull of darvon employed, in lieu of aspirin, to placate the flu. Since his death, variously interpreted as a mile-radius teardrop’s once-in-a- lifetime terminal burst, a joke and a half on both himself and his precious chosen whole damn Thing, and — by occasional uncouth louts — the final glorious triumph of his excess, the spectrum of Bangs-in-ongoing-print has dwindled from monochromatic /sparse to colorless/ nonexistent. Of the two books in his name which appeared during his lifetime, quasi-coffeetable numbers on Blondie and Rod Stewart, neither a particularly representative Lestorian effort (or even particularly good: the former admittedly hacked out “in two days on speed,’’ and looking it, i. e., ad hoc and forced; the latter disowned as a clumsy, if innocent, foray into “writing as whoring’’), both are either out of print — officially — or on the back burner of barely having ever been in same, at least as regards this coast, where I’ve yet to see either in bookstore one. Nor have two posthumous whatsems. Rock Gomorrah, cowritten (early ’82) with L.A.’s Michael Ochs, and a projected collection of unpublished fragments scrounged from Bangs’s apartment a day or two after his death, gotten more than inches off the publishing ground — the former for reasons which if herein revealed would get me sued but good, the latter because, in the words of editor Greil Marcus, “the stuff is less tractable than I thought at less than 5000 words or so.’’ Also stalled, and/or abandoned (and/ or nonspecific pipedreams to begin with) : all known plans to reissue out-of- print Live Wire LP Jook Savages on the Brazos, recorded, Austin, TX, Dec. ’80, by Lester Bangs & the Delinquents, lyrics and vocals by guess who. In fact, the only anything by L. C. Bangs readily available where availables are sold is his liner copy for The Fugs Greatest Hits Vol. I, released by PVC/Adelphi some months after he’d croaked, for which he (or rather his atoms) later copped a Grammy nomination, and for which, reliable word has it, he never was paid.
Well, I’ve been proven wrong; it hasn’t been easy recollecting Lester in even half a toto in so much tranquility. Didn’t seem like such a bad idea back when obits were appearing left & right and at least two- thirds of ’em smacked of revisionism at its well-intentioned worst; having ridden the range with the guy, having been as intimate with his daytime/nighttime revealed essence — I would bet my boots — as anyone in or out of various possible beds with him, I had fiery goddam galaxies to say in his behalf that were simply not being said, at least not in print by his designated peers; and, although my no longer living in New York couldn’t help but delay my shot, remote and after-the-fact seemed like the ticket, y’know anyway, for some major necessary rerevision.
But here it is two, two and a half years gone & more, and whuddaya know if all the raw goddam pain (at the loss of, yes, a brother) and jagged fucking anger (at a waste of life, life-force, and relative inconsequential like “talent” and “genius”), an unbeatable duo which for weeks, weeks, months gave the Lester totality so cosmic a shape, scale and intensity, have by their own inevitable burnout given way to the contemplation of standard-issue mere data, of the skeletal remains of a larger-than-life life which have come to make sense (or not) in too neat, too linear, a manner. Well — hey — fuggit: Even if grocery lists, chalk diagrams and hokey storytellin’ are the forms ongoing life-as-life has imposed on the mission, there’s still a heap of essential Lester information that could use, uh, exposure to printed-page light.
What too many write-biz intimates sought to do in the wake of his death was debunk the Lester Legend (solely) by reciting evidence that his bark was worse than his bite. While I’m sure he’d have “wanted it done” (i.e., have the saga-as- litany scraped of treacherous barnacles, or at least of their treacherous vogue), I can’t imagine the projected post-life intent of such a wish as in any way entailing cosmetic overhaul, especially in the service of moral/experiential object lessonhood. Lester’s day-to-day transaction with post-adolescent life-as- dealt was — let’s be conservative — 94 % anything but pretty. If he’d have wanted his entire whatsis to serve up viable scenarios for intimates and non-intimates alike (gee, would the Pope prefer to be Catholic?), there’s no way the deal’d come out even provisionally Lester-functional without interested non-intimates having retroactive access to as hefty an eyeful of the not-so-pretty — in all its hideous, non-Clearasiled blah blah blah — as intimates galore regularly managed to cop and, in their various personal ways, have already learned from. To deglorify an earlier incarnation of shit (which the man himself was clearly hellbent on doing in his waning days on earth) you’ve got to at least speak its name — loudly! — for the whole entire planet: c’mon now, one & all. A solemn responsibility (I call it) which, credibly/incredibly, the smelly sumbitch’s closest associates have, to this day, all but refused to consider.
To wit: For every time anyone saw the defanged, declawed Lester teddy bear rear its cuddly li’l head (see obits 2, 3, 5 & 7) the man was uncountable times the asshole, the buffoon, the sodden tyrant; been those things myself — in semi-prior lifetimes — so I know. Back in ’73, for inst, the soon-to-be-dead Lillian Roxon gushed shameless love for the s.o.b., in New York on Creem business, ordering up a Lester button and leaving it in his hotel box; response to this purest of offerings was “What’s that fat cunt want from me?” About a year later I get this call from Nick Tosches requesting that I please take Lester, who’d shown up at his door on acid, “off my hands”; took him to a party at John Wilcock’s place, during which he verbally brutalized Wilcock’s wife (in green Fingernails) for being a “hooker,” snapped at an affable Ed Sanders for being “the only alkie in the counter-culture,” and had nothing more to say to Les Levine’s Asian girlfriend (wife?) than “Yoko is a lousy gook”; further into the night, at Vincent’s Clam Bar in Little Italy, he literally bellowed ( more than twice), “There’s a lotta tackin’ wops in this joint.” And how can I forget the way he treated me and Nick, his closest approximate friends f'r crying out loud, as our wonderful editor while at Creem? He’d call us each up at 3 a.m. to urgently solicit various (rather specific) reams of pap, needed via Special D toot sweet; we’d climb outta bed, peck away bleary-eyed to whack out the closest possible takes on what he’d claimed he wanted, whereupon he’d reject ’em with a vengeance (“I won’t print beatnik shit”), then run thoroughly like-minded i. somethings — under his own byline — or with our words, usually verbatim, laced throughout. Just a few “examples,” dunno if they sound like big stuff or small, in any event typical Lester, with plenty, plenty more where they came from — y’know times n-plus-many.
In spite of such anticommunal upchuck, or quite possibly because of it — post-adolescent of a post-summer-of-love feather & all that — I did have deep affection for the bastard during my final years in New York; he could really piss me off (and I, I’m assuming, him) but bygones were always eventually ditto. In those days I generally shared his affection for The Edge, and might even’ve gone extreme slightly ahead of him; in January ’72, this is true, he actually dubbed me “the Neal Cassady of rock and roll.” But by fall ’75, when I split New York to at least simulate an escape from the Frantic and Hyper (and he subsequently arrived, ostensibly to embrace same), I was feeling the first stirrings of apprehension re my own prolonged massive intake of Edge Substances (emotional, cultural, but above all chemical) and was on the verge of an early series of attempts to, y’know, cut down, to maybe get off my collision course with all sorts of walls, both metaphoric and real. Lester, meantime, seemed on a rapid upswing in the intake dept.; what had so far served as mere horizon or frame for his trip, or at most been its semi-essential fuel, was now lunging headlong for the foreground of his life ... or should we call it the twin foregrounds (life as Mythic Construct; life as physical/emotional/cultural Hard Mundane Reality).
Hey, the guy was beginning to scare me. Certainly as an advanced — or rapidly advancing — version of what I no longer wanted to be and could (possibly) imagine once again becoming, but more as this vivid, palpable spectre of specialized human decomp not just out there but right there: a pal & a buddy headed (willy nilly?) for the sewer. From late ’75 immediately onward, on those unlikely occasions when separate coasts — underscored by far fewer rockwrite junkets — any longer allowed for it, I was usually unable to handle being in the same room with him, knowing I’d have to witness whole new increments of what could really no longer be passed off as anything but (gosh) misery and (dig it) horror. Where in the earlier ’70s it was almost cute — once in a while — the way Lester would stumble into classic self- directed drunk jokes (like the time he called me from the Detroit airport to tell me he was headed for an Alice Cooper show in London, presumably England, only he’d drunkenly got it wrong and was on his way to London, Ontario), there was this half-week in ’79, for inst, during which he hung out at Michael Ochs’s house in Venice with no daily design but to get skid-row-calibre gone and stay there, that was just fucking grim. Looking an unhealthy as I’d ever seen him, basic shit-warmed over with an ngly bump on his forehead (which he claimed he was “treating with Romilar”), he refused to eat without an Occasion. When, one evening, Michael and I pretty much dragged him to a Mexican restaurant, he refused to actually step inside until he’d fortified himself with the cottons from six Benzedrex inhalers — the local pharmacist was out of Romilar — busted open on the sidewalk with a shoe.
Washing down their remnants with a Dos Equis as his enchilada sat there staring at him, he quoted (or claimed he was quoting) Sid Vicious: “Food is boring.”
So, inevitably, when Billy Altman rang me up from N.Y.Clearly on a California morn, to let me hear it straight from a friend — “instead of from a creep” — my immediate response to no more Lester, steps ahead of all the pain & anger & whut, was holy fucking shit, the fucker finally did it; it’d been in the real-world cards for long-long times for Lester to cease to be. Though even on his gonest days he was no way a classic cornball suicide-romantic — heck, I don’t really think he was all that clinically suicidal (big-sleep fantasies never overtly/covertly lured him, not even metaphorically, from the darkest sub-basement of his World of Dread; nor was Danger, though he often nonstop lived it, itself the merest tickle of a ripple of a thrill for him, a context before the fact) — he’d sure staged more corny, frightful dress rehearsals than Jim Jones plus Judy Garland (squared) for simply ending up dead.
Biggest of which I ever saw was January ’81. I’m at Nick’s place in New York, en route back to L. A. from Montreal, when who should pay a surprise visite but Mr. Bangs, cassette in hand. It’s a tape of these tracks recorded during an Austin romp I’d heard about second or third hand (he’d planned to “live there forever,” it was said, ’til a night in the local drunk tank — on top of who knows what else — totally changed his mind), and in the course of the next 12-15 hours he played it, for us and at us, many times. Also during this stretch, after boasting, rather proudly, that he no longer drank, he managed to ingest at least 36 cough- suppressant tablets (three 12-packs of Ornical — we weren’t always watching) washed down with sizable slugs of bourbon, as there was nothing else but water to wash ’em down with.
All stages of this ordeal, in which Nick and I were little more than foils for surge upon surge of what we’d come to regard as typical Lestorian bathos, were hardly bearable in the state we were in (after far too many “nights with Lester,” going back to the days when we even could dig it, we’d opted for a change to take this one straight), but the morning-after phase was literally one for the books. On the umpteenth playback of what was soon to hit the racks as the Jook Savages LP, Lester insisted that one particular vocal was pure Richard Hell (in Lester’s cosmos an a priori yay); my dogtired no-big-deal of a response was it sounded existentially neater than that, more on the order of Tom Verlaine (a Lester nuh-nuh-no). Suddenly hair-trigger sensitive — in a performance-trigger vein — he tapdanced back with “Then I might as well go sell shoes in El Cajon.” Next cut he compared himself to somebody (very contempo) else, prompting me to comment, for non-pejorative, sleep- denied better or worse, that his vocals (across the board; in general) had the same basic flavor as those on such country-western parodies as Sanders' Truckstop or the Statler Brothers’ Johnny Mack Brown High School LP. Affecting grievous offense, as if any of his b.s. actually mattered (the Lester of ’73/’74 — in any chemical state — would merely’ve giggled), he took things up a full notch of indignant/sarcastic: “Well I guess I’m just no fucking good. ”
But he wouldn’t stop playing the crap, not with every cut looming as a supercharged occasion for kneejerk call- and-response, a challenge for him to goad Nick and/or me into goading him, in turn, into mock-self-deprecatory one-liners ad nauseum — a dress rehearsal, as it were — his puke-stained sweater seemed appropriate — for his triumphant appearance on Johnny Carson, which he had no doubt the worldwide success of his Blondie book would imminently require . . . along with a shot of his mug, cleanshaven, on the cover of People (over which he whined “fear” of besmirched personal image).
Ultimately Nick and I, weary of further compliance in so shoddy an interpersonal number, old buddy or not (and/or old bud in particular), found ourselves laughing in his face; enough was enough, and the sight of this bumbling mammal going gaga for an audience of two-who-knew- better was kind of otherworldly amusing. The object of our yuks, however, took it as us laughing with him: Great Moments in Standup/Audience Rapport! Swollen with illusory (or whatever) whacked-out self, Lester then proceeded to announce his program: (1) to save Rock & Roll; (2) to become president (presumably Oi the U.S. of A.); (3) to move to England and in turn save their Rock & Roll. As mere dipshit goals, nos. 1 and 3 meant topically little to either of us — geez, we’d all but buried the Anglo-Am mainstream as even an idle, y’know, sometime hobby or whatnot — but (2) hit us firmly, instantaneously, in the breastplate.
Lester’s neurons, no recent model of health to begin with, had made the short-circuit of Lester Bangs . . . [tenor saxophonist] Lester Young . . . (latter's nickname] Pres . . . Pres/U.S.A. per se!!!
Guffaw, guffaw — we guffawed — though I guess we could've gasped (or shuddered). Then: a heavy silence, as cosmic (or whatever) as it was awkward, filled presently by the man himself:
"Hey! I'm gonna buy some import albums! I'll get a whore I know to lend me her charge card! Cab fare too!" And he was off; no amiable nudging, no “Get the fuck out of here" could take the place of timeless vinyl hunger. Gone at last — and we gave him (in all solemn, empirical, non-jive reckoning) six months to live.
But of course he fooled us, by (nearly) a whole damn calendar year. Surprise, surprise: but an even bigger surprise was the extent to which he managed to actually turn things around — well, almost — during that extra annum, especially during its. and his. final months. Not only was he still among the living, not only did he no longer seem conspicuously earmarked for premature exit — the Lester with whom I spent a rather refreshing week in February '82 gave every indication of having already gone beyond mere survival (as an issue) and appeared, astonishingly, to be thriving on the theme.
In L.A. following his mother's eventually fatal stroke and staying with his 56-year-old half-brother in Studio City, he accompanied me one night to a low-stakes poker game attended by members of the Blasters, the perfect setup, you’d figure, for Lester to revert to type. But no, he just minimally fun-&- games'ed it like anyone else — no lookin' for opportunities to “be Lester," no showing off for rock-roll peers either verbally or intakewise. no diving for the evening's jugular and letting 'er rip — and after two beers (!). without so much as a grimace, he declared he’d had enough. Postgame he engaged Phil Alvin in a lively musical dialogue, but at no point did fightin' words fill the air, or were axes even poised for grinding. The pair agreed to exchange tapes — a wholesome friendship in the making — and next day Lester complained (true, true) that reefer had been smoked.
As the week wore on in consistent, low- key fashion. I was struck by the fuckload of inner capacities the guy was perceptibly calling on, left, right and center, to extend his defiance of Death to the domain of just plain living, capacities I hadn't caught sensory evidence of — all previously told — for more than 11 minutes total. A far cry from anything as cheaply benign as, let's say, more frequent eruptions of "Lester washes the dishes" (see obit 04), what I got to witness was kind of on the order of a whole new Lester, one who'd finally found a non-lethal, functionally less jagged (though in no way “benign") rhythm for his life. Engaging him in tight quarters with more open-heartedness per se than I*m sure I’d ever mustered (sharing an Edge does not always make for brotherhood-by-numbers. let alone by pure, unedited inclination), I willingly submitted to his rap/rant and bought its tenor if not its verbatim transcript; by the time he returned to New York, his mother still hanging on. I’d seen and heard a New Lester series pilot that could credibly have played — prime time — on the Pro- Life Network.
For starters, he’d learned to slow down, to proceed apace through a given experience without easy reliance on everpopular on-off switches. He'd gotten far more selective about the company he kept, seeking out, for the first time in his known adult life, social interactions stressing soulwarming interpersonal comfort over thrash-trigger me-you tribulation. A good deal less insistent upon strapping each day to an emotional chopping block (as recalled, for inst, in that old chestnut of his, “I need to be in love!"), he'd begun to let his life embrace emotional motifs of greater duration and resiliency. And. as stuff like this fed back to his theoretic apparatus, even Lester's ideas (as stated) began to display an unexpected day-to-day congruity; no longer, it seemed, would he write an anti-racist wowser for the Village Voice in one breath and scream, "Fuckin’ niggers!” at Village Oldies the next. Lester-as-flux had had its thoroughly engaging run. and for this to give way to a “maturer” unpredictability was not the worst of possible outcomes.
Even the drastic reduction in Lester’s intake of physical poisons bore little trace of on-the-wagon-or-bust — y'know, as if any day, minute, second the tension of it all would cause him to snap right back with equal vengeance — particularly with its status as but part of a whole-body package that included both eating at regular intervals and a radical olfactory modification: He now took baths. (One afternoon in ’74 Nick and I met Lester at some ritzy midtown hotel. Though he’d been in the room all of an hour, the smell was like a dog had died there, and been left to rot, weeks or months before. Consequently, we vetoed his offer to call down for drinks on Creem’s tab, suggesting, to his consternation, that any dump of a bar would be more, uh, whatever. Many of his heterosex liaisons had foundered on the rocks of precisely this issue.)
In terms of cultural orientation, no longer was he monomanically enslaved to rock & roll (-or-perish). For virtually the first time since the sixties he didn’t need, burningly, brand new Big Beat LP’s in his mail slot each (and every) day; the state of the Art, wobbling on a multi-year terminal gimp, no longer served as his external psychic barometer, his armband of first-person pride (or shame); having finally produced Music of his own, to severe personal specifications (regardless of the giggles it inspired in jerks like me), he no longer needed to prove anything with it or through it. Crucially, though some would probably like to deny it. he no longer saw Rock’em-Sock'em as a viable metaphor for his (or any, kindred or otherwise) state of being, viewing it as the all too easy — and ultimately, revoltingly, unsatisfactory — crystallization of (mega-numerous) blank and scattered lives. Lester's break with rock-roll mythos as his be-all/end-all of etc., which I have no doubt (had he lived) he’d've sooner rather than later made official, was as profound, and profoundly moving, as his break with the Myth of Lester. As one committed jackass who’d made the same painful transition — goodbye, Rock-Automated Self! — I knew how tough a bond the chronically intermingled personal/cultural can be to crack (and my heart went right out to him).
It also warmed my cockles, considering his record in the mere civility dept., to see him relate (graciously) to his half- brother’s wife, this unaffectedly pretty 21- year-old rural Mexican the macho blusterer, a stuntman by trade, had recently acquired, maritally, while on location Down South. Though she knew pun near zero English, my first sight of her she was watching some random English-language crap, while hubby rested for a shoot of the Fall Guy series, on the tiny TV in her fussy suburban kitchen; materially cozy for the first time in her life, she seemed lonely, disoriented, far from home. Silent and solemn, she visibly stiffened — shyly? menially? — at the intrusion of Lester, my girlfriend Irene and me. only to be put at ease by Lester introducing us, without missing a beat, as, well, friends of the family. Like it mattered to him that she feel like family — and thus shared in all aspects of etc. — and for a moment the loneliness left her face; she smiled broadly, shook (or at least took) our hands, went back to her tube.
But what came off as so genuine when he was dealing with his family, his friends, kind of sputtered into the ether when he tried to branch it to the family of Man. Whenever he got to talkin' Hard Humanism, which had all the earmarks of being his preoccupation of (Rock- replacement) record, he’d make these broad, lecture-ish, relatively flavorless statements which often didn't wash.
Never wholly credible 'cause once again he seemed to be performing — without booze/etc. but surely with a script — he’d say thus & such about human courage and folly that not only had an artificial ring, it tended to run in direct opposition to what had clearly been his experience. Even his word choice sounded stilted, alien, not his own; when he spoke of "women" he could easily have been reading straight from a column in Cosmo.
A lot of which suggested a Lester so hellbent on being a good boy once and for all that to merely work overtime cleaning up his own act was scarcely sufficient; he had to render a transpersonal commentary that made his good intentions “universal,” even if the topical universality he’d taken an option on was simply the first he found it comfortable song-&-dancing a provisional connection to. There were moments when his bill of particulars made me uneasy, realizing that to intellectually challenge any of this would be like kicking mud on some kid’s newest/truest pastime, 'specially when it was one so socially redeeming, so non- self-destructive. one which, for all intents and purposes, I basically shared with him anyway. What really counted was the miracle of Rock Tough Guy #1, after 15 years of rocknroll plug-in and little else, during which he'd come to thread that needle upside down (and asleep), to the point (even) of smugness, flipness, pomposity, out on a goddam limb over something else: a neophyte at last! (I could dig it.)
Anyway, finally, on the last night of Lester's stay — which worked out as our last time together, period — we did something we’d previously never found the appropriate nexus for: trading rants (in earnest) with blank tapes a-rolling.
For something like five-six hours we went apeshit re such topics as: the sellouts & prejudices of mutual colleagues; novels and novelists; New York as (quite possibly) the coldest outpost on Emotional Earth; the usual standard rockish garbidge (plus some un- and some non-). We also hit on shrinks-we- have-known, with Lester's rap on this rooty-toot of a subject being the single one, from the four-and-a-half hours I’ve so far transcribed, which most tellingly nutshells the excruciating self- examination he had to've undertaken — and undergone — just to be sitting around discoursing as fluidly as he was, to’ve transcended whatever the fuck en route thereto:
“Like I went to a psychoanalyst, one in New York and one in Detroit, for a total of, I dunno, three-and-a-half years. I finally concluded, I mean yeah I’m insane, I’ve got my problems, my sicknesses are fucking me, yeah, I’m sure they both probably helped me, y’know, I know the last guy in New York, it's like everybody I know was totally appalled by my drinking and drugging, well like you, right, and everybody else had the same reaction, y’know, except my shrink. He’d say, ‘No, that's alright.’ I went out to this, he had a country retreat, a whole bunch of us would go out there on weekends. And the first time I went there like I got drunk on Friday night, and Saturday morning I got up and washed down a bottle of Romilar with a bottle of beer while sitting on a slick rock by the stream. I got this great idea for something I wanted to write, I stood up on the rock in boots like these and whoosh, went like that and smashed, see it, the scar on my nose? That's how I got it, smashed my face open.
“And he thought my druggin' and drinkin' was great, y'know? He said, in fact he kind of told me I'd be not as great of a writer if I gave all this stuff up. And I said, 'Yeah, but look at all these people, they rot away, they end up like self- parodies like Kerouac and Burroughs and all that sort of shit.' And he said. 'No. no, not everybody's like that.' I said, How could I someday be 55 years old and have to take a handful of speed to sit down at the typewriter?' Well he said, 'People do it. heh heh heh!' Well both my shrinks, especially this guy, they had real great humanist compassion and empathy and all that, but I know what both of 'em did, and in the long run in essence they were no good for me, because they were getting off on me being there. It’s like they’re so bored, one housewife alter another, 'I don’t love my husband, I don't know why.’ Then they get someone like you or I that's actually interesting, that has ideas, and so it's fun time for 'em. I mean if I hadda follow this guy’s advice I’d be dead, uh, pretty soon.”
Hmm: one effing eery end-of-quote as, alas, all is now dust — reactively acquired caution or no. Possibly possibly possibly, any tonnage of prudence would inevitably have proven insufficient for the autopilot courses he was still, evidently, all too capable of flying. Or, reversing horses and carts, maybe his tortured shell was already jus’ too beat-to-shit, with even a radical lessening in his scale of abuse being too little — archetypally — too late. And then there’s this pharmacological biz about purified cells succumbing to doses they’d have been more than up for when poison was all they knew. (And can we ignore the Wrath of Influenza?)
Even if, to some bitter-enders, his death remains as shrouded in formal “mystery” as those of Eric Dolphy and Warren G. Harding, all-of-the-above can't help but provide a not-unlikely profile of how Lester came to die. Throw in a few more mainline Causalities (cultural: rock-roll glut, esp. coupled w/ too literal an intoxication with Kerouac, Celine, et al; primalpsychological: a childhood more woeful than most, his Jehovah's Witness mom — pushing 50 when she had him — mind-setting, almost singlehandedly. a chronic “inability to cope"; geographic: the Apple, even when it wasn't absolute Edge Central, affording him. given his makeup, scant opportunity for inner peace) and you'd easily have an explanation that 'd hold up in a court of his cronies/cohorts/camp followers.
But if Lester was the pawn, victim, and (indeed) fellow traveler of such easy- Aristotelian a-implies-b, he was also, in those last fitful months, a scatterer of all such shit to the winds, a man who showed his true destiny muscle by throwing all the elements out of on-the-head mythopoetic sync just when they threatened, conspiratorily, to reduce him to merely another Jim Morrison. Jimi Hendrix. Mr. Kerouac. Screamingly, courageously, he committed himself, as wholly (really) as possible, to a counter-causal gameplan which even if flawed — and accidents, y’know, happen — did actually manage to defuse (at least where I live & breathe) the mythic oompah of any time-delayed rat-trap he may subsequently (or previously) have fallen in. If there's anything almost pleasing about the timing, the anti-drama, of Lester's death, it's the monumental Mythic Disjuncture factors he'd set in motion were thereby — implicitly, explicitly — to forever effect.
LESTER’S (WRITERLY) LEGACY — “One of rock’s most colorful characters, Bangs made his reputation as a pugnacious, participatory journalist who was not above picking fights with rock stars in pursuit of a good interview." So wrote one voice of prevailing wisdom, Patrick Goldstein, in the May 9/82 L.A. Times; nothing — latter part — could be farther from the truth. If Lester (the writer) more than once battled Lou Reed into (and beyond) the wee hours of etc., it was not to get a story, it was to live a story: to encounter all the rock-related being his writerly credentials (as a wedge) were able to afford him (as a person)'. Nor was he in any way enthralled by the sickening spectacle of stars being stars; artists, maybe, but stars, fug 'em. When he as mere citizen found himself face-to-face with the pose, pretense, and professional guardedness of such gaudy, extraneous creatures, Lester could not (for the life of him) deal with such crap but to cut right through and speak, directly, to the mere citizen in them, or (failing that) force the situation into functional self-destruct — before the fact of anything so dispassionate as actually “writing it up."
That his eventual write-ups tended to display utter contempt for the entire food chain of music-corporate life, often biting, intentionally, a grimy hand that could not’ve been more willing — his mighty Credentials & all — to feed him, heck, fatten him, was but half the take-no-shit of Lester's essential statement as a writer de rock; forcefeeding the stuff, his stuff, the stuff-as-writ, to the only marginally less corporate (or grimy) running dogs of rockwrite publishing was at least as pugnacious a gesture of this-is-what-I-am/this-is-what-I-do/take-it-or-be-fucked. Since the extent of his success in shoving it down so many otherwise unyielding editorial throats may have had less to do with his willful intent than theirs — camouflage, for inst, for their being life-deep in major-label record company pockets — its significance at this juncture is, at most, merely ironic; the reciprocal influence, in any event, of his ease at getting published upon subsequent moments of raw critical-expressive spew was procedurally nil. In fact, what may most enduringly matter about Lester's approach to his chosen profession, way ahead of dandy journalistic touchstones — "courage," “integrity,” “pride in craft" — that he ate for breakfast like so much broken glass (but which, really, you can still get from Nat Hentoff and Howard Cosell), is the “anti-professional," forcibly non-dehumanized square-one struggle he by design submitted to — and could not. with any kernel of his humanity, avoid - in order to pump out critical prose of any scale of note. (Pugnacity with form; with ritual creative context; even — especially — with roleplaying writerly/critical self.)
That he was ofttimes a great writer/critic, so-called, was but icing on the cake. That scant few others, on the hottest days of their lives, have even approached him — or particularly cared to, considering the requisite gravity and passion of the chore he’d set — probably says as much about their investment in lesser quals of cake as it does about the relative inadequacy of their writerly follow-through. Rockwriting is, and nearly always has been, the trade of simps, wimps, displaced machos, brats and saps; of, in Lester's own words, “ass-kissers of the ruling class”; of fuddy-duddy archivists with cobwebs on their specs; of pathetic idealizers of a lost youth no one has ever (even approximately) experienced or possessed; of sycophantic apologists for chi-chi trends, musical and extramusical alike, without which (so they've always claimed) “rock is dead”; of binary yes/no cheeses with the cognitive wherewithal of vinyl, shrinkwrap, the physical column- inch. Rockwritin' Lester, like anyone else in the trade, was certainly each of these things from time to time, though (probably) none of 'em, singly or in tandem, for longer than the odd off review. Sadly, though his untradelike comportment surely tantalized mere tradefolk while he lived — at least in terms of Style — and even begat a not-half-bad (early-’70s) clone in “Metal Mike" Saunders, his actual abiding sway among such clowns, beyond the occasional liftable riff, was — as it continues to be — infinitesimal.
Finally: the twin silly questions (1) where a still-living Lester might hypothetically've taken it (i.e., beyond the rockwrite fishpond) and (2) what such imaginary newstuff could/would conceivably’ve meant to his basic audience. Second one first. Okay, that Lester's rockstuff generally read so hot as personal testimony is one thing; for it to have been perceived by so many as being eminently, genuinely about something — something rather specific, in fact something "rear’ — is something else. When you get down to it, the gospel of Lester's radical about-ness rested largely on a big hunk of readerly illusion, the illusion of a functional one-on-one between the guy’s fertile imaginings and the psychic infrastructure of rock & roll as dealt; there could be harsh discordance, of course, but as long as a firm relationship could (for whatever readerly vested interest) be consistently inferred between Lester’s mindgames and rock’s g-g-games per se, you at least had the stamp of a viable — if totally simulated — one-on-one. But, really/truly, while Lester’s psychic playground may surely have been one drastically twisted maze, its actual correspondence (sympathetic, hostile, whatever) to rock's own labyrinth, one so airtight and dank as to make his seem like wide open etc., was far too often naught but a matter of readerly convenience. Everyone loves a cipher, a living/ breathing anagram or two. even some — hey — with flaws more rampant than Lester’s, but for the man’s writerly service to’ve been gauged (almost solely) vis-a-vis his reliability as a stand-in cipher-of- x, y’know for readerfolk too lame — or lazy — to suss out x themselves, is the real tragedy of the trip, particularly when the first-&-final glue of most folks’ attachment to his writing was never much more than their own desperate attachment to an x they could, and should, have been accessing more independently (and less desperately) to begin with.
So, anyway, here's the rub. Had Lester lived long enough to both sever his own desperate rock connection — officially, in sheets read by his fuckheaded fans, simply by writing other stuff — and, furthermore, to back it up with an equally official rejection of the Fount of Neurosis from which he'd sung its tune (and they'd listened), it ain't really much of a longshot to imagine him losing a huge percent of the fuckheads — certainly the most gung-ho among 'em — in, well, no time flat. And, c’mon, how much of an immediate, uh, new audience was he likely to yank in writing up (as he insisted he would) such transcendently pivotal mere-humanistic trifles as the dearth of love (as we know it) in scene X or Y . . . how this set of new-age culture jerks uses that set of new-age culture jerks as props in regards to bluh . . . New York editors who pull rank (pshaw!) along collegiate lines [a hard-hitting exposé] . . . or, I dunno, something about shams and follies in clothes and/or grooming?
Plus, well, though, um — (even if) — then again: Aside from loss of ad hominem authority due to the fickle scumbait nature of the pop-world Beast, aside from the fact that many of his generic partisans would prob'ly now be targeted, topically and even personally, in scathing printed-page rants, aside from the limited run such goulash (Sensitive Ties His Laces, w/ Brass Knucks & Footnotes) has ever had — hey — can ever/will ever have . . . aside, aside, aside — the most glaring fact fact is how few times, as of his death, he'd as yet even aspired to the heights (or whats) or non- rock journalism. Four-five-six, some number like that, in the Voice and wherever else, all of ’em still pretty much rockwriterly appendices to the rockwrite “adventure," meaning he had a good ways to go before he'd’ve got the wings/chops/ legs for a total-pulp plunge (or at least a regular shift) at full oldtime capacity (but with newtime thrust and content). Which would’ve been no fall from grace no matter how you scope it — give the boy time (for fuck sake) to stumble and bumble and get it right — but how would any possible Lester have dealt with a (previously amenable) shithook book co. like Delilah telling him not now, sonny when he handed ’em a ream of copy on (let’s imagine) friends who’re fuckups? Personal persona limelight Lester had learned to live without — but writeperson limelight? (It would not’ve been easy.)
Okay, he's dead. All this brand new grief and hardship never befell him; never will. But words on pages remain: What is their lot? Lester's standard fare was so paradigmatically “of the moment" that he was the rockmag shootist. But books of the stuff? Nah; it’s kind of nebulous how even his best mag outings will wear when inevitably (??) anthologized. For someone so public in his orientation, both as input and output, he was — don't laugh or even smirk — one of rock’s more precious and fragile "private moments.” Private moments you can always document — coercively, of course — but try and play ’em back and. well . . . we'll all see, I reckon.
LESTER LEAPS IN — Y’all know all by now how Lester leapt out of New York; lemme just finish with how he leapt in. His first night in town, just a visit, fall "72, he stayed with me and my girlfriend Roni, West Village, 104 Perry St., apt. 4. Arriving semi-direct from JFK, he split pretty quick for the nearest grocer, returning with three six-packs of Colt 45. What he did for the next day and a half — all he did — was wade through 18 big ones, half quarts, as follows: start can, drink fast, get tired; fall out, dropping remainder; awaken following can’s impact with floor; stagger to fridge for fresh one; repeat cycle. What he mumbled or muttered during any of the 18 pre-fallout phases I simply do not recall.
So like hey y’know wo hey hey wo-wo hey, OLD SPORT: love ya, hope I didn’t cramp yer style, g’bye.
--Richard Meltzer, “Lester Bangs Recollected in Tranquility”  Dec. 6, 1984
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tinydooms · 4 years
Note
Evy/Rick with #81 (pen and paper) ♥
This is probably not what you were expecting. In my defense, sometimes I don’t get to choose what the characters want to do. 
Cairo, early December 1922
When he had first arrived in Egypt as a boy, someone had told Rick to always check between his sheets at night, in case a snake or a scorpion had sneaked into his bed during the day. It was advice that had stuck with him, probably because it had scared the bejeesus out of him, not that he had ever found a creepy-crawly in his bed. A man was more likely for a man to get bitten out on a dig or a desert expedition than in his own house, especially when that house was Evie and Jonathan’s Zamalek home and probably the nicest place Rick had ever lived. Everything about this house whispered of money: the tiled floors, the central courtyard with its fountain, the excellent plumbing and steady electricity. But it was a home first and foremost, the furniture just a little bit shabby, the carpets just a little bit worn, every surface cluttered with books and artifacts and family pictures. It was noisy, too; Evie and Jonathan were not quiet people, always laughing and talking and slamming doors. It was, Rick always thought in some wonderment, everything he had ever wanted. 
He still shook out his sheets every night, though, gathering blanket and topsheet up in his hands and flapping them over the mattress. He never found anything in the bed in the guest bedroom assigned to him--until, one night, he did. 
It was a book, tucked neatly under the lip of the blanket against his pillows. Rick settled the bedding and folded it back, settled down and reached for the book, intrigued. It was medium-sized, thick but not hefty, bound in dark red cloth. There was no title printed on the cover or spine. Rick opened the book. He boggled. 
It was a French translation of an erotic manual, printed in elegant typeface and with very detailed illustrations.
“Uh,” Rick said aloud, looking around the room. He was alone, the door to the hallway ajar; there was no one around. And yet he knew who had left the book--it didn’t take any guess work, considering there were pieces of paper marking different pages, each with a note written in Evie’s neat script. 
“Yes,” said some notes, simply, tucked between the pages of one illustration and its accompanying explanation. 
“No!” said others, and, 
 “Perhaps, but I don’t really see how this is pleasurable,” said some. 
Rick thumbed through the pages, incredulity giving way to amusement. Had this book come from the collection at Evie’s library? It must have; he was pretty certain it was banned to everyone but scholars. Lucky he read French, really, though ultimately unnecessary in this case: the illustrations rendered the words unnecessary. So Evie wanted to try that, huh? That was exciting. But she wasn’t going to try that. Okay. Rick didn’t like that either. He turned the pages, grinning to himself, reading the notes his fiancee had left for him, yeses and noes and maybes. He flipped back towards the front, to the ones he had missed initially. She had left him a proper message there. 
My dear, 
I hope you don’t think this is disgustingly forward of me, but I think by now you realize that I like to do a bit of research before trying out something new. I assume that you have more practical experience in this area than I do (I hope you don’t mind me saying that) but I found this book quite enlightening and thought you might like to know in advance my interests. Don’t tell anyone. (I know you won’t; I can’t imagine why I wrote that.) 
Your loving Evie
Rick sat back on the bed and laughed helplessly, smothering his cackles in both hands. Oh, Evie, blessed, sweet, darling Evie. He tossed the book down and got up, walked down the hall towards her room. She wasn’t there, though her light was on. Rick could hear water running in the bath next door and grinned, shaking his head. He needed a shower himself after those pictures. He looked around; there was a box of writing paper on her table. He helped himself to a sheet and found a pen. 
Evie honey, 
You are hardly--he paused, how to put this-- “disgustingly forward”, as you put it. You are, in fact, the love of my life and the best thing that ever happened to me. Yes, I have practical experience (Rick hesitated, tapping the pen against his mouth) but not anything like some of those pictures, so I guess we’ll try them together. (A new thought struck him.) Also, does no mean I won’t do it to you or you won’t do it to me or we won’t do it together? Whatever answer you choose is fine; I just want to clarify. 
Damn it, lady, I was already looking forward to marrying you! You can’t spring that kind of literature on a guy with three weeks to go! (Stop while you’re ahead, O’Connell.)
I love you, Madame Librarian
 Rick. 
He settled the paper against Evie’s pillow just under the blanket, like she had put the book, and slipped back to his room. He had homework to do. 
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katsukikitten · 5 years
Text
Lust and a whiskey neat
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"Really you're going to see that crack head who dyes his hair fire truck red?" Your friend asks applying a hefty layer of lip gloss before she poses for a few hundred selfies for her Insta. She angles the camera down and it captures her tits and pouty mouth.
"Tacky really." She says as the sound of her nails click on her phone screen. She's probably sending it to six different guys first before posting it to the gram with some basic bitch caption.
"He isn't tacky." You roll your eyes as you apply your eyeliner on thickly. It's black as your heart and as sharp as a knife. Perfect to match your all black aesthetic
"He's a pro hero you know." You look at her a moment in your giant shared mirror staring at your complete opposite side. She was always about looks, caring solely about catching a man's attention.
Whether it be good or bad as she smiles mischievouslly at her matte pink phone, with a little cellphone charm swinging as she replies furiously.
The white and red catch your eye and you smirk, applying your mascara.
"You think Todoroki's red hair is tacky too then?" She gives you a rare look at her real eyes far from the normal doe look she gives guys. It is sharp and unforgiving, tactful as she speaks.
"Please Todoroki-sama is far from tacky." She wants to hold your gaze but you're too busy making a little heart beside your eye, she chooses to admire herself. Wiggling in her too tight mauve pink dress, adjusting her tits to sit better. She smooths her long dark hair, her bright nails with a single rhinestone catch your eye.
"I'm not seeing him tonight. I'm working remember." You step back and look yourself over. Adjusting your low cut shirt where it shows just enough cleavage for extra tips from guys but not too much that women will not tip you at all. You slide your cellphone into your ripped black jean shorts.
"Besides he is just a customer who comes in and sits at my bar every now and again after a long shift."
She gives you a pointed look, texting without looking.
"Oh so every night for the past month is every now and again?" She rolls her eyes, "Then I only talk to about six guys at a time every now and again."
You laugh at her bluntness. It's true she always kept men on the fringes, never fully letting her guard down. Plus why would she when she was the top escort at Madam's.
"You know you'd make more at work if you escorted someone." She looks you over, you're both naturally pretty. Having this sort of magnetism about you, "Like a lot more."
She eyes your boobs and ass, mentally comparing them and making a satisfied face.
"I couldn't balance it as well as you." You admit.
"You're fucking right about that!" She snaps a selfie, pulling her dress past her nipple but hiding it behind the fisted fabric, "But you're lucky. You're the type of girl that one guy will pay to be exclusively theirs for fucking life."
She smirks as her phone pings in reply.
"But..." You hesitate as you lace your black converse, Madam has asked if you'd like to try, that if you wanted you could be more than the bar keep and the bouncer rolled in one. Most of the girls were quirkless or cared so little for their power that majority of them were beginning to forget how to use them.
Your friend didn't bother to even learn how to control hers, though her power must be difficult to aim as she has always had fortune, Lady Luck on her side if you will.
Even getting out of being arrested when the officer watched the crime with his own eyes.
"Akime..."
"No you don't have to fuck any of the customers. Madam prefers that you don't." She holds your gaze, "I'm serious."
"Well what I was going go say is get your fucking shoes we're gonna be late."
"I'm never late as nothing starts until I arrive."
Its slow even for a Thursday but that doesn't stop you from pouring a whiskey neat and setting it at the bar stool off to your right.
Like clock work the hero comes in, still dressed in his uniform, though there isnt much of one for him to wear before he sits in his usual stool.
"You remembered." He smiles but the joy stays out of his eyes. You bite the inside of your lip, this is abnormal for him and you should know cause you can read body language as if it were a simple book. You're a bar tender it's a prerequisite. Talking and sounding like you care equals big tips.
"What's eating you tonight?" You ask, deft hands shining glasses, setting them up neatly for the order that's going to come from table two. Ruby eyes stare into the brown liquid that he swirls. He bites his lip, debating on telling you.
"I've uh... I've got to find a date for this big gala thing." He downs the whole glass and you blink.
"Well don't look so downtrodden, you're in the perfect place. Our hybrid bar is for meeting people or escorts." You gesture behind him and he looks over his slumped shoulders spying a too tight pink dress, he's had his eye on someone at this place.
"We've got booze and bitches." You laugh at your own joke and he turns to give you a softened look.
"No these women are so kind, far from bitches." You refill his drink off record as an apology, "You're right I am in the perfect place with stunning women on short notice but..."
"But?" You turn to grab the top shelf tequilla, he hardly let's his eyes linger over your sculpted legs. He looks over his shoulder again, as if debating. He swallows his drink whole again, slamming the glass down.
"But I have to get a date for a friend too." He looks crestfallen at the bottom of his empty glass. You refill it before continuing your specialty 'lust' margaritas.
"Well we have a variety of women here to choose from. Bring him in, he's bound to see someone his type." You says as you place the blood oranges just right on the rim of the glass careful not to disrupt the red salt and pink sugar.
"That's the problem he has no type!" He sighs frustrated, "Hasn't for as long as I've known him. Work is his only type."
"Oh he's a virgin then." You wipe the base of the glass before setting them on a tray for Momo, "Yikes."
She grabs the tray with a smile as she sashays to her usual customer. The red head laughs aloud.
"Far from!" He chuckles into his drink, "He's slept with lots of women."
"Oh then what's the problem?"
"That it's a 'date', pretend or not he's awful at PDA. Our PR manager says we need this exposure. A little love drama." His red eyes become puppy dog big as he looks at you as if you have the answers.
Akime makes her fake laugh loudly, her nails catching your eye as she makes her hand signal to ready her drinks. You make quick work on a lust margarita and two shots of vodka. You slice another blood orange as she sways her hips your way.
"Are they almost ready Y/N?" Her tone is all sugar but only because someone is at the bar, she mock gasps as if she didn't see him. Leaning over a bit to give him a better view of her overflowing breasts.
"And who might this be, Y/N?" She smiles, eyes flickering to you.
"Oh ah...actually I don't think he's ever introduced himself. I only know his hero name. Red Riot." You say sheepish for the first time in your life.
"Kirishima Eijirou." He says gently. You see Akime's plan of adding him to her throng of followers set in motion.
"Ah your red hair is so cool!" She says fingering the strands gently. You inwardly roll your eyes.
"Oh thank you. Not as cool as your Louboutins." He smiles a sharp toothed smile, you notice a dusting of pink on Akime's cheeks. Could she always fake a blush like that or...or was that real?
"What's your name?" His voice is butter smooth. She blinks at him wildly, noting that his eyes are, and have been, firmly locked with hers.
"Akime. You sure know your shoes."
"Your Prada dress is gorgeous too." He offers his sharp smile again and this time the blush deepens just a hue, "But you could wear a potato sac and it still wouldn't distract me from your stunning eyes."
"M..my eyes?" You cannot hide the surprise on your face, she has never stammered before. Kirishima nods as the man from her table calls out, his beady eyes glued to her ass.
"Akime dear.."
"Coming!" She sings back, blowing him a kiss before she almost glares at the bar's new ruby eyed patron.
He doesn't watch her go, a feat you've never seen any man take. Instead he sighs into his drink, mind clouded with worry.
"Well he's bound to like someone here." Your eyes gravitate to Madame's highest earner who also just happens to be your roommate. Kirishima follows your line of sight, watching the woman in pink take a shot.
"Yea...someone."
Your night with the red head is filled with odd conversation as he tells you all about his hero work.
Honestly you welcome any conversation that isn't about a sad broken marriage like the sob stories you normally get.
You laugh loudly when he tells you a blunder that Chargebolt did on a job and how angry Ground Zero got.
You do not notice how his ruby red eyes shine when you belt with joy. The clock tower near by chimes, singing its praises for closing time.
"Oh ah I'm sorry Kirishima-san but it seems its quiting time." You smile sweetly as Akime makes her way to the back room for her jacket.
"Ah will you ladies be safe to walk home this late at night?" He asks, voice suddenly sober with concern. You giggle , Akime returns from the backroom quickly in her pink faux fur jacket eyes narrowed to slits. She slips her hand onto his strong arm, pressing her glossed lips to his ear earning a huge blush.
"Y/N could kick your ass and I would be happy to watch. Please leave fire engine." She is no longer wearing her persona, something you've never seen her show a male before. He blinks, stunned at the sudden switch before he turns to her with a wide smile.
"I knew you that dumb doe look wasn't real." He squeezes her hand to his chest with his arm, this time leaning his lips to her ear, "Real men actually enjoy a woman with intellect. I believe you've been holding the attention of too many boys"
He gives her a cat like smile before stopping at the front door.
"See you tomorrow ladies. Same time." And with that he leaves with a wink.
&&&&
8:15pm comes soon rather than later and you've got a whiskey neat lined up in his usual seat, another glass pending a drink as you're expecting his friend but you do not want to assume.
Kirishima waves with a sharp toothed smile as he walks in followed by an extremely grumpy looking ash blonde.
You smile as they take their seats, except Kirishima sits a seat down from his usual, putting him on the end of the bar where he faces the length of the bar but can turn his head to the side to see the low couches.
You swallow as the angry blonde takes his seat, scarlet eyes glowering at the drink.
"This shit must be for you, shitty hair." He says as he slides the whiskey neat as if it were poison. Kiri retorts with a smile before his ruby eyes settle over the low couches. You follow his gaze to see it settled on *her* couch. You sigh turning to the agitated blonde.
"What can I get you?" You're cheery and offer a bright smile to which he sneers, you offer a drink menu when he does not answer you.
"Why the fuck did you drag me here?" The young hero asks, dropping his giant and in your opinion gaudy, grenade vambraces. They hit the floor with enough weight that all the glass behind the bar rattles. You send a nasty glare that goes unnoticed as he stares at Kirishima.
"Ah well..." He scratches the back of his head as he sips on his drink.
"He's trying to find you a date. Which to me already seems next to impossible considering how rude you are." You fake a smile at the end as you add "Now do you want anything to drink or no?"
The blonde glares your way for the first time tonight.
"I want a drink that will make you less of a bitch." He growls and you feel your temper flair.
"Oh so sorry, I can't make one of those for you, just like I can't make a drink that will make you less of a fucking asshole. But maybe a vodka Sprite will shut you the fuck up." You snap, pouring his drink with speed before slamming it down on the bar to attend to the incoming Friday night crowd.
You pour hundreds of drinks in the span of just a few hours as you submerge yourself in your work. Serving the drinks that are ready for tables by the edge of the bar where Kirishima sits and taking new orders from waiting customers all the while a set of scarlet eyes watch.
Watch you flirt.
Watch you bend over just enough for guys to get a better view of your tits earning a better tip.
They watch you smile and it causes his heart to race, especially when you share it with another man hinting at an innuendo.
Through all that you still manage to refill Kiri's and that damn ash blonde's glass, though you give him something different after each drink.
You set the house special of Lust before him and he stares at the red sunset colored drunk.
"What the hell is this?" He asks gruffly, the first words to you since your comment.
"Lust." You smile at him, a real smile as you are delighting in his slight discomfort, "But maybe I should make you a drink called love instead..."
"No, I told you that my services don't go that far."Akime laughs though you know she's holding back rage, "Please I enjoy your company and don't want to ask you to leave."
You don't catch the first que as the blonde yells in your direction.
"I said no!" And then she giggles but his hands try to pry her crossed legs open.
Kirishima notices, a hot rage burning in his stomach as he picks Akime up gently, placing her on her two feet in her prada shoes behind him before he leans in real close to the mans face.
"I think you should get your hearing checked. The beautiful lady said no, not convince me." His voice is dark and the drunk man rears his fist, his gaudy rings catching the light attracts your eye and you jump over the bar.
You didn't do your research on Red Riot, so you wouldn't have known that the man swinging would have broken his fist against a stone face instead you slam your own fist so hard into greasy skin that two gold teeth and a string of blood fly out.
Unfortunately for you, you've just hit a pretty notorious boss and his goons rise from the surrounding couches. You smile as they lunge your way.
Most of them are easy one punch K.Os, your fist meeting flesh and making that satisfying crack.
Your favorite sound as you feel the orbital bone give way under the force of your fist, power singing through you before they can even use their quirk.
You don't notice the last one coming out of the bathroom, his eyes wide as he stares at his boss lying facedown with a bloodied golden suit. The ox like man charges for you like a bull sees red.
You're turning too late to counter or even block the on coming bear paw. As you brace yourself for what should be a sliding impact you feel a muscular arm wrap around your thick waist as a a powerful palm catches the meaty fist. A series of pops dance along his tight forearm as steam hisses from his palm.
"Tsk. You're really starting to piss me off fatty." His eyes glow red as his tone turns dark
"G...Ground Zero!" He stammers, "Y..you can't sc..scare me."
"Wasn't trying to, tiny." He tightens his grip around his fist before twisting the baemeth's wrist the wrong way. Cracking echos through the quiet room as the man falls to his knees.
The blonde squeezes your hip gently before letting go to walk forward and further damage the man. His snarl turning into a small manic smile. The man shakes beneath the hero. You pull the broad shouldered blonde from the man just to earn a glare.
"I was handling that." A growl, as the man cradles his wrist.
"Yea so well too." Sarcasm drips over every syllable, "Well enough you were planning to take a direct hit to the face."
"I. Had it. Under. Control." You bite out again pushing him, letting your temper heat your blood.
For whatever reason you HATED having a man come to your rescue.Mostly because anytime one of them did, they expected something. You feel the ghost of his hand on your hip, further fueling your rage.
Arrogant
Asshole
Is all you can think as he steps closer, looking down on you as your chests touch, forehead almost touching yours.
"Do you know what his nickname is?" A growl so dark your stomach twists and your muscles tense ready for a fight, "The bone crusher. Do you know why?"
You stare him in the face, starting to see the edges of your vision turn blood red.
"His quirk can shatter bones with just a flick of his fingers. You're lucky I know how to counteract the force," Another growl, "But of course you wouldn't have known what is quirk was because you're too busy flashing your tits for fives."
You see completely in red as your first moves on it's own accord right into his pretty, arrogant asshole mouth. Causing him to slide into your precious bar, wood splinters beneath his weight. He spits blood onto the shining wood top.
But you aren't done there, no you were in full on berserk mood as you jump into the air to get a more intense impact because right now you want to see those kissable lips and those burning eyes bloodied.
"ENOUGH!" You are frozen mid air before you fall to your knees powerless as madame's graying hair stands stick straight. Kirishima and Katuski share a look as they watch the older woman reminding them of their old Sensei.
"A round of free drinks on the house. Mina!" Madame calls, the pink skinned girl bows.
"Yes ma'am?"
"Get started on those orders and make sure they are delicious drinks please darling." She's all sugar before she turns to you, "My office now! All four of you!"
You struggle to stand as your power has been sapped for at least ten minutes.
You feel oddly human and you do not like it as your body seems to weigh too much even for your powerfully toned legs. A busted lip blonde offers you his hand with a scoff and when you push it away he growls, placing his arms beneath your triceps pulling you to your feet before he shoves his hands in his black pants.
He spits blood on the floor again as he follows Kirishima who is gently guiding Akime to the office with a large palm on her mid back.
You and Akime take the two seats across from her oversized desk in her cramped office as the two men stand behind you. She smooths her hair down before setting her sights on you.
"What the hell happened out there?!" A shrill yell, "That's a high ranking thug you've hit out there and do you know who that is?"
You follow her finger over your shoulder and huff angrily. His arms are crossed and his scarlet eyes are averted.
"No ma'am. I do not."
"Well you should!" She slaps a newspaper on the desk for you to see, you peer down at the blonde who, even though you'd hate to admit, looks cool as hell as he crouched, just dodging a punch and already mid counter.
"He's tied for number one!" She slams the paper with her wrist for emphasis, "And you bruised his handsome face!"
"I..."
"No, no excuses. Now Red Riot and Ground Zero what brings you two here today?" Her dark eyes slide over the built men. Kirishima laughs, scratching the back of his head.
"Well we need dates for this gala...." He says honestly as the aura from behind you goes from pissed to seething, you can almost hear the popping sound of his quirk.
"You're in the right place." Madame smiles, "Did you have any ladies in mind?"
His ruby eyes fall to your friend who is sitting with her hands in her lap, fighting mixed emotions about tonight. Though to the naked eye she seems relaxed, bored even.
She inspects her matte pink nails to further emphasize her facade.
"Well only if she agrees to it." He says softly before meeting the gaze of the older woman.
"Akime will accept. Now love what is your external rate at these days?" Madame asks, plucking a pen from her chaotic desk with ease.
"250 an hour, and additional 50 an hour if there is physical contact. Kisses on the cheek are 20 bucks and kisses on the lips are 55 a piece." Akime says as she reaches for her phone to text idly.
Kirshima feels his soul leave his body as Katsuki's eyes narrow on his supposed friend.
"And for your friend?"
Kirishima's eyes shift to you wholly noticed by Madame.
"I'm not sure who he would pick but as far as her prices I can't..."
"You won't have to. I will lend these two ladies to you free of charge as an apology for the rough night Y/N has put you through." She scribbles on paper.
"That is very generous but.." Eji starts only to be interrupted once again.
"There are no buts in this conversation. I will allow you these two women for the whole evening. Return them at midnight or let me know other wise should they somehow fall in love with your boyish charm and his brutish way of showing affection." She does not look up from her notes.
"Th..thank you madame." Kirishima bows as Katsuki sucks his teeth before they both leave with her business card in hand to provide details for later. The second the two men leave you find yourself and Akime speaking over one another.
"He's such a fucking brute. Why did you pick me? He should take Urakaka san or one of the other hmm I dont know actually escorts."
"Madame I cannot be SEEN with firetruck and especially not for FREE?! Ugh and it matches his sparkling eyes and it's kinda cuu... really ugly madam I cannot go on like this. I'm being punished. I was the victim here!"
"SILENCE BOTH OF YOU!" You both flinch for fear of her power stripping quirk. It even makes the quirkless feel weak.
"I'm still going to pay you both. Just not your external rates Akime. I'm going to pay your normal rate doubled as with you Y/N." She finally holds eye contact switching between you two, "Do you know what this will do for the escort services and the bar? Hero exposure will have this place skyrocketing, we won't even have to advertise that is our establishment as everyone knows where Akime works what with her large male following. And with the world renowned drinks you've made Y/N everyone will be all over this joint. And hell Akime maybe you'll even catch the eye of Todoroki."
You both stare dumbfounded.
"But.." You say in unison.
"But you both need to leave before I make these a series of dates."
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jewels2876 · 5 years
Text
Clumsy - S.S. Drabble
requested by @thing-you-do-with-that-thing  - prompt in bold
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You were just taking stock of your apartment; you had swept, dusted, changed your sheets, and arranged all of your bills in a neat pile on the kitchen counter. It was the first time he was coming over and you wanted the place to look nice. Most guys hadn’t made it past date two, but something about this guy made you melt inside. Maybe it was his passion for his job, or his beautiful smile. It was DEFINITELY his dorky sense of humor and the light in his eyes when he looked at you. No matter what it was, you wanted to make a good impression… and maybe take it to the next level. You squeezed the stuffed monkey he won for you on your first date before throwing it on the bed. You heard a short knock at the door and did a little dance before answering.
He had cut his hair short for his next role, but the sparkle in his blue grey eyes made you blush. “Hey Seb! Come on in!” You moved back to allow him in, as he offered the wine bottle from his left hand.
“I hope this is ok?” You looked at the bottle and grinned. “You didn’t say what we were doing for dinner so I guessed.” At that you chuckled as you took the bottle into the kitchen.
“I hope pizza is ok? It’s homemade but its my favorite.” You leaned back into the living room as he looked around. “Feel free to take a seat wherever!”
Seb walked around the living room slowly, taking in the family pictures scattered around. He spotted the one of you at your brother’s wedding, flanked by your parents. “This might be my favorite of you.” He turned around and took the glass of wine you offered. 
“Thanks! It was a beautiful day; they looked so happy.” You took a sip of your own wine before taking a seat on the couch. “Come, sit!” You patted the seat next to you. “I don’t bite until way later.”
Sebastian chuckled, thankful he didn’t spit out the wine in his mouth. He took the offered seat and threw his left arm behind your shoulders. You leaned into him and sighed happily. He seemed to fit in your space with ease and you couldn’t help the lazy grin on your face. “So this is my place. Nothing fancy.”
Seb set down the glass of wine on the side table and looked down at you. “I like it; it’s cozy. It’s very you.” He saw a sparkle of something out of the corner of his eye and teased “But I do see something fancy over there.” His hand waved in the direction of his gaze now. You groaned and laughed.
“That is a very heavy, very shiny, award I got from my old job a million years ago before I moved to New York,” you explained sitting up. “Just be careful around it. I’d hate to see what kind of damage that could do to someone’s foot.” The timer went off in the kitchen. “I’m going to grab that, just give me a minute?” You kissed his cheek and he grabbed your ass. Your head reared back as you laughed, running to the oven.
Seb couldn’t help himself. He stood up and went to inspect the award. He picked it up and weighed it in his hands. That IS pretty hefty, he thought. I wonder if… CRASH!!!
“Careful not to break the—oh!” You slid the pizza stone onto the coffee table where you had laid out several potholders.
The award laid on the carpeted floor, still intact just face down. The mirrored table it had been standing on, however, hadn’t survived though. Seb’s face was crestfallen. “I’m so sorry! You weren’t lying about that award though.” His eyes were round and reminded you so much of a lost puppy you couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of your chest. You wrapped your arms around him in a hug.
“I hated that table,” you admitted as he hugged you back. “I don’t know why I thought I needed it when I saw it.” You raised your head to offer Sebastian a smile; he leaned down and kissed you softly.
“Are you sure?” 
You sighed and pulled out of his arms. “I’m positive. In fact…” you picked up a piece of pizza and put it on a plate for him, then did the same for yourself. “Here’s a toast to getting rid of lousy furniture. May I replace it with something much better.” He laughed and knocked his plate gently against yours. He took a bite and groaned.
“You made this?” You nodded and he groaned again. “If you cook this well I’ll GIVE you my furniture, with or without me in the deal, up to you.”
You giggled before taking a bite. Then you swallowed and grinned. “One thing at a time, but I haven’t seen your furniture yet. Is that an invite?” You wiggled your eyebrows.
Seb let his pizza free hand reach out and stroke your cheek. “That is DEFINITELY our next date.”
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smolbeandrabbles · 4 years
Text
Makin’ Waves - Fraser x Reader (Black Sea)
Part 3 of #TheRetcon:  Quit Breaking Up With Me / Keep The Girl
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GIF CREDIT: X
Author’s Note: I’ve been mentioning my GIF usage a lot lately but... I really LOVE this one. I mean like... I can just think about lying with him and just that quiet understanding staring... and then talking to each other and I just...  I’m sorry! I Digress! Here we are! Part 3 of 4!  Disclaimer: I own nothing from Black Sea / I mixed up about 5 different places for where they are on holiday but it’s solidly based on Marbella  Premise: Back from Russia with a hefty amount of Gold, Fraser begins to decide how to spend it. The answer is obvious... Words: 7890 Warnings: Pre-Amble / Sex (Edges into Smut maybe a little) / Swearing 
________ We found paradise right here tonight a little off shore And a pair of eyes lookin' into mine that's gonna lead to more Gonna lead to us a little later on clothes on the floor So hold on tight cuz... Sangria kiss I won't forget, you know the kind that lingers on your lips When you wake up in the morning Yeah we set it motion... There's no signs of slowin' it down... We got the weekend wakin' Up on the bank, it's breakin' Got nothin’ slow on the radio Ain't just those speakers shakin' As soon as that sun starts fadin' I'll be the arms she lays in That girl is amazing And we just love makin' waves We got the anchor down We got the music loud We gonna party as long as we want 'Cause there ain't nobody around ---
Something wasn’t sitting quite right with you. Not quite. Everything about seeing the boys home made sense. It did. The ones still there, one ones not. (Minus the banker. You’d make sense of that in your own time. Collateral? The only man who knew what was really going on – someone had funded this. Possibly his boss. It made sense to bring him home. Kinda.) But there was one little thing niggling at you. You pulled the car over, engine still running. Your hands tapped the steering wheel and you bit your lips together; Fraser looked around the car like he’d missed something. “Y/N… What’s wrong?” You looked to him; “Why… Why was there an 18 year old kid from Liverpool on a Russian sub in the first place? What reasons did Tobin have to be there-!?” “Oh-! Well… Kurston…” Fraser began to explain, but as he did so you reached across him, opening the glove box again and scrabbling around for paper and a pen “…Told Robinson all about it, and then killed himself… Tobin delivered Robinson the news… I guess we were just desperate to have the right number of men so Tobin got pulled into it. If Gittens didn’t die I wouldn’t have had to pull him into Diving…” He paused “Are you mad at me?” Even your scribbled handwriting was neat, Fraser raised an eyebrow at what exactly you were writing however; “…But why would you accept something like that? Does he have a family…? And of course I’m not mad at you. You needed three divers. He could dive…” “Well we didn’t exactly all sit down and talk about our lives… But I wouldn’t assume so… Sleeping rough? I’d say he needs that money like we all do – as for family… I can tell you he has family coming. I mean he’s having a kid so. Yeah… family… But maybe not… the kind of family you’re talking about.” You folded the note in half and held it out to him; “Give him one.” Fraser took the note – address and phone number – without hesitation “Us? A pretty girl from London and an Australian psychopath? That’s one hell of a family.” “Just… he can come whenever he wants or needs to… he can call when he needs to. Invite him for dinner too. That’s what people do, right?” “Are we adopting this kid now?” He grinned “He’s a diver too. So… I feel like of all the people who are going to look after him, see him straight.” “Think Robinson thinks he’s got that covered.” The sarcasm that dripped from your voice couldn’t be understated; “Oh. Yeah, cuz we know what happened with Robinson’s family.” “Y/N…!” He shook his head at you and then laughed, “Okay. I’ll go invite him…” But he allowed himself to stare at you for a few more seconds, before smiling and ruffling your hair; “You’re too good a person.” He opened the car door and slipped out. Making you laugh and call after him; “WELL - ! Someone’s gotta look after you both-!” *** “So where do I need to run it...” You ran your hands through your hair and muttered to yourself for a second before sighing “God this feels like insider trading... call the number I gave you, tell them everything you can about the gold. They’ll log a case - it’ll be sent through and be picked up by someone who will then begin the processing. Once that’s done they will offer you a price... and if you agree the price they’ll transfer the money through - probably - and send a security vehicle to pick up the gold. It’s usually a simultaneous action...” “How is that insider trading?” “Your partner works for the company you’re sending it too.” “You’re not getting something from this though?” You gave a shrug, technically not, it would be his. But you’d still be in his life, there was still a personal connection here. “Eh, I dunno, the money goes to you but I’m here.” “...Just quit it. I’m using your company. That’s final. Fraser trusted you. Which meant he trusted where you worked. He had a choice in this you supposed. You just hoped it wouldn’t end up on someone’s paper trail... These days anything could happen.
 Still, Fraser home was about the best thing to happen in years. He was unusually quiet about this trip. But he also liked revelling in you and was quite content to stay quietly at home. You didn’t mind too much, if he was there at least he was keeping out of trouble and therefore prison. He was making you late again though - and had no remorse for that. And your boss could tell her was back more than a few days in; “Fraser’s back, isn’t he?” “Oh god it’s that obvious!?” He gave a knowing little smile “Work from home a few days if you need to... that’s totally fine. He’s home. You should enjoy that.” So you accepted, but you couldn’t say you got a lot done when working from home either.
Miraculously today you weren’t even on time but early into the office. And had already finished one report by the time Tobias, your boss, walked in. “Hold on...” he pointed at you “What happened..?” “Nothing!” “He’s not gone back out already has he-!?” “No!” You laughed, but decided a moment later to bite back on that, that was the last thing you wanted right now. He peered at your screen “No, you’re right no charts to be found... fancied being productive?” “Yes, in fact!” “Good!” Then he looked even more surprised as you handed the report over “Here you are.” “Suspiciously productive, Y/N!” He tapped the side of your desk with a smile and walked off, looking back every so often to jokingly tell you he was keeping his eyes on you. But not close enough. And pretty soon you were making your way to a different operations department and sitting on the desk of a great colleague of yours; “I have a request for you.” Gareth’s eyes flicked up, suspiciously “Go on...” “How many trades you got going on?” “Shouldn’t you be asking the LME floors that...? Got a couple, slow going... kinda meandering.” “So, you have capacity?” He folded his arms and sat back in his chair, trying to take a measure of you; “What’s up? You know I can’t give you any information.” “I know but I also trust you to handle it with integrity.” “But it’s between me and the client and I’m not doing them any favours.” “Just look out for something for me, will you?” “I’m all ears... but if it gets grabbed by someone else it’s out of my hands... interesting?” “Russian gold from an abandoned submarine that was on its way to the Nazis.” He blew out a breath at your deadly seriousness; “Sounds like a museum piece... Geez... how much?” “Don’t know. I’ve heard the casual figure of £2 million flashed around but I don’t know enough to say that’s for sure.” “... It’ll be done on authenticity and purity... hammer and sickle works?” “As far as I know.” You had literally no idea, and didn’t want to know any more than you had to Gareth whistled; “Well, that’s certainly something worth being part of the process on... who am I looking for.” “His name’s Fraser.” “What is he to you?” “Best we don’t say right?” “Right. But also, Y/N, regulation would state you should declare or it would be even worse if they find you out.” “To whom must I declare?” “To my boss. At the very least!” You nodded, you knew Aimee relatively well; “And you don’t owe me.” “Certainly not.” You patted his shoulder “Thanks Gareth - tell me when y- No... forget it don’t even tell me that...!”
 Two days later, you got a call to go back down to Gareth’s desk. Which you thought was against the rules, but you went down anyway. And he looked both elated and bemused. “What?” “Is this the diver guy you’ve been with for 10 years?” “No comment.” “He’s possibly one of the most interesting men I’ve ever met...” You raised an eyebrow and could think of many questions to ask, opting instead to get to the point. “You’re not here to tell me that.” “Who told you £2 million, it’s bullshit.” “... In a good way?” “In a very good way. We couldn’t even value it, had to get one of the museum distributors out...” “Oh my god.” “If he worked that damn hard for it he deserves what he’s getting believe me. I just wanted you to know that it’s a big figure, so, if this is the guy you’re with, I hope you’ve damn well told the people you’re meant to.” You leant against his desk; “I followed protocol. It still feels wrong talking about it like this…” “Well it’s massive - we can’t not...! Congrats!” “Geez, he needs it. I know that...” “Yeah I bet... I just got the valuation back, I’m about to send over... so, if he signs...” Gareth gave a shrug “It’ll all be worth the effort. And I’d sign...” “Shut up!” “Well just if he comes to you...” “He should go to you... I don’t even want to know the amount...” “Good! Keep completely out of it.” “Fair price?” “No rates necessary - they aren’t playing him. I’ve made sure of that, that’s why you asked me. I know...” “Thanks Gareth I-“ “Hey-! You don’t owe me, okay! Don’t even think it..!” He turned back to his computer “Though-! If something comes up on your floor I’m always interested!” You laughed “I’ll keep it in mind!” *** You knew the second that cheque came through though, because the door was barely open before he was running to you; “Y/N!” “Oh-! God-! Okay-! Hold on, let me get through the door…!” “Have you ever-! I’ve never-! I---!” He waved the paper for a minute “I… I…” “I’m not sure I wanna know how much you’re worth… What happened…?” “Oh…” he indicated to the door; “They brought a big armoured van around and put it all in there… I think some of it could be going to the museum too… That guy seemed very interested. Do you think I coulda got more on the black market, I mean…” “I have it on authority they aren’t playing you…” you rolled your eyes “And god forbid you do anything legally.” Fraser laughed; “I just… I can’t…” He pulled you to him and placed your hand over his heart; “What even… is… I just…” “Breathe!” You giggled “Did they tell you what happens next?” “Oh… yeah!” He still kept your hand in his as he pulled you into the kitchen, gathering another piece of paper “I take this cheque and this letter to the bank. Apparently the letter is very important. And I guess it all clears and the money is mine.” “Well, what does it say?” “I dunno, looks like jargon to me.” “Yeah, and a diving manual would look like jargon to anyone else…” You held your hand out for it and he gave it over. Although you realised your mistake instantly as your eyes widened. “Sorry-! That’s nearly 21 mil-!” You stopped yourself and looked across to him “Who the hell said two!?” He gave a shrug “That was the ballpark, grossly underestimated.” You turned back to the paper and read it; “I’m gonna go with you, you better take every form of ID you have an be on your best behaviour.” Fraser tiled his head like the notion of him behaving otherwise was foreign to him; “I’m always on my best behaviour. You folded your arms and raised an eyebrow, amused as you were you couldn’t help it; “Oh yeah? Wanna tell that to your criminal record?” *** You'd never seen Fraser look so excited. You also hadn't seen him bounce off the walls like this since you used to dive together - and it was easy for you to realised how much you missed it.
This time it was about money though; as his cheque came through for the gold - he might just have held his breath until it cleared... And then he really was allowed to think about what he could do with the money.
"Just be sensible..." "Sensible was always my first thought..." He gave a smile "I'm taking you away." You were between raising your eyebrow in confusion and the sweet ‘aww...’ You felt at him telling you the very first thing he wanted to do was go on holiday with you. "...You want..." You couldn't keep level headed about that - and relapsed into a wide grin that wouldn't disappear. "I know just the place... But you have to promise to dive with me." You looked back to those beautiful blue eyes pleading with you. "Not too deep." "Sweetheart, I know your limit... I just need you to do this with me... Please..." You walked over slowly and took his hands in yours; "Baby... Of course I will... Now go on." You gave a wink "And tell me nothing but the dates." He tipped his head, with a disbelieving smile "Oh? You trust me?" You thought it was a silly question, but humoured him anyway, pulling yourself into him you brushed your lips to his "...With my life..."
 **
 He did remarkably well. And you knew exactly where he'd got the idea from. Every so often if Fraser was out at sea your friends would take you away themselves to make sure you weren't all alone in your house for a long period of time. Even though Fraser wasn't massive on his social media - you knew he always saw the pictures, because he always asked where you had been.
 Fraser had been planning something like this for so long. Sure, he could get paid for diving usually - but that didn't mean that on occasion the two of you didn't scrape by. It wasn't like he was getting work anywhere else. Your lifestyles weren't exactly lavish - you were just conscious savers. And that was before he thought about any time he was in prison or picking up fines. And he wasn't happy with you paying for everything either. But if he wasn't taking you diving (which since your accident had been a few times but nowhere near as many times as he wanted), or he was allowed to take you on a job (also occasionally they'd allow spouses to come), Fraser hadn't been able to take you on holiday.
 But he could now. And he could give you clear, warm, tropical seas that would hardly put your skills to the test - but that you would be more than happy to dive in. The white sugar sand just off the promenade made everything picture perfect - and even though he was holding hands with you as you walked, Fraser knew you were somewhere out there. And he got to watch that for himself this time. The hotel had a number of private flats that overlooked the beach and each had its own private strip. There were other couples you'd both interacted with around the resort, but it was so out of season that everything seemed deserted. So you revelled in how much alone time you got with him - and that he could enjoy the beach, for once.
 You liked just being in his company for so long - there was no threat of him being called away out here, and even less threat of prison. For which you were extremely thankful. Even on the flight out you'd got to curl up with him and wind yourself around his arm in a way you hadn't for nearly 5 years. And he knew how significant that was; leaning his head on yours and running his thumb over the back of your hand soothingly. That was good for him too, in fact, this whole break was good for him. Fraser got to occupy himself with just about everything. There wasn't a day yet where he hadn't been up before you and wandered back into the bedroom with a smile "Hey! Y/N! I've been thinking we could do this today... I just went up to the hotel and they said..." "...Honey, whatever you want, just come back to bed for a bit - yeah?" And so he did, often.   Then you got to revel in him in a different way for a little bit.
 Today you'd managed to persuade him not to drag you out of bed so early, so you could spend the day on the beach. Which meant you actually woke up before he did; but you didn't move. Why would you when he looked like this?
Fraser's name shouldn't really ever have been uttered in the same sentence as 'calm' - because he didn't have a calm setting. He was high energy, when he was sat still... Well, he was never still. Something always had to be going on, either with objects in his hands, or with how fast he would talk. Fraser needed something to stim with, and that was how the knife had started – other than it obvious utility – only, now that was somewhere in the Black Sea, you guessed. That was about as "calm" as it got. And because you ran on a wavelength similar, that's how you had always ended up in fights. No matter how 'in the past' that notion was. Because Fraser didn't wind up; Fraser just snapped. And that was a hard thing to deal with if you didn't know him well. Which also pissed you off about him spending half his life on a claustrophobic container in the depths of the ocean. Fraser noticed when he was on that edge and he could talk himself down. But in the process of doing so, if you irritated him again he would cross that line. And Fraser over that line was never merciful.
 It was a line you'd witnessed him cross enough, but you'd only crossed it once. Fraser could get angry and hate you - but you'd never ever been on the receiving end of a dangerous and violent psychotic episode. Nope - you'd crossed that line diving. Because you were still a teenager when you'd met him, and you were still a teenager when you'd become dive partners. And thought you were both invincible and too old to be told what to do by someone clearly more experienced. Your snap backs to every careful comment he made were on occasion downright rude; and he had every right to go off on one after telling you multiple times to stop. Because there was nothing Fraser cared more about than the people he dived with. So, you learned the hard and fast way that Fraser screaming at you over a comlink on the sea bed wasn't exactly your idea of a good time. (Yes, you'd been good at pushing his buttons back then too.) But by the time you surfaced he'd calmed down to a more manageable level of mad, and decided he'd rather not talk to you for three days than do that again. But it scared you enough to let you know to never do it again. And also had you learning a lot more about him. Now here you were. Ironically the only other time in your entire life you hadn't listened to him you had been hurt, but it had let to him laying here with you now. So that didn't feel all that bad.
 So sleeping with one arm tucked up under his head and the other reaching across the bed so that his hand grazed your stomach, yes, Fraser looked calm. You took the hand on your skin in your own and kissed his fingertips delicately. You realised a long time ago how hard it was to repay this man for saving your life. Staying by his side through everything and trying to protect him from the world seemed like an agreeable thing to do. Even though sometimes you thought that's what he was trying to do for you. "I love you..." You shook your head gently; "And even I don't think I realise how much..."
 **
 The beach meant only one thing to Fraser. Ice Cream. No beach visit was complete without it; and when he'd announced that to you in his strong Australian accent, you knew it was the Britishness in him talking. "Oh. We converted you somewhere along the way then?" He gave a smart shrug "I guess!" It was about the only thing he enjoyed when you would drag him to a beach in the UK - because half the time he would grumpy about the amount of people. High energy yes, but social? No way in hell. You and The Boys. That was Frasers social group, and in all honesty the only one he wanted. He only hung out with your own friends on occasion because his status as your partner demanded it of him. So, ice-cream it was. And you were surprised how long you had to sit and wait for him to return, considering the lack of people out here. Maybe he'd just had to walk a long way for it. Maybe he'd stopped to admire the sea... You hoped you hadn't missed that...
"Can you believe it?!" Was how he announced his return, holding the cup of ice-cream up "Even all the way out here they still use these stupid plastic spoons!!" Fraser settled back next to you on the beach towel and held up the tiny fluorescent yellow "spoon".  "Whose idea of a joke were these things!?" "Makes it last longer." "Nah!" He took a spoonful and pointed it at you "That's what they want you to think! Truth is your ice cream is liquid about 6 spoonfuls in. and then it becomes even more useless!!"You gave an amused shrug and leant on your hand "Go on, Mr.Holmes, what's the theory?" He bent it between his fingers "Look how easy that is to snap..!" You took his wrist "Well don't do it! Or you'll have to go get another!" He laughed "Would you like some?" "Mmm... I wouldn't say no..." "...Oh, to answer, I have no theory... See you'd think it could be for the kids... Only, talk about a choking hazard. Also I'm NOT a small child!" "You sure about that?" He gave you a warning look "Just because I love you doesn't mean you're getting any ice-cream if you're just gonna be plain rude... Y/N!" "Rude?” You teased “I thought it was quite funny." "Ha. Ha." But his sarcastic laugh made you really laugh and he leant forward with the spoon, "Now come on... It's pretty good." "Oh. I don't get the whole cup then." "I'd never get it back!" He did know you well! You opened your mouth and were met with the taste of your favourite ice-cream; "Mmm! No that is good!" "So you want more right?" "Is that why you decided on my favourite, huh?" "No." His smirk was gentle, “it's because you aren't getting any of the other.” "The other?" You questioned; "Going back for seconds, are we?" "Obviously..." He scraped the spoon around again; "Just two spoonfuls for you mind." "Too kind." "Well... At my own expense..." You accepted a second plastic spoonful of ice cream and then let him sit contentedly to finish the rest on his own.  Not without stealing his cap though. "Hey- Aw, forget it..." "Not fighting me now, huh?" "Oh, we gave up on that..." Fraser tipped the cup back like a shot; "See! Liquid!" He set it down and eyed you "...No... I've just always thought you looked good in that..." "Aw..." You pulled it down a little more to shield your eyes from the sun "...Do I get to keep it?" "NO!" He pushed you gently "Look after it, by all means!" You noticed he used the same tone with you then as he did when he asked you to do so before he left for a job. "Yes Skip!" "Damn right - not that you ever listened!" "I did 98% of the time...!" You whined with a pout "Yeah and that other 2% was hell, thank you very much!" He continued his lean forward and captured your lips with his. "...oh-!" "Thought I better kiss that pout away..." And so Fraser did it again, and again - and you just kept accepting his kisses.
 Fraser did, eventually, get back up and wander away again. By this time you were laying down, shades on, eyes closed, music in. That didn't mean you didn't notice when his presence left your side. You opened an eye and shook your head after him. What did he need more ice cream for anyway? Again it took him an age to stroll back to you. And when he sat back in the sand he tapped you; "Y/N..." You slid your shades up to rest on his cap and sat up. "Now what...?" "Come here a sec..." He patted the towel next to him. That made you suddenly suspicious, and your eyes narrowed; "Fraser I am literally right here..." "Yeah I know, and I want you a little closer, darling, c'mere..." Even with your suspicions you weren't about to resist the pull to be closer to him, and took the two steps needed to be on his towel, where you sank back to his level. "What?" He turned his body so that you were facing each other and he held out another spoon of ice cream; "Do you want some?" "You just said I wasn't getting any of this one..." "I know what I said, I'm feeling generous..." He gave a wink that you also felt you shouldn't trust. But stupidly did. "Okayyyy..." Fraser gave you a winning smile and held out the spoon for you. But you should have known better and he teased every time you tried to take a bite. "Seriously!? And you say you're not a child!" "-Just playing into the spoon!" "Will you hold still!?" "Okay... I will now I promise..." He didn't. And this time instead of moving his spoon out of your reach, you ended up with ice cream on your nose. But the cooling sensation on your skin made you at least giggle. And this time when Fraser leant forward, he licked it off you.
"Oh." It was of both realisation and surprise. And you realised exactly why he'd bought a second helping. And why you were also in a pretty secluded part of the beach under palm trees "Fraser I..." "I figure it's yes or no..." He murmured kissing you gently again. You weren't sure, but something in you was curious. Fraser knew you and sensed that; so the spoon left marks across your jawline and down your neck; and his lips followed the trail his hands were making. Your eyes fluttered closed as you focused on him. "Yes..."
  As he continued his trail of ice-cream and kisses, your body trembled as the feel of his tongue gliding over your skin. And you closed your eyes – sighing. Fraser pushed the straps from your shoulders and pushed you gently down into the warm sand and you knew this was heading exactly where expected. You quivered again at the thought of making love to him somewhere so public – you’d never had that before with anyone, and for a moment you were curious as to whether he had. Considering his background, where he was raised, and everything that remained a mystery to you, it wouldn’t surprise you if he’d done this before. But never with you… The ice-cream was finished before he’d got half way down your body; but not before he’d managed to completely undress you. And he afforded you as many touches as you would allow, before you wanted his shirt and shorts off him. He wasn’t about to give into that request either…
 Fraser admired you a little longer in the sunlight than he usually did. He liked that you weren't afraid to show that scar. There was a confidence in that he admired - and how you could easily have it tidied up, or nearly gone, but refused it... There was a tragic beauty in it... And a constant reminder to him of how much he should protect you. How delicate you really were; even though you'd always been a tough girl. And had to be, to be with him.
He took your hands in his as he kissed it - just as delicately. He whispered against your skin. I love you? I'm sorry? You couldn't make out the movement of his lips. But it didn't matter - you knew why. You ran your free hand into his hair. And that was Thank you.
 ***
 He got the idea to take you out on a boat. Eventually you knew that would mean diving, but for now Fraser was going to whisk you away to a tiny private island. And you meant tiny. You stared at it questioningly from the boat and turned to him; “I think I liked it better on the mainland.” “…I didn’t say we were going to live on a private island.” “Fraser that thing is barely inches wide.” He shook his head at you; “You’re not seeing the bigger picture here.” You laughed at his choice of words and turned, with a grin; “Help me out…” “It’s private, Y/N. That is literally the only word here that matters.” You leant on the boat and stared hard at him, but that smirk on his face wasn’t moving. Oh, it was gonna be one of those days…
 “…Damn… I swear this is clearer than it looks over there…” You shielded your eyes from the sun, looking across to the main shoreline from the dock. “Whatever you say.” Fraser joined you to stare at the water, hands in his pockets and his eyes traced over to you. You noticed this, and couldn’t help your smile under the weight of his gaze; “Stop looking at me like that.” “Like what?” Though Fraser was well aware of what he was doing. “That…!” “Why…?” “It makes me feel…” you bit your lip gently, and shied away from him “…Like I’m about 18. Again.” A smirk threatened to cross his face; “What did I do?” “…Nothing… My heart hasn’t raced like this… well… I mean… since yesterday, but…” He looked back out to the sea again with a snort; “This sounds like some damn romance novel.” You folded your arms and turned towards him; “You asked the questions!” You couldn’t help your smile though, “This is entirely your fault Fraser. Now get the HELL over here!” ‘Over here’ was about five steps, but he still put a little swagger in his walk as he strolled across the tiny ‘pier’ to you. You almost shook your head watching him. “You wanted me to say that.” He gave a gentle shrug; “Maybe.” “Shut up!!” “No. You, shut up.” He wound his arms around you, pulling your body close to his, his lips grazed yours gently, nowhere near good enough… “Damn…” you sighed against Fraser’s kiss as he left your lips – kissing your forehead, to your temple, across your cheek to your nose, before claiming your lips again. But each one was a ghosted kiss, and you knew that was on purpose. And so did he, by the way he liked that you whined. But he was strong enough to keep you back from him. “No… No… don’t do this…” “Mhhm?” “Fraser…” you whined again, voice soft, “Please…” He smiled again, and answered by kissing you once more. But you weren’t ever going to let him just get away with that! He wasn’t in control of you – he wasn’t about to start thinking that either-! You’d show him-! All it took was one movement, and before he could stop you, or even react to what you were doing, you’d pushed him backwards off the end of the pier and into that crystal clear blue salt water. By the time Fraser resurfaced you were laughing so hard it almost hurt; “Y/N! WHAT! THE! HELL!” “Oh my God! That was TOO good to pass up!” “GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW!” “Why don’t you make me!?” The flash in his eyes as he moved through the water to the pier made you step backwards a few paces, and your breath catch. But you held firm and shook your head; “Just chill out, stay there a while sweetheart.” “Y/N!” there was a growl to that, sending a familiar tingle up your spine. “Say it.” Fraser knew exactly what game you were playing, and he sighed with a slight roll of his eyes, tilting his head back in the water “…Please…” “Uh huh.” You unbuckled the belt pulling your dress in belt first; it fell to the pier with a clink. Unbuttoning your sundress, as slow and sensual as you could make it, you dropped it, running your hands through your hair you watched him. Fraser was more than a little taken aback, but you knew he loved the way you were looking at him. “You gonna take off your clothes or what?” He frowned; can’t argue with that and nodded, his shirt was off in one swift movement. But his shoes took a little longer. You almost laughed “Bet you wished you’d taken them off to walk through the sand now, huh?” You slipped your feet out of your sandals as he shot you a look. You reached up and pushed the straps of your swim wear from your shoulders; and as a second gesture of goodwill pulled your pants down your hips just enough. You heard that gentle growl, and the rest of his clothing was on the pier in seconds. You bit your lip just thinking about it with a gentle hum, and the way those blue eyes were looking at you expectantly.  But that wasn’t quite good enough for him; so he swam back a little further, just to make sure he could get a real look at you. You unclipped the top half of your costume and stepped out of your pants nonchalantly. Running your hands through your hair one last time, with him staring at you like that, made you feel like you had all the power here. And that injection of confidence made you the one to smirk as you stepped forward to dive in. The water was warm; the sun has been hitting it right all day. You surfaced and breathed gently with a smile as you swam out to him. Fraser whistled gently; “Well, damn. What was that?” He took you back in his arms with another delicate kiss. “Well it’s not like I’ve been practicing or anything…well.. Mayyybe I have…” You made sure to kiss him back; smaller, butterfly kisses, because he should damn well know you still want revenge. “Oh, uh huh?” He attempted to deepen every single one of those kisses, but you continued to pull back from him. You knew you couldn’t keep control over him for long, so you had to own this moment whilst you had it. “Naw, Y/N, c’mon…” You refused him once more, and could tell he was just becoming more frustrated. And you were in his domain out here. And he was a stronger swimmer than you. Fraser caught you again; tangling your legs below the water, he began running his hands lower on your body; which instantly made you gasp his name. “F-Fraser---!” Your breathing hitched, twice and whatever control you had is gone. He could kiss you now – and Fraser knew he had won. He lifted you higher onto his hips, barely allowing you breathing space as his kisses became hungrier and hungrier. You brushed against him and gasp again; and you could feel the way Fraser started smirking against your lips. – He’d always been very good at not asking for it.. Not begging for it...  What happened between you after an argument involved so much push and pull, but when he was back from work now… All you wanted was him… So you were not; you’d never put up much resistance to him wanting you, anyhow. Your breathing hitched for a third time as he kissed down your neck, and your exposed shoulder, biting down gently – that was enough to have you moaning, eyes closed. “Fraser!” His hands were all over you, and all it made you want was friction. Your legs tightened around him. But you still didn’t want to entirely give up on that little bit of power… In your desperation you attempted to move your body lower down his, which only caused Fraser to chuckle again – of course he knew what you were doing… His hands moved quickly to your thighs and he attempted to loosen your lock around him to lift you a little higher. But you weren’t having any of that, either.
“Well, one of us has gotta give.” You hated that Fraser had voiced it the way he did. How he made your body tremble against his; and you could feel your cheeks heating up; “uh huh! I told you it was hot out here.” He virtually purred it, with a cocky grin as he kissed you once more. You hated that confidence as much as you loved it – you were both frustrating each other on purpose, only it was getting to you more. “Fraser…” your voice was barely audible, and he missed what you said “You’re gonna have to repeat that darlin’…” “...Don’t.” Of course he wasn’t going to listen, and he pushed your body again. Well, this time you were fighting him on that one. Locking your arms around his, your nails dug into his skin – enough to give him a visible wince; “NO.” For a second you were more in control than you have ever been before, considering how fierce the look you were giving him was. Fraser bit his lip – he hadn’t seen a look like that from you in a while, not since you used to fight. And reminiscing on moments like that didn’t help anything but turn him on even more, and he knew you could feel that. “D-Damn….Y/N…” “Please.” Knowing that neither of you were going to give up, and yet both of you wanted it, you were gracious enough to concede – you needed him; “Baby, please…” At least he responded to that, capturing you in another kiss; his hands ran through your hair and you sighed gently against his lips, tightening your embrace around him. Fraser felt your legs loosen around his waist and dropped a hand from tangling in your hair to guide you. The movement was gentle – but you whined through the kiss at the same as your body tensed for just a second. But you weren’t the only one making noises; and he groaned too, breaking the kiss to breathe deep – his eyes closed to you for a moment, and he traced his hand down your spine… Fraser always had this strange feeling that you were perfect, you were built right for him. He found that an odd thing - not something he ever thought about often, but he felt it now. Maybe it’s because he was here… Fraser was never more in tune than he was in the water. You placed your forehead gently to his, and closed your eyes too, your focus on his breathing, his heartbeat, this moment. When he opened his eyes again yours were still shut – and Fraser moved from you to trail kisses down your neck – now you tasted like the sea too. And that was all his favourite things in one place… He ran his hands lower on your body to support you against him, aware that he would be all you had out here. You were relying on his abilities once more.  That feeling persisted though; and the notion that you were built for him made the prospect of you ever being with someone else an odd concept. He realised if you had any ex-lovers he never knew about them. But Fraser was always aware of the crew’s teasing – that you could have whoever you wanted when he was away and he’d be none the wiser, or that they could simply win your heart from him. Your eyes reopened as you gasped gently again, as the train of thought he was on began to affect him. “F-Fraser! W-Wait--!” “Sorry! Sorry I didn’t mean…” You shook your head, smile setting back in – you gathered his face in your hands, eyes looking between his. People called him a psychopath - like it was just a word they could use… but behind those eyes of his was something wild and untameable; a stormy energy perfect only for the open sea. You weren’t sure what your role was in that… you only used to add to it – a squall that would attempt to destroy you both. Now you could calm it… but control it? That was a fabrication of anyone’s mind who dare think it… “It’s okay, don’t ever say sorry. I love you…” You let him go in order to claim kisses again; this time biting his lip gently. Pulling yourself into him tighter you took another breath; Fraser closed his eyes for just a second to adjust himself to you, and the water. Was he excited by this prospect, or not? Well yes… but the responsibility was all on him.  Your breathing slowed, as you slipped into the grove of his own. His lips brushed yours, to let you know he was ready, and your movement of reassurance was taken as an opportunity to move. “Fraser---! Dammit---!” but your sighs weren’t angry; just blissful and he chuckled gently. “If you keep saying my name like that, Y/N, we might just have to do this more often…” *** Even on the gentle boat ride out to the particular chartered area of water Fraser had decided on, he could see you were nervous. It was far from you not wanting to be there, though... This was just what happened every time you went now. The way you would eye the ocean and beg that this time it wouldn't finish what it started.
Obviously Fraser hated seeing you like this; given that there was never anything he could really do about it. You came to terms with it on your own and he knew you'd be right as rain after being in the open sea for a couple of minutes, but until that time you'd be internally freaking out. His attempts to distract you from it proved fairly futile, but at least you were standing close by him now - and he could put an arm around you. He wasn't sure if you'd ever get over it, but there was sometimes nothing he wanted back more than you by his side on deep sea diving missions.
He slowed the boat down to a complete stop and turned to you; "You sure you're going to be okay?" "Mmmm..." Though you didn't sound so certain. To you it was just a question Fraser always felt he needed to ask; he knew you'd be fine and that once you'd spent 5 minutes below the water it would be just like it always used to be. Still, he always gave you that option to back out, even when you were already fully dressed and kitted out. "Alright," he breathed, "we're gonna do this nice and slow okay? Always make sure we're in each other's eyeline and if anything happens..." He pointed to the back of the boat, "We signal or call for help; okay? Other than that - you know all the partnership rules..." He pushed his forehead to yours, "I'm gonna look after you okay, Y/N..." Those blue eyes studied yours hard, but he didn't let his own internal worries cross his face. "I promised myself nothing like that would ever happen to you again and I meant it. And I've still never lost a diver." But Fraser had always been diligent, and you'd always blamed your accident on your own mistake - whether Fraser let you or not... You nodded and accepted his short sweet kiss, before he stepped away to finish getting ready himself.
 You could feel the tightness in your chest - and your skin running hot and then cold. Your blood and heartbeat pounding in your chest, and through your ears. It all made you feel a bit nauseous and you had to steady yourself against the side of the boat. You found it ridiculous that even after all these years it was still that bad. The waves swelled under the boat, but it was all very gentle. And you knew Fraser was watching you again with the same worried look on his face. But those nerves made you hesitate - and you never knew why. You should have been more scared under the water than standing above it - but entering it was almost always the difficult part. And why?
Maybe it was the not knowing... Not until you were in it or under those waves what the temperament of the water would be. And that could always massively affect the success of the dive. But it had never fazed you before. You turned to him, now by your side and took a deep breath "I'm sorry this always happens." "Don't be..." He pulled you to him and sat you on the side for a minute; "Even now I can't imagine how hard this is..." "Should it be..?" Fraser gave a shrug, "I pray I never have to find that out..." he held out his hand "We'll do this together - okay?" "Mmm..." You laced your fingers with his, and gently pushed your forehead to his again closing your eyes. You knew this was as calm and steady as Fraser got, and you just wanted to bask in that energy as much as you could. He was home right here - and it still made you so happy to behold it. "...Fraser, I love you. So much." He chuckled gently, and grazed his lips against your cheek "How many times do you think you need to tell me that?" You reopened your eyes, "Well. How else am I supposed to get you to kiss me?"
Fraser got that immediately but the way he smiled and shook his head "...Well. I figured even then, you might have made it easier on yourself..." He gripped your hand a little tighter "Just let me make up for that and make it easier on you now, Mmm'Kay?" You gave a nod "Together? On three?" You nodded again - but were well aware he wouldn't even count one. You could have laughed at the predictability of it all, as he pulled you backwards off the boat as soon as you'd agreed to it. But the sound you made was enough for him to know that he had done the right thing.
 And that was his only aim; Fraser would always do right by you. You deserved nothing less.
---
@dennismitchell @happyskywhale @wltz-bby​
#MendoTagSquad.
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ducktracy · 4 years
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53. bosko the speed king (1933)
release date: march 11th, 1933
series: looney tunes
director: hugh harman
starring: johnny murray (bosko), rochelle hudson (honey)
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bosko takes to the racetrack to tackle the champ, but, as always, the champ’s got a few tricks up his sleeves.
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honey is ogling at her sweetie in the newspaper, crooning “ain’t he grand?”. she turns the page to read more, the headline screaming in bold letters “THE CHAMPION IS FAVORED TO WIN”. she turns up her nose and pooh-poohs him.
as it turns out, honey is perched on a fence, watching bosko work on his car. great staging! very creative. bosko, jolly as ever, whistles while oiling up his car. there are some more shots of the other contestants working on their hot rods: a dog furiously pumping air into his tire, a pig sewing a patch into his tire, and another dog cranking his car, twisting his body up and unfurling.
enter the champ, who looks exactly like the kidnapping lumberjack from bosko the lumberjack. his car is a marvel, all tricked out and fancy—much grander than bosko’s dinky little car. honey isn’t deterred by bosko’s mediocre car (which also has a big 13 emblazoned on the side. yknow, for good luck). she encourages him by admiring his work, declaring “oh, bosko! that looks swell!”
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lumberjack turned champion doesn’t think so. with a jeer of “looks swell, eh?” and a swipe of a matchstick to the car, bosko’s hood is scratched and burned. boys will be boys!
rightfully so, honey and bosko get angry, with a “you old meanie!” from honey. bosko assures he’ll get him, and tells her that they’ll tune up the motor first. literal gags are always the best. honey saunters up to a nearby piano and presses a key, the motor revving in the same key. tuning the motor goes from a few keys to a whole rendition of yankee doodle dandy. i love it!
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before he knows it, bosko is being summoned to prepare for the race. he hops in his car (a belt hiding his shiner) and putters his way up to the starting line, as always greeted by a warm reception.
this next gag really feels like something from looney tunes, because it involves stuttering, but maybe that’s my icon talking LOL. the flagman stutters “on your m-m-m-mark, g-g-g-get set... g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-“, the cars inching forward and back with each “g”. the flagman whistles (a gag that would often be used in the joe dougherty porky cartoons, such as i haven’t got a hat, plane dippy and porky’s romance to name a few) to “snap out of it” and yells “SCRAM!”
all at once, the cars speed off (save for a dog pedaling on a go-kart), and there are some pretty neat ground-level angles of the cars hurtling straight at us. one gag includes a hood ornament (of hermes?) getting covered in a plume of exhaust. the hood ornament opens the little pedestal it was perched on and dives into the gas (or... some sort of fluid. it looks like water, but what do i know about cars?) below and comes out squeaky clean.
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more shots of the cars, such as this awesome “free wheeling” car with its wheels all out of whack. the animation is great! i always love the purposefully discombobulated animation, that’s always a bear to synchronize unsynchronization.
in pure wacky races style (which would be even more of an “influence”—a reverse influence i guess since it came out in the 60s—in porky’s road race), the champ tosses a box of tacks onto the track. hapless victim bosko, as always, is just one of the many people who get flat tires.
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bosko skids to a halt and thinks of how he can get himself out of this mess. there’s a cat nearby, which he grabs and uses as a lever, jacking the car up. he then unzips the tire and takes out the actual deflated tire and puts a new one in, zipping it up, good as new. very creative! though the gags are somewhat predictable or serve as a “standard” of sorts, they’re still fun to help. i love the next detail of bosko putting the cat down and giving it some pets as a thank you. a car barrels past him, and he realizes that he’s in the middle of a race, not a pet shop. nice little glimpse of personality!
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the other contestants improvised, too. one car has a crutch on its deflated wheel, one tying the tire into segments, another guy pushing his car like a wheelbarrow. bosko is now gaining on the champ, who takes notice. to ensure his status as champ and keep bosko back, he blows a plume of exhaust in bosko’s face.
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standard gag now, but i wonder how often this was used in the 30s! bosko wipes the smog from his goggles with mini windshield wipers and smiles like nothing ever happened.
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vision cleared, bosko can focus on the prize. he veers to the opposite side of where the champ is, but he blocks him. they do a zig zag tango of aggression, and bosko’s car turns sentient and bites the champ’s car in the rear. nothing like a good bite in the ass to get your message across! i love cartoon physics. the champ’s car flies into the air and lands behind bosko, who is now in the lead.
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the underdog comes out on top! honey presents him the grand prix crown and situates it on his head. they kiss, until they realize they have a hefty audience watching. bosko chokes the engine and causes a plume of black smoke to form a smokescreen as they kiss again. fade out.
this was a cute one! it’ll certainly be filed under the better bosko cartoons list. bosko didn’t have much personality, but he was still enjoyable to watch and root for. honey was very endearing and cute! she DOES have some personality, so it’s always exciting to see her in the shorts, especially when she isn’t deemed irrelevant halfway through the short, never popping up again. this cartoon reminds me a lot of porky’s road race, which would technically be the same premise, albeit with more hollywood celebrities and more of a wacky races feel. the gags were standard in this, yet entertaining regardless! it didn’t seem to drag on for too long, maybe the scene with bosko using the cat as a car jack, but it wasn’t bad. i loved the gag of the flagman stuttering and the cars inching forward with each stutter, very much a looney tunes feel to it (i wonder why 🤔). overall, above average cartoon! i’d recommend it!
link!
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vegas9 · 5 years
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I Own Anne Bonny’s Coat
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I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase Anne’s coat used in the production of series 3 of Black Sails. It is actually Clara Paget’s stunt double’s coat, but it turns out to fit me perfectly so I’m not the slightest bit bummed that it wasn’t Clara Paget’s coat seeing as how she’s a bit taller than I am.
As I’ve posted this to imgur before there is always a question of cost so I’ll get that right out of the way:  The coat came to $1750 after a bidding war I nearly lost at the last second - this is not at all indicative of my disposable income or spending habits, the timing of the auction just happened to coincide well with my savings. I hope to God I never want an object as badly as I wanted this coat. (Seriously, it was like gremlin-level compulsion to possess this item.)
Anyway, I’ve used it to cosplay Anne at cons before and for anyone out there looking to replicate it I present to you multiple photos to help you in your crafting endeavor. If there’s anything you can’t see that you would like to in terms of how the coat was constructed or fabric please let me know - I’d be more than happy to take additional photos for you!
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Aside from the brilliant fit, the attention to detail on this is just astounding. It's very clearly handmade and it's been made exceptionally well. I got to show photos of it to my grandmother who had been a designer and seamstress before she passed away last year and she couldn't believe it was something that belonged to me. (She even asked how I had known it was so well made as if I hadn't spent my childhood wearing dresses and other clothing she had handmade for me with the same attention to detail - even if the materials weren't nearly as costly.)
 You'll notice the shoulders are more rounded with the patches on them. I don't store this hanging on a traditional hanger. Not only am I worried it could slowly damage the shoulders by malforming them, but it is extremely heavy and requires a hefty hanger. More on that in a second.
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This monster is heavy, weighing in right around 9 lbs. A lot of that weight is in the 'tails' that have exceptional movement. The way this coat was made it has a way of moving with you almost as though it's vaguely alive. It's extremely satisfying to walk or turn around with it.
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It’s these patches and embroidery that give the shoulders a rounded look as opposed to the more traditional boxy look you get on regular jackets. It does feel a bit different to wear than any other coat I’ve had, but - again - in a satisfying way. That being said, while the style works for this coat I doubt I could pull it off with anything less dramatic.
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A shot of the embroidery and detail on the tails at the center back of the coat. This coat has buttons and even loops that you could theoretically button them with. Since the coat was never worn that way on the show and the loops are very stiff and I don't want to put undue strain on them, I've never buttoned it while worn or stored except for the single attempt to see if they were truly functional. The cuffs on the sleeve are something else entirely. They add colour and subtle interest without demanding your attention. 
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The cuffs on the sleeve are something else entirely. They add colour and subtle interest without demanding your attention.
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More detail of the front of the coat. When I was bidding on it the photos didn't really show that the main fabric of the outside of the coat was embossed (it's not a printed pattern, you can feel the slight grooves where the detail was stamped in). I don't know where the designer found the fabrics that were used, but damn I'm beyond impressed.
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The front of the coat has these really neat pockets and get this - beyond the detail and visual appeal ...the pockets are real. The buttons can be opened and there's enough room in the pocket to store things such as a large smartphone in a wallet style case with room left over. (This is invaluable to me, my cosplays never have a spot for me to keep my phone.)
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The lining in the coat had just as much care taken with its consideration. The fabric isn't itchy or artificially slick, but while this coat is pretty to look at and weighs as much as a large newborn, it won't keep you terribly warm. Also, I just love the patterns and the way it was thought out even though it was likely never to truly be seen on screen - it could have just as easily been a solid colour.
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There are small tags handstitched into the collar, and though the marker used to write has been worn you can just make out "st... dbl" on the bottom one.
Also: the jacket in cosplay
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From a fun little photoshoot I did back in 2017. Photograph taken by the lovely Dana Barrett.
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I also flew out to London to visit some friends during London MCM/Comic Con in 2018 and brought my Anne costume with me for it. My friend who has always written the Jack to my Anne threw together a quick Jack inspired cosplay based on what they had on hand and frankly, I approve.
BUT WAIT. THERE’S MORE!
While we were at MCM in our Anne and Jack getups we ran into a group of guys also dressed as Black Sails characters also wearing screen-worn pieces. 
They got super excited, in part because of the coat - one did offer to buy it from me and I’m not so sure he was joking. But they were even more excited because I was dressed as Anne and apparently Jessica Parker Kennedy was at the con. (Which I’d had no idea of up to that point.) I basically got swept up by four strange men to meet her and even though she was just supposed to be signing, she got the okay to take a photo with us all. 
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I was not a remotely functioning human being. I was not cool. I basically turned red and couldn’t get any words out and it wasn’t helped by the fact that when we were trying to figure out who was going to stand where she insisted I stand next to her because I was Anne.
As a shout out, the four strange men are also super talented costumers in their own right. The fine gent dressed as Charles Vane all the way on the left in the above image makes awesome stuff that can be found here.
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chocolategate · 5 years
Text
Even Gods Love Frogs
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Link to read on Ao3
Warnings: None
Rating: Gen
Relationships: Darcy & Thor friendship
Wordcount: 2k
Tags: Fluff, Animals, Darcy Loves Cats
I wrote this little thing for @pinkcoffeefrog.  
Thanks for beta reading @dresupi
“Wasn't Morris the cutest?” Darcy asked Thor as he flipped through a photo album of her childhood.
“He was indeed,” Thor answered. The photographs of a younger Darcy amused him. Her gap-toothed grin had stayed much the same, though her spectacles were far smaller and more flattering now. The orange feline in that particular picture hung in her arms as if he couldn't support his own body. “Was he a youngling?”
Darcy shook her head. “He was already fully grown by the time I was born. He's about nine in that picture.”
Thor frowned. That couldn't be true. Earth's beasts were indeed smaller than those on other planets, but according to a television program she'd shown him, some of the world's most deadly creatures were felines. The one she was holding was no larger than his forearm.
Darcy trailed her fingertip gently over the picture. “He was my best buddy. I miss having a cat.”
The sadness in her voice caught Thor off guard. He didn't understand much about the whims of Midgardians, but Darcy’s sadness hit him particularly hard. She was a brave warrior, much like himself. Sadness didn’t become her.  
“Can you not acquire another?”
She sighed and shut the photo book before hauling herself up off the couch to return it to its place on her overcrowded bookshelf. “My landlord doesn't allow pets.”
“Surely such a tiny creature would not be a nuisance.”
She huffed a laugh. “You'd think that, but cats can be kind of destructive. A lot of places around here don't allow pets of any kind, or if they do you have to pay a hefty deposit. Maybe someday, though,” she said with a tight smile that barely even lifted her cheeks.
She disappeared into the kitchen and left Thor sitting on the couch, stewing in his thoughts. There had to be some way for Darcy to have a cat. He would have to ask one of his other companions for advice.
On a rare Saturday afternoon that it wasn’t raining, Thor and Darcy walked to a nearby pet store. Thor had stopped by previously and learned it hosted local animal rescues almost every weekend and donated a portion of their proceeds for pet supplies back to those same rescues. The public was welcome, whether they wanted to adopt or simply spend some time playing with the animals.
As soon as the cat area came into view, Darcy squealed and Thor allowed her to pull him by the hand to the edge of the pen.
One of the volunteers, a kind-faced woman with graying hair got up to greet them.“Hi there, are you here to adopt or to play?”
“Just to play this time,” Darcy answered, the barest hint of that earlier sadness in her voice.
The woman let them into the pen, closing it behind them to keep all the wandering kittens in.
Darcy immediately dropped to her knees with the widest smile Thor had ever seen on her face. His heart swelled knowing he'd helped put it there.
He squatted down as well and observed a few of the cats before settling his attention on a sleek black one hiding beneath the table with the adoption paperwork. He scooted close enough to reach the cat, then waited patiently until it grew curious and took a few steps toward his outstretched hand. It glared up at him through piercing green eyes.
“Your coloring reminds me of my brother,” Thor said as the cat sniffed at his fingers. It turned away with a dismissive sneeze and he chuckled. “As does your countenance.”
He left the cat in peace and turned to where he'd left Darcy.
She was still on the ground in the middle of the pen, but now she had three kittens hanging from her sweater by their claws and two more in her arms. When he caught her eye she grinned and said, “This is literally the best day of my life.”
He crawled over and gave the biggest one, a handsome gray and white fellow, a scratch between the ears. It looked up and bit down on his fingertip with its sharp incisors. He let it chew fruitlessly on his finger for a minute, then pulled the digit free and said, “You have a warrior's spirit.”
“That one is pretty feisty,” Darcy agreed.
Thor brought the kitten close to his face and murmured, “May you be as mighty as Freyja's cats of old. I wish you a long and prosperous life, little one,” before setting the kitten back on the newspaper covered floor.
Several loud barks echoed through the store, startling some of the cats.
“I didn't know they had dogs,” Darcy said, comforting one of the frightened kittens in her arms.
Thor rose to his feet. “I should like to see these dogs.”
“Sure, dude. Go play with all the slobber-mouths. Just come back and get me when you're ready to go.”
She seemed content on her own, so he set off to explore. His first stop was the dog area. Most were significantly larger and more hearty than the cats had been, though several of the smallest appeared to be more cat than dog. One large golden dog reminded him of Captain Rogers if he were a dog.
He didn't linger there long, despite the warm feelings he got when the dogs licked his hands. The store housed a wide variety of animals, and he wanted to see all that he could of Midgard's “pets” while he could.
He passed some small hairy creatures, some tiny with long tails, others larger with no tails at all. Their information tags informed him they were mice, hamsters, and guinea pigs. There was also an enclosure with three long, sleek animals called ferrets. They looked like something Loki might like.
Toward the back of the store, away from the warm wriggling mammals, he finally found what he was looking for: a large wall of glass tanks cleverly camouflaged with leaves and logs to resemble a forest environment.
He peered inside one of them, grinning as wide as Darcy had when he spotted a snake coiled comfortably beneath a heat lamp. He hadn't seen one in centuries. As a boy, he'd spent vast amounts of time exploring the rougher terrain of Asgard, often with a cold-blooded companion or two, but once he matured and took on more responsibility for the realm, he had less time for such activities.
He hadn't been aware that Midgard was home to such creatures. Granted, this one was far smaller than any he'd come across before, but that made it even better. It could fit in his pocket. He'd be quite happy with a pocket snake.
He took his time and searched each of the rest of the containers with his eyes until he located their inhabitants. As with the cats, the creatures were smaller than he was used to, but he wasn't shocked until he came to the end of the aisle, where he found a species he'd never encountered before.
Unlike snakes, these creatures had four legs and short, round bodies. Their thin, wide-set mouths and large eyes gave them a friendly quality, and he squatted down to read the information posted beside each tank.
Frogs, they were called.
A vibrant green one with a thin white stripe down its side clung to the glass wall of the tank with its translucent toe pads and scooted away when he pressed a finger to the glass near its body. It was alone in its tank.
The next tank held five frogs, each no larger than the tip of his little finger and brilliant yellow with black stripes. The information sheet boasted of their poisonous skin and Thor grinned. It seemed even the smallest of Midgard's creatures were well equipped to take care of themselves.
That was one thing he admired most about the planet. Everything on it had such a short life span, but they all had one brilliant quality other planets could benefit from–they adapted to survive.
Thor crouched down and watched the little frogs in silent amusement until a tiny hand patted his elbow.
“Do you like frogs?” A tiny brunette, not dissimilar to Darcy, said.
“Aye, I’ve only just discovered them,” Thor replied.
“That’s neat. They used to be my favorites. Now I like ants.”
Thor hummed. There had been an ant featured on the most dangerous creatures show, so he could understand why the girl liked them.
“I have a pet one, but he’s not like other ants. He’s bigger than me.”
Thor didn’t know what to make of the statement. On the show, the ants had been quite tiny. Perhaps San Francisco was home to a giant species. It must be a fairly safe variety if the child was able to keep one as a pet.
“Have you seen these before?” He pointed to the tank of tiny yellow ones.
She leaned in to see and her face lit up.
As she cooed over the adorable little creatures, Thor  found himself wanting to introduce pets to his people. The life spans of Midgard's creatures was far too short, but perhaps Heimdall knew of a planet with creatures tame enough to be companions.
“Cassie,” a man’s voice called from nearby.
Thor rose to his feet just before the owner of the voice rounded the end of the aisle.
The man paused and several unreadable expressions flashed over his face before he settled on a pinched version of a smile. “Oh, hey there Peanut. What are you doing over here?”
The girl finally looked away from the tank and darted over to the man. “Daddy, you have to see these new frogs they got. This guy showed them to me,” she said as she dragged him by the hand to her previous spot.
Thor smiled. She reminded him of Darcy.
He noted how the man indulged the girl and chatted with her about the frogs, all while carefully positioning himself between Thor and his daughter. Thor took no offense to the protective gesture. He was far larger than most Midgardians and he was an imposing figure.
When it looked like the girl was going to spend a considerable amount of time looking at the frogs, Thor decided it was time to find Darcy.
As he walked away, the man followed him and once they were out of earshot from the girl, he said, “You look familiar. Ever spend any time in San Quentin?”
Thor shook his head. “I have not. I did spend several days in Puente Antiguo, however.”
The man’s face scrunched up the way Darcy’s did when she was thinking and Thor smiled. He saw a lot of her mannerisms in this little family.  
“I must go and find the friend I came with. Enjoy your day with your wonderful daughter. I believe she will grow into a fine warrior one day.”
His face scrunched even farther, if that was possible, and after Thor turned away, he heard the man say, “Thanks, man.”
Thor found Darcy right where he’d left her, though most of the cats around her were napping instead of using her body as a mountain for climbing.
She noticed him right away and gave him a wide, lazy smile. “You ready?”
“Only if you are satisfied.”
She removed the sleepy kittens from her person one at a time, kissing each on the nose before setting them back on the ground and spoke briefly with the woman at the desk before joining Thor outside the pen.
She hooked her arm through his offered elbow and leaned against his arm, resting her head against the pillow of his muscles.
As they walked back to Darcy’s tiny apartment, thunder rumbled through the sky above them.
Darcy glanced up at him. “Is that you?”
“No,” he replied with a soft smile. While the storms he created were indeed magnificent, he truly enjoyed Midgard’s natural weather patterns. The natural static in the air filled him with a buzzing energy that he couldn't manufacture on his own.
They were only a block from home when the skies opened up, and instead of making a run for it, Darcy paused. She tucked her glasses on the neck of her shirt and folded her jacket over them, then tilted her head up, giggling as the moisture collected on her cheeks and in her hair.
Laughter rumbled through Thor's chest and he joined her, embracing the feel of the icy droplets as they splashed against his skin.
Someday he'd find a way to get Darcy her cat, but for now this was enough.
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neganandblake · 6 years
Text
I think I liked you better when you didn't have a knife in your hand, Peaches... Chapter 100 - The King & Queen of the Saviours
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When Blake finds herself sold out to the Saviours by her abusive fiancé, she realises that she's certainly not on her own anymore and finds an unlikely friend in Negan. And Negan does NOT like men who beat their girlfriends, one tiny bit…
MASTERLIST
Chapter 100- The King and Queen of the Saviours
[At the Hilltop, Blake proves herself to be more than just a scared and beaten-down woman...for Negan has built her into much more than just that these days...]
Author’s note: I cannot believe I made it to chapter 100, guys! It’s a long one. Enjoy.
WARNING: Mentions of smut/nsfw/violence and Blake being a badass
"After you, Peaches" murmured Negan in a husky voice into her ear as he held open the door to the large and looming building.
Blake instantly wrinkled her nose, shooting Negan a smirk as she slid easily by him, stepping inside and gazing about at the large entrance hall.
The inside the house itself, set upon a slight mount in the centre of the Hilltop, the interior was grand and impressive. And although perhaps it was a little stuffy for Blake's taste, it was still beautiful all the same, with its winding staircase, oil paintings pinned to the panelled walls and high ceilings adorned with carvings and chandeliers.
"Wow, now this is a bit different from the Sanctuary…" she breathed, her green eyes flickering about the room.
But almost instantly, she felt Negan's tall, broad form reach her shoulder, his fingers entwining neatly with hers once more.
He gave a loud scoff.
"Pfft," he said waving his hand dismissively. "Shit like this is all well an' fuckin' good when you're tryin' to impress, Sweetheart. But heatin' a place like this must be a goddamn nightmare. An' hell, those doors ain't keeping out a horde of those dead-shits for very long."
That was indeed true. The fortified factory she and Negan lived in, was indeed far better protection in this world, than a place like this, but even so-
"I don't know…" said Blake in a goading voice, giving a hefty sigh. "I still kinda like it."
She glanced Negan's way.
"What do you think?" she purred, nudging him with her hip as they strolled forwards. "Vacation home?"
And at this Negan presented Blake with perhaps the widest grin she had ever seen, gazing at her in utter awe.
"Now that is an idea I can fuckin' get behind, Doll-face," the dark-haired Saviour growled back. "You, me, a queen size, and a hot tub out back. Phew, I can think of a million fuckin' reasons to love that."
Here they were, the two of them. An almost perfect match for one another. No one could deny that.
Both dressed in black, both tall and beautiful…and both with pasts that had shaped them into what they were today.
They had come out stronger from all the shit they had been through.
And as a pair, that strength was obvious to anyone. An utterly formidable duo.
Negan gave a lingering chuckle, digging his cheek with his tongue before he dragged his eyes finally away from hers, staring about.
The two of them automatically made a beeline for the set of double doors straight ahead, Negan giving them a shove open with the end of Lucille, just as they heard a hurried set of footsteps behind them.
Blake glanced around, as she and Negan made their way into a large ornately decorated office, and rolled her eyes.
For there was the bearded Gregory, striding across the entrance hall towards them.
"Wow," said Negan, his voice sounding slightly different now, with a sarcasm lingering there that could only be for the leader of the Hilltop. "Now you know what this room needs?"
And with that, Negan arched his back and pointed up at a blank space upon the wall dead-ahead.
"A goddamn nice paintin' of a guy ridin' a horse," he finished, pursing his lips.
And it took all of Blake's effort not to roll her eyes at this.
For she knew just what painting he was talking about. The painting now sitting in the Saviours rec room, that Simon had snatched from this very place long ago, Negan had told her that during her tour of the Sanctuary during her first week of being there.
But Gregory ignored Negan's comment, moving around the pair and coming to stand before the dark-haired man.
"Let me just say if there's anything I can do to help in your search….Negan," said the old man in a grovelling sort of tone, flashing Negan what he likely thought was a warm smile. "Anything I can do at all….I just want to prove to you how loyal both I, and my people here, are."
A frown line twitched its way between Blake's brows now.
Ugh, she hated this man already…just the way he spoke, making her skin crawl.
But she knew of course that Negan took to fools even less that she did. And she barely had to look upon at the dark-haired Saviour's face, already correctly predicting what his expression would be.
"Now that..." Negan said, taking an inch step into the Hilltop leader. "…is good to know, Greg. You know there is nothin' I like better than a guy or gal willin' to come around to my way of thinkin'. Ain't that right, Peaches?"
But Blake merely shot Negan a lingering look, but didn't smile, retracting her hand from his and folding her arms across her chest coldly, her green eyes soon drifting over to Gregory.
"Hmmm, I'm not so sure though," said Blake sucking on her teeth momentarily. "See I think Greg here once feigned his loyalty to Rick too….when he thought he could get something out of it."
Now the older man almost immediately looked her way, shooting her a scathing look.
"I'm sorry, and you are?" he bit back in an airy sort-of voice, than instantly made Blake's hackles raise.
God, he reminded her so much of David. So dismissive, so arrogant…
"Blake," she growled out now, lowering her chin darkly.
But Gregory had already turned away from her, almost the moment she had spoken.
"Right, right," he nodded, barely even waiting for her answer and gazing back at the leader of the Saviours. "Negan, I can assure you, my loyalty does not lie with those people…it lies only with you….like it always has."
But Negan's had already narrowed his eyes, a furious looking twitch, tickling away inside his clenched jaw, as he stared down at Gregory, his mouth turned down into a grimace.
"See the thing is...Greg…" Negan growled in a low intimidating voice, lifting Lucille and pressing the end of it into Gregory's chest. "I think I am more inclined to listen to Peaches here…an' I have a feelin' that you might just be one hell of a sneaky son of a bitch who will try an' double cross me first chance he fuckin' gets."
But the leader of the Hilltop shook his head quickly.
"No….please, Negan….I would never ever do that," said the old man, a gulp sliding its way down his throat. "You have to believe me. I am loyal to you. I have provided for you…and whatever, Bea here, says-"
But at this dismissive use of the wrong name, Blake gave a growl beneath her breath, her eyes blackening.
"You'd never be loyal to anyone," she suddenly hissed, taking a step forwards and pulling the gun from the back of her pants. "You're an asshole who only thinks about himself and what he can benefit from any arrangement he makes. I've known men like you. Spineless, pathetic snakes."
She pressed the barrel of the gun into Gregory's chest in the space beside Lucille, feeling a new-found confidence built from the anger swirling inside her.
"So, go," she murmured. "We'll find you when we're done taking a good look around. And then you can try and grovel a bit more, if that's what you really want to do."
With that, with his eyes flicking first from Blake and then to Negan, Gregory gave a swift nod, pulling himself away from the pair of them and hurrying off, leaving the room without even uttering another word.
Negan waited until he heard the front door slam closed, before he finally let out a long and carrying whistle of approval.
"Wow," he said, turning to Blake, biting down onto his bottom lip and shaking his head, gazing at her as though she was the most precious of jewels. "You are sucha fuckin' badass. Fuck me, Daddy is hard just hearin' those bad fuckin' words come out of your mouth like that, Princess."
And with that, Negan, leaning over Blake, gave her the smallest of shoves backwards until her ass collided with the desk behind her.
The caramel-blonde woman grinned, wetting her lips gently with her tongue, and she felt herself getting warm.
She absent-mindedly placed her gun down onto the desk at her side, before her fingers reached up, curling around the grey fabric of Negan's t-shirt, and pulling him into her.
"That so?" Blake purred out in a vixen-like tone, as the dark-haired Saviour's smirking lips hovered just a breath away from hers.
Negan nodded back gently, giving a needy growl, as his hands found the back of her thighs, lifting her up slightly and dropping her back down to the desk behind her.
"Hmmm, you want me to show you, Peaches?" he hummed darkly, settling himself between her legs now as he tugged her ass into towards him.
And with that Blake gave a smile into his mouth, feeling his hard erection pressing into her hot damp core.
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"Mmmhmmm, yes, please, Daddy," she smiled, as her eyes flickered over Negan's shoulder devilishly for the briefest of moments, her free hand curling through the back of his dark hair. "But leave the door open…and that way, if Greg does decide to come back, he's going to see how bad we really are…"
And at her goading words, Negan giving a wide wolf-like grin, barely lingered for a moment, before devouring her mouth with his..,.
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Twenty hot and dirty minutes later, with papers that had once been on the desk in neat and tidy piles, now strewn haphazardly across the floor, Blake stood just a little way from the window now, tucking her tight black sweater back into her jeans.
Ok, that had been pretty hot, she had to admit…
With her back against the desk….and Negan between her legs…his stiff cock pounding into her tight wet pussy faster and faster…until she had cried out, the butt of her abandoned gun digging into her back…but right then, she hadn't particularly cared, so caught up in the moment.
It had been intense, delicious and dirtier than ever before…and Blake now couldn't help but smile over at Negan as he righted himself too, doing up his large belt buckle once more.
His chocolate eyes soon caught hers and he grinned widely, offering her a small questioning look.
"A badass and a dirty fuckin' girl, all in one mornin'?" he said cocking an impressed eyebrow in her direction. "I am lovin' this new you, Sweetheart."
But Blake, grabbing her gun and shoving it down the waistband of her pants before picking up her abandoned jacket from the floor, merely smirked, giving a small shrug.
"It was always there…." she purred out. "It's just that I had no one to keep up with me, until now…"
Negan stared, his eyes taking in every inch of her, looking absolutely besotted with the caramel-blonde woman now.
But Blake, threading her arms through her coat, merely sidled on up to him, smiling gently.
"Well, I think we've finished checking this room for starters, don't you think?" she asked biting her lip teasingly.
Negan grinned back at her now, grasping up Lucille with one hand and holding out his other arm in a gentlemanly manner.
"Oh, most fuckin' definitely," Negan beamed. "An' so fuckin' far, this is shaping up to be a pretty fuckin' good vacation home don't you think?"
And Blake, grasping hold of his leather clad arm, merely wrinkled her nose, as the pair headed out of the open double-doors and back into the hallway.
"Oh yeah, and we are definitely keeping that desk where it is," she replied, as they walked.
To her right, Negan gave a small chuckle of appreciation, just as the door ahead of them leading into the house itself, was flung wide open, and in walked Dwight followed closely by Arat, both looking out of breath and wide-eyed.
Blake took in a breath. Despite her dirty words earlier, she was grateful that the pair hadn't entered ten minutes prior, the front doorway, giving a good view of the desk in the office directly behind them.
"Any fuckin' luck?" Negan barked, lifting his chin and eyeing the duo, the cheerfulness soon dropping from his features.
But Arat, pursing her lips and giving a hard sigh, shook her head ashamedly.
"We've checked all the outbuildings…and, nothing," she uttered tensely.
Negan gave a hard sniff and beneath her grasp on his arm, Blake could feel the dark-haired Saviour tensing slightly at this disappointing news.
"Well then get the boys to check the rest of the fuckin' rooms in here," he murmured back in a deep voice, gesturing up the stairs with Lucille as he spoke. "We ain't leaving without that fuckin' prick. We clear?"
Dwight nodded.
"Crystal, Boss," the blonde man uttered promptly, before heading back out the door beginning to round up the rest of their men.
Arat lingered for a brief minute, looking as though she wanted to say something, but refrained.
But Blake could of course read her like a book and she took that as her hint.
"I'm just going to wait outside," the caramel-blonde woman said, swiftly dropping her arm from Negan's, and heading out of the door, not wanting to get in the way…
..because that wasn't what she was here for.
It was raining now harder than it had been earlier, Blake looking skyward as she exited the building.
She stepped aside as Dwight and six or seven or so of the Saviours all filed past her heading promptly into the house, each one of them offering her a familiar nod or grin as they went.
It was a strange feeling to actually be part of something….even back during the time she had spent at Alexandria with David…..she had never truly felt like they were HER people.
But now, with the Saviours, it was a whole different life…..and being this close to Negan obviously helped matters.
Although despite her rocky beginning, it was now obvious that Blake had garnered her own level of respect amongst the people of the Sanctuary. And that they liked her perhaps even a little more than they did Negan on occasion.
For whereas he could be a tough and harsh leader…
…Blake was kind and considerate…..but yet perhaps still as formidable on occasion.
Making her way across the grassy yard, winching a little against the falling rain, Blake gazed around, eager to take a small peek at the little fenced-off garden at the bottom of the walled-in expansive space.
But she had barely even a gone a few paces, when a sudden hand grabbed her shoulder, spinning her back around.
"Blake," came a voice, but the caramel-blonde woman jumping in fright, instinctively pulled her gun from her pants, frowning hard…
…but she faltered slightly, her eyes meeting with the short, brunette, face of-
"Enid," she breathed out, lowering her weapon slightly, as the young girl stared back at Blake wide-eyed.
Blake had hoped to avoid both Enid and Jesus. But yet here they were…
She gave a small inward sigh.
"W-What are you doing here…with him?" asked the young brunette accusedly, in a hurt-sounding voice. "After what he did to Glenn…to Abraham-"
But a dark look passed over Blake's features now, as she gave the slightest of pissed-off grimaces.
"Let me stop you right there," she uttered in a cold sort-of voice. "I am truly sorry for what happened to them, I am. But things have changed."
But at Blake's words, Enid gave a scowl.
"He's still a murderer. Negan," she said bluntly, in a hollow voice, leaning forwards and pointing at Blake. "And you're here waltzing around with him…like his pet."
What?
Blake's eyes blackened almost instantly, an anger bubbling inside her .
After everything that had happened to her in her life, after dealing with David's abuse, having him treat her like something he would find on the bottom of his shoe…. being called a pet, hurt more than any insult she had heard banded around about her before.
Blake gave a gulp, staring hard at Enid, feeling utterly furious and taking a threatening step toward her.
"Don't you dare ever, ever call me that," Blake breathed in a dangerous voice. "You stupid girl. You seriously have no idea what I've been through. Your friends back there in Alexandria…Rick, Tara, Rosita...they turned their back on me when I needed them and yet that man over there, Negan…"
Blake pointed back to the house, her voice growing ever more heated.
"…he saved me….and rather than pulling me down like David did, or your friends did….he was the only one who treated me like I was human and not just some sorry woman who got knocked around by her boyfriend. So don't you dare judge me, and look me up and down like you're disappointed in me. Because no matter what you think of me. or him, or the Saviours, we will always be on that top rung looking down on you…."
And with that Blake stepped forwards, so that she was just an inch away from Enid now, the young girl, breathing hard and looking scared.
"...and before you talk to me like we're friends….or patronise me..." Blake finished. "...you'd better realise you're pissing off...because I am not a person you want to get on the wrong side of anymore."
That was the truth and right now both she and Enid knew it.
The teenager let out a shaky whimper as Blake backed off slightly, still holding the gun in her hand as rain fell down onto their heads harder now.
She wasn't regretful for saying those things to her. But, fuck, she was sick of people she knew, talking down to her and blaming her for joining up with Negan and his people.
This was her choice and they had all made their decision when they believed David over her…when they turned a blind eye to his actions…when they allowed her to get hurt over and over again.
So she wasn't sorry now. Not one little bit.
But the caramel-blonde woman could only roll her eyes as the long haired figure of Jesus appeared just to their right, stalking quickly over towards them.
"Enid, are you ok?" he asked gently, but his eyes were not on the young girl anyway, but on Blake instead, his face expressionless.
Blake knew exactly what he was thinking….he was a clever man. And unlike Enid he could obviously tell that Blake was more to Negan than just a pet….that she was far more of a threat than that.
But Enid didn't reply, merely turning on her heel, looking wounded, and heading off back in the direction of the large group of people, still milling around the centre of camp, waiting for the Saviours to leave.
But now it was just Blake and Jesus, standing there alone, as the rain fell all around them.
But she did not take her eyes away from his, her face set.
Blake did half expected him to snarl at her now, to tell her to go…to offer her some snide remark.
But he didn't, and after a moment or two, the long haired man spoke, in a calm and surprisingly soft sort-of voice.
"I'm sorry for what David did to you," he said suddenly, causing Blake to blink a little, a lump appearing in her throat, taken aback. Not expecting these words at all. "My old man used to beat my Mom up when I was a kid, so I know what it's like to feel scared and alone and think you don't have anywhere to turn."
Rain pitter-pattered all around...
Blake tilted her head, her chest rising and falling hard, as she felt her heart thudding way inside her chest.
Furious tears pricked at her eyes as her lips twitched….so desperate to say something back…
But for some reason she just couldn't find the words.
And it came as a relief when suddenly there was a loud cry and a yell from over to their right, as both Blake and Jesus looked around to see a man being thrown out of the door of the large looming house, him tumbling swiftly to the floor and landing on the wet grass.
Blake raised her chin, noticing Dwight, Arat and the tall figure of Negan all striding out of the door, the dark-haired Saviour in particular, advancing on the man on the ground.
That must have been Tony, a thin and scrawny man that Blake had seen at the Sanctuary a few times.
Glancing over, Blake also noticed a crying woman and small boy both cowering in the corner, tears streaming down their faces as Danny pointed a large flat meat cleaver to the young boy's throat.
She bristled at the sight, watching as Negan stepped forwards, rubbing at his mouth with his fingers, Lucille swinging from his hand limply.
But before anything could happen or Negan could do or say anything, the oily figure of Gregory hurried forwards, his hand raised aloft.
"I swear," he said shaking his head and standing before Negan, almost pleading now, giving a shaky laugh. "I had no idea that they were here…"
But Blake gave an instant scowl at his grovelling words, talking two or three sides of her own, as she walked silently over towards Negan and the other Saviours, leaving Jesus where he stood, and watching the scene before her unfold.
Negan now made a face, arching his back easily.
"Oh I think you did fuckin' know all along," he said in a loud voice, raising both eyebrows. "An you know what? I am still deciding outta you an' him, who's gonna face the fuckin punishment for this. I mean, on one hand we've got you….lyin' straight to my face. But on the other hand, here's Tony, putting his life above the lives of not only his wife an' kid, but all of the other fuckin people back at home….all those kids…the moms…those elderly fuckers…putting them . at . risk, all because youwere a selfish fuck."
Negan pointed with Lucille over towards Tony, who was now on his knees whimpering, guns pointed towards him from all around.
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"Which one do i choose..."
But Gregory gave another laugh…obviously presuming that Negan was joking.
"Come on," he said shifting his weight from foot-to-foot.. "How about we go inside, crack open a bottle of whiskey and talk about things man to man….and then you can do whatever you want with this fella….like I said….I had no knowledge of him being here…."
But Blake gave a growl beneath her breath, lifting her chin and strutting over towards Negan on her long, slender legs.
Negan glanced her way, a flicker of something warm in his eyes as they reached her.
"What do you say, Peaches?" he asked, as she stopped just a few feet away from him, standing at Gregory's side. "You think I should listen to ol' Greg here?"
His lips twitched slightly, but he stayed as stony-faced as ever, seemingly waiting for her answer.
Valuing her opinion just that much.
But before Blake could speak, Gregory had turned to her now, a weak smile at his mouth, insincere and vile.
"Look, Brooke, Sweetheart-" he began in a poisonous voice.
But at his words something in Blake snapped….
And before her now was not Gregory at all…
..it was David…
…and Steve…
…and the Wolves who had tried to rape her…
….it was every guy who had yelled at her on the street or tried to grope her on the dancefloor at a club or on public transport…
And in the blink of an eye, she had lifted her gun aloft, removing the safety and holding the barrel, at once, to Gregory's head.
"My name is Blake," she said in loud voice full of fury, her eyes black and deadly now. "Blake. B.L.A.K.E. And the only person who ever gets to call me anything other than that, is him."
And now she didn't have to point at Negan, for everyone to know who she was talking about. For it was obvious.
The entire yard had fallen silent now, all watching her….all listening to her…..hanging off every syllable.
And Blake knew that they would remember her name.
The leader of the Hilltop looked now as though he was about to cry, his mouth hanging open in utter gaping shock.
But even so, Blake still did not relent and in a second, she had lifted her foot and kicked Gregory hard in the stomach, sending him flying backwards and landing on his ass on the damp ground beside Tony with a loud thud.
A couple of the Saviours around now gave a tittering laugh, as did Negan, but still, none of them spoke, all of them waiting for Blake to continue.
Blake looked to Negan now, who stood there with his chin dipped low, surveying Blake's every move with a wide grin plastered over his bearded mouth...
...looking like the devil in human-form…
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But Blake blinked, realising that she probably didn't look far from that either.
He was everything to her. Changing her life in so so many ways.
And what Blake had told Enid had been true…..he had saved her.
He'd made her into something incredible…
…..a queen, where there once had been just a mouse.
Negan, at once, gave a silent nod, encouraging Blake to carry on. And it was only then did she return his grin…
…both looking as dark and dangerous as each other right now….
….but unlike Negan, Blake knew that this was just for here….
…just for now…
…just where it was needed…..
And so lifting her chin and bringing herself up to her full height, as rain fell all around them, Blake turned back to Gregory, pointing the gun once more at his head.
"P-Please," the older man said suddenly, getting to all fours and staring up at her. "I swear, I have and will always be loyal to you...to Negan...to the Saviours..."
But Blake knew that this was easy for him to say here and now, with a gun to his head.
"And how do we know you aren't going to betray us, huh?" said Blake in a cool and collected voice, blinking down at Gregory.
"I wont I swear, B-Blake...please..." Gregory pleaded, clasping his hands before him, as Blake pressed the gun to his temples.
It soothed her now to have him use her name like this...to have it ingrained into his skull. Burned into his mind like this bullet soon would be.
But as glad as she was, she faltered ever so slightly as she lifted her eyes just a little, to see Jesus and Enid stood there now, side-by-side in the surrounding crowd of people.
A gulp trailed its way down Blake's throat, as she parted her lips ever so slightly wavering.
She couldnt do this...
...she wanted to...
...she was angry..
...bitter...
...hurting...
...but even so, this wasn't who she was.
And without being able to help it, Blake lowered her gun, as both Tony and Gregory whimpered at her feet looking hopeful.
But Blake merely turned on her heel, stalking swiftly over to Negan...to the man, she knew, that could do what she couldn't, right now...
... to the man who could finish the job.
And so, pressing herself into Negan's side, Blake pressed her lips to his ear, her fingers curling around his leather-clad sleeve.
"I cant choose," she murmured in a nonchalant, carrying voice, making sure everyone in the crowd could hear her now. "You decide."
And with that, she gave his arm an affectionate squeeze, as she slid her gun into his hand.
Negan grinned down at her, biting down onto his bottom lip with glee at seeing her like this, and leaning his mouth into her hair.
"Oh, Peaches, you are fuckin' somethin', you know that?" he hummed for her and only her to hear, causing a small smile to slide across her lips, as he slowly pulled back from her and walked forwards...over to Gregory.
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Fuck, he looked like a god now. Frightening and imposing...
And Blake knew that she wanted him. With every fiber of her body from now, until the end of everything.
She watched with stony green eyes as the dark-haired Saviour now raised Blake's black handgun and pointed it back over towards Gregory's head.
He gave a long sigh now before speaking.
"Y'know maybe the lady's right..." Negan mused, giving a shrug of his shoulders and leaning back on his heels. "Maybe you will betray us, Greg."
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"I wont...I promise I wont!" pleaded the leader of the Hilltop, begging Negan now, as both crowds of people stood around watching. Witness to his cowardice.
But Negan merely tutted intimidatingly.
"H'mmm I aint so fuckin' sure-"
And with that, before Blake could even blink, a loud carrying gunshot rang out across the yard.
There was a sudden scream and a cry and it took Blake a long few second to realise what had happened...
...as it did Gregory, who knelt there trembling, and slowly staring over to his left...to where the kneeling figure of Tony swayed on the spot, gaping...his eyes fixed dead forwards...a large red and smoking bullet hole through his heart...
And, in an instant with the cries of his wife and child carrying out behind him, Tony fell, face forwards onto the wet ground...dead.
And it was then that Blake truly realised just how unpredictable Negan was.
But even so, she waited until Gregory had looked back up at Negan and the dark-haired Saviour, dropping Lucille down onto the older man's shoulder, spoke once again, his voice full of darkness.
"You ever betray me, and your fuckin' end wont be so goddamn quick.", Negan said in a low growl, leaning down and baring his teeth. "We understandin' each other?"
And by the look on his face, Gregory certainly did understand as he nodded quickly, his beige pants now covered in mud and blood as it ran from Tony's lifeless body down the slight slope towards him.
Negan soon stood up straight once again, seemingly happy with everything. And, lifting Lucille back up onto his leather-clad shoulder, he swiveled now now on his heel, turning to Arat and Dwight.
"Clear this place out," Negan said in a cold tone to the pair. "Take anythin' you think we might want."
Almost immediately the duo nodded, getting to work as the Saviours filtered from the crowd.
Danny stepped forwards.
"Boss, the wife and kid... what do you want me to do with them?"
At Danny's words, Blake saw Negan suck on his teeth, staring over Danny' shoulder at the grieving widow and the small boy.
But it was Blake's turn to take the lead here, approaching Negan gently.
"Leave them here," she said now, gazing up into Negan's angry chocolate eyes, conveying to him now that he needed to do this. He need just to let them go.
And he did...the dark-haired leader of the Saviours giving Danny a nod...
...before he slowly turned his attention, now, to Blake.
The rain was falling heavy on their heads, both of them utterly drenched now...but that didn't seem to matter.
Negan took a small step into her, gazing at her almost awe-struck by her presence.
"Y'know you are a goddamn queen, Peaches..." he growled, reaching for her hand
But rather than entwining his fingers with hers, Negan brought it up to his lips instead, pressing a gentle kiss to her knuckles.
Blake smiled, parting her lips, staring up at the dark-haired man.
But this time, as he lowered their hands, Blake didn't let go, instead blinking hard and offering him a wicked grin.
"Oh, I know..." she purred in reply, as everyone around them stared at them both now...
...in fear and awe...
...at the two of them, standing there tall and intimidating...and utterly spectacular...
...the King and Queen of the Saviours.
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echoeternally · 7 years
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Forever Endures (1)
Oh neat, another thing to complement my Pokemon fanfics! How swell.
Unlike others, this will be the first part of a three-shot mini-series type. It’s basically me building up the background for Machamp and Alakazam, which I’ve talked about with some people before, but I wanted to try writing up.
This first part is when they meet for the first time in their early stages. Because their friendship has to start up somewhere, so this will be where!
I’ll try to update the other two parts with coming chapters of my current Pokemon fanfic, Melting Gelid Roses. This first part was supposed to come out with the previous chapter, but life and computer issues delayed me.
So, here it is now, below the cut! Enjoy reading!
[Caulfield Outskirts, Years Ago…]
 A group of youngsters carried baskets of berries as the sun shined, the remaining hours of the day fading. They marched on their way back to their village, through the chilly but grass kissed roads, as they chattered and laughed the way back. Trees swayed under the breezes that flowed through the area, some strong enough to make them shudder.
 “I think mama’s gonna be proud of getting such a big haul,” cheered a pink puffball, her red eyes sparkling.
 “That’s ‘going to be,’ Igglybuff,” corrected her star-shaped counterpart.
 “Ah, sorry, Cleffa.”
 “Well, I hope my mama’s not going to be cross with me,” mumbled a gray bunny, peeking at the berries under his basket. “She didn’t want me going out too far for these.”
 “It is pretty late,” agreed the chinchilla that walked beside him. “Our parents won’t be happy, especially with that incident that happened some weeks ago.”
 “But we got so many berries for the festival!” A spiked ball, egg-like fairy jumped around. “Bunches and bunches of them!”
 “Oh, Togepi! Please, settle down!” A bigger egg-shaped creature tried to stop the youngest from bouncing. “You’ll spill all of the berries we’ve collected.”
 “Aw, ok…”
 To reach their village, the children passed through a valley. A sharp wind gusted against the stones that rested on the cliffs above, and the children shivered.
 “Gosh, it’s really cold today,” murmured Cleffa. “Maybe we should have worn heavier cloaks today.”
 “Right? Isn’t it so chilly?” The bunny shuddered and shook his head from his crawling chills. “Minccino and I have fur, and we’re still freezing!”
 “It’s ok, Bunnelby, we’ll be home soon enough,” reassured the larger egg-shaped creature. “Then we can sit by the fire and warm up.”
 “That’s if we don’t get scolded forever, Happiny.”
 “Oh, hush. That won’t happen.”
 “How much further…?” Togepi picked a berry from his basket. “I’m hungry now.”
 “Togepi, you’ll spoil your supper,” chastised Minccino. “Come now, it’s just beyond this valley, and we’ll be home.”
 “Ok…”
 Some pebbles cracked and cascaded down from the mountains above the children. They gazed up, staring at the stones that shook from the heavy gusts above.
 “If it gets any windier, I’ll get blown away!” Igglybuff giggled.
 “You laugh, but you’re probably right,” murmured Bunnelby. He patted Igglybuff’s head. “Stick low to the ground and don’t float off.”
 “Ha, yeah!”
 “Let’s be careful from the stones too,” cautioned Happiny. “Even if they’re small, it’s better safe than sorry.”
 “Don’t you like finding stones?” Togepi poked at Happiny and pointed at the scattered brown and gray pebbles nearby. “Shouldn’t you get those?”
 “Not those, I want different ones.” She patted at the white, round stone in her pouch. “Like this one.”
 “Hm. Some stones can evolve us, right?” Cleffa picked up a gray rock. “I wonder if any of them are here?”
 “Probably not,” debunked Minccino, “those are harder to find.”
 A sharper gust howled around them, as dandelion balls scattered through the air. Boulders crackled and quaked above the children, and they gasped as one hefty stone dropped from a cliff above, crashing down to the plateau below it and tumbling over.
 “R-run!”
 Bunnelby and Minccino scooped up Cleffa and Igglybuff, as Happy grabbed Togepi, and the sextuple scurried from the crashing rock that slammed down behind them. They shouted and screamed, spotting another three boulders rolling down from the cliffs above and down to the valley below.
 “Help!!”
 “Someone help us!!”
 As a giant stone came rolling from the hill above, a gray creature leapt out and slammed its fist into the rock. It shattered into many smaller pieces, raining down around some of the children.
 The gray, muscular critter landed, and spiraled around. He grinned at the children and waved, then jumped up and smashed another boulder to smithereens.
 “…Wow!” Igglybuff bounced in Minccino’s hands. “That was great!”
 “Ha, thanks.” Their hero grinned. “Just wanted to make sure no one got hurt.”
 “You’re a hero, mister!” Cleffa clapped. “Good job!”
 “Mister? Ha-ha! I’m not that old.”
 “Still, thank you for the help.” Bunnelby nodded. “We could have been crushed for sure.”
 “What’s your name?”
 “Me? I’m Machop!” His beam softened. “You kids should head home now, the winds are picking up a lot at this time.”
 “Thanks again.” Minccino smiled. “You were really brave.”
 “Aw, I don’t know—”
 “Happiny! Look out!”
 Machop jolted up and whirled around, watching as another boulder tumbled from above. He stumbled as he dashed forward, and Happiny tripped as she held Togepi out from her.
 “Save him!”
 “No, Happiny!”
 “Wah!”
 Everyone panicked as the boulder rolled down for a crash landing. Before it hit, however, a quick yellow and brown blur flickered in, as a critter grasped Happiny and Togepi before they disappeared with it.
 With a shout, Machop punched at the stone, breaking it to bits and wildly searched for the egg-like creatures. A flash beamed beside him, and he whirled around as the brown and yellow creature placed the children down.
 “Oh, wow! You saved us!” Togepi clapped his hands together. “That was so cool!”
 “Gosh, thank you so much.” Happiny bowed to their savior. “We could have been squished. Thank you, thank you!”
 “Uh, um…”
 They tilted their heads at the figure, some kind of mix between a goat and a fox, though not quite either. Machop and the other children closed in, as the other critter shivered.
 “That was awesome!” Igglybuff bounced from Minccino’s arms. “Are you Machop’s partner?”
 “You guys are like heroes,” chirped Cleffa.
 Before anyone else could chime in, a flash blinded them a bit as their rescuer disappeared. Machop rubbed his eyes and quickly looked up, spotting nothing. He twisted around and scanned again, spotting the brown and yellow fellow this time.
 “There!” The critter gasped and disappeared once more. “Hey, wait!” Machop dashed forward, but skidded to a quick halt. “Uh, you kids get home and stay there! It’s only getting windier out. Um…bye!”
 “Bye-bye!”
 All of the children waved as Machop vaulted up the valley’s hills, climbing after his helper that appeared and vanished from view time and again. Chasing after him, Machop jumped from cliff to plateau, dodging or punching stones that fell in his way.
 He slipped at one point and yelped out, but with a bright flash, he arrived gently on a landing. He turned and smiled to the yellow creature, who gasped and disappeared in another flash.
 Determined, Machop surveyed around and continued to pursue the fellow, making his way further up the mountainside. He eventually climbed up a cliff and came to a small cave. He rubbed behind his head and wandered in, with the cavern lit by the sunset’s glow. His helper panted, with his back turned from the cave’s opening.
 “Hey!”
 “Ah!”
 “No, wait, please don’t go!” Machop reached out with his hand as the other vanished. “I wanted to thank you!”
 For a moment, Machop stood in silence, and deflated as he waited. A flash lit up the cave briefly, and the critter appeared as the light faded. He slumped down, and Machop gazed upon him, studying his thin eyes and long tail. Huddling himself together, the creature shuddered as Machop inched a little closer.
 “Um…y-you’re welcome.”  He trembled and scooted back. “Y-y-you can g-go now.”
 “But I don’t want to leave you all alone,” protested Machop. “If you need help getting home, I’ll take you! You helped me, so—”
 “This is my home,” interrupted the other one.
 Machop blinked and turned back, spotting a ripped, faded blue cloth that rested against the rocks. He frowned and pivoted back to the fellow, who still held himself and pressed back against the wall.
 “It’s…really this?” Machop brushed his own stubby tail, and rolled his shoulders a bit. “Here?”
 “Yeah.”
 “But…are you alone?”
 “Y…yeah.”
 “What about your parents?”
 He waited as his counterpart sat quietly, picking at pebbles on the ground. He sighed heavily, and Machop backed up slightly.
 “They…they’re gone,” managed Machop’s helper, his voice breaking.
 “Gone from here, or gone…” Machop quieted as the other boy sniffled. “Oh. …I’m sorry.” They fell silent for a moment, and Machop’s shoulders sank. “…Mine are gone too.”
 “Sorry,” echoed his host.
 Again, the two hushed and waited, as Machop sat down. He brushed over the plates on his head, and blinked at his helper’s ears.
 “Um…what’s your name?”
 “…Abra.”
 “That’s nice.” Machop hugged his legs close to him. “So, you live out here alone, Abra?”
 “…Yeah.”
 “Isn’t that…well, lonely?”
 Abra let out a giggled, but clamped his hands over his snout and mouth. He sank down and sniffled again.
 “Yes.”
 “How…how long has it been?”
 “Uh…weeks.”
 “That long?” Machop shook his head. “Have you been eating?”
 “N-not a lot.” Abra clutched his stomach. “I wanted to get food, but I heard those younger kids, and then…I had to help once I saw them.”
 “…Did…weeks out here,” reiterated Machop. “Did you…were you from Caulfield’s outer square?”
 “Yeah, I…” Abra shook his head. “How did you know?”
 “That’s where I was from.” Machop flicked a pebble away. “Before the accident with the wind and the fire.”
 “So…you were one of the lost kids,” realized Abra, “…like me.”
 “Yep.”
 “That makes sense.” Another pause rose between them, as Abra hung his head. “I’m sorry.”
 “It wasn’t your fault,” soothed Machop. “It was just…um…they called it—”
 “A freak accident.”
 “Yeah, that.”
 “…Yeah…”
 A low growl echoed around the cave, and Abra grasped his stomach. Machop slid his legs out and sat back.
 “We should go get you food.”
 “Um, you, uh, you don’t have to.”
 “But I want to.” Machop pushed himself forward. “You shouldn’t be here all alone. We’re not alone, and the village is helping us…us, um—”
 “Orphans.”
 “That’s it, that.”
 “They’re nice, but I’m scared to be there,” admitted Abra. “I…I miss my parents, and I don’t like being alone, but…but I don’t like being in the village without anyone that I know.”
 “…Hey, you know me now.” Machop smiled. “What if we stay together?”
 “Huh?”
 “Yeah, how about that?” Machop bounced up. “I like to wander around and help other folks out, but it’s a lot by myself. If you could help me sometimes, that would be great! And we could stick together and never be alone!”
 “Don’t…don’t you have other friends?”
 “Nope.” Machop shrugged. “Most of the time, after I help someone, they thank me and sometimes offer me stuff, but that’s it really. But, I still like helping out!”
 “That’s nice of you.”
 “And you do that too!” Machop grinned. “You came out once you heard those little kids and helped out! With you, we were able to save all of them!”
 “Well…yeah, but…I guess.”
 “Come on, then!” Machop reached down and held out his hand. “We can be partners and help out all kinds of folks! Who knows how many? It would be great! And we can stay together forever!”
 “Together forever?”
 “Yeah! We can be best friends, and besides helping people, we can do other stuff!” Machop held up another hand and counted off with his fingers. “We can play games, train with each other, sleep and eat together, and we’ll always be around each other so that neither of us has to be alone again! Wouldn’t that be great?”
 “Um…well, I sleep a lot,” brought up Abra. “It’s because I can’t channel my powers yet. And…I can’t really fight that well.” He deflated and sulked against the rocks along the wall. “I…I don’t want to bother you like that.”
 “That wouldn’t bother me,” persisted Machop. “I’ll just train while you sleep too. And we’re not old, so we have time to get better at battling.” He smiled again. “Besides, you don’t need to be good at everything to be friends with someone.” Machop reached out toward Abra with his hand again. “I don’t want to leave you here alone. And…I don’t want to be alone either.”
 They sat quietly again, first remaining still in the cave, as the sunlight faded. Abra slowly reached up with his hand, which twitched as it bumped against Machop’s fingers. But he brought it forward again, and their hands wrapped together.
 “…You really mean you want to be with me?” Abra slowly pushed himself out and up.
 “Yeah, I do!” Machop helped his new friend up from the ground, and gazed up, as Abra stood up. “I really want you to come with me.”
 “Go with you. Together forever,” repeated Abra.
 “Yep! Forever together, together forever!” Machop laughed.
 “…I’d like that.”
 “Me too!”
 “Ok.” Abra hesitated and held Machop’s hand tightly. “Ok, yeah, I’ll go with you.”
 “Great!” Machop tugged Abra closer to him. “Let’s get going then!”
 He turned to leave the cave, but stopped as Abra threw his arms around Machop. Turning back, Machop tightly hugged Abra, and the two held the embrace for a bit. They pulled apart and laughed as they smiled to each other. Taking Abra’s hand into his again, Machop led him to grab the blanket, and the two walked from the cave.
 Together, the pair gazed up at the darkened sky, spotting the stars that came out. Machop led Abra forward, but he tugged back and pointed below. Machop glanced out and the two disappeared in a bright light. Down by the rubble and the valley’s end, the pair reappeared, and Machop grinned to Abra. Holding hands, they walked back to their hometown.
Yay, they met and became fast friends! Loneliness makes a good motivator.
I mentioned before to some friends that Abra and Machop were orphaned after an accident in their village that claimed the lives of their parents, as well as other children’s. It helped establish their codependency toward one another, because other adults can help, but they can’t quite relate to what the pair is going through like they can.
Machop was always the little heroic type, since he aspires to become a knight some day. He ropes his timid but clever Abra pal right in after they mix their talents together for the first time. They’re not too old themselves, but they managed to help other and younger kids out, so they’re doing something right together, which Machop wants to keep going, and Abra likes the idea.
Speaking of, yeah, it’s another write-up that I’m not sure if it’s canon exactly as it’s written, but the general idea is. And, obviously, it’s before Melting Gelid Roses and Inferiority Complex, both which also feature this pair, but when they’re older and in their final stages.
Like above, I’ll add the next part in with another chapter of my main fanfic, hopefully a little closer in time, but as long as it’s the same month or within weeks of it, that’ll be good enough. I think the middle part will be longer, but the last will probably be shorter. It’s fun to write them, I can’t help it.
Anyway, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! More to come.
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1.1
Chapter One Gabriel I like numbers. I like how concrete they are; I like that one is always one and two is always two. One isn't one, but can also be this or that. Two isn't two, but can also be that or this. No, numbers are just numbers. There is no two ways about it. Numbers like me. They're easy to handle and they don't try to fight me when I sort through them or try to fit them into my perfect algorithms. Unlike people, numbers are easy. Numbers don't question you, they don't fight you, and- most importantly- they are kind to you. I don't get that very often. There really isn't much in life that fits as flawlessly as numbers do. People do not fit like numbers do. Well, I suppose that maybe some do, but the masses do not. I've tested many theories on this in my ventures to figure out the algorithm of the human race and not one has been successful. To my disappointment, we humans are just too complex for things like algorithms. People do not work with enough constants. It is this reason that I do not like people. I, myself, enjoy constants. There are things that I know I can work with. I understand these things because I know they are what they are and they will never not be what they are. No matter how you look at it, every human that's ever lived has died; no day has gone on forever; even if you never really found the path, that equation in your algebra class does have an answer; and the sun has never let us down before. Why would any of those variables change? Change is confusing. Change is not needed. The only good change is a change of clothes or a change of a light bulb. These changes I can handle. These changes are totally within my control... I wish I could say the same for all changes. Changing schools is not something I believe is necessary. You are comfortable in elementary school, why do you have to change to middle school? You are comfortable in middle school, why do you have to change to high school? You are comfortable in high school, why do you have to change to college? Really, why is it not an option to just stay in one school all your life, a place where you feel safe, where you know what you should expect, where everything remains constant? The same halls, same classrooms, same teachers, same smell in the gym, same cracks in the sidewalks, same dying oak tree out front. Moving to a new school requires readjusting yourself, it requires you having to become accustomed to new smells, new people, new cracks, and new dead trees nobody bothers removing your whole career there. Is there a reason we are forced to become disoriented every few years? Not really. Not one I can discover or make sense of, and if I can't make sense of it, it's hard to convince me anyone can. "They try to fit you guys into sections," my mom explained to me when I asked her about it, ruffling my hair in that affectionate way I've come to notice many women do to young children. Most things my mother tended to do came off as affectionate. "You know, they're doing what you like to do with your food. You put your veggies on one side of the plate, bread on the opposite, and the fruit on the other. The school system likes putting children together, preteens together, full teens together, and adults together. I guess it's easier to manage." Easier for them to manage, not so much for us. I appreciated the organization, but I knew of plenty of kids who'd gone to schools that went from kindergarten all the way up to your senior year of high school. These were small towns, however, and somehow that made a huge difference. Smaller groupings are much easier to keep track of and control. My phone probably rings for thirty whole seconds before I even realize it. The device is by my elbow on the desk full of neat stacks of papers, magazines, and textbooks I truly didn't need, squirming against the wood. I pick it up, my eyes skimming the contact, and hit the answer button. "Hi, Mom," I say, holding the phone exactly two inches away from my ear and three from my mouth. "Hey, sweetie. I just called to check-in," my mother's warm voice comes through the speaker. I push some sheets on my desk aside and glance over the ones beneath it, remembering what had brought me to my work desk in the first place. My applied linear algebra teacher had assigned a pretty hefty project due in a week and I'd successfully accomplished a good sixty percent of it last night, with the sacrifice of a night's rest. No big deal. I could make up for it tonight. Just go to bed a little early tonight, maybe two hours early. That won't make up for a missed eight, but it's better than nothing. I hum into the phone, shuffling my sheets back into order. "Yeah, that's usually why you call," I respond, wondering why she felt the need to even state this. Mom always called once a day, always around seven thirty in the morning, to check up on me. I glance at the clock and am not surprised to see it's exactly seven thirty. She's silent for a split second, then she laughs. "You're right, it is. How are you, Gabe? You sound a bit tired," my mother points out. Amazing how she always reads me so perfectly. "Did you get enough sleep last night?" "Oh, I was working on my project. It's going really well so far. I have most of it done already!" I chirp excitedly, looking up from my papers momentarily to catch a glimpse outside. The sun is playing peek-a-boo behind some clouds, waving at me with one of its long strips of light. I love how friendly the sky always seems in the morning. My mother is speaking and I almost miss everything she says, my head- literally- stuck up in the clouds. I catch the tail end of one of her mini lectures on getting enough sleep, taking care of yourself, etcetera. "You may be an adult, but you still are growing, Gabe! You need to keep that in mind! Taking care of your body and your mind isn't something to take lightly," she warns me, though it has little effect. I know all this and she knows I know, so I find it trivial to go over it anymore. I don't want her wasting all this time worrying about me when I am perfectly fine. In all honesty, I'm better than I've been in a long time. "Yes, Mom," I say the rehearsed line, smiling even though she can't see me. "I'll keep that in mind. I should head off to class though. My computing class in about ten minutes and it takes me nearly nine to get to the building from here. I love you, Mom." "Love you, Gabe. And remember..." "I won't pull any more all-nighters, Mom. Promise. Perfect mind, perfect soul," I interrupt, getting out of my seat to begin collecting my materials. Her mantra is burned so deep into my memory, it'd be impossible for me to forget it. As annoying as that may be, I honestly don't know what I'd do without it. Unlike most things, it's a constant. It's comforting. "Bye." "Goodbye, sweetie." The campus is always buzzing around this time. Kids are rushing by, practically mauling the small coffee cart and the café before heading out to class. I usually would be joining them myself, but coffee doesn't taste the same when you're by yourself. It tastes lonely. I don't like the taste of lonely and, really, nobody does. My classroom is exactly eight minutes and thirty-seven seconds away from my dorm room. I've yet to get an exact amount of steps recorded, but my estimate is a little over seven hundred. The average person can take a thousand steps in only ten minutes, going at a speed of three-point-five miles per hour. I bet I average that, so seven hundred seems like a generous guess. The teacher doesn't arrive in our class until the bell has rung and nearly everyone is already in their not assigned, yet somehow assigned seats. No one tells you where to sit, but on the first day, everyone finds their place and that's it. You don't move after the first day. It's the unwritten rule of the school. There's a tug on my sweater, right at the point where the humorous bone meets the radius, and I turn my body about forty-five degrees. The teacher is up front talking and I don't want to get caught not paying attention, even if it's unlikely he'd care. "Hey, Gabriel?" the small Hawaiian girl who sits in my row murmurs, her eyes falling short of my own. Her voice is so slight I have to lean over a bit to hear it properly when she clears her throat and continues. "Can I borrow a pencil?" I reach into my pencil pouch and produce a shiny gray mechanical pencil, brand new and filled with lead. I slide it over to her wordlessly, offering- what I hope is- a smile. She returns it kindly and lets her attention be brought back to the lecture. Kam, I think. That's her name! I couldn't recall before. Despite the fact we've sat beside each other this whole year, I've never spoken to her before. I have nothing against her, by no means, but I'm not sure we have much in common. She is an artist with a knack for computing, or so I assume considering she is in my class, and I'm a mathematician. We could talk about numbers, I suppose, but even I realize that can only get you so far.
By the time I leave my last class of the day, I can feel the lack of sleep beginning to creep up on me. I'm starting to droop a bit too far off the side of my desk when the final bell rings. The usual herd of college students make their way through the doors and out onto the campus, returning to their respective areas. I find myself at the doors leading into the café, right in front of the beautiful window that, when seen from the opposite side, gives you a perfect view of the manicured green that stretches from one end of the school to the other. It is the best seat in the whole school and I often was lucky enough to share it with my two best friends. I consider going inside for a moment, but I quickly shake that thought off. It isn't enjoyable to be stuck in that overly crowded place with chatty kids our age, sipping warm beverages and snacking on fresh baked goods in bean bag chairs... at least, not without Calliope and Kaito. The two of them make everything feel a thousand times better. The sky seems to be a different blue when I'm with them and flowers have a sweeter smell. Life, all around, is just much sweeter with friends by your side. My two best friends, or Foster Parents as they sometimes call themselves, are both working a shift at the local clinic tonight. Calliope is studying to become a nurse, something she tells me she's dreamed of since childhood, and she managed to get a job there for the school year. Kaito, despite going to school for marine biology, followed her there and somehow got a gig as a receptionist. I considered also filling out an application to join their adventure in medicine, but my parents suggested it best I focus solely on my studies for now. If they were off, I'd go in there. It's nice going in there with them. We sit and talk at the table near the window, and the two of them occasionally get up during Karaoke Night and perform Their Song, Enchanted. The two of them mix well together, both vocally and romantically. Just as I start moving away from the Campus Café, the door swings open and a familiar boy with a flamingo scarf walks out sipping something pink out of a clear cup. I'm pretty sure he starred in our school's performance of Phantom last year as The Phantom, but it's hard to recognize him without the mask. Out here, he looks so normal with his colorful clothing and stylish hairstyle. We nearly run into each other, but I manage to divert, my head down. "Sorry, dude!" he apologizes in a friendly tone. I don't look up, I just mutter a sorry back and wave him off. The coffee cart has no line at it for once, so I stop and purchase a hot chocolate from the barista. There are two kids who work there after school, a pretty chill guy and the most high strung girl you'll ever meet. Luck seems to be in my favor today, it's the boy. "You look like you just walked off the set of a Tim Burton movie," he comments as he goes about serving up my drink. I shrug my shoulders, about to tell him he isn't the first person to tell me that. I've got the powdery skin, the powdery eyes, the unkempt hair. (Although, I usually do keep it rather neat. Today is a just a bad hair day.) I don't say this, though, and instead I just let this awkward silence hang between us before he slides the cup over, my name written on the side in neat handwriting. "Have a good day, Gabriel." "You know my name?" I ask, shocked. Not many people notice I'm there. Not many people are observant enough to see me and that is often how I prefer it. The barista chuckles, his face widening a bit to fit his smile. He's got one of those smiles that lights up his whole face and even the air around it. "Of course I do. We had basic English together last year. I sat behind you," he explains, reaching over to take the money I was offering him. "You're Gabriel, your friends call you Gabe." "I'm surprised you noticed," I say, glancing down at my drink and the beautiful lettering sprawled across it. It feels oddly satisfying to know that this entirely random kid is aware I exist. Is that strange? I'm not sure if it should be, but it doesn't feel as if it should. "I notice a lot of things other people miss," he explains. I check his name tag. "Well, thanks, Joakim," I say, praying I pronounce it right. It's not a common name, but I have seen it before. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess it's German? "I'll see you around probably." "Probably," he agrees, still giving me that smile most people reserve for their best friends. As I walk away, I think to myself, I've been buying coffee from that guy for nearly two years and I never once realized we had a class together. Now that's weird. I take a long sip of my hot chocolate, wincing only a little when it burns my tongue, and tug my phone out. There are three messages for me, all from Calliope. She wants to know if I'm up for going with her and Kaito to Karaoke Night on Friday. I text her back that I'll come as long as I don't get too much homework. Today, unlike most days, I have no homework whatsoever, which means I will spend the rest of my night either watching my favorite anime all over again or rearranging my bookshelf for the third time this week. It's not that the shelf really needs to be arranged again, but my books never look as if they are arranged correctly. I color-coat them and it looks weird, I place them by genre and they look sloppily tossed there, I go tallest to shortest and they tip over... That bookshelf doesn't want to cooperate with me. I slide my phone into my pocket and make a left turn down one of the streets in between the building containing the café and a building full of tech classes. There's a single car parked at the curb which I don't pay much mind to. Someone is sitting inside, fiddling with their phone, probably calling to make plans with someone. I keep walking, my head positioned at forty five degree angle, just high enough for me to see where I'm going but low enough for people to know I don't welcome eye contact. My hand reaches into my pocket once again to grab my phone when I feel it buzz, but I never get to grab it. Darkness overcomes me and seconds later, I feel myself fall flat and then nothing.
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fancymuffinparty · 7 years
Text
A Foolproof Plan
Rating: G -T; for comic mischief.
Pairing: EreAni, Eren x Annie. Hints of other pairings.
Summary: How would Annie Leonhart ask her date to the Sadie Hawkin’s Dance? Here’s how! (No guarantees that it will all go smoothly… especially when your friends are idiots.)
Word Count: 1678
A/N: I love the RBA trio. Btw, this is slightly crack lol. That is all.
“Have you asked anyone to Sadies yet?”
If Annie Leonhart had to hear that question one more time…
Shiganshina High School’s Annual Sadie Hawkins’ Dance was but a week away.
All of her buddies had successfully asked their dates. Sasha was going with Connie, asking him after one particularly heated night of karaoke. Mikasa and Armin were going as friends, the crafty usage of a fortune cookie ultimately sealing the deal. Krista asked Reiner before first period with the help of a few others, each wearing t-shirts spelling out: S-A-D-I-E-S-?
Krista insisted on being the question mark.
Ymir coerced Bertolt using a charming combination of cleverly arranged Hershey’s kisses and brute force, putting on a show for everyone after his basketball game.
Someone managed to record the entire spectacle and upload it on YouTube. The video had over a hundred thousand hits last time Bertolt checked, lowkey dying of embarrassment but happy to have a date to the dance nonetheless.
At first, Annie was unsure if she even wanted to go, but her friends just wouldn’t give her a break.
“Come on, Annie!”
“Don’t be lame!”
“You have to go!”
The crew continued egging her on for the next couple days, reminding her that her crush had yet to be asked.
“I heard Eren doesn’t have a date yet.”
“You should ask him.”
“Do it!”
Annie was surprised Eren hadn’t been asked by anyone. When she mulled it over, the hints he kept dropping her at lunch made it seem as though he was waiting for her to ask him.
Hints within the realm of: “Wow, it sucks that I haven’t been asked to Sadies yet!”
And: “So I heard you haven’t asked anyone yet, Annie. Interesting…”
The real kicker: “Just so you know, Annie, I’m not doing anything Friday. Huh. That’s funny. Friday just so happens to be Sadies! What a coincidence, right?!”
Okay, okay. It was pretty obvious what he was trying to convey.
But how was Annie Leonhart going to play this out?
Everyone else had asked their dates in such cute and clever ways.
Mikasa practically went out of her way to ask Armin! A fortune cookie with the proposal written on the little piece of paper inside. A fortune cookie! A fortune cookie? Like, who does that?!
Sasha went all out with her Karaoke plan, stealing Connie’s heart by crooning away with songs like ‘Baby Come Back,’ and ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.’
Krista had planned her proposal weeks in advance, ordering the special-made t-shirts ahead of time.
Ymir was going to be hard to top. No doubt, she made Bertolt an offer he couldn’t refuse, given her persuasive methods. It’s hard to say ‘no’ when a hottie with more sass than freaking Deadpool has you in a near chokehold and throws Hershey’s (and then literal) kisses all over your face.
In front of everyone at a varsity basketball game.
Annie was never the super competitive type, but she didn’t want to seem lazy either.
She couldn’t let her friends show her up, especially since it was their senior year.
It was do or die. Now or never. All or nothing.
This was it. Today was the day.
Annie Leonhart was ready to ask Eren Jaeger to the Sadie Hawkin’s Dance!
The only thing left for her to do was to time this out right. For now, she’d have to be quiet and remain perfectly still.
With the help of Reiner and Bertolt, she devised a foolproof plan, needing only a large cardboard box and a bag of gumballs.
Said bag of gumballs were in her hands. As for Annie, she was hiding in the giant cardboard box, carried delicately by Bertolt and Reiner as though they were handling a sort of ‘package.’ Seeing as how she only weighed around one hundred and ten pounds, she may as well have been a feather; no match for the muscular arms of her assistants.
The plan was for Reiner and Bertolt to ‘deliver’ the box containing the petite Annie to Eren’s house and from there, before Eren could open it- Booyah!
She’d burst open from the inside and surprise him!
Such a genius, she was!
Annie could make out a few distinct sounds from her position inside the box, readying herself mentally when she heard Reiner ring the doorbell to Eren’s house.
The door opened, followed by a slightly audible conversation.
“Reiner? Bertolt?” Eren looked back and forth between the two in confusion. “What are you guys doing here?”
Bertolt was sweating nervously, as usual. Reiner had the biggest shit-eating grin plastered on his face.
“Special delivery for Eren Jaeger.” Reiner had one hell of a hard time suppressing a hearty laugh. It was making his stomach hurt. His lungs especially needed the release.
Eren raised a brow as the two gently lowered the ‘package’ to the ground.
“What’s this all about?” Eren asked.
Bertolt began stuttering. Reiner took a step back.
“Why don’t you open it?” Reiner clapped his hands together, figuring that was a good enough cue for Annie. He wanted to see how the rest would play out
“Uh… okay.” Eren shrugged.
Before he could move to try and open his package, he was taken aback when the box started… moving.
Inside the box, poor Annie began worrying. Why couldn’t she jump out in a glorious blaze like she’d seen in the movies?
Shit, she thought. I can’t get out!
“Guys,” Eren stammered, “is there something… inside the box?”
His question went unanswered as Reiner’s eyes widened in horror. “Bertolt… when I said ‘use the glue on the kitchen counter,’ you didn’t happen to reach for the yellow bottle, did you? The one with the missing label?”
Bertolt nodded. “Uhh… well… yeah. I used that one”
“That was super glue, Bertolt!” Reiner shouted in agony. “Shit!”
“Oh, no!” Bertolt gasped.
Eren grimaced. “So, how the hell am I gonna get this thing open?!” The box kept jumbling around. Whatever, or whoever, was inside seemed desperate to get out. “And who the hell uses super glue instead of ya know, TAPE, to seal a package?!”
“We ran out of tape! Look, there’s no time to explain, Eren! We gotta get it open!” Reiner hastily picked up the box and tried frantically to pry it open with no more than his bare hands.
“I don’t think that’ll work, Reiner!” Bertolt implored the blond beast to settle it carefully on the front lawn and then quickly said a prayer. “Forgive me, Annie.” He whispered.
To the horror of those in his presence, he began kicking the sides of the box in an effort to weaken its construct.
“What the hell?!” Eren gasped.
“Bertolt! No!” Reiner ran to stop his friend from continuing. “That’s not how we’ll get it open.” Reiner rolled up his sleeves. “This is how we’ll get it open.”
With that, he began punching the top of the hefty cardboard box, with the intention of doling out enough damage to free the enslaved Annie from the package’s restraints.
Eren could only watch in shock, frozen where he stood like a deer in a headlight.
He came to his senses when he heard something inside squeal in distress.
“Stop!” Eren dashed over to stop the idiots from causing any further damage. “Didn’t you hear that just now? It made a noise!”
“It did?” Bertolt and Reiner asked in unison.
Eren paused for a moment and sighed. “This isn’t some kind of prank, right?” The chances of them messing with him were high, but the concerned looks on their faces appeared genuine.
When both giants shook their heads, Eren exhaled sharply and began walking to his garage.
“This thing is indestructible. I’m gonna go grab my dad’s chainsaw.”
Bertolt and Reiner nearly choked at his suggestion.
“You can’t be serious!” They cried out in sheer defeat.
“What choice do we have?!”
Just when all hope seemed lost, the box rumbled and jumbled around, like a volcano about to erupt.
Though the boys had no way of knowing what was happening, it wouldn’t be long before all their worries could be cast aside. Thankfully.
Annie, by the grace of gods above, hadn’t been harmed by the barbaric acts of her friends in their attempts at freeing her. She had been placed in the box with loads of bubblewrap and crinkle-cut paper as a means of cushioning her inside.
As a fall back plan, she had brought a special ring gifted to her from her father; a ring with a small sharp folding blade sheathed within.
Using the blade, she began methodically tearing away, finally managing to free herself after a few swipes.
Annie burst out of the box and stood up victoriously. After briefly dusting her knees, she reached for the bag of gumballs at her feet and made her way over to where Eren was standing.
All three boys were at a loss for words, watching her as though she had just risen from the grave.
“Here.” She handed Eren the gumballs nonchalantly, like the last few minutes never happened. “Open it.”
“Annie…” Eren couldn’t formulate a proper sentence, voice emptily trailing off.
Bertolt suddenly lost consciousness and fainted, to which Reiner gathered him in his arms to catch his fall. He fanned away at Bertolt, casually offering words of encouragement while trying not to laugh.
“Calm down,” he sighed. “Everything turned out all right.”
In another setting, Eren had hurriedly opened the bag of gumballs and fished out a small note inside.
The note read; I finally have the balls to ask you to Sadies.
Awh! Such neat hand-writing, too!
Eren smiled and looked back at Annie, pulling her in for a hug.
“Took you long enough,” he said, squeezing her tight.
Annie smirked, completely satisfied.
Although her plan hadn’t quite worked out the way she had intended, it was certainly one for the books.
Who else could say their date was about to use a chainsaw to free them from being stuffed inside a box?
Suffice to say, she definitely outshined all her friends- and even managed to surprise herself.
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pizzapality · 7 years
Text
Mended in Gold
Summary:  [Direct sequel to Valentine's Day (Concerning Oolong and Pfeffernusse)] In which a knight and his queen discuss broken teacups and life purposes. Mostly fluffy! Anahardt.
Hey all! Here’s another Anahardt fic because I can’t stop thinking about these cuties. It’s a sequel to my other one, which can be read here.
I’m still waiting on my AO3 invite! I’m excited to get these guys up there when I do. 
FF Link
It was a quiet, rainy sort of evening at the Watchpoint. It could have been because of the late hour, or because of the fact that many of Overwatch’s members had just returned from an arduous battle in Dorado, but one could hear even a pin dropping walking through the halls. Everyone had retired to bed early after dinner, leaving the common areas the perfect place for thinking.
Or making upgrades to crusader armor.
Brigette’s finger traced a few lines of a blueprint that rested on a desk, leaning over to scribble the line in darker for her older companion.
“This one, you old geezer!” she whispered irritably, trying not to wake anyone up but still trying to get her point across. “If we slightly adjusted the angle of the shoulder blades by three degrees, you would achieve that much less wind resistance during your charge! No wonder you can’t get there quickly enough to pin those guys – they’re miles away before you can even think about getting there!”
Reinhardt Wilhelm mulled over the paper carefully, lifting his drafting pencil to scratch idly at his fluffy white beard while adjusting the reading glasses sitting on his nose. He let out a long, low hum of thought before tapping the pencil lightly against the paper.
“But then…” he began, tilting his head slightly to the side while picking up a nearby sextant to perform a few measurements. He slowly jotted them down, careful not to snap the pencil in two – these things were so small, but pretty expensive.
“Then what?” Brigitte replied, curious. She leaned against the desk.
Reinhardt looked up at her, removing his glasses and placing them in front of him.
“Well, then I won’t appear nearly as menacing.”
The young woman couldn’t contain the long, agonizing groan that escaped from her.
“You’re impossible!” she exclaimed, reaching her hands up to dramatically grab fistfuls of auburn hair.
Reinhardt haughtily chuckled at her reaction before he looked over at his watch, noticing just how late it had gotten. 1 AM already? He supposed that time always flew when he and Brigette were hard at work.
With a hefty sigh, Brigette returned to pat Reinhardt hard on the back.
“You know, old man, you were always good at giving me a hard time.” Her tone was much more jovial this time as she leaned on his shoulder while giving him a playful flick of the ear. Reinhardt smiled at the girl before tapping his watch face.
“It is late, you know.” He remarked. “1 AM. This can wait until tomorrow, if you would like.”
Brigette shook her head, swishing her hair around her freckled face with a soft tsk-tsk. “What, you think that I’m going to quit just because we can't agree?” she said, placing a hand on her hip. “The frustrations you’ve given me over the years are more than enough to keep me up for a lifetime.”
An unfamiliar voice spoke.
“That makes two of us.”
Brigette and Reinhardt leaned over to and realized that they had now been joined by newly-recalled Overwatch operative Ana Amari in the doorway. Both colored slightly at her appearance, one more apparently than the other as she knew that her companion and Ana had some…unresolved issues in the past. Ana had recently resurfaced alive, when everyone for years believed her to be dead. Across the board there had been emotional and heartfelt reunions with her daughter, Angela, Torbjorn, and the others, but things didn’t seem right between Reinhardt and Ana. Like there was something that needed to be taken care of, but neither of them was brave enough to do it.
“Oh! Ana, we didn’t…see you there.” Brigette said, forcing herself to relax while the man beside her still struggled to find something to say. “I hope we didn’t wake you – I know it’s late.”
“Oh, no, dear. You didn’t.” Ana reassured her by dismissively waving her hand, gliding over to the coffee machine across the room and holding the button until the machine started up with a whirr. “I’ve seen enough in this life to be well past sleeping at night.”
The awkward silence between the three of them was instantly tangible. Reinhardt still remained dumbfounded in his seat, his vision shifting between Brigette and their new company. Mein Gott, what was he supposed to say to her? Well, he thought, he had many things to say – thousands of things. But nothing that wouldn’t turn to total and complete mush in his mouth the second he tried to say it. He thanked the Gods that Brigette was there beside him, else he would surely –
“Well, I’ll tell you what. All this planning has gotten me beat.” Brigette stretched her arms up high over her head before taking a moment to rub her face and rid herself of secondhand embarrassment. “I think I’m going to head off to bed.”
“Brigette!” Reinhardt hissed, exasperatedly grabbing at the girl’s shirt and tugging at it. The young woman locked eyes with the crusader and leaned over onto the desk, the grin on her face growing more wildly mischievous as every second passed.
Don’t go, his expression pleaded her, and she couldn’t help but snicker under her breath.
“Who is the squire to intrude on a private council between a knight and his queen?” she whispered, gathering the blueprints with one swift click from the clips on each side. Reinhardt ground his teeth.
Brigette bid them both a good night and swiftly exited the room, the sound of her footsteps hastily ascending the stairs being the last thing heard before the common room was in complete and deafening silence.
Reinhardt could feel his heartbeat quicken drastically as time went on. His eyes locked on Ana’s lithe form, who was now standing idly by the coffee machine while it poured steaming water into a teacup underneath. Just seeing her again clouded his mind -- even after all these years, she was still…breathtaking to behold. Her trademark blue headscarf was nowhere to be found, her battle attire stripped down to a black turtleneck and pants. Her hair, normally tied back into a neat braid, now cascaded freely down her back, silver strands catching and glinting in the light of the nearby lamp.  One amber eye fixated on the steam that rose from the cup as the water slowed to a trickle.
“Reinhardt.”
Her voice came sharp enough for him to instinctively stand, ripping him abruptly from what could only be described as ogling. Said amber eye was now focused on him, awaiting his notice.
“Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?”
His shoulders slouched as the words reached his ears. A simple enough question, to be sure.
“I…would love one.” He breathed, half-stumbling toward the counter.
How was he still so flustered? After all this time, how did she still manage to make him feel like he was gasping for air? She truly was an alchemist.
He stopped next to her at the counter, resting his hands against its marble rim. He tapped his fingers against the countertop, trying to think of something, anything to say.
“So, you couldn’t sleep?” his tone was broken, crackling, almost as if he were afraid to disturb the silence.
“Not once. Not in many, many years.” Her reply was immediate. It startled him.
“And why is that?”
“When demons are chasing you, it’s hard to find a moment to rest.”
He let out a sigh then. This was going nowhere.
The coffee machine had finished filling the second teacup, and carefully Ana’s lithe fingers wrapped around the handle, lifting it and placing it on a saucer in front of her. She reached for a small satchel she’d brought with her, sliding it open and pulling out a tea bag which she carefully dropped into her teacup. She ran her fingers around its gold rim methodically, slowly watching a yellow tint seep from the pouch.
“And what for you?” her tone was pensive. He tensed, unsure.
“Kamillentee?”
“Ah,” The woman mused, airily, turning to the small satchel and rooting a finger around. Her eye lit up suddenly, pulling out a similar bag that was tinged with a green corner.
“Here we are, some chamomile.” A ghost of a smile perched itself upon her lips, and she dropped the bag into Reinhardt’s hand. “I apologize if it tastes bitter – it is my last, and easier to store alongside my other flavors.”
Reinhardt chuckled under his breath, easing the small bag into his cup.
Before too long, words found him.
“And you?” he asked.
“And I?” her voice didn’t waver.
“What are you drinking?”
She took a moment, extending her fingers to lift the saucer of her cup. He could see a painful look cross her features for the shortest of moments – eyebrows furrowed, lips hardened into a thin, straight line. But then it was gone.
“Taiwanese oolong,” she replied, turning toward him with a sad smile. “It’s bitter, but it helps me relax.”
He grunted awkwardly in recognition. Idly, his eyes fell to the way her left hand played around the teacup’s handle. Two fingers continually tightened and then loosened their grasp around it, her thumb twiddling with a mended crack the cup had sustained. In fact, it looked like the cup was covered in mended cracks; the pink floral pattern that dotted the sides were still chipped or fractured, but expertly returned to their former glory when pieced back together.
He wondered why that cup felt so…familiar to him as he lifted his eyes to watch Ana brush a lock of hair behind her ear. Looking at it made emotions swirl within the pit of his stomach.
Wait.
Mein Gott, it couldn’t be.
“Ana, that isn’t --”
Her laugh was etched into his thoughts after he thought he’d never hear it again. It was so nice to know that he’d remembered it exactly.
“I was wondering when you’d notice,” she replied after looking down at the yellowish liquid that had begun to darken within the cup. “It’s a treasured gift that has continued to serve me well all this time.”
His whole body felt charged in that moment, as if he could power his rocket hammer with his spirits alone.
“What happened to it? What happened to…you?” he questioned, moving ever so slightly closer to her. Ana’s face turned, pursing her lips a bit before pulling in a slow breath.
“Reinhardt…” she warned, reluctantly.
“Forgive me,” he said matter-of-factly, his eyes hardened with determination. “I just…seeing you these past few days has been like seeing a ghost.”
He studied the scowl that crossed her face, but she quickly retracted the expression in favor of something a bit more forgiving.
“No,” she agreed with a sharp nod and a strange expression he couldn't pinpoint. “You deserve to know. After the incident with Talon, I needed time to reflect on everything I’d done.” She looked over at the last few drops of water that fell from the coffee machine. “It was easier if no one knew. That meant everyone – even Fareeha. No one would come looking for me when they thought I was gone.”
Ana’s face grew wistful for a moment, her gaze casting a look down at her hands holding the cup. A corner of her mouth turned up, almost in a smile, but not really.
“And as for this old thing…I was on a recon mission.” She began, trying to perceive the events of the past from within her tea. “It was a long time ago. I was still struggling with depth perception then.” She laughed to herself.
Even still, after all the pain she’d gone through, Ana was still in there, laughing in the face of danger. Laughing at herself. It had been a joke within the Overwatch ranks that the woman would never die, because she had the ability to come back from anything.
Reinhardt felt his heart twinge with something like irony in mourning her death. All in all, he should have known better.
“Well, as you can imagine, I was caught out of position. He almost got me, too, but I was able to hit him with a sleep dart and get away with only minor injuries. Only later, after I was alone and able to patch myself up did I realize that one of the bullets had gone right through my bag, shattering my cup.”
It was clear that Ana had suffered a great deal from the weight of the memory on her shoulders. Reinhardt considered grasping at her hands, else he thought she may drop and shatter the cup a second time.
The woman fell quiet before lifting her hands and placing her tea back on the countertop. Her arms snaked their way around her body protectively and her eye darted about the room, everywhere except looking at him.
“I was devastated,” she began to elaborate. “That cup was the last thing connecting me to any happy memory I’d had. I’d lost Overwatch, Fareeha, you…what do you fight for when everything you have is so broken?”
Her voice started to crack and Reinhardt thought that if he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she might start to cry. She held tight to herself, closing her eye and drawing in a deep, dark breath before pushing out a long and painful exhale. Her eyelid opened once more, staring a hole into the floor.
“And then came the recall, from Winston. By that time my wounds from the attack had healed. I kept every piece of the teacup with me, carrying it around as a memento of what I’d lost and what I could never get back. I was dead to all of you, my one true purpose in life a failure.”
His face contorted into a grimace at that thought.
“Ana, that is not…true, we --”
She placed a finger to his lips, hushing him. She was good at that.
“But one day, while on a mission in Hanamura, I saw a pot that had been shattered in all different places, just like my cup. But, instead of mourning the loss of the pot, its owner had taken the pieces and put them back together with gold in between the cracks.
The broken pot did not mean that the pot could no longer serve its purpose. It meant that it had gone through experiences that had broken it and brought it back stronger than before. And for me, it should be the same. I am old now, and things happened in my life that have broken me. But it does not mean that I cannot still serve my purpose, protecting those that I hold dear.”
Her body seemed to relax as she stood for a moment, reflecting on everything she had told him. He could see a faint smile play across her features as she once more reached to move a finger around the gold rim of the teacup.
“And so it is,” she sighed after a long pause. “I put the cup back together again. I put myself back together again, and decided that I would answer the recall to Overwatch. Even if Fareeha was furious with me for leaving her and would never see me again, I would go on protecting the world she lives in. The world we all live in. Because it…” She shrugged her shoulders. “…it is my purpose.”
Reinhardt had never wanted to take this woman into his arms more. He had thought her dead, gone forever, and still he had not felt his love grow stronger than that of this moment. His hands clenched and relaxed and his muscles tensed and his insides burned for something, to do something… and he felt stupid for not knowing what.
“And as for you --” she added, her tittering laugh akin to a hummingbird fluttering its wings, “Well, I figured that if you’d forgotten about me and --”
“Ana,” The scolding growl that interrupted her sounded far more menacing then the hurt eyebrows knitting themselves on his forehead. “And here I thought you to be sensible.”
She said nothing, just looked up at him with a raised eyebrow, one gleaming ocher eye staring deep into his blue one. He managed a small chuckle, though it came out a bit more solemn than he would have liked.
The crusader, longing to be near her, closed a smidgeon of the gap between them, his hand reaching out to brush his thumb against the Horus tattoo on her cheek. “You must be speaking nonsense if you were to think that I would forget you for even a second.”
After all the years of holding it in, the words coming from him felt like a weight being lifted from his chest. Never had he dreamt that he would be able to tell her in person a fraction of the things he felt for her. Sure, the two of them were known to flirt, but after losing her, saying those things in a joking manner felt wrong. Especially because he had suffered so much with the regret of not telling her about just how much she meant to him. Or about how after her death, he refused to sleep for weeks. Or how when he finally did sleep, he dreamed of himself waking in the middle of the night to find her basking in the moonlight. Or how much it hurt waking up again, alone. About how for years after her passing, he’d taken up alcohol, his only solace in the twisted realm that was his world without her near.
His arm fell again when Ana took in a sharp breath of air as if to say something else, but decided against it as she turned to pick up a nearby spoon. She fished out her tea bag and placed it on the saucer underneath, then raised the cup to her lips, almost as if eager to escape into the liquid. Then, abruptly, she hesitated.
One blue eye stared unwavering as she lowered the cup from her lips again, her expression gleaning nothing he could determine.
“I have wasted so many years, Reinhardt.” She mused, placing her tea back on the saucer. “I am old now.”
“So am I.” He replied, without missing a beat. He could see now what she was thinking. “But, it is as you say. Despite everything, our purpose remains.”
She glanced sidelong at him, the corner of her eye catching his form.
“I am unsure of what you are getting at.”
A large, callused hand enveloped hers, and carefully he genuflected to press a fleeting kiss to her knuckles.
“You know how…cowardly I can be in matters of the heart.” He explained as she took a few steps near him. “If that cup you've kept serves as any memory.”
Her soft skin tasted good, he thought, immediately chiding himself afterwards and throwing the thought to the back of his mind for him to reflect upon later.
“You might need to jog my memory of how it ended.” Her voice was teasing, and despite how he flushed at the comment – because he, in intricate detail, could remember how it ended – was glad to have Ana Amari in good graces again, if only for the moment.
Slender arms found their way around his neck and she pressed her forehead to his, the Horus relying on its loyal protector while it rested its watchful eye.
“Mein maus…” he whispered, his voice deep and rough. Her scent wafted through him, his senses filling with the smell of scented oils and tea leaves that lingered on her skin. She lifted her head to rest in his hair while he made himself comfortable under her neck, letting go of a contented sigh.
“Asad, my knight,” his body rumbled with contentment upon hearing her dark, sultry voice. Thin fingers played through his white locks as his thumbs traced rubbing patterns into her back. “I have missed you so.”
“And I you.”
There was a small pause, her fingers continuing their exploration.
“I…am sorry for not coming sooner. For not telling you I was alive. I must have caused you great pain, Reinhardt.”
“Ah,” he responded, lifting her into his arms and rounding the counter to seat her at a nearby couch before sitting himself. “Don’t worry yourself. It was difficult without you, but nothing makes me happier than having you here again.”
She laughed under her breath, keeping eye contact with the man beside her.
“But please, promise me one thing – that if you ever find yourself broken again, let me help you. Let me be the gold that keeps you together.”
Her expression looked slightly surprised at the comment before it softened entirely, taking in what he'd said. Carefully, her small form crawled delicately into Reinhardt's lap to place lingering kisses along his furry jawline.
“I'll do my best to remember that.” He could feel her whisper into his neck.
For a long while after that, he made sure to cradle her as they talked, careful that she wouldn't disappear if he were to wake up from another dream. They chatted and joked and flirted, as they always had – the tea left cold and forgotten on the countertop.
Brigette was always one of the first people to wake in the morning, regardless of what time she went to sleep. It was a credit to her work ethic, she surmised – she was always ready and willing to return to her life's work. Roused with the thought of brewing some coffee, she rolled out of bed, grabbed a book she had been reading, and tiptoed her way downstairs as not to disturb any of the others.
She turned the corner into the common room to stop abruptly in her tracks.
The couple, Reinhardt and his late-night guest, could not have been comfortable sleeping the way they were. They were tangled up in each other, legs interlocking while Ana used his arm he had wrapped around her as a pillow. Both faces looked entirely serene, though, Reinhardt snoring as softly as she'd ever heard him, with one of Ana’s hands precariously placed underneath his shirt. A long, thin blanket covered them both, completing the scene.
At first, Brigette thought to take a picture. Think of all the things she could get away with if she had this kind of leverage in her back pocket! Reinhardt would let her do anything! But then, she thought, taking a step to round the corner out of the common room again, she had better not. She'd not seen her partner so contented in a long time.
She decided instead that coffee would wait, and sat by the foot of the stairs before opening her book. She would see to it that they were not disturbed – after all, the squire should not mettle with the affairs between a knight and his queen.
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