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star-killer-md · 4 years

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Dream A little Dream of Me Pt. 7

Welp. It’s been uh, a long fucking time. My only excuse is college is hard and also I’m lazy. Anyway, here she be. Thank you to everyone who continues to read this cause I need it to exit my brain and it’s incredibly nice to not just like, scream Kylo porn into the void.

I hope y’all enjoy and feel free to leave me a comment or reblog or dm if you are so inclined.

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Part 8

Warnings: Inappropriate use of the Force, Force sex, angst, nsfw, y’all know the drill

Summary: In which answers are found.

Ship: Kylo Ren x Negotiator!Reader

Word Count: 6.6k

The room smelled too sweet, the kind that lodged under your tongue and ached in your jaw. It made you long for the silence of your seaside room, made you strangely thankful that Kylo Ren often never filled it. But only for a minute. Because thinking of him reminded you of how you’d woken to an empty bed and cold, damp sheets and that you were certainly not thankful for.

Meanwhile, Lem Alba seemed intrinsically compelled to do exactly the opposite.

In fact, once he’d guessed you wouldn’t chew his head off every time he opened his mouth, it never closed again. You weren’t entirely sure if this annoyed or pleased you. But when Lem came to your door and invited you to brunch before all campaign staff were carted off back to the Federal District, you agreed.

If only to avoid being left alone with your thoughts.

“Not to grandstand,” Lem babbled between sips of his drink, “but I often feel some of my skills are wasted working just as a personal aide.”

You glanced up from your plate and nodded, “I think most people in this profession tend to believe that. We’re all a bit insatiable.”

He chuckled, soft voice melding perfectly with the chatter and bustle of the surrounding tables. You couldn’t help but think that Lem fit in well here, as much as he tried to deny it. His edges blended seamlessly with the velvet and silk background. It reminded you of when he’d plucked you right out of the crowd your first night here.

“You First Order people have a way about you. Something in the way you stand a bit too straight.”

Something in the way you’re always waiting for the ball to drop.

“Yes well, I’m not gunning for a power grab,” Lem sighed and rolled his eyes.

He looked very much like a scorned child and you felt a twinge of remorse, “No, I didn’t think you were.”

“It’s alright,” he ran a hand through his neat hair and stared at you over the rim of his glass, “I just get so bored of it all sometimes.”

“Mm, me too,” you said around a bite of some extravagant concoction that dripped embarrassingly down your chin.

You thought of blood and saltwater rolling across your skin and quickly wiped it away with a napkin.

“Really? I wouldn’t have thought that would be an issue for someone in your position.”

You had to try very hard not to scoff out loud, settling for a disbelieving raise of your eyebrows. Piles of paperwork taller than the Commander filled your head, glowering officers and incessant incident reports—your life nothing more than a series of other people's mistakes that somehow became your fault. Grey walls and meetings that never ended.

Come to think of it, you’d been bored and tired and frustrated your whole life it seemed. Although, not so much anymore. Still just as exhausted and angry, but less like a pacing animal in a cage. The thought sat uncomfortably in your stomach as you wondered when exactly that had changed.

Of course you already knew the answer.

You always were attracted to things that kept you on your toes.

“Should we discuss this speech I’m supposed to be giving?” you asked.

If Lem noticed your less than subtle change in topic, he didn’t show it for which you were grateful.

“Certainly,” he gestured for you to continue.

“Well, I’ve had it outlined for quite awhile since the powers that be were oh-so specific about the subject matter,” you began, watching Lem grimace sympathetically.

“Yes, I believe I’m meant to collect a draft from you by the end of the week.”

The joints in your shoulders popped when you slumped forward, hanging your head against the weight of far too stringent deadlines.

“I’m well aware,” you sighed. “Normally I wouldn’t be so neglectful of the timeline, I’m just having a hard time...focusing.”

The barely concealed mark on the curve of your neck throbbed as you recalled the massive, decadently handsome distraction that consistently occupied your workspace. Really, how were you expected to get any quality content produced with that dark, looming shadow always poisoning your mind with questions and completely inappropriate fantasy.

Currently, your entire body seemed to constrict at the notion that it was no longer strictly a fantasy. Your muscles corded taught, pulling like a ruched seam and tugging painfully at the sinew. It felt almost as if you were a marionette with invisible strings controlled by equally invisible hands that tingled as they jerked you about. You got the distinct sensation that someone was watching you, but resisted the urge to turn and look.

Lem—completely oblivious to your inner turmoil—perked up and offered you a blindingly white grin full of ramrod straight teeth.

“I have an office I’m more than willing to loan out if you’d like to make use of it,” he said.

You considered the idea, chewing on your lip. Maybe getting lost in speech writing would be good, you thought. Something easy, something formulaic would do wonders for taking your mind off, well, everything.

“As long as you’re offering,” you flashed him a strained smile and went back to shuffling things around your plate.

Lem continued to spew an endless stream of comfortingly meaningless ramblings and you bathed in the sound of it, looking up occasionally to offer a hum of acknowledgement. You didn’t really care what he was saying—whether it was opinions for opening lines or who you should thank first or what color to wear that he thought would bring out your eyes—but you couldn’t remember the last time you’d had a friendly conversation with...anyone.

So you let him talk, and nodded every once in a while and basked in the normalcy, the mundaneness of the scene. Until, of course, the peace was shattered when your server returned with a new cocktail for Lem, who promptly spilled it all over the table.

You watched it unfold like the audience of a holodrama: the waiter, tall with an abundance of black curls and long fingers extending the glass, their hands touching for just an instant, the scarlet blush that tinted Lem’s ears when he glanced at the man’s face and stared transfixed even as the drink spilled off the table and onto his slacks.

It felt very suddenly as if you were seeing something you shouldn’t be.

But the moment ended quickly and quietly, fizzling out with a whimper as the waiter with all his curly hair frantically mopped up the mess. His voice was low and pleasant when he apologized and rushed off to get another drink mixed.

For once, you had the urge to participate in the conversation.

“Who’s that?” you asked, flicking your eyes up briefly and then back down to the wet mark on the table cloth.

Lem shrugged and fiddled with the stain on his pants, “Nobody.”

And for once, it seemed, he had nothing else to say on the matter.

It was truly a challenge to keep the amused smile from splitting your cheeks as Lem so clearly tried and failed not to make a complete fool of himself every time said server returned to clear plates. And when a beautifully decorated fruit tart found its way to your table—decidedly marked as ‘on the house’—you were graced with an extraordinarily toothy, childish smile from your dining companion.

Your chest ached with it, the display of reality.

On your first night here, you’d thought Lem looked too much like all the other First Order officers you were forced to work with. Thought his hair was too perfect, his suit too pressed, words too cherry picked.

But here you were again, getting drawn in by these stupid, simple instances of existence in relation to others. You craved the feeling of fading into the background as Lem stuttered whenever he tried to thank the boy with his curls and warm smile.

It was strange too, to see that people truly did flush and brush hands and chew their lips and smile so freely. For whatever reason, you’d been under the distinct impression that was an exclusively fictional pursuit, saved for holofilms or storybooks.

Did those things exist in you? Were there times when you’d fluttered the way Lem did now, cautiously stealing bites of his tart, trying to preserve the delicate design for as long as possible? Or had they atrophied and fallen to dust from disuse, nothing more than a vestigial organ, unnecessary and forgotten—ready to pump your body full of toxins at a moment's notice should it burst.

And that only raised more questions. How incomplete had you been this whole time? How long had you been ignorant of your deficiency?

And did it matter?

But that was not something you could ever answer. So, you sat back and watched and listened and breathed it in.

Appreciated from afar this show of innocenceweakness.

You jolted in your seat, shoulders bunching together as if a hand had grabbed you from behind. The double voice rang out in your head, echoing up like it was shouted from the bottom of some pit inside you. You knew that voice though—would know it anywhere by now.

It was him, of course it was.

You could feel Kylo Ren like a shroud, a dampening of the outside world. When you listened closely, you swore you could hear the sound of crashing waves, the crunch of sand under boot heels. The smell of salt and skin and bloody water filled your nose. Your chest was burning, a prison for some roiling, angry creature that flung itself against the steel bars of your ribs.

His ribs.

His heartbeat, a pounding and ruthless tattoo.

His feet already moving in time to the beat, carrying him farther and farther—

Is it? you shouted back.

The words tore at your throat even as you sat in silence at the table. But no response came, instead the chatter of the dining room returned and Lem tilted his head in concern, standing and gathering you up by the arms.

He pulled you down the poshly ornamented halls, chattering still but shooting glances down more often with his brows furrowed. You let him lead you, thin arm looped around yours, back towards your quarters to ‘help you pack,’ he said. And you didn’t bother discouraging him.

You already knew the room would empty.

***

The meeting had been dragging on for quite nearly an hour already. You were seated at the far end of a comically long table staring off into oblivion, eyes having glazed over nearly ten minutes in when one of the relations staff started going on about color coordinating suits.

Although, you were not completely tuned out. It was very hard to be when just a few seats away sat the Representative himself with his grotesque excuse for an advisor positioned at his right hand. Fortunately he hadn’t spared you a glance, but it was a challenge not to keep one eye on him at all times—to not consistently feel your calves twitch, ready to bolt through the nearest exit.

You understood now what it must be like for all those prisoners sitting in the Finalizer’s belly—backed into the final corner, waiting for Kylo Ren to swoop in like a shadow and leave them flayed open to be tossed out with the rest of those who have outgrown their usefulness.

You’ve been trying not to think too specifically about...him since you’d returned to the Federal District, your room here just as empty as the one by the sea. His shirt, the one you’d stolen was still packed neatly into your bags. You thought about throwing it away, or tossing it in the corner for him to find. But then you remembered the bits of torn up packaging and lace and that you would not sink to that level. Physical reminders aside, your head had been blessedly—or maybe concerningly—devoid of any voices that were not your own since your, well, ‘fight’ you supposed was the word for it at brunch.

Then again, all you ever did with him was fight, but this felt different.

There were plenty of reasons for the Commander to be angry with you, in fact, you didn’t think there could ever be a shortage. However, this seemed just a little too...petulant for your liking.

You recalled some of Hux’s old rants. Generally, you’d just let him rave like you were just another piece of furniture in his office, stewing in the same hot, bubbling pot of indignation. You could hear him now:

“He’s a child, a sulking, immature youngling completely incapable of a single rational thought.”

And you finally understood what he meant.

If only you were allowed to use the silent treatment, but that seemed to be a privilege only for those higher up in the food chain.

Besides, you were far too classy for such elementary tactics.

You spat the last words and hoped to the stars that wherever the hell Ren had run off to, he heard them. Which one of you was the weak one now?

It was Lem who pulled you from the dark, brooding hole you’d dug yourself as he caught your eye from across the table. The speakers were switching, a half-hearted applause ringing out in the cavernous room and he flashed you a quick roll of his eyes. You bit back a smile at the way he jumped when Gahl turned to rattle off some inane order and Lem scrambled to take a note down.

Watching it reminded you of how he’d nearly leaped out of his suit when the waiter boy with curly hair brought by your plates. Jane was his name. You’d discovered it while Lem was helping you pack, happily filling the silence with how he was much too smart to be working as a server.

And as you thought, your traitorous mind led you inevitably back to the looming, black specter that haunted your every waking minute. You would be kidding yourself if you thought you could ever have given the Commander the cold shoulder when truly he was all you ever thought about. Even before, even if it was just to remember how much you despised him.

Past tense now, you noted worriedly. What a terrifying concept.

But your brain was moving quickly past that, tucking it away in some far, deep corner to only be touched on long nights when you were up far past the shift in day cycles.

Now it was replaying your brunch, closing up on a still of Jane’s hand on the glass about to tumble, on the lip biting, starry eyed and heart pounding look in his eyes. And then he was changing, the skin of his hand growing lighter, milky and soft with scattered freckles.

Then it was your hand reaching out. Your hand slipping on the glass and Kylo Ren—sweet smile on his face—staring down at you blushing like a ripe fruit in summer.

His lovely crooked teeth flashed behind lips like pillows filled with the softest featherdown.

The tips of his fingers brushed your hand, light and nervous in that not-quite-accidental way that should have made your heart leap into hyper drive. Kylo’s eye flicked down at the floor, downcast coyly and glancing every few seconds to catch you staring at the pink in his cheeks.

You watched the scene as if through water, some stark, salty barrier that coated him in a film of non-reality. You waited for the star shine look of his eyes to pull you in, waited to feel your hands shake and your pulse race and any number of other inane, fluttery things that you had seen Lem stumble through.

But the sight of it, the look on this man's face—because it was most certainly not Kylo Ren looking at you with honey eyes, sparkling shy dips of nectar—it was...

It was not at all what you’d thought.

It was revolting.

It was an antithesis come to life.

It made your skin crawl with the unnatural feeling of it all.

Kylo Ren’s face was not built to look at you this way, did not contain sickeningly gentle smiles, his hands knew no soft brushes of fingertips.

No, they wielded saber blades and crushed bone and spilled blood.

They tangled in your hair and molded mottled fingerprints into your skin

His lips were carved from marble that could not comprehend such an innocent up turning, unless it was to mock his opponent.

They sucked permanent brands of ownership into your skin, and made them throb when you thought of him.

And that was all you would ever want him to do.

As much as he roused the caged and angry beast that resided in your bones, as much as he lied and withheld and left you to wake alone—

You couldn’t bear this bastardized, cheap imitation that stared at you sweetly.

That was not your Commander.

That was not your Kylo Ren.

And you would not have him any other way.

That thought sat heavy with you and called to life something in the depths of your being. A fire, red and electric sparked to life. You recalled the vision he’d shown you. Recalled his words echoing:

“All I see is a whore who has no idea what she’s getting herself into.”

You felt yourself slip into the memory of his hands burying themselves in your flesh. The image of yourself—ruined, marked, and so clearly his—was crashing to the surface of your thoughts like whitecapped waves on a stormy sea. The ache in your neck returned, as though his hands were wrenching your head back to make you watch as he split you in half with his cock. You saw it in incredible detail, the veins of his length sinking into you to the hilt in one long roll of his hips. It stung and made your nerves sing with the pain of taking him.

It was delicious.

It fed you the pit inside you like meat thrown to a starving beast.

This was how he was meant to be taken: painful in his beauty, lovely in his destruction.

His skin was so warm when he pressed your back to his chest and growled in your ear:

“So desperate for your Commander’s cock, aren’t you?”

And yes, of course you were, of course you always were because really had you ever felt complete or whole without him filling you to the brim? But it wasn’t just his cock you needed buried in you. No, you craved him in a way that transcended your physical being.

Separate. That’s what he told you, that there was something more to you than just your body that could exist outside of yourself, could slip into his head and find him even when you were dreaming.

And you were desperate for the feeling of his thoughts. For his mind, for whatever it was that let you hear him whispering all the things he could never say aloud.

His voice in your head was the only thing that soothed the churning in your guts, it was like salve on a burn, cooling like the mint of his breath. The steady beat of his blood the only thing that truly set you at ease.

Yes, that was your Kylo Ren.

Possessive and withholding, saying everything in brief glances and the twitch of of jaw. Complex and often painful and perfect.

You wanted him that way.

And you needed to hear him.

You couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

Kylo?

The single word echoed across whatever void your mind was inhabiting, crosses bounds to seek out something on the other end.

You waited and wanted and—

And then you were not so alone in your head anymore.

But the meeting room was coming back into focus and everyone was staring directly at you. The large holoprojector in the table’s center showed the first, familiar graphics of your portion of the presentation. From across the table, Lem was staring at you, brows furrowed and questioning.

“Right,” you said, making your way to the front of the room.

You felt as though you were back in the academy, bland and boring faces all staring up at your false smile. You tried not to focus on them too hard. “As the delegate from the First Order, I’ll naturally be making the announcement of endorsement. This will be submitted to Mr. Alba for review by the end of the week along with the Order’s formal statement of apology.”

You nodded and the projection moved on, showing the next set of animations, “Now, as I said, these will be submitted at the end of this week, so if there’s any—”

There was a hand sliding up your thigh. It was distinct and massive and coated in leather, the feeling of it so incredibly acute under your clothing you almost choked in shock. But when you slapped a hand down, there was nothing but empty air.

The crowd for the most part seemed not to have noticed your pause, too caught up in whispered conversations to the side or staring blankly at the tabletop, so you cleared your throat, “If there’s anything you’d like to be included that should be given to me by tomorrow evening at the latest.”

Your heart was pounding in your chest, the pulse of it clear all the way to your fingertips. Taking a shaky breath you continued to go over the list of other asinine requests, falling easily into a familiar rhythm. Presentations like this were half your job back on the Finalizer. It was home turf, and you were able to flick on autopilot long enough too—

What was that? you asked incredulously into the void of your mind

Silence echoed, and you glanced briefly around the room, though thankfully you’d looked down at your notes when the hand returned. This time much, much higher. The unmistakable feeling of leather catching on the edge of your panties made your jaw drop.

You called.

Kylo’s voice reverberated through your skull, his tone was blank but you could feel the strange mixture of amusement and annoyance that was not yours. It was irritating on a level you’d thought impossible.

Well I’m a bit busy if you hadn’t noticed, you snapped, grinding your teeth when his disembodied scoff graced your ears.

You’d think it might be one of the most alluring things you’d ever heard if the stares of so many faceless campaign staffers weren’t pinning you down at the same time.

Hmm, he hummed, unconcerned or unbothered by whatever was going on outside of the little world that consisted of just the two of you.

His hand—because that’s what it had to be, his hand, somehow—curled under the hem of your panties, ripping the elastic to the side where it dug painfully into your skin.

Stop, you hissed it, spat the word at him and tried to will away the fingers that pulled the meat of your thighs apart.

But they only spread your legs further, a rush of cold air hitting your cunt and tensing your stomach as his fingers drew up up up—

You’ll just have to keep quiet, won’t you?

And, of course, since you’ve never been all that good about following orders, the second he plunged two, impossibly thick fingers deep into your pussy, your voice caught in your throat. The garbled half cough half moan half wounded animal cry made every head in the room turn to face you.

Even Atreus, whose dead, white blue eyes locked in on your face and never blinked.

You froze, struggling to recall your place as Kylo worked his unseen fingers father into you, coaxing a wave of slick heat to drip from your core. Your hands bunched into fists, nails digging crescent moon holes into the skin of your palm in an effort not to gasp when he hit that lovely spot inside and made your knees threaten to give out.

Don’t stop, now. Unless you’d like them to know what a little whore you are, Kylo growled from somewhere deep inside you.

You caught your breath, plastering a smile on your face and taking a sip from the glass of water being offered to you.

“My apologies, where was I?”

Shuffling through your notes, you picked up where you’d left off with proper terms to use when addressing members of the Order. You tried not to move, focusing squarely on the projection and schooling your expression—at least you hoped you were. Atreus’ stare never left you now. Like he could smell the lie on your face. Or the way your pussy gushed with ever renewed thrusting of Kylo’s leather fingers, the ridges creating a sinful drag against your walls.

Well if I’m a whore then what are you?

From whatever corner of your mind he was lurking in, Kylo chuckled softly.

Much worse, he mused.

You bit back a scream when his thumb found your clit, rubbing swift circles with the smooth material.

But in your head, your voice rang free, and you let out the string of curses you’d been holding back, voice cracking into a whine when he added a third finger. And just as he spread you open, scissored your entrance and glided against your walls, something else opened too, gaped wide and you spilled into it.

You could see him, but it was a different him, from a different time, walking the halls of the Finalizer. His boots ran out against the durasteel until they came to an abrupt halt and silence filled the corridor. There was a slight tremor in his hand, a minuscule shaking as he gripped his thigh and fell back against the wall, breath coming heavy through his mask.

It was practiced, the movement of his hand that fumbled with the layers of his robes until his cock sprang free, hard and leaking and with a lovely red flush to the head. Your mouth watered at the sight of his hand stroking long and fast along the shaft, thumb teasing his tip and collecting the little beads of precum that glistened there.

This is what you do to me, he said. I hear all of it. Every thought you have. I hear how badly you want my cock pounding into you and my hand on your throat and—

He groaned in your head, the same way you knew he must have in whatever memory you were viewing. Distantly, you could just barely feel the movement of his hand as he jerked himself, hips bucking up into his fist.

You were not faring much better. The words kept tumbling out of your mouth, sometimes trailing off on a particularly hard thrust of his fingers. Your head spun with this new confirmation. He’d heard all of it. Every frustrated thought, every time you’d goaded him in meetings and hallways and when you’d lie awake— or not so awake—and think about how much you maybe, probably, almost certainly didn't hate him. Not that you hadn’t known, that he could hear you. Not that you hadn’t suspected that it had always been him, not some imaginary replication. That was very clear, but now. Now you had the truth. Now you knew for certain.

Kylo Ren had always been more than just a dream.

For so long he had watched you crumbling from afar and said nothing.

And who knew how long he intended to keep you in the dark.

If there wasn’t a target on your back right now, would you have ever found out?

Kylo, you gasped the words in your head as his thumb sped up in its rhythm on your clit and his fingers stroked your walls, what is this?

You needed to know. You deserved to know.

And you could feel the words. They were there, right on the tip of his lovely pink tongue, about to find their way past the crooked edges of his teeth, lips loose in the pleasure of you. But the burst of white that clouded your vision and finally made your knees buckle drowned out any truth he may have spared you. Your combined releases flowed thick like heavy metal through your veins as you felt the pulse of him slowly fading from your mind, slipping from your grasp.

Your hand shot out to grab the table edge, holding yourself upright as everything in your mind went blessedly, horribly quiet and the room grew much louder. Time was unclear to you. The projections showed you’d managed to get through over half of your presentation, but you called none of it.

Lem was standing up now, walking briskly over to you with a hand on your back and another under your elbow. The fingers in your cunt had disappeared, leaving you feeling empty and cold as your slick stuck to the inside of your thighs.

“Ah, I believe our financing presentation is up next,” Lem called out, motioning quickly for the team to take over and leading you back to your seat.

When you were safely sat back in the chair, you felt his stiffly gelled hair brush your cheek. It smelled overpoweringly of apricots and vanilla. Too sweet.

“Are you alright?” he whispered.

The concern in his voice was evident, but you were lost in the past few minutes and too frustrated by the silence in your head to appreciate it.

“Fine,” you mumbled back and turned your head back to the blank table.

You didn’t look at him as he rushed back to his place by Gahl, who’s gaze never shifted your way. Unlike his advisor. Even now the slip of a man in his dark suit and red tie stared at you down his nose like it was the barrel of his blaster.

Like he was taking aim.

You swallowed and tried to go back to that space where time did not exist and your head was not so empty, but it didn’t not come.

Instead, you sat and listened and hoped you wouldn’t leave a damp spot on the cushions when you left.

***

There were a lot of rules in negotiations.

The First Order made sure its best and brightest had them all carved onto the backs of their hands before they ever set foot in the situation room. When you closed your eyes, you could see the words flashing in your mind. You knew them better than you knew yourself. But maybe that wasn’t really saying much. You’d been discovering quite a lot of personal details recently you weren’t previously aware of.

Though, that was besides the point now.

Now all you could think of was that the number one rule to a successful negotiation, was to always know more than your opponent.

Knowledge was your strength, knowledge was your red crackling lightsaber, knowledge was your fist closed, throat crushing Force.

That was how you came out on top, by constantly keeping the upper hand—by always having an ace in your metaphorical back pocket.

But right now, you were losing.

And the frustration of it was going to consume you.

Because you didn't know what or how or why Kylo Ren was in your head. In fact, you weren’t even sure if it was your head he was in. It felt much deeper than that now. And no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t keep him out. Whatever you’d done, whatever you’d let in that night on the sand with the sea standing witness, you would never be able to take it back.

Kylo Ren was a liar. That you knew, because you were a liar too.

Knowledge was your power, but lies were your currency. They were what you traded at the table, they were what slipped the easiest from your tongue and made sure you walked away from a deal with more than you’d come in with.

And Kylo Ren was not in the business of negotiations, so there was nothing you could ever offer that would pry his jaw open and spill all his secrets. Nothing that could persuade him to tell you what exactly had taken root in your chest when you’d accepted him, took him inside and wanted to keep him there.

But you needed to know.

The desire to understand consumed you and every thought in your head. The same head that found itself clunking against a new desk in a new office with the same unending dissatisfaction.

Lem had left you a few hours ago, setting you up in his workspace with a glass of water and a concerned smile. You knew you were being unnecessarily rude to him, and had you been less shaken, you might have felt some guilt over it.

Now you were staring up at your datapad, document resolutely blank, and unable to think of anything other than the way Kylo’s skin reflected the light off the ocean or how his hair curled into little ringlets when it was soaked through and dripping onto your face and—

You groaned, knocking your forehead into the desktop and squeezing your eyes shut against the barrage of images and the strange, uncomfortable ache they incited. You rested your head on your arms and tried to block out the light of the office, let yourself drift and tried to recall...well what you weren’t sure.

The Force always seemed so far away, so fantastical that you weren’t ever truly convinced it was real. Not until you’d seen it first hand, watched the bodies of countless ‘troopers dragged from the hallways with not a mark on them. It simply wasn’t something anyone talked about, not at the Academy, and certainly not when you started working under Hux.

It was...energy, you knew that much. And it was in everything, everyone you supposed, though stronger some than others. You knew it could be used for more than just making objects float around, although for what other purposes you weren’t entirely certain. It certainly wasn’t something you’d ever been able to use.

But you thought it must have a hand in this, whatever it was that let you see, hear, taste, feel the Commander even when he was so far from you. Somewhere deep in the dusty corners of your mind, you knew that this would always be the case from now on. That even with light years in between, he’d only ever be a hair's breadth away—a whisper of his name or a beat of your heart.

It was hard to swallow that notion. Hard to comprehend that you would never be alone in your skin. Never would you feel so lacking. What a cruelty, you thought, that it had taken so long. That you had been born into this world incomplete. Your Commander would call that a weakness, but really wasn’t he just as unfinished as you. There was still some gap in him waiting to be filled.

So, then, why couldn’t you find him like he could find you?

You didn’t have the gifts he did, you couldn’t make doors fly from their hinges or break bone with just a twitch of your fingers. And maybe that was the problem. Maybe it always would be.

Voices from the hall broke you from your stupor. Two of them, the first old and grating, the second slick like oil that left a bad taste in your mouth—the representative and his advisor. You’d recognize them anywhere now.

“...well I’d say that a drink is in order,” Gahl was saying, trailing off as they walked further from Lem’s office.

“Sir, we shouldn’t be leaving—”

Atreus spoke that time, the sound of it trickling like cold water down your spine. Thankfully, the representative spoke over him.

“Lem is here, he’ll take care of things.”

A hand slapped the closed door currently keeping you hidden as they passed. You stayed still at the desk until the footsteps had completely petered out, listening to the expensive click of their hard soles die away into silence. Until now it had not occurred to you how close they were. How close the blade was to striking. You let out a breath and looked around. Everything seemed a bit more foggy than usual. Then, from across the room, you heard it—a soft creaking. And when you looked up, the door to Lem’s office was slowly falling open on its hinges.

Like it was pulled by some invisible hand.

And you felt the same tugging, the same formless compulsion, the same ghosting over your flesh.

Across the hall, another door was drifting open by degrees, revealing a meticulously kept office with a shiny gold name plate:

Atreus.

Slowly, you let yourself be pulled—a puppet on strings—walking noiselessly across the corridor. In the doorway you paused, staring at the intricate black lettering. You wanted answers, and something told you this is where you’d find them.

Into the belly of the beast.

You took a careful step over the threshold, the air honey-thick and clinging to your skin. The office was spotless, not a paper out of place as you circled around the massive desk and ran your hands up the array of drawers. Each one was furnished with an ornate golden handle that glimmered in light from the hall.

To your right, a drawer slid open just an inch or two. You watched, eyes wide, as it shuttered of its own accord out of place. And your hand similarly seemed to have a mind of its own, reaching out to grasp the handle and reveal it’s contents.

Inside, nestled atop of a stack of folders was a small, black notebook. At first glance, it seemed innocuous. Not many people used pen and paper these days. But then the space around it started to shimmer, locking your gaze until the world outside it turned hazy. Shaking, your hand reached out fingertips brushing the leather bound cover. You bit your lip, teeth worrying the flesh as you sat on the floor and pulled the book into your lap. The ragged edges of each page caught on your nails when you flipped them open.

Written in small, messy scrawl, was page upon page of notes. Words ran off the lines, and continued through the margins, most too minuscule or smudged to be legible. Multiple times, the Commander’s name was scratched in between sentences, angry obsessive markings that made your eyes sting. But you kept skimming, letting your hand be guided along.

Until suddenly the pages stopped turning.

And you stared down in horror.

In the awful, disgusting script, was your name circled, underlined and bolded at the top of the paper. Thin, curving, inked arrows drew lines across the other mismatched text and you slapped a hand over your mouth to stifle the grating, garbled sound that threatened to escape your chest.

There, the words stood out clear as day among the mess of lines.

Bond.

Your brain hadn’t even begun to register the implications of this, but you knew.

This was the answer you’d been searching for.

And you had no time to process it, because footsteps from the hall were approaching, quick and hard soled. Your eyes went wide and you scrambled to close the drawer and shove the book into your jacket pocket. Knees tearing on the carpet, you tucked yourself into the space under the desk and held your breath.

Silence rang out in the tiny room.

From outside, you heard the footsteps grow louder, closer, and finally come to a halt right in the doorway.

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itslieutenanthawkeye · 3 years

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Jeankasa Royal AU: A Knight's Mission

Sir Jean Kirstein has been sent to hizuru by the Yaegar brothers with one goal: become princess Azumabito’s close guard and pave the way to betray and conquest the eastern country. But the hizuran princess is much lovelier than what he imagined. Can Jean’s loyalty stay with the yaegar brothers or will it tilt towards the woman he may, or may not, be falling in love with?

AO3

The capital city of Hizuru, Heian-kyo, is thrice as large as some eldian cities. Flanked on all sides by tall, snowy-peaked mountains and home to about two million citizens, it is the largest city in the eastern country. Despite the high altitude, the noise and music and laughter in the city equal –or maybe rival— the cold winds blowing from the mountains.

The royal palace, built beautifully halfway up one of the tallest peaks, is nothing like it.

I curse lowly as I’m being led through the passageways of the Azumabito palace, with its sliding doors, quiet servants, and even quieter rooms. There’s the sound of running water coming from somewhere to my right, perhaps it’s the famous gardens I was told about on my induction —a gift from one of the previous empresses to her emperor, a place of peace and quietness so they could grow old together. Although in all honesty, the last things this place needs are peace and quiet.

Some faint music would be fine, I think as I find myself missing the horrid sound from Reiner’s little cousin practicing the violin. I guess I would even take a whole concert of that if it meant breaking the perpetual silence of the palace.

I look to my right, noticing that Marco looks calmer than Reiner and I put together. I’m not surprised; he helped the Yaegar brothers concoct the plan to gain Hizuru’s vast territory, free its people from a monarchy and, above all, get Eldia’s claws on their precious mines.

“Take a deep breath,” Marco whispers, his voice as serene as the rest of the palace. The servant, a tiny girl in a simple kimono, is far away from us that she won’t hear. “She will be pleased with us.”

We’re presents, gifts sent to look after the princess by her fiancée in Eldia, her political alliance once she comes of age, Eren. He chose us well; the three of us are nice to the eyes, charming to a degree. If the princess takes a liking for any of us, we might be granted the charge of close guard for either the princess or her guardian, and then it’ll be an easy task to learn the secrets of the castle, be aware of its military routes… all in all, we’ll know more details how to overthrow the teenage ruler and free the people.

By taking over Hizuru, we will give Zeke Yaegar access to the hizuran mines, and we’llhave our hands filled with silver. Enough silver to leave knighthood, enough silver to convince a nice girl to marry me, enough silver to buy a whole castle.

If we manage to keep our heads on our shoulders, the grimmer side of my brain chirps in.

I shake my head, quite enjoying the fact that it is still attached to my body. This must work. It cannot go awry. If it does go awry and we manage to escape, I can imagine Zeke and Eren condemning us to a lifetime of menial tasks within the military, without a chance to become rich through any of their colonization schemes.

And if we don’t manage to escape…well, we all became acquainted with hizuran torture methods before coming. I’m not looking forward to dying, let alone be tortured.

“Jean,” Marco calls, giving me a sideways glance. We are standing at the doors of the throne room, where the princess and her guardian await us. The servant girls leading us have disappeared beyond the doors, perhaps to announce our presence us to the princess. “You need to stand straighter than that.”

Again, I do as Marco says. He’s much more put together than I, and a bit of me feels a twinge of jealousy of how good of a leader he is among our tiny group. He’s told me before I have much more leader material, however Zeke chose him to lead this expedition, not me.

“Are you okay?” Reiner asks at my side. “You look like you’re about to puke.”

I glare. “I’ve never met a proper royal before.”

“What about all those fancy folks in Eldia?”

“I meant I’ve never met a princess.” I say, shrugging, wondering what awaits us behind the door. Not much is known about hizuran royalty back home, and there are no pictures nor paintings of the hidden flower of Hizuru.

She might be hideous for all we know. All chances point to her being hideous if she refuses to get pictures or paintings of her face. Although I’m not sure if her being hideous will help or damage our attempts at charming our way into her private guard. If she’s hideous, I pity that poor Yaegar bastard.

“It doesn’t matter what she looks like,” Marco said, guessing his thoughts. “Remember we were sent for a reason.”

I look around, wondering what is up with his sudden burst of information, or if a group of guards will come get us from sniffing our betrayal in the air. But nobody comes; in fact, the palace is as quiet as before. Maybe it’s the way Marco talks, maybe that soft purr of his voice makes his words mingle with the eerie peace of the palace.

“What’s taking so long?” I say, looking away from Marco, clearing my throat.

“There’s an extremely specific etiquette to informing the princess of new guests in the palace. And then you add the etiquette of the Pine Room, it’ll take a few minutes,” Reiner replies, giving me a frown at the confusion in my face. “The Pine Room? The throne room, Jean. Do you not remember anything from our lessons? Did you not read the booklet?”

To be fair, I didn’t. We stopped by a seaside city on our way over, and that beautiful redhead had kept my attention from studying our booklets on the way before discarding them. “I’m an idiot.”

“Just remember, bow deeply, don’t raise your head until she allows you, let her speak first, call her imperial majesty when greeting her, then just call her princess,” Marco lists with a soft smile. “Walk ahead of her only when you are allowed, let her call you by your name.”

“Seems like a lot of fucking rules for a kid.” I reply.

“She’s not a kid,” Reiner says with an exasperated sigh. “She’s seventeen. Aren’t you eighteen yourself?”

“I have more life experience than a princess could ever have,” I say with a flirting smile, but then drop my stance at Marco and Reiner’s concerned gazes. “Alright, alright. I won’t screw up. I never do, remember?”

“Which is why Eren chose you as her present too.” Marco says with a wink, making me blush.

“Any other rules I should remember?”

This time it’s Reiner who answers. “Never call her by her name, never touch her.”

“What’s her name anyways?”

Marco leans into me, whispering even lower, almost looking fearful to pronounce the princess’ name too loud. “Mikasa, that’s her name.”

I mouth the syllables underneath. Mi-ka-sa. Huh. Doesn’t sound like a too awful name; not hard to pronounce anyways. Not that I’ll be using it much, mind you. Out of the three, it’s Marco the one who is more likely to charm the princess, to become her friend or lover, whatever he needs to get the information we need about Hizuru. He’s got a much softer demeanor; it doesn’t work much with girls at bars, but it will surely work with a princess. I can see the confidence in his face as the servant girl slides the door open.

We got this, that’s what his face says.

Two, three years, and we’ll be richer than god. Bless Eren for choosing us for this plan.

“The princess is ready to see you.”

We are led across an enormous room with wide windows at both sides, from which I can clearly see the city sprawled in a thousand different colors below. There are some people gathered in the chamber that stare at us as we walk by. From their clothes and expressions by seeing foreigners, I figure they’re not all royals. The princess must be holding audiences for her people.

I see her throne at the end of the room, and her sitting on it. But we are too far away for me to see anything but the deep blue color of her kimono. I stifle laughter; if she sits this far away from everyone, she must be horrid.

Two guards flank our way as we moved forward, and I fear troubles have begun already. We are taller than the hizuran guards, but they train for decades to become skilled at combat, and I’ve no doubt we would not win against them.

“Princess,” the servant girl says, talking in her direction. “Your gifts have arrived.”

“Please, let them come before me.” She says, and the soft cadence of her voice surprises me. She must be a good singer, I think hazily. And this must be some sort of ritual.

We walk ahead until we are standing about ten feet away from a screen seemingly made from crystal, which impedes anyone from walking any closer to her throne. Ah, it must be a security measure. A bulletproof screen to guard the princess form any madman that might sneak their way in the Pine Room while she holds audiences.

The three of us fall to our knees and bow, pressing our foreheads against the pristine floor. Again, I haven’t seen her royal face.

There is the soft shift of fabric on the wooden floor, and then tiny steps. “Rise, eldian knights, gifts of my future husband,” she says, in perfect eldian, to my surprise. “I would look upon your faces.”

I smile slightly at the silliness of it all, at the fancy words she is using to perfection, but my smile freezes the moment my gaze lands upon her face. And my first thought is that Eren Yaegar is the luckiest bastard in the world.

This princess is the most beautiful, perfect woman I’ve ever seen. Ever. She has gray eyes, jet black hair and is not as small as I thought she would be. Her face isn’t precisely hizuran, but it isn’t quite eldian either. It’s strange, but not unpleasant to the eye.

Who am I kidding? She’s a vision to look at.

“Thank you for your journey, knights of Eldia,” she says, her expression serene, giving away not much emotion. “Please, bring forth the bread and salt.”

Servants scurry around the room and bring us jade platters full of bread and salt. I blink, realizing they’ve accommodated to the eldian custom of sharing a meal with your guests to assure their lives will be well guarded while under the host’s roof.

I look at her as the servants make the long way from the entrance to the throne room. She wears no jewelry, and her kimono is of a wonderful shade of purple and silver. Her hair is not combed upwards in the traditional hizuran fashion. It’s long, beautiful and darker than night itself. I’ve seen dark before, but not like this. It is deep, tantalizing, beautiful.

Her gaze catches mine during the seconds we wait for the bread to arrive, and I look away instinctively. She noticed I was staring, I curse myself. Staring like an idiot is not the way to get her trust.

My eyes trail to the throne, and I notice another woman has been looking at me the whole time. I’m guessing that’s her guardian, Kiyomi Azumabito, and curse myself again. She won’t want a staring creep near her protégée.

The bread comes on a platter for each, and Mikasa —no, the princess. The princess has a platter too. We eat the tiny salted bread buns while looking at each other in silence. Once we are done, Mikasa cleans her hands on a towel one of her servants offers to her.

“Now, we have done your eldian tradition and you must know you are safe and welcome,” she says in that serious tone of voice. I wonder if she ever laughs. “I would like to know your names. Blond sir, please go first.”

“Reiner Braun, your imperial majesty,” Reiner says, bowing slightly. I hold the need to roll my eyes. We won’t have to bow each time we speak to her, will we?

“And I must call you?”

Another custom. I really should’ve read that booklet.

“Either is fine, your majesty.”

“You may call me princess.”

“Thank you, princess.”

Mikasa, the princess turns to Marco and he gives her a polite smile. Her face proposes the name question to him, and Marco catches the intention of her face quickly. “Marco Bodt, your imperial highness. You may call me as you wish.”

“Your face, I don’t know the eldian word for the dots,” she says, gesturing to the bridge of her own nose. I hold back another smile. She’s so cute. “What is the word? Oh, you may call me princess.”

Marco smiles charmingly, and I feel jealousy again. “Freckles, your highness.”

“Freckles,” the princess says, pronouncing the word as if she were tasting a new meal. So pretty. She looks at Marco, gives him a tight smile, stirring the fire of jealousy in my chest. Damn his freckles to hell. “Thank you, Sir Marco. You’ve given me the gift of a new word.”

Marco bows, and now I roll my eyes. What am I supposed to do after that? He just gave the princess knowledge. For a royal that owns a thousand mines, knowledge is the one thing one can give her to make her smile is knowledge.

“And you, sir?” She says expectantly. Our eyes meet again, and I feel the rush of blood to my cheeks. I gather my thoughts; I’m a knight. I’m here to betray her and get rich, not stare at her pretty self or get jealous from Marco making her smile.

I bow in the same way Reiner did. “Jean Kirstein, your imperial majesty.”

“Nice to meet you, Jean,” she says, then opens her eyes slightly, seemingly catching herself. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Kiyomi Azumabito narrowing hers. “How may I call you, sir?”

Yours, the rawest part of my mind shouts.

“You may use either, your imperial majesty.” I say, feeling my breath quicken at the thought of her slipping. What was it about me that made her slip? My looks? Or maybe she’s just trying to intimidate the creep that’s been ogling her?

“You may call me princess, Je—Sir Jean.” She says, stumbling a little with her words. She clears her throat. “You’re taller than most, aren’t you?”

Heads turn in our direction, and I guess this isn’t part of the protocol. My height has made her curious, which makes me feel like a proud little kid. “I am, princess.”

“Good sparring partner.” She mutters, more to herself than to the crowd, but the three of us hear her clearly. She looks at me again, and this time there’s nothing I can do to hide my blush. “Good knights, it seems. I am grateful to my future husband for his gift. We will see that you are well taken care of within court.”

“Thank you, princess.” We say at unison.

“I hear my husband wants to make you three part of my personal guard,” she says thoughtfully.

“Yes, princess.” Marco says.

“I appreciate my future husband’s will to look after me,” Mikasa says, and something in me suspects she’s keeping the protocol once again. “We will discuss these matters in future meetings. For now, please enjoy your dinner in your quarters and have a rest, my knights.”

Hearing her call us my knights almost turns me into a puddle. But I hide my feelings behind a mask of proudly knighthood. This mission isn’t to lust after a princess. This mission is to get rich. After I claim my part of the silver mines, I can woo as many princesses as I want.

“Thank you, princess.” We say at unison, and we are dismissed from the throne room.

The servant girl leads us to our room, a big, furniture-less chamber overlooking a series of hot spring pools for us alone. She explains to us how to lay out our futons on the curious tatami flooring, but my mind is on Mikasa. On the princess and her purple kimono and how much I would enjoy seeing it on the floor of our chambers. And her in the hot spring pool with me.

“Stop it,” Marco says after the servant girl leaves.

“Stop what?”

“Lusting after her. Crushing on her,” Marco says in a disapproving tone of voice. He’s figured it out. He knows me too well and knows when a woman catches my eye. “Jean, we are not here to crush out on a woman. We are here to—”

“I won’t try and sleep with her, Marco,” I reply, closing my eyes and throwing my back against the floor. “Just let me have my mind fun for a little while. She’s a beautiful girl.”

“She is indeed,” Reiner agrees as he examines the clothes they’d prepared for us. I wonder if they’ll let us wear our uniforms if we do manage to become her close guards. “Pretty eyes, and not even you can deny that, Marco.”

I open my eyes and notice that Marco raises his eyebrows. “She is a cute little thing.”

I frown. “I thought we weren’t here to just after her? Also, don’t call her a thing.”

“Now you’re protective of her?” Reiner asks, crossing his arms over his chest. “Stop giving me that face, Kirstein. You were the one who was ogling her today. You cannot compromise the mission.”

“He won’t,” Marco assures him, patting my shoulder. “Jean just has an eye for pretty girls. The moment he sees another servant that catches his eye, he’ll stop being weird about the princess. Won’t you, Jean?”

“Yeah,” I shrug. “We should just stop talking about the princess altogether, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“If anyone hears us calling her a pretty little thing, we’ll get in trouble.” I reply with another shrug, and that seems to convince them. My intentions are slightly devious, though. Maybe I don’t want them to think of her the way I am. I don’t want them to call her pretty or think about her at all. I know we have a mission, and my eyes are on the silver at the end of the rainbow. But for now, the thoughts of the princess are all mine.

“How’s the liaison?” Reiner asks Marco. “Do we know who it is yet?”

“I’m sure they’ll show themselves soon.” Marco replies, and their conversation diverges into territory that isn’t related to women, far away from the princess. I sigh, trying to focus on their talk of hizuran customs and the architecture of the palace (subjects that might seem innocent to any casual listener) but my mind is on the princess and her pretty, serious face. It’d be fun to see her laugh at a point, but I don’t say this out loud.

For now, I want the image of her to be mine alone.

Maybe I’ll try to beat Marco at being her close guard.

___________________________

I enter the royal chamber and get rid of my kimono to walk about in my undergarments. Kiyomi is sitting on the far end of the room, and she gestures me to sit at her side to have our afternoon tea. I take the cup and walk out towards my garden, cringing at the idea of sitting down a moment longer.

I understand the need for audiences, and it is not that I don’t enjoy listening to queries from the citizens and solving as many problems as I’m allowed…but I’m not one to made for sitting down.

“That boy,” I hear myself saying before I can stop myself, looking at Kiyomi over my shoulder. “The tall one.”

“What about him?” Kiyomi asks, in that casual tone I know so well. She’s curious to know what I’m thinking, because she already formed an idea of the boy herself.

“He’s got a good height,” I say, turning again towards the gardens. “I haven’t sparred with someone so tall in a while.”

“He’s an eldian knight,” Kiyomi replies calmly. “He could harm you.”

“He was sent by Eren, wasn’t he? I doubt they mean any harm.”

“I don’t trust Yaegar.”

The words make me arch an eyebrow, and I’m persuaded to go sit at her side. I’ve met the Yaegar boy sporadically since I was brought back into the castle and became Kiyomi’s protégée. He was a loud child and, for a while, an even louder teenager. It’s been a while since I saw him last, and I wonder if he’s quieter now; a quieter demeanor would fit those green eyes of him much better. “Why don’t you trust him?”

“He’s sent handsome men.”

I snort. “Are you scared of handsome men, Kiyomi?”

“It concerns me he’s sent them to test you,” Kiyomi says, taking a sip of her tea, closing her eyes. “Three handsome men, all sent to be your close guards.”

Ah, my noble future husband, I think sarcastically. For a political alliance, it seems like too much trouble to test my loyalty for him this way. It’s not like we will always live together after we are married; we will have our wedding night, and a few months together every year afterwards. Because he is bound to Eldia as much as I am to Hizuru.

“I won’t jump into bed with them, you know. Not at first, at least.” I reply, and my words cause Kiyomi to choke on her tea. I cover my mouth with a hand, stifling a giggle. “I’m sorry, Kiyomi. Let me help you clean.”

“Don’t.” she warns, narrowing her eyes. She knows I just said that to shock her, but she does not like the ring of my words. An unmarried and young princess is a dangerous thing, she has told me. She and my servants told me I am lovely to look at. According to her, I am ripe for picking.

According to my skills, whoever comes near me will end with a broken neck.

“About the sparring,” I mention again. “I really haven’t had a tall fighting partner.”

Kiyomi smiles and narrows her eyes again, this time playfully. “You are rather set on that boy,” she says. I shoot her a questioning look, but all I get in return is the same placid, cheerful smile of hers that tells me she’s seeing something I am not. “You were looking at him since they walked into the room.”

“Because he is tall. I haven’t practiced against someone that tall,” I reply, but Kiyomi remains silent. Her silence hurts my pride. “Do you really think me capable of jumping into bed with the presents Eren sent me? Why do you think I would act this way?”

The hurt tone of my words placates her teasing somewhat. She puts her porcelain cup down and places a hand atop my own, a loving gesture that’s not uncommon among families behind closed doors. I smile; I barely remember my family before Kiyomi. In a way, she’s the closest I’ve ever had to a mother.

“He just reminds me of someone, dear princess, that is all. I trust your judgment with these gifts as much as I trust your judgement with the council,” she says. Her words swell my pride as easy as they hurt it a moment ago.

“Who does he remind you of?” I ask, curious. “That Jean knight.”

She shakes her head. “Not important at the moment,” she sighs, using a piece of silk cloth to clean some of the crumbs around us. “What is important is you choosing which one of the three will be your close guard.”

“Must I choose?” I ask. The last thing I want is a close guard; someone to accompany me everywhere, stand by my tub when I wash, stand by me when I eat, watch over me while I sleep. It seems invasive, at best. “I can defend myself. We could give them the treatment we give ambassadors. They will much prefer that.”

“This is not for you. Your future husband has clearly gone out of his way to send you protection,” Kiyomi says. “Not allowing at least one of them as your close guard will mean offending him. The Yaegar brothers are the head of a powerful nation, a conquering nation. A nation we must keep in our good graces.”

Unlike the Yaegar brothers, the two eldians who rose to the head of the Eldian empire in a mere five years, I do not care much about conquering. The emperor before me, a distant uncle of mine, resembled them more than I ever will. He spread our dominion to the islands on the shallow waters to the west, and the vast horse plains to the north…lands I intend to return once I ascend to the throne of Hizuru and clean out my council.

Having an empress who doesn’t want to conquer won’t settle well with most royals, and it will surely make us weak in the face of Eldian prowess. So, my marriage must keep us in Eldia’s good graces for a generation or two, depending on how many heirs Eren and I produce. He has displayed every hizuran gift we’ve sent him, so I must do the same. Although I’ve never sent him humans as presents, to be fair.

This must’ve been his older brother’s idea. As little as I’ve treated him, I can’t conceive the idea of Eren sending three humans as presents. He values freedom of will too much.

“So, how will I choose my close guard?” I ask.

“We will give you time with the three, on your own,” Kiyomim says easily. “It’ll be a trial period, of sorts. You will choose in the end. I trust you will choose wisely, and go for the one who will tempt you the least.”

“None of them tempts me.” I reply, again hurt in my pride. Why does she think I will act like a giddy teenager? The three men are not bad to look upon, but I value my commitment to Hizuru far too much to put it at risk for a foreign man. My own mother already did, and it did not end well.

“Do you have one you’d prefer me to choose?” I ask, curious to know about her impression of the three knights. “One you think would make a good job?”

“I do,” she says. I look at her expectantly, but Kiyomi remains focused on pouring more tea for the both us. “I won’t tell you, Mikasa. You are bound for a throne and decisions will be your daily living. We start small, but important: you must choose this close guard of yours mindfully and responsibly.”

I sigh, sipping a little more tea, finding it bitter. I’ve taken decisions before but choosing a man who will guard me day and night is not high on my list of priorities. “Can I still have the tall one for sparring? Even if I don’t choose him.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind.”

“He can’t mind if he’s a present,” I quip back, thinking there must be a flaw to Eren’s logic. Why someone who loves the concept of being free so badly send three humans as presents for his future wife?

“Even so,” Kiyomi says with a soft smile. “I’m sure the Kirstein knight won’t mind.”

I frown, there’s a playful tone to her voice that I don’t recognize. Is she trying to imply Jean will agree because he will think I am not strong enough to beat him? I take another determined sip of my tea. Kiyomi is good at reading people, and if she thinks the tall knight considers me weak, then it must be so.

“I will show him.”

“What, princess?” Kiyomi asks.

I shake my head, undermining the matter, my head filled with thoughts of the tall knight.

__________________

The next morning, Kiyomi sends a message with one of her servant girls. Princess Mikasa will meet with us one at a time throughout an unspecified period of time, and then she will make her decision before the summer festivities.

Marco is called first, although I am not surprised. He did impress her first with his vast knowledge of the word freckles.

He comes back and tells us how he and the princess went visiting the art museum within the palace. They talked for hours about hizuran artists, and then see a small play together, in which he met the members of the council that handle cultural affairs within her palace and the city.

The next day, Reiner is called. Mikasa takes him to the silk market in one of her official visits, and they have lunch in the hanging gardens at one of the mountains, where he meets the minister of trade.

Despite their vastly different experiences, both Marco and Reiner agree on something.

“She’s quiet.” Reiner says from the pool of hot water in our garden. “She’s like an old volcano.”

“Did you just call her old?” I blurt out.

“He’s right,” Marco says, putting an appeasing hand on my shoulder. “She does come off as an old volcano. Never make a sound, and when they do, it’s important.”

I frown. “Could you not make conversation with her then?”

“You need to know the right things to say.” Reiner says, arching his eyebrow. “Do you think you can handle it?”

I scoff and roll my eyes. Reiner wants to be her close guard. Out of the three, he perhaps wanted it from before we even reached Hizuru. This is a mission to not only get rich, but also to get honor. He wants to be the hero that conquered Hizuru, perhaps he wants to conquer the whole country for himself. “Are you forgetting who you’re talking to?” I say, with an amount of confidence that I do not feel. “I can catch anything she throws my way.”

The next day, I get a call to go to the northmost garden in the castle, and a group of servants to accompany me to boot. Marco and Reiner both give me a thumbs up as the group of servants leads me away from the room; I smile confidently at them, but in reality, there’s a hole in my stomach that seems to be growing bigger.

The servants take me to a changing room first, and they hand me clothes that seem too cold for the weather outside. Black pants and a black, sleeveless shirt. I don’t ask questions, mostly because I know they won’t be answered by the group of silent servants.

I don’t want to think why she chose me last. On one hand, she might’ve not wanted to deal with my annoying ass for the first couple of days. On the other, she and Kiyomi might think to leave the best for last. Either thought is equally terrifying. Reiner and Marco met important people, and I can’t help but to wonder who I will meet todayu, or how I must act around them. I studied the members of her council, yes, but I reading about a person and meeting a person are two different things.

I find Mikasa –the princes— in a large, barren stretch of land that overlooks the mountains, talking to a man a few decades older. She wears pants and a sleeveless top much like mine, all black. I have to look at the ground as I walk forward; I’m not a prude by any means, but the clothes she has on would be considered scandalous for any hizuran royal. There is something in her hands, a black, metal-looking stick, and the man at her side holds it too.

It must be some sort of test, I tell myself. She wants to see if I can keep my mouth shut, my eyes to myself, and my face expressionless, qualities any future empress would want for a close guard. So, I must not, by all means, let my eyes wander to the curves of her body in that black ensemble, which matches so perfectly with her ponytailed hair.

I catch her eye and she gestures us all forward. The servants lead me until we’re standing six feet away from each other. I bend forward, meaning to bow, but the man with her presses the butt of his stick against my chin, stopping me.

“What?” he says in a booming voice, using eldian for my sake. “Do you intend on fighting right away?”

I blink, stepping back in an attempt of self-preservation. “Come again?”

“Sir Jean,” Mikasa —the princess says, greeting me with a polite smile I barely manage to give back. “I’m happy I look upon your face this morning.”

“Thank you, princess,” I say, stopping myself before I bow again, giving the long, heavy stick in their hands a fleeting look. “Thank you for this opportunity, princess, for letting me accompany you for the morning.”

The princess blinks at me and gives me a tight-lipped smile. “This is Yoshida Kururugi,” she says, giving the man next to her a look. “He was a head drill instructor for the hizuran troops. He became my personal teacher when I turned nine.”

The trainer looks hardened by the years, to say the least. Long scars traverse his face, prints from Hizuru’s bloody past. He stands straight, and I take that as a permission to bow before him. I do so, feeling more angered than confused. I might’ve been slightly out of line when meeting her, but that didn’t mean she had to give me this treatment.

Marco and Reiner met ministers, council members. And here I am, stuck with an old, bittered trainer for the frail princess. “Princess, I am confused,” I say after I finish greeting the man. “What are we doing today?”

She nods, acknowledging my question as valid, and takes a deep breath before answering. “We are sparring, Sir Jean,” she says, putting both hands on her long stick.

I blink, confused. “Princess, I do not wish to hurt you.”

Mikasa arches an eyebrow, in a surprisingly proud expression. “I will be fine.”

“But, princess—”

“I have not had a tall sparring partner in a while. You won’t be in trouble if you hurt me,” she says haughtily, and her voice reminds me I have no say in the discussion, no authority. If the princess wishes to spar with his shiny new present, so she shall. I hate it. “I am not familiar with eldian swordplay, and you are not familiar with eastern fighting styles.”

In that she is mistaken, I think as I try to force myself not to smile. I perhaps know more about hizuran fighting styles than she does. As much as a war veteran this man may be, Mikasa is still a princess. And no mere princess can stand against an eldian soldier.

“It shall be done as you say.” I say. The metal stick is against my chin before I can bow before her. I look at Yoshida, barely containing my frown. “I know, I know. No bowing before a fight.”

“A smart eldian,” he tells Mikasa, who nods in agreement.

“Let us begin,” she says. “You can have Kururugi’s weapon.”

Yoshida goes to the side of the training arena and Mikasa stands before me, regal, beautiful and, above all, unthreatening. I can’t say my pride isn’t more than a little hurt by her decision to make me a sparring partner, but I won’t say it aloud. If the princess wants a puppet to play sword with, I won’t make it easy for her. If the princess wants sparring, sparring she shall have. We bow to each other, and thus our fight begins without giving me a second to gloat to myself at the fact that the powerful hizuran flower has bowed for me.

She lifts her weapon and waits, her back straight, her body waiting. Ah, she wants to play the waiting game, wants me to lure her out into the struggle. Alright, I’ll give in. I charge forward with my weapon, dodging in the very last second to hit her behind her legs, thinking that if I make her loose balance, we can be done with the silly fight and move onto meeting members of her council.

To my utter shock, Mikasa jumps and avoids my stockade. She twirls, defying physics, and lands a kick to my chest that sends me stumbling back. I fall on my bottom, cursing lowly, and it is only then that I notice the muscles shifting in her arms, the way she isn’t even out of breath from her jump.

“Come, Sir Jean,” she says. “We are not finished yet.”

I stand again, feeling heat rushing to my cheeks. She’s a proud royal, and she is mocking me for having thought I could be a match to her. My pride overwhelms my sense of logic, and I charge forward again. I was the sixth best cadet in my generation; I’ve beaten Reiner at sparring, and I’ve even beaten Eren Yaegar himself at a fist fight. A mere princess with a few muscles isn’t a challenge.

She blocks my stockade again and tries hitting me with her stick, but I avoid it as good as she did it before. I hear her sighing in surprise, but I give myself no time to be proud. I kick forward, connecting my feet to her chest, and she steps back a few steps. Unlike me, however, she does not fall to the ground.

Mikasa stays at a safe distance. “You are tall, but slow.”

“You want conversation now?” I ask as we circle each other, both trying to find an opening.

“It is good to have conversation with the opponent,” she says seriously.

“Not when we’re fighting,” I reply, feeling my temper rise. “What are you hoping to get out of this?”

Mikasa blinks in confusion. She opens her mouth to answer, but I take an advantage of that brief moment of distraction to charge at her. Our weapons touch and I kick forward, but she is smaller than I am and, just as she said, I perhaps am too slow for her. She slithers away, aiming a blow at my hip, which I stop with my own weapon.

I attack once again and swing at her ankles, but she jumps and avoids the blow easily, as if she’s skipping rope. I go for her again, and my weapon connects with the muscles of her abdomen. Mikasa gives out a startled yelp, but she doesn’t back down. She charges at me with the most serene expression I’ve ever seen in a fighter and her weapon connects with my lower back.

I cry out from the pain from the sheer weight of the weapon, wondering why she isn’t crying from the blow I gave her.

“Damn you!” I shout, using my arms to grab her by the waist and lift her in the air. Not even that startles the princess, however. Letting go of her weapon, Mikasa wraps both of her legs around me and, using all her weight, brings us both down against the floor.

For a second, all I see is white flashes of light pass over my eyes, all I can feel is the throb of where her weapon connected with mine. After a moment of heavy breathing, I look down to realize she’s caught under my weight, her eyes wide in surprise and her face flushed from our fight. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“You-you—”

“I’m a great fighter?” I guess. “I know. I was sixth of my class.”

“You…”

“What is it?” I ask, my head thumping from exasperation. “You were all confidence back then. What ate your tongue?”

She flushes harder, and it is then that all the hizuran rules about physical touch flood my brain. I’m keenly aware of how little fabric we’re both using, how well I can feel the curve of her breasts against my body.

“You can’t touch me,” she pants, finding her ground and pushing me back. I move without protest, reeling still from the fact that I had her so close. Yoshida is at the princess’ side in less than five seconds, but, to my relief, I see no wish to punish me for touching the princess in his face. He eyes me up and down as the princess comes to her feet.

“Tall, slow,” he says, and I feel myself flushing in embarrassment. “Good fighter, though. Strong, good with your arms. Under whose command did you use to be?”

“Commander Smith,” I reply reluctantly. “Erwin Smith.”

“Ah, Smith,” Yoshida replies thoughtfully. “He did a good job. He must be disappointed to have lost such a good fighter.”

No, he’s looking forward to collecting another victory for Eldia, I think, but keep my mouth shut. Most of my attention is on the princess anyways. On the princess and her reddened face, the reddened shoulders, the feel of her body against mine. She averts her gaze from mine and part of me wonders if this is an accomplishment or a terrible mistake.

“Need help, boy?” Yoshida asks, his tone jovial, almost friendly, grabbing my hand to bring me to my feet. I stand, but the princess remains silent. “You sure are tall! What do people eat in Eldia?”

“I’m taller than most.” I say, giving him a half smile.

“It’s been a while since I saw the princess struggle in a fight,” Yoshida says, giving Mikasa a wide, friendly smile that she doesn’t return. I frown; it didn’t feel like she was struggling at all. “Princess?”

“Kururugi, do I have permission to leave?” she says, her eyes barely meeting mine.

Her master opens his mouth, as if recalling the rules and etiquette when it came to Mikasa. Now, he knows why she seems so upset, and why she refuses to look at me directly. “Of course, child,” he says with a nod. “You may leave. We will talk about your fight later.”

The princess runs past by me to enter the palace, and she is soon surrounded by three handmaids dressed in gray kimonos.

“I didn’t even apologize.” I say as the handmaids dress the princess with a beautiful green gown. I’m so focused on the movements of the muscles in her back that I barely have time to notice that one of the handmaids has a head of yellow hair. The liaison Zeke talked about, perhaps?

“I’m sure she will apologize to you in due time,” Yoshida says, bringing my attention back to him. “You just need to give her a little time. She is proud, but she is fair. She knows she forced your hand into the fight, and thus you broke the rules that bind her so.”

“How do you know her so well?” I venture.

Kururugi smiles at me. “Why, I’m Kiyomi’s partner. We raised her. She’s practically my daughter.” he says with an amused smile, and I curse myself for not having studied the booklet with all the information about the royals of Hizuru more thoroughly. “Don’t worry, boy, she will come around. In the meantime, I’m guessing you and I can have tea out in the gardens.”

I swallow saliva. Sure, she can’t stay shy forever, but I have a mission to fulfill. A timed mission, a mission that will make me richer than God. I don’t have time for the princess to be shy, or to be offended. What if she stays mad for the whole year?

I look at Kururugi, feeling the hole in my stomach become true and deep. This is the man who has raised her, the man who has trained her in the hizuran arts of combat. And I just embarrassed the princess in front of him. No, I touched the princess in front of him. I had her under my body in front of him, which must be the royal hizuran equivalent of getting caught half-naked by your own father in a barn, with a boy.

I feel lightheaded suddenly. I definitely screwed up.

#jeankasa #Jean Kirstein #Mikasa Ackerman #JeanKasa #Jean x Mikasa #JeanMika #fanfiction #ao3 #shingeki no kyojin fanfiction #Royal AU

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boogiewrites · 5 years

Text

His Own Piece of Heaven By The Sea

Characters: Alfie Solomons x Ruth (OFC)

Summary: Ruth, a nurse at Margate, happens to be assigned to a man brought in off the beach with a gunshot wound to the head. With her kind nature and good heart he quickly sees she is exactly as she appears and becomes fond of her. Asking her to be his personal nurse in his seaside mansion in Margate, an unlikely friendship grows. With time, tenderness and patience they grow to become more. (Done to celebrate PB S5 being released in the US. I tagged those that are tagged in my other Alfie fics as well.)

Warnings/Tags: Sexual Content. Slow Burn. Nurse caring for injured Alfie after After season 4. Possible S5 Spoilers. Started as an AU so... Domestic fluff. Fluffy Smut.

Click on my icon then go to my Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. (Had to do this since Tumblr killed links, sorry.) Please like, comment and reblog if you enjoyed it! It helps out us writers A LOT!

Luckily for Alfie Solomons, the Margate hospital was only a few minutes from where he was shot and left for dead. Even if it had been carried out at his own insistence, after waking up sputtering to half a face and a high tide, it was now more trouble than it was worth, it seemed.

He lay in a sanitized room. The window was open, he could hear the seagulls and the breeze outside. He found it curious only half of the room appeared before him, but as a quick regretful touch of his face informed him, he no longer could see out of his left eye. He’d been stitched up and medicated, lots of thoughts swirling about his foggy brain. Some perfectly logical, some not. He stayed in that thin veil for some time at first while he healed. After the fact, he couldn’t recall much, only her. As she was the one constant through it all.

“He got shot in the face, left for dead and LIVED!” he hears whispers from the doorway. He was still a mess, scabs and swelling and a face that was half pieced together. He couldn’t blame anyone for looking but he wished in his lucid moments that they’d leave him the fuck alone.

“Go now. Mind your business. The man needs peace and quiet!” she hissed and the sound of tiny hands slapping against bodies could be heard. He smiles with the side of his mouth it doesn’t hurt to and grunts. “I’m sorry Mr. Solomons. Some people have no manners.” she speaks in a soft voice. This is his first memory of her.

----

He groaned in pain. Whoever was touching him, and whatever they were doing wasn’t right. They had him on enough drugs to keep him sedated but the loud roar of pain that rose from his tired chest made the girl trying to dress his wounds squeak in fear.

“He keeps fighting me! He’s under enough sedation to take down a horse!”

“Well, what are you doing to the poor man?”

“I’m trying to clean his wounds!”

“With this?”

“Yes!”

“You bloody idiot.” she sighs and moves over to Alfie’s side. “I’m sorry, forgive her for she knows not what he does.” she rolls her eyes and gingerly takes off his bandages. She barks orders, and in her familier voice, it felt good to hear. He focuses one eye on her as he sees her lips pursed and blowing to soothe his irritated skin. A kind hand rubbing and patting his chest to keep him still. “I know it hurts, I’m terribly sorry.” she tells and see’s him focusing on er. “Hurt enough to pull you awake, eh? Poor man.” she coos and pushes back his hair. “This will help.”

At first, he winces, the cold a surprise, but soon it numbs and dilutes the medication placed incorrectly. “Mmph.” he snorts in response.

“My, my what a chatterbox today.” she smiles and continues running ice over his face, blowing and cooing all the while. She takes her time, as she always has with him and cools his skin, then applies the correct medication to numb then another to fight infection. With a new dressing, she fluffs his pillow and gives his blanket a good shake before tucking him back in. ��Here you go, love.” she speaks, one hand behind his head, the other placing a bottle of liquid to his lips that he knows means another long rest is coming. “There we are. Soon you won’t need my help with that. I’ll check on you later Alfie. Not that you’ll know.” she chuckles. “But I’ll be there.” she pats his hand and gives him a smile as his eyes roll back and flutter shut.

----------

The longer he stayed and recovered, the closer they became. He quickly became her favorite patient and she, his favorite nurse.

“Ruth!”

“Yes, Alfie?” she asks carrying a tray on food into the room.

“The seagulls are being mighty peculiar today.” he answers with a shake of his head.

“What are they up to today?” she amuses him as she takes away his binoculars and sets them on the bedside table.

“Loud today. Storm coming in perhaps. The fuckers have been fightin’ like mad. They know something we don’t.”

“I wouldn’t doubt that in the least.” she smiles and places a napkin into his shirt collar, the tray in his lap. “Always up to something those birds.”

“You understand, Ruth. That’s why I like you.” he announces approvingly. He was rather entertaining when medicated. Although she hadn’t seen much of him sober yet.

“I managed to snag you another bowl of pudding and a sweet roll.” she distracts him.

“Always spoilin’ me Ruth.” he gives her a wag of his finger. “Have I ever told you about how I had a bakery? We made these rolls ourselves.”

“No, you haven’t. Tell me more.” she sits next to him, her shift over but having nowhere to go she cared about. She sits with a book in her lap and listens to the stories he tells over and over. Ones she could recite from memory if needed. But he sounded happy, was so lively when he told her stories she couldn’t bring herself to tell him no. She rather enjoyed seeing him smile.

-----------

Coming off the medicine, Ruth missed those stories and smiles. Alfie was coming down from his highs, pain, and withdrawal both plaguing him. Learning to function with one eye, the dizziness that came from the force trauma to his head and the depth perception problems. She understood his short temper, but he was still far nicer to her than any other person that helped him. After a particularly nasty day, him falling and being embarrassed, angry about being sick from the medicine and his head throbbing almost visibly, he surprised her.

“He’s asking for you again.”

“Right.” she tidies up and goes to the sounds of a groaning man. She could walk to the path in her sleep now. So many rounds and shifts, days and nights spent there with him. “You called for me?” she responds with the same polite tone.

“I did, yeah.” he nods then turn to look at her. “I’ll be out of here soon.”

“That’s what I’ve been told. I know you feel poorly but you are doing better,” she adds supportively. “It’s good that you’ll be leaving. Means you’re on the last stretch of recovery.”

“Do you want me to go, Ruth?”

The question catches her off guard. “I want you to get better.” she states plainly.

“Now I do want the fuck out of here, yeah? But I don’t wanna GO per se.”

“I’m afraid I'm not following.”

“I want to hire you. To come live with me. Be my personal nurse. You’re the only one worth a damn. The only one I trust. The only one that doesn’t look at me like…” he stops himself and sighs. “Would you be interested?”

“You flatter me as always Alfie,” she replies with a smile and her hand to her chest. “But I work here, I have rent I can’t just-”

“I’ll pay ya double what you make now. No rent, I’ve got plenty of rooms. You can help me, yeah? I don’t want to deal with this shit alone. I’ll only admit that to you. This fuckin’... the sight and vertigo and all 'is… shit that goes along with getting shot in the fuckin’ face. I can do it alone, but I don’t wanna, love. I’m finished with makin’ things harder on myself. And you help me, right? You have since I got here.”

“I have. I was the first assigned to you.”

“And the only one that’s stayed.” he lets out a little chuckle that turns into a cough.

“Yes.” she nods and smiles. “I’ve never done in home care.”

“You’re a good nurse. The best I’ve seen here. And you don’t annoy the shit out of me. You’re perfect for it.”

She shrugs, eyes not meeting his out of uncertainty.

“Ya gonna make me beg, love? Or is it more money you’d like?”

“Neither.” she laughs and gently pats his hand. “I accept. You’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse.”

“That’s what I was known for.” he grins.

“I can see why.”

“You go tell that boss of yours that don’t appreciate you enough to fuck off now. You’re gonna come with me.”

“I’ll tell them in my own way if you don’t mind.” she giggles.

“If you insist.”

---------

Ruth, in her simple cotton dress, walks closely behind Alfie as he slowly makes his way with his cane into his Margate home. She hadn’t known what to expect, but a mansion hadn’t been it. Aged and covered in ivy, the walls covered with specimens and art and each piece more interesting than the last, she had to focus on him to not become distracted. She’s careful to follow him on his side he can see on, ready to help him stay steady should he need her. He tromps his way into a cozy and lived-in room, plush chairs and a set of doors that overlooked the ocean. She gingerly helps him sit in the largest chair and doesn’t judge his pained sounds as he does so.

“Your place is lovely, Mr. Solomons.” she remarks, taking his hat and coat from him.

“Who the fuck is Mr. Solomons? Don’t call me ‘at. Call me Alfie.”

“My apologies. Since I was working I wanted to be formal.”

“No need for such. We’re old friends already, Ruth.” he grunts and resituates himself.

“Yes, sir.”

“None of that either.” he shakes his finger at her and she nods obediently.

“Yes...mate?” she suggests with a face that shows her rapid reaching for an alternative and it makes his laugh turn into a cough.

“We’ll work on it.” he chuckles.

“Where should I put your things?”

“There’s a closet by the door, hang ‘em there.” he nods in the direction of which he speaks.

With a quick bow, she leaves and returns promptly. “What would you like of me, Alfie? Some tea perhaps? I can get used to the kitchen.” she offers with hands clasped in front of her. So reserved, he thought to himself.

“Nah, you can go ahead and fetch ya things. Your room is the last on the left hallway, love. I’ll just be here.”

“Alfie, with all due respect let me at least make you comfortable before I go. That is my job afterall.”

“I’ll be fine, you don’t live that faraway. I did make it this far in life without you ya know.” he jokes.

“May I speak honestly?”

“It is what I prefer, yeah.” he turns his head and narrows his eyes at her.

“I do not want you falling or getting hurt while I'm here. I will feel personally responsible as it is my job to care for you and I take my job very seriously. You are... a bit stubborn and I don’t want your tenacity to give you a set back you will later regret and I will be left to mend something that could have been avoided.”

“Well that is...honest.” he shrugs.

“So as per my expertise, I would like to make you tea, perhaps a toastie or something to keep your energy up before tea. I’ll give you something to take the edge off, you’ve done a lot of traveling today and don’t need to exert yourself. I’ll settle you down with a book and some binoculars to watch the sea like you enjoy, eh?”

“A toastie?” he lets out a deep laugh that moves his stomach. “Haven’t had one of those since I was a lad. Sure. Tea does sound lovely after that char they serve in the hospital. Trust you can find the leaves on ya own?”

“Certainly so.” she nods with that same polite smile. “Here’s your binoculars...and a pillow in case you require it.” She moves about the space as if she knows it already. He notices what an observant person she must be. “Be back in just a moment, sir-Alfie.”

“Now SIR Alfie does have a good ring to it.” he teases and laughs, reaching for the binoculars as she opens the doors before leaving to familiarize herself.

“Don’t poke fun of me Alfie. I’m adjusting to this informality.” he hears the laughter in her voice covering the offense taken.

“I’d never, love.” he says with dramatic offense taken. “What sort of man do you think I am?”

“The kind that gets his tea poisoned for being an arse.” she snaps back with a playful smile he hadn’t seen before.

“HA!” he throws his head back, forgetting for a moment in the exchange that he was injured before cursing and mumbling, “Bloody room needs to be still.”

“And THAT is why you need me, Alfie. Behave yourself.” she sighs with a shake of her head as his brow furrowed hard in concentration.

“Yeah, yeah. Make me feel worse about it why don’t ya?”

He hears the sounds of another person in the house. Something he wasn’t entirely accustomed to. The tinks and shuffles of water and china go unnoticed as he focuses on steadying his head.

“Has the room stopped spinning for you to enjoy this?” she asks, standing with a steaming cup of tea and a saucer in her hands.

“Ya quiet as a mouse there.” he gruffs with one eye opening and giving her a once over.

“Not my intention,” she says with her trademark polite delivery. “Here you go. Still hot.”

“Mmph.” a grunt as he sits up straight and sees the swirls escaping the liquid. She stands patient and still as he puckers his lips and blows. He gives her a moment of eye contact before taking a noisy sip. He waits a minute, a slow head nod then a noisy smack of his lips. “Made the right choice hirin’ you dinnit I?” he states with a turn of his good eye her way. “That’s a good brew there, love.”

“Thank you. I pride myself on it. Been making tea since I could pour it myself.”

“You can tell. Good, that.” he adds with another slow sip. “What else are ya good at Ruth?” his tone sounded more like a challenge than a casual question.

“I suppose you’ll find out, won't you?” she answers back quickly and curtly. A small almost bend his way before moving back to the kitchen to impress him with a snack.

------------- He awakes with a twitching nose and the pain that the motion sends immediately through his head. The pain is ugly but the smell that caused it is lovely. The sun was already moving up into the sky and he groans and manages to sit up in his bed without too much nauseated feeling. He’d overslept which normally would be very much unlike him but his sleep schedule since being shot was erratic at best.

“Oh, you’re up already!” he hears the familiar voice chirp. “I’ve brought you breakfast.” she proudly declares, carrying a tray and sitting it on a table away from the bed. “How are we this afternoon?”

“What bloody time is it?” he grumbles as she approaches and checks his forehead with the back of her hand.

“Half past eleven.”

“Fuckin’ ‘ell.”

“The medicine makes you sleep, Alfie. Nothing out of the ordinary. I’d rather you be resting than unable to.” her voice remains instructive but polite. “Here’s your tray.” she places the shelf to eat off of over his lap and begins to arrange the food. “We have porridge and honey. Tea with the same. Good healing properties in it, yeah?” she keeps her polite smile and watches him flinch as he moves his face. “Doesn’t require chewing. And I’d like you to start having food in you before you take your pain medication from now on. So we’ll start here and see how this goes.”

“Ya gonna do the dressin'?” he asks with a tired eye exposed.

“After your medicine has had time to dull the pain. No use in making you suffer more than you already have to.”

He watches her move about with light fingers and a pleasant face. “Why ya wearin’ that?” he asks with now focused eyes. He was referring to the new uniform she was wearing.

“My old uniform was the property of the hospital. I thought since I was still working it would be proper to get myself one.”

"Ya didn’t have to.” he offers.

“It’s no problem.” she lied. She’d had to buy the uniform second hand because she couldn’t afford a new one of her own. Of course with the new pay and lack of rent she’d be able to afford one soon. “The black will help hide any stains and the apron is always useful.” she offers and sits on the edge of the bed. “Now stop fussing and eat.” she directs with a gentle pat to his foot as she holds the paper in her hands.

“What’s that?” he motions with a spoon full of porridge.

“This morning’s paper. I thought you might like to read it.”

“If I wanted a fuckin’ headache, yeah.”

“That’s why I’m still here.” he retorts. “I can read it for you while you eat. Save your eyes.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“But would you like me to?”

“Mmmph.” he nods and begins to nibble away at the flavorful lumps in the bowl.

He was glad she could read so well, he’d had maids that couldn’t before but she was a nurse putting on the hat of a maid as well. He had to remind himself that. He uses his one good eye to look her over while she’s distracted. It was still in his nature to use anything available to his advantage. He’d already been able to surmise that she grew up poor, if she wasn’t still, from the food she served. This new uniform, clearly worn was another sign of this theory. It was a touch too short, clearly tailored for a shorter and smaller woman. The sleeves rolled up and the petticoat fluffing out at the edges that hit at her knees, the undone top button that wouldn’t clasp were all signs of support for his growing back story about her he was concocting in his head.

After he’d eaten his fill, an amount that was approved of by her and a good sign of returning health, she’d proclaimed, he takes his various tonics and medications that begin to make the edges of his vision a bit blurry. He pays attention to her now, his hands clasped in front of him, staring at her as she reads to him. “Would you like me to skip the arrests?” she asks.

“No, it’s a favorite part.” he gives her a smile.

“Very well…” she begins, posture straight and head moving animatedly as she read off the charges.

It was the drugs that made him feel so comfortable with her. But it didn’t stop it from feeling good nonetheless, no matter the official cause. “You have a lovely speaking voice, yeah?”

She blinks with surprise and turns her head his way.

“Bet children love it when you read to them, eh?”

“They usually fall asleep.” she replies with eyes that moved around in thought.

“You ever read poetry? Shakespeare and the like?”

“I am familiar with the works. Never thought it much use to read it to children in the hospital.”

“Mmmph.” he nods. “Perhaps one afternoon we’ll do that. I think your voice would lend a certain lyrical lilt to it.”

“Thank you.” she says politely as she closes the paper. “I do believe it’s time to change that dressing and clean you up. Officially start the day, yeah? The seagulls are probably lonesome without you looking at them.” she jokes.

“I’m a very busy man.” he nods in agreement. “Someones gotta keep an eye out on those bloody birds. Can’t trust em.” he hears her soft chuckle and keeps his hardened face in place, as is his way. Especially when his reactions tended to make her laugh.

-------

“Alfie?” He hears Ruth enter the room, announcing herself as his blind side was facing the doorway.

“Ello. Look at this ship that’s come in today. Never seen one so big.” He motions with his hand to approach him as he holds one eye of the binoculars up to his face. “Lots of cargo ships today.” He muses while Ruth peers out to the sea to entertain him. She couldn’t care less about ships. “Must be for the turning of the season coming. Needin' supplies and that.”

“Yes, I felt the chill incoming this morning.” She agrees with a nod and hands the spectacles back. “I have a question… or rather a concern I need to discuss with you.”

“Alright, go on.” He pats the seat next to him and she obediently sits.

“Tomorrow is Friday.”

“Mmm that it is.” He nods.

“That means Shabbat.” She states obviously as he seemed to not be following.

“Can ya make Challah?” He inquires.

“Yes, no problem at all. But there is the issue of me working.”

“Ah. I see. Yes.”

“I had been considering ways to still observe but not be away.”

“I could be fine for a day on me own, love. Ya don’t have to worry like ya do.”

She didn’t want to argue even though she disagreed.

“You can go off and do whatever it is you like.” After a pause and silence on her end, he turns to look at her. “What?”

She lets out a small frustrated noise. “I don’t really… have anywhere else to go.” She gives a small shrug. “I’d rather stay here.”

“Oh.” He blurts out, surprised at the answer. “Well, that’s also fine, innit?”

“I thought perhaps I skip cleaning on Shabbat. I can not wear the uniform you know? We can work together for tea and I can lounge a bit instead of keeping busy.”

“You know… some company would be nice.” He wouldn’t dig into her lack of social life today. The poor thing seemed embarassed. “I can help with the bread or at least supervise. Be useful somehow.”

“That would be wonderful. We could listen to one of the radio programs perhaps? Or I could read something besides the paper to you as you suggested?”

“Full of good ideas you are Ruth, dear. We can be a couple of mates bein' lazy. Have our wine and leisure as God requests.” He speaks with his hands, an animated delivery that told her he was adjusting well to the less intense medication.

“That sounds lovely. I’d like that very much.”

“Then that is precisely what we shall do, love.” He declares with a pointed finger.

And it was.

A lovely indulgent afternoon to close out their first week together. Wine and conversation. His snoozing through the afternoon as she prepared dinner. He told her stories and she read poetry about the sea to him. She continued to care for him but in her simple cotton dress this time. Her usual conservative hairstyle replaced with a loose fall of hair around her shoulders. A total opposite to the severe bun she had sported. He sees Ruth for the first time and not Nurse Ruth. She shares stories of patients and they laugh. She tells him of past Shabbats with her mum, and he shares some of his own. A mutual bonding on the loss of their mothers. They talk well into the night and only end the revelry when his medication renders him useless. It would be a special time for both of them to share and an instigator for their budding romance.

——————————

“The rest of you needs seeing to Alfie.” She insists. Knowing of his skin condition and back pain. “If you just let me assist you I can get it all in one go and it would be so much easier on me.” She stands with a hand on her hip as he stands with an undone shirt in the doorway of his bathroom.

“It’s a man’s business all his own in the bath. I don’t need your help to wash. Just on the ol face. I don’t want you all...exposed to this.” He motions to his body.

“You act like I’ve never seen a naked man before Alfie. I’m a NURSE. This is what I DO.” She maintains with open hands that chop down to the beat of her words.

“Ya tryin to get at me bits is what ya doin!” He replies dramatically and she sighs and puts her hand to her face.

“Alfie I swear-“

“Ehh. Only teasin bout that don’t get ya knickers in a bunch.” He groans and moves slowly toward the tub.

“You can use one of the wash cloths to cover up if it makes you feel better. But you never came off as shy before.”

“I’ll take ya up on that.” He makes his usual sounds of discomfort as he takes off his shirt. “Now turn and I’ll get in. Having an audience makes me bashful.” He jokes as she rolls her eyes and lets out a chuckle.

“I can’t have you getting dizzy and cracking your head open. I won’t apologize for watching out for you.”

“So you keep saying.” his voice shows his mild annoyance with her caring nature. But he was healing well he had to admit. She hears his clothes hitting the floor and water sloshing about. “Hotter than hell but fuck me that feels good on the ol joints” he grunts. “Come on in then ya stubborn bird.” He sighs out as she’s at the ready with her case of medicines for him.

“This makes this a lot easier on me. I appreciate your cooperation, truly.” She states with no sarcasm as she lines the bottles up and rolls up her sleeves.

“Only reason I’m agreeing to it.” He answers with lips planted together and readying for the bandage to be removed for what could be the last time.

“You have healed up so nicely.” She remarks softly as she studies the now stitchless face, only scabs left to fall off. Some already have done so with dark lines now showing the marks left from the open wound.

“Tell that to me fuckin eye.” He responds defensively.

She suppressed a sigh of frustration. He truly had come so far. He could’ve died of infection or any number of things by this point. “The sight left but the healing it’s done is remarkable all the same. The pigments gone but being able to keep at the eye at all is a teatmabe to your bodies ability to heal.” She uses a cloth to wipe gently at his face.

“You’ll say it’s a miracle I’m here at all next.” He complains.

“I won’t.” She snaps back. “Even though it is.”

He hums sarcastically.

“I feel comfortable not covering it anymore. Get some air and sun on it. Do you good.”

“Can’t wait to unleash this on the world.”

“You’ll be even more intimidating than you already are. With your personality, I’d think you’d find that more useful than a negative.”

“Got a point there.”

“Besides, the integrity of your face is still intact. All symmetrical and that. Your beard is almost grown back in on this side. Just scar and an eye that could pass for an opal. Adds character. And you are a character for certain.” She chuckles. “You aren’t disfigured. In my humble opinion still pleasant to look at. Most that get shot in the face can’t say they still kept their looks.”

“Looks?” He turns with a brow raised. “Are you complimentin' me?”

Her eyes blink fast and she looks away. In her attempts to cheer him up perhaps she’d been TOO honest. “I am.” She nods and begins rubbing oil between her hands. “Now give us this mop of hair.” She changes the subject and leans over to get her fingers into his scalp.

He’s rendered useless. As her nails rake away and wake up his scalp with a tingle. “Fuck that is good, innit?”

She smiles contently as his eyes roll back and he shuts them. “Get your blood flow going and heal up any spots. Very good for you” She says softly as he grunts. She washes his hair, an intimate thing she makes comfortable, the medicine she’d poured onto his face and hair washing into the bath water. “You can give yourself a wash while I put these away and then I’ll cover the spots on your trunk.”

“Trunk? The fuck you on about?”

She chuckles again and shakes her head. “That’s nurse for torso.” She explains.

“I was wondering if you’d sewed me up wrong for a minute there.” His response draws another laugh as she turns her back and closes bottles and wipes them down. “‘Spose you could’ve been takin bout my nethers.”

This brings a further laugh from her. “Nethers.” She chuckles. “That Alfie for genitals?”

“Since you’re a lady I wasn’t gonna say cock.”

She lets out a snorting laugh, shoulders shaking with it as he gives her a smile she doesn’t see. “But alas, here we are.” A happy sort of tone that shows her amusement and lack of offense pleases him in many ways. “Since when do you watch your language?” She sass’s.

“Since I got me arse and bollocks out I suppose.” She covers her face for another round of laughter and he joins in.

“You’re a character, Alfie Solomons. Never met a man like you before.”

“I’ll take what back handed compliments I can love.” He genuinely agrees.

“Not back handed. You are interesting. Unique. That’s what character means.”

“Quit bein’ so sweet and get over here, you’ll make it hard for me to be a grouchy bastard.” He grunts and stands, hand still holding the wash cloth over himself as she turns to get an eye full of dripping wet man in the tub. She was going to ask him to rise up a bit to get to the spots but… this worked too. See gulps and he catches it, a flush of confidence he couldn't help comes over him.

She works in silence, focusing with a furrowed brow she rarely had. She was fighting to not look anywhere she didn’t have to. Her fingers worked into his scaly spots, soaking up the good mixture of healing ointments and losing their redness already. He was dotteda long his shoulders and back, some on his chest and she was thankful there weren't any on his legs to be seen. She remained professional in action but her thoughts were moving in a wholly different direction.

“There you are. Finished.” she declares with a nod, not meeting his eyes and speaking curtly. She looks him over, not being very skilled at being subtle or sneaky as he stands and stares at her. A bit of flex of power as he saw her jaw tighten and lashes flutter.

“You gonna oogle me or hand me towel, pet?” he coos out and she is visible bothered. A quick jump and rush to grab what he asked.

“I wasn’t- I didn’t-”

“Hush, love I'm only teasin’.” he grins, draping the towel around his hips. “But I do believe I can handle the rest meself.” a smirk that gave away his delight at getting flustered is plain on his face but she dare not meet it.

“Course, course.” she mutters out and quickly turns and hurriedly gathers her things.

She goes to her room and finishes putting the bottles into her bag for later. She rubs the back of her neck and looks around at nothing in particular as her eyes remain nonblinking and wide. She was a professional, what was wrong with her? She shakes her head and the image of his broad body remains. Wide shoulders and strong, stocky legs that were made for… well, things she hadn’t experienced in a long while. The time without the intimacy of a man being felt hot in her face and elsewhere. She had heard him referred to as Captain, he was a military man, which would explain the strength there. She looks at herself, suddenly self-conscious with hands to her soft stomach and hips. She supposes it’s a good sign he looked so… healthy. It was in part to her good care and support and she took pride in that. But another feeling that was called sin was bubbling up beneath the surface for his recovery was becoming more and more apparent. ----------------

Time passes and the true nature of themselves reveals itself. Alfie being stubborn and grumpy, although she couldn’t entirely blame him. And her proving hard working and insistent. The banter between them became easy, the routines in place and their roles clear. It was a relationship that both of them felt they didn’t have to work too hard at. Over the weeks they’d grown comfortable with one another, and it was starting to show.

It was one of the last warm days of fall, the cool air getting chillier by the degree every night and feeling it into every morning. Alfie was very aware of winters coming in his bones. An ache in his joints he dreaded every year with the changing of the seasons. But at least he now had someone with soft hands and warm heart to rub oil into the hurting bits. He wasn’t sure what helped more at this point, the oil and massage or the woman who was doing it.

They walked side by side, Ruth dutifully holding his arm out of habit by this point. But he didn’t mind it all that much. She had a little blue dress, one of the many shades of the sea they walked alongside. Both barefoot and Alfie with his pants rolled up his calves, his typical white shirt and waist-coat loose on the breezy and pleasantly cool day. When the sun would peek through the clouds a warmth would spread across their skin, sparkles on the water shone as they walked, their footprints disappearing behind them in the tide.

“Come in a little further, get the cold water lapping about your legs! Get the blood going!” she requests with a hand laced into his, giving it a timid tug in her direction.

“It’s bloody cold, love.”

“It’s not THAT bad Alfie. It wakes up the senses. Keeps you on your feet!” she gleefully announces as she lets his hand go and lets her dress get wet in the waves.

“Last time that water touched me I woke up with a hole in me fuckin face so forgive me for not being as enthusiastic as you.”

“You love the sea Alfie.” she scolds. “You sit up there on that balcony all day every day and watch it and everything in it. You hold no ill will towards it. Don’t make excuses. You can always just say no politely and I’ll listen.” she lectures as she splashes about, the tips of her hair getting damp and a sheen across her face from the splash the sea was waving against her. She looked happy. An innocent at play he thought.

“You’re welcome to it, love.” he contributes with a nod, watching her intently as the waves lapped around his calves.

“Fine, have it your way.” she submits as a wave almost knocks her over, a laugh arising from her shaking chest. “The doctors say this is good for the heart.” she informs without an inkling as to the soft look on his face, eye barely squinting in the dim sunlight.

“Yeah. I’d agree it’s that, innit?” he replies quietly, watching this lovely little siren spin and splash about. He wondered if it was old age making him soft, or if it was, in fact, just her. Perhaps a bit of both. How was a hardened man like him supposed to withstand a persistent assault at his heart by a woman so wholesome? She saw the world so differently, then he did. He couldn’t help but find her mind intriguing. He was already looking forward to wine and conversation with her that evening. Wine was the only way he’d found to open her up a bit, and each week he chipped away at her professionalism. One day he hoped to find something to give him some indication as to whether her kind and caring nature was just that, or if it was a sign of something more when it came to him.

——-

“Alfie, are you awake? I could use some assistance!” Ruth calls out, arms full of packages from the market. As she made her way through the house and into the kitchen.

“Do you think all I bloody do is sleep?”

“I can only work with what my own observations tell me.” she smarts back and he smiles.

“Don’t like it when ya get smart on me like that.”

“Then don’t ask silly questions, dear.” she ties back her hair as she moves past him to go fetch another set of bags from the car.

-----

They work well together in the kitchen. Both their upbringings working in tandem to create meals that both liked. He was a much better cook than she’d expected. She wasn’t used to men taking such interest in it, especially the baking. But she’d never had a better Challah than one that was kneaded by him.

“Did ya get the kosher eggs, love?”

“Of course I did.” she replies placing them next to him as he did a check of the ingredients needed.

“And the candles?”

“They’re crucial, of course, I remembered them you worrywart. I bought the fruit yesterday and the fall compote is in the icebox. The chicken is marinating, I have your favorite vegetables as requested and the broth is beginning to simmer. So onto the matzo balls.” she claps her hands together and readjusts her sleeves up her arm.

“You got the good schmaltz for it?”

“Yes, Alfie. Only the best for such a meal.”

“Good girl.” he praises as he moves about the kitchen with her, a slight hug from the side and a kiss to the head that made her blush at the approval. “These meals are so much easier with you here Ruth. Barely gotta do a thing.”

“Just keep making the best bread I’ve ever eaten and I’ll be more than happy to oblige you with the rest of the meal.” she says with a broad and happy smile.

“You flatter me.” he speaks softly as he dumps out the dough. He places his rings into a small dish she’d brought into the kitchen for that singular purpose. The kneading brought him back to his early days in the kitchen with his mum, the days he instructed the bakers at the shop. All happy memories that were being cast in shadow by the new ones he was forming with Ruth. But all she really could pay attention to the was the strength and endurance of his experienced hands plying the flesh-like dough. She put on records and lit candles, set the table with the last of the flowers from the garden. She had given the home a soft touch, a feminine one it lacked. It was still entirely his own, his things, how he wanted them, she never forced herself in. But her presence did seem to make things a bit more palatable. Especially on the bad days.

— They’d drank their wine, a bit over indulgent but no harm done. Sitting on opposite ends of a fainting couch and listening to the sea beat onto the shore outside the window. The fire roared away, Ruth shivered despite being under a blanket. She despised the cold, she always froze in the winter and without a fireplace in her bedroom she was already getting a bit chilled at night.

But in the shadow of the fire, warm and fuzzy on wine and seeing a snoozing Alfie it was far from her mind. She watched him with his harmless exterior, sat back and snoring lightly in his chair. He looked peaceful and rather adorable she would admit to herself. Lips pooched out with a chin pushed back into his neck, all snuggled into his beard on his chest. She sat with her elbow on the arm of the chair, chin in her hand and stared, took all of him in without judgement. She barely noticed the scars anymore honestly. She hadn’t known him without them. They seemed to suit him almost. A grumpy bear of a man she mused. The bear's nose twitched and awoke with a grunt.

“Mmph. What time is it?” he mutters.

“You’ve only been out for a little while.” she answers with a sweet voice that calls his attention. He sees her propped up and comfortable, a content smile not hidden on her face as she continued to observe him.

“Ya watchin’ me sleep?” he blurts out without any grace.

“Suppose I was. You look so peaceful.”

“Was dreamin’ ‘bout you.” he admits.

“Really? What about?”

“We were on a balcony. ‘Spose that one outside my room. It was cold and dark.”

“Least it wasn’t a nightmare.” she adds supportively.

“Far from it.” he grumbles, not giving away the other details of the dream of a warmth between them and their affections shown physically.

“Must’ve been nice. You looked happy.”

“Mmph.” he didn't want to give away any more than he already had. “Why didn’t you wake me? Or go to bed yaself?”

“You looked happy. Like I said. Didn’t want to bother you.”

He nods in acknowledgement. “That why ya lookin’ at me like that then?”

“I was just thinking.” she sighs out.

“‘Bout?”

“You.”

“Are you inclined to share your observations?”

“When you sleep you remind me of a bear.” she answers with a smile, her head tilted against the back of the chair.

“Ah.” he thumbs his nose. “A fierce beast indeed.”

“I should clarify I meant a stuffed bear.” she grins.

“What sort of stuffy would look like ‘is eh?” he retorts. Not exactly defensive, but not entirely not either.

“A well loved one.”

The smile she gives him makes him stop adjusting his posture and give her a gaze back. He looks her over for a moment, the wine leaving her relaxed with no sign of embarrassment in her body language.

“You look soft, comfortable. Your head down like your stuffing has been hugged about the neck so many times it’s lost its support. You’re worn and well-loved, threadbare in places. Some seams have split and you’ve lost an eye from your adventures but you’re still the same bear.”

He doesn’t know what to say. He hadn’t heard her speak in such a way before. He knew her for her positive outlook but she sounded so… soft and dare he imagines loving with her poetic observations.

“But we’ve given you a good scrub, cleaned you up. Sewed up the seams and given you a lovely new pearl button for an eye. You’ll be good for years to come.” she practically coos, her head shaking backing and forth in support of her statement.

“You… are drunk.” he states.

“Oh pish posh Alfie, what if I am?” she raspberries her lips.

“Would explain this monologue you’re on about.”

“You are though. Drunk or not I’d mean it. I didn’t mean to offend you. I only meant it as a compliment.”

“Didn’t say I was offended did I? Far from it.”

“Good.” she states and snuggles into the blanket around her shoulders. “Because you should see yourself that way.”

“Might take a bit more than kind words to change me own mind, love.”

“I’ve got them. I’ll keep trying.” she tires.

“Pearl button.” he chuckles.

“It shines in the firelight like an opal. Colors.” she yawns with smacking lips and closed eyes. “Or the moon in a cloudy sky.” she begins to murmur, sleep beginning to find her by force. “Lovely, really.” she barely whispers.

“Oh, darlin’.” he breathes out, watching the little mouse lose her fight with wine and sleep. “You’re too good to a man like me,” he declares before sitting up and moving her way. He doesn't have the heart to disturb her, only closing up the doors and placing the blanket he had over him onto her as well, giving an extra pillow for her to snuggle up to when she inevitable made the descent to laying horizontal. “Sweet little thing,” he murmurs, pushing back her hair from her face. “Don't take more than one eye to see how lovely you are Ruth.” he smiles softly and adjusts the cover around her. “Night, love.” he places a kiss to her head and she gently stirs, a little muffled hum from the touch. That’s what he’d go to bed tonight thinking about, that soft face spilling out honest words about how she truly saw him. He hoped his dream from before would return, he had lots of ideas for how to finish it now. ——

The cold had set in for the season, a crisp wind against the panes as the fire inside roared away. He supposes his compromised body, busy healing him from the shot was too preoccupied and hadn’t managed to keep up with its usual form of defense against the illness that made its way around this time of year. Ruth held herself responsible even though Alfie told her not to be ridiculous. He hadn’t left the house, he shouldn’t have had any way to get sick. She must’ve brought it in from the market she guesses. With her guilt heavy, and even if she wasn’t, her care of him always went above and beyond what was expected.

“We have just broth this time. Don’t want to upset your tummy further.”

“Tummy the medical term?” he still gives a sarcastic response despite his head hanging over the bed and the remnants of breakfast in the bucket below him.

“I’ll call it what I like.” she speaks with confidence as she wipes down his face with a cloth to clear his beard. “You need to stop being so mouthy and relax.”

“All the times I’ve been told that in my life...”

“You’d think you would’ve learned to listen by now.” she gives his cheek a gentle pat as she tucks the blankets in around him. “Take a few sips and wait. Then if you keep it down within the hour we’ll try some tea.

“Ugh.” he groans, his head spinning and for the first time not from the injury. He was just plain sick. Some stomach something that made him hot and cold and sleep like the dead. “I don’t want to eat a 'fing.”

“That means you’re still sick and you need the energy. So do as I say, please.”

She was stern but kind, reminded him of his mum a bit. She never shied away from the gross bits, whisking the tray away as soon as she saw his face turn and she knew he was going to be sick. She cleaned him up and bathed him to sweat out the sickness. He was so exhausted he didn’t have it in him to even tease her about seeing him naked. This told her he was especially sick. So when the hour got late and he was nowhere near where she’d like him to be in recovery, she stoked the fire and changed into her pajamas, setting everything he could possibly need by the bed.

“You’re burning up, love.” she whispered with a hand to his forehead. He only nods in agreement. “I’m going to stay with you tonight. Is that okay?”

“MMph?” a questioning glance shot her way.

“I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“You 'fink I’m gonna die?”

“No, I don’t think you’re going to die.” she chuckles and smoothes back his hair. “But I want to keep an eye on you nonetheless. You poor thing. I know you feel miserable.”

“Aye.” he moans.

“Do you mind me asking something personal?”

“What?” he gruffs out, sat back into the stacked pillows with a frown.

“When you were little... what did your mum do when you were sick?”

“Have me sleep with her. Do that lovely fing you women do with the fingers in the hair.” he grunts at the exhaustion he feels trying to reach his hand up to ruffle his own.

“Then I’ll do that then, yeah?” she suggests.

“Not a baby.”

“Tonight you are.” she smiles, crawling into the bed next to him. She makes herself a little nest and situates. “Would you like laying on my lap? A lot of people prefer it. That or on the chest, heartbeat is soothing, but I’m afraid I don’t want you that close to my face.”

“Don’t blame you.” he groans and moves slowly, to roll onto her legs.

“Curl up a bit, sometimes that helps with the stomach cramps.” she rubs his back, damp from sweat soaked through his pajamas as she lets him nestle up against her. Another sign he was very sick was his lack of defense of the idea. Men did love to be comforted in a maternal way when they were ill. She’d learned that quickly in her years as a nurse. This man wasn’t any different, it seemed. “That’s a good boy, now.” she feels a yawn coming on, fingers carding through the damp strands as she feels him rest his weight on her. “You aren’t accustomed to getting so ill are you?”

“No.” he laments.

“Your system has been through it as of late, hasn’t it? Healing you up so well it forgot to man the gates.” she lets out a soft laugh and his eyes are already shut. “Poor darling.” She whispers with a sweet lilt that gives him a moment of strength to wrap his arm over her legs. “Rest now, love, you’ve earned it. I’ll be here.” She continues to stroke through his hair as a snore quickly rises from his full lips.

He awoke without the usual ache in his body he’d grown accustomed to. Tiredness that was very much there, but the pain was dull and far away. He feels his head move with a soft rise and fall, realizing he was on Ruth’s stomach and he was feeling her breathing. He knew she was asleep by the steady rhythm it kept and it made him want to rejoin her. He felt the weight of her hand on his back and the other with an open book against the bed. By the small amount of light in the sky, he could determine she’d tried to stay awake and failed, but he had succeeded in getting an almost full night's rest for the first time that week. It must’ve been the fever breaking his rational mind thought, but he also concluded that the affection surely didn’t hurt his chances of recuperation either. —-

With frost heavy on the windowpane that night, Ruth kept adding more wood to the fire in the lounge to try to combat the freezing temperatures.

“Gonna have to move back inland to chop me own trees if ya keep feedin' it in such a way.”

“I’m sorry I’m just... freezing.” She whines with a sigh, pulling up her socks and tucking her feet beneath her on the chair that had been designated as hers unofficially over the weeks she’d been living there.

He looks to see her jumper layered over an undershirt, long johns and her big socks pulled up to her knees with her boots still on. “You’ve got more on than I do, ya still cold?”

“I’m always cold.” She mumbles. “Nights are worse.”

“Ya have a proper coat? A wool jumper instead of that knit one?”

“No.” A voice that was small and clearly embarrassed.

“Do I not pay ya enough to buy the things you need?” His tone wasn’t one of judgment which she was relieved by, but she still felt suddenly inadequate under his gaze.

“You do, you’re very gracious I just... I've been saving it.”

“Ah.” He nods, still looking her over. He wanted to ask her for what, but he supposed it wasn’t any of his business. But his curiosity and her silence got the better of him. “May I ask for what?”

“Just... life.” She shrugs. “For a place of my own one day. Being an unmarried woman I need to be able to support myself at any given moment if need be. Things happen. I like to be prepared.” She sheepishly answers.

“Well, that’s smart of ya innit.” He approves. “How about we go out tomorrow and I buy you a new coat? Get ya some good winter protection since you’re such a small thing. Won’t have ya freezin' in my house.”

“That’s very kind of you but it’s not necessary. I’d considered taking up knitting. I could make some things for myself.”

“You need something better quality than you could pull together. Not to be rude, love. It’s a good hobby to have but the weather by the sea demands more.”

“It is so much colder than it is inland. The wind bites to your bones.”

“That it does. So we’ll go. You aren’t spendin' your money on something like... fuckin gamblin' or what not, ya bein smart, so I don’t mind to step in. Consider it a gift for your excellent work.”

“You don’t have to-“

“Hush now Ruth. You don’t reject gifts now do ya. I know you were raised better than that.” He teases.

“Thank you. It’s very generous.” She finally accepts and pulls a duvet over her shoulders.

Her chattering begins to be noticeable to him. His injured side still hearing her sniffling and shifting as the night carried on even if he could not see it. “How have you been makin' it through the night without a fire if you’re already so cold?” He inquires without looking her way.

“I haven’t been really. I’ve had a hot water bottle and a warmed iron in my bed, sleeping in my clothes and that.”

“Unacceptable.” He grumbles. “You should’ve said something, pet.”

“I didn’t want to be a bother.”

“You have never been a bother and you could never be, Ruth. Anything you need you just ask. Promise me.”

“Yes, Alfie” she agrees hesitantly.

“Good girl, now c’mere” he instructs, raising the blanket thrown over his lap. “Use the 'ol sharin' body heat in the meantime.”

“Are you su-“

“Get over here Ruth. Your teeth will grind down to nothing with the chattering they’re doing over there by the window.” He orders with more conviction, another motion of his hand to beckon her closer.

She sighs but begins to move, a nod of agreement, because he was right.

“Won’t have you catchin' a cold when a simple intervention of body heat will help remedy the situation.”

She brings her blanket around her shoulders, dragging behind her on the carpet as she shuffled towards him. Wordlessly she sits next to him as he pats the cushion, direction to sit close.

With only the crackle of the fire, he puts an arm over her shoulders, tucking the blanket now shared as he pulls her legs into his lap.

“Get these feet warmed up, eh?” He mutters, unlacing her boots as she watches him with curious eyes. The delicate movements of his fingers catch her off guard by the attention they demand of the firelight shining off his rings. “Beneath the legs. Toes under here, there ya are.” He mumbles while tucking her feet under his thigh to warm her. “Don’t be shy, we’ve had a cuddle before.” He chuckles as he pays her back. Her little body, in comparison to his, curls up against him. “Lookit is nose, red as a beet yeah? Can’t have that.” He takes her nose and places his palm over it and makes her laugh. “You are freezin' love, my goodness.” He remarks softly, rhetorically. “There now. Better?” He asks with genuine concern as he runs her back over the blanket.

“Yes actually.” She admits quietly. “You’re very warm.”

“Aye. Good it’s going to use then, yeah?” He looks back to the book he’d been reading. She feels a bit limited, being in such a confined space with him. She was on his blind side but that didn’t stop him noticing she was staring. “ You’ve seen me every day, love, what could there possibly be to look at you haven’t seen before?”

She gives him a grin. “I haven’t had to be so close in some time now. You’re still doing very well. Swelling is gone.” Her fingers trace over his scars that run from the line of his beard to his temples. “Healed up nicely. Hardly any displacement. Scars will always be there but a small price for what you’ve been through.”

“Thanks to you.” His way of accepting the compliment.

“I think you had a bit to do with it.” She lets out a soft chuckle. “I think you wear it well. Not just anyone could make this sort of look work for them.”

“Not that I’ve had a choice.”

“You certainly do.”

“How so? Can’t exactly choose what I look like.”

“No, but you have a very strong face, Alfie.”

“That’s a way to say ugly and still be polite.”

She laughs and her forehead pressed into his collar bone for a moment. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never say such a thing as it would be a lie.”

“Backtracking now are we?” He turns to show his good eye and an amused but teasing face.

“No!” She laughs and snuggles a bit closer to get his warmth.

“Hush and snuggle up ya little ice lolli.”

“Strong means exactly that. Strong.” She rests her head on his shoulder with his permission. Hair nuzzling against the scars they spoke of. “Masculine, you know. Hard brow, pronounced nose and jaw. And all symmetrical.” She yawns. “ Most can’t say that without getting shot.” She lets out a soft laugh.

“What did you break? You’re being too nice again.”

She lets out another giggle and it makes him smile.

“You know I would’ve come running and crying if I had.”

“True.” He agrees.

“You have an intense air about you. Suits the whole… look. That’s all.”

“Then thank you, Ruth, love.”

“Welcome.” She sighs with a smack of her lips.

She falls quiet, gentle breathing against his chest he doesn’t mind in the least. As much of a surprise to him as anyone else.

“Ya asleep?”

“Mmmph. Warm. Comfy.” She mumbles.

“Then let's go to bed, yeah? At least until we can fix the cold in your room.”

“Together?”

“Yeah, love, I’ll keep ya warm. Let me be of use to ya somehow. For what all you’ve done for me.”

“No use in arguing with you. Won’t win.” She answers with a sly smile that makes him laugh.

“Kind and smart. Gonna have to hold onto you aren’t I?”

His response causes a warm happy hum in her throat that makes him lean in to kiss her head before he wraps her up and takes her in his arms to carry her.

“Don’t strain yourself.” She tells him, waking up and wrapping her arms around his neck instinctually.

“I know me limits.” He grumbles back defensively. “Don’t worry, you just keep warm.” He adds more softly as he carries her down the hall.

With a well-fed fire and a comfortable position found in his bed, Alfie and his little mouse burrow up, her without her usual wall of hesitation as she hungrily pulls herself towards him, so relieved at the promise of a night not freezing alone.

As she had done before, watching over and being of service to him, he returns the favor night after night. Watching over her and the total abandon on her face as she slept. She looked so innocent in his arms, dark hair and lashes that lay stark against her skin. Besides their buzzed conversations, these nights were a close second in his favorite way to spend his time. He felt useful to her. Like he could entertain he could ever repay her for the help she’d given him. Laying with the strong but fragile-looking woman in his arms gave him something carnal he missed. He felt like a man for the first time in a long while. He hadn’t known if he’d ever feel such a way after being shot. He thought women may run in fear of him, left to pay for any kindness or intimacy with them. But one had appeared that made his chest warm, his belly full and his mind occupied. She’d been a comfort from the beginning, but he was suspecting he was becoming one for her as well.

--------

Alfie hadn’t had very many visitors since coming home and it’d been months. Very few people seemed to know he was even alive from what Ruth gathered. The only people that visited him seemed to be Jewish businessmen she’d never seen before. Most were Orthodox and very polite but they spoke suspiciously quietly while they met with Alfie.

She greeted them all enthusiastically making tea or bringing biscuits as Alfie suggested and this time was no different. She’d even put on her maid uniform even though she was more than a bit cold in it. But unlike times before, they spoke louder, as did Alfie, sounding a bit distressed. She was doing her work, scrubbing at the entryway where they had tracked in mud from their trip to the market.

She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, it just happened she was in proximity with her work. She hadn’t meant to listen and hear things she shouldn’t have, but she did. Now she knew who Alfie Solomons was, and him being shot now made sense.

That evening Alfie, as is in his way, already knows she’s heard him. He could tell from the moment she took away the tray from tea. The lack of eye contact, the almost sad but cautious expression. None of it was lost on him.

After supper, he knows there’s a conversation that needs to be had. He knew no better way to approach it than head-on.

“I know you heard what me 'n those men were talkin' 'bout today.” She says nothing and keeps knitting. “I’m not angry, you can look at me, Ruth.”

“It wasn’t intentional.”

“I didn’t assume as much but thank you for clarifying.” He answers calmly.

“I was working on the floor. The mess from going to the market and the wet and that.”

“Mmm.” He nods. He says nothing having learned it is better to let people talk themselves instead of probing in most cases.

“I’m not… in trouble am I?” She asks with big eyes.

“Not if you can keep a secret.”

“I’ve not told anyone that you’re here either.” she adds quickly.

“Good. Then no problem, yeah?”

She gives a sharp nod.

“But I would like to know. For my own selfish reasons, what you think now. Because you aren’t lookin' at me the same.

“It was a shock at first. But upon reflection it made sense. The big house, money, the guns” she recognizes. “You’re very well-spoken and read. Clearly a man of intelligence. You can be very intimidating at times and it seems natural. I thought perhaps it was just your turn but it seems it’s learned for… work purposes.”

“You’re very observant, Ruth. Very clever.”

“Thank you.”

“All those things are true. I won’t deny them to you because you deserve the truth. But I am retired now. I don’t do that sort of work now. I put in my time and it’s given me the means to have this sort of life. Now I can sit back and use the reputation, yeah, the power that comes with such a name and life lived.”

She nods bashfully again.

“Will this be a problem?” He questions after a moment of silence between them.

“Am I… I’m not in danger am I?” She asks with the same honest eyes as earlier.

“Oh pet.” He sighs out, reaching out and taking her down turned chin into his hand. “ I would never put you in danger. Do you understand? You’re far too important.”

“Okay.” A soft solution that cues him to move his hand to hold hers.

“Do you think less of me now?” An upfront inquiry she hadn't expected.

She takes a moment to consider her answer. She didn’t feel threatened or scared of him. He admires her ability to slow down and consider her words before speaking. It was a skill many lacked. “No.” She shakes her head. “You have been nothing but kind to me. Grumpy sure but that’s a personality trait and not the core of a persons being. You’ve been generous and thoughtful. As I see it you’ve done no wrong to me, and that is all I can base my judgments on. Who youwere before doesn’t seem to be who you are now. I believe people can change. You’re a good man to me. One of the best I’ve known and I suppose it makes no difference how you made your life.”

“That is a relief. And so thoughtfully spoken.” He gives her hand a squeeze.

“I know some think me naive. As my kind nature can be mistaken."

“You are not naive. You’re very smart. Have a lovely, clever wit about you. You’re a good woman. You have a good heart. I admire that about you.” He lets go of her hand and sits to look at her, meeting her eyes intensely. “What I want to know now, is do you want to continue to live here with me? Now that you know?”

She doesn’t consider it as long as he expected which makes him let out a relieved sigh. “I do. I trust you. And trust your word. I feel safe here... with you. Safer now still than I did living alone.”

“It does make me happy to hear such news.”

“But Alfie…” She begins. “You know, and I only bring it up because you did first. But you are aware you no longer... need me, right? Save the housework I haven’t had to be your nurse in a few weeks now. I’m no longer needed for the purpose I was hired for.”

“You are not needed for that purpose, no.” He shakes his head. “But you do not wish to go?”

“I do like it here. And you. But, I hate to put my foot in my mouth to ruin a good thing but I’m still being paid for things I’m no longer doing.”

“Mmph. That would seem to be the case yeah.” He nods, looking into the fire. “Perhaps I hadn’t brought it up because I don’t want you to leave.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I don’t.” He shakes his head. “I like you, Ruth. And I can count on one hand the people I’ve liked in my life. I’d choose you to stay here. With me. I wouldn't charge you rent. And I do like how you keep a house. And cook. And… many other things about you.” He pauses. “But I would like to know. Do you like me? Would you want to stay?”

“Am I… reading too much into this being a loaded question?”

“I’m not proposing anything indecent. Not asking anything of you. I genuinely enjoy you. You as a person. And I don’t want you to leave. Your company would be missed. Greatly.”

“You want me to live with you? Not as an employee? Am I… understanding you?”

“Yes.”

“If not as an employee then...as what?”

“You’re a good woman Ruth and I don’t want to insinuate or offend. I do enjoy our friendship. But I believe there is the possibility of more there. And I would be willing to help you out, as we could help each other out, by living together and giving that a chance. No professional lines crossed, and if you find you do not want to stay I would never keep you against your will. But I believe you might feel the same way. If I am so bold to suggest.”

“You are bold.” He can’t get a solid read on her expression as it holds many things. “But you are… also correct.”

“Would you like to take a chance then, Ruth love?” He takes her hand again. “I know a man like me has no business asking this of a woman like you. One as lovely and smart with so much to offer but if I didn’t I know I’d spend the rest of my life alone and regretting it.”

“A man like you has every right to ask such a thing of me.” She lets out a soft huff of a laugh to being flattered.

“Nothing has to change. Business as usual and no funny business on my behalf. I can behave. Despite rumors.”

She gives him a smile. One that reassured him of her answer. “I would like that. We remove the confines of professionalism. No taboos just, two very good friends… exploring the possibility of more. Organically.”

“You put it in such an easily understood way, dear.”

“I can agree to that.” She nods with a nod of confidence.

“Then it’s settled.”

“So it is.” She beams back. A moment of silence hangs between them. “How about a cuppa before bed? Special brew to celebrate?”

“Always full of good ideas, you are. I’d love that.”

——————-

That night when it's time to go to bed Ruth has regained that same nervous smile she had in the beginning.

“It feels a bit different now, yeah?” She states with a nervous laugh.

“A bit. But it won’t be. Everything moves at your own pace, love. Do you still want to sleep in here?”

“Oh, yes” she very quickly answers much to his relief. “I can admit now it’s far too pleasant sleeping with you to go back to that freezing room. I mean, sharing a bed with you… you know what I mean. Why am I being so particular?” She laughs at herself.

“S’all right.” He speaks comfortingly and as always lifts his arm to accomodate her against him. “You’re rather endearing when you’re nervous.”

“Lucky me.” She snickers. “ I would like... some minor adjustments?” She asks sitting up to meet his face on her elbow.

“Anything you want, darlin'.”

“Just… here.” She scoots closer to move her feet under lhis eg, taking his hand that lay next to him on the bed and resting it on his chest. “And one more thing.” She asks with batting lashes, “Nothing indecent about a goodnight kiss to the cheek right?” She asks before planting one on the scarred side of his face.

“Nothin' a ‘tall. Spoilin’ a man.”

“This is a good start.” She coos with tired eyes, already putting her head to his chest to listen to his breathing and heart. She takes his hand into hers and laces their fingers together. “Goodnight Alfie.” She sighs out. A content and pleased sound.

“That it is, Ruth. That it is.” He closes the night with a kiss to her hair. A new nightly ritual begins.

————-

Their courtship began and despite the fluttering in her stomach she was distinctly aware of now, it didn’t feel like much had changed. There was a certain closeness, an intimacy and tenderness that hadn’t been so blatant before. There were kisses to cheeks as they cooked, holding hands as they sat side by side on the chair in front of the fire at night. Quick strolls around the estate, hand in hand to knock the dust off Alfie's shoes as he put it. He’d started venturing out more as well. Returning home with trinkets and sweets to gift Ruth to show his fondness. She’d never had a man give her gifts, and even the simplest purchase of something she’d needed such as socks or soap, made her blush and feel pampered. They were moving closer to something increasingly serious between one another each day, and they were both waiting for the other to cut the tension.

Their Shabbat is spent together as always, days spent cooking and nights spent leisurely enjoying each other’s company after blessings in the confinement of their home. Ruth had an air of ease about her now that she was being courted and the barrier of being in Alfie's employ was gone. This led to her being over indulgent in wine for the Friday evening, but Alfie didn’t particularly mind.

She went to bed when he had, a late night with a bright moon and stars. She woke up shortly after a brief rest, feeling hot in his embrace. She peels herself from the bed, feet hitting the cold floor and her still buzzed state becoming acutely aware to her. She shuts the door, Alfie grumbling as she left after a kiss to his cheek and a whisper of “I'll be back darling, sleep”.

She made her way with the fog of rest and wine in her eyes as she lit a candle in the hallway. She took a sweet from the glass dome they were housed in and proceeded to stand in front of the glass double doors that outlook the beach. The ocean was still awake, a sparkling blue and gray as it lapped at the sand. There wasn’t a soul out to feel the salt air except for Ruth. Her face was flushed, the breeze welcome and fluttering her dressing gown to ease the side effect of the wine. After many content sighs, lazy blinks that turned the glimmer of moonlight on the water into small seemingly touchable stars she retreats to the confines of the dark and quiet house. She turns on the record player, something she enjoyed when she was drunk, and on occasion when she wasn’t and Alfie wasn’t home. With one door open, a tinkling of the chandelier above her as she spun and sashayed about the room with the bell sleeves of her gown adding a decorative flair to her lonely waltz.

Alfie had slept through plenty of things Ruth had done in the house, including playing music. But perhaps the lack of another body in the bed for too long made him restless, his mind refusing to tune it out.

Ruth was swaying with eyes closed and a content smile as she moved around the dark collection of Alfie's things. Light filtered through the gems on the chandelier and gave the room a smattering of bright spots that moved with the breeze and her raised arms as she felt the music move about her.

She was none the wiser to Alfie standing in the archway watching her. He moved as quiet as a mouse down the hall, suspecting no foul play at the music in the night. He smiled at the swirling woman, being happily surprised by what he found waiting for him. He had grown to enjoy having music on during waking hours, a pleasant distraction and a chosen aesthetic to the day to set whichever mood he fancied. But it seemed Ruth was the one setting the tone that filled the room tonight.

In her light-colored gown, a blue gray in the moonlight, she moved in and out of the beam coming from the open door. Her hair was down and free, waves moving with the fabrics with her small hands orchestrating along. She takes a swift spin to follow the string section, opening her eyes as she stumbles slightly. A happy laugh escapes her before she notices Alfie watching. A small gasp leaves shortly after with wide eyes that admitted guilt to being caught.

“Did the music wake you? I’m so sorry Alfie, my love, I thought I had it low enough that it wouldn’t.” She rushes over apologetically to the machine but a gentle and assertive hand stops her before she can hurriedly remove the needle and most likely scratch the record in the process.

“It did but no apologies needed, love. Your absence was what caused me to venture out more than the noise.” He explains.

“I woke up in a heat and needed some air.” She elaborates.

“That what happens when you drink too much.” He chuckles before giving her chin an affectionate pinch.

“You’re right. As always.” She gives a bashful smile as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “Shall I shut this off and return to bed?” She asks with eager eyes and he finds himself sighing at the sight.

“No, no, love. Best not waste this lovely little scene you’ve set, eh?” He suggests as he straightens his posture and moves away from the wall. The candle in the hall was losing its fight against the darkness around it. It made no progress past the corridor and with a lack of fire in the room it was a peaceful display bathed in moonlight.

She looks at him curiously, not sure of the meaning of his words.

“Do you like to dance, Ruth?” He asks with an outstretched hand it takes her a moment to register its purpose.

“Oh yes. I do.” She nods.

“Would you like to now? With me?”

“I’d love that.” She smiles and takes his offered hand, small feet light as they were pulled along into the open space of the room among the rug and parted chairs.

“You’d never mentioned you liked it.” He observes.

“I’ve only done it alone before.”

“Ah. A shy one.” He grins and pulls her to his chest.

“Historically yes.” She laughs and happily takes her place against him. “You know better than anyone I am mostly hesitant to express myself and my wants.”

“Aye.” He nods, chin against her hair as a simple back and forth between them falls in naturally. A slow movement of feet, a swaying of shoulders as they leisurely made their way around the room. “But there is no need to be with me, pet. You’ll never get what you want if you don’t ask.”

“So wise.” She praises softly. “And so handsome. Really not fair.” She begins to giggle and hides her face in his chest.

“You’re still drunk.” He laughs and kisses her head.

“Only a touch. Enough to follow your advice. The wine helps you see. Helps me talk.”

“It can do that, yes.” He watches her face flushed and happy, lift to look at his.

“Sometimes I feel there’s so much in my head I want to say that I can’t choose where to even begin. So I don’t. But I want to.”

“Like what?” He inquires, giving her a chance to share her thoughts.

“Things… about you… and myself.”

“I have to admit I’m more than curious about your thoughts on the subject.” He teases and makes her smile with a dip of his head her way.

“I don’t even mind your teasing when I get to see you smile like that.” She catches him off guard with her softness as she always does. “You don’t smile often, so it’s like a little treat when you do. And when it’s directed at me…” she lets out a happy hum with a smile that warmed him against the wind whipping against his skin from the outside. “It just… makes a woman melt.” She admits with a soft laugh.

“Then I must admit yours makes me feel the same, love.” He kisses her forehead.

“You make me feel so… warm.” She sighs. “Like a constant hug. Or a big meal. It… feels so good.” She brings a hand up from his chest to rest it against his cheek. “I’ve never…” She stops and her eyes narrow just slightly in thought. “I’ve grown so fond of you, Alfie.” She finally verbalizes.

“And I you.” He keeps his voice soft as to not distract her.

“And you’re so… much. Smart and funny and lovely and so very good to me. And despite your insistence to the contrary, I do find you terribly handsome.”

“This what you’ve wanted to say to me love?” He nuzzles his nose against her head with an almost patronizing smile. As is his way. “Because it seems you’re only speaking my mind, as I feel about you. You kind and beautiful little woman. Clever and hard working. And bless you, finding me easy to look at.” He presses a long kiss to her cheek that makes her stomach flip and a smile that carries across her entire face bloom.

“I do. Because you are. And for that and so many reasons I really do very much care for you. Beyond friendship. Beyond platonic now.”

“Will you stay with me then darlin'? Ease my worries for losin' a treasure like you?”

“Of course. I don’t want to lose you either.” Is her honest and heartfelt response.

“So if I did what I truly wanted… and kissed you you wouldn’t be offended and run?”

“A man like you asking permission lets me know I am in fact exactly where I’m supposed to be. With you. So carry on with what we both want.” Her lips are still smiling as they finally close the space between them.

He was gentle with her. His hand moving from hers and to her head. It was short and chaste, as he didn’t want to offend her with more. She was by nature delicate and easily overwhelmed at times. The kiss’s purpose wasn’t to convince her for more but seal their courtship as official.

Small affectionate pecks follow. As they stand in the chilled room with nothing other than a warm feeling between them.

“I do believe it’s you and not the wine making me dizzy at this point.” She admits with a giggle against his lips.

“Then how about we get you to bed? There are always more kisses to be had whenever you want them. I’d never rush you, my love.”

“I do believe you’re right. I’m feeling a bit tired. And the promise of cozying up to you is more alluring than the breeze and music at this point in the night.”

“Then let’s do just that.”

—————————

Alfie had been put down for a nap as Ruth likes to affectionately tease him. He still suffered from the odd headache from time to time from the injury but a simple low dose of medicine and rest could always take the edge off he needed to function. If that didn’t solve it then Ruth’s humming and oiled fingers massaging his face and scalp could do the trick.

With a sweet kiss and words to leave him to drift into sleep, Ruth takes the time alone to see to the things she had on her to-do list.

Alfie wakes, just slightly groggy and becoming quickly aware of the silence in the house. There was usually some noise with Ruth around, the clinking of dishes or music floating about but his shuffling feet carrying him into the hall led to nothing. Perhaps she’d gone to town, she did say she needed some things for tea. With a shrug he helps himself to water and makes his way back with more open eyes than before. This time he sees the residing place of Ruth, and it was a bit of a shock on the old man.

Ruth had always taken her baths while Alfie napped. With medicine assuring he’d be down for a while she always left the door cracked to hear him call for her if needed. This time was no different.

Alfie heard the plinking of water first, his feet stopping in their tracks as the reflection in the mirror leaves him with a slack jaw after taking in the view. Ruth was exiting the bath, a reflection of soft curves bare to him for the first time. A lump in his throat grows, her toweling off and then turning with falling tendrils of hair wet and springing against the nape of her neck. Ruth was a modest woman, in her beliefs and her dress. Seeing her, and unexpectedly made Alfie behave like any man would, which surprised him. He didn’t consider himself just any man, and here he was with a storky, frozen like a teen seeing a naked woman for the first time. Admittedly it had been some time since he’d been with one. His life before didn’t really lean to him having any romance. He was busy, he was dangerous and he couldn’t risk any distractions. But he was no longer that man. A softness that had grown from wear and Ruth’s influence made him stop and take note of what was being blessed to him with his good eye.

As he sees her weighted breasts and soft stomach and hips disappear behind a towel he comes out of his trance and rubs his face, grunting as he makes his way back to his bed.

Ruth, none the wiser comes and kisses him goodbye. The grumpy and pursed-lip bear that was still in recline. She said she would only be gone a short while, as she needed plenty of time to prep dinner. She had said it many times and come home at almost dusk, so he hadn’t expected today to be any different.

Except she had. She’d wanted to celebrate their future together and attempt the bread he usually makes. Bread took time as he was certain to teach her and she wasn’t about to risk under proving it. Most of the time when she’d medicated him, Alfie would sleep through the afternoon. She would usually go in and check on him, a quick kiss before leaving to prepare for the evening. This was her plan as she moved light-footed down the hallway, but a new sound makes her stop and her eyes search for the source before she reaches his door. Now Ruth wouldn’t call herself nosey as much as cautiously curious, and at first, the sound worried her, heavy breathing, groaning, perhaps her poor darling was having a nightmare. But before she could turn the knob of the door she hears her name. And not called in any sort of way she’d heard before. It was needful, but not in a way that demanded her aid. This breathy call was asking for something different.

She gulps and a flush rises to her cheeks. With a flutter of lash she feels as if she’s been naughty and will be caught in the act of misbehavior. The longer she stays and listens, the less she becomes worried and the more… intrigued she becomes.

Alfie was no stranger to swearing, even in the company of Ruth who hadn’t ever minded as it’s never been directed maliciously at her. But she could hear the push of his stomach muscles, the strain in his neck as he said her name, soft words of encouragement for what she was sure were scandalous acts happening behind his lids in his mind. “Take it, pet.” he moans through gritted teeth, her hand moving to her chest to steady herself. “Fuck me, that’s it, love.” She knew what was happening behind the door, as he was only a man, it didn’t surprise her exactly but what did was her reaction to it. A heat in her face that sent a tingle down her spine that landed right between her legs. Her mind hurriedly imagined what he looked like, legs splayed and hand slowly gripping himself, those soft lips panting and begging things of her. She felt oddly powerful and the way her body reacted so quickly, so thoroughly was the real surprise to her. He wanted her, and in the biblical sense. It was a natural progression of their relationship, and one she had admittedly been considering more as of recent with the late-night snogs and roaming hands. It was a relief for her, she realized. Knowing he wanted her, and badly. It was a thought that followed her around all afternoon and into the evening. All the way to her bed.

With a pause in the cooking, now only waiting for timers to alarm, Ruth in her state of distraction excuses herself. Saying she was going to freshen up before the meal as she’d been out. Alfie doesn’t think much of it, a normal thing for a woman to do.

He waits and decides to peruse in his office, a room beside Ruth’s old bedroom. He was looking for a particular contract he’d been working on, the beginnings of a Ketubah. The sounds that tickle his ears are not as holy as the intention the document represents but they are indeed heavenly.

Ruth, hiding away in her bedroom under the guise of being in the bathroom is tucked away letting her body lead the way her hands move against herself. She’d been distracted and wet all afternoon. Every touch of Alfie's hands to her skin had ran red hot through her. She couldn’t hear a breathy chuckle and not think of her name leaving his wet mouth in much the same sound. She had to give in to what her body was calling out for, but she wasn’t exactly quite ready to reach the final step with Alfie.

In her throws she doesn’t notice the opening of the door through the wall that his study shared with her bedroom, her back resting against it as she sat on her bed with her face in tense concentration. Waves move her body and her voice, growing moans as her fingers circle and stroke. She imagined Alfie and his full lips on her breast as her fingers teased it through her dress. She imagined those firm thighs against hers and he moved in rhythm above her. A breathy and light call of his name escapes her as, in her mind, his lips find her neck.

On the other side of the wall, Alfie was feeling tortured. What a little minx she was. Seeing her naked and now hearing her touching herself proved too much on the man. His blood surged forward like a much younger man, even after sinfully meeting his needs earlier in the day, his cock was gaining more and more attention as her sounds continued.

He pressed his ear to the wall, a hand rubbing himself over his trousers and another in a fist. “Fuck, love.” He sighs out, hearing her whimper out his name.

She continues with her melodic moans until his body aches and can no longer be ignored. As hard a diamond he strokes himself, hearing her just on the other side of the wall, almost feeling her panting breaths.

“Oh my… Alfie yes, please.” She whines and tenses her thighs.

In his mind he gives over, his hand firm and fast and already nearing an end at the rather unorthodox means he was hearing a woman get off. She was a tease and didn’t know it. Trying to contain herself and be decent, take care of herself in private. But it made it even more delicious for him. He knew now she wanted him, and it gave him control. He knew he’d have her now. A proper woman like her didn’t want to fuck just anyone. She wanted to fuck someone she loved and the revelation of it all, between the two of them as they crested with moans and open mouths, was as intense as their orgasms. It was only a matter of time now that the known could remain a secret.

———————

Another Shabbat, another day spent close together. There was food and drink and sweets, an intimate dinner by candlelight that left them both feeling closer than ever.

Their evening is spent snuggled up on the couch. Ruth sat in his lap and read to him as his head rested against her chest, her fingers rubbing through his hair. He loved the sound of her voice. He also loved the feel of it. Something he hadn’t noticed before. The way her chest rose and fell and vibrated his head as she comforted him. She reads poetry he’d heard so many times before, making them both feel sentimental and appreciative of the other. Especially when they were nestled so closely in each other’s arms.

“I’ve never enjoyed anything with another person as much as I love simply being here and reading with you.” She reflects as she kisses his fussed hair.

“And your company is unrivaled.” He gives a smile and a kiss to her chest in agreement.

“You’re my favorite person you know.” She whispers and nuzzles her nose against him.

“And you mine. No one else has ever made me see the world as you have. A spotlight of optimism, a softness that endured against my most hard and stubborn parts. You’ve made me better. More human and somehow more powerful for it. Parts of me long lost were touched by you, love. I do hope you know how special you are to me.”

“I do when you work your silver tongue like that.” She kisses the end of his nose before dipping down to share a lingering slow kiss. His hands were gentle against her, warm as they ran up and down over the blankets. As was her way she pecked away, keeping a certain distance to not lose herself in him with a hand braces to his cheek in his beard lightly.

“It’s only natural to speak of a woman like you in such a way.”

“Charmer.” Her giggles turn into happy sighs against him. “I would never wish for anything bad to happen to you, but being here because of something bad that happened I can’t help but be selfishly grateful for such a thing. I wouldn’t have come to know you this way without it. And I don’t want to be without knowing you now.”

“Having you here now gave it purpose. In a different life, before all this, I couldn’t have been with you. Not with the life I led, the man I was. Not a peaceful sort of existence like we have now. Together.”

“A good reminder of fate knowing better than we do.” She huffs out a laugh as her fingers move over his textured face. “Knowing what we both needed… how to get us there.”

“Don’t sell yourself and your own actions short, love. I wouldn’t be in such a good state without you. Without your mind, body and soul to help heal me.”

“Take your own words and don’t give me all the credit, Alfie. You’ve fought to be here. And I’m thankful for such a stubborn man.” She kisses his forehead and holds him close for a moment. “I have been thinking...”

“Yeah, love?” He takes her hand, seeing the bashful nature return. Making her look at him as she spoke.

“These last weeks, months have been so lovely. With us being together as we are now.”

“Couldn’t agree more.”

“It’s made me consider a lot of things I hadn’t before. Living with you like this, feeling how I do about you. I want to stay here. With you. Like this. It’s too pleasant a life to pass up. And I… over these past weeks I’ve… Alfie, I do believe that I have fallen in love with you.” She manages to say with a sweet conviction.

She sees softness in his eyes take over. A dark hooded peek into his soul and a light cloudy one move over her face and take her cheek. “I am certain that I love you my little Ruth. And it pleases me beyond those silver-tongued words you admire to hear that you feel the same.”

“Alfie I do love you. It’s a fearsome thing to feel such a way. But it is such lovely torture to be blessed to have.”

“That it is.” He nods and the shine of tears in her eyes touches him, making his chest ache.

She leans in to kiss him, and one without the hesitation of them all before. A full connection, a sharing of breath and hands that held tight to him to match. After rounds of soft lips and teases of tongue she parts to breathe, feeling light-headed. Her closed eyes, forehead pressed to his face give away the emotions building inside her.

“Tell me Ruth my love, would you like to stay forever with me?”

“With you, Yes, always.” She exhales happily.

“Forever can start tonight if you want it love.”

“Yes. We’ve both waited so long already haven’t we?”

“That we have. A lifetime it seems.”

“Then… let us start our new life together, tonight.” Her fingers trace his skin along the inside of his collar. A clear indication of the meaning of her words.

“Is this what you want? Whatever it is I’ll give it to you Ruth. My world is yours now.”

“Yes. I want you. Every bit of you.” She whispers with her nose to his. “Make me yours in every way tonight.”

“You’re asking a lot of an old man there, love.” He smiles and makes her laugh into his cheek.

“Oh, Alfie.” She laughs and sighs, kissing his cheek. “I’ll take whatever you can give me you silly man.”

“That’s my girl.” He grins and kisses her cheek. “That laugh would keep me warm in the dead of winter I believe.” His voice soothing and deep as his nose grazed her jaw.

“You’ve already won me, seduced me. Let me do the same. I can show with actions more than tell with words. Let me tell you how much I love you in my own way.”

“Then no more words, only show.” He promises with a seal of a kiss that presses hard against her, beginning their melting into each other for the night. Tight hands around heads and backs give way to more need than their position allows.

A trail of clothes down the hall, a musical staff’s worth of varying laughs and sighs and moans follow them into the bedroom leaving them bare against the other. The journey to this destination might’ve been slow, but their hands and mouth give away the need they feel with the speed in which they move.

He knew he wasn’t a young man anymore, but she was neither a young woman. He made love to her the best way he knew how, first with his words, now with his body. Arching her back in the soft nest of bed they shared he kisses every point of her he’d dreamed of. Ears and neck to chest and hips. Her whimpering for him the entire way.

She needs him close. Her hands pulling him back up to her as she holds his face, a gasping kiss as she feels the heat of him presses against her stomach, her own hips giving away at how much she wanted to be one with him.

With soft lips attached to her neck, her own panting, he stroked her to a mewling mess. With small hands tense on his back, she begged for him, and he was happy to oblige. With her own wetness, he spreads it along himself between her hot and sensitive lips and over her clit to male her jump with every touch. She held her legs apart, welcoming him in eagerly.

With a tense push and a loud moan, they finally feel the chemistry between them realized. He swears into her shoulder, a hard brow concentrating as he felt her pulse around him, hips already asking more of him.

She moans out for him and God and in those moments moving inside her he felt they were one in the same. If he’d thought himself more than a man before, making this woman who was made of everything entirely good curse as she peaked only solidified the fact. As she shook he held her close, hips grinding together in a friction-filled union that took them both where they’d longed to go together. She was overwhelmed by the fill, the pressure, stretch and push of him. He was overcome by the squeeze, the pulse and the raw need he felt from the heavenly sounds escaping her mouth. They were only for him, and they’d only ever be for him again.

Not a care was given to the aftermath, the wet and mess that comes with lovemaking. They stayed together in it, lips connected and hearts in the same rhythm as they beat together chest to chest. Brief sweet praise, and exchanging of vows to belong to one another before the intensity caught up with them. The slowing of breathing and pulses died down to a whisper, the only heavy breathing that of sighs in their sleep as they held one another through the night. Each other was all that was needed in that big house by the sea. A place Alfie had called a slice of heaven in its picturesque existence.

Alfie had been given a second chance and he knew this. He knew this piece of heaven he’d carved for himself wouldn’t last forever. The day would come when he had to return to the world of mortal men and face his consequences, take a stand. However it played out as history saw fit. But for now, he would relish in this heaven he’d built with this woman. For he had convinced himself long ago he would go to hell. But the future would never again keep him from enjoying the present. His life was in the now, with her, and he planned on living this way as long as he could; in his own earthly heaven he’d built with Ruth, the most angelic woman he’d ever know.

Please like, comment and reblog if you enjoyed it! It helps out us writers A LOT!

@jaegeeeeer @cosettewinchester @lookuptheskyisfalling-blog @brianaisasongbirdd @cry5t4l-w4rri0r @jess2464 @hardygal69 @thegarrisonpublichouse @a-flock-of-angry-pigeons @pootle @negansdirtygirl22 @musingsby-night @shine-dont-shadow @inkinterrupted @vale0413 @emerald-bijou @elaenom @give-jack-a-lightsaber @ultrablackwidower @tinastarkandco @arrowswithwifi @marvelgirl7 @they-are-not-just-stories @ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes @alitheamateur @gold-trashbag @divadinag

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naivesilver · 4 years

Text

Vecpio Week - Day 3: Vacation

"Do you think we ought to tell him to stay away from the water?"

Vector cracks an eye open. "What?"

Honestly, he hopes that the matter at hand doesn't require too much of his brain power. He was about to doze off, lulled by the sound of the waves crashing and by the warmth of the sand he's lying on; he's having a hard time even processing Espio's question, half asleep as he already is.

Espio doesn't repeat himself, though. He just raises both eyebrows and inclines his head towards the sea, so Vector has no choice to push himself to a sitting position, groaning, and look at whatever is going on.

The beach they're in is almost empty, with only a couple other people and their kids wandering around. To call it a beach is perhaps an exaggeration, to be honest - in truth it's more of a glorified stretch of dirty sand, stones and pebbles overlooking the sea, where the tide doesn't bring in seashells but rubbish and the occasional piece of algae. No one in their right mind would choose it over the prettier, more expensive beaches further down the coast, except someone as penniless as the Chaotix are.

No one would walk down to it now, especially, not when the war has been over for such a short time. Everyone is still rebuilding and counting their losses, and the three of them aren't any different in that regard. If anything, between rallying survivors for the Resistance, proper fighting and cleaning up the mess afterwards, they've been busier than most people, with barely a moment of respite.

The need for a break is, actually, the main reason why they're on the beach now, even if said break is nothing more than a couple hours spent at the seaside. Surely no one can begrudge them that, not with all the hard work they've been putting in. Besides, though it's not summer yet and therefore no one's wading through the water, the sun is shining bright, and he and Espio are cold-blooded reptiles; they surely need to soak in the sunlight to keep their health up, or at least, that's the official excuse they're planning to use if they meet anyone of their friends.

Charmy is not roasting under the sun beside them, though, and that's what Espio directed his attention towards. Instead, Charmy is...Vector isn't even sure how to call it. Not swimming, because the kid never gets more than knee-deep in the water; rather, he waits for the small waves to crash lazily at his feet, and then he darts back towards dry land, shrieking with laughter. The cycle repeats endlessly, with Charmy returning to dip his feet in the sea only to run away again, as if the tide were a monster he has to escape from, seemingly never tiring of doing the same thing on a loop.

It's a perplexing enough game, but so are most of the the kid's games. Espio's comment seems even less reasonable now that Vector has seen what it referred to. "Nah" he replies after a moment. " Why should we? He's not even causing us trouble, for once."

Espio snorts, but the frown doesn't leave his face. "Have you taught him how to swim? Because I haven't, and I don't remember anyone else bothering."

Ah, so that’s what it is. It's his mother hen instinct coming out swinging. "He's not even swimming! Look, the sea's basically flat. Even if he falls in, I've got plenty of time to get him out before he drowns. I'm a great swimmer, if you'd forgotten."

"As you say." Espio doesn't push the matter further, opting instead for laying down on his belly, his head resting on his arms.

Even so, though, he's facing the sea, and his eyes never leave Charmy, watching the kid like a hawk.

Vector watches him instead, frowning all the while. He's pretty sure he's missing something here, but he doesn't know what it could possibly be, casting a shadow on such a nice afternoon.

It's true that the war has taken a toll on all of them. Even if they've defeated Eggman, it's hard to get used to such a threat looming over their heads. The sea itself is likely still full of ash and debris, and perhaps that's why Charmy's staying out of it, freezing temperature of the water aside. Traces of the fighting mar every corner of the city, after all, be them fallen buildings or handmade posters calling for lost relatives to be found.

They were lucky, on that sense, though. He and Espio both know that, and Charmy as well, though he's too young to realize the extent of it. They've been hurt and scarred more than once, but at the end of the day they always came back to the cramped storage-room-turned-emergency-bedroom in the Resistance base, with its even more cramped bed and the cot that Charmy kept ignoring in favor of crawling in between them. Even their house is still standing, aside from a hole in a wall they'll fix once they're done rebuilding other people's homes. They made it. They’re alive.

There were a few close calls, of course, more than they’d have liked, but there always are, when one gets involved in saving the world as often as they do. Considering it was a bloody war and not the usual skirmish with a robot that takes Sonic five minutes to solve, it’s a miracle they’re still more or less hale and whole. It could have been any of them razed to the ground by that guy with the mask, or trampled by Eggman’s robots, or locked up and tortured as it’s rumored Sonic was.

If after surviving all of that they were to lose Charmy by drowning, it would be...well, a very dark joke on life’s part. Also a damn magic trick, since it’s literally impossible for it to happen. The kid is only a couple feet from them, to the point that he keeps splashing them with damp sand as he runs back and forth. If he so wanted, Vector could reach out and snatch him away before he goes any deeper than the inch or so of water he’s currently kicking around in.

So either Vector’s really missing something, like a tsunami warning on the morning weather forecast, or Espio’s been thinking too much again, and that’s never a good sign.

Espio is a worrier, that’s a given. Vector will begrudgingly grant him some useful idea now and then, but mostly, what he does is nitpicking perfectly good plans and think about things that might never actually happen. Sometimes it’s funny, because there’s nothing more hilarious - more endearing than watching him fuss and get worked up over nothing, but there are times where Espio gets stuck in his own brain, going in circles around stuff that no one else would deign of a second thought.

If that’s the case, and he’s still thinking about the war, ruminating about what sort of bad stuff could happen to Charmy, then Vector’s duty is to help him. That’s his role, usually, as boss, as partner, as a sensible person who has no intention to spend his life brooding: he gets Espio out of his own head, even if he has to drag him out kicking and screaming.

Most people would probably try to use words right now, to comfort and reassure, but Vector has always been one for more proactive solutions, so he takes off his shoes, drops them next to Charmy’s, and then gets up with a grunt that draws Espio’s attention.

The chameleon looks at him with a puzzled look on his face. “Where are you going?”

Vector gives him a wide grin. “To keep the brat from drowning. You coming?”

Espio stares at him for a moment, wide eyed. Then he smiles, small and barely there, but genuine, which is exactly what Vector wanted. “Go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Vector nods, starting off towards Charmy. If Espio prefers to stay behind and watch, then so be it, as long as what he sees doesn’t remind him of the war, or work, or whatever impending doom he might be picturing. Vector himself is, after all, devilishly handsome to watch, even as he’s wading through wet sand to play with a little kid.

Besides, it’s not as if there were another war coming for them, right? They’re safe. They’re gonna be okay, all three of them.

As long as Charmy stops long enough to tell him just exactly what kind of game they’re playing, that is.

#vecpio #wecpio week #vecpioweek #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #vector the crocodile #espio the chameleon #charmy bee #fanfic #sonic forces #this is set right after forces #which means that if you take idw canon into account it MIGHT be slightly more painful #but I'm really proud of this one!!!! for once #I am still a kidfic author at heart it seems lololol

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unicyclehippo · 4 years

Note

prompt: Fjord and Beau just being best bros

‘Dude, my head is killing me.’

Fjord nods drowsily, bent over his coffee. He slides his own cup over to her and stands slowly, exhaustedly, to pour another. Beau slams the last of his drink, passes it back to be filled again.

‘Shit’s fucked, man.’

‘You can say that again. But don’t. There’s a child over there.’ Fjord points.

Beau follows the line of his finger to Luc, laying akimbo on an armchair, almost entirely upside down. It can not be a comfortable position. Beau heard somewhere that children aren’t, like, fully formed or they have a weird number of bones still. Maybe that’s why he can sleep through having basically contorted himself into a pretzel.

‘Should we. Carry him to a bed or something?’

‘I have no idea. Looks more comfortable than the beds in the orphanage. So...he’ll be fine.’

‘Monks sleep on a plank of wood.’

‘So do orphans.’

‘I didn’t even have a blanket.’

‘I had a rag I named Buddy for a blanket. He was also my best friend.’

‘I - no, yeah, that’s rough dude.’

Fjord grins, that stupidly charming grin of his, hint of a tusk flashing at the corner of his lips. ‘I’m gonna carry the kid to - I guess your bed? Caduceus snores.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll carry your coffee. I’d carry the kid but like, you’re buff now.’

‘Maybe Yeza and N- Veth can use my miraculous transformation to get the kid to eat his seaweed wraps.’

‘Or to give him nightmares.’

‘Nightmares?’ Fjord asks, mostly a whisper as he walks to Luc, scoops him up off the seat. The halfling boy snorts, kicks out a foot, but doesn’t wake, snuggling into Fjord’s chest.

‘Dude. You had a stranger talk to you in your dreams, walked out into a snowstorm, got all wrapped up in seaweed that had no way to get there - I mean the time it would take,’ she elaborates as they make their way up the spiralling staircase, ‘to get the seaweed to the mountain, you’d have to either transport it by ship to the far north, which is all ice so that’d add weeks more to the time frame, or you have to carry it north through either Xhorhas or the Savalirwood, and I don’t need to tell you how hard that would be, either one.’

‘Right, sure, uh,’

‘So either we’re thinking the seaweed was waiting for you and people came in the middle of the night to wrap you up extreme bondage style, or -’

‘Or the good goddess of nature and the wilderness, to whom I have dedicated myself, gave me a gift?’

‘Sure. Or that.’

Fjord snorts. ‘That’s not nightmare fuel. Is it?’

‘I mean.’

‘Is it?’

‘Is it for you?’

‘No?’

‘Then nah,’ Beau shrugs, drinks deeply from her cup. ‘It’s fine, dude.’

Fjord eyes her, nods toward the closed door. Beau juggles the cups she’s carrying into one hand, opens the door with her other and lets the boys inside. She drinks again, humming happily at the jolt of the caffeine in her veins.

‘Uh - ‘

Beau glances up at the note of confusion in Fjord’s voice. She looks into the room for anything strange but sees nothing.

‘What?’

‘There’s only one bed.’

Beau frowns over at him. ‘Yeah, it’s Jester’s room.’

‘You’re sharing with her?’

Heat rushes to her cheeks at the way Fjord looks at her, intrigued and curious and the smallest bit appraising. He says nothing, walking into the room and laying Luc down onto the bed - the boy immediately rolls away from him, snuggles into the blankets and pillows, and neither of the friends can fight looking adoringly at him for a second.

‘We did good.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Didn’t drop him.’

‘Didn’t hit his head on the doorway.’

‘We’re like legit babysitters.’

‘We rocked that!’

‘Yeah!’

They high-five and the crack of sound echoes through the room. Beau and Fjord freeze, look toward the bed. Luc snores and does not wake.

‘We should,’ Fjord whispers, points to the door, ‘we should go.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, lets go.’

Beau closes the door very, very quietly behind them and passes Fjord’s cup back to him.

He drinks.

‘So. You two - share a bed?’

Beau’s eyes cut sideways. ‘Just when we’re here in Nicodranas. Jester likes having a roommate.’

‘You were a monk. You’ve slept on the floor before.’

‘You want me to sleep on the floor?’

‘No, no, I’m not saying you have to, I’m just asking,’ he insists. Everything about him screams sincerity - and awkwardness - and Beau forces herself to relax. ‘I guess - we don’t have to talk about this,’ he decides. ‘Let’s - not.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘I’m not sure I want to know.’

‘Okay.’

They both drink. Beau slurps obnoxiously loud, making Fjord snort a laugh into his own cup, drink splashing onto his face and shirt. He splutters, wipes at his face and chest.

‘This explains a lot,’ Fjord says after a minute of silence. ‘Like, a lot.’

‘Huh?’

‘You and Jes are - uh - ‘

‘We’re not -’

‘I just said I didn’t need to ask, I don’t know why I’m talking about this-’

‘No, you have a right to know!’

‘I don’t think I do,’ Fjord insists, voice going strangled and high-pitched with the hope to avoid this whole conversation that he started. ‘Let’s not. Let’s not. Anytime I think about talking about it, just hit me. In the head. Maybe I’ll get short term memory loss or something-’

‘That’s not funny. I’m not gonna hurt you, dude,’

‘That’s not,’ Fjord sighs. ‘I know you won’t.’

‘Okay.’

They re-situate themselves at the bar at the base of the Chateau. Re-fill their mugs and sit in companionable, if somewhat strained, silence.

‘Last night was wild,’ Fjord says after a bit. ‘You seemed like you had fun though.’

‘I don’t know if what I had was fun or if it was something else entirely.’

‘A trip. You had a trip.’

‘I could see and hear everything and for a minute it was the most amazing thing, I really was my best self just like Caduceus promised. But it was like when you’re walking on a railing or something and you can fall off it and dude, I fell way off.’

‘Yeah, you were grabbing at shit in the air - ‘

‘There were fish in the air, dude! I could see them! I bet they’re all around us right now.’

‘Nice fish?’

‘Some of them. Some of them were fu-u-ucked though. That deep sea shit I’ve read about in books. Eels. Massive sea snakes.’

‘Snea snakes, I think they’re called.’

‘You’re right, you’re right. And hey, sorry I fucked up our interrogation last night.’

‘Eh.’ Fjord shrugs. ‘I really believe him when he says he was just there for a good time.’ He ignores her sound of disagreement. ‘Besides, there’s no one I’d rather have my back. Even high off your fucking ass, you’re my first mate. Can you imagine if I’d been stuck with anyone else?’

‘You and Nott would’ve caused a riot. Veth.’

‘Veth. One hundred per cent. I wouldn’t have a clue what to say to Yasha.’

‘She’s good, though, she can read people, that would’ve been fine.’

‘Maybe! But if another guy came up to her I would’ve pulled my sword.’

‘Oh for sure. Caduceus?’

‘That would’ve been fine.’

Beau arches a brow. She lets the comment pass. ‘You and Jester, then?’

‘I’m going to say this just once. What we - you and me - did last night was so fucking stupid. We got lost, we lost our mark, I thought I got a contact high from having out with you, I forgot literally everything Caleb and Jester said in their messages,’

‘We’ve had better nights, for sure.’

‘But if I had been with Jester,’ he says, ‘things would only have gone wrong. I’m thinking instant unicorns, I’m thinking I would have thunder stepped with her and broken a pillar or something.’

‘Destruction. Mayhem.’

‘Definitely. She has this way about her,’

‘You wanna help her out, you wanna get her what she wants, like, straight away.’

‘Yeah! And it’s like, you’re not thinking with your right mind anymore!’ he hisses, almost distraught with it. Beau nods a few times very quickly in agreement.

‘That’s it! Your brain just goes fucking wild and you go with the first idea that comes to mind and that’s always the stupidest one!’

‘Every time!’

They shake their heads in unison. Sigh. Drink their drink and stare out the bay window to the seaside.

#cr tag #prompt fill #tagging my stories

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tisfan · 4 years

Text

May I take Your Coat?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25288321 For @livewire28

Bucky is a selkie, headed into the human world to find a potential mate. He has no intention of staying very long... until he does.

Wanda is closing up the tiki bar for the night and wishes this last-minute customer would hurry up and go... until she doesn't.

Inspired by several tumblr posts I’ve seen where the human offers the coat back after knocking it down, or whatever.

Bucky flopped up on shore, scratching his belly over the sand and wending his way up to the rocks. There was a cave there, long since used for such purpose. Human things were stored there, neat and tidy. If he was lucky, the rain barrel would be full and he could take a bit of a bath.

Long gone were the days that a half-dressed, scruffy stranger could walk into a seaside town and not immediately be run out by the local coppers. There were standards. He couldn’t look like a vagabond.

Humans were weird.

Bucky made his way to the cave and then shrugged out of his coat.

It always took him a moment to find his land legs again, and he was glad enough that there weren’t people looking at him. Not even his own kind.

The cave was cool, and well laid out, the earthen floor long since cleared of stone and debris, flat and firm under his feet. A few human style chairs were set around a flat surface. Tabul, Bucky thought was the word, or close enough.

The rain barrel was full and he drew a few buckets into the tub to wash the salt smell from his skin, to scrub out his hair. Things they didn’t really worry about during their day to day lives.

He checked the gift box; trophies from past loves and gifts for new courted mates. Never stolen. Selkies weren’t thieves. Take one, leave one.

A fine string of black pearls, intermixed with a rose pearl every five beads. That should be well enough. Human women preferred jewelry, men preferred weapons. Or gold. There was some of that in the chest, too.

Bucky took his own offering, a handful of pirate treasure that he’d gotten from one of the wrecks nearby. The sea was hard on things from the land, aside from treasure. Eventually, someone would come, check the box. Gather up that which could be crafted. Everyone contributed because the system benefited everyone.

If you wanted a child, or a mate, you went through the cave.

Bucky found clothes there, sealed in a zip locked bag. He knew about those, too. Plastic. It filled the ocean, no matter how much the selkies tried to gather it up and toss it back on the shore. But it kept clothing dry and free from dirt and stains while waiting for someone else to be able to use it.

He dressed. Finger combed out his hair, gently untangling the strands. He looked well enough to pass for a local, he guessed.

Slinging his coat over his arm, Bucky put on loose-fitting shoes -- he hated shoes, all selkie hated shoes, but the humans got mad if you weren’t wearing them.

Stupid human rules.

But it was the only way to be sure.

If a selkie mated with another selkie, they could birth seal pups, which was tolerable, or a selkie, which was ideal. Or a human child, which was not ideal at all.

Humans no longer looked at a child left on the beach or the docks as a blessing. The child would end up in the human foster care, sometimes adopted out, sometimes neglected, but often taken far away from the sea, too far for their parent to find them, so they would never know… until some years, or even generations later, when they had their own child.

Who might be a selkie.

But any selkie who took a human as their mate, the child would be selkie.

For the women, it was easier; come ashore, spend a few days with a relatively tolerable human, come home and have the baby. The only time that went wrong was if the human found and stole the selkie’s coat.

For men--

Well, there were a few options. Selkies weren’t thieves.

But the cost of a child was high; the cost of living a half-life among humans was high.

Many selkie men chose to raise a child not of their blood, help provide for a child with a selkie mate, adopt the offspring.

It wasn’t a bad plan, not really.

But Bucky wanted his own child.

Was that too much to ask?

Wanda sighed as the man walked into her bar. There was no dress code, aside from yes, please wear clothes. It was a beach bar, tiki themed and tacky, but it meant no one expected the floor to be swept. It was almost closing time, though, and she’d already shooed the rest of the locals and tourists out.

“It’s already last call,” she said. “I can get you one drink, and anything that’s left cooked in the kitchen, but that’s all.”

“That will be well enough,” the man said, and he was beautiful, really. Dark, windswept hair that looked like he’d been swimming most of the day. Blue eyes, cleft chin. Cheekbones that would worry the TSA, they were that sharp.

The clothes, not so much. A tourist tee from one of the shops up on the strip and ugly shorts with pineapples on them. Sandals, which wasn’t typical. But he carried a brown silk sport coat tucked over his arm. Gorgeous, almost golden. Glittery, reflecting back the light from the imitation tiki torches. The shop owner didn’t like smoke from real torches, so they had ugly fake electric things. And light up palm trees. It was tacky as shit.

Which meant, at least, her customer mostly matched the decor.

She wished she didn’t have to work the night shift -- she was always cranky during the evening -- but school was in the morning. One of these days, she was just going to collapse. Trying to do two full time gigs, and her side-hustle where she consulted for people doing gardening and helped them lay out and select plants. She barely got any time to breathe. Certainly relaxing was all the way out of the question.

Which didn’t make her the best host to a customer coming in to eat a plate of cold fries and drink a beer.

“Long day in the sun?”

“Something like that,” the man said, sitting down at the bar, moving gingerly. He didn’t look sunburned. Maybe he was just sore. Too much swimming.

“Well, we’re closing soon, so you enjoy your food. Yell if you need something, but I gotta start clean up. I was supposed to have help today, but both the other girls called out,” she said.

“Is there anything I can do to assist?”

Wanda didn’t quite scoff. Like a tourist would want to help do the dishes or put the stools up. “It’s just basic stuff. Put the seats up on the table, rake the floor for trash, empty--”

The man got up, drained his beer, and Wanda half expected him to leave without paying, saying he was going to leave a bad review and would be back to talk to the manager, because honestly that was what she was used to. Tourists were people with money, and most of the time, they were entitled pricks.

Instead, he wiped his mouth on the back of his arm, and then-- got to work putting up the stools.

“Thank you,” Wanda said. She probably shouldn’t let him help; Thaddeus Ross, her boss, would not be pleased with her if something happened to the man. Or even if he complained-- or if someone else complained. But she was so tired, really, what could it hurt, just this once? “My name’s Wanda.”

“Bucky,” the man said.

“Thanks, Bucky,” she said. “If you can do that, I’ll get the kitchen shut down, then take out the trash.”

“Will do, Wanda,” he said, and he stressed her name, like a caress.

She suppressed a shiver, headed into the kitchen. She didn’t have time or energy to worry about some guy.

Loaded the dishes into the industrial washer and started it. Sometimes she wished she had one of those at home. Once the dishes were in the rack, it took about four minutes to clean them. She had to be careful unloading because the dishes would be hot as hell, but it was nice.

And then she’d look at the space it needed and the cost and decide if she needed a plate in four minutes, she could just wash it in the sink.

By the time Wanda came back out to wipe down the bar, Bucky had put all the chairs up except the one he had been using, stacked all the trash bags by the door, and was raking the floor to get up all the random cigarette butts, spare change, and cruft that gathered around the tiki bar.

“Wow,” she said. “Nice job.” She took his plate back into the kitchen and left it by the washer. There was no point unloading the whole thing to wash one plate. Opening shift could get it tomorrow. “Here--” she snagged his jacket, flipped up the last stool, and then offered it to him. “Thanks for your help.”

Bucky reached out his hand tentatively for the jacket, as if he were shocked that she’d touched it. Or given it back. Or something. She couldn’t help petting it. The material was so soft.

But when he reached for it, his fingers brushing the fabric, a jolt of heat, of desire, of-- something passed from her to him and back.

“You-- want to go to one of the all night pancake houses up the way and buy a girl a cup of coffee?” her mouth said before her brain engaged. She never asked anyone on a date, even if she was interested.

“Yes,” Bucky said, and his voice was husky and seductive. “I would like that very much, I think.”

#winterwitch #bucky barnes x wanda maximoff #selkie AU

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mareebird · 4 years

Text

a wee fic for sunday night

By request, from @diggerkaren: “"How about a side trip in the Relic universe - where Nebula and Rocket come to visit Thor.... Has Loki met Nebula before?"

So this takes place in the Relic universe, but Relic isn’t totally Infinity War or Endgame compliant, so I’ve taken a few liberties. Nebula has never met Thor, but Rocket still has. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I don’t think it’s going to hurt anyone’s brain too much.

Rated: Teen and Up, TW: Serious physical injury; Wordcount: 3977

Read on Ao3, or below here on Tumblr...

The Relic is also on Ao3

------------------------------------

I Got Better (by Mareebird)

As usual, they needed to make a side trip. “Needed” to make one. Nothing could ever be over and done when traveling with her sister’s friends. Rocket tried Nebula’s patience sometimes. There was always some item the small creature needed to buy (or steal) or a person he wanted to see (or rob). She did not care, not in any moralistic sense, but there was never anything quick about it and she hated wasting time.

They had been in New York for a day, dropping off equipment to Tony Stark. It was what they had come to do. It was a regular delivery, one they made every few months, in Rocket’s modified Class-M. Nebula did not typically come along, because she did not like Earth, but Rocket needed a co-pilot, and all of the capable members of their team were otherwise occupied. Not even the Flora Colossus had come along. He was shedding leaves and needed privacy. Nebula suspected that it was code for something and she did not want to know what.

It was her first time seeing Tony. Nebula was glad the man had lived. He seemed happy. He had a wife and child. She told the softer, organic parts of her brain not to think about what might have been, had she needed more oxygen and food while the two of them were adrift on the Benatar. Tony was fortunate to have been trapped with her, of all possible companions, although it would have been easier to survive had he been alone. Nebula could have lasted for months on her own, if she cared to go on that long. Tony had kept her alive in his own way.

She enjoyed hugging Tony and his family when they said hello and goodbye. She did not hug any of the other humans they encountered. Perhaps they thought it might offend her. They would not have been entirely wrong. No one dared to touch Rocket at all.

After one night of sleep, it was time to depart, but not for home. Unfortunately. They needed to make their quick side trip first.

“Where is this Norway?” asked Nebula. “And is this absolutely necessary?”

“I just want to see how an old friend is doing,” said Rocket.

Nebula scowled. Rocket did not have old friends. He barely had new ones. They were similar that way, but she strapped into her seat without comment. Arguing was merely a waste of time on top of what was already going to be a waste of time.

And she hated wasting time.

Norway, as it turned out, was on the same planet as New York, to the east and slightly north. The flight was short, but the star Sol was straight overhead by the time they touched down. They landed in a remote field, at coordinates which Tony had given. It lay several miles from where Rocket’s friend had been conducting...whatever it was he that was doing here. Apparently, this friend was not native to Earth. That he happened to be here at the same time was fortuitous, if only for the fact that it saved time. Nebula made peace with letting it play out. Interference would only lengthen their stay.

They had arranged to meet Rocket��s friend at a safe distance from the city, so as not to cause alarm. Earthlings were embarrassingly skittish. The field in which they landed was pocked with rocks and patches of snow. It was pretty, in a barren, naturalistic sort of way. There were mountains in every direction. It could not have been more different from New York. Nebula had not been aware that places like this still existed on Earth, unruined.

Rocket unfastened his flight restraints. “You coming?”

Nebula shrugged. Her intention was to stay inside and let Rocket take care of whatever this was on his own. “Is it necessary?”

He rolled his eyes. “Suit yourself, friendly.”

Through the view-shield, she watched him march steadily through the field, frowning to herself. Sometimes, Nebula wished she was not the way that she was. Then again, someone would probably die if she allowed herself to become as easily distracted as the rest of them.

Rocket’s friend was not alone when he appeared on the horizon. They were so far off that Nebula first mistook the figures for a ripple in the wind. She honed in on the pair with her artificial eye, curious as to what sort of deplorable miscreants Rocket considered his buddies. They were two males, Terran in appearance. Both were tall, nicely-built specimens. Nebula wondered if she wanted to say hello to them after all. Her remaining organic parts still appreciated the company of attractive people. One man had light hair, the other, black.

And he was familiar.

The black-haired one, fox-faced and angular and...

Her bald brow furrowed like a cabbage as she leaned closer to the view-shield and a chill rippled down her spine. Her organic parts, it seemed, could also still react to shock.

Nebula threw off her flight restraints and ran outside, tearing through the dead grass at full speed.

“You’re alive!” she cried out.

The black-haired man’s eyes sharpened on her while she was still far away. He leaped backward and, for a flash, appeared as though he might bolt, like he was laying eyes on a predator, which was fair enough.

The other man simply looked confused, as did Rocket, but he raised a hand to hold her off, positioning himself in the center of it all. He was ruddy and muscular and effortlessly in command.

Nebula halted. She did not blame the man for attempting to run, nor did she underestimate him. He was Asgardian. (Well, really he was Jotun, that was detail.) He was an Asgardian prince. But more importantly, he was one of the finest fighters she’d ever sparred against, if you could call her father’s predilections training. They were more...exercises in survival.

She had to stop calling Thanos that. Father. He was not her father.

“Loki?” She uttered his name cautiously, but she knew it was him. Those eyes were unforgettable, deep-set and haunted. She knew that he recognized her, too, the way that the harrowing memories of their time together splintered in his gaze like broken glass. The face that surrounded them was a little different. Older. His youth was utterly gone. When they met, he had almost looked like a boy.

Nebula wondered if her face would ever change, or would parts of her simply fall off as time passed? She tried to be pragmatic about such things, because what was the alternative? But that Loki had aged at all, that he was alive, that he was actually standing before her -- it was almost more than her brain, sharp as it was, could process.

How was this possible? Thanos had hunted Loki like a cat after the last mouse in the universe. And by the story he told after leaving the Asgardians behind, he might as well have come home with a tail between his teeth.

“Hey, you know Nebs?” This came from Rocket, who sounded more concerned than impatient for once. Slowly, Loki nodded.

“Norns…” breathed the other man -- the taller, thicker, fair-haired one. “She’s one of Thanos’s daughters, isn’t she?”

Nebula grit her teeth. The other man was Thor -- Nebula realized it all once. The other Asgardian prince…the older one...was he the Allfather now? Loki’s brother.

Thor had been a mark. He had been part of the reason why Thanos wanted to train Loki in the first place, rather than kill the poor boy straight away, when he first arrived at Sanctuary. It was surreal to see him on the flesh, standing before her. He looked so different than the person she had been shown, and nothing at all like Loki, but there was no reason to expect that he would.

What were the two of them doing in Norway?

Except for the fact that Asgard no longer existed.

Loki cleared his throat. He put on a smile, of all things, and returned to the group. “Forgive me for reacting as I did. Old habits.”

“I don’t blame you,” she said coolly.

Rocket snapped his fingers until everyone looked down. Being the size that he was, it was necessary for him to be rude to get attention -- or at least, that was his excuse. “Hey, I’m dying to know the story. Really, I am. But is there any chance we could catch up, I don’t know, indoors? And not in the middle of a frozen wasteland.”

Nebula was vaguely offended. She blinked at the mountains in the distance. It was beautiful here. But Thor waved a hand and ushered them forward. “Right. The portal is at the bottom of the hill.”

With a glance over his shoulder, Rocket jogged ahead. Nebula lingered, standing very still, as did Loki, as though he expected her to wait. “I was told you were dead,” she said. “Thanos told everyone about what happened on that ship.”

Loki’s eyelids fluttered. And then, with a wry smile, he patted his chest, proving how solid he was. “Surely, you think more highly of me than that.”

Nebula did not laugh. There was nothing funny about this.

He gestured that they ought to catch up. “I’ll explain once we get into town.”

---

The next few minutes of their journey would remain a blur in Nebula’s mind. Loki brought them through a portal, one which he may or may not have created himself. Passages through magical doorways did funny things to her non-organic parts. It never lasted very long, and she had only traveled using them a handful of times, but It always left her feeling staticky and dull until the effects faded. It was an annoyance, but she couldn’t do anything about it.

All she could recall was following everyone, like the runt of a litter, as the mountains transmuted to a seaside street, until her fleshy brain and cybernetics synced up with one another. With a jolt, Nebula realized that she was sitting in a hard chair, indoors. There was a table in front of her. There was a cup of something hot in her hand.

She tilted her head.

She was in...a coffee shop?

Two tables had been pushed together, around which, in addition to herself, Loki, Thor, and Rocket were seated. At the counter, a human man and woman were buying drinks. They finished, turned around, and offered polite smiles as they passed.

Nebula anxiously flexed her blue hands and vaguely recalled Loki saying something about casting a spell on her and Rocket, so that they would appear Midgardian. Human. Apparently, it was not something she could see with her own eyes. Pity. She was curious what sort of disguise Loki would choose to paint on her.

But not curious enough to ask. The longer Nebula thought about it, the less she wanted to come face-to-face with a flesh-and-blood version of herself, free of the metal that held her together.

A bell jingled as the door closed. The woman behind the counter circled around and locked it. Apparently, she was an insider to their meeting. She was a woman of average height and build, for a human. She sat down next to Loki and Nebula noted the way he leaned ever so slightly into her presence at the table.

So, not only was Loki alive, but he was apparently doing well for himself. It still boggled her mind.

Though it did make her feel slightly less guilty for what had happened between them. That horrific moment. Involuntarily, she shivered. She hoped no one noticed.

“All right,” said Rocket, “now that we’re alone, time to tell the story.”

“There isn’t much to say, other than the obvious,” said Nebula. She lifted her coffee to her lips and took a sip and hoped no one had noticed just how dazed she had been seconds ago. “We trained together. Briefly. All of Thanos’s children did.”

It was not the whole truth. That wasn’t hers to tell his people.

Across from her, Loki lifted his heavy brows, but he did not comment. Rocket shifted in his chair, trying to get a little more height at the table. “Right,” he said, “but training with you was top of the class, wasn’t it, Nebs?”

Was that a compliment? She shrugged. “Thanos wanted Loki trained quickly.”

“I think I learned more from you than a thousand years on Asgard,” said Loki. She noted a tightening of his throat, as well as his fist around his drink. He looked to be drinking tea, not coffee.

Nebula remembered pitying him when he’d first arrived, even though there had been no logical reason to care about a fallen Asgardian prince. Pity was a dangerous thing. She knew that far too well. “But how are you still alive?”

Whatever was left of Loki’s thin smile vanished, like a shadow blotting out a little sliver of sun. The woman beside Loki turned ashen, as well. Nebula wondered if she had been given her name. She did not remember.

With gravity, Loki turned his eyes upon his brother.

Thor shifted his weight against his seat. “I brought him back using magic, I suppose you could say.”

Nebula lifted her brows, or what sufficed for them on her face.

“And not to forget,” said Loki, “there are times when one benefits from having a sister who guards the gates of Hel.”

“So you were dead?” Nebula asked.

“I got better.”

Everyone chuckled. Everyone except her. She did not understand why they laughed.

But she was not one of them. And they were not her. And they had not been there the day Thanos shipped her off to Ronan. Only Loki had been there. Only Loki knew.

So why did he laugh, too?

Her organic parts felt numb.

----

Nebula never finished her coffee. She’d never cared for the drink all that much. Mild stimulants were fairly useless. What she really wanted was strong alcohol, but it was clear she wasn’t going to be offered any. Rocket had a supply on the ship. She would help herself to it later. He would get pissed off, but he wouldn’t get in her way.

She didn’t divorce herself from the rest of the conversation, not completely; she tried her best to focus. She was good at that, focusing on two things at once; the others probably couldn’t tell that her mind was elsewhere. She suspected Loki could tell, though. His mind was probably stuck on the same thing as hers.

His eyes were glassy.

It was Rocket who rose first, signalling their exit. He was satisfied to hear that Thor was doing well. Nebula did not fully understand his concern, and she assumed she would never hear the full story. Once they left, Rocket would move on to other things and so would she. Thor seemed well enough, aside the missing eye. She knew what that was like.

Rocket tried to make a trade for the eye, but Thor didn’t accept.

Rocket was disgusting sometimes. Nebula didn’t know why she enjoyed traveling with him so much, except that he was the least idiotic member of their little crew. Except for her sister, of course, but that was a given.

She pushed her mug aside and stood. Good-byes were said. Thor hugged Rocket, which was a sight to behold. Maybe the little beast was a niche interest.

No one hugged her, not even Loki, though she hadn’t expected he would. They weren’t old friends; they had briefly been in the same place at the same time. Nebula dipped her head in a formal farewell. Chances were slim they would ever run into one another again. “It was good to see you,” she said.

Loki bowed. Stiffly. When he rose, his face was drawn, and he looked somehow older still. He lifted his eyes over Nebula’s shoulder, to the door, through the tiny window. “Actually, would you mind if we spoke in private? Just for a minute.”

Nebula blinked. She did not want to waste time. She glanced over her shoulder at Rocket and Thor, still chatting outside. Laughing loudly. She wondered what on earth Loki was doing to shield his non-human appearance, because Thor was still looking at the ground when they spoke. Was Rocket playing the role of a foul-mouthed child?

The blond woman whispered something in Loki’s ear and shuffled outside. Their eyes met. The door shifted into its latch with a click and Loki locked his hands behind his back. She remembered that stance and how his limbs went rigid when he was frightened. Was he frightened now? What did he intend to say?

Nebula tilted her weight from hip to hip. “Your woman seems nice,” she said.

Loki made a funny sound, losing some, but hardly all, of the tension in his jaw. “I’ll tell her you said so.”

He stared at her, then, taking too much time. Slowly, he drew a breath in and out of his nostrils. Nebula’s chest tightened.

“I wanted to say thank you,” he said. Nebula felt the floor tilt beneath her feet. Thank her? For what? The corners of Loki’s mouth twitched, as though he had felt the little earthquake himself. “You’re surprised.”

“I…” Nebula opened her mouth to discover it had gone dry. She tried to clear her throat. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

The image of Loki suddenly wavered before her, like water over a pane of glass. “I…”

“You could have finished me off,” he said.

“Your back was broken.” She sent it bluntly, like she was finding her voice, like it was an excuse. It was. But Nebula had never spared anyone else during Thanos’s training sessions.

Loki unclenched his hands long enough to massage his right hip. The fated moment flashed in her mind, not for the first time today. His blood curdling scream, his bent body.

“I was the one who broke it,” she said.

Loki shrugged, as though he disagreed, somehow. “I tripped.”

“Hardly.” She swallowed, and then she whispered. “But it was not intentional.”

“I know. Just as I know you could have finished me then and there, but chose not to. You could have impressed your father. I’m sorry. Thano--” Loki’s voice wavered before grinding to a halt. His Adam’s apple lifted high and fell.

“He was not my father,” she said quickly. “And nothing I ever did impressed him, anyway.”

Loki nodded, his eyes taking on a far-away glint. He blinked and it vanished, like one of the tricks that he’d shown off before every playful impulse had been beaten out of him at Sanctuary.

What happened that day felt as though it had taken place in another lifetime, but it had not been so long ago. Still, it seemed like someone else’s life that she’d been living, a person without freedom, without control over her own mind. She had jobs to do; occasionally training her father’s latest acquisitions was one of those jobs.

She’d been fucking fed up with it. She’d known all about Thor and about Odin, or as much as Thanos had wanted her to know. She'd known Loki was the younger brother of the future Allfather, the son of the current Allfather -- and she'd known he was no Asgardian.

She'd had every intention of proving that.

Loki’d spoken of impressing Thanos, but he’d gotten it completely backward. She was sick of the game, sick of her father, sick to death of herself. What was Loki to her, but the latest in a long, long line of challengers to her fly-speck of a purpose in this damned galaxy? Another thorn in what remained of her hide. He was a threat. Nothing but a threat.

He’d proven a more worthy opponent than his meager, hungry look suggested, but Nebula underestimated no one. She remembered it was raining that day. Thanos preferred they train in real conditions, real settings. He obsessed on being one with nature, which was why it was such cruel punishment to cut her up after every failure and, piece by piece, slowly turn her into a machine.

If she killed Loki, she would at least be spared that. For only a day, perhaps, but her life was a day-by-day existence, minute-by-minute. She numbered her small victories and her even smaller rewards.

Loki tripped that day, but in reality the water-logged ground beneath him had given way. The earth swallowed him. The fall alone should have been his end. Perhaps he would have been luckier to die, but Nebula suspected the man had never possessed a lot of that. Luck. Neither had she. People like them scraped through life without luck.

The sound that erupted from his twisted body was the most agonizing noise she had ever heard, minus her own screams, when Thanos spliced her into pieces.

He never bothered to dull the pain. He always made sure it hurt, that it was flame and agony. He made sure everyone heard her scream until she begged for release. Until he was satisfied that everyone knew that the Mad Titan could make a machine weep real tears.

Nebula remembered tearing down the wet hill, over the rocks, through the mud. She’d been shocked to see that Loki was still alive, but he was a retching, shivering, gnarled mess. She remembered her hands shaking just as much as she stupidly reached for him. Stupid, stupid girl! She remembered the blood and snot and mud slapped across his youthful face.

Her heart exploded. And then came the frigid snap of numbness, shock, and disbelief.

Loki was nothing to her, nothing except a threat. Thanos had plans for him, plans he did not have for her. She ought to have ended Loki, thwart her father and remain blameless, because it was her job to weed out the weak.

Loki was nothing. Nothing.

The poor boy was nothing...

Nebula recalled the shouting of her father’s footsoldiers in the distance, racing toward them to assay the damage. Loki drew a sharp breath and held it, lifting his eyes, not blinking as the rain pelted them.

He knew. He knew he was nothing to her, to anyone. He was a prince who would never be a king, a son without a father, without a family, and now he was physically broken. Nebula had every right and reason to put him out of his misery. He wanted her to do it.

But it was too late. Loki had already become something to her.

She could not kill him.

That night, her father tore out what little flesh still remained in her left hand.

Loki went on to do terrible things. So had she.

There were years behind them, now. Thanos had bragged about finally catching the younger Asgardian prince. She’d made peace with his death, because what else could she do, but apparently Loki had more luck that she realized. If she had not spared him that day, perhaps his brother never would have been able to ultimately revive him.

And now, as she stared at his gently lined face in a Norwegian coffee shop, she was happy to see that he’d had the opportunity to leave his youth behind.

“I wish you safe travels,” said Loki, “wherever you’re off to next.”

“Back… Back to where my sister is.” Nebula dipped her head, bowing her farewell and blinking quickly, before she teared up. It wreaked havoc on her cybernetic parts. “What happened to Asgard was...unfortunate. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well, I have my brother. Sometimes that’s all the home you get.”

Nebula almost laughed. She turned toward the door. “How is your back, by the way?”

“Honestly, it was never quite the same, but it could have been far worse.”

She nodded. “Yes. It could have been much worse.”

#I Got Better #nebula #loki #thor #relic universe

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starlitsummermoon · 4 years

Note

Hey there~! Hmm Can I request a ikesen Mitsuhide romantic/surprise date please? I really love your writing! Thank you~

@mikablazen @nad-zeta (A/N: This one is a bit longer mostly because of how many requested it~)

—————

All day, the girls at work have been bragging about their dates their boyfriends were taking them on after work. Each time they giggled about what they were expecting, my eyes would roll. With enough practice, I would probably be able to see my brain by the end of the day.

Some of them tried to pry and ask about what my boyfriend had planned for me and all I could muster was a fake smile and say, “Gee, I don’t know! Hopefully nothing too crazy!”

I did my best to match their same level of excitement and enthusiasm, but I kept my expectations low. Not that Mitsuhide didn’t spoil me enough already, I just wasn’t the biggest fan of Valentine’s Day. In fact, I disliked the “holiday” so much that I never even told him about it. He’s been in my time with me for just about a year or so, leaving his wartime life behind. If anything, I should be the one spoiling him for giving up his entire lifestyle just for me.

The minute the clock struck the right time, I bolted out before I could hear anymore girls losing their minds about date night. Even the men in my office were getting out of control, bragging about the night they’re about to have, mainly the after-date activities.

“Now let’s see,” I whipped out my phone, pulling up my list of groceries I needed to pick up. Although I had no faith in this greeting card holiday, I was subtly planning on making Mitsuhide a nice dinner “for no reason,” but I had to act fast if I was going to get it ready before he came home.

I blindly started walking towards the sidewalk when I suddenly felt someone grab my arm. Startled, I turned, ready to punch, but then I found myself frozen stiff. It was Mitsuhide, in the flesh.

“My, that’s quite the greeting,” he smirked, “is it one I haven’t learned yet? Seems fascinating.” He knew full well it wasn’t a greeting at all and that it was just me reacting to suddenly being grabbed, but I was still struggling to find my words for I was still shocked to see him in my front of my work. I wasn’t expecting to see him for several more hours.

“Mi-Mitsuhide!” I gasped, finally finding my words. His hand loosened from my arm only to have his arm wrap around my waist, guiding me down the sidewalk. “Wh-what are you doing here? I thought you were working until 6 tonight?”

“It’s a special night,” he said, casually leaning over to press his lips against my ear, “By your surprise, may I assume you are indeed surprised?”

Special night? My heart sank into my stomach as I came to the realization that he found out about Valentine’s Day. Whether it was the media or maybe even his co-workers, I’m not sure, but one way or another, he knew and thought he got the upper hand on me.

“Surprised, yes,” I shrugged his arm off, trying to be serious, but he kept placing his arm around me, passive-aggressively guiding me down the street, “special night? I don’t know about that one. Mitsuhide, if you want to do something for tonight, we can do it in the privacy of our own home! So will you please just-!”

“Don’t be absurd,” he boasted, my struggle with his arm didn’t seem to phase him as he suddenly stopped, “tonight is a special night to celebrate our love, wouldn’t you agree?” I didn’t even notice there was a black luxury car right in front of us. He opened the door for me and urged me to go inside; I didn’t protest. The minute he closed the door behind him, the driver at the front took off. He must’ve already had a destination for us.

“Mitsuhide, please!” I begged, keeping my voice low enough so the driver couldn’t hear, “we can celebrate our love any and every night, we don’t need one day out of the year to give us permission!”

“Reservations have already been made, my dear,” his smirk somehow got sneakier than normal, “and I’ve already paid for everything.” I huffed in dismay, accepting defeat. He took notice to my soft grunt and pulled me into his arms, nuzzling his face into my hair, murmuring, “Just relax and let’s enjoy our evening together.”

I knew he was right. There was nothing I could do now except enjoy our “special night” and hope I could squeeze in something about not doing anything for Valentine’s Day in the future.

It didn’t take long to get to our destination, or least it was hard to tell since all my attention was on snuggling my man in the backseat of a luxury car. We were brought to a seaside restaurant just on the outskirts of the city. Exiting the car, I could already see the long line of couples waiting to be seated, but Mitsuhide escorted me directly to the hostess who immediately directed us to our table.

My concern escalated when the seating hostess weaved through the maze of booths and tables, dimly lit with kerosene lanterns and candles to fit the mood of the evening. The further back we went, the more expensive the tables looked as they were decorated with little lights and bushels of roses, and yet we still get going.

At last we arrived at a door, which the seating hostess happily opened for us. I couldn’t help but smile as I stepped onto the sandy beach. The sound of the ocean waves and the smell of the sea breeze simply swept me off my feet. Our table was at the very end of the perimeter, closest to the beach, but furthest away from any table. The timing was perfect as sunset was just beginning over the ocean.

We got comfortable in our over-sized cushioned wicker chair, large enough for just two people, and the hostess finally left us alone with one menu. I didn’t even get the chance to pick it up before a waiter came swinging around with two glasses of champagne.

“Mitsuhide,” I sighed happily, picking up my ice cold glass, “color me impressed and wee bit speechless!”

“Only the best for you,” he winked before taking a swig. I sipped at my beverage, glancing down at the menu before me, pretending to read it. Knowing him, he’d see through me in a heartbeat if I tried to act like nothing was on my mind. In fact, he probably already knows.

“How did you find out about Valentine’s Day?” I asked nonchalantly, holding my glass up to the sun setting on the glittering horizon, watching the bubbles rise up as I awaited his answer. There’s no point in beating around the bush with this man, asking him straight up was the best strategy.

“I’ve heard my co-workers mention something like that,” his arm once again wrapped around me, holding me close to him, “but after a little digging, it didn’t seem all that interesting to me.”

“…wait, so then-” my words trailed off as I snapped my gaze up at him, his profile lit by the harsh light. Dumbfounded, my gut wrenched at the reason we’re here, unable to understand, “if we’re not here for Valentine’s Day, then… why are we here?”

It had been way too long since I’ve seen Mitsuhide this puzzled, his eyes wide with curiosity for he, too, wasn’t understanding something, which only made ME more confused. I refused to believe this “special night” was just a night he had planned for us that coincidentally landed on every single couple’s “special night!”

“Have I done something wrong?” Mitsuhide scratched the side of his head with his long finger, genuinely baffled. “I’m sure I did my investigation carefully and got all the facts-”

I tuned him out when he trailed off like this. Ever since arriving in the modern day, he’s done anything and everything to learn modern customs. In fact, he almost lived at the library for two weeks when he first discovered it. Now we just have a mountain of books in a corner of our apartment; his research corner. He’s always interested in seeing what he’s learned “in action” so we’d go out see if it really played out the way he expected it to. If it ever didn’t, he always got like this, explaining his research and investigations. Whatever he thought he found in his “modern domestic research,” he misunderstood something.

“Slow down,” I soothed, trying to hold back my laughter as I set my glass down so I could face him fully, “slow down, slow down! Now, skip all the mumbo jumbo about investigating and tell me what this special night really is about?”

His gorgeous golden eyes faced me completely, stealing my breath away. There was a small moment of silence between us, most likely him trying to figure out the best way to tell me without explaining everything from the beginning.

“One year ago, on this day,” the seriousness in his voice kept me on the fine edge of anticipation, “I arrived here in this time with you and we started our modern lives together. I read that it’s customary for couples to celebrate anniversaries like this. Am I… incorrect?”

Not only was he correct, but he was 110% correct and I was 110% moron. I couldn’t believe myself! I completely forgot that we arrived one year ago today!

The day we arrived, we were both sent to the hospital, mostly thanks to Sasuke, and after that it was nothing but hard work to adjust him to modern life and for me to pick up where I left off. THEN, with all this craziness about Valentine’s Day that I’ve been blocking out of my mind, our anniversary of our lives together didn’t even come into mind.

“No, Mitsuhide,” I lowered my head, hoping to give myself some time to stop the tears threatening to flow, “You’re right, you’re absolutely right. Today is a very special day and I’m so very happy that you-”

“You forgot, didn’t you?”

I didn’t have to see his face to know he was smiling that awful, teasing, evil smile!

“Of course I DIDN’T!” I scoffed, hitting his shoulder. “I was just shocked that you even cared or that you even wanted to do anything like this on today of all days!”

“Leave it to you to forget the important things,” he teased, pretending to defend himself from another hit. Our playful banter went on until the waiter came over to take our order. I couldn’t stop smiling throughout the entire dinner and even on our way home, my heart nearly bursting knowing that this day will mean something completely different to us, something that we have for ourselves, nobody else.

#starlit’s valentines request prompt 2020 #ikemen sengoku #ikesen #ikesenfanfic #writing by starlit #Mitsuhide Akechi #requestbystarlit #ikesenrequestbystarlit #ikesenrequestbystarlitformistuhide

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illfoandillfie · 5 years

Text

Seaside Rendezvous - Part 1

Request: Can you please write a hc for going on a island vaca at a resort with your family after college finals and you meet joe (also a college student) and you two see each other a ton but you are always with your family so not much happens but flirty small talk and you both end up having a lot of sexual tension and go into one of your rooms when you’re family is out and just some smut happens?

Pairing: Joe Mazzello x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of sex but generally pretty innocent

Words: 4606

A/N: So this was meant to be just a small blurb/hc thing but it turned into a full 2 chapters lmao what can I say, the idea spoke to me 🤷‍♀️. It’s also the first full Joe fic I’ve done! Set in like the 2000s I guess because I don’t know a single goddamn thing about current celebrities (not that it really matters too much)

Taglist: @idontbelievethiss @somekindof-cheese @dtfrogertaylor @ezmina98 @vee-ndetta @atomic-watermelon @kellypenac @labessieisallama @deakyclicks @jennyggggrrr

In the days before you went on vacation your friends had made a lot of jokes about potential holiday romances. Everything from unsubtle innuendos to fantasies about running into pop stars who would, naturally, sweep you off your feet. You laughed at it all, rolling your eyes at the more far-fetched ideas – as if Justin Timberlake would want you. But, if you were being honest, the idea had crossed your mind the minute your Mom called to tell you she’d booked a family vacation to Hawaii. Not the Timberlake stuff, the real stuff – the potential to have a fling with a cute almost stranger, a couple of weeks spent relaxing on the beach and indulging in meaningless sex. After all, it had been a few months since you broke things off with Eddie and, while you weren’t necessarily ready to rush into anything as serious as a proper relationship, a brief holiday romance sounded almost ideal. Provided you could find anyone attractive enough. And get away from your family for long enough.

Almost as soon as finals were done you were at the airport, boarding your flight to Hawaii where your parents and little sister had already been for a day. With thoughts of warm sand and soft kisses swirling though your head as you shuffled onto the plane, it was almost inevitable that you’d ended up fantasising about one of your fellow passengers. He’d seen you struggling to get your carryon luggage into the overhead compartment and had come to your aid, lifting the heavy suitcase with ease and offering you a sweet smile and a joke about travelling with rocks. You giggled, less because the joke was funny than that you didn’t know how else to deal with those gorgeous hazel eyes looking at you. Unfortunately, you couldn’t say much more than a brief thank you, the crowd jostling around you pushing you towards your seat, a few rows behind him. You spent the rest of the flight trying to subtly watch him, glancing at him from over the top of your magazine. It wasn’t like you had anything better to do for the duration of the flight – the magazine you’d picked up seemed painfully boring now and after finals your brain didn’t feel up to reading a whole lot anyway. Thankfully you had an aisle seat, something that had bummed you out at first but now seemed like a lucky break since he did too. He looked to be around your age, alone, reading. You took in everything of his appearance you could, the slope of his nose, the slight scruff covering his jaw, as you let yourself drift into fantasy. His hands pulling you into the airplane bathroom. His lips trailing down your throat. His fingers slipping into your shorts. He was definitely cute with a capital c, and it was nice to have someone to think about, even if this small infatuation or whatever it was wouldn’t last much longer than the flight. After all, he probably wouldn’t be staying at the same resort your family was, right? Because that would be the sort of thing you’d find in a romance novel or a cheesy movie, not real life. Real life never lined up so perfectly.

At the end of the flight you watched him get up, pull down his own luggage, and leave without so much as a backwards glance. And then he was lost in the crowd as you collected your things and followed everyone towards the arrivals lounge. The sight of your parents and younger sister, Erin, drove the cute passenger from your mind, the infatuation slipping away (as you’d known it would) as soon as you saw Erin waving at you, a big grin plastered to her face. Your mother pulled you into a tight embrace as soon as you were within reach, already asking you a hundred questions – how was school? Did the finals go okay? Whatever happened to that Eddie boy you’d brought home for Thanksgiving? Your Dad pried her off you, reminding her you needed air like everyone else, and began to lead you all out towards the car. On the drive to the resort you filled each other in on what had been happening, catching up on the months you’d missed since you last visited home.

By the time you arrived at the resort, the guy from the plane was so far from your thoughts you wouldn’t have been able to recall the colour of his eyes if you’d tried. Which is why you almost dropped your luggage when you saw him leaning against the reception desk. You mumbled something about tripping when your Mom turned to see what had happened, trying not to let your eyes flick towards him again. Your parents already had the key to their room but you’d booked one in your name as well – twin beds so your sister could join you. “I’ll get someone to take your luggage up while you sort out your key and then we can all head down to the pool before dinner, sound like a plan?” “Sounds great Dad, I’ll meet you guys upstairs” you nodded, willing them to leave before Airplane Boy did. If things went your way you could find out how he compared to your airborne fantasies by the end of the night.

Whatever being was watching over you must have been in a benevolent mood because twenty seconds later your family was in the elevator and your fantasy man was turning around, room key in hand, eyes going wide when he saw you. “Well isn’t this a small world,” his eyes, hazel, flicked over you as he spoke, taking in every inch of your appearance and suddenly you wished didn’t look like you’d just got off a plane. “Yeah, who’d have thought we’d both end up at one of the most popular resorts on Hawaii?” “Would have been just my luck if we hadn’t, did you manage to get that bag of rocks back down or is that why you’ve got no luggage?” “I got it down. I had to get help from someone in the cabin crew, but I got it down.” “Well I’m glad someone was there to rescue you. I’m Joe by the way.” He held out his hand. “Y/N,” you said, shaking it, setting the butterflies in your stomach fluttering. “Nice to meet you properly, Y/N.” “Likewise.” You smiled at him, batting your lashes ever so slightly. “Well, if you need any more help with your bags, I’m happy to lend a hand. Make up for not getting them back down for you.” “That’s a very sweet offer Joe, though I don’t think I properly thanked you for the help in the first place,” Oh christ did that sound too much like a line from a porno? Joe's laugh was that of someone a little flustered, cheeks turning pink. “S-sorry, I, uh, I should let you go check in now,” “Probably should do that should’t I? Maybe, I’ll see you round though?” “Yeah, I hope so. I mean, probably, right? A place like this – not many spots you could hide in,” he laughed. “Who said I’d be hiding?” You trailed your fingers over his arm as you walked past him, “See you later Joe,” He cleared his throat, “Yeah, bye Y/N.” You managed to resist the urge to turn around and see if he was watching you walk away as you headed to get your key, kind of wishing you had let your Mom talk you into getting a twin room. Erin was great, and you’d missed her, but nothing said you're not having sex like sharing a room with a twelve-year-old. It didn’t hit you until you were in the elevator that you should have found out his room number.

“Sorry I’m late, the guy in front of me had some sort of problem. Took ages to sort out.” Definitely wasn’t flirting with anyone. “Well you’re here now. Still got time to hit the pool so best get a wriggle on.” You and Erin exchanged rolled eyes as you opened your room. It was clean and simple, the two beds taking up most of the space. Splashes of bright green, like the cushions that sat on each bed, and the vase of flowers that stood on the side table against the far wall, were in stark contrast to the crisp white walls and sheets. A balcony gave you a picturesque view of the ocean, and ocean themed artwork hung above the TV and on half the blank walls. You ducked into the bathroom to get changed, finding more artwork on the walls and some decorative shells by the sink. It took you all of five minutes to change into your bathers and grab your sunnies. Normally you wouldn’t have bothered with the bikini for anything less than the beach, especially so late in the afternoon, but there was the chance you could run into Joe again and you wanted him to see you in something better than the old shorts and too big shirt you’d flown in. You gave your lips a swipe of gloss, blowing a kiss to your reflection before hurrying out to join your family, towel tucked under your arm.

The pool was not the single Olympic length one you’d been imagining but rather a series of oddly shaped lagoons of crystal-clear water interspersed with greenery that made everything feel full of life and offered protection from the sun when it was at its highest. It was busy but large enough and spread out enough that it wasn’t noticeable. There were people gathered around the bar, ordering bright drinks topped off with umbrellas and fresh fruit, and relaxing on the many lounge chairs, empty glasses and plates lining the tables. Your father led the way through the hoard of screaming children in the kiddie pool and their parents lazily watching them from the sides, towards a lagoon further back, finding a clear spot at the water’s edge. You’d barely sat down, dipping your toes into the cool water when Erin ran past you to cannonball into the pool, the large splash she made flying towards you. When she surfaced, she laughed at the now wet hair you’d had to push backwards out of your eyes. “Careful sweetie,” your Mom warned, already lying back on a lounge chair with her eyes closed. You kicked some water back at Erin, only half paying attention as you let your eyes wander over the people. No sign of Joe. You sighed, leaning back on your hands and closing your eyes as you tilted your head back, letting the low sun warm you while it still could. It felt nice to relax, even if there wasn’t a cute boy drooling over you. You hadn’t properly relaxed in too long to count.

“Bikini’s a good look,” Slowly you brought your head back up, turning towards your right where Joe was suddenly sitting. “Suit’s you.” “Thanks,” you gave Joe a once over, pushing your sunglasses down your nose a little so you could take in the boardshorts and bare chest look he’d gone for, before tilting your head back to the sky again, “Could say the same for you.” “Don’t think I’d look half as good in a bikini as you do.” You could hear his stupid grin through every word and couldn’t help the laugh it inspired. “So what brings you to the pool?” he asked, shifting so he was facing you and leaning in. “Eyes forward, can’t look like we’re talking.” “Oh-kay.” He did as you asked, dropping his feet into the water and looking out to the other end of the pool, “Can I ask why we’re being so,” he stretched the word out, waving his hand in circles as he searched for the right word, “clandestine?” “Family. Mom’s over there on the lounge chair, Dad’s gone to the bar I think. And technically I’m watching my little sister swimming. Not meant to be talking to cute boys.” “Well I'm flattered you’d break whatever rules you’re breaking for me, but I don’t want to get you in trouble.” “I like the trouble. Besides it’s less rules and more that this is the first time I’ve seen my family in months. If they caught wind I wanted to ditch them for a guy I barely know...let’s just say they’d make a fuss.” “So we’re not dealing with like, an overprotective father then?” “Mum’s more of the worry, she’d get like super nosey. But Dad’d be too awkward to be mad.” “Thank God,” Joe mimed wiping sweat from his forehead. When he put his hand back down it was closer to yours, pinkie fingers brushing slightly. You could feel him chancing a glance at you but focused your gaze on Erin, watching as she tread water while talking to another girl around her age, trying to slow your heart beat before it thumped right out of your chest. He flicked his head forward again, a shy smile still in place as his eyes came to rest on the same spot as yours, “Your sister seems sweet,” “Erin? She can be, but she also inherited Mom’s love of gossip.” “So gotta be careful around her then,” “Definitely,” You turned your head towards him, finding it difficult to drag your eyes away from his lips once they’d settled there, your own parting slightly in anticipation of a kiss that wasn’t coming. “Sneaking around is kinda more fun though. Think you can get away tonight? Just long enough to have a drink with me?” You hadn’t expected him to be so bold as to ask you out this early on but it wasn’t an unwelcome surprise. Even so, you pretended to think it over, taking extra time as if you were running through a list of things in your mind, “Yeah, think so. Just depends how fast Erin drops off.” He threw you a questioning look. “We’re roommates.” “So I guess you’ll be wanting my room number then, since yours is off limits. It’s 308.” “Huh, I’m in 315.” “Well Miss Y/N from room 315, Hope I see you soon.” He pushed himself to his feet and walked away, leaving you with a racing heart, sweaty palms, and a pinkie finger that just wouldn’t stop tingling.

After dinner you returned to your room, exhausted from the long day and needing to unpack properly. Erin collapsed onto her bed, flicking the TV on and settled in to watch reruns of The Simpsons while you hauled your suitcases over to the cupboard and began to put things away. The two of you talked intermittently, mostly during commercials, about what you were hoping to do on this holiday and how much fun it was going to be. She didn’t mention seeing you talk to Joe which relieved you no end, especially after you’d run into him at the restaurant where you’d had dinner. Just a brief, “Sorry, excuse me,” from him as he squeezed behind you while you waited for a table. His hand had lingered a fraction longer than necessary on your lower back, and it had taken all your willpower not to grab it and place it on your ass. And then he was gone again, lost in the crowd, while you tried to maintain a regular conversation with your parents.

You’d just changed into your pyjama shorts and a singlet and were about to hop into bed yourself, when you heard a loud giggle from the next room over where your parents were. It was followed by your father’s voice making shushing noises through his own laughter and then, “don’t want the kids to hear us. So glad we’ve got the room to ourselves now.” You and Erin exchanged horrified looks and then you were both moving, slipping shoes on and grabbing the room key, all tiredness forgotten as you just about ran out the door. You only paused when you reached the elevator, realising you had no idea where you were going. “Is there like a rec room or something we could go to?” You asked, scanning the list of floor numbers for any sign of a pool table or video game console. “How should I know?” “You’ve been here a whole 24 hours more than me,” “I just went where Mom and Dad went!” “Alright, Christ, no need to yell. Well, I know the bar is on flo-” “Typical,” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “All you grown ups care about is the stupid bar,” “Yeah cause you brats drive us to drink,” “You brats drive us to drink,” she imitated in a high pitched annoying whine that made you roll your eyes. “Fine, you’re gonna be a baby I’ll see if there’s a fucking nursery to drop you in. You clearly need to go beddy-byes.” Your bickering was interrupted by footsteps coming up behind you and a familiar voice calling your name. Fuck.

“Didn’t take you for one to argue in the hallways,” “Clearly you don’t have a younger sister then, Joe,” “No, but I do have an older one. She could be real bossy,” he winked at Erin who giggled. You rolled your eyes again. “Do you know if there’s a rec room or something round here?” “At this time? What’s wrong with your room?” “Mum and Dad are fucking,” Erin chimed in before you could come up with an excuse, looking far too innocent to understand what that meant and for a moment you wondered what else she’d learnt while you were away at college, “I saw you talking to Y/N this afternoon at the pool. Are you two fucking?” “Jesus Erin, language. And stop being so fucking nosey,” “You swear all the time,” “I’m an adult, I’ve earned the right to swear,” “Why don’t we settle this argument back at my room? There’s a Simpson’s marathon on which I’m sure... Sorry didn’t catch this little angel’s name,” Smooth. “Erin,” the so-called angel piped up, sticking out her hand and grinning. “Which I’m sure Erin would enjoy,” Joe finished as he bent down and shook her hand, “Nice to meet you.” Your eye muscles sure were getting a workout tonight. But Erin seemed pleased with the turn of events so you accepted. Better than getting lost on the way to a rec room that may not even exist. Plus it helped that as Joe stood up he subtly mentioned the bottle of vodka he had stashed in his suitcase.

Joe’s room looked much the same as yours, though he had different art and instead of twin beds, one king sized. “Alright, there you go Missy,” he said to Erin as he handed her the remote control to the TV, “Knock yourself out,” “Please,” you mumbled as Erin raced into the room, kicking her shoes off as she went and then bounced into the middle of the bed. Joe caught you rolling your eyes again. “You do that a lot y’know,” “Only when I’m babysitting. I love her to death but Christ,” If badmouthing your sister was going to earn you another laugh from Joe you could have gone all night. Instead you reigned yourself in, leaning against the doorframe as you watched him dig through his luggage. Finally he pulled out the bottle he’d been searching for, holding it up triumphantly. “D’you wanna sit on the balcony?” “Sounds great,” you followed him out, dodging Erin’s annoyed grunts as you moved in front of the TV. “Not gonna get too cold out here in those adorable PJs? Very short,” Joe said as he gently shut the door behind you. “I think I’ll be fine. But I’ll let you know if I need warming up.” He laughed as he slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, patting the spot beside him. You glanced at the unused chairs but joined him anyway, stretching your legs out in front of you as he opened the bottle of vodka. “I don’t have any glasses so I hope you don’t mind sharing the bottle,” “Who brings a full bottle of vodka and no cups?” “A college student?” “Fair enough,” “Ladies first,” He passed the bottle over and you took a large swig, hissing a little as the alcohol burned your throat. “You were good with her, before,” you passed the bottle back to Joe, tilting your head to indicate Erin. “Yeah well, don’t just have an older sister, got a younger brother too. Not quite the age gap though.” “She was a bit of...a surprise. But your family isn’t here too?” “Nah, came on my own. Reward for getting through another fuckin year.” “Cheers to that,” you peaked over your shoulder but Erin was completely entranced by the TV. “So you’re parents really just went for it?” “Urgh, god don’t remind me. That’s what the alcohol’s for. Completely unfair that they get to haunt us with nightmares for the rest of our lives and I can’t get a second away from my baby sister.” “You could always sneak away.” “What like, fake being sick?” “God no, too risky. Have you never watched a movie before? Ferris Bueller ringin’ any bells?” “Alright, calm down,” you laughed, “it was just a suggestion,” “Fake being sick,” he scoffed, taking another sip of vodka, “To make it believable you’d have to start exhibiting signs the night before. Then day of you have to give yourself a temperature and make yourself sneeze or cough or throw up a lot. And then what about Erin? She’s not gonna catch whatever mysterious illness you get that clears up in 24 hours. And you can only use it once.” “Jesus Christ. You really have thought about this.” “I got a lot of practice as a kid,” he said with a shrug, “If one of us was off from school sick, all of us were off from school sick.” “Okay smartguy, what do you suggest I do instead?” “Easy. Go with them on whatever they’re doing. Relaxing on the beach, golf course, whatever. Then a few hours in say you need to stretch your legs or claim to have an appointment with the masseuse or something but say you’ll meet up with them for lunch or dinner even. And then you come back here.” “You’re very confident that I’d visit you in my family free hours,” “You called me cute, think I can afford to be confident.” “Touché.”

It was another few hours before you stood to leave, Joe having stashed the bottle of vodka away long ago, before you had the chance to get completely wasted. He’d told you that you’d thank him tomorrow when you didn’t wake up with a hangover but the part of your brain that remembered why you’d wanted a drink so bad didn’t fully believe him. You’d let him take the bottle with a promise that you could help finish it another night. As the hours ticked by he’d slowly inched closer to you, eventually wrapping his arm around you as you looked up at the partially obscured stars. You encouraged him by claiming you were getting chilly. Erin had dropped off within the first hour, though you were still cautious in case she woke up. Still you were happy to wedge yourself into his side, dropping your head onto his shoulder as you talked about whatever crossed your minds. You’d been even happier to let him kiss you, softly, breaking apart much too soon as Erin snorted in her sleep. That had been your cue to leave, even though your lips still buzzed with the desire for more. “Sorry,” you said quietly, not quite pulling away from him. “No it’s fine, I don’t wanna get caught out by her either. She’s a feisty little thing,” “The word you’re looking for is nosey but yeah,” “Wouldn’t want her announcing anything to the whole resort,” “Not when sneaking around is kinda more fun,” You both chuckled, trying to keep your voices low as you re-entered Joe’s room. “D’you want me to carry her back to your room?” He offered with all the kindness you’d come to expect from him. “Sure your skinny little twig arms can handle it?” “I lifted your suitcase of paperweights didn’t I. Plus, it’s just up the hall.” “Thought it was a suitcase of rocks.” “Tomato, tomatoe. Do you want the help or not?” “Thanks,” He grunted slightly as he lifted her, one arm under her knees and the other under her back, pretending to drop her a little which had you stifling laughter and shaking your head as you lead the way out of his room.

The walk back to your room was much too short, though Joe probably would have said different under the weight of your dead-to-the-world sister. You put your finger to your lips as you opened the door and held it. He deposited your sister on her bed as gently as possible, going the extra mile to tuck her in under the blankets she’d so hastily thrown to the side earlier. All was quiet in the room next door and you breathed a sigh of relief as Joe came back out into the hallway. He stood close, the extra inches he had on you much more noticeable now than when you’d been sitting on his balcony. “So, you’ll try to get away then?” Joe bit his lip nervously which only served to make him look even cuter, making you want him more. “Yeah, soon as I can.” “Tomorrow maybe?” “Coming across a little desperate Joey,” you teased, poking him in the chest, “Besides think Mom mentioned something about doing a tour of the island tomorrow, not sure I could get away. But soon, promise.” “I’m gonna hold you to that, Y/N,” “Of course,” There was a brief pause, Joe rubbing the palm of one hand with the other’s thumb as his eyes darted over your head to your sleeping sister and then to the door of your parent’s room. “Fuck it,” he said and then he was leaning in to kiss you again. It started as light and soft as the first attempt back at his room had, almost chaste, but when no third-wheeling sibling or grumpy parent interrupted it changed. His hands moved further around your back, pulling you as close to him as he could. You wobbled slightly as your balance shifted but he held you steady while you wrapped your arms around his neck, tongues meeting with the urgency only an imminent interruption could bring. You lost track of how long you were intertwined, all other thoughts driven from your mind until he pulled back. “Been thinking about that since you helped me on the plane,” you muttered softly, trailing your hand down over his cheek, not wanting to lose contact yet. “How did I do?” His hands hadn't left you either. “Oh, uh r-really good,” you nodded rapidly. Joe laughed again, “Don’t think I’ve seen you this lost for words before,” You wanted to say something witty in response, but your mind was still whirling with the kiss so all you could manage was a, “spose not,” and a small giggle. Slowly you came back to your senses, realising where you were. “I should -,” you pointed at your room with your thumb, though it was half hearted. “Yeah,” He caught your lips with his once more, briefly, before bidding you goodnight and disappearing down the hall leaving you, once again, wishing you had a room to yourself so you could at least masturbate in peace.

#my writing #joe mazzello x reader #joe mazzello imagine #i hope you like it!#part 2 will be up asap #(this was one of those fics where like #everytime i read over it i wanted to add to it lmao #i eventually just had to force myself to stop #but god im so excited to write p2 #i have it all planned out and theres gonna be some Good Stuff)

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