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korpuskat · 4 years

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Start Game [Tomura Shigaraki/Reader] - Part 3

[Ao3 Mirror]

Rating: Mature Word Count: 3,574 Summary: It’s a date, kind of, and goes about as well as a date with Tomura Shigaraki can. Contains: AFAB but Gender Neutral Reader, mentions of previous sexual activity (see part 2), soft Shigaraki

===== [Part 1] [Part 2] [You are here] [Part 4] =====

“There’s a good burger place.” Tomura says, watches your fingers move across the screen of your phone, scanning over the rows and rows of recommended restaurants. Places you didn’t know or recognize- “Here.” With his uninjured left hand he points- and you’re all too aware of how he keeps his fingers away from you. His whole hand arching away from yours.

It makes you look up to his face again- he doesn't seem perturbed. After all, the rest of his body is pressed right up against you, slotted between your sided and the wall, why would he avoid touching you now? He’d been all too happy to try to fuck you into his bed not five minutes ago. But his finger, slender and pale, the nail well-bitten down to the quick, taps on your screen and draws your attention. You look back just in time to watch him navigate through the site to a menu.

You read through it- and Tomura shifts beside you. You blink, watch as he pushes himself up onto his slender arms. He winces, holds his bandaged right hand with his left, little finger held away. You tip your head. Maybe it’s not just you.

He moves again, scooting towards the edge of his bed- and this time his scowl deepens, twists into disgust. You think you can tell why, at least. A dark patch has grown over the front of his sweatpants- the thick, loose fabric stretching as he pulls it between two fingers. You flush, can’t help the little thrill that brings a grin to your face-- you did that to him.

“Pick something.” He grumbles, standing awkwardly, pulling the messed up pants away from his crotch. His grimace only deepens. “I need to change.”

Though your problem is not nearly as obnoxious as his, you’re a little jealous. Your underwear has become slick between your legs, soaking up all the arousal that had oozed freely with your grinding. Now it's left clinging and uncomfortable with every tiny movement, though surely not as obnoxiously chafing as Tomura's must be.

You do your best to read the menu, to think about toppings and sides and if you should get a shake with it- but in reality your eyes keep darting over to Tomura’s long limbs as he picks through his messy room. He kicks at a pile of mostly black dirty clothes before frowning, the lines around his eyes deepening. The actual dresser is his next target, pulling open the drawers one by one and from how deep he has to reach inside, you wonder when the last time he put away his clothes was. But he pulls a lump of black cloth out and unfolds it-

And his hands touch the waistband of his pants. No hesitation, no glance back towards you. Not a modicum of modesty. He turns away just enough and whatever shame still keeps you human has your eyes locked onto your phone screen. But your peripherals don’t lie- Tomura shucks the black pants from his legs, long streaks You try so hard not to look- he’s turned away from you, he obviously doesn’t want you to ogle him, right? Right?

But he stumbles. One hand landing on the dresser, the assorted knick-knacks there shake, clink off something ceramic. The hand other grabs his leg- and you start to gasp; his thighs are wrapped up in bandages, just like his arms. The need to ask if he's alright rises to your lips- and dies just as quickly. His shirt covers to the tops of his thighs, but a thin stripe of pale skin peeks between the old bandages and black shirt. The sight makes your mouth go dry, your body stilling- Tomura mutters something to himself and you force your eyes back to your screen. He keeps moving in your peripherals, but this time fear keeps your gaze from drifting.

Does he know you looked? Sweat beads at your temple, fear and shame twist in your belly (and you work very hard to ignore how much you would love to appreciate that nary inch of skin you saw). He shuffles back towards you- and oh god, can he tell how hard you’re blushing in the low light? Should you just tell him? He probably doesn’t care too much, right?

“Here.” Something soft and black flumps beside you on the bed. You glance towards it, but can't quite make out what you're looking at. “You pick something yet?”

“Oh, um, no.” You bite your lip and glance up towards him- and his eyes glitter with mischief. Subdued, not that same overpowering thing that makes his mouth split into a wide, manic grin- but still there nonetheless. The corners of his eyes upturned, the tiniest sly smirk pulling at the corners of his lips. Your hands shake, so you hold your phone to your chest.

“I’ll order you my favorite. You’ll like it.” He nods towards what he’d dropped beside you. “If you need to…” He inhales, glances down your body, “Change. While I go pick it up.”

You blink, “We aren’t going out?”

Tomura’s hand rests on the doorknob, doesn’t speak for a minute- and like a curtain falling, his expression shifts. The mischief in his eyes turns sour, a dark cousin to the excited glint he’d had in the arcade. “It’s late. Lots of villains around lately.” He pauses, licks his lips. “Does that scare you?”

You think for a moment- but, to be honest, aside from what you saw on the news you’d never really dealt with villains. Of course what you’d read in the news was scary… You swallow your nerves, try to push a soft smile into your voice. “Well.. You’d protect me, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.” It rushes from his mouth, too fast to play it off as a joke- and he doesn’t bother. It’s all genuine, a sincerity sinking into his voice. The dark glittering in his expression doesn't fade, one corner of his mouth pulling up, as though grinning at a joke only he could hear. “Of course.”

The smile catches, and you can’t help but tease a little. “Big, bad Dust going for the save, playing the hero.” You laugh to yourself.

It’s the utterly wrong thing to say. The softness evaporates from his face so fast your blood freezes, chills cascade over the back of your neck. The red eyes you’d found warmth in so many times are distant, shut off- and there's something different about his body now. The stiff way he holds himself makes your stomach churn, makes the tendons in your legs tense with every last vestige of prey instinct screaming to run. “Heroes wouldn’t save you.”

"Heroes...?" Your teeth sink into your lip- still tender from Tomura’s biting- and choke on some kind of apology. You don’t know what’s happened, what you said that twisted the mood so foully. Red eyes weigh on you and you waver under their cold pressure. Your fingers pick at the buttons on your phone and fret, would he ask you to leave? “I’m sorry? I didn’t mean to upset you…”

But just as your shoulders truly begin to collapse in on your chest, he sighs. A low, rumbling rush of air- and he crosses back towards the bed. You blink up to him- find your eyes wet and beginning to blur at the corners- and he looks down at you with a rueful softness. “You’re sweet…” He touches your hair. Swelling in your chest, your head pounds against your ribs. He touches your hair- presses his palm down against your head, only two fingers actually sinking into your hair to scratch at your scalp. It’s not your face that he looks at- it’s his own hand; his eyeline is too far above you to be anything else. “Cute…”

Oh. Your head sways, suddenly dizzy with the emotional whiplash- and then his closeness and touch and praise and what is so close to tenderness in his expression. But at the first tip of your head, arching up towards his hand in subconscious desire for more- He withdraws too quickly to be casual or planned. A sudden jerk away, as though you'd burned him. Were you too forward? Too needy? But Tomura cuts you off, “Change.” and his voice is not unkind. Any worries that you’d done something wrong fade away. “I’ll get the food.” He’s out the door before you can protest.

You touch the clothes he’d left for you and a soft huff of laughter follows as your fingers trace over his selection. A rumpled black shirt with a logo for Orbital Force in patchy red and blue peeling vinyl and pilling drawstring sweatpants that have been worn down so much they look gray. You bite your lip and unfold them, double check. Shirt. Pants. Surely you've missed it. Shirt, still from being at the bottom of his dresser drawer for too long. Pants that look near threadbare along the inner thighs.

The dampness between your legs slides uncomfortably on your thighs. He didn’t offer you any underwear. Would that be too weird, to give you a pair of his own? If he was offering you clothes anyway- and why a shirt? Yours seemed fine, you weren’t terribly sweaty, were you?-- why not include what had been surely the most pressing article of clothing for him?

The gears turn for a moment- but a glance over towards his discarded pants is all it takes to slot those pieces together. The smeared, drying evidence of your liaison makes your cheeks heat again. The gears screech to a halt and your thoughts stops dead in their tracks. You ease off the edge of the bed just to look closer, to make sure-

Oh. It’s all over the inside of his pants. Only his pants. No underwear to be seen.

Oh.

Was he always…? Every time you’d met up with him…? You swallowed thickly, unsure what to make of that.

Even without underwear (and... would you even have been be able to bring yourself to wear his if he had offered it?), the mess on your thighs needed to be tended to. Clean pants sans underwear would have to be better than what you had now.

He hadn't shown you where the bathroom was, either. Tomura certainly left you in a bit of an odd situation- but hey. If he was okay changing in front of you, he must be alright with you changing in his room, right? You click the little doorknob lock into place just to be sure and awkwardly shuck your very, very wet underwear and pants. Staring at the door, as though Tomura would somehow be back within seconds, you wipe the remnants of your arousal from your thighs.

Holding up Tomura's oversized sweatpants, though, you feel a little bad. They'll definitely end up smelling like... you. Or. Maybe he'd like that? Your fingers play with the drawstrings. Maybe he won't want them back. That has you smiling; you could have something of his. With that you step through the leg holes- and wonder exactly how tight he must pull the cords to keep the blanketing garment on his thin waist.

There's no mirror in the room for you to check how you look, but they fit you surprisingly well, the fabric softened with time and wear. The shirt still lays spread out on Tomura's bed. You really don't need to change your shirt... but you lift it, sink your nose into the fabric and inhale. It's old, definitely having been stuffed in his drawer for quite some time, but beneath the vague, lingering mustiness of being set away for a while, there's something else. You breathe in, close your eyes- it's... masculine. Kind of like old sweat that didn't quite get washed away, as though he hadn't used enough detergent. It's not a bad scent, you decide.

You swap your shirt out for his.

Your clothes awkwardly bundled together, you leave them near the end of his bed so you won't forget them. One little click to unlock his door and you're left looking around. You don't really want to snoop too much... Tomura's always been kind of private with you. So you settle back onto his bed, picking up your phone again and flicking through your apps restlessly. How long would he take? You didn't even think to ask before he went out.

Across the room, the game's stats screen dimmed, the camera still spinning over the map, waiting for input. The controllers sit on his nightstand- you blink.

His gloves lay over his clock, the green light of the display making them glow faintly. He's never taken them off around you before- you'd never really asked why; it was never important. If it was sensory or Quirk-related, it wasn't really your business. But you'd kind of assumed he always wore them- but here they were. How much... did you really know about him? If you were going to do anything with him, shouldn't you know a little more than his first name and that he prefers strategic turn-based games to bullet hells?

You don't even know where you are-

"Miss me?" You jump- the door opens. Tomura's face is covered in shadow, his hood pulled low over his face, forcing his light hair to fluff out around his neck. In his arms, he has two soda cups pressed between his forearm and his chest, in each hand a paper bag held in his odd three-fingered grasp.

"That... was fast." You say, scooting over on the bed as he steps into the room, closing the door with the heel of his foot.

He drops the bags on the bed, knocking the mess on his nightstand out of the way to set down the drinks. In the dim light of his room, he blatantly looks over you. His scarred lips pulling at the corners. "You look good." Heat returns to your face and all you can do is duck your head, can't quite get the words thank you out. It doesn't matter because Tomura is already settling himself onto the bed.

He starts to open up one paper bag, hand halfway in the bag before sharply frowning. He glances up at you- an idea rolling around in his head, crimson eyes flitting over your face as he contemplates something. Tomura pulls back, twists towards his nightstand to grab the gloves he'd left before. He's careful putting them on, pinching the thin black fabric and methodically working it onto his hand. First, fitting the two fingers to be covered into their holes, then stretching the base over each finger individually until it wraps around his thin wrist. Tomura repeats the action with the other glove, this time using all the fingers of his gloved hand to assist.

You haven't even touched the food yet, your bag still crumpled together at the edge. Too caught up in watching those slender fingers move- the delicate precision he held with such impeccable control. One glance from under the edge of his hood has you startling, grabbing at your food with shame in being caught.

The food inside smells absolutely heavenly, promising a heavy and greasy meal; it makes your stomach grumble loudly. You fish out the burger, unwrapping it- and from the corner of your eye you watch as Tomura does the same. All five fingers of his now gloved left hand holding the burger up as he grabs a remote from the floor. A few button presses and the source changes, switching over to a livestreaming site. He navigates easily with one hand, biting at his meal as he chooses the first Cloud Seven streamer he finds.

It buffers for a moment, a loading icon circling on the screen- and you look at his hands again. Tomura sets the remote aside and holds his food with both hands. The question is too great, the curiosity blooming too readily- the need to know anything burgeoning and bursting forth-

In the silence of the room, your voice is too loud. "Is it... for your Quirk? The gloves?"

He stops, goes completely frozen. From under the soft fluff of his hair, his eyes are trained on you. Not even breathing- and just as with earlier, that sense of dread constricts in your belly.

You swallow and every cell in your body is now screaming out to backpedal, to apologize, just as you did earlier... but that wouldn't get you anywhere, would it? You'd be right back where you were, swept up in his intoxicating influence and none the wiser to who you spend you days with. So you lick your lips and take a shaky breath. "I... realized I don't really know much about you. And if this is supposed to be a date... I just thought..."

Tomura's only reaction is the narrowing of his eyes. You bite your cheek, lower your hands to your lap, stare down at your food. If he was embarrassed or ashamed of his own Quirk, you had him beat. "I'm Quirkless, if that makes you feel better." You laugh lightly, shrug. Years have worn you down, left you numb to just about any comment he could make. "So no matter what it is, it can't be as bad as me. I'm utterly unremarkable."

You don't know Tomura's opinion on Quirks overall well enough to guess his reaction- aren't sure what to expect when you look at him again. His brow has raised, stretched in shock, the tight corners of his lips relaxing slightly at your confession. Surprise, yes, you could work with that. His lips press together- just beginning to part again, to say something-

"Oh, oh, he's got the flashbang! No, no!" The stream roars to life. A teen in a gaming chair throws their head back in one corner of the display, his green screen wavering as he spins and groans at the now playing killcam of another player. "He's got like five health!"

At least it breaks the tension, gives you something else to focus on- and Tomura doesn't look at you again. His eyes break from yours, zero in on the screen and do not waver. You finally eat, just to quell the ache in your belly, even if there's a rising nausea with it. It's so hard to chart through your relationship, so many landmines and blackholes of forbidden topics- like anything outside of sex or games carried a peculiar danger to it.

That should really be a red flag. He's not just secretive or touchy about things, he's... guarded. Maybe you should just-

Knuckles bump against your shoulder, just enough to get your attention. You blink- and he holds out the soda cup. Perspiration beads around it, wiped smooth and shiny near his hands- the water soaking into his glove around his ring and little fingers. You touch the drink- "They are." You hold the drink dumbly, parsing his words before he clarifies. "They're for my Quirk."

Tomura's eyes flit to your face only once, a quick glance to judge your reaction. "Oh." You breathe out, and try very hard to not grin like an idiot. Maybe... he's just slow to open up. You take a sip of your drink and pretend that's what you're talking about. "Thank you."

He doesn't reply, but you don't miss how the tension eases out of his shoulders. Slowly, by inches, his predatorial stillness is replaced with a looseness. And though you worry about what has happened to him to make him so defensive, the joy of him putting in an effort has your eyes watering. Before you can fall prey to your own doubt, you scoot closer to him. Its awkward without your hands, hardly making any progress--

and Tomura plants one hand on the bed, hauls himself until his side is flush with yours. You can't help but squeak- even if you'd started it, you hadn't really expected him to close the distance so quickly. But he looks down at you and there's such a softness about his features, you can't help but smile- and arch up enough to get him to lean down and meet you halfway into a brief kiss.

The streamer plays on, cheering as he gets a cheeky kill only for karma to return just as swiftly. Beside you, Tomura's shoulders lift and shake, a tiny laugh that mostly escapes through his nose. You eat in peace, no other conversation necessary in the changing glow from the screen. In the end you crumple your wrapper and drop it back into the paper bag- and fully curl into Tomura's side.

"Come here," He says, pushing the trash bag onto the floor without a second thought. He stretches out, and you follow his lead, laying down beside him on the narrow mattress. It's a tight fit, but for this much contact with him- one gloved hand splayed over your back, his chest warm and firm under your head- it's more than enough. With him so near, the room so dark, it's easy to get lost in the steady, continuous beat of his heart, loud and strong in your ear. So easy to sigh in contentment, to let your eyes close-

and with his voice murmuring something you can't quite make out, it's just as easy to let yourself sleep next to him. Against your hair Tomura sighs, "You're not unremarkable."

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@annonymousbread

#start game #tomura shigaraki #tomura shigaraki fanfiction #tomura shigaraki imagine #tomura shigaraki x reader #tomura x reader #tomura x you #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki x reader #bnha

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seokiloquy · 4 years

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Pumpkin Spice - Miya Osamu

AU: Regular, coffee shop(?)

Server Collab (Linked)

Tags/Warnings: GN Reader, swearing, time-skip spoilers

Word Count: 9.2k+

Working at a cafe in the middle of the busy streets of Tokyo’s business sector often led to many customers in need of a nice brew and in association, tips. Lots of tips that often fell into your pocket at the end of the day. The pay was good enough and made up for the moderately long commute from your campus that you spent sleeping on the train. On top of that, your boss was the nicest and most supportive old woman in downtown Tokyo.

The interior of the cafe was soft and homey in comparison to the reflective silver exterior of the building outside. Seats with red vinyl cushions filled the open area leading to the wooden top counter that you worked behind, mixing up whatever ludicrous drink they asked for. The customers loved you. You loved the money. It was the best.

It was sunny that day, people were smiling for once as they walked to work for once. The traffic was light, people weren’t running late, and to top it all off you had just gotten an email that morning with the mark for your latest assignment, a perfect grade.

“We’re closing.”

“Like, just for today, right?” you asked Juri, brows furrowed as a disbelieving smile pulled on your face as if you were being pranked. She gave you a sad look. “Right?” you repeated, pouring in a measured amount of coffee beans into the espresso machine.

“(Y/N), I’m so sorry,” Juri gasped. “The building owner jacked up the renting price and I just can’t afford it now.”

You reached behind you for the counter, gripping it tightly between your fingers as you pulled yourself closer to slump onto it. A dull ache began to grow right between your eyes. “Don’t apologize, Juri. There’s nothing you can do. I’m fine.”

“Well, that’s a lie,” she spoke after a moment, skating over the thin ice that froze over your conversation. “You can spend more time studying now at least, university gets harder in your final year.”

“University’s the reason I needed this job though.” You walked around Juri’s stout form, reaching for the coffee machine, grabbing hold of a mug and readying yourself for the freshly pressed beans. “I have to pay for it somehow.”

“(Y/N), darling, maybe a three shot espresso isn’t the best thing to have right now.”

You gave the old woman a sour look over your shoulder before shooting back the mug of dark bean soup. Immediately, your tongue tried to escape your mouth. “Oh god, you,” you gagged momentarily. “You were right. That was horrid.” An uncomfortable shiver ran over your shoulders and through your spine.

Juri’s wrinkled hand came to rest over the black strap of your apron that hung desperately to your shoulder, squeezing it tightly to the point of bruising. She pulled you down roughly and flicked your forehead with her nail. “Stupid,” she chastised.

Walking to the sink, she grabbed the mug you held and rinsed it out before handing it back to you, filled to the brim with cold water. She rubbed your back, encouraging you to suck back the water to rid the bitter taste from the corners of your mouth. “If you want, I’ll write up a letter of recommendation for your resume.”

“I’m not sure whoever would hire me would take the time to read it, no one uses reference letters anymore. But thank you, I’d appreciate it.”

She smiled, making the wrinkles on her face shift slightly. “Anything for you sweetheart. Besides, you’ll need every advantage you can get with your horrid cooking.”

On your last day of work, Juri sent you off into the dark streets of Tokyo with a notebook filled with homebrew, baking and cooking recipes —the last two being one’s you have never and likely never will touch— and a container of cookies that she had made that morning.

The book, in and of itself, was innocent enough. A relatively mute earthy colour palette that made flowery designs from one edge to the other. But, you knew there had to be some secret spells of torture within the pages, or just something that you’d injure yourself with.

Not even a day later, far into the night, a sugar-covered cookie was left forgotten on your table as you scrolled through job listings on your computer, occasionally getting distracted by the scantily clad fictional characters that promoted a game on the edges of the webpage. You reached for the cookie, shooting your eyes back to the list and scrolling.

Your dorm was rather modest, more like a small apartment when compared to some of the other dorms on campus though. Which admittedly saved you money and made it more expensive at once. With your own kitchen and modest living space attached to a bedroom and bathroom, you successfully managed to isolate yourself from any other students in the building for just an extra fee. Luckily, having a kitchen meant that the school didn’t supply you with food, saving you money, but also leaving you starving since the only recipes you had in your head were for coffee. Moment’s spent in your kitchen alone with a grumbling stomach sometimes made you wish you were roomed with another person, or had taken the university's food plan. Curse your late teenage pride.

The walls were off white, surrounding a room filled with mostly dark furniture —namely navy— and reflecting the light that came off your computer screen. They made large shadows against your floor and walls. Your two fingers swept along the mousepad, moving the dry list up your screen. You bit into the cookie, quickly scarfing it down and clawing for another, mumbling to yourself as you skimmed over all the nanny jobs, and full-time positions. Corporations that would likely not give you enough pay were quickly forgotten, also.

The neighbours above you were playing study music rather loudly, letting the smooth sounds seep through the walls gently, it made you want to sleep, they probably had an essay to work on. You sighed, rubbing your eyes before sparing a glance at the time displayed in the corner of your screen. 1:32 am. Swallowing down the tired taste in your mouth, you swiped your fingers harshly against the pad, entirely too tired to do any more thinking and letting the loading screen of the website choose your job for you. You threw your head back, slumping into your seat with a worried wince, desperately hoping that you wouldn’t regret it.

You squinted at the top result of the most recent listings. “Huh.”

The black uniform wearing man scratched his head through his matching, logo crested hat, making it shift slightly to reveal his dyed hair underneath it. You sat silently on the plush stool at the counter as the older man —he couldn’t be much older than you, could he?— skimmed through your resume lightly before reading the reference letter Juri had written for you. The sweater he wore tightened at each opening, puffing out into what looked like a cozy crewneck. Definitely not the most common uniform for a food establishment, but you wouldn’t complain, it was starting to get colder. He rested his elbow on the counter-table, turning the top of his stool to face you directly.

“You’ve never worked in food before?”

The open-concept space of the man’s restaurant/cafe seemed to close in rapidly, making the light brown tables and decorations blend in with the white walls and red seats. The colours spun in your vision, blurring all your surroundings except for the tall, hunched man in front of you. He seemed to pop off the screen of your static vision with a halo of light surrounding him. You blinked rapidly, mentally shooing away the loopy visions. There wasn’t enough sleep in your system. That and it felt like you were about to be penalized.

Noticing his intense, stoic eye-contact, heat from your stomach rushed up to your cheeks and ears. He had pretty, grey eyes. Your lungs vibrated under your sternum as you tried to suck in enough air to speak. A bashful smile crept onto your face as your fingers fiddled together, occasionally dragging the pad of your thumb over the length of your nails.

“If I’m being honest, I’ve never been very good in the kitchen. Juri, my old boss, wouldn’t let me help her with baking the pastries because I would always burn myself. I’m working on it though.” That was a lie, a total lie. You weren’t working at it at all. You continued, laughing at yourself, “Because of that, Juri always had me doing beverages. So when I saw you were looking for a barista, I applied.” Well, that was only a partial lie.

The silver-haired man chuckled lightly, “I received your request for an interview, your request, 5 minutes after I posted the listing.”

Biting your lip, you reached for a napkin from one of the dispensers as you forced yourself to maintain eye contact. He seemed to enjoy watching your fingers fiddle with the limp piece of paper. You coughed, “Is that a good thing? Cause my desperate self is in need of a job. I’ll even risk burning my hands off if that’s what’s needed.”

He laughed again, taking the black, curve-rimmed hat off his head and set your papers down next to it on the sleek wooden counter. “(L/N), relax. I am looking for another barista, I had my previous one go work at our second location because it’s closer to home. So I’m short-handed and know only the basics about coffee, and with winter fast approaching I need help.”

You ripped the tissue paper in your hand in half before compiling it and stuffing it quickly into your pocket. “Does that mean I’m hired? Cause I need to pay for my tuition.” He watched, an amused smile pulling at his face, he stood up gesturing for you to follow him. With an awkward grin, you followed his silent instruction.

The rectangular counter you were sitting at wrapped around the back corner, creating a two-metre space walkway that led to the bathrooms and cut off an unlabeled wooden door from being easily accessed by customers. You followed his steps, watching his black Adidas sneakers step over the lines of the large wood floor panels. He opened the wooden door, gesturing you inside, before pulling a box off of the shelf that sat against the back wall and dropping it onto the counter next to a sink. Pulling out a cozy-looking crewneck sweater with a proud and yet desperate smile.

“This is the kitchen and break room,” he said, throwing out an arm to the rest of the large space, before walking back over to you, sweater and cap in hand. “Can you come in tomorrow? I can show you the ropes.”

“I’m sorry Miss, but we don’t have that drink here, it's not the season yet.” You smiled apologetically at the older woman who was digging through her bag in frustration. You hated telling customers little white lies, the feeling dug at the sides of your stomach each time you had to. It was becoming more frequent with October fast approaching.

“I’m sorry too,” she replied, letting her purse drop onto the counter with a smack. “My daughter has been nagging me all day to pick up one of these drinks and no one has it yet.”

You flexed and clenched your fist underneath the counter before adjusting your cap to try and give the woman a confident facade. “We’ll be getting the ingredients next week, so hopefully she can hold off until then. For now, would you like some onigiri? They’re freshly made.”

“Please.”

After ringing up the woman’s total and sending her out the door with a wave, you turned to your co-worker with an anxious grin. Taichi scoffed in response, openly laughing in your face. “You have to stop lying to our customers!” he berated with a lopsided expression.

“I know, I know! But I hate seeing them annoyed or upset. I can’t help it that they keep asking for a drink that we can’t make!”

The 1st year university student (who you quickly found out went to the same school as you) chuckled, leaning against the onigiri display. “What are the ingredients for it anyway?” he asked, watching you rest your hip against the counter next to the cash register.

“One cup of pumpkin puree, half a cup of sugar, half a teaspoon of pumpkin spice seasoning but that’s optional. That’s to make the pumpkin sauce. Then you need a quarter cup of pumpkin sauce, two ounces of espresso, eight ounces of milk, and then whipped cream and cinnamon on top,” you listed, staring off onto the floor.

“You have that memorized?” Taichi asked rhetorically, mouth hanging open.

You crossed your arms. “I’ve been working as a barista for over 3 years now. You start to remember things.”

Taichi lifted his hat, taking a moment to ruffle his straight cut black hair before setting it back down on his head. “Well, you can just ask Miya to order some, right?”

Snapping your finger, you sent the younger boy a finger gun with a pensive look pulling your eyebrows upward, “I hadn’t thought about that.”

On your next shift, after an early morning lecture about the global economy and stock market (which you tried not to sleep through), you walked into the break room to find your silver-headed boss curl over the edge of the small round table in the corner of the room while sitting on the old futon next to it, hair tousled in an oddly pleasant way. His hands moved quickly as he scribbled into the papers before him, the tight grip on his pen making his muscles flex slightly in his arm, that was made visible by his rolled up sleeves.

You quickly looked to your shoes, trying to calm your breathing down. “Um, Miya,” you called lightly, trying not to startle him. Nearly dropping the pen in his hand, he looked up. “Sorry,” you said, pulling your hands into the sleeves of your uniform.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m almost done,” he said, watching your fidgeting hands. “Did you need something?”

“Pumpkin sauce.”

He gave you a strange look, nose scrunching as a single eyebrow lifted. “Pumpkin sauce? Oh right, that’s a thing isn’t it?” Miya said as if just remembering the time of year, looking away from your wiggling fingers to the empty kitchen across from him.

You gulped. “Yes, for pumpkin spice lattes. A lot of customers have been asking about it.”

He raised the other eyebrow in your direction, trying to strangle down a teasing laugh. “You lied to the customers didn’t you?”

“I might have told a little white lie so they wouldn’t get upset.”

Miya sighed, holding eye contact with you for a moment, before signing the last sheet of paper in front of him with an entertained smile. He looked back up while gathering the papers into a neat pile. “I’ll get an order in by next week.”

“Thank you.”

Why did you ever decide that philosophy was a good thing to take in university? Seriously. What were you thinking? You stared at the empty document before you, blinking tiredly as you groaned.

Aesthetics. The first unit that your professor chose to discuss for a university-level because it’s likely the easiest to discuss. The essay itself was more introductory than anything. The instructions were to write an essay about how aesthetics and attraction to particular aesthetics are created, how society plays a role, and finally, your own personal stance.

You clearly remember glaring at the young professor when she said she wanted to gain a deeper understanding of each student. That’s for high school, you thought, mentally going over the three years of university you’ve already suffered through. Then again, maybe an easy grade. The only downside was that even though you’ve gone through nearly a decade and a half of school, you’ve never been good at writing an introspective piece.

“Professor Suzuki, How introspective should it be exactly?” you had asked her after the lecture had finished.

She gave you a sharp pointy smile with a light, slow shrug. “However much you think is needed. But I do want to learn about you and your experiences.”

Your brows were pinched together tightly, as you tried to understand. “So like an attraction autobiography?” That's deeply concerning.

She never did give you a clear response after that. Dancing around the direct answer you needed to hear. She must’ve been a high school literature teacher at some point.

A self-deprecating chuckle escaped you, making the younger boy who was lazing about on your couch turn his attention away from the tv. “What crawled into your pants?” Taichi asked, pouring the last remains of your chip bag into his mouth.

“I have to write about stuff for a philosophy essay.”

“Isn’t that the whole point of an essay?” The empty chip bag crinkled loudly in his hands as they folded the plastic messily.

You scowled at him. “If you’re going to be a smart ass you can stop eating my food and go back to your dorm.” Standing up from your kitchen counter, you scanned the junk-filled counters, eyes landing on the small carpet patterned notebook that sat sadly on the corner edge.

Taichi ran up from his seat, pleading for you to not send him out, claiming that his roommate was mean and hogged up the whole space. You partially ignored him, letting his yapping ring numbly in your ear as you flipped through Juri’s old recipe book.

“Wanna help me make cookies?” you asked, turning your head his way and effectively cutting off his rambling.

He paused, letting his bottom lip hang open before snapping it shut in a cautious sneer. “You’re deciding to bake? I’d rather risk getting bullied by my roommate. Bye.” He ran out of the dorm. Ran.

“God, my baking skills don’t warrant that kind of a reaction, jeez,” you huffed to yourself, slamming the notebook shut. No longer in the mood to experiment in the kitchen.

“Did the new rice come in?” the blond asked, letting his whole torso lie flat on the short table extension of the main counter.

The light click of a plate resonated in the empty restaurant. “You’re lucky,” the grey-haired one said, monotone response making the other look up to the large, meat-filled onigiri waiting for him on the porcelain plate. “Fresh shipment just came in this morning.” At the entrance of the building, the bell attached to the door sang lightly as it opened. Notifying your entrance, while a cool autumn breeze rolled past you. “Speaking of shipment. (L/N), the pumpkin sauce came in!”

You unravelled the scarf around your neck as you walked, giving your boss a large grin that made him gulp slightly. “Really? That's amazing, Miya..” The blond, noticing the other man’s reaction upon your entrance, spun in his chair, making his honey brown eyes meet yours. “There’s t-two. Two of you?” The scarf you had taken off sat limply in your hand as you stared off blankly at the two identical men.

“(L/N), this is my brother. You can call him Atsumu.”

The blonde sent you a small vibrating wave and a smirk, leaning his elbow against the counter as he tilted his head in your direction. With tightened brows and a tight, awkward smile, you nodded in response, bowing as your hand began to grip your colourful scarf a bit tighter. The blond followed up his brother’s introduction. “If you’re gonna call me Atsumu, you might as well address him as Samu.”

“Samu?” You questioned.

Over the table, ‘Samu’ smacked his brother with the black cap from his head. Hitting his shoulder with a loud smack before facing you. “Osamu is fine.”

You nodded hesitantly before bowing again. “Call me (Y/N), then. The both of you.” Facing your silver-haired boss, who still gripped his black baseball cap tightly between his fingers, you pointed to the back room with a meek smile. “I’m gonna go put my stuff down. Sorry for being a bit behind. I was up late working on an essay.”

Osamu nodded. “Sure thing, I have a new recipe for you to try out when you come back out,” giving you an understanding smile before ushering you off to the back, watching the folds of your jacket move with each step. He gulped. As soon as your back fell behind the door frame's edge, he weaponized his flimsy hat again, making the older twin howl as the top button hit his temple.

“What was that for?!” the fake blond screeched.

Osamu sent him a deadly glare. “Don’t flirt with my employee. They’re too young for you.”

“We’re the same age, Samu,” Atsumu teased, as he dropped his voice a couple of semitones. “I don’t see you restraining yourself.”

Atsumu left Onigiri Miya with a number of small bruises running along his hairline that morning. Though, he refused to leave without sending you a request to watch his upcoming game. “I want to have everyone watching,” he said, forgetting to even tell you what you’d be seeing, leaving his younger twin to take the burden.

You sat on one of the red plush stools, swinging it side to side and Osamu stood on the other side of the counter, onigiri filled plate in hand. He wore a hesitant grin as he set the plate down in front of you. Then, he started talking as he walked around the counter. “They’re slightly different than the ones I usually make so they look a bit weird, but we had the ingredients so I thought I'd play around with the different flavours.”

The store was empty. As expected for an early Saturday morning. It was also windy outside, making the inside of Onigiri Miya feel that much warmer as the howling wind ran loudly against the glass wall of the entrance, occasionally making the polyester awning above the entrance flap around like paper.

You gave him an encouraging smile as he walked around your seated form, nearest hand brushing over the length of your shoulders through the black sweater. A chill ran down your spine as his hand fell from the end of your shoulder. He sat down beside you, spinning the stool to face you head-on, much like how you both were during your interview. “I’m sure they taste great. What are the fillings?” you asked, reaching for one-half of the two pairs of onigiri on the plate.

“Well, since the pumpkin sauce came in, I figured I would play around with it a bit,” he said, reaching for one of his own.

Once you bit into the centre of the rice ball the smooth sweet flavour of the sauce rolled over your tongue. The orange sauce dyed the rice on the inside, making the colour soak in the individual grains. You let the flavour sit on your tongue for a moment. “Were you going for a sweet onigiri?”

Osamu chuckled a bit. “Kind of. I made the other one more savoury though.”

You looked at the other slightly misshapen onigiri on the plate, then up at the maker of them, meeting his eyes with a kind supportive smile. “The choice is yours,” you said, taking one off the platter and taking a large bite out of it. “But I think they’re both pretty tasty.”

“Really?” he asked, resting his elbows on his knees, leaning toward you in earnest. “Not too sweet or bland?”

“They’re perfect. Just like the chef who made them," you complimented happily.

Osamu flushed slightly, trying to pout as he chewed away at his onigiri. "You don't have to be so nice, they still look a bit lopsided."

"Does the appearance of the food really matter? I thought the taste was the biggest factor," you teased lightly. Whenever you made a brew for a customer, most never really cared if there was a cute design sprinkled on the top, or if the layers were visible from the side of their plastic cup if they took it to go. All you ever focused on was the taste, and when the 7 am rush comes through, patrons are typically too tired to even care about the look so long as they get their dose of coffee in.

"Do you never look at the exterior of things? Most consumers judge their first impressions of things based on their appearance. Like book covers."

You furrowed your brow. "I've never really thought about it. A lot of the books I read are digital now so there's no need for a fancy cover."

"What about people then," he prompted, leaning further forward, forcing you to maintain eye contact with him. His normally grey eyes seemed to hold tints of the honey brown from those of his sibling. "Have you ever... let's say, been attracted to someone based on their appearance alone?"

Your gaze shot back and forth between his eyes and the fringe of his silver lightly brushing over his eyebrow before finally settling on his left, blown out pupil that started more directly at yours. "Maybe subconsciously." It came out in a light whisper.

The bell at the entrance rang, a ragged, tired looking suit-clad woman wobbled in. Eyes blinking slowly as she waved her hand in the air. "Light roast, double shot espresso with whipped cream! I am running late!"

You shot out of your seat, knocking off Osamu's hat by the brim with your own, before grabbing a mug from over the counter and rushing to the mixtures. "On it!"

"Thank you," she panted, handing her card to Osamu to ring up.

Your head and shoulder twitched as you bounced on your toes outside the glass wall of Onigiri Miya. The wet concrete and frozen air of the early morning made the idea of curling against the polished glass with your face tucked into your scarf all the more tempting. Another silver tickled your spine.

Groaning you spun around to face the golden brown and red streets. Wind carried the dry leaves over their drowned sibling until falling into a puddle themselves. You closed your eyes, trying to redirect the heat in your body to your hands that were tucked into your pockets, clenched tightly.

Something cold lightly smacked against your nose and eyelids.

Cracking your eyes open, your lashes pushed against a brown decaying wall that blocked out all the light of the early morning. When it was away, leaving a cold residue behind, the light made your squint.

“You're here early,” the silver haired man said, tossing the old leaf over his shoulder before pulling a collection of keys from his coat pocket and gently tucked you out of the door with his free hand. Opening it up, he placed the keys into his back jean pocket.

“Did you just give me a face mask with an old leaf?”

“Sure did,” he said, matter-a-factly. “Why are you here so early? You’re not a morning person.”

You followed him through the glass door, letting him take the responsibility of flicking off the lights as you pulled your coats and scarf off. “You said today was your brother's game, I didn’t know what time, so I figured I'd be here a bit early.”

Mouth open, Osamu stared at you without blinking, as if searching for a joke. “You know most post games happen in the evening right?”

“So I’m here early for nothing then.”

The two of you walked through the empty restaurant, coats slung over your arms as you conversed.

“I wouldn’t say nothing,” he teased, hanging up his coat on the hanger in the back, lifting the bottom hem of his shirt slightly. “You get to work.”

“Yay,” you yawned, reaching for your uniform sweatshirt.

“For money.” He added.

He had trouble making you laugh throughout the morning, only receiving yawns and frustrated pout in response as you made coffee for all the equally tired customers.

You’ve never seen a volleyball game before, only ever having tried to play during gym class in high school. On top of that, you never understood the rules, but you blamed that on the phys ed teacher rather than your own inability.

The live recording of Astumu’s game was being played on multiple sports channels. It got pulled up on the large screen of the tv that sat against the wall 30 minutes before the game even started. Osamu stood with you and Taichi —who had made it to work at a reasonable time to watch the game—, explaining the rules and positions over layers of customer chatter, as he made onigiri in view of the game instead of in the back where he normally worked. He pointed to the screen.

“That’s Hinata in the opposite hitter position. He pretty much does the same thing as Bokuto,” he shifted his arms angle to point to the duo-tones haired player on the screen. “An outside hitter.” Then, facing you, he watched as your nose scrunched in thought.

“What makes them different, then?” Beside you, Taichi nodded along, handing a customer a plate of onigiri.

“Their orientation with the setter,” Osamu replied. Before letting out a loud cheer, fist clenched and elbow tucking quickly into his side as his brother scored another point.

You let out a loud, exasperated laugh, shaking your head slightly. “There are a lot of rules and stuff you want me to memorize.” On the other side of the counter, a girl came up to stand in front of you, asking for a pumpkin spice latte. “Sure thing. Taichi, ring her up for me would you?” you asked, making your way to the coffee machines that sat along the length of the counters, continuing to talk to Osamu.

You looked at the available ingredients. “We’re gonna need more pumpkin sauce.”

“I’ll order it. Is it that confusing?” He asked, following you to the machines.

Mug in hand, you gave Osamu an unsure look as you reached for the whipped cream, stretching your arm only to knock it farther away. “A little? But at least their mascot is cute.”

“The black jackal?” he laughed, taking hold of the whipped sugar and placing it in your open palm, to which you smiled in thanks. He quickly diverted his gaze, staring at the blank walls as he bit inside of his cheek. “Didn’t even bother to listen to me ramble then, too busy gushing over the cute mascot. I thought visual exteriors weren’t important to you.”

“Oh shut up, I was listening,” you scoffed haughtily, smacking Osamu’s shoulder as you walked past his tall figure to give the girl her mug. “And he was interacting with the young fans, it was cute.” You looked at the clock. “It’s 6:30, I’m gonna take my break. I got an essay to write.”

Taichi laughed mockingly. “Good luck. We’ll hold down the fort.”

Osamu watched your back as you walked away, adjusting his hat as he turned to face the upcoming customer that had just walked in.

“Bake at 450? Oh, that's Fahrenheit? Why, though? Okay, got it. Oh shit, did preheat it too much then?”

Juri, as lovely a lady as she is, had terrible handwriting, or terrible in your opinion because you couldn’t read it. Whether it was a letter, or note for an order of cookies and bread, the intricate curls of her connected lettering always made your brain feel like it hit a brick wall. Holding the book in your right hand, you used the other to carry the tray of separated butter cookie dough and hooked your foot underneath the oven handle to pull it open. Still glaring at the writing, you slowly lowered the metal tray onto the racks.

“Hey, (Y/N)! Can—”

“Fuck!”

Taichi let himself in, turning the corner of your kitchen counter to quickly pull your hand away from the immense heat source. You clenched your teeth tightly, airy and painful laugh falling through your grimace. Dropping the notebook, you wrapped your hand around your left wrist, squeezing it tightly as Taichi helped you stand up. An endless series of insults left you, directed at the large cubic fire instrument.

“Okay cold water, here we go.” Taichi then left your side to finish tucking in the metal tray, silicone glove on his hand. He turned back around to see you hunched form leaning over the running sink, choppy breaths flying out of you. “Why are you baking?” he scolded.

“Oh, I can’t bake now?”

“You’ve never been able to bake.”

“Oh screw you, dude. I’m trying to learn a new skill.”

“Learning how to kill, more like it.”

Hand still stuck under the cold running water, and pain still crawling up your arm like red ants deciding to feast on your flesh, you slowly turned your head to face the younger boy, smacking your lips. You glared, “Why are you here, Taichi?”

The new university student dug his socked toe into the tiled floor of your kitchen. Pursing his lips and sending you a pair of finger guns as soon as he met your glare. He lowered them when you didn’t laugh. “I was hoping you could take care of my closing shift tonight? I have a group assignment due tomorrow and no one did any work.”

Spinning your head and torso uncomfortably to look behind you, you stared at the clock on your wall. You bit your lip. “Taichi, your shift starts at 6.”

“Uh, ya.”

“It’s 5:30.”

“Uh-huh,” he continued, barefaced, as he tucked his hands into his jean pockets.

“You're working here and waiting for the cookie timer to go off.”

Taichi nodded, moving his feet to look at the oven counting down. “Okay, got it. Do I get to eat some of them?”

You sneered at him as your blistered hand throbbed painfully at the movement of you grabbing your things, notebook included, in haste. “If they don’t kill you.”

“Osamu! I’m so sorry for being late!” You yelled rushing through the main door and startling a few customers. You ran towards the staff only door unravelling the warm scarf from around your neck and letting your jacket fall off your shoulders as you went.

Osamu’s eyes followed your frazzled movements, chuckling lightly as you kicked the wooden door open. He yelled through the door as you changed into your cozy uniform. “Calm down, (Y/N). You’re not late. Taichi called in too, so don’t worry.”

You poked your head through the door, brows pinched in the center before slowly walking up to stand next to him. “So I’m not late?” you asked, adjusting your hat.

The customers had gone back to their individual activities, typing away at their computers or reading whatever book in hand or chatting over a simple brew and snack Osamu had put together for them. You looked out the front window, the sun was already beginning to set over the darkening leaves, letting a warm glow pour in through the glass to cover every surface inside the cafe despite the temperature outside being the opposite.

The evening was spent with both of you helping the late-night customers with their requests, often having to dance around each other's forms with a light ‘sorry’ or ‘excuse me’ to notify the other.

“Thank you both. Have a good night!” the last customer called, waving, as they walked through the door.

Osamu waved back as you collected the mugs and plates that were left at the tables, taking them to the back room. “I’m gonna wash these up then take my break. Is that alright?”

“No problem, we probably won't see anyone else for the night so I can handle it.”

The door swung shut behind you.

When you turned on the tap hot water poured out quickly, and without thinking much of it, you stuck your left hand under it. You flinched, letting out a strangled yelp before switching the water to cold, letting it wash over somehow forgotten burn on the back of your hand. You sighed at your own stupidity, grabbing a dirty plate. Luckily the dishes were quick to clean, the light music you set up on your computer beforehand helped. Before you even realized, the dishes were washed and dried, and you could get some work done on your essay.

You sat down on the couch futon, blowing cold air onto your burnt hand that you switched tabs on your laptop. The constant yawns escaping you only seemed to make lying on the slightly deformed seat way more tempting than trying to get some school work done.

“Can’t do beauty standards, everyone’s gonna do beauty standards,” you yawned again, taking your fingers off the keyboard and turning your eyes away from the bright screen. Your eyes burned as you closed them, leaning your head back against the back of the folded futon. Another yawn. “Maybe books covers?” you breathed slowly. “Hmmm.”

On the other side of the door, Osamu wiped down the table seats and counters until they were spotless, letting the red vinyl and wood patterns shine through uninterrupted. As he cleaned the glass front, squeegeeing it to crystal clear perfection, Osamu watched as the last bit of sunlight that bounced off the top of the buildings across the street disappeared. It suddenly looked a lot colder in the streets.

Hanging up the damp towel, he made his way into the backroom, flicking off the lights in the main area as he walked through the door. “(Y/N) how’s the essay going?” he trailed off, catching sight of your curled up body lying sideways along the old couch, laptop continuing to play a soft tune.

You had one foot off the couch, touching the floor, and another resting on the wooden armrest. The open legged sweats you often wore were crunched up at the knees. Your torso was twisted so you were partially on your side and your hands were pulled into your chest. Mouth slightly parted, Osamu could hear your small breaths as your chest rose and fell.

He chuckled, walking over to your side, and glancing slightly to your screen. The essay you had been rushing to complete was left open, unfinished. He closed the computer, tucking it into your bag, pulling out a small notebook to make space. The bookmarked page fell open as he set in down on the table. With a curious huff, he read the recipe over.

“Huh, simple enough.”

As he reached to gently shake your shoulder in hopes to wake you up, he caught sight of the burn that ran along the back of your hand. Huffing, he lifted his hand, put the book back in its place —tucked between your laptop and the side of your bag—, and walked over to where the first aid kit was.

A scratchy hum was the first noise you made upon waking up. Bleary-eyed, and drained of energy, you slowly blink up to see your hand being gently wrapped in a soft cloth-like bandage. You squinted up to the black-clothed man as he fastened the bandage together.

“Did I really fall asleep?” you asked sadly, voice slightly hoarse. “I have to… write.”

The light in the room was dreadfully bright, making you squint as you tried to look at Osamu’s face. All his features were hard to see, leaving only his hair as an anchor point for you to admire as the light bounced off of it.

He said something, but in your delirious state, all you could make out was the smooth deep hum of his voice reverberating in your head like a slow waltz. You hummed again, letting out a lethargic ‘nice’. Your eyes shut again, and you drifted off to his low, breathy chuckle. An unconscious mumble followed, but you were too tired to hear his immediate response.

“Come on (Y/N),” he cooed, massaging your shoulder gently. “Time to wake up.”

Another incoherent mumble bubbled out of your mouth as Osamu tried to sit you up. Your head bobbled as you moved to be upright, falling backwards before he could catch it. Chuckling at his own mistake, he stuck an arm out, curling his hand around the back of your neck to bring it forward again. As he cradled your head gently in one hand, he used the other to continue prodding at your shoulder.

“Okay, sleepyhead. You gotta wake up now.”

There are those moments where people wake up and they think they see an alien, or shadowy figure at the edge of their bed. Those scary figures that seemed to carry a negative connotation a majority of the time. Most people, if they were to wake up, eyes fuzzy, and see a silhouette immediately before them they would very likely think the same, flail about, and duck for cover. You were not most people.

Eyelids hanging millimetres away from shutting, you gazed drowsily at the blurry from before you, tired mind trying to put together the dark shape as your body swayed back and forth. Falling forward slightly to get a closer look.

Osamu grunted slightly, catching your limp weight. The hand he used to rub your shoulder had now made its way around your back, lifting you from a different angle. His other hand still protected your neck from strain, holding your head closer to his chest. He looked down at your hazy gaze, perfectly timed with your own sudden need to lean upwards.

A near chortle of a huff forced its way out of Osamu’s nose, painting your cheek in warm air as your eyes shut fully. The feeling of your lashes dancing against the bridge of his nose tickled, making his shoulders scrunched up slightly. His grip tightened, pulling you ever so slightly closer. The light scent emitting off of your hair washed over him like a wave of fresh air, and the heat radiating off your body felt like a warm blanket on a cold night. There was a light tug at the end of his sweater as you wrapped the fabric gently between your fingers. Tough dried from being parted in your sleep, Osamu could feel the malleability of your lips as they pushed against his.

This one last surge forward, you let your arms relax, falling almost entirely limp in Osamu’s arms as you pulled away.

He blinked slowly, trying to look at the colour of your eyes between the slits of your lashlines.

Another warm hum left you was your head curled into his shoulder. “Cute.”

Osamu scoffed quietly to himself, laughing as he shook his head. “You never stop lying.”

Osamu liked to think he was a nice brother, a good brother, the best even. He kept his twin out of trouble, made sure he didn’t get injured and protected him from bullies. All for the payment of letting Osamu torment him for all eternity with repeated punches and kicks. Osamu liked to think he was a nice brother, but he wasn’t.

“Assumu, shut up or I’m gonna punch the daylight out of you.”

“Vulgar. That’s a new one, Samu. Try me.”

Hinata grabbed hold of the blond twin’s forearm as he made taunting motions to his brother, pinning it down onto the table. The smaller red-head cried out for the two brothers to stop, calling for Bokuto’s aid.

“Ya, both of you stop it. I’m trying to eat here.”

From behind his white mask, Sakusa let out an exasperated sigh, brushing a hand through his wavy hair at the part. “Would you all calm down?”

Atsumu teased out a laugh as he settled back into his seat between Hinata and Bokuto, who both happily went back to eating their donated snacks. The blonde leaned his elbows onto the counter and bounced a leg beneath him as he looked up to his uniform wearing brother.

“So,” he drawled, smirking at the grey-haired man. “You kissed (Y/N). While they were asleep no less. Doesn’t that seem kind of rapey to you?”

Osamu groaned, ripping the black cap off his head before throwing his arms into the air. “I didn’t force it! (Y/N) was hardly even awake, definitely in some sort of dreamscape, and then just kissed me.” He groaned again, knocking his forehead into one of the coffee machines, making it rattle lightly.

“Damn,” Atsumu replied, finally relenting his mockery and reached for his own onigiri. “Guess I lost my chance then. Do you know if they even remembered it though?”

Setting down his hat, Osamu walked around the counter, pulling up a chair from one of the tables to sit with the four teammates, making them spin in the stools.

“No idea. I just drove (Y/N) back to the university dorms with Taichi’s help.”

Bokuto’s muffled voice spoke up, as he tried to talk through his full mouth. “How is Taichi doing anyway. It’s been a while since we’ve seen him.”

Osamu grimaced at the visible mushed rice poking out between the duo-toned man’s teeth. “He had a project to finish, that’s why (Y/N) was here last night. Overall he’s been doing good though.”

Hinata swallowed his last bit of onigiri, turning the top of his stool to face the older man more clearly. “When will we get to meet (Y/N), then? We could probably see them both at the same time.”

Osamu scrunched his nose up, digging his face into the palms of his hands and let out a tired, run-down laugh. “Hopefully soon if I don’t get arrested for sexual misconduct.”

Sakusa glanced at the drink orders that were written in chalk against the side wall. “Hey Atsumu,” he switched the subject. “Can you make me a pumpkin spice latte?”

Sighing, the owner of the restaurant got up from his chair and walked back to the coffee machines he had earlier abused with his forehead. “I can give it a go, but it definitely won’t be up to (Y/N)’s standards.”

Sakusa just waved it off, not caring.

“I mean, they’re still bad, but at least they’re better than last time.”

You stopped your slow typing and let out a puff of hot air. “If you actually helped maybe you’d be eating better cookies.”

“Hey hey, no no no,” Taichi laughed, munching into another dry cookie from the pile. “You’re the one that wanted to learn a new skill.”

You threw your head back into the soft couch of your living room and grabbed one of the throw pillows from the corner, shoving your face into it to muffle your angered scream. Running out of air, you dropped the pillow into your lap, shutting your eye tightly as you panted for air.

“Here,” he said, stuffing one of the burnt biscuits into your open mouth. “Eat a cookie.”

Taking the box of poorly made cookies with him, Taichi stood up from the wooden bench at your kitchen counter and made his way to flop down onto the other side of your couch. He stuffed another straight into his mouth as he kicked his slipper clad feet onto the coffee table right next to your laptop.

“So, What’s got you all wound up? It has to be more than these cookies.”

“I,” you paused, taking a large intake of decaying leaf air into your lungs through the open window. You got up, wiping your hands on your well worn sweats, and shut the window lightly, so the only thing coming in though it would be the view of red leaves. The palms of your hands dug into the window sill. “I need to get this essay done. It’s due in two days.”

“Not buying it. Keep going,” he said, flicking his finger in a circular motion in the air.

You sighed, still looking at the old piles of leaves in the courtyard outside your dorm. “My baking skills still suck, this essay is due in two days, and I still haven’t written the personal reflection portion of it.” You spun around and leaned against the window, challenging Taichi’s disapproving expression.

He tsked, sucking in the air. “There’s something you're not telling me. What happened?”

You quickly diverted your gaze to the top corner near the exit. Your nails made a clicking sound as they flicked against each other. “I, I can’t.”

“(Y/N),” he strained.

“Nope.”

“(Y/N).”

“I can’t.” You played with the bandage on your hand.

“(Y/N). You’re lying to yourself.”

“I’m gonna get fired.”

Taichi stood up from the couch, stalking over in your direction, meaning to pin you into the corner. He stood tall in front of you, arm crossed as if he were a principal. “(Y/N), what happened?”

“I kissed our boss.”

“You did what?”

You squeaked uncomfortably, thrashing your arms about and shaking your hands to calm your nerves. Head thrown back, you yelled. “I kissed Osamu!”

His arm dropped. Taichi threw his back into a curve, spinning around as he laughed wildly in sharp honks. “That’s amazing!” he squealed, throwing himself onto the couch and kicking his feet into the plush armrest.

“Shut up, I could get fired!”

Taichi, gasping for air, sat up from his fit of giggles and sighed. “Okay, what the hell happened?”

You puffed out an annoyed gulp of air and waddled over to the couch, slumping into the open space next to him. He leaned forward, beckoning you to talk.

“I was half awake, delirious after trying to write an essay about fucking aesthetics and attraction of all things. Osamu tries to wake me up, and I plant a big one on him before falling asleep again.”

Taichi laughed, happy to hear your tale. “That’s what happened yesterday? I just thought you were overworked.”

“I was!” He smirked, watching you squirm around. “Don’t take it out of context, you know what I'm talking about.”

“Fine, fine.” He relented and reached for the half-empty box of cookies, holding it in your direction. “Eat one. You need it.”

You frowned as you bit into the over-salted cookie, swallowing it as fast as you could before the taste settled in your mouth.

“Besides,” He said, grabbing another for himself. “I don’t think getting fired is something you’ll have to worry about.”

Long night shift. The sun had fully set, making the neighbouring stores’ exterior decorations glow in all their spooky glory. You shivered as you yawned, feeling cold air run over the length of your shoulders underneath your sweater.

With a spray bottle and damp towel, you swiped down all the counters, really digging into the coffee stains that were left by an overworked mother and her grumpy toddler. For the umpteenth time that night, another yawn tore it’s way out of you as you walked toward the sink behind the counter to wash the dirtied cloth. You kept your bandaged hand out of the hot water, doing your best to just use the one.

After ringing out the both you grabbed one of the clean mugs from the counter, stalking over to the coffee machines to whip up something for yourself. You yawned again.

“Tired?” From the backroom, Osamu emerged, hands tucked neatly behind his back.

“Hmm? Oh ya. I’m whipping up a pumpkin spice mocha of sorts. Don’t want to fall asleep again.”

Osamu coughed and leaned against the counter next to you, setting down a small box that you didn’t bother to look at, too busy with your coffee. “Ah, right. Do you mind making one for me too? I’d like to be coherent, tonight. I’ll grab some fresh onigiri too.” He smiled at you.

Trying to beat the heat that was quickly climbing up your neck to try and darken the colour of your cheeks, you bit your lip and poured all your focus into the orange-hued liquid in front of you. Behind you, Osamu reached for the freshly made onigiri from the chilled display case. You could hear the fabric of his sweater shuffle as he bent down to pull it out. You reached for the whipped cream with your eye tightly sewn shut.

“Got it,” he said as you turned around with both mugs in hand.

Once in the back room, you set down both mugs onto the table, before sitting down in one of the corners of the futon, letting him take up the other half. Osamu sat down slowly, pushing the second onigiri your way. “Eat up. You can restore some energy.”

You thanked him before taking a bite from the rice ball, it was filled with spicy salmon. Smiling, you took another bite.

Osamu took a sip from his coffee, trying to lick off the leftover whipped cream from his upper lip. It looked like a small mustache, and you laughed.

“Enjoying the food, over there?”

You chuckled again. “It’s great, but. Jeez, you have a mustache.”

Osamu grumbled, whipping the top of his lip with his thumb. “Here,” he said, grabbing the small box off the table and holding it out to you. “These are for you.”

Setting down the half-eaten Onigiri, hesitantly took the box between your fingers. You gave him a confused look as you brought it into your lap. Lifting up the attached paper lid, you found yourself staring at a small collection of cookies, iced and cut to look like the adorable black jackal mascot from his brother's team.

“I saw the recipe in your notebook that...night. I wanted to make you something as an apology, and you said that the mascot was cute.” You looked up to see him scratched back of his head, staring pensively into his mug before glancing up to meet your eyes. He flinched back, pursing his lips and racing to look at the mug again.

“You don’t have to apologize, Osamu. I initiated it.” you reached into the box, pulling out one of the cookies and took a small bite out of the jackal’s ear. “I didn’t hate it either.”

You chuckled in embarrassment, watching from the side as his ears turned a rosy colour. Taking another bite from the cookie, you leaned forward a bit, trying to catch sight of his pink cheeks through his hanging fringe. You prodded.

��I did call you cute too, remember?”

Your fingers danced over your laptop’s keyboard.

I don’t often find myself thinking about the way aesthetics affect my opinions. Looks, trends, and opinions are always evolving and changing. I don’t have the capacity to keep up with such superficial things in the same way a majority of people do. Though, on a rare occasion, I will find something endearing enough to call ‘cute’. /

Outside your window, you could see the last few leaves fall off their branches. You sat down, curled up on your dorm’s couch as you saved the final copy of your essay, nibbling away at the cookies that sat on the table next to you, pumpkin spice latte in hand.

This is now the longest thing I’ve written thus far, and so the next few I write will be short cause I’m lazy.

Once again, this oneshot is part of a fall themed server collab, the masterlist is linked at the top, so I recommend that you give all the other stories a read, I would appreciate it. -Bacon

Posted: 25/09/2020

44 notes · View notes

peachyteabuck · 4 years

Text

eye on the prize

summary: commission for astrid, who asked for chris evans x reader interview fluff.

pairing: chris evans x reader

words: 3,006

trigger warnings: RPF, slow burn, heavy flirtation, idiots in love, nondescript mentions of misogyny in the media as a business, a likely poorly reconstructed timeline (time fake and reality is a construct!)

ask box / masterlist / commission info / ko-fi

The hotel bed is large, big enough for four of you. The blankets are thick and the soft, the pillows a perfect balance of structured but plush. Sunbeams stream onto the mused sheets, warming your face. It’s nice, but only as nice as the calm before a major tropical storm can be. As your phone alarm blares next to you, you start to wonder if being caught in a category five hurricane would be better than press junkets.

A whole day talking to people about a movie you made months ago that you know jack shit about. Sometimes you have nightmares about giving a book report on a novel you’ve never even opened (you’re how old? And high school is still haunting you? Jesus, you need to go back to therapy) that cause you to break out in a cold sweat and kick all the covers from your bed and buy a bunch of stuff online to distract yourself from your racing heart and shaking hands.

Still, those are never as bad as interviewers asking about character arcs and plotlines and your relationship with actors you’ve barely (if ever) met and whatever else a normal interviewer would ask a normal interviewee when all you know is your character, the fact that she does shit with magic, and she’s Dr. Strange’s daughter. Anything other than that is anyone’s guess.

Your stylist and makeup artists are the ones to eventually drag you out of bed and plop you into hair and makeup after squeezing you into an incredibly tight pair of jeans and a non-controversial sweater. The forty-five minutes are a complete blur, but then again, nothing feels real until Sebastian hands you a large coffee in a travel cup that bares no logo or other kind of copywritten signifier – your knight in shining…cardboard? What are travel coffee cups even made of? Paper? Can paper even “shine?”

You’re nearly purring when the taste of caramel macchiato burns your tongue. “Ah. Thanks, Seb. I appreciate it.”

Sebastian shrugs, sipping at his own drink masquerading as generic brand. “No problem. I didn’t want you to bite an interviewer’s head off this morning. Or worse, mine.”

You play-hit him in the face and laugh with him, making small talk and trying to kill the time before the mind-numbingly long day really begins. You’re halfway through a rant about the woes of make up artists trying to put you in a full face of makeup to a man who barely has to put on concealer, the fucking asshat, when Chris makes an appearance.

“Hey, guys,” he’s is also drinking coffee from the unmarked travel cups. He looks you up and down before taking another sip. “You look really nice today.”

You blush, smoothing out your sweater – one of the color-blocked ones that sits at the intersection of casual, feminine, and not-intimidating. “Thanks, you too.”

Sebastian’s about to say something snarky when someone wearing a headset calls upon the three of you.

“Let’s get going, people!” she calls, ushering you into three barely-comfortable seats. You’re between Chris and Sebastian, the sheer mass of them making you feel approximately three feet tall. It doesn’t take much to forget how large they both are – even if Sebastian doesn’t weight two hundred pounds anymore and Chris was able to tone down his exercise regime since finishing Infinity War, you still feel like you’re sitting at the big-kid table for the first time.

The first interviewer is from some YouTube channel you only know because your fourteen-year-old niece gushes about them every family dinner. The woman who sits in front of you is young, cute. Dresses trendy, dark eye makeup and red lips.

She’s nice, too, along with being knowledgeable about the projects of each of you. She banters with Sebastian about his seven million movies before turning to you.

The interviewer turns to you. “And you! You’re nominated for some pretty major awards!”

You smile wide, unable to help yourself. “Yeah, best actress and best original score.”

“That’s so cool,” Chris mumbles. You blush and pretend not to hear him as you speak again.

“It’s just super crazy,” you tell the interviewer. “Not even gonna lie. When I was younger, I would look at stars who like, cried when they found out they were nominated. Not even winning, just their name shows up on the ballot. But now I’m like, it’s me, two-time Grammy nominee! I was nominated for a Grammy, twice!”

Sebastian chimes in, laughing. “When we were at bunch together, I got there early and the caterer showed up and they were like, we’re here for the two-time Grammy nominee?”

“You had a brunch?” The interviewer asks.

You nod. “Yeah, I bunch of the Avengers cast and the cast from my last movie were in my hometown, which is super rare, so I hosted this giant brunch-”

“As one does,” Sebastian chimes in with a crooked smile.

You nearly hit him. “Yes! As I do! I wanted to see all my friends, whom I love, so I host a brunch. Sue me! Anyway…I hosted this brunch and invited a bunch of people over. Just a bunch of my favorite food from my favorite restaurants. Everyone I’d wanted to see for such a long time was there. It was amazing.”

The interviewer paints a faux frown across her face, looking at the man on your right. “Chris, you look very sad.”

“I didn’t get invited to the brunch,” Chris frowns. Unlike the woman in front of you, he looks genuinely sad. A twinge of pain bounces in your ribcage, and you rub his cardigan-clad back

“You were out doing Broadway shit!” you laugh. “You were halfway across the country!”

Chris continues to frown, staring at the printed-out pictures from the social medias of various guests. A few are from yours – you in a flowy sundress with your head thrown back laughing, a shot of you and a few of your friends from college drinking alcohol in the bright mid-afternoon sun. One you recognize from Sebastian’s Instagram, another from Hemsworth’s. A few from Twitter of a few of your non-movie-star friends. You look so happy in all of them, so beautiful in each shot. “I still wanted to be invited.”

You just roll your eyes. “Okay, call me when you’re in my region of the country and I’ll host a brunch,” You touch your forefinger to his nose. Chris blushes, profusely, in his cheeks and his ears. “just for you and me.”

You don’t hear much after that, too focused on Chris’ eyes meeting yours and his small smile. You’re taken aback by how sweet, tender he looks, and before you know it the interviewer is saying goodbye and the next one is taking her place.

It’s a man this time, a little older than the last one with artsy facial hair and a button hip. He mostly pays attention to the two men and soon your brain goes on battery-saver and you’re lost in your own thoughts.

Are hipsters still a thing? Is that what this guy is trying to be? Do hipsters even like Marvel? Is that too “mainstream for them?”

Eventually he asks a question about you, your recent entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, your music, your composing. You’d be happy to talk about your passions, of course you are, but the first genuine question of the interview is positing towards…not you. You’re about to tune everything out again, but then Chris speaks and you snap back to attention.

“It’s always interesting to meet people who bring something new to the art form, ya know? A huge part of acting is learning and evolving and all that, especially from other actors,” Chris avoids your gaze, and the gaze of everyone else, as he speaks. “If you stop learning, if you stop growing, what’s the point? Why would I do this job if I didn’t think it could change me for the better?”

There’s a moment of thick silence, the heavy weight of Chris’ introspective answer settling over the people in the room. It’s one of the things you lo-

It’s one of the things you enjoy most about Chris, how dedicated he is to acting as more than a job. It’s amazing, truly, how much he adores what he does. You could spend the rest of time with him, a plate of cheese, and a bottle of wine; listening to him talk about how he thinks of acting as an art, how that art can impact people and society, how actors have a responsibility to that art (that is, of course, after you mock him endlessly for Not Another Teen Movie and Fantastic Four).

You feel like a high schooler again, doodling your first and his last name in hearts in your math notebook with your favorite pink glitter pen. You’re an adult, why are you blushing red as a raspberry every time he says something smarter than a fast food order?!

The rest of the day goes down in a blur, the only time you start to care again when someone on the production staff calls for dinner (yeah, no lunch on press junket day. You can ask for a light snack, but you learned the hard way a full meal is “bad for your figure” and “makes you likely to burp on camera” and a bunch of other stuff you care very little about).

All three of you groan in happiness when you enter the room designated as craft, the thick smell of barbeque hitting you like a baseball bat. But a good baseball bat, though, like…one you ask to be hit with. Honestly, you have no idea what you’re talking about because you’re so hungry.

When you finally manage to scavenge food, Sebastian’s right behind you as you stare at a very delicious looking tray of pulled pork. Your plate is already full, but what if they take the food away? And then what if you get hungry later?

“You know he’s flirting with you, right?” he whispers as you watch the man in question scroll through Twitter on his phone. Chris is eating about the same thing you are, plus celery. You almost make a quip about it being “nature’s floss,” but then you realize that would be dumb because Sebastian definitely wouldn’t find it as funny as Chris would.

You shrug, picking up a French fry from your plate. “Yeah, but you were, too.”

He scoffs into his second Americano of the morning. “Nah. Not like that. He likes you! He like likes you!”

“He does not-“

“And you like-like him!” He boops you on the nose and pinches your cheek like some sort of grandmother who hadn’t seen her fifteen-year-old son since he was five. “My little baby has a cruuuush!” he coos while making small kissy noises.

You’re about to bite back about how you’re not that much younger than him, but then the sound guy on the other side of the meat tray glares at the both of you. Looks like, while Chris couldn’t hear your bickering from the across the room, this dude definitely could – and he’s not very happy about it.

“Sorry,” you both mumble, shrinking away from the persecuting techie and his judgmental eyes.

Sebastian only talks again when you find an unpopulated corner, devoid of prying eyes and anyone who could be annoyed with the two of you gossiping like high schoolers.

“You know I’m not wrong, right?” he says around a bite of crisp apple. What is up with this guy and fruit? Sure, he’s on a restrictive diet for a role to keep him from bulking up (something at the intersect of keto and vegetarian but able to eat lean meats) but he’s can’t eat like, the vegan stuff? Why must he always eat like rabbit in your presence? “Have you not seen what he says on Twitter?”

You scoff. “No, because I don’t have a Twitter. And neither do you!” You narrow your eyes accusingly. “How do you know what he posts?” Sebastian rolls his eyes. “I see screenshots on Instagram, first of all. Second, he could be complimenting your music on the inside of a cave. It’s about the principle.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” you hiss. “Also, I’m done arguing with you about this. Let me find a cheeseburger and eat in peace. Is that too much a woman to ask, Sebastian!?”

He just laughs you off and lets you eat in peace, eventually getting his own food. Though, you suppose the meal was specially timed, because then Chris Evans is sitting next to you.

He’s about to say something, too, and you’re about to listen, but then you get called for an individual interview for a women’s health magazine and you have to leave him and you plate of food and fuck…you hate this job. A lot.

The interview is boring, once again, and the next time you have another coherent thought you’re taking the elevator back up to your hotel room and waving off your manager, who is telling you to be downstairs by seven tomorrow to catch your flight back home.

You’re just kicking off your heels when you hear a faint knock at the door. When you look through the peephole, you see a very sad-looking Christopher Evans. With his small frown and hunched shoulders, he looks like a kicked puppy; and even though all you want to do is take your bra off, you let him in.

He’s quiet for a moment before speaking as if he was a child preparing to be scolded.

“I lost my hotel key. And my backup got demagnetized.”

You bite back a laugh, trying to seem sympathetic. “Do you want to chill in here until security brings you another one?”

Chris nods solemnly as he steps through the threshold. “Thanks.”

Neither of you speak for a while, instead Chris looks around your quite messy (or “homey,” as you call it when you FaceTime your best friend and she scoffs at how easy you can make a room look like a hurricane tore through it) room and you…find an outfit for tomorrow?

You’re the first one to speak, only breaking the quiet after changing into fuzzy socks and sneakily taking off your lacey bra (and tucking it under the covers of the bed for you put away later).

“Well, that was excruciating,” you mumble. All you want to do is change into your biggest, most comfortable hoodie and your cotton panties and order room service and ignore humanity until you leave for a flight the next morning, but a man you’ve had a crush on since he appeared as Johnny Storm is right in front of you and after that talk with Sebastian your world is kind of shaken to its core and should you make a move? Is he the kind of guy to not like that? Would you want to be with a guy that doesn’t like that? What if he-

“Always are, I guess.” Chris interrupts your train of thought, saving it from going off the rails. When you at him he looks just as, if not more than, exhausted than you are. “That’s one of the things that you forget, I think. How hard it is to talk about these movies.”

You snort. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Chris smile a little wider as you laugh. “Yeah. Other movies I can talk about like, characters and plots and shit. With these I live in constant fear I’m gonna pull a fucking Ruffalo and get my ass fired from the best paying gig I’ve ever had.”

Chris laughs with you, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Word.”

An awkward silence fills the room and you find something, anything to do to avoid his heavy gaze under those thick eyelashes and his thick beard that you just want to run your fingers through or his even softer hair that you want to mess up while you-

“Do you want to get dinner together sometime?” you blurt. You’re ready to take back the words as soon as you say them, wanting to backtrack or say “just friends” or “ha-ha, just kidding!” or something else that absolves you of non-platonic commitment.

By a long stretch of luck that you can’t even begin to thanks a long number of deities for, Chris doesn’t laugh at you or turn you down or even walk out of the room. He meets your gaze with excitement in his eyes and a smile wider than your home state. “I’d love to,” is all he says. It’s all either of you get to say before his phone rings loudly, and the name of the head of security flashes on his screen. He sighs loudly, apologizing as he takes it. Somehow, you feel more awkward as he turns away and answers the call. You fidget with your hands, with a loose thread on the sweater you’ve come to hate more than anything else in the world, with your phone. Nothing makes it easier to face Chris again once he hangs up.

“That was…,” he laughs lightly. Not laughing at you, maybe at life or how weird his life is, but never at you. “You know. They fixed my key and want to give it to me in person.”

You swallow and nod. “Yeah, understandable. I’ll, uh,” you clear your throat. “I’ll see you…”

Chris finishes for you. “How about we find a good restaurant near here after I’m confirmed to actually be me by the private security detail our employers hired to make sure no one kills us? We can have that second dinner I’ve heard you always eat late at night.”

Holy shit…he remembered that time you vaguely mentioned how much you enjoy staying up late and eating lots of food. It makes you blush as you respond.

“Yeah that sounds,” you sigh happily, smile just as big as his is. “That sounds great.”

#chris evans x reader #lukis does commissions #lukis writes stuff #chris evans imagine

184 notes · View notes

annashipper · 6 years

Text

Questions

Where is Emily? The last time we saw her hanging around Ben was on the 2nd of December, 2016 at the Sky Women In Film And TV Awards.

How come no one’s ever spotted Ben buying anything for either of the pillows? Does he wear his special disguise when going into department / toy stores?

Why did Sophie Hunter wear a maternity-friendly gown when she escorted Ben to the Jaeger-Lecoultre event despite the fact that she's as whippet-thin as ever?

Whatever happened to the unblurred, HD pics from the pap set taken on the 31st of October 2016 at JFK airport?

Are we ever going to get to see a picture of Ben, Weirdo, Pilo and Pilo 2.0 in the frame, in HD, with all of their faces unblurred, looking like a normal human family? Extra points if Weirdo isn’t smiling straight into the paparazzo lens.

Has Pilo 2.0 been christened yet? If so, have the paparazzi stopped camping outside Mottistone regardless of the fact that it’s such a celebrity hotspot?

When are we going to be treated to what Ben’s heroic wife has been constantly hard at work on since before the summer of 2016?

When was the last time Letters Live divulged information regarding what percentage of their earnings go to charitable causes?

Will Gambles be performing music on any London street corners this week? If so, will Weirdo be contributing to his worthy cause?

How does AnythingBatch spend her time nowadays?

How do the team of die-hard Weirdo fans that were running SHC spend their time nowadays?

Where is Pilo?

Where is Pilo 2.0?

Wasn’t Pilo 2.0 supposed to have “alien eyes like Ben”? All I see on the Heath pap op disaster is a baby with perfectly generic, normal human eyes.

Whatever happened to the Red Ribbon Stalker?

Whatever happened to Sophie Hunter’s logo? It’s been almost two years since it appeared on the internet, only to be removed from circulation less than 24 hours later, and we never heard anything about it ever again…

Why has Ben never supported any of Weirdo’s projects?

Why was Ben photographed escorting a blonde woman at the National Theatre on August 20th of 2014, 2 months and a half after the showmance with Weirdo had been launched at the French Open on June 8th of 2014?

Why can’t anything involving Weirdo and her “art” be straightforward? (LINK to the question which includes multiple sub-questions)

Since Ben is hounded by the paparazzi and they obviously know all three of his addresses in London, why hasn't a single pap ever photographed Weirdo going in or coming out of any one of Ben's houses in the past 4 years?

Why did Ben walk The Imitation Game red carpet without Sophie Hunter by his side at the London Film Festival on the 8th of October, 2014? Sophie Hunter was there and dressed for success after all.

Why were the interns working for SHC blurring Ben out of pictures when they were (still) trying to sell clothes and shoes?

Why does Weirdo not have a speaking part in this Showmance?

Why was Weirdo creating mood board(s) for a wedding gown which came straight off the rack, and photographed for Vogue wearing a wedding gown that didn’t match the one she was wearing on her wedding day (which came off a collection that was a year old by that time)?

Why is Weirdo the exception to every gestation rule known to humanity?

Why has Ben’s name been removed from the list of producers for The Current War on IMDb?

Since there was no public notice, how did the paparazzi know to set up camp at Mottistone on the IoW for Pilo’s Christening? Setting aside the fact that it’s a celebrity hot spot of course.

Why was Weirdo smiling at the paps both times (March and October of 2016) Pilo was photographed by paparazzi in NYC?

What was the reason behind all the fluffing of Sophie Hunter’s CV?

Why was Weirdo on holidays with friends during the summer of 2014 instead of Ben?

Why was Weirdo re-introduced to the world* in the fall of 2017, with no work to follow it up? (LINK)

Why did Weirdo yank Ben’s arm to put it around her shoulder while posing for the paps, but pushed him and his arm away from her as soon as she thought the cameras weren’t rolling anymore during a pap walk? (LINK)

Has Weirdo taken her husband’s last name or not? If so, why has no publication ever used it? If not, why did People run that article back in the day?

Why did Ben, who once said during an interview "there are rooms in my head not made for public consumption” suddenly become so open about his private life since he started his Oscar campaign in 2014?

Why was Ben giving weird quotes to ELLE about how important it is “to be able to have some fun with your currency” in 2014?

Since Ben and Weirdo had known each other for 17 years before they got engaged and have been together for... only Harvey knows how long, why had Guy Garvey, the singer of Elbow who is a dear friend to Ben, never met Weirdo before the wedding at the IoW? (LINK)

Why did SunnyMarch go into a “bidding war” (according to a Nonny who claimed to work for Picador: LINK and LINK) to secure the rights to a book that was being sold at 50% off, the minute it hit bookstore shelves?

Why are there never any sightings of Weirdo and the pillows in London when Ben’s out of the country alone?

Why is Weirdo allowed to have a previous long term relationship listed on her Wikipedia page, but Olivia has been erased from Ben’s? Will "they" erase her when they get divorced?

Why did Ben try to issue a kill order for a picture of his motorcycle parked outside his new property in London but not the 8 HD pictures of his firstborn son’s face taken in NYC? I’m asking about these two particular sets because the motorcycle pic was never published by any media outlet, and the unblurred version of the NYC pics were never touched by any publication either.

Why wasn’t Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch’s name printed correctly on the engagement announcement for The Times?

Why was Ben on the verge of tears when asked about the announcement of his engagement to Weirdo during his interview with Good Morning America? (LINK)

Why did a teacher (who’s linked to Weirdo) break the law by reporting on social media about Pilo and Ben attending one of her classes? (LINK)

Why did Ben’s mom ask Caitlin Moran to find her son a bird in 2013 if he was already in a relationship with Weirdo? (LINK)

Why hasn’t Ben tried to set up a directing / screenwriting / acting gig for his heroically hard working wife on one of the projects he’s worked on during the past 4 years? She could have directed his Hamlet, adapted the screenplay for The Grinch, played Eurus Holmes on Sherlock, etc. Why waste so many opportunities to share her boundless talent with the world?

Why did Sophie Hunter resort to plagiarizing an academic’s essay on Beckett to put together an article for The Guardian in July of 2015?

Why don’t Ben’s friends mention him on social media anymore?

If Skeptics are so vile, why don’t Ben’s friends defend him on social media? Especially considering his latest quote about being well aware of what everyone says about him on social media and assuming he’s so bothered by it all.

Weirdo’s resume, such as it is, features a few bit parts and the occasional vanity project. Where is the long, hard slog of crap work? Every artist, from those who have not been discovered to Beyonce, has a long string of unglamorous obscure work that they took to stay in the business. For many artists, that’s most of their careers: shooting commercials so they can afford to make the movie they love. Singing jingles while they wait to hear from the major producer. We have not seen that with Weirdo. Not by a long shot.

If Ben travels with his family and is never without them, why has no one ever spotted the entire family at any airport travelling together since Pilo 2.0 was born a year and a month ago?

Are there no family-friendly, vegan restaurants in NYC where Pilo and Pilo 2.0 could have joined their parents for dinner on the 3rd of April, 2018?

Why was Weirdo removed from circulation during the Pilo 2.0 pregnancy?

Did Weirdo ever get the memo that Ben is fiercely protective of Pilo and that he feels like he’s constantly being bombarded with possible threats to his wellbeing? (LINK)

Why does Ben who once said: “If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people’s expectations, then you can go mad.” (to Empire magazine in 2013) care enough about people’s perception of his family to go on record stating his wife and child are not a PR stunt (on his Vanity Fair interview for Doctor Strange promo in 2016)?

Did the paparazzi who took pictures when furniture and dead plants were being moved into the rental place in Camden, where Ben and his family supposedly live while they’re waiting for his new property to be renovated, follow the movers from his old flat at the Heath to the rental place in Camden? If so, where are the pictures of the furniture and dead plants being moved out of his old flat and into the trucks? If not, how did they know Ben and his family were moving to a rental place, and who gave them the Camden address?

Have Pilo and Pilo 2.0 travelled to LA for the IW premiere / promo tour since Ben’s had to be away from home for more than a few weeks? If so, have Californian paparazzi developed a new respect for Ben's privacy between the pap walk extravaganza of August 2016 and now?

How did the fan pic that Ben and Weirdo took with 4 teenagers, at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice on the 13th of February 2016, end up on a local paper? Did none of the 4 teenagers pictured have a social media account at the time? Has none of them created a social media account in the 814 days that have passed since?

How did Weirdo get 5 month old Pilo to sit still for 4 hours straight daily in order for him to Skype with Ben, while the latter was away from home filming Doctor Strange?

Why have the paparazzi stopped spotting Ben at airports?

Out of the full set of pics from the Bora Bora honeymoon in late February of 2015, why were some crystal clear, while all of the ones featuring Weirdo in a bikini were extra blurry?

Why was Pilo’s birth ready to be announced on People magazine on the 8th of June 2015, but then the article was removed? (LINK)

If Ben and his family have relocated to a rental house or into Ben’s new property, why does Google Maps continue to block the “street view” of his old street in Hampstead Heath? (LINK)

Why did Weirdo’s friends congratulate her on her birthday and on escorting her husband to the Oscars on her Facebook page in 2015, but not on Pilo’s birth?

When was Weirdo born? (LINK)

Why is the renovation for Ben’s new property not finished yet? 556 days is a bit long to wait out with one’s family, living at a rental place instead of one’s own two story flat, no? Especially when the owner is a multimillionaire who could certainly speed things along with handsome bonuses to his contractors.

Why did Weirdo never make a move to protect her belly when Ben almost ran her into a bin at LAX on the 12th of January 2015 and kept smiling for the paparazzi instead?

Why are Ben and Weirdo travelling sans the pillows again? Taking into consideration this quote on a German publication from Ben: “When I work I almost always bring my family with me. As of yet I’ve not been away from them a week. Since my second son was born it has been a weekend, I think. The time with the children is so precious that I prioritize them at any time. For me it is very clear: work is work, family is family. When I get home, I leave anything related to work outside the door.”

Why did Ben step in front of his wife, effectively blocking her access to a reporter at the Vanity Fair after Oscars party on the 22nd of February 2015?

Why have Ben and Weirdo not been spotted IN LONDON by the paparazzi while walking the street / out on a date since August of 2017? Is Ben wearing a mask when he steps out of the house with his wife and children that are definitely real and not a PR stunt nowadays? (LINK)

Whatever happened to Eggsbenedish? (however many people were running) That blog set the stage for the showmance, went away when they made sure people were talking, came back to do some damage control when things started getting out of hand, realised they were terrible at herding cats, deleted the blog entirely after the birth of Pilo was announced officially, and now someone has re-opened the blog, but of course all of the posts are gone.

Why did Weirdo not perform on the second Letters Live show (held on the 19th of May 2018) in NYC?

Why was Weirdo smirking during the NYC pap walks in May of 2018 while Ben was being pissy? (LINK)

Did Weirdo attend the LL event on the 19th of May 2018? If so, why didn’t they arrive together at the venue? (LINK)

Almost 2 years in, is it safe to assume Weirdo’s logo will never be ready to “go live again”? (LINK)

Why did ATCB try to pass a paid-for paparazzo shot off as a sneaky fan pic on the 6th of August 2016? (LINK and LINK)

Why did Ben become a brand ambassador for Hisense (a relatively low-end electronic and home appliances manufacturer) instead of signing up for one of the countless roles that major movie studios are presumably throwing at his feet?

Why was there a baity blurb on the Evening Standard about Weirdo’s ring back in February of 2017*, which was then removed entirely less than a week later, leaving only traces of the tags under the original article**? (* LINK and LINK) - (**LINK)

Why did the Fail never run any of the pictures they purchased the rights to from the Pilo 2.0 pap op at the Heath that were taken mid August of 2017? (LINK)

HOW???? (LINK)

Why is Weirdo’s name not listed among the people who have performed for Letters Live in Ben’s letter to the general public who visit the Letters Live official page on the internet? Did he forget about his “very cool” wife, is he just not that impressed by her “heroic hard work”, or does it turn out she’s a liability rather than “an asset, a tool” because of her overwhelming fetchlessness? (LINK)

Why was every announcement / milestone / major pap walk where we got some new bit of information regarding Ben, Weirdo and the most bizarre pregnancy documented in the history of humanity perfectly timed to coincide with Ben’s Oscars campaign and voting close offs back in 2014-5? Why is every outing / interview with weird quotes from Ben regarding his family still timed perfectly whenever Ben needs some free publicity to promote a new project, 4 years into this showmance?

Were the pillows in LA for Infinity War / Patrick Melrose promo? (LINK)

Why can’t the press get Weirdo’s name and/or face right 4 years after she’s been introduced (and then re-introduced multiple times) to the world, considering also that she’s supposed to be super duper mega successful in her own right? (LINK)

Is Weirdo really so bad at reading that the people running Letters Live (including, but not limited to her husband) had to create the entirely new role of Announcer of Names Of Talented People Who Get To Read Actual Letters On Letters Live, in order for the fetchless wonder to get a variation of her name mentioned in the press?

Did either of the pillows appear at Hay? Cause going through the Hay tags on Instagram and Twitter, I see a myriad of babies and children of all ages joining their parents at the festival, but I haven’t seen a single Nanny (and there were quite a few at the festival last weekend) mentioning they caught a glimpse of Ben’s pillow-y offspring.

Why is Ben’s ring missing from the main Hisense print ad (I’m assuming it’s the main one, since it’s the one featuring the Hisense and World Cup logos), but is there for all of the rest of the pictures from that shoot? Does the image of MarriedToAFamewhoreDismalBatch who is also a #fatheroftwo to two mostly invisible pillows not appeal to all potential customers of the Hisense product range? (LINK)

Why did Ben, an actor whom everyone describes as a consummate professional, skip rehearsal with Paapa Essiedu, Tim Minchin, Harriet Walter, David Tennant, Rory Kinnear, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench and Prince Charles on the 23rd of April 2016? Was the photo op with Weirdo at President Obama’s speech so important? (LINK)

Why does DorkyBatch never come out to play whenever Weirdo is around him, even though Ben has been pretty darn dorky / silly / happy during interviews / red carpets / promo sessions for the past 3 months?

How is it that when Weirdo was asked to contribute a piece of art to a Christmas bid for Anno’s Africa charity foundation in December 2016, the work she submitted appeared to draw inspiration straight from the art work her ex boyfriend, Conrad Shawcross, submitted for the same charitable bid? (LINK)

Why does the timeline regarding the proposal / engagement / wedding of much privacy and impeccable timing for Awards season voting closeoffs make no sense when one’s source is Benedict Cumberbatch? (LINK)

How is it that Ben’s heroically hard working wife who is a director, wanna-be-producer, playwright, curator, narrator, theatre operator, singer, mime, visual artist, clown, Wimbledon spectator, model, and… ACTRESS has been in no way involved with Patrick Melrose, a project so close to Ben’s heart, that is a 5-part series which involved a cast of 100 people (93 of the roles being speaking ones)? Is it that Weirdo didn’t want to steal Ben’s thunder, or just that Ben didn’t trust Weirdo to even stand in the background of one of the numerous scenes involving extras in the cast?

Why was Weirdo photographed consuming champagne at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards on the 30th of November 2014, when she was already 12 weeks along and certainly knew she was “pregnant” at the time?

Why did Ben and Weirdo choose a remote location, only accessible by boat, where there are no immediate medical facilities in case of urgency, and which requires not-advised-for-pregnant-women vaccinations against tropical diseases for their honeymoon?

Does Ben understand anything about babies? Going by his interviews, he didn’t seem to know a whole lot about taking care of his firstborn (what with Pilo getting sunburned no matter how much lotion his parents put on him, skyping for 4 hours straight with his dad at less than 5 months of age, getting bathed after 11pm because it was the only time available to Ben during Hamlet, using a potentially toxic and filthy movie prop as a teether, being fed apple slices when it was still a choking hazard for him, etc)

Why does Ben keep travelling alone to and from London, only for Weirdo to show up at the final destination for a few pap ops? (LINK)

Why has Ben not tried to shield either of the pillows’ faces from the paparazzi on 4 separate occasions? He clearly knew how to do it for himself before Weirdo entered the scene and he started conducting set-up pap walks to prove how real and not PR-stunt driven his marriage and children are. (LINK)

Why were the Bora Bora honeymoon pics pulled the same day they were published on Popsugar, on the 24th of February 2015? How is it that Ben had both the motivation and means to issue a kill order for this set of pics within a few hours (while being loved up with his wife on their honeymoon no less)? Couldn’t he muster the same drive to issue a kill order for the set of pics featuring Pilo’s unblurred face in HD from NYC, which remained on sale on the (for hire) pap agency site for months? If he couldn’t be bothered trying to issue a kill order for the NYC set of pics, why didn’t he just buy the entire set off the pap agency site, and had them removed that way?

Did anyone ever find Weirdo’s name on any of the Oxford Alumni lists?

Why do the paparazzi only ever spot Ben and Weirdo out in public when Ben is gearing up to start promotion on a new project nowadays?

Was it a fortunate coincidence (publicity wise) that Ben and Weirdo got married on the 14th of February, 3 days before the Oscars voting close offs on the 17th of February in 2015? (LINK)

Bonus Question: Who is in charge of uninstalling PRStuntBatch and reinstalling Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch®?

#questions

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jeanjauthor · 6 years

Video

youtube

Clothes vs. Money: Status and Self Worth in the 18th Century

Writers, this is an EXCELLENT summation of how important the quality & appearance of clothing is in a pre-modern society.

Clothing today is incredibly cheap: a single day’s wages will get you pants or skirt, shirt, socks and underwear, all of it brand new, straight off the rack, in a vast variety of colors and patterns. A week’s wages will get you shoes and coat and a couple changes of underwear, extra shirt, extra pants or skirt (or a dress).

Prior to the 20th century...it could take you more than a month to earn enough money for a new shirt, or underclothes, or trousers, or shoes. Not and, but or. You’d be lucky to get two of those things at average to good wages for the vast majority of people...and since the vast majority still worked on farms prior to the industrial revolution, and with it, the agricultural revolution, you’d only see that kind of money during or shortly after harvest season.

Listen to John Townsend reading from these journals. Take your inspiration from them. Be realistic in what your characters would be wearing, how often they’d get a chance to do laundry, and make sure your characters are clothed appropriately for their situation.

In the movie Ever After, Danielle (Cinderella) borrows a fancy noblewoman’s dress left at the painter’s studio to go rescue her fellow servant. The dress is only available to her because her best friend growing up is the painter’s apprentice, and because painting a portrait can take weeks of work, so it was often just easiest to leave the clothing on a mannekin form while the owner went off in their other clothes to do other things. We might think the dress she normally wears isn’t too bad, but it’s only slightly above what the other servants wear, and it’s definitely not new.

In the modern era, this is also true, though the lines are a bit more blurred. We have Casual Fridays, where you can come to work at some places in jeans and a teeshirt, or a Hawai’ian shirt...and we have formal suits and dresses and skirtsuits. Some situations you can get away with a Casual Friday. Others, you’d never get away with it. Lawyers, for example, are expected to wear suits or the equivalent at all times, to project an air of professionalism & seriousness.

We have a variety of uniforms that we have to wear for certain jobs or industries, too. Not just UPS or Military or Post Office or Law Enforcement. Have you noticed the variety of uniforms in the restaurant industry? Some places (McDonalds, etc), issue you your uniform. It isn’t yours to keep, however; once you’re done working for them, you have to hand it back in. You also have to keep it clean and neat at your own expense. Housekeeping staff for hotels have to do this, too.

Other places simply say “wear black pants (or skirt, but no yoga pants or jeans) and white shirt, no teeshirts or logos (not even a lil alligator or polo pony)”...and that’s all you have to wear. You have to supply your own “uniform.” It could be almost any style of trousers or non-logo non-tee shirt. Others allow you to wear a serious, sober, law-office-worthy tie...while some allow you to wear “an amusing tie of publicly acceptable subject material”...aka no naked-lady ties, or ties covered in swearwords...but you could wear Loony Tunes characters like Bugs Bunny, or a Transformers tie if you wanted.

However, clothing is incredibly cheap; if you’re used to having money in your pocket for clothes every few months in real life, you probably haven’t thought about having to repair your clothes. Shirt gets ripped? Go buy a new one! No big deal! ...Right?

You cannot take that attitude, that mindset, into a pre-20th-century tech-level world.

Just to give you an example, making the cloth to make clothes took HUGE amounts of effort before the advent of industrialization, from the farm machines to automatically pick the cotton through to the carding and spinning and weaving machines. Prior to all of that (and yes, the mechanized industrialization of agriculture is PART of why clothes are so cheap...and why wool, which still has to be sheared by professional shearers working one sheep at a time, is so much more expensive!)...it took 12 full time spinners to keep 1 full time weaver working at the loom.

What does that mean? It means that the 12 spinners listed above did nothing but spin all day long. Aside from maybe making their meals, they didn’t plough (plow) the fields, they didn’t feed the livestock, they didn’t shepherd the sheep, they didn’t mend the fences, they didn’t craft the furniture or repair the roof thatching... A lot of families grew flax specifically for turning it into linen thread, and spend every spare moment they had spinning thread, to either hopefully get them enough thread to set up a loom in the winter months when there was’t a lot of outdoor activity going on, or to sell to professional weavers, in hopefully good enough quality to fetch the best price for their balls of thread.

Ploughmen (whatever gender) would be outside all day long, plowing, weeding, harvesting, mending things around the farm and would only spin if there was time. Housekeepers and child tenders would spin while food was cooking (which could take hours), or while laundry was drying...but it would still probably take roughly 30 part-time spinners to keep 1 weaver in constant production.

Also, consider the fact that it takes literal days to set up a loom...and god help you if you got it wrong and didn’t discover the mistake right away, because you’d spend hours more undoing and redoing it right. Dependind on the width of the fabric, the tightness of the weave, the type of fabric and the kind of loom (Navajo vertical looms are different beasts from European treadle looms...and a lightweight linen suitable for handkerchiefs and veils isn’t going to be at all like a heavy canvas, never mind a rug weight material), the swiftness of making the cloth means that your progress might be measured in inches per day, feet per day, or if you’re very lucky, yards per day...and that’s assuming you have enough thread on hand for both warp and weft.

...Think that’s a lot? I haven’t even gotten into all the effort required for finding and making dyes, madders (fixing agents to help keep the colors from fading too fast in sunlight) and getting the consistencies right. (Contrary to popular belief you could get some bright colors out of natural dyes; black was the absolute most difficult to dye, not purple. The materials for making black dye were far cheaper to acquire than for purple, but still, difficult to dye and keep it actually black in sunlight.)

Nor have I gotten into sumptuary laws, which tried to dictate what a person of a certain social rank could wear, including furs and silks. (Anyone could wear squirrel fur, for example, but to wear mink or ermine, you had to be waaay up high on the social ladder.) ...People still wanted to wear things “above their station” and sumptuary laws were difficult to enforce at times...but sometimes they were enforced ruthlessly. So it was risky at times.

Danielle in Ever After would’ve been whipped & imprisoned/indentured for wearing that fancy dress, if people had realized she was a peasant, not a noblewoman. But for her, the risk was worth it, to save a man from being sold off to the colonies for indentured servitude, to bring him back to his wife and his family & friends.

So John’s not kidding when he says that people in the late 1700s/early 1800s invested money in their clothes as a sign of their social status. You want people to treat you with more respect, you have to look like you have the social status, and that preceived social status is often dependent on wealth.

Buying new is not the only option, either. We have places like the Rack where they sell off for cheap the odds and ends, remnants of garments that just didn’t sell at listed price in the big department stores, or they might have a few flaws that the big stores reject (missing button, wonky stitching, etc), but otherwise the garment is in good shape and still basically brand new, so it’s sold for maybe $20 instead of $80

We also have the true thrift stores, such as Goodwill, Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul, Value Village, and those are just the local charity/donated goods shops in my area. You can visit these places and get that same dress at $80 for just $4-$8, but it’ll have been worn by someone else, laundered (well, one hopes), and put up for sale.

The same sort of system existed in pre-industrial societies. Mercedes Lackey has a beautiful scene in her first Bardic Voices, The Lark & the Wren novel, wherein the main character, the Wren, is taken to various used clothing sellers in the market places of the city she’s in, and given advice on what to buy, which includes torn and stained clothing, and how to hide the stains, using ribbon trim and embroidery and applique patches, or even just wearing a vest over a shirt that’s stained on the chest area.

Since Wren is trying to make a living as a bard/minstrel, it’s considered appropriate for her to have clothing that has fancy, eye-catching trim on it, as part of her entertainer persona. When she’s busking in the street (performing for passers-by to hopefully get pennies...or pins...in payment), the more eye-catching, the better, since it goes with her ear-catching music.

And when she gets a job providing polite, soothing music in an upper-class bordello/brothel style establishment, she wears more subdued clothes. Why? To help her blend into the background, since the focus is to provide soothing, pleasant music while the rich patrons wait for their chosen paid companions to be available. They’re not going to put up with someone wearing screaming shades of red and yellow and green with ribbon-strung bells dangling off their elbows...but neither will they put up with someone wearing the cheapest, crappiest woven fabrics visibly stained and ragged, badly patched or torn.

Since the adage “the clothes make (the social status) of the man” has been around for ages and ages...I can only imagine that clothing--and the kind of high-tech gear you can afford--far into the future will also still continue to be a mark of unspoken social status for humankind.

...I mention gear because aliens might or might not have any need for clothing, but they’ll certainly have a need for gear, and the higher the quality the gear, or the more functional it is, the more likely they’ll be considered higher quality in social status, too.

Also, functionality is a key factor, because social status isn’t just about kings and queens at the top and peasants and slaves at the bottom. It’s also about what kinds of society your characters move around in. You wear clothes appropriate to being a sailor while on a ship, but you will want different outfits when you’re a blacksmith apprentice, versus a clockmaker’s helper, versus a farm laborer, versus a nobleman’s son.

A nobleman’s son wouldn’t want to wear the leather apron or smock that a blacksmith would, but if you walked into a smithy and asked for a job while wearing fine silks, you’d get turned down (and laughed at behind your back), but if you walked in wearing wool (which doesn’t catch on fire; it just scorches and smolders and goes out) and leather (ditto), you’ll be taken seriously.

Your gear is the same. The Millenium Falcon was a rusted bucket of bolts and patch jobs compared to Queen Amidala’s personal, sleek, silvery interstellar transport, but it was still a fantastically swift, maneuverable ship. The Queen’s personal yacht would get her respect from port authorities. The Falcon’s capabilities would get it respect from other smugglers and crime bosses, because it looks like it can’t go very fast and should fall apart at any minute...but it won’t fall apart. It’ll blast past everything else & keep going...provided you can keep it patched together.

Anyway, long speech short, watch this video, and think about how your stories and your characters protray their social status, their wealth, via their clothes & gear...and remember, pre-20th-century, clothing is expensive. You and I have each probably have so many different outfits on our shelves and in our dresser drawers and wardrobe cupboards and closets that we’d be considered damn near royalty in terms of pure clothing-wealth, compared to just about anywhere in the 11th Century.

Clothing makes the character, and the story.

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ghostbustermelanieking · 7 years

Text

locking out the ghosts (chapter one of four)

s5 fic: spoilers for emily and kitsunegari, part of my series that i write as i rewatch the x files.

summary: Post-Emily arc, an emotionally vulnerable Scully breaks off the incredibly new relationship she and Mulder have recently been engaged in. As the season moves forward, how do they cope with this new development in their relationship, and how do the stressful situations their job puts them in affect this?

note: this fic is a continuation of an old fic, soft yellow. (actually, the first scene is basically just the fic itself. i copied and pasted.) i’m posting in parts because it’s already incessantly long and i’m not even finished yet. it’s going to cover most of season 5 by the time i am.

the kitsunegari scene is very different, however, from my other kitsunegari post ep in this season, old pennies. i really should’ve planned my fic for s5 out more.

i’m posting in parts because it’s already incessantly long and i’m not even finished yet. it’s going to cover most of season 5 by the time i am.

i do consider this to be au from the show, but it’s written in a canon compliant way, and is one of those fun stories that i think is realistic to canon and very likely could’ve happened in canon. (it puts an angstier twist on things for sure.) so i’ll leave it up to you!

Mulder drives her to a hotel after the funeral. He even calls Bill’s house to let him know that they won’t be coming back there. She can’t face her family right now. She holds the cross in her closed fist, tight enough to leave an imprint on her sweaty palm, closes her eyes and rolls the window down to let the California breeze blow across her wet face.

Mulder reaches across the console to take her spare hand, but she moves it away, balling it up in her lap.

It’s happened a few times now--the first time in Florida, after he’d come back from the Asekoff’s house and found her asleep across his bed. He’d gone to cover her with a blanket and she’d woken up and, in a deadpan, offered him some cheese. He’d apologized for leaving, and then they’d ended up talking--about what, she can’t remember, it runs together as a wine-soaked montage in her head--and she’d kissed him on an impulse across the hotel comforter. Nothing had happened that night aside from both of them falling asleep on top of the comforter, their hands pointed towards each other like arrows. She’d held him in the forest, later, cradling him in her lap and counting his breaths. It had felt like the start of something. In Georgetown, Mulder kissed her against the doorjamb and she’d tugged him inside by his tie. Since then, they’ve been something of a couple, guest starring in each other’s bedrooms or living rooms or hotel rooms. In Indiana, he’d asked her to dance.

(She’d looked at him kneeling beside her daughter on the ground and pictured them raising her together. Now he leaves a sharp, painful tug in her chest when she looks at him, then looks away. Between the grief and guilt crowding her head, there seems to be no room for him.)

“Are you okay? Do you want anything to eat?” Mulder asks softly.

She opens her eyes. They’re passing a blur of brightly-colored fast food restaurants. She hadn’t eaten any breakfast, and the food at the memorial service hadn’t stayed down well. “No, I’m fine,” she says softly, watching the colorful blur of lights.

The gold chain trails from her fingers. She swallows hard, pulling her knees up to her chest.

When they get to the hotel, Mulder gets two adjoining rooms because she says, “Please, Mulder, I need to be alone,” in a wavering voice and he clenches his jaw and nods. He offers to carry her bags, but her things are still at Bill’s. She just wants to be alone, take a sleeping pill and fall asleep. If Mulder is with her, he’ll offer to hold her and comfort her, but she’s never been someone who likes to be around other people when she’s upset. She’s always been the type to shoulder her own sorrows.

Mulder walks her to her room, and reaches out to touch her shoulder gently. “Are you sure you’re okay, Scully?”

No, she thinks. I’m fine, she plans to say, but if she talks, she’ll sob. The weight of incoming tears has been steadily building the entire ride here. She opens her mouth to tell him she’s fine, but the tears start falling before she can help it.

“Scully,” he murmurs softly, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and drawing her into an embrace. She sniffles against his chest. He doesn’t tell her it’s okay, which is what she was expecting; instead, he just kisses the top of her head, rocking her back and forth slightly. She doesn’t move to hug him back. She doesn’t feel like she’s able to do much of anything at the moment. She stands still while he kisses her temple, her forehead, her nose. And then she steps away.

“Mulder, I can’t… I can’t do this anymore,” she says.

He looks at her, briefly confused. And then he nods like he understands. “It’s okay, it’s been a long day, I’ll just…”

“No,” she says, her voice drawn out and hollow. She can’t remember where she decided this - somewhere, maybe, between Emily’s hospital bed and Emily’s empty coffin. “I mean… I want to go back to just being partners.”

(She needs him but she can’t have him, it’s too hard right now. She needs him to take a step back, back to the way they were before she got sick, until things make sense again. She needs to work through this alone.)

He blinks with surprise, maybe even something like hurt, and then he nods, looking at the ground. Whatever he’s feeling, he’s trying to hide it; she knows the technique well. “Okay,” he mumbles.

“I… I just can’t deal with this,” Scully says. Goddammit, it is late and she is exhausted and she doesn’t want to have to explain herself. Not tonight. She just wants to sleep. “Right now. With everything. And I…”

“I understand, Scully.” His words come out jagged and sharp, so he backtracks, softening the next thing he says. “I do.” He reaches out like he’s going to touch her cheek, but moves his hand away at the last minute, lowering it to his side. “I… whatever you need.”

“I-I’m sorry,” Scully says, and she is. Fuck, she’s crying again. “I don’t… I’ll see you in the morning, Mulder. Thank you for bringing me to the hotel.” She turns and unlocks her door, closing it softly behind her. Inside, she sags against the door, pressing both hands to her mouth and shutting her eyes.

There’s a soft thump on the other side--Mulder’s hand, she thinks, pressed up against the door. And then, so soft she barely hears it: “I love you.” He sounds defeated. Done. Scully presses her hands harder against her mouth to muffle the soft sounds she’s making. Mulder’s hand lingers for a second before moving away. She can hear his door open and shut next to her room.

She can’t remember how she got to bed, but she wakes up the next evening still feeling exhausted. She thinks she had nightmares. She knows, judging from the darkness in the room, that she’s slept all day. Flicking on the lamp by her bed, she finds a plastic container of soup waiting for her. Mulder, she thinks - he asked for a second key to both their rooms and had handed her his. He used to do things like this for her when she was sick - usually with some kind of note attached. There is no note today.

Scully climbs out of bed and goes to heat the soup in the microwave. The light is on in Mulder’s room - she can see the soft yellow peeking out from the crack under the door between their rooms.

She can’t leave things like this, not between them. She isn’t in a place where she’s ready to have a relationship, true, but the least she can do is try to mend the rip, fill in the cracks. He’s her best friend, and when she moves all of the fucked-up things out of her head, she might be a little in love with him. She grabs the hotel pad and tries to write a note to him.

Mulder,

I love you, too, but

I can’t do this right now

You’re always going to be my best friend

Chewing her lip hard, she throws the piece of paper away and takes her soup out of the microwave. She heated it up too much, she burns her mouth as soon as she takes a bite. She sits at the little table and stares at the hotel logo.

How can she tell him what she’s really feeling? That even though she doesn’t blame him for any of it (she went down the rabbit hole, she was warned), she can disassociate him with the pileup of tragedy in her life? That grief is crushing her and she has to be able to move past it before she can be in a relationship? That she loves him, but she needs time? That all she could think about when he carried Emily in his arms was them raising her together and she can’t handle it, now that she’s gone? The daughter who was never hers.

She takes another bite of soup and scribbles out a short message in a shaking hand.

Mulder,

I’m sorry for last night. I just need some time to deal with things, and I need to deal with them on my own. I hope you understand. I don’t want to stop working together. We’re friends, Mulder, and I hope we always will be. - S

She slides the tiny piece of paper under the door and waits, eating her too-hot soup until the roof of her mouth aches. He slides the note back with a messy reply: I understand, Scully. I’m here for you if you need me.

She thinks about replying, something like I want to try again when I’m in a better place, but it feels wrong to ask him to wait for her. And after all this time, she thinks that they are a given, the two of them. It’ll work out in the end.

She folds the small piece of paper and sets it next to her cross before crawling into bed and turning the light back off.

---

Mulder doesn't sleep. He lies on the hotel bed and flips through channels on the TV. He doesn't let himself think. (Doesn't let himself picture how small Emily was, her tiny weight in his arms. How the way her blue eyes glinted when she smiled looked just like Scully's eyes. Doesn't let himself picture Scully. Doesn't let himself picture Scully pushing him away. Doesn't picture Scully pressed against him in bed, arm slung over his chest. Doesn't think.)

Night fades into day. Mulder waits for Scully to wake up, but there is only silence on the other side of the connecting door. He gets breakfast and comes back to the room. Still nothing hours later. Upon opening the door, he finds her curled in on herself under piles of blankets, tossing and turning restlessly against the pillows. If things were different, he may have crawled under the covers and wrapped himself around her, tried to comfort him. But. He swallows the lump in his throat and closes the door, leaves the hotel and grabs some lunch. Picks Scully up a container of that soup she likes and leaves it in her room. Doesn't touch her, doesn't brush the hair off of her face or kiss her cheek.

(He should've known, she hasn't touched him since Emily went to the hospital. Hasn't really touched him since DC. He had sat out in the waiting room for hours, just waiting. She'd come out of the back of the hospital at three in the morning, stiff and nearly unresponsive. Not crying. Her eyes were half closed, and he'd honestly thought she hadn't seen him when she walked past him. He followed her, catching up to her and touching her gently on the shoulder. She flinched violently, recoiling away. He yanked his hand back, asked gently, “Is she…” Her jaw clenched, her eyes snapping shut, she nodded. Then ripped away, shoving into the bathroom. He could hear her getting violently sick on the other side. He waited, but she didn't come out for a long minute. When he'd wandered down the hall towards Emily’s room, he'd seen the sheet draped over the tiny form and he'd felt a little sick himself, had walked to an abandoned part of the hospital and punched a wall so hard that it left his knuckles bruised. It wasn't fair. She was a little girl.)

He goes back to flipping channels until it is dark outside and Scully is slipping a note under the door. Her words make his throat burn, his vision blur. He wipes his eyes and scribbles out the only reply he can come up with: that he will be there for her. He slides the note under the door and sprawls out on the bed covers, turns off the light and tries to sleep. The light on the other side of the door goes off, too.

Mulder stares into the darkness of the room. He doesn't think about Emily, how good Scully had been with her, the smile tugging at the edge of her lips as she sat on the floor with her daughter. How he'd never seen her as a mother before.

---

Scully is dressed in a suit the next morning, her face scrubbed clean. She isn't wearing her cross. She says, “Good morning,” briskly when she opens the door between the rooms.

So that's how they're going to play it. “Hey, Scully,” Mulder says, leaning against the bed.

Scully tries to smile, but it comes out wobbly, strained. “When's our flight?”

“Hour and a half,” he says. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. I've just got to call Bill and tell him we'll be by the house for my things. Will you call a cab?” Perfectly normal, her face almost stiff in its formalness.

“Sure,” Mulder says awkwardly. She's already turning away. The words spill out of his mouth before he can stop them: “How are you feeling, Scully? Are you okay?”

Her shoulders stiffen. “I'm fine, Mulder,” she mutters. “I'll meet you out front.” The door slams shut behind her.

They don't talk in the cab, or at Bill's house, or at the airport. Scully won't look at him. Business as usual, she's pretending everything is fine. Like she wasn't lying next to her daughter in a hospital bed about five days ago. Like she didn't break things off with her partner the night before.

They're in a three seat row on the plane. Mulder takes the window seat, Scully sits next to him. No one takes the third seat. A little while after takeoff, Scully pulls up the divider between her seat and the empty third seat and stretches out between them. Mulder doesn't comment. An hour later, and she's curled completely in the third seat, putting space between them. Whether or not she's doing it on purpose, Mulder doesn't know.

Somewhere over Tennessee, the plane hits a bout of violent turbulence. The Seatbelt sign comes on, and the pilot's voice tells them not to panic. Scully, half-dozing under the makeshift blanket of her jacket, jolts awake. Face whitening, she fumbles for her seatbelt. Scully hates turbulence, hates any hint of a plane losing control. Seatbelt already on, Mulder watches her carefully for any signs of panic. On a normal flight (on the flight back from Florida, on the flight back from Indiana), she would hold his hand when they hit turbulence. As much as she's been avoiding touching him today, Mulder isn't expecting her to reach for it today, so he's surprised when she seizes his hand blindly.

“Scully,” he whispers, squeezing her fingers. “It's okay.”

She's not looking at him, but she nods. A toddler is crying a few rows ahead of them.

The plane shakes and shudders for a few good minutes before finally settling into a steady rhythm. The passengers relax, a few even applauding when the Seatbelt sign goes dark. Mulder unbuckles his seatbelt, breathing a sigh of relief, and turns to Scully, to check on her.

She still isn't looking at him. She's staring straight ahead, face still white, jaw still clenched. Her hand is stiff in his. Her chin is trembling a little, like she's about to cry. And then Mulder hears it: the toddler crying a few rows up, wailing, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

“Excuse me,” says Scully, voice wobbly, and she gets to her feet and goes down the aisle towards the bathroom. Mulder swallows against the feeling of nausea in his throat. Emily had been so tiny. He'd never once heard her refer to Scully as anything. Not Mommy, not Dana. If she'd lived. If she'd lived, maybe. He rests his head against the window and closes his eyes.

Scully comes back almost ten minutes later, her voice steady but her eyes red. She sits without saying anything to Mulder.

He leaves his hand on the empty seat between them, but she doesn't take it again.

---

Two days.

After arriving home from San Diego, Scully spends exactly two days home from work. Two days that have nothing to do with the picture of her daughter she had tucked in her wallet, behind her medical insurance card. She won't admit it to herself, but she's hiding from Mulder. Hiding from the way he will check on her and speak too softly to her. Hiding from the fact that she fucking broke up with him. Hiding from Mulder telling her Emily was never meant to be, from him telling her that her ova had all been extracted in front of a fucking stranger who was deciding whether or not she could have her daughter. Hiding from Emily’s head lolling on his shoulder, Mulder buckling into her car seat, and Are you two the parents.

(She's not just hiding from Mulder. Her mother calls five times, and she lets it go to voicemail every time. There is plenty she isn't facing.)

She cleans her entire kitchen from head to toe and scrubs the mildew stains in her bathtub so hard that the muscles in her arms ache. She watches bad daytime television that she avoids religiously under any other circumstances. She tries to read. She jams a chair under the doorknob of her spare bedroom; she doesn't want to go in there. (Locking out the ghosts, Mulder might say. But they are everywhere. Inescapable.) She sleeps a lot, takes two sleeping pills and pulls the covers over her head. She is fine as long as she doesn't dream, doesn't think too hard. She is fine. Fine. She will be fine.

On the third day, she gets ready and goes to work just like normal. Rides the elevator down and doesn't think about how she and Mulder had made out like a couple of teenagers on her second-to-last day of work before Christmas, Mulder shoved up against the elevator door. (She'd had something of a boundless sense of joy after her remission. A weightlessness. Anything could happen because she'd lived and she had so much time now. Seriousness had seemed futile; it was time for her to have fun. She thinks that's why she kissed him the first time. And maybe even all the times after that.)

Mulder is waiting for her inside. His face lights up, briefly, before his expression turns neutral. She ignores it. “Hey, Scully,” he says, waving a little at her with a pencil in his hand. “How you feeling? Get a lot of rest?”

She will not (will not) say she's fine again. “Yes, lots of rest.” She sits across from him, crosses her ankles and folds her hands. “Any new cases?”

“We'll see. We have a meeting with Skinner later.” Mulder waggles his eyebrows at her. (He is teasing. He wants things to go back to normal. She wants it, too, but normal for her is probably very very different. Things haven't been normal in her mind since before she got sick.)

“A meeting concerning what?”

“Don't know. He just said it was important.”

Later, after welcoming Scully back with a fatherly sympathy in his eyes, Skinner explains to them exactly what important means. “Do you recall your ordeal with Robert Patrick Modell?”

Scully's eyes widen, stunned. She wants to forget that day, forget the smell of gunpowder and the click of an empty chamber, the pleading in Mulder's eyes as he tried to move the gun away from her. The muzzle against his head. She had forgotten, until now. She had forgotten. So many things to forget.

Next to her, Mulder stiffens in shock, but he recovers quicker. “Yes, sir, of course,” he says too quickly.

Skinner folds his hands on the desk. “I'm sure you'd much rather forget, as would I, but unfortunately, we've been denied that luxury. Modell has escaped from prison.”

Bile rises in Scully's throat. He wasn't supposed to wake up, she wants to shout. Mulder doesn't say anything, so she speaks this time. “How did that happen, sir? Do they know where he is, what he wants?”

“From what I understand, Modell tricked a guard to get out. We don't know where he went, but I'm organizing a manhunt. As the only two agents who escaped your encounter with him unscathed, I'd say it's clear that you two are the best equipped to catch him.” Skinner swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing (the only signs of fear he'll show), and Scully remembers the thumps of Holly’s shoes against Skinner's body. “I'm putting you two as Special Agents in Charge.”

Mulder's hands ball into fists on his knees, unclench. He casts a brief, nervous look Scully's way. “Are you sure that's wise, sir? Considering what happened last time?”

“Agent Mulder, you're the only living person who knows Modell well enough to catch him,” Skinner says, exasperated. “You're not just the clear choice, you're the only choice. Despite what your reputation would suggest, you and Scully are some of my best agents and I have complete faith in your ability to catch this son of a bitch.”

Skinner never gets this personal, Scully thinks. She wants to deny, wants it badly, doesn't want to ever have to experience that again (doesn't want to fear for her life, Mulder's life, doesn't him to kill her, doesn't want to kill him, pull the trigger on him, it's unimaginable, she's hurt him enough already). But. Skinner won't let up, and if she argues, it'll only make things worse for Mulder. She can do this. It's not even the worst thing she's faced this week. She wants to laugh, bitterly, at that, but she purses her lips, touches Mulder's arm and says, “You're right, sir. We'll do whatever it takes. Whatever you need from us.”

Mulder is rigid, almost doll-like, under her hand. He says nothing.

“Report to Lorton Penitentiary in time for this briefing.” Skinner hands them a sticky note with the information written down. “And be ready. I expect only the best work from you, agents.”

As soon as they leave Skinner's office, Mulder stalks down the hall without a word to Scully, without looking back. Scully retreats to the ladies room to wash her face and wonders, staring at her drawn face in the mirror, if he's finally found it in himself to be angry at her. She wonders if she's relieved.

---

She spends most of the case worrying about Mulder. She was worried from the get-go, but it intensifies when she hears Mulder's briefing and remembers. (Handing her his gun. Modell’s hand shattering the camera. Gun to his head.) She tries to warn him after discussing Modell’s medical condition, asks if he should be heading this investigation. “As opposed to what? What's your point?” he says, and she wonders if he's upset because she agreed to head the investigation. He's thrown himself into it wholeheartedly, if that means anything. If his objections matter less. (If she knows Mulder, he's thinking about the people Modell will hurt. That's enough motivation for anyone, but especially Mulder.)

“That it's exactly what he wants. That once again you're playing his game,” she says instead of voicing her thoughts.

He doesn't say anything. He shoots her a look of irritation before walking off. So he is mad, she can assume. She certainly deserves his anger. It's just that she worries. No matter what happens, she wants him to be okay.

It intensifies more, her fear, when Mulder is talking to Modell on the phone. The longer he has the receiver cocked to his ear, the longer the fear closes in on her, her heart pounding in her ears, remembering how he killed a man with a phone call. She tells him to hang up and he listens, for once. But the fear remains, and it solidifies in her mind when they find Nathan Bowman with Fox Hunt painted across the wall. He is looking for Mulder, just like she feared.

Mulder finds Modell and loses him in Falls Church, becomes convinced that Modell isn't playing with him, that he didn't kill Nathan Bowman. They talk to Linda Bowman, Nathan's wife, and he becomes even more convinced. He thinks that Linda murdered her husband. He spells it out to Skinner, and Skinner doesn't believe him. “Scully, you heard her in there,” Mulder prods, and she can't, she's too afraid that if he plays into Modell’s bullshit that he will end up eating a bullet.

“Mulder, no,” she says, and he looks shocked and hurt, stunned. “I'm sorry. You said it yourself, you said "don't listen to Modell, don't trust him". But you've done both.”

“But what if she can do what Modell does?”

Skinner exchanges an uncomfortable look with Scully, says to Mulder, “I think you should go home.”

“You think I should go home?” he repeats incredulously, and Scully thinks of Skinner telling them that he had complete faith in them.

“You're suspended until such time I'm confident your judgement is sound,” says Skinner. “Give me your weapon.”

“Who are you afraid I'm gonna point it at?”

Yourself. “Mulder, I think you should do what he says,” Scully says.

He's staring at her, hurt, like he can't believe it. She immediately thinks of the expression on his face when she broke things off with him and she breaks eye contact, she has to. Mulder caves, pulls out his weapon and gives it to Skinner.

Clacking footsteps sound off behind them, and then Linda is there, asking for water. “I'll prove it,” Mulder says, determined, and then he's walking away.

“Agent Mulder?” Skinner calls.

“Go fetch her some water!” Mulder snaps. Scully's eyes burn. She blinks hard and hopes that he's not going to get himself in trouble.

He calls her from the prison, later, insisting that Linda Bowman called and convinced the physical therapist to electrocute herself. He convinces her that something is wrong at the safe house and he is right: Modell is there, Skinner has shot him because he saw a gun. A gun they cannot find.

Mulder shows up at the hospital. He's convinced that Modell drew Skinner's fire on purpose, to take the fall for Linda Bowman, as soon as he hears what happened. “For what possible reason?” Scully protests as Skinner walks away, clearly irritated and embarrassed, clearly fed up.

“To protect someone.”

“Linda Bowman?” she asks in an unbelieving deadpan.

“To take the fall for her,” says Mulder.

“That's one hell of a plan, Mulder,” she says. “A serial killer makes us believe that he's guilty, in turn diverting the suspicion away from the real estate lady? Well, he had me going.”

“Where is she?” he wants to know.

“They've taken her home,” she says carefully, firmly. “There is no reason to keep her in protective custody, Mulder. It is over.”

“No, it's not.” He's turned, walking away.

“Where are you going?” she calls after him. Home, she hopes, where he's going to stop acting like an idiot and listen, for once. Where he's not going to get himself killed.

He turns briefly, says, “If Modell makes it through surgery, I want to be the first person that he talks to,” before turning and going on.

“Mulder, talking to him has already done you enough harm.”

He turns again, annoyed, and says in a heavily mocking tone, “OK, look, you do me a favor, Scully. You give me a call when you think I've come to my senses, all right?”

Hurt, she starts to say something else, but there is nothing really to say. He keeps on walking, fists clenched by his side.

She turns away, rubbing at her forehead. Maybe she should've listened to him, at least given him the benefit of the doubt. But he sounds insane. There is no credibility to his statements, aside from the fact that Linda Bowman seems a little emotionless and that Modell didn't kill Mulder when he had the chance. But it makes no sense. It makes no sense. But he deserves the benefit of the doubt, after she… after she…

Scully sighs, rubbing at her face again. At least it's over now. Modell will likely survive surgery, and then he will go back to prison. He can't hurt Mulder anymore.

She leaves the hospital and is almost home before she receives a phone call. It's Skinner, his voice weary. “Modell’s dead,” he says gruffly.

“What? How did that happen?”

“We don't know. Mulder claims it was Linda Bowman.”

“He's still there?” She pulls into a parking lot to turn around.

“Um… no,” says Skinner. “He was here. He says a nurse told him to leave the room, and when he came back, Modell’s heart had stopped. He was headed out when he claimed that Linda Bowman was the reason Modell was dead.”

She smacks the steering wheel with the flat of her hand. “Where is he now? Where was he headed?”

“Well, he wouldn't tell me, but… we found an address on a paper with Nurse written on it. We found it in Modell’s room. I assume that's where Mulder's headed.”

“What's the address?”

“214 Channel Avenue. That property where we found Linda Bowman in Falls Church.”

Scully smacks the wheel with her hand again. “I'll go after him. I'm just as close to him as you are.”

“What do you think he's going to do? Is it really necessary to chase him down?”

Her mind is working, picking away at the information Skinner has given her. Who would've written that address for Mulder to find? It couldn't have been Modell… “Did you say the address was on a piece of paper that said Nurse, sir?”

“Yes, written on the back.”

Linda Bowman could've used that, she realizes. If Mulder's right and she has the same power that Modell does, she could've used the paper to imitate a nurse.

“Mulder's right,” she says, and hangs up, tosses the phone on the seat beside her.

---

The warehouse is cold in the January night. Mulder walks cautiously through the darkness, moving his flashlight around the room. He wishes Scully were here, if only for the backup. He wishes he had his gun.

He's nervous in the moment, if only for his complete lack of knowledge of Linda’s plan, but he's not really scared until he hears Scully's uncertain, “Mulder?” cutting through the silence of the warehouse.

Terror shoots through him, and he gasps unevenly as he runs towards the sound. He rounds a corner and sees her, standing alone at the end of a corridor, gun in hand. “Scully, what are you doing here?”

“You were right about her, Mulder,” she says, and it's the only time in his life where he's horrified to hear those words. (Linda got to her somehow, she knows, how does she know…)

Scully raises her gun slowly to point at Mulder. A shortened game of Russian Roulette.

“Scully…” he says desperately. (How does she know, did Modell tell her, oh god, I hope she doesn't know that I…)

“She's making me do this,” Scully says, cocking the hammer on the gun.

“Where is she?” he demands. He's not going to let her play with them like this.

“She's here,” says Scully. “Mulder, make her stop. I can't help myself.”

I know, Scully, I know. “Linda Bowman!” he bellows.

“Mulder, make her stop!”

“Show yourself!”

“Mulder!” Scully cries out, and this one is the most distressed. She's turning the gun, no, she's pointing it at herself, at her head, and Mulder realizes Linda’s game now…

“No!” he shouts, a plea, taking off in a run towards because this cannot happen, it cannot… “No--”

But it's too late. Scully pulls the trigger. It happens too fast and too slow and all at once and the room seems a million miles long. The gun explodes in her hand and she crumples to the ground.

Mulder skids across the floor, landing on his knees at her side. His hands go to her face, her neck, her shoulders, searching for a pulse, for any signs of life, and this cannot be happening. His stomach is knotting, he feels sick, his face crumpling briefly as he pushes back her hair, and she can't be, she can't be…

Footsteps behind him. He turns and sees Linda Bowman approaching, gun in hand.

Fury and grief coursing through him, he pulls the gun out of Scully's limp hand (god, Scully, god) and turns to Linda, growling, “I'm gonna kill you,” with all the bloodlust building inside him.

---

After it's over, Mulder won't let her touch him.

He was going to shoot her, when he thought she was Linda Bowman. When he thought she was dead. He'd been screaming at her to shut up, her words going right through him. She saw her opportunity, Linda Bowman coming into her line of fire, and she shot.

Mulder jolted in place, thinking it was him who was going to be shot, not really looking at her. He looked behind him tentatively, in the place where he'd thought she'd fallen. Where he was crouched when she came in. Where Linda Bowman lay sprawled now. He looked behind him, then back at her, seeing her now. “Mulder,” she said, hoping to anchor him to earth.

He looked horrified as he realized, the gun lowering to his side. She walked to him, squeezing his arm comfortingly, and then past him to Linda. She crouched beside her. “You think you can hold me,” Linda taunted in a scratchy voice.

She stood, pulling her phone out, and dialed 9-1-1. Mulder turned away, face warming, shoulders slumping in devastation. By the time she was finished with her call, he was halfway across the room.

“You have to help me,” Linda said, and her melodic voice washed over Scully. “You have to. It's your duty as a doctor, you know.”

Scully clenched her teeth. For a second, when she was coming into the warehouse, she'd thought Mulder was dead. She'd heard him crying out, and then the gunshot, and it had taken everything in her not to run, to remain calm and try and surprise them, in case Linda was tricking her. And then she'd rounded the corner and seen Mulder crouching on the ground, horror across his face, and Linda telling him she was dead. “You can wait for the fucking paramedics,” she said calmly, and walked over to Mulder.

He didn't look at her, pressed his forehead harder against the wood of the boxes. “I'm sorry, Mulder,” she said quietly. “I'm sorry I didn't believe you…” She put a hand on his back and he flinched, stepping away from her touch. “Mulder,” she said quietly. “I know she…”

“You don't have to do this.”

His voice echoed harshly across the empty warehouse. She recoiled a little. “What?”

“You broke things off. You said you needed time.” He was pressing his hand over his eyes, like he was trying to erase the image of her dead. She winced, biting her lip hard. “You don't have to do this,” he said, and the harshness of his voice broke her a little.

“Mulder…” she said, uncertainly, and suddenly all she wanted to do was put her arms around him, to feel that they were both okay. They could do that platonically, couldn't they? They'd done that as friends a thousand times before.

“I'm fine, Scully,” he hissed, and she winced again, tears stinging the back of her eyes. “It's fine. You didn't believe me. I don't expect much different from you. But I'm fine now, and you don't have to comfort me.”

Her throat was dry, her eyes wet. He was going to shoot her because she was dead. He loves her, he'd told in San Diego. She turned away, wiping her eyes, and walked over to stand by Linda’s side.

The ambulance arrives and leaves with Linda Bowman. Scully clears her throat until she can speak without her voice wobbling and calls Skinner to tell him what happened. He wants them to meet in his office the next day. Scully thanks him and hangs up. She turns and Mulder is gone. She gets outside just in time to see his car speeding away. Her stomach hurts. She climbs in her car and drives away.

She's home within a fifteen-minute timespan, kicking off her shoes and collapsing on the couch. She pulls the knit blanket over her, curling into the cushions, and buries her face in a throw pillow. It's too much, Mulder was right, they never should've taken this case. But Linda might’ve come for them anyway. There is no fucking telling. It's too much. She is applying for vacation time as soon as humanly possible.

She doesn't remember falling asleep, but the sharp ringing of her cell phone wakes her. It's still tucked in her suit jacket, she didn't bother changing before falling asleep. She dislodges the phone from the thick wool edges of her coat and turns on her back, answering it and tucking it between her ear and shoulder. “Scully,” she answers wearily, closing her eyes.

Nothing on the other end but soft breathing.

She opens her eyes, rubbing her forehead. “Mulder, is that you?”

No answer. She sighs. “Mulder, what do you want?”

Silence. He breathes. She says nothing. She blinks hard, wiping her eyes again, turns on her side and lies the phone parallel to her head. She doesn't hang up. He doesn't, either.

She closes her eyes and listens to his breathing, imagines for a second that he's lying beside her, her arm tucked around him. She breathes in and out slowly and loudly, so he can hear. Her fingers rest at the edge of her collarbone, where she took off her cross. She lets herself drift towards sleep.

An undetermined amount of time later, she hears his voice crackling over the line: “I'm sorry, Scully.” It sounds like shattering glass. She opens her eyes as the phone clicks and the dial tone sounds.

She touches the phone on its speaker, whispers, “I'm sorry, too.” Puts the phone on the coffee table, climbs off the couch, and goes into her bedroom alone.

#xf rewatch #xf fanfic #i wrote this

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fortheloveofeos · 7 years

Text

College Graduation - the Chocobros

Hey y’all! I have officially moved home and graduated from college over the last few days. I know some of you probably have/are about to as well, so I thought this might be a fun way to celebrate. I hope y’all like it!

Side note: I’m currently without internet at my house, so I’ll be coming to my grandmother’s to update as soon as possible. I’ll be able to work on requests and post them as soon as I can, so send them in!

XXX

Noctis

As soon as the ceremony was over, you were up and out of your chair. People crowded the huge arena in search of family and friends. You stood on your toes, trying to see over the crowd but didn’t see the one person you were looking for. You kept checking your phone but found that you had no messages. “Where the hell are you,” you mumbled under your breath as you stared at the rolled-up paper in your hands.

“You did it and I’m so proud of you.”

Glancing up, your eyes landed on the midnight blues of the most handsome man you had ever seen. “Noct!” You yelled and all but jumped on top of the Crown Prince of Lucis. “I can’t believe it.” Through your excitement you couldn’t help but notice how good his dark dress clothes looked on him. It was so rare to see him out of a t-shirt.

Noctis smiled and pushed his hair from his yes so that he truly take in the sight of you before him. Your gown was unzipped to reveal the beautiful dress you wore beneath and your hair curled perfectly out from beneath your cap. Your cheeks were slightly pink from the excitement and your eyes shown with pride. “You’re so beautiful,” he praised you with a kiss to your forehead. His lips were soft as he placed a sweet kiss just beneath your cap. “How does it feel to be a graduate?” He smirked and his eyes glinted with happiness.

Giggling, you pulled him back to you for a chaste kiss. “Strange, but so good! I just cannot believe that I’m through. I feel like I only just started freshman year.” Noctis offered you a smile, stepping back so that his arm rested in the small of your back.

The crowds parted as King Regis, dressed in a sharp suit, carefully approached you. Resting his wait on his cane, he offered you a kind smile. He bowed his head as he addressed you. “Let me assure you that everyone is proud of you. You’ve earned it,” he nodded towards the diploma in your hands.

Just as you were about to thank him, an attendant appeared with a bundle of flowers clutched in his arms. Noctis gratefully accepted the bouquet of calla lilies before offering them to you. “I’m sorry they’re late. Turns out calla lilies are not a popular flower for graduation.”

Regis chuckled at his son’s attempt to be smooth when a flash captured you all. Prompto clutched his camera, offering you a thumbs up. He congratulated you just as the rest of Noctis’ friends appeared. Prompto snapped picture after picture of you and Noctis, you and Regis, you and the entire gang, and ones of just you. Finally, you were shuffling out of the arena and towards the awaiting limo that would take you all to dinner. You were about to slide in when Noctis caught your arm.

“I really am proud of you,” Noctis murmured with a shy smile. He had never been great with words but you could tell he was trying to work through something in his head so you nodded to show that you believed him but kept your mouth shut. Finally, he sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “You’re the smartest person I know…and I know that I’m a lucky man to have you.”

Tears began to well up in your eyes as you threw your arms around his neck. You stood there for a moment, cuddled up to Noctis and enjoying his warmth as you waited for the tears in your eyes to diminish. “I love you,” you whispered against his shirt.

“Hey lovebirds, we’re starving,” Gladio leaned out of the door, a smirk plastered on his lips before he disappeared back into the limo.

Laughing, you threaded your fingers through your boyfriend’s and pulled him towards the open car door.

“I love you,” he promised and stole another quick kiss. A moment later you had been safely tucked into the bench seat and were racing off towards dinner and, ultimately, your future.

Prompto

The graduates around you tossed their caps into the air – you kept yours firmly on your head. You had spent hours several nights before decorating it for the occasion and you were not going to risk losing it and/or damaging it. You cheered and clapped before rising from your seat as an onslaught of people that flooded from the stands onto the stadium floor in search of their loved ones. A friend caught you up in a huge before you were able to find the one person you wanted to celebrate with. As the two of you separated, a flash of light followed by the sound of a camera shudder brought a smile to your face.

“Prompto!” You giggled before you were wrapped in a warm and tight hug from your boyfriend.

He placed a kiss against your forehead before pulling back and snapping another photo. “I’m so proud of you, babe. I can’t believe you finally graduated college!”

You laughed and lightly shoved at his chest. “Wow, thanks Prompto.”

Blushing, the blonde rubbed at his neck, his camera held in one gloved hand. He had dressed up for your special day – a white button up and a pair of black straight legged pants – but he still wore his fingerless gloves. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to just above his elbows. “You know what I meant.”

“I do,” you promised and kissed him sweetly to assure him that you did. “And thank you very much. I’m so happy you’re here.”

Prompto pressed his lips to your cheek, positioning the camera so that he could snap a picture of the two of you. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he chuckled. “The guys are meeting us at the restaurant. We should get going If we want to miss the traffic.” He laced his fingers through yours and pulled you towards the exit. The two of you had almost made it to the entrance when he stopped turning to you with panic. “Oh! Hold on, I forgot something. Wait right here.” And with that he disappeared into the crowd.

You stood awkwardly by the door, thumbing through the adorable pictures Prompto had just taken as well as those of you crossing the stage and accepting your diploma. Showing his talent, he had managed to be close enough to get a picture of you hugging one of your favorite professors, degree clutched in hand, and tears in your eyes. The next picture showed the two of you holding one another at an arm’s length, you smiling as they congratulated you. You couldn’t help but smile and be thankful he had captured such a moment.

“Happy, uh, graduation!”

You looked up to find Prompto holding out a shirt, your school logo printed above the word “Alumni” on the chest. “Prom,” you smiled before carefully taking the shirt. “This is so sweet! Thank you,” you threw your arms around him, his camera and the shirt clutched in your hands.

“Come on,” he smiled blushing. He kept an arm around your shoulders and guided you towards his awaiting care – a sleek black sedan on loan from the Citadel. He opened your door and ushered you inside. Once you were both inside and buckled in, Prompto reached behind the seat and handed you a small wrapped box. “I wanted to give this to you in private.” He turned his attention back to the parking lot before pulling the car onto the road.

Giggling, you carefully unwrapped the beautiful gift – more than likely done by Ignis as Prompto wasn’t much for gift wrapping. Inside, you found a large velvet box. You popped the top and inside, resting carefully on a bed of black satin, lie a glittering bracelet with two charms: a graduation cap and a camera. “Prom,” you felt tears build in the corners of your eyes.

“I thought we could add to it as you travel and work or whatever.” He flashed you a quick smile before pulling into the restaurant. “I hoped we could fill it together?”

Once he had parked the car, you planted your lips on his. “Of course we can. I love it.”

Prompto clasped the delicate charm bracelet around your wrist before rushing around to open your door. “Come on, college graduate. It’s time for drinks.”

Ignis

The ceremony went by in a blur. One moment you were filing in with the other graduates and being ushered to your seats. The next, you had already crossed the stage and received your diploma and now you were standing on the turf of the arena where the ceremony had been held. You were staring at the paper tied with a delicate red ribbon in your hands.

The sound of your name being spoken somehow managed to filter into your ears over the commotion around you in his lilting voice finally pulled you from your reverie. “I believe congratulations are in order.” Ignis Scientia pushed his glasses up his nose, a small smile on his composed features. He took another step towards you before pulling you against him. You couldn’t help but notice that he kept one arm firmly behind his back. You cocked an eyebrow at your boyfriend. With a chuckle, Ignis revealed a bouquet of your favorite colored daisies.

“Ignis,” you laughed and accepted the bundle from him. Smelling them, you couldn’t help but be reminded of springtime and the time he had picked a handful of wild daisies from just outside the wall for your third date. “They’re beautiful.”

Lifting your face so that he could look into your eyes, he smiled – a real and true expression that broke his normal calm façade. “I believe they pale in comparison to your beauty. I do believe that everyone in the room was captivated as your accepted your diploma. I am so very proud of you, my love.” He pressed a kiss against your cheek as a camera shutter sounded before you.

Prompto smiled as he pulled the picture up on the viewing screen of his camera. “Got it!” he congratulated you before handing you the camera so that you could see.

Your cheeks burned at the sight of the intimate moment captured for all time. You couldn’t help but tug at Ignis’ sleeve as you looked at the image. “Thank you, Prompto.”

“Could I trouble you for a copy of this?” Ignis pulled you closer. “I believe it would look perfect beside the picture of my graduation.”

You laughed as the particular image he referenced came to mind. Hanging in the his living room was a picture of the two of you the day Ignis had received his diploma a few years before. His hair had been smashed down by the cap and his glasses had caught the light hiding the happy tears that had tried to build in his eyes. You had your arms wrapped round his chest as you pressed a kiss to his jawline. “I think it would look perfect. I do have the better hair though,” you jokingly mimed flipping your hair.

Ignis grimaced but nodded. “I believe so. Though I’m not sure it would take very much to be an improvement from my hat hair.” Chuckling, he pulled you in for a chaste kiss. “How about we return home. I’ve made your favorite dinner and prepared a few surprises. Gladio is bringing around the car with Noctis.”

Prompto continued to snap pictures, having been asked by Ignis to record the event. “Thank you,” you smiled as the three of your made your way to the car. Prompto rushed ahead in hopes of getting some shots of your outside the arena.

Using the momentary privacy to his advantage, Ignis pulled you close so that he could whisper in your ear. “I have another surprise for you later,” he nipped at your ear momentarily knowing it was your weakness. His grip around your waste tightened as your knees weakened.

Gladiolus

The moment the ceremony was over, Gladio bounded down the stairs that would take him to you. Iris scrambled to follow, pulling Prompto and his flashing camera along with her. Recognizing the shining decorations of your cap, Gladio pulled you in for a bone crushing hug before placing a kiss square on your lips not caring that you were in a crowded room. “Congratulations,” he murmured against your lips. “I really am so proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished.” His deep voice had you weak in the knees.

“Geez, Gladdy. You’re not the only one that wants to hug the college graduate,” Iris crossed her arms and smirked, clearly not truly upset with her brother. She seemed amused that you were able to elicit such a reaction from the normally observant and careful Shield.

Laughing, you gently pushed your boyfriend away so that Iris could pull you in for a hug followed by a continuously photographing Prompto. “Way to go,” Prompto offered you a thumbs up before capturing a picture of you holding up your diploma.

“I’m so happy for you,” Iris nodded and handed you a card. “I know Gladdy’s been talking about this for weeks. You would think he were the one graduating.” She rolled her eyes before gently pushing at her brother’s shoulder.

You caught the slight red that tinted Gladio’s cheeks. “It’s a big day,” he grumbled under his breath before he produced a bouquet of dark red and black gladioluses. You wondered where he had managed to hide them but you couldn’t help giggling at the sight of them. “I thought you might appreciate ‘em,” he sighed as he held them out towards you.

Taking them from the big guy, you inhaled their scent and couldn’t help being reminded of the slightly floral undertone that made of Gladio’s scent. “I love them. Thank you,” you smiled and kissed him once more, careful not to crush the flowers.

Iris pretended to gag but was overcome with a fit of giggles when you stuck your tongue out at her. She might as well have been your own little sister by how the two of you joked and got along. You were only a couple years older than her as you were younger than Gladio. “Come on, you two,” Iris laughed. “Ignis is making dinner and he’s going to have a fit if we’re late.”

“She’s right. Better not to piss off the chef,” Prompto pulled the camera away from his face for the first time since hugging you. “I’m starving.”

Lacing your fingers through Gladio’s roughened and calloused ones. You couldn’t help the comfort and security you felt at his familiar touch. You were nervous about your future, but touching him was enough to ground you and reassure you that you would be alright. “Let’s go, Big Guy,” you pulled him slightly as you nodded towards the exit.

Chuckling, Gladio scooped you up into his arms bridal style. “I could definitely go for some of Iggy’s cooking after sitting through that.”

“Gladio,” you shrieked through your giggles. Prompto held the flowers you had dropped. “You’re supposed to carry your bride over the threshold, not a college graduate.”

“Oh,” he said in mock surprise, “I guess that’s why you went to college.” He leaned down to steal a quick kiss before heading towards the car still holding you against his chest.

Iris sighed and shook her head. “Can’t take you two anywhere.” She giggled when Gladio shot her a glare. Grabbing Prompto’s hand once more, she raced ahead to the car giving the two of you a moment alone.

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storytimewithtara-blog · 7 years

Text

Nancy and The Artist

Fuck IPAs.

Not my typical first thought coming out of a blackout, it was normally regretting the aftertaste of whatever kind of vodka or tequila was on sale. They were more efficient when wanting to get drunk. Though the one thing I knew right now was hops were everywhere. I was dealing with limited other information on how I’d ended up downing so many beers. My eyes were hazy, ears ringing, and every limb felt numb, but my sense of smell had come back in a flash. Bad beer filled the air, along with burnt popcorn and something metallic.

Blurry shapes moved in front of my eyes. Pins and needles started to crawl through my feet and fingers, but everything still felt sluggish. I could feel pressure from the chair beneath my ass, some sign of improvement. Ringing was getting lower. I managed to pick out words like crazy, deserved, cleaning, and a few fucks from the noise around me. Several people were talking, but none of their voices seemed aimed at me.

I started blinking hard, but the vision wasn’t working itself out. Limbs were coming alive, I managed to shake my head. Flexed my hands and legs, no pain. Seemed to be physically fine. My clothes felt slick, they stuck to my body as if I’d gone for a long run in July. that metallic scent was strong, might be what was blurring my eyes.

“Swear to fuck, every time I get the floors done some asshole loses their shit in here, “ a woman said.

Chairs were being shoved around, someone was angry. I hear wood snap. How did I end up in a bar? The gallery I planned to attend was in the downtown area, surrounded by restaurants and boutiques. No bars for at least three blocks. And that showing’s crowd was not one to frequent dives. I wouldn’t have joined if they had been in the rare mood anyway.

“Hey, I think her snack is still kicking,” a man said.

“No shit?! Thought she scooped them clean at the end,” another man slurred.

“Probably didn’t have enough time to chew on him. Who knows what he’s got left in there.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time she left her food for someone, me specifically, to clean up,” the woman’s voice came back in.

Were they talking about me? Why was I food? Whatever, more important things to focus on. Like finally getting full motion back. I rubbed my eyes, an act I instantly regretted as it seemed my hands were covered in the same stuff as my clothes. The action worked to clear my vision. The slick on my hands were red. Blood.

“Fuck,” I said.

“Ah, well, we know Snack Boy still has one word rolling around in there.” The slurring man was laughing.

Blood was splattered over me and the floor by my feet. Broken glass and foamy beer mixed with the pool gathered at my feet, guess that explained the hops. I followed a short trail across the floor to the stiletto heeled pale feet of a woman. She was wearing a tight blue cocktail dress, that looked marbled with the amount of blood on it, and had long straight red hair stuck to her. The hair almost covered the chunk of her neck that was missing.

“Fuck!” Me again, a bit louder.

“Hey, Nancy! You’re about to have another asshole losing its shit,” a woman called out from behind me.

“Literally this time!” The slurring man was having a blast with this.

“Someone cut Joe off. He is having far too much fun right now,” the first woman from earlier said. Apparently she was on the same brainwave as I was. She stepped in between me and the dead woman. This blocked the dead body, but her more casual jeans and t-shirt were covered in as much blood as I was. “I swear, Snack Boy, if you add vomit to my list of things to clean up tonight I will rip your throat out too.”

There’s that food name again. I didn’t feel like throwing up. My stomach was holding on to its contents, whatever that was other than bad beer. The body had been a shock, but I was steady. Confused as shit as to how this situation had come about, but steady. My memory was a blank, a bad omen when a dead body was involved. “What the hell is going on?”

“This may be a surprise, but you got lucky tonight.” She flipped back a long black curl of hair to look at the dead woman again. “If she hadn’t flipped her lid, you would have been the one turning cold tonight.”

“Her throat is-”

“Here!” the man holding up the body said. He shrugged the body over to one arm and waved over to me with his now free hand, a large chunk of meat gripped tight.

There was a lurch in my stomach. I thought it was the beginning of a gag, but realized it was too light for that. It’d been the start of a laugh, dare I say a giggle. That should be concerning. Maybe I was in shock. That would be reasonable. Isn’t a main part of being in shock, not knowing you are in shock through? I’d have to look it up later.

“Frank, you’re a dick.” The woman grabbed my arm and pulled me up from the chair. She looked back to the man still holding the throat up. She flicked a hand his way and it the same moment there was a bone sticking out of his arm.

“God damnit, Nancy!” He dropped the body to the floor, her head smacked against the edge of a table on the way down. A corner actually bent from the impact, but the guy was only focused on his now broken arm.

“You deserved it,” she sang back to him as she pulled me toward the door. “Now you just scurry on home and take a shower. Get drunk. Tomorrow you’ll have a bad hangover and convince yourself this was a nightmare.”

I stopped her from pushing me outside, an act that took more force that I thought it should have. She was a good five inches shorter than me and trim, but this woman was near heaving me out the door. “I just go home? After a fucking murder? Covered in blood? After I have no clue as to what the hell happened to me tonight?”

“It’s because of the no memory thing that I’m letting you out of this one. Also, I’ve got enough to do without adding another body to that list. Her, we can do away with until her people come for her. You might have people come poke around. I don’t know and don’t care to check it out. And it’s not like any cops you go yapping to will find anything.” She gave another nudge toward the door. “But the cop thing is a bad idea. You know that right? Looks very bad for you.”

I hadn’t thought to go to the police. That should have been something I wanted to do, right? “I don’t even know-”

“We could make it look very bad for you if we had to,” she had continued, not even listening to me. “But if you force us to put more effort into this, we will be very annoyed. I will be very annoyed. And you don’t want this crowd holding a grudge. You’ll probably end up dead. We can clean this up and, as a one-time courtesy, you walk out free as a bird.”

I looked past her into the bar. Waxed up wood floor, if you ignored the area filled with a crime scene. The tables and chairs were some dark wood that looked good other than the cracking vinyl cushions. Pinup girls printed on tin sheets hung throughout the walls. Stain glass lighting hanging down over tables and the bar. In the 50s this place might have been a nice gentlemen’s bar, but no one had bothered to update since then. And it had aged about as well as I’m sure the actual pinup girls had by 2005.

While most people were standing around the body, a few patrons remained in their seats. Drinking their beers as if this were a typical night. A couple at the bar were carrying on with a conversation about what do have for dinner after their drinks. “You seem rather casual about this disposing of a body thing.”

She pushed me through the doorway into the chilled night air. “You seem rather ungrateful about this walking away from a murder scot-free thing.”

“What the fuck kind of place is this?” I turned around to face her again and took in the front of the building this time. A rusted tin building, with a neon sign that spelled out “HEATHENS”. Though it only had the two h’s and e’s working. The outside looked no bigger than a 20 by 30 box, something a crew had slapped together in a day. But there had been at least twice the room inside. And the decor inside, even as dated as it was, did not match the exterior. There wasn’t any paved parking, just packed dirt from being parked on repeatedly over the years. The gravel road behind us stretched out with other decaying buildings dropped along, this seemed to be the only one with a still functioning business inside. But I knew we weren’t too far on the outskirts of the city. I could see the lights of downtown over the top of the building, seemed like a completely different world just a short drive away.

“A place you probably won’t ever find again. Night!” She turned back into the bar.

“Hey! How the hell do I get back home exactly?”

“I could call you a cab,” she glanced back at my clothes, “but on second thought maybe not.” Leaning farther into the door, I heard her call something to a person inside.

I watched her a hand and caught the sound of a thud hitting her hand. Then she pushed back to be on two feet. The woman walked down the short line of vehicles and stopped at a sleek, black Audi.

She laid back over the hood and pointed back to me. “To go along with your grand prize of staying alive, you get a brand new car!”

I didn’t move.

She rolled her eyes and pushed herself up to now be sitting on the hood. We stared at each other until she sighed and raised a hand at me. My feet moved, but I wasn’t the one telling them too. Each step was a hard crunch and once close enough she forced a set of keys into my hand. There was a keychain of a glittery martini glas attached to the key fob with the Audi logo. “Don’t be a pain now, Snack Boy. You are so close to being clear of this.”

I tried to give the keys back. “I don’t think stealing a car will add any good karma to my night.”

“It’s Trine’s car.” She saw my blank look and sighed again. “The dead woman inside. The one who was chewing on your brain bits. Her car. She won’t be using it. Probably stole it herself initially, but I’m sure she’s gotten that all cleared up on her own. No one would be looking for it anymore. I’ll tell her people it was fair game and they will understand. Tell people you had some old aunt die and leave you a car. Or just get home and ditch it tomorrow. I don’t really care. My business with you ends once you leave my property.” She moved off the hood and around me to go back toward the doorway.

I turned with her. “This cannot just end with me going home.”

The woman flickered from being five feet away from me to in my face with a hand gripping the back of my neck, fingers dug into my hair. There had been no steps between, no turning back to face me. I’d been staring more at her ass before and then right into her face.

Her eyes looked dark before, but were now full black with what appeared to be embers floating through them. “I am about out of patience with you, Snack Boy. Take my very kind offer of a car and go. If I do not hear you leave in the next five minutes, I will scalp you and use it to mop up what Trine spilled on my floor tonight.”

I blinked and she was in the doorway, back turned to me again. There was still a hand shaped spot of heat on my neck. My feet moved to their orders, this time under my own control, toward the driver’s side of the car she claimed I could take as my own if I wished. I fell into the low seat and adjusted the chair so my legs would fit. My clothes made a squish sound from the blood and beer in them. I’d have to clean this seat no matter if I kept the car or not. As I pulled out from the bar, I kept shifting in the seat unable to find a comfortable position. It seemed odd since I could tell the leather seats were top of the line. But a flash of that black eyed bartender laid over the hood went through my mind and a lightbulb came on upstairs, to match the one that had been turned on downstairs.

Shit. Guess it would be a cold shower to get all this gore off me.

“I’m not talking like a thick layer of sawdust, just a dusting, “ I said to Wendy, my ever faithful blonde and butch barmaid, as we cleaned glasses behind the bar. “As much as different liquids get spilled around here. I’d help soak some up. That blood took two hours hours to get off of everything last night. Not including my shower afterwards.”

“But then it’ll smell extra super woodsy in here all the time. You’ll start getting more of the nymph-type folk and they are just odd.”

George shook his head, straw hair rustling, from a table covered in broken chair parts nearby. “Fuck you too.”

Wendy flinched while looking down at the sink, but called out, “Not sorry, George. Your people are freaky.”

“No. No, this stops now,” I cut in. “I demand boring, I earned boring.” I took the last glass from her hand to dry. “You ever going to watch your mouth? It’s what got you killed in the first place.”

“No, because it was cursing the men of my village as they burned me at the stake. Oh! Which I just checked in on them last week and they’re down to only the last two bloodlines. I may pop in and shake them up a bit.”

“Just get someone to cover your shifts. But for now go wiggle your nose at the condiments and get them filled for the night.”

“Now that is offensive.” Wendy vanished into the back storeroom to continue prep.

I popped open a PBR and took it to George. “Please do not let my big-mouthed worker effect your fine on fixing up my chairs.”

George took a swig of the beer and smiled, “ Eh, she’s right. Why do you think I hang around here so much? Dances, rituals, sacrifices, or some other ceremony what feels like every damn night. Too much to keep up with.”

I was personally thankful he was anti-social with his own kind. Because of that I could just give George cheap beer and get any handiwork done for free. Worked out great when someone goes psycho in your bar and breaks five chairs and two tables, one post mortem. “Oh, speaking of rituals. Taco night. I have you down for those jalapeno pinwheels again, that good?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He rubbed his fingers down the side of a cracked chair leg. The wood splintered itself back together to form a whole piece.

“Awesome! I will leave you to your work, good sir.” I wanted to give the tabletops another wipe down before any early birds rolled in. Mostly the Trine Ground Zero, to make sure none of the sticky residue from the blood or the cleanup chemicals remained. I had fans running all morning, but the bleach smell was stuck in the air.l Maybe I could spill a few beers around on purpose to cover the smell, but then it’d be sticky again. And i’d be back to square one. After that bit of fun was inventory, my least favorite thing in this world or the next. Stuck in the back for hours, counting. Just counting. Damn. It. All.

As a person who had been in literal hell, you think it would be impossible to find something worse. But that spreadsheet, holy shit was it awful. Sometimes it made me wonder if I’d ended my walk through hell or had been sidetracked in some bizarre bit of torture and never realized. If I had made it back, and ever ended up there again, I knew that spreadsheet would be waiting for me.

The front door banged open, rattling the Bud Light neon sign nearby. Out of habit of being a bartender I turned my head toward the sound to see who might be coming in. And the longer habit of being an asshole had me ready to tear them a new one for being shitty to my door. My insult caught in my throat cause it wasn’t a regular coming in, but Snack Boy. How’d he manage to get back here? Most normal people would go past this place and never realize it was here. That’s what I paid Wendy’s damn cousin for anyway. He must have put a lot of thought into finding the bar.

He looked a lot better without the blood, but still a bit frizzled out. His hair had looked brown with all the much before, but it was actually blonde. Trine had dressed him up in a generic three-piece suit, but now he was in jeans and plain t-shirt. This fit him better. Wonder if his ass looked better than it had last night too.

“You gotta fucking help me,” Snack Boy said.

“Do I now?” There was a short list this could be. Trine spent all his money. He’d been MIA too long from work and was out of a job. He’d contracted some horrible disease. Maybe she had-

“There’s a fucking body in my studio,” his statement cut off my train of thought.

George snorted behind Snack Boy. “Join the club.”

That had not been on my list. “It’s there now? Trine leave her last boy toy meal at your place?”

“It’s a woman. She’s tied to a chair in my studio out in the backyard. She’s got cuts all over. The floor beneath her is covered in blood.” He was one of those ‘talk with their hands’ types, but even given the topic his gestures were not frantic. More like a good fishing trip of gestures.

I wonder if the blood pool will get bigger each time he tells the story?

“It’s a woman,” I repeated. That seemed odd. Trine and I had not been friends, but from what I heard of her, she didn’t swing that way. Her meals were men and never bloody. From what I knew her type of ‘feeding’ was pretty clean, more a mental thing. Sucking away at the brains of those she was with.

“And she is cut up and dead in my studio,” he said slowly, apparently thinking I wasn’t grasping the direness of the situation. An edge of anger growing in his voice.

“Let’s not get rude now. Doesn’t seem like her usual thing. But she was going a bit off there at end, maybe she got violent before coming here.” It had almost been a shock to see her arrive at the bar. She didn’t come unless her cliche decided to go out for an ‘old timey’ night. Or she was kissing ass with some higher up who was holding a meeting here. And she certainly had not been around since our last conversation.

“So much for this all being a damn nightmare by this morning.” Now he was being snippy, throwing that back at me.

“Yeah, kinda sucks, dude. Sorry.” I stepped back to the table I’d been about to wipe off before being interrupted. If he was going to throw a tantrum, I wasn’t going to play that game.

“What do I do now? How do I get a body out of my studio? You made the other one disappear, what did you do? How do I clean up all the blood? You’re going to help me right?”

Dear fuck, he’s not going away. I didn’t stop wiping down my table. “There’s a lot of ways to get the body out. The easiest, I’d say, would be cutting her up a bit so you’re not seen walking out with what is clearly a body. Put her in bags or wrapped in something. Tell the neighbors you’re doing some spring cleaning if they’re nosy. Drop her somewhere. Several somewheres. I’m not telling you what we did with Trine, because it’s not a service I can offer to you. For the blood, bleach is a thing. Just air out the space and buy lots of Febreeze for afterward.”

“Cut her up? What kind of sick-”

“You said she was already cut up a bit right? Just follow the lines. Right at the joints would be the neatest. If you catch the rigor mortis just right, maybe you can break her apart.” I snuck a glance at him hoping for a good reaction.

Snack Boy dropped into a chair, but didn’t go pale like I’d hoped. The same one Trine had propped him up in the other night when he was following her around like a dog wanting a treat. “This shit is all so mundane to you.”

I kept up with the tables, very disappointed in the lack of reaction, but didn’t say more. The bleach was starting to bug my nose again. Should follow my own advice and go get some Febreeze.

“What kind of place is this, really?” he asked as he stared over at the bar tabs.

Oh wow, he managed a thought that wasn’t about himself. You didn’t see that a lot with the civilian types that got caught in these situations. I gave him some honesty and a smile,”My bar is a little hell on earth. Filled with monsters you know of, but are in no way ready to have exist.”

“What kind of monster are you?” he turned to look back to me, those dark green eyes hitting me.

“A basic hellfire bitch,” Wendy called out from the bar. She’d come back out with the condiments stacked on a couple trays.

“Still your boss. It would be a shame if you had to redo all of that hard work.” I reached out mentally and rattled the bottom tray as a warning.

“Can you please help me?” Snack Boy asked.

“It’s asking a lot to come in here and expect me to drop my work for a stranger.” I mean, given that it was a Wednesday night, the crowd wasn’t likely to be wild. But I had thought that about Tuesday night. Then I was cleaning Trine blood for two hours. On top of that I had inventory. Which I hated. And he was giving me an out.

Wait a second.

“I don’t think I can do this alone. Please.” He was rubbing his thighs with his palms, starting to get nervous I’d really turn him down.

Gotta play this right. Make it sincere. Well, as close as I could get. Moving to another table I started wiping it down like I hadn’t been listening to him, but slowed my hand before stopping. I gave him a little look over. He was a pretty solid guy; those jeans were pulled tight right now. He looked exhausted, hard to sleep when you had a dead body lying around. Well, for most people. One little reluctant toss of the rag onto the table and then I said, “Alright. You get one more favor from me.”

He perked up. “Seriously? Thank Christ.”

“Wrong crowd man,” Wendy said. She stepped around the bar. “And while you’re out doing community service, I will be here alone?”

“Call Jake in early. He’s been looking for extra cash. He can run the ar and you can work on inventory for me.”

Wendy threw her arms into the air. “There it is. I knew it. Fucking inventory bullshit.”

“Just bibbidy bobbidy it to count itself,” George said as he took a drink.

Wendy turned on him. “You know, there has been enough crude witch humor already tonight. Don’t you need to lure some virgin into a pond or something right now?”

“Children, “I cut in before George came back with a response, “I don’t imagine I’ll be gone for too long. Should be back in time to finish it up with you. So behave.”

Snack Boy stood back up, he was smiling. “Thank you. Thanks so much for this. I really didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re driving. Let’s do this.”

Wendy was glaring as we passed, but she pulled out her phone to call Jake. George was turning over a chair, running fingers over a crack to fill it in as he went. They’d be bickering again as soon as I left. If the chairs got fixed and at least three-fourths of the racks counted when I got back, they could finally do the nasty on the bar in their spare time for all I cared.

Outside, Snack Boy led me towards Trine’s car. The one he’d been keen on not taking.

“You’re still using this?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You said it should be fine. And I didn’t know what else to do with it yet either.”

I tilted my head as I waited for him to pop the door lock. “You like it.”

“It’s a car.” He unlocked his door and dropped himself in.

I heard the thunk of the lock going up and I swung into the passenger seat. The ever familiar smell of disinfectant hit my nose. “Had there been a mess in here too?”

“Just my side,” he said pulling out from the bar. “Blood from my clothes got on the seat. Cleaned it as soon as I got home.”

“Cause you’d fallen in love with the car by then.”

He pushed the gas and we sped down the gravel road heading toward the highway. Snack Boy was smiling again, “It may be the silver lining to this situation.”

It was strange how level he was. Given my occupation, I didn’t interact with a large amount of normal civilian/human type people. The few I’d been around tended to be far more unbalanced. The normal behavior was spinning in circles over whatever dark corner of the world they’d found themselves in. There is more crying and ranting. Begging and pleading. General whining about how unfair it was that ‘life’ did this to them. Snack Boy was tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the song playing on the radio. Maybe it was shock, he’d still not realized what happened to him yet. A second dead body within 24 hours could do that.

“You get your memory back yet?” I asked.

“Nope. I figured out I was supposed to go to a friend’s gallery showing on Sunday. I remember getting ready for that and then my memory jumps to your bar.”

“Are you an artist too?”

“Yeah. I do landscapes. Canvas and acrylic. I’ve gotten into some small pottery and sculpting work too lately.” He had this mixed tone of pride and embarrassment.

“Makes sense. You fit into her picky appetite.” That could also, maybe, explain his attitude right now. He’d Bob Ross’d his way to some peaceful state. Or got really high. Plenty of opportunities to purchase some new vice. Especially in this city.

Snack Boy looked confused, “You keep referring to me as a food.”

“It’s what she does, did, as far as I know. She’s one of those brain sucker types. But she’s this gross snob version that only eats artistic minds. Feeds on that talent first, I guess, and then feeds on the rest. Not a bad way to go, in comparison to the way other people I know eat people.”

“The woman left at my place is in my work studio out back, this shed I had converted. So that goes along with her art thing. But her brain looks like the one part of her that was left alone.” He pushed on the break as we came to the end of the gravel road where it met the highway.

I made a cannibal reference and he doesn’t flinch. Starting to lean towards the ‘on drugs’ theory, probably shouldn’t have let him drive me. “Maybe she was trying something new, sex wise. Which explains why a woman. It’s the blood that throws me off the most. Trine’s style is pretty clean.”

“You did say she went a bit crazy.” He turned left onto the highway, heading away from the city.

My bar was close to being on the outside of the city already, as it existed now. Not much more beyond a trailer park, a gas station, and a bait shop out this way. Business, and people, moved the other direction decades ago while I was dead, or living elsewhere.

“True. True. I’ll have to get a look at her. Maybe it’ll make sense then.” Maybe this guy would make sense then too. Or he could sell me some of whatever he was on.

After a few minutes, Snack Boy turned left to a newer looking side road. He drove for another ten minutes before turning right at a sign that read “Serenity Grove”. Coming around a line of trees opened up a view of a gated community of houses that must have only started to be built out here a few years ago. Only a few seemed to be currently lived in, all spread out from each other. The kind of people who could afford these places probably were probably using them for “summer” or “weekend” homes. Being ten minutes outside of the city probably seemed rather county to them. Snack Boy followed the road to the right and passed six empty looking homes before pulling in the driveway at his own. A standard kind of two story cookie cutter that could have been plucked from a suburb and dropped out here.

“So you’re not a starving artist is seems,” I said as we waited for the garage door to open.

His face turned a little red, “My dad built the place. He’s letting me stay here for super cheap.”

“Hey, no shame in that. You gotta save that money somewhere. And if you can do that here and not on his couch, good for you.”

“He likes to use it as a sample to show interested buyers for other developments. He’s gotten a few others out here from having this house set up. Have to keep the place nearly sterile since they come by anytime. But I’ve got my own work hanging up all over the place. Sold about twenty pieces that way so far.” He inched the car forward to park it next to a shitty looking Honda. Yeah, the Audi was staying here.

“See! There you go. Work that system. You make dad’s money work for you.”

Snack Boy just nodded and turned the car off. We both climbed out and he jogged over to be able to swing the door leading into the kitchen open for me. Walking in, I saw he really did mean sterile. The place didn’t look lived in. More like a set house made to be viewed, but not touched. Peeking into the living room I was hit by deja vu and I had to wonder if I might have hooked up with this guy myself at some point and forgot. I moved farther into the room for a longer look and it hit me, I’d seen this exact living room in a magazine Wendy had thrown out on the counter a couple months ago. Back then I’d made the comment the couch was too thin and frilly to be useful and my opinion still stood as I looked at the gaudy golden thing now.

“What part of the house do you actually live in?” I asked.

He laughed. Body in his backyard, but i got him to chuckle as he came into the room behind m. “In the studio. I sleep on top of the bed covers to be safe, but I also have a fold out sofa in the studio. A bit of time in the kitchen. But I bother to make food it takes about twice as long to clean up because I have to make it spotless. Or else my dad will kill me.”

“Not your mom?” Real forward thinking there, Nancy. You’re 1940s were showing.

“If her ghost could manage it, she would. But Dad has picked it up since she passed away a couple years ago and he doesn’t rather well.”

There was a whisper of a ‘tsk’ that came from the kitchen. I chose to not seek it out. His possible ghost was not my issue.

“Well, never know. After what you’ve been dealing with lately,” I wanted to nudge the coaster on the coffee table an inch to anger the spirit of his mother. Maybe she’d hiss at me and move it back. “You didn’t pick any of this decor out did you?”

“Is it that obvious? Dad gets stuff switched out every few months to keep up with trends.” He pushed on the creme overstuffed recliner chair near him. “I like this chair. Going to ask him if I can buy it next time he wants to swap out.”

“So, there’s a body somewhere in this Stepford home of yours?”

He tensed up again, face pulled tight into what looked like anger. “Yeah, in the one space here that’s actually mine. Studio is out back.”

We stepped back into the kitchen. He walked through to the sliding patio door and flipped a switch for the light outside. String lights lined a dark wooden deck and about 15 feet from the end of the stairs was a large shed tucked away in the back corner of the yard. I was distracted by the shine the lights caused on the fridge. God, I wanted to smear my fingerprints all over it. Piss off that ghost I was pretending I didn’t catch flicker into the hall.

“Your dad built a studio with the house?” I asked.

“Dad’s clients are usually well off, if you couldn’t tell. I pitched that adding the studio could showcase how much you can do with the space out back and not feel cramped. The rich housewives he sucks up to always have some new hobby too, so he could use it was proof that he can design spaces for them to express themselves in.” He stepped out to the deck and started to move across into the yard.

I moved through the kitchen and to his side without moving my feet. In a blink, from one space to the next. Managed to get a small jump out of him, at last. “Must be a high quality studio you got then.”

“And there’s blood all over it,” he sounded disgusted. “After all the work I put in to convince my father to make the thing.”

“At least he supports the artist thing.” The yard, even in the dark, felt annoyingly well maintained. I dug my feet in with each step toward the shed. Trying to make sure I had some dirt to track back into the house.

“More so I convinced him it was a good investment.” He grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door open, waiting for me to go in first.

“You did say you’d sold pieces to his clients.” I stepped into the open doorway, consequently this was also a step into decay filled air. I backed up again. “That is a decaying body alright. “This thing sealed that smell in good.”

“Only the best from Dad. He was convinced the fumes from whatever I was doing would leak out and ruin the property value. If my art is a true money pit, he wants it to be a big one. But whatever, I got my studio. That’s why I’d like to get her out of it.”

He continued to stand holding the door open. Silently insisting me to go first. My nose had not come fully around to the rotting smell, but it was adjusting. Hindsight had me thankful that the bleach has jacked up my nose a bit earlier. Fresh bodies were no big deal. Annoying, but manageable. You let them sit for awhile, even just a day, and things could get nasty. Fast. I leaned back for one last breath of clean air and went in.

His studio was an open space. Directly left of the door was a little utility sink, mini fridge, and two cabinets with a countertop. To the right were stacks of canvas, many of them looked like completed pieces. A couple plastic shelving unit sof supplies across the way. HIs sleeper couch tucked in between those. The right corner was filled with what looked like a large black metal box with a door, but it was built partially into the wall. Positioned near center in the room was a desk and easel. Scraps of paper were scattered across the desktop, likely bits of ideas for pieces. There was a canvas on the easel, but I couldn’t see it from here due to the angle.

Given the sparse amount of bulk items in the room, it wasn’l like the body was hidden away somewhere. A solitary chair sat in the far left corner and she was tied to it. A mix of zip-ties and rope keeping her in place. Odd, seeing as how Trine normally filled her victim’s heads with happy drugs and they stayed on their own. Maybe she wanted to hear a scream for once. There were long cuts down her arms. One on her left arm looked jagged, when I got closer I saw a bunch of smaller horizontal cuts across the longer one. Someone had put a happy little tree into this woman’s skin. There was what looked like a crude mountain etched into her left leg too.

“Did you look her over at all before coming to the bar?” I asked.

“I got to the desk and couldn’t get any closer.”

I turned back to him, he was standing with his back against the wall between two stacks of canvas. “She was tortured. Trine cut stuff into her.”

“You said she liked the artsy stuff.”

I turned back to the body. The dried blood under my shoes flaked off as I moved around. More good stuff to track back inside. Trine had appeared drunk when she arrived with Snack Boy last night. But no one had thought twice about her until she shoved Carin into the jukebox and was ranting about cutting her flesh into stripes that imitate waves and an ocean of blood tinted paint. Snack Boy had been in his seat smiling the whole time.

This woman was dressed far below Trine’s standard. Even if she was experimenting with females, I figured there would have been a hard rule of black tie attire. The jean shorts and graphic tee this woman sported would not fit the bill. I tilted the woman’s head back, no makeup. Her hair didn’t look like it had fallen out of any styled do, but had been laying limp the whole time.

I stood up from the body and turned back toward the whole room. Maybe something about this space flipped a switch in Trine. “You think Trine would come out here instead of her own little posh condo in town? Especially if she picked you, and possibly this girl, up in the downtown area.”

“I’m closer to the bar. If she had been wanting to end up there, it would have been the shorter drive.”

But to go all the way in town and come farther out than she needed? Odd. I crossed the room toward the canvas stacks, pointing to the desk as I passed and said, “Can you go through that stuff for me? You’ll be able to tell what is yours and what might be some scribbles from a Trine gone mad.”

He gave a glance towards the body, not eager to step closer, but straightened his back and moved. “I thought we were just getting rid of the body.”

“It just doesn’t make sense. She’s had sloppy kills before, but nothing like this. No one really will fight over her being dead, there were plenty of people to vouch she was off her rocker and had it coming, but a couple will have questions. Like me. And I need to have the answers for her people so that I can get them out of my hair quickly when they come for her. So dig.”

Tipping the paintings forward one by one, I took in some of Snack Boys work. He hadn’t lied. Lots of landscapes. There were your typical forests, lakes, rivers, mountains, and plains that you could find littering the walls of all your doctor’s offices and boring relatives. Though some of them had interesting color choices, darker than your expectation for a visual that was usually bright. One piece displaying a cliffside so muted and depressed that I could hear the person falling to the rocks below while looking at it.

“Nothing seems out of the ordinary here,” Snack Boy said. “I mean, to a normal person my chicken scratch might look insane, but it’s all me.”

“It was a long shot,” I said setting the stack to its leaning position and turned back to the body. From here I could see the currently in progress piece. There were currently mostly faint penciled lines across the canvas. Mountains and one significantly tall tree were the bits that stood out in darker drawn lines on the canvas. I pointed toward it. “Did Trine do that?”

Snack Boy turned to the pad and seemed to be taking it in for the first time as well. HIs eyebrows scrunched together. “Maybe? I don’t remember starting it myself. But you said she fed off the artistic stuff first, right? Maybe she was copying my style?”

What came first, the body or the sketch? I moved toward the large door in the wall. “What’s this big thing?”

“A kiln. For the pottery and sculpting I mentioned before. Real authentic setup. Gives the pieces this older feel. It was the hardest thing to convince Dad to put in. He wanted to get an electric one, but they don’t come out the same.”

I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about. “So it’s a big oven. Fire and everything?”

“Fire and everything.”

“Well that makes this super easy. We burn her! Still need to break her up into bits and it’ll probably take a couple rounds to burn her all up, but no need to even take her out of the shed.” I grabbed the door handle and pulled. A few metal racks were set inside; they were adjustable to accommodate for different sized pieces. The kiln was empty, except for a long piece on the bottom rack. It was a dark black and didn’t appear to have any of the normal ‘pottery’ traits on first glance. Being nosy, I pulled it out. Maybe his sculpting is as off as his landscapes.

Not an oddly skinny vase. Not a sculpture of a twig or some pretentious shit. Not a blob of clay he’d pass off as modern art representing the human condition. Though, the human part was a hit. A femur to be exact.

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “Shit, and it looks like she won’t be along in there.”

“What do you mean?” Snack Boy came around the desk to get a closer look at what I had.

I pointed the bone right at his face. “You’re a goddamn psychopath.”

He blinked. “I’mma what?”

The gears were clicking together. I felt like an idiot for taking so long to get there. “Trine didn’t kill this lady, you did. You cut her up and were starting in on your little trophy painting when you had to leave for your friend’s gallery showing. You probably didn’t think much of it because you assumed you’d only be gone for a couple hours and she would have been fine for that long.”

Snack Boy was white knuckling the edge of the desk. “That cannot be right. I’m not-”

I cut him off because I was on a roll. “Then Trine grabbed you and did her mind tricks. She started feeding on your art, not realizing it was tied to your crazy. Which then drove her crazy. Talk about biting off more then you can chew. She went off the deep end at my bar because she couldn’t handle your twisted head.”

He backed up to sit on the stool at the desk. His face had gone the sheet white I’d been expecting to see much earlier than this.

I swung the femur over to the stacks. “Are each of those darker ones a body? Because if they are you have been hard at work, my friend. I counted like ten that seemed off. You said you’ve sold some pieces, did you sell any dark ones? At this rate, you may just blow those other big hitter serial killers out of the water.”

His face was turning blue. He was taking long, hard blinks at the stacks.

I came up beside him and hit the desk with the bone. “Breath, Snack Boy. You gotta breath, man.”

He didn’t jump from the sound, but took a long breath in and on the exhale and said, “My name is Pete.”

I didn’t really care about that, but I guess it was good to know his actual name for when the papers and police caught on to this and his name was plastered everywhere. Maybe I should grab a quick picture with him to prove I knew him for a minute. “Cool, Pete the Killer. This has got to be a unique situation we have, huh? Not many times a serial killer has forgotten they were a killer. I bet.”

Pete was keeping up with the long breaths. It’d been awhile since I’d seen one, but I think this was a form of panic attack happening. “I do suppose this is rather novel.”

“I mean, think about how well you’ve been taking a lot of this stuff so far though. It was a bit strange, I gotta say. Thought you were on some strong ass weed or something. Makes sense that finding out you’re a serial killer would be tipping point for an already unstable brain.”

“Can you stop calling me a serial killer for thirty seconds? Please.” He was slowly bending over towards the desk. His forehead resting on the wooden top. “The room is spinning a bit.”

I rubbed his back with the nub of the bone. “There, there. It’ll all come back to you. I assume. I bet in no time your memories will come back and you’ll be your old, uh, eccentric hobbyist self.

“Joy.”

“Okay, well, how long before this little fit can wrap up? We got some barbecue to do.” I was not about to do all of this myself and have to listen to him hyperventilate on top of that.

“Can you give me a minute here?”

“Sure. Sure. Woosaa, dude. Woosaa.” I went back to the body. Poked her a couple times with the end of the bone. She shifted a bit in the seat with each jab. “You know it’s too bad Trine had you gone so long. No easy breaks on this body anymore. She’s come back around to floppy.”

He groaned into the desk. His breathing was evening out.

I tossed the bone across the flood, back towards the kiln. It was going to need to finish burning. Breaking zip-ties and ropes wasn’t a hard task. Thank you, telekinetic powers from hell. No longer tied to the chair, the body tipped to the left and fell. I watched her face smack the concrete, could have bruised if most of her blood wasn’t already on the floor.

The stool scraped against the floor, Pete was standing again. He was leaning heavily on the desk, but standing. His eyes zeroed in on the stacks of paintings, the pile of potential victims.

“Hey,” I broke him of his self-induced trance. “How about you get that fire going for us?”

His movement was stiff, auto-pilot functioning, but he did what I asked. There was some control panel I’d not paid attention to next to the door. He punched a few buttons and I heard the machine hidden within the wall kick on. Small crackles of fire came a minute later.

On my end of the room, I had the body broken up in a few bits by the time the fire was popping. Arms and legs divided up the joints. Neck broken off closer to the collar bone. The torso was still a considerable chunk, no real clean place to break that one up more without spilling some guts around. It was a pretty tidy job, I thought. Though I wondered how he did it on his own. No special mind powers on his end, that I knew of. Or hell, that he knew of either.

Pete was fidgeting with a dial on the wall. Waiting on the fire to pick up. I stepped over to the sink/fridge area and continued being nosy. Maybe there was another body in here somewhere. A skull on a shelf. An organ in the icebox.

The cabinets held more art supplies. Paint thinner, cartons filled with half used paint tubes, and the like. Under the sink there was a large amount of bleach, to be expected given that this room was really for. I pulled a bottle out and the bucket also stowed away there. The fridge was empty, I realized it wasn’t even running when I pulled the door open and no light came on.

“Your fridge is busted.”

“Bad outlet,” he replied in a flat voice. “Gotta get an electrician out here.”

Before closing the door, I noticed the bottom of the fridge had pulled out from the force of the door opening. So the fridge was really, really busted. How’d his father let a crapped out fridge like this get in there? Leaning down, I pulled the loose plastic out and found another fun surprise. The edges of the piece were clean, they’d been cut. With that able to be pulled out, it made a space of a couple inches below the fridge where three meat cleavers and a sharpening stone were hidden away. So that’s how he did the bodies. I slid the plastic back into place, deciding to let him discover that one on his own.

“Kiln is almost warmed up. Should get her in there before it’s too hot to have the door open,” he said.

“Sounds good. Grab some and toss her in.” I stacked a pile of pieces in my arms. Watched enough Rachel Ray over the years to know how to balance an awkward amount of stuff.

Pete stood over the body for a moment, looking over the pieces one by one. I was tossing my arm load on a rack by the time he bent over to pick up two chunks of her right leg. He was slow going, but did a part of the body moving at least. The head had been left for me to roll into the bottom rack, but he snapped the door shut and punched the temperature up one last time.

“Now you just let that bake for about twenty minutes,” I said. “Maybe give it a turn to make sure everything cooks evenly.”

Pete stepped around me and went back to the sketch pad on the easel.”You think I could stop?”

“Being a killer? Wanting to kill? That could be a hard one.”

“But I don’t understand how I could do this. How could I be such a monster? I don’t feel like killing anyone now.” His fingers traced the lines of the tree.

“Because your head is still recovering from Trine. She was feeding on that part of you, it’s probably tapped out. Give it time, I bet whatever trigger you get to kill will come back.”

“What if I don’t want it? What if I fight it?”

God damn, I agreed to body removal. Not therapy. Deep breath. Help the sad, human killer. It’s still better than inventory. “Uh, well, I’d suggest finding a damn good hobby. Something to fill those idle hands. Not much can match up with murder.”

Pete sat on the stool and picked up a pencil from the lip of the easel. He shaded in a peak of a mountain. “What if I just focus on the work? You think that’d be enough?”

“No. Not even close.” From what I’d gathered, it was focusing on the work that drove him to cutting it into woman. I felt a tiny bit bad when his pencil dropped for a second. “But, I mean, really I know fuck all about you. Maybe that’d work.”

“Maybe.” He kept working on his lines. Another peak coming to life bit by bit.

My eyes flickered over to the stain of blood and gunk still on the floor around the chair. If he was going to fully zone out on me now, I was out. A phantom ache in my lower back reminded me of all the time I’d spent mopping just the night before. “So I figure you can clean that last bit up on your own. Now that we have the hard stuff out of the way.”

He leaned over to look at the dried blood pool. His hand idly matching the shape on the canvas as a pond. “Yeah, I can get that. Thanks for your help.”

I passed him to get to the door, but stopped before going out. “Hey, I mean nothing says you have to be a killer. I guess. You can give the normal guy thing to try. But if that doesn’t work, if you decide you want to dive back into that dark part of yourself, come by the bar sometime. I think you’ll be surprised at how much company you’ll be in. Monsters are a matter of perspective, you’d be surprised by how many you actually like.”

I was a businesswoman first. Asshole second. Some days anyway. Anything to sell a couple more beers. And maybe something to do with those bits of humanity still rolling around in my head.

I was halfway through the yard before I heard him call out, “You need a ride back?”

“No, I can take a shortcut.” Thank you again supernatural powers from hell. “You just keep doing that.”

I didn’t need to go back in the house, but I hadn’t stepped in all that gunk for nothing. Since it seemed he’d be out here for awhile, I should probably shut off the lights for him anyway. Stepping back into the sterile kitchen was unsettling. Two very different worlds in such a small space, but I suppose that was the point. I pulled open the large fridge door and found tidy shelves filled with organic foods. Cans of beverages and neatly stacked containers of leftovers ready to be viewed by the nosy potential buyers, or the nosy demon bartender. For my time, I snatched a can of pop.

“Not yours, Young Lady,” a chill voice echoed through the room.

I licked my palm and ran it over the freezer door. “Fuck you, ghost mother.”

With a thought I flicked off the lights and then snapped myself from the house to the front door of Heathens. I popped the tab of the can, it sprayed up into the air and partly in my face. One goddamn day I was going to remember that shit happened.

A week later, I was still telling patrons about Snack Boy/Pete the Serial Killer.He was a hit around the bar. People were nagging me for his address, wanting to see his deadly art studio for themselves. They were begging for a peak at the kiln filled with ashes of who knows how many bodies. But I never gave it out. As far as I knew, he wasn’t killing anymore. I would check for missing women, but that was kind of a needle in a haystack situation in this city. Letting him try to make the normal thing work was the one good deed I had going. I liked to have one of those from time to time. For shits and giggles. Also it pissed off the Divine folk when you could throw a good dead you’d done in their face.

I was facing the bottles in the cooler when I heard the scrape of a barstool against the floor. Wendy was running tables, so I turned around to help whoever had arrived.

Pete. Blonde hair styled, a little floof of volume on top of his head. A green bottom up and a thin canvas jacket. All that around a smile that only pulled up one corner of his mouth. Green eyes brighter that I”d remember them being.

“Hey there!” he said, in a lighter tone than I’d heard from him before. “It was Nancy, right?”

Hot damn he was…damn hot. Had i not been looking at him in good light before? “Uh, yeah. Nancy. That’s me. I’m surprised to see you Sna…Pete.”

“I have something I wanted to show you.” He pulled a couple folded pictures from a pocket and laid them out on the bar in my direction. The top one was the drawing he’d been doing when I left him, but finished as a full painting. Looming mountains, a dark pond, and that tall tree you could tell was waiting for a body to hang from it.

“Wow. That’s awesome. No shit, you’re actually really good.”

“Glad you think so. Though I had to find a little extra inspiration since my original dried up.” The other side of his mouth pulled up, reacting to a joke only he got. Pete, out of instinct I figured, looked around him before swapping to the second picture. Another woman tied to the same chair. Cut with jagged lines over any visible skin. “The mountains were given me trouble. I needed a different medium to help get the lines right.”

Now I was smiling too. “Normal life wasn’t too exciting was it?”

“Not at all.”

I pulled two bottles of beer at random from the ice chest below me, handing him one. “We’ll put this first one on the house to celebrate your return to the dark side. Welcome to Heathens.”

“Thanks,” he said and took a long pull from the beer. “By the way, did you lick my fridge?”

#fiction shortstory writing dark killer serialkiller murder

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/fyre-festival-my-front-row-seat-for-the-chaos-in-the-exumas/

Fyre Festival: My front-row seat for the chaos in the Exumas

Image copyright Fyre

Image caption It all looked so promising

Fyre Festival. If you think it sounds like the name of a new sort of natural disaster, you might not be wrong.

It started with an eye-catching video offering a luxury Bahamas festival weekend with models and celebrities galore. It ended with thousands of people stuck on a small island in tents meant for refugees, eating limp sandwiches from trays, and with the organiser, Billy McFarland, jailed for fraud.

As two new documentaries highlight the chaos of the Fyre Festival weekend in April 2017, writer T.R. Todd explains what he and others witnessed.

The party of the decade.

That’s how the video promoted it. And it wasn’t just any video: Bella Hadid and other supermodels, promoting an upcoming festival in the Exumas, an island chain in the Bahamas.

It promised luxury villas on the beach, gourmet chefs and a musical line-up topped by Blink 182 and provided by Kanye West’s label.

There was a buried treasure hunt worth more than a million dollars. Oh, and they would fly you in on a private jet, touching down on an island once owned by former Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

The backdrop was perfect: glamorous yachts, secluded beaches and the bluest, clearest water you had ever seen.

But for us, back then in February 2017, that video was just Exuma – our stomping ground. We had been up and down the archipelago a million times. If anything was happening in Exuma, we knew about it.

Yes, the water and beaches are that beautiful. And granted, there is indeed an island once owned by Escobar, otherwise known as Norman’s Cay. That’s where the truth ended.

The Fyre Festival, like it or not, was very definitely happening.

The man behind it was Billy McFarland, and the festival truly began when I heard the words: “Billy McFarland is at the gates.”

I’ll never forget those words.

I was sitting down to breakfast at the Grand Isle Resort, an upscale community in Great Exuma. After a few years at The Nassau Guardian, the country’s largest newspaper, I was hired by Peter Nicholson, the largest owner at Grand Isle, to run his marketing and communications. He was beside me at the moment we got the call.

Billy McFarland is at the gates.

We stared at each other in disbelief. Just 48 hours earlier, I had made a call of my own. Like everyone else, I had seen that mind-blowing video, but I was worried.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Before Fyre Festival, Exuma was best known for its happy swimming pigs

Years before, we had launched a marketing campaign for the famous swimming pigs of the Exumas that spread around the world. For decades, these pigs had lived on a secluded island, all by themselves.

As tourists passed through, the pigs grew accustomed to swimming out to the boats for food. So in 2014, we released a documentary that received millions of hits, setting off a chain reaction of publicity that gave Exuma its first true taste of fame. I would later write a book about it.

We had also organised a small music concert for only a few hundred people, twice, and it almost killed me. I understood how hard it was to pull off an event on the islands.

But Fyre Festival? How was this even possible?

So I called them.

Exuma is made up of 365 islands and cays, small sandy spits of land. Most of these islands, the ones not owned by celebrities and business moguls, are incredibly isolated. They lack basic infrastructure.

You want to have a major, upscale festival in the Exuma Cays? It wasn’t just “on the boundaries of the impossible”, as they advertised. It’s impossible, I told them.

I asked: have you ever heard of Great Exuma? (They hadn’t).

It was clear they had no clue what they were doing. Worse: they had no idea where they were.

Has Fyre Festival burned influencers?

Then they showed up, marching through the gates of Grand Isle. There was a gaggle of models brandishing smartphones, beautiful people flanked by fancy marketing executives and event planners from New York.

Image copyright Martin Howell

Image caption “For locals, the Fyre Festival was a loss of livelihood, and some cases, the loss of their life savings”

Caught in the middle of it all were the locals, about 20 them, wearing black T-shirts and hats, all branded with the Fyre logo. It felt like they were transformed by Fyre, or indoctrinated into some cult. The brand’s orange zigzag with the flame on top would soon spread all over the island.

It was such a departure from the Exuma we all knew and loved.

There isn’t a single traffic light on the island. There is one main road. And if you don’t pick up a hitchhiker, that’s rude. Millionaires and billionaires mill around locals with a few dollars in their pockets.

People come here to disappear, to melt into the landscape, to just be themselves. Exuma is arguably the most beautiful place in the world, but it is unpretentious.

Fyre felt like the opposite. It was flashy. It was shallow.

Inside the world’s biggest festival flop

The entourage made for the bar, ordering whatever they wanted. It was clear that money was not a concern.

And then there was Billy: the ultimate millennial villain.

Image copyright Netflix

Image caption Organiser Billy McFarland on a jet ski. He was later jailed for six years after pleading guilty to fraud.

When I’d see him in the following weeks, it was always the same: a big smile, a handshake, a pleasant word, but then he’d dash behind a phone or computer. To me, he was never at ease with himself or those around him. And he never listened.

I was by Nicholson’s side when he told Billy: “Don’t do this.”

With the right expectations, Fyre Festival could have been successful. But they needed at least six or eight months, maybe even a year, to prepare. At this point, they had three months.

Despite all the warnings, McFarland couldn’t be stopped. If it was going to happen anywhere, it was on Great Exuma, right across the street from Grand Isle.

So much of those three months were a blur. McFarland and his team never allowed anyone on site. There was a sense that they weren’t ready, but nobody knew just how bad it was.

Image copyright Martin Howell

Image caption Guests were promised luxury accommodation – they got this. And then the rain started.

On 27 April, the day before the festival was due to start, I walked down in the rain to the restaurant where three months earlier I had first laid eyes on Billy McFarland. The place was jammed with partying millennials. Many of them were influencers with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of followers.

It wasn’t long before the hysteria set in, when people saw the tents they would actually be staying in.

By now, we all know what happened next. Because so many of them were influencers, the Fyre Festival is engrained in us through images on social media: the disaster relief tents, that infamous cheese sandwich in Styrofoam.

I mostly saw it play out from Grand Isle, with people begging me for a bed, a couch or a pillow on the floor. Some of them frantically called home and stomped around in anger. Others were in a state of shock, weeping silently to themselves in frustration. Well-to-do millennials were now affectionately known as “refugees”. We took in as many of them as we could, as did others at Grand Isle. It could have been a lot worse. In the end, they all went back to their normal lives.

What was lost in it all, however, were the locals. They didn’t have millions of followers. This was their home.

For them, the Fyre Festival was more than a rip-off, a disappointment or an inconvenience. It was a loss of livelihood, and in some cases, the loss of their life savings. It shattered a dream and the promise of something better. Fyre consumed everyone in its path, especially the less fortunate that needed it most.

Everyone wanted the fantasy to be real.

That night, I went over to the festival site to see it with my own eyes.

There were hundreds of Bahamians that had worked day and night to try and make the impossible possible.

Defeated, with tears in his eyes, one of the festival’s organisers had one request: can you help get these workers home?

So in the middle of the night, I jammed our car full of workers, people that would never get paid. It was pitch black because the roads don’t have street lights. The houses don’t have addresses.

I would later find out these people were from the capital Nassau, not Exuma, because the festival couldn’t find enough labour on the island. An hour or two later, we eventually found a nondescript, darkened house, and I began my long drive back to Grand Isle.

Fortunately for the locals, there may yet be a happy ending.

Image copyright Getty Images

Earlier this month, two documentaries on the festival were released. The Netflix documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, tells the story of Maryann Rolle, who owns the restaurant Exuma Point with her husband, Elvis.

She bore the brunt of the chaos, feeding up to a thousand people a day without ever getting paid. In the documentary, she says she lost $50,000 (£38,000) of her savings.

Since the documentary aired, a GoFundMe page has raised more than $190,000 for her family. And now, together with the filmmakers and the Exuma Foundation, we have set up another GoFundMe page to help the hundreds of other workers impacted by Fyre.

The same social media monster that helped create Fyre may also provide salvation for the people of Exuma.

T.R. Todd is a journalist, biographer and novelist now based in Ottawa, Canada.

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hastybooks · 7 years

Text

dick trace

The Snapchat notification pops up when Roman unlocks his phone out of familiar disinterest, waiting for the waiter to come back with drinks and English getting a little too complicated for him to follow in this stylish, pipe-riddled restaurant that bounces every fucking noise around.

Roman blinks when he sees that it's from Yannick. Yannick almost never uses Snapchat, and that should make a little pit of dread light up in Roman's stomach. Instead he opens it, expecting to see Yannick's puppy do something cute.

Cold mortification rushes through his blood when he realizes what it actually is.

Thank fuck, his phone is underneath the table, right where Roman's pretending to look at the overworked menu, away from patrons who are pretending to ignore Roman while including him in their own selfies. Roman's throat closes as soon as the snap shows a computer screen with his own face on it, wearing a backwards cap with the Bruins logo emblazoned on it, looking down at his cock getting sucked by Tyler Seguin, back when Seguin was just a regular douche instead of a grade-A-douche, with the words Seguin Gseet uus wie gstorbeni Chatz typed right over where Roman's getting sucked off.

Fucking Yannick set the snap for infinity.

Roman slams his thumb on the power button, making the phone blink dark, and shoves it back into his pocket. He doesn't have to think too hard about how Yannick found that stupid video. Nothing goes away once it gets on camera, and Yannick is actually buddies with some of those fuckers who were egging both of them on to hook up. Roman's recollection of the night is. Hazy. Seguin made too much noise, gagged himself too hard on Roman like he was running away, leaving Roman's palms itchy like they needed a good wash.

He's never seen the video. Is almost afraid of seeing it, especially since Yannick is the sort of mean that would pick up on Roman acting like Yannick to get through Seguin's mouth around him, feeling only a flash of fondness when pink came up on Seguin's cheeks, making him stroke Seguin's blush and grind his hips against his face.

Also--

Roman thinks he may have called Seguin a good girl. Which was something 19-year-old Yannick constantly called Roman and Yannick never forgets any of that weird sex shit because he's a massive prick. Roman strips the paper wrapping from his straw and shreds it into thin strips. Smiles at some stupid jokes while thinking about the snap, the blur and the grain of the screen that doesn't hide the way Roman was flexing his abs for the handheld camera.

Fuck, he was a vain little shit.

Drinking his cucumber water doesn't fix the lump in his throat. He's dreading whatever shit Yannick gives him about the video, dreading actually watching it with Yannick because-- that's the exact shit he'd pull if he got his hands on a sex tape involving Yannick. Roman makes himself text Yannick to come over because sometimes a good defense is a decent offense.

Yannick sends back a peach emoji.

Yannick sinks down onto Roman's couch, pokes at a pillow covered in fake sheepskin before he taps the thumb drive outlined in his polo pocket. The skin on Roman's scalp tingles. He distrusts the smirk on Yannick's face. Roman sinks onto the cushion next to Yannick anyway, breathing in the pine-cool cologne that smells a little too close to Ralph Lauren Polo for Roman to ignore the firsts that came with that scent. He pries open his netbook, feeling Yannick's eyes on him like he's petting the curls on the back of his neck, and clears his throat before he presses it onto the coffee table.

Roman shifts his eyes onto Yannick's face for the first time since he walked into the door, and Yannick breaks into a grin, "Aw, Jos. Don't be shy."

"I don't--" Roman gestures mid-air, "remember that. Much."

He got smashed on Long Island ice teas, shotgunned with a few of the boys from the BioSteel camp, and woke up with a mild headache and hickey marks around his cock and Seguin looking at him a lot differently than he did before. Combined with a lot of porn star jokes.

Yannick jerks his eyebrows up, fiddling with the flash drive cover between his finger and thumb, "Yeah, fucking Tyler Seguin would be something you'd have to work hard to forget." His smile becomes wider as he looks Roman up and down, "Let's call it a lapse in your taste, eh?"

Roman squirms, smooths his hand over his shorts, hating the heat that's rushing up to his face. He was a NHL rookie who made most of the jump there, turned a lot of heads and that got his head turned, and there's his flimsy excuse for banging everyone left, right and center, oh god.

If Roman could sink through the floor all the way down to the basement level of his condo building, or float out through his wall-length windows he could start believing in a benevolent god.

Instead of Roman being spirited away, he stays on the couch, watching Yannick jiggle the flash drive in. The video player starts, and Yannick pauses and says, "Get this to stream to that TV," pointing at the TV that mostly looms on the far wall. Roman flicks a few buttons on his remote, and sees the blurry thumbnail of the video pop up on the TV.

Yannick makes a pleased noise deep in his throat, and says, "I'm flattered, really." He curls his arm around Roman's neck, pressing his lips to the corner of his jaw, "Ripping me off while fucking someone else, really gets me going."

Roman raises the remote, and says, "Is this when you give constructive criticism?"

Yannick unbuckles his belt, pushing his pants down enough to show off his lack of underwear, "No, this is when I play with your juicy ass and give you constructive criticism." Finding the bottle of lube Roman keeps hidden underneath a tissue box cover is easier than taking off his pants. Roman doesn't want to keep Yannick waiting, not when he's looking at him with a small smirk while stroking himself, and undresses as fast as he can before he presses play.

The video on the TV screen isn't high-def, the borders between skin-shorts-wall-carpet blurring into each other, but Roman gives a soft gasp when he recognizes his own face smirking down at Seguin, a joint dangling between his lips and his thumb pressing down on Seguin's only lip.

Yannick scrapes his palm down Roman's back, "Very juvenile delinquent of you." Roman bites his lips, and says, "Well. You would have done the same." Yannick hums, pulling himself closer to Roman, "I would, if the pot back home was actually smokeable."

Any retort Roman has gets shut down when he hears an off-screen voice-- Biznasty?-- laugh and tell Roman to shotgun the joint into Seguin's mouth. Watching himself lean down and blow smoke into Seguin's parted lips, hearing him moan, sets his teeth on edge. Yannick rubs a cold slip of lube up Roman's cleft, breathes, "Should have blown smoke into his face, he would've liked it," and laughs when Seguin tries to kiss Roman on screen, only to have Roman cover his mouth with a hand, "I did that to you a lot, didn't I?"

Roman blinks, remembering the gritty press of Yannick's palm against his mouth every time he leaned down to kiss him in a grotty shower, and any realization he gets slips away as soon as Yannick presses a finger against his asshole, rubbing small circles against his rim, the distant pleasure spiked by the bite of Yannick's teeth on his neck.

On screen, Roman presses down his shorts, slinging them underneath his balls, and telling Seguin to get closer. Roman watches himself sneer, "C'mon, we all know you're a cocksucker," which makes bury his face against his crossed arms, pressing back against Yannick's finger, embarrassment mixing with arousal when he presses around his prostate, his thigh in between Roman's legs. Seguin sucks Roman to hardness, the grainy pixels only making the vivid pinks-- cock, lips, knuckles-- even more obscene on the large TV.

"Don't remember calling you that," Yannick drawls, rubbing his hand over Roman's abs until his fingers brushes against the edges of hair.

Roman laughs, leans against the easy curve of Yannick's hand, "That was the top word in the locker room." He pauses, watching Seguin's face flush deep before he opens his mouth, "Sounds a lot meaner in English." He can almost feel Yannick raise his eyebrow as he says, "You did suck my cock a lot."

"Call me cocksucker then," Yannick leers.

Roman grinds down on Yannick's hand, feeling his thumb slip against the rim, "I think I called him a slut after he tried to go deep--"

"Oh, you do."

Yannick slips in two fingers before Roman can say anything else, fucks into him a few times before he squeezes Roman's side with a lube-sticky hand and tells him to watch the screen. Roman sets his jaw, shivers when Yannick pets his ass, cups his balls and tries to look at the way he's pulling at Seguin's cap on that TV, pressing the plastic band flush across his forehead and his own cock into his mouth. Seguin wraps his fingers around Roman's hips, any noise he can make only a gurgle before he coughs. Roman pushes Seguin's head away, laughs, nudges at his shorts with his foot, "You're such a fucking slut, Seguin, getting hard over sucking cock. I like it."

Seguin's blotched face gets covered up by his hand trying to scrub away spit, and he tells Roman to shut up before he tries again, less showy and more focused this time. Yannick scrapes his teeth against Roman's ass, "Now, that I told you," sounding almost fond.

Roman pants, "You like that I was pretending to be you," right as Yannick presses his mouth against the curve of his fingers and Roman's rim, gets a slow lick for that little insight. His back prickles with heat, watching himself squeeze Seguin's chin before he lifts up his cock for him to suck, the pained moan when Seguin gets mocked for his technique-- it's not an ice cream-- the slow slide of his fingers over Seguin's closed eyes before he calls him a pretty girl.

That makes Roman clench around Yannick's fingers and tongue before he pants, "You called me a pretty girl when you first rimmed me, on your messy bed--"

"You kinda deserved it," Yannick says in between licks, "All open and pretty with your ass up in the air," which makes Roman flip him off. Yannick slaps his thigh and presses his fingers in several rough thrusts that makes Roman scrape his nails against the cushions, watching himself holding Seguin against his hips so close his nose gets smooshed flat--

Roman pants, "You do that to me all the time."

Yannick presses his cock against the back of Roman's thigh, getting it sticky with precome, as he says, "Felt good, didn't it? Nothing like getting in deep," low and mean into the curve of Roman's ear. Roman curls his hand around his cock, stroking it as he pants through his teeth, feeling like he's being taken apart in every direction at once--

Fuck, Yannick's screwing in three fingers now, just as he's watching himself stroke off on TV, coming on Seguin's face and Seguin closing his eyes like it's a miracle rain--

"It's a shame you didn't keep fucking his mouth when you came," Yannick says, stroking his fingers over Roman's rim, "Would've liked to see come leak down that chin," and Roman comes, thinking about Yannick watching him get blown with dark jealously in his eyes, getting hard all over, the rough catch of his fingertips pressing against Roman's asshole like he would fuck Roman raw afterwards. He keeps jerking himself off, trying to get Yannick to come closer, until he's twitchy and dry and oversensitive.

Yannick turns Roman on his back with a smirk, "Maybe I'll deep-throat you, Josi," drags his hand down Roman's thigh, "See if you'd dare to be as mean as you were." He leans in closer, drags his lips against Roman's, "Since you've been a good student."

Roman makes a soft noise as Yannick slips down between his legs, petting the edges of Yannick's hair as he mouths his spent cock, the room silent now that the video's over. Yannick'll get his. He always does, and Roman licks his lips, shuddering at the feel of Yannick's hot mouth on him and the promise of more.

He can be mean.

#ficlet #smut #yannick weber/roman josi #past seguin but who cares about him

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