#like everything considered it is fucking BIZARRE and the circumstances under which i heard it are making me go
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why were they playing Your Type in the grocery store though. this isstill haunting me it doesnt seem real. its like that one time they played Be Sweet. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE CARLY
#genuinely made me go 'what the FUCK???' out loud when i realized what was playing#its a non-charting single off an album that has a vast legacy but isnt necessarily mainstream#like its so funny to listen to this pop song from a pop artist who released an album that did pretty well#and go 'what the FUCK is this DOING playing in PUBLIC' but genuinely when have you ever in your life#heard a song by her in public that wasnt Call Me Maybe (perhaps THe Loneliest Time? i know that one did well on tiktok recently)#like everything considered it is fucking BIZARRE and the circumstances under which i heard it are making me go#DID I DREAM THAT??????????????? I DIDNT AND I KNOW I DIDNT BUT ITS LIKE#HIDING FACE IN HANDS..............ITS OVER FOR ME YOU HAVE TO LEAVE ME BEHIND
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Bechloe Fic: The Kraken Has Been Unleashed
Summary: Chloe has a way with her. That’s for sure. And, as uncomfortable as it might make her to think about it in this very moment, Beca’s starting to wonder just what that really means.
Set at the beginning of Pitch Perfect 2. Kind of canon, kind of...not canon. Mostly fluff and fun and maybe some very mild angst at best. Nothing too stressful. We’ve been through enough of that!
Read on AO3
Chapter 10
Beca's alarm wakes her up way too early the next morning.
Usually, she'd snooze the clock ten times, roll out of bed and barely have time to brush her teeth before running to class. This morning is different though. It's the first day of her internship and she wants to be prepared. Wants to look professional. And she's pretty sure professional doesn't include a messy bun with sweatpants and one of Chloe's Barden t-shirts.
So she gets up early. Showers and puts on something nice before grabbing a bowl of cereal.
“You look hot this morning DJ. What's up?” Stacie ambles into the kitchen and gestures to Beca's outfit while opening up the refrigerator.
Beca looks up from her breakfast. “Hey Stace.” She swallows the bite she just shoved into her mouth. “Nothing. Just...won't have time to change before the party later.” The stool screeches across the floor as she stands and drops her bowl into the sink. “See you tonight.” She grabs her things and rushes out before Stacie can ask anymore questions. Stacie can sniff out a lie from a mile away so the last thing she needs to do is play a game of 20 questions with the house genius.
“Can’t wait!” Stacie calls out as Beca hustles out of the door to get to her first class on time, excited for what the day holds.
-----
Jesse’s car is rounding the corner as Beca walks away from her last class so she picks up speed. She doesn’t trust him. He has a knack for embarrassing her in public places. Not maliciously. Just...dorky.
“Hey superstar!” Jesse shouts out of the car window as he screeches to a halt. He leans over the center console to sling the passenger door open for Beca. “Damn! Work it Bec!”
Beca practically sprints the rest of the way to the car. “Oh my god.” She jumps in and slams the door, frantically trying to roll up the window. “Please shut up.”
Jesse laughs. “Is that any way to talk to your chauffeur for the day?”
“Keep it up and it’ll only get worse.” Beca side eyes him and adjusts the radio.
Jesse always plays late fifties pop songs and while Beca appreciates all types of music, she can't sit there and listen to it for extended periods. Although it does give her ideas for new mixes. Chloe always loves it when she mashes up old school songs with new stuff. Her thoughts stay trained on her best friend and she wonders what Chloe is up to. Between the rush of getting ready and trying not to freak out, there just wasn't time to see her this morning.
That's her excuse anyway.
If she's being honest, avoidance tactics may have been at work. She feels like absolute shit for keeping the internship from the redhead but she doesn't know how to broach the subject. Under normal circumstances, she knows she would be excited to tell Chloe. But there's a lot at stake for the Bellas right now and she doesn't want to add anything else to the older woman's plate. She wants Chloe to know that she's there and she's present and she's going to fight for them because letting Chloe down would be the worst feeling in the world.
Jesse's small talk forces her to dismiss the thought. They talk about classes and auditions and their last hood night party the Trebles are hosting later tonight and before she knows it, they’re pulling up to the Residual Heat Recording Studio.
Her nerves bubble up again.
She's excited and hopeful but she still has the weight of guilt lingering in the back of her mind. Jesse reassures her that everything will be okay. He reminds her that she's worked hard for this opportunity and she deserves this shot.
She gives him a quick kiss before running away while he continues to holler out more embarrassing comments. He's definitely a nerd but he knows her well. His goofy antics have calmed her down considerably and she takes a moment to appreciate his charm before charging ahead.
-----
The afternoon is a blur.
She fucks up her name tag picture, makes a shit ton of coffee and hands out a lot of snacks. She's nobody important here but that's not the point. There's a lot to be learned. A lot to be gained. This is her shot. It's her first step into the world of music production and she's looking forward to paying her dues.
In a bizarre series of events, her boss unexpectedly storms into the office and announces they'll be producing a new Christmas album for Snoop Dogg. The Snoop Dogg. It's crazy but she stifles her excitement. She doesn't want to be labeled as some psycho newbie on her first day but relaxing isn't easy. Between draining her brain for a quick idea on how to make Snoop's new album original and the exchanges happening between this Dax kid and her boss, she’s struggling to control her reactions. Her facial expressions always give her away and the one she's wearing right now screams absolute confusion because Dax is now high-kneeing around the room and this is all really fucking weird.
Thankfully, her phone buzzes and it gives her a reason to look away from the train wreck happening in front of her. She has four messages, none of which she noticed earlier. They’re from Jesse, Amy, and Chloe respectively.
She opens Jesse's message first. It's some idiotic, cheesy 'hope everything is going well’ message and she replies by calling him a dork. It seems like her go-to word when referring to him.
She hesitates before opening Amy's messages because she never knows what the blonde is going to say. It's almost always inappropriate and usually impossible to understand, but she opens it anyway.
Shorty! Where is our toothbrush?!
Yep.
What the fuck does Amy mean by our toothbrush? Beca refuses to believe the obvious. That Amy is implying (more like directly stating) that they use the same toothbrush. That just cannot be right. And even if it is, why would it be missing?
She makes a mental note to buy a new one immediately.
Maybe two.
The second message is almost just as cringeworthy.
Your acawife was asking where you were! You're gonna be in the dingo house tonight!
The urge to roll her eyes is too strong to avoid so she rolls them around before deciding she will not be messaging Amy back. She clicks Chloe's message instead. It's the most recent one.
Trip to Copenhagen is all booked! AHH! :-P
Beca chuckles to herself. She can hear Chloe's voice singing the message in her head. It's cute but it also makes her feel bad because they haven't even discussed the issue of Worlds and Beca promised she would be there for Chloe. Yet, here she is. At an internship that she still hasn't told Chloe about while the redhead sits at home and plans alone all afternoon. She knows she's going to have to address all of this at some point but how? This isn't really her area of expertise.
Another message comes through.
It's Chloe again.
You okay? Haven't heard from you today! :-(
Ouch.
Beca wonders why she acts like such a dick sometimes. There doesn’t seem to be any logical excuse. Especially when it comes to Chloe. She's the last person on Earth Beca wants to disappoint but it seems like it's destined to happen.
She takes a deep breath and types out a reply.
Sorry Chlo! Busy day. I'll see you at the Trebles’ later!
It's vague and lame but she can't tell the truth and she doesn’t want to outright lie to Chloe so she hits send and shoves her phone back into her pocket as her boss storms back into the room. She straightens in her seat and tries to blend in for the rest of the day.
-----
Beca exits the studio, overwhelmed and stressed, and throws her bag into the back seat of a cab before jumping in and giving the driver directions to the Bellas’ house.
She leans back and takes a deep breath that vibrates her through her lips on the way out. She knew this business would be cut-throat but wow . Today proved how messed up the music industry really is. The people are self-serving and the pace is incredibly fast and it feels like the multi-tasking skills needed to get through each minute are nearly impossible to master.
She’ll get through it though. She has to. This is her shot to get out there and start making a name for herself. This is her dream.
Plus, she’s glad to have the first day out of the way. It can only get easier from here.
Hopefully.
Possibly.
Who knows.
She shakes it off and pulls her phone out of her pocket. She hasn’t had a chance to check it since she messaged Chloe back earlier. Sure enough, there are a few new messages from her best friend. Chloe has no qualms about sending Beca multiple texts in a row. Even when Beca doesn’t answer right away, Chloe will continue babbling without worrying about whether or not she's being annoying.
If it were anyone else, Beca would probably send a string of expletives and permanently block their number. But, like everything else, Chloe is the exception. She smiles and opens their text thread.
Okay! Can't wait! XO
I hope they have the green punch!
Please bust out the cell phone dance move! I love it!!! ;-)
So, a Legacy showed up to our door tonight to audition and we accepted! She's totes amazing and you're going to love her!
I don't think we are breaking the rules bc she came to us! Loophole! :-D
BTW, Legacy means that her mom was a Bella. Her mom is THE Katherine Junk! Omg!
Beca chuckles at the enthusiasm in the messages and pictures Chloe grinning excitedly as she wrote them. A wave of anticipation hits her and she’s overwhelmed with the sudden need to get home as quickly as possible. She tells herself that she’s just anxious to get home after a long day but she knows that's a lie. Before reading those texts, she was tired. Even considered not showing up to the party but there’s a new energy flowing through her and she wills the cab driver to hurry the fuck up already.
When she finally makes it home, she throws her bag down, uses the bathroom, and races through the bushes to the Trebles’ house.
-----
Beca approaches the party, surprised at how out of control things seem already. It's still pretty early but the acapella crowd clearly came to party tonight. She wonders what type of trouble the Bellas are getting into and smiles thinking about all of their past Hood Nights. They've had some wild ones and she's sure this last one will be no different. Especially if Chloe has anything to do with it.
Chloe has a way of making Hood Nights, and most parties in general, more fun than they probably should be. Some of them, in particular, stand out for reasons that Beca isn’t prepared to think about right now. Mainly because they involve Chloe getting way too handsy.
But she already said she’s not thinking about that and scans the crowd for red hair instead.
Oddly enough, she can’t quickly spot her best friend but she spies Jesse sitting up on the deck. And because the night has her feeling light and giddy, she creeps up behind him and grabs him by the shoulders before giving him a quick peck on the lips.
His drink almost slips out of his hands and Beca mutters a quick “oh shit” before dropping down next to him. She takes a deep breath, ready to de-stress after such a crazy day, but Jesse starts asking about the internship and about Chloe and damnit.
“Oh, she’s just..she’s like, locked into the World’s right now and I’m looking for the right time. It’s-- I’ll tell her.” Beca tries to shrug it off like it’s no big deal but it dampens her mood and she excuses herself to grab a drink at the tiki hut. Why did Jesse have to bring up Chloe and the internship in the same sentence? Beca already feels like the absolute worst person in the world and the thought of Chloe having to ask Jesse for her whereabouts just makes it even worse.
This sucks.
Beca takes a huge gulp of whatever concoction is being served tonight and notes that it’s not the green punch that Chloe was hoping for but she can't dwell on it because she notices there’s a really tall girl just standing there staring at her. The girl's arms are stretched out towards Beca and she has no idea what’s about to happen.
“Hi!”
“Hi…” Beca responds hesitantly, still completely unsure.
The taller woman rambles something about being sisters and then it clicks for Beca. She realizes this is the girl- correction- the Legacy, that’s been added to their team.
“Oh yeah! Hi. Chloe texted me that we added a Legacy. I...didn't even know that was a thing.” She lifts her shoulders and gestures with her hands as she speaks. It feels odd.
The girl giggles and keeps staring at Beca so Beca just chuckles uncomfortably and takes another sip.
Then another.
And they're both just sort of standing there awkwardly.
Beca gives a tense smile and widens her eyes, which finally seems to break the other girl’s manic look.
She slaps her hands to her forehead way too hard. “Ouch! Oh my god. I’m sorry! I'm Emily. By the way. Sorry. I forgot that you didn’t know my name yet and I think the others have already started calling me Legacy so it’s totally okay if you want to call me that too I just figured you should know my real name because I totally-”
Beca reaches out and briefly touches Emily’s arm to stop her rambling. “Emily.” She pulls her hand away. “Nice to meet you.”
Emily beams and Beca really wants to get as far away from this interaction as possible.
“We can get to know each other better later. Right now…” Beca uses her head to gesture across the yard where she can see a few of the Bellas bouncing up and down. “Let’s go catch up with everyone else.”
“Oh!” Emily nods rapidly and Beca thinks she looks like a battery operated bobble-head. “Yeah, definitely! Let’s go!”
Beca nods once before taking a shot and refilling her cup as Emily follows her into the crowd.
-----
“Beca!” Amy is the first person she encounters.
Of course.
She is immediately picked up and twirled around by the blonde. “Where have you been? Oh my god! Have you gotten taller? No! That’s not possible!”
“Amy!” Beca kicks her legs and starts to protest the manhandling but she sees a flash of red hair as she’s being spun around and the words die on her lips.
She starts laughing because jesus christ. It’s been a long day and it feels like she’s been waiting to see that red hair for way too long now. She presses on Amy’s shoulders and frantically wrestles herself out of the tight grip, almost toppling them both over in the process. Amy strings together a few choice expletives and she can hear Stacie muttering something inappropriate but it doesn't stop her.
She bounces right up to her best friend with a smile so wide she thinks her head might explode. “Chlo!”
Chloe’s head whips around and when her eyes land on Beca, her face actually does explode into a display of pure joy. She reaches out and grabs Beca, hooking her arm firmly around the shorter woman’s shoulders to drag her in close.
Chloe's laugh echoes in Beca’s ear and Beca can’t stop her smile from growing impossibly wider as she wraps her arms around the redhead’s waist as best as she can and squeezes back. The scent of fresh laundry and liquor invades her senses and it’s all a little overwhelming but it feels good and she can't help but sink further into it. She lets her body sway back and forth with Chloe's as she breathes her in. Exhilaration and borderline manic happiness taking over in the moment.
“Beca!” Chloe pulls back but keeps her arm firmly around Beca’s shoulder. “Where did you come from!? Where have you been!?” Chloe’s mouth is wide open and the way her eyes are bubbling with excitement reminds Beca of a shaken soda bottle. The look is scary powerful and Beca can’t find it in herself to formulate a response so she just laughs like crazy and brings her cup up from around Chloe's waist to clink it to redhead’s before taking another sip.
Chloe’s eyes stay trained on her as she downs the drink and it makes Beca feel like a shot of Red Bull has been directly injected into her veins. It travels through her entire body with lightning speed and everything inside of her buzzes to life. She crushes the cup in her hand as she continues to drink, eventually cracking it. Remnants of the liquid leak down her arm but she keeps chugging. The atmosphere and the energy of the party has her head spinning and she just wants to let loose. Have fun.
She’s buying time too. Chloe’s presence is taking her to another level of excitement and she doesn’t know how to quite contain it at the moment. It feels like the cup is the only thing anchoring her to sanity at the moment.
“Beca!” Chloe swats the crushed cup straight out of Beca’s hand, the last few drops splashing out when it hits the ground and Beca’s eyes widen but she doesn’t move. Her arm stays frozen in the air, invisible cup still in hand. Mouth still open.
And Chloe smiles.
It’s that mischievous, self-satisfied smile. The same one she used after their shower duet so many years ago.
Beca won't forget that look. It makes her shiver but she smiles back, hand coming back down to squeeze Chloe around the middle again. "You're going to get into trouble tonight." Beca tuts, pretending to be put-off, "I can feel it."
Chloe nods enthusiastically, apparently thrilled by the notion, and moves both hands to Beca's shoulders. It brings the two of them face-to-face and she leans in to speak directly into Beca’s ear. "And you are already in trouble for getting here so late."
Beca’s chest tightens as Chloe pulls back to lock eyes but she keeps herself together. "Is that right?"
"Mhmm." Chloe is still nodding, all breezy happiness and cool confidence.
"Well," Beca shrugs, doing her best to appear nonchalant, "what are you gonna do about it?"
Chloe drapes her arms further around Beca’s shoulders, big blinking eyes boring into Beca, “I’m going to dance with you."
Beca’s hands involuntarily squeeze the redhead tighter, fingers eventually pressing into Chloe hard enough that she’s afraid she might leave a mark. She panics momentarily, not wanting to hurt her best friend, but then Chloe’s laugh cuts through the party noise and the redhead is dragging her through a crowd of people back towards familiar faces that instantly start shouting when they see the duo approaching.
“Beca!”
“Chloe!”
“Bloe!”
“What’s up bitches?!”
“Where were you guys!?”
Beca dodges Amy’s swinging arms as Chloe continues to pull her into the circle of Bellas but all of her ducking and dodging distracts her right into Stacie’s waiting hands.
“DJ!” Stacie shouts, squishing Beca’s cheeks and before Beca can react, Stacie starts moving in with puckered lips. There’s nothing Beca can do because one of her hands is still wrapped up in Chloe’s and the other is no match for Stacie’s strength so she braces for the onslaught coming her way, eyes shut and lips sucked in.
But it never comes.
Instead of sloppy Stacie kisses, Beca feels herself being pulled out of the taller woman’s grasp. She sees a flash of red and green and her favorite smile and she lets herself collide with the person reining her in. Hands squish her cheeks again but this time, she doesn’t even consider trying to fight them off. Instead, she wraps her arms around Chloe and returns the smile, letting everything around her disappear because Chloe leans in and peppers her face with kisses that match the beat of the song and the thump of her heart.
It makes Beca feel giddy.
Goofy.
Like she’s already had too much to drink but she knows that can’t be.
And really, in the moment, Beca honestly doesn't care what the reason is.
What the feeling is.
All she knows is that Chloe is here and everything feels perfect so she grabs on tighter and pulls Chloe in closer. Squeezing and laughing like a crazy person.
"You're insane! You know that, right?!" She's borderline shouting to be heard over the music.
Chloe pulls back just long enough to look directly at Beca. Eyes dancing and hands squeezing Beca's shoulders tightly. She mutters a quick, "mhmm" and leans in again, bright blue eyes crossing briefly as they come nose-to-nose.
It makes Beca chuckle.
"I know." Chloe mumbles the words and kisses the tip of Beca's nose.
Beca takes a deep breath and lets the tingling feeling take over as the beat drops and she falls into step with Chloe.
#bechloe#bechloe fanfic#bechloe fanfiction#pitch perfect fanfiction#pitch perfect fanfic#becha mitchell#chloe beale
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When Love Falls- Tom Holland x Reader (Repost)
Summary: A mutual visit to the same park in New York City resulted in Tom fantasizing about being in a relationship with you. The only problem? He saw you, but you didn’t see him and you left before he worked up the courage to introduce himself. Now, Tom is faced with a particularly troubling dilemma: How is he supposed to find you again in a city of eight million people when he doesn’t even know your name?
Word Count: 2,719
Warnings/Triggers: None, just lots of fluff!
Author’s Note: Hi, everyone! After nearly a year of taking a fanfiction writing hiatus to focus on school and learning more about the craft of writing overall (I’m a creative writing major in school), I finally decided to revisit and edit my old fics using the new tools I’ve gathered in my classes. I plan on doing this for all of my writing to produce and publish the best art I can for you guys, so be on the lookout for some more pieces here soon! But, in the meantime, I have to thank @bicaptain for proofreading and providing constructive criticism for all four drafts of this fic that I had. I appreciate you, L!
Most normal relationships nowadays begin with a simple “hello” while standing in line to check out at the grocery store or liking a post on someone’s Instagram page. A dinner and movie date might ensue, or a long thread of DM conversations before a “going steady” label or a change in one’s social media bio to “in a relationship.” It’s the twenty-first century for Pete's sake; for a relationship to begin any other way would be peculiar and out of sorts.
But, to be fair, when had Tom Holland, or his life, ever been normal?
For him, your relationship began the moment he first laid eyes on you. He was filming a project in New York City for a couple of months during the summer and rented an apartment on the south side of the island, just a train ride away from the apartment was a dog park he discovered and frequented with Tessa, his Bull Terrier. The grass in the park was emerald green and well fertilized; oak trees that had to have been planted more than one hundred years ago spanned the perimeter of the park, extending up and into the open air, cutting jagged edges out of the atmosphere, begging to be climbed and explored.
Which is exactly what Tom decided to do.
\What compelled him to perform such a task, he would never figure out, but he decided to blame it on a combination of his amateur parkour abilities and his boyish nature that was always poking at him to explore new places, no matter the risk or cost. On the first day he had a break from filming, he left Tessa at home so he could place his complete focus on the tree-climbing; he threw the hood of his sweatshirt up on his head and hopped aboard the subway for the short ride.
It was only natural of Tom to choose the tallest, most fruitful tree in the park to begin scaling once he got there. It probably should have proven more difficult than it was to get to the spot he decided he was going to make his own, but his early-twenty-something stature swung him up and about rather easily. The spot that he chose had multiple sturdy branches that sprouted out in all directions and provided the perfect nook to lay his blanket down and settle in with the book he brought, a book that certainly challenged his dyslexia but was too thrilling not to try and work through it. All was well for a couple of hours, what with the light breeze caressing his face and the warm sun shining through the leaves onto his skin, and he felt invisible, invincible, and at peace. He would have almost gone as far to say he was untouchable, even, like the anxiety of his career and the constant pressure of having to be something for someone all the time had completely disappeared. Tom was about thirty-seven pages into the mystery plot, thirty-seven pages into his blissful isolation, when the soft humming of an old Blink-182 song by a strong voice floated up into earshot.
That’s when he peered down and saw you.
You were making yourself comfortable with your own blanket and book at the bottom of the trunk. Your golden retriever, Winston, was laying contently beside you. That damn Blink-182 song had been stuck in your head for days ever since you walked past a hole-in-the-wall bar that was hosting their annual emo night, and no matter how much you sang it, some notes on the pitch, others off-key, you couldn’t let it go. So, it followed you here as you settled under the very tree Tom was nestled in to get a head start on an assignment for school and allow for Winston to get out and enjoy the fresh air, but because of the overgrown branches and monstrous-sized leaves, you didn’t know he was there. You sat contently for a time combing through your work as Tom’s mouth grew increasingly more dry while looking at you. He knew he shouldn’t have been doing that, watching you while you were completely ignorant to his presence, but he was drawn to your aura, the radiating confidence, and gentleness that simultaneously oozed from your pores. He’d never experienced anyone like you before, and certainly not under these bizarre circumstances, either.
How long his attention was gauged on you, he didn’t know, but when he snapped out of his lovestruck daze that had drool falling from the corner of his mouth, he realized he was watching you pack your bag and untie Winston from the tree to go on your way. Tom should have done something, damn it, but the thought of making himself known to you shrunk his confidence down to minuscule size and caused him to freeze. What in the world could he have possibly said: Hi, I’ve been watching you from up in this tree for hours and I think you are the loveliest girl I’ve ever seen, and I mean this in the least creepy way possible? Piss off. He could never. You wandered down the park trail and out of his sight and Tom’s heart fell at the realization that he’d never see you again.
If someone stuck a probe in Tom’s brain and used a projector to cast his thoughts on a loop, that person would only see you. You began to invade every aspect of his life: Tom closed his eyes in the shower to shampoo his hair, and there you were behind his eyelids. He passed an extra on set with a hair color similar to yours and his vision suddenly blurred. He heard your Blink-182 song in his dreams and woke up to believe you were right next to him in bed, curled up and sleeping soundly. It was the spaces between moments where you came to fruition-- sat next to him on the subway as someone else left the car, working behind the counter at the Starbucks on 8th Avenue right as walked out of the door with his coffee, passing him on the staircase as he made the climb to the floor of his apartment. You were there until you weren’t. A moment in time Tom couldn’t hold onto, a figment of his imagination that flashed before him and dissipated before he could resonate that he wasn’t actually looking at anything at all.
“You’ve got it bad, bro,” Harry stated over FaceTime one evening after twisting Tom’s arm behind his back to get him to explain why he couldn’t hold a proper conversation with his younger brother. “You saw that girl one time and you’re so preoccupied with her that you can’t even talk to me for more than thirty seconds before trailing off and drooling on yourself.”
“I am not drooling!” Tom protested although he couldn’t be sure, so he turned away from the camera to swipe at his chin just in case. No drool. A bastard, Harry was.
“You might as well be. You talk about her like she put the constellations in the sky herself.”
“C’mon, dude, you’ve got to give me a little bit more credit than that.”
Harry began fiddling with the cord of the headphones he was using to talk to Tom. “Hey, I didn’t say it was a bad thing to feel this way about someone, man. I just think you need to learn a bit more about her to ensure those feelings are constituted. Maybe you should, like, make yourself known to her first and say hello. Don’t keep looming over her head and ogling at her like a fucking weirdo.”
“Just how do you expect me to do that, Mr. “I Know Everything About Love?”
“Well, for starters, have you considered going back to the park to find her? She may be a frequent flyer.”
Tom sat silently, his eyes wandered off his phone screen in embarrassment.
“Ok,” Harry sighed, feigning annoyance. “Let’s start there. You should head to the park on the same day and time as before and make yourself comfortable near where you first saw her. I mean, this is a total shot in the dark and you really might never see her again and end up alone forever--”
“Dude!”
“--Or, you might just get lucky and see her again. But bro, a bit of advice: If you do see her, the only way you’re going to form any kind of relationship with her is by making sure she knows you exist. Say something to her if you see her.”
And somehow, by some crazy twist of fate, when Tom followed Harry’s advice and settled himself in his same spot in the same tree on another day of rest from filming, you showed up shortly after to settle in your same spot under the same tree. Tom couldn’t believe it. He was genuinely at a loss for words. The sound of your familiar humming of the same Blink-182 song gave your presence away before the sight of you did, and just like last time, he froze in his spot, eyes fixed on you, mouth slightly agape. To hell with the novel he was reading; you were far more pleasurable a sight to lay his eyes on than any story could have ever been, and he immediately began to wrestle with the incredibly creepy task he was performing. He just needed to go down there and say hello, to introduce himself as Harry said, but because fear was coursing through his veins, he simply watched you again for as long you were down there. This time, you were on the phone with your mother, and through this Tom was able to gather a shocking amount of information about you, including your mother’s name, your middle name, the latest summer classes you were taking at Columbia, and the fact that you have three younger brothers, just like Tom has, who seem to be knee-deep in their fair share of shenanigans, just like Tom’s brothers would be. The similarities between your two families made him smile, but before he was ready to see you go, you were up and on your way again with Winston, the connection Tom felt a fleeting moment he wished he could make tangible and wrap his fingers around forever.
For the next few weeks, Tom stayed up in the safety of his tree where he knew you wouldn’t find him. Every other Tuesday seemed to be the day was when his filming schedule opened up and allowed him to find you at the park by the tree. Every other Tuesday, for the next couple of weeks, Tom would fight to work up the courage to talk to you, and every other Tuesday for the next few weeks, he would lose. This was how he came to practice calling you his own.
However, for you, the relationship began a bit differently.
You’d been coming to the dog park with Winston on a bi-weekly basis whenever you didn’t have to be in summer classes or at work. You would have liked to have visited more often; a one bedroom apartment on campus wasn’t conducive with the lifestyle of an energetic five-year-old golden, but you made do with the free time you had and Winston wasn’t the type to protest. There was a particular tree you’d grown fond of (no pun intended) in the park for its sturdy trunk and strong frame, as well as the sweet shade it provided on humid New York summer afternoons, and you made it your temporary squatting place on the days you could make it out there.
On a Tuesday in mid-June, you settled down in your usual spot with a blanket to rest on and a bowl of water for Winston to lap up when he needed. The moment your back fell against the tree, you huffed, livid and nearly sick over the prospect of failing the physics test you took earlier that day. Science was never your thing to begin with, and why the hell did a liberal arts university require so many science classes of you to graduate, anyway?
It was a particularly windy day, so the constant rustling of the trees didn’t seem out of place against the bright blue sky, but it was about forty-five minutes into mindlessly scrolling on social media to distract yourself from your troubling emotions that you realized something was off: A shadow that was shaped oddly like a man was stretching across the grass in front of you. You peered over the top of your phone to look for the source of the shadow that was accompanied by the feeling of eyes blazing into your skin, but before you could stand up to search for the person that was causing your hair to stand on end, you felt a sharp object clip your shoulder while it fell to the ground.
“Ow!” You shouted, your hand immediately crossing over your body to cover your already-bruising skin. The object bounced a couple of feet away before flopping inanimately, and it took you a couple of glances to register what had just come down on you.
“A book? What the-”
“Oh my goodness, sweetheart, I’m so sorry!”
A boyish voice with an English accent coming from above interrupted the expletive that almost rolled off your tongue, and you looked up to see that it belonged to a man scurrying frantically down the tree. You started to stand while the man’s sneaker-covered feet landed on the grass. He began dusting off his jeans until he realized you were cradling yourself in pain, and within that moment he came to your rescue, apologizing profusely.
“I was up in the tree reading and my leg began to fall asleep, so I shifted my bum and the book slid off my lap and fell onto you before I had a chance to catch it! Please forgive me, miss, it was a sincere accident.” That boy was telling lies and you knew by the way his pupils dilated with every inhale of breath he took between his long-winded sentences. Even so, though, his dilated pupils were swimming in golden brown irises, and as his palms grazed the bare skin on your arms to offer some kind of assistance for your injury, you felt your skin warm at the touch and the adrenaline in your bloodstream settle.
“Were you…” you paused, trying to process the fact that the shadow that had been observing you moments ago substantiated into someone rather handsome and quirky, “Were you up there watching me the whole time I’ve been here?”
“I, uh...See, well, I, uh--”
So that’s a yes. “Have you been watching me the entire time I’ve been coming here?”
“No! Absolutely not. You see, I, uh, I heard that Blink-182 song you were humming and I… uh… I rather like that song, and so I, well, I…uh--”
“You’re a really bad liar, you know.”
The boy stopped stammering and sighed. “I know how incredibly creepy that sounds, but I promise I wasn’t stalking you. Every time you left the park, I didn’t follow; I had no idea where you were heading home to. I only observed you when you were under this tree because I was so enamored by you… Oh my gosh, this sounds so awful. Jesus…”
You giggled and felt your cheeks blush. “Is that slightly creepy? Yes. Absolutely. But is it also oddly endearing? You bet.”
The boy’s shoulders dropped in relief at the sound of your laughter as he extended his hand out to you. “Anyway, my name is Tom. I should have told you that the first time I saw you here. I apologize for the scare and for the bruised shoulder.”
You took his hand and gave it a firm shake, the warmth radiating through you again.
“Y/N.”
“‘Y/N,’” Tom repeated. “Nice to officially meet you.”
“Likewise-- Er, uh, sorta.”
You both laughed and took a seat on your blanket.
“So, Tom, have you always had a knack for climbing trees? You seem to be pretty good at it, seeing as how you got so far up I couldn’t see you.”
He broke out into a grin. “Oh, love, you don’t even know the half of it.”
Xx.
If you enjoyed this fic, please consider supporting my plan to go to grad school and earn my MFA in creative writing by donating to my Ko-Fi here! All of the money will go toward graduate school expenses.
#tom holland#tom holland x reader#tom holland fic#tom holland fanfic#tom holland fanfiction#tom holland x you#ton holland x y/n#tom holland fluff#harry holland#tom x reader#tom holland writing#fanfiction#fan fiction#fanfic#fan fic#marvel fanfiction#marvel fic#marvel fan fiction#marvel fan fic#spider man#peter parker#homecoming#spiderman: homecoming#spiderman homecoming#reader insert#original fic#original fanfiction
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“Some Sort of Neighborly” (10/11) | Once Upon a Time
Title: Some Sort of Neighborly - (10/11)
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Rating: M
Genre: Romance/Humor
Words: 8,292/41,279
Completed: 02/20/2017
Summary: Modern!AU Captain Swan. They're not neighbors, not exactly, and they're not friends either. It's pretty hard to find reasons to bump into the woman who lives next door to your best friend, especially after your only interaction with her has been waking up on her couch one Saturday morning. Sequel to Rude Awakening.
One more chapter to go! :)
On AO3 here | On FF.net here | On Tumblr under "Read More"
Some Sort of Neighborly
Chapter 10
Just like that, he’s gone.
It shouldn’t surprise her, really, how thoroughly he’s disappeared: even before, he was just her neighbor’s friend, after all, and she can count the number of chance encounters she’s had with him in one hand. Most of the times she’s run into him, she realizes now (now that it’s too late) haven’t been products of circumstance, but instead of deliberate intent.
They’d all been results of effort on his part, too, save for her showing up at The Jolly Roger – and look where that got her.
She almost expects to hear a knock on her front door or at her window at any given moment, to pull it open only to be snared by his suspiciously innocent smile.
But it never comes.
I think it’s yourself you’re afraid to trust.
Her skin still crawls with the ghost of his words. Except, while she knows her immediate reaction that night should have spoken for itself, while she refuses to believe he would lie to her – the more she turns it over and over in her mind, the more she decides that her response, instead, should have been pure indignance.
Because she’d been right to confront him: he doesn’t know anything about her relationship with Neal. He doesn’t know the hell she went through to put herself back together, to keep the scars she’d born, after years and years of that same hell, from tearing her apart all over again. He doesn’t know how firmly she’d steeled herself, how she’d forced her life forward even when it seemed stuck in the past, in that same never-ending loop she’s had on replay since the Swans decided they couldn’t keep her.
(She was supposed to be done with all of that the second she turned eighteen, once she could finally grasp her heart with both hands and refuse to let it be passed around ever again.)
(But he does know. And it kills her that she didn’t have to tell him at all.)
Either way, if she hadn’t raised herself on trust – internal trust and nothing else, at that – she wouldn’t have been able to make it through any of it, which the only thing she can cling to, the only thing she can use to tell herself that he was wrong.
She doesn’t want to think about how the only reason she needs to do that is because she doesn’t know what the hell to do if he was right.
So there isn’t anything to do about it at all, honestly – especially since, well, he’s gone. Though not without leaving her far too many mementos of that night for what little had actually happened – a faded mark on her neck that still tingles with the scratch of his scruff days later, the taste of his hunger and desperation on her tongue, his soft groan against her lips replaying itself over and over in her mind. But for all that she’s plagued by the memories of his warmth in her bed, and the pang of white-hot craving that inevitably follows, what sticks with her the most, as she’d feared, is the hollow look on his face right before he’d left. It was worse than the pain he’d had to endure to relive his ghosts, but only barely, and the spot on her cheek where he’d have kissed her stings with the loss of his goodbye.
Fuck. She doesn’t know how the hell it’d happened, but some way, somehow – she misses him. She hadn’t even had the chance to have him, not even as a constant presence, but she misses knowing he might be there, on the other side of that door, always ready to say exactly what she needs to hear.
(Double fuck.)
It’s the refusal to dwell on that thought finally that pushes her off of her couch and towards that same door, the one she’s been staring at for the better part of the afternoon, an entire week after he’d walked through it without looking back. She doesn’t realize where her bare feet are taking her until she’s already halfway to the apartment down the hall, and with that, she also realizes that her next-door neighbor might have been in a perfect position to witness exactly what had transpired in this hallway last weekend, and that she’d been a little too wrapped up in it herself to check for bystander trauma at the time.
Before she can blush, before she can overthink it, she forces her hand upward to knock.
A short moment of muffled shuffling later, the door swings open, heralding none other than Robin’s surprised face.
(She shouldn’t have expected anything else, but disappointment still flickers through her all the same.)
“Hey, Emma.” His confusion only takes a split second longer than usual to dissolve into a smile, but she appreciates the warmth anyway: for more reasons than one, she’s been in no mood for the questions and confrontation Mary Margaret and Ruby would have wrought had she not kept her distance, and though she appreciates them respecting her plea for space under the circumstances (even if she feels a tad guilty they’re under the wrong impression, given what happened at the bar), that also means she’s been sorely deprived of friendly human contact for longer than she’d care to admit. In the doorway, Robin cocks his head. “How can I help you?”
“Er.” Well, no going back now, no matter how silly this attempt suddenly seems. “Is Killian around?”
She can almost pinpoint exactly when the pieces click together in Robin’s head, as though she’s just confirmed his suspicions; she’s always been well-tuned to pity, even when it looks a lot like sympathy, after all. “No, I…” he presses his lips together. “I haven’t seen him. Sorry.” No surprises there, either. But she had to try. He continues, slowly: “Is something going on?”
No. It’s the truth, if only because he’d so staunchly decided it for the both of them, and yet it doesn’t feel like the right thing to say. She holds Robin’s gaze, expectant but concerned, but there’s no proper response she can give him. So, instead, she shakes her head and heaves him a short sigh from a half-smile she doesn’t feel, one she suspects will be telling enough.
“Sorry to bother you.” But just as she turns to leave, he calls after her.
“You don’t want to know where he is?”
She supposes he knows as well as she does that she has no shame in resorting to that tactic. The thought of tracking Killian down now, though, is far removed from the triumphant satisfaction she’d only just celebrated what feels like yesterday. She hasn’t a clue what she’d even say to him.
“Uh, no,” she says, one foot out the metaphorical door even as she faces him again. “That’s all right. Thanks though.”
Her parting smile feels just as forced as her previous one, but something in Robin’s expression catches her off-guard. His brows furrowed, he seems less like he’s analyzing her for answers than trying to figure out his own, and that’s the only reason she hesitates just long enough for him to speak again.
“Whatever’s happened between the two of you,” he says carefully, and then stops, restarts in a different direction. “I won’t ask, and I won’t get in the way, but you have to know how he feels about you, Emma. You know it, don’t you?
Guilt twists in her gut like a hot knife. “I know. I swear I didn’t—” She sounds too defensive, even from just that. “Look, Robin, I’m sorry. I know he hasn’t been around, and I know you’re nowhere dense enough not to have guessed at why, but—”
“Emma, I’m not looking for an apology from you,” he interrupts her quickly, with a shake of his head, and the look on his face is so genuinely insistent that she just has to believe it. “I just wanted to make sure you knew.”
Of course she’s known. But that isn’t the problem. “Thanks, Robin,” she tells him anyway, with as much appreciation as she can muster. “I’ll, uh. I’ll keep that in mind.”
That doesn’t quite seem to be the end of it, though, given how his serious gaze still pins her in place – still thoughtful, still considering. He shuffles between his feet before he speaks, earnestly. “He’s better for having met you, you know.”
His words ring with a strange kind of truth, one she can be sure holds at least for one of them, though also one that feels misplaced for how unexpected that declaration is. “Um. I… sorry?”
“I heard about that morning,” Robin says, cocking his head with a trace of strange amusement. “That morning, when you two met. He broke into your apartment, didn’t he?”
Still unsure where he’s going with this, she can only frown. It’s a little bizarre to think of Killian as the stranger he once was. “Yeah,” she begins slowly, but he continues before she gets the chance to herself.
“He was probably still a little pissed, and definitely more than a little hungover. Don’t you wonder why that hasn’t happened since then?”
“I didn’t think he made a habit of breaking into strangers’ apartments.”
“No, not that,” Robin snorts. “I meant – he used to drink himself into a coma, almost every weekend we didn’t have plans. After work, he’d pack up and go to a different bar, and he’d get straight-up pissed to try to drown everything out.” He doesn’t have to say it; she knows, even with his considerate discretion, exactly what he’s talking about. The rawness in Killian’s expression whenever his gaze had fallen on his mother’s ring was proof enough. “He hasn’t done any of that, though,” Robin goes on, “not since the morning he met you.”
“I… I guess he learned his lesson about safe drinking habits,” Emma suggests, though she hates trying to make light of something that makes her ache so.
“Maybe. I actually thought he might have been trying to distract himself with winning you over,” he says, and it sound vaguely like an apology, to his credit, “but something was different about him from that very first morning.” She might be more miffed at that first part, but she’s too wrapped up in his words to mind very much (especially, of course, when she already knows the truth of the matter herself). He seems to have trouble finding the right words to elaborate on the second. “He was… lighter, I suppose. More like his old self. I think meeting you reminded him of the person he used to be.”
That easy rhythm she’s known with him from the very start – even when it’s stumbled, it’s beat on between them, stronger than ever, and the loss of it still throbs within her now. “Why are you telling me this?”
Robin’s smile is one of careful sympathy. “I think the only reason that happened,” he says, “is because the two of you are so alike, even more than you could have known back then. Whatever you’re feeling right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s feeling the same way.”
Doubtful, she thinks, on pure instinct. After all, she wasn’t the one who walked away, and on a bullshit premise, at that. But Robin’s reminder ripples through her again, that they’d only met in the first place because Killian was trying to drink away his past – that he’s always been good at running, at trying to leave things behind. He could probably give her a run for her money for it, in fact, if she gave him the chance. From whatever had happened with his father to make his brother his only escape. From the deaths of his mother and that brother she knows he’d have loved so well. From Milah.
From Milah.
He’s still running, she realizes with a dull start, one that pangs hot in her chest and spreads through her like the flicker of a candle – but it isn’t from her. Maybe they really are too alike.
“Robin, I, uh—” She blinks to regain her focus, Robin’s patient face blurring back into view. “Listen, thanks for this. I have to run, but I really appreciate it.”
“Wait, what?” The startled pitch to his voice reaches her even as she turns away. “Where are you— wait,” he says quickly. “Are you going to try to find him?”
“I will,” she says, sending him a reassuring nod over her shoulder. “There’s just something I have to do first.”
She’s going to need to come back and find Robin again, at some point, but right now, she needs to put one foot in front of the other before she loses her nerve. She needs to remember all the reasons she has to move forward (forward, instead of backward), why she wants to more than she can remember ever feeling, no matter how difficult it might be to steel her heart and simply get it done.
She needs to grit her teeth and fight for it. That’s the only way she’s ever gotten the chance for anything in her life, after all.
She needs to pick up the phone and call Ruby.
He’s a right idiot, for more reasons than one.
It’s a thought that’s been gnawing at the back of his mind for the past week, but right now, trudging up the five flights of stairs to his apartment with but a single grocery bag to show for his efforts, he feels it more than ever.
Yes, he really did bundle up, brace himself for the cold, and walk all the way to the corner store for a box of hot chocolate mix. Yes, he’d only bought it to see if it would taste as good without the duckling mug, without a certain blonde neighbor (of sorts) sitting across from him on a hard wooden floor. Yes, that’s the only way he could finally quell the thoughts plaguing his every breath since he left – by flat out giving in to them.
(Yes, he might have been able to save himself three flights of stairs had he not left at all, and he might not have been so resigned to drinking hot chocolate alone, either, if he’d stayed. But he hadn’t, and even if it was the right thing to do, it still sits at the top of the list of reasons why he’s a right, bloody, ridiculous idiot.)
If he were a weaker man, he’d have given in to her. He’d wanted to, more than anything – especially when the hurt on her face had become nearly too much to bear, when he could feel the sting of betrayal with which he’d left her as poignantly as if she’d stuck him with it herself. He knows he’s not the first person to walk away from her, and there’s no way to express how much he wishes he hadn’t had to be the latest on that list.
And yet, he’d gone and done it anyway.
No matter how many times it makes sense in his head, he has to wonder if he’d be regretting it quite as much if it really was the right decision after all. If he’d done it for the right reasons, or if he’d only ruined everything on an assumption that he’d known her better than she knew herself, that being with her then should have been everything, because it should have felt so much more right than it had.
Guilt, pure and simple. That what is was, and that’s what it is, and he doesn’t know how to rid himself of it.
And now, an entire week later, it’s built into a weariness at all of his doubts and sentiment and his stupid, aching chest, one that keeps his eyes locked on the ground as he shuffles though all of his tasks like a mindless, heartsick buffoon.
That’s probably why he almost misses the obstruction blocking the top step of the stairway until it lurches into his field of view.
His head snaps up.
“Hey—”
“Killian.” He very nearly forgets to exhale the rest of that held breath, because, in all of her windswept glory, who else but Emma herself should make stumbling to her feet look like an act of pure grace?
Granted, he might be a bit biased: with all the resolve he’s put into staying away from Robin’s, and in effect, away from her these past few days, she’s a much more welcome sight than his bewildered mind can process. But, to be fair, he’d never, not once, imagined he’d ever see her anywhere near his apartment building, much less brushing the dirt off the back of her jeans from where she’d been seemingly camped out on the floor to his landing.
Somehow, her place had become the base for her, for them, in his mind.
“Sorry,” she says quickly, anxiously, and he realizes he’s been standing there with his foot raised and his mouth (likely) agape for far too long. “I… I know I shouldn’t have just shown up like this, but Robin gave me your address, and I just had to—” Her words stumble over one another, like white water over rocks. “I mean, I can come back another time, if you’re busy. But I ran all the way over here, so. You don’t have to, but I thought….”
He’s not sure whether or not she’s supposed to be making sense, which he doesn’t think should be attributed to any lack of oxygen on her part for her supposedly hurried commute. It does almost prick a spark of amusement through him, though – how she seems torn between demanding an audience with him and shying away – except he should probably say something, anything, first, before he starts acting in a way that’s liable to get him punched.
“Have you… You haven’t been waiting too long out here, have you?” It’s the first thought that makes it from his brain to his mouth, though it nearly makes him want to put his foot in it straightaway. He’d only been gone for the twenty minutes it’d taken to get to the store and back (a pathetic single-objective mission, of course), but he’s not too fond of the idea of her camped out in this drafty hallway for any length of time, either.
Sure enough, she shakes her head, and then pauses.
“Can I, er…” She gestures over her shoulder, towards the door to 611 on the other side of the hallway.
He grimaces the moment her meaning becomes clear, forcing the words from his mouth before he can think twice of it. “Swan, I don’t think— that might not be the best idea.” Neither is the prospect of having any kind of conversation with her out here, in full view of all his neighbors, but, damn it, he doesn’t know if he could bear having her in his apartment, so close, when he knows nothing she might say to him now will change his mind.
He’d meant it: she’d never be able to stop protecting her heart when she kept it lodged in the past, locked up even from herself, as she did.
“I went to see Neal,” she says firmly.
He freezes. “What?”
“I tracked him down. I talked to him, just now, before I came here.” Her sigh seems to be one of impatience, as though she wishes she didn’t have to spell it out for him quite so thoroughly. He’s getting there, he thinks, but the words are so unexpected it’s just taking him longer than it should. “Listen, can I just… come in for a minute?”
He swallows thickly; he should probably have gotten used to her waylaying everything he’d known by now. In the end, there’s nothing he can say but a careful, hesitant, “All right.”
It’s bizarre, walking past her to unlock his door – he wonders if it’s just because she’s here at all or if it’s because, as he pushes it open and nods her inside first, he thinks this might be how she feels every time she’s on the other side of hers. Every time he surprises her, and every time she lets him in (except for, of course, that first morning). This time, he suspects, might be a bit different, because once his initial shock passes, all it takes is the slightest whiff of her perfume as she brushes past him for everything he’s been trying to suppress, to forget, to come back in full force, and he doesn’t think she’s rendered momentarily paralyzed with a jolt of longing whenever he crosses her threshold.
That night had almost been his undoing, in too many ways.
(And perhaps he should be ashamed for it, how easily but memory of her skin and the taste of her kiss could make him crumble – but it has, and it does.)
She’s still hovering by his front door when he finishes with locking it and turning to face her, dropping the grocery bag to the floor, though she seems preoccupied with glancing around at the tiny expanse of what she can see. Which isn’t really a lot, but it makes up most of his apartment all the same: the utilitarian kitchen, the single couch and armchair set adorning the room beyond. Had he known she was coming, he might have taken the time to tidy up a bit (he’s been a little distracted of late, after all, which hasn’t exactly lent productivity to menial things like laundry), but he figures he’d never really given her a heads-up on his visits either, so it’s only fair.
As it turns out, he doesn’t have much time to dwell on her opinions of his place at all when she finally spins on her heel, neglecting to have even removed her coat, her expression alight with adamance.
“I thought about what you said,” she tells him, without preamble. “About Neal still being a part of my life, no matter how much I told myself he wasn’t.”
It’s awful hearing his own words repeated back to him, in her voice, but he still stands by it. At least now, though, her declaration from before makes a lot more sense. “So you went to confront him?” He hesitates, and even through his admiration of her bravery, concern flickers through him like the smoldering crackle of ashes come back to life. “Swan, are you all right?”
She presses her lips together, seems to draw herself up to her full height. “That might not be the last time I see him, whether I want to or not. He’s going to be around for a while, and there’s nothing I can do about that, but it doesn’t matter.” She heaves a long, heavy breath. “He left so suddenly, there were a lot of things I never got to say. A lot of things I didn’t even realize I wanted to say until now, looking back.” A guilty smile plays at the edges of her lips. “I probably should have punched him then.”
His disbelieving snort, almost a bark of a laugh, is harder than it should be to contain, given the circumstances. “Did you, just now?”
“No,” she admits with a hint of regret. But then she shakes her head, as if to clear it, and continues on with dogged determination. “We just talked. He isn’t sorry for what he did, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – he had his reasons, selfish as they were. But everyone always has their reasons. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t deserve more.”
He gets the feeling she’s not just talking about Neal. “Emma, love,” he says slowly. “What happened? How on earth could… for you, as tenacious as you are…” There’s no proper way for him to outright ask it, which is why he’s grateful when she seems to understand his message loud and clear.
(He’s never outright asked anything of her, until now, but perhaps this is the most important question he ever could.)
Her green eyes glittering with a muted fierceness, she still seems to need a moment to gather her response. “He let me hope.” She says it staunchly, like a stubborn fact she knows she can’t change. “I thought I was over that – I thought I’d forgotten how, to trust someone so wholeheartedly with the confidence that they’d never leave. But I guess I spent so long not remembering what hope felt like, after all those years in the system, I didn’t realize it’d crept up on me until it’d already made a home for itself where it didn’t belong.”
He feels his jaw clench without thinking it. “What Neal did,” he tells her, with deliberate emphasis, “and how you feel about it, even now – it’s not your fault.”
“Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the way I do.” She spares him a half-hearted shrug, and he knows, as much as he hates to admit it, that it’s true. “You were right. I did have unfinished business with Neal, even if it was just setting the record straight and finally knowing, after all this time, that he doesn’t regret it, not even after I told him what I just told you. That he wasn’t worth the hope I gave him in the first place.” His heart squeezes tight in his chest, and not for her concession of his words from earlier. For that concession, though, she doesn’t look the least bit ready to back down, either, her pink mouth still set in a determined line across her face, so all he can do is wait until she finally speaks again.
“You were right about how I felt,” she repeats. “But you were wrong about something else.” Her gaze seems to pin him to the spot. “Just because it’s hard to move forward doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“Wh…” He struggles to piece together her words. “But Swan, you just said—”
“I know what I said,” she interrupts him in a rush, “but that’s not the same thing. I might not have been able to carve Neal out of my life. Maybe I never will, and I’ll carry around those scars forever. But they don’t need to vanish like they never existed before they start to heal. The things that hurt you – they don’t have to stop hurting before you can start to move on.” She lets out an exhale, one that he can feel trembling in his bones even though he’s nowhere near enough to capture it on his skin. “I know I can put the past behind me, but that doesn’t mean I have to do it alone. That doesn’t mean you have to do it alone, either.”
He blinks. “What?”
In three long strides, she’s before him, a hand going up to rest on his chest. Her warmth melts through the fabric of his coat, somehow, and every inch of him clenches with the desire to feel it without barriers again. “This ring,” she says resolutely, looking up to meet his eyes. “I know you might wear it in memory, but you carry it like it weighs as much as the goddamn world.” Her fingers curl into a fist, and it certainly feels like he’s being twisted up tight in her grasp, the breath lost somewhere between his lungs and his throat. “That weight doesn’t just go away, even if you don’t realize it’s there, you know. Letting someone else help you lift it doesn’t mean you’ve failed, or that it means any less to you than it once did. All it means is that you can take it off and give yourself a moment to remember how to breathe without it around your neck.”
He forces himself to swallow, hot and thick. In the back of his mind, her television screen flashes with an image of a bright smile and a sparkling diamond ring, one he’d had so much trouble separating from the vision in his memories. He remembers, night after night, feeling the strings of his guitar against his fingers and refusing to admit, even if he’d told her otherwise, that the reason he’d kept dodging the prospect of her mixed with his music was because somewhere deep inside – he couldn’t escape it. The guilt of forgetting, even for a moment, what it’d felt like to see that flash of brunette hair in the crowd. The guilt of losing that one sentimental piece he had left, that one reminder of where he’d once lodged his heart so firmly, it was an insult to think he might be able take it back, give it to another, just like that.
That guilt he’s been feeling, the name for it comes to him now: the guilt of letting go.
But, he understands, it’s not letting go and pretending it meant nothing, in the end.
It’s healing.
The inhale he forces down his aching throat doesn’t quite do much for his stability, but he needs it all the same to say it, quietly. “How do you know all this, love?”
She bites her lip, her bright eyes darting between his. “Don’t be mad, but it was Robin. Don’t—” she says in a rush, as the confusion starts to bubble up into vague indignance, “don’t get upset. He didn’t tell me anything, really. All he said, all he did was remind me that… well, I know you better than I should. We’re the same. It didn’t take much to figure it all out after that.”
Bloody Robin. For all of his vocal disapproval, he sure seems to have a different opinion of his relationships – whatever form they may or may not take – when he’s speaking with Emma. “And he told you I’d be here?”
“Is that all right?” Her hand still pressed against his chest, she’s closer than ever, which makes the hesitant quiver of her lashes all the more distracting. “I didn’t know how else to find you.”
“And you ran all the way here from Neal’s?” He can’t help the tiny smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth, despite everything. Or, perhaps, because of everything. She only rolls her eyes. “Why?” he asks.
“I was in a hurry,” she tells him flatly, as though it should be obvious, but she elaborates upon prompting with a quirk of his brow. “I didn’t want to waste any more time.”
That doesn’t mean I have to do it alone. “Any more time before what?” It is obvious; he just needs to hear her say it. Just as it’s obvious that she’s spoken nothing but the truth, that the reason understanding comes to readily to him is because she’d had to come to terms with it, as well. That it probably hadn’t been easy – acceptance never is, he knows – but the one thing that is easy is staying by her side, and maybe that’s enough to pull him through it, to pull both of them through it all, piece by broken piece. That he wants it, if his pounding heart isn’t indication enough, finally, with everything he can possibly muster.
That he’s done wasting time, too.
“You know what,” she mutters. He feels her hand press more firmly into him as she seems to sway in place, her gaze so full with the sentiment she won’t put into words, it threatens to swallow him whole.
Well, that’s good enough. He lets it.
Exhaling the breath he’s held caught in his throat, he dips his head, hovers there for the time it’d take for her to pull away. But she doesn’t, only nudges closer infinitesimally, and waits with extraordinary patience – until, at last, he bridges that last gap and presses his lips to hers once more.
It’s gentle, searching, wrapped in all the things they’ve said like the seal of a promise. Her mouth moves against his with perfect abandon, and her hand on his chest slides up to join its partner around his neck, pulling herself flush against him as the heavy beat of desire between them, reawoken, begins to thrum that familiar pattern, like it’s loathe to have disappeared at all. He savors this kiss, savors her, in all the ways he couldn’t let himself back when she’d first kissed him at The Jolly Roger, in her apartment, which is the only reason he has even the slightest cause for protest when her lips grow more insistent, a new level of hunger that scarcely allows time for appreciation.
He breaks away just enough, the heady scent of her clouding his senses still, but all that seems to do is prompt her expectant glare.
“I know you said you were done wasting time,” he murmurs, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it, too.”
“Who says I’m not?” Catching him by the collar, she starts to tug him backward, towards the only way out of the kitchen.
“Would you like a tour?” he asks with amused sarcasm. He knows his apartment is small, but the confidence with which she seems to expect to find what she’s looking for (with her eyes closed, no less, if he has anything to say about it) is more endearing than worrying.
She snorts, a sweet breath on his tongue. “Maybe just one of those single-destination trips, for now.”
“For now,” he agrees, and she pulls his mouth back down to cover hers with a grin. Her fingers work at the zipper to his coat, then at shoving it off altogether, all the while shuffling them backward across his kitchen, the heated slide of her lips against his drawing him along at her mercy. It’s all he can do to shift them in the right direction, towards the door to his bedroom, much less keep up in terms of her urgency. He keeps finding himself lost, after all – in the feel of her, her warmth in his arms and her tongue coaxing bliss through his veins – so it doesn’t quite surprise him that, by the time she falls onto his bed, she’s only lost her jacket, while his shirt seems to have found a new home on his floor.
He stops himself from collapsing on top of her, but only just, so it’s from a new vantage point that he can watch her eyes flit down his form, glinting in the bare light of the setting sun through his blinds.
“You know, I’d have thought you’d be much faster at taking off clothes.” He raises an eyebrow at her, but she only shrugs, helping him out by beginning to unzip her boots. “You seemed to have no trouble with getting shirtless while black-out drunk,” she reminds him, “right before passing out on my couch.”
“For your benefit, of course,” he hedges lightly, smirks at the way she seems to have trouble maintaining her scowl. He’d have to be blind to miss the appreciation in her gaze – to have missed it, even back then.
(Like then, too, the moment he remembers, he makes sure to tug the chain of his ring over his head before it can cause any more problems, to tuck it away into his pocket for safe-keeping as a force of habit. It’s lighter than it’s ever been, cupped in his palm, and he doesn’t miss the flash of emotion that crosses her face at the sight, either – if just for a split second, mingled understanding and subdued pride.)
“Come on,” she snorts. She kicks off her boots and shuffles up his bed, and he has no choice but to do the same, to join her in record time. He tucks her into his side, nudging her lips back to his with his thumb fitted against her chin, and the curve of her leg slides between his knees, her hand beginning to wander up his chest. It has to be that she’s deemed them properly situated for her liking, because she finally lets him keep the pace at a heated simmer – lets him take her in with everything she deserves.
The sweet vice of her mouth, slick and hot and wonderful, doesn’t distract him from how her fingertips pull at the hair across his skin, or from the delicious sounds she makes every time he kisses her just right. It also can’t help him decide where to touch her (everywhere seems like a good place to start), and he swears he runs his fingers between her jawline and the soft tangle of her hair far too many times before he finally settles on sliding them down her collarbones to hook into the first button of her shirt. He might be perfectly content with simply kissing her forever, but the moment he undoes the last clasp, slides his hand up the bare expanse of her belly, the need to feel more jerks up his nerves with a sensation akin to pain.
Gooseflesh rises along the path of his touch, and with every time her muscles tense under his palm, he grows more and more certain that the heat coiling its way from every inch of his skin down into the space below his gut – it’s a shared thing.
This time, when she tugs away even as she cups his jaw in place, her tongue darting out between her swollen pink lips, the dark gleam in her eyes makes it all too clear that he was right: she’s done with indulgence.
“Come on,” she repeats, barely a whisper this time, and the thin, wanting sound propels him forward without any more convincing. He slips his grip between her free shoulder and her shirt, though that’s just about all he can do when she hauls herself up to sitting to shrug it off. Her hands go to the button of her jeans, so he tries to quell the throb of his pulse just enough to work on his own (carefully, of course; it’s ridiculous how hard he’s gotten from endless kissing and a few prolonged touches alone). Given her ribbing, he’s only too glad he’s managed to kick them off by the time she settles back under him, as all that matching lace is more than a little distracting.
“Did you know this would happen?” he asks quietly as he props himself up on an elbow, smiling at the faint blush that stains her cheeks, and curls a finger into the strap of her bra. He’s all for respectable reverence of undergarments – as respectable as an inspection of that nature can be, really – but it’s the sight of all that lovely pale skin against his sheets that has hunger gnawing low, beneath his last shred of clothing.
“No.”
“Are you sure, darling?” She casts him a look (though it loses a great deal of bite when cushioned by pillows from all sides). “It appears as though you’d come here knowing exactly what I was thinking, so it goes without saying you’d also known exactly what my answer would have been.”
“Don’t get used to it, buddy,” she tells him, and she reaches behind her back in a maneuver he suspects is meant to shut him up. “I don’t have enough matching underwear to keep this up forever.”
He hums, half in acceptance, half in pure appreciation when she gets the clasp loose. “I suppose I’ll just have to bear it.”
“What a saint.”
“I’m nothing of the sort,” he says, grinning widely – though him reaching over fill his palm with her breast, to rub this thumb over a pebbled nipple when she tosses that scrap of lace to the side, is far from an attempt to prove a point. She sighs with satisfaction, arching up to meet him, and the sound goes straight between his legs with an accuracy that almost has him buckling over. He does end up bending for a different reason, though.
It’s the best kind of torture, the feeling of her chest heaving, her body writhing beneath his mouth. He marks a wet trail down the side of her neck, continues where he shouldn’t have left off the last time he tasted the salt of her skin – down, down, latching onto a breast with a swirl of his tongue, a nip of his teeth. One set of her fingers finds its way into his, his anchor to keep him grounded in the moment despite the unbearable tautness coaxing its way through every muscle in his body with every quiet gasp that escapes her lips. That leaves him with one free hand to play with the lace at her hip, urging her legs to twitch apart wider. The lace between them is almost completely soaked though.
“Bloody hell, love.” She makes a noise that sounds almost like a laugh, but it’s cut off the moment he slips his fingers beneath, his groin tightening just as quickly at the slick feeling of her heat. He returns his mouth to her other breast and tries, in vain, he should think, from going mad, from losing himself entirely in the ache to simply sink himself inside. He knows, from personal experience now, that it’d be incredible beyond his wildest dreams, if this is what he gets for merely touching her. He slides between her folds, teasing and rubbing and coaxing out sound after wonderful sound, his thumb drawing tiny circles around the bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs. It isn’t long before her hips begin to move with impatient need against his hand, and he obliges before his brain can catch up, curling one long finger inside slowly.
“Oh,” she groans. When he looks up, her lashes are fluttering madly, her own free hand clenched so tightly in his sheets he’s surprised the one clasped around his hasn’t yet rendered him numb. The edges of his self-control fraying, he pulls out as carefully as he can, then sinks that same finger back inside her trembling quim, and the feeling of her around him hits, hot and wanting, right below the belt, so to speak. He watches her back arch, her hips rising to meet him to the knuckle, and then her heavy-lidded eyes catch him in their dark green snare. “Killian.” It’s an expression of gratitude and a desperate plea, all in one. “Killian, please.”
The noise that escapes his throat is something that should probably embarrass him, but, as it is, he’s too preoccupied with letting her underwear settle back into place as he scrambles for his bedside drawer. Somehow, she manages to kick it off completely, to start at the waistband of his before he’s even managed to get the condom out of its foil package.
“Bloody—fuck, Emma,” he bites out. She smiles a serene sort of torment, all innocence like her hand isn’t wrapped around him, curving gently as she slides her grip down. His boxers barely askew from his hips, he can only sit back on his haunches, his mind blanking but for the sensation of her palm around his cock.
Saints. He needs to feel her.
“Come on.” It’s the last time she has to say it (though it’s a close thing, how he freezes the moment he registers her completely bare – the loveliest sight he’s ever seen); he gets rid of the last of his clothing, rolls the condom with shaky hands. Before he can resume his prior place over her, though, she pushes him back to sitting with a hand against his shoulder.
His mouth feels dry, even as he grins. “You know, somehow, this doesn’t surprise me.”
“Shut up,” she tells him, and she’s barely settled herself into his lap, hands clasped around the back of his neck, before she very effectively does it for him. One second, her hand is guiding his length into position, and he feels just the slightest hint of pressure from her quim; the next, she’s lowering herself down onto her knees, taking him deep without even the decency for preamble.
He hears himself groan, as if from somewhere far away, a sound that mixes with her sharp inhale in a way that’s pure music to his ears. She clenches him so perfectly on the slide down, wet and tight, that he needs a moment simply to breathe as he bottoms out, feels her legs clamp more firmly around his hips as she steadies herself, too. And then she’s moving, back and forth in his lap, her hips rolling to push him deeper with every labored thrust she doesn’t even bother to make gentle, or start slow at all, for that matter. The hot clasp of her body consumes every fiber of his being, his pulse pounding in his cock and in his throat as she fucks him, and he’s so caught up in the utter bliss that it pumps through his blood that he doesn’t even realize he’s wasting time until he feels her mouth tilt over his.
If he’s being honest with himself, he’s in no right state of mind for his lips to be moving properly, but perhaps his instincts have done something right when he tastes the vibrations of her moan. Or perhaps it’s just that he can feel her tightening in time with the coil of pleasure tensing to a point in his groin, pushing him closer and closer to the edge every time she sinks back down and buries him to the hilt. He slips a hand between them, pressing his thumb into where she’s opened up like a flower, and it takes just a second of coaxing for her to cry out against his lips at last. Everything is white-hot and stretched to the absolute cusp of breaking as her slick walls squeeze around him, fluttering with her release.
When he comes, it’s harder than he can ever remember, deep inside her, with his fingers clutched so rigidly against her hip, he’s almost afraid of leaving her with more than a pair of bruised lips.
It takes several long moments for the thick pulse of pleasure to subside, for its clouds to clear themselves from his hazy, lust-filled mind. He feels every pant she exhales over his cheek, her nose skimming a gentle line across his skin, and he swallows, tries to catch his breath enough to speak.
“Emma.”
When she opens her eyes, even in the new darkness of the room, he can see the lazy satiation glittering in them, clear as day. “Yeah?”
Those words from before – he’s glad to be able to say them now. “I wish I’d let you hear me perform earlier, too.” Her laugh is an exhausted, but no less pleased, thing, one he can feel more than the way she shifts over his still-tender flesh.
“Well,” she says, “now that I know where you play, I suspect you’re going to be able to make up for those regrets a lot sooner than you’d think.” Her fingers wind into the hair at the back of his head as he returns her grin. “But actually – speaking of which,” she frowns down at him, “where have you been keeping your guitar this past week? If you’ve been avoiding going to Robin’s?”
He shrugs, and it doesn’t bode well that the soreness is already starting to settle in there, since that probably means it’s starting to settle in everywhere. And he knows it’ll plague him everywhere. “At The Jolly,” he tells her. “I’m afraid I’ve gotten woefully out of practice, thanks to you.” He knows she’s aware he only means it in jest.
“Guess you’re going to have to put in a few extra hours later,” she says, raising her eyebrows meaningfully.
“I suppose I could use a private audience for that, too.” She muffles her chuckle by kissing him again, wrapping her arms full around his neck to press her breasts flush against his chest. He might suspect her of trying to work him back up again, and he’s just about ready to pull away and accuse her of it, no less – except she’s barely a few seconds into it when a thin growl twists its way into the quiet air of the room.
He doesn’t realize exactly where it’s come from until he spies the redness creeping into her cheeks, long after he jumps and breaks the kiss, startled.
“Hungry?”
“It’s gotten late,” she says with a touch of defense in her not-quite pout.
“And you’ve certainly worked up an appetite.” If her punishment for his cheek is extricating herself from him, at last, and perching herself back down on the edge of the bed – well, the loss of her warmth might make him think twice about his words from now on.
Maybe.
(Probably not. The view is certainly something to be admired, and there’s also the fact that he only has to lean forward to feel it again, soft at the pulse of her wrist.)
“Dinner?” he suggests, and the corners of her lips curve in the darkness.
“You did say that’d be a step up from doughnuts and cupcakes.” Against the mattress, she twists her hand to twist her fingers around his, and she glances at him over her shoulder. “Although you’d better be willing to put up with all of my failed attempts at cooking, if we’re staying in.” From her tone, he’d wager she has zero plans of letting either of them leave anytime soon, which is just as well.
“That won’t be a problem,” he tells her, in no uncertain terms. “It just so happens that I’ve only recently purchased a box of hot chocolate mix, of which I hear you’re something of an expert.”
He swears her smile would light up the room, if it could.
“That,” she says, leaning forward to kiss him again, “would be perfect.”
(It is.)
#cs ff#cs mc ff#captain swan#once upon a time#emma swan#killian jones#captain hook#writing#some sort of neighborly
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Allied, Part 9
Group: GOT7
Member: Jackson
POV: 1st Person
Type: Angst/Fluff/Series/Other
Word Count: 2,200
Summary: The world is in turmoil. There are few functioning governments left and an incurable disease has wiped out most of the human population. It’s every man for himself until you find an ally who becomes more.
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
“You’re an idiot, you know that?”
Jackson doesn't say a word, just scowls, as I walk around the room preparing things to fix him up.
After coming ashore and finding out Jackson was injured, our new little group decided that the number one priority was treating Jackson. So the three of us set out on a trek that led us to a road and then an old, abandoned gas station. After checking that it was safe, I pulled Jackson into the bathroom while Jaebum kept watch outside. It was in pretty bad shape and there was nothing left to scavenge, but it at least got us out of the elements to focus on getting that bullet out of Jackson.
That was one thing we determined on the way. Only one of the bullets went all the way through; the one in his abdomen. None of us were doctors, but as far as we could tell, the one that went all the way through didn’t cause serious damage. We would have to wait and see, but he kept pressure on it until we got to the gas station. I knew if I left it the other bullet in, it would get infected and risking any kind of infection was asking for trouble. The deadly kind and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I didn’t want to lose Jackson.
It was stupid really. He was just a guy I met along the way, or at least he used to be. Now he was someone to look to, someone to help. A companion, a comrade, a friend. And I would be a monster to let my friend die because of a fucking infection.
“We might be dead if I didn’t take over,” I heard Jackson say and turned around to look at him.
He was leaning against the counter where the sinks were, looking very uncomfortable and very shirtless, but I couldn’t appreciate it through all of the blood. He also looked annoyed. I was as well, but at that point I couldn’t figure out who was annoyed with what. If he was annoyed with me, himself or our situation in general. I got the feeling it was all of the above.
“What?” I asked.
“If I didn’t step in to get the motor going and get us out of there, we might be dead.”
I scoffed. “I’m not calling you stupid because you took over from me. I’m calling you stupid because you didn’t consider the consequences and because you didn’t tell us sooner that you got hit.”
He tried crossing his arms to make a snarky comment but winced when it made him engage his injured shoulder. I almost laughed at how quickly the look on his face shifted from sassy to hurt, but I stopped myself. There was no point in either of us getting any more riled up than we already were.
“Let’s get that bullet out of you.”
I set down everything I had in terms of first aid next to him on the counter. All I could find was some gauze, a little bit of antiseptic I had left in my bag, fabric scraps, and a needle that I would need to close up the hole in his shoulder. The two in his abdomen were small enough to close up with butterfly stitches and then wrap some gauze and fabric around to keep closed, so I did that first. He gritted his teeth and hiss harshly when I applied the antiseptic, but the worst was still to come. I touched the skin around the bullet wound in his shoulder and Jackson pretty much jumped out of my reach.
“That hurts,” he yelled in a high-pitched voice.
“It’s going to hurt a lot more than that when I pull the bullet out,” I told him. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
He flinched when I tried to reach for him again. It was weird seeing Jackson, the usually brave and reckless, shying away from my touch. I needed to help him but he was too scared to let. I was going to need to try a different strategy.
“Wait here,” I said.
Jaebum was right outside the bathroom, leaning against the wall with a gun in hand. He looked very casual, but I knew he was being vigilant. I was actually surprised he was still with us at all. His head shot up when I came out and he looked at me with enquiring eyes.
“So?” he asked. “How’d it go?”
“I’m not getting that bullet out of him without some help. We have nothing to numb the pain and he’s so sensitive right now. He is going to scream his lungs out when I try to get that bullet out and let everyone within a five-mile radius know where we are.”
He thought about it for a second before nodded. “You have a point. What do you need me to do?”
The truth was I didn’t know. My medical knowledge was limited, but I knew the tools needed to be sterile and that we needed to manage Jackson’s pain somehow, for his sake. But we only had so much at our disposal. All we had for pain were some paracetamol for headaches, nothing that could make a gunshot feel like less of a big deal. We also didn’t have anaesthesia, which meant Jackson was going to be in a world of pain. I didn’t look forward to seeing that or being responsible for it, but we didn’t have a choice.
“We need to find him something to bite on,” I said to Jaebum, letting my words sink in. “And I’m going to need you to hold him down.”
I waited while he processed what I told him, a looking of determination settling over him before he nodded. It was bizarre to me how ready he was to tackle stuff like this. I knew we’d all seen our fair share of shit and had to learn to work through it, but Jaebum was on another level. Being part of the rebels really affected him.
We search the shop one more time before deciding that a souvenir t-shirt would be the best thing for him to bite on. I’ll rip off a piece, wad it up and stuff it in his mouth. Hopefully that will stifle most of the sound.
Jaebum follows me into the bathroom where Jackson is sat on the counter looking like a fidgety mess biting his nails. We get him to lie down on a pile of t-shirts we brought in from the shop, tearing a piece off of one for the gag. I sterilise a pair of stainless steel chopsticks with a lighter and prepare some more fabric scraps with antiseptic liquid while we wait for them to cool down. Jackson’s eyes keep shifting between me and Jaebum, waiting for some kind of reassurance, but it wasn’t time for that yet. I accidentally put pressure on the hurt shoulder and he hisses loudly before I apologise. It was too sensitive. He was going to have to wear a sling for a while and that would put him at a disadvantage.
“This is going to suck,” I tell Jackson before putting a wad of fabric in his mouth.
His eyes widen briefly and then he looks away from me entirely. I grab the chopsticks and take a deep breath before sticking them into the wound. Immediately Jackson flinches and tries to scream, but the fabric does a good job at muffling him. Jaebum holds him down while I try to find the bullet.
“Hold on,” Jaebum says to try and console him. “She has to do this.”
But Jackson keeps screaming the same muffled cry of pain and I see tears running down his face. It makes it so much harder for me to concentrate, but I have to get it done. Two torturous minutes late, I finally get the bullet out and I drop it on the floor where it rolls into one of the stalls out of sight. We all take a relieved breath, but Jackson is still in a considerable amount of pain and he’s also bleeding pretty badly.
I quickly apply the antiseptic liquid to a rag and press it to the wound, making him flinch and squeal again. Jaebum keeps holding him down without any hint of expression on his face.
When everything was finally under control and I had Jackson’s wound dressed, everything was quiet. Jackson’s eyes were still squeezed shut and his breathing heavy. It was the only other sound I could hear over my heart pounding in my head.
“You’ll be okay,” I whispered to him. “I promise.”
We decided to stay at the gas station that night. Jackson and I were still too wiped out from the bullet removal to really think about moving around. Jaebum wasn’t too keen on the idea, but for some reason he also didn’t want to venture off on his own. It was comforting to know he would be around to have our backs. I think he’s proven his trustworthiness at this point.
I build us a small fire around the back of the building in an enclosed service area. The corrugated steel up against the chainlink fence told us that someone tried to reinforce the station, but they weren’t very successful by the looks of things.
Jackson was asleep inside in what seemed like a staff room. His arm was in a sling and he was pretty much dead to the world not even ten minutes after I took care of him. In all honestly, I was very worried about him. I’d done the best that I could with my limited resources, but there was still the risk of infection. There was only so much I could do in the shitty circumstances.
I was tending to the fire and trying to keep warm at the same time when I felt someone take a seat beside me. It almost scared me half to death before I remembered Jaebum was still awake.
“You shouldn’t be up,” I said. “You’ll be too tired to take the next shift.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, staring into the fire.
I didn’t have anything to say to that. I didn’t want to be a nag. If he didn’t want to sleep I wasn’t going to command him to. So we just sat like that, staring at the fire and listening to its almost rhythmic popping. It would almost be soothing if it wasn’t pitch black around us in every direction.
“So,” said Jaebum suddenly. “You and Jackson.”
I turned to look at him. “Me and Jackson what?”
“Are you two, like, together?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t feel that way about each other.”
“That’s not true on his part.”
“And how would you know that, stranger?”
My emphasis on the last word makes him smile. “I don’t have to know either of you very well to notice the way he looks at you.”
His gaze on me is too intense and I have to look back at the fire. “And how is that?”
“Like you’re his whole world.”
My skin prickles at that. “Your skills of observation are off.”
He chuckles. “They’re definitely not. Jackson is so in love with you, it’s almost sad. Why are you doing this to him?”
I jump to my feet. “Why are you doing this to me?”
He just looks up at me with his dark eyes and the slight smirk on his face tells me that he’s gotten what he wanted. All he wanted was to get a rise out of me and I gave it to him on a silver platter.
“Do you think this is easy for me?” I continue. “You’re a loner too. You of all people should know what it’s like to not want to get close to anyone. We’re both going to get hurt eventually and this is the lesser of all those possible evil. So, just leave it alone. I’m going to sleep. You can take this shift.”
I march off into the building before he can get another word in, but I know what I said will resonate with him. It wasn’t as simple as jumping into a relationship with the first person you find. I wanted to minimise the damage I did to other people and getting romantically involved with anyone increased the chances of doing just that. I needed to keep my options open. If, for whatever reason, I needed to make a run for it, I could because I’m essentially on my own. Yes, Jackson and I were travelling together, but that doesn’t make him my responsibility. All I wanted was to do right by him without things getting too serious.
As I walk into the staff room and see Jackson asleep on the floor, I’m struck with the realisation that I would be forever indebted to him. He has saved my life so many times that I don’t think I would ever be able to repay him.
I lie down in front of him and as I watch his steady breathing, I fall asleep too.
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#got7#got7 jackson#got7 imagines#got7 imagine#got7 scenarios#got7 scenario#got7 fanfic#jackson#jackson wang#jackson wang imagines#jackson wang imagine#jackson wang scenarios#jackson wang scenario#jackson imagines#jackson imagine#jackson scenarios#jackson scenario
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The Sequel - 889
Eden Hazard Can Really Hurt You
André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea/BVB players, and random awesome OC’s (okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)
original epic tale
all chapters of The Sequel
“Do you know why Eden is asking Schü if you’re back with Lex?”
“Does anyone know why Eden does things?”
“Well did you mention her, or see her or something?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Yes. You sound like a paranoid and untrusting girlfriend right now. Why?”
“I’m not. It’s just weird. Why would he ask him about it out of the blue?”
“I don’t know. Ask Eden.”
“K”
“Why do you care why he asked if I’m telling you it’s not true?”
“I don’t.”
“Sure.”
“Are you seeing someone else, other than Lex?”
“No. You don’t trust me?”
“Of course I do, but I’ve told you so many times that you can do whatever you want, so...It wouldn’t be like you were doing something wrong.”
“And I’ve told you I don’t want anyone else.”
“Ok. I’m sorry. It was just weird.”
“What’s wrong, pretty girl?” André asked his forlorn looking wife after he let the dogs out. She looked all distant and vaguely upset again on the couch, like earlier in the barn. He lifted up her blanket to get back under it.
“Nothing. Can you just- Can you ask Eden why he was asking you about Juan and Lex?” Christina grimaced. “I know you don’t wanna hear that I’m now obsessing over that, but I have to be honest, and-“
“It’s okay.” He inhaled deeply through his nose, which made a rather loud sound. “We can talk about anything. Always. He didn’t really ask me about him and Lex. He asked me if I recognized some girl Juan talked to at a club last night, and then mentioned that he thought he was back with Lex before.”
“Oh.” Christina’s face fell, and she looked even more forlorn than before. I don’t know who I’m more disappointed in right now. Juan might be hiding something, maybe, and this one could have told me this bit of information that he knows I am definitely interested in.
“Okay, before you get all upset with everyone, consider the source,” the footballer warned encouragingly. He put his arm around her head and kissed her temple with the side of his mouth. “Eden never knows what he’s talking about, and guys talk to girls in nightclubs. It just happens. Especially when you’re the only single guy there. Girls come up to you and they’re all sweet, or seductive, or fawning for you. You can’t get upset because Juan conversed with a woman, and you can’t be mad at me for not telling you that Juan did something you can’t get upset about.”
“But-“
“But it hurts you when someone who says you’re special so much as acknowledges the existence of another woman- got it.” André nodded and squeezed her head tighter. This is a bizarre thing. I’m here consoling her like her gay best friend, because she’s brokenhearted over another guy. How did our lives get like this?
“I just- I need to go make a phone call...”
“Yeah. Of course. Tell him I said hi.”
Christina gave him an apologetic peck on the cheek as soon as she was released from the headlock, and then hurried down the hall to the study as fast as her ouchy ankle would take her. She dialed Juan as soon as her butt hit the window seat cushion.
“Yeees?” the Spaniard sighed over the line, clearly having expected her call.
“Don’t get mad at me. I’m not doubting you. I just need an explanation.”
“I can’t explain another person’s ac-“
“Not for Eden. He asked Schü about the girl you were talking to at whatever club you all went to last night. He just mentioned the Lex thing for context, I guess.”
“And you want to know who the girl is.”
“Yes. And if you took her home with you and if she now knows your tongue is as good as your left foot.” Christina cracked jokes when she was nervous. Christina cracked jokes when she thought humor could get her out of trouble. Christina thought her best friend was rightfully going to be furious with her for asking those questions.
“Her name is Jenni, she did not come home with me, and I have no idea how she feels about my tongue. I can tell you I don’t feel good about you losing your mind because you heard I spoke to a girl.” Juan’s response was measured. It was angry, and impatient for sure, but measured. He didn’t lash out, or sigh, or make disgusted sounds. He also didn’t go on to lecture her about what her reaction said about their relationship. He just left it hanging there. She almost couldn’t help herself. She had to dig her hole deeper.
“Did you want her to go home with you? Do you like her?”
“Chris!”
“I’m sorry,” she groaned. Spencer noticed her in the window and was hopping around on the patio on just the other side of the flowerbed under it, trying to get her attention. It wasn’t working. Her mind was fixed on something else, immovably. “I’m jealous. Okay? I’m jealous. I love you and you’re mine and no matter how many times I say you can go fall in love with someone else I obviously don’t want you to do that ever. I’m sorry. I’m a terrible person. I’m the worst. I’m insanely jealous. I’m also so mad at him for not telling me this, and at the same time I feel terrible for letting him see how jealous I am because somebody else talked to a girl. Ugh. I am the worst.”
“Are you drunk?”
“High, I think. I took one of the prescription pain meds for my ankle.”
“Ahhhhhh. That explains it,” the Chelsea man said with an audible smile on the end of his sigh. Christina didn’t know if he was amused by her inability to tolerate serious drugs or by her serious jealousy.
“It still hurts. And I decided to retire Nicky Tater Tots in March. And Dortmund is awful- the team I mean, not the city. Everything sucks and you shouldn’t talk to girls.”
“He told me he wasn’t going to let you take those things anymore.”
“Pharma Schü only dispenses them in extreme circumstances.”
“He shouldn’t give them to you at all.”
“I’m just being silly because I was, like, panicked.” Well this is embarrassing. I tried to cover up the anxiety attack over him flirting with someone and now he thinks I’m under the influence. Great.
“Okay,” Juan yawned.
“What are you doing?”
“Watching television.”
“I showed Lukas the Marvel dog costumes you sent me and he wants Spencer and Lucky to go to the Halloween party with him as Iron Man and Captain America. I had to pay like a gagillion Euros to have them shipped second-day.”
“What is he going to be?”
“I talked him into being a baby dragon. He likes the little wings. I think he thinks it’s actually a dinosaur costume, but whatever.”
“Did you decide which season Daenerys you want to be?”
“Season 7, badass Daenerys with the pointy shoulders and black outfit. I tried to convince Schü to be Jamie Lannister but he wasn’t having it. He’s with the team for Halloween anyway.”
“Did you end up buying the expensive wig?”
“Yes. I’m going to bring it to Doha with me and we’re gonna role-play,” Christina teased, finally feeling like the tension was gone from the conversation. Her friend’s voice was back to normal, without lingering traces of irritation, and she felt less anxious too. They’d been discussing Halloween costumes for a week because he saw a kid on the street in London in really realistic, correct Scuderia Ferrari overalls just like Sebastian and Kimi’s and then went on an Internet hunt to find the suit and suggest it to Christina for Lukas, to go with his battery powered Ferrari. He couldn’t find the exact suit, but he did stumble across the dog costumes, advertised on some pups that looked just like Spencer and Lucky, so he sent those to her just for fun. She wanted Spencer, Lucky, and Lukas to be her three baby dragons, since she was going to be Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons. The two-thirds of the family was going to a community party and trick-or-treating thing in Marco’s neighborhood. A bunch of André’s other teammates lived there too.
“I’m never fucking you in a wig.”
“Party pooper.”
“Can I go now?”
“Yes. Sorry about before.”
“Goodnight, cariña. Te quiero.”
“Love you too. Byyyyye.”
Christina returned to the couch. André asked her if everything was as it should be. She said it was. He then asked her to let the dogs back in. She did. Then she announced that she was actually going to bed, and he waffled on what to do in response. His first instinct was to talk to Juan and find out what the deal was. She didn’t actually mention what was said about the Jenni girl, or Juan’s conduct, or how she felt about it. In retrospect, asking her if everything was as it “should be” was a foolish question. Christina could have been literally truthful in her answer and theoretically lying. She might have thought the Spaniard should be able to flirt with other girls, or hook up with them, or even begin a relationship, so if he did any of that then it was appropriate for her to answer “yes” even if she were hugely upset about it and didn’t want him to do any of those things. The player wished he’d just asked her how she felt about whatever was discussed on the phone. He thought of following her to bed and just being extra nice to her in case she was upset, or in case she could be indirectly persuaded to explain the situation. He also thought of just giving her space. Her ankle hurt a lot, she had a busy day, the decision to begin planning Nick’s retirement was an immense weight on her, and she’d been running around trying to keep everyone in the family happy despite things like fish deaths, criminally inept football, unwelcome transfer rumors, a brother’s refusal to commit to a visit, and in-laws who wanted to spend more time with their grandson. In the end, he didn’t really choose. He simply stopped trying to decide, and stayed in the living room.
Christina couldn’t sleep. She wanted to text Juan, not about anything specific, just to chat, but she got a “leave me alone” vibe from him on the phone before. Like her, he needed alone time to do nothing too, and he was historically very turned off by her interrogations and distrust, so she didn’t want to dig her hole any deeper with him. She tried browsing Instagram, playing games on her phone, reading, TV, and even masturbating, which she couldn’t get into. Nothing put her to sleep. The rider gave up and texted her husband downstairs to see if he was coming to bed soon. Rather than write her back, he put the house to sleep and went up to talk face to face.
“Were you waiting for me?” he questioned with his typical look of mild confusion. “Was I supposed to come soon?” Christina shook her head on her pillow. It was all he could see of her, but it was evident from the state of all the other pillows and much of the blanket that she hadn’t been sleeping for the hour or so since she said goodnight.
“I can’t sleep,” his girl frowned.
“Juan?”
“Not really.”
“Nick?”
“Not really.”
“Aidan?”
“Okay you’re making it sound like I’m having relationships with a lot of dudes, boyfriend.”
“One is a horse and one is your brother!” André laughed a little, reassured that he didn’t mess up or miss a cue in not initially following her to bed earlier. He ambled over to her side of the mattress and sat on the edge to give her a kiss once she turned over. “Why can’t you sleep, Prinzessin?” he asked in his Sweet Husband voice.
“I don’t know. I tried everything. I even tried my fingers but my vagina is like a desert right now.” Christina tried out Poor Wife, but was hit with a pang of guilt the second she successfully beamed misery from her eyes. “Are you upset that I cared if Juan talked to a girl? I was really inconsiderate of how you’d feel about that.”
“No. I expect as much. I don’t think I’d be okay with your relationship with him if you didn’t care enough about him to have that reaction. I mean, it’s not pleasant for me, but it’s not a big deal. Don’t let that keep you up,” the player stressed with brows pinched for emphasis. His hand rubbing her hip over the comforter felt honest. It wasn’t an empty gesture. I’m grateful that we’re back to where I can tell he’s being real with me just from the weight of his palm, she reflected. We used to talk at each other and step on each other and just keep getting it so fucking wrong. It was like we spoke different languages and knew nothing of each other’s body language either. “Is it that situation that’s keeping you up? You can say,” André added encouragingly. He wasn’t so sure of his ability to hear and read her. “I don’t want him to do things that hurt or upset you either, believe it or not.”
“I believe it, actually.” A little grin made her face look a lot less unhappy and plagued to him. “Are you ready for sleepy time or are you just visiting?”
“Depends. Are you inviting me into the bed to hydrate your desert vagina or-“
“No I just think I have a better chance of falling asleep on you than by myself.”
“Can I brush my teeth and everything or is this an emergency?”
“You may,” Christina nodded. He’s so sweet. Sometimes he gives me those awkward I-wish-he-could-be-my-dad feels I don’t know how to address. Sometimes he takes care of me and he has the loving, dad-like quality in his voice, and in his face too, even. I guess what you do when a guy gives you dad feels is have a kid with him so that you can see him behave like a dad but you can still sleep with him and stuff. Ugh maybe Juanin is right. I shouldn’t take those painkillers. She reached down to rectify a wedgie situation and then waited for her preferred pillow to use the bathroom, brush his teeth, put his shorts and socks away, plug in his phone, fill his water glass, and fluff his regular pillows, which she’d repurposed for herself during her struggles to get to dreamland. He got under the covers and immediately reached over to hug and squeeze her before he was going to get comfortable and prepared to host her in a snuggling capacity.
“You want talking, or just rubbing and petting? Or spoon?”
“Your legs are so hairy,” the filling in his arm and leg taco observed. The outside of his thigh was the only place for her right hand when she found herself squished in the middle of all of his limbs.
“Are they ever not? That part, at least.”
“In the summer when I make you wax.”
“What do you want to have dreams about tonight, pretty girl?” he inquired with his mouth and nose in her freshly shampooed mane. It smelled like lemon. His desire to help her get to sleep, and indeed to have nice dreams when she arrived there, was grounded in a certain relief and satisfaction in the transparency in what unfolded throughout the night. He knew he had to have felt a certain amount of security to be able to say anything at all to her about Juan and Alexis, and then to explain the full context. Not so long in the past, he would have avoided it at all costs, because he would have felt threatened by her reaction. Then Christina was comfortable enough to admit that she needed to go clear up the gaps in the story with Juan rather than keep her anxiety to herself, hidden from her husband for safety’s sake. And she was still forthcoming with the communication after the call, and she was sympathetic to how he could feel about it. The whole episode demonstrated, in André’s view, a comprehensive improvement in the levels of trust and understanding in their marriage.
The fundamentals of the situation were still tough to take- his wife was still in love with another man too, and enough so that she was very upset by literally the rumor of his sharing a conversation with another woman- but that was easier to digest when she wasn’t also lying about it, trying to hide it, pretending, or deflecting, or letting it destroy everything for her and for them. There was a lot less drama surrounding the core issue. André couldn’t do anything about the core issue. He couldn’t make his wife un-love his former teammate. His choice on that was to accept it or walk away. He always felt he could do something about all the nonsense that ruined everything in their relationship though, and it finally felt as if he’d accomplished that, or they’d accomplished it together. Christina’s relationship with Juan was no longer rat poison for her relationship with him. He was finally just getting the benefits of letting her have the arrangement with the Spaniard that she wanted. He got a happier, less stressed, more emotionally fit girl to enjoy sharing his life with, and though he was sure she could be that way without Juan, he was also sure she didn’t believe that, and that it was foolish to keep trying to make her believe it. It felt very, very good to let go of that need to make her believe, and to duly reap the rewards.
“Exotic macaroni and cheese.”
“Exotic?”
“Like smoked Gouda, or a blend of many cheeses...”
“You want to dream about cheese?” the player asked skeptically as he released his strange wife to find a position that offered more long-term comfort.
“Or bread. Bread and cheese. Baguettes and Camembert. With wine, or coffee, even, in a Paris cafe. The kind the locals go to, not tourists. My makeup should be really pretty and effortless- very French- and you should have your sleeves rolled up, and a lovely scarf. And we kiss between every bite of divine bread and cheese, or bread and delicious French butter, and you flirt with your eyes the whole time, and it makes me blush and laugh a lot.” Christina was safely tucked under her favorite gangly arm by the time she was done setting the scene for her dream, and her cheek was resting comfortably on her footballer’s chest. He started thinking about kidnapping her for an overnight in Paris to celebrate his birthday. It was on Monday, and his girl was leaving for Doha on Tuesday. Bayern Munich was due at Signal Iduna Park on Saturday in the early evening. They could use the charter jet to fly after the match and still get to Paris in time for late dessert, spend the night, enjoy the day there together, and come back Sunday evening.
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The Price of a Life - Chapter 3
Title: The Price of a Life
Fandom (s): Fullmetal Alchemist/Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood
Summary: I always thought waking up in another world would be a lot more…interesting. At least slightly exciting and terrifying, but it really wasn’t. It was more of a sudden and underwhelming event, that landed me in the company of fiction and its ignorance to modern physics. I thought it was a dream. Boy was I wrong.
Characters: SI/OC, Maes Hughes, Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, etc.
Rating: PG-13
I couldn't sleep again that night, or even the next, not even getting a few seconds of splendid nothingness in my anxiety. I had come across a dilemma in my planning, and worst of all there was no more milk. The problem was, Tucker's experiment on Nina and Alexander was an important step to Ed and Al realizing how important it was for them to stay alive.
In order to keep the story straight, I needed to keep the emotional and character development as the same as possible. For Hughes, that just meant keeping him out of the picture or at least convince others (aka Flame Colonel) of his death. However, when it came to the deaths of characters influencing the development of others, it meant that some degree of death and suffering had to be involved.
I was the kind of girl who saw these kind of moral decisions in black and white most of the time. Something was right or it was wrong, good or bad, that kind of stuff. But the lives of people? Intentionally making Edward get depressed and in effect attacked and almost killed by Scar? Not to mention his automail and Alphonse would get all busted up...poor Winry. This was a little much for me to deal with, let alone practically decide the fate of the whole series.
'An Alchemist's Anguish' and 'Rain of Sorrows' were the first really serious life and death episodes people cried about, unless they had some weird attachment to Cornello or McDougal, and it's not as if the story focused on the past trauma the Elrics had endured (not a ton I could do to help them now).
I didn't want to think about how I would deal with future situations, let alone this one, so I decided to draw some silly doodles of Maes instead. Now, I was no artist, which was why I was calling them silly doodles. They're literally stick figures with glasses and a cowlick. That was it. That was my artistic ability.
The 'drawings' (if you could call them that) clashed horribly with my messy consideration of Nina and Alexander' experimentation/deaths as a) preventable b) necessary and c) reversible. I could try to find a way to keep the resulting chimera of Tucker's experiment alive long enough for proper research to reverse their condition to be discovered, however, that meant the two having to live as that monstrosity for who knows how many years.
Not to mention the Tuckers' deaths were something that really sent Ed over the edge, thus creating the whole 'look how cool it is to be alive!' speech Alphonse had to give him. It also updated Winry on the Elric's situation, and lead to the meeting with Dr. Marcoh, which led to the fifth laboratory, not to mention Sheska's job - it all came from that event practically, and without it, no one would be able to stop Father on The Promised Day. The snowball effect of the plot was awful when considering the impact of people's deaths, but it also made one hell of a show.
All these moral and plot questions were really messing with my head, so I decided to get a glass of water. This was a mistake, as it seemed to have woken Maes up. Well, he didn't look like he'd gotten much sleep either. I almost bolted for my bedroom when I heard his door open, but decided against it since my ankle was acting up again.
I had the notebook in my room, so it was probably safe so long as Lucha didn't try to eat it. He was still acting weird, sleeping more than usual and eating less. I was starting to get worried he was depressed or something. Anyways, Hughes walked in on me as I sat down at the table. I was wearing a new nightgown Gracia had bought for me, all frilly and white like something out of a horror movie.
"Can't sleep?" I asked, peering up from my glass. He wasn't wearing his glasses, and it was just downright weird. A Maes without glasses was like an Irish without a Lucha. It was just damn unnatural. Besides the bizarre lack of glasses, Maes seemed kind of beat down, barely cracking a smile when he walked past me to start the coffee machine.
I never noticed how old it looked. Like, it was a freaking dinosaur. Probably this world's equivalent of an early Pavoni Espresso Machine. I wondered if they still drank it with or without grinds in, what year was this, 1913? The invention of filters came out in 1908 I thought… Wait, no, Elicia turned three not too long from now and she was born in 1911 so...1914-ish? So yeah, no coffee grinds.
I hate coffee, and in an episode of hyperfixation, I spent several days researching everything about my nemesis. As they say, “know thy enemy”.
In reality though it was for a school project, but I still fucking hate that vile bean juice.
"I was about to ask you the same thing." Hughes said, waking me from my coffee musings. He had the machine running and sat down across from me, waiting for it to finish. "Want to ask me that question from earlier?"
No. I really didn't want to ask the damn question. I was a little distracted by the consequences of saving lives to think about taking them. Still, it was probably the reason I snapped at Elicia earlier and the reason I hadn't been sleeping. I rested my chin on my hands, looking across the dark room at the pictures on the mantel.
"You've killed people, right? In the civil war?" I was glad I was collected enough to act like I was making assumptions about Hughes' career as a soldier. "How do you...is it possible, I mean, to get over it?"
My heart felt as if someone had stabbed me through and through with a hot iron, and my mouth had suddenly become the Mojave Desert. My cheeks were crimson, and I knew the dark couldn't hide the tears that slipped down my cheeks. Part of me thought I was being weak, another felt vulnerable and scared, and a final piece was ready to break down sobbing and hug Maes like he was my own father.
It was quiet for a while, as if Hughes was letting me collect myself a little before he said anything that might upset me more. I realized how long I had been sitting there trying to stop the tears when I heard a short, quiet click from the coffee machine. Hughes got up and poured himself a cup. I was considerably more relaxed now, but still on the verge of tears. I had to stop crying every night, it was starting to become a bad habit. Maes sat next to me, not drinking his coffee as he thought for a moment.
"It's not something you're really supposed to 'get over'." He said slowly, assessing my lack of reaction. I tried my best to not mentally berate the statement, he wasn't finished. "But it is something you need to learn to cope with. I'm no expert in trauma - at least not on paper - but, just try to accept what you did and move on." Oh snap, I brought out the serious Hughes. Shit was about to get real. Okay, so it seemed I coped with humor.
"It's hard at first, but it helps to have someone to talk to when you start obsessing with it - blaming yourself, others, denial, that kind of stuff. You shouldn't avoid it necessarily, but it shouldn't be something that runs your life." I nodded, feeling slightly better. I was considerably more collected than I had been a minute or two ago, suddenly feeling stupid for even bothering Hughes. It probably brought up bad memories for him, not to mention there were probably books about trauma in the library - though, it would burn down before the Elrics got back from their trip to Resembool to recuperate, right? Ugh, stupid, stupid, stupid!
"Thanks, really, thank you." I said, my voice raspy from all the damn crying I'd been doing. I really hated crying in front of people, if you couldn't tell from my little self loathing speech up there. This is the most I had cried all month. He almost awkwardly rubbed my back in an attempt to help me calm down some more. Sweet of him, but it seemed to only make me more upset. My dad would always rub circles on my back like that when I was upset."Can I ask you something else?"
"Sure, anything." Maes said softly, taking a sip of his coffee, a faraway look misting over his eyes. Ugh, I was so stupid for asking for help - why couldn't I learn to deal with stuff on my own? Part of me was aware that I did the right thing by asking him for advice, but it still made me feel bad. I needed to change the subject before I started to cry again.
"What does my Honorary Citizenship come with? Why did it impress Miss. Reich enough to get me a job?" I asked, genuinely curious. It seemed all official and pretty, but what was special enough to a) get me out of prison and b) get me a job with a prejudiced shopkeeper who had zero knowledge of my skills or abilities? Hughes also seemed happy to change the morbid subject to something else.
"Well, they aren't common to say the least. I'm pretty sure only two have even been issued before you - both before King Bradley was Fuhrer. They're the highest honor that can be given to a citizen. If you ever decide to join the military, you get a starting rank of a corporal once you graduate from the academy. And even if you don't, you still have access to the same career benefits - insurance and whatnot - that a corporal would.
"There's also some legal power with it, I'm pretty sure you have the power to arrest someone under certain circumstances - I think you have to have witnessed the crime with multiple witnesses and have at least a sergeant present." I nodded, a bit intimidated by the power the small piece of paper held. It was like having Order 3066 in your back pocket, except it wouldn't cause, you know, mass genocide and that kind of stuff.
I knew about military ranks, at least a little. My older sister back home was a Chief Petty Officer of the U.S. Coast Guard, so we heard plenty of this and that, but naval ranks weren't exactly the same as army ranks.
"A corporal? What kind of job would I do?" I asked, interested. If I became involved with the military, I could keep a closer eye on Hughes and the Elrics. However, that meant Pride and Wrath would be able to keep a close eye on me. The Fuhrer had most likely already figured out that my story had some small plot holes, especially the Drachman part of it. I didn't know shit about Drachman culture, let alone some religion - I should have probably given it a name so they didn't think the story was too vague. I'll call it...Utkism? Yes. A religion named after the Russian word for duck. After finishing this little tirade with myself I realized Hughes was looking at me oddly with a small, sleepy smile growing on his face. "I'm sorry, what did you say?" He stroked his scruffy beard sagely.
"You could work with me, once you finish at the academy that is." I realized I probably missed a whole spiel on what the hell a corporal was supposed to do, so I just nodded. All this nodding was starting to hurt my neck.
We talked for a little longer about the academy; how long I'd be there if I applied, what it'd be like, stuff like that. It was around two in the morning when I realized how often we were both yawning. We had gotten to the subject of state alchemists somehow, probably by talking about Edward, and were both struggling to maintain the conversation.
"I'm heading to bed," That was a lie, I was going back to awful moral questioning and arguing with myself over the lives of people, but Maes seemed to believe it as he too began to make his way back to his room.
"See you in the morning," The man said with a yawn, making me yawn as I entered the room. Sitting on my bed, I was happy to find the notebook unscathed. The bed was really squishy and comfortable, but I couldn't fall asleep with all the planning I had to do.
The first page of the notebook had the title of the pilot episode 'Fullmetal Alchemist'. There wasn't really much I could 'plan' for the past, but I did jot down a few notes about who I came into contact with - Kimblee probably listened in on me and McDougal, Wrath (which I simply marked with a WWE symbol just in case Seliem, or rather, Pride, was up past his bedtime spying on me), Mustang, Riza, The Armstrong Squad, the Elrics, ect. I also made a minor note of the other officers and soldiers I had met, and my 'story' of how I got there and my background. It would be both embarrassing and terrifying to screw up a lie.
The next page had both 'The First Day' and 'The City of Heresy' episode titles just to jog my memory (I lied about having an eidetic memory to you, I was only good for memorizing lists, names, and numbers. Did I forget to mention I was a compulsive liar? Just kidding, that was a lie.). I had recently given up on 'An Alchemist's Anguish' as it nearly took up two whole pages and I didn't know how long this little book was.
The next episode was really sad with lots of rain, when Scar went after the Elrics...ah, yes. 'Rains of Sorrows' would happen the day after the Tuckers were murdered. It would be cool to see if I could prevent Ed and Al some pain, but then they wouldn't have to go to Resembool and meet Marcoh on the way so I guessed I had to let shit go down between Scar and the state alchemists. Speaking of which, I was pretty sure all of this would happen in East City. I should have probably found a map so I could figure out where the hell I was at least half the time.
On another note, Lucha was finally awake for once, and not hungry. But he was still acting strangely, a twitching mess acting as if he had never walked before, stumbling around the bed like a drunken pig. I sighed, walking over to the extra bed and picking the snake rat up.
"Are you sick little buddy?" His eyes were cloudy, as if he had cataracts. This made me nervous. I didn't think the vets here would provide care for living slinkies, let alone know how to remove a cataract. I kept trying to get a better view of his eyes, which was hard considering how fidgety he was. "Geez, would you stop-" I squeaked in pain as he bit me. No blood was drawn, but it hurt like hell. "Fu-dge." I said, curbing a curse as Lucha found his footing on the bed and began to tentatively shuffle over to the notebook. "No you don't you evil little-" I stopped when I realized he was picking the pen up in its mouth, dragging the tip over the page.
Okay, I knew ferrets were smart, but he was not really one to stick with stereotypes so Lucha was always a bit of an...astronaut. Yeah, an astronaut. He was never really all there, a bit dopey and clumsy (my brother dropped him when we first got the ferret, I cried the whole way to the vet and back). Anyways, no ferret - no animal (at least without an opposable thumb) should have been able to write.
I finally got out of my stupor when he made this strangled squeak, like he was afraid to make too much noise. Lucha seemed to want me to look at what he wrote. It was three simple words, messy and with letters that were somewhat backwards and too large for me to read the first few seconds I stared at the ink.
"I AM TRUTH" It read, which made me let out a short bark of laughter. Lucha in turn glared at me and gave a short snarl.
"Sorry, it's just," I really couldn't stop giggling. One of the most powerful and all knowing beings of the series, so powerful and influential some called it a god, came to earth in the form of a ferret. "You're so weak, in that form I mean." Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it was hilarious. The cloudiness of Lucha's eyes cleared to reveal a violet eye, rings circling around a small pupil, like the eye that appears in the middle of a human transmutation circle. Lucha - Well, Truth I guessed, picked up the pen again. "Oh, not on the notebook!" I said, snatching the small tome from the pen's inky reaches.
Truth snorted, looking around for something else to write on. I guess I gave that pen to Truth, I didn't want to write with a slimy bitten ferret pen. Finding nothing, Lucha crawled up to me and began to draw the pen's sharp tip over my shin. It hurt a little, but it would wash off later. It took me a minute to read when the ferret had written, I had to turn my head to read the upside down letters.
"What do you mean you don't like it but have to deal with it? Is this about the thing you said when I was at the Gate, you know, about not being able to possess a creature with a soul?" The ferret's snow white head bobbed up and down. "Aw, but I was kind of the person who thought that maybe-" Lucha shook his head, practically having a seizure suddenly. "Lucha!" I whispered urgently, catching the small animal before he fell off the bed to the hardwood floor below.
He looked up at me, his green eyes sparkling with their little golden flecks. Crawling around my neck, Lucha nuzzled my cheek before resting on my shoulder. I sighed, knowing Truth probably could tell me something I was wondering.
I did remember what I learned from seeing the Truth, I just needed to know if I was applying that knowledge correctly. I learned that a life would have to be taken if my presence interrupted the death of another person, meaning that if I did save Nina and Alexander, someone would die. I had no way of knowing who or when, but that could seriously screw with the timeline more than plain and simple stopping an event.
Are you starting to see my big problem with saving them? And don't even mention Hughes, I was not ready for that kind of emotional trauma after the little therapy session I just had. I just wanted to ask Truth if there was a way to predict who would die in the other person's place. But, I was stuck with a sleepy slinky that was now chewing on my hair. Was he trying to force me to bathe again? Probably.
By the time I rubbed the ink off my leg, it was only 2:30. Needing something to keep me busy, I decided to go for a walk around town and get my bearings. It'd be easier to walk around at night too, not as many people out and such. Was there a curfew? Maybe, but I'd just whip out my wondrous Certificate and get a free pass. Hopefully. I left a note on the table anyway telling Maes to call the police station if I wasn't back for breakfast.
Before I could get out the door, thunder shook the building, and lightning flashed outside as a downpour began. Just my luck. And here you would think a girl named Irish would be lucky. Still, the thunder and lightning seemed to have stopped and the initial flood of rain had quickly been reduced to a light shower. Okay, so maybe I did have some luck to my name. I decided to wear one of the skirts Gracia had bought me.
Now, I'm down to wear steel toed boots and jeans and work in the mud and drive tractors all day, but I spent my first twelve school years in a skirt and blouse. In high school, I did wear jeans and boots and hoodies daily, but dressing up was my absolute favorite thing to do.
But I digress, the skirt was long, like, traditional and formal western style. It was blue with a belt that she had bought for it. Not really my style, too loose for my liking but it would do for a quick walk. The white blouses she had bought made me uncomfortable with its relatively see through fabric, so I decided on wearing one with this cute little dress jacket that mostly hid my grey sports bra from peeking out from beneath the thin fabric.
Everything was relatively comfortable, except for the frilly collar of the blouse, it was kind of itchy. To top it off, I found this hat Mrs. Hughes had left in the bottom of the closet. It had lost most of its 1900 feathers and flowers that it once adorned, and I wished they had some cloche hats around that I could use instead, but at least this would hide my hair, which was beginning to look more like a mane.
I felt very proper, with all the old clothes I was wearing. Resisting the urge to narrate my journey to the front door with a British accent, I decided to recite a few lines of Jane Austen's Emma mentally. At the front door I was contented to find a pair of shoes that, though not my size in anyway, would suffice for a quick run through the rain. I was about to put the dress pumps on when I realized the rain might ruin the old shoes. Industry was just starting to get back to producing peacetime goods after the war, so they probably weren't the best quality.
"Okay, so barefoot it is." I said quietly, checking to make sure I had everything I needed before quietly heading out with Lucha around my neck like a breathing fur scarf. As much as I loved my slippers and orthotics, barefoot was always the way to go in the rain, so long as there weren't any broken bottles lying around.
The lights in the reception area were still on, but no one was there to stop me from stealing an umbrella from the cute old umbrella stand. There were lots of umbrellas, and it wasn't as if anyone was going to be in such a rush at this hour.
Outside it was beautiful. The street lamps were still the type that needed to be lit every evening, which resulted in some of them sputtering out of existence with the rain. However, the few left burning were enough to light the streets. The shower was lightening up, but the rain was kind of peaceful. I walked all the way down main street before I saw anyone. It was starting to lighten up a little, almost an hour had passed since I left the Hughes' residence, but it was still pretty dark out.
The man was military, his blue uniform bearing many medals and awards, which made my heart skip a beat out of fear. He was also imposing in his own right, taller than Maes with a pointy handlebar mustache. The officer was familiar, but I just couldn't put my finger on where I had seen him. Believe it or not, seeing 'characters' as 'people' was strange. Like, actually imagine meeting a living breathing human being with gold eyes like Ed? It just was a lot different than seeing it through a screen. You saw imperfections, small things that make them human instead of flawless animations. Real freaky.
The rain had stopped and I had as well in my maladaptive daydreaming about how easy it would be to mistake Hughes for anyone other than himself if you saw the man in a crowd. He would honestly look just like any dad, and unless you talked to him, you'd have no clue who he was, super fan of the show or not. In my distraction, I didn't realize that the man had slipped into an alley until I heard what sounded like my little brothers starting a pretend WWIII with opening speeches. Still clutching my umbrella, I ran up to the alley way before stopping to listen to the conversation.
"-You've picked the wrong target!" A voice said brusquely before an alchemic reaction took place, blue lightning crackling and lighting up the alley way. Literal canon fire came towards my end of the alley, causing me to duck away as smoke and fire reigned for a moment.
"You're fast," The same voice said, the scene still not clicking quite yet. "Try this!"
The smell of chemistry class was bringing on flashbacks to the great Disaster of McCarthy, in which a friend of mine a) put out match with his tongue and then b) broke the Bunsen burner and made an impromptu flame thrower. Chemistry class was not fun. What sounded like chains broke my post traumatic stress visions of the boy fearfully wielding the weapon of minor destruction. The voice continued onward as his assumed combatant avoided the attack.
"A little more!"
Why all the yelling? Was he trying to attract attention or help, or was this just how people duel in the olden days of 1914? There were three consecutive bangs as something closed, the moment of silent prompting me to peer around the corner.
"Hm, that wasn't so difficult." I finally recalled the opening scene of 'An Alchemist's Anguish', watching in horror as….Brigadier something or other Grand approached the newly made iron box.
"Oh fickle fudge balls." I said under my breath, dropping my umbrella and hiking up my skirt to quickly sprint over. "Mister officer sir please don't-" An explosion interrupted me as Scar broke out of the box using his deconstruction alchemy to grab the Iron-Blood Alchemist by the face.
"What? No, how?" His muffled voice said in surprise. I backed away, terrified but unnoticed thus far. I put my back against the box's wall, not wanting to intervene or be noticed. My heart felt like a car's piston as it pumped, fast and loud.
"Now you perish," A new voice said, husky and solemn as the crackle of an alchemic reaction occur, Grand falling with a thud and blood dripping to the ground. It was quiet for a moment, and I started to back away from the scene as blood came into view. I kept back up, keeping my eyes on the blood before I bumped into someone.
It felt like my heart was going to explode as he used a hand to pin my head against the box. Lucha had been knocked off my neck, falling into a puddle along with my hat. I squeezed my eyes shut to stop the brimming tears, but calmed myself. This was Scar. He only killed State Alchemists, right? I slowly opened my eyes to look up, and was surprised by what I saw.
So, you know how Scar was always portrayed as this grumpy looking guy with a permanent scowl and all? Yeah, went right by the real design. Okay, so the scowl thing was spot on, but his face was a lot softer looking from what I could see (his hand was on my forehead but it still blocked a good part of my view).
He didn't kill me, he was just, looking at me. For a split second by the direction of his shaded eyes I thought he was looking at my chest, but he was looking at my choker necklace. It had popped over the blouse's collar uninvited, sparkling in the moonlight that now peeked from behind the clearing clouds.
My hand instinctively grabbed it as I tried to make eye contact. It was kind of hard to make eye contact with people when they wore shades like that, and he was really tall, okay? Maybe not Armstrong tall, but Scar was up there in my list of Tall People of Amestris.
The man wouldn't make eye contact, his view shifting to the amazing rainbow of colors my bruises had acquired as they finally started to fade. Geez, I didn't want pity, especially not from a guys who was in the position to kill me or worse. We both looked down when Lucha growled the most adorable growl a ferret could make, attacking Scar's shoe with ferocity.
He finally stopped trying to squish my head against the box, allowing me to see the infamous scar. It wasn't marring, just a light cross of pale grey across his darker skin. I was enraptured by his tattoo, the intricate and conspicuous design mesmerizing.
Scar abruptly turned and began walking calmly away, Lucha losing his grip on the shoe and curling around my ankle and snarling angrily. Looking down, I realized it wasn't Lucha (the little bastard would never bite anyone, unless he was hungry). Truth's purple eyes stared up at me for a moment before the white ferret seized and writhed for a few second before lying still. Sliding to the ground, I held my snake rat out of the puddle he was inadvertently drowning in. Scar was still walking away, and I could hear sirens somewhere in the distance. My eyes went back to his arm.
"You're older brother wouldn't want this." I said quietly, but my voice echoed in the empty, window lined alleyway. The man took off running as the blare of sirens advanced, not acknowledging my statement beyond a short pause in his step. I curled my knees to my chest, holding Lucha close.
The realization of what just occurred hit me like a wall of bricks, and I ended up retching. It didn't last long, but I still felt disgusted with having to wipe the vomit from my mouth. Lucha had managed to escape the episode unscathed, I almost crushing him against my chest to keep him away from the mess I made. Believe it or not, it was relieving to throw up for once. It felt as if all of the pent up stress of the past few days was gone in an instant.
I should have just waited for Hughes and Armstrong to show, I knew they would get here to investigate the body before morning and they'd find me and question me and maybe take me to a hospital and everything would be okay in the end. But I panicked and ran. Not after Scar, oh Truth no. I ran home, or at least tried to. About halfway there, a familiar pair of voices yelled,
"Stop! You're under arrest-" I crashed right into Brosh and Ross and we all went tumbling to the ground. Lucha managed to survive yet a second crash landing that morning.
"M-Miss. Irish?" Brosh stuttered, helping me to my feet once he found his own. I was a mess, the skirt's hem all muddy and the entire skirt soaked from when I went to pick up Lucha earlier. I was in a bit of shell shock just staring around me at the familiar faces as if they were total strangers. I started run again, wanting only to curl up with a cup of hot cocoa if such a thing existed in this world.
"Hey, where do you think you're going?" Maria asked, catching me by my arm. My breathing was speeding up, an asthma attack seeming imminent as I began to stress about how I would explain that I was a witness fleeing a murder scene. "Woah, calm down, tell us what happened."
Why did she have to have that motherly tone? I was about to start crying again when I noticed Armstrong and Hughes getting out of a car. So that was why Maes was up last night (or, well, this morning), he never did sleep because he was working on this case. In my daze of confusion and realization, I almost forgot about Maria's question.
"Oh, um," Well, I couldn't say I was enjoying an early morning walk now could I, even though that was the truth a little while ago. I looked at my feet. "I saw something I probably shouldn't have." I said quietly, Maria and Denny looking to each other before gently leading me in the direction of Hughes and Armstrong.
Great. This was going to be lots of fun, all rainbows and unicorns. I just wanted to go home, I might have even gotten some rest knowing that the story was progressing. But no, I had to be interrogated - for like the second time this week! Why couldn't I just do something normal and get a normal experience in return? Equivalent exchange and all that stuff? Hughes looked up from the body, which they had thankfully covered with a sheet. The blood stains on the ground still made me feel physically ill though. Armstrong and he turned to me and my two escorts.
"We found her fleeing the scene, sirs." Denny said, I having to restrain a glare. The guy made it sound like I was the one who killed Grand.
"She claims to have witnessed it." Hughes nodded as Maria said this, his fatherly attitude earlier nowhere to be seen.
"Thank you, 2nd Lieutenant and Sergeant. Take Irish to central command and make sure she's okay. Don't question her until we get there." Maes said. I wasn't liking his serious tone, I had heard too much of it already this morning. Before I could get a word out otherwise, a new car pulled up, Bradley stepping out of the passenger door and approaching us. All of the soldiers saluted, but I just nodded in the general direction of the car. It's headlights were like looking at the sun. "Fuhrer Bradley, your excellency, what brings you here?" Hughes asked as the man approached Grand's body.
"I got word of what happened." He said gravely, looking down at the blood stained sheet. "Lieutenant Colonel Hughes, you're the officer in charge of this case?" Hughes looked up, replying with a curt,
"Yessir."
"Should you need any additional personnel, just ask." Bradely's voice suddenly became rather frightening considering what he personified. "The man doing this is a traitor, I want him stopped." Both Hugh and Armstrong mirrored my own slightly nervous expression at the Fuhrer's seriousness before nodding.
"Sir." Hughes said in acceptance of the task. Bradley turned to leave, but stopped as he saw me with his good eye. He probably saw me earlier with his 'all seeing eye' thing but wouldn't have been able to with the eye patch under normal circumstances.
"Irish?" I lowered my head, looking at my bare feet. They were cold, and wet, standing out starkly against the dark stone ground. "You just can't keep out of trouble, now can you kiddo." Ugh, could he not call me 'kiddo'? Only my Uncle Thomas was allowed to call me that, not the physical manifestation of Wrath.
"I'm sorry sir," I looked up making eye contact. "Trouble has a funny way of finding me." He nodded before taking his leave, allowing me to finally relax. It made you tense to be in that guy's presence, he just made you so damn nervous that he would kill you if you said the wrong thing. I sighed, looking to Hughes then to the Armstrong Squad. "Let's get this over with, I might even take that coffee offer now Hughes."
We all got into a car, I was pretty sure it was the same one Hughes had driven me to his apartment complex in because the crumbs on the floor were suspiciously similar to the cookie Lucha had been eating that day. The drive was mostly quiet, in exception for Lucha's snoring.
"Where are your shoes?" Maria asked at one point, noticing my bare feet. I shrugged, stroking my ferret's white fluff.
"I didn't want to ruin the new shoes Mrs. Hughes bought me by using them in the rain."
"So, you went barefoot?" Denny asked, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. I nodded, happy we weren't talking about the murder.
"Yep. Why? Did I break another law?" I asked, worried I had broken some stupid law like we had back in the states. Did you know that in some places it's illegal to walk backwards down the street with an ice cream cone in your back pocket on a Sunday? Weird.
"No. It's just a little…" I sighed, nodding as Maria faltered.
"Strange, I know. I never really wear shoes that much since there are never any my size." I explained, even though it was a partial lie. I didn't wear shoes when they messed with my balance or I didn't want to ruin a new pair. And they did have shoes my size, the problem was, well-
"But you're feet aren't that small." Denny pointed out, observing my left foot. "Even if sizes here are different than Drachman sizes, I'm sure there'd be something-"
"No, not like that." I interrupted, putting my heels together to show the two the difference. "See? My left foot is a size seven and a half, but my right foot is a size three, uh, in Drachman sizes that is." They really were in American sizes though, which made it a pain to buy shoes. You would already spend a hundred bucks on a pair of dress shoes but oh, you have to buy a second pair! It really sucked.
"Oh…" Both of the officers said, Maria speaking up and saying, "Is foot binding from Xing practiced in Drachma?" Eek, they had foot binding around still? Ouch.
"Nah, it's a genetic thing. The bones in my feet never properly formed so when my feet started to grow, the bones were still partially fused together and, well, my right foot's the result." Denny grimaced.
"Sounds like it hurt." I nodded.
"Like hell, but it stopped when I stopped growing so it's not so bad now." They were looking at me weirdly. "What?"
"How old are you?" Maria asked, a puzzled expression on her face as she and Denny looked me up and down. I looked at my chest and crossed my arms defensively.
"Seventeen, why do you ask?" That made Denny uncomfortable, and probably Maria too but she seemed to hide it better than him.
"Uh, well, you just look...young, for your age." My turn to raise a brow at him.
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"We're here." Hughes said, glancing momentarily at us as he pulled the rickety old - well, old to me - car up the road of the monstrous building known as Central Command. Sunlight was finally blessing the land with its warmth, which meant I had another long day ahead of me.
I was getting real tired of this building, we're good acquaintances, but I was not overly fond of Command so I think we need some time apart. It was not Command, it was me. Actually no, it was the guy running Command and this whole damn country that I needed to spend some time away from. Unfortunately for me, it seemed no one in the car heard about my breakup with Command, so they dragged me along anyway.
After a long series of ridiculously baffling hallways, we somehow arrive at Hughes' office. Quaint little place, nothing like Mustang's temporary office he had while he was in Central, but kind of comforting. I was actually pretty nervous. I did have my certificate with me, laminated and tucked safely into my belt, but that piece of paper couldn't protect me from interrogation methods of the 1914s.
"Sit down." Hughes 'offered' motioning to a chair in front of his desk. Armstrong, Brosh, and Ross were on the couch behind me, taking notes. Well, Maria was the only one with a pad of paper and a pen so I guessed she was the one taking notes. "So, can you tell us when happened?" I sighed, unintentionally cracking my neck as I retold the events.
"Well, I was just walking down the street and it was raining - oh Tru-ck I dropped an umbrella I borrowed, do you think we'll be able to get it back?" I asked, looking behind me to Denny and Armstrong. They didn't realize I was actually looking for answer until Hughes cleared his throat.
"Don't worry about that for now, so you were walking in the rain, how did you stumble upon the murder?"
"Well, it wasn't exactly a murder, it was more of a fight. I heard some guy talking all preacher like about judgement and all so I decided to eavesdrop since it seemed interesting-"
"You didn't think to get the police?" Hughes interjected, not looking up from a note he was writing. Well, shit. Never thought about that…
"Um, well, no. There wasn't really anyone around except for the guy - Grand or whatever - and I got a little distracted after he went down the alley so anyway the guy was talking all preachy-like and I was eavesdropping. Grand sounded really confident he would win when they started fighting. I missed some of what he said, but after the fight started the preachy-guy didn't talk much. Anyway I decided to look when everything was quiet and I wasn't being shot at by freaking canons, and Grand got the guy trapped in a box. I went to go ask him if he was okay but then there were blue sparkles - alchemy I think - and a hole in the box formed. The guy had Grand by the head and I looked away when he used the alchemy stuff to-"
"You said he used alchemy?" Hughes asked, looking up. Oh, frickle frackle firetruck. Did I screw up? Truth, if you posses Lucha and tell me I didn't just give away info that might change the story in some way that'd be real great.
"Uh, yeah. I think. It was a little like what McDougal did when he froze that guy's arm back at the prison. That's the only alchemy I've ever seen before."
"They don't have alchemy in Drachma?" Armstrong asked, surprising me with his low, booming voice.
"Uh, not that I've seen." He nodded, allowing me to relax a little. Why was this so nerve racking? You're telling the truth mostly - but you probably shouldn't mention what you told Scar about his brother, that would screw shit up for sure Irish.
"Continue, please." Hughes asked, his glasses hiding his eyes from view with their glare. I never really got how glasses did that, maybe you needed special lenses...Adjusting my own spectacles, I did as he asked.
"Yeah so after Grand died I started to back away because I didn't want to mess with the guy - he wasn't going to let a witness go probably. But I kind of bumped into him and he grabbed me - oh Hughes, I lost my hat. I found this hat in that closet, real vintage 1900s stuff and it hid my hair well but it's probably still there-" Hughes cleared his throat. "Oh, sorry. Um, yeah he just kind of looked at me for a minute - my hair and eyes kind of caught him off guard I guess, and he kind of was starting to creep me out when he stared at my necklace." My hand touched the sterling silver Celtic cross.
"He took interest in your hair and eyes - your necklace, what is it, a religious symbol?" Hughes asked distractedly as he jotted down some notes. Thank Truth for me coming up with a name for the 'religion' earlier.
"Yessir, it's an Utkist cross. A symbol of martyrdom, unity, and struggle." Eh, close enough?
"Utkism, would you care to elaborate? Is it a well known religion?" Well, um, improvisation!
"The religion of Ire, my home village. It's very far in the north of Drachma by the sea, very secluded. I'm afraid it's not a well known religion by those who don't live there. Even in Drachma it has little influence beyond the far northwest." Were they buying it? Truth, why did Hughes have to have such a good poker face? Probably learned from surprise attacks on Mustang with pictures of Elicia and Gracia. That man was the absolute best. Wait, wrong time to compliment the guy interrogating you Irish - bad timing!
"Hm, a murderer of State Alchemists using a form of alchemy, and a possible connection to a small religious group." Oh, Truth. Hughes I am so sorry if this screwed up your investigation. Please don't ask me if there are any other people from Ire in Amestris please! "Could he perhaps be from your village?" Ugh, I guess that's not as bad.
"No way, I got a pretty good look at him and I knew almost every one of the maybe hundred people that live in Ire when I left only a few years ago. Besides, his skin was too dark and he had a weird scar on his forehead." I said, making up the little village of Ire in my head. A cute village where you know your neighbors and have your children marry them in arranged ceremonies. Also home to the duck religion, that worships a legendary duck called Mother Goose that was fabled to lay golden eggs. Yes, this would work nicely. Apologies any actual religions that worship ducks and geese - I needed something to convince these guys with!
"So, the Scarred Man struck again." Maria said with a sigh.
"Yes, who else has been targeting State Alchemists and killing them in an odd fashion?" Denny responded.
"The who now?" I asked, hoping to stay off the topic of the actual interrogation. Hughes looked up from his notes, his glasses no longer hiding his hazel irises.
"The Scarred Man, though most of us just call him 'Scar' for short. He's been targeting and killing State Alchemists, and it looks like Grand was his latest victim." Maes said, compiling and straightening his notes. "How'd you get away? You seem to have a knack for escaping murderers."
"One of my many unusual talents acquired from living with my weird family of freaks. One of the many…" I said wistfully, smiling at his confused and slightly concerned expression. "He let me go if you're that concerned. Lucha did bite him but, in case you haven't noticed, Lucha's a bit of a wimp." The living slinky was exploring the office, currently gnawing on Armstrong's boot lace, which seemed to entertain the big man greatly.
"Did you see where he went?"
"Nope," I swung my legs back and forth, my feet barely touched the ground in this tall chair. "I got sick with stress - you try facing off with murders twice in one week - then I ran like the wind and hoped to curl up in a ditch somewhere and pretend it never happened." Hughes nodded.
"And then you ran into 2nd Lieutenant Ross and Sergeant Brosh, correct?"
"Yepsterdoodles." He looked at me as if I had grown three heads, but said nothing as he nodded nonetheless and handed his notes to Maria.
"Thanks for your help Mac, you're free to go!" Hughes said in a suddenly jovial mood. This guy had some serious mood swings sometimes.
"Uh, can I stay for the day actually?" He looked at me in a kind of surprised manner.
"Sure, why?" I shrugged looking around the office.
"I guess I want to see if there's anything I can help with. But, I do want a list of the State Alchemists if you could get me that. There's something I want to check out." Maes seemed to think for a moment before looking to Armstrong and the amazing babysitting duo.
"Armstrong, see if you can get that list for Mac; Brosh, Ross, could you two make sure she keeps herself out of trouble - or at least keep trouble from finding her.
"Yessir," The three said, Armstrong leaving to get the list of Alchemists. Hughes turned to Denny and Maria.
"Can you two take her home so she can get a change of clothes? You must be uncomfortable in those clothes Mac." I nodded, the soaked skirt and frilly blouse collar not helping me relax.
"Yeah, sounds like a plan."
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#fullmetal alchemist#fullmetal alchemist brotherhood#si/oc#fanfic#fanfiction#writing#bbb writes#bbb#bluebookbadger
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