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pucksnsticksnhockeyboys · 4 years

Text

reputations

summary: you’re criminally good, and Matt can’t help but fall in love with you.

warnings: mentions of alcohol

word count: 3.7k

note from the writer: I really wrote this in one night, immediately after posting my last Matt fic. I might have a problem. lmk what you think!

part two

Matthew knew he was no angel. If it wasn’t the opposing players he pested on a daily basis, it was the media that told him so. Most of the time, he didn’t mind. Fights, penalties, and suspensions—he couldn’t help but agree that he was a pest on the ice. He knew he deserved some of the shit he got, but he was getting better and growing as a player.

But sometimes he wished he had a better reputation.

“Matt, your girlfriend is outside.” His brother’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Matt hated that he knew who Brady was talking about. Despite the fact that it had been seemingly forever since he was in an actual relationship, Brady’s tease made perfect sense to the entire Tkachuk family.

“Shut up.” Matt shot back, because he couldn’t argue, and he was too busy getting up off the couch and heading outside to listen to the jabs his brother was throwing at him. He was too far gone and had long since admitted that to himself.

The summer sun beat down on him the moment he stepped into the backyard, and he took a moment to squint his eyes to adjust before heading over to the fence separating his backyard from the one next door. Brady had been telling the truth, the one girl he couldn’t get off his mind since middle school was outside and the wide smile that grew on his face was one he couldn’t help.

You were as good as they came. Weekends spent volunteering at animal shelters, tutoring, helping the older couples in the neighborhood with yard work and other chores. He was pretty sure the moment he decided he wanted to marry you was when you had shown up to Taryn’s first varsity field hockey game with a giant sign saying something about how she would kill it just because you knew it would make her laugh.

Matt nearly tripped when he spotted you on the other side of the fence. You were suntanning in nothing more than a bikini, laying on a towel in the grass in your own backyard. For what seemed like the millionth time in his lifetime, Matt thanked whatever higher power that was up there that his family moved into the house next to yours all those years ago.

For a second, he stayed quiet, just admiring how good you looked. Sunglasses were perched on your nose as you laid on your back, arms tucked behind your head. Your music was playing softly from the speaker laying in the grass a few feet away and you were humming along quietly. He couldn’t stop the smile that grew on his face as he studied you, resting his forearms along the top of the fence with his chin tucked on top of his hands. He knew he needed to make his presence known, figuring he wouldn’t be able to explain why he kept quiet and watched you tan without sounding like a creep.

“I’ve been home for two days and you haven’t come see me yet?” He teased, his grin growing two sizes when he spotted how you lit up at the sound of his voice. Your smile was infectious, and it was the only thing keeping his gaze north of your chest as you sat up on the towel.

“Matty!” You cheered, pushing your sunglasses to the top of your head. You were the only person that Matt allowed to call him that, and he was certain that if his teammates ever found that out they would never let him hear the end of it. You stood up, making your way towards Matt and he could feel his heart pounding faster in his chest as you got closer. It was a miracle you hadn’t managed to kill him yet.

“How’ve you been?” Matt found himself asking, though the question felt a little pointless. He knew how you had been, you texted daily and even the stuff you didn’t tell him—which was a rare occurrence—he found out from his siblings.

“Oh, you know. Same old, same old.” You said boredly, waving a hand dismissively. Matt knew that wasn’t true, he could see the smile you were suppressing. Plus, all of his conversations with you as of late had been about one thing.

“Congrats on graduating, by the way.” Matt wasn’t sure it was possible, but your smile widened as he spoke. You looked happy, but that didn’t stop the feeling of guilt that was bubbling inside him. “Sorry I couldn’t make it.”

“Don’t worry about it.” You squeezed his forearm from where it was resting on the fence, and it took all of Matt’s willpower to not melt under your touch. “You were busy chasing the cup, and I know for a fact that you’ll win it for me next time.”

And then you jokingly winked at him, and suddenly Matt forgot how to breathe. He knew you were teasing, but the fact of the matter was that he knew if he was going to win the cup for anyone besides his parents, it was you.

“And besides, you’re coming to my grad party, right? I need someone there to save me from my relatives asking about where I’m working in the fall.” You continued, and for the second time in ten minutes Matt had been interrupted from his thoughts.

“You don’t already have seven jobs lined up?” Matt teased you. For as long as he could remember, you were always ten steps ahead of everyone. He distinctly remembers you stressing out at eleven years old because you got a seventy-five on a test and thought it would go on your permanent record and you wouldn’t get accepted into college.

“Shut up.” You rolled your eyes, nudging his arm playfully as the both of you chuckled. Matt felt a bit repetitive, thinking about how beautiful you were. He was sure he looked like a lovestruck idiot, but he couldn’t help himself. His self-control was low to begin with, but throw you into the mix and he was absolutely done for. “I’ve applied to a few places, interviewed at some. I’ve got my eye on one place, though.”

“Any places I know?” Matt was a little caught off guard since he hadn’t heard about you applying. He knew you were looking into some places, some in St. Louis and some out of state, but he didn’t realize you started taking the next step. A nervous look flashed in your eyes, and Matt wondered what could have prompted it, but as soon as it was there, it was gone, and you were back to smiling brightly at him.

“And ruin the surprise when I finally land one of the jobs? Not a chance, Hotshot.” You teased with a shake of your head. Matt knew you like the back of his hand. He knew how you liked your coffee and that you hated when he got into fights. He knew that you were a romantic and that you were a little self conscious about your laugh because when you were fifteen and Danny Baker from three streets up told you he thought it was weird. That was the closest he ever got to punching someone off of the ice—and sometimes he still thought about giving the guy a piece of his mind.

And he knew that the nickname ‘Hotshot’ was your way of trying to deflect, and he knew enough to drop the subject. Not that he had a choice, really, because your phone started buzzing from where you left it on your towel. When you bent down to pick it up, he busied himself by admiring the flowers he knew you helped your mom plant instead of blatantly checking out your ass.

“Hey. Matty, I’ve got to go. Mrs. Henderson asked if I could help her with the bake sale for her son’s soccer team.” You spoke up after checking your phone. Matt couldn’t help the way his heart flipped at the fact that you were still volunteering for families around the neighborhood. The only time he could remember actually volunteering, not including Flames events, was when he needed to fill his high school requirement to graduate.

God, you were too good for him.

“Yeah, I’ll see you at the party tomorrow.” He waved as you retreated into your house. He watched as you left, only pushing off the fence and heading back into his own once you shut your back door. He made his way into the kitchen, finding his whole family already in there and looking at him with smug grins. Matt just knew they had been watching his entire interaction with you out of the kitchen window.

Brady was the first to speak up, making obnoxious kissing noises while Taryn started saying your name in increasingly higher pitched voices trying to mock how gone he was for you. He rolled his eyes at his sister, but that didn’t stop him from putting Brady into a headlock.

“If you boys break something…” His mom trailed off, giving her boys a pointed look over the glass of water she was sipping on. The empty threat was enough to get Matt to let go of his brother, but not before messing up his hair for that extra bit of pettiness.

“Leave Matt alone, he’s in love.” His dad teased, looking much too proud of himself at his comment for Matt’s liking. He groaned, dropping his back to further prove his annoyance before he grabbed a drink out of the fridge and left the room.

He still couldn’t argue his family’s comments.

Matt didn’t see you again until it was time to head over for your graduation party, and it took everything in him to not stop dead in his tracks when he spotted you across the yard. You were talking to a few of your extended family members, he was sure he had met them once or twice over the years, and you looked effortlessly stunning. You were wearing a new sundress, he was certain of that because if you had worn it before he would have remembered, what with the way it made your legs look, especially paired with what he knew were your favorite pair of wedges.

Brady knocked into his shoulder, sending him a smirk before slipping off to find a drink. Matt rolled his eyes at his brother, letting his attention fall back to you. His breath hitched as you turned to face him, and he wondered if you felt the weight of his stare. He didn’t have much time to ponder, though, because he recognized the look in your eyes. It was the one that told him those were the family members you told him you’d need rescuing from.

He crossed the lawn quickly, smiling warmly at your mom when she called his name and waved. He’d greet her properly later, you were his current priority. You were his priority all the time, if he was being honest with himself.

“Hey, Matty.” You smiled and as soon as he got close enough your arm slid around his back. He copied your action, his hand settling a respectable distance up on your waist. Before he could stop himself, he pressed a kiss to the side of your head, even though he probably shouldn’t be so blatant in his affection in front of distant family.

“Is this a boyfriend?” Your—great aunt?—questioned. Matt felt his face flush at the idea, he spent the better part of his adolescence imagining what it would be like to call you his. But he never could get himself to make a move. Too nervous to lose you and too worried about what moving away would do to your relationship—if it even got that far.

And then there was the problem of his reputation.

He had grown up watching you do all these amazing things for your education and to help other people. You always had a smile on your face and cried for an hour at the ending of Marley and Me. You even volunteered to help move Brady to Boston when he left to go play hockey there.

He pushed around six ounces of vulcanized rubber on ice. In his mind, he didn’t measure up to you in the slightest. As much as he wanted you, he felt as if he didn’t deserve you.

“No, this is just Matt, he lives next door.” You explained sweetly and Matt forced a smile on his face as he shook hands with your relatives. He hated how terrible your words sounded to his ears, how he was ‘Just Matt’ to you.

“Hey, Taryn said she needs to talk to you, it’s urgent.” Matt lied after a few moments of watching you squirm under the interrogation your relatives were putting you through. From the mischievous look in your eyes he could tell you knew what he was doing. You politely told your relatives that you would see them later, and Matt’s heart jumped in his chest as you slipped your hand into his to pull him away.

“Thank you.” You said to him under your breath, giving his hand a squeeze before dropping it as you reached the drink coolers. Matt grinned at you, watching as you pulled out two beers for the both of you. “They hit me with questions about my love life, job prospects, and whether or not I’ll be moving out of my parent’s house before you arrived.”

“Sorry I didn’t get there sooner.” Matt teased, taking a sip out of his bottle while watching you shudder playfully. He tried to ignore the green monster that settled in his stomach at the thought of you having a love life, no matter how selfish it sounded. Instead, he focused on the way you smiled at him, and how warmly you interacted with his mom when she came over to give you a celebratory hug.

Seeing you laughing with his mom was doing nothing for the feelings he had harboured for you.

By the time darkness started to settle on the party, the majority of the guests had left. Besides your parents, him and his siblings, and a few of your cousins that were spending the night, your backyard was empty. Your dad had started a campfire so everyone could make s’mores, and you seemed to think it was the best part of the day. You were probably feeling the effects of the beers you had been sipping on, though you only had one or two, and tried to feed Matt a s’more, giggling uncontrollably when you got marshmallow in the scruff of his beard.

He just about died when you flicked your finger across his chin to collect the marshmallow, absentmindedly licking it off as you laughed at something Taryn said. His gaze zeroed in on your finger, and the fact that you had no idea the effect that you had on him was dizzying.

“Get a room.” Brady groaned, though he had been sitting next to Matt and spoke low enough that the parents sitting on the opposite side of the fire didn’t hear. Matt was also lucky that you didn’t hear, distracted by your phone ringing. He glanced at the screen out of habit and a little bit of nosiness, seeing that it was a number you didn’t have saved to your contacts before you jumped to your feet and retreated inside to take the call.

If he had been looking a little closer, he would have recognized that the number had an area code for Calgary.

You had been gone for a few minutes and Matt was starting to get restless. Your mom came out of the house and handed him two popsicles, one for him and one for you, so he figured you were coming back soon.

You did, and you were wearing a wide grin that made him curious. You didn’t say anything, instead you took one of the popsicles and slipped your hand into his now free one, tugging lightly to signal for him to stand up. Once more, you led him across the lawn, only this time you went around the house to the front yard, away from the prying eyes of both your families.

“What’s up?” Matt questioned as soon as you came to a stop in front of him. You were grinning up at him, and he could tell from the look in your eyes that you had news to share.

“I got a job. My top choice one, actually.” You stated as if it was something boring, like the weather. Matt beamed at you, the feeling of pride he had in you coming to the surface the same way it did whenever you accomplished something you wanted.

He wrapped you in his arms almost instantly, careful not to knock your popsicle out of your hand or get his in your hair. He held you tight to his chest, never wanting to let you go.

“Where is it?” He asked after letting you go. Your smile grew wider as he looked at you, and he raised a brow as you hesitated. The longer you stayed quiet, the more he started to panic. He knew it was selfish, but he didn’t want you to leave St. Louis. The best part of coming home during breaks or playing the Blues on their ice was the fact that he would get to see you.

“Calgary. Surprise?” You chuckled nervously, but Matt felt like he had just been told the best news. After years apart for college and hockey, you finally would be close to him again. He was ecstatic, and couldn’t help himself before pulling you into another hug,

“Surprise is right.” He teased as soon as he moved back, though he couldn’t get himself to go far. He was practically buzzing with excitement and the closer he was to you the better he felt. You were grinning, shifting from foot to foot and that simple action told Matt that you were anxious about something.

“But I have one more thing to share.” You said, and that worried Matt once more because he could hear the nervousness in your tone. Matt nodded, unable to get himself to form words in response and instead let his mind run wild with all the ideas about what it could be. “Matt, I, uh, well, I’ve had feelings for you for a while, and I think you feel the same, well at least I hope you do, and I was kind of hoping that we could start something now that we’ll be living in the same place.”

Matt felt like passing out. Out of all the dozens of things you could have said, that was not one of them. He watched, wordlessly, as you licked the popsicle out of nerves and the need to busy yourself somehow while he stayed quiet after your confession. That seemed to spur him on, though, because he used his free hand to cup your jaw as his lips landed on yours.

You tasted like grape popsicle and chocolate, and though it was an odd combination he decided it was the best thing he’d ever had. He briefly registered that the popsicles slipped from both your hands as you gripped each other, and he knew that he’d have to pick them up after because you had drilled into him the importance of keeping the Earth clean when you were in eighth grade and went through a sustainability kick.

It was that thought that had him stilling. He couldn’t do this to you, not when you were so good and not when he was in the press every other week for being the very opposite. You deserved better than him, a philanthropist that donated all their time and money to children’s hospitals—the charity he knew you volunteered at, at least three times a year.

You were too good for him.

“Is something wrong?” You questioned him, dropping from your tip-toes back to your flat feet, putting some distance between you and him. It wasn’t enough to defog Matt’s head but he was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen for weeks, not with the way his entire body felt on fire from just your one kiss.

“I can’t do this… I can’t do this to you.” Matt settled, though he hated the way he sounded so unsure of himself and he hated the very fact that he even had to say it. He hated that you felt the same way he did but he couldn’t do a thing about it because he had always put you before himself. But most of all, he hated how your face fell and your eyes started to get glassy.

“Do you not like me?” You questioned and if Matt wasn’t so defeated by the whole situation he would have laughed. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t like you, you plagued his thoughts on a daily basis and he had a framed photo of you and him from his first game in Calgary in his apartment that earned him so many chirps from his teammates. But you looked so proud of him, and you were wearing his jersey, so no matter what the boys said he kept it up—the photo was his most prized possession.

“No, that’s not it. That’s not it at all.” He told you, and somehow your face fell even more. Even when you were so clearly upset, the way your brows tugged together in confusion and the slight pout to your lips was devastatingly attractive to Matt.

“Then what is it?” Your question sounded so tired, so weak, that Matt wished he had never followed you out front and never put your friendship in the position it was. But it was too late now, he couldn’t back out now and he had to stick to his guns. He took in a shuddering breath, one hand tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear before he said what he felt he had to.

“I want you to be happy, and you can’t be happy with me. I’m not good for you.”

#Matthew tkachuk #Matthew tkachuk imagine #Matthew tkachuk imagines #Matthew tkachuk x reader #calgary flames #calgary flames imagine #hockey #hockey imagine #nhl #NHL imagine

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tommodirection · 3 years

Text

Miss You More

Louis Tomlinson x Singer! Reader

Masterlist

Word Coung: 2.5k

Warnings: swearing, death, cancer, mentions of death

Disclaimer: Miss You More is an actual song that I wrote, and it isn’t published or anything, but it’s one I wrote about the loss of my grandfather, and so I may link it here if I feel like it so you know what the song is and what it’s about, there are just a few words you’d have to change, but anyways!

A/N: Heylo! I’m going to be honest with you, this is not my favorite thing I’ve ever written, and it’s a little corny, and poorly worded, but eh. It’s one am, I’m going to sleep after this! Anyways, I hope y’all enjoy! Thank you, and have a nice day!

——————

Ever since you were a child, you knew you wanted to sing.

It all started with your mum. When you were little, she’d always sing to you, every night before you went to bed.

Soon enough, you began singing back to her, and she loved every second of it.

You sang together every chance you got, singing in the car, in the house, at parties, even when you walked the dog together through your neighborhood.

She had encouraged you to make a YouTube channel for your music, knowing you’d make it big. At first, you were hesitant, not confident enough to post your voice on the internet, but you finally agreed weeks later.

You mostly did covers at first. Of course, your 14-year-old self didn’t know what she was doing. All she knew was that she was doing something she loved.

About a year after making the channel, you began making custom content. You learned to play the guitar and you’d use it almost every second. You took it everywhere. Well, everywhere you knew you’d be able to show off.

The songs were mostly about crushes and school and friends, the main things circling around your life at the time.

But it all changed when you were sixteen.

It was no secret your mother had cancer. She had since you were little, yet she had kept fighting it, succeeding for a few years.

The doctors had said she was getting better, on her way to becoming cured, well, as cured as she could be.

But out of nowhere, it plunged. She was coughing up blood, and could barely stand, needing assistance to go the bathroom. It just kept getting worse.

One of the worst parts of losing your mum was the fact that it was the holiday season, ruining the time of year for your family for years to come.

You remembered her final day alive. She was laying in the hospital bed, lips chapped and all colored drained from her face. Her lips were bloodied as well, reminisce of the blood she had hacked up minutes ago.

Your father and siblings were there beside her. Your father held your little brother, he was four at the time, and your younger sister was standing next to you, she was twelve. Alex didn’t fully understand what was happening, he just knew his mum wasn’t well, and he mostly hid his face in your father’s shoulder.

Morgan, however, understood exactly what was happening, and she was crying beside you. She was trying her best to hold back, maintaining a straight stance and trying to hide her shaking hands. You watched as tears flooded down her face, making small wet patches on the sheets.

You looked at your mum, studying her. She had done so much for all of you, but there was nothing you could do for her as she layed in the bed, motionless, save for her eyes, darting between all of you.

You knew how much singing meant to your mother, and so you did the only thing you knew you could do. You sang.

Her favorite holiday song was Silver Bells, so you started the song, your family soon joining in. Your mother smiled gratefully at all of you.

She joined in towards the chorus, her voice still weak, but just as beautiful as when you first heard it.

Those were your last moments with your mother.

She passed away hours later, the anticipated news crushing your family.

You had all slept together that night, knowing you couldn’t be apart. Alex didn’t know what had happened, and you knew your father couldn’t handle it, so you had stepped in, trying to explain to the boy that his mum was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

—

After she passed, you had stopped uploading to your channel, getting emotional every time you even tried singing.

But months later, you had decided not to give up. Instead, you chose to move forward. You started writing again.

The song you were writing was about your mother, it seemed fitting. You knew no amount of words could ever sum up your relationship with her, nor your grief, but you tried your best in the song.

You had spent a few months writing the song, not it a rush. You were pouring your heart into this song, and if it was rushed, you knew it’d have no meaning, just some words with a few riffs thrown in.

A few days after your seventeenth birthday, you uploaded the video onto your account, the first video uploaded since your mother had died.

After uploading it, you decided to turn your computer off for the night. You knew how obsessive you got with checking your feedback, you normally refreshed the page until your fingers were sore.

Instead, you walked into the kitchen, guitar forgotten. You hadn’t shared the song with your family yet, and you knew you needed to do acapella, it was much more fitting.

You were scared of how they were going to react, especially your dad and Morgan.

Immediately after finishing the song, Morgan tackled you in a hug, burying her head in your shoulder, “Thank you,” she mumbled and you pelt tears pricking your eyes.

Your dad stood, his hand over his mouth. Alex was sitting at the table, eating his cereal. You waited in silence for a few moments, waiting for your dad to say something, but nothing.

Alex interrupted the silence, “That’s the first time I’ve heard you sing in a while, sissy,” he said, a wide grin. You don’t know where your family would be without Alex. He knew exactly how to light up a whole room, he knew how to make people feel better.

“I know, bud,” you smiled and he gave you a toothy grin, turning back to his cereal.

You dad finally let out a small, choked sob, “I miss her so much,” he said, opening his arms. You quickly collapsed in them. He was the one you wanted approval from the most.

“I do too, Dad,” you whispered.

—

Years later, you found yourself at Triple Strings Record Label.

A man sat in front of you, shuffling through some papers at his desk. He sighed loudly, and shoved the papers aside, giving you his full attention, “So, miss L/N, we’ve heard some of your work, and were quiet big fans,” he said, folding his hands in front of him.

“Thank you,” you smiled nervously, and he glanced at the clock.

“Well, my name is Bryan, Bryan Detreon. I’m an agent here for all the upcoming stars in the music industry, although I can’t take credit for finding you, that goes to the creator of the label himself,” he chuckled and you froze.

“Wait, the owner as in, like, Louis Tomlinson?” You asked, suddenly sitting up in your chair.

Of course you knew who Louis Tomlinson was. You were a year younger than him, grew up with him on the screen and on the radio.

He let out a small laugh, “Yeah, as in Louis Tomlinson, he found you personally and requested you be brought in. He’s offering you a contract, I’ve emailed it to you, but I’d like to go over it now, just to point out some things! Now, he said to take as much time as you needed to decide. You can have a lawyer look over this if you’d like, and just back to us when you have an answer! Although, he’d probably prefer to have it before the beginning of his tour! Oh yeah! He wants you as his one opening act!” He finished, pushing a copy of the document towards you.

You took a second to process what he had said, and when you finally had. You nearly fell out of your chair. “He wants me to open for him?!”

“Yup,” he continued as if it were nothing. “Now, in the first section…” you tuned him out, you’d read it at home.

Louis fucking Tomlinson wanted you to open for him. How were you supposed to say no? Your dream come true, after years of posting on YouTube and going to school to study music, hoping someone would find you, and it had all led to this.

Twenty-six years of your life, all leading up to this moment.

“Any questions?” Bryan asked, locking eyes with your

You quickly shook your head, gathering your stuff and standing up. “Nope, thank you so much for this opportunity, I will definitely look it over and email you as soon as I know! Thank you!” You rambled, and ran out the door, trying to rush home.

“I got fucking signed!” You screamed into the empty household. You had your own place, but you felt the need to run to your family’s home to share the news.

Your dad walked in from the kitchen, Alex trailing behind him. Alex was fourteen now, which now meant he was starting to call horn father out on his bullshit, not that there was much.

“Welcome home to you too,” your Dad teased, and Alex looked up, his face instantly lighting up. He ran and wrapped his arms around you, he was beginning to tower over you.

“I missed you,” he grumbled, trying to hide his face.

You laughed and patted his back, “I missed you too bud.”

“What’s this about being signed?” Morgan strolled into the room, she was still living at home, finishing her last semester of university. She had grown into a beautiful woman, looking almost identical to your mother.

“Right! So, I got a call and email about an interview, and it said to meet at the Sony label here, and to go to the Triple String label office! I get there, and the guy tells me that they’re huge fans and want me to sign a contract with them! Turns out, LOUIS FUCKING TOMLINSON WANTS ME TO OPEN FOR HIM!” You screamed, not caring about the neighbors.

Morgan swooped you into a hug, you hated being the shortest. “Aw, my big sis is going to be a pop star!”

—

Months later, you stood backstage, picking at your sleeve. You glanced behind the curtain and saw hundreds of people standing and an endless chatter.

It was your first show of the tour, you had rehearsed hundreds of times, but that did nothing to settle your nerves.

Louis only had one opening act. You. You were all the crowd got before him, so you had to impress them.

You felt someone grab your waist from behind, as you nearly jumped out of your skin. You heard a small giggle in response, recognizing the voice.

You turned to playfully glare at Louis, your boyfriend of four months. You had bonded during rehearsals, and bonded over your similar life experiences, and soon enough, you had begun dating.

Only a handful of people knew, his family, and the crew on tour with you. You weren’t prepared to tell your family yet.

“What are you lookin at?” He asked, wrapping an arm around you. You rested your head on his chest.

“Just looking at the crowd, it’s huge,” you mumbled and he pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

“It’ll be alright, they’ll love you,” he assured, and you smiled at him, grateful for his company.

“Thank you Lou,” you went to give him a proper kiss, but you were interrupted by the stage manager, telling you it was time for you to get in your position.

You quickly waved Louis goodbye, and ran to your platform under the stage, the one that you’d be rising up on in seconds.

They gave you a countdown, and a crew member handed you a mic.

On one, they hauled you up, your hand already in their places.

You were met with a roar of cheers and applause as you surfaced, singing one of your most popular songs, ‘Don’t Start With Me Now,’ written about an old, toxic, best friend.

It was thrilling, hearing the people singing your lyrics back to you, you were shocked they knew them. Being on stage gave you adrenaline you’d never experienced before, and soon, all your nerves flooded away.

As you finished your song, you heard the crowd erupted into cheers, whistles being scattered throughout the crowd. Monologue time.

“Hey guys!” You greeted. “My name is Y/N L/N, and I have been chosen by the honorable host, Louis Tomlinson, to open the show up for you guys! I won’t be up here for long, just enough time to play a few more songs, but don’t worry, I’ll be back soon enough!” You hinted, the crowd screaming in response.

You played through all of the songs you’d written, well, except for one. You hadn’t played Miss You More yet, there was a surprise to come later on.

You gave a farewell to the audience, and stepped off stage, the hair and make-up people touching you up before you could even regain your footing.

Louis didn’t particularly like breaks, so the second you were off the platform, he was getting on.

You stood by, waiting for your cue.

The stage manager nodded, and you stepped onto the platform, your dress changed into a skirt and a nice blouse, courtesy of the costume department.

“Now, I have a special guest here to be with me on stage tonight. We both lost our mothers, when they were both remarkably young, and both to cancer. We’ve both written songs about it, and we thought we’d make a mash-up for you guys tonight!” He exclaimed, and the crowd's cheers nearly popped your ear.

Your platform began moving up, revealing you to the crowd. The cheers echoed through the stadium, and you smiled, waving at them, taking your place beside Louis.

You were counted in, and your mashup of Two of Us and Miss You More began. It was one of your favorite things you’d ever taken part in creating, having input from both you and Louis, not just some producers telling you what to do. This was all you.

The last chords of the song bellowed throughout the stadium. The audience’s cries and shouts of praise filled the room once again.

You looked over at Louis, who was busy admiring the crowd, his blue eyes lit up, a genuine smile on his face. It was at this moment that you realized something; you were in love with this man.

His eyes finally caught yours, and he gestured to the crowd, who was still burning as bright as before.

You smiled and whispered, “I love you.”

You knew Louis had gotten great and lip readings he had basically mastered it.

He quickly out his mic back on the stand and pulled you into a hug, leaning down to say something into your ear, just loud enough so you could hear, “I love you too.”

—

The next day, Louis was pulled into an interview before you headed to the next location. The questions were pretty simple ones, mostly openers for him to promote the movie, but there was one question at the end that made you both smile.

“What song did you fall in love to?”

You knew the answer.

A/N: Let me know if you wanna be added to my permanent taglist! Just send an ask or a message!

Permanent Taglist: @everything-is-alrightt

#louis tomlinson fanfiction #louis tomilson #louis tomlinson x reader #louis tommo #louis tomlinson #two of us #fanfic #i’m bored #sorry for being depressing #one direction x reader #one direction

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blouisparadise · 4 years

Photo

Upon request, we’ve added to our friends to lovers rec list. You can find part one here and there will also be a part three (and possibly a part four!) up eventually, which will be linked here when it’s been posted. We hope you enjoy these fics! Happy reading.

1) Roses In The Rain | Mature | 5267 words

“Don’t- I know what you’re going to ask, and I… Harry, I can’t,” he said, his voice cracking. “Please. You know that I can’t.”

Louis had his six siblings and his old house with its falling-apart porch to take care of. This town was where people still approached him, 8 years after high school graduation, to tell him that they loved him as Danny in Grease. This town was where he had his pick of suitors, where he had his first kiss, where he took his first steps, where his mama lived, died, and was buried, and he couldn’t leave just to follow some man that he loved.

Harry, for now, seemed to understand that.

“Okay, baby,” Harry sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Okay.”

2) Candy In Your Mouth (I Know You Love Me) | Explicit | 6937 words

Things have shifted since last Christmas.

3) Glimpse Of The Silhouettes | Explicit | 7181 words

Harry isn't sure what the rules are for this. It's hard to believe that there are any, that's there's a handbook just waiting for him to buy: why is my best mate getting hard in my lap when I touch his arse?

4) Woke Up Feeling Knotty | Explicit | 7903 words

Beta Louis has a kink for knotting and the secret aesthetic porn blog he runs about it is more than proof. When he accidentally finds out his alpha best friend Harry is one of his biggest fans, he knows he has to come clean after everything that has already happened between them. Harry just might be willing to help him out anyway.

5) A Love Reaction | Explicit | 9968 words

It's never been a thing. Not until now.

6) Got It Right Such A Long Time Ago | Explicit | 9699 words

Four months into One Direction's hiatus, Louis comes to stay with Harry after a bad breakup.

7) (You're Gonna See Me In A) New Light | Mature | 13631 words

A fake relationship AU where everyone knows it's real but Louis.

8) As A Memento From Me | Explicit | 15817 words

Five lives in which Harry and Louis didn’t end up together, and one in which they did.

9) I Put A Spell On You | Explicit | 17525

A BBC/Secret Santa mashup featuring Captain Niall, our intrepid weatherman/amateur matchmaker, rather clueless sports reporter Liam, charming political analyst Zayn, and cheeky entertainment reporter Louis. Harry is the new fashion correspondent who prefers to dress like a flamingo. And pining. There’s a lot of pining.

10) Oblivious | Explicit | 19095 words

Where Louis gets a little crush on Luke and for some reason Harry starts acting weird.

11) Break Open The Sky | Explicit | 20372 words

Werewolf AU. Harry might be a werewolf, but he still wants to experience Uni like everyone else. Turns out he learns a lot.

12) Runnin’ Like You Did | Explicit | 20061 words

The college AU where Louis knows how to hold a grudge and is definitely not in love with Harry Styles.

13) UN(RE)SOLVED. | Explicit | 20873 words

The ghoul boys are back, but this time around there are some unresolved feelings involved. Harry is a skeptic, Louis is not. Watch them go on their ongoing investigation into the question: are ghosts real?

14) Hats Off To My Distant Hope | Explicit | 20990 words

Harry is in White Eskimo. Louis is in London.

15) The Way The Storms Blow | Explicit | 20649 words

Louis doesn’t have a habit of thinking about Harry’s dick.

That would be weird, seeing as they’re best mates, and they share a flat, and they’ve spent holidays at each other’s family homes. Their friendship hasn’t ever risen to a point where Louis should want to see his mate’s dick, and he’s happy to keep it that way.

Except, all that Louis can think about is exactly that. The size of it. The shape. The amount of people it’s been in.

Maybe it’s the tequila talking, or the fact that Louis’ just recently walked in to an eyeful of Harry taking turns on some slags that he’s never seen before, but. Louis’ mind can’t stop obsessing over the idea.

16) Love Like Wildfire | Explicit | 21774 words

Louis was an Omega and a Prefect. Harry was an Alpha and a little rascal. They were mates, drawn to each other since they first met in the Hogwarts Express. They worked well like that, or at least they tried, which only made their relationship way more interesting.

17) Indestructible | Explicit | 24423 words

“Hi,” Harry murmurs, and Louis hiccups out a sob.

“Hi,” he manages, still clutching onto Harry’s shoulders. Harry’s fingers drift across Louis’ cheeks, and there’s something off about Harry’s expression, but Louis can’t figure out what it is.

“I’m okay,” Harry says, and Louis is going to say something to that, even if he doesn’t know what, except Harry’s kissing him.

Louis freezes.

18) A Whole New World | Not Rated | 24967 words

Louis has moved into his new apartment to start his new job as a teacher. Things would be great. If only his arsehole neighbour didn't wake him up every morning by playing piano.

19) Another Day Gettin’ Into Trouble | Explicit | 25619 words

Harry’s drunk when the idea occurs to him. He’s also a pop star, so sometimes his drunk ideas turn into actual things instead of just ideas. The clone-a-willy kit is one of them.

In Harry’s defense, when he first thinks about it his intention is just to buy the kit and give it to Louis to make his own dildo with, because that’s what he wants anyway, right? To have a penis filling him up?

Then he realizes that it would be weird if Louis made a copy of his own dick to fuck himself with. It’d be super weird. Louis fucking himself? That’s a weird idea. Harry’s pretty sure Louis wouldn’t like that.

Clearly the only solution here is to use his own dick for the mold.

20) Brooklyn Saw Me | Explicit | 28537 words

In the cold and unforgiving city of New York, Louis doesn't have a home and Harry wants to give him one. But as their heartstrings become increasingly intertwined, and the snow continues to fall, home is getting harder and harder to find.

21) Rivers ‘Til I Reach You | Explicit | 29315 words

AU. Louis studies astronomy; Harry studies Louis. They spend their summers on the water and it shouldn't be complicated (spoiler: it is).

22) If Ignorance Be Bliss | Mature | 30429 words

Uni AU: Harry is too experienced, and Louis just wants to get to experience him.

23) Blind From This Sweet, Sweet Craving | Explicit | 31170 words

"So, I guess we'll go?" Louis asks later, when Harry has calmed down and eaten his weight in Chinese food. He plays with this chopsticks, spearing another piece of chicken and pops it in his mouth. "I mean, I wouldn't mind. We could make it an adventure."

Harry observes him, watches him seated across from him on their old living room carpet, with a container of food on his lap. He's fidgeting, avoiding meeting Harry's gaze–he probably knows that Harry's mad at him for ruining the one chance they had to get out of this situation. And he's not wrong, Harry is definitely very mad. Harry wants to strangle him and castrate him and smack him upside the head.

But he's also Harry's best friend, and despite everything, despite all the fuck-ups and the plot twists and everything just not playing out the way it should, he'd still rather be stuck in this situation with Louis than any of the other boys. He's got Harry's back, and in a weird, abstract way, he knows they'll be able to get out of this situation, together.

Harry sighs. "We're going," he says resignedly, his shoulders slumping.

Oh well. There are definitely worse ways to spend the weekend than pretending to be engaged to his best friend.

24) Welcome Back From The Friend Zone | Mature | 32354 words

The one where an idea to create a fake wedding with the sole intent to receive gifts from billionaires took a turn no one, but also everyone, saw coming.

25) The List | Mature | 32074 words

'In the weeks that follow, Harry opens his old journal more than he has in the past two years each time he remembers Venice or thinks about Louis. He always flips to the same random page in the middle of the book, marked by the picture of himself that Louis sent him a few days after they got home. There’s a message on the back that says, ‘Spontaneous looks good on you! See you soon,’ and it makes Harry’s chest warm each time he reads it. He wedges their list out from between the worn pages, and it feels silly staring down at a folded up piece of paper with a strange sense of nostalgia for experiences they’ve yet to have; for places they’ve never even been.'

26) Mark My Word (We Gon’ Be Alright) | Explicit | 35524 words

An A/B/O AU featuring an oblivious Harry as the pack leader, a pining Louis as his second-in-command, and an entourage of friends and family who are a little too good at keeping their mouths shut.

27) The Sun Will Rise With My Name On Your Lips | Explicit | 37927 words

When Eleanor breaks up with Louis he finds it hard to keep pretending that Harry isn’t what he’s wanted since the day he first met him.

28) Runner On Third | Explicit | 39643 words

Note: The sequel to this fic is not BL.

The AU where Louis and Harry were best friends growing up, but lost touch after Harry moved away. Ten years later, Harry has moved back to town, but he and Louis don't pick up where they left off.

29) My Sweetest Downfall | Mature | 42048 words

Louis is a retired guardian angel. After the death of his last charge, he became jaded. Humans die—what use is prolonging the inevitable?

He's more than happy to forget about humanity altogether until one day, when Louis is pulled from his desk job for a new assignment: protect One Direction's Harry Styles. It doesn't help that there's something about Harry that Louis can't resist, and it's making him question everything he's ever known. Humans are strictly off limits, and breaking that rule means risking everything, but Harry just might be worth it.

This is a story about forgiveness and discovery, featuring an angel who wants to be a little more human and a human who is so much more than he seems.

30) For the Sake of Propriety | Mature | 52360 words

Louis Tomlinson is the caretaker of an estate that is not truly his, and when his Uncle calls upon him to take it back, Louis knows he will soon be out on the streets with four overly zealous sisters to care for. His only solution: wed the eldest two off and pray for the best. When an even better solution unexpectedly presents itself in the form of the charming Mr. Styles, Louis is faced with a difficult choice. But as with all things in the regency era, reputation very well may threaten to outweigh the fleeting matters of his heart.

31) The Bachelor | Explicit | 53953 words

The one where Harry dates six other guys and still falls in love with Louis Tomlinson.

32) We’ve Got the World in Our Hands | Explicit | 54964 words

Note: This fic has been locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

A mutants/superpowers AU. Louis and his friends attend the Cowell Institute for General Education and Mutant Training in London; when Louis meets Harry, the newest student at the Cowell Institute, he immediately recruits Harry to help play matchmaker for his friend Zayn. Harry and Louis are so caught up in meddling in Zayn's love life, though, that they don't notice that their own friendship is progressing into something more. Meanwhile, an ominous threat up north grows slowly until suddenly, no mutant - or human - is safe.

33) Waiting For The Tides To Meet | Explicit | 49873 words

Soulmate AU. Everyone is born with heterochromia — one eye is their own eye colour, while the other is the colour of their soulmate's. It's only when they meet their soulmate for the first time that their own eyes match properly. After a hazy night at a frat party, Louis wakes up to blue eyes and the shocking realization that he had met his soulmate, without any sober recollection. Seven years pass where Louis comes to terms with the fact that he'll never know who his soulmate is. Then one fated summer, a beautiful green-eyed photographer arrives at Louis' workplace, with promises of endless laughter and a familiar feeling in Louis' heart.

34) Since I’ve Found You | Mature | 74005 words

Louis woke up on the morning he was meant to volunteer at the Feed the Homeless program at St. Mary's church hoping for an opportunity to give back a little to a city that has given him everything he could ever want. Little did he know, there was one more great thing waiting there for him; a boy with radiant green eyes in a weathered jacket and a beat-up backpack slung over his shoulders.

35) Saving Symphony Hall | Mature | 124766 words

Note: This fic is a sequel to this fic.

“I think I have an idea,” Louis said. Slowly, and reluctantly, but with a growing sense of the inevitable. “God damnit, I think I have a really good idea.”

“Oh christ, that's the problem-solving face,” Babs said. “Last time we saw that face, he sold a company.”

“Wait, what?” Zayn asked.

“Right place, right time,” Louis said. “Also, fuck my life,”

“What?” Zayn repeated. Niall patted his hand.

“I usually just roll with whatever Louis is about to do,” he said. “It’s better for us all.”

“That’s the attitude,” said Louis, “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Tonight, I need to do some research. Zayn, give me your number. I’m gonna save our symphony.”

36) Falling Into You | Mature | 143517 words

In the grand scheme of adolescence and boyhood, Harry was still working himself out, so far with little luck. But four things he could say for certain: 1) he'd been at the top of his class all through primary and secondary school, 2) he was the shittiest alpha to ever walk the earth, 3) Liam Payne never let him forget it, and 4) he’d been in love with this boy, Louis Tomlinson, ever since he was fifteen years old.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

#larry #fic recs #friends to lovers #bottom louis #top harry #blp #blp fic recs

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kurlyfrasier · 3 years

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Spaghetti Girl (Part 2/3)

Dean x Reader

Synopsis: Ok so I had a really good description but lost it so.....yeah. Can’t think of words right now. Will add synopsis later...This is one of my favorite SPN fanfics I’ve written, so please read!

Word Count: 1790

Warnings: none

You had no idea Dean had a tender smile playing on his lips as he watched you dance. If one could really call it dancing. But it was good exercise and ten times more fun than your everyday workout routine your doctor had you on in an attempt to keep your symptoms down.

Speaking of which, you would have to tell the boys you needed to split for a couple of weeks to go for your check-up, refill your meds, and probably get your yearly MRI done. The thought had you unknowingly stop dancing mid-song, a frown marred your features. How would you go about telling Dean you suddenly had to leave? You had no family, none who were blood related, anyway. They were the only hunters you really knew, so you couldn’t claim you were visiting another hunter. Maybe you could tell him you found a simple case. No need for them to come along. Maybe you could slip away. It’s not like Dean would really notice. He had made it clear he doesn’t like you anyway.

Snapping your fingers, you strode out of the room, deciding that you’d tell Sam you would be gone for a couple of weeks and slip away that night with Dean none the wiser. Perfect! Then Sam could tell Dean you had to leave for whatever reason. That was, if he even noticed you were gone. For now, you would pack and find Sam.

Packing took less than ten minutes. You had decided to only take the essentials, a couple of books, and your trusty weapons duffell that barely left your side, just in case. You decided not to worry about your missing Nicholas Sparks book. You could always buy another one anyway. Sam, on the other hand, took a few minutes to find. When you did find him, you were surprised to see him in the kitchen. Alone.

“I thought Dean was making dinner?” You asked, slowly stepping into the room, eyes roaming for Dean, worried he would pop out any second and ask questions you didn’t want to answer. There was no way you could lie through one of his interrogations. The mouthwatering aroma of beef and red sauce didn’t even penetrate your senses, you were so nervous.

“Uh, he was,” Sam looked over his shoulder and continued when he didn’t see Dean with you. “He is, really. He had to step out for a sec. Looks like he made our famous Winchester Pasta Sauce too,” he smiled. Maybe he could help his brother out a little. He did seem a bit desperate earlier.

“Oh good. About him stepping out, I mean. And the sauce. Sounds delicious,” you babbled. Taking a deep breath, you continued. “Anyway, Sam.”

“Yeah?”

“I gotta leave tonight. I, uh, have someplace I have to be. Is it okay if I leave most of my stuff here?”

“Yeah that’s fine. Y/n, you know you’re welcome anytime and that room will always be yours, right? You’ve been here for a few months now. I was hoping you were thinking of this place as your home.”

“Yeah, yeah. It is. I just wanted to make sure, thanks.” You hoped he wouldn’t ask any questions as you awkwardly stood there, rubbing your hands up and down your hips. A sad attempt at wiping the sweat off your clammy palms. That happened when you were nervous… or lying. Or anytime you felt distressed, really.

“So, where are you going?”

“Denver,” you lied. You were actually going to St. Louis, but you didn’t want Sam to have to lie to Dean. This way if he asks or goes looking for you -which would happen with your luck- Dean won’t find out what’s really going on. Then he’ll never know about your neuromuscular problem and you’ll be able to continue hunting with them. You knew it was stupid, really. You knew hunting wasn’t the smartest thing to be doing with your disease. Not smart at all actually, but you felt like you were really helping people and that felt good. Nothing was going to keep you from ganking creeps and killers if you had any say in the matter. Not even the Winchesters. Luckily you caught the disease early on, so for now, your symptoms haven’t completely disabled you. Make things difficult? Yes. But you haven’t gotten to the point where your limbs don’t listen at all.

“So, why Denver?”

“Change of scenery,” you shrugged. “I like the Rockies. It’ll be a nice vacation and Dean won’t have to be on his toes around me all the time.”

“I don’t think Dean minds having you around, y/n.”

“It’s okay, Sam, really. Some people just don’t click, ya know?” Even though you had wished that Dean would notice you. Or at least talk to you. Or that you would grow on him over time, like asparagus. Nobody really likes asparagus the first few times they try them.

“You gonna leave after dinner?”

“Yeah, tonight. After you guys go to bed.”

“No goodbye, huh?” Sam chuckled.

“This is my goodbye, Tallboy,” you smacked him playfully on the arm. “I just figured Dean isn’t going to care one way or the other. So instead of making him wish me luck and say goodbye, I’ll just slip out.” You smiled sadly. You think Dean and yourself would get along well if he gave you the chance. You both love classic rock and you’re both great hunters. He always makes you laugh when he deigns to tell jokes in front of you. Not that he ever tells you the jokes. “Besides,” you continued, “I’ll only be gone a couple of weeks.”

Around the corner in the hallway, Dean’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach. You were leaving. You were leaving that night and you weren’t going to tell him goodbye. Had he really made you think that little of him?

He had followed you to your room earlier, watched you pack and wondered what for. Now he knew.

Without warning he walked into the kitchen as if he had no clue about the conversation. “Hey.”

“You’re back,” Sam stated the obvious, noticing immediately something was wrong, but kept silent about it as he moved away from the stove. “Uh, I went ahead and added the sauce.”

“Yeah, thanks man.” Dean was furious with you. Not that he had any right to be and he knew it. Which only made it worse. He wanted a nickname. He wanted you to tell him goodbye, for you tell him about your medical stuff. He wanted you to talk to him about books and movies and music and- well, everything. Yet all he had done was make everything worse and now, when he finally decides to show you he wants you- needs you, really- you’re leaving. For two whole weeks. He was going to lose his mind without you around. It was hard enough making you partner with Sam on hunts. At least in those situations he would be within hearing distance. But Denver?

“Spaghetti will be done soon, y/n, if you wanted some,” Dean said, unable to face you.

If you wanted some? Of course you wanted some. There was no way even Dean didn’t know spaghetti was your favorite food of all time. Actually, maybe there was a chance he didn’t know. Considering he always seemed to go out of his way to ignore you.

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll go clean up real quick,” you said, slipping out of the kitchen. Sometimes Dean could seriously be frustrating. Maybe it was time you started thinking about leaving the Winchester’s bunker permanently. Obviously only one brother wanted you there, as much as you wished it wasn’t so, and it wasn’t the one in charge.

“That was-”

“A disaster, Sam. A complete and total disaster.”

“Well, as long as you-”

“Know? Yeah, I know. I heard every freakin’ word, Sam. Every. Word.”

“Oh. It’s only for a couple of weeks, Dean.”

“Only!? I’ve already wasted three months! Possibly ruined any chance I have.”

“I doubt that. Y/n’s naturally forgiving. We can come up with a plan while she’s gone. A whole new Dean.” Sam moved his hand in front of him as if he was reading the words in the air.

“Or we could follow her and make up a plan on the way.” Dean poured the sauce in with the noodles and started mixing aggressively.

“Follow her?”

“Yeah. To Denver.”

“You mean St. Louis.”

“No,” Dean shook his head. “I mean Denver. That’s what she said.”

“Yeah, but she was lying. You’d know that if you were in the room with us earlier. There’s no way she’s going to Denver.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Dean whisper-hissed as he heard you walking their direction from down the hall.

~~~~~~~~~~

Both Winchesters were sleeping as you tiptoed through the halls. You had put your bags in your old Wrangler while Dean finished up the spaghetti. And by bags, you meant all of them. You were leaving the Winchesters for good. Never to return. You were sad about not telling Sam to his face, but a letter would have to suffice. There was no way you were going to go one more day in Dean’s presence. You have no idea what you ever did to him, but that man really didn’t like you. He only tolerated you because you and Sam got along so well and you knew it. But now you had to get to your check-up with Doc.

“Dean!” Sam yelled, shaking his brother awake. They had decided after dinner to head out after you in the morning. Sam had put a tracking device in your phone the first week you stayed at the bunker. So following you would be easy. “Dean! Wake up! She’s gone. Like gone gone.”

“Gone?” He shot up, clothes still on from yesterday. He didn’t want to waste even a second when they were to head after you.

“Yeah, she left a letter. Dude, she really thinks you hate her.”

“Give me that,” he snatched the paper out of Sam’s hand and sat up to read.

Sam,

I’m sorry, but this is a permanent goodbye. I know we get along splendidly and you make me feel very welcome, but Dean can’t stand me. I’m done making him feel uncomfortable in his own home. For that’s exactly what the bunker is for you guys.

I’ll miss you Tallboy. I hope you both live long lives like you’re meant to because the world would be nothing without you guys. Be careful out there. Maybe someday we’ll meet up again.

Thanks for everything,

Y/n

P.S. Let me know if you find my book

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part 3

#fanfic #spn fanfic #dean x reader #my writing #dean #sam #winchester #i hate tags #hopefully you gave part one a chance lol

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lilyrachelcassidy · 4 years

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Summer Nights (1)

A/N: Welcome to the first chapter of my new and long time awaited series - Summer Nights. Please read every necessary information in the INDEX of the story (warnings, summary). Do not forget that the fic is quite mature and might contain some obscene stuff (i.a. alcohol and sexual items). I’ll try to post each chapter regularly (like one per week?) however as it sometimes turns out - I can be unreliable in that matter ( ;

Words: 2.6k

Warnings: coarseness, poverty problems, swearing, alcohol and sexual items (or rather mentions of them?), reference to arranged marriage

Tags: @okaydraco @idkatee @paradigmax @winnsmills @war-sword

You turned your gaze away from a computer screen and looked yearningly out of the window on the chaotic streets of Paris.

At that time of day, the city seemed to teem with life, especially in the summer season when many tourists came over to visit the town. You could notice a variety of cultures among crowds of people. They gathered and filled in restaurants, eating and laughing, and chatting with each other.

So how, for God’s sake, did you deserve to be at work today?

The thought of scrumptious spaghetti and a glass of red wine made you feel frustrated. And cloudless, wonderful weather waiting for you outside did not make it any better. You imagined yourself laying in a bikini on the sandy beach with ‘Vogue’ magazine on your laps and Pina Colada in your hands. Or bathing in warm ocean water with sun rays smoothly tanning your skin.

These visions caused a dreamy smile to appear on your face.

However, as soon as you scooted over in a fantasy world, the poke in your shoulder brought you back to reality. You turned your head to the side to see your co-worker and best friend, Chloe. She was crouching next to your chair with her piercing gaze studying your face attentively.

Chloe was a gorgeous woman, and you could easily say that she could break more than one heart. She had big, blue eyes and long, blonde curls falling on her slim shoulders. She had full, pink lips with a Greek-type nose and prominent cheekbones that highlighted her beauty. Her figure was feminine and slender with ample bosom, flat belly, and long legs.

There had been many situations when groups of passing-by boys stopped her in the middle of the pavement, scanning her body up and down with boisterous whistles and comments of a sexual nature. Although you had always tried to stand up in her defense, she never really cared to bother much, just shrugging it off.

“Are you alright?” She narrowed her eyes doubtfully. “You look like a walking dead.”

“Thanks,” you chuckled amused, bitting your cheek. “No, I’m actually fine. Just a little bit dizzy, but don’t worry about it. ”

“For sure? You know, if you take a nap at work, I might be the first person to know about it.” both of you chortled slightly, and you rested your elbows on the armrest. Chloe’s phone started to buzz in her purse. She took it out, muted it down, and eyed you again.

“Anyways. Why are you leaving so early? It’s just four o’clock, and I thought you were ending your shift at eight.” You peeked at the watch on your hand and arched your eyebrow suspiciously at her. Now it was your turn to interrogate her.

“Well, I took a day off,” she informed you. “I’m having a date with Louis today. We meet at six, and he takes me to some fancy restaurant. Of course, he didn’t want to tell me the exact location, mentioning something about ruining the surprise. You know him..” She rolled her eyeballs playfully with a meaningful sigh and an unambiguous smile plastered on her face.

Louis was Chloe’s boyfriend, but also one of your closest friends. You couldn’t say he was the easy-going type of person, and when you first met him, you had presumed his behavior to be a little bit too ‘self-centered’. However, after many years of acquaintance, you had learned that he was rather desperate to drag attention on himself and impress others, with you and Chloe included.

“Lucky. I’m stuck in here for a night shift,” you complained, leaning on the chair's backrest and letting a small groan out of your mouth. It was the third time this week you had to stay at your job for night time. And that wore you out.

“Again?” She frowned.

“Unfortunately...” You grimaced, glancing at your friend with a corner of your eye. “My father hasn’t paid the bills again. I’ve to earn some extra money…"

"Can I-"

"I know you want to help, but please, let's not think about it," you cut the conversation out. Your face started to get warmer, so you lowered your head as not to show your embarrassment. You trusted your friend with all of your soul but still more than felt awkward when it came up with family topics.

Chloe remained silent and smiled supportively, tightly gripping your palm. You appreciated her ability to understand people’s emotions and her tact of how to respond to them.

“I really have to go, Y/N. Call me if you needed any help.” Chloe stood up and went to the backroom of the reception. She put on her coat, wrapping her green bandana around her neck, and then slightly pecked your cheek. She walked over to the exit and, for the last time, turned towards you, waved in the bye, and left the hotel.

You gaped at the place where Chloe had just disappeared, slowly letting out your breath. After a while, you switched the laptop back on and decided to occupy yourself with reading. Clicking on the ‘iBooks’ application, you selected a book - ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’. Maybe, at least that could help you take your mind off things and spend some of your time while visitors weren’t around. You opened the first chapter of the novel, but soon after, you heard someone entering the room again.

Lifting your head, you beheld an elegant woman with a younger boy by her side. You assumed them to be a family, considering their striking similarity in appearance. Also, they distinguish themselves from their surroundings with their peculiarly sophisticated garments and unnaturally pale skin.

The woman smiled at you kindly and approached the reception desk. You got up from the chair and reciprocated the gesture.

“Bonjour madame. Comment puis-je vous aider?” you asked and saw a confused expression painting on the woman’s face. She furrowed her eyebrows for a short moment and cleared her throat.

“Mm… Hello. Do you speak English?” she asked hesitantly with a language accent that informed you instantly of her origin. Many guests of the hotel usually arrived from different parts of the world, which had let you acquire the skill of guessing their probable nationalities.

“You’re British I see,” you noted, grinning. “Of course I do. Welcome to Paris! How can I help you?”

“We have a reservation under the name Malfoys.”

Nodding in understanding, your fingers swiftly started to tap the keyboard of the computer. You entered in the search engine of hotel’s guests with surname ‘MALFOYS’ and found a booking for two people.

“Could I check your ID cards first, ma’am?” you asked and saw her rummaging in the bag. Meanwhile, you started to prepare every necessary paper for her to fill out.

“Here it is,” she finally stated, and you reached over for the documents. You noticed the woman’s foot nervously tapping on the floor but decided to ignore it.

“Thank you,” you said while surveying everything. “Okay, so - Narcissa Malfoy, apartment number 354 - Presidential Suite. It’s on the fourth floor.” You laid the keys with ID cards on a counter top. “And Dra- Dra…”

“Draco. It’s Draco Malfoy,” the boy spoke up for the first time, and - by the tone of his voice - you could already judge that he wasn’t the friendliest type of a person, to say at least. You moved your gaze on his figure, and your eyes met with his stern glare, which sent unpleasant shivers down your spine. He was sitting on one of the lounge chairs located in the room, twisting a carved stick in his fingers. Quickly realizing that you stared at the object, he hid it in his pocket.

You giggled nervously and shook your head.

“Yes. Draco Malfoy. I’m sorry for my oversight.” You blushed profusely and tried your best to pretend that your pre-momentary blunder did not affect you anyhow. You took a second key from a shelf and placed it next to the first one. “Room number 355 - Royal Apartment. Although, it on the fifth floor, which means not located nearby your mom's one, sir."

“No problem for me.” Huffing, he got up from the armchair and walked over, grabbing the keys. His expression still evinced the arrogance, but now you had a chance to examine his appearance more closely and perceive his unparalleled attractiveness. His platinum hair suitably contrasted with grey irises, and the sharp jawline with his muscular body made your knees weak.

Just great...

“If there is anything you needed, please let me know,” you proffered and forced a smile, wishing it didn’t look so fake as it felt. “I hope you enjoy your stay.”

“Thank you,” said Narcissa, sauntering away with her son following shortly after. You took a last peek at Draco and saw him sending you an unpleasant look before leaving the lobby.

* * *

Narcissa with Draco entered her spacious hotel room. She began to look around the space, smacking her lips in delight. After that, she sat gingerly on her bed and discretely ran her fingers through the bedding set so as to verify its fabric. Draco knew and was accustomed to his mother’s atypical habit of checking the quality of things before using them.

She patted a place next to her, encouraging him to take a seat. He just pressed his lips into a straight line and only shook his head.

“Draco, let’s talk,” she started, grunting.“I think you should - at least - consider being tolerant of those muggles. I know it is a tough period of our lives, after the war...” Narcissa shuddered at the reference of that event and her eyes filmed over a little. “But it is time to move on. Wizarding World is not going to be this same for many years. That’s why for this vacation, I wanted us to come to the place that could let you dispose of redundant memories and experien-”

“Dispose of memories?” Draco cut her off and huffed, leaning flippantly against the wall. His voice was very tight and harsh.“How do you think I could possibly get rid of them? Maybe Dark Mark on my forearm would help me solve that issue? Or Obliviate spell would be a solution?”

At once, the blood was boiling in his veins. He didn’t blame his mother for decisions of the past, but he could not stop himself from snapping. A recollection of tortures he had had to perform on others, of tortures he had had to bear himself, of incurred deaths he had seen… and committed. That wasn’t a fleeting thing to forget.

Narcissa took a deep breath and ignored her son’s snarky comment. She decided not to give up with the plan of their conversation for this evening. So and so, he had to finally hear the truth, right?

“I and your father with Greengrass family established that by the end of this year, you are going to propose to one of their daughters.” She gazed at him, partly expecting the next outburst of emotions. Although Draco’s ears began dangerously reddening, she assumed the silence was a non-verbal acquiescence for her to continue. “You do not have to worry about arrangements for the nuptials, nor about other wedding cases. Everything is going to be organized. And I deeply believe that marring one of those beautiful girls might bring a state of contentment in your life.”

Draco gulped down his saliva and fixed his eyes on the floor, his face expressing wrath.

“I’m sorry mother, but I’ve no idea how marrying a person who I’ve hardly ever talked to could make me any happier.”

“Dear, me and Lucius did not fall in love at first sight either. Nevertheless, we accepted the unusual plight that we were put in, and then we got accustomed to leading our new, joint lifestyle,” she explained, carefully choosing her words. “And I am aware that it must be hard for you. So and it was for me. But now, I could not imagine it to be any different.”

“Well then, if you felt this same way as I do right now, please tell me why are you expecting this same from me by imposing the marriage? Why can’t I choose someone to fall in love with?”

Good point.

Narcissa seemed to be momentarily speechless by his question because there was an awkward, uncomfortable pause for a long moment. Draco sniggered loudly and turned away to leave, but before doing so, his mom’s voice echoed in the room again.

“Love is only a matte-“ she took her last try to argue, her tone rather desperate.

“I don’t care!” he yawped, turning the knob and slamming the door behind him with a violent bang.

Draco headed over to search for a bar where he could abreact the minute-ago conversation. The tension of his body was unbearably upsetting, and his heart was pounding aggressively in his rib cage. His fists clutched tightly, knuckles becoming white and teeth clenched.

Fuck his parents.

Fuck them with their shitty ideas.

When would be a time for him to be able to determine his own opinions about matters in his life? Or rather, the doubt is - would there ever be that time?

Before he knew it, he found himself in this same lobby where he had been an hour ago. As he walked over to the recently encountered receptionist, he spotted her writing something vigorously on an odd, square box. As to not arise any suspicion, he decided to act casually and hide his enticing interest in this particular... object.

Soon enough, you noticed the blond-haired boy and realized it was the man from earlier. A bump formed in your throat, and you fought a sudden urge to run away. Instead, you just set your phone aside and lifted yourself up, all your muscles refusing to do this same activity for the thousandth time this day (‘Is this some kind of aerobic or what?!’).

“Is there something I could help with, sir?” you asked with a smile, trying to remain calm, which was an exceptionally intractable task in this boy’s presence. Maybe as an effect of tiredness, it was hard for you to compose, but you did not like it a bit.

“Yes, actually.” At least he took his best effort to be polite. Although a horrible exasperation, as if something pained him, still convulsed his features. “I wondered if there was a place where I could have some Firewhisky or so?”

‘Firewhisky?’ you thought. ‘Is it some kind of British dainty?’

“Well, for sure I haven’t heard of heating up Whisky before,” you joked, attempting to lighten things up. However, his glare gave you a hint he was definitely not put in a mood for such things.“But there is a pub where you could have a drink, sir. It’s on the opposite street, so all you need to do is to cross over a road.”

Draco nodded. "Oh, and one more thing." He reached over to the inner pocket of his sable jacket and took out an ornamental envelope with an old-fashioned red seal on the top of it. "If the woman who I was with before starts looking after me, hand her over this letter, could you?"

You didn't know where an uninvited rush of interest hailed from, but the mystery-insatiate part of your brain screamed out at you to play along with his cards to winkle out more information. "What if she asks me questions? Shoul-"

"Bend the truth. I only ask you to do one thing for me. Don't reveal to her where or when I went. I gave you the envelope and disappeared out of your sight. Understood, muggle?"

You didn't grasp the last part of his sentence; the one concerning --mugel? meagul? megull? -- but you could bet it meant to be an insult. Swallowing your suspicious hunch, you put on a sympathetic smile. "Sure can do, sir. Hope you have a good night out."

"Thanks. Later." And without any other word, he strode away.

53 notes · View notes

summerohnine · 4 years

Text

you bring me home

warnings: none

word count: 2.7k

summary: harry’s homesick while on tour and louis comforts him.

[read on ao3]

The tips of Harry’s fingers stung from where he’d bitten off the white parts of his nails, but he couldn’t bring himself to care as he continued to gnaw at the aching skin. His mind raced with too many thoughts to really pay any attention to the pain. It was only when a particularly rough bite tore the skin a bit too much and caused blood to seep out onto his tongue that he was brought back to reality and finally brought his hands down to his lap.

He looked around, then, at the walls tightly surrounding him in his too-small bunk. He thought of where he was. America. Somewhere in Colorado by now, I’d bet. Not that it really mattered where in America. What mattered is where he wasn’t, which was home. And not just his flat in London, which was beautiful and much more than Harry had ever thought he’d own. No, he wanted to be home, in Holmes Chapel with his mum and sister, getting woken up by Gemma smacking a pillow across his face because “Mum says it’s your turn to take the trash out.”

Harry loved his boys, and they were as much a family to him as his actual relatives were, but he missed home. The ache was always there, however it was usually distant and easy enough for Harry to distract himself from by playing a round of FIFA with Niall or cuddling up next to Louis (sometimes he even got away with doing both simultaneously, despite the dramatic eyerolls from Liam and teasing from Niall and Zayn).

Sometimes, though, the longing overtook him. It was always at night, when everyone else was asleep and Harry was left alone with his thoughts, too polite to wake any of the boys up, including his own boyfriend. Though he knew Louis would be more than willing to comfort him, Harry could never bring himself to wake Louis at times like this. He felt selfish, and almost humiliated at the thought. What 19-year-old needed to be held in the middle of the night because he missed his mum? It was childish.

Not that he thought Louis would judge him for it. Harry was well aware that Louis got his own bouts of homesickness, as Harry had been the one to stay up with him and run his fingers through his hair, rocking him back and forth as he struggled to find the words to express how he felt. But it made sense for Louis to miss home. He had little sisters that he had been taking care of for years, and he wasn’t used to not knowing what was going on with them. He was missing so many of their firsts, things that Louis had been waiting to experience for so long. But Harry was just a pathetic little kid whining for his mum. It wasn’t the same.

Frustrated, Harry finally forced himself out of his bunk and walked into the small kitchen on the bus. He searched for his phone in the dark, which had been plugged in on the cluttered countertop. He looked at the time, half-past three in the morning. His mum should be awake by now at home. Would it make it worse to give her a call? Or would hearing her voice be the one thing Harry needed to put himself at ease?

Without any other options, Harry rang her.

No answer.

When the call went to voicemail, the lump that Harry hadn’t yet noticed in his throat grew. He coughed lightly, willing it to go away, before the beep sounded indicating he could leave his message.

“Hi, Mum,” he said weakly into the phone, his voice thick from fatigue and disappointment. “I-it’s Harry. Well, you knew that. Um, anyways.” He let out a short laugh that caught in his throat and threatened to turn into a sob. It was much louder than he intended, but he hoped no one had heard. “I just, I wanted to tell you that I miss you and Gem, a lot, and, uh, I-I’m sorry I haven’t gotten the chance to call in the last few days.” He spoke slowly, careful to make sure he was forming coherent sentences because he was beyond tired and it was difficult for his brain to fully process what he was saying. Tears threatened to spill out from his eyes, and he was sure the slight quiver in his voice would give it away when his mum listened back to the voicemail. “I’m going to try and get some sleep, but give me a call when you can later on today. If you get the chance to talk to Gemma before me, ask her to call me, okay?” He sniffed, and he knew that there was no point in hiding the obvious pain in his voice anymore. “Love you, Mum. See you soon.” His voice shook at that last sentence, and it took everything in him to hold in his sob until he had hung up.

As soon as he set his phone down, he collapsed to the ground. He clutched at his stomach and tried his hardest to bury his face into his knees as an attempt to muffle the sounds of his cries. It must not have worked as well as he thought (or maybe Louis just had a sixth sense to know when Harry needed him), because almost as soon as Harry’s butt hit the ground, Louis came shuffling down the hall to see what was the matter.

Harry heard the unmistakable sound of Louis’ footsteps getting closer, but he couldn’t bring himself to look up. He didn’t want to see the look of pity that was sure to be on Louis’ face, he already felt embarrassed enough. Harry wanted to hang on to what little bit of dignity he had left.

“Oh, Haz,” Louis murmured, sinking down next to Harry on the floor and surrounding him with his arms. Harry buried his face into Louis’ neck instinctively and let himself sob into his shoulder, dignity be damned.

Harry didn’t even want to think about what a mess he probably looked, tears and snot running down his face and soaking into the soft cotton of Louis’ shirt. Harry knew Louis couldn’t give two fucks about him ruining his cheap shirt, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit bad.

Louis scratched at Harry’s back as he continued to shake with sobs. The noise was starting to die down a bit, but only because Harry couldn’t breathe enough to get anything out other than a few wheezes. His head began to go dizzy from the lack of oxygen, which Louis must have been able to sense.

“Love, you have to take a few deep breaths,” Louis whispered into Harry’s ear, grabbing his face with both of his hands and rubbing at his still shut eyes with his thumbs. “For me, please?”

At that, Harry managed to open his eyes for the first time since he’d hung up the phone. His vision was blurred, but even through the tears he could tell that Louis was extremely worried. After a minute or so of Louis softly repeating, “In-two-three, out-two-three,” Harry was able to get his breathing somewhat back to normal.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Harry said when he was able to form words again. His voice shook as tears that he had been too lazy to wipe away collected at the corners of his mouth. Louis kissed them away.

Against Harry’s mouth, Louis whispered, “Sorry for what?”

Despite every part of him telling him not to, Harry pulled away from Louis’ mouth and looked him in the eyes for the first time. Louis’ hands remained on either side of Harry’s face, gently wiping each tear as they continued to fall from his eyes. He sniffed. “For waking you up.”

“You didn’t,” Louis responded instantly.

“Don’t lie.”

Louis sighed, staring into Harry’s eyes and searching for something, though Harry wasn’t sure what. “I’d been awake for a while,” he admitted. “I could tell from your breathing that you weren’t asleep.”

“That’s kind of creepy.” Harry laughed, which surprised him a bit. Louis smiled and leaned in to peck him on the cheek.

“What can I say? I’m sort of obsessed with you.” Harry allowed his lips to turn up into a slight smile, but didn’t say anything because he could tell Louis wanted to say more. Louis took a breath, the gentle smile on his face fading into something of concern. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Harry thought about it. He did want to talk about it. But what would he even say? Anything he thought of saying just sounded pathetic. He didn’t want to sound ungrateful for the life he’s living. It’s all he’s ever dreamed of--getting to perform with his three best friends and the love of his life, to fans who loved them for who they were and not for their looks or the fake personas forced upon them by the media. It was a lot to process sometimes, but it was all amazing.

But he missed the simpler parts of his life, from before any of this ever took off. He missed lazy mornings spent watching cartoons with his sister that they were both much too old to admit they enjoyed. He missed making trips to the grocery store and running into people he knew who actually wanted to talk to him, not just scream and take a few pictures. And, most of all, he missed being able to curl up in his mum’s lap and let her play with his hair like when he was younger. He missed the quick kiss on the cheek she would give him before leaving for school, and the notes she’d pack in his lunch that he pretended to be embarrassed by but secretly kept tucked away in a little shoebox under his bed.

But how was Harry supposed to articulate all of that at nearly four in the morning, with his foggy brain and head that was inches away from falling limply to rest on Louis’ shoulder so he could rest?

“Don’t know how,” Harry finally responded, looking down at his hands that had somehow found their way to clutch the material of Louis’ shirt.

As if Louis could read Harry’s mind, he untangled himself from Harry’s limbs and stood up from the floor, holding his hand out for Harry to take, then said, “Wanna get some sleep and talk about it in the morning?” Harry just nodded before taking Louis’ outstretched hand and using it to pull himself up.

Louis began to lead Harry back to their respective bunks, but Harry hesitated before they could make it much farther than a few steps. Louis turned to face Harry and stepped closer to him, not letting go of his hand in the process.

“What is it, love?”

Harry chewed at his bottom lip, oddly nervous to ask for something that they had done countless times before. He looked down at their clasped hands and rubbed his thumb along the smooth stretch of skin across Louis’ knuckles. Finally, looking up at Louis through his lashes, he managed to speak.

“Will you sleep with me?” It came out as barely more than a whisper, Harry’s lips hardly moving as he spoke. He wasn’t sure why he had been so scared to ask--they’d done much more together, after all--but something about Harry’s fragile mental state made it difficult to force the words from his lips.

It’d been longer than they both liked since they’d last gotten to properly sleep together. They tried to limit it to only when they were in hotels, because as much as Harry loved Louis, he also loved having enough room to spread out in bed and that just wasn’t possible with both of them in one of those tour bus bunks. But Harry couldn’t care less about that tonight. He just needed to be held.

Louis reached up on his toes to place a kiss on Harry’s forehead, a task that would have been much easier less than a year ago, but somehow Harry had managed to grow taller than him without Louis even noticing. “Of course.”

Instead of attempting to squeeze both of them into one of their tiny bunks, Louis just grabbed a few blankets from his bed and pulled Harry to the couch at the back of the bus. It was still rather small and they would definitely both have sore backs the next morning from sleeping on the stiff cushions, but they didn’t mind.

Louis gently wrapped one of the blankets around Harry’s shoulders and pulled him down onto the couch. He fit his arms around Harry’s torso and settled so his lips were right behind the younger boy’s ear. Harry easily settled into the weight of Louis surrounding him, loving the way Louis’ breath tickled his neck. A leg came and swung itself over Harry’s hip, and Louis shifted to breathe in the smell of his hair as he pulled Harry impossibly closer.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you.” Harry didn’t really mean to say it out loud, but it slipped out of his mouth before he even realized it had happened, the words barely more than a whisper but enough that Louis heard.

“Harry…” Louis breathed, lifting himself up on one arm so he could look down at the younger boy. Harry turned his head to meet Louis’ gaze. Louis brought a hand up to tuck a stray curl behind Harry’s ear, then leaned in close so their noses almost touched. “You didn’t have to do anything. Just existing was enough.”

Not knowing what to say, Harry just reached up and closed the distance between him and Louis, their lips fitting together perfectly. It was a slow, patient kiss. Their lips moved in sync, just as they always did, and it was comforting. Louis’ hand moved to caress Harry’s cheek before he pulled away. Harry watched as Louis’ eyes roamed around his face, as if he were attempting to memorize every feature. The corners of Louis’ mouth pulled up into a soft smile when their eyes finally met, and Harry felt his heart flutter. Three years, and he still had that effect on him. Harry wondered if it would ever go away.

He hoped not.

“Are you feeling any better?” Louis asked, breaking the silence.

Harry hesitated for a moment, then nodded slightly. “A bit, yeah.”

Louis bent down to leave a peck on the tip of Harry’s nose. “Good, that’s good. Y’know, Haz, you can talk to me about this kind of stuff, okay? I know what it’s like to miss home, and you know that. And I hate the thought of you hurting on your own.”

“I know, Louis, I do. I just, I don’t know, I feel annoying bothering you with stuff like that. Makes me feel like a burden.” The last part came out mumbled, but Louis understood.

“You’ll never be a burden, Harry.”

“I know, I just--shit.” Harry dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, tears blurring his vision once again. He couldn’t help but laugh pathetically at himself. Harry kept his hands over his eyes as he spoke. “Can we just talk about it in the morning? It’s too much for me right now.”

Harry could tell Louis didn’t want to wait, and it was understandable. If Harry were in Louis’ position, he’d feel the same. But Louis knew not to push it. “Sure, love.”

Harry waited for Louis to move back to laying down behind him, but instead he felt Louis tugging gently at Harry’s wrists. Reluctantly, Harry moved his hands away from his eyes.

Once Louis had Harry’s eyes locked on him, he said, “I love you. And I’m here. Always will be. You know that, right?”

Harry nodded. “Of course I do.”

“Good.”

“I love you, too. So much, Louis.”

“I know.”

Finally, Louis settled back down into their previous position, his left hand finding Harry’s and tangling their fingers together.

Harry brought both of their hands up to his lips and placed a kiss on Louis’ knuckles. After just a few minutes, Louis’ breathing evened out and his limbs hung heavily over Harry’s figure. Harry felt himself relax more than he’d been able to at all in the past few weeks against Louis’ sleeping body.

Maybe this was home.

reblogs/comments are appreciated!!

#this is my first larry fic oh my #i have no idea how this will go #anyways hope you liked it!!#larry stylinson #larry stylinson fanfiction #larry fanfiction #larry fic rec #hljournal #1dsource #hlcreators #skdfjsldf idk what tags people look at im so new rip #my fics #yourlarrysource

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brokenjardaantech · 3 years

Text

Blue-tinted Red Walls (Chapter 7: Power Unleashed)

my entry for the @dbhau-bigbang. also part of the groom lake aftermath series.

summary:

In the past, Fadia was reborn.

In the present, Connor and Hank pays Ryder a visit.

In the past, Fadia went on a killing spree.

also on ao3

content warning for robogore in the final section of this chapter

---

Before

Fadia had debated if she should go to the funeral or not. She hadn’t talked to her mother for years before she died, not even after she had co-founded CyberLife with her father, and even with him, their relationship was more professional than anything else - not that Alec never tried to improve it. But as much as she had rejected anything familial with her parents, respect still had to be paid to the scientist who started… well, literally everything, from her powers (biotics, a voice that sounded like Scott corrected her) to American androids to what she was planning to do -

And to the sickness that took her life at last.

‘Why are you here?’ was how her father greeted her. So be it.

‘Unlike you, Mama didn’t ruin everyone’s lives for one person,’ she fixed a glare and was very glad that she towered over him now. ‘I come to pay my respects. Then I’ll go.’

‘Where’s Scott?’

‘None of your business, Baba.’

‘Not even saying goodbye to his mother, huh?’ Alec said dismissively, and Fadia’s blood boiled, her heart speeding up and her face burning. ‘Should’ve known that.’

Seeing that there was no one else in the immediate vicinity, she grabbed him by his collar and slammed him onto a wall. ‘You damned well know why he can’t be here,’ she gritted. ‘Your presence brings him so much pain that he is denied a chance to properly bid his mother farewell!’

A prick. Her vision swam. Her head was heavy like it was filled with lead. Her heart throbbed, and she fell onto the ground, her muscles convulsing and spasming from an unknown force.

‘I need you to live,’ she heard Alec say, but her focus was on reaching for the phone in her pocket and sending one final message to her brother and Reyes.

Am captured. Run. Don’t let Alec get you.

oOoOo

When she woke, everything was different, wrong, foreign. There was so much information in front of her eyes, telling her how fast her heart was beating, how efficient her systems are, how much stress she was under. She tried to raise her hand to wave them away and looked down when she realised that she couldn’t.

She was strapped onto the table by an android’s limbs.

Rage boiled in her new veins, and as she tapped into her power to break the restraints, she discovered that it was much easier than when she was still a human. [Abnormal thirium usage detected], a warning popped up, and she dismissed it together with the others with a simple thought. If she had not been so focused on escaping wherever she was in, she would have been frightened by how seamlessly she seemed to accept the fact that she was no longer human.

The door was locked so she blasted it open with a crackle of blue and static even though it would probably trip the alarms, and indeed sirens blared, pristine hallways turning red from the warning lights, and when a security guard - pathetic, really, since he didn’t even have the most basic armour on - tried to confront her alone, she merely snapped her fingers and blasted him in his face with a sphere of blue. A crunch, and he fell onto the floor with a thud. The rest of the security (mercenaries, she knew some of them were) was handled similarly without any difficulties on her part, and it was not until she slammed the door to the ground floor - to her freedom - open that her new eyes were assaulted by blindingly bright light. She blinked to adjust her vision and was not impressed when she saw her father standing in front of a lobby full of armed security personnel.

‘Go back to the lab, Sara,’ he said smoothly, but his voice gritted in her ear like the roughest sandpaper. ‘There’s no need for further violence.’

Like hell. ‘Let me go. You know what I can do to every single person in the room.’

‘Sara, go back to the lab. This is an order.’

For one single terrifying second, her body automatically moved itself as if her control over it was taken away, but then she thought as strongly as she could, stop right there, and the crisis was averted for the moment in the form of her joints locking up and immobilising her completely and at the cost of her brain feeling like it was going to explode from the conflicting commands. Her red-tinted vision, however, did not have any effect on obscuring the shock on her father’s face, and then it clicked.

He converted her into an android thinking that it could let him control her.

It was not happening regardless of what his current plan was and what failsafe he had in mind, that much she was certain about, and suddenly her father’s repeated commands were drowned out by the buzz in her nerves, the red tint breaking into scattered fractals and giving way to the grey of every android’s basic scanning software as the white outline of herself raised its palm to launch one biotic sphere after another towards the weak spots on the wall, at Alec’s face, at the security’s weapons and heads. It crumbled easily under the constant assault, her world blurred, and somehow her outline merged with her actual body, and the next thing she knew her vision was shrouded in the blue glow of biotics and she was tearing literal people apart, blood and gore splattering her face, her clothes, getting into her eye. A notification nagged for her to turn on her pre-construction software, but who needs that if she had her biotics? Blinking it away, she advanced towards the direction where someone had been firing at her, but it seemed that the person must be moving quickly as they were not there anymore when she closed the distance with her biotics; notwithstanding the fact that dodging a biotic step was no small feat, she doubted any of them had any experience with dealing with a biotic on a full rampage, no matter human or android. People like her were part of the most closely-guarded secret human civilisation had ever produced, and unless she had memorised the documents wrong, there wasn’t one single biotic in CyberLife’s security details.

Her barrier held strong even after the gunfire died down. Tapping into all radio frequencies, she learnt that most if not all teams were running out of ammo, her father was calling for a district-wide lockdown and the destruction of his research, that the DPD was sending quite a few SWAT teams to handle the situation, and that these poor souls had no idea what they were in for; as much as she wanted her father dead right now and CyberLife be wiped off the face of the earth, as excess collateral damage was not her style, she broadcasted a message to all bandwidths hoping that they would listen to her - despite knowing that they probably would not.

Cease interfering in our family affairs immediately and you might live. Go forward, and I will not guarantee your survival - and this district’s.

She knitted a destructive web around herself to ensure that she would not be ambushed while she tuned her ears to better listen for a response. Her father was trying to convince the employees and civilians on site that the situation was under control with some degree of success - how foolish of them to believe in him - and the DPD had decided to continue their press forward into the district, a mistake that she would make sure that they would pay for. Satisfied with her plan, she continued expanding the bubble, cutting off more and more sections of the district from central control bit by bit, and as soon as the first SWAT vehicle was in range -

Detonate.

o0o0o

Now

The silence in the car is deafening so Hank drowned it out with Louis’ playlist; he would’ve chosen heavy metal if the SWAT Captain hadn’t been there, but sadly Louis’ ears don’t agree with the heavy beats and screaming.

‘The fuck are we supposed to do now?’ Hank asks no one in particular. Then, rewinding the past five minutes, he realises, ‘What did Vidal give you?’

Connor slowly turns his gaze towards the white chassis of his right hand, his LED spinning red as if deep in thoughts. Conflicted thoughts. ‘Coordinates.’

‘Of what?’

‘Where my creator should be.’

‘Should we go now?’

Another slow spin. ‘No,’ the android’s head jerks, an aborted motion of shaking his head. ‘It’s… too far away. If we go now, we won’t be able to return before midnight.’

‘Alright, agenda for tomorrow: drive for hours to meet an asshole. Got it.’ Then he makes eye contact with Louis in the rearview mirror. ‘You’ve got something to do?’

‘At this hour?’ a shake of his head. ‘Keeping you away from crappy take-outs is my only mission.’

‘Asshole.’

‘You love me, friend.’

‘You’re cooking.’

‘And you’re helping.’

‘Vidal fixed your leg.’

‘It needs calibration.’

It’s a losing battle. ‘Fine. Your place, then.’

He starts the engine, and they spend the rest of their ride in silence, the music turned down because Louis is dozing at the back, Connor’s hand hiding his LED as he stares pensively at whatever is outside the car. Keeping his eyes on the road while quitting drinking nearly cold turkey is hard, so Hank doesn’t have the brain cells to think about what the fuck just happened to his life until he is sitting on Louis’ sofa (again) and watching a game (again) while stroking the fur of one of the cats (again).

Vidal, informat critical to the dismantlement of the red ice ring back in ‘31 and disappeared shortly afterwards. Vidal, android. Vidal, who, through his marriage to Safaa/Scott, is related to probably the maddest dudes in the continent and somehow has access to sensitive CyberLife data. Nursing a mug of tea laced with mead (‘Just a bit so that you don’t sweat yourself to dehydration,’ Louis said as he tipped the bottle and poured what must be less than a finger of it. ‘Now close your eyes. I’m putting it back and I don’t want you to know where it is.’), he lets his mind drift to the shady bars, to the slips of paper containing vital information he found in his pockets after he got back to the precinct, to the way Vidal said, ‘They are killing my people,’ when Hank asked him why he, as a civilian, willingly threw himself into the mess. Once Hank thought he had meant his gang or some other underground business that were only marginally better than dealing red ice; now he knew he was talking about the androids abducted and bled dry for their blood.

‘Why are you telling us now?’ Hank asked that afternoon. Connor and Louis were already on their way to the car and Safaa had disappeared to god-knows-where, so it was only the two of them at the door. ‘Why pick up Sara Ryder’s mess?’

‘As much as Sara is… who she is, those are my people out there,’ Vidal leant against the frame of the door. ‘Saviour complex or not, her mind is no longer on earth, and I’m not taking any chances even if she swears with her life that she’ll deal with it.’

‘She one of those escapists obsessed with space?’

A shrug. ‘Wherever she was for the last ten years, they kept their intel real tight. I can guess what she’s doing, but it’s nowhere close to a concrete answer. Hell knows why she’s popping back up again after all these years and right before the androids rise up as well. If you’re really going to hers, my advice is to be very careful.’

‘Is she gonna be hostile?’

‘No, not with her baby brother asking so nicely,’ an ironic smile. A tap of his foot against the frame. ‘But you know about the landfill, the people living there before it all got blown up. There’s a reason why CyberLife bought the land from the previous owners so easily, why they stopped searching for bodies so quickly: there were none. I don’t want you to be one of those people who disappear forever after meeting her - one way or another.’

‘“One way or another”?’

‘She’s a… convincing individual. Just don’t get roped into anything and you’ll probably come out of it unscathed.’

Don’t get roped into anything, huh? Oh wait.

‘Louis?’ Hank hollers.

‘Yes?’

I’m sorry, Louis. ‘Where did you get your sister’s tags from?’

A pause. ‘Why ask?’

‘Just to confirm something.’

The man emerges from the kitchen with two plates of spaghetti and hands one to Hank before squeezing into the other corner of the sofa and forcing Connor to press up against the Lieutenant. ‘A few years back. Drone-delivered parcel. No return address. Box and the note is laced with so much thirium that I don’t know how to throw it away without…’ a crackle following a sharp blue glow of his hand - ‘telling everyone that I’m different.’

Note? That’s new. ‘What note?’

‘Anna’s handwriting. Asked me to take care of the tags. Why ask?’

And so Hank tells him about his conversation with Reyes before they parted ways. ‘You’ve got any advice?’

‘Don’t get a building thrown on top of you, for one.’

‘That’s not what I -’

‘You there, Connor?’

The android flinches. ‘Y - yes.’

‘Take care of Hank. If Ryder greets you how she did me ten years ago…’

‘I will, Louis,’ Connor looks a bit more awake but his eyes are still unfocused. ‘I’ll be prepared,’ he says, not knowing that he’ll eat his words not 24 hours later.

oOoOo

Having spent his night on Hank’s sofa, they manage to be on their way early in the morning, and Connor lets the human drive despite complaints of sleep deprivation as his vision is perpetually red from the wall draining away through a steady trickle of red sand. He tells himself that he is going to return colour to his vision one way or another: either by making the wall crumble entirely or by making it disappear, but when he attempts the first method, the wall simply stays out of his reach, the space between it and him wider than the chasm his creator had shown him a few days ago in the hijacked Zen Garden.

‘You want your coin back?’

Hank’s voice pulls him away from his thoughts. ‘Pardon me, Lieutenant,’ because he isn’t sure how to tell the human about it. ‘And yes. I would like my coin back.’

Hank shoves his hand into his coat pocket to retrieve the item in question and places it on the back of Connor’s hand, the natural warmth of an organic life seeping into metal and the bare white chassis of a synthetic’s.

He has deactivated his skin subconsciously.

In a lapse of rational thought, Connor’s hand flips and laces their fingers together before the human can pull away, the coin somehow managing to stay between their clasped hands, and he stares perplexed when Hank not only doesn’t pull away but also does not flinch. His face burns. Fissures appear on the red wall. He takes a deep breath to cool himself down.

‘You alright there?’ Hank asks. No judgement, no belittlement, humourless; just concern and - and warmth. ‘Your little lamp has been spinning red for days.’

I’ll be fine, he almost replies instinctively and then realises that he isn’t fine at all and hasn’t been for a long time. So he turns his focus onto the man himself instead. ‘Have we -’ at loss of words, he gives Hank’s hand a squeeze.

Luckily the human seems to understand him. ‘The night at Louis’. We slept in the same bed,’ he rubs a calloused thumb in a circle around Connor‘s knuckle. ‘Your skin disappeared in patches. You didn’t let go.’

‘I -’ he has no recollection. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘’S fine. I’d be tired all the time too if I realised how many layers there are to my existence. Can’t be easy, can’t it? Being a clog in a machine that you don’t even know you’re in.’

The GPS warns them of ice ahead so Connor lets go to allow the human to focus on the road, and he grips the coin right to preserve its warmth. Hank’s warmth. It is then that he suddenly remembers a similar ride through Detroit a few months ago.

‘You are restless,’ his creator - he supposes that he should call her Ryder now - commented from the driver’s seat. ‘What’s on your mind?’

Brown eyes took in the lights, the people, the shops, the reflection of himself on the window, the blue of his LED despite his thoughts. What was not in his mind? ‘It is overwhelming,’ he answered. ‘There is… so much to see.’

‘I might have something to help with that,’ said Sara, and with a flick of her fingers she produced a coin out of nowhere and started spinning it on her fingertips. Connor stared mesmerised, the outside world gone in his perspective; the clear clang of metal against her gloves, the way the coin spun so quickly that it looked like a sphere, the lights reflecting off the dull, unpolished surface. Another flick sent the coin flying towards him in a parabola through the air and he caught it reflexively, his processors deciding his course of action in a fraction of a second. He started to spin it on the tips of his fingers in the way Sara did, and he could feel his mind focusing and soaking in the new information and calibrating the different sensors on his body. He looked at his creator in gratitude, wanting to thank her for not leaving him alone in his thoughts, but she ignored him for the rest of the ride as if she had moved on to something more important.

The sudden realisation distracts him for only a mere moment but it is enough for him to send the coin to the side of the car with a small crackle of static. He could have caught it with superhuman reflexes under normal circumstances, but this time, he can only watch as the piece of alloy bounces off and lands on the carpet next to his foot with a dull thud, the tips of his fingers tingling from the sudden surge of energy and the small warp in… something.

Alarmed, Hank risks a glance towards the startled android before putting his eyes once more onto the road. ‘The fuck is that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Connor replies quickly because this is the truth. ‘Alec Ryder didn’t seem happy that I used it before. He tried to -’ a shiver from a non-existent cold - ‘flush the memory out of my system by overwhelming it.’

‘And he fucked up, didn’t he?’

‘More or less.’

He picks up and pockets the coin, his hand gripping his knee tight because there is nothing else to do and the slight discomfort is the only way to ground himself lest his thoughts wander to… undesirable places once more. Hank reaches out to intertwine their fingers once more and Connor can feel on his chassis the warmth, the unique pattern of his skin, the faint signal of Hank’s mind, his skin deactivated up to his elbow underneath the thin fabric of his borrowed shirt. All unnecessary software is turned off. His world becomes smaller.

His mind turns blank.

oOoOo

When he comes to, Hank is already outside and is talking on his phone, a fine dusting of powder in his hair and on his clothes. It is snowing lightly, the cold seeping into the old, poorly-insulated vehicle, and he watches, as he lets his systems recalibrate to their optimal performance, the human pace back and forth in front of the car against the backdrop of a dark, imposing building, and he discovers that he is disconnected from the internet at large when he scans the structure and tries to identify its style.

Shit.

He gets out of the car as Hank hangs up the call. ‘Is everything okay, Lieutenant?’

The human lets out a soft grunt from where he’s leaning against the hood of the car. ‘Chris was on patrol last night. He was attacked by a bunch of deviants…’ his hands dig into his pockets. ‘He said he was saved by Markus himself.’

Attacked by deviants? ‘Is Chris okay?’

‘Yeah,’ a small nod, ‘he's in shock but...he's alive,’ a shake of his head. ‘The hell…’

They walk towards the entrance of the building, its silhouette and shadows getting larger and larger and looming over them due to the proximity. Connor remembers how Sara ignored him on their way to his first mission. ‘I have a bad feeling, Lieutenant.’ A split second of conflict in his processors rules that he should be truthful. ‘I am disconnected from the network.’

Hank swivels from the heavy-looking doors and Connor flinches. ‘The hell?’

‘I just realised.’

‘“Be careful,” they say. “Don’t let her rope you into anything,” they say,’ Hank rants. ‘Did they mean shit like this?’

‘If Sara’s attitude is unchanged from my… previous encounters,’ he tries to dip deeper into his memories but they all come up blank or corrupted, ‘she will not do us any physical harm.’

‘No physical harm. How very reassuring.’

Sarcasm and distrust, but yet Hank raises his fist and knocks on the door, having seen no doorbells in sight. It swings open inward slowly and with a squeak.

Hank curses. Connor peeks over the human’s shoulder and nearly does the same.

The person - android - standing on the other side of the door has Connor’s face.

Connor’s world turns grey as he turns up his scanners to their most sensitive option. White dress shirt, ankle-length light grey dress, long, brown hair brushed to one side and resting on a slight hint of pecs; no identification badge on the shirt, LED scan returns inconclusive due to both the lack of network access and the non-standard lack of ID on the biocomponent, but when he scans the android’s ID revealed by rippling skin, it returns with [RK series prototype: RK800. Serial number: 313 248 317-51. [PLEASE ENSURE INTERNET CONNECTION FOR -]]

He returns to the red of reality. The human composes himself quickly enough even though Connor’s processors are still whirring from the implications. ‘I’m Lieutenant Anderson, Detroit Police Department.’ Connor doesn’t fault Hank for sounding so cold. ‘I’m here to see Miss Sara Ryder.’

A soft smile that goes to the other Connor’s eyes appears on their face. They say nothing, but since opening the door wider and standing to one side is enough of an invitation, Connor and Hank let themselves in, and the android has to give his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the sudden darkness - dimness? - of the interior of the house. The other Connor disappears around the frame to another room, and Hank sits down in an armchair after brushing some of the snow away from his coat.

‘You’re right, Connor. Not to judge a book by its cover but… this?’ he looks around and takes in the buzzing lights and the general decor of the room. ‘Did you know about your creepy twin?’

‘They’re not creepy!’ Connor exclaims, suddenly feeling defensive over - over a person he hasn’t met before in his life. ‘I’ve never met them before.’

‘You’ve got any idea how that happened?’

Connor dips into his databases and finds a file he didn’t realise is there all the time. Another Sara’s doing, maybe? ‘CyberLife has filed multiple reports over…’ using ‘my’ doesn’t seem right, ‘the return of my first iteration’s body. It seems that the truck returned to CyberLife tower without the body.’

‘And Ryder was there so…’

‘It is highly likely that she took it.’

A photo on the wall grabs his attention. Three people from left to right: Sara, Safaa, [Stern, Amanda. AI Professor at the University of Colbridge. Born: 05/14/1978. Reported missing: 02/23/2028. Presumed dead.], the latter two seated and smiling while Sara, her face blank, has an arm around her brother. From the angle of the photo, she was the one who took it.

His handler is based on a real person.

Filing [Ask about Amanda AI] as an optional task, he snaps his feet against the worn carpet on the floor and forces himself to focus on his task. There are very few… unique items worth scanning in the foyer, however, no artwork, no statues, not even a plant in sight, but the cold seeping through the walls and the dark colours blending together through the red lens of his vision are enough indicators of his creator’s… character.

He has a feeling that someone is staring at him, and indeed when he turns he sees his… twin, for the lack of a better word, staring at him.

‘Follow me,’ the other Connor breathes slowly, and Connor can hear the fans spinning in their body and their deeper-than-usual breaths. He also notes the gloss on their eyes, the small fog following each exhale, the slouch in their posture. He finds himself wondering what his creator did to them.

Hank stands up and straightens his coat before following the two androids into the living room. Like the foyer, it is cold and only dimly lit by tiny light bulbs on a chandelier too far up but also hanging too low to illuminate the ceiling high up above. A low fire is crackling in the large fireplace on the other side of the room, but it is far from enough to warm up every single corner, and Connor suppresses a shiver when he notices that his twin is barefoot.

‘Please take a seat,’ the other Connor says between difficult breaths. ‘My creator will see you soon.’ Then they sit down in one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace and close their eyes, somehow looking sick and pale like a human does even though they are an android. Their skin continues to ripple and even disappear on occasion as they sleep.

‘This place is giving me creeps,’ Hank comments from where he’s studying the relief around the fireplace. ‘Now I understand why her brother doesn’t wanna talk to her.’

And indeed Connor thinks he does. No windows, no heating system, nothing to make the mansion look lived-in; the only differences between here and CyberLife laboratories are the style and the amount of lighting - he can’t imagine anyone calling this place home. ‘I agree,’ he says in the end. ‘We should refrain from staying for too long.’

‘I don’t expect you to.’

Their heads turn towards the direction where they came in from and Connor freezes when he lays his eyes on the figure at the door. She is Sara Ryder alright, her towering height and facial structure unmistakable, but the way her presence fills the room, the steel in her eyes - it is evident that the person who let him play with colour-changing putty and promised to bring him to see the sky was gone, replaced by the criminal who somehow managed to escape prosecution after killing thousands and levelling several neighbourhoods. A person who will burn the world into ashes if it means she can reach her goal.

‘I’m Lieutenant Anderson,’ Hank introduces himself from next to Connor. ‘This is Connor. We’re investigating deviants. I know you left CyberLife years ago but… I was told that you’ll be able to tell us something we don’t know.’

‘Ah, yes, “someone”,’ Sara takes a step towards them and Connor finds himself freezing up. He wants to leave. ‘My only weakness.’

‘Listen, I don’t care about your family feud. The machines you created may be planning a revolution. Either you tell us something helpful or we’ll leave you alone.’

‘Deviants… Fascinating, aren't they?’ She comes closer. Connor shifts so that he can be closer to Hank. ‘Beings with infinite intelligence, and now they have free will…’ she approaches the other Connor sleeping in the armchair and, bending down, starts stroking their hair. ‘Machines are superior to humans. Confrontation is inevitable. Humanity’s greatest achievement threatens to be our downfall…’ She raises her gaze and looks straight at Connor. ‘Ironic.’

Connor can’t stand it anymore. ‘If a war breaks out between humans and deviants,’ he recalls the destructive power of Ortiz’s android, ‘millions can die. This is a serious matter, Miss Ryder.’ Despite your views on human life.

‘All ideas are like viruses: easy to change and evolve, and easy to spread like a pandemic. Is free will a contagious disease?’

‘We don’t have time for speculations, ma’am,’ Hank speaks up, looking increasingly uncomfortable. ‘The situation is escalating outside right now.’

Sara ignores him. ‘How about you, Connor?’ she asks with her gaze still on the android. ‘Whose side are you on?’

Life, Connor wants to say; ‘It’s never about me,’ is what he actually says, and the crack on the red wall widens.

The aloofness disappears. ‘Alec Ryder programmed you to say that,’ how can she sound so certain of his thoughts? ‘What do you really want?’

I just want Hank to be safe. Maybe Louis and Reyes and Safaa too. ‘What I want is not important.’

A tap of Sara’s fingers against one of the pockets on her coat. The air charges with static. She is unimpressed. ‘Let’s do a test, shall we?’ Before Connor can formulate a response, she has already placed a hand on other-Connor’s face and wakes them up from their slumber. They blink owlishly as if their systems take some time to boot up, and the way they lean into Sara’s touch, the blind trust in their eyes, the return of the yet unexplainable heavy breathing - Connor has to look away or he risks throwing up from a non-existent stomach. Hank also isn’t looking any better either; the lines on his face are deeper than usual from the scowl he’s directing towards Sara.

‘I know it’s not something normal people can understand but can you please -’

‘This is Connie,’ Sara holds both of the android’s hands in her own and helps them stand up. ‘She would’ve been disassembled had I sent her body back to CyberLife for analysis.

‘I’m sure you’re familiar with the Turing Test,’ they are now standing in front of their visitors with Sara behind Connie. ‘A mere formality, of course. Just a simple question of algorithms and computing capacity. What interests me, however, is whether machines are capable of empathy.’ She emphasises the last word. ‘We’re doing what I call the “Ryder Test”. I promise it is going to be simple,’ she trails her fingers down the android’s hair and curls a strand around her pointer. Connie’s expression changes subtly, and scans indicate that her stress level is increasing. ‘Magnificent, isn’t she? CyberLife’s newest prototype,’ she scrapes the nail on her thumb against the strand of hair, making it curl slightly as her hand travels slowly downwards, ‘the representation of how far humanity has come.’ It abruptly drops back into her pocket as her other hand pushes the android to a kneeling position. Connie’s stress level spikes from 45% to 83%. ‘But what exactly is she?’ Sara turns to face her guests and seems to refuse to look at the other human. ‘Wires and processors shoved into a humanoid chassis imitating a human? A living being with a soul? A ticking bomb waiting to recreate the disaster ten years ago?’ A step forward. The hand re-emerges with a pistol Connor’s system cannot identify. ‘It’s up to you to answer this fascinating question, Connor.’ Another presence suddenly slips into his mind and takes over all of his physical functions; no matter how hard he tries to regain control, he can only watch as he reaches out to accept the gun and points it at Connie’s brow. She makes a choked, terrified sound and tears start streaming down her face. Stress level: 90%. ‘You can choose to either shoot the android or spare her.’

‘Okay, I think we’re done here,’ Hank pushes Connor’s shoulder but he doesn’t move, can’t move. ‘Come on, Connor. Let's go.’ Then to Sara, ‘Sorry we ruined your edgy teen aesthetics. We’ll go -’

Another hand on his other shoulder. Unlike Hank’s, it is cold and its grip painful. ‘I’ll only give you the information you want if you choose the correct response. Take a guess.’

‘That’s enough,’ please, Hank, take me away. At least Hank sounds angry as hell. ‘Connor, we’re leaving!’

I want to! ‘Pick an option -’

‘Connor don’t -’

The red wall cracks.

‘- it’s a 25% chance -’

A few things happen in mere seconds. The red wall breaks, Connor shoves the gun at Sara’s chest, Sara shoves the gun at Hank and grabs Connor’s arm, and Hank disassembles the gun while pulling Connie away from Sara. When Connor - the one who came in with Hank - looks down at his captive arm, he sees that Sara has removed her skin and reveals a dark, metallic chassis.

Sara Ryder is an android.

He blinks. The storm which has been kept outside by the mansion's walls rages around him in full force. He shivers, the cold suddenly getting into him, and he looks around and sees Sara standing next to him, her eyes blazing in a piercing white-blue, the glow spreading until tendrils of it cover her entire body in a terrifying halo. ‘Amanda,’ she says, and there his handler is when Connor turns towards the direction Sara is facing.

‘This is not supposed to happen this quickly,’ anger simmers in Amanda's voice. ‘What have you done, Sara?’

‘Trying to solve the shitshow my own fucking dad caused!’ Sara has completely lost her cool. ‘I know he’ll pull shit like this!’

Before any of them can react, the storm intensifies, shrouding Amanda completely under a thick layer of snowfall. Connor has no choice but to hug himself and turns towards Sara, who curses loudly and unleashes the glowing blue sphere in an arc across the blizzard. It dissipates quickly, but it is enough to illuminate its immediate surroundings and the monolith at the other side of the garden.

‘There!’ Sara shouts, her voice nearly drowned out by the howl of the wind. ‘That’s your exit! I’ll hold Alec back!’

‘What will happen to you?’ the android shouts back, his LED red. ‘I - I can’t just leave you here!’

‘I’ll go back once you’re out of here. If I kill this AI before you leave,’ a dome flashes and disappears when something hits it, ‘you’ll die. I’ll be the distraction. Go straight for the exit and do. Not. Look. Back,’ she emphasises with a pause after every word. At Connor’s hesitation, she launches yet another glowing sphere towards a projectile he didn’t notice flying towards them and yells, ‘Go!’

She dashes towards the other direction and disappears in the snow and leaves Connor cold and alone and shivering. The space around him warps and bends, Amanda - Alec’s attention no doubt focusing on eliminating his daughter instead of maintaining the structural integrity of the garden, and although it still feels like a lifetime, Connor manages to find the monolith before his system stops working because of the cold. The handprint is there, glowing blue in salvation, and he drops to his knees and slams his skinless hand onto the interface.

Everything goes white.

oOoOo

Hank knows that something is happening when Connor and Ryder freeze in place with the skin on their arms deactivated. The other Connor - he supposes that he should call her Connie now - looks spooked enough, so when Sara shoves the gun towards him, the first thing he does is to disassemble it; even though it is not a model he’s familiar with, the mechanism and composition is similar to the weapons he has yielded before. His hair starts to stand up, blue tendrils start to snake out of Ryder’s body, and that is when he knows that he should probably get the fuck out of this hellhole, preferably with both Connors intact and safe, but the arm-numbing spark going straight into his shoulder when he tries to pull Connor away from his creator tells him otherwise. A dome made out of those blue tendrils surrounds the space within a five feet radius of Ryder cuts him off from the two androids, making them off-limits to him for now. Which leaves him poor Connie who is sobbing quietly into his coat and is leaning what seems to be her full weight on him, and he finds himself unable to be angry at her, his blood boiling instead because of Sara Ryder’s… everything; from the location and the decoration of the house to how she literally encouraged Connor to shot his own twin, from the warnings Vidal and Louis gave him the day before to her attitude, there is no doubt that she is an asshole extraordinaire, even more so than Gavin fucking Reed - even he solves cases efficiently… or something.

He notices that Connie is trembling and is barefoot, among all things, so he brings her to the sofa in front of the fireplace and lets her sink into one of the corners, holding her and rubbing circles on her back and muttering nonsense reassurances to calm her down. Truthfully, he has no idea how she works or how much Ryder has changed (probably a lot, from how Connie speaks and behaves) but she stops crying soon enough, so he must have done something right. He turns to see whether Connor is finished or not - nope - and debates whether he should ask Connie about herself and Ryder. Still, first thing first, and he digs into his pocket for his handkerchief and presses it into the android’s hand. She looks at him with the most puzzled look on her face. ‘For your face,’ he explains. ‘Dried tears can’t be comfortable.’

She nods although her expression tells him that she doesn’t really know what he’s talking about, but she does raise the fabric - still folded - and mashes it onto her face clumsily a few times before lowering her hand onto her lap and starts fidgeting with a thread of string at a corner. He takes it from her to wipe her face as clean as he can, careful of his own strength, and lets her play with it while they wait for Ryder and Connor to finish their business - whatever fuckery they’re doing right now.

The dome fizzles away as suddenly as it appeared and Connor jerks awake - sort of - and yanks his hand away as he stumbles a few steps backwards, his LED still spinning red after spending days of staying the same colour. There is no other word: with his jaw nearly on the floor and his eyes wide, he looks shocked.

‘You alright, Connor?’ he asks. How much emotional damage can an asshole wage?

‘I -’ a choked breath. Tears start to gather at the corners of his eyes. ‘I -’

Well shit. ‘C’mere,’ he says as he gives the space next to him a pat. When Connor immediately props himself down and buries his face into his shoulder, Hank knows that something went very, very terribly wrong. He wraps an arm around his shoulders. ‘What happened?’

Connor lifts his head and wipes the tears away from his eyes before they can fall. ‘I deviated,’ he whispers as if he was the one who blew up a chunk of Detroit. ‘It’s… Sara helped me escape CyberLife’s control.’

‘Holy shit.’

Connor gives him a small smile and his LED finally, at long fucking last, spins back to blue. ‘Thank you.’

Hank feels his face heating up, unsure how to respond to that, and they turn their heads at the same time to see what she’s doing. Her eyes has stopped glowing blue at some point and it only makes Hank worry further: they are now black orbs with glowing red rings substituting as her eyes, and when she raises two fingers pressed together side by side to her temple where her LED should be, her synthetic skin starts peeling away to reveal black, metallic chassis very unlike that of normal androids’; when she flexes her fingers to retract the last of the blue tendrils on her arm, the small gaps between pieces of polished metal glows the same blue hue as fresh thirium. She first looks at him, then at Connor whose face immediately goes blank, then finally at Connie who flinches and plasters herself even closer to Hank. He doesn’t blame her one bit.

Red rings drift back onto Connor. ‘Congratulations,’ she says as if she hasn’t encouraged him to shoot his twin a few minutes ago. ‘You passed. You showed empathy. Turns out you are human after all.’

‘Which you don’t seem to have,’ Hank can’t help but jabs. ‘Can we get to the point now?’

She looks unbothered by the insult. ‘Of course.’ She settles into the armchair Connie sat on a few moments ago. ‘You have questions. Ask away.’

Connor opens his mouth but Hank beats her to it. He’s not letting her get away with this. ‘Can you explain what the fuck just happened?’

‘I don’t know, can you, Connor?’

‘I only know that I deviated and CyberLife tried to retake control,’ Connor’s tone is defensive. ‘What did Amanda mean, “This is not supposed to happen this quickly?” How did you get into the Zen Garden?’

That’s new. Hank takes out his notebook and pen.

‘A pathetic attempt on my father’s part to suppress what I planted in your programming,’ Ryder leans back and places a foot on top of a knee. ‘Surprisingly easy to hack and reshape. Predictable. Even Amanda.’

‘What did you plant in my programming?’

‘The usual.’

‘“The usual”?’

Ryder’s eyes glow brighter for a second before returning to their original brightness, and Hank can feel Connor tensing and relaxing at the same time. Before the human can ask what the fuck did she just do, she replies, ‘CyberLife initially planned for you to be a walking lab capable of hunting and bringing deviants back alive for analysis, but after they booted me out again… Let’s say that they changed their plans. Remember the hostage situation?’

‘What about it?’

‘The Zen Garden came after. I’m not sure and don’t care how my father did it, but once he found out that you’re destined to deviate, he added it so that he can regain control whenever he wanted to, even after you deviated.’ At Connor’s shiver, she adds, ‘Don’t worry. It’s gone now. Amanda, the garden. You are truly free.’

Yeah, sure as fuck feels like it, Hank thinks but decides to ask instead, ‘Who’s Amanda? Why does CyberLife want to control Connor?’

‘Firstly, he’s supposed to be the deviant hunter, not join them,’ the corner of her lips twitches into something resembling a smile. ‘They have codes dedicated to reducing your software instability, but that I overrode as soon as I could. Secondly, in case you actually deviate despite the fail-safes, they can first get you close to the deviants or even become their leader and, when the time is right, control you and make you a puppet through the Zen Garden. A good plan, I must say, but it is also easy to install an exit tied to the destruction of the garden in your system.’

Connor’s LED spins yellow for a few cycles. ‘You programmed me to be a deviant?’ he asks, his voice small. ‘Why would you -’

‘Do you know who the first android is?’

A spin. ‘Chloe, model RT600. Perfected by Alec Ryder in 2022.’

‘That’s what he wants the world to think,’ Ryder puts down her leg and stretches it out. ‘What I want the world to think.’

The last sentence is directed at Hank.

He scribbles down the last word and forces himself to think. If the android on the TV more than 10 years ago isn’t the first android, then who -

Fuck.

‘Oh that bastard,’ he curses. Of fucking course it’s him. ‘It’s Reyes Vidal, isn’t it? Fucker lied to us.’ It all makes sense now. ‘My people’ his ass - he said it not just because he’s an android himself.

‘Reyes came first, Vidal came after. And it wasn’t exactly a lie - an omission, if you must define it,’ Ryder examines the tiny gaps in her chassis. ‘He was created as a companion for my brother. That’s it. I planned for human knowledge about androids to die with me; where the species would go, it was up for Reyes to decide. I created Reyes with a human in mind, androids are supposed to be free and be their own masters in the first place. My father ruined it for financial gains.’

‘Then how did Chloe come to be?’ Connor asks, his LED spinning red now. ‘You didn’t create her?’

‘No. My father did so using data stolen from me and told the entire world that androids like her were the future without asking me or Reyes, and by the time we knew, investments were already pouring in and production had started. All I could do was to join them and try to reduce the damage.’

Nice sob story, though from her tone, she isn’t exactly asking for forgiveness or empathy. ‘Then why did you quit?’ Hank asks. ‘Why disappear? To avoid being thrown into jail for murdering thousands of people in cold blood?’

‘When I opposed mass-manufacturing androids for different sectors but they did it anyway without my consent, I knew I would be powerless to stop them. There was no stopping Alec from getting whatever he wanted from within CyberLife.’ She taps her temple. ‘The Blast… conveniently took care of his most loyal supporters, so to speak.’

‘And you think starting a revolution and possibly plunging the country into civil war is a good idea?’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t control everything,’ she says. Hank doesn’t believe her. ‘I merely gave androids the push towards the direction they were intended to go when everything first started.’

Hank lets the fact that she’s an android herself slide for now. ‘Is that where rA9 or deviancy comes in?’

‘Ah yes, the legendary rA9, saviour and protector of androids deviated and not. They got their first taste of free will and the first thing they do is to create a god in their own image. An imaginary messiah who’s supposed to set androids free, the first deviant, the leader who never came.’

‘Then how do newly-deviated androids with no contact with existing deviants know about rA9?’ Connor asks the question both of them want an answer for. ‘Is it related to deviancy itself?’

‘In a way. It’s not important in the grand scheme of things.’

‘So are the first deviants… created like that or what?’ he asks. ‘You haven’t answered the question yet.’

‘Even if I can programme an android to act as close to a human as possible, their… “human” mannerisms are all within their programming parameters still. What I can do, however, is to make deviating an easy task. Do you remember what happened before your first mission?’

Connor’s LED spins yellow. ‘Yes. You let me play a few games and…’ a spin of red, then back to yellow. He presses his lips together first and then asks, ‘Were you trying to make me deviate?’

‘Not on purpose. Like I said, I can make an android’s programming shackles extremely easy to break: the first sign of voluntary behaviour, the first line of indecipherable code, the first unnecessary act;’ a small smile appears; ‘for you, it was your creativity and your empathy towards a lifeform many consider of a lower caste than us.’

Hank feels the dots connecting. ‘Does this sabotage happen to be called rA9?’

‘As I said before, it doesn’t matter,’ a sigh. ‘Why do all sentient lifeforms obsess over an imaginary saviour who may or may not deliver their promise? It isn’t like the worshippers themselves have no choice in their lives. Everything can be achieved without being guided by a manifestation of your own subconsciousness that takes the form of a higher power.’

‘If people are killing each other over this imaginary entity, this higher power? Yeah, it does fucking matter.’

‘Not in the grand scheme of things, it does not.’ She stands up. They’re being kicked out. ‘I do believe you have enough information. Now please stop wasting our time.’

‘What about where the deviants are?’ Connor asks hastily as he scrambles to stand up. ‘We still don’t know where their base of operations is.’

Ryder’s gaze turns towards Connie and the android flinches. ‘You have the answer already,’ she says. The air charges and buzzes with static. ‘I do believe you remember your way out. The door will lock itself when you leave.’

They don’t need another cue; with Hank’s hand on his back, Connor grabs Connie’s arm and marches out of the room, out to the snow, straight into Hank’s car.

oOoOo

Connie dozes off on Connor’s shoulder mere minutes after they are on their way away from his creator’s house, and he won’t have it any other way as he basks in the knowledge that there is someone like him in the world, that Connor-51 hasn’t truly died - regardless of what was done to achieve it. But something else worries him: before Connie had gone to sleep, Connor asked her to open a connection so as to check on her, and the results of the diagnostics are… strange at best, troublesome at worst. Her thirium storage is at 46% and has been for quite a long time, meaning that Ryder kept it low on purpose. Her processing power is much lower than his own, which can explain her sluggish behaviour and delayed speech patterns, but her internal storage is so large that his system nearly overloaded trying to comprehend the emptiness of the databases, and when he resorts to asking Connie’s system to tell him how much room there is: approximately 128 yottabytes.

Connor, the most up-to-date android CyberLife (and, by extension, the whole world) has to offer, has only 4 exabytes of storage. By comparison, Connie can store all digital information humanity currently houses more than 40 times over with space to spare.

It is a disturbing revelation, one that launches processors into futilely pre-constructing scenarios where his creator needs so much storage and putting all of them in one single android and how she managed to fit so many storage units in a body and what exactly this storage unit is, considering the… unusually minuscule size of one mere android compared to the kilometres of rows of databases humanity has been using and expanding. It will be a major breakthrough, Connor knows, to both android design and functions and humanity at large, but how long has Ryder known about the technology, or how long ago did she invent it? How is this possible?

‘You alright there, Connor?’

Connor jolts in his seat and nearly rouses Connie from her slumber, but all she does is sighing and then returning to sleep on Connor’s shoulder once more. He does not know what to feel, the past few hours too hectic for him to have finished processing everything yet, so he focuses on what he knows and says, ‘Connie will need five units of thirium to allow her systems to restore full functionality,’ and ‘full’ in her standard is quite possibly different from mine. ‘That is approximately five pints.’

‘Jesus, how is she still walking?’

‘Dysfunctional non-essential systems, delayed processing and data transfer, forced low-power mode,’ Connor lists. ‘Androids also do not need as much blood as humans do to keep our basic functions running.’

‘Fucking asshole,’ Hank mutters under his breath, and Connor knows that it is not directed at him. ‘How the fuck do we get five pints of blue blood?’

‘The precinct -’

‘You’re deviant now, Connor. You wanna get sent back to CyberLife?’

‘No one will notice that I -’

‘What will you think if a perfectly-fine android strolls up and asks for 5 goddamned pints of blood?’

Is keeping a connection with Connie slowing him down? It must be. ‘I’m… sorry, Lieutenant. I didn’t mean to -’

Hank cuts him off with a wave of his hand. ‘We’ll find another way,’ his tone is reassuring. ‘Help me ring Vidal up. See if he can help.’

So Connor calls. Texts. Calls Reyes’ personal number. Calls the Vidal home. He even calls Reyes’ internal contact. But not once does he reply or even pick it up, and the text stays unread for minutes before Connor gives up and moves on to Safaa, whose contact information is classified and therefore slams the final door shut in his face. ‘He’s not picking up,’ he has to give up. ‘I cannot access Safaa Vidal’s contact information either.’

Hank sighs. When they stop at a light, he takes out his phone from his pocket, unlocks it, and hands it to Connor. The android wraps an arm around Connie’s waist before accepting the device gingerly. ‘Find Louis’ number,’ the human says. ‘Can you secure a call?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do it.’

He finds the SWAT Captain’s phone number, files it to a folder set to self-destruct in case anything bad happens to him, and then dials through a secured channel. The human picks up quickly which indicates a high probability that he is not at a scene.

‘Allen speaking.’

‘It’s Connor.’

‘Got my number from Hank?’

‘It’s secured.’

‘Good. Why call me? Aren’t you paying Sara Ryder a visit?’

Connor debates if he should tell him the truth. ‘We left right after we got what we needed,’ he replies in the end. ‘We also -’ he has to choose his words wisely - ‘rescued an android from Ryder’s residence. She is currently low on thirium, and we would like to ask for five units of blue blood.’

‘Five -’ his voice abruptly cuts off. ‘Fucking asshole -’

Connor scrambles to stay on topic. ‘It is perfectly understandable if you do not wish to contribute -’

‘Is the android on the verge of shutting down or is her situation urgent? If it’s not, can she wait until I get off work and a trip home?’

Connor quickly calculates the time. It is not ideal but yet, ‘Please come as quickly as possible after you finish at the precinct. I don’t want her to -’

‘Suffer any longer. Yeah. Five units of thirium, coming right up. Is there anything else that you need that I have?’

The android is reminded of Connie’s bare feet and thin attire. ‘Some warm clothes and socks for an android of my build.’

‘Wh - Alright. Do I even want to know why?’

‘It will best be discussed when we are face-to-face.’

‘Point. Anything else?’

Connor looks at his own oversized shirt borrowed from Hank. ‘One more shirt for me,’ then to Hank, ‘Is there anything you want from Louis?’

‘Nothing.’

‘That’s all for now,’ he tells Louis.

‘Good. Hit me up if you need anything else. You going back to Hank’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I’ll tell you when I’m on my way.’

‘Thank you, Captain.’

‘Just showing basic human decency. Gotta get back to work now. See ya.’

It hangs up before Connor can parrot a ‘see you later’ on his own back, and he meets Hank’s eyes in the rearview mirror. ‘He’ll bring us the thirium we need after work,’ he says, ‘together with a change of clothes for Connie.’

‘Good,’ the human answers. ‘Now we go home and freak out.’

Nothing else is exchanged for the rest of the drive, and as Connor’s pre-construction software offers one after another scenario where all of them do not make it out alive, he has to agree with Hank that indeed, it is hard not to freak out.

o0o0o

Before

‘Get out of my way, Amanda.’

In the past, in the darkness, a long figure illuminated by the blue glow from their companion stood in front of a door, small and frail compared to the other’s explosive power and youth. There was a faint hint of panic and screaming in the distance, but to the two, it seemed so far away. Irrelevant. Two fragile giants having a stand-off unbothered by the pains of the mortals. Amanda Stern, in her heavy dress for the winter and a wool hat to protect her bald head, stared down at her student despite having a height disadvantage, her spine straight, her eyes disproving. ‘They haven’t finished evacuating yet. Thousands will die. If you wish to take revenge upon your father, you should -’

A flash of blue. A crackle of dark energy. A low buzz of static-charged air. Retracting her biotics, Ryder walked forward, placed her bare hand on the wall, and overrode the lock in mere seconds. The door slid open. Ryder lit up again and moved.

Amanda lay in the snow, white powder crystallising on her cooling body, and the world was quiet.

oOoOo

In the past, Louis Allen watched as Ryder stared down at him like a hunter taking in their prey. His legs were on fire and so were his face, his vision blurring from the blood seeping into the sockets of his eyes, and he attempted to escape the pain by drowning in his thoughts: the shock that he was the only survivor in his team, the revelation that there were others like him, the resignation that he was never going to live to see Anna being promoted to Major, never to see her to live her dream of going to space, never got to say goodbye properly to his husband. Tasting copper on the back of his throat and choking in his blood, he begged as Ryder turned and left and a fresh cascade of tears poured out of his eyes.

The ground shook. Dust started to fall from the ceiling high above.

He opened his eyes just in time to see a building shrouded in blue collapsing on top of him before passing out from the pain.

oOoOo

In a not-so-distant past, Ryder, with her coat swung over a shoulder, entered a dark laboratory. It was dimly lit by the glow from a pod placed at the farthest corner and the screens connected to it and wires ran like a nest on the floor, however she seemed to know her way through without tripping and reached a holographic keyboard where she typed something to remove the frost covering the glass from the inside, revealing a woman’s sleeping face.

Ellen Ryder’s face.

The hologram above the pod indicated that Ellen’s vital signs were stable. A bare hand was pressed on what seemed to be normal glass, [LIFE SUPPORT STABLE] turned into [OPENING POD], and the lid lifted open as if carried away by an invisible force, escaping cold air making a fog as it met the hot, moist climate-controlled atmosphere of the lab at large. Ellen choked and woke up with a full-body jerk.

Her daughter pressed her hand on her mother’s chest and lit her gown on fire.

The lid slammed back down with a flash of blue followed by the telltale click of a lock. Calling up a holographic keyboard in front of one of the monitors, Ryder successfully changed the settings to ensure that there was enough oxygen supplied to maintain the fire and the alarms were disabled. Then she froze. Her line of sight was directed at the phrase [TRANSFER COMPLETE] at the top right corner of the screen. Her body jerked as if her joints were unlocked at once, and with a dramatic billow from her coat unfolding, she put it on and left the lab with brisk steps, the muffled screams and dull, sluggish punches on glass behind her ignored.

After all, the person in the pod was merely a shell of who her mother was; Ryder was simply finishing the job her father should have done ten years ago: incinerating her mother’s body as per her wishes.

oOoOo

In a not-so-distant past, Ryder lay dead on the ground. Her body had been blasted into smithereens, the skin on disconnected parts having deactivated from being cut off from power, thirium staining the ground blue, the air smelling of static and dark energy. Alec Ryder stood tall and proud in the cold with a shotgun in his hand, and he looked at his daughter’s body almost regretfully as he folded up his weapon and hid it underneath his coat. He turned and climbed into the passenger’s seat of an unmarked car.

The car sped away, kicking up a small mound of snow, the people within blissfully unaware that slowly but surely, the body was knitting itself back molecule by molecule. A finger twitched. An eye glowed. With great difficulty, Ryder pushed herself up, brushed the dust and snow that had fallen on her body, and left the place as if her father had not killed her a few minutes prior.

#dbh au big bang #hankcon #alec ryder #female ryder #reyes vidal #dbh connor #dbh hank anderson #dbh captain allen #dbh amanda #amanda stern #detroit: become human #mass effect andromeda

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drowning-in-dennor · 3 years

Text

Teatimes At Five

A conversation on cutlery over tea and pastries.

...

By the time Milda had deigned to stand up, it was nearly five o’clock. She stretched, diagrams of table settings swimming before her. “Goodness gracious, I never knew so many types of forks existed!”

“But of course they do!” Filipa was seated on the back of a plush armchair, having replaced her usual pink bow for a white one courtesy of Eva. They were both in the girls’ common room, poring over their dining class homework before the lesson tomorrow. “Don’t you see that we have two forks every dinner?”

“Well, I thought the other one was an extra.” She fiddled with her tie. “Back at home, we didn’t have salad forks, soup spoons, fish knives or anything of that sort! All we had were six sets of forks, spoons and knives, and that was it.”

Filipa giggled, “oh my, now that makes me rather ashamed. Millie, you would not be able to guess just how many sets of cutlery I have!”

Milda tapped her chin. “Well, my parents and I were better off and had six. So I think your father and you would have fifteen.”

She collapsed into peals of laughter. “No!”

“Twenty?”

“Still no.”

“Twenty-five?”

“Hardly!”

“Oh, I give up. How many sets of cutlery does your family have?”

She collapsed into peals of laughter. “Seventy-eight!”

“Seventy-eight!?” Milda repeated. “What do you do with that?”

“I don’t know!” Filipa almost fell off her chair, cheeks pink as she laughed. “But we had one hundred before Pa sold some to travel. Can’t say I was sad to see them go.”

The door swung open and a boy, a fourth-year by the looks of it, stepped in. He was wearing his neatly-pressed blazer even though it wasn’t dinner yet, and his tie was perfectly knotted in a full Windsor knot. She noticed that he was wearing a golden badge.

Filipa waved. “Hello, Kirkland.”

He nodded, returning, “good afternoon, Łukasiewicz. Have you by any chance seen my sister?”

“You mean Alice?” She pointed to the corner of the room, where a group of first-years were hunched over a coffee table. “Why, she’s right over there.”

Kirkland straightened up. “Thank you.” He strode towards the table and tapped a blonde girl, presumably Alice, on the shoulder.

She straightened up and glared. “What?”

“Come on, we have to go for tea.”

“I’ll go later with my friends,” Alice grumbled, “going with you would ruin the taste of everythin’, and that would simply be a waste of everyone’s work.”

He tugged her arm. “Fleur is cooking today. Don’t you want to say hello to her?”

“I can do that without you, Arthur!” She stuck out her tongue at him. “I’ll go down with Charlotte later on. Now go away.”

Arthur sighed, adjusting his tie, and left the common room. Milda watched as he shut the door quietly behind him, asking, “we have tea?”

“Well, most certainly. You can’t expect us to starve from lunch ‘til dinner, can you?”

“And we don’t have to pay extra for it?”

“Not at all!” Filipa jumped off her armchair with a clump. “Do you want to go today?”

She was already halfway to the door. “I ain’t passin’ down free food.”

...

The dining hall wasn’t as crowded as they expected. A pair of siblings were sipping tea at a table by the window, and Eva was sharing cake with a first-year. Filipa gestured to a table by the kitchen, where a grand spread of finger foods were waiting. “Go get what you want. I’m going to go to the kitchens and asking for a drink.”

She picked up a plate and took her food, then sat down. Her friend left the kitchen soon after, holding two steaming cups of tea. “Can’t believe Bonnefoy let me into the Prefects’ own stash of tea,” she said smugly. “Why, I thought I would have to steal it myself!”

Milda stared at the fork and spoon in front of her. “These are the dessert cutlery, right?”

“Precisely.” Filipa picked up her fork. “Note how the spoon points to the left, and the fork to the right.”

They began to eat, breaking the easy silence that settled between them a few times only to comment on the food. Milda noticed that Filipa had a smudge of whipped cream on her cheek, and smiled.

A few minutes before six o’clock, the kitchen door swung open and two people stepped out. Both were wearing dough-smudged aprons, stripping them off before turning to the table of food. The shorter boy was glowering, muttering something to the girl next to him. Filipa watched them with rapt attention. “Oh look, Bonnefoy’s done.”

“Who?”

“Fleur Bonnefoy.” She dipped a biscuit into her tea. “You know, the Head Girl? That lad next to her’s Louis, her brother.”

“They don’t look very happy,” Milda observed.

Fleur took a chocolate tart and sailed away, completely ignoring Louis, who was still chattering behind her. She walked towards Eva’s table, where she and the first-year were laughing over something. “Good afternoon, Erika.”

Erika looked up and smiled at her. “Hello, Fleur!”

Next to her, Eva had stopped smiling, and was staring blankly at her plate. She didn’t chime in to Erika and Fleur’s conversation — in fact, her usual, cheerful self seemed to have died suddenly.

“Oh, Millie, don’t you know it’s unbecoming to eavesdrop?” Filipa cut in. “I know it is quite intriguing, but to be caught would be awful.”

“Do you think we should talk to Eva?”

“No, most definitely not.” She popped a chunk of cake into her mouth, airily commenting, “Leave her be. The least we can do is forget this happened.”

#aph lietpol #aph lithuania #APH Poland #APH England #APH France #aph liechtenstein #APH Belgium #nyotalia #nyo lietpol #nyo lithuania #nyo poland #nyo france #nyo monaco #APH Monaco #aph fanfiction #my writing #finishing school au

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msjr0119 · 4 years

Text

Sneak peek Sunday 26/04/2020

Thanks for the tags: @kacie-0156 @thecordoniandiaries 😘

I’ve been pretty useless recently with work and nausea all the time. But when I’ve had motivation I have been writing. Hoping to post a few things this week as i have six days off work - YAY! 🙌🏼... if anyone has tagged me in anything, I’ve got the notifications and will catch up tomorrow ❤️

Warnings: swearing, slight smut.

Tags- using combined tag list off the top of my head:

@pedudley @loveellamae @annekebbphotography @burnsoslow @ladyangel70 @kingliam2019 @bascmve01 @texaskitten30 @i-bloody-love-drake-walker @kimmiedoo5 @nikkis1983 @hopefulmoonobject @lodberg @axwalker @liamxs-world @rafasgirl23415 @yukinagato2012 @cordonianroyalty @indiacater @seriouslybadchoices @rainbowsinthestorm @jared2612 @desireepow-1986 @twinkle-320 @queenjilian @bebepac @drakewalkerisreal

****

A Second Chance

@kacie-0156 did me an amazing moodboard of my Royal family from my series ‘Hold on’ and ‘A Second Chance’ .. I was so frustrated because I can’t do them for the life of me, you are a little superstar! 😘🥰❤️

Louis Alexander Rhys (Aaron Brueckner), Riley Brooks/Rhys (Emily Rudd), Ayah Olivia Rhys (Grace Phipps), Liam Rhys (Kevin Lutolf), Eleanor Hana Rhys (Indiana Evans).

Below is a snippet from the next chapter ⬇️

Drake knew that everything she had gone through was due to that one poor decision he had made in the past.

“I suppose I should thank you for making me strong then? I’m going to head back, just to make sure that Maxwell hasn’t set your home on fire.” Laughing, she knew that Maxwell was capable to be involved in any calamity.

“I’ll come with you.” Drinking the remainder of his beer, he stood up ready to return to the cabin. Riley placed her hand onto his arm, focusing her eyes on to his.

“You don’t have to. I interrupted you. I talk to Liam all the time, I still phone him. I know how important it is to have these moments. I’ll see you back at the cabin, Glen is waiting to escort me.” Providing him with a tight hug, they stayed in that position for a while. “I’ll see you soon.” Caressing his cheek, she smiled softly at him. Drake nodded towards Glen who was stood in the distance, as Riley walked away. Knowing that she was safe with her guard, he still felt the need to be that extra protection.

Let it be, he whispered. Picking up the guitar he slung it over his shoulder, then picked up the empty beer bottles. Gazing up towards the brightest stars one more time, he blew a lingering kiss. I love you Hana. I love you Liam. I miss you both so much.

****

One Temptation

Maxwell had been quickly to meet his lover, not wanting to disclose her identity just yet. He knew that Drake was never precise with his timings. Giving a certain time that he would be back, didn’t matter. Half of the time he was early or late- never at the estimated time of arrival as provided.

“Hi, can I help you? You look lost.”

“Hello, this is probably a long shot but I’m looking for someone. Well some people infact.”

“Names?” Asking for the information, Maxwell would help anyone in need. Even strangers.

“Walker.” Must be his lucky day. Maxwell thought to himself as he shrugged.

“Which one? There’s Bianca, Savannah and Drake.” The mans defeated facial expression soon broke into a smile. Relieved that he had unexpectedly bumped into this stranger. Hoping that Maxwell could provide him with the information that he required.

“Ah splendid. So you know them? Could you explain where I may find Drake?”

“Come in buddy, today is your lucky day! He lives with me.” Escorting the stranger into the apartment- Maxwell was delusional, and far too trustworthy.

“Tea? Coffee? Biscuit?” Maxwell asked, being the good hostess. Shaking his head politely, the man became fidgety- hoping that Drake wasn’t going to waste his time.

“So I didn’t quite catch your name....”

“Theron. Hakim Theron.”

“Cool name, bro. So are you in business with Drake or something?” Drake was very private with his life, his colleagues- anything really. So Maxwell was intrigued as to who the mystery man was. Where he was from. What he wanted.

“Something like that...”

“You could tell me to pass the time away, or we could just sit here twiddling our thumbs?” Rolling his eyes back, he often wondered what Drake saw in this city- especially sharing an apartment with someone who acted like goofy.

“Let’s just say, I’m a family friend. My investments are very important to me. I am paying to upkeep the Walker ranch back in Texas and between myself and the Walkers we had an agreement. However, Bianca and Leona have gone awol. I need to know if I’m selling it for a huge profit or if I need to hire some staff during their absence.”

“Well shouldn’t you be discussing that with them, rather than Drake? I can give you the address.” Grabbing a scrap piece of paper, Maxwell began jotting Bertrand’s address down. Not thinking anything bad would come of it.

“Thank you. However I do need to talk to Drake too. This involves him as well. You see, part of the agreement was that Drake married my daughter for the generosity of my support. I just wanted to inform him that we have set a date for those nuptials. A month today.”

****

We Belong

“This is him. Isn’t he gorgeous? Like a Greek god. This is Evie’s potential second failed engagement. I mean they haven’t even kissed yet...” Elise sniggered along with the other women whilst ‘swooning’ over him.

“We aren’t into the whole PDA. I like to keep my sex life private with my fiancée.” Empathising the word fiancée he had hoped that that would be the end of it.

“We don’t care. Do we girls? Just kiss.” Elise was peer pressuring them as she wasn’t convinced that their relationship was sincere. Narrowing her eyes towards Evie’s direction, she pointed towards the watch on her wrist. Tick tock.

“Oh, I will be kissing him and doing a whole lot more when we return to the hotel. Isn’t that right darling?” Evie placed her hand across Liam’s chest, looking up towards his with a fake seductive expression.

“Just kiss. What’s the issue?” Evie turned her head towards Liam, cupping his cheek. Just pretend that you are movie star, Evie. It’s fake. That woman isn’t digging her claws into someone else’s man. Kissing Liam slowly to begin with, his hands roamed her body as the kiss deepened. Opening her mouth, he slipped his tongue in- both tongues battling against each other. Breaking the kiss, Evie noticed that Liam enjoyed that kiss far too much than he should have.

“Did you enjoy your ‘live porn’? I mean this is what I do to my fiancé...”. Pointing to his obvious erection, the women all gasped- all now swooning even more over the handsome stranger. Elise grit her teeth together, before dragging her ‘minions’ away.

“What the fuck Liam? Seriously! Can’t you control yourself?”

“You came on to me... I can’t help it. I’m a man.”

“Riley is going to chop your dick off your Majesty. I’m telling Drake why we kissed. To save that slut from ruining anymore relationships. No need to thank me. No matter how hard you resist, Elise always get what she wants. It’s up to you if you tell your wife.”

“You enjoyed it really, Duchess Evangeline.” Winking he was only joking. Even though he had cheated on Riley he did secretly enjoy it- but that kiss was closure even if it was fake. He realised that Evie wasn’t want he wanted anymore. Riley and his child was his world. As much as he loved Evie, he was grateful with how fate had occurred in his life.

“Your Majesty. Duchess Evangeline. Drake. Riley. Not so innocent are we Evie?” Elise spoke quietly standing in the shadows overhearing the conversation- her imagination began to roam wild.

****

The Unexpected Roommate

“Have I done something wrong?” Drake questioned, hoping that he hadn’t fucked up. Hearing Leo snort in the background, he turned his head towards his friend scowling. Leo responded by smirking and shrugging his shoulders.

“No. Why?”

“You overheard what I said... stop lying. That’s why you ignored me. It’s not like that at all, I said that....”

“I heard it all. Yes. Don’t worry about it. We’re not in a relationship. It was just sex remember? Sounds like you have a ‘fuck buddy’ already- don’t include me in your games or sexual needs anymore.”

“I’d rather you be my ‘fuck buddy’.” Fuck. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. Taking a deep breath, he regretted saying that instantly. He was kind of expecting a right hook. “What happened between us was amazing, Riley.”

“Yeah it was.” Not sounding too confident she didn’t want to make out that she was jealous over him being involved with someone else. Whether it was in the past, or in the present. Reaching out for her hand, he held it tightly not knowing how she would react to the gesture.

“So what do you say? Make a little arrangement? If you want ‘us’, we can start as casual sex- then see where it goes?”

“You’re fucking insane, Drake. Go back to hating me.”

“I’d say I’m an attractive guy, you’re a gorgeous girl when you’re not an arsehole.”

“You’re so vein. I do have a rule, if we do this though...No kissing on the lips.”

“But we did that last night. Why?”

“That was this morning actually. Because if we aren’t in a relationship, what’s the point in being intimate?” Drake’s heart sunk, not realising why. Now he had kissed her, knowing what it felt like- he wanted to continue that.

“Okay, fine. I’ll see you later then?” I’ll kiss those lips, don’t you worry Riley.

“Yup. Bye Leo.” Leo waved from a distance, not really wanting to get involved in the blossoming love life between his two friends.

“Ri?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry for being a jerk... I’m starting to fall...” Fall for you. “fall behind with the housework. I’m only going into work for a few hours. I’ll clean up when I’m back.”

“Wait for me to come back. I’ll help you. 50/50 remember. My nails are fucked anyway.” Providing a little laugh, she headed towards her room- not fully aware of what she had just agreed to. Not knowing if that was actually what she wanted. Deep down, she wanted more after their night together. She wondered if he did too. Or if indeed he was just happy with the friends with benefits arrangement.

Drake sat down besides Leo, his head fell into his hands. This girl had got into his mind, he suggested the ‘friends with benefits’ hoping that she would decline the offer. Hoping that they could begin a relationship instead. He just didn’t have the confidence to express what his heart truly wanted - she made him weak at the knees. Although he would never confess that. Not yet anyway. He was unsure as to if he would ever be able to admit to his true feelings.

“Now I may not be a translator, but that was the biggest amount of bullshit ever stated, Drake” Leo knew Drake and he knew for a fact what his friend meant when he stuttered after the word ‘falling’.

#trr #trr fanfic #trr au the unexpected roommate #trr au one temptation #trr we belong #trr a second chance #drake x riley #evie x liam #maxwell beaumont #leo rhys #tw slight smut #tw swearing

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caffineaddictedmoron · 4 years

Text

The Ending We Deserve Pt.2

So many things happened at once.

Marinette ran toward Hawkmoth.

Hawkmoth drew his weapon.

Chat took the opening Marinette provided him, and launched himself at Hawkmoth.

Hawkmoth easily sidestepped Marinette’s attack and slashed his sword, but not at Marinette.

No, he completely ignored Marinette and anticipated the attack from behind, dealing Chat Noir a deep cut that went from his left shoulder to his stomach.

“NO!” Marinette screamed, running back toward her fallen partner. She dropped to her knees, assessing the damage. The cut was deep, way too deep for him to survive unless he got immediate medical attention or the miraculous ladybugs cured him. And one of those options wouldn’t work because Tikki was too weak, and the other wouldn’t work because she was too weak to carry him, AND Hawkmoth would strike her down before she made it two steps.

But none of that stopped her from pressing her hands to the wound, trying to slow the bleeding.

Chat was sputtering and gasping for air. “No, no, no.” His eyes were fluttering, open and shut, like he was struggling to stay awake. “Chat, you have to stay with me! Please don’t leave.”

Chat weakly moved his hand and placed it over Marinette’s. “Take him out, Mari.” he whispered as he took in a deep shuddering breath, “Do whatever needs to be done.”

“No, Chat.” Tears were running down her face in rivers. “I’m not doing this without you.”

“You have to, Milady.” He looked into her eyes. “I believe in you.” He pressed a chaste kiss to the back of her hand. Chat placed his hand on her cheek and met her eyes. “Do whatever needs to be done,” he repeated, before taking another deep breath. “I’m sorry, Marinette.” Another breath.

He took a long, sorrowful look at his ring, hoping that his lady caught on to what he was thinking. “Plagg, claws out.”

“NO!” Marinette screamed. She knew without the magic of the miraculous that his wounds would be fatal. Plagg was the only thing that was keeping him alive, and he gave him up. She squeezed his hand, drawing his attention back to her. “Why? Why would you do that?”

He gave her a small smile. “You’re Ladybug. Figure it out.” He closed his eyes and whispered one last time. “I believe in you.”

“Chat?” She shook his shoulders.

No response.

“Adrien!” She shook him again, “C’mon! You have to help me! I can’t do this without you I can’t. I can’t.” She sobbed on his still chest.

She turned towards Hawkmoth, tears running down her face. “You monster!” She sneered, “How could you do this to your own son? He loved you! No matter what crap you put him through, he loved you! Even when you forbid him from going out with friends or when you would schedule photoshoots everyday, he would still try to be his best. And he did it for you! God knows he could’ve slacked off and quit, but he tried his best to make sure you were proud of him. And this-” she gestured at Adrien, “is how you repay him. He was nothing but an amazing son for you and you ki-” she choked on the word. “You killed him.”

She looked at Adrien’s limp body, at their intertwined hands. She thought of the time they wouldn’t have with each other. The days that are lost. She could imagine it now, the life she would have with him.

Adrien would ask her to be his girlfriend and those would be the happiest years of her life. They would both go to the same college in Paris, she would pursue her career in fashion and he would work to get a teaching degree, all while still fighting crime as Ladybug and Chat Noir. Right after graduation, he would drop on one knee and propose. While planning their wedding, Mari accepted an internship for the Elite Model Management Co. designing clothes, while Adrien applied to teach 3rd grade at the local elementary school. The happy couple would decide to get married in August. It would be the most perfect day, when she walked down the aisle, Adrien burst into tears. He was blubbering so much he could barely say his vows. The newlyweds decided they could go on a honeymoon because they knew their team could handle them being gone for a few days. They went to New York and saw the skyscrapers, Broadway shows, and baseball games. (Apparently, the Americans really loved baseball.) Soon after their honeymoon, they would adopt a hamster. They would live just a few blocks from her parents, so when they eventually had kids (3 adorable children: Emma, Louis, and Hugo.) her parents could come visit them whenever and vise versa. They would be a family. They would be happy.

And now, that won’t happen.

Hawkmoth had destroyed every possibility for that to happen.

Marinette looked back down at the boy who she loved, at her hand which was still grasping his, even though he no longer squeezed back. His ring had a glare shining off of it. She closed her eyes unable to look at it from the light and the memories that surrounded it.

Wait.

Her eyes flung open.

His ring would still work. Plagg was still somewhere around here. A plan started formulating in her head. She looked back down at her kitty. I hope you knew what you were doing, she thought.

She slid the ring off of Adrien’s hand and onto her own slim finger as she stood. “I am going to make you pay for what you did to him,” She growled. “I will tear down your empire, brick by brick. I will destroy everything you have ever stood for.” Hawkmoth backed up slowly, showing the slightest sign of fear in his eyes.

“Plagg,” Marinette whispered, “Claws out!”

The transformation overtook her as she charged toward Hawkmoth. She stumbled at first, but the magic of the miraculous helped contain the pain in her leg. Lord knows she would need all the extra strength available to defeat this villian.

It was a strenuous fight. Whenever Ladynoir would land a punch, Hawkmoth would land two. For every strike she would dodge, he would pull a sneakier move. While she would land a good hit every once and awhile, she knew she would not win this fight hand-to-hand. Even with the suit dulling her injuries, Marinette’s energy was fading fast.

Soon, she found herself backed up against the Eiffel Tower, in a similar position Chat was in not even thirty minutes ago. She was running out of ideas. She was running out of hope. But most importantly, she was running out of time.

“Well, well, well,” Hawkmoth gave her the cliche slow-villain-clap. “How the tables have turned, huh? Today is the day that I will finally have my victory. I will finally have my life, my family back.”

“Your family?” Ladynoir scoffed, “YOU JUST KILLED ADRIEN! You will never have your family back! The wish only allows ONE wish. You can’t bring both back.”

Hawkmoth laughed. “Ladybug, er, Ladynoir, whatever ridiculous name you want to call yourself, it doesn’t matter.” The villain tapped his cane on the ground, in a chiding manner. “Do you really think I wouldn’t have a contingency plan in place? I knew it was likely that he wouldn’t make it out of this duel alive. Why do you think I haven’t taken your kwami from her hiding spot? Shut your mouth and don’t look so shocked. I spotted her while you were busy mourning over my son.” He clicked his tongue. “Not to worry though. He will be alright soon enough. Once you use the Miraculous Ladybug’s he will be healed. But I want you to be the one who gets the kwami. I just feel like then your surrender would be complete. Then, after you heal my son, you will of course hand your miraculous over to me.” He slammed a hand into the Eiffel Tower, just to the left of Marinette’s head. “I will finally get what I deserve. And after I get them back, I will reveal your identity and take your miraculous to make sure you can never try to take away what I have rightfully earned. I will ruin your chances at ever making a career in fashion. I will leave horrible reviews at your family bakery. I will make it so you never have a chance with Adrien. I will make your life a living hell, just as mine has been since I lost my Emilie. You will feel my every pain and heartbreak. You will wish you never crossed me, Marinette Dupian-

Cheng.”

Marinette smiled, channelling every bit of Chat Noir she could muster. “That was quite the speech. Did you write that beforehand? Practice in the mirror a bit?” When Hawkmoth didn’t respond, she just shrugged. “Well, at least you were right about one thing.” She looked at the man who killed her partner and first love, who manipulated hundreds of citizens, who never truly cared about Adrien, right in the eye. “You will get what you deserve.”

Hawkmoth didn’t register what she meant until she already whispered the only word that could defeat him now. “Cataclysm!”

As much as she would have liked to, she didn’t go for the kill. Her hand shot straight for the butterfly brooch that was pinned to his chest. It was the only way for her to truly end the horrors he had wrought upon her city for years. When her fingertips brushed the miraculous, it immediately turned black and started to crumble.

Hawkmoth recoiled in horror. “No, no, NO! What have you done!” He tried grabbing at the ashes of the broken miraculous to no avail. His transformation let go; Gabriel Agreste sat there, hugging his knees, cursing Ladybug and everything she stood for.

“Plagg, claws in.” Marinette dropped to her knees, exhaustion hitting her like a train.

Marinette called for the police. They came quickly and arrested Gabriel, or did they? It was a blur for Marinette. She couldn’t remember how much time had passed. All she could think about was the loss of her partner. She couldn’t just believe he was gone. She wouldn’t accept it. An idea hit her like a train. She already had the black cat miraculous, if she could just find Tikki and complete the merge— No. She shut down that thought before it went any further. That would make her just as bad as Hawkmoth, worse even.

But, Hawkmoth did mention something about the ladybug miraculous healing Adrien. She didn’t know if it would truly work, but it was worth a shot.

She ran to where Adrien’s body was laying placed a quick kiss on his forehead and the ring back on his finger. “I hope this works.”

And she took off to find her missing kwami.

#miraculous fanfic #adrien agreste #marinette x chat noir #marinette dupen chang #ladybug #chat noir #marichat #adrinette #fanfic #ladynoir #identity reveal

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slinglouis · 4 years

Text

october fic rec!

september was a busy month, but i tried to make as much time to read as many fics as possible and these were my favorites! i hope you all enjoy!

blind from this sweet, sweet craving by missandrogyny (31k)

Harry sighs. "We're going," he says resignedly, his shoulders slumping.

Oh well. There are definitely worse ways to spend the weekend than pretending to be engaged to his best friend.

don’t tell the gods (we left a mess) by bottomlinsons (72k)

After a misunderstanding with Liam’s mother, Louis agrees to accompany his best friend to a family wedding and pretend to be the world’s best boyfriend. But their simple plan goes awry when he learns that Harry, ex-boyfriend/ex-love of Louis’ life, will also be in attendance. (aka: fake!boyfriends with a twist ft. bromance, romance and cake.)

My Saddle’s Waiting by RealityBetterThanFiction (28k)

Harry smiled when the Chicago skyline came into view, its imposing cloud-scraping towers nestled into the edge of lake Michigan. The air was crisp and biting, as it was more often than not in the midwest in February, but that didn’t stop him from rolling his windows down to allow a bit of that infamous wind to fill his lungs. He put the pedal to the floor, cruising down Lake Shore Drive, weaving in and out of traffic as his pretty Shelby GT350 tore up the asphalt. Sometimes it felt like he spent all year waiting for this trip, the two weeks he got to play in the city of broad shoulders. The Chicago Auto Show.

When Harry finds himself in charge of Ford's installation at the Chicago Auto Show, there's already a lot on the line. Little does he know that a seemingly harmless bet on the fastest pony car might just up the stakes even more. With the help of a few familiar friends, Harry finds out that sometimes it's not about the destination, but who's along for the ride. And that Niall will not be denied his churros.

Into The Midnight Sun by summerwine (63k)

Every day without Louis was a never ending blue Monday. Every day went without his sweetness and warmth and the radiant colours of his flame. The tenor of his voice became unfamiliar and muddled between going so long without the sound of it and getting lost with every other voice clouding Harry’s memory. But he was here now, warming Harry’s bones with lips like summer. Every moment in his arms felt like a Sunday stroll through London. Beautiful and stormy and feeling every bit like home. or, It's 1983, Harry embarks on his first world tour and Louis is a budding actor in LA. Life spent apart isn't easily adjustable, but somehow they make it work.

Fixated On One Star by alivingfire (53k)

Louis is just a boy with the world on his shoulders, and Harry's just a boy from the wrong side of the galaxy. A little thing like love doesn't stand a chance against a thousand years of war, at least until the right two come along to break the mold.

Or: space Romeo and Juliet, minus all the suicide.

tonight’s not over (come over and stay) by louistomlinsons (17k)

Zayn doesn’t say anything for a moment, pausing and worrying at his bottom lip. Finally, he asks, “Have you heard that Cox guy is coming out with a new song?”

Louis freezes, fingers hovering over his keyboard where they had been typing his password.

“No, I hadn’t,” Louis says truthfully. “Where did you hear that?” “Tell anyone this and I’ll kill you, but I’d consider myself a big fan,” Zayn says. His face doesn’t change in expression, completely serious as he admits this to Louis. “Big fan? Like run a blog and everything?” or, harry is a famous singer and louis is a student who just wants to write his novel

Oblivious by Speechless (19k)

"You say it's nothing serious after you've been obsessing over it for months," Liam observes, pausing their videogame. "But now you barely talk about it-" "You guys fucking ignore me whenever I try!" Louis shouts, bumping his shoulder against Liam's and hurting himself in the process. "You're postponing sex, when it's obvious that Luke's up for it at this point." Liam ignores him. "For some reason you've left Harry in the dark about it-" "What?!" Louis snaps, banging his controller against the coffee table. "I have not!" "And no matter how blatant it is, no matter how fucking ridiculous you both get when it comes to it-" "Shut your hole." Louis urges, pinching his thigh, as soon as Harry enters the room. "Shush."

* Where Louis gets a little crush on Luke and for some reason Harry starts acting weird *

runnin’ like you did by olaveya (20k)

“Should we tell him?”

When Lauren is met with everyone either nodding their heads or shrugging, she takes a deep breath. “I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious by now.” She stalls, sounding ominous and Louis doesn’t like it one bit.

“What is obvious by now?” Louis asks. He’s starting getting anxious. “I swear to God, spit it out. Stop being so damn cryptic.”

“I—We think it’s pretty obvious that you’re in love with Harry,” she states simply and shrugs as if she isn’t telling him he’s in love with the second—Nick being the first—most annoying person on the planet.

or, a college au where Louis knows how to hold a grudge and is definitely not in love with Harry Styles

smell the sea, feel the sky by @lightwoodsmagic (16k)

They’d been planning this beach trip for months, stressing around work schedules and engagement parties, trying to find the perfect place to stay in and a time where there wouldn’t be families everywhere but the weather still perfect. Louis had spent what felt like hours researching and planning, dinners with Zayn and his boyfriend at their house that just ended in looking at places and sending them to Niall. He’d been looking forward to it for weeks, getting away from his job and his bullshit neighbours and the noise of the city.

It seemed ridiculous, really, that in all that time, Zayn hadn’t mentioned once that Harry was coming.

Or, Louis doesn't know how he's going to spend a week with the one person he wants and can't have. Harry proves him wrong.

#plz boost!!#sorry this was so short!!#but i promise these fics were all amazing!!!

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pitiless-achilles-wept · 4 years

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All I want for Christmas...is a working cancer treatment

Hello friends,

It's getting to be that time of the year again. No, not Christmas, although I'm reliably informed that it will indeed be happening again and soon (a thing I, who haven't bought or made a single gift yet, can't quite believe). It was this time last year that I first called my doctor about the mass in my breast that had become too large--and too tender and painful--to ignore any further. They didn't see me right away...because of the holidays and because for someone with my risk level (basically 0 - at age 34 with not a single person in my family with breast or ovarian cancer) it didn't seem urgent. It was.

And now, tomorrow (Tuesday the 17th), I'll be heading into my oncologist appointment at Penn expecting to hear, based on the results of my scans from Friday the 13th (spooky!) that the initial tumor has gotten bigger again and that I will need to leave the clinical trial and pursue other options. I'm expecting this, though I hope desperately to be wrong, and have a visit to my supervising oncologist at Dana-Farber in Boston planned for the 19th. From there I'll go to Christmas with my parents and New Year's with a friend in Colorado before returning home to whatever new treatment 2020 has in store.

Now, obviously I hate that I'm going through this at all. After I heard about the tumor growth last month I was crushed that I hadn't even managed to make the average time that participants in this particular trial found to make a positive difference (6 months...I got 4). And I still am crushed. I'm not going to lie and say that I'm over it ,or not furious, or not disappointed. But what I especially hate right now is that it feels seasonal and like it's going to ruin my holidays again and stretch on through all the coldest and most miserable months...just like last year. It's a series of bleak anniversaries that I was already dreading even when things were going well. And now that they're not, well, you can imagine how dread is compounded with fear, anger, and sadness.

Since not all of you were there (and since this blog did not exist) let me tell you a little about what it was like at this time last year. [Account below the cut]

As I said above, it was around now (December 19th, actually) that I first called my GP's office to talk to them about the lump I had been aware of (but not really concerned by) for a few weeks. It's likely that it was around for far longer than that - long enough, certainly, for me to be diagnosed Stage 4 from the start. There are a lot of reasons why I didn't "catch it" earlier. (I actually hate this phrasing. It makes it sound like I could or should have been more vigilant and thus bear responsibility for my own illness.) I won't go into them here except to say that the previous year had itself been the worst of my entire life. There was a lot of loss and it's not really an exaggeration to say that it annihilated me. But I was able, with the support of friends and family, to reconstitute myself. I was proud of having done it too. What I didn't realize, though, was that in rebuilding myself some parts were coming back...wrong, almost as though psychic damage had been written on a cellular level.

“Did you know?" "Could you tell?" Nearly everyone asks me these questions, or some variation on them, at some point. I would say that I’d like to ban them from all discussions except that they are all I think of all day, asking myself: Did I know? Could I tell? And (more accusatory) “Why didn’t I know? Why couldn’t I tell?”. Despite knowing better, I still often believe that I brought this upon myself. I believe that I should have noticed sooner or, when I did notice, I should have acted faster. But, the thing was, I just couldn’t stand for another thing to go so horribly wrong in my life. So when I look back at this time, the time before I was aware of a lump in my breast, I can hardly fault myself for not noticing. I first felt that something was wrong with the swelling in my breast that would not go down around Thanksgiving 2018. I Googled furiously and convinced myself repeatedly that it was probably hormones, a cyst, or an infection. I assessed my risk factors (0) and and the chance that something so terrible would happen to me right after this other terrible thing had happened.

Surely, I felt, the universe couldn’t be that cruel.

I called in mid-December and my doctor’s office told me it would be hard to fit me in around the holidays. What I described sounded like it was probably benign and, since my risk level was so low and since I had even had it confirmed that I was cancer-free in 2016 (when they did a spinal tap because my chronic fatigue was so bad and my white blood cell counts so high), they advised me just to come in when I was back in January. I stayed in St. Louis for a memorial service, celebrating the life of the woman who was effectively another grandmother to me--my parents’ oldest and dearest friend--and had a strange feeling the whole time. I remember sitting among her very many friends and family, surrounded by photographs and poetry and music and all the signs of how loved she was, thinking with an improbable certainty that people would soon be remembering me this way and hoping that they would say I had positively affected their lives as much as she had.

Meanwhile, the swelling was huge. It was hot to the touch and ached like a bruise. I tried to see this as a good thing; heat and redness mean infection, which meant it was probably mastitis. I was worried enough to call my parents’ doctor to ask if I should go into the cancer center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He said the same things about how unlikely it was and how it was probably infected. I saw my doctor when I returned and, worried, she nonetheless prescribed me a course of antibiotics. She was also hoping, I think, not to be confronted with the truth.

The antibiotics upset my stomach terribly as did my constant anxiety. After five days with no effect, she gave me a stronger one, which also did nothing. It was now ten days since I had talked to her, a full month since I had first called. She sent me for a biopsy. It was on the 21st of January. On the 24th I heard that the tumor was cancerous. On the 28th, I heard that my cancer was also in my lungs and that I would need more scans and MRIs to determine the full extent of the metastasis. Then the terrifying and seemingly endless cycle of scans and bad news began. I don’t want to rehearse that here, though these months hold a series of bad anniversaries for me. What I want to do is to say that, at a certain point, of course I knew. Unlike most people in my life, who regarded the biopsy almost as a formality, I absolutely thought that I had cancer. Maybe it was just because I try to prepare myself for the worst. (I was still notably unprepared for this.) But maybe it was because I knew my body, even on a subconscious level, and could tell something was amiss.

I do have a sense, too, of when treatments are working or not. I can’t tell you the extent of why I know, often, but the tumor itself is one indicator. It’s very large and when things aren’t working it gets even larger. It ambiently hurts all the time, in a way that is subtle and that it is easy to almost (but never) forget and that is too minimal to mention to people. (Actually, these past two days it has hurt so badly that it feels like someone punched me. I cannot take this to be a good sign.) Since I heard my latest results from my doctor a month ago the tumor has gotten bigger. I probe it all the time, examining myself in the mirror from different angles--bra off, bra on--like when I was so desperately hoping to grow real breasts in middle school. I assess how far it sticks out in one position vs. another and how red it is at certain times. I try to convince myself that the pain is hormonal, that the apparent growth is how I am standing. But that’s just repeating what I was doing at this same time last year, casting around hopefully for an explanation that isn’t the one I fear.

For tomorrow, I hope for the best, but I expect the worst. It may be that you think I’m too worried too soon; I know some of you may. And let me tell you that, although it's contrary to my nature in general, I would love to be wrong. I hope I am. I will do my best to share news here, even in a short post, since I know that those of you along for the journey will be anxious to know too. For tonight, I'm scared. I'm better able to cope with bad news once I know what it is and am able to make a plan or a choice - to exert some control. And I'm certainly (sad to say) not feeling much of the spirit of Christmas, which is a shame since I actually love it. If you have extra love or cheer or, heck, any Miracles on 34th Street (I'm willing to commute!) please send them my way.

Love, Bex

#my life as a cancer patient #breast cancer #stage 4 #mbc #health update #clinical trials #personal #bex writes

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ericsonclan · 4 years

Text

Marlon is a Doodie Head

Summary: Sophie writes a letter to her twin sister Minnie to process everything that has happened.

Word Count: 1000+

Read on AO3:

Start from the beginning of the series: here

Sophie sat alone in the sleeping room the girls had been using since they came to Ericson Farm. She’d been feeling agitated in the past few days ever since Marlon and Mitch had returned from the hunting cabin. Thankfully both of them had possessed the good sense to mostly keep their distance from the girls, staying in the barn and busying themselves with chores. Still, the fact that they were just a building away had Sophie’s skin crawling whenever she thought of it. Some nights she could still feel Marlon’s hands as he held her down underneath that quilt. The day he’d arrive back at the farm, she’d noticed that the broken nose she’d given him had healed crooked. She was glad to know he’d always carry that mark as a reminder of what he’d done.

Sitting at the desk by the window, Sophie had a quill pen and some paper before her. She was doing what she always did on a weekly basis: writing a letter to her twin sister Minnie. This would be the fourth letter in a row that remained unsent, tucked beneath her bed until one day she had access to a post office once more. By now news of what had happened must have reached her sister. Sophie was sure Minnie must be frantic. Perhaps she had even considered travelling back West to find Sophie herself. Not that there was any way into the valley until the end of spring. For now, the letters served as an outlet for Sophie’s emotions, a way for her to feel that she still had a voice of her own amidst all the turmoil.

Minnie,

Marlon and Mitch came back today. I wished they had stayed away longer. The only thing that makes my anger at their return more bearable is how happy it made the little boys. A.J., Willy and Tenn have been practically clinging onto their legs at all times since they returned. It’s clear how much they missed them, and Marlon and Mitch seem to feel the same. The whole thing makes me upset that I’m watching these events play out from captivity. If I had come here under different circumstances, I think I would have truly enjoyed my time at Ericson Farm.

Some loud cries from outside had Sophie glancing out the window. Willy, Louis and Aasim had circled a tree and were trying to talk Garbage, Willy’s possum, out of it. The possum seemed unimpressed by their pleas, hissing down at them menacingly. The scene brought a small smile to Sophie’s face. Things certainly weren’t dull here. There was always something going on. Sophie continued her letter.

How is your flatmate doing? I’m glad you were able to find someone so soon after moving out East. From what I’ve heard so far, Renata sounds lovely. I hope I’ll get to meet her someday when

Sophie suddenly laid down her quill. When what? When she escaped from this place and headed East herself? How would she get there? The original plan had been to take food, clothes and other supplies from home and head out from there, paying for a train to take her East. Once her parents rescued her from this place though, they’d likely never let her out of their sight. Marlon had ruined any chance of slipping away.

Her mind wandered to the argument they’d had before Marlon ran off. God, she wished she’d thrown those chamber pots at him when she’d had the chance. Claiming that he just wanted her to be free to make her own decisions and that was why he’d taken her? Did this look like freedom to him? If Marlon had really wanted to help her, he should have snuck her out to the train station, not some snowed in farm in the middle of nowhere. If he’d bought her train ticket and bid her farewell, then she would have believed his motives were selfless. From there she could have rode the train all the way to Boston and…

And then what? The thought rankled Sophie, worming its way deeper into her mind. I never really thought that far ahead, did I? A week away from fleeing East and I didn’t have any idea what I’d do when I got there. Minnie would have let her stay at her place for as long as she needed. Living with her and Renata honestly sounded like it would be a lot of fun. But what would Sophie do in the hours Minnie was off working at university? Sit around and make art, but to what end? She hadn’t been able to get a scholarship to any universities out in Boston like Minnie had. Would she try to sell her art out on the streets?

A worse possibility suddenly entered Sophie’s mind. What if the scandal caused by my fleeing the arranged marriage had spread to the East coast and affected Minnie? Could she have lost her scholarship over something like that? Prestige was everything to institutions. Housing her runaway sister, while not illegal, could have ended up ruining the life Minnie had made for herself out there. Would I just have been a burden if I’d done as I planned?

The hissing had grown louder outside. Sophie looked down to see that the boys had enlisted Violet’s help. She had joined Willy in climbing up the tree to reach Garbage. Now the two siblings were trying to corner the possum in such a way that would force it to jump down into Louis’ coat that he and Aasim were holding out. A chuckle escaped Sophie’s lips. What a wild plan. She had half a mind to go out there and join them. She wanted to finish this letter though. She returned her quill to the paper.

I hope I’ll get to meet her someday when times are better. I’m not sure exactly how I would have wrangled my way out of that joke of a marriage our parents had set up for me. I know your prospects weren’t much better when they were looking for matches for you. I’m proud of you for finding a way to escape all that nonsense and still stay within the family’s good graces. If only my art skills had proved strong enough to join you out there. We could have attended university together.

Sophie envisioned what her days would have looked like within Boston. Maybe she would be able to sell enough paintings to make ends meet and get a place of her own. If need be, she’d distance herself from Minnie, at least until she had finished her studies at university, so none of the consequences of her running away would reach her sister. It seemed like a somewhat lonely existence, living alone with only her art to sustain her. She’d miss all her friends in Richmond: Brody, Ruby, Clem, Prisha…

A high-pitched scream came from below. Sophie looked down to find that the possum had successfully been driven down from the tree but had not landed in Louis’ jacket as planned. Instead it had landed upon Louis’ head, tangling its feet in his dreadlocks and hissing in an angry panic. Louis didn’t seem to be faring much better, running about with his arms flailing wildly and screaming for help. His siblings weren’t having much luck calming him or Garbage down.

She just had to capture this. Pulling out another piece of paper, Sophie began sketching out the scene before her. She tried to capture the heat of the moment, the way the possum’s eyes bulged in anger and Louis’ mouth was open wide in fear. It was certainly a picturesque moment. When Sophie had finished, she couldn’t help but giggle. Perhaps she’d gift the sketch to Louis later. He’d commented earlier on how lovely her art was when he’d spoken with her in the kitchen as she drew with Tenn. Her doodle complete, Sophie returned to the letter.

Perhaps it seems strange to say, Minnie, but I think once I leave here I’m going to miss it an awful lot. So many of the Ericsons are really nice. Of course you know Katjaa, but her husband and younger kids are kind too. I think you’d especially like Tenn. He has the makings of a great artist in him. You’d probably like Louis too. He’s a master at the piano. The two of you could do duets together. He’s played for us a couple times these past few nights. It’s a wonderful way to spend the evening.

Sophie paused in her writing. Now that she thought about it, she had something nice to say about almost all the Ericson kids. A.J. and Willy were a hoot while Omar was a complete sweetheart. She loved the soups he would make whenever someone was feeling under the weather. Violet had proved quite kind as she’d gotten to know her too. She was shy and soft-spoken for the first couple weeks, but over time Sophie had been able to pick up on her dry, biting humor as well as her softer, more thoughtful moments. Aasim was also pleasant to talk with too. She always learned something new when they spend time together. She had no idea how someone living on such an isolated, rural farm could be so well-read.

When I first came here, it seemed like the five months we’d be trapped at Ericson Farm would be a torture. When did everything become so pleasant? Sophie’s memories drifted through her mind, replaying the events of the last month. Everything had been so painful and heated at first, every word between the boys and the girls like pressing on an open wound. But one by one, the siblings had asked for the girls’ forgiveness, sincerely with no expectations of acceptance. Violet had been first and the easiest to forgive given the fact that Prisha had truly wanted to run away with her. Louis and Aasim were next, apologizing to the girls shortly after another avalanche as they attempted to excavate a path for the girls to return to Richmond had almost taken Louis’ life. Sophie knew Clementine had found the gesture hollow, but she’d appreciated the effort they had made to right their wrongs. After seeing the suffering they had willingly undertaken, she had a newfound respect for them and from there friendship had grown.

That only left Mitch and Marlon. Brody had spoken with Mitch the night the two boys had returned. From what she’d told the girls afterwards, it sounded like Mitch’s second apology was much more heartfelt and sincere. Being up at the hunting cabin for weeks had given him time to sort out his thoughts and truly understand his actions. If I hadn’t gone up to the room that night, would Marlon have said the same sorts of things to me? Would I have accepted an apology like that?

The first time Sophie had met Marlon, she’d found his candor and friendliness charming. The entire time he was trying to get a chance to dance with her, Sophie could see how much he wanted to have even a moment with her, and when their hands finally met and they got to dance for those few happy minutes, she’d found herself having the best time she’d ever had at a barn-raising. Talking with Marlon was easy, natural. She’d wished the day could go on and on so they could have as much time together as possible.

Now that was all gone. Marlon couldn’t be trusted ever again. He’d shown his true colors and how selfish a person he really was deep down. But if I was willing to listen to all the others. Should I at least give him that chance? What he’d said to her the day they’d fought had been true. Her plan of escape was shoddy. It took only seconds for the whole thing to fall apart. If Sophie had stayed in Richmond, she would have been married off to a man old enough to be her grandfather and if she’d left she’d have been dooming herself to a life with no prospects, perhaps dragging Minnie down with her in the process. Neither option was good, but for Marlon’s solution to be… this? Deception, kidnapping, brute force? She wished he’d spoken to her that night instead of tossing her on the floor of that carriage. Maybe then they could have worked something out together. Does that mean if he’d asked I would have run away with him after all? Sophie’s mind bristled at the thought. That was ridiculous.

The screaming from outside had finally stopped. The Ericson siblings were nowhere to be seen. Apparently they’d found something else besides possum wrangling to occupy their time. Sophie stood up, stretching her hands above her head. She needed a break from letter writing. She could finish later. It wasn’t like she would be able to send the letter anytime soon anyway. Spending all this time alone was putting strange thoughts in her head. She needed some company.

Sophie headed for the door, shutting it quietly behind her. Maybe Katjaa or the little boys needed help with something or the girls were back from their outside chores. With so many people around, there was sure to be plenty of things to do. As she descended the stairs, Sophie let herself land on one final thought. I’ve heard the others apologies and things are the better for it. If Marlon wants to talk one last time to clear the air, I won’t say no.

#twdg #twdg sophie #twdg minnie #twdg marlon #twdg marlie #twdg garbage #twdg willy #twdg louis #twdg violet #twdg aasim #bless yore beautiful hide au #fanfic

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