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im-a-wonderling · 1 year

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Love & Hate, Part VII ~ Paul Lahote

Wow, this series is getting more and more popular. This part has one of my favorite scenes in the whole fanfic, so I hope you guys enjoy! @writing-on-the-wahl, thank you so much for being such a good sport about helping me edit all my fanfics before I post them. You’re the best, and I’m forever grateful.

Warnings: descriptions of needles and drawing blood

Word count: 9k

Love & Hate masterlist

The two mile walk from his cabin to Sam and Emily’s house took twice as long as it could’ve, but Paul didn’t want to let the wolf out. After so thoroughly losing his freedom of choice last night, he wanted to avoid shifting if at all possible.

It sent him into a foul mood, the fact that he was tiptoeing around something within himself. Nothing egged at him quite so much as that.

If Y/N wasn’t around, he wouldn’t have any issues with the wolf. There would be no need for arguing, no need for spontaneous trips to Kansas City, and absolutely no need for Jacob to bite him. Paul ran his hand across his shoulder underneath the sleeves of his tank, over the place where the bite mark had been. The wound had closed fairly quickly thanks to his supernatural healing, but the memories of the pain and embarrassment lingered.

He was so far gone, so preoccupied with thoughts of a woman that his packmate had to bite him?

And worse than that, the words Jared shared about Y/N being alone wormed around in his brain, joining forces with the wolf’s utter mortification over the fight they’d had. In favor of dealing with the full moon, Paul pushed the memories of the argument aside, but now the full moon was over. Now there was no excuse to make to rid himself of the waves of shame.

A growl loosed from his throat.

Paul was easily irritated, he knew that, but Y/N could just get under his skin like no one else ever had.

Add that to the wolf’s constant, unhelpful commentary about how beautiful she was and how good it would feel to be next to her and how perfect she was…Paul’s path to being the crazy villager everyone laughed about was almost set in stone.

He shook his head, trying to focus on the present.

Apparently, when Sam had informed Carlisle of the events the night of the full moon earlier this morning, Carlisle had asked for the chance to speak to the pack. Since Paul was intentionally not shifting, he didn’t have the chance to see the memory, but according to what Sam said on the phone, Carlisle had been rather anxious.

What could have the doctor all tied in knots?

I suppose I’m about to find out, Paul thought as he opened the front door.

Y/N’s scent hit him like a semi truck, and he immediately clenched his fists, fighting his desires both for more air and more of her smell.

Had her scent always been this sweet?

Paul didn’t know, but if her scent was somehow becoming more irresistible to him over time, he might as well take up permanent residence in Kansas City if he wanted to be a functional human being.

Was there somewhere in La Push Paul could get a scuba tank? If he brought his own air, there was no need to be smelling Y/N’s.

He shook his head.

Stupid idea.

He stepped into the house, trying to ignore the intoxicating smell, lest he lose any semblance of common sense he had left. As soon as Paul laid eyes on the scene in the living room, however, he realized he had much bigger problems.

Jacob sat on the armchair, like he always did, while Sam and Emily stood beside the walkway to the kitchen. A few werewolves lazed about on the furniture while the majority of the pack made themselves at home on the floor. Considering the pack’s rise in numbers, there wasn’t any floor space to spare.

Carlisle Cullen stood with his back to the fireplace, hands wringing and eyes flitting to look at every werewolf in the room. Leah, perched on the arm of the couch, gave a mock salute when she saw Paul. She was the only one to acknowledge him. The rest of the pack watched the doctor. No one assumed the bloodsucker’s news was of a good variety, but his apparent nerves heightened the highly strung atmosphere.

The tension in the air was unlike anything Paul had ever experienced.

Paul stood on the other side of the walkway to the kitchen, leaning against the wall, pretending like he knew exactly what to do with his arms. His ears caught the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway, and from the labored gait, he knew exactly who it was.

When Y/N came around the corner, Paul’s heart seized in his throat.

He’d forgotten how beautiful she was. It wasn’t just one part of her. It wasn’t only the way her hair framed her face or the sensuous lips or the innate grace she carried, even with her limp. No, her beauty belonged in the whole picture, the balance and colors used in this living painting.

His insides leapt as she came closer. He wasn’t sure if he’d been existing these past few days because to be seen by her was to exist, and it’d been far too long since they’d last seen each other.

Paul’s brain came to a screeching halt.

Those thoughts weren’t his.

Shut up, Paul grumbled at the wolf.

Still, the wolf barked in protest as Y/N limped right past him without batting an eye.

“Y/N,” Sam said congenially.

Instead of saying anything back or even nodding, she pursed her lips, throwing a glare in his direction. When Jacob got up to offer him her seat, she fixed him with the same cold stare and limped over to stand by the wall opposite Paul instead.

Paul cocked his head, suddenly curious.

Why was she behaving with such hostility? There was no way she’d forgiven Paul for the comments he’d made after changing her tire, but she wouldn’t take that out on Sam or Jacob. She was unreasonable, but not that unreasonable.

Which meant something else was going on.

Whatever it was, it most likely had something to do with Carlisle’s studious effort to avoid looking in Y/N’s direction. Didn’t the two of them work together? They’d acted fairly chummy before, so why suddenly did Carlisle look as if there was a tennis ball stuck in his throat?

Paul suddenly straightened.

Had some sort of romantic advance been made? Had Y/N…

He didn’t want to finish the thought, not when her smell was calling to him. Not when it took all his strength not to give into the gravity she’d always seemed to have around him. Besides, the doctor was happily married…right?

But what if Y/N was attracted to him? It would make sense because they were both in the medical field, but she wasn’t supposed to be with the bloodsucker, she was supposed to be with him. No one could ever be good enough for her, but Paul was the only one who could be sure to try every day to keep her safe and happy.

Really, man? Paul asked the wolf. Calm down.

“Alright, Carlisle,” Sam said, arms folded in the stance he typically took when he was trying to look authoritative (Paul had once caught him practicing it in a mirror). “What’s the news?”

Carlisle cleared his throat, and Paul couldn’t help noticing he now looked like a high school boy about to confess to his parents that he’d accidentally gotten a girl pregnant. “Um, well, my family and I…we-we decided not to, uh, tell you about this, but with the events of late, it’s probably best that you know.”

Paul exchanged a nervous look with Jacob. A bloodsucker secret? This couldn’t be good.

“You may recall that some humans have blood that sings to vampires.” Carlisle took a deep breath. “These ‘singers’ are nearly impossible for vampires to resist, especially if they haven’t practiced resisting human blood before.”

“So…it’s like how Bella’s blood sang to Edward?” Jacob asked.

Y/N hadn’t known that, judging by the slight rise of her eyebrows.

Paul hated the fact he’d even noticed.

“Yes, like that.” Carlisle scratched his neck. Then, his eyes darted in Y/N’s direction, as if it were uncontrollable.

A flare of some green-eyed, protective need rang through Paul, like Carlisle’s look was a mallet hitting Paul’s bell. “Out with it already,” Paul grumbled, curling his hands into first to keep from storming towards the vampire and bashing his face in. “Some of us have patrols to do.”

Carlisle shoved his hands into his pockets. “As you know, werewolves and vampires are natural enemies.” He paused again, and Paul only just resisted the urge to walk over and shake the words out of him. “I think that’s why this vampire is hanging around.”

Confused murmurs erupted in the room, as mostly everyone still didn’t understand what Carlisle was getting at.

“What didn’t your family want to tell us?” Sam asked, trying to get straight to the point.

“The blood of a wolf’s imprint sings to all vampires,” Carlisle said.

The whole world ceased to spin, teetering dangerously on its axis.

Paul gaped at the doctor.

How long had the Cullens been sitting on this? Did the Cullens have any idea how much danger they’d put Emily in by not telling the pack this information? Or Kim, Jared’s imprint? Or Quil’s kindergarten imprint?

Of course, the Cullens kept this to themselves. Renesmee, being half vampire, was most likely immune to this.

A few growls sounded around Paul, and he knew he was not the only one having a hard time refraining from violence.

Out of the corner of his eye, Paul saw Sam shift to stand in between the doctor and Emily. “You’re saying,” Sam said slowly, like he was imagining what Carlisle would look like with a broken nose, “that vampires are attracted to the blood of our imprints?”

Carlisle nodded solemnly. “I think that’s why this vampire is hunting Y/N.”

Paul froze.

In his preoccupation, he hadn’t realized it wasn’t just Emily, Kim, Claire and Renesmee who’d been endangered by the keeping of this secret.

Y/N was too.

Had someone dumped a colony of fire ants on Paul? He could’ve sworn something was burning his skin, crawling up and down his back and neck. The guilt that had been plaguing him earlier was nothing compared to the tidal wave that rose up in him now. He nearly choked as the full weight of the news sunk in. It was Paul’s fault Y/N was in danger. The vampire wouldn’t be hunting her with such an intensity if Paul hadn’t imprinted on her.

Paul’s eyes slowly slid to her, suddenly wishing she would look at him so he could guess what she was feeling.

But Y/N’s eyes stayed on the doctor as a mirthless laugh tumbled out of her mouth. “You’re telling me–” she pushed off from the wall to step in Carlisle’s direction, “–that not only am I stuck with him–” she pointed an accusing finger straight at Paul, “–as my supposed soulmate, I’m now an irresistible snack for all vampires?”

Carlisle winced. “That’s a bit harsh–”

Another bitter and grating laugh came from Y/N, and Paul felt like his insides were shriveling and crumbling away.

“Dr. Cullen, I think you should leave now.” Sam’s voice was tense, leaving no room for argument. With the speed Carlisle headed for the door, he wasn’t looking for any room anyways.

Unfortunately, Carlisle left behind only one target for Y/N’s wrath.

She rounded on Paul. “You.” Paul was glad just then for Y/N’s limp, because she wouldn’t be able to chase him if he needed to make a run for it. “You and your imprinting!”

“Y/N, that’s enough,” Sam said the same tone he’d used on Carlisle.

But of course, where the doctor had fled, Y/N stood her ground. “I’m not one of your lackeys!” she spat at him. “I have a job, Sam, a life that I’ve been shut away from because you guys can’t catch this stupid vampire. And now, you’re only going to shut me up longer while you cross your fingers and twiddle your thumbs!”

Paul knew he should get involved and make an attempt to calm Y/N down or reason with her. But he couldn’t make himself move towards her.

“We’ll protect you,” Sam cut in, “just as we have been.”

Y/N advanced on him. “What, are you going to tell me to be patient and sit around this house while I continue to wait for you guys to save the day?!” Sam opened his mouth, but nothing came out, which is how Paul knew that was exactly what he’d been going to say. Y/N shook her head so violently that a lock of hair fell into her face. “No.” She tucked the lock of hair behind her ear in a movement that somehow made Paul’s chest ache. “No, now it’s my turn.”

“What are you going to do?” Sam asked. “Chase the vampire down yourself?”

The little jab at Y/N’s limp made Paul’s breath catch. He knew that Sam’s frustration wasn’t really aimed at Y/N, he knew that. But his hands still rolled into fists, and it took every bit of his strength to keep from flinging himself at the alpha.

But Y/N didn’t cower or cringe, she only held herself taller. “No, because as you guys have so kindly proved, chasing this vampire doesn’t amount to anything.” Sam’s face soured, and Paul’s shoulders relaxed from their previously murderous stance as a smile fought to break free. Clearly she didn’t need him fighting her battles.

“We need to lure him,” Y/N said.

All the members of the pack looked at each other, and Paul didn’t have to be in his wolf form to pick up on their desperation. “How?” Jared asked.

“Bait,” was Y/N’s response.

Every cell in Paul’s body rebelled as his head filled with the yips of rejection from the wolf. “Absolutely not,” he blurted out, causing everyone in the room to look at him, Y/N included. It was hard to focus when he could see the full scope of the anger simmering in her expression, but he managed. “We’re not putting you in danger.”

“I don’t need your permission, and I certainly don’t need any of your protective wolf bullshit.” Paul couldn’t hold back his flinch. “It’s my life on the line, and I’ve had enough of sitting back and hoping that you guys will do your jobs. I say we’re setting a trap.”

Y/N’s icy words made Paul feel cold all over, but he wasn’t about to back down. “Do you have any idea how painful it is to be sucked dry of all your blood?” he asked her. He intended for it to match her levels of venom, but the question came out softly.

Y/N’s eyes blazed hotter. “I’m no stranger to pain.”

The wolf whimpered. She didn’t deserve pain, nor any other discomfort this world could subject her to. She deserved sunshine. And bouquets of flowers. Gentle kisses and back massages. Bubble baths and–

“Fine then,” Paul managed to say around the wolf’s cascade of thoughts. “Do you have any idea what happens to a wolf when its imprint dies?”

A smile appeared on Y/N’s face, an expression of pure spite. “Well, you’ve wanted to be rid of me since day one, so it seems like a win-win for you.”

All of the sinew in Paul’s body rotted into pain, and he inhaled sharply. He deserved that comment, he knew he did, but it was like Y/N thrust a knife into some deep part of him. Whether that part belonged to him or the wolf, Paul didn’t know.

Not looking the least bit apologetic, Y/N addressed the pack. “The vampire wants my blood. And thankfully for us, I’ve been drawing blood since I started med school.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “You want to draw some of your blood and use it as a trap?”

Y/N nodded. “Carlisle said it was nearly impossible to resist an imprint’s blood when it’s inside the body. Imagine how irresistible it would be outside of the body.”

Bile burned in Paul’s throat at the idea of any of Y/N’s blood being outside her body.

“It could work,” Leah mused, and Seth elbowed her. “What?” she snapped. “Y/N’s right, our way hasn’t worked. Maybe it’s time for a change of tactic.”

Paul glared at Leah, but she didn’t bat an eye.

“I’m down,” Seth said, looking completely at ease in his position sprawled on the floor. Paul opened his mouth to argue.

“I’m in too.” Jared’s eyes were far away, likely centered around a fair-haired classmate in need of extra protection.

“Sam?” Jacob pushed, and Paul wheeled to look at the alpha.

Sam glanced at his wife, and Paul knew what he was thinking.

If they used Y/N as bait and caught the vampire, Emily would be safe.

Sam rolled his shoulders, preparing for action. “Let’s do it.”

Paul stared around the room at the pack, at his brothers, who’d been gushing about their imprints and telling Paul that he would one day understand. Yet every one of them had thrown Y/N into the way of danger for either a chance at a bloodsucker hunt or their own imprint’s safety.

Paul’s blood boiled, bringing his body temperature even hotter.

He wanted to rip out his pack’s throats.

And what’s worse, he knew it was only his own imprint bond making him feel that way.

This was why.

This whole situation offered more proof than Paul could ever need about the imprinting bond. It always, always did more harm than good.

As Y/N and the pack launched into brainstorming, Paul shrank against the wall, wishing he could be alone.

He wanted nothing to do with this plan.

“What do you mean I have to go to the hospital?!” Paul roared at his alpha. It didn’t matter if the two werewolves were all the way across the room; Paul’s raised voice still made me jump.

He cut me a glance, something urgent simmering in his face, but he turned back to Sam too quickly for me to decipher where the heat was coming from.

Sam didn’t even blink at Paul’s commonplace display of temper. “We need Y/N’s blood, and the supplies necessary for that are at the hospital. Plus, this way Y/N can check out Emily and the baby to make sure they’re okay.”

“So then you go with them,” Paul snarked. “Why is my presence necessary?”

“Because I’m driving Emily home after we check the baby. And because someone needs to protect Y/N while she draws the blood. Because we don’t want her alone in that hospital with Dr. Cullen. Because she’s your imprint and I’m your alpha.” Sam arched an eyebrow. “Do you need more reasons?”

I glanced at Paul, who, noticing my attention, sat down on the armchair, frowning. I rolled my eyes at his petulance. If I could stomach being in the same room with him, he could too.

“Emily, are you almost ready?” Sam called, rubbing his forehead.

“I can’t tie my shoes!” she hollered back from the bedroom.

“Just wear slip-on shoes then!”

“Sam Levi Uley, stop being a jerk and help me tie my shoelaces!”

All the worry on Sam’s face melted away, giving room for a smitten smile. “Coming,” he said, too quietly for Emily to hear.

The sweet tone of his words only made it all the more awkward when he disappeared into the bedroom, leaving me alone in the living room with Paul.

His eyes rested on the wall. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought he was internally debating something dull, such as the best technique for brushing one’s teeth. But there was no mistaking the way his fingers gripped the arms of the chair or the way his arm muscles were flexing, allowing a sliver of his tattoo to peek out from his short sleeve.

He hadn’t so much as attempted to start a conversation with me, not about my blood singing to vampires, nor what he’d said after changing my tire. Part of me wondered if he waited because he wanted me to break the silence first.

But I didn’t have anything to say that I could tell Paul.

Like, for instance, how would I ever be able to convince a vampire to bite me but leave enough blood in my body to circulate the venom that would change me? If my blood was irresistible, no vampire, no matter how disciplined, would be able to resist even a drop of my blood. It wouldn’t just be a risk, it would be suicide.

Once again, my quest had become harder and more steps were added to my plan.

Now this vampire had to be dealt with before Paul and I could focus on breaking the bond, and there was a chance of my blood remaining irresistible even after the bond was broken.

The idea of getting that far and still failing was…unthinkable.

I tried to shake off the hopelessness swirling around me like fog. Becoming a vampire was my only hope and had been for months. I wouldn’t stop, not even if it seemed impossible.

I walked into the kitchen, pouring myself a glass of water. I’d barely taken a sip when Emily waddled into the kitchen. “I’m driving,” she announced.

“Do you think that’s wise?” Sam asked gingerly. His soft tone didn’t land as intended, for Emily turned to glare at her husband, who seemed to shrink a little.

“I’m with Sam,” I said, drawing Emily’s wrathful gaze. But unlike Sam, I’d dealt with expecting mothers before. “Your movement is limited, and that’s not safe for you, your baby, or anyone riding with you.”

Emily narrowed her eyes, but I could tell by her silence that she saw my point. Out of anyone in La Push, my MD probably had the most sway with her. “I’m not riding with Paul,” she finally said flatly. “He’s a maniac when he drives.”

Paul started grumbling under his breath.

I smiled at Emily, slightly pleased that she’d annoyed him. “You can ride with me.”

“Absolutely not,” Sam interjected. “There needs to be one wolf per car, in case the vampire shows up.” Emily’s obvious exasperation didn’t seem to have the same effect this time around. Sam might’ve been willing to quail on some things, but when it came to vampires and safety, he’d never change his mind, not with the recent news from Carlisle.

Then the whole room seemed to come to a realization at the same time.

If Emily wouldn’t ride with Paul and Sam wouldn’t allow her to ride with me…

I shot a glance at Paul, who glanced at me at the same time. He looked away quickly, but I just narrowed my eyes.

If he didn’t already regret imprinting on me, he would soon.

With his superhuman lungs, one would think Paul’s lung capacity would be upgraded as well.

As it was, holding his breath lasted him less than a minute.

Her smell clung to his skin like humidity, and like humidity, it was causing him to sweat badly enough to need a shower. It was difficult to keep still. His limbs contained all this unnecessary energy, making time seem slower. Any time Emily’s car came into view on the road in front of them, Paul stiffened. The anger at his pack had yet to dissipate, and Sam was the worst of the lot.

Y/N’s eyes never strayed from the road, and her ramrod posture made Paul’s back hurt. Paul didn’t know how it was humanly possible, but she looked even less comfortable than he was.

When they passed the spot where Paul had changed her tire several days ago, Paul shrunk in his seat a little. Should he apologize? Would Y/N not appreciate the reminder of what’d been said? Or would this awkward tension in the air remain as it was until he apologized?

Apologize, the wolf sang. Apologize, apologize, apologize.

Paul ignored the chanting as much as he could. Despite what the pack and the elders might think, Paul owed Y/N the same she owed him: nothing. He tried to take a steadying breath, but the air laced with her smell did nothing for his inner turmoil.

One step at a time, Paul told himself. First, defeat the vampire. Then, break the bond.

A sharp melody sounded, startling Paul, and the phone in Y/N’s cupholder started vibrating.

“Can you look at that?” she asked.

Paul squirmed. “Umm…I’d rather not.”

“Oh for goodness sake,” Y/N said with a roll of her eyes, “ look at the caller ID.”

“You look at it,” Paul shot back.

“What is your problem?” she snapped. “I’m busy driving, just pick up the phone.”

“No.”

“Pick. It. Up.”

“No!”

“Now!”

“NO!”

The ringing stopped, and Y/N’s fingers whitened as her grip on the steering wheel increased. “Great, now I missed a call because you wouldn’t just look at the caller ID.”

Paul crossed his arms. “I didn’t want to snoop.” Surely she could appreciate that.

“It’s not snooping if you have my permission.” A muscle in her jaw rippled, and he strongly suspected she was grinding her teeth, adding to the bite in her voice. “Curiosity is the most natural thing in the world. The human race would’ve died out long ago if they hadn’t been curious.”

Her clipped tone provided the spark for Paul’s short fuse. “I’d hardly call respecting your privacy an action that will annihilate the human race.”

“Why can’t you just do what I ask?” Y/N grouched. “What’s so hard about picking up a phone?”

“Exactly, so pick it up yourself.”

“I’m driving.”

Paul threw his hands in the air. “What’s the big deal? There’s hardly anyone else on the road and it would only take you a few seconds!”

“A few seconds is all it takes to get in an accident!” Y/N burst out. Her chest heaved, her body trying to keep up with the rush of blood towards her reddening face.

Paul stared at the angry splotches on her cheeks. Why had she spoken like that? Like it was a confession born of unspeakable events? Admitting to being an uptight driver wasn’t some dark and terrible secret.

Y/N shifted her left leg, and with that small action, it clicked.

“You were in an accident.” Paul shifted so he was facing her. “That’s how you injured your leg.” And that was why she was so militant with seatbelts and not texting while driving.

Y/N grit her teeth, but she repositioned her left leg again.

“How long ago?” Paul asked before he could stop himself.

“Mind your own business,” was the cutting reply.

But while her hostility was usually effective in ending any more questions, it couldn’t stop Paul’s curiosity this time. “How bad was the accident?”

“I said–”

“What kind of injury was it? Did you have surgery? Did you break a bone?”

“–mind your own business!”

Paul studied her. He’d freely admit to anyone that he didn’t know his imprint that well, but if the accident was insignificant, Y/N would’ve admitted it, simply to correct him. The only reason she’d be cagey was if it truly was a horrifying event.

She wasn’t angry.

She was afraid.

His stomach sank.

He’d assumed that Y/N’s cynicism and rigidity had been attitudes gained after a lifelong struggle. But if it was an accident, it could’ve happened recently. Was that why she’d dropped everything and moved across the country? Was she struggling to cope? Jared’s words came back to him. Right now, she doesn’t have anybody but us. How alone was she? And how alone had she been when she’d been in that accident?

The ringtone started up again, interrupting Paul’s whizzing thoughts.

Y/N didn’t say anything. Apparently, her tight lips outweighed her sharp tongue.

Paul reached for the phone. “It says dad.”

If Y/N was grateful to him for finally telling her who it was, she didn’t show it. “Just let it ring. I’ll call him later.”

“Okay.” Paul gingerly set her phone back into the car cup holder.

Y/N didn’t say anything, clearly preferring silence. But Paul’s mind was racing too much to call the atmosphere ‘silent’.

Leading Sam, Emily, and Paul through the Emergency Room entrance was mortifying.

Even at eight months pregnant, Emily was still walking faster than I was. Apparently carrying a baby the size of a coconut still didn’t compare to my limp. The back of my neck felt hot, as if all the staring somehow kept raising my body temperature.

All four of us squeezed into an exam room that was clearly not intended to fit a pregnant woman, her doctor, and two overly protective werewolves.

As soon as Emily got onto the exam table, I pulled over the ultrasound machine, accidentally clipping Paul’s foot with its wheels. “Ouch,” he grumbled. I ignored him, focusing on the Ecovue gel bottle.

“Might be a little cold,” I warned her.

Emily didn’t flinch, her eyes focused on the ultrasound screen that wasn’t displaying anything yet.

When I pressed the ultrasound wand to her stomach, Sam shuffled closer, capturing her hand and lacing it with his. A tiny heartbeat emitted from the monitor, and I glanced up at the virile alpha to see his eyes glistening. Emily smiled widely, squeezing her husband’s hand. “That’s our baby.”

“Hello, baby,” Sam said quietly.

I studied the pair. It wasn’t unusual for ultrasounds to be emotional events, but why was Sam behaving as if–

“I’m sorry,” Sam mumbled, looking down at his wife with guilt deeply etched into his expression. “We haven’t even discussed names.”

Emily reached up a hand to cup his face. “It’s okay. You’re out there saving the world.”

Oh.

Sam hadn’t been to an ultrasound yet.

Feeling awkward, I glanced over at Paul.

Paul was looking anywhere but at Emily’s belly or the monitor. His eyes skimmed the cabinets around us, the art intended to be comforting, and even the jars of alcohol pads and tongue depressors. If it wasn’t somewhat inappropriate to laugh during such a sweet moment between a husband and wife, I would’ve.

I froze the screen before withdrawing the wand and cleaning it up. “Your due date’s in a month.”

Emily tore her eyes away from Sam. “There’s a midwife in La Push that agreed to work with me.” Clearly she remembered what I’d told her at the last ultrasound.

“You’re having the baby at home then?”

“Yes,” Emily said, sounding extremely confident while Sam looked anything but.

“Honey, are you sure that’s wise?” Sam glanced at the frozen screen. “What if something goes wrong?”

“That’s what the midwife is there for.”

“Still, I’d feel better if we came here.”

Sensing an argument brewing, I got to my feet, wiping away the gel on Emily’s stomach. “I might very well still be sleeping on your couch when you go into labor, so if it makes you feel more confident, I can be there for the birth.”

Sam eyed me, and I knew what he wanted to ask.

“I’m an MD. I’m only a month short of having completed an obstetrics residency. Between the midwife and I, your wife will be just fine.”

Emily clapped her hands. “Perfect. There’s the plan.” She tried to sit up, and Sam immediately helped her before she could fall back again. “Now I’d like to go home.” She awkwardly slid off the exam table before making her way to the door.

I busied myself with resetting the ultrasound machine.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sam follow Emily, stopping in front of Paul.

“You’ve got her?” he asked quietly. Was that remorse on the alpha’s face?

“Yeah.” Paul’s equally soft response spoke of dark promises.

The exam door opened and closed before I realized which ‘her’ they were talking about. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I decided to say nothing as I led Paul out of the ER.

I expected him to trail somewhere behind me or in front of me, but instead, he kept time with my labored pace. Somehow, that annoyed me more than if he’d gone ahead or behind me.

He reached the elevator before I did, but instead of pushing the button, he shoved his hands in his pockets. I sent him a suspicious look.

What was with the sudden gentleman act?

I pushed the button, and the doors dinged as they opened. Paul and I walked inside, and I selected the button for the second floor.

“Hold the door!”

Paul stuck his hand through the rapidly disappearing entrance, and the doors slid open, revealing none other than Carlisle Cullen.

He came to an abrupt stop. If vampires had any blood in their body, all of Carlisle’s would’ve drained from his face just then. Was this reaction due to seeing me?

Then the lift started to shake, creaking and groaning.

I turned to ask Paul if Forks often got earthquakes when I saw that his whole body was convulsing, and he was staring daggers at the doctor.

Carlisle fell back a step. “I’ll take the next one.”

Paul’s glare didn’t lessen, even as the doors closed, shielding the vampire from view. The floor of the elevator continued to tremble underneath my feet.

“Paul?” I asked warily.

The shuddering didn’t cease.

“Paul?!”

His eyes remained on the elevator doors. Was he having some sort of seizure? I set a hand on Paul’s shoulder, shaking him to get his attention. “Paul!”

Paul blinked, trance seemingly broken. Then his attention shifted to my hand, still resting on his shoulder.

I withdrew it. “What was that?”

“The wolf,” Paul grumbled, his hands reaching up to fiddle with his stubby braid. “Neither of us are very happy with that bloodsucker right now.”

I couldn’t argue with that, so I led Paul to my office. “Wait here,” I told him before limping to the nearest med supply closet.

Paul, of course, didn’t comply.

I rolled my eyes. “I told you–”

“I can’t protect you if I’m not with you.” Paul folded his arms imposingly for emphasis, and I tried to ignore the muscle bulging off his arms.

“You’re not authorized to be in the supply closet.”

Paul shrugged. “Neither is the vampire. I doubt authorization matters much to him.”

My fingers itched to push him back to my office. With great effort, I continued towards the closet. The faster the blood was drawn, the sooner we could leave and the sooner we didn’t have to be around each other.

Alcohol wipes.

Medical tape.

Gloves.

I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to carry all the supplies I needed with one arm. Without looking away from the labeled bins, I handed the box of gloves to him, half expecting to hear it thudding against the floor. But no such noise sounded. I handed the alcohol wipes to him, and he took them without comment.

Tourniquet.

Gauze.

Empty blood bags.

“Two?” Paul blurted out.

I quirked an eyebrow. “What?”

Paul shifted, and the box of gloves fell out of his grip. He tried to catch it, but failed. We both crouched at the same time, our hands brushing as we reached for the box. I expected him to jerk his hand away like he always did upon physical contact with me, but he didn’t. He picked up the box like nothing had happened.

Well, not nothing.

There was a peculiar and unsettling contusion in his face. He looked…concerned?

I made to brush past him, but he sidled into my path with such severity, it nearly made me lose my balance. “Two bags seems like a lot.”

“Paul–”

“How much of your blood is two bags?”

“It’s not a big deal.” I tried to walk around, but Paul planted himself directly in front of the door.

“How much?” Paul pressed.

“It’s two pints of blood.” I made another attempt to leave, but Paul threw a hand into my path, somehow balancing all the supplies in one arm.

“How many pints of blood do you have total?”

“About ten.”

Paul’s jaw went slack. “You want to draw a fifth of the blood in your whole body?”

“The more blood used for the trap, “ I explained as patiently as I could muster, “the more likely it’s going to work.”

Paul was shaking his head long before I finished speaking. “Absolutely not. Losing that much blood is not good for you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, have you been to med school? If you had, you would know that blood loss is traumatic at 30 to 40%. Clearly I’m not planning on getting to that point.” Paul didn’t budge, and my patience frayed. “Oh for the love of–what do you want from me?” I nearly shouted at him.

“I want you to stick to one bag.”

I folded my arms. “Not your decision to make.”

Paul opened his arms, all the materials crumbling to the floor as he set his hands on his hips. “If you try to do more than one, cinnamon sugar, I’ll haul you over my shoulder and carry you out of here. So please just stick with one.”

“You’re threatening me?”

“I said ‘please’.”

I rolled my eyes. “So you’re nicely threatening me?” His only response was to smile proudly. My frustration reared its head, and I quickly tamed it. “Look, we should get started. We can argue about the number of bags later.”

Paul was already shaking his head. “Oh, no, no, no, no, you don’t get to dodge this–”

“The longer we stand here, not getting any of my blood,” I said with as much composure as possible when talking to a headstrong werewolf, “the longer we stay here, away from the pack and exposed to danger.”

After a moment, Paul nodded and bent down to regather the supplies.

As we walked back to my office, I realized it hadn’t even occurred to me to lie to Paul. If I’d said it was 20 or even 10%, we wouldn’t have had to compromise. So why hadn’t I just said that?

I shoved the question away with all my might. It was time to focus.

I prepared all the supplies for the blood draw, and Paul stood, his hands in his pockets as he glanced around at my office. “I need your help,” I told Paul. He stayed where he was, warily watching me. “I can’t wrap a tourniquet around my own arm.”

“I…” Paul scrunched his nose. “I don’t know how.”

I opened my mouth to say something snarky, but then he glanced around the office again. The airs of arrogance that normally pooled around him had gone.

He’s embarrassed, I realized with no small amount of shock. I wanted to laugh at the idea of this massive, arrogant man being embarrassed about anything whatsoever.

A small part of me whispered that if I wanted to make him feel the way I felt by the side of that road, I had an opening. I could bring him to his knees.

But for some reason, I couldn’t make myself do it.

What was happening to me? Was I losing my edge?

It was Sam and Emily’s fault for being so loving and adoring to each other, it’d softened me up.

“I’ll show you what to do,” I said, my aggravation bleeding through.

Paul reluctantly came closer. His warm fingers brushed my upper arm as he followed my instructions, tying the tourniquet in the exact place it was supposed to be. “What’s the tourniquet got to do with drawing blood?” he asked.

“It dilates the veins, making them easier to access.” I pressed the tip of my middle finger to the inside of my arm, trying to locate my antecubital fossa.

One of the most random things I’d learned in my medical career is how bouncy veins were to the touch, especially when a tourniquet was on. Veins were thinner, had lower blood pressure, and held more blood than arteries. Veins were also closer to the surface of the skin.

I finally located the vein and lifted up the needle.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re going to stick a needle in yourself?” Paul looked rather green all of the sudden. “That needle looks big, why does it look so big?”

“I didn’t think you’d be so squeamish,” I replied. My arm was starting to tingle a little bit, letting me know the tourniquet had already been on for quite a while.

Paul stiffened. “I’m not squeamish.”

“Then get back over here and help me.”

“Help you?” Paul’s shrill voice filled the office. “Help you with what?”

“I need you to hold the skin tight so the vein doesn’t roll as I try to get it with the needle.”

Paul took a nervous step back, his arms posed in front of his body like he was in a boxing ring. “Why can’t Dr. Cullen do it?”

“Oh, now you trust him?” I scoffed. Why would Paul suddenly swivel to the opposite side of the emotional spectrum when it came to the doctor?

“No, I don’t trust him,” Paul declared. “It’s just that…he’s probably more qualified to do this than I am.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll tell you exactly what to do.” When Paul didn’t move, I tried to adapt a more comforting tone. “Look, all you have to do is hold the skin tight. You don’t have to watch me stick the needle in or anything. It’ll be easy.”

“Easy?” Paul repeated sarcastically. “Nothing about sticking a needle in your body should be easy.”

The tingling in my arm increased. “Will you just sit down and help?” I swallowed hard, annoyed with having to beg, but having no other choice. “Please?”

Paul slowly lumbered over to the other chair and lowered himself into it. It took a great deal of instruction, but eventually, Paul correctly held the skin taut as I held the needle, hovering just above the vein.

“One,” I said softly to myself, making sure my grip on the needle was relaxed, but firm. “Two.” I took a deep breath, looking up to see Paul’s face turned far away from my arm. “Three!”

The needle went in painlessly enough, but there was no blood flow. “Crap,” I muttered.

Paul shifted slightly. “What?”

“I missed it.”

“Missed what?”

“The vein.”

Paul’s head whipped around with so much force, the motion probably could’ve powered the hospital. “What?!” His eyes fell upon the needle in my arm. “Oh my gosh.” He clamped a hand over his face, blocking his vision.

“I need you to hold the needle for me.”

Paul’s hand flew away from his eyes, and he blinked at me. “Oh, hell no.”

“Either you hold it or I just let it go, and I’m sure I don’t have to explain how dangerous it is to just leave the needle half in, half out of my body.” Paul gulped as I guided his hand to the needle, my fingers showing him how to hold it properly. As soon as I let go, Paul muttered something in a different language, staring at the wall behind my head.

“Give me…a second.” I felt around the needle with my free fingers, scouting out the skin for the familiar buoyant feel indicative of a vein.

“Just tell me when it’s over,” Paul said, shutting his eyes.

Again, the urge to laugh nearly overwhelmed me. I paused in my search, looking at his face. It occurred to me that I hadn’t really actually ever studied his face. Hot was too crude a word, and handsome was too virtuous of one. He truly lay somewhere in between, forever resting in an area as gray as his fur. If I leaned forward, I’d be close enough to kiss him.

That observation shook me out of my reverie, and I refocused, finding the vein and taking the needle from Paul to redirect it towards the vein. My effort was rewarded as blood started flowing through the tube and into the first bag.

“I’m done,” I told Paul as I ripped a piece of medical tape with my teeth and secured the needle.

Paul opened his eyes, took one look at the needle in my arm, and closed his eyes again.

I couldn’t stop my laugh. “If I’d known that shoving a needle into my arm was the way to shut you up, I would’ve done it ages ago.”

“Okay, calm down there, sugar.”

“Why do you call me that?” The question was out before I realized curiosity was the thing fluttering in my chest.

Paul cracked his eyes open, his attention centering on my face instead of my arm. “No reason.” His tone was breezy enough, but a faint blush started on his cheeks, magnifying my interest.

“Oh, there’s definitely a reason. And since I’m the one with a needle in my arm, I think I deserve to know.”

“Hey look, the bag’s a quarter full already,” Paul said in a poor attempt to distract me.

I checked to make sure the tape was still secure. “You’ll have to get the next bag ready.”

Paul’s head jerked up. “We’re not doing another bag.”

“It’s–”

“It’s your blood, and you have a medical degree, and you’re stubborn, but that’s still not enough to convince me,” Paul replied. “I’ll yank that needle out if I have to.” He reached out, like he was preparing to take it out right then.

I sat back in my chair, feeling slightly woozy. “You could do that, but you could do it improperly and give me a hematoma. Or even cause me to lose more blood.”

Paul froze. “I could hurt you?”

For all my knowledge, I couldn’t quite discern the meaning of his tone. Was he concerned again? Or was he still feeling squeamish?

And why did I care?

“Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal.” Intrigue shone in Paul’s eyes as he gestured for me to go on. “We’ll stop at one bag if you tell me why you call me ‘cinnamon sugar’.”

Paul sat back in his chair, folding his arms. “This is extortion.”

“What can I say?” I said with a casual shrug. “I get what I want.”

“Do you?” Paul mused.

“Yes.”

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

“Always?”

I hesitated for a moment. “Yes.”

Paul scratched his chin thoughtfully. “No deal.”

I blinked. “No deal? Why not?”

“Well, you did say you always get everything you want.”

“So now you’re trying to spite me by withholding information?”

“Possibly.” Paul leaned closer to me, a smirk toying with his lips. “Or maybe I just want to see what lengths you’ll go to in order to get the answer.”

Something in my chest danced, curiously rising to skim the surface of his brown eyes. “You just love making things difficult.”

Paul scoffed. “That’s all you, sugar.” He reached out to fiddle with the blood bag. “That’s…” He looked two seconds from hurling. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“We should get ready to hook up the second bag.”

Paul made a noise of disbelief. “We’ve gone over this. We’re not doing a second bag.”

“Unless you want to ‘fess up, yes, we are.” I reached over to my desk where the second bag lay, intending to prepare it, but Paul snatched it up.

“No, we’re not.”

I made another pass at the bag, but my reaction time was so sluggish, Paul easily lifted the bag above his head before I got anywhere near it. Not one to be outdone, I stood up, stretching out my hand for the bag.

I’d underestimated the effect of blood loss.

I swayed, my center of balance shifting over to my left side, and my bad knee buckled. I nearly lurched forward, only just leaning back to allow myself to fall back into my chair instead of forward onto the floor.

My heart thundered in my chest, and I knew I couldn’t blame it on having less blood to pump through my body.

Falling.

I’d done it often when my knee first sustained its injury. After the accident and surgery, I’d spent hours doing physical therapy, doing everything I possibly could to restrengthen the muscles around my knee. Unfortunately, knee injuries involved muscles, bones, and ligaments. The complexity of the joint fed into the complexity of injuries to that joint.

The bleakness of my prognosis wasn’t something to face, it was something to avoid. Transitioning to a vampire was the only way to fully avoid it.

“We’re doing two bags,” I said stubbornly. “This trap has to work.”

Paul kneeled down, setting the blood bag on the floor. “Stop at one bag.”

“No.” I shook my head and regretted it as my world spun. “We need two.”

Paul got to his feet, resting a hand on each armrest of my chair, trapping me into it. He opened his mouth to speak and shut it again, eyes dropping to the blood bag. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Counteroffer. We do two bags, and you tell me about your accident.”

My heart tripped, falling headfirst into a hasty pace.

Brown eyes dipped to my chest all the sudden, and I remembered the comment Paul’d made about being able to hear my heartbeat.

I didn’t want to give him answers.

Couldn’t give him answers.

“No deal.” I pushed at his shoulders, shoving him away from me.

Paul stepped back, folding his arms. “Since I know you’re used to winning, I’m not sure you know what happens when two people reach an impasse.” I opened my mouth, and Paul held up a finger. “They compromise.”

“Compromise?” I laughed.

Paul didn’t. “Compromise. It’s the basis of every relationship.”

“You’re just saying that because you want me to agree. If I say honesty is at the basis of every relationship, would you tell me why you call me ‘cinnamon sugar’?”

Paul sighed, rubbing his forehead. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“Do I strike you as someone who lets things go?” He paused, slowly raising his head to look at me, a sudden sadness in his eyes. I shot him a confused look. “What’s your problem?”

“I’m sorry.”

I sat back in my chair, hardly believing my ears. Did he just…? “What are you apologizing for?”

“For what I said by the side of the road.”

His words rebounded again, as unbidden as every other time they’d replayed in my head.

Wanting to be rid of you has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with you!

My worst fear, that something really was wrong with me, confirmed by my ‘soulmate’ himself.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Paul wrinkled his nose. “It does. I don’t have a problem with your…” He gestured towards my knee brace.

Discomfort rustled its wings. “Like I said, it doesn’t–”

“Yes, it does,” Paul said firmly. “I was frustrated, and I said things I didn't mean.”

“I don’t really–”

“I think you’re a very capable person.”

As compliments always did, his words made me want to cringe, to retract my turtle head back into my turtle shell and avoid uncomfortable things until they were long gone. “Can we drop this?” I asked, fiddling with the needle so I didn’t have to look at Paul.

But Paul was on a roll. “I mean, you can’t change a tire, but I can’t stick a needle in someone to get blood and whatever else you doctors do, so it all works out.”

Warmth blossomed in my cheeks like a mellow fever. “It’s not a big deal.”

“And I know I said I wanted to be rid of you, but it’s the imprint bond I don’t like.” My desk creaked as Paul sat precariously on its edge. “I could’ve imprinted on anybody else, and it wouldn’t’ve made a difference.”

I abandoned the needle, looking up at Paul.

“I mean it,” he said, correctly decoding my expression.

“Whatever,” I muttered. I started to cross my legs, but my good knee bonked against the metal of my brace, so I gave up.

“Am I forgiven?”

“Paul–” I began to say, more than ready to move on to anything else.

“Am I forgiven?” he said louder.

“Yes, you’re forgiven!” I snapped, focusing on the irritation at his persistence instead of whatever other feelings were rising in my stomach. “Now will you just attach the second bag?” Paul raised an eyebrow, and I rolled my eyes. Really, I couldn’t blame him for his skepticism, but did he have to be so thorough in his doubt? “I’m not going to do a full bag, I’ll only do half.”

Paul cocked his head. “Compromising, are we?”

“Annoying, are we?” I parroted back.

No reply came. Paul’s eyes narrowed, traveling over my face with a sort of hypervigilance. I suddenly felt sorry for the creatures in biology that I’d studied under a microscope. Is this what it felt like to be measured and weighed? To have one’s behavior scrutinized and written about in a scientific report?

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking.”

“Stop it.”

The corner of Paul’s mouth turned up. “Is it illegal to look?”

“It should be,” I grumbled. “Especially when you should be hooking up the second bag.”

Paul didn’t move, still inattentive to my words in favor of inspecting my face. Had he gone deaf? What could possibly have him paying such close attention, and with such a dreamy look in his eyes?

“You’re still doing it.”

With a start, Paul finally got up, picking up the second bag and crouching to tie off the first one. “Sorry,” he grunted. “The wolf had things to say.”

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jimblejamblewritings · 2 years

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romeo and...cullen? | part 8.

Summary: Y/N Cullen, youngest in both actual age and last to be turned in the Cullen clan. Her world is turned upside down when Bella Swan enters her family’s life, because Bella doesn’t bring just herself but drags some of her friends into the Cullen’s life as well.

Warnings for the Series: light violence, light angst, light smut

Pairing: Jacob Black x reader

Word Count: 1.3k

Previous Part | (Series Masterlist)

Jake’s phone was once again perched on the toolbox so you could see him and Bella. The bikes were supposed to be finished that day and they were gonna go test them. You said you wanted to see so you dragged yourself out to the woods to FaceTime.

“Quil keeps asking to come over, I think he likes you a little too much,” Jacob told Bella.

“Oh, well I’m not really into the whole cougar thing, you know?”

“What’s with you and age? I mean how old was that Cullen guy?”

“Um, my brother has a name, Jake.”

He mouthed a ‘sorry’ to you.

“He’s right Bella, don’t be too hung up on age. It’s just a number.”

“A number that keeps going up,” she retorted.

You knew how Bella felt about ageing and looking older than Edward. You didn’t like it. You wanted your friend to live her fullest life as a human. Being a vampire wasn’t something you enjoyed and if you could take it back you would. Not that you weren’t grateful to Carlisle but if it hadn’t been life or death, you would never willing take this life.

Jake held the phone in his hand while Bella drove her truck to an area for them to test the bikes.

“Is that Sam Uley?” Bella asked as she drove along the bridge.

Jacob scoffed. “Yeah. Him and his cult.”

“Oh my God!” You heard Bella yell. The truck abruptly stopped. “Did you see that?”

Jacob started laughing and the picture on your end was very blurry as his body moved.

“They’re not fighting Bella, they’re cliff-diving. It’s scary as hell but a total rush! Most of us jump from the lower cliffs. Leave the showing off to Sam and disciples.”

Jacob walked back to the truck. He and Bella sat there watching them for a minute, Jake turned the phone around so you could see as well.

“Is there some kind of beef with them or something?”

“Not really, they just think they run this place. Embry used to call them hall monitors on steroids, now look at him.”

Jake had told you about Embry a couple days ago.

“That’s Embry? What happened to him?” Bella asked.

“Missed some school, all of sudden we see him following around Sam like a lost puppy. Same thing with Paul and Jared. And Sam keeps giving me these looks… like he’s waiting for me or something. It’s starting to freak me out.”

“Well, just try to avoid him if you can.” Bella started up the engine and continued driving.

“I try,” Jake said.

They had finally arrived at the location. Jacob handed the phone to Bella for a minute as he effortlessly took the bikes from off the truck bed. Jacob took the phone back and explained to Bella how to work the motorcycle.

“You got this, Bells!” you cheered for your friend as Jacob stepped aside to let Bella go.

You and Jake were watching as she started off. It was going well until something happened that caused Bella to slam into a rock. She was thrown from the bike and hit her head. Jake ran over to go help her. Jake set down his phone and took off his shirt to dab the blood from Bella’s head.

“Geez. Bella are you alright?”

Bella picked up the phone so you were no longer in the grass. “I’m okay, I promise.”

“For my sake, can you two do something a little less dangerous. Like watching movies.”

Both Bella and Jake laughed. “Movies, understood.”

When Jacob answered your phone call he looked like a hot mess. He answered with a very groggy hello. His hair was stuck to his face and he was really sweaty. Jacob sat up a little in his bed so he could talk to you.

“You look a wreck.”

“Thanks, babe.”

“Are you alright? Bella told me about the Face Punch incident. Who names a movie Face Punch, anyway?”

Jacob pushed his hair out his face. Something about him looked different but you weren’t sure what.

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened. And now I’m sick. It feels like my whole body’s on fire and I’m tired all the time.”

“Should I get off the phone, then?”

“No, no stay. Show me around, what are you up to in Alaska?”

Jacob got up to make himself some food while you were packing up your car before heading into a different store.

“Ooh, look!”

Jacob laughed as you excitedly showed him the husky dog by your leg. Carlisle adopted the dog for you when the whole family noticed you were kind of lonely in Alaska. Of course your dad couldn’t pass on the opportunity to make fun of you by picking the breed that most closely resembled a wolf. The husky, who was trained off leash, barked when you turned the phone around so she could see Jake.

“You got a dog.”

“Yeah, named her Dakota. Koda for short.” You walked with Koda into the store to grab snacks. “Woah, Jake. Got enough to eat there?”

You looked at the massive sandwich on his plate. Jacob shook his head as he emptied the bag of chips into his mouth and took the sandwich back to his room.

“What are you shopping for?”

“Some of our cousins from around Denali are coming into town to hang out. We’re going to picnic by the river. I’m on snack-duty… well, I’m really supposed to be picking up a badminton set. The snacks are for me.”

“Is that your boyfriend?” The old woman at the check-out counter asked.

You nodded and turned the phone so Jacob could say hello to the lady. You both blushed as she said you seemed like a good couple while bagging the snacks. You thanked her and headed out the store, Koda right next to you.

You and Jake continued to talk as you drove over to the river. The only people there at the moment were your cousins, your parents and Jasper.

“The others are coming in a little bit. I think Edward’s actually gonna be here too.” Jasper came bounding up to you. “Hello, Jacob.”

“Hey, man.”

You followed your brother to where the rest of your family was. Your parents greeted Jacob and your cousins were intrigued by your new boyfriend. It was so easy for you to show him off to them. Having never spent a day in their lives in Forks, the Denali Clan had never seen Jacob before and had no clue about the Quileutes.

You set the phone down on the rocks and peeled off your dress to reveal your bathing suit underneath. You could hear Jacob cough slightly. You picked the phone back up to see him swallow the last bite of his sandwich.

“That’s a nice bathing suit, (Y/N),” he said awkwardly.

“Yeah?” you sat on a towel by the rocks. “I got it a couple weeks ago. I think it looks good. Red’s my color I’m pretty sure.”

Jacob nodded. “Red’s one hundred percent your color, babe.”

You continued to talk to Jacob as your family hung around the river. Jacob’s eyes were starting to get heavy but he pushed through to keep talking to you. He was upset that lately he’d felt so sick he couldn’t keep up with your calls.

“Oh, Koda’s coming with me for Spring Break.”

“Yeah? I think she’ll like Forks.”

“I do too. Ugh, I can’t wait. Our anniversary is in, like, a week and then Spring Break.”

“I was thinking we have dinner over FaceTime and then I’ll really take you out when you come down?” Jacob laid back down in his bed. You looked up to watch your brother push Irene into the water.

“Hmm, yeah… that sounds like a good idea. We should dress up for it. What are we gonna eat…Jake? Jake?” You looked back down at your phone. Jacob had fallen asleep. “Talk to you later. Sleep tight Jake. Love you.”

You hung up. The rest of your siblings, including Edward, had finally arrived.

“I forgot you got a dog.” Edward gave you a hug.

“Maybe if you visited more often, you would remember.”

You and your siblings raced into the water. You spent the rest of the day just hanging out.

(Part 9)...

#jacob black x reader #twilight fic

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andreafmn · 3 years

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Collision - Chapter 2

Word Count: 1,477

Characters: Female Reader Uley Character, Sam Uley, Allison Uley, Charlie Swan, Bella Swan, Seth Clearwater, Billy Black, Jacob Black, Emily Young, Paul Lahote, Harry and Sue Clearwater, Leah Clearwater

Story Description: (Y/N) Uley is back home after being away for four years. Her life at it’s first standstill and she is taking this time to find out who she is without school. But she never thought that coming back to the reservation would turn her whole life around. In the midst of secrets and mystery, a man crashes into (Y/N)’s and her life will never be the same.

*DISCLAIMER* I do not own in any way Twilight, all credits of the pre-established characters, script, and storyline belong to Stephanie Meyer and Summit Entertainment. The only thing I own is Uley Reader insert, any upcoming characters, and her storyline, as well as her effects in the others’ story line.

Chapter: 2/?

A/N: There’s no Cullen’s in the first chapter, we’ll see them soon though. Also, Esme is in the story but her and Carlisle are not together romantically. If you enjoy my writing I’ll also be posting them in AO3 and Wattpad along with other stories (I also hope to start taking requests if ya’ll want) Hope you enjoy and all constructive criticism is encouraged.

<-Previous | Next ->

Chapter 2

The next day she awoke at half past ten. She looked at her bedside clock flustered, knowing she had wasted almost all morning. She could smell breakfast already prepared and her mother downstairs doing some light cleaning.

She hurried into the bathroom and took a small time to finish her morning routine, flying down the stairs. Allison laughed as she noticed her daughter stumbling with hurry down the stairs, clearly heading to the door.

“Eat some breakfast before you go, darling!” Allison shouted as she swept the floor of the dining room.

“I’ll just get some on the way,” (Y/N) said as she put her jacket on, seeing in the distance dark clouds adorning the sky.

“I made you a sandwich so you can take it with you and a travel mug filled with coffee.”

“Thanks, mom. You’re the best,” (Y/N) kissed her mother’s cheek and grabbed the food from her hands.

“And be careful on the streets, the tires haven’t been changed on the truck and the roads are supposed to be very slippery today.” Allison called out to the girl who was almost completely out of the door.

(Y/N) barely heard her mother’s warning as she jogged up to the truck parked on the driveway. There was a sandwich hanging from her mouth as she backed up and sped to the main road. It was quite a long ride to Port Angeles, and she wanted to be back before dark. She spent the ninety-minute drive listening to background music and noticing how the sky changed from blue to dark grey to a lighter grey as she passed and left Forks. She rarely visited the neighboring town, listening to the stories by the elders gave her enough reason not to. Unlike most of her friends and even her own brother, she believed the string of words that they sewed. There were so many things that were unexplained in the universe that it would be ignorant of her to not believe that the supernatural could exist. Although, the past four years she had started to disregard the tales as made up stories, not being able to prove that they were veracious.

Once she arrived, she parked in front of an antique store and started perusing through the various stores in the strip mall. Before she knew it, five hours had passed. Her feet were sore from walking back and forth, her arms were read from all the bags she had carried, and her head was hurting from a lack of food. It was already five in the afternoon and (Y/N) was ready to go home. She got back into the truck and started her drive back home. An hour into the drive the sky darkened more than it should’ve, and heavy rain cascaded from the clouds. Her vision was impaired from the thick droplets and her heart was beating hard, scared of what could jump out in the darkness.

(Y/N)’s worries were confirmed when a deer jumped onto the street and had her swerve the truck. The car spun for some seconds and slid off the road, crashing into a tree. The girl’s head flew forward on impact and connected with the steering wheel in front of her. Her vision blurred and her headache grew exponentially. She could hear her name being called from far away but couldn’t distinguish whose it was. As it came closer, she could finally make out the frame of the sheriff, Charlie Swan. He was speaking to her, but no words registered in her head.

Charlie moved closer to the truck and tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. The sheriff reached into the open window and carefully tried to retrieve the wounded girl. She wasn’t in the right mind and in this rain an ambulance would take too long to get here. He laid (Y/N)’s head on his shoulder as she mumbled incoherent words, then reaching his arms under hers to pull her softly. He was careful not to scrape her body too much against the broken window, laying down his jacket first to cover most of it. Charlie tried his best to see amid the harsh rain, praying to whatever being was controlling the weather to stop. The blood that was gushing from (Y/N)’s forehead had washed off as soon as her head had exited the car but it didn’t stop flowing. After what felt like hours, the sheriff had the teenage girl in his arms and carried her to his cruiser. Turning his emergency lights on he sped as carefully as possible to the hospital.

He felt the ride eternal as he heard the hurt girl in the back of the car moaning in pain and noticing the shirt he’d wrapped around her forehead was soaking up too much blood. As he neared the bright lights of the hospital, he slowed the speed down as to not slam on his brakes and cause more damage to (Y/N). He carefully grabbed her limp body and entered the hospital. It seemed like the emergency room had a slow night, but he only brought trouble.

“I need some help here!” Charlie called out, worry laced in his voice.

“Sheriff Swan, what happened?” A nurse asked as she accompanied the team wheeling a gurney for the unconscious being in the officer’s arms.

“This is (Y/N) Uley. She hit her head in a car accident, I assume her car swerved as she avoided an animal in the street. She’s been unconscious since I got her in my car. When I found her she was barely coherent.”

“Okay, why don’t you wait for us in the waiting room. We’ll let you know as soon as we have some news.” The nurse smiled.

All Charlie could do was nod and sit down for a second, later pulling out his phone to dial Allison Uley’s number.

“Sheriff, to what do I owe this pleasure,” Allison chimed.

“It’s not good news, Allison. (Y/N) has been in a car accident.” Charlie could feel the panicked energy coming from the other side of the phone. Close to this time last year he had gotten news that his own daughter was hurt through a phone call. “Now, Allison, I know you want to speed off to the hospital but I would advise you not to. The roads are really bad over here and we can’t have you both admitted.”

“But I can’t leave her alone,” she sobbed. “I need to be there for my baby.”

“I know, but she won’t be alone. I’m gonna stay here until she’s good to go and I’ll take her back to your house. Now don’t you worry, you know she’s a strong one.”

“I know,” Allison sighed an air of defeat. “Alright, just please keep me updated on everything. Doesn’t matter how late.”

“Will do. I’ll have my buddy pick up the truck and leave it at Billy’s.”

“Thank you, Charlie, so much.”

“No problem, Allison. Try to get some shuteye, it looks to be a long night.”

And a long night it was.

Thankfully, (Y/N)’s injuries were minor and she would be able to leave as soon as she woke up. Charlie spent all night in the hospital, calling a friend to drive (Y/N)’s truck so that Jacob could see if it was worthy of repair and leaving a message for his daughter that he would not be coming home that night. The nurses were nice enough to bring the officer a blanket and some coffee as it seemed he wasn’t going to leave and come back the next morning, keeping his promise to Allison that he’d stay beside her daughter.

Once a room was given to (Y/N), Charlie managed to catch up on a little bit of sleep on the armchair next to her bed. The girl slept even through the morning light that slipped through the window that woke the sheriff up. He updated Allison on the persistent status of her daughter. Once again, the nurses showing kindness by bringing him a cup of coffee as he waited for (Y/N)’s eyes to open.

(Y/N) was engulfed in darkness during what felt like a second. She tried fluttering her eyes open but was met with a painfully bright light and a pulsating headache that rang through her body. Her eyes closed once again to try to minimize the discomfort, to much avail. She barely remembered what event befell her to end up in this situation, but she could hear she was not alone.

“Are the lights bothering you, (Y/N)?” Sheriff Swan spoke, noticing the girl had awoken. She promptly nodded and he stood up to turn off the lights as the room door opened. “All right, they’re off now. Hello, doctor.”

She tried opening her eyes again and was met with the most radiant eye color she had ever seen.

Golden.

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maybe-theres-hope · 3 years

Text

Tarlos Fic - Dinner Date

3.2k | T | Warnings: Blood, Injuries (mostly minor) | Contains: Judd/Carlos friendship, Tarlos being perfect, blue Camaro (rip)

Read on AO3

“So, what are your plans for the night?” Nancy asked as they exited the ambulance, their shift nearly over as long as the bell didn’t go off in the next ten minutes.

TK smiled to himself for a moment before he spoke. “Well, Carlos is taking me to Jeffrey’s, so…”

“Holy mother,” Nancy breathed, looking at him with obvious envy. “Do you guys have a ten year anniversary or something coming up? Did he get some kind of commendation at work? Because I know your last one was like a month ago, so.”

“No, no anniversary, that’s in a couple of months. And its three years, Nance.” He chose to ignore her muttering about their mushiness ‘aging me ten years’. “And nothing from work that I know of. Maybe he just loves me?” TK couldn’t stop grinning while they stocked the bus and readied for the handover.

“He loves you crap ton! Their wagyu strip steak is a hundred and twenty-five dollars!” Nancy had her phone out, obviously googling the menu.

“Well at least we’ll save money on wine,” TK said with a chuckle.

“I’ve heard of the place by reputation but like, dude, who ever gets the chance to actually go there?”

“TK it seems,” Tommy cut in. “Why don’t you go on? We got it here and you’re gonna need at least an hour to pick out an outfit.”

“And gel your hair. You and your dad are way more alike than you want to admit,” Nancy added with a roll of her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. You sure, Cap? I can stay and help?”

“I’m sure, kiddo. Go get dolled up for your man. Eat a few bites for us, yeah?” Tommy yelled at his retreating figure. She and Nancy looked at each other with grins as they caught the little skip in his step.

“So, what do you think the occasion is?”

Tommy looked back at Nancy with a gleam in her eye. “I can wager a guess, but I don’t want to jinx it.” Nancy just gave her a look and went back to restocking.

Around 8 p.m., Owen was sitting in his office toying with his phone in his hand, smiling at his last text exchange.

we’re just leaving the house now, wish me luck!

you’re not gonna need it, kid :)

“Not if I know my son anyway,” Owen said aloud to the empty room. He wondered if it’d happened yet. No incoherent string of emoji’s from TK yet, so he doubted it.

He was shoving the phone back into his pocket with the bell went off.

“Alright guys,” Owen said into the mic from the Captain’s chair. “Dispatch says three vehicles involved, two still on the road and one went over the side into the ravine. Police are on their way but we’ll probably beat ‘em there. Strickland, Marwani, soon as we get there I want you to harness up and get down in that ravine. Judd, you too. You’ll be in command down there and I’ll stay up top with the other two vehicles. Everybody else you’re with me, got it?”

A chorus of “Copy that, Cap,” and suddenly they were on the scene.

“Marjan, Paul, we’re goin’ down!” Judd called to them as the rest of the crew went over to the silver Prius and black Mazda that were crumpled in the middle of the two-lane highway. Judd wasn’t a prayin’ man, but he sent up a little something to the man upstairs that this went their way. It looked bad.

Paul arrived at his side first, strapped into his gear. “Marjan’s grabbing the bag from the truck, she’s coming.”

“Alright. We’ll go down this way,” Judd said, pointing to a safe-ish stretch of hillside. “Can’t see the other car from here but dispatch said bystanders saw it go over. Probably just hidden in the trees.”

“Okay guys, let’s do this!” Marjan called, harnessed and carrying the medical bag and a backboard. “TK’s gonna be sad he missed this. Medical doesn’t get to harness up a lot and I know he loved it. He coulda helped.”

“Nah, he’s got better things tonight. Carlos was takin’ him to Jeffrey’s,” Paul said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“Ohh, fancy,” Marjan said with a smile. “What’s the occasion?”

They’d reached the bottom and were starting to look through the brush and low-hanging trees for a vehicle.

“Don’t know,” Paul answered. “But I think Cap’s in on it somehow.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Judd cut in as he whacked a few branches out of his way. “Carlos came by the station a few weeks ago, and they sat up in Cap’s office for an hour before he left grinnin’ like a possum eatin’ a sweet tater.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Paul said with a laugh.

“Hey guys, look!” Marjan called from a few yards to the left. The other two went to her position and saw what she’d found. A track in the underbrush where it had been torn at and flattened. “Think this is the place.”

“Let’s go,” said Judd. They followed the path through the brush for a couple of yards before they caught sight of it: taillights. “Alright, Marjan you go on the passenger side, I got the driver. Paul you see if you can clear some of that brush off the back in case the doors are jammed and we gotta get ‘em out that’a way.”

Visibility was still low despite the lights of the car and their flashlights, but as they approached they saw the car wrapped around the trunk of a tree on the passenger side. “I don’t know if I can get in there, Judd, but I’ll try,” Marjan said as she broke out into a jog.

“Wait!” Paul cried. Judd looked over at him, and he would have said such a thing couldn’t happen to a calm and collected person like Paul, but his face had gone ashen. “That’s Carlos’s car,” he said on a breath.

“What?” In the dark, now that he was really looking, he could see they were coming up on—what used to be—a blue Camaro.

“I’m sure of it. TK bullied him into putting that sticker on the back because he said it was too pristine and it needed personality.” He shone his flashlight at the rear bumper and sure enough, there was a SXSW sticker half ripped off from the path the car had taken to get there.

“Come on,” Judd said, heart rate kicking up.

“Should we call Cap?” Paul asked.

“No, we stay down here and do our jobs, and he stays up there and does his. We’ll get ‘em.” His voice sounded numb even to his own ears, but he was determined.

“They were on their way to dinner,” Paul said lowly.

“Yeah, probably takin’ the backroads to avoid traffic,” Judd said, shaking his head. Fate was hell sometimes.

When they reached the car, Marjan was yelling. “TK! TK can you hear me?” She turned to Judd. “I can’t get in there. The tree trunk is halfway into the car, probably pinning him to the console. He’s unresponsive.” Her face was also pale, but determined.

Judd went to the driver’s side and saw Carlos, head hanging to the side facing the broken window. He tried the door as he called out. “Carlos? Hey Carlos, come on buddy. Can you hear me?” The door wouldn’t budge; Judd figured the car had rolled a couple of times coming down the hill, crumpling it like a tin can. Then he heard a soft groan.

He looked up, and one of Carlos’s eyes was trying to open. The other was swollen shut, where he’d probably hit his head on the steering wheel before the airbag deployed. Half his face had burn marks from it.

“Hey, hey Carlos, look at me, that’s it.” That one eye tracked around before it landed on Judd, drawn to the light of the flashlight on his helmet. “Hey man. We’re gonna get you out okay? Now, can you move your fingers and toes for me?” Judd stuck his head into the window to see down in the floor boards. “Alright, likely no spinal damage. How’s your head?”

“Hurts. Shoulder, too.” His voice was barely audible.

“Okay, it looks like you dislocated it,” Judd said as he prodded his left shoulder. “I don’t see anything broken but we’ll have to get you out to determine that.”

“TK—“ a wheeze, “TK…first. Been out…a while.”

Judd peered over to the passenger side, where TK was shoved almost fully into the center console, head laid back on the headrest and his face covered in blood. Marjan and Paul were still hard at work outside trying to clear a path into the car.

“We can’t get to his side just yet, but we can get you out first and then we’ll be able to pull him out this way, okay? We wanna focus on you right now.”

“Alive.”

“Yeah, you’re alive, Carlos. You’re not gonna leave us yet,” he said as he assessed the door panels where they could cut through with the saws they brought.

“No. TK. Weak, but…alive,” Carlos breathed out, coughing through the end.

“We’ll make sure he’s alive, okay?” Judd said, trying not to lose his professionalism at this whole messed up situation.

“He is.” Judd stopped looking around and looked back at Carlos. The man raised his right hand just as much as he was able, showing where he had two fingers on TK’s radial pulse.

“Good, that’s good Carlos,” Judd assured him. That meant Carlos had had some minutes of consciousness after the accident before they showed up. “Was he talking at all? After you hit the tree?”

“Little. Minutes, maybe.”

“That’s good, that’ll help. Alright Carlos, we’re gonna get this door off so I’m gonna cover you with this while we do okay?” Judd waited for a small nod before he covered Carlos’s face and torso with his own turnout coat.

After an agonizing four minutes, the door popped off in a shower of metal and broken glass. Judd removed the coat and went back in to assess. “Carlos? How you doin’?”

“Tired. But won’t…sleep. Promise. That’s bad.”

“You learn a few things from your Paramedic boyfriend?” Judd said with a watery smile.

“Mmm.”

“Judd, I got the back cleared. Maybe we can get in there to at least check TK’s vitals,” Paul informed them.

“Get on it, I’ma try to get Carlos here out onto this backboard. Marjan, radio for another backboard and have two RA’s ready to go topside!”

“Copy that!” Judd had to admire those two. They never let their professionalism slip too far, though he could see they were worried sick. He could relate. He wouldn’t relax until both of the boys were back up the hill and on the way to the hospital.

From the looks of things, maybe not even then. But he had hope.

“Alright, Carlos, I’m gonna grab your legs and behind your shoulders here and pull you out, okay? It’s gonna hurt like hell, but it’ll be quick.”

“Wait.”

Judd stopped cold.

“Left…pocket. Please.”

“You want me to get at your left pocket?” A nod. “Alright, hang on.”

Judd carefully shifted Carlos’s leg so he could reach into his slacks, which had probably been part of a very nice suit at the beginning of the night. His fingers searched until they hit a small bump, an object no bigger than a baseball, soft velvet over a hard shell. He sucked his lips between his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as he pulled it free in his hand.

“Keep it…safe…for me?”

Judd looked down at the little black box for a moment, then clutched it tight in his hand before transferring it one of the innermost pockets of his turnout.

“Of course, man. I will guard this with my life.” He looked up and saw Marjan coming back with another backboard. “Alright, buddy. It’s go time.”

Carlos gave a weak nod and winced when Judd started to pull.

“Welcome back, man. You had us worried there for a bit.”

Carlos opened his good eye to see Judd sitting at his bedside, smiling softly. It took a moment to remember where he was. Hospital. Accident. Tree.

“TK—“

“Is fine. Banged up and will need crutches for a few weeks, not to mention a killer headache with no meds, but he’s fine. All things considered.”

“Where is he?”

“On his way, so you just stay put, okay? You’re pretty banged up, too, ya’know.”

Carlos shifted a bit and winced. His left arm was in a sling, his head bandaged over his left eye, and his right side hurt like hell.

“Broken rib when the tree went into TK’s door, door went into TK, TK went into the console, then the console went into you. He’s got a femoral fracture in his right leg but like I said, all things considered, you’re both pretty well off for how far you fell and probably rolled.”

“Yeah, he said his leg had gone numb but he could still move his toes. He made sense for about five minutes, then started talking all jumbled, then went quiet. I uh…freaked out a bit after that. I thought he had…” Carlos trailed off, looking haunted.

“Yeah, and you kept your fingers on his pulse that whole time. What you were able to tell us at the scene helped us treat him. You did good, Carlos.”

“Not good enough to swerve in time,” he said.

“Not your fault. And don’t you dare go thinkin’ it is. I don’t wanna hear it, Carlos,” Judd said in what TK called his Dad Voice. Stern and no room for argument. Carlos just nodded.

“And uh, hey. I been waitin’ to give this back to you.” Judd stood and walked over to the bed, holding out a tiny black box. Carlos took it and cradled it against his chest. “It better be a nice one, cuz I about had a heart attack while I was showerin’ thinkin’ someone was gonna come get my pile a’clothes and take ‘em to the laundry while I was gone.”

“You didn’t open it?”

“Nah, I figure the big reveal? TK deserves that all to himself.”

“Owen’s seen it,” Carlos countered, smirking.

“Uh huh. He approve?”

Carlos laughed. “He whistled and said I spent too much.”

“To impress the Cap it must be a lot,” Judd said with a small whistle of his own.

“Well, what was it Michael Scott said? Three years’ salary?”

Judd’s eyes almost popped out of his head, and Carlos laughed harder before wincing again at his broken rib. “I’m kidding, Judd. But I can tell you, no matter the cost, TK deserves the best and that’s what I hope I got.”

“You gonna make another reservation? Soon as y’all get back into fightin’ shape?”

Carlos looked down at the box again for a moment, contemplating. “I…don’t think so.”

Judd had a confused expression on his face but at that moment, a nurse was wheeling TK into the room, followed by most of the 126. Carlos’s face lit up like starlight at the sight of him.

“Hey, babe,” TK said with a smile. His leg was in a full cast, so the nurse was careful in maneuvering him around to Carlos’s bedside.

“Hey, I feel like you should be the one in bed! Why are you out and about?”

“Because you were still asleep and he’s an absolute menace. We made multiple apologies to the staff on his behalf for the last hour,” Owen said as he walked into the room behind his crew. “He’s a stubborn little shit. Always has been, always will be. You sure you’re up for that?” He asked knowingly. TK was still looking at Carlos, blushing at his dad’s ribbing. Carlos met his eyes and said, “Yes.” He blushed more.

“In fact,” Carlos continued. “I’m ready to get started. I’ve waited too long anyway. I mean, how many times do you and I have to beat death before I get the nerve to do this?” He said, looking into TK’s beautiful eyes which were looking confused.

“What are you talking about, babe?”

“Look, I’m sorry this didn’t go how I planned. And I’m sorry I can’t get down on one knee right now, but. I hope you love me enough not to mind.” He lifted his good arm, his hand holding out the box. “A little help, Judd?”

“It’d be an honor,” the man said before leaning in and opening the box, since Carlos only had one good arm.

At the sight of the contents of the box, TK’s eyes went as big as saucers. Surprise was written clearly over every inch of his features, which were all still beautiful even scarred and stitched up as they were at the moment. God, Carlos loved this man so much.

“Tyler Kennedy Strand, you are the love of my life. I tried so many different scenarios in my head of how this speech would go, before I just said screw it, I’ll speak from the heart. You’re kind, funny, sexy, sweet, and everything in between. You can’t boil water and you absolutely can’t properly separate laundry. I have a dozen pink shirts as proof of that.” At this, the gathered group chuckled and TK went bright red. “Ah, but you also know just how to ease the tension from a long day just by hugging me on the doorstep. And I can always count on you to be there for me when the world gets too much, when what we see out there creeps in too far. And I want you to know, that I want to be that for you too, for the rest of our lives. So, TK. Will you marry me?”

The room was silent, apart from the hum and beeps of the machines. Everyone on the edge of their proverbial seats, but no one having any doubt to the outcome.

“Oh, my God! Of course I’ll marry you! Yes, yes! Yes!” The last was said through TK’s fingers covering his red face, hiding the few tears that had started to fall. He held out his left hand to Carlos, who Judd had kindly helped by removing the ring from its box and handing it back to him. He slid it over TK’s finger, smiling like an idiot the whole time, barely registering the whoops and hollers of the 126 throughout the room.

He only had eyes for TK.

“I love you,” TK breathed through his happy tears.

“I love you too, baby. Always.”

“Oh, my God, dude, were you seriously surprised?” Nancy asked incredulously once the commotion had died down.

“Well…yeah? I didn’t expect this at all,” TK said, looking sheepish.

“TK…my dude…he was taking you to Jeffrey’s! How could you not know?”

Once again, the room erupted in laughter and TK ducked his head again. Carlos reached out and touched his chin, catching his eyes again.

There was nothing but love there.

CLEARLY every Tarlos fic I write has to have a proposal in it *shrug emoji*

Also I wrote this in like an hour after I had a dream so please excuse any typos I didn’t catch!

Please reblog if you liked it! I would really really appreciate it :) Thank you for reading!

#tarlos #tarlos fic #carlos reyes #tk strand #911 lone star #brooke writes

54 notes · View notes

marjansmarwani · 3 years

Text

say that we’ll stay with each other

3k || ao3

On what seems like a normal day and a normal house fire things go from bad to worse in an instant and Carlos is left to confront his biggest fear, one of the things that keeps him up at night. But this isn’t a dream, it’s very real and Carlos will do anything to make sure it doesn’t mean the end. Not from them, not for TK.

Electrocution for @badthingshappenbingo requested by @officereyes

---------------

Carlos was already waiting at the edge of the lawn when the ladder truck pulled up. Behind him there was a house fully engulfed flames and there was someone trapped inside.

“There’s a woman trapped inside,” he informed Captain Strand before the older man had even fully exited the truck, “her husband is pretty sure she’s hurt and she’s definitely trapped.”

The Captain took it in stride, nodding before turning to the crew, “Alright team, it looks like we have a trapped and injured woman in the structure. She is in the,” he paused here, turning to Carlos.

“Second floor bedroom, far right window,” he provided. Owen nodded and opened his mouth to continue instructions when Carlos continued, “but the stairs are out. They collapsed as the husband was coming down.”

“Okay so we will be entering through the window,” Owen said with a nod, turning back to the team. “Mateo, prep the ladder. There’s not enough clearance here to use the truck ladder so grab one of the ladders of the side. Captain Vega,” he called over to Tommy, “can I borrow one of your team? We don’t know how badly she’s hurt and having a paramedic on scene could make things a lot simpler.”

“What do you say, Strand,” Tommy asked TK with a raised eyebrow, “feel like going back to fire for a bit?”

TK flashed her a grin, already reaching into the compartment for his turnout coat and pulling it on with relish, “Sure thing, Cap.”

Carlos shook his head at his boyfriend’s obvious enthusiasm for walking into a flaming building as he turned to Nancy, “the husband’s over by my cruiser, he took a fall when the stairs collapsed. He seems to be okay, but if you wanted to give him a look anyways I already told him to expect it.”

“You know us so well Reyes,” she quipped back, flashing him a grin as she shouldered her pack and crossed over to where the anxious husband was watching the activity around the house.

Carlos turned to the house then, watching as Mateo got a ladder set up. He wasn’t surprised there wasn’t enough clearance – the house was surrounded by thick trees on all sides. He was surprised that the city hadn’t done anything about them, however. The powerlines weaved through the trees and stretched across the front of the house, which seemed like a serious safety and fire hazard, in his opinion. He wouldn’t even be surprised if that had something to do with the start of this fire. Thankfully there was enough of a sloped roof right at the base of the windows which made accessing them all the easier.

He caught TK’s eyes as he walked by, his boyfriend flashing him a cheeky grin. Carlos smiled fondly at his excitement. He knew that TK loved being a paramedic, that he hadn’t regretted his choice in the slightest – once the rocky transition period had passed. He also knew that there was absolutely no denying that he was in love with an adrenaline junkie and that even if TK hadn’t wanted to admit it there was definitely a part of him that missed the thrill of running into a burning building.

Carlos couldn’t say that he had missed the worry that came with that particular action too much, but he supposed he could stomach it one more time if it meant seeing TK this happy.

“Think you remember how to do this kid?” Judd called with a grin as he approached, clapping Carlos on the shoulder as he passed by.

“I think I’ll manage,” TK deadpanned, “you know how hard it is to remember 7 years of experience and training after only being out of it for a few months, after all.”

Judd rolled his eyes at TK and reached over to muss up his hair before he could get his helmet on, ignoring TK’s indignant noise, “Yeah, yeah, alright. Don’t get your stethoscope in a twist. Just remember, you’re medical now so I call the shots getting us there and getting us out. I’ll leave all the medical up to you but...”

“In and out, don’t treat anything that can wait until we’re not in a burning house,” TK finished. “I know Judd, I’m not new at this.”

“I know you ain’t kid, just wanted to make sure we are on the same page.”

“Aren’t we always?” TK asked with a grin and Judd rolled his eyes. Even Carlos couldn’t repress a snort at that.

Any comeback on Judd’s part was prevented by Owen calling for the teams to move out and TK paused long enough to throw another grin in Carlos’s direction before he was off and heading up the ladder after Judd. Carlos hung back at the edge of the scene, keeping a watchful eye out for anything he might need to address, but it seemed all was calm. He was also keeping an ear open, however, and couldn’t deny that he was relieved when he heard TK’s voice across the radio only a few short minutes later.

“We’ve got her free and she’s stable enough to move,” he reported, “we’re bringing her down soon but she will need treatment for some pretty severe burns when we get out of here.”

“Copy that, Strand,” Captain Vega replied, “get her down here and we’ll take it from there.”

“On our way now, Cap.”

Carlos couldn’t deny the relief he felt when TK appeared at the window a few moments later. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his boyfriend’s skills, it was that while he might not be an expert it did seem to him that the flames were getting stronger and stronger with each passing second.

It was also that he had a bad feeling he just couldn’t shake. It was probably nothing, but the sooner TK and his team were out of there and back on the not on fire ground, the happier he would be.

He watched as TK stepped onto the ladder, swinging his leg over to the front of his and beginning the process of climbing down.

At least, that was what was supposed to happen.

What happened instead was that the moment TK put his weight on the ladder, it slipped. It fell to the side and it was all TK could do to catch himself, flailing his arms to keep his balance, to avoid the 10-foot plummet to the ground. He succeeded, but his actions propelled him back as he overcompensated, sending him in the direction of the other edge of the roof, and the improperly placed power lines Carlos had noticed earlier and Carlos knew with a sinking, heavy dread what was about to happen before it did.

Knowing didn’t make it any easier to see the sparks emitted the moment TK made contact with the lines, or the way his body convulsed as 240 volts coursed through his body. Foresight did nothing to ease the fear of watching him crumble, falling onto the roof in a heap before rolling down the roof and hitting the hard ground with a decisive thud.

For a moment, Carlos froze. TK was crumpled on the ground at the edge of a burning house and he wasn’t moving. Not a twitch, not a blink, not a breath. He heard a desperate voice calling out TK’s name and realized with a start it was his own.

There was deadly silence for a moment as the assembled team processed what they had just seen. But only a moment. The next moment was filled with shouts as the fire chose that instant to erupt, filling the last corner of the first level with bright and hungry flames. Marjan and Paul rushed to attend to it with a hose and Owen put in a call for another unit to respond. There was so much going on and no hands to spare so Carlos took off running, meeting Tommy at TK’s side.

“TK?” she was calling when Carlos skidded to a stop, “can you hear me?”

There was no answer and Carlos felt the dread inside him grow. Tommy gave TK a quick once over before glancing back at the raging flames that were far too close for comfort and looking up at Carlos, “Officer Reyes, I need you to help me move him.”

It took half a moment for the words to process before Carlos was moving, nodding even as he was already bending down to help the paramedic captain.

“Carefully,” she told him as she indicated for him to support TK’s left side, “he took quite a fall and I don’t know for sure what injuries he might have, but this fire is getting out of hand and we’ll get trampled if we stay here.”

Carlos nodded, as if he had any intention of doing anything but. TK was the most precious thing in the world to him, he wouldn’t risk hurting him further for anything.

Distantly he heard the noise of Judd calling for assistance and then descending the ladder with Mateo’s help to grab the victim at the bottom. The 126 continued to work at their usual efficiency even now, splitting into seamless groups to attack the rapidly swelling inferno before it began to spread through the neighborhood. They were consummate professionals, but even they couldn’t help but throw a worried gaze in TK’s direction every few minutes. Carlos couldn’t say he blamed them. This was easily the most horrifying sight he had ever seen.

But once they got TK settled in a more remote corner of the scene anything else ceased to exist. Because they had just carried him a good 30 feet and he hadn’t woken up which could not be a good sign. He watched, his own breath trapped in his throat and his own heart beating its way out of his chest, as Tommy leant down with the side of her face close to TK’s and her hand atop his chest. The seconds ticked by like hours before Tommy shook her head with a quiet yet desperate curse and reached out to check his pulse again. She frowned and muttered “C’mon Strand,” and Carlos’s heart sank. TK wasn’t breathing, his heart wasn’t beating, he was…

His spiral was interrupted by an ambu bag being thrust into his hand.

“Place this over his nose and mouth, like you have in your CPR courses and squeeze when I tell you to,” Tommy instructed.

There was no talk of how there was no one else to help, no mention of how they were stretched thin with her third paramedic lying still on the ground before them. There was no discussion of how it shouldn’t have to be Carlos, that it shouldn’t be him having to push the breath back into the lungs of the man he loves more than life itself; but it was conveyed in a glance, and Carlos nodded. There is no other option and he would have to be dead himself before he stood by and did nothing to help TK.

He placed the mask over TK’s face and followed Tommy’s rhythm, trying not to think how each thrust of her arms was the only thing keeping his blood moving through his veins; trying not to dwell on how each pump of the bag was the only thing bringing air into his lungs. Tommy was calling out instructions but it was all white noise to Carlos who was hyper focused on the horrifying sight before him and the rhythm of the CPR: 30 compressions, 2 breaths. 30 compressions, 2 breaths. 30 compressions…

And then Nancy was there, kneeling down beside him and unpacking the defibrillator with calm professionalism. She reached around Carlos without a word, placing the pads on TK’s chest. She attached the leads to the machine and called for Tommy to stop and for them both to stay clear as she administered the shock that would hopefully reset his heart.

Carlos’s body followed her instructions on autopilot, stopping his motions and watching with dread as TK’s body arched off the ground as electricity coursed through his body once again. He wanted to erase the sight from his memories but he knew with a cold certainty that it was one he wouldn’t be able to, that it would return in the night for days and weeks to come. He knew it was an image that would forever be burned into his brain.

He waited silently, not even daring to breathe on the off chance he might miss something, that he might upset the tenuous balance of the universe. He watched as TK’s body settled back onto the ground, as Nancy examined the ECG. The single moment it took her to read the display seemed to last a lifetime but finally, she smiled and Carlos almost dared to breathe.

“He’s in sinus rhythm,” she declared, voice heavy with relief, “he’s going to be okay.”

Carlos sagged, all the tension caused by fear leaving his body in an instant. He was going to be okay. He repeated it to himself like a mantra, desperately wanting it to be true - desperately needing it to be true.

From his spot a few feet away he could now see the gentle rise and fall of TK’s chest and he was certain he had never seen anything more wonderful in his life. He never wanted to see it stop ever again.

------------

There was a voice calling his name. It was raspy and weak, but familiar. He knew he should answer but his body was so tired he wasn’t sure if he even could sit up even if he wanted to.

“Carlos.”

The voice called his name again and somehow his sleep clouded mind connected it with a name - TK. TK was calling him which meant…

“TK!” he exclaimed, sitting bolt upright, eyes wide as he took in the sight before him. TK was in the hospital bed that Carlos had been resting his head on just a moment before and smiling at him. He was awake and Carlos was quite certain he had never seen anything more wonderful, “You’re awake! How are you feeling?”

“Sore,” TK replied with a wince, “very sore. I kind of feel like one giant bruise?”

Carlos couldn’t help but snort at that, despite everything, “That doesn’t surprise me.”

TK frowned at him now, taking in his disheveled state and the dark night evident through the windows, “What happened? How long have you been here?”

Carlos swallowed, reaching across the bed to take one of TK’s hands in his own, “What to do you remember, Ty?”

TK frowned as he considered, “I remember the house fire with an injured woman trapped inside. They needed a medic inside so I went in with Judd and then...nothing? Did something happen? Is Judd okay?”

Carlos squeezed TK’s hand, “Relax babe, it’s okay. Judd is fine, everyone else is fine. We’ve all just been worried about you.”

TK frowned at him, still clearly needing more explanation and Carlos sighed before launching into the story: “You were coming out of the house with the victim and Judd when something happened with the ladder. It slipped and you fell off, and managed to fall right into the power lines by the roof.”

TK’s eyes widened and he breathed a soft, “Oh.”

“Oh is right,” Carlos agreed quietly, running a thumb across the back of TK’s hand as he studied their linked hands. He knew his eyes would show too much. He knew that the fear he had felt then was just as evident now. “It was scary,” he said simply, softly, “you got shocked and then fell off the roof when you collapsed. Your body is pretty much one giant bruise right now and you do have some nasty electrical burns from where the lines hit you, but you’re so lucky. We’re so lucky. For a while there I…”

He trailed off, using his hand not intertwined with TK’s to hastily brush away the tears sliding down his face. He took a deep breath and forced a smile before he looked up to meet TK’s eyes, “But you’re okay, and I am so happy.”

“But you were scared,” TK observes softly, “I’m sorry I made you feel that. If it had been you…”

TK trailed off but Carlos could fill in the blanks easily. He was about to reassure him, about to tell him he had nothing to be guilty about when TK continued.

“I know it was an accident,” he assured Carlos, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I am sorry. I know we can’t control what happens in the field. This was an unavoidable accident, you know I would never willingly put myself in danger. Not anymore,” he paused, holding Carlos’s gaze for a moment before continuing, “not when I have so much to lose. Not when I stand to hurt someone I care about so much. I would never do anything to cause you pain on purpose, Carlos.”

Carlos swallowed around the lump in his throat. TK was still holding his gaze and he knew how much he meant those words. Just as much as he knew that this was an accident - that it couldn’t have been stopped, no matter how much he wished it could have.

“I know,” he said eventually, voice thick, “but that doesn’t change the fact that you scared me. I really, really thought I had lost you for good this time and it is the worst thing I have ever felt.”

TK’s eyes grew even sadder as he studied Carlos. He leaned down to press a tender kiss on Carlos’s forehead before resting his own Carlos’s. Carlos savored the closeness, the familiar warmth of TK’s skin against his as TK spoke.

“I will always do everything in my power to come home to you, Carlos Reyes,” he vowed, voice warm against Carlos’s skin, “I promise. All I ask is that you try to do the same.”

Carlos nodded, pulling away so he could see TK’s eyes, so the other man could see how sincere he was.

“Always,” he promised, “it’s going to take an act of God to pull me away from you, Tyler Kennedy.”

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howtosingit · 3 years

Text

Fic: Ice in My Veins, Fire in My Heart

An unexpected, once-in-a-lifetime ice storm in Austin leads to a chaotic day for Carlos and the 126.

Written for @911giftexchange | For @charlie-bradburyss

6K | Also on AO3

A/N: Happy Holidays, Holly! I hope this fulfills all of your “tarlos + fire fam/found family + hurt/comfort (emphasis on the hurt)” wishes. May the New Year bring you all the love and light that you deserve!

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️

The thing is, no one’s really expecting Austin to be pummeled by a once-in-a-lifetime freak ice storm.

Though rare, it’s not unheard of for the Texas panhandle to get hit by the southern tip of major storm systems that move across the Midwest, but Austin is typically too far south to really experience that kind of intense winter weather. Sometimes, they’ll have icy nights that lead to dangerous morning commutes, but that’s mostly because the majority of Austinites aren’t experienced with driving on ice-covered roads. There’s always a surplus of vehicular accidents to respond to on those mornings.

But, this is way more than that.

When TK first looks out the kitchen window, he has to do a double-take to confirm what he’s seeing, his coffee burning the back of his throat as he swallows quickly in shock. Every single inch of the world outside is covered in a shimmering layer of ice - every tree branch and leaf, every fence post and door handle; individual blades of grass find themselves trapped inside a shell of frozen water, and the back patio has turned into a miniature ice skating rink, complete with furniture coated in long, thin icicles.

He takes a moment to admire the ethereal beauty of a rare, wintery Austin, how the early morning sunlight dances across the rooftops of the neighboring houses. Then, realizing what all this ice is going to mean for the rest of his day, he glances down at his watch, cursing when he realizes what time it is.

“Babe!” he calls, grabbing two thermoses from the cupboard. He transfers his coffee into one, then fills the other. “Move faster, we’ve gotta get to work!” He quickly preps Carlos’s coffee the way he knows he likes it, then grabs a few protein bars for each of them to eat on the way to work. “Babe!” he calls again when he doesn’t hear anything from the bedroom.

“What the hell are you yelling for, TK? We still have an hour before our shifts,” Carlos gripes as he comes around the corner, uniform already on and shoes in hand. He gives TK a look of mild annoyance, his signature sass on display, and TK honestly adores him even if he is being obtuse at the moment.

Instead of answering, TK just points out the window, watching as Carlos takes in the icy spectacle, his eyes widening as his jaw drops. “Wow,” his husband breathes out, clearly in awe. Then, having the same realization that TK did, he glances down at his own watch. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah, I thought you might say that,” TK laughs, moving towards the hall closet to grab their coats. He reaches towards the back, finding the ice scraper that Carlos kind of made fun of him for buying a few years ago.

“You made me coffee?” Carlos asks when he reappears, holding his green thermos.

“Of course I did.”

“Have I mentioned that I really love you?” his husband questions, pulling on his coat.

“If this is your way of apologizing for getting sassy with me, I’m going to need you to work a little harder, babe,” TK jokes, sliding up next to him and raising his chin. Carlos rolls his eyes, a smile pulling at his lips as he ducks down to press their mouths together in a gentle kiss.

“How about I give you a ride to work?” Carlos suggests, still close enough that his lips drag against TK’s as he speaks.

“That’s a very sweet offer,” TK says, staring into his husband’s twinkling brown eyes, “but you were going to do that anyway.” Carlos’s police cruiser drives better on ice, so he always drives TK to work if there are hazardous conditions. “Try again.”

“How about,” Carlos starts, his voice going deeper as he trails his lips along TK’s jaw and up to his ear, “I drive you to work now, and then when we get home later, I run you a bath to help warm you up?”

TK hums, his heart rate picking up. “Make it a bath for two, and I’ll consider all of your indiscretions forgiven.”

Carlos huffs out a laugh, moving to press another kiss to his lips. “You are quite the negotiator,” he says, stepping away and grabbing two protein bars off the counter. “I accept your terms.”

The drive to work takes twice as long as usual, Carlos driving as carefully as possible through Austin towards the fire station. The roads seem somewhat deserted, and TK wonders if most people got stuck in their driveways before they could get far enough to cause mayhem in the streets. For the most part, the ice seems to be sticking around longer than it usually does. Carlos pulls to a stop outside Ladder 126.

“See you later?” TK asks, leaning over the console to give him another kiss.

“Probably sooner than that, I’d guess,” Carlos says, knocking their foreheads together gently, the way he always does when they’re saying goodbye at the start of a workday. TK smiles, reaching for the door and climbing out onto the slick pavement. “Be careful out there.”

“You too, officer,” TK responds, giving him a wink before closing the door. He turns, heading into the station to being what will no doubt be a non-stop day.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️

Carlos is right.

Almost immediately after his husband texts him that he made it safely to the police station, they’re called out to an accident on Lakewood Drive. When they arrive, TK spots Carlos in the distance, directing cars to use an alternate route.

A large semi-truck takes up the middle of the bridge, the trailer sitting nearly perpendicular to the tractor section. It still seems to be standing upright, so TK doesn’t immediately understand what accident they’re responding to.

“Officer,” his dad calls when Carlos spots them and starts moving their way, careful on the patches of ice that still remain on the bridge. “What’ve we got here?”

“Semi swerved a bit on the ice into the lane of oncoming traffic. Passenger car coming from the north then swerved to avoid it, completely lost control on the ice, and hit the guardrail on the passenger side,” Carlos reports, pointing in the direction of a mangled section of the barrier. “Car flipped and slid down the embankment.”

“How many passengers?” his dad clarifies, and TK can tell the way he tenses, his brain already working on a plan of action.

“Just the driver, an adult woman,” Carlos answers, his breath visible in the cold morning air. “My partner made it down to her and she’s responsive, but definitely stuck.”

“Okay,” Owen says, turning to face his team, jaw tight. “Jaws of life, everyone down. Medical will be here in a minute, let’s try to have her out for them.”

There’s a near-collective nod from all of them, but before they can move, they hear a crash in the distance. Turning, TK watches as the line of traffic becomes a danger zone of its own when an approaching car is unable to stop before it runs into the car ahead of it. Like, dominoes, the line begins to splay, cars trying to move to avoid being hit.

“Damn,” his dad sighs, shaking his head. “Change of plan. Ryder, Strickland, Strand-Reyes, you’re down with the jaws of life. Marwani and Chavez, let’s see if we can keep things from getting worse up here.”

TK follows Judd and Paul to the truck, grabbing everything that they might need. As they head towards the damaged guardrail, he passes close to Carlos, nudging him in the side.

“Have I ever told you how much I love to watch you work?” he says, giving his husband a wink as he moves past him. Carlos follows after him, laughing softly.

“TK, for God’s sake, will you stop flirting with your husband for one day,” Judd cries, and TK looks over to find him smiling at him, his eyes dancing with mirth.

“Now, come on, Judd,” Paul adds, his tone teasing. “They’re just being newlyweds.”

“Newlyweds?” Judd scoffs, rolling his eyes. “They’ve been married for two years!”

“Oh, wait, you’re right,” Paul says exaggeratedly, like he’s just remembered. He turns back to TK and Carlos, now walking side-by-side, his face morphing into a look of disgust. “Stop being so in-love, it’s getting weird now.”

TK huffs out a fake laugh, his breath swirling through the air as he sticks his tongue out at his friends. They reach the top of the embankment, looking down at the wreckage. The car still seems to be pretty intact, so TK is hoping this won’t be too bad. He feels a solid hand on his back, turning to find Carlos looking at him, his face serious.

“Don’t do anything reckless down there, or I will arrest you,” he jokes, beginning to walk away.

“On what grounds?” TK gasps, his jaw dropping.

Carlos pauses, his eyebrows furrowing as he thinks about it. “Trying to give me a heart attack before I’m 35,” he finally decides, shooting TK a wink before leaving them to go help with the traffic pile-up.

It’s slow-going, but TK, Paul, and Judd finally make it down the hill to the overturned car. Paul moves over to the window, speaking to the woman, while TK and Judd set down their bags. From what he can see, it looks like it’ll be a pretty straightforward removal.

They’re just prying the door open when his dad radios that medical has arrived. TK moves back to one of his bags over by the bridge, looking for more gauze to press to their patient’s shallow head wound, when there’s a loud crack to the right. He looks over, watching as a somewhat large icicle drops from the bridge and shatters onto the frozen creek below. Looking up, he watches another icicle detach itself and rapidly fall to the ground.

“Shit,” he says, jerking to the side to avoid another one. He feels his feet slide out from under him, unable to gain traction on the ice, and before he knows it, he’s falling flat on his back, his head slamming hard against the solid ground beneath him.

His vision swims, pain coursing through him. His stomach turns, and he feels like he’s going to be sick. He closes his eyes, trying to breath. He thinks he hears a voice in the distance, maybe Paul or Judd calling to him, but he can’t make it out. There’s another loud crack from above, and he opens his eyes just in time to watch a rather large icicle grow larger as it flies towards him.

Pain bursts from his abdomen as he lets out a gasp, his vision swimming once more as his body tries to handle all of the trauma it’s currently experiencing. He clenches his jaw tightly, refusing to let out a yell. He can handle this, he’s done pain before. Between a gunshot and falling through the floor of a house and then falling off the roof of a house just last year, he can handle this. It’s no big deal, so he’s not going to make it one.

He lifts his head, blinking to clear his vision. There are voices around him, fuzzy shapes moving in his peripherals, coming closer. He ignores them, instead looking down towards his stomach. The sight causes him to gasp again, the pain coming back full force now that he has eyes on the source.

There’s an icicle buried inside of his abdomen.

From what he can see, it looks to be as round as his fist and about two feet long, the top of it gleaming threateningly in the sunlight, almost as if it’s proud of itself for the damage it’s just done.

“Fuck,” TK moans, lowering his head as Paul and Judd finally reach his side. He still can’t hear what they’re saying, so he just looks up at the clear blue sky instead. A thought pops into his head, almost making him laugh.

Carlos is totally going to kill him for this.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️

Sometimes, Carlos really hates living in Texas.

Well, that’s an oversimplification. It’s more that he hates the kind of stereotypical attitude that many straight men from Texas possess. The kind of “I’m built Texas tough” mentality that leads to reckless, dangerous, and truly annoying behavior. The kind of attitude that causes a fully-grown man responsible for a six-car pile-up to scream in his father-in-law’s face about how stupid and moronic everyone else is, including the firefighters currently fixing the mess he’s made, forcing Carlos to handcuff him and stick him in the back of his cruiser just so that they can all get a moment of peace.

“Did you see the size of that vein in his neck?” Mateo asks as they move from car to car, making sure that everyone’s okay. “I thought he was going to collapse or something, his face was so red.”

“TK’s gonna be so upset that he missed you wrestling him to the ground,” Marjan pipes in from his other side, elbowing him in the ribs. Carlos just rolls his eyes, shaking his head.

“You know that’s not a turn-on for him, right?”

Marjan scoffs. “Sure, okay, I definitely believe that.”

Captain Strand approaches the three of them, effectively ending the conversation. “No one’s injured in those three cars, so I told them all to sit tight until the tow truck gets here. We may be able to help them once we’ve got the driver down there stabilized.” They all nod in agreement. “Marjan, Mateo, why don’t you keep making the rounds, keep people from trying to get out of their cars. We don’t need any unexpected accidents or falls.” The two firefighters accept their orders, moving away. “You’ve got someone directing traffic further down the road?” Owen asks Carlos.

“Yeah, at Lakewood and Carpenter,” Carlos says, pointing in that direction. “We shouldn’t have any traffic through here from now on.”

Before Owen can respond, they hear a sound from the bridge. They both turn to see the ambulance arrive and begin to walk towards it, eager to fill Michelle and her team in on what’s happening. At his side, Owen radios to his team that medical has arrived and will be down soon.

They’ve just made it onto the bridge, Michelle already making her way towards them, when they hear a shout from down below. They both freeze, trying to listen, but then can’t make out the words. Then, Owen’s radio crackles to life, Judd’s voice coming through, his words rushed.

“We need medical down here ASAP, I’ve got a firefighter down.”

Carlos feels the blood rush from his face, his heart slamming into his ribcage. He shares a look with his father-in-law, and it’s clear that they both know who Judd’s talking about.

“Talk to me, Judd. What’s going on?” Owen says, already heading to the edge of the bridge, Carlos following right behind him.

He stops short when his eyes land on the scene below. He doesn’t even need Judd's report to confirm what he’s seeing. At the bottom of the embankment, almost under the bridge itself, he sees TK laying on the ground, unmoving, a giant shard of ice sticking out of his midsection.

He doesn’t even think before he takes off down the slope, moving as quickly as he can without falling.

“TK!” he shouts, not even sure if the other man can hear him. He finally gets to the bottom, rushing over to his side. “TK!”

Paul moves aside, allowing him to kneel down by his head. He takes his face gently in his hands, watching as TK’s eyes blink dazily, his pupils unfocused and his mouth slack.

“Nobody jostle him,” Michelle yells, and Carlos looks up to find her and her team closing in. “We don’t want that thing to shift an inch. Paul, hold it steady for me if you can.”

Carlos stares down at the two-foot icicle currently buried in his husband’s gut. Every time TK breathes, it pulses, almost threatening to fall over. Paul reaches out and wraps his hands around the top, keeping it vertical.

“What happened?” Michelle asks, kneeling on TK’s other side as she assesses the situation.

“He slipped on the ice and fell, then the icicle came down on him before he could move out of the way,” Judd explains.

“He might have a concussion from the fall,” Michelle mutters, moving to shine a light in TK’s drooping eyes. “Seems likely. Rosewater, take over for Paul, Gillian, see if you can stabilize our patient in the car over there. Carlos,” she says, and his eyes snap up to look at her. “I need you to talk to him okay, try to keep him awake and responding. He could go into shock at any minute, and that’s not going to help us.”

He nods, ducking down to press his face closer to the one that he gets to wake up to every day. “Hey, baby,” he says softly, stroking TK’s forehead. “Hey, it’s me. Can you open your eyes for me? Just open your eyes for a minute, okay?”

TK moans, his eyes blinking rapidly a few times before he opens them enough for Carlos to see those green irises that he loves so much. “Carlos?” he mumbles.

“Yeah, hey, it’s me, I’m right here,” Carlos says, his voice a little unsteady as he tries to stay calm. “How are you feeling?”

“Cold,” TK mutters, his breath creating wisps of steam in the air above him.

“Any pain?” Carlos asks, his eyes shifting down to glare at the icicle for a moment.

“My head hurts,” TK admits, letting out a small gasp.

“Anywhere else?”

TK shakes his head, his eyes darting everywhere.

“That’s probably the adrenaline,” Michelle interjects. She stands up, surveying the bridge above them. “I’m worried his body heat’s going to start melting that icicle faster than we want it to. We’ve gotta get him up there.”

“I don’t think we can get him up the slope without jostling him too much, there’s too much ice,” Tim says.

Michelle turns to Owen, her face grave. “Get the ladder ready, Captain, we’re gonna have to lift him.”

With only a quick, wide-eyed glance down at his son, Owen shoots back up the hill, Judd following him. Off to the side, Carlos sees that Paul and Nancy have managed to remove the driver from the vehicle.

“Carlos?” TK says, and he quickly looks back down at his husband, running his thumbs along his cheek.

“Yeah, Ty, I’m right here,” Carlos assures him, his bottom lip wavering.

“I’m a little scared,” TK admits, his eyes glassy as he stares up at him. “It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?”

“You’re gonna be okay, cariño,” he says, his voice hard and clear.

“You look scared,” TK tells him, raising a hand to touch Carlos’s mouth.

“I’m not scared, I promise,” Carlos lies, leaning in to press a kiss to his forehead. “I’m never scared when I’m with you.”

TK doesn’t respond. He just stares up at Carlos, eyes still unfocused, a wide smile taking over his face.

Minutes later, the team loads TK up on a stretcher with no major problems, and for one shining moment, Carlos thinks everything’s going to be fine.

He climbs up the embankment as fast as he can to meet him at the top, Michelle at his side. She’s telling him that she’s called for another medical team to come for the driver, who thankfully doesn’t appear to be in critical condition, when they hear a shout from Tim.

“Damn it,” Michelle says, running towards where TK’s stretcher is now laying on the pavement. Carlos follows, his heart back in his throat, and the sight that greets them nearly causes him to collapse.

“Tim, apply as much pressure as you can,” Michelle says, throwing her hands on TK’s abdomen, blood rushing from where the icicle has shifted. “We have to get him in the van, we’ll have a better chance of stabilizing him there.”

Carlos watches as TK’s head lists to the side, his eyes dropping closed.

“He’s crashing, let’s move people!” Michelle shouts.

There’s a mad rush all around him, but Carlos barely comprehends it. All he can do is stare at his husband, his unmoving body, the blood draining from his face while simultaneously gushing from the wound in his stomach.

He doesn’t feel the way his knees hit the pavement, or Marjan’s arms around him. He doesn’t feel the tears falling on his cheeks, or the way he starts to shake. He doesn’t even feel the cold, unfamiliar Austin air.

As TK is pulled away from him, he doesn’t feel anything at all.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️

TK wakes up in the hospital.

At this point, it all feels very familiar. Every hospital room seems to smell the same, sterile and uninviting. The sheets are scratchy, which coordinates nicely with the scratchy hospital gown they have him wearing. He can hear the gentle beeping from the monitor next to him, and feel the pinch of an IV in his left arm.

TK opens his eyes slowly, staring up at the ceiling as he assesses his current state. The lights are low, but it still takes him a minute to adjust, his head faintly throbbing. He recalls how much his head hurt on the scene, how his vision went blurry, and assumes he got a concussion from his fall.

He shifts slightly, gasping as the movement pulls at his midsection and an intense pain radiates throughout his entire body. The sound causes a weight against his right arm to shift, and he looks down, his eyes immediately softening at the sight before him.

Carlos is seated next to the bed, his body bent so that he can rest his head against TK’s arm, which he’s also gripping with one of his hands. His other hand is awkwardly linked with TK’s own, their fingers threaded tightly together. Carlos’s face is turned towards him, his eyes closed as he rests. TK notices how puffy his eyes are, and how his skin is more pale than usual. His heart sinks in his chest, an intense guilt masking his own pain as he stares down at the man he loves more than anything.

Before he can even think about how much pain it might cause, he lifts his left arm across his body to run his fingers through Carlos’s dark brown curls. It’s his favorite thing to do on the rare occasions where he’s the first one to wake up in the morning, and he knows his husband absolutely loves it. Sure enough, Carlos lets out a soft moan, unconsciously tilting his head towards TK’s fingers.

He can tell the minute that Carlos realizes what’s happening by the way his whole body tenses. His eyes fly open, his brown eyes wide as he sits up straight. His gaze finds TK, drinking him in, and TK can’t do anything but smile back at him, squeezing their hands together.

“Ty,” Carlos breathes, his eyes filling with tears.

“Hey, baby,” TK says, pulling gently on Carlos’s hand until he gets the hint.

His husband stands, shifting closer to the head of the bed, before bending down to press a soft kiss to his waiting lips. Carlos tries to make the kiss quick, but TK reaches up to grip the back of his neck, keeping him close.

“How long has it been?” TK asks when they separate, rubbing their noses together. At this point, it’s their traditional question when one of them is in the hospital.

“They rushed you to surgery when you first got here, which took about four hours,” Carlos explains, his voice shaking as he runs his fingers soothingly through TK’s hair. “You’ve been sleeping for about five.”

“So, still the same day?” TK confirms. It’s an odd question, but after going through one multi-day coma in his life, he’s hoping to never have to do another. Besides, he knows Carlos wouldn’t handle it well.

“Still the same day,” his husband confirms, the first sign of a smile pulling at his lips.

“That’s good.”

“Very good,” Carlos agrees, leaning in to kiss him. This one feels a little more heated than the last one. “You know how I get when I don’t get to kiss you goodnight.”

“You become the equivalent of a child who’s told he can’t have ice cream right before bed,” TK supplies, enjoying the shocked look that appears on Carlos��s face. “Or so I’m told.”

“Told?” Carlos cries. “Who told you that? Give me the traitors’ names, Tyler!”

“Just for that, I’m not going to,” he laughs, gasping for air when the movement sends a flare of pain through him.

“Are you okay?” Carlos asks, worry written clearly on his face. He reaches out, his hands fluttering around him but too afraid to touch.

“Yeah, I just,” TK grits out, holding his side. “Fuck, that does not feel good.”

It takes a few minutes of deep breathing for him to finally settle back down, reaching for Carlos’s hand when he’s sure that his grip won’t break his fingers. Carlos gingerly takes a seat next to him on the bed, running his free hand through his hair to soothe him.

TK’s just about to ask exactly what the damage is when there’s a knock on the door. They both turn to find his dad poking his head through, an apologetic smile on his face.

“Hey boys, sorry to interrupt,” he says, glancing behind him at something they can’t see. “There’s just some people here who wanted to say a quick hello.”

TK rolls his eyes, sharing a smile with Carlos. This happens every time someone from the firehouse ends up in the hospital - though to be fair, it’s usually him.

“You know you can always let them in, Dad,” he says, his fondness clear in his tone. Carlos just scoots a little closer, pressing one last kiss to his lips.

“I love you,” he mutters, his eyes shining.

“I love you, too,” TK whispers back as the door is thrown wide open and the equivalent of a clown car files into his room.

Judd and Grace lead the way, followed by Paul, Marjan, and Mateo, then Michelle, Tim, and Nancy. His dad, the last one, closes the door behind him. Strictly speaking, this is way too many visitors to have in a single room at a time, but there are nurses at every hospital who are willing to bend the rules a bit for familiar first responders, as long as they’re discreet about it.

TK looks around at them all - Grace, with her hand on Carlos’s shoulder, and Michelle at the foot of his bed, her eyes glinting with happiness; his dad standing next to her; Mateo, Marjan, and Paul all standing to his left, Paul reaching out to punch him lightly on the shoulder, a bright smile on his face.

They’re his family, all of them. And they all saved his life today.

“I, um,” he starts, his voice thick with emotion as he looks around at them all. He feels Carlos’s hand slide up his arm, his thumb gently caressing his bicep in support. He turns to look at him, noticing how Carlos still has his back to most of the room as he faces him on the bed. They share a look, just between the two of them, and Carlos nods, a tear falling down his cheek as he squeezes TK’s arm.

“I, um, I wanted to thank you all,” TK says, looking around the room again, his eyes hovering over every face that makes him feel safe and loved and whole, “for saving me today. I - we - will never be able to tell you how much it means to know that we have all of you by our side, looking out for us.”

He feels a tear fall onto his cheek, but before he can reach up to brush it away, Michelle shifts from the end of his bed, coming around the side to stand next to him. She reaches out for him and Carlos, drying his face and gripping his husband’s arm tightly.

“Don’t be silly. You boys are our family,” Michelle says, “so we’re always going to be here for you. No matter what. It’s as simple as that.”

“She’s right,” Judd pipes in, his arm around Grace. “Though, full disclosure, we are gifting you a bulk-size roll of bubble wrap this Christmas.”

“Hey now, c’mon Judd,” Paul says, his hands buried in his pockets. “You weren’t supposed to tell him.”

“Ignore Judd, y’all,” Grace adds, rolling her eyes as she pats her husband’s chest. “He doesn’t do Christmas shopping, and I have much better taste, trust me on that.”

TK huffs out a laugh, wincing at the way it pulls at his injury. No one else catches it, too busy laughing at Grace’s comment and Judd’s offended expression. He glances over at Carlos, seeing a tightness behind his eyes, and knows that his pain didn’t go completely unnoticed. TK reaches over, squeezing his thigh where it’s pressed against his own. Carlos gives him a small smile, grabbing his hand to press a kiss to his fingertips.

The tightness in his eyes doesn’t go anywhere, though, and TK’s heart caves.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️

The team stays until visiting hours are over, laughing and joking as they fill TK and Carlos in about the rest of the work day. It seems that much of the ice started to melt by the middle of the afternoon, making the end of the day much easier than the beginning. Finally, a nurse comes in, shocked to find so many people in one room, and tells them that visiting hours are over. One-by-one, they come over to hug TK and Carlos, Grace even pressing a kiss to each of their foreheads.

When only Carlos and his dad remain, the nurse checks his vitals, telling him that everything appears to be normal. Carlos stands by his side, hand on his shoulder, as TK honestly answers her questions about his pain levels. She helps him to adjust his position on the bed, showing Carlos how to help him so he’ll feel the least amount of pain. His husband listens closely, his face set and serious.

She leaves, and Carlos excuses himself to the bathroom, leaving him alone with his dad.

“How’re you feeling, kid?” his dad asks, sitting next to him.

“A little tender,” he admits, running his hand lightly over the thick bandage on his stomach. They’re quiet for a moment, TK biting his bottom lip. “It was pretty bad, wasn’t it?” he finally asks.

His dad looks at him, his eyes softening, before reaching out and taking his hand. “You crashed right before they got you in the ambulance. The icicle hit a pretty major blood vessel near your liver, and you lost a lot of blood when it shifted unexpectedly.”

TK is quiet, thoughts rolling through his mind. “He saw, didn’t he?” he confirms, his voice barely more than a hushed whisper.

“Yeah,” his dad admits, his tone heavy. “He wasn’t in a good place when you left, so his partner drove him here and Michelle stayed with him until I could come.” TK nods, his eyes filling with tears. “He’s gonna be okay, though, TK. You both are.”

His dad stands again, looking around the room. “I’m going to head home,” he says, reaching out to run his fingers through TK’s hair. “I know you’re in good hands for the night. I’ll come back first thing in the morning, okay?”

“Yeah,” TK says. Then, he gets an idea. “Can you help me shift a little?”

His dad smiles knowingly before reaching out again to help move him to the left side of the bed, TK breathing deeply through the pain.

Carlos finally comes out of the bathroom and his dad gives them both a hug, TK watching as he whispers something in his husband’s ear before pressing a kiss to his temple. Then, with a final wave, they’re alone again.

“Hey,” TK says, breaking the silence.

“Hey,” Carlos parrots back, his voice thin and uneven.

“Come here,” TK says, patting the now open space beside him. Carlos moves across the room, glancing down at the spot doubtfully.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Ty,” he says, his eyes full of so much pain.

“Well, I don’t want to go another minute without you laying by my side, so get your ass up here.” The hard tone of his voice leaves no room for questions, so his husband sighs, sliding next to him as gently as possible.

They lay there for a moment, just breathing together. Then, like a dam breaking, Carlos turns onto his side, placing an arm over his chest as he tucks his face into TK’s neck. In no time at all, TK feels tears soaking the collar of his gown, and his own tears finally fall at the evidence of Carlos’s silent pain.

“I’m so sorry for scaring you today, baby,” he sobs, bringing his hand up to press against the dark curls near his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

Carlos doesn’t respond except to shake his head, his sobs continuing. TK holds him through it, his heart shattering into a million pieces in his chest. Throughout the past four year, Carlos has had a few nightmares of TK bleeding out in front of him - caused by him getting shot before they even started dating - so he knows that today had to be especially brutal for his husband.

“I know it was an accident, and that you’re going to be okay now,” Carlos finally mumbles into his neck, “but I was so fucking scared that I had lost you there for a minute. I’ve never seen Michelle so intense before, and I really thought this was it.”

“I know, baby, I know,” TK says, trailing his fingers along the back of Carlos’s neck. He digs his nails in just a bit, knowing that the feeling will help ground Carlos. Sure enough, his husband shivers against him, letting out a shaky breath. “You didn’t lose me, though. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“You promise?” Carlos asks weakly.

“Babe, look at me,” TK says, pulling his head back to look down at him. Carlos’s eyes are red-rimmed, his face puffy from crying so much today. He looks so small, so cut open and raw, that TK wishes he could take all of his pain away. “I promise that I am going to do everything in my power to come home to you in one piece at the end of every day, okay?”

Carlos nods, his eyes falling closed. TK stares at his long, gorgeous eyelashes now soaked with tears. Leaning forward, he presses a kiss to each eyelid, feeling the way that Carlos relaxes further into his side.

“I’m sorry that our bath plans got ruined for this evening,” he says after a few minutes, recalling their conversation from this morning.

“That’s okay,” Carlos says, his fingers lightly tracing TK’s collarbone through his hospital gown. “Once I get you home, I’m probably never going to let you leave again, so there will be plenty of time for baths.”

TK laughs, ignoring the pain when Carlos joins him. “I like the sound of that,” he admits.

Their gazes lock for a moment before Carlos presses up until their lips meet, the kiss igniting a fire inside of him from head to toe. It doesn’t matter how many times he gets to kiss Carlos, TK thinks that each one feels new and different and life-affirming, his body and soul practically singing at the chance to connect with his husband in a way that no one else can. That no one else ever will.

It’s something that he knows he’ll never get tired of for as long as he lives.

Which will be a very, very long time.

He’s sure of it.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️

#911giftexchange #tarlos #tarlos fic #911 lone star #tk strand #carlos reyes #I wrote a thing #charlie-bradburyss

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strandbuckley · 3 years

Note

Hi :) Would you please write a fic following the Tarlos market scene - TK and Carlos have a fight and then don't speak to each other. The following day, Carlos is injured at work and they make up. Thanks!

Read on ao3 here

(This was also written before Paramedic TK was canon but there is some slight Paramedic TK content in this)

“I cleared out some room in your closet.”

Those words followed by the slamming of the door haunted TK the minute they left his mouth. They echoed in his brain, bouncing back and forth across the walls of his skull as he drove home and collapsed into bed without saying a word to his parents. Not that they’d even noticed him walk in, let alone what kind of mood he was in.

He hated himself for leaving Carlos like that, hated himself for throwing his boyfriend’s insecurities back into his face. It was a dick move, an Alex move, and the very thought of acting like his ex was enough to make TK want to vomit.

He pulled out his phone and hovered over Carlos’ contact. It would be so easy just to call him, to apologize and grovel but his brain got the best of him.

There was the completely plausible and valid possibility that Carlos was done with him after that, and he wouldn’t blame him. Carlos had been loving and kind and accepting of all of TK’s bullshit since they met. Yet TK couldn’t accept this one thing.

He opted to turn his phone off, burying it in the drawer of his bedside table to worry about later. He burrowed under the covers, pressing his pillow over his head and closing his eyes.

He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep, but he was woken abruptly by his dad shaking his shoulder.

“TK, come on get up. Did you turn your alarm off? Your shift started thirty minutes ago.”

“Shit!” TK swore throwing himself out of bed and rushing around to find his clothes. Judd was running point on Owen’s day off and he was going to have his ass for being late.

“I didn’t know you came home,” Owen commented as TK breezed past him, retrieving his phone and willing it to turn on quicker.

“Yeah, I just needed a night to myself.”

“Alright then. You better get going. Maybe Judd will take it easy on you.”

“Doubt it. I’ll see you later.”

TK drove as fast as he dared, ducking into the station, hoping to avoid Judd for as long as possible.

Unfortunately, Judd was waiting for him, leaning against one of the trucks.

TK sighed and held out his hand, grabbing the rag and bucket that Judd handed him before ruffling his hair and walking away whistling.

The day was slow, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but TK did manage to finish the overload of chores Judd was punishing him with before the bell rang.

He was grateful to have something to do and grabbed his gear, hopping into the truck next to Paul.

“You alright?” Paul asked, nudging his leg with his own. “You seem off today.”

“Had a fight with Carlos last night. It’s not a big deal.”

“I’m sure you’ll work it out. After all, it’s Carlos. How bad could it be?”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Okay guys,” Judd rounded them up for instructions when they reached the scene. “APD is already here. TK, I want you to go with Tommy and Nancy for backup on medical. Marjan, Paul, and Mateo round up stragglers and get them out of the way. This is an APD scene, we’re just here to help so defer to them if you need to.”

TK glanced around and he had a strange heart jump moment when he realized that Carlos and his partner were there. He looked away quickly, trying not to be spotted as he jogged off to join the paramedic crew.

“What’s going on here?” TK asked Tommy as he followed her to triage.

“Robbery gone wrong. Just some dumb kids. As far as I know, APD has them in custody, we just need to check on the injured workers.”

“Got it.”

“TK, take that woman over there. Nancy, help me with the two teenagers.”

“Got it, Cap.”

TK approached the woman with a med bag thrown over his shoulder.

“Ma’am my name is TK. I’m here to help.”

He knelt next to her and assessed the cut on her leg.

“Okay this is gonna need some stitches but I’m gonna patch it up temporarily until we can get you to a hospital.”

He pulled things out of his bag, talking her through it as he cleaned and wrapped the wound before getting her loaded into an ambulance.

The other two teenagers were whisked away and TK made the mistake of assuming they were home free. The robbers were in cuffs and the crew was loading up the truck to head back to the station when there were shouts from the APD crew.

“Clear out, suspect on the run.”

Judd pulled TK out of the way as the cops ran by, chasing down the guy. Carlos got to him first, tackling him to the ground.

Carlos let out a shout of pain as they hit the ground but TK couldn’t tell what was wrong until his partner had gotten him into cuffs and Carlos rolled over. TK was pretty sure his heart stopped for a split second when he realized that there was a knife sticking out of his left thigh.

“Tommy Carlos is hurt!” he shouted, grabbing a med bag and running toward his boyfriend.

“TK,” Carlos groaned when he dropped to his knees next to him.

“I’m here ‘Los.”

“It hurts,” Carlos reached down to his thigh but TK slapped his hand slightly aggressively.

“Don't touch it. They’ll take it out at the hospital, I’m just gonna pack it to stop the bleeding.”

“Okay,” he muttered.

Nancy approached them, helping to elevate Carlos’ leg while TK worked, and Tommy supervised, helping TK with his technique. They got him loaded into the ambulance and it was an unspoken agreement that TK would ride with him, technicalities be damned.

Tommy gave him something for pain en route to the hospital, so Carlos floated in and out of consciousness as he clung to TK’s hand.

Upon arrival, Carlos was whisked away and TK was left to wait. His dad joined him soon after, a comforting presence.

They were there for almost an hour when a nurse finally came with an update.

“Carlos Reyes family?”

“That’s us.”

“So good news. There was minimal damage. Quite a few stitches and he’ll be sore for a few days. We’re also recommending that he take some time off work. Other than that he’s perfectly fine and good to go home tonight as long as someone can stay with him to take care of him.”

“That would be me,” TK said.

“Okay. I’ll go write up the discharge papers.”

*****

“Okay, watch your step.”

“I’ve got it TK,” Carlos grumbled as TK helped him through the threshold of his house. “Thank you for bringing me home. You can go now.”

“The doctor said someone needs to take care of you. I want to be here Carlos.”

“Could have fooled me,” Carlos groaned as he lowered himself down onto the couch.

“Yeah I know,” TK sighed and perched himself on the coffee table across from him. “Look I’m sorry for being a little bitch.”

“You-”

“If you’re gonna say that I wasn’t, you’re lying. I was but I’m not sorry. I just- I realized that the reason I was so upset was because all of a sudden, I felt unsafe and unstable in this relationship.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“But what I didn’t consider was how unsafe you have felt since you came out, and then I went and threw that back in your face like the world’s most inconsiderate boyfriend. So you can tell your parents that I’m a friend, a colleague, your personal shopper, I don’t care. I know what we are and that’s good enough.”

“You were right earlier,” Carlos started. “I do have someone who loves me, and I love him just as much. And I do want my parents to know how happy and comfortable I am with you. I just don’t know if I’m ready yet.”

“That’s okay Carlos. Take your time, and if you’re never ready, I’ll still be here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I love you so much,” Carlos said, voice thick with unshed tears.

TK leaned forward to kiss him gently, “I love you more.”

#911 #911 lone star #911 lone star fic #tarlos #tarlos fic #tk strand #carlos reyes #my works #ask #prompt #fic

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punksarahreese · 3 years

Note

discrepency + dizzy -milkymarj

Dizzy | Discrepancy

Disability!AU; pain can be incredibly disorienting, especially if one pushes through it.

Word count: 1205

Prompt: dizzy

CW: pain, syncope/fainting

@milkymarjan

***

Hindsight is always 20/20, unfortunately, and Marjan tends to learn that the hard way. Realistically she knows better, yet every time she pushes herself too far she finds herself frustrated with her body’s limits. She shouldn’t still hurt like this, she reasons with herself, it shouldn’t be this hard.

She said that but she knew it was the opposite in reality. She already did things doctors told her she would never be capable of doing, and she did them on the daily. That comes with clear risks, of course, but Marjan didn’t worry about them. Not in the moment, anyway, because all she really wanted to do was help people. She was in it for the fulfilment of her childhood dream and the need to help others, though she would also admit the adrenaline rush is pretty great too.

Marjan should be more careful, it's what her parents and friends back home tell her constantly. They’d seen all her videos and the risks are evident but Marjan never listened too hard. She’s Firefox for goodness’ sake, one doesn’t go viral by being careful or by being treated like glass. That's what she told them every time and it's what Owen needs to be reminded every time he expresses his concern. She knew they nag because they’re worried but she’s 25; one would think Marjan could take care of herself by that point.

That’s what she muttered to her captain when he nudged her on their way back to the rig. She was limping, she could feel it in the way her body instinctively favoured her right side. Something wasn’t right and Marjan knew that but she had hoped no one would notice. Usually capitan Strand was too preoccupied with his own thing to really notice, but that wasn’t the case on this day.

“Marwani, you okay?” His voice was lowered, thankfully, and Owen waited until Paul had gone off to help Mateo with the hose before he spoke. They had an agreement that Marjan would keep him updated on her condition so long as he didn’t let the rest of the squad know. Considering the amount of things he kept a secret from his son in the past, she hoped he could apply that to the whole 126 this time around.

“Fine, Cap,” she answered as she went to hoist herself back into the truck, trying to hide her flinch when she leaned too much on her leg.

“Marjan.”

“Just a strain,” she promised, settling down in the seat she usually claimed. A quick glance out the other window told her the others were coming into the rig. Giving Owen a look, Marjan went to fiddle with her seatbelt in an attempt to avoid eye contact, hoping he would take the hint. Marjan didn’t need the concern and she certainly didn’t want the rest of her crew to know anything was wrong. Nothing was wrong, after all; or at least that’s what she told herself.

Even still, she had to admit paying attention to any conversation was extremely difficult. Actually, Marjan was having a hard time focusing in general, her brain feeling like it was stuffed with cotton. All she could think about was the amount of screaming pain her leg was in at that point, the ligaments in her knee being particularly bothered. Any movement sent harsh tugging motions through the connective tissue, making Marjan grit her teeth and hide her flinch as the rig came to a less than gentle stop in the station.

She was the last one out of the truck, pretending to fix her scarf and tugging on her undercap a bit. The boys didn’t bother her or look in her direction whenever she did that, something she was always grateful for. In that situation it gave her some time to have them disappear to shower or change, leaving Marjan mostly alone so she could relax for a moment.

That was the idea, anyway, but it was easier said than done. Even after sitting and trying to relax her muscles for a moment, Marjan could only feel pain. A gentle hand pressing on the back of her knee through her gear felt like she was being hit with a baseball bat, causing her to stifle a pained sound. She had to stand up, though, because her staying in the rig for this long was already a cause for concern.

Holding onto the handle for support, Marjan lowered herself out of the seat, praying she didn’t fall off the step with how unstable she felt. Her head was spinning, an uncomfortably familiar sensation caused by her adamance to push through the pain. Even as she tried to regain her footing, she knew she pushed herself too far this time.

She had declined Paul’s offer to be the one to rappel into that building, insisting it was her turn and hooking her harness to the rigging system before he could argue. She had been fine all day, through the walking and heavy gear and even while carrying a little boy out of a house fire. She miscalculated her stability during the rappel down, though, and a stumble when going to break a second floor window with her boots had her knee buckling. The initial pain was bad but the aftermath made it feel like a pinprick in comparison. She wasn’t sure what she had done but the way she had to grit her teeth with every bend of her knee told Marjan it was way more than just a strain.

“Marjan?” Mateo was behind her all of a sudden, a gentle hand on her elbow when she teetered on her unstable legs. She winced because she wasn’t sure how to avoid the truth but this wasn’t a situation she could hide from them. She was hurt, that was clear, and she couldn’t smile her way out of the concern of her crewmates.

“I’m fine, Probie,” she replied before he could ask, “Knocked up my knee a bit is all.”

“I’ll get Tommy.”

“Mateo, no,” Marjan said quickly before her friend could run off to find the paramedic capitan. She tried to shake her head, meaning to put on a brave face and promise she was just fine, but that was a mistake. The rapid head movement only worsened her vertigo caused by the discomfort, the room spinning and her leg threatening to buckle under her. Mateo must have noticed because he grabbed her again, quick to help support her right side because Marjan was clearly having trouble.

“Captain Vega?!” Marjan wanted to protest again but she was too dizzy, her eyes felt heavy and all she wanted to do was cry. She hated appearing weak but she couldn’t keep up the façade at that point, not when her whole leg felt like it was on fire, almost as bad as when she first tore her MCL back in middle school. Marjan couldn’t even answer Tommy when she asked what was wrong, only a stifled whimper of pain preceded her descent into unforgiving unconsciousness, falling limp in Mateo’s hold.

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braveclxrke · 3 years

Note

Regarding your Bingo Card- Can I request “Crying into the chest” with Tarlos.

I so want to read it after watching that scene in the promo. 🥺

Thank you ☺️

Thank you so much for the ask!💗

This is the first bad things happen bingo prompt I’ve ever done so I hope you enjoy it! this turned out much longer than I expected so I apologies, I just couldn’t stop writing 🥺

Ao3 link

Title: How do you go on after you lose everything: Take a breath, then another. That’s it

Summary: The 126 lose a member of their family on a call and TK struggles to deal with it.

Fandom/pairing/prompt: 911 Lone Star/Tarlos/Crying into chest

Word Count: 3.5k

@badthingshappenbingo

TK had had some crazy days in Austin; hurricanes, bulls in cars, and solar flares, but he could never have predicted what was happening right now.

“Lava?” Paul said, his brow raised as the crew jumped off the truck, the air thick and warm. “You serious,” He asked, looking over at Owen like the rest of the crew.

The crew passed the police barricades, the air growing warmer by the second. TK could hear the ground cracking, the sounds of screaming growing closer. Smoke now filled the air, as the group looked at the scene before them, bright, glowing lava seeping from the ground, everything around the whole in the middle of the square on fire.

“Guess you were being serious,” Mateo said, looking around at the 126.

“Alright everyone stay alert, stay in pairs,” Owen called, holding his mask in his hand, “Tim you come with me and Judd, Nacy with Marjan and TK and Tommy with Mateo and Paul,” The paramedics slung fireproof jackets over their shoulders, Owen and Judd helping to fit their breathing equipment.

“Bet you never saw this in New York,” Marjan said, knocking her shoulder into TK’s, pulling her mask over her face, “Sure you can handle the heat Strand,” She said, and TK could still see the teasing smile on her face through the smoke and mask.

“Oh you know it,” TK smiled back, “You guys sure you can handle the heat?” He said nodding towards where Tim and Nancy were standing.

“We’ve been doing this a lot longer than you kid,” Tim joked, shifting as he got used to the heavyweight of the fire protective jacket.

“You telling me you’ve faced lava before?” TK asked, his brow raised.

“You have no idea what we’ve faced before,” Tim smiled, looking over at Nancy who was laughing as she slipped her own oxygen mask on. The small group laughed, and for a moment TK forgot that lava was spewing a few feet away.

Continue reading under the cut

If the worried civilians around the police tape could hear their jokes, TK was sure they would be perplexed. Here they were about to enter a scene covered in lava and they were joking. It was something that came with years of experience, you had to shut off a part of your brain that saw the danger and everything that would go wrong; otherwise, you’d never step into a burning house or in this case; the pit of lava.

TK went to slip his mask on when a voice called from behind.

“Hey!” TK turned around to see Carlos coming towards him, his hand held up to cover his face.

“You shouldn’t be this close to the scene,” TK said, squinting his eyes through the growing smoke. Carlos had no protective gear on, and he could see from the way his boyfriend covered his face with his forearm the heat was intense. Carlos got closer and TK could now see the frown on his face, this time not from the heat, “Please be careful,” Carlos said, his voice serious and low.

TK gave a small smile, leaning forward to place a quick kiss on Carlos’s lips, “When am I not?!” Giving Carlos a wink as he slipped his mask on.

TK walked over to the place where his crew had gathered, waiting to step into the scene. Marjan nodded her head at TK, Nancy standing next to her.

Marjan held her hand up, TK giving her a high five, “Lets roll Strand,” She called as the three of them carefully entered the scene, the other groups going in different directions.

It didn’t take long for them to find someone, lying on the floor, their leg trapped underneath a piece of rock. The group dashed over, being careful to avoid the still growing flames. Nancy got to work while TK and Marjan assisted the woman, talking her through what was being done.

A roar echoed as a rock flew through the air, crashing into the ground. The earth shook and TK had to reach out to stop himself falling, Marjan doing the same, holding Nancy still as she worked.

TK gave a small smile, shaking his head; how did his life get this crazy? TK had been back to work for around 5 months, and it was only in the last month that TK had started to enjoy the job again. The itching fear and anxiety that had embedded itself into his body along with that bullet had just started to subside. TK no longer flinched when he heard a car backfire, or pause before breaking down a door in case someone with a gun was on the other side.

TK felt the sweat drip down his face, stinging his eyes. “We’ve got to move her,” Nancy said. TK and Marjan moved closer, “I need you two to carefully lift that rock while I move her,” She continued, pointing to the rock that was trapping the woman. The pair nodded moving to the rock, their hands poised on either side. “Ready?” Nancy said. Marjan and TK locked eyes through the smoke, nodding as they carefully lifted the rock, the woman crying out as Nancy pulled her free. There was no time to get a stretcher and bring it back, the smoke around them growing thicker each second. Nancy explained to the woman that Marjan and TK were going to carry her out, she nodded as tears spilt down her cheek making marks in the black ash on her face.

Marjan and TK carried the woman through the smoke, the air becoming clearer as they reached the ambulance, placing the woman on a stretcher that was waiting for her.

The ground shook again as another roaring noise filled the air. TK watched as a large rook flew through the air, the smoke too thick to be able to tell where it landed.

Marjan patted TK on the chest to indicate they were ready to head back out when the radio on their chest crackled to life.

“Man down! I repeat man down!” Judd’s voice cut through the chaos of the scene. TK waited to hear his fathers voice, but he didn’t speak. TK felt a cold shiver run through him, his whole body going icy despite the lava a few feet away. “No one enters the scene, it’s too dangerous, we’re bringing him out,” As to prove his point another rock flew through the air, TK didn’t move as it collided with the ground, shaking the earth, It was as if his fear had frozen him in place. “Ambulance on standby I repeat, male hit in the chest with one of the rocks, I don’t think he’s breathing,” Judd continued. Even though TK was strapped to oxygen he’s breathing stopped, caught in his chest and throat. He wanted to reach up and call for his dad over the radio, but his hands were locked by his side. Everything felt slow and blurry as people rushed around him, through the fog TK could see shapes moving towards him; bodies.

Nancy raced past him as Judd and- TK felt the air return to his lungs, his feet unsticking from the ground as he saw his dad next to Judd, covered in dirt and ash but alive. TK let out a relieved breath, it only lasted a few seconds as he noticed who they were carrying; Tim. Everything seemed to speed up as Judd and Owen placed the young paramedic on a stretcher, Tommy leaning over to work on him. He knew people were saying things but he couldn’t hear anything besides the loud ringing in his mind.

Tommy was performing CPR.

Tim wasn’t breathing.

TK felt Marjan grab his hand as they watched in terror as Tim fought for his life.

The paramedic was loaded into the ambulance as it pulled out of the lot.

The 126 just watched for a moment, no one speaking or moving “Alright let’s get back to work,” Owen said. TK could hear how his voice broke, everyone wanting to go be with their friend but there was still work to do. That was the harsh reality of this job, you can’t just leave, the emergency doesn’t stop. Everyone gave a nod, TK noticing the tears that had gathered in Nancy’s eyes as they headed back towards the scene, Tim occupying a piece of all of their minds and hearts.

The truck pulled into the firehouse, the crew slowly jumping off, everyone sore and tired. The lava had taken over 2 hours to manage, from pulling people out, to stopping the continuous growing fire surrounding the scene. TK shrugged off his gear onto the table, pausing for a second to chat his breath before heading up to the bathroom to shower off the shoot and ash.

They had heard nothing from the hospital, no one had spoken a word unless necessary after Tim had left, everyone waiting for their radio to tell them everything was alright. TK had hoped the warm water would wash away the fear and guilt from his body but it did little to ease his emotions.

He had felt relieved. It was just for a second, the smallest moment as he realised his dad was okay but it was relief and the pit in TK’s stomach hadn’t left since he’d felt that momentary relief.

TK eventually pulled himself out of the warm shower, the air of the firehouse feeling colder than he remembered as he pulled on a green shirt and jeans. TK walked out of the washroom to head back down to the lot when he heard a voice.

TK froze as he realised it wasn’t a voice, but a cry. A desperate, broken cry. TK slowly walked to where the cry was coming from.

Eventually, TK came to the door of the large lounge. He could see through the glass that the crew was gathered inside. Paul had his arms wrapped around Marjan and Mateo. Judd was sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands.

TK realised it was Nancy who was crying, another paramedic with his arms wrapped around her from behind.

TK took an unsteady step back, he told himself he wasn’t witnessing what he knew he was. Maybe they were tears of relief, maybe this was nothing to do with today's events. TK finally met his father’s eyes, who had noticed him while he had been watching everyone else.

There was no doubt in his mind now what TK was witnessing; grief.

TK didn’t move from the threshold of the door, made no effort to push it open. If he stayed on this side maybe it wouldn’t be true. On this side, everything was the same and life wasn’t about to change.

TK felt his lip quiver as he staggered back from the door, turning on his heels as he walked down the corridor, his mind working on autopilot. TK grabbed the handle of the staircase and started to head down. He only made it halfway before his legs seemed to finally stop working, TK stumbling before falling onto one of the steps, his arms still holding onto the railing.

TK just stared ahead, his mind so wrapped in his thoughts he didn’t hear the footsteps till they were right behind him. The footsteps stopped and TK heard the person sit down, he didn’t have to see them to know who it was; Carlos. TK could recognise the man's cologne anywhere.

“You okay?” Carlos quietly asked, perched on the step behind him, his legs either side of TK.

Carlos' voice managed to cut through the chaos that was TK’s mind, he let his hand fall from the railing above, “He’s dead instead he?” TK asked his voice monotone, no hint of emotion to be found. TK turned around to see Carlos looking down at him, the rims of his eyes red from tears, “Tim?” TK choked the emotions finding his way back to his voice.

Carlos sighed, his lip trembling and that all the confirmation that TK needed, “The hospital did everything they could but, there wasn’t anything to be done,” Carlos reached out, placing his hand on TK’s cheek, “I’m so sorry,” He soothed.

TK just stared straight ahead, the image blurring and shifting as tears filled his eyes. “When I first realised it wasn’t my dad I was…” TK cut himself off, shaking his head of the thought and comforting hand of Carlos, he didn’t deserve it, “...Relieved and ugh” TK shook his head harder, wrapping his arms around his stomach to try and lessen the nausea that was building.

Carlos moved his hand back to TK’s shoulder, his thumb smoothing this skin. “You can’t blame yourself for that TK, he’s your dad, of course, you wanted him to be okay, that doesn’t mean you wanted the others to hurt,” The logical side of TK’s brain knew that was true, but right now that side wasn’t working.

“We’d just become a family,” TK laminated, narrowing his eyes, “I spent months keeping everyone at arm's length and then as soon as I realised I wanted to be here…” He trailed off again like his mind wasn’t capable of finishing a thought, all of them too painful. When TK had gotten to Austin, he had just meant for this to be a job, like it was back in New York. Yet, here TK had found people he never expected to, people that understood him, supported him; a family. “Now one of us is gone,” TK whispered to himself. In the six years, TK had been a firefighter, he had never lost a crewmate. There’d been close calls, people who had to leave the force but no one had ever...died. Tim might not have been a firefighter, but he was part of their family, part of the 126 the same way Carlos and Michelle were; they shared a home. “I was just joking with him a few hours ago,” TK instantly cringed at his light and cheerful attitude he had worn when he arrived at the scene, it seemed so wrong now looking back. “What are we supposed to do?” He asked, not to Carlos in particular, more to the world, but he sure neither of them would have an answer.

“Right now...” Carlos sighed, moving his hand to TK’s back, “Right now we do what we need to do, and get through the day.”

Get through the day. It seemed so simple, but as TK sat on the stairs the end of the day seemed almost unreachable. “I don’t know about tomorrow,” Carlos whispered.

It was the break in the man's voice, the tiredness in his eyes that lifted the last bit of fog from TK’s mind.

“I’m sorry,” TK finally said, his voice a fraction more stable this time, “I know you’ve worked with him for a long time,” TK said, his hand reaching out to take Carlos, “He’s your friend to,”

Carlos had been in Austin years before TK had even arrived, as had Tim. The two had known each other for years, worked together on cases that TK probably knew nothing about.

Carlos just nodded, the lump in his throat bobbing as he blinked quicker, “He was everyone’s friend,” he said.

The use of the word was and not is caused a tear to roll down TK’s cheek, a moment later the same happening for Carlos; they were speaking about Tim in the past tense.

“This isn’t meant to happen to them, we’re the ones that are meant to run into to danger,” When TK became a firefighter, he knew danger was a part of everyday life, he’d gotten use to it, but the paramedics, they were meant to save lives and be safe, not run into the fire with them. TK looked away down at the empty lot. All the trucks were there, even the ambulance, everything looked the same but nothing was. “My dads in remission, I’m back to work, everything was just going right and now-” The constant worry that something was about to go wrong had finally quieted down, the fear that he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop had stopped. “I just don’t understand,” TK asked, again not to anyone in particular.

“Neither do I Ty,” Carlos said, his arms coming to wrap around TK’s shoulder, his head resting in the crook of his neck. “But we’ve all got each other, and we’re going to get through this,” He said. TK closed his eyes, he hadn’t even thought about the crew, how they were feeling. “You wanna go see your dad?” Carlos whispered.

“No,” TK quickly said. He knew it was selfish, he knew he should go see his crew; his family, but that made it too real. TK wasn’t sure he could face that right now, his mind was still too confused and overwhelmed, “I just wanna sit here for a little longer,” He warily said. He knew he would have to leave eventually, but right now he just wanted to sit here.

TK felt Carlos pull back, “Want me to leave you alone for a bit?” He asked.

“No,” TK didn’t even have to think before he answered, “I don’t want you to go,” TK whimpered, suppressing those sobs that were growing in his chest, aching to get out.

It was a sentence that was drenched in double meaning. TK didn’t want Carlos to leave right now, the man brought TK comfort in ways that he couldn’t describe. But he was also asking something else, begging Carlos to never put TK in this position, to never go to work and not come back.

TK felt Carlos’s hand run through his hair, a light kiss being planted on the top of his head, “I’m not going anywhere,” He assured.

TK turned around, Carlos was looking down at him, his eyes glassy but still full of such love and support. TK leaned forward, Carlos coming to wrap his arms around him, his lips pressed into TK’s hair.

TK rested his head against Carlos's chest, listening to the steady heartbeat below. “This wasn’t meant to happen,” TK muttered again. There were hundreds of things that weren’t meant to happen; his dad wasn’t meant to get cancer, TK wasn’t meant to be an addict, he wasn’t meant to get shot. Life didn’t work like that though, bad things happened that weren’t meant to, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

“I know, I know,” Carlos murmured into TK’s hair.

TK squeezed his eyes shut, a tear leaking out of the side and running down his face.

TK knew the stairs were solid, unmoving, yet he felt unbalanced like everything had shifted and was still changing. He held onto Carlos' chest like it was a life raft like it was the only thing that kept him grounded. There were no words left to say, nothing to make the pain in his chest, and everyone else's less.

TK tried to take a breath in but it got caught in his chest, the sobs that had been struggling to escape finally erupting through. Carlos' arms wrapped around him tighter, as the man whispered words of comfort into his hair but TK couldn’t hear over his own cries.

The men just sat on the stairs, holding onto each other as a new world shifted around them, one that wasn’t the same as before and never would be.

“We’re going to be alright,” TK barely heard Carlos’s words over his cries, but they settled into his chest and mind.

We’re going to be alright it seemed hard to imagine right now, as TK cried into Carlos’s chest, the rest of his crew mourning in another room. TK’s cries still caught in his throat as he clung to Carlos, he took in a shaky breath, his sobs growing further and further apart till it was just hushed cries.

TK pulled himself back from Carlos’s chest, blinking a few times to clear his eyes, reaching up to wipe the tears from the corner of Carlos’s eyes.

TK stood from the steps, his breath still shaky. Carlos stood as well, taking TK’s hand as the pair just stood there, “You ready?” Carlos asked, nodding towards the lounge above them.

TK bit his bottom lip, his eyes still blinking quickly to clear the tears.

“Yeah,” TK nodded, his thumb smoothing Carlos’s hand.

‘I think we’re going to be just okay’ TK had once told his dad, and at the time he didn’t believe it, yet things had turned out okay. “We’re going to be okay,” TK said as he started to head up the stairs with Carlos, taking in a few steadying breaths.

Things wouldn’t be the same.

And they wouldn’t be easy.

But they would be okay. The 126 had one another, they were still a family and nothing would change that.

#immermagical #badthingshappenbingo #aj writes #tarlos fic #911ls fic #911 lone star #usersneetches #tuserjamie

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96harmony96 · 3 years

Text

Chapter one.

“We should head to a bar and celebrate.”

I wasn’t surprised by my roommate’s emphatic pronouncement. Cary Taylor found excuses to celebrate, no matter how small and inconsequential. I’d always considered it part of his charm. “I’m sure drinking the night before starting a new job is a bad idea.”

“Come on, camila.” Cary sat on our new living room floor amid a half-dozen moving boxes and flashed his winning smile. We’d been unpacking for days, yet he still looked amazing. Leanly built, dark-haired, and green-eyed, Cary was a man who rarely looked anything less than absolutely gorgeous on any day of his life. I might have resented that if he hadn’t been the dearest person on earth to me.

“I’m not talking about a bender,” he insisted. “Just a glass of wine or two. We can hit a happy hour and be in by eight.”

“I don’t know if I’ll make it back in time.” I gestured at my yoga pants and fitted workout tank. “After I time the walk to work, I’m going to hit the gym.”

“Walk fast, work out faster.” Cary’s perfectly executed arched brow made me laugh. I fully expected his million-dollar face to appear on billboards and fashion magazines all over the world one day. No matter his expression, he was a knockout.

“How about tomorrow after work?” I offered as a substitute. “If I make it through the day, that’ll be worth celebrating.”

“Deal. I’m breaking in the new kitchen for dinner.”

“Uh…” Cooking was one of Cary’s joys, but it wasn’t one of his talents. “Great.”

Blowing a wayward strand of hair off his face, he grinned at me. “We’ve got a kitchen most restaurants would kill for. There’s no way to screw up a meal in there.”

Dubious, I headed out with a wave, choosing to avoid a conversation about cooking. Taking the elevator down to the first floor, I smiled at the doorman when he let me out to the street with a flourish.

The moment I stepped outside, the smells and sounds of Manhattan embraced me and invited me to explore. I was not merely across the country from my former home in San Diego, but seemingly worlds away. Two major metropolises—one endlessly temperate and sensually lazy, the other teeming with life and frenetic energy. In my dreams, I’d imagining living in a walkup in Brooklyn, but being a dutiful daughter, I found myself on the Upper West Side instead. If not for Cary living with me, I would’ve been miserably lonely in the sprawling apartment that cost more per month than most people made in a year.

The doorman tipped his hat to me. “Good evening, Miss Cabello. Will you need a cab this evening?”

“No thanks, Paul.” I rocked onto the rounded heels of my fitness shoes. “I’ll be walking.”

He smiled. “It’s cooled down from this afternoon. Should be nice.”

“I’ve been told I should enjoy the June weather before it gets wicked hot.”

“Very good advice, Miss Cabello.”

Stepping out from under the modern glass entrance overhang that somehow meshed with the age of the building and its neighbors, I enjoyed the relative quiet of my tree-lined street before I reached the bustle and flow of traffic on Broadway. One day soon, I hoped to blend right in, but for now I still felt like a fraudulent New Yorker. I had the address and the job, but I was still wary of the subway and had trouble hailing cabs. I tried not to walk around wide-eyed and distracted, but it was hard. There was just so much to see and experience.

The sensory input was astonishing—the smell of vehicle exhaust mixed with food from vendor carts, the shouts of hawkers blended with music from street entertainers, the awe-inspiring range of

faces and styles and accents, the gorgeous architectural wonders…And the cars. Jesus Christ. The frenetic flow of tightly packed cars was unlike anything I’d ever seen anywhere.

There was always an ambulance, patrol car, or fire engine trying to part the flood of yellow taxis with the electronic wail of ear-splitting sirens. I was in awe of the lumbering garbage trucks that navigated tiny one-way streets and the package delivery drivers who braved the bumper-to-bumper traffic while facing rigid deadlines.

Real New Yorkers cruised right through it all, their love for the city as comfortable and familiar as a favorite pair of shoes. They didn’t view the steam billowing from potholes and vents in the sidewalks with romantic delight and they didn’t blink an eye when the ground vibrated beneath their feet as the subway roared by below, while I grinned like an idiot and flexed my toes. New York was a brand new love affair for me. I was starry-eyed and it showed.

So I had to really work at playing it cool as I made my way over to the building where I would be working. As far as my job went, at least, I’d gotten my way. I wanted to make a living based on my own merits and that meant an entry-level position. Starting the next morning, I would be the assistant to Mark Garrity at Waters Field & Leaman, one of the preeminent advertising agencies in the US. My stepfather, mega-financier Richard Stanton, had been annoyed when I took the job, pointing out that if I’d been less prideful I could’ve worked for a friend of his instead and reaped the benefits of that connection.

“You’re as stubborn as your father,” he’d said. “It’ll take him forever to pay off your student loans on a cop’s salary.”

That had been a major fight, with my dad unwilling to back down. “Hell if another man’s gonna pay for my daughter’s education,” Alejandro Cabello had said when Stanton made the offer. I respected that. I suspected Stanton did, too, although he would never admit it. I understood both men’s sides, because I’d fought to pay off the loans myself…and lost. It was a point of pride for my father.

My mother had refused to marry him, but he’d never wavered from his determination to be my dad in every way possible.

Knowing it was pointless to get riled up over old frustrations, I focused on getting to work as quickly as possible. I’d deliberately chosen to clock the short trip during a busy time on a Monday, so I was pleased when I reached the Crossfire Building, which housed Waters Field & Leaman, in less than thirty minutes.

I tipped my head back and followed the line of the building all the way up to the slender ribbon of sky. The Crossfire was seriously impressive, a sleek spire of gleaming sapphire that pierced the clouds. I knew from my previous interviews that the interior on the other side of the ornate copper-framed revolving doors was just as awe-inspiring, with golden-veined marble floors and walls, and brushed aluminum security desk and turnstiles.

I pulled my new ID card out of the inner pocket of my pants and held it up for the two guards in black business suits at the desk. They stopped me anyway, no doubt because I was majorly underdressed, but then they cleared me through. After I completed an elevator ride up to the twentieth floor, I’d have a general time frame for the whole route from door to door. Score.

I was walking toward the bank of elevators when a svelte, beautifully groomed brunette caught her purse on a turnstile and upended it, spilling a deluge of change. Coins rained onto the marble and rolled merrily away, and I watched people dodge the chaos and keep going as if they didn’t see it. I winced in sympathy and crouched to help the woman collect her money, as did one of the guards.

“Thank you,” she said, shooting me a quick harried smile.

I smiled back. “No problem. I’ve been there.”

I’d just squatted to reach a nickel lying near the entrance when I ran into a pair of luxurious black oxfords draped in tailored black slacks. I waited for a beat for the person to move out of my way and when they didn’t, I arched my neck back to allow my line of sight to rise. The custom three-piece suit hit more than a few of my hot buttons, but it was the tall, powerfully lean body inside it that made it sensational. Still, as hot as all that magnificent maleness was, it wasn’t until I reached the person's face that I went down for the count.

Wow. Just…wow. She sank into an elegant crouch directly in front of me. Hit with all that exquisite femininity at eye-level, I could only stare. Stunned.

Then something shifted in the air between us.

As she stared back, she altered…as if a shield slid away from her eyes, revealing a scorching force of will that sucked the air from my lungs. The intense magnetism she exuded grew in strength, becoming a near tangible impression of vibrant and unrelenting power.

Reacting purely on instinct, I shifted backward. And sprawled flat on my ass.

My elbows throbbed from the violent contact with the marble floor, but I scarcely registered the pain. I was too preoccupied with staring, riveted by the woman in front of me. Inky black hair shoulder length framed a breathtaking face. Her bone structure would make a sculptor weep with joy, while a firmly etched mouth, a blade of a nose, and intensely Emerald green eyes made her savagely gorgeous. Those eyes narrowed slightly, her features otherwise schooled into impassivity.

Her dress shirt and suit were both black, but her tie perfectly matched those brilliant irises. Her eyes were shrewd and assessing, and they bored into me. My heartbeat quickened; my lips parted to accommodate faster breaths. she smelled sinfully good. Not cologne. Body wash, maybe. Or shampoo. Whatever it was, it was mouthwatering, as was she.

she held out a hand to me, exposing onyx cufflinks and a very expensive-looking watch.

With a shaky inhalation, I placed my hand in hers. My pulse leaped when her grip tightened. Her touch was electric, sending a shock up my arm that raised the hairs on my nape. she didn’t move for a moment, a frown line marrying the space between arrogantly slashed brows.

“Are you all right?”

Her voice was cultured and smooth, with a rasp that made my stomach flutter. It brought sex to mind. Extraordinary sex. I thought for a moment that she might be able to make me orgasm just by talking long enough.

My lips were dry, so I licked them before answering. “I’m fine.”

she stood with economical grace, pulling me up with her. We maintained eye contact because I was unable to look away. she was younger than I’d assumed at first. Younger than thirty would be my guess, but her eyes were much worldlier. Hard and sharply intelligent.

I felt drawn to her, as if a rope bound my waist and she was slowly, inexorably pulling it.

Blinking out of my semi-daze, I released her. she wasn’t just beautiful; she was…enthralling. she was the kind of woman that made a person want to rip her shirt open and watch the buttons scatter along with her inhibitions. I looked at her in her civilized, urbane, outrageously expensive suit and thought of raw, primal, sheet-clawing fucking.

she bent down and retrieved the ID card I hadn’t realized I’d dropped, freeing me from that provocative gaze. My brain stuttered back into gear.

I was irritated with myself for feeling so awkward while she was so completely self-possessed. And why? Because I was dazzled, damn it.

she glanced up at me and the pose—she's nearly kneeling before me—skewed my equilibrium again. she held my gaze as she rose. “Are you sure you’re alright? You should sit down for a minute.”

My face heated. How lovely to appear awkward and clumsy in front of the most self-assured and graceful woman I’d ever met. “I just lost my balance. I’m okay.”

Looking away, I caught sight of the woman who’d dumped the contents of her purse. She thanked the guard who’d helped her; then turned to approach me, apologizing profusely. I faced her and held out the handful of coins I’d collected, but her gaze snagged on the god in the suit and she promptly forgot me altogether. After a beat, I just reached over and dumped the change into the woman’s bag. Then I risked a glance at the woman again, finding her watching me even as the brunette gushed thank-yous. To her. Not to me, of course, the one who’d actually helped.

I talked over her. “May I have my badge, please?”

she offered it back to me. Although I made an effort to retrieve it without touching her, her fingers brushed mine, sending that charge of awareness into me all over again.

“Thank you,” I muttered before skirting her and pushing out to the street through the revolving door. I paused on the sidewalk, gulping in a breath of New York air redolent with a million different things, some good and some toxic.

There was a sleek black Bentley SUV in front of the building and I saw my reflection in the spotless limo tinted windows. I was flushed and my brown eyes were overly bright. I’d seen that look on my face before—in the bathroom mirror just before I went to bed with a man. It was my I’m-ready-to-fuck look and it had absolutely no business being on my face now.

Christ. Get a grip.

Five minutes with Miss. Dark and Dangerous, and I was filled with an edgy, restless energy. I could still feel the pull of her, the inexplicable urge to go back inside where she was. I could make the argument that I hadn’t finished what I’d come to the Crossfire to do, but I knew I’d kick myself for it later. How many times was I going to make an ass of myself in one day?

“Enough,” I scolded myself under my breath. “Moving on.”

Horns blared as one cab darted in front of another with only inches to spare and then slammed on the brakes as daring pedestrians stepped into the intersection seconds before the light changed. Shouting ensued, a barrage of expletives and hand gestures that didn’t carry real anger behind them. In seconds all the parties would forget the exchange, which was just one beat in the natural tempo of the city.

As I melded into the flow of foot traffic and set off toward the gym, a smile teased my mouth. Ah, New York, I thought, feeling settled again. You rock.

I’d planned on warming up on a treadmill, then capping off the hour with a few of the machines, but when I saw that a beginners’ kickboxing class was about to start, I followed the mass of waiting students into that instead. By the time it was over, I felt more like myself. My muscles quivered with the perfect amount of fatigue and I knew I’d sleep hard when I crashed later.

“You did really well.”

I wiped the sweat off my face with a towel and looked at the young man who spoke to me. Lanky and sleekly muscular, he had keen brown eyes and flawless café au lait skin. His lashes were enviably thick and long, while his head was shaved bald.

“Thank you.” My mouth twisted ruefully. “Pretty obvious it was my first time, huh?”

He grinned and held out his hand. “Parker Smith.”

“Camila Cabello.”

“You have a natural grace, camila. With a little training you could be a literal knockout. In a city like New York, knowing self-defense is imperative.” He gestured over to a corkboard hung on the wall. It was covered in thumbtacked business cards and fliers. Tearing off a flag from the bottom of a fluorescent sheet of paper, he held it out to me. “Ever heard of Krav Maga?”

“In a Jennifer Lopez movie.”

“I teach it, and I’d love to teach you. That’s my website and the number to the studio.”

I admired his approach. It was direct, like his gaze, and his smile was genuine. I’d wondered if he was angling toward a pickup, but he was cool enough about it that I couldn’t be sure.

Parker crossed his arms, which showed off cut biceps. He wore a black sleeveless shirt and long shorts. His Converse sneakers looked comfortably beat up and tribal tattoos peeked up from his collar. “My website has the hours. You should come by and watch, see if it’s for you.”

“I’ll definitely think about it.”

“Do that.” He extended his hand again, and his grip was solid and confident. “I hope to see you.”

The apartment smelled fabulous when I got back home and Adele was crooning soulfully through the surround sound speakers about chasing pavements. I looked across the open floor plan into the kitchen and saw Cary swaying to the music while stirring something on the range. There was an open bottle of wine on the counter and two goblets, one of which was half-filled with red wine.

“Hey,” I called out as I got closer. “Whatcha cooking? And do I have time for a shower first?”

He poured wine into the other goblet and slid it across the breakfast bar to me, his movements practiced and elegant. No one would know from looking at him that he’d spent his childhood bouncing between his drug-addicted mother and foster homes, followed by adolescence in juvenile detention facilities and state-run rehabs. “Pasta with meat sauce. And hold the shower, dinner’s ready. Have fun?”

“Once I got to the gym, yeah.” I pulled out one of the teakwood barstools and sat. I told him about the kickboxing class and Parker Smith. “Wanna go with me?”

“Krav Maga?” Cary shook his head. “That’s hardcore. I’d get all bruised up and that would cost me jobs. But I’ll go with you to check it out, just in case this guy’s a wack.”

I watched him dump the pasta into a waiting colander. “A wack, huh?”

My dad had taught me to read guys pretty well, which was how I’d known the god in the suit was trouble. Regular people offered token smiles when they helped someone, just to make a momentary connection that smoothed the way.

Then again, I hadn’t smiled at him either.

“Baby girl,” Cary said, pulling bowls out of the cupboard, “you’re a sexy, stunning woman. I question any man who doesn’t have the balls to ask you outright for a date.”

I wrinkled my nose at him.

He set a bowl in front of me. It contained tiny tubes of salad noodles covered in a skimpy tomato sauce with lumps of ground beef and peas. “You’ve got something on your mind. What is it?”

Hmm…I caught the handle of the spoon sticking out of the bowl and decided not to comment on the food. “I think I ran into the hottest person on the planet today. Maybe the hottest woman in the history of the world.”

“Oh? I thought that was me. Do tell me more.” Cary stayed on the other side of the counter, preferring to stand and eat.

I watched him take a couple bites of his own concoction before I felt brave enough to try it myself. “Not much to tell, really. I ended up sprawled on my ass in the lobby of the Crossfire and she gave me a hand up.”

“Tall or short? Blond or dark? Built or lean? Eye color?”

I washed down my second bite with some wine. “Tall. Dark. Lean and built. green eyes. Filthy rich, judging by her clothes and accessories. And she was insanely sexy. You know how it is—some hot people don’t make your hormones go crazy, while some unattractive people have massive sex appeal. This woman had it all.”

My belly fluttered as it had when Dark and Dangerous touched me. In my mind, I remembered her breathtaking face with crystal clarity. It should be illegal for a woman to be that mind-blowing. I was still recovering from the frying of my brain cells.

Cary set his elbow on the counter and leaned in, his long bangs covering one vibrant green eye. “So what happened after she helped you up?”

I shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I left.”

“What? You didn’t flirt with her?”

I took another bite. Really, the meal wasn’t bad. Or else I was just starving. “she wasn’t the kind of girl you flirt with, Cary.”

“There is no such thing as a girl you can’t flirt with. Even the happily married ones enjoy a little harmless flirtation now and then.”

“There was nothing harmless about this girl,” I said dryly.

“Ah, one of those.” Cary nodded sagely. “Bad boys and girls can be fun, if you don’t get too close.”

Of course he would know; men and women of all ages fell at his feet. Still, he somehow managed to pick the wrong partner every time. He’d dated stalkers, and cheaters, and lovers who threatened to kill themselves over him, and lovers with significant others they didn’t tell him about…Name it, he’d been through it.

“I can’t see this woman ever being fun,” I said. “she was way too intense. Still, I bet she'd be awesome in the sack with all that intensity.”

“Now you’re talking. Forget the real person. Just use ther face in your fantasies and make them perfect there.”

Preferring to get the girl out of my head altogether, I changed the subject. “You have any go-sees tomorrow?”

“Of course.” Cary launched into the details of his schedule, mentioning a jeans advertisement, self-tanner, underwear, and cologne.

I shoved everything else out of my mind and focused on him and his growing success. The demand for Cary Taylor was increasing by the day, and he was building a reputation with photographers and accounts for being both professional and prompt. I was thrilled for him and so proud. He’d come a long way and been through so much.

It wasn’t until after dinner that I noticed the two large gift boxes propped against the side of the sectional sofa.

“What are those?”

“Those,” Cary said, joining me in the living room, “are the ultimate.”

I knew immediately they were from Stanton and my mom. Money was something my mother needed to be happy and I was glad Stanton, husband #3, was not only able to fill that need for her but all her many others as well. I often wished that could be the end of it, but my mom had a difficult time accepting that I didn’t view money the same way she did. “What now?”

He threw his arm around my shoulders, easy enough for him to do because he was taller by five inches. “Don’t be ungrateful. He loves your mom. He loves spoiling your mom, and your mom loves spoiling you. As much as you don’t like it, he doesn’t do it for you. He does it for her.”

Sighing, I conceded his point. “What are they?”

“Glam threads for the advocacy center’s fundraiser dinner on Saturday. A bombshell dress for you and a Brioni tux for me, because buying gifts for me is what he does for you. You’re more tolerant if you have me around to listen to you bitch.”

“Damn straight. Thank God he knows that.”

“Of course he knows. Stanton wouldn’t be a bazillionaire if he didn’t know everything.” Cary caught my hand and tugged me over. “Come on. Take a look.”

I pushed through the revolving door of the Crossfire into the lobby ten minutes before nine the next morning. Wanting to make the best impression on my first day, I’d gone with a simple sheath dress paired with black pumps that I slid on in replacement of my walking shoes on the elevator ride up. My brown hair was twisted up in an artful chignon that resembled a figure eight, courtesy of Cary. I was hair-inept, but he could create styles that were glamorous masterpieces. I wore the small pearl studs my dad had given me as a graduation gift and the Rolex from Stanton and my mother.

I had begun to think I’d put too much care into my appearance, but as I stepped into the lobby I remembered being sprawled across the floor in my workout clothes and I was grateful I didn’t look anything like that graceless girl. The two security guards didn’t seem to put two and two together when I flashed them my ID card on the way to the turnstiles.

Twenty floors later, I was exiting into the vestibule of Waters Field & Leaman. Before me was a wall of bulletproof glass that framed the double-door entrance to the reception area. The receptionist at the crescent-shaped desk saw the badge I held up to the glass. She hit the button that unlocked the doors as I put my ID away.

“Hi, Megumi,” I greeted her when I stepped inside, admiring her cranberry-colored blouse. She was mixed race, a little bit Asian for sure, and very pretty. Her hair was dark and thick, and cut into a sleek bob that was shorter in the back and razor sharp in the front. Her sloe eyes were brown and warm, and her lips were full and naturally pink.

“camila, hi. Mark’s not in yet, but you know where you’re going, right?”

“Absolutely.” With a wave, I took the hallway to the left of the reception desk all the way to the end, where I made another left turn and ended up in a formerly open space now partitioned into cubicles. One was mine and I went straight to it.

I dropped my purse and the bag holding my walking flats into the bottom drawer of my utilitarian metal desk; then booted up my computer. I’d brought a couple of things to personalize my space and I pulled them out. One was a framed collage of three photos—me and Cary on Coronado beach, my mom and Stanton on his yacht in the French Riviera, and my dad on duty in his City of Oceanside, California, police cruiser. The other item was a colorful arrangement of glass flowers that Cary had given me just that morning as a “first day” gift. I tucked it beside the small grouping of photos, and sat back to take in the effect.

“Good morning, Camila.”

I pushed to my feet to face my boss. “Good morning, Mr. Garrity.”

“Call me Mark, please. Come on over to my office.”

I followed him across the strip of hallway, once again thinking that my new boss was very easy to look at with his gleaming dark skin, trim goatee, and laughing brown eyes. Mark had a square jaw and a charmingly crooked smile. He was trim and fit, and he carried himself with a confident poise that inspired trust and respect.

He gestured at one of the two seats in front of his glass and chrome desk, and waited until I sat to settle into his Aeron chair. Against the backdrop of sky and skyscrapers, Mark looked accomplished and powerful. He was, in fact, just a junior account manager and his office was a closet compared to the ones occupied by the directors and executives, but no one could fault the view.

He leaned back and smiled. “Did you get settled into your new apartment?”

I was surprised he remembered, but I appreciated it, too. I’d met him during my second interview and liked him right away.

“For the most part,” I answered. “Still a few stray boxes here and there.”

“You moved from San Diego, right? Nice city, but very different from New York. Do you miss the palm trees?”

“I miss the dry air. The humidity here is taking some getting used to.”

“Wait ’til summer hits.” He smiled. “So…it’s your first day and you’re my first assistant, so we’ll have to figure this out as we go. I’m not used to delegating, but I’m sure I’ll pick it up quick.”

I was instantly at ease. “I’m eager to be delegated to.”

“Having you around is a big step up for me, Camila. I’d like you to be happy working here. Do you drink coffee?”

“Coffee is one of my major food groups.”

“Ah, an assistant after my own heart.” His smile widened. “I’m not going to ask you to fetch coffee for me, but I wouldn’t mind if you helped me figure out how to use the new one-cup coffee brewers they just put in the break rooms.”

I grinned. “No problem.”

“How sad is it that I don’t have anything else for you?” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Why don’t I show you the accounts I’m working on and we’ll go from there?”

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Mark touched bases with two clients and had a long meeting with the creative team working on concept ideas for a trade school. It was a fascinating process seeing firsthand how the various departments picked up the baton from each other to carry a campaign from proposition to fruition. I might’ve stayed late just to get a better feel of the layout of the offices, but my phone rang at ten minutes to five.

“Mark Garrity’s office. Camila Cabello speaking.”

“Get your ass home so we can go out for the drink you rain-checked on yesterday.”

Cary’s mock sternness made me smile. “All right, all right. I’m coming.”

Shutting down my computer, I cleared out. When I reached the bank of elevators, I pulled out my cell to text a quick “on my way” note to Cary. A ding alerted me to which car was stopping on my floor and I moved over to stand in front of it, briefly returning my attention to hitting the send button. When the doors opened, I took a step forward. I glanced up to watch where I was going and green eyes met mine. My breath caught.

The sex god was the lone occupant.

#camren #lauren jauregay #lauren jauregui #fantasy #fanfic #camila coelho

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tarlosprompts · 4 years

Text

Self-Destruct (Part 2)

@rachbabe007 : 😭😍 if you’re up to do a part to where the 126 family tell tk why they love him. I would totally love that. And I loved this❤️😘

Hope you like it, Red💋!

Warnings: addiction, cursing, drug addiction, depressed mood

Part 1

TK had changed into some of Carlos’s clothes. It was comforting how big they were on him. It was like a hug from Carlos himself. Carlos watched over him as he slept in his room. TK looked so much younger without the worry across his face and whatever thoughts had been going through his head when he arrived.

The knock at the door startled him. He quickly made his way to the door, not wanting to wake the slumbering man. He raised an eyebrow at the whole crew standing in front of his door. “Should I be worried that you aren’t out doing your job and your fire truck is parked in front of my house?”

“Is my son here,” Owen blatently ignored the previous questions. He was worried about TK, after the call and his blow up at the station, Owen was beginning to wonder if TK had relapsed. He didn’t want to doubt TK, but the sheer amount of negative emotion that was going through his son would be enough to at least make TK think about relapsing. If he wasn’t at Carlos’s, Owen would pull strings to have the whole fire department and police department on the lookout for his son.

“He’s actually sleeping right now. Would you like to explain to me why he came to my home in the middle of shift with blood and bruises? Or why he asked me why I would choose to be with him when I could have anyone else? Or maybe you could explain to me just what the fuck caused that look on his face.”

Carlos stepped out of the house, closing the door behind him. He really didn’t want to wake TK up with this talk. He knew that the man could be sensitive when he was the topic of conversation, but he needed to know what was going on with his boyfriend.

“He’s been in a mood for the past few days. I’m sure you’ve noticed since he’s around you most of the time,” Paul started.

“Actually, we’ve been working opposite shifts, I haven’t seen him in person in four days.”

“Well shit, that doesn’t help,” Judd stated. “He’s been in a mood for the past few days. Bit my head off when I tried to talk to him about it. We got a call today to a drug house. Drug bust gone wrong and part of the house was a hide out for those who wanted to get high. Two teens had fallen through part of the floor.”

“So TK and I went down in the hole after he told Cap that since he wasn’t benched, he wanted to do his job. Whatever one of the teens took had hallucinogenic properties. He thought we were there to hurt his friend. TK got hit in the head and explained what was going on. He had me go find the other teen while he dealt with the one attacking him. By the time I got back, TK was bloodied and holding a struggling teen down,” Marjan sighed.

Carlos bit his lip to keep from interrupting. He wanted to ask why she had thought it was a good idea to leave her partner to deal with a violent drugged teen, but he needed to hear the rest of the story. “So Judd made a joke when they got back up there. I think he was trying to diffuse the situation, but TK didn’t take it well and walked off. He was shaking real bad, even before the joke. When we got back to the station, TK went to go to the shower, but Cap said that they needed to talk. TK asked if they could do that after he had a shower, but Cap insisted and mentioned how he’d been acting...then TK blew up,” Mateo shook his head as if he was thinking back to the argument.

“He started to rant about how he fucked everything good up in his life. Talked about how he did that with drugs and how he was currently self destructing his life. He talked about how every time he thought something was going good, he would just mess it up. He complained that we all walked on eggshells around him after he told us about his addiction. He said he was waiting for us to slip through his fingers like everything else in his life does. He mentioned his ex and what happened in New York and how he relapsed. He said that we were like family and he was afraid of losing us and he didn’t know how we could put up with him,” Paul recalled.

“Then we thought he had gone to take that shower, but after fifteen minutes, I got worried. Usually when TK needs to think about things, he takes ten to fifteen minutes in the shower to work through everything...but when I checked, I couldn’t find him and I just worried with all of those negative thoughts and emotions that he...maybe he thought-”

“-that he would relapse,” Carlos glared. “He wouldn’t. I don’t care if he has in the past, he’s determined not to slide back down the hill, Captain. Want my advice on how to handle this?”

Owen stared at him for a moment before nodding. “You have to show him how much he means to each of you. You, individually, need to tell him how much he means to you. You have to roll with the negative emotions and thoughts he’s having because if you just blatantly ignore them, they’re going to fester and get worse. You have to show him that you’re going to be there for him even during the worst of his addiction recovery.”

“But we do that, don’t we,” Judd asked, looking at the crew.

“Think about it then come up with a better plan. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d actually like all of you to get to work. I’ll take care of TK. You’ll see him on Thursday.”

___________

Thursday

TK wasn’t excited about being dropped off at work. After spending two and a half days with Carlos, he didn’t want to leave. Carlos had said that his Captain had made him take the two days with him off, but TK knew better. Carlos wanted to make sure he was okay...that he wouldn’t relapse and overdose.

TK had woken up in the time that Carlos had been out with his crew. He knew that they told him everything that happened. He loves his boyfriend, but it was frustrating to think that everyone thought he would just relapse and be done with it. At this point he should just do it so they’ll stop waiting for it to happen.

TK is stiff in Carlos’s hug. He mumbles some response to Carlos’s wishes for him to have a good day at work. “Love you, Tiger.”

“Yeah,” TK whispers, hugging Carlos a little closer despite his want to separate himself from every interaction.

It’s a long walk from the Camaro to the station. All of his steps were hesitant. He shook his hands out as he hurried his steps. He needed to get this over with. No matter how long it takes, he needs to get the air cleared to keep the anxiety from taking over again.

He hurried to the locker room, avoiding the crew that was coming in and leaving. He just needed a few seconds to get everything together. As he opened his locker, multiple pieces of paper fell out. Brow furrowed, TK picked the paper up, turning them around to read them.

You’re so strong, TK. I look up to you.

TK, you’re not weak for your addiction, you’re one of the strongest of us, brother.

Teek, you deserve more than the hand you were dealt in New York. We’re not going to slip through your fingers...you’re kind of stuck with us.

I think it’s time someone took care of you instead of the other way around, TK. We all have our demons, it’s okay to talk about it with us.

You’re the greatest thing in my life, Tyler Kennedy. Everything I do, I do for you because you are my light, Kid.

Your smile lights up the room.

Your laugh is contagious.

You have amazing hair, just like your old man.

Your heart is so big and is always on your sleeve, I love how you care about everyone you meet.

Your humor is something to be reckoned with.

We love you and your demons. We don’t think less of you. You’re human, things happen. We’re here for you, whatever you need.

TK clutched at the notes. His head was bowed as he took deep breaths. He was not going to cry in front of his crew again. He licked his lips as he tidied up the stack of notes, putting them in a spot where they wouldn’t be crushed or messed up. It meant a lot that his team was willing to write notes for him...but he shouldn’t need notes to make himself feel better. It’s childish.

He changed and headed up to the loft. He gave strained smiles to those he passed. No matter what the notes said, it wasn’t that easy to do. He couldn’t just open up and let all his demons out. He didn’t want to push anyone way more than he already did. Buttercup ran up to him, winding around his legs. Noticing a note attached to him, TK raised an eyebrow. He bent down and showered Buttercup with attention and grabbed the note. I mean, the dog loves you so you can’t be as terrible as you think you are. Dogs usually hate ‘bad people’. In fact, I’m pretty sure you are just as amazing as Buttercup’s treats.

A startled laugh left his throat as he read the note. He shook his head, petting Buttercup again. Maybe he wasn’t so terrible...but he’d still caused his dad to watch him die three times, so he doesn’t rule out that he isn’t terrible.

And so, that’s how the rest of the day went. He’d find random notes throughout the firestation and even in his turnout. Some of them were in compartments in the truck. No one had said anything directly, but he could tell they were trying to figure out his reaction to the notes.

By the end of shift, TK felt lighter...maybe that’s why he had Carlos go out and get a cookie cake with the words ‘I love you guys too, thanks’ on it. No matter the dietary differences of the crew, he knew they’d all like the cake. That’s how Carlos ended up at the station thirty minutes before shift ended.

Carlos had sneaked into the station and set up the cake by the time the crew had gotten back from their call. A full smile fell on TK’s lips as he saw Carlos. He wrapped his arms around the man, pressing a kiss into his neck. “I love you. Thank you for doing this.”

Carlos gave him a wide smile. “Love you too, Amor. You know I’d do anything for you.”

“Cake?” TK and Carlos walked into the kitchen.

“I thought everyone would enjoy a piece of cake since you’re all so sweet,” he smirked at his pun as his dad groaned and Carlos let out a surprised laugh.

“You didn’t have to thank us with a cake,” Marjan stated.

“I know...just like I know you didn’t have to write all of those notes.”

“We’d do anything for you, Brother,” Judd stated, cookie cake halfway to his mouth, “especially if you buy us cake after each thing we do-not that that’s the only reason we’re going to be there for you...but cake is just amazing.” Judd winked at him as TK rolled his eyes.

“If I bought a cake every time you helped me out, Judd…” he trailed off, a shit eating smile on his face.

“Okay, come here short stack. I’ll show you just how not fat I am.”

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goldenonionstan · 3 years

Photo

| chapter one

| the sound of forgetting

summary: after being wrongly accused of the murder of her fiancé, Bella Swan is trying to find stability in her broken life. Until a mysterious brown-haired boy reveals a harrowing secret about the man she loved, and she embarks on a time-bending journey to clear her name…

a/n: hooray harooh harrah i finished chapter one and this baby is ready to go! i can’t communicate to you how pumped i am to explore this world and all the dark fantasy that comes with it! let me know what you think x

October 14th, 2012

It was still dark when I pulled my ancient Chevrolet pick-up into the parking lot of the café, and I settled the beast into an open space next to Dad's favorite oak tree. Killing the engine, I reveled in the heat of the truck's cab, bracing myself for the crisp, Washington air that awaited me outside. Unfortunately, I always drew the short straw when it came to taking the early morning shifts from my siblings – Seth and Leah knew how to get exactly what they wanted from Sue.

"Morning, Dad," I called out as I strode into the café, hitting the switch for the neon OPEN sign that hung on the front door; it awoke with a dull hum. Garish lights reflected off the green gingham tablecloths Charlie had bought the other day from Billy Black – I made a mental note to look for replacements when I got home.

"Morning, sweet pea," He replied from the kitchen, and I could hear bacon already sizzling on the grill.

Dad had been the proud owner of Clearwater's Bites, sharing the responsibility with his wife, Sue, for almost ten years. Nestled into the sleepy heart of Forks, Washington, Charlie had surprised Sue with the café as an engagement present after she told him about her life-long dream of owning a restaurant. In the summer of 2002, he became the head-chef, Sue ran the front-of-house, and waitressing shifts were shared out between me, Seth and Leah. I was happy to see that the place was still standing when I was released from prison.

I doubted anyone else would have wanted to hire a convicted murderer to make small talk with their regulars.

"Expecting it to be busy today?" I inquired, making polite small talk as I rolled napkins neatly around pairs of knives and forks.

"Not too sure, Bells. It is a Sunday so I doubt we'll be rammed, but, then again, I could be wrong. We'll have to see."

Thank goodness, I thought, breathing a sigh of relief into the growing stack of cutlery; at least there wouldn't be so many whispers and stares.

"Sounds good, Dad! I'm sure we'll be able to hold down the fort!"

I enjoyed working shifts with Charlie – neither of us were particularly big talkers, so we worked side-by-side in comfortable silence, nodding at each other as we passed. While he set about preparing for the breakfast shift, I worked at serving the odd customer, giving the place a scrub when we were quiet – my siblings were not as pedantic at cleaning as I was, so I think Charlie and Sue were happy to have me in the shop.

The early birds were my favorite people to serve because, where the café was quiet, I was able to pay close attention to what they ordered. Gladys, along with her Labrador, Skip, came in for her regular one-shot cappuccino with extra chocolate dusting, while an elderly gentleman in a bowler hat ordered a simple tea and sat against the far-window, reading a newspaper. I let my mind conjure a story where the two used to be high-school sweethearts, but were torn apart when Gladys' mother died, and she went to live with her aunt. After seven years with very little to do, I had learned to become reliant on my imagination.

It was around two hours into my shift that a stream of customers began to build, and our small parking lot became crammed with a plethora of vehicles. A buzz of chatter filled the room as people shared stories over cups of steaming liquid, and my heart swelled. When people were paying little attention to me, I felt content to find myself amongst a crowd again.

"Welcome to Clearwater's Bites," I chirped cheerfully, placing two laminated menus before a new table of customers. They were two brawny construction workers, and both wore black t-shirts that clung to their bulging chests, stained with streaks of paint and dust. "What can I get for you today?"

"Aren't you the woman who murdered her fiancé?"

The pen began to shake between my fingers, but I couldn't tell whether it was from anger or the tears that stung my eyes. My prison sentence came to an end a month ago, and, although the accident happened in 2005, my presence in town seemed to stir up old memories. The front page of every national press had covered the story from the moment the coastguard pulled The Victoria to shore, and I had been led off the deck in handcuffs. I would get the occasional inquiry as to whether I was happy to be back in town, or what I planned to do with my time now I had returned to Forks.

It was the direct questions that always threw me off.

"Uhm," I murmured, struggling to get my thoughts straight. "No, I don't think that was me, but I appreciate the inquiry."

"Oh, come on, it's definitely you! Isabella, isn't it?" The weaker of the two men smirked as he leaned back in his chair, taking in the view of my beat-up Levi's from behind. "I would recognize that ass anywhere."

I clicked my tongue against my teeth as I turned away from his gaze and looked around briefly to see if anyone had overheard what he said. No-one seemed to be paying attention to our interaction.

"Would you like some tea with that misogyny, Paul?" His friend remarked from behind his menu, throwing a glare in his direction. Paul sat back up in his chair.

"Would you just fuck off, Jake? I'm only messing with the pretty lady." He turned back to me. "You were definitely the lass I had pinned up in my locker last year."

"That's wonderful. Do you want me to autograph it for you?"

"Ay, Mami, is this that famous temper of yours? Hopefully, there's no sharp objects around."

Paul winked; I seethed.

"It's eight in the morning, for Christ's sake," Paul's tanned friend spat as he handed me his menu. "We'll take two Americanos. Black, no sugar."

"No problem," I replied, plastering my best customer service smile across my face. "Coming right up!"

"You could always leave me your number instead," Paul hollered at me as I shuffled back behind the counter, drowning out my racing thoughts with the noisy whirr of grinding coffee beans.

"Alright, sweetheart?" Charlie poked his head around the entrance to the kitchen, forehead glittering with sweat. He held two plates of eggs in his hands. "Not causing you trouble, are they?"

I punched the double-shot button a little too hard on our clunky coffee machine, watching the black liquid splutter into the awaiting cup. "Nothing I can't handle, Dad."

"Are you sure? I haven't seen them around before, so I'm sure they wouldn't mind if I told them to move along?"

I peeked over at the men again as I waited for their cups to fill. Paul sat texting on a cell-phone, no doubt something about me; his friend…Jake, I think it was, glanced over and smiled. I darted my gaze back to the coffee.

"Honestly, Dad, it's chill," I placed the now-steaming cups of coffee onto two saucers, grabbing a pot of sugar cubes. "Like you said, they're not regulars. Probably won't ever see them again."

Charlie nodded. "Chin up, Princess, don't let-"

"-Your tiara fall," I finished, turning back towards Paul and Jake. "I got it, Dad."

Gingerly returning to their table, I placed a cup in front of each of the men and practically ran back behind the counter before they could make any more remarks. I avoided looking in their direction for the duration of their stay, feeling relaxed as I watched them take the last swigs of their drinks.

Until Jake started walking towards the counter. Feeling my heart in my stomach, I pretended to be writing something on a spare blackboard.

"Hey," He said, standing awkwardly in front of the register. "I just came to bring this back. No sugar, remember?"

He placed the neglected sugar pot in front of me; I shook my head. "Oops, sorry. Just one of those mornings."

"No problem, I get that." He chuckled. "I kept waiting for you to come back to collect it. Seemed like you were avoiding our table…?"

"You're observant," I remarked. "Didn't want your friend to harass me again."

"Yeah, I also came over to say sorry about Paul. He's a bit too forward sometimes."

"Don't worry, I'm used to it." I picked up the sugar pot and wiggled it. "Thanks for bringing this back."

Jake smiled, and we stood there in silence for a moment. His brown eyes bore into mine for longer than I expected, and I looked away, feeling my cheeks heat up.

"Right, I completely forgot to introduce myself, I'm Jake-" He stretched his hand towards me. "Jacob Black. My father owns the furniture shop in town."

"Isabella Swan," I giggled, taking his outstretched hand. "You must know my dad then. Charlie?"

"Probably not, I only just moved into town. I used to live with my Mom."

"Oh, cool, what happened to your Mom, if you don't mind my asking?"

"It's nothing like that, she just got remarried." Jacob looked at the floor. "Moved to Canada."

"Didn't fancy it?"

"Not really; wasn't up for moving sticks, I'd just got my job here."

"Construction, yeah?"

"At Forks High School."

"Nice – I used to go there, definitely could have used a revamp back then."

"Well, luckily we're here now!" We both smiled at each other. "That must mean you know Forks pretty well?"

I crooked an eyebrow at him. "Hmm, it depends why you're asking..."

"I was looking for a tour guide if you were up for it? Need someone to show me the ins and outs, stuff like that."

"Paul's not good enough for that?" Looking behind him, I expected to see his friend leering at us, but I was pleasantly surprised to find an empty table.

"He's not the greatest company."

"That's fair. I'm working the next coupla' nights, but maybe Thursday? I get off at 6."

"Sounds great." Flashing another smile, I realized how perfect his teeth were.

"Perfect – I'll show you the literal two bars in town."

Jacob took a napkin from the stack next to the counter, and pulled a pen from his back pocket, roughly scribbling down a series of numbers before handing it to me. "My number. Call if you need to cancel."

"I'll try not to," I flushed. "See you Thursday."

"Looking forward to it."

My heartbeat did not slow to a regular pace until Jake had safely clambered into his truck, and I watched Paul drive them out of the parking lot. I hadn't been the subject of a man's affection for what seemed like a lifetime. Had it always made me this giddy?

"Hey, Bells," Charlie's voice pulled me from my thoughts.

"What's up, Dad?"

"Would you mind making me up a large pot of tea? I'm just going to say hello to Carlisle over there!"

Nodding eagerly, I set about grabbing our best porcelain pot from the shelf, settling the open-top under the tap of hot water, and switched it on. Charlie always spoke highly of Carlisle, a doctor who worked at the local hospital, and I was always in awe of his wife, Esme, when she accompanied him for a coffee and a croissant. They looked perfect, like models, with porcelain-smooth skin, and matching caramel-colored hair. I felt scrawny and inferior in comparison.

He occupied the corner table, where the elderly gentleman had sat this morning, but his wife was nowhere in sight. Instead, he was joined by a statuesque blonde with legs for days, a Herculean man who looked like he could break my head between one bicep, and a willowy boy with unruly, russet hair. Despite his form being covered by a long-sleeved black roll-beck, I could see his hands were extremely pale. In fact, they all were.

They all looked as though they had never felt a drop of Vitamin D in their lives.

Dad tottered over to their table, shaking Carlisle's hand with a grin. He had it draped on the shoulder of the tall, pale boy when I arrived with the tea.

"Ah, Isabella, perfect timing! This is Rosalie and Emmett, Carlisle's niece and her boyfriend," Charlie said, gesturing at the blonde and her burly man; I nodded politely and they returned the favor. "And this is Edward, Carlisle's son."

Once again, I nodded in the direction of Edward but he only grunted in response, grabbing for the pot of tea, and pouring himself a cup. Compared to Jacob, he had the manners of a toilet brush.

"He's a little shy," Emmett reassured, nudging Edward in the ribs.

"No worries," I blathered. "Enjoy!"

I hurried back to the counter almost as quickly as before, except I was sure no one was trying to stare at my butt this time. I knew Edward did not owe me anything – it had been a pretty awkward introduction from Charlie anyway – but a smile wouldn't have hurt anyone. I glanced back over towards Carlisle's table and caught Edward staring at me, eyebrows furrowed together. Just as Jacob had done earlier, I pulled my lips into a tight smile. He cocked his head to one side, briefly, as though mentally sizing me up. Finally, he smirked back, turning then to engage in passionate conversation with his family of perfect specimens.

I had a feeling, deep within me, that this wasn’t going to be the last time I saw this brown-haired boy.

#htda #twilight #twilight fanfiction #twilight fic #twilight renaissance #twilight au #bellaxedward #fantasymystery #new fic #historical #bella swan #edward cullen #chapter one #updates on mondays chicks x

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ironandsilvcr · 5 years

Text

poor temper.

SUMMARY: taking place during new moon. you are paul lahote’s imprint, the two of you trying to take the whole bond thing slowly while you get your head around the whole wolf thing and get to know him. still, when you hear his temper could have been the cause of injury to bella swan you can’t help but say something. ( fluff with a little angst. requests are open. )

WORDCOUNT: 3,000

The length of time you spent at the reservation really shouldn’t have been surprising to anyone anymore. Schoolwork, your part-time job at the cafe you loved in Forks and trying to keep some sense of normality at home all tried to keep you away and yet, you still found yourself sat in Emily’s kitchen most Saturdays. Listening to the howling laughter of the boys whilst sat at the table doing homework. Sitting beside Paul and Embry watching a movie, you didn’t care what you did when you got there. You even helped Emily make a muffin or two, although no one could claim you were a match for her in the kitchen. Settling in amongst them all had been as easy as sighing after a long day, easy in a way you weren’t really prepared for. It almost seemed as if you had never needed to be anywhere else.

The packs reasons for inviting you tended to change. It was usually something like letting you get to know the pack, them needing another player for their board game of choice, or even just to escape the chaos of forks for a little while. You had however come to have your own suspicions. The pack was getting larger and you were no stranger to stories of Paul’s temper. It had been a point of warning for you once sat next to Emily at a bonfire. You had had to promise her to get out of harm’s way the second something had seemed off. There was a part of you wondered if he was simply easier to be around when you were there too. Something along the lines of making him softer, getting him to let his guard down. The thought was enticing, no matter how new this thing between the two of you. You had to admit it was endearing to think you could have such an effect on him.

Today had been one of the busier days between the sightings of the ginger vampire and Jacob admittedly struggling to handle the shift Paul had made it clear when he’d called the house phone that you weren’t likely to see much of him that day. You headed over to Emily’s anyway ignoring the feeling of disappointment in your gut. On busy days like these, you figured Emily was going to need all hands on deck to make sure the pack didn’t make a mess of her place.

The sound of a truck outside and the familiar hooting of wolves pulled you from your thoughts. Turning your head to grin at Emily. The boys were back and going by the fact none of them had run in at full speed yelling about a problem they were in one piece for now at least. Embry and Jared entered through the screen door and you busied yourself fetching some juice for the table, Emily taking the muffins from the oven.

“You guys hungry? Like I have to ask,” You heard Emily joke as you turned around, a grin spilling onto your own features as you knew exactly what appetite she was referring to.

Still, when you lifted your gaze to the door, it was not Sam, Paul or Jacob standing there, but rather none other than Bella Swan. A girl you had barely spoken to since you were kids.

“Who’s this?” You heard Emily ask looking to the boys for an answer, you meanwhile lifted your hand in a somewhat awkward wave. Luckily she didn’t really seem to notice too busy looking just about everywhere in the house but at Emily. You figured one of the boys must have mentioned her scars and she was now actively trying to avoid making this any worse than it had to be.

You couldn’t be sure whether or not Emily had noticed, but you watched her grin anyway as you moved to take your usual seat at the table leaving a seat between you and Jared that Paul would fill later. Shooting a confused look to the two boys who all of a sudden seemed hesitant to meet your gaze. The very fact that their behaviour was off and Bella was there meant that something must have happened. You opened your mouth ready to fill the silence and ask where the other three might be, but Emily beat you to it.

“So,” Emily hummed. “You’re the vampire girl,”

Relief washed over Bella’s features as she stepped into the room, her hands stuffed into her jacket pockets. You could help but be amused by Emily’s ability to put people at ease.

“So you’re the wolf girl,”

Laughter flashed over Emily’s features then, you could tell she’d decided at that moment that Bella maybe wasn’t as bad as some of the boys had made her out to be “I guess so… well I’m engaged to one,”

The moment the muffins finally hit the table you knew they weren’t they were going to last very long. Not that that stopped Emily from trying her hardest to make sure that the boys kept their manners reaching out to catch Jared’s hand.

“Save some for your brothers,” she sighed pushing their shoulders. “And ladies first,” Her eyes bounced between your’s and Bella’s then gesturing to the plate. You didn’t need to be told twice, having learnt from past experience that you needed to act fast.

“Sure, thanks.”Bella seemed to get the hint, heading over in your direction and taking one for herself.

“You okay Bella?” You asked cautiously, ensure what you could and couldn’t say even though she clearly looked like she had been shaken up.

She raised a brow in response, almost as if she had forgotten that you were there at all. “Yeah, I guess,” Bella shrugged. “Given… everything,”

You didn’t really have time to think about what it was that she might have meant as it seemed Emily had managed to put the pieces together much faster than you.

“Leave Jacob to figure out a way around Sam’s gag order,”

What really took you by surprise was just how calm she sounded.

“Wait… what?” You questioned seemingly the last to know. As far as you were aware the boys weren’t able to go against Sam, so just what has Jacob done?

“He um, didn’t tell me anything,”

“Yeah it’s a wolf thing,” Embry spoke despite the daggers you were shooting him over the table. “Alpha’s orders get obeyed whether we want ‘em to or not. Oh and check it out we can hear each other’s thoughts,”

You didn’t need wolf based telepathy to picture Sam cringing.

Luckily Embry’s comments were enough for Jared to try and step in even with his mouth full of crumbs. “Would you shut up? These are trade secrets. Damn it this chick runs with vampires,”

“You can’t really run with vampires,” Bella corrected to Emily’s amusement. “’ Cause they’re fast,”

You couldn’t help but feel a bit uneasy about the way she found it so easy to talk about the bloodsuckers that you had become so scared of in the past few months. What would Bella have been like, you wondered, had your places been reversed and she had been witness to so many stories about the destruction the cold killers could leave in their wake.

“Yeah?” Jared commented as if he could hear your thoughts. Leaning forward as if it might make Bella take him more seriously. “Well, we’re faster, freaked out yet?”

Everything was going to be a competition to the pack it seemed but at that moment you were glad for the normality. Shaking your head at just how standoffish Jared could appear to be to strangers.

Bella shook her head, you could have applauded her for the way that she was willing to stand up for herself. “You’re not the first monsters I’ve met,”

“Jake’s right,” Sam spoke from where he finally appeared in the doorway. His appearance a welcome sight to everyone. “You’re good with weird,”

You watched him walk across the room then his focus on Emily alone. He took the few steps across the kitchen to reach her side before he whispered the softest ‘hey’ you ever heard and kissed her about a hundred times.

It always made you feel a little odd watching Sam and Emily, despite how dear the two of them had become to you. They were the only other imprinted couple in the pack and were about as close to true love as two people could get and that was from the viewpoint of an outsider. The fact that you and Paul had the chance to have a similar relationship was not lost on you, even if you preferred not to think about it for the moment. Imprint or not, you owed it to him to get to know him as a person rather than just the wolf.

Seemingly responding to your thoughts Jake and Paul arrived on the porch a few moments later, shoving at each other in a way that had become familiar and playful. Whatever tension you had been holding dissolving for a moment at the sight. Clearly, whatever it was that had happened out there had done no permanent damage.

Jake and Bella were, of course, wrapped up in each other from the moment he arrived, you, however, could say nothing given the way that Paul’s eyes lighten slightly upon noticing you at the table. You grin as his hand brushes against your shoulder and he, as predicted, pulled out the seat beside you and reached for a snack of his own. It was no big romantic gesture compared to what you had seen between Sam and Emily but it was enough for the two of you at that moment.

Then when after he had seemingly convinced himself that you were indeed real rather than something made up in his mind. He turned to Bella, the grin still filling his features highlighting the way that he could never manage to take things seriously.

“Sorry,”

Sorry? You questioned. What had happened?

You didn’t miss the way that Jared had to get five dollars out of his shorts to hand to Embry five dollars, that being the biggest clue any of them could have given.

Bella and Jacob disappeared a few seconds later off to one of the beaches most likely. The pair leaving behind a few beats of silence after they left like the others needed to catch their breath. It was a big deal for all of you, trusting someone else with such intimate knowledge not just about the pack but about their tribe.

“Something tells me we’re going to be seeing her more often,” Sam spoke from where he was still standing, arms wrapped around Emily like he hadn’t seen her in months.

Embry scoffed shaking his head. “As long as she knows that she has to keep quiet,“

“Says you!” Jared spoke in disbelief.

The shook your head then, despite the softness you held towards the pack their bickering could still be annoying.

“Look,” you sighed. “Is one of you going to bite the bullet and say what happened, or are Em and I supposed to figure it out for ourselves?”

The mood at the table shifted then, the boys looking over to Paul expectedly while the playfulness alighting his features disappeared. Clearly, you were more frightening than Bella.

“Well?” you asked pointedly looking between the four of them for answers.

“You should have seen it y/n,” Embry spoke excitedly. “Jacob phased like that,” snapping his fingers for effect.

“Embry shut up,” Paul huffed in his seat beside you. He looked more anxious than before like he was scared of something.

Sam got the hint then, moving from Emily’s side to clasp the two other boys on the shoulder. “C’ mon lets give them the room,”

Paul shot him a grateful glance, while Emily moved to squeeze your shoulder lightly before following after the other three.

You waited until you were sure the two of you were alone before shifting in your seat. Moving to take Paul’s hand, not really thinking about anything other than the way he always seemed to find comfort from your touch. It must have been an imprint thing you guessed. Standing with his arm around your shoulder, or a hand or in the small of your back, or even sitting so close your legs brushed under the table. The two of you had long surpassed any form of physical boundaries in that regard.

“You gonna tell me what happened? Remember unlike most people in your house I can’t read your mind to help you out,”

That caused him to laugh at least.

“We were heading over to Billy’s to check on Jake, you know what he’s been like lately,”

You nodded. Jake had been the first real newcomer to the pack you had witnessed, you had been too new yourself when Embry had phased, but even with your limited experience, you could tell he wasn’t taking it all that well.

“Well Bella was over for something, I don’t know, and so she bolts up to the four of us and starts yellingat Sam. Really aside from Jake I don’t think anyone’s ever really yelled at him like that ever. Anyway, she’s shoving at him and I’m already frustrated thinking Jake must have told her somehow and then she makes this claim that he’s afraid of us and that’s why he’s not speaking, which of course I laugh at because, you know, Jake’s our brother, but she really didn’t like that because next, she slaps me right across the face,”

You couldn’t help but cringe, not because it would hurt but that might have been the stupidest decision Bella had made in her entire life.

“So then I just can’t take it anymore and I phase right there in front of her,”

“Poor girl you must have given her a heart attack,” You sighed. There could be no doubt the wolves were an intimidating sight when a person first lay eyes on them.

“I mean it was fine,” He backtracked “Because Sam had gotten her to at least give me some space, and I at least had enough sense not to hurt her, but then Jake comes running out of the house, volts over the porch and shifts jumping over Bella as she ran away,”

You raised your brow at that, unsure if you had heard of anyone else shifting that fast.

“Anyway the two of us got into a bit of a fight and may have broken Billy’s boat,”

You sighed then, resting your forehead on your free palm for just a moment. “Well for starters I hope you apologised,”

He nodded. “Look y/n -” He went to speak before you cut him off.

“That was stupid you know,” You sighed although there was no real annoyance in your tone. “If she’d been standing closer if there had been someone else with her…” Your thoughts providing a never-ending list of just how that could have been so much worse. Still, you don’t move your hand from his. You had known that his temper was an issue right from the first time he took you to First beach. it was not going to scare you away now.

“I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I did try to stay calm,” There was a degree of tenderness in his tone, directly related to the way that (admittedly unsaid) you simply refused to be scared off.

You nodded then. “I’m sure,” If there was one thing you had faith in it was that Paul was a lot more emotional and caring then people might think initially. “Listen if she slapped me I would have been… Maybe just try and remember how intimidating you guys can be from the outside next time alright?”

He seemed to visibly relax then, squeezing at your hand a little more and slumping back into a more comfortable posture in his chair somewhat, even though it seemed like there was still something he needed to say.

“It’s just with this and what happened to Emily, I just didn’t want you to think that I wasn’t trying, or didn’t take this seriously. I’m not going to put you in danger, I’d rather die,”

The two of you had had plenty of quiet intimate moments between the two of you, with just how loud the pack could be, and how chaotic your life was at the best of times they were necessary just to make sure the two of you had some time together, but you could have sworn you’d never seen him be that vulnerable until that moment. Emotions were usually something Paul could disguise pretty well so for something to have shaken him up this much must have been a pretty big deal.

“I know,” You spoke gently, looking right at him. “Just like I know exactly what signs to watch out for if things get bad… I’m not going anywhere Paul, so you can stop worry about scaring me off,” Usually you wouldn’t have been so stern with him, but it was what he needed to hear at that moment.

Getting up from your seat, you saw a second of confusion in his gaze whilst you closed the gap between you and wrapped your arms around his (quite bare) shoulders. Not really thinking about what it was you were doing you pressed a kiss to his cheek, before the two of you just held onto each other in a moment of silence.

Then when you were sure you had been of some comfort to him, you pulled away and grabbed his hand again. You tugged until he stood up from his chair a stray hand coming to reach for your waist.

“C’ mon,” You spoke lightly. “We should go catch up to the others. Emily will want to make sure you’re okay,”

#paul lahote x reader #paul lahote #paul lahote imagine #twilight imagine #*mine

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route22ny · 4 years

Link

This is a harrowing read, and in the end you may ask yourself, as I asked myself: how was the nation not protected from such criminality? Decades of organized crime involvement culminated in the most corrupt and dangerous president in American history, one who now presides over a reeling nation in the throes of a deadly pandemic.

We watch in horror and disbelief, daily, as he ineptly--or maliciously--mismanages the nation’s response to covid-19, contributing to a death toll expected to surpass that of the Vietnam War...twice. How did we get here?

This is must reading.

***

IN THE EARLY 1980s it was decided—by whom, and for what ultimate purpose, we can’t say for sure—that Donald John Trump would build a casino complex in Atlantic City, New Jersey—probably the most mobbed-up municipality in the state. Dealing with the mafia might have dissuaded some developers from pursuing a Boardwalk Empire, but not Trump. He was uniquely suited to forge ahead.

Donald’s father, the Queens real estate developer Fred Trump, had worked closely with Genovese-associated and -owned construction entities since building the Shore Haven development in 1947, when Donald was still in diapers (the first time around). Fred was an early mob adopter, the underworld equivalent of an investor who bought shares of Coca-Cola stock in 1919. The timelines is important to remember here. Organized crime did not exist in any meaningful way in the United States until Prohibition. Born in 1905, Fred Trump was just two years younger than Meyer Lansky, the gangster who more or less invented money laundering. Thus, Donald Trump is second generation mobbed-up.

When Donald first ventured from Queens to the pizzazzier borough of Manhattan in the seventies, he entered into a joint business deal with “Big” Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino syndicate, and Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, of the Genovese family he knew well through his father and their mutual lawyer Roy Cohn. As part of this arrangement, Trump agreed to buy concrete from a company operated jointly by the two families—and pay a hefty premium for the privilege. Only then, with double mob approval, could he move forward with the Trump Tower and Trump Plaza projects. (Among Cohn’s other clients at the time was Rupert Murdoch, whom he introduced to Trump in the seventies; you would be hard pressed to find three more atrocious human beings).

Atlantic City is in South Jersey, closer to Philadelphia than New York, so to build “his” casino, Trump needed to play ball with the Philly mob. That meant dealing with Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, head of the most powerful mob family in Philadelphia. Land that Trump needed for his casino was owned by Salvie Testa and Frank Narducci, Jr.—hit men for Scarfo, collectively known around town as the Young Executioners (the nickname was not ironic). To help negotiate the deal, Trump hired Patrick McGahn, a Philly-based attorney known to have truck with the Scarfo family.

(The last name should sound familiar; Don McGahn, the former White House Counsel, is Patrick McGahn’s nephew. And Don McGahn is not the only Trump Administration hire with ties to the Philly mob. Among Little Nicky’s associates was one Jimmy “The Brute” DiNatale, whose daughter, Denise Fitzpatrick, is the mother of none other than Kellyanne Conway. A number of wiseguys paid their respects at DiNatale’s 1983 funeral. I don’t want to make the mistake of condemning Conway or Don McGahn for the sins of their relations. But given Trump’s OC background, it’s fair to question why he chose two children of mobbed-up families for his inner White House circle.)

Trump acquired the needed Atlantic City property at twice the market value: $1.1 million for a lot that sold for $195k five years before. But there were legal pratfalls, shady dealings, chicanery with the documents. The New Jersey Gaming Commission was investigating the matter, because casino owners could not, by law, associate with criminals. And most of Trump’s friends were crooks. It looked like Trump was in trouble—not only of losing his gaming license, but of criminal indictment.

And then, something miraculous happened. On 4 November 1986, Scarfo and eleven of his associates were indicted on charges that included loan sharking, extortion and conducting an illegal gambling business in a racketeering conspiracy. Prosecutors had tried for years to take down Little Nicky. And now, after all that time, they finally had their evidence. Not only that, but the investigation into Trump? It went away. Poof—as if it never existed.

A confidential informant, or “CI,” is a mole run by law enforcement within a criminal enterprise. Not a “rat,” whose treachery is well known to his comrades, but a craftier, more duplicitous breed of rodent. Crimes committed by the CI are overlooked, or allowed to continue unabated, in exchange for good intelligence—“treasure,” as Control calls it in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

A fictional example of a CI is the Greek, a character on the show The Wire (spoiler ahead). Baltimore law enforcement piece together that the Greek is the head of a crime syndicate that deals in narcotics and human trafficking. But when they finally move to arrest him, the operation is kibboshed by the feds, for whom the Greek is a Confidential Informant. This is extremely frustrating for viewers of the show, who rightly regard the Greek as the cause of so much woe in West Baltimore.

In real life, there are two famous examples. The first is Whitey Bulger, the head of the so-called Winter Hill Gang, which operated for decades in Somerville, Massachusetts. In 1975, Bulger became a Confidential Informant for the FBI, handled by a corrupt agent named John Connolly. His intelligence helped take down a rival mob family in Providence, Rhode Island—a city notorious for the influence of organized crime. In exchange, Connolly allowed Bulger and his associates to operate with impunity. At least 19 people were killed by the Winter Hill Gang while the feds looked the other way. When the FBI finally realized its mistake, Connolly tipped off Bulger, who went on the lam for 16 years. He was finally arrested in 2011; by then he was in his eighties. He was killed in prison seven years later.

The second famous CI is Donald Trump’s former associate Felix Sater. Racketeering charges against him back in 1998 ended with a fine of just $25,000—a slap on the wrist. From then on, Sater become a top echelon confidential informant, feeding law enforcement intelligence of “a depth and breadth rarely seen,” as court filings show. “His cooperation has covered a stunning array of subject matter, ranging from sophisticated local and international criminal activity to matters involving the world’s most dangerous terrorists and rogue states.”

The winsome ex-con, still one of the more puzzling figures of Trump/Russia, “continuously worked with prosecutors and law enforcement agents to provide information crucial to the conviction of over 20 different individuals, including those responsible for committing massive financial fraud, members of La Cosa Nostra organized crime families and international cyber-criminals,” prosecutors claim. “Additionally, Sater provided the United States intelligence community with highly sensitive information in an effort to help the government combat terrorists and rogue states.”

His intelligence helped prosecutors break up the “Pump and Dump” and “Boiler Room” mob operations in the 1990s. He turned over useful information about the Genovese crime family (note: the same family Fred Trump fronted for), and provided ample dirt on international arms dealing (note: Jeffrey Epstein’s specialty). And his crowning achievement: he helped the United States track down Osama bin Laden (funny how the Russian mob knew where he was). Sater is proud of his CI work, and has talked it up the last few years, probably to counter his association with the mafiya, and with Trump.

We know about Bulger being a CI because his handler turned out to be crooked. We know about Sater being a CI because he outed himself prior to his sentencing in 2009—and because he keeps boasting about it. If Sater had not come forward, Loretta Lynch, the former Attorney General, would not have been legally permitted to reveal his status.

That’s the thing about Confidential Informants: they are confidential. The informant doesn’t want to be made as a mole, any more than law enforcement wants to burn a source. Both sides are bound to secrecy. It is the good guy version of omertà.

The only way to know for sure if Donald John Trump is a Confidential Informant is if he admits it himself (unlikely), or if law enforcement comes forward (illegal). But the circumstantial evidence is compelling. The pattern is: 1) Trump deals with mobsters as usual; 2) Law enforcement begins investigating Trump; 3) Mobsters suddenly get busted, while 4) investigation into Trump is scuttled. This happened three times that we know about. I’m not counting the first known instance of Trump providing information to prosecutors, concerning Cody and concrete, in the late 70s:

I can conceive of no scenario in which Trump was not a CI, and a top echelon one at that. He’s avoided indictment too many times. No one is that lucky.

Or, put another way: How can someone that lucky manage to run a fucking casino into the ground?

Salvatore Gravano, known as “Sammy the Bull,” was an underboss of the Gambino crime family. After the assassination of “Big” Paul Castellano in 1985—an audacious hit, done in broad daylight—John Gotti was installed as the figurehead capo. But in practice, the Bull was the one calling the shots. His territory? Manhattan. For as long as he was in power, any construction that took place in New York, New York had to be approved by Gravano. “I literally controlled Manhattan,” he told ABC News. He did a lot of business deals with Donald John Trump, and speaks of him fondly.

After his arrest on 11 December 1990, Gravano turned state’s evidence to help put away Gotti, his nominal boss. The lead prosecutor of the case? Robert Swan Mueller III. (This is why, when Trump found out Mueller was named Special Counsel, he collapsed into a chair and muttered, “I’m fucked.”)

We know that Gravano flipped on Gotti. But who flipped on Sammy the Bull?

On 19 July 1990, the Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) of the State of New Jersey opened an investigation into Donald John Trump, regarding the Trump Organization’s business dealings with Joseph Weichselbaum, a mob associate and embezzler who had been convicted not once, not twice, but three times. Trump hired Weichselbaum’s company to provide helicopter transportation to Atlantic City, conveying high rollers to and from New York. As a casino owner, Trump was prohibited by law to do any business with the serial felon. He not only continued to do so, but he went to bat for the guy, going so far as to write him a letter of recommendation. (There’s more bizarre stuff with Wiechselbaum, whose case wound up being initially tried by Trump’s sister, a federal judge, but I won’t get into it here).

Six months after the DGE opened its investigation, Gravano got pinched. And once again, as if by the wave of a magic wand, Trump’s legal troubles seemed to vanish.

It’s worth noting here that Sammy the Bull likes Trump personally, then and now, and seems not to blame him for ratting him out. There were likely others who informed on Gravano, too. But given the timing, the investigation against Trump, his disastrous finances at the time, and his long familiarity with federal prosecutors, it stands to reason that Trump, too, turned on his longtime business associate.

The Kurt & Courtney decade was unkind to Donald John Trump. The Bush I recession hit his businesses hard. Trump filed for bankruptcy protection for Trump Taj Mahal (1991) and Trump Plaza (1992). Again: our “lucky” guy had managed to go bust in the casino business. In between those bankruptcy filings, he lobbied Congress for tax relief for real estate developers, began phoning reporters claiming to be a publicist named John Barron, had an affair with a D-list actress named Marla Maples, and divorced his wife of 14 years, the mother of his kids Donald, Ivanka, and Eric: the former Ivana Zelníčková. (Sidenote: Ivana Trump’s father was a big wheel in Czechoslovakia’s Státní bezpečnost intelligence service; Miloš Zelníček helped raise his grandchildren, especially Don Jr., who speaks fluent Czech…but this is a subject for another dispatch).

Things were going south fast. Trump desperately needed a lifeline. He found one in Moscow.

The Soviet Union collapsed on Christmas Day 1991. What the West viewed as the triumph of capitalism over communism was really the subversion of a conventional superpower by the shadowy forces of transnational crime. The Cold War was not over; it just shifted modes of attack. In the early 90s, Russia invaded the United States—not with soldiers, but with mobsters.

The commander of this underworld incursion was a violent ex-con named Vyacheslav Ivankov, known as “Yaopnchik,” or “Little Japanese.” Hardened in the brutal Soviet prison system, Ivankov was a member of the vor y zakone, or thieves-in-law—the arm of the Russian mafiya that originated in the post-Second World War gulags. He was such a nasty, violent motherfucker that when it was necessary to rough someone up to extort them, he didn’t send in a subordinate—he did the job himself.

Ivankov arrived to the United States in 1992, ostensibly to work in the film industry. Even the new Russian government warned the FBI that he was up to no good. The feds lost sight of him almost immediately, even as he traveled from New York to Florida and everywhere in between, consolidating power, and displacing the Italian mob. (That brazen 1985 hit on “Big” Paul Castellano was instrumental in achieving this Vor hegemony, as the Gambino boss neither liked nor trusted the Russians). Per the testimony of Bob Levinson, the FBI’s foremost Russian mob expert:

Ivankov’s organization’s income was derived from a number of sources: his group was implicated by sources to have been involved in the “gasoline tax scam” whereby so-called “daisy-chains” of petroleum handling companies were established with the specific intention of defrauding governmental tax authorities using non-existent or ghost companies to pay the gasoline taxes due.

A primary source of the group’s funds was the collection of “krisha” or protection money from wealthy Russian and Eurasian businessmen operating between North America and the former Soviet republics. In addition, the Ivankov organization organized the collection of, in effect, a “street tax” from Russian-born and Eastern European criminals who were operating their illegal enterprises in North America. Ivankov organization members fanned out across the United States and Canada identifying and then approaching these criminals saying that each now had to contribute to an “obshak” (mutual benefit fund) being collected and organized by the Ivankov group.

In addition, Ivankov and other members of his organization settled business disputes for Russian and Eastern European businessmen operating between North America and the former Soviet Union, receiving in return a percentage of the amount in dispute, usually hundreds of thousands of dollars. Through his authority as a “thief-inlaw” and the head of a criminal organization, Ivankov was able to exercise a kind of informal power in the émigré business community tantamount to decisions made by formal, official courts of law. Those who went against the decisions made by Ivankov and his associates were usually met with violence, including beatings and/or murder.

As Little Japanese worked the States, Semion Mogilevich, the current head of the Russian mob, set up his base of operations in Budapest, Hungary, where he moved in 1992 with his Hungarian girlfriend. “The Brainy Don,” as he is called, soon acquired a bank in Russia, which allowed him access to the global financial system. Meyer Lanksy may have invented money laundering, but it was Mogilevich who took it to Hollywood, so to speak: Lansky wrote the book, and the Brainy Don made it into an international blockbuster. (Note: Levinson, the FBI agent, moved to Budapest around this time, to investigate Mogilevich more closely.)

For three fruitful years, Ivankov did his thing, laying the foundation for what would become the world’s pre-eminent organized crime operation—more S.P.E.C.T.R.E. than GoodFellas. He ran amok. Law enforcement had no idea where he was….until, one day in 1995, they found him living in a deluxe apartment at—you’re not gonna believe it—Trump Tower. And that was not the only Trump property he frequented: Ivankov was also a regular at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. He was arrested in June of 1995, convicted, imprisoned, and deported to Russia in 2004 to face murder changes. Once home, he was promptly acquitted. He was gunned down in Moscow in 2009.

This monster was living in Trump’s building, gambling in Trump’s casino.

What was Donald John Trump doing in 1995? Failing tremendously. That was the year when he declared a loss of an unfathomable $916 million on his tax returns. It was also at this time that Trump Tower became a sort of Moscow on Fifth Avenue, with any number of Russian mobsters scooping up apartments—an arrangement that began in 1984, when the Russian mobster David Bogatin purchased five condos for $6 million. Trump Tower was one of just two buildings in all of New York City that allowed units to be purchased by shell companies. Why did Trump, virtually alone among New Yorkers, allow these fishy deals?

As the indefatigable Craig Unger writes in the Washington Post,

the shady Bogatin deal began a 35-year relationship between Trump and Russian organized crime. Mind you, this was a period during which the disintegration of the Soviet Union had opened a fire-hose-like torrent of hundreds of billions of dollars in flight capital from oligarchs, wealthy apparatchiks and mobsters in Russia and its satellites. And who better to launder so much money for the Russians than Trump — selling them multimillion-dollar condos at top dollar, with little or no apparent scrutiny of who was buying them.

Over the next three decades, dozens of lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, mortgage brokers and other white-collar professionals came together to facilitate such transactions on a massive scale. According to a BuzzFeed investigation, more than 1,300 condos, one-fifth of all Trump-branded condos sold in the United States since the 1980s, were shifted “in secretive, all-cash transactions that enable buyers to avoid legal scrutiny by shielding their finances and identities.”

Unger continues:

The Trump Organization has dismissed money laundering charges as unsubstantiated, and because it is so difficult to penetrate the shell companies that purchased these condos, it is almost impossible for reporters — or, for that matter, anyone without subpoena power — to determine how much money laundering by Russians went through Trump-branded properties. But Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist, put it this way to me: “Early on, Trump came to the conclusion that it is better to do business with crooks than with honest people. Crooks have two big advantages. First, they’re prepared to pay more money than honest people. And second, they will always lose if you sue them because they are known to be crooks.”

It is simply inconceivable that a creature of the underworld, a man who had extensive dealings with mob figures for his entire career, would, in a moment of dire need, be unaware that mobsters were buying his properties, using shell companies to conceal the origin of the dirty rubles.

It is also inconceivable that a mobbed-up real estate developer—a crook whom the government of Australia would not grant a gaming license because of his obvious mob connections; the subject of a 41-page initial investigation by the Department of Gaming Enforcement in the State of New Jersey that, taken together, is positively damning—could have avoided indictment for all these years unless he was covertly helping out law enforcement. Trump is a criminal, yes, but his crimes are not as heinous as Ivankov’s, or Gravano’s, or Scarfo’s. Prosecutors would happily toss a minnow like Trump back into the sea if it helped them catch the big fish.

Nothing about Trump’s term as president suggests he’s turned his back on organized crime. He hasn’t “gone legit.” His Twitter antagonists comprise a “Who’s Who” of the FBI’s Russian mob experts: Robert Mueller, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page. He has attacked the credibility of those who know what he really is. That is what made Trump’s attacks on Mueller so ironic. He impugned the former FBI director as corrupt, while depending on his incorruptibility to not reveal his (alleged) CI status.

To reiterate: we cannot know for sure if Trump was a CI unless he admits to being one (maybe Yamiche Alcindor can goad him into admitting it?), or if the federal prosecutors in the know break protocol to expose him.

As it stands, prominent G-men have given us clues. When McCabe was fired, he began his statement thus: “I have been an FBI Special Agent for over 21 years. I spent half of that time investigating Russian Organized Crime as a street agent and Supervisor in New York City.” The subtext there is that McCabe knows who Trump is.

In the excerpt of his book Higher Loyalty sent to the press, James Comey compared Trump to Gravano. “The [loyalty] demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony—with Trump in the role of the family boss asking me if I have what it takes to be a ‘made man.’ ” Of all the famous mafiosos, why did Comey choose Gravano, a relatively obscure figure, as the comp? He wants us to dig into Gravano.

(Gravano himself was asked about the Comey pull-quote by Jerry Capeci of Gangland News; he said, “The country doesn’t need a bookworm as president, it needs a mob boss. You don’t need a Harvard graduate to deal with these people…[Putin, Kim, Xi] are real gangsters. You need a fucking gangster to deal with these people.” This seems to indicate that Sammy the Bull thinks Trump is a “mob boss” and a “fucking gangster.” Takes one to know one?)

Unless he thought it would help him avoid prison, Trump will never cop to being a Confidential Informant. We can only infer that he served that function by presenting the circumstantial evidence to support the hypothesis. But plenty of people can confirm or deny (rather than refuse to confirm or deny) Trump’s involvement. Bob Mueller, certainly, but every prosecutor too that dealt with Scarfo, Gravano, and Ivankov, and plenty of smaller cases besides.

When a Confidential Informant is deliberately fucking up the federal government’s response to a pandemic—when his willful negligence will cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of American lives—protocol must be sacrificed for the greater good. Is not the purpose of that law, of all laws, to protect the people from enemies foreign and domestic? And has not the COVID-19 response, or lack thereof, proven Trump to be an active enemy of the United States?

We don’t need more careful legalese. We don’t need more cryptic phrasings along the lines of “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” We need to hear, loud and clear, what the FBI knows. We need to be told, unequivocally, that Trump is an inveterate crook—a real crook; an actual criminal; not just a cute Twitter assertion—and, even more surprising, and contrary to all recent evidence, that he is capable of telling the truth when it serves him.

Notes:

This piece was written under the expert guidance of Lincoln’s Bible. If you don’t already do so, please follow her on Twitter, and check out her own mafiya reporting at Citjourno.

I encourage everyone to read the State of New Jersey Department of Gaming Enforcement investigation report on the allegations against Donald John Trump in the Wayne Barrett book Trump: The Deals and the Downfall.

The late Bob Levinson was the FBI’s best Russian mob fighter. His Ivankov testimony is also essential reading.

The photo at the top is the Greek, from The Wire—the best show in the history of television.

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/tinker-tailor-mobster-trump

#organized crime #long reads #trump #america is broken #greg olear

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artificialqueens · 4 years

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If You Ever Wanna Be in Love (I'll Come Around), Chapter Six (Branjie) - Athena2

Previously: Vanessa realized she’s in love with Brooke Now: She has to deal with her feelings as she falls more and more in love

A/N: Thank you all so much for the amazing feedback! I really do appreciate it! I’d love if you could leave some more on this chapter! Thank you times 10,000 to Writ, for betaing and also all your help on this chapter. You’re the best and I love you <3 <3

Vanessa drifts off for an hour and wakes to the sight of a blanket and pillows neatly stacked at the foot of her bed. Her mind reels as she remembers last night. Maybe it was all just a dream. But she knows those blankets will smell like Brooke, and she knows it was real.

Why now? Why just when things are coming to an end does her heart decide to bust out of the cage Vanessa put it in, under strict convictions that she was not in love with Brooke? She might have locked her feelings up, but obviously she didn’t hide the key well enough.

Brooke’s been adamant that this is all fake. She had promised Vanessa that she wouldn’t keep asking this of her, keep making her pretend to be in love for her parents. The worst part is Vanessa doesn’t have to pretend anymore.

But she can’t do this. Brooke is her friend, and this is fake. There’s no need to confess her feelings and mess up what they have. Brooke doesn’t feel that way, and Vanessa tells herself being friends is enough. She takes a deep breath and heads down the hall.

Brooke is at the kitchen counter mixing something. Her face is soft and rumpled with sleep, hair in a loose ponytail, and maybe it’s the sun on her, but she’s never looked so beautiful.

“Thought I’d make pancakes,” Brooke says. “They’re pretty much the only thing I can make.”

“Can I help?”

“If you want.”

Vanessa turns on the coffee pot and gets the griddle ready, letting butter sizzle happily before they take turns spooning batter on and topping it with blueberries, watching it bubble up and fill the kitchen with warmth. For just a second, she wonders what it would be like to do this every day. Their coffee mugs side by side, having breakfast with sleepy-eyed Brooke each morning before heading to work. Vanessa forces the idea away.

She hops up on the kitchen counter, noting with satisfaction that she’s finally as tall as Brooke. This close, she can see Brooke focus as she tends to the pancakes, her tongue sticking out a little in concentration, and it’s hard not to reach out and stroke Brooke’s arms, pull her over to the counter and hold her close.

“Sleep okay?” Brooke asks quietly.

“Yeah,” Vanessa lies. “Told you, different beds don’t bother me.” It wasn’t the bed so much as not having Brooke in it.

She flicks flour at Brooke to change the subject. Brooke swipes batter down Vanessa’s nose, the touch making her shiver. She shrieks and Brooke lets out a snort, handing her a napkin.

There’s a gentle cough, and Vanessa looks up to see Brooke’s parents in the doorway, watching with enormous smiles.

Vanessa turns her attention to the floor as Brooke does the same with the sink.

Brooke’s parents slink over to the table, and Vanessa grabs the coffees while Brooke takes the pancakes and they all sit down together.

The levels of faking–internally pretending not to be in love with Brooke while outwardly pretending she is for Brooke’s parents’ sake–is messing with her head, and all she can focus on are her pancakes as everyone talks. She’s afraid one wrong word will give her away, that she’ll look at Brooke too long and be unable to hide it anymore. She’s quiet until they get ready to leave, when Brooke is in the bathroom and Brooke’s mom pulls Vanessa aside.

“We’re happy to have you and Brooke over anytime,” Brooke’s mom says warmly. She leans in like Brooke does when she’s sharing something, lowering her voice. “I’ve always worried about Brooke. She’s so shy, and she’s been alone so long. But you’re such a good fit for her. I love seeing her this happy.”

There’s a lump in Vanessa’s throat the size of a baseball, and the pancakes churn around like the sea in her stomach. Brooke’s mom will be so crushed when Brooke tells her they broke up. Vanessa plasters on a smile and tries not to think about it, tries to shrug off the guilt creeping into her shoulders.

“Me too,” she manages.

Luckily Brooke comes out then, and there’s a blur of hugs before they’re in the car, where Vanessa spends the longest car ride ever staring out the window when she wants to hold Brooke’s hand.

—

Brooke is a mess.

It’s Monday morning, and her inbox is overflowing but she can’t lift her head off the desk, the cool wood easing the burn of embarrassment and frustration in her cheeks.

Did she ruin everything this weekend? Should she just have braved the storm and driven her and Vanessa home? But Vanessa had been scared, almost terrified, smaller than she’d ever looked as she curled into herself, and Brooke couldn’t push it, couldn’t do anything until that fear had left Vanessa’s eyes. It had been instinct to hold her and soothe her fears away, and Brooke couldn’t rest until Vanessa felt better again.

It was that fear that led to Brooke sleeping on the guest room floor–her back is still aching, but she won’t tell Vanessa–and makes Brooke wonder if the rain had blown everything to pieces.

She didn’t want to just jump in the bed with Vanessa, didn’t want to make things awkward for her. Vanessa was already staying in a strange house, after all, with someone she was pretending to date. Brooke didn’t want her to think they had to sleep together just because of that. She’d never put Vanessa in that position, and it was easier to just take the floor, avoid the awkwardness of sharing a bed entirely. Except even as she arranged blankets, some part of Brooke wanted Vanessa to argue, to insist she get in the bed. Some part of her wanted to sleep with Vanessa, to see what it would be like to wake in the night and know she was there. Brooke hasn’t slept with someone in a while, and she wonders how it would have felt sleeping with Vanessa beside her.

But Vanessa wanted to sleep alone, and Brooke didn’t blame her, tried not to let the disappointment show. Brooke thought that was the end of it–but Vanessa was quiet the morning after, quiet the whole ride home. She didn’t change the radio station, or screech when they passed a cow, or keep adjusting the AC vent so it didn’t mess up her hair. Did Brooke do something wrong somehow?

Her phone rings so loud it makes her jump. Maybe she needs a hike soon. They always help clear her head. She heaves a sigh and answers the phone.

—

“Yvie, if you hit me with popcorn one more time–” Vanessa can’t finish her threat with kids around, but her death glare should send the message. Yvie thought today was a good day to test out the new popcorn machine she bought for the children’s room, and she better be the one vacuuming that rug after the kids devoured it. She’s taken to throwing pieces in the air and catching them in her mouth, but her aim sucks, and Vanessa digs another kernel out of her hair.

“What’s up with you today?” A’keria asks.

“Nothing.” Vanessa doubts the lie fools anyone. She’s supposed to be cutting out tickets for the carnival, but her movements are sluggish, her arms too heavy to lift. Even the air feels heavier than normal, crushing her down.

“Did something happen with Brooke this weekend?” Yvie comes over and smoothly takes the tickets away from Vanessa, doing the work herself.

“Can we not talk about it?” She doesn’t have the energy for this today, doesn’t have the desire to crack her heart back open.

“Of course.” A’keria rubs her hands together, deep in thought. She’s always good at distracting upset kids, giving them something to focus on while Vanessa got toys to cheer them up. Now Vanessa is the upset kid, but she can’t even argue. “Bets on Paul acting a fool at the carnival?”

“That’s not a bet, it’s a guarantee,” Yvie says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he dresses as a clown.”

“Did you know Silky and I dressed as clowns for Halloween one year?” A’keria asks.

“The point of Halloween is to wear a costume, not your normal clothes, you know,” Yvie says, launching into her laugh that makes Vanessa smile.

“Bets on Silky wearing a clown suit?” Vanessa asks, more grateful for her friends than ever.

—

The library parking lot has been transformed into a mini-carnival, minus the rides.There’s food trucks lining the street and bright tents for games and sweaty kids running around showing off prizes. The air is alive with laughter and salty popcorn and oily fried foods, and Brooke lets last weekend go, lets herself enjoy being with Vanessa. Vanessa seems more herself today, smiling with her hair pulled back in two long braids and heart-shaped sunglasses perched on top of her head. She talks passionately about kids literacy programs and praises kids for their prizes. Brooke can see how proud she is of all this, how happy her job makes her. It warms her heart to see Vanessa get so excited, talk so fast about things she loves.

Brooke peeks at the fake ring she’s wearing to keep up appearances for Vanessa’s co-workers. Brooke favors simple hoop earrings or necklaces at work, rings just too constricting on her fingers. She adjusts the ring, and it’s not as tight as it was last time. It almost feels like it fits.

“This is nice,” Brooke says.

“Yeah. I wish there could be some rides, though,” Vanessa says. “Anything but Ferris wheels.”

“Yeah, I’m not a fan of them either.”

Vanessa nods in approval. “They’re so slow! You’re up there forever and there’s nothing to do but look down. Once when I was five, my brother said I was a chicken if I didn’t go on with him, and I’m no chicken, so I went. This was after I ate pizza, a churro, and ice cream, mind you.” Vanessa shakes her head, and Brooke knows what’s coming. “I puked on his favorite Nikes and haven’t been on one since.”

Brooke snorts, imagining tiny Vanessa marching up to the Ferris wheel to prove she’s not a chicken.

“I’m surprised you met the height requirements.”

“Hey! It was a kiddie Ferris wheel, and I was more than tall enough!”

She tugs Brooke along to the face paint booth, planting her in the chair in front of A’keria.

“I can’t do a dinosaur,” A’keria says, like Brooke’s a little kid. “I’m good, but not that good.”

Brooke shrugs, looks at the sheet of designs. “Maybe a rainbow?”

“You got it.”

Brooke lets A’keria’s tiny paint brush tickle her cheek, Vanessa smiling at her all the while.

“You sit still better than Vanessa,” A’keria says.

“Hey!” Vanessa pouts, but she takes her turn and can’t stop squirming as A’keria works.

“I rest my case,” A’keria mutters like a long-suffering parent.

“Thumb war?” Brooke suggests to Vanessa, thinking it might give her something to focus on. “That’s what me and my sister did in the car when we got bored.”

Vanessa smiles. “Me and my brother too.”

Her hand meets Vanessa’s, the touch sending a buzz up Brooke’s arm like lightning, their thumbs twisting all over until Brooke forces Vanessa’s down. She forces herself to tear her hand away, rather than leaving it intertwined with Vanessa’s.

“You have longer fingers!” She complains, but all the outrage flies out of her after A’keria shows her the rainbow in a little mirror. Vanessa makes them take a picture of their matching rainbows and sends it to her, and it takes all Brooke’s willpower not to make the image her lock screen (sorry, Henry and Apollo) right this second.

“Brooke, are you gonna win your wife a stuffed animal?” Vanessa’s friend Silky appears out of nowhere with a huge grin on her face.

“Oh, uh…” Silky and Vanessa’s other friends drag her to the bottle toss, run by a bored, underpaid teenager. A small crowd forms, Paul included, and Brooke’s neck is damp with sweat. Sports aren’t her thing. Her parents signed her up for soccer when she was five and she endured a year of setting up cones and foot-squeezing cleats and sticky orange slices—the only good part—at half-time, until her parents let her take dance lessons instead.

Brooke hasn’t attempted a sport since, but she can’t back down. Not when Vanessa is inspecting stuffed animals for her prize. Brooke has to win something for her, even if it’s a small prize instead of a giant one. It’s cheesy, but winning someone a prize is something she always wanted to do, watching them squeeze a giant stuffed animal and knowing she had won it for them, hoping they’d think of her whenever they held it. There was no chance of taking a girl to a carnival when Brooke was in high school, and maybe she can make up for it now.

The baseball is too heavy in Brooke’s hand, the stack of bottles too far away. Can she calculate the distance or something physics-related to make the shot? God, she hates physics. She rubs the ball on her shirt and practices throwing, her leg awkwardly swinging with her arm, muscle memory from ballet years ago. Her first throw hits the wall and the tower doesn’t even sway, a groan coming from the crowd. The second one comes closer, but nothing. She’s down to her last chance, and Brooke gulps as she reaches for the third ball–

But Vanessa is launching it through the air, and bottles tumble with a mighty crash.

Brooke blinks at her. “How–”

Vanessa is much too smug. “You’re looking at a former Little League all-star.”

Brooke laughs so hard she has to clutch at her stomach, because the image of young Vanessa with her ponytail sticking out of a baseball cap is maybe the most perfect thing Brooke can imagine. Vanessa picks a small stuffed pig for her prize, and Brooke gasps when Vanessa’s arms fling around her in a hug. Her coworkers are around, so it’s probably part of the act but Brooke doesn’t care, throwing her arms around Vanessa and breathing her in.

“Sorry I couldn’t win for you,” she whispers.

“You tried,” Vanessa says, and Brooke squeezes her and never wants to let go.

—

“You’re really gonna sit here with a straight face and tell us the carnival was fake?” Silky asks, her expression incredulous.

Vanessa shrugs and turns her attention to Thackery, sprawled out sleeping in her lap. She wishes she could take a nap right here and avoid what Silky is turning into an interrogation, the couch cushion Vanessa’s sunk into becoming a witness stand. A’keria even pauses the reality show they’ve all been watching, and Vanessa knows this is now a talk.

“That’s the only thing about her that is straight,” A’keria says. “Matching rainbow face paint? Her winning you a stuffed animal? Come on, V. We know how you get when you’re in love.”

“I won that pig myself, thank you.” She’s been holding it when she sleeps, because it reminds her of hugging Brooke.

A’keria rolls her eyes. “Forget the pig! The way you hugged her–”

“It doesn’t matter, okay?” It comes out harsher than Vanessa intends, and she cringes. “This whole fake relationship thing is done. Brooke doesn’t like me like that. We’re just friends.”

“You don’t know that.”

“She slept on the floor so she didn’t have to share a bed with me,” Vanessa says. Her chest still aches with the emptiness of that night, staring up at the ceiling fan and wishing Brooke was next to her. What would have happened if she had insisted? Would Brooke still have ended up on the floor, or would she have settled beside Vanessa? Would their arms have brushed against each other, would the night have become something more?

There’s too many unknowns. But Brooke doesn’t love her. Vanessa is positive about that.

“Well, maybe she didn’t want to make things weird.” A’keria and Silky are trying, Vanessa gives them that. But there’s no point.

“Look, if I tell her, it could ruin everything. I’d rather be her friend than nothing. I can’t lose her.” She doesn’t want to be without Brooke. It will hurt this way, sure, to look at her lips and not be able to kiss them, to see those eyes sparkle but not be able to see them sleepy in the morning or softened in bed, to hear her laugh sometimes but not every day. But it’s better than not having those things–not having Brooke–in her life at all.

“Maybe someday you could tell her?” A’keria suggests.

Vanessa shrugs. She wants to tell Brooke more than anything. But some of Brooke is better than no Brooke, and if it takes her silence to keep Brooke, Vanessa won’t say a word.

—

It’s her first weekend without plans with Vanessa–no babysitting, no thrifting, no dinner–and Brooke doesn’t know what to do with herself. She can do anything she wants, but that freedom she usually craves is scary and overwhelming today, a free-fall through empty space that was once occupied by Vanessa. Brooke’s always made time to have a day to herself, on the couch in sweats with the cats, but now that she has one it feels odd not to have something with Vanessa planned.

Brooke didn’t realize until now just how much she’d come to count on their weekends, how much she liked having that time with Vanessa. Even if it wasn’t anything special, just being with her made it special. It’s rare for her to find someone she enjoys more than her own company, rare to find someone she could be herself around, and Vanessa happens to be one of those people.

She thinks of texting Vanessa, asking what she’s up to, but maybe she should leave this weekend alone. They’re still friends and everything, but maybe they both need a break after so much time together pretending to date. She knows Vanessa does stuff with her friends on the weekends, and she won’t ruin that for her.

Brooke burrows into the couch. Next week she’ll go on a hike, but maybe a quiet introvert weekend is what she needs now. Her head is heavy with thoughts of Vanessa, with worry over if she wrecked things, and she needs to not think for a while.

She curls up with the cats and manages to drift into a nap, the peace of it hijacked by her subconscious when she dreams of nothing but Vanessa.

—

“How the hell did you talk me into this?” Vanessa asks, the mountain looming above them.

“You’re the one who wanted to come!” Brooke protests.

Vanessa shrugs, because that’s fair. After a week of casual texting and playing it cool, she had asked Brooke her weekend plans. When she found out that Brooke was going for a hike by herself, her mind flooded with images of Brooke falling or getting hurt, all alone with no one to help her, and there was no way Vanessa could let her go alone.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now, they’re at the base of a small, twisty mountain bursting with trees, and Vanessa hopes her bright pink Nikes are up to the job. Hopes she’s up to the job. Brooke assured her it’s an easy trail, the first one Brooke ever did, with a nice spot up top for them to have a little picnic.

Brooke fiddles with her backpack of picnic stuff, and at least staring at Brooke in her hiking gear is part of this. Broken-in hiking boots curve around her feet, her long legs and arms exposed in her shorts and T-shirt, hair up in a neat ponytail. It’s unfair, really, how Brooke looks beautiful without even trying.

“Ready?” Brooke asks.

Vanessa nods, eager to show Brooke she can do this. Brooke put up with all her friends at the carnival, and Vanessa wants to do something that’s more in Brooke’s element, show Brooke that their friendship means enough to her that she’ll climb this big-ass mountain.

They pass a tiny stream at the mountain’s base and Vanessa can’t stop herself from running over to a pile of stones.

“Wait!” She calls to Brooke.

“Tired already?” Brooke teases.

Vanessa sticks her tongue out and picks up a rock.

“Do you know how to skip rocks?”

“I’m okay at it,” Brooke says, and Vanessa knows that means she’s good at it but doesn’t want to brag.

“Can you show me? I can never do it.”

Brooke nods and slips behind her, one hand light on her hip, a ghost’s touch, the other hand curling around Vanessa’s own. Brooke’s hands are so special. Her skin is pale like ice with rivers of veins flowing underneath. Her hands are sure and confident when she points out fossils in the museum or paths on the trail, yet tremble and fidget when she’s unsure of herself. Those hands are strong enough to protect Vanessa from a storm but gentle enough to dig for fossils, to stroke a cat’s fur, to braid hair. Brooke’s hands help her skip the stone so it ripples through the stream three times, and Vanessa wants to hold that hand for the rest of her life.

Tell her. The thought pops into her head. Tell Brooke you love her. It’s the perfect day for it. The sun kisses at their skin, the sky a clear blue, and they’re about to climb a mountain and have a picnic. This day was practically made for love, and Vanessa has to tell her. If she doesn’t do it now, she’ll never do it, and her heart isn’t meant for silence. Brooke’s hand linger against hers, and it’s another sign that now is right.

Each step brings Vanessa closer and closer, dodging sticks and kicking rocks, not even the bumpy, mud-flecked path enough to stop her. She keeps pace with Brooke even though her legs are much shorter, climbing in an easy silence punctuated by their breathing, with little stops along the way to sip water and marvel at the flowers. By the time they reach the top, she’s bouncing in her sneakers.

“Vanessa?”

“Yeah?”

“Look,” Brooke breathes, nudging her up to the edge of the mountain, and Vanessa gasps.

The entire world is spread out below them, sun sparkling off the stream running through the valley and so much green everywhere–trees and shrubs and all kinds of plants that she doesn’t know, but that take her breath away just the same. They’re only half an hour from the city, but this feels like another world, another time, and she should’ve done this sooner.

Vanessa loved the outdoors when she was little, rolling in the grass and climbing the big tree in the backyard. She and her brother spent hours out there playing catch, practicing wrestling moves, wearing their dad’s belts and pretending to be Batman and Robin (he always got to be Batman because he was older) until their mom called them in, groaning over their grass-stained clothes. There’s something about all these trees around her that feel like childhood, that joyful part of her she tries to keep in shape but is maybe a little dusty these days. Here, that part thrives.

She looks at Brooke who has the same wonder in her eyes and Vanessa almost kisses her right there. But she can wait until after lunch. She’s waited this long, after all.

There’s a flat grassy patch over to the side, and Brooke lays down a plaid blanket and gets out waters and sandwiches, passing them to Vanessa.

“Orange?” Brooke offers.

Vanessa nods, expecting Brooke to hand her a whole orange. Instead, there’s a tiny container with the orange already peeled and sliced, and it shouldn’t be a big deal but it is. Brooke took the time to peel the orange and separate the slices for her, packed it all into a little container just for Vanessa. Brooke did this for her when she didn’t have to, and it almost makes Vanessa not want to eat the orange, but keep the little slices forever. Brooke is watching though, so she takes one and lets the juice dribble down her chin.

“You ever put the whole slice in your mouth and smile with it?” Vanessa asks.

“Of course I did.”

Vanessa flashes an orange-segment smile at Brooke. Brooke shoots one right back and Vanessa falls a little more in love with her.

They pack up their stuff and Vanessa wants one last look at the valley below. She climbs up on a little rock for the perfect view one more time.

“Look, I’m taller than you,” she teases Brooke.

“Please be careful,” Brooke says, genuine worry in her voice. Vanessa steps off the rock but she misses a step somewhere, and suddenly she’s falling, the stony ground rushing up to meet her–

She lands in Brooke’s arms, Brooke looking down at her in concern, asking if she’s okay. Vanessa doesn’t answer, but goes in for the kiss, only to never meet Brooke’s lips. Because Brooke is letting go of her and stepping back with fear in her eyes. She’s scared, scared of Vanessa and her kiss, and Vanessa never wants Brooke to be scared of anything, wants to fight away all her fears. Being the reason Brooke is scared is like a knife in Vanessa’s heart.

“Brooke–”

“V-Vanessa, what are you—“

“I was trying to kiss you,” Vanessa whispers, each word cutting her throat on the way out.

Brooke is shaking her head, eyes wide, breath coming in frantic pants. “No, I-it’s too fast, I can’t.” Brooke is trembling now, gasping for air she can’t seem to get even though there’s nothing but air around them.

“But Brooke, it doesn’t have to be fast,” Vanessa begs, trying to keep things from falling apart, trying to get Brooke to understand that she’ll take this slow, that she’ll never hurt her.

But Brooke is still shaking her head. Her hands are trembling, her whole self unraveling before Vanessa’s eyes. “I can’t, Vanessa. I just can’t.” She runs over to a tree and braces herself against it, turning her back to Vanessa as her shoulders heave.

Brooke is upset and it’s all Vanessa’s fault, all because she had to confess her feelings, and now she’s ruined everything. She came on too strong, too fast, and tears spring in her eyes because she knows she’s lost Brooke. Brooke doesn’t love her back and never will. Their connection, their bond–neither was enough for Brooke to love her too. She wipes her tears away hastily. She doesn’t want to cry here, in front of the person who doesn’t love her. She won’t.

She watches Brooke slowly get her breathing under control and knows this is the end of trading work stories. She watches Brooke adjust her backpack and knows they’ll never have another movie night. She watches Brooke re-tie her shoe and knows that there will never be another dinner of trying each other’s food and laughing.

They walk down the mountain and drive home in utter silence, and Vanessa runs inside her apartment without a look back, buries herself in bed, and cries.

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #yvie oddly #silky nutmeg ganache #akeria davenport #branjie #fluff #mild angst #lesbian au #fake dating au #s12 #if you ever wanna be in love #athena2 #concrit welcome #submission

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