#really cold last few winter days here in PA
Text
Pas de Trois: Part One
Pairing: Reader x Noah, eventual Reader x Nicholas
Word Count: 2.3k
Warnings: None! (Yet)
I was just thinking, like: Swans, right? But Noah and Nicholas. No beta we die like Odette and Siegfried!
It was as cold in the beginning as it was in the end.
You could pretend all you wanted- that the embrace of a not-quite lover could warm you enough to stay alive. But you both knew better by now.
It starts the way it ends: at a pond.
You need a breather from your mother and her love schemes. Something about a party at the Van der Whatever’s condo on the east side, the unwed men rumored to be in attendance.
All those years of safeguarding your virginity like a crown jewel, only to be whored out to the first eligible bachelor the second you turned 23 and expressed no interest in marriage.
You roll your eyes at the thought of it; the idea of preserving your chastity whilst being surrounded by the scum of the earth in Bottega stilettos. It feels like you rub elbows with literal vampires most days: creatures that linger in the shadows, waiting to drain you of whatever they needed from you in that moment.
At least Bela Lugosi never asked you about why you decided against Yale after your father’s hefty (and unrequested) donation.
The air is crisp, biting at your cheeks as you walk. You wander into a familiar park near your apartment, the street lamps illuminating the freshly fallen snow in a gentle glow. All around you, trees creak and groan in the wind, as if they, too, were ready for spring again. It isn’t so secluded that you felt any real danger, but it was far enough away from the sounds of traffic to give your mind space to wander.
Faintly, you hear the sounds of people milling about on the street. There’s a theatre up the road- they’ve been hosting a ballet company performing The Nutcracker for the last month or so. Looking through the gaps in the bushes, you can spot a few people dressed in rich velvets and fur coats taking photos under the gleam of marquee lights. You haven’t gone to see The Nutcracker for years now. Your mother stopped taking you when you confessed that you did not have the talent- nor endurance- to be a real ballerina, the same time that she unenrolled you from dance classes altogether.
Humming Tchaikovsky's Pas de Deux to yourself, you meander through the park until you come upon a pond. A treasure in your heart, it’s a spot you come to often to clear your head- though this is your first nighttime foray.
Longer than it was wide, the pond was not the most impressive in the city by a longshot. Most people didn’t even know of its existence, save the few dog-walkers who came through in the mid-morning and late afternoon. It was familiar, though, having been situated here as far back as your memory could recall.
Winter crept over the small body of water in sheets of ice at the outer perimeter. If the temperature continued to drop (it would) the entire thing would be frozen solid by next week. As it was, the ice at the edges looked thick enough to hold up an entire person.
You fight back the melancholy this brings you, knowing the incoming freeze would take with it the many creatures that inhabit the pond. The ducks have long since left, flying somewhere further south, somewhere warmer. The fish have been awfully quiet the last few weeks as well, settling in for their winter rest. That really just left the-
Ah, You think, sounding hushed even in your head. There you are.
They glide in silently, slicing through the water like moonlight. Long, graceful necks with great plumes puffing up behind them, the swans are pure magic in the stillness of the night. They make a triangle in the water, with four smaller fowl following the swan at the crest of the formation. Its dark eyes meet yours for a moment, and you feel so utterly vulnerable under its gaze that you look away, suddenly very interested in your shoes.
Must you be intimidated by everything? You sigh to yourself internally. Seriously, a fucking bird?
You felt silly as you built the courage to finally look back up, but the bevy had disappeared. Craning your neck around, you were halfway to considering searching for them on foot when a branch cracked behind you.
Whirling around, your eyes scanned the tree line, pulling the mace on your keychain out with shaking hands. The neighborhood was safe, sure, but you weren’t stupid. A girl alone in a park well after the sun had set? Yeah, you’d seen the crime shows- no thanks.
“Hello?” You call, your voice wobbling despite your best efforts.
Another crack.
Your mace was up in an instant, poised and ready to fire. You are not a damsel in distress, you are certainly not going to be a statistic. As your heart pounded in your throat, a figure came into view.
“Ew, there’s bird shit everywhere- Woah!” The stranger stumbled backwards, hands up in the air as he saw you. “Oh my god, please don’t tase me-“
“It’s not a taser.” Was, for some reason, your first response. Then, “Who are you? What are you doing lurking around in the dark?”
His eyes went wide. “It’s a public park! I’m going for a walk!”
Your eyes narrow, the hand wielding the mace never moving. “A walk? At 9:45 at night?”
Impossibly, his eyes grew wider. They were dark- familiar in a way you couldn’t fully place in your panicked state. The snow reflects off of them, reminiscent of starlight. “You are also in the park at 9:45? And you’re armed?”
Well, that was certainly a valid observation. You take two deep breaths, then lower the mace, though not pocketing it entirely. You spend a moment observing his appearance.
He was tall- tall enough to be threatening, if he wanted to. Slim build, dark eyes, like you’d noted before. His hair was parted down the middle, brushing against the top of his cheekbones softly. He’s handsome, you think. Not the overly-manicured handsome you were accustomed to, though. He reminded you of the first dandelions in the spring; The delight you feel at seeing a living thing burst forth from the frozen ground, uncaring of if it's a weed or not.
A huge sweater encompassed him, something light in color and soft-looking. The sleeves poked out of the arm holes of his jacket in a strange way, as if it took a great deal of work to stuff them in there in the first place. A hat topped it all off, giant pom-pom bobbing at you in a way that was far from menacing.
“That’s a weird hat to wear while you creep on people in the park.” You quip, cocking an eyebrow at him.
His mouth drops open in shock. “My grandmother made me this, fuck you very much. And it’s winter! Of course I’m wearing a hat. Are you always this bad with logic and reason?”
“So you don’t deny creeping?” You ignored his question.
The face he gives you would have been comical under different circumstances. “Wha- Okay, look, I’m sorry for encroaching on your turf- even if that turf is city property-“ he mumbles the last bit to himself- “But I’m not like, a serial-killer-murderer. Pinky promise.”
He looks so earnest, it reminds you of a little kid. He is holding out a single pinky to you, a safe distance away.
You eye him warily for a second, then sigh, taking a few steps forward to interlock your pinky with his. He beams at you, smile as bright as the snow that began to silently fall around the two of you.
You introduce yourself, shifting on your feet in a way that feels awkward and uncomfortable, like you were suddenly too aware of your body’s movements.
“I’m Noah.” He offers warmly, cheeks and nose tinged a rosy pink from the winter air. The longer you look at him, the less intimidated you feel. He was still large- but in the way that the inflatable noodle-people outside of used car dealerships were large. He didn’t flail, necessarily, though. His movements seemed fluid, controlled. Where you were rigid from years of posturing amongst socialites, he was naturally elegant, as at ease under your gaze as the swans in the pond earlier.
Soft, your mind supplies. He looks soft.
His voice is gentle when he speaks again. “So, what brought you to the park in the middle of a blizzard?”
You try to resist the grin that creeps across your face; you fail miserably. “If you think this is a blizzard, you’re in for a shock come February.”
“Do you defer every question someone asks you, or am I just special?” His dark eyes are trained on you, head cocked to the side curiously. It wasn’t an attack- his expression was too open to be on the offense. He was genuinely waiting for your answer.
“I needed to get away from my mother.” You answer honestly, shrugging, though not meeting his gaze.
You can feel his eyes on you, though, searching for more. “You got into an argument?”
Shaking your head, you cast your eyes back to the pond, hoping to get another glimpse of the swans. “Not an argument. We have the same discussion every week, knowing fully well that we’ll disagree and end up screaming at each other.”
You have not felt… seen, like this, ever. You aren’t an adamant rule-follower, but you’re far from a rebel, too, allowing you to safely pass through life unnoticed. Even your mother only really seemed to remember you after your older sister had been married off to some fishing industry tycoon. To have a stranger see through your facade was unnerving.
“Disagreeing and screaming sounds like an argument to me.” He pushes, to which you hum noncommittally. Sensing your apprehension, he follows your line of sight to the pond instead. “The ducks left weeks ago.”
“I’m not looking for the ducks.” You answer shortly, perhaps a bit too harsh.
“Oh?” Is his only response.
It’s obvious he wants you to continue. This was a safer topic than your mother, so you yield to his piqued interest. “I like watching the swans. They were here earlier, but I think you scared them off.” Your eyes slide over to him slyly.
He scoffs, looking insulted. “The swans probably left because they were scared you’d mace them.”
You whirl on him, poking a finger into his chest. “The swans don’t lurk in the bushes at the park like a weirdo.”
His expression is unimpressed, but there’s a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “No one was lurking. Besides,” He grabs the finger directed at him gently, guiding it down to your side. “You don’t make a good damsel in distress. Anyone trying to steal you would just bring you back when they figured out how mean you are.”
“I’ve been nothing but cordial.” You sniff, brows furrowing at him.
His smirk is a little overwhelming. “If this is you on your “Nice” setting, I’d hate to see you pissed off.”
“Stop pushing your luck, then.” You respond dryly. He throws his head back to laugh, and the sound makes you feel warmer in your coat.
You turn back to the pond, giving up on seeing the swans again tonight. You probably need to head home, anyways- you were expected at this stupid party, and suffering through it would be better than dealing with your mother’s nagging if you were absent. You let out a soft sigh, resigned to your fate.
“I should go.” You say to no one in particular.
You feel Noah’s eyes on you again. “Hey, don’t let me run you off. I can go if I’m bothering you-”
You shake your head, body turning to face him before you realize you’re moving. “No, it’s not you- really.” You offer what you hope is a kind smile. “I’m expected somewhere. My mother will be horribly cross with me if I’m not there.”
He’s giving you an understanding smile, eyes crinkling up at the edges. “Sounds like a real rager. Will I, uh-” He glances down at his shoes, kicking at the snow before continuing, “Will I get to see you again?”
The question genuinely startles you. You assumed your demeanor (and mace) would be off-putting enough for him to be quite happy not speaking to you from this moment forward, but he… wanted to see you again?
“I mean,” You stammer, unable to find your words, “I’ll be around. At the park. If you’re also around.”
When he looks up, his face is alight. “Okay, yeah. I’ll also be around. Near the swans.”
A grin sneaks its way onto your face, unbeknownst to you. “Yeah, near the swans.” You avert your gaze, needing to look anywhere but at his hopeful expression. “See ya, Noah.”
He calls out a goodbye, but you’ve already scurried past him, the heels of your boots clicking rapidly against the sidewalk as you make your escape. You don’t dare glance back.
Your home is a few minutes away, shorter than usual given the fact that you’re practically jogging through the winter night. By the time you’ve shut your front door behind you, you’re out of breath, chest rising and falling heavily.
Your mother appears from the kitchen, her usual expression of passive annoyance plastered on her face. She calls your name, as if she needs to get your attention when you’re the only two people in the room. “Where have you been? It’s been snowing for half an hour, you’re going to catch a cold. And your boots are covered in mud- for heaven’s sake, really, we need to leave soon. Why are you grinning like that?”
You don’t register the smile on your face, still panting. Schooling your features into neutrality, you mutter out a quick, “I’m going to change clothes, be down in a sec.”
She’s ranting about punctuality and manners, but you barely hear it as you run up the stairs, grin overcoming your features once more as you think about dark eyes and soft smiles.
#bad omens fic#bad omens fanfiction#bad omens fanfic#bad omens x reader#bad omens smut#noah sebastian fic#noah sebastian fanfic#noah sebastian x reader#noah sebastian smut#cowpokeomens
59 notes
·
View notes
Text
Just Acting
i thought this gif was funny💀
Chapter Nineteen
You've been back home for a couple days now. It's been nice to be able to relax and be away from the LA noise. Sure, Philly's pretty big, but it's different from the angel city's chaos. And of course you love filming the show, but it feels good to have a break.
Basically all you've done since you got to PA is watch movies with your family, try to cook with your mom, text with Jess, and sleep.
You miss your little routine of talking to Jess almost every morning while you get your coffee, but being home with the cold weather and your family and the fireplace in the living room is comforting. LA weather in the winter is strange; it's either chilly or still hot. It wouldn't feel much like Christmas if you were still there.
Your phone rings as you get ready to go shopping with your sister. "Hello-"
"Just friends huh?" A deep voice says in your ear.
"What?"
"Just friends. That's what you think we are?" Matthew asks and you can practically see his obnoxiously attractive head tilt.
"You watched the interview,” you say, pointing out the obvious.
"Yeah."
"What was I supposed to say, Matthew? That we're friends with benefits or some shit? Look, it was cool while it lasted, but I can't do this anymore. I'd rather have a real relationship with someone who actually cares for me than whatever the hell we're doing here."
"Y/n-"
"Be mad at me all you want, but we're not twenty. This was doomed from the start anyway." You hang up, setting your phone on the bed not so gently. You sigh audibly, dropping your body to the bed too.
"Y/n, hurry up!" Lola says from the bathroom in between both of your bedrooms.
You get up reluctantly and finish putting on your sweater. You're wearing an off-white sweater that's perfect for the cold weather, black jeans, and cute boots. You leave your hair down and natural and put on a smallish amount of makeup.
After you're done getting ready, you meet Lola downstairs and grab your mom's car keys. "I'm driving, I don't trust you downtown."
"Rude. I've been driving for 2 years."
"Yeah um compared to my 18, I think I'm good driving.”
The two of you go to the mall downtown to get Christmas gifts. You both get gifts for your parents and other people. You decide to get everyone on the cast small presents and you plan to make cookies for the crew members when you get back to Los Angeles. Lola and you split up to shop for each other.
You're not entirely sure what you get your sister since you haven't been around much lately to know what she's into.
You go to a few places before finally finding something she may like. You got her a new pair of airpods and a digital picture frame for her college dorm. When you get home, you plan to put pictures of you and Lola, her and her friends, and your family in there. It'll be good for her to not have to bring frames to college. Hopefully Lola will appreciate it.
You don't plan on telling her about what just happened on the phone with Matthew. You're not even completely sure what happened. Why was he upset that you said you guys were just friends? Sure you slept together a few times, but you weren't like a couple. Not at all. He's a childish, mood-changing actor who just wanted you for sex. Maybe that's all that you wanted him for too. It's over now, so it doesn’t matter.
Whatever type of stupid childish thing the two of you had going is gone. You're not getting any younger, and maybe you aren't ready to settle down, but you sure as hell aren't going to continue a friends with benefits relationship, and with your coworker at that. It was a childish decision that neither of you should've made.
Why does it feel like I lost a friend?
Could you really consider him a friend? You guys fought and butted heads all the time. But recently, you’ve had a strange understanding with him.
You shake the thoughts of Matthew out of your head and get back into the car with your sister and the things you bought.
At home, you both hide the presents in your rooms and head downstairs to watch another Christmas movie with your parents. Your mom is forcing you guys to watch a Hallmark movie. You've never liked the corny unrealisticness of every single Hallmark movie. Especially the Christmas ones.
You sit through it though for your mom's sake. Lola pops some popcorn and you share a bowl while curled up on the couch with a blanket.
A part of you wishes you could stay home forever. See your sister every day and be with your parents. But Lola's going off to college this fall and your dad won't stay quiet about his opinions for long. And you're working on the biggest and best project you've ever done and may ever do in your life.
When the movie's over, you head up to your room and lay in bed. You stay awake for a bit, staring at the ceiling of your childhood bedroom.
You wake up to the sound of distant talking coming from downstairs. You get up and head down to the kitchen. The smell of syrup and bacon hits your nose, causing your stomach to growl a bit. You see your dad putting cooked bacon on plates that are already full with pancakes and eggs. Your mom is at the other counter, pouring a mug of coffee.
"Merry Christmas... Eve."
You smile at your mother, and Dad hands you two plates of food to set at yours and Lola's spots at the dining table. Lola comes down soon after and pours herself a cup of coffee, still half asleep.
It was always a tradition for you guys to eat breakfast together on Christmas and Christmas Eve. Normally, you and Dad would cook it and your mom would decorate cookies with Lola to hand to neighbors and friends. But traditions change as time passes.
You sit down with your iced coffee and take a bite of your breakfast. You've always been more of a waffle person, but pancakes are good too. Your family doesn't talk much at breakfast since you literally just saw each other before you went to sleep.
It's Christmas Eve which means the agenda for today consists of hanging the last two ornaments on the tree (you and Lola get new ornaments every year from your parents) and preparing for tomorrow. You'll also be watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas (a tradition you started at the ripe age of 12) and going downtown to see the decorations.
After eating, your mom hands you and Lola little bags. "Okay go ahead and open them."
Your ornament is a miniature clapperboard. You smile. “Awh I love it! Thank you."
Lola's is the mascot of the university she is going to next year. Both of you hang them up, and then you all lounge around the house for a while.
Lola and your dad go grocery shopping so Mom can cook Christmas Dinner tomorrow. You always have a honey roasted ham, potatoes, vegetables, and some type of dessert.
"Merry Christmas guys!!" AJ texts on the cast group chat. A chain of Merry Christmases come from everyone.
When Lola gets back home, you and her hang out in her bedroom. She talked about this girl she met a few weeks ago and how she has a crush on her but is scared to make a move. Oh teenage problems. You sort of missed those.
"You've always been so bold, it's weird to see you unsure of yourself," you say.
"It's just that... well my gaydar definitely goes off with her, but what if I'm wrong?"
"Just talk to her. The worst that can happen is you lose a friend, and if that does, she wasn't worth it anyway,” you tell her honestly.
She nods. "You're right. When I see her next, I'll tell her how I feel."
A part of you always knew your sister wasn't straight, but you wanted to let her come out on her own terms. She told you she was bi before she told anyone else, five months before she even told your parents. Both of you weren't sure how they would take it, but their reaction wasn't bad. They know she's the same kid she's always been, and she's their daughter so they need to support her. It took a bit for them to accept it fully, but they came around.
You were happy that your baby sister got to be herself around your family, at least the three of you.
"So how's your love life? Still dry as hell?"
"Damn that hurt. Well other than what I told you, pretty much... accept that one guy I dated for like a month if that. He was just so... I don't know."
"Boring?"
"Yeah pretty much,” you nod.
“What about Matthew?”
You swallow. “I’m not getting into details of sex, because ew, and that’s all it was.”
As soon as the sun started to set, you all got ready to go downtown. You throw on a pair of black leggings, boots, and an oversized hoodie to beat the cold.
The decorations downtown were always super extra and pretty. Christmas lights were displayed in different designs and on different buildings throughout the area. You guys also always loved to see the rich peoples' decorations in their front yards. It's crazy what people spend their money on, but it makes for a good sight.
"Y/n?" You turn around to see your old friend from high school.
"Conner! Hey!" You give him a small hug.
"Wow, it's been years. How are you?"
"Doing pretty good. How about yourself, what have you been up to?” You ask.
"Me too. I just moved back here last summer to run Dad's business,” he says.
"Oh really? That's cool."
"Yeah. I heard you're a big LA star now, huh?" He bumped your shoulder.
You chuckle, blushing. “Something like that. Man, it’s been so long.”
"Yeah it has,” he nods. “Hey, do you want to catch up later, if you get the chance before you leave?"
"Yeah I'd like that," you smile. He gives you his new number and says goodbye. You catch up with your family again.
"Ooh new love interest alert," Lola said, wiggling her eyebrows.
"Oh shut up, we're just old friends catching up."
"Sure, sure."
At around 8:40pm, you and your family head home to get into your pajamas and watch the annual movie. You eat dinner on the couch while Dad pulls up How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Jim Carey’s version of course, on Netflix. This movie was one of your favorites as a kid and you still love it to this day.
You curl up with your sister on the couch, occasionally fighting over who gets more of the blanket.
chapter twenty
tags: @pauline5525mgg @theintimatewriter @lilibet261 @greysviolets @jazzymariexoxoc @one-sweet-gubler @thatsonezesty13 @necromaniackat @awhoreforspencerreid @sebs-oxygen @scarredelirium @bts-sugaplum @awesomeness1679 @preciousbabypeter @yazzyu @cynbx @r3idsp3ncer @1010lizz @tiredbut-here @skulzombiw @lena-1895 @eevee0722 @danis-stuff-is-here @kylakins88 @daydreamingqueen1 @regulus-black-223048 @virginmusicloverr36 @inlovewithcharmers @kylakins88 @f-me-reid @matthew-gray-gubler-lover <3
#criminal minds#criminal minds fanfiction#spencer reid fanfiction#spencer reid angst#mgg x you#spencer reid#spencer reid smut#mgg angst#mgg fic#spencer reid and reader#mgg fem!reader#matthew gray gubler smut#matthew gray gubler x fem!reader#matthew gray gubler#matthew gray gubler x you#matthew gray gubler x reader#mgg x y/n#mgg x reader#mgg fanfiction#spencer reid x y/n#spencer reid x you#spencer reid series#spencer reid x self insert#spencer reid criminal minds#spencer reid imagine#spencer reid fandom#spencer reid fic#spencer reid fluff#mgg#dilf spencerreid
79 notes
·
View notes
Text
so yah like - i played and shit - no drama - well maybe - and the cord shorts - for 3rd time -2 others before - i suggest another cord while also arranging alternate guitar - both r possible - new cord and no prob - and we play more or less the planned - last miniit small change/s and coming off confident when actually unsure and quirky as adjusting - but i think the trance is working - in retro feelz slo motion but at the time - wuz somewhere and hyper aware of every change and its rarely like the dining room - wishing there was recording going places i might not knowing and acting casual - a spark here and there lights up magic for the momentary glimpse of the i dont wat the fuk it is - and i dont know how its coming off at 1st but nobody talking loudly so most ppl must b listening and its a little crowded - i should look out at the crowd maybe once in awhile - mash up aint superstitous and rollin and tumblin w a couple lines of another robert johnson - this was a pre show going thru motions muscle memory and last minute change just before leaving - jazzier than heavy sans amp - blondie plugged straight into pa - more of a mellow clean no distortion but nicely ambient best straight into pa sound ever - noah does a really excellent job w sound - anyway 2nd song the weight someone maybe 2 sang along at times always a good sign - finis w st james infirmary which went somewhere it never had before almost a rag time
so forgot few words - emoted like fukk - good audience response - didnt get lost too much - took some chances - wish there was a recording but
a little exhausted - it was drizzle rain but not too cold after much wetter bluster early
it woulda been considered victory just to show up - closest thing to a nice day when theres been an open mic eve except 1 that was last minute cancelled for football - its been a miserable winter wet and windy - had some fun listening to others also - will post a couple snippets tomorrow - a few nice comments after performance
for a few moments - its only the music and weaving connection as many magic flashes as can muster or sometimes at least more or less in tune merely avoiding disaster and not knowing
originally had planned on playing w band Salvation Day but life got in the way
i guess more gospel than psycho onna sunday witch calls for a 2nd hallelujah -anyway
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
A New Stretch Mark?! Facing My Own Internalized Fatphobia
As fat positive as I try to be, I had a moment at the doctor recently that really threw me. A few months ago I noticed two pink streaks under my belly fold. I had a thought they might be striae (stretch marks) because it felt like there was a slight indentation when I poked at them, but it seemed like the pink color disappeared when I touched it, so I thought maybe it was new spider veins (I've had some on my calf since I was 22). That had to be it; they couldn't possibly be striae. Sure, in recent years I gained back so much of the fat I lost and an additional 50 pounds, but my weight has been stable for at least 2 years. The last new striae I can remember noticing I got when I was 13 years old. I'm 32 now. And besides, a big insecurity I have about my fat is how, well... floppy it is now. You have to have taught skin to get new striae, right? Surely.
My belly pouch has become more pronounced in recent years not just because I grew, but because my fat around my inguinal region has shrunk to the point that I can feel my iliac spines for the first time in my life. Between that and my skin and fat loosening over the years, I now have a deep fold there, and in the last two years it's started to get sweaty and my skin rubs together more. 2 months ago I noticed friction irritation there after going on an errand all layered up for the cold weather. I went to the bathroom and I felt some irritation so I checked on these sores. The streaks seemed to darken in color, especially one spot. I poked it. Hard. As I did, I was in a lot of pain and it seemed as if I was digging into my flesh and widening a gap under my skin in real time. And the purple color was spreading too. What had I done? What was going on with me? Intertrigo? Bacterial infection? The pain made it hard to sleep that night. I got a dermatologist appointment but it was going to be over 5 weeks away. I went to urgent care and a PA said it looked bacterial and gave me an antibiotic. The pain would soon subside but it was still painful when I touched it. After the course of antibiotic, the dark spot and the gap that I thought I had made was still there. I called the urgent care clinic and they gave me another antibiotic for 10 days. Afterward, it was the same.
Two weeks ago came the day of the dermatologist, and I was so nervous. One, because I've been cold sensitive for the last couple years to the point of having permanent numbness in my fingertips and stinging pain in my legs, so I lament going outside in the winter; two, because COVID finally got to my family for the first time and I didn't even know if I'd make it (I tested negative that morning); and three, because I had no idea what this sore was or if I made it worse. I made the drive, and I told my doctor the story and he looked at it briefly and he quickly said:
"They're striae - it's a stretch mark."
I was dumbfounded. How could this be?? With my loose skin? No weight gain the last couple years? He said it can happen and it's a very common area. What proceeds is my speculation: it seems that my skin (which I already think is saggy and old) lost so too much elasticity and couldn't take the strain from my fat anymore, or my fat and skin have been so loose that it just kept tugging in my pants until it tore. And my doctor didn't give me a definitive answer on whether I made my stria permanently wider by digging into it with my finger. Seriously... digging my own stretch mark open? What a fat, emo moment if there ever was one.
I think a lot of people with new stretch marks are cute and beautiful and really cool. But I can hardly see this in myself. I didn't grow to get these new striae, at least not recently. I didn't gain intentionally, seeking to give myself pleasure. I gained 50 pounds past my highest weight 5 years ago when I was feeling stuck and panicked after finishing college, and since then it's just been... sitting here. My body just aged. No flashy transformation. In this time I've become fatter, and bonier, with more neuropathy. If I were taught and plump I could say my body was at least doing something. Instead I just feel all the more stagnant and detached from the world around me.
#fatphobia#body positivity#mental illness#body dysmorphia#fat#personal#medicine#body image#ageism#ableism#stretch marks
0 notes
Photo
Chilly morning. Didn’t want to crawl out of my blanket nest. 🥶
#really cold last few winter days here in PA#meirl#no makeup#nomakeup#inked#girlswithpiercings#girlswithtattoos#altgirl#nomakeupday#nomakeupselfie#love#ravennazane
22 notes
·
View notes
Text
物の哀れ ( ‘the sadness of things’.)
Characters : Alpha! Jungkook x Omega ! OC.
Genre : Arranged Marriage / Temporary contractual Marriage.
Warnings : Non- Con/ Extremely Dubious Consent . High functioning alcoholism. Genre related consent issues. Implied suicidal thoughts.
Summary : A recently widowed Jungkook agrees to a contract marriage to keep his company afloat. His grief overwhelms him and it is hard to look at his new wife as anything other than an intruder .
[ Author’s Note : 物の哀れ ~ Mono no aware can be translated as ‘the sadness of things’. It comes from the words 物 (mono – thing) and 哀れ (aware – poignancy or pathos). The ‘sadness’ in question comes from an awareness of the transience of things, as taught by Zen Buddhism. When we view something exceptionally beautiful, we might feel sad because we know it won’t stay so beautiful forever – but appreciation only heightens the pleasure we take in the beautiful thing in that moment. ]
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
Chapter 3
“Yoongi left a bunch of painkillers for you. He said you can take up to three per day.” Jin said calmly , carefully slipping the sleeves of my t shirt over my wrist as i held my arms out for him. He slipped the shirt over my head gently but his arms hit my shoulders, jostling me. I swallowed the whimper of pain that shot through me at the movement. Mina was now awake, happily wiggling around on her rocker.
It was a little past seven in the evening and Jungkook wasn’t due to arrive for another hour .
“I could sleep on a bed of rusty nails right now. I’m so tired and i don’t know why. “ I whispered, staying still as he carefully drew the fabric down over my ribs, before stepping back.
“I’ll sleep in the nursery with her. You should take the bed. You’re in no shape to be up and taking care of her when she wakes up. Jungkook’s asked me to stay here during the day because I’m not going to be performing for a couple months anyway and I’ve been losing my mind, rattling around that huge ass mansion all by myself. ”
The phone rang, startling both of us.
I groaned before moving to get up but Jin oppa held a hand up.
“Stay in bed. I’ll go see who it is.”
I watched him disappear out of the room, settling back against the pillows and reaching for the ice pack in the small cooler by the bed. I had to ice my ribs every hour or so and while it didn’t seem to be helping much, I definitely appreciated the temporary numbness it offered.
Jungkook’s guilt had driven a new wedge between us and he hadn’t so much as looked at me in three days.
I wasn’t sure entirely if this was a good or bad thing. The fact that he seemed to be considering that he had to get his emotions under control to stop hurting the people around him was a welcome change. But the idea of going back to being ignored and treated like furniture , wasn’t really all that appealing.
“Jungkook’s parents are on the way.” Jin’s voice broke through my reverie and i jumped.
I resisted the urge to sob out loud .
Mr and Mrs. Jeon were on the opposite side of the grief spectrum and just as annoying.
Where Sooah’s parents were intent on making Jungkook remember their daughter as often as possible, Jungkook’s parents were intent on making him forget her.
The only thing the two of them had in common was a burning hatred for me.
Jungkook’s parents had wanted him to quit the company and sell it when it went into loss but Jungkook had categorically refused because that would result in all of his employees getting laid off, and back then Jungkook had been nothing if not ridiculously compassionate. Jungkook’s parents firmly believed that if it hadn’t been for me, their son would be back in Busan, letting them raise their granddaughter.
“Great, that’s great. Did you tell them their son is not around?” I grimaced. I’d only met them three times in total and the last time was in the hospital two months ago when Jungkook had crashed in the middle of a board meeting, weeks of starving and dehydration catching up to him. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, getting cursed out in front of the doctors and nurses and it probably won’t be any fun in the privacy of my home either.
Jin gave me a sympathetic smile.
“He’s already told them he’s on the way. I’m going to take Mina out on a walk. Give you guys some privacy. Shoot me a text when they leave.” he said gently.
“Can’t I come with?” I begged and he laughed.
“That would be a bad idea, even if it weren’t for the cracked rib. Just relax. Smile and nod and let them spew whatever nonsense they want and then they’ll leave. ”
I opened my mouth to tell him how many flaws there were in his plan when the doorbell rang.
“And that’s my cue. Text me, yeah?” Jin moved to pick Mina up from the rocker before reaching for the baby carrier on the table.
I debated the pros and cons of staying in bed and finally decided against it, gently throwing my legs off the edge and raising myself up to a sitting position. I heard vague voices by the front door, Jin’s sweet tones mingling with Jungkook’s slightly gruffer ones.
I heard the door close and the stillness of the apartment was as oppressing as ever. I could hear him quite clearly though. The clink of the keys as they hit the bowl, the small click of the door as he locked it.
i could imagine him, exhausted from the day’s work, briefcase held in one hand while the other tugged on the knot of his tie.
I imagined for a second, what it must have been like for him with Sooah. She was a bright , incredibly cheerful person. Everyone kind of faded into the background when she was around. Sooah had always been the first to smile at a stranger, the first to laugh even if the joke wasn’t funny. The first one to stand up to help someone in need.
I swallowed, clutching the sheets to ground myself.
I guessed that she must’ve always rushed to greet him at the door. I could imagine him wrapping both arms around her waist, drawing her into a hug or even a kiss.
How was your day, Kookie? (I’d heard her call him that, once when they had been at my father’s house for a charity dinner. )
I wondered if perhaps the very sight of her would have taken away all of the day’s exhaustion from him. Perhaps, he would forget all the ways his company had been failing back then at the sight of her beautiful laughing face. Perhaps losing his company hadn’t been as terrifying as losing his job.
And perhaps once he lost her, he just couldn’t bear the thought of losing his life’s work too. And so he’d agreed to meet my father’s demands.
My fingers began trembling a bit .
I could imagine her moving around the house, pregnant and glowing, laughing as he nuzzled into the curve of her belly. Had he perhaps pressed his lips to her skin, whispered sweet endearments to his daughter through the fabric of his wife’s clothes? Had he perhaps loved Mina, deeply? WAs it just his grief that made it hard to be near his wife. Or was it perhaps me? Me holding the baby that should have been in his beautiful wife’s arms.
The wife he had been so madly, deeply in love with.
Love, I thought vacantly.
It wasn’t something I had ever felt, for anyone until I’d began caring for Mina.
But what Jungkook had with his wife was something different wasn’t it?
The love a man had for a woman. Laced with desire, longing and passion. A love that made you put their happiness over your own.
Love like that had never been in the cards for me.
Ever
I was an Omega. Rare and hated and known for being selfish and greedy. People didn’t love my kind. They avoided me. They always assumed I would take advantage of them. My peers growing up had treated me with so much contempt.
The girls would whisper how I was trying to seduce their boyfriends. The boys would call me a tease, even when I stayed far away and did nothing to attract their attention. I’d gotten used to it. It didn’t bother me. it was the way of the world for me. Ad it wasn’t like I could honestly deny some of it.
I looked at handsome alphas and wanted them. I wanted to be held and cherished. To be bought pretty things and cared for. It had taken decades for me to beat that part of mine into submission. To remind myself that if I ever let that part of me out, it would destroy me.
But love? Being in love with someone?
I didn’t know what that could have been like for Jungkook.
Or maybe I had but I couldn’t recognize it because I’d never received it myself. Whatever the cause, it was for me, a fairytale. It was hard to imagine people loving each other so much, to the extent that they would die for each other. ( Jungkook’s words still hung in the back of my mind : that he had wanted to follow her even in death )
Jungkook was right.
I could never know what his loss was like.
Because I would never know what he had lost.
It felt a little like being dipped in an ice cold lake in the middle of winter. My skin broke out in shivers, hair standing on end and I felt my throat go dry so swiftly. I’d never wanted to run away so much. I wrapped a hand sound myself, scooting back on the bed again. I reached for the blanket, wanting to pull it over my head and curl into a ball.
Shut out the world and all the things that didn’t make sense.
“Are you alright?” Jungkook’s voice broke through the haze in my head and I swallowed. He had an alpha’s voice and my body responded even if my mind resisted. It didn’t happen all the time. Jungkook couldn’t control me. But sometimes when I was feeling vulnerable, instincts took over . I was already dropping the blanket and smiling softly.
“Mina’s out for a walk.” I croaked out, surprised at how awful my voice sounded.
I felt the press of something against my fingers and I blinked, staring at the glass of water Jungkook was pressing into my hand.
“Don’t worry, I called them and told them not to come over.” He said quietly , watching me drink with still trembling fingers.
I swallowed and stared at him.
“I... Thank you. “ I said fervently, feeling a few knots come undone in my gut. I couldn’t really stand up to Jungkook’s parents the way I did with Sooah’s parents. Because Jungkook loved them deeply and hurting them would be the same as hurting him.
“There’s a party in a couple of days. It’s my birthday. I’m turning 34. Yugyeom’s organizing the whole thing, so I’m going to hire a babysitter for Mina, because Jin hyung will be there too and you need help caring for her anyway. You can stay home and rest. ” he said .
I scoffed.
“I’m going to come with you.” I said firmly.
Jungkook frowned.
“What?”
I glared at him.
“I’m not letting you go to a party organized by your shit for brains friend, Jungkook. You’ll probably end up getting drunk out of your mind and killing someone and I’m not going to hang around to clean that up. I’m coming to that party and I’m making sure you don’t have more than one drink. “
Jungkook’s frown deepened into a scowl.
Did you ever look at your wife , like this? With so much loathing? I thought stupidly. Or did she only ever get to see the sweet and wonderful side of you? Did she ever annoy you the way i seem to every second of the damn day ? Did you hate certain things about her too? Or was she so perfect that you could only feel love ?
“ I can take care of myself. Its my birthday , I can do whatever the fuck I want.“ He snapped.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
“Not unless you’re a five year old kid in the sandpit, which you’re not. You’re an adult and when you make stupid decisions as an adult, very real people end up paying for it. You’re old enough to know this Jungkook and for once, just listen to me. You can drink, fine. But I’m going to be there and if I see that you’re getting drunk, I’m going to bring you home. You either agree or I’m going to call Yoongi oppa .”
That made him pause.
“Fine. Fuck you.” He snapped, turning on his heel and stalking out of the room. A few seconds later I heard the door to the shower slam shut.
I wanted to follow him and shake some sense into him but before I could decide if it was worth jostling my body, when another sharp pain lanced through my ribs.
Oh great.
I took deep breaths the way Yoongi had taught me. Apparently, pneumonia was a thing that could happen, so i had to breath carefully to reduce the risk of that happening.
The birthday party organized by Yugyeom was going to be a whole entire migraine inducing disaster. I could already feel the headache come on. It still amazed me that Jungkook was friends with him and his cronies.
Yugyeom and his friends were the typical; brain dead alphas who thought themselves superior to all other ranks. Even worse, they viewed omegas as objects: fucktoys to be more precise and I bristled when i remembered the way he had always stared at me.
Well, if he stepped anywhere near me, I would kick him in the teeth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Jungkook’s mother turned up at home the next day, I wasn’t entirely surprised. I wasn’t surprised but it didn’t make things any more pleasant.
“We’re willing to take Mina for a couple of days if you would both need time to prepare for the party. This is the first big event Jungkook’s holding after Sooah’s passing and we want it to be perfect. As his wife, i hope you’ll do your part.”
Mrs Jeon’s pinched face did nothing for my already frayed temper.
“There’s not much i can do with a cracked rib, mother.” I said politely. It stung, having to call this bitter, cruel woman mother but then, such was life. It was late afternoon and Jungkook was probably sitting in the comfort of his air conditioned office, being flattered and doted on by his smitten secretary while I sat here entertaining his vicious mother.
“Nonsense, you’ve probably just scratched it. I know how you omegas like to exaggerate. “ she waved off my injury easily. “ There are so many details that need to be decided on and its unfair to drop all of those responsibilities on poor yugyeom’s head. Why don’t you go with him and help out a bit?”
The idea of going anywhere with Kim Yugeom was easily the most repugnant thing to me.
“I’m sure he knows Jungkook much better than I do. If i interfered, I’d only be getting in his way.” I said politely.
Mrs. Jeon hummed.
“Well, its good that he’s agreed to the party at least. That woman never let him meet with Yugyeom or his friends when she was around.”
That woman being Jungkook’s late wife.
I felt a sudden fondness for her. Clearly she had also recognized Yugyeom for the absolute pig that he was and kept her husband away from his rotten influence . But unlike with her, Jungkook didn’t actually care about me. So I had no way of stopping him from meeting the idiots. Yugyeom’s family was rich and reputed and it was clear that the Jeons wanted the friendship and the connection. Why else would they keep pushing for it so much?
“Is there any particular reason you’re here, mother?” I said finally, after hearing her babble on and on about caterers and invitations and what not.
“I was hoping to meet Mina...why isn’t she here?”
“I’m not able to care for her well, what with the rib. The doctor has advised me to rest so Jin oppa takes care of her during the day. Jungkook picks her back up on his way back from office. I can send her over to your place with him this weekend.”
“That would be fine i suppose. Have you spoken to the decorators about changing the portraits put up in the house?”
I blinked.
“Sorry?”
“The penthouse, we’ve got it back now right? why don’t you move there. We have a cook and a housekeeper .”]
“this is closer to Jungkook’s office.” I had no idea where the penthouse was and could only hope it was farther way.
Mrs. Jeon frowned.
“This apartment is too small. Not to mention, you still have Sooah’s photos everywhere in this place. Surely that’s not healthy. Get rid of them and put up pictures of you and Jungkook.”
Jungkook’s parents didn’t know that our marriage had an expiry date. i wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad thing. But they saw me as nothing more than a way to get rid of Sooah from the deepest recesses of Jungkook’s mind.
“I’m sure, with time...Jungkook can make that decision by himself. When he’s ready for it.” I said gently, beginning the fresh throb of pain near my temple.
“Nonsense, Heejin. Men won’t ever move on until you force them. Have you considered getting pregnant?”
I jumped about a foot into the air.
“I...what.” I croaked out.
“You need a child too. He mated you. He owes you that. I’m going to tell him that he better do his duty by you.” She said firmly.
“Please don’t.” I shouted, stunned out of my mind. Was this woman even sane?
“Why not?” She frowned looking at me like i was the one being unreasonable.
Why not? Because its barely been four months since he lost his wife of seven years to childbirth. Surely, you don’t think the remedy to that is to have him go through it all over again.
“ Mina is still small, mother. I’m sure we can wait a while. Maybe after she’s one or two.”
Jungkook would probably move on by then. Of course he would. Grief was overwhelming but it was also finite. It did get smaller over time. Easier to cope with. Jungkook would eventually be able to navigate his life around his grief. He would learn to make new connections and who was to say one of those wouldn’t be a compatible match?
So two years from now, there was no reason Jungkook shouldn’t meet another lovely woman, a beta maybe and eventually expand his family. Of course i would be nowhere in the picture at the time. But that was fine.
I remembered something I’d read somewhere, a while back.
If two people are like ships that pass in the night, they meet by chance for a short time , then do not see each other ever again.
Like ships passing by each other in the night, I reminded myself. That's what Jungkook and I were.
“Well, if you think that’s wise.... fine. But now that Jungkook’s doing well, why don’t you entertain people more often? You haven’t had a dinner party here yet, have you?”
And so it went on, over an over for a whole two hours until I was wrung out from sheer exhaustion, my head throbbing and nails having dug half moon indents into my palms from fisting my hands too hard.
By the time i finally closed the door on her face, I couldn’t help but sag against the door, sinking to the floor in a heap, cracked rib be damned.
I glanced up at the solo portrait on the wall. The one my mother in law had wanted gone.
“She must’ve really hated you, huh?” I said casually pulling myself up to my feet and moving to the dining space to stare at her face more closely.
She was dressed in her wedding gown, a fitted mermaid dress with lace and satin detailing. She had a bouquet of white lilies in one hand, elbows bent and the blooms resting on her shoulder while her other hand curved around her slender waist.
Beautiful was an understatement, I thought vacantly.
“ You look like you didn’t put up with people’s bullshit. That’s cool I guess.” I smiled a little. “ You know in another world, we may have been friends.”
I bit my lips.
“Yugyeom was shitty to you too huh? He seems the type. i’m glad you kept Jungkook away from him. I wish you’d somehow help get him away again. He doesn’t listen to me. Thinks I’m trying to control him or something. ”
It was ridiculous. What was i doing.. Why was i talking to a framed picture on the wall. God.
But now that I’d started, I couldn’t quite stop.
“About what happened with Jungkook... I don’t want you to think i was seducing him or anything. And when i said that I hated him calling your name when we... well you know why i said it right? It wasn’t anything personal...i was just pissed. I don’t enjoy the sex by the way... I don’t think he does either but he’s an alpha and you know how it is…they need that release or they kind of lose their mind .. So trust me we both hate the principle of it.... but at least he cums and well I don’t. He’s never made me cum. That should say something about how we feel about each other.......”
“Uh.. Should I come back later?” The voice near the doorway was so unexpected my heart jumped right to my throat and I screamed, stumbling a bit to the side.
Min Yoongi stood framed by the door, one hand wrapped around a bouquet of flowers and the other clutching his bag and stethoscope. He still had his white coat on over his shirt and slacks, hair mussed like he’d run his finger through it.
It took me a second to remember that Yoongi had a key to the house.
Another second to remember exactly what I’d been doing when he came inside.
Good God.
Had he heard the part where I’d talked about Jungkook not making me cum? Surely not? Oh Please no.
“Jungkook told me to check on you. That you couldn’t sleep last night? Are you in a lot of pain?”
Jungkook and I had shared the bed in his room last night and I had apparently, tossed and turned and whimpered through the night in pain. Or so Jungkook claimed.
“Uh... I’m not sure. He said so... so..”
“you guys sleep together right?” Yoongi asked casually, taking his coat off. I stared at the way the material of the shirt strained over his shoulders, my throat just a little dry.
Yoongi smelled so ridiculously good. He was a doctor and he was so handsome and kind to me. The attraction would have been there even if i had been a beta but as an omega, the urge to just fling myself at him and beg him to make me his, it was kind of horrifying.
Tamping down that part of me, I gave him a casual shrug, heart still pounding.
“Yeah. There’s just two bedrooms here and one is Mina’s nursery. So ...” I finished awkwardly, watching him move around and place his bag on the table before unwinding the stethoscope, placing it around his collar.
He gave me a small smile.
“I’ll just take a quick look and check how your breathing sounds. that okay?” He asked gently.
“Oh... sure. You need me to take my shirt off?” I asked curiously.
He gave me a quick little smirk.
“Not for medical reasons no.” He winked.
I felt blood rush to my face along with guilt. What was I doing? This was Jungkook’s best friend!! His hyung. Someone he trusted and I was his....
His what?
Nothing. I was Jungkook’s nothing. When was the last time someone had flirted with me . Someone who wasn’t a grade A creep.
Yoongi moved closer, sitting down on the kitchen stool and beckoned me to come stand between his thighs. i moved, achingly aware of how much more potent his scent was up close. He looked up at me through sooty black lashes, a small smirk on his lips, feline eyes warm and open .
“Put your hands on my shoulders, yeah?” He prompted.
I hesitated, fingers shaking just a little before reaching out to rest on this shirt. I kept the touch feather light , the softness of his shirt the only thing I could feel.
He hummed and bending down to lightly tug the hem of my shirt out of the waistline of my jeans. I bit my lips to stop myself from squirming.
He glanced up , eyes meeting mine and holding my gaze.
“You good?”
“Uhuhbuh.” I stuttered and he grinned wider, pulling the fabric up to the curve of my breasts. He lightly ran his finger tips over the bruised skin , humming thoughtfully .
“You’ll be fine in a few weeks. Hang on.” He pulled back, plugging the steth in his hear before holding the other end up to my chest. He pressed it against my skin, just before the underwire of my bra and it was unexpectedly cold .
I jumped, fingers curling on his shoulder and squeezing down.
“Hey.. what’s wrong?” Yoongi whispered, hands reaching for my waist, gently holding me steady and I flushed. He looked genuinely worried , lips turned down and brows furrowed and i felt absolutely stupid.
“Sorry. Sorry.... It’s nothing.. i just.. it’s a little cold.” I laughed nervously and his gaze softened.
One hand still curved around my waist, he brought the diaphragm up to his mouth, holding my gaze as he gently breathed warm air all over it.
My throat went instantly dry and i had to swallow. He pressed it against my chest again and this time it was so much warmer. .
“Better?” He prompted and i nodded, guilt and discomfort churning in my stomach. What was i doing? I had no business indulging him. i had no business indulging any man. Ever.
I looked away, pulling my hands up off his shoulder, pushing his hand off my hip as well . He didn’t say anything his shoulders stiffened at the subtle rejection.
A mantle of awkward tension settled over us, a small thundercloud of regret and that threatened to rain misery all over us. I wanted to kick myself. He was older than Jungkook by four years. Thirty eight years old.
Did he have a girlfriend? Oh god, what if he was martried?
Nausea threatened.
“Your breathing sounds fine. Are you practicing those breathing exercises , I taught you?” He asked casually and I nodded . I couldn’t trust myself to speak.
“Hey...” He said gently and I flinched.
“I’m sorry.” I blurted out. “ I didn’t mean to lead you on or tease you in any way and I’m sorry if i came on to you ...”
“What?! Heejin, stop. That’s bullshit. You never did any such thing. This was all me.” He said firmly.
I stared at him.
“I know you’re married but... your marriage, its going to end right? Eventually.”
I made to step back but he grabbed my waist again, this time a few inches over my jean and his fingers on the bare skin of my midriff made me want to melt. He had long slender fingers, a surgeons hands, and the press of it on my skin felt so foreign and gentle and different and good.
“We don’t have to do anything. I just... I thought we could get to know each other. Over coffee or dinner.”
I wanted to sob at the unfairness of it all.
Because Yoongi was beautiful and handsome and so good and so much more than I could ever even dream of, but he was and would always be so intricately woven with Jungkook and with Jungkook’s life. And I couldn’t imagine anything more messy than sticking around and watching Jungkook and his daughter forget me and move on.
“It’s.... probably a terrible idea. “ I said roughly, shaking my head. “ Its the kind of idea that would never end well.”
“Are you sure? Because unlike Jungkook, i could probably make you cum.” He winked and I felt my face flame red.
“Oh God...” I hissed, stumbling back. This time he let me move away, merely chuckling and reaching for his coat and bag .
“I won’t bother you again. But the offer’s always open, yeah?” He smiled again. “ You need me to send over more pain meds?”
I shook my head mutely, begging him to just leave already.
He nodded and held his hand up in a casual wave before walking out of the door. I collapsed on the stool and dropped my head into my arms , groaning.
What had i gotten myself into.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I didn’t actually see Jungkook for a couple of days. The meds knocked me out and he worked overtime, only arriving after I’d slept off and leaving before i woke up. Jin brought Mina around everyday and there was something absolutely exhilarating about watching her clutch at her little teething toys and rattles, gummy smile peeking out every few minutes.
On a whim, i told Jin what had happened with Yoongi and much to my surprise he actually laughed.
“About time . He’s been pining for what three years now?”
I gaped at him, completely thrown.
“I..he.. what.” I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what I had heard.
“He saw you at that art exhibition you put up in the Hyatt . By the way, don’t you paint anymore?”
I flushed.
I had no proper response to that. What could i say? That my painting had just been yet another way to control me, only appreciated by father when he could use it to make more money. And that part of my marriage contract included that I wouldn’t paint or make any money off my art for the duration that I stayed with Jungkook.
It was just yet another way my father reminded me that he controlled him. I didn’t fight him because he would win anyway. And the only thing he loved more than controlling people was winning battles that were always rigged in his favor. i wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. I would soldier through this awful marriage and at the end of it , i would disappear without a trace.
I shook my head vaguely and Jin hummed.
“Yoongi doesn’t understand art but he hung around the entire nine hours , morning to night . Three whole days of him just pretending to look at the artwork while secretly making moon eyes at you.”
I could only stare in sheer disbelief.
“i... i never knew.”
“How could you? Yoongi’s idea of courting is pretending he doesn’t exist and fading into the background. “ Jin rolled his eyes. “ He tried approaching your father to officially court you but your old man shut that down rather brutally.”
I swallowed .
“I... I’m sorry.” i said feeling foolish. Three years...what? I couldn’t think beyond the shock of the information.
“Does Jungkook know?” I asked , scared.
Jin shook his head.
“Like I said Yoongi never made it known . He was afraid it would make life difficult for you. He didn’t want any rumors around because everyone knew your father was looking to offer you to someone rich and young. Yoongi was what , fifteen years older? That’s quite a difference.”
“Thirty eight isn’t old.” I said sharply and Jin’s brow went up.
“Oh?” He questioned teasingly and I flushed.
“Jungkook is eleven years older. What’s another four more years?” I shrugged.
“You’re interested then.” Jin said thoughtfully. I recoiled, shaking my head quickly.
“I...what? No. No I’m not. “
“Why not? If it isn’t the age, then there’s no reason to say no. Yoongi is handsome , settled and a great guy all around and besides, your time with Jungkook is finite right?”
“I... I won’t cheat on him.” I said firmly. “ i can’t... I... besides, Jungkook and I... we’re... we have sex.” My ears turned red, “ I can’t do that with two guys... I’m not like that. “
Jin nodded.
“Its alright.. Heejinah ...I’m sorry if i pressured you or anything. You don’t have to do anything. I know you have a lot on your plate right now. Yoongi probably got carried away . More than likely he’s going to panic and avoid you for a year just to recover.” He laughed and I smiled reluctantly.
“He’s nice I don’t want to hurt him. “ I said softly.
“ Sometimes that’s just inevitable . People get hurt no matter what we choose.” Jin gave me a sad little smile. “ Jungkook is just as nice a gy as Yoongi. If not better. He’s just...not in the right headspace to show that side of himself to you. I wish you’d known him before Sooah. He used to be this...playful and funny kid. We all went out of our way to keep him safe. Sooah was just as amazing. Usually , we try to find flaws in people our friends date right? Well trust me Sooah was hard to dislike .” He laughed, eyes misting over as his gaze landed on her portrait over the mantle.
I followed his gaze and swallowed.
“Do you think Jungkook will ever get over her?” I asked simply.
Jin hesitated.
“Someday? Probably yes. But it won’t be easy. He’s ... He feels things deeply. He always has. He loved her deeply, he cared for her deeply and so its only obvious that he’s going to feel the loss of her presence very deeply too.”
I nodded.
“Its his birthday tomorrow.” I said softly. “ I have a gift for him. Well its not a gift from me, but a gift nonetheless. But I’m not sure if I should give it to him.”
Jin gave me a surprised look.
“What do you mean?”
I smiled bitterly.
“Just that sometimes fate can be very cruel when it chooses its players. I’m forever wondering if he would be better off or worse without me in the picture and I just can’t decide.”
“Different. He would just be different.” Jin said calmly.
There was nothing else i could say to that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yugyeom had rented out the rooftop restaurant in one of the poshest Hotels in Seoul and although the party was a pool party, I hadn’t bothered dressing for it. I wore a plain sequined top and burgundy skirt that fanned out around me knees.
The place was teeming with people his age , friends acquaintances and business partners. The women had changed into bright , skimpy bikinis and lounged about in the brightly lit pool tossing a ball around .
The older people were being hosted by the Jeons on the lower level of the restaurant in a posh ballroom. Jungkook and i would have to visit them later but for now I was content sipping a mocktail, leaning against the bar while Hoseok and Lisa flanked me on either side, pointing out who was sleeping with who.
Jungkook was in the pool with Yugyeom and Jimin and it was impossible to tear my eyes away from him. He looked happy almost, laughing and shaking water out of his hair as he moved around with the strength and agility of an Olympic athlete. Yoongi was in the pool as well and on the opposite team with Jin and Namjoon....and it was increasingly obvious that the half a dozen bikini clad women were there simply for an excuse to touch the handsome alphas as they worked up a sweat.
“Jungkook is such a competitive bastard.” Hoseok laughed. “But I don’t know what’s gotten into Yoongi today. i can’t believe he’s in the pool. “
“Of his own volition. “ Lisa added. “ usually someone has to strip him and toss him in.
Yoongi kept glancing at me every few minutes. It was impossible to miss. It was also impossible to miss that at least three of the six women in the pool were trying to get into his pants.
I sighed and turned back to the bartender asking for a refill. when i turned back around, Jungkook and Yugyeom were climbing out of the pool and Jin was moving to the opposite side to take their place with Jimin.
“Jungkook and i are going to go get a drink. Anything for you , beautiful?” Yugyeom reached out to touch me and I almost fell in my haste to get away from him.
“Keep your hands off me.” I snapped . Jungkook frowned.
“No need to be rude, Heejin , he was just being polite.” He said softly and i smelt the alcohol on his breath.
“Don’t drink too much Jungkook.”
“Oh come on, beautiful., Its his birthday let him live a little...” Yugyeom laughed and I glared at him.
“I’d rather have him live longer “ I snapped. “ And that can’t happen if you keep trying to give him alcohol poisoning.”
Yugyeom rolled his eyes.
“Is she always this dramatic, Jungkook-ah.” Yugyeom laughed. Jungkook didn’t laugh but he gave me a look that said, ‘ please don’t make a scene’ and I bit my lips.
I didn’t want to ruin his night. He looked ....so close to a normal person tonight and whether I liked it or not Yugyeom had contributed to that. The music was apparently Jungkook’s favorites only, the pool because he loved volleyball in the water and the buffet had all his favorite foods. Yugyeom had gone out of his way to make the party perfect and i suddenly felt like the troll stomping on Jungkook’s happiness.
Swallowing my own instinct to drag my husband away from the alpha who had his arms around him, I turned away and walked off to the pool. Yoongi’s face lit up when he saw me.
“Hey there, angel. Here to watch me kick some ass? “ He cupped his hands in the water, before tossing a handful of water at me. I blinked in surprise, laughing a little.
“I’m just here to cheer Jin oppa. “ I said impishly, moving over to the lounge chair near his side of the pool. Yoongi’s pout was adorable and I couldn’t help but laugh.
Maybe I could stop worrying about Jungkook for a while. Yugyeom wasn’t dangerous. Even if he got a little drunk, I was still here. So were all of our friends.
It would be fine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
it wasn’t fine.
An hour later, I found Jungkook in a room filled with cigarette smoke and light music, yugeyom and his friends scattered around the place with a few beautiful women lounging about on their laps.
“You said one drink Yugyeom...he’s completely out of his mind.” I said shrilly staring at where Jungkook sat on the couch , shirtless and laughing as some girl in a bikini ran her fingers up and down his arm. She had one leg draped over his thigh. I felt sick at the very sight of it.
its because he’s drunk , I told myself. He’s drunk and can’t consent, that’s why you feel sick, nothing else.
Yugyeom gave me an easy smile.
“Guy just wants to have some fun. Reina’s a friend of mine. She’ll take good care of him don’t worry. She’s the birthday gift i got him. “ He leered.
I resisted the urge to punch him in the face.
Glaring at him,
“Jungkook, we’re leaving. Come on.” I made to move towards him but a hand shot out, gripping my wrist like a vice.
“Not so fast baby.... I already paid for her. You can’t just waltz in here and take away her livelihood.” He sneered. “ Unless you want to take her place. This is a special bar you know. All these lovelies, they have something in common with you.”
I stared at him frowning.
“What does that mean?”
“I hired them from an omega escort agency...you know because that’s all you omegas are useful for anyway.”
I rolled my eyes, yanking on my wrist.
“You and your medieval ideals can go to hell. I’m going home. Jungkook!!” I yelled again and this time Jungkook turned eyes landing on me.
“Heejin?” He slurred.
“We need to go home, Jungkook.” I said firmly.
“Now?” He blinked. I nodded.
“Yes now.” I made to move away but this time Yugyeom wrapped both arms around my waist, pinning me to his body. Pain , sharp and unbearable shot up my ribs and I whimpered. He was squeezing too hard and God what if the cracked rib just snapped?
Panic began setting in and I yelped.
“Let me go you bastard.” I struggled to get away, staring in disbelief at my husband .
Jungkook was standing but he swayed dangerously. There was no clarity there and his eyes were hooded. He was drunk. Really, really drunk.
“Jungkook tell him to let me go!!” I yelled , trying to tamp down the panic that was rising up my throat.
“Don’t worry Kook. Just gonna ask her to wait outside for a while. Why don’t you finish your conversation with Reina.. i’ll entertain your wife for a while.” He drawled and i felt my entire body go ice cold at that.
Jungkook was blinking rapidly, the words clearly not registering and genuine terror began to bleed into my veins. Jungkook couldn’t even fathom that i was in genuine danger here, let alone help me. Oh God, why had i come alone? Where were the others??
Yugyeom held me tighter and i swallowed a groan . My ribs felt like they were on fire.
“Let’s take this somewhere private, Heejin?” He whispered into my neck and i couldn’t believe it. Yugyeom was drunk yes, but was this idiot also insane?
“Wait...no.. Yugeyom don’t be a fucking idiot. If you touch me, that’s fucking rape...You can go to prison for that .” I shouted, trying to drill some sense into his head. He wasn’t going to risk prison to make a point was he??
“Not if you seduce me angel...and you’re going to... Or I’ll just tell people you did...same difference , right?” he whispered.
And then he began dragging me off to the corner and my eyes fell on a side door leading out of the room .
If you let him take you there this is going to become frighteningly real, a voice screamed in my head and I inhale deeply, ready to scream loud enough to get the attention of everyone in the damned building.
The door opened just as I opened my mouth and I froze, watching Mrs Jeon walk into the lounge, looking lost.
“What is this place?” She muttered out loud looking around and the arms around me fell away so fast, I crashed to the floor.
“Heejin-ah!” Yoongi’s voice came from right behind her and I flinched, willing my shaking legs to stop trembling.
“Mrs. Jeon...” I muttered, voice strained and ribs throbbing.
“Heejin? What is going on here? Where’s my son?”
“Fuck... Jungkook-ah...” Yoongi moved to get him and I took a deep steadying breath.
Years ago , I’d taken a self defence class and one thing i’d definitely enjoyed learning was how to throw a punch. And It wasn’t something i’d forgotten.
Planting my feet firmly , i lightly rotated my hips, a subtle shift, before engaging my core , drawing all the fury and helpless rage inside me into my fist. I pulled my shoulders in and took a deep breath. Punch past your target , i told myself. You’re not just going to break his jaw you’re going to put him in the hospital tonight.
“Mrs. Jeon, Jungkook had a great time toni-” His voice was all i needed to hear to know exactly where his mouth was behind me.
i relaxed my muscles as i threw the punch, contracting them just as my fist landed on Kim Yugyeom’s face.
The satisfying sound of flesh on bone felt like music to my ears and Yugyeom’s sharp cry of sheer agonizing pain even sweeter.
He crashed to the floor in a heap and I could feel my fist throb like hell. I was going to bruise so badly. But it was worth it.
“That was for telling me that you were going to rape me and tell everyone that i seduced you.” I said calmly.
Yoongi let out a noise of disbelief.
“What the actual fuck.....” He shouted.
“Yugyeom what the fuck man? Are you out of your damned mind?” One of his friends yelled. Yugyeom merely groaned.
He couldn’t answer, blood trickling down his chin and hands cradling his jaw, whimpers falling out of his mouth. My own fist throbbed like hell so the damage had to be significant.
Mrs Jeon looked horrified and when she opened her mouth i quickly held a hand up.
“I’m not doing this. Not tonight. “ I said calmly. Jungkook was quiet, the way he always got when he was drunk and I groaned.
It was going to be a long night.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We need to talk.” I said calmly and Jungkook swallowed.
“Heejin, I’m -”
“Hear me out first Jungkook.” I said sharply. “ I don’t need your apology, it means nothing to me because it means nothing to you. You’re not sorry that you didn’t help me last night. You’re just angry that you had to help at all. You don’t give a fuck about me. I know that and I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is you getting drunk to the point that you don’t even recognize that someone’s in need of help. “
I took a deep breath.
“If you did it to me, you’ll do it to your daughter too. Yugyeom is going to get you drunk someday when you’re taking care of Mina by yourself and then when she needs you, what are you going to do?”
“You’re right... I shouldn’t have gotten that drunk -”
“I’m only here , talking to you , because of your daughter. If it was just you, I wouldn’t give a damn because you’re an adult and if you make your bed , you can just lie on it. It wouldn’t bother me. But Mina...she’s not capable of making the right choices. She need a father who can make the right choices, because whatever shitty choice you make, your daughter is going to be there along for the ride whether she wants to or not. You drive your car off a cliff tomorrow , she’s going to be there in the car seat laughing because she doesn’t know the consequences of your choices. “
I clenched my fists to keep my voice even. To stop myself from yelling.
“I have something for you. “
I grabbed the brown paper wrapped canvas from under the table.
“It’s a painting . Your wife commissioned me to make this a year ago when she got pregnant.”
He froze so eerily still that it made me nervous.
“At first , i wasn’t sure if i should be giving it to you because well... because i was marrying you ... I wasn’t sure that it would be right, coming from me ...because I was taking your wife’s place after all...”
i laughed.
“Now I know that's just bullshit. I don’t have a place in your life. I’m a nobody. This isn’t about me. This is about you. She told me back then that you were nervous about being a father. That was all she said. And she wanted me to pain this. “ I held the canvas out to him.
“You can see it. I’m going to go stay with Jin oppa for a few days. I want you to see it. It shows how your wife saw you. The kind of father she hoped you would be. I want you to see it and make a choice. You can either get the help you need. “ i took a deep breath, “ Or I’m going to tell Yoongi that you’re incompetent to be a father. He’ll file charges , “ I had to close my eyes to get the next words out, “ and you will lose custody of your daughter.”
Jungkook inhaled sharply, hands curling into fists on his knees.
“i hope you make the right choice.”
I wrapped both my arms around myself and walked out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author’s note. :
I’m so exhausted I’ll tag people tomorrow!
.@girlinthemikrokosmos @xius-exos @sugainfireslex @yunkichiee@kpopstudybee @ephyraaaa @peachoney9795 @ggukkieland @veronawrites @blr1004 @tinyhoagiepartylover @btsis7okay@squishyjk @itsdingdong @emmmui @honeeybunneey @yeonkiminnie
@just-me-and-myselfs @delicate-snow-flake @kpop-lore @beautifulvirgobutterfly @sumzysworld @btsmylife21 @teresaisla
.@melrosaeparker @taestannie @dchimminie @ meraki--life @somewhereinthestarss @mawwnsterr @kookiesbreaky @chimchoom
#jungkook smut#jungkook fics#jeon jungkook#bts fanfics#bts smut fic#bts smut#bts fics#bts#jungkook#bts scenarios
600 notes
·
View notes
Text
4. Been to Hell (& Back Again)
Written for @sephweek prompt #4: Been to Hell and Back Again.
Pairing: Hades & Zagreus (Hadsephone son OC)
Summary: In which Persephone’s boys are together again, talking about a woman who isn’t there.
Now here comes a man, a man with broad shoulders, coming up to a train station. He ain't been there in a while, though he knows the way. Always knew the way. Knew the way before there was a station to call upon. Would close his eyes and beat feet and find his way here even if he’d set off with no destination at all.
That’s just the way the underworld works when you’re a born citizen there. Always wants you back, and sooner or later, you go.
But for Zagreus, well, it ain't usual for him to obey that call. He’s always been his mother’s son, and his mother’s mother’s sun, which is to say that he has lived for sunshine and honeybees, sweet air and mountain springs. Not to say he ain’t got something of his Pa too – but he’s been a man partial to a sweet summer’s day and he’s chosen his living accordingly. He’s always been closer to his Ma and Maw-Maw. Maw-Maw usually makes sure to visit his farm every winter, and Ma for a week or so in the summer, and that’s just peaches with him, even if Maw-Maw does cluck her tongue on his choice of crops and Ma clucks hers at his fancy tractors and tillers and all sorts of new equipment, sometimes courtesy of Pa.
Now, Pa and him have been distant for a while; there's nothing between them that can't be expressed better from afar and seems both of them have been alright with that. Pa usually sends a few notes, at least six a year, always in the summer months, and Zagreus dutifully always writes back. Neither of them prone to much flourish, a half a page or less each missive, but he knows his Pa loves him, deep down. Don’t buy a man a tractor if you ain’t got love in your heart for him, and Zagreus long ago learned that presents and provisions are Pa’s way of saying his love.
But Pa’s letters, cryptic though they are, are enough to make Zagreus wonder a’times.
Pa’s talked about changes he’s making for Ma, and Ma has talked about changes Pa has made that she ain’t happy about, but no one seems to want to bother to tell the baby boy just what those changes have been. Ma in particular seems sour on it all; she ain't said a complementary word about Pa in a long, long time. Pa used to talk ‘bout Ma a lot in his letters but less so over the last few years.
Sometimes in the winter when the wind howls too strong, Zagreus pulls out his letters and looks through, each one, and tries to see where it’s all gone wrong. Once he gets to a mind to ask his most frequent visitor Mr. Hermes, most holy uncle, how Pa and Ma is doin', and what he gets is: never you mind, young Zagreus.
Which is to say, Zagreus is pretty sure that his parent's long, long marriage is in the shitter. And he isn’t sure who caused it or what caused it, but it’s a sad state of affairs, and he tries not to think on it so much.
But then Pa sent him a letter, a winter letter, most unusual, and asks him a simple question: let’s meet up upon the train, at this time and in this place.
And Pa rarely asks for such a meeting. And when Pa does ask for such a meeting, one feels compelled to come, for Pa rarely asks twice.
And so now here he is. Sitting on a train station bench, itself uncomfortable. Himself uncomfortable too; his collar itches. He scratches at it but with the gloves he’s got to wear, on account of the cold, well, it ain’t really bluntin’ the itch.
So he tries to think of other things, more joyous things. Blueberry pie, fresh from Maw Maw’s oven with a big scoop of her ice cream on top. Ooh, yeah, that’s nice. Then he thinks of Mr. Hermes’ new little fella, whose only ten but gawky and sweet and gonna be a right heartbreaker on that guitar when he grows into his godhood just a bit more. When Pa still ain’t arrived by the time he’s gotten through that, he thinks about Grannie Rhee’s pecans, which arrive every so often when he has a craving, and he ain’t never worked out how she knows such things. Thinks about his own crops for next year: sativas, he thinks. Ma likes sativa best, and she’s his best customer at this point.
‘Sides he ain’t never been able to say no to his Ma.
He finally hears the train in the distance and brightens up; be right nice to see Pa and Ma together, right nice. Might be able to figure out what’s going on with them together, maybe even nose his way in and figure out what’s goin’ on with them up-close. He’s always played the peacemaker in the family. Ma and Pa love one another very much but both is pig-iron stupid in a lot of tiresome ways, too proud by half.
Thankfully, Zagreus takes after some other relative there. Not sure which, but he’s a more practical sort. Maw-Maw always said so, was always proud that he could sheaf a corn in less than thirty seconds, could grow and crack a walnut down to just a nut in a minute or less.
Train comes in. Zagreus stands, puts his hands in the pockets on his leather jacket. Still cold. Cripes but Pa and Ma are makin’ it mighty cold this year.
A door opens and a man steps out and he brightens, holds open his arms. Pa ain’t the sort to hug, really, unless he’s got an invitation. Zagreus, being a most practical man, offers the invitation.
Pa don’t look so happy, and, more to the point, Pa looks old and tired: Pa’s hair is bright-white, which it’s been a while, but it looks more dull than its ever been. Pa’s jacket is long and leather and Pa’s wearin’ it like a security blanket, with his arms clutched at his sides.
Which is to say, woo boy, Pa is in a mighty poor mood.
“Pa!” He shouts, and this induces only the slightest smile. Pa’s smiles are always slight but this one slighter than usual, just a half-vestigial tug of the lips. Sigh. Pa – Pa needs a hug.
And Zagreus, like his mother, does like to provide.
“C’mon, Pa, give your boy a hug.” He crosses the few steps between them and throws his arms around Pa, who freezes up as he ain’t done in a long time, not since Zagreus was a boy and Zagreus was a boy a mighty number of years ago now. But pa’s hands do slowly wind round his shoulders, and he holds him a long time there, Pa’s head on his shoulder and his head on Pa’s.
Pa smells like soot and dirt, and it’s comforting in a way, a smell of home. Pa’s hand, hesitantly, comes round to gently touch his curly hair and he leans into the touch. Pa’s got to be kind of swept in, but he gives good hugs when he gets tricked into it.
“I missed you, Pa,” he says.
“My boy,” says Pa, voice deeper than any river. “My boy.” Pa keeps him in a long hug then, and it’s pleasant, but also makes Zagreus wary. Pa never was the type for long hugs.
And when he peers over Pa’s shoulder, he don’t see little Ma on the train, patiently waiting her turn. And Ma always is waiting for a hug, least from Zagreus.
“Ma ain’t come?” He says, and he hears a little tremor, even in his own deep voice. “It’s winter…”
“Not this time.” He claps once more on Zagreus shoulder, and a five-alarm fire bell starts going off in Zagreus’ head: my god, they’ve finally done it ain’t they, Ma and Pa, ‘bout to tell him he’s going to be a child of divorce though of course at his age ain’t much a child about Zagreus anymore. “C’mon my boy. Ride with me. Want to – want to talk to you alone.”
“Is Ma okay?” Words come out before he can stop them. It’s been a couple years since he’s heard much from Ma, herself being more distant than usual. Ma can be mercurial at times and he’s assumed she’s just been a bit down, but Maw-Maw has said she’s spending more time with Pa and Pa – Pa don’t look like a man full of time with Ma.
“She’s alive, unhurt.” Which didn’t mean well, he knew well enough. Pa’s arm hasn’t left his shoulder, but now he moves him to the train. “Come, come.”
And so he rides. Been a long time since Zagreus has run the line with his Pa; last time, this train was brand new and Pa’s train looks – well, not quite lived in, but it looks like it’s Had a Time. He sits down on one of Pa’s little seats and Pa, to his surprise, sits in the next chair across. Normally Pa sits opposite, likes to look at a man to take his measure. Not today.
“How’s it goin’?” Pa asks, which is trouble indeed because Pa ain’t the sort that bothers with small talk. Pa small talking is nothing but bad news.
“It’s going jus’ fine.” He tries to smile, feels sweat at his neck and dabs at it. He wishes Ma was here, Ma who is always better at drawing out Pa’s anxieties. “Thank you mighty for the engine advice, by the by. It was the carburetor.”
“Always is,” says his father; he looks away, looking at the train’s track as it passes through the forests near Ma’s little home away from home. “Bloody things.”
“Yeah.” Pa nods and seems content with that for a long moment, and Zagreus can only keep the talk going so long. Just can’t last it, his chatter about what he’s been fixing up in the winter getting swallowed up by his father’s monosyllabic groans and grunts.
The lights go out, fast. He raises his eyebrows; somehow, he’s been surprised by going down. Himself, the only one born down here. Seems he ought not be taken by surprise, but that’s the Underworld for you. Always catches one unaware.
His father waves a hand in the darkness; Zagreus alarm grows as the train slowly, agonizingly, stops. It takes his father a moment, but he truly does stop the whole system from running with just a wave of his hand.
“Pa…?” He asks, with a shaky breath. Lots of people are afraid of his Pa, but until this moment, Zagreus ain’t never counted himself in their number. “Pa, what’s goin’…?”
“Now,” his father rasps. “No witnesses.”
Before he can even so much as ask what the fuck his father is on, his father stands, digging through his leather coat’s pockets. Pa tosses two little baggies down next to Zagreus.
“Son,” he says, his voice heavy. “I’ll only ask once.”
“What?” He stares at the baggies; the first is full of little tablets, white little ones. Don’t look factory-made, so ain’t something Pa made. Which means they come from—he swallows. Aw, Ma.
“Did you supply your mother…?” He asks, his voice heavier with regret than he thinks Pa has ever sounded. “This your idea…?”
“Ma ain’t never done the heavy stuff,” he says, picking up the second bag and finding it filled with a white powder. He is pretty sure he knows what this is, and knows it takes Pa’s earnings to have a bag this full of it. “And all I ever supplied her with is smokin’ muggle.” Marijuana’s all he’s ever grown for Ma, herself not having space for it in her own gardens, not with Maw Maw nosing about.
His Pa looks at him a long moment. Pa’s got to be a good judge of people, himself being the judge of all people. He stares at his son with that supernatural stare, and Zagreus squirms underneath it.
“I ain’t seen Ma in a few years, Pa. She ain’t been comin’ in springtime. Thought she was – just busy.”
His father wordlessly puts his hands in his pockets. Stands. Stares. “That’s the Gods’ honest truth, Pa. Swear to the Styx.”
“Swear to me,” his father mumbles, and Zagreus stands. Just as tall as his dad, just about.
“Fine, Pa. I swear upon your chromium throne, upon your wealth and your riches and your love for Ma and the dog and me and all the souls upon your employ. I swear to you, I ain’t never messed with the heavy stuff. And if I did, I wouldn’t sell it to my Ma. May you strike me dead, Pa, if you find such a lie.”
He’s breathing hard, and breathes hard still as Pa’s hand shoots out, grips – lightly – on his shoulder. Pa’s studying him a long moment, then he nods.
“So you know nothing, then?” He asks.
“If I did, you think I wouldn’t tell you?! You think – Jesum, Pa, what happened to you and Ma? She ain’t never done the heavy stuff.”
“She has, now. On it more than off.” His father collapses into the chair opposite him, his body sagging. “Do you know what those are?”
“Pills could be lots of things. Powder, too, but…” But they both know it’s likely cocaine. Which is a hard thing for Ma to make all her lonesome, but he don’t say that.
“What happened?” Zagreus asks, his voice spit-fire. “What the fuck happened, Pa? Everything seemed right as rain a couple years ago, and then—”
“I don’t—I don’t know,” his father murmurs. “I don’t know.”
“Fuck’s sake Pa, what do we do?”
“I don’t know,” says Pa again. “I just don’t.”
“Damn,” he says. They’re both silent for a long moment, collapsed into their seats. Pa’s all but crumpled into his, an obvious wounded wolf who’ll snarl if Zagreus comes on too fast. But Zagreus, himself, ain’t quite Pa’s breed, and the wounded puppy he is wants nothing more than to go and comfort Pa’s wounds.
But he knows better, so he just licks at his own, trying to figure out: What on earth is Ma doin’? Ma ain’t never liked the heavy stuff. Dangerous, Ma used to say, to try to escape your own mind. Now Ma was chasin’ labyrinths with Bolivian marching powder? And Pa ain’t got a thing to say? Shit. And to think Pa used to look down on him for growin’ some goof butts.
Pa snaps his fingers and the train starts again. “I assume you want to be dropped off back…?”
“No,” he says, soft. “I want to see her, Pa. I got to—I got to see her.” Pa looks at him, the look unknowable and vacant, and that worries him too.
Now it’s rare for them to have multiple signs of affection in a day, but Zagreus can’t resist getting up, grabbin’ Pa’s hand which is far, far older than he remembers: the golden veins more prominent, the skin drier. “You know it’d make her happy. Her boys, together again.”
“Her boys, again.” His father raises an eyebrow, going back and forth in the decision for a long moment. “Alright. Sit lively, then.”
And so he does. But as Hadestown rolls in, and he sees how much it’s grown – well, he gets an idea, maybe, of what’s bothering his Ma.
But Pa don’t see it, his eyes dark even in the blinding light of the hell-fire, and Zagreus wonders, maybe, if things have gone so far even he can’t quite bring it back.
Ma and Pa, after all, always were awful stubborn.
#Hades#Persephone#Hades/Persephone#Zagreus#Hadestown#sephweek#been to hell and back again#fun fact all the nicknames for drugs are actual nicknames from the 20s and 30s#my favorite personally being Bolivian Marching Band
29 notes
·
View notes
Text
Un jour de février
Fruk week 2021
Day 4: winter / spring
Words: 2,565
Summary: Domestic fruk. Old married couple vibe. The couple is visiting Matthew in Quebec city during the cold month of february.
Warning: French, so much french (Translations are at the end), and mention of sex. Not really explicit though.
Francis couldn’t wait to visit his son in february. However, he was dreading the cold and the weather he would face when they’d arrive in the city. He wasn’t used to that kind of cold anymore ergo he knew how much he would suffer through it. At least, he would be in good company and his boyfriend Arthur was coming as well.
As soon as Francis and Arthur landed in Quebec city, they traveled straight to their hotel since Mathieu would only be coming the next day and his meeting in the capital got delayed. Hopefully, Francis would enjoy a nice evening with his dear Arthur. The hotel room they picked had a cozy fireplace with a plaid fluffy blanket laid on the king bed. The decor of the room reminded Francis of a lumberjack’s cabin with deer antlers hanging down from the wall and the wood-like walls. While it wasn’t the usual style Francis would like, he did appreciate the coziness of it. He reminded himself not to let Arthur choose a hotel for them by himself again. At least, the bathroom was huge compared to what he is used to and in the middle of it, there was a bath that could easily fit 3 people in it. At the sight of the bath, Francis gave Arthur a teasing smirk as he tucked a lock of his blond hair behind his hair. Arthur rolled his eyes and sighed.
“Sure, love. Later.” Arthur agreed to his boyfriend’s silent plea.
Francis wrapped his arms around Arthur’s from behind.
“Je te promets qu’on passera un bon moment.¹” Francis whispered to his ear as he delicately bit it.
“I promise I’ll kick you in the arse if you don’t stop teasing.” Arthur said with his jaw clenched and a blush on his cheeks.
The comment made Francis chuckle and hugged his boyfriend closer.
“C’est trop facile de te taquiner."² Francis kissed Arthur’s cheek and let go of him.
Since they were both exhausted from the flight and the jetlag, they decided to go to bed early after they took a shower.
In the morning, they decided to wait for Mathieu to tell them when and where they would meet in their room after they got back from eating breakfast on the first floor. Francis looked outside the windows, contemplating the landscape from the city under the snow, as Arthur finished getting dressed and buttoned his shirt up.
“On n’a plus d’hiver comme ça par chez nous, hein?”³ Francis sighed.
“You never had winters like this before. Unless you count the ice age.” Arthur commented.
“Ouais. Du coup, c’est ben mieux que ta pluie 10 mois par année.”⁴ Francis retorted, looking back at his boyfriend.
Arthur glanced at Francis before taking his jacket from the bed and put it on.
“Tu sais que la reine vient pas aujourd’hui, hein?”⁵
“Shut your bloody mouth and get dressed, Francis.” Arthur sighed.
Francis let out a dramatic sigh as he let himself fall on the bed face first and grumbled Arthur’s name on the pillow. Arthur just rolled his eyes, ignoring his melodramatic scene as he was well too familiar with it. Francis turned around and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Peux-tu m’aider, mon amour?”⁶
“What? Help you get dressed? You’re not a child anymore.” As Arthur spoke, he received a notification from his phone that was placed on the desk and charging. He picked it up to see what it was.
“It’s Matthew. He wants to meet at the castle at noon.” Arthur paused to look at the time. “You’ve got one hour to get ready.”
“Quoi? Une heure?” Francis whined. "Ça nous donne même pas le temps de faire l'amour."⁷
"We would if you hurry the fuck up and stop whining."
Francis finally got up from the bed, not without whining even more. At the end, he did get ready in under an hour. When Francis got out of the bathroom, he paraded in front of Arthur who was sitting on the chair in front of the desk. Francis wore an open blue see-through shirt with some kind of green flower pattern on it. As for the bottom part, he wrote black trousers with the same flowery pattern.
"We're not going to a gay pub or a fashion show."
"Ah mais il faut que je sois à la hauteur de moi-même quand je sors. Je ne peux pas sortir comme si je serais un pauvre paysan. Pour qui tu me prends, putain?"⁸
"What the hell does that mean?" Arthur sighed. "You're going to wear a warm coat at least?"
Francis walked over to his suitcase and pulled out a navy blue double button wool coat and put it on.
"C'est sublime, non?”⁹ Francis turned around to show all angles of his outfit, feeling proud of it.
“Yes. You’re looking very handsome. You’re going to be cold though. Have you not brought something warmer?” Arthur put his hands on his waist.
“J’ai une écharpe qui ira bien avec. De toute façon, on restera pas trop longtemps dehors. Qui serait assez fou pour aller dehors en un temps pareil?”¹⁰ Francis replied.
“Right. Don’t say I haven’t warned you, frog face.”
Francis would probably die of humiliation if he had to wear something ugly so he’d rather die of hypothermia and being pretty than be seen wearing something hideous. The couple left their hotel room and took a cab to get to their destination. They were still a few minutes late, but nothing Arthur would mind and Mathieu was already waiting for them in front of the castle as agreed.
Upon meeting, Francis hugged Mathieu tightly since he hadn't seen him for months. Arthur greeted him politely under his giant coat that he brought to make sure he didn’t freeze to death. He wore both a winter hat and the hood of his coat with a scarf and at least 2 pairs of gloves. Since Mathieu knew both Arthur and Francis, he didn’t make a comment on how they were dressed. In his opinion, one was overdoing it and the other thought fashion was more important than warmth.
Since Mathieu was getting hungry, they went and looked for a restaurant. While Francis wasn’t hungry, he was gladly welcoming the idea of getting inside. He’s only been 2 minutes out and thought his nipples were already frozen. On their way to the restaurant, Francis tried to warm himself with his hands in his coat pockets and holding his arms close to his body, without much success.
After going down some stairs, at Francis’ displeasure, they walked down a small street that led to the restaurant. Francis remembered that street, he visited it during summer a long time ago. It changed a bit but not enough to not recognise it. He would admire the scenery if he wasn’t so goddamn cold. He just couldn't wait to get to the restaurant at last. Mathieu was explaining to Arthur the historic facts of some buildings even though Arthur already knew those facts; he just forgot. Their chatter sounded mostly background noises to Francis as his focus was mostly on his movements.
Finally, they reached the restaurant. They got seated and offered the menu to order.
“You’re awfully quiet, frog.” Arthur commented as he opened the menu. “Not complaining. That’s just unusual for you.”
Francis glared at his boyfriend. They both knew why he was quiet.
“Can you two stay civil please?” Mathieu asked. He knew his dads and their tendency to fight or argue way too well.
“Of course, lad.” Arthur replied. “I’d offer you my coat for a while, at least until you warm up, but I know too well you won’t accept it.” He continued.
“J’ai pas besoin de ta pitié. Je vais juste commander un bon café chaud et ça ira.¹¹ Francis replied.
“If you say so, love. I hope they offer good tea here.” Arthur said, dismissing Francis’s passive aggressivity.
The waitress came soon after and they all ordered their food and drinks. She took back the menus and left for the kitchen.
“You two are so different. I sometimes wonder how you are still together.” Mathieu commented.
Both Francis and Arthur looked at each other, Francis smiling lovingly.
“Cause we have great sex. That’s why.” Arthur answered Mathieu’s wonderment. He soon received a kick under the table from his partner.
“C’est vrai.”¹² Francis added.
“Please stop. I don’t want to know.” Mathieu interrupted Francis before he would add anything too explicit for him. The Frenchman chuckled while Arthur smiled. Well, at least, Mathieu succeeded to ease the situation between the two.
While they waited for their order, Francis grabbed Arthur’s hand under the table.
“Fucking hell, Francis!” Arthur exclaimed when he felt his boyfriend’s cold hand on his.
“Ah. Je suis désolé, mon amour.”¹³ Francis apologised, looking dejected.
“It’s fine. You surprised me, that’s all.” Arthur said softly as he took Francis’s hand in his.
Thankful, Francis smiled and let Arthur warm his hand. Usually, Arthur hated public displays of affection even as small as hand holding, so it overjoyed him that he accepted to do so.
They talked about Alfred the rest of the time they waited for the order. The American was quite busy at the time so he couldn't make it, but Matthew was grateful he couldn’t because he could easily bring all the attention to him. He appreciated the rare times he got alone with either of his parents. Even when Alfred wasn’t here, he got all the attention, but that was fine with Mathieu. He’d prefer that over Alfred present and talking loudly and interrupting him.
After lunch, Francis felt warmer and happier from the cup of coffee he drank and the small affection he received. His joy wouldn’t last long when Mathieu offered to walk alongside the river and the old port since they were close by. Arthur agreed to it too quickly, Francis thought.
“Et si on allait faire du shopping? Ça serait pas mal, non? Tu m’avais pas parlé d’un centre commercial avec un mini parc d'attractions à l’intérieur?”¹⁴ Francis suggested.
“Well, Matthew and I never liked shopping much and I don’t especially like theme parks either.” Arthur protested as he put his coat back on.
“Besides, there are probably too many people there already.” Mathieu added.
Francis pouted and followed the other two outside. They walked a few minutes until they reached a pedestrian path near the river. Arthur narrated the scenery with tales of the past, including Mathieu in it. Francis would normally enjoy joining in and teasing his partner, but he had troubles following them up even though they walked at a relatively normal pace. The Frenchman wished he was anywhere else other than outside in the cold. He thought of leaving them, calling a taxi and going back to the hotel on his own, but his fingers were already frozen again and he would have to look for the taxi’s number. Arthur probably had the phone number since he called one earlier. However, Francis was too prideful to ask him the number.
They walked and walked until they reached a small park in front of the train station. By that time, Francis thought his fingers were so frozen that he might lose some of them. His feet weren’t any better. Arthur and Mathieu spotted a bench and sat on it to take a break while Francis stood in front of them. At this point, Francis had his hands inside his coat pockets and the bottom half of his head hiding behind the scarf. Some of his hair locks were frozen too for some unknown reason and his cheeks and ears were red, almost turning to purple. When Mathieu sat down, he noticed how cold Francis looked.
“Es-tu correct, papa?”¹⁵ Mathieu asked him with concern.
“Ouais”¹⁶ was all Francis could be able to say through his shivering.
“Would you like to go back to the hotel, Francis?” Arthur sighed.
Francis nodded.
“You could have said so before, you dumb bitch.” Arthur added as he took his phone out to call a taxi.
The Frenchman didn’t have the energy to insult him back. Mathieu stood up and removed his jacket and offered it to his papa. He wouldn’t have taken it if he wasn’t so desperately cold and if he didn’t appreciate and enjoy gifts he received from his kids. The inside of Mathieu’s jacket was really fluffy and warm, like wearing a cloud.
When Arthur was done telling the taxi operator their current location, he hung up the phone and noticed Mathieu gave his jacket to Francis and only wore a red t-shirt.
“Aren’t you cold, Matthew?” He asked his son.
“Nah. It’s only -10°c anyway.” Mathieu shrugged.
Arthur almost choked himself with his saliva at this comment.
“What do you mean, ONLY -10°c? That’s too bloody cold, lad.” Arthur replied, making the taller blond boy laugh. “Even I want to go back inside and get warm. Perhaps get a cup of tea or something.”
“We can wait for your taxi inside the train station if you want.” Mathieu suggested.
The other two didn’t even have to say anything; they both agreed and followed Mathieu inside the train station.
Back at the hotel room, after Arthur took out his own coat, gloves and hat, he helped Francis get undressed and wrapped him around in the fluffy tartan blanket from the bed.
“Sit down on the chair and I’ll light up the fireplace for you.” Arthur requested him.
Francis smiled softly as he sat down in one of the two sofa chairs in front of the fireplace. It didn’t take long for him to sit with his bare feet on the chair, holding his legs close to his body. Arthur took a match out of the matchbox sitting on the top of the fireplace and lit it up. He quickly threw the match inside the fireplace and closed the glass door.
“Right. I’ll get some water boiling for tea. Would you like a cup?” Arthur asked.
“Oui, s’il te plaît.” ¹⁷
Arthur kissed his boyfriend’s red cold cheek and left to the small kitchen to boil some water with the kettle. Francis laid on the side of his head on the chair and watched him, smiling. While Arthur rarely said he loved him or complimented him much, he did care a lot when it mattered. He was there for him if he needed him and of course, Francis would do exactly the same.
Arthur came back with two cups of boiling hot water and put it down on the side table between the two sofa chairs and sat down next to Francis. The Frenchman noticed his boyfriend brought his own tea bags and even thought of bringing Francis’ favourite kind of tea even though he preferred coffee over tea. He watched as Arthur soaked the tea into the cup.
“Are you feeling better, love?”
“Oui. Merci.”
“You’re welcome”
Francis got up from his chair and went to sit on Arthur’s lap.
“What do you think you are doing?”
Francis wrapped his arms around his partner’s neck and kissed him tenderly.
“I love you.” Francis whispered after he was done kissing. Arthur blushed and pulled Francis closer.
“Je t’aime aussi.”¹⁸ Arthur whispered back.
Translation:
¹ “I promise you a great time.”
² “It’s too easy to tease you”
³ “We don’t have winter like this back home, do we?”
⁴ “Yeah. At least, it’s better than your rain for 10 months a year.”
⁵ “You know the Queen isn’t coming today, right?”
⁶ “Can you help me, my love?”
⁷"What? One hour? We won't even have time to have sex."
⁸ "I must be at the top of myself. I can't go out like a poor peasant. Who do you think I am?"
⁹ “It’s gorgeous, right?”
¹⁰ “I have a scarf that would look good with it. Anyway, we won’t stay long outside. Who in their right mind would stay outside in that kind of weather?”
¹¹ “I don’t need your pity. I’ll order a nice hot coffee and I’ll be fine.”
¹² “It’s true
¹³ “Ah. I’m sorry, my love.”
¹⁴ “What about going shopping? Wouldn’t it be nice, would it? You told me about a shopping mall with a mini theme park inside, didn’t you?”
¹⁵ “Are you ok, dad?”
¹⁶“Yeah”
¹⁷ “Yes please.”
¹⁸ “I love you too.”
#frukweek#frukweek2021#aph fruk#hws fruk#fruk#ukfr#aph ukfr#hws ukfr#aph england#hws england#aph france#hws france#THIS TOOK ME TOO LONG#i do love fluffy old married couple trope#no beta read#we post the first draft like the finnish in russia#i legit thought we were during winter at the end like bruh we're only in August. its hot out
29 notes
·
View notes
Text
white winter hymnal - tom hardy smut
The one where you’re Tom’s PA and you two get snowed in.
Warnings: smut, boss/employee relationship, dirty talk, kind of sexist remarks?, that wasn’t my intention, but maybe that’s how you’ll see it, so I should warn you about it, reader is very sex positive in this fic, idiot in lust, PA!Reader, jealous!Tom, kinda possessive! or maybe asshole!Tom, again it wasn’t my intention, I just wanted to write some dirty talk, use of the term cockslut and another that I can’t remember, or maybe it was cockslut twice
A/N: I’m not really satisfied with this collage, but this will have to do 🤷♀️ Anyway, here’s another anon request I received a while back. Please take everything Tom says as nothing more than dirty talk. Also, I did that thing where I wrote a pre-POV intro, idk if it’s any good but when the inspiration hits, I just roll with it ✌
Y/N wasn’t having a good week at work. It wasn’t that something wrong had happened - actually when you considered the cold facts about what had left her feeling so high strung that a simple touch almost made her moan, anyone would think she was crazy. Those were nice things, good situations that she’d found herself in.
But she’d disagree emphatically. There was nothing nice about the fuck-me eyes with which Tom, her boss, had regarded her when she arrived on set with the pencil skirt that she knew made her ass look great. There was nothing nice about the way he’d commented on how she was out to get him, making his life more difficult because of the way she was dressing. There was nothing nice about how he had kept on complimenting her, telling her how pretty she looked with her hair down, or how he joked about how it must have hurt when she fell from heaven.
And especially, there was absolutely nothing nice about the subtle, fleeting touches he’d decided to shower her with, leaving her burning and more aroused than she cared to admit, considering how innocent they actually were. Tom had been flirting with her ever since her job interview, it was nothing new and she should have gotten used to it by now.
But the truth was that she didn’t, she couldn’t. And who could really blame her, when every day it seemed like Tom stepped up a notch, making it harder and harder for her to ignore his advances and keep things professional between them?
Especially considering just how badly she needed to get off and just how attracted she was to him and his stupidly perfect body and damn hypnotizing smirk. She was only human, after all. A human woman with healthy desires that seemed to revolve exclusively about her boss.
God, she was pathetic. At least, she could always count on Saturday nights. That was the time she managed to escape the acting world and the craziness of the set where they had been filming for the last month to go to the bar and find someone who’d take her home and help her deal with her growing levels of horny.
If it weren’t for random strangers who knew what to do in bed, she wasn’t too sure she wouldn’t have succumbed to Tom’s spell and climbed him like a tree already. And that’s where she was headed, just after she stopped by his rental house and went over their schedule for the week ahead.
She’d get through this, she thought as she made sure her coat was tightly wrapped around her waist before exiting her car and running towards the front door, ignoring the snow that had been lightly falling since that morning. Just two more hours and she would be on her way to drowning her needs in another stranger’s body, just to pretend that she didn’t think about Tom during the entire act.
Yeah. She could totally do this.
Tom was screwed.
He had been since he first laid his eyes on her, some five months ago, just before they moved to this fucking freezing country to start filming for his next movie. He knew even back then, he should have thanked her with a smile, explained that she wasn’t right for the job, and asked her out. The fact that she was the best person for the job shouldn’t even have counted, because he was head over heels for her in that first meeting, how the fuck could he keep himself away when she was supposed to be working by his side every minute of every day?
In the end, the idea of having to wait until the end of filming to actually get to spend some time with her made him take the impulsive decision that led him to this situation. Having her so close, but nowhere near what he wished for.
It was hell on Earth. Especially since he knew she felt the same way, he could see it in her eyes, in the way she squeezed her thighs together every time he so much as looked her way. If only she wasn’t so unbelievably professional.
“Tom?” He heard her sweet voice calling out from downstairs and casted a glance at the window. The snow had been gradually building up since that morning, it was a surprise she had managed to reach his house in the first place. But of course, she would never let something as silly as the weather keep her away from her responsibilities.
With a low chuckle, he made his way to the living room, rubbing his hands together to create some warmth despite the heaters that were working overtime since he arrived at that house. It didn’t matter, it was still too fucking cold.
“Ready to go over your schedule?” He trailed his eyes over her body, taking notice of the dress she was wearing over the warm leggings. What day was it? Oh, right. Her day off started the minute she finished this one last task, and then she’d be off to…
He knew where she’d be off to. Thinking about it made him see red, especially since he didn’t have the opportunity to do the same where they were. He envied her, but he envied the lucky bastard that got to fuck her tonight even more.
“Of course,” was all he said, assuming a spot on the seat next to hers on the couch. She visibly tensed, but then threw him a small smile that seemed to try to ease her own nerves, to which he returned with a grin of his own.
“What are you all smiley about?” It was nice to see her more laidback, it was clear that the prospect of letting off some steam tonight was relaxing her. Tom could work with that. In fact, it just made his plans that much easier.
“I can’t imagine how someone could be near a woman as beautiful and not be happy, sweetheart.” Her smile immediately dropped, her eyes growing twice their size as he maintained his grin. “But let’s get on with it, shall we? I have a lot to plan out with you.”
She raised an eyebrow at his lack of interest in continuing to mess with her but shrugged it off before opening her planner. They did have a lot to talk about before she could finally leave to the nearest bar.
Tom chanced a glance out the window as she tried to locate their current week on her faithful notebook. This might just turn out the way he needed it to be.
Y/N’s P.O.V.
“Aaaand… I guess this finalizes your schedule for the next week,” I commented as I made sure to correct the time for a phone interview Tom would be having on the following Friday, before glancing up at him. He’d been mostly quiet for the last few minutes, a stark difference from how he had behaved during the entire meeting. Through all my time working for him, it had been the first time he was actually really present for the scheduling of his following week, making changes and trying to be sure that it would go as smoothly as he wanted it to be.
It wasn’t an unwelcome change, but it sure was peculiar. And by now, I knew him enough to get that there was definitely a hidden reason for him to be behaving this way. Still, I couldn’t yet grasp what it was that he had planned, so I resigned myself to getting through with what I intended to do for the day, and thankfully, that was now done.
“Well, if you won’t be needing me anymore, I’ll be getting out of your hair now.” I smiled softly down at him when I left the sofa, making quick work of my scattered papers and random pens before straightening out to say goodbye. “What?” I had to ask since he was looking at me like he was trying to contain his laughter.
“Well, first of all, sweetheart, I always need you. Perhaps not in the way you’re supposed to help with, according to your job description, but it’s the truth.” I had difficulty maintaining eye contact after that, opting to stare at the mountain of documents in my hands while I fidgeted from one foot to the other, feeling the arousal inside of me sparkle before starting to burn even more intensely. Why did he have to be so honest about wanting me?
“Second and perhaps most importantly… I think you’re stuck with me for the rest of the evening, love.” That made me look at him again, desperate to find any signs that he was only toying with my emotions, anything to show me that he was only playing. But all I got was a nod of his head, pointing towards the windows, and that’s when it hit me.
We were snowed in.
A lot of different feelings took over me at the realization. First, there was despair. What would I do now that I couldn’t go to the bar? Then, there was anxiety. How the fuck was I supposed to survive spending the night with my boss - to whom I was attracted to - in a house with a single room in it?
Finally, sheer panic set in, making me shake my head in frustration. I’d never be able to find enough control to resist him without the release that my weekly escapades granted me. And by the way he stared up at me, with those darkened eyes filled with lust, I could tell that he knew.
I watched with a trembling body as he slowly rose from the seat and made his way to me until we were chest to chest. His eyes ran up and down my body until they finally settled on mine again, and I had to bite down a whimper.
That’s how weak I was for him. He could reduce me to a wanton mess with a fucking stare.
“You’re scared.” It wasn’t a question. Both he and I recognized it as a fact. Still, I whispered into the air between us, “Yes.” Immediately, he pressed on. “Of me?” I almost melted at the sight of such a burly, strong man, towering over me and devastated at the prospect of threatening me.
Tom’s P.O.V.
I waited for her answer with a heavy heart, but the hopeful expectation that she did actually feel just the same as I did: scared at the prospect of what could happen between us, but equally excited.
“No.” I tilted my head at the word, curious as to what was her explanation, then.
“Then what?”
“Of what could happen if I let go of my control. Of what I would become.” Slowly, a smile took over my face, and I finally felt confident enough in her feelings to feel like I could touch her. So I raised my hands to hold her hips, rejoicing in just how small she was in comparison to me. It felt like I could very easily pick her up and take her - in whichever way I wanted. And there were a lot of them.
“Let go,” I whispered in her ear, having leaned down so I could compensate for our difference in height. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to see you without that precious control of yours.”
Goosebumps had spread all over her skin at the difference in temperature of my breath and her skin. I watched in fascination, following their trail, rubbing my nose across her jaw before finally, her lips were inches from mine. And then they were mine.
I possessed her mouth just like I’d fantasized for so long, desperate to make up for the lost time, for all the nights I spent alone thinking about her while she was off with someone else. And she responded just in kind, her arms barely able to embrace my body, but her palms were spread over my back, pulling me closer, and that was more than enough for me.
For now, at least. Now that I’d captured her on my web, there was no way I was letting her go before I fulfilled each and every one of the dirty, dirty dreams I had about the two of us. I was going to ravish her. I was going to ruin her.
She let out a tiny whimper when I pried her lips open with my tongue, before melting in my arms as I explored her mouth, basked on her taste. “You know there’s no way I’m letting you go now, right?”
By the way she looked at me with hazy eyes, it was clear that there would be no resistance from her whatsoever. She was pliant and soft in my hands, easily following when I picked her up and climbed up the stairs to my room with her in my arms. And then, when she was on the bed, there was just no way I could control myself anymore, not even long enough to take off our clothes properly. So I just flipped her skirt up, before ripping apart her leggings and finding her underwear absolutely drenched for me.
“Fuck,” I whispered, already reaching out to rub my thumb over her nub, making her gasp and cry out for me. “I can smell you dripping through the fabric, sweetheart.” To my pleasure, she didn’t seem coy about it at all.
Oh, no. My little assistant, the picture-perfect of professionality was licking her lips, frantically nodding to my indication. “For you, I’m always dripping for you.” A smirk took over my face at her confession, my cock hardening even more at hearing that while I was suffering silently all that time, so was she.
So I ripped her underwear to shreds, spreading my hands over the inside of her thighs to get the perfect view of that pussy that had been haunting my dreams. “Shit, I can’t wait to eat that.” And with only those words as warning, I dove right in, attracted by the sweet smell that made my mouth water.
She was just as sweet as I thought, but the sounds with which she filled my bedroom were what drove me crazy. I couldn’t close my eyes to fully appreciate her taste, too transfixed by her beauty, unable to believe that I finally had her, that it was her pussy I was currently lapping.
“Damn, look at you,” I hummed against her clit, making her jerk and try to pull away for a split second before I threw an arm over her hips to secure her position. “You fought so hard against your instincts, only to end up right here, spread open for me.”
With each word that left my lips, she seemed to get closer and closer to her release. “And to think you could have had my mouth on you all this time. Tell me, darling, do you think a stranger could make you feel better? Were any of the people you fucked, trying to ignore our connection, this great at making you cum?”
I could feel her muscles quiver under the soft skin of the inside of her thigh, and I doubled my efforts on her pussy, determined to see her cum at least once before I finally got my cock in her. It was throbbing now, begging for any sort of attention, but I was too transfixed by the sight of her reaching her high, the way her chest heaved as I quickly rubbed her clit with my tongue before sucking it into my mouth.
“Gimme your cum, baby. C’mon. Been waiting so long to get you in my bed…” She came as I hummed against her, the sensations obviously flipping her over that edge. “Fuck, you’re sweet.”
I kept on slowly cleaning her up, mindful of not hurting her, as she struggled to get her breathing in check. Despite her sensitivity, I couldn’t get myself to part with her taste just yet, even considering the possibility of eating her out some more, making her cum one or two more times before I fucked her properly.
But that was all before she fractured my control with two simple sentences. “Want some help with that? I’ve really been looking forward to getting your cock in my mouth.” I hadn’t even realized that I had been grinding against the mattress as I pleasured her, just to relieve my needy member at least a little bit.
What I knew was that I most definitely would not be able to hold back enough to feel her mouth around me. At least this first time. So all she got was a growl as I pounced on her, forcing her to taste her cum as I kissed those gorgeous lips and held her knees open to accept my weight between them.
“Right now, I’m gonna fuck this little pussy until you’re sobbing for me, okay, love? If you beg nicely, I might let you taste me later.” She whimpered in response, and a smirk took over my face. “Wow, you really are cockdrunk for me, aren’t you sweetheart?” The whine I got only made me laugh, giving me a little bit more control to tease her some more.
“You think you’re ready for me?” I asked, pressing the head of my cock against her clit, rubbing it with my member. “Are you sure you can handle my dick, darling?” Watching her thrash around the bed in an effort to get me to push into her was something I never thought I’d get to see. It made that moment of victory just that much sweeter.
Y/N’s P.O.V.
I was trembling in anticipation to finally have him inside of me. To feel that fat cock stretching me open, filling me up like I’d always wanted it to. It was enough to drive me absolutely crazy with desire.
“Yes, yes, please, I can handle it. Please, stop teasing me,” I begged, my hands not able to choose what to hold as I struggled to keep myself from losing my mind over my boss’ cock. From the depths of my desire, I took notice of the way he smirked, one eyebrow raised up as he stared down at me, still slowly running the head of his cock between my pussy lips.
“Teasing? This isn’t teasing, love. Teasing is what you did to me, every single day since we met, parading everywhere with those fucking skintight skirts.” And with those words as preamble, he finally slid home, only stopping when he was completely inside of me, hitting my cervix and difficulting the now herculean task of remembering how to breathe again.
“Fuck, I knew you’d be this tight. I just fucking knew it.” Those were the last things I heard before he started pounding me against the mattress, barely having given me any time to get used to his thickness.
If I thought I was losing my mind before, it became clear from the way he was bruising my insides that there was no possibility of me ever leaving this bed as a sane woman. Tom had managed to reduce me to a blubbering, stupid mess. He truly had turned me into his cockslut, I realized. I’d do anything just to keep being filled by him, over and over again.
“See? This is what you could have been having this entire time. Me and my cock. Instead, you just had to leave me for those random men. And while you were out, having your fun, all I had to keep me company was my own hand.” Tom never stopped the torturing pace with which he kept on fucking me as he slowly drove me crazy with his words. It was just unbelievable how great he was at dirty talk, I felt like I could cum already from the rhythmic attack on my sweet spot and the filth he was spilling.
The mental image he elicited of him touching himself didn’t hurt, either.
“You’re so egoistic, sweetheart. Wasn’t it your job to serve me? Instead, I had to get off all by myself.” Despite the teasing nature of his remarks and the still brutal pace of his thrusts, his touch over my body was gentle, as he gathered my hair away from my face so he could bury his head in the crook of my neck.
“You… You could have had anyone you wanted,” I managed to remind him, starting to mirror his movements, fucking myself up on his cock. “You could have had anyone at all.” Abruptly, he stopped hiding his face against my skin, pushing away just enough to watch my expression - or maybe to show me his, in all of its seriousness.
“The only one I wanted was you. This was everything I wished for, since day one.” Tom raised himself slightly, changing the angle of his thrusts in a way that had me gasping in surprise, while also preventing me from being able to figure out what I could possibly say to that. So he continued, slowing the movements only a bit, but fucking me deeper, his eyes searching mine for something I couldn’t pinpoint.
Tom’s P.O.V.
She gasped, finally giving up that last little bit of control and allowing herself to relax against the mattress as I did all of the work. “But now I have you, huh? And this is where you should be spending your days, with my cock deep inside of your pussy, keeping me warm, keeping me happy.” I kissed her before finishing, “Keeping me fulfilled.”
With a moan that electrified every single cell of my body, she came and prompted my own orgasm, and I spilled inside of her with a roar, momentarily losing my strength and falling on top of her body.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, darling. Let me get out of you.” But she stopped me from leaving her arms and her pussy, hugging me to her chest until I had no other choice but to cuddle her.
“It’s okay,” she said, fingers lightly running through my short hair. “I like it.”
I fell asleep that night happy because I understood that was her way of saying that she was satisfied with this development in our once strictly professional relationship. And I couldn’t wait to wake her up with another reason why she shouldn’t regret this.
#my fics#tom hardy smut#tom hardy#smut#tom hardy reader#tom hardy fanfiction#tom hardy oneshot#tom hardy oneshots#tom hardy imagine#tom hardy imagines#tom hardy x reader#tom hardy insert fanfiction
313 notes
·
View notes
Text
Chant
I just realized I never posted this here. It is the first chapter of my series “Memories in the Wind” (Chapters 2: Incense & 3: Artifacts have already been posted here. Good thing chronology doesn’t matter in these little stories =) Anyway, hope you enjoy!
Other works in this series:
Incense
Artifacts
…………….
“Be careful, Bumi!”
Katara pulled protectively at her toddling son as he leaned disconcertingly over the edge of Appa’s saddle to rub his chubby little hands in fistfuls of Appa’s fur.
Aang looked back over his shoulder from where he held the reins on Appa’s head and smiled.
“Oh let him have some fun, Katara! You know I’ve got him if he falls overboard.”
Katara’s grip on her son tightened as she sent an exasperated looked toward her carefree husband. “Aang, I just don’t think it’s safe for Bumi to think that every time he falls off of Appa he gets a ‘fun airbending ride with Daddy’ back up here to safety.”
“But I’ve got him, Katara. I don’t want him to be afraid of heights.”
Katara huffed. “But for those of us who don’t command Air, Sweetie, a dose of that kind of fear is not unhealthy.”
“You don’t know yet that Bumi doesn’t bend air,” Aang said casually. “He’s too young to tell.”
Aang smiled with a playful twinkle in his eye. “Or maybe he’ll be splashing his mom with waterbending before we know it! Wouldn’t that be great?”
Katara couldn’t help the smile that found its way to her mouth. She did like the idea of teaching waterbending to her son one day. At a year and a half Bumi hadn’t shown any signs of either waterbending or airbending, but he was young yet.
“Maybe he won’t bend at all,” Katara proposed thoughtfully.
Aang smirked cheekily, “As long as he doesn’t bend Fire or Earth, I think we are good.” He looked at her with mock-seriousness as he teased, “Because then you’d have some ‘splaining to do.”
Katara rolled her eyes at Aang dramatically, but couldn’t help but smile at him, shaking her head at the preposterousness of the idea. With Bumi’s open, carefree spirit and his ‘run before he walks’ and ‘leap before he looks’ tendencies, Katara wondered how anyone could ever doubt that Aang was his father. Personality wise, Bumi was undeniably Aang’s son.
Katara looked at her son as she held his torso with two hands, his fat little fingers still buried in Appa’s fur. Bumi laughed and babbled “Ap-pa, Ap-pa, Ap-pa” to himself as his dark hair blew wildly in the wind.
It had been a sore spot for Aang that Bumi had spoken the word “Appa” before “Daddy” -- a fact that Aang insisted his sky bison lorded over him constantly. “You don’t know what its like, Katara! I’ll catch a smug look in Appa’s eye and just know he’s laughing at me. How could my own son betray me this way?!” It was all in jest of course, but Katara suspected that any real feelings of hurt didn’t fully dissipate until Bumi started babbling “Da-da” at which point Aang seemed to forget the snub completely as he instead, glowed with pride. “Katara did you hear that?! He’s so smart!” Then continuing with a loving look at his wife, “A genius, just like his mom!”
The little family currently flew over a forested area in the northwestern Earth Kingdom. This part of the Earth Kingdom was pretty far north, the vegetation consisting of mostly evergreens and other tenacious plants that didn’t mind the rocky ground and the cold winters. But it was summer now, and the air was clear and cool, the breeze bringing the delightful scent of pine as Katara inhaled deeply.
Suddenly, Appa let out a groan and veered sharply down and to the right. Katara reflexively pulled Bumi protectively into her lap as she grabbed the saddle with one arm to steady herself, her innards giving that strange lurching feeling that felt like her stomach had jumped into her throat.
“Whoa boy!” Katara heard Aang say as he pulled the reins, trying to get his animal guide back on course. “What’s up, Buddy?” Appa groaned something at Aang as he leveled out again.
But a moment later he lurched again, this time turning them all the way around and descending toward the forest below.
Katara looked over the lip of the saddle to see Aang laying flat on his stomach on Appa’s head as he spoke to his bison. “Do you hear something, Buddy?”
Then sitting up, Aang called back to Katara. “Looks like Appa wants to land here for some reason, Sweetie. I guess we’re going down.”
As the giant bison landed six-footed onto the rocky ground amid the sparse but towering trees, Aang hopped back up into the saddle with his wife and son. Then taking hold of Katara around the waist as she held Bumi, Aang airbend-jumped all three of them down to the ground.
“Why did we stop, Aang?” Katara asked.
“I’m not sure. I have no idea why Appa wanted to stop here.” But Aang’s perplexed look quickly turned to an open smile that he turned to his wife. “Well, shall we have a look around then?” Katara could see that Aang’s disposition for adventure and his naturally flexible sense of ‘destination’ were taking over.
“I suppose so,” Katara said as she set Bumi down to let him walk around a bit, smiling affectionately at the way her son held his hands out for balance. “It is a lovely forest.”
They had not taken more than ten steps into the trees when Aang stopped Katara in her tracks. “Wait. Do you hear that?”
The sound was faint, but as Katara strained her ears she thought she could hear the sound of… what was that? The sound was long and solemn, resonating out a continuous melancholy whine. Katara didn’t know what would make a sound like that; certainly not an animal. Maybe some sort of instrument perhaps?
Aang seemed to have frozen, a wide-eyed look on his face.
Appa bellowed again and walked forward, nuzzling his head into Aang, snapping Aang out of his trance. Aang put his hand on Appa’s big head and affirmed with semi-stunned excitement, “Yeah, I hear it too, Appa!”
“Let’s go find it, Buddy!” Aang said enthusiastically to Appa as he scooped Bumi giggling up into his hands and grabbed Katara’s hand and pulled her back onto Appa’s back. Appa didn’t wait to hear “yip, yip” before he took off into the sky.
Katara still did not know what the sound was, but it clearly meant something to Aang and Appa. She wanted to ask her husband about it, but she didn’t want to interrupt the single-minded concentration Aang was giving to following the sound at this moment.
Appa flew low, the toes of his six legs often skimming the tops of the trees. Aang half straddled, half stood on Appa’s head, like a jockey standing up in the stirrups, all the while moving his arms in wide sweeping motions, as though he was pulling the air towards his chest. Katara knew that Aang was pulling at the surrounding air, willing the sound to come to him, amplifying it so they could follow it to its source.
It didn’t take long to follow the sound to a tiny settlement nestled among the trees. There were so few houses, and each spaced so far apart, that it couldn’t really even be called a town. Appa had to circle around the roof of the source of the sound a couple of times before needing to land a short distance away from it in the only clearing big enough for his large body.
The sound rang out clearly from inside a small log dwelling.
But even after Appa landed with a huff, Aang remained still, staring unmoving toward the dwelling just visible through the pines. He didn’t move from Appa’s head. Katara began to feel a little apprehensive as she observed the blue tattoo on Aang’s tense back.
“Sweetie?” Katara asked after another long frozen minute listening to the melancholy brass song through the trees. She placed a supportive hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Katara was unprepared for the intensity of emotion on Aang’s face when he turned toward her. His grey eyes were wide, almost haunted, some complicated set of emotions brewing behind them. Anticipation? Hope? Dread, perhaps?
Aang turned his gaze back towards the dwelling before climbing down slowly from Appa’s head. Something about his climb down seemed so strange. For one thing, Katara wasn’t sure if she had ever actually seen Aang climb down before, not like this anyway; he usually just jumped or floated down. But this movement seemed to be in slow motion, and as though his body was suddenly heavy, each step taking effort. Like he dreaded what lay before him.
Aang began to move toward the trees leading to the log house.
“Sweetie?” she tried again.
Aang turned back to her, the solemn sound ringing through the air around them. “It’s a singing bowl, Katara. An Air Nomad instrument. I haven’t heard one in…” his sentence drifted off absently as he turned back towards the sound.
But then he just stood there, not moving forward. Appa grunted and took a couple steps toward him -- exhausting the extent of space this clearing left for his big body to move -- and nudged Aang with his head as though pushing him toward the sound. Aang shook his head slightly, as if recovering from a trance, and reached out a hand to stroke his oldest friend’s furry cheek. Aang forced a fleeting smile and a “Thanks, Buddy”, before stepping into the forest toward the cabin.
Katara just watched the strait back of the last known air nomad walk away toward the small dwelling that vibrated with a sound both ancient and presumed extinct. For a moment Katara just sat there before she came to herself, and scooped Bumi (who had been uncharacteristically still, as though spellbound by the sound singing through the mountain air) onto her hip and scrambled down Appa’s side to hurry after Aang.
Katara, with Bumi in arms, wound her way through the fragrant evergreens, the light crunch of dried pine needles snapping under her soft boots as she followed after her husband. By the time she arrived at the small dwelling, Aang was nowhere to be seen.
“Aang?” she called as she ducked around the building to the open front door.
Katara stopped, her hand on the rough wood of the open doorframe. Aang stood a few steps inside the small home, his body unnaturally still. She couldn’t see his face, just the rigidity of his stance. The wailing sound vibrated full and long all around the small room.
Beyond Aang, sitting serenely on a mat on the floor was a very old, bald man. A young child at his side ran a wooden mallet around the edge of a brass bowl perched on a folded cloth on the ground in front of him. The ringing was clearly coming from the bowl. Eyes closed, the old man spoke softly – no chanted, almost like he was singing – words that Katara could not understand.
Katara boosted Bumi a little higher on her hip and took a few tentative steps forward inside the hut until she stood at Aang side. She touched his shoulder tentatively with the tips of her fingers. “Aang?”
Aang didn’t turn to look at her, but he exhaled as though it was long overdue, his eyes still staring at the old man.
The old man finished his mantra and then opened his eyes. His withered old hand reached over and gently stopped the circling hand of the child at his side, stopping the singing bowl’s effervescent wail. The sound seemed to echo in the small structure for a moment even after the vibrations had dissipated. The child looked up at them with bright grey eyes, expectant.
The old man brought his hand together with a fist and bowed his head slightly toward Aang. “Bhu-la”
Katara could see Aang’s adam’s apple bob once before he too brought his hands together and bowed respectfully, replying, “Jolak”.
The man motioned with his hand to the empty space on the floor across from him and Aang sat down in lotus, facing him. They both said nothing at first, but Katara could see that Aang’s throat bobbed again as if holding back great emotion.
“Bhu-la”, the old man addressed Aang again (Katara seemed to remember from her stilted efforts to learn Aang’s Air Nomad language that this meant “younger brother”), “I am honored to have you in my home. At first I thought my old eyes had deceived me. I never thought that I would again behold another Kushow La in my lifetime.”
Aang’s face fought valiantly against some strong emotion. “Jolak…” Aang addressed this elder brother and then paused, needing a moment to find his voice before he could continue. “Are you… are you a Kushow La? Are you also an Air Nomad monk?”
Katara’s eyes darted back to the old man in hopeful surprise, even though she saw no arrow tattoos on the old man’s forehead or hands.
The old man sighed, “Alas, I am not.”
Aang’s head bowed, his eyes clenched tightly as he fought to keep his obvious disappointment within. A moment later, Aang’s face became a stone wall. The same stone Katara saw whenever he was keeping some strong emotion to himself.
“I see,” Aang replied.
“I am not. But, young Bhu-la, my father was,” the old man said.
Aang’s eyes opened eagerly, his whole body leaning forward. “Your father? Was an Air Nomad monk??”
“Yes,” the old man chuckled at the eagerness of the tattooed young man before him. “My father was a Kushow La. Like you.”
“My father was not even yet twenty years old at the time of Sozin’s massacre.” The man took a long inhaled breath before continuing. “He told me that his bison had fallen ill, and he was tending to him, which is why he was late for the festival that would have taken him home to the Northern Air Temple at the time of Firelord Sozin’s first attacks. Having not been at the temple, he avoided the first wave of fire.” The old man looked somberly down to his lap. “But he and his kind were hunted afterward. His beloved bison was cut down before word of the slaughter had even made it to my father’s ears. My father only narrowly escaped that attack with his own life.”
The man looked knowingly at Aang, a well of sympathy behind his old eyes as he continued, “My father did not talk much of those many years of fleeing from the Fire Nation. But I know he saw great atrocities and his personal losses were great.”
Aang listened intently, nodding minutely in understanding, his face stone again (although Katara could see the pain behind his eyes).
“My Earth Kingdom grandfather’s family provided my father a temporary refuge for a time. While my father was staying with my grandfather, he and my mother fell in love. But when their union was opposed by my grandfather, the two fled together to these very forests. They built this home, far from civilization, with the hope that they could hide from those who sought to destroy them. I was born within these very walls.” The old man looked up at the small wooden structure, as though a lifetime’s worth of memories were written upon it.
“My mother and father and I lived here happily for many years. Until whispers of Airbender survivors began to circulate, even making it out here to our remote location. My father ignored them for a long time. Until one day he told my mother he had to go and see, to find one of these ‘havens’ in the mountains for himself. I was twelve at the time.”
The old man looked Aang strait in the face. “I never saw my father again. I never found out what happened to him.”
Aang winced, as if he understood more than he wanted to. Katara was not sure what “havens in the mountains” the man spoke of, but she did not have much trouble imagining the end fate of this man’s father.
Aang spoke, “I am so sorry for your loss, Jolak.”
“Thank you for your sympathy, Bhu-la. I accept your shared mourning.”
Aang turned his eyes toward the child and with a kind smile said, “Thank you for your music, Bhu-la. You play just like I remember it from when I was your age!”
The little boy’s face burst into a wide, charming smile. The old man smiled and patting the child’s leg with unobscured pride as he introduced, “This is my great-grandson, Aanpa. He is named after my father, the Kushow La.”
Aang’s eyes moistened, but he smiled at the boy again. “It’s a good name, Aanpa. I had a friend my age who shared your name too.” Aang bit his lip and looked down at his hands in his lap. “It’s a good name,” he repeated again.
At this point Bumi bucked in Katara’s arms, reaching for the floor. He wanted to get down. Katara knelt down on the ground as well, a step to the side of Aang as she pulled Bumi to sit on her lap. Aang looked towards her and introduced, “Jolak” then nodding to the little boy “and Buh-la, this is my wife, Katara, and our son, Bumi.”
The man palmed his fist and dipped his head towards Katara and Bumi. The man’s great-grandson just smiled bigger. Katara smiled back, dipping her head in respect as well.
Seeming to remember, Aang added, “Oh, and I’m Aang.”
The old man’s eyes twinkled, traveling once up to the blue tattoos on Aang’s arms and forehead. “I’m aware of who you are, Bhu-La Aang. Even way out here, we are aware.”
Aang opened his palms upward, motioning toward the singing bowl, “May I… join you? To chant the Time Mantra again?” Katara saw him swallow past his emotion. “It’s been a long time since…” but Aang’s voice seemed to fail him then.
The old man looked at him kindly; Katara seemed to see an Understanding in his old grey eyes. “Of course.”
The man nodded to his great-grandson and the little boy hit the brass bowl with his mallet, then rubbing the wooden handle around the bowl’s edge, the metal began to sing. Bumi bucked again, trying to get out of his mother’s arms to grab at the bowl, but Katara pulled him back to sit on her lap.
Aang and the old airbender’s son both closed their eyes and breathed deeply. Even as their eyes remained closed they both lifted their right hands up, palm facing forward, their left hands resting palm up on their folded knees. For a time they just sat this way, eyes closed, breathing deeply as the singing bowl rang out. Then without any signal that Katara could see, they both began to speak in unison.
Katara had heard Aang chant to himself frequently. And Aang had told her often of the daily chants and joint meditations of the monks. So she was familiar with the sing-song of the mantra. But she had never heard an Air Nomad chant in tandem before, and the sound of it, the way the words resonated through the little log house was incredible. It was like their voices were one layered voice, but somehow even more potent. The sound of it brought a catch in her throat. Even Bumi sat listening, watching his father’s face intently.
As the chant filled the small wooden dwelling, the chorus seeming to sink within her, Katara couldn’t help but imagine how this sound would have echoed gloriously in the great meditation halls of the Air Temples. With a hundred voices reciting the words together.
For the thousandth time Katara felt a great swell of compassion for all that Aang had lost. There was no accompanying anger this time, as there had often been in the past, just a great sense of loss, like a gaping hole opening in her abdomen.
Compassion stirred within her as she saw tears begin to stream down Aang’s face from under his closed dark lashes. Bumi’s little hand reached up to her face, and she realized that she was crying too. She looked down into her son’s wide perplexed eyes, and took his chubby little hand in hers and kissed it, reassuring him that everything was all right.
Katara could not understand the words of the chant, although she recognized the intonations as Aang’s native tongue, the long-lost Air Nomad dialect. She bit back regret that she had not learned more of his language, so that she could know the meaning of the chant. Silently she vowed to try harder to learn.
But knowing the meaning of the words or not, there was no doubting the sacredness of this moment:
Aang, eyes closed, tears streaming down his face, chanted in his own language a mantra of his youth with another living being for the first time in over a century.
…………..
Katara looked up from her place at the kitchen counter when she heard a knock on the front door. “Just a moment,” she called out as she quickly set the sliced lotus root she was preparing for dinner into a bowl of water to soak. Wiping her hands on her apron (that bulged comically over her rounded tummy) Katara walked toward the door of their home on Air Temple Island.
With an angry yell coming from Kya’s room, Bumi and one of his friends came barreling from the back of the house, bumping into Katara on their way to the door. “Sorry Mom!” he quipped with a charming crooked smile as the two of them jostled out the front door, nearly knocking the man standing outside it over in their haste.
Katara sighed in exasperation as she saw the door swing shut after them, muffling her son’s “oh, sorry!” to the man he nearly knocked over on the doorstep. She shook her head at her son, now verging on teenagehood, but still just as unwary and haphazard as when he was a toddler.
Opening the door again, Katara saw a young man with a light pack on his back and a parcel wrapped in a cloth in his hands, watching Bumi and his friend running pell-mell down the path towards the docks. As he turned his attention back towards her, she smiled. “Hello. Can I help you?”
The young man smiled nervously. “Um, hi. Are you Master Katara? I’m here to… to see your husband.”
Katara was not surprised by the man’s request – people frequently sought an audience with the Avatar – although she was surprised that he had not been stopped by one of the Acolytes before coming strait to her door. No worry, she would be happy to see what he wanted.
“Aang is in the sanctuary at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?”
The young man tapped the parcel in his hands idly and looked around. “Um, sure. I guess. You see, I’ve come to, um, to maybe join your, um, your Air Acolytes.” His eyes flicked unsurely to Katara for a moment.
Katara’s heart warmed as she smiled at the boy. She never ceased to be amazed at the generosity of those willing to give their lives to keep the Air Nomad’s culture and teachings alive. “Of course. Welcome to Air Temple Island… what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. But it’s Aanpa. My Great-great-grandfather was an Air Nomad. I don’t know if you remember, but I met you once, when I was very young. You and the Avatar came to my Great-grandfather’s house.”
Katara’s eyebrows lifted in pleasant surprise. “Oh yes! I remember that day well. Are you the little boy who played the singing bowl?!”
Aanpa smiled widely, and held up the parcel, unwrapping a corner to show her what was inside. “I have it with me now! I wanted to… to um, maybe give it to Avatar Aang. Since it belonged to his people…”
Katara ran her fingers delicately over the edge of the bowl, remembering that day. She remembered the sound of it, how it had called to Appa. How the sound had spiked in her husband a hope that pierced a hundred year of empty looking.
She knew how the hope had hurt Aang, how believing that ‘maybe’, only to be disappointed again, had left his heart raw and exposed. He had tried for days afterwards to build his walls ever higher in an attempt to hide his grief, even from her. But she could see through it. And she understood. And her unwavering embrace had said more than any words could have when he finally leaned into her for strength.
When he was ready, Aang admitted his disappointment. But also his joy to have found a descendant of his people. And how much it had meant to him to Chant with the Kushow La’s son. Despite the pain, Aang felt it was a blessing.
Katara was used to her husband’s ability to see Light. And how he accepted the shadows that, for him, so often accompanied it. Even Aang’s fondest memories carried shadows. But something that Katara loved most about Aang was that even though nothing would ever restore what he had lost, no one was more grateful than he was for every shard of Light to be found.
Katara gently folded the fabric back around the bowl and pushed it back towards Aanpa. “No. This belongs to yourpeople. It is a heritage you and Aang share. Aang will be touched that you would consider giving it to him, but I know he would want you to keep it.”
Then, setting aside her apron and stepping out onto the porch, Katara beckoned to Aanpa to follow her. “Come with me. Let’s go and find Aang.”
The pair could hear the chant carried on the pleasant spring breezes long before they reached the end of the upward winding path that led to the sanctuary. As they reached the entrance, the many-paneled doors swung wide open allowed for the sound to travel freely outward. Many voices spoke as one, the words singing out with the great brass bowl -- this one the size of a barrel -- that was rung carefully by an old Acolyte in saffron robes.
Aanpa stared at the group of Acolytes sitting on the temple’s mosaicked floor, their eyes closed tranquilly as the words of worship and unity spoke from their lips. Katara’s eyes found one blue arrowed brow amidst them, his face peaceful as he joined the chant.
The Acolytes knew many chants. But how fitting that today they would be speaking this one. The same chant that Aang had shared with Aanpa’s great-grandfather all those years ago.
While the pair watched and listened, Katara, supporting her heavily pregnant belly with one hand, leaned in towards the young man and asked, “Do you recognize it?”
Katara smiled compassionately as Aanpa turned to her with tears in his eyes. “This is the… it’s the same one my great-grandfather… used to…” Aanpa looked back into the sanctuary. “But I never understood it. I don’t know what it means.”
Katara looked back towards the worshippers, sunshine falling freely upon their brows as their many voices in unison resonated out.
“It’s called the Time Mantra. Let me translate it for you.”
Katara paused as she listened to the words as they rang out vibrantly. “Time is wind. No one can hold it. No one can stop its course,” she translated. “Time, like the wind, blows past, ever flowing, ever moving, stopping for not a soul.”
She paused listening for the next line, “See how it shapes the mountains. See how it moves the seas.”
Katara could see the young man swallow thickly as she continued. “How will I let it move me, what will I let Time bring?”
The last of the chant came to a pulsating stop as Katara’s voice spoke the last line in silence. “Now is the only chance, to rein what Time shapes in me.”
The two stood together, hearing the echo of the chant in the silence. Katara felt the baby kick within her. She watched to catch Aang’s eyes when they opened, a giant smile bursting on his face when he saw her standing there. He looked happy, a fullness of peace in his demeanor.
Katara turned to Aanpa and took his elbow kindly, moving him forward into the sanctuary. “Come, Bhu-la Aanpa. Let’s go in and say hi, shall we?”
…………
The Time Mantra
Time is wind. No one can hold it. No one can stop its course.
Time, like the wind, blows past, ever flowing, ever moving, stopping for not a soul.
See how it shapes the mountains. See how it moves the seas.
How will I let it move me? What will I let Time bring?
Now is the only chance, to rein what Time shapes in me.
………..
Incense
Artifacts
..............
To read this series on AO3:
<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27159106"><strong>Memories in the Wind</strong></a> (13682 words) by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADCurtis"><strong>ADCurtis</strong></a><br />Chapters: 3/3<br />Fandom: <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Avatar:%20The%20Last%20Airbender">Avatar: The Last Airbender</a><br />Rating: General Audiences<br />Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply<br />Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar)<br />Characters: Aang (Avatar), Katara (Avatar), Bumi II (Avatar)<br />Additional Tags: Post-Avatar: The Last Airbender, Air Nomads (Avatar), Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Aang (Avatar) Needs a Hug<br />Summary: <p>A sound carried on the winds lead Aang and Katara to hope for something seeming long lost.</p>
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
Pairing: Arthur Morgan x gn!reader
Summary: A return trip from Annesburg is about to change your life forever
Word count: 1520
Notes: CW: vague descriptions of wounds | Unsure how to tag this right now, Amensia Plot | Unbetaed [Any feedback is appreciated]
Tags for: @husbandits.
I was so excited when I saw that I was assigned to be your Secret Santa this year (even if i do still have a request I need to fulfill for you 🙈) I loved each item on your wishlist, but this one really jumped out at me.
"okay, so there was a post going around like last year i think where arthur had gotten amnesia and the reader took him in, and honestly i haven't been able to get it out of my head these past few months for some reason"
I couldn't find the original post you referred to, but a rough idea started to form in my head...The only problem is, this idea is so much bigger than the stories I usually write and I was starting to run out of time to get it posted for in time for the @rdr-secret-santa event (as you well know, I'm a slow writer) so...please accept my humble offering of the first chapter while I try chip away at the remaining parts.
The Best Kept Memories
[working title]
Chapter 1: Late 1899 [Oct/Nov]
All this commotion was frustrating to say the least; you'd arrived in Annesburg late yesterday afternoon, ready to pick up the supplies you'd needed to stock your cabin up with before the weather turned back into the harsh winter the Grizzlies were famous for. Despite arriving in town a good 30 mins before the train carrying your supplies from Saint Dennis was due in at the station, an hour later you were still standing on the platform waiting for it to suddenly come rumbling down the tracks.
"All the trains have been delayed you know" A local busybody informed you.
"Yeah, I kinda gathered," you politely replied - not really wanting to be drawn into conversation...too bad the older lady didn’t get the message.
"Talk is…" she leaned in close, as if she was sharing confidential intel that only you were to know about, "a bunch of degenerates living not too far from here, decided to rob one of the earlier trains coming up from city."
You found yourself rolling your eyes internally upon hearing this; you were aware the Murfree Brood were a sadistic bunch of murdering bastards, but from what you previously heard about them, they could barely care for and ride their horses, let alone plan to board and rob a moving train.
"Terrible affair I heard, seems they managed to make it all the way up towards Bacchus Bridge before…" she stopped mid-conversation, not because she ran out of gossip to share with you but she had noticed that the tracks began to rumble and the sound of a train's whistle could be heard approaching the station.
"Well, looks like the delay is finally over," you commented, pointing out the obvious.
"Oh do excuse me will you." You sighed with relief as you watched the woman move a little down the way, heading towards the train's engine to see if the driver had any updates of the goings on in Saint Dennis to share with her.
By the time you'd finished loading your wagon up, you were exhausted and couldn't face the thought of driving home through Roanoke Ridge in the dark, especially if the Murfree Brood were still loitering about. Looking down the main street you saw the local hotel had some vacancies and made the impulsive decision to spend the night in one of the rooms there, ready to feel refreshed in time for your morning ride home.
While it seemed like a very good idea at the time, you soon realised you'd made a huge mistake. After waking up and having a quick wash before getting dressed, you made your way back outside to find the most peculiar sight. The mining town of Annesburg, usually full of workers with dirt covered faces, wandering about in their equally filthy overalls, was now overrun by well dressed men in suits.
"They say they're Pinkertons." You overheard the gossiping woman that you encountered the previous night, telling her newly captive audience. "One of them told me personally that there was a gunfight up near Beaver Hollow."
"Well Eunice, I heard talk there was reports of those hooligans that they're after, fleeing into the night and the 'Pinkertons' had to chase them all over the Ridge well into the early hours of the morning," another lady informed her, looking super smug that she'd been able to provide some information that her friend wasn't already privy too.
"Well either way, several roads around the area have been blocked off by the men in suits." Eunice huffed before walking off, looking for a less informed person to chat too.
Shaking your head, you dismissed their talk as nothing but idle gossip and jumped up on your wagon, ready to head back home along one of the roads leading South.
"This road is closed," the well-suited man hissed as you approached the roadblock with your wagon. "I suggest you find another route."
"It wasn’t closed yesterday when I rode into town, any chance you could let me go past just this once?" you protested, not really knowing why you were bothering. His stony face told you this was not a man who had much compassion for others, but wanting to get back home before the storm brewing on the East side of the Lannahechee river rolled in, you persisted, "I can be home within the hour if you let me past, whereas the other route will take me twice as long - not to mention those treacherous mountain roads I'd be forced to travel along."
"I said, find...another...way" he growled at you, clenching his teeth as he emphasised each word.
"Fine," you sighed as you reversed your wagon and drove along the road heading north.
Even though this route would take you the better part of the day to get home, you didn't mind so much as you could take the time to enjoy the beautiful scenery of this part of the country, especially the area around the huge mountain that rudely stood directly in front of you.
Taking a left hand turn to finally head southwards; you trundled along, lost in a world of your own as you admired the red wildflowers that grew in abundance here. Making a mental note to maybe pick some up on your next visit up here, so you could liven your cabin up, you were shocked when your horse suddenly reared up, whinnying a distressed shrill.
"Hey now Ponos, what's to do with you?" you asked gently, hopping down off your wagon to assess the area around you. There was nothing obvious that you could see in the road, but out of the corner of your eye you noticed a flock of scavenger birds circling over something that must be hidden out of sight behind the giant rock to your right.
"Trust you to be scared of a half-eaten animal" you chuckled as you patted Ponos' neck in an effort to calm him down. A beautiful Chestnut coloured Belgian Draft, you'd named him after the Greek God of hard labour & toil and while you couldn’t fault his excellent work ethic and seemingly unlimited stamina, you soon realised why the stable owner had offered you such a cheap price for him all those years ago; this giant of a horse was easily spooked by the smallest of things.
After reaching up to grab your gun from underneath your seat, you started walking over to the most likely spot to investigate. If it was a fresh kill you had enough space on your wagon to throw the carcass on and take it home to make a nice meal or two out of.
Approaching the overgrowth behind the rock, the birds squawked and scattered when they realised that you were about to steal the meal they had their eyes on. Getting closer, you noticed a heaped mound laying there. Your mouth started to water as you realised whatever this was, it was certainly likely to be bigger than a rabbit and therefore would provide several tasty meals over the next few days. Using the barrel of your rifle, you cautiously moved apart the long grass, almost dropping your gun as you finally saw what was previously hidden.
Looking like death personified this was certainly no animal, but a seriously injured man. His poor face, gaunt, bloody and bruised. Judging by the shallow, laboured breaths you could see him trying to take, he was still alive - but only just.
"Sir? Sir? Can you hear me?" You asked, not really expecting a response but the almost corpse groaned and weakly nodded in response.
You glanced back at the grey clouds that had followed you on your journey from Annesburg, before looking back at this wretched soul. What was it your old pa used to tell you?
'There's never any harm in being a good Samaritan to those that need your help.'
Realising that you could never let yourself walk away and leave a healthy man to be stranded in a storm, let alone an almost dead one to succumb from his wounds, you quickly set your gun aside and placed his arms around your neck. Summoning all the strength you had, you somehow managed to pick the sandy-haired man up and manoeuvre him onto the back of your wagon.
"I live a short ride away, you’re welcome to rest there until you get your strength back up.” Unravelling a few pelts you had stored with the rest of your cargo, you tossed them over the injured man to help try to keep him warm.
"Sorry it's not very comfy but I guess it beats lying there in the cold waiting for the cruel embrace of death," you explained whilst taking out a carrot from your satchel to feed Ponos, in the hope he had gotten over his fear and was willing to continue your journey back home, “Tell me, do you have a name sir?”
Jumping back into the driver’s seat, you looked back over your shoulder, only to find your passenger had passed out.
#arthur morgan x reader#rdr2 fanfic#rdr secret santa 2020#fangirl writes#(this techincally is still a work in progress so i may edit parts in the future
66 notes
·
View notes
Text
Slow dancing in a burning room | d.m imagine
Request: no.
Word count: 3029
Pairing: draco x slytherin!reader with a tiny bit of oliver wood x slytherin!reader
Note: Major heartbreak. I was inspired by the song Slow dancing in a burning room by the talented John Mayer. For the best reading experience, I suggest you to listen to it while reading. Also, I might or might not have an idea for a second part, so let me know if you want that. Thanks. xx
The Yule Ball. Probably one of the greatest nights for the students in Hogwarts. The boys were nervous about asking the girls to go to the Ball with them, and they were furious about the fact that they had to take dance classes so they wouldn’t make a fool out of themselves during the opening dance. And the girls were excited to dress up nicely, and to do each other’s hair and makeup. It was a perfect night for those who were afraid to confess their feelings and ask their crush out on a date.
It was perfect for me to pretend that my heart was finally mended, and I didn’t spend my nights with crying and trying to erase all those shared memories from my mind. But the fact, that I wore the dress I had picked out just for him, because I knew how much he would have loved my long deep dark green satin dress with the diamond necklace he gave me for last Christmas didn’t really help. I just wanted to look good for him. Let him see how proud I was to be his. It hurt to see myself the way I was dressed up. I was dressed for him and not for my date. Or for myself. I looked exactly the way I wanted to look – just for him. Maybe I needed to hurt myself with this. Maybe it was a good step to finally start my healing process and learn to love myself.
- Are you ready? – Pansy turned to me after she finished her makeup – Wow, you look absolutely beautiful. I love this colour on you.
- Thank you – I smiled at her – You look amazing too. Blaise is going to faint when he sees you in this dress – I winked at her and laughed a bit at how her face turned into a dark shade of red. It was so amusing to watch my two friends being little troublemakers, but they were both afraid to tell each other how they truly felt.
- He better be, because I didn’t force myself into this dress for him to say nothing – she playfully rolled her eyes and dragged me out of the room. I was biting the inside of my mouth, and my nervousness grew by every step we took towards the stairs. I didn’t know if he was going to be there. I didn’t even know if he had asked someone to the Ball.
- Calm down – Pansy squeezed my hand and stopped me for a minute. She checked if anyone was close enough to hear what she was about to say, and when she made sure we were alone, she grabbed both of my hands and looked me in the eyes – I know what you’re thinking about, and you have to stop it right now. You have an amazing date for the Ball, and I want you to have a good time – she looked at me with sympathy in her eyes. Pansy was there in the first days, not leaving my side. She even slept next to me, so she could be there for me even in the middle of the night, when I had a dream about him and I, and I woke up choking on my tears. She was worried, and wanted nothing but understand everything. But how could I make her understand when I didn’t know either what was really going on?!
- It’s hard – I sighed and looked away – I don’t know if I…
- You can! – she assured me – I know that you can stay strong, Y/N. Listen to me, we go down to our dates. We dance. We have fun. And if you feel like you need to leave, you come to find me and we leave. I’ll always be here for you, okay? – she smiled – But at least try to enjoy the night. For your own sake.
She was right. I had to try at least. I nodded and took her hand in mine, leading her to the stairs. Our dates were already waiting for us at the bottom, standing next to each other and they were in a deep conversation; but when Blaise looked up and caught us, he nudged Oliver to pay attention to us. I forced a smile on my face, and walked down the stairs, with Pansy by my side. The look on Blaise’s face was worth it. He looked at Pansy like she was the only girl in the whole world, and the smile on his face told me he was very proud to be her date tonight. And maybe be even more after it.
- You look great – Oliver Wood smiled at me kindly and offered me his arm, which I gladly accepted and let him to lead me to the Great Hall, which was transformed into an even magical Ball room for the night. It was like our very own winter wonderland made out of ice. Everyone looked so different in their formal clothes. I was used to seeing them in their robes or in their sweaters, but they looked amazing. The room was slowly filled with the arriving couples and we were only waiting for the Champions to enter the room and open the dance so we can join them. Oliver had his arm around my shoulder, protecting me from the couples who surrounded us just to get a better look at the dancing Champions and their dates. I was smiling at how Harry managed to step on his own feet during dancing, when I caught a familiar pair of grey eyes. His face was mainly emotionless, but I could tell his jaw was clenched and he was frowning a bit. My heart skipped a beat as I checked how amazingly dashing he looked tonight. I would have bet his tuxedo cost a smaller fortune, but the white shirt and bow tie he had on somehow fit his pale skin. A few strands of his platinum blonde hair was almost in his eyes. I always loved that. It made him look less terrifying. But my heart dropped into my stomach when I saw that someone was clinging onto his arm. I had seen the girl before, she was a Slytherin too, but I never really heard her speaking to anyone apart from her best friend. I had to admit, she looked very good in her light blue dress. Her black hair was up in a tight bun, and little diamonds decorated it. I wondered if those were gifts from Draco.
- Come, dance with me – Oliver took my hand softly and pulled me to the dance floor. I was very thankful for his gesture. He pulled me close to his body, and let me rest my head on his chest. I was fighting back my tears, and tried very hard not to break down in the middle of the dance floor. He did come with someone else. He was allowed to. We broke up after all. Who was I to ban him from moving on? I should have done it too – He is still watching you – he whispered in my ear. I froze for a moment, but reminded myself that we were dancing, so I kept moving.
- I don’t know who you’re talking about – I answered him and twirled around. I put my hand back in his and followed his lead. Oliver was a great guy. I really liked him, and admired his passion for Quiditch. He was nice to everyone, and he had a good sense of humour. So when he asked me if I wanted to go to the Ball with him, I couldn’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t. Except for one, of course, but that was only a delusion.
- Y/N – he laughed – I saw the way you looked at him, like he was the only man in the whole world for you – he smiled softly – But I also saw the pain written on your face when you realised he came to the Ball with Darcy Hopkins – Oliver caressed my bare back with his hand – And you know what else I saw?
- What? – I asked with an annoyed but playful tone. I don’t think he knew how toxic our relationship was. Our close friends saw it, and tried to help. They were almost relieved when they heard us fighting one night. That night, when we ended things. That night, when we broke each other. But I don’t think that they’ve ever realize how hard it is to pull yourself out of a toxic relationship with someone you loved dearly.
- I saw how he looked at you when we entered the Hall. I’ve only seen him looking at you like that – Oliver looked down at me – And I saw how hurt he was when he realized that you had a date for tonight. Listen, Y/N, I’m not a relationship expert. My only long term relationship is with Quiditch – I laughed at him a little – But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell if a friend of mine is in love.
- It’s not that easy – I sighed – I really appreciate your kindness shown towards me. It means a lot to have someone trying to understand the whole situation, but I’d rather not talk about this. Tonight should be fun, and I really don’t want to ruin it for you with my constant whining about how Draco and I screwed up something that could have lasted a lifetime. Both he and I made huge mistakes, which eventually lead us to break up. I’m working on myself, and taking baby steps on the path of healing – I shrugged – I know this is going to take a while, but I also know that one day, I’ll be fine again.
- I’m happy to hear that, but I think he thinks about this differently – before I could ask him what he meant by this, I got my answer. My body went in shock when I saw Draco approaching us and looking at Oliver with respect and anger in his grey eyes. I was genuinely surprised how civilized he was acting, but again, he had no reason to be jealous or overprotective. We weren’t together.
- Excuse me, Wood – he looked at Oliver – Can I steal your partner away for a dance?
Oliver nodded and put my hand in Draco’s. When my skin touched his cold hands I felt like an electric shock ran through my whole body. I missed holding his hands in the hallways or at night. Playing with his long fingers while he laid in his bed, talking about everything and anything in the middle of the night. I missed feeling his hands around my body, when he held me close to himself while we were asleep. I had to force back my tears when I looked up at him. He was beautiful. Almost too beautiful to be too.
- May I have this dance? – he didn’t wait for my answer. Draco pulled me closer and placed his other hand on my waist. It was so easy for me to follow his lead. The memory of us slow dancing around the huge Christmas tree in the even huger living room of the Malfoy Manor from last winter rushed back to my mind. We sneaked out of his room after his parents went to sleep and cuddled up on the coach with hot chocolate in our hands, legs tangled as we watched the flames dancing in the fireplace. Out of nowhere, Draco stood up and pulled me with him to dance. And we did. We danced with no music playing, our carefree laughter filled the silent house. We were so happy and so in love in our bubble, we didn’t even realize that we actually woke up Lucius and Narcissa who watched us having fun.
- You look breathtakingly beautiful – he whispered in my ear. Shiver ran down my spine, and the butterflies woke up in my stomach. No, it wasn’t right. He was at the Ball with someone else, so I was. – Y/N…
- What are we going, Draco? – I asked him. A month had passed ever since the night when we broke up, and I had to realize, I was still unable to move on. All my attempts of forgetting him were for nothing, because now, that he held me so close to his body that I could feel his heart beating fast. And his cologne filled with mint and his natural scent filled my nose and mind to the point where I couldn’t think straight anymore. All those feelings, good and bad, love and pain, passion and suffering. It was him. And I.
- I miss you – he buried his face in my neck and took a deep breath – Why did you come to the Ball with Oliver?
- Oh, no – I pushed his head away – We are not doing this, Draco. You don’t have the right to ask me these kind of questions. We’re not together, so I don’t have to explain myself to you anymore.
- Y/N – Draco’s hands held me tighter, like he was trying to cling to me – Please. Did you forget everything we had? – his eyes were filled with pain – Don’t you remember the secret dates by the Great Lake? Or when we would sneak up to the Astronomy Tower to see the shooting stars and make wishes on them? – we were spinning around the dance floor, not paying attention to anyone around us – I only made one wish. To have you by my side and to feel your love for the rest of my life. Please, tell me you still remember…
- Of course I do – I said – But I also remember all the pain you caused. I still remember every fight we had. Every bad word we threw at each other. I remember the jealousy, and how insanely overprotective and controlling you would get from time to time – I looked up at him with tears in my eyes – I remember how much we were destroying each other, Draco.
- If it isn’t destroying you, then it is not love – his voice was hard. I looked away from him, only to catch Pansy and Blaise staring at us from the side of the dance floor. Their faces showed concern, worry and hope at the same time.
- No. If it is love, then is should build us – I said slowly – Our relationship was toxic, Dray. You have to face it. We were killing each other slowly – my voice broke a little – All we did was fight. You were never good with confessing your feelings to yourself, let alone showing it to someone. And I needed you to do it, so I pushed you. I’m terribly sorry for forcing you into something you clearly wasn’t comfortable with in the first place – I apologised to him – But I came to a realization, that if I have to fight and ask for your attention, than I don’t want it at all.
- What do you mean I never showed you how I felt? – he stopped for a bare second, but continued dancing – What about all the gifts that I bought to you?
- That’s exactly what I’m talking about – I raised my voice – Gifts. I never asked for them. All I wanted was your affection. All I wanted was you to love me the same way I loved you
- Loved? – this time he really stopped dancing. We were standing in the middle of the dance floor, facing each other for the first time in weeks. I could tell that our schoolmates were watching us, waiting for a big drama, but all I could think about was how did we end up here? After all those fights, we still had energy to argue more. And we did it while our song was playing in the background, just to make the whole situation even worse.
- I need to heal – tears ran down my cheeks as I looked him in the eye – You know that the only way a wound can heal, is if you stop touching it. You are that wound for me, Dray. I need to stay away from you. I need to stop thinking about you. I need to stop loving you so I can finally learn to be happy again without you. So I can love again one day.
I took a step closer to him. He looked so lost and so hurt. My heart was breaking by the sight of his grey eyes filling with tears. I placed a hand on his soft cheek and caressed the pale skin with my thumb in a calming way. After all, I can wanted the best for him.
- Until you heal yourself, you’ll be toxic to every woman who tries to love you, Draco – I whispered so only he could hear me. He grabbed the hand on his cheek and tried to pull me back to him, but I was faster and stepped away from him, turning my back at the boy who I loved with every piece of my heart. But he was also the boy who hurt me so many times. I never knew I could feel so much pain, and yet be so in love with the person causing it.
- Can we please leave? – I asked Oliver when I successfully pushed everyone out of my way. He was waiting by the huge door, looking at me with worry and concern written all over his face. Pansy was already standing there with him, knowing very well that I was going to need her too for the rest of the night. I wanted to look bad. I wanted to see him one last time. I don’t know what I wanted to see exactly. Maybe the pain in his eyes. The tears streaming down his beautiful angelic face. I wanted to see him in the same state that I had been in for weeks. But I couldn’t do it. I knew if I saw him hurt – because of me – I would have pushed away all the bad memories, all the pain, and the suffering that I had to go through because of him, and I would have ran back to him just to tell him how much I still love him and how much I want to protect him. But instead I grabbed Oliver and Pansy’s hands and dragged them with me to the courtyard. When I felt the cold breeze hitting my face, I let everything out. I fell in my knees and sobbed. I had to realize, if your heart hurts a little after letting go of someone that’s okay. It means that your feelings were genuine. No one likes endings. But sometimes we have to put things that were once good to an end after they turn toxic to our wellbeing. Not every new beginning is meant to last forever. And not every person who walks into our life is meant to stay. Most relationship fail not because of the absence of love. Love is always present. It’s just that one loves too much and the other loves too little.
Part 2?
#Draco Malfoy#draco fanfiction#draco x reader#draco imagine#draco x slytherin!reader#daddy draco#harry potter imagines#harry potter#hogwarts#yule ball#oliver wood#draco x y/n#draco x you
126 notes
·
View notes
Text
Snow Day
13 year olds Dipper and Mabel decide they want to spend their winter break up in Gravity Falls with their Grunkles and experience their first blizzard. Chaos ensues.
Notes: Here's my submission for a Secret Santa I participated in on discord! It was so much fun and I'm so glad I decided to participate this year!
Happy new year, @anistarrose! I'm your Santa!
The prompt: "I will crave and enthusiastically consume any form of Pines family bonding, time travel shenanigans, Bill getting dunked on, or any combination of the above." I, of course, had to go with the former, because you can never have enough plotless fluff and shenanigans!
AO3
Having been born and raised in California, Dipper and Mabel never got to experience winter the way television always promised they would. They never got to experience snowball fights, sled races, or building snowmen the way all the kids on TV got to.
Sure, they’ve seen snow before, it’s dusted here and there, but it was never enough to stick to the ground overnight. When they were younger, they always hoped the spirit of the season would be enough to bring them a blizzard so they could get snow days like all the kids on the east coast got to have, but it never came to be. They’d just about given up hope on the idea of playing in the snow in their own backyard when they were around ten years old.
Regardless, they looked forward to winter break every year. Their parents used to always take time off work to take them on a short vacation, and when Dipper and Mabel begged them to let them spend their winter break after their thirteenth birthday up in Gravity Falls with their Grunkles, their parents had said yes, which only made Dipper and Mabel look forward to break even more.
They left by bus an hour after their school let them free, and they arrived at the Mystery Shack eight hours later to their attic bedroom already set up for them.
~~
Dipper awakens to the sound of Mabel shrieking her head off at six in the morning. He nearly jumps half a foot in the air, scrambling to turn his bedside lamp on.
“Mabel?” he squeaks. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Dipper, look!” she beams, bouncing up and down on her feet and pointing out the window.
“Seriously?” he groans, rubbing at his eyes as he stands from his bed. “I thought we were already numb to Gravity Falls weirdness by now” he says, but can’t help the gasp that escapes him when he looks out the window to humor her. There’s so much snow falling from the sky that Dipper can’t even see the tree line of the forest beyond the shack, and there’s a layer of snow coating the ground so thick that it completely covers the steps of the back porch.
“Woah,” Dipper gasps. “I didn’t think it could snow that much in Oregon”
“That’s just the thing!” Mabel grins. “What if it can’t? What if the reason it snowed like, two feet overnight is because it’s all a part of the Gravity Falls weirdness? You remember what Stan said when he came to see Grunkle Ford, right? It was snowing!” she throws her arms up in the air dramatically. “Dips, do you know what this means? This could be our only opportunity to see snow like this without having to go to like, Alaska or something!”
“You know what else this means?” Dipper asks, frantically grabbing at her shoulders.
“What?”
He smirks, shoving her towards her bed as he books it for the door. “Race you outside!” he calls behind her, not even bothering to look behind his shoulder for her reaction.
“Hey! No fair!!” Mabel cries, scrambling to her feet and sprinting out of the room in an attempt to catch up with her brother. The young twins tumble down the stairs, and nearly collide with Ford on their way towards the kitchen where they’d last dumped their coats.
They yell a frantic apology in his general direction and unison, but they’re moving too frantically to hear his response. Dipper eventually makes it out of the shack first, and he’s standing with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face when Mabel meets him outside.
“You better not be telling me that I owe you any of my special cocoa for beating me out here” she pouts, crossing her arms over her chest to mimic Dipper. “Cheaters don’t get cocoa”
Dipper chuckles, his arms slipping to his side as he cautiously steps down the snow-covered steps of the deck. “Alright, fair enough.” He points an accusatory finger at her. “But it’s been eight years. You’re gonna have to tell me your recipe someday”
“In time, brother o’ mine,” she replies as she joins his side. “In time.”
For a few moments, neither of the young Pines twins say anything. In unison, they throw their heads back and lift their arms up into the air and let the snow fall gently on their face. Catching snowflakes on their tongues is a lot harder than TV makes it seem, but it feels good to just stand out in the snow and let it land gently on their face.
It’s peaceful. Dipper closes his eyes, and he knows if the snow weren’t so thick and wet and if his winter coat were better suited for it, he’d let himself fall back and lie down in it. But since it’s not, he settles for standing in place and just listening.
It’s peaceful, until it isn’t.
Something cold and wet smacks him in the back, and he’s so startled by it that he yelps. His eyes pop open, and he whips around frantically to see where that could’ve come from.
Dipper just barely misses the sound of Mabel’s maniac giggle before he’s pelted again, this time in the forehead.
“Yes!” Mabel cheers, pumping her fists in the air. “Bullseye! Two in a row!”
“No fair!” Dipper pouts, brushing the snow off of his hat. “I wasn’t paying attention!”
Mabel smirks as she bends to prepare another snowball. “What, so now you’re against cheating? You seriously need to work on your moral compass, bro”
He just manages to duck in time as he bends to form a snowball of his own. “That was different! It’s not like I’m the one who woke you up unreasonably early this morning!”
“Pssh,” she waves a dismissive hand. “I just as easily could’ve come out without you if I wanted to”
Dipper takes her brief moment of distraction to pelt her in the arm with a snowball. “Nuh-uh,” he mocks, the same way he has since they were toddlers. “Admit it; you don’t have the heart. You love me too much”.
“Ewww, never” she cringes dramatically, and lunges the snowball she’d been solidifying between her hands directly towards his face. Dipper tries to duck, but miscalculates the force and speed of her throw and the snowball splats against his face so roughly and suddenly that it knocks him to the ground.
“Ohmigosh!” Mabel declares, the playful tone in her voice gone. “Dipper, are you okay?” she asks, running to his side. His response is an incomprehensible mumble, muffled by the snow he hasn’t wiped off his face yet.
“What was that?” she asks, leaning closer.
Underneath the snow, Dipper smirks, and balls the pile of snow sitting on his face and shoves it into Mabel’s. “I said you’re going down”
He stands to his feet, bunching his fists into the snow to gather a bunch of it at once, and Mabel half-shrieks, half-giggles as she makes a run for it. Dipper almost manages to snag her right in the head, until she suddenly takes a sharp turn to hide behind one of the wooden columns supporting the roof of the shack.
“Hey!” he shouts, and just barely dodges a snowball she lobs at him from her hiding spot.
“What?” she calls, popping her head out from being her hiding spot. “Nobody ever said that hiding was against the rules! Besides!” she gestures to the column mirror to hers that’s closest to him. “It’s not like I’m hiding somewhere super-secret, or anything!” She lobs another ball in his direction. “The longer you stand there the more vulnerable you become!” she singsongs, tossing a snowball back and forth between her hands teasingly.
Dipper makes a dive for it into the snow, and crawls along until he’s standing behind the wooden column, shoving fistfuls of snow into his pocket along the way. Mabel groans, like she can’t believe she didn’t think to crawl away before he did, and attempts to launch a snowball at him as he’s standing up. She misses, and Dipper can’t help but laugh as the snowball sticks to his wooden column and doesn’t budge.
He mashes the snow in his pocket into a ball, and grabs a bunch more snow to make it even bigger. He winds his arm back like throwing it harder is going to make aiming it any easier, and hears the back door creaking open just half a second too late.
The snowball flings out of his hand, but instead of hitting Mabel, his intended target, the snowball hits Ford as he’s coming out of the door with such force that it knocks his glasses off of his face.
Dipper freezes, looking absolutely horrified, and Mabel bursts into hysterical laughter.
“Grunkle Ford!” Dipper shouts, wiping his hands off on his jacket and running towards his great-uncle. He’s expecting him to look shocked, or sad, or even angry, but when Ford gets his glasses back on his face he’s nearly laughing as hard as Mabel is.
“I…” Ford starts, removing his glasses for a brief moment to wipe some of the excess snow from his lenses. “…came out to see how you were doing, because I saw you running by me in the kitchen, but I guess you’ve already answered that question for me”
“Grunkle Ford, I’m so sorry,” Dipper’s gaze falls to the ground, his cheeks turning pink in embarrassment. Ford only chuckles and places a gentle hand on Dipper’s shoulder, prompting him to meet his eyes again.
“There’s no need to apologize, my boy. I love the snow. Stan and I used to have snowball fights all the time when we were kids”
“Really?” Mabel beams, stepping out from her hiding spot.
Ford nods. “Every time we had the day off from school, he’d wake me up by sneaking a snowball into the house and throwing it at me while I was still asleep in bed.” He shakes his head affectionately. “You could never wake Stanley up early for anything, but the moment school got cancelled on account of a blizzard, he was up an hour earlier than even Ma or Pa”
Ford takes a few steps forward and leans against the wooden pillar, gazing out at the falling snow. “I always did wonder what he was up to those first few winters after Pa kicked him out. I tried forgetting, I tried telling myself he wasn’t worth the time of day, but…”
For the briefest of moments his shoulders tense, like he’s suddenly overcome with the image of Stan freezing to death in his Diablo, but he shakes that image off with a deep breath and his shoulders relax as normal. He bends to pick up a handful of snow, and lets it fall between his fingers. “Now, though, I’m just happy to see it again,” he turns his gaze back towards the younger twins. “Haven’t had a chance to see it in thirty years”
“What?” the young twins ask in perfect unison.
“Not even in the multiverse?” Dipper asks, and Ford shakes his head.
“Most dimensions didn’t have a concept of weather. Even the dimension that was supposedly a perfect copy of our Earth was eternally summer” he muses, and steps down from the porch and into the snow. For a brief moment he too merely stands where he is and watches the snow fall, until an idea visibly comes to him and a devilish grin spreads across his face.
“I have an idea,” he says, grabbing two handfuls of snow, and disappearing back into the house.
There’s nothing but the sound of Ford’s boots on the hardwood and the whistling wind, and then nothing at all, and then the sound of Stan shrieking.
Ford comes running out the door again, grinning so hard that his smile could split his face in two. Stan follows close behind, but stops in front of the doorway, clad in his ratty tank top and boxer shirts with a large chunk of snow splatted against his chest.
Dipper and Mabel exchange glances, and can’t help the snickers that escape them.
“For your information, I was in the middle of something very important” Stan grumbles, jabbing an accusatory finger at Ford.
Ford only laughs, forms another snowball, and throws it at Stan, still in the doorway. “Mm, how dare I pull you away from your black and white Victorian era romances right?”
“Alright, that’s it” Stan growls, and slams the door closed. He’s only gone for a minute or two, and when he opens the door again he’s wearing a puffy winter coat and pants. “You want a fight? You’re gettin’ a war.”
He steps outside, sprinting down the porch steps and shoveling handful of snow onto the sleeve of his jacket until he’s got an entire armful. He bunches it all together until he’s got a singular giant snowball in his hands. Ford’s eyes go wide at the sight, and he takes a few cautious steps backwards.
“S-Stanley, I was just joking, you must understand that I’m not properly dressed for this” he chuckles nervously, raising his hands in the air in defeat.
“Y’got your turtleneck, don’t ya?” Stan grins devilishly, solidifying the snowball in his hands. “Besides, that never stopped me when we were kids, now did it?” He steps cautiously towards Ford so as not to drop his snowball, and lunges it right in his brother’s face.
The hit lands, and Ford falls to the ground the same way Dipper had just moments ago.
The two young twins exchange glances, and can’t help but break into hysterical laughter. Ford sits up, removing his glasses to remove the snow that had gotten shoved behind the frames, and wipes them off on his sweater before heading back towards the door.
“Fine,” Ford replies. “If you want a war, you’re getting a war”
“Hey, now wait just a minute, brainiac” Stan crosses his arms over his chest. “I recognize that tone. Don’t think I’m letting you use any of your fancy-schmancy interdimensional weapons against me. We got all the weapons we need right here” he gestures to the snow around him. “I may be a professional conman, but at least I have standards when it comes to these sorts of things” he closes his eyes, nodding sagely. “If we’re waging a war on each other, it better be waged fairly”
He pauses for a few moments, his gaze turning to the young twins. “…and turn those two against each other!” He points towards them, and approaches the two of them. He picks Mabel up by her waist, and places her on his shoulders. “I call Mabel! Girl’s got aim and can take you and brainiac junior down any day”
“Yes!” Mabel chants, pumping her arms in the air. “Team personality reigns superior again!”
“We reconvene here in five.” Stan says. “Go and get your coat on if you so insist to put any more layers on, and then all bets are off” he bows sarcastically to Ford, Mabel giggling on his shoulders.
“Best of luck to you, Sixer” he teases. “You’re gonna need it”
Dipper watches as Ford disappears inside, and Stan and Mabel run off to another part of the shack’s backyard. Stan kneels on the ground, and Mabel leap-frogs off of his shoulder to help him build a snow fort for defense. Upon seeing that he’s watching them, they both form snowballs in their hand and threaten him with them.
Dipper yelps, and runs back towards the porch before they can hit him. Something creaks, and Dipper nearly jumps a foot in the air, but his tension melts when he just realizes that it’s Ford coming back outside with a thick coat and winter hat.
“How are things looking?” Ford asks, placing a gloved hand on Dipper’s shoulder.
Dipper shakes his head. “It’s not looking good. Mabel’s got strength and sculpting abilities, and they’ve already started on their fort. By the time we can even start on our foundation they’ll already have a castle built”
Ford hums in acknowledgement. “And we both know how Stan is with cheating” he taps at his chin. “What we’ll need is strategy”
“Hey!” Stan shouts from across the lawn. “Are we talking or are we fighting? Get a move on!” He tosses a snowball that lands in the space between Ford and Dipper.
“…Right,” Ford says. “We’ll strategize as we go along then”
Dipper drops to the ground where he stands, bunching armfuls of snow together to build a small wall. He silently gestures for Ford to help him, and he obliges, wordlessly kneeling to the ground and helping to pile snow onto the singular-walled fort. Once it’s tall enough to cover Dipper, he tugs Ford to a crouching position.
“Okay,” Dipper whispers. “So far, Mabel’s strategy has been to…not have one. She builds a bunch of snowballs at once, and then flings them all at once. If we want to knock her out, we need to wait until she needs to restock”
Ford chuckles affectionately. “She sounds just like Stan when he was a kid. He’d have to make the biggest snowball he could. I’m sure there’ll be an overlap between the two of them needing to restock at some point”
Dipper smiles. “They sure do have a lot in common, don’t they?”
Ford ruffles his hair. “I’m sure they say the same exact thing about us, my boy”
Dipper beams at that, but before he can respond he’s interrupted by the sound of Mabel screaming “CHARGE!” and snowballs being pelted at their small wall. Dipper and Ford dive out of the way, and Dipper starts shoving snow into his hands. Without lifting his head over the wall, he attempts to throw his snowball back at Mabel, but misses and only hits the edge of her fort.
“Hah! That the best you’ve got?” Stan taunts, popping his head out from behind cover. Beside Dipper, Ford flings a snowball back at him, and a soft oof escapes Stan as the snowball hits him in the shoulder. He grumbles something to Mabel that neither Dipper nor Ford can hear, and soon after Mabel pops her head out too. She and Stan start pelting snowballs at Dipper and Ford in unison. A good number of them miss, but when Dipper pops his head up during a short pause to check and see if they stopped to reload, he’s pelted right in the forehead. Stan and Mabel high five, and Dipper groans as he attempts to scrub the snow away.
“Okay,” Dipper whispers, crouching to the ground once more. “I think they’re restocking.” He bunches some snow into his arms. “You ready?”
Ford nods. “I’m ready”
The two of them pop out from behind their wall, and start pelting as many snowballs at Stan and Mabel as they can manage. Some of them are tiny, some of them are huge, and Dipper doesn’t notice that one of them had a frozen acorn in it until it was too late, but they’re getting a good rhythm going. Dipper manages to knock Stan’s hat off his head, and Ford’s able to knock Mabel’s snowball out of her hand as she’s still trying to put it together.
“Yes!” Dipper cheers, and from across the yard Mabel crosses her arms across her chest.
“Booo,” she calls. “No fair! We never said anything in the rules about strategizing!”
“It’s a snowball fight, Mabel, there aren’t any rules!”
“Exactly!” she calls back. “Snowball fights are supposed to be about chaos!” She throws her arms in the air. “Not calculating the best angle for wind trajectory, or whatever nerdy thing you and Grunkle Ford have been talking about!”
She chucks another snowball as hard as she can, and this one smacks against Dipper and Ford’s tiny excuse for a fort. It crumples to the ground with a pathetic splat, leaving them vulnerable from every angle.
“See?” She grins. “Just like that!”
“Hah! Nice shot, pumpkin!” Stan cheers, and he and Mabel high-five again. Even from where Dipper sits he can see their playful grins melt away into maniacal smirks, and just barely has enough time to see them shoveling snow into their hands before Ford grabs his hand and begins sprinting to another part of the yard, doing anything he can to avoid being pelted with snow.
“New plan,” Ford whispers to Dipper as they run frantically around the yard as if it were a minefield. “Take down their fort. Once their defense is gone, they’ll be just as vulnerable as us, and it’ll give us a better chance at taking them down”
Dipper salutes him, trying and failing to keep the goofy grin on his face. “Understood”
With that, the two of them split off into different directions. Dipper doesn’t quite see where Ford disappears to, because as soon as he splits off from Ford he’s on his knees smushing together as many snowballs as he can in one go. Once he’s got enough, he stands to his feet and charges back towards the direction of Stan and Mabel’s fort. He starts blindly lunging snowballs at them, not risking even a second to give them an opportunity to knock the snowballs out of his arms. Dipper knows that without Ford by his side he’s twice as vulnerable, but he also knows that once Stan and Mabel’s fort comes down they’ll all be on equal ground.
He misses every shot he takes at the fort, but finds malicious satisfaction in “accidentally” hitting Stan square in the face. He dives to the ground shortly after to avoid being hit by the retaliation attack, and his frantic recreation of more snowballs is frozen dead in its tracks at the sound of footprints crunching in the snow quickly behind him. Dipper curls in on himself, afraid of the possibility that Stan snuck away when he wasn’t looking to sneak up and attack him from behind.
The attack never comes, though, and when Dipper finds the bravery to sit up and glance behind him he sees Ford sprinting towards the three of them with a massive snowball in each hand. Stan and Mabel yelp in surprise, ducking beneath their fort for cover, but it’s no use, for when Ford hurls his snowballs at their fort it comes crumbling to the ground.
For a few moments, nobody says a word. Dipper, Stan, and Mabel sit in shock, exchanging glances. There’s nothing to break up the silence between them but the whistling wind and their heavy breathing.
Until Mabel stands to her feet, brushes herself off, and shouts “FREE FOR ALL!!”
She gathers a bunch of snow between her hands, throws it at Stan’s chest, and all chaos breaks loose from there. The rest of the family is on their feet in an instant, chasing each other around the yard in a blur of jackets and gloves and flying snowballs. Dipper gets knocked to the ground face-first by a snowball to the back of the neck, but he’s having too much fun to notice the cold feeling on his face. Ford manages to knock Stan’s glasses off of his face, and Stan retaliates by throwing a wad of snow at the only exposed part of Ford’s neck. The high-pitched squeak that escapes Ford at the sensation makes the kids laugh, and they form a temporary truce to team up against Stan to see if they can get similar results from him. It works, once they’re able to lunge a snowball at his exposed wrists, but comes at the cost of Stan turning and lunging snowballs at them in return.
Dipper’s laughing too hard from the chaos of it all to notice Ford approaching him until it’s too late. Instead of pelting him with snow, though, Ford picks him up by the waist. “I’ve got one more idea to take the others down, if you’re still willing to work with me” he whispers, and Dipper nods wordlessly. Ford places Dipper on his shoulders, gently bends to gather a snowball in his hands without letting Dipper slip off. He then offers it to Dipper, and even without saying a word Dipper can tell he’s got a smirk on his face.
Dipper glances between the snowball in Ford’s hand and Mabel and Stan, and finds a smirk spreading to his own face. He takes the snowball from Ford, and as soon as it’s out of his hand he starts charging towards the other two.
“Sweet moses!” Stan yelps, leaping out of the way of their path. He jumps to his feet, brushing the snow off of his coat, and looks to Mabel. She nods, and he picks her up and places her on his shoulder as well.
“Winner takes all?” Mabel smirks, leaning her elbows against Stan’s head.
“You know it,” Dipper grins, mimicking her gesture and leaning against Ford’s head. “If we win, you have to make us your special hot chocolate. If you win, I dunno, you just get the same old boring hot chocolate I always make because someone is too stubborn to share her recipe”
Mabel sticks her tongue out and blows a raspberry at him. At Stan’s call, the two pairs messily charge towards each other. Stan and Ford struggle to bend down to pick up mounds of snow without accidentally dropping the younger twin off of their shoulders, and Dipper and Mabel struggle to throw the snowballs handed to them by their Grunkles without almost falling backwards off of their shoulders. For the first few minutes Dipper wonders if this was a bad idea, but as soon as Stan and Ford figure out their balance and fall into a pattern with the respective twin on their shoulder, Dipper almost wishes that they’d been doing it this way from the very start.
From up here on Ford’s shoulders, Dipper feels like he can accomplish anything. He knows, logically, that Ford can’t be any more than two feet taller than him, and that he already has gone through the apocalypse and won, but there’s something about this height that just makes Dipper feel safe.
That is, of course, until Mabel pelts him in the forehead with a snowball and nearly knocks him to the ground. Dipper grips onto the edge of Ford’s jacket just a bit tighter, and Ford nods silently to reach a hand up and gently squeeze Dipper’s hand in reassurance that he doesn’t intend to let go that easy. The two pairs prove to be a near-equal match, and their battle lasts for nearly an hour until the moment that Stan misinterprets Dipper’s body language and ducks at the wrong time, and Dipper’s able to knock Mabel off of her grunkle’s shoulder with a soft thud.
“Yes!” Dipper pumps his fist in the air as Ford helps him to the ground, and goes to offer Mabel a hand to help her off the ground.
“Good game”
She tries to fake an angry pout at him, but it doesn’t stick. “Good game, you dork” she takes his hand to stand, and punches him in the shoulder as she stands. She walks to take Stan by the hand, and gestures towards the shack. “But you’ve made one fatal mistake, brother” she smirks over her shoulder as she and Stan make their way inside. “You never specified that I had to tell you the recipe if we lost, just that I had to make it for you”
Dipper splutters, and opens his mouth to respond, but she’s already gone before he can think of a good comeback. He pouts, crossing his arms over his chest. A gentle hand on his shoulder tears him from his thoughts, and when he looks up at the source he sees Ford smiling at him in amusement. He doesn’t say anything, just sort of shakes his head, and the two of them follow Stan and Mabel inside.
Once inside, Dipper runs up the stairs to kick off his wet clothes and to change into something dryer and warmer. While he waits for Mabel to finish preparing everyone’s cups of cocoa, he drags all of the blankets from their beds downstairs and drops them into a pile on the living room floor, climbing underneath it for warmth. To Dipper’s surprise, Ford kneels on the ground and joins him under the blanket pile, winding an arm around his nephew for warmth.
“It’s ready!” Mabel cheers, stepping carefully into the room with two nearly-overflowing mugs donned with whipped cream, chocolate shavings, chocolate sprinkles, and a straw-shaped cookie sticking out of the mound. Dipper takes his mug carefully, and Ford chuckles as he takes his own.
“You know, Mabel, the multiverse had thousands of different flavors of whipped cream. The Pines Family sweet tooth is a strong one, and I collected as many as I could without getting caught by their equivalent of customs”
“Really?” her eyes become stars, stopping in her tracks on her way back to the kitchen. “Did you sneak any back home?”
Ford nods. “I’ve got a lovely cherry cream locked away in the basement lab for safe keeping.” He takes a sip of the hot chocolate in his hands, leaving a white moustache of cream across his lips. “If you’d like, I’d love to experiment with making a cherry cordial hot chocolate sometime”
“Are you kidding?” She squeals. “I’d love to!”
If it weren’t for Stan’s soft grunt as he takes a seat on Dipper’s other side, he’d have been too distracted watching Mabel and Ford geek out over food experiments to notice his arrival. Dipper smiles at them one last time before shifting his gaze to Stan.
“Grunkle Stan?” He says, before taking a sip from his own cup.
Stan raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“I wish all of our winter breaks could be like this”
Stan smiles warmly, ruffling up Dipper’s hair. “Me too, kiddo. Me too”
48 notes
·
View notes
Text
Red Dead Secret Santa
Howdy @mileycyprus-hill I’m your secret Santa this year! I hope you like my gift to you!
Masterlist
Read on AO3
Arthur sits astride his horse, his fingers aching from the cold. He shaked his hand a little, trying to fend off the ever-pressing chill. Even inside these rabbit-fur gloves, the low temperature bites his skin. Not only that, but his toes are chilled, his nose, his neck and ears. The one thing that keeps him warm is the thought of coming home to you and his two children.
You’ve been Arthur’s anchor for many years now. Even before the gang fell apart, you were his rock. His best decision was to marry you, and his two favorite days were when his children were born. However, despite having a proper home now where you can live a quiet, peaceful, and most of all safe life, Arthur still has his wandering spirit. He definitely doesn’t stay away for as long of periods as when he was just a gang member. Usually he’s only out a couple of days.
He’d left three days ago to go “hunting with John”. Or that’s what he told you and the kids. In reality, he’d taken a trip down to Blackwater to do some last minute Christmas shopping. He wanted something special for all three of you, and luckily Blackwater, being the large port for trade that it was, provided just that. After he’d done some shopping, he’d continued wandering to hunt for game, mostly as an excuse to you for being gone so long.
The wind blows hard again, picking up a cloud of the freshly fallen snow and nearly taking his hat. His hand steadies it, securing it back onto his head and keeping him warm. Oh what he wouldn’t give to be in his warm home with the most important things to him. The steady mare beneath him snorts, seeming just as miserable as him. He pats her neck. “Almost home, girl.”
Around him, the iconic sharp mountains south of Valentine appear out of the fog. They’re covered in a beautiful blanket of snow, thanks to the major winter storm that had come through the night before. He looks up at the darkening sky, feeling even colder at the sight of the thick clouds.
After another hour of riding, Arthur finally reaches the fork in the trail that will lead him home. Just as the snow begins drifting down in fat flakes again, he sees the lights of his cabin. His heart lifts at the sight, thinking about your face.
When his mare’s in her stall with some food and a blanket on, he heads to the cabin with the gifts tucked away inside the furs in his arms. The moment he opens the door, he hears a squeal. Smiling, he drops his load on the floor and bends down to pick his five year old daughter up.
“Papa!” she huffs in his face. She pokes his red nose. “Cold, papa.”
“Yep, I’m cold, darlin’.”
“I get a blanket, papa,” she says and he puts her down, chuckling as her short legs carry her off. His eyes immediately find you. His entire body warms at the sight of you coming over to him to greet him with a kiss. He returns it enthusiastically, loving the feeling of you in his arms again, right where you belong.
“Where’s my boah?” he asks gently when you pull away.
As though on queue, the two year old comes toddling out. He’s carrying his stuffed horse, his eyes the same color as yours nearly hidden under his mop of dirty blond hair. “Pa!” he hollers at seeing Arthur. Once again, he bends down to pick up his son.
“Hey son. You been good for your mama?”
“Oh I don’t know about that,” you tease, patting Arthur’s back as you go over to the stove to pull dinner off.
Smiling, Arthur puts his son down and then takes off his winter gear before helping you pull out the dishes.
“Mm, smells so good, darlin’,” he says, looking at the meal before him. He’s just glad he got home in enough time to eat with his family. “So, how was our little girl?”
You sigh a bit. Your daughter has always been a daddy’s girl and when Arthur leaves, she can be a downright nightmare. She pouts a lot, but the likelihood of her throwing a tantrum multiplies by ten. “She’s… well, you know how she is.”
Arthur smiles and decides to go and find her. After all, wasn’t she getting him a blanket? He goes to her room that she shares with her brother and finds her laying in bed on her favorite blanket. She instantly grins when she sees him and he knows she’s been waiting for him to come fetch her.
“Come on, baby. You gonna come eat?”
“I have a blanket, papa.”
He chuckles and picks her up, her blanket still clutched to her. She instantly lays her head on his chest. He loves how cuddly she is with him. He remembers briefly how when she was about a year old, she’d gotten sick. Both you and him were so scared she’d die, and Arthur spent many nights with her tucked against his chest as he sat in a rocking chair by the fire, trying to keep her alive. Ever since then, she’d been his biggest fan.
When he walks out with her in his arms, you smile again and the four of you sit down to eat. Arthur silently says a thank you to whomever might be listening that he got home tonight. After all, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. He wouldn’t miss spending it with his family for anything in the world.
The next day is spent in some chaos. You and Arthur always clean the house from top to bottom during the day of Christmas Eve, hampered by your two kids. Although your daughter tries to help, she’s only five. Plus it’s Christmas, which means she’s more hyper than if you’d let her drink some of your morning coffee. Her brother isn’t much better, and being two he’s as destructive as a tornado. However, you and Arthur manage to keep them mostly in check. It’s still a relief when night comes and you can finally sit down to eat dinner.
Arthur always catches a wild turkey for Christmas Eve dinner and this year is no exception. If Arthur prides himself on anything, it’s his ability to take care of his family. He sometimes regrets not giving the same attention to Eliza and Isaac when they were alive, but he’s grown a lot since they died. When the gang fell apart, it really shook his world but when you stuck by his side he knew he’d die for you.
Arthur sits down at the table, sighing as he prepares to carve the turkey. You’ve done your best to create a beautiful dinner; Arthur grabs your hand and tells you it looks wonderful (although he’s sure the potatoes have a little more garlic than needed). Luckily your kids are sitting relatively quiet, although it’s clear they’re jittery.
After stuffing yourselves, Arthur does what he’s done every year since you began your family and sits down in his chair. His daughter immediately crawls into his lap, a book in her hand.
“Papa, here’s the book,” she says, handing it to him and then curling into him. He chuckles and opens the book. He reads this every year on Christmas Eve after dinner. You sit in another chair with your son on your lap. He’s clutching his stuffed horse again, but he’s got his wooden cowboy that Arthur made him for Christmas last year. As Arthur begins to read, your son plays with his toys, thankfully quietly.
You love listening to Arthur read, how the words come alive with his deep tones. You love watching him even more right now with his daughter tucked against him. He’s been such a blessing as a husband. Never have you had to worry about how ends would meet, about food being on the table, about your children’s safety and it’s because of his efforts.
When Arthur finishes reading, he closes the book and his daughter yawns. “Hey, why you goin’ to sleep? We ain’t done yet, baby. Ya need your Eve gift.”
Immediately she perks up and hops off his lap. “Papa! Go get it!”
He chuckles and stands up, and so do you. He kisses you briefly before heading outside into the darkness. It’s traditional for your kids every year to get new pajamas and a new story book before bedtime.
After a few minutes, he comes back in with two packages, similarly sized. Your daughter immediately squeals with excitement, but your son runs over and grabs his leg. “Pa! Up, up!” He gestures for Arthur to pick him up.
“A’right, gimme a second, boah. Ya gotta open your present first.”
He hands the kids their gifts and they immediately rip into them. His daughter giggles when she sees the pretty little night dress of her favorite color, while the boy inspects his new boy’s union suit. He’s young enough to not really understand the tradition yet, so he’s a little disappointed. However, he sees the children’s book and gets excited. Although he can’t read yet, he loves stories.
After the kids have opened their present, Arthur puts his arm around you. “A’right kids. Who can get dressed in their new pajamas first?”
Your daughter stands up, giggling madly. “Me! Me!” She books it into her arm, closely followed by her brother, although his stubby legs greatly hamper his speed.
When the kids are in their room getting dressed, Arthur grabs your shoulders and turns you to face him. He bends down and kisses you deeply. His behavior tells you that, if the kids were already in bed, he’d be laying you down near the fire and making sweet love to you. It’s all you want as well, but too soon the kids’ door opens and your daughter comes bustling out in her new PJ’s, followed by her pouting brother. It’s obvious who finished dressing first.
Arthur rewards both of them, telling them how good they are. He then tells them it's time to read one of their stories for bed and that the sooner they go to sleep, the sooner they get presents. You follow them all into the kids’ room and watch as Arthur sits down on your son’s bed. His daughter, as always, crawls into his lap as he reads one of their new books. It’s expected when he finishes, they both argue to him to read the other one. If it hadn’t been Christmas Eve, he probably would’ve said no, but tonight’s different.
By the time he’s done reading, both kids are drifting off. He stands up and lays his daughter in bed, pulls the covers over her and kisses her head. After, he does the same for his son. When he’s done, you go in and say your good nights and give kisses as well.
After both kids are put down, you and Arthur clean up the house and then lay out the kids’ presents for the morning. Without a doubt, your daughter will come out of her room in the middle of the night to gaze at them to make sure they’ve shown up. You don’t mind though, she never opens them until morning when you and Arthur have woken.
When everything’s done, Arthur pulls you into a one-armed hug and gives you a squeeze. “Come on, beautiful. We got a long day tomorrow.”
With a yawn, you nod and let him guide you to your bedroom. Once there, you begin pulling out your nightgown to change. Arthur’s hands are suddenly on you and he’s kissing your shoulder from behind.
“You ain’t gonna need that now, darlin’. I’m gonna keep you warm all night.”
Sighing, you let Arthur slip your clothes off and begin touching you. With surprising speed and strength, he picks you up and tosses you onto the bed. Giggling, you watch him crawl over your naked body. With a wicked grin, you can tell exactly what he’s going to do.
“Can I give you my gift early?” he says, but he doesn’t wait for you to respond. Sighing in the pleasure of his touches and kisses, you know it’s going to be a long night.
39 notes
·
View notes
Text
i’ll be home for christmas
pairing: bucky barnes x reader
word count: 4,019
summary: Bucky made a promise to his girl, and Steve helps him keep it.
warnings: Some h*ckin’ words.
a/n: So like. I just slapped this together when the idea came to me last night. Let me know what you think!
Bucky Barnes was tired.
And not the tired that came from being on your feet all day, no. He was the kind of tired that was bone deep. It sunk down underneath his skin and took root in all the small crevices of his body. It lingered in the lines on his palms and the soft skin behind his knees.
He let out a groan befitting his true age as he got up off the bed, moving to his dresser. A picture frame sat on the dark wood, an old engagement ring sitting next to it. His eyes rested on your face for an extra minute or two as he took in a deep breath.
It was a picture of you from 1942. You were wearing that pretty green dress that brought out your eyes, your hair perfectly curled. From a first glance, the photo looked so serious, but he could see the twitch of a poorly contained smile at the corner of your lips. It was a photo your mother had taken with your family’s color camera.
A luxury, in those days.
Your family had been one of the ones a little better off after the stock market crashed. You weren’t thrown into the same kind of poverty that he was.
Your family was old money and old money didn’t crash and burn because it didn’t believe in the banks. Your father kept your family’s fortune in a safe in your house.
When the banks had failed, you guys had stayed afloat.
Not that your family hadn’t helped out others. You’d been so kind. Your father had given him a winter coat when he’d seen that his was several sizes too small and worn thin.
Bucky had been eighteen and still wearing the coat he got when he was twelve.
Your father had also been his boss when he worked at the docks, and had subsequently been the reason that his family had survived those harsh years. They hadn’t been able to survive on his pa’s savings forever, especially not after his ma lost her job when she broke her hand.
But that was so long ago.
“We’re doing some pretty big things today, darlin,’” he said as he pulled on his jacket. “Stevie’s going back in time to take the Infinity Stones back. He’s gotta take them to the exact moment in time they were taken or it’ll create alternative timelines or something like that. It was a lot of words that even I couldn’t understand, and you know how much of a nerd I am.” He took a deep breath, running his fingers through his hair. “I miss you, baby,” he whispered as he pressed two fingers to his lips before gently touching the glass of the photo frame, right where your lips were. “I love you always.”
“BARNES!”
Bucky looked up to see his supervisor, Davies, calling him over. He wiped his hands on his jeans as he headed over, calling out, “Yes, sir?”
“We’ve got a new shipment coming in late tonight. Is there anyway you could come in?” Davies asked, at least having the decency to appear a little apologetic. “I’ll throw in a coupla extra bucks for ya, kid.”
He sighed, glancing down at his shoes. They were his one good pair and they were starting to wear through. There was no denying that he was going to need a new pair in the upcoming months, and that’s not to mention how fast Becca was growing.
She’d need a new dress within just a few weeks, he was sure of it.
And Christmas was coming up. Fuck.
As much as Becca insisted that she didn’t need a Christmas present, that she understood how rough things were, he still needed to do something for her. He needed to preserve that little bit of normalcy, that idea that Christmas was special.
Maybe a new pair of stockings. Or some mittens. Something small and simple that he might be able to afford.
“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that,” he said.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Davies said with a grin. “You’re the best damn guy we got working here. Keep it up. Maybe there’s a promotion in your future.”
God, he hoped so. With how bleak everything had been, his family could really use the knowledge of knowing that he had a secure job and secure pay, even if it wasn’t a lot.
The chatter of the men around him died down a little with the sound of heels clacking on the wet docks, and he turned to see you walking towards the main office, a bag in your hand. You wandered the edge of the docks, eyes on the water that crashed up against the concrete walls.
You didn’t seem to notice the way the men were staring at you, or if you did, you hid it well. You burrowed down into your thick winter coat, the mink fur lining the color keeping your ears warm. Your hair was styled in a sleek French twist, a style his ma used to do a lot for Sundays at church.
You were beautiful.
But Bucky watched almost in slow motion as your heel slipped on the ice that covered the docks, your eyes going wide as you fell into the icy water with a crash.
The other men were frozen in place, not sure what to do. They were torn between wanting to help and not wanting to risk the icy depths.
His heart pounding, Bucky ran for where you’d disappeared, tearing off his threadbare coat along the way. The men shouting at him sounded like buzzing in his ears as he dove in.
Eyes stinging from the salt water, he felt his heart jump as he saw you struggling to swim to the surface, bogged down by heavy skirts and your coat. He grabbed you by the waist, holding you close to his chest, before pushing up to the surface.
Blinking away the water in his eyes, he was greeted with men surrounding the area that he’d jumped from.
You were sputtering in his arms, coughing up water and clutching onto him for dear life.
“I’ve got you,” he said, his legs working in overtime as he worked to keep both of you afloat. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“SOMEONE GIVE ‘IM A HAND!”
Bucky passed you off to one of the men, waiting for you to be pulled up onto the docks before he allowed several hands to pull him up. He collapsed on the cold concrete, staring up at the sky as he tried to catch his breath. He pushed himself up, grabbing his coat from where it’d fallen. “You’re gonna catch your death,” he said as he threw it over you, trying to shield you as best as he could from the wind coming off the water.
“FLOWER! FLOWER!”
He looked up to see the big boss man, the one who owned the docks, running towards them. His eyes widened as he realized that you looked remarkably like him.
“D-Daddy,” you stammered, coughing up more water.
“Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” her father said as he fell to his knees in front of you. He held your face in his hands as he checked you over for any sort of injuries. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” you insisted, holding onto him. “Thanks to him.” You nodded over to Bucky, and it was then that your father finally seemed to notice him.
He swallowed as the man’s eyes fixed on him. “You saved my daughter?” He asked.
Bucky slowly nodded. “It was nothing, sir,” he insisted.
“It wasn’t nothing,” he insisted, helping you up. He held out a hand to Bucky, who gave him a look of bewilderment.
It wasn’t often that rich men held out their hand to poor boys like him.
“She needed help, and I wasn’t going to leave her in there,” he said with a shrug as he shoved his hands into his pockets. He tried to play off just how cold he was, his wet clothes sticking to his skin and starting to turn to ice. If he looked closely at his fingers, he could see them starting to turn blue.
Her father seemed to notice his predicament and took off his coat, pulling it around his shoulders. “Come on into the office. We’ll get you two nice and warmed up,” he said.
Bucky didn’t know what else to do, so he just nodded and followed him.
“Thank you.”
He looked over in surprise to see you looking up at him with pretty eyes, a flush in your cheeks that he suspected had nothing to do with the cold. “It was nothing,” he repeated, glancing down at his feet.
Steve would have a field day about how he’d done something stupid enough to warrant a scolding from his ma, something that the blond was usually on the end of.
“You saved my life,” you whispered, holding his coat tightly around you. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
The others were waiting for him down by the time travel thing. He could never be bothered to ask the actual name. He knew that the others had used Pym Particles to go back, but the actual contraption didn’t seem to have a name other than ‘time machine’ and it seemed like such a lame name for something so fucking cool.
Steve was getting ready to go, chatting with Sam idly as they stood there. Banner was messing with the controls.
He’d seen photos of the Hulk before, but the weird mix of both Banner and the green rage monster was… unsettling, to say the least.
Steve sighed as he walked over to Bucky, eyeing him slowly. “You know, Buck, I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s never a good thing,” he teased, a sly smile creeping up on his lips.
He laughed, shaking his head in slight amusement. “I want you to come with me on this. Help me out.” He wrapped an arm around him. “You didn’t get to do the whole time travel thing with us, and we have more than enough Pym Particles.”
Bucky looked at him, trying to get a read on his eyes. Finally, he let out a chuckle. “Okay. Sure. I’ll go with you to help with the Stones.”
And within two minutes, he had one of those fancy contraptions on his wrist and a quantum suit had materialized around his clothes.
Returning the Stones was easy. And time travel was exhilarating, to say the least. In all of his wildest dreams, he’d never imagined anything like it.
Steve took an extra long moment when they returned the Tesseract to the seventies, stealing a moment to observe Peggy in her natural element.
She was a force to be reckoned with, but she always had been.
Bucky knew what Steve wanted to do. They’d talked about it the night before.
His best friend wanted to go back to the forties to get his life with the Brit, with his first love.
And he got it. He really did. He understood the longing to go back, to steal back the life that was taken from him.
But Peggy had a life ahead of her. One that Steve wasn’t a part of. She had a husband and children and grandchildren.
“We got one last stop,” the blond said as he turned away from the window he’d been observing her in her office through. His eyes lingered on the photos of her family on her desk as he typed new coordinates, and with a flash, they were gone.
“Where are we?” Bucky asked as he glanced around.
But even as he asked, he knew.
Brooklyn. 1940-something.
A thin blanket of snow covered the ground, but there was already more coming down. It coated his lashes and his long hair in a white dust.
“The war ended in September,” Steve said, leading him down the alleyway. “Figured it’d be best to drop you off where there wasn’t a war going on.”
“Drop me off?” He took in every sight, smell, and sound like it was a drug. He’d missed this place so much. As much time as he spent in the twenty-first century, it never felt like home. He always felt like he was on his toes, like he couldn’t relax.
Steve stopped in front of a familiar townhouse, a sly smile on his lips that was barely visible in the dim light of the streetlamp. “If I remember correctly, you made someone a promise. And I intend to help you keep it.”
“Stevie–”
He shook his head, his eyes fixing him in place. “Listen, jerk. I’m not going back to Peggy. I did some thinking, and it’s not right,” he said. “She’s got her own life, her own love. Maybe mine is out there. But yours…” He looked up towards the window that Bucky knew peered into the kitchen, a soft light illuminating the flowers lining the sill inside that you were nicknamed after. “I know you’ve read her file. You know she never married, never moved on. That’s the love of your life, and you have the chance to be with her.”
“But what about you? And Sam?” He asked, his voice cracking with emotion. His eyes burned as he tried to hold the tears back.
Steve smiled warmly as he slung an arm around his shoulders. “Sam and I are gonna be just fine. He’s gonna need someone to listen while he rants about how the shield is more trouble than it’s worth more often than not and how people expect Captain America to be Mr. Apple Pie,” he said.
Bucky nodded, rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes. “Tell him I said bye, okay? And that I’ll miss him.” As much as he didn’t like to admit it, the man had grown on him. He considered him one of his best friends. They gave each other shit, but he knew he’d take a bullet for him. “And he’s an ass.”
The other man let out a chuckle, nodding as he pulled him into a tight hug. “I’ll miss you, jerk.”
“Yeah, I’ll miss you, too, I guess,” he said, squeezing him for an extra moment. Everything he’d been through in the past seventy years felt like it was all coming to a head in this moment. “I love you, punk.”
“I love you, too.” Steve pulled back, pulling a letter out of his suit pocket. “Give this to Peggy. She’ll know what to do.”
With a nod and one last hug, Bucky turned to go up the steps of your townhouse, his hands sweating as he knocked on the door.
January 4th, 1945
My dearest Sunflower,
I’m still alive. I know you’re ready to kick my ass for not writing to you in a few weeks, but we’ve been unable to find a post office.
Steve is good. The other guys are good. We’re doing alright for ourselves.
We’re somewhere in Austria right now. I can’t tell you exactly where, and they might redact it anyway.
It’s cold as hell here. Even colder than the water I jumped into to save you that day we first met. Remember that? I thought you were the prettiest gal I’d ever seen. Still do.
To be honest, darling, I don’t think even your father’s coat could keep me warm here. We have to keep fires going at all times One of the men got frostbite in his fingers because he didn’t wear his gloves.
I’m sorry I wasn’t there for Christmas. I know that you looked mighty pretty in whatever dress you wore though. I bet it looked real good with that ring on your finger. Becca said in her letters that you never take it off. I just want you to know how often I think about that. It gives me a little happiness, knowing that you’re going to be my wife when all of this is over. I keep your picture right over my heart. The one your ma took a few months before I got drafted.
A lot of the other men aren’t so lucky. They don’t have a gal to go home to. Definitely not one was pretty as you. When your letters arrive, I let them read them as long as they promise not to mess it up. They really liked that hair ribbon and the photo of you and Becca you sent me.
I think it gives them hope, knowing that there’s still love in this world to give and to receive.
For Christmas, there weren’t many gifts. Steve did give me an extra few pairs of socks. I gave him an extra blanket I found lying around.
I know you’re going to say otherwise, but I can’t stop feeling like I failed your pa. The one thing he asked of me when he left was that I look after you and your ma and I promised him I would. I told him I wouldn’t come over here and risk my ass.
I ran into him a few weeks ago. He was going around with some of the other higher officers, talking to the troops.
Needless to say, he was surprised to see me.
He looked so mad when he pulled me into his makeshift office, I thought I’d die right there. You know how much his opinion means to me. I’d never had a good father figure until I met him. My pa was never like him. Never treated my ma or my sister with the respect and love your father has. I never knew fathers could be kind until I met him.
So I told him everything. I told him about getting drafted, how I’d tried to get out of it. I hadn’t even told Steve that. Only you.
Thanks for not telling him I was over here. I know it was awful of me to ask such a thing of you, but he swears he’s not upset with you and he understands.
He cried when I told him I’d been drafted, that I’d done my best to stay home and keep you and your ma safe. I cried, too. I’m not ashamed to admit it.
He was a little upset with me for not going home when I had the chance, but I told him I had to stay with Steve and make sure he stays safe.
But I promise you, I’ll be home for Christmas. I don’t know if it’ll be this Christmas or the next or the next, but I’ll make it home to you, okay? I pinky promise.
I have to go. Steve’s just got word that Zola is on the move.
All my love,
Your Jamie
You took a long swig of wine as you read the letter for the eighth time tonight. No matter how much of the bottle you drank, it didn’t numb the pain.
He never came home.
You’d held onto that letter, rereading it so many times that the paper had gone soft. Some of the words were blurred from tear stains.
It was the last letter you ever received from him.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
You looked up in surprise, glancing over at the clock. “Who the hell is knocking on my door at midnight?” You asked yourself as you pulled on your robe to cover your nightgown.
Which, it wasn’t like you were sleeping.
After spending Christmas Eve cooking with your ma, Winifred, and Becca, you were exhausted. But you were all determined to get it done so you could spend Christmas Day relaxing.
A pang twisted your heart as you glanced down, your ring catching in the light.
Even after two years, you didn’t have the heart to take it off.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
You huffed, tying your robe tightly. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Flicking on the front hallway light, you didn’t bother to look through the peephole at whoever the hell was at your door. Wiping away a few lingering tears, you flung open the door, ready to chew the person out, but the words caught in your throat.
James Buchanan Barnes was standing on your doorstep. Even though he looked a few years older, with his long hair and thick beard, there was no doubt in your mind that it was him.
“J-Jamie?” You stammered, tears pricking your eyes. “Is it really you?”
“It’s really me, sunflower,” he said, shuffling his feet.
The smile he gave you was so boyish and charming, so Jamie, that you fell to your knees. Sobs wracked your body as you tried to catch your breath. “I-I thought you were dead! They told me you were!”
“I promised you I’d be home for Christmas.” Bucky fell to his knees with you, gathering you up in his arms. “It’s me, baby. It’s me. I’m here. I’m home. And I’m never leaving you again.”
Sniffling, you grabbed his face in your hands, pushing his hair back. “Your hair,” you laughed, toying with the silky strands. “Your hair is so long.” Your fingers moved to cup his jaw, a giggle breaking through the sobs. “And your beard!”
He let out a chuckle, resting his forehead against yours. His hand found your left, running over the stones on the ring that he’d given you with a promise to come home years ago when he’d been shipped off. “I have so much to tell you, my love. But I’m home.”
The feeling he could never find in the twenty-first century was back. The weariness in his bones disappeared as he held you against his chest, smoothing down your hair as he rocked you back and forth. The feeling of being home at last bloomed in his chest.
You rested your head on his shoulder, blinking away tears as you stared out at the snowy sky, holding him tight. You didn’t care that you were half inside and half out, or that the neighbors could see you.
But you were startled to see Steve Rogers leaning against the streetlamp, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked like he’d been put through the ringer just like Bucky.
And he looked so much bigger. You’d seen the newsreels of him, but nothing compared to seeing him standing just a few feet away.
“Thank you,” you mouthed to him.
He gave you a nod, a teary smile on his face, before fiddling with something on his wrist and disappearing into thin air.
Grabbing Bucky’s face in your hands, you pressed sweet kisses all over his hair and his face. “You’re never allowed to scare me like that ever again,” you said, leaning back to look in his eyes. Even though they were sparkling with delight, there was a hauntedness to them that you had no doubt had something to do with the metal arm that was currently holding you. But you were sure that would be explained later. Right now, you were just grateful to have him home. “You hear me? I’ll… I’ll put you on house arrest if I have to!”
He grinned, basking in your kisses like they were summer sunshine. “Trust me, darlin,’ I’m not going anywhere.” He pressed a bruising kiss to your lips, his flesh hand holding the back of your head.
It felt just as good as all the kisses you’d gotten from him before, maybe even better.
“I gotta ask you something,” he said as he leaned back just enough to brush his nose against yours.
“You can ask me anything, Jame, long as you stay here with me,” you murmured, kissing him once, twice, three more times before letting him speak again.
An impish grin tugged at his lips. “Where the hell are your decorations? I come home and I don’t even get some mistletoe to kiss you under?”
Rolling your eyes, you leaned your forehead against his. You relaxed as you felt his steady, strong heartbeat under your palm. For the first time since he’d been deployed over to Europe, you felt complete. “I don’t need mistletoe to kiss you under, Sarge.”
#bucky x you#bucky barnes x you#bucky x y/n#bucky barnes x y/n#bucky x reader#bucky barnes x reader#bucky fic#bucky barnes fanfiction#bucky barnes fic
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
chapter twenty: practice what you preach
Sam awoke to the feeling of Alex's little body nestled up right next to her. At some point, over the course of the night, she inched closer to him and he had put his arm around her once again. She slid her foot back towards that edge of the bed only feel to it was icy cold from the nightfall. Indeed, the entire house was cold from the night and the induction of the Bay Area fog outside.
Even with the daybreak, the Bay Area was still dark and cold from the dead of winter. She cuddled closer to him like they did in the back seat of the car: the sole difference was that a full inch of rain had fallen all over San Francisco overnight rather than something over a foot of snow. But she shivered regardless of the covers over her body.
There was a loud clank at the front of the house, followed by a pair of soft voices.
Alex groaned in his throat at the sound and Sam opened her eyes. His face remained right before her own: the tip of that aquiline nose about an inch from her cheekbone. Those sharp eyebrows as smooth as stone, and that skin as pale and smooth as the very snows that chased them away from Lake Tahoe. Even though he lay flat on his back, he had rolled his head over the top of the pillow and thus that little tuft of gray hung right above her eyes. For a moment there, upon her opening her eyes, she swore that he was a small boy once again, especially given they were in his old bedroom and they lay underneath all of those old posters from when he was a kid and in high school.
A part of her wanted to stroke his face, just to feel that smooth delicate skin and really find out if it was that smooth and soft as it looked. But she decided not to as he stirred a bit and rolled his head back a bit so she could only see the side of his face. She kept her eye on his chin and the delicate tight skin underneath; followed by the curvature of his lips, and then she fixated on his prominent nose and his high features, as stark and aged as stone in spite of his youth.
Young and old at the same time.
She nibbled on her bottom lip as he fetched up a sigh and held still right there next to her. She had kept her hand on something soft. It wasn't his hipbone.
“Alex!” Arlene called from the front of the house. “Alex! Samantha!”
Sam dared not move her hand lest he wake up to it instead of his mother's voice.
“Hey, kids!” Jerry followed up. Alex stirred again but he never awoke. Sam kept her lips pursed together, and she wondered if a certain small movement of her hand would do anything more for him.
“Breakfast is ready!” Arlene called out once again.
Once she had said that, Sam could feel the hunger within her as it gnawed away at the inside of her stomach. She wanted to move her hand but then again Alex still hadn't moved a single muscle. She held onto something soft and warm and she had no clue if it was actually his body or something else.
“Alexander Nathan Skolnick!” Arlene spat.
And he popped his eyes open at that, and he stared straight up above to the ceiling. Sam never moved a muscle.
“Is that your hand,” he asked her in a flat tone of voice.
“I don't even know where my hand is,” she confessed.
“Are you guys awake?” Arlene followed up.
“Yes, Ma!” Alex shouted which in turn made Sam grimace a bit. “Sorry,” he told her in a low voice. “Anyways, that better be your hand.”
“It's on your body, I know that much.”
He rolled his head over the top of the pillow again, that time with squinted eyes.
“Ma?” Arlene laughed.
“Ma and Pa,” Jerry called out, which in turn made Alex roll his eyes, but Sam giggled at them. She moved her hand and she realized that she had grabbed a handful of blanket, much to their confusion.
“What the hell was on me, then?” Alex asked her as she rolled out of bed.
“My arm, maybe?”
“Could be. But I could've sworn that it was your hand, though.” He followed her out of bed and, even though she put her jeans back on, he kept his shirt off as he walked with her into the front of the house, much to Arlene's shock as she brought over the plates of fresh matzo and sausage patties.
“Alex! What're ya doin'? Put your shirt on!”
“He feels better without a shirt, Mrs. Skolnick,” Sam told her as she took her seat next to Jerry at the kitchen table.
“I'm getting cold just looking at him, though,” Arlene insisted as she handed Sam a cup of coffee. “How do you like your coffee, by the way?”
“A little bit of cream,” she replied.
“Always start out with cream.” She shook her head with a smile but then she looked on at Alex with a slight sneer on her face.
“It's fine, Mom, I promise,” Alex pointed out as he ran his hands down his forearms. His pale skin seemed to glow under the kitchen lights as if made entirely of snow; once she took her spot across from him, he hunched his shoulders a bit. Indeed, it was rather cold in the house and the heater seemed to have a bit of trouble in picking up from underneath the metallic vent on the floor next to Jerry. His jet black hair flowed over his shoulders like little tentacles; his nipples tightened and goose pimples crossed over the skin on his waist. He was cold but Sam was sure that he wanted to be without a shirt, much like she wanted to be without a bra until they went out again.
“Alex—baby—go put a shirt on,” Arlene encouraged him.
“Go brush your hair, too, son,” Jerry told him, and Alex let out a sigh and then he stood up and ducked out of the kitchen.
“I also promised my mom I'd call her when I got here,” Sam said once he left.
“Oh, yes, definitely do that!” Arlene told her. “Phone's right over there over the stove, bubbeleh.”
Sam rounded the table and she stepped over to the little black telephone there on the wall next to the stove. She dialed her mother's number and she held the receiver to her ear. One ring, two rings—
“Hello, hello?” Esmé answered in a broken voice.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Oh! Sam! Thank heaven! I was just starting to get worried about you and Alex because you hadn't called me.”
“We got snowed in up at Tahoe the night before last,” she explained, “like we got to Carson City and then I took him up to the southern edge of the lake and it started snowing. It was nighttime by then, too, so we just buttoned up for the night and waited for the snow to stop. When it did, we went up to Incline Village for breakfast and now we're at his parents' house in Berkeley. Spent the night here last night.”
“Oh, good! Thank heaven. What matters is you kids are safe and both are in one piece. Also, I got a letter from Joey believe it or not. Just last night.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he brought it over to me, like he must've seen me from across the room—we were in the grocery store in Long Beach.”
“Greg brought it to you,” she said aloud.
“Yeah—and Joey said he's going to meet you down at the harbor when you get down here again, whenever that may be.”
“I dunno, to be honest with you, Mom, because I have no idea what Alex and his parents are going to do.”
“Oh, no, wait, it says he's going to meet you there later today.”
“Today?”
“Yeah. No idea what time exactly, but he did say the day after New Year's, though.”
Sam fetched up a sigh. On one hand, she wanted Joey to have at least called her about it. But then again, he didn't know where she had gone off to and he didn't know where Alex and his parents lived there in Berkeley, either.
She bode her mother farewell for the time being, and she returned to Jerry and Arlene there at the table.
“My mom told me that I have a little something waiting for me down in Long Beach,” she told them, “which means I have to be down there today.”
“Aw, you're leaving us, bubbeleh?” Arlene looked hurt by that.
“I'm afraid so. And what does that mean, too?”
“What, 'bubbeleh'?”
“'Little doll', right?” Alex joined in from behind them; Sam thought about Belinda and if she and Marla had gone back home at that moment.
“Yeah! I used to call him that when he was little, because he was just this little doll of a little boy.”
Alex took his seat right next to Sam, now wrapped up in a long black shirt with a white square on his chest: it looked as though he had attempted to brush his hair but he never went further than his bangs, which started to grow out rather long: the bottoms brushed upon that sharp brow to where the longest tips began to obscure his eyes and make them appear even deeper than before.
“Have you heard of Run DMC?” he asked her as he gestured to his chest.
“I have now,” she told him.
“Oh, man! You've got so much to learn, Samantha.”
“So much to learn and so much to give, too,” Jerry followed up to that.
“Give it all to our boy over here,” Arlene chimed in with a hearty little chuckle.
“Oy vey,” Alex muttered as he took another bite of fresh matzo ball.
Sam stayed there and relished her cup of coffee and her spot at the table between Jerry and Alex. But she knew that she would have to pick up her things again and head on over to the airport, and by Alex's direction no less.
By around ten o'clock in the morning, and a few holes had broken through on the fog bank over the Bay Area, Alex changed back into a fresh pair of jeans and Sam had put her bra back on, albeit in the bathroom. Even from the other side of the house, she caught the sound of Alex's voice in the kitchen. Even with his parents, he still stood out like a sore thumb and he had the big booming voice to boot on top of it. Indeed, even when he stood next to his band mates, he seemed to dwarf them, especially Chuck who loomed up close to his height.
But then she thought about Joey and the fact that he had confessed to her even through a drunken stupor.
She wondered what he had in store for her as she headed out of the bathroom and made her way back to Alex's room for her purse, and then she walked back up the hall, towards the front foyer for her shoes and her jacket. Alex glanced over at her.
“Oh, there she is,” he said in a low voice, and he turned to front door for the same things as well. He took his seat next to her there on that little velvet bench and they laced up together. He put on his jacket and he reached into his pocket for the car keys.
“Come back any time, bubbeleh,” Arlene told her, and she put her arms around her.
“I'm sure I will!” Sam declared with a big bold laugh.
“Be safe and give your mother a hug for us,” Jerry added as he embraced her as well.
“I shall, Mr. Skolnick,” she promised; he put his arm around Alex at the same time.
“Li'l group hug!” he chuckled. “I'll be back.”
“You behave,” Arlene advised him in a low voice, and he made a soft little whimper at that.
Alex led Sam back outside to the car and that time, he climbed in behind the wheel.
“I really do like your parents, Alex,” she told him once they got rolling.
“I just—I feel like they were putting me on the spot the whole time,” he confessed.
“In your defense, they kinda were,” she said, “like especially when we were in the back room and you were showing me that riff, and you couldn't finish it.”
“Yeah, and I don't like being interrupted, either,” he added.
“I still like them, though. I like your dad, especially. I mean, he told me to come to him for anything school related. I like that.”
“Thank you for that,” he told her. “When I was growing up, a lot of people didn't, because they're New Yorkers and they're scary smart collegiate professors and everybody thought their raising my brother and me like that screwed us up.”
“Hey, at least they aren't from a strict religion,” she pointed out, which in turn made him chuckle.
“No, they aren't! I'd rather they be fully educated anyways.” He paused for a moment as they pulled up to a stoplight.
“By the way, are you thinking of continuing on with school? 'Cause—it looks like you didn't finish.”
“I didn't, no.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I don't really know, if I'm honest with you, Alex.”
The light turned green and they fell back into silence all the way over to the airport, all for the next flight out to Los Angeles. A quick one way ticket and the two of them walked together to the gate, both of them as silent as ever. It would be another minute before the gate opened and thus Sam turned to him and the gentle look on his face, the most gentle she had seen him.
He put his arms around her and held her close to his slender body. Still very soft from the two nights together.
“Give your mom a hug for me,” he told her in a hushed voice.
“Gladly,” she vowed to him. More people congregated behind them in anticipation of the flight.
“Also,” he added, “um—look for our last name in your mom's mailbox around the—middle of the month, give or take.”
“Oh?”
He showed her a shy, small smile in response to that. Sam stood still before him, slightly befuddled, but then she realized what he was telling her.
“I'll be on the lookout,” she promised him, and she wondered what it was exactly that Joey had in store for her.
“You better get going,” he encouraged her in a low voice, and she turned her attention to the gate behind her. Everyone behind them proceeded to board the plane.
“February, you said?” she asked him.
“Right on the first! Please join us.”
“I'll see you soon,” she told him.
“You, too,” he said. “Safe travels.” For a second, she swore that he winked at her. But then she picked up her things and headed over to the gate, and she boarded the plane with everyone else. She peered over her shoulder at the sight of him there with his hands tucked in his jeans pockets and the somber look on his face. The tuft of gray hair stood high over the right side of his brow like a little icicle. Those eyes locked onto her one last time before she turned away and headed down the terminal corridor; she then boarded onto the plane in silence.
And that whole entire time she never came across her father anywhere in the Bay Area: yet another thing she had to address to her mother once she was back down south.
She took that flight headed for Los Angeles once more, and soon thereafter she would board the boat down to Santa Catalina Island. She was bound to return to New York at one point regardless of anything else simply to visit Joey in upstate and to lay on her couch once again.
Over the course of that ninety minute flight, she thought about Alex's behavior over the course of their entire trip. It all worked out so perfectly with them even when she intended on nothing more than to improvise on it all. That was it right there: her first window into Alex and her confirmation on what Louie had said to her on the ride down the California coast. He had shown a new side to him, but she swore that she had a long way to go with him.
Add to this, she had a long way to go with Joey as well. She gazed out the window to the snow covered mountain tops down below: on the other side was the vast stretch of desert that seemed to go on out East for eternity. She and Alex had rode up that desert together all alone: on the other side of the plane, even though she couldn't see it from her seat, the Coastal Range and the coastline itself loomed down below the plane.
An hour later, and she landed just outside of Long Beach, where Joey himself awaited her there outside of the gate. His brown eyes appeared a bit lazier than usual but he showed her that familiar lopsided grin once she rounded the corner.
She hurried up to him with her arms wide open.
They embraced each other and he planted his lips onto hers.
“God, I missed you,” he confessed to her.
“Where's Krista?” she asked him in a near whisper.
“She went back home to Kansas City. I think she got the message.” He flashed her a wink at that.
And with nothing more to add, he led her out of the airport and back over to the docks for the next large boat over to Catalina. It was a cold, blustery day there in Long Beach, such that he lingered closer to her as they awaited their ride: the gray waters out before them chopped and shortened up with the cold winter winds around them.
She could feel his fingers right on the seat of her pants, and she showed him a mischievous smile as a result.
Indeed, once they boarded the boat, he kept one hand on her knee the whole twenty two miles. At one point, he slid his hand up the inside of her thigh, and she playfully slapped the back of his hand at the feeling. He showed her another lopsided grin at that.
Within time, the harbor outside of Avalon emerged in their view: all the usual little boats and yachts around the place had docked up for the New Year and also for the storm that had passed through. Esmé awaited them at the far end of the dock, wrapped up in a little sweater and with her cat eye glasses perched upon the bridge of her nose all the while.
“There are my babies,” she declared once they came within earshot; she embraced Sam so tight that she swore that she would cut off her circulation. Joey let Sam take the front seat and they drove back to the house.
Once they had made their way inside, Esmé continued on back to her bedroom for something, but that left Sam and Joey some time alone together.
“Alone at last,” he said as she guided him into her bedroom. She nudged the door shut, but she left it ajar a bit by a sliver the width of her pink nail.
“So how was your road trip?” he asked her once he peeled off his jacket, followed by his shirt. He tossed both on the chair in the corner of the room, and then he lunged for the bed.
“Exciting and quite the adventure,” she told him as she took off her jacket and her shirt. She unhooked her bra and left it on the floor next to her feet.
“An adventure like what we're about to have?” he asked her in a husky voice; she climbed up next to him but she never moved any closer to him. There had to be something here, something more just to get her going.
“Joey, we're in my bed,” she whispered to him.
“So? Let's get it on, Sam I am. I should tell you—State of Euphoria went gold.”
“Oh—Oh, Joey. Mister Lead Singer.”
She set one hand on the side of her and then she lowered herself down on top of him, and she placed her lips onto his dark ones. As smooth and silken as molten chocolate still: he tasted like peppermint and she knew that he had brushed his teeth just prior to her landing. A little tip of his tongue onto her own and she wondered where they would go from there. She had already put her lips onto his length when in England, but there was something more here. Something a little more homely.
“Sam?” Esmé called from the front of the house, which in turn brought the two of them to a complete standstill.
“Yes?” Sam replied back to her.
“Could you come in here for a second?”
She fetched up a sigh and she climbed off of Joey. With a bit of haste, she put her bra and her shirt back on over her body, and she headed into the kitchen to see what was the matter. Esmé struggled to remove the cork from a brand new bottle of sparkling cider, and thus Sam decided to help her. Though it was dry, she hoped that Joey wouldn't smell it from the next room, but at that point, her mother had poured her a glass of that cider and offered her a slice of pie with her lunch.
She thought of Alex all the while and since she knew that she hadn't eaten since that morning, she took the glass and the pie and took her seat there at the bar. Soon, Joey joined them and he, too, received a plate of pie and some cider himself.
“My little girl's actually going to be twenty four in a few days time,” Esmé remarked with a wistful tone to her voice.
The same age as Cliff, and just like with Cliff, she, too, hadn't been touched between the legs herself either. All the little glances and glimpses from Joey made her wonder if they would go any further than that over the course of the next few weeks.
But they never did: given the extent of Anthrax's tour, Joey returned back home to New York the next morning after he had spent the night with them. Much like Alex, he took to the comfy couch overnight, and Sam and Esmé saw him off on the next flight out to Anthrax's next stop in Houston.
Sam's twenty fourth birthday in the middle of the month came with the next round of winter's rain as it lasted the full week, from Martin Luther King, Jr. Day all the way to that weekend when the country watched the inauguration of Bush. The whole entire time she watched it on the little television in the guest room, she thought of Alex and the package that he and his parents had sent her: a black fedora with a white ribbon around the base of the crown and a little black and red feather on one side. Alongside it was a handmade card from them, pieced together with colorful cardstock and some ribbon. On the inside, in neat penmanship and bright red sparkling ink, it read:
“Happy birthday, Samantha! Love, Jerry, Arlene, and Alex.”
She smiled at their names as she placed the hat upon her head, and she wondered if Joey was willing to give her something for her day as well, especially if Alex's words about gifts were anything to go by.
Indeed, she wore that hat on the flight back up to San Francisco on the first, much to the pleasure of the flight agents all around the airport and even a couple of the stewardesses on the plane. Alex awaited her at the gate, albeit with a grin on his face.
“Had a feeling that hat'd be a good fit for you,” he told her once she gave him a hello hug.
“You picked this out?” she asked him.
“Nah, my mom did. She was like, 'I haven't even met her yet and yet I feel this hat would fit her wonderfully!' and then you met her and after you left, she was like 'yes, definitely send that hat to her, baby.'” She chuckled at that. “Anyways, come with me.”
Alex led her out of the airport into the cold San Francisco Bay fog outside, and ultimately to his car. They drove over to that studio that he had shown her on New Year's Day, and they were greeted by an excited Louie wrapped up in a leather jacket right there on the front doorstep.
“Also, I should tell you that I finally figured it out!” Alex proclaimed with a twinkle in his eye.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!” He unbuckled his seat belt, but he didn't climb out as of yet. “Literally right after you left, my dad was playing a record from a man named Al Di Meola and I heard it from my room, and it was like a lightning bolt. I ran across the hall and I started playing it on this guitar and then I was like 'yes!' So I called up Eric and showed it to him and he was like 'right on! Let's go with that!'”
They climbed out together and Louie hurried over to her with his arms wide open.
“I feel like I haven't seen you in a million years,” he declared right into her ear.
“It's only been a few weeks, Lou,” she told him.
But then he led the two of them into the studio, with that lush shag carpet on the floor and the bright high ceiling overhead. To the right stood the actual sound room itself, where Greg and Eric had already walked into with their guitars in hand. They rounded the corner only to find Chuck speaking with a familiar bob of black hair in the desk chair before him.
“Hey, Zelda!” Sam greeted her.
“Hey, hey! I was wonderin' when you'd get here!” Zelda clambered to her feet and threw her arms around Sam. “Happy belated birthday, by the way. Eric reminded me.”
“Thank you so much! And happy belated to Louie Louie over here, too.”
“Ha!” Louie belted out as he took off his jacket and hung it on the hook next to them; right underneath his jacket was a miniature fridge.
“The girls and I have a gift for ya, too,” Zelda continued, “but it's not like this hat or anything these boys have given you. We're making another album and I already have the perfect name for it, too.”
“What's that?”
“Captain Shelley's Gallery. After you and your artistry.”
“Oh, Zelda!” Sam threw her arms around her once more.
“And we got a gift for you, too,” Chuck joined in, “I'm sure Alex gave you a hint to it on the way over, too.”
“He did!” Sam declared.
“You girls are standing in for Mr. Producer right now,” Alex himself said as he raised a finger. He took off his jacket and he strode into the sound room as if he owned it himself. Sam and Zelda watched him walk over to his guitar, propped up on a metallic stand; he picked it up and slung it over his shoulder, and waved his black hair about a bit. That tuft of gray was obvious at that point.
Louie took his seat behind the drum kit and Chuck lingered over to the side.
“Alright, gentlemen,” Zelda announced through the microphone, “unleash hell.”
Eric and Alex both started it out with a big grinding introduction.
Louie's kick drum pounded through the wall right before her. Sam looked over at Zelda, who in turn flashed her a grin and nodded at her.
That riff, that groovy riff; it coaxed a shake from her hips a bit. In junction with Louie's drum beats, which felt akin to the hammer of a black smith, and it only added to the feeling. Zelda nodded her head along with it.
Sam thought about the night on Anthrax's tour wherein Alex had covered that Soundgarden song. His leads here wandered around and spiraled tightly into coils like that song straight out of Seattle.
Eric and Greg twinned one another: the latter of which played his bass such that it resembled to thunder. And then Chuck's vocals seared through that microphone's head.
Almost four years of straight touring and making music had made these boys tight and on point each and every time the next time over.
It had that hooky chorus, “so practice what you preach!” a phrase which Sam knew she would cling to for a thousand years.
He repeated it and Alex, Eric, and Greg both joined in on back up.
“Groovy, hard, and fast, and it gets stuck in your head, too!” Zelda exclaimed.
“Yeah, it does,” Sam said, “and I almost wanna like dance to it, too.”
At one point, Alex took a step forward with his little red guitar pressed to his body and he proceeded on his solo. Sam and Zelda watched him in complete awe as it felt as though he painted his first real masterpiece upon the proverbial canvas. Even through the sound proof door, he was able to make the floor shake with his bending of those strings.
This was not the hole in the wall and this was not the first time Sam watched Anthrax.
This was beyond that.
Eric gave his inky black hair a toss back as he joined in with Alex again for a few more seconds. Louie tapped on the kick drum a bit and Alex improvised along with him.
“He's—He's unreal,” Sam said to Zelda.
“Who, Alex?”
“Yeah. Well, Louie is, too, but Alex is from somewhere else.”
“He's a true artist,” Zelda said, “kind of like how you are.”
Sam stayed silent at that. She didn't really believe that was on the level of true artistry as of yet, but she knew it still resided within her. She knew that her own masterpiece, her own “Practice What You Preach”, stayed within her for the time being.
They jammed out some more songs, all the way to the end of the afternoon, to which Chuck sang himself hoarse and Louie had finally broken out a sweat. Chuck himself walked over to the door and unlocked it for them, and Sam and Zelda met up with him there.
“Oh my god!” he yelped in a broken voice.
“Dude, that first song is going to be huge,” Sam told him.
“Dude! Don't call me 'dude'. Anyways, I think you're gonna be right, li'l Sammich.” He turned to Zelda. “Care for a drink?”
“Please!” Zelda doubled back to the hooks on the wall and the miniature fridge on the floor there. She took out a pair of beer bottles, one for herself and one for Chuck; once she handed the one to him, she turned to Sam.
“Care for one?”
“Let's share one,” Sam told her, which made the boys laugh out loud. Chuck doubled back into the room and opened the bottle.
“Drink up, Alejandro,” he commanded.
“Chuck—Chuck, no.”
“C'mon, a little sip of beer won't kill ya,” he coaxed him. Sam bowed into the doorway there and she watched Alex take a whiff from the bottle's mouth first before he took a sip. He shrugged his shoulders and handed it back to Chuck himself.
“Not bad,” he confessed, “rather have a glass.” The phone on the control panel rang right then and Zelda bowed away to answer it.
“You guys really are like Metallica's honor student kid brothers,” Sam told them with a little laugh, which in turn brought a laugh out of Chuck.
“Metallica's honor student kid brothers,” Louie echoed that, and he laughed himself.
“And I guess Anthrax showed up right behind us to put the 'kick me' sign on our backs,” Alex cracked with a gesture to his own back.
“Then Megadeth came to talk us into the ground during debate class,” Greg added.
“And Slayer showed up, just to give the five of us all a swift kick in the ass!” Chuck rounded out and the six of them laughed out loud at that.
Zelda cleared her throat right behind her.
“Hey—Hey, Miss Frankenstein!” she said right into Sam's ear, which in turn brought more laughter. “Your little monster is on the other end.”
Even though she had nothing to drink right then, she was already feeling giddy. Zelda handed her the phone, the receiver of which she brought over from the body itself. Sam lingered there in the doorway with it up to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Sam?” She recognized that upstate accent.
“Oh, hi, Joey!” She smiled at the sound of his voice.
“Sam—Sam—you're—you're not gonna believe this,” he could hardly speak. The tremble in his voice made her stop right in her tracks. Indeed, he almost sounded sick.
“What happened?” she asked him, slightly concerned.
He fetched up a sigh, albeit one that shuddered a bit. He gasped and whimpered the lightest of whimpers and she wondered what was going on with him. Louie said something and Greg burst out laughing right then; thus, she cupped a hand over her ear so she could hear him.
“Joey,” she started in a low voice, “—what happened?”
He sighed again.
“I got fired,” he said in a small voice.
“What,” she stammered, “what! What the—fuck, what do you mean you got fired?”
Someone shushed the people in the rest of the room, and the room fell silent behind her.
“I got fired,” he repeated, and he brought his voice to a near whisper. “I just got off the phone with Charlie. He said—they all got into a meeting together and just decided to rid of me. If it's any fairness to him, though, I—I could tell he had a hard time doing it.”
She brought a hand to her mouth to keep herself from crying herself or from vomiting. He gasped again and she could tell that he was crying.
“Oh,” she breathed into the mouthpiece, “oh my god, Joey, I'm so sorry.”
“I'm just,” he stammered, “—I'm just—gonna—go to sleep now.”
“Oh my god, Joey. Sit tight, I'll be right there.” She hurried back to the sound board to the phone's body.
“Sam?” he stopped her in a broken voice.
“Yes?”
“I love you,” he declared.
“I love you, too.” She hung up right there, and she closed her eyes and let out a low whistle, and then she returned to the room, and Zelda and Testament, all of whom looked on at her, stunned.
“What happened?” Chuck asked her, concerned.
“Joey got fired,” she told him in a soft voice, and Alex gaped at her. Chuck raised his eyebrows at that, flabbergasted.
“What,” Louie flatly said.
“When did this happen?” Eric asked her.
“I guess just now? He said he just got off the phone with Charlie—which tells me he's home now—and they all had a meeting without him, and they decided to get rid of him.” Sam paused for a moment. “He also said that Charlie had a hard time telling him about it, too.”
Alex and Chuck looked on at one another with stunned looks on their faces.
“What the fuck,” was all Zelda could say.
“They were doing good, too!” Eric declared.
“They were doing excellent,” Sam continued. “Last month, he told me State of Euphoria went gold.”
“Already?” Alex raised his eyebrows at that.
“Yeah. So it just—that doesn't make any sense. And I promised him I'd be right there with him, which means I have to—I have to fly home to New York.”
“Well, it's five o'clock—we're done for the day,” Greg told her as he clutched his bass by the neck, “we'll take you to the airport.”
“I'll come with you,” Alex told her.
“Yeah, me, too,” Chuck added.
“No, guys, that's not necessary,” Sam told them off.
“Samantha, your boyfriend just got fired,” Alex pointed out, “he's going to need all the support he can get.”
“What he said,” Chuck added.
“I'll come, too,” Zelda joined in, “I'm going back home after this, anyways.”
Sam nodded her head and, once they had closed up shop for the day, Eric and Greg drove them all back to the airport. She had no idea as to what to say to Joey once they were back in upstate. But she knew that she would have a little talk with Scott and Charlie at some point.
Eric and Greg walked them throughout the airport and all the way to where the next red eye would take her, Chuck, Alex, and Zelda over to Syracuse.
“Are you guys going to be alright?” she asked them.
“Oh, yeah,” Eric assured her as he put his arms around her.
“I'll call you when we get there,” she promised him.
“Aw, thank you so much for that.” And he gave her another hug for that.
She would have to give all the hugs in the world from that point onward for Joey.
#fanfic#fanfiction#anthrax fanfic#testament fanfic#testament#testament band#anthrax#chapter 20#souls of black#fever in fever out#fever in fever out fanfic#book four#alex skolnick#chuck billy#eric peterson#greg christian#louie clemente#joey belladonna#joey belladonna x oc#oc tag#also on ao3#also on wattpad#writing#text
2 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
localcryptidinthewoods
≡ꗃ cryptid ✧𓂅
thyartiamsatanel
The Holy Grail
dreamyguurl-blog
Dream it wish it do it
thyartiamsatanel
The Holy Grail
inthahouse215
D-Nice