#this is about an interview I read on Wrinkle in Time the new version where the director said | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yoontopia · 3 years

Text

coffee & cream | jjk

pairing: jeon jungkook x (f) reader

genre: friends with benefits au (like the movie mila kunis is sexy y’all), one (1) smut scene [in the form of oral (m) and (f) receiving, unprotected sex (wrap it up kids cmon), spanking, grinding], fluff, angst (but its a happy ending bc its me)

rating: M

word count: 14.3k

summary: Jungkook isn’t usually a risk taker-- in fact, he’s the safest guy in the room. But you’re about to change that

Jungkook adjusts his tie and looks out of the little airplane window. The seatbelt sign is blinking back on – it’s been a relatively exhausting flight from LA to New York and his legs are numb. He eyes the tall buildings of the metropolis below, squinting when he can see the Empire State building in his view. It isn’t his first time in Manhattan, having visited once with his family when he was a teenager. The sheer size of the place terrifies him a little though.

It’s not like Los Angeles isn’t a big city. LA is huge, in fact, and just as saturated as any big city is. But New York is a different topic altogether. Jungkook finds LA intimidating, he’s not sure where to even start with Manhattan.

He walks out into JFK, hoisting his duffle bag on one shoulder. It’s noisy, he notes, as soon as he’s walked out and into baggage claim. He only makes a small pitstop in the men’s bathroom to make sure his hair doesn’t look like birds have nested in it and emerges out, looking around. Someone’s supposed to be picking him up, and they should be here, amongst the throng of people holding up placards with names on them. He’s just pulling out his phone to double check if any emails about his pickup were sent while he was in flight, when a commotion by baggage claim catches his eye. Raising his eyebrows, he takes in the sight before him.

There’s you, hair coming out of your bun, clutching your stilettos close to your chest as you walk barefoot on the baggage belt wearing a crinkled skirt-suit. You’re looking for something, tip toeing around the suitcases, unaware of the stares you’re getting. You’re walking towards him, against the direction of the belt and he stares around him and sees a piece of paper with the name JEON JUNGKOOK written on it in bright red lipstick. He leans over to pick it up, and realizes you’ve made a grab for it as well.

“That’s me,” he says. You blink at him in confusion, before your face clears.

“Jeon Jungkook?” you affirm, and he nods, pointing to the piece of paper and then at himself. “Oh, thank god.” You introduce yourself and hold out your hand, which Jungkook promptly shakes. You’re still on the baggage belt, so he has to walk alongside you.

“You’re picking me up from the airport?”

“Yes!” your voice is hushed and out of breath. You smooth down your flyaway hair hastily.

“Do you… always pick people up like this?” He gestures at the baggage belt and you suddenly laugh, a high tinkling sound. Jumping off the belt, you stand in front of him.

“Uh yeah, you know, I like to keep things interesting,” you say, nodding your head like you mean business. “Welcome to New York, by the way. I feel like I should’ve brought a boombox with that Taylor Swift song blasting on it.”

“I mean there’s always next time, right?” Jungkook cracks a smile, shoving his hands in the pockets of his suit. “You know… you’re not exactly what comes to mind when one thinks ‘headhunter’.”

“Yeah, I prefer the term executive recruiter,” you say offhandedly. “‘Headhunter’ always makes me sound a little creepy.”

“Well,” Jungkook says, as he watches you put your heels back on. They add a significant amount to your height, and you stand in front of him expectantly. “You did stalk me for the past six months. That’s kind of creepy.” You laugh again at that and reach for his bag, which he pulls out of the way.

“Let me carry your bag, it’s my job!”

“You don’t look like you do this often,” he points out.

“Okay so maybe you’re my first recruit, sue me.” You’re pouting faintly, as the two of you walk out of the airport. The New York heat hits Jungkook all at once, and he sniffs the air curiously. “Nasty isn’t it? I love it” you grin.

“What is that?” he asks, wrinkling his nose.

“Sewage, rats, and the sweet smell of capitalism.” You’re waving down a yellow taxi. “Need me to play you that Taylor Swift song yet?” You hold the door open for him and he gets in and you pop in from the other side. Once you’re done giving the driver your destination, you sit back. “So.” You start. Jungkook raises your eyebrows at you. “You’re finally here!”

“Only took six months worth of emails to convince me,” he says, looking out the window as the cab crosses a bridge. Manhattan looms in front of him.

“It’s a huge opportunity,” you say, and he has to give you points for being earnest. “Art director for Vogue? This is the big leagues!” You’re turned in your seat to look over at him. “I mean, no offence to your little internet blog.”

“Which got seven million hits last month,” He points out, only a little offended. You roll your eyes.

“Have you been on TikTok lately, little kids are pulling those numbers.” You say, and he can’t deny it. “But I’ve seen your work firsthand, and you’re amazing at what you do. That’s why you’re here.” Jungkook sighs. The cab is in Manhattan now and he stares out the window once again.

“There must be a reason you’re here,” you continue quietly. “Even I was surprised you finally agreed to give the interview a shot.” Jungkook doesn’t look at you. He doesn’t know you enough to tell you the real reason he up and left his life in LA.

“A free trip to New York? C’mon I’d be an idiot to turn that down!” He says instead, making his tone as light as possible. “But New York’s so crowded. Look around! I’m from California okay? I prefer the coast.” You’re looking at him, and he has a feeling you can see right through him. Considering New York also has the ocean, even Jungkook knows that is the poorest excuse.

“C’mon, what’s really holding you back?” Your tone is serious. Jungkook shrugs.

“I don’t know. This is a ridiculously huge move. I’ve lived in one place my whole life. And I don’t want it to feel like I made the wrong move and got myself into something I can’t handle.”

“I’m telling you, your work is incredible,” you say again, and Jungkook feels the back of his neck go warm. He’s heard flattery before, but you’re a stranger and you sound so blatantly honest. “You’re fully capable of handling this. Look, we’ll get you some coffee before your interview, you’ll be fine.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” Jungkook mumbles, lowering himself in his seat. You stare.

“What?! You heathen.” You’ve dropped all formalities with him, and Jungkook doesn’t know if that’s just New York, or you.

“It’s really hot,” he says as the cab pulls up to the destination.

“Doesn’t it get hot in LA?” you ask, paying the driver. Jungkook stands on the sidewalk and looks around. He can see the river from where he stands and smell the ocean. That thought comforts him a little.

“Yeah it gets hot in LA, but here it’s the heat, the pollution the humidity. In LA, thirty degrees feels like thirty degrees. Here thirty degrees feels like—the ninth circle of hell—”

“This conversation about the weather is really fascinating, believe me,” you cut him off. “But lucky for me, we’re here.” You point at the large building the two of you are standing outside of. “So, good luck.” Jungkook looks up at the skyscraper.

“Whatever happens, happens,” He says, shaking his head. “I told you, I don’t really want it.”

“I think you do,” you say, crossing your arms slightly. “Whatever it was that convinced you to finally fly out here is also convincing you to go for it. But regardless, just do me a favour? Act like you do want it so that I look good.”

“I guess I can do that,” he mumbles, scratching the back of his neck.

“Okay”, you say, flashing him another one of your blinding smiles. “Go get ‘em.”

It’s past three in the afternoon by the time Jungkook walks out of the building’s shiny revolving doors.

“Hey!” you’re running towards him, still wearing the same clothes from this morning. Your hair is down though, Jungkook notes.

“You’re still here,” he’s surprised, and partly impressed by your ethic.

“Yeah, well,” you say, sounding sheepish. “It’s my job. How did it go?” Jungkook allows himself a small grin.

“They bought it,” he says, giving you two thumbs up. “You’re safe for a little while longer.” You clap your hands excitedly.

“Well thank you,” you offer him a little curtsy that has him laughing. “I owe you one Jeon.” At that moment, his phone buzzes in his back pocket and he reaches for it, while you cross your arms and wait.

“Uh,” he says, reading the notification. “It’s from you.”

“It’s your offer,” you say, tilting your chin at his phone.

“Wait,” he says, confusion evident on his face. “I got the job?” You’re smiling now.

“They called about five minutes ago,” Your smile widens. “Congratulations! The offer expires at midnight.” Jungkook holds up his phone.

“Why didn’t you just tell me instead of texting me?”

“‘Cause it’s more dramatic,” you state, as if it’s obvious. Jungkook scoffs and looks away, towards the river, running a hand through his hair. You roll your eyes.

“Jungkook, you’re not gonna screw this up,” you say.

“It’s a huge move,” Jungkook argues. “Would you uproot your entire life for a job? Be honest.”

“Well, no. For a job, probably not. But for New York? Yeah, I would. Which is why I’m not gonna sell you on the job, I’m gonna sell you on New York.”

“It’s New York!” Jungkook says, exasperation leaking into his voice. “I’ve seen Iron Man, I know what it’s like!”

“Not the bullshit tourist version,” you say, looking at him, that slight pout back in your face.

“Puppy dog eyes? Really?” He questions, defeat evident in his voice. You laugh.

“C’mon,” You say grinning. “Let me buy you a drink.” You’re walking away from him and crossing the street when you realize Jungkook isn’t following. “What’re you waiting for?”

“For the light to turn so I can cross the street,” he says pointing at the red hand glaring across from him. You scoff and march back up to him.

“You Cali folk are so cute,” Linking your arm with his, you lead him onto the street. “C’mon it’s fine.”

“No, it’s really not,” Jungkook argues, watching a cab nearly run the two of you over, but you expertly dodge it. “See? I’m gonna die.” You lead him down Park Row, your arm warm against his and Jungkook finds himself at the Brooklyn bridge.

“What’re we—” he starts, but you ignore him, dragging him to the foot of Brooklyn Bridge. Cars are rushing past them, commuters going home after a day of work. Pedestrians are walking along the sidewalk, admiring East River below. You walk up to a small woman sitting on the side of the sidewalk in front of some mangoes.

“Maria!” you exclaim, followed by sentences in a language Jungkook barely recognizes as Spanish. The woman looks up in recognition and smiles at you. You fish through your wallet for a few dollar bills before handing them to her. You’re still speaking in Spanish as you point at Jungkook and then at yourself. The woman nods and begins to bag up the sliced mangoes.

“You’re feeding me mangoes off the street?” Jungkook whispers.

“What? I thought you LA folk were all about that organic, local bullshit,” you retort. You graciously take the bagged slices from the woman and wave at her before pulling Jungkook back in the direction of Manhattan.

“Do I at least get to eat them?” He asks.

“Not yet!” you reply cheerfully. You usher him into the Fulton Street Subway station, even let him use your Metro Card. Jungkook is too winded to ask any more questions as you practically push him onto a train. Two stops later, you’re getting off, Jungkook trying to keep up with you.

“Battery Park!” You wiggle your fingers. Jungkook stares around. “This is where you come if you wanna take those super expensive tours to the Statue of Liberty by the way,”

“Good to know,” he laughs. You walk him in the direction of the water but away from the ferries. It’s a promenade, he realizes. The two of you walk until you arrive at what he recognizes as a World War II memorial. You walk towards it and sit down on the slabs of concrete next to the steps, your feet dangling off as you stare at the ocean in front of you. You pat the space next to you and Jungkook throws the thoughts of getting his one good suit dirty and joins you. You promptly hand him the bag of mangoes.

“I thought we were going for a drink,” he jokes. You laugh as you pop open the bag. He stares down at his own. “What did that woman do to my mangoes?”

“She puts cayenne salt on them,” you say, popping a cube into your mouth. Jungkook raises his eyebrows and experimentally puts a piece in his mouth.

“Oh my god,” he says, voice coming out in a moan. “This is amazing”

“Right?” you laugh. “Maria is a culinary genius.” Your legs swing as the air gets cooler. The two of you watch the ferries in silence, but its comfortable. Jungkook breathes in the salty air.

“Do you do this often?”

“When I need to clear my head, I come here to watch the sunsets,” you say. “The crowd dies down by then because the only tourists that come here are here for Liberty and the ferries stop around this time.” There is another minute of silence and then – “You know, Jungkook, I like you.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s why, I’ll give you your choice of closes.”

“What?” Jungkook is confused again, a state he finds he’s often in wherever you seem to be involved.

“How I close you on this job.”

“Oh.”

“So, we got the flattery close,” you start, and put on a sweet, simpering voice. “Jungkook, you are so good at what you do!” Jungkook is laughing, but you carry on. “The take-it-or-leave-it close – Man I don’t care if you take it, I get paid regardless!” Jungkook is trying to interrupt but you reel right on. “The sympathy close,” suddenly your voice is hitched, and you pretend to bat away unshed tears. “You see, my liver is failing—”

“Why do women think the only way to get a man to do what they want is to manipulate him?” Jungkook finally manages to interrupt your rant and his voice comes out harsher than he expected it to. You blink at him, a look of understanding flashing across your face and Jungkook clamps his mouth shut.

“History,” you reply, choosing not to pry, for which Jungkook is grateful. “Personal experiences. Romantic comedies.” You look out towards the ocean again. A sailing boat is crossing your line of sight as you speak. “C’mon, you’re here for a reason, whether you want to admit it or not.”

“Yeah,” Jungkook says, biting into another slice of mango. “To explore an option. Who wouldn’t want to know their options?”

“Someone who’s in a perfect situation,” you counter.

“Are you in a perfect situation?” He throws your words right back at you.

“Job? Oh, absolutely.” You say. “Everything else? Well, that’s none of your business,” Jungkook chuckles, and you smile. The wind ruffles your hair as you lean back. You watch as he finishes the remainder of his mango. “Ready to go?”

“But we just got here!”

“Chop Chop my friend, New York waits for no one.” Jungkook groans, deciding that you’re just impossible to keep up with.

“Central Park? Really? I thought we weren’t doing the bullshit tourist stuff.” Jungkook is holding a cup of boba in his hand – rose black tea with lychee jelly. The two of you had picked some up on the way to the park. When you’d said drinks, this wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but he wasn’t complaining. You take a giant sip of your own milk tea with pearls.

“You do realize Central Park is huge, right? There are corners of this place tourists tend to not venture into.”

The two of you are near the upper end of the park. The city is more residential here, almost into South Harlem. You tell him it’s the North Meadow. You find small curving paths in the park and the two of you walk around. Jungkook has to admit, it doesn’t feel like he’s currently in the world’s noisiest city.

“Here’s the countryside and peace you were craving for,” you say cheekily, and he laughs. But the air smells cool and fresh, the smell of exhaust and the sound of cars only a faraway tune.

“Okay fine, this wasn’t on TV,” he admits, and you grin. The two of you manage to find a spot in a clearing on a slight hill next to a huge oak tree and make yourselves comfortable on the grass. You pop open the slices of cake you’d picked up at the boba place and dig a fork in them, motioning Jungkook to do the same.

“So, what’s your dad think about all this?” you ask casually and Jungkook stares at you in disbelief. “What? He must have an opinion! He’s famous – he was the brand marketing director for GQ for 23 years.” Jungkook is surprised, to say the least.

“Wow, somebody did their homework.”

“Oh yeah,” you agree. “I have this thing at work. It’s called, uh, Google.” You ignore Jungkook’s scoff. “C’mon, what did he say about the job?”

“Actually, I haven’t asked him.” Jungkook confesses. You don’t need to know that he hasn’t seen or spoken to his father for almost a decade now.

“Well, then, you must know what he’d say,” You counter, waiting patiently for Jungkook to answer.

“He’d tell me to go with my gut,” Jungkook says at last. “And that he’d be proud of me no matter what I did.” If you can sense the shift in his tone, you don’t call him out on it. He’s realizing that you’re more perceptive of your surroundings than he originally gave you credit for.

“Well, he sounds like a really great man.” Your voice is soft and Jungkook doesn’t need to look at you to hear the smile in your voice.

“Yeah, he is.” Jungkook says softly. He doesn’t know if its because you sense the tension, but you stuff the remainder of the cake in your mouth.

“Hey, do you wanna see something really cool?”

“I always want to see something really cool,” Jungkook says easily. He watches you as you lie down on the grass.

“C’mon!” you tell him, and at this point Jungkook knows better than to argue. His suit is ruined anyway. The two of you lie down side-by-side to look up at the sky.

“One of the only places in the city you can actually see a clear night sky,” you point out. “And you know the best part? Very poor cell reception.”

“You bring all your recruits here?”

“I told you, Jeon, you’re my first.”

“Wow.” Jungkook says. “Thanks.”

“But if you tell anyone about this, I will rip your ears off and staple them to your neck.” You continue, in the same, airy tone.

“I believe you,” Jungkook says in a small voice. You sit up next to him. Your hair is frazzled from lying down and your black pencil skirt has grass all over the behind, but you don’t seem to notice or care.

“Oh, it’s time,” you say, checking your watch.

“Time for what?” Jungkook asks, but he hears it as soon as the question leaves his mouth. Soft music reaches his ears from faraway.

“Those tourist spots always have live musicians in the evening.” You say, hugging your knees and resting your chin on them. “But I don’t like the crowds, so I come up here to listen. Nobody for miles – just you and the music.” Jungkook watches you, as your eyes shine, and you stare into the distance.

“Now this is pretty damn cool,” he says. You’re swaying to the music without realizing it and Jungkook watches you tap your foot along to the beat.

“It’s nice to feel like you’re a part of something, right?” you say. “New York can get a little lonely sometimes.”

“And you’re trying to sell me on it.” Jungkook jokes. You laugh, that high tinkling sound Jungkook has come to associate with you after today.

“Every place can be a bit lonely sometimes,” you correct yourself softly. Jungkook thinks the two of you might be more similar than he’d originally thought. He makes a split-second decision.

“I’m in.” he says.

“What?”

“You sold me.”

“Really?” Your eyes are still shining, but you’re looking at him now.

“I’ll take the job,” he laughs. You squeal, still swaying slightly to the music.

“Oh my god!” you grin. “You are so gonna crush it,” And in that moment, surrounded by nothing but the smell of strawberry cake, faraway guitars, and your windswept hair covered in grass, Jungkook really believes you might be right.

Jungkook finally feels like he’s finished moving into his new apartment. Despite being a twenty-something, he never realized that he didn’t actually own that much stuff, and moving states had taken less than a month. Jungkook had other, more pressing matters to worry about – like quitting his previous job, training his replacement, signing a new lease, and bidding farewell to his rather scary old landlady in LA. Jungkook couldn’t say he was very sorry to leave her.

His apartment in Upper West Side Manhattan is miles better than the cramped place he had called home for the past five years. Vogue really had gone all out fixing him up with a place. Jungkook’s favorite feature are the giant floor to ceiling windows that overlook the city. He finds he can get used to this.

He was here now, on the first day at his new job, trying not to sweat through his cream dress shirt. His new team is unfamiliar to him and Jungkook isn’t an extrovert by nature, but he ignores his sweaty palms and tries to play nice.

“So, all I ask is that you give me a little bit of time to gain your trust,” he says, reciting the little speech he’d practiced on the flight a month ago. “I know that I’m new at this, but what I lack in experience, I make up for in cliches.” He gets a few scattered laughs out of that lame gag and sighs internally. “My door’s always open,” he adds. “Literally.” He gestures wildly to his office wall that’s made entirely out of glass, putting him on view to the rest of his team sitting in cubicles outside. “Thanks guys.”

There’s a scattered applause, a few shaken hands, and Jungkook smiles shyly. The crowd dissipates, leaving behind a man with curling blonde hair making his way toward him.

“Park Jimin, I work in marketing.” He introduces. Jungkook shakes his hand. He’s about to ask Park Jimin about his career when he sees you, wearing a navy dress and holding a stack of papers. Your hair is up again, this time in a no-nonsense ponytail.

“Oh, hey Jimin,” you say cheerfully and Jimin grins, exclaiming your name and giving you a hi-five. “Whatcha doing?”

“Sizing up the new guy,” Jimin stares at Jungkook from the corner of his eye. “You did good here. I could just eat him up.” Jungkook’s eyebrows disappear into the fringe of hair that falls over his forehead as he sees you trying to control your laughter. You pat Jimin on the butt with a fondness that isn’t missed by Jungkook.

“Go back to work Chim,” you say and Jimin shrugs and bounds off towards his office. Jungkook levels you with a look, eyebrows still raised, and you giggle. “You get used to him.”

“Anyway,” Jungkook says, picking up his iPad from his desk. “I have something to show you.”

“Show me?” You’re curious now as you walk into his office fully, still clutching your papers. He uses his tablet to switch the screen on the TV above his desk. It’s a small acoustic band, playing in Central Park.

“I tracked down the band that plays music in the North end of the park – the one we listened to that day that I decided to take this job,” Jungkook explains. “I’m thinking of using them somehow for my first project. I got in touch with the lead singer – we’re thinking of using them for guerilla advertising.”

“Taking something so pure and commercializing it?” You ask. “Knew I’d found the right guy.” Jungkook chuckles and watches you put down the stack of papers on his desk. “Anyway, here’s your contract. Sign it, and I will be out of here.” Jungkook fingers the front page hesitantly.

“A whole year,” he says wonderingly. “Wow.”

“Why do I feel like this is the first real commitment you’ve ever made?” Your hands are on your waist as you level him with a judgemental look on your face.

“Its not,” Jungkook argues, mildly offended. “I worked my last full-time job for two years. And fuck – I do regret that one.” He holds up two fingers to drive the point home.

“Do me a favour,” you sigh. “Don’t quit or get fired before this year’s up, otherwise I don’t get my bonus.”

“Wait, I can leave whenever I want? Then what’s the point of the contract?”

“Just sign the damn thing!” You watch as he groans and scribbles his signature at the bottom. “Nice doing business with you Jeon Jungkook,” You shake his hand vigorously. Jungkook watches you collect all the papers.

“Hey, I was thinking of maybe getting some lunch. Do you know a place?” He asks, checking his phone for the time. You stare at him.

“Are you… asking me out?” Jungkook blinks. What?

“Whoa, no,” he amends. “I’m just asking you to show me a restaurant.”

“I mean, I’m the only friend you have in New York,” you ramble on. “You don’t wanna complicate that.”

“I know,” Jungkook starts. “I’m not asking you out.” You ignore him, Of course you do.

“I mean, sure, we’d have fun, roll around, get into some erotic humiliation fantasy—” You’re wringing your hands. Jungkook thinks if he wasn’t sweating while giving his speech before, he’s definitely sweating now.

“I—Erotic?”

“—But it’ll all blow up in our faces, end very badly, and we’d never speak to each other—”

“Can you slow down for a second—”

“It’s just not a good idea Jungkook—”

“I’m not fucking asking you out, I swear to god!” Jungkook almost shouts, and you shut up. He watches your eyes go wide, and you bite your lip as if to hold back a sob. He winces inwardly.

“Okay,” you say, your voice unusually small. “You don’t like me like that, I get it. You don’t have to be so mean about it,” Your voice is trembling now, and you look down at your feet. Jungkook sputters, taking a step towards you.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t--,” but he realizes that your voice wasn’t trembling from hurt, it was just you trying to keep your laughter in. You look up at him now, mirth swimming in your eyes and he knows he’s been had.

“God, you’re such a girl,” you grin. “Come on sister, it’s my treat.” Jungkook watches you turn on your heel and march out and wonders if there will ever come a day when he’ll have you all figured out.

You bring him to a brunch place at the corner of the block. It’s got a long French name Jungkook struggles to pronounce but he orders a large smoked salmon avocado toast while the two of you sit at a small table by the window.

“So, was it an easy move?” you ask, chopping your broccoli into tiny pieces before eating it.

“It was tough leaving my mom,” Jungkook offers. “My brother gave me some shit. But, uh, the timing was right,” He nods, as if satisfied with that answer. You’re watching him, a small smile on your face.

“An ex?” you ask. Jungkook winces, remembering that you’re far more astute than you let on. “I kinda got the vibe.”

“Yeah,” Jungkook answers, mouth full of salmon. “She’s great! Wants us to stay friends!” You make a gagging sound. “She’s also convinced she can cure me of my emotional unavailability.”

“You’re emotionally unavailable?” You ask laughing, and Jungkook nods vigorously. “Oh my God, I’m emotionally damaged. My ex was so kind to point that out when he cheated on me. I haven’t seen you at the meetings.”

“I’m done with the relationship thing,” He sighs, giving you his leftover broccoli, which you accept graciously.

“Girl, you are preaching to the congregation,” you cheer, raising your hands in agreement.

“Choir.”

“What?”

“‘Preaching to the choir’. You’re supposed to preach to the congregation. That’s the expression.” Jungkook takes a long swig of his hot chocolate.

“Did you understand what I was saying? Then don’t be a dick about it,” you smart and Jungkook laughs. He finds he does that a lot in your presence. “Anyway, I’m having some friends over tomorrow. Why don’t you come? You can meet some new people too.”

“I’m gonna have to check my schedule,” Jungkook says solemnly, pulling out a wad of cash to pay for his meal. “I’m really busy. I work at Vogue now,” you’re giggling. “It’s not just some little blog on the internet.” Your laughter drowns out everything else and Jungkook finds he likes being the one making you laugh.

Jungkook triple-checks the address you’ve texted him before knocking on the door labelled 2A. He hopes he’s picked up a decent enough wine as a housewarming gift. He’d even made sure to get the best alcohol content-to-cost ratio from the grocery store down the street from your place! He hasn’t even entered your apartment and he’s already sweating through his cardigan.

The door opens and it’s you, and this is the first time Jungkook sees you out of your usual business attire. Your hair is down, and you’re sporting skinny jeans and a tank top.

“Hey!” you say breathlessly. “You made it! C’mon!” He hands you the wine, which you graciously accept. You drag him into your living room and address the rather large gathering.

“Hey—HEY everybody! This here is Jungkook, he’s from LA!” There’s absolute crickets at your proclamation, and you roll your eyes. “He’s the reason I can afford all this beer.” You state plainly. At that, there’s a universal cheer that goes around the room.

Jungkook is generally wary of large crowds. Multiple strangers staring at him always makes him uncomfortable, but for some reason he finds himself blending in with your friends. Granted, he spends most of the evening with you playing wii bowling, jenga, and drunk card games with you and Jimin and two other friends – Taehyung and Namjoon.

The days turn to months just like this and Jungkook finds that life in New York is almost refreshing. It turns out he and Jimin have a lot in common, and that Jimin flirts incessantly with literally everyone he meets, not just him. After your party on that fateful day, he’s hit it off with Taehyung and Namjoon too. Taehyung’s a freelance artist, and Namjoon works in the music industry. He hangs out with you often too and finds that the two of you have easily become good friends. You don’t actually work for Vogue, working for a registered recruitment agency instead, so he doesn’t see you that often. He decides though, that this is a good thing. You’re definitely the one person he knows best in this city and he doesn’t want that becoming overcomplicated with having to see you as a colleague instead of a friend.

It is on a Friday night Jungkook finds himself dissolving in your extremely comfortable couch, after one too many beers, watching what he thinks is the worst romance film in existence. You’re totally enraptured though, a firm grip on your own drink.

“I swear all these movies have terrible music,” Jungkook mutters as the soundtrack crescendos and the female lead runs into the male lead’s arms in slow motion, fake tears staining her face.

“It’s so you know how to feel every single second,” you answer. Your voice is croaky from unshed tears as the female lead jumps into the male lead’s arms and he spins her round and round. Despite your newly found distaste for relationships, Jungkook has learned that you’re secretly a sucker for romance. He watches you as you mouth along to the dialogue.

“God, I wish my life were a movie sometimes,” you murmur, as the ending credits roll. “I’d always look good, and never have to go to the bathroom.” You turn to him abruptly. “And then, when I’m at my lowest point, some guy would chase me down the street, pour his heart out, and we’d kiss. Happily ever after.”

Jungkook groans, lowering himself further in your couch, chin now resting on his chest. You ignore him.

“Why don’t they ever make a movie about what happens after the big confession?”

“They do,” Jungkook replies instantly, taking a swig of his beer. “It’s called porn.” You slap his chest, sitting back comfortably next to him.

“God, I miss sex,” you say, your words slightly slurring together. The alcohol in your system has erased your filters, not that you had many in the first place. “Right? I mean, sometimes, you just need it.”

“There can never be just sex,” Jungkook mutters. “There’s always complications involved.”

“Yeah but why? What’s wrong with uncomplicated sex?”

“It’s womens’ fault,” Jungkook says and you sit up, affronted.

“Excuse me?”

“‘Hold me, let’s spend the rest of our lives together’” Jungkook mocks, making you scoff.

“As if men are any better. You’re all eyeing our pussies right from that first date.”

“I wish it wasn’t like that, y’know,” he continues. “It’s a physical act – a sport – if you will – like…. Bowling. Two people should be able to have sex like they’re going bowling.”

“For some weird ass reason, that made sense to me,” you say lazily. Jungkook laughs.

“Right, it’s just a sport. Maybe you shake hands at the end, and then get on with your life.” You nod. A comfortable silence follows. You pat him on his chest, small hands warm.

“More beer?” You’re downing yours. Jungkook nods sleepily and watches as you bend over to pick up the empty bottles and empty bags of chips from your floor and traipse over to your small kitchenette. You’re dressed in a simple tank and booty shorts and Jungkook can’t deny that, in your dimly lit apartment, your legs look good. He calls your name, and you look over at him.

“Let’s go bowling,” he says, tapping his foot. You blink at him in confusion. “Let’s have sex like we’re going bowling.” He repeats. You have the audacity to laugh out loud.

“You’re insane,” you tell him, walking back to the living room with more beer and a bowl of popcorn. Jungkook scowls and pulls himself up to sit up on your couch.

“Don’t laugh at me! This could be great. This could take all the weirdness out of it. We both want the same things.”

“We’ve been over this,” you say, tossing some popcorn in your mouth. “I don’t like you like that.”

“I don’t like you like that either,” he points out evenly. “That’s why this is perfect.” You chuckle.

“I don’t even know if I find you attractive!” you respond.

“That’s cute,” Jungkook says, standing up and bringing himself to his full height. You roll your eyes.

“Well, I do have a thing for jerks,” you mutter, which has Jungkook scoffing. “Do you even find me attractive?”

“That’s cute.” He repeats. You wave your hands and stand up in front of him.

“No, no, no,” you say. “Before you got to know my awesome personality – strictly physical – first impression of me?”

“This is just two people talking right? Sharing notes?” Jungkook affirms and you nod. “I liked your eyes – you have nice eyes.” He sighs. You’re looking at him, arms crossed.

“I liked your lips,” you offer. “Thought you might be a good kisser.”

“I am,” Jungkook admits solemnly, and you snort. “Your breasts,” he adds, tilting his chin towards your chest. You look down at it.

“What about them?”

“They intrigue me.”

“Aw, really?” you seem incredibly flattered. You give your breasts a congratulatory pat. “That’s a first – no ones ever called by boobs intriguing before. I liked your hands by the way. I’ve always got a thing for tattoos.” He watches you eye the ink on the back of his right hand, your gaze traveling up his arm where the tattoos disappear into the sleeves of his shirt.

“Mouth.” Jungkook responds quickly.

“Thighs.” You counter.

“Voice.”

“Butt.”

“Eyes.”

“You said that already,” you’re smiling now.

“I meant it,” Jungkook responds honestly. You’re looking at him now, eyes narrowed.

“You swear you don’t want anything from me other than sex?” You ask.

“You swear you don’t want anything from me other than sex?” he counters. “I know how you girls get.”

“Don’t be a pig.”

“A pig who’s got a cute butt.” He wiggles his eyebrows. You roll your eyes.

“No relationship,” you state. Jungkook nods. “No emotions. Just sex.”

“Whatever happens,” he adds. “We stay friends.” You nod back at him. The two of you stand there, staring at each other.

“Swear?” you ask.

“Swear,” he states evenly. “So…. I guess we should just start?” You laugh nervously.

“Okay then, let’s go to my bedroom.”

“Wait – what’s wrong with the couch?” Jungkok gestures wildly at your sofa, which he has to admit, is stupid comfortable. “It’s less emotional.”

“The bedroom has better light,” you point out. “And since we’re just friends, I don’t have to be insecure about my body.” Jungkook blinks at you, doe eyes wide.

“Aw, cmon,” he says. “You’re beautiful. You have nothing to be insecure about!” You fix him with a glare.

“That’s way too emotionally supportive. You need to lock that down.” You jab his chest with a pointed finger.

“Uh… your ass is way too bony?” he tries, watching your behind as you saunter towards your bedroom.

“Much better!” comes your reply, and he grins. Following you into your room, he watches with slight amazement as you tug off your top. “My nipples are sensitive,” you tell him conversationally. “I don’t really care for dirty talk, and had I known this was gonna happen, I’d have shaved my legs this morning.” You stand before him topless and he shrugs.

“I enjoy dirty talk, I sneeze sometimes when I come, and the socks stay on during sex. It’s a weird feet thing, nothing you need to be worried about.” He’s pulled off his shirt and tossed it on top of yours.

“Wait, feet gross me out too, look at that,” You grin. “Meant to be.” You tug your booty shorts off and stand in front of him wearing nothing but a bra and underwear. He whistles and you roll your eyes.

“Can you please be a little less fuckboy about this?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

“Girl, look what we about to do right now, and tell me this isn’t peak fuckboy behaviour,” he berates. You can’t argue.

“Fine, whatever, be a fratboy, but will you just start my tits are freezing—” But Jungkook doesn’t let you finish your sentence for he takes two strides towards you, cupping your face with his hands and smashing his lips down on yours. You make a muffled sound of surprise, but he ignores you, tilting his face to deepen the kiss. It takes you only a split second to reciprocate, and your hands travel up his sides to rest on his shoulders as you open up and let him explore your mouth.

Jungkook pushes you backwards without breaking the kiss until you’re falling on your bed. You scoot back until your back hits the headboard and you watch him as he stares at you, eyes dark and hair tousled. Without wasting any more time, Jungkook crawls over on all fours towards you. Giving you a chaste kiss on the lips, his tattooed hand travels down your neck, grazes over your shoulder, the underside of your breast, stomach and finally arriving to rest on your thigh. You watch him expectantly, bottom lip caught between your teeth, and he refuses to break eye contact with you s he tightens his grip on your thigh to yank you down so you’re lying down underneath him.

His lips latch onto your neck and you let out a whine that has blood rushing to his cock. He sucks a bruise right over your pulse before his hand comes up to lower the strap of your bra. Pulling the garment down, he lowers himself to press kisses and suck on your breast, before moving to the other side to repeat with the other one.

“Hurry up,” you murmur from under him, thighs rubbing against each other. Jungkook chuckles, and nibbles slightly on your nipple, drawing a whimper from you.

“Patience, princess. Good things come to those who wait,” his hand reaches down, and he strokes a single finger over your clothed core, and you shudder. “So wet already and I’ve barely done anything,” he notes, mouth still closed around your breast. Letting go with a slight plop, he looks at you hungrily. “Let me eat you out.”

You raise your eyebrows but do not object, and Jungkook moves down, pressing kisses to your navel, until he arrives between your thighs. Using both hands to spread your thighs apart, his gaze moves from you to your core. He buries his nose in your pussy without warning.

“You smell fucking amazing,” he tells you and your face heats up instantly, your arms coming up to cover your face in embarrassment.

“I told you, I don’t like dirty talk,” you say, your voice coming out in gasps. Jungkook smiles over your pussy, mouthing it over your underwear.

“Too bad,” he mutters against you, and your toes curl from the vibrations his voice causes through you. “I’m gonna tell you exactly what I want to do to you whether you like it or not.” Hooking a finger through your underwear, he moves it to the side. He licks a stripe up your folds, before burying his nose back into your pussy, tongue lapping at your juices. You’re writhing under him and he places his hands on your thighs to steady you. You’re gasping for air, little moans leaving your pretty pink lips.

Jungkook feels your hand tangle in his hair as he sloppily eats you out. You’re dripping on his tongue and he, in turn, is practically salivating at the taste of you. Your hand tightens its grip on his hair, and he feels you grind down on his tongue.

“O-oh my god,” you gasp. “Jungkook.” He pulls away from you and looks up at you. Your juices cover his lips and chin and you’re looking down at him, eyes blown out, hair in disarray.

“Yeah? You like that?” he groans out, and you nod desperately. “Like it when I fuck you with my tongue?”

“P-please,” you whisper, and he grins.

“Tell me what you want baby,” Your ears turn red at that and you look away. He climbs up to hover over your face and lowers his lips onto yours. His tongue is immediately in your mouth, its sloppy and wet and he knows you taste yourself on him. Its an exchange of spit mixed with your essence and when Jungkook pulls away, a string of saliva connects the two of you. He watches as it snaps and dribbles down the corner of your lips. You’re panting now. “Tell me.”

“Your fingers,” you mutter, clearly embarrassed. Jungkook’s smile widens.

“My fingers where?”

“C’mon Jeon, don’t be a dick.”

“Alright, I’ll stop,” Jungkook answers noncommittally, pulling away to sit back on your bed. You moan and your hand covers his wrist in an attempt to stop him. He grins.

“Your fingers inside me.” You answer, face as red as a strawberry. Jungkook’s grin widens and he leans back down to place a small kiss on the corner of your lips. His hand travels back down to between your thighs and he strokes your folds with his index finger.

Without warning, he shoves two fingers in you, and you moan, small hands curling around his biceps, nails digging into his skin. He buries his nose in the crook of your neck, and your hand tangles in his hair again. It’s quiet except for your gasps and moans and the sound of his fingers steadily pumping in and out of your pussy. He can feel that you’re near your high, so he carelessly shoves a third finger inside you, increasing his speed. Before you know it, you’re chasing your high, coming all around his fingers with a loud squelching sound and a gasp.

“Like music to my ears,” Jungkook hums, nudging his nose against your jaw. Your hands caress his chest, sides before one travels down to palm the tent in his jeans. Jungkook gasps, biting down on your shoulder. Boldened by his reaction, you twist your hips, so your knee rubs against his crotch and Jungkook freezes. You take this opportunity to flip him over, so you’re settled on top of him, your hair spilling around you. Jungkook lies back on your pillow, bringing his fingers that were just in you up to your mouth. You run your tongue along them, and he shoves them deep in your throat before pulling them out and spreading the mixture of saliva and your wetness across your face.

Your hands spread across his chest as you grind down on him and he groans.

“My turn,” you whisper, leaning forward and placing a chaste kiss on his lips. Your hips are swirling over his crotch as your mouth moves from his lips to kiss his jaw, neck and then moving down to swirl your tongue over a perk nipple. You’ve undone his pants and he takes no time pushing them down. You palm him over his boxers before pulling them down too and letting his dick spring free. You suck in a breath, tongue hungrily swiping out to wet your lips.

You waste no time to take him in your mouth. Unlike Jungkook, you’re not a teaser and Jungkook throws his head back and groans as your lips wrap around his length. Your head bobs up and down between his legs and Jungkook closes his eyes and loses himself to the feeling. His fingers tangle in your hair, gripping it tightly until his hips are out of control and he’s fucking up into your mouth. You let him, slackening your jaw, tongue lying flat against the underside of his dick. Jungkook gets high off of the sound of you gagging on his cock, spit dripping down him and onto your bedsheets. He’s so fucking close he’s seeing stars.

It takes all his self control to sit up and signal you to stop. You look at him, lips swollen and wet, a mixture of precum and saliva messily splayed across your face.

“No more,” he rasps, pulling you close and flipping you over so he’s on top again. “Need to be inside you right now. Condom?” You breathe out that you’re on the pill before smiling coyly up at him. Jungkook is painfully hard and wastes no time to slip inside of you. You let out your loudest moan yet, and he waits for you to get accustomed to his length in you.

“You can move,” you tell him, voice hoarse. Jungkook nods and pulls out only to slam right back in you with a groan. The first few strokes are long and languid until you’re pinching his nipple and motioning him to take you harder.

“I’m not a fucking porcelain doll,” you ground out. “Fuck me like you mean it Jeon.” Jungkook grits his teeth and pulls out of you completely. You’re about to ask him what’s wrong when he flips you over like a ragdoll so you’re lying on your stomach.

“Fine,” he grunts. “You’re such a brat.” You shiver at his tone and he’s gripping your ass to prop it up, pushing your face with one hand so you’re buried face down in your pillow.

Without warning he shoves himself back in you, one hand on your hip, the other still pushing your face into your mattress. He sets an unforgiving pace, ramming into you without pause until your muffled screams could be heard in your pillow.

“How’s that?” he grinds out, planting a smack on your ass as you moan. “That hard enough for you?”

“Y-yes,” you manage to scream. He shoves two fingers into your mouth, spanking your ass between thrusts until you’re smarting and red. Your garble moans around his fingers, drool lacing your pillow until he’s twisting his hand back in your hair and pulling you up flush against him. Grabbing one of your breasts he bites down on your shoulder.

“Fuck you feel so good around my cock,” he whispers in your ear and you shiver. Your ass is sore, but Jungkook shows no mercy, stroking it with his right hand and continuing to smack it. His hand moves around to rub over your clit and you almost fall over at the stimulation but his other hand clutching your breast keeps you upright. “You’re gonna cum now sweetheart? Milk my cock for all its worth?”

“Oh my god, Jungkook please,” you’re almost sobbing

“Come on baby, you can do it,” he croons, and you look over your shoulder at him and he wastes no time in closing the distance and planting his lips on yours. Without warning you’re coming, and that too all over Jungkook’s hand, dripping down your thighs and onto the bed. He’s not far behind, your convulsing pussy driving him over the edge before he’s releasing his load in you. You collapse on all fours in front of him as he pulls out.

“Damn,” he says, bringing his hand up to show you. “So, you’re a squirter, huh?”

“What?” your ears turn red as you look back at him. “Oh, my fucking god.” You watch as Jungkook licks his fingers clean without hesitation before collapsing on the bed next to you.

“Don’t tell me that was your first time squirting,” he grins. You look away in embarrassment, and he props himself up on his elbow, head resting on his hand. “Wow I’m just that good.”

“You’re such an ass,” you mutter. Jungkook cackles in delight.

You and Jungkook fall into a routine after that. There are multiple trysts, mostly at one of your apartments after work, a few in the bathroom of restaurants while you’re out with your friends, and one (1) time at work when you arrived for your weekly lunch date wearing the tiniest skirt Jungkook had ever fucking seen.

Sex with you is easy. Being friends with you is also easy. Jungkook can’t believe how simple you make his life. You’re a good friend, always willing to listen. He tells you things about his life back in LA, his ex and how thankful he was that he was finally out of a five-year relationship. You talk about your family, your sisters, your childhood. There are still lines the two of you don’t cross. Jungkook knows your last relationship left you scarred, but you never mention it and Jungkook never mentions his father. Some things are better left unsaid.

It isn’t until one day when you’ve dragged Jungkook out to Macy’s on the hunt for a new outfit you need to go meet a potential new recruit, that he manages to find the missing puzzle piece.

He’s sat through you trying out at least fifteen different shirts, all of which look the same to him, but you insist they’re not. It’s after you’ve finally picked out a dress shirt, some trousers and a new pair of “killin” shoes that the two of you collapse in a café across from the department store, your bags surrounding you.

“God, nothing feels better than a day full of shopping for shit,” you say, taking a huge sip out of your (soy) cappuccino. Jungkook rolls his eyes.

“I’ll show you exactly what’s better tonight” he mutters and its your turn to roll your eyes.

“Can you please keep it in your pants for a minute,” you groan. “I’m actually nervous about recruiting this guy.”

“Please,” Jungkook huffs. “You’re gonna be fine, you’re a natural!”

“Really?” You’re raising your eyebrows. “After the shit show you had to put up with?”

“Excuse me?” Jungkook pretends to be offended. “I’m here, aren’t I? You won me over.”

“Barely. For fucks sake you arrived to see me on the fucking baggage belt.” you huff, placing your head down on the table. Jungkook watches you, a twinge of sympathy running through him.

“Look, you are good at what you do. I don’t think I’m an easy person to convince, if I do say so myself,” he says, voice gentler. You look up at him slowly, figure still hunched. “Maybe you’re a little unorthodox but hey! We need someone like that. Just be yourself, you’re gonna be fine.”

“You think so?” you’re pouting, and Jungkook’s heart melts a little.

“100%”

You’re smiling faintly at him when the two of you hear your name being called. You freeze and look past Jungkook, a glassy look overtaking your eyes.

“It is you!” the voice comes closer and Jungkook turns around to look at what is possibly the most beautiful man he’s ever seen in his life. He’s tall, hair pushed back in a neat part, wearing a three-piece suit. In front of him, Jungkook feels like a giant toddler in his sweatpants and colorful hoodie and messy hair.

“Seokjin.” Your voice is hushed and oddly quiet, something Jungkook has never seen before. He eyes the two of you curiously.

“How have you been?” The man – Seokjin – asks. “It’s been forever.”

“Yeah,” you clear your throat. “It really has.” It’s awkward for a minute until Seokjin’s eyes land on Jungkook. His eyes travel to the cups of coffee in front of the two of you, and something flits across his expression.

“I’m sorry, are you two--,” he starts, and you’re rushing to correct him, but for some reason, Jungkook’s body moves on instinct.

“I’m Jungkook,” he says, getting up and offering a hand.

“Seokjin,” the man answers, taking it and shaking it firmly. “It’s nice to meet you.” There’s another beat of silence and then a girl is running toward you, calling Seokjin’s name. Seokjin freezes as the girl catches up to him, laying a hand on his shoulder to catch her breath. Jungkook feels you freeze up even more, if possible.

“Hi!” she says brightly, looking from Jungkook to you. “Friends of yours Jinnie?” she addresses the taller man. Jungkook doesn’t fail to notice that she’s just as beautiful as Seokjin. Pretty people really do stick together. You stand up abruptly behind Jungkook and he feels you clutch at the back of his hoodie, out of Seokjin’s gaze. Seokjin clears his throat.

“U-uhm, this is Joohyun,” he offers. “My fiancée.” At this point you’re tugging wildly at the back of Jungkook’s hoodie and he isn’t stupid. He gets the hint.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” he says, plastering on his best fake-charming smile. Joohyun seems to buy it because she grins back. “But we really are in a rush. Places to be! Nice meeting you guys!” and he turns around without another word, grabs your hand in one of his and picks up your bags in a single fluid motion with his other. Then he’s pulling you out of there, away from the café, away from Seokjin and out into the busy street.

You walk behind him wordlessly, hand still clasped in his and he drags you up a few blocks until you’re at Bryant Park. The two of you find a bench and collapse in it, slightly out of breath.

“Thanks,” you whisper, after a while.

“No problem.” Jungkook replies.

“You’re not gonna ask?”

“Should I ask?” He turns to look at you. You chuckle weakly and lean back to stare up at the tall trees.

“My ex-boyfriend,” you say. “Obviously.” Jungkook had figured that but he nods along anyway. “He—uhm—cheated on me,” you continue and Jungkook suddenly feels white-hot rage curling inside him. You’d mentioned it before on the first day of his new job, at brunch, but it hadn’t registered until now. “With the girl we just met.”

“What the actual fuck.” He mutters, running a hand through his hair.

“He’s the reason why I can’t--,” you start, then stop. You take a deep breath before continuing. “Why I can’t get myself to enter into another relationship.” Jungkook doesn’t know what to say to that but it doesn’t seem like you care. Now that you’re talking, the floodgates are open.

“We’d been together since college. I imagined we’d be endgame y’know? Everyone always told me how lucky I was to bag a man so attractive and smart and I felt lucky. Jin was always the best, the most caring, the most loving. We had some really great times together. But then… I don’t know… college ended and careers happened and I struggled to find a job straight out of university, while Seokjin comes from a long line of rich businessmen and he was already working for his dad’s company by graduation. We drifted after that. A part of me resented his privilege, I was envious of what he had. I took it out on him, and I guess he-he—”

“That does not give him the right to cheat on you.” Jungkook stops you. “I get being unhappy in relationships, I really do, but in no way is that the correct response.” Your eyes are glassy and full of unshed tears.

“She’s like him, y’know,” you continue, sniffing. “Beautiful, successful, I heard she owns a clothing line. Seeing them together it made me realize that I was the anomaly.”

“Don’t.” Jungkook says. “Don’t put yourself down. Look at you!” He gestures at you and you look up. “You’re smart, cute, successful. He’s trash for not recognizing that.”

“No, what I am is broken,” you give him a small, watery smile. “I haven’t been able to let anyone in since Seokjin and I broke almost a year ago.” Jungkook sighs and shuffles closer to you. Sniffling, you lean over to rest your head on his shoulder. “Thanks for today Kook,” you murmur against him. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you weren’t there.”

Jungkook sighs and leans over to kiss the top of your head lightly. The two of you sit there, amongst the chirping birds and trees, leaning on each other. Jungkook squeezes your hand and tries not to think of the unfamiliar feeling curling inside his stomach.

Things change after that. Jungkook finds that the two of you are almost domestic with each other. You stay over more often, and he finds you in his kitchen in the mornings, flipping pancakes wearing nothing but his button down. It’s so normal that Jungkook often has to take a step back and remember that the two of you are just friends. Seasons change from autumn into winter and a sheet of snow covers Manhattan.

“My sister’s in town,” Jungkook tells you one morning, offhandedly.

“Older or younger?” You’re making pancakes in his kitchen and you set down a plate of them in front of him before returning to make yourself some. Jungkook shakes the can of whipped cream next to him before squirting himself some.

“Older,” he grins. “She lives in LA with Dad and she’s in New York for business.” It’s the first time Jungkook has mentioned his father in front of you since the day the two of you met. You don’t prod. “My parents are separated,” he offers.

“I figured,” you shrug, sitting down across from him and refusing the can of whipped cream when he offers it. “Do you hate him or something?”

“What? No!” Jungkook laughs. “We just aren’t close that’s all. Everyone expects me to be this prodigy because of my Dad’s reputation, but I barely know the guy. Anyway, my sister wants to meet you.”

“Me?” You’re surprised.

“Yeah she wants to see who it was that convinced me to leave LA.”

“Oh, so that’s my reputation in the Jeon household now is it?” Jungkook gives you a cheeky grin. “How nerve-wracking—you sure you want me meeting your family? Makes us sound more than we are.”

“It’s not like that,” Jungkook argues, ignoring the faint twinge of disappointment somewhere deep within himself. “She’s only in town for three days. Come get some brunch with us tomorrow.”

“Fine. But you need to do something for me in return,” Your mouth is full of pancake and your hair is mussed but Jungkook smiles endearingly. “I have this… thing I got invited to tonight and I need you to be my date.”

“Are you sure? It makes us sound more than we are,” Jungkook throws your words back at you and you kick his shin under the table.

“Shut up, it’s my childhood friend’s Christmas party and our families are close so I have to go but I don’t have a plus-one and I need you there to keep me sane. Seokjin’s gonna be there.”

“You’re asking if I want to go with you,” he starts slowly. “To a Christmas party. As your date.”

“Well, yeah,” you shrug. “We go, drink at the open bar until we can’t see straight and then come home and you pound me into your tempur-pedic.”

“You’re disgusting,” he grins. “But, okay, I’m in--what the hell.”

“Do you have a tux?”

“Girl look who you speaking to,” he gestures at himself, sitting up straight and throwing his chest out. “Of fucking course, I have a tux.”

Wow, Jungkook thinks to himself that evening as you stand in your door in front of him. Long olive-green silk hugging every curve of your body, you grin up at him. You’d tamed your hair by pinning one side up, clutch in one hand, and feet in black pumps.

“Well?” you grin. Jungkook whistles, shoving his hands in his plain black tuxedo.

“Yeah well, you clean up nice too Jeon,” you pat him cheerfully on his chest, causing a warm feeling to flutter through him. “Let’s go do this thing.” You straighten his tie, and Jungkook swallows. He doesn’t know when exactly it happened, but over the course of time you really have him wrapped around your little finger.

The two of you uber down, your warm body next to his as you tell him some inconsequential story about your high school prom.

“We didn’t have prom at my school,” he tells you and you gape at him. “We had sports day though.”

“That is so sad.”

“Not really,” Jungkook shrugs. “Social gatherings are terrifying.”

“Never would’ve pegged you as the socially anxious type Jeon.”

“Well I am,” Jungkook rests his elbow on the car door, his chin in his hand to look outside. “I can’t believe I’m going to this rich people thing with you.”

“C’mon! It’ll be fun!” you send twin finger guns his way and he smiles wantonly.

“No seriously,” he says, looking at you, chin still balanced on his hand. “Thank you. You always manage to take the edge off and make things less intimidating and make me feel like I can step out of my comfort zone.” You blink at him, grin fading at his sincerity.

“What’re friends for, right?” you say, your voice quiet.

“Right,” he says back, just as quiet.

“You know,” you ramble on. “When I first saw you, you did totally strike me as a stereotypical fratboy. I was a little scared.”

“Of me?” Jungkook points at himself, surprised. You lean back in your seat and rest your head back.

“Yeah,” you mutter. “You reminded me of the guys I went to high school with. The jerks that ranked the girls by how fuckable they were and shoved kids into lockers and giggled at you as you tried to present your history project to the class.”

“Why didn’t you just beat them up?” Jungkook isn’t offended by your generalization. He knows what you mean. “The you I know would’ve stabbed someone’s eye out with a pencil.”

“I was different when I was sixteen,” you smile. “But you’re right, now I’m not beyond stabbing someone’s eyes out with a pencil. Anyway, I’m sorry for judging you.”

“It happens,” Jungkook shrugs but you shake your head vigorously.

“No, you’re sweet,” you continue. “I’m so happy we met. And that we’re friends now.”

“I’m glad too,” Jungkook grins, punching you lightly on your shoulder. “Are you sure you can do this? I saw how you were when you saw Seokjin that day.” You bite your lip and look out the window.

“I’ll be fine,” you say slowly. “I have you.” Jungkook blinks and gulps.

“Listen, there’s something I need to tell you—” he starts but the uber is arriving at the venue and you’re getting ready to step out of the car. Jungkook stares at the ceiling before getting himself out. Checking in your coats at the entrance, the two of you enter together.

You were right, Jungkook notes. This isn’t just some Christmas party. Lights sparkle down at him and the massive Christmas tree in front of him is decorated to the nines. The bar is sparkling with decorations, and the tables are decorated with fancy centerpieces and champagne flutes. People wearing black tie are mingling, men in tuxedos, women in floor length gowns.

“God,” you whisper next to him.

“You didn’t tell me you were also Richie Rich rich,” Jungkook whispers back and you jab him in the side with your elbow. “Oh my god you’re a trust fund baby! You’re Gossip Girl!”

“Oh my god shut up,” you’re giggling. “I’m the family’s black sheep, fortunately for you. I refused to major in what my parents wanted me to major in and that was apparently the final straw. I’m surprised Yoongi even bothered to invite me – we haven’t spoken in months. There he is now.”

A man shorter than Jungkook is making his way towards them. He’s got effortlessly tousled black hair and his ears are adorned with many earrings. His eyes flit lazily towards Jungkook before landing on you and he’s pulling you into a hug.

“Yoongi!” you say grinning, returning his embrace and he smiles, changing his entire demeanour. “How are you, this is amazing!”

“Thought I’d do something to get the old gang together,” he shrugs. “I’m happy you came.”

“This is Jungkook, we—uhm—worked together.”

“Ah one of her recruits huh?” Yoongi is shaking Jungkook’s hand. “Min Yoongi, pleasure to meet you. Please make yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you,” Jungkook is sure his palms are sweating again. He picks up a flute of champagne from a waiter passing by and takes a huge gulp. You and Yoongi exchange pleasantries for a little while longer and then he leaves the two of you to greet some other guests that are just arriving.

“Wanna go to the bar?” You’re pulling him in the direction of the alcohol before he can say yes. You wave down the bartender and order your drink and turn to Jungkook. “You okay?”

“Why? Is it obvious I’m freaking out?”

“You country bumpkins are so cute,” You pinch his cheek. “What were you trying to tell me in the cab?” Jungkook looks sideways at you, but sees who’s approaching and clears his throat.

Seokjin looks even better than Jungkook remembered, in a well-tailored suit, holding a glass of wine. You turn and freeze momentarily.

“Jin! Hey,” your voice is steady and Jungkook is almost proud of you.

“I’m glad you made it,” Seokjin mirrors Yoongi’s words from earlier. “You didn’t last year.”

“Yeah, well,” you say sheepishly. “There were just some people I couldn’t face last year.”

Ouch, Jungkook thinks, on Seokjin’s behalf. If Seokjin hears the slight bite in your tone, he pretends not to notice.

“You’re Jungkook, right?” Seokjin’s addressing Jungkook now. “From the mall.”

“Yeah, good to see you again man,” Jungkook smiles and the smile Seokjin gives him in return is incredibly genuine. Your hand is snaking down and gripping Jungkook’s, and he gives you a squeeze, something that doesn’t escape Seokjin.

“Are you two together?” he asks conversationally, and Jungkook is about to vehemently deny the question, when you squeeze his hand back.

“We are,” you answer, much to Jungkook’s shock. He almost chokes on the last of his champagne before he puts the empty glass down on the bar. “We met at work.” He’s trying to calm himself down, trying to stop that warm feeling bursting through him again. You talk to Seokjin for a few more minutes before he’s leaving the two of you to your own devices again.

“So, you beat me to what I wanted to tell you in the cab earlier,” Jungkook grins. You look up at him and he leans in, placing a chaste kiss on your lips. “That I like you,”

“W-what’re you talking about?” Your voice is barely above a whisper. Jungkook leans in and nudges his nose against the column of your throat.

“I meant what I said,” he mumbles, pressing kisses under your jaw. “I’m asking you out. Officially.”

“We’re in public,” you’re hissing, firm grip on his wandering hands. Jungkook grins and leans back against the bar, shoving both hands into the pockets of his trousers. “And you don’t mean that.”

“Of course I do,” he schools his expression into one of sincerity. “You’re awesome, I love spending time with you. We have a lot of fun. Am I wrong?”

“You’re just being reckless—”

“Believe me, I am a lot of things, and reckless isn’t one of them.” Jungkook frowns. “Do you not feel the same way? I just assumed—”

“No, no,” your eyes are wide, panicked. “I like you too Jungkook, of course I do.”

“Then what’s stopping you?” You’re looking at him, eyes wide and he watches your gaze flit past him over his shoulder. Raising his eyebrows, he turns his head over his shoulder to see what you’re staring at. His mouth forms a straight line when he realizes its not a what, but a who.

“Seokjin,” he says, the bitterness leaking into his voice. “You’re still in love with him. Of course, why didn’t I see it before.”

“No! Jungkook, that’s not—”

“So, bringing me here as your date, what you said just now to Seokjin – what was that? A ploy to make him jealous? Hoping he’d run back to you? What, you didn’t wanna show up alone in front of him, so I was your safe fallback?” Jungkook is seeing white, his fists clenched, embarrassment and humiliation washing through him. “I’m just a distraction to you.” Your bottom lip is trembling now and you’re vigorously shaking your head, but Jungkook feels so empty and suddenly finds he doesn’t care. “I’m done. I don’t need to set myself up to get hurt by coming in between whatever this is you have going on with that guy.” He’s pulling his tie loose.

“No, don’t leave,” you’re begging, small hands grasping his arm in a last-ditch attempt. Jungkook sighs, untangling himself from your hold. “Please, Jungkook, hear me out—”

“I hear you loud and clear,” he says, a sad smile breaking out onto his face. Pulling off his tie he undoes the first two buttons on his shirt, trying to breathe. Clenching his fist, he’s walking past you before stopping to turn and take one last look at you. “We’re still friends okay? I just need some time. And for the record, telling you this as a friend, you’ll never be free for as long as you’re seeking Seokjin’s—or anyone’s – validation.”

And then he’s walking out of there, away from you, from a life that never really belonged to him. All he wants to do is to get out of this stifling suit throw on his sweatpants, drown himself in an obscene amount of chocolate and play Overwatch all night.

“Slow down, you’re gonna throw up those eggs if you don’t slow down,” Jungkook’s sister chastises from across the table. “Jesus, you and Junghyun are both such fast eaters because you don’t chew. You’re gonna die early.”

“I’d like to die now,” Jungkook answers, his mouth full of medium-poached eggs and hollandaise.

“So, you got rejected, what’s the big deal?” She asks. “You’re a grown man. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move the fuck on.”

“Easy for you to say Miss-I’m-engaged-to-the-love-of-my-life” Jungkook doesn’t mean to sound bitter. “How am I even going to face her after all this. I’m an idiot.”

“You really are,” his sister responds, elbow resting on the table and chin balanced on that elbow. “You always like to think you’re this cool, collected, distant guy when in reality you’re a giant softie that believes in soulmates.”

“I do not.”

“Yeah,” she grins. “You do,” She sighs. “Look Jungkook, that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s endearing, and there’s nothing wrong with giving yourself completely to someone. Just make sure whoever you’re giving yourself to is worth it.”

“You don’t think she’s worth it?” Jungkook asks glumly.

“She’s confused, it seems. And that is never a good thing, not in relationships.”

“So, what do I do? I’m still gonna see her at work occasionally.”

“Don’t do anything. The ball’s in her court. You’ve bared yourself to her already and she can either accept that or reject it. And eventually, it’ll get easier to be around her. You might even go back to being friends. And try to move on, will you?”

“With whom?”

“I have someone at work I can introduce you to,” she hums. “If you’re willing.”

“Whatever,” Jungkook mutters. “How’s dad?” His sister stares at him, expression suddenly serious.

“Well,” she sighs. “That’s also why I’m here to see you.” She says quietly

Jungkook is avoiding you. You may not be the most intelligent person in any room, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. He hasn’t replied to any of your texts, dutifully turning his read receipts off so you don’t even know if he’s seen your messages. Whenever you drop by his work for one of your meetings, his office is always closed. You suspect Park Jimin has something to do with Jungkook knowing exactly when you’ll be by the company. When you corner Jimin about this though, he’s tight-lipped, always regarding you with a slightly judgemental stare. It’s clear where his alliance lies.

You could always drop by his place, but even you admit that’s bordering on being pushy. He did say he needed space but its almost been a month and you haven’t as much as seen his coconut head. The New Year passes just like that and you celebrate by finishing two entire bottles of wine by yourself and watching Love Actually for the twenty-seventh time. Yoongi invites you to his New Years’ party too but you decline, not wanting a reminder of what went down at his last bash. You also want nothing to do with Seokjin.

At first you were angry over what Jungkook had said to you before he’d left that party. But soon after, once you’d calmed down, you’d realized he was right. Seokjin was never going to look at you and it was foolish to wait around while he carried on with his life. You deserved better, and Jungkook had taught you that. The realization was oddly freeing.

More than anything, you miss your friend. The coffee dates, the weekly brunches, someone to watch cheesy movies with. And, you admit shamefully, you also mis his dick. Jungkook had been right, you should’ve given the two of you a chance.

It isn’t until a cold morning in February, a whole two and a half months after the entire fiasco, that you finally see Jungkook. He’s standing outside the building, winter coat on and a burgundy scarf around his neck. He looks out of character, dressed like a businessman instead of the usual college-boy sweatpants and baggy t-shirts that you’re used to seeing him in. His hair is longer than it was when you saw him last, curling slightly at the ends. It suits him. He’s chatting happily with Namjoon about something, waving his hands around descriptively, matching cups of coffees in their hands.

You hesitate to get out of your uber, but you’re late for your nine am. There’s no way to avoid him, with the two of them standing right in front of the entrance. You step out of the cab hesitatingly and Jungkook sees you right away. If he’s nervous about running into you, he doesn’t show it. Instead, his face softens into a small smile and he gives a small wave in greeting. You return his greeting shyly.

“Oh, hey,” Namjoon greets, as you approach the two of them slowly. “Got a meeting today?”

“Yeah,” you reply, eyes travelling from Jungkook to Namjoon. “I’m late.”

“I’ll leave you guys to it then,” there’s nothing sly in Namjoon’s tone, but the guy is like, insanely intelligent and you don’t doubt his intentions. “Gotta see Yoongi about this newest track I’ve been working on.”

Jungkook bids Namjoon goodbye before the two of you are making your way inside.

“How have you been?” you’re the first to break the silence. Jungkook takes a sip of his drink.

“Good,” he answers. “I finally beat Breath of the Wild.”

“Took you long enough,” you tease, and he chuckles. You follow him into the elevator and watch as he presses your floor for you, along with his. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah, I,” he clears his throat. “I went to LA to see my dad,” You whip your head to look at him. “He wasn’t well so I worked remotely for a month or so.” So, he was never actually avoiding you, he wasn’t even in the city! You feel oddly relieved.

“How is he?”

“Fine,” Jungkook replies. You can’t help but notice that his animated self from earlier is gone, replaced by someone more somber. “I spent Christmas there.” The elevator doors open at your floor and you step out.

“Listen Jungkook,” you say quickly turning around. He pauses, pressing the button to keep the doors open, and looks at you questioningly. “I’m sorry – for everything.”

“Don’t apologize for your feelings,” that small smile is back.

“No! I mean – I’d really like it if we can be friends again,” you’re panicking. “I’ve missed you.” He grins at that, reminding you of the Jungkook you’d been intimate with.

“I’ve missed you too,” he answers, and something in your chest lifts. “Of course, we’re still friends.”

“Okay—wanna get brunch with me this week? The usual place.”

“I’ll text you.” Is all he says before he lets the doors close, leaving you standing there, slightly breathless.

You spend the rest of your day with a bounce in your step.

Things return to normal after that – somewhat. You and Jungkook start hanging out again, but you can tell something is off. He’s cheerful as always, but he’s holding back. It’s obvious that whatever he offered you that day at Yoongi’s party is no longer on the table. He’s guarded, confides in you less, heart locked away in a place you can’t even begin to reach.

But he’s here, in your life, tangible and real, and you tell yourself that this is enough. Until one day, when it all comes crashing down.

You’re at his place, and he’s retreated back into the kitchen to get the two of you more beers. His phone lights up, vibrating on the coffee table in front of you. It’s not that you mean to pry, but your eyes unconsciously travel to the notification that’s blaring on his screen.

1 New Message Jieun: Hey! We still on for tomorrow night, right? Gonna wear that dress you like 😉

You swallow. Of course, he’s seeing someone. Everything makes sense – the reason he was able to have you back in his life was because he’d moved on and rightfully so. The two of you aren’t teenagers – you are adults, and he is well within his rights to find someone else when you’d so obviously rejected him. You wonder, why then, your chest aches.

Jungkook reappears, holding two bottles of beer in each hand. Placing them on the coffee table next to his phone, he offers you one, which you accept, plastering a grin on your face. He grabs one himself, picking up his phone and collapsing on the couch next to you to turn his attention back to the movie that the two of you had been watching. From the corner of your eye, you watch as he checks his messages, eyes lighting up, a smile on his face as he types up a response.

You spend the rest of the night holding in tears.

You invite Taehyung to yours the next day as a distraction. He insists on watching some documentary about gothic architecture, but you don’t mind. Whatever takes your mind off Jungkook. And what he might be doing right now.

“You know, you are insane,” Taehyung comments offhandedly.

“Excuse me?”

“The both of you,” he continues, lounging on your couch a little too comfortably. “Insanity.” You continue to stare at him, and he sighs. “You and Jeon.”

“What about Jungkook?”

“He’s in love with you,” Taehyung answers plainly, as though he’s telling you today’s weather forecast. Your stomach drops. “And you like him too, but are too dumb to admit it.” You scoff.

“He has a date tonight. That hardly screams ‘in love with me’” You point out. It’s Taehyung’s turn to scoff.

“Please,” he chuckles, arms coming up to rest behind his head. He sits like your dad. “It’s only his third date with that girl. It’s nothing serious.”

“And he’s not in love with me.”

“He is,” Taehyung insists. “Told me so himself. I wasn’t gonna say anything because it’s none of my damn business but the two of you are so atrociously stupid—”

“He…told you?” you pause the documentary.

“Yes. Last week,” Taehyung is talking as though he hasn’t dropped the biggest bombshell on you. “But he’s putting himself out there because he thinks you don’t feel the same way. Frankly, I’m tired.”

“Why are you telling me this?” you whisper. Taehyung checks his watch.

“Because, you still have time. Time to go get him.” You laugh.

“He’s not even gonna be back yet,” you point out. “Plus, what if I go there and he’s having her over? Third dates basically mean sex.”

“He’s not gonna sleep with her.” Taehyung tells you.

“Oh, and I assume he told you that too—”

“He did.”

“What sort of conversation were the two of you even having?” You’re incredibly confused

“A deep one,” Taehyung’s monotone voice is starting to irk you. “I took him out for tea. He’s home right now – by the way.”

“Why do you know so much Kim Taehyung?”

“It’s because I’m always minding my own, and vibing,” he informs you. “Go get your man, for fucks sake.” You’re already running around grabbing your keys and coat.

“Thanks Tae,” you mutter, giving the sleepy boy a kiss on the cheek. He smiles, leaning further back into your couch and turns his documentary back on as you rush out of your apartment.

There aren’t any ubers around your place at this time on a Friday night and you’re stuck taking the subway to Jungkook’s. Tapping your foot impatiently on the 4,5 line you rush out as soon as the train doors open, running to the building you know he lives in.

Your mind is blank as you stand outside his place and ring the doorbell. The faint music coming from the inside stops and you barely have time to second guess your choices before the door is opening and Jungkook is standing in front of you. Dressed in a crinkled dress shirt and black slacks, it looks like he got home not too long ago. He looks at you in surprise. Before he can open his mouth and ask why you’re standing on his doorstep wearing your sweatpants under your winter jacket looking haggard, you step forward, crushing your lips onto his.

His response isn’t immediate, you’ve caught him by surprise. But slowly he melts into the kiss, arms coming up to rest on your waist. You grasp wildly at the shirt on his shoulders.

“Are you sure about this?” he’s whispering, shutting the door behind you as you push him further into his apartment. “Know that I want more?”

“More sure than of anything else I’ve been in my life,” you whisper back, pulling away. “And whatever you want, I want it too. I want you. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize that.”

“How did you know that I still wanted this?” he asks, before his face clears of the confusion and he’s grinning like he knows exactly how.

“We’re really gonna have to send Taehyung an expensive bottle of wine soon,” you grin back. “But first, I need you out of these pants.”

#kwritersworldnet #bangtanarmynet #btswriterscollective #jeon jungkook #jungkook fluff #jungkook angst #jungkook smut #jungkook fic #bts #bts fic #jungkook fanfic #jungkook

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onlydylanobrien · 3 years

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Dylan O’Brien is on the run. Quite literally.

It’s a crisp October afternoon on the Toronto set of Flashback and the former Teen Wolf star has just arrived. O’Brien gives director Christopher MacBride a hug before gearing up for the physical sequence on the horizon. As the cameras begin to roll, the 29-year-old actor sprints up the staircase of an abandoned warehouse. Again, and again, and again. As he repeats the scene, O’Brien lightheartedly voices his concerns about holding his head up during his mad dash. “I’m untrained as an actor,” he says to MacBride.

“That was just me joking about things in movies that you don’t think about, like trying to run upstairs and you are not watching your feet because you have to keep your head up for the camera,” O’Brien tells SYFY WIRE as he plunks down on a chair in a remote corner of the building. Running at full tilt, while also ensuring that you’re making sure the camera can capture your performance, is a skill in and of itself, it turns out. “It’s hilarious because then you are tripping and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is not easy.' It’s one of those funny little things. This must be what they teach you in acting school.”

Landing in select theaters and VOD on June 4, Flashback — previously titled The Education of Fredrick Fitzell — follows Fredrick Fitzell, an ordinary guy on the cusp of his 30s. Locked in a corporate job, he must make some tough decisions regarding the next chapter of his life and career. To complicate matters, a chance encounter with a man from Fredrick’s past triggers disturbing memories of Cindy, a high school classmate who vanished. To unravel the mystery behind her disappearance, Fredrick turns to his old druggie buddies and the substance Mercury. Could a trippy bender unlock his repressed memories… or allow something more troubling to resurface?

Fredrick’s existential crisis immediately spoke to O’Brien. The New York City native previously suffered an accident, involving a stunt gone wrong, while filming his movie, The Maze Runner: The Death Cure. The incident left an injured O’Brien hospitalized, broken, and mulling whether to continue acting.

“The two things I had done the longest since I started acting were Teen Wolf and Maze Runner,” O’Brien says. “I had always had those homes and knew I would be moving on from those at some point. They happened in the same year, too. They both kind of ended. It was a new stage that I was going to be entering into. I wanted to take my time, for me personally, because I had been going nonstop since I was 18. I always believed that as an artist, the only thing you are inspired by is life and experience. You can’t be on set all the time. I was reading a lot and trying to figure out and feel what was right to do next. I wanted to be patient about that.

“I read this script and called my manager, ‘I absolutely love this!'" he adds. "It’s an incredibly well-written script and wildly unique. It’s completely out there, and yet, at the same time, it’s really structured and written by somebody who knows what they are doing. Beyond that, it felt like my world at the time. Something could not have fallen into my lap that I was more connected to.”

Although marketed as a psychological thriller, Flashback’s narrative is rooted in genre, with elements of horror and sci-fi. Reminiscent of Jacob’s Ladder, the story switches between past, present, and future versions of Fredrick. In addition, a horrifying creature, with a personal connection to Fredrick, haunts his visions. The monster serves as an interesting device used as a metaphor for motherhood and exploring the complexities with a parent.

“I love that instead of hammering home what his relationship was like with his mother in the script, it’s sort of a very important piece of the film that he’s losing his mother,” explains O’Brien. “You never really see how he feels about that, outside of what he is going through. The only way you do that is through this creature and through this hovering energy.”

Viewers will be treated to multiple Fredricks (nine, to be precise) on this deeply personal journey. There’s 17-year-old teen Fredrick, his present-day self, and an older version. O’Brien was impressed by the aging and de-aging process — enough that he admits to occasionally getting a little lost in time.

“Every day, I’m like, ‘Where the hell am I?’” he jokes.

“The makeup team has been doing an amazing job because it’s not an easy thing to do and you have to be subtle with it,” O’Brien says. “They will do things, like when I’m 30, it’s no makeup aside from enhancing my little wrinkles that I have, the natural things in my face and have a little scruff. Then, at 17, they are young-ing us up. They put makeup on us to make our skin look younger, our face look better. A little foundation smoothes everything out. We shave and try to cover up the shadow.

“I didn’t expect it to be so mentally and emotionally draining,” he continues. “I do feel spent at the end of so many days. It’s a lot of focus. Again, in this time crunch of 25 days, sometimes we are doing three big scenes of the entire arc of the film, three completely different stages of his life. I want the performance to be there. It’s difficult, but it’s such a fun challenge because it’s something I connect to, something I dearly care about and want to get right.”

O’Brien concludes, “It’s been nothing but a blast and a pleasure to have that challenge of exploring these subtly different nine versions of this guy and having traces of him still be there in each and every one.”

#dylan o'brien #flashback press

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13atoms · 3 years

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Deep Focus: Chapter 1 [Tom Hiddleston x Reader]

Summary: Tom’s a successful porn director with a romantic streak which proves very popular with his female audience. His resident porn actress and business partner has been with him through thick and thin, the two of them growing completely inseparable, even as her own career starts taking off.

But working in such close proximity is intense, and burgeoning feelings threaten to complicate their professional relationship.

Mature, smut, porn director!AU, ethical porn production discussion, porn-star-and-coworker!reader. Friends to lovers, slow-ish burn. [7.7k]

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There was such a style to everything Tom wrote, everything he directed. A sincere passion that you suspected was always meant to be used elsewhere. You wondered if his craftsmanship was ever appreciated, on the other side of the screen, as strangers got hot and bothered watching each meticulously designed frame of his vision come to life.

Sure, it was porn. But Tom directed it like he could win an Oscar for ‘hot lifeguard pounded poolside’. This was his livelihood, his passion, and it was a damn shame he wasn’t award-season eligible.

The names would make you wince, as you saw them uploaded to the site, thumbnails and previews drawing in viewers by the million with their shots of heaving bodies and glistening sweat. Tom never called the videos such crass things. Not in his scripts. You would get copies titled ‘Romantic Night In’ or ‘Office Love Affair.’ He was a fan of sugar-coating what would be inside those innocuous white pages, a veneer of respectability which Tom insisted upon, regardless of how obvious the true nature of the videos was. But once the videos were sold, it was out of his hands. Your face contorted mid-faux-orgasm would be plastered across the site, and everyone involved would try and forget what happened.

Ignore the comments.

Keep moving.

You often wondered how Tom wound up in this place, with his sharply tailored suits and polished shoes, eloquent and educated, his words almost poetic as he directed mid-budget porn in hotel rooms and his studio day-in, day-out.

Then again, he never seemed particularly bothered by it. He gave each shoot his full attention, his full boundless enthusiasm and all the professionalism he could muster. You wondered how he balanced it, sometimes, the creative drive to press on with trying to be creative and shoehorn romance into films knowing that, ultimately, it was porn.

He had interviewed you like a real director might, talking about your life and experience and ambitions, almost apologetic when he had finally choked out ‘could you undress’, barely glancing at your naked form before he hired you as his first employee.

You asked him early on, while watching him try and assemble a fake restaurant-date set in the studio, complete with faux windows and an extra playing a waiter, why he bothered when three-minutes of good quality fucking footage would make him the same amount of money. He’d given you a strange smile, the wrinkles beginning to appear at the corners of his eyes, and shrugged.

“I make what I’d like to see.”

The words haunted you later, as your rather attractive co-star bent you over the white-cloth covered dining table and you allowed mewls and groans to escape your mouth without a second thought. Trying to avoid the muted blue of Tom’s eyes behind the cameraman.

Despite your reservations when you first started to work for him, Tom had won you over. His gentler, more romantic approach to pornography had a loyal following. Both of your pseudonyms garnered huge numbers of views across various platforms, and Tom was keen to cultivate a collection of female-friendly porn. Against all the odds, it was working.

And you loved working with him. He was a great director, and inspired writer, and a genuinely brilliant boss. He made sure you saw royalties, good pay, that everyone you worked with was screened and tested, always keeping you safe. Always.

Each time he called a wrap, passing you a robe and offering a meek congratulations on your performance, you found yourself more and more pleased you had wound up working with him.

“You really do have a talent,” he’d told you one day, distracting you as you discussed a new script in his office.

You were sat opposite him, Tom’s glasses perched on his head as he watched you read, your feet resting against the leg of his desk. You’d come in to your shared workspace to try some costumes out, to discuss new scenes, still recovering from a thoroughly exhausting shoot the day before. There were still light bruises around your wrists, and you caught Tom glancing at them worriedly each time your long-sleeved shirt slipped.

“I love that you’re such an actor,” he continued, hands tapping the desk as he spoke, “like, a real actor.”

Your eyes drifted across the script, scanning it with your bottom lip between your teeth. He always appreciated your input, wanting the ‘female fantasy’ in a lot of his work, and he’d timidly shown you some ‘student-professor’ script he’d been working on. He was like that, embarrassed in a way which you wouldn’t expect from a man with his considerable experience in adult entertainment. He was assertive, certain, even stern where it counted. But with just the two of you together, dancing around what was sexy and what wasn’t, he seemed desperate to avoid saying anything you might perceive as too ‘crude’.

“What do you mean?” you’d chuckled, still flicking through the first draft.

He only entrusted you with such early versions of his work – but that made sense. Your careers were symbiotic, tied to one another with an unspoken pact. He directed everything you were in, and you were in everything he directed.

It made sense.

“You don’t just… I don’t know. You never make my scripts seem silly. Or cheesy. You… you really try and make them feel real. I could write anything, and you’ll deliver the lines well. I was overseeing auditions earlier and... I just kept thinking none of them were you. I think you might be the best in the business.”

You rolled your eyes, offering him a disbelieving smirk, and he scoffed.

“I’m serious! I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

The weight of his words settled heavy in your chest, and you turned back to the script, frowning as you flicked through the loose-leaf pages. Tom fidgeted behind his desk, unhappy with losing your attention, but you ignored him.

“Here. If you want the fantasy to be believable, I think he needs to lock the office door. Make a show of it, you know. Cover my mouth,” you comment dismissively. Tom already has as pen in his hand, making notes. “It could be hot, maybe ‘Don’t make a sound or you can’t cum’, something like that. As if there’s other students in the corridor outside.”

Nodding, Tom dutifully wrote down your words, mouth slightly open in realisation as he listened.

“Don’t make a sound…” Tom repeated, and you felt yourself blush.

“Not… not that exactly,” you backtracked, “you’re the real writer! I just think, there needs to be some build up. A remind of the power dynamic. Him going straight to oral is a bit… fast. That could happen in any old plot, you know?”

You felt his eyes on you, looking up from the paper to spot Tom leaning back in his chair, a distant smile on his face.

“You really are the best,” he praised, “that’s great. I’ll do rewrites tonight.”

For a moment, you let his words hang heavy in the air. Then you blinked back at him, a slight frown pinching your forehead at his strange mood. He was calm, for once. Tom was usually a ball of enthusiasm, and you wondered if your dismissal of his words earlier had done something to hamper his spirit.

“It’s always easier to critique,” you dismissed, “I love the script, it’s great. I really think it’ll be good. Hot. Maybe I can wear a Britneyschool girl costume, or something?”

He frowned a little, pinching the bridge of his nose at the thought.

“No, weird. We’re going for University student, just… a nice pair of jeans or something.”

“Don’t they wear suits where you went, posh boy?” you teased, loving how it riled him up. “I’ll try and dress like a smart person.”

“You are smart, don’t give me that.”

You rolled your eyes, loving how you managed to fluster him, putting the script back on his cluttered desk as you reached for your bag. This was how your meetings always went, a few hours of notes, some teasing, and a hasty retreat once Tom told you the next shoot day you had to attend. You still had a few hours of social media to do for the last video you’d shot together, notes from Tom, and you lamented the sight of the sun setting outside of your shared office. You’d hoped for at least a bit of natural light today.

“I’m serious, you are!” Tom asserted, and you ignored him purposely as you shut down your laptop, preparing to take it home.

“Yeah, I know, whatever. Don’t work too late!”

“Rich coming from you,” he sighed, “it really doesn’t matter if we send that last edit late.”

“It matters to me! I’d quite like to get paid this week, you know?”

Tom sighed. The two of you tried to produce a couple of videos a week – one for Tom’s site and another to sell to a third party. It didn’t leave either of you with much free time, both of you left in the tiny office at all hours as you worked to keep up with demand.

“Very true. But I’d rather you got some sleep, you know I can help if you’re short on money,” he offered, shuffling papers on his own desk.

He was always quick to jump to an offer to help, and you tried to ignore the fondness spreading through your chest at his eagerness to look out for you. That gentle protectiveness which coursed through Tom was enough to make you melt.

He was one in a million, that was for sure.

“I’m fine, Tom. Thank you though, I’ll ask, if, y’know –”

“Do! Any time. Actually…”

Tom cut himself off, typing something into his phone, and your pocket buzzed with a notification.

“Get yourself a nice dinner.”

You checked your phone to see a transfer from Tom. It wasn’t a crazy amount, but too much for just dinner, and you huffed performatively as he grinned at you.

“No! Don’t be ridiculous –”

He barely made more than you, and you were certainly doing perfectly comfortably.

“Royalties are really good this month. That old break-up sex video is trending again, apparently.”

You smothered a smile. It was hate-fucking, as you’d told Tom a hundred times. That was the title. You could still remember the look on his face the day you’d filmed it, his twitchiness, the unknown male actor who had slightly scared both of you with his sheer size as he stepped into the studio. The male star had fucked you like you’d broken his heart, hands on your neck and hips bruising yours as he pounded into you, and you’d be a little alarmed at how little you had needed to act in his domineering presence. He’d been muscular and tall and assertive, almost injuring you with his enthusiasm, and the shoot had ended with you a sweaty mess, struggling to walk, eyes watery.

You had ached from the moment Tom helped you up from the bed, a protective body between you and your costar as you watched the man collect his clothes and his paycheck. The footage had been great, you’d watched Tom edit it, but it had been your first taste of Tom’s protectiveness. The actor had never returned, and Tom had bought a hot water bottle for the office, pressing it into your lap as he brought tea for the pair of you, loathing how you winced as you moved.

He’d taken you out for dinner that night to celebrate a good edit, but you knew the real reason. That neither of you wanted the other to be alone. It had been a lovely evening, a restaurant then a bar, without a break in laughing conversation the entire night. It hadn’t been a date, but if it had been a date, it would’ve been the nicest date you’d ever been on. In those moments, you wondered if Tom was really cut out for the industry. If you were.

As much as Tom hated the film, it was hot. It had propelled your studio into the spotlight, and it paid a significant chunk of your rent.

“Thank you,” you smiled to him, wracking your mind for anything else that needed discussing before you headed home.

Maybe you’d get takeaway. That would be nice.

Tom cleared his throat.

“What are we shooting tomorrow, by the way?”

You looked up at his words, frowning a little at the realisation you hadn’t been given a script yet. It was unlike him, to be so unprepared. Usually everything was organised weeks in advance. With a glance at the shadows under his eyes, you decided not to tease him about it.

“We’re shooting tomorrow?”

“This week… we’ve only got one video. I was just thinking something simple, I haven’t called a costar yet, but we don’t have to if you don’t want to –”

It was your paycheck on the line as much as Tom’s, and you wondered how the hell you’d forgotten.

“Do we have a camera crew?” you frowned.

“No, not yet. I can call though. Or I could just do it myself, if we’re not doing anything too complicated?”

You thought for a moment, leaning against the open doorframe as Tom started to pack up his own desk, nimble fingers tapping across his keyboard.

“Solo?” you suggested, stifling a laugh as Tom blinked and tilted his head to face you.

“I missed that, love?”

“Solo. Like ‘hot female solo’ or something?”

He smiled slightly, closing his laptop lid.

“That’ll do well, I’m sure. Do we need anything costume-wise? Props?”

Toys. He meant toys. You smiled at his refusal to call a spade a damn spade.

“I’m sure we can find everything here. It’ll be nice to do a simple shoot for a change,” you enthused, holding the door for Tom as he moved to turn off the lights, lingering nearby as he locked up the office.

“Yeah. Single-shot, no camera-man either.”

“Cheap,” you sighed, as though it was the sexiest thing in the world.

You did the books, and avoiding having any more costs this month sounded great.

“Yeah,” Tom smiled, falling into step beside you as the two of you left the warehouse studio.

He looked ready to say something else, but changed his mind. For a second the two you stood by the exit, words trapped beneath your closed lips as the early evening air enveloped you.

“Do you need a lift home?” Tom finally offered.

“No. No, I’m good. Thank you.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, yeah. Usual time. Twelve?”

“Perfect.”

He reached an arm out, ready for you to walk into his embrace, and you froze. The moment was over as soon as it started, his arm retracted, and you could only stare. His hand found the curls at the back of his head, scratching there, a blush dusting his cheeks in the harsh fluorescent lights of the car park. You could kick yourself as you watched the bob of his Adam’s apple, the clench of his jaw. He felt awkward. You contemplated hugging him, but the moment had passed. Instead you rocked on your heels for a second, before turning to leave.

“Bye, Tom!”

“‘Night! Look after yourself, don’t forget dinner. I’ll see you – ”

He cut himself off as you walked too far away, and you could have kicked yourself for the sadness in his final syllable. You sighed as your feet fell against the pavement, your whole walk home haunted by the awkward shuffle of Tom’s hands as he went to hug you goodbye.

You were surprised by how difficult it was to brush off that awkward memory. As you ordered and ate dinner, you were reminded of Tom with every bite, that he’d snuck aside part of the company’s petty cash budget to give you dinner. That both of you had gone home, separately, to separate empty houses and empty beds.

Had he wanted to go for drinks? Wanted company? You had come to accept a long time ago that the man was your closest friend. He would be the person you called in an emergency, a shoulder to cry on. You liked to think he’d lean on you the same way.

Despite that, you spent limited time together outside of a professional context. You never met up on weekends, or casually called. Of course you didn’t. He made a career out of seeing you naked, watching you fake orgasms for other men. As you readied yourself for the day, you reminded yourself that of course, he would be nice to his only full-time, very lucrative actress. To his business partner.

As you’d queued up the company’s social media posts the night before, you could only think of Tom behind the camera, orchestrating each photo and clip you uploaded.

You couldn’t help the grin which split your face as you walked into the studio, bag flung over your shoulder, overpacked with everything you thought you could possibly need. Tom greeted you, emerging from his office with a smile.

Before you could overthink it, you walked into his arms, giving him very little choice in the matter as you greeted him with a hug. In his surprise you felt his body stiffen, his arms slowly wrapping around you, and you were momentarily gobsmacked by the muscular form he seemed to hide behind those suits.

He was a little more dressed down today, smart black jeans and a button-up white shirt, unruly hair sticking up like it did when he forgot to brush it. He looked better than yesterday, like he’d had a good night’s sleep.

“Good morning,” he chuckled, bemusement clear in his voice.

You pulled back from the hug, a little embarrassed at the affection until you saw the smile stretching across his face, reaching his eyes. Suddenly the previous night, worrying you had inadvertently rejected him, seemed to be erased.

“Morning! What have you got for me?”

The studio space was cleaned, but empty. The camera stood in the corner as Tom lead you further into the room, his office door open to the side of it, and you frowned at the emptiness of the space.

There were tape marks on the floor where sets were usually assembled, conspicuous without the usual hive of activity buzzing around some piece of furniture you would be thrown onto or fucked against. There was nothing.

“I didn’t know what you wanted to do,” Tom was saying, his gentle voice booming in the empty space, “we don’t have a script or anything so… I’ll leave it to you.”

You bit your lip.

It was more freedom than you were used to, less direction, less to build the fantasy where you could forget you were ultimately in a warehouse with just your business partner. It was… nothing. Tom said your name quietly, and you nodded, stepping back to assess the space.

“I’m just thinking,” you reassured him.

Had the studio always been this quiet? You tried to remember a shoot day where it had been this silent, this calm, without the stress of lighting people or cameramen or scripts being thrown around. You could hear every step Tom took as he walked towards the camera, the wheel-mounted tripod creaking as he moved it across the floor, checking batteries and SD cards while you stood in place, your bag still hanging from one shoulder.

Noticing your frozen stance Tom frowned across at you, nothing but gentle concern in his blue eyes and the fine lines around them.

“I was thinking something kind of minimal, maybe cosy?” he offered, “Maybe an armchair? Something like that?”

You thought about it for a moment, crossing to the corner of the room to finally set down your bag.

He was finally getting into ‘director mode’, growing more energetic by the second.

“I’m thinking we just frame it on you, no distraction. Single take, if we can.”

You nodded silently as he crossed to the storage cupboard he’s overeagerly labelled a ‘props department’. It was stacked high with fabric and furniture and lingerie, tubs of various exotic sex toys near the door. Tom stepped straight past them.

There was a mattress in the props room, materials to build a bed, and you pondered on the idea for a moment.

“We could keep it really simple, maybe?” you suggested, “Find a warm background. Or just use white. Try and get one twenty minute shot, or something.”

You reached for lube without thought, collecting the near-empty bottle of body oil beside it too, as you perused the options in front of you.

“Remind me to buy more of that,” Tom mused, sparing a glance to the bottles in your arms before standing beside you to peruse the options.

You nodded silently, your free hand rifling through bagged silicone toys, slightly in a daze as you picked out a few options. There was a slight blush dusted across Tom’s high cheekbones as he turned to see your arms full of dildos. You smiled as it took him a second to find words, and wondered how the hell he’d chosen to start a porn studio in the first place.

“Colour co-ordinated,” he commented, and you smiled, picking out yet another pink toy from the pile.

“Naturally,” you smiled, “I think that’s everything? Could we drag a mattress and pillows out?”

He nodded silently, already moving to manoeuvre the double mattress leaning against a wall in the props room. You rolled your eyes before helping, knowing he was being a gentleman, or whatever he called it. You called it putting his back out.

He rejected your help, so you grabbed as many pillows as you could, following him back into the main studio, privately smiling at the dramatic grunts he made trying to move the mattress. He tossed it to the ground with a grunt, shoving it into the corner of the room, before pausing again.

You dropped everything down on to it, toys, lube, pillows and all.

And then both of you waited.

It was so strangely intimate, just the two of you in the room, the strange nature of your relationship weighing heavy after last night’s miscommunication. Suddenly there was nothing you wanted to do less than take your clothes off.

“White sheets?”

“Hm?” you hadn’t processed what Tom said, too wrapped up in your own world, frowning down at the bare mattress.

“I was thinking white sheets.”

“Oh, uh, yeah.”

He was off, assigned another task, and you almost envied his distraction as you slowly sorted the pillows how you wanted, gathered the toys absentmindedly. Before Tom came back from the props closet you made yourself scarce, catching sight of his slim outline through the doorway. Facing away from you as he rummaged.

In the single bathroom of the studio you cleaned anything that would be going inside of you, avoiding your reflection, trying to shake off the odd nervousness coursing through your veins.

Why? It had been years since you felt this way before a shoot. Before you’d met Tom, even. Sure, shoots could be exciting, exhilarating, intimidating, but this self-consciousness, this self-doubt… it had come from nowhere.

You pressed your forehead to the mirror, closing your eyes, breathing deeply. The tap running sounded like a waterfall, the silicone under your fingers felt alien, the air almost claustrophobic as you wondered what the hell was wrong with you.

Tom was done making the bed when you got back, frowning at his phone until he heard you re-enter the studio space, quick to look up and see if you were happy with his set. You felt hyper-aware of him, of every movement he made, a clean towel and toys cradled in one arm as you took in the space. It was a simple premise, just a clean fitted sheet pillows in a corner, a clear space for you in the middle. You knew it would look good on screen. You knew this was an easy job.

You felt sick to your stomach.

“Do you want to face the camera? Or kind of, not acknowledge it?” Tom asked, speaking again as you forgot to reply, too caught up in your own mind. “Maybe if you ignore it that’s more… voyeuristic?”

“Sounds good,” you responded, kneeling to prepare your space. This was autopilot, your day job. You could do this.

“Right.”

He sounded a little put out by your response, but moved the camera anyway, switching to a knee-height tripod. You stood, stepped back to give him space, and frowning at the sudden headrush. You blinked, catching yourself staring at the flex of his arms as he moved the heavy equipment. You didn’t realise how long you had been staring into space until Tom called your name a second time, crossing into your personal space.

“Are you okay?”

Tom’s voice was so soft you wanted to cry, fingers hovering beside your bicep, his gentle eyes demanding for you to meet them, daring for you to lie while his face is so close to yours.

Somehow, the guilt of his worry made you feel worse.

“No, I’m…I’m being stupid. Sorry, just tired.”

“Did you not sleep well?”

“No, I, uh, I slept fine. I’m not sure. Just not really feeling it.”

His face fell, but you knew he wasn’t disappointed in you. He thought he’d done something wrong. Immediately you were talking, doing anything you could to soften his guilt.

“It’s my job, though. I can do it. This is great Tom, I think it’ll be a good shoot.”

“Sweetheart –”

You sighed, eyes falling to the mattress, before forcing a smile.

“Let’s get this over with!”

He looked like he wanted to argue with you, but you forced yourself to move, pulled your feet from the floor with far more effort than it ought to take. There was some comfort in rummaging through your own bag, that piece of home, something private from the studio. You found the vibrator you’d brought, a pink bullet you used almost exclusively at home, fully charged that morning. Behind you, Tom snorted in amusement.

“Nothing here is ever charged,” you shrugged off his stare, knowing damn well you didn’t have to explain yourself.

You wanted to explain anyway though. Just in case, Tom thought anything he did wasn’t enough. He seemed perfectly fine with the criticism, though you knew he was making a mental note. He always did, then you had something to say.

Trying not to make a big deal out of it, you stripped to your underwear, folding your clothes neatly and being careful not to show any self-consciousness in your posture. You’d never been ashamed or embarrassed before now, and you weren’t about to start. Even if it was just you, and a very well, fully dressed Tom. Vibrator clutched in your fingers, you finally sat on the damn mattress.

He was the other side of the camera now, somehow both distant and a few feet away. You found yourself staring at your body in the monitor, just watching. Tom’s voice broke you out of yet another daze, and you wanted to pinch yourself. Why couldn’t you do it today?

“We don’t have to do this today, if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s okay I just… I forget it’s just us sometimes, you know? There’s such a production and so many people and at the end of the day…”

Tom smiled, a relief on his face that told you he had been feeling it too. That this was weird.

“I know what you mean. If you’re uncomfortable…”

“Just give me a second to warm up, we need to make something, after all.”

You stretched, not really sure why, moving a little around the nook Tom had created, shuffling pillows and practicing where you wanted to lie back, watching a monitor as Tom played with a soft lighting, twisting and turning to find the most flattering angles you could.

As he shuffled things around, Tom nodded to the spread of toys you’d set out. You’d added your vibrator to the pink line up, perfectly organised on the white towel.

“Do you want those in shot?”

You shrugged.

“Might be hot?”

He nodded silently. You moved the toys in to the frame, trying to blink away the cloud which had settled in your mind. The world felt foggy, your arms like they were moving through treacle, and you knew Tom had noticed.

As he prepared two directional microphones, you tried not to feel claustrophobic. The audio from the microphone he was pointing towards your pussy would be almost grotesque, and you fought not to shuffle further from it as you imagined Tom listening later, headphones in, as he balanced the levels between your moans and the wet sounds of you fucking yourself.

Fuck.

Why was this so different to a regular shoot?

You’d done solo shoots before. With Tom. And half-a-dozen other crew, you reminded yourself.

You caught sight of his curls above the monitor, face serious as he set everything up.

“Speak?”

“Testing, testing,” you spouted off nonsense until he offered you a thumbs up, happy with the audio.

Then there was nothing else to do.

He stood, looming over the equipment. And you looming over you.

“What’s the plan?” he asked, smiling at your frown. “You’re in charge here, I’m just the camera guy.”

You rolled your eyes, knowing he was trying to put you at ease.

“You’re the director,” you reminded him, knowing how he preened himself under the title.

You were impressed that his eyes had only roamed down your body once as he took in the shoot, glancing at the indulgent layout of toys, double checking the monitor, one headphone in. He had that stance he always adopted when he was directing, and you knew it was his favourite moment in any of this. The moment everything was pinned on him.

It happened so quickly you almost missed the moment he knelt down, blinking in surprise as his face remerged at your level beside the camera.

“Then my direction is: enjoy yourself. Forget I’m here. Let’s show them something real.”

He must have seen your shock, because it made him smile.

“Real?” you questioned, and he nodded firmly.

“I’m serious.”

For a beat, both of you were silent, his eyes meeting yours over the body of the camera.

“If you can,” he offered, “I understand it’s not always…”

You interrupted him with a hand, smiling your understanding of what he was saying, and dismissing it in one motion. The silence dragged on, and you decided to push this forwards. If you were done by lunch, Tom would probably insist on taking you somewhere nice.

“I don’t know if I should use – ” you ghosted a finger across the biggest toy, worrying a bottom lip between your teeth, “Simplicity might be key.”

“Do what you want, darling. What feels good.”

You nodded mutely, and for just a second you saw doubt flicker across his face. This was new territory, and even you weren’t sure if this was a step too far.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah. If I’m… actually… it might take a while. Let me know if I’m taking too long.”

“Take as long as you need, darling. I’ve got nowhere to be.”

Tilting your head at him a little, you realised abruptly just how intimate this was. Moreover, that you wanted it anyway. That you were about to make him watch you cum. Make him hear you, smell you. He couldn’t touch, but he could watch.

And that was enough for you to perform.

Tom gave you a countdown, red lights peppered your field of view, and he was recording. He had taken a seat on the floor behind the camera set up, one headphone in to monitor audio, waiting.

You stayed sat up, back arched a little as your hands began to caress you own body, keeping on eye on the monitor while your face was out of the shot. You rubbed along your thighs, across your stomach, teasing at the lace of your bra and the elastic of your underwear each time you passed them, trailing your fingertips. It didn’t really feel like anything, doing this to yourself, but you knew to tease the camera. Tom would cut out anything too slow.

Your gaze remained firmly on the screen as you began to make your touches firmer, more deliberate, dragging lines into your skin and flirting with the camera. You admired the soft skin of your breasts as you started to shift your bra, enjoying the stiffening of your nipples in the monitor until –

The screen went black, and you immediately glanced at Tom, frowning as you lost the visual of yourself. He met your questioning gaze sternly, eyebrows furrowed, and you remembered his direction.

“Enjoy yourself.”

With nothing left to look at you closed your eyes, feeling the blood rushing to the surface of your skin, the sensitivity of your breasts as your fingers idly danced across them. You shoved your bra down unthinkingly, wanting to feel more, rubbing at the heaviness of your breasts and wincing as you enjoyed the pleasure and pain of pinching at your nipples, teasing them to attention. You glanced your nails across them, feeling it in your core. You didn’t want to wait anymore. Fuck the cameras.

It was hard to let to, to stop the delicious feeling of your fingers on your own breasts, but you forced yourself to free one hand, shoving off the bra, desperate to feel yourself without it. You knew you were grimacing, it wouldn’t be sexy, but you didn’t care. That was Tom’s problem.

You needed to touch yourself.

One hand reached below the waistband of your underwear, seeking out your clit, guided by a familiar ache. It was all you could focus on, your other hand forgotten, cupping your breast, the sensation vague and lost as your fingers found your clit. The sensation overwhelmed you as you shifted the hood, your body beginning to produce wetness. The room was a little cold, the air relieving against the heat of your bare skin, making your nipples peak as you leant back into the nest of pillows behind you.

You felt your stomach tense, a bolt of electricity tensing the muscles up and down your body as you brushed across your clit a little too hard. Your middle finger probed your pussy experimentally, slipping inside of you, quickly joined by a second as you played with the wetness there.

One, two, three pumps of your fingers inside you was enough for you to gasp, your eyes still closed against the bright lights as focused on nothing but feeling. No more fucking around.

You reached for your vibrator, hand knocking against the thick silicone toy lined up beside it, writhing as you pressed it against the fabric covering your clit. You cycled through the settings as fast as you could, still desperate for more stimulation.

More. It was on the highest setting. You wanted more.

Without moving the vibrator you shoved your underwear off, huffing as you kicked them away, not caring where they landed. The tip of the toy nudged against your clit exquisitely, and you froze.

There.

You thought about Tom watching you. The hot blood coursing through your body, the line up of toys just waiting to be shoved inside of you. The sensitivity of you clit as you held it against that perfect point. The air against your dripping, aching pussy. The muscles starting to clench, the rhythm of your body. Building, building, you didn’t fight the feeling.

This was what you wanted.

That warm familiarity of the vibrator on your clit, the runaway train of your thoughts, it was enough to drive you over the edge. You hadn’t realised the keening, groaning noises you were making until you heard them, pleasure leaving your lips as an afterthought.

You felt empty.

Blindly you reached out, sticky fingers finding the shaft of a toy you wanted, a smaller one you could take right now. A dollop of lube in the palm of your hand was all it would take, a few pumps of the toy enough to coat it, the excess lubricant smeared on the sheets. You didn’t care. Not your problem.

Without conscious thought, you were still rubbing yourself, two fingers absently making circles against your clit as you fidgeted to be able to take the dildo. You didn’t bother preparing yourself anymore. You were wet enough, and you wanted the stretch.

Needed it.

Needed to feel full.

You shoved the toy into yourself, gritted teeth and your spare hand grasping at your breast, giving the nipple a sharp pinch to interrupt the overwhelming feeling of that silicone pushing inside of you. Your walls were stretched open, a gasp reaching your ears as you felt a nudge against your cervix.

It wasn’t enough. You felt wild, desperate, as you sloppily pulled the toy from yourself and shoved it back in, clenching down and still needing more.

Your fingers found a larger toy, arousal and lubricant smearing across your body as you discarded the dildo which you had just been fucking yourself with, leaving it somewhere on the mattress, forgotten in favour of the bigger option. It was thick. Maybe, in your right mind, you wouldn’t have considered it. But instead you coated it in lube, squirting the clear liquid on to the tip and rubbing it down the toy, focusing on nothing but the need pulsing through your pelvis.

On the emptiness inside you, begging, pleading to be filled. It hurt, how much you wanted to be stretched out, to feel something pounding into you. You felt animalistic, desperate for anything. The last of your conscious thought was occupied by the need in your clit, the demand for friction, and you just didn’t have enough hands. It was impossible to think. When you finally sank down on the fake cock, leaning back, legs apart, gaze focused on nothing but your own swollen pussy, it was a relief. You gasped, then sighed, pushing another inch of the toy inside you. You felt stretched already, split in half, but you kept going. With each thrust, you took the silicone further inside of you until you felt the dull ache of the toy going too far.

Finally, that emptiness felt sated, and you stayed still, too stuffed to risk moving and too blissed out to care.

But you needed more.

Each bear down made the toy threaten to shift, and you didn’t have the brain power to thrust and pay attention to your aching clit. You moved gingerly, grabbing a pillow to straddle, holding the toy inside you as you hunted for your vibrator.

You couldn’t even lean too far to reach it, you were so full it ached. And it was delicious.

With the smooth plastic finally in your hand you leant back, ready to bring yourself to another orgasm. With a blink, you realised there was a tear tracking its way down your cheek, and you smiled to yourself.

And then you accidentally looked forwards. Your eyes met Tom’s. The camera. The lights. The switched off monitor.

You wanted to cry.

He was watching you directly, with those sharp blue eyes, one finger resting along his jawline, his usual calculating, wide stance replaced with one knee hugged to his chest as he sat on the concrete floor. He was watching you.

You. Stuffed full, straddling a pillow on the bed Tom had fucking made, covered in a mix of lube and your own arousal. That strange feeling from earlier came back full force.

God. He had seen you actually come. Without acting or cheesy lines or clever angles to hide the worst of your O-face. You could pretend to come, tell your male co-stars what a good time you’d had, follow direction, anything. But this was too real. And it was just you and Tom. In the corner of a huge studio, bright lights and cameras and –

Had he called cut? You wouldn’t have heard. Did he realise you’d lost control? That you had forgotten you were supposed to be acting and been so desperate and –

“You’re doing amazing.”

You smiled at him weakly, gasping as the toy inside you nudged your cervix as you fidgeted. You didn’t realise that you were awaiting direction until he spoke.

“Another one?”

His voice was a little throatier than usual, though you supposed he’d been quiet for a while. His eyes kept drifting from your face, and you wondered if he felt as uncomfortable as you did.

You nodded silently, closing your eyes, listening to the increasing pitch of the vibrator as you turned it up to its maximum setting.

The minutes stretched on as your orgasm built, little raises and falls of your hips accompanying that insistent buzz of your favourite vibrator, the toy inside you starting to ache as it stretched you apart. It was impossible to forget that Tom was watching you now. That his piercing gaze was on you. As a matter of professionalism, you tried to avoid looking up. You ignored the camera, fucked your body in the way you knew it would respond to, only half-faking it as you came a second time.

You moaned and groaned and gave the camera an indulgent few seconds of overstimulation, the vibrator pushed against your clit to make you writhe and shake. You pulled yourself off the dildo in a mess of arousal, played with yourself, showing off how stretched out you were.

Fingers swirling in the arousal inside of you, you sighed in relief when Tom called, “cut.”

Dropping the toy, you pulled your legs together, ignoring him for a second as you took deep breaths. Taking stock of your body, the residual pleasure and pain and stickiness. A lot of stickiness.

Tom took pity on you, shifting a softbox so you had a clear path out of the corner you were hemmed into.

“Go and have a shower,” he told you, the most softly-spoken command you’d ever heard.

Nonetheless, you followed orders. On weak legs, you indulged in as long as shower as you dared, cleaning up and then just… waiting. Trying to avoid the real world. When you finally opened the door, wrapped in a robe, you found your clothes folded outside. Tom was nowhere to be seen, but you thanked the universe for him anyway.

When you re-emerged you were fully dressed and feeling a lot more like yourself again. And, actually, quite proud of yourself. Tom’s busyness told you everything had been recorded properly, equipment moved and the mattress bare, leant against the wall.

“All good?” you asked, more to announce your presence than anything. He stopped moving, offering you a gentle smile.

“Perfect! I think it’ll be great. Do you want to go get lunch somewhere? To celebrate?”

Predictable as anything. The thought made your heart swell with fondness for him, his head tilt and excitement, his strange place here.

“I think I’ll just go home,” you tried to smile apologetically, but you could still feel the ache inside you, the dull oversensitivity of your clit against your underwear.

The embarrassment and excitement fighting in the fit of your stomach.

Tom nodded, clear understanding on his face. He held the door for you on the way out.

“Are you coming in tomorrow?” he asked, quietly, like you might run off if he asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll see you then.”

Your bedroom fell silent as the vibrator stopped, the battery finally flat. You whined in disappointment, desperate for another orgasm. Your fingers replaced it instantly, rubbing, desperately pulling more wetness from the arousal weeping from you, but you were too oversensitive.

Panting, vision blurry, your thighs aching, you blinked away tears. You glanced at the nightstand. Tom hadn’t text you.

When you woke up the next morning your phone was dead. You’d forgotten to charge it last night, and leaving it in your room to charge offered a strangely peaceful morning. You had a few hours before you would be expected at the studio, and no work to do before then.

You indulged in spending time getting ready for the day, making a decent breakfast, doing a few chores you’d been putting off.

Processing what had happened yesterday.

In the clear light of day, you wondered if you ought to be embarrassed for the way you’d completely lost yourself at the shoot. The more you thought about it, the more you thought about it, the more you rationalised at you’d just followed Tom’s direction. Done what he’d asked. It had been intense, for sure, but you’d done what he’d asked. If anything you regretted the moment he’d had to speak, losing your nerve. You hoped he didn’t want pick-up shots today, you weren’t sure your body could take any more.

You thought about the night before, clearing up the scattered clothes and charging the vibrator you’d left strewn beside your bed, more ashamed of the images which had been conjured by your overactive imagination in the late-night privacy of your bedroom. You hated that everything you imagined was involved blue eyes. Distinctive curls. Pulling buttons from smart shirts and kissing along sharp cheekbones. Poor Tom. He didn’t need you overstepping that mark. And yet when you had closed your eyes, imagined you were under those lights again, all you could imagine was Tom. His creative gaze. Listening to the smoothness his voice leant to everything he said as he instructed you even more intimately than usual.

As you switched your phone back on, you forced the thoughts from your mind. They couldn’t follow you to the studio. The two of you had built something good. Something successful. The studio was doing well, you were both saving money away for the future, building your brands. You couldn’t screw that up now by imagining him like that. He trusted you. You trusted each other. Relied on one another.

You wondered if he ever fucked other actresses.

#lord forigve me for i have have rpf x reader #13atoms #fic #tom hiddleston x reader #tom hiddleston fic #tom hiddleston imagine #this is a weird one #i think 2 more chapters maybe #lmk what you think!

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enchantedblackrose · 3 years

Text

Flesh Wounds & Somedays

Jay Halstead/Reader

¡!Warnings: Infant abduction/kidnapping. SIDS. Violence against women. Swearing. Fluffy ending.

Still unedited, hoping to have the nice version up soon. Sorry in advance! Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! Please be safe ❤

Upon exiting the very stereotypical "mom van" you're greeted with harsh Chicago air stinging your face and it instantly makes your eyes water. You hastily blink back the tears though it's fruitless. Instead you pull the knit hat you're wearing further down your head and pull your scarf tighter. You keep the door open, huddling near the inside of the vehicle. Anything to stay warm. You scan the parking lot for any sign of your suspect. Anxiety starts setting in. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing this. The moments leading up to a confrontation always send your stomach plummeting

"Easy now," Jay, sporting the store employee smock, whispers as he rolls a grocery cart by, indicating to your foot mindlessly tapping against the cement. Immediately you stop. You give him a small smile. He winks in response. You pretend to dig around in your purse, anything to give the impression you're distracted when in reality all your senses are in overdrive.

Voight's voice barks your last name through your strategically placed com. "Suspect approaching from the east. You know what to do. Everyone else, stand down for now! We don't wanna spook him."

You open the back passenger door before closing the driver's. Your fingers work quickly at unfastening the baby from the seat. You then drape a blanket over the baby for protection against the cruel elements.

It's subtle, but you cannot ignore the feeling you're being watched. The reality is you are. Your whole team is looking out for you. But this is something different entirely, something sinister. You suppress a shudder. Securing the blanket once more, you hoist the baby from the carseat and hold the infant against your chest. With a push of a button, the passenger door slides shut. You fiddle with the keys, making sure the van locks before tossing them in your purse.

You coo at the little bundle snuggled against your chest. Your steps deliberately appear hurried.

And that's when he emerges from a dark blue conversion van parked one whole row over. You spot him out of the corner of your eye and he is unmistakably walking towards you. But you stick to the plan. Your pace slows just barely, not wanting your target to sense the change. You also don't want to actually reach the store entrance and potentially bring harm to the public even with Al and Ruzek inside.

He suddenly appears in front of you, eyes frantically dart around before resting on you. He's disheveled. clothes are wrinkled and slightly stained. His greasy, unwashed black hair is plastered to his head. He smiles which unnerves you. But you return it anyway. His grin disappears. "Give me that baby. And you won't get hurt...much" He removes his right hand from his coat pocket and you notice the blade he's gripping. That's new, you think to yourself. He's growing desperate. Still, you have to get him to attempt an attack or abduction.

"No!" You pull the baby impossibly closer to you. "Leave or I'm gonna yell for help." The threat is feeble on purpose but still seems to evoke rage inside the man.

He lunges at you. His body weight sends you stumbling but you remain on your feet. He wildly pulls at your arms and at the baby, trying to break your grasp. He swings his left arm and his fist perfectly catches your eye.

"Son of a bitch!" You cry. Your foot slams onto one of his and you use that moment to headbutt him square on his chin. He lets out a primal scream before sticking the blade into your upper thigh and you can't help but yelp in pain. He tugs the baby out of your arms. The blanket drops to the ground.

You watch the changing expressions dance across his ugly face: anger, elation at his success, confusion.

"What the hell?"

It's the opening you need. Your weapon is drawn on him. "That's right, you stupid son of a bitch. The baby's fake. Chicago PD! Get down, face down."

Still in his stupor, he obeys. You kick the blade away just as Antonio and Jay come running from opposite directions. Antonio searches and mirandizes him. You return your gun to its inside waistband holster.

As your adrenaline begins to slow, you feel exactly how much pain you're in. It's evident that your eye has started to swell and there's a throbbing sensation in your thigh. You stagger a bit, but a pair of strong arms steady you.

He sighs and you look at Jay. "Don't start," you warn.

"I should have been there. I ended up carrying groceries for this old lady..." Guilt is written all of his handsome features.

"Did she tip you?" You joke, but he stares at you. "Stop. We knew this might happen. He had to attack me." The rest of the team appears and Jay drops his voice to a whisper.

"Yeah, attack like come at you, not actually harm you." He looks as if he's about to argue more when the sound of tires squealing interrupts.

You flash concern. "He wasn't alone." Your eyes meet those of your colleagues.

Voight breaks the silence. "Antonio, get that piece of garbage out of here.Halstead, get her to Med. The rest of you let's head back." You open your mouth to protest, but Hank won't even let you get a word in. "That leg's gonna need stitches. Now go." He stares at you until you move. Jay lends his support as you gently lean into him. It's not as needed as it is comforting.

You were seen and stitched in no time; the wound to your thigh was mostly superficial. Your swollen eye, which was now bruising, was being iced. You would have left Med sooner if your weirdly overcautious boyfriend hadn't insisted that his own brother see you before checking out. It took Will saying it, but Jay finally seemed to accept you were, in fact, fine.

You want in that interview room more than you've wanted anything in a long time.

"Absolutely not," Voight answers when you ask. "This guy doesn't respect women. I don't need you going in there so he can admire his handiwork." He waves a hand indicating to your black eye you're still icing. Hank returns to the observation window to watch Antonio and Atwater interrogate a very non talkative perp.

You remain in the bullpen with Adam, Jay, Mouse and Alvin to stare at that damn board some more.

Alvin recaps; all of you hoping to discover something, anything at all, that could help solve the case.

"Here's what we know. 2 or more suspects working to abduct infants. 1 in custody. Greg Jones. Couple of parking tickets, nothing too serious. Attempted three abductions, not including today's, in broad daylight, over the course of two weeks. Only one was he successful, if you call it that, but the infant was later abandoned at Firehouse 51."

You interrupt. "That baby left at 51, was a boy, right?"

Al double checks before answering, "Yeah."

"The other two attempts were on baby girls," Jay adds, possibly sensing where your mind is going.

You nod. "And today, I had a lavender blanket to cover the doll. One would probably assume it was for a baby girl. Just hold on a sec. Mouse," you holler over to him, knowing he'll pull up what you want faster than anyone. "Check hospital records and obituaries, plesse! Any infant deaths in the last month? Can you look into Jones' social media, too? Girlfriends and such." You've hardly finished the request and Mouse has the information for you. "How many of the babies that died were girls?"

"Two."

"Do you have the mothers' names? Any link to Jones?"

Mouse 's eyes scan the screen in front of him. "Tiffany Young...girlfriend of Jones according to Facebook, lost her baby girl last month."

You nearly hop up from your seat. "Text us her last known." You nod to Jay, asking without words if he's ready. Before you can walk away, Mouse calls your name.

"She was reported missing three days ago."

The whole team exchanges uneasy glances.

In a bizarre turn of events, Tiffany Young had reported herself missing. Jones and Young had been working together to abduct a baby girl with a plan to then flee the state. You and the team discovered that Young was conspiring against Jones going as far as plotting his murder to take place after a successful kidnapping. He would look responsible for her disappearance and his death would appear as a suicide. At least in theory.

It wasn't the best thought out plan, but in these situations they seldom were.

"I still don't understand," said Adam. You were all gathered around a large table at Molly's trying to relax after a long day. Well not all, Antonio made arrangements to see his kids. Al had also rushed off. "Why plan to off Jones?"

"She blames him for their daughter dying." You say taking a sip of your drink. "I read the report, even though it was SIDS, he was the only one there at the time." Everyone is quiet for a moment, presumably lost in their own thoughts. It takes Herrmann coming around, asking who wants another round for the conversation to resume.

Thanks to the refills and a few well timed jokes, the mood of the night has drastically shifted to a much happier one. An hour or so goes by when Jay lightly squeezes your knee under the table. You understand the gesture, surprised that he's waited this long to signal his want to leave. Jay hadn't really wanted to go out in the first place. "I'm gonna head out," you tell the group standing only when you've finished the last of your drink. There's a chorus of goodbyes. As you walk away, you hear Jay excuse himself to use the bathroom. You know he'll leave for your place afterwards. Neither of you know exactly why you keep the fact you're dating from your friends. Maybe the sneaking around is thrilling. Maybe it's just nice having something of your own. Regardless, it's the worst kept secret of the precinct, though no one has any proof and they ultimately leave you alone about it.

You've only changed into a tee shirt when a knock beckons you. You let Jay in. The door has just closed and he's ordered you to take your pants off.

"We need to work on your foreplay," you quip, but Jay's not laughing.

"I'm serious. I need to see again that you're okay."

You sigh, but shimmy out of your jeans. His genuine concern for you was slightly overwhelming in the best way, never having experienced anything like it before. Carefully, you pull back the adhesive bandage exposing your fresh flesh wound, still very bright pink and aggravated.

"I'm so sorry," he murmurs.

"It's not your fault," you say, trying to reassure him.

"I hate that you were hurting and I couldn't do anything." He pulls you for a tight embrace while mindful of your thigh. He's completely still for a moment, breathing you in and finding peace in your arms.

Suddenly, he picks you up off your feet. It catches you off guard and you giggle. "What are you doing?"

He doesn't answer. Instead he takes you to the bathroom and sets you on the counter near the sink. He starts rummaging through your medicine cabinet, pulling out gauze, bandages, and rubbing alcohol. He grabs a clean washcloth from the towel rack.

You raise one eyebrow in question. "I thought I had Detective Halstead, not Doctor."

"Tonight you have both." You bit down on your lip to keep from laughing, but the misconstruction of his words hit him. "That came out wrong. That's not at all what I meant." Laughter escapes from you and Jay joins in, shaking his head and telling you to keep your mind out of the gutter.

"Mm, it's difficult when you're around." You give him a quick peck on the lips.

He turns the warm water on, letting it run for a minute. He tests it, making sure it's not too hot before soaking the wash cloth. He rings it out and looks you in the eyes. "I'm not sure this is going to feel all that great.'

You nod your understanding and Jay very gingerly begins to clean your wound. You talk to keep yourself distracted. "I can't stop thinking about the case. Clearly, they're competent for trial and I'm not justifying what they did, or tried to do. But I can't imagine losing a baby. Just the thought…" Your voice drops off. You wish you could leave work at work, and sometimes you can, but tonight when you're struggling to do so, you feel extra fortunate to have someone who truly understands.

Jay has almost finished cleaning your wound, allowing it time to breathe before covering it with a fresh bandage. "I know," he says. "I kept thinking about if that had been us and our baby, what would stop me from going crazy."

Your heart flutters a little faster, "Our baby?" It's the first time he's ever said anything like this.

He suddenly avoids eye contact with you. "Yeah? I mean someday...down the road if we are still...and that's something we...you want...maybe?" His cheeks are flushed and he glances at you, his green eyes full of hope.

"Jay Halstead," you offer him a big smile, "have you been thinking about our someday?" He nods, giving you a smile of his own. You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him close to you. One of his hands rests on the countertop, the other lovingly brushes your cheek before you nuzzle into the spot just below his neck. You plant a kiss there. "Tell me more about your plans."

"Well they definitely don't include you getting stabbed again," he pulls away just enough to cover your thigh with the new bandage. A slight pout plays at your lips having not gotten the answer you wanted. Jay, seeing this, chuckles. "C'mon." He lifts you off the counter, carrying to the bedroom.

Gently, he places you onto the bed. You watch as he kicks off his shoes and strips down to his boxers. He catches you admiring his physique and shoots you a wink. But you pretend to still pout and cross you arms. It causes Jay to shake his head, bemused by you.

Pulling the covers back, he slides into bed and brings you to his side. He kisses the top of your head, fingers tracing a nonsensical pattern along your arm. "I see lots for us, love. So many ways things could play out, but it's always with you at my side."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah, definitely," and with that Jay launches into different versions of the future he's envisioned. Some are improbable, others imaginative, many seem possible, but all include you, just as he said.

#chicago pd #chicago pd imagine #jay halstead #jay halstead imagine #jay halstead x reader #jay halstead x you

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kyoonqs · 3 years

Text

iluso amor ; first part.

↬ summary: Cora has always considered herself elusive, easy to bore and adventurous to the last fiber of her body. One day for no apparent reason, she appears in front of the manager of a globetrotting circus passing through the city where she is temporarily staying to fill her life with magic. Baekhyun, as serious as he is handsome, has no intention of playing a role other than on the main canvas of the circus. He decides to separate Cora from her life of fantasies created by her travels and sets out to show her reality as raw and cruel as he knows it. Or so he believes.

Will time run out too quickly before love and passion devour him and he decides to risk everything for a love that lasts… Forever?

↬ pairing: baekhyun x cora fem!reader.

↬ circus!au ; illusionist!baek x hitchhiker!oc ; strangers to lovers au!

↬ genre: fluff ; romance ; angst ; drama.

↬ length: 2.8 k words.

↬ tag list: @changshapatrol @spacebyuns @fluffyhunnie @soos-goddess @hoho-cham @shadoukiti @sunbyun21 @mangobaek @suhotly @pororodks @bbhbae

If you’d like to be tagged for future chapters, please let me know!

↬ masterlist.

↬ author’s note: this is my first time writing a series, hope you enjoy it and any feedback will be appreciated. thanks for reading! ♡

Vanilla, caramel and butter scents invaded her nostrils the moment she stepped on the re-centering and she reminded herself that from now on she should get used to the smell due to her timely madness. Beyond her view, occasionally blocked by some old trucks, a red and yellowish-white circus tent loomed along with several smaller tents and a host of caravans. The largest tent, dotted with gold stars, had a large, deep blue sign bearing the name of the circus and its owner. In addition to a few tethered horses, Cora saw a number of huge cages with animals and all kinds of unsavory people, including some pretty dirty men, most of them encrusted with mud and rust.

She was beginning to regret the moment when she had ripped the worn out brochure from the lamppost and the idea of joining the circus scene rose out of boredom. Yes, that was the case, curiosity had killed the cat and she could not contain herself that late afternoon when she had driven her bicycle past the front of the tents and the multicolored costumes of the artists had simultaneously caught her eye. But now it was not like that, the moment she advanced towards the train car where she was to present herself for the position, everyone stopped what they were doing and fixed their eyes on her. Without thinking too much, she stepped forward steadily as her sneakers sank into the sandy ground and she staggering as she stared at the ticket booth where the same brochure she was carrying was presented.

Away from the scrutinizing stares that once haunted her, she took the steps of the carriage two at a time and froze when she saw him inside. He had hair as dark as molten chocolate and chiseled features that would make his face look too beautiful if it weren't for the firm jaw and menacing frown. Men who possessed that brutal appeal had always attracted her but at that moment she would have chosen someone less intimidating to interview her. She tried to calm herself by reminding herself that she would not have to spend more than a couple of hours with him and that it would all be over as soon as she explained clearly why she was applying for the job, which she was still completely unaware of.

She cleared her throat and began with her introduction, first name, last name, place of birth, previous jobs and reason why she was there - from the latter she omitted boredom as a possible factor. The man in question did not give her a single glance and, of course, did not speak a word. She stared straight ahead, the unyielding lines of that hard profile making her skin tingle.

–“I, I want to learn about the trade...” She swallowed.

–“I'm really interested in the job, whatever it is...” She swallowed again.

–“Bastard.”

Until the man in front of her turned his head and looked at her, she didn't realize what she had said. He arched a dark brow with mild curiosity, as if he wasn't sure he had heard correctly. Her impulsiveness took control and she felt her lips tremble, for it was clear that they didn't share her problems in restraining her inappropriate thoughts.

The metal legs of the chair where he was sitting screeched against the hard floor of the wagon. He stood up, ironed the wrinkles of his pants with his hands and looking into her eyes for the first time, he said in a stern and inflexible voice:

–“You are hired. Meet me after the last show behind the main tent.” And without further ado, he passed her by without giving any other explanation.

She could barely suppress a sigh. She directed a furtive glance at the boy, still nameless and wondered what she had gotten into but an irrelevant part of her was dying for new adventures and without a doubt, he would be the greatest from that precise moment.

–“Ladies and gentlemen, the show is about to begin! Come closer everyone!”

The man who made the announcement was the same man who was encouraging people to buy tickets the day the circus had arrived in town, although now he was wearing a red master of ceremonies jacket. At that moment Cora appeared before the young man in the carriage, leading a black horse by the reins with one hand. It was then that she realized that he was not only the manager of the circus but also one of its performers.

He was dressed in a velvet jacket, a velvet vest with nothing underneath and black trousers tucked into high leather boots that snuggled over his calves. A jewel-encrusted band of all colors surrounded his torso accompanied by fine iridescent chains and some ribbons of razo that fell from his pocket. He also carried a rolled whip hanging from one shoulder. Curious about the skills he would display in the arena –she had gotten one of the dancers to tell her when they would leave and to her surprise it would be the next morning– she followed the man with his eyes. At that moment he saw her. The decision she had made had been too recent to seek a way out and she still did not feel comfortable talking to him. Cora tucked her hair nervously behind her ear and refuse to take her gaze from the horse following him when he began to walk towards her.

–“There are unsavory people hanging around the circus. Until you know how everything goes, stay where the rest of the audience is, always” he told her as he adjusted some rings on his slender fingers.

–“Understood.” She responded, since she had just promised herself that she was going to put forth her best effort and not get carried away by first impressions that day.

–“Come in and take a look at the show.” His tone was firm, despite the fact that she was already heading back to where she was previously.

–“Wait! What is your name!?” She asked hastily, not realizing that perhaps she had sounded somewhat desperate.

He glanced at her over his shoulder with the corner of his mouth slightly curved. “Baekhyun!” He said, chuckling, and with that he returned to his place in line with the rest of the artists.

She was still feeling hot as she circled the crowd and entered the tent through the back entrance. She found a free spot in the stands. They were weathered white-painted planks of wood, hard and narrow, with nowhere else to rest one’s feet but on the seat of the spectators in the row below. But she quickly set aside her feelins of discomfort the awkwardness when the lights dimmed, a drum roll crescendoed and a spotlight illuminated the emcee on center court.

–“Welcome to the happiest circus in Valencia, welcome to Gran Fele Circus!”

The music exploded, played by a band consisting of two musicians with drums, a synthesizer, and a consola. A lively version of New York, New York began to play and a white horse entered in the arena with a girl who carried a flag with the name of the circus. The other artists followed, carrying colorful banners, smiling and waving to the crowd.

It was the troupe of acrobats that caught Cora's attention; three handsome men and a beautiful woman –whom she identified as the dancer who had helped her earlier– named Laia, dressed in gold sequins, shiny leggings and thick makeup. They were followed by a group of horsemen, clowns, jugglers, and trained dogs.

Baekhyun entered the arena alone, riding his fierce horse, and unlike the other artists, he didn’t wave his hands or smile. As he circled the track, he seemed such a distant and mysterious being. He was no stranger to the presence of the people, but somehow he remained isolated and gave a strange dignity to the colorful display.

As the show progressed, Cora was amazed at such talent.

Suddenly, the lights went out and the music died away. A blue spotlight illuminated the master of ceremonies, the only one occupying the dark center court. His voice turned dramatically low and a haunting, folk melody began to play in the background.

–“How many times have we wondered if we were crazy? How many times did someone make us doubt our actions? How many times has someone come before us with the idea of changing our thinking? Sanity makes us useless, many times it is better to be crazy. Life is made for taking risks and if you don't think so, let the next person convince you otherwise...before time runs out.”

The lights began to gradually increase in intensity, the music resounded and Baekhyun entered the middle of a path that seemed illuminated by small streetlights, thin beams of light that danced around him and that were reflected in the small sequins of his suit. With indisputable ease, he untangled the whip dangling from a waistband and sliced through the air in all directions with it. Small particles, like glitter, floated in the air suspended around him. He performed a series of skillfully executed feats that were both daring and dramatic. They had brought a few accessories onto the floor during the emcee's presentation: ribbon targets, fluorescent balloons, chandeliers, and more. Circling the runway, he popped the balloons one by one, and a bright red explosion, like drops of blood, shot through the air with each snap of the whip.

The lights dimmed until only he was illuminated by the spotlight, and he grabbed a second whip and made them pop and dance in all directions with such masculine grace, Cora gasped. The dance was increasing, with faster and faster movements and, as if by magic, the two whips became one. With a powerful twist of his arm, Baekhyun lifted him above his head to set him off in flames. The audience gasped, the lights went out, and the flaming whip danced wildly through the darkness. When the lights came on again, he had vanished.

–“What are you doing here? Hasn't anyone taken you to the motorhome yet?”

Cora roused herself, her eyes snapping open. Looking up, she saw the same deep brown eyes plaguing since afternoon that day. For a moment, she couldn't remember where she was but then everything came to mind: the circus, the manager, the show, his whip.

She suddenly became aware of Baekhyun's hands on her shoulders, it was the only thing that had kept her from falling off the old stool that she had been seated on while waiting for him. She had decided to wait there since it was the most illuminated area around the tent, next to government mandated public toilets where there was still a queue to pass them.

She shifted uneasily under his hands and tried to regain her balance with the idea that he would release her.

–“Could you tell me what time it is? I've lost track of it waiting here for you.”

–“It's about 30 minutes to midnight,” Baekhyun put his hands in the pockets of his coat. Instead of the suit he donned for the show, he wore jeans ripped at the knees and a white t-shirt printed with the word ‘Supreme’ in terms of design. Despite the casual attire he didn’t look any less intimidating.

–“Look dulzura, you will have to get used to my presence, since I will be your guide and housemate from now on”. It wasn’t as if Cora hadn’t tried to do it before, in fact she had been attracted to him the moment she met him, only his personality –and now a whip– had slowed her down. He, at her lack of response, muttered something under his breath and after a sigh, spoke again.

–“Come on dulzura, I'll show you where you'll sleep for the next few months.” He turned and left at a fast pace to where the group of caravans were together, paying little attention to the fact that she had luggage that weighed a ton, the consequence of her idea to buy a memorable garment from each city she had visited until now.

–“Wait!” Her scream had an edge of hysteria, but he seemed not to hear it as he continued walking toward the line of caravans. She rubbed the sole of her sneakers across the ruff, gathering some on the toe of it as she dragged her foot. With a gasp, Cora started walking again. Baekhyun approached two vehicles that were parked next to each other. The closest one was a modern white caravan, it looked spacious inside and on its roof you could see a satellite dish. Next to it was another caravan, dented and rusty that appeared to have been silver previously. She begged to herself that it was the space caravan and not the other.

He stood in front of the ugly rusty trailer, opened the door, and disappeared inside. Cora grunted but conceded since she had stayed in worse places. Perhaps the inside wasn’t as hideous as it looked on the outside. Baekhyun reappeared at the door a moment later and watched as she approached fighting with her backpack towards him. When she finally reached the metal step, he offered her a cynical smile.

–“Home, sweet home, dulzura. Come in and settle”.

Cora had always found the Spanish language something to delight in but this was the third time the nickname had come out of his mouth directed at her and she could swear that the way the word rolled on his tongue and briefly hissed before pronouncing the syllable "zu", surely it was close to the song of the angels that received you when you entered paradise.

She sniffed and climbed the four steps that separated her and...the interior was much worse than the outside. Narrow, messy, it smelled musty and old, with a hint of mothball. In front of her was a miniature kitchen, the countertop metal, it had spots with peeling paint. To the right of the kitchen, the faded upholstery of the small sofa was barely visible under a pile of books, newspapers, and men's clothing. In addition, she saw an old, medium-sized refrigerator, wooden cabinets, and a bed with rumpled sheets.

Baekhyun stared at her blankly, genuinely doubting whether she had noticed.

–“It is a small caravan as you can see, but it is comfortable and cozy in the cold. It's all there is and all I have.”

The bed took up most of the back of the caravan, nothing separated it from the rest of the "rooms", the only thing that seemed to be secluded was the bathroom –which she would make sure to explore as soon as she had the chance. On the sheets there were tangled clothes, a towel, and something she couldn't make out from where she was standing.

–“I think I'll sleep on the couch, it would be better…”

He gazed absently at the tip of his foot, then looked up. She stared into those dark eyes –which depending on the light could be paler or even more blackened– and she felt a chill run down her spine, followed by another strange sensation that she did not want to examine further.

He slowly raised his hand, adjusting a lock of hair that had been tousled while she was struggling with her backpack, Cora froze and pursed her lips as she felt the softness of his thumb brush the hollow under her ear with something that it seemed like a caress.

–“Do whatever you want, dulzura. I have to go, I still have things to do.”

Cora gasped when she realized she should have felt danger but her skin had taken the brush of his thumb with pleasure. She felt Baekhyun's insolent hand move away from her hair as he pulled away from her, even though he had left something light on the trailing of her ear. The trailer door swung on its hinges. Baekhyun looked at her and stepped out of it, dropping his gaze from her face to a nonexistent point. Once he was out of sight, she reached for the object that was barely tickling her cheekbone and held the geranium between her fingers with a furtive smile on her face.

↬ This is all for this chapter, I promise to try to write more in the following parts. I will try to update every Saturday. Honorable mention: Oliv (@changshapatrol) without her this story would be nothing, thank you for your patience and trust in me. I love you, a lots ♡

#baekhyun fluff #baekhyun angst #baekhyun smut #baekhyun x oc #baekhyun x reader #baekhyun x you #baekhyun fanfic #baekhyun fanfiction #baekhyun scenario #baekhyun scenarios #baekhyun serie #baekhyun series #baekhyun au #exo fanfic #exo fanfiction #exo scenario #exo scenarios #exo au #iluso amor

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hoekaashi · 4 years

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HQ Skincare hcs

a/n: i had too much fun with these hehe, hope you enjoy! onto my next series which will be longer than the skincare ones characters: kageyama, kenma, kuroo, oikawa, iwachan, atsumu, osamu warnings: none other than my language lol taglist: @babydabi @suckersuki @bakugoustanaccount @animoozies @haiikyuuns @depths-of-your-soul @differentballooncollection @waitforitillwritemywayout

꘎♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡꘎

⇾ growing up as in going to middle school with oikawa, he picked up some stuff ⇾ small things, like which cleanser is better for his skin, what type of skin he has, the difference between toner and essence, what daytime moisturizer he should use and what nighttime one ⇾ things like that ⇾ and even once he was no longer around oikawa, skincare became something that he enjoyed doing ⇾ he would look up new products on his own and he was always willing to try new products too ⇾ his teammates are always so awestruck by his dedication just to his skin ⇾ wouldn’t mind splurging every once in a while on a holy grail product, but everything else is pretty much drugstore stuff ⇾ until he started getting products sent to him in pr packages once bokuto and atsumu let it slip in an interview that kags has a dedicated routine ⇾ his 4 step routine turned into 12 very fast and unfortunately for him, half the time he doesn’t know what he’s doing and ends up bothering oikawa about it

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⇾ he’s a rich bitch and it shows ⇾ he gets a facial two to three times a month, doesn’t care that he shouldn’t get them too frequently ⇾ his mentality is that if he’s not washing his face every day, it’s okay for him to get facials more frequently ⇾ he just really enjoys the massages they give him, but after learning that he doesn’t do anything at home to take care of his skin, they make him a list of products to use and create an entire daytime and nighttime routine for him ⇾ and because he can, he buys the fancy shmancy products that are overpriced ⇾ his favorite part of the routine is putting a cold sheet mask on his face and letting it marinate on his skin ⇾ he ends up buying a beauty fridge and stocking it up with mostly sheet masks ⇾ but because he doesn’t want to be wasteful, he ends up learning how to recycle them properly along with how to make his own sheet masks ⇾ his facialist starts crying when she finds out that he’s actually taking care of his skin now

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⇾ literally didn’t do shit for his face ⇾ but as he got older, he would look into ingredients more - not only with what he was putting in his body, but also on it ⇾ around his last year of high school, he decided to start a routine but it wasn’t anything too fancy ⇾ proper face wash and a moisturizer ⇾ slowly he started to build it more looking into the benefits of using toners and the difference between fermented products and regular ones ⇾ you can pry nerdy science kuroo from my cold dead hands but rigor mortis will make that even harder for you to do haha ⇾ once he got his fancy schmancy job, he had the money to splurge on skincare so not only did he get products that were good for him, he also got the expensive ass ones that typical people would save up for and make it last way past the expiration date ⇾ kenma got him hooked on sheet masks ⇾ he has a mini fridge in his office and whenever he’s stressed or just super tired, he’ll pop one on with some eye patches and just take a 10-20 minute nap in his chair ⇾ even though he’s not very active on social media (most of his followers are people who found him through kenma), he will still email companies and ask them to add him to his pr list ⇾ will bug kenma whenever he isn’t added to the pr list

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⇾ this bitch has a full 12 step routine that he perfected at a young age because he wanted to preserve his youth ⇾ ”why do you wait until you start aging to use anti-aging products? if i start at a young age, i’ll never get wrinkles and people will forever think i’m 20 years old” ⇾ rotates out one product whenever it finishes so his skin doesn’t get used to it ⇾ takes pride in his looks so he would never hesitate to drop money on a product that he knows works ⇾ but on the other side, he also doesn’t mind drugstore products if they do a bomb ass job too ⇾ tried to change the other seijoh third years to have better routines and they all either ignored him or assaulted him with body wash bottles or anything else laying around ⇾ everything is displayed in his bathroom in an aesthetic way ⇾ easily notices if even one product is off ⇾ has a travel sized version of his entire routine and it doesn’t matter if he’s away from his place for even one day/night, he will take the entire thing with him wherever he’s going ⇾ has never missed a single day of his routine which is why iwa went through his acne phase through puberty and oikawa didn’t he still holds it against him to this day

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⇾ literally uses bar soap to wash his face and moisturizes with coco butter BODY LOTION ⇾ oikawa has a heart attack whenever he sees him do this and proceeds with his cardiac arrest when iwa tells him to fuck off ⇾ wanted to punch oikawa in the face whenever he teased him about not having breakouts since he took care of his skin while they were growing up, but once puberty was done and his hormones were balanced, he never saw another pimple on his face again ⇾ will go to grave without a soul knowing, but his acne pissed him off so much he actually bought products to treat it ⇾ advocate for Proactiv MD ⇾ eventually grew out of his bad habits with skincare but still doesn’t do anything more than face wash, toner, and moisturizer ⇾ will never spend more than 25 bucks on a single product. ever. ⇾ enjoys how oikawa gets jealous knowing that he does the bare minimum and his skin looks as great as it does ⇾ quietly thanks his parents for their good genes

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⇾ aha ha ha he’s awful ⇾ rinses his face with water after practice, and if he’s showering, he’ll use his 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner to wash his face ⇾ complains about the weird coating it leaves on his face and when osamu tells him it’s because hair products aren’t for his face, he just says it’s extra moisturizing and walks away ⇾ wanna know why he copied osamu’s hairstyle in high school? it’s because his greasy ass forehead was covered in acne from the sweat, clogged pores, and lack of proper hygiene ⇾ in desperation, he stole osamu’s skincare products and used it to clear up his forehead their last year of high school ⇾ for once in his life, osamu let him get away with it because he was tired of hearing his brother complain about his skin ⇾ his patience ran out when he saw his brother using coconut oil on his skin - the kind you use for cooking ⇾ atsumu sat through three hours of his brother telling him what was good for his skin and what was bad - coconut oil was bad especially for his oily face ⇾ as an adult though, he has the money to spare to get facials and visit a dermatologist regularly ⇾ ironically became the face of a new skincare line and osamu never laughed harder when he saw the ads

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⇾ not super involved as a teenager but knows what products work for him and what don’t ⇾ definitely reads the ingredients and knows the good stuff from the bad stuff ⇾ doesn’t mind splurging on a product or two in high school, but nothing more than that he’d rather spend his money on food ⇾ as an adult it’s up to his mood on whether he would drop money for skincare or not ⇾ he enjoys getting microdermabrasion facials and gets one every 6-8 weeks to help his skin cell turnover rate ⇾ never misses his nighttime routine but not because he’s dedicated to his skin, but because he uses the time to relax before bed and just unwind ⇾ will have either relaxing music playing or complete silence as he does his routine - do NOT talk to him while he’s doing this though it’s his ‘me’ time just like when he works in the kitchen but that’s neither here nor there he needs a lot of ‘me’ time ⇾ if he can’t go to his facial, he will be working in the kitchen with a headband pushing his hair back and sheet mask on ⇾ has an anonymous blog where he rates and reviews new skincare products that’s pretty popular

#kageyama tobio #kenma kozume #kuroo tetsurou #oikawa tōru #iwaizumi hajime #miya atsumu #miya osamu #hq #haikyuu!!#haikyuu hcs #hq hcs

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stereksecretsanta · 3 years

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Merry Christmas, obsessedbutonline!

For @obsessedbutonline, who listed fluff, angst, and ‘Derek giving Stiles gift’ as a few ‘Likes’. I hope I did those items justice. Hope you have a wonderful Christmas, Friend!

Read On AO3

*****

The Gift

The gift. He supposed it all started with the gift. Or maybe Star Trek. Derek wasn’t sure. It was Stiles, after all. One day, the younger man had been debating the cuddle rating of a Tribble, before diving into an analysis of The Voyage Home being one of the worst movies in franchise history (except for the whales, of course), and the next thing Derek knew, he’d found himself discussing how Moby Dick was one of his favorite books. The random jumps from one topic to another hadn’t been anything new for Stiles, but that had also been the year they’d legitimately gotten ‘together’ after their contentious circling of each other’s orbits, so when Derek had opened an inelegantly wrapped early edition of the novel on that first Christmas as a couple, he’d been rendered speechless.

He couldn’t remember how long he’d stared at the leather-bound copy exactly, but he did recall feeling a bout of inadequacy. He thought he’d hid it well though. “Stiles – “ he’d started. “I wasn’t expecting…This is too much.”

Stiles had shrugged like it hadn’t been a big deal, an eager grin on his face. “Nah, it wasn’t too bad. A classmate mentioned a prof who needed an assistant to help translate some Latin verses, and I thought I’d check it out. When I went, I noticed a copy of Moby Dick in his office, and you’d mentioned it was one of your favorites, so I offered my translation services for free if he would sell the book for a discounted price.”

Of course, Stiles had remembered that weird detail from a throwaway conversation. And of course, he’d been resourceful in procuring it. That was just who Stiles was. Now, Derek, on the other hand… well, he’d felt completely out of his league when he’d pulled out the gift card he’d picked up a day earlier from a comic book store. He hadn’t even known if that was a store Stiles ever visited. He really sucked at gift-giving. “Sorry, I didn’t …”

Stiles had yanked it out of his hands before he’d even finished. “I love it. Thanks, Derek!” The younger man had beamed excitedly, clutching that cheap piece of plastic in his hands as if he’d just received some personal heirloom. There had been no uptick in the man’s heartrate, so there’d been no lie in those words, but that hadn’t stop Derek from feeling bad.

And it was then that he had resolved to do better, that he would be thoughtful and meticulous in his gift selection the next time Christmas rolled around. Stiles deserved as much.

But he’d mentioned he was bad at gift-giving, right? As in, monumentally bad. Because the next Christmas, when they’d settled down on his couch after an intimate holiday dinner he’d prepared for the two of them, Stiles had presented him with a charmingly wrinkled gift bag. And when he’d pulled out a lovingly restored and framed photograph of his family from before the fire, he’d not only felt a slight lump in his throat at the sentiment, he’d also felt remarkably small and completely lacking in comparison. It was a good thing they’d come to a mutual understanding that their birthdays would be a no-gift zone, because Derek wasn’t sure he could’ve handled double the inferiority complex this time of year.

“I found a copy of the photo from the digital archives of the town newspaper. It was for some fundraiser committee your mom chaired, I think. I saved a copy, and googled around for some pointers on how to increase the resolution so I could print out a decent version of it,” Stiles had explained.

Derek had nodded absently, his fingers lightly tracing the curve of his mother’s face under the cool glass. His whole family had stared back at him, carefree and unburdened in the moment that photo had been taken, eyes all shiny from a sunny afternoon picnic. “Yeah, I remember. It was a Pets in the Park fundraiser for the local animal shelter.” There had been an ache in the pit of his stomach at the reminder of everything he’d lost, but it wasn’t as sharp as it had once been. Now, it had been dulled by time, and tempered by the meaningful relationships he’d found, foremost of which was the one with the man beside him. “Thank you,” he’d said slowly, slightly surprised that his voice hadn’t cracked at the pool of emotion swirling within him.

“Anytime, big guy.” Stiles had leaned in, his weight and warmth freely offered as a source of silent strength.

But when he’d pulled out his gift for Stiles, he had had that sinking feeling of failing an important test. He hadn’t even had time to wrap it properly, opting to place a haphazard bow on it instead. “Sorry, I didn’t know …”

Stiles had grabbed the cellophane-covered box with a puzzled expression. “A bath set?” he’d asked slowly. “Is this your way of telling me I stink?”

There had been amusement in the younger man’s tone, devoid of upset or disappointment, but that hadn’t stopped Derek from feeling upset and disappointed in himself. After Stiles had gone through all the trouble of giving him such a personal and meaningful gift, he’d reciprocated with … soap. “Remember when you were on break during Thanksgiving,” he’d started to explain. “That necromancer problem we had?”

“Oh, damn, do I ever! We spent the whole night trying to wash zombie goo out of bodily crevices I never knew I had!” Then, realization had set in as those rich brown eyes widened. “This is perfect, Derek! Thank you!” And just like that, Stiles had fallen on him with his usual gracelessness, and proceeded to express his ‘gratitude’ properly.

That had been last year. But this time around, right before Stiles had returned to campus for his final two semesters of college, Derek had stumbled upon the ideal Christmas gift, while they were cleaning, of all things. They’d been packing up and storing some of Stiles’ stuff before the younger man headed back to school when they’d gotten diverted by some dusty, old boxes in the Sheriff’s attic. Somehow, in the way of procrastination, they’d ended up flipping through old photo albums when Stiles had paused to tell him about a picture of his mother.

“Oh, there’s the locket my dad helped me buy for Mother’s Day when I was eight,” Stiles had said as he’d pointed to a picture of Claudia Stilinski, vivacious and beaming brightly at the camera. Anyone could see where Stiles had gotten his smile. “I didn’t have the greatest taste in jewelry, so it doesn’t look like much, but she was so excited when she got it. She wore it all the time.”

“It’s nice that you have a memento to remember her by,” Derek had supplied.

Stiles’ shoulders had slumped a little at the comment. “Yeah, I think we accidentally sold it during a garage sale not long after she died. Dad wasn’t exactly in the best place, and he just wanted to get rid of the memories because they hurt so much back then. Lots of regret now. Who knows? It might’ve found another home, or it might be in a garbage dump somewhere.”

And that comment had led him down the winding, convoluted path to where he was now: standing in front of a teenage girl with bright blue hair and an eclectic ensemble of a loose plaid shirt, artfully ripped leggings, and combat boots.

“A hundred bucks,” the girl re-stated, her tone indicating that this wasn’t a negotiation.

“One hundred? The pawn shop owner said you only paid five dollars for it.” He could be stubborn too, though deep down, he knew he wasn’t really in a position of power in this situation, much as that rankled him.

Ms. Blue-hair shrugged. “So? If you want it that bad, then you should be willing to pay for it.”

She had him there. Three months of diligently interviewing the Stilinski neighbors, and following a trail of multiple goodwill and pawn shops had led him to that very locket hanging from the girl’s neck, that very locket Stiles had shown him in that old photo of his mother. He gave the teen what Stiles had laughingly termed his ‘murder-brow’ look and pulled out his wallet. Of course, he would pay, especially after all the work he’d put into tracking it down, and because this was for Stiles. He didn’t have to like being swindled like this though.

“That’s a nice jacket, by the way.”

Derek looked up from pulling out the cash and froze. He glared at the girl, hoping the intensity of his stare would deter whatever she was about to insinuate. It didn’t work.

“No,” he said flatly as she watched him expectantly.

“Okay, I guess we’re done here then. Nice meeting you.” And with that, she turned and started to walk away.

Derek ground his teeth together to keep from outright growling and fought hard to not wolf out. He hated being bested like this. Life would’ve been so much simpler if he could just take the damned piece of jewelry by force and run off with it. Stupid morals.

“Fine,” he conceded with a clenched jaw after she’d managed to walk several feet away.

She turned with a triumphant smile as he started to shrug off his leather jacket. When he held it out with the wad of cash, she unclasped the chain without any further objections and handed it over. “Pleasure doing business with you, sir.”

(***)

Stiles’ name flashed on his lock screen just as he was pulling up to his loft.

“Hey, you back already?” he answered as he shifted his car into park. His regular visits to Stanford notwithstanding, he’d been anticipating Stiles’ winter break for a while, and the timing couldn’t have worked out any better with him finding the locket when he had. “I was going to pick you up tonight after you’ve had a few hours with your dad.”

Several seconds of heavy breathing greeted his words, and almost instantly, he was on alert, muscles tensing and heartrate increasing. “Stiles?”

“Yeah, Derek, I’m here,” a familiar voice sounded through the phone. “Sorry, just had to get around Scott to check something out. But no, I’m not home yet. Got sidetracked on my way into town. Can you come to the preserve right now? The trail just off Parsons. We’ve got, um, a problem.”

Since his return to Beacon Hills, the supernatural activity in the area had decreased significantly, especially with a solid pack established in the area now, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t the occasional run-in with creatures bringing in death and mayhem. This sounded like one of those times. Shifting gears into reverse, he responded without hesitation, “On my way.”

The trip to the preserve was quick, the route having been travelled so many times that he could probably drive it eyes closed. After parking in the lot off Parsons, he picked up Stiles’ scent almost immediately, along with a few others of the pack, and had no problems tracking the source down a few hundred feet off a popular running path.

Not surprisingly, Scott noticed him first, looking up from a patch of tall grass and nodding in greeting as Derek silently approached. Stiles stood more out in the open, back turned and head down as he tapped busily on his phone. Once upon a time, his quiet ‘stalking’ would’ve caused a flailing of limbs and a high-pitched yelp from the younger man, but of the familiarity borne from the years of closeness, Stiles simply turned, smiled, and greeted him with a warm ‘hey’ as if he’d known he was there the whole time. And all things considered, he probably had.

They’d never been a couple for overt displays of affection, but the way Stiles unconsciously leaned toward him, trusting and open, worked just as well in telling Derek how the other man felt. He usually did the same, subtly breathing in the scent of his boyfriend and feeling more settled in his presence. They hadn’t seen each for a couple of weeks, and he’d missed having Stiles near.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking around for the rest of the pack. Their scents were fainter, which meant they had been here recently, but had likely wandered off or left altogether.

“It’s Christmastime in Beacon Hills, so the usual. Y’know, carolers, Santa parades, sleigh rides, tidings of comfort and joy, and oh yeah, witches.”

Derek had never been bothered by Stiles’ sarcasm, though he wouldn’t openly admit that if asked about their first encounters with each other, but now, he found the trait rather endearing. “So, we’re dealing with a witch. How bad?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I was driving back into town when I saw a kid running across the road. Freaked me out, and barely stopped in time. When I went to check on him, he was crying and said an old woman had tried to take him. At first, I thought it was an attempted kidnapping, but then, he said that there was a lot of screaming coming from her big bag, and he was scared of getting stuffed in there with all the other kid. For this town, that triggered alarm bells. Stuffing kids into bags and lugging them around is not your regular run-of-the-mill kidnapper MO. I called my dad, and he came out here with a few units, but is running interference on the supernatural front. He’d mentioned that this was the third attempted kidnapping this month, so the deputies are on high alert. They still think it’s a regular human predator, so they’re canvassing the other side of the preserve right now, which means we can do our own investigation here. I called Scott, and the others are now fanned out, doing a search to see if we can catch a scent.”

“No luck yet,” Scott added as he strode over to join them. “Just a whole bunch of the usual smells, and with the people that use the running trails, it’s hard to pinpoint a specific one. We’re not exactly sure what we’re looking for.”

“I think I have a lead though.” Stiles held out his phone to show an etching of a stooped crone with a large sack. “We might have an Icelandic witch in the area, one that kidnaps and eats children, but I’m not a hundred percent. I hope I’m not right because … well, children! But she’s supposed to be active around Christmas. I need to double-check some books at my house to make sure though.”

Derek nodded, not surprised that Stiles had pretty much figured it out already. As human as Stiles was, he was arguably one of the pack’s most valuable assets, and truth be told, Derek felt quite proud of the other man’s quick wit and life-saving accomplishments. “So, you need to go home then?”

Stiles made a sound of agreement as he tucked his phone away and gave him an apologetic look. No words were needed to communicate how sorry he was that their reunion wasn’t what they’d planned.

“Okay, call us with any info,” Scott chimed in. “Derek and I will probably be more useful if we keep scouting the area. This is children we’re talking about. I don’t want anymore of them put in danger.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Alpha leader, sir,” Stiles replied jokingly, giving his friend a mock salute.

The years had matured Scott somewhat, enough that the erstwhile werewolf took his role and responsibilities somewhat seriously now. And for this, Derek was grateful.

Scott gave Stiles a shove to get him on his way, before shaking his head with a laugh and started to move back to the tall grass he’d been searching through earlier. “Go, you idiot.”

Stiles responded with the very mature gesture of sticking out his tongue. Then, Derek felt the younger man’s arm wrap lightly around his waist and pull him close for a quick kiss. The motion was casual, natural, and one that Derek returned without thought. “Sorry, not what we’d planned when I got back, huh? Let’s catch this witch fast so we can start our Christmas cuddle session, ‘kay?”

Derek raised an eyebrow at the comment. His boyfriend sure did have a way with words sometimes. “Christmas cuddle?”

“Hey, it is what it is.” Stiles shrugged innocently as he started to move away.

“I’m not calling it that.”

“Suit yourself, Sourwolf, but I’ve officially labelled it, and you can’t take that away from me,” Stiles said as he walked backwards toward the nearby trail. Derek half-expected him to trip on some invisible rock in the next few seconds. “Gonna say it all I want!”

He rolled his eyes as the younger man’s antics. “Go.”

“Christmas cuddle! Oh, and far be it for me to complain about seeing you in that t-shirt, but you do know it’s winter, right? We may live in California, and you may have some super-awesome internal wolfy furnace going, but I’m cold just looking at you. Where’s your jacket?”

“Go!” While he didn’t feel the chill as acutely, he didn’t need to be reminded about his fleecing by a greedy, blue-haired teenager.

After Stiles wave his acknowledgement and jogged out of sight, Derek turned back to join Scott. Their relationship may have started out roughly, but they’d fallen into a companionable pattern over the last few years. It was likely because of everything Scott had been through and his maturation, but Derek guessed part of it may have been out of respect for both their relationships with Stiles. Without much preamble, they quickly sectioned off their respective search zones, and fanned out into the thicker parts of the preserve. Derek had grown up here, had run and played amongst the trees and foliage so often that walking through it now stirred a sense of homecoming. Still, sometimes, there were things here that could still surprise him. Like the odd whiff of fear and panic he caught a few minutes after he’d split off from Scott. It was faint, probably non-existent for the newer wolves, but it was there, so out of place with the earthy scent of moss and soil. He started to follow it, his senses sharpening as he homed in on the potential prey. He hadn’t made much progress before he heard a howl off in the distance, and his entire body tensed, ready for action.

They’d found something!

Once he pinpointed the source, he was off, dashing through branches and over roots with a surety of stride that had been acquired from a lifetime of running these woods. He didn’t get very far though. He heard it first, a loud symphony of disembodied laughter all around him. Before he could stop and confront whatever it was, he caught a flutter of movement in his periphery, and then, he was flying, thrown through the air by an impact harder than anything in recent memory. He was out cold before he even landed.

(***)

He wasn’t unconscious for long. At least, he didn’t think he was, given that generations of werewolf evolution had refined his healing abilities to the point where he shouldn’t be. But however long it was, it was enough to find himself strapped to a board – or a crude table, perhaps – staring up at the flickering shadows of a stone ceiling. Or a cave? He honestly hated losing time like this and waking up in unexpected places, which, given who he was and where he lived, was an actual occupational hazard.

A whimper somewhere to his left drew his attention just then, and he tilted his head at an uncomfortable angle to take better stock of where he was, and with whom. Just within his field of vision, he could barely make out a small figure sat huddled inside a primitively constructed cage no higher than his hip. A wood fire burned beneath a big vat just a few feet away, thoroughly heating up whatever was inside if the bubbling sound was any indication.

“Hey,” he said quietly, if a little hoarsely, hoping the hunched figure would shift enough into the firelight for him to make out who it was.

The figure shuffled over, and Derek could see the tear-streaked face of a boy, probably no more than eight or nine years old. Stiles had said there’d been attempted kidnappings. It looked like one had succeeded.

“H-hello? You’re awake.”

“Yeah, I am.” He wasn’t good with children, barring the few cousins he’d played with when he was younger, yet that had been different. They’d been family. He knew this kid was scared, could hear it in the tremor of his voice and smell it in the dankness of the air, but he wasn’t sure what he could say to help with that. “I’m Derek. What’s your name?”

“A-Andy.”

“Well, Andy, if you give me a minute, we can get out of here and I’ll take you back to your parents.” He tried to sound reassuring, though he wasn’t sure it worked as well as he’d intended when he was tugging and testing the thick ropes tied around his chest, waist, and legs. They were tight, but he managed to slide a hand free enough to shift and start slicing away at the restraints with his claw.

“Just Mom,” the boy said quietly. “Dad left.”

“Okay, we’re going to find your mom then. I’m sure she’s really missing you right now.” He figured that keeping a calm tone and easy conversation going was as good a plan as any while he worked on the ropes.

Andy shuffled a little in his cage, his face dipping down again into the shadows cast by the nearby fire. “She’s working. She’s always working. She promised I’d get to see Dad, but she couldn’t take me, so I went to find him myself.”

Which might explain why the boy hadn’t been reported missing yet. There was some give to the rope by his right hip, so he tilted his head and tried to look over at the boy and hoped he properly projected the sincerity of his words. “That doesn’t mean she’s not missing you, Andy. I know she’s probably very worried. She – “

The stench assaulted him first, sour and rancid, before he felt the whole space shake with a reverberating thud. Andy quickly scooted back into the corner of his cage with a scared squeak, leaving Derek to turn and search out the source in the dim light. An old woman came into view near the foot of his table, posture bent and face haggard, each of her steps sending tiny shockwaves through the cave. Her long, gray hair hung in a greasy, unkempt mess, framing a crooked nose and a gap-toothed, mirthless grin. She resembled the picture Stiles had shown him on his phone, but the younger man had neglected to mention one thing. She was a fucking giant!

The whole cave suddenly felt cramped, and her looming presence caused his heartrate to spike. He worked faster on his ropes.

“Good dog. You’re too old and gristly for my liking, but if my lads want a pet, a pet they will get,” she said in a voice deeper than he’d expected. She patted his stomach dismissively as she passed, and he fought hard not cry out at the jarring, painful contact. “Now, where’s my little snack? Little boy for a little snack. Little boy snack.” She cackled at her own wit.

He heard Andy whimper again as the old, giant crone ambled her way over to the cage, and he wanted to tell the boy to be brave, to hold on because he was almost through his rope. Yet, as he was about to do just that, he caught the scent of metal and electricity in the air. It cut through the myriad of other unpleasant smells like an olfactory beacon, clear and crisp and a harbinger of something – or someone – familiar. He couldn’t help but smile a little at the arrival of the calvary, even as Andy shrieked when the witch pulled him roughly from the cage and shuffled over to the boiling pot.

Then, several things happened at once. First, voices that sounded like the disembodied laughter he’d heard earlier came from somewhere outside. This time, however, they were shouting out in distress, intermingled with the familiar voices of his pack. The cries gave the witch pause for a split second, just as he cut through the last of his restraints and pulled free. After that, he was up and leaping through the air, aiming to get Andy free of the old woman’s clutches and away from the fire. And he managed just that, wrapping his arms around the boy as he clawed at the large hand that held him. But he underestimated the reaction speed of the crone, and barely managed to turn his body to shield Andy before her other hand swatted his side. He landed with bone-cracking impact against the boiling pot, adrenalin enhancing his movements as he rolled quickly to avoid landing on the fire or getting splattered by the hot liquid in the toppling vat. He was pretty sure he’d probably cracked a few ribs, but they were already healing. Andy seemed none the worse for wear when he looked down, unhurt and safe in his arms still.

“My boys! What are they doing to my boys?” the witch wailed.

Derek tensed briefly, thinking the giantess would take her surprise and anger out on him. He readied himself for a fight, but instead, she turned and marched the other way, he and Andy seemingly forgotten. He eased himself up with a barely suppressed groan, and let the small body pressed against his chest slide down to his lap. He could hear the pack outside, the growls of the wolves and the foreign-sounding chants from Stiles, and he knew that they had it handled.

“You okay?” he asked as he gave Andy a good once-over.

The boy simply nodded, his whole body still trembling. Then, without a word, he leaned forward and hugged Derek as if his life depended on it. Not sure how else to respond, Derek hugged the child back.

That was how Stiles found them a few minutes later when he stumbled clumsily into the cave. After some coaxing, they both managed to talk Andy into finally letting go. Scott took it from there, coming in to take the boy away to find the Sheriff, who had been called to the area when Stiles had triangulated Derek’s location. Stiles waited a moment after Scott had left before he turned and threw himself into Derek’s arms.

“Oh, thank every deity I just prayed to you’re okay. Had me worried.”

Derek squeezed the warm, lithe body clinging to him like an octopus, and bent down to briefly nuzzle his partner’s neck. He breathed in the fortifying scent that was simply Stiles and used it to ground himself after the crazy events that had just happened. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m fine.”

“I know. You’re one tough son of a bitch, but the uncertainty always gets me.” Stiles pulled away and gave him a look with those ridiculously wide Bambi-like eyes that made Derek’s insides go warm. “And of course, you would go all superhero and save a child while we saved you. With the way the boy was holding on to you, I thought you’d replaced me with a cuter, newer model.”

Derek quirked up his lip into a lopsided, half-smile. “Never,” he returned easily. “If I did, I would at least try to get a good trade-in price for you.”

“Smartass.” As his comeback, Stiles smacked his arm with the back of his hand. He then slipped said hand into Derek’s, intertwined their fingers, and started walking out of the cave. “See if I ever send baddies back through an intercontinental gate for you again.”

“So, she wasn’t a witch?” Derek asked as he followed Stiles’ lead out of the cave

“Oh, no, she was a witch. The giantess witch, Gryla, and her sons, the Yule Lads. I don’t know how they got here, but I was working off of some quick and dirty research, so the best I could do was track down caves in the area, which is what the literature says she tends to favor, and find a spell to send her back to her native Iceland.”

Derek silently listened as Stiles explained what had happened, both grateful and proud – and not for the first or last time either – at the quick wit and resourcefulness of the guy he got to call his. They eventually emerged from the cave, and he immediately felt lighter the moment he could smell the fresh earth and foliage again. The sun was beginning to set, creating lengthening shadows of the redwoods and the oaks that stood like sentinels around them. And with that came a distinct chill in the air. He felt Stiles shiver at the lower temperature, and wished he’d had his jacket around to offer the other man. The jacket that he’d exchanged for …

With his free hand, he reached into his jeans pocket where he’d tucked the locket earlier, and –

Shit!

Without another thought, he turned and sprinted back into the cave. He quickly scanned the area and did not see the locket anywhere. His eyes then fell on the overturned pot and the still-burning embers of the woodfire. A dash of panic began to taint his actions, but he didn’t stop to quell it. Instead, he rushed over to the dying fire and started digging through the ashes. His hands burned and healed almost simultaneously as he dug desperately through the charred wood, an odd combination of frustration and helplessness clouding his judgement.

“Derek?”

He heard Stiles, but didn’t answer, mainly because his fingers wrapped around a clump of metal just then. He looked down at what used to be Stiles’ mother’s locket, the piece now misshapen by the heat and bearing no resemblance to what it used to be. He dropped the thing, both dejected and angry. This was supposed to be the year. This was supposed to be the Christmas where he would show Stiles how much the younger man meant to him by putting the care and thought into his gift that Stiles had always put into his. But everything… everything had been for nothing.

“Derek? What’s wrong? You okay?” Stiles approached and knelt beside him, looking ready to join him in whatever he was searching for.

He brushed the soot and ash off his hands, shook his head, and stood up. “Nothing. I’m good. Just thought I dropped something but I was wrong. C’mon, let’s go home.”

Puzzled, Stiles stood too, though he didn’t pry, and together, they made their way out of the cave once more, but not before Derek threw one last, longing glance at the pile of ashes.

(***)

“Oh, my god, I’m so stuffed,” Stiles said as he plopped down on the couch and rubbed his belly. “I might have to be rolled off to bed later because there’s no way I’m standing up.”

Derek smiled softly at the younger man’s dramatics, and joined him on the sofa. Christmas dinner had been an intimate one again between just the two of them, with Derek doing most of the preparation, while Stiles had ‘helped’. He didn’t mind though. He enjoyed their time together. The way they fit together, their ease with each other … it had all been hard-won, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything. The younger man had chatted animatedly throughout the meal and Derek had let him go on, wanting to prolong the whole thing because, if he was being honest, he was dreading what would happen afterwards: their gift exchange.

“Merry Christmas, Derek,” Stiles said, as if reading his thoughts. He reached over to the end table and grabbed an unevenly wrapped gift.

Derek stared at the thing for a moment, just knowing deep down it would be a typical Stiles present, all special and personal. Why did Stiles even stay with him? He must come across as an unthoughtful, unappreciative jerk. Slowly, he unwrapped the gift, and revealed a collage of artfully arranged photographs. There were trees and flowers and butterflies dancing on sunbeams across open trails. They were beautiful, more so in that Derek recognized where they had been taken: the preserve.

“You sometimes talk about how you grew up in the preserve,” Stiles explained. “How it’s a second home to you, and how you have all those memories with your family there. I know the memories are special, so I went and took some pictures during summer break. I hope these help you remember all those good times.”

Derek blinked away the prickling he felt in his eyes. Stiles may have assumed he was touched by the gift, which was fine. He didn’t need to know what Derek was really feeling. He didn’t need to know that in that moment, he thought Stiles really deserved so much better than him.

“Thank you. It’s perfect,” he choked out. “I – “ He didn’t know how to continue. What else could he say? “My present isn’t –“

He stopped. Stiles looked at him expectantly. Not finding the right words, he leaned over to the coffee table and grabbed the last-minute gift bag he’d filled the day before. “Here.”

He looked away while Stiles eagerly dug into the bag. He knew what was in there, and he didn’t need to see the lackluster reaction the younger man would have at the assortment of Reese’s candies he’d find.

“Oh, this is awesome, Derek!” Stiles exclaimed excitedly. “Holy shit, there’s a half pound peanut butter cup in here! Hello, Heaven!”

Derek felt Stiles’ arms wrap around him in gratitude, but he couldn’t find it in himself to return the gesture. The younger man seemed to notice and pulled back. “Derek?”

He turned and took in Stiles’ questioning gaze. He couldn’t do this. They complemented each other so well in everything, but somehow, in this, they were completely mismatched. “Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked in earnest.

“What?”

“My gifts. Doesn’t it bother you that my gifts are so … so bad. Yours are always so … so perfect.” It felt good to get that off his chest.

Stiles gawked at him as if he was speaking a foreign language. “Huh? But I think your gifts are perfect. And that’s not a lie. You can tell, right?”

True, Derek hadn’t heard any change in the other man’s heartrate to indicate otherwise, but no one could like his choice of gifts that much. “I just ... I wanted to show you how much I appreciate you, how much I care about you, the same way to do for me, especially with the gifts you give me. But I can’t seem to do that.” This was uncharted territory for him, this admission. He wasn’t used to revealing his insecurities like this. Yet, this was Stiles he was talking to, he reminded himself. Stiles, who never had any shame in revealing his every failure and weakness, and who gave his trust without fear of being hurt. Derek owed him the same. “I found your mother’s locket,” he finally said. “The one from the album you showed me. I found it, and was going to give it to you, but I lost it when we fought that witch last week. I’m sorry.”

He stared at the coffee table. He stared at the discard wrapping paper of the collage he’d just received. He started at everything but Stiles.

And then, “That’s what you were worried about? Not being able to show me you loved me?” Stiles’ tone was incredulous, and it was enough for Derek to turn his attention to the younger man again. “You’re an idiot, Derek,” Stiles continued. “For the record, your presents are awesome. But that’s not the point. You drive three hours each way to visit me on campus every other weekend. You cook Christmas dinner for us every year. You help me pack for college each fall. You drop everything and meet me in a forest, no questions asked, when I call. You even spent all night picking zombie guts out of my hair. If that doesn’t say ‘love’, I don’t know what does!”

To put an exclamation to his point, Stiles pulled him in for a long, lingering kiss. “I love you, Derek Hale, and I know you love me. You don’t need to give me things to show me that. You show me every day in the things you do. And that’s more than enough.”

Derek looked at the man sitting beside him, stunned and at a loss. “I –“

“It’s more than enough,” Stiles re-stated firmly. “Now, stop your self-flagellation, and show me how much you appreciate my gift by kissing me.”

Stiles pulled him in again, and this time, Derek did put everything he had into that kiss because the weight of those heartfelt words were slowly sinking in. He loved Stiles. And Stiles … Stiles knew that. He groaned in appreciation at the true gift he’d been given as he pushed the younger man down onto his back, bracing his weight on his arms as he ground their hips together. Fuck it, he felt like he’d really won the lottery in finding Stiles … because Stiles was right, he realized as he deepened their kiss, tasting and teasing the smart, sarcastic, and silly man beneath him.

This … This was more than enough.

#obsessedbutonline #stereksanta20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

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papermoonloveslucy · 3 years

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LUCY vs TIME

June 22, 1973

The publicity photos, from the movie set of Mame were unrecognizable. Unrecognizable! Why, they were unbelievable. Either somebody had shot them through six layers of soft-focus gauze - or a time machine.

Who was this frisky redhead hoofer kicking up her heels on the distant reaches of some resplendent soundstage, cannily avoiding a camera close-up?

Who was this svelte eyed lady fluttering from beneath a fringed rug of false lashes, not a wrinkle, sag or bag, not to mention even an expression line, sporting her famous face?

Well, clearly the lady was a star. And as star of Warner Brothers' new $8 million musical version of Mame, Lucille Ball had veto rights over all still photographs.

The trouble was that obviously nobody had had the nerve to tell her that if she could order reality rubbed out of a picture with a wave of the retoucher's brush, she couldn't pull the gauze over the eyes of an interviewer ushered into the Mame set to confront the living flesh, unretouched.

Time has not been unkind to Lucille Ball. No, beneath a billowing wine velvet and cream satin lounge suit, the svelte one-time chorus-girl's curves are still obvious. Despite a badly broken right leg from a skiing accident that had left the shooting of Mame stalled and the star in a cast for nearly a year, the shapely former showgirl's gams had now already carried her through a dozen dance routines up on top of pianos and down banisters that would have taxed a tap-dancer half her age.

At 61, Lucille Ball could pass for a dozen years younger. But only a dozen years.

The outrageous, outsize eyelashes now stick like pine spikes out of a swamp of tucks, puckers and bags etched around her shrewd big baby-blues. Her plastic face is a relief map of over-made-up wrinkles, the big bright red Cupid's-bow mouth lipsticked in a smile outside her own spidery upline.

But you don't survive 22 years on TV in the top ratings, get renewed once again this season when all about Bridgets and Bernies and Dean Martins (1) are falling to the network's chop, practically bear a baby and outlast a broken real-life marriage on the TV tube, take over a foundering corporation and build it into the single most powerful independent TV production house, without it showing in your face.

One look at Lucille Ball's face and you don't doubt it for a minute when Hal, her make-up man for 32 years, says she used to limp on to the Mame set in excruciating pain. Then, the minute the cameras clicked on, burst into a dazzling and seemingly effortless song-and-dance.

Not that the lady would admit it for a minute. "It was excruciating pain," she dismisses the subject airily.

But then these days she's not admitting much. It was a lesson learned the hard way. One recent fateful February day, over perhaps one too many Pouilly-Fuisses on the rocks, she was admitting so much so freely to the New York Times that the story read like a Hedda Hopper monologue.

On Desi Arnaz Sr., the Cuban bongo (2) player-bandleader she met and married out of a chorus line in 1940 and divorced 22 years later after a marriage that was even stormier off -screen than on: "He drank too much and he couldn't stand success."

On Desi Arnaz Jr., their 20-year-old son and his much-publicized romance with actress Patty Duke: "I had my doubts if the baby was Desi's at all. I said to him, "You feel responsible? Boy, you're all of 16 1/2 years old and you want to spend the rest of your life with this neurotic person?'"

On Liza Minnelli, then Desi's current fiancée: "They took her for over a million and a quarter more than her mother's debt. Just for beginners..."

One mention of the story now is enough to send sparks flying. "Why, that man should be..." she sputters over the reporter, "...spanked!"

It's a first burst of spontaneity from a lady who, once burned, is now so careful that she sounds at times as if he's dictating to the Library of Congress.

"I never thought I'd get this far, do so much, have such beautiful children," she says, chain-smoking in her dressing-room, all the wide-eyed telephone lineman's daughter from upstate New York. She knocks on wood.

"All I ever wanted was to get to vaudeville and I never made it."

When she hit New York to take acting classes at 16, the school sent back her mother's money, saying. "No talent." And now, refund in hand, 81-year-old DeeDee Ball, as the whole family calls her, sits in a front-row seat for every “Here's Lucy” show, just as she has done non-stop for the last 22 years.

Still it wasn't till 1951, when the Amazes dreamed up the “I Love Lucy” show, patterned after their own lives, as a way of keeping their marriage together and bandleader Desi home from the road, that success came.

But when it came, it was she who stole the show.

By two years later, 68 per cent of TV viewers in America were tuned in to see her show-by-show birth to Desi Arnaz Jr., whose arrival vied with the U.S. presidential election results for front-page space under the headline, "Lucy's $50 million baby."

Everybody, it seemed, loved Lucy except perhaps Desi Arnaz. Despite her insistence that "the series was happy there was no fighting. It was the greatest time of my life," she admits, "the trouble came much later. Only the last five years were hard."

Which means that the greatest time of her life lasted only a scant six years. When their marriage broke up officially in 1962 (3), friends introduced her to a stand-up comic named Gary Morton, now her producer, vice-president of Lucille Ball Productions, Inc., official show warm-up man and for 11 years now, Mr. Lucille Ball.

As her daughter Lucie, 22, and still a performer on the show, puts it. "She may be the king of stage 12, but at home she's queen Gary's the king!"

She indulges his passion for golf and a garage full of classic cars, but with the warning: "If he ever looks at another woman, I'll kill him."

She says she never makes a business move without him, but when she was left to head up the giant Desilu Corporation after her marriage break-up, it was she who was known as the woman shrewd enough to snap up “Mannix”, “Mission Impossible” and “Star Trek” when they were apparently doomed pilots, a comedienne who was not so comical in the executive suite.

But as for her much-vaunted business acumen, she is all denials and femininity.

"Me? No way. Desi did the whole thing. He was a fantastic businessman. I only took it over to build it up and sell it. I mean, there was a certain amount of building up to do."

When she took it over from Arnaz in 1961, Desilu had lost over $600,000. When she sold it seven years later, for $17 million in Gulf and Western stock, making her the conglomerate's largest stockholder and, some say, the wealthiest woman in Hollywood, the company had grossed $30-million and made a profit of ever $800,000.

"But everyone in the know knew I wasn't tough," she says. "No, the men I surrounded myself with were."

Still there a flinty glint behind the false lashes, a shrewd imperious purse to the painted lips, a ring to the wise-cracking whisky voice that's used to being heard. She moves around the Mame soundstage in queenly command, dispensing Norman Vincent Peal-doms, part star, part super-mother.

When it comes time for a scene featuring co-star Bea Arthur, she practically takes over directing from Gene Saks, Miss Arthur's husband. "Now did you tell her what side of the camera to be on?" she asks Saks, who looks like he might explode. "Now honey, toe your mark," she fusses over Bea, who grows quiet, explaining later:

"Lucy's really a dear. But sometimes it can get a little overpowering."

She doesn't talk to people without picking lint off their clothes, and straightening their collars, a habit that comes naturally enough to a woman who has her whole retinue, hairdresser, secretary, make-up man and driver of the last two decades - even her little picket-fenced French-provincial dressing-room trailer, with its false shutters and plastic ivy - picked up and transplanted wherever she strays from Lucy Lane where she presides at Universal Studios, year after year.

With her kids, she was, as daughter Lucie says, "Strict - and you want to believe it. We were the only kids we knew who had to work around the house for whatever money we'd get." Lucie still gets paid only scale for her mother's show.

But Desi Jr. wasn't exactly a natural. "He'd be asleep on the sidelines and I'd be ready to smack him," Lucy says, "When he said he was interested in serious acting, I said, 'Oh, really?' But he got out and worked. He surprised me. He surprised everybody. He even surprised himself."

Still, for all her talk about the joys of getting away to her Colorado ski lodge where she does "the cooking, the washing, the socks, the things I miss - not to mention the leg breaking - there's not much chance that Lucille Ball is going to be sitting the next round out, wallowing in domesticity, In the old rocking chair.

# # #

FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) “Bridget Loves Bernie” was a 1972 sitcom about a mixed marriage between a Jewish man and a Catholic woman. Like Lucy and Desi, stars Meredith Baxter and David Birney were also married in real life. Despite excellent ratings (it was the highest-rated new show of the 1972-73 season) the show was cancelled after only one season. The official reason for its cancellation was that it was scheduled between two mega-hits, “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, and its ratings weren't strong enough considering its choice position in the line-up.

Also, that same season, the long-running “The Dean Martin Show” (1965-1974) was cancelled. Lucille Ball had made three appearances on the show, and he also appeared on hers.

(2) Conga drums, not bongos. It is slightly dismissive to call Desi Arnaz a bongo player.

(3) The editor makes the error of assuming that Lucy divorced Desi and Married Gary Morton the same year. She divorced Desi in April 1960, and married Gary in November 1961, a year and a half later.

This article was published in the Leisure section of The Vancouver (BC) Sun on June 22, 1973. The article was written by Marci McDonald and illustrated by David Annesley.

#Lucille Ball #Mame #Vancouver Sun #Marci McDonald #David Annesley #Bridget Loves Bernie

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kalendraashtar · 5 years

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Fanfiction - Dark Shines

Friday 13th and a Harvest Moon call for witches and crime stories! This chapter debuts an incredible new moodboard, made with love by the amazing @sassy-sassenach and lovingly accepted by this author. Thank you so much! ❤

Part I, Part II

Dark Shines

Part III – Tasseography

Behind the ash wood door was a spacious room, substantially darker than the inside of the Beauchamp’s Cup front store. Still, that diffuseness didn’t feel like the dimness of depraved things, but more like the controlled atmosphere meant to protect old books and antique items.

Jamie could identify hundreds of glass jars and wooden boxes, made of a myriad of different colours and shapes. There were also books aplenty, some neatly stored in a massive bookcase against the back of the space, others – probably the ones more frequently used – stacked in piles between the two worktables and the imponent desk. The writing table was built from a beautiful white wood with an almost invisible grain, ivory-like, that Jamie eventually identified as holly, one of the sacred trees of the old druids.

There were also other objects scattered around the surfaces, stranger and somehow more disturbing in their simplicity – a small silver bell, a pendulum, several knives in different sizes, candles and a totally black tea-set, with seven delicate-looking cups and a robust teapot, which sparkled like an onyx stone would under the intense gaze of the moon.

“Tea first, I think.” Claire said amiably, pointing him in the direction of a plush burgundy armchair in front of her desk. Jamie nodded and tried not to stare openly around him, half-expecting her to go for the wicked looking set of porcelain. Instead, she retrieved a fairly common pair of tea-cups from a sideboard, reassuringly white with the rim simply embellished with soft pink lilies. “Do you have a preference?”

“Whichever ye’re having is fine.” The criminal profiler answered, studying the tea-maker as she prepared the infusion with the measured practice and solemnness of a ritual. After she offered him a cup, pungent with the fragrancy of mint and lemon verbena, Jamie thought he had endured enough politeness for the time being. “So, will ye tell me about the true nature of yer relationship with Morag MacKenzie and Mary Hawkins, Miss Beauchamp?”

The rumoured-witch sipped her tea placidly, blowing softly against the rim of the cup, a magnetic movement of her lips that drew gooseflesh on his arms. “They were faithful clients, almost since I founded the company a couple years back.” She nodded to herself, seemingly content either with the taste of the brewing or with the progress of the conversation. “And they were...curious, about other subjects. Sympathizers, one might say.”

“Do ye mean that they were some kind of witch-groupies?” The man raised a brow, mechanically stirring the liquid with an odd-looking small teaspoon, the point carved like a coiled snake.

“I’m not a member of the Beatles, Agent Fraser.” Claire rolled her eyes, scrunching her perfectly perky nose. “They weren’t groupies. They were interested in some aspects of power and the barriers that stop most people from using it.”

“Were they yer version of Muggles, then?” James Fraser smiled bitterly, silently reprehending himself for letting his own perspective on the subject so abundantly clear. He needed her help, as much as he was convinced that she was a blatant schemer. “I gather from what ye’re sharing that they didn’t have any…power of their own.”

Claire’s eyes fixed on his face, with an intensity that was almost predatory, and then they slowly descended to his upper leg, where he felt her gaze like the two gunshots that had once pierced his flesh, hot and devastating like speeding bullets. It was strange to be once again close to people who knew part of his story, even though they couldn’t possible fathom him.

When her lips moved, it felt like being underwater listening to the secrets of a siren, that he could never accurately reproduce. “Everyone has power. Maybe not what we’d prefer - but some. You won’t find any magical wands here, Mister Fraser, but there are still instruments – conduits, if you’d like – that one might use to do…what I do.”

“And what is that, exactly?” He raised his brow, his tone lowering to a not-too-subtle provocation. Jamie was trying to draw her out, to force her to show more of herself openly - most people revealed plenty with the simplest behaviours, like a choice of recurrent words or hand mannerism, but Claire Beauchamp was undecipherable.

“More tea would be nice, wouldn’t it?” She didn’t wait for his answer, diligently grabbing his cup to refill it from the steaming teapot. Claire squinted at the bottom of his empty cup and then smiled, a lopsided movement of lips that was the true portrait of light-heartedness.

“Found something amusing there?” Jamie asked, annoyed at the growing feeling of rawness, of extreme and unwanted exposure. “I dinna believe in fortune-telling or in the reading of tea leaves, so spare me the telling of some grand adventure in my future, aye?”

“You put too much sugar in your tea.” She revealed cheerfully, deliberately ignoring his borderline-rude remarks. “I don’t need to resort to tasseography to realize that you’ve already experienced too much bitterness in your life.” With ease, she returned him the teacup refilled with a second helping of the hot beverage. “Besides, there’s always more of someone’s past at the bottom of a cup than of the future. That’s the nature of the leaves themselves – they are the tea’s past.”

Jamie offered her a narrow and cold indigo look, retrieving a pen from his pocket to scribble down some notes. “Do people really fall for these tricks?”

“Do people really fall for the brooding and intimidating approach?” She quirked her lips as if she was about to laugh aloud and with a strange twitch his pen fell from his hand, as if it had acquired a life of its own. The policeman bent down haphazardly to catch it, furrowing his brow. “I’m guessing there was something else you needed from me, Agent Fraser, if you chose to come here in the first place. What brought you around, before I volunteered the information that I knew two of the victims?”

“I’m the one who should ask the questions here, Miss Beauchamp.” He clenched his jaw and, before he could continue, his pen – which had been innocently resting on the table, after a stalled first attempt at escaping his possession – slid from the edge of the table and rolled happily away.

“Must be an air draft. Edinburgh and old buildings, you know?” Claire sipped another generous gulp of her tea, her grin barely hidden behind the cup. “Ask away, Agent Fraser. I’ll be on my very best behaviour.”

Before Jamie could explain the mysterious symbols that had led him to her door, and show her some of the illustrating crime scene photos, his phone vibrated inside his pocket.

“Fraser.” John said, with a hint of excitement and consternation in his voice. “We have a fifth victim. Uniforms responded to a call from neighbours complaining of a dog who wouldn’t stop barking, and found another atrocious scene. Meet me there?”

“Aye. Text me the location.” Jamie said shortly and ended the call, when in all truth he wanted to yell a wholehearted “Fuck!”. “Miss Beauchamp, I’m afraid our interview will have to be postponed. I might come by tomorrow for some further inquiries.”

“Of course.” She raised from her chair, the dove around her neck seemingly flapping her wings for a short fraction of time, that left Jamie wondering about the true contents of his afternoon tea. “I’m not always here, so I’ll give you my home’s address in case you need to reach me.” She politely walked him to the door, the very impersonation of an impeccably mannered hostess.

“I’ll be in touch.” Jamie said; it was meant as a farewell, but somehow it sounded like a threat. Claire shrugged and waved him off as he closed the door behind him with more firmness than usual.

Only when the young, yet seasoned, criminal profiler reached his car did he realize that he couldn’t really remember the details of Claire Beauchamp’s face – only her striking eyes. It was as if she had hidden herself behind a curtain of undisturbed mist.

***

The scene in front of them was oddly, but not at all reassuringly, similar to the ones they had witnessed, either in first-hand or by way of photographs.

“Another woman. But I guess that’s not surprising.” John said in a murmur, shaking his blonde head. He was paler than usual, and a few wrinkles in his usually impeccable shirt denounced a bone-deep tiredness. “So far the forensic team couldn’t find any signs of forced entry. Again.”

Jamie nodded in agreement, their train of thought synchronized like a flock of birds during murmuration. “These women know the unsub. There’s no way around it, really. They willingly opened the door to let him in, probably entertained him for a while before things took a verra gruesome turn. They didn’t foresee any danger coming from that person.”

“But while they seem to know him, he doesn’t show any classical signs of regret or guilt, does he?” John pursed his lips in concentration. “The unsub didn’t cover her bodies or place them in any comfortable or nurturing position. Didn’t leave any tokens to show respect, as well.”

“Aye.” Jamie sighed and crouched down, his eyes slowly trailing down the cold body of the most recent victim, as if her skin could whisper the name of the perpetrator through its pores. “But this also isna sexual. He doesn’t engage in sexual intercourse with them perimortem, even if all of them were young and bonny. No evidence that he wanks in the scene or that he takes anything other than the forefinger to fantasize later.” His eyes searched for his companion’s. “This doesn’t seem like a true-born serial killer to me, to be honest. More like a hitman, eliminating specific targets for a very earthily reason.”

“I don’t know many hitmen that make such a spectacle of their killings, though.” They walked to the threshold of the room, watching as Denzel gave instructions to some uniformed officers to collect statements with the neighbours. “Usually a revolver or a good piece of sturdy nylon around the neck. This scene took time and intention.”

“Maybe all the production around the murder is the most important part of why he does it.” The redheaded profiler theorized. “It can all be about the ritual.”

“We’re still waiting on her ID.” John brushed his forehead. “But plenty of pictures around.” He pointed towards a large frame with his pen, where a photo of the victim surrounded by other women dwelled. She was abundantly black-haired, with a unique white streak in her bangs, and warm and sapient brown eyes. All the faces depicted were either smiling broadly or making funny faces, as they sat around a presumable beach bonfire.

“A mhic an diabhoil!” Jamie’s jaw dropped, as he slowly approached the image and almost touched one of the women’s faces. “I think that’s the woman I’ve just met at the teashop.”

#Dark Shines #Part III #Tasseography #Outlander fanfiction #Modern AU #Jamie and Claire #dark mood #Criminal Profiler vs. Witch

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artificialqueens · 4 years

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Galactica, Chapter 9 (Group Fic) - TheDane/Veronica

A/N: Please know how INCREDIBLY grateful we are to anyone who’s liked or commented on this story. It’s really a labor of love, and we’re thrilled that people are enjoying it! Click here if you’re looking for previous chapters (or here if you’d rather read on AO3). 💫

Last Chapter: Violet suffered a hangover and, to her delight, found an assistant candidate that Fame approved.

This Chapter: A million girls would kill for Courtney’s new job.

***

Courtney took a deep breath as she entered the Galactica building and took the elevator up to the 25th floor.

It was a sunny day in early August, and she had dressed in her very best outfit since it would be her first day at her brand new job.

Courtney had applied for the job with little to no hope of actually getting it, but then the miracle happened, and she had been completely overjoyed when her new friend Violet had called her with the news; even if the interview with Miss Fame had been one of the scariest things she had ever done.

Courtney’s entire weekend had been spent in a frantic state of pulling together the mountain of paperwork HR had requested in order to get her visa, and of course there was the anxiety about having nice enough clothes to wear.

She had ended up enlisting Tyra to help, since her college friend was the most stylish person she knew, and managed to do it on a budget, too. They’d scraped together enough pieces for this week, but if Courtney lasted longer than that, and she desperately hoped she would, she would have to beg, borrow and perhaps steal some more.

It was 8 am, and Courtney thought she would have been the first one in the building, but when she made it to the office, Violet was already there. Courtney quickly checked her hair and her teeth in the glass door reflection, smoothing out the wrinkles in her light blue dress before she opened the door with a big smile and a cheery, “Good morning!”

Violet looked up. She was wearing a white buttoned up shirt, golden jewelry and a crimson pencil skirt, her long black hair falling down her back in curly waves, looking as beautiful and impeccably put-together as always.

Violet was organizing something at a brand new desk that had not been there during Courtney’s interview. It was placed directly across from Violet’s desk, on the other side of the door to Fame’s office.

“Ah. Courtney.” Violet smiled. “Good morning.”

Courtney sighed, a bit relieved. Today, Violet seemed much more like the lovely girl she’d met at the club last week, and less like the uptight hardass she’d been during the interview. Courtney supposed that maybe that had been a test, and she was thrilled she passed, because now they could be friends.

She looked at the new desk, which was equipped with a new iMac and office supplies, along with a thick binder and notepad with the Galactica logo.

“Fame is getting her hair recolored and cut at Juju Sandersons salon-” Violet took a brief pause, her eyes searching Courtney’s face for something, and Courtney realized that she was probably expected to know who that was, though she had no idea. “Hmm.” Violet tapped her papers against the desk, putting them into a neat and organized pile. “Which means we have time to get you ready before she returns.”

“Get me ready?” Courtney looked down at herself; she thought she looked more than fine. She’d tried to look as chic as possible in honor of the new job.

“Not that. Your outfit is acceptable today.” Violet gestured for Courtney to come sit at the desk while she continued to stand. “Here.” Violet placed a stack of papers in front of Courtney on the table.

“What’s this?”

“I need you to sign this before we begin.” Violet put a perfectly manicured finger down on the paper, and Courtney’s nose was filled with the overpowering scent of lavender. “It’s a standard NDA. You’ll do the rest of your paperwork with HR later, but I can’t show you anything until you sign.”

“Oh...okay.” Courtney wasn’t sure exactly what an NDA was, but if it was that important, she supposed she better sign immediately. She picked up a pen and began to fill it out as quickly as possible.

Her pen had barely lifted from the last line when Violet snatched it off the table, replacing it with the binder.

“Thank you.”

Violet pointed to the binder, a 4-inch monstrosity filled with tabbed sections and little flag stickers. “I took the liberty of preparing a manual for you. It’s nowhere near complete, but it’s enough to get you started. Read it, memorize it, get to know everything inside.”

“Sure,” Courtney said, and opened the cover, a little startled when Violet reached out a hand to snap it shut again.

“Not now.” Violet sighed. “Do that on your own time. Please.”

“Sorry.” Courtney swallowed. Guess party Violet was a lot further away than she had thought.

“I’ve pulled these for you from marketing.” Violet dumped a stack of colorful catalogues on Courtney’s desk. “Brochures for the last 10 years, so you can become familiar with the collections. Every day here can be a test, so be serious when you study them. Miss Fame will frequently ask for references, and sometimes she won’t give much information. You’re expected to be able to find ‘the powder blue tweed skirt’ or ‘the dress with the flowers’. It’s your job to figure out what Miss Fame wants. Never ask her for clarification.”

“Never?”

“If you do, she’ll be aggravated, and believe me, you do not want to experience her aggravated.”

“Right…”

“Remember, this will be fun,” Violet touched Courtney’s shoulder, a smile on her face. “You told me you love fashion, right?”

Courtney nodded. She was starting to have a sneaking suspicion that her idea of loving fashion was different from Violet’s.

“Here’s the company directory.” Violet put yet another document folder on the table, this time filled with laminated sheets. “All of these are obviously in the binder, section 2, but I made some laminated versions for your desk. You need to know this backwards and forwards. Focus on senior management first, they’re the most important, but you’ll be expected to name and know the other assistants. Know the support staff too, but that won’t be expected until at least your third week here. This-” Violet pulled another list out of the folder, “is a list of the company’s trusted vendors and consultants. Do not, and I repeat, do not, just use whoever you think will be able to do a good job.”

Violet waited for a beat to make sure Courtney had understood.

“And this is Miss Fame’s approved list - her close friends and trusted associates. Pay attention to it; none of the people here should ever have to wait more than an hour for a callback.”

“Is Adore on it?” Courtney’s eyes lit up, looking down at the list.

“This isn’t about your friend.”

“Right, of course.” Courtney added the new papers to the growing stack of material she was expected to memorize.

“Now...” Violet placed a brand new iPhone in front of her, which Courtney immediately grabbed, gasping when she turned it around and saw that it was the one in rose gold.

“Oh my god!” Courtney loved it. It was sparkly and fun and just what she needed after what felt like hours of white paper and black folders.

“Are you disappointed?” Violet looked genuinely sorry. “I can have it exchanged if you don’t enjoy pink, I simply thought-” Violet extended her hand, ready to take the phone back.

“No!” Courtney moved so Violet couldn’t get it. “No! It’s fine! More than fine! I love it!”

“Great.” Violet pulled a chair up to Courtney’s desk, sitting down and looking at her gravely. “This phone is your most important piece of work equipment. It’s not a toy, and it’s not for your personal use, okay? I don’t want to catch you playing Candy Crush or screwing around on social media with this.”

Courtney nodded, already knowing now that she did not intend to keep that promise at all. This was the best thing that had happened all day; her new phone was going with her everywhere from now on. She glanced around the office to see where the best selfie light would be, already imagining the post with #firstday in the caption.

“You will never, and I mean never, leave your phone unattended during business hours.”

Courtney swallowed, her daydream of selfies completely forgotten. Violet sounded serious. Way serious.

“We do have an office line,” Violet pointed at the phone on Courtney’s desk, which had a corresponding model on Violet’s, “but any calls get redirected to our phones if no one picks up within the first four rings.”

Courtney nodded again, trying to commit everything Violet was saying to memory.

“Fame uses these numbers to get in touch with us, so you’ll have it on, even during nights and weekends in case Fame needs us.”

“Got it.” Courtney smiled. It sounded kind of extreme and she was pretty sure Violet was exaggerating. Who had their work phone on over the weekends?

“Good. Now remember, there will never be any excuse good enough not to take your phone if Fame calls during the weekend, and you will always, and I mean always, have it fully charged. Nothing is more useless than an assistant you can’t get a hold of.”

Courtney nodded, keeping a very serious expression on her face to match Violet’s tone.

“Always bring a notepad with you too. Fame is busy and if we can help it we never bother her with any follow-up questions, we just do what we’re supposed to.”

“Right.” Courtney almost bit her lip, the word starting to sound stupid to her own ears since she had said it so much.

“Last but not least,” Violet placed a keycard in front of Courtney next with her full name and photo on it. “This is your keycard to the building. We have one of the highest security ratings, so never, and I mean never, ever, ever, lose it. We can go through every door on every floor except for senior management’s private offices, though yours will work for Fame’s.”

“We can go into Fame’s office?” Courtney smiled widely, already excited about snooping around in the inner secrets of Galactica’s glamorous CEO.

“Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.”

“Oh…”

“We are assistants, Courtney, and therefore the least important people in this company.”

Courtney wrinkled her brow. She was pretty sure she had just heard Violet say they had access to everything, which seemed pretty damned important if you asked her.

“We’re not here for personal gain or to have fun, but to make Miss Fame’s workday as easy and effortless as humanly possible. If we fuck up, we can get fired, so I hope you have prepared yourself for that.”

Courtney gulped, realizing for the first time how much responsibility was about to be piled on her slim shoulders.

***

Violet glanced at the clock. She had spent about an hour introducing Courtney to everything in their suite, as well as the most important computer systems. It seemed like the blonde was picking it up well enough, but Violet could also sense that she was getting tired and overwhelmed.

It was understandable, but annoying, since Violet knew how rare it was for Fame not to be in the office.

She checked her phone, a text from Juju’s assistant telling Violet that Fame was safely in the chair at the salon, and Violet decided that it was time to throw Courtney a treat.

“Courtney. Get your things, come with me and I’ll give you a tour of the building.”

“Yes!” Courtney smiled brightly, pumping her fist and grabbing her things, relieved to be allowed away from her desk.

***

Courtney hadn’t seen much of Galactica so far, and as she followed behind Violet, she felt like she was being swallowed up by a world of white. Everything at Galactica was kept sparkling clean, the floors in some places so newly polished, Courtney could see her own face.

The only thing breaking up the monotony of the long hallways and immaculate conference rooms were giant pieces of art that hung on the walls, Violet offhandedly naming painters and artists like Courtney was supposed to know who they were.

Violet showed her the office supply closets, the boring interior of it, shelves stuffed with post-its and binder clips almost seeming wrong in a place that was otherwise so slick and fashionable, before opening the door to “Max’s studio,” where some kind of photo shoot was in progress, a few models in chairs getting made up. Courtney watched for a few moments, a secret thrill rippling through her at the thought of someday being in one of those chairs, before Violet shut the door again, pulling her farther down the hall.

“What was that shoot for?!” Courtney asked excitedly. “Do we ever get to-”

“This...” Violet cut Courtney off, completely ignoring her. “Is Raja Amrull’s office. Her assistant’s name is Ivy, and she’ll be the closest thing you have to a coworker here.” Violet pushed a door open, and as Courtney stepped inside, she felt like she was taken to another world.

Raja’s office was filled with plants, the white walls and somewhat sterile look of the rest of the company exchanged with a lush explosion of warm colors. The assistant’s desk was heavy oak, while the cream white couch of Fame’s waiting area was replaced with a deep brown leather one that stood on top of what Courtney could only assume was a real Persian rug.

“As you can see, Raja doesn’t share Fame’s appreciation for Scandinavian design.” Violet smiled, and Courtney was pretty sure that Violet had just made a joke.

She was just about to open her mouth when they were interrupted by a redhead who came through the door from the outside.

“Violet!”

“Hello Ivy.”

Ivy was absolutely stunning. Her copper red hair was collected on top of her head, and she was wearing a beautiful green pantsuit that suited her perfectly.

“Ivy, Courtney, Courtney, Ivy. It’s her first day.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” Ivy held her hand out, a smile on her face as she shook Courtney’s, leaning in with a conspiratorial wink. “I know it can be a bit much when you start here, so let me know if there’s ever anything I can do to help you.”

Courtney just about swooned in gratitude, Ivy’s warm and caring nature so immediately different from anything else she’d experienced all day.

“I’m showing her around,” Violet explained.

“Do you want to check out the styling closets?” Ivy asked, a twinkle in her eye as she confided, “My favorite place in the company.”

“Sure!”

Violet checked the clock on her phone screen, sighing slightly, as Ivy led Courtney through a door in their suite to one of the most amazing sights Courtney had ever seen. When she imagined working at a famous fashion house, this was what she’d fantasized about. Racks and racks of clothes in every color, hundreds of shoes lining the shelves, every accessory you could ever want. Courtney’s mouth opened in delight; she had to resist the impulse to clap her hands and jump up as down like a child.

“This is incredible!”

“I know, right? Our own little slice of paradise,” Ivy said. “You know, sometimes when I’m cleaning things out, there are pieces up for grabs. I could maybe-”

“Thanks Ivy, that’s enough” Violet said. She leaned in to Ivy, muttering under her breath, “Let’s get her through the week before we promise her perks.”

“Violet,” Ivy admonished gently, eyes sparkling, but she went along with the request, closing the door.

“Wait, you mean we get to-” Courtney began.

“Courtney, come. We have a lot more ground to cover,” Violet said, ushering her out the door and down a flight of stairs.

Courtney followed along, feeling a bit more excited after what she’d just seen—the photo shoot and the amazing closet. Maybe this job would be exciting and glamorous after all.

“The 24th floor is basically everything not directly related to fashion and design,” Violet was explaining. “HR, accounting, operations. You should be sure to make friends with Shangela, the Director of Operations. She’d been here forever and knows pretty much everything about the management side of things.”

Violet opened the doors to a large bullpen. It was still white and slick like the floor above, but slightly busier, more office-like. Open cubicles with shining white desks, people bustling around, larger offices lining 3 of the walls, light pouring in from the big windows filling the 4th.

“Here we have marketing, which is led by Alyssa Edwards, whom you’ll get to meet soon enough.” Violet said, walking briskly through the space.

Courtney nodded, almost running a little to keep up with her, silently cursing herself for the sky-high stilettos she had worn for her first day - she would have loved to wear her 3-inch pumps, but after her interview she knew they wouldn’t cut it. But Courtney had no idea there would be this much walking in an assistant job; in her mind it had been a job mostly about sitting at a desk, fielding calls from designers and the press and being pretty.

“This is PR and social media. Pearl Liaison, who oversees that department, is notoriously difficult to get a hold of. She spends very little of her time at the office.”

“Where does she spend her time then?”

“Pearl goes to every fashion related event in New York City. She usually covers everything that Fame or Raja are either too busy to attend, or simply don’t care for.”

“Do we ever get to go to parties for Galactica? Like, as assistants?”

“No.”

“Oh…” Courtney bit her lip, a little disappointed.

“If you desperately need Pearl, tweet her.”

“Tweet her?”

“I’m trying to teach her to accept calls like a normal person.”

“Wait.” It almost looked like Violet was smiling, and Courtney suddenly remembered that she was pretty sure she had seen the woman in question before at the club. “Pearl? Isn’t she the one who-”

“Shangela!” Violet exclaimed, turning from Courtney towards a beautiful black woman in a pink skirt suit. “This is Courtney, Miss Fame’s new assistant.”

Shangela gave Courtney a quick once-over before shaking her hand. “Welcome aboard. You’re in good hands.”

“Thank you.”

“Violet, I know you’re still waiting on her to agree to pushing the Tuesday meeting, but I really think it’s important,” Shangela said. “Jaida and I need time to revise everything—you know what a mess everyone has been, we barely even have rough numbers.”

“I’ll do my best,” Violet said.

“Thanks, love.” Shangela gave her an air kiss and continued on her way.

“Okay, so-” Violet said, approaching the door to the stairwell again.

“What’s that?” Courtney asked, pointing to a room where several employees were gathered around an espresso machine.

“The breakroom. You won’t be needing it,” Violet told her, pointing towards the stairs. “This way.”

They took one more flight down and Courtney could tell from the way Violet’s face got a bit dreamy that there was something truly spectacular underway.

“Twenty-three is where the major creative work takes place. The executives for our makeup line have an office here, and design-”

“Makeup?! Here?!” Courtney squealed.

“Where else?”

Courtney knew, of course, that Galactica had a makeup line—a very high-end, exclusive one that she couldn’t afford herself, but she’d assumed that it was all done in some factory somewhere. The idea of having it in the same office was terribly exciting.

“Here’s where the designers work,” Violet said, pulling open a set of heavy doors, just as her phone buzzed in her hand. “Sorry, I have to- Hold that thought.”

Courtney tried to see the text that Violet received, but the other girl was too fast.

“Fuck! Courtney. Come with me!” Violet let the door to design close heavily, barely offering Courtney a glance inside, turning and racing back up the stairs in a panic.

“Violet, what’s wrong?!” Courtney ran after her as fast as she could, but the other girl was taking the stairs two at a time.

“Fame is on her way, her driver just texted me and she got in a taxi while he was circling the block, now come on.” Violet rattled it off, words falling from her like a waterfall, Violet barely even sounding out of breath.

“Is the tour over?” Courtney asked, panting. Damn, she was fast.

“What do you think?” Violet replied, her voice exasperated, her tone sharp as she rattled off orders. “Go to the coffee shop in the lobby, pick up a fresh latte, the barista will know her order. You’ll need to pick up breakfast from 10 too. Can you handle that?””

“From 10?”

“The tenth floor, are you even listening to-” Violet groaned, and turned on the stairs. “Courtney. I’m only going to ask you this once. Get your shit together, and get it together now.”

“I’m sorry!”

Courtney felt sweaty and disheveled by the time they made it back to their office, Violet throwing open a drawer and pulling out a wad of cash. She stuffed it into Courtney’s dress pocket and then shoved her out the door.

“Lobby, then 10! I’ll text you the order. Run!”

Courtney ran. By the time she’d gotten to the lobby, she had a series of texts from Violet with detailed instructions: exactly what the coffee order was (medium double extra hot skinny vanilla unsweetened almond milk latte, cold foam and 2 shakes of cinnamon), to remember to get a receipt and tip the barista (WRITE THE TIP AMOUNT ON THE RECEIPT), a reminder about Fame’s breakfast (her order’s been called in but you need to double check that it’s correct: egg whites scrambled with mushrooms and spinach, sliced tomatoes instead of toast, side of avocado--make sure it is SEPARATE and not touching the other food or it’ll get warm and she HATES warm avocado, small fruit salad with NO pineapple also in a separate container), and one last reminder, in case Courtney had forgotten the main objective, to HURRY!!!

She was in such a panic going back that when the elevator doors opened and she raced back towards the office, she didn’t even notice the imposing figure in a cream-colored coat strolling through the lobby.

When she did, attempting to stop short so that she wouldn’t crash into the woman, she had too much forward momentum to stop, and then everything happened in slow motion…

She stumbled in her heels, squeezing the paper coffee cup in her hand just enough so that the lid popped open, sending half of the contents sailing through the air, landing directly on said cream-colored coat.

As Courtney stood there in horror, blood rushing to her ears, Fame turned around, noticed the stain, and gave her a look that made her want to disappear more than she ever had in her life.

Heart pounding, Courtney opened her mouth to speak, to apologize, but nothing came out. Instead, the next word either of them uttered was when Fame turned away from her in a fury, and shouted,

“VIOLET!”

#rpdr fanfiction #thedane #veronica #galactica #lesbian au #fashion au #violet chachki #courtney act #ivy winters #shangela laquifa wadley

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honeymoonjin · 5 years

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ten - ot7 x reader fluff

A/N: the final part to our numbers trilogy! Read the first part here - Seven, and the second part here - Eight. 1.9k. (i’m boo boo the fool and wrote this whole thing before realizing that i couldn’t call it ‘nine’ anymore oops) Life changes now that you and your seven boyfriends are parents.

---

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

Beaming down at the sleeping new-born in your arms, you can’t help but agree with Hoseok. After an excruciatingly long labor and a couple of days in hospital, you had returned home and spent the next week and a half in new-parent bliss with the boys.

The past nine months had been full of trials and tribulations. Seeing the boys anywhere outside the dorm became impossible as countless emergency meetings were scheduled on whether BigHit should let the public know you were pregnant. The thought even came up that you should get a paternity test for your baby so that only the ‘real’ father would be publicly known as the dad.

You cringe thinking back to that meeting. Hoseok had gotten all quiet and scared at the thought that he might not be able to be seen with you in public if he wasn’t the father. Namjoon, Jin and Yoongi had gotten heated to the point of yelling about how that would affect the group morale, Jimin and Taehyung left, telling Sejin that they would go on strike from the group if Sejin wanted to split them apart like that. Worst of all, your gentle Koo had started crying, hand clasped over his mouth and nose as his shoulders shook, letting out upset whimpers with every sob.

The pregnancy wasn’t all emotionally strenuous meetings though. There was an abundance of joy that kept you going in seeing your boyfriends prepare to be fathers. Still, to this day, the eight of you had a parenting-specific group-chat called ‘Operation Baby’, which had started out as a way for the members to give their opinions on baby clothes and nursery furniture since they weren’t allowed to be seen shopping for items like that. Now it was mostly used to designate whose turn it was to get up when the cries started at all hours of the morning.

There were some slight disagreements over time; Jimin, who desperately wanted to buy little color-coded booties and binkies, wanted to find out the gender but Namjoon was insistent that gender wasn’t something to designate a color, and that the sex of the baby didn’t matter, that you would love it equally no matter what. Jimin reluctantly settled for buying booties in every pastel shade there was (he teared up opening the massive cardboard box that arrived in your mail one Wednesday morning). One night, while he was a bit too drunk, Jin suggested that he should be the name for the father on the birth certificate since he was the oldest. Hoseok rebutted that it should be him since he had been dating you the longest, and a scuffle had broken out on your patio. In the end, Jin had won the battle, but with the caveat that he would get no extra rights over the others. That decision was one of the hardest you had to make.

Luckily for you and the boys, it wasn’t touring season. They had just finished the final leg of their world tour when you were reaching the end of your second trimester, and then they were allowed to have a one-month complete break before returning to work. Still, Sejin and Bang PD had decided it was wise to have them working on a new album for a while, at least over the later months of the pregnancy and after giving birth. They had been gradually increasing public appearances on a smaller scale to keep the fans entertained; a new season of Run! was airing, their mobile game had been a hit as expected, and they were taking the time to feature as guests on several Korean variety shows and be interviewed over Skype for some international news outlets. Put simply, everything had gone much more smoothly than you think anyone was expecting.

“Ah, I think Jimin wants to come in,” Hobi says softly, pulling you out of your musings. You glance up to see a shadowed silhouette wiggling around behind the clouded-glass of Namjoon’s studio. The man himself, Namjoon, was fast asleep on the small couch and you didn’t think he’d be waking up anytime soon. He lay there with his legs sticking off the end, his mouth dangling open and a string of drool gathering on the fabric under his cheek. Namjoon looked totally exhausted.

You nod and Hobi and he gets up quickly to let Jimin in, shushing him the moment the door opens. Behind him, Jungkook enters silently, waving to the infant in your arms cheerily and immediately running up to start wiggling her little chubby legs and tickling her tummy as she lets out little coos. With a hushed voice, Jimin questions, “how is our little Hana doing?”

You beam down at the little girl, letting her latch onto your pinky with her tiny sausage fingers, complete with the smallest fingernails in the world. “She’s happy. We’re trying to get her used to the sounds of the equipment running.” There was always a slight buzz in the air because of how much producing equipment was in here and the other studios, and you had read once that if you got a puppy used to certain noises then it wouldn’t bother them when they grew up. Surely babies were the same, right?

Jimin sighs out dreamily, coming forward to rub your back and give the baby’s forehead a kiss. “Can I hold her?” Instinctively, Jungkook steps back to give you two room.

“Of course,” you whisper back, deftly navigating the delicate body out of your arms and into his. “Where’s Dul?”

So, there was another thing. Not that long after you started regularly going to the clinic for checkups, your nurse found two heartbeats. The boys were over the moon – all the more babies to love; you couldn’t stop thinking about how hard it would be when they eventually had to return to work. But for now, you tried not to think about that and just enjoy your sweet little twins. Taehyung, who had twins in his family’s history, thought this meant he was the biological father. But then again, the family resemblance had become a bit of an ongoing inside joke. Your little daughter had Yoongi’s gummy smile, Namjoon’s dimples, and your nose. Her brother, older by sixteen minutes, had Jungkook’s glittering eyes, Jimin’s pillowy lips, and had already started twitching his nose like Jin. Nobody could deny that the little infants looked nothing like Hobi, and while you’d all joke around about it, you could tell it hurt him.

Jimin laughs breathily, bouncing the baby until she lets out a sweet yawn, bunching her fist up by her mouth, and promptly goes to sleep in her daddy’s arms. “We really need to come up with names already. One and Two aren’t going to be cute much longer.”

You fix him with a glare. “Excuse me! I don’t see you posting any better suggestions on the Operation Baby chat.”

He tuts you with a grin. “That’s because the last few options have been Thing One and Thing Two, Bob and Linda, and pussydestroyer69 and pussydestroyer420.”

Having been quiet for a few minutes, Jungkook reflexively blurts, “pussydestroyer420 and 69 are gender neutral, okay? I thought Namjoon would appreciate it.” He turns and gives the sleeping leader a baleful look. “I can never win.”

You reach up and pat his cheeks teasingly, standing up and stretching out your sore arm joints. “Anyway, whereabouts is my little son?”

Jungkook leans into your touch, wrinkling his nose in protest to your pats. “The kitchen. Jin and Tae are telling him how to make spaghetti Bolognese.”

You laugh softly, leaving the three boys sitting and the one sleeping in Namjoon’s studio, heading down the hallway to the kitchen. As you approach, you can hear an angelic low melody hummed by Taehyung, and the animated yet matter-of-fact tone of Jin describing how to properly dice onion.

You smother a grin, rounding the corner and taking a seat at the breakfast bar. Jin had apparently heard somewhere that it was important to speak a lot around growing children to increase their exposure to language, and had taken it upon himself to narrate his entire life in the past week to the little oblivious babies. He gestured passionately with the knife and his elbows as Tae kept a safe distance, bouncing the baby softly as it lay against his chest, head tucked into Taehyung’s neck. The humming had clearly sent your son to sleep; truth be told, the slow version of Scenery had your eyelids feeling heavy too.

Once he notices your presence, Jin sighs heavily. “Finally, you’re here! Your son isn’t listening to me!”

You smile, eyes crinkling. “In his defense, that knife would be fair too heavy for him to hold.”

“Weakling,” Jin mutters.

The humming stops. “You look tired,” Taehyung notes, tipping his head at you. “You and Yoongi were on night shift last night, right?”

You make a noise of affirmation and nod once. “Hana just wouldn’t settle. I think she’s going to be the trouble one of the two.”

“That’s true. This guy seems pretty easygoing.” You let yourself get lost in the sight of Taehyung snuggling your baby boy, Tae’s hand bigger than the infant’s entire back, but then Taehyung calls your name again. “Y/n. Go to bed, baby. We’ve got this; haven’t we, Jin-hyung?”

Jin scrapes the diced onions into the pan and smiles up at you, cheeks puffing. “Dinner’s still a couple of hours away. Get some rest, jagiya.”

As much as you want to savor every moment with your family, you’re certainly relieved to finally have a good reason to lie down. You give them both a soft kiss on the lips, and your baby several smooches on his chubby cheeks and soft head, before padding down the hallway to the only other person who’s still in bed.

“Yoongi,” you whisper into the dark bedroom, curtains drawn. The lump under the blankets doesn’t move. “Are you awake?”

“Physically,” comes the gruff reply. You grin and shuck your clothes quickly, leaving just your underwear on before slipping under the covers. “Hey, baby. How are the terrible two?”

“Taehyung and Jungkook are fine,” you quip.

“Ha ha. C’mere, I wanna snuggle.” You huff a laugh at the demanding way he asks for affection, but nevertheless shuffle into his grasp, letting him wrap his arms around you, planting soft kisses on your bare shoulder.

You hum in contentment at the sensation. “Love you, Yoonie.”

“I love you more.”

You tilt your head up and scrunch your nose playfully. “I love you most.”

His eyes are narrowed at the edges as he smiles. “Fine then, you win. Now let me spoon my beautiful wife and the mother of my children.”

Your eyes fly open. “What.”

“Uh.” Yoongi stammers. “Just, uh, ignore that wife comment. Shit.” You chuckle a little and lie back against the pillows, feeling a lazy finger trace circles on your skin. Minutes later, when you’re almost asleep, you hear him murmur into the silent room, “just pretend to be surprised when Hoseok pulls out the ring, okay?”

#bangtanarmynet #btswriterscollective #btswritingcafe #bts fluff #ot7 oneshot #bts x reader #ot7 fic #jin #yoongi #hoseok #namjoon #jimin #taehyung #jungkook

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tysonrunningfox · 5 years

Text

Ripped: Part 16

Ao3

“People who do this don’t look at pictures of it like that.”

The plain-faced supposition of Hiccup’s innocence in Eretson’s office after Dave’s murder flashed back into Hiccup’s mind the second that Grisly saw Tuffnut. Hiccup had looked at those crime scene photos with a shivering, pale-faced feeling of dread, something more instinctive and paralyzing than fear. With a slow spreading numbness in the center of his brain, somewhere between clinical detachment and an abstract refusal to accept the reality of the gore.

But when Grisly saw Tuffnut and smiled like he was imagining a duplication of the horrible scene in the alley, Hiccup wondered instantly if that’s what Eretson meant. What if people who murder and mutilate their victims look at the pictures like Grisly stared down Tuffnut? More than predatory. Not a hungry lion but a bored housecat holding a trapped mouse by the end of its tail.

Astrid’s right, it’s a basket of leaps, but leaps based on a gut feeling that gets deeper the longer that Hiccup tries to shake it off.

He knows that theories are supposed to be based on facts, and he tries, really, but usually his theories are based on flippant comments that connect two things with a random click. A joke that amounts to pulling two random puzzle pieces out of a thousand-piece box and finding a mysterious miracle fit. The first click is enough to make him curious and that’s when he shifts to more systemic tactics, looking for corners and edges and working inward with obvious patterns until a picture starts to form.

Johann’s ads got huge, so he must have been making money, and in comparing the dates of his biggest ads to the dates of the murders, a blurry but cohesive picture emerged. It’s eternally unfinished though, a puzzle in an elementary school library, some pieces pocketed and some chewed up and hidden away or just plain lost.

All the pieces of this puzzle are still here though, it’s only three quarters unwrapped, and Hiccup happened to slip two miracle pieces out of the side of the box. Grisly looks at people like he knows what’s under their skin, but wants to visually confirm. And as Eretson glared over Hiccup’s shoulder out that bulletproof window, the corners started to take shape.

Grisly wedges himself where he doesn’t belong. Grisly works for the condos that do the same, muddling the character of Downtown Berk into something new and clean that just doesn’t fit. Grisly hired Heather, who enhances unfinished puzzles from cryptid pictures of a real solution to high definition snapshots, like a thesaurus fueled scientist on CSI.

He doesn’t want it to take shape, necessarily, but at the same time he can’t stop dwelling on it, finding grains of fact in the space of it. Pieces craving one or two matches attach to the bigger, truth shaped possibility. And with Snotlout stuck on traffic duty, Hiccup can’t go research at the station without looking more suspicious. But then again, a few sepia toned pixels from a half-ruined older version of similar events might provide insight to the shape emerging from cool alleyway fog.

That’s half the reason he goes to the archives two days after finding Gruffnut’s body. He never spent that much time on the Elizabeth Smith murder, probably because no one questions a beginning. Well, no one but Astrid, with her theory that her apartment isn’t involved at all, rewriting the root of the narration in an attempt to distance herself from it.

He wishes that tactic was working better for her.

The other half of his reason for visiting ticks up to an easy seventy five percent when he’s halfway down the stairs and hears Astrid’s voice, hovering just past the cusp of irritated above the sound of rustling papers.

“…being ridiculous, Fish,” she snaps, setting something heavy down on what Hiccup assumes is her desk.

“I’m no Grimborn-ologist—”

“Not what it sounds like.”

“It’s simple pattern recognition,” Fishlegs’s arms are crossed when Hiccup comes around the corner, and Astrid is elbow deep in a dusty box of paper scraps, a brown smear across her scowling eyebrow. “All I’m saying is that there’s reason to believe there will be a murder at your apartment in the next week and a half, and I have a guest room—”

“You’re looking for somewhere to stay?” Hiccup blurts and they both turn to look at him. Astrid tries to wipe the streak of dirt off of her forehead and leaves a larger smudge behind and Fishlegs sighs heavily through flaring nostrils, moustache barely budging in the breeze.

“She’s not looking, she has one.”

“I’m not looking because I don’t need one,” Astrid corrects him, going back to sorting through her box, “what are you doing here?” The question starts out harsh and ends flat, but she shoots him a genuinely curious look and he shrugs.

“I was hoping to do some research,” he says cautiously, edging a step closer to her desk to try and see what she’s looking at. “And maybe see you, if that’s ok?”

“I don’t know, have you done your taxes?” Fishlegs rolls his eyes.

“I didn’t realize I needed to pay taxes to talk to Astrid,” Hiccup tries to drag a laugh out of the room, but it doesn’t work, the air as stale and tense as the centuries old contentions in the papers around them. “If so, is there a special form? Or a student loan balance exemption—”

“What are you looking for?” Astrid abruptly pulls her hands out of the box, wiping dusty handprints on her jeans and gesturing back at the stacks.

“I was going to umm,” he thinks briefly about lying, given the conversation he walked in on, but thinks better of it with her paralyzing blue eyes staring straight through him. “I was going to brush up on that first Elizabeth Smith article, actually.”

“Sure,” she waves him along after her and he follows down an unfamiliar, narrow catalog of books to the left and through a door into a dingy back room full of boxes.

“It smells like my dead great aunt’s attic in here,” he comments, running his finger over a dusty letter box that threatens to crumble under the gentle touch.

“Maybe she donated something,” Astrid stacks two dirty boxes on top of each other and wipes down a table with a dust cloth. “This is the new arrivals room, but Fishlegs said if I shuffled things around, I could make it the Grimborn room. I already moved some of the Grimborn things in here after I caught people trying to sneak out with them in their coats.” She picks up a carefully folded but newly wrinkled newspaper and sets it down on the clean section of table, “Elizabeth Smith paper, have at it.”

Then, with a casually familiar but all too brief pat on his shoulder, she walks back towards the door.

“Wait,” he turns around and she stops, looking at him expectantly, “I was kidding about using you as a tax loophole, I actually did come to see you.”

“I know, but I’m working,” her lips twitch into a small but sincere smile as she shrugs and leaves the room and he can’t help but remember her kissing him goodbye after their date. He wanted to walk her home, but it felt like bad luck, just more time to peek into alleys and have another moment ruined. He got the feeling she silently agreed and they both ended up calling rides, much to Snotlout’s instant disappointment.

And Hiccup’s slightly delayed disappointment.

It was the first time their dare-he-say romantic interaction didn’t get smothered by a new murder discovery or accusation in the next twenty-four hours. No, this time there have been no tours full of prying questions or alleys full of gore or faces full of suspicion, just empty hours to think about Astrid.

One time he stopped responding to a girl after three unremarkable but overall decent dates after she mentioned being the fifth wheel on a ski trip with two of her coupled up friends. It was June. Just the thought of tying himself to a potential weekend months in the future with a girl he barely knew made him back off, even though she’d tagged along on a tour and handled meeting Snotlout with a surprising amount of grace.

On a first date with Astrid, he offered to be her date to a family wedding at some point far in the future.

He tried to pawn it off on the fact that Eretson spent their entire interview looking at him like a perfectly healthy dog abandoned at a high kill shelter for being ugly, but being a more-than-potential murder suspect isn’t affecting his decision making as much as it probably should. The fact of the matter is when Astrid started yelling theories down at him from her window, she did what he’d always banked on being impossible. She made learning about the past make him think about the future. She gave him something to look forward to, to depend on. And then she had to take over his tour with an impossible picture and kiss him surrounded by history and anchor him again and again when things kept turning for the worst.

For the first time in five years, he’s desperate for forward motion. And more than that forward motion towards something. Someone. Even scarier, with someone.

“Finding anything?” Astrid’s voice breaks his concentration and he blinks twice at the paper he hasn’t even started to read.

“What?” He shakes his head, watching her set down another heavy looking box and start digging through it.

“I asked if you were finding anything,” she smiles at him, a fond minimal smile he definitely hasn’t done anything to deserve, “sorry to break your deep concentration.”

“No, you’re good, I wasn’t concentrating on the right thing anyway.” He laughs and it feels more like a lie when she nods bemused and turns to leave, “or I mean I was, actually, concentrating on something more important than reading this old thing again.” He smacks his knuckles on the edge of the table when he gestures at the paper and she raises an eyebrow. “Can I help? It looks like you’re sorting through things, I could help with that.”

“I thought you were here to research.”

“I’ve got nothing but time,” he shrugs, “unless you don’t trust me not to pocket any of this delightfully dusty paper.”

“I trust you,” she says it like it’s a phrase in a foreign language she’s just learning, “I just found all these boxes under that table where we were displaying some of the Enquirer correspondence, I have no idea what’s in them.”

“Have you informed Area Fifty-One that you’re on the cusp of a big discovery?” He asks seriously as she opens the box and she elbows him a little harder than necessary on the way to set the old lid down. “Ok, I get it, don’t diss the Enquirer, you don’t have to break a rib.”

“You know how I feel about the Enquirer,” she teases, voice dipping, and Hiccup’s heart jumps in his throat remembering his too big hat on her head and how fiercely beautiful she is when she’s trying to convince him that she’s right.

“Right, it’s the clandestine shrine to the preservation of the everyman’s most rationally thought out theories about their place in the universe,” he talks too fast, like always, but Astrid keeps up, narrowing her eyes and shoving a heavy manila folder at his chest. He promptly nearly drops it, barely saving a scrap of paper from drifting out the bottom. “This could be a priceless piece of history—”

“I’m working,” she turns back to the box and squints to decipher a handwritten date at the top of a page of notes. “Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Flirting.” The red on her cheeks is more obvious when she holds another clipping up to the light and pointedly avoids his eyeline.

“What? I’m not flirting,” he relishes in even the tiniest second that he has her unbalanced. And it’s true, he didn’t think he was flirting, he was talking about the Berk Enquirer, that’s not flirting.

Maybe Astrid thinks that’s flirting.

“I’m working,” she repeats and Hiccup turns around to lean back against the table, studying her like she’s studying an old dusty letter.

“I can see that.” He cocks his head at her and she spares him a glare, the heat rising further in her cheeks when he doesn’t flinch.

She has a face made for smiling but she holds it like she resents even the implication of that decision being made for her. Maybe it’s because she knows he’s watching her, but the line of her jaw is tense, working quietly as she knits her brows together and sounds out an unfamiliar word to herself. She’s all contrast, upright spine in a comfortable sweatshirt, hair in front of her ears escaping a neat ponytail, fundamentally kind eyes bristling at his persistent attention.

“I thought you were going to help,” she breaks, setting the letter down gently with frustrated hands.

“Am I qualified to sort through the Enquirer?” He touches a folded paper in the box, using false reverence as an excuse to step closer. “Or can you point me to some sort of bullshit subtext interpretation certification?” He takes a notebook out of the box and starts skimming through it, carefully avoiding disturbing a century old folded corner on a page. “Some kind of supply manifesto? Doesn’t look like a big ship, maybe a private merchant?”

“On second thought, I don’t need your help,” she takes the notebook from him, dusty fingers grazing over his hand. Her eyes flick to his lips, almost a glare, and it would be funnier if it didn’t make the dingy room feel so much warmer.

“Sorry,” he says even though he isn’t, backing up a step and giving her what he hopes is an at least half-convincing apologetic smile, “I didn’t believe that you actually considered making fun of the Enquirer to be flirting. I had to check.”

“That’s not—what is your thing with visiting me at work anyway?” She huffs, sorting things into nonsense piles without reading them.

“You visit me at my work every night.”

“That’s because you bring your work to my apartment,” she says slowly like she’s disappointed she has to explain something so obvious to him.

“Here I was feeling flattered,” he shakes his head, letting her get back to reading before continuing, “I do have a reason to visit you though. I’m worried that too much time with Fishlegs might bring you to his side of the historic copier blood feud we have going on.”

She snorts, “so you came to annoy so much it shoves me in that direction, ok.”

“I was just thinking that it absolutely doesn’t bode well for me if you’re staying with him while,” he pauses, trying to think of a half-decent way to say this, “you know, your apartment is…while you’re waiting to see if—”

“If there’s a fourth murder,” she stands up straight and dares him to argue with her, “I’m not scared, or even if I am, I’m not going to run just because Fishlegs thinks I can’t take care of myself.”

“Who said anything about running?” Hiccup gestures at himself, “all I’m saying is that I know what it’s like to be constantly inconvenienced by where these murders keep happening. It makes sense to umm, lean on someone who gets that unique complication, I think. So if you need some place to stay because Eretson’s creeping you out by glowering at the chalk outline on your living room floor all day, I get that.” He waits for her to respond but she’s just staring at him, apparently confused, all of that righteous anger fading into something tired that makes him want to hug her. “I don’t have a fancy guest room with all the…I don’t know, little soaps and stuff that Fishlegs probably has but—” He yelps when she punches his arm, “what—”

“I said stop flirting with me while I’m working,” she tucks her hair behind her ear, “and inviting me to stay with you when you don’t have an extra bed is definitely flirting, you don’t need to double check that one.”

“Oh, I didn’t—I can see how you—not that I don’t want, I mean, I’ve finally had a little time away from murder to clear my head and you’re so—”

“Then what did you mean?” She asks the right question, bouncing him back to the root of the issue even as he’s still trying to swallow his foot.

“I don’t like the idea of you being involved in whatever’s going on more than you already are.” He reaches for her hand and she lets him, her stubborn expression falling slightly, “I hate feeling like I’ve involved you in this, I hate that you have to be my alibi, I—if anything else is going to happen, I want both of us, but you especially, to be far away from it.”

“I don’t think you have much say in how involved you are,” she says quietly and he hates that his heart stutters when he realizes that she’s worried about him. It shouldn’t make him happy, especially when he’s saying how much he hates that she’s involved, but it does anyway.

“That’s fair, given how this has gone so far, but digging a foxhole and hunkering down in your particular apartment right now doesn’t seem like a way to disentangle either of us.” He squeezes her hand and while she doesn’t back down, she seems to remember that it’s a thing she could be capable of, with much conscious effort and determination. “Plus, I was going to offer you Snotlout’s bed, I thought you’d really appreciate all of the Patriots posters and the signed football in a glass case—”

“No,” she laughs, shaking her head, “absolutely not.”

“Framed tickets from some big game—”

“Over my dead body.”

00000

“Gruff’s is open?” Snotlout sits bolt upright on the couch, jerking Hiccup out of his book. Viggo Grimborn Solved: The Admiral Haddock Connection is even better after Astrid returned it with comments, mostly half coherent swearing about how stupid it is on little blue sticky notes, because she wouldn’t write in any book, even one she thinks is this stupid.

“I can think of one really big reason that’s not possible,” Hiccup hunkers down further in his father’s chair, carefully holding a sticky note aside to read the words underneath it.

“Just got a text from Johnson, they just broke up a fight there, it’s totally open.”

“I don’t see how Gruff’s could be open, dude.” He’s halfway through a sentence when Snotlout snatches the book and grabs his wrist, yanking him unwilling and stumbling to his feet. “Give that back—”

“Astrid’s…not even dirty notes,” he wrinkles his nose in disgust, “will be here when we get back.”

“My back’s killing me, I don’t want to walk all the way down to Gruff’s just to find it predictably closed, as usually happens when bar owners are murdered.”

“Then get an Uber,” Snotlout is undeterred, tossing Hiccup’s shoes at him, “unless you spent all the money you made with those big-ass tours on some lame book or something.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to start tours again, this money might have to last a while.” Hiccup is glad that the original floor plan of 324 Harbor Road he ordered yesterday hasn’t arrived yet, even though it only looks expensive because it’s old paper. In reality, finding something that specific and having it shipped overnight would usually cost way more than the couple hundred dollars he spent on it.

“You could get a normal job—”

“Fine, I’ll come look at the locked front door of Gruff’s with you,” he starts putting on his shoes, “just leave the concept of a job out of it.”

So Hiccup hasn’t been having the easiest time of it lately and he spent some time trying to find the shift between his original holding pattern and the quick descending chaos of the last couple months. His mind immediately jumps to Astrid and her toothbrush and the midnight tour that entangled them in something bigger and more horrible than he could have imagined, but if he thinks a little deeper, his trouble started way before her.

Hiccup’s life took a turn for the dismal when Snotlout started having frequent opportunities to say ‘I told you so’.

Gruff’s is definitely open. If anything, it has more than its usual crowd and Hiccup spots a few people in Ripped Tavern shirts around a booth when they first step inside. Of course, Gruffnut’s murder would have caused a real increase in a certain kind of business, but as seedy as he was, Hiccup can’t see how he would have managed to take advantage of it.

When they finally make it through the crowd, there’s a split second where Hiccup thinks that Gruffnut has miraculously done exactly that, but then the doppelganger behind the bar tries to twirl a bottle like Tom Cruise and when it shatters on the floor, he breaks into an unmistakably authentic grin. In years of coming here, Hiccup never saw Gruffnut smile.

“If this is your bar, that’s your gin you just threw on the floor, idiot,” Ruffnut is leaning on the bar and pleading with who Hiccup obviously must accept is her brother, even though it’s still really creepy.

“I’ll get the hang of it,” Tuffnut assures, picking up another bottle and starting to throw it.

“If you’re just going to smash that, can I have it?” Snotlout tries, sliding onto a stool beside Ruffnut and holding out his hand.

“No,” Ruffnut chastises him, “at least pay for it.”

“Here you go,” Tuffnut sets it on the counter with a couple of shot glasses, “it’s on the house. I’ve always wanted to say that. I don’t know who calls a bar a house though, that’s never made sense to me, you can’t live in a bar.”

“That means that the business is eating the cost of the drink,” Ruff groans, but she doesn’t think twice about accepting a shot from Snotlout.

“Good, down with the business.” Tuffnut pours himself a shot out of the bottle and clinks it with Snotlout’s, “and the man and the establishment and—”

“Tuff, you are the business. That’s your money now.” Ruffnut points to an official looking piece of paper that was recently on the bad end of an attempted bartending trick involving blue curacao. “You have to sell this place.”

“Sell?” Hiccup sits down, leaning on the bar to relieve the aggravated ache in his lower back. Just leaning doesn’t do much and he accepts a shot from Snotlout, who seems to be doing more actual bartending than the person behind the bar. “When did you buy it?”

“Like five years ago, apparently,” Tuffnut shrugs, wiping the filthy bar with a rag and refilling a glass someone brings him. “Do I look cool or what?”

“Gruffnut put it in Tuff’s name,” Ruffnut tosses a shot glass at him and it misses, shattering on the floor, “look over here, Tuff, I mean it. Look at what that asshole did to your credit score.”

“Uh, you already showed me that, my credit score is perfect. Beautiful bastard had one more gift to give me.” He pauses to wipe a fake tear, absently glugging vodka into someone’s highball glass as they come up to the bar to order again.

“Um, can I get a well whisky, neat?” The would-be paying customer asks and Tuffnut rolls his eyes.

“Well, whisky is pretty neat, but this vodka is fancy.”

“How much?” They look dubiously at the mostly full glass of alcohol and Tuffnut shrugs.

“On the house.”

Hiccup reaches in front of Snotlout and grabs the piece of paper, a bank statement of some kind, and raises his eyebrow, “your credit score is 420?”

“Nice,” Snotlout holds his hand out for a high five and Tuffnut narrows his eyes.

“Aren’t you a cop?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Tuffnut claps his hand to Snotlout’s over the bar and pours another sloppy round that Hiccup decides to sip rather than knock back all at once, “I didn’t know you guys were in on the code. Hip to the lingo, as it were.”

“Did you come with Astrid?” Ruffnut asks, looking genuinely concerned when Tuffnut makes sloppy change for a tray of beers and struggles to slam the register door shut.

“No,” Hiccup instantly wishes he’d changed his shirt or looked in a mirror before leaving. In his defense, he thought he was going to a bar that was closed due to murder, but that doesn’t matter now. “Is she coming?”

“She said she was on her way.”

Hiccup isn’t really used to panic. His first reaction to a problem is usually more along the lines of breaking it down or figuring it out. And he knows he doesn’t have proof, he doesn’t have anything but a gut feeling and the memory of feeling chilled to the bone when Grisly looked at Astrid at the archives, but thinking of her walking alone still makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“How long ago?” He tries to sound buoyantly curious but Ruffnut sees through it.

“A little early to be keeping tabs, isn’t it? You two have been on like one date.”

“He was reading her dorky little notes in his book all afternoon,” Snotlout snorts, “he’s probably wondering if he has time to go get it so they can discuss.” The last word is in Snotlout’s favorite, completely inaccurate nasal tone and Hiccup rolls his eyes.

“They’re over here!” Tuffnut shouts in the vague direction of the door from the other end of the bar, all while pouring beer and spilling most of it on the floor when he uses a full glass to point towards Hiccup.

“So it’s true,” Astrid fights her way through the crowd a second later, catching herself on Hiccup’s shoulder when someone jostles her, “this is exactly what I would have guessed Tuffnut playing bartender would look like.”

“I’m winning bartender, thanks,” he gestures at the shelves behind him, “or I will be when I figure out how to reach the bottles on the top shelf.”

“Keep giving those out for free,” Snotlout nods and Tuffnut points at him.

“Good call, why should I use storage I can’t even reach?” He turns around and starts staring at the liquor shelves, “does not spark joy…”

“Does he know that’s all his now?” Astrid leans in close enough to ask Hiccup in particular, her breath cool against his ear in the over-crowded bar.

“There have been attempts to explain it to him, I don’t think any have sunk in.” He laughs and she leans a little harder on his shoulder, “so Gruff had the bar in Tuffnut’s name?”

“Apparently,” she shifts, lips nearly against his ear when she speaks again, “a letter showed up at the twins apartment earlier with no return address and a copy of the deed inside.”

“No return address?” Hiccup frowns and turns to face her, momentarily preoccupied by the mystery enough to fend off being overwhelmed by her proximity and the tickle of her hair against his cheek, “did you recognize the handwriting?”

“It wasn’t Comic Sans,” her smile is tight and not quite comforting, teasing and oddly protective at the same time. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

“Not in so many words.” He scrambles when Astrid half falls into his lap, half catching her and flinching when she pushes herself back upright with a hand on his head.

“Snotlout, oh my god,” she snaps and Hiccup can hear Snotlout rolling his eyes.

“I’m just trying to hand you a shot, get the rest of the way onto Hiccup’s lap if you’re so clumsy.”

“I’m not clumsy,” she fixes her shirt but keeps her elbow on Hiccup’s shoulder, “and it’s Wednesday, you know that, right?”

“We’re celebrating the fact that this bar doesn’t suck anymore without Gruffnut being a dick to cops,” he shoves a shot into her hand and half of it sloshes onto Hiccup’s leg, thankfully cooling the idea of Astrid on his lap. He’s doubly thankful for the sudden chill when she shifts behind him to let someone through, her fingernails almost habitually raking across the nape of his neck.

She pauses and he wonders if she caught his shiver, but then an unmistakably familiar voice attached to partially familiar biceps next to them announces itself.

“What do you mean Gruffnut Thorston didn’t get along with the police?” Eretson leans on the bar, almost unrecognizable in a black tee-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Almost, except for the absolutely familiar, business-like scowl he’s directing at Snotlout.

“Oh come on,” Snotlout throws his head back but still manages to slap Tuffnut’s hand when he sets a free high ball glass of something from the top shelf in front of Eretson, “don’t serve him—“

“This is Gruffnut Thorston’s bar, isn’t it?” Eretson shakes his head and does a double-take when he catches sight of Astrid out of the corner of his eye. “And you’re here.” He looks at Hiccup and then pans past Tuffnut to Ruffnut on Snotlout’s other side, “you’re all here.”

“I am,” Ruffnut nods, “but your sleeves aren’t, and I have to ask, are those guns standard issue?”

“Come on,” Snotlout groans, spinning on his seat to face Eretson and nearly jabbing him in the chest with an intentional but thankfully hesitant finger. “What are you doing here?”

“Some friends invited me,” Eretson sounds almost bashful, like he’s not supposed to tell suspects that he has friends, and maybe he’s not. That sounds like the kind of protocol Snotlout wouldn’t mention breaking.

“Now you’re bragging about having friends—“ Snotlout starts but Eretson stops him with a clap on the shoulder firm enough to at least attempt to anchor him back to his sensibility, that is if he had any.

“Wait, how do you all know each other?”

The pause is long enough that the initial awkward silence fades back into the indistinguishable din of the crowded bar and Hiccup clears his throat.

“So, again, I gave a Viggo Grimborn tour to Astrid’s apartment and Snotlout is my cousin and at some point he went by Astrid’s place and met Ruffnut and—“

“Shut up,” Snotlout hisses, kicking Hiccup a little too hard in the shin. His left shin. The metallic ringing echoes in Hiccup’s ears and he waits for Eretson to hear it. For the air in the room to shatter.

“My office. Eight o’clock tomorrow. Be on time or I’ll send officers to collect you.” Eretson slaps the bar and turns around, disappearing back into the crowd.

#ripped #httyd fic #hiccstrid #modern au #serial killer tour guide au #loving how fishlegs and hiccup can't get along #loving bartender tuffnut #loving exasperated coplout #and the fact that Eretson can't relax for five goddamned minutes

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indigoire · 5 years

Text

It Read-through Chapters One and Two, “After the Flood” and “After the Festival”

Starting off strong with child death! Yaaaay!

Warning for gore, death, homophobia, hate crimes, sewer clowns, and juvenile humor.

Explanation of what I’m doing here.

The first chapter is pretty much exactly like the first part of the 2017 movie, with a few very key differences.

For one, Bill is a few years younger here than he is in the first movie. In the movie the kids are around thirteen or so and they make note of this a couple times. In this Bill is only ten, therefore he’s eleven for the rest of the child half of the novel. Georgie is still only six.

For another, when Pennywise attacks Georgie he doesn’t drag Georgie into the sewers, and the neighbors respond to his screams almost immediately. It’s outright stated that forty-five seconds after Georgie’s first scream a man named Dave Gardener finds Georgie’s body, already dead, arm torn from its socket. People run outside when they hear the scream, they witness Georgie by the storm drain, they know of the attack. In the movie he’s “gone missing”, largely presumed dead, but here Bill and his family know from the outset that Georgie is dead and died violently at that. There is a mention by King that the town tends to get through terrible events and then pretend they never happened in order to get over them, and I think in the film they made this more overt by having the few neighbors around ignore what happens to Georgie.

I feel like for the sake of the liveblog I should go over what happens in the book for the unaware, but it almost feels superfluous for this first chapter. Everyone knows Georgie dies at the hands of Pennywise, at the claws of It. Even the book lets it slip very early on that Georgie is slated for death, only a few paragraphs in.

Let’s rewind and properly explain. The book begins with George Denbrough running after a newspaper boat in the rain. George, or Georgie as he is affectionately called, is the younger brother of Bill Denbrough, one of our main characters, if not the leading man. Bill is sick with the flu, so he can’t go and play with Georgie in the rain, but he builds the kid a paper boat all the same, and seals it with paraffin wax to keep it watertight. A lot of the first chapter is devoted to two things: showing the bond Bill and his brother share, and showing that Georgie is already somewhat aware of It’s presence.

Bill sends Georgie down to the cellar to get the wax, and Georgie goes, but with extreme trepidation. He pictures monsters waiting to snatch him up in the cellar, and King here goes in depth into the smell of the cellar, a smell of “dirt and wet and long-gone vegetables”, the stink of rot, which is the smell of the monster, “the smell of It, crouched and lurking and ready to spring. A creature which would eat anything but which was especially hungry for boymeat.”

Yep. “Boymeat”. Right up there with “manflesh” in terms of descriptive vocabulary.

But basically, on some level, Georgie knows there’s something lurking in the dark for him, and he knows it’s a childish fear but he can’t quite shake his instinct.

Sidenote: there’s a reference to the Turtle fairly early on! Georgie finds a flat can of Turtle wax, and stares at the logo for a good thirty seconds. Which, by the way, probably looked like this:

Anyways, Georgie finds the paraffin wax and runs up the stairs, fearing that something lurking in the dark will grab him by his shirttail and yank him down, but he escapes and goes to give the wax to Bill.

Just a personal note here, when I initially tried to read this book some ten years ago I rolled my eyes at the conversation between the two brothers, which I remember distinctly being about buttholes, who was the biggest butthole, etc. I mean, they’re kids, it’s juvenile humor, what ya gonna do. The version I have downloaded here has the kids calling each other “a-holes”. So now I have to wonder if my version got censored somehow. Anyways. Nothing to inspire confidence in the rest of the novel like a conversation about who’s the biggest asshole between kids.

The brothers do have an oddly tender moment, which they both note is out of character for them, with Georgie kissing Bill’s cheek goodbye and Bill telling him to be careful. It seems like they know instinctively that they’re never going to see each other again.

Georgie runs out to play with his boat, and he chases it happily through the street until it unfortunately goes down a storm drain. Georgie tries to see if he can get it, but only sees yellow eyes staring back, until said eyes solidify as a clown. Georgie describes the clown as a cross between Bozo the Clown and Clarabell from Howdy Doody (both, for the record, are the most terrifying clowns I’ve ever seen, dear lord), but King notes that if Georgie “had been inhabiting a later year” he would have thought of Ronald McDonald first.

Just real quick gonna throw these nightmares up on screen for y’all:

Thanks, I hate it.

Here Pennywise introduces himself as Mr Bob Gray, also known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, so right off the bat there’s some differences. Georgie asks himself how he could have seen yellow eyes when Pennywise’s eyes are a “bright, dancing blue” like his mother’s or Bill’s eyes.

Like the 2017 movie, Pennywise says the storm blew him and the circus into the sewer, and asks Georgie if he can smell the circus. Georgie can indeed, but he does notice the cellar smell lurking underneath, the smell of wet and rot.

But he ignores it.

Instead the clown offers him a balloon and Georgie asks “do they float?”

And the second he reaches his hand out to grab a balloon, Pennywise latches on, Georgie screams, and knows no more.

“They float,” it growled, “they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too—”

It��s noted that Georgie watches the clown’s face change, and what he sees destroys his sanity “in one clawing stroke”.

So really it’s a good thing that he dies a few moments later after It wrenches his arm off.

Again, Georgie’s body is found within the minute by a neighbor, and other neighbors run over to see what’s going on.

The chapter ends with a description of the paper boat floating through the sewers of Derry, as Bill’s family is delivered the news and his mother is sedated for shock in the ER, and “perhaps it reached the sea, and sails there forever, like a magic boat in a fairytale”.

Sweet sentiment. I’m getting all choked up over here. 🙄

So I figured I’d read on to the next chapter, seeing as the first chapter is so short and so well known.

God, I wished I had left it at one chapter.

The next chapter is told through a series of interviews with the witness and suspects to the case of the murder of Adrian Mellon.

It’s a fucking shitshow of a chapter.

It is DEEPLY homophobic. Every word of it.

This is how we’re introduced to Don Hagarty, partner to Adrian and key witness to his murder: “This man—if you want to call him a man—was wearing lipstick and satin pants so tight you could almost read the wrinkles in his cock.”

COME ON, STEPHEN.

Now. I know very very well that this book was published in 1986 and America was not kind to queer people in the eighties. I know that King was capturing that homophobia, not necessarily homophobic himself, and that his viewpoints have probably changed.

That said, reading this chapter was like a punch in the stomach every few sentences. The cops who interrogate the men responsible for the hate crime against Adrian make it clear that they are both disgusted by the attackers and deeply homophobic themselves. They all say at some point “I don’t like fairies, I don’t care for queers, they’re hardly men” in varying forms of intensity.

I honestly think I blacked this chapter out when I was seventeen, I don’t remember it being like this. Or maybe I didn’t care so much a decade ago, closeted and repressed, and that’s a scary realization. That your own internalized homophobia might have been so pervasive that you don’t see it in others. That it sounds reasonable when a supposedly sympathetic character says he hopes the murdering homophobes get locked up, prison raped, and get AIDS.

Sigh.

To sum up: Adrian Mellon is attacked while out with his boyfriend, Don. A group of young men, having been teased by Adrian at the Canal Days festival (though Adrian here makes a blowjob joke, not a shitty haircut joke--he’s too good for this book really), claim that they attacked out of “civic pride” because Adrian was wearing a “I ❤️ Derry” hat. One of the attackers tells Don to get out of there, and he screams for help. The attackers push Adrian over the side of the Kissing Bridge. The attacker who saves Don, Chris, sees Pennywise, and so does Don a little bit later, and they tell the cops that interrogate them. The cops dismiss the clown, at first ostensibly because the witnesses are hysterical, but then later in the chapter it’s revealed that the police don’t want the attacker’s lawyers jumping on the clown thing to prove their clients’ innocence. So Pennywise, even having been seen by two witnesses, is left off the record entirely.

King also reveals the deeply, deeply homophobic sentiment in the town, the violent anti-gay graffiti all over public property, at the Kissing Bridge or in the public park, the people in the town outright ignoring the attack as it’s happening, the fact that the one gay bar in town is home to some very fearful people who just want to keep their heads down.

So yes, you can extrapolate that the homophobic stuff expressed in the book is to show that Derry is a hateful place where fear festers and so forth...

But King also goes out of his way to emasculate Don Hagarty and Adrian Mellon every chance he gets, effusing about the dramatic makeup they wear, the nail polish, the bright outfits, the campy attitudes. Adrian is described as five-foot-five and slight. Don is described as shrill and dramatic (his BOYFRIEND was just BRUTALLY MURDERED). Meanwhile the homophobes are described as looking like Bruce Springsteen. Like.

I really feel for Don, I do, despite the book’s best attempts to make him a walking caricature, a huge gay joke. He says Derry’s like “a dead strumpet with maggots squirming out of her cooze”. He calls Derry a sewer. He’s right on both counts.

Well. On that cheerful note, time to wrap this read-through up! Tune in next time for our introduction to Stan (and probably the last time we’ll see grown-up Stan :D).

Bye for now.

#IT #It (book)#It (novel)#Stephen King's IT #Stephen King #IT Readthrough #I'm uhh not looking forward to the next chapter tbh #I saw the title and I know what's coming and it's not pretty

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hannahmcne · 5 years

Text

The Two O’Clock Meeting - pt 1 of Twoshot

It had been a long day. He'd woken up early and gone in to take the test he'd missed yesterday, so he could attend his father's meeting. Then, he'd taken the test he would be missing this afternoon, for Swords and Shields. It'd been harder than he'd anticipated – he'd probably have to take it again – and have missed breakfast. He'd fallen asleep in Chemistry, brought the wrong book to Math, and had almost fainted during weights because he hadn't had anything to eat or drink all day long. English hadn't been so bad, except that Lonnie hadn't completely finished her part of their group project and Chad's part was done in handwriting that looked suspiciously like Ruby's. And then Annie, Anna's daughter, who had somehow wound up with Elsa's magic despite not being descended from Elsa, had sneezed beside him and froze his hand to the table. The Swords and Shields meet had turned out terrible, both of his parents were gone with court stuff, Audrey had to cancel her plans to come to hang out with him for something her parents needed her for, and so he'd eaten dinner at nine, all alone, and was now heading to bed, finally.

Ben put his shoes on the grate beside the door and hung up his jacket. He put all his clothes in the laundry chute, knowing they'd be back the next day, and found his pajamas by his bed with a sigh. He plugged his phone in in the other room – he wasn't allowed to have it at night – and the screen sensed the time, sensed the power source, and locked him out. It would unlock at five thirty the next morning when he'd have to get up to go to the school for an early morning tourney practice. Hopefully, he'd have time to finish homework during his first period.

Ben flipped off the lights and collapsed onto his bed face-down. The pillows let out a whoosh of air as his face sank deeper into them. He could already feel his eyes closing as the sweet embrace of sleep came up to capture him.

He turned onto his side, blinked twice, and noticed a light coming out from under the doorway. Ben groaned pitifully, swung his feet back over the side of the bed, and walked to the door. He twisted the knob. It whirred a little as he opened it – just like his dad's office door, and he opened it into the other room.

Light blinded him, and all of the sleepiness vanished from his mind. He stared in shock at the other side of the door. It had changed in the few seconds it's taken him to walk back to the door. The ceilings were higher, with wood paneling and brick overlays. A large dark brown desk sat in front of a window that was looking out on the palace grounds, and there were large boxes sitting around the room, filled to the brim with items. It looked… exactly like his dad's office, only unpacked and a little updated.

Ben turned back around and examined his room, sheathed in darkness. To his surprise, his frame was still visible, lying on top of the sheets with his head tilted to the side at an angle he knew he'd regret when he got up the next day. He turned back to the light, shut the door, and watched in shock as it vanished. The real door was to his right, up against the wall and on the north side. He moved to put his hands into his pockets by force of habit and discovered he was wearing tan pants with a watch on his wrist. A blue shirt was tucked into a belt with a simple Auradon crest buckle completing the look. His hair was combed. He looked like he was accompanying his parents somewhere.

The boxes around the room were labeled with a sturdy, yet curly scrawl. Probably a woman's handwriting. One read: "Tax Records Year 20-48. Take to Records." Ben examined the box tactfully. Auradon measured years based on when the country had been formed. It was the year 18. He'd be taking the throne in two years, when he was sixteen, during year twenty. Twenty, as in the number inscribed on the box. Ben swallowed.

"Are you my two o'clock meeting?" A voice came from the doorway. Ben jumped and spun around. He hadn't heard if the door had opened or not, but he could suddenly see out into the hallway. In the doorway stood a tall, handsome man who looked like he was in his forties, though he had evidently aged well. He still had his hair, though laugh wrinkles had pressed themselves around his mouth and eyes. He held a perfect posture, an upright stance, and a kind smile stretched across a familiar face.

"Two o'clock?" Ben stuttered, watching in awe as the man stepped further into the room, examining him with kind eyes.

"Ah, yes. That'd be you." The man nodded, shutting the door and then walking past him. "Sorry for the mess; we're almost all cleaned out. You know, you're my very last official meeting as King?" He smiled at Ben, and then pulled a chair from the side of the room and placed it in front of the desk. He walked around the desk, sat down in his own chair, a black leather chair on wheels, and gestured to the seat. "Do you know who I am?" The man asked.

Ben took the back of the chair in his hands and sat down with a swallow. "You-you're me, aren't you?" He asked.

The older man's smile grew brighter. "I am." He nodded, folding his hands together on top of his desk. "It doesn't quite seem like it, huh? And you're here to appraise me, correct?"

"I – I'm here to – what?" Ben stammered. He was too busy examining his older version's face. How he had even eyebrows and clear skin and thick hair. Wow, he'd never have thought he'd one day look so good. He touched the acne on his forehead and wrinkled his nose in jealousy. His older version laughed.

"Yes, I know. It'll go away soon though. I swear it's not just something mum says to make you feel better." He laughed, leaning forward. "But come on, now, Ben. Think for just a second. What's another word for Appraisal?"

"An interview," Ben replied immediately. It was one of the things his dad had drilled into his head. "It's an interview where everyone tries to find out if you've done anything wrong." He mirrored his counterpart, folding his hands together in his lap and twiddling his fingers nonchalantly.

"That's right." King Ben nodded. His smile remained bright and proud. "Now, Ben," He began, "Can you guess how old I am now?"

Ben swallowed and glanced back to the box he'd been looking at earlier. "Well, you – I – was born in year four, so… aren't you forty-four or forty-three?"

"Forty-four." King Ben nodded in assurance. "I'm thirty years older than you right now."

A chill ran down Ben's spine as he looked around at everything and took a long, slow breath. "Wow." He whispered. "That's a long time."

"It flies by." King Ben agreed. "It still does for me. I go to bed every night and I wonder where the hours went. They're flying faster now that I'm leaving office."

"You said I'm your last meeting?" Ben asked, attention snapping back to his counterpart. "Then… you must be passing the throne on?"

"On Monday." King Ben affirmed. "This is my last meeting, and then my family will help me take everything out, and tomorrow is Sunday, so nothing will happen and we'll spend the day together. Then on Monday, a new ruler will take the throne."

"But if you're passing the throne on, then that means-" Ben's mouth ran a bit dry. "Do you – do I – have children?"

"I have children; you will have children." King Ben confirmed with a brighter, proud smile. "That's how a monarchy works, Ben."

"Of course." Ben stuttered with eyes large as he dug his fingernails into the edge of the chair. "And they'll be sixteen, so they were born-"

"I was twenty-eight." King Ben cut him off. "My wife and I… she wanted to put it off. We were married for almost seven years before our first baby was born."

"Seven years." Ben echoed, sliding down into his chair a little.

"I was twenty-one when I married her." King Ben smiled. "Do you want to know her name?"

"Can I?" Ben asked. "I mean, am I allowed to? What if I wake up and then I know-"

"Then you wake up and you know who she is." King Ben shrugged. "And you keep your mouth shut and you hang back to give her some time and space and you tell her when you're about, oh," He glanced to the side coyly as if he were pretending to brainstorm a date. "When you're marrying her in three days and she asks how you're sure she's the right person."

Ben's mouth fell open. "You already did this?" He asked.

King Ben nodded. "It's been a very long time since I sat in that chair." He hummed. "Kind of strange to see you here; not going to lie." He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. "Go on, then, see if you can guess who she is."

"Audrey," Ben asked immediately. His hands were tightening into fists as his heart rate increased.

King Ben shook his head and closed his eyes as if he were reminiscing about something. "Audrey and you break up when you go after the girl you'll make your queen. She gets married to Chad, and that unites all three of those kingdoms, and they had a son together who became the King of their states a few years ago."

Ben's mouth dropped open. "What about Lonnie?" He asked. "Lonnie and I have gone out. Is it Lonnie?"

King Ben straightened up very carefully and pursed his lips a little. "It's not Lonnie." He shook his head. "Lonnie married someone from… a different land. His name was Jay. They moved up to Northern Wei and had twin girls together. They don't take a throne up there until they reach twenty, though, and they're only twelve."

Ben swallowed. "Is it Jane?" He asked. He could see himself going for Jane. Jane was quiet and kind, if a little vain and reserved. However, he was shocked to see a deep frown cross his counterpart's face.

"Jane marries a boy named Carlos." He told Ben. "Who also comes from a different land. The same one as Jay, actually. And we're friends, but she said something that hurt my wife very badly in her youth, and so I've never even held a one-on-one conversation with her since we left Auradon Prep." He leaned forward and looked at young Ben. "Do you want me to tell you now?" He asked.

Ben pulled his chair closer to the desk and nodded eagerly. "Yes." He whispered.

A ghostly smile crossed King Ben's face. He threaded his fingers together. "Her name is Mal," He confided, whispering the name like it was a secret or a treasure.

Ben wrinkled his nose. "Mal." He repeated, testing the name on his tongue. It seemed to stick. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what she might be like, but nothing came to mind. "I don't know her." He told King Ben, who shook his head.

"She comes from that different land I was telling you about." King Ben hummed.

"Where?" Ben asked, putting his hands on the desk in anticipation.

King Ben stood up and went to look to the south, out the window behind his desk. Ben stood up and looked over the desk. In the distance, he could see a hazy green barrier flicking into and out of his gaze. His mouth went dry. "The Isle of the Lost?" He asked.

King Ben turned back around. "Tell me, Ben, what do you think 'Mal' is short for?" He sat down on a corner of his desk and hooked his hands around his knees as he waited for an answer.

Ben's mind raced with fifty thoughts. Mal, as a prefix, meant Bad. Evil. Rotten. He skimmed his list of memorized villains and suddenly stopped on the large, overbearing, obvious one. "Maleficent?" He asked.

"Is that a problem?" King Ben asked, arching an eyebrow.

"No," Ben decided, though he sat down in surprise. "Not if she's the one. It doesn't matter who her mom is. And, well, the kingdom is obviously fine, so…" He shrugged.

"She's the one." King Ben affirmed. "It's true love." He sat back down in his chair and smiled. "We've been married almost twenty-five years, and every day is better than the last."

"And now you won't be King anymore?" Ben asked, sitting down as well. "It'll be your… son?"

"I won't be." King Ben agreed. "And our daughter, actually. Her name is Colette." He got up and walked to a box that read: "Knick-knacks". From this, he withdrew a framed photograph and held it out to Ben. Ben took it with shaking hands. It was a photo of a girl looking over her shoulder a little bit. Long, long purple hair was swept over her shoulder as she smiled at the camera with perfect, white, straight teeth. Her eyes were brown, just like his. He felt all the breath leave his lungs.

"Colette." He repeated, tracing a finger down the side of her face. "She's… beautiful."

"Just wait until I show you a picture of Mal." King Ben chuckled, shuffling a little in his box. He pulled out a second photo and handed it to Ben. "Those are all the kids," He told him, before hefting a larger picture out of the box and setting it beside the desk. Ben examined the second photo. Four children in various degrees of attentiveness were captured behind the glass. The oldest, Colette, was leaning into a couch with her sister, who also had dark, lush, purple hair, leaning into her side. Two boys were wrestling a pillow between them while they faked that they were looking at the photographer. One had the same purple hair and was older, and the other was the only child with tan, sandy hair. Ben examined them all. They looked like they all had his skin color, except for one of the girls. And two of them had brown eyes, and two had green. That meant he was heterozygous dominant for brown, he realized with a smirk. All those boring science classes must have pounded something into him after all.

"Why did we let them all dye their hair?" He asked King Ben, who had gone back to sitting on a corner of his desk as he watched young Ben evaluate his future family.

"We didn't." King Ben responded with a laugh. "It grows in like that. They all have naturally purple hair. My wife was devastated."

"But they look so good!" Ben frowned. "They're the most beautiful kids in all of Auradon!"

"You should see Evie's." King Ben smiled. "They're pretty cute too. I prefer my own, of course, but anyone with Evie's genes is bound to be gorgeous." He rubbed his hands together and stood up to wander the room. "Mal was upset because it makes them easy to spot. Also, she says she likes my hair, but whatever. I honestly think that as the generations go by, the purple hair will just come to be a mark of royalty. Our youngest son Damien is the only person to escape the purple hair gene, and now he's devastated because he doesn't match."

Ben snorted and put a finger on the blonde-haired boy in the photo. "Damien." He repeated.

"And Jordan is our older son." King Ben filled him in. "He's just a little younger than you are now. And the last girl is Annalee. She's a real cuddler. You don't appreciate that now, but when you get off after a meeting and she wants to cuddle beside you, you'll understand." He folded his arms in pride as he watched Ben take it all in.

"Mal's hair must be purple then, and she must have green eyes," Ben mumbled. His cheeks grew a little warm. Could it be possible he'd made these people with someone?

"On the money." King Ben replied.

Ben rubbed the glass to get some imaginary dust off of it. "How old are they all now? Except for Colette. I already know she's sixteen."

"Jordan is thirteen." King Ben began. "And then the twins are only six. That means I still have a few years." He brushed his hair out of his face. "Mal and I sort of want to try for a fifth kid now that we're losing Colette, but we don't know. She might be too old now."

Ben glanced down to the frame that King Ben had set beside his feet and gasped in shock. A beautiful hand-painted portrait of what he assumed was a goddess with dark, curly, perfectly purple hair was leaned against the desk. He put the photo down and picked it up. The woman in the painting was, without a doubt, gorgeous. Her lashes were long, her lips held an even pink color, and her eyes were the same bright, vibrant green he'd seen on his future children. "Mal," He whispered, the name rolling off his tongue and sticking immediately to the person whose portrait he held in his hands.

"Isn't she lovely?" King Ben asked in pride. "I had that commissioned for our tenth anniversary. She'd had Colette three years before and was actually pregnant with Jordan then." He leaned down a little to see the portrait. "It's a shame I couldn't have her paint it herself, but it still turned out beautiful despite that."

"She paints?" Ben asked. He could scarcely rip his eyes away from the lady on the canvas to look up at his counterpart. King Ben nodded with a smile and pulled a booklet out of the box he'd been foraging through. He took the painting out of Ben's hands and replaced it with the booklet, though Ben was sad to see it go. He cracked the booklet open and discovered a watercolor drawing of a baby sitting in the sunlight, surrounded by toys. Beside it was a detailed pencil sketch of a little girl with braided hair. The inscription 'Colette' was underneath it.

Ben flipped through the booklet slowly, examining everything inside of it. He noticed that while the children's full names were almost always used, Colette tended to be shortened to 'Co-co'. "Can I see more?" He asked, closing the book carefully and then leaned back over the portrait of the girl who'd done them, Mal.

King Ben laughed and pulled his phone out of his pocket. It was the same type Ben used, but obviously years ahead of him. King Ben found what he wanted on the screen and carefully pressed the screen into his palm. Ben stared at the screen. On it was himself, older, with his arm around the girl, Mal, and they were taking their photo in front of a crowd at a gala or some other function. The queen's crown was on her head and the King's crown on his, though his was at an angle. He swiped left and found a picture of Jordan, the oldest boy, with whipped cream on his cheek as he smiled at the camera. Another swipe left revealed a picture of Mal, though her figure was misshapen around her middle and she was rolling her eyes exasperatedly at the camera while keeping a little hand to her torso. Ben's mouth went dry. He studied the image, every pixel, until King Ben elbowed him with another laugh. "You did that." He reminded Ben. The fourteen-year-old turned beet red and hunched his shoulders before he quickly moved on, prompting more laughs from his older counterpart.

"I still have a question." Ben sighed, handing King Ben's phone back to him after a while. "Well, a couple, really. But the big one is… how did I meet Mal?"

"You mean how did you navigate around the barrier?" King Ben laughed, taking a seat back in his chair. Ben picked up the portrait again and then set the photo of the kids in front of it so he could look back and forth between the two and nodded to King Ben's words. "It wasn't easy." The forty-four-year-old sighed. "Your parents weren't the happiest at the beginning of that adventure, though they did get used to it."

"Oh, Mom and Dad!" Ben blurted out, interrupting his older self. "Are they still alive? What happens to them?"

"They're still alive." King Ben laughed. "And well, too. They' be around for many more years. But, as I was saying, they're not going to be one-hundred percent on-board with your plan. You're going to have to hold your ground a little. Eventually, they'll come back around and say you were right."

"But how?" Ben asked. "What am I supposed to hold my ground on?"

King Ben stared at him with a blank expression. Ben felt the gears in his head begin to turn. "You said that Jay and Carlos came from a different land. And you also mentioned Evie. She must be the daughter of the Evil Queen. They must all come from the Isle of the Lost. You – I – let children from the Isle of the Lost come over."

"You pick the first ones, and then your 'core four' pick everyone else." King Ben affirmed. "And you meet Mal when she comes over. You'll know her face the moment she appears. You get to step forward and shake her hand. She won't be too hot on you at first but give it time. She likes sarcastic jokes and strawberries. Within a month of meeting, you'll be dating."

"What's she like?" Ben asked, tracing the tip of his finger over Mal's purple locks in the portrait on his lap.

"Amazing." King Ben exhaled. "She'll become the most important person in your life. She's strong, she's kind. She likes tight hugs and soft kisses, and she goes crazy when you wear purple. She's talented and artistic, and funny, and hard-working. She's going to be devoted to you as a girlfriend, as a fiancée, and as a wife. And while you'll both have your doubts; we turn out to be pretty awesome parents together too."

"She sounds incredible." Ben exhaled, sounding exactly like his older self. "God, where can I sign up?" He let his eyes flit off the portrait for a few seconds as a deep red color tinged his cheeks. "What's it like to kiss her?" He asked softly. His voice chose that moment to crack, and he winced, hoping that the future Ben wouldn't laugh.

King Ben's eyes sparkled. "Why are you so embarrassed?" He laughed. "You've thought about kissing girls before – I know you have."

Ben shrugged as his blush deepened. "I just didn't know if it was something you wanted me to ask." He mumbled.

King Ben nodded, leaning further back into his cheek. "It's like the heavens opened wide." He shook his head. "I swear, every kiss, I could die." Then, King Ben glanced at the younger version of himself with a smile. "But you do realize I have four children, right? I've done far more than just kiss Mal."

Ben's face turned a deeper shade of red. He set the pictures aside as King Ben laughed at his burning cheeks. "When you do start kissing her, just know she'll care a little bit more about length then about quality. About the time you have Colette is when she'll start to care about how well you can kiss her, not just how long."

"Got it." Ben nodded.

"And I know you won't value this tip now but hear me out." King Ben laughed and winked a little at him. "When you want her to go crazy on you, wear something purple. Just the sight of her color on you is usually enough to set her off."

Ben made a disgruntled, uncomfortable sound and covered his face with his hands as red seared his cheeks again. King Ben couldn't hold back his loud laughter as Ben tried to compose himself. He pulled one knee up onto his leg and examined the young man. "You'll be a fine king." He told him. "You'll do just swell. And with Mal by your side, really, there's no way for you to mess up. You'll be a fine king, a wonderful father, and, according to Mal, a fantastic husband."

"Do I pass science?" Ben blurted out and then realized that was probably a stupid question to ask a man who hadn't attended his school or taken his classes in thirty years.

King Ben pulled a card out of his pocket. "I knew you were going to ask, so I went and looked it up." He told Ben and cleared his throat. "You squeak past with a B-. Just make sure and retake that genetics and Mendelian test, and you'll be fine. It should be a lot easier now that you have some real-life applications." He spread his arms across the pictures on his desk. Ben nodded in agreement. There wasn't a doubt in his head that this was for real.

"I can't believe these are my kids." Ben gasped a little. "I mean, I can see my eyes and my hair on Damien, and Colette has my skin – This is incredible! I wish this was my life right now."

"It will be, one day." King Ben smiled. "Do you have any questions for me?"

"So many." Ben gasped. "But… I guess most of them will be answered soon enough." He hesitated. "Did Dad ever figure out what to do to help Arendelle and Weselton sort things out?"

"I have no clue." King Ben shook his head. "Probably not since they still fight today."

Ben wrinkled his nose. That meant he'd have to deal with it. "Do I get to meet Maleficent?" He asked. King Ben shook his head with a quiet smile, and Ben sighed. "Do you have any advice on how to be a good husband?" He asked.

King Ben's eyebrows shot up. "That's a very mature question." He hummed and shrugged. "I forgot to mention this, but Mal is magical. And every once in a while she likes to experiment with her powers. Don't get down on her. Let her have that little freedom and everything will be fine."

"Okay." Ben nodded with a dry mouth. "What do you think I should be the most excited for?"

King Ben straightened up and fixed the cuffs on his sleeves. "That's another mature question." He hummed. "I don't know. I haven't finished living yet. I can give you a small list." At his words, Ben straightened up and took a deep breath. King Ben began to count on his fingers. "You meet and marry an amazing girl who you remain madly in love with years later, You change the lives of hundreds of kids by introducing them to the ways of good, you're renowned for being a doting father while also keeping up on every single one of your responsibilities, and you end up making some pretty amazing kids with your fabulously sexy wife, so I'd say you've got loads to look forward to." King Ben put his fingertips together and smiled at Ben. "Especially on that last point." He told him.

"I can't wait," Ben replied honestly, staring down at the pictures across the desk.

The door across the room opened and Ben whipped around to see who'd walked in. A little girl with a full head of purple hair snuck around the corner and then dashed towards the desk. King Ben held out his hands and scooped her up as she reached him. He tickled her sides and made funny growling sounds like he was pretending to eat her while she shrieked and pulled on his shirt a little. She had pale skin, very different from Ben's, but dark brown eyes.

"Daddy it's you!" Annalee pointed across the desk at Ben.

King Ben set her up on his knee and nodded. "It is." He affirmed. "Annalee, can you say hi to Ben?" Annalee waved shyly at him from her Dad's arms and then curled her face into his chest, balling her little fists up in his shirt. A cuddler, just like King Ben had said. He examined everything about her, from how short she was, to how her nails were painted a peeling pink, to her he could even see a bit of his mom's face in hers. And she'd called King Ben 'Daddy'. That joyful sound rang in his ears over and over. That'd be him one day. It'd be him.

King Ben looked up towards the door and his smile, which had remained permanently etched onto his face since Ben had first seen him enter the office grew wider and softer all at the same time. His eyes sparkled as he focused on a point just over Ben's shoulder and he leaned up a little to greet the person behind them all. Ben's heart thudded in his chest as he turned around slowly.

There was a swish of purple hair and the smell of acrylic paint. A lady with the same dark purple hair that, true to King Ben's words, was like a royal trademark, stepped into the room. She was wearing black paint-splattered jeans and a purple and green shirt, and a purple and green jacket with metallic studs was slung over her shoulder. She set a hand on Ben's shoulder as she walked by and leaned down to kiss his cheek. Her touch was soft, and her skin was like silk. Ben felt every hair rise up on end as he watched her pass with wide eyes. Queen Mal crossed behind the desk and leaned down to share a kiss – a proper one – with her husband. Ben felt a little like he was watching his parents kiss as he watched Mal withdraw with a smile and a glance down to their little girl, even though it was only himself many years older.

"Watch out, she'll go to sleep." Queen Mal warned King Ben with a laugh. "She just trashed my art studio, so I brought her down here to put her energy to use moving you out of Colette's office." She set her hand on her husband's shoulder. Her nails were short and unpainted if you didn't count the dozens of colors stretching up her skin.

"You being naughty?" King Ben asked Annalee, picking a bit of brown paint off of her cheek. Annalee shook her head and burrowed deeper into his shirt. Ben's heart was thumping in his chest. King Ben glanced over at his younger counterpart with a smile like he knew exactly how he was feeling. The king looked up at his wife and gestured to the young child snuggling deeper into his arms. "We made her." He reminded her. "I think we did a pretty good job."

"I think so too." Queen Mal hummed and smiled. She leaned into King Ben's side, balancing on the chair, and looked across the desk to Ben. Ben straightened up a little, pulling on his sleeves so they weren't bunching up around his armpits and hoping she didn't notice the acne spread across his forehead like trash on a beach. "How'd I get so lucky?" She mumbled, and Ben was taken aback because really, he wasn't that nice to look at yet. If his skin was real estate for zits then his chin and hairline were beach-front property, and he was lanky with big feet and he was pretty sure the cut he'd gotten in tourney over his eyebrow hadn't completely healed yet, but there wasn't much he could do.

There was a sound like a hiss behind them and they all turned to watch a door – the same door Ben had first entered through – appear in the wall. King Ben carefully pulled Annalee up onto his shoulder and stood up, and it was around this time Ben realized that Queen Mal was extremely short. "It's time for you to go." King Ben told his young protégé. "You'll be waking up soon."

"I still have so much I want to hear about." Ben mourned. "Like about Colette and Jordan and Damien? I want to hear all about them."

"You will," Mal assured him. "And believe me, your story is like nothing you've imagined so far. You're going to be blown away."

Ben stood up and King Ben wandered around his desk. "Do you want her before you go?" He asked, gesturing to Annalee. "She's light."

Ben immediately stretched forth his hands and King Ben set the small girl against his chest. She curled her fists into his shirt and leaned her head into his collar, and Ben felt his heart rate speed up. This girl didn't even exist yet to him, and already she meant the entire world. He hugged her to him, afraid to squeeze her too tightly, and then a light came from under the door he was supposed to enter. "Time to go." King Ben announced and help his arms out for his daughter. Ben returned her to him grudgingly and glanced at the door.

"Come, now." Queen Mal put a hand on his shoulder and led him towards the door. "And Ben, one thing from me before you go back if you don't mind." She smiled, and Ben straightened up a little and met her eyes. "When you first see me, I don't exactly… look like me. I'm dark and I'm angsty and I've never known love my entire life. So don't be scared to talk to me. I started to fall for you because you kept coming back around and showing you cared."

"I will – or, I won't be scared, that is," Ben assured her, and then fumbled with his hands. Was he supposed to shake her hand? Or could they hug since she was technically married to him thirty years into the future? Queen Mal solved the issue for him. She took hold of his shirt and leaned up to kiss his cheek. He felt his entire face erupt into red.

"So long." Ben waved to the King of Auradon, who raised a hand to send him off.

Queen Mal skimmed his hairline and hummed. "I'm so glad we're not teenagers anymore." She told King Ben with a chuckle. "Well, goodbye Ben. I'll see you in, what two years?"

"He doesn't know when he's meeting you yet." King Ben filled her in. She nodded with a sound of understanding, and Ben wanted to ask when he'd meet his Mal when the door opened and a white wind filled the room, making the light unbelievably bright and drowning out his vision. When fuzzy pictures started to remanifest themselves to him, he realized he was back in his room with his alarm clock blaring on the other side of the bed. He was on top of the covers, in his pajamas, and with a very bad crick in his neck. He sat up and felt his body. Nothing had changed or felt different. Had it all been a dream?

Then he looked up and noticed a card sitting on his headboard. On the front was the king's insignia. It looked exactly like the cards his dad would send out to people to let them know they had meetings coming up. He flipped it over, holding his breath, and read the back.

Crown Prince Benjamin is hereby formally invited to the King's Offices on the Evening of August the twenty-seventh at the time of two o'clock for a Life Appraisal. Please dress appropriately."

And really, you couldn't get more blatantly specific than that.

#future #time travel #ben #ben florian #mal #mal bertha #descendants #disney #disney descendants #descendants 2 #descendants 3 #fanfic

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