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pbandjesse · 10 months

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I am back at camp. And my decision could be more positive I think it works really well today. Very tired right now but I had a really nice. One of the negativity that I had been feeling really transferred over to today. And I start with my boundaries I am setting have been respected. And I'm just feeling pretty good. Also just really excited to close my eyes.

Last night after I finished my post James would finish their podcast and would come give me the biggest hug and it was so nice. We would talk for a really long time and eventually they went to go to pizza and we just sent the night together and it was really really good. I told him about my plan to be more positive and they thought that was a good idea.

When I woke up in the morning James was right there getting ready to leave. They gave me a big hug and then they went to work. I was going to roll over and sleep longer but then I remembered I purposefully parked on the side of the street that we had to move the car by 8:00 a.m. for shoot cleaning or get $100 ticket so that I would force myself to wake up. And, under duress, I got up and got dressed and tried to shake off how tired I was.

It was very hard. I was not feeling 100%. But I really liked my outfit and my hair was doing good things and I was determined to be positive. I'm trying to stop frowning so much. I feel like I've been just frowning a lot and I catch myself doing it and I don't like it. So I am making a big effort to just have a neutral face if I'm not smiling.

I went and got breakfast and that was fine. And I saved my sandwich for lunch which I always think is a pretty good idea. And it was a nice drive. I listen to some music and I beat the drop off line once I got to camp.

I got up here around 8:30 and tidied up a little and put some stuff away. And kind of made a plan for what I was going to do. I had to do some prep work and I wasn't sure if Tatiana was coming. But I wanted to make sure I had stuff done just in case. And I figured when she came she could help me sleep and reset some of the cardboard and things would be productive.

And she would come and she was super helpful. I showed her the other loom and we worked on that for a while. I showed her the tools that you used to move the yarn around and I don't know if she's interested in using it but it was fun to have as an example.

And it would be a really nice day. Our first group was running late. Not shocked. So I was standing outside and I felt like I was very overcaffeinated this morning because I was flitting from one thing to the next. And I told Tatiana I felt like my brain was going a million miles a minute.

I went outside to see if anybody was coming and one of the girl groups was walking past and one of them just said oh my God you're so pretty. And I was like oh my God the first person to tell me that this summer. And the counselor and a couple of the kids go but we all know you're pretty so we don't have to tell you. And I'm like but no one has told me! And it just made me feel so good and when that little girl saw me later she said hello gorgeous. And I was like oh my God thank you so much.

So that brighten my day a lot. And I would have a really nice day. While my first group was late, they did a great job, Jorge was there and he loves arts and crafts so it means all the kids really excited to do arts and crafts. He is color blind so it was very cute when he came in to ask what color the yarn was in his hand. He was looking for red and he was playing with brown. And then he thought one was white it was actually pink. But we eventually figured it out and he was able to make the red white and black flag he wanted to make for the sports team he likes. I forget which one it was. It was soccer. You know, European Football.

I don't go to lunch. Instead I eat my egg sandwich in my outside hammock and read my book. While I was out there I heard voices in the art building and I knew Tati was in here. But it wasn't the group it was Joe and Alexi's dad and two electricians. Because Alexi's dad, Lou, apparently bought a new kiln or was given a kiln? And he wants to put it in the art building so we can do ceramics again. Which would be so cool but Alexi does not think will happen because this building is not insulated for that. It would get so hot in here. And that is correct. That is my concern. I don't know how big the kiln is he's talking about. But it would have to hold a lot of pieces I was assuming. It would be very cool to do though. Maybe sometime in the future.

In the meantime though I talked to Joe about flooding in the building and he has some ideas. He's not too worried about the structural stuff I think but at least we'll get some of the moisture out of here hopefully.

Good afternoon groups were great. The day camp group right after lunch was 15 minutes early again. But they were very chill about it and they took the kids down to the field. And they did a very good job with their little stick of looms that we made. Honestly I don't think the fabric looms work great. I don't know why because the Pinterest moms all said it was such a fun project. But I'm only having day camp one and two do it because I don't think they can handle the other one. The older kids can barely handle it. It's been very mixed. Most, like 99%, of the kids really like this project. It's just a couple that really don't get it or rushed through it because they want to be done cuz they're not interested. Fine I just don't like when they're disrespectful about it. Like I don't accept that everybody will love my projects all the time even if I would love for that to be the case. I just want them have a good time so as long as they tried we can move on. Like one boy absolutely hate leaving. And did not want to do it at all but he tried for a few minutes and then he asked if he can make a drum so I got him a jar and a balloon and we made him a little drum and it was really fun.

Good afternoon actually went really fast. I have my little break and that group right after was stuck it and they came too early and I made them all leave because I said I had 10 more minutes on my break and I wanted them to go away. And Manny was like yep you don't have to explain that to me! And then they ended up being late which I thought was funny. But they were very sweet boys and at first none of them wanted to do anything but then I convinced them all to make bracelets and stuff and a lot of them made things for their girlfriends which I thought was cute. They asked what would be the perfect color to make the bracelets they were going to do and I said it should be your eye color and her eye color and they were like oh my God that's such a good idea! I was like they're going to love it. So I helped a few of them do that. And a couple of them made beaded bracelets. Including one boy who's from the Ukraine and has a very fun accent. He did not love that I called him the Ukrainian child a few times. But I think more because he does not want to be referred to as a child. But they're all children to me.

One of my favorite things right now has been explaining to the kids that my age difference between me and the counselors is more than the ancient between them and the council hurts. And I think that's really funny. It's also fun to tell the kids that James was a few of the counselors counselor back in the day. Like that's my husband. And we're old!

I was happy when the day was over just because I was getting tired. I said goodbye to Tati. Jeff was up here doing service hours and was sorting beads for me. He also wrote his little paper on Bob Ross which had a lot of typos but was solid information. I did not know that Barb Ross was in the army. And was missing a finger on his left hand. So I signed off on his service hours and his paper and I went to go take a shower.

I actually kind of wish I had brought my bathing suit down so I'm going to start keeping my bathing suit in my shower bag. Because when I got down there the water was so warm and it was so nice. I was standing in the shallow end in my skirt for a little while just enjoying it and then I went and sat with Chloe who had her legs in the water. The horse girls were swimming and getting ready for pool canoes. The little girls that were there were all very concerned about my skirt getting wet but I kept telling him it's fine guys it's fine. I'm about to get changed. And after we sat and talked for a while I would go take my shower and I did not smell like metal this time. So I'm pretty happy about that. But I think I am going to stop somewhere this weekend and get a new lotion. Something that smells nice like a fruit. I usually go body shop but it's so expensive. We'll see what happens.

I would take a walk around camp at one point. I heard Ty wasn't here because something was going on. So I was going to walk over to homestead. I stopped at nature first and said hello to Celia. She was working on creating a new enclosure for Samson the box turtle. And then I went over to see the homestead animals. I also texted Ty to check in to make sure he was okay. And I made friends with the goats. I had tried to get them to come over to me but they wouldn't and then when I walked away they started bleating So I walked back and then they wanted to chew on my skirt and sniff me and stuff and I was like oh my God are we friends now?? It was great.

And it would be a really nice afternoon. I would read for a while and hang out and eventually CJ came and chilled with me. I had a little snack before dinner. And then me and her walked over to dinner itself to get ready and it was a really good dinner.

We had spaghetti. There was no meat sauce. I got to have breadsticks and broccoli. I wanted to have three breadsticks but honestly two was too many. But I was having the best time. And my friends were there and everything was great. And then I heard there was Kona ice coming too and so I was like oh my God we need to go get that. So we jokingly all said that we had to go check on the quality of the Kona ice which is why we had to go get it right now. So me CJ and Celia walked across the field to go bother the Kona Iceman.

We chatted with him for a while and we all got our little treats. And then me and Celia went back to nature so that she could show me Samson's new enclosure and when we got there we didn't see him because it turns out he is so happy for the very first time he has enough substrate and space to bury himself. And so he dug a little hole and buried himself in his new substrate. What a difference 6 in in width will make on a tank for this little turtle. And so we sat and we were just so thrilled that he has so much more space. And then we discussed ways that we can try to improve his enclosure and the snakes enclosure. Just make them a little bit better. I'm going to check to see at home if I have expandable foam and if not we might make a plan on trying to make some kind of rockscape in the back using some that we can pick up from somewhere. But it was just really nice sitting in there and we talked about him a whole bunch of stuff. Including all of my weird medical things. And then Josephine enjoyed us and we all chilled for a while until it was time to go and put the birdies to bed.

We got in the bird enclosure and immediately I grabbed the dog. Which isn't very weird thing to hold. And he did not love it. But we got him in the enclosure and then I grabbed the chicken, Grandma, and then we had to get the two little chicken. And they were much harder to catch because they were faster. But humans are pursuit predators so it was not a big deal we just kept following them until we cornered them were able to catch them. It was really fun to know I was having a great time but I was getting a little sweaty and I was ready to go and lay down.

Celia went home and Josephine and me walked to the museum to use the bathroom. And then she tried to convince me to come to skip tonight but I was not having it. I have eaten way too much food and I was ready to go lay down. I talked to Cody for a few minutes and then told Josephine about the movie The Newsies because we were looking at a sign about Santa Fe. And then I came back up here. Which is where I have been for most of the last hour. I did walk down to the field for a little while to watch the fireflies but I am very very tired and I am ready to just be chill.

Tomorrow is the last day of the first session of camp! And the end of the second week. I love camp and I'm glad that today really felt more normal. Things didn't feel as heavy and bad and people were being more respectful and I just felt more myself. It was really good.

Tomorrow I have my last groups and fingers crossed me and a couple of the kids from teepees will get to practice with the metal casting. Hopefully I don't hurt myself or anybody else. We'll see what happens there. But I hope it's a really good day and I hope you guys sleep well tonight. Send me the vibes that I can fall asleep easy and then no beetles attack me. Good night everybody.

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battenthecrosshatches · 3 years

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Hey, I saw your awesome Supercorp Body Swap fan art based off that ficlet & I loved it! I also thought of a follow up you could do for it (if you like it & want to) — Kara & Lena (while they’re still swapped) exchange clothes! Lena dresses Kara’s body in her usual million dollar business attire, while Kara (in Lena’s body) wears a (Beebo themed?) sweater with jeans. And when they see each other, they’re completely shocked. I threw in some dialogue just for fun (you can ignore it, if it’s too much lol).

Lena (in Kara): “Please tell me you just stayed at my penthouse?!”

Kara (in Lena): “Well... no. Your assistant called & asked me to come in & sign some papers.”

Lena (in Kara): “Oh, god!”

Kara (in Lena): “Well, what about you?!! What did everyone say at CatCo about... ‘my’ new look?”

Lena (in Kara): “Everyone loved it! ...Though, Andrea wants ‘you’ to cover National City’s Fashion Week now instead of Nia. Which reminds me... Nia’s not speaking to ‘you’ at the moment.”

Thank you! Lol, nice! I’ll let this live here.

While we’re talking body swap, people getting used to the tiny changes that take a while to pinpoint. Someone going “Aha! I usually crane my neck down to look at you, but now I’m looking up and that’s why you seem to look slightly different!”

Someone with cilantro yum taste buds swapping with someone with cilantro dirt/soap taste buds.

Experiencing someone else’s muscle memory.

“I’m leaving!” “You can’t drive that motorcycle!” “And why not?” “You don’t have your license!” “:o >:(“

A partner swapping into a short body and learning that their kitchen has had a step stool.

Lena in Kara’s body finding Kara in her body sleeping every new time she encounters her. Kara: You just live like this?? You are always this tired?? How do you ever stay awake?? Lena: I’m supposed to be doing things! Stop sleeping! Kara: you’re welcome for giving your body rest!!

Alex hugging Kara-in-Lena’s body, looking over at Lena-in-Kara’s body: oh my god, your hair is so soft!! Kara, pressing Lena’s hair into her face: I know, right?

Kara singing in Lena’s body. Lena: I actually sound good. I didn’t know I could do that!

Kara experiencing a bug bite and being insufferable and also scratching the hell out of it and Lena getting mad.

Lena basking in the sun for hours, enjoying the zing of it and also enjoying not getting sunburned.

Lena walking around constantly wearing the lead-lined, noise-canceling headphones because it’s A Lot, Holy Shit.

Going to Noonan’s and not paying close attention, picking up their cup at the counter, only to realize upon first sip that Duh, they have the other’s Usual order in hand.

Lena hearing people say nice things about her, thinking they are talking to Kara. People getting confused when she starts to tear up.

#btc talks #ask btc #body swap talk #archiefan23

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nicknellie · 3 years

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@julie-n-phantoms requested: I saw this really cute idea once, about Willie having a whole bunch of different fun flavored chapsticks and making Alex guess what they were when they kissed. So maybe that, and Willie just keeps using it as an excuse to kiss Alex at the most random times and poor Alex keeps bluescreening?

This is so cute omg I love it! It ended up kind of short because I’m extremely tired and haven’t written Willex in a while, but I’m still very happy with how it turned out. Thank you for the request and sorry it’s taken me so long to get round to it, I hope you enjoy! Title from I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry (ofc lmao).

The Taste of His Cherry Chapstick

Not for the first time, Alex found himself questioning exactly how the rules around ghosts worked. He had been a ghost for quite some time now and he kept thinking that he should really have these things figured out, but being dead was a lot trickier than it seemed. Alex could sit on chairs, but he could also walk right through them; he could change his clothes, but he still hadn’t figured out how his clothes became invisible to lifers just like he was; he didn’t have a body, but he could still get hurt (he had Caleb to thank for cluing him in on that one). He had long ago accepted that the rules of being a ghost would always be hazy and muddled and that sometimes he would just have to get on with it, but every now and then something would happen and it would totally stump him.

Like right now. Willie was putting chapstick on and Alex was simply could not wrap his head around it.

“Why do you need to do that?” he asked Willie, breaking the soft silence between them. They were sat in the studio on the sofa together, Willie with his legs casually crossed over Alex’s lap, lying back as he applied the chapstick.

Willie shrugged easily, popping the cap back on and slipping it into his pocket. (Pockets were another ghost thing Alex didn’t understand and he might have spiralled into that a little more if he hadn’t been so fixated on the chapstick.)

“Stops my lips getting chapped,” Willie said. “It’s kinda in the name.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Alex replied, “but you’re a ghost. Can your lips even get chapped?”

“Yeah, that’s why I bought the chapstick,” Willie explained, meeting Alex’s bewildered look with an amused smirk. “That and the fact that it’s a nice flavour. Do you want to test it?”

Alex shook his head violently. “Absolutely not. I don’t trust it. How can we still use it even when we’re dead? There are some things that should not cross the line between life and the afterlife, and this is one of them.”

Willie giggled. “Alex, it’s literally just chapstick.”

“I know that. I’m not using it.”

Willie rolled his eyes affectionately, but then the amused smirk he’d had on his face morphed into something much more mischievous. Alex knew that look – it meant Willie had got an idea and there was absolutely no way of telling whether or not it was a good one.

“Well,” Willie said slowly, sitting up and shuffling so that he could properly look Alex in the eye, “there’s more than one way you could try it out.”

“How?” Alex asked sceptically.

Willie’s only response was to lean forward, that devilishly cute little smirk still on his face, and press a sweet, chaste kiss to Alex’s lips. It took Alex by surprise and was over before he could even kiss Willie back as Willie pulled away with a soft, self-satisfied smile. Alex, meanwhile, was still struggling to process what had happened. It wasn’t like he and Willie had never kissed before, but the fact that he hadn’t been expecting it combined with how brief it was and how happy Willie looked to have solved the chapstick issue meant that his mind was lagging a little as it tried to catch up. It did not help that Willie was beaming at him, looking effortlessly adorable.

“So?” Willie prompted after Alex had been silently staring at him with his mouth open in shock for almost a minute. “What flavour do you think it is? Do you like it?”

Alex dragged his mind back down from where it had been launched into the heavens. He reminded himself that he was here, with Willie in the studio, that conversations only worked if both people were talking, that staring was rude, and that there had in fact been a point to the kiss. He cleared his throat, trying to school his features back to neutrality but knowing he failed when Willie giggled, and then licked his lips.

“Um… is it cherry?” he guessed. His mind was still a little foggy and more focused on the fact that Willie had kissed him rather than what flavour the chapstick was.

Willie grinned, digging the chapstick out of his pocket again and showing Alex the label on the tube. “Yeah, man! You’re right, great job!”

As Willie settled back into his original position with his legs kicked over Alex’s lap, Alex pushed his momentary panic out of his mind and tried to be normal again. He had thought it would be a one-off, that one kiss and his one guess, and that would be the end of it. But apparently, Willie had other ideas because it just kept happening over and over again.

The second time it happened was in the middle of the night. Willie had got the bright idea of going to the museum at midnight to see all the art and exhibits in the dark. It had turned out to be an amazing idea – the low light gave every painting and sculpture a completely different energy, some more sinister, others infinitely more sad, some seeming so different to how they were during the day that it would have been hard to tell they were the same piece of art at all. Alex followed Willie around the museum with an affectionate smile on his face the whole time, a loving warmth in his chest as he listened to Willie talk about all the art and what it meant and who made it. It was always endearing whenever Willie talked about art; his passion and enthusiasm and the way his face positively lit up was enough to make Alex fall in love a thousand times over.

It was going so well and Alex felt unbelievably lucky that he got to be the one there with Willie. But then Willie stopped talking for a moment and Alex watched him reach into his pocket and pull out his chapstick. He couldn’t help the way his mind wandered to the last time this had happened, when Willie had pressed that one gentle kiss to his lips and backed away. When he saw Willie’s eyes light up, he knew he was thinking of the same thing.

“Want to try?” Willie asked. It was an innocent enough question, but they both heard the implication behind it – Willie was asking for another kiss.

Alex loved kissing Willie, but it still made him nervous every time, mostly because he couldn’t believe someone as incredible as Willie would actually want to kiss him. So momentarily, his nerves caught up with him and he couldn’t reply to Willie, not with words at least. He gave a quick nod before swallowing his nerves and cupping Willie’s jaw to pull him into a kiss.

He made sure this one lasted longer than the other, but it still wasn’t more than a few seconds. Alex tried not to pout when Willie pulled away, but smiled to himself when Willie rested their foreheads together.

“What flavour do you think it was?” Willie asked quietly.

Oh yeah, that was what Alex was meant to be figuring out. Well, he didn’t think he could really be blamed for forgetting that detail when just a moment ago he’d been kissing the love of his afterlife. Again, his mind took a ridiculous amount of time to get past the excitement and giddiness of the kiss and actually focus on the question he’d been asked.

“Is that cola?” he asked after a minute or two.

Willie dropped a feather-light kiss to the tip of Alex’s nose (and Alex was not too proud to admit it made him go slightly weak in the knees) and then pulled back with a smile. “You’re two for two. You’re getting good at this game, hotdog.”

“We’ll have to keep playing so I can get even better,” Alex replied. It might have been smooth if not for the fact that he was blushing so profusely that he could literally feel the heat in his face, and his voice was a little pitchy with a cruel mixture of nerves and the awkwardness that came with not being very good at flirting.

Willie didn’t mention it though. He just smiled softly, squeezed Alex’s hand, and said in a low voice, “Oh, we’re definitely going to keep playing.”

The third time it happened, Alex wasn’t expecting it at all. Half because they weren’t alone, and half because he hadn’t seen Willie put the chapstick on.

Julie and the Phantoms had just wrapped up a gig. Flynn had hired them to play at her birthday party (well, less ‘hired them’ and more the fact that the boys had wanted to give her a birthday present but they were all ghosts which made things like that very difficult, so they and Julie had offered to provide live music at her party instead) and it had gone brilliantly. Not only was the crowd enormous because Flynn had invited practically the whole school – which meant the band would get tons of exposure – but they had clearly been loving the music too. They were easily the best crowd the band had ever played too.

But maybe Alex was biased – he tended to say every crowd was the best crowd just as long as Willie was in it.

Willie and Flynn hadn’t actually met because they were yet to find a way of making Willie visible to lifers, but Flynn had heard enough stories about “Alex’s super cool skateboarder ghost boyfriend” to know that he could be counted as a friend, so he had been invited. As always, Alex had sought him out in the crowd and played like he was only playing to Willie. That was always when he performed his best.

When they finally finished their set and headed into the makeshift backstage area (which was really just Flynn’s bedroom), Alex barely had time to register what was going on as Willie came running into the room, grabbed Alex’s face and pressed a hard kiss to his lips. Alex distantly registered a few cheers from his friends, but he was too distracted to bother telling them off. All that mattered was the fact that Willie was kissing him and it was even more of a rush than the performance had been.

When they finally pulled away, Willie breathed, “You killed it up there! I swear, I’ll never get tired of hearing you guys play. I’m proud of you.”

“If you’re proud of all of us then how come only Alex gets a kiss?” Luke asked. Alex knew that he was joking, but he still bundled Willie up protectively in his arms, ignoring the way that just elicited laughter and ‘awwww’s from his friends.

“You liked it, then?” Alex asked quietly. He knew Willie always loved their performances, but it always felt amazing to hear it.

“I loved it, just like I love you,” Willie whispered back. Alex melted a little. “Did you like it?”

“Like what?” Alex asked. “The performance?”

“No,” Willie said, that sly smirk back on his face. Suddenly Alex realised what was going on, how he’d been caught off-guard. “My chapstick. Did you like the flavour?”

This one was totally unfair. Alex hadn’t know he was supposed to be thinking about the chapstick. He’d been so caught up in Willie that it had been the very last thing on his mind. Briefly, he entertained the idea of kissing Willie again to try and get another taste, but he knew if he did that he probably wouldn’t be able to stop and he wasn’t so keen to do that while his friends were still in the room, even if they weren’t paying attention anymore.

“That’s cheating!” he said. “I didn’t know we were playing.”

“You’ve gotta guess, hotdog,” Willie returned with a laugh, “those are the rules.”

“You never told me there were rules.”

“You never asked.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” he admitted reluctantly. “Was it… I don’t know. Blueberry?”

“Not even close,” Willie said. He pressed another kiss to Alex’s lips and pulled away before Alex could lose himself in it, which was disappointing but probably a good thing.

He tasted it this time, doing his best to focus on it, but it was very difficult with Willie so close and so cute. Still, the proud smile he got from Willie when he finally guessed watermelon made his restraint and effort completely worthwhile.

From then on, he learned to expect it. To look forward to it too. He went shopping with Willie to buy new multipacks of fun flavours (though shopping was another weird thing as a ghost because even though they left money on the counter it felt a lot more like shoplifting) and they continued their guessing game for months and months. But truth be told, it had started to feel less like a game and more just an excuse to kiss each other. It took another month or two for Alex to realise that had probably been Willie’s plan all along anyway – when he asked Willie about it, the laughter he was met with was more than enough answer.

But he wasn’t complaining. He got to kiss his boyfriend all he wanted, and neither of them ever got chapped lips.

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mouse-fantoms · 3 years

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What if on Friday the 13th, bc it’s Friday the 13th, ghost powers get like heightened.

Like the day before the boys are joking “Oh on the Friday the 13th we’re gonna spook you so much.” Julie’s of course going along with it and know the boys mean absolutely nothing by it bc they cannot hurt a fly (literally if there’s a fly in the studio, it’s a group effort to get the fly out of the studio bc none of them want to hurt it).

But bc it’s their first time being ghosts (and Willie forget to inform them), they have no clue that on Friday the 13th their ghost powers get amplified.

It’s in the morning and Julie comes into the studio bc she realizes none of them have said anything to her yet. She can hear in the studio Alex and Luke telling Reggie not to panic, they can figure it out. She opens the doors and sees that Alex and Luke are looking up bc there is now a floating Reggie near the ceiling.

Alex and Luke give Julie a run down that they don’t know what happened but they woke up and Reggie was just floating up by the ceiling and he doesn’t know how to steer or get down so they’ve just been comforting him bc it’s what he needs right now.

Luckily he hasn’t floated up through the ceiling yet but he’s just so close to hitting the ceiling and is just going in circles bc apparently found out how to do that.

Julie offers that maybe Reggie just takes a second to breath and focus on going down. He does just that by closing his eyes, breathing in and out and he slowly floats back down to the ground.

They all think everything is fine until Alex suddenly notices the strange looks he’s getting by the three.

“Where’d your lower half go?”

Turns out of Friday the 13th some ghosts can become more ghostly bc when Alex looks down and his lower half is just a wispy pink tail while all of him is transparent (to get the full effect have this lovely art that I did out of a ghost coloring sheet).

(Yes I’m 17 years old and still can’t color inside the lines I KNOW IM AWARE 😭 SHUSH)

All of them are like “...umm... it’s a look.”

Julie brings up, “Maybe it’s because it’s Friday the 13th that things are weird for ghosts.”

“Does that make any sense?” Luke calls out.

“Well... Reggie can float, Alex has a wispy tail we can see through.”

“That is true.” Alex confirms.

Luke shrugs. “I guess I mean out of all the explanations.”

He takes a seat on the couch but when he sits down the coffee table suddenly violently flips over just as Luke sat down. He sits back up from shock because all of them saw that.

“Umm... I didn’t do that.” He points to the coffee table and then one of the items from the shelves behind him gets violently thrown out. The longer he points the more things get thrown out that Julie, Reggie and Alex have to duck for cover.

“STOP POINTING!” Julie shouts.

The minute he does the items stop.

“Great,” Julie sighs, “I have a ghost who can float, a ghost who’s transparent, and a ghost who’s a poltergeist. Happy Friday the 13th to me.”

#happy Friday the 13th friends #Reggie also would poof out to the streets to see if he can communicate with black cats bc Friday the 13th #jatp #julie and the phantoms #jatp netflix #jatp julie #julie jatp #julie molina #jatp alex #alex jatp #alex mercer #jatp reggie #reggie jatp #reggie peters #jatp luke #luke jatp #luke patterson #thephantomsandjulie

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imagine-that-100 · 3 years

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All of You

Description: Alex Turner x Reader (Female) | After getting married, you and Alex go on your Honeymoon that comprises of two destinations. Athens is filled with shitty jokes whilst Bora Bora is filled with compliments and kisses.

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: Lil smut

A/N: This was requested by the lovely @ghostlightqueen. Really hope you like it and I hope the rest of you do too. Likes and reblog are appreciated and thank you so much for reading x

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You thought that the day you got married would be the happiest of your life, but it seems that the days that followed were somehow even more joyous. You travelled to your second Honeymoon destination a week after your wedding and the moment you got off the plane with your husband's hand in your own, you knew that this was heaven on earth.

Bora Bora was gorgeous, and it was truly the best Honeymoon destination for you and Alex. You don’t think he’d done nothing in his mind for a long time so the absence of the need to write songs really must have relaxed him.

You’d already been to Athens to see the sights. You both found a lovely antique store whilst you were there and by some miracle you both found an English poetry book in there and each night, before you slept, one of you read one to the other.

The sight-seeing was really fun with him too. You enjoyed going round with your polaroid camera and asking strangers to take a picture of the both of you.

You knew Alex didn’t really like pictures but the ones with you he never failed to smile for. Your husband was also hilarious with you the entire time you got excited to see something new.

Seeing the world was something Alex was obviously lucky enough to do, and you’d been lucky enough to to accompany him a few times, but this was totally different. You were viewing history and you found it so fascinating.

“You’re really Greek-ing out over the view, aren’t you?” Alex chuckles loving seeing you as excited as you are.

“Al, that was awful.” You giggle putting your camera down.

He laughs at your distaste for his joke, but he grins at you and nods, “But you are though.”

“Yes Alex, we’re standing in Acropolis… I’ve always wanted to come here.” You tell him what he already knows.

He smiles at you then before he quickly kisses you. When he pulls away, he says, “Don’t worry, I’ll let you carry on Greek-ing out.”

You roll your eyes, “Oh lord.”

The day after, you both go on a tour around the Parthenon, and Alex catches you looking at an ice cream cart. So, Alex, being the loving husband he is, he goes and gets you an ice cream as you continue to listen to the tour guide.

A minute later Alex came back over with two ice creams in hand and he whispers into your ear after he hands you yours, “What’s Athen’in?”

The way you rolled your eyes at that would have been comical if Alex saw it, but he didn’t, you elbowed him in his side for the awful way he asked, ‘what’s happening.’

“Thank you for my ice cream, you fucking nerd” You whisper back dismissively and Alex chuckles before taking your hand and following the rest of your group as you started moving from your current spot.

Alex continues to make his shit jokes all week and you won’t let yourself admit they are entertaining. You didn’t want to encourage his silly behaviour despite secretly loving it.

On your second to last day before you were due to travel again, you go to a museum and you absolutely love it. But your husband loves to be needy in the crowd of people you were in.

“I love you.” Alex says, leaning over your shoulder and kissing your cheek as he wraps his arms around your waist.

“Love you too Alex.” You smile as you rest your hands over his, stroking the back of his hand with your thumb.

Alex pouts wanting you to return his kind gesture, “Give me a kiss to prove it then.”

“Why can’t I just tell you? We’re in public.” You say, not feeling the need to get off with him as you were standing admiring some art.

Alex grins as you’ve played right into his hands. He jokes, “Athens speak louder than words, Y/N.”

You groan, “That’s the worst one yet.” leaning back into him.

“You love it really.” Alex mumbles as he leans down and places a kiss on your shoulder.

Alex kisses then travel from your shoulder and up to your neck. You’re well aware he likes that your shoulders are available to kiss because you're wearing a white vest top with spaghetti straps. He always loved to follow that trail of kisses.

You pay the loving kisses no attention though, you just chuckle and tell him, “I can’t wait to tell Matt about your shitty jokes.”

“Hey...” Alex pouts, “What Athens in Greece, stays in Greece.”

You hold your groan back this time and curiously ask, “Can I get an annulment or does it have to be a divorce after nearly a week?”

You can’t hold back your smile as he loudly gasps and spins you around. You knew that he knew you were joking but that doesn’t stop his jaw falling open.

“You love me, you wouldn’t do that.” Alex playfully frowns a little.

“You should know by now that you can’t tame me Turner.” You grin and wrap your arms around his neck.

Who were you kidding, you didn’t care about PDA that much.

“I know everything about you, Turner.” Alex grins, using your new last name against you. “You’ve been my best friend since we were seventeen.”

“I know, you idiot.” You smile as you feel his arms wrap around your lower back.

“That’s how I know you hate me when I do this.” You grin as you reach up, messing up his fluffy hair with one hand whilst stealing his sunglasses with your other.

Alex gasps and laughs, pulling you in tighter so you can’t escape. You giggle like an idiot trying to get away from him but he doesn’t let you go anywhere.

“You’re my wife, you can’t pull shit like that anymore.” Alex says, his jaw still a little agape.

You grin and say, “I can and I will… Gotta keep you on your toes now Turner.”

Alex shakes his head and mumbles against your lips before he lets you fully kiss him, “Like you have done the past twenty years, you mean?”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Bora Bora was a completely different experience.

Maybe it was because there was less to do or you were both just shocked by the beauty of the place. You felt like you were in Neverland.

The islands surrounding the one your resort was on was amazing. You and Alex were staying in your own water villa and it was one of the end ones so you had the best view and the bigger place.

Not that you really needed it but you had to admit, it was nice to have a big house in a stunning paradise to yourselves.

There was a balcony on the water villa you were both staying in and it was amazing. It came equipped with sunloungers and even a small pool, which was mental to you because the sea was right there for you to jump into if you wanted to swim.

But that didn’t mean that you didn’t get use out of it.

You’ve both been there a few days and you’ve not yet got bored of sunbathing after your hectic week of being a tourist. Last week had definitely tired you both out, so despite you already having your tans by now, you still loved spending your full day out in the sunshine.

You got up from the sunlounger, that was more of a sun bed, beside Alex not 20 minutes ago, and swam to the edge of the small infinity pool and rested your elbows on the side of it as you watched the sun go down. The view was stunning.

The sun slowly hid itself behind the stray clouds that littered the sky, turning them red which against the now orange sky made it look picture perfect. You wanted to paint the scene in front of you.

But before you knew it, it had disappeared and darkness was creeping its way to the sky. So you slowly made your way out of the pool so you could get ready to go for dinner soon.

“You look so good right now Angel.” Alex says as you walk up the steps out of the pool.

You smile, feeling a little shy for some unknown reason. Probably because you weren’t doing anything that you thought was compliment worthy, “You think so?”

“I always think so.” Alex nods before gesturing for you to come towards him.

He didn’t care that you’d just been in the water at all. His trunks were still damp from his swim earlier so when he guided you to straddle his lap, he didn’t care at all.

You looked stunning in your blue and white striped spaghetti strap bikini. He definitely couldn’t not tell you, even if he did see traces of embarrassment show on your pretty face.

“I love you.” You grin before pressing your lips to his after wrapping your arms around his neck.

Alex grins back and keeps you close as he whispers, “I love you more.”

You brush your nose against his as you shake your head, whispering back, “Not possible.”

You kiss him then and despite it being soft and gentle, you get the same nervous feeling in your stomach that you got the first time you kissed him however many years ago now. The kiss deepened and you guess the two of you just got too consumed in the moment because before you knew it all the strings that held your bikini together were being untied and Alex’s trunks were off.

If you ever cared about having sex and the risk of others seeing you, you certainly didn’t in this moment in time. You were riding your husband on the large sunlounger on your balcony and you felt euphoric.

The intimacy of the moment somehow made it better and you think even the risk of others seeing or hearing increased the pleasure you were feeling too. That must have been subconscious though because all you could think about was Alex.

His hold on your hips was strong and when he pulled you hips down to meet his, it caused the sweetest sound to fall from your lips which made Alex do it again and again. You looked heavenly above him like that.

Eyes closed just basking in the feeling of pleasure you were both giving each other. The sun setting behind you as Alex watched you ride him was stunning, it made you look like you were glowing.

Gorgeous was another word Alex would use to describe you when your head tilted back in the bliss of the moment. The whine you release when Alex starts kissing your neck where he knew you were sensitive was music to his ears.

And the way your fingers laced through his hair and pulled on it causing a similar sound to fall from Alex’s lips. But most of all Alex just thought you were the most beautiful human being and he never had a problem with telling you that.

The things he told you during intimate moments like this just made everything better and when your orgasm hit you, it was unearthly. You cling to Alex like he was going to magically disappear and Alex did the same to you when he got his release.

“I love you Alex.” You just about manage to say into his neck where you were hiding yourself when you came back to reality.

Alex trails kisses from your shoulder all the way up your neck to just under your ear as he’d done hundreds of times before. He breathes you, “I love you too Angel.”

~*~*~*~

Days in this paradise were spent relaxing in each other’s company outside or inside, in bed. The latter happened often as there was no need to get yourselves up in the mornings so you lazed about in bed.

Either cuddling and listening to music or listening to the TV in the background as you both stared out at the amazing view that the island had to offer. There weren’t very many times throughout this honeymoon when you wouldn’t be found touching each other.

Even if you went out for a walk you’d be hand in hand. But mostly you were entangled together in the confines of your own villa.

Either in the same sense that you were when you were on the sunlounger, which you couldn’t look at the same again, or just innocently cuddling. You think that your happiest day had been when Alex showered you with a million more compliments than he did every other day.

Today you’d stayed in your villa for most of the day, first Alex had made you feel euphoric again by making you feel like a queen (his queen). This time in bed though and not on the sunlounger.

Afterwards, you both showered and you were certain you’d never felt more peaceful than in that shower with him after he’d just made you feel pure bliss. After you dried off, Alex catered for you by making you a late breakfast which later you returned the favour for and made him lunch.

After relaxing in the small pool that was on your balcony, you also messed around a little and both jumped in the sea a lot, as if you were seventeen again. Once you decided it was time to make yourselves presentable for dinner later, you both headed back inside out of the sunlight.

You ran yourself a bath and unsurprisingly Alex joined you in it when it was filled. The bath was next to a large window that again showed off the stunning views of your amazing surroundings, so you enjoyed resting back against Alex, listening to the music that was playing out of your phone.

The kisses to your head as you both relaxed warmed your heart more than the water you were both sat in. It made you not want to leave the escape that the villa brought you.

So you dragged the bath out for a good hour and after Alex washed your hair and you had a giggle washing his, you got ready and went out to have your meal.

You came back to the villa long after the sun had set and you couldn’t wait to get in bed so a whole new day could start. Alex had been charming and flirty all throughout dinner so it really wasn’t a surprise when that continued.

The compliments started falling from his lips as soon as you both made it back to bed. Both of you cuddled together but he was once again teasing you with neck kisses.

“I’m sad you took that dress off, you looked stunning tonight.” Alex tells you as he places random kisses just below your ear.

He was pretty much lying on top of you, your chests pressed together and his head was buried into your neck. You weren’t complaining though, you just happily traced patterns on the smooth material that rested on his back, and now and again you ran your fingers through his hair.

You grin knowing he’d like it. “I thought you’d like that one.”

It was a little black dress that you’d bought purposely for a dinner date. You knew he’d love it because of how perfectly it fit you, but you had to admit, taking it off and putting your new black silk pyjama top and shorts on felt comfier.

“I like everything you put on… Or take off for that matter.” He chuckles a little, still lying on top of you and kissing your neck now and again.

He made you feel really warm and you loved the intimacy of the moment. Just lying in bed with him with the balcony doors open and letting the cool breeze run over the both of you as you listen to the waves.

“Very easily impressed, aren’t you?” You grin as you twirl his hair around your fingers.

Alex chuckles before kissing his way back up your neck. “Only by you, Angel.”

You giggle a little then as you play with his hair whilst he still distracts himself with your neck. You were sure he’d keep his head there for all eternity if you let him, and he had even more reason to stay there because he knew you secretly loved it.

“I could name 110 things I love about you right now, just off the top of my head.” Alex promises as he lifts his head and kisses your lips.

You giggle when he pulls away, “That’s oddly specific.”

Alex grins and kisses you again as he says, “Well I could have said 505 but at the risk of being cheesy, I adapted.”

The laugh you released then was something Alex was so glad he could hear everyday now. He couldn’t wait to start a proper life with you now you were officially his.

“Your laugh might be at the very top of that list.” Alex tells you, smiling to himself.

“Then your eyes, they are so stunning.” Alex tells you, his own eyes looking back and forth between yours. Almost as if he couldn’t decide which he liked better. “I’d write a full song about your Y/E/C eyes if you’d let me.”

You grin at him but shake your head. It was an answer that Alex knew was coming but he still loved them non the less. Alex gazes down at your lips then that were tugged up into a stunning smile.

“Your smile is definitely up there too. I don’t think I could ever have a bad day again if you smile at me like that every day.” That fills your chest with warmth.

Alex gives you an eskimo kiss then and your heart skips a beat at your noses brushing together, and again when he softly says, “I love the way you just sort of melt when I do that.”

It was true you really did practically melt beneath him. Your eyes close, you release the breath you're holding and you just bask in the feeling of his nose brushing against yours, you feel like you sink into the pillow beneath you more than you already had.

His compliments continue, “I love the way you run your fingers through my hair and how you twist it around when you’re relaxed and happy.”

You smile as you carry on doing it. And you didn’t plan on stopping.

“I love that you still wear that perfume I helped you pick out years ago.” Alex says getting another whiff of the gorgeous scent.

“I love your kisses. To the point where I think I’d cry if you’d deny me one.” Alex jokes a little with you and it makes you giggle again.

“I love waking up and falling asleep next to you.” Alex admits, “Definitely better than waking up next to the idiots back home on a tour bus.”

“You’re such a lovely friend.” You chuckle looking into his soft brown eyes.

Alex hums in agreement and continues with, “I love that you’re my best friend and have been since I can remember.”

“I adore the fact that you’re amazing at what you do and you give 110% for each new thing that’s thrown your way.”

“You’ve said 110 twice now, should I be expecting another song?” You playfully ask him and Alex laughs before he kisses you again.

“I love your reactions to the songs that are about you.” Alex grins.

Your eyes narrow a bit there as he knew how you felt about the songs. But you could let that go a bit now.

He was your husband after all.

“I love that you get really sexy when you get annoyed at something.” Alex says before kissing you again, and he starts kissing down your jaw and he focuses back on your neck.

“I love the way you pretend you hate this but I know from the way that you react that you don’t.” Alex says and you catch yourself reacting in encouraging ways.

Your fingers tightened in his hair, you gave him more room for his lips to find your skin, and your breath hitched when he teases the spot he knew was your weakest.

“I love that the way you breathe gives away how you want to have sex.” Alex practically purrs in your ear.

Alex’s lips continue to tease you and after a few seconds he nips on a spot he already got before and you release a breathy whine. Of course Alex says, “I love those noises you make so much. I wanna hear them all day.”

Alex slowly moved himself a little further up your body, this time resting himself down between your legs and you can feel him getting hard through the both of your pyjama shorts. You gasp a little, “Alex.”

He all but groans, “I love the way you say my name.”

Your eyes are closed now and you focus on the kisses on your neck and his hand running down your side until he carries on to your leg and he gently guides it to hook around his waist. He felt even better against you then and you bite your lip to stop yourself from giving anything more away.

“I love how you try to stop yourself from wanting us… Makes it even funnier now we’re married.” Alex chuckles before he kisses your lips that he catches you biting.

You don’t really care now, he’s right. He’s your husband, you don’t have to show restraint anymore. Especially on your Honeymoon.

Your kiss is slow but intense. You could feel how much Alex loved you and you wanted to show how much you love him too. And in this moment your actions seemed like no better way.

“Alex.” You breathe to grab his attention.

He kisses you again and bites in your lip as he pulls away. He grins at your whine and innocently asks you, “Yes Angel?”

You grab a fistful of his pyjama top and say, “Please let me take this off”

He lets you and once it’s somewhere on the floor Alex grins at you like an idiot. You know he’s happy, overjoyed even, but there’s a teasing sparkle in his eyes so you lean up and kiss him again to bypass that.

Your top hits the floor next and Alex has his fun attaching his lips to your chest leaving mark after mark. The rest of both your pyjamas are removed shortly after.

Before anything goes any further though Alex pauses for a second. He looks down at you so lovingly, you feel as if you could literally melt under his gaze.

His chest is still pressed to yours and you’re both breathing a little heavy from previous kisses. But the way he’s looking at you makes your heart flutter.

At this point you don’t think it ever wouldn’t.

Alex’s declaration of love finishes off with, “I just love you Mrs Turner... All of you”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

415 notes · View notes

annie-mit-ie · 3 years

Text

Glimpses: Part 9 (Kathryn Hahn x Fem!Reader)

Part 1 // previous chapter <<< >>> next chapter

Summary: Are you... finally having a date?

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: Hey y’all! Again, I apologize for the delay but uni didn’t allow for me to have some free time to write. I’ll try to upload something earlier next week and hope you enjoy the new chapter until then! xxx

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“Wish I could've seen your beautiful face on my screen tonight, sweetheart.“ You stare at your phone. Is she… flirting? By now it’s too late, so you can’t ask Alex for help since she is already sound asleep on her side of the world. You ruffle your hair and let your head fall to the back to look at the ceiling. Taking in a deep breath, you close your eyes and consider your options. Tonight, it’s only you, your phone and Kathryn.

Unsure of what to do, you opt for the safer way and start a conversation rather than flirt with her right away, because honestly, you don’t even know what to do. “You know, we all actually hoped you guys would be able to see us, too.“

You are not sure if you blew it with that, but then again it’s not like you and Kathryn haven’t talked about things the fans think before, not that you are not one of them, but that’s a different story. She takes a while to respond and you throw your phone on the bed before lying down on your back.

Looking up at the stars on your ceiling, you reflect on what happened within the last week until your phone lights up again. You lie there for a short while waiting for Kathryn to respond and think about what plans you have for the rest of the week. You train of thought gets stopped when your phone lights up. You turn to your side to look at it and realize it lit up, yes, but this time there is no new message. Instead, additionally to lighting up, your phone starts to vibrate as hold it in your hand - a familiar face looking right at you. Yours. She is calling you. KATHRYN. On Facetime.

Shocked as you are, you throw your phone across the room and as you try to catch it you hit it again, which only makes it fly further away. You immediately jump after it and fall from your bed in the process, taking a tumble before rolling off on the floor. Typical you and you would roll your eyes at yourself right now, if only you weren’t so busy reaching out for your phone.

For a moment, you think about how you could’ve hit your head pretty hard just a second ago, but somehow your body went into god mode and you managed to roll off pretty quickly. Phone in hand you are lying on the floor, all sprawled out as the time runs out to pick up the call. Gladly, you remember you should and take it as you still lie on the floor.

“Kathryn?“, you try to catch your breath. “Sweetheart, HEY!“, you catch a glimpse of her as you’re getting up to sit on your chair and hear her laugh. “What exactly are you doing, Y/N? You look… You are a mess, honey! WHAT HAPPENED?“

You immediately stop in your motion and look at her while running a hand through your hair trying to look more presentable. “I…“, you stutter. “I… I.. My phone… Floor. I had to… It’s…“

“Sweetheart you gotta take a breath for me now.“, she looks at you concerned.

“Yes, thank you Kathryn, yes. Hello there! I’m sorry. I might’ve hit my head actually. I’m not sure.“ She smiles once again while she is looking at you with her warm, blue eyes, as she gives you another minute to calm down after you ramble. “Well, I’m glad I get to see you now. I hate those one sided video things, especially since I’ve missed your face.“ She winks.

“You saw me like… 5 days ago. You’ll live.“ You can’t help but laugh at her antics once again and the both of you sit in comfortable silence for a moment until she breaks it. “Anyway, I am calling because I wanted to know if you will come and spend some time in my garden again this weekend.“ The words leave her mouth and you hear her but your brain seems unable to comprehend what is being said. How can this be your life right now?

While you are caught up in your thoughts Kathryn continues talking. “I promise this time we’ll stay at my place. No surprise gigs or anything to attend. Just the gals hanging out.“ You want to ask her if this is a date, you really do, but you can’t get yourself to be bold like that. Instead you just shoot her a wide smile as she waits for your answer and nod. “Yes! Absolutely! I mean… We never got to finish that bottle of wine we opened, so…“

Now it’s her turn to nod and you both fall silent again. Even though you are fully comfortable sitting in silence and just spending time with her in real life, it feels different on Facetime. Kathryn seems to notice rather quickly and breaks the silence again.

“Well, Sweetheart. I’ll let you go because I’m sure you’ve got other things to do. I will send you details for the weekend as soon as I know what my schedule looks like and then I’ll have Peter pick you up again?“

“That sounds amazing!…“ And you should've stopped there but at the same time you feel a little adventurous, so you throw a common phrase in there that Alex uses any chance she gets. Realizing you could always say you don’t mean it that way makes it even easier - after all Kathryn doesn’t know you actually do. “It’s a date!“

Her smile turns into a wide grin. “It’s a date. I’ll see you on Saturday then.“

“Not if I see you first.“

—

You don’t see her first. Kathryn would never admit it, but she is in fact very nervous and paces up and down the house waiting for you. She fully cleaned all of it last night already, knowing that you would come over today.

When she hears Peter and you arrive with the car, she walks up to the front door immediately and opens it right as you exit the car. You're wearing a flow-y summer dress again and your hair falls your shoulders in beautiful curls. A pair of sunglasses is propped up on top of your head and she can see you squinting your eyes against the sun.

Kathryn is leaning against the door frame as Peter sees you off and the two of you laugh about a dad joke he makes. She likes how you get along with everyone around her so well and her heart skips a beat as you turn around and your eyes meet. She is beautiful. A dark green pantsuit, that Kathryn combined with a white shirt (including the rolled up sleeves, of course), is hanging loosely off her shoulder. Her hair is in its usual curly mess and slowly moves in the wind as a fresh breeze hits her face.

Faster than anticipated you make your way up to her and wrap her up into a hug that, according to your consideration, is a little bit longer than a usual hug. She holds onto you just as tight and her hand wanders up to the back of your neck. When you finally let go of earth other you forget to put distance between your bodies again, so you find yourself just a couple inches away from her face once again.

“You look… stunning.“ She says as her hand softly pushes back a strand of hair behind your right ear.

“THANK YOU!“, you say in a high pitched voice as your eyes widen because of how embarrassing that voice raise was. “You look beautiful as always yourself, Kathryn.“

The smile on her face tells you that the compliment is sitting very well with her and you decide to keep a bit of the mystery, so you brush against her as you walk inside the house and make your way to the door thats leading to the garden.

Stunned, Kathryn stays in the doorframe for a moment before following you out onto the patio. She reaches you before you can reach the seating area because you purposefully strolled a little and appreciated the beauty of her backyard.

“I love your dress! That color and fit is just… you look beautiful, Y/N.“ You blush and it doesn’t go unnoticed by her as she has just caught up to you. The two of you have reached the couch and she offers you to sit first and makes sure you have a drink and everything you need before she makes herself comfortable. Just like last time, she sits down across from you first, keeping the mystery and all.

The Kathryn you get to meet now is not that much different from the Kathryn you met within the last two weeks. She is funny and open and, if anything has changed, then it is the fact that she is much more relaxed without all the other people around.

As she tells you about her latest interview fails and gives you inside on her life, you can’t help but fall for her a little more, especially whenever she throws her head back as she laughs wholeheartedly.

When it’s your turn to tell stories, you tell her about your childhood hobbies and how does might effect your future. She is very interested in arts and you immediately agree to meet up again to create something together. Talking about how you spend your free time, you finally mention Alex and talk about how fast she became your best friend. Just as always, she makes you feel like you are the most important person on the planet as you talk and somehow you feel like Alex becomes important to her as well, the moment you talk about how important she is to you.

With every glass she pours, Kathryn scooches a little closer to you until your knees nearly touch. Whenever you laugh about a joke, she reaches out to put her right hand on your leg and as you finish the first bottle of wine and she decides to order pizza as the sun starts to set, she plops down right next to you after getting the menu off the kitchen table.

Being fully comfortable with her now, you let yourself sink into her shoulder as the two of you browse the pizza names to see what you want to order. Luckily, you make a decision rather quickly while Kathryn needs some time, so you can enjoy the moment of closeness for a little while longer.

For the very first time, you realize how good her hair smells and how calming her aura is. You close your eyes to take it all in and smile to yourself about the sheer happiness that you are feeling in this very moment.

Kathryn notices how calm you have gotten and leans back as her left arm sneakily finds its way across your shoulder to hold you close to her. Leaning back into the couch, she pulls you with her and the both of you sit in silence as you listen to her heartbeat.

After a while, you hear a deep growl and Kathryn gets startled out of her meditational state. “Oh I’m sorry! I must be hungrier than I thought I am.“

She takes out her arm from behind you again and reaches for the menu and her phone to call the delivery service. When the pizza arrives and she comes back from the front door, she sits down on the other side of the couch once again and you immediately miss being by her side.

The pizza is nice, maybe even the best pizza you’ve had from any delivery service before, and by the time you finished eating, the sun has fully set. Not sure how she is going to react, you fiddle with your fingers for a moment before making a proposal.

“I.. actually arranged something. I looked up Peter’s agency and asked for his number and asked him if he could take us somewhere tonight. I mean.. If you’d wanna go?“

Once again speechless, Kathryn looks at you with wide eyes and raised eyebrows as her face is beaming from excitement. “Absolutely! Do we… need anything or are we good to go right away?“ It’s nice that she wants to help, but she doesn’t have to. Alex and you have planned for this very moment all week and talked it all through several times, so that Peter and you could arrange the surprise for Kathryn.

You help her up from the couch and lead her back into the house, where a filled basket, that has magically appeared, is waiting at the front door. Peter is already waiting in the car ready to take you to the stars.

It’s a rather short drive as he takes you to a little meadow on a hill where you can look over Los Angeles in between rocks and trees and actually see the stars as well. Naturally, he stays in the car and ready a book as the two of you walk up to the corner of the hill, where a small spot suggests that lots of couples have spent some time there.

“This is perfect, Y/N. I….“ She looks at you before looking up at the night sky and stops talking as she feels your eyes on her. Your fingers on the blanket are close enough to hers that you can feel her warmth and you slowly move them closer. Neither of you breaks eye contact as your hands touch and a tingles move through all of your body.

You bite the inside of your lower lip in anticipation as you cup her hand with yours completely. Giving it one last squeeze, you let go and cup her face instead. Slowly, you move closer until you can feel her breath on your lips. Looking into her eyes for one last time, you overcome the remaining inches and capture her lips in a longing kiss as your hands find their way into her long hair.

Leaning into the kiss with a little too much force, combined with the fact that she is so focused on the way you make her feel, makes her lose balance and she falls backwards onto the blanket. Before you can do anything about it, you find yourself on top of Kathryn who is grinning and goes in for yet another kiss. Now she is the one who is holding onto you and her hands glide all over your body as she takes no measures to get you off of her.

You make out with her in that position for a short moment, before she stops in her tracks. “We can’t. Not like that. Not out here. I’m sorry, Sweetheart.“

“Oh no, don’t be sorry. You are absolutely right.“ You smile and kiss her shortly for one last time before getting off of her. “Let’s go back home? It’s getting rather cold anyway.“

“Home? Are you… Staying over tonight?“ She looks at you, unsure of what to expect.

For a moment you consider if you should play it save, but thinking about everything that happened tonight, you decide to go into full offense and shoot your shot while you wink at her. “Well, Ms. Hahn. Seems like you are asking me to stay, so I might as well.“

She looks at you and you can tell she is biting her lip before she looks back at the lights in front of her as she grabs your hand. “Please stay, Y/N. I would love that.“

#kathryn hahn #kathryn hahn x reader #Kathryn Hahn x You #Kathryn Hahn Fanfiction #Kathryn Hahn fan fiction #groupie #groupie au

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felix21im · 3 years

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"Ice Cold", a Leon Kennedy x reader fanfiction

As an Art and Design student all you want to do is just knuckle down and finish that one goddamn piece you've been working on for months. Too bad your time is constantly stolen by your Waiter job with minimal pay, but hey, at least the tips are good if you unbutton your shirt that one more time.

Masterlist

Chapter 4: The Party

This chapter is intended for mature audiences (18+).

While the main core of this chapter is gender neutral and SFW, the ending is written for a general female reader. The male reader part will be in the next post separately. If you would like to read neither you will be notified when to click away and when to start reading again.

A few weeks passed after you finished your “passion project”, as Alex and Jordan lovingly called it. You went to visit Leon a few times after that again but he was often out for work, which made it hard to stay in personal contact. You never found out what he did for work and where he went but as soon as he was away from home you felt him changing a little. Even though you mainly texted each other, he sometimes even called you. When this was the case he often was drunk and you wondered if he really went out for work or just to party. As soon as he was back you never had the chance to ask him if he's keeping anything from you. Whenever you tried to talk about the calls or messages he left for you he changed the subject. So you just learnt to live with it because you didn't want to make him mad or be annoyed by you.

Since it was your birthday in only a few days you wondered if Leon forgot his idea of partying at his place. Maybe he wouldn't even be home by then, you thought to yourself.

You were just eating dinner with your roommate Jordan as your phone lit up again. “Let me guess, Leon again?” You checked your phone just to confirm their premonition. You let out a small sigh. “What is it this time? I don’t know about you, but I think he's acting kinda odd lately and I never even met him!”

“Yea, I don't really know either. Maybe he's just overworking or something, I don’t know. I mean, he always liked to drink so maybe too much work doesn't really help with that.” You lay your phone to the side, eating the rest of the food you prepared earlier. It was nothing compared to Angel’s food but it was all you could afford to buy this week. It made you think about that money Leon offered you back then. Maybe declining it wasn't your best idea.

After Jordan and you finished eating and cleaning you went back into your small room and Jordan left the house to meet with a friend. You unlocked your phone again to see what Leon was up to this time. You noticed he had sent multiple messages already, asking if you were ignoring him or whatever. You quickly answered and reassured him that you weren't ignoring or pissed at him. He then asked about your day and what you were up to the next few days. You let out a small laugh. “Hmm, I don´t know.. Maybe celebrate my birthday or something like that.” You were unsure if he was just messing with you or actually forgot about it. You tried to respond calmly but it didn't really work as you hoped it would. Instead you sounded wayyy too ironic and pissed and you were angry at yourself.

You wanted to throw your phone away but Leon answered once again before you had the chance to do so. “I’m just messing with you, Buttercup ;) how could I ever forget your birthday? - Leon”, the message said. You couldn't stay mad for too long, especially not after Leon sent a picture of him after it. You hadn't seen him in so long so you weren't really prepared for what's gonna come. And even if you had seen him before, nothing could have prepared you for this. He sent a picture of himself, probably after working out. He was looking at the camera, his face in bright red and sweat covering his whole upper body. And he wasn't even trying to hide his muscular body. You were unable to move, you didn't even know what to do or say right now. You were happy that Jordan was out of the house right now, that meant you could have some alone time to yourself and that picture…

Another few days flew by and before you knew it, it was your birthday. You were woken up by Jordan, who came into your bedroom singing “Happy Birthday” as loud as they possibly could. You looked at them tired but soon had a smile resting on your face. After Jordan finished singing they came over to give you a nice hug. “Happy 21st birthday! I got us a small cake, we can eat it now if you want. And.. I also got some presents for you!” They pushed you out of the bed and into the small living room.

On the small table was a cake and a few small presents, but the biggest was seated on the old couch. “Leon!”

You had a big smile on your face and practically ran into his arms. “Happy Birthday, Buttercup. I hope my little surprise worked.” You nodded as hard as you could and sat down besides Leon. You opened the presents from Jordan and thanked them for it. Then Leon reached down into a bag that was laying next to his feet. “I also got you something. You’re probably gonna need this today.” You looked at him confused, took the wrapped present and opened it. You felt some kind of fabric on your fingers and pulled it out.

You spread it out before you and realized that Leon had bought you your own suit. You actually remembered a similar one in Leon’s closet back then. “Wow, Leon! This is so pretty, I don't even know what to say!” You went back to hug him again.

“Don't worry about it. Angel actually got you something for it as well. Here.” He gave you another small bag. In it was a purple bow-tie, the exact purple you painted the living room with. In the bag was also a fake clematis, which you could put into your suit jacket pocket.

“This is so nice! Thank you guys so much! I can't wait to wear it.” Jordan and Leon had to laugh because of your excitement.

“Let's eat some cake first, birthday kid, before you mess that new fancy suit of yours up!” Now it was your turn to laugh. You nodded in agreement before sitting back down. Jordan cut the cake in three pieces and each one of you enjoyed their piece of it.

After eating and drinking some tea you gave Jordan your dirty plates so they could clean them up. While they were doing that you grabbed your new suit and went to go into your room. “I'll be back in a few. Please make yourself comfortable and if you need anything, just ask.” You told Leon before leaving the living room and going into yours. You got rid of the pyjamas you were still wearing and put on some fresh underwear. You then lay the suit on your bed and looked at it in detail. It contained black pants, a white collared shirt with shiny buttons, an almost blackish purple vest and jacket with the fitting bow tie and flower from Angel. You began putting on the pants, followed by the shirt and vest. You then put on the bow tie and went to leave the room with the jacket and flower laying over your arm. Before stepping outside though, you realized you didn't have any fancy shoes that fit your outfit. You decided to just put on some white sneakers, hoping it would look at least kind of okay.

As you left the room you almost walked into Leon, who was standing in front of your door. “Oh, I’m sorry. I just wanted to see if everything was alright..” He looked at you from head to toe. “Wow.. You look wonderful, Buttercup.”

You felt your cheeks heat up once again as you tried to find the right words to thank him. “Thank you so so much, Leon. I don’t think I've ever worn something so fancy and expensive, I really like it.” You looked up to him, a big smile covering your face.

Leon then reached out his hands, fixing your bow tie a little. “I just gotta make sure you look perfect. Now, put on your jacket so I can add that flower and I think then we should be ready to go.” You nodded and he helped you get into the jacket. After that he added the clematis into your chest pocket. He then took a step back looking at you. “This is perfect. Well then, should we go?” He held out his hand for you to take before going to the front door. You grabbed your phone and keys and then left together with him. Jordan was already waiting outside, also wearing a shirt covered by a black vest and some jeans. The three of you then left the building and went to Leon's car.

As you arrived at Leon’s home you already saw multiple people putting up signs or preparing stuff. You looked at Leon shocked, since you didn't think it would be this big of a party. Even Jordan couldn’t stop themself from letting out a surprised “Wow.” You nodded in agreement, unable to find any words. The moment Leon stopped on the driveway you could see Angel coming closer and then opening the car door for you. You thanked her and got out of the car, also thanking her for the presents she got for you. For a short second it seemed that she had a tiny smile on her lips but it happened so fast, you weren't sure if you just imagined it.

You felt a light tap on your shoulder taking you back to the now. “Come with me. I actually got another present for you. But it wouldn't fit in your home.” Leon took your hand and led you through the crowd of people. He then let go of you, standing behind you and covering your eyes. “Do you trust me?” He asked to which you answered with a slight nod. You felt him start walking so you also started going forward. After a short while of walking and taking turns he finally stopped you. He slowly lifted his hands from your eyes and added some dramatic sound effects with his mouth.

As soon as your eyes got used to the light you looked around. You were still outside near the house, but somewhere you never went before. In front of you stood a black car, already showing signs that it wasn't completely new. You turned back to Leon, looking at him confused. “What..What am I supposed to do with this now?” You asked him kind of dumbfounded as if you missed something.

Leon let out a small chuckle while walking to the car and unlocking it. “This, my dear, is your own new car. I mean, not really new, I used it before and it's actually kind of old, but I don't have any use for it anymore.”

You looked at him, still unsure on how to react. “You do know that I don't have a driver's license, right?” You slowly walked toward the car and checked it out.

“Of course I do. But I took care of that as well. A friend from work will be your teacher for a few weeks. You’re going to be getting driving lessons every day and before you know it you can drive all by yourself. I promise you, everything is gonna work out just fine.”

You still looked at him, raising an eyebrow. “I- Leon, this is really nice of you but-”

He stopped you before you had the chance to finish that sentence. “-Nope, no buts. I'm giving this to you now and I don't want you to return it to me like that money a few months back. You hear me?” Before being able to argue he threw the car keys over to you, leaving no room for discussion.

You sighed and had to chuckle. “Alright then. Thank you, Leon. I mean it. I don't know how I deserve all this. There's no way I'll ever be able to repay you.”

“That's the reason all these things are gifts, Buttercup. I don't want anything in return. I just like to help you out a little.” He winked at you before taking your hand and leading you back to the main party.

From a few meters away you could see Angel talking to another woman and a man. You recognized the man as the one who was with Leon at that bar a few months back. He was also wearing a fancy suit. The woman next to him was wearing a yellow dress, making her an eye catcher when combined with her pink hair. Leon and you walked right up to them, unfortunately interrupting their conversation. Leon cleared his throat, making your presence known to them. The three of them turned to look at you, realizing who you were. “Happy birthday!” The small woman with the pink hair pulled you into a hug, resting her head on your chest as she rocked you back and forward. “Angel has told me a lot about you!” She said as she pulled away. “Leon’s friend!”

Leon introduced them to you. “This is my colleague Chris and his assistant Daisy.” He pointed toward the two people and gave you a smile.

You let out a small “Hello” before you started talking some more. “It’s nice to meet the both of you.”

“It’s nice to meet you properly.” Chris held out his hand for you to shake and you gladly accepted it. “It’s weird to think that just a simple dinner between Leon and I allowed for the two of you to meet.” He chuckled. Chris then began to talk about how long he and Leon had known each other and that they often go out for “jobs” together. You tried finding out what kind of jobs they were, but never got a serious answer. At one point it was just you Daisy, Angel and Leon. They began to tell you about their relationship and how long the two of them had been together. You had never seen Angel so happy.

After you guys warmed up, Leon left you to stay with them to change as well. The three of you went to the backside of the house to see the preparations that Leon and Angel made. Eventually you ended up sitting down at one of the patio tables with Chris and the two of you drank a glass of champagne together.

You and Chris chatted for a while as you began to see the courtyard fill up with people. You barely recognised anyone and wondered who invited them all. There were college kids and older adults.

After a small while Leon came back to you and Chris, now also wearing a suit that looked identical to yours. You looked at him and couldn’t hide a smile. “Looking good, Mr. Kennedy.” You said to him jokingly.

“I can only return that compliment.” He winked at you. As the last guests arrived, Angel allowed for people to get the fresh food that was just finished up for them. You also got a plate and went to get something nice to eat. You and Leon went up together and he helped you pick out some food, although it was plain you just went for some meat and cheese. After getting your dinner, you and Leon sat down next to Chris on a small table. Soon after, Alex and Jordan also joined filling all your glasses with some champagne they found on their way through the house. You didn't even want to ask where they were sneaking around and just thanked them. Like always, Leon added some ice into his drink before clinking your glasses together. You all then ate and drank together, enjoying each other's company and having a lot of fun. This time you didn't really worry too much about how much you or even Leon had drunk. You were just glad to have a big birthday party with all your new friends.

Once it hit around midnight most of the guests began to leave, leaving only a handful of you left. The evening was really great, you met some new people and also drank a lot. Now you and Alex sat at the edge of the pool with a bottle of beer in each of your hands. You must have been there for a while because at some point Leon came over to tell you to get away from the pool. “C’mon, you’re going to get cold over here.” He held out his hand for you to take but rather than accepting it like always you simply looked at it.

“No.” You replied to him as you looked out towards the pool and you took your shoes and socks off, placing them behind you on the floor. “I’m having a grand ole time over here!” You dipped your feet into the water.

“I don’t want you to fall in.” He crouched down beside you and looked at both you and Alex. “The pair of you are pretty drunk and I’d rather you stay with the adults.”

“I am an adult, Leon.” You turned to scoff at him, pointing your finger in his face. “I’m pretty sure I know how to look after myself. I can make my own decisions, I don’t need your help!”

“Fine.” He stood back up. “Just be careful okay? I’m surprised that no one fell in the pool and I don’t want you to be the person who does it.” He turned around to head back to where he was originally sitting with Chris, beside the giant heat lamp that sat on the patio.

“Oooo, I don't want you to be the person who falls in the pool…” You rolled your eyes at Alex as you mimicked what Leon said. “I won’t fall in.” You chuckled to yourself as you began to take your jacket off. “I’ll willingly go in!” You tossed your jacket over to your shoes and you pushed yourself off the ledge and straight into the freezing cold water. Alex looked at you surprised, then jumped in after you. You could see Chris trying to hide his laugh while Leon looked at you shocked. This wasn't what he expected to happen. He didn't exactly have a plan for his next step, so he just decided to let it happen. So now you and Alex were acting like little kids playing in this big pool. After a while however you were getting bored, deciding to get out of the cold water and drinking another glass of whiskey that stood on one of the tables, just waiting for you guys. You sat down on the garden chair, your new suit completely wet, leaving you freezing cold. Leon already went inside to get you two some towels to get at least kind of dry.

You tried to hide your shivering but after a few minutes Leon noticed it anyway. "You know, I told you it wasn't the best idea to get into that pool, right?" He gave you a smirk, showing that he knew exactly that he was right. You just shook your head, letting some water fly through the air and wetting Chris who was sitting next to you. Leon let out a sigh, standing up from his chair. "Follow me. I'll get you some dry clothes." You let out a groan, feeling like a child the way Leon treated you the last few minutes. Nevertheless you stood up from the place you were sitting, slowly following Leon. You suddenly felt the alcohol you drank in your body making you walk unsteadily. Leon seemed to notice and even though he wasn't exactly sober either he helped you walk. Together you went inside the house and into his bedroom. You tried not to touch anything fearing you would make it dirty, but as soon as you went into his bedroom you couldn't keep your balance anymore. You lay down on his bed, muttering a quiet 'sorry'. Leon didn't seem to care and just went into his closet and grabbed out a single black t-shirt. It was heavily oversized but you still accepted it. It was a combination of you being soaking wet and all of the drinks you’ve had throughout the night but you instantly began to unbutton your shirt and you tossed it to the side of the room, the wet fabric beginning to create a puddle on the carpet. You slid the shirt over your head and then took off your trousers, throwing them onto the pile. “You could have just given that to me. I could have put it down the laundry chute…” He raised his eyebrows as he picked up the wet clothes and threw them into the laundry bin. “C’mon.” He placed his hand on your lower back as he walked you out of the room and back downstairs.

“You’re mad aren’t you?” You looked up at him, the embarrassment from you jumping into the pool only just kicking in.

“Why would I be mad, Buttercup?”

“You told me to come and sit with you and Chris, but noooo I wanted to be stupid and be annoying.” You rolled your eyes at yourself, disappointed that you might have ruined the night.

He let out a small chuckle. "The most important thing is that you have fun, you hear me?" He stopped walking and looked you deep in the eyes. "That's all that matters to me." You instantly got red, unable to move or answer anything to what he just said. “I’m happy if you’re happy.” He placed his hand on the side of your face and stroked your cheek.

As you came back to where Chris and Alex were waiting, you noticed Angel and Daisy had joined them as well. They were talking a bit, well mostly Chris and Daisy anyway. Alex seemed too tired and drunk to even add anything to their conversation. When you were sitting down again Chris just got up to leave. "It was really nice getting to know you. But Daisy and I will go back to our hotel now, we have something to do tomorrow. Maybe we can have an evening like this someday again." You gave Chris and Daisy a goodbye-hug and they went to leave. Angel accompanied them to their Taxi they must have called when you were changing your clothes upstairs. After that she went inside, already cleaning up some parts of the house. Alex decided to also go inside, not helping Angel but rather to get some sleep. That was probably the only good idea they had in that state. You sat down on the garden bench taking another sip of your drink. Leon placed himself next to you, also drinking another glass of whiskey.

FEMALE VERSION (starting now)

MALE VERSION

It was just the two of you now. “Thanks for the party, Leon.” You looked up and smiled at him and he looked down and did the same. You weren't sure if it was the alcohol or maybe the hypothermia sitting in but you felt so hot looking at his face so closely. “I’ll be sure to remember it.”

“Are you sure you’re not too drunk to remember?” The smell of whiskey from his breath filled your nostrils and sent a warm feeling down your spine. Even though your soaking wet hair was keeping you cold, you felt so warm next to Leon. You simply let out a small chuckle at his little joke.

Leon held his arm around your waist, pulling you more onto his lap and allowing for you to lean on his chest. Your hair drenched his shirt, his fancy branded dress shirt. Once you realised what you had done you pulled away from him and apologised. “Oh god. I’m sorry, Leon.” You pulled the towel off of your shoulders and began to dab it on his chest, only making it worse. All you were doing was spreading it and making his shirt even more see-through, you would have been lying if you said you didn’t like what you saw.

“It’s fine.” He chuckled at you. “I’ve been wanting to take this shirt off all evening, it’s starting to irritate me.” He slightly leant forward so that he was no longer leaning on the back of the chair but also making sure that you stayed on his lap. With one hand he undid the buttons on his shirt while the other was placed on your hip, making sure that you didn’t fall. You watched him closely as he undid his buttons, even helping him with the very few that he struggled with. The only time he let you go was to allow for him to slide the sleeve off of his arm, but he instantly put his hand back, with slightly more grip than before, making your ass go slightly numb. Yet again, you’d be lying if you said you didn’t like it.

“Can I ask for one last birthday present?” You were shocked with yourself when you said that. The words came tumbling out of your mouth without any thought.

Leon placed his drink on the armrest of the chair and then placed his hand on your thigh. “And what is that, Buttercup?” He asked.

“I-” You swallowed hard, not being able to stop what you were about to say, it was like you were possessed. “I want you to fuck me.”

“Huh?” He answered. You knew he heard you, he just wanted to be a complete asshole. “I’m getting old, my hearing isn’t quite what it used to be.

“I said. I want you to fuck me, Leon.” You repeated yourself.

“Oh really?” He raised his eyebrows at you as he smirked. “Where’s your manners, Buttercup? I mean you’re going to have to ask a bit more politely than that.”

You were a bit taken back by Leon’s response, you were half expecting to be thrown onto his driveway and being told to never come back. But you were excited that you got a different reaction. “Please Leon. I want- I need you to fuck me.” You stuttered as you talked due to him sliding his hand up your thigh, playing with the fabric of your short mini dress. “I’ve been wanting you ever since you sent me that photo of you while you were away.”

“Did you touch yourself to that photo?” He asked you, correctly thinking that you had. You simply nodded at him, unable to get any words out as his hand was completely under your oversized shirt, fiddling with your skimpy underwear. “And you didn’t even think to ask for any more photos?”

“I didn’t want to overstep.” You admitted, shyly looking down.

He whistled at you as he didnt want to move either of his hands. “You could never overstep, Buttercup.” He hooked his finger around the side of your underwear and pulled it down your legs. “If you want anything from me, you can always ask.” He gave you a wink as he twirled your underwear around his finger, followed by him then throwing it onto the table in front of you. “What can I say?” He let go of your hips and placed his hand on the back of your head, slowly pushing you towards his face. As he was doing so his other hand felt like magic to you, his large fingers slowly caressed you and massaged your inner thigh. “I'm a giver.” He winked as he kissed you heavily. The both of you letting out the stress that neither of you knew you had, both of your shoulders untensing and collapsing. Your entire body had melted around him, you were like a puppet being played by his strings.

“Go on.” You heavily whispered to him.

He chuckled as he continued to kiss you, his stubble tickling your face. As you were preoccupied with his face, his fingers slowly but surely inserted their way into you, gracefully pumping in and out of you. “Are you alright?” He asked after he noticed your face was a little uncomfortable.

“Yes, yes.” Your breathing was heavy and you did feel uncomfortable, not because of Leon, but because you were anxious. “I- I’m just nervous.”

“What’s there to be nervous about?” He asked as he pulled a strand of hair out of your face.

“I’ve never done this before.” You admitted to him, but he didn’t seem phased, if anything he was excited.

“And?” He stroked the side of your face. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

You felt relieved at his response, and you began to relax, letting Leon do his thing. As he slowly moved his fingers in and out of your body his thumb slowly ran circles on your clit, sure you had done this by yourself when your roommate wasn’t home but Leon was making you feel things you had never felt before. It felt different with another person doing this to you, you were used to knowing exactly what was about to happen as you were the one in control, but now? Leon has you by the strings.

Leon kept the slow pace, not speeding up and not slowing down. He wanted for you to orgasm but he didn’t want you to do it too fast. As your breathing became heavier, so did Leon’s, you could feel his cock aching under your leg. If his pants weren't such high quality you wouldn't be surprised if he would have ripped them right then and there. You leant on Leon’s shoulder as your stomach began to tie into knots, your head was buried into his neck and you quivered on him as you began to orgasm, cum absolutely drenching both his finger and his leg. Although you were a little embarrassed at the mess you had made, Leon assured you that it wasn’t a worry. He slowly pulled his fingers out of you to make sure that he wouldn't hurt you at all. “Are you okay, Buttercup?” Just that nickname alone made you want to orgasm all over again. You simply nodded, and once you opened your eyes you saw him pull his fingers out of his own mouth, then putting them back under your shirt and drenched his fingers yet again but this time he put them in your mouth. You tasted your own cum and you weren't sure what it tasted like, you just wanted to lick his fingers not your own cum.

He eventually pulled his fingers out of your mouth and smirked at you. “Do I get to give you a handjob now? Is that how it works?” You asked him, earning a small smile and a laugh.

“No.” He simply replied as he scooped his arm under your legs and the other one on your back. “It’s your party, and I'll make you cry if I want to.” He placed you down onto the seat where he was just sitting and he knelt down on the floor.

“Wha-?” He interrupted you by leaning forward and kissing you, as he did so he spread both of your legs open using your knees. “Oh!” You chuckled as he went back down to his knees, giving you a smirk as he went down. Leon kissed his way up your thighs, sucking and biting every inch of you while he made his way towards your clit. You couldn’t help but fidget as he tickled you from his light stubble, causing him to laugh and him tickling you even more. Eventually you calmed yourself down as the only thing you could focus on was Leon’s tongue and his large nose. You looked down at him and the only thing you could see was the top of his head, his hair slightly moving back and forward. As Leon worked his magic you didn’t know what to do with your hands, you kept one on the arm of the chair, gripping it around the glass that Leon had placed there earlier, your other hand moved down your own body and you tangled it in Leon’s hair, grabbing onto it hard.

“Be careful.” He pulled away and breathed heavily. “You’re going to pull all of my hair out.”

You were taken back by his heavy breathing. “Can you even breathe down there?” You asked, genuinely concerned for him.

He chuckled and brushed his nose with his finger. “I’m fine. If I can’t breathe I’ll just pull away.” You nodded at him and he gave you a small smile before going back down, you made sure to loosen your grip a little on his hair, you sufficed to just slowly running your fingers through his locks.

You tilted your head back, banging it on the chair but you ignored it. Your body was too focused on trying not to suffocate Leon as he made you feel special. You shuddered, and flinched forward, holding both of your hands in Leon’s hair. He chuckled at your reaction and the small vibrations that came from his mouth were what sent you over the edge, your body continued to shake, wave after wave as you came on his face. You felt his tongue licking up all of it.

He pulled away and sat back, leaning against the coffee table. “How was that?” He asked. He looked at the watch on his wrist and then to his left at the sky. “How about we continue this in the bedroom?” He suggested as he stood up and held out his hand for you. “Angel wakes up at the same time everyday and I’m sure you don’t want her interrupting us.”

You couldn’t help but smile as you accepted his hand, standing up on your own two feet felt a little disorienting, from the combination of how much you had drank throughout the night and what Leon just did to you, but he made sure that you could walk. He led you up to his bedroom again, making this a night to remember.

BACK TO THE MAIN STORY

The next morning you were already sitting downstairs in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee. Your hangover made your head pound with every move and you thought you were just gonna end up vomiting on the kitchen floor. Leon was still in a deep sleep when you got up that morning so you didn’t want to disturb him by telling him your issues.

You were sitting there, wondering what's gonna happen next. You let the past night play through your head a few more times, wondering if it was a one time thing or meant something more. You let out a deep sigh, instantly regretting it and massaging your forehead.

You didn't notice Angel coming into the kitchen, asking if you were alright. You told her about your headache and severe nausea and she reached into a tall cabinet, pulling out a pill bottle. “Here.” She passed two of the pills and a bottle of water. “This should help, but be careful because it’s going to make you kind of tired.” You thanked her and swallowed the pills without question, followed by downing the entire bottle of water.

You sat beside the window with a large mug of coffee that you made for yourself, looking at the heavy rain that pelted against the window, just thinking about the possible outcomes now. It wasn't like you were regretting the past night, you just never had an experience like that.

Just after hearing a deep cough from behind you, you were taken back to reality. "Angel told me you were feeling sick, is everything alright?" You turned around, seeing Leon stand in the door frame. You took a deep breath, trying to find the right words.

"Yea.. it's just, well.. I don't really know actually." You took another sip from your coffee and felt Leon taking a seat next to you.

"Is it because of what happened last night?" He looked at you worried, scared that he might have taken it too far back then. You tried explaining it to him, failing miserably. “Are you embarrassed to be with an old man like me?” Leon put himself down. You shook your head, too hard making you feel sick again but you tried to ignore it.

"That's not it.. I'm just.. I don't want this to be just another one night stand to you. I don't know what I want but-"

“I won’t abandon you, if that is what you’re scared of.” Leon looked at you seriously and took your hand in his. You weren't really sure if there was still some alcohol inside your body controlling your actions, but you brought your head closer to his. You weren't really sure what it was between you and Leon, but you knew you were way more than just friends.

You felt Leon's hand on your cheek, also getting closer to you now. You closed your eyes waiting for him to take the next step. And before you realized it, you felt his soft lips resting on yours sending butterflies through your entire body. You smiled into the kiss, leaning closer to him.

“This is just like the movies huh?” He chuckled.

----

Taglist: @trinswhimsys @dixanadu

#resident Evil #re2 #re4 #re6 #resident evil vendetta #leon Kennedy #leon s kennedy #leon x reader #leon kennedy x reader #leon s kennedy x reader #resident evil x reader #x reader #x male reader #x female reader #x gender neutral reader #x gn reader

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tedturneriscrazy · 3 years

Text

And here we are with Yesterday's Lie, the season 2A finale!

Wow, this came up quick, huh?

Anyways...

What are you doing with all that, not-Luz?

(Also, cute photo of younger Luz. She had hair!)

That musical cue when not-Luz adjusted her hair was rather unnerving

Judging by Camila's reaction to that box being set out, she wasn't lying when she said she loved Luz's creativity

Freeing the rabbit from the trap did a lot to establish more of Camila's character. I'm glad we're finally getting more of her.

OH SHIT REAL LUZ IN THE MIRROR

"Are you sure this isn't gonna blow our faces off?" "Nope!"

That's a rather eclectic collection of ingredients for the door

I wonder if Amity also provided the abomination head

Group hug❤

There's the trailer shot

You only appear in reflections, huh? Interesting...

Jeez, Luz, priorities!

(Oh who am I kidding, the fact she's still thinking about her girlfriend is adorable)

I do love it when her accent comes through

Whoops, looks like wherever this is the magic of the Isles doesn't reach

Previously unmentioned dad whose face is obscured in the photo

GASP

Spider-Man moment

Oh, voice change in not-Luz!

Classic "I ain't goin' back, man!" moment

Also, it's beta Luz's bat!

"Monster Slayer Academia" I'm not entirely sure that doesn't actually exist...

"I will never understand anime..."😂😂😂

Oh, true form time!

Vee's gonna be a fan favorite, isn't she? (I ask, full well knowing the answer)

I mean, I've already seen plenty of Luca x Owl House fan art, so I imagine that may intensify

Luz seems to be quite understanding all things considered. I suppose all the people in the "Doppelganger isn't evil, actually" camp have been vindicated.

Oh, Eda

I don't think I like that camera...

So Gravesfield, Connecticut, huh?

Welp, there's a statue of a man that's probably Philip Wittebane

Oh, partially transformed Vee is gonna be irresistible to fanartists

Witch obsessed guy? Pamphlets? Hmm...

Wait, MARILYN?! As in Stan's ex?!

(I know she wasn't actually since the two shows don't take place in the same universe, but no way that nod wasn't deliberate)

"She tried to pay for a latte with a live raccoon" Eda I'm saying this in the nicest way possible: What the fuck

Those rats...buh

"BREAD OF WISDOM GRANTS US SPEECH! WE DESIRE MORE!"

Can't say I don't relate to Vee wrt confrontation

Luz has definitely had some...previous experiences with other kids. Creepy talking rats? Yes. Human high schoolers? No thank you.

Oh, fellow campers! Luz isn't the only one who had off-screen experiences.

That reading seemed...ominous

Right...contacts...

Side note: seems like that camp doesn't stomp out weirdness as thoroughly as previously speculated

Oh shit it's Sonic the Hedgehog! I mean Warden Wrath! I mean Roger Craig Smith!

I saw someone take issue with how Vee reacted to Luz running away to the Demon Realm, but considering her past experience and trauma, her reaction is understandable

Belos I don't care how much of a foxy grandpa you are, you fucking suck

"Skin's sure weird!"

She took the day off work to drive "Luz" to camp I just😭

Whether you think camp was a bad idea or not, Camila's a good mom

Oh dear, Sonic is a conspiracy bro

I guess we know who set up that camera. And the traps.

Oh, seems Eda didn't have elixir with her on one of her trips to the human realm...

"After watching a few Mew-tube videos I learned the truth!" Yup he's a conspiracy bro. Goddamnit, Sonic!

(I can rag on Sonic the Hedgehog all I want, I've been into the games since the Genesis days, well before most of y'all were even born)

Luz having a "BOI" moment

This guy definitely watches Alex Jones. Props to the TOH crew for teaching a new generation about these conspiracy creeps.

Vee is accustomed to a life on the run, but apparently not with Luz's determination and quick thinking.

Also, all this talk about being "outed?" Yeah I'm definitely seeing the trans allegory everyone's talking about.

Now Luz turns to the one person who can help

That "boop"❤ (Now we know where Luz gets it from)

Camila not believing all the Demon Realm stuff. Shocked. SHOCKED, I say.

Well shit, Camila's been a veterinarian all this time! Don't we all have egg on our faces!

It would explain how Luz is so good with animals

Sonic the Curator sure is something, huh

The scary thing is that there are people like him in real life. Worse, even.

Okay, I know this is a dire situation, but I am enamored with Camila's mom energy here. She's adorable.

Dude with a ponytail and cardinal on his shoulder to send the theorists in a tizzy. It'll be interesting to see how this all eventually comes together.

I just realized that that's a training wand on the table

And now Camila realizes this is no game

Further props to the TOH crew for making the antagonist of the episode a crackpot white dude. This is correct.

Yup, further trans allegory. Plus a nice example of a supportive-if-not-quite-understanding-everything parent.

And there's Camila going ham on a motherfucker. Turns out there was no lie in the "Two Truths and a Lie!" Rather, the lie was that there was a lie in the first place...My brain hurts.

Oh, she can appear in the rain. That's cool!

Now is time for Real Sad Hours

The way Camila is reacting...god...it hurts...

"Is this the only way I can touch you?" STOP😢

"Staying here was the best decision I ever made!" Uh oh...

That promise is totally not gonna come back up later in the most tragic, gutwrenching way possible. Nope. Nuh uh. No way that'll happen.

Dammit, Luz, not more lies! Oh, right. The episode title.

Her face really says it all.

Well, it wasn't quite the continuous pain train we convinced ourselves it was gonna be, but that ending? Ow. I'm glad Vee has the support she needs, but my heart hurts for the Nocedas. I really hope they can resolve the issues they clearly still have, because damn.

And now we get to chew on all that for the next however many months! Hooray! I knew I said I was ready for a hiatus, but it turns out I'm a big fat liar, because I'm not! Augh!

Well, I'll try to look on the bright side: At least my sleep schedule can normalize again? Also I can cancel my Sling subscription once 6-10 drop on D+. Neither DisneyNow nor Sling are optimal VOD experiences.

#the owl house #luz noceda #camila noceda #toh vee #vee noceda #idk i've seen other people use that for her #toh season 2 spoilers #toh s2 spoilers #the owl house s2 spoilers #the owl house season 2 spoilers #toh spoilers #the owl house spoilers

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hoe4almondmilk · 3 years

Text

Safety Net: Chapter 2

Present! Carol Denning/Reader

It’s been three days since you’ve been at max and it’s been honestly quite awful. You stared at the tray of food in front of you poking at it with your fork instead of eating it, you weren’t hungry and you were restless from not being able to sleep. Who could even sleep here? The lights are on constantly.

“Making art, (L/N)?” you looked up to see who the familiar voice belonged to, it was Piper with her fiancée Alex. Piper was starting to become a little more tolerable now that she was reunited with Alex. You were happy for them and honestly glad to have them here with you even if you were never particularly close with either of them during your time up at camp.

“I don’t know if I’d call it art but it’s something.” you chuckled, continuing picking at the food. “I miss camp, I feel like I'm always on edge here.”

“I definitely agree with that, sleeping with this fuckin broken arm hasn’t been pleasant.” Alex replied as she began eating her food. God, you almost felt nauseous watching someone eat. Food disgusted you right now. “You’re not pulling a Sister Ingalls are you?” Alex asked half jokingly but also sounding a little concerned.

“No, I just haven’t had much of an appetite lately, I feel sick looking at food, it’s probably just my anxiety. Also the food here looks repulsive..” you sighed.

“I don’t blame you, I would feel anxious too if I was sharing a bunk with the head of C-Block.” said Piper.

You turned your head to the left over where Carol was, she was playing cards surrounded by her posse. You and Carol haven’t really spoken much or been around each other since she basically scared you off the other day. It was kind of an unspoken rule, if Carol was in the room you stayed out of her way and hung around somewhere else until she came out which was pretty often since she was mostly out here playing cards. You were so deep in thought you forgot you were still looking in carol’s direction when you snapped back to reality you saw her staring straight at you with an emotionless expression, you quickly looked away.

“She’s actually not that bad, I mean besides telling me to get the fuck out the other day. She’s quiet and clean. except for when she’s looking at those magazines of men, that’s when it gets a little uncomfortable. I feel more sorry for you being bunkmates with Badison, Chapman.” you chuckled as Piper’s eyes rolled hearing her roomie’s name.

“Oh please don’t get her started, it will never end.” Alex groaned, rubbing her temple with her functioning hand.

“She’s giving you trouble?” You asked, actually concerned.

“Trouble doesn’t even begin to describe it. She’s a bully!” Piper exclaimed. “There is something deeply wrong with her.” Piper was normally a pretty dramatic person but you knew she wasn’t exaggerating when she was talking about Badison. You’ve only known Badison for a few days but there really was something wrong with her.

“I think there’s something deeply wrong with everyone here.” Alex replied. “They’re in maximum security for a reason.”

“I wonder what Carol did.” You said thinking out loud. “Everyone obeys her, shit even Badison is scared of her.”

“All I know is that one of her girls, Creech, is my bunkmate and I want no trouble.” Alex said, continuing to eat her food.

“Aw, look at that, all of the new cookies eatin’ together. What is this a fuckin pride parade?” you recognized that god awful bostonian accent, it was Badison as she began to sit down at your table.

“Well you know what they say about us gays, we hang out in flocks.” Alex replied sarcastically. You couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle.

“I would’ve never guessed you were a carpet muncher, Mouse. I guess you learn something new everyday.” said Badison. “I better be careful, don’t want you developing a crush on me or anything.”

“I’m picky with my women, you have nothing to worry about.” Your eyes widened realizing you said that out loud. It would’ve been an awkward silence if it wasn’t for Alex’s small chuckles.

“Oh you’re a funny little thing, now aren't you?” Badison replied, still shocked by what you just said.

“I meant that I'm not really interested in dating while i’m in prison, you know?” you said trying to cover your ass for what you just said.

“I got what you meant.” Badison said slowly coming closer to you. “You should really be more careful with who you smart off too though. Don’t wanna start off on the wrong foot with anyone here. Remember what I said on your first day. We can make you want to live or die.” Badison whispered and walked her way over towards Carol.

“I’m so fucked.” You said worryingly.

“Badison’s not gonna do shit, she just wants to scare you two.” Alex said, trying to comfort you.

You nodded. You looked over your shoulder once more to see Badison next to Carol as she played a card game with the other girls. You couldn’t help but feel a small pit of worry in your stomach.

Later that evening a few hours before lights out, you decided to go take a shower, something you had been avoiding for the past few days. It’s not that you were unhygienic, it's just you had been slightly depressed from the big transition of moving from up the hill to down the hill.

You took a quick look around the shower room, thank god it was empty. Empty showers were a rarity in any prison.

It was when you were washing your hair that you heard a couple of footsteps walking in. Well, that was a nice five minutes of peace and quiet. You ignored it and continued to rinse the shampoo out of your hair. Suddenly, you felt an arm wrap around your chest and something pointy and sharp being pressed against your right jugular.

“If you scream, I swear to god I will push this into your neck. You got that?” You nodded trying to hold back your tears. The arms around you flip you over and you’re faced to see two of Badison’s friends Eckelcamp and Teng.

“What did I do?” you asked quietly and shakily, almost choking trying to hold back your tears. You’ve mostly kept to yourself this whole time here, actively trying to avoid any trouble, you certainly don’t remember doing anything to these two. This is the first time you’ve even spoken to them.

“You disrespected Badison, bitch.” Eckelcamp said, still extremely close to your face. She wrapped her hand around your neck tightly with the shiv still firmly pressed against your neck. You were barely able to breathe. “Next time Badison talks to you, have some fucking manners.” she said slamming your back hard against the shower wall. You did your best to hold back a yelp. Getting stabbed in the neck with a dirty shiv was not the move for today.

“Next time you see her, apologize.” said Teng, “We’ll be watching. Let’s get out of here before a CO comes.”

Eckelcamp nodded in agreement and looked at you once more and yanked your hair pulling you down to the hard wet tile of the bathroom and left.

You waited till you heard their footsteps disappear to crawl into a ball and sob under the now cold running water of the shower. So this is what Badison meant when she said live or die. Your hands gently rubbed your possibly bruised neck. You finished your shower and got dressed before anyone walked in and saw you like this.

Once you returned to the common room, your eyes scanned the room for Badison. You looked over at Carol’s table, her usual spot but she was absent. You met eyes with Eckelcamp and Teng. Ignoring them you made your way to Badison and Piper’s cell. You really hated the fact that you were being practically forced to apologize to her but this bitch was not worth a stab in the neck with a dirty shiv.

Once you got to the cell you saw Badison laying on her bunk and Piper in hers reading a book. You lightly knocked on the open door.

“Hey, (L/N).” Piper said smiling but her smile quickly faded almost as if she could sense something not right with you.

“Hey, Chapman.” you smiled trying to not seem suspicious, as much as you liked Piper she had a tendency to involve herself in situations that she didn’t belong in.

“The fuck do you want, Mouse?” Badison asked sarcastically as she laid up from her bunk. She knew exactly what the fuck you wanted.

“I was wondering if I could have a word with you.” You asked. “Out here. In Private.”

“Whatever you need to say you can say it here with me and Gapman.”

“Please, Badison.” You were trying to hide the impatience in your voice. Piper was already looking at you suspiciously.

“Only because you said please.” Badison said she climbed down her bunk making her way out the bunk.

You walked over under the stairs. “I wanted to formally apologize to you for disrespecting you.” You said trying to sound sincere.

“I see you met Eckelcamp and Teng.” She chuckled looking at your neck. “Oh, those are gonna be some ugly bruises tomorrow.”

“It’s not like I have anyone to look beautiful for here.” you said rubbing your neck.

“Aw, you don’t wanna look pretty for your lesbo girlfriends.” Badison said, as she made a pouty face.

“You mean Chapman and Vause? Just because we’re gay doesn’t mean we’re dating eachother.” You were actually confused. Was she actually that dumb?

“What?” She looked visibly confused. “Anyway, That was a shitty apology.”

“What do you want from me, Badison?” You said already fed up.

“I don’t like you. I can look past that though if you fill up my commissary for the next two weeks. Don’t be stingy with me, (L/N). I know you got plenty of money.” She said with that sleazy fucking smile.

“Fine, deal.” You really didn’t want to do this but you also didn’t want anymore trouble with Badison or the rest of Carol’s gang.

“I accept your apology.” Badison said.

As you were about to turn around to leave you felt Badison’s foot slide under yours causing you to trip and fall hard on the ground. You heard Badison let out a loud laugh. You could feel your eyes well up with tears again and this time you didn’t even bother to stop them from flowing. Let them see you cry, you didn’t care anymore.

“Oops.” Badison said as she continued to laugh.

“(L/N), are you okay?” You heard Piper's voice as she tried to help you up. You must have hit the floor hard enough if Piper heard you fall from her cell.

“I’m fine, Chapman. Just go, don’t make this worse for the both of us.” You snapped as you stood up from the ground. You wanted to yelp from the shock of pain that shot through your body.

You looked over to see everyone at Carol’s table laughing, except for Carol. Your red puffy tear filled eyes locked with hers for a second. You looked away embarrassed. You hurried as fast as you could up the stairs to your cell. You wanted to lay down and hope you woke up from this fucking nightmare.

As soon as you reached your cell you climbed to the top bunk and crawled up into a small ball and just sobbed. You hated being seen as weak here. You didn’t like giving these people that power over you but you couldn’t help it. You were so wrong on your first day, you were finally beginning to crack. You weren’t sure how long you were crying but your sobs finally turned to small sniffles.

“You new cookies really do crumble quickly.” You heard that stern cold voice say. You lifted your head up to meet eyes with Carol. This is the second time she’s ever actually spoken to you. You quickly wiped your tears away. “Are you gonna say something or are you just gonna keep looking at me all pitiful?” Carol said as she leaned against the wall of the cell with her arms crossed.

“I don’t really have anything to say.” You continued to sniffle. “At least not without having to worry about getting shanked in the shower.”

“Oh, so that explains your neck.” Carol chuckled.

Damn was it really that noticeable already?

“I thought you would’ve known, your girls are the ones who did it.” You replied with a slight attitude putting your head back down.

“Whatever Badison has the other girls do has nothing to do with me.” Carol replied.

“I’ve been here for three days and you’ve never bothered to speak to me. Why the sudden change?” You asked.

“Am I bothering you?” Carol replied almost as if she was slightly offended.

“No, you’re not. Sorry, that sounded a lot ruder than it did in my head.” You rubbed your eyes, Please don’t beat my ass. You prayed. You had enough ass beatings for the rest of your sentence.

“I’m talking to you because I believe you have potential, (L/N).” Carol said with a slight smirk.

“Potential?” You asked, confused. What the hell does she mean by that?

“I want you to work for me. I can tell you’re smarter than most of these other girls here. It also makes sense considering the fact that we are sharing a cell together.” Carol said. She did have a point. Carol was not someone to be enemies with.

“I mean I guess. Look Carol, I’m just trying to keep my nose clean, do my time and-“

“And what? Avoid getting in any trouble? What happens if you get into another disagreement with another inmate and she starts a fight with you? You’re gonna get fed up with being someone’s punching bag and you’ll fight back. The COs aren’t going to see it as self defense. They’ll happily throw you into the SHU and add more time onto your sentence. Stick by me and I’ll make sure Badison or any other girls never lay a finger on you.” Carol did make a good point. “See me as a type of safety net, if you will.”

“Can you give me time to think about it?” You asked not sure if you would be able to do it.

“The offer is off the table then. Continue getting your ass beat. It’s not hurting me.” Carol said, trying to hide her annoyance.

You sat and thought about it for a minute. You knew you weren’t going to be able to just continue getting beat on. You were going to break at some point. You looked up at Carol and took a deep breath in.

“Okay, I’ll do it.” You had three years left on your sentence, that’s not a lot of time, you could do this.

“Shake on it.” Carol said coming up to you with her hand out.

You looked at her, a small smile forming at the corners of your lips. “Okay, boss.” You said as you shook her hand.

“Sit down here kid, I’m gonna show you how to play Bridge.” Carol said sitting on her bed as she began to shuffle a deck of cards.

“Bridge? Is that the game you’re always playing?” you asked as you slowly began to crawl off the top bed. Trying to ignore the pain in your sore arms and legs.

“Yep, It’s best I teach you now, you’re going to be playing a lot of it.” Carol said, laying out the cards in front of you as you sat down. “Shall we begin?”

What the hell am I getting myself into. You thought to yourself as you watched Carol explain bridge to you.

Chapter 3 here

#OITNB #Orange is the new black #orange is the new black fanfic #fanfics #carol denning x reader #carol denning #carol denning/reader

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gifted-burnout-archive · 3 years

Text

Driving Home For Christmas

Word Count: 3.8K+

Author’s Note: we’re back bitches, and with new stories every day until the 25th!! and we had to start with our favourite star herself, julie molina, because of course! i loved writing this, we love brother alex, we love having last names for the fucking characters!!!

Pairings: julie x reader - brother!alex mercer x reader - willie x alex

Warnings: fluffiness!!

The Mercer children hated spending their Christmas holidays in Aspen. In fact, there wasn’t anything the siblings hated more.

The luxurious ski resort cabin certainly had charms: the hot tub on the porch, the on demand hot chocolate, the fast passes to get on the slopes ahead of the general public, and that was all before you got to the world renowned chef, Portia, that was on-call twenty four hours of the day, seven days a week, able to make whatever their hearts desired. Anyone else might have thought the resort, covered in snow and holiday decorations, like a scene from one of those Hallmark Christmas movies that are always just on in December, was the perfect winter wonderland, and the sort of place anyone would die to spend the end of their year.

But Alex and Y/N Mercer didn’t hate Aspen; they hated their passively-homophobic parents and extended family that always showed up to ruin the festive cheer. Whether it was by berating the heir to the family fortune about his boyfriend back home in California; or their consistent pestering of Alex’s younger sister Y/N about when the girl would find herself a decent, upstanding boyfriend, like she hadn’t spent her entire childhood until the last year stuck in an array of all girls’ boarding schools across the great United States.

With the pros of the cabin weighed out by the con of their family, it came to be that on Christmas Eve the brother and sister sat amongst the slow-moving traffic on some interstate between the Colorado ski lodge and home, in sunny California, already ten hours into their drive.

“I still can’t believe… Dad is going to kill us, you know?” Alex said, swaying along to the song playing softly from the beaten up car’s stereo, his knees pulls up to his chest thanks to the bags that sat in the footwell. The car was overflowing, a mixture of luggage and gifts for those waiting on the other side of the sunshine state’s border.

Whatever snow adorned the old red car roof had been melted away the closer they got to the coast, the driver more and more grateful with every slow passing mile that she had saved up to buy her own mode of transportation. She hadn’t followed in her older brother’s footsteps of taking dad up on the offer of a car: the high-tech monstrosity Alex drove around Los Angeles was the sort of car that would be shut down remotely if stolen: Y/N’s car could barely get a radio signal.

“Dad will kill me; he needs you to complete some masterplan. Wanna theorise about what private institution he’ll send me to next?” Y/N asked with a smile to her older brother, the pair sharing a laugh in the glow of red brake lights.

Their relationship had always been easy: Alex was his little sister’s best friend, and he hers. Whether that was because money led to lonely children, or because they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company beyond their sibling obligations, the pair didn’t bother to find out. They were close, and that was what mattered to them.

“He’s running out of them now, you know. How many was it before you convinced him Los Felix was the answer to all your problems?” Alex asked with a raised eyebrow and smirk, leaning an elbow on the central divider of the tiny car, avoiding the sharp edge of a ski blade to tease his sister with a knowing look. “Was it seventeen or-”

“Twenty-four… I made a point to average it out to one every four months or so. Keeps mom and dad on their toes, makes the disappointment even more apparent when I show up on the doorstep again.” Y/N cut in, correcting her brother, the blonde boy taking her free hand and squeezing it.

“At least we keep disappointing them together…” He offered as words of solace, their hands breaking apart upon the movement of traffic, red lights dimming as the cars began rolling forward at a steady pace. “Thank you, Smalls… For this whole thing.” The nickname he used so often rang in Y/N’s ears and made her smile.

Her brother meant the words, she knew it: he had pleaded with their parents before they left to stay in California, with Reggie or Julie or Luke, but the mention of his bandmates had ended the conversation and turned it into their dad reprimanding Alex for his ‘fanciful’ mindset. The drummer never stood a chance against the united front that was their parents: they knew he wanted to stay for Willie, of course he did: the two had been planning their Christmas vacation together since Halloween, dates to the ice rink at Santa Monica Mall, to the university for lectures, to the movies to catch old Christmas movies on the silver screen. Half the reason their parents had forced Aspen onto the kids once again was because Alex had found his person, and Willie found Alex, and Mr and Mrs Mercer would do a fair amount to convince the general public, themselves, and Alex that he wasn’t gay.

The other half was because Y/N was pretty sure she had found her person too.

“Don’t sweat it, Alex.” She shrugged, moving up a gear as the traffic finally began to move towards an expected speed for the freeway. “Hearing mom and dad shout at us once they sober up enough to realise we’re gone? Priceless.” She let a regular smirk rest on her lips, indicating to take the upcoming turnoff, hopeful she might hit easy driving instead of the stop and start. The sun was setting before them, the sky painted shades of yellow and orange and pink and purple into the deep blue of the encroaching night, despite the time on her car dashboard only reading 16:42. It would be gone within the next few minutes, and the driver switched on her headlights in response.

“Alexander Washington Mercer! How dare you defy me in such a way: you know better than to follow your little sister so blindly!” Alex yelled into the cramped space, impersonating their father with the gruff voice the man in question used, like he constantly had a cough in his throat he couldn’t dislodge.

“Y/N Y/M/N Mercer! I expected better from a young lady of your fine standing! How are we meant to find you a good husband if you run off with your brother like you haven’t a care in the world?” IT was Y/N’s turn to impersonate a parent: the shrill shriek of their mother, Y/N raising a hand a messing with the locket around her neck the same way their mother fiddled with her pearls when she was distressed. The two shared a look through their chuckles.

“It’s just a phase!” They said in chorus, the line their parents most often used in arguments against either of the pair. The laughter died away with the words, both letting out a soft, melancholic sighs, and falling into a comfortable silence. They were just skirting the outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, with at least another six hours of driving left by the state of the road, Y/N joining the back of another queue of cars all headed somewhere.

“Driving home for Christmas. Oh, I can't wait to see those faces, I'm driving home for Christmas, yea. Well I'm moving down that line. And it's been so long, but I will be there. I sing this song to pass the time away. Driving in my car, driving home for Christmas…” Alex turned the volume dial, letting the song play out, beginning to sway along to the radio once again, humming a harmony line over Chris Rea’s raspy lyrics.

Y/N always like that: that her big brother was so musical. She had spent so long away form him, at every other boarding school in the country, she forgot how talented Alex was sometimes. IT was only getting to see him and his band perform the year before that she really clicked to her brother’s undeniable star power, and that ability was shared amongst his friends. But it wasn’t just his talent that made Y/N happy, but that fact that she never saw her brother happier than when he was performing with his ‘other’ family.

In truth, they were hers too… One of them was why she was racing home so eagerly, why she had masterminded the entire escape for her and Alex. Neither of them would have been able to survive another minute with the monsters they unfortunately call relatives.

By the time they had passed Las Vegas and were closing in on the California border, the dashboard read 19.53. The countless games of ‘eye-spy’ and ‘would you rather’ grew old quickly, replaced for an hour by Alex reading out the pages of the closest book they could scavenge amongst the piles of presents and luggage, one of Y/N’s art textbooks. That then turned onto Alex recovering his drumsticks, tapping and singing along with the radio as Christmas song after Christmas song played.

“Smalls, what if we don’t make it?” Alex posed the question for the first time that night, and Y/N was honestly shocked it took her big brother so long to reach his usual state of worry. “What if we drove all this way and we don’t make it in time?”

“Relax, Alex, honestly… Look, we’ll get there when we get there. No-one even knows we’re coming, it’ll be fun, a surprise!” Y/N suggested, stopping herself for continuing to press down on her car horn, honking in anger at the dude who just cut in front of them. “Fucking asshole.” She muttered, looking back to her brother to be met with a face of surprise.

“How is it that I am always labelled the emotional one?” The question made Y/N smile, reaching over and patting on the blonde locks atop her brother’s head.

“Because rage isn’t emotion, it’s power.” Y/N quoted their dad again, putting on the gruff voice Alex had portrayed hours before, letting her neck roll and crack out air pockets once the words hung in the air. “With your little bandmates, it may not be true, but in this car? It most certainly is.” She reminded turning her eyes back to the road and putting the car back in gear to drive, following the car in front as the traffic began to move again.

“You know, I never thought church would be that fun! Is it always like that, or do they just ram up the wow factor for the holidays?” Reggie asked as he followed close on the footsteps of the Molina family, Luke to his right as he received glances from those surrounding him. “What?! I’m not exactly the person you’d expect to head on over to midnight mass every year, dude.” Reggie defended, Ray unlocking the front door of the house before turning around and placing a hand on the bassist’s shoulder.

“Well, we were glad to have you along with us, Reggie. Glad to have you for the holiday too, both of you, in fact.” Ray opened the statement to Luke, whose eyes darted up and were followed by a bright grin.

“Glad to be here, Mr Molina.” The guitarist responded with a dashing smile before rushing inside, his destination quite certainly the fridge, where Carlos was already searching for snacks before bed.

The Molina family had kept the tradition of midnight mass ever since Julie was little, a chance for some spiritual connection to the holiday season as well as familial. That year, with the Peters and Pattersons off on a Bahama cruise, Ray had welcomed Julie’s best friends and bandmates with open arms. The only thing that would have made it better was the Mercer kids.

It seemed to be why, while the boys all gravitated to chocolate chip cookies and warm milk before bed, Julie had idled over to the window, her eyes drifting out into the front yard, searching for someone who wasn’t going to show up.

“Mija…” Ray said softly, watching his daughter from across the room, a soft smile tracing his lips as she let out a yawn. “Mija, you should be going to sleep. Papá Noel won’t deliver his gifts if you stay awake all night staring out a window.”

“But dad…”

“I know it sucks, honey, but we’ll see them at New Years, right? And tomorrow we’ll have Flynn’s family and tía and Willie all over for food.” Ray reminded, and Julie let out a sigh, finally diverting her eyes from the window and up to her dad, his hand outstretched for her to take. She took it, and Ray lifted his daughter to her feet and into a hug. “I love you sweetie, now go get ready for bed. I have to round up your friends before they eat all the food in the house.”

With that, Julie gave up on the sliver of hop she had held for that night, shuffling up the stairs somewhat defeated. She knew it wouldn’t happen, in the back of her head she knew it wouldn’t happen, but she had really hoped Alex and Y/N would just show up, out of the blue, and surprise them all by spending Christmas back home, with them, with her. Of course, Mr and Mrs Mercer were far from nice people, far from unwealthy people: the idea of their kids spending Christmas at the Molinas was probably something they flat out refused to even think about.

It didn’t take long for Julie to get into her Christmas-themed pyjamas and brush her teeth, tying her hair into braids and tidying them back with a cap for the night: her night time routine was one she knew well, and was efficient in doing. Her makeup washed its way down the bathroom sink, her glasses perched themselves onto the slight dents the pads had carved into the sides of her nose, her blue monster slippers kept her feet warm as she shuffled back to her room and into her bed. She tried to focus on the better parts of the day: of making gingerbread houses and rehearsing Christmas songs with the guys, of putting up the final decorations on the tree in the living room while trying to avoid her father’s cries of anguish over another badly wrapped present from the other room.

But she couldn’t help but think about how much better it would have been had Alex been banging on his drumkit, how much happier he would have felt spending Christmas Eve with Y/N by her side…

The thought had Julie grabbing at her nearest pillow, squeezing it under crossed arms as she scrunched her eyes shut and willed sleep to come. At least if she slept, she wouldn’t be thinking about Alex and Y/N being trapped with their not-so-nice family in some snowed in cabin in some mid-west mountains, not consciously anyway.

tap.

A noise, one Julie excused as a creak of the house floorboards or a falling branch from the tree outside, seemed to echo in her near silent room, save the girl’s breathing.

tap.

This time, Julie’s eyes darted open, though she refused to move. Two was a coincidence, there were plenty of explanations for two almost identical sounding taps spaced apart almost perfectly.

“JULIE!” A loud whisper sounded from outside the girl’s window.

Now, that wasn’t coincidence.

The girl jumped out of bed, rushing over to her window in a blur of sequined candy cane pyjamas, muddling with the latch on her window before opening it up wide to the chill of LA winter air, her eyes darting across the grounds below to find the source of the noise. A part of her wondered if she might be dreaming, if it might have all been the saddest and happy dreams because she’d wake up any moment and the sight would be gone.

But there they stood, Alex and Y/N, in her driveway, the latter’s car parked behind them and looking like it most certainly drove for nineteen hours straight.

“Dad!” Julie called back into the house, the smile on her face brighter than any of the Christmas lights Y/N had seen on their drive through the residential district. “Dad, we have some extra guests.” She finished, her calls waking Carlos, Luke and Reggie in the process of alerting Ray, the windows of the house suddenly lighting up and the household woke for good news.

With a final grin out the window, Julie disappeared from Y/N’s sight, to no doubt meet her and Alex by the front door, and the pit in her stomach Y/N had tried to ignore for the entire car journey from Colorado seemed to only get bigger, louder, more persistent, now they had finally arrived back in California, in LA, at the Molinas. She had initially pinned the feeling to adrenaline from disoberying her parents, from packing up her car and driving almost a full day to arrive three states west of her original destination.

Looking at the house’s front porch, a muddle of Christmas gifts in both her and her brother’s hands, Y/N came to the conclusion that the pit wasn’t because of leaving Aspen: it was because of arriving in LA.

“I’m not going to ask how you made it or why you are here, but we are happy to see you all the same.” Ray’s kindly tone and words brought Y/N from her thoughts, blinking away the haze to find the door now open, Alex, Reggie and Luke in a tight embrace with presents scattered over the driveway, and Ray standing in front of her with Carlos by his side. “I would suggest one of you text your parents’ that you are safe though.” He added with a chuckle, opening his arms for Y/N to rush into, the pair embracing in a tight hug.

“Nice to be home, Mr Molina.” She replied with a smile as the pair broke apart, only for Alex to take the next slot of hugging Julie’s literal, and the four other teens’ figurative, dad.

“I made up the spare room just in case, you know. Julie’s request.” Ray added, gesturing with a thumb back to the front door, forcing Y/N’s eyes to follow.

She was so beautiful, every time Y/N saw Julie Molina her breath escaped her body, her limbs became heavy, her mind fogged: her heart began beating at a pace too fast for her body and her lips lost any real words.

“I thought you’d be in Aspen until the day after Boxing Day.” Julie said with a shy smile, the five guys in the front yard glancing amongst themselves before Carlos cleared his throat.

“I think we should put the presents under the tree!” The ten year old declared, scooping up some of Alex’s dropped gifts and marching inside, prompting Ray and Luke to do the same. Alex rans back to the car, retrieving the last straggler gifts from the car’s back seat while Reggie relieved Y/N of the stacks of presents in her own hands, save one. The two teens shared a smile, Reggie going the extra mile to pass on a wink of good luck to the younger Mercer before the bassist and drummer both disappeared into the house, leaving Julie and Y/N alone.

“I uh, I made a decision… A decision to kidnap my brother and drive a day across country.” Y/N managed to get the words out without too much difficulty, trying to get over the cotton mouth she was experiencing. “Because I didn’t want to spend the holidays without the people I love most.” She added, finally reconnecting her leg movements to her brain and walking across the driveway to meet Julie at the foot of the porch steps.

“Without the people you love most?” Julie questioned, taking a step closer, the girls standing toe to toe, Julie looking up at Y/N with doe eyes that could melt diamonds.

“Without the girl I love most.” Y/N corrected herself, tucking the small gift box she held into her back pocket. The words were seemingly sufficient enough in hello, as Julie launched herself onto her girlfriend, their lips crashing together in sweet harmony for the first time in weeks, thanks to the Mercer parents.

Y/N’s hands cupped Julie’s face as they shared in the sweet, intimate moment, Julie’s hands pulling Y/N closer by her t-shirt. Their lips colliding was the action required to dissipate that pit in Y/N’s stomach completely, her senses in overdrive finally being close to her girlfriend again. The smell of Julie’s perfume, the minty taste of toothpaste still on her lips, her glasses brushing against Y/N’s cheek. For Julie, it was much the same experience: the kiss made her head spin, overcome by the smell of Y/N’s car air freshener and the taste of red vines on her lips.

The pair broke apart after a few moments, their foreheads pressing together as peaceful silence washed over them, the cool breeze counteracted by the red heat that had risen to both girls’ cheeks.

“I wouldn’t want to spend Christmas with anyone else.” Y/N breathed out softly, one hand taking Julie’s in hers, the other retrieving the gift from her back pocket. “Mostly because I missed you like crazy, partly because I wanted to give you this.” She explained, the girl before her grinning and taking the gift box offered with bubbling excitement.

“Can I open it now?” Julie asked, and Y/N glanced at the watch on her wrist.

“I mean, it’s technically Christmas so…” Y/N giggled when Julie let out a shout of joy, pulling off the ribbon holding the box shut and shimmy-ing the lid off, to reveal a small potion-looking bottle amongst tissue paper. Julie lifted it out of the box, a small key glinting in the porch light within the bottled, caught in mid-air by invisible strings withing the decorative gift.

“It’s so beautiful… What is it?” Julie asked, pure curiosity in her words as she looked at the bottle in wonder. In response, Y/N pulled her locket out from beneath her shirt, gesturing to a small keyhole on the front Julie had never noticed adorning one of the girl’s most essential items before.

“That, Miss Molina.” Y/N started, grinning from ear to ear, exuding a shaky confidence that seemed like it might falter at any second. “That is the key to my heart.”

“Y/N…”

“I love you Julie.” They had never said it so directly before, ever. They always skirted round the actual words, always knew what the other meant without need for clarification. But under the porch light of the Molina residence, unaware of Alex, the guys, Ray and Carlos watching from the living room window, after having driven through so much traffic just to try and get to her on time for Christmas, and with Julie standing there in her festive pyjamas and blue fuzzy slippers and looking at her like that, Y/N had never felt more sure of something in her life.

“I love you too, Y/N.” Julie promised, pulling her girlfriend close again, the kiss shared this time chaste, though no less sweet.

“Merry Christmas, Molina.”

“Merry Christmas, Mercer.”

Tags (some people I think might like this festive nonsense): @reggiesleatherjacket @parkeret @calamitykaty @crybabyddl @delicatelukepatterson @lukespatterson @kcd15 @siennanoelle01 @eries45 @lolychu @lazydaisy19 @reggieandthereggies @writerinlearning @mjflower @uhmitstori @walkingonshunshine @kristencoontz @vicesvsvirtuesfanfic @ritz-hell-hotel @mishappend @dovegranger @dmcfarland1 @cherrymaybank @oswinsleaf @only-here-for-jatp @jatpfan99 @n0wornever @bookdealer5

Twelve Days Of Christmas: 2/12 will be released in 24 hours! Who will our story focus on? Can you guess? I’ll give you a hint: we’ll be going back to 1990s...

#abby's twelve days of christmas #julie molina x reader #julie x reader #brother!alex x reader #julie and the phantoms #willex #jatp #alex mercer #reggie peters #luke patterson #jatp fanfic #fluff

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sunset-curve-fantom · 3 years

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Unsaid Emily- Luke x Reader

Luke Patterson was one of the most genuine, funny, musical people you had ever met, except he was a ghost. His buddies and him were killed by tainted hotdogs in the ‘90s and now, now they were making their comeback in 2020 with the help of Julie and yourself.

When Luke left this world, he left his parents behind with an uncertainty of how their child lived in his final moments. They had been fighting at the time, so there had not been much communication between them for some time. They hated the direction their 17-year-old was heading, and instead of being understanding, they made Luke was feel trapped, like they were trying to change his greatest love in life, his band and more importantly his music.

You had been blissfully unaware of how much Luke was truly hurting until his birthday, which happened to be today because there he was sitting on his parent’s counter, hot tears running down his face. Your heart broke seeing him so upset, you never realized how much Luke was really hiding behind his façade. He was trying to make up for the life he never got to live, they never saw him play or get married, to grow old. He lived a life that was cut abruptly short, and he would never forgive himself for walking out that night.

The more Reggie and Alex talked about the past, the more you realized that Luke spent a lot of time at their house. Like he was trying to make new memories with his parents who could never see him in the way you do. In their eyes, he was gone but in yours he could never be more alive.

So here you were, waiting for Luke to return to garage. You asked Julie and the boys to let you talk to him alone, the bond you had was something special and you felt he would open up to you more. Focusing on the book in front of you, it felt like you had been waiting forever. You knew he it was his birthday so he would be gone for most of it, so you just had to play the waiting game.

No sooner did you finish the last page of your chapter, did Luke poof into the chair next to you. You could see that his eyes were puffy, and his face was red from all the crying. You knew he was hurting but you did not know how to even approach him. He seemed shocked to see you sitting there by yourself, usually you were off with Julie or the boys.

He shifted in his seat trying to hide his sniffles, “Hey Y/n, I wasn’t expecting you to be here”

“Well… I thought we could talk. I just noticed you’ve been kind of distant and I wanted to make sure you were okay” you said honestly, you truly just wanted to make sure he was okay, or more so check to make sure he would be okay eventually.

He just sighed at me, trying to avoid my statement, it was clear he didn’t want me to be involved with his pain. He would rather keep it to himself than burden someone else with his problems from beyond the grave.

“Luke, please. I just want to help…” you said again, trying to get him to open up. He couldn’t get this all pinned up inside of him, eventually he was going to explode, and it was going to be fatal for everyone involved.

He was avoiding your eyes, afraid of opening the flood gates and not being able to close them again, he had been crying for days and he didn’t want to cry in front of you.

“I really just don’t want to talk about it, please just drop it”

“Luke… I know… I know it is your birthday, I know where you have been all day… so please don’t lie to me” you said, sitting on the coffee table in front of his chair, you could see his eyes rolling.

“Seriously. You and Julie preach about boundaries and you stalked me. Really y/n?” He said, the anger clear in his voice, so you did the one thing you could think of. You reached out to him, and surprisingly your hand rested on his knee instead of going through him.

The look of shock mirroring on his face as he placed his large hand onto yours. It was a sense of comfort, something he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

“Luke… I know I didn’t… I mean I know I shouldn’t have spied on you. But I am worried about you, I know it’s your birthday and you spent most of your day at yours parents. I can’t even begin to imagine how you are feeling, but I am here for you, every step of the way. I know it doesn’t mean much but- “Luke cut you off.

“It actually means more than you could ever know. I never talked to the boys about my parents, so it is nice to have someone who knows. My parents… when I left this world I left on bad terms. I was doing something that they didn’t want me to do. They wanted me to finish school, get married, basically have a life worth living. But I was so focused on my music and the band, that I walked out. I walked out and that is the last memory they have of me. I walked out that door and I never came home…” He was choking back his tears; you only gripped his hand tighter. You just wanted to take away this pain, so you just stood up wrapping your arms around him.

You could feel his tears on your shirt, you pulled back wiping more of them away with your thumbs. He caught your gaze, “Please… don’t tell the boys. I don’t need any more pity”

You felt a frown appear on your face, “Luke, I don’t pity you. I know how hard it is to lose someone, and I just want to be here for you. Did you ever show your parents your music, or write anything for them?”

He pulled away from you, so you just sat back down on the coffee table. “Whatever I wrote for them, it would never matter. My music was nothing to them, it was always the one thing that drove me away. They regretted buying me that guitar the moment I started playing. They lost me, and they will never forgive themselves no matter what.”

You couldn’t help but feel tears pool in your eyes as well, you wanted nothing more than to take back the past, to give your life for his, for a moment to make up with his parents.

“I wrote one song; it was for my mom. It was right after I ran away, and it was everything I didn’t know how to say to her. But now, she will never hear everything I wanted to say, she was so important, and I just left her there”

You processed his words, you knew exactly what song it was and tomorrow you were going to give that piece of art to his mom, and hopefully it would heal some of the open wounds in her heart. You hand already made up your mind about that.

*Next day*

You woke up early, before heading across town. You knew if you waited later in the day, that you would change your mind about this. You knew Luke would be mad, but you felt he needed this to heal, and so did his mom.

You quietly pulled into the Patterson’s driveway, trying to keep your nerves under wraps. You shut the car door and made your way up the drive. You were almost to the front door when Luke poofed in front of you. The look he gave you was not exactly good…

“What- why are you here??” he questioned; you could barely look into his eyes. You knew he would be angry when he found out your reasoning.

“I wanted to help- so I brought Unsaid Emily with me for your mom. I think she deserves to hear everything you couldn’t say to her. You can be mad at me, but I need to do this for you and for her” You said with confidence before rigging the doorbell, Luke just scowled at you. He was going to give you an earful later.

Moments later the door opened, and there stood a man. He was older from some of the pictures you had seen, but he was Luke’s dad, and you knew that.

“Hi, may I help you?” He spoke softly

“Yes, Hi. My name is Y/n, Y/n Y/l/n. My friend lives in the house where Sunset Curve used to practice, and I found something that you might want.” You said, feeling the hot tears pool in your eyes as you saw him suck in a deep breath.

He stepped aside letting you in, Luke followed in behind you.

You picked up a photo on the table, “Is this your son? Luke, right?”

He nodded before talking, “He was about 2-years-old in that photo. He was definitely a light in our life” A small smile fell onto your lips; he was the light of your life now. Even in death, he was the most perfect, and incredible person you had ever met.

Before you could speak again, you saw Luke’s mom come into the room, “Hi honey, did I hear the bell ring” she just offered you a small smile.

“Yes, this is Y/n and her friend lives in the house where the band used to rehearse. She brought something for us” He said to his wife, who looked at you with wide eyes.

“I assume you must be Emily?” You asked, sending Luke a look across the room. You could tell he was holding in a breath.

She nodded, before you continued, “I was cleaning out the garage and I found this song. It is called “Unsaid Emily”, I could happily sing it for you… if that’s okay?”

“Uh- could you maybe wait a moment, I have something you’ll need” Luke’s dad said, before retreating out of the room. He quickly returned with a guitar in hand.

“it was a birthday present for Luke, we never got to give it to him. It would be wonderful if you could play it for us… if you can play?” His dad said, handing you the fresh guitar. You caught Luke’s gaze across the room, he was in shock. He always thought they hated his music.

Taking a deep breath, you sat down in front of them with Luke’s lyrics in front of you. It took you a few minutes to tune the guitar before you began singing,

First things first

We start the scene in reverse

All of the lines rehearsed

Disappeared from my mind

When things got loud

One of us running out

I should have turned around

But I had too much pride

It was like as soon as the song started, it had come to an end. You could swear you could hear Luke still singing the song, like he wouldn’t be able to stop.

“You have no idea what you have given us…” Luke’s mom said, playing her hand on yours. You just grabbed it tightly.

“I can say, I write my music in the same place he did. It is a beautiful place full of happiness. I just thought you would want to know that. He lived doing the one thing he loved the most, and that inspires me everyday” You said, pushing the guitar back in their direction.

His dad just shook his head, “Keep it, I think Luke would want you to have it. And please, come back. It is great to hear his music inspired someone, especially someone so gifted”

You were shocked, this was an incredible gift, especially from Luke’s parents of all people.

“I could not thank you enough, I promise I will be back soon… I will try to find more things of Luke’s” you said, gently hugging his parents before heading out the door. You gripped the guitar close to your heart, it was an incredible gift.

You got in your car, and there was Luke. You could see the tear stains on his cheek, you intertwined your hand with his.

“I cannot thank you enough for what you just did… You gave them back a hope, a happiness in their life…” He said, choking back more tears.

“Luke, I did this for you… Don’t thank me. I just needed to do something… I wanted to bring you closure as well. You don’t know how much I care about you Luke.” You said, rubbing your thumb on the back of his hand.

His head whipped in your direction, “Of course I do, your dork. I know how much you care because I feel the same way about you. This is definitely something interesting we have. And I may be dead, but I am not dumb.”

You just laughed at his remark, Luke was always going to be the one who held your heart. He was the one who made your world spin in ways no one has. Luke was your one in a million, and he was going to be that until the end of time.

#luke patterson imagines #luke patterson #luke patterson x reader #luke patterson smut #reggie #reggie x reader #reggie julie and the phantoms #alex #alex x reader #alex julie and the phantoms #julie and the phantoms #julie and the fat ones #julie x reader

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ghostofmichelangelo · 3 years

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silent patient ~ alex michaelides review/reaction

** DISCLAIMER! - contains a lot of spoilers about the book **

** Read at your own risk of spoiling the storyline **

so i just finished the silent patient and my god what a fucking ride. after finishing it, i literally could not articulate it whatsoever cause i was trying to put 2+2 together for ages. the sheer cleverness of the writer had astounded me. i was also extremely shocked at how the writer was able to wrap up the entire plot of the book in not more than 20 pages max, managed to keep it completely unexpected and while doing so, evoke such a powerful reaction from the readers. i would bow. the storyline was absolutely fresh. it was very original and it was written in a language which was easy to read through and easy to visualize. that’s what i really liked about the book. it was written incredibly well written especially the main characters i.e alicia berenson (the patient) and theo faber (the psychotherapist). the character development happened very smoothly and slyly. the length was also perfect. what i mean to say is, it is not unnecessarily long wherein it is getting too descriptive and at the same time, it was also not too short and abrupt. i felt like all the words in the book were written judiciously and all the details had a role to play in the overall story. every single word had a purpose. none of the bits seemed overexplained (*coughs in king*) or irrelevant. for me personally, it surprisingly had a lot of elements which i really like in general and did not expect to be in it judging by the first look or the first few pages. i am talking about the use of greek mythology, particularly the tragic story of alcestis, art, interpretation of art and psychology. usually i don’t come across these themes when i’m reading about a murder (i'm fairly a new reader, more like a resurrected reader). at least in contemporary fiction. another thing that kept me on edge every step of the way was the fact that the climax wasn’t revealed till the last few pages of the book. I would like to emphasize on the word ‘few’ cause the story is wrapped up in pretty much the last 10-15 pages of the book which is something extremely risky and difficult. The fact that the writer was able to summarize the entire plot and tie all the loose ends in the final 10 pages is something that is definitely worth all the appreciation in the world. to do such a task and so effortlessly needs a lot of skill, planning and courage. the last 10-15 pages were the ‘make it or break it’ point in the book which was handled very intelligently and naturally it evoked the intended reaction out of the readers. the readers made it through triumphantly without any chance of disappointment. now, diving into the main plot points which got me fkn charged with emotions was obviously, without a doubt, the ending. I felt like such an idiot for not seeing it coming. for some reason i saw kathy cheating on theo and, alicia and gabriel’s story as two separate things altogether. i did not, for once, get the slightest inclination that maybe the two can be related. i just don’t know why. maybe i trusted theo as a character way too much. i know that agatha christie had a big influence on the writer and boy, did he manage to pull a complete ‘roger ackroyd’ on us. it makes complete sense. why alicia ‘opened up’ to him out of all the people who tried to cure her, why theo insisted on having her as his patient, why he believed her ‘strange man’ theory unlike all the others, why alicia randomly attacked him etc. i did not understand the whole ‘strange man’ trope till i unconsciously found theo outside gabriel/alicia’s house while following the man who kathy cheated on him with. everything was in front of my eyes and still i wasn’t able to grasp it. even then the mere fact that theo was following some random man and the fact that alicia also complained of being watched/stalked did not ring a bell. it was only when he notices alicia berenson from the summerhouse, did i have my hallelujah moment. however, my dumbass brain still wanted to get confirmation, which it did by the end of the next chapter. when this happened, my mind went along the lines of, ‘wasn’t alicia in coma?’. That’s when

i realised the timelines of the story. my god, there was a point towards the end of the book where even i was convinced that alicia was lying and that maybe she has been making the whole of it up to fulfil the rest of her revenge plot. throughout the book, there wasn’t a single person i didn’t doubt. i doubted max, diomedes, yuri. these are apart from the obvious ones like elif, christian, gabriel himself, jean etc. it was only towards the end i realised that there were two time periods as well. i thought everything was happening side by side. that there was no past or present. this aspect took me a while to comprehend cause it became a little confusing. also I really appreciate how paintings were used to interpret the story/psyche of the person. i found it very refreshing and new. this is psychological aspect of the book which i really enjoyed. i wanted to see those pictures myself. overall, i feel like i can give this book a solid 5/5 stars and is hands down one of the top reads of this year by far and knowing me, i know im a picky reader, esp in thrillers.

P.S would love to do more book reviews if it helps out and if you enjoy reading them!

#books #bookreviews #darkacademia #lightacademia #silent patient #psychologicalthrillers #thrillers #murder #crime #truecrime #mysterybooks #mystery #booksbooksbooks #book clubs #read #literature

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nicknellie · 3 years

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Anonymous requested: Could I request willex fake dating au, maybe the boys are trying to get Alex a boyfriend and so he asks Willie to fake date him to get the boys off his back or something please!

Anon, I love fake dating AUs, I’m beyond glad that you suggested this. Plus with willex I think fake dating is very in character, especially for Alex. I had a lot of fun writing this one, thank you for your request! I’m sorry it took me so long to get round to writing it, but to make up for it I’ve made it longer than most of my other fics.

A Dream Come True

Alex had to hand it to them – when Luke and Reggie wanted something, they really pushed for it. Normally it would be one of the many things he loved about the two of them. Determination, perseverance, resilience, all good qualities. And when they put their minds towards something useful like booking Julie and the Phantoms a gig or dragging Willie out of the washing machine when he got stuck in it playing hide and seek, they were definitely useful to have around. So usually, Alex loved their pushiness.

He just didn’t like it when it was aimed at him. Even less so when they were trying (for the umpteenth time that month) to get him a boyfriend.

And the worst part was that this time Alex had run out of excuses.

For reasons Alex simply couldn’t fathom, Luke and Reggie had been obsessed with the idea of finding him a boyfriend for some weeks now. Reggie had downloaded several dating apps and entered all of Alex’s information, and every time Alex saw him the first thing Reggie would do was reel off a list of several candidates he’d deemed worthy. Luke, ever the technophobe (or rather just terrible with technology), had taken a more natural approach and spent countless hours wandering the streets of Hollywood for someone who was, in his words, ‘the sort of guy who would make Alex lose his goddamn mind’.

It wasn’t that Alex didn’t appreciate them trying to make him happy – he found it sweet, if a little weird – it was just that he knew nobody they found would ever be right. He knew what he was looking for, he knew what he wanted, and he didn’t think that Luke and Reggie could get it for him.

The first time they had tried to send him on a date Alex had faked a cold and pulled out at the last minute. The second time he had “accidentally” shown up to the wrong location and missed the entire thing. The third time he simply hadn’t gone – instead, he turned off all the lights in his house, locked all the doors and windows, and hid, so when he didn’t show up and Luke and Reggie came over looking for him they assumed he was out. The fourth time and most recent time he had pretended to fall asleep when they told him about it.

Alex wasn’t the most creative of people and he had pretty much exhausted all of his go-to date-dodging tactics. So the fifth time his friends tried to set him up, he completely panicked.

“So I was doing my usual lap of Sunset Boulevard this morning,” Luke said in lieu of a greeting the moment he walked into Julie’s garage. “And Alex, dude, bro, you will not believe the guy I saw.”

“Good morning to you to,” Alex said flatly.

Luke wrinkled his nose like the greeting confused him, but then saw Julie setting up her mic in the corner. A bright smile grew on his face as he was distracted and for a moment Alex thought he might have been lucky enough to get out of the conversation. But a moment later, Reggie entered the studio and also decided that greetings weren’t a necessity.

“Luke! Did you tell Alex about the guy yet?”

Julie snickered (she found the whole thing much funnier than Alex did and he most certainly did not appreciate it) and for a moment more Luke continued to just look at her, absolutely besotted, but then he came to his senses and all of a sudden his excited smile was directed at Alex.

“Right, that. So I ran into him outside the Orpheum, so he’s probably a music guy,” Luke gushed, winking in a way that Alex supposed was meant to be suggestive. “We had a little chat and he told me he’s training as a teacher and is also looking for someone to settle down with.”

“Sometimes I worry about you,” Alex said, laying a gentle hand on Luke’s arm. “You’re getting forgetful. I’m not looking to settle down with anyone.”

Rolling his eyes dramatically, Luke shrugged Alex’s arm off and instead planted his own hands firmly on Alex’s shoulders, shaking him a little. “Maybe not, but that might change when you meet this guy.”

“I doubt it. What’s his name?”

“Oscar. Maybe Oliver. Orville? I don’t know, but it definitely began with an ‘o’.”

“He sounds memorable,” Alex deadpanned. “I’m sure we’ll have a great time together.”

Reggie gasped excitedly. “So you’ll meet up with him then?”

“No,” Alex said firmly.

Julie giggled again (and once again Luke looked at her, dazzled). “Why not, Alex? You sounded so enthusiastic about him!”

“Very funny,” he returned. “I’m not meeting him.”

“Why not?” Luke whined, dragging the words out like a frustrated toddler. “You always do this! Reg and I try to set you up with people but you always say you don’t want to. Are we missing something?”

Alex could see the cogs whirring in Reggie’s mind before his face lit up and he triumphantly guessed, “Or are we missing someone?”

If anyone had asked, Alex wouldn’t have been able to give a reason for what he said next. It was completely untrue, a wild statement made under extreme pressure in the face of an emergency. Perhaps it was a bad decision, but he had run out of excuses to not meet people and he was getting desperate. He hadn’t had time to consider it.

Alex said, “Yes.”

Reggie’s jaw dropped, Julie dropped her microphone, and Luke dropped whatever respect he had left for Alex’s personal boundaries. He launched himself at Alex, tackling him to the floor in what he assumed was supposed to be a hug, and Alex was fairly certain that Luke was crying with happiness.

“Dude!” he shouted (though it was rather muffled since he had his face buried in Alex’s shirt). “That’s awesome news! Reggie and I can stop searching! I didn’t think you’d be able to find someone yourself, bro.”

“Thanks for having so much confidence in me,” Alex said flatly as he extricated himself from Luke’s vice grip and hoisted himself to his feet.

“You’re welcome,” Luke said as he wiped his eyes (yes, he was actually crying happy tears).

Julie had her arms crossed in front of her chest, looking half-puzzled and half-affronted. “You’re seeing someone? And you didn’t tell me? The only one of your friends who is even a little bit good at keeping a secret?”

“Hey,” Reggie interrupted, “I’m good at keeping secrets!”

“Reggie, honey, I love you but at Christmas you told everyone what you’d bought them as soon as you’d bought it.”

Reggie looked like he wanted to defend himself but couldn’t. “I was excited to see everyone’s reactions…”

Rolling her eyes fondly, Julie turned back to Alex. “Anyway – why didn’t you tell me?”

While he was a terrible liar, Alex just so happened to be a very good actor. In high school he’d got the lead role in the school play two years in a row, but whenever someone asked him if he was gay (before he had come out) he would often panic and pretend to faint to get out of the situation. Though he was technically telling a lie here, he decided it would be the prime opportunity to employ some of the improvisational skills he had worked on with Carrie back in their theatre club.

“It was all very new,” he explained, “we weren’t sure if it was going to go anywhere and we didn’t want to tell everyone until we were sure.”

It was only at this point that Alex realised he was digging a very deep hole for himself and it was most certainly too late to climb out of it now.

“When do we get to meet him?” Reggie asked excitedly.

“You already have,” Alex replied.

A little voice in the back of his mind was saying, shut up, you absolute idiot, what the hell are you playing at? Perhaps stupidly, he drowned that voice out.

Looking dumbfounded, Luke clutched Alex’s shoulders again. “We have? Who is it?”

The little voice got louder – don’t say it, Alex, I’m begging you not to say it, it’s like you’re actively trying to ruin your own life, you absolute–

“Willie.”

In eery synchrony, Luke, Julie, and Reggie all looked to each other with identical expressions of shock and bewilderment and then turned back to Alex with furrowed brows.

“Willie?” they all chorused.

Alex pursed his lips and rocked on the balls of his feet, suddenly regretting every decision he’d made that had brought him to this point in his life. “Yep.”

“I thought your thing with him finished like six months ago?” Julie said.

“Well, there wasn’t really much of a thing to finish,” Reggie reasoned, “just Alex’s pining from afar that had lasted for like four years–”

“Yes, thank you, Reginald,” Alex interrupted. It wasn’t that Reggie was wrong, Alex just didn’t like how right he was. “And yeah, it did… I guess. But then we were hanging out together a few months ago and it was really nice and we started doing it more often and eventually he asked me on a date.”

Alex was overly aware that every word he had just said was an utter lie. Firstly, he had never really got over Willie – Willie wasn’t the sort of person you could just forget or move on from, even though Alex had never actually dated him. Secondly, Alex and Willie hadn’t actually hung out together alone in quite a while. Willie had been busy with their blossoming art career, going to different presentations and awards shows, trying to make a name for himself; Alex, on the other hand, had been doing his best to avoid dating anyone. And thirdly, Willie had never once asked Alex on a date.

He knew he should have backtracked, told them the truth, but he was in far too deep.

“This has been going on for a few months?” Luke said incredulously. “How have you kept it from us that long? Dude, you just let Reggie and I spend literally all our free time trying to find you a boyfriend!”

“I never asked you to do that.”

“You could have told us to stop,” Reggie said.

“I did,” Alex returned. “Several times.”

Julie raised her hands placatingly. “Okay, okay. That’s not important right now. What’s important is that Alex and Willie are finally together. Are you sure they’ll be alright with you telling us while he’s not here?”

Alex shrugged, trying to act like he wasn’t too sure (which was easy because he’d never been less sure of anything at any time in his life). “Umm… well… we haven’t really talked about it much, but… you know, I’m sure he won’t mind too much. I’ll tell them tonight.”

Julie smiled warmly. “Well, I’m happy for you in any case. It’s nice that you’ve finally got what you wanted for so long.”

“Amen to that,” Luke said, finally picking up his guitar. Alex had all but forgotten they were supposed to be practising instead of talking about his very fake relationship with Willie which Willie didn’t even know about. “And Reg and I can finally stop looking for someone.”

“Could’ve stopped before you’d even started,” Alex said, sitting down behind his drumkit, “but alright.”

He knew that sooner or later he would have to tell Willie what he’d done and he was absolutely dreading it. Willie was a very chill person and Alex knew they’d probably find it funny more than anything, but it was still a daunting prospect. But for now, he focused himself on his drums, hammering out all of that excess anxiety, and forgetting the absolute nightmare he’d created for himself just for a little bit.

It was nearing one o’clock in the morning and Alex was very much not ready to go to sleep. For one thing, he was still wearing his clothes instead of pyjamas, and for another he was pacing his room like a caged lion with anxiety and had been doing so for almost three hours. He was trying to build up the courage to call Willie and let him know what had gone on, but he was so nervous that he wasn’t sure he’d even be able to string a sentence together if Willie picked up the phone.

He knew he would just have to bite the bullet. He couldn’t put it off forever or it would end in disaster. For the thousandth time he reminded himself that Willie was the kindest, funniest, most good-natured person he knew and that he had nothing to be scared of when it came to telling them that he had made a massive, probably damning mistake. Willie would be fine with it, Alex knew.

Before he could dwell on it a second longer, Alex dialled Willie’s number and let it ring.

It only rang twice before Willie picked up. Even though it was late, Alex had known Willie would pick up (the guy hardly slept at all) and he fought the urge to tell him to go to bed.

“Morning,” Willie said chirpily.

Alex checked the time and blinked in surprise; he hadn’t realise how long he’d been pacing for.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” he said. “How come you’re still awake?”

“Mario Kart,” they replied. Alex could practically hear Willie’s smile – suddenly there were butterflies in his already anxious stomach and they certainly weren’t helping. “Why are you still awake? I thought your bedtime was half nine.”

“It hasn’t been in two years and you know that,” Alex said. Willie giggled brightly which teased a smile out of Alex. “I, uh… I actually need to talk to you about something that happened today.”

Just get on with it, he told himself, don’t drag it out.

“Oh?” Willie said. “What is it? You sound nervous – do you need me to come over?”

“No,” Alex told him, “it’s late – or maybe early. Either way, you don’t need to come all the way to my place just so I can tell you this.”

“It sounds serious.”

“It might be,” Alex admitted. “It depends on how you take it.”

There was a brief silence on the other end and for a moment Alex wondered if Willie had decided to end the conversation, but then they said, “Alright, let me just pause the game.”

Another short pause as Willie stopped mid-race. Alex took the opportunity to collect himself, shake out his nerves. It would be fine. Willie would be fine with it.

“Okay,” he said a moment later. “I’m back. What’s going on, hotdog?”

Alex scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck, suddenly unsure where to start.

“Okay,” he began uncertainly. “Well… Luke and Reg have been trying to set me up with someone for a while now and I’ve been trying to avoid it as much as I can. I’ve sort of run out of excuses and you know how difficult it is for me to say no to them.”

Willie hummed knowingly. “Like with the Great Cactus Robbery of 2019.”

Alex winced at the memory – he hadn’t realised cactus spikes hurt quite that much, but he’d gone through with a lot that night for Luke and Reggie’s sake.

“Don’t remind me,” he said witheringly. “Anyway, you know what I’m talking about then. They told me about another guy earlier today and I really needed another excuse to give them. I tried just point-blank telling them no, but then they started asking questions and…”

“And?” Willie prompted.

“I told them I was seeing someone,” Alex said. There was silence on the other end. “I told them I was seeing you.”

After a moment or two (that felt like an eternity) Willie burst out laughing. Alex sighed, affronted, but he supposed it was one of the better reactions he could have got. At least Willie wasn’t angry at him.

“Why?” Willie wheezed between laughs. “Was that seriously the first thing that came to your mind?”

“Yes,” Alex grumbled. “I was under a lot of pressure. You were the obvious choice.”

They giggled happily and Alex realised just how true those words had been – whether he liked it or not, Willie would always be the obvious choice for him.

“Well, I’m flattered,” they told him, blatantly trying to contain their giggles. “Thank you for thinking of me, hotdog.”

“You’re welcome,” Alex said. “But I’m sorry about it too. I’ve created an absolute mess and dragged you into it, so I understand if you’re angry at me.”

“Does it sound like I’m angry at you?”

“No?”

“That’s because I’m not,” Willie said kindly. “I get it, man, you just panicked. No big deal. Besides, we can ride this out easily.”

Alex blinked. “We can?”

“Sure, man, it’ll be fun. We’ll pretend to date for a few weeks, have a friendly breakup, and then everything can go back to normal.”

“You’re sure?” Alex checked. This hadn’t been what he was expecting – he’d thought Willie would say it didn’t matter but he needed to come clean. He hadn’t been expecting the offer of dating.

Fake dating, said that irritating little voice in his head. It’s not real. Don’t let yourself forget that.

“Of course I’m sure,” they said. “I mean, it’s totally cool if you don’t want to, but surely it’ll be easier than backtracking completely with the others. And it’ll get Reggie and Luke off your back for a little while longer.”

He considered it, weighing up the pros and cons. On one hand, he’d get to date Willie at last, something he’d wanted to do since he met him. It would give them more of a chance to hang out together, Luke and Reggie would stop pestering him, and it was always fun to harmlessly mess with his friends. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure his sentimental little heart could stand getting to date Willie and then having him taken away even if that was the arrangement from the very start.

But it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

“Alright,” he said resolutely. “I’m in.”

“Cool,” Willie returned happily. “Shall we meet tomorrow to discuss, you know, like, boundaries and stuff like that?”

“Sounds great. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He heard Willie press play on his game, the unmistakable sound of an item box being broken on Mario Kart.

“See you tomorrow, Alex,” Willie said. “Or maybe now we’re dating I should be calling you ‘babe’ or something.”

If that made Alex’s heart flutter, he wouldn’t say anything about it. “We’ll go over pet names tomorrow. Goodnight, Willie.”

“Goodnight, babe.”

As Alex put his phone down and launched himself into bed (still fully clothed but suddenly far too tired to even consider getting changed) he thought to himself that there probably couldn’t have been a better outcome.

Alex had expected the meeting with Willie to feel awkward and weirdly formal, but it was completely the opposite. Both of them were in high spirits the whole time, jokingly holding hands and making heart eyes at each other, laughing every time one of them used a particularly ridiculous pet name for the other. (When Alex had called Willie ‘sugarpoops’ he had thought they might die from laughing.)

But the meeting was productive too. They set some effective boundaries – any touching was allowed, just not too intimate; kissing was fine, but only to prove a point; and just for the fun of it they agreed they had to act like the most sickeningly in-love couple the world had ever known. Alex didn’t really care if that would give the whole thing away, it seemed like a bit of fun and it would be useful when it came to reminding himself that none of this was actually real.

That bit, he had to admit, still stung.

He and Willie had arranged to meet Luke, Reggie, and Julie at the studio that afternoon, so spent the day together beforehand. Just to try and get into the swing of things, they treated their morning together as a mini date. Alex took Willie to minigolf, then they went to an ice cream parlour, and after that Willie tried to teach Alex how to skateboard for fifteen minutes before Alex got too nervous and gave up. It was fun and Alex tried not to think about the fact that this was the reality he was missing out on – if he imagined he was just hanging out with Willie as a friend, which in a way he was, then it was just about bearable.

They arrived outside the studio together and they could hear the other band members’ voices already inside. Alex’s stomach started squirming nervously which he thought was weird. He didn’t actually have anything to be nervous about – he and Willie weren’t really dating.

But still, he was starting to feel a little bit queasy and was seriously considering just running away.

Then he felt Willie’s hand slip into his and their fingers lace together. He looked down at them and saw that he had a kind, soft smile on his face, gently encouraging.

“Ready to be my boyfriend, sweetheart?” Willie asked teasingly.

The nerves didn’t disappear, but Alex found it a lot easier to ignore them after that.

“Always,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

Without another moment’s hesitation, Alex pushed open the studio door and led Willie inside. Julie, Luke, and Reggie all hushed immediately and looked at the couple like they’d been caught red-handed. If their guilty expressions were anything to go by, they had been talking about Alex and Willie before they had walked in. He could only guess as to what they had been saying, but at that point Alex hardly thought it mattered.

It was showtime.

“Hey guys,” he said, grinning broadly. “What are you talking about?”

The three all responded at the same time but with wildly different answers.

“That gig next week,” blurted Luke.

“I lost my favourite hairclip,” Julie explained.

“I’m thinking of buying a horse,” Reggie told them.

Alex and Willie looked at each other, trying to hide their amusement.

“Anyway,” Julie said, “doesn’t matter what we were talking about! Because you’re here now, both of you! And you’re dating!”

Without warning, Willie giggled brightly and attached himself to Alex like a koala to a tree. Alex laughed and threw his arms around Willie, holding them tightly, pressing a firm kiss to the top of their head.

“I feels so good to finally have it out in the open,” Willie gushed, gazing at Alex with pure adoration in his eyes. “Right, sugarplum?”

Alex gently rubbed the tip of his nose against Willie’s, fighting the urge to laugh. “Of course, my little cheesecake.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Alex could see his friends’ expressions – he had to close his eyes so he wouldn’t be able to see them, otherwise he definitely would have broken character and started laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. Luke looked utterly horrified, like the display of affection was disgusting; Julie was staring at the two of them wide-eyed, her face flushed red, looking like she would rather be anywhere else; and Reggie just looked baffled.

After a while, Julie cleared her throat and the couple turned to look at her innocently.

“So,” she said, “we’ve heard Alex’s version of the story, but Willie – how did… all this happen?”

Willie linked his arm through Alex’s marched the two of them over to the couch and sat Alex down, then sat primly on his lap, laying their head against Alex’s shoulder. “I’m so glad you asked.”

“I’m not,” Luke muttered, “this is weird.”

Julie kicked his shin and he shut his mouth.

“I had been watching Alex from afar ever since we met, but I didn’t think a cool, handsome drummer could ever care about someone like me. I was convinced we would only ever be friends. But then we hung out together and I saw all these different sides to his personality – he’s so caring and soft, you know, and he means everything he says. Alex isn’t like anyone I’ve ever met. So I decided to just go for it, ask him out, admit how I feel.”

Alex stroked a hand through Willie’s hair, eyes fixed on him. “Since then we’ve never looked back. And we never will.”

“Oh, my darling!” Willie exclaimed, throwing themself at Alex and pressing a kiss to his lips.

It certainly wasn’t how Alex had envisioned his first kiss with Willie going (and he had envisioned a great many different versions of it) but in a strange way it felt just right. Sure, they weren’t dating, but they were hanging out together, having fun, being in each other’s company and loving every second of it. Maybe the circumstances weren’t exactly what Alex wanted, but the love they held for one another was still there, nothing could take that away.

So maybe it wasn’t the best decision he’d ever made, but Alex let himself get lost in the kiss. He didn’t know how many times he’d get to do this in his life, so he figured it was better to make the most of it. He blocked out the fact that his friends were right there (a sure sign that he wasn’t thinking straight – absently he knew that he would be very embarrassed by this when it was all over) and just focused on Willie.

And he was sure he wasn’t imagining the fact that Willie seemed to be enjoying it just as much.

When Julie eventually cleared her throat again, they separated. But Alex couldn’t take his eyes off Willie. He knew he wasn’t imagining what he’d felt in that kiss – like sparks had flown between them, forcing their dynamic into something much more than friendly banter and an inside joke. Willie’s eyes were glassy and he was breathing heavily, scanning Alex’s face for something, though Alex didn’t know what. All he knew was that the kiss had pushed the boundaries they had spent all morning setting and if he wasn’t more careful he would lose himself to this silly little charade.

The five of them spent the rest of the afternoon and evening just talking to each other. Willie stayed firmly planted in Alex’s lap and they both used the occasional cutesy nickname for each other, but it seemed as if both of them had silently made the decision to tone things down a little bit. Luke seemed relieved about it at least – for all the heart eyes he made at Julie he certainly seemed uncomfortable at the affection Alex and Willie had shown. It was probably because Alex hardly ever showed love like that in front of people.

But god, he wanted to do it all again.

Luckily, it didn’t seem like any of their friends suspected Alex and Willie of lying to them. By the time they were all on their way home – Alex and Willie walking away hand in hand – nobody had brought up the fact that it could all be fake.

“That went well,” Willie said as they walked along the seafront, heading back to his place. The cold night breeze lifted their hair and Alex couldn’t keep his eyes off them, not when they were looking so beautiful.

“Yeah,” he said, watching the way the amber glow of the streetlamps danced in Willie’s eyes. “It did.”

“Have you thought about how long we’re going to do this for?” Willie asked. Alex was sure he heard nervousness in Willie’s tone, maybe mingled with hope.

He shrugged. “A few weeks maybe. Unless you had something else in mind.”

“No, no, that’s fine, man.” They had arrived at Willie’s apartment building and stopped just outside of it. “I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, smiling smally. “See you tomorrow.”

He didn’t know what he was thinking – he had expected a goodnight kiss from Willie, but instead he was left alone in the cold as Willie let go of his hand and hurried into the building. Alex was suddenly reminded again that it was all fake, that he shouldn’t have expected kisses when they were alone.

It hurt though. He knew that kiss earlier had been more than just top-notch acting.

He fell asleep that night, still thinking about it, the memory replaying on a loop in his mind. In one way or another, Willie was going to drive him crazy.

The next two weeks flew by. Alex found himself hanging out just with Willie more and more often, playing Mario Kart together at Willie’s insistence, going on more dates that weren’t actually dates, or even just video-chatting each other while doing their own separate things to enjoy the company.

After that first day as a “couple”, Alex was sure Willie’s confidence had been knocked. For the next few days they withdrew himself from Alex and Alex didn’t know if he’d done something wrong or if it was just something on Willie’s mind. Still, he let Willie work through it, and a few days later he was back to normal, clinging to Alex like a barnacle to a ship, calling him every pet name under the sun.

And still their friends were none the wiser.

The end of their time as a couple came all too quickly. Alex walked Willie back to his apartment again, a heaviness in his heart. He didn’t know how an actual breakup felt, but he was willing to bet that a breakup would be less painful than whatever this was. No part of him wanted to give this up, whatever silly little thing was going on between him and Willie – it was fun, it was freeing, it gave Alex a light feeling in his chest and made him so happy he thought he might burst at any moment. He didn’t want to give any of it up.

But still he walked Willie to his door.

They stood facing each other, hands interlinked between them, sad smiles on each of their faces. Alex tried to memorise every detail on Willie’s face as if it was the last time he would see them.

“This has been fun,” he said eventually, his voice low, quiet in the night air.

“You can say that again,” Willie agreed. “I loved being your boyfriend.”

“I loved being your boyfriend.”

Something flickered in Willie’s eyes, an expression gone too quickly for Alex to name, but it was quickly forgotten because a moment later Willie stood up on his tiptoes and kissed Alex.

It wasn’t like any of the other kisses they had shared in the past few weeks. There was nothing over-the-top and exaggerated about it, it wasn’t just a stunt they pulled to fool their friends. It was slow and soft and Alex felt the rest of his body go fuzzy and numb as all he could concentrate on was Willie’s lips on his.

An eternity later, Willie pulled away, his eyes scanning Alex’s face.

Alex swallowed heavily and said, “I thought we could only kiss each other to prove a point.”

Willie nodded. “Did I not get my point across very well? Do I need to kiss you again?”

Alex almost laughed but something stopped him. “Just… just explain it to me first. So I don’t get the wrong idea.”

“I loved being your boyfriend,” Willie said. “You enjoyed being my boyfriend. So… why should we stop?”

Alex felt his head spin. Somehow the nightmare he’d created for himself all those weeks ago was turning into a dream come true.

“You mean that?” he asked. “Tell me you mean that, Willie, please.”

“I mean it,” Willie said resolutely. “I’ve felt this way about you for too long just to let it go. If you want me then I want you. I want to date you, Alex. For real.”

Alex kissed him again, short but sweet.

“Is that a yes?” Willie asked, giggling.

“There’s no other answer I could have ever given.”

Even though they remained boyfriends (real ones this time), Alex and Willie decided to drop the over-the-top, lovey-dovey stuff. It was fun, but it wasn’t them. Instead, they chose to fill every second together with quiet declarations of love, casual dates, soft kisses, nothing that wasn’t real.

But they never did tell Luke, Reggie, and Julie how much of it had been fake.

Taglist (if you want to be added or removed just let me know): @ace-bookworm @williexmercer @boggie-brainrot @itstiger720 @the-reckless-and-the-brave @that-one-newsie @bluedarkness @lookingthroughmirrors @tmp-jatp @salty-star @julieandthequeers @lmaohuh @sunnysbright @sylphrenas @callmeontheleyline

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haloud · 3 years

Text

an overture bold and beyond

for the Roswell New Mexico Big Bang (@rnmbb)

[AO3 link]

Jesse is dead, and Alex is left standing in the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions left behind by the events of Crashdown and the days leading up to it. With the dust settled, Alex and Michael pick through the debris--they've argued many times before, but the last one, in Michael's workshop, lingers over them, demanding...something, demanding to be seen, to be spoken, to be soothed. Through three conversations, they search for an understanding they've never found before, one that brings them closer together. (An episode 2x10 fix-it fic)

with art by @bisexualalienblast!

The shed is as it always was and at the same time something else entirely. Small and dusty, smelling of wood, at night it would throw weird, spiked shadows from the tools and trophies adorning the walls, but during the day the light is pale yellow and pleasant against the pine. Ten years of light and absence have faded the posters that still shroud the walls. The floor is clean and swept and no amount of scalded memory could make Alex recall exactly where the blood used to be.

Dad is dead, and that means there is a life’s worth of unloading and sorting and dispersing to do of the things he possessed and left a mark on, and Greg has done enough, which means it falls to Alex. And it’s only fitting that the shed go first.

Still, where to begin? Should he get a dumpster for the antlers or a box to collect the tools for donation? Should he be cold and unfeeling, or should he pore over the cracks of his soul and salvage some sentimentality, some silver lining for the toolbox that built his treehouse, or the low bench that served as his bed on the safe and hidden nights, or.

For so long, this tiny, old, unused building loomed so large in his mind it blotted out any light that could shine on anything else. And then, through sheer stubbornness, he told himself it was just a building with such intensity that now, here, with the boogeyman six feet deep for good, it’s shocking all over again to find out that he was right.

It’s just a building. There are cobwebs so thick one corner is entirely grayish-white. The windows are grimy; the floorboards creak. Alex stands in the middle with his hands in his pockets. Somehow, he always thought there would be more screaming, like the soft and sweet-smelling pine might have captured the echo. It’s almost as unsettling as seeing a ghost, to stand at the center of his nightmares and not be haunted at all.

Greg would have come out here with him if he’d asked—but he didn’t ask. Greg would have hovered, looked at him all full of concern, like he thought Alex was being some sort of martyr for tackling this alone. Hell, maybe Alex thought that too, just a bit. Maybe that’s why it’s so bizarre to stand here and be...fine.

He’s fine. He’s too fine. He’s so weirdly, blissfully, mind-numbingly fine.

No grief. No celebration. Just a fineness so complete and immaculate it could be mistaken for emptiness if his head were a little clearer.

Alex takes in a deep, woodsy breath and blows it out slowly, making dust motes scatter and dance.

He left the door open intentionally, to hear if Greg shouted for him, for a quick escape, just in case, for a breath of fresh air. When a shadow falls across it Alex freezes, braces for impact, until he jerks his head up and sees the reason.

“Hey,” Michael says. A smile flickers across his face and then it’s gone, and Alex breathes through the blow of it.

“Hey.”

A beat passes. Alex chews on the inside of his cheek. They’ve been alone together once since their fight, and that was a hostage situation.

“Maria made me bring food over. I gave it to Gregory. Seems to be holding up okay.”

Was that true? That Maria made him? Or was it a cover, a thin, defensive veneer protecting him from—well, if he was really just here on an errand of respectability at the behest of someone more respectable, he could have—it would have been easy, the easiest thing in the world, to leave the food and slip back out without Alex ever having even known he was there.

Yet here he is, having sought Alex out. Should Alex let himself hope that this means something, that everything they were building, all closeness and understanding, wasn’t set aflame and burned to ashes in a furious, impulsive whirlwind?

He’s here. It’s something.

Alex has been practicing, since that last night they were alone together, since the bunker. He had a lot of time to think and could only hum the melody he found for his song so many times. So he’s been practicing what he’d say next time he saw Michael, what he’d say to make it right. To stretch out an open hand and not snatch it back, to allow himself to be reached for and not snap at it, all teeth. It all feels like a ridiculous fantasy now, looking at Michael’s quiet, expressionless face. He’s never known what to say. Maybe he never will.

Clearing his throat, Alex says, “Yeah, he’s, uh, made his peace, I guess. Still, we’re keeping each other company for now. How’s Maria doing?”

“Hanging in there. If it wasn’t for Liz…” Michael swallows and glances away.

“Yeah,” Alex replies hoarsely. Yeah. If it wasn’t for Liz, Flint’s body count would be up by one, and it would be Alex’s fault. Should have secured him better. Should have made sure there wasn’t a second key. Should have warned Charlie instead of going out the back. Shouldn’t have been distracted by his father. Should do something to stop him from acting again. Disaster struck. Justice done. Should…

“Hey. Alex,” Michael says, and Alex snaps out of his head to see him hovering closer, concern all over his face.

“Just,” Alex waves his hand, waves him off. “Just thinking about where we’d be without Liz. Not a pretty picture.”

“Yeah.”

Michael retreats just a pace or two back to the door. For a moment, Alex jolts like he could stop him from leaving, but then Michael turns to talk again.

“And…how are you?”

“What?”

“I mean. I’m not sad the bastard’s dead, but.” Michael leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms. “I’m not gonna break out the champagne until I know it’s cool with you, I guess.”

“Ha. I…I think the feeling’s a little more ‘lazy Sunday’ than ‘wild party.’”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like…I can breathe easier now. I’m not ready to celebrate, I just want to drink it in, you know?”

“Sure. We can make it mimosas instead.”

At that, Alex laughs, a short and underused thing. He runs out of stamina quickly. Part of him aches to invite Michael in, to sit beside him on the bench and talk about all the things they aren’t saying. But how would Michael take that? Here, now? Alex needs more time to consider all the pieces on the board.

“And physically?” Michael steps back toward him, nearly pacing for the number of times he’s walked those three feet of floor. He touches his own forehead where Alex is cut in two jerky movements, one forward, one up. “No concussion or anything?”

Alex shakes his head. “Clean bill of health.”

“Good. That’s good.”

The awkwardness dances between them like the dust does, and Alex measures his breaths to keep calm. The light should make things easier; it couldn’t be more different from the dark underground of Michael’s workshop, but the tension between them is the same.

“You were right,” Alex blurts.

“I should go,” Michael blurts at the same time, and then the two of them are frozen again until Alex breaks the ice.

“No, don’t. Please. I didn’t get a chance to really say this when you found me, but I need to.”

Michael hesitates. Alex holds his breath. But then Michael sighs, shoulders lifting and falling, and nods.

Bracing himself, Alex continues.

“You were right.”

Michael makes another aborted noise of protest, but Alex barrels on.

“My father was lying and manipulating the way he always has, and I was so ready to think that he was defeated that I stopped trying to see through him. I wanted to be right so badly that I convinced myself I was, and I hurt you, and I could have hurt so many more people if Liz hadn’t been able to—if Isobel wasn’t there to hold off the fire—”

His voice falters and he closes his eyes, then forces them open. No hiding.

Michael works his jaw for a minute or so like he might respond, might get angry, but he takes so long to start talking Alex almost continues his speech.

But then Michael says, “You don’t have to do this. You’ve got no obligation to make me feel better or whatever. We both had a hand in making bombs this weekend, and I’m the one who knew what he was doing.”

“For me. You made a bomb for me.”

Michael levels him with a golden look.

“Yeah. I did.”

“To save me. And maybe I didn’t know what my father would use that piece for, but it was never going to be anything good. I just wanted answers, it didn’t have to be life or death. I’m—sorry.”

Alex hates apologies. Always has. After growing up the way he did, they always felt like a test, a test of his own commitment to forgiveness, to the value he chose for himself, the value his father never would have tried to beat into him. Or like an exertion of that same pressure on someone else, a desperate, pathetic cry for acceptance, for absolution.

And apologies were always particularly difficult between the two of them. Like each one granted might rip the bandage off all the old wounds that were never treated at all. But it was time, long past time, however, that they began to face these things.

Michael sucks in a breath and blows it back out in a huge sigh.

“Look,” he says. “It doesn’t make me feel any better to listen to you beat yourself up, okay? It’s not like you were entirely wrong; it’s not like I was making any strong effort to see things from your perspective. I…”

Michael flexes his left hand, then shoves it in his pocket, and another wave of guilt drags at Alex like quicksand. He can’t look away from that pocket even as Michael starts talking again.

“I still don’t understand. Why you would want him to change, why you would want anything from him after all this time and…everything. But there’s a lot I don’t get about family. And I probably would have told you giving up the piece was a bad idea no matter what, but I shouldn’t have to understand everything perfectly to listen when you’re telling me something’s important to you. I’ve been talking to Maria…” He pauses.

“It’s okay,” Alex prompts. It’s been months; there’s no point in pretending like what’s happening isn’t happening.

It would be easier if any of their endings felt like the end. If he could shake off the certainty of old habit that time would pass and gravity would bring them back together. Michael and Maria have a good thing. Alex is taking steps, trying new things. And yet…

Neither of them would ever say it. They’ll both push it to the back of their minds, paper over longing with something new.

Yet.

Michael says, “Maria isn’t sure if suppressing her powers her entire life is what she wants. And I feel like an asshole because we both know that I’m asking her to do something I might not be able to do myself in her shoes. So I’m trying to understand where she’s coming from, no matter how much it hurts. I’m putting in the work. In every part of my life, okay?”

Alex nods, not knowing what to say.

And Michael carries on, like he’s trying to lighten the mood. “Anyway, I figure I might at least try and earn those second chances you keep giving me, right?”

His tone is light and weightless, but it sends Alex’s heart plummeting into his stomach.

“What does that mean?” He asks, even though he already knows.

Michael shrugs. “Look, I should really get back to the hospital. Text me if anything comes up, okay?”

“Michael!”

“What, Alex?”

His voice spikes, then his lips press together in a harsh line, but Alex doesn’t wait for any attempt at an apology. No amount of yelling ever made him scared of Michael.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “And it may be out of line for me to say this outright. But. You’re nothing like my father. Never have been. Giving you second chances—I mean, letting anyone make mistakes and work past them—it’s nothing you have to earn any more than, I mean, I have to earn them, which isn’t to say I don’t know I have things to work on—”

“Alex, stop.”

Michael mercy-kills his rambling, and Alex inhales deeply and bobs his head once in a nod, and Michael drops his eyes to the floor.

“Gonna tell you something I’ve never said to someone who wasn’t comatose, so, uh. Be honored, or something.”

Alex nods to tell him to go on, even if Michael can’t see it.

“Look, I know you know what it’s like to grow up under shitty circumstances, so I won’t waste your time getting into it, but. Growin’ up, and then even when I was older, in high school and after, all my relationships had always been…transactional. Except you never saw the price tag and you just had to guess.”

A soft noise escapes Alex’s mouth, and Michael glances up then lets his eyes slide away again. Alex doesn’t say a word to interrupt him. Alex is tense with a strange mix, gratitude and regret at how little he knew, how little he still knows, about how Michael the boy makes up Michael the man, and how little Michael knows in return. How much he still has to learn.

All he wants is for them to be in each other’s lives to keep that learning going. But how to say that in a way that isn’t begging Michael to be pinned down by him?

Michael continues, “That’s why I didn’t believe you at first when you said people could just be nice for no reason. You were the first person who showed me there was another way, and then after you, I…stopped believing in it again. Partially ‘cause I knew I’d fucked up with you, so I didn’t deserve you anymore. That’s a kid’s way of thinking at it, but yeah. With Max and Iz, with Sanders, with Maria, and yeah, with you, trading favors is what I default to, and I’m trying to stop thinkin’ of it like that. I am. But trying to earn things, people, second chances...it’s the kind of habit that’s stubborn to break.”

“I’m trying, too.” Alex measures his breath again and wonders if Michael can tell he’s doing it, how obvious he is. Does he owe Michael at least as much vulnerability and courage as that took, or is that transactional thinking too? “I’m trying to remember that my morality isn’t always universal. I thought I was doing what was right, and in some ways I was, but I was acting in a world where everyone thinks exactly like myself, and that’s just not the real one.”

Michael stands up a little, then. His eyes sharpen. Alex doesn’t know what he’s going to say, so he keeps talking.

“I subsumed my moral compass in work, in mission for so long, that the second I started recapturing it…I lost sight of so many other things.”

“No. No, Alex,” Michael says firmly. Outside, the sun is beginning to set, the light deepening, the blurriness of early dusk. It smudges Michael’s edges; it softens him. It’s reminiscent of how he looks at dawn, a sight Alex may never see again, and his chest aches. And he aches for the fine, furious tremble, the certainty in that fixed jaw.

“Yes,” Alex disagrees. “Your faith in me is…” So many words are so loaded. Unearned? Undeserved? “It’s, um, an honor. But…I think I know who I am now. And I’m learning more every day.”

He winces as his own cheesiness, but Michael just softens, slouching back against the door, a flicker of a smile on his face.

The light is truly dying, now, and Alex looks around the shed. He didn’t get anything done he intended to tonight, but it can wait for another day.

He looks back at Michael and asks, “Is it hard for you? Being here again. I should have asked earlier, I…”

His voice dies off as Michael takes a step inside, looking all around himself before his eyes settle on Alex again. He’d stayed so close to the doorway and the open air the whole time they were talking. Inside, with the broad shoulders and strong hands that had been budding and awkward on his seventeen year old self, he takes up so much room there’s none left for the last of the ghosts.

“I’m okay,” Michael says. “He’s gone. Never gonna hurt me again. Never gonna hurt you again.”

“I know it’s just a building, but it seems like it should be more. It was the only place I felt safe, and then in one moment he tore that away. It’s hard to process that someone like that is just…gone. You know he used to tell us all about how his grandfather built this place with his own two hands? I just…”

Michael looks at him, then, and it’s the same like the shed is the same. Ten years of safety, ten years of hiding and neglect. He looks at him like he always has, the careful, creative study of men who named constellations.

He has a hammer in his hands. He holds it out to Alex handle-first.

“Yeah. This place sucks.”

Michael looks like shit. His eyes are ringed with purple shadows, both from sitting by Maria’s bed and from the sleepless nights present and future, his hair rough from where he’s been running his hands through it. Isobel rests a hand in the crook of his arm, close enough to him that he can physically feel her comfort. If it were Alex, he’d chafe at the pity, but at the same time he’d do anything to be in Isobel’s place, to be allowed that closeness, to be that part of Michael’s life where he knew how to provide any comfort but silent presence.

Isobel, however, doesn’t stick around long after they read Tripp’s journal, leaving them with a tousle of Michael’s hair. They’re left to the bustle of a busy diner, but the world seems to shrink all the same. Alex fiddles with the loose vinyl strings at the edge of the booth and searches for the right thing to say.

“So do you think they were? Cosmic?” He asks, watching the cover of the journal like it could tell him anything more than it already has.

“Does it matter? They’re both dead.”

“I. Yeah. They are,” Alex says, then leans back in the booth and lets out a carefully measured sigh, working his fingertips into the muscle of his right thigh, hoping to ease the persistent ache.

His head hurts, too, and he closes his eyes to give himself a break from the pressure and strain behind them. It blots out the journal in front of him. It blots out Michael’s weary, troubled face; it blots out his strong, whole hands folded on the table.

Tripp must have closed his eyes too. For decades, as the woman he loved was tortured and imprisoned and experimented on and left to die, to die in front of her son’s screaming eyes as Alex held him back from joining her.

When he opens his eyes again, he almost expects Michael to be gone, but he isn’t.

“How are you holding up?” Alex asks, tentatively. His hand inches across the tabletop like he might take Michael’s, soothe him where he’s begun picking at the skin around his nails, but he forces it back before Michael even notices his approach.

“Fine. I’m…ha.” Michael shakes his head. “Gotta be fine, right? Been here before.”

“Michael…”

“It’s true.”

“I know.”

Alex doesn’t apologize. It wouldn’t mean anything anyway, not here and now with all that’s gone between them. Michael’s eyes flicker up to him as if checking his reaction; his shoulders curl inward, making himself small.

“Don’t know why I thought this time would be different. But now I know, I guess. Common denominator. Should’ve already known, but I’m a dumbass like that.”

“No, you’re not, you’re—”

Michael ruthlessly cuts him off. “Shouldn’t you be asking how Maria is, anyway? I thought you were her friend.”

Alex blinks at him, cocks his head. But it doesn’t take a genius, or an expert in Michael Guerin, to see that for the deflection that it is.

He has been to the hospital to see Maria, plenty of times. It’s basically only hospitalization that’s kept him from bringing it up, from asking what she’s thinking. Michael and he are here, now, only feet between them once again like the feet between them in the tiny shed as they tore it down around them. No closer. Alex wants to get closer, but denial is the reliable companion comfort is not. So Alex focuses on his body and filling it, staying within it, staying present, while Michael bleeds the love of two people and ten years and one into the space between them, walking wounded.

“I am, but I’m your friend too. And to hear her tell it, she’s the one who broke up with you. So I think my priorities are okay for now.”

“Oh, we’re friends now, are we?”

That one hurts, but Alex just shrugs. It’s true that friends might not be the right word for what they are to each other. What they are has to be a word that doesn’t quite exist, at least not in the only language either of them knows how to speak. If Alex lingers too long on the potential of the languages either of them could know if it weren’t for the confluence of violence and neglect, he would be lost.

Michael flattens his palms and leans over. “Nothing to say? Really?”

Alex replies, “I don’t want to fight again.”

“Why?” Michael snaps. “Because you don’t want anything from me right now?”

At that, Alex can’t help but flinch, muscles locked up and frozen like a wolf inches from the teeth of a trap, and Michael flinches as well.

“I—I didn’t mean that. I—” Michael shakes his head. His face twists into something awful, something grieving, something inward. He rocks back, muted colors all but disappearing against the bright vinyl cushion behind him. God, Alex just wants to touch him. A hand on his shoulder, a hand on his hand. It’s the only way they’ve ever been able to communicate. But just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it’s enough.

“No, you’re right,” Alex reassures. “You’re right. In your lab, I was wrong to come at you like that, and not just that, I was completely out of line not taking no for an answer—”

“No, Alex, no. You might have been wrong about your father changing, but we already talked about this, and I should—I should be able to control myself by now.”

A prickle of unease trickles cold across the back of Alex’s neck. He lowers his voice, though it’s probably too late to prevent any eavesdropping. “What do you mean? Control yourself? Michael, you’re one of the most controlled people I know. I hate that you’ve had to be, but from what you’ve said, the control you have over your powers is amazing. Admirable.”

Michael barks out a dry laugh. “My powers. But it’s more than that, it’s always been. You know that better than anyone; you said it yourself, and you were right. Fucking wasting my life, right? And now here I am, wasting this chance to be there for you because I can’t just get over some hurt feelings.”

There for him. Michael is the one with the freshly broken heart, and he’s coming down on himself for not comforting Alex about the death of a great-uncle he never met, a great-uncle who abandoned his mother when she needed him. A great-uncle who should have died somewhere his brother never could have buried him on family land, should have died where he stood, like Alex would, like Alex would if it was Michael, if it was his—

Alex shakes his head frantically at that, at Michael’s cold shutting down of his own pain as just hurt feelings. What a screw-up. Michael isn’t perfect either, but Alex was never taught to pull punches, neither with fists nor with words.

“Michael, do you want to know why I said those things to you last time we fought?”

“Because I wasn’t listening! ‘Cause you were pissed at me, I don’t know—”

“Because the change in my father had me confused and scared, and I was floundering for control.”

Michael opens his mouth, eyebrows scrunching together like he’s ready to argue, but Alex barrels on, staring straight into Michael’s eyes, knowing in his core that Michael isn’t going to look away from him.

“I thought that piece could be leveraged against him, and I didn’t care how you felt about it. I was hurting, and I took it out on you because you were an easy target. A safe target. I know in every part of my being that you would never hurt me.”

“No!” Michael protests.

“So when I tell you some garbage about you not deserving my faith in you, it’s gospel, but when I tell you I was wrong, it’s too much?” Alex demands.

To that, Michael has no answer. His mouth falls open, but nothing comes out, so it snaps shut again and he shakes his head.

“I’m the last person who’s gonna get on your case for not watching your mouth when you’re pissed,” he says with a casual shrug.

The ache in Alex’s thigh has radiated all the way up into his hips and lower back. In the kitchen, something clatters to the ground, the sound bringing the setting back in harsh relief, the very public diner loud and living all around them. Michael takes notice too, leaning back self-consciously, pulling his jacket tighter around himself.

Alex doesn’t know how to argue anymore; he knows he doesn’t want to. He can’t undo a lifetime of evidence built up inside Michael that he’s worthless with a few pretty words, no more than Michael could do for him over ten years. Trying is how they got here, at least in part. A good strategist knows when to retreat and try again another day.

Michael hasn’t said anything more, hasn’t probed farther for a fight, so sensing they’re done here, Alex takes the journal from the table to put it in his jacket pocket. But when his fingers touch leather something about the sensation makes him stop.

“Do…do you want to take it? I mean, he wrote about your mom, I…” He swallows, and continues, “I can’t give any part of her back to you, but if it gives you any comfort at all to read about her…”

“He was your ancestor. A Manes man. One who wasn’t a bloodthirsty bag of dicks. You should give it back to Maria or keep it if she doesn’t want it,” Michael says gruffly.

Not bloodthirsty, perhaps, but Alex is less sure that he was any sort of hero or any sort of comfort to Alex now. Tripp’s dog tags hang around his neck, warmed to the temperature of his skin but still palpably there, the feeling strange in a way his own never were. A reminder of what can happen if you believe in something but fail to act upon it.

“Yeah, it belongs to the Delucas. I wish Patricia had gotten to read it. I don’t know why Tripp didn’t...”

“And we never will. I’ll leave returning it to you. Can’t imagine Maria’s eager to see me at the moment.”

“You might be surprised.”

Michael just shrugs again and slides out of the booth, shoving his hands in his pockets when he stands.

Alex does a calculus at this point grown familiar, of whether he should nurse his drink for a little while longer so Michael doesn’t see how hard it is for him to stand, how painful to walk. So Michael doesn’t see him as weak. So they don’t have to have the awkward moment where Michael drives off while Alex calls an Uber or something because he walked here from the coffeeshop when Michael and Isobel texted him and now he can’t make the return trip. So—

“I got street parking,” Michael says.

“What?”

“My car’s right outside. Let me give you a lift home? We can stop by and grab whatever you need from your car and I’ll come back and get it, give it a tow or something.”

His eyes flick to Alex’s, briefly, then dance away. He doesn’t say it out loud, that he’s been able to notice that Alex is hurting.

“Or you can call Greg or Forrest or Kyle or something and I’ll get out of your hair,” he continues. “I know you don’t need my help—”

Alex grabs his wrist. He gets half cuff, half skin.

“Michael. I’d appreciate it, actually.”

The smile he gets is a half-bitten thing, brighter than the sun itself.

The sun sets in their eyes as they turn onto Alex’s street, and after ten minutes of silence, Michael speaks.

“I was out of line, spoiling for a fight with you back there. I won’t do it again.”

Alex doesn’t need to look at him to know that he’s golden, pure gold.

“We’re both on the remedial track for emotions and handling conflict. I understand, Michael.” He curls his fingers around the truck’s bench seat like he did when he was seventeen and they couldn’t hold hands in public. He can almost imagine there are grooves there that fit just him. “It isn’t second chances, or third, or fourth. It’s proof we’re learning how to make mistakes without ending the whole world over it.”

If he stole some of that from his therapist, so be it.

Michael’s voice is a little thick when he replies.

“That...that sounds pretty good to me.”

When they pull up to Alex’s driveway, he doesn’t get out right away, though he picks up his crutch and settles it over his lap, partially for a quick escape if he loses his nerve, partially for something to do with his hands.

Alex watches the lavender-gold sky and says, “It’s okay, you know. To be angry. I know I said the opposite, before, but…” he swallows harshly. “But it was hypocritical, and I regret it, and.” Horribly, tears prick at his eyes, but he has to get through this. “You deserve to feel safe. I don’t want to make you feel unsafe, ever. I walk around saying I’m doing the opposite like I deserve some kind of medal, but then I attack you, and I put you in danger—”

He chances a glance Michael’s way, only for the crack in his heart to widen at his hunched, defensive posture, curled around the steering wheel like it’s a shield to protect him where he’s most vulnerable.

Michael says, “You were the first person. The only person. Who ever made me feel safe. Who ever cared enough to make sure I had a place to go even if I didn’t trust you or if I pushed back on it. Who didn’t ask anything in return. We share a lot of the same pain from those days. But I don’t know if you know what that meant to me. I don’t know if you know how fucking hard it is for me to hear you talk like this now. I don’t know what you want from me.”

Horror creeps in at the edges of Alex’s vision. His lips are numb, but they still form, “Michael, you...you haven’t thought that you owe me for that for all these years, right? Please, please tell me you haven’t…”

“No! God, no.”

Michael looks at him, the sunlight turning his eyes to honey. His mouth is chapped, but it just makes Alex want to feel that roughness with his thumb, cup his jaw and feel the stubble against his fingertips.

Those instincts may never go away, but that doesn’t mean they have to suffer, even if they can never make being in love good for the both of them. A life where their jagged edges align in the way only they can for each other, where they find that perfect angle where nothing, nothing hurts at all when they sit beside each other...that’s all they need.

Michael turns away before he says anything more. The sun doesn’t turn, though, just limns his eyelashes in gold, casts his cheekbones in dramatic shadow, and Alex lets out a soft sigh from somewhere deep in his soul that Michael can be, from every angle, this unchanged.

“I don’t want to owe anyone anything. I’m tired of it,” Michael says, voice low and rough. “And I found out recently that some people in my life I thought I was racking up debt to I’d die without repaying had wiped my slate clean long ago. I can be wrong about stuff sometimes. I’m pretty smart, but I’m a big boy.”

He flashes a quick morning-mist smile, eyes quirking sideways to look at Alex as he does it, and Alex smiles back, shoulders dropping as some tension leaves him. Michael’s eyes flick down and away before he speaks again.

“But where do we go from here? You and me, I mean. We keep tripping over ourselves to make up for the last fight out of too many to count in our lives, but there’s gonna be an after, too. What’s that look like for us?”

Alex rests his hand on the bench seat between them, just so it’s there, in case Michael wants to take it. And Michael glances down, and the apple of his throat bobs, but his hand doesn’t inch any closer.

That’s okay.

“Do you want to come inside?” Alex asks.

“Huh?”

“Friends hang out, right? No starting over. Let’s start from right here. Still got a guitar you can use, if you’re into that. Or we can crack open some beers and watch Netflix or something. Anything you want.”

Michael faces him for real for the first time, his generous mouth parted in shock, but then his face goes soft.

“Sure, yeah. I’d like that.”

Alex meets Michael’s eyes from across a crowded room. His cultural knowledge suffered significantly while he was active duty, but throughout his life he’s watched enough rom-coms curled up on the carpet with Liz, Rosa, and Maria to know how that’s supposed to feel, and to know now that the movies never did the feeling justice. Michael slowly removes his hat, and Alex’s heart swells so much he can hardly stand it.

And then Michael is gone, somewhere and sometime before Alex has lanced himself of all the words that have built up inside his skull, pounding against his temples, spilling out his eyes and ears and mouth. Only Isobel remains, and she gives him a sympathetic look and two thumbs up, whatever that means.

Well, not just Isobel. Greg is here, and Forrest, and some coworkers Alex turned Maria’s way to keep traffic up at the bar. But the space Michael left is vast and empty, and for all Alex didn’t ask him to come, it hurts a little like rejection would have hurt if he had asked and Michael told him no or hated the song.

At least he can hope that Michael heard something of what he’s trying to say and will carry that with him, whatever happens next.

The song ends. His fingers stutter and linger over the keys; the spell shatters around him and the world rushes back in with applause. Forrest beams at him from the front row, and he smiles back a little awkwardly. Being so vulnerable so publicly…not really his thing. But maybe not all bad, not when it brings tears to his brother’s eyes and he kisses a man in the open, his father’s voice drowned out by ivories and drunkards and his own heartbeat echoing off his bones.

Forrest squeezes his hips and smiles up at him as the next person takes the stage and the night goes on around them. “I’m proud of you,” he says, just for the two of them to hear. “How do you feel?”

“I feel…good.”

He does. He does feel good, in a way that’s refreshingly distinct from the haze of okay he’s been drifting in for weeks.

“Buy you a drink?” Forrest offers, raising his eyebrows, hooking his thumb back at the bar. Maria is still at home resting, so she isn’t there to support and/or lightly judge him.

“Uh…”

Say yes. He probably should, right? Just see what it’s like dating someone in the open. But would it be fair to use Forrest like that, as an experiment?

“…Can I take a rain check? This,” he gestures back at the stage, “Was kind of a lot for me, believe it or not, so I’m not in a chatty mood. Is that okay?”

Forrest’s smile doesn’t budge. “Okay, man, sure. See ya around.” And he heads to the bar alone.

Alex’s shoulders drop, feeling a little disappointed, feeling a little like he isn’t as disappointed as he should be. Hands in his pockets, he makes his way over to the door, only to stop short when he sees Kyle at a table in the back. Sheepishly, Kyle lifts his beer at him in a salute—but that isn’t an explanation, so Alex beelines for him anyway.

“I thought you hated this shit,” he says mildly, without preamble.

“Oh, I do. The second someone starts in on some amateur poetry, I’m out. But I was just being a dick earlier, and that’s not what I do these days so…”

“Apology accepted.”

Alex glances around before sliding in across from Kyle. It’ll get awkward if Forrest sees him, but oh well.

“Hell of a performance,” Kyle says, going to flag down a waiter until Alex stops him.

“I’m not sticking around for long. But, uh, thanks.”

Kyle takes another long pull of his beer, and Alex raises an eyebrow at him.

He says, “You know, if I was so bad you have to drink to forget, you can just say so. My delicate feelings have been through worse, actually.”

“Ha! No, it’s…” Kyle trails off, staring at his beer instead of anywhere near Alex. “Eh. It’s part of the deal, but sometimes it still sucks to get slapped with reality. No matter how much you change, the people you’ve hurt don’t have to forgive you.”

“I…”

“No, don’t apologize. I get it. I was a big part of the reason you never would have sung that song in this town without the people that support you now. It’s okay that you still hesitate sometimes about me. Just, you know,” he shrugs with a small smile. “Sometimes I’m gonna drink about it.”

Alex leans across the table. “Kyle. You’re a good man. And my friend. Okay?”

Kyle’s shoulders drop an inch or so, and his face shifts with a more genuine, soft smile. “Okay.” Then he turns serious again, and continues, “But you know it’s going to be the same for Flint, right? First, that you can’t redeem someone who has no remorse—I had to make my own choice to be a better guy, to live by a better code, and no one could have done that for me. Second, that even if he does make that choice, the people he’s hurt have no obligation to forgive him. Michael has no obligation to forgive him, and you can’t force him to. You have to make peace with that now, before you start down this road.”

“I know. But thank you, for the reminder.” Alex lets out a long breath. “I don’t know if I can forgive Flint. But he’s a part of my father’s legacy, too. I can’t undo all the harm, but if I can reduce any harm in the future, if I can even do that much…”

“I wish you luck. But, man, just...don’t try and bear too many other people’s sins, okay? You’re not responsible for what Flint does. You gotta look out for yourself, too, you know.”

“Thanks,” Alex says. What else is there to say? He might disagree with Kyle both on what makes someone responsible and also the degree to which he’s already acting in his own self-interest. A truly selfless person would focus on what’s already within control in order to do the most good, not on trying to control everything they could. But if Alex doesn’t know how to live with himself and his choices at this point, he’s already lost. There’s a certain comfort and strength in that.

“Any time,” Kyle replies, saluting him again.

Alex leaves the table and leaves Kyle to it, making for the door and for fresh air. He’ll go home and have a beer there, maybe. Look at his keyboard and think of other songs to write, now that he’s gotten Michael’s song out of his skull.

Like all songs won’t be about Michael, somehow, always.

That thought might have been depressing six months ago, six years ago, in the middle of all the missing they’ve done. But now Alex lets the nostalgia wash over him, welcomes it as an old friend. As a part of him, natural, not something that needs to be fixed or cut away. Every song is about Michael because Michael is a part of him. Nothing wrong with that, no matter how their relationship keeps changing, even if Alex never gets what he wants. He can live with that.

He steps out onto the Pony’s empty patio. Most likely everyone is either still inside watching other performers go on or has already left in disgust at the whole affair. The glow of the string bulbs softens the night, turns the bar into a welcoming place, an oasis of light, makes it hard to take that last step off the porch and into the parking lot. That’s probably the idea. Maria’s savvy like that.

According to Max, Michael helped her hang these a few years back, and somehow he always comes up with replacement bulbs when they’re needed, always knows just what the fix is. It’s so easy to imagine him up on a ladder, deft hands weaving the cords around the wooden lattice, winding a perfect web, not too bright or harsh, just right. Alex sighs, and if it’s overly wistful, well, that’s a secret between him and the night.

“Everything okay?”

Alex jerks around at that voice. He’s heard it from nowhere before, but this probably isn’t one of those times, and sure enough, Michael lifts his head to give Alex a look of concern, head tilted to the side. That dramatic black hat, along with his dark clothes and curled-in posture, it makes him blend into the background, no matter how large he looms in Alex’s eye. He’s always been good at diminishing, at blending. Alex wishes he’d never had to learn to do that.

Alex forces his shoulders to lower, forces a smile to his face. “Yeah, you just startled me. Didn’t think anyone was out here, and, um, I thought you left. During the song.”

The silence stretches too long, too awkward as Michael rolls his shoulders in a shrug, does a familiar old nervous gesture of taking off his hat, running his hand through his hair, and settling his hat back down. Alex spent two weeks trying to find the chords right for that memory, the quiet yearning it awakes in him.

“Yeah, I—I don’t know,” Michael says.

He doesn’t lean against the wall; he doesn’t fold his arms in front of him. He has nothing in his hands. Alex can’t remember the last time he saw him so without a shield, and it takes his breath away.

Michael continues, “I know I wasn’t invited. I mean, uh, I think you didn’t mind seeing me too much, if I can read your face half as well now as I used to, but I wanted to respect that.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t mind.”

Silence falls again. Alex should say something more, should explain himself, shouldn’t let Michael walk away from this thinking he wasn’t wanted.

He blurts, “I thought about inviting you, but I—well, you heard the song, and with things with Maria still so recent and up in the air, I didn’t want to put you in a tough spot. I understand.”

Michael smiles at him, a look so soft Alex can hardly stand it. He licks his lips as if to check if he can still feel, still taste Forrest there, like that might be some sort of reminder that there are other things in life than Michael. He feels nothing, tastes nothing—but how much of the way Michael has always lingered on his skin and on his senses has been psychosomatic all along, because of how much he wished Michael would stay? No one could ever compare. It’s wrong of him to even try.

“You could have asked,” Michael says. “Let me know what it was about. I would have been here. I would have come. I’m happy—proud of you. For doing that, in there. I hope it was everything you wanted it to be. The moment you needed.”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I want to say I was doing it for me, but...it’s hard to tell. Something else I’m working on.” Alex shrugs and puts his hands in his pockets just for something to do with them. “It...it definitely meant something, though. I’m happy.”

“Then I’m happy, too.”

Alex shakes his head. “You don’t have to say that. You wanted so badly to be open with me, but I was never ready, and now that I am, it’s…” Too late. But he doesn’t say it, like filling the air with it might make it even more real than it already is.

“Alex. I lived in this town with your father for ten years. I got it. It hurt, and that hurt might have been screaming louder than the fear we both shared, but I did feel it too.”

The silence that follows has a hole in it where another apology might fit, but if they get started they’ll be here all night.

“Look, um,” Michael says, “Were you looking to get out of here or do you want to sit for a while? It’s a pretty nice night.”

What had previously been the truth—that the show had him feeling good but wanting privacy after willingly divesting it so dramatically—goes right up in smoke, and in its place is just the clean, simple desire to be in Michael’s company, close enough for their knees to brush under the small table, under the fairy lights, under the sky.

“I’m sorry,” Michael says. Alex sucks in a sharp breath.

He hadn’t expected the apology to actually reach the air. Hadn’t even wanted it to.

Alex has never liked apologies. What good is an apology? Greg used to apologize, sometimes, in hushed words when their father wasn’t listening. Flint and Clay never bothered, and Alex preferred it to empty words. Greg’s apology is easier to accept now, with the advantage of hindsight, coupled with action, but Alex doesn’t know how to react to Michael’s sorry.

Jesse Manes never apologized. Not for anything. And now he’s dead. Alex sits across from Michael. The slam of the Pony’s door as someone leaves, the slam of a car door as someone arrives, it all just sounds like hammers falling one after another.

How long did it take for Alex to stop flinching at the sound of military-issue boots approaching? At the shape a man’s shoulders made in uniform towering over him? At the snap and bark of a sergeant’s voice?

Michael’s shoulders are rounded. He always slouches so much.

Alex misses flinching, sometimes. He misses simple, unconditioned, weak prey instincts, universal signals of the vulnerable, of the frightened, so someone capable of comforting him might know how badly he’s in need of comforting—

“Alex?”

Michael’s hand rests in the middle of the small table, bare, his palm upturned like it’s just waiting for the weight of Alex’s hand to settle on top of it. It’s his left hand. Over ten years and one hundred hoarded golden hours, Alex loved the way that hand touched him, like it was all of Michael contained in one small limb. Hurt and hopeful, with a necessary tender lightness, with a shape that sometimes made his throat ache to look at it. Some days he couldn’t use it at all. But he never hid, never tried to cover that part of himself to make Alex comfortable. Maybe that’s why Alex reacted so poorly to the bandana he wore these past months. He made the mistake for so long of thinking that a baring of scars was the same as a baring of souls, and then he learned he was wrong. And then Michael’s scars were gone…

But the hurt still lingered.

Alex puts his hand in Michael’s.

“What are you sorry for?”

“Hearing you sing in there…you’ve got me thinking about how much time we missed. The part I played in all that, pushing you away time and again. Not trusting you, not talking to you.”

“We were just kids.”

“I know. Still. Kids hurt each other all the time, and worse than adults do, most of it. And I’ve done my fair share of that, too.”

Oh, Michael.

“The hurt kids do to each other, it’s not the same,” Alex says softly, as gently as he can muster. “I’m thirty years old. If I can’t look back and forgive the kids we were over the past ten years, what hope is there for me now?”

Michael shakes his head stubbornly. “I was old enough to know better. To be better. To use my words instead of just lashing out when I was hurt. Maybe you don’t remember some of the shit I said, when we used to fight over you leaving, but I do. If we’re turning over a new leaf now, sayin’ sorry just feels like the right thing to do.”

He makes himself look so small. The table forces the barest necessary space between them, but not so little Alex can gracefully lean across it to press their foreheads together, or to rest his hand against Michael’s heart, no matter how much he wants to, no matter how tightly he presses their hands together to make up for it. He wants to feel that heartbeat, let Michael feel his own, match themselves to the same vital rhythm.

But this is about new leaves, like Michael said. So Alex takes a deep breath and lets the words stretch and burn and breathe between them, strengthening the muscles that he let grow so weak for so long.

“Michael. Listen to me. When you were seventeen, homeless, and vulnerable in ways I couldn’t even comprehend, you threw yourself onto my rich, homophobic, military father to protect me. That takes more courage and goodness than it takes to throw yourself on a grenade. Trust me, I know.”

“But—”

Alex leans in, the table biting into his stomach, close enough now to feel Michael’s breath on his cheek and smell rain off the collar of his shirt. “I refuse to blame us—to blame you—for the way it broke us afterward. Okay? No more keeping score. We have the pieces—we can, maybe we can work together to put them back together. No matter what the final picture turns out to look like, even if it’s something completely different than we thought it would be at seventeen. Is that—would that be okay?”

Michael’s thumb passes over the back of Alex’s hand, a simple gesture that makes the hair stand up on his arms. All static, all electric. Alex aches, but it’s a good one.

“I don’t know if it’s too late for us. And you weren’t wrong when you said that things are still rough with Maria. It doesn’t even feel real that things could be over between me and her. And I saw the way Forrest Long looked at you.” Michael’s voice goes so soft Alex can hardly stand it. “If that’s something, you should let it be something.”

“I don’t know if it’s something. I don’t know if I want it to be.”

Alex’s words are distant even to his own ears.

Michael says, “That’s okay too. I’m just tired of pushing, tired of pulling. I want us both to be free, to, to just follow our hearts and see where we end up. I guess that’s my version of not keeping score. ‘Cause I know that you’re in here,” he puts his other hand over his heart, “No matter what our relationship is like. Fighting that just hurts us worse.”

Hope is such a painful thing. Michael told him that for years and years and Alex never quite believed him. But now that he’s asked to hold true to his own beliefs—that hope is necessary, that hope is a tool against yesterday, a compass pointed firmly in the direction of tomorrow—he wavers.

“It shouldn’t have had to be a fight,” he says. “You tried to tell me that you just needed space months ago, and I didn’t—couldn’t—didn’t want to listen. I wanted us to be okay; I thought if I atoned or whatever, we would be okay. But I wasn’t doing it for you. Digging for information, turning over every rock to find the ugliness underneath, that’s what I needed, not you.”

“But you were trying. I recognize that now, I do.”

“I—” Inches from arguing, Alex stops himself short. Patterns, it’s all patterns. They both have to get better at recognizing them, and that means Alex can’t do the same thing he’s told Michael is wrong, where he believes Michael’s assessment of him only when it suits the ugliest voices in his head.

So he says, “Yes. I was. I wanted to empower you the way I feel empowered when I have all the information at my fingertips, but I didn’t ask you what you needed.”

Michael leans forward. “And I should have told you outright that I needed space instead of trying to make you leave so it would make sense when you did—or just trying to hurt you for staying this time and not any other time when I really needed you to.”

Alex swallows hard and nods. He leans forward too. Michael’s hand is so, so warm in his. The two of them walk the same tightrope toward solid ground.

“I’m glad,” Michael says. “I’m glad that you stayed this time. You deserve to know that. I’ve been fighting to get free of the past; I know it’s unchangeable, but it’s always there, telling me all the ways I should have been better, and. Right now, in the present. Thank you. For being there this year.”

Michael smiles at him, a real smile, the kind of look Alex thought he might have imagined from across the bar, with music in his lungs. His eyes crinkle up, sparkling, face utterly transformed with what can only be utterly consuming fondness.

I love you. I love you. I love you. How could he not? How could he have ever convinced himself he was capable of stopping? Michael’s laughter is the joy of knowing someone. Alex hasn’t felt so seen and so unafraid since he was seventeen years old.

Maria and Michael just broke up a few days ago, and it wasn’t mutual. There are so many leaps Alex wants to take now that he’s taken this one, to see how they feel, to reshape and reaffirm his comfort zone now that some of his ghosts have been put to rest. There are so many reasons to wait, to make sure that this time they can get this right.

But what if Michael doesn’t know? Even at this stage down the long road of getting to know the man he loves, Alex knows how easily he doubts his own worth

He and Maria understand each other, as ever. He would give up his brain to see the future, too.

Michael’s face has gone soft and concerned the longer Alex hasn’t responded. Tingling spreads up Alex’s arm when Michael’s warm, rough hand tightens around his own, and the softness he feels helps unloosen his chest and let the words come out.

“No, thank you,” he says, fitting his other hand around Michael’s knuckles so Michael’s healed hand is cradled between his.

That touch lingers for a long moment. For most of their lives, Alex hasn’t been able to read Michael’s face, has second-guessed what he thought each little flicker meant, has held back from acting on what he thought Michael was telling him, no matter how achingly open Michael’s face was. Now, though, Alex just has no idea what is going through Michael’s head as he watches their joined hands, Alex’s fingers against Michael’s bare skin, the bandana abandoned somewhere before Michael even came to the Pony tonight.

“Should we...should we talk about this?” Alex asks, letting his finger draw gently against Michael’s middle knuckle. Michael’s fingers flex in his grip.

“Don’t know what there is to talk about.”

“I don’t know.” Alex shifts and clears his throat. “Just...anything you want to say. Anything you’re feeling. Anything you want to say to me specifically.”

Michael glances around. They’re alone on the patio, but Alex understands. The silence of the night and the muffled clamor of the bar on the other side of the wall give the illusion the whole world is listening.

Then, bluntly, he says, “It hurt. What you said. That you so obviously didn’t understand I might have a hard time looking at it for personal reasons, since I never asked for it to be healed. I thought if anyone understood that, you would.”

Alex’s knee twinges in concert. He itches to rub it, but his hands stay still wrapped around Michael’s.

Michael continues, “Hiding the healing had nothing to do with you, and if I was still pissed at your dad for causing it or at Max for healing it, that wasn’t really any of your business, either. That’s all.”

Deep breaths. Having all that out in the open is a clean thing, a necessary thing. Alex nods. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Michael nods back and lets his shoulders drop. “But Max is the person I need to get into it with, not you. Then he was dead when I really needed to, so it got all twisted up and stuck inside of me, and I didn’t say anything to anyone. I don’t blame you for not being a mind reader and coming to some wrong conclusions.”

It’s that—it’s that that leaves Alex floundering for a moment, that instant of Michael seeing his guilt and cutting through it with a few words. He leaves a vacuum in its place and all of Alex’s other feelings, so carefully compartmentalized, have to rush to fill it in. Michael lets the silence linger, but Alex can feel the quickness of his heartbeat in the small of his wrist.

“What about you? Anything you want to say to me?” Michael says. “‘Cause we’ve fought before, but for some reason we keep coming back to the bunker. Feels like maybe there’s something there.”

“I…”

That...yeah. He was right. So many times, they’d fought. When they were kids and everything was falling apart. Over ten years, among the pieces. The argument they had in the bunker was practically a level-headed disagreement compared to the fight they had before Alex’s last deployment, the worst one, the one that cut them apart for almost two years without a word to each other. Even that one had scattered like mist under the morning sun when they were in each other’s arms again.

And maybe that’s part of it. That their physical relationship has changed, that without the language of touch everything feels harsher and harder to forget. But the other reason lurks behind the walls in his mind.

He’s supposed to be better now. More peaceful, more understanding, more balanced. To preach forgiveness then lash out at Michael, the one person it’s always been safe to be angry with—it’s an ugly thing. Alex doesn’t want to hold it. Doesn’t want to be that. He’s supposed to be better now. It doesn’t matter how often a therapist tells him progress isn’t a straight line. It shouldn’t matter.

If he can fix this, make it like it never happened, maybe he can fix them.

Alex doesn’t want to look that feeling in the eyes. Has avoided it, so far. And how to say it? He doesn’t even know if Michael wants them fixed. Not the same way Alex does. And now’s not the time to ask that question.

“I just want us to be okay,” he says. Simple. Weak. He hates the sound of pleading inside his own skull. He isn’t used to it. It’s just Michael. Michael won’t use it against him, won’t hurt him, he knows this, but inside something turns and hides and covers its head with its arms waiting for the blow. To buy it time, he babbles, “Not talking about it feels like hiding. All the times we let arguments go in the past—I want to do things differently, to actually say I know what I did wrong and say that I know we, I, can do better, I don’t know, I just want things to be different, to change for good—”

“Okay.”

Michael’s voice is soft. So soft Alex wants to whimper.

“Okay, Alex,” he repeats. Now his other hand, hesitating just slightly, comes up to rest against Alex’s, so they’re holding onto each other as fast as they can with the distance and objects between them.

That’s it? Just okay?

Michael shifts their hands, slides their fingers together slowly, and gives them a squeeze.

Oh.

Okay.

“Were you wanting to get out of here?” Michael asks suddenly, dipping his head slightly so his hat hides his eyes.

“No, um. Actually, I think I’ll stay a while. It’s a nice night.”

He’s exhausted, but nothing could tear him away. Not now. And it is a nice night, clear and cool, the sky wide and velvet above them, in their little bubble of light.

“Cool,” Michael says. He leans back in his chair, though he leaves their hands connected, and he looks up at Alex again, eyes glimmering with a smile. “‘Cause I want to hear more about how you got into songwriting for real. You didn’t tell me about it when we hung out the other day.”

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Alex replies, but his heart sings at the interest.

“Ok, sure, uh-huh. Well I’m going to go get us drinks, and when I get back maybe you can distract me and pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

“Between the two of us, you’re the one with the magic hands,” Alex says, only for his mouth to drop open when he realizes what he’s just said.

But Michael is already cackling, and the sound is so soothing to Alex’s soul he can’t interrupt, and he’s standing up to go inside, and it’s impossible not to notice how he doesn’t let their hands drop until the last possible moment, and then he’s sweeping his hat off his head with a dramatic bow and a cheeky smirk, and Alex can’t help but smile back at him.

He turns to head back into the Pony, and as Alex watches and mirrors the motion, he flexes his hands, rubs them together, then slides them into his pockets as if to hide the lingering feeling of touch for safekeeping.

And then Alex is alone, still smiling, knowing Michael will be back soon.

#rnm bb #roswell nm big bang #my fic #malex #malex fic #alex manes #michael guerin

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