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criminalromantic · 4 years

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Cornelia Street - Chapter 3 (Billy Russo x Fem!Reader)

Summary: Your relationship with Billy progresses and might be the start of something.

Word Count: 1652

A/N: the third chapter is here and we have a cat that has a dialog, enjoy :)

Warnings: none, just fluffy fluff

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Hearing a Monday morning alarm was not a pleasurable experience for most of the population and you were no different. You frowned at the sound of your alarm and without opening your eyes looked for your phone on the nightstand. You cuddled your teddy bear close to your chest before you reluctantly let him go. Unfortunately for you, you would not be getting the privilege of sleeping in. Soon your little fluffy cat-son would start meowing like the world was ending and demanding breakfast. With the thought, you slowly sat up on the edge of the bed. Not bothering with throwing something over your pajamas, you walked into the connected living room-kitchen area, where your cat had been already expecting you.

“Good morning, Benjamin.” After giving him a little scratch behind his left ear you poured some dry food into his little bowl.

“Meow.” You refilled his water bowl while he was devouring his breakfast.

Now that the cat was taken care of - for now - you went to the bathroom to do your business. A few minutes later, you were standing in front of your closet, trying to think of something to wear. And since it looked like a warm and sunny day, you picked a pair of white trousers and a white t-shirt with a flower pattern. You finished the look with mint blue sneakers and headed back to the bathroom to do your hair and put on some light make-up that would match the color scheme of your outfit. You started to feel hungry so you went to the kitchen and started preparing breakfast for yourself, stealing glances at the happy cat that was now lying in his cat bed and enjoying the sunlight coming through the windows.

You were happy that you didn't need to rush to get to work. Since your apartment was right above your flower shop, which was a real privilege. You never had to worry about rush hours or traffic jams, because all it took to get home from work was to walk up the stairs in the back of the building. There was also no need to be scared about going home alone because you didn't even need to step outside to do that. Also, you didn't even need to leave the place for a lunch break, you just went home. It was perfect for you.

Having finished your breakfast, you washed the dishes and got ready to go to work. You made sure to stop by Benjamin and gently stroke his head.

“Bye, Benji, be nice and don't sneak out to the neighbor’s, alright?” You told the feline as if he would understand and left your apartment. He almost seemed like he understood, cause he let out an annoyed meow and went back to soaking up the sun.

A few moments later, you opened the shop for the day and first customers started rolling in. There were quite many, like any other Monday, but everything went smoothly.

When the demand let up for the first time that day, you quickly went to the back of the shop and made yourself a cup of coffee. With a creamy and sugary caffeine boost in your hand, you walked back to your place at the counter and continued enjoying a few moments to yourself. That was until you heard someone come in. And you recognized the person.

It was the same guy that stopped by on Friday night. You might have been sleepy, but you remembered that face. This time, he looked much more put together and in control. He was wearing a dark grey suit that looked crazy expensive. A black coat on top of that and as your eyes moved upwards you noticed that his hair was slicked back. Quite like the last time you saw him, except this time not even one hair was out of place.

“Hi.” He said softly before your brain even thought about saying anything.

“Hi.” You had no idea what to say, so you took a long sip of your coffee to avoid having to say anything.

“I wanted to say thank you, for Friday, you know, for not kicking me out. And letting me drip water all over your floor and keeping you at work.” Even though he was dressed to impress full in business mode, he was very sweet and endearing.

“You already thanked me once….” You trailed off, looking for a name in your memory and realizing that you didn't know his name.

“Billy. Billy Russo.” He offered to shake his hand and you took it.

“Y/N Y/L/N.”

“I came here actually intending to introduce myself. On Friday I remembered that I didn't do that and I also didn't have a name to assign to such a beautiful girl.” You could feel your cheeks burn with blush at the statement. He seemed proud at the recent flow of events and the look on his face was just...content.

What you didn't know, was that Billy had tried to come by one time during the weekend. It was on a Saturday morning after we woke up with a hang-over from the night before. He couldn't stop thinking about you that evening and he couldn't get your out of his head the following morning either. So he went by. When he tried to pull the door, he noticed that it was locked and it was dark inside. It didn't occur to him that maybe, you didn't work weekends. That theory proved itself to be true when he quickly skimmed through the opening hours. With a rather sad expression on his face, he went back to his apartment.

“That's the only reason you came by? To tell me your name?”

“No, I also came to buy some flowers from my favorite flower shop in town.”

What was an emergency visit on one Friday night, turned into a habit over a few weeks. Billy would usually come by every day unless he had a lot of work and he would shoot you a text if he wasn't coming. While you had exchanged numbers, most of your conversations were face-to-face. There was a pattern to his visits. One day he would come in the morning. The next day he would come in the afternoon. With every single visit, you learned a little more about him. He told you about his friends, his childhood, his time in the military and last but not least, about his military contracting company - Anvil.

Billy was crazy about you, at least that's what Frank told him when he entered his office or his penthouse. There weren't too many flowers, but Billy made sure to have a bouquet in every room of his penthouse. The same went for his office in Anvil. He had a security company and the place had to look as such, so he couldn’t make the place look like a garden. That was why giving flowers to his female employees also became a regular occurrence. At first, he got a few weird looks here and there, but he was overall known as a good and thoughtful boss, so everybody just went with it.

“Bill.” Frank tried to get his friend's attention when he saw him walk through the office door with yet another bouquet.

“Bill.” Still no response, he was currently filling a vase with fresh water.

“William Russo!” Frank growled at his friend, who jerked and finally decided to look at him.

“Hm?”

“You are smitten, brother. I've never seen you act like…this. When do I get to meet this mysterious flower girl? I'm beginning to think you just made her up.” Billy laughed, but Frank didn't. He kept his eyes on best friend, awaiting an answer.

“I can assure you that she is real, Frankie, and… I feel like she's good for me.”

“Have you asked her out yet?” Frank asked in a lighthearted teasing tone.

“No, not yet.” BIlly's voice was quiet but his friend heard the response very clearly.

“What? Why? Come on, I thought Billy the Beaut was back at it again.”

“I tried to ask her out once and do you know what happened? As soon as the word left my mouth she nearly choked on her coffee. To be honest, it was funny and cute, but at that moment I decided to wait. I don't want to mess this up, Franke. She doesn't even know it, but I think she makes me better.” A wave of realization washed over Billy. He didn't want to mess this up. He was always the one and done type of guy because he never thought that anyone would want more from him. The money, cars, suits, parties, it was cool, but one ever cared to dig deeper. Whenever there was a girl he thought he might like, it turned out she just wanted to cross his name off the list. So over time, he stopped seeing himself as something more. He thought that no one would ever want him romantically. He never thought that someone would like him for him and not for what he could give them or do for them. And you were… interested. In him, in what he did, how he did it, all that stuff that no one bothered to listen to. And you wanted to hear about it from him. He knew he had quite a reputation and at first, he was worried about what you might have heard about him. All those worries turned to dust when you told him that you didn't care what people said. He felt that he could be just himself.

“Well, that makes two of us. I have never seen you so happy. Hope it lasts.” With that, Frank got up from the chair opposite Billy and left the office.

“Yeah, me too,” Billy said to himself in a hushed voice before he started working.

#ben barnes #billy russo #billy russo x reader #billy russo fic #billy russo cornelia street #billy russo flower shop #the punisher #frank castle #billy russo imagine

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focsle · 7 years

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I liked the idea of Anson being Karnaca’s Resident Curmudgeon so much that I decided to let him escape his overseer interrogation with his life. So here, have Anson aging gracelessly.

Somewhere in the apartment, a clock ticked softly. Motes of silver dust spiraled in the sunlight that filtered between the window blinds. A fan rattled in desperate combat against the humidity that cast a haze throughout the rooms, and the spiced smell of wood sitting in the heat for too long rose from the floorboards.

From the bedroom in the back hall, a faucet creaked, rust tinged water tumbled into cupped hands, and Anson splashed it across his face.

His reflection scowled at him from beneath the blotchy patina of the water-stained mirror. There was a speckling of age spots across his skin, where the Serkonan sun had been particularly unkind. He pressed his fingertips to his temple to trace his receding hairline and then dragged his hands down his sandpaper jaw.

“I’m getting old.” He sighed to himself.

Standing in an undershirt he was already starting to sweat through, Anson braced his palms against the sink and scrutinized his wiry frame in the glass with pursed lips. Not much different from the days when he could claim to be thirty, but he was certainly going softer in places, sagging in places. It was enough of a blow to his vanity to send him spiraling into a myriad of self criticisms every morning.

“And fat.”

Something brushing against his calf brought his eyes downward, where a lanky, hairless cat had entered the room. Tail held up in an inquisitive curl, the feline wove a figure eight between Anson’s legs before looking up at him. She meowed, pointedly.

“I am. Don’t try to argue with me.”

The cat meowed again, flashing her needle-like teeth.

“I know how things used to be.” Anson sniffed with disdain. “I have certainly had,” He paused to sweep what was left of his greying hair back from his brow. “More glorious days.”

Seemingly disinterested in continuing their conversation, the cat turned and padded back out into the hall. Anson watched her go.

“Such an unbothered little thing.” He called after the cat. “All you have to think about is which patch of sunlight to lie in.” How he longed to be unbothered.

He took his left hand in his right, laying one set of fingers to the twisted wounds of where the others used to be.

The little finger was entirely forfeit—severed by the flash of an overseer’s knife clean at the first knuckle. The ring and middle fingers were salvageable, with enough of a joint to attach the decorative silver prosthetics he had made from salvaged, scrapped together funds. They were cold and hollow, a reminder of how far he had fallen.

“No matter…no matter.” He muttered to himself, shaking the gloom away with a jerk of his shoulders.

He took up his corset from the bed, eying it. Years ago he had pinned back the silhouettes of the aristocracy, and now he was only pinning back his own slumping form. Everything circled back around to a boy in a one room apartment in Drapers Ward, listening to the hum of his father’s sewing machine and the uneven drop of his injured foot on the treadle. Everything circled back around to a young man who had clawed his way out of that tenement, a charming fraud rubbing elbows with the gentry. At the height of his success, and in his less moral moments, he wondered whether or not his father would have been proud of him. Now he didn’t wonder about his father at all. Now he asked what a younger Anson would think of himself: a tired old man, a poor crippled tailor, slipping off into obscurity in a dusty corner of the world. It all circled back.

He jerked the laces of the corset more tightly than he used to. His breath hitched, and he went through the laborious process of drawing back his age with each pull of the intricate lacing. What had once been swift second nature to him was now slow and cumbersome without the full use of his hand.

Several minutes later Anson looked back at a more satisfactory reflection. He pulled on the rest of his clothing, still impeccably tailored by his own hand, dabbed vetiver oil upon the back of each wrist, and tied his cravat in a stiff bow. That bow would undoubtedly wilt in the heat as the hours passed, and blood and dust would mottle the hem of his trousers, but that was no excuse to let himself go.

He strode out into the front room where his cat had found a pool of sunlight to sprawl in.

“Ahhh, Thimble.” He said as he stepped over her. “I see you’ve made your most important decision of the day.” Her ears twitched but she made no move to get up.

“I’ll be back later.” Anson added before walking out the door.

The stairwell was dingy. Drifts of trash gathered in the corners, fliers for mistreated miners, warnings about parasitic flies looking to take advantage of any bloated corpse. The wallpaper peeled off in rolls as the glue came undone in the merciless humidity, and the floors were only partially tiled, as though whoever was laying them left for a lunch break one day and never came back. The landlord had yet to respond to Anson’s numerous needling requests to get around to fixing the place. In fact, the man seemed to always conveniently vanish the moment he saw Anson approach. The coward.

Anson tripped on one of the loose tiles on the way out, cursing through his teeth, and then stepped out into the burning white light of Karnaca at noon.

The familiar but odious stench of fish viscera hit him immediately and he retched. He suspected he would never get used to it. The atmosphere was heavy with it, along with the droning of flies drawn to the dead sharks hanging over drip pans that rippled ruby with each sluggish drop of blood.

Barely recovered, Anson looked over at the man next to him who was sawing into one of the creatures. Its guts bubbled out of the cut made in ropes of purple and red, and Anson choked back his bile.

“I—“ His voice cracked. He swallowed and started again. “I take it you lost.” He said to the worker.

The man stopped in his butchery to look up at Anson. He sniffed, dragging a heavy forearm beneath his running nose.

“What?” The larger man asked, with narrowed eyes.

“At your dice game last night. Heard you cursing about it terribly. At two in the morning.”

“Yeah, and I heard you bawlin’ out the window like a little piss tellin’ us to shut up.”

That was indeed true. The alleyway was directly beneath his bedroom window. Equipped with a moldering couch, it was a dreadfully comfortable gathering place for the dockworkers’ nightly games.

“Look at me.” Anson said to the man with a sigh, shifting his weight to one side. He pointed at his drawn face. “Don’t I look like a man who needs sleep?”

The worker laughed and plunged his hand into the carcass to pull out the offal. “Stuff some cotton in your ears or somethin’ tonight, because Jackie’s bringing cards.” He said, as Anson sourly buried his nose in the crook of his arm and stumbled away from the man.

Blood everywhere, in the Campo Seta dockyards. The water endlessly bloomed with it as the gutters spat out their waste, and it was tracked on the soles of every pedestrian in town. Storage hatches were crammed to capacity with all a manner of sea creatures, split open and rotting in the heat. When he strolled to the wealthier districts in his more wistful moments, he still couldn’t look at the cans of fermented red shark displayed in their luxury storefronts without feeling a roiling nausea, since he was so intimately acquainted with the process.

Anson lit a cigarette for himself as he weaved past the activity of the dockyards. Longshoreman hauled sacks and barrels of goods. Ships were caulked in the harbor. An idler cast a line into the water for the hagfish.

Leaning at the other end of the docks, a ramshackle bar nailed together out of shipboards and corrugated metal cast a merciful patch of shade. Anson walked over to it and draped himself upon his familiar barstool.

“‘Lo, Anson.” The bartender said while polishing a dingy glass.

“Afternoon.”

Not many people had known Anson on a first name basis in Dunwall. Few had been acquainted enough to be considered friends. He made sure of that, out of fear of his petty circle learning that he was not truly one of them.

But now, the only lie he had left was the measure of his waistline. There was a certain freedom in that.

“What’ll you take?”

Anson’s order was caught beneath the thick hacking cough he had been developing over the years. He beat a fist to his chest and spat off to the side. “Damn dust.” Anson muttered around the cigarette. “Just a Padilla.”

The bartended nodded cheerily, sliding a small green bottle in his direction. Anson gave him a grateful nod, stubbing out his cigarette and washing the ash down with the bubbling taste of pear. Lukewarm, but better than nothing.

Amidst the cries of gulls and the hush of the waves, Anson heard the wheedling tone of a fiddle slightly out of tune behind him. He twisted on the barstool to look at the young woman playing with a bow where the horsehair hung in strands. Her companion sat alongside her upon an overturned fruit crate with a guitar in hand, calloused fingers dancing across the strings. For all Anson’s outward bitterness, he cracked a smile. Something uplifting among the stench and gore of the neighborhood.

He slid off the barstool and pushed the soda aside, walking over to the musicians in the loose jointed way that characterized him in easier days. The man took a moment to get a sense of the flow of the music and then angled his ankles in the fashion he had been taught during the local Morley Nights in the district, when the raucous laughter and jaunty session songs tumbled from the windows of local pubs late into the night. It was an event he never would have attended, in his old life, but now one that he delighted in.

With the upward sweep of the melody Anson lithely danced upon the balls of his feet with a timing and grace that belied his age. The girl laughed, high and good natured, and Anson returned it. Fifty two, he wasn’t old at all. Certainly life had carved the lines on his face with a much heavier hand than on most, but he still had something in him. Despite the midday sun he kept a bouncing pace, grinning when he heard the bartender behind him clap his hands in time, to give him a beat to strike his heel against.

Never would he have danced in the gutter in Dunwall. But no one knew him here, and so it was here where he allowed people to know him.

#sj writes things #charlatan corsetier

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