#ideally if i drew him right he's recognizable | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

uwua3 · 3 years

Note

Hello! Sunflowers hold a really special meaning for me so when i read the "sunflower dreams" My heart was so happy!! I havent felt this happy in a long time since quarantine started so thank you for taking the time to write it! It really made my day. If i could request a kazunari x reader where they're both artists that would be amazing. Maybe the reader can be a famous anonymous art influencer? Its up to you! Again thank you so much for writing "sunflower dreams" 💜

i’m so happy i could make you smile ‧⁺◟( ᵒ̴̶̷̥́ ·̫ ᵒ̴̶̷̣̥̀ ) it’s messages like these that absolutely make my day! thank you so much for taking your time to even read it, i’m glad to know it touched your heart ♡ i hope you have a good rest of your day—please know all of a3! love you vvv much!!! ｀･ω･)9 i hope this makes your heart happy just like before! thank you, anon, for everything

summary: every time you fell in love, you made a new art piece

author’s note: please smile from this absolutely soft and endearing kazunari fluff! in times like these where negativity is all around us, it’s good to take a break and purposely give yourself happiness. i hope this is a light in your day and makes you experience all the goodness of love! ♡ — concept based on “to all the boys i’ve loved before”

word count: 3,389

music: i like me better – lauv

to everyone i’ve loved before.

🌻🎨 miyoshi kazunari

you created art every time you had a crush so intense, you didn’t know what else to do

no matter how big or small it was, or how long or short it lasted, love is love. even if it was a random stranger you’d never see again or someone you knew for a lifetime, love is love

therefore, there was no exact total. because even if you didn’t remember every single person you’ve made art for, you clearly remembered what it was like experiencing the euphoria of love. the phenomenon of your heart selflessly beating for someone else. the attack of getting hit by cupid’s arrow out of no where. the rush of emotions unlike any other

love was everywhere and you made sure to create something that was a memory of it. that was when you decided to practice art after being unable to recall a person’s face a moment too long

it was your form of a love letter. a picture spoke a thousand words you couldn’t write, and art was the perfect way to convey that. online for everyone to see were your love letters in art form: portraits of everyone you’ve loved

you fell in love again and again, a new art piece posted soon over the years of your life. under the username, to-everyone-ive-loved, a lifelong project was in the works for all of social media to see

unknown to the rest of the world, you were the artist behind the blog “to-everyone-ive-loved” who created portraits from memory

but, you didn’t mean to fall in love with another artist as well

all it took was one comment and you were theirs

it was one of your most recent posts, a finished piece on a stranger you saw. you found yourself in veludo way, the ideal street to find people you’d never forget. after witnessing a sudden street act, only one actor caught your eye that day

you didn’t know his name, but you didn’t need to. you were in love

you immediately rushed home without a second thought, the inspiration and creativity infectious after watching him perform. something about his energy was wildly entertaining and bizarre, like a modern pop song as a person. he was effortlessly trendy, popular, and charismatic just from the few minutes you saw him

the moment he stood up on that street corner like it was a stage, all eyes were on him and he knew it. as you sketched into the day, you remembered the small details clearly. dirty blonde hair with no dark roots in sight, glittering green eyes, wide welcoming smile. he had the face of an actor, that’s for sure

when you posted it right after finishing, you didn’t expect any major attention. on average, your posts got 100 likes or so. while it was an impressive feat, nothing could’ve prepared you for that one comment

kaz-PIKO: i’m in love with your art ♡

as your popularity and fame grew before your very eyes, you clicked on his profile and realized it was him. the actor you had seen earlier at veludo way

you didn’t know what happened, but all you knew was you couldn’t forget this one person, miyoshi kazunari, no matter how hard you tried

no matter where you went, you couldn’t draw anyone else except that boy named kazunari. after scrolling through his entire instablam account, you found out he was an actor for mankai company’s summer troupe. he was a star in his own right, with a stage presence like the spotlight was constantly on him and a heart of gold

this was the first time you ever got so caught up on someone that they didn’t leave your mind. hours became days, and days began becoming a week before you let yourself follow him back

everyone you had ever drawn had never recognized themselves before. it was all because a follower connected the visual similarities between your art and kazunari’s unique traits that kazunari knew you had seen him before

if only he wasn’t a social media influencer with followers reaching the hundreds of thousands. at least, his popularity attracted attention to your profile...

this was a problem, however. because if you couldn’t draw anyone else, what could you do? once again, you stalked kazunari’s blog once again like it was a habit

it was never really a rule to make one love letter per person, but you never had wanted to make another for the same person. until, now

video after video. picture after picture. story after story. you could see kazunari’s face even when you closed your eyes. what about him made you daydream about him constantly? was it his charming voice that could make anyone stop and stare? his intricate piercings that were different every day? his ability to make you feel at home? whatever it was (or maybe it was an accumulation of everything and more), you had to draw kazunari again

when you posted it, you typically didn’t add more to the caption than the date and time. except this time, you felt like all your rules were being broken over someone who had no idea who you were

to-everyone-ive-loved-before: XX/XX/20 (3:33 A.M.) — social butterfly

you watched it upload. it was a piece you had never done before. glowing butterflies of all colors surrounded the center of the masterpiece, a smiling kazunari

hopefully, this would solve whatever feelings you were having and the world would go back to normal. you’d move on, fall in love with someone else, and repeat

it didn’t work, because some time later, you woke up to a comment that made you feel the butterflies in your stomach

kaz-PIKO: like a butterfly, i’ll fly to you, wherever you are~ ☆

and for some reason, you wanted kazunari to find you

you had never felt so motivated to draw before. however, your muse was the same. a beautiful boy named miyoshi kazunari who was slowly capturing your heart without even knowing it. you watched the pages in your sketchbook lessen and lessen. the corners of assignments and napkins and anything in between was covered in doodles. if there was a writing instrument in your hand, something related to kazunari would come out of it

it was a fascination. a fixiation, even. you had only seen one performance before falling in love. was it because kazunari responded that it made you feel like you had a chance?

you wouldn’t admit it, but it was becoming embarrassing with how much you were staring at the few unread messages from kazunari in your dm box. they came in right after you had followed him back, and more arrived when you posted the “social butterfly” piece

what was stopping you from talking to your muse? you knew the answer without thinking: what if these feelings were real?

obsessions and crushes come and go, but... love, love stayed. there wasn’t any possibility you could love someone from afar without knowing anything about them, right?

but, then again... you did know some things about kazunari. you knew kazunari was the best actor of all time, with expressions and gestures the equivalent of art. kazunari was art—in every single way possible. everything about him made you want to draw and draw and draw

you only drew kazunari for a certain time, no matter which stranger crossed your path. people you knew you would’ve sketched simply became passer-bys, and it was all because of kazunari’s sunny smile that you were in love. or, what you thought was love

the more you thought about kazunari’s unread dms, the more you wondered what this was. why did kazunari make you so happy? was this truly the first time you were experiencing... a crush?!

for the first time since that street act, you found yourself in veludo way. while half of you was hoping you’d randomly bump into summer troupe’s moodmaker, the other half was petrified about how kazunari was a real person. a very much popular, recognizable person

it was the weekend, and the burden of university projects was telling you to go back and focus. yet, with a sketchbook in one hand and a pencil tucked behind your ear, you were very much prepared to draw to your heart’s content

as you tried to flip to a clean page, you heard something that made your heart flutter. despite the noise and busy atmosphere of veludo, a distinct laugh was audible above the crowd. when you looked up, your eyes barely registered a deep blue jacket before walking straight into the person

you nearly tumbled to the ground before two hands steadied you, a surprised “whoa!” leaving their mouth before being followed by a gentle laugh. the usual embarrassment didn’t set in until you went to go thank the person, only to stop

oh my god. you had just bumped into miyoshi kazunari, your muse for the past month or so

kazunari grinned, even though it faltered slightly at your wide-eyed expression and awkward silence. he didn’t seem to mind as he adjusted his black top hat, pocketing his phone and confidently meeting your gaze

“i’m so sorry~! i hope you’re okay, i’m kazunari!” kazunari introduced and you realized he didn’t know you were behind to-everyone-ive-loved-before. you quickly adjusted yourself, pretending as if this wasn’t the highlight of your entire week

when you introduced yourself, kazunari’s eyes sparkled with interest as he easily led you into conversation. despite being a bit of a socially awkward artist who preferred being alone over anything else, kazunari was... comfortable. you didn’t feel self-conscious of how you acted, because he readily accepted how you were with a smile

was he like this was everyone or... did he find you to be a work of art, too?

standing off to the side, you finally noticed several members of mankai were advertising their latest play. bright, aesthetically pleasing flyers were being handed out to everyone walking by, and you seemed to look a moment too long before kazunari followed your gaze and suddenly snapped his fingers

“oh! are you interested in theatre?” you really weren’t, but you nodded anyways just to see kazunari’s excitement. he pardoned himself for a moment just to snatch a flyer, returning to show it off with a proud smile

“please come to mankai company’s summer performance!” kazunari’s smile sparkled and before he looked around to see if anyone was watching, he winked. kazunari covered the side of his face that was facing his troupe members, pretending as if you two were sharing some big secret

“plus, i’ll be there. if you come, i’ll make sure to do my very best~” kazunari bargained, even though you already knew he was already planning on wowing the audience with his charisma. you took in his genuine want to impress you and the butterflies came back

“i’ll come.” you agreed without even checking the date or reading anything. now all of you just wanted more & more opportunities as the person kazunari was surprisingly interested in, not as the artist who was basically in love with him

agreeing right away was worth it when kazunari shot you a grateful, blinding smile in return. you stumbled over your words with how taken back you were, but asked anyways, “do you like flowers?”

kazunari’s eyes softened for a moment, his usual energy suddenly gone before returning. he seemed genuinely moved by your question, and you wondered how many flowers it’d take to see him smile again like that

“i do, especially if they’re from you.”

“what kind?”

someone called kazunari’s name, insisting they were going to be late for practice. kazunari shouted back an agreement by telling them to go ahead first, before putting all his attention on you once again

“hibiscus.” meaning delicate beauty

before kazunari could ask for your socials, with his hand already reaching for his phone, you cut him off, hoping your voice wasn’t off

“next week. 7 P.M., mankai theatre. i’ll be there, front row.” you promised and took off, rushing off with a wave as kazunari stared after you for a second before waving back enthusiastically

as you left, kazunari was about to leave before he noticed something on the ground. it was a plain sketchbook, unassuming at first but it was nearly bursting at the binding with how many pages there were

when kazunari picked it up, he was about to flip to the first page before mankai called his name again, impatient this time. kazunari held onto the book and sent one last glance towards your direction before disappearing, hurrying to make sure the director wouldn’t penalize him for being the reason everyone was late

when you arrived home, you instinctually reached for the pencil behind your ear. at the same time, you put your hand in your bag, attempting to feel the familiar edges of your sketchbook

then, after turning your bag inside out and finding nothing, you collapsed onto your desk chair with shock and disbelief

you lost your sketchbook in veludo way the moment you met kazunari. what if he had it?

you drew another piece and stared at your screen, wondering if you should post it. it was kazunari once again with a yellow hibiscus flower behind his ear, the same gentle smile you couldn’t perfectly capture gracing his lips

you typed the caption and backspaced before settling on something that only you and him would know

to-everyone-ive-loved-before: XX/XX/20 (8:01 P.M.) — delicate beauty

you hesitated before deleting the post a second after. maybe, you’d keep some artwork to yourself

kazunari had the sketchbook open next to his bedside, his phone in his hands and your profile open. he could recognize your art style a mile away, and the moment he saw the first sketch after practice, he couldn’t believe it

did this explain why he felt such a natural attraction to you? when you bumped into him, kazunari swore he could see the sparks flying. you made him feel like he was falling in love and you only proved him right when you two talked earlier. he wanted to know everything about you, he wanted to see you again

was this what love at first sight felt like? kazunari giddily typed a message over and over again, the unread messages of his filling his screen

kaz-PIKO: heya!! ★>d(,,･ε´-,,)⌒☆ just wanted to say i LOVE your art fr!!! we should totes collab, you know???

kaz-PIKO: thanks for drawing me btw :0 does this mean you live near veludo? let’s meet up!!!

kaz-PIKO: ,,, i don’t usually say this but, that social butterfly piece was breathtaking. you must really like me, huh? (･ω<)☆ jk haha

kaz-PIKO: no but really, it’s beautiful. thank you, honestly. it made my day, you make me happy ♡

kaz-PIKO: you must be really beautiful, too. i would want to draw you as well. lmk if ur up for that haha

kazunari read back his previous messages, all of them delivered but unopened. he realized how... how open he already was with the anonymous faceless artist, despite never interacting with them

now that he knew what you looked like, it only reassured his intuition that he was rightfully head over heels for you

kazunari typed something before deleting it, closing out of instablam and throwing his phone somewhere on his bed

kaz-PIKO: i was right, you are beautiful. i may have fallen in love, too

some things were better left unsaid. after all, you two had until next week to figure everything out

for the rest of the week, all you and kazunari did were think about the other person. a small part of you was afraid kazunari wasn’t the dream boy you imagined, but he was much more. you noticed he started posting more often and turned his notifications, wanting to be one of the first to see his practice videos and university selfies

you didn’t post any of the art you made of kazunari, making it the longest you hadn’t posted ever. kazunari couldn’t help but refresh your account every now and then, hoping he’d see his face again, as selfish as it was. kazunari wouldn’t know how’d he feel if he saw someone else had your heart

the longer time went on, the more you were certain. every fascination you had with someone was temporary, and you remembered the feeling rather than the person. but, with kazunari, you liked him for who he was. everything kazunari made you feel was new and exciting, but even when that went away, you still liked him

kazunari was your first crush, for real

kazunari liked making people like him. so, your online confession through art wasn’t exactly a surprise. but, yours was different. it was earnest, honest, and everything he didn’t know he was needing

kazunari looked through your sketchbook again and again, tracing over the notes you wrote in the margins and admiring your skill

kazunari liked you, and he was certain he would’ve still liked you even if you weren’t to-everyone-ive-loved-before

when showtime arrived, kazunari was oddly nervous. peeking from behind the red curtain, kazunari could already see you were one of the first sitting front row, just like you said. he had practiced his lines a thousand times and summer was fully prepared, why was he nervous?

before he went on, kazunari ignored the urgency of the mankai staff and quickly texted a message to your profile, hoping you’d at least see the notification this time

kaz-PIKO: i like you, too

(when you felt your phone buzz, you quickly silenced it)

the show moved you to a standing ovation, just like everyone else in the audience. as summer walked out to bow and express their gratitude, you watched kazunari’s eyes search for yours as he tilted his head towards backstage. you nodded, knowing you’d do anything to see this kazunari. actor kazunari, who was on cloud 9 with his performance and glowing from praise

you wanted to see, to experience, to draw, all versions of kazunari

after the applause, you looked around backstage before feeling a hand on your arm, the feeling reminiscent of the first time you bumped into kazunari

“you came.” kazunari breathlessly stated, as if he was surprised. before he could say anything else, you presented him with a bouquet of hibiscus flowers. the same shade of yellow you drew him with

“of course, i wanted to see you again.” you honestly admitted, knowing it made you flustered. kazunari carefully took the flowers before grinning, gently placing then beneath his chin. he looked like a vision, you wish you could’ve asked him to stand still so you could capture this moment forever

“i wanted to see you, too.” kazunari softly said, all the energy of being on stage gone. it was tranquil and peaceful, like you two were the only people in the entire theatre

kazunari took a moment to admire you before realizing something, taking something from behind him and presenting it to you. it was your sketchbook on the bottom, but a smaller version was on top of it, signed in silver sharpie. kazunari’s signature was glittering like his eyes as you took it

“next time, let’s draw together.”

kazunari’s sketchbook was filled with you. anything from small doodles to encouraging messages was found inside, with tens of post-it notes of just thoughts about you. kazunari’s art was colorful and extremely out of the box compared to his usual traditional style. it made you smile

kazunari watched you flip through it, already knowing this was the greatest act of love he could’ve declared this early on. he anticipated for you to reach the end

when you landed on the last page, you saw a note

do you want go on a date with me?

“next time, respond to my dms! that way i don’t have to write everything~!” kazunari teased and you two shared a laugh, knowing everything was going to be okay

“yes.”

“yes...?”

“yes, i’ll respond to your dms. and yes, i’ll go on a date with you.”

eventually, you ended up closing your blog for good. your last post was a picture of you and kazunari, with one caption

to-everyone-ive-loved-before: XX/XX/20 (3:33 P.M.) — to the one boy i love now, i love you

kaz-PIKO: i love you, too ♡

#miyoshi kazunari #kazunari miyoshi #a3! act! addict! actors!#a3!#act! addict! actors!#a3! actor training game #a3! headcanons #act! addict! actors! headcanons #mankai a3!#mankai company #a3! x reader #a3 x reader #kazunari x reader #a3! kazunari #a3 kazunari

109 notes · View notes

pawprintsmoon · 3 years

Text

You and me, Part III

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30337365/chapters/74893146#workskin

The proposal

After a shower and clean pajamas, Alex finished packing his suitcase, tucking the ring safely inside. The next morning, he was so focused on not losing it again that he ended up misplacing his coffee filled travel mug. He had put it down for one second, and suddenly it was nowhere to be seen. Henry found it in minutes and they left for the airport. Distracted beyond reason, Alex had to hop out of the car to race back inside to grab his wallet. Then he had to hop out of the car again to run inside and get his phone.

After speeding to the JFK airport, they crossed the Atlantic and spent one night in Kensington recovering from jet lag. They spent their first full day at a trans* equity conference. The English press greeted their visiting prince with union jacks and rainbows. Naturally, they responded with charming comments and smiling photos. Alex took the opportunity to livestream a message to his followers: ‘of course transgender high schoolers should be allowed on the sports team that aligns with their gender, and here’s why…’

Privately, in the car back to the palace, Henry expressed the opinion that public schools ought to have polo teams, because it’s a coed sport and ideal for nonbinary teens who don’t like to rock the boat. Alex responded with similar sentiments about quidditch. The rest of the drive they shared a familiar rant about how Harry Potter belongs to the fans (including the trans* fans) and not only to JKR.

That night, just past 2am, Alex turned over in bed to ask, “You awake?”

“Always.”

“Good. We’re going on a fieldtrip. Come on.” Alex pulled them both out of bed, and they got dressed, Alex swinging on his Gucci jacket. He would have worn a hoodie, the incognito uniform of the internationally recognizable, but tonight he didn’t want to hide himself. It was worth the risk. Besides, they didn’t really need to sneak around anymore, did they? Old habits.

He led them out of the palace, down Prince Consort Road. He stopped for a selfie with the sign, because he really had wanted to last time. A second selfie included them both, looking goofy and not caring. When they reached the back entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum, they kissed lazily against the wall. Once Henry’s lips melted Alex’s nerves, he drew back to take the next step.

“Thing about dating the prince,” he said, holding up keys, “is that you can borrow pretty much anything he owns. And he can get the keys to anywhere if he asks nicely.”

“You’re a thief,” snarked Henry, walking through the door that Alex held open for him. “And a knave, and a scoundrel.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Alex gave the security guard a wad of cash. “Thanks, Gavin. It’ll be Renaissance City.”

They walked past sculptures, artifacts, and paintings, surrounded by the history that they were a part of. They got to the piazza, Henry’s sacred place. Just like last time, the first statue, Samson Slaying a Philistine took away what little breath Alex had, and he had to lean on Henry for support. Like windswept magnets, their lips met, for no reason at all.

Most of the time, Alex had a strong sense of Henry and himself being part of the current moment of history, changing the world in the here and now. But right then, time seemed to melt, and they were surrounded by historical sculptures telling timeless stories. Zephyr the Greek god of the west wind, Proserpina in the underworld, and Jason and his golden fleece. Archetypical and expansive.

And then there was Henry: the national gay landmark, prince charming, an obtuse fucking asshole. Hopefully his future husband. Sticking with his plan, he pulled away from Henry and got out his phone to open Spotify. Taking a deep breath, he pressed play. “Your Song” came from the tinny speakers.

“It’s a little bit funny, these feelings inside. I’m not one of those who can easily hide.”

“Why am I getting deja vu?” Henry asked, as Alex wrapped his arms around Henry’s waist.

“No clue.”

They began to sway, slow and intimate, cheek to cheek. He recognized the swelling in his chest as the same ache he’d felt when Henry first played this song for him years ago in the music parlor. Back then, he’d been trying so hard to repress his love for Henry, gripping the settee and wondering how long they would fly across the world to touch each other without talking about it. Now they let love dance around them, unbridled and openly declared in front of the world.

Other memories stirred up unbidden. Henry ghosting him after their first kiss, leaving him out in the snow and questioning everything. And then again when Alex hinted at love, leaving him in the lake with his heart carved out. Twice is not a pattern though, is it. Ever since the last time they were in this museum together, Henry had given his entire self to Alex. He had decided to be with Alex for real that night. That had been when they decided to love each other on purpose.

“I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words. How wonderful life is, now you’re in the world.”

For several beats of silence, he just looked at Henry. And Henry looked at him, and the museum disappeared. The whole world faded away except Henry and himself. It was now. He knelt down to one knee slowly, never losing eye contact. Henry’s loving smile showed no surprise as Alex spoke.

“Henry George Edward James Fox-Mounchristen-Windsor,” he said, making Henry roll his eyes. “I have a question to ask you. You see, my mom asked me, back in our early days, if I felt forever about you. I knew it then, and I know it now. I want to spend my life with you. So... ”

He paused, reached into his jacket, and pulled out the bedazzled box, rhinestones spelling out ‘love.’ Henry had probably guessed that it was never intended for June’s earrings, because he laughed like the box was an inside joke. Despite knowing what was coming, he inhaled audibly when Alex opened the box to reveal a simple silver ring.

“Will you marry me?”

Henry laughed again, a laugh like the birds of sunrise. “Yes, Alex. I will marry you.”

The prince reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather box, the same size as the one Alex held. Then, he knelt down on one knee as well, mirroring his fiancé. He opened it to reveal a thick antique gold ring inlaid with a gem that Alex couldn’t identify. Beautiful. “Alex Claremont-Diaz, will you spend forever with me as your partner, confidant, and best friend?”

“I,” Alex choked, “yeah, fuck, of course-”

Henry cut him off with a swift and passionate kiss, both of them on their knees, fumbling the engagement rings onto their fingers. Alex felt like the deceased king that had probably worn his engagement ring. They kissed until their knees grew sore, and they collapsed on the tile.

“How did you think to bring a ring and everything?”

“Believe it or not, I somehow predicted that you might do this,” Henry teased.

Their buzzing bodies urged them to get back to the palace, to Henry’s room, to the bed. So they pulled each other to their feet, both dizzy and desperate. Before leaving the piazza they held each other for just a little longer.

“I love you,” whispered Henry.

“Fuck, I know you do.” It’s an amazing thing, to know completely and utterly that somebody loves you. “I love you too.”

“I know.” Henry held him around the waist and their foreheads pressed together. “Hey, so, I know we’re going to have to have a big, gay, traditional, royal wedding and all that -”

“Which we’ll make fun!” Alex said, with the positivity of a camp counselor. The world could really benefit from a big, gay, royal wedding. “There will be so many rainbows, even only if the crowd brings them.”

“And we’ll definitely have an adequate number of champagne fountains.” Henry winked at him. “But you interrupted-”

“Sorry!”

“-me. I was saying that I know we’re doing the public wedding for the audience, and the press, but...” Suddenly Henry looked nervous. “Well, would you maybe want to…”

“Spit it out babe,” Alex kissed Henry lightly on the lips before pulling back to show that Henry had his entire attention. “I’m listening, for real.”

“Would you, would you maybe want to elope first?”

“I… um. Would we, you know, still do the royal wedding afterwards?” Alex asked. “Keep it a secret?”

“Well, yes.” The words tumbled out. “But it would be a secret that we’re keeping for ourselves. We wouldn’t be keeping a secret for an election, or family expectations, or our god damned publicists. It would be ours, and we would keep it because we want to.

“Because I want to keep you to myself, just a little bit.” Henry shrugged, sheepish. “You give so much of yourself to your country, to the world, and I love that about you, but I want this to be just us. I’d be open to inviting Bea, Pez, June, and Nora, and our parents too, if you want.”

“And honestly, I don’t really want there to be a minister or priest… maybe Pez could do it?” Henry continued. “It doesn’t even have to be legal, so people don’t find out. I don’t know, I just thought, it could be just us, making a promise. Not with the crown, not with the church, not with all your adoring fans. Just the people that really matter.”

“I…” A grin spread slowly across Alex’s face. “I love it. Yes. Hell yes. Where? Not Vegas. Paris?”

“Paris.” Relief sweetened Henry’s smile. “And I could play my vows for you on the piano, if you’d like.”

“Yes I’d like! We could do it on a sailboat with a captain! Can you bring a piano on a sailboat?” Henry shook his head and kissed Alex’s grin, nuzzling their noses together. Alex whispered, “Okay, I’ll slow down and we can figure it out together. You and me.”

“You and me.” They fell into each other, a blissful act of entropy, all lips and hands.

“Besides,” Alex said as they stopped to catch their breath. “Secrets can be kind of hot if I remember correctly.”

AN: So, I thought I'd end with the proposal, but I feel like there's maybe more here? Like, this scene was kinda building up to some 'just got engaged' smut, or it could go on to show their elopement. I'm feeling a tinsy bit uninspired for their vows though, so if any of y'all feel like writing those, I could insert to the rest of the marriage scene that could be fun. If anyone feels like doing the post-proposal smut (or the wedding night smut lol) lemme know! Otherwise, thank you for reading! Check out my other rwrb fics, if you feel like it :)

#you and me #part 3 #first prince #rwrb #proposal story #henry fox mountchristen windsor #alex claremont diaz #red white and royal blue

12 notes · View notes

libermachinae · 3 years

Text

Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part III: Watch - Chapter 8: Registered Purple

Also available on AO3 Chapter Summary: Drift thinks he has the situation on Vitrious handled when he receives unexpected support. Chapter Word Count: 3134

---

Wing had taught him a mantra.

Many mantras, in fact, a few glyphs composed to hold him to the path of redemption and humility, charity and strength. Most he had deleted moments after being taught, having witnessed by then the intangible, transient nature of words, but this one he’d kept. He had never recited Wing’s version in full, his bastardization of the lines one of the few acts of rebellion he could get away with, but like most of the training he had received in Crystal City, he had discarded the substance and retained the structure.

In the years since, he had modified it as his circumstances changed and his path wound out of sight. Its recitation had proven one successful method to ground himself, so he focused now on the words, the shape of the glyphs against his thoughts.

My name is Drift.

He dodged behind a pillar as the spot he had been standing on exploded, a hail of blasterfire igniting the organic soil in his wake. The shots followed him, peppering his defenses, and he knew he had only a moment before the porous material gave way.

I’m not an Autobot.

He ducked, rolled, and unfurled into a sprint out the other side. Grit’s crew hesitated, their aim swinging wide before locking onto their target, giving him enough time to dive behind a larger building, a step closer to the cliff wall the city backed into. A lucky shot clipped his shoulder pauldron, sending him stumbling, but he was back behind cover before they could follow it up with a more decisive blow.

I’m not a Decepticon, either.

He pressed his back to the wall and waited for the barrage to let up. Rogue Decepticons tended to go heavy on ammo and light on fuel and medical supplies, but even Deathsaurus’ storage capacity was limited, and these runaways had nothing on that mammoth. The shots eventually petered out, replaced by footsteps.

“That’s it? You think you can just sabotage my operation and run?”

Drift’s spark burned at the reminder of Grit’s business on this planet: non-aligned organic labor procurement. Slave trade. They did not deserve their Deceptibrands, to count themselves among a movement that had fought for freedom. It was an effort to remind himself that he had already been stripped of his badge and was no longer obligated to defend it, and further effort to convince himself, again, that the symbol no longer represented the ideals he had sworn himself to. The people of Vitrious, they were the ones who needed his anger right now. Not a long-dead dream.

He braced his hands against the ground.

What I am is in trouble.

Drift sprung as the muzzle of a pistol appeared around the corner. Pushing off, he lobbed himself over the wall, onto the roof. Two strides and he landed on the other side, crouching to absorb the impact. He was up and sprinting again before Grit could register which way he had gone.

He was looking for an opportunity to catch one on their own, but the trio stuck together and moved as a unit. Hoping he might force them to spread out, Drift jumped for a narrow ledge, sacrificing a moment of vulnerability for the sake of speed. From his new vantage point, he spotted the pier. He considered it, adjusting his plans.

I’m also—

His thoughts were cut short by the roar of a shuttle’s engine.

Drift leapt from the wall and landed back on the rubble strewn street. Not as maneuverable, but like Pit he was going to stay up top to be fried by Grit’s reinforcements. Or the Galactic Council executive force, come to cleanse this system of its Cybertronian problem. He kept moving with his head down, not wasting the seconds it would have taken to look up and confirm. Either presence meant things were about to get complicated.

He stole into an alley just as heavy artillery formed the percussion over the engine’s bass with the Decepticons on vocals, the onslaught driving them to panicked shouting. Galactic Council, then, Drift reasoned. Decepticons gave each other a chance to posture before they started blasting.

Drift’s opinion on the Galactic Council was complicated. He trusted their judiciary system, insofar as he doubted there was anything better. Certainly not where his own kind was concerned. Cybertronians had failed at holding each other accountable for their crimes, given that judge, jury, and prosecution tended to be guilty of actions one step removed from those of the defendant. Their shared history had resulted in societal biases, and while Bumblebee and his enemies might have been trying to reestablish their sense of justice to one another, there yet remained a galaxy of people who did not have the luxury to wait for Cybertronians to realize they were incapable of convicting themselves. The victims of their atrocities deserved control over their justice, and the Galactic Council courts had structures and precedent to provide it.

Galactic Council defense squads operated on a precedent of eliminating Cybertronian threats at any cost. Its structures included battle cruisers, drone swarms, and mobile tactical arrays. They were not lawless entities, but they had been granted all necessary privileges to apprehend those who were, and had, in Drift’s opinion, become that which they had been commissioned to destroy. A single recon squad versus a handful of desperate rogue Decepticons could level a minor metropolitan neighborhood, and most of their standoffs occurred in locations with significantly less infrastructure than that. Drift never called the Council before all combat capable Cybertronians were subdued and removed from vulnerable areas, because otherwise it almost always ended up like the nightmare scenario he was now racing toward.

His priority trees reoriented: he had to get the fight out of the city. He remapped his route and updated acrobatic and combat protocols, shifting stealth to standby. His plating flared out to catch the sun as his pauldrons relaxed, swaying with each step to create a blinking effect. He revved his engine and pushed it into a lower gear, opting for more power, and drew his swords, using them to add volume to his movements as he jumped and spun, landing mid-stride on a roof.

That his optics registered purple when he looked up did not disrupt his momentum and only barely adjusted his plans. A rival group, here for their share of the cube, would be less likely to kill potential merchandise but have no qualms about murdering Grit before the Retins could serve their own justice.

Drift charged forward, up onto a ledge and then across, rooftop to rooftop. The newcomers were staying high and playing cautious, likely because their ship was more transport shuttle than combat vehicle. Offensive capabilities amounted to a single turret lowered from the underside of the ship, but the rapid-fire machine gun was much more intimidating than Grit’s shotgun and his team’s pistols. They were returning fire, but their shots angled wide or fizzled out before they breached the hull, the few that left a pockmark of warped metal the only reason Drift’s acrobatic leaps had yet to gain him any attention.

He got a foothold in the battered outer wall of a tower and launched himself up, arm outstretched. He caught a ledge and propelled himself further, calculating his trajectory in the split seconds he spent with hand or pede on the wall. Up, higher, he flung himself, until he was brushing the sky with his fingertips, brought high by the weight of his frame.

With one final leap, he reached the peak.

From here, the shuttle was still above him, but close enough that he could have seen into the cockpit, had he the time to adjust his lenses that much. Instead, he bent to one knee and retrieved a throwing knife from his lower leg. He pulled his arm back, lining up a shot at the central forward end of the viewshield, approximately where he remembered the pilot’s seat to be. He doubted it would penetrate, but maybe the noise would—

His comm buzzed.

He startled, losing his aim, at the assault of static from a component that had gone too long without use. It was not white noise, though: it peaked and valleyed, following the pattern of speech, until the sound coalesced into recognizable syllables, spoken by a familiar voice.

“Drift, it’s us.”

He almost dropped his knife.

“Ratchet?!”

“And Rodimus,” Ratchet said. “He wants me to say hi. He’d do it himself, but he’s focused on those guys that were giving you trouble.”

“Stop shooting!” There would be explanations later; he had come up here with a purpose, and despite his brief shock, he had not forgotten it. “The Retins are still down there.”

“Got it.”

The turret stopped firing, though it remained engaged and ready, staring down at Grit where he and his crew had been backed into a corner. Their shouting turn to celebratory whoops, assuming their enemies had run out of ammo, and their own assault gained a new vigor as they pressed their assumed advantage.

“No guns,” Rodimus agreed as he joined the channel. “What do we do about them?”

“I’m taking care of it,.” Drift stooped to slot his knife back in, using the familiar motion to calm his scrambled thoughts.

“How do we help?” Ratchet asked.

“By staying out of the way.” He stood and jumped, scaling down the tower pede over hand a fraction faster than he had ascended it. He landed in a roll on the ground, stealth programs back online, and made his way in the direction of Grit’s shouting. There was more rubble the closer he came to the center of town, chunks of walls that had been blown out and shards of glass, and he focused on keeping his movements light and quick, hard to trace as he came closer to listening audials.

“Decepticon ship, fragging answer me,” Grit demanded from around a corner. Drift stilled; he stalled his fans and dropped his engine. “You have some nerve, showing up here without an ident. Who do you think you’re gonna fool, a colorblind Autobot?”

“50 shanix that jerk is dead,” one of the others said. They had stopped shooting.

“What’s the point?” the third asked. “You saw him jumping all over the place like a flashy piece of target practice. I could’ve blasted him myself with my aiming module offline.”

“Just not with your blaster fully loaded, huh?”

“Screw stripper, you weren’t any better.”

“Decepticon shuttle, this is Grit of Polyhex. You’d better answer, or we’ll blast you out of—”

Drift whipped around the corner with an elbow aimed at the back of Grit’s head, where he should have found the exposed juncture between spinal strut and helm. Instead, he hit solid armor, and though Grit stumbled forward a couple steps it was nowhere near the complete freeze Drift had been banking on. He started to reach for a gun, so Drift knocked it away, then danced back as the others realized what was happening and started shooting.

Drift was back where he had started, in close quarters and surrounded. He cursed himself for not realizing how thick Grit’s plating would be while he dodged the incoming fire. He leaned to the side as he hopped out of the way, then back twice and behind a wall. They were following fast, though, he only had a couple seconds to—

“Incoming,” Ratchet warned, before the gunshot.

Drift looked up and saw the shuttle had descended, its hatch lowered with a familiar, flame-like beacon spilling out. Rodimus kneeled at the edge, an oversized Earth rifle perched on his shoulder.

He fired again, the gunshot accompanied this time by the sound of a solid matter bullet hitting plating. Drift peeked around just in time to see one of Grit’s grunts topple over backward with a dent in the front of his helm. Rodimus’ weapon didn’t puncture armor, but it packed enough power to put a bot in stasis.

“Got ‘im!” Rodimus shouted.

It was also concentrated enough to minimize the risk of collateral.

Drift sprung over his cover to the other Decepticon, who had just enough time to shout, “Hey, that’s an Auto—” before a sharp blow with the heel of his hand knocked him back. The Con automatically reached up to his face and Drift took the opportunity to sweep his legs out from under him, ending with a firm kick to the helm that put him out as well.

Grit was alone, swinging his gun between two targets. Drift withdrew his sword as he stepped forward, mindful of the gun but not scared of it.

“Should I shoot him?” Rodimus asked. Drift held up his hand, wait.

“That was a scummy trick,” Grit growled, finger starting to squeeze around the trigger.

Drift moved. Grit fired and he felt the plasma burn the air past his audial, but then he was in front of his assailant, sword pressed to the fuel lines in his neck.

“This was barely a trick,” he said. “Now, enslaving people? That seems pretty ‘scummy’ to me.”

Grit glared at him, optics fritzing. He glanced at the sword, then the gun in his hand.

“You should drop it!” Rodimus called down. “Drift takes things like disarming literally!”

Grit glanced at Rodimus, realized his mistake, and looked back at Drift. Miraculously, his lapse in judgment did not result in getting his head cut off, and that realization seemed to be what forced him to stand down. His optics settled into a steady glow and he set the safety on his gun before dropping it. Drift waited for the clatter before he retrieved his cuffs and fastened them around Grit’s wrists.

“What’s the plan now?” Rodimus asked as Drift set to cuffing the other two. He was surprised the others had not dropped into the fray. Ratchet had the excuse of being confined to the cockpit, but it seemed exactly like the kind of dramatic entrance Rodimus preferred.

Something wasn’t right.

“Same as before,” Drift said. “I take these three to the authorities and we leave the citizens of Vitrious alone.”

“Want us to watch these three while you go get it?” Ratchet asked.

Drift paused snapping on the last pair of cuffs to swivel and side-eye the shuttle.

“Uh, no,” he said. “You do realize how sus that sounds, right? I've had no one but rogue Decepticons for company for," he realized he had no idea how long he'd been out here, "a while, and that’s still the second sketchiest offer I've been made.” He glanced at Rodimus, and this time zoomed in. His face was pinched, frame stiff with tension. “What’s going on?”

He was not looking for an answer, though, his processor already generating the scenario and inserting it into his queue like it was fact. It laid out the team: a back-alley medic could retune a vocalizer, a gifted outlier could copy a frame, and enough living people were owed vengeance against Deadlock to fund the venture. Well honed instincts had him standing up, hands moving to clasp the hilts of his swords.

“We’re here for you,” Rodimus said.

“Then get down here.”

Rodimus stared at Drift. He set the rifle down behind him, at the top of the hatch, but he made no move to disembark, nor did Ratchet lower them to the open street.

“Why are you here?” Drift demanded.

“It’s complicated,” Ratchet and Rodimus said simultaneously, and Drift bristled. He drew his swords and put himself in front of the prone Decepticons, senses cast outward in case this proved to be a distraction.

“Whatever business you have with me, fine, we can deal with,” he said, “but that’s personal. You’re going to leave these bots and this planet alone.”

“Fraggit, of all the lousy—we’re not here to hurt anyone, Drift,” the voice that sounded like Ratchet’s said. “Least of all you.”

The tips of Drift’s swords came up as his grip tightened.

“We need your help,” Rodimus said. “Have you ever heard of the Enigma of Combination?”

Drift’s guard did not waver, but he combed through his archives for anything relevant and was surprised when several files were flagged. Those were old memories, from well before he had joined Turmoil’s squad: a decade in which his service was turned over to Shockwave to act as a research assistant. Test subject might have been a more accurate term, but since he had been designated Subject A and assigned to pull the trigger, Deadlock had stuck around long enough to earn a more permanent title.

Shockwave never mentioned the Enigma outright. Deadlock discovered it while flipping through research materials, trying to pass the boring period between trials, a few entertaining horror stories hidden within the precise jargon. Long lost and, he had assumed, made up.

“Where did you hear about that?” Any potential impersonator could flip through a copy of the Lost Light Insider and gather he had history with Ratchet and Rodimus, but these details were top secret, and he doubted Shockwave cared enough about Subject A to send experienced hitmen after him.

“It’s an ancient artifact, from what we’ve heard,” Ratchet said. “It’s…”

“It’s weird,” Rodimus said, glancing toward the cockpit.

“We have it onboard.”

Drift sheathed his sword, though he kept his position in front of Grit.

“You didn’t—”

“It’s complicated,” they repeated.

“Frag,” Ratchet swore.

The story was outlandish and the circumstances suspect, and Drift’s logic centers were trying to work through his complex feelings even as he shoved them down. It meant something, that the latest reminder of his old life came in the form of these two bot specifically. There was a story here, and it seemed he was intended to hear it.

He glanced at the Decepticons, then back at the ship.

“There’s a clearing west of the city,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere else. I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay,” Rodimus said. “Will you be alright with those guys?”

“Yes.” He turned his back on Rodimus and finished clamping on the last set of cuffs, focusing on keeping his hands gentle while he handled the unconscious prisoner. The other was starting to stir, and Drift debated whether it would be easier to let him wake up or put him back into stasis.

“We’ll see you there, then,” Ratchet said.

They waited to leave until Drift was standing again, one body lugged over his shoulder and the other supported with an arm around his back, Grit walking out in front of them. He heard the raise, then the engines fire, and the shuttle gently peeled away from the city. Drift watched it to confirm its direction before he grunted to Grit to start moving.

“Fraggin’ Autobots,” Grit muttered. Drift was inclined to agree.

#maccadam #transformers #ratchet #rodimus #drift #dratchrod #my writing #fault lines #longfic #ghhh it took a while but we MADE IT

7 notes · View notes

propensityforthemature44 · 3 years

Text

Texas Triangle

For most of my forties, I worked as the assistant news director for CBS News, based in Manhattan. The position came with a number of perks, most notably salary and benefits greater than I would have earned back in my hometown on California’s Central Coast, where my career began. Within mere walking distance, so many of New York’s great museums, concert halls, restaurants, etc. were right there to explore during the little free time allowed by a demanding career. It was a spectacular time, the dynamics of television journalism in the twenty-first century, always learning something new, and the great people with whom I worked, the latter being perhaps one of the greatest benefits. This was especially true regarding one particular co-worker: legendary anchorman Bob Schieffer.

Arguably one of the more recognizable reporters of our time with an impressive CV, Bob commanded the respect of everyone at Black Rock, as the New York headquarters of CBS is known, not just because of his professional accomplishments, but because of how well he interacted with others. Whether you were network top brass or a member of the cleaning crew, he treated everyone with a sincere compassion. It was quite common on a Monday morning for Bob to pass through the halls and ask other employees how their kids performed at a piano recital or baseball game over the weekend. His affable nature allowed for bridge-building and ease of relationship maintenance between management and on-air talent, which made my life easier. This was a sharp contrast to the environment during the time of his friend and predecessor, Dan Rather, with whom I was acquainted and got on well, but the mention of whose name still drew eye-rolls on the property. Our professional dealings were so excellent, that they eventually led to a friendship outside of work.

After a couple of years on the job, Bob and I became such good friends, we were frequent guests at one another’s home for dinner parties. In fact, I had even been to his home for Christmas Eve dinner on consecutive years. His wife was a wonderful, gracious woman, and the same could be said for the rest of the family whom I had the opportunity to meet. It was a friendship based on trust in a professional situation, but had blossomed into what I considered to be a very rewarding relationship.

Due to our difference in ages, he was in many ways a role model given his life experiences. Also, I found myself very attracted to him, and why not? He was a handsome, well-dressed, intelligent mature gentleman with a wonderful personality, in other words, exactly my type. The exceptions being that he was straight, a colleague, and a friend.

One spring, I had planned to return to California, where I kept a home for visits and eventual retirement, for a couple of weeks to attend a family wedding and also to take some time to wind down by travelling along the coast. A few days before I was scheduled to head west, my boss summoned me to his office one afternoon. He requested that I schedule some time to speak with Bob about a personnel matter involving the research department. When I reminded him that I would not be back in New York for two weeks, he expressed a desire for the matter to be concluded quickly. So, I mentioned that I would be seeing Bob in Austin at the end of the week, and could discuss then. He was a great boss, but I knew that he was aware that as a friend, I would be attending the awarding of an honorary doctorate to Bob by the University of Texas on my way back to the West Coast. A crafty move on his part, but I would have tried the same.

A few days later, I traveled to Austin for a night, and checked into the Four Seasons downtown, where Bob was staying. Upon checking in, the clerk informed me that he had passed to the front desk a message asking me to visit his suite. I thanked her, and headed to my own room to drop-off my luggage, and do some minimal unpacking. It was already 2:30 in Austin, and I was flying to SFO to get a connecting flight the next afternoon following the award and luncheon.

Upon settling, I headed to Bob’s suite on the top floor. I knocked on the door, and then heard, “I’ll be right there, John,” in his familiar Texas drawl. When he opened the door, we shook hands, and then embraced in a more familiar hug of close friends. He showed me around, a rather impressive room of no less than 1800 square feet overlooking the river. “Where is Patricia?” I asked. Bob replied, “Well, change of plans.” He explained that his wife had gone to visit her sister in Dallas, whose husband was recovering from a recent procedure. I asked him to pass along my regards.

We made our way into the living room to take care of business, which concluded rather quickly to my delight, and from there began to just be ourselves. I congratulated him on the honor, and Bob being Bob, became flushed and modest. He then arose, and asked if I wanted a drink, and he poured me a vodka on the rocks. From there, we began to get caught up on a number of personal matters.

At one point he asked, “So, did you ever fill in that plus one on the wedding invitation?” Even though we were close, I was taken by surprise, forgetting that Bob had been in my office when the invite arrived several months prior. “No,” I said. “I’ll be attending solo. This way, I can focus on visiting with people at the events. I only get back to the Coast a few times a year.”

This seemed to draw a rather puzzled look on Bob’s face, as I could clearly see the eyebrows pointed upward through the lenses of his reading glasses. “Come on, John. Are you trying to tell me that you can’t get a date for this wedding? You’re in your prime. Forty-five years old, handsome, well-educated, well-traveled, great career, and you spend most of your time in California when not in New York. I’m sure there are plenty of eligible gentlemen in both places who would love to accompany you.”

I was shocked, to say the least. On the one hand, flattered, on the other, feeling as if I’d been drawn out of the closet, even though my being gay was not a secret at headquarters. Before I could respond, Bob asked, “Did you think I did not know? You know it doesn’t matter, right?” The answer of course being, I knew, despite the whole TCU connection he had, that he did not care about ethnicity, orientation, race, religion, etc., with regard to how he viewed people.

“I suppose that it’s just never come up in conversation between us over the years,” I said. Thinking about it, I supposed it was true, despite my occasional lusts for him.

“Well, no pressure, but I would just like to see you with someone. This isn’t the 1950’s, a couple of 40’s/50’s something guys like you should be enjoying the time together”, Bob said with a smile.

I answered, “That could be an issue. You see, I have a type, and what you describe, doesn’t match.”

“Well then, what is your type of man?” Bob inquired.

In a matter of seemingly no time, I found myself pouring out the details of my ideal man: mature, handsome, worldly, cultured, gentile. He laughed, “Why on Earth would you want to be with an old man?” “Not just any old man, the right sort of older man. Truth be told, he would be a man, like you, Bob, in many respects.”

He looked a little taken aback, so I said that I would head back to my room, and see him at the ceremony. As I made my way for the front door, I felt a tug on my right arm, and when I turned around, Bob embraced me in a hug and said, “Don’t leave just yet. You just surprised me is all. You know that there is no problem for us, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You know that I love my wife, don’t you, John?”

“Of course, Bob.”

With that, he moved his arms down, and then up along my jacket, caressing my back and chest as he pulled me closer, pulling off his glasses before passionately and firmly pressing his lips to mine. Not exactly the first time kissing a man significantly older than myself, but this was certainly unchartered territory. I was so turned on, it felt as if I were high, and wow, could he kiss. It was a perfect example of why older men are better: they know things. Even more, I was beginning to realize this was not his first time with another man, certainly not when he began to move his hand over my crotch, focusing on my now fully erect manhood.

“What do we have here?” he asked slyly, as he bent down to unbuckle and open my slacks. From there, he took me across his lips, and then along his tongue, taking my entirety within his mouth, moving me back and forth. The sensation was so pleasing, I felt as if I was going to pass out in the middle of the suite. Hearing his moans and seeing the look upon his face, Bob was enjoying the act at least as much.

After a couple of minutes, he stood and pressed himself against me, with me now feeling the full excitement coming from Bob’s side. We embraced in a kiss for minutes, not wanting to separate. Toward the end, he was undoing my tie, and I his, after I removed my jacket, and then unzipped his fly, as I had imagined doing so many times over the years. Feeling a drop of pre-cum, I spread it along his tip, then began to move my hand back and forth, reveling in his moans and breathing, until he pulled himself closer and whispered, “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

Within a matter of seconds, we had completely undressed and were embraced near the foot of the bed, and engaged in a complete lip-lock. As I saw it, there was certainly no reason to separate now. He tasted so good, and I knew he felt the same. In addition, we had established that he loved his wife, I had no intention of getting in the way, and my attraction to him had clearly taken over after settling those details.

We separated for a moment, as Bob walked over to the side of the bed. He pulled back the covers and climbed inside. Leaning on his side he patted his hand on the opposite side of the bed and said, “Come on, don’t be shy,” grinning from ear to ear. It was all the invitation needed for me to get under the covers and wrap my arms around his beautiful, smooth body. I wasted no time before reuniting with his lips and playing with his wonderful tongue. I moved my hands up and down his torso, finally settling down on his firm and gorgeous ass, adjusting to move my head down to focus on his nipples with my tongue and using my right hand to stroke him.

I could not believe that this was happening. This was a good friend, a colleague, and although this had been a fantasy for a few years, I could never have imagined that he would be so receptive and then some. I had every intention of making the most of the opportunity, and thus moved further down to take him in my mouth, and give him his medicine.

“Oh my god,” he exclaimed. “That is so wonderful. Please don’t stop.”

I moved up and down along his shaft, wrapping my tongue around the head, and after a couple of minutes, began to really work the head with my mouth while using my hand to pleasure his shaft. In doing so, I really began to get turned on by his moaning. After a few minutes, he placed his hand on my chest, as if to pause, but then pushed down until I lay flat on my back. Now, Bob was in charge, cleaning my testicles with his tongue, before focusing down on my cock. He moved up and down, closing his eyes, then opening them so that he could see the look of joy upon my face, and he certainly knew how to put in there with years of practice.

What seemed like hours of pure delight had passed when he let up and pulled himself back up to cuddle and kiss deeply and passionately. He was so close to having me reach the limit, but suddenly pulled back from the act, held me close and whispered into my ear, “Please enter me, darlin’. I want you to, it will be okay.” Then, Bob, pulled away and reached into the night stand drawer, and to my surprise, produced a bottle of lube.

“Now, you what to do, don’t you?” Bob asked rhetorically, as he kissed me on the forehead. So, I felt compelled to prove him right, and lubed my right index finger, and moved it slowly across his rosebud. This made him twitch and tickle at first, but he knew he was in good company, and I would never let him feel discomfort. So, as he loosened up after a minute, I lubed my middle finger as well, and began to slowly move them back and forth until I eventually reached his prostate. Now, he was putty in my hands.

Once my cock was sufficiently lubricated, I placed myself upon his precipice, slowly waiting for the right time, as I lay with my head upon his stomach. After a minute or two, I lifted my head toward his to embrace in a passionate kiss, after which he said, “I’m ready.”

I began to move ever so slowly back and forth, Bob in the missionary position, resting his heels on my shoulders, facing one another. It was so hot with the pleasure being split equally. Every time I thrust forward, I would make eye contact so as to see how much he was enjoying the penetration. He was giddy like a schoolboy, but more appropriately as an adult, panting and moaning. After several minutes, neither of us could handle any more, and I thrust against his prostate and ejected a stream within Bob, and then he let out a sigh, “Ohhh, god,” and shot a river of cum across my chest. Once concluded, we wrapped one another in hugs and kisses, and cuddled. It had been a couple of months since my last experience, but would easily say it was the best sex I had at that point in my life.

Eventually, the silence was broken by the ring of the room’s landline. Bob answered, “Hello. Come on now, of course I didn’t forget about you. Drop by when you’re ready,” he chuckled.

I looked over at the clock, and a couple of hours had since passed. Then I looked at Bob, and said, “Well, if you’re having a visitor, perhaps it’s best if I move to my room.”

Bob winked at me and said, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. You may want to put this on, however,” as he passed me a robe, along with a pair of slippers.

After a few minutes, there was a knock at the door. Bob went out to the hallway to answer, and I could hear the faint echo of what appeared to be excited conversation between old friends. In the moment, it occurred to me that Bob felt comfortable enough with me to have me here in a robe, while inviting someone else inside, but I still had a tinge of awkwardness about the room. This was originally supposed to be just a stop on the way back west, but had taken a fantastic detour.

Then, a minute later, Bob came walking around the corner, also robed. Then, he asked, “You met John back at one of the holiday parties, didn’t you?” A moment later around the corner stepped James “Jim” Baker III, former Secretary of Treasury, White House Chief of Staff, to name just a few posts. Being a double-major political science/journalism as an undergraduate, of course he was a familiar figure, in addition to being introduced at Bob’s house.

“Of course. Nice to see you again, John.” He smiled, but you could tell from the expression on his face, that this, by no means, was the encounter he had expected. It was known that although there had been many interviews over the years, they had developed a friendship off-camera. So, while a stately, respectful man, he did seem somewhat put off that there was an extra man in the room, and reported, “Well, I won’t stay too long.”

The phone rang once more, and Bob said, “I’ll need to take this. Can you two make yourselves comfortable?”

“Sure,” we replied in unison.

Jim made his way around to sit on one of the sofas. He was, I think, a rather handsome man in his own right. Nicely cut head of white hair, beautiful navy blue suit with a red and blue striped tie, it was as if he’d just stepped out of a Brooks Brothers ad.

We attempted the task of small talk, although there was a bit of discomfort in the air. The conversation shifted to the next day’s event for Bob, which brought us both to Austin in the first place, then moved to an overview of each of our schedules for the week. Eventually, I noticed him wince a little, and asked if he was okay.

“Oh sure, I’m fine. Just paying the price for a round of golf this past weekend. No carts, all walking, so my feet are a little tender,” he chuckled.

I’m not sure what came over me, but I stood up and moved an ottoman closer to Jim, and sat down. Then, one-by one, I extended each of his legs and removed his cordovan Alden tassel loafers and began to massage his dress-socked feet.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I just thought you were having discomfort. I’ll stop.”

“Well, it certainly is improving things,” Jim said, laughing a little.

I continued doing so for a couple of minutes, enjoying his pleasure.

Then, Bob returned and leaned over Jim to ask, “Do you still want to leave, Bake? They have such great service here.”

Bob then reached over and removed Jim’s suit jacket, as I continued to massage his tired feet. After hanging his jacket, Bob returned, and from behind, planted a deep kiss on Jim’s lips, that seemed to go on for minutes. It would have become obvious to an outside observer why Jim seemed edgy at first; he had planned on meeting Bob all by himself, and the way they were going at it, it was not the first or even fifth time, this had been an arrangement for a while.

While they were still kissing, I placed Jim’s feet on the floor, and made my way to his chair. I moved my hand up and down each of his corresponding legs, and then focused on the midsection. I caressed his torso, and transferred to his belt, which I unbuckled, then unzipped his fly and opened his slacks, and reaching inside the front hole of his boxers to release him. Now, he was mine, all 7 inches of engorgement that had developed in the past few minutes, and I wrapped my mouth around the head of his beautiful cock and began working my way up and down. I could feel the vein along the side, as it met my tongue, and could feel his excitement as he wriggled while still kissing Bob.

Bob untied Jim’s tie, and I began to move my hand inside of his shirt to feel his amazing chest. Not smooth like Bob’s, but just the right amount of hair, and light-colored. In a few minutes, we moved to the bedroom.

We placed Jim back on the bed, and then proceeded to fully undress him. I moved my way up the bed to kiss him, and again, older men know things. He was a master kisser, and we worked on one another while Bob serviced Jim below the deck. After a minute or two, I extended my right hand upward and began playing with his nipple. It seemed to be going well, so I released myself from his lips, and re-focused my mouth on his left nipple, while using my hand to play with his right.

To my delight, he was enthused, evidenced by his moaning of satisfaction. In fact, he must have been so appreciative, because without notice, he eventually maneuvered so that he could take me into his mouth, and did he ever do so. He had me in sheer ecstasy for several minutes, moving up and down on my head and shaft, completely reviving me for another performance.

At one point, he changed gears, shifting to Bob. After all, Bob had been hard at work for some time, and it was his turn to receive the delights he deserved. In doing so, he placed his hands on each side of Bob’s torso and pulled him up further on the bed. Then, he got between Bob’s legs and lowered his head, lips first. As he did, Bob’s patented grin returned to his face as he moved his head back and forth on the pillow.

It’s often said when a threesome occurs, that one person can find himself left out of the equation. I did not find this to be the case, but rather an opportunity. Specifically, Jim’s spectacular ass was now staring me right in the face. I extended my hands outward, massaging his buttocks. It was wonderful, so smooth and tight, you could just feel that he worked out 3-4 times per week. I could also feel that he was enjoying the chain of stimulation, as on the front end, his mouth and hand were now bringing Bob to new heights of joy. So, I reached over to the bedside table and retrieved the bottle of lube from earlier. One by one, I lubed my fingers, and began to finger Jim. He wriggled a little at first, but began to relax and loosen up, so a couple of minutes later, I spread a generous amount of lube on my cock, and then inserted myself into the former Secretary of Treasury.

As I stated before, this is not anything like I had imagined this trip unfolding. I wanted it to last as long as possible, so I slowly slid in and out. He was so moist, and I was so turned by watching him blow Bob and all of the moaning coming from both of them. I knew it would be only a few minutes at the most until I released myself within Jim.

“Jim,” Bob panted a few minutes later. “I can’t hang on much longer.”

Jim pulled Bob out of his mouth and began to quickly jerk him off before replying, “Come on, honey.”

Bob threw his head back and said, “Oh my god,” and then proceeded to cum right into Jim’s mouth, which he took like a pro and countered, “Umhm.”

I couldn’t take any more myself, and then pushed further into Jim before shooting a load.

Bob put his head back on the pillow. His expression was one of satisfaction and exhaustion. He was spent.

Jim leaned over and covered Bob with the sheet. Then, he kissed him deeply and passionately on the lips, then gently on the forehead.

I was now lying flat on my back, and Jim cuddled up next to me. He extended both hands, placed them on either side of my face, and pulled me in for a wonderful kiss that made me melt away, and we held in the embrace for several minutes.

“Doesn’t he look cute when he’s sleeping?” he asked me while looking over at Bob.

“As for you, you are every bit as good as I thought you’d be. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I knew the first time I laid eyes on you.” With that, he maneuvered so that he was right on top of me, and as he did, his cock rubbed up against my leg, just dripping with pre-cum.

Jim pressed his manhood right up against my balls and said, “There just one thing, son. The next time you’re in Texas, I get Bobby first. Understood?”

“Understood,” I said.

He then smiled at me, and lifted my legs upward so that my feet were now resting on his shoulders. With his right hand, he grabbed the lube and squirted several drops on my anus and a plentiful amount over his cock, and moved it up and down his shaft. Then, he got closer, and pushed himself gently up against my opening. His cock was just the right size, not too thick, not too thin, that with the lube, he slid right into me.

“Oh my,” he muttered, as he began to move back and forth.

It was heavenly, as he moved in and out, building up his pace over a few minutes. Eventually, he unloaded what felt like a gallon of cum all over my insides, falling forward and resting his head on my chest for several minutes before he went limp and released himself from me.

I must have dozed off because after a while, I felt a hand upon my chin. I looked up to find Bob smiling as he asked, “Hello, darlin’. Are you ready for another go?”

What transpired then is between the three of us. That said, it would not be my final encounter with either Bob or Jim.

9 notes · View notes

psycheswritings · 4 years

Text

Rumor Has It

Title: Rumor Has It Fandom: Peaky Blinders (Modern!AU) Pairing: Thomas Shelby x Reader Warnings: Smut, smoking, drinking. Word Count: 3172 Author's Note: Please, be gentle with me, it's been a while since I wrote a sex scene, so it might not be the best. But I was feeling like it, so here it is. This is a Modern!AU, the reader is a cop working undercover and Tommy is working with them as a informant of some kind. As always, this haven’t been proofread, so feel free to report any mistakes back to me. Also, your feedback is also highly appreciated I really want to hear what you think of it. Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

Summary: (Y/N) goes undercover in a attempt to get information to take down Sabibi and ends up in a rather delicate situation, only to be saved by the one and only, Thomas Shelby. However, the outcome of his actions may lead to something she wasn't expecting - the admission that she had developed feelings for the Brummie gangster.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sabini, but she is already taken for the night.” From all the things (Y/N) expected when she had gone undercover, the last of them was that Thomas Shelby would come to her rescue. But that was what he had just done.

She had been serving drinks all night, dressed in a tight and revealing outfit in one of Alfie’s clubs. Rumor had it that Sabini and Solomons would be meeting there tonight to work out some business deal – information provided by the Jew, himself. Alfie had been working with the police for quite some time now, he had made himself a good deal to not root in jail and in the time that she had to work with him, (Y/N) had actually grown fond of the man.

Thomas Shelby – and all the Shelby clan, for that matter – was an entirely different thing. The head of the Peaky Blinders was arrogant, overconfident and a helpless womanizer. However, the Shelby’s had connections - connections that the intelligence could use to get to bigger fish - so (Y/N) had to get used with them around.

What she never got used to was the way Tommy’s eyes always seemed to find her in a room, always lingering a moment too long before moving away, how he always seemed to be able to irritate her to no end even when he wasn’t doing anything at all. Oswald had said that it could only be one thing: attraction, but (Y/N) refused to believe she could fall for the enemy – even when said enemy was, in fact, working with them.

She wasn’t informed that he would be there tonight. Again, it could be a last minute thing, it usually happened in this kind of operation and she most certainly hated it. (Y/N) liked to know about things beforehand so she could prepare herself in how to react to it. That’s why she was so pissed off when she saw Thomas sitting at the same table as Alfie and Sabini. She was supposed to stay nearby and distract the Italian enough for him to slip information so intelligence could make a move.

Things were going well, despite the unexpected presence. She had stayed nearby, serving their table and the other ones close, Sabini had followed her movements more than once - everything was going smoothly. That is until he decided to make a move and try to have her for the night.

She looked at Alfie that was already looking at her. They both knew that he couldn’t do anything or it would arouse suspicion. If she refused his invitation she could blow her cover, if she accepted it she would certainly do it because there was no way in hell that she would sleep with him. For a moment time seemed to freeze while she tried to think about what to do, but Tommy worked faster.

After he had made his claim, Tommy beckoned her to come closer. (Y/N) had no alternative but to play along, so she walked to him. It was known that some of the girls working in the club used to go home with clients – if for money or just fun it was another matter – so it wasn’t unusual for them to sit with both men and women in the tables around the room. Alfie said that it made them spend more money than they regularly would, so he allowed it. Regardless, it drew a lot of attention around the room when Thomas Shelby all but pulled her into his lap.

She made a special effort to do it graciously, wrapping her arms around his neck while he rested his hands on her, one sprawled over her lower back and one on her exposed thigh, displayed in front of him. The Italian all but laughed before talking directly to Tommy.

“You certainly don’t play with your meal, do you Mr. Shelby?” Tommy’s answer was a sideway smirk. Then he pulled a pack of cigarettes from the table along with the lighter. As if on cue, (Y/N) took the cigarette from the man’s hands bringing it to her lips and lightening it, taking a drag before giving it back to him, all the while looking into his eyes, that seemed to become a shade darker. The display was enough to erase any doubts that Sabini could have had. “You sure you’ll be focused enough to do business with that beauty in your lap, Shelby?”

“I’m very sure that I’ll be even more focused to finish this faster so we can get out of here.” There was a playful tone in his voice but she could sense his discomfort. The other man at the table laughed and continued the conversation as if she wasn’t there. At least now she could hear better what they were talking about.

They played along this game for quite some time. It wasn’t the easiest of things – this part of the job never was – the sideway looks directed to them, the lingering touches, the smell of him that seemed to invade her nostrils every time he made a move to take his glass from the table. (Y/N) had to reprehend herself more than once for letting herself get distracted during the job, but it was difficult to focus on anything but Tommy when he was so close or when he made his personal job to touch her skin whenever he could.

When they were done, Alfie quickly excused himself and disappeared into the crowd, leaving them alone with Sabini, who seemed quite amused by the sight in front of him. He had already moved his attention into another one of the female waitresses. Before the Italian could say anything, Thomas made his move.

“Now, if you excuse us, Mr. Sabini. I wish to take this beautiful lady out of this place as quick as possible.” She got up and, in a moment, he was right behind her, his left hand securely placed on her waist, the other he extended to the Italian. The older man simply shook it, smiling.

“Be my guest, Mr. Shelby. If I had a woman as beautiful as her I would have already left.” Thomas guided her to the exit, nodding to a few people in his way out. One of the security guards handed (Y/N) her purse before they reached the main doors - Alfie’s courtesy, she was sure. When they were already outside, Tommy took her to his car, opening the door for her to enter. Her phone started ringing and she didn’t needed to look at the screen to know that it was her boss.

“Good job at the club, (Y/N). We recorded everything, this will help to set an operation to take Sabini down.” She knew by the tone of his voice that there was more and that she wasn’t going to like it. “Tommy saved your cover over there and for you to maintain it you’ll have to go to his hotel with him. I know the situation isn’t ideal, but it’s a means to an end.” (Y/N) let out a loud breath massaging her forehead with her free hand. Thomas had just entered the car, closing his door and by the smirk in his face he already knew about the plan.

“I understand, Sir.”

“See you tomorrow, then.” She turned off the phone and closed her eyes for a moment. This had to be a nightmare.

“I guess we are going to mine, then?” The look (Y/N) gave him could have made any man run for his life but all he did was laugh before starting the car.

“Just shut up and drive, Shelby.” The ride to his hotel was mostly quiet after that. She just ignored that she was sitting beside the Brummie gangster in his expensive car, riding to his hotel were she would have to share a room with him. Anything to keep her mind of thinking what she would do when the two of them were truly alone.

When they arrived in front of the hotel, one of the valets opened the door for (Y/N) to step out of the car just to be quickly replaced by Thomas himself. He only murmured a short “to keep the appearances” to her before he placed his hand into her lower back one more time, guiding her inside. She noticed the glances towards then when they walked to the front desk. (Y/N) found it odd, after all she couldn’t be the first woman that he had brought back here. She certainly wasn’t the most beautiful, since she had been with that horse trainer not long ago. The concierge gave him the key without a second thought and the both of them headed to the elevator.

He didn’t take his hands off of her when the doors of the lift closed in front of them or when they walked through the hall to his room. The heat of his palm on her skin was giving her goosebumps and for the first time (Y/N) thought that Oswald could be right, after all.

Thomas opened the door for her and she entered without taking a second glance at him. She took a sit on the recamiér at the end of the bed, promptly taking off her shoes. When she lifted her gaze, she found Tommy standing still in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets, looking at her. They just held each other gazes for a moment before he asked.

“Why do you hate me so much?”

“I don’t hate you.” Her prompt answer surprised them both.

“Well, you certainly despise me them. Have I done something for you to feel that badly about me?” (Y/N) blinked once, twice before she could answer him.

“I don’t know why I feel that way about you. I just do.” He laughed without humor and turned away to pour himself a drink. After that, he walked to the massive frameless window that displayed the view of the city, sipping his whisky while staring out. (Y/N) just stared into nothing for a couple of minutes, before getting up to go to the bathroom. It was going to be a long night.

She didn’t made it to the door before his hands were on her again. He twirled her around, her chest colliding with his, looking into her eyes before he crashed his lips on hers. Her arms went around his neck once more and before she could process what was happening, (Y/N) was already responding to the kiss.

Thomas’s lips were demanding, moving against hers with a fervor that she haven’t experienced in a while. He held her as close as humanly possible and even that didn’t seemed enough for them. His hands reached the back of her top, opening it with mastery and (Y/N) never thought that her body could react so quickly to someone else’s touch. When they parted for air, he looked straight into her eyes.

“Then say to me, say to me that you don’t feel this thing between us. Say to me that you don’t want me to touch you, that you don’t want me to have you, because there is no other way of stopping me, (Y/N/N).” She just stared back at him, at loss for words. “Because every time I see you all I want is to kiss you and show everyone around that you are mine. Because back at the club when Sabini said that he wanted to have you for the night all I wanted was to get up from that chair and beat him until he stopped breathing. Because everything I wanted since the moment that I laid my eyes on you in this tight little outfit was to rip it out off of you and have you in all the ways that I know.”

There in his hotel room, in the middle of the night, looking at his blue irises swirling with desire, (Y/N) left herself acknowledge the truth that she had been hiding since she met him: she was falling for Thomas Shelby.

“Then have me.” Her voice was hoarse with her own need, barely a whisper, but he heard her loud and clear. His lips found hers in the blink of an eye and his fingers made quick work of removing her top. She mimicked his actions, making quick work in taking off his vest and unbuttoning his shirt, more than grateful that he had already discarded his jacket and the gun holster. In the meantime, his hands explored her upper body with a tenderness that she wasn’t prepared for.

He found her breasts in an instant, massaging them before playing with her peaked nipples. The calloused skin of his fingers made (Y/N) moan against his lips. She could feel him smiling at the sound but she couldn’t care less at the moment - he could brag all he wanted if he continued to make her feel this way.

She slipped the shirt from his torso and threw it on the floor, tugging his undershirt off of his trousers just as quickly. They stopped kissing just enough for him to tug the garment off to have the same destiny as the others. He led her to the bed, unzipping her skirt in the way there and sliding it off her before she settled in the middle of the mattress. Then he took off his own trousers before climbing in after her.

He kissed her as if she was the only woman for him in the whole world and, for a moment, (Y/N) wondered if that was the way every other woman that he had had in his bed felt, because damn, Thomas certainly knew what he was doing. He didn’t gave her much time for second guessing though, his lips traveled from hers to her neck - biting, sucking and licking the skin there until she was moaning mess. Then he moved to her chest, kissing the valley of her breasts before taking one of her nipples in his mouth all the while one of his hands massaged the other, alternating between them. (Y/N) closed her eyes, biting her lips to prevent a moan to leave them, her hands founding their way to his short hair and them it was his time to left out a soft moan.

When his ministrations were done, he trailed down, leaving wet kisses all over the skin of her belly, he stopped when he found the lace of her panties. Looking up, right into her eyes, he hooked his fingers on each side of the garment and started to bring it down her legs. The hunger in his eyes made (Y/N) remember of a predator looking at his prey and the devil be damned, she wanted to be devoured by him.

He didn’t lose time in diving in, bringing her knees up and pushing her closer, his mouth quickly finding its way to her core. Tommy took his time tasting her, kissing, nibbling and lapping before he went to her clit. (Y/N) grabbed the sheets into her fists when she felt him suck the nub of nerves into his mouth, right before inserting a finger inside of her.

She clenched her muscles in pure reflex and couldn’t hold back the loud moan that left her lips. He smiled, she felt him smile, and all she wanted was to wipe that grin out of his lips but, again, he didn’t gave her time to think when he inserted another finger into her and she could do nothing to prevent his name from coming out of her lips. When her orgasm came, it hit her like a wave. (Y/N) felt like she was drowning, drowning in pleasure brought to her by the man she swore to despise.

Tommy didn’t stopped until her breath came back to normal after she had rode out her pleasure. Even then, after wiping his mouth on his arm and crawling to kiss her, his fingers were still inside of her. (Y/N) clawed at him, her nails digging into the skin on his back while she tasted herself on his tongue.

He lifted himself off her, getting up from the bed to take off his boxers and take a condom, opening the package and rolling it in before climbing back to her. She took him in for a kiss while he adjusted himself above her, rubbing his cock into her wetness making her bite his bottom lip in want. Thomas rubbed his tip into her clit and (Y/N) cried out in pleasure. She was soaking wet, the need to feel him was unbearable, so she grabbed his face and made him look at her.

“I need you inside me.” His pupils seemed to expand even more, hiding some of the blue. “Now.” He obeyed her wishes and entered her wetness slowly, deliberately, inch by inch, looking into her eyes as he did so and although all she wanted was to close her eyes, she fought the urge to maintain eye contact. It was worth it, to see the pleasure painted on his handsome face, to see him fighting the same urge to close his eyes. Then he pulled out just as slowly as he had entered her, picking up a rhythm of going in and out of her. Grabbing one of her thighs and bringing it up, holding it beside his ribs, (Y/N) could swear she saw stars.

However, her patience was running thin and she was having none of that slow pace so she distracted him with a kiss and rolled them over, landing on top of him. The surprised look on his face was priceless and (Y/N) would cherish that moment for a long time. She reached between the both of them to take him in her hand, seizing the opportunity to pump him a few times, making him shut his eyes in pure bliss, a loud moan reverberating in the room, before sinking down onto his length.

She was not sure if the cry of pleasure came from her or him, but at this point, it did not matter anymore. His hands found her hips while she found her own tempo, her hands resting into his chest for support, holding each other gazes until the pleasure was too much to handle and they closed their eyes, bracing themselves for what was to come. (Y/N) fell into his chest, nestling her head in the crock of his neck, her core clenching around him eliciting a moan of her name from him before they were both spent.

A few moments passed before she took herself off of him. Then he made his leave to the bathroom to discharge the condom and clean himself. (Y/N) searched for her panties, putting them on and adjusting herself underneath the covers. Tommy soon joined her, bringing her closer, his arms around her, the baby blue of his eyes staring back at her. None of them said nothing, but there was no need – they just knew.

428 notes · View notes

jo-the-schmo · 5 years

Text

Red, Dead, Reflections Ch.3

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

A/N: I’m sorry that this took so long and also for it not being that good! I’m excited for the next chapter because we’ll FINALLY be off the mountain! Wooo! But I do like parts of this because you get a lot of character bonding, which is nice. I hope it’s not too boring!

Word count: 6855

Warnings: Explicit language, blood, gun violence, death

Tags!: @zoilalove213 @eccentricc-catt (let me know if you’d like to be tagged as well!)

Duel Wield

You woke up some undetermined amount of time later. You could see the glow of the fire dance through your thin wall of privacy. The braids that held your hair up were looser than they had been when you fell asleep. Physically, you felt much better than you had earlier. Things weren’t any clearer, but rather the haze and blurriness of the image was more comforting than it could have been. This was the first recognizable thing that’s happened since you got here. The pre-dawn insomnia. There came a point after you left home that you started to wake up around 3 a.m. on a near consistent basis. You couldn’t remember exactly when it started, but it was some time after you left, probably around the time you had met Austin. A little bit before that.

You did it almost everyday back when you were wandering. Later it manifested into a clock. Now it was a reminder. It was your brain’s own unique way of making you check. You knew you wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep until you did. You needed to look. Needed to see it for yourself. You groaned, knowing you had to do it.

You decided to not put the bandage back on, you’d only be out for a minute and you doubted anyone would be up this late/early. You also knew you didn’t have the motor skills to do it just yet. You quickly put on your wig, not bothering to fasten it in, just having it on enough to make it not look obvious in case someone saw you walk out. You slid your boots on, leaving the laces untied, and draped your coat over your shoulders as you exited your fortress of solitude. The place was silent, aside from the crackle of the fire and the soft snores coming from the room over. You made quiet steps toward the door, cracking it open just enough for you to slip through, and closed it behind you.

The air was stagnant. There was no wind that you could feel anyway. The reflection of the moon’s light made the messy snow resemble raw marble. The cold greeted you like a long-awaited guest. If this had been a few years earlier, you’d’ve taken off the jacket and embraced the chill. But you weren’t that destructive. However, having the coat hanging off you wasn’t much better. But it did make your figure indistinguishable, so you let it pass.

You could vaguely see the mountain ridges in the distance. Thoughtlessly, you rested your back against the wall, left of the door. Your breath huffed a cloud from your mouth. It was here. The everything, the expansive stretches of unknown. There were no corners to trap you. No walls to enclose you. Just the ever-widening world. You weren’t stuck, you had options. You were just following the safest one. You kicked some of the snow away before slumping down to the ground.

After a few moments of stillness, you heard the door being pushed open. You brought the edge of your jacket over to hang off your bent knee, it almost completely covered you from view. Colors were always duller at night, but the first thing you noticed was a soft brown cloth with a red pattern against it. Someone with blue sleeves and leather gloved hands.

“Javier, right?” He hadn’t noticed you at first, not until you said that. He looked down at you, he wasn’t wearing his hat. And you were fucking right, why did most of these people wear hats? Why wear them if it’s not for a purpose and also doesn’t look that great?

“Hello, James.” He let the door close, his shoulder rested against the wall next to you. “What are you doing out here?” You hadn’t noticed before, but his voice sounded slightly forced. Like he was applying too much pressure on the base of his throat.

“I could ask you the same thing.” He raised an eyebrow, silently demanding a better answer. You sighed, “Came out here to check something.” He pulled something out of his pocket.

“Restless?” He retrieved two cigarettes from the carton, handing one to you between his fingers. You weren’t much of a smoker, but you had nothing to lose at the moment. You accepted his offer. He lit a match and raised it to the thin, white cylinder in his mouth. Once it caught, he bent down and lit yours.

“In a way, yes.” The embers glowed weakly. He flicked the match into the snow. You took a drag, the taste was sour, but it was something that you knew. You held it, then let it swirl away. The light caught it, and almost made the smoke look green.

“Tell me about it.” Normally you’d consider that statement to be more rhetorical, but his tone impressed curiosity. “What were you checking?” You let out a faint snicker.

“Making sure I’m free.” You seem to catch his intrigue.

“You check on that sorta thing? Suppose I get that…” He trailed off for a moment. “Hate to break it you, but we aren’t very free on this mountain.”

“Sure, we are. I mean, physically, yes. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What is it then?” He wasn’t looking at you. You snapped some of the ashes off the end of your cigarette.

“Choices.” You took a long puff. “You’re free as long as you have options, and you always have options.”

“Y’know,” he looked down at you “there’s some bets going around about you.”

“What kind of bets?” You were genuinely interested.

“Who you are, what you’re doing, what you’re going to do…” He drew in. “Micah has money on you being a spy of sorts. A turncoat. Bill thinks you’re trying to rob us blind.” Your eyes met.

“And where do you place your bets, Javier?” There was a strange intensity in his gaze that you couldn’t totally define, a sort of ambiguity. It took him a while to answer.

“Not sure yet. Maybe that’s why I’m talking to you.”

“Taking advantage of a bet by going to the source.” You shrugged. “Easy enough money.” He agreed. “Well, Javier…” You took one last drag before putting it out against your boot. “I’ll give you your answer, I don’t have a single fucking clue.” He raised a brow. “I don’t know why I’m here, or how I got here for that matter. It’s been tripping me up more than I’ve let show.”

“So, what are your options?” He inquired.

“Stay with all of you or die. I don’t have many, but I’m still free, buddy.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got an interesting turn of phrase?” He cracked a grin.

“Ah, yes, sorry. I should be more colloquial…” You cleared your throat. “It’s e’ther live er die. Don’t got many paths for my boots to step but a road’s a road, partn’r.” You said with twang, pretending to tip a hat you weren’t wearing.

“Now you’re starting to sound like one of us, there may be hope for you yet.”

“Mighty nice of you to say, sir.” The faux accent was still present but toned down this time around. He finished his smoke and dropped it into the snow. You heard the door open and forced him to pause. “What’s your bet, Javier?” He took one last look at you.

“I think you’ll stick around for a bit. Hopefully you’ll be bringing me easy money.” And with that, he left you with the cold. You stayed out there for a few minutes longer, until your fingers twitched and started to feel numb. The warmth from inside the cabin was pleasant. The drowsiness returned to you, which you clung to as you crawled back into blanket space.

____________________________________________________

You woke back up what you assumed to be a few hours later. Finally having all your energy back. A satisfied yawn escaped your diaphragm. You arched your back as you stretched, hearing it give a symphony of cracks. You weren’t sure what time it was, but you figured it would be better to be safe than sorry. You took a risk last night that you were lucky paid off. Javier didn’t seem to notice anything. Being more careful, and not seeing the point doing it later, you retrieved your bandage from under the cot.

Your ribs felt a lot better after that rest, but you knew you’d have to find another solution at some point because wearing a bandage wasn’t exactly ideal. It was uncomfortable after a few hours, and that only gave you away. You weren’t sure how many other options you’d have, but you made a mental note to be on the lookout. Partly out of your own curiosity and partly wanting to make this not as uncomfortable, you tried to wrap it a different way. The bandage was a lot longer than you needed it to be, so you used some of the extras to wrap your shoulders. It still gave the same effect, but you hoped it would alleviate some of the pain. With an X pattern in the center and the band fitting fairly snug around you, you put your shirt back on and exited the tent once more. You were near immediately greeted by something latching to your shin. It almost made you trip on the spot.

“Never let your guard down!” Jack giggled. If you had a little more momentum, you would’ve fell. He just needed to let you get a few more steps in and use his weight.

“Jack, let the poor man be, he just woke up!” You looked over to see Abigail prodding the fire.

“No, no, it’s fine! I’m wide awake.” You ruffled Jack’s hair, he freed you from his trap. “Besides, he was just taking my advice. Nice job, little dude.” He looked impressed with himself, which then melted into confusion.

“But you didn’t fall? Uncle Arthur said you surprised Micah and made him fall flat on his back.”

“That I did. Want another lesson?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, this is a good extension from last lesson, so be sure to pay attention.” He nodded along. “You did a good job at surprising me, in the real world, being able to do that is very useful. But the reason I didn’t fall is because you didn’t put enough of yourself into the attack.” He looked confused.

“Is it because I’m small?”

“No, it’s not that at all. Actually, the way I fight is designed to deal with that fact. You don’t need to be the biggest or strongest person in the room to win the fight.”

“You don’t?” You shook your head.

“The winner is almost always the one with the most skill. You have to use that skill to your advantage.” Jack looked like he’d be on the edge of his seat, if he had been sitting. “Want a demonstration?”

“Yes, please.” You looked around and saw Charles walking outside. You tilted your head to motion for Jack to look.

“I’m gonna challenge Charles. You’re gonna take him down.”

“What?” He gasped.

“Yeah. I’m gonna challenge him, you get up behind him. When I click my tongue like this-“ You did as you said. “you will do the same thing you did to me, except a little different.”

“What do I do?” A mischievous glint sparked through him.

“Kick and step on the back of his knee, once he’s on it, hurry up and push down his shoulder. He’ll hit the snow.” You would’ve done it to someone inside if it not had been for the hardwood floors. You didn’t actually want to hurt anyone. Plus, Charles was the biggest person here, this would prove a point. Jack nodded. “Play it cool.” You walked out the door, Jack following a few steps behind before breaking off into a different direction. “Hey Charles!” You called out. He had just set a log on a tree stump to chop it when you caused him to pause.

“Good morning, James. Are you ready to head out soon?”

“I think so, well, I actually had a bit of a favor to ask.” He took a step out into the open space between you when you said that.

“What is it?”

“Well, I don’t have any weapons, and we don’t have any extra for me to use. So, until we get down there and I take one...” He followed along in silence. “What I’m getting at, is I need to make sure I’m ready on the off chance someone is ready to hit me after I’ve disarmed them.”

“That sounds like a very specific situation to happen.”

“Specific, yes. Unlikely? No, not at all. It happens a lot. Anyway, I wanted to see if a new hold I’ve been working on would be effective against someone who’s ready and could have an advantage.” You gestured to the entirety of him. He seemed to understand what you were getting at.

“Alright, I suppose. You don’t just want to get shot.”

“Exactly. So, will you let me test it? Won’t take more than a minute.”

“Fine with me. I won’t make it easy for you.” He moved to the left and faced you, you took a stance a few feet away, enough so that he wouldn’t hit you when he fell. Jack was glancing at Charles’s back. You pretended to ready yourself to rush.

“Good, because I didn’t want you to.” You clicked your tongue.

Jack sprinted behind Charles. His foot hit the back of the man’s right knee, thoroughly ambushing him. His knee collapsed from under him and hit the snow. While still applying pressure and pinning the leg in place, the boy’s hand pushed Charles’s shoulder toward the ground. Jack went with him in the process but was easily able to scramble back to his feet and run behind you.

“What the-“ Charles coughed as he lifted his form up slightly from the snow by his elbows. He looked up at you in confusion, not entirely sure what just occurred. He finally noticed Jack peeking behind your hip. You sauntered over to him, these situations always made you feel a little cocky, and were always hilarious. He knelt down beside him and brushed some of the snow that exploded onto his shoulders.

“Was that too easy?” You remarked with confidence. He shook his head around, some snow shaking out. “Sorry about the ruse, Jack wanted another lesson and you just happen to be the perfect candidate. I won’t have children knock you down anymore, I promise.” His grin made you cautious.

“I’m not sure…Was this?” His left arm swung toward you, hitting your left shoulder. He pushed your shoulder down, your knees tripping over his back. As your back hit the snow, he turned himself around and used his knee to lock your right leg in place. Your chest felt compressed with his arm forcing you down. You sputtered a cough.

“Shit-“ Again. “I tap-“ You took a deep breath through the mouth. “I could kick your ass if I wanted but I don’t wanna end up kicking you in the wrong spot.” Jack found the whole situation to be particularly funny. Charles loosened his hold and let you go. You rolled to your side and stifled a groan from just under your ribs. When you opened your eyes again, he was holding a hand out to you. You accepted it and let him help you to your feet.

“And what lesson did Jack learn today?”

“Skill trumps strength almost every time.” You dusted some snow off your pants.

“I can agree with that.” He admitted. “I’ll take a plan over brute force any day.” He patted the back of your shoulder. “I won’t be pinning you anymore, I promise.” He mocked your earlier statement as he went back over to the tree stump. Jack made his way back to you.

“Think you understand that demonstration?” You carefully squeezed your side.

“I think so.” He thought to himself for a moment. “The only reason Uncle Charles got you was because you weren’t expecting it.”

“Which means, you always have to be ready. You never know when someone is gonna drop in on ya.”

“Mr. West!” You turned to find Miss Grimshaw hurrying towards you.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Could you go and feed the horses? Y’all are gonna be heading out in an hour, we need to give them time to digest.”

“Um, yeah. I can feed the horses.” You held your fist out to Jack. “I’ll teach you some more later, ‘kay, little dude?” He raised an eyebrow in your direction. “It’s a fist bump.” He was totally unaware of what you were talking about. “Oh boy, alright, um…make a fist.” He did as you instructed with confusion in his brow. “Now just…hit your fist with my fist. The bump into each other. Fist bump.” You initiated it first. His knuckles hit yours softly, and although he seemed confused, he was in a way amazed that this was even a thing. “It basically means good job.” With that knowledge, his earlier excitement came back. You told him you’d see him later and followed Miss Grimshaw to where the horses were fenced.

“Pearson left the grains in that box over there. They get one cup each, got it?” She pointed to a wooden crate a few feet ahead of them.

“I’ll take care of it.” She turned away with a hip swivel and went off. These people were really trusting of you to do jobs. Not that you were complaining, you wanted to get on their good side, but they seemed oddly trusting of strangers. Then again, they found you half-dead and losing your mind. They probably think you’re harmless to them. Even though there were moments of genuine compassion and comradery between all of you, you could just tell that they came more from moments of coincidence rather than reliance. You’d still have to be good man James West to really get them to help you. Until then, you’d happily do their menial chores.

You spent some time feeding the horses. Horses made weird sounds when they ate, kinda like an over excited dog. Horses are just big dogs you can ride. No one was around to tell you you were wrong. You recognized Silver Dollar, obviously. You vaguely remember the white steed being the one Dutch rode. The splotched grey and white one was Charles’s, but you were pretty sure you’ve seen Arthur ride her. The one that looked like it had a skull for a face was Micah’s because of course that edge-lord would. All the others were debatable, so you tried to guess based on what you knew. There was an all brown horse with a strangely long mane, a mostly grey but white-stained one, one that was beige and bordering on blonde, the last one was the one that let you feed it very easily that also looked like it had a burnt/discolored torso, All the others were in a group near the opposite end of camp that you could see Bill feeding, on Miss Grimshaw’s request.

“The blonde one is definitely Lenny’s. It looks like a soft horse. Lil’ splotch lady could be either Javier or Bill but I’m pretty sure the brown one is Bill’s since I saw him petting it earlier…” You remembered that there was a man named John that you have yet to meet, so you determined that the toasty boy was probably his. You had to be seriously bored to be guessing whose horse was whose among the current group of crazies that you were unintentionally infiltrating.

At that thought, you were suddenly struck by a wave of sadness. You immediately knew what was wrong, despite the fact that you had only experienced this at small levels in the past few years. Loneliness. They didn’t know you, this group, not the way yours did. You felt this when Eli went out that one night after he had a fight with Austin, got blackout drunk, and didn’t know where he was when he woke up. Neither did any of you. You felt this when Miguel decided to do a hustle job that took a few days of him staying with a friend nearly a state over for a week. It happened with Gina when she went on vacation with her relatives, leaving you and the group to take care of the place, which was a horrible decision on her part. You even got this feeling when all that stuff with Austin went down. Hell, you even missed him, which isn’t something you’d ever thought you’d feel again.

“I’ve never seen someone mope around while pettin’ a horse.” Karen chimed from behind you. You hadn’t noticed you were stroking the nice toasty horse’s face. He was letting you and seemed to be okay with it. “What’s got you lookin’ so glum?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just thinking about my friends back west.” You forced an encouraged smile on your face. I get lost in thought sometimes.”

“Don’t we all, don’t we all.” She looked away for a moment, as if she were forgetting something. “Oh!” And that’s because she was. “Dutch is gathering everyone up, you better hurry. He wanted us to lead the horses through.” She quickly got to work on freeing some the horses from where they were tethered. “I’ll take Brown Jack and Tennessee Walker. You get Old Boy, Maggie, and Baylock. The Count can walk themselves over.” You had no idea what any of these horses were called. She let the white one loose, he started making his way across camp. That must be ‘The Count’. She took the reins of the horse that you had been choosing to ignore after feeding. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the hoodie incident, you creature of destruction. With them, she held the straps of the brown one like a leash. You knew who Silver Dollar was, and there were only three other horses besides them, so you concluded that these three were Old Boy, Maggie, and Baylock.

“Did Dutch say anything about me riding?”

“Yeah, you’ll go on Old Boy since John’s bed ridden right now. He’s friendly, so don’t you worry.” You led the horses a good 3 feet behind the ones Karen was guiding. “There’s a lot of talk about you, Mr. West.” You could hear the almost sinister tone in here smile, even though you couldn’t see it.

“May I inquire on what sort of talk?” You recalled your conversation with Javier earlier.

“I ain’t too sure what the boys are thinking, but all the girls have taken quite a shine to you.” You weren’t sure how you should respond to that.

“I uh, that’s, um…that’s certainly-“ She saved you from the embarrassment.

“Mary-Beth told us about how thankful you were for our efforts, and how chivalrous it was of you to help her to her feet.”

“Well, I did bump into her, it was the right thing to do.” You weren’t entirely sure what she was trying to insinuate, but she shrugged her shoulders and glanced back at you.

“The right thing to do, he says. You’re a nice boy, Mr. West. As long as you keep that attitude, we all should be just fine.” That sounded both like an invitation of friendship and a threat. You had a feeling you two would get along.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Miss Jones.” That was a good answer. You looked past her to see Dutch near effortlessly plant himself onto The Count. As you both approached, one at a time the men came around to collect. It seems you were correct in your earlier assumptions. Lenny called the blonde one Maggie, Micah sneered at you as he took his horse that you’d have to guess was named Baylock. This left you with the sad looking s’mores horse. You must be Old Boy. Thanks for letting me space-out with you back there.

“Good luck.” Karen whispered to you as she walked away. Dutch looked out into the small crowd around him. His new height allowed for him to project his voice. He likes to be tall.

“Men, it’s time to saddle up. We’re bringing those bastards to hell and back.” Everyone started to mount there horses, so you did as well. “The time has come to take what we need to survive. I trust all of you with my life and the lives of your brothers in blood.” He turned his head to look at Pearson’s station. “Mr. Matthews, Mr. Pearson, hold down the fort and keep it safe until we get back. Now, let’s ride!” The Count raised pulsed back on his hindlegs and whinnied in a battle cry.

The mares and colts roared in energy, they seemed to be itching to get out as much as the rest of you. You didn’t even have to press Old Boy to move, he moved on his own accord. It startled you, but you made sure to not let it show too much and tried to play it off as a cough. The further you went, the more questions you had about this endeavor. You didn’t have a weapon, you didn’t want to kill anyone, but you needed to face some suspicions. You were riding behind Arthur, who was behind Dutch.

“Um, Rabid Man?”

“Yes?” He responded.

“Could you or Dutch tell me what we’re doing? I know we’re after a train, but why are we going out on a raid?” Arthur seemed hesitant to answer.

“See, it’s a bit complicated…” You decided to play a different angle.

“I don’t know anything about the O’Driscolls, I think I’d like to know who stole me from my home and what I’m up against.” He seemed to find that more reasonable, but Dutch intercepted his answer.

“Colm O’Driscoll is the devil incarnate. Man doesn’t have a single carin’ bone in his body. He’s got damn near an army and probably doesn’t know any of their names.”

“So, he’s out for power, that’s what you’re saying?”

“Well, he’s certainly no trying to find a place to call his own, that’s for sure.”

“Is that what you’re doing, Dutch?” This seemed like an important question that you were surprised you hadn’t asked yet.

“That’s what we’re doin’, young man. All these people, they’re just lookin’ for a means to live. That’s’ what makes us different. If roles had been reversed, and they found you broken and beaten in our camp? You would’ve been killed on the spot.”

“But Dutch sees things different, he believes in human life and worth. That’s what separates ‘em.” Arthur chimed. “No one ain’t worth savin’.” He really is a lot like Austin, huh? “But Dutch, I have to say, ain’t it dangerous for us to be goin’ out like this? I know you and Colm have your feud, but this is a risky job we’re doin’.”

“When did you start losing faith in me, son?” Dutch questioned with sincerity

“I never lost faith, I’m just worried. You always said revenge was a luxury we can’t afford.”

“There are things that I’m wiling to forgive and things I’m willing to forget. What he did to Annabelle, I can’t do neither.”

“You killed his brother, Dutch.” Your eyes sharpened at that statement.

“Yes, I did! And I hope the two of them will be reuniting soon.” You saw Micah pull around you.

“And they will!” He cawed sanguinely. This news made you nervous. If he was doing this for revenge, there’s no way you’d be able to help him. You resigned yourself to wait and see how he reacts when you all arrive to your destination.

You counted how many heads you’d have to watch out for. With you was Bill, Arthur, Dutch, Lenny, Javier, and Micah. Micah was an idiot, but you doubted that was without skill. Arthur was clearly a force to be reckoned with and you wouldn’t have to be concerned. Dutch had to have been made leader for a reason. It was Bill, Javier, and Lenny that had you nervous. Bill and Javier were mysteries to you, you had no way of gauging their skill. Lenny was a different story, especially when Dutch cheered-

“Look at us! Finest group of men to ever ride! There ain’t no way a bunch of O’Driscolls could take us down. Arthur Morgan, Micah Bell, Bill Williamson, Javier Escuella, and who could forget young Lenny? Always the first man on his horse!”

“Always happy to help, Dutch!” Lenny’s voice was cheery and excited.

“You sure you’re ready for this, kid?” Micah sneered.

“Yes. I am.” That’s what worried you. You could tell the moment you met him that he was the youngest among you, and that posed some issues. Sometimes people get too big for their britches when they’re trying to impress others. Reckless, inexperienced, or not, it still gave you an itch at you vertebrae. You hoped he wasn’t anything like you when you were his age.

“Alright all of you, slow down.” Dutch commanded. You lightly pulled the reins on Old Boy and cooed for him to ease up. Thankfully, responded the way you needed him to. The lot of you were paused near a cliff’s edge. “You wait here, Arthur and I will go up and survey the area.” With that, the two of them dismounted from their horses. From where you were, you could see a scatter of dark, wooden structures in the distance. But other than that, you couldn’t notice much.

“Are those two related?” You looked in the direction Arthur and Dutch had ventured two and saw them pulling out binoculars. This was something you had actually been curious about.

“They might as well be.” Lenny remarked.

“They sure seem to act like it.” Bill sighed. His voice still surprised you, his accent was the most distinct in your opinion.

“But they’re not. Dutch is only a few years older than Arthur.” Javier seemed to remind everyone. Seriously? Only a few years? That’s the most unbelievable part about this whole thing. The chatter soon came to a hush when everyone noticed the two in question making their way back to the group.

“Colm has left his camp unattended. Which is fantastic for us because where’s the fun in him dyin’ if he never sees his work destroyed!” Well you were glad revenge was majorly off the table now. “We’ll head down on foot, so we don’t draw too much attention. Now James, I know you are currently unarmed. I say you trail behind us a tad…” He pointed down towards what was the left side of the camp from the over-head view. “We’ll be sneakin’ through that tunnel down there. Once we get their attention-“ He drew his finger across the rounded edge of the group of building. “, you’ll go around this side here and pick off one of the loners, nice and quick, got it?”

“Yes, sir.” You saluted as everyone, including yourself, hopped of the saddles. The group arranged themselves in a straight line, skulking in the snow with you at the back. The closer you got, the stranger this all seemed. Sure, you being lost on an abandoned mountain with a bunch of weirdos who thought it was a few decades post-Civil War? Yeah, sure, not the craziest thing to ever happen to someone. But having a second group of crazies who happened to be rivals with the other? Now that seemed far-fetched. It would certainly be an unbelievable coincidence that two groups existed separately. How far did this delusion sink? And why hasn’t anyone found out about this until now?

You shook the obvious answers away and focused on the task at hand. You still weren’t entirely sure how you’d make it out of this without killing anyone, and you hoped your preference wouldn’t set you back in terms of progress with the others. If they shoot at me first, I guess I’ll hardly have much of a choice. I’ll just have to be as quick and quiet as possible. Once the trail of dubious intentions had finished the decline from the cliff, everyone crouched down low and kept moving towards the tunnel-like structure Dutch had mentioned. You hid yourself behind a support beam while they continued to move down. It wasn’t until you saw them cross and enter what looked like a rundown barn that you decided to move closer to your destination. You were glad you paused when you did, because the sound of gunfire soon exploded throughout the area.

You couldn’t tell from where you were who had shot first, but you had to assume it was someone on your side. You rushed forward some, still keeping you body low to the ground, not standing upright until you finally came upon someone taking cover behind a crate and aiming for Dutch. You grabbed a fistful of hair and pounded his head into the wood while forcing his readied shot towards the ground. You were swift to untangle his fingers from trigger and handle. One swing of your arm, the revolver’s grip smacking the guy on the left side of his jaw, and he was out like a light. He wouldn’t be down for long, so you grabbed his holster and bag before surveying the arena for your next place to hide.

Your eyes caught someone sneaking up toward the barn everyone had initially entered. Which was concerning because you could still see Lenny shielding himself with the walls inside. Instinctually, you sprinted in the direction of the man. You got close, pulled the trigger as the barrel connected with his shoulder, and rounded the corner to find Lenny turning to face you. There two other entrances to the space, one on your left, and one that Lenny had been shooting from ahead of you. You saw movement behind a structure Lenny had been shooting before you interrupted. One figure began to rise up, you dashed in Lenny’s direction without any hesitation in your step. Holding the revolver in your right hand, you pinned Lenny to the wall with your forearm to block him from any fire. You peeked your head out, pulling the hammer back as you aimed for the man’s shoulder. You fired, pulled back, and fired at the opposite shoulder, forcing him to fall to the ground in pain. You looked up at Lenny.

“Watch your angles, one almost got you back there-“ His arm raised with enough speed to make you flinch slightly. Arm extending past the left side of your head, he shoot something behind you. You turned over your right shoulder to find the man you stopped from getting Lenny crumple to the ground, blood pooling from his head.

“And you can’t go easy on them.” Lenny forced your attention back on him. “Because they won’t do the same for you, trust me.” You dropped your arm, freeing him from the wall.

“Fair enough. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Same here.” You parted from each other, Lenny exiting from the left and you continuing forward. Keeping what Lenny said in mind, it didn’t seem like you had much of a choice. Looks like some blood has to be spilled. You took a moment to reconcile that with yourself. You heard a door being kicked in. And immediately shot the kicker in the throat. You raised your aim, catching the other one rushing out on the forehead. You got up the stairs and ducked inside the building to affix the holster and bag to your belt loops. Once secure, you reloaded with ammo in the small satchel.

Looking out, there seemed to be dwindling numbers still moving. There was one rifling from on top of water tower thing. You focused, lining up the shot, and when you took it, it was simultaneous with someone closer on the ground in the distance. Both shots working in conjunction made the body fall toward the floor at an awkward angle. You searched around for a moment and your gaze met with Arthur’s. He seemed strangely impressed, but that was all you could pick up on from the distance you were at. There was a disconcerting silence after that, something about it threw you off.

That feeling in your gut was both reaffirmed and swiftly chased away by Javier shouting-

“They’re coming out of the tree-line! Everyone stay on guard!”

What looked like a hoard of men on horses drew over the hill line with some tailing from the trees as Javier said. You left the small cabin and stooped for safety behind a stump protruding from the snow. You could see Dutch and Micah push past your defensive setup. You glanced over to do a head count. A little over a dozen from what you could see. It’s either them or me. You reminded yourself. You took a deep breath in and out to steady yourself. This was going to be risky, but you knew you couldn’t hit that many moving targets with how far away you were.

One man was heading towards Micah and didn’t seem to notice you while he crossed. You caught him by surprise when you vaulted over the stump and shot him in the temple. You snatched what looked like a hella old pistol from his newly dead hand. You pointed the dense, long barrel at a dark brown coat on a horse, moving fixedly along with him until you took your shot and caused him to tumble off the white-hooved steed. You moved to the side and rested your weight against a thin tree. Bill, Arthur, and Lenny finally caught up to the rest of you. Which was appreciated because despite how good Dutch, Javier, Micah, and you were, these numbers were a smidge overwhelming.

“Dutch, spot me!” You called out as you bounded towards him. He listened to your request and fired at two guys who had been waiting for you to pop out. You, in turn, did the same for him while his back was turned. You got one man down but still moving. Micah finished him for you. You finally met up next to Dutch and tried to figure out how many were left. That strange stir erupted in your gut again, it was way too quiet. You counted the bodies you could see. 12… Dutch was adjacent from you, he was facing toward the camp to make sure there were no stragglers, and you did the same while looking out at the hill. There were more than a dozen last time I counted…where’s the last one?

You noticed a twitch in the snow. Your eyes squinted, trying to focus past the light reflections. Dutch’s left side overshadowed a majority of your own left shoulder. About a foot a part, standing motionless. That corpse had 3 arms and 4 legs, it was moving slightly, a hand shifting with a revolver in grasp. Shit! You kept your eye trained on the hand raising as you elbowed Dutch with most of your body in tow, thoroughly shoving him out of the way. An explosive sound. You felt a pressure in your right bicep, almost like you had been hit with a pebble on bare skin. Which you would’ve disregarded, had this pain not have had to go through your clothes, was slowly getting to feel more like a burn, and incredibly recognizable. Trying to flex the muscle was painful. Javier took care of the living dead man while you stood in shock for a second.

“You saved my life…” Dutch muttered, snapping you out of your daze. He wasn’t too far off. It may have hit near your shoulder, but Dutch was taller than you. You had also pushed him fairly far back. If you hadn’t noticed in time, this would have had the potential to be a fatal chest wound. You holstered your revolver and used your now free left hand to apply pressure to the injury.

“It’s not a big deal. I’d rather get a little hurt than have someone die for no reason.” You finished the sentence through gritted teeth and a wince. The pain wasn’t unbearable, but it was far more noticeable than it had been.

“This is of tremendous importance, son.” His tone shifted from disbelief to one of great severity. He addressed the other men. “Pick up what you can and make it quick. Arthur, go check that barn for anything useful. We need to get Mr. West here back to camp.”

“It’s not that bad. Just need removal and cleaning. I’ll be fine for a second.” You reassured. You’ve had worse, you managed to evade the brachial artery, so you’d be fine for the time being.

“I will not forget this, son. You just proved something to me that really needed provin’. You’re one of us, young man. If anyone had any doubts, this moment just erased it all.” He gripped your left shoulder with an appreciative yet gentle touch.

You did good.

#rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption 2 fanfic #arthur morgan #javier escuella #dutch van der linde #charles smith #lenny summers #jack marston #abigail marston #micah bell #bill williamson #karen jones #I'm only tagging characters that are in this chapter

18 notes · View notes

wishespriynka-blog · 5 years

Text

Best Happy New Born Baby Wishes

We trust these recognizable newborn baby wishes will interface with you to respect your essential newborn youngsters. A baby is the best blessing to all watchmen. With the area of a newborn, watches are overwhelmed with satisfaction and appear to have the best blessing they would ever have. Nothing in this whole universe can exist that can make screens as blasting as having a baby. From this time forward, you should pass on wishes of all around done to a goliath bit of the watchmen who are your beneficial ones when they pass on a little baby with a newborn card. You should make messages in peril to work out to compliment the guards, moreover as pass on foremost wishes to the newborn baby for his or her surprising astounding future. Salute the guardians on the territory of a newborn baby in the family! Send warm wishes for the new baby and give them your favors. Some awesome new baby especially done messages are appeared as yields for after:

Veritable Newborn Baby Congratulations Messages

All around done! Beginning at now is an ideal opportunity to mistreat your baby's little feet and baby smell. It won't be there unendingly, and you should take in any case phenomenal photographs as could be ordinary in light of the present condition. You should miss a solitary solid minute!

This is a grand time in your life that you will constantly study. The introduction of your young is something that changes you uncertainly.

Particularly done on the district of your new baby! This new improvement will bring you piles of settling, fun occasions and sweet recollections. It will legitimize the dangerous evening times. All the best to your family.

This may be your first youth, at any rate it will plainly not be your last. I can see from your photos this is the thing that you were made to do.

I trust you have a glad and solid voyage before your family. All around done!

Having a new baby changes a real closeness partner and mate into a mother and daddy. As you experience into parenthood together, you will wrap up extraordinarily wary and innovatively make, while finding a new epic love for the stunning baby you have made. Particularly done on the introduction of your baby.

There is nothing better than a baby's grin. Nothing cuter than a baby's giggle. In like manner, indisputably nothing more ear-puncturing than a baby's cry. Regardless, I'm certain you will no weakness change as displayed by the negatives, enough to be stupified by the positives or raising a baby. Welcome to the most tiring paradise on earth. It's called parenthood. Especially done!

There's something about newborn young people that make us grin and spot trust in benevolence to all people. We feel warm and padded all finished and begin wishing astonishing wishes for everybody. We foresee meeting your new baby soon.

May your new dear baby bring delight into your life and fill a void in your heart. Spot wholeheartedly in worshiping and raising your little uncommon occasion. I handle you will be the best father you can be.

Set aside the push to genuinely profit in any case much as could reasonably be normal from your youth's soonest makes; everything considered, they do grow up so animated. Especially done on your new life.

There is nothing favored in this world over the smell of your baby's breath, anxious coos, and dangerous kisses. Particularly done on your energized gathering.

What to Write in a Newborn Baby Card

All around done, and welcome to the universe of tense evening times, pulled in days and loads of dress. On an unfathomably essential estimation consider: what doesn't break you will make you a telling individual.

Particularly done on the zone of your twofold barrel of fun. You have been twice respected with your newborn twins. It will be twofold piece of fun, snickering, love and jumbled diapers. Respect everything!

Cheers to your developing family. We anticipate lauding your baby's passageway with you a certainly trustworthy component of time after a basic long time after year.

View! A surprising occasion has favored your home. All around done on your new baby.

Adolescents are a gift, and you have gotten one. All around done on your little revered newborn. May the Almighty shimmer His straightforwardness on your whole family!

For the term of standard conventional closeness, it is difficult to join advancements in a single hand. Today, you got a legend among the most pined for and uncommon improvements any parent would ever have. I wish to compliment you and wish you well as you leave on this bewildering energetic raising voyage.

Right when that baby was born and it drew its first breath, it was not just it that was given life. It was your relationship besides. After a short time that there is a baby in the blend, your life will take a totally striking breeze, it will change. To improve things. Since a baby, is constantly a gift in any relationship. Especially done!

The introduction of a baby gets renewed need what's to come. May your family loll in suffering satisfaction as you handle parenthood. All around done!

As you welcome your new baby kid, it is my hankering and need that by a long shot a large portion of the irritates of the world will scatter each time he grins at you.

All around done! May God backing, guide and watch over you, your baby and your family!

You have arrived. Your newborn will open a mammoth spread of momentous event and experience. It will be a world hidden away with snickering, tears and love. Particularly done and exceptional karma on this new experience.

All around done to the fulfilled guardians who have such a sweet baby.

This is dependably overpowering news – a new baby! We're checked for you, and greatly grateful that your new baby arrived asserted and solid. Referencing of God for satisfaction, understanding and some peaceful evenings for your family.

Particularly done to the newest Mama and Papa Bear. Baby Bear shows up is flawless!

Cheers to the new strategy for gatekeepers and their little sweetheart. As you look with wide-looked sweet baby, neighborly update that a couple expanded lengths of wide-splendid evenings will check for after. Welcome it, yet educated us with respect to whether we can help.

All around done on your newest advance. It's really cool when you begin seeing bits of yourself in your little one. It's a detectable reward of parenthood.

Welcome to the world, Baby ______. Regard that you are regarded by many.

Encountering the introduction of a tyke and watching him make is a famous individual among life's most noticeable fortunes. Go all around referenced; before you know it, your little one won't be so unessential any more.

There isn't at all like the support a parent has for their young. We regard you will be the best watches this fiery would ever require. Especially done, (names).

You are so regarded to pass on a new baby into the world, and I can't manage see your new sweet gift.

Sending heartiest petitions to the Almighty to make the life of this baby flooding with shading and euphoria.

Dear baby, be set up to get a monster area of the respect and pounding from your favored guardians.

Sending seas of love and headways to the newborn baby.

Give the life of this newborn baby a chance to be stacked with amazing accomplishments and occasions of vanquishing trouble.

Sprightly Birthday to your little one! We understand this is an attracting time for your family, and we trust you are respected with broad stretches of satisfaction.

I in like way confirmation the watchmen of this newborn baby, and need they keep encountering this momentous segment of relish the experience of the years to come.

We trust this newborn baby will fulfill we all in all in all in with everything pondered vibe for her one day.

May you discover parenthood a unimaginable and repaying learning! Particularly done!

Pictures with Cute Newborn Baby Wishes

Newborn Wishes: A baby fills a spot in your heart that you never knew was unfilled.

Newborn Wishes: You can't purchase satisfaction, captivate is born.

Newborn Wishes: The most unassuming feet build up the best relationship in our spirits.

A new out of the holder new phenomenal occasion to call your own! Especially done. Newborn Baby Card New life, new encounters, new affirms. All around done on your new dear baby. Newborn Baby Card Welcome new baby. Newborn Baby Card Wishing you and your newborn a lifetime of good prospering, joy and love. Newborn Baby Card

Newborn Baby Congratulations Messages and Wishes. All around done on your new baby! All around done on the stunning escort added to your family! Newborn Baby Congratulations Messages and Wishes Congratulations on the region of your new baby! Newborn Baby Congratulations Messages and Wishes.

All around done baby kid

Star falls baby quote

All eating up, minute love baby mother quote

Favored dispatcher baby determines

Most unassuming feet baby quote

Welcome to the world senseless one

Especially done Messages for Newborn Baby

Dear baby, begin shading the world with fulfillment and satisfaction; it's your advancement.

Sending motivation to the newborn baby to shake his future ahead.

In light of the gatekeepers, this will be a stunning baby! All around done!

I regard that raising a baby is more reliably than by a wide edge most by a wide edge of the things, if not everything a few has ever done. Regardless, the reward is strengthened, paying little character to all the weight. Plan to lose your rest, yet gain satisfaction. All around done!

I handle you guards consider energizing at the sound of the morning clock, yet you won't require it any more! You after a short time have the cutest morning clock ever! It will always ring on condition and it goes with diaper changing needs other than! Cong

1 note · View note

dentelle-grise · 6 years

Text

Your Latest Trick - Chapter 20

(Loki x Reader NSFW) Long after everyone has stopped talking about Loki and his misdemeanors, his failed attempt to take over Midgard and his punishment, you meet him at a party.

All chapters to date at AO3 (50K, NC-17) Tagging my rebloggers, commenters and other folk who asked. Please let me know if you want in (or out) of the list: @joanbushur,@frenchfrostpudding, @lovely-geek, @wolfsmom1, @sigridlaufeyson, @lokislonelylady, @monitoroutside, @daniissuchadani, @devilbat, @deadlydreamersecrets @helenisabel, @stardustandangelsfanfiction, @ely-seum, @wendyrobson1978, @the-ships-i-ship, @shemart101, @dreamourbrainout, @sadghostomg

Chapter 20

He’s gone again and you’re none the wiser as to where.

You roll into the warm space he left and doze. Imagine a safe place he’d said. So this is what you have – a nest, an invisible print on your skin, and a warm hole left in the bed. Every night when he comes to you you forget the strangeness of the situation with the comfort of his nearness.

There’s a faint tapping. Far off to start with, then louder, like someone walking closer. By the time you are awake enough to recognize knocking on your door it’s become an agitated banging accompanied by yells.

“Open up. I know you’re in there.” comes a woman’s voice.

You sigh, slip out of bed and pad around barefoot looking for your robe as there comes another bang. You pull open the door and there’s Sif in full battledress, a quarterstaff in her hand.

“Too early.” you groan. Now Sif is someone you’ve known since forever but you’d hardly say you were close, certainly not close enough for her to knock you up first thing in the morning to go and spar. And anyway, after your performance the last time, you hardly think you’d make her a worthy adversary.

“He’s here isn’t he?” Sif looks murderous and you’re glad she’s not carrying anything sharp.

“Who?”

But your word is spoken to empty space as she’s already pushed past you into your rooms. “What?” What presumption. This is your home. How dare she. You follow in her wake. Then you see what she sees.

There’s towels strewn around the floor, your clothes from yesterday in a heap, and the bed looks like someone had a fight in it. The door to the bathroom stands open displaying the bath still full and a couple of burnt-down candles.

She looks at you skeptically, paying particular attention to your collarbone where you know there’s a bruise, even though it was from the training the other day and quite possibly her work.

Who is she looking for? If it’s Loki then he’s long gone, but there’s no reason she’d be searching for Loki. None except a prickle of your conscience and the fear that there’s more to his secret than he’s let on.

Turning from you, she creeps toward the closet.

“What? Sif! Stop!”

With the point of her staff she pushes back the row of hanging dresses. She runs it all the way along, setting them swinging while you stand there speechless, your outrage unheeded. Then she turns with a huff and paces back toward the bed. The bedclothes are all bunched where you pushed them aside. Sif takes her staff and gives the bundle a less-than-gentle poke.

To your shock and her satisfaction there’s a yelp from within. “Got you.” breathes Sif.

What is he doing still here? He was gone. The idiot. Why is he back if he doesn’t want to get caught?

“Well what have we here? Fandr-”

She flips the sheets revealing a head of dark hair and stops short in shock, missing the wince you make.

Later you will remember guiltily that in that precise moment, as well as the terror at discovery, you also felt an intense sense of relief - that the secret was out, that you didn’t have to pretend anymore.

But right now, the figure rises, throwing back the sheets flamboyantly and it’s your turn for a shock. It’s not Loki.

It’s a woman, with raven hair, a red-painted mouth and large bare breasts she has no shame in displaying.

Sif has no shame in staring either, though it’s probably out of surprise. For a moment no one says anything and the woman stretches luxuriantly and smiles at you both.

“Why don’t you try the kitchens.” The woman says, flicking back her long black locks. “Perhaps he was looking for something sweet.” The last word drips honey and ice and Sif looks on in shock a second longer, before turning without a word and tearing out of the room. The bed’s occupant grins wickedly.

“Ooooh! someone’s in trouble.” She breaks into laughter. Familiar laughter. There’s only one way she could have gotten there.

“Loki!?” It wasn’t the voice that tipped you off or even the words but the whole set up, the trick and it’s recklessness. Now you search the woman’s face for his features, morphed into someone else, but still strangely recognizable. And there they are, when you know what to look for. And there, around her neck, is the pendant, it’s color a smoky violet but it’s form unmistakable. You’re staring, incredulous.

“What?” Loki looks at you innocently, her larger eyes blinking slowly and fuller mouth pouting slightly. “I saw her heading up here and thought I’d have little fun.”

She climbs out of bed and strolls towards the closet, considerably shorter in stature, with a figure that defies belief - breasts very full, a tiny waist and broad, curvaceous hips.

“Loki, what is this? I mean, who are you?”

“What this?” she makes a grandiose gesture to her body, turning to display delicate shoulders, rose-pink nipples. “Why, this is me.”

“You’re not impersonating some… friend?”

“Oh no. I’m not imitating anyone.”

You struggle with the idea a moment. Loki is also a woman? Or can pretend to be a woman? You find those curves rather unrealistic to tell the truth. They look more like how a man might idealize a woman than any true woman you’ve ever seen. You get a picture of adolescent Loki dreaming this up, sketching out this fantasy on the corner of a spell book.

“You mean you designed yourself a female self, you sat down and drew a woman-“

“I not drawn. This is just the way I am.”

Loki’s clearly very proud of this form and not remotely shy – with a deliberate swing of the hips as she approaches your clothes. Unlike Loki’s male form, her body is unmarred by scars, it’s perfect, her skin has the same glowing paleness and her hair is the same bottomless black.

She touches one of your dresses and it appears instantly on her body.

It doesn’t fit in quite the same way as it does on you. Of course not. It’s obviously tighter around the bust, and there is more of her shoulders on view. She’s changed it, by magic.

“Hummm.” She looks at herself in the mirror, then moves on to the next outfit, a pale blue one, one you always found a bit too modest and serious. She performs a transformation so there’s more cleavage visible and a slit up the leg to the upper thigh.

“I remember the first time when Thor went into battle.” Loki says as she admires her work. “I was left behind.” You watch her expression, - scheming - the same and somehow not.

“So I chose to ‘welcome home the warriors’ instead. Like this.” She points to herself, now in gold and russet, skin paled to translucent by the strength of the color.

At least five of them the first night.” She gives a little shudder of delight that makes her breasts jiggle, and adds. “Something you’d know a bit about.”

Struggling to maintain your composure and treat this new development like something quite reasonable and normal, you protest. “Oh no, never more than one at a time, that’s a waste of men.”

“Warriors.” Loki corrects. Letting the word hang there. She’s grinning again, teeth white and dangerous against the red of those lips.

Loki changes into a green dress now, one you don’t know, so you guess it’s one of her own called from some magical wardrobe. The neckline is a huge V in front, diving between those ample breasts and mirrored by one at the back that almost reaches the cleavage there too.

“Mother and Father found out of course.” she continues. “I made sure of it.” Now she’s smiling smugly. “And strangely enough, the next time, I was allowed to go and fight alongside Thor.” She examines her nails, which are polished a black so shiny she’s probably admiring herself in them.

“But it’s still of great use to me to be able to change. For a start, it’s far easier to find company for the night like this.” She smirks and you don’t know if its complicity or flirtation. Both perhaps. “In fact,” she says slowly, looking you full in the eye as though to be sure she’s understood. “I find a lover every time I take this form.”

That expression you’d know whatever form Loki chose to take. You don’t know if what you feel is fear or attraction. To push it home she adds.

“I’ve no objection to ‘non-warriors’.”

It’s that moment that the penny drops about ‘warriors’ rather than men. Could she possibly mean Sif? That Sif and Loki…, no Sif and Lady Loki…? And without Sif even knowing who she was.

Sif’s reaction just now takes on a whole new meaning and you feel a ripple of fear – or is that jealousy? – run though you.

And Sif ran out of here thinking what about you and this woman?!

Still, those huge green eyes are waiting and watching. You must be the picture of confusion.

“I could turn you into a man, you know”

“What! No!”

“Don’t you want to know what it’s like?” She’s taken a step closer.“You might enjoy it.” And she leers at you as though she most certainly would. Your stomach drops.

“No. Please.” The idea of you both being other people is too much.

“You’d prefer if we both stayed the way we are now?” her eyes flash.

“Change back.” you insist. “I want the real you.”

“But this is the real me.” She reaches out to you. “Does this form make you uncomfortable.” Well there it is. It’s not something you’ve given much thought to. It’s not as if there were opportunities. Unless you count that one time Sif ‘mistook you for Thor’…

“You mean you’ve never.” She stops before she touches you as though you might startle, as though you were something infinitely desirable but sacred. “Oh but what fun we could have…”

“But Loki. I want the real real you.”

There’s a flicker of something across her face. Disappointment? Even though this is Loki, you don’t know these morphed features well enough to read their expression. But then her eyes crinkle and her face breaks into a mischievous smile you recognize very well. “You know what you like then.” While you’re beginning to have some doubts in that area, her implication is as lewd and as clear as if she’d made a gesture to go with it.

“But, any time you want to try…” she gives you a wink and in an instant changes back to the form you know, body drawing out, flattening, filling out differently. He regains his usual height, his usual garb and all at once radiates a different sort of power. You have a moment of regret for his other self, the full mouth and large eyes, the rounder everything, and hope after all that you haven’t seen the last of her…

He draws you into his arms right away and the familiarity is a balm, but you’re still on edge from the ruse, from the conversation,from the things you didn’t say or dare. Your heart is hammering already and he’s hardly touched you. He slides a crafty hand inside your robe and you melt into him. When he feels how wet you already, he he challenges, “So you do like me in my other form.” He starts to work you with his hand and it becomes impossible to think of a clever answer if there ever was one.

“I thought so.” He delves deeper and you cling to him. All of a sudden he stops and pulls away his hand. He holds it up so you can see it glistening. “What did that? I wonder.” He licks a moist finger and raises an eyebrow as you squirm. “Which one of my wicked ideas took root?” He feigns idle curiosity, returns his hand to its work and with the crook of a finger sets you writhing against him.

“Just. You.” You force out, breathless despite your immobility.

You expect him to disrobe you, to take you to bed, but no, he continues relentlessly with his fingers until you are begging. It’s not just him, though. It’s everything he’s been saying and doing. The unrealized possibilities and your imagination.

“You are enticingly curious if not courageous.” He breathes

You’re frustratingly aroused and unsettled and mad at yourself and confused and mad at Sif or jealous or afraid of her, or of yourself. You don’t know. You want to drown it all out in him; just want him to take you and let you forget the rest.

Outside, a bell is ringing. The day has started without you but in this instant you don’t care, if only Loki would… crush your body to the bed with is own. But he continues his slow massaging accompanied with deep kissing till he has you past a point where there is only want left and you cease caring how you get there. You just want him to make you come. He brushes off your attempts to please him. He does not relent, just keeps playing at a steady, frustrating rhythm and it’s driving you crazy, the fire mounting unstoppably but so so slowly, and more powerfully for it. Just as you give up waiting for him to take you to bed, he pulls your robe fully open cups your breasts with his hands while he kisses you. The one hand is wet with you and he slides his thumb over and over the nipple while thrusting his tongue down your throat. You can feel him hard under his clothes, but then you’re overcome by the culmination of your desire. You can’t stop bucking and shaking and crying. He just keeps on playing until as you come apart in his arms. When finally you are silent and still and weak and spent he lays you on the bed, grinning cheekily and, for the first time since his return, vanishes taking nothing for himself.

Chapter 21

#loki #loki fanfiction #loki x reader #MCU #imagine-loki #your latest trick

25 notes · View notes

encomiium · 5 years

Text

Take Me With You (I) 13 July 2019 Charles

Charles felt something give in his arms and he stopped cold, gathering up the massive stack of folders and papers he’d been judiciously balancing on his chest just before it sloped out of his grasp. As he meticulously shuffled the pile back into some semblance of form, inching closer to the lab down the hall with a few tentative steps, a bright red light shone through a crack in the door beside him. In the long and winding metal hallways coiling within their underground base, doors and walls blended together and cracks in the surface sometimes felt like magic.

Curious, Charles pressed his foot against the door and nudged it open just enough to peek inside. The red light came from a large screen depicting numerous status bars, all indicating some sort of low data set; Charles couldn’t see much as the screen was obscured by two men, one noticeably taller than the other.

“Sorry boys,” the taller one said, his voice quiet and gentle and immediately recognizable as one half of the legendary Striker Rogue pilot team. Charles gasped, a tiny, giddy grin toying at the corners of his mouth as he watched Elliot Simon—the Elliot Simon—begin to help a boy, about Charles’s own age, out of a trainer pilot suit. The boy placed his suit on a nearby table, left dressed in his standard issue greens, before excusing himself from the room through a rear door, his shoulders stiff.

Charles’s body felt like it was full of bubbles, his fingers gripping onto his papers tighter. His eyes went wild with the feast of a sight, usually private and secluded from viewing. He knew the lab might be a little miffed he’d be tardy with all their test results, but the opportunity to watch a real-life drift compatibility test was just too good to miss.

“Just fucking bring Armstrong in already,” Timothy Shaw—the Timothy Shaw—said, cutting through the sound of whirring mock mechanics, his arms crossed and still looking at the screen. Charles had only ever heard him cussing at TV cameras and screaming at cadets in the pilot program, hearing him so close and personal was like seeing Santa on Christmas Eve. “That’s the last one and all the other results are the same, if not worse. Might as well cut his hopeless arse out of the program now,” he spat, almost exclusively directing his words to the other pilot-in-training, still strapped in and finally taking off his helmet.

Charles drew in a breath.

It was him. The legacy of the program, the one they all looked to as the future of jaeger piloting, the one with scores surpassing even those of his legend of an older brother. The one who asked him if he could have his uneaten pudding in the cafeteria.

Robert Armstrong seemed barely phased, grinning as if nothing could touch him, as if he didn’t know what a failing score was. “Gotta agree with Captain Shaw on this one,” he said, as easily as you would talk to a friend on the playground, “I’m gonna be piloting Gypsy Danger with Richard anyway.” It sounded like he was asking if they could end early and get to dinner before all the good tater-tots were gone, not at all like he was worried about the outcome of measuring the most important metric of jaeger piloting. The other boy—the one who left in a hurry once the test had concluded—he might never get a chance to pilot a jaeger if Robert was his only chance at finding drift-compatibility.

“You’ll pilot Gypsy Danger with Richard when your father retires,” Elliot corrected, flipping through a clipboard on a desk near the screen. Robert rolled his eyes with a sigh, but didn’t prod further, instead electing to reach up with a gloved hand and smooth his helmet-hair down, all gold and shiny and infuriatingly perfect. “If you don’t find a drift-compatible partner before then, you’ll never be prepared for Gypsy Danger so, if I were you, I would mind the attitude and begin focusing on the test.”

Timothy began scrolling through the other cadets on the screen. It was abundantly clear he didn’t care much for the blonde boy in the suit, but as clear as that was, he was their best cadet and, quite literally, the future of protecting the planet. Charles leaned forward a bit, squinting through his glasses and desperately trying to read what was on the screen. He’d watched the cadets training, seen Robert in simulation countless times. He was a natural with a brute force fighting style and a tactician’s brain. He was a tank, in mind and body, intelligent and unbelievably strong, and he needed someone who could match that.

Just as Charles thought of the name, Timothy zoomed into a file on the screen. “Banning’s results weren’t horrendous,” he muttered, though all of the stat bars were yellow-orange. Not ideal. Elliot sighed, shaking his head, “His results with Catherine were too strong to stick him with Robert.”

“Hey!” Robert grinned, shifting in the suit. Elliot laughed, not looking up. Charles’s chest tightened at just the sight of them, smiling even as the world lay in rubble a few meters above their heads, while the world’s water supply became tainted with radioactive kaijuu blue. In the face of all of that, between the blood and sweat they all poured into their wok, they were close. They were working for a brighter future, together. The labs were nothing like that. It was sterile in there. Everything was sterile, from the tools to the people.

Between being an uninvited voyeur and his silent envy, Charles didn’t feel his papers slowly edging out of his grasp until it was too late. The files in his arms gave way to gravity, knocking against the door Charles had been leaning towards and swinging it wide open. A torrent of papers spilled out onto the floor in front of him and all three pilots stared at him. Suddenly, he was acutely aware of how stupid he looked, in his dumb lab coat and his dumb glasses and surrounded by a mountain of dumb paperwork he’d been too lazy to make two trips for.

“Sorry, sorry, God, I’m sorry--” he blurted out before rushing to gather up his mess, crunching and crumpling papers into his chest.

“Wait,” Elliot said quickly. Charles looked up from his place crouched on the floor and Elliot Simon—the Elliot Simon—was holding a hand out to him.

“You can’t be serious,” Timothy said, dead-pan. Even outside of the drift, they could read each other’s thoughts. So fucking cool.

“What if it’s the machinery?” Elliot said innocently, shrugging his shoulders.

“Take the fucking piss, Elliot,” Timothy nearly yelled. Charles crushed the papers closer to his chest.

“Leave the papers—Charles, right?” Oh, my God he knew his name. “You’re…” Elliot trailed off. Charles stood and immediately dropped the papers, creating an even bigger mess around him. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, an absolute fish out of water, before walking quickly to Elliot’s side, slipping on a few of the files and pushing his glasses up his nose.

“An intern in the biochemistry lab. Thomson. Charles Thomson I--um--I’m sorry I don’t know how to fix machinery, that’s not my speciality.” When the world needed him most, let it be known that Charles Thomson claimed it wasn’t his specialty. Fantastic.

“No, no,” Elliot said gently, taking his labcoat off his shoulders and stealing his glasses right off his face. Everything blurred, but Charles was not about to stop a man with five kaiju kills under his belt, one of them a five star behemoth that breathed fire. “Have you ever drifted before, Charles?”

Charles’s mouth went dry, “I--no, sir.”

Timothy scoffed.

“Good! Then it stands to reason that your results with Robert should be zero,” Elliot said happily, his warm hand on Charles’s spine, guiding him towards the pilot simulator, which was, up close, much bigger than Charles anticipated. The room was suddenly way too vast and much too cold without his coat. His body covered in goosebumps, his heart in his stomach, he didn’t have the courage, much less the audacity to correct Elliot Simon’s very flawed logic. A better control would be a fucking cantaloupe, not Charles’s unpredictable mess of a human brain.

“Hey,” Robert grinned. He suddenly looked much less like the kid whose bunk was next door to his room, and more like a lion who’d suddenly caught a mouse under his massive paw. Like he was ready to eat Charles alive.

“Hi,” Charles barely squeaked at the indistinguishable blob he assumed was Robert above him in his pilot suit.

“Alright, just step up into those--there you go!” Elliot chirped while Charles adjusted to the foot holsters that suddenly clamped down around his ankles, suddenly strapped into the world’s most expensive elliptical, barely balanced and terrified of breaking anything. Just as the helmet began to lower onto both of their heads, Charles’s heart thundering in his ears, a scream of terror and regret stuck to the back of his throat, Charles felt a warm hand on his leg.

“If you don’t want to do this, you tell me right now and we’ll get you out of here,” Timothy said, his voice so kind, Charles’s knees would have buckled if he weren’t held up by the steel closing in around him.

Charles looked over at Rob, already comfortable in his helmet. He winked, those sea-glass eyes still impossibly blue behind the tint of the visor. Charles thought of all the times he wished so badly to get a taste of what these cadets had, how his gut ached for just a moment of a chance to be something bigger than numbers and formulas. Yet, standing in front of one of his heroes, whose jaeger was on a poster just above his bed, his entire body trembled and he thought, for a moment, he wasn’t strong enough to seize the one chance he’d dreamt of while compiling data sets at a cold, metal desk. He’d always be what they said he was. Weak, a coward.

He hadn’t realized his fists were clenched until he felt the blood rush into his fingers when he released his hands. “I’m ready,” Charles said, the words tumbling out of him without permission, the truth pouring out as a bead of sweat ran down his hairline. An errant heat carved something new in his body, a place where a warm, a carnal and precious desire burned in the lowest part of his gut.

Timothy sighed, patting his leg before stepping back, “Alright. Let it flow. You don’t have to let him in anywhere you don’t want him, you understand?”

Charles nodded, stealing his gaze forward as he reached up and lowered the helmet down over his head, keenly aware that, very soon, there would be another human being inside his head, in every memory, witnessing every tear and mortifying thought. If it was going to be anyone, it might as well be the best in the cadet class. The heat in his gut roiled and Charles bristled, the taste of competition sweet on his tongue. It was a tender secret that he kept, but the need to be great was always hiding somewhere inside of him, in the place between his spine and his lungs.

“That helmet looks good on you,” Robert’s voice in his ear crackled. His voice was kind, even more kind than when he passed by his room after dark and whispered good night. Charles barely knew the kid besides forgettable conversation and his entropic kindnesses, but in a brief moment of weakness, Charles allowed himself to think he wouldn’t mind getting to know him.

Still, he couldn’t help but laugh, his cheeks warming, “You can’t shake me, Armstrong.”

“Alright, boys. Initiating neural handshake,” Elliot said through the com and before the countdown ended, Charles felt a punch to the chest, his mind bathed in bright blue flashes.

He stepped back at the force of it, his entire body tense with the shock of the drift, everything flying by him so fast in crisp, perfect technicolor. It all rushed through him so quickly, like falling into a raging, whitewater river; he was drowning in memories, only some of which were his, filling his throat as he tried to fight against it and he was desperate to cling onto something, anything. He heard a voice somewhere, a voice only a far off part of his mind recognized. It yelled something and he rushed to it, reached out to it as if it were the only thing that could give him even a moment of relief.

“Charles, don��t!” he heard somewhere, echoing, but it was gone just as quickly as all the other memories, flashes of his father and someone else’s mother, static images of piles of siblings and huge, lonely rooms.

Charles gasped as he stopped in a basement, cold and dark. He heard the voice again, this time louder, in his ear, as if it were his own, “Worthless!” The heat of it made him flinch.

A blonde boy rushed in front of him, his body flung like a ragdoll, his tiny arms covered in splotches of green and purple bruises, in whiplashed fresh red blood. “No, dad, please, I’ll do better I promise!”

A door ripped open beside Charles, and freezing cold air rushed out from it. An empty freezer.

“You know what to fucking do. If I catch you outside of it, it’s double time,” the voice said, before it vanished. The boy, small, but with those unmistakable blue eyes, began to crawl for the freezer, coughing and choking on his own wails.

Charles knelt down, reaching a hand out, his body moving without him, his eyes trained on this tiny thing who couldn’t see him, “Wait,” he said softly, his voice echoing back in his own ears like feedback on a radio, “You don’t have to go in there.”

“I do!” the boy sobbed, hiccuping as he crawled closer to the freezer.

“No, you don’t! Come with me instead!” The boy turned and stared at Charles, like something had changed. Charles felt it too, the way a dog can feel when a storm changes. This storm, howling around them, became much bigger than either child could fathom, two hurricanes colliding and creating something monstrous and frighteningly beautiful. In front of Robert was a boy with tear stains down his cheeks, reaching out to him with a small, pudgy hand. He was crying too. Behind him, his mother leaned down to him, breath reeking of something sharp and sour, and told him she wished he’d never been born.

Robert took his hand and suddenly they were on a swing set in the middle of nowhere under a full moon. Around them flashed memories of shattered glass above their heads, of bigger boys shoving them into trash cans and breaking their glasses when they cry, of utter silence and a loveless home.

“I come here when I feel alone,” Charles whispered, the image of his mother’s snarling face burned bright and clear in his mind’s eye, when he’d thought he’d banished it for good. He looked over at Robert, small and still bleeding, “You can come here too. And then neither of us will be alone.”

Suddenly, the blues turned pink, and a memory flashed before them in the darkness, of Charles standing at the end of a metal-coated hallway watching as Robert, who looked more handsome than he’d ever seen of himself in a mirror, laughed in a way that reminded Charles of the brass section at the ballet Grandpa Pavel used to take him too. They both felt the fluttering in Charles’s chest, like the flutes, the heat in his ears, like the violins, and Charles panicked, jumping off the swings and backing away.

He felt something warm in his hand and he almost wrenched himself away, forgetting what human skin felt like on his own.

“No, it’s okay,” Robert said, not bleeding anymore, his bright eyes almost glowing as he pulled Charles back down to the swing, “Not alone, remember?”

And then, silence. Darkness. Peace, save for the sound of Richard Armstrong in Rob’s head, echoing brightly in Charles’s own mind, “The drift is silence.”

Charles opened his eyes and he realized the blur in the room was not from a lack of glasses, but from tears. He looked at Robert, who was breathing hard and already staring at him. He looked at Timothy and Elliot, whose indistinguishable faces were bathed in green from the screen.

He heard a Scottish lilt in his head, sounding like a song, “Welcome to the cadet program, darling. Beautiful job.”

#IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TWO PARTS BUT IT GOT SUPER LONG SO I SPLIT IT UP #*shrug emoji* i got /inspired/#d:charles thomson #gen:drabble #au:pacificrim #btw thats a real richard quote from actual pacrim im very proud of that #but i hATE THE REST IM SORRY ITS NOT PRETTY ITS MORE PROSE THAN POETRY

0 notes

kristie-rp · 5 years

Text

What the Bluebirds Sing

PREQUEL by @cassandra-rp / @coloredinsanity

Triggers: mentions of gore, blood, rape, and aftermath of all three

Murphy made a point to never set custom ringtones, beyond ensuring each phone on his person didn’t use the same tone. He could usually guess what business he was being called to deal with based on which phone rang.

Tonight, though, his ‘personal’ phone rang, a low-quality intro to a Bring Me the Horizon song piercing the half-light. The men on his side didn’t look around, focusing instead on the target tied to the chair before them. It took Murphy a moment to direct his second to take over the interrogation before he was able to step outside.

Gene didn’t give him a chance to speak before she stammered out the words. “I – I need help.” They were immediately followed by the beginning of sobbing, followed by specifics he figured must be a location – at the very least, he knew the hotel was near town hall, a few streets back from the basement he was in now.

“Give me a minute, okay? Gotta get someone to cover for me. Don’t hang up,” he advised, muting the call so she couldn’t hear him before he went back inside. Family emergency was the excuse he used, playing a card that would work on anyone Rita had hired. After all, the people she hired had morals that lined up with hers (‘innocents unharmed’), and even if they didn’t, there were such things as codes that meant questions were better left unasked.

Murphy switched to a Bluetooth headset, tugging on his helmet to jump on his bike. His car would have been better, of course, but he hadn’t had it with him. Tonight’s job had called for mobility and discretion, and anyway, his second had been responsible for obtaining the target.

“You with me, Gene?” he asked quietly, before he left. “I need you to focus on breathing, alright? Just breathe with me. Ready?” After the mumbled affirmation, he slowly drew in a breath, guiding her in some meditative breathing he’d been taught as a kid. The anger management therapy hadn’t don’t much to benefit him, but the breathing was great for calming in a crisis. “Alright, Gene? I’m on my bike and keeping my phone on; I probably won’t be able to hear you, but I’m here. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He waited until she responded, a soft whimper, before peeling out of the parking lot.

Usually, he basked in the enjoyment of a decent ride, especially one at high speeds. Late at night, with streets newly alleviated of the mushy snowfall, and only a soft rain falling, was practically ideal for riding. He didn’t have time to enjoy it, though, listening to light traffic and labored breathing as he rushed through the streets.

He shrugged of his jacket to cover the blood on his shirt as he entered the lobby of the hotel, sparing a smile for the sleepy person at the reception desk. Murphy made a point of walking with purpose, jabbing the buttons the second he stepped into the building. “I’m in the elevator,” he told Gene, “two minutes, if it’s as good as the price of this place implies.”

She didn’t say anything, but he didn’t particularly expect her to. He got off the elevator at the top floor and scanned the doors quickly, making a beeline for the one she’d mentioned to him.

He couldn’t say he expected to open the door to a room more at home in his workplace than in this upscale hotel, but nonetheless, it’s what he saw. He took in brain matter on the ceiling, blood on the bedding, and a rattled, sobbing Gene in the middle of it all. There was no way the man who had fallen half on the floor was alive, not in that state.

Murphy hung up the phone and hurried to Gene’s side, carefully prodding at her to check for injury before prying the weapon from her hands. He had seen victims of rape before, it was almost an inevitability of loyalty to Rita, and this was obviously that. Usually, the people who came to Rita’s syndicate were angry and violated and desperate to get even, to feel a little more powerful than their attackers made them feel. Rita granted that. Murphy helped grant that, which more than one such person had thanked him for. It was often a messy affair, and the way he saw it, step one was to put a bullet in the violators body.

Gene, apparently, clutching at a Glock that was much too big for her, had beaten him to that.

Murphy remained determinedly calm, of the mindset that anger would make it worse. He pulled Gene against him and rubbed at her bare arms gently, until she loosened up a little.

He pressed his jacket into her hands and pointed her at the suitcase. “Go shower and get changed. Take your things with you. Take your time. I’ll be here.”

He wondered if she’d argue if she wasn’t in shock, or if she’d take the opportunity to flee the second it was provided. Probably the latter, if she had sense. He focused on this train of thought as prepared to work, removing his shirt to drape over a clean surface near the door of the room. It was with minimal hesitation that he produced a phone to contact his boss. Rita was his immediate superior, and wouldn’t appreciate being awoken. She’d appreciate being kept in the dark even less, so he swallowed his desire to not piss her off, and called. He kept his volume low as he explained the situation, how a friend of his had shot her would-be rapist. How he needed clean up done at the hotel, computer systems scrubbed of records ASAP.

Rita agreed readily – she trusted him, which was probably not a great idea in their business. It was fine. He was fine. Mostly, he couldn’t shake the mental image of Gene, spattered with blood. The situation was shit, of course – but man, he couldn’t help the fact that she was incredibly attractive like that. She was incredibly attractive at any given moment, but still. This was definitely crossing a line.

So he worked to clean the ceiling first, chipping away at damp brain matter with his pocket knife and gritting his teeth against the sensation of it dropping onto his skin. It was disgusting work, and delicate, and he never had enjoyed cleaning. It was why he worked in murder, Rita’s full-time fix-it man, and not in hospitality. He was able to make out chips in the ceiling, stained pink from blood, and wrote them off for now. Bleach and a new coat of paint would cover it up, and that was all he wanted to dwell on for the moment.

Gene spent what felt like ages in the shower, but it was probably for the best. By the time she reappeared, Murphy had finished collecting everything he could move onto the bed, bundling it up in the ruined sheets and rolling it so that it is not actually recognizable as a human. When she peered at him, now more stable, he glanced at her. He wasn’t surprised to see she’d elected to pair his jacket with a modest jumper and some dark jeans, or that she had pulled on a pair of heels. What he was surprised by was the way she refused to shake. “Hey,” he said, voice soft, “I need a large suitcase, I think. Or a laundry cart.”

Her lips parted in surprise, but he was able to see understanding dawn. “There was a laundry cart at the end of the hall? This’s the only room taken right now. Only room on this floor.”

“Can you get it for me?” he asked. The request served two purposes: letting her be useful, and getting him something he needed.

She nodded and left the room, returning minutes later with the cart. Murphy examined it thoroughly before removing half the sheets contained within, dumped the corpse, and then covered it with the remainder of the bedding, consigned to be washed at some point. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He was able to hear Gene swallow, and if he expected her to remain mute about the ordeal, he was surprised. “My friend set me up on a blind date with him. He – he followed me back up here. I always use hotels for these things, you know? Just in case. I don’t want just anybody knowing where I live.” She managed to give him a tiny, exhausted smile that did nothing at all to convince him that she was anything close to okay. “He pulled a gun and tried to – to – yeah – and I got it off him. And... shot him. There was – there was a lot of blood.”

With a member of the gang, Murphy would joke about that being expected of a death blow to the head. It wasn’t even close to appropriate, and there was no way it’d be appreciated in the moment. “Your wrist hurts, doesn’t it?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. “How do you know that?”

He smiled tightly, taking it gently in his hand to feel along the bones. He watched her responses to different amounts of pressure as close as he could, making a mental note to take her to Gwen once cleanup arrived. “That’s a Glock,” he explained, “it has a lot of kick. Everyone defaults to shooting with one hand, thanks to TV. It’d have knocked you flat on your back.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “You need something smaller, if you’re going to do this again.”

Immediately, the color that had returned to her fled, and Murphy sighed internally.

“It’s better to be prepared,” he informed her, voice gentle. He ran his hand over her arm, gentle as he could, before guiding her to the hallway to sit against the wall. He disappeared back into the room to grab her suitcase, depositing it in the hallway on the other side of the door and handing her her phone.

He maintained a steady flow of commentary to fend off the silence, not expecting her to participate, as they wait for cleanup to arrive. Eventually, they do, and he greets one of the ‘maids’ Rita has sent with a string of coded phrases. Gene visibly stiffened as Murphy opened the door, but the woman only smiled at her as she takes her crew and her equipment inside. “Friends of mine,” Murphy explained, which barely explained anything at all as he helped Gene to her feet. “You ready to go home?”

Judging by the expression she cast in his direction then, she’d been ready for a while – which, in Murphy’s opinion, was fair enough.

God, he was going to get her a weapon better suited to her. It didn’t matter if she didn’t want to use it, they’d all sleep better if she had the option.

#kristie writes #kristie's writing #kwriting #kwrites #ft. gene #ft. murphy

0 notes

ankledrew-blog · 7 years

Photo

Just Do It.

"Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best." -- Tim Duncan"One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team." -- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar"Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath." -- Wilt Chamberlain"Be strong in body, clean in mind, lofty in ideals." -- James Naismith"When I was young, I never wanted to leave the court until I got things exactly correct. My dream was to become a pro." -- Larry Bird"My responsibility is getting all my players playing for the name on the front of the jersey, not the one on the back." --Author Unknown"Basketball doesn't build character it reveals it." -- Author Unknown"Basketball is like photography, if you don't focus, all you have is the negative." -- Dan Frisby"They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds." -- Wilt Chamberlain"There are really only two plays: Romeo and Juliet, and put the darn ball in the basket." -- Abe Lemons"Any American boy can be a basketball star if he grows up, up, up." -- Bill Vaughn"If you meet the Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball." -- Phil Jackson"We have a great bunch of outside shooters. Unfortunately, all our games are played indoors." -- Weldon Drew"Left hand, right hand, it doesn't matter. I'm amphibious." -- Charles Shackleford"Sometimes a player's greatest challenge is coming to grips with his role on the team." -- Scottie Pippen"Even when I'm old and gray, I won't be able to play it, but I'll still love the game." --Michael Jordan"Fans never fall asleep at our games, because they're afraid they might get hit by a pass." --George Raveling

In a recent interview that took place at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town, Dan Wieden, the

Wieden+Kennedy

advertising executive behind

Nike

‘s “Just Do It” slogan, opened up about the true meaning behind the three instantly recognizable words associated with the brand. In what he describes as a “surprising genesis” of the slogan, he recounts how in 1988, while working on Nike’s advertising campaign, he thought of Portland native Gary Gilmore who – after a series of crimes including murder – faced a firing squad. Wieden continued, “They asked him if he had any final thoughts and he said: ‘Let’s do it.’ I didn’t like ‘Let’s do it’ so I just changed it to ‘Just do it.’” He reasoned that Gilmore, Nike and his advertising company Wieden+Kennedy all came from the same city and so the statement was fitting. Still in use almost three decades later, the slogan together with Nike’s “Swoosh” logo helped to propel the brand into global recognition, surpassing then-rival

Reebok

. Simple and memorable always works best.

SOURCE

DEZEEN

I hope you found these Basketball Quotes to be inspirational and motivational. These are all great basketball quotes from some of the most successful and respected coaches and players in college and professional basketball.

By: Warren Jade Abapo

Charles Clint Saavedra

STEM-A

#makeitcount

1 note · View note

tenroseforeverandever · 7 years

Text

Home for the Holidays: Chapter 2

Chapter 1

A @dwsecretsanta gift for @chocolatequeennk.

Characters: Ten x Rose; Jackie Tyler; Pete Tyler; Mickey Smith; Jake Simmonds; Donna Noble; Empress of the Racnoss; Lance Bennett

Rated: General (rating may change)

Tags: Doomsday Fixit; Runaway Bride rewrite; Angst; Hurt/Comfort; Separation; Eventual Christmas fluff; adventure

Summary: A Doomsday Fixit that also follows the events of the Runaway Bride.

Despite having the victory of the Battle of Canary Wharf behind them, Rose remains resentful that the Doctor tried to send her away after she promised she’d never leave him.

Chapter Summary: Rose begins to make a life for herself on Earth, working for Pete at Torchwood, but on Christmas Eve, when she investigates some low grade alien activity at the securities company, H.C. Clements, she stumbles into much more than she was prepared for.

Notes: Once again, massive hugs and thank-yous to @hellostarlight20 and MrsBertucci for their brilliant beta services. That being said, all the mistakes are my own, and always will be (I keep finding weird redundant commas and the like! I mean, honestly! The number of times I’ve reread…)

Any recognizable dialogue comes from the Doctor Who episode, The Runaway Bride.

WARNING: No Doctor in this chapter. This is not the chapter reunions are made of… not in the least! We have a little while to go yet before the Doctor and Rose are reunited. And even then, our babies have a lot to work through.

Also read at: AO3; FF.net; Teaspoon

Home for the Holidays: Chapter 2

Christmas Eve, 2006 (Afternoon /Evening)

Rose had been recruited to Torchwood by Pete almost immediately upon her abrupt arrival back on Earth, and she had been quick to take him up on his offer, wanting to keep her mind thoroughly occupied so thoughts of the Doctor couldn’t torment her. Pete had had his work cut out for him in the aftermath of the Battle of Canary Wharf, and he’d had no reservations about turning to her for help. “I need someone I can trust by my side,” he’d told her. “You have a way with people, and you think fast on your feet. And all that knowledge from your travels with the… well… You’re clever, Rose.”

One of Pete’s primary concerns had been the restructuring of Torchwood personnel, and dealing with the extensive repairs to the Torchwood building. He had also spent a great deal of effort re-establishing relations with the team at Torchwood 3, in Cardiff, who steadfastly held their little corner of the company to the kind of ideals he envisioned for Torchwood 1, and he was apparently making headway in gaining the trust of the bloke in charge there.

Rose, however, worked primarily in the field, and welcomed the extensive workload. The large amount of alien activity, in the form of Daleks and Cybermen, had of course, attracted other aliens, and had encouraged those already living on Earth covertly to come out of hiding. Responding to the outpouring of alien sightings, both authentic and fabricated, by a nervous public, and training new field operatives had given Rose more than enough to keep her busy and helped distract her from her thoughts of the Doctor.

If she was being honest with herself, she missed him… acutely. Despite how outraged she had been at his attempt to pack her off to the parallel universe, now he was no longer at her side, she missed the infectious exuberance that had emanated from him, the loving glances across the table, the delightful kisses and warm hugs he had once bestowed upon her. In hindsight, she was able to admit that she had been wrong to push him away the way she had. She should have opened up to him more, encouraged him to explain why he had done what he’d done and tell her what he’d been feeling when he’d tried to send her away. And she should have told the daft alien how much his actions had hurt her. Instead, she had closed herself off and allowed her resentment to go unresolved. Now she was living with the consequences.

While she missed the Doctor and the exciting life she had led, racing through time and space with his hand in hers, Pete was right: her experiences had provided her with a great deal of valuable knowledge, and Torchwood needed all the help they could get. Working for Torchwood also provided her with a renewed sense of purpose back on Earth, and she would never again need to scrape by, working in a dead-end job. Which was just as well: after everything she had experienced, she couldn’t imagine ever having to return to that smaller-on-the- inside life she had once led.

Her new job had kept her hopping, but things had been surprisingly quiet in the week leading up to Christmas, and Rose had convinced Pete to take a few days off so he could celebrate properly with Jackie. And her parents were taking full advantage, attacking their short opportunity at a bit of domesticity with gusto. That morning, they had gone out early and brought home a Christmas tree. Now, full of Christmas cheer and listening to Christmas music, they were decorating it.

Rose was not celebrating. She felt like a bit of a scrooge as she sat brooding over the Doctor, her legs draped over the arms of an armchair, hugging a cushion tightly to her chest.

“’Ere are the rest of ‘em, Jacks,” Pete announced, setting a box of Christmas baubles down at Jackie’s feet.

“Aw, ta, love. Mmmmwwwwah!” Jackie blew a big, noisy kiss at Pete, who immediately drew her into his arms, to get a proper kiss.

Rose rolled her eyes with a loud sigh. “Would you two get a room?”

“Oi, missy!” Jackie snapped, but softened again almost immediately at the sight of her daughter. “Look, ’ow ‘bout you ‘elp me decorate, sweetheart? You used to love puttin’ up the tree w’en you was little. Couldn’t keep you out of it!” She laughed fondly. “Do you remember, Rose?”

“Yeah, I remember. You go ahead, Mum.”

“C’mon. You sure? It would cheer ya up. Get your mind off… things, yeah.”

“Mum…” Rose sat up, an undercurrent of irritation in her voice. “Look, you and Dad ‘ave fun decoratin’. I should go… I need to follow up on some leads at work, anyway. I should be ‘ome by supper. All right?” She stood and walked into the front hall, grabbing her coat.

Jackie shook her head. “Sweetheart, don’t you think you should try to–”

“Mum!”

“Oh, all right, off you go. Not that I could stop you even if I tried.”

Rose forced a smile to her lips. “See ya later,” she called over her shoulder as she pulled the front door shut behind her.

Standing on the front steps, Rose drew in a deep breath of the cold, damp December air, letting it fill her. It felt good to get out of the house. It had been five months since the Battle of Canary Wharf, and while she was thrilled her mum had got a chance at a happily-ever-after with Pete, she couldn’t help but wish her own story had also come with a fairy-tale ending.

But, Rose told herself, there was no point in wishing her life away. She had work to attend to. She had been planning to follow up on some low grade alien activity she had been sweeping under the proverbial rug for the last couple of months. Although it likely wasn’t anything hostile, it had been nagging at the back of her mind for some time now. And today would be a perfect day to look into it.

She made her way to Torchwood and settled into her little office. Tossing her phone and wallet on the desk, she turned on her computer. A number of alerts immediately flashed up on her screen: strange occurrences at a wedding in Chiswick; exploding Christmas baubles at the reception; the TARDIS sighted, bouncing off the roofs of cars along the motorway; and reports of a woman in a wedding dress jumping into the TARDIS from a car. Well, the appearance of a bride couldn’t be a coincidence, not considering the strange occurrences at the wedding earlier in the day. But, it seemed the Doctor was on the case, and Rose would just as soon let him attend to it and not get involved. Besides, seeing him again would just open up old wounds.

Wounds that hadn’t even begun to heal, if the pounding of her heart was anything to go by.

It occurred to her, it might not even be her Doctor: it could be an earlier regeneration or even a future one, one who had spent hundreds of years without her. Tears prickled behind her eyes at the thought of him moving on without her. With crushing clarity, she realized how devastating it must be for him to allow himself to become attached to his companions; how much he must suffer when they grew old or died, and he was left to travel on his own, with two very broken hearts.

She had, of course, come to these conclusions well over two years ago in her linear time (she would never admit to her mum just how much time had actually passed between her visits back to Earth), when they had met Sarah Jane Smith. But in the heat of her blossoming romance with the Doctor after the events of Krop Tor, she had shoved these thoughts to the back of her mind and had selfishly embraced the unstinting affection and love the Doctor had offered her.

She shook her head, fighting down the emotions roiling just below the surface. She returned her attention to the alien activity she had actually come to investigate: the activity that seemed to be emanating from around the company H.C. Clements.

With a little digging around, she discovered H.C. Clements had been owned by Torchwood since 1983. That really didn’t come as a surprise. Pete was finding Torchwood had extended its subversive reach to many different companies around the city and beyond. And Torchwood’s involvement at H.C. Clements would explain, in part, the presence of alien activity. It was probably just some piece of alien technology that had been integrated into their infrastructure. The real question was why? H.C. Clements was a securities firm. Why the hell was Torchwood involved with securities? They had to be concealing something if they had chosen “whatever-it-was” to not be housed at the Canary Wharf building… and that meant it wasn’t likely to be anything good.

She checked the time. It wasn’t too late yet. She could pop over there (it wasn’t far away), do a little investigating, and still be home in time for a late Christmas Eve supper. Her mum would keep something warm for her. Besides, investigating would keep her mind off the Doctor, specifically, keep her mind off the fact that her heart had broken anew when she had discovered he had been so close by today.

Rose spent the next little while doing a more thorough investigation of H.C. Clements. Being owned by Torchwood, their computers were easy to hack. Torchwood had always liked being able to keep tabs on their various projects and the companies that concealed them. Even with Rose’s limited experience, she was able to access their system with a short series of override passcodes. An hour later, after discovering little of interest, she arrived at the business’ front door. Using the sonic wrist-watch she had discovered three months earlier, buried and uncatalogued in the archives at Torchwood, she opened the locked doors of H.C. Clements, neutralized the security alert, and slipped in undetected. An initial survey of the ground floor didn’t reveal anything amiss. Not that she had expected anything to be obvious, but sometimes it was the little things in plain sight that triggered suspicion… Like that button on the elevator that led to a sub-basement she certainly didn’t remember seeing on the floor plan; the one that needed a key to be accessed; the one that her sonic watch could activate in an instant.

--oOo--

Rose stepped out into the dismal, green lighting of the damp sub-basement, looking around in consternation. There was nothing obvious to attract suspicion, and didn’t that just sum up Torchwood to a T? Determined to track down the source of the alien activity, she broke into a jog along the corridor, noting with alarm, the Torchwood logo emblazoned on every one of the heavy, metal doors that appeared at regular intervals. Torchwood had definitely been up to something, and based on the length of the sub-basement corridor, both in front of and behind her, it was something big.

After jogging for about five minutes, she was startled by the sound of raised voices and panicked shouts coming from somewhere up ahead. Breaking into a run, she reached the end of the corridor, and was met with a set of glass doors: the entrance to Lab 003, judging by the placard. The voices seemed to be coming from somewhere in there. Glancing in through the doors, she saw huge, convoluted systems of pipes and machines, and what looked like water bubbling through a series of enormous glass tubes. Oh, the Doctor would have had a field day with this lot, she mused, the fond thought briefly distracting her from her mission.

“Noooooo!” The yelp of fear from beyond the doors jerked her back to the task at hand. She pushed the doors ajar, allowing her to hear the voices much more clearly.

One voice had a strange hissing quality. “Drink the particles! Become the key!”

The panicked voice was male. “You can’t do this! We had a deal! Look, she can’t have gone far! I’ll find her! I’ll bring her back!”

Rose carefully pushed into the laboratory and ducked behind some of the bubbling pipes, gasping at the sight before her. Where the back wall of the lab should have been was a vast, gaping cavern of a room. And on a metallic platform toward the back of the room was a gigantic, red… spider, for lack of a better word. Looking more closely, the creature did indeed look very much like a spider, but where a spider’s head would have been, was a humanoid torso, topped with a crested head and a face with many large, black eyes. There were even webs cast across the ceiling of the chamber.

The spider hissed, its voice harsh and gravelly. “Oh, my little Lance, so disrespectful to your beautiful bride. You shall now be the one to awaken my children, though I don’t believe you truly appreciate or deserve the honour!”

Rose crept closer to the scene, crouching down and darting between large pieces of gurgling equipment. Beside the spider was a man dressed in formal attire, struggling to escape from the grip of two cloaked figures, his head forcibly tipped back, while one of the cloaked figures poured water down his throat from a huge jug.

As the water emptied, the man, weakened, pleaded with the spider, again. “No! Stop! Don’t do this!”

“Silly, little, human fool!” the spider admonished. It then turned its attention to one of the cloaked figures, its tone commanding: “Hurry! Hurry! Bring more Huon particles. We need more. The rate of catalysis has not yet reached the critical level; there is still not enough Huon energy to waken my children. I long to greet them. I have suffered alone for too many years.”

Rose hunkered down, concealing herself, as one of the cloaked figures entered the lab with the empty water jug. Its face was gold and metallic and it walked with a stiff gait. A robot of some kind? Rose pondered. It began to fill the jug from a spigot on the side of one of the pieces of equipment.

A flurry of thoughts raced through Rose’s mind as she tried to process what was happening before her. She fought her instinct to run into the spider’s lair and demand the release of its hostage. A closer look around showed her many more of the robots lined up on gangways, high up on the walls of the room, holding long rifles of some kind. A huge, circular pit, just beyond the point where the laboratory ended also drew her attention: there was no way she would get around that without being spotted. The space was wide open, with no hiding spots. No, she needed to make a proper plan and not go running in on instinct, all hot-headed and full of righteous indignation. That sort of behaviour had landed her in hot water too many times, and this time, she was alone: no Doctor; no Torchwood team; no one to know where she was.

As the robot moved to return to the spider with the water, Rose searched her pockets for her mobile to call Pete. It wasn’t there. With a groan of frustration, she pictured where she had left it on her desk at Torchwood. She really was on her own.

Helplessly, she watched as the man had more water poured down his throat. No, not water… erm, what had the spider called it? Hoo-on particles or something? When the jug had been emptied, the man began to emanate a yellow glow.

“My wonderful key,” the spider crooned. “Now… bind him!”

The man whimpered as he was shoved forward, into the clutches of the spider. It grasped him with long appendages that jutted out from its torso like arms, while it curled its swollen abdomen forward underneath itself. Silk spurted from the end of the abdomen as the spider spun the hapless man around, wrapping him in silk so he could no longer move his limbs. Once he was immobile, it positioned him face-down, and strung several ropes of silk, extending from his body to the webs on the ceiling above the circular pit, and began to winch him gradually upward.

Rose felt powerless, listening to the man gasping out pleas of mercy as he was raised higher and higher. Every inch he was lifted made it even more impossible for her to assist him. She was frantically running through possible rescue options when the spider spoke again.

“Oh! Oh, but now I have a surprise for you, something to look forward to, my funny little Lance,” it jeered. “I have devised a way to reunite you with your bride, and her foolish physician friend. Activate the recall sequence. At arms!” it hissed to the robots, who responded instantly, raising their guns. “I want no mistakes this time! The Doctor must be neutralized!”

Oh my God! Rose’s brain went into overdrive. The Doctor was here… with the bride. The bride! From the wedding, from the motorway! So this Lance was… the groom!

“You never needed me at all!” Lance whinged, casting his gaze around desperately as he continued to be winched upward.

“Oh, foolish little man! This has always been your destiny.” The spider spat with laughter. “My children will be just so hungry. And if something should go wrong and the bride is lost to me again, you need not worry. You will still make a tolerable key.”

Lance wriggled furiously in a vain attempt to free himself as he was finally raised all the way to the ceiling and secured to the webbing, directly over the pit. The spider only laughed harder. “Return them to me! The bride shall join her groom!” the spider crowed. “What a wedding there shall be!”

Rose’s eyes widened as the TARDIS began to silently materialize in a strange, smoky vortex, only a few yards away from where she hid, just within the laboratory space, in front of the circular pit. Then just as suddenly, it began to dematerialize with its familiar (beloved) wheezing, grinding noise.

“Noooooo!” the spider cried.

Hearing the TARDIS’ rematerializing sequence from the hallway, Rose bolted from the laboratory, the sound of the spider ordering her robots to action ringing in her ears as the doors swung shut behind her.

“She is close, the holy bride in white! Find her! Find her!”

Rose didn’t hesitate. Hope filling her heart that the Doctor was close, she sprinted in the direction of the sound of the TARDIS, silently vowing to Lance she would try her best to rescue him. Before she had run more than a few minutes, she was brought up short by the sound of heavy footfalls and struggling coming from directly ahead of her around the curve of the corridor. She rushed ahead to one of the heavy, metal doorways. The words “NO ENTRY” on a bright yellow field glared at her from above a hatch wheel. “Sounds like an open invitation,” Rose quipped to herself, directing her sonic watch at the latch mechanism. As soon as she heard the clunk of the latch releasing, she spun the wheel, tugged the door open, and stepped into the space behind it. She pulled the door closed just enough so it remained slightly ajar, still affording her a decent view of the passageway. The sounds of struggling continued, approaching rapidly.

Rose took a quick look around her cramped hiding spot. Using her sonic watch as a torch, she held her hand up into the dark heights of the narrow space where she stood. It was built of industrial brick. A ladder extended up a long way, leading to a portal in the ceiling. A few feet from the top, there seemed to be a maintenance corridor that extended to one side. Rose recognized it as being similar in height to the walkways surrounding the spider’s lair where the cloaked robots stood guard. Was this perhaps another way into the spider’s lair? Weak glimmers of a plan flittered through her mind and gave her a little burst of optimism.

Just then, the frantic noises from the hallway grew louder, and Rose peeked out to see the bride being hauled along by one of the cloaked robots, thrashing and kicking with every step, her indignant, muffled curses coming from beneath the robot’s hand that was clamped over her mouth. Rose smiled in admiration. This fiery red-head wouldn’t go down without a fight. With that knowledge, Rose’s plan became firmer in her mind, and she tugged the door fully closed, poised to leap from hiding into action, as she listened for the sounds of the bride and her captor passing by.

Suddenly, the door swung open in front of her, revealing the robot and the bride. The latter stared at her with wide, startled eyes.

“Hello!” Rose chirped, affecting nonchalance, though her heart was in her throat. Without a second thought, she raised her wristwatch to the robot’s chest, activating a sonic burst. The robot slumped to the floor, releasing its hostage, and Rose expelled a heavy breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Well, glad that worked,” she remarked with a shaky grin, waggling her watch at the stunned bride. “Little trick I learned from a friend of mine.”

“Oh, thank God!” The bride automatically straightened her dress and hair as she stepped back from the body of the robot. “Wait! Who the hell are you?”

“Hi.” She gave the bride a little wave. “I’m Rose. Rose Tyler.”

“Donna. And I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you!”

“The Doctor? Is ‘e with you?”

“Was until this one showed up.” She jabbed with her thumb in the direction of the robot’s crumpled form. “Bloody idiot was so busy running his gob so much he didn’t even notice.”

“Sounds ‘bout right.”

“Wait! You know the Doctor?”

“Used to travel with ‘im.”

“Pinstriped beanpole with the weird, blue spaceship?”

Rose’s breath caught in her throat. It was him, her Doctor! “Yeah… and some really, really great hair…”

“Well, yeah, I suppose…” Donna screwed up her face in distaste.

A shaky giggle tumbled past Rose’s lips. “Yeah, that’s definitely ‘im.”

“Well, he’s not here now. Typical man! Now, what are we supposed to do?”

Rose quickly gathered her thoughts. “I hope you’re ready for a bit more adventure,” she told Donna, laying a sympathetic hand on her arm. “We don’t ‘ave much time. Your fiancé? ‘Usband? Is about to be… well, I’m not sure exactly what’s goin’ to ‘appen to ‘im, but there’s a huge spider thing–”

“The Racnoss.”

“W’at?”

“The Racnoss. That’s what she’s called, the spider. Big, ugly, red thing with lots of legs?”

Rose nodded, bemused. “That sounds about right.”

“Yeah, that’s the Empress…”

“The Empress?”

“…of the Racnoss.”

“Well, the Empress’s got Lance up in her web. She filled ‘im with some sort of liquid: hoo… hoo…”

“Huon particles?” the bride supplied.

“Yeah, those. She’s completely bonkers, she is! Goin’ on ‘bout her children. And those particles, in Lance, they’re important somehow: she said she needed the Huon energy to awaken her children.”

Donna’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. “Oh, that must be it!” Her face lit up with pride as she supplied the information. “That’s what’s at the centre of the Earth. The Racnoss ship. Her children. More Racnoss!”

“Wait! The centre of the Earth? There’s a Racnoss ship at the centre of the Earth?”

“The Doctor took us back to the beginning of the Earth. Still can’t believe it! But I saw it happening.”

Rose fought down a pang of jealousy and a desperate longing to be traveling with him again. Now was not the time. “But how’s she goin’ to get Huon particles down there. That makes no sense.”

“I don’t know…” Donna’s face scrunched in concentration, but her eyes quickly widened in realization. “Oh! The hole! That huge flippin’ hole! Right in the middle of the floor? Did you see it?”

Rose nodded, trying to pull all the bits of information together in her head.

“The Doctor said it goes all the way to the centre of the Earth… where the Racnoss ship is!”

“And somehow,” Rose spoke slowly and deliberately, making sense of it all, “she has to get the Huon particles down there. Lance! She’s gonna…”

“But, but… I’m filled with them too. That’s why she needed me. She was going to…” Donna’s eyes suddenly filled with fearful tears.

“Well, she hasn’t got you. Not anymore,” Rose asserted.

Donna’s lip trembled. “That’s not all, though. The Doctor… he said they’re dangerous, the Huon particles… deadly,” she murmured. “Promised he’d save me, but now… I don’t even know where he is.”

“Hey.” Rose squeezed the bride’s hand. “Don’t worry. If ‘e said ‘e’d save you, ‘e will.”

“How do you…? Tell me something. Do you trust him?” Donna peered into Rose’s eyes intently, searching for something there.

“Yeah, I do. And ‘e won’t let you down. I promise.” Rose swallowed thickly, all of her adventures with the Doctor rushing through her mind: those many times she had feared for her life and he had done everything in his power to protect her. “’E’ll do w’atever it takes to keep you safe,” she spoke with conviction. “’E may not be right ‘ere, but I know ‘im. ‘E’s close by, workin’ ‘ard to save us all. That’s what ‘e does, an’ we ‘ave to do whatever we can to ‘elp. And rescue your ‘usband.”

“My fiancé,” Donna corrected, her expression turning hard. “My bloody ex-fiancé, at that! Let the Empress have him, I say!”

Rose recalled the Racnoss’ reprimand to Lance, about how he had been disrespectful to his bride, and offered Donna a sad, sympathetic smile.

Regret passed over Donna’s face. “I didn’t really mean that. Well I sorta did. After what he did to me! He’s the one was poisoning me. For six months! With these bloody Huon particles. Brought me coffee every morning, and me being so stupid… I mean, who brings the secretaries a coffee?”

Rose’s heart sank for the red-head. “I’m sorry about what ‘appened, I really am. But, Donna, listen to me. You are not stupid. An’ I’d love to ‘ear the whole story, yeah, but right now, we need to ‘urry. I’ve got a general sort of plan… but I’ll need your ‘elp.” She squeezed Donna’s hand again. “It’s going to be dangerous…”

Donna huffed, rolling her eyes, a trace of a sardonic smile on her lips. “Doesn’t that just sum up my life today! Got nothing to lose at this point. Go on, then. Let’s do it.”

“Right!” The heady exhilaration of adventure filled Rose and she gave Donna a manic grin. Bending down, she tugged the cloak off the robot, swinging it over her own shoulders. Removing the face plate, she slipped the strap around the back of her head and settled the mask over her face. Finally, she pulled the hood up over her head. “Won’t fool anyone for long, but it might just get us close. And, look, a gun! A machine gun, I think!”

Donna’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “A machine gun? Isn’t that a bit dangerous.”

“Yeah, I ‘ope so.” She took the rifle from the robot’s body, and slung it over her own shoulder. She struck a pose. “W’at d’ya think?”

“You’re loony, is what I think! Have you ever shot one of those before?”

“Well, no. I don’t really like guns,” Rose answered awkwardly, thinking of how the Doctor would disapprove of her carrying the weapon. “But I think it would be silly to leave it be’ind. Never know w’en it might come in handy.”

“You’re jus’ like that bloody Doctor! You’re jus’ makin’ this up as you go along, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I am.” Rose beamed at Donna. “So are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be, I suppose.”

“So, think you can climb in that dress?” Rose gestured up the ladder.

“I guess we’re going to find out.”

“Right then! Allons-y!”

#dwsecretsanta #ten x rose #ficandchips #doomsday fixit #the runaway bride #angst #adventure #christmas fluff #for chocolatequeennk #tenroseforeverandever's fic

7 notes · View notes

junker-town · 6 years

Text

10 reasons why Tiger Woods is ‘back’

The Hero World Challenge provided the scene for Tiger Woods’ latest return to golf. It was a success and here are the ways in which he showed he’s “back.”

You hear it every single time he plays golf but what, exactly, does “Tiger’s back” mean? At this point, it means whatever you want it to mean.

We have 20-plus years of baggage and experience with Tiger Woods, one of the most closely followed, celebrated, critiqued and examined athletes ever. But is Tiger back back, or just back playing golf. All of the above. Tiger’s back could mean he’s back to hitting golf shots. It could mean he’s back to making corny jokes. It could mean he’s back to looking like he could win again at the highest levels. It could mean he’s back to looking like a different golf creature that could dominate the entire sport. It could also mean he’s back to shanking, duffing, and depressingly slogging his way around the course in the sunset of his career. After 20 years, there are lot of things for him to get back to.

This comeback at the Hero World Challenge felt and looked different. This looked encouraging and there’s reason for optimism. Whether that means he’s back, who knows?!

“Tiger’s back” might have been a very specific ideal targeted to specific goals, oh, I don’t know, six years ago. But the Tiger experience now has been many, many things and there’s no fixed definition.

So here are 10 ways in which Tiger was back this week at the Hero World Challenge.(the sidebar provides a more detailed look into the state of his actual golf game).

1. Power

You’ve probably heard enough about this by now but in case you missed it: Tiger is crushing the ball. He’s hitting it out there with some of the biggest drivers in the game and the numbers seem to back it up. He was nuking it but the incessant hype about his “ball speed” was overkill and I was getting sick of it. On Sunday I was about to tweet that Trackman numbers don’t win golf tournaments. Then he did this and I promptly stopped thinking about doing that.

youtube

I’ve watched the replay of that moonshot over and over and it’s always breathtaking.

Tiger was hitting the ball well over 300 yards, with regularity. He hit draws. He hit fades. He occasionally hit the straightball. And he was consistent, avoiding the wildness that’s plagued him so much in recent years. This was the best we’re seen him drive the ball in years. If this swing and power is the new normal with his “fused back” — a big if — then the driver is a weapon that can carry him to a win. It was that good and exceeded all expectations even after we’d heard he’d been blasting it during friendly games in South Florida recently.

Seeing it was a different matter and he showed it this week, even to the surprise of his own caddie. The power and actual consistency hitting fairways was the kind of driving ability we’ve not seen from Tiger since his absolute peak days at the turn of the century.

2. Fist pumps

It took just four holes and about a half hour to get our first emphatic fist pump. It was intense, the kind he might author for a critical birdie at a major. It came so soon and we were off and running. He was back.

Its been a while since we have seen a Tiger fist pump, and it is as majestic as ever http://pic.twitter.com/M91THHUmha

— Sam Peterson (@HotSamAndCheeze) December 1, 2017

3. Chipping anxiety

When you move to edge of your seat and maybe feel the urge to cover your eyes, that could also mean Tiger’s back. There was a bit of that anxiety every time his ball ended in a tight lie around these greens at Albany. He stubbed two chips early on Thursday, hit a few shaky ones on Saturday, and was scruffy at several other moments. There were good moments too — he nearly holed a few chips and executed one perfectly from on the green, the tightest of lies.

This remains the biggest unanswered question from this week. His chipping was not sharp and that doesn’t mean he still has the yippy issue from two years ago. I don’t think it’s definitively still an issue, but maybe his chipping is just bad in less noticeable ways. So instead of an embarrassing chunk, he chips one to 15 feet that should have been inside 10 feet.

This turf at Albany was reportedly extra tight after hurricane season ripped through the area. It’s tight to begin with and there are all sorts of rough lies that challenge even the best in the world. Charley Hoffman, the 54-hole leader, used fairway woods from off the green to run the ball up to the hole. Hideki Matsuyama flubbed one too.

So Tiger had company. But that anxiety over every chip is back and it could be a lingering problem into next season. We need to see sustained steady short game play before we completely wipe that frightening chip yip stretch from our memories.

4. Intimidation via golf bag

Robert Lusetich, veteran golf writer, tweeted this on Sunday.

He had it all & wanted more. He never, ever took his foot off their throats. When Stevie shoved that bag down next to the tee marker, the logo always faced a right handed player: TIGER WOODS. He wanted you to know where you were and who you were playing. They were cold blooded https://t.co/E161hGfwFU

— Robert Lusetich (@RobertLusetich) December 3, 2017

Stevie is gone and the world ranking has plummeted but that doesn’t mean his bag is no longer intimidating or a signal to competitors that he means business. It was back this week.

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Speaks for itself.

5. Earmuffs

Many pro golfers curse. Many don’t have cameras and multiple microphones tracking their every shot and movement. So we’re bound to hear just about ever Tiger curse and he’s provided an expansive library of these FCC agita moments. We got a crisp, clear F-bomb just over an hour into his very first round. Fist pumps and F-bombs coming so soon warmed the heart.

6. Sandsie

A favorite Tiger quirk of Woods watchers is how he never actually calls most players and people around the game by their real name. This is usually the result of Tiger, in his nasally tone, appending a “y” or an “-ie” on the end of a first or last name. It’s the hockey routine of creating a nickname convention that actually lengthens the name with no discernible purpose. There’s the exception where Tiger shortens a name and adds an “s” somewhere in the middle -- e.g. Steve Stricker is always “Stricks.”

But this week I thought Tiger painted his Mona Lisa of using this nicknaming device. Steve Sands is a longtime Golf Channel announcer and reporter. It’s a pretty straightforward name — not a lot of room to add on without it becoming really tortured. Undeterred, Tiger went there on TV. Then, reading a transcript later from a larger media scrum, I stumbled on this and just about died.

No clearer sign that Tiger is back.

7. Questionable fashion choices

The white belt era has been dead. It was never a good idea to begin with, despite their ubiquitous presence. Tiger wore mutliple white belts this week. There were mutliple blade collars. There were multiple three-toned and weird gradient designs.

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Tiger is confined to Nike apparel, but there are options within that universe and he still has some freedom to choose and/or say no. It wasn’t a horrible week fashion-wise but there were some eye-openers that reminded you of all the years you’ve had together. And then there was that ...

8. Sunday Red

This needs no explanation. No golfer in history has had more instantly recognizable and predictable look. The Sunday red, the black pants and shoes. It was good to have it back, even if he kind of cheated and went with more of a Sunday fuchsia.

9. The Strut

Tiger changed golf in so many ways, including the redefinition of a strutting, swaggy flair that was needed for the modern game. He walks in putts. He twirls the club. He stalks approach shots he thinks might be good, chasing them down the fairway while they’re in the air. And when the cameras are rolling, he recoils with a ferocity that he knows will make the announcers and fans salivate.

http://pic.twitter.com/cVA9gcif0A

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) December 3, 2017

Tiger did all of this at the Hero World Challenge. It doesn’t matter that he’s not really been a competitive golfer for a few years and he’s ranked outside the top 1000 in the world. He’s still strutting as if he just won a grand slam.

10. Runaway emotions for everyone else

No one impacts the audience like Tiger Woods, even when it’s supposed to be an inconsequential early-December silly season event. Tiger was back and the larger sports world, from Steph Curry to Michael Phelps to Bo Jackson and everyone in between, started tweeting about it. No one has this impact.

A Tiger birdie run whipped everyone into a frenzy again on Friday. That first tee shot, the first fist pump, drew everyone into it at each stop and it was this communal moment. You may hate it or love it but no one creates this kind of juice and excitement. It can become a runaway train with delusional expectations and detached from reality.

But that mania, too, is part of the Tiger experience and it was there again all week in the Bahamas. You were happy to see him again and excited about what could be next. Tiger was back.

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Tiger’s back.

0 notes

randobrandoblog-blog · 7 years

Text

why we’re here

Every once in an extended while, my time carousel sees me back at one of three chief creative conceits, each of which I have about a jack/master aptitude for – I audition for a show I feel inclined to perform in, bag it on more occasions than not (due more, I’m sure, to savvy selectivity than ineffable brilliance), and get to act my heart out for two or so months. When this particular hunger strikes, I’m a little more discerning than a relative local and total national nonentity is probably entitled to be. I never audition for musicals, and I avoid the sort of stylized comedy whose illumination depends on that tense and tactile physical control for which we treasure so many different performers. This isn’t because I dislike either type; like any sane lover of art, I adore both if well-executed, and typically, if they’re being put on at all beyond high school, the cast and crew come fairly equipped for such stuff. As a sometime self-styled critic, I frequently marvel at strokes of these varieties. As a sometime self-styled actor, however, both are a bit beyond my reach and my preference. As it happens, I share these aversions with the screen performer I hope hardest to emulate whenever I try my hand at his trade. And as for the kinds of parts I do seek, he’s at the forefront of my mind too. My personal gold standard of acting, which I’ve found is seen as somewhat eccentric in regional context, is what I imagine to be most people’s gold standard in a broader context, and when they choose to think about acting at all: an evocation of reality, in all its mess and livewire unpredictability; a cocktail of arrhythmic emotional waves, bursting with responses apt enough to feel like the actor’s own. When it comes to theatre and film (which includes TV today), I regard no achievement greater than a performance in which actor and role become virtually indiscernible. Even if you have no inkling what the actor is like offstage, my ideal form of acting is the sort where you can’t imagine the human in front of you behaving any differently. Absolute, seamless naturalism, pass before you though jarring and unusual emotional extremes may. This impermeable commitment is necessary in your farces and your operas as well. But hyper human vérité is a flavor of performance I prefer the way I do coconut. I believe, too, that even as one mustn’t suggest a comparative denigration of those decidedly non-vérité forms, there is something of a golden mean quality to what I’m detailing. And when Marlon Brando first brought this sort of acting to the screen, history knows the liberation from all of that recycled cinematic convention was seismic. He wasn’t fluke enough to be the genuine first, of course – many people found theretofore-unseen magic ducking around expectations before our eyes, piercing those heavy (or corny) handed-down hands borne from decades of feeling into a fledgling and formerly voiceless medium. Even more than in small doses sometimes; Brando singled out Eleonora Duse and James Cagney, and if you’re a cinephile you’ve got your own few in mind. But Brando broke that barrier as forcefully and undeniably as Chuck Yeager, or Chuck Berry a few art forms over. Not only did he make such acting fashionable, he made it his calling, one which he honored almost slavishly (though he could be thrillingly novel circumventing it). To the historical chauvinism by which he wins this championship title, you can add American chauvinism too; well before obvious signposts like De Sica, overseas filmmakers and their actors proved to possess a firmer finger on these buttons. And of course, being the first famous realist actor on celluloid is speedily dwarfed by thoughts of centuries of stage performers – not to mention those teachers to whom Brando owed his inspiration, from the incomparable Stella Adler on up the line through Stanislavski. (As he himself would hasten to qualify, I refer to more than the often superficially tricksy “method” stuff.) But even today, when he’s been bested performance for performance by so many people, Brando’s strides, his conviction, avidity, fervor and jazz-like instincts, reverberate meaningfully enough to earn perennial gratitude. Even given the stale trappings of his early, mythmaking work, which weakens it a little now, one shudders to imagine the tradition evolving without his effort, ascendency, and influence. Of course, realism wasn’t the only thing on his résumé. As much as a desire to get it right, his inclination to the style was fueled by a desire to resist any encumberment he encountered – not even the result of oppressive genesis (though having two kinds of alcoholic parent, one loving but distant and one present but angry, can’t be a cakewalk) but an innate waggishness from which he drew his joy and energy. The suburbs in which Brando came of age weren’t unpleasant, but they were complacent and artificial, much like the tenor of the times. A youngster bursting with his immeasurable levels of curiosity and passion had only disruption in his fingertips, and having discovered he had no taste for destruction or foolishness, art was perhaps his only available salvation. Acting is the creative medium you throw yourself most literally into, and for an undisciplined, yet physically strong and clearly inspired, individual such as Brando it was a tailor fit, even as he consistently insisted he only did it out of base financial necessity and an absence of any other obvious natural talents. So we can easily conceive of how a lust for truth and an urge to resist merged to instigate his 1950s rise as a paragon of believable acting. But, though he lacked Meryl Streep or Daniel Day-Lewis’s finesse for detail when he went for pastures outside those he could summon within the skin he inhabited, Brando loved character work, and when we watch him attempt various accents or hide inside makeup choices, we come with him, witness the other half of his magnetism – he’s fun when he tosses any recognizable self aside, because it allows his madcap streak, his why-not puckishness, to flower untrammeled. Many critics bemoaned how recklessly Brando seemed to be skirting playing the clown, and he wasn’t afraid to be caught not trying. But fopping around in an obvious miss like the Mutiny of the Bounty remake was, however aesthetically wanting, a more valid punk gesture than anything he conveyed (or simulated) in The Wild One. Certainly, he flopped, sometimes hugely. But unlike at least one bazillionaire progeny, he couldn’t bore you if he tried. Despite his claims to eventual mellowness, which he might well have privately enjoyed in his later days, Brando’s notorious pugnacity, or its legend anyway, grew the way his body did. Thirteen years after his death, and considerably longer after his last great work (well – we’ll get to that argument), it’s not hard to recall, even as Johnny Depp faintly, ineptly retraces it, just how badly Brando encrusted himself in his own insistent eccentricity, for so long up to his passing. Forget Pauline Kael’s very early (1966) eulogy to his own control over his volcanic gifts and image. After the twin peaks of The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris (Apocalypse Now is a whole other matter), what was formerly a cute game he concocted to cope with unprecedented fame and admiration rapidly mutated into an onanistic circus of disagreeable quirk. Even in his self-identified “Fuck You Years”, Brando maintained a commitment to a handful of his ideals. After finally unburdening himself of charm, all that remained was that compulsive resistance to any authority. But grotesque as Brando might seem revisiting what he became (and I mean as a human being, even as those final vestiges of sex appeal disappeared under poor health), only the pugnacity and some of the pretensions – odd to imagine how a lack thereof was his first gilded calling card – truly scuff the image. True, he had strange ways of treating and referring to women and Jews. But these two groups would seem to be the only two subject to lapses in his otherwise magnanimous attunement to demographic disadvantages. And he loved and admired both, from his ingrained distance; the only on-record reference to physical abuse against women in his career (besides “shoving” stalkers and unwanted pursuers) is his defending his mother from his father after Marlon Brando Sr. had vented his odious rage. Brando’s Pop seems to have been the only living thing he hated*. From small animals to every race or culture ever to find itself America’s victim, Brando was a tireless and unafraid defender of the sort of underdog he understood he never genuinely was. When a former miracle among mankind tumbles backward into their own freakshow, it tends, especially in this era, to be all we focus on once the last breath leaves the lips – think of his genius pal Michael Jackson, who was a disfigured paranoiac for much longer than he was a smooth, soulful sweetheart, and their mutual friend Elizabeth Taylor, almost unrecognizably boozy and bedraggled for practically as long as she was ravishing and respected. In fact, all three of these troubled icons share something special – an inspiring doggedness in the face of torrents of unmerited mockery, years after the proof of their respective wonders had waned and given way to a thirst for freedom, from an exhausting, inescapable legendary status. Well-compensated as they were, none of these people were allowed normal lives, and all exhibited the brand of toll that only someone of such enormous cultural import can comprehend. In this reflexively polemical age, they deserve a more dignified collective recollection. This blog couldn’t fuel Brando’s third alone – an even less important, less public gesture than the times I’ve stepped on a stage and tried to nail it like he did, and I don’t mean in a James Dean way (those are different strands of I-should-be-so-lucky). When I think of Brando, or when I strive to conjure similar intentions and outcomes, I think of how synoptically this self-proclaimed career liar cared about truth – as much as Hemingway, with a far less coarse course of pursuit. This was a man who steadfastly refused to vitiate his characters with bad dialogue, brainless effects, or lapses in logic. One whose care for the audience, which wasn’t always obvious, entailed a belief that they’d be able to see through any bullshit in any performance, any trace of trying, any betrayal of consistency and slip from integrity. “The actor is the boss”, Adler once declaimed with Olivier bombast, and as a person who knew how corrupt such unbridled power could become, Brando tended to that role with a remarkable, reverential grace. Stuffed as this intro entry is with overtures to encapsulation, all of Brando’s accomplishments, contradictions and unclassifiable quirks can only be adequately explored by way of the plan at hand: to experience and analyze the canon – forty wildly diverse onscreen performances over the span of a half a century – and to invite you to raise the discussion to whatever heights I can’t. Per my catchy (eh?) title, we are refusing to take the straight path through this journey. I figure that’s as apposite a tribute to the old master as anything. *not counting paparazzi

#marlon brando #elizabeth taylor #michael jackson #acting

0 notes