#And Nines will thread their fingers together and kiss their wedding rings and be like 'I'll think of you every time he bends me over' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wild-aloof-rebel · 4 years

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Do you have any David and Patrick wedding reception/after party/wedding night headcanons?

absolutely! here are nine…

even though the rest of the catering is delicious, david still misses the pizza that should have been, insisting that his carefully crafted menu is incomplete without it. halfway through the night, a dozen of elm county’s finest pizzas mysteriously appear, and though it isn’t fresh-baked the way it would have been had everything gone to plan, it’s salty and cheesy and hot and precisely what everyone needs to keep the night going. no one takes credit for ordering it, but patrick suspects that roland and jocelyn’s sudden absence during the cake cutting may have been for more wholesome reasons than he and david had assumed.

ii.

the cake is a traditional white almond sponge, but there’s a cherry filling and a thin layer of matcha buttercream in the middle that perfectly balance out the sweetness with bright and earthy notes. david had made patrick promise that he wouldn’t smash cake in his face, and he holds true to that vow, feeding him a careful bite from his own fork and relishing the way his eyes close and the corners of his lips quirk up, the same as they had the day they’d first sampled it at the bakery in elm glen, tipsy on free champagne and each other. but as soon as all the eyes in the room turn away from them and back to their own plates, patrick dips his finger into the icing and dabs a single dot of it to the corner of david’s affronted mouth just to have the excuse to lick it off of him.

iii.

there are too many toasts for david’s taste, which is to say any at all, the spotlight of stories and well-wishes making him wriggle in his seat, patrick’s hand squeezing gently at his thigh every time his leg begins to bounce. johnny, despite david’s worries, gets through his brief words without a single tear, just a huge, proud smile that doesn’t seem to leave his face all night. clint, on the other hand, tears up as soon as he starts, leaving marcy to swap his champagne flute with a tissue from her handbag. stevie, traitor that she is, opts to give her speech responsibilities over to alexis, and david braces himself for whatever horror story from their past she’s about to unleash. but instead of the past, she talks about the here and now, about the ease of david’s laughter and the quickness of his smiles, about the way patrick looks at him when he isn’t watching, about getting back a brother she hadn’t realized she’d lost and gaining another she hadn’t known she’d wanted, about how the walls we build around ourselves aren’t what protect us but love and friendship and family and trust are, about all the ways that letting others in only makes us more ourselves in the end. her charm and endless warmth invite everyone in to the story, make them a part of it, and there isn’t a dry eye in the room by the time she finally raises a glass, not only to david and patrick but also to this little town that brought them together–all of them–and gave them happiness they hadn’t known was possible.

iv.

patrick tears up watching david dance with marcy, his husband taking advantage of his height to spin her under his arm, her buoyant, carefree laughter floating out over the sounds of “brown eyed girl.” impossibly, he sometimes thinks she might love david even more than he does, and while he’s so glad that everything has worked out the way it should, there’s still a part of him that knows he could have missed this, that he could have let her miss this, not just the joy of dancing with david, which on its own is a beautiful thing, but the certainty of knowing that patrick is living this happy, comfortable life of his own choosing. they’ve talked a lot since his birthday, and he knows that all she and his dad have ever wanted is for him to be happy. there’s guilt and sorrow that twist in his gut like knives when he thinks about how close he came to denying them that, to denying himself that, and he still isn’t sure some days how he managed to walk away from that life and straight into this one he hadn’t even known he’d wanted instead. he honestly suspects some kind of divine intervention; it’s the only way to explain the miracle that is his husband, holding out a hand to him from the far side of the room, inviting him in once again to this world of joy and laughter and light that he gets the privilege of sharing with him every single day.

moira wears 4 different outfits throughout the night, and david can only roll his eyes fondly at each costume change. in addition to the white alexander mcqueen dress she wears for the ceremony, she slips into a black stella mccartney gown before the start of the reception, the fabric split at the shoulders to reveal sleeves made of the same delicate crystal-adorned mesh that’s stretched across her shoulders. at the end of the night when it’s time to retire to the motel, she says her final goodbyes in a gareth pugh striped pantsuit that reminds david so much of her pajamas he briefly wonders if she might actually sleep in it. but his favorite by far is the ethereally structured iris van herpen she dons after dinner and toasts and cake, the dress flowing around her in elegant waves as his father spins her across the dance floor, art come to life, all the sharp, swift lines of her blurring into something–someone–softer and subtler and more at ease than he ever thought she could be in this place.

vi.

after a dance with stevie, patrick spies his husband tucked into the far corner of the room, his nose buried in his phone. david startles when patrick’s hands slip around his waist from behind, but the surprise of it passes quickly and he relaxes back in patrick’s grasp, comfortable and safe and at home in his arms. he drops his phone to his side though when patrick presses up on his toes to hook his chin over his shoulder, but not before he can catch a glimpse of a picture of the canopy of tulle and flowers that hangs over the center of the room. you can admit it you know, patrick tells him. admit what? david asks, though he clearly knows he’s been caught out. patrick presses a quick, soft kiss to the curve of his neck, tightening his arms around his husband as he breathes him in. they did a good job. this place is beautiful. david scoffs, but there’s no truth in it at all and patrick buries a chuckle in his shoulder. you’re beautiful, david replies instead, raising his phone again but flipping to the front-facing camera this time. he catches patrick’s left hand in his own, squeezing them to his chest so that both their rings are visible on the screen. he snaps several, both of them grinning dopily at the camera or at each other, as if they can’t stop themselves from looking deliriously happy if they try. after a careful debate over which one is best–patrick argues for the picture where the crinkled laugh lines around david’s eyes are deepest, though david vetoes that one in favor of another where patrick’s smile is wide and bright as david presses a kiss to his cheek–david posts the picture to the store’s instagram account since he no longer uses his own, captioning it we’re officially a family-owned business now. family. david is his family. the thought bursts into happy sparks, a cascade of fireworks hot and bright inside of patrick, and he can’t help but kiss david then, turning him in his arms to press all this glittering joy against his lips.

vii.

much later, patrick opens instagram on his own phone to clear away the overwhelming number of notification that have popped up on the post. hundreds of likes and dozens of congratulatory comments have rolled in, but the very first of each is from rachel.

viii.

thought i might find you out here, patrick says as he finds his husband standing in the inky darkness out behind the building. he looks overwhelmed–by the noise and the people and the emotions of the day–but in that way like he still can’t quite believe this is all real. let’s go for a drive, patrick offers. david’s brow wrinkles but he climbs into the passenger seat without a word, and patrick knows that however many mountains he’d climb for this man, he’d never have to do it alone. he can feel the moment that david realizes where they’re going, his fingers digging excitedly into the meat of patrick’s thigh. it’s well after midnight, so he doesn’t pull into the driveway, stopping instead on the shoulder across the road. he drags a blanket from the trunk and throws it across the hood of his car, offering david a hand to help him clamber up on top of it. they sit together there under the stars, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at their future, sketching the shape of it in whispers and hushed giggles and kisses soft and warm. only when they’re both shivering in the damp night air do they finally climb down and crawl back into the car, taking one long last look at the place they’ll soon call home. i wish it was already ours, david confesses into the safety of the dark, and patrick threads their fingers together, squeezing until he can feel both of their rings digging into his skin. me too, he says, but you’re still the only home i need.

ix.

they slip in quietly through the back door, though stevie grins wolfishly at them from across the room to let them know their absence hadn’t gone unnoticed. but there’s more dancing then. and drinks. photos. conversations. all these beautiful memories in the making. and later still, when things finally wind down and their parents and most of their other guests have said good night, david’s stomach rumbles loudly enough to be heard over the hushed strains of whitney houston still playing in the background. patrick, half-drunk, buries his fond, ridiculous laughter in his husband’s neck, and twyla suggests they head to the cafe. together with alexis and stevie, they wander right down the middle of the street, arms linked between them, david shaking his head as the other four make a sloppy, over-loud attempt at belting out “willkommen.” at the cafe, they all pile in to a booth together, talking loudly enough that twyla can still join in, calling back to them through the pass-through as she cooks up a mountain of scrambled eggs with cheese and warm, buttery toast, which she brings out all on one big plate. as they dive in, david thinks back to all the best meals he had when he lived in new york–expensive dinners at michelin-starred restaurants, quick lunches at greasy spoons, long boozy brunches and cheap late-night dives–and none of them could possibly compare to 3 AM scrambled eggs at the only restaurant in town, with his husband pressed so close he’s practically in david’s lap, surrounded by these people he loves more than he ever thought he could, all of them cackling wildly as they try to steal bites off each other’s forks. it’s the kind of moment–the kind of life–he would have never even thought to dream of, but it’s his and it’s real and he’s going to do everything he can to hold on to it for as long as he’s able.

#imargaery #replies #long post #rebel writes #this turned out way longer than i mean it to but oh well

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let-it-raines · 4 years

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I’m married, I used to be a wedding planner, I’ve been to far too many weddings. All this said, I still struggle real hard to write a wedding. So, nonnie, I hope you like this! It was nice to get it out of my head and have it put in actual cohesive words, even if it took longer than I intended❤️

found on ao3 | here |

*I’m having to repost because something super funky was happening with the “keep reading” as can be seen in the screenshot of the ask. Sorry about that!*

-/-

June 19th, 2021

Ruth wants them to stay apart tonight.

It’s some kind of tradition or superstition, and as an athlete, Killian gets it. He does. He is all about doing the same stupid thing over and over again because it was happening on a day where something good happened. When he made it to his first post-season, he didn’t shave until the last ball was played. In 2018 when they made it to the World Series, he wore the same pair of socks every day. He washed them, but it was still the same pair of socks.

(He’s too particular about cleanliness not to wash things.)

But those were things he needed in order to convince himself that they were going to win, that he was going to be able to do it, and that everything was going to be alright.

He doesn’t need to spend the night away from his wife the night before their wedding.

The thing is that they can’t exactly tell anyone that they eloped over a month ago. It would break their family’s hearts, and he and Emma are committed to keeping that secret between the two of them.

That was their day, just them, and it’s not something to be shared.

He’s been wearing his wedding ring on a chain around his neck for the past month, and God, he can’t wait to get to put it on his finger tomorrow even if he’ll have to put it right back on the chain for games.

They likely shouldn’t have picked a wedding date right in the middle of baseball season, but this is the date that worked for everyone.

No game happening.

No work for Liam and Elsa.

Ruth could come to town.

And no one was so pregnant that they couldn’t attend.

(Anna told him that if they got married while she was eight months pregnant with twins she would murder him, so they obviously changed the original date.)

“Mom, I’m not doing that.”

“It’s tradition.”

“I stayed apart from David when we got married,” Mary Margaret adds in as they walk down the hallway after paying the restaurant for the rehearsal dinner.

“I’m staying in my own damn apartment,” Emma huffs. “I like my bed and my stuff, and I don’t want to have to sleep on the rock-hard bed in your spare bedroom.”

“Okay, well, you stay home, and Killian can stay at Liam’s.”

Emma stops walking and crosses her arms over her chest before briefly glancing at him. She is not happy, and if she didn’t love her family, he imagines there would be some kind of strangulation happening right about now.

Well, if there also wasn’t the threat of jail as well. That might also keep her from doing it.

“I appreciate you both looking out for tradition and any possible horrible things that may happen to us if we don’t stay apart,” Killian sighs, “but this wasn’t something we were planning on doing and neither of us are interested in it. If down the road we don’t work out, feel free to say ‘I told you so.’”

“Are you serious?”

“As anything.”

Killian glances over at Emma, at the small smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. If he looks at her, he can ignore the disapproving stares of Mary Margaret and Ruth. It was Ruth who was insistent, but now, he might be a little more scared of Mary Margaret.

“Emma,” Ruth sighs, “won’t you please do this? It’s tradition, and it would mean so much to me to get to spend this night with you.”

Emma sighs and tilts her head up to look at the ceiling. She’s got on a short white dress tonight, and it flows off her body from the waist down, but it’s tight around her chest where the material barely covers her breasts. He’s been distracted by it all bloody night and the way that his mother’s ring hits in the concave between her boobs, but now as her neck is elongated, all he can focus on is the smoothness of her skin and the way her summer tan accentuates all of her features.

Beautiful.

“I’m sorry, but no,” Emma finally says. “I will see you both at nine tomorrow morning, and you will be with me until I walk down the aisle at six. That’s so much time, and I would much rather spend the night with Killian. I don’t think we’re going to be cursed.”

“Let the woman go,” David yells from the elevator door. “I’m ready to go to sleep.”

“David speaks the truth,” Killian laughs, reaching over to thread his fingers through Emma’s. “It’s been a long, wonderful day, and I cannot thank you both enough for it. Let’s all go home, though, get our beauty sleep. We’re all going to need it. There’s only so much editing the photographer can do.”

Mary Margaret and Ruth finally relent, and David manages to drag them out of the restaurant where they have been camping out for the last several hours, toasts given and delicious food eaten as half of the people they knew came up to he and Emma to congratulate them and talk about their excitement for tomorrow. The wedding has ended up being much bigger than either of them intended, mostly because of the sheer number of people they know and getting carried away with the help of Mary Margaret, Ruby, Elsa, and Anna. It’s honestly been insane and a whirlwind with the season taking up most of his time, and after they got married last month, neither of them have cared much about what this wedding will be like.

It’s a celebration with their friends and family, and if everyone else is happy, he will be too.

Though, he is excited to see Emma’s dress. He’s not seen it yet, but he knows he’ll find her beautiful in anything.

Killian tugs on Emma’s hand, and they start walking to the elevator, heading down to the lobby to get his car from the valet. There are photographers waiting outside, and he hears Emma groan. He squeezes her hand, wishing there was some other way to comfort her from the nuisance that are gossip reporters, but there’s nothing they can do now besides get his keys, get in the car, and go home.

“Was Ruth driving you crazy too?” Emma asks as they start slipping out of their clothes in their closet. “I know she means well, but oh my gosh, I never realized how much of a traditionalist she could be until the past few weeks.”

“I mean, it’s not unheard of for couples who already live together to stay apart the night of the wedding.”

“No, it’s not, but I still didn’t want to do it. I mean, have you slept on the bed in the guest room at David’s? It’s awful.”

“You could take the couch.”

“I promise they wouldn’t let me.”

Killian chuckles and hangs his shirt up before taking off his belt and his pants as Emma unclasps her bra. “Tomorrow you’ll wear the pretty white dress and carry a far too heavy bouquet, and everyone will be so amazed by your beauty that they won’t care that you kept bucking their traditions.”

“Getting a little cheesy there, Jones.”

“It happens sometimes.”

Emma shakes her head and bends over to grab one of his t-shirts. She doesn’t bother to hang up her dress or put away her bra or her shoes, and one day he will stop hoping that she’ll clean up her clothes.

Maybe.

Possibly.

Probably not.

He ends up picking up her clothes and putting them away after he’s changed into a pair of shorts, and he finds Emma in the bathroom taking off her makeup and washing her face. It takes her a little longer than usual to do it, and by the time she’s finished, he’s scrolling through Netflix trying to find something for them to watch as they fall asleep.

“You went ahead and got yourself comfortable, huh?” Emma laughs as she gets into her side of the bed and pulls the covers up to her chest.

“You took forever to take your makeup off.”

“Had to make sure there wasn’t any left. I’d definitely get, like, the biggest zit in the world, and believe it or not, I want the pictures to look nice tomorrow.”

“They could always airbrush it out. As long as it’s not too big. I was kidding about the photoshop thing earlier.”

“Shut up,” Emma laughs, reaching over to gently shove him. “Did we bring any leftovers home?”

“No, but I know Scarlet took a box home. You could always call him.”

“Would it be crazy if I did that?”

“Yeah, love, yeah it would.”

“It was really good food.”

Killian puts the remote down and leans over to wrap his arm around Emma’s waist and pull her closer to him. She’s warm, even if her feet are cold, and he breathes in the lingering scent of her perfume as she settles against him.

“We have some food in the fridge. Or I can make you something.”

“None of that will be the same as Will bringing me the leftovers.”

Killian laughs into her neck and then kisses the skin there. “I know for a fact that you’re going to brunch in the morning, so I think you’ll be able to make it.”

“Don’t be jealous that my friends plan on me having better food than Liam plans on you having.”

“Well, maybe I’ll have to attend the brunch as well.”

Emma twists around in his arms, elbowing him and kicking him before she settles so that the tips of her nose brushes against his. “I’m so glad we got married at the courthouse. I mean, I’m excited to wear my dress and to have the big party, but I really liked that day.”

“Aye, me too.”

She presses forward to glide her lips over his, soft and slow, and neither of them are in a hurry to get anywhere. He loves when they get to be like this, when they have time to tease and explore and not be in a rush to get to a certain destination.

There’s always somewhere to be, something to do, a game to play, someone to talk to. There’s always a rush.

Right now, however, the only rush is the beating of his heart and the way that the woman in his arms makes him feel.

Frustrated and exasperated and so damn in love that he’ll pick up her shoes when she leaves them around, which is always.

When they come together, it’s in that same gentle, slow motion that they were following earlier. Emma’s hair is cascading down her back in long, soft waves, and when she bends down to mold her lips to his again, he shifts his hips up to keep their rhythm as his hands settle on her back sides and hold her down to him. Who knows how many times they’ve done this and how many times they’ll do it in the future? It’s the past and present all at once, but he doesn’t care to be in any moment other than this one.

Damn is he glad that she’s not staying at the Nolans’ tonight. He can’t imagine her being anywhere else other than here with him.

When he wakes in the morning, it’s to the softness of Emma’s lips pressing against his chest, her mouth tracing his skin. Slowly, Killian blinks his eyes open, a smile curving on his lips, and while he expects Emma to be still be naked next to him in bed, she’s not. Instead she’s clothed in a button-down and a pair of shorts, her hair freshly washed and her face bare of makeup so he can see her freckles.

They come out more in the summer, and he’s rather fond of them.

“What are you doing out of bed?” He mumbles, reaching over for her and pulling her back to him. She easily falls into him, resting half on top of his leg while his hands reach out for her. “It’s not time for you to go yet.”

“We were up pretty late there, twenty-nine, and you slept in. So, yeah, it’s time to go. Elsa said she’s almost here to come get me.”

Killian juts his lower lip out. He knows Emma will find it ridiculous, which is exactly why he does it. “We’re technically already married. Want to play hooky?”

“No,” she laughs, getting up to lean back down over him so she can kiss him. “I’ll see you at the end of that aisle.”

“Well, technically you’ll see me for the pictures beforehand.”

“Semantics.” She kisses him again, lingering this time. “I love you. I will see you later. You’re going to be the most handsome man there tonight.”

“I better damn well be. I love you, Emma.”

And then she’s getting up and walking away, picking up a large tote bag, a backpack, and her dress before she’s walking out the bedroom door.

What a lucky son of a bitch he is.

Killian doesn’t have anywhere to be until noon. None of his friends or his brother are calling and texting and badgering him to do things, so he gets up and gets dressed to go for a run. It’ll be hot later, June in New York not exactly pleasant weather, but this morning, it’s nearly perfect, even if he has to avoid a few photographers as he makes his way to the park. They’ve been worse than usual lately, the wedding putting them into overdrive looking for gossip and exclusives, and Killian’s doing his best to ignore them. He always has, especially when people are trying to attack Emma.

He is not going to let them ruin is mood today, not when he’s got miles ahead of him and a damn big party to attend tonight.

He runs for almost an hour. Technically today should be a pitching practice day for him, but Al took him out of the rotation so he’s only missing one game while in Spain instead of the two he was slotted to. He’ll have to do some kind of practice, but how many times does a man get to have a honeymoon?

Well, considering all goes well and all that.

He stops for coffee before he goes home, drinking it on the walk back, and he slips in the back entrance of his apartment complex before taking the elevator up and hoping into the shower the moment he gets inside. It’s like it’s any other day.

Except it’s not.

“Where are you?”

Killian jumps at the sound of Liam’s voice, and he quickly turns off the water and grabs a towel to tie around his waist. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Making sure you’re not still asleep.”

“It’s almost noon. Have I ever slept in that late?”

“All the time.”

“Since I was a teenager then?”

“Eh, maybe. Not that I know about, though, unless you had a late travel day. You going to put some clothes on?”

“You come into my place, unannounced, and you’re going to complain that I don’t have clothes on?”

“I’m your brother. That’s what I do. Now, come on, Elsa told me I should take you out for lunch. I apparently didn’t think about that.”

“You’re a spectacular best man.”

He shrugs. “I do what I can, which has mostly been keeping Addy and Lucy out of their dresses so they don’t stain them before tonight. Who puts kids in white?”

“Your wife picked out those dresses.”

“Of course she did,” Liam chuckles. “But seriously, finish getting ready. Robin is getting us some food, and we’re going to eat at the venue.”

“What? I don’t deserve to dine in?”

“Do you want to?”

“No, I’d much rather sit on the couch and eat.”

“Exactly. Let’s go.”

When they get to the pier, Robin, Will, Eric, August, Kris, Graham, and David are already there, food and drinks spread out across the table in front of them. They’re in the middle of some debate about Thursday’s game, Will arguing with Robin about him misreading one of Will’s signs, and they don’t notice when Killian sits down and grabs a bowl of pasta from the center of the table.

“Pleasant, don’t you think?” Killian asks David.

“Exactly how I would want all of my friends to be acting on a day when we’re all supposed to get along.”

“It’s worse if they’re also your coworkers.”

David chuckles and takes a sip of his water. “Did Ruth break into your house in the middle of the night to try to separate the two of you?”

“God, no,” Killian laughs. “And if she did, I’m sure she would have been in for quite the sight.”

“Please remember that you’re talking to Emma’s brother when you speak to me.”

Killian shrugs and smiles. “What? You don’t want to be having this conversation?”

“I want to be having anything but this conversation.”

“Okay, we can talk about last year’s Christmas when you – ”

“Jones, shut the fuck up.”

Killian chuckles and pokes his pasta with his fork. “No, Ruth didn’t come and get Emma in the middle of the night. I was almost convinced she and Mary Margaret would, so I’m thankful that she didn’t. Emma left so damn early this morning, though, that she might as well have stayed somewhere else.”

“A lot goes into them getting ready for today. Though, honestly, I’m pretty sure Ruby has all of them getting drunk on mimosas.”

“Oh, I would bet on that.”

“What are we betting on?” Will interrupts. “Are we betting that Emma doesn’t walk down the aisle tonight? Is she going to be a runaway bride?”

“Don’t be an asshole, Scarlet,” Robin mutters. “You can’t say shit like that.”

“What? We all know I’m joking. Emma is far too good for the man, but she loves him. She’s definitely going to show up…probably.”

Killian flips up his finger at Will and keeps eating his pasta. “I feel like I was much more supportive on your wedding day.”

“Oh, you were, but I like to switch things up. I keep it interesting.”

They keep eating and jokingly arguing and not agreeing on a single thing, but then they turn on the game tapes that most of them are supposed to be watching for Monday’s game. It’s like it’s any other day, all of them messing around and groaning about mistakes, except after a few hours, they start changing out of their lounge clothes and into black tuxes with crisp white shirts that they’re under strict instructions not to spill anything on. Emma is just across the hall from him now, and Ariel keeps walking over to make sure that nothing has been ruined.

Between Ariel, Mary Margaret, and Ruth, none of them have any room for error.

Maybe those three should be their coach instead of Al.

The photographer comes and gets Killian and all of his groomsmen around four, they take all of the pictures on the list that he and Emma made up, and then Killian is told to walk out onto the large deck that’s just outside the ballroom. The Hudson is right below them, an expanse of sparkling blue water that makes a spectacular backdrop, and he tries to focus on it even though he knows that he’s standing out here so he and Emma can take their pictures.

She’s been texting him on and off all day, little updates about how things are going, and it’s been odd knowing she’s just around the corner but not with him. And he would be a liar if he said he wasn’t curious what her dress looked like. He never thought he would be a man who cared about something like that, who thought that a dress could make any difference in how he looks at the woman he loves, but he knows that Emma loves this dress. If she does, that’s enough for him to look at her that little bit differently.

Like she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, because to him, she is.

What a day for some sentimental thoughts.

“Hey, handsome,” she sighs, and he immediately turns around at the sound of her voice. “I know you love the water, but I don’t think jumping in is really an option right now.”

“I mean, I could, but this was a bloody expensive tux.”

“Be a shame to ruin it and all that.”

Killian’s finally able to look away from her face and the bright smile there to look down at her dress. It’s not a bright white, exactly. It’s off a little bit, and it hugs her until it gets to her waist where it loosens and begins to flow until it hits the floor. Pearls cover it, a few at the top and then more and more as his eyes scan to the bottom of her dress. It’s different than what he expected, but it’s Emma.

This is Emma.

And she’s gorgeous and radiant, and while he’d marry her again in a courthouse with no pomp and circumstance, he’s glad they get to do this too.

“You look – ”

“I know,” she finishes for him. “We clean up pretty well, Jones.”

“Don’t I know it?” He leans in and brushes his lips over her cheek, lightly so he doesn’t mess up her makeup. “All of our friends are staring at us from inside.”

“Is it creepy?”

“It’s terrifying.”

“Addy and Lucy are very excited. Have you seen them yet?”

“I haven’t had the honor, but I have talked to them on the phone several times. They want to know if they get to tear up your flowers.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I obviously told them yes, so you best watch out for that.”

“I’ll be on the look-out. You want to take some pictures until our faces hurt?”

“Obviously. It’s what I’ve dreamed of since I was a young lad wondering just what this day would be like.”

She gently pushes at his chest. “You had anything to drink there, twenty-nine?”

“I had one small glass of rum, which is nothing compared to the mimosa fest you went on.”

“Hey, now, that was mostly Ruby and Elsa. I, too, only had one glass. Wanted to make sure I’d be able to recognize you. You’re wearing almost the exact same thing as Liam. Wouldn’t want to marry the wrong Jones.”

“Don’t even suggest that.”

“Are you two going to make out now or what?” Ruby yells from the entryway. “Because I need to know which parts of Emma’s makeup I have to fix!”

“She’ll never change, will she?” Emma laughs, her smile as radiant as he’s ever seen it.

“Never.”

They seem to take pictures for hours, pose after pose with just the two of them before they add in the bridal parties and family and have ticked off everything on the list. Emma wasn’t kidding when she said their faces would hurt from smiling so much, and he knows that she has heels on so he imagines her feet are killing her. But soon enough, he’s having to leave Emma back up in the bridal suite while he lines up at the front of the ballroom, ready for Emma to walk down the aisle with all of these people looking at the two of them.

What a weird tradition.

But hey, he gets to marry Emma twice, and he can’t really complain about that.

-/- -/-

“How drunk is Kris right now?”

“Well, he’s starting talking about how much he loves ice, so I think he’s at least five drinks in.”

“Is it six-drink Kris that gets a little frisky?”

“Babe, he’s a married man and a father of two now. His tolerance dipped, and it’s now drink two where he gets frisky.”

“That would explain why he tried to touch my ass earlier.”

Emma laughs and moves her hand to gently shove Killian. His eyes crinkle with his smile, his summer tan making everything seem brighter, and she idly wonders if his face still hurts from smiling for pictures from earlier. Or, well, still smiling now. It’s got to be getting close to ten, and it doesn’t seem like anyone has left the reception. She can’t even remember a time where her face didn’t hurt or where her feet weren’t killing her despite the fact that she chunked her heels at least an hour ago.

It’s been a good day.

Like, really good.

She’s never really had an idea of what her wedding day would be like. It’s not something she imagined in much detail. Maybe it would be a small crowd, just her closest friends and family. This isn’t some extravagant thing, but it’s definitely much bigger than any sane person would call a small crowd. That’s all thanks to Ariel and her constantly coming up with people they forgot or Ruth asking if they could invite some of her friends since they all wanted to see her daughter getting married.

Emma’s heart still flutters every time she thinks about Ruth calling Emma her daughter.

But the extra people and flowers and lights really just make it one better, bigger party, and despite the fact that for awhile she kept getting pulled away to talk to everyone, she really hasn’t had to have that much interaction with the people who aren’t in her close circle.

That’s been nice.

Being able to dance with Killian and eat in a hidden room and not constantly be pulled apart at the seams has been that way too. Half the reason they got married at the courthouse was for fear that they wouldn’t be able to enjoy their wedding day, but that’s not at all what’s happened.

She’s happy. That still, somehow, surprises her sometimes, and she doesn’t want to take it for granted.

“You’re ridiculous, Jones,” Emma laughs, her hand sliding back to rest around Killian’s neck. They’ve had two slow songs in a row, and she’s enjoying the change of pace. “How much longer until I can get you out of this tux?”

His brows raise, and his smile turns salacious. “Look who’s getting frisky now.”

“I mean, I am expecting to get lucky tonight.”

“As you should be. Though, I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to get you out of your dress. Are you sewn into it?”

“There’s a small zipper on the side. Don’t break it.”

“Why? You planning on wearing this thing again?”

“I am obviously going to lounge around the apartment in it. No more sweatpants for me. Only gowns.”

“Seems practical.”

“I am always practical.”

Killian dips down and tugs her close as his mouth closes over hers. She can taste rum and cake on his tongue, and she appreciates the mixture of sweet and spice. His kiss doesn’t linger for long, but the feeling of it settles somewhere deep in her belly.

“I love you, my wife.”

“You just love calling me your wife.”

“I do. It’s got a nice ring to it. Makes me feel far more responsible than I am.”

Emma chuckles and shakes her head. He’s an idiot.

“I love you, too. Do you want to – ”

“Hey,” David interrupts, “can I borrow Emma for a minute?”

“What, mate?” Killian laughs, already letting go of her. “Do you not want to dance with me?”

David winks. “We’ll have our time later.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Oh my God, stop.”

“Never, love.” Killian winks and starts stepping away. “Do you want another glass of wine?”

“I do. Oh, and one of those popcorn bags. The – ”

“The cake flavored kind, I know.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a popcorn bar at a wedding before,” David says as he takes Emma’s hands in his and pulls her close. The song is changing to something faster, more upbeat, and while everyone else is changing how they dance, they don’t. “That’s kind of ingenious. I’ve always thought most wedding food was stuffy.”

“Says the man who had the most classic wedding menu in existence.”

David shrugs. “I can’t help it that I didn’t know I could sneak in some classic stadium food but put a gourmet twist on it so we didn’t seem cheap.”

“Eh, screw wedding traditions. Most of them are outdated anyway.”

David smiles and then spins her around, gently letting her go before pulling her back in as laughter rumbles in her chest. Never let it be said that David Nolan doesn’t know how to dance.

“You look beautiful tonight, by the way. I don’t remember if I got the chance to tell you that.”

“You did, but thank you. You don’t look too bad yourself.”

“What a roundabout way to say I am the most handsome man in this room.”

Emma rolls her eyes. Her brother is also an idiot.

“Maybe to Mary Margaret.”

“Fine, fine,” he sighs, “I guess I can allow you to think that your husband is the most handsome man in the room. How’s that feel, by the way? Any different?”

Emma hums and looks over David’s shoulder to see Killian already holding a glass of wine in one hand, some rum in the other, and a small bag of popcorn sticking out of his shirt as he talks to Will and Belle. He looks ridiculous, and she really should have thought more about having him carry three things.

“Not different,” she answers, trying to figure out what to say. She’s technically been married to Killian for over a month now, and she still hasn’t quite been able to articulate the feeling in her gut. “I don’t really know. I mean, we’ve been pretty much committed to each other from the beginning, and we’ve been living together for a year and a half. I feel like everything is the same, but it’s like…I don’t know. It’s like it feels more permanent that I get to have this family that I found.”

And that, she thinks, is exactly what she’s been trying to say this entire time.

Family.

She’s had David, Mary Margaret, and Ruth for a decade and a half now. She’s had Ruby and Graham for a little less time than that. Then came everyone from the team and all of their partners, including Liam and Elsa and their kids.

And Killian.

He’s her family. She’s known that for a long time now, but there’s something nice about it being official.

Mr. and Mrs. Killian and Emma Jones.

Some kind of official unit who pays joint taxes and argues over what’s for dinner and who has pictures of the two of them on the bookshelf and on the walls.

Never in a million years could she have imagined her life going this way, but it did.

And it really all started because David took her to a Yankees game when she was a teenager. It’s funny how life works like that.

“You deserve all of it and more, kid,” David whispers as he leans down to kiss her forehead. “Tell Killian I’ll steal him for a dance later.”

“Oh, I promise you he’ll somehow find you first.”

David lets go of her hands, and Emma maneuvers away from the dance floor to go get Killian. He’s still talking to Will and Belle, and when she walks up to him, he hands her the glass of wine, and she takes a sip while trying to figure out what the hell they’re talking about.

“He fucking misread my signal.”

Never mind. She knows exactly what they’re talking about.

“Scarlet,” Emma sighs, “just for tonight, let it go. You and Robin can keep having your lovers spat tomorrow when I am not in the country to hear about it.”

“I have an international plan. I can still call you.”

“He is not going to call you,” Belle promises. “I will make sure of it.”

“I know he still will, but maybe I won’t answer.”

“And after all the nice things I said about you today.”

“What nice things did you say about me today?”

“I said you looked beautiful and that you are definitely Killian’s better half.”

Emma smiles into her glass and glances over at Killian. He is simply shaking his head.

“That was last night,” Emma tells Will, “but I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Emma,” Lucy interrupts, tugging on Emma’s elbow. She’s miraculously still got no stains on her dress, but her flower crown is a little worse for the wear. “Anna says that we can throw the confetti soon.”

“Yeah? Did she tell you what time, kid?”

“In thirty minutes.”

“Well, I will be sure to be ready for you to throw the confetti at me in thirty minutes, okay? Make sure to get a little on your uncle.”

“That’s what Daddy said too.”

“Hey,” Killian grumbles, “tell your father he can – ”

“Do not finish that sentence,” Emma laughs, turning back to Killian. “Do you think we can get Ariel to pilfer us a few more bags of this popcorn and send them home with us before we leave?”

“I’ve already had it arranged.”

“Ah, you’re knocking it out of the ballpark already, babe.”

“I see the awful sports-related puns never stop.”

“Never.”

Emma’s not really sure where the time goes. One minute she’s talking to Killian, and then the next she’s being pulled away by Ruby and Mary Margaret for some pictures. Then there’s another bite of cake and half a glass of water, and she somehow talks to everyone she knows in half an hour before they’re all throwing little pieces of confetti up in the air as she and Killian walk down a hallway on their way to the car that’s going to take them back to the hotel they’re staying in tonight.

Even the ride to the hotel seems to go in the blink of an eye, like they’re carefully putting a seatbelt over her dress one minute and then trying to figure out how to get her out of the car without the material dragging against the concrete the next.

Time does seem to slow, though, when they get inside the room and Emma can feel Killian’s lips against her neck. They’re warm, much like he is, and a shiver runs down her spine until it settles deep in her belly so that she can have some of Killian’s warmth as well.

It seems to be never-ending.

“On the side, you said?” Killian whispers against her skin.

“What?”

“Your zipper? Where is your zipper?”

“Oh,” Emma laughs, craning her head back against the door, “yeah, it’s on the side. Don’t yank on it. We don’t want a pearl disaster in here.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Emma’s chest heaves with want and with laughter, and it makes it difficult for Killian to get her zipper down. There was some kind of complicated part, and she ends up helping him, cursing under her breath when it gets stuck before they both get it down.

Team works makes the dream work and all that.

She really has to stop with the sports puns tonight, but her brain seems to always have them now.

Consequences of her job and her husband’s job, she guesses.

After her dress is finally off and carefully draped over a chair, they easily get Killian’s tux off, Emma’s fingers fumbling with the few buttons that are remaining before she tugs his pants down so that everything is resting on the floor. The bed is soft when she lands against it, but she really doesn’t have that much time to think about it when Killian’s head is suddenly between her thighs and she’s reduced to having no thoughts at all.

Damn, he’s good at that.

He’s also good when he sinks into her, warm and steady, and his hands interlace with her above their heads. It’s a gentle rhythm, loving and slow, and she savors the push and the pull, the give and the take, the want and the need.

The way that they fit together in some kind of far too cheesy, puzzle-like kind of way.

And tonight, there’s no added meaning to the way Killian thrusts into her. It’s the same as it almost always is, as it was when they first got together, when they fell in love, when they got married for real. It’s got her gulping for air as Killian kisses her and her hands squeezing his to hold onto the feeling of him for as long as she possibly can.

They’ve got forever, though, so maybe she doesn’t have to hold on too tightly.

Then again, why wouldn’t she when this is everything she never allowed herself to wish for?

-/-

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#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #cs fanfic #captain swan fic #captain swan ff #captain swan fanfic #captain swan

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captain-emmajones · 4 years

Text

Love, Emma (5/7)

(Art by the wonderful @carpedzem <33)

Loosely based on Love, Rosie (2014). Killian and Emma are best friends and neighbors. They’ve always been – until he leaves for the Navy when his brother dies. When he comes back, nine months later, summer has begun and childhood is ending. Emma can tell something is changed in him, but she doesn’t know what. Until she does. He’s fallen in love with someone else.

And then, suddenly, they’re kissing on her nineteenth birthday. When she asks him to forget their night out, and never talk about it again, Killian thinks she means to tell him she regrets the kiss they exchanged. Except she has no memory of it.

Killian and Emma will dance around each other, until their heads spin and their legs hurt, and everything becomes blurry and it has to stop – for both of their sake.

Thank you guys for your comments and likes, it means the world. Also huge thank you to @profdanglaisstuff who beta’d this and gave me her precious thoughts <3

Quick summary: Last scene of last chapter was Emma deciding to stay with Killian in Portsmouth in order to help him settle back into his life after losing his hand. This chapter opens on Killian and Emma, still in hospital room, one day after his surgery. It is still set six months before Emma's wedding.By that time, Killian has broken up with Milah, and Emma knows it.

Friends to Lovers - Mutual Pining - Angst - Fluff - 5500 words - ao3

Part 1 - MIRRORBALL, Part 2 - AUGUST , Part 3 - HOAX, Part 4 - PEACE, Part 6 - CARDIGAN , Part 7 - INVISIBLE STRING

PART 5 - THIS IS ME TRYING.

Six months before Emma’s wedding.

Large, golden sparkles dance over his closed eyelids. Wrapped up in a soft cloud of unconsciousness, Killian is reluctant to open his eyes. The pain has finally stopped. The buzzing in his skull as well. He is peaceful. He could remain like this forever.

Ah, denial, an old pal. But where is he, exactly?

As Killian emerges from his sleep, the first thing he becomes aware of is the soft, tingly sensation coming up from his forearm. Then, the pain radiating from his missing limb. And then warmth, against his body, a sunny and welcoming warmth. And then more pain, always pain.

Oh right. His hand. The machine. Then the hospital. Then Emma.

Bloody hell.

In a grunt, he finally lifts his eyelids and his eyes slowly adjust to the light cascading through his hospital room’s window. It’s a very bright, golden light spilled onto each corner of the room that highlights dancing sparkles of dust around his bed and lands onto the same golden threads spread all over his forearm. They are the ones to blame for the familiar tingles in his arm.

A small, white hand rests above his stomach, while another one acts as a pillow under her cheek. Killian’s heart beams. She used her red-leather jacket as a blanket.

If his face is still frozen by pain and medicine, a part of him – that part of him that believes in hope and happy endings – well, that part of him smiles. It’s a soft, timid, fragile flicker of light that spreads tentatively in his chest and leaves warmth there.

She stayed, stammers his ferocious, hopeful heart, she stayed. And the morphine he is under is simply too strong to allow him to fully understand what this means, as she lays asleep in this plastic chair, and her back must be killing her, and she stayed.

Shush, heart. Those are territories we do not explore anymore.

Except that his fingers have suddenly found a peculiar interest in her golden curls, and he only realizes he’s been playing with them when Emma grunts in her turn and raises a sleep-wrinkled face.

Killian takes his hand back in a heartbeat.

“Oh, you’re awake,” she mumbles, and her mouth sounds incredibly dry as she does so.

A small chuckle escapes his lips. Killian is glad she is still too tightly wrapped in Morpheus’ arms to notice his embarrassment.

Killian thinks Emma has always been a sight for sore eyes in the morning, as she rubs her puffy eyes and tries to untangle her hair with impatient fingers and her green eyes find his and steal his breath away.

“Aye. I believe so, love. Are you, though?”

And he thinks she doesn’t miss the tender irony behind his words. He can tell because she arches one mischievous eyebrow as she straightens her back, and her hands meet her waist and she winces.

“Oh, very much so. My back is killing me.”

And he casts a very amused eye on Emma as she stretches some more, hands up in the air, and dramatically sighs. Then, she rests her palms over his arm again and swallows him with the waves of her big, green eyes and he needs to keep breathing or he is going to stay far longer in this damn hospital.

“Did you stay all night?” he asks, because he only remembers falling asleep, while she appeared captivated with Sheriff files, red leather jacket on her back and feet propped on his bed.

Lord is he glad that he was under so much morphine when she told him, last night, that she would stay in New York as long as he is hospitalized – anyway, Graham owes me so many paid vacation days – and he did not dare ask any further questions. This was just too good to be true, and instead he stared at the ring on her finger, the one she was twirling, twirling, twirling and he said “Thank you, Swan.” He didn’t find the strength in himself to add “You didn’t have to”, because he was scared she would leave.

“I did,” she exhales, and suddenly her gaze is all over him again, and he swears he feels completely submerged in its intensity. “Made quite the deal with the nurse – trading my Snickers bar for her Twix – but definitely worth it.”

“Of course, you did.”

And then she pauses, mouth slightly open, as if words are about to come out of her mouth, and she’s looking at him as if he might shatter in front of her eyes, into thousands of bloody sparkles. He thinks he just might when a small sigh escapes her lips. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

The confession is followed by a frown, a shake of her head, and Killian thinks she regrets it right then.

His hand starts forward to grab hers.

And she doesn’t back away, although they’ve just spent more than a year apart, she doesn’t back away even as her muscles tense under his touch, and her eyes widen, and she stretches a smile on her face.

And there is so much loneliness in the gesture she doesn’t initiate, in the fingers she doesn’t tangle with his, in the straightness of her back.

And it is terrible then, to stare at her, stare at the void between them, this gulf of pain and distance and grief, to be able to touch it, almost, to see the splinters of their lost friendship and love and to guess the shape it used to have, but to be completely unable to put them back together.

He doesn’t risk his “You didn’t have to” that time either, instead settles for: “Well, thank you, Swan. It means a lot.”

There are still golden sparkles reflected on the white hospital wall. There are still words stuck in his throat, words he desperately wants to tell her but knows he has no right to.

Thank you for coming. You saved me in so many more ways than you could possibly imagine. There is no one left in this world for me to love but you. And you, I will always love.

Of course he broke things off with Milah, when he learnt about her engagement to Neal. How could he keep up the charade? It no longer made sense.

“No need to thank me,” she abruptly answers, and her tone is not as fierce as she probably wants it to be, and she snatches her hand away from him.

A blink. A frown. She’s standing up, grabbing the plastic cup on the white sink, pours water inside and drinks it up.

Nothing makes sense anymore. And it should be fine, really.

But if it were fine, surely he wouldn’t be staring at her like this, as she drops the cup on the sink and looks back at him, the beginning of a smile on her lips, and surely that smile wouldn’t die into a frown when she gazes into his eyes. Surely she wouldn’t be nearly melting into the white wall behind her back.

“Want some?”

A pause. What the bloody hell is she talking about? Oh right. Water. “Huh, aye, I’d like that.”

This is bloody awkward.

The cup of water is handed down and more niceties with it.

But then Emma has a nervous blink down, what the bloody hell is she looking at and the plastic cup remains still in his hand, untouched. Why, hello there, the bandage around his wrist seems to tempt Killian — all white teeth out. And Killian feels absolutely numb. There is still an urge, inside of him, to stretch out this missing limb and grab her hand, but that will never happen again.

And that should also be fine but it feels like swallowing glass. And he congratulates his brain for wallowing over Emma and him, a long lost fairytale, instead of his missing limb – denial is after all a wonderful thing – but they are both unreachable, forever gone, and it should be fine.

Thankfully for him, Emma takes the cue to start babbling. That’s something she used to do when they were younger and she felt exposed, or uncomfortable, or vulnerable, she’d babble to muffle a deafening silence.

“I’ll be staying over at a small motel near the hospital. Mary Margaret and David are staying there as well. They’ll come by tonight to say goodbye. They’re flying back to New York. The nurse said you would have to remain under observation for a couple nights more. But then I’ll help you move back into your apartment, and surely there is some kind of support you can get from the hospital, like a nurse that’d come for your stitches at home…You have an apartment, right?”

He grins to muffle a scream.

“Aye, that I do, Swan.”

Something terrible howls in his chest. Not even her eyes in his are enough to soothe it.

Mary Margaret and David do pay them a visit, later that afternoon, when the sun begins its way down in the sky and leaves orange trails behind it, and Emma’s managed to sneak pizza into his room.

Mary Margaret lends him a pile of books. “Pretty sure you’ll find plenty of time to read those now.”

Killian finds comfort in their friendship. For a minute, as they all stand around his bed and David’s hand is pressed to his shoulder as Emma finally lets go of her red leather jacket to feel more comfortable, Killian forgets his missing limb.

“I’ll be sure to drop by New York on my next leave,” Killian says, and he means it.

When they decide to leave, David shakes his car’s keys in front of Emma’s eyes – your coach awaits you outside milady – and Killian feels a very childish fear tighten his chest.

“Thank you guys for coming all this way from New York.”

David ruffles his hair playfully. “It was the right thing to do, Killian.”

Killian smiles, blinks. Liam’s features burn his eyes. Has it always felt this lonely?

“Take care,” whispers Mary Margaret, as she presses a kiss onto his cheek.

“Always do.”

It’s Emma’s turn to glance at him, and Killian nods, and he hopes she doesn’t see the frightened look in his eyes.

Loneliness is leaning against the wall, arms crossed, a satisfied smirk on her lips. She’s been his best friend for months now. And there aren’t a lot of things Killian is afraid of, but she is one of them. There’s no getting rid of her. She sticks to the walls and to his heart and she poisons his mouth.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Emma whispers, and she modestly squeezes his hand as a goodbye.

And the distance between their two bodies leaves pebbles in Killian’s belly and a lump in his throat.

They spend those couple of days together, navigating around the ruins of their friendship. Very careful as they step around each other, not to wound the other. It’s a real battlefield full of sharp edges, of long given up swords, of yellow irises and broken hearts.

Emma shows up as early as she is allowed, and Killian knows what it costs her. She’s no morning person, as confesses the coffee she holds tightly against her chest as she enters his room with eyes half-closed and purple under-eye circles.

“Have you been sleeping, Swan?”

“Of course I have.”

Liar.

Emma is more guarded than ever. It makes him sad. She didn’t use to be like that...well, at least, not with him.

Killian has to settle for niceties. It’s all she is willing to offer. He cannot blame her.

She leaves around five, red leather jacket firmly slung over her shoulders and the last dying rays of sunshine tainting her hair with blood.

“See you, Killian.” And she smiles, and he almost catches a glimpse of the girl who stood on his porch and held his hand.

“See you, Swan.”

Emma’s running. Again. She is late. She overslept. But she hardly slept all week, and it really had nothing to do with Killian, and she needed to.

There are yellow irises clutched to her chest with her usual morning coffee, and she knows Killian will forgive her as she twirls between the walls of Portsmouth hospital to avoid nurses in her rush.

Killian’s already all dressed up when she irrupts into his room, face flushed, and she hopes the nurses helped him with his shirt and – oh, he’s staring at her.

“Hello, Swan.”

And then he looks down at the flowers against her chest, and she tries her best to hide the grin that tickles her lips as she hands them to him.

“It’s been a while,” she mumbles and she figures in the eyebrow he raises that he is also attempting to conceal a smile.

“Still my favorites,” he simply answers.

All around them, dust dances in the sunlight.

“Good.”

Emma has trained her heart. Emma has trained her heart and she has given it armor – a red leather jacket – and she has taught it how to survive, how to remain strong.

But all the training in the world might not be enough to muffle her heart’s sigh when Killian Jones walks beside her to his apartment, and he is pale, livid, and he is in pain, and she cannot save him.

February is such a nasty month. February is cruel and cold and has little care for their human hearts.

No more Christmas lights in the trees, no more snow on the pavement, everything is dead but the blinding, evil sun.

Emma glances quickly at Killian as she walks at his pace, making sure she stays within his reach. He did not look at her, getting out of the car, he did not look at her and she thinks it was for fear that she would try to help him.

She clenches her jaw.

“Almost there, Killian,” she attempts, and he simply lets go of a groan. The surgery he went through was heavy. He looks positively exhausted.

And yet the sun shines its evil beams.

And Emma thinks, as her eyes remain fixed on his figure, that being with Killian always felt like being bare naked, exposed to his knowing eyes. There is not a corner of her soul he hasn’t seen and she only guesses what this must feel like – to have her stare at his missing limb and make out the extent of his anguish.

And she might be a complete grown up, independent woman, and she might wear a red leather jacket, but Emma Swan’s heart will always have a special strawberry weakness for Killian Jones, and that is something she needs to navigate around.

Open the front door of his building. Let him in. Breathe.

It was easy to convince herself, back in Storybrooke, busy with Sheriff duties and Neal, that she no longer cared for Killian Jones as much as she used to. That he absolutely wasn’t a living embodiment of a very big hole in her life. Nope. All it took to shatter this illusion was hearing his name on the phone.

“Careful, Killian,” Emma whispers as they finally reach the stairs leading to his flat.

She doesn’t dare to touch him as he begins climbing, lips pressed together in a firm line. She doesn’t want him to think she thinks he needs her or something. And she frowns, she fists her hands, but she lets him climb alone, right behind him, in case he falls.

And when they reach his threshold she lunges forward to quickly unlock the door, and she hears the small wheezing sound escaping his lips. She shifts to face him, she watches as he closes his eyes and pearls of sweat roll down his temples and well – her arms have reacted without her consent.

She’s suddenly all over him, arms wrapped around his torso, and he glances at her through his semi-closed eyes, and he is pale, pale, translucent, and it’s breaking something inside of her that she thought no longer existed.

“You don’t have to, Swan—” he begins, his voice hoarse, but she shakes her head.

“—It’s okay to need help, Killian.”

And his eyes shine in recollection. He remembers.

He was the one who taught her this, a long time ago, when she was new in Storybrooke and this neighbor and his bright blue eyes were staring at her from his fence. He saw her struggle with Ingrid’s yellow irises and he said in a very gentle voice “It’s okay to need help.” And her eyes were twitching because he didn’t understand, the nice blonde lady would send her back if she killed her flowers. And then his hand had been very warm and tender over her shaking knuckles, and it was the first time Emma Swan thought she was in love with Killian Jones.

While the fear of being abandoned retreated, the teenage crush lingered in one hidden corner of her mind for a very long time. She doesn’t think it still lives there though.

“Come on,” she eventually whispers, to break this silence that is far too heavy on their shoulders and to guide him inside.

The door shuts behind them.

And what Emma discovers stirs something very strange, very nasty in her belly as a smell of alcohol and rotting food fills her lungs and her throat does a strange heaving thing.

“Sorry for the mess, Swan. Didn’t think I’d get any visitors anytime soon.”

“Aha, don’t worry. I’ve seen worse.”

Except she hasn’t. Well, she has, but not applied to Killian Jones. Killian is proper and Navy and upright and clean and organized, and not whatever the hell this is.

As she opens her mouth to utter a smart comment, it is as if, suddenly, her brain disconnected from the rest of her body.

She comes up with a joke, bad break up huh, but she settles for keeping her mouth resolutely closed.

Clearing her throat, her gaze sinks to her feet as she helps him sit in one corner of his sofa that is not already invaded by empty cups and pizza boxes.

She crinkles her nose. Something, that is not cheese, is definitely rotting there.

“There you go.”

Her gaze resolutely avoids the empty rum bottles on the floor. She did not come all the way from Storybrooke to Portsmouth to lecture him, to guide him towards the light or whatever, she came to help a friend after an accident and it is no big deal.

And it is no big deal either that she feels him staring at her as she observes his place with the blankest expression she can come up with, anything not to make him feel worse.

Except that she is almost tempted to run the hell away from all of this, from him, to run and never look back, because this is far more than she ever signed up for, and what the hell was she thinking, that she could just be a shoulder for him to lean on without losing said shoulder in the process.

And then she notices a picture of them, on his fridge, just below one of Liam and Killian, and her hands come to rest over her hips.

It’s a picture they asked Granny to take on her nineteenth birthday.

Killian must have followed her glance because she hears him exhale behind her: “We had quite the night, didn’t we, Swan?”

And she nods, although no coherent thoughts are to be spotted in her mind, except for a distinct and distant smell of vodka and fruit juice and the sweetness of rocky road ice-cream melting over her tongue.

Emma flips back, a big grin on her lips. “Still fancy a grilled-cheese? It’s the only thing I can cook.”

And she smiles, harder, mostly to savagely crush this urge to run between her teeth.

Killian sleeps all afternoon, curled up on his sofa. Emma tucks a blue blanket under his chin and sets her mind on cleaning his flat. It’s rather a nice place to live in. It’s far bigger than Mary Margaret and David’s, back in New York, and only smaller than the one she shares with Neal in Storybrooke. It has one bedroom and a big living room and a small kitchen, and the walls are luminous and white and bare and – alright, it definitely makes her sad.

A pizza box hits the floor, near the trash can.

“Damnit.”

Emma grunts, bends down to drop the damn box back inside.

It’s as if Killian did not want this place to belong to him. She doesn’t even know how long he’s been living here. Perhaps he moved after his breakup with her.

Hidden behind the fridge, Emma finds a broom against the wall. She picks it up.

It isn’t exactly the kind of place she pictures when she thinks about Killian. She can see different hues of blue, and yellow, and a naval theme going on, and also a very neat place.

Her hands stop over the broom. Perhaps she doesn’t know him at all anymore. It’s been so long, after all, since they’ve had a true conversation.

“How can you settle for him, Emma?”

“You’re one to talk about settling, Killian! You’ve been clinging to Milah for years now, even though you are miserable!”

“You don’t know that, Swan!” he screamed, but she only heard: “You don’t know ME.”

“Well, if I don’t know… then, then I’ll just hang up!”

“Suit yourself!”

“FINE.”

Memories of their last fight flash before her eyes, and she grunts. Her eyes land on him — asleep on the red sofa. His mouth is slightly open. He looks peaceful, younger.

And then a sigh, a shrug. No need to look back at the past. They’ve made mistakes. They’ve made a lot of them. And so what? They’re still friends in spite of everything. They’ll always be.

And she sweeps the floor with more intent.

He wakes up to a smell of soap, and tomato sauce and basil tingling his nose and he opens his eyes in a groan.

No, she did not…

“Swan,” he grunts, and there are so many reproaches echoing in his tone.

He rubs his eyes, a terrible headache invading his skull – one of the many side effects of anesthesia – and discovers her behind his grey kitchen counter, hair up in a ponytail and a spoon in her mouth.

The sun of this late afternoon is long gone, and all of the lights are switched on in his flat, and she cleaned everything and he feels terribly ashamed.

“You really didn’t have to clean up my mess.”

“Oh don’t sound angry Killian, you’re gonna love this. Trust me.”

He raises one eyebrow.

“What is it?”

“Pasta and tomato sauce. What? I told you I’m no chef.”

“Wasn’t complaining.”

“Oh, but your eyes speak for you.”

And then the banter and the lime green apron are put down on the counter and she makes her way towards him, brows furrowed.

“Are you feeling better?” she asks and he has stopped breathing somewhere in her path between the kitchen and the living room towards him.

She looks infuriatingly beautiful, with her hair up.

“Aye,” he exhales, and then she’s leaning forward to grab his arm.

But bile climbs up his throat, and it is simply too much for him to take, and he has to push her away and... his arm jerks out of her grasp.

She backs away, immediately. Broken are the splinters in her eyes as he swallows glass again.

“Thank you, but I can do this alone,” he utters, and he tries to sound gentle, but the damage has already been done.

She stands in his living room with her hands on her hips and she’s smiling but it isn’t a smile, it’s the mere shadow of a smile, it’s killing him, and he cannot, will not reach for her.

They eat silently, as normally as possible. It’s a lot of awkward silences and “This is really good, thank you, Swan”, and “No problem,” and “Could you pass me the salt?” and “Sure, here you go,” and Emma’s tone is suddenly sharp and merciless and he stares at his fork with the serious intent of digging a hole through his plate.

Luckily for him, he did not lose the hand he uses the most.

And anxiety is just a blink away, it’s lurking in one deep corner of his mind, ready to roar and leap on him at any given moment. And Emma is twirling her ring again, twirling, twirling and suddenly it is difficult to breathe.

What is he going to do if he cannot re-join the Navy? What if they don’t want him back?

“Erm…Are you okay, Killian?” tries Emma in a small voice, and she must have seen him become paler.

He looks up with eyes wide open. No air is reaching his lungs.

She has tomato sauce in the right corner of her mouth, and he wants to tell her, but he cannot.

His heart is drumming in his ears. It’s as if he just understood the extent of his wound. It’s not only limited to his hand, it spreads to every inch of his life.

“Aye, I just…”

Breathe, Killian, breathe.

He sees her brows furrow, he watches as she leans forward. “Come on, Killian. There isn’t much you cannot tell me.”

And her ring glints under the white ceiling light, glints far brighter than the bracelet around her wrist, glints.

“Aye. I was simply thinking about the Navy and what’s to come, for me.” He is surprised his voice comes out this calm and collected.

He sees her give up on her fork and knife and seize his hand on the table, as if it is the most normal thing in the world.

Flashes of once upon a time pass before his eyes. Once upon a time, she held his hand on Granny’s table on a summer day and he thought she meant “I love you”, and the sun was reflected in her golden hair, and perhaps she meant “I love you”, but that doesn’t matter. The moment slipped between his fingers and there is no getting it back now.

Still, he takes the initiative of intertwining their fingers together and he smiles faintly, heart still beating far too fast.

“You’ll be okay, Killian. You’re a survivor, remember?”

And his knuckle is brushing the side of her hand, and she isn’t taking it away.

“Aye. Although it’s not very fair to use my own words against me, Swan.”

And she grins, and she is an angel of beauty in a house of decay, with her blonde hair cascading down her shoulder blades and her pink lips, and it is a hard endeavor not to stare too long at them, to look away in spite of how brightly she is shining.

“Come on, Killian, eat up before it gets cold.”

He nods, but the drop of his eyes to her mouth is inevitable. He is hypnotized, it seems, and suddenly he is bending towards her.

Her eyes widen. She doesn’t back away.

And he cannot quite prevent the chaos he is about to create, cannot quite stop the course of his lips towards hers, and he looks up, sees confusion in her gaze, then glances down at her lips, and up at her eyes again, and down, down… And before he knows it, his hand has cupped the back of her head, fingers slipping into her ponytail. She has a small whisper then, a small hiccup, “What are you doing—” but the end of her sentence dies on his lips and he is kissing her open mouth.

He shuts his eyes. Hard.

Tasting her after all these years sends a wave of shock rattling through his body. She tastes exactly as he remembers, as he tried to forget.

His heart drums, drums, drums and she does not back away. She kisses him back. She is kissing him back.

She steps into him, pressing her mouth harder against his, and Killian is no longer breathing because a firework has started in his chest and there is smoke in his lungs.

Somehow, she crosses the distance between their two bodies, and suddenly, she is straddling his lap, and her hands are in his hair, and they tug, they tug for dear life, and his arm comes to wrap around her waist as he holds her tighter, as close as he possibly can, and he cannot breathe...Her lips move above his, a hypnotic rhythm, open slightly to allow her tongue to taste him, and she bites his lower lip and his heart comes crashing down in his chest, it drums, drums, drums.

And then, it stops.

Just like that.

Drum, drum, drum.

She lets go. Stands up. Runs although her legs aren’t moving. As a brutal sea of frozen waves swallows him alive.

“Killian, I…I,” and she stammers, takes a step back, creates a necessary distance between them, is blushing furiously, brushes an inexistent strand of hair behind her ears, “what are we doing? You just had surgery, and you’ve still got drugs in your system, and I am engaged, and this should not be happening, and I cannot do this, you understand, right? This isn’t right. It isn’t.”

And as the taste of her lips lingers on his tongue, finally, he desperately wishes she were wrong. He is still high on drugs and that’s why he dared to kiss her. No other explanation. No underlying feelings.

“You’re right, Swan. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. I don’t know what came over me.”

Except, he knows full well. And you, I will always love.

She leaves the next morning in a deafening, groundbreaking silence. He watches as she makes sure everything is settled, that he is comfortable, that the nurse will come check on him every day for the next couple of weeks, and she tells him “call me if there’s anything you need” but they both know she doesn’t mean it, what she means is “call someone else”. And this rest of his life without her must go on.

That night, he sets his mind on finally writing down his thoughts. Finally telling her. After what feels like years of miscommunication, a good old-fashioned letter might do the trick to confess his feelings.

My dearest Swan, my oldest friend,

Thank you for coming. You saved me in so many more ways than you could possibly imagine.

I know the kiss was confusing, and it shouldn’t have happened that way, and for this I apologize. But I am begging you: if a part of you, no matter how small, does not want to marry Neal, do not do it. You deserve someone who loves you for who you are and who knows how lucky he is to have you. I don’t ever want you to settle like I did.

As for me, there is no one else in this world for me to love but you. And there is no else I would want to love. How could I? You are bloody brilliant, amazing, and I think a part of me has always loved you.

If you find that your feelings reciprocate mine, please answer this letter. If not, I’ll simply pretend I never sent it and we can go back to being friends.

Love, Killian.

“Emma, I’m leaving for work now!” exclaims Neal as he climbs down the stairs of their new house.

“Mmmm, see you tonight!” Emma gargles for answer, and Neal smiles.

When Emma brushes her teeth, she really goes all in.

Grabbing his satchel from the living room table, his eyes look down at their front door.

They’ve got mail. A lot of it.

“Damnit, I don’t have time for this.”

But then he’s already kneeling down and he goes through the envelopes in the blink of an eye, bills, bills, more bills, until – until one name catches his eyes.

Killian Jones.

What the hell does Killian Jones want to say to Emma in a letter?

“Fuck.”

He glances up at the stairs, watches as Emma rushes to the bedroom again, towel in her hair, completely oblivious to him and that’s for the best.

And he rushes to open the letter, fingers trembling with the fear of losing the love of his life.

What he reads then freezes something deep within him. They kissed. Of course they did. What was he thinking? That Emma could simply see her old pal and not make out with him?

And then another shudder.

He loves her. Killian Jones loves Emma Swan and he wants her.

And something very green and nasty strangles Neal’s heart. He will not lose her, even if she made a mistake. He strangely finds that he would rather never address her betrayal, never confront her than risk losing her forever. (Denial is a nasty bitch anyway.)

Steps clatter down the stairs. Neal shoves the letter down into his pocket.

“Any mail for me?” Emma asks, arms slipping into her red leather jacket as her deputy sheriff star shines at her belt.

He simply smiles, his big grin, the one she loves. Presses his lips to hers. Conceals as best as he can this vicious, dripping mix of fear and anger. “Nope, nothing, baby. Just an enormous amount of bills to pay. Who knew adulthood meant paying a bunch of bills you know nothing about? ”

And she looks the slightest bit disappointed, and she wasn’t expecting him to write her, was she?

“See you tonight.” A last kiss and he’s out, with a letter capable of putting an end to his happiness in his pocket, and a rage he will never voice in his throat.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tagged those of you who liked the last chapter, but please do tell me if you don’t wish to be tagged anymore <3

@yasbio2015 @bubblegum1425 @daenerysmyhsa @dancingnancyy @elizabeethan @farewell-courgette @beca0912 @stina-g @tenaciouskittynightmare @noensnaringnet @klynn-stormz @sekretny13 @tiganasummertree @vvbooklady1256 @brustudyblog @peggyyswan @thisonesatellite @courtorderedcake @snowbellewells @kingofmyheart14 @teamhook @mariakov81 @folkloreismylullaby @officerrogers

#captain swan #cs fanfics #cs ff #love emma #my stuff #love rosie au #big thank you to you guys for your support <33 #means the world

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spaceman-earthgirl · 4 years

Text

Supergirl Valentine's Prompts Day 14/14: "I love you."

Lena watches the way Kara’s hand plays with her own, mesmerised by the way Kara’s fingers glide against hers as their fingers twist together. Lena’s not even sure if Kara is conscious of her movements but Lena is, smiling as Kara’s thumb runs over the ring that’s been sitting on her finger for the last six months.

“I can’t wait to marry you.”

So maybe Kara is aware of her actions as her thumb moves over the ring again, the ring that had Lena in tears when Kara had knelt in front of her with a question she’d been considering asking herself.

“Just three more months,” Lena replies, from her position nestled into Kara, her back against Kara’s front. They’d sat down to watch a movie together but the screen still remains blank, both too comfortable now to move and get the remote.

“Why did we decide to wait so long to get married? We should’ve had a shorter engagement,” Kara says. Lena doesn’t point out that nine months is actually a relatively short engagement compared to most people she knows. “I’d fly us straight to Vegas right now to tie the knot if I could.”

“I think your sister would murder us if we did that.”

“I can take her in a fight, let’s do it.”

Lena can hear the smile in Kara’s voice.

As great as that sounds (because nothing sounds as great as being able to call Kara her wife) they both know they won’t, both want their family there to celebrate the day with them. Lena laughs. “You can take Alex, but what about Eliza?”

Kara presses her face into Lena’s shoulder, her next words come out muffled. “Don’t bring Eliza into this, she’d be so sad if she missed our wedding.”

“Exactly.” Lena takes Kara’s hand, threads their fingers together, brings them to rest on her stomach. “Three months is going to go by so fast, I know it.”

---

Lena curls her feet into the grass beneath her, stupidly nervous but so excited that the day has finally arrived. They’re in Midvale, surrounded by their family and friends, and it’s perfect.

She’s not sure how Kara managed to convince her to wear bare feet, but she did.

(Actually she does know how, the suggestion from Kara had sounded entirely reasonable to her kiss-scrambled brain. But she must admit it was a good suggestion, wearing heels on grass didn’t sound overly fun).

The music starts and Lena’s heart jumps.

This is it.

She’s never been this excited for anything in her life.

The moment Kara steps into view, her heart stops, before it picks up double time in her chest. Kara looks absolutely stunning, in a dress they’d picked out together, her own feet bare, with the softest look Lena has ever seen on her face.

Lena would call in nothing short of adoring.

She knows she’s looking back at Kara with the exact same expression, even if the edges of it are tinged with nerves.

There are already tears in her eyes as Kara walks down the makeshift aisle in the Danvers backyard towards her even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. When Lena had told Kara that part, Kara had kissed her and told her there’d no doubt be tears, from them both.

(But mostly her because Lena’s been known to cry rather easily, and this day is nothing small).

“I love you,” Kara mouths as she gets closer, smiling getting wider the closer she gets.

Lena is so in love with her.

“I love you too,” she mouths back, so entirely happy that it feels like she might burst with all the feelings currently swirling around in her chest.

Kara’s smile somehow gets even bigger.

Lena takes Kara’s offered hand when she reaches her, the feeling so natural as their hands tangle together. Lena’s pretty sure her hand was made to be held by Kara’s.

They say their vows and then Lena’s hands are shaking as she slips the ring onto Kara’s finger before Kara does the same.

They’re both crying now. She knows there are people watching but she doesn’t care.

“I love you,” Lena says, this time the words whispered between them as they lean in for their first kiss as wives.

“I love you too,” Kara replies, the words caught in the kiss, a kiss that’s always felt so much like home, as it does now, as they kiss in front of their family.

Kara is home.

“It’s official,” Lena says as they part. Kara’s smiling so wide it looks like it must hurt.

Lena’s not sure she’s going to be able to stop smiling anytime soon either.

“It’s official,” Kara repeats, tangling their fingers together between them again. “You’re my wife.”

Lena already loves that word. “And you’re mine.”

“Forever.”

ao3

#supergirl #supercorp #kara danvers #lena luthor #supercorp fanfic #vday prompts #writing tag

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amydancepants-peralta · 4 years

Text

you’re the closest to heaven that I'll ever be

(aka, the epilogue I suddenly found myself writing) 🙈♥️🤷‍♀️

season eight: you’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be

On New Years Eve of 2020, the Santiago-Peralta household is strangely quiet.

In the tastefully decorated living room a brightly coloured activity centre, complete with musical panels, sits neatly beside the beige sofa. Three of the warmest blankets in Brooklyn share space with a knitted Ninja Turtle themed throw, and strapped to the door frame of the reading room Amy had once considered her favourite space is a purple and yellow Jolly Jumper, a myriad of sensory developmental toys clipped along it’s edges.

There are five different flavours of baby food on the kitchen counter waiting to be put away, and the bedazzled invitation to Gina Linetti’s 2021-a-thon lays forgotten to the side, mixed in with the letters and correspondences that neither Jake or Amy have done more than skim their eyes over. Above the counter, below the precision-timed clock, hangs a framed photograph of the two of them on the night of their wedding, the happy glow of a freshly married couple still noticeable all these years later.

Having just hung up from an unnecessarily long conversation with her mother, Amy leans against the kitchen counter, sighing at the familiarity of the curved granite meeting her lower back. Mama Santiago means well; and as the mother of eight and abuela to five, has a lot of valuable tips and tricks up her sleeve. But this is Amy’s first child, and as much as she wants to do everything exactly right, she also wants her and Jake to figure things out as they go. A statement she’d had to repeat approximately eighty-nine times to Camila during that last phone call.

Twisting the rings on her finger, Amy smiles at the thought of all that she and Jake had been through in the past year. At eight months, their daughter Mia was tiny but fierce, and motherhood was both everything and absolutely nothing like she’d expected it to be.

There had been offers to babysit from friends and family alike in the last few weeks, but all of them had been met with a polite shake of both her and Jake’s heads. Sure, there were a lot of places that they could be tonight - and they’re probably missing out on an interesting experience at Gina’s - but truthfully, tonight there is nowhere they’d rather be than home.

(With any luck, they’d have their own wild night - and by wild, she means uninterrupted sleep for the next ten to twelve hours. Baby Mia had only just begun to sleep through the night, and both Amy and Jake were approximately 4,167 hours behind on their own slumber.)

Shaking off the last remnants of the phone call from her body, Amy tucks her hair behind one ear and looks around the kitchen, noticing the bottle of champagne that her husband had pulled out of the chiller earlier was still sitting to the side, unattended next to a spare lid for their daughter’s favourite bottle. Pouting her lips slightly, she glances at the clock, noting from it’s steady tick that it had been a good half hour since she’d heard from either Jake - and while silence in a house with a baby is usually a good thing, she’s also really curious what could be holding him up, and so Amy grabs the champagne with her left hand, shoving her phone into the pocket of her sweats with the other.

The condensation from the neck of the bottle drips onto Amy’s fingers as she makes her way down the short hallway, her socked feet moving carefully across the floor lest a squeaky floorboard should wake their sleeping beauty. Amy cranes her neck around the doorway once she’s reached her destination, and the sight inside simply makes her heart melt.

Jake sits inside their daughter’s room, on the oversized plush chair that a very pregnant Amy had insisted they buy, his eyes trained solely on their sleeping daughter. The delicately embroidered pillow made by Camila, with Mia’s name sewn in shimmering thread, remained gripped in his hands, his body leaning forwards as though at any given second he was going to climb into the cot and join their daughter. His eyes are soft when they flicker over to her, and he shrugs, giving Amy a sheepish look before turning back to Mia. “I just can’t stop watching her sleep. She’s so beautiful, Ames.”

Humming her agreement, Amy tiptoes into the room. While a relatively tight budget had meant that the nursery had remained the same colour as the rest of their apartment, she and Jake had chosen softer toned items for all the trimmings, and the mixture of excerpts from some of her favourite children’s authors and photographs of family that lined the walls never failed to bring her a sense of calm. Running her free hand along the edge of the dresser, she toys with the neatly folded onesie Jake had placed there earlier in the evening before resting the champagne bottle beside it, moving to stand beside her husband and run her hand through his hair. He was absolutely besotted with their little girl, and it was her favourite thing in the world to see.

Jake starts at the moistness of her fingers, looking up at Amy before noticing the champagne and he rubs his face in exhaustion, wedding band glinting in the soft light from the lamp set up behind him. “Oh right, I’d completely forgotten that I opened that before I put Mia to bed.”

Shrugging, Amy points her chin towards their daughter, moving both hands to Jake’s shoulders as she replies. “It’s a good thing you did, really. A popping champagne cork would definitely have meant saying good-bye to a sleeping Mia for the rest of the night.”

His laugh is soft as he nods, the memories of the first few nights with a screaming newborn still very fresh in both of their minds. “It’s crazy, though … how much I miss her when she’s literally right there.”

Amy’s heart swells to twice it’s normal size, thrumming against her rib cage as it tries to compensate for the sudden and overpowering amount of love she feels for her husband. She understands all the reasons why there was a part of Jake that was worried he would turn out to be a terrible father, but oh, how she wishes he could hear how sweetly he talks about their daughter. Turning slightly, she grabs the bottle of champagne and nudges Jake over on the plush seat, rubbing her shoulder against his as she settles into place. One of her favourite things about this chair - and the reason she’d been so insistent on buying it - was the fact that it was just big enough for two (if they snuggled); and in moments like this Amy would definitely consider it a worthy investment.

Reaching for the bottle and taking a slow swig, Jake uses his free hand to rest against Amy’s thigh, fingers tracing gentle patterns that she knows are unconsciously done. (They’d been together so long now that each of their bodies was an extension of the others, and she liked to think that the tiny swirls he made were representative to the myriad of coils in his mind, stretching and unfurling comfortably whenever she was around.) In front of them, resting her tiny head in the cot that Jake had put together (and definitely hadn’t lost his cool whilst doing so), was their baby girl - and she was literally the most beautiful thing.

“I still can’t believe we made her.”

“I know.”

“And that it’s been eight months already.”

“I know.”

Jake smiles, nudging the frame of his glasses up with the edge of his finger (a Tired Jake at home has no time for contacts). “She gave me the biggest smile tonight, when I lay her down and kissed her goodnight. It was like she was saying ‘goodnight, daddy!’ … without being able to actually say it, ya know?” His face scrunches. “God, I sound really stupid right now.”

Amy shakes her head, unable to keep the blissful smile from stretching across her face. “Not at all. This morning, I swear she almost said ‘mama’, but then she just kinda spit up everywhere.”

His shoulders shaking as he chuckles, Jake turns his head slightly to leave a commiserative kiss on Amy’s temple. “I’m sure she was trying to say it anyway, babe.”

Shrugging one shoulder, Amy looks up at her husband with a smile. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Her first word is definitely going to be Dada.” At Jake’s incredulous shake of his head, Amy persists. “She literally lights up when she sees you, babe. It’s adorable. You’re going to get first word, and I am totally okay with it.”

(Her first word, when she says it in a few weeks time, is in fact baba - aka, her bottle. But, it’s totally a compromise between mama and dada, and the parents take it with glee.)

Picking up the blanket mysteriously knitted by Tia Rosa, Jake drapes the material over Amy’s legs before clearing his throat. “So earlier this evening, I was scrolling through Facebook, and the sweetest photo came up on my timeline.” He pauses, digging for his phone and unlocking the screen with the dexterity of a man who has definitely trained himself to text without looking down. “See?” He continues, holding up the selfie he’d posted of the two of them last year, the festoon lights strung out on the fire escape casting their faces in a cool glow as they grinned up at the camera. “Hard to believe this was only a year ago, right? What a difference between then and now.”

“Oh god, that feels like forever ago,” Amy murmurs, her eyes running over the image as the memory of that night washes over her - right down to the feeling of their daughter still nestled in safely. “You were right, though. This year has been amazing. Even if we’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a quiet home for longer than five hours.”

“An amazing night is just another Peralta Guarantee, babe.” Jake winks, grinning. “And as crazy as it sounds, I’m all in for that screaming, Ames. I mean ... I’d like it a lot more if it was two in the afternoon, and not morning, but I’m here for it all the same.” He shakes his head at Amy’s offer of the champagne again, and she nods in agreement, setting it down on the floor.

Shuffling until her legs are draped over Jake’s lap, Amy reaches for her husband’s phone and types in her brother’s profile. “Chris did the same thing earlier tonight - look, it’s the same photo I sent to you all those years ago.” Jake smiles, eyes taking on a faraway look as Amy continues. “Man, I was so stupid back then. I was crushing so hard for you, and really thought that if I just put all my energy into my work, that it would just …. Go away, I guess.”

Jake nods, his arm wrapping further around Amy’s legs, rubbing the amazingly soft purls of wool between his fingers. “If only we’d been able to talk to each other about it … I would’ve warned you it was fruitless. I tried to forget how I felt about you for over a year. Obviously, it did not go well.”

“Do you think if we had told the rookie detective versions of ourselves, sitting in that unmarked car down at the docks, that one day we’d spend our entire evening watching our daughter sleep, that we’d believe them?”

His chest constricting with a restrained snort, Amy feels Jake shake his head above her. “There is no way I would have believed it for a second. I would have hoped, but …”

Wrapping one arm tight around Jake’s midsection, Amy looks up at her husband, genuinely wishing that even the smallest part of the amount of love she has for him right now is detectable in her gaze. “Lucky our heads caught up to our hearts, huh?”

Leaning in, Jake plants a gentle kiss against her lips. “I’m thankful every day.”

A muffled snore comes from the direction of the cot, and Mia stretches out her fists as she slips further into whatever dream she’s having. “Okay, seriously. Our daughter is literally the cutest baby ever to be born.”

“She really is.” And really, how else could they put it? She was tiny and beautiful and adorable and all those other words that always seemed to fail to come to mind when someone asks them to describe their daughter, because how can you relegate something so life-changing to just a few words? She laughs, a deep-from-the-belly kind of laugh, whenever Amy pretended to have a sneezing fit in front of her. Smiles so brightly that even her godfather Ray finds himself smiling right back. Grips her parent’s fingers with the strength of an army - and Jake swears that their daughter somehow took a seminar in utero, because she is her mother’s daughter - but Amy already knows that truly, both of them were 100% wrapped around their daughter’s little finger from the moment she was born.

Mia was a tiny tyrant, but their tiny tyrant; with deep brown eyes you could lose yourself in, messy curly hair, and a screaming voice louder than any infant had any right to have. But it only took one look from her: one slow blink, or the resting of her head on your shoulder, and suddenly everything was okay again. It took thirteen hours to birth her, and only one second to fall in completely in love, and Amy would do it all again in a heartbeat.

As her eyelids begin to grow heavy, Amy rests her head against Jake’s shoulder, relaxing completely as the combined scent of his shower gel and their daughter’s baby powder fills her senses. Before they close completely, her eyes shift towards the framed picture of her and Jake on their very first New Years Eve together as a couple. Oh, how far they’d come.

It’s several hours before she opens her eyes again, ears picking up on an unfamiliar but persistent pop sound coming from the window in their daughter’s room, and as her still-snoozing mind begins to wake up, Amy realises that both she and Jake had managed to sleep through it all.

Jake’s head is heavy on her shoulder, and as Amy cups his jawline in her hand and begins dotting kisses to his hairline, he mumbles himself awake, shrugging when Amy tells him that they’ve missed counting in the New Year completely.

His hand grips Amy’s steadily as she leads him over to the crib, neither able to resist the chance to check that their daughter was still just as perfect as she had been several hours ago, and with a stretch of his limbs Jake allows himself to be pulled away from the nursery, grabbing the baby monitor from the change table as he goes.

Both are asleep again before their heads even hit the pillows, completely unfazed at missing the countdown. This house, after all, was going to be filled with celebrations for so many years to come - whether their family expands or they stay as a unit of three - that a new year simply meant a new beginning. The future was ripe with possibilities, and they couldn’t wait to see what was in store.

#ok so now it's really finished #the fortunate ones #b99 fanfic #NYE Peraltiago stylez #title from the goo goo dolls #Jake x Amy fic #which yes I know is a little old but what a line!#mia is the name I've used so far so I'm just sticking with it now #feel free to read it as some other name if you prefer #we all have our list of faves!#b99 fandom events #b99 2020 vision challenge

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sherlollydramoine · 4 years

Note

Can I request a belated Rami NYE elopement? It can be really fluffy just a glittery wonderland. If not I am totally down for a real nice rom-com moment for valentine's day in NYC xx

Here it is doll. I hope you enjoy!

Warnings: Just some cuteness, might be some language, no smut, pure fluff.

Word Count: 1917

Glancing at yourself in the mirror one last time smiling to yourself. You couldn’t help the excitement that was building because your friends and family were going to be in for one hell of a shock. They all thought they were just showing up to a fancy dress New Year’s Eve party at a nice bar that you and Rami had rented out for the evening, but what they didn’t know was that the two of you had been planning this moment for over a year. Noone even knew that the two of you were actually engaged to be married.

Heading downstairs you find Rami sitting on the couch nervously playing with his tie. He wore them so well, but he never really liked them.

Letting out a small sigh you smile up at him, “You ready babe? I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces when they realize what’s going to happen tonight.”

“I’m nervous.” was all he managed to say.

“Don’t be my love. This was all your idea anyway.” you reassure him. His eyes finding yours as he smiles up at you, reaching out for your hands.

“I love you. Also, Joe called and he’s sweating bullets. He said that he was having a hard time keeping this a secret. You look absolutely stunning. That white dress looks good on you.” he rambles, while you you just nuzzle your head into his chest.

“Shall we go? Do you have everything we need? I have your ring on my right hand, do you have mine?” you ask with a brow raised. He would accidentally forget the one thing that he actually needed to bring.

He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls it out, “I’ve got it!”

You laugh as you take his hand and lead him towards the garage.

“We have to go, or we’ll be late for our own wedding. And by the way my love, you look so fucking gorgeous tonight. Just quit fiddling with your damn tie.” you gently scold, as you pull him towards the car.

The location that you had chosen was actually located just off the water. Half the building was glass which made the water view spectacular. The rest of the building was decorated to look like a very classy, glittery, winter wonderland.

You wandered around surveying all the gorgeous decorations, the tables were set and everything was absolutely perfect for tonight.

“The party planner sure did a fantastic job with this place didn’t she?”Rami asks, and you just nod your head.

“I don’t think one detail was overlooked. It’s just perfect Rami. Absolutely perfect!” you coo, while dancing around him in a circle. He just laughs at your goofiness.

Suddenly the door to the bar swings open and in walks Joe, the one you’ve asked to officiate your wedding ceremony. He had gotten certified online just to do this for the two of you, and he was fully prepared with all the necessary paperwork.

After about an hour or so the rest of your family and friends had finally arrived to the venue all dressed to the nines. The party was in full swing.

Your nerves were starting to get the best of you and the closer it got to midnight the antsier the both of you became. You were about four glasses of champagne deep and feeling warm and giggly.

Joe called everyone’s attention at about eleven-thirty. A whole room full of people went absolutely silent at the sight of Joe standing on a chair yelling at the top of his lungs to pay attention. Your hand in Rami’s as Joe does exactly as you asked him to do.

“So you all may be wondering why I’ve called all of your attention. I know you all think that you are just here for a New Year’s Eve party. That is part of it but Rami and YN have also decided that tonight would be a great time for a very special surprise. If you all could please find a seat and get settled as quickly as possible.”

A lot of murmuring was going around but eventually everyone found a seat.

Rami took your hand and guided you to the front of the bar, the little fairy lights that had been placed all around making his eyes sparkle.

Joe clears his throat at the same time you hear some gasps coming from around the room.

“Yes, this is exactly what you think it is. These two dweebs are finally going to tie the knot! So children, if we can all settle down, we’re running short on time and they wanted this done before midnight.” Joe addresses the group.

The whole time you are standing there in front of Joe, holding Rami’s hands looking up at him nervously. You both had planned this for about a year and you know the decision is for the best, but you still couldn’t help the nervousness. Rami can sense your unease and squeezes your hands before leaning in to give you a small chaste kiss.

“Hey none of that kissing stuff yet, you have to wait for that my man!” Joe scolds, and everyone laughs including the two of you.

“Just trying to ease her nerves a little bit dude. Chill.” Rami laughs.

Joe clears his throat again and then launches into the actual wedding speeches he had planned. You had both told him that you didn’t care what he said as long as it wasn’t too gross, because Joe has a propensity for saying inappropriate things at the worst time.

All too quickly it was time for the vows and exchanging of the rings.

“YN, I just, I know I was supposed to have prepared something and I did, but here now in the moment I can’t remember what I wrote. I just want to say that from the first moment we met I knew that you were the one that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. You make me feel alive and so very loved. I could never imagine my life without you in it ever, and so if you’ll have me, will you allow me to love you every day for the rest of our lives? Because I want nothing more than to be yours, and only yours forever.” he says, with tears in his eyes. You knew he meant it all of his words were coming straight from his heart.

Your eyes filling with tears at the thoughtfulness, sincerity and absolute love behind his words. Choking back a small sob he continues on.

“So YN I make this promise to you now that I, Rami Said Malek,will love you and only you for the rest of our days. Through everything that life may throw at us. Ups and downs, sickness and health, and I promise that nothing will ever tear us apart. With this ring, I take you as my Wife, my one and only until death do us part.” he says, as he slides the ring that he’d had in his pocket onto your finger. Giving your hand a gentle squeeze his eyes shining with tears.

Joe turns to you and informs you quietly that it is your time to speak your vows.

“Rami, my love. I-I-Oh man-How do I follow that beautiful speech up?”you laugh and he chuckles.

“Rami, I too have known since we met that you were the only man that I would ever want. You make life an adventure everyday and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The way you love me, you make me laugh, you make me smile. I’ve never met anyone that has made me feel the way that you do and for that I’m glad. I hope that we have many more years of love and laughter. The joy you have brought to my life along with the chaos has always been worth it. I will love you until the day I die, and to answer your question; yes, yes I will allow you to me every day for the rest of our lives. I too want nothing more than to be yours, and only yours forever. So Rami I make this promise to you now that I, YFN/YMN/YLN, will love you and only you for the rest of our days. Through everything that life may throw at us. Ups and downs, sickness and health, and I promise that nothing will ever tear us apart. With this ring, I take you as my Husband, my one and only until death do us part.”you say, as you pull the ring you’d had on your right hand off, and slid it on his finger.

Joe just smiles at you two, knowing he has to speak quickly or else you’ll both jump the gun.

“So YN and Rami, now that you guys have officially declared your love for each other, I have one more important question to ask you.”

Both you and Rami look up at Joe, as Joe asks the question.

“Rami, do you take YN to be the wife of your days, the companion of your heart and the friend of your life? To stand united in the face of adversity and bask together in the light of good fortune? With these words spoken, and all those as yet unspoken, do you wish to marry YN and join your life with hers?”

“Oh my God I do! I do! I do!” he repeats while smiling up at you, eyes shining with unshed tears again.

Joe turns to you and asks the same question.

“YN, do you take Rami to be the husband of your days, the companion of your heart and the friend of your life? To stand united in the face of adversity and bask together in the light of good fortune? With these words spoken, and all those as yet unspoken, do you wish to marry Rami and join your life with his?”

“Yes! I do! I really fucking do!” you laugh out, and all of your friends and family join in, as you bring your hand to your mouth realizing what you had just said.

“Well folks, I think we know what happens next, don’t we? YN and Rami, you have expressed your love to one another through the commitment and promises you have just made. It is with these in mind that I pronounce you husband and wife. You have kissed a thousand times, maybe more. But today the feeling is new. No longer simply partners and best friends, you have become husband and wife and can now seal the agreement with a kiss. Today, your kiss is a promise. Rami, you now may kiss your bride.”

Joe barely finished before you found yourself being pulled closer to Rami.His hands coming up to your face as your lips crash together, your tongues dancing as your fingers thread through his hair. You can hear the various shouts and cheers from your friends and family. As soon as you pull apart, you both look up at the clock and realize that you had just had your first kiss at midnight, which is what you had planned for.

The fireworks began going off outside lighting up the room with their technicolor shades. Your family and friends began shouting “Happy New Year!” and also exchanging hugs and kisses, as you both just stand there wrapped in each other’s arms watching the fireworks display over the water.

@free-rami @xmxisxforxmaybe @mrhoemazzello @txmel @ramimedley @itsme690 @the-real-ramimalekpeen @hissom1933 @youthtea @r-ahh-mi @spacedustmazzello @imnottiredofgettingoveryou @ramimalekpan @itslula1991 @sasha–1996 @safinsscar @warmommy @mezzomercury @sassystrawberryk @happy-rami @alottanothing @ladyr0b0t

#rami malek #rami malek fluff #rami malek fanfiction #rami malek reader #rami malek x reader #rami malek x you #rami malek is adorable #this is pure fluff #sweetness #rami malek wedding #rami malek new years eve fluff #joe mazzello #joe makes an appearance #joe mazzello officiates a wedding

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lady-divine-writes · 5 years

Text

After 6000 Years, This Is Where We Begin (Rated PG)

(Some after wedding bliss, featuring my personal head canon that they get married at the Globe Theater and featuring the Queen song ‘You Take My Breath Away’)

You can reduce me to tears With a single sigh Please don’t cry anymore Every breath that you take Any sound that you make Is a whisper in my ear I could give up all my life for just one kiss I would surely die If you dismiss me from your love You take my breath away

Aziraphale smiles when Crowley holds him tighter, singing to himself at the start of the next verse.

So please don't go Don't leave me here all by myself I get ever so lonely from time to time

Crowley seems so calm, so at peace, so far removed from the demon Aziraphale knows, the one that feels every emotion that passes through his body so completely it tends to overwhelm him.

Here, beneath an indigo sky filled with stars, he’s finally found his bliss.

Aziraphale regrets interrupting it, but in a few short hours, it’ll be sunrise.

“Crowley, my dear?”

“Hmm-mmm?” Crowley mutters to the tune of the music.

“Everyone’s gone home. Hours ago, as a matter of fact.”

“So they have,” he replies, not lifting an eyelid to check.

“And the managers are going to want their theater back.”

“Probably.” Crowley rests his head further into the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, his breath ghosting his skin.

“Maybe we should leave, too? Get along home and put ourselves to bed?”

“No,” Crowley says without pause.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale chuckles.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley mimics. “How often do we get to dance like this, hmm? Alone underneath the stars?”

“We’ll find the time. I promise. It’ll be easier now. Besides, we’re not exactly alone.” Aziraphale catches sight of what’s left of the staff (the losers of a ‘straw draw’ Aziraphale saw them at earlier) seated at a table off to the corner playing cards while they wait for the happy couple to leave. The more understanding of the lot either ignore them or smile as they waltz by. One or two throw them glares of pure venom. “We’ll be living in your flat. There’s plenty of room to dance there. And we can miracle up some stars. If I recall correctly, you used to be pretty good at that sort of thing.”

Aziraphale feels Crowley’s steps slow, feels him frown against his neck, exhaling so deeply he flattens against Aziraphale’s body. Holy God above, does he wish he’d kept his mouth shut! Of all the things to bring up, and on this day in particular! It’d been perfect up till now!

Crowley was right. For a clever angel, he really could be quite stupid.

Aziraphale holds his breath, waiting for his demon to react – for him to pull away with a monotone, “Okay, then. Let’s run along home,” and lead him off to his Bentley, hands shoved in the pockets of his tuxedo trousers.

But he doesn’t.

He threads the fingers of his right hand with his angel’s left, his pinkie searching for, and finding, the band on Aziraphale’s ring finger. With a contented sounding exhale his smile returns, and in that moment, everything seems right with the world again.

“You’re the only miracle I need, angel. The only star in my sky.”

Aziraphale’s heart stutters – at the sentiment, its meaning, and the softness of his demon’s voice. “That’s rather romantic of you.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Maybe I am a little.”

“You don’t see me as a romantic?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s more that … you’re a romantic in actions, not so much words.”

“Well, then – in the spirit of active romance, I’ll make you a deal.”

“A deal?”

“Yup. I’m still a demon. Deals are what demons do.”

“All right. What’s the deal then?”

“Call me by my full name, angel, and I might consider going with you.”

“Your full name?” Aziraphale asks, confused.

“A-ha.”

“Who are you taking your cues from, then? Rumpelstiltskin?”

“Strike one.”

Aziraphale’s nose scrunches as he tries to determine what in the world Crowley is talking about. “Do you mean Anthony? Oh …” he groans “… you’re not still going on about that now, are you?”

“You’re just gonna have to try it and find out.”

“Oh, Lord.” Aziraphale shakes his head. “O-kay. Anthony Crowley, would you do me the honor of accompanying me home?”

Crowley snickers. “No. Because that’s not it, angel.”

Another soft groan from his angel has Crowley smirking.

“Anthony J Crowley?”

“Try again.”

Aziraphale racks his brain, trying to solve this riddle before sun up so that the tired group gathered in the corner can finally go home and get some rest. But when the answer occurs to him, thoughts of anyone but his husband siphon swiftly away. “Anthony J Crowley … Fell?”

Crowley smiles, and kisses his husband on the forehead. “That’s it.”

“I---I thought I would be going by Aziraphale Crowley now, if we decided to change our names at all.”

Crowley shrugs. “I think Crowley Fell makes more sense.”

“It sounds like a sentence,” Aziraphale says sadly. “One that’s a little too on the nose, as they say. I was afraid that it might bring back bad memories.”

“It does,” Crowley admits, “but I can’t keep running from my past. I mean, it’s been over 6000 years. I should start thinking about getting over it. Don’t you agree?”

“I would understand if you didn’t.”

“You know, Aziraphale, things didn’t end too badly for me after I fell.”

Aziraphale tilts his head questioningly. “How do you mean?”

“I got tossed out of Paradise in Heaven, but I found it again here on Earth. With you.”

Crowley looks down at his angel as Aziraphale looks up, their eyes meeting in between. Crowley stares at him long, lovingly even with those serpent eyes that seemed so inhuman to Aziraphale at first – a bright and blaring indicator his demonic magic couldn’t hide that he was who he was.

Evil.

They’re a warning for anyone who happens to see not to be fooled by his handsome exterior, as something truly wicked lies beneath.

But now, Aziraphale can’t imagine Crowley without them. It would be odd to see him with brown eyes. Or green. Aziraphale has tried to picture it before, unsuccessfully. The Crowley that Aziraphale knows – the one who has followed him through history, teased him, cajoled him, saved him, and then, finally, proclaimed his love for him, couldn’t look more lovely, more human, if he tried than he does in this moment. Aziraphale’s cheeks go pink beneath Crowley’s stare, but he can’t look away.

He doesn’t want to miss a thing about this moment.

“H-how long is all this romantic talk going to last, do you think?”

“Don’t know. But you should soak it up while you have the chance. Just in case.”

“I guess I should do. I do admit, I like how Crowley Fell sounds, but I like the idea of taking your name, too. Call me old fashioned, I guess.”

“We can always switch. We’ve switched bodies before, why not names?”

“True.”

The song ends and a new song begins. The tempo shifts, becomes upbeat, and Crowley spins Aziraphale quickly. He yelps at the change in speed, giggling with the giddy feeling of sailing the night air in the safety of his husband’s arms. When they return to the dance, however, he notices one young lady at the table has fallen asleep, head resting on her crossed arms. He knows she has children – 8, 6, and 3 – being watched by their dad while she works. He remembered overhearing something about the three-year-old being sick, and that the other two had to wake up early for school in the morning. If that’s her life, what about everyone else’s?

It tugs at his heart.

Plus, selfishly, he doesn’t want their wedding reception to be the thing these nine strangers curse come sunrise.

“Crowley?”

“Hmm?”

“The least we can do is help tidy up the place. That way, when we do leave these poor overworked and underpaid people to their tasks, they won’t have that to contend with.”

“Why? We paid for them to clean up. Not us.”

“Yes, and your silliness has caused them to miss their buses and trains.”

Crowley stops dancing. He looks at the staff layered at the table, two more in the process of putting their heads down for some shuteye, one nodding off sitting straight up, and rolls his eyes.

“Oh, all right then.”

Crowley snaps his fingers. The nine people at the table disappear without a sound. Aziraphale looks around in alarm.

“Wha---where did you send them?”

“I sent them home.”

“Whose home?” Aziraphale pictures them stuffed into some random one room flat, the first Crowley could think of, solely for the purpose of getting them out of the way.

“Their homes. They’re all fast asleep in their beds, dreaming about whatever they like best. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve been there since eleven. A reasonable time. Plus, they’ve each got themselves a hefty tip for the time we’ve wasted. I thought you’d like that.”

“I do.”

“Good. Now can we keep dancing?”

“And how long do you intend to keep dancing?” Aziraphale asks, though the answer no longer concerns him much seeing as the exhausted staff have been properly seen to.

“I don’t know. Till the stars fall out of the sky?”

“That sounds about right.” Aziraphale smiles, resting his head against his husband’s shoulder, melting back into the sway of slow dancing together, without a care in the world. “Of course, tours of the theater start at 9:30, so …”

“Shut it, angel.”

#Good Omens #ineffable husbands #aziraphale x crowley #crowley x aziraphale #frankie writes

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leiascully · 5 years

Text

Fic: Baseball Metaphors (15/15)

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of what, like Visitor, began as a one-shot and ended up a thirty thousand word journey. It’s possible that this is the epilogue of Deathly Hallows of epilogues, and if that’s true for you, please feel free to ignore it and live forever with Mulder and Scully in the throes of some truly epic afterglow. But I wanted to follow the thread a little further, and explore what their future might have been if this had been their present sometime in the middle of Season 3 (honestly, a terrible time to set it, given how many killer episodes and how much mytharc I ended up having to write out of their moderately peaceful life together). I’m sorry to say that it’s safe for work, PG at most.

Jenny won't take elopement for an answer, so Scully relents and lets her help plan the reception. Despite her dull taste in paint colors, Jenny turns out to have exquisite taste when it comes to planning weddings, and she and Scully talk flowers and place settings and the details of the reception dress for hours. She coaxes out all of the details Scully never thought she cared about as Mulder watches, fascinated. In another life Jenny would have made a great interrogator. Maybe even in this one.

They go to the wedding, of course. The minister is boring and the vows are boilerplate. Mulder slides his thumb smugly under the hem of Scully's dress. She smiles like an angel and pulls him into the garden during the reception so that he can keep the promise his thumb made. But they both cry, just a little. It's not because of Ethan and Jenny, they swear to each other. It's just the idea of weddings, of course. It's the idea that they, one day soon, will be standing up in front of each other and saying their various versions of same old words that somehow still mean something every time.

Eventually, the baby is born, and their time with Ethan and Jenny peters out, except for Scully's occasional wedding planning dates. She dandles the baby on her knee and discusses the merits of a veil versus a fascinator for the reception (the fascinator wins) while Jenny changes out the cabbage leaves in her nursing bra.

They get married in her mother's living room. Maggie isn't happy about the lack of a Catholic wedding necessarily, but she gives them her blessing as they join hands and promise themselves to each other, forever and ever. At least the priest makes house calls, Mulder thinks. They all sign the document afterwards and Scully's mother serves up cake and coffee. It's all very civilized. Scully glows in a dress she got from the department store. Mulder touches the white rose pinned to the lapel of his new bespoke suit. When everyone's plates are just crumbs and the cups are dregs, they hug Maggie and take their leave. She presses a horseshoe and a bell into Mulder's hands.

"Melissa would have wanted you to have it," she says. Scully cries.

That night in bed, they explore each other slowly, their hunger tempered now by months of indulgence. He spends so long after his first orgasm coaxing gentle climaxes out of her that she reaches down and finds him firm again, and she slides her leg over his hip and takes him in. They make love gazing into each other's eyes, as if each touch is part of a ritual that will keep them safe and whole and happy.

Only afterwards do they realize they forgot the condom.

The train from DC to Portland, Maine takes twelve hours, give or take. They spend most of it holding hands. Scully pages through the issues of JAMA she's never managed to catch up on. Mulder reads a treatise on alien behavior that someone sent him anonymously, sharing the most entertaining portions aloud with Scully.

The B&B may or may not be haunted, but it's picturesque as hell. They rent a car and drive into the woods and there it is, white clapboard and black gables spattered with wet leaves that the wind has pasted there. The bed is deep and soft and they spend the weekend hiking, eating, drinking wine by the fireplace, and making love with no barriers between them, holding their hope cupped in their palms like a candle flame in a breeze.

Scully doesn't get pregnant. It's just as well. They keep going out on cases. They dip in and out of the darkness of their own minds. Krycek reappears, the bad penny forever turning up. That's after the black oil, after the airport in Hong Kong.

"I should have made him my best man," Mulder muses, when everything's over, because there's nothing to do but whistle in the dark.

"Frohike would have been a better choice," Scully demurs.

At the reception, Byers gives a lovely toast and Frohike demands to dance with the bride. Langly tries to DJ. No one dances. It's a small party, but Teena Mulder comes down. She kisses Scully's cheek and presses a glass of wine into her hand. "I said the seven blessings," she says. "I always knew it would be you. Fox will know what to do."

He ducks his head. "Thank you, Mom."

She reaches up and strokes his cheek. "You're a good son, Fox. I think you'll make a good husband."

"He is," Scully says fiercely.

Teena's eyes soften. She nods. They drink the wine and Mulder steps on the glass. "Mazel tov," Teena says, and makes her excuses.

They don't tell anyone about the marriage, not even Skinner. Scully wears her ring on the chain around her neck, next to her cross. It seems safer that way. They do move in together, quietly, submitting separate change of address forms weeks apart. There's some kind of solace in coming to work in separate cars and opening the door of their new apartment to find the other one already waiting in a place that isn't filled with their own ghosts. Mulder keeps his old place too; it's a convenient place to meet up with his informants.

They fake his death there one day, when Scully is dying of cancer and Mulder is at the end of his rope. He comes back from the land of the lost with a chip for the back of her neck. Bill steps in front of him, a snarl on his face, but Maggie lays a hand on her son's arm.

"That's her husband," she says calmly, and weathers the hurricane of Bill's fury and confusion while Mulder coaxes Scully to sit up, kissing her dry cheek and whispering to her about miracles. She has the little bottle in one hand and her rosary in the other.

"You can't let go," he says. "I know I said 'til death do us part, but Scully, that can't be now." He kneels at her bedside and sobs against her thigh while she strokes his hair.

"I'll do it," she says, and he can hear that there isn't really hope in her voice, but she wants to spare him the agony of never having tried.

She gets better. They go to the doctor to discuss the ova from the facility Mulder found. The specialist thinks there's hope. It takes a few months, but eventually the test comes back positive. "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Scully," the specialist says, and neither of them correct her. The conspiracy they've been unraveling may be so much lint and chaff, but this is real. They put their hands together on her belly.

When they find Emily, the adoption agency is only too happy to let them fill out the paperwork. A nice young married couple, steady jobs, maybe a little on the dangerous side, but at least they've got good insurance and a government pension, right? And it can't be so risky, if Agent Scully is pregnant and still going in to the office. They have to tell Skinner after that. He doesn't look particularly surprised. They fly their daughter across the country and settle, dazed and dazzled, into some kind of routine.

At least their new place has a bedroom for her, and one for the baby on the way. They burn through a lot of their sick days, but Emily begins to grow and thrive and Scully's belly rounds. Mulder helps her with her reading at night; Scully coaxes her through math. It works. They're a family. When they bring home little William, Emily is delighted.

Cassandra Spender disappears from a bridge in Pennsylvania. Her son batters down the door to the basement, but they don't know much more than he does. Scully was home with Emily when the itching began, not in her neck but in her brain, but it was bathtime for Emily, and there were stories to be read, and then Mulder to hold her in the dark, and she never left DC.

Diana Fowley strides back into their lives, bearing news of a psychic child. She studies the ring on Scully's hand (no point in secrets anymore) and their family photos on the desk. "Congratulations," she says in a deliberately even voice. The door closes behind her with a click. She doesn't come back.

They go to Texas while Maggie watches the kids. Somehow they end up in Antarctica, but somehow they get back with all their fingers and toes and a few more insights into the vast global conspiracy that used to be the lodestar of their lives. They lose the X-Files for a little while, but they have other things that are important, like where Emily's other shoe is and whether there are any clean bottles to store breastmilk in and why Mulder's mother sends such expensive presents.

(Scully never goes to Africa. Mulder never goes to Oregon. Despite it all, they have their health and strength.)

They're happy. They still argue. One Christmas Eve, Mulder convinces Scully to leave the kids at her mother's and takes her ghosthunting for old time's sake. One strange day through a series of strange coincidences, Scully meets her ex at a hospital.

"All the choices we've made," she says later, blurry after a glass of wine, "they've all led to this moment."

"I'd make the same ones," he says.

"Me too," she says, taking his hand. "You know, the kids are in bed."

"Are you propositioning me, Agent Scully?" he asks, mocking outrage.

"It's my turn," she says, and leads him into their bedroom, and he thinks they just might live happily ever after after all.

#the x-files fic #xfiles au fic #canon divergent au #msr #mulder x scully #my fic #fic: baseball metaphors

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uruhaxrukifanfics · 5 years

Note

A suggestion where they break, but still love each other and Takanori misses Kouyou desperately. Lots of angst and pain.

Nine years.It had been nine years since Takanori had physically last seen Kouyou, letalone speak to him, and it was the most jarring experience he has experienced inall his twenty-seven years of life.

Kouyou wasbeautiful – he always thought as such – but the years made him heart-stopping-stunning,and Takanori downed his fourth flute of champagne when his mouth kept growingdry whenever their gazes locked, his heart beating far too hard in his chestand skipping a beat with a flutter when he noticed Kouyou’s double-glance, toomany glances to count.

Heshould have shredded the wedding invitation the moment he received it in themail from Kouyou’s sister. He should have played coy and feigned that it musthave gotten lost, or that his work schedule conflicted with the set date forthe ceremony. Honesty was the best policy: maybe he should have declined andadmitted that the very thought of thepossibility of seeing her brother made him stove up like a knee-jerk reaction.

Of course,he hadn’t. Takanori had checked the little box that he would bring a plus oneguest with him, called to RSVP – suffer through the loudest, sharpest squeal ofhappiness he’d ever heard with a fond smile – and look into booking a flight toHaneda’s airport. It wasn’t like he could lie himself out of it. He wanted to attend her wedding, and it fellaround the perfect timing since he planned to visit his parents for the needed timeoff away from work.

Except, hisplus one guest was no where within sight after a heated argument on the way tothe airport; he’d left him to show up by himself, and that knee-jerk reactionwas delayed and gave way for something that made his chest skitter instead ofcave in panic or throw up a wall of defense. In a room full of people, Kouyouwas all he saw. He hadn’t changed much; his face held elegance and maturity withall sharp angles, softened by small, subtle details Takanori remembered. Like thebarely noticeable tilt of his head when something caught his attention, a smallsmile curling the left corner of his mouth first before the right followed immediatelyafterwards. His hair is so long now,it made Takanori’s fingers itch to card through it and see if it’s as soft tothe touch as it looks and correct his loosened tie.

Instead,Takanori licked the lingering remnants of champagne from his lips as heldKouyou’s gaze from across the crowded room, passed his hand through his inkylocks that he took down from its ponytail to spill over his shoulders and, gesturingto his own tie with careful movement to mime fix it, slowly smiled back.

Automaticknee-jerk reaction.

¤ ¤ ¤

Takanoridrinks a lot of champagne that night because he needs it. Badly. It was a big,very miscalculated mistake, because when he found himself gravitating to meetKouyou in the middle of the taller’s endeavor to thread himself between guestand stranger alike, eyes shimmering with determination and something unreadablebeneath strings of tea light lanterns, he could only stare as Kouyou asked loudenough over the music, “Can I get you a drink?”

It was amistake, because Takanori agreed so fast it made them both share a laugh that dispelledwhat tension tried to settle between them.

It was a mistake, because he needed someone to take him back to his hotel, and Kouyou’s mother was so happy to see him (them, together like old times), he didn’t have the heart to reject her. Not while she looked at him with such hopeful eyes when she requested he pay her a visit tonight. So, of course he went.

Of course,Kouyou was staying with his mother. Of course, he offered to drive him there. He was going that way, anyway.

Of course, he noticed that Kouyou waswearing a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand as he watched him drive.

“You’remarried,” Takanori observed quietly with a hint of a small smile warming the slurof his voice.

“Engaged,”Kouyou corrected, catching the way Takanori’s eyebrows shot up in surpriseafter sparing him a glance to make sure he was okay. “For a couple of months,now.”

“Nofucking way,” Takanori breathed, something falling in his chest to settle heavilyin his stomach, taking his breath away, in that moment. “That’s– Kouyou, that’s…”That’s great, he wanted to say.He’s happy for him, truly. He just didn’t know how to get it out in the open inwords and he was at a loss of them. At least, that was what he believed as heswallowed around the steady constriction of his throat that worked hard to forceaway the lump of emotion lodged there. It made his eyes prickle with wet warmthand he blinked once, twice, tipping his head back to keep anything fromspilling with a soft tremor in his exhale.

Funny. Heremembered a time when they had made shitty rings out of cellophane wrappingfrom their cigarette cartons the night before Takanori had to catch a flightthat whisked him abroad for the university of his dreams and pressed promisesin the form of a deep kiss into the palm of each other’s hands, Kouyou’s eyesfocused on him with determination; soft round the edges by a love so… visceral,it was otherworldy. Nothing like anything Takanori had felt from another in hislife.

Somethingthat he never felt again with anyone else.

“Younever fell out of love with him, did you,” the voice of his (ex?)boyfriend yellsat him accusingly in his head, bouncing off the walls of his memory like a rubberball. “I know you’re going to thatwedding just because he’ll be there. Ifhe broke up with you, why are you even looking back?”

But he wasn’t looking back. Losing your boyfriend was one thing. Losing your best friend is another. But losing both at the same time? Kouyou had been both, and there wasn’t a single word to describe anything like it, except a heartbreaking pain Takanori wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. Just emptiness, as empty as one could feel when they just… stopped talking after trying their hand to remain friends; as empty as the box of keepsakes he would dump out to reread handwritten letters over and over; as empty as his eyes when he’d press play one more time on his phone to hear the loving voice messages Kouyou had left him over time.

He hadmoved on. Wounds heal with time, and once he was sure that internal ache in hischest was tolerable enough Takanori dated around, saw other people and pushedthose keepsakes he kept dear as far as he could under his bed to never touchagain. Out of sight, out of mind, people say. But that was the problem. Kouyouwas always on his mind, one way orthe other. It was the little things, the smallest thing that seemed so unimportantenough to rouse a spark of familiarity yet made him smile to himself all thesame before going on with his life. It was something he could live with.

But Takanorimissed him. Sometimes, in the beginning, he missed him so desperately, theemotional ache was strong enough to bring a man to his knees and make him yieldinstead of fight against it. After so many years of silence, so much time spenton healing and focusing on himself and other areas of his life, that longing steadilyreared its head in the silence of Kouyou’s car and Takanori rubbed at his eyesas subtly as he could. He never stopped missing him.

“Are you happy?” He asked quietly as the vehicle slowed to a stop at a traffic light, his eyes so full he feared they’d spill over if he blinked or looked anywhere else but at the roof of the car. It takes a moment to realize that Kouyou steers out of traffic to park on the side of the road and just… sit, the silence thick enough to cut with a knife.

“I don’thave any complaints, I think,” Kouyou softly admitted at long last, audiblyswallowing around something that makes his voice tighten just for a moment. It’sgone as soon as it surfaces. “I care about her. She makes me feel content.”

Takanorinodded, only to flinch in surprise as a tear swiftly tumbled down the round ofhis cheek and Kouyou’s eyes followed it immediately. But what winded, whatabsolutely gutted him was the soft,tender gaze Kouyou regarded him with; a look resembling the way one looked at Christmaslights on a wintry night, weighed by a reflected ache Takanori believed wasn’this place to assume; to think… to hope.

He forceda small smile. “Then that’s all that matters.” It didn’t last long. Not with Kouyou’s hand coveringhis in his lap, intertwining their fingers after a pause of hesitance;squeezing his hand in his hold with a shaky exhale. If he felt tears fall and wetthe back of his hand, roll over the curves of his knuckles, he didn’t say anything.And Takanori was grateful.

Takanorihad moved on. His life kept going with or without Kouyou by his side, and hefound peace, acceptance, with that a long time ago. Kouyou wasn’t someone heneeded, but who he wanted and god, did he want him. He always had. Theyweren’t the same person that they’d fallen in love with and he recognized thatenough to know that his feelings evolved along the way with him, and hisfeelings remained unchanged.

He neverhad stopped loving him, even when he had been at his worst. He would love himfor the rest of his life, and that… That, he was sure of.

He didn’tknow how to do otherwise.

#Uruki #uruhaxruki #drabble prompt #drabble request #thank you for the prompt request!♡#Anonymous

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vide0-nasties · 6 years

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hello you wonderful human being 👋 send you questions 9, 16, 24, 26. have a nice day~

hello to you, too, anon!! 👋👋👋 i had a pretty decent day, and i’ve got some asra-heavy answers for you bc i’m a SUCKER FOR ASRA.

9. Does your apprentice have any special abilities that youheadcanon and cannot accurately be expressed in the actual game? What are they?

How strange she felt explaining her ways to another. No onehad ever…remained interested long enough to investigate her workings. But hereis curious Asra, growing evermore ravenous with every answer she nervouslyfeeds him with her fingers.

What’s that face for?This place reeks of iron. Really? You cansmell it? I can always smell iron, and it stings from my nose to my gut. Why? My mother was a selkie, one of thegentle folk, and iron hurt her. Are you aselkie too? No, but I have her attributes. Large fingerwebs, dapples, enormousteeth. I nearly can’t drown, and I can outswim everyone I’ve ever met.

“What about the travelling witches? The Sisters?” he asks,half-sleeping with his head in her lap. The scar is still fresh to her, but hewouldn’t know.

“After my mother killed my father, I was adrift at sea ninegruesome days. A doctor helped me escape imprisonment, because I looked nearenough alike to her to be hanged. He sent me to the Sisters with his word, andthey began to train me,” she tells him, fingers in his hair, sweeping his temples.

“I thought,” Asra yawns, sinking into her touch, “I thoughtyou already knew magic.”

She shrugs. “Some. My mother refused to teach me, wanting meslavishly dependent, but I watched her and learned. When the Sisters took me,my skills were a danger, out of control. They gifted me reins. For that, I playedthe butcher and spilled blood on their behalf.”

Asra’s eyes fly open, mouth drawn into a hard frown, takingher wrist in his hand. “You’re not a tool, Eustacia. Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s all I’ve ever been, Asra.” She smiles and tucks a curlover his ear. “If it soothes you, technically I am a duchess. I inherited myfather’s duchy when he died.”

“You’re a what?!”

#’s 16, 24, and 26 under the cut!

16. Does your apprentice have any scars or tattoos? Whereare they? Describe them?

“You’re stunning,”Asra breathes, staring at her naked body for the hundredth time, “I have to look at you.”

Over the course of her life, she has turned her skin intoher very own holy text—green-black ink hammered and needled into the pallor ofher hide.

Eight-pointed stars representing the eight winds of chaosmagic sit on the backs of her hands. Patterns of sacred geometry wrap aroundand snake up her arms, her legs. Over her chest are potent sigils older thanher mother, runes more ancient than time. With these runes, and help from oneof the Sisters familiar with chaos magic, her back has made into a nearencyclopedia.

Little grotesques fight for space among the symbols:sharp-teethed bats, roaring lion’s heads, boars, roosters, snakes. One leopardseal, on the back of her calf. A feral looking pig on the top of her foot, alittle red hen on the other. “Sailor’s superstition. Pigs and chickens can’tswim. Sailor blown overboard? God will take mercy on the animals, take them toshore.”

Asra comes to a rooster hanging from the gallows on theinside of her calf. He smirks up at her through his lashes. “I know there’s astory behind this one. Tell me?” he purrs.

“My cock hangs below my knee. You wouldn’t believe how manybets I’ve won with him.”

The lines from her bottom lip to the dip of her throat—spiraling,intricate tangles. The phases of the moon, down the center of her forehead. “Haveyou ever been fourteen-years-old and wanting to piss off your mother?”

A bloated scar over her shoulder—a glance from a sword. Alumpy one around her knee—nearly lost her leg to a cannonball, and would haveif not for powerful healing magic. Cross-hatching over her palms—“Curse workand quick sigils, you know that, Asra.”

Vengeful gouges in her brow, an angry canyon pinching thefold of her nose and hugging the lean apple of her cheek. “You know I wasglassed,” she mutters, running her fingers down his thigh. “You were rightthere.”

“I know,” he tells her, taking her face in his hands andkissing the pallid markings. “I’ll never forget.”

They find each other’s hands and the scars they put there.Bite through your lover’s hand, unstopping until blood is drawn, and your loveis truly true. They had, filling their mouths with blood, and they wear theteeth marks like wedding rings.

24. Outside of magic-related workings, does your apprenticehave any hobbies? Do others know about this hobby or do they keep it a secret?

Eustacia has to keep herself entertained while alone at theshop, and that’s easier said than done for a person with the attention span ofa gnat or minnow. Always, she’s midway through a hundred projects andactivities.

Dozens of half-read books lie around her home, while thesame four get read and reread until the spines fall apart. Six crocheted blanketsin various stages of completion hide in a trunk under the bed, countless skeinsof yarn and spools of thread in a spectrum of colors dominate a wardrobe thatwas once meant only for clothes.

Handmade jewelry is forgotten unfinished among mountains ofhomebrewed and boutique makeup, only to be plucked to safety months later,finished, and forgotten in one of a half-dozen jewelry chests scattered onshelves.

The bathroom is a cacophony of homemade beauty spells andmundane cosmetics. Blessed lotions, charged bath salts, enchanted body scrubs,towels uncountable with runes stitched into the hems with black or red thread.Body butters, face masks, hand crèmes, lip balms, under-eye serums, hairtonics, pots of hair-stripping wax, what feels like thousands of oils, and a crateful of jars of hair wax and pomade.

It’s a miracle that it’s feasible to step foot insidewithout being killed by an avalanche of product.

Her many handmade nail lacquers sit in a chest next to amassively overstuffed, well-worn armchair, along with nail files, cuticlepushers, more oil and hand crème, andthe ingredients needed to curse and un-curse her nails to be unbreakable.

Sometimes, she wonders how Asra can manage to keep hissanity in the utter chaos and confusion, but when he returns from his travels,he’s so well-adjusted she’s left baffled. He’s also a terrible enabler. “Here,I saw this and thought you might like to give it a try,” he tells her,grinning.

26. How does your apprentice sleep? Do they sleep with a tonof pillows and blankets or none? Do they toss and turn? Weird things they do intheir sleep?

“Pick a hand,” Eustacia tells Asra, apropos of nothing, twofists held up.

He’s wary, and has every right to be. Usually, when shepulls this, bad things happen. That’s what happens when your first personalitytrait is usually given as ‘dangerouslyimpulsive.’ “…Left,” he says, pointing.

She groans and drops her hand. “Fucking hell—fuck me—god dammit. Get up. We’re making the bed before…ugh, we’re making the bed before bed tonight.”

Really, it’s not nearly as much of a chore as she makes itout to be in her head, despite the inexcusable amount of jewel-tone downpillows and blankets. Even the massive rabbit fur blanket on her side isn’t toounwieldy. Asra stands back and admires the freshly made bed, and looks to herwith a smile. “Now, if we take baths, we’ll sleep like the dead.”

“If I sewed you to the side of my head, I would never have abad idea again,” she tells him in agreement.

By nature, she’s nocturnal, and running the shop leaves herhateful and sleep deprived. Asra keeps strange hours himself, but she’s closedthe shop tomorrow in celebration of his return, and he has to push himself tostay awake with her. Freshly bathed, wearing clean clothes, they do make it tobed before the night has burned away.

At first, she faces away from him, battling her physicalnature and neediness, but she loses the fight. “Asra…?” she whispers into thedark, knowing he’s awake and thinking too hard.

He needs no further question, and they tangle together. Asrapresses close in her arms, head against her chest, and she curls around him,burying her face in his hair. “G’night, Eustacia,” he sighs, relaxing.

“Dream sweetly, master,” she bids him, holding the nape ofhis neck. He’s the only thing that’s ever felt like home, ever since she wokeup hearing his voice, feeling his hands, and smelling his scent.

Through the night, she shifts and turns about, but they’rehardly out of contact. He presses against her back, forehead against her neck.They sleep spine to spine. They wake only to grope for the other’s hand.

Asra manages to force his way half on top of her, and shedoesn’t even stir, letting him sleep against his shoulder. He doesn’t stir whenshe makes guttural, jerking noises deep in her throat, teeth snapping togetherwhen her jaw reacts. He calls it clonking and says it helps him to sleepbetter, because it lets him know she’s there.

In the morning, the bed is completely unmade, they smile ateach other under the blankets, and they won’t bother to make it again for twoweeks.

#holler holler get $#rags wrote a thing #Asra #OC: Eustacia #i didn't stick to the 300 word limit on half of these and i'm not ashamed #i'm surprised by the amount of fluff considering i'm me and i write what i write #thank you anon!!#Anonymous

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let-it-raines · 5 years

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Welllll since you're taking Second in Command prompts...how about a morning with them hanging out in bed??? I don't care when in the storyline. They were always so soft with each other, and I miss that 😍

They were so soft with each other, weren’t they? I loved writing them like that, so you know I’m always up to write more! I really thank you for asking for more and wanting it! That means the world to me that you still want to see extra scenes from this universe! 💕

This is, like, August of 2019 and they’ve been married for two months for reference. So I guess it would be part of that missing time I skipped over😊

“You have big hands.”

“What now?” he chuckles, flexing his fingers as he looks over at his wife whose eyes are fully focused on tracing her nails over his fingers as they lay under the covers in the dim light of their bedroom, only a little bit of the sun rising outside shining through the curtains.

“Your hands,” she mumbles, dropping his right palm and completely holding onto his left hand so that her fingers are focused on his wedding ring and the slightly rough callouses that he’s somehow gotten despite not spending a lot of his time working outside. It’s where he spends his free time, but it’s not as if he’s done manual labor his entire life. But still, he knows that he doesn’t have perfectly smooth and soft skin, not like Emma. He can feel hers now as her right leg is tucked between his thighs and as her fingers press into his skin. “Like, they’re not monstrously big, but compared to mine, they are.”

“Well, love, I am larger than you. Just in general and all.”

“Shut up,” Emma laughs, her eyes playfully shining as she leans forward and bites at his nose and then his upper lip, the sensation making its way down his spine while his eyes never leave hers.

He wonders if he’ll ever not be this in love with her. He sure as hell hopes not because this…he wants to spend all of his days laughing with Emma before either of them have managed to get out of bed. He knows that won’t happen, that it already doesn’t happen. They have too many early mornings where Emma is agitated without her coffee or he’s annoyed by how cold it is in the house. But for all of the years where he could only see her in the privacy of the pub in the middle of the night, he dreamed of being able to argue with her over the temperature of their room or what bedspread they wanted to cover the mattress.

Now he gets that. He gets to love her every day, and he doesn’t think that magic is ever going to go away, even if it presents itself in different ways. Maybe he’s simply a newlywed who is happy in his life and in his relationship and he’s enjoying it.

He truly does hope that he’s always this in love with Emma. She deserves it. Maybe he deserves it too.

“Tell me more about your fascination with my hands,” he whispers, lowering his voice and purposely darkening it as his brows lower and his lips tick up on the right. “I would think that you know all about them for all of the times that you have held them, for all of the times that I’ve made you scream out my name with them alone.”

Her nose scrunches up in that way that he’s partial to, the way that also makes her eyes crinkle. “I am not inflating your ego like that.”

“Oh come on now, darling,” he mumbles, leaning closer so that is lips brush over hers once, twice, three times, a fleeting touch that is so much and yet not enough. “You’re not one to shy away from a little dirty talk when you’re in the mood, and you were already working your way there.”

“I wasn’t being dirty, you jackass,” she murmurs right back, parting her mouth before she gently glides her lips over his, her mouth sucking on his bottom lip so that a sigh escapes from the back of his throat, his body inching close to her so that they’re almost completely pressed together. It’s lazy, slow, and he knows he could get lost in this, lost in Emma as a slow ache of pleasure spreads over his entire body. “I was simply talking about how much I love your hands.”

“Hmm,” he hums, taking her hands in his and stretching them out up over their heads as he twines their fingers together and holds them there. “Usually when a woman is talking about a part of my anatomy, she’s being the slightest bit naughty.”

“Yeah, you better only be talking about me there, bud.”

“Always,” he whispers, leaning down to kiss her again, reveling in the little gasp that comes from her throat while he continues to press himself down on top of her, gently rolling his hips into hers under the sea of white blankets. “You are the only woman allowed to talk about my anatomy. Well, Lizzie can too, but that’s only because she says my arms are stronger than her daddy’s when it comes to lifting her in the air.”

“Your arms are better than Liam’s.”

“You like my hands and my arms. Damn, do you like my shoulders too? What about my knees? My elbow? My right hip?”

“Everything but knees.”

“And why’s that?”

“They’re currently crushing my calf.”

He leans down to quickly press his lips against hers before rolling onto his back and tugging Emma with him, letting her settle her knees on either side of his hips as she lets go of his hands so that she can trail her fingers up his chest. Her eyes are focused on her ministrations as she twists his hair and then lets it go, repeating the motion over and over again as that familiar pleasurable sensation keeps making its way over his body.

“I love every part of you, Killian,” she says calmly, her eyes still not looking at him as they seem rather focused on his chest. She has always been rather fond of his chest. He enjoys that, enjoys her fascination with it. “You told me that once, that you’re a fan of every part of me. It was, like, one of those swoon worthy things that only you can get away with saying with that damn accent of yours, and I’ve never forgotten it.”

“It was true,” he admits, parting his lips as he smiles. He moves his hands from the mattress and grabs onto her wrists, pulling her away from messing with his chest hair so that he can hold onto her and be connected to her. “I’m a fan of every part of you, my love. Including your incredibly dainty little hands.”

“You’re being an asshole again.”

“I find that it’s a permanent state of being for me.”“It only took you twenty nine years to figure that out.”

“Eh, it took me about twenty five, but I decided not to say anything to you. Didn’t want you to break up with me.”

“I could still break up with you.”

“You wouldn’t because there’d be a hell of a lot of paperwork.”

“I do hate paperwork.”

“Exactly,” he chuckles, bringing her down a little bit closer to him. She looks so happy this morning with her cheeks slightly flushed against the tan of her skin. Her hair is all over the place, half of it falling out of its bun, and he knows that at some point today, hopefully soon, he plans on threading his hands through it all and tangling it a bit more. “And for that reason alone, you cannot divorce me.”

“That sounds like a solid reason. Though, should we really be joking about divorce two months into marriage?”

“What else are we going to joke about? Actual funny things?”

“You’re right. That sounds ridiculous.”

“C’mere, love,” he softly demands, tugging her down to completely land on top of him, her breasts pressed into his chest as her chin rests just below his.

“You beckoned me?” she giggles, the sound so airy and light and for what has to be the one millionth time, he wonders how he got so lucky to wander into her pub. He wonders how he got so lucky for her to give him the time of day and for her to fall in love with him in the same way that he fell in love with her.

“You are my favorite person,” he promises before gently biting her nose, mimicking her motions from earlier, “and I love you despite your weird obsession with my hands.”

“They’re very nice, very big hands.”

“All the better to hold you with, my dear.”

“Oh my God,” Emma sputters out, inching up his body before she presses her lips against his jaw and then his ear, settling herself at the spot that always seems to drive him mad with want.“You are a weird man, but I do love you. You know what would make me love you even more, though?”

“What?” he asks, releasing her grasp so that he can rub his hand up and down her back.

“If you’d make me some breakfast and then bring it to me.”

“You don’t want to come downstairs and help out with that?”

“Why do that when you have such capable hands?”

#second in command #sic prompts #cs prompts #cs fic #cs ff

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eddiespagheti · 6 years

Text

the echo i created outlasted my last breath

part three

The years pass fast. Amy doesn’t know how but her and Jake have been together for five years and all his clothes now live in her closet. They grow together, melt into one another.

Gina and Rosa move to California after Gina’s video is reposted by Rob Kardashian and she starts getting many business opportunities. Holt and Kevin renew their vows after almost thirty years together.

Gina and Rosa announce their marriage when they’ve been living in California for three years. Their wedding is set in Vegas and Gina appoints Amy as a bridesmaid and Rosa appoints Jake. Amy’s amazed at the hotel that Gina and Rosa are hosting their wedding at and wonders just how much getting re-vined by Rob Kardashian pays.

“Are you two here on your honeymoon?” the hotel employee asks as she types into the computer. They’re checking in for the wedding.

“Ah, no.” Jake answers. “We’re, um, we’re here for the Linetti-Diaz wedding.”

“Oh.” She nods and smiles awkwardly. Jake and Amy avoid looking at one another. Marriage is not something that they had discussed yet. But, obviously, the thought was heavy in their minds. It was unsaid, like children and missing soul mates are. She knew it was unhealthy and they should probably speak about the possibility of either of them finding a soul mate but it hurt too much to even think about.

Jake smiles awkwardly at her when she glances slightly him.

“How crazy was it for that lady to think we were married?” He asks hours later when they’ve showered and Jake is brushing her hair. It’s a nightly tradition and Jake had taken over when they moved in together.

“Super crazy.” she laughs but it sounds hollow. The elephant in the room makes it a little hard to breathe.

“I mean, it’s one thing if we were, you know, soul mates but we aren’t.” he begins. Amy tries to meet his eyes in the reflection of the mirror but he isn’t looking at her.

“Yeah.”

“Plus, what is marriage anyways? A piece of paper?” he continues. “And more debt to add? No, thank you.”

“Yup, that’s, that.” She says, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. It hurts that Jake had said it out loud. Sure, she’s thought it many times and she knows it to be true but for him to say it so nonchalant drives her a little crazy; makes her sad.

Jake notices the look on her face but doesn’t say anything.

He nods slowly and hands her the hairbrush. He leaves her alone in the restroom and Amy glances at herself in mirror, contemplating. In the last five years that she’s spent with him, there’s been instances in which she has had her doubts and it’s hard not to. With all the pitying looks once they comment that they are not soul mates and the fact that they will never have this, people flying from all over the country to witness them unifying themselves forever.

She braids her hair quickly and walks back into the room, turning the restroom light off. Jake sits in the bed, the TV remote in his hand. He meets her eyes as she walks into the room. She gets into bed with him and melts around him. Then, everything hits her. Amy in a big, poufy dress. Jake dancing with his mom around the lit dance floor. Gina blocking off the dance floor with her peacocky moves.

The kiss they would share. His hand wrapping tight around hers. The idea that they would be each other’s forever.

Jake is still looking at her when she opens her eyes again, his eyes mirroring hers. Both of them saying, I want it.

The wedding is more subdued than she thought it was going to be-there’s only three smoke machines, opposed to the six that Gina had first planned for. Gina has three pages’ worth of wedding vows and Rosa says a record breaking thirty words, with six of them being Gina’s name. The reception is beautiful, with lavender decorations and beautiful harp music playing.

“Wow.” Jake says as they walk in. Amy tightens her hand around his, remembering her imaginary wedding to Jake. They find their seats and sit with Holt, Kevin and the rest of the nine-nine.

Charles gets drunk off of strawberry wine and drunkenly starts a thirty-minute rambling speech. Amy gets up to go to the restroom during the twentieth minute and walks back into the reception and watches Terry carry him off the stage. Amy stands in the corner of the room as Holt clears his throat.

It’s his turn to give a toast.

“Emotional toasts do not come easy to me.” Holt begins. “But I do not need to search very deeply to talk about these two wonderful women. They love one another, that much is true.” Holt continues. “Love means lots of things. Love means overcoming all obstacles.” Amy looks over at Jake, already finding his eyes on her. There was a hollowness between them ever since Jake said that thing about marriage last night. She tried to ignore it but now, it shines brightly on his face. “Love means fighting to be together. Love warms you in the coldest of days and fills you in your emptiest.” Jake stands, makes his way over to her. “Love brings you joy in the moments that you need it most. It sustains you.” Holt raises his glass. “To Rosa and Gina.” The reception raises their glass in synchronization and repeat after Holt.

“Hey.” Jake says as he reaches her. The dance floor is opened again as couples begin inhabiting it. They push them towards the door as they dance.

“Hey.” They stare for a moment and then he continues.

“Last night, when I said,” he begins over the harp player playing again. “that marriage was just a piece of paper, I was lying. It’s not. At least with you it wouldn’t be.”

“Jake.” Her eyes begin to fill with tears.

“My parents were soul mates and just look how they turned out. So, I guess, I was a little cautious. Because if they couldn’t make it, even being soul mates, what’s to say that we could? But, honestly, I feel ridiculous for ever doubting anything at all. Holt is right: love is about overcoming obstacles and it’s about growing stronger because you do. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future or whether or not we’ll find our soul mates again but, all I know, is that I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“I love you, too. “ She smiles and threads their fingers together. “I can’t wait to spend the rest of it with you.”

“Maybe we don’t have to.” Jake begins. Amy narrows her eyes, wondering where he’s heading. “I’ve been thinking about it and…well, we are in Vegas.” He says.

“We are.” Her parents are going to kill her if she does this and they’re not there or even in the same state but, she loves him, she really does and, to be honest, her heart is going to beat out of her chest if she doesn’t do this right now.

Their eyes meet, the same thought running through their minds. They speed out of the reception, hands clasped together. She’s giddy with excitement. She laughs as Jake almost trips over his own feet as they run.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.” she mutters as Jake unlocks the car. Jake smiles at her over the roof. She grins back. When Jake turns on the car and begins to reverse, she sets her hand on his wrist, stopping him. “Wait, should we be doing this?”

“I want to marry you; do you want to marry me?”

Amy can’t keep the smile off of her face. “I want to marry you so bad.”

“Then, that’s it.” he laughs. “That’s all we need.”

“Jake, we don’t even have a ring.” she says, the worry now creeping onto her mind. What if this all fails? What if they’re making a huge mistake? Jake whips out his wallet and behind a crumpled dollar bill, out pops a ring.

Amy’s eyes widen. “It’s my great-grandmother’s ring. She gave it to my mom.” he explains. “Don’t worry, it’s not my parents’ cursed ring.”

“Jake…” she’s speechless. The ring is so beautiful and Amy can see it sparkling on her finger as the years pass. And Jake is thinking the same thing by the way he’s staring at her. “I don’t have a ring for you.” She replies quietly.

“I don’t care. I don’t need a ring.” he says. “I just want to marry you.”

Amy blinks away the tears from her eyes and leans in to kiss him.

“HONK!” a passing car scares them as they stay semi-parked, stopped in the middle of reversing. They giggle and Jake drives forward, parking in the space again.

“Sorry! I’m getting married!” he yells out the window; the passing driver flips him off.

There’s three chapels within a five-mile radius but there’s only one that has a line with less than ten couples. They sign the paperwork and then they’re ordered to sit in the pews and wait for their named to be called out. It’s less romantic than Amy was picturing but she ignores it as she begins to craft her vows in her head.

“My old Hebrew school teacher is probably turning over in her grave.” he mutters to her. Amy scrunches her nose as a girl throws up into her purse.

“So is my Catholic school teacher.” They wait for ten minutes until they’re called out. Amy straightens out her dress and follows Jake towards the front. Nervousness colors his features, and his hand shakes at it reaches over to her. She’s nervous, too but mostly excited.

Sure, the poufy dress that she had envisioned is actually a scratchy bridesmaid’s dress and there’s no harp music playing—instead, Taylor Swift plays over the loudspeakers. But, who is she kidding, Jake was probably going to convince her to dance their first dance to a Taylor song, anyway.

“Rings?” The Fake-Elvis asks. Jake hands over his ring and Amy has a quick idea. She grabs a bobby pin from her heavy up-do and twists it so it somewhat resembles a ring. Jake raises his eyebrows as Amy drops it into Elvis’ hand and she shrugs.

“For now.”

The wedding is quick. They don’t get a chance for those wedding vows. Still, in a miniscule lull, Amy manages to let it some quick words.

“It’s you. It’s always going to be you.” The words are short, almost nothing, but Jake’s eyes glisten as if she’s recited the most ornate poetry. They exchange rings and then Elvis calls them husband and wife. Then, they share their first kiss as a married couple. It doesn’t last as long as she hopes because the Fake-Elvis, in his cheaply made suit, calls for the next couple.

They hold hands all the way home and Amy has a hard time keeping her hands off of him. He kisses her when the light turns red and Amy can hear her heartbeat in her ears. They hardly make it to the hotel, almost crash twice. And as soon as the elevator doors close, he presses her against the wall and kisses her.

His hands shake as he unlocks their room door.

They fall into a mess on the bed. Amy’s partially grossed out at all the possible germs in the bed but when Jake kisses her, it’s all forgotten. She deepens the kiss, drunk off the pink bubbly wine. One of her hands starts undoing his tie.

“Wait.” he mutters and leaves her on the bed. He disappears to the restroom and returns with a towel. Amy grins and stands. He lays it on the bed and Amy flops back onto it.

“Thank you, Mr. Santiago.”

“You’re welcome, Mrs. Peralta.” he replies, impish grin on his face.

“We’ll discuss the name change later, right?” She wraps her arms around his neck, dragging his lips to hers. They kiss for a moment, everything else forgotten. He pulls away, ignoring her groan.

“First one to take off all their clothes gets to keep their own name.” He replies.

“Jake-” she begins, because they are not going to start their marriage--even thinking the words makes her giddy-- with childish things. But, Jake is grinning, his hair now uncombed and wild around his face; Amy remembers why she married him in the first place.

She pushes him off her and starts unzipping her dress. Jake, fumbles with his tie.

Later, when they shower, “their first time as a married couple” Jake keeps reminding her, they order some room service to celebrate.

There’s a knock in the door fifteen minutes later. “Should I open it or should we open it together—our first time as a married couple.” Jake asks from the bed. Amy knows that Jake isn’t going to get over that soon and she’s giddy, glad. She can’t stop thinking about the fact that now they’re bound for life—she ignores that little itch in her brain that reminds her of soul mates.

“Just open it Jake.” He bounces off the bed, grinning in his white robe and opens the door.

“Order for Mr. Santiago?” says the attendant over the door. Jake looks over at her and groans. Amy grins and continues combing her hair.

(She won.)

Gina is more upset at that fact that they missed her dancing with Rosa, than the fact that they skipped most of her wedding. She’s happy that she, in a roundabout way, dressed Amy. Everyone takes it great, Boyle more than some. Holt even gives them a whole week off so they can honeymoon. They go to Puerto Rico and return tan and full of plantains.

Her parents don’t take it as well as Jake’s mom. Her parents are upset at the fact that they not only got married on a whim, but at the fact that they didn’t tell them until after they returned from the honeymoon.

Her dad conciliates after Jake gives him a bottle of rum that they brought from Puerto Rico. Her mother is a little harder to appease but once she sees just how much Amy’s eyes sparkle as she looks at her new husband, she backs off.

Amy thinks that things are going to be different between them now that they’re married but things are exactly the same. Except, there’s now a ring on her finger and even on Jake’s. (He refused to take off the bobby-pin ring.)

She’s a little restless afterwards, waiting for something to happen. And although she doesn’t want to say it out loud, she knows exactly what she’s waiting for. She’s waiting for the rug to be pulled from under her. She’s waiting for that unapologetic surprise that is going to drop.

Except, it’s been six months since that night in Vegas and nothing has happened. It’s only a year later that she lets herself relax. She focuses on her sergeant’s exam and extinguishes all the bad energy from her life.

She stays up for days at a time, just reading and studying herself crazy. Jake, on the other hand, is extremely busy on a case with Boyle. They’re irritable around each other, both of them pulled thin with their different endeavors. She snaps at him when he leaves the milk out and comes home to it chunky and spoiled. He snaps back when she puts his stuff away in foreign drawers, which she responds is called organizing.

The night after a particularly bad fight, a fight that ends with tears and with Jake sleeping on the sofa, she cries quietly in her room. She thinks back to the past six years and wonders if it was even worth it. She wonders if this is it, the other shoe she was waiting to drop.

Amy is so caught up into her thoughts that she doesn’t hear the door creak open. She only feels the tightening of his arms around her. She melts into him.

“I’m sorry.” he mumbles, kissing under her ear.

She remembers what Holt said about love breaking and becoming stronger and she thinks that that she’s never felt as strong as she does when she’s around him.

She passes her sergeant’s exam with the highest score in years. Chief Garmin personally calls her and congratulates her. Amy is extremely happy, all points of her life covered. Her life calendar is almost complete.

There’s still one more blank, however, and that’s a baby. Three months into her new position, she realizes that she’s late. She doesn’t want to startle Jake so she doesn’t say anything and just let’s herself stew in the freak-out by herself. It’s the worst thing she can do. She starts losing weight despite all the stress-eating that she does. After a week of going back and forth, she breaks down and buys the test. She hides it deep in her purse and takes it in a gas station restroom. She urges for a cigarette and glares at the test as she realizes that she can’t smoke.

Instead, she bites her nails down to a stub and stares at the clock.

It’s negative. She sighs in relief and washes her hands three times.

Jake is going over a case when she arrives at home and she kisses his cheek as she takes off her coat.

“I’ve had the craziest week.”

“Oh, yeah? The Vulture driving you insane?” he asks. The Vulture had been working with the nine-nine over the last few weeks over a significant case.

“Well, yeah, but.” She laughs as she looks over the mail on the table. “I feel even silly for saying this, but, I thought I was pregnant.” Jake looks up quickly.

“What?”

“Yeah.” She shakes her head. “I was late and I took a pregnancy test. It was negative.”

“Wait, what? When?”

“I took the test today.” Jake looks confused as she looks at him. Amy feels the beginning of a fight springing and she feels with dread. She’s done something wrong.

“And you didn’t tell me?” he asks. “We’re married. We’re supposed to tell each other things like this.”

“I-” Amy struggles with a reply. But the truth is that telling Jake was the farthest thing from her mind. It was wrong and she knows it. “I’m sorry.” she replies. “I was scared.” she replies slowly. “I thought that my whole life was going to be put on pause if I was and I-I didn’t want to make it real.”

Jake hesitates. He still looks annoyed, eyes flecked with disappointment, and Amy realizes that perhaps he isn’t’ only mad at the fact that she didn’t tell him.

“You...wanted me to be pregnant.”

“Yes.” he replies automatically.

“Jake,” she lets out a breath from her lips and Jake looks down at the papers on the table. “I just got promoted. If I got pregnant that means that everything is going to have to be put on hold.”

“I know. I know. I just… don’t you ever want to have kids?” he asks softly.

“I do.” And she does. Before, when she was younger she dreamt of what her kids with her soul mate would look like.

But, now, she knows exactly what they’d look like. They’d have her eyes and his crazy hair. There’d be one girl who followed Jake around at every move and who watched Die Hard diligently with him. The other would follow her closely and listen as she listed crime statistics, as she used to when her father would list them.

“In the future…” she begins but doesn’t finish. Jake nods slowly, knowing how her sentence ends. “But, Jake, you know how risky it would be-”

“I don’t care.” Jake replies automatically. Amy, once again, remembers her brother and her niece. “All I care about is being with you.” he says. Amy smiles.

“I’m sorry for not telling you.” she replies. “That was the first thing I should’ve done. In the future, you will be the first person I tell; not the pharmacy clerk.”

Jake snorts. “I’m behind the pharmacy clerk? Is he the one who almost knocked you up or what?” Amy grins and walks over to him. Jake wraps his arms around her automatically. She closes her eyes as she hugs him.

Her body fills with longing for what’s probably never to come.

Gina and Rosa adopt a little girl with the greenest eyes that Amy has seen. Gina’s social media profiles are littered with pictures of the baby. Amy doesn’t give babies a second thought ever since that night that she and Jake spoke. Her career is going amazing and she’s right on her plan’s sake.

However, everything changes.

The two mothers and the new baby move back to Brooklyn. Amy and Jake visit them one quiet afternoon. Amy hasn’t carried a baby in years and she’s nervous. The baby is warm in her arms, and it smells like baby powder. Amy instantly softens. It throws up on Jake as soon as he carries it but that doesn’t erase the huge smile on his face.

They spend hours with the new mothers and the baby. Before leaving, Amy presses her finger to the cheek of the baby and nearly coos when it smiles at her.

Jake drives and sings along loudly to the radio while Amy stares out the window. Sometimes life doesn’t have to go according to plan, she thinks as they arrive home. She glances at her life calendar and admires it for a second before chucking it in the trash. And sometimes she doesn’t want it to.

Amy doesn’t even think twice before she stops taking her birth control. After advising with not only her gynecologist but three of her sisters in laws, she finds out that the pills still work for a short while after she stops taking them.

She doesn’t tell Jake yet, but she knows that he still wants it. He’s first to offer to babysit baby Lulu, Gina and Rosa’s baby. The baby softly adores Amy, her cries quieted by the feel of Amy’s arms around her. They’re watching her sleep when he tells him.

“I stopped taking my birth control pills two months ago.” Jake’s eyes snap to her quickly. Amy is not expecting him to attack her mouth but he does. She manages to pull away as he trips on her feet. “Jake, we can’t. We’re babysitting.”

“We’ll be quiet. Remember that time we stayed at your parents?” He asks, hands roaming all over her. Amy glares at him, her cheeks dashed with red. She all but blocked the fact that they were at her parent’s house that weekend.

Lulu starts crying and Jake drops his hands as Amy moves to pick her up. The baby quiets as Amy cradles her to her chest. Jake is watching with thinly veiled emotion in her eyes. He looks down at the baby and then up at her. “I can’t wait.” He says with a huge grin.

She sits on the edge of the tub, her fingers anxiously tapping on her thighs. She can hear Jake anxiously pacing in the other room. Nine months of trying. Fifteen tests.

All negative.

At first, they had brushed it off, thinking it had something to do with the birth control pills. But, when two months quickly turned to nine they began to get worried. Even more worried when test number three turned into fifteen. Now, as Amy holds test number sixteen in her hands, she sends a small prayer to the heavens.

Only one more minute to go.

If this one if negative too, it’s going to break her. Her phone starts to ring and Amy silences the alarm immediately.

Please, she pleads. Jake’s waiting at the door now and his face falls when she shakes her head.

Sixteen.

He follows her back to their room and sits next to her on the bed. There’s a moment of brief silence and then he says, “Maybe we can adopt.”

“Maybe.” She says, not really paying attention. She’s still thinking of how she can never get anything right. Her soul mate left her and now she can’t have a baby. The only good thing for her sits beside her, his warm hand resting on her leg and his caring eyes on her face.

This not only has to be hard for her but for him, too. She kisses him and he smiles softly.

“We can continue trying. We can even start right now.” Amy smiles at his attempt to cheer her up but shakes her head.

“I’m tired of trying. Maybe we just let it be? If it happens, it happens and if it doesn’t…” she finishes her sentence with a shrug and Jake nods, eyes solemn and understanding. Amy’s never been more thankful for him.

“You’re right. If it happens, it happens.”

It doesn’t happen, at least for a while. First, her brother finds his soul mate in his ex wife’s cousin and then Boyle and Genevieve have another baby—this one not adopted. They name him Jacob, after Jake obviously, and make them godparents. Holt stars preparing her for her lieutenants’ exam.

Jake secretly prepares for his sergeants’ one. They both pass and they celebrate at Shaw’s. They get blackout drunk and later stumble into bed.

She wakes up the next morning with a cotton-mouth and the worst hangover in her life. She’s half dressed and Jake snores in her ear. She wakes him up as she goes to the restroom to wash her teeth. He eyes her with bleary eyes as she puts on her glasses.

“Why am I wearing my shirt and jacket but not my bra?” she asks, holding up her lavender bra.

“I think we tried to have sex but fell asleep halfway through.” He answers gravelly.

“God. How drunk were we?”

“I think we might’ve called Linda Baker.”

“No! The one who stole my valedictorian spot?” she groans and sits on the bed, covering her eyes with her bra. How embarrassing.

“I’m pretty sure we bragged for like fifteen minutes straight.”

“God!” she groans and flops down on the bed, feet still planted on the ground. “I’m so embarrassed.”

He doesn’t move from the bed but reaches one hand and pats her head.

“It’s okay, lieutenants don’t cry.”

“Neither do sergeants.” She says. Jake sits up and grins at her.

“We’re pretty accomplished aren’t we?”

“Mhm.”

“Should we go out tonight and celebrate without the three bottles of tequila?”

“No. Let’s stay home and watch cartoons all day like two very accomplished individuals.”

“First, let’s finish what we started last night.” He says as he moves closer to her.

“And I’m already not wearing my bra.”

Three weeks later, Amy wakes up with the worst nausea she has ever had. She takes a pill and goes to work at her new precinct. But, it doesn’t stop. It continues.

“Maybe it was that chicken from last night.” Jake says as he rubs her back. Amy shakes her head.

“I only had salad.” She closes her eyes. It’s the thirteenth time in the past four weeks that she’s been kneeling over the toilet. Jake had offered to stay behind with her and take care of what they assumed was a bug. But, there's a little spec of hope in Amy's heart that she doesn't' want to scratch at with Jake in the building. She doesn't know what she's going to do if she's wrong and she has to see Jake staring at her with those wide eyes.

So, she tells him to go. He leaves, calling over his shoulder that he'll bring her chicken noodle soup from the deli downtown.

When she's sure he's gone, she creeps over to the cabinet. She pauses, unsure if she really wants to open this can of worms. It's been ten months since Sixteen and Amy still remembers the bitter taste of disappointment.

Still, she grabs the last test, the one hidden inside her tampon box, and opens it. The three minutes are endless and Amy gets deja vu to months before. She closes her eyes and prays.

When she opens them and sees the positive sign, she almost throws up and not from her symptoms.

Amy spends the rest of the day between drafting a letter to Jake, jumping off the walls in excitement and researching every single thing that she can about her pregnancy. (Even thinking the word gives her shivers). She’s a nervous ball of energy when Jake arrives that night, promised soup in his arm. She’s sitting in the sofa, trying to look casual and not trying to look like she spent the last thirty minutes crying and staring at her stomach in the mirror.

“Hey.” he says, closing the door with his foot. He tosses his bag and keys onto the table by the door. “Do you feel better?” He asks, microwaving the soup.

“Mhm.” she says with a nod. She wants to blurt it out but knows of the heart-attack she’d probably cause him and instead just watches him as he takes off his jacket and hangs it on one of the chairs. He smiles awkwardly at her eyes on him.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

“No.” She replies but she just can’t take it anymore. She walks over to him.

“Come on, tell me truth. Do I really have something on my face?” He wipes at his face; Amy grabs his hand and threads their fingers together. Jake narrows his eyes. “Did you have too much medicine?”

“No.” she grins. “Jake, I wasn’t really sick.” She hopes he gets the hint.

He doesn’t. “Oh, was it cramps?” She sighs but the realization slowly creeps onto his face. It starts with his mouth, jaw going slowly slack, and then finishes with his eyes, who soften and shine. “Really? After two years?” She nods, her own eyes getting misty. It’s been a long, long road.

“I took the test and it was positive. I still need to go the doctor and have her confirm it-”

He doesn’t let her finish and carries her, bringing her around in a circle. Then, he almost drops her, remembering the tiny being living inside her. “Sorry. Are you okay?” he grins widely.

The microphone beeps as the soup steams from inside but it’s unheard as the two idiots stare deeply into each other’s eyes.

The set an appointment for that weekend. They set not to tell the anybody until it’s officially confirmed. The time waiting for the results is grueling but she comes back and tells them that it’s true. Jake grasps her hand tightly.

“Do you know how far along I am?”

“Seven weeks. You’re still in the danger zone, at least for a week more.” She says. Amy nods. Almost two months with the little being inside of her and she had no clue. “Do you want to see it?”

The doctor makes her lie down and slathers a cold jelly on her stomach. And then, there it is. It looks like a peanut but what was she expecting? A fully formed baby? She glances over at Jake, who is staring intently at the screen.

“It’s too early to know the sex.” The doctor says. “But give it a few weeks.”

The little being in the computer screen moves around and Amy can’t believe it’s real. Almost two years wishing and praying for it and now here it is, finally. It’s surreal.

“I can’t believe this is real.” Jake murmurs, eyes glued to the screen. Neither can she.

"Or Lucia." Amy says as the elevator whirs.

"Mm...Nakatomi?" he asks nonchalantly, as if Amy hasn't seen Die Hard with him a million times.

"No Die Hard names." Jake groans but his smile doesn't fade. He's been wearing that smile they left the doctor’s office. The elevator doors open and they begin walking towards their apartment. Jake wraps his arm around her waist, fingertips reaching over to her stomach. She's not showing and she won't for a few months but that doesn't stop Jake for pressing his hand on her stomach at every chance he gets.

"What about Ophelia?"

"I like it." she nods. "Erica?"

He scrunches his nose. "There was a girl named Erica in my high school and she ripped off my nose ring once."

Amy laughs. As they turn the corner, they notice a man standing outside their apartment. He's about Jake's height with blonde hair and dark brown eyes. He's leaning against the door, tapping his foot impatiently.

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know.” She answers truthfully. The man notices them and he straightens, smiles widely.

“Amy Santiago?” he asks and Amy nods slowly. Jake’s hand on her hip tightens. “I-I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Amy’s entire soul freezes. “Amy,” he says, smiling. “It’s me.”

my voice it made an avalanche and buried a man i never knew / and when he died his widowed bride met your daddy and they made you

the rest of it

#brooklyn nine nine fic #Brooklyn Nine-Nine #b99 #b99 fic #peraltiago #jake and amy #idlewheelposts #the echo i created outlasted my last breath

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ourwonderlists · 6 years

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30 FASCINATING WEDDING FACTS!

1. In 1878, the New York Times ran its first wedding announcement for a black couple: Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce, the first black American to serve in the Senate, and Josephine Willson.

2. Speaking of law and order, in 2000, 120 inmates at Carandiru prison in San Paulo, Brazil married their fiancees, setting the Guinness world record for the largest wedding in a prison.

3. The longest-married couple on record is Herbert Fisher and Zelmyra Fisher. They were married for 86 years, 9 months, and 16 days, until the bride passed away in 2011. Their marriage advice? “Remember marriage is not a contest — never keep a score. God has put the two of you together on the same team to win.”

4. The phrase “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a silver sixpence in her shoe” symbolizes continuity, optimism for the future, borrowed happiness, fidelity, and wealth or good luck, respectively.

5. Because white is the color of mourning in Eastern cultures, white wedding dresses are uncommon.

6. Las Vegas is the top wedding destination with over 100,000 weddings a year, followed by Hawaii at 25,000 weddings a year.

7. Early Roman brides carried a bunch of herbs, such as garlic and rosemary, under their veils to symbolize fidelity and fertility and to ward off evil. These herbs served as a precursor to the modern bridal bouquet.

8. Wedding rings are often placed on the third finger of the left hand because ancient Egyptians believed the vein in that hand (which the Romans called the “vein of love”) ran directly to the heart.

9. Flower girls traditionally threw flower petals in the bride’s path to lead her to a sweet, plentiful future.

10. Guests in ancient times would tear off part of the bride’s gown as tokens of good luck, leading to the tradition of the bride throwing both her garter and her bouquet.

11. The phrase “tying the knot” initially came from an ancient Babylonian custom in which threads from the clothes of both the bride and bridegroom were tied in a knot to symbolize the couple’s union. Literally tying some type of ceremonial knot at a wedding ceremony can be found across cultures.

12. A wedding cake is traditionally a symbol of good luck and fertility and has been a part of wedding celebrations since Roman times, when a small bun, symbolizing fertility, was broken above the bride’s head at the close of the ceremony. During the Middle Ages, custom required the bride and groom to kiss over small cakes.

13. Pope Innocent III (1160/1-1216) declared that a waiting period should be observed between betrothal and marriage, which led to separate engagement and wedding rings. The first recorded account of a diamond engagement ring was in 1477 when King Maximilian I of Germany (1459-1519) proposed to Mary of Burgundy (1457-1482) and offered her a diamond to seal his vow.

14. Throwing rice at weddings symbolizes fertility, prosperity, and bounty. In some countries, the bride might even carry or wear sheaves of grain. However, some modern churches and wedding locations discourage rice throwing because of the pervasive, yet mistaken, belief that rice can be fatal for birds who eat it. 15. To ensure fertility, the Irish would take a hen that was about to lay an egg and tie it to the wedding bed.

16. Oriental wedding dresses often display embroidered cranes, which are symbols of life-long fidelity. At Japanese weddings, the presence of 1001 white paper origami cranes is considered good luck.

17. In Europe during the Middle Ages, the lord of the manor had a legal right to spend the first night with any non-noble bride on his land (“le droit du seigneur” or “right of the lord”).

18. In Ethiopia, women from certain tribes, place plates in their lower lip in order to entice a rich groom. The larger the protruding lip, the more a groom will pay.

19. Some scholars claim the word “honeymoon” comes from the Teutonic custom when newlyweds would hide out and drink hydromel (a fermented honey and water mixture) for 30 days until the moon waned.

20. More than 40% of couples now plan their weddings together, and three out of four grooms help select items for their wedding gift registries.

21. The superstition that the bridegroom must not see his bride before the wedding stems from the days when marriages were arranged and the groom might never have seen the bride. There was the chance that if he saw her, he might bolt. Other sources say that to see the bride in her dress is peering into the future, which can bring bad luck.

22. Queen Victoria’s wedding cake was three yards wide and weighed 300 pounds.

23. Queen Elizabeth II had 12 wedding cakes. The one she cut at her wedding was nine feet tall and weighed 500 pounds.

24. Wedding bells are an important symbol of a wedding. Traditionally, it was believed that demons were scared off by loud sounds, so following a wedding ceremony, anything that could make noise was used to create a diversion.

25. The bachelor or stag party supposedly started in fifth-century Sparta where military compatriots would feast and toast one another on the eve of a wedding, like warriors going to battle.

26. Before the 1500s, couples in Europe were free to marry themselves. It wasn’t until 1564 when the Council of Trent declared marriage was a sacrament that weddings became the province of priests and churches.

27. In the United States, June is the most popular month for weddings, followed by August.

28. Nearly $72 billion is spent on weddings every year in the United States.

29. Before the church declared marriage a sacrament, couples often sought sacred places in nature to wed, such as a hilltop or cliff, where the earth supposedly meets heaven.

30. In England, before literacy rates were high, invitations to weddings were shouted out by “bidders,” who were old men hired to announced the details of the wedding.

#Wedding Facts

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staystrange · 6 years

Text

happy halloveen | chapter 3: bonus

Jake and Amy’s individual POVs of the HalloVeen episode, but with way more backstory, plus a bonus chapter. I just wish the episode was longer than twenty minutes so the writers could have fit even more details into the episode!! But since they couldn’t, I wrote them myself : )

read on ao3 | ff.net | wattpad

Jake and Amy were the last to leave Shaw’s that night.

They didn’t even notice that everyone had left at first; they were too busy with each other, still absorbing the fact that they were actually engaged. Charles was treating everyone to drinks in celebration of their engagement, and normally Jake never passed up free drinks, but tonight was certainly not normal. He turned away from the bar after just two beers; he wanted to remember every single second of this, and there was no way he’d be able to if he didn’t stay sober. It was hard for Jake to care when Amy was replacing every drink he would have had with kisses and “I love you”s.

Amy. She’d barely left his side all night, leaning into Jake when he gently wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She too was insistent on remembering this night at Shaw’s, so the squad only got to see One-Drink Amy that night, much to Rosa’s disappointment. “Going out for drinks isn’t any fun if you guys don’t drink,” she mumbled, but even she couldn’t hide the grin threatening to emerge on her lips.

Everyone in the squad had snuck occasional (constant, in Charles’s case) glances at the newly-engaged couple throughout the night, but Jake and Amy only had eyes for each other. For Jake, the way her eyes shone brighter than the stars (whether from the light in the bar or from the tears or both, Jake couldn’t tell), the way her hair was just slightly rumpled from when he ran his fingers through her hair, and the way her fingers were threaded through his own, the two stones on the ring glittering. For Amy, the way he couldn’t keep that one dopey expression of disbelief off of his face; the way he couldn’t stop saying, “oh my God, you’re my fiancée” over and over again; and the way he unconsciously rubbed circles into her back, tethering her back to reality when she got lost in daydreams about what their wedding would be like. Granted, she did already have a wedding binder prepared at home, but there was no shame in adding to it.

The night had been spent talking about their relationship, slow dancing together on the makeshift dance floor to super cheesy songs, and just enjoying the company of everyone around them. The Nine-Nine were Jake and Amy’s family, and they were so happy they were sharing this milestone in their lives with them.

Eventually, the night crept into morning, and the bar had to close. Jake and Amy were both genuinely surprised at how much time had passed without them noticing and at the fact that everyone had left without saying goodbye (“We did!” Charles protested later when Jake asked him about it. “You guys were just too focused on each other to hear us.” Rosa backed him up.) When the bartender that night apologetically told them that they had to leave, they both just smiled, grabbed their jackets, and walked out of the bar, hands swinging between them.

When they arrived home, Jake took off his jacket and watched as Amy carefully hung hers up in the small coat closet by the front door of the apartment. He wanted more than anything to just make out with her (and, most likely, more, at least if Amy wanted to), but more than that, he just wanted to talk to her with the covers pulled over them, their bodies radiating heat. Amy turned to him, smiling when she saw him just standing there, lost in thought, that dopey expression back on his face.

“What are you thinking about, babe?” Amy asked, smiling softly at Jake.

“Just how much I love you,” he replied. He hung up his jacket and took Amy’s hand. “Want to lie down for a while?”

Amy raised her eyebrows suggestively, but Jake shook his head, and Amy nodded. “Sure.”

Amy let him lead her to their bed, pulling the perfectly made covers back and gesturing to the spot where Amy slept every night. Jake climbed into the other side of the bed, and Amy gently lay her head down against his chest. Her right arm was hidden by the thick blankets, but she proudly displayed her left hand in between them, changing the angle of her hand so the light reflected pretty patterns from the ring onto the walls. “How long did you have this planned?” she said quietly.

“Well,” Jake began, “as I said earlier, I got the general idea on April 28. But I didn’t think of the actual proposal idea until I was in prison.” Amy audibly gasped, and Jake bit his lip in thought, the memories of his time in jail still fresh and vivid in his mind. “Planning the intricate details of it got me through each day I was locked in there.”

“Babe,” Amy said, reaching for his right hand with her left, the ring cold against his skin. “That’s all over now. What matters is that you’re safe and that we’re together and that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.” She couldn’t help but grin.

“Heck yeah we are!” Jake replied. “But yeah, I had a whole document filled with ideas before I left; I would have made an idea binder for you to keep afterward, but you would have discovered it and figured my plans out in about five seconds, so I hid it on my laptop instead. Not as fun, but definitely more practical. I can’t believe it took me until I was alone in prison to think of proposing on Halloween. I couldn’t believe I had actually managed to think of the perfect proposal idea. And the worst part was that I didn’t have any paper to write on. Do you know how difficult it is to plan something without paper to write on? It’s difficult, let me tell you.” His eyes softened. “But seriously, I just kept reminding myself that whether I stayed there for a month or fifteen years, you would still be here when I got back, and I would propose to you during the next Halloween Heist.”

“And you did.” Amy glanced down at the ring on her finger.

“Yeah.” Jake beamed. “I did.” He looked down at their intertwined fingers, rubbing his thumb gently over the soft skin of her hand.

“You know, I didn’t expect to ever get engaged,” Amy said suddenly, Jake looking up at her with crinkled skin between his furrowed eyebrows, “at least not to someone I actually loved.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “I always thought being truly happy about getting married was only for beautiful, perfect girls with perfect lives who found their fairytale happy ending while they were still really young.” She pulled her hand away from Jake’s for a moment to tuck her hair behind both of her ears, returning her hand to its place in his once she finished. “When I turned thirty, I thought that was it for me. Every relationship I’d ever had was so wrong, like, it looked good to everyone else, but to me, I felt like I was forcing myself to love every single one of those men. I would keep the relationship going with them until it felt like it was getting too serious, at which point I would come up with some dumb excuse to break up and plan it out so I didn’t upset the guy too much. Sometimes, they even broke up with me first. They told me I was too nerdy, too weird, too obsessed with Jeopardy! for her own good.” Her next breath was shaky, whether from sadness or happiness, she couldn’t tell. “When I started dating Teddy, I knew a few months in that I didn’t love him, but I figured he was my best option. I was all set to let him propose to me and call it quits, but then you swooped in and ruined everything.” She grinned, and so did Jake.

“Ruined everything, huh?”

“Mmhmm,” Amy replied. “But then I fell in love with you, and I finally understood what people meant when they talked about love. And then you proposed, and now I’m getting the happy ending I never even dreamed that I could have.” Jake kissed her temple gently, pulling her closer. “Sorry that I just brought all of that up and ruined our perfect night.”

“Who said anything about tonight be ruined? And who said ruining something was a bad thing?” Jake pointed out, and Amy laughed. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

“Thank you for finally getting your act together and kissing me in the evidence room,” Amy replied.

“Thank you for putting up with my crazy.”

“I love you, Amy.”

“Noice. Smort. I love you too, Jake.”

“Hey, I just realized,” Jake said suddenly. “We need to cross ‘get engaged’ off of the life plan.” He reached into the drawer in his bedside table, shuffling everything around a bit until he found a Sharpie. He carefully stood up on the bed, pulling Amy to her feet beside him. “Would you like to do the honors?”

“I would love to,” Amy replied. She took the Sharpie from Jake’s hand and filled in the box next to the words “get engaged”. A tear slipped down her cheek, and Jake immediately wiped it away.

Amy handed the Sharpie back to Jake, and they jumped off of the bed and onto the floor. “I think we should celebrate. Want a drink?” Amy asked.

“Ames, I thought we weren’t getting drunk tonight.”

“Who said anything about alcohol?” Amy replied, smirking. She ran into the kitchen and returned with an unopened bottle of orange soda and two cups.

Jake had never loved her more.

1. I don't remember what I originally had planned for this, but I'm definitely happy with how it came out. 2. I'm sorry that it's so short, but I hope that the fluffiness makes up for it : ) 3. This is the end of this little series, but I'm starting a "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and "The Good Place" crossover fic that should have its first chapter up next week, and I have a heck of a lot more planned for after that. Seriously, you guys have no idea how long my list of ideas is.

Thank you guys so much for reading as always!! If you have a request for a fic or just want to say hi, send me an ask or a message : )

#original #fanfiction #happy halloveen #5x04 #halloveen #peraltiago #jake peralta #amy santiago #brooklyn nine nine #ao3 #ffnet #wattpad #canon compliant #fluff

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