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coeurdastronaute · 3 years

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Essays in Existentialism: Christmas Day 34

previously on Christmas

Polo Xmas prompt: Lexa gets auctioned off as a date for charity to support a good cause. Clarke gets jealous and tries to bid on her but loses. Thanks!

“You’re late!”

“Not that late,” Clarke furrowed as she adjusted her dress slightly.

“Fashionably late,” Lexa offered after checking her watch. “Hardly noticeable.”

The annual Christmas Charity Gala illuminated the museum. The carpet was hidden beneath the white tents, protecting the visitors from the dazzling flurry of perfectly timed snow. Lights hung from every available eave, while brilliant Christmas trees glowed throughout the exhibits. The main hall was a sea of black ties and festive gowns, of fancy hair and cologne, of happy couples and wishes of merriment.

Immediately set upon by Raven as they walked past the cameras and coat check, there hadn’t been even a second to really take in the winter magic that existed for the benefit Marcus began with Abby’s help. It was the social event of the season, and Lexa considered her boss to have outdone himself more so than ever before, and she’d been to quite a few Kane parties in her time with him. Tables here were going for no less than $50,000. He was ready to set records, even in philanthropy.

As Clarke finished fidgeting, she met her friend’s eye. Lexa’s hand remained on her back and she felt the flush of the warmth of the building finally hit her cheeks. Nothing was noticeably out of place. She was reasonably put together.

“Seriously?” Raven groaned, shaking her head at the couple. “The limo?”

“What? No… what do you mean?”

Stoic and unbothered, Lexa squeezed Clarke’s arm subtly, tucking her other hand into her pocket. Raven was completely right, and she was almost slightly proud of the fact that it was almost apparent on her girlfriend’s face as to why they were late. She got a smug grin and surveyed the rest of the party.

“I’ll let Marcus know you’re here,” Raven rolled her eyes as she turned to walk away, only to pause and give them another look before departing.

For a moment, Clarke stood there and looked over her dress before looking over her girlfriend’s completely unrumpled tux and tie and hair.

“How did she know?”

“You tend to have a glow about you.”

“I do not,”Clarke disagreed. She found a reflective surface and checked her make up while Lexa found them glasses of champagne, snagged from a quickly moving waiter’s tray. “If anyone should have a glow it’s you,” she accused. “I’m damn good in a limo and you’re lucky to have me.”

“Oh, I know, princesa.”

“There’s no way she could know though. Not for certain.”

“She knows.”

“Shut up.”

With a calming gulp, Clarke held her glass and for the first time since arriving, surveyed the party as they walked through toward the main area in hopes of finding familiar faces.

“You weren’t saying that twenty minutes ago,” Lexa reminded her. “I believe your exact words were something about my outfit.”

There was a blush near her collar bones at the recent memory, but Clarke didn’t break this time, instead taking another sip of her drink.

“Do you like my dress?”

Lexa looked it over again, for well about the hundredth time and remained completely in love with how her girlfriend looked in it. She nodded as she took a drink herself.

“You know I think you look amazing in it.”

“Good. Then forget what just happened in the limo.”

“I could never.”

“It’s the smugness. It’s unattractive.”

“Is it though?” Lexa grinned.

They stood close as they found their table, pausing before Lexa pulled out the chair to offer to her girlfriend. She kissed Clarke’s cheek before taking her own seat as well, happy to be near her, happy to be at an even like this for the first time ever in her life. There’d been many times she’d been on the arm of someone, but never had she been so happy to have Clarke on her’s.

“You might want to hide that smugness, there, tiger,” Clarke offered, looking over her shoulder at the familiar form approaching.

“I don’t know if it’s possible. You do remember what I did to you in the--”

“Dad! Hey!”

Clarke rolled her eyes to see that the smugness didn’t leave Lexa, though she did stop talking, which was important. It was the season of giving, and Clarke was proud, too proud often, and she was not great at accepting, except with it came to Lexa. With Lexa, she took everything.

Lexa stood as quickly as she sat, careful to button her coat before grabbing Clarke’s chair for her to hug her father. She did everything in her power to stop thinking about the limo.

“Looks like this is the family table. Your mother was kind enough to put us all together after taking my very large check. How are you, Lexa?”

“Doing well, sir. Nice to see you.”

Gripping his hand, Lexa met his eyes and nodded. He smiled kindly, and he had Clarke’s eyes. It was disarming in a way.

“You look great, honey,” he kissed his daughter’s cheek. Once more, Lexa pulled out the chair.

“You clean up alright, too. Is Mom auctioning you, too?”

“She is, and here I thought the divorce was enough to get rid of me.”

Despite herself, Lexa smiled into her glass as the patriarch of one of the largest companies on the planet signaled for a drink as well. Clarke sighed audibly at her father’s jab.

“Clarke’s annoyed that I was volunteered,” Lexa offered, earning a nudge from an elbow.

“She never did share well,” he shrugged, chuckling at his daughter’s misfortune.

“There’s only one limo I plan on going home in tonight,” the polo player promised.

“Maybe you both will find true love tonight as you’re sold like slabs of meat on the auction block. I don’t understand why they can’t just do a silent auction.”

“Oh, she is a bit jealous, isn’t she?” Jake observed.

“I was just hoping to get her to take me to lunch more.”

“Are you going to bid on your girlfriend?”

“No. I get her for free. I’m not going to spend your money.”

“You can bid on your old man, if you want,” Jake explained. “I’d hate to get stuck at some lunch with some mad woman or man, plus it’d be nice to catch up.”

“You’re really not going to bid on me?” Lexa furrowed.

“You signed up to go on a date with a stranger, and so I’m going to oblige.”

“That’s not what I--”

“Okay, you two, let’s go,” Raven appeared, slightly out of breath. “Abby is running me ragged looking for the talent.”

“Now you’re making me sound like a pornstar.”

“If you go for a high enough price, who knows,” she retorted. “Come on.”

“Good luck,” Clarke offered as Lexa leaned down for a kiss. “I hope you go for higher than my dad. That’d be embarrassing.”

“Remember when I said you were beautiful in that dress?”

“Mhm.”

“I love you.”

“I know,” Clarke smiled. “I’ll see you after.”

XXXXXXXXXXX

Left to her own devices, Clarke finally took stock of the past hour of her life and ventured a moment to think of the next one. There was something magical about Lexa showing up in the limo, dressed to the nines, her hair perfect and tamed, or at least as much as it could be. It lived forever in her mind, that image of a dashing girl, adjusting her watch at the foot of the stairs, the look she got when Clarke walked down the steps.

She was smitten with the polo player. She was more smitten than she could ever remember being, and she didn’t want anyone else going to lunch with her girlfriend.

Exchanging pleasantries with the rest of her table before her friend returned, Clarke did everything she could to put the events of the limo out of her mind. There was something about how sexy Lexa was, and how her hands were always everywhere, and her lips were always so warm. It was alarming to want someone so much. It was new for Clarke.

Beneath the small tree in her apartment, there were little gifts, already wrapped and ready for Lexa. There were plans, already, for that morning.

“There is going to be a feeding frenzy over your dad and girlfriend.”

“How’s he doing backstage? He hates attention.”

“I might bid on him myself, honestly.”

“Did he say he’d bank roll you to get him out of it?”

“Even if he did, I’d hold him to a date.”

“Ew on so many levels,” Clarke laughed.

“Him and Lexa are actually gossiping about watches and junk. They’re kind of adorable together. You might have to bring her around more,” Raven explained as she grabbed another glass of champagne.

“I don’t know if I’m more afraid of them getting along or not getting along.”

XXXXXXXXXX

“Next up, we have perhaps the most eligible bachelor in all of New York City. You know him as the CEo of Griffin, and I know him as the father of my child, I give you, Jake Griffin.”

Abby applauded as the CEO sheepishly made his way out onto the catwalk toward the stand.

“Jake loves Italian food and Westerns. He’s run the NYC marathon five out of the last seven years and practices kickboxing with his daughter at least once a week. A proud alumni of Columbia, he’s become an affiliate professor teaching business classes part time at the community college.”

On the stage, Clarke’s father waved and put his other hand in his pocket.

“Bidding will start at five thousand for a wonderful lunch date while you tour the city from the water on his private yacht.”

“Five right here!” Raven yelled, lifting her paddle quickly.

“Stop!” Clarke rolled her eyes.

The bidding went higher and higher as Jake gave his daughter a confused glance. She just gave him a thumbs up and laughed at the entire thing.

“Remember, ‘tis the season, everyone,” Abby added. “We have fifty-five going once, going twice, and sold!”

Surprised as he was, Jake nodded and smiled toward the crowds. He offered a quick wave before retreating to the safety of the backstage.

“Next up, we have someone who needs no introduction, though I am going to give her one anyway.”

Unlike her predecessor, Lexa came out, prepared for the season, clad in a bright red Santa hat and sporting a very mischievous smile.

“The championship polo player and current model for Patek Philippe, Calvin Kline, and Ralph Lauren is fluent in four languages and enjoys spending the day snuggled up with a good book, something she’s done a lot of with a Masters in Latin American Literature.”

In a similar movement, Lexa waved toward the crowd and shoved a hand in her pocket, however she knew how to work a crowd and walk a runway, much to her girlfriend's faux chagrin. Lexa knew Clarke wasn’t one to get jealous, but she appreciated the display. She appreciated feeling wanted and protected, as if somehow the girl in the green and red gown would fight anyone who bid.

“Lexa Woods is an accomplished athlete. She’s an Olympian for her native Argentina, enjoys a hearty red wine, and spending time with her ponies. We’ll start the bidding at ten thousand.”

“Fifty thousand,” Clarke called out after a few people lifted their paddles.

It grew a little quieter for a moment.

“Sixty!” a voice rang out from another table, though Clarke couldn’t see where it was coming from exactly in the hubbub of the large hall.

“Seventy,” another joined, the crowd getting into it.

“Eighty!” Clarke interjected, earning a look from her mother.

“Ninety.”

“One hundred.”

Clarke lowered her paddle and rolled her eyes.

All said and done, Lexa went for a record $183,000 and Clarke found herself somewhat proud of that number, just as Lexa looked floored by the final result before escaping backstage as well. But it was for charity, and Clarke was relieved to see that the winning bid was to an older woman.

XXXXXXXXXX

“I’m sorry I didn’t keep bidding on you,” Clarke mumbled as she plopped down onto the bed in the hotel room. “I would have easily spent a million dollars on you.”

“That’s kind, but I’m glad you didn’t,” Lexa smiled to herself.

Carefully, she folded her coat and laid it over the chair in the corner before she sat down and began removing her shoes. The light from the hallway streamed in, casting one long line across the livingroom and bedroom, but Clarke didn’t move at all, just spread her arms wide and stared at the ceiling, full of too much mirth and spirits.

“Are you going to take that dress off for bed? It doesn’t look too comfortable to sleep in.”

“Take it off for me.”

“Hopefully my lunch date will stay a little more sober than you.”

“I doubt it. I know Mrs. Winston and she’s about as dry as a… as a wet mop.”

Lexa shook her head and went about the task of undressing her girlfriend, grateful to have made use of their time together before the event. She knelt at the edge of the bed and began with the shoes, gingerly unstrapping them and slipping feet from them.

“I would have bid on you more.”

“I know. I wouldn’t have stopped if it were you.”

“Afraid I’d run off with some hedge fund manager?”

“Terribly afraid of that.”

“Nah,” Clarke murmured, lulling her drunken head to the side slightly. “Not with how good you look in a tuxedo. Holy fuck.”

“And I couldn’t care about a stupid lunch when you look like the most wonderful present waiting to be unwrapped,” Lexa promised.

“I’m drunk but I think you should come up here and kiss me right now.”

“Since you asked so nicely,” Leca shrugged before eagerly agreeing.

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whump-town · 4 years

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BAU Pool Fic

I wrote @davidrossi-ismydad bau pool fic... it’s 3,000 words bro I took it way too far

“Jack Attack!” Emily Prentiss finds herself with an armful of overly excited five-ear-old. “How are you doing baby?” She brushes a strand of his hair back from his face, rubbing in a spot of sunscreen on his temple. She loves all her nephews. They’re her maternal outlet and Jack just eats it up. Even if that does crush both her and Hotch.

Jack smiles broadly, “I’m super!” He moves, twisting so she can see the floaties on his little arms. “Look!” Jack points on his floaties, “Daddy got me floats with Cap’n ‘merica!” Sure enough, a cartooned Captain America is sitting on his bicep. “Uncle Dave is gonna let us swim!”

Emily is nodding along, used to his quick pace. She knew about the Captain America floaties last week when Dave first brought up opening the pool. Hotch went from timidly sipping the Scotch Dave gave him to panicked because Target hadn’t gotten in their superhero floaties yet. Of course, in the safety of Dave’s office, she’d chuckled at seeing his DadMode activate. Then she had Garcia show Hotch how to order the floaties online, where they were in-stock.

“I know,” she agrees, trying to match his enthusiasm. “Are you excited to swim?”

Jack nods, “Daddy said he would too!”

A sigh comes from behind her and Emily turns to find Hotch. He’s got a beach bag over his right shoulder while his left-hand twists his sunglasses by the side. “Buddy, I said I might swim.” He loves his team, really does, but getting in that pool with both sets of ‘the boys’ might be a bit much. That and he has to do his best to keep water out of his ears unless he wants to nurse an ear infection all summer long.

JJ and Garcia laughter cut through any further conversation, coming in through the side door. Their drinks already in hand, sent by Rossi to greet whoever he heard just pulled in. The two of them had been expecting Emily, she’d sent a text as a ‘heads up’ when she stopped for gas on the way here. It’s just a pleasant surprise to find Hotch and Jack too.

“So, that’s what you’ve been hiding under all those suits.” JJ cocks her head to the side, smirking at Hotch. She, of course, knows about her best friends rocking bods. Everyone has seen Morgan topless, so he’s no big surprise. The real treat in today’s plans was 100% figuring out what Hotch and Reid hid under way too many layers of clothes.

Garcia agrees too, sipping some white fruity white canned alcoholic drink. “You look hot, sir.”

Hotch looks down at himself. He’s wearing a dark green, thin button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He hadn’t buttoned the first three buttons, leaving a good bit of his chest visible. His trunks are dark blue and come up just above his knees. They were shorter than what he’d expected when he ordered them but pants are always a problem at his height. So he considered it an overall win they didn’t come up higher.

Compared to his usual attire around them, he might as well be naked. Not to mention his pale skin which is startlingly bright in the light of Rossi’s parlor. Hot isn’t exactly what he’d seen in the mirror when he’d put it on. Just… clothes.

“Thank you,” he responds, with a tense smile. He really needs to work on accepting compliments. “Nice… bathing suits.”

That is the understatement of the year.

JJ has on a one-piece that cuts up very high on her hips. She’d chosen the color maroon and damn if she wasn’t right about it being her color. It’s cheeky and risky and Garcia was absolutely here for it. Refusing to hear JJ’s excuse she couldn’t pull off bathing suits like this one anymore. She has a mom-bod.

Emily’s rebuttal had been that JJ was right. She does have a mom-bod because JJ is a total MILF.

With two hype-women, JJ had to get the bathing suit.

Garcia’s own is white with red and blue flowers. There’s a perfect triangle cut out between her breast, drawing tasteful attention to them. Her selection had come easy, ‘I don’t need your help on this one. It’s speaking to me’. She too looked killer but saves her boss any grief on his compliment falling short.

Emily snorts at the comment but covers it up by addressing how her best friends had betrayed her. “Evidently, this year we were going one piece.” Emily gestures to her own body, to the bathing suit she’s hidden under a maxi dress. “I didn’t get the memo.”

Garcia caves first, “babe, we said we were sorry!”

Seeing this as his only ticket to get away from a conversation he has no idea how to be a part of, Hotch extends his hand to Jack. “Come on buddy.”

Emily puts him down, patting his head as he takes Hotch’s hand and follows his father with a little skip.

“See daddy,” he says brightly. “I told you, you looked han’some!”

Emily watches them leave, tucking her arms around her body. It’s protective and comforting. She smiles sadly at Jack’s comment, it turning bitterly into a frown

JJ cups Emily’s cheek, “we are sorry.”

The worst part is, she’s not mad they got one-piece bathing suits. It’s about her own insecurities. JJ has smooth, perfect skin, and Garcia’s gunshot wound makes her look like a badass. The memory is… murky but she’s a fighter because of it.

Emily’s scars are tainted. A reminder of just how awful their lives have been lately and when she takes her dress off it’s just going to be that much more in their face. She’s a walking horror film, a damn slasher movie.

“It’s fine,” Emily promises. “I’m just…” she blows out a breath. “I’m in a mood, I guess.”

Her arms are still crossed so JJ finds that a little hard to believe but before she can start to dive into a line of question and dredge up whatever is bothering her.

“I didn’t know the party was in here,” Rossi states, stepping into the house. He sees the tension in Emily’s body, frowning when Emily places her hand over the one JJ has on her cheek. Squeezing the thin digits before moving them away. “Bella?” His relaxed smile falls, “is there something wrong?”

Pappa Rossi has come out and he’s a fierce mister to mess around with.

Emily shakes her head, picking up her bag and stifling all her concerns. “I’m fine,” she promises. She motions for the other girls to follow and she meets Rossi at the door. “You just worry too much, vecchio uomo.”

Old man? She wounds him.

He’s dressed simply, no desire to swim in the pool with those little animals (whom he loves dearly but the point still stands). Dad jean and an opened button-down, he looks too good. He squints his eyes but his sunglasses hide his skepticism. “Mhmm.” He opens the door for them, “you’d better get out there. You’re missing out on a party.”

The party greets them before they can fully get out of the door.

“Oh, Spence,” JJ covers her mouth, the only person merciful enough to hide her smile at the sight of him. “Honey, what did you do?”

Someone, definitely Derek, had pushed him into the pool. He looks like a drowned rat. An adorable drowned rat but a rat none-the-less and in his clothes too. He shakes his head, looking down at his wet clothes. “I got pushed in.”

“Uncle Derek,” Jack explains helpfully, padding up to them. He’s visibly wet, obviously an eyewitness given his pleased smile.

“Yep,” Henry confirms from his best friend’s side. Smiling just as bright as Jack. “Untle Derek push’ted him in!” He jumps happily at the end, nodding his head to his mother.

The uncle in question sneaks up behind the boys, grabbing them by their waists and hoisting them up. “Are you boys tattling on me?” One on each side, Morgan looks between them faking an angry frown. Both boys know exactly what he’s going to do and start squirming excitedly. Claiming simultaneous denial.

Morgan’s face sobers for a split second, his attention on the adults. “Pretty boy had it coming,” he says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I brought him a bathing suit and he wouldn’t put it on.” He shrugs and his playful smirk sinks back into place as he announces, “and since someone tattled on me… I’m forced to get my revenge.”

“No! No!” Henry and Jack shout, gleefully screaming as Morgan turns around and heads for the pool.

“Hold your breath boys!” Morgan jumps in and there’s a large splash as all three submerge. The boys pop up first like little apples, laughing uncontrollably.

Reid is standing in front of them shivering, looking rather pathetic soaked to the bone. “I pulled him in with me,” Reid states, moving to get past them.

Poor Reid had not been expecting it at all. He’d gone to the pool’s edge to talk to Henry and Jack. They were chatting away, Jack showing him the Captain America’s and Henry telling Reid that he was gonna learn how to swim without floats with Uncle Hotch too. So he and Jack could both be big boys.

That’s when Morgan had come up from behind, lifting Reid off his feet in a swoop and throwing him in.

In his mind, it was payback. Morgan brought Reid a very bright red speedo, a gag gift of course. After that fun had ended, the fun being seeing how red he got having to hold the atrocious garment in his hand, Morgan had gifted him light purple swim trunks.

So that he could swim. Except, Reid refused. So Morgan took the matter into his own hands. Then he felt guilty.

Offering Reid a hand up had, of course, been a mistake because the second the genius’ hand met his Morgan felt a sharp pull. Then he found himself in the pool.

Jack and Henry, who hadn’t recovered from how hard they’d laughed watching Reid get dunked in were wheezing by the time Morgan’s head popped back up.

It seems as if they really did miss a party.

“Prentiss,” Hotch greets, walking up alongside her with a drink. “It’s a strawberry daiquiri, Dave said it’s your favorite.”

She takes the drink with a smile, watching her friends mingle and laugh amongst themselves. While she stands off to the side, isolating herself. She takes a small sip from the top, smiling. God, if Hotch and Rossi weren’t just the sweetest men she knew. Which is a strange thought to have once she considers it. Hotch is the bad cop to her good cop and Rossi is the reason they have such strict fraternization rules.

“Do you think I can just be Emily, today?” she asks hopefully.

Hotch smiles, nodding. “If I can be Aaron,” he barters. They tap their glasses together, a silent agreement. He takes a sip of his beer, watching the others around them. He’d gotten word, from Dave, about Emily and the bathing suit thing. She could play the other’s stupid but no one can lie to David Rossi. Not even Hotch. “Not swimming?”

She sighs and she knows exactly what this is. “Aaron...” she sighs, shaking her head but she can’t think of what to say. She can’t say he doesn’t understand. Her wounds might be larger but he had more. Quantity to quality and God, that’s awful.

He takes her hand lightly, his eyes intense and sad.

And she’s terrified.

He lets go and she thinks that it. He’s going to let it go because they’re messing with demons here and she’s learned her lesson with stirring them up. But he does something so much worse.

He takes his shirt off.

“Hotch-”

His hands are trembling despite this being some act of courage because it’s only been two years and he knows the scars look awful and-

“Uh-oh!” JJ yells from the other side of the pool. She’s very drunk and drunk JJ is very supportive… and has no filter. “DILF alert!” She sends them two thumbs up and Will waves, a stressed smile stretched across his face.

Hearing the commotion, Garcia turns away from Morgan and their current conversation. “Holy shit…” Garcia mumbles, pushing her sunglasses down to get a better look. “Does the FBI do a wet t-shirt contest or something? We have to get you boys in it.”

Hotch tilts his head expectantly.

“Oh shut up,” she rolls her eyes and sits her daiquiri down. She takes back every nice thing she’s ever said or thought about him. Especially that internal monologue from before about him being one of just the sweetest man she knew. In fact, she doesn’t like men at all anymore.

Pulling her dress up over her head, she shakes her head.

That’s right, the Aaron Hotchner, a certified DILF, and federal agent had turned her 100% gay… well, until she forgives him.

She frowns at him, realizing how dumb they both look just staring at each other mostly naked. “Satisfied?”

He raises an eyebrow, playfully shaking his head, “are you trying to get us both sent to a sexual harassment meeting, Agent Prentiss?”

“Morgan and Garcia could use the company.” She’s trying very hard to keep her eyes on his face which is also making it hard to be mad at him. The scars aren’t even that noticeable and, while his abs might not be as defined as Morgan’s they are still visible. And nice.

Before this conversation or frankly, anything else about this day, can get any weirder, Rossi calls out that the burgers are done.

First come first served.

Which really means Reid, Henry, and Jack eat first while the rest of them fend for themselves.

The chaos, as always, really gets going after dinner.

JJ, Emily, and Garcia were standing and discussing whether or not Emily should get a different bathing suit for the beach trip her mother’s planning when the boys come from nowhere.

Will, Reid, and Morgan.

All three girls end up in the pool. Garcia slung over Morgan’s shoulder. JJ scooped up by Will. Emily dragged kicking and screaming by Reid. It’s declared war and Emily, seeing Hotch chuckling at the sight of them, decides it’s against all of the men.

The other three aren’t that hard to get.

Will is lured in the way any man is into a trap, by thinking with the wrong head. JJ takes him out at the knees and Emily is the final blow. Execution style. Will considers it to be a bitter defeat.

Morgan is stupid. Emily sends off to get more drinks and together Garcia and JJ rush him as he walks past the pool. He goes in mid-wave to Jack and Henry, who are playing in the shallow end.

Emily just picks Reid up, doing the same as he’d done to her. Ego soaring and the alcohol she’d consumed clouding her judgment, Emily takes on her main target. Aaron Hotchner.

He’s standing at the edge of the pool, with his shirt back on but completed unbuttoned, and telling Jack and Henry to come to get another layer of sunscreen on. His back is completed turned when Emily pushes into him. She’s expecting to hear his body hit the pool water and then her name to be grumbled out when he bobs back to the surface.

It’s like hitting concrete. The man goes nowhere.

He turns to face her, frowning disappointingly. “Is that all you got Emily?” He shakes his head and turns back to the boys, “chop! Chop! The faster you get out the faster you get right back in.”

Emily attempts to conspire with the others but they’re cowards.

“Oh, no, princess. Not a chance in hell.” Morgan shakes his head, he already thinks she’s crazy for trying the first time.

JJ is too drunk to really tackle.

Garcia thinks it would be cruel. Hotch has done nothing wrong.

Will is a coward.

Reid is scared of him.

Rossi is too old.

“You’re all boring,” she pouts. So she tries again on her own.

The boys are back in the pool, Hotch asking when the last time they had some water or a juice box was. That alone almost stops her. Because it’s adorable. She decides she really doesn’t care and takes the approach of shouting his name and then tackling him.

He catches her. She hits his body but he moves at the last second and wraps his arms around her waist. “Is this what you were trying to do?” Right over his shoulder she goes, plop- right in the pool.

The boys get a proper kick out of it.

Emily, with a towel wrapped around her shoulders, sulking in a chair watches as Jack and Henry shout for Hotch. He pretends to be surprised as they run at him. They jump up and he catches them to his chest, making a dramatic show of pretending to be knocked back into the pool.

When he comes to the surface he shakes his hair out of his face and she frowns, hating him for making that look hot.

Ick... men.

The afternoon wraps itself up well.

Rossi lures the boys out of the pool with sweets and movies. It’s a picture perfect moment.

Jack and Henry are exhausted and the moment they settle in the living room, both sharing Uncle Dave’s lap in the lazy boy, they’re out like lights. There’s the smallest bit of chocolate smeared on their lips and Rossi dares Hotch or Will to take his boys away. They can stay the night.

And they do.

Emily says goodbye to all three, pressing kisses to their temples.

“Did you have fun, Bella?”

She got free food. She got drunk.

Her boss took his shirt off in front of everyone to make her feel comfortable in her own skin and then dunked her in the pool.

She laughed until she cried with JJ and Garcia.

She played a very dangerous game of chicken with Morgan and Reid...

“Yeah,” she admits. “I had a lot of fun.”

Rossi’s eyes crinkle, “mission accomplished then.”

#BAU pool party #emily prentiss #is the main character #think about it #reid is a baby #and totally wears purple swimming trunks #hotch is a dilf #i'm just going over things we all know #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #jennifer jareau #derek morgan #spencer reid #penelope garcia #david rossi #jack hotchner #henry jareau

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staytheb · 3 years

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Moonlight Melody - chapter 4

Word Count: 5,557 previous chapter, next chapter

Moonlight Melody masterlist.

semi-proofread. anyways, the fourth chapter allows Joohyun to begin her revenge of sorts and meets her new boss, Jinyoung. happy reading and kthxbai, Admin Lia~

The next day Joohyun awoke feeling refreshed, energized, and strangely anew. She felt like she had slept the most peaceful of sleeps she had ever had in a long time. It was if the Joohyun she once knew had been re-awakened to what the world and whatever it had in store for her. There was a spring to her step as she got ready this morning and was even humming a soothing tune. When Joohyun entered the kitchen she was surprised by the meal that her mother had prepared which were all of her favorites.

"Ma, what's the special occasion? Why did you make my favorite foods?"

Joohyun commented with a laugh as she sat down with her mother placing a small bowl of rice porridge in front of her.

"And aren't you in an energized mood today? What gives?"

"Today is the day you start your new job, dear. It's to celebrate the start of a new journey for you."

Jiwoo stated with a smile as she too had a spring in her step before sitting across from her daughter. Joohyun was at first puzzled as she ate a spoonful of the rice porridge. The confusion disappeared once she savored the taste of the hot soup before reminding her mother that she didn't have a new job.

"What new job, Ma? I still work at the bank. I've been there for the last seven years if you don't recall."

"Oh, silly girl, not anymore. Don't you remember?"

"Remember what, Ma?"

"Honey, you quit that job a week ago and a new one right away."

Jiwoo stood to fetch something from out of one of the kitchen's drawers, came back with a letter and some other kind of paper in hand, and placed them on the table for her daughter to read it herself.

"I don't know how you forgot about that when you were excited when these came in."

Her mother went back to eating as Joohyun stopped eating while reaching out to read the letter and the other contents that came with it. She scanned the slightly familiar name of the company and that today was indeed the first day she would be starting. She grew confused as she clearly remembered that just yesterday she was still working for a bank. Her brows furrowed as she recalled Ukulele's words about the tiny wishes that came with the gemstones. Next the image of the unknown man from yesterday also flashed across her mind along with how she pulled the string of the doll last night. Her mother looked at her in concern.

"Joohyun, are you okay?"

"Yeah, Ma, I'm fine."

She answered with a smile to show her mom that she was fine. She glanced down at the paper again with a quirked brow.

"How do I even pronounce this? Mole-Deer? Maul-Dur?"

~~~~~~~~~

Joohyun realized that her new job was the same company as her ex-boyfriend when she stood in front the familiar building. She didn't understand how she couldn't have connected it, but she remembered that she never really paid any attention to the name or the company itself. Joohyun was more concerned with Bogum to have paid any attention to other things. The last time she was here was when she came to speak with her ex-boyfriend, but ended up doing a product photoshoot instead. Anyways, Joohyun exhaled as she gave herself a once over at her casual outfit consisting of white Adidas shoes, black skinny jeans, a thin black and white striped shirt, and a light blue jean jacket over it.

"I'm so under-dressed for a classy place like this."

She shook the thought away as she psyched herself up. She was already here and would have to deal with the outfit and her ex-boyfriend later. For now she needed to report to her attendance and not make a bad first impression. Before Joohyun could actually walk inside she noticed a car pulling up as Bogum got out of the car and almost walked right by his ex-girlfriend when he actually turned to glance her way and stopped in his tracks. He lowered his sunglasses to make sure what he was seeing was for sure before making his way towards the female while taking off his shades.

"Are you going to cause a scene here, too?"

Bogum accused as Joohyun frown.

"Why would I do that?"

"Never mind. Why are you actually here?"

"I work here now."

Bogum laughed before commenting.

"You really are trying aren't you? Wow, that's a good one."

"I'm not."

She slightly huffed.

"Today's really my first day here."

Joohyun held up her work badge for Bogum to see, but he barely glanced at it.

"Yeah, right. I'm sure it's a fake. I can't believe this is happening. I knew I shouldn't have dated you."

He signed while pinching the bridge of his nose. Joohyun's facial expression immediately dimmed upon hearing those words.

"Look, just go away."

Bogum did a shooing motion.

"I don't need any trouble here. President Kim is going to be arriving soon and I don't want the likes of you around when he shows up."

"The likes of me?" She asked in shock before shaking her head.

"People like me are the ones that make this world function for the people who are like you."

"What? Say that again."

"I said what I said."

Bogum scowled.

"You need to leave now or I'll call the police."

Joohyun's eyes widened and before she could counter she was interrupted by another person.

"Mr. Park."

Bogum turned his attention to the person and realized that it was his boss, Kim Jaejoong.

"Ah, President Kim. I apologized for not coming sooner. I had an alt-"

Jaejoong held up a hand for him to ceased speaking while turning his attention onto Joohyun.

"And you are?".

"Bae Joohyun, sir. I'm a new hire and I start today, sir."

Joohyun shot him a pleasant smile and hoped that she wouldn't be fired already while holding her badge in front of her like a shield.

"Ah, Ms. Bae. Lovely. Glad to have you a part of the MOLDIR team. I'm Kim Jaejoong."

"Really? I mean. Thank you so much, President Kim. Bogum here thought it was a fake."

Jaejoong turned his attention onto a nervous Bogum.

"Why would you ever think that? Those that are hire for MOLDIR always go through a very thorough screening test."

Joohyun finally learned how MOLDIR was pronounced and repeated it in her head slowly. Mall-Deer. While she was doing that Bogum was stumbling over his own words of how to tell Jaejoong that it wasn't like that.

"Enough."

Jaejoong let out in a cold voice as he pinched the bridge of his nose before focusing his eyes on Joohyun.

"Please report to Wendy at the front desk. She'll notify a Park Jinyoung of your arrival. You'll be working under him."

"Yes, sir!" Joohyun complied with a small salute.

She dropped her hand a second later. Jaejoong chuckled before glancing over at Bogum.

"Let's get going, Mr. Park. We're running behind schedule."

"Ah, yes, sir."

Bogum stumbled ahead towards the car he drove up in as he opened the door for Jaejoong to enter before getting behind the wheel and driving off. Joohyun smiled as a warm-fuzzy feeling settled in her chest. It made the revenge just a little sweeter knowing that her ex-boyfriend was just scolded just now by his own boss. She faced the building and headed inside wondering how the rest of her day was going to go. She freaked a little when she found out that the person named Jinyoung Park was the handsome man she had seen driving in the car yesterday. Luckily, she didn't have to spend her first day with him. She was required to learn the policy, the product line, and other aspects of the company first. It was a very long day, but not as stressful as working for a bank.

~~~~~~~~~

Over the course of two weeks Joohyun worked diligently under Jinyoung's supervision. He was patient and led her well in understanding how everything worked at MOLDIR. Of course when he wasn't around and attending to other work, Bogum found time to bother her. He blamed her for Jaejoong's indirectly demoting him to errand boy. Bogum made it his business to annoy Joohyun so that she would quit. Joohyun didn't give in and wasn't going to let him walk all over her like he did once before. Now that she's been with the company for less than a month now, Joohyun was checking the products currently in stock to log for MOLDIR SHOWROOM's shop hours that was happening in less than three weeks when she felt someone gripped her elbow harshly and pulled her around. She came face to face with a panicked looking Bogum.

"Are you seriously asking for trouble?" Bogum asked her as Joohyun cast him a confused look.

"I don't know what you mean, Bogum."

"There are two police officers that want to speak to you."

"Why?"

"That's what I would like to know."

He let out a harsh breath.

"In all the years I've worked here, there has been no police force involvement in this environment until now."

"Okay, but what makes you think I did something?"

"Because they want to talk with you. Are you dumb or what?"

"I'm not dumb."

"Right."

Joohyun shook his grip off of her.

"Look, Bogum," She started as she took a few steps back away from him, "You're the one that ended things between us and I'm just minding my own bus-"

She was interrupted when Bogum noticed the sweatshirt she was wearing.

"Is that last year's Fall Jeco Animation sweatshirt that you're wearing?"

Joohyun paused in mid-sentence while glancing down at her pink sweatshirt.

"I guess so."

"What do you mean you guess so? How did you even get it? Those are limited items."

"I received it as a gift and was not aware that it was a limited item."

"From who because clearly I didn't gift it to you."

Joohyun frowned at her ex-boyfriend's behavior. Sure his words hurt, but she couldn't help but realized that Bogum was clearly not the perfect boyfriend she had believed him to be. She wondered what she had ever seen in him.

"Clearly it wasn't you, but someone else. Also, I don't have to discuss my private life with you."

The sweatshirt was a gift from Tiffany and as an incentive for her to join in as a side model if needed or wanted to make some extra cash. Joohyun had received three other sweatshirts along with the Jeco Animation, but she didn't really think much of it at the time. Still, she happened to wear the sweatshirt despite her usual wear for today.

"Look, Bogum," Joohyun said his name with a slight sigh to keep herself calm, "I'm just here to do my job. So Mr. Park, per President Kim, expects me to input all of the information by the end of the day to see if more products need to be order or assigned for the showroom next month and I won't let you interfer with that."

Bogum gritted his teeth while trying to keep calm as well, but knew that what Jaejoong wanted is what he'll received. Despite his reluctance to work with his ex-girlfriend who seemed to be getting the better end of the stick.

"Fine, but make it quick. They're in Room B and don't do anything that'll tarnish the brand. Understand?"

~~~~~~~~~

Joohyun stayed silent after politely greeting the two police officers and unaware that Jinyoung would be sitting in on the questioning due to the fact that he had quite a few meetings to attend today. She felt slightly intimidated about what they wanted to talk about, but oddly with her lead supervisor's present she was feeling weirdly calm.

"Good morning, Ms. Bae. I'm Special Agent Yang Hongseok," The male policeman introduced him while motioning at the woman beside him, "And this is my partner, Special Agent Lee Siyeon. We're both with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department."

Joohyun nodded in acknowledgement.

"Thank you for taking your time out of your work to speak with us." Hongseok said in a calm tone.

"We'll make this as quick as possible for you to go back to what you need to do."

Joohyun just nodded in response once again.

"Alright, we just wanted to ask you a few questions about your old colleague, Jung Eunji. What could you tell us about Mrs. Jung?"

Joohyun frowned upon hearing the familiar name. She hadn't heard Eunji's name used since her death a few weeks ago and her ex-colleagues just went on like she had never existed when the funeral happened. Of course Joohyun didn't keep in touch with her family as she didn't want to disturb them in their time of mourning and simply went on with her own life. Joohyun wasn't sure what she wanted to say about her colleague as they were only friends at work and never hung outside of it. Still, nothing but fond memories invaded her mind and she spoke of those.

"Eunji was such a mom and even treated me like I was one of her children."

Siyeon and Hongseok picked up on the way that Joohyun spoke of Eunji with a fond tone.

"I remember this one time I got a paper-cut and the bank just ran out of band-aids and she gave me one that had a Pikachu on it since her kids liked it. It was quite cute and it made me feel better."

Joohyun recalled more things about Eunji from making a character lunch box for her one day or sewing a costume for her kids' school play to deciding what she wanted to get her husband for his birthday until Joohyun realized that she was kind of babbling.

"Ah, sorry."

Unconsciously she glanced at Jinyoung and he cast her a small smile which calmed her before facing the two police officers again.

"Why the sudden interest in Eunji?"

Siyeon open her mouth to respond, but closed it to let Hongseok handle it instead.

"Well, there's been a new discovery in the case and we're just re-touching bases." Hongseok replied.

"We wanted to know how Mrs. Jung was like before and after her hospitalization."

"I see. Well, Eunji was happy working at the bank and speaking with the clients, but because of her illness no one knew when she would return to work, and then she suddenly passed. I do remember during her stay at the hospital that she wasn't able to do a lot of things except pass the days calmly."

"Honestly, Ms. Bae, we're a little more interested if you could you tell us anything about if Mrs. Jung was unhappy or unsatisfied with her stay at the hospital or with the hospital staff, per se?" Siyeon asked wanting to get to the point of the conversation.

"Anything that you can recall?"

Joohyun tilted her head pondering if anything like that happened with Eunji.

"Not really. Eunji was always sweet and spoke ill of no one." She answered before recalling something.

"But I do remember there were times she told me that she felt out of it and just wanted to go home. She did keep this little ranger figurine with her as her kids gave it to her as a sort of good luck charm to ward off the bad guys. Bunhong and Woonggom were very well behave, sweet and calm throughout the whole thing despite not understanding what was going on with their mother."

Siyeon asked another question as Hongseok side-eyed his partner quietly.

"What did you think of Dr. Kim Sungkyu?"

"Dr. Kim?"

Joohyun said the name before remembering the doctor.

"He seemed quite professional and well kept. I don't remember much as I hardly saw him whenever I visited Eunji."

"I see."

"Do you by chance know a person name Hyun Seunghee?"

"I don't recall the name. No, I do not."

"I see."

Joohyun thought that was it until Siyeon brought up her old job.

"Why did you leave your previous job for this one?"

"Siyeon."

Hongseok firmly whispered her name, but Siyeon didn't care. The female officer just stared at Joohyun waiting for an answer. Joohyun wasn't sure how to respond as she couldn't just blurt out the truth. She glanced at Jinyoung once again as he cast her another small smile. Joohyun faced the two special agents and went with a partial lie that fitted with her situation.

"It was just a change of pace. Since my mother's getting older and hospital visits aren't cheap and MOLDIR was the best route."

"I see. Well, thank you so much for your cooperation, Ms. Bae, and for giving us your time to further investigate Mrs. Jung's case."

Siyeon thanked her while standing up. The others follow suit.

"Yes, thank you, Ms. Bae for your time."

Hongseok also thanked her.

"Ah, you're very welcome and I hope I was helpful." Joohyun replied with a polite smile.

"You were."

Siyeon assured with a curt smile. Soon enough the two officers thanked Jinyoung for his time and Joohyun completely forgot that he was here as well. Anyways, Jinyoung and Joohyun led the two police officers back down to the lobby to see them on out. After that did Jinyoung asked her about the situation and she vaguely explained which was good enough for him as he dismissed her to return to her work and that he would check up on her some time later. Joohyun returned to cataloguing the merchandises and didn't realize that Bogum was no where in sight.

~~~~~~~~~

Joohyun returned home, had dinner with her mother, did her nightly routine, and spent a few minutes on her balcony. Joohyun heard a faint melody playing in the distance as she looked around her. Nothing was out of the norm until she gazed up at the moon and just for a quick second she thought she saw a jade-colored rabbit hopping around while playing a flute-like instrument. She blinked a few times and focused her attention onto the moon again, but there no music playing rabbit hopping about. She sighed while rubbing her face. She asked what was going on with her and if her mind was messing with her.

Joohyun returned inside and settled into bed with another deep sigh. She stared up at the ceiling thinking it would ease her mind, but it didn't. The light traffic outside in the distance soon calmed her nerves as she slowly breathed in and out. She wasn't sure if this is what she should be feeling or if it was still so surreal for her to comprehend. It was as if she was questioning if she had made the right choice to believe in the grim reaper or as if she would wake up any time soon and go back to the reality that this was all made up. Joohyun sighed again as she closed her eyes. She opened them again when she heard Grim Reaper Jessica's voice.

"Good evening."

Joohyun slowly sat up in bed as she noticed that the grim reaper was in the same position as when they had first met.

"Hello." She greeted back.

The grim reaper shot her a small smile.

"How's it going?"

Joohyun smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes when she replied.

"It's going very well."

Soon enough Eclare and Blanc appeared with Blanc lying on his belly upon Joohyun's bed while resting his chin on his paws.

"Tell me everything." The while feline purred.

"I wanna know all the juicy details."

"Are the hellhounds going to be joining us?" Joohyun answered causing Blanc to make a face.

"They're busy. Aren't I enough?"

"I'm not a cat person. I prefer dogs."

"Wow."

Blanc blew a raspberry before disappearing in a puff of a white smoke.

"Don't mind him." Grim Reaper Jessica explained before Joohyun could apologize.

The grim reaper let out a laugh as she petted the black feline in her arms.

"He's just moody because Eclare beat him in a game of checkers earlier."

"Yeah. I got a King Me this many!"

Blanc announced while holding up his paws to show Joohyun as she giggled at how cute he was and the black cat giggled along with her.

"Anyways," Grim Reaper Jessica interjected, "Is there something you wanted?"

"Huh?"

Joohyun tilted her head in confusion. Grim Reaper Jessica decided to explain it to her.

"You were unconsciously thinking of things that led you to unconsciously call out to me telepathically."

"Did I?"

"Yeah." Eclare answered instead with a nod.

"We get these invisible sound waves when those who want to seek out the other side and we come on over."

"Well," Joohyun spoke slowly," It's more like an answer."

"Then what is your question?"

"Is it normal to feel like this after the revenge is going so well?"

"Depends. What are you feeling?"

Joohyun thought about it before answering.

"Honestly, I'm happy that it's going well, but I feel like it's missing something. Like, I'm not sure, but there’s a void of some sort."

She looked at the grim reaper before continuing.

"I, well, I'm not sure how to explain, but I feel like I'm still incomplete."

"Oh, do you need a massage?" Elcare asked with a smile as he fluttered on over to Joohyun.

"Or maybe you want a slice of strawberry cake? I'm going to get you a slice an-"

The grim reaper whooshed the black feline away and he disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

"Sorry about him. He just loves anything strawberry related."

Grim Reaper Jessica apologized as she now sat cross-legged in mid-air while a black file appeared out of thin air and she read its contents.

"You got a new job that pays well to care for your mother without stressing like before. You have also become a stronger person than before as well. Even your new big boss picks on your ex-boyfriend."

The grim reaper looked over at her charge expectantly.

"What makes you feel incomplete, Bae Joohyun?"

Joohyun couldn't formulate an answer as she herself couldn't figured out the reason why she felt incomplete and simply shrugged.

"Hmm, let me ask you a few things then."

The grim reaper closed the file to which she had opened before it disappeared soon afterwards.

"Why did you date Park Bogum, even though you yourself believed that you were too average for him?"

"Because he made me feel special about myself from the first time we met and had first interacted." Joohyun answered without hesitation before an afterthought came out.

"Or so I had thought I was."

"When did the feeling begin to fade as you continue to lie to yourself that you were still special to him over the course of your relationship?"

Joohyun opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out. Her expression became thoughtful and curious as she tried to remember when she had felt out of place with her relationship with Bogum. She honestly couldn't remember when she had first started to feel like that. It may have started several months after their relationship, but she wasn't sure.

"Have I really been that blind when I was with him?" Joohyun asked, but it was more to herself than to the grim reaper.

"Did I really disregard the situation so that I wouldn't feel lonely not having someone by my side or that I was just a safety net for him?"

Joohyun looked up at Grim Reaper Jessica.

"Did I get attached just so I can be attached?"

"Only you can answer those questions yourself." Grim Reaper Jessica told her with a calm tone.

"I'm just here to aid you as best as I can."

"I'm sure that you can aid in an answer or two, right? It's basically the same thing as I'm sure it is."

Joohyun reasoned as the grim reaper smiled at the woman's attempt to receive an actual response to her questions.

"You're weird, but no, I can't."

Joohyun sighed while lying back onto her bed.

"I've always been weird."

"And there's nothing wrong with that either."

The grim reaper floated down to stand on her own feet while walking to the side of Joohyun's bed instead of being at the end of it so that she could be in her charge's line of sight as the woman had turned her head off to the side.

"If you listen well, then there is something that I can do to help you find your answers quicker though."

Grim Reaper Jessica told her as she snapped her right fingers together and suddenly Flesh appeared at her feet. Joohyun's eyes sparkled upon seeing the hellhound with red eyes appear. She instantly sat up and beckoned for the canine to come to her to which Flesh immediately leapt on to the bed and snuggled himself against her.

"That is, if you're interested."

Grim Reaper Jessica casually spoke which Joohyun's attention went back to the grim reaper.

"Yes, I am." Joohyunn answered quickly.

"You have a free day tomorrow, right?" The grim reaper asked to confirm.

"I do."

Joohyun answered despite a majority of her attention was on the canine.

"Take care of Flesh for the time being and go out for a walk at the Golden Star Park tomorrow." Grim Reaper Jessica instructed as a dark red leash suddenly appeared beside Joohyun.

"Flesh will know when to let you know when he wants a walk and after that he'll take care of the rest."

"But what if my mom notices him?"

Joohyun's question wasn't answered as she turned her attention onto the grim reaper, but Grim Reaper Jessica had disappeared leaving her alone with the red-eyed mutt.

"Don't worry, Ms. Watermelon. Your mom won't noticed I'm here unless I reveal myself to her."

Flesh assured her as Joohyun glanced at him with an unsure look not minding the familiar nickname she was called by the felines a week ago.

"But how does taking you for a walk tomorrow going to answer my questions?"

Flesh snuggled closer to her without answering. Joohyun sighed as she continued to pet the canine while settling back into bed herself.

~~~~~~~~~

Joohyun wore black on white Adidas shoes with white skinny jeans along with a white long sleeve loose top with a thin black and white plaid cardigan over it. Her hair was in a long ponytail as she wasn't sure how hot it would be outside as well as if it would ran unexpectedly either due to it being monsoon seas. With one hand she held a small umbrella while the other hand she held onto the end of the dark red leash as Flesh led her along one of Golden Star Park's path ways like any normal canine would. The pup was happily trotting along on its little legs to which Joohyun couldn't help but smiled. Her mother hadn't noticed the canine's presence despite Flesh scurrying around all over the place.

Of course Joohyun really wanted to questioned what was the plan for today as she had no clue except to give the hellhound a doggie walk like any kind of dog would happily love to engage in. Still though, she didn't want to appear like more of a weirdo with her talking to Flesh as if he could respond back if one of the pedestrians happened to overhear her. So Joohyun just enjoyed the casual walk underneath the partially cloudy blue-gray sky until she felt the leash yanked hard in her grip and Flesh dashed off all of a sudden.

"Flesh?!" Joohyun called out to the hellhound while being pulled by the mutt.

This was totally not what she had expected when the grim reaper told her to take the red-eyed hellhound out for a walk. She was even more puzzled with the fact that the canine led her to recognized her lead supervisor and one of her female colleagues, Jisoo, standing underneath a pine tree. She heard Flesh growling at the young woman who seemed shaken up by its presence. Joohyun wasn't sure what was going on, but felt an unsettling feeling once Jisoo slightly turned and she noticed something shiny to the side of her colleague's waist.

"Call off your dog, Joohyun." Jisoo ordered.

Joohyun's mind blanked out as she had no idea what was going on.

"I said call off your dog right now. Do you hear me, Bae Joohyun? Call off your damn dog."

Jisoo repeated as she motioned with her hand that held something which Joohyun realized was a pocket knife.

"Call off your damn dog and no one gets hurt!"

"Ms. Kim, please calm down. No one has to get hurt."

Jinyoung spoke in a calm tone to de-escalate the situation.

"Put down the knife and we can talk it over. Please."

Jisoo pointed the knife at him again.

"Yeah, right. Why do you think I want to hurt you? I'm just letting you know how I feel about, Park Jinyoung."

Jisoo faced Joohyun once more, but still held the knife at Jinyoung.

"Call off your mutt, Bae Joohyun."

Joohyun opened her mouth, but no sound came. She instead try to click her tongue for Flesh to back off and come to her side, but the dog continued to growl at the young woman. Jinyoung cast a gaze towards Joohyun just as Jisoo barked at him to focus on her to which he did.

"Jisoo, let's calmly talk about this."

"I am calm, but you won't look or speak to me at work. You even threw away my love letter for you."

"I apologize. That was careless of me. But, please, put down the knife."

Make an anonymous call to the police about a fire in the park.

Joohyun heard Flesh's voice inside her mind as her eye widened.

A Fire?

She questioned in her own mind.

You'll learn later, but just do it without letting them know. Hurry!

Joohyun immediately did as Flesh informed her to do without catching the attention of the other two. Then Joohyun watched Flesh run at the pair just as Jisoo who in turn panicked and stabbed Jinyoung's stomach. She immediately let go of the knife in fear of what she had just done just as Flesh tackled her along with the injured Jinyoung to the ground knocking both of them out. Joohyun gasped at the scene before her. She didn't think that this was what the grim reaper had in mind when she meant that Flesh would take care of the rest if she brought him to the park. Luckily there weren't other people in their area of the park.

"What should I do? Call the police? Wait. I just did that. Then an ambulance? Oh my gosh."

Calm down. They're fine. The police is enough.

Came Flesh's voice inside her mind again. Flesh sniffed the two bodies before trotting over to Joohyun.

"Bite into a ruby gem until it dissolves into liquid form combined with your saliva."

She suddenly heard Flesh's voice ordered her snapping her out of her panicked state.

"First used a tiny bit to smear across the female's forehead, and then spit the rest onto the male's injuries."

Joohyun was about to do that, but shot Flesh a disgusted look.

"You want me to do what?"

"Eat the gem, smear some on the female's forehead, and then spit the rest on the male's stomach."

"No that's gross. What happens if-"

"Just do it."

Flesh ordered and something within Joohyun complied. She reached for one of the rubies, popped it into her mouth, waited until it liquefied, and then did what Flesh had instructed her to do. She brought her thumb to her lips and spread some juice onto it to smeared on Jisoo's forehead afterwards. Then with the rest of it she spit onto the stab wound with the knife still intact on her lead supervisor. Soon enough the knife melted away as the wound healed. There was no trace of the injury or that Joohyun had spit on Jinyoung. She glanced at Jisoo's forehead and saw that the residue wasn't there either. Joohyun glanced behind her over at Flesh who sat patiently.

"Now what?"

"Use another gem stone like a lipstick and kiss the male."

Flesh ordered nonchalantly as Joohyun looked taken aback.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm just kidding."

Flesh laughed just as the sounds of sirens could be heard in the distance. The mixed breed dog quickly ran off to a different pine tree away from the unconsious pair while Joohyun witnessed fire coming out of the canine's mouth spreading onto the pine tree.

"This is what you meant by the fire, Flesh?"

"Yeah. Now c'mon. Let's go!"

"But how does this answer anything?"

"You'll find out later."

"Bu-"

"Trust me, Ms. Watermelon. C'mon, let's get a move on before we're discovered and those two wake up."

Flesh picked up his own leash and handed it to Joohyun before pulling her along. He assured her as they headed on back home. Still, Joohyun wonder if what transpired just now was a good thing or a bad thing. She sighed. She just had to trust in the grim reaper and the red-eyed mutt.

#staytheb #jessica jung scenarios #red velvet scenarios #got7 scenarios

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chain-unchained · 3 years

Text

December 12 - Part 2

It was like déjà vu, walking into the mines; it was hard to believe that their nearly ill-fated adventure was only a few months past. It felt like a lifetime ago, even though the harrowing encounter with the slime boss was still fresh in their minds.

For Abigail of course it was just a brand new adventure, uncharted territory waiting to be explored. “Alright, so how does this work?” Her impatience dripped from every word as the boys filed in behind her. “Do we sign in or something?”

“Yeah—er, well,” Ashe stopped at the sight of the unmanned rescue station, “usually, at least… that’s… weird. I could have sworn that Ellie would be here today…” For Abby’s sake, he clarified, “Usually there’s someone here to check us in.”

“Oh, you’d have loved her Abby.” Sam elbowed her with a grin. “She was a real cutie. Real shy, too. Totally your type.”

Her face fell. “Really? Damn it. I’ll have to sneak up here on another day and try to meet her. Penny’s the only other girl in town that I’d consider and she’s too into Maru to pay me any mind…” She sighed. “You boys have it so easy.”

“Well,” Ignoring that, Sebastian blew on his frigid fingers to warm them as Ashe looked over the log book, “what’s the plan now, Ashe? Are we still gonna go in or what?”

“… It… should be okay.” There was real hesitation in his voice, though his uncertainty was eased somewhat by the sight of Percy’s signature on today’s page. Besides, if something did happen to go wrong, he did have that as a last resort. “I think as long as we sign in we’ll be okay.”

Abby cocked a brow. “Why do we need to sign in if there’s no one here?”

“Trust me, Joja will know and you’ll be banned in a heartbeat.”

He scrawled his name hastily in the entry beneath Percy’s and stepped back so that his friends could do the same. While they did that, he stepped behind the station and retrieved a box full of safety equipment for them to make use of. After what happened last time—not to mention this growing sense of foreboding-- he didn’t want to take any chances.

By the time he returned to the sign in desk, Abby had finished adding her name to the book. At least, he had expected it to be her name, but instead—

“Really?” Sebastian was wholly unimpressed. “You used your Discord handle?”

“Like I’m dumb enough to put my actual name in here.” She twirled the pen between her fingers, wearing a cheeky grin all the while. “I’m not gonna risk mom and dad finding out. They’d flay me alive.”

Both Sebastian and Sam exchanged a long look; after a second, Sam snatched the pen from her and they both hastily amended their sign ins.

“Speaking of Discord,” she pointed a painted nail at Ashe, “you need to give me yours so I can invite you to our server. I’ve been meaning to ask you for awhile now but it always kept slipping my mind. And don’t even think of giving me that ‘I’m too busy’ b.s.,” she added as the farmer opened his mouth, “I know for a fact that you’re scrambling for stuff to do now that winter’s here.”

“I-I wasn’t going to say that--” he absolutely was, “--I was just going to say that I don’t have a Discord.”

“Well you have a phone, right? Or a laptop?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore.” That one day of rotten luck had seen to that.

“… Wait, really? But—” She was aghast. “How do you survive?”

Sebastian paused in the middle of strapping a hard hat onto his head. “Really? You’re just now learning this?”

“I already said that it kept slipping my mind!” She strode forward and grasped Ashe’s face with both hands. “Seriously, how do you not have at least one of those things in this day and age?!”

Now Ashe was feeling quite embarrassed. “I just—never have the time to use them, so there wouldn’t be a point to replacing—”

“Oh, I so know what you’re getting for the Feast this year.”

“N-No no, actually no, please don’t—” He paused. “Wait. Feast?”

Sam tugged off his gloves and tugged on a pair of work ones. “Yeah. The Feast of the Winter Star.”

“… What’s that?”

“Oh, right, you’re from the city. It’s just another festival. It’s how Pelican Town celebrates Christmas.” He grinned. “There’s a big feast, and everyone does a Secret Santa present exchange. Nothing too crazy, but it’s kinda fun to shop for a gift for a different person every year.”

Sebastian grimaced. “Yeah, it’s fun until you get Haley as your secret buddy. I got her last year.”

“And I got her the year before.” Abby strapped on some protective gear, but stopped short of the hard hat. “God, that sucked. She totally shit on the gift I got her.”

“Haley does kinda have rich white girl tastes,” Sam nodded.

Even if she did… “I know that she can be… hard to deal with,” Ashe fidgeted with his own hard hat, “but she’s not that bad…”

All three of them looked at him like he’d just said the earth was flat.

“Yeah, she’s over the top, and she’s loud, and she isn’t afraid to speak her mind, but… she’s a person too, y’know? And she knows that nobody likes her…”

Now their attention shifted from him to each other. “Are you feeling alright?” Sam finally asked.

“Huh? Yeah, of course… I just… Y’know what, nevermind.” He slapped his own cheeks and unstrapped the pickaxe from his back. “Why are we standing around talking when there’s loot to be had?”

The sudden about-face didn’t go unnoticed by his friends. It was eerily similar to the one he pulled the last time—compounded by him just not seeming like himself recently. But it was hard to have a conversation with someone’s back, and so they had to hastily follow him into the elevator leading into the left mineshaft—well, Sebastian and Abby followed, dragging a reluctant Sam behind them. The blonde had a severe case of claustrophobia and fear of elevators.

“This is new.” Sebastian said, with Sam clinging to him for dear life as the elevator began its rickety descent into the depths of the shaft.

“Mhm. Joja installed it… last month, I think?”

“Damn. You’ve been hitting this place that hard?”

Ashe grinned meekly.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Because I have no sense of restraint and this is par for the course for me?”

“… Actually, yeah. That just about sums it up.” He patted Sam’s back. “You’re okay, Sam. Nothing’s gonna happen. You can let go of me now.”

“Y-You don’t know that for sure!” If anything, Sam only clung to him harder, and Sebastian just rolled his eyes and put up with it. There was no getting out of that vicelike grip once it was locked.

####

Even though it was the bastion of the very thing that he was once addicted to, Shane still made it a habit to visit the Saloon after work. It was a place to go that wasn’t straight back to ranch—of course he loved the place, but there was something suffocating about heading straight home after an eight hour hell shift stocking shelves. And the free sparkling juice that Gus would slip him was nice. It helped with the cravings.

“Hey Shane!” Emily was the first to greet him as he stepped in through the swinging double doors. She usually was, always with a smile. “Glad to see you! I wasn’t sure if you would be up to visiting with all that snow out there.”

“I mean, this place is right on the way home, so it’s not like I have to go out of my way or anything.” He took a seat at the bar, and on cue Gus set a cup of sparkling something in front of him—might have been cranberry just on first sniff. “Thanks, Gus. This a new drink or something?”

“It is, it is.” The portly fellow was all smiles as well as he cleaned a mug. “Courtesy of our favorite farmer. I thought you ought to have the honors of giving it the first tasting.”

“Well shit, I better not say anything bad about it.” He took a swig and let the flavor mull over his tongue. It was equal parts sweet and tart, and nicely carbonated—it tasted vaguely like the fruity drinks that he once was into, back in his edgy high school years. “That’s pretty nice.”

“As expected of produce from Ashe’s farm.” Emily leaned against the counter. “Speaking of, how’s he doing lately? It feels like an age since I last saw him.”

“Fine, as far as I can tell. Still a crazy busybody always doing something.” He sighed and swirled the deep red liquid around in the cup. “Won’t lie, I’m starting to get real worried about him.”

“Oh? How come?”

“Just—how do I put it? He just doesn’t seem like himself lately. He’s saying and doing all the usual stuff, but… iunno,” he shrugged his shoulders, “I just get this feeling that it’s an act.”

“Well, if anyone could tell it’d be you. You know more about him than anyone else.”

“But that’s just it!” He threw his hands up. “He’s so tight-lipped that even after—fuck, how many months has he been here--?”

“Nine months,” Gus answered, bemused.

“Thank you-- after nine months, I know basically fuck-all about him.” With his fingers he began to count what he did know, “I know he lived near the capitol, I know he used to work for Joja, and I know—well, I’m pretty sure that his mom died. That’s it. Fuck, I don’t even know if he has allergies. That’s bad, right?”

Emily tapped her finger against her lips, contemplating. “Mmm… Not necessarily? Doesn’t it just mean that that stuff hasn’t come up yet? I mean, are you expecting him to just sit you down and go ‘this is my life story’ like in a badly written movie or book?”

“No, what—of course not.”

“Well then, what’s the problem? If it really bothers you so much, talk to him about it. Tell him that you would love to hear more things about him from time to time.” Playfully she poked him with her elbow. “Some people just need that little extra nudging to open up, after all.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right on that… Maybe I can get the ball rolling on one of our dates. Oh, speaking of,” he set his glass down and turned to Gus, “can I reserve the back room for the next few Sundays?”

Once more Gus looked amused. “Are you finally going to take me up on that offer I made when you first got together?”

“Maybe. This is literally the only thing I could think of to make him take a break, short of strapping him to a chair in front of a TV.”

Emily hid a laugh behind her hand. “I’m glad you’re choosing this instead of that. Maybe you can talk him into stopping by sometimes, too. I miss that sunshine he brings with him.”

“I’ll try, but no promises.” Shane finished off the drink and paid for the reservations. Honestly, he missed that sunshine too…

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emily-rose-white · 4 years

Photo

Practice Challenge 1:

“Princess Fluffy Angel! Fluffy Princess Angel! Angel Fluffy Princess!” I called out to my three poodles from the foyer of her Paris flat.

“Girls! Your mommy’s home and she brought presents!” I aded before skipping over to her tea room where a set of cookies and cakes had been awaiting her.

“Lady White, you forgot to say this morning, would you like rose tea or mint tea with your snacks today?”

“I will take rose tea! Thank you!” I replied as one of her dogs ran up to her. I threw the wrapping paper from her gift bag down on the ground as my maid picked it up, removing a light pink fluffy tutu and flower crown.

The Whites came from a long line of an affluent family. They had been there when Illea was founded, serving as Gregory’s right hand man, then invested that money into stocks and properties. The Whites, therefore, had never run out of money. I had acted in films and shows on occasion, but only because I loved the attention. Also, so I could have a chance to possibly meet Ava Jones.

When I was around thirteen, I worked in my first movie. I took on the role exclusively because my favorite pop singer, the newly discovered, Ava Jones was writing a song for it. There was no guarantee that meant I would meet her, but I would take any chance to do so. One day on set, my dream came true. Ava Jones, the coolest fifteen year old the world had ever seen (in my eyes) appeared. However, I had been acting horribly that day and couldn’t believe her luck. Ava Jones, my icon, my Goddess, would see me completely flop.

I ran behind her trailer and sobbed, curling into a ball and sitting with my head in my lap. When suddenly things when from bad to worse,

“Hey," Ava mumbled as she stood in front of me. My face shot up red in embarrassment, tears and snot being sent downwards as my head went up. "I look so ugly!" I screamed and started crying even more.

"I don't see why that really matters, but yeah you're a pretty ugly crier." Ava squatted down to be on level with me. She took the tissue from my hand and wiped me off as I panted to catch her breath.

"I don't want you to see me looking ugly! You're Ava Jones!" I yelled, supposedly trying to explain myself.

"Then maybe don't cry." Ava sighed and sat down on the ground next to me.

"What do you even have to cry about?" She asked.

"This script." I grumbled and threw a paper down on the ground. Ava picked it up and tried to examine it. She didn't really know anything about acting but gave it her best shot.

"What's wrong with it?"

"I'm not good enough for it. They want me to be shocked! How am I supposed to be shocked?" I huffed.

"Well, I'm not an actor so I can't really tell you. But do you wanna practice with me a few times?" She offered. I nodded a little bit as Ava examined the script

"Look out princess magenta! That building is falling!" Ava yelled with WAY too much enthusiasm.

"Oh no." I said, still emotionally drained from the crying.

"Well that was sad." Ava couldn't help but grin as my head dropped in further despair. She paced for a moment before getting an idea, "You seemed pretty shocked when I found you crying," I nodded.

"Maybe just, I don't know, channel that or something?"

I nodded with enthusiasm this time, "okay! Let's try again"

"Look out princess magenta! That building is falling."

"oH NO!" I yelled. It was probably a bit much but I was happy and this was just a kids movie after all. From that day on I decided that one day Ava Jones was going to be her best friend. I had gone to every concert, set up photoshoots. I even turned a Playboy magazine event into a charity event so Ava could be pressured into coming. But, it was always the same. Ava would smile, they’d talk about work, then she’d be whisked away. I needed at least once to crack her shell.

And that’s why today was the best day of my life. Her phone rang as she sat, munching on her cookies and she answered it to her screaming friend Tammy, “OHMYGOSHEMILYEMILYEMILY I HAVE THE BEST NEWS FOR YOU!!”

“WHAT WHAT OH MY GOSH WHAT!!!?” I yelled back causing the maids and her poodles to wince.

“AVA JONES IS JOINING THE SELECTION!!” She screamed causing me to shriek in delight.

“Really? It’s not at all her type of thing, where did you hear this?” I asked quickly, still holding onto hope.

“Okay so my brother’s girlfriend’s, best friend’s cousin’s boyfriend's older sister works for Rainbow Companion Recordings, and she heard from an intern who heard from her boss who heard from her boyfriend who heard from his boss that heard from Ava’s agent that she’s joining!”

I gasped and my phone fell to the ground in shock for a moment before I picked it up and quickly ended the call before called my sister.

“Savannah! Can we push back golf? I have to pack for a flight to Angeles!” I exclaimed as my older sister sighed.

“Really? You know it’s hard for me to clear my schedule. I’d really prefer we stick to our originally planned time.” She sighed. My heart dropped a bit but I sucked it up and agreed to our normal time.

***

The ball flew higher than I intended for it to. I could never hit them perfectly. Not the way Savannah could. Savannah was always perfect, be it in golf, studies, anything. She was mother and father’s favorite. She had excellent grades all her life, became fluent in Spanish, new Asian, french, Italian, and German, then she followed in our father’s footsteps taking off to become a large company’s illean representative. She was flown around and paid nicely (not like she needed it). Our parents always had hoped for me to grow up and follow in her footsteps, but despite Savannah's framed report cards being hung in the hallway, I could never keep up.

“Do you think you’ll apply for the selection?” I asked her as I quickly went to the ball.

“You really think I’d apply for that? Mom and dad would never approve of either of us getting a fiance that way.” She scoffed and crossed her arms. “Why are you asking, one of your bimbo friends planning on it?”

I bit the inside of my cheek holding back on defending my friends, people like Savannah didn’t get along with people like me. “Well, it’s not like he’s some four. He’s a prince I hardly see how that’d lead to disapproval.”

“You really think mom and dad would like one of us putting our lives up on a TV for the speculation of the world and tabloids, being the prince’s personal prostitutes for however long he needs to recover from a broken engagement. Not to mention the fact that he had an engagement called off, what does that say about him? Doesn’t think through decisions, commitment problems, then there could be a whole other plethora of reasons for the engagement being called off.” She responded. A “duh” needing to follow each statement.

I looked down to the ring on my own finger, I had the diamond replaced after father would no longer give his blessing to Jacob. It was now a glistening pink ring, it’d have been too sad to return a ring so beautiful, but I no longer wore it on my ring finger. I didn’t have a good response for Savannah, she made excellent points as always.

“You better not be thinking of joining yourself. They barely handle your “actress” lifestyle.” She sighed before hitting her own ball. I was the failure of the family. The easily manipulated, easy-to-bed, childish, Emily-rose.

***

I applied anyways, it would be one of my only chances to see Ava Jones again. I needed her to like me as much as I liked her. To understand how much I would value our friendship. I brought boxes of macrons with me from France and decided to use them as an excuse to speak with Ava. I would have to give them to everyone though, as to not seem creepy. I stopped at the door of one Ms. Jen Li and waited at the doorway as she was in bed,

“Hi! I'm Emily-Rose White! You might know me from a few movies I've been in. I recently got back from Paris and brought some macaroons back for the selection as a friendship gift, would you like one?” I offered, giving a quick introduction.

“Macarons?” She asked then scoffed something under her breath. I was very familiar with the action. Mother or father had done it since I was a child. Prancing around at parties they’d mumble their embarrassment to each other. I brushed it off and widened my smile,

“ Do you dislike them? I have coffee, mocha, chocolate, and vanilla flavor. I can also order some more if you'd like?” I offered. I would hate for Ava to hear of me being unkind to a selected. Mother had always said giving gifts was a much more dignified way of forming alliances than giving hugs.

Jen took one of the cookies, holding it carefully. I wonder if she’s never had one? They’re pretty tasty if she’d like to try it. I hope she knows I’m not one of those women who you can never eat in front of. “Emily White. You're a Two, aren't you?” She asked.

“Yup! Though my family were originally politicians when Gergory Illea took over and aided him, he bought our way to the two cast a few years after and mostly acted as society socialites. But again, I like to act if I see a role that looks fun. How about you?” I answered by giving a little bit of fun fact information for fun.

Jen tossed the cookie back in the bin and scoffed again, I hope I didn’t catch her in a bad mood, “Figures. I'll pass.” she replied. I tried to not let myself crack even though I was becoming increasingly terrified that I had done or said something wrong.

“Oh well, again if you'd like anything else I can get it for you. I'd love to be friends with you all here.” I offered and gave her another smile. I handed the box over to a maid who stood near me.

Jen shot up at that and stalked over to me, “I know you're a Two, and you've never had to lift a single one of your manicured fingers in your life, but when you're in my room-” she took the box back from the maid and shoved it back at me, “ you treat them with respect. At least they actually contribute something to society.” She said. I frowned and realized it must be because I hadn’t spoken to her. Their job was to aid us so I hadn’t thought of interacting with them as opposed to just giving them their tasks. I thought that was how they preferred their work to be done, or at least that’s what mother and father always had told me.

I turned to the maid and gave her a friendly but apologetic smile. “Excuse me Miss Maid. As it is your job to do would you take this box and throw it out. It has no use now.” I explained feeling a bit like I was performing and unsure if I had done it correctly. “Is that what you meant?” I asked Jen hoping she would feel better now.

Jen pulled the box back from the maid and shoved it once again in my arms, “No, you bitch, I mean do it yourself. Or is that too hard for you?” She sneered.

I couldn’t help it anymore and my lip quivered as I felt myself crying. Of course she wanted me to deal with the box. I’m such an idiot. “I'm sorry, I can do that.” I spoke quickly and turned with the box hoping I hadn’t caused too much of a scene.

***

I laid in my bed for a few hours. I debated calling Savannah or mother- but of course they would know not to act that way with a maid. Of course I was the dumb one here. I had offended lady Jen Li and caused a scene. I was already in this event that they hated and now I was ruining the White name.

Crying into my pillow I decided to go down to Ava’s room. We weren’t friends yet, and this was NOT part of the plan. But it would be better for her to hear it from me so I could apologize for what a complete fool I had been before she decided that was who I had grown into. I cried on her bed for a few hours, explaining that I hadn’t meant for things to turn out that way and I truly hadn’t known that Jen would be so upset. She was incredibly kind, offering to speak with Lady Jen herself, but that would be even worse, to escalate the situation more. I dozed off in the room and slept my first night in Ava’s room.

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morphituu · 4 years

Text

Milagro

Chapter 15: Omens

Ch: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14

Callie’s brows furrowed in bewilderment when Nick’s hand cupped beneath her fist to catch the muffin wrapper, quickly tossing it away before speeding back to help pull her sweater up her arms.

“Why?” she only asked, blinking up at him in confusion while he went so far as to help pull her beanie down her cheeks.

“You heard the doctor,” he snipped, not even bothering to shield his own scalp from the rain as he kept the umbrella clear over her and only half over his lumbering frame.

“Rain isn’t pitocin,” she sassed, taking control of the handle to make sure he wasn’t pelted by the persistent rain.

“I’m not taking any chances,”

“You do realize that sex is what’ll make everything start moving, right?” she teased with a lopsided grin. Nick’s pointed ears twitched when the displeasure of such a realization rooted into his mind.

“I guess we’ll have to cut back,”

“Oh shut up, like we could,” she smirked up at him. “You really wanna stop fucking like we did last night?”

Nick flushed at the recollection of the evening; the way they were both left breathless, shouting each others names into the early AM hours. How she unwound the tight coil at his center, her loving gaze keeping him in suspension as she witnessed him unfold, smiling against his open mouth that howled her name.

“Okay come back down to Earth,” she patted the back of his hand clutched in her hold a few times, giggling when he nodded languidly but clearly was still wandering through his thoughts as he sauntered on.

“We should try that position again,” he said below his breath after opening the passenger side door of the truck and helping her climb in. She snorted as she clicked her Chucks together to shake off the water and gravel.

“That’s the only position I can do anymore,” she scoffed, wiggling around until she found her spot with the seat reclined a little farther.

Nick shrugged; I don’t have a problem with that.

When he’d rounded the truck and stuffed the umbrella in the side compartment, Callie was already setting her shoes in the back and grabbing for her heels and stockings with the heater on blast, the final touches of her outfit coming together before she went in for work.

“You’re gonna snap an ankle on those things,” he mumbled, his repulsion towards the tortuous footwear evident in his tone.

“Maybe, but damn if they don’t make my fat legs look better,” she struggled to lift a heel onto the dash and show the definition of her calf.

Nick neither agreed or disagreed; he knew better than to fall into that trap again.

Her phone vibrated loudly in the center console, and she hissed a low curse trying to finish inching her stockings up her thigh and under her tight pencil skirt in time to grab the phone.

“Hey Rose,” she exhaled, pinning the phone between her shoulder and cheek while she worked on the next leg. “Yeah we just left,”

Nick listened quietly, twisting through the wet streets leading away from the clinic nestled behind luxurious townhomes and sprawling businesses with equally extravagant day goers cluttering the slick sidewalks. The glossy streets reminded him of the tune-up the truck needed, more urgently the changing of the tires it was due for. Preferably before Leo joins us. He glanced through the rearview mirror at the carseat still perched neatly behind them; he gripped the steering wheel tighter, containing a wide smile.

“Three centimeters already,” Callie smiled, but it quickly vanished. “No- centimeters, not meters,”

Nick snorted.

“No they still say the 21st,” she grunted, finally finished and pulling her skirt down her thighs. With a hard exhale, she let her head bounce back against the seat and her legs spread and stretch to relieve the pressure on her lower stomach. Now Nick could finally snake his hand under her arm and caress her stomach, drumming where Leo kicked in protest of his mother squishing him. “I doubt it, he’s still head down. Yeah. Uh-huh. Today?” she looked at Nick, holding the phone against her chest. “Are we doing anything today?”

Nick shook his head, only half sure; are we?

“Yeah I can but I need to go home first cuz there’s no way in hell I’m walking around in these heels,” Callie returned to her call, pulling her lipstick from her purse and pulling down the visor. “Yeah just pick me up from the house when you’re ready,”

“I need more lotion!” Nick whispered, snapping his jaws when she shooed him away.

“Okay pues I’ll see you then. Ah-huh, bye gurl bye.” Callie dropped the phone into her lap, finishing with the lip stain. “Rosie’s gonna take me to do the gift registry for the shower,”

“Oh get everything I wishlisted on Amazon, especially that bottle set,” Nick piped, glancing at her excitedly.

“No one’s gonna buy us that, baby, it’s expensive,” she again reminded, and pouted compassionately when his spirits dropped a little bit. “He’s gonna be attached to my boob anyways,”

Nick grumbled a little bit. “Add the sling then?”

“Of course,” she smiled, patting his molted hand. “That’s more doable than a fifty dollar bottle set,”

He grumbled again. “You never know...”

“Uh-huh,” she teased, giggling when he dug his fingers into her belly. Once she’d finished the last touch-ups of her makeup and fluffing her hair around her shoulders, she could recline into the seat and relax the remainder of the drive across town through the winding hills, and listen to the rain pattering against the roof of the car with the radio drifting softly around them.

Her eyes drifted down when Leo tapped insistently under her own palm, cracking the smallest of smiles when she followed the gentle nudges.

“I can’t believe there’s only a month left,” she cooed, her thumb stroking the rough skin of his hand.

“Mom told me the last month takes the longest to go by,”

“Yeah my mom told me that too,” she agreed, watching Nick’s fingers roll when Leo spun. “God I’m only gonna get bigger,”

“He’s gonna get bigger,”

“And I am gonna get chubbier,”

“More ass to bite into,” Nick smiled, clicking his sharp teeth together a few times when Callie glared at him.

“Lookin’ for a new spot, huh?”

“Always, but I’ll wait ‘til after we’re married. Bite into the spot,” he explained smugly, his vague detailing making her eyes narrow.

“Don’t know if I wanna marry knowing I’m literally gonna be bitten on the ass for it,”

“No way out of it now- Orcs mate for life. This finger is mine,” he sang, her ring finger in his hold and wiggling her hand. “Gonna have my baby and my last name,” he boasted, shoulders shimmying in the seat as he turned into the parking lot before the bank.

“Fine, you can have all that as long as I get to swim in that police pension,” she countered cheekily, shoving her makeup pouches back into her purse.

“Ha, have fun waiting another twenty years,”

She smirked, her lips pursing as he grinned. “Deal. I’m off at 2,” she caved, leaning over the center console to meet his lips for a series of loving kisses. The crook of her hand held under his jaw, igniting a small chuff; getting him going before work was one of her favorite past times.

“No heavy lifting,” he got in between. “Boss people around,”

“Like I need to be told that,” a final kiss was placed on his cheek, his hand rounding her stomach before she pushed the door open and slid down the seat.

“I love you- don’t do anything strenuous!” He called, sticking his head out the window.

“I love you too!” She smiled, waddling towards the entrance and thanking the security guard who opened the door for her.

Nick shook his head, shifting the truck into reverse. “Stubborn brat.”

He only felt a tad bit guilty stopping at a Taco Bell; it wasn’t only for him, but for Sergey too. It was his first day back after a bumpy recovery that had extended twice when the ‘burns’ across his chest didn’t heal as expected, but that itself was expected after being bludgeoned by a spell. Nothing heals right when magic is involved.

Nick pulled up to the first window, digging through his wallet for cash when the worker at the window exclaimed.

“Where’s your wife?” asked the stout older woman he’d met at the window nearly all of the times visiting this particular chain with Callie beside him.

Her aged smile was kind, but the interaction still made Nick edgy.

“At home waiting for the food,” he lied through a stiff smile. He’d once made the mistake of telling someone at work that Callie still worked so late into her unpredictable pregnancy, and he’d been dealt a harsh reprimand from an officer he barely knew, at that, scolding Nick about letting his lover work when he should’ve been bringing in enough money to support them both.

Nick avoided that officer from then on; no longer would he acknowledge his presence when they were near.

Don’t tell me how to handle my life, he recalled wanting to shout. Besides, Callie would fucking castrate me if I tried forcing her to stay home.

“Ah, such a good man going for his lady,” she admired, quickly finishing his purchase. “See you later than, ah?”

“Yeah- thank you!” Nick replied awkwardly, quickly collecting his card and rolling to the next window. He exhaled, hopeful the other worker at the next window didn’t recognize him.

With the food collected and another awkward encounter avoided, he quickly exited the plaza to start his small trek across town, caving into his hunger and chowing down on a burrito before he made it halfway to Sergey’s. It was unfortunate that he’d be returning on such a gloomy day, but Nick was determined to make his transition back into their high-stress- and high harassment- job as smooth as possible, and starting the day with one of his favorite meals seemed to be a good start.

Entering the Orc predominant neighborhood Sergey resided in didn’t bring Nick as much heat as it once did; he could shoulder a few glares if the majority of his interactions were kind. Munguz carried a lighter air to it now, and he was thankful. Nick wanted his presence amongst the Orkish community to be neutral at best before Leo made his debut, and knowing the hardships halflings grew up with meant Orcs were his best bet at fitting in.

Nick sighed, bridling the troubling thoughts. Worry about that when it comes.

By the time he parked neatly along the narrow street, he spotted Sergey standing in the doorway of his small cottage, his frown as telling as his slumped shoulders and holding a mug that steam danced from in the chilled afternoon. Before he exited the truck, he reached over to pop open his glove box and retrieve one of the invites Rosie had made for Callie’s shower Nick had been handing out very meticulously.

Sergey watched Nick make his way across the street, his spirits admittedly lifting a little when he spotted the paper bag in hand.

“Did you just wake up?” Nick grinned, and Sergey nodded.

“Couldn’t sleep much last night,” he confessed, tilting the mug to watch the creamy tea swirl.

Nick felt unsure of himself once he stood before his young partner. “You’re not ready to go back, are you?”

Sergey shrugged, looking back out across his yard. “S’not that. Just nervous,”

“I know the feeling,” Nick affirmed, handing off the food.

“Aw, you remembered my order?” Sergey keened, and Nick’s eyes rolled, following him inside.

It was a welcome relief to step into the warm home, the scent of the Orchid tea drifting through the home that was dimly lit and tidy. Dura decision to pursue homemaking had really tapped into her creative side, and upon observing how much he liked the colored walls and small decorative pieces, he considered asking her to help him with the make-over his home desperately needed. Neither him or Callie were very good at mixing and matching.

“Ah, Nick! It’s good to see you!” Dura exclaimed, popping out from the kitchen and pattering over to him for a hug.

As he leaned down to get his arms around her, he had to remind himself that even though Callie was growing fast, Orcs grew even faster during pregnancy. The poor girl was already waddling, her stomach popping out much farther than a human would expect at 11 weeks along.

“How’re you feeling?” Nick pressed, holding her hands when she’d straightened back out.

“I’m doing good, just trying to keep up with this little girl,” she smiled, holding her round stomach.

Nick’s ears twitched. “You guys are having a girl?” he turned to Sergey, meeting his smug grin. Nick had brandished that same smile countless times before while going on and on about Leo, so he let him live it up. It was definitely something to be proud of.

“Speaking of babies,” Nick remembered, pulling the invite from his back pocket and handing it to Dura.

“Oh this is so cute!” Dura whined, her fingers tracing gently over the designs and raised stickers of the invite. “Callie wasn’t upset you chose an Orkish design?”

Nick shook his head. “She doesn’t like the whole ‘Leo lion’ thing,”

“Yeah it’s kinda mayonnaise,” she teased, carefully pinning it up on the bulletin board above the corner that housed her working computer. “How’s she been doing?”

“Good, good- today is her last day at work,”

Dura scoffed. “Just now going on leave, ah?”

“She gets restless easily,” Nick shrugged.

“I’m surprised her little legs keep up carrying that belly around,” Sergey voiced, and Nick nodded in agreement. “How about you, old man? Ready to be a dad?”

“Just counting down the days at this point,” he responded calmly with his palms rubbing together, but beneath the surface he was containing an excitement that made him feel like he could run the diameter of the world twice.

“When he’s screaming all night you’re gonna wanna go back and rethink those words,” Dura countered playfully.

“I guess we’ll see then,” he bumped Sergey’s arm as he’d began to chow down on a taco. “You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he mumbled through a mouthful, his slides already on and moving past Nick towards Dura.

She keened over Sergey adoringly, his thin face held in her hands and nodding at her persistent questioning while he rubbed the side of her stomach, eventually leaning in for a tight hug. Dura looked to be more reluctant about his departure than Sergey himself did, but that was expected. Callie had been the same way his first day back after his attack.

“Nauk-avurn votar avo avhiuk liavavle ni, ah?” she ordered gently, smoothing her hands across his head once more before exchanging a few kisses.

“Jiak'll alwayuk nauk-avurn avo mausan girluk,” Sergey grinned, bringing forth a dazzling smile from Dura.

Once more she hugged him, her arms tight around his neck and committing the moment to memory, more fearful than before that her husband wouldn’t return.

“Keep an eye on him,” she told Nick once separating from Sergey and walking them to the door.

“Won’t let him out of my sight.” He winked, patting her arm before following his partner back into the chilled afternoon.

The officers hunched through the small onslaught of rain, already wishing they were in their own homes and avoiding the miserable weather when they climbed into the cold truck.

“What if the rain is a bad omen?” Sergey mumbled, pulling out his next taco.

“If rain was a bad omen I wouldn’t even be with Callie,” Nick argued, and although Sergey’s mouth opened many times to argue, he ultimately kept silent, thinking over his words critically. Surely he didn’t know the true meaning behind that, but if it distracted him from the dread he was surely feeling, Nick would keep quiet and let him work it out.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Ehh, I still get sore sometimes, muscle spasms. I hope we’re not expecting to chase anyone down today,”

“I’ll do the chasing, your aim is better anyways,” Nick cracked.

“I’ll take the next chase,” he sighed.

Nick glanced at him as he navigated the narrow road and rain. “What’s up?”

Sergey shook his head. “We can’t talk about it,”

Ahh. “Still have questions?”

“About a million,”

“You know, you can always go and request a meeting with Kandomere. We can’t openly talk about it but you can-”

“I have. Four times,” he exhaled. “I keep getting rescheduled,”

“Keep at it. MTF is worse than the IRS,”

“I don’t know if they’ll even give me the answers I want. If they’re not even willing to talk then what’s the point,” he grumbled, nearly popping a sauce packet all over Nick’s truck as he angrily tore it with his sharp teeth.

Nick ran his tongue over his clipped tusks as he pondered. This could end badly. “What do you wanna know?”

Sergey looked at him as he chewed, his hairless brows furrowing. “Huh?”

Nick nodded encouragingly, silently bolstering him.

Sergey tucked his food away, turning his shoulders to better face Nick.

“Why was she there?” he asked first, and Nick glanced at his rearview mirror, counting down the seconds until the sirens came up behind them.

“She needed another Bright’s help to take down the one following her,”

“You’re a Bright!?” he yelled, but Nick hushed him despite knowing no pedestrians or drivers could possibly hear them.

So he shook his head, and when Sergey mouthed ‘Ward’ in question, his brilliant eyes widened. “He is!?” he hissed.

“She couldn’t find him so she found me,”

“How did she know you two?” he pressed, and Nick sighed, glancing at his mirrors again, but there was no flashes of red and blue trailing them.

“Years ago there was a similar incident she was involved in, that’s all I can tell you about that, but, just like this time she dragged us into some shit,” Nick detailed sparsely, but Sergey didn’t seem to be too up in arms over the vagueness.

“So me being there was completely coincidental?” Sergey mumbled sullenly, and Nick nodded.

“No one was ever meant to know, not even Callie,”

The younger Orc nodded, shifting back to face forward. They were approaching the precinct when Sergey huffed angrily, pulling Nick’s attention from the officer he gestured to at the front entrance.

“Here I thought I was chosen to be a part of something cool and all it was was coincidence- fuck that,” he rattled off hotly, gathering his food before he zipped up his hoodie and pulled his hood over his head. “That’s bullshit,”

Nick snorted softly. “You saved people from an explosion, remember? That’s pretty cool,”

“Oh yeah I’m a badass now,” he chuffed, opening the door a little viciously. Nick stifled most of his chuckle as they made their way through the parking lot and into the building, and it was Nick’s first relief when most of the officers who passed Sergey welcomed him warmly. There was always the few who either turned cheek or made a remark under their breath, but it was easy to block those unwarranted comments and steer him towards the locker rooms.

“That wasn’t what I was expecting,” Sergey admitted below his breath as they at last made it into the locker rooms.

Nick still gave Daryl’s former locker a glance every time he passed it, but the heartache that was significant the first day he’d not been to work after his early retirement was gone, and he could now recall the good days they had together on shared routes.

Nick opened his own, always fixing the photobooth strip that was surrounded by numerous photos of him and Callie, a few of Pucca and his parents, and a whole corner filled with only ultrasounds of Leo that he taped in order, from the very first wiggling blob of a heartbeat to the perfect cinnamon roll he already was.

Now Sergey could tape up his own of… wait a minute.

“Do you two have a name picked out?” Nick asked, bumping his arm.

“Mariak,” Sergey grinned. “It means ‘my beloved’,”

Being that Sergey was normally such a goofy person even when he had Dura around, it bewildered Nick to some extent to see him so smitten over his little girl, but Nick was also sure that if anyone from work witnessed how he himself acted around Callie and often had full conversations with her stomach, they’d be shocked to see his usual stoic demeanor so… mushy.

“It already sounds like it suits her,” Nick clapped him on the back, grinning when Sergey beamed proudly.

Small conversation passed between the Orcs as they changed, and just as Nick’s kevlar vest had been loose upon returning from his recovery, so was Sergey’s, but the men’s attention was pulled from his fittings when a fellow officer walked behind them, snorting in the direction of their open lockers.

“Is it part of clan law to have kids at the same time?” The heavier set officer mocked, walking by with his utility belt thrown over his shoulder.

Nick was ready to ignore the remark like so many others he’d brushed off, but out of the corner of his eye he spotted Sergey spinning quickly, and Nick immediately recognized the same protective fury he’d been forced to learn how to harness early on.

“Fuck you Andrews,” Sergey spat, Nick’s hand coming to his chest to bring him back a few steps.

“Oh calm the fuck down you grunter, it was a fuckin’ joke,” Andrews laughed, as if the slur meant nothing on top of his first jab.

Sergey pushed again, but Nick pushed harder.

“Keep your head on your shoulders, Malinka,” he ordered below his breath.

“They get to-”

“But they can use more against us than we can against them,” Nick said through a clenched jaw.

Nick got it- he really did. Letting go of any kind of insult in his childs direction was like chewing glass, but even if this one time was taken care of, it wouldn’t stop the others increased efforts to bring them down if the Orcs were known to snitch.

Sergey huffed unwillingly, pushing Nick’s hand away harshly to turn back to his locker.

Nick glanced at Andrews, the men exchanging differing expressions that said all the words they needed, but just as Nick’s silent snarl was rebuked, so was Andrew’s priggish smirk.

It was just another day Nick secretly wished Ward was still working. Even if they rarely worked side by side, having a human back-up meant he was able to snap back without fear of a full repercussion from the Chief. Now, he was Sergey’s safeguard; he couldn’t go jeopardizing either of them.

They finished tacking on the last of their gear, but Sergey still slammed his locker heatedly once he’d grabbed his phone.

“C’mon, we’re probably working Grand today,” Nick nudged his arm, and caught his brows perking up. “Putting assholes in cuffs always feels good.”

↠

A hard exhale puffed from her pursed lips, her elbow draped over her eyes and rocking in her office chair, but even being reclined and keeping movement constant didn’t completely appease the little one favoring one side of her hips to lean on.

No matter how she pushed back or resorted to kicking her heels off under her desk to walk circles in her office, Leo did his best to stand straight and break free of his ever shrinking home no matter how he tossed his mother about.

A particular hard jab against her bladder stirred a grunt, her knees pinching and jerking upwards.

“C’mon Leo, harass me at home but not here,” she lamented, smirking when he tapped gently under her rubbing hand.

“Is he using your insides as a trampoline?” came Tam’s voice, and she unveiled her eyes to find her peeking over her cubby.

“He’s bungee jumping with his umbilical cord,” Callie smiled weakly, her head dropping back as Tam laughed.

“You up for lunch? I brought wings for everyone,” her boss smiled coyly, but the immediate growl in Callie’s stomach banished the curiosity as to why she’d gone out of her way to buy such a luxurious lunch for everyone.

“I’m always in the mood for wings, c’mon now,” Callie sassed, graciously accepting Tam’s hands when she aided in getting Callie standing.

“Maybe it’ll get that little boy settled down,”

“He only stops when he’s tired,” Callie groaned, again accepting Tam’s elbow as they walked across the polished marble floors to the break room. A small trip through the branch couldn’t go without someone commenting on her size, always asking how close she was to popping. At first watching their faces shift between surprise then either disgust or amazement when it was revealed she wasn’t as far along as people assumed was funny, but now it just annoyed her. People became bolder the bigger she got, it seemed.

Maybe they assumed she wouldn’t try swinging in her condition if they kept egging her on…

“My branch isn’t gonna run as smoothly without you here,” Tam grieved, the girls taking a turn down the hall to the break room.

“I bet you’ll like the replacement more than me, but if any of you ruin how streamlined I have those orders now I swear I’ll hunt you,” Callie threatened.

She thought it odd when Tam stepped before her to grab for the doorknob, and eyed her suspiciously once stepping in, but the loud shouting from the many co-workers stood behind a table with assorted foods and a small cake brought her hands to her cheeks, stifling her wide smile as they cheered and clapped for her.

The glimmering banner that read ‘baby boy’ stretched across the narrow room said all she needed to know before spotting the gifts stacked atop another table, and Tam walked her in, everyone giving Callie a hug and wishing her best during her last day of work before maternity leave. The silver and gold decorations brought the usually drab breakroom to life, as well as the clammer that went on inside as she made her rounds, thanking every person who found the time to help with the surprise.

Curious hands found their way to her stomach, most of them knowing how active of a kicker Leo was. Plenty had seen her wince through presentations or conversations when he’d act particularly vivacious, and plenty had also helped her waddle across the building when Leo was ruthless.

Now, they had a chance to feel the calmer kicks and somersaults, most of the women stacking their hands and blubbering when they witnessed first hand how reactive he was to small taps and pokes.

But the more the hands piled on, the more Callie wanted to push them away; she could handle a few, but the insistent questions from every direction and clamor all around was making her fatigued, and sweat start to collect at her hairline.

“You look like you’re ready to pop right now!” Lupe, one of the new girls Callie was still warming up to exclaimed as she came up to hold her stomach a little aggressively. Her unusually long, square tipped nails always bothered her in addition to the tacky blue eyeshadow she caked on, but even if the girl was awkward and didn’t know boundaries, she was sweet and a good worker.

Callie laughed flatly. “Still have a month left,”

“Oh I’m sure you’ll go before then, are we doing bets? Who’s holding bets?” she turned to announce, running off to harass someone about it.

Callie shook her head, moving to a chair she could easily recline into.

“You okay hun?” Ellie came up next. They’d both been hired the same day those years ago and had excelled in different positions, but through all the competition, they’d had remained close. Ellie was also one of the few at the branch who had a good head on her shoulders and kept her nose out of other people's business, something that was hard to do in a building full of young adults that gossiped like mad.

“It’s just a lot,” Callie said lowly, fanning her warm cheeks.

“Do you want me to make everyone leave?”

“Nah, I’m hidden in the corner back here. I just need a minute,” Callie grinned, grabbing a cold water from the bucket beside her.

“Hopefully they give you a few minutes before the next wave comes.”

Callie scoffed, downing the cold water before fixing her camisole under her thick sweater. Another long breath, and she situated deeper into the stiff chair, holding her stomach protectively when someone moved to closely and she thought they were going to lean in for a touch.

Now that Leo was settling down, it made her reluctant to get up and interact with the people who had spent time and money on throwing this, but finally having a moment of peace in her own body made her aware to how tired she was. On top of restlessness, her son was just as restless, often keeping her up at night coupled with the heartburn and braxton hicks. When she figured no one was looking, she let her head rest back against the wall, her hand tracing across her belly where she felt one final swirl before probably falling into a nap.

“Cal!? Callie!?” she’d heard him yell, and tensed with a hidden, beaming smile when he came charging back into the room, his footing nearly lost as he jumped onto their bed.

“You’re pregnant? Is this yours? This is yours?” he exclaimed, pulling the blanket away.

“It’s been sitting there since we got home!” she laughed, squealing when he shouted and jumped, quickly pulling her into a bone crushing hug.

“Oh baby,” he wept, holding her face to kiss her repeatedly. “I’m so proud of you-” another kiss, “Oh my god,” he went on, burying his face against her neck when he wrapped his brawny arms around her waist, keeping her tight against his chest. “Oh I can smell it!” he sobbed, taking deep inhales past the stuffiness of his nose.

She wiped her teary eyes behind him, smiling against his mouth when he chanted thanks in Orkish, holding her face between his big hands.

“When did you take it?” he asked, sitting back so he could lean farther down to press his face to her flat stomach.

“At work,” she sniffled, holding his shoulders when he pulled her into his lap. She kissed the top of his head, embracing around his neck. With his cheek against her chest, he breathed deeply again and again, noticing the small differences of her scent this time around.

He continued to squeeze her in tight hugs and kisses, telling her how amazing she was, how proud he was; that this one was going to be their miracle.

“What if it happens again?” she asked quietly, as if saying it too loudly would determine this baby’s fate.

“It won’t. This one is yours,” he told her firmly, holding her head. “You’re gonna hold this one and watch it grow. I can see it in you already, baby. I think your body knows that this is it,” Nick told her sincerely, his thumbs wiping away the tears that slipped down her cheek.

She placed her hands over his, nodding with her eyes closed and their foreheads touching. “I’m really excited,” she confessed silently, smiling when Nick’s own gleamed up at her.

“Good, stay excited,” he pressed, kissing her again.

“What if-”

“No what if’s this time. We go with hope this time, okay? No more being cautious. It’s not good for you,” he pleaded, letting his breath go when she nodded hesitantly.

“I’ll try,”

The kiss he gave her was tender, and careful. It was a lot to ask her to be optimistic when she’d only been dealt unfair hands thus far, and he wanted to remind her that with every step or bump, he’d be there, shouldering the same struggles as best as he could. But even though he could feel the slight tension in her frame, he could also feel how much she bared to him, and in turn how much she trusted his words.

“We’re gonna have a baby,” she said softly, her dazzling smile filling him with warmth.

“We’re gonna have a baby!” He shouted, tackling her back onto the mattress and smothering her until she laughed.

The moment often came to her when she’d stare down at her size, always amazed at how much time had flown by and how little she worried for Leo’s passing now, but the memory had a way of bringing her back to herself. In moments where she felt unsure, or anxious- often when she wondered if she was ready for this new step in life, it reminded her that no matter the crowds or opinions around them, it was her and Nick. They’d jumped into parenthood hand in hand, and sometimes they looked at one another without a clue of what came next, but she was thankful he was there to be scared with.

No one else fought like they had to the point they were now or knew their unborn son like they did. Nick could tell if Leo was close to napping by the temper of his kicks, and if he talked long enough, he could seemingly hypnotize him into peace.

This one is yours.

Callie grinned against the palm of her hand.

He’s mine.

“Callie!”

Her head shot up, finding Tam motioning in her direction. “C’mon, we have games!”

The self indulgent moment was comfortably tucked away, and she stood to join her co-workers at the tables just as they’d started pulling out rolls of toilet paper.

↠

“Boy, seven arrests in one day!” Nick exclaimed, slapping Sergey’s palm forcefully after they’d stepped from the cruiser.

“Ah it’s just luck,” he brushed off, grabbing the latest arrest from the back seat. The middle aged woman tugged against his strong hold, but otherwise kept her blonde head bowed down in shame.

“Luck is finding dope in the trunk. All of this,” Nick shook the impressive pile of paperwork. “Is pure instinct. This is impressive for your first day back,”

“I didn’t think I’d jump at chasing someone,”

“And some tackling too, apparently,” Nick mumbled in Orkish, motioning towards the disheveled nature of the girl, more notably the deep scratches covering her arms after she’d been chased into some thicket.

“I have energy I can’t take out on Dura anymore,” he intoned, and Nick scoffed.

“I hear that,” he sighed in return, the pair entering the precinct. They were about to take a hard left to intakes when a flash of blue caught Nick’s eye, and he stopped Sergey.

Pointing down the hall, they both spotted Kandomere speaking to one of the detectives that had been called in from another state to help deal with a recent increase in dragon slayings that were out of season. As usual, the elf was calm and collected, and as usual, didn’t acknowledge the Orcs existence despite meeting their curious gazes.

“Now’s your chance,” Nick murmured.

“I have this,” Sergey muttered, but Nick quickly took hold of her cuffs, jerking his chin in Kandomere’s direction.

“The worst that can happen is you leave with the same answers you had before,”

Sergey exhaled, his hands flat against his chest. “He makes me nervous,”

“If you give him back the attitude it makes it easier to deal with,” Nick advised, shrugging when he eyed him dubiously. Sergey stared a moment longer before squaring his shoulders and puffing his chest.

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“Go for it.”

It was slow, but Sergey still headed down the hall with confidence in his frame, waiting patiently until Kandomere had finished his conversation before grabbing his attention. Nick couldn’t help but linger even as the woman in his hands commented on their stalling, waiting until Sergey was following the elf down the hall and turning to give him a thumbs up.

Nick released his breath, finally directing the woman to the back of the precinct to be processed, but as he walked, he came to a stunning realization.

Watching Sergey walk up to Kandomere had filled him with such anxiety that he was certain if the young Orc had been berated before the men and women surrounding them, he would’ve stepped in and shielded him from the lashing. Somewhere along the line, Nick had become fiercely protective of his partner, even willing to go as far as saying he was the younger sibling he’d secretly always wanted.

He already found himself wanting to smack him upside the head when he made bold strokes that would land them in hot water, and the two would often fall into near wrestling matches when either of their tempers flared, but it was also nice talking to someone who was on his side of the daily battles.

Someone who could identify with his struggles on a more relatable level. Venting to Callie or Ward always lessened the heartache, but knowing Sergey went home sometimes feeling the same weight on his shoulders didn’t make him feel better, but brought him to feeling content in his decision to become a cop. After years of battling hate and doubt, it was good to know someone else was as dumb as him to pursue such a dream.

Nick chuffed, startling the woman before him.

It could be his paternal instincts kicking in and asserting themselves over the people he cared for.

Either way. It seemed that Nick had taken Sergey under his wing in every sense, yet it made him prideful. He liked being able to share his knowledge and wisdom in hopes it would improve his experience.

Assuming I could keep him from being blown away by a Bright.

A rogue hand dipped into his pile of potato chips smothered in Tapatío, but before Nick could swing, Sergey plopped down before him with the chips crunching in his mouth.

“I keep forgetting to tell Dura to get me this,” Sergey groaned, snatching another chip despite Nick flicking his hand.

“How’d it go?” he inquired, bringing his late lunch closer to himself.

He could see the words processing in his eyes as Sergey opened his own, shrugging or scowling, eventually saying, “He really does have an attitude,’

Nick chuckled. “Told you,”

“I got my answers though. Now I can sleep knowing she won’t show up randomly,”

Nick’s brows furrowed. “He told you where she is?”

He nodded, opening his hearty chicken soup. “He didn’t tell you?”

“I never asked, actually,” Nick mumbled, leaning back in the small cafeteria chair. “Where is she?”

“Kamishak Bay,” he said before biting into his dipped crackers.

Nick blinked away the disbelief before sitting forward, his voice dropping a few octaves when he asked, “Kamishak actually exists?”

“Apparently,”

“They have like, Minotaurs there!” Nick hissed, his eyes wide with wonder, but Sergey snorted.

“Minotaurs don’t exist, dumbass,”

“Neither did Kamishak until fifteen seconds ago,”

Sergey opened his mouth to protest, but the more he thought it over, the more likely that all the creatures rumored to not exist suddenly held great possibility of roaming the Earth, and he matched Nick’s stance in leaning over their food before whispering, “I’ve always sworn I saw a Griffin once,”

That was when Nick thought maybe it was a little far-fetched to think they were housing creatures.

“Either way,” he went back to arranging his food. “Why take her there, though? She was dismantled,”

“Where else would they take her?”

Nick poked his chicken and rice, eventually shrugging. “Well I hope they threw away the key after locking her in.”

↠

A jaw stretching yawn Callie didn’t bother to cover went largely unnoticed by the account holders in line, but there was always that one that eyed her upon seeing someone yawn like a horse. She could really give two shits; after an extended lunch and keeping up with games and people, she wanted to nap for a full day, and the last hour of work had dragged on and on.

So had Leo’s insistent kicking, right against her bladder.

She didn’t make it five minutes into the final hour before texting Nick to come take her home early, and once she spotted the cruiser pulling up outside, she eagerly placed the ‘closed’ placard on her counter, catching the displeased sigh from an older woman who’d admittedly been waiting in line longer than anyone should, but once spotting Callie’s obvious condition after she slid down her chair and waddled into view, sympathy flickered across the woman’s hardened brows before she looked away stubbornly.

“You need help taking the bags out?” Tam asked over her office wall once Callie had started gathering the few filled to the brim with leftovers and various gifts.

“Nah it’s okay,” she grunted while standing upright with the bags in hand and purse over her shoulder. “Nick’ll be in here in a sec,”

“Wait wait-” Tam rushed around the wall, outstretching her short arms.

Callie frowned, placing the bags down to reach over her belly and embrace her boss tightly.

“My branch is gonna crumble without you here,” Tam greived, but Callie giggled. “Promise you’ll bring Leo in when he’s born?”

“I promise,” Callie smiled, giving her a final squeeze. They parted in time for a few more co-workers that had seen Nick come in to bid Callie a temporary goodbye. She could excuse the gentle belly pats this time as they in turn wished Leo best wishes, and in addition asked to see the little one once he made his debut.

Many goodbyes and promises later, Callie had her bags in hand and was waddling back to the cubby she had been set behind to grab her sweater when some rather peculiar conversation floated her way, and looked over to the two new girls stood by the fax machine behind the counter, staring out into the lobby with hungry eyes.

“No girl, I’ve seen him here before!”

“Have you talked to him?”

“He’s always working, I don’t wanna bother him,” the curly haired brunette whined, peaking over her shoulder. Callie followed her eyes, and nearly choked when it lead to Nick handing out stickers to a small mob of children.

Her brows pinched, thinking they must have been talking about someone else.

“You freak, you like Orcs?”

Callie scoffed under her breath. Nevermind.

“He’s mad cute bitch, don’t deny it!” She looked over her shoulder again, as if trying to catch Nick’s attention by staring long enough.

Callie’s eyes narrowed in thought as she pulled her sweater on; had she really gone without making it known that that cute cop was her cute cop? The very one that had planted this little boy in her belly? During the entire two weeks they’d started working there!?

“I’m gonna talk to him,” the brunette decided with unsteady confidence, tugging on the shoulders of her cardigan. “I don’t see a ring on his finger, either,” she winked, squealing when the other girl did.

Okay, that’s enough.

Although it would’ve been entertaining to see her waltz up to Nick on her cheap heels and try to woo him with her caked lashes, the territorial side of Callie was irked, and had she not been so exhausted, she might’ve had the energy to chew her out. This matter at hand was rearing its ugly face far too often to keep letting it slide.

“Go go, he’s free!” her co-worker encouraged, pushing the brunette towards the end of the counter.

“I can talk to him for you,” Callie smiled without even apologizing for eavesdropping, but the girls sparkling eyes only spelled excitement.

“Really!? You know him?” she beamed, shimmying her shoulders to spread her camisole a little farther.

Callie had to withhold rolling her eyes. “Yeah! He’s my baby daddy,”

The smile weakened, and the confusion across their faces almost stirred a hard snort, but before either could ask if she was serious, she was gathering her bags to click across the marble lobby.

She knew their eyes were following her, and upon walking up to Nick and seeing that his eyes although covered by his Clubmasters were only on her, and those lips curling into a toothy grin were about to meet hers really tempted her to pull him down for a searing liplock, but Callie reminded herself that the quick yet loving peck he left on her mouth coupled with his hand holding her face spoke louder than causing a commotion.

“What’s all this?” he asked, visibly scenting the air when the aroma of wings wafted upwards.

“Mini baby shower, and,” Callie stepped closer, pretending to struggle in handing over another bag. “The brunette behind the counter wants to get at you,”

Nick looked behind her, witnessing the girl fumbling to look occupied with anything else, and his brows flattened in mild disgust. “Good thing I only like strippers,”

Callie punched his chest, her knuckles cracking against his vest before they made their way towards the doors. She didn’t bother looking back, but didn’t care if they were still watching, even with Nick’s hand placed on her lower back and opening the heavy glass door for her. Maybe they’d ask around, and maybe she’d gain another enemy, but something she’d come to learn dating and now bearing the child of an Orc, is learning how to stand her ground like them.

“You’re coming in?” she asked when he too exited the cruiser with the gifts in hand.

“For a quick bite of these wings,” he grinned, jogging to the other side of the car to offer an elbow. When she grabbed ahold, she couldn’t resist squeezing his rock hard biceps that the uniform was becoming increasingly snug over. She grinned knowing her co-workers had admired him from afar, and knowing she could run her hands across his chiseled body at any moment had her blood racing.

“Tryin’ to get a feel of these guns?” Nick teased, tensing his arm so she’d titter.

“Si, do it again papi,” she whined in exaggeration, laughing louder when he tried to pull away from the awful pet name.

“Get your cute ass inside,” he ordered playfully.

“Okay ready?”

“Ready,” he said around a wing, holding his phone up with the camera open.

Callie turned with a yellow onesie striped with dark blue lines laying over her stomach, a blue beanie to match rested under her bust. “This is my favorite,”

“That’s the one,” Nick smiled, clicking a few pictures worth as she spun in various poses.

“Right!? I saw it and thought the same thing,” she whined lovingly, her hands over the onesie and swaying.

Nick grinned as he chewed, watching her look down at her stomach and rub her hands over the outfit, eventually sliding it up over her chest. “I can’t believe I get to hold him one day,” she smiled.

“Soon, not one day,” he corrected, grabbing for another wing as she held the clothing up one last time to gaze at it. Carefully she folded it away into a separate bag from the other gifts littered about the kitchen counter.

Turning his wrist to glance at his watch, he sighed. “I gotta get back,” he groaned.

“Yeah?” she glanced over her shoulder. “Rosie is gonna be here soon,”

“At least you can knock some stuff off the registry,”

She chuckled. “Yeah that’s true,”

His classic pout made her giggle once she finished organizing the bags, lifting her arms until he stepped into her hug. Even with the heavy vest and belt across his body she snuggled tight against him, tilting her face up.

“I want you to come with,” she groaned, her jaw held in his hand as he peppered her with sweet kisses.

“Me too,” another smooch, “but I gotta go make more ladies swoon,”

A brow kicked up as she gazed up at him. “Getting a big head now?”

“It was a joke,” he grumbled, reluctant to unwrap from her warm embrace.

“You know it happens a lot more than you think,”

Nick scoffed. “Quit fibbin’,”

“I’m not! Do you know how often I hear girls talking about you? Looking at all this muscle?” her hands added point by slapping his ass, but he only snorted. “I can’t stand the way they look at you,”

Now Nick’s brow kicked up, the beginnings of a smirk creeping across his mouth.

“It’s not funny!” she exclaimed, leaning back enough to slap her hand against his chest.

“Do you get jealous?” he dared asking, smiling when her big eyes narrowed.

“I do,” she admitted lowly.

“You know I don’t look at anyone else,” he devoted softly against her lips before placing another kiss there. “I don’t even notice it,”

“I do. They can fuck off and get their own cop,” she blistered, the temper of her eyes rising as she tugged on his hips possessively. His mouth sealed over hers, a low moan hatching in her throat as his wide palms smoothed up her curved spine, his fingertips finding her hot skin as he made it up across her shoulder blades.

“Too bad humans can’t smell who you’ve fucked,” he whispered against her jaw, pressing his face flat against her neck when he caught the first hint of her arousal soaking through her panties.

“Too bad I can’t fuck you in the middle of a crowd when I see someone staring,”

Nick laughed. “Welcome to my world,”

“You can fuck me right now?” she breathed, arching back to find his face. “Fuck me so they know who I belong to,”

His eyes fluttered, a searing flush firing up his body. She was so unbelievably sexy and didn’t even know it.

A short gasp tumbled from her lips when he lifted her onto the countertop, reaching for the velcro on his sides but stopping when she grabbed for his hands.

“Keep it on,” she smiled, bringing his lips to hers. “Lemmee fuck my man in uniform,”

Nick whined, relieved he didn’t have to waste any time in stripping off the gear across his body, and quickly worked on his belt and pants as she wiggled side to side to pull her tight skirt up, all the while continuing to kiss him hurriedly.

His open mouth found her slender neck when his heavy dick fell into her grasp, pulling her closer to the edge of the counter and poking blindly until his thick head pushed between her slick lips.

The sweet burning of his girth always made her head roll back, a long sigh billowing out as he buried himself deep in her pussy. Her fingers hooked over the collar of his vest, clinging to him desperately as he made long, slow passes in and out, his forehead against her shoulder so he could see her juices shimmering across his cock.

“Is’so good,” he slurred, the heavy hands that had been on her hips moving roughly up to the crook of her spine when she bowed backwards, her heels hooking the cabinets below them and knees spreading farther.

Callie sang before him, jaw hung and gripping the hand that had grasped the collar of her camisole for better leverage when his hips started rutting harshly against her.

She smiled when noticing how concentrated he was on where they came together, the gear across his body doing nothing to hinder his rocking hips or fervent hands wandering across her form.

All that mattered was the slick heat engulfing him, and the way she whimpered his name and reached down to gently touch where he entered.

“Harder, Jakoby,” she gasped, and his dilated eyes shot to hers.

“What?” he breathed.

“I said fuck me harder, Officer Jakoby,” she ground out, using her heels to pull him closer.

She saw the feral shift in his eyes before she was suddenly being dragged off the counter and spun, his big hands pulling the skirt farther up her hips.

It took only moments to find her center again and squeeze in, his groin pressed tight against her ass. Callie moaned, pressing her ass tighter against him. She wanted him deep; she wanted to cry out every time he slammed in.

And she did. He fired into her with an iron grip at her hips, the head of his dick shooting delicious shocks high into her gut and making her eyes roll back.

A choked cry forced it’s way past her clenched jaw, her elbows landing on the countertop. The dizzying pleasure made her knees weak, but she was sure even if she went limp that Nick would hold her in a dangle and still finish.

She wouldn’t mind, of course.

A burning slap to her ass cheek made her bow, her eyes pinching shut. A thick handful of her hair craned her neck, a louder cry ringing off the walls.

“Say it again,” Nick groused into her ear, his voice shaking with his hard thrusts.

“Fuck me harder, Officer-” she strangled, crying out when his foot pushed at her inner ankle and spread her thighs farther.

She could hear the keys to his belt jingling, the gear clicking and shifting; she considered reaching back to touch his gun, but when a brilliant fire started to grow in her groin, her breaths started to come in pants.

“Nick- I’m gonna cum-” she gasped, reaching back blindly, but her wrist was snatched and held against her lower back, a loud growl following from Nick as he savored the way his impacts shot up her body, relishing in how her moans came forth in cries and whimpers.

His girl had kept a dirty secret from him after all this time, and her body was alive under his touch. Heaving, begging, writhing- he drank it all in, and when her pussy started to tighten around his cock, he leaned his head back, slowing to long strokes.

Her muffled words confirming her climax barely floated to his ears as he basked in the pulses, massaging every inch he hid inside and now gripping her sides hard enough to make her cry out when it was enough to send him over the edge. He still carried on with the slow strokes, milking himself into her tight center, their juices mingling and dripping from her flushed cunt onto the tile floors.

He sang her name repeatedly, his stomach stiff from clenching and thighs shaking the longer he forced himself to stay buried inside her.

Nick’s eyes peeled open to look down at the way he slipped from her slowly, his wet dick falling heavy from her filled hole.

He leaned over to kiss her shoulder, leaning onto the counter when she turned her head lazily to kiss him, her dark tresses tangled before her face. The two panted as he rested over her, his face pressed against the back of her neck and his dick pressed against her folds as they both came floating back down to earth.

“There’s so much,” she whimpered, looking down at the mess between their feet.

“I’m sorry,” he slurred, pushing off the counter and stiffly standing upright.

She was pushing her skirt down her hips by the time he sauntered from the kitchen and towards the bathroom, the gear across his body heavier than before.

Callie held her stomach as she went about cleaning the mess they’d made, but never before had she wanted more than to just flop onto her bed and sleep, even with Nick’s load still inside her. Doggy always took it out of her; in that position, he found the deepest her pussy stretched and filled it completely, sometimes finding it’s end if she were positioned just right.

She slapped the used wipe into the trash and leaned against the counter, her stomach knotting uncomfortably.

“Are you okay?” Nick asked with concern, holding her sides when he came back up behind her.

“I think you pressed my labor button,”

“WHAT!?” Nick shouted, his hands retracting and spinning her by the shoulders.

Callie giggled. “I’m joking,” she grinned, watching the color return to his face. “That was just a hard session,”

“I did what you asked,” he said bashfully, still a little lightheaded from that sudden rush of panic.

“I know baby, but he-” she jabbed her finger in Leo’s direction. “Is mad he got thrown around,”

Nick snorted, imagining how jostled Leo really might’ve been during that. “Are you gonna be okay going out?”

“Oh yeah. If I have to I’ll use one of those scooters,” she smiled with an eye closed as their son kicked angrily into her ribs.

“Just be careful. I gotta bounce,” he leaned down to bless her lips with a few soft kisses, his hand cupping under her jaw.

“Be safe,” she frowned, looping her arms around his waist one more time for a tight hug.

“Always am.” He said into her hair, bending over to kiss her stomach and mumble to Leo before grabbing his sunglasses and phone to leave. They said their I love you’s softly to one another at the door, a final kiss passing before he skipped down the porch and to the cruiser parked in the driveway.

She lingered at the door until he was on the street, smiling when he chirped the sirens and flashed the lights before driving away.

“Oh God oh God oh God.” Callie spun to race down the hall towards the bathroom, her bladder near exploding.

Callie let out an animalistic noise as she struggled out of Rosie’s sedan, her back stiff and hips sore.

“Add a belly band to the list,” Rosie had jogged around her car to help straighten Callie up.

“It’s going at the top,” she winced.

The two were slow going across the wet parking lot, but walking was easier than standing for extended periods which Callie quickly found herself in when the woman behind the counter proved she shouldn’t even be able to breathe and blink at the same time let alone work at Target. A sour beginning to a night they’d both been looking forward to, but after two more associates chased off the dense worker, Callie had a scanner in hand and a growing grin as she made her way deeper into the store.

“Thank you, next,” she sang after scanning a few nursing bras with Rosie beside and sharing sage advice she’d accumulated over the years.

It amazed Callie just how much went into pregnancy aftercare; spandex bands that squeezed muscles back into shape, the Dermaplast that would help ease the burning after pushing Leo out- even panty liners!

“You’ll never sneeze without peeing a little ever again,” Rosie explained, taking the upper hand in scanning the packs multiple times. “Always cross your legs,”

She followed her older sister a little dispondantly after that. Maybe a c-section wouldn’t be the worst…

Rosie glanced back when her fawning over a baby blanket set went unanswered, finding Callie looking down at her stomach.

“No, a c-section wouldn’t be better,” she guessed, and Callie looked at her skeptically.

“How-”

“Cuz I thought the same thing, now c’mere, look,” she jerked her head in the direction of the blankets, pleased when quite the handful were scanned.

“I’m not a fan of the blue,” Callie mumbled as she skimmed through what they’d selected so far.

“It’s impossible to avoid though,”

“Yeah I guess,”

Rosie was running her hand over a luxurious velvet sweater when a particularly sour topic came forth, chewing her lip in hesitation before deciding to speak on it. “Trish wants to help with the baby shower,”

She’d expected Callie to brush that off rather quickly, but not the genuine holler of laughter she let out, a hand on her chest as she leaned back into the whooping.

“That amusing, huh?”

“C’mon, you know she’s just doing it to stick her nose in my business so she has more shit to talk,” Callie rolled her eyes, scanning the small sweater.

“Hasn’t done much of that lately, actually,”

“But when I asked to see Yare she had to call dad and cry that I was the one out of line, right?” she looked back, her lips in a flat line and eyes wide in wait.

Rosie tried to fight the facts, but in the end, she settled with, “Yeahhh,”

“I fought years to get to this point and I’m not gonna let her ruin it, Rose- I don’t care how upset it makes everyone,” Callie scanned clothes angrily, her arm snapping with every barcode inputted.

“I get that but-”

“No buts! Everytime I miscarried she found some way to pin the blame on me just when I’d start to convince myself there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening,” Callie snapped, the old, bitter emotions crawling out from the closet she’d stuffed them into with her skeletons. “I would never blame what happened with Michael on her but if you show any sign of weakness around her, she attacks. Fuck that noise,”

Rosie nodded, following silently behind as Callie clicked the scanner vehemently over random objects whose purpose in raising a baby was unknown, but she could barely see past the fresh, stinging tears brimming in her eyes.

“For three years I tried to have what you two could do in your sleep and when it happened, all she said was ‘was that so hard’?” Callie looked back at Rosie whose brows were furrowed in horror.

“She said that?” she hissed, grabbing Callie’s arm when she tried to turn away. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What’s another knife in the back?” she murmured, wiping her eyes quickly.

“Ay chaparrita,” Rosie keened, pulling Callie to her side and resting her cheek against her head as she composed herself, the tears wiped away on Nick’s thermal she’d borrowed. A few sniffles later and she was stepping away, running her fingers through her hair and letting a deep breath go. “I’ll tell her to stay back. I wish you would’ve told me sooner though,”

“It’s one of those things that are harder to repeat than first hearing it,”

“I hear that. Look,” Rosie reached for a set of swaddlers. The chubby lion was at the center of the sunflower yellow wrap, it’s big eyes and blocky mane striking a chord in Callie.

She scoffed and sniffled again. “I don’t like the Leo lion thing,” she mumbled.

“But this? This is fucking cute. I wish they would’ve had this kind of stuff when I had Joaquin,”

“Mm… Nick would like it,” she noted, scanning the set and handing it back. “It is kinda cute,”

When a few more were handed down from Rosie, she scanned them, less enthusiastic as before.

Rosie felt for her. She knew just as well how vicious their older sister could be, how willing she was to fire at people when they were at their lowest.

In a heated argument once before, she’d asked Rosie how she could’ve made the mistake of leaving her children unattended long enough to find their way into death's arms, and it had been the cause of her second relapse back into Ambien, desperate to sleep away the words that were left branded into her skin. Sometimes, she had to remind herself that just because she’d patched the crack between them crudely didn’t mean others were ready to do the same.

“No more talk about Trish, yeah? I’m sorry I brought it up, she’s just been at my neck about it,” Rosie sighed.

“If she’s so adamant she should just come to me, but that’s like a nun touching a dick,”

Rosie’s face soured. “Nick’s given you a foul mouth,”

“It’s cuz of where my mouth has been-”

“Okay enough,” Rosie wiggled her hands before Callie’s face. “Your son is listening!”

“Poor thing was forced to listen to the fucking Nick laid on me today,” Callie panted playfully, fanning her cheeks.

“You probably poked one of his eyes out,” Rosie said through the corner of her mouth, earning a hard smack to her arm. “Is that why you’ve been walking weird?”

“Mind your own business.” Callie smarted, scanning three different brands of the baby slings Nick had told her of numerous times.

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we're definitely shifting into a little slice of life kinda writing, but DON'T YOU ALL WORRY CUZ YOU KNOW I ALWAYS HAVE SOME SHIT JUST AROUND THE CORNER FOR THESE TWO <3 if anyone caught when callie said there was only a month left until Leo's predicted birth, it might give you a little insight as to when we might expect him! ;D i apologize the updates have been staggered! i hit a rather nasty bout of writers block and THEN artists block AND THEN DEVELOPED A SINUS INFECTION so i've been clogged in every aspect hahaha

anyways, i hope you enjoyed the chapter! feedback is always appreciated! 💛

Translations: -Nauk-avurn votar avo avhiuk liavavle ni, ah? - come home to this little one, ah? -Jiak'll alwayuk nauk-avurn avo mausan girluk - i'll always return to my girls

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luciferpens · 4 years

Text

( EMMA WASTSON, FEMALE, SHE/HER ) ⌇ have you seen EVELEEN MCCARTHY around icaria? they are the 28-year-old child of DIYONISUS. they remind me of OVERFLOWING BOOKCASES, SEX IN PUBLIC PLACES, LAVISH PARTIES THAT GO UNTIL THE SUN RISES, AND INK STAINS ON STACKS OF MANUSCRIPTS.

BASICS

FULL NAME: Eveleen Alexandria McCarthy

NICKNAMES: Eve, Evie, Eevee

FACE CLAIM: Emma Watson

AGE: Twenty-eight

SEXUALITY: pansexual & panromantic

DATE OF BIRTH: April 25, 1992

GENDER/PRONOUNS: cis female she/her

EDUCATION: MBA

OCCUPATION: Fashion designer and author

GODLY PARENT: Diyonisus

GODLY POWERS: Teleportation (limited) & Chlorokinesis. Passively has 'immunity' over wine. If someone so much as thinks the word 'party' she has the ability to teleport to that place. Chlorokinesis but only over vines (specifically grape and strawberry)

BIO + BULLET POINTS

Born to a fashion mogul who started her own magazine

Has a little sister named Hilary who is 4 years younger than her.

Her mother is very harsh and has very high expectations of both children. Forcing them to do more than most would by their ages and being horribly disappointed in them if they fail.

Eve starts writing stories and modeling at a young age.

At 15 Eve starts sewing her own clothes and at 17 she has her own clothing line for teens and young adults.

At 18 she had published her first YA book.

Her mother threw her a party to celebrate which is where she meets her father Diyonisus.

By 19 she had three books under her belt in a variety of genres; YA, fantasy/sci-fi and romance.

She moved to LA and got a roommate, Harley, and then a boyfriend Chester.

TW : Rape and Abuse

Chester blackmailed Eve with explicit photos that he took while raping her in her sleep.

This continued on for months before he broke things off with her

The two “remained friends” as Eve desperately tried to regain control over the photos.

Harley moved, she started to travel the world while writing and working on her designs.

She met Ivy and the two became the best of friends/FWB

TW: Murder / Death / Blood

One day Eve was at a part where she ran into Chester. He acted as if nothing happened

He tried to blackmail her back into a relationship when she snapped and used her vine to pull him off the side of a small cliff and into a bunch of thorny vines 30 feet below. The fall killed him.

She teleports herself to Nightshade, gets Ivy and the two cover up the murder and her involvement best they can.

Eve moves back to London, resumes her life of fashion and novels. She gets a roommate named Vera, the two become thick as thieves and when both of their fathers tell them to move to Icaria. They do.

Eve now lives on Icaria with Vera.

Bonnie McCarthy never wanted anything more than to be her own boss. She spent the first 20 years of her life working one weird job after another until she landed a small-time position at Vogue. Over the next six years, Bonnie worked her way up until she was the assistant to the editor-in-chief. Then -- then she got stuck. A year later she married her boyfriend, and two years after that … two more years of not getting promoted, of not getting moved to a better position, Bonnie took all her knowledge, all her contacts and all of her skill, and left Vogue to open up her own magazine.

She was 30, but she had more drive and willpower than most, and within a year she had a magazine up and running. It was on the anniversary party of the magazine launch that Bonnie’s world got flipped on its head. She had just been enjoying her party, enjoying the drinks, the praise, the attention and celebration of the magazine growing so big in only one year. When she walked in on her husband having an affair; Instead of flipping on him, she quietly closed the door, returned to her party, and promptly found someone to sleep with. What she hadn’t been expecting was for that man to be Dionysus; what she hadn’t been expecting was three months later realizing she was pregnant and having no idea if it was her husband or the man from that lone night.

The answer wasn’t made any clearer six months later when little Eveleen McCarthy came screaming into the world. She looked most like Bonnie, no clear sign if it was the random man or her husband’s, or soon to be Ex-husbands. She had worked herself hard, accomplished so much that her husband asked for a divorce; he tried to claim half of her stocks, her money, her things, but when she brought up that she had caught him cheating and pointed to the clause in their prenup… well, he was left getting nothing. Bonnie brought little Eve to work and hired a nanny to keep them both close.

Raised mainly by a nanny Eve learned to read, write, and draw and once she turned 4? Well, then schooling started. Her baby sister, Hilary, was born, and attention was slowly beginning to shift. Her nanny read to them every morning, their mother every evening before bed. Eve started to devour books; she loved them and wanted nothing more than to read everything she could get her hands on. Her room, over the years, was filled with sketches of clothes and novels… hundreds of them lined her walls. Eve was addicted. She adored all books and could never get enough. By 6, Eve had been pulled into her mother’s world of fashion and modeling. She was used as the child model for almost every product that required a child Eve was used to flashing lights, to cameras, to people fawning over her. And while most children would fall into a self-righteous, big-headed, mentality, Eve stayed relatively calm and sweet. Maybe it was because, at the age of 10, Eve realized she wanted to write stories, and every time she showed her mother she was patted on the head and told: “That’s nice dear, but let's find you something that can actually earn you some money.” The idea was dismissed, ignored… and promptly forgotten about. Every time Eve tried to show her mom a story she wrote for class, the same thing was said, the idea dismissed.

Still, Eve kept a smile on her face and became known as the butterfly of Spellbound Magazine. She would move from one area of the magazine to another, fluttering in and out and bringing smiles and excitement wherever she went. As the magazine grew into an international seller and started to rival other magazines like Vogue and Elle, her family’s wealth and influence grew just as much. The attention that was brought on them wasn’t… new, but it was more intense and extreme. She was harassed and ripped apart even as a 15-year-old in the gossip magazines and online, she has ridiculed if even one hair was out of place or she wore not quite the right shoes to an event. This scrutiny caused Eve to do more research, to learn more from her mother, to study the magazine so carefully she could talk fashion with her mother and hold her own.

This fueled a passion and a will deep in her bones to tell off any magazine or journalist who had picked on on her to second guess what they said. So, she picked up her sewing machine and got to work. She started to make her own clothing. It took years of practice, a lot of failed attempts and cold words from her mother. She knew she wasn’t living up to her mother’s expectations… so she tried harder, stayed up until the sun rose, sewed until she felt like her fingers were going to bleed… and the first time she had gotten a small smile from her mother and a nod of her head Eve almost wept. Overjoyed Eve knew she was doing a good job, and every time someone asked who the designer was, she said herself or Spellbound. Slowly her work started to gain attention and her mother; ever the businesswoman capitalized on it. Eve started creating her own fashion line for teens and young adults. Her interest and talent in fashion and modeling lead Bonnie to start teaching Eve the ins and outs of running the company at just 16.

She started attending all the parties, dressed to the nines a smile on her face. This… was when she started noticing something a little different. Whenever her mother started planning a party, without her even being told, Eve knew. She’d appear at her mother’s door and ask if she could help with the planning. Sometimes she’d even be a bit unsure of how she knew or got to her mother’s room to ask the question. But once the party rolled around? Being there felt like being a kid finally let loose in a candy store. She felt energized and elated, as she wondered the parties she noticed those around her got more excited and happy as well. For years Eve chalked it up to her mother’s abilities to plan a good party. But she’d come to learn the real reason just after her 18th birthday.

How she learned of her godly parent started with her younger sister Hilary. She was 17 and showed Hilary the novel she had written. The novels she had tried to show her mother a week before and was brushed off about. Her sister, only 13, read it, burst into her room the moment she finished and told her to do something about it. To “ignore mom” and do what she wanted. That little push from an angry preteen was exactly what she needed. So Eve did just that. She looked into getting it published, she shopped it around to different agencies, talked to agents, got readers to go over it, and by the time she turned 18… she published her first YA novel under a pseudonym. She didn’t want her name and fame to affect how people viewed her book so she used a fake name, Jean Fink.

Her mother, surprisingly proud of Eve for successfully publishing a book, but probably more so for her latest line of clothes, threw her a party. It was here with all her friends invited, with everyone drinking and enjoying themselves that Eve noticed something. Having been gifted a bottle of wine, she popped it open, and upon the first sniff, she felt a new sensation. One she still can’t quite explain. But she and her friend started to drink, and she realized rather quickly -- that her friends were feeling the effects of the wine but she? She was fine. Handed a glass of whiskey a couple of hours later… she felt that. But the wine? It was like drinking grape juice. Yummy grape juice, but it had no side effects like the whiskey.

The party raged on, and as Eve got looser, her just being around the partygoers influenced them, it released more ecstasy and need to party the need to make it more chaotic. By 3 am the party was still raging, people were getting drunk; they were enjoying themselves it was wild and crazy, Eve stumbled outside of her house that night and sat in the garden. But when she touched the ground, a plant sprung up below it. Before her eyes, the plant grew into a small grape tree. She freaked out. Was she hallucinating? Was she drunk? Eve had a minor panic attack causing her to throw up -- not something wholly uncommon for her; she had been diagnosed with anxiety and bulimia at the age of 12, but this was major. She was unsure of what was happening. And to make matters worse -- a man appeared with a grin on his face and a wine glass in hand.

He explained himself to be Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, parties, homosexuals, plays and well, he was her father. Eve had never known or questioned her mother on her biological dad was. It had never been important… until now. He explained that this made her a demi-god; it allowed her to have powers and dominion over certain things. She asked so many questions and wasn’t satisfied until Diyonsus had explained it all and taught her a couple of tricks. Finally, calm and satisfied with what she learned, Eve started to approach life in a new way.

She started practicing, started testing her limits. She would teleport herself to parties around London, then around the UK and after some time? The world. Appearing all over the place, showing up in magazines and slowly earning the name of a party girl. She started growing vines wherever she could, and having Bonnie for a mother? She began to invest; she found some winery’s she enjoyed and invested money into them and every time she came she sent out a tendril of her powers and made the grapes grow big and flavorful. She partied hard, influencing those around her to enjoy themselves more, she slept around, she drank or smoke barely feeling the effects that others did. She was learning to master her powers.

But it was learning that her father was the god of plays, of drama and writing, that had the most profound impact on the woman. While her first YA book didn’t sell great, she started to dip her toes into other genres; Sci-fi and fantasy was written under the name Eden Allesan. But the one that picked up the most traction? Romance novels. This time under another pseudonym Lucy Ariadne. Lucy -- well Lucy became a well-known romance author in the span of three books published in under a year and a half. These were stories that Eve had written as a teen, fanfictions reworked into stories so separate it’d be hard to tell where the inspiration came from.

With her name and designs growing ever more popular, Eveleen figured it best to move to the one city where her red-carpet looks would do best. L.A. A city she knew she could do both of her passions; fashion and writing. She found an ad online for a roommate and -- before she knew it she met the girl, Harley, and the two were hitting it off. They became the best of friends spending all their free time together. When she wasn’t working or out partying she was hanging out with Harley. There were almost no secrets between the two women…. That was until she met Harley’s male best friend Chester; the two fell for one another and for the first time Eve actually settled down. She was 19, dumb, and in love and the three of them were thick as thieves...

TW: Rape and abuse

Until one day when she was awoken with her boyfriend overtop her, camera taking photos...and both of them were naked. She was in shock, unsure of what to do, what to say, and just clenched her eyes and hoped for it to be over soon. She tried to ignore it, tried to forget it, but it happened, again and again, and again. He started to try to control her, trying to control what she wore, where she went, and how she acted. He demanded to go with her everywhere she went, especially if it was where they would be seen in the public. He started using her for fame and notoriety. He told her that if she left him that he would release the photographs and video he had taken of them over the past seven months. Terrified of what would happen Eve did her best to just be the happy bubbly girlfriend she had been but slowly she worked on breaking the relationship apart, making him think it was his idea to end the whole thing.

And after four months -- it finally worked. He ended the relationship, they said it was mutual and “stayed friends.” She never let anyone know what happened, never spoke or even really thought much on it after it happened -- terrified of confronting what had happened to her over the past year. Terrified of those photos one day making it onto the internet. If you were to have met her or talked to her during this time, you never would have guessed he had spent the past year in such a state.

End TW

The next couple of years were a bit chaotic for Eve, she worked until her fingers bled, published three more novels, and completed two collections. She was back to being an overly motivated party girl. Sleeping around whenever it suited her and refusing to bend to anyone else’s whims, she was terrified of relationships and outright refused to be solely dedicated or to ever sleepover in anyone’s bed. She enjoyed her free time with Harley and her friends and looked forward to the next big thing.

Sadly the next big thing was her best friend moving across the country for a job. Heartbroken but excited for Harley’s big step up in the world, they promised to keep in touch. For the first couple of years they did, they texted throughout the day every day, things were great. Eve was working, she traveled more and wrote more and more novels. She designed clothing lines and got to debut them all over the world. She helped start up the American side of Spellbound magazine. Eve made friends across the globe, and for the first time in three and a half years she let herself actually feel something for someone. Ivy. Ivy had been a friend she met traveling abroad and the two quickly became travel buddies, jumping from country to country. They fell into friends with benefits sort of relationship with…. Slight feelings cropping up here and there. But what was most important to Eve? That Ivy was there for her through the good times and the bad.

TW: Murder/Death & Blood

One evening just before her 28th birthday Eveleen felt the call of a party on the coast of Maine. It was just starting at 5 pm, but it was already loud and chaotic and just the type of energy she needed. Halfway through the night was when the atmosphere, at least for her, changed. Chester. He had shown up at the party. He smiled at her waved her down and tried to act as if he hadn’t blackmailed and raped her for years. She kept it polite and sweet before moving on.

Three hours later she was standing over his body, he was strangled and tangled up in the vines she had conjured on the outskirts of the property just off the side of a small cliff. Facedown, a drink inches from his hand, blood oozing from multiple pricks along his skin as the vine dug deeper and deeper. He had threatened to release the photos of her if they didn’t resume their relationship... and Eve snapped. She felt nothing as she watched his last breath leave him, she felt nothing as she turned her back and teleported away to a party where Ivy was at. She felt nothing until she collapsed into Ivy’s arms and told her what she had done in a back room of a club that the woman had owned in Icaria. After pouring her story out to the once assassin she teleported them back to the party where the two women cooked up a plan to cover Eve’s tracks. They made their way into the main part of the party, they talked to anyone and everyone they could, took photos and made their alibi as being in the party and inside as strong as possible. They knew Eve had already been seen arriving so there was no hiding that she had been there. But a couple of minutes she was gone? They wrote that off as a trip to the bathroom, a trip to touch up makeup and gossip. They convinced everyone that they had never left to go outside.

They made it seem as if she had only said hello to her ex in a very public setting and turned her back to continue enjoying her time. He wasn’t found until the next morning when the staff was cleaning up the grounds after the party. But by then? It didn’t matter, Eve was long gone, having returned to London, to work with her mother. The corner ruled it an accident, a drunk man stumbled off the side of the cliff, they ruled the fall as the cause of death and the vines as insuring a fatal blow practically impaling himself on thousands of little needles.

End TW

For the next six months, Eve stayed in London, working with her mother on running Spellbound and when her father appeared to her one day and asked her to move to Icaria for her own safety. She decided the change of scenery would be nice…. Besides her roommate and best friend, Vera’s father had appeared and told her the same. So the two packed up their lives and moved to the isle so many others had already made a home on.

#Icaria: intro

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theevangelion · 5 years

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THE NEED: SUPERCORP HALF-CHAPTER

Alpha Lena/Omega Kara — Kara has just had a baby and their first heat postpartum is coming fast and hot. Creative problems require creative solutions for the couple, and Lena is anything but gentle with her woman of steel. (Anal, lactation, knotting, biting.)

The sun was high in the sky and dazzling the road, and the highway was inundated with people. The traffic pulled slowly, chugging for a bit, then stalling to a halt. It would be like this for at least seven miles if the woman on the radio announcing the collision ahead was to be trusted. The passengers in the rear cab of the sleek town car had plenty to do to fill the time. There were phone screens in hand, computers on laps, communications and official statements underway. The boss just sighed and stared out of the window, flustered and only growing all the more flustered by the state of things.

“Cancelled your four o’clock,” Jeanie peered over her seat and handed a tablet with something on the screen that needed a digital signature. “The press team is asking if you want to make a personal statement to reporters this evening or if they should quietly release the news on the website?”

“You know, my brother once said there was no such thing as bad press.” Lena forced a small smile as she signed the screen and passed it back. “But now that L-Corp stock is plummeting, I’m inclined to disagree.”

“It will blow over,” the analyst sat in the front seat spoke up, she took the tablet from Jeanie and sighed. “I’m running the numbers and the share price is already starting to plateau. Most of the damage was the Russians short-selling the majority of their stock. Luckily, an investor just bought a billion dollars worth of L-Corp shares. The market price is stabilising.”

“Who was it?” Lena furrowed her brow.

“You.” The analyst smiled and turned the tablet back around. “Thanks for your signature.”

The headache intensified with immediacy. Lena reached up and rubbed where her temples and prestinely tied back hair met, inhaling deeply. This broke at least three financial trading regulations that she could think of off the top of her head, and to compound the stress, her brother and mother had managed to release a joint-manifesto from their separate top security prisons outlining their political ambitions upon release. On top of all of that Lena was coming into rut, which meant Kara was coming into heat, alone, in pain, and with a newborn to take care of for good measure.

The inability to make any of it instantaneously better was infuriating.

“Lena, urgent call for you.” Jeanie reached over the headrest again to pass the phone to the grumbler.

Lena dismissively waved her hand and peered out the window in thought. “Tell them I’m too busy.” Today was not a good day to be the CEO, although there were rarely good days if truth be told. Manageable was at the top end of the mean average.

Jeanie pulled a face. “Far be it from me to tell you what to do… but I really think you’re going to want to take this call…”

Lena rolled her eyes and snatched the phone, bristling and immediately suspicious that one of her immediate relatives had obtained a satellite phone purely to gloat. She brought the phone to her ear and her voice became tight.

“This better be damn important—”

“Your daughter is smiling.” Kara interrupted the bad mood with abundant chirpiness. “Are you smiling, little girl? Are you smiling for Momma?” She singsonged at their tiny one.

“Oh goodness!” Lena relaxed instantaneously and juggled the phone between her ear and shoulder, lifting the lid of her laptop so the inevitable pictures in their iMessage conversation could be cooed over. “Is it a big smile or a little smile?” She grinned in anticipation, clicking and scrolling.

“A big one, she’s in a good mood. I saw the news bulletin and I thought you might need a pick-me-up.”

“Yeah, about that.” Lena closed her eyes and sighed. “Apparently there’s at least one mole in the lab. How Lilian received copies of the research I’m still not sure but she knows L-Corp has the power to chemically suspend non-human abilities and it’s splashed all over every screen I’m looking at. Just in case you haven’t unmuted the news, there’s your recap of my day.”

“The news was unmuted,” Kara assured.

“It wasn’t the way I wanted the public to find out, to say the least.”

“Well, you’re a genius and people were bound to find that out sooner rather than later.” Kara remained a force of calm. “The technology has the potential to do lots of good. Just look at us, at little Ellis. You’re going to save and change lives with it.”

“The Alien Rights Coalition doesn’t see it that way.” Lena worried to the only person she felt capable of talking her worries through with. “They’re saying it’s the first step towards a genetic holocaust and I don’t think my last name helps matters...” The headache intensified.

“The technology could be dubious in the wrong hands, but—luckily for all of us—it’s in yours. And your application of the technology will help alien moms have full-term pregnancies, Lena!” Kara trailed with the sheer amazement of it. “Sunlight makes my body invulnerable to change, Ellis never would have been able to grow to full-term if you didn’t figure out a way to suspend my powers, just for a little while.” She heard Kara smile. “Thank you for that by the way, our little girl is the best gift you��ve ever given me and that’s taking into account the signed Spice Girls world tour poster you got me for my birthday.”

“Well thank you for giving her to me, too.” Lena smiled.

“So, in other news.” There was a small, thoughtful pause. “I’m getting moody which means I might need the chickento come home to roostsooner rather than later… I know you’re having a terrible day but maybe that’s all the more reason for you to sneak home early?” It was said with an air of optimism.

“Is that codeword for what I think it’s codeword for?”

“Leen, I don’t want to talk about what we do in the bedroom in front of our sweet, innocent, adorable, tiny little—”

“Understood.” Lena cleared her throat and shifted her eyes toward the staffers who were pretending not to eavesdrop. The Alpha rubbed her temple and looked up with pursed crimson lips, sighing and a little foggy from the current warfare of her own hormones. “I don’t know if we’re ready for that yet. You remember what the doctors said, Baby…” If the doctors weren’t direct enough about the whole thing, the stitches that were still holding things together down there were pretty clear on the matter. “I can take a suppressant?” Lena offered as an afterthought.

“I don’t want you to take a suppressant.”

“The nausea only lasts for an hour, I don’t mind.” Lena reasoned, tucking the phone deeper between her chin and shoulder as the forward motion of the car picked up with a bit more consistency.

“I don’twant you to take a suppressant.” Kara emphasised it, her voice low and stern, her intention to make the big boss shut up and listen successful in execution. “It’s our first cycle since my body has been mine again and I want us to enjoy it. Can this be our good thing that we look forward to today? Please?”

The big boss did need a good thing to look forward to.

“Let me think about it?” Lena waned slightly.

“Love you, honey.” Kara’s voice scaled upwards again back into the happy range, crisis averted. “You love Momma too, little girl? You wanna say bye to Momma?” Lena smiled at the way Kara sounded when she cooed.

“Give her a kiss from me, I love you too.” Lena smiled and ended the call.

Confused and slightly horny, Lena followed through on her word. The journey back to the National City, the brief jaunt from the car up the steps of the L-Corp building, dodging photographers and thrusted out microphones the entire short distance, all the way up to the top floor executive suite where a roundtable of important stakeholders was already underway, the only thing Lena found time to muse on was what making love to her wife sans pregnancy would look like. From a logistical standpoint, difficult and bumpy with newness considering Kara was still healing and rendered chemically human. From a personal standpoint, exciting and all the more delicious because of it.

“Lena?” The chief economist, Charles, cleared his throat midway through the presentation. “Are you following?” His eyes darted back to the forecast charts on the board.

The boss realised, despite her best efforts, that she was not presently a boss at all. She was a lovesick teenager, chewing the lid of her pen, tapping her Louboutin heel incessantly against the floor, thinking more about the newness of her wife’s changed body than the pressing matter of the PR shitstorm that could unseat her executive position before sundown. Lena swallowed and inhaled sharply, glancing at the forecast points, her quick mind for numbers doing the rest.

“I’m following, I’m just not trusting the current predictions.”

“You don’t?” Charles scoffed a bit. “Lena you headhunted me straight out of Washington because I’m very good at what I do.”

Lena smiled slightly and lifted her brow. “I remember,” she agreed.

“Then I would love to know where your concern stems from?” His hand found his hip.

“The data is still so new that we won’t be able to tell between the qualitative and anomalous points for a while yet.” Lena shrugged and pulled it out of her ass. “It feels reductive basing an economic forecast for the next two years mostly on twelve hours worth of events.”

“The numbers don’t lie,” Charles insisted.

“You’re right and they don’t, but people do. The Russians dumped their stock to destabilise our market position, every news outlet from here to Al Jazeera is running with nothing but rumour-fuel about our corporate direction, and I know it feels safer to sit in this room and worry over numbers from last year, over what numbers might look like next year, but there is a blazing inferno outside and we’re the firefighters who need to put it out.” The chief reclaimed her air of authority. “I think we should move the product launch up to Monday and get out ahead of this thing. Thoughts?”

Charles sighed and nodded a bit. “Getting out ahead might work… with a delicate hand.”

“You don’t think I should take up too much spotlight?” Lena became hopeful that it might give her some spare time to get other things done.

The Head of PR chipped in, a decisive expression only growing all the more fervent as she considered things. “I think getting an alien face out there to talk on the moral and ethical points of the technology presents a better opportunity to turn this around.”

“I agree.” Lena nodded and tried not to seem too pleased. “There’s at least a hundred reporters outside hoping to catch a glimpse of me. It might be best if I go home for the weekend and stay out of the way. I don’t think footage of me declining comment for the next few days is going to score any points.”

“It’s your call, nobody wants to force you out of the picture.” Jeanie reassured.

“I can work from home. The world is tired of Luthors, let’s give them a few days respite.” Lena nodded decisively.

If the world anticipated one thing it was that the ever-manicured, coiffed, pristinely dressed, most powerful woman in National City, would not be making a quick get away from the underground garage in a dinged Honda Accord. The baseball cap and sunglasses helped matters, Lena was certain of it as she pulled onto the freeway without the slightest hint of a pursuit.

The office had been left in a strange sense of coordinated mayhem, the staffers aware of what needed doing, the interns darting out on a coffee run for what was about to be the latest all-nighter in L-Corp history, the executives all bustling in and out of meeting rooms ready to demonstrate their weight in salt. It was a sight that didn’t leave Lena with much concern at all, frankly, the opposite was true. And the intern who bore the most resemblance to her, new and fresh out of engineering school with the tuition loans to show for it, was more than happy to switch clothes to aid the escape plan and get a new dress and a pair of Louboutins out of the deal.

Lena couldn’t remember the last time she wore jeans and a plain cotton t-shirt, but the lack of Spanx was doing wonders for her personal comfort. She shifted in her seat and cranked down the window, another first for a long time, and the cool breeze helped soothe the slick sheen of sweat that formed over her skin. Lena turned up the radio and drove like a bat out of Hell down the freeway.

The phone rang.

“Well hello, love of my life.” Lena tucked it between her shoulder and jaw, a slackened grin forming in the corners of her mouth. “You need me to pick something up?”

“You see the seatbelt next to you?” Kara’s tone was stern.

“I do?” The grin tapered.

“That. Use it please.”

“I am?” It was a white lie, her body was starting to sting a bit.

“I’m watching you on Fox 61. No, you’re not.”

“What do you—” Lena stopped and looked out the window. She sighed and cursed beneath her breath. “Ah, the news helicopter. Well… that’s certainly an unanticipated development.” She winced.

“If I could fly more than six feet I would come and pick you up,” Kara almost apologised for it. “Your driving leaves a lot to be desired.”

“Mhm,” Lena couldn’t help but chuckle slightly. “I guess it’s been a while. Who knew Shayla drove stick?” Her eyebrows wiggled in amusement.

“I’m glad you’re coming home early.” She could almost hear Kara biting her lip. “I was worried you might leave me here all alone… finding creative ways to fill the time…”

“Ellis?” Lena swallowed, hard.

“She just went down. I’d say we’ve got a few hours, maybe three if you’re lucky… she didn’t nap this afternoon.”

“I’ll be home soon.” Lena instinctively put her foot on the accelerator.

“The seatbelt, use it.”

…

She did well to hide how ravenous she felt, did well to hide the frustration that came with not having the vocabulary to describe those feelings. There was something delicious about bruises, the way they ached but not in an entirely unpleasant way, the way they ached but slightly tingled too, as if to remind her how precious and fragile this body was for the time being.

There was one earned from bumping her elbow against the cabinet a few short days ago, and Kara couldn’t help but press it with more frequency as her heat drew in thicker. That, plus the scratch on the back of her hand. She rubbed her thumb against the change in texture, over the thin jaggedness of it, over the state that had never existed prior to nine months ago. According to the Lena she had another few more months of this before things returned to normal. Kara was determined to make the most of each lovely moment it.

The tiny one was asleep upstairs, producing nothing but breathy snores and the occasional deep, sleepy furrow of her brow on the baby monitor as if she were dreaming of only the most important things. She got it from the other mother, Kara was full of nothing but fondness over the thought.

The interim between watching Lena drive home on the news network and Lena making her arrival was spent busying herself with a need for distraction, preening and checking for any baby spit she might have missed since showering, lighting candles, blowing the candles out incase it was too much, double-checking on their baby no less than once every ten minutes. A helicopter parent she would become yet, no doubt in anyone’s mind.

When the two succinct beeps signalled the gates at the bottom of the property were opening, Kara darted inside the powder room and checked herself over one last time. The slight sallow beneath her eyes made her look tired, but it wasn’t a sight that made her feel less any beautiful. There was something worth cherishing about these fleeting days of fragility, something worth enjoying because it gave contrast to her life. She tucked her curled blonde hair behind her ears and wiped away the tiny gleam of sweat from the apples of her cheeks. An anticipatory smile turned into a beaming grin as car wheels crunched over the white pebbled drive outside, announcing the clever one’s arrival.

It wasn't that the sex was terrible during the second and third trimester, it was just different, it was just soft, half-hearted, careful, thrumming with fear on Lena’s part that she would do something to hurt one of them. To compound the difficultness of it, as Kara’s body changed with pregnancy, becoming something that was both powerful and fragile, her desires shifted too; she yearned for bruises and bitemarks and other tiny precious wounds that Lena would have shrivelled into dust over had she merely heard a whispering of it. Kara inhaled deeply as she walked back into the living room, hopeful that today would be different, hopeful that today would be full of wonderful discoveries.

It was a sunny day outside. The bay windows were almost blinding to look at from the refraction of light. Kara looked out to the front drive with narrowed eyes and didn’t recognise her for a moment. She watched Lena clamber out of the rusty Accord, utterly gobsmacked once she realised the big boss was dressed down. And she was. She was completely dressed down. And not in the Lena Luthor definition of the phrase either; which roughly meant swapping a tailored suit and Prada heels for tailored slacks and leather loafers — an outfit choice that she insisted for the entire fourteen hour duration of the home water birth was homely, dressed down attire. This, the woman outside in a baseball cap, pushing sunglasses up her nose, pushing up the sleeve of her loose t-shirt up her bicep as she grabbed things out of the trunk, was a fantasy that Kara never knew she had and was only now stumbling across on a moment to moment basis.

Unsure and deeply out of her element, aroused and embarrassed about it, the soft one sat down and rubbed her mouth. The blurred glass of the front door was darkened with movement and shadow, the wood bumped open with a hip as things were juggled between both arms and a water flask hung off the pinky for good measure.

“Hello to you too,” Lena puffed and smiled as the door was kicked closed. “Busy day?”

“Mhm. Oh! but not as busy as yours!” Kara caught herself.

“Well, nobody said being the boss was without its stresses.” Lena wiggled her brows and dumped things on the side table. “I’m one McQueen dress and a pair of Christian Louboutins light but I’ll live to fight another day. The disguise probably needed a bit more work.” She took a swig of water.

“Well it’s doing wonders for me.” Kara craned her neck and rubbed the side of it, astounded that a flannel shirt tied around the waist could be such an immense turn on. “You, er, you look good.” Kara smiled and nodded, embarrassed by the sudden wetness.

“I look good, huh?” Lena piqued a manicured brow and took a few gaited steps closer, showing off the new attire as if she were the butchest thing this side of province. “Does my girl have a thing for big tough Alpha types?” Lena narrowed her eyes slightly and pushed the short sleeves of her t-shirt up her arms, grinning and loving the attention.

“Hmm,” Kara pouted in thought. “I did marry the toughest one I could find. So sure, you might be onto something.” It earned an impressed smirk.

“Is that so?” Lena bit her bottom lip.

“Nobody said you were a wallflower.”

“You’re quite the catch yourself, Supergirl.”

“Ah ah,” Kara lifted her finger. “Maternity leave. I’m not Super if I can’t crash through walls or swoop down from the sky, or, you know, breastfeed and make a smoothie simultaneously.” The last part was said with slightly more exasperation.

“Well you’re Super to me,” Lena beamed and plonked herself down in the armchair a little less poised than usual. “A few months and you will be breastfeeding, making smoothies, and halting bank robberies for good measure.” She nodded reassuringly.

“Simultaneously? That sounds like it could get messy,” Kara chuckled.

“I told you I would support you going back to work when you’re ready, I meant it.”

“Strong, tough, and also very sweet.” Kara closed her eyes and sighed happily. “They were right, you are a catch.”

“How are you feeling? Have your hormones been wreaking havoc?”

“Do you want the truth or something a bit easier on your…” Kara glanced down to the large bulge in her wife’s jeans, cheeks pushed out, eyes darting back up to something other than the erection. “I can do either?”

“The truth. Unabridged, please.” Lena fluttered her long eyelashes.

“Well, my breasts are leaking, there’s stretch marks in places I didn’t even know possible, there are eight stitches holding my labia together, my womb is currently screaming at me to make another baby, my brain is screaming at my womb that it’s a trap.” Kara sighed and watched Lena’s expression fidget with confliction. “And on top of all of that, I masturbated three times today between mom-duties and it feels like I’m trying to put out an inferno with a watering can that has a hole in the bottom. I have never been more turned on than I am right now and my body is still a construction site. I could be better, I could be worse.”

“Okay, baby, first thing, your body is not a construction site. It’s a place of worship. It’s the Vatican.” Lena reminded with a deep, serious look. “Second, I knew this would be too much too soon. I’ll drive to the clinic and get a suppressant shot, it’s no problem—”

“You’re already in rut, plus, I reallydon’t want you to do that.” Kara became antsy and overwhelmed. “I’m just trying to warn you about what’s underneath all of this. That’s all...” The light grey cardigan was fiddled with.

“You remember that I was down the business-end when you gave birth, right?” Lena lifted an amused brow. “We shower together in the morning, sometimes you even let me kiss you on places other than your mouth when I’ve been extra well-behaved. I’m very aware of what’s under that cardigan, and the thought of it alone is doing a lot for me right now.” It was said with dopiest, softest, most loving, tender-eyed expression.

Kara chewed her lip guiltily for a moment. “I shower before you wake up. I put concealer under my eyes and make sure everything is neat and tidy before you see me naked.” It was a guilt that Kara wanted removing from her conscious, that she needed to be absolved of before Lena got a rude awakening of the present state of things. “It’s not that I think you won’t think I’m beautiful, it’s not that. I love this body, I love that it made a perfect little baby. I love that it aches, that it gets sore, that I finally understand what people mean when they say their muscles feel tired. I love knowing what it feels like to be human. But… this is our first cycle since Ellis and I just… want you to be in the picture.” She closed her eyes, aware that none of it sound as erotic as she hoped to be in the moments preceding intimacy.

“Baby, c’mere,” Lena became soft and empathetic, a small pout working into her mouth as she opened her arms wider.

The soft one stood up, frustrated and only growing more frustrated with the inability to express what she meant. There was still so much of it underneath the surface, so much of it steeped between the things she felt capable of saying. Half of her frustrations were because of her heat, because of the undulating, pulsating, hungry feeling in her belly that wanted for nothing but tired muscles and her wife’s knot. The other half was maybe the fear that Lena wouldn’t reciprocate the desire for something a bit more passionate than the usual order of things.

She clambered into Lena’s lap and took some small comfort in the closeness of it.

The bare arms around her spine were warm and smooth. Shoulders rising, forearms tight, chest exhaling weighted sighs, Lena became the safe thing to make it all go away. The soft one burrowed her nose and found a spot on Lena’s neck that smelled of relief. She stayed there, quiet, smiling a bit when she felt the taut jaw tuck itself over her head.

“Your body is so beautiful and powerful.” She felt the wisps of baby hair above her forehead move with the tender admittance. “I’m in the picture, my head is in the game, and it’s you a thousand times, Kara Danvers,” Lena crooned.

Kara smirked as her forehead was pecked with kisses. “Using my maiden surname now?” She craned her brow.

“Only so you remember I replaced it with mine.”

“Your boner is pushing in my butt.”

“Sorry, I get reallyexcited when I remember you have my last name.” They both giggled, and Lena shuffled the piled Superhero on top of her lap to make a bit more room. “Kara Danvers, I am going to take you upstairs and we’re going to sixty-nine until the sun hides behind the clouds in embarrassment. Anything else you want to talk to me about before I do just that?”

“Baby,” Kara pulled back and lightly pressed her thumbs into the hollows of Lena’s cheekbones. “I didn’t say I didn’t like your boner pushing in my butt…” It was exhaled with a bite of the bottom lip, with a tinge of naughtiness to her voice.

“Baby!” Lena blurted and blushed, as if she were avoiding a clear trap. “That is… no… we’re… just no.” She shook her head.

“Excuse me?”

“That is. That is barelyscooting around the medical advice we were given, Kara.” Lena closed her eyes, pink cheeked, flustered, aroused beyond words and trying to dampen her growing interest. “I want to do that more than anything but without your powers I could hurt you…”

“So if I was human you would never fuck me like you do when I’m Super? You wouldn’t want to experiment and try new things?” Kara lifted a slightly accusing brow. “This is the only time in my life when I will ever be physically weaker than you and I want to enjoy it, baby.” She rubbed Lena’s shoulders and felt her start to wane. “Don’t you want to enjoy me?” She knew there could only be one answer, the correct one.

“I do, believe me… if only you knew how many times I’ve fantasized about having you sore and whimpering underneath me…” Lena closed her eyes and let the sentence hang. “It’s just your life experience is that of an indestructible woman, Kara. And that doesn’t intimidate me in the slightest. It just worries me that if I get too rough with you while you’re without powers… it could be overwhelming? I guess?” Her green eyes appeared again from behind her fluttering lids.

“I want it to be overwhelming.” Kara pressed forward and kissed her lips. “I want it to hurt, to ache, to make me sore, to make me so tired I can barely crawl. I want you to bite me and mean it. I want you to tell me you love me and mean it more. I want to get primal. I wantto be overwhelmed.” She emphasised with warm palms growing tight around the tautness of her wife’s jaw. “You’re the kind of woman who makes the thought of being overwhelmed by you very, very appealing.”

“It’s the flannel, isn’t it?” Lena chewed a weak grin. “Is that why my pretty girl is on me like a bruise today?” Her eyebrow piqued.

“Well, I was kinda hoping you might find the time to put some bruises on me…” Kara kissed the corner of her mouth, the cupid’s bow of her top lip, pecked her way around the outskirts of town until the big boss weakly growled because of it.

“Fuck,” Lena hissed.

READ THE REST RIGHT HERE OR HOLD ON TIGHT FOR THE PUBLIC RELEASE!

#supercorp #kara x lena #lena x kara #abo #alpha lena #omega kara #supergirl lesbian #supergirl fanfiction #supergirl smut #smut #wlw smut #lesbian fanfiction #wlw fanfiction #femslash smut #femslash supercorp

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peggysousfan · 4 years

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The Affair (Warning!! Smut assured)

Hey guys! So this is a fic requested by @peggysousoversteggy. It does contain violence, slander, and smut. It is extremely ANTI-Steve Rogers and ANTI-Steggy. So if you support either one, do NOT read this. However, it is Pro- Peggysous!It is super long so I will separate it into sections. this is section 1, So enjoy!! :)

Year 1957:

Peggy Carter-Rogers makes her way through her kitchen and tries to make her son, Grant, a plate of breakfast. Her husband, Steve Rogers, has already left for work. Both Peggy and Steve work with the SSR, but Steve does more commercial work with the government.

"Alright, Grant, here you go." She places the plate in front of her son.

"Ew, this is gross! Mom you're a woman, shouldn't you cook better than this?"

"Grant Stephen Rogers! You don't say things like that! Not all woman has the gift of being talented in the kitchen. Now you eat what I gave you or you go to school without. Now choose." Peggy says, frustrated.

"Whatever." He gets down from his chair and leaves. 'How this child can be so ungrateful and sexist at his age is beyond me' She thinks. 'Then again, that's how Steve is. Like Father like son I suppose.' Peggy grabs her folders and heads to the SSR office.

"Hey there she is! I was just talking about you." Steve comes up to Peggy and grabs her ass and tries to kiss her lips. She shoves him back and steps on his toes.

"Don't ever do that again" She storms off to her desk and gets to work.

"You let your wife talk to you like that, Rogers? If she were mine, I'd show her who the real boss is." Agent Caldwell says as he makes an explicit gesture.

"No, its okay. She already knows who's in charge in our marriage, especially in the bed." He laughs with the other Agents and walks to his office. Peggy roles her eyes and continues to look at her paper.

An hour later, after her bathroom break, she notices a slip of paper on her desk. looking around for any sign of the writer, and seeing none, she looks down and reads the note. Meet my in the file room at lunch -DS. It takes all of her strength not to smile like a little schoolgirl. Daniel Sousa, one of her colleagues and her best friend, has seen the way Steve Rogers treats her, and he's tried to speak up, but he's always put down. Everyone at the office looks down on him because of his disability, but to Peggy its not that; to her it's a symbol of bravery, hard work, and sacrifice. He smiled the brightest smile that day when she told him. Now they're meeting in the filing room again, the only place they can have a conversation in peace.

"Hey." He says as he looks up from a file.

"Hello." She replies. He sets down the file and opens her arms. She laughs and throws her arms around him. "Thank you" She buries her head in his neck and he holds her for a few more seconds.

"What are friends for?" She laughs and shoves him lightly. For years Daniel has been her shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen to as she's spent her entire married life in hell.

"What's this for?" He explains the case Agent Thompson and Rogers had been appointed too, and that they both were leaving town for a couple of weeks. "He didn't tell me..."

"Tell you what? That he was leaving?" She nods her head and looks at the ground.

"Peg, are you okay?" Before she can say anything, Steve walks down the stairs.

"Am I interrupting something?" He crosses his arms and puffs his chest defensively. Peggy rolls her eyes and walks away. Steve grabs her arm and stops her. "I asked a question, Peg. You're just gonna ignore me? Seriously?" Peggy yanks her arm away and stands straight.

"I was filing away reports. You know, my job? Or do I no longer work here?" She stomps away and goes back to her desk. Steve follows her.

"What's your problem?"

"I don't have one. I'm simply doing what I need to do. I have a job and income; I'm not just going to sit around and do nothing." He shakes his head.

"I'm leaving for Washington in an hour. I won't be back for a while. Make sure you take care of my son."

"I already do that, remember?" Steve glances at her and starts to walk away. "Did you at least have a talk with YOUR son yet?

"Talk? About what?

"Were you not listening when I said he was sent home for harassing a little girl in class last week? He shoved mud down her dress and grabbed her arm when she tried to walk away."

"Boys will be boys, Peggy. They play in mud and with girls. Nothing more I can tell you." And with that he leaves for the airport. She groans and mumbles under her breath. 'This day cannot get any worse'. For hours she works through the SSR like any other day. Grabbing coffee refills, lunch orders, filing reports, and codebreaking. When its time to clock out she smiles and says goodbye to Daniel, and heads home.

"Took you long enough. I'm hungry mom." Peggy grumbles.

"Want to try that again, young man?"

"Make me some food? What else am I supposed to say?"

"How about, 'Mum, could you please make some dinner?' You know, have manners."

"Why should I say please and use manners? Its your job." He walks away and goes into the living room. Peggy close her eyes, takes a deep breath, and lets it out. She makes a grilled cheese sandwich and tells Grant to come and eat. "Is it edible?"

"Just eat the damn sandwich or go to bed hungry. Those are your only options."

"Why couldn't Mary Smith be my mom? She actually cares if her kids eat food and don't starve."

"Mary Smith is an uptight, society mother who follows every word and rule she's forced to follow."

"And? She's a woman and a mother. At least she acts like it."

"Grant... What did I say this morning? Woman are not play dolls or objects that you can label or boss around. Not all woman has to be barefoot and pregnant cooking in a bloody kitchen!" "Why not?"

"Go to bed, Grant." "But I'm not tired."

"Go to bed or so help me God I will show you the strength of an angry mother!" He rolls his eyes and goes to his room.

"Why are woman so emotional?" He mutters. It takes all her strength to not yank him back in the kitchen and give him the spanking of his life. But she knows it doesn't work. Ever since Grant could walk and talk, he's been nothing but disrespectful, rude, and pig headed. Now that he's older he's deep in the waters of a sexist cow.

She goes upstairs and finds him laying down, and what she assumes is his bed. His room is piled with so many things she can't see the floor. No matter how many times she yelled at him to clean it, he never does. And Steve is no help. He simply shrugs it off and says, 'Boys will be boys.' The more he says it the more insane she feels. Peggy locks the door to the house and heads back to the SSR. She forgot a file she needed to bring back home with her to de-code. When she gets there, the office is empty, all but for one person.

"Daniel? What are you doing here so late?" she walks over to his desk.

"I got the night shift today. Figured if I work tonight, I'll get a day off tomorrow." She laughs

"Very well played, I must admit." He smiles at her and asks what she was doing there so late. "I forgot a file I needed to bring home with me." She walks towards Steve's office and Daniel follows her.

"You okay? You seem a little...off today. More than usually."

"Put it into your usual delicacy." She teases. He laughs and reaches for her hand.

"Come on Peggy. What's going on?" She leans against the desk and sighs.

"Everything." He listens attentively. "Steve is...I can't stand him, Daniel. My biggest regret in my entire life is marring him. At first, he seemed nice, kind, respectable, and then he turned into this! And Grant? He's just like Steve, if not worse! And no matter what I tell him, no matter how much I discipline him, he doesn't listen. Everything in my life seems to be falling apart and I can't-

"Hey, its okay. Peggy." She looks away and wipes her tears away. He embraces her tightly as she weeps again. "Its gonna be okay, Peg. I promise."

"Unless you have a magical wand to cast a spell on my life, Daniel, you can't make it better." She pulls away, slightly, and looks at him. "My husband treats me as if I'm some sort of plaything he can control, torment, and order around." She explains, her tears hot on her cheeks. "My own son treats me like I'm his slave, and when I discipline him for doing wrong? Steve intervenes and blames me for it all. I feel as if I'm trapped, Daniel. And there's no way out..."

"I'm so sorry Peggy." He holds her close to him and he feels the need to never let go; to shelter her from the horrid life she has.

"You're the only good thing in my life. I hope it stays that way." She looks into his eyes and he places his hand under her chin.

"I'm not going anywhere." Time seems to have stopped for them as them gaze at one another. His hand still lays under her chin and the other is on her waist. She slips her arms around his neck and kisses his lips. At first it was feather like; a quick taste of each other, and now its more insistent. Their lips brush against each other hungrily, and Peggy's tongue begs for entrance. Daniel lets her in and grabs both of her hips; their bodies pressed together, molded perfectly. She sets on the edge of the desk and they continue to kiss. Peggy undoes the buttons on her dress and Daniel stares at her, unsure. She takes his tie in her hand, brings him in between her legs, and kisses him again.

"You won't hurt me, Daniel. It's alright..." She looks up at him, his eyes glazed with hunger and worry. She slips off her dress and tosses it on the floor; there she sits in her brassiere, garter, nickers, and stockings; not once shying away from him. His Adams apple bobs up and down and he strains in his pants. She laughs at his expression and snogs him again, placing his hands on her skin. She starts unbuttoning his shirt, slowly, but soon enough he can't take it. He rips it off and tosses it to the floor; and Peggy gasps. "Daniel..." He laughs and brings her body closer to his, and she can feel his arousal against her. She can't help the moan that escapes her. He lefts one hand and buries it in her hair as he kisses her breathless. She rests her hands on his belt, but he shakes his head.

"Not yet..."

"Tease." They laugh again as Daniel unclips each garter, extremely slowly. Peggy groans from impatience. "Daniel!"

"Peggy!" He fake moans her name and attacks her lips with his. She squeaks from surprise, but melts in his arms. He slips a hand in her knickers and she gasps again.

"DANIEL!" Her hands pull at his hair and he explores her core. Their lips meet once more, much sloppier than before, as Peggy can't help the moans and noises escaping her. He takes his hand out, and its soaked. They laugh and kiss again as he rolls down her stockings and slips off her garter. "Now..." She places her hands on his belt again and undoes them without waiting for an answer. He chuckles at her eagerness and pulls them down. When he does he gazes into her eyes, his prosthetic now out in the open. She glances at it and then back at him. "It doesn't bother me, Daniel. It never has." Peggy runs a hand through his hair and down his back.

"I know..." He leans in close and undoes her brassier; not expecting the sight before him. She laughs hysterically.

"Like what you see?"

"Love what I see." He dives in and nips and licks at her breast. She gasps and laughs and moans in pleasure. Peggy can't take this feeling of heat any longer, so she starts to pull down his underwear. "Are you sure about this?"

"I've never been more sure about anything in my life. I want you, Daniel. No one else." His smile brightens and he takes hers off as well. In one thrust, he's home. They both moan at the same time. The office fills with their moans and groans as they enjoy this time of lust. They chant each other's name like a prayer and whisper sweet nothing in their ears. And papers and files on the desk have fallen off. She pulses around him and they finish together; she cums with a gasp and he with what sounds like a roar. Although they finish, Peggy still holds onto him, her legs wrapped around his waist. He kissed her temple, lightly, and sits down in the chair; her legs releasing him. "Sorry if that was too much on your leg." She blushes.

"Its fine. I'll just sit for a few minutes." As he does her eyes glide over his body... Daniel looks for his underwear, when she stops him. "What?" She sits on his lap and takes him in her hand. He laughs and obliges her, grabbing her head and snogging her breathless. Their bodies meet once more, and the chair begins to rock. They get their fill of pleasure again and finish within a few minutes. They stay like this, pinned against each other, trying to catch their breaths. "You are..."

"I know." They laugh and kiss once more as they separate their bodies. The find their clothes and get dressed. "Do you think he would notice?" She gestures to the mess around Steve's office. Daniel chuckles and starts to clean up.

"Yeah, a little bit..." And then his mood begins to change.

"Daniel?" She walks over to him a place a hand on his arm. "What's wrong?" He takes a deep breath and speaks honestly.

"Peg... you're married."

"And?"

"And we just- I'm not your husband. This is wrong." She takes his face in her hands and gently kisses his lips.

"Steve Rogers may be my husband, Daniel, but he is not my other half. I'm not in love with him, I never was. I don't love him at all, and I am miserable in my marriage. You-" She beams at him. "You are the one good thing in my life. And this? Is the best thing I have ever done. I don't regret it. And I would do it all over again." Daniel smiles at her and holds her close.

"You would?"

"In a heartbeat." She smirks and they snog once more, much more passionately than they intended. "I think you should come home...with me." Daniel laughs.

"Not tonight..." She groans. "Maybe tomorrow? You know, when I'm not actually on duty." She forgot Daniel was on the night shift.

"Fine. But I'm holding you to that." One more kiss and she leaves for home, and Peggy has never felt happier and more alive.

#peggysous #peggy carter #daniel sousa #peggysous > steggy #anti steve rogers #anti steggy #peggy sousa #mentions of peggy rogers #angst #smut #warning

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the-dark-fantastic · 5 years

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Trick Or Peet (Fanfiction - Pokémon HG/SS - Petrel/Reader)

Title: Trick Or Peet Author: ultra-warped / the-dark-fantastic.tumblr.com Fandom: Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Characters: Petrel/Reader, Giovanni, Team Rocket Grunts, Original NPCs Rating/Warnings: General/Teen - Completely SFW fic; the rating is for some mildly-naughty words and bad jokes. Notes: At the end of the fic (along with a 'deleted scene')! Summary: Everybody has a good time at the holidays. Even Team Rocket.

One of the great things about this town is that no one's ever too old for the Haunted Harvest Festival. Even the people who don't go all-out for it still give it a nod, in the way of a hairbow holding a tiny pointed hat, or a porch full of plush Pumpkaboos, or that one incredibly odd fellow with the lapel pin shaped like Mismagius that when you lean in turns out to be an actual Mismagius -

Alright, that guy's a f'n freak. But everyone else is having a good time, including you, though you'd probably be having an even better one if you hadn't gotten stuck taking your little brother around for tricks and treats. Your dad was supposed to do it this year, but -

"He went out for candy cigarettes three hours ago and hasn't come back," your mom said, staring out the window with the most worried expression she could possibly contrieve, and you'd just groaned, dropping your head into your hand. (He really will be back, though. Your mom just thinks that joke is a lot funnier than it is - but your brother's not old enough to understand it yet, so it's probably okay.)

(And to be honest, you wouldn't put it past your dad to have gone out the front door, snuck around the back, and been hiding in the basement choking on his own laughter. The whole family's like this, but at least you know where you got it from. And whose fault it will be when you finally get your sweet, sweet revenge.)

So you're stuck with the kid instead of meeting up with your own crew, but at least it's a nice night for it. Last year, it rained until the garlands of paper Ghost-types turned to purple mush, and the year before that, it was so cold that nearly everyone had ended up in a universal costume of parkas and overfluffed earmuffs. But right now it's warm enough to slip off the light jacket and go bare-armed, and once the temperature does start to fall, you'll have been running around for so long you'll welcome the kind of breeze that scratches leafless branches across a midnight sky.

Your neighbours are nice - and certainly festive (Gentleman Edward and Madame Vivianne do the absolute best amateur spookyard, hands down) - but for the real haul, most people head downtown, where all the local businesses and even a few of the larger chains are stocked with full-size chocolate bars, gift bags so heavy the bottoms are threatening to fall out, and in one case, a berry-bobbing tub deep enough to drown in. It's all about drumming up customers, of course, but it's hard to mind when every window is filled with a living display and the only way you can tell the employees from the guests is by their nametags because all the costumes are that damn good. There's no half-assing it with just a googly-eyed, wiggly-eared headband here.

But what's better yet (or much, much worse, or absolutely hysterical, depending on who you talk to)? Is that Team Rocket gets super-into it, too. No one had been happy when the infamous criminal organization had set up shop here - and it's not like they'd been open about it at first, they hadn't put the Big Red R on their roof or anything; but once the rumours started to spread, they'd spread fast, and once someone actually managed to prove it - by then, they'd become firmly enough entrenched that no one knew how to run them out to begin with, or if it would have been the right thing to do even if they’d found a way. Weirdly enough, Team Rocket puts a lot back into the local economy. So sort of an uneasy truce had formed, with most of the residents looking the other way as long as Team Rocket didn't do anything really publically illegal, and Team Rocket pretending their business wasn't doing things that were...well, really illegal.

But then they'd started up their Happy Harvest, Family Fun! campaign, handing out candy and trinkets and colourful little cards right outside HQ, and the PTA Brigade had lost their minds. “Criminals? Luring our children into their creepy black van? Not in my backyard!” If ever there was a lost cause, though, trying to keep kids away from an increasingly-shiny combination of candy and danger was probably it. Eventually, Moms Against Team Rocket (MoTeR, pronounced exactly like it wasn't actually spelled) had given up on attacking the event directly and settled for grumbling behind the closed doors of what their husbands assumed were meetings full of wine and those lemon bars their hands had been smacked away from.

Your mom hadn't been part of it (though you're not sure if that's because she isn't particularly concerned about Team Rocket or because of the Noodle Casserole Incident that had gotten her politely but firmly invited not to feel as if she needed to continue attending the PTA), and so you don't feel much guilt about taking your brother that way once the frenzy at the shops starts to die down. He's still as wound up as he'd been when you left the house and probably doesn't need any more sugar, but he's easier to manage when he thinks he's getting his way and once you get back, he's going to be your parents' problem, not yours. (Ha. There's your revenge.) He's run into one of his little cronies and they're shrieking about who's collected the most, and by the time you rock up to the Rocketyard, the stories being passed back and forth about all the people they know who know someone who's been to Lavender Town (and occasionally, someone who didn't come back from Lavender Town) are actually a relief, because every time they manage to scare each other silent, it lasts a whole three seconds or so.

Whatever's beyond those heavy red doors is off-limits to anyone not a member of the organization, so the party takes place outside, and outside is packed. Most years, it's been the grunts handling the handouts, but tonight - Seriously? The big boss himself? Those are the murmurs at the back of the line, anyway. You've never seen Giovanni in person before - just his portrait staring into your soul from the posters put up now-and-then - and you bounce up on your toes, trying to get a glimpse over the top of the crowd. You can't - too many taller heads prevail - but a pair of girls you remember vaguely from your senior year are passing by on their way out, and you can hear them giggling and gasping - "Oh! I know Team Rocket's terrible, but Mr Giovanni's really quite dashing, isn't he?" "...did you really just call him dashing? Did Celebi transport me back in time and I missed it?"

So it is him? That adds a further touch of mystery and excitement to a night that's already got no shortage of either. Why here? Why now? It's no secret that Team Rocket hosts these events to boost their image, but they're doing well enough right now (for a given value of 'well enough', anyway) - so is it that he feels safer making an appearance when public opinion is high, or could it be a ploy to push it even higher? Because, face it, ninety percent of these kids would vote the man into office right now. (The other ten percent are too firmly on the Pikachu is Pikafection platform, and by tomorrow, they'll all be throwing their support to Mr Mime's Wall O'Wonder Show. The candy bribes giveth, and the candy bribes taketh away.)

As you get closer, the image you've seen in those pictures begins to resolve. Giovanni isn't costumed (though he is very definitely dressed up - like, to the nines up), but he's made a concession to the festival by pinning a spray of purple blossoms to his lapel. He's seated in a chair padded with the sort of leather that probably shouldn't ever actually be brought outdoors, and though he's generally accompanied in promotional material by the most smug Persian the world has ever known, the Classy Cat is currently nowhere to be found. It seems, too, that the grunts are still the ones running the show, because Giovanni nods and smiles - kind of smirks, really - at the visitors who've made it to the front, but it's his henchmen who are filling bags and making jokes and pulling punches at the teenagers who think they're too cool for fun and just want to say they went toe to toe with Team Rocket.

And while the Persian may be strangely absent, there are an assortment of the other Pokémon people have come to associate with the most poisonous team in town - an Arbok dancing amidst fan-blown ribbons, the full Zubat evolutionary line flapping about overhead, and more Koffing than you can shake a swab stick at.

Seriously, there are so. Many. Koffing. They're bobbing around like balloons, and they're dressed up, too - with hats and body paint and fluttering capes, and one even has a little papier-maché head stuck to its side, so that it can know what it's like to be a Weezing even though it's not quite ready to evolve.

You've reached the end of the queue, and while your little brother is hopping up and down, jabbing the air next to a grunt who's clearly weary as hell but still doing his best to make sure all the kids get to have a good time, Giovanni steeples his fingers and dips his head in such a way that his eyes flash before going darker still, and alright, you can absolutely see why the airheads called him 'dashing'. You only get to hold the thought for a moment before the two of you are ushered away, though, and you don't have time to snatch it back before your brother's shoved his head into the sack and started reeling off a list of his ill-given gains. It's a smorgasboard of crackerjacks and actual jacks, little plastic toys that won't last for more than a day but it doesn't matter because little boys can't stay interested in most things that long anyway, and the reason you know they're going to break immediately is because your brother's managed to snap one in half before you've even made it halfway home.

Unfortunately, 'halfway home' is well before the limits of even the shortest attention span, and delight turns to dismay with a wail that could make a Haunter shudder and turn pale. You do what you can to, if not distract him, convince him that it's not the end of the world and he probably didn't care that much about the trinket anyway, but he's already convinced himself of the exact opposite, and in the end, the only thing you can get him to agree to is to stay right here while you run back to see if they'll give you a replacement. It's a goodwill gesture, right? And they'd all seemed fairly good-natured about it. Maybe they won't mind.

By the time you get there, though, things are winding down; the Rocketyard's mostly cleared out and the remaining grunts are either sweeping up the hundred thousand wrappers dropped by hands that are surprisingly incapable of holding on to anything for being so sticky, or trying to recapture the overly-excited Koffing that are now chasing each other around with all the grace of drunken bumper cars. "Oi! Peety! Come get your freakin' plague puffs!" one shouts, and if this Peety, whoever that is, answers, it's lost beneath the cacophany of cleanup. Your chances of finding (or buying, or begging) a new toy seem to be dwindling as rapidly as the chance anyone's getting those Koffing back in order, but from the corner of your eye, you catch a flash of dapper black vanishing around the building's far side, and screw it, you are going for the gold.

"Mr Giovanni! I'm sorry to bother you, but do you have a minute? My brother -" you call, and then you stop short, because as you come up on the man you're chasing, he starts to strip - no, wait, he's wearing something else beneath that fabulous suit, and you wouldn't have thought that to even be possible, it fit so well. Did he not hear you? He must not have, because he's dropped his face into his palms and raked his fingers through his hair, and when he turns toward you at last -

It's not Giovanni. It's a tall man in the black and white uniform of a Rocket executive, with purple hair swept up atop his head, and if you hadn't seen the transformation yourself, you never would have believed it. He's as surprised as you, now - but for a different reason - and the elegance he'd displayed in Giovanni's suit is gone as he stumbles back. "&#%$!" he yelps, and you can hear every symbol rolling off his tongue. "You, ah, didn't see that, did you?"

You stammer an answer as you edge away yourself, because as fun as it may be to play 'Take On Team Rocket!' when you're eight and loaded up on Vanillish Wafers, this seems a lot more like it's going to result in real trouble, and though your hands have found the wall and you're trying to use it to guide yourself back the way you came without taking your eyes off the executive, it's no use - his long legs outstride yours and he's caught up to you well before you have any real hope of getting away. His own hand plants to the wall, just beside your head, and he leans in, smirking that same smirk that had you so convinced he could really be the Fearless Leader. "'cause if you did, I'm gonna have to make sure you won't talk."

Oh, &#%$, you think, legs shaking, you are going to die here; you are going to disappear and at your empty-coffined funeral, your little brother is just going to scream that you hadn't gotten him another toy before you were tossed off the mortal coil, but before you can manage to pass out so that you at least won't see it coming, the man ducks the rest of the way in and smashes his lips to yours. And then he's gone, darting around that corner you were so desperate to reach yourself, and based on the sound that's rapidly fading as he puts ever-more distance between the two of you, you're pretty sure that he

giggling.

"G'damnit, Peety!" you hear as you're creeping out, apparently from the same grunt who'd been yelling for the mysterious Peety before. "The hell have you been?" You don't stick around for the reply, because no one's looking your way - including the lanky executive, who not only has his back to you once more but has suddenly been flocked to by every last one of the runaway Koffing, cloaking him in a cloud of poisonous purple love - and this seems like the perfect time to make your escape.

"Where is it where is it where is it!" your brother demands as you run back up, grabbing his hand to pull him along whether he's ready to go or not, and you mumble a reply you can barely understand yourself; They didn't have any more or They were already closed or something else that doesn't have a damn thing to do with what actually happened but at least takes the blame off you because what are you supposed to do in that situation? Your face is on fire, but as long as he's trying to find the perfect balance between crying over his broken knick-knacks and stuffing his mouth full of candy, he's not paying enough attention to notice, and by the time you've made it back to your house and pawned him off on your parents (Dad was indeed in the basement, and you are not surprised at all), that chill evening wind has mostly washed away what you haven't managed to yourself. The sooner you're in your own room, the better, though, and you spend a few minutes flattened to the closed door, trying to catch the breath that should never have left you in the first place.

...Team Rocket throws a Christmas party, too, don't they?

Notes:

- For @hollowsart, who said there wasn't enough Petrel/Reader fic in the world. - There was a discussion about Team Rocket (or at least some members) doing Random Acts of Kindness to cast them in a more positive light, which reminded me of the Yakuza group that does that with Halloween, which is how we're now getting a Halloween fic in May. >_> - It ended up with a lot less actual Petrel/Reader than I intended (or even Petrel at all), but this is what I do, I make it so we can't have nice things, and also I think it's cute so you'll get this and you'll like it! <_< - =D

Bonus Deleted Scene:

Jessie and James roll out a mechanical Persian, which promptly malfunctions, necessitating a need to whisk it away as quickly as possible lest the Jig Be Completely Up.

#pokemon #pokemon hgss #petrel #executive petrel #team rocket petrel #petrel/reader #fanfiction #gift fic #my fics

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itsanerdlife · 6 years

Text

Captivated (MC Series) 8

Pairing: Biker!Eggsy Unwin x Reader

Characters: Natasha Romanov, Merlin, Clint Barton, Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Scott Lang, Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy, Michelle Unwin, Frank Castle, Roxy, (Mentions of) Harry Hart, OFC Logan and Markus, Tony Stark, Charlie Hesketh.

Warnings: Swearing, creepy boss, a girl who can handle her own, stalking, creepy guy, law breaking, random hook ups mentioned, angst, sass, drama, cops involved, sexual harassment (nothing happens tho promise), melt downs, and allegations of abuse.

In your town there is a Biker club Called Kings Rebels, you weren’t a good girl and you surely weren’t a biker girl, or were you? One night changes everything in your life. You started that night out as a hostel waitress who works in Stark Tavern, one ass grab and a sucker punch later, did you just slip the Pres of a Biker Club, Eggsy Unwin, your work hours? But is MC life for you, being an old lady? When your faith is tested for the club, they follow through with everything Eggsy promised you. Will your world stay upside down since walking into the Clubhouse, or do you fit into their lifestyle more than you ever thought possible??

“Call Peter. I owe him a present for my tatt anyways.” You lean on the bar grinning at Eggsy.

“He does like new people to work on.” He nods, sighing, pulling his phone out. He hands you the ringing phone.

“Boss?” Peter answers.

“No I’m prettier.” You laugh, Eggsy rolls his eyes.

“Y/N?” He chuckles.

“Come to the Tavern. I have a gift for you.” You grin.

“I’m heading that way.” He laughs, as you hang up. You hand the phone back to Eggsy, as Shelby the hostess walks by again, Logan’s eyes crawling over her. You snap your fingers at him, shaking your head.

“No. Stay away from that.” You stare him down.

“Since when are you no fun?” He chuckles, sipping from his glass.

“What are you trouble makers doing here?” You squint at the two of them.

“Visiting.” The laugh, you tip your head, not buying it. You wait for them to crack.

“Court date, huh?” You shake your head.

“Yeah.” Markus sighs.

“How do you do that?” Logan laughs.

“I have like a moron super power with you two. I always know when you two are in trouble.” You roll your eyes.

“Easy mom.” Markus laughs.

“No ink for you fucker.” You point at him as you turn around grabbing a box of empty bottles from the floor, Stark stepping out of his office, his eyes lingering on your curves too long. “Stark I’ll make fucking good on that threat.” You growl as you stand up, looking at him. He smiles at you, backing away. Nat comes rushing in, her hair a mess, her sneakers untied.

“What the hell?” You shove the box at Stark, looking at your friend.

“I know, it’s a fucking trip.” She shakes her head.

“Explain.” You wave her on as you pour her a shot.

“So my car wouldn’t start, I locked myself out of the apartment. Oh did you know you can’t jump start a car with a bike?” She tilts her head looking at you.

“No shit.” Your brow crinkles, looking confused.

“Yeah well 25 minutes of fighting with Buck about that. He finally called one of the prospects with one of the SUV’s and then he left with my keys.” She grumbles, shaking her head.

“Two shots.” You nod, pouring another, she takes it, setting the glass on the bar, she sees Eggsy, then the other two on the side of him.

“Who are the tatted twins?” She whispers at you.

“My brothers. Markus and Logan.” You introduce them.

“Peter is going to fan girl over them.” She nods, looking at all the ink they had.

“He’s on his way. They’re my gift to him.” You grin at her.

“Aw Y/N you’re like the best mom ever.” She laughs, joking with you.

“I hate you all.” You roll your eyes, walking away. You stop in front of your brothers. “Touch her, you die.” You nod, pointing at Nat. “She’s his VP’s old lady. No touchy or I breaky the hands.” You warn them. They grin at you, like two adolescent, troubled twins.

“Ruthless.” You hear Eggsy mutter into his glass, you shoot him a look, he almost chokes on his beer with a laugh.

Peter did in fact fangirl over Markus and Logan, they talked ink for so long Eggsy had to change the subject or he was going to punch Peter.

“What trouble are you two in that brings you here?” Eggsy leans on his elbow looking at them.

“Got into a fight.” Logan nods, Markus grins.

“More like Logan, hit on the wrong girl and then mouthed off to her cop boyfriend. We ended up in a cell for the weekend.” Markus punches Logan in the shoulder.

“She was hot.” Markus laughs. “Besides her boyfriend was drunk on badge power.” He rolls his eyes.

“She was right, you two are trouble.” He laughs, shaking his head.

“Oh don’t let those wide eyes and innocent grin fool you. She is all trouble wrapped up looking sweet and innocent.” Markus laughs.

“Yeah, Scott thinks his nose isn’t going to heal right.” Peter looks at Eggsy, he sighs.

“She hit someone?” Logan looks interested.

“Yeah a buddy of ours, got drunk and grabbed her ass. She swung so hard he hit the ground before he finished his sentence.” Eggsy nods.

“Right on.” The brothers high five each other.

“She’s always been ruthless when it comes to being touched.” Logan nods.

“She beat up a football player in high school with a science text book for making a pass at her, he was out for the rest of the season.” Markus smirks, almost proud. A commotion behind them, a chair scrapping the ground, makes the four of them turn in their seats quickly.

Y/N, hits him twice, he drops to the ground with a thump and groan. She casually grabs the bar stool, setting it over his chest, the foot rest pressed to his Adams apple, he looks nervous. She straddles the seat, arms resting on the back of the chair, looking down at him.

“This is the closest you’ll ever get to me again dick bag. Touch me again and I’ll decide between breaking your fucking jaw or your fucking hand.” She grins at him. “Mkay?” Her grin widening.

“Yeah.” He attempts to nod, swallowing hard, he was panicked and stunned.

“Good boy.” She crinkles her nose at him. “Tip your waitress, dick bag.” She stands up, removing the stool, and placing at the table again. She steps over him still laying on the ground, coming back around the bar. The four of them turning following her, she checks the computer orders, as if nothing just happened. When she looks up the four of them are staring at her, eyebrows lifted and mouths open.

“What?” She looks confused.

“Ruthless.” He grins at her.

“He told me he’d give me a royal seat, and grabbed my ass.” She shrugs.

“You take all the fun out of being your big brothers.” Markus grins at her.

“Shouldn’t have taught me to defend myself.” She cocks her eyebrow at him.

“Alright, what are we doing tonight, oh feisty little sister of ours?” Logan grins. She chews the bottom of her lip thinking it over.

“Party at the clubhouse?” Eggsy looks at Peter. “You can ink up the misfits if they have any space left. Maybe this time,” he looks over at her “someone won’t run off again.” He winks at her.

“Than you better stock up on a med kit, if your tart can’t keep her ass in line.” She tips her head a smirk forming on her lips.

Captivated: @mo320 @rileyloves5 @irepeldirt @travelwithwords @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked @elle88531 @lesmiserablememelovingfuck @taylorjacksonandtheolympians @lovemarvelousfics @mrskokitztelford @live-for-the-avengers @shamptainshmerica @misspygmypie @mariekoukie6661 @bluebird214 @allyp1023 @sarahp879 @nerdyandexhausted @i-love-superhero @supernatural-girl97 @petersunderroos @kazuha159 @sweet-honey15 @ingridsigne @red-writer13 @nessy-bearxb @cece-daughter-of-pitch-black @thedarklightwithinus @itsemmyb @debbienewnes84

#Cross Over #Eggsy Unwin x Reader #Kingsman Avengers #Eggsy x Reader #Captivated #MC Series #Eggsy Unwin AU Series #Kingsman Avengers AU Series #Eggsy AU Series

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ryleesfanfiction · 6 years

Text

Bloody Knuckles- Chapter One/Phan

The town seemed to be under a different control, not controlled by the government but controlled by the two most feared gangs in London, Manchester. The Mayor made deals with one of the gangs, the gang lead by none other than Phil Lester himself, the Mayor made a deal that he wouldn't arrest anyone from their group, unless the government came breathing down his neck. Phil's gang agreed since they often got busted for stupid things like murder and drug deals. Phil's group was called Venom, often being called Snakes due to their lack of remorse and hunger for anything and everything, no matter what size. The other gang was The Wolves, which Dan stood by proudly- flaunting his leather jacket and switch blade where ever he went. But today was different, Dan had to dress up, which he didn't mind. So when Dan walked out of the changing room, wearing his grey hoodie (only because the big man didn't think scars and cuts were sexy) and short pastel blue skirt with thigh high tights and kick ass boots, everyone couldn't help but stare.

"This good, boss?" Dan asked innocently, those big doe eyes staring back at the older man.

"You clean up nicely don't you, Dan?" He cocked his head to the side.

"Anything for you." Dan winked before walking out and onto the streets to start his real task, getting across town without attracting the wrong guys.

Dan was a flirt when he needed to be, other than his sex he was 100% serious. He never slept with people in The Wolves, even though half of the guys has either hit on him or asked him out.

"I see you, PJ." Dan said, smirking when the taller boy takes off in a jog to try and catch up with him.

"I was out of eye shot, how did you see me?" PJ asked in awe.

"You're asking the best spy on this side of town how I could sense you following me?"

PJ chuckles under his breath, not saying anything, the silence filled the gap.

"Why are you here, Peej?" Dan finally asked.

"Boss sent me to look after you."

"Lying makes you go to hell, Peej." Dan rolls his eyes, side eyeing the boy beside him.

"Yup."

"You just wanna look at my ass." Dan snickers.

"Damn straight." PJ laughs.

"Shut up." Dan sticks his arm out abruptly, stopping PJ dead in his tracks, both boys snap back into the real reason they are there, to get to work.

"I'll be around back.." PJ says leaving Dan's side and walking around to the back of the building.

Dan struts right up to the door, heels clicking on the sidewalk. Dan throws open the door, a jingle sends out throughout the small store.

"Good evening." The cashier smiles.

"Morning!" Dan throws a wave over his shoulder before walking around the store, pretending to look for something to eat.

Dan looks around the store, counting four cameras on him right now, two behind the cashiers desk and one in the hall to the stock room. Dan grabs a sucker, unwraps it and sticks it in his mouth.

"You're going to have to pay for that!" The man behind the counter yells.

Dan pulls out his revolver and shoots the man clean in the forehead. He sticks the gun back into his boot, leaving the store without giving a second glance. The last thing Dan saw was PJ running up to him as a bag was thrown over his head and he was forcefully thrown into a van.

-----------

Phil slammed the metal door behind him, making the tied down boy shoot his head up, brown curls hanging in his eye, cracked lips and bruises lining the side of his pretty face.

"Look at what we have here." Phil smiled wickedly as he slammed down Dan's revolver on the table in front of him. "Sweetheart."

Dan's eyes scanned over the golden word printed into his personal gun, it was a gift from his mom, she had worked for The Wolves for a long forty years before Phil's dad shot her in the back, betrayed The Wolves and joined Vemon. But that's what Phil didn't know, he didn't know his own father worked for The Wolves, and that's what Dan held secretly above his head, he knew more than Phil, and knowledge was power.

"What made you think you could rob my store and get away with it." Phil cocked his head to the side, scanning over Dan.

"Well, uh, I did. I robbed your store because I didn't want to pay and last time I checked; I can. Besides, I didn't even know it was yours." Dan smiled, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

Phil slammed his hands down on the table in front of Dan, leaning in so their noses almost touched, leaning in close enough so Dan could smell the bubblegum he just spit out two minutes ago.

"Do you take me for some type of idiot, Howell? You know damn well that's my store, it's on my side of town." Phil growled.

"Didn't take you as a classic bubble gum type of guy, what did the bad-asses run out of gum man enough." Dan chuckled.

"Fuck you." Phil leaned back, folding his arms over his chest.

"Only in your favorite dreams, Lester." Dan winked.

"You're whorish ways isn't gonna help you sleep your way out of this one." Phil said, unfazed by Dan's words.

"What are you gonna do?" Dan leaned forward, the cuffs digging into his skinny wrists. "Hit me?" He chuckled, leaning back. "I like the pain, nothing you can do is gonna make me tell you what I was doing."

"Not even if I did this?" Phil snapped, suddenly the door was thrown open and PJ was pushed inside, his hands tied behind his back, his eyes wild with worry but at the same time curiosity.

"This is a nice gun, Howell." Phil said, picking up the gun and turning it over, inspecting it. "It would be a shame if I wasted your bullets..." Without even turning to look at PJ, Phil raised the gun to his head, cocking the gun and waiting for Dan's next move.

"Do it." Dan urged him. "Doesn't mean anything to me." Dan smiled.

"Oh well." Phil shrugged, pulling the trigger.

Blood sprayed over the side of Dan's face. PJ's body hit the floor with a thud, and Dan did the only thing he knew how to cope with lose. He laughed.

#bloodyknuckles #smut #dnp #danhowell #danielhowell #phan #phillester #danandphil #amazingphil #danisnotonfire #my own works #lgbt #romance #gang #angst

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likexporcelain · 6 years

Text

A Crack in Everything (Chapter 2/8) - Jonerys

Summary: Six years after their high school romance ended in emotional ruin, Daenerys Targaryen runs into Jon Snow by chance on Valentine's Day, forcing old memories to the resurface. This sudden reunion could be cathartic, but it could also deepen the cracks already in their hearts. The question Daenerys grapples with is, will this all be worth it in the end?

Rating: Explicit (eventually)

First two chapters up on Ao3 - additional tags/warnings/notes there

The next day, Jon didn't come see me at Martell's, and I hadn't really expected him to, but I had hoped. After a full week of hoping, I had given up any attempt to make myself prettier in the morning, opting for an extra hour of sleep rather than a longer shower and enough time to straighten my hair and apply the right amount of makeup. When I got to work looking my usual, slightly disheveled self, the male employees working my shift made similar comments about how they preferred my hair straight and Daario risked me filing a complaint with the bosses by smirking at me and saying “Done trying to impress me, huh? You know you're my favorite, Dany.” I rolled my eyes and tried to avoid him the rest of the day, but I couldn't help but feel like a fool for ever doing anything to impress anyone, even Jon.

It would be another week, the first day of March, that I would see Jon again. I had just had a rather annoying conversation with Daario where he tried to convince me it was still February. His version of flirting no doubt, judging by the way he would wink his eye and lean toward me across the register counter. I had been moments from leaving to use the restroom, just to buy me a couple minutes alone, when the little box above the sliding front door dinged.

He looked the same as when I ran into him at his work, but this time in a white t-shirt exposing an arm covered in ink and his hair was down in dark curls I remembered well. When his eyes found mine, I dropped my gaze to the counter top, cowardly.

“Hi there, Sir. Let me know if you need any help,” Daario greeted him.

I had wanted to see Jon for days, but now I found myself hoping my manager's long back was enough to hide me from him. I heard footsteps move further into the store and when I looked up, Daario was sending me a look of displeasure. “I shouldn't have to do your job for you, Dany. That's why I'm the manager and you're the floor associate. Now go see if he needs any help.”

As I walked past the isles, I ran my fingers through my hair anxiously before just giving up and using the black hair tie around my wrist to pull it all into a pony tail. I found Jon in the last isle, hands in his pockets and staring at shelves stocked with grain-free dog food.

“Do you have a dog?” I asked, trying to keep the nerves out of my voice.

“No.”

When he turned to look at me, I forced myself to keep eye contact. “Do you have any pets?”

“No.”

Seemed like as sure a sign as any that he had come in to see me, but my mind still raced with alternate explanations. He needed to buy a gift for a friend's dog's birthday party perhaps?

“Neither do I.”

“Do you have a lunch break coming up or something?”

“No, I don't get lunch breaks because I only work five hours a day.”

“Oh. . . I have work at two.”

It was already one, according to my watch.

“I could take lunch at five, if you want me to,” Jon suggested.

Did I want him to take lunch at five? I got off work at five. He obviously wanted to talk to me, or he was just doing this because he thought I wanted to talk to him. This felt horribly awkward. Jon and I had never been this unsure with each other, not even when we sat next to each other in Chemistry all those years ago. Did I really want to keep doing this? Keep having painfully awkward conversations with a guy I wished meant nothing to me?

“Yes,” I answered. “Yeah, okay.”

He nodded and for a few moments we just stood there in silence. But then his feet moved and he left.

As soon as I got back to the register, Daario threw up his hands at me. “Maybe if you'd kept up the beauty treatments, you'd actually get someone to buy something every once in a while.”

* * * * *

At the end of the last lunch period before Christmas break, Jon put his number in my phone and told me to text or call whenever I wanted during the two week period we would be away from each other. I texted him as soon as we got into Chemistry, telling him to do the same. This would be the first stretch of time he would spend at his uncle Ned's house without the reprieve of school and – I thought, optimistically – me. He didn't say so, but I knew he was nervous about it.

“Are you in hell?” I had texted him Christmas morning just after waking up. The night before he had texted me almost nonstop about a horrendous Holiday party his aunt Cat had thrown, inviting a slew of neighbors, Ned's employees, and their families. Every other minute my phone had buzzed with a new message detailing another insufferable conversation he'd had to sit through, or another bizarre appetizer he was forced to try, or another tipsy middle aged woman hitting on him before pretending like she didn't know he was only seventeen.

He had told me Christmas would be “family day” which was not a good thing. It wasn't that he disliked his family. Although he resented his uncle on behalf of his mother, Jon cared for him like one cares for family and he genuinely enjoyed his cousins. Jon just wasn't good at being part of a family. A lone wolf trying to be part of the pack.

“I've been pretending to still be asleep for an hour. Eventually they'll send someone in for me,” Jon replied right away.

“I wish I could pretend to sleep. I've got work today. Pray for me and I'll pray for you.”

Christmas was a busy day at the outlet mall. I'd worked every day since our break began and would work almost every day until going back to school. On the bright side, I was going to stop by the Apple Store after my shift and get the 64GB Classic I finally had the money for. A Christmas gift for myself, since I wouldn't get any from anyone else. That was what I thought at least.

A half hour before my shift at Banana Republic was up, I felt a gust of warm breath tickle the back of my neck as I fixed the 50% Off rack. I giggled and twisted, swatting Jon on the shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice down.

He looked nice. Too nice. Clear face, goop in his hair, and wearing clothes that looked like what we sold at Banana Republic, but more expensive. Not at all the sort of wardrobe I had imagined Jon would wear during his free time. A teal sweater – cashmere? – and black chinos.

“I snuck out.”

“You snuck out?”

“You would sneak out too, Daenerys. They were about to have a family portrait taken. Look at what I'm wearing right now. I told them I was going to the bathroom and went right out the window.”

Jon always used my full first name. He had found out on his own what Dany was short for and refused to use the nickname ever since. If he had been anyone else it would have annoyed me – I was self conscious about my name because it just highlighted the fact that I was a Targaryen, daughter of the infamous Aerys Targaryen, who was convicted of fraud when he stole over a billion dollars from his clients as a financial adviser – but the syllables sounded so soft on his tongue, never accusatory or cold. “I love your name. Your whole name. I want to know where it comes from,” he'd said to me, and when I reveled to him that both parts of my name were essentially made up – Targaryen being adopted some two hundred years ago when my ancestors wanted to stand out – Jon told me about his name. “My mom was a Stark obviously, but I never knew who my father was. Only Mom's name is on my birth certificate. As far as I know, when the nurse asked her what she wanted to name me, she said Jon Snow on a whim. All I know is that she never wanted me to be a Stark. I guess both of our names are made up then.”

After begging to be let off work a bit early, I made Jon go with me to the Apple Store and then we took a walk around the Outlets, buying a couple of cinnamon pretzels and talking like we were still sitting behind the basketball gym at school. While he had much more to complain about regarding his time cooped up at the Stark place, there were good things he shared as well. He told me about the strange things twelve year old Arya did to make him laugh and showed me goofy pictures of six year old Rickon. Apparently, ten year old Bran could scale the entire facade of the Stark mansion in less than sixty seconds, but got grounded whenever his mom caught him. Sansa, who I already vaguely knew as a freshman at our school, was quite the seamstress, according to Jon, and was already designing her dream wedding gown, despite not having a boyfriend and being only fourteen.

Lastly, Robb, just a bit older than Jon, was home for the holidays from USC and managed to get into Jon's good graces enough for an odd-couple friendship to form. Robb had graduated from Westeros Prep the year before. We had shared a math class but hardly ever exchanged words. He was always polite, though, and I hoped he wasn't trying to change Jon's opinion of me. If he was, Jon didn't mention it.

Even though they were Starks, I liked that Jon was getting along with his family. It made me feel like I could one day have a big family too and do alright.

I had no delusions that this was a date. Jon may have paid for my pretzel, but not once did he hold my hand and I didn't try to hold his either. However, this time together outside of school made me wonder what a date with Jon would be like. I wanted to find out.

The sun was going down and I was finishing up a hot chocolate when Jon finally looked at his phone. He cursed under his breath at all the missed calls and texts from his aunt wondering where he was. “Apparently I've ruined Christmas,” Jon told me with a small chuckle. I blushed at the irony, because from my point of view, it was the best Christmas I'd ever had.

I walked with him to his car and he offered to drive me home. I made up some excuse so that he wouldn't insist. Despite knowing Jon wasn't actually a rich kid, I didn't know enough about where he came from to feel comfortable enough showing him where I lived, alone in a tiny studio apartment above a Seven-Eleven on the wrong side of town.

“Okay, but before I leave, I have to give you your present.” He popped the trunk of the Mazda sedan his uncle got him shortly after he moved in.

“You shouldn't have gotten me anything, Jon. I didn't get you anything.”

“I don't want anything,” he replied and lifted a brown Ralph's bag from the trunk and presented it to me.

“You got me groceries? How thoughtful.”

“Just look inside, smart ass.”

Smiling, I dipped my hand inside and felt something soft. It was a sweatshirt in crimson and when I unfolded it, I saw big-print white letters running across the chest. “HARVARD.”

“That's where you're going to go, right? Sorry, I'm not really good at gift giving.”

I shook my head and hugged the sweatshirt to my chest with one arm. “Well, that's my first choice, but I think my chances of getting in are slim. Thank you, though. You're sweet.”

“Well, don't tell anyone. It'll ruin my cred.” He closed the trunk and leaned back on it. “Are you sure you don't want a ride home?”

“My gift to you will be you not having to drive me home. It's in the complete wrong direction, and it sounds like you might become the victim of domestic violence if you don't get home soon.”

He didn't move right away. His finger tips drummed on the car and his face scrunched in the way it would when he was thinking about something. I wondered for a moment if he was going to ask me out, or maybe even kiss me, but when he finally pushed himself off the car, he took me into a quick one armed hug and said he'd see me at school. I should have been happy. Jon had never really touched me before save for an accidental shoulder bump here and there, and that day, he had made the conscious decision to wrap his arm around my shoulders and bring me gently to his chest. But I didn't think of it as a step forward at the time. I thought of it as a missed opportunity, and figured I was doomed to wade in the frigid pond of friendship until he found someone he liked better.

* * * * *

The time on my watch read five o'clock and I realized that Jon and I hadn't discussed where to meet. Was I supposed to go to Whole Foods or was he going to come back to Martell's? I said goodbye to Daario, grabbed my purse from the back room and walked out into the breezeway in front of the shop. Figuring that if I walked toward Whole Foods I'd eventually run into Jon, I started moving. The sun was starting to fall and the lights lining the walkway were turning on. I got to the first set of Whole Foods' sliding doors just as Jon was coming out of them. I watched him pull out a cigarette and light it with a green Bic lighter before announcing myself.

“You're smoking for real now, huh?” I pretended like I hadn't already deduced that, just to have something to say.

He turned to me and expelled some smoke that puffed upward with the wind. “I know it's unhealthy, but I figure it's at least a better alternative than some things I could be hooked on.”

If he had been anyone else, I would have silently judged that excuse, but I knew Jon and where he came from. If he needed to smoke to avoid other substances, I wasn't going to give it a second thought.

“Yeah, I'm pretty much addicted to caffeine at this point. Still don't like coffee, but it's just Diet Coke and Dr. Pepper all day long. I once drank four Monsters in one day. I'm strictly soda now, though. But, I guess I don't really know the difference health wise.”

“Do you want to walk? I have to find something to eat that isn't organic.”

I followed him out of the Marketplace, across the street to the In-n-Out, both of us completely silent until I told him I'd save an outdoor table while he ordered. Despite the coolness in the dusk air, I was acutely aware of how much I had been perspiring and sitting inside a stuffy fast food restaurant would be torture.

After a bit, Jon sat down across from me with a tray of burgers, and two cups. “I know you didn't eat, so I got you a cheeseburger and a chocolate shake. You still don't like thousand island, right?”

“Yeah. Thank you. How much was it?”

Jon waved away my question away with a sweep of his hand before grabbing a burger and taking a bite. In school, Jon never ate during lunch period. He didn't want to bother one of the Starks' many servants by having them fix something for him and he didn't want to venture into one of the busy food lines on campus. On the few occasions I'd get to watch him eat, I enjoyed it maybe more than was normal. The way his jaw moved and his lips pursed while he chewed. . .

We both ate silently until Jon was half way finished with his burger. He set it down on the tray, wiped his mouth with a napkin and asked “So what the hell are you doing working at that stupid place?”

Swallowing hard, I took a sip of milkshake to sooth my throat. “Need money.”

“So you're still in school?”

I took another few sips, buying myself some time. “No, I'm not.”

“I don't understand.”

“What the hell happened to your face?” I asked instead, my anxiety turning to frustration at the way he was trying to interview me.

His eyes moved to the table top as he twisted a fry in his fingers. “Got cut,” he replied.

“How long have you been in Long Beach?”

“About a year. Sam lives here and I was staying with him for a bit, but it didn't really work out so I've been on my own for a little while.”

“Sam? Shit, I haven't heard from Sam in forever. I haven't heard from anyone in forever. How is he?”

“Married.”

“Are you serious?”

Nodding, he resumed eating.

My shoulders relaxed, thinking about Sam now instead of how insecure I was about my life.

* * * * *

I had been jealous of Samwell Tarly once. I had grown so used to being the only person at Westeros Prep that Jon could tolerate that seeing him and Sam become chummy in Chemistry made my heart beat a little more irregular. Sam had been in most of my classes since Sophomore year, but I didn't know much about him, just that his family was wealthy like everyone else, he was a straight-A student like I was, and he had no other friends, also like me. For a whole week I had convinced myself that Jon was replacing me with Sam, that he had realized I had a crush on him and felt it was time to get a friend who didn't think about kissing him all the time.

When Jon wasn't behind the basketball gym at lunch that Friday, I was sure that he was with Sam, but I didn't know where that would be. He had left me, and I needed to accept that. One would think that I'd be used to losing people, what with how many people I'd already lost, my father and oldest brother having died before my birth, my mother dying on the day of my birth, my other brother, Viserys, promising to take care of me and then doing the opposite until deciding I wasn't worth the trouble. This felt different, though. This was abandonment without explanation, without closure.

When the bell rang, I walked to Chemistry by myself, checking my phone once again to see if Jon had texted me with an explanation for his absence. Nothing. But then a hand landed on my shoulder and I stopped in my tracks, looking up and expecting to see Jon, but the boy beside me was taller, thinner, and his curls were blond and not black.

“Hey, Dany,” Loras Tyrell greeted me with his blue eyes shining brightly, like I wasn't just his math tutor. “You hear about the party at Dick's tomorrow night?”

“Like, Dick's Sporting Goods?”

Loras laughed one of his melodic laughs and smiled sweetly down at me. “You're funny, Dany. I always thought you were a cool girl. Everyone else at this school has there heads up their asses. No, I'm talking about Dick Tarly.”

“Tarly? Like, related to Sam Tarly?”

“Yeah, I guess. Look, I was wondering if you were planning on going, because if you are, I think it would be awesome if we went together.”

“Um. . .” My mouth had gone dry and I forgot all about the bell and that I had to be anywhere. “Okay?”

“Alright, sweet. So, I won't be able to pick you up or anything because I'm grounded from using the car and I've gotta hitch a ride with my sister. But, when you get there, find me, alright?”

“Sure.”

And without another word, Loras was off and I was standing in an empty hallway, mind struggling to process what had just happened. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I had just agreed to go on a date with one of the richest and most attractive students at Westeros Prep. I was late to Chemistry that Friday and my punishment was not being able to take the pop quiz Mr. Baratheon handed out before I got to my seat.

After the quiz, was a lab assignment. Sam had become Jon's lab partner after his last partner moved away during the break and I used that as a way to blame Mr. Baratheon for taking Jon away from me. If he hadn't banned us from associating in class, I could have been Jon's lab partner. Instead, I was Tyene Sand's, and not only did she outwardly despise me, she also had no problem letting me do all the work and then copying all of my answers. Watching how Jon seemed to get along so well with Sam at their lab table, I couldn't help but think about how many times I'd let Jon copy my homework. Had he just been using me for answers this whole time?

I would have my answer after the bell rang. I was usually one of the last out of the class because, unlike everyone else, I didn't start packing up until after class was over. Jon was waiting for me in the hall.

“Did you go to the basketball gym today?” he asked me. “My math teacher gave me detention. Forced me to scrape gum off desks during lunch. Why do people still put gum under their desks?”

“Oh.” My cheeks flushed. I felt like such a neurotic fool and then lied, saying “No, I actually had a tutoring session at lunch, so I guess it worked out perfectly.”

He chuckled and started walking with me in the direction of my next class, even though I was pretty sure his was in the opposite direction. “Well, at least we were both not having any fun.”

“You and Sam seem to be getting along.”

“Yeah. He's pretty cool. I mean, he's completely uncool, but I think that's kind of cool, you know?”

“Sam's really nice.” It was true. He was really nice. One of the only nice people at Westeros Prep, besides Jon.

“He told me about this party his brother is throwing. I guess their parents are out of town. Sam's pretty miffed about it all so I thought I'd go and keep him company. I asked if I could bring you along and he said that was fine. What do you say? Want to go have a miserable time with me at Sam's house tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

Jon turned to head to his own class, but I stopped him quickly with a confession. “Jon, wait. I actually told Loras Tyrell I would go to the party with him. Well, not really go with him, because we're going to meet there, but you know what I mean.”

“Loras Tyrell? Isn't he gay?”

“No.”

“I'm pretty sure he's gay, Daenerys.”

With a roll of my eyes, I replied “I've been tutoring him for months. I've known him for years. I think I would know if he was gay or not.”

“Maybe. But maybe you wouldn't, because he's definitely gay.”

“First you're pretty sure he's was gay and now he's definitely gay? Which is it, Jon? And why would he ask me on a date if he's gay?”

“I have no idea. But he's gay.”

“Whatever. Gay or not, I told him I'd go with him, so unfortunately, I'll be a little too busy hanging out with him to be miserable with you and your new friend.”

“Okay?” He looked positively perplexed. Hell, I was perplexed. I had no idea what was going on or how this argument happened. All I knew was that I liked Jon in a way that I had never liked anyone before and it was fucking with my mind. “If you would rather go to the party with Loras, then I think you should.”

I don't want to go to the party with Loras, is what I should have said, because it was the truth, but I suddenly didn't have the courage to speak truth. Instead, I replied “Good” and continued on to class, knowing I would be late to that one as well.

* * * * *

“I can't believe Sam is married,” I said, more to myself than to Jon. The weather and milkshake was finally cooling my body temperature and I was beginning to feel cold. I pulled my black cardigan from my purse and put it on. “I mean, I'm sure he's a great husband, but it's just so strange to think that there are people we went to school with who are now married.”

“They've got a kid too,” Jon added before plucking a pickle into his mouth. “Sam Jr. He's not Sam's biologically, but he met his wife while she was pregnant and the birth father is a real piece of shit that isn't around anymore. I don't know the whole story, though.”

“Wow.” I stared at my hands, clasped around the milkshake cup, thinking about babies and trying not to notice the sudden twist in my gut. “You said it didn't work out, living with him. Why not?”

He shrugged and if I remembered correctly, he wore an expression that would be best translated as I don't really want to talk about it. Eventually he replied “I do better on my own.”

“Yeah, I guess I do too. I have a roommate. She's really sweet, but I avoid her more often than I'd like to admit. She spends most of her time with her boyfriend anyway.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

I would have took the question in a more suggestive way, but when my eyes lifted to Jon, he was pulling another cigarette from his shirt pocket and sliding it into his mouth, his attention focused solely on lighting the thing. Once, six years ago, he had told me “No one wants to kiss someone who smokes. So I make the girls I'm not interested in think I smoke. It just saves everyone a lot of time.” Sitting there with him in front of the In-n-Out, however, I thought I wouldn't mind tasting the tobacco on his lips.

“No,” I answered. “Do you?”

“Nah. As for a girlfriend, though, I don't have one of those either.” He exhaled a plume of smoke and checked his phone. “I need to get back to work soon. You never answered my question.”

“What question?”

“What's going on with you?”

My hands had gone numb from the cold of the milkshake cup, but I hardly noticed. “Just living my life. Same as you, I guess.”

Drumming his fingers on the table top just as he had done so on the trunk of that Mazda that one Christmas evening, Jon stayed silent for quite some time. I made no attempt to break that silence, but at the same time, I didn't feel put off by it. It was Jon. When he eventually stood, he didn't put an arm around me and bid me goodnight, but he did ask if we could talk again soon. I wasn't sure what the point was, but I wasn't about to say no.

“I have weekends off,” he said. “I can pick you up from work on Saturday.”

“Alright.”

With a short nod, Jon sucked on his cigarette and turned back toward the Marketplace.

#jonerys #jonerys fanfic #game of thrones fanfiction #jon x dany #jon x daenerys #got fanfiction #jonerys fanfiction #jonerys fic #mine #my fic #fic #a crack in everything #a crack in everything: chapter two

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robininthelabyrinth · 6 years

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Countless Roads - Chapter 26

Fic: Countless Roads - Chapter 26 - Ao3

Fandom: Flash, Legends Pairing: Gen, Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, others

Summary: Due to a family curse (which some call a gift), Leonard Snart has more life than he knows what to do with – and that gives him the ability to see, speak to, and even share with the various ghosts that are always surrounding him.

Sure, said curse also means he’s going to die sooner rather than later, just like his mother, but in the meantime Len has no intention of letting superheroes, time travelers, a surprisingly charming pyromaniac, and a lot of ghosts get in the way of him having a nice, successful career as a professional thief.

———————————————————————————

"This is worse than cars," Mick grumbles. He looks ill.

It takes a really special something to give a ghost an upset stomach.

The Waverider is precisely that special something, apparently.

Time travel sucks.

Somehow, that detail never really seemed to get that much attention in any of the sci-fi films Len watched.

They arrive in the 1970s, which is a little disappointing - all of history, and they go to a time within Len's living memory, if admittedly just barely? - and deal with some side-effects like numbness or linguistic confusion (another overlooked detail). Hunter announces their target for the moment – some professor who supposedly will have information to lead them to the bad guy they're hunting – and then promptly ditches Len, Mick, and Sara.

“This mission doesn’t require your particular skill set,” Hunter says, then, thinking better of it, adds an ominous, “Yet.”

“Meaning you don’t need anyone killed, maimed or robbed,” Len says, unimpressed.

“Precisely,” Hunter sniffs.

“Sure it’s a good idea to leave these two unsupervised on a time machine?” the tall guy asks.

“Hey, haircut,” Mick snaps. “Deafness wasn’t one of the side effects.”

“We need to hurry,” Hunter says. “Professor Boardman will die in less than 24 hours.”

“Why cut it so close?” Carter asks.

“Because if he's destined to die, then he doesn't have a timeline for us to disrupt, and whatever impact our involvement now will have on the future will be minimal,” Hunter explains. “You see, time wants to happen – that’s what makes our fight against Savage so difficult. This man’s death occurs, and will likely still occur, regardless of any interaction we have with him.”

“Brilliant, if somewhat depressing,” Stein comments. “Jefferson, are you coming?”

"I'm not going anywhere," Jax says, still looking queasy from the flight. "Grey, next time we take off? Roofie me first."

"I would never," Stein says, but he's beaming. "I can scarcely believe it – we're in 1975 once more!"

"Maybe they're faking it," Len suggests. "Like the moon landing."

"The moon landing wasn't faked, Mr. Snart," Hunter says officiously, even as Stein and Jax are rolling their eyes. It's an in-joke to the time someone suggested as much to Caitlin and she spent the next three days in 'someone is wrong on the internet and I need to tell them in excruciating detail why' mode, which naturally meant that everything fake in Central City from American cheese to teenage pop singer vocals was now immediately compared to the moon landing. It wasn’t a comment meant for Hunter, something the man chooses to ignore entirely – if he’d even noticed. He seems rather self-involved. Len wishes that the time ship wasn't ghost-repellant - he'd love to find out more about Hunter, and where better than from his ghosts? "Now, shall we be on our way?"

They leave. Len promptly starts to snoop around the time ship, while Mick finds the television. "Oh," he says wryly. "Reruns."

Len rolls his eyes. For someone who lived through parts of the ‘70s more or less glued to the TV after they constructed the juvie, Mick really has no room to complain.

"Am I the only one on this ship who could really use a drink?” Sara asks after a few minutes, still looking slightly confused by how she keeps drifting over to stand by Len. “I say we go get weird in the '70s.”

"Snart's the freakiest thing here," Mick says. "But I'm game for a drink."

“Excellent idea,” Len says. Beats sitting around on a shelf until Hunter decides to use them, that’s for sure.

"Yeeeah, I'm not legal yet," Jax says.

"Live on the wild side, kid," Sara tells him. "No one's gonna card you."

Behind her back, Len mimes making a telephone call, then draws a finger across his throat. He’s met Jenna. He knows better. She'll find out, somehow.

"My mom will literally teleport through time and space to find me in the act," Jax says, confirming Len’s suspicions. "And then rip my head off. No, thanks. I’m only a few months from legal anyway."

"Your loss."

Len's a bit wary heading out into the past on his own, with only Mick at his side, but everything seems fine – he can hear the ghosts, same as always, buzzing about, and the first unquiet dead that starts sidling over takes one look at Mick and splits. Just like old times.

Besides, turns out the ‘70s isn't really all that different from what Len recalls the ‘80s to be.

Len and Mick follow Sara to a bar, which she finds with the instincts of a drunk sorority girl – which is to say, within ten minutes and with stunning accuracy at finding incredibly cheap alcohol.

"Dollar beers," Mick says approvingly. “You gotta love the ‘70s.” Then he spots a jukebox and his eyes light up.

Len braces himself.

“Who wants to listen to some Captain and Tennille?” Mick asks innocently. “I heard it played when I grew up. A lot.”

Len glares. That had been a very specific period in his life, damnit.

Pity jukeboxes never have any good ‘30s music to torment Mick with.

"Hey, Leonard," Sara says. "Wanna dance?"

"You go right ahead," he says, waving a hand. “I'll watch.”

It's as good an excuse as any to stare at the holes in her, for lack of a better term. The medium that brought her back did a good job – it's definitely her body, that much is evident from the slick and confident way she moves – but whatever technique brought her back to life didn't make for a perfect match between body and soul.

He wonders what she uses to fill those gaps. Bloodshed or sex are the most likely, though food or attention could do it for some. He doubts it for her, though. Some combination, perhaps?

It occurs to him that failed – or partially-failed – medium resurrections could very well be the original source of the vampire myth.

It's an interesting line of thought, sadly interrupted by the bar fight Sara promptly gets into.

She can definitely hold her own, though. Badass. Len approves.

"Now," she says, studying the gang approaching her, "I could do with a hand."

Len takes the polite gesture – she most certainly does not need a hand, not against this few, based on how easily she was disposing of the first few – in the spirit in which it's meant, and he nods, jumping into the fray with Mick by his side.

They're still laughing about it when Len's Cisco-provided comm – currently in his pocket – buzzes.

Len pulls it out, mildly impressed that it still works.

"What's that?" Sara asks.

"Comm link from 2016," Len says. "Jax, that you?"

"Could you guys come back?" Jax asks, aiming for casual and sounding a bit shaken. "We, uh, the Waverider, that is, kinda sorta appear to be under attack."

"Great," Mick says. "I'll pop a car."

As always, Mick drives like a maniac who was born when horses were still more popular a mode of transportation and they were still debating the benefit of regularized speed limits, but Sara seems to enjoy it. Len just holds onto his seatbelt for dear life.

They get there just in time to hit one of the three armored figures, not unlike gussied up storm troopers, attacking the Waverider with what appear to be pulse rifles, not to mention Stein, Rip, the two others and what's probably the professor they went off to investigate.

"We go out for one lousy drink and you guys decided to re-enact Attack of the Clones?" Len drawls as he steps out of the car and charges up his gun. "For shame."

The troopers have very good armor, good enough to resist Len's cold gun, but Len's used to being at a disadvantage, and they aren't expecting him to ice the ground under their feet so that they slip.

And, of course, no one, armor or not, likes to be downstream of Mick's heat gun.

Stein makes it to the ship, grabbing Jax and forming Firestorm, and with his help, they're able to cover their retreat into the ship.

"I think we could've taken 'em," Mick growls as they take off.

"In some cases, Mr. Rory, retreat is the wiser course," Hunter says, and takes them off into something he calls the temporal zone.

He's kinda condescending, but whatever.

More important is figuring out why, exactly, soldiers which were obviously from the future are hunting them down.

Hunter has an answer to that, too, but it's not one the heroes on board like.

Turns out they're not Legends. They're nobodies.

And this mission? Totally unauthorized.

Illegal, in fact.

The storm troopers work for Rip Hunter’s old bosses, who turn out are really pissed about Hunter grabbing his ship and running off to go meddle with the timeline against their express instructions.

Mick shoots Len an amused look, which Len returns. Neither of them really put much stock in something being illegal, for obvious reasons, and Len never really did care about his rep outlasting him. Hell, he's just glad he's still alive for the moment – there’s that family history clock ticking down, after all, closer and closer.

Besides, they’re not on this ship to make names for themselves. They're here to have fun.

"Bet you a quarter they pick 'Legends' as a team name," Mick says when they settle down to repair their guns.

"God, no. That'd be dumb."

"You good for it, then?"

"...nah. It's dumb, but it's just these guys' speed of dumb."

Mick snorts in agreement.

"Still feel like we're going the right way?" Len asks.

"Yeah. Definitely."

"Good to know. No ghosts around us here in the time stream –” It’s oddly quiet, which Len doesn’t like since it reminds him of what happened with his dad, even though this quiet feels a lot more natural than that did. More like travelling from the city to the country, a reduced noise level instead of a total muting. It’s still an uncomfortable reminder, but Len’ll be damned if he stops doing anything because of that bastard. “– but the ghosts in the past feel the same."

"Some of them probably are the same, boss. The 70s weren't that long ago."

"Says Mr. Great Depression."

"Please. Mr. Dust Bowl's more precise."

"Either way, old man."

Mick grins, teeth glinting in the low light. "Hope I die before I get old. Oh, wait now..."

Len chuckles.

Rather unsurprisingly, the heroes decide to stay on with the missions. It's Mr. Perky Scientist – Ray Palmer – who first suggests calling themselves Legends.

Len's glad he didn't take that sucker's bet.

And then, for lack of any better ideas, they go to a nuke auction to find Savage.

"There's a lot of restless spirits here," Len comments to Mick as they head into the auction.

"Wouldn't have pegged you for the religious sort, Leonard," Sara says, coming up behind him.

"I'm not," Len says. "I only celebrate two holidays for real – New Years and Atonement Day, and all that's in between."

Her nose wrinkles. She's probably wondering what weird sect of Christian he is, which is of course wrong - people always assume Christian sect before they assume Judaism, which is really just quite sad. It's not important now, though; he'll just correct her later.

To be fair, he is in some weird sect - while everyone Jewish agrees that Atonement Day's the most important day of the year, it's usually Passover after that, but for his family, it's New Year's, and they observe the rest of the holidays more perfunctorily than they probably ought to as good Jews. But New Years and Atonement Day: his mother pressed those two into his head. The New Year, when you start the year afresh, and Atonement Day, the day when all wrongs have the chance to be forgiven if you ask for them from their rightful bearer. Wrongs against your fellow man, from your fellow man. Wrongs against God, from God. The day of the breaking of oaths; the day of confession; the day of the future.

The day God marks down your fate, closing the book of life and the book of death for another year. The book of life, the book of death, the book in-between, and the black book. Len’s family’s own personal mythology.

Len wonders, idly, how Sara's own religion fared when faced with the proof of her death and resurrection.

"It gonna be a problem?" Mick asks, ignoring Sara. He can see the ghosts too. Most ghosts don’t follow people around, not loved ones, not hated ones, nobody; they just drift, often around where they died, sometimes checking in on loved ones but rarely having enough life of their own to actively follow someone. These are not most ghosts. No, these ghosts are of the rarest sort - neither unquiet nor friendly. They are savage. Feral. They can focus on nothing but the men they follow, their killers, and they are distracted by nothing, not even Len with all his life.

Ghosts of revenge. They gather only around the cruelest of mass-murderers, and they’re here in flocks.

Len would not want to be one of the men in this crowd when they finally die, their spirit separating from their body only to be welcomed by the hands of their waiting victims.

"No," he says. "Let's go."

He lifts an invite, but it's Stein's bluffing that gets them in.

It's also Stein's blunder that gets them caught, but hey, you win some, you lose some.

Savage himself is unprepossessing from a physical standpoint, but he feels wrong, too, the way Carter and Kendra do. If they're partially empty containers, like parts of their lives are somewhere else, then he's some sort of a sieve.

His life is cycling like some sort of self-contained waterfall, which Len doesn't even know what that means; he's never seen it before. That must be what Rip Hunter meant by 'immortal'.

From what Len gleaned from the conversations on board, he's using Kendra and Carter as sources to feed his own life.

A bit like Cabrera wanted, with Len's power.

Fucking mediums. Len goes a whole lifetime without them, and now he can't seem to be rid of them.

Mick ends up setting shit on fire and they fight back-to-back, the same way as always, heat gun and cold gun. Firestorm leaps into action, Ray Palmer (Len can't bring himself to call him 'Palmer', he really can't) pulls out a shrinking super-suit, Sara unleashes some ninja moves with some batons, Kendra and Carter sprout hawk-wings – even Hunter pulls out some dinky futuristic six-shooter that goes with lasers.

Not too shabby, even though Hunter yells at them later.

Of course, the yelling not entirely without a purpose: Ray apparently screwed up the timeline by leaving some future tech lying around, which means that Sara leads team go-and-find-it while Len and Mick volunteer for team get-the-magic-dagger-that-will-kill-Savage, which cannot actually be dumber than it sounds but very well might be. It's apparently hidden at some rich Russian's house; should be a nice easy in-and-out snatch job.

Ray insists on going with them.

"He's gonna screw everything up," Mick complains as they walk up to the Russian's house.

"Probably," Len agrees. "No respect for expertise, this ship; making us thieve and babysit."

"You know I'm right here and can hear you, right?" Ray says indignantly.

"We know," Len says. "The question I have for you is: do you think we care?"

Mick snorts.

Ray scowls for a moment, but just as Len thinks they might be digging in past the endless bright optimism into some real personality, his expression clears. "Hey, I know that!"

Len tries to snatch him back, but can't stop him from running straight up to the dummy box.

He groans.

"These people suck," Mick grumbles.

"Fuck it," Len says, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Go get him out. I'm sending a ghost in first."

He hates to do it, especially for thieving – it feels too much like cheating. But it's not fair to be trying to rob a place with a six-foot-something idiotic impediment dragging him down, either.

"You do that." Mick gets up, shaking his head, and goes to ambush the guards confronting Ray.

While Mick entertains himself with that, Len tilts his head back. "Anyone here wanna help?"

Three ghosts pop up almost immediately.

Two women, a guy, all in their twenties.

"Guy in here do for you?" Len asks, jerking his thumb towards the house.

"I got in where I shouldn't," the guy says with a shrug. "I was a housecleaner. My name is Sergey."

"Not for Maureen and me. We just crashed our car," one of the women says.

“Trish!” Maureen exclaims.

"What? It’s true! Anyway, no relation to the guy who owns the place now. This was our old house, though, for a bit."

"Good enough. Anyway: I'm looking for this dagger, Egyptian..."

A few minutes later, Mick finally drags Ray back. Literally drags, with Ray trying unsuccessfully to dig his heels into the ground, which explains what took them so long.

"I said I'm sorry," Ray hisses. "There’s no need to pull me around! But anyway, it's not all bad. We got the guards, right?"

"We?" Mick echoes incredulously. “We got ‘em?”

"Okay, fine, you got them. But I lured them in! That means we can go in and grab the dagger – "

"The guards not doing their rounds will set off alarms," Len says patiently. "As will the actual alarms that the dummy box set off. No. This is a bad job; I don't like doing heists without casing the joint in advance on a good day, and this job is clearly already snake-bit bad luck. No go."

Mick nods his agreement, but Ray puffs up like an angry toad. "Are you kidding? All that about you being thieves extraordinaire, and you just give up at the first sign of trouble?"

"Part of the reason I am a thief extraordinaire, in fact," Len says dryly. "And not, you know, in prison all the time."

"If we don't get the dagger, we won't be able to stop Savage!"

"I never said we wouldn't be getting the dagger," Len says. "I said we wouldn't be going inside to get it."

Ray blinks. "I think I'm lost," he says. "How do you get the dagger without, uh, getting the dagger?"

"Note the pronouns."

"What?"

"He won't be going to get the dagger," Mick rumbles. "Doesn't mean someone won't."

Right on cue, the bushes rustle and Sergey shows up, Trish and Maureen right on his heels. "I have it," Sergey says, beaming and holding out the dagger. He's shining with the life that Len gave him, strength flowing through his limbs. He is justly pleased: the life means he will be able to say his goodbyes to his wife and to tip off the police as to the location of his body, thus ensuring he will receive adequate burial according to the precepts of his religion, which is the thing he desires most.

Then he'll pass on, satisfied. Now that's what Len calls a good deal.

Trish and Maureen are pouting that they weren't the ones to get it first, but they do offer up some pretty necklaces as consolation. They want the life Len gave them to go spook their friends, which Len thinks is a perfectly acceptable reason, if slightly less mature than Sergey’s. Then again, they’re college girls; as Len well knows, they can be more or less serious in nature and these two are clearly fans of the 'less'. "Good, good," Len says, examining them. "That's great, girls."

"You got patsies to do for you?!" Ray exclaims, only for Mick to loudly shush him. He does lower his voice, but still looks indignant. "It's too risky to go yourself, so you send someone else, is that it?"

"While I prefer to do these things myself – basically, yes," Len says. "And it worked, didn't it?"

"And you got the girls to steal for you, too! Ugh, I can't believe you. What happens when they go back in there? Or if he finds out they took them? What'll he do to them?"

"Nothing worse than a car crash," Len says.

"What?"

"Just...never mind. We got the dagger, we got a stash, let's go before the Ruskie who owns them gets home."

Of course, thanks to Ray's earlier fuck up with the dummy box, that doesn't happen. Instead, a positive army of personal bodyguards sweeps into the place, encircling –

"Savage," Mick says. "This must be his house. Of course he'd have the dagger."

"This guy is everywhere," Len grumbles. "How'd he even make it here from the auction so fast?"

"Private jet. Baddies always have 'em," Mick says.

"Hey, I used to have one," Ray says.

"Evil corporatist, huh?" Mick replies. "Knew you weren't that sweet, Haircut."

"Evil –? Wait, no, I didn't – I wasn't -"

"Shut up before my opinion of you drops further."

Len is peering through the bushes. "I think we're gonna need an exit strategy."

"Can't we just call the Waverider?" Ray asks, reaching for his comm link.

"Or we could sneak out and then call them," Len says, snatching his hand. "Thereby not alerting Savage to the fact that it was us lifting the thing and thus maintaining the element of surprise. We'll need a distraction. Mick, burn the house."

"With pleasure."

"That's destruction of property," Ray says, sounding mildly appalled.

Len has so much he could be saying about that, but he settles for "Yeah, Savage's property."

That wipes Ray’s objections away. Len barely keeps from rolling his eyes – Ray clearly subscribes to the 'if it's good, it's good; if it's bad, it's bad' theory of the world, in which arson isn't arson if the guy suffering it is a murderer. Idiot idealists are incredibly dangerous, because they'll smile like puppies before, during, and after murdering you for society's good, because the fact that they're 'heroes' in their own minds makes it okay.

Len makes a mental note not to rely on Ray for anything beyond technical expertise.

He waits until the fire gets big enough to draw attention, then heads out, hissing for Ray to follow. They get back out over the fence by bashing the two guards left to watch the exit over the head, and a bit of scrabbling. Luckily, Ray is pretty tall, which helps them get over the fence - maybe Len was too quick to judge him good for nothing.

"What about Mick?" Ray asks anxiously. "We can't just leave him to Savage."

Len mentally revises his opinion of Ray up a very, very small notch. At least he understands the idea of standing by your team. That counts for a lot, with Len.

"What about Mick?" Mick asks, stepping out of the brush behind Ray.

Ray yelps in surprise, then turns and hugs Mick before Mick can get away.

Len snorts at Mick's horrified expression.

"We have the dagger," he says. "Let's go to a safe zone and call for a lift."

Once they're back on the Waverider, it turns out Team Suit also succeeded in their mission, so history is back on track.

"This dagger is what we'll use to kill Savage," Carter says, picking it up. "We should go immediately."

"He's in his own house surrounded by bodyguards," Len drawls. "How about you keep it in your pants and pick a better ambushing spot? Or do you just really enjoy failure?"

Carter bristles. "I've fought this man for two hundred and eight lifetimes --"

"And see what you've done with it," Len replies. "Dead, dead, dead, and – if I had to guess – dead."

"We defeated him in Central City less than eight months ago!"

"Well, that clearly didn't take," Mick says, slouching further in his chair. "Have you considered letting the lady try?"

Kendra blinks. "Me?"

"Sure, why not? Since your boy-toy here has a string of failures a mile long, you can't possibly do any worse."

She flushes a bit. "I – I mean – I've never killed anybody?"

"Well, from what I gather from bird-brain here, neither has he," Len says.

Carter tries to throw a punch. It's laughably telegraphed.

Len ducks out of the way, knocks his legs out from under him, and kicks him over and steps on his chest. The entire process takes maybe ten seconds.

"Carter!" Kendra exclaims, but she sounds mostly amused.

"If he's on his back, his wings are useless," Len tells her, using his weight to pin Carter. "Have either of you considered, I don't know, practicing a bit?"

"I am the prince of countless armies – " Carter splutters, his face red. "I have lived centuries and fought in more battles than you can even imagine – "

"Sure, in other lifetimes," Len says. "How about this one? You ever do anything other than work out at the gym? You've got no instincts or muscle memory at all from what I can tell."

"Mr. Snart, get off of Mr. Hall this instant," Hunter snaps, sweeping in through the door, jacket fluttering behind him. It looks practiced.

"He wasn't hurting him," Ray objects, which wins him an approving look from Mick.

An idiot, clearly, but a loyal one. That counts for something in their book.

Fine, maybe Ray isn't all bad.

"Regardless, I will not be having such behavior on my ship," Hunter says. "It's unprofessional."

Len steps off. "Thought you said we were the worst team you've ever worked with. And that you were a fugitive from your former bosses. I don't see why that makes you an expert on what's 'professional'."

"Says the thief, Mr. Snart?" Rip shoots back, as if that's a complete answer.

"Yeah," Len says, starting to get annoyed. "A thief, and proud of it. A thief who you recruited, knowing who I am and what I do. If you think I signed up for this mission to be your ace in the hole when you need a pair of light fingers, only to be ridiculed and judged for those same skills the rest of the time, think again."

"Yeah, that shit's got to stop," Sara says from the doorway. "When I agreed to stay, it was so that I could prove myself a hero. Not to be your – or anybody else's – pet killer."

Hunter looks chagrined, but not in the sort of way where he realizes he's been a jackass; instead it's in the sort of way where someone calls you on exactly what you've been planning and makes it sound so bad you realize you're going to have to actually adjust your plans to deal with the objection.

Len doesn’t like it. He’s never minded working with criminals, but he objects to working with rats that treat their crews like pawns to be used or thrown away without so much as a thought to them as actual human beings.

Rip Hunter, it appears, is just that kind of rat.

(A/N: This chapter features Len's thoughts and opinions about the Legends, not necessarily accurate descriptions of them. His opinion of people will grown and change as things go forward.)

#dccoldwave #mick rory #leonard snart #sara lance #ray palmer #rip hunter #Jefferson Jax Jackson #martin stein #Kendra saunders #carter hall #my fic #deadfic

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giancarlonicoli · 4 years

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It was a decision I made with my heart and not my head. When I’m 80 and reflecting back, I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I have in my life. And most of our regrets are acts of omission—the things we didn’t try, the paths untraveled. Those are the things that haunt us. And I decided that if I didn’t at least give it my best shot, I was going to regret not trying to participate in this thing called the internet that I thought was going to be a big deal.

Policy news & views

Statement by Jeff Bezos to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary Testimony before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law

July 28, 2020

Statement by Jeffrey P. Bezos Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Amazon before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law July 29, 2020

Thank you, Chairman Cicilline, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, and members of the Subcommittee. I’m Jeff Bezos. I founded Amazon 26 years ago with the long-term mission of making it Earth’s most customer-centric company.

My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was difficult for her. When they tried to kick her out of school, my grandfather went to bat for her. After some negotiation, the principal said, “OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she can’t do any extracurricular activities, and she can’t have a locker.” My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished high school, though she wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with her classmates to get her diploma. Determined to keep up with her education, she enrolled in night school, picking classes led by professors who would let her bring an infant to class. She would show up with two duffel bags—one full of textbooks, and one packed with diapers, bottles, and anything that would keep me interested and quiet for a few minutes.

My dad’s name is Miguel. He adopted me when I was four years old. He was 16 when he came to the United States from Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan, shortly after Castro took over. My dad arrived in America alone. His parents felt he’d be safer here. His mom imagined America would be cold, so she made him a jacket sewn entirely out of cleaning cloths, the only material they had on hand. We still have that jacket; it hangs in my parents’ dining room. My dad spent two weeks at Camp Matecumbe, a refugee center in Florida, before being moved to a Catholic mission in Wilmington, Delaware. He was lucky to get to the mission, but even so, he didn’t speak English and didn’t have an easy path. What he did have was a lot of grit and determination. He received a scholarship to college in Albuquerque, which is where he met my mom. You get different gifts in life, and one of my great gifts is my mom and dad. They have been incredible role models for me and my siblings our entire lives.

You learn different things from your grandparents than you do from your parents, and I had the opportunity to spend my summers from ages four to 16 on my grandparents’ ranch in Texas. My grandfather was a civil servant and a rancher—he worked on space technology and missile-defense systems in the 1950s and ‘60s for the Atomic Energy Commission—and he was self-reliant and resourceful. When you’re in the middle of nowhere, you don’t pick up a phone and call somebody when something breaks. You fix it yourself. As a kid, I got to see him solve many seemingly unsolvable problems himself, whether he was restoring a broken-down Caterpillar bulldozer or doing his own veterinary work. He taught me that you can take on hard problems. When you have a setback, you get back up and try again. You can invent your way to a better place.

I took these lessons to heart as a teenager, and became a garage inventor. I invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker out of an umbrella and tinfoil, and alarms made from baking pans to entrap my siblings.

The concept for Amazon came to me in 1994. The idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles—something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world—was exciting to me. At the time, I was working at an investment firm in New York City. When I told my boss I was leaving, he took me on a long walk in Central Park. After a lot of listening, he finally said, “You know what, Jeff, I think this is a good idea, but it would be a better idea for somebody who didn’t already have a good job.” He convinced me to think about it for two days before making a final decision. It was a decision I made with my heart and not my head. When I’m 80 and reflecting back, I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I have in my life. And most of our regrets are acts of omission—the things we didn’t try, the paths untraveled. Those are the things that haunt us. And I decided that if I didn’t at least give it my best shot, I was going to regret not trying to participate in this thing called the internet that I thought was going to be a big deal.

The initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, who invested a large fraction of their life savings in something they didn’t understand. They weren’t making a bet on Amazon or the concept of a bookstore on the internet. They were making a bet on their son. I told them that I thought there was a 70% chance they would lose their investment, and they did it anyway. It took more than 50 meetings for me to raise $1 million from investors, and over the course of all those meetings, the most common question was, “What’s the internet?”

Unlike many other countries around the world, this great nation we live in supports and does not stigmatize entrepreneurial risk-taking. I walked away from a steady job into a Seattle garage to found my startup, fully understanding that it might not work. It feels like just yesterday I was driving the packages to the post office myself, dreaming that one day we might be able to afford a forklift.

Amazon’s success was anything but preordained. Investing in Amazon early on was a very risky proposition. From our founding through the end of 2001, our business had cumulative losses of nearly $3 billion, and we did not have a profitable quarter until the fourth quarter of that year. Smart analysts predicted Barnes & Noble would steamroll us, and branded us “Amazon.toast.” In 1999, after we’d been in business for nearly five years, Barron’s headlined a story about our impending demise “Amazon.bomb.” My annual shareholder letter for 2000 started with a one-word sentence: “Ouch.” At the pinnacle of the internet bubble our stock price peaked at $116, and then after the bubble burst our stock went down to $6. Experts and pundits thought we were going out of business. It took a lot of smart people with a willingness to take a risk with me, and a willingness to stick to our convictions, for Amazon to survive and ultimately to succeed.

And it wasn’t just those early years. In addition to good luck and great people, we have been able to succeed as a company only because we have continued to take big risks. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Outsized returns come from betting against conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom is usually right. A lot of observers characterized Amazon Web Services as a risky distraction when we started. “What does selling compute and storage have to do with selling books?” they wondered. No one asked for AWS. It turned out the world was ready and hungry for cloud computing but didn’t know it yet. We were right about AWS, but the truth is we’ve also taken plenty of risks that didn’t pan out. In fact, Amazon has made billions of dollars of failures. Failure inevitably comes along with invention and risk-taking, which is why we try to make Amazon the best place in the world to fail.

Since our founding, we have strived to maintain a “Day One” mentality at the company. By that I mean approaching everything we do with the energy and entrepreneurial spirit of Day One. Even though Amazon is a large company, I have always believed that if we commit ourselves to maintaining a Day One mentality as a critical part of our DNA, we can have both the scope and capabilities of a large company and the spirit and heart of a small one.

In my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the best way to achieve and maintain Day One vitality. Why? Because customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and a constant desire to delight customers drives us to constantly invent on their behalf. As a result, by focusing obsessively on customers, we are internally driven to improve our services, add benefits and features, invent new products, lower prices, and speed up shipping times—before we have to. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it. And I could give you many such examples. Not every business takes this customer-first approach, but we do, and it’s our greatest strength.

Customer trust is hard to win and easy to lose. When you let customers make your business what it is, then they will be loyal to you—right up to the second that someone else offers them better service. We know that customers are perceptive and smart. We take as an article of faith that customers will notice when we work hard to do the right thing, and that by doing so again and again, we will earn trust. You earn trust slowly, over time, by doing hard things well—delivering on time; offering everyday low prices; making promises and keeping them; making principled decisions, even when they’re unpopular; and giving customers more time to spend with their families by inventing more convenient ways of shopping, reading, and automating their homes. As I have said since my first shareholder letter in 1997, we make decisions based on the long-term value we create as we invent to meet customer needs. When we’re criticized for those choices, we listen and look at ourselves in the mirror. When we think our critics are right, we change. When we make mistakes, we apologize. But when you look in the mirror, assess the criticism, and still believe you’re doing the right thing, no force in the world should be able to move you.

Fortunately, our approach is working. Eighty percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Amazon overall, according to leading independent polls. Who do Americans trust more than Amazon “to do the right thing?” Only their primary physicians and the military, according to a January 2020 Morning Consult survey. Researchers at Georgetown and New York University found in 2018 that Amazon trailed only the military among all respondents to a survey on institutional and brand trust. Among Republicans, we trailed only the military and local police; among Democrats, we were at the top, leading every branch of government, universities, and the press. In Fortune’s 2020 rankings of the World’s Most Admired Companies, we came in second place (Apple was #1). We are grateful that customers notice the hard work we do on their behalf, and that they reward us with their trust. Working to earn and keep that trust is the single biggest driver of Amazon’s Day One culture.

The company most of you know as Amazon is the one that sends you your online orders in the brown boxes with the smile on the side. That’s where we started, and retail remains our largest business by far, accounting for over 80% of our total revenue. The very nature of that business is getting products to customers. Those operations need to be close to customers, and we can’t outsource these jobs to China or anywhere else. To fulfill our promises to customers in this country, we need American workers to get products to American customers. When customers shop on Amazon, they are helping to create jobs in their local communities. As a result, Amazon directly employs a million people, many of them entry-level and paid by the hour. We don’t just employ highly educated computer scientists and MBAs in Seattle and Silicon Valley. We hire and train hundreds of thousands of people in states across the country such as West Virginia, Tennessee, Kansas, and Idaho. These employees are package stowers, mechanics, and plant managers. For many, it’s their first job. For some, these jobs are a stepping stone to other careers, and we are proud to help them with that. We are spending more than $700 million to give more than 100,000 Amazon employees access to training programs in fields such as healthcare, transportation, machine learning, and cloud computing. That program is called Career Choice, and we pay 95% of tuition and fees toward a certificate or diploma for in-demand, high-paying fields, regardless of whether it’s relevant to a career at Amazon.

Patricia Soto, one of our associates, is a Career Choice success story. Patricia always wanted to pursue a career in the medical field to help care for others, but with only a high school diploma and facing the costs of post-secondary education, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to accomplish that goal. After earning her medical certification through Career Choice, Patricia left Amazon to start her new career as a medical assistant at Sutter Gould Medical Foundation, supporting a pulmonary medicine doctor. Career Choice has given Patricia and so many others a shot at a second career that once seemed out of reach.

Amazon has invested more than $270 billion in the U.S. over the last decade. Beyond our own workforce, Amazon’s investments have created nearly 700,000 indirect jobs in fields like construction, building services, and hospitality. Our hiring and investments have brought much-needed jobs and added hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity to areas like Fall River, Massachusetts, California’s Inland Empire, and Rust Belt states like Ohio. During the COVID-19 crisis, we hired an additional 175,000 employees, including many laid off from other jobs during the economic shutdown. We spent more than $4 billion in the second quarter alone to get essential products to customers and keep our employees safe during the COVID-19 crisis. And a dedicated team of Amazon employees from across the company has created a program to regularly test our workers for COVID-19. We look forward to sharing our learnings with other interested companies and government partners.

The global retail market we compete in is strikingly large and extraordinarily competitive. Amazon accounts for less than 1% of the $25 trillion global retail market and less than 4% of retail in the U.S. Unlike industries that are winner-take-all, there’s room in retail for many winners. For example, more than 80 retailers in the U.S. alone earn over $1 billion in annual revenue. Like any retailer, we know that the success of our store depends entirely on customers’ satisfaction with their experience in our store. Every day, Amazon competes against large, established players like Target, Costco, Kroger, and, of course, Walmart—a company more than twice Amazon’s size. And while we have always focused on producing a great customer experience for retail sales done primarily online, sales initiated online are now an even larger growth area for other stores. Walmart’s online sales grew 74% in the first quarter. And customers are increasingly flocking to services invented by other stores that Amazon still can’t match at the scale of other large companies, like curbside pickup and in-store returns. The COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on these trends, which have been growing for years. In recent months, curbside pickup of online orders has increased over 200%, in part due to COVID-19 concerns. We also face new competition from the likes of Shopify and Instacart—companies that enable traditionally physical stores to put up a full online store almost instantaneously and to deliver products directly to customers in new and innovative ways—and a growing list of omnichannel business models. Like almost every other segment of our economy, technology is used everywhere in retail and has only made retail more competitive, whether online, in physical stores, or in the various combinations of the two that make up most stores today. And we and all other stores are acutely aware that, regardless of how the best features of “online” and “physical” stores are combined, we are all competing for and serving the same customers. The range of retail competitors and related services is constantly changing, and the only real constant in retail is customers’ desire for lower prices, better selection, and convenience.

It’s also important to understand that Amazon’s success depends overwhelmingly on the success of the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses that also sell their products in Amazon’s stores. Back in 1999, we took what at the time was the unprecedented step of welcoming third-party sellers into our stores and enabling them to offer their products right alongside our own. Internally, this was extremely controversial, with many disagreeing and some predicting this would be the beginning of a long, losing battle. We didn’t have to invite third-party sellers into the store. We could have kept this valuable real estate for ourselves. But we committed to the idea that over the long term it would increase selection for customers, and that more satisfied customers would be great for both third-party sellers and for Amazon. And that’s what happened. Within a year of adding those sellers, third-party sales accounted for 5% of unit sales, and it quickly became clear that customers loved the convenience of being able to shop for the best products and to see prices from different sellers all in the same store. These small and medium-sized third-party businesses now add significantly more product selection to Amazon's stores than Amazon's own retail operation. Third-party sales now account for approximately 60% of physical product sales on Amazon, and those sales are growing faster than Amazon’s own retail sales. We guessed that it wasn’t a zero sum game. And we were right—the whole pie did grow, third-party sellers did very well and are growing fast, and that has been great for customers and for Amazon.

There are now 1.7 million small and medium-sized businesses around the world selling in Amazon’s stores. More than 200,000 entrepreneurs worldwide surpassed $100,000 in sales in our stores in 2019. On top of that, we estimate that third-party businesses selling in Amazon’s stores have created over 2.2 million new jobs around the world.

One of those sellers is Sherri Yukel, who wanted to change careers to be home more for her children. She started handcrafting gifts and party supplies for friends as a hobby, and eventually began selling her products on Amazon. Today, Sherri’s company employs nearly 80 people and has a global customer base. Another is Christine Krogue, a stay-at-home mother of five in Salt Lake City. Christine started a business selling baby clothes through her own website before taking a chance on Amazon. She has since seen her sales more than double, and she’s been able to expand her product line and hire a team of part-time employees. Selling on Amazon has allowed Sherri and Christine to grow their own businesses and satisfy customers on their own terms.

And it is striking to remember how recent all of this is. We did not start out as the largest marketplace—eBay was many times our size. It was only by focusing on supporting sellers and giving them the best tools we could invent that we were able to succeed and eventually surpass eBay. One such tool is Fulfillment by Amazon, which enables our third-party sellers to stow their inventory in our fulfillment centers, and we take on all logistics, customer service, and product returns. By dramatically simplifying all of those challenging aspects of the selling experience in a cost-effective way, we have helped many thousands of sellers grow their businesses on Amazon. Our success may help explain the wide proliferation of marketplaces of all types and sizes around the world. This includes U.S. companies like Walmart, eBay, Etsy, and Target, as well as retailers based overseas but selling globally, such as Alibaba and Rakuten. These marketplaces further intensify competition within retail.

The trust customers put in us every day has allowed Amazon to create more jobs in the United States over the past decade than any other company—hundreds of thousands of jobs across 42 states. Amazon employees make a minimum of $15 an hour, more than double the federal minimum wage (which we have urged Congress to increase). We’ve challenged other large retailers to match our $15 minimum wage. Target did so recently, and just last week so did Best Buy. We welcome them, and they remain the only ones to have done so. We do not skimp on benefits, either. Our full-time hourly employees receive the same benefits as our salaried headquarters employees, including comprehensive health insurance starting on the first day of employment, a 401(k) retirement plan, and parental leave, including 20 weeks of paid maternity leave. I encourage you to benchmark our pay and benefits against any of our retail competitors.

More than 80% of Amazon shares are owned by outsiders, and over the last 26 years—starting from zero—we’ve created more than $1 trillion of wealth for those outside shareholders. Who are those shareowners? They are pension funds: fire, police, and school teacher pension funds. Others are 401(k)s—mutual funds that own pieces of Amazon. University endowments, too, and the list goes on. Many people will retire better because of the wealth we’ve created for so many, and we’re enormously proud of this.

At Amazon, customer obsession has made us what we are, and allowed us to do ever greater things. I know what Amazon could do when we were 10 people. I know what we could do when we were 1,000 people, and when we were 10,000 people. And I know what we can do today when we’re nearly a million. I love garage entrepreneurs—I was one. But, just like the world needs small companies, it also needs large ones. There are things small companies simply can’t do. I don’t care how good an entrepreneur you are, you’re not going to build an all-fiber Boeing 787 in your garage.

Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact on important societal issues. The Climate Pledge is a commitment made by Amazon and joined by other companies to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement 10 years early and be net zero carbon by 2040. We plan to meet the pledge, in part, by purchasing 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian—a Michigan-based producer of electric vehicles. Amazon aims to have 10,000 of Rivian’s new electric vans on the road as early as 2022, and all 100,000 vehicles on the road by 2030. Globally, Amazon operates 91 solar and wind projects that have the capacity to generate over 2,900 MW and deliver more than 7.6 million MWh of energy annually—enough to power more than 680,000 U.S. homes. Amazon is also investing $100 million in global reforestation projects through the Right Now Climate Fund, including $10 million Amazon committed in April to conserve, restore, and support sustainable forestry, wildlife and nature-based solutions across the Appalachian Mountains—funding two innovative projects in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy. Four global companies—Verizon, Reckitt Benckiser, Infosys, and Oak View Group—recently signed The Climate Pledge, and we continue to encourage others to join us in this fight. Together, we will use our size and scale to address the climate crisis right away. And last month, Amazon introduced The Climate Pledge Fund, started with $2 billion in funding from Amazon. The Fund will support the development of sustainable technologies and services that in turn will enable Amazon and other companies to meet The Climate Pledge. The Fund will invest in visionary entrepreneurs and innovators who are building products and services to help companies reduce their carbon impact and operate more sustainably.

We recently opened the largest homeless shelter in Washington state—and it’s located inside one of our newest headquarters buildings in downtown Seattle. The shelter is for Mary’s Place, an incredible Seattle-based nonprofit. The shelter, part of Amazon’s $100 million investment in Mary’s Place, spans eight floors and can accommodate up to 200 family members each night. It has its own health clinic and provides critical tools and services to help families fighting homelessness get back on their feet. And there is dedicated space for Amazon to provide weekly pro-bono legal clinics offering counsel on credit and debt issues, personal injury, housing and tenant rights. Since 2018, Amazon's legal team has supported hundreds of Mary’s Place guests and volunteered more than 1,000 pro-bono hours.

Amazon Future Engineer is a global childhood-to-career program designed to inspire, educate, and prepare thousands of children and young adults from underrepresented and underserved communities to pursue a computer science career. The program funds computer science coursework and professional teacher development for hundreds of elementary schools, introductory and AP Computer Science classes for more than 2,000 schools in underserved communities across the country, and 100 four-year, $40,000 college scholarships to computer science students from low-income backgrounds. Those scholarship recipients also receive guaranteed internships at Amazon. There is a diversity pipeline problem in tech, and this has an outsized impact on the Black community. We want to invest in building out the next generation of technical talent for the industry and expanding the opportunities for underrepresented minorities. We also want to accelerate this change right now. To find the best talent for technical and non-technical roles, we actively partner with historically Black colleges and universities on our recruiting, internship, and upskilling initiatives.

Let me close by saying that I believe Amazon should be scrutinized. We should scrutinize all large institutions, whether they’re companies, government agencies, or non-profits. Our responsibility is to make sure we pass such scrutiny with flying colors.

It’s not a coincidence that Amazon was born in this country. More than any other place on Earth, new companies can start, grow, and thrive here in the U.S. Our country embraces resourcefulness and self-reliance, and it embraces builders who start from scratch. We nurture entrepreneurs and start-ups with stable rule of law, the finest university system in the world, the freedom of democracy, and a deeply accepted culture of risk-taking. Of course, this great nation of ours is far from perfect. Even as we remember Congressman John Lewis and honor his legacy, we’re in the middle of a much-needed race reckoning. We also face the challenges of climate change and income inequality, and we’re stumbling through the crisis of a global pandemic. Still, the rest of the world would love even the tiniest sip of the elixir we have here in the U.S. Immigrants like my dad see what a treasure this country is—they have perspective and can often see it even more clearly than those of us who were lucky enough to be born here. It’s still Day One for this country, and even in the face of today’s humbling challenges, I have never been more optimistic about our future.

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today and am happy to take your questions.

#united states

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