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sneyrwrites · 4 years

Text

|| Homesick || Kuroo Tetsurou X Reader

✘ Wordcount: 4,5k

✘ Genre: Angst, fluff. smut

✘ Warnings: NSFW

Author Note: What is it about my need to write angst lately? Anyway, Enjoy! (criticism is always welcome)

This started out as a 500 words drabble, but it got out of hand.

Kuroo had no idea how he would get through this fucking course without breaking down at some point. The worksheets and load of work he had to pull through would get him a few early gray hairs, his psyche suffering tremendously, but oh well... that’s what college was about.

The only thing he looked forward to was getting home, where you were probably waiting for him with a warm smile and a heart-melting “welcome”. Those were the time where he could feel all of his stress and negativity dissipate into thin air.

The sound of the lock opening brought a flutter in his stomach, him already anticipating the sweet relief of finding you there upon opening the door.

The cold and dark room was the only thing to receive him.

Oh, right... you were not there anymore.

You had left a long time now, exhausted by his constant neglect. Could he blame you though? Of course not.

If he was honest, in fact, he wouldn’t have put up with his sorry ass for half of the time you did. But seeing the empty shoe rack by the door, and the hangers stripped from that hideous scarf you insisted on wearing, he could not fight the tears that threatened to fall. What was he supposed to do now?

The click of the switch brought light into his house, which he no longer called home. Kuroo ran a hand through his messier than usual hair, and sighing heavily he left his bag on the floor, not caring about his spilled books.

He didn’t feel like doing his project anymore, and talking to your mutual friends would only bring him more despair, as Bokuto seemed to only know how to talk about you.

The creaking of the mattress when he heavily fell on it used to bring him joy, because it was often accompanied by your soft giggle, followed by the usual “Tough day, huh?”

You had no idea.

You had no idea just how tough his days had been since you left, depriving his apartment from the spark it used to have.

It was unfair for him to feel this sour about the situation. Break-ups sucked, and he had every right to feel hurt about it, but he recognized his actions had lead to the outcome. You tear-streaked face would hunt him for eternity.

“I can’t handle this anymore Kuroo...” Your whispered words, so tiny and fragile, but so powerful at the same time, breaking his heart in a million pieces.

The words died in his mouth, so he just steeped aside, letting you go without even trying to make you stay.

All the I love you’s and promises he never got to make, all the late night snacks and pillow talks you would never share.

Now they were nothing but a wish, an illusion that dissipated into thin air.

The first week you were gone, he was resentful and shady over social media, like he was only a teenager who’s crush rejected. But, as Kenma had put it in simple words. He was just a sore loser.

You had tried your best, but the fights started to rise, In volume, in frequency, in anger. And they were about the stupidest things ever, like him not feeling like getting up on his sparse free moments to go out with you, him refusing to eat with you at the table. Once you were gone, he regretted letting all of his frustration and stress out on you.

Half of his helplessness came from a selfish place if he really thought about it. You were his mini vacation, his heaven on earth, and he had destroyed it, even noticing his mistake until it was too late and the sheets were cold, just like the half-finished cup of tea you had left at the counter, and he still didn’t have the courage to put away.

Akaashi’s couch was soft and comfortable, hugging your body as if it was a cloud.

But it wasn’t Kuroo’s bed. The warmth the boy irradiated as he sleeps was missing. The way he would sometimes mumble nonsense or when his hand would reach for yours in the middle of the night, simply because.

Those were the things you missed the most. At those times at night you couldn’t help but think. Were you over reacting?

You knew he was stressed about school, maybe you shouldn’t have been as harsh, but thinking about letting him go over you like if you were nothing but the shoe mat in the front door, made a bitter taste settle in the back of your mouth and a resentment you never wanted to have towards him bloom.

If you didn’t walk away when you did you would have ended up hating him, or hating him in the tough moments at least, because when everything was going good, Kuroo made you feel like you were floating, and oh so loved.

But he tended to lock himself inside his head, submerging in a spiral of unhealthy habits of insomnia and a full gallon of caffeine to keep going. Shutting you out completely, brushing your attempts at spend time with him off.

Sighing, you rolled on the couch by the tenth time that hour, restless and sad. Akaashi’s apartment was pitch black. The only thing cutting through all the blackness was your phone, displaying a picture of you and Kuroo, smiling at the museum, in front of a painting of Marie Curie. That one was taken in summer vacations, when he still hadn’t started his courses and could spend some time with you while being awake.

Maybe it was unfair of you to disappear from his life out of nowhere, just picking everything up and running to hide behind your friend, not able to confront Kuroo and see his reaction at your abandonment for more than ten seconds.

You turned again, the blanket wrapped around your shoulders slipping to your waist. You didn’t even bother to readjust it.

“You know, I Can hear your sorrow all the way from my room.” Akaashi’s voice startled you, Looking up you noticed his silhouette in the living room entrance. Sighing, he uncrossed his arms and started towards the kitchen. “I’m going to make tea.”

Two heartbeats later, a steaming cup was in your hands, your friend sitting next to you, sipping his green tea in silence.

“Okay...” He said once he finished the cup, leaving it in the table. His voice calm and collected. “What is it? You obviously need to talk.” You kept silence, focusing on the pale color of your drink. It didn’t taste like Kuroo’s tea at all. This one was missing something... You sipped again, still unsure about speaking up about what was bothering you.

“ I know it’s about Kuroo, and I know you need help to figure your feeling out... But understand I Can’t help you if you don’t speak to me... I’ve been patient for the two weeks and a half you’ve been crashing in my couch.” He turned to you, resting his elbow in the back of it, his face supported by his hand. “Don’t get me wrong, i love having you here and all. But it’s obvious you don’t. Judging by the way you’re stabbing daggers at the tea...”

“Sorry, I just...” You didn’t know what to say. That you missed Tetsuro’s bed or his tea? That you could not get the way he sings in the shower to cheesy 80’s songs out of your head? Or the way your hand always felt empty without his in it? “I miss him...” That seemed to sum it up pretty well.

“I thought you couldn’t handle the relationship anymore...” He prompted

You shook your head, setting your still full cup in the table.

“I couldn’t... but I don’t know” You were bad at communicating, maybe that was one of the reasons you chose to escape rather than talk.

“Do you think you could have handle things different with him when it started getting rough?” Akaashi’s words were intense, just like the look he was giving you, his clever gaze analyzing up every single reaction you made.

Yeah, in fact, you thought about that.

Maybe that was why you were so restless, the guilt o knowing you could have done more for the two of you, but choose to do nothing weighted on your conscious

“You know, if you want to go back with him, that doesn’t make you any less strong (Y/N)... Sometimes we just don’t handle our emotions in the right way. And it seems to me that the both of you made a few mistakes... Maybe you should talk to Kuroo. Who knows? This time it could go better...” Akaashi got up and went to his room, throwing a “Try to rest” Over his shoulder.

What were you going to do? The shame of your actions overshadowed all logic and reason.

What if Kuroo told you to fuck off? He could hate you for all you knew.

You hadn’t made up your mind the next morning, still teetering on the edge to throwing your pride to the garbage and just beg him to take you back or just leave everything as it was. Time cured everything, right?

Coincidentally with this debate you were having between logic and feelings, your college sent you an email regarding a few missing papers you needed to hand over in the office. Bad -or good-thing was, you left that folder at Kuroo’s place thinking you wouldn’t need it anymore.

Seems like you would have to see him, you wanted it or not.

Three knocks on his door woke Kuroo up that Saturday morning.

He considered the possibility of just not getting up, too tired by his restless nights to function properly, but by the time whoever was outside the door knocked again he was walking to the door, throwing a random hoodie that was lying around his naked torso to look somewhat presentable. He didn’t want to look like a perv in case it was his landlady, a sweet grandma that was always nice and used to bring you cookies from time to time. Kuroo remembered tenderly those times where the lady and you would spend hours in the corridor sharing recipes and exchanging goodies.

He missed those days.

Kuroo opened the door and froze in the middle of zipping the hoodie up.

Was he dreaming? It wouldn’t be the first time, Those weeks without you were a torture, and your memories usually haunted his dreams, you in the arms of someone else were a popular theme in his subconscious.

And now, you were there, right in front of him, close enough to extend his hand and brush the skin on your cheek. He was dumbfounded, not able to emit a word.

He thought you were no longer going to speak to him, sending Akaashi or Bokuto to pick up the remainder of your stuff.

“Um... Hi” You hesitated, trying to look at anything but his exposed mid drift, but failing completely. “Sorry to bother, but I forgot a few important papers the last time I was here.” you tried to say as nonchalantly as possible

“Oh... “ He said, stepping aside, letting you into the apartment you used to share. “Sure... Do you remember where it was?”

You took a step in and the rush of longing took you by surprised.

You missed that tiny and uncomfortable couch so much, and the horrible square pattern blanked Kuroo bought ant kept in the chair next to it. The curtains that would slap you in the face if the windows behind the sofa was open, everything there felt like home, and you knew you were the one to go away in the first place, but still.

Akaashi was right, you didn’t even try to talk to him before running away, too traumatized by past experiences to even try to make it work. Th tears choked you and threaten to fall.

It was too late. Asking to try again would be so selfish, after the mess you caused yourself.

“(Y/N)?” Tetsurō‘s gentle tone broke you out of your trance.

“Huh? Oh yeah, It’s probably in the bedroom...” Was it even appropriate for you to go inside his bedroom still? Kuroo must’ve noticed your hesitation because he signal with his hand for you to go first.. The flash of sadness in his eyes almost going unnoticed by you.

Everything was just as you left it inside the room. The same glass of water on the nightstand, your drawers only halfway closed cause you were in a rush when you left, afraid that you back out of your dumb and rushed plan to break up with him all of the sudden, thinking that way would be better, just like ripping a band-aid.

In the bookcase against the wall you spotted the red folder you came looking for. Once it was in your grasp, you really didn’t have an excuse to delay your exit from Kuroo’s house... that used to be your home, and that you wanted so bad to call it home once again.

Turning back to him, who was standing at the door you hugged the folder to your chest.

“So... this was it. Thank u Tets...” You noticed your mistake and tried to correct it “Kuroo... I better leave now.” You advanced towards the door, but his sulked figure blocked the way. “Kuroo?”

You looked up at him, and the tears in his hazel orbs stunned you. His lips trembled slightly and with a frustrated groan he rubbed his eyes harshly.

“Fuck!” He exclaimed, keeping them covered. A broken sigh shaking his shoulders, “I hate this... I hate it so much...”

Your heart clenched, and you regretted not sending Akaashi in your place. He obviously wasn’t okay with you there.

“Oh um... Sorry, I’ll just leave now.” You attempted to sidestep him to get out of the room, but in heart beat his long arms wrapped around you and pulled you into his chest.

The sobs of the boy you loved made his chest vibrate under your skin, and the pain he was feeling you could feel it too. You didn0t hesitate, and as if it was a second nature to you, you squeezed him harder, kissing the soft bare skin of his chest, as you felt your chest collapse into itself.

Could someone die from sadness and love at the same time? Because that was how you were feeling.

“I’m sorry... I know it’s too late and all... But I really am sorry...” He started, his words coming out strangled by the tears, but you shushed him as the tears slipped over your cheeks, leaving wet trails on them.

“Shh... I’m sorry too.” You chocked on a I love that you refused to let slip past your lips. He could be trying to move on, and this was just a minor setback, you would not be that selfish and just throw your feeling into him.

Still presses against his body, you sighed

You missed so badly the feeling of his arms around you, and the way your body fit into his in all the right places, his hands burying themselves in your hair as he brought you closer to him.

Kuroo Tetsurō was your home. The home you lost the key to, locking yourself out of it in a careless action.

“(Y/N)?... I’m sorry...” You opened your mouth to say it was okay when he spoke again. “I love you so much... and I’m so sorry I pushed you away...” The air was sucker punched out of your lungs. And now it was your body, the one being rocked by uncontrollable sobs.

You loved him too, but were too busy weeping to respond to his declaration.

Kuroo held you in his arms, while the both of you cried.

It was almost therapeutic, finally being able to apologize about his mistakes.

Something muffled came out of your mouth and he didn’t catch it, since the got lost against his skin, your warm breath tickling him.

“What baby?” He asked, and wanted to kick himself for it. He was not respecting your decision of separating with his actions and words, but he couldn’t help the overwhelming waves of emotions that watched over him.

“I want to come back home...” Kuroo stayed silent, processing what you just said. “I’m sorry for not trying to make us work Tetsu... But I miss you like crazy, and I was scared and I don’t know what I was thinking... I’m just so sorry...”

His response was simple. He hugged you closer, picking you up like he had done so many times in that same room.

He sat at the end of the bed, with you sitting on his lap, your head tucked in the crook of his neck while his hands caressed your scalp.

Once the sobs retreated, you lifted your head and looked at him in the eyes. Your eyelashes were shimmering with the remaining wetness the tears left behind, your nose was red as well as your cheeks.

Your eyes scanned his face and Kuroo held his breath when you leaned in, your lips softly brushing his, almost as if you feared rejection.

He could never say no to you.

He applied a little more pressure and he finally tasted your lips again. God, how he missed the feeling of your lips against his. Your breath tickled his mouth each time you pulled away to take a breath in between kisses.

Kuroo’s hands went to your back as the kiss rose in intensity. Your hands grabbed his shoulders, your fingers pressing his arm.

Kuroo could feel his erection grow, pressing against his gym shorts, and he was sure you could feel it too by the way your face was getting hotter to the touch.

You readjusted on top of him, your hips straddling his, and the friction from the movement tore a moan from his throat. Embarrassed, he tried to kiss you again to hide his blush, but you pulled away and looked him dead serious in the eyes. He started to feel nervous and was about to apologize, when all of the sudden you moved again, grinding against him. He let out another whiny moan and an entertained glint flashed across your eyes.

Your fingers found the zipper of the hoodie, and the cold skin of your knuckles brushing him as you undid it, exposing his abs. You admired them for a second before kissing him again, breathing in his scent. Slipping the hoodie from his shoulders, a shiver traveled his spine when your fingers brushed the sensitive spot in his clavicle. And an amused smile twitched in the corner of your lips, as you brought your face down to meet your lips with his skin.

Your scorching mouth against his neck made his head spin, and when your teeth made an appearence, he could not help the clench of his stomach, the nibbles you left on his skin sending a tingling to his toes. He sucked in a sharp breath when to licked behind his ear all of the sudden, and the low chuckle on his ear snapped him out of the daze you had him in.

Grabbing your hip and back, he pressed you harder against him, and a gasp left your lips. Smiling smugly, he flipped both of you over.

Kuroo smile above you, as he teasingly trailed his fingers against your sides, until he came to a stop on the edges of your pants, looking at you once again to confirm you were still okay.

Your smirk was the only confirmation he needed.

He unbuttoned your jeans and he took them off, throwing the garment somewhere behind him. His mouth came down to your lips once again as his hand slipped inside your underwear that was a dripping mess because of him.

Pride swelled his chest at the thought he was the one making you feel like this, craving his touch just as much as he craved yours.

When his fingers brushed your clit, a strangled moan came out of you, and oh how much he missed the sounds you made when he touched you like that.

He kissed you like there was no tomorrow, his mouth claiming yours, teeth pulling your lips and soft words whispered into them as his finger kept stimulating you, a fog settling over your mind.

“I love you so fucking much...” His mouth went to your chin, and kept going down, trailing your skin, an electric shock struck you from head to toe when he kissed that one spot in your hip he knew drove you crazy. “So fucking beautiful...” He praised.

He kept going down, his lips ghosting over your inner thighs and his breath brushing over your cunt and making you whine out his name.

“Kuroo...” You said. Your hand digging into his hair as your eyes flutter closed.

“What is it, baby?” He asked, and you could even hear the mock in his tone. You were going to respond, when his teeth nibbled the sensitive skin, careful not to hurt you.

Pulling aside your underwear, his mouth found your pulsating sex. And a shock wave of ecstasy filled your body. It didn’t take too long for him to have you at the edge, your toes curling and your hand clutching his hair. Heaving breaths rose your chest and with one last flick of Kuroo’s tongue an orgasm hit you full force, his name coming out of your lips.

“Tetsu...” A series of spasms rocked your body, and your legs clenching around his head, and Kuroo Chuckled at your reaction, amazed at the intensity of your pleasure.

Once you came out of your high, Kuroo settled next to you in bed, his erection still present and bothering him a little, but he was content with making you feel good. He needed nothing else. He could take care of his arousal later.

Rolling over you sat on top of him, leaning down you kissed his neck as you dragged your hands down his abs, feeling the smooth muscles underneath your fingertips, and you noticed just how much you had missed the intimacy you both shared. Your hands kept traveling until you found the elastic of his pants and pulled them down, brushing his swelling member as you pulled the garment down, stripping Kuroo of his last garment.

With his pants out of the way, you could feel the heat from his cock against your wet pussy. He helped you take out your shirt and kissed the exposed skin in between your breasts.

You rubbed on him once more, and the friction ignited the fire in your stomach. You circled Kuroo’s neck with your arms, and leaned you damped forehead on his chest, soft moans coming out of your mouth.

Lifting your hips slightly you aligned Kuroo’s dick with your entrance and in one swift motion you were filled to the rim with him.

“Shit (Y/n)!” He threw his head back, fingers digging at your hips, as you slowly adjusted to him. “God, I love you so much, I love you so fucking much baby...” Kuroo hissed. Kissing your temple, he then guided your hips up and down, feeling every inch of you tightening around him.

Your moans were shushed by his mouth, while your hips kept moving, feeling the way his member pushed at your walls, tightening the knot in the pit of your stomach.

Switching up the pace, Kuroo sat up and picked you up. Laying you on your back you admire the sight of him, his smooth skin and tall frame, his muscular legs and abs, his gentle hands, and his eyes that were so full of love.

You turned around, lifting your ass up and inviting him in. An almost animalistic growl left his throat at the sight.

“Please Tetsu...” You looked at him, with your eyes full of lust and a glint of mischief in them. “I want you inside of me”

In less than a heartbeat he was inside of you once more, his hips colliding mercilessly with your ass, the lewd sounds of skin against skin mixed with the whimpers that involuntarily came out of your throat as he pounded your pussy like he wanted to.

“Fuck, I missed so much being inside of you.” He grunted, biting his lip.

Kuroo picked up his pace, and you reached for his hand. Intertwining your fingers, he kissed your knuckles, leaning to bite your neck playfully right after.

You could almost feel his abdomen twitching with the need to release his load inside of you. Your chest was flushed against the bed, as Kuroo’s rhythmic movements hit every right spot.

“Tetsu...” You whispered. “Please cum inside of me... I need you.” You begged, aching to be filled by him once more. Your words caused something on him, as if you had stepped on the gas .

The thrust of his hips got more intense and fast, hammering your pussy like it was the sole purpose of his existence. Your thoughts were jumbled and the only coherent thing on your mind was his name, so that all you said.

“Fuck” He moaned, his erratic pace almost matching the beating of your heart. “Oh god baby.... shit.”

With two last powerful you felt him filling you with his cum, releasing three weeks of frustration and desire.

Kuroo tried to pull out of you, but you prevented it, grabbing his wrist and pulling him down to rest on top of you, his bare and sweat covered chest against your back.

A content sigh left his lips and he kissed your shoulder, and your heart could have exploded right then and there.

“So... Now what?” He said, asking the question you were too afraid to voice.

You didn’t know how to precede. Did he wanted to try again? Or was this only a fling of the moment and nothing more?

“Hey.” He called your attention, shifting slightly so he could be lying half of his body on the mattress. You turned your head to him and came nose to nose with him. Kuroo placed a chaste kiss on your lips. “Quit over-thinking and be honest... I won’t get mad if this is really over and you regret this thing we just shared.” His face showed a vulnerability uncharacteristic of him and your heart clenched.

“What do you want?” You turned the question around, a nervous flutter in your stomach.

Without hesitation in his voice or in his eyes, he answered

“You.” He pecked your lips, pressing your foreheads together. You observed his beautiful eyes as he reassured you. “That’s all I ever wanted... You’re my home (Y/n), this house feels empty without you... My life feels empty if you’re not sharing it with me. So... what do you say baby, do you want to give us another chance?” He asked.

“I’m happy to be home Tetsu...”

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pbandjesse · 3 years

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Welp I have a horrible headache, and a few bruises, from crying for the last hour or so. Its so stupid. I feel stupid. Im just not having a very good time and not sleeping much has made me sort of a mess, and its making everything else really hard.

I just couldnt get comfortable last night. I was freezing and my chest hurt and it just wasnt a good time. So waking up wasnt fun either. I got up and just felt. So off. I got washed and dressed. Tried to feel alright. But I also just felt really busy.

I packed up my orders and sent those out. I had my call at 11 with the financial guy (which ended up not happening and I have to investigate more), so I had breakfast and tried to ice my chest. But it didnt help much.

I talked to my dad for a half hour or so. It was nice to talk to him but talking about money makes me uncomfortable and I end up making jokes about ignoring it. Which isnt actually true! I just cant. Think about it to much because it makes me anxious. Because I dont have money and I do have debt and Im trying my best. I really am. But it was nice talking to my dad and trying to show I was appreciating his help. Even though I hate being helped. Because it makes me feel bad.

But then the phone call didnt happen. And I waited a whole hour and felt like I was stuck. So I cleaned the apartment a bit. Vaccumed and stuff. And had lunch.

I headed to work and I just felt. So sad. And I got there and they still didnt know where I should go. So I cleaned and helped put things away before I headed to the middle school to watch the older kids.

They were mostly nice. A little mean girl behavior. But they like me so that was nice. They were excited to watercolor paint. And it was fun to share that with them.

I was able to read for a little. And I drew a picture of the watch James gave me. All things considered it was a good day.

A lot of the kids went to the open space to play at the end of the day so I just had the little little kids to paint with. And then it sort of calmed down. And it was about time to go home. But then one kid didnt get packed up until exactly 6. But that was okay. I was able to go home quick.

I got home and James had made pasta. He's so great. We hung out for a little and James wanted to check on my student loans because of something my dad said this morning. But I was right about them being paused.

So I called my dad. And then all hell broke loose and me and mom ended up having a horrible fight. Which lead to me crying in the bathtub and throwing a chair. Which lead to sweetP being scared and hiding under the bed.

Like. I feel bad. Because I said some mean stuff. But I was hurt. Like. This just felt like a huge misunderstanding not just of what was going on, but on my feelings and my understanding of what was going on. Not sleeping well didnt help, but I think just also me not being able to express my feelings about big things caught up with me? I just felt very misundertood and I was also just misunderstanding. Im not going to get into it here. But Im just. Sad.

It was funny when my landlady called in the middle of the call with my dad and I was sure someone was calling concerned because of the yelling. But no. Were just getting a new dishwasher tomorrow and she wanted to let me know. Shes sweet.

But once I was actually off the phone with my dad I tried to find sweetP and couldnt. I called Jess and we talked and she made me feel a little more heard. And then we found sweetP so that was good.

I took a shower. And tried to feel alright. My piercing is hurting and I sent an email to the piercing place because Im concerned about the jewelry shape. It seems the sides are poking into me a bit and maybe something more round would help. I might also have to wear a bra. Ugh. Well see.

I have a pretty bad headache now though. And I just would like to sleep. I hope it just starts to snow and things can just be quiet. I hope things feel better tomorrow. Take care of yourselves. Goodnight.

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littlemeowmeowschimmy · 4 years

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Sugar Daddy [Hoseok x Reader] 10

credit: littlemeowmeowschimmy

Requests opened // prev - m.list - next

Genre: Romance // Angst // Smut

Summary: A sudden request to be one of the most powerful man’s sugar baby comes apart of your life, it’s hard to turn it down. However, through the process of this relationship, you slowly start to feel for him..but then again, you become extremely wary of the position you’re in. Will this end well…?

WC: 1.8k

A/N: Something about “throwing your kitchen table” is my new found humor in this series...

»»————-　★　————-««

Not only did you have Jung Hoseok stay at your place, but the next morning, you had to explain to your landlady why you didn’t have an apartment door. She was surprised to see Hoseok standing in the kitchen with nothing but his pants on, but she didn’t ask any questions for you. Instead, she just said it was alright and that you wouldn’t get charged for it.

You were under the assumption she said that because Hoseok was in your kitchen. Everyone knew who he was, so you got off the hook. However, that meant that you would have to stay home and wait for the repairman to come with a new door. Since your sugar daddy so happened to spend the night, you two weren’t on speaking terms.

You were still angry with him for leaving you in the dark, but you could understand why. Everything just wasn’t making any sense, but at the moment, you were too irrational to fully comprehend what was going on. Hoseok merely watched you from a distance. Taking everything in that he missed. The first thing he noticed was how long your hair had grown. It was now down to your mid-back, and he already had dirty thoughts wrapping in his mind.

But he wasn’t going to ask you for anything since he could see your anger from afar. Your body hadn’t really changed, and even if it had, he wouldn’t have noticed right away. Once he investigated further, he saw your hips, thighs, and bust were thicker than before. His mouth was salivating at the thought of how you would feel under his fingers. Yet, those thoughts would almost immediately go away when you caught wind of him staring.

He yelped, turning his body around and grabbing a glass from the counter. This certainly felt like a romcom, and you were beyond furious with him. How none of your stuff got stolen was terrific, and even if they did, you would kill him for sure.

It was mid-morning when the two of you were awake. You held your phone in one hand, a glass of orange juice in another. You were trying to get through some work emails, while also explaining to your boss why you couldn’t come in today. You were being honest with her, considering that she even knew the relationship you had with Hoseok. Although she didn’t think it to a full extent, she knew enough of it.

You wore a baggy button-up with your hair tied in a bun. Your pajamas had changed during the night because you weren’t comfortable with the earlier ones. Hoseok found it all too amusing, but then again, he didn’t see you for the rest of the night. You locked yourself in your bedroom and wouldn’t answer even if he knocked to go to the bathroom.

The only conversation you two had was telling him to go outside. He had a dick, he could stand up and pee behind a trash can or something. Hoseok wasn’t pleased with the decision, but he wasn’t going to argue with you. The argument was going to have to be settled or talked about. You weren’t, okay, that was a lie. You were upset with Hoseok, but you just couldn’t find it in yourself to talk to him about it.

There were so many emotions raging inside that it was hard for your rational brain to pick apart. Once again, you knew it wasn’t his fault, but your anger was directed towards him. More so now that he broke your damn door, and you had to wait for the handyman.

Your stomach growled at the smell of pancakes and other delicious breakfast food. Your eyes slowly moved up from their spot on Twitter to watching Hoseok cook in your small kitchen. First, you didn’t know you had pancake mix, second, why was he without a shirt, and third, what the hell was he cooking?

You bit your lower lip, slowly moving yourself up from your spot and heading into the kitchen. You made up a stupid excuse if he asked that you were getting more orange juice. But, you had only drunk half the glass, so what’s the point of getting more when you had plenty?

Hoseok could hear you shuffling towards him and didn’t pay you much attention. It was only when you peaked over his shoulder and looked down at the pan. Sausages, rice, pancakes, fruits, and so much more. Everything smelled delicious, and it made your mouth salivate.

“Do you want me to build you a plate?” was the first thing Hoseok asked. You turned to glance up at him, his golden honey eyes shining down as his face was bright. You simply nodded your head, taking a step back and licking your lips now.

Your stomach grumbled again as it was sub coming to the delicious smell. This time, Hoseok heard it and started laughing under his breath. That was the first break in your small anger. Hearing his laugh was enough to make you smile slightly, although you wouldn’t openly admit it. Your heart was starting to flutter while your stomach twist and churns. Due to the lack of “romance” you had in your life.

No, the lack of Jung Hoseok you had. You knew you were falling for him like a girl would in a rom-com. This whole situation was starting to feel like one. The overly rich guy who doesn’t want a relationship but turns out he’s falling for the simple city girl was too easy to catch. Yet, here it was, unfolding in front of your eyes, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

Hoseok knocked you out from whatever thoughts you had by placing the plate in front of your eyes. You blinked twice, reaching up to grab it. Then, down to take whatever chopsticks you had. Thanking him, you moved into the small space you called a dining area. You sat down at the small table, humming happily. Silence fell across you two as you were undoubtedly thinking about different things.

Hoseok was thinking about how to get a conversation rolling with you, and you were thinking how long it would take for the handyman to arrive. So you two were back to not talking, and the only sound that was evident was the clanking of your chopsticks and Hoseok’s utensils.

About half an hour later, he showed up by introducing himself from the outside. You turned around to look at the repairman standing there with his toolbox. You waved at him, moving forwards and explaining what had happened. Then, he went to work, filling the silence by giving you a new door.

You walked back into the kitchen since you decided to clean up after yourself. It was there that Hoseok made a second attempt to talk to you. Stating that he would clean up, and you didn’t have to do anything. You only nodded in his direction, then turned to move back towards the living room. Picking up where you left off on your phone.

You weren’t going into work today because your boss decided to give you the day off. Meaning you didn’t have to answer any more emails, and you could just let loose. Yet, you didn’t know exactly what to do in your free time. Especially now that you had to figure out how to get Hosoek out of your hair. You puffed your cheeks and glared in his direction.

How could someone so knowledgeable be so...dull? Not to say that his personality wasn’t there, but his street knowledge was lacking. You understood that most people didn’t know how to change a tire, but they also knew that they could call someone to do so. Hoseok was rich enough to afford such things, so he didn’t really need a place to stay.

But, you chopped it up as him wanting to spend time with you. Or so you assumed he was doing so because indeed, you would have called for a tow truck. Yet, when you came barging in, you weren’t really in the right state of mind to deal with it. So you just allowed him to stay over. Were you also dragging yourself for doing such a thing?

Or was this really starting to turn into a fucking rom-com? You groaned loudly enough to make Hoseok look up from where he was standing. The repairman minded his own business as he was simply just switching the doors. He, too, could feel the tension in the room but didn’t say anything. Instead, he called out to you when he was finished and walked off.

You thanked him, testing your new door and ignoring Hoseok’s stares. Or so you thought you could ignore them. It got to the point where when you sat down on the couch again, you simply just gave in.

“Are you going to stare at me all day?” You questioned, glancing down at your phone.

“Absolutely not,” Hoseok retorts, setting some of the dishes away. Silence then a low sigh escaping.

“I’m still upset with you,” you gave in chewing your lower lip. It was a bad habit that you needed to break, but where you? Probably not. “I understand why, but not to the full extent that you want me to.” setting your phone down and glancing back up at him.

Hoseok cocks an eyebrow, curious as to where this conversation was headed. But, he didn’t say much more since he knew that he spent all his time last night discussing his side. Plus, he just invited himself over without allowing you to even consider having him over.

“This doesn’t simply mean we can get in bed again,” you paused, scratching the back of your head. “I don’t mind going out on dates to fulfill that aspect of our relationship,” pausing once more as you explained yourself. “But...I think for now taking whatever this is slowly is the best option. Especially for me as I’m still wrapping my head around this.”

Hoseok went silent, but he understood where you were coming from. He, too, was trying to fully understand your side along with his own. He knew that things would be difficult, and as of right now, this whole contract thing was starting to feel like a relationship. He wasn’t looking for that, but feelings got involved. Then his manager got involved and really started to mess with his brain. Hoseok simply didn’t know what to do, and he assumed the only option was to slightly move away from you. But even then, that was messy within itself.

It was like someone was flossing his brain, and he didn’t know which side to take. Maybe taking things slow and going on “dates” would be nice. At least something he was still fulfilling some aspect of it, right? Hoseok really didn’t know how this whole thing worked, but he was going to make it right somehow.

“Totally off-topic,” Hoseok starts moving around. You glanced back up at him, curious as to why he was changing the topic. “But, uh, I’m going to need help with my tire.”

And that urge to throw your kitchen table at him suddenly reappeared.

#littlemeowmeowschimmy #bangtanarmynet #btswriterscollective #ficswithluv #bts #bts au #bts sugar daddy #jung hoseok #jung hoseok x reader #bts hoseok #hoseok x reader #reader insert #bts x reader

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jeonsduck · 4 years

Text

Smoke and Mirrors pt 4

WARNINGS: gore, graphic imagery.

a/n: im so sorry

Since getting permission from your new supervisor to work in San’s office, you’d fallen into a bit of a routine. You woke up, got ready, fed Noodles, and San picked you up from your building because it was on his way to work. On some mornings he’d come upstairs instead of calling yo he got there, bearing gifts of a breakfast sandwich (for you) and canned tuna (for Noodles). By now, your elder landlady recognized San and he blew her a kiss when he picked you up in the mornings.

When you arrived at the office, you’d hole yourself up in the file room until lunch. Keran or San would occasionally come by to check on you and bring you a little styrofoam cup off coffee and remind you to take a break. Sometimes Byul would break in and walk all over your papers and laptop keyboard until you scratched her behind her ears.

At 11:45, San would slip a leash on Byul and the three of you would go on a walk to pick up lunch for the whole office. You all ate in the front room, Keran and the bodyguards included. This was of course, if San didn’t have a lunch meeting, which you were learning were reserved only for his most important clients (read: Hongjoong and company). You caught glimpses of them when they came to see San, but you had yet to be introduced to any of them. You were thankful for that because just from what you’d heard about them from Agent Heejin they were men to be feared and taken very seriously.

After lunch it was back to the dungeon to try and make sense of what the hell San’s friends were doing with their money.

If he wasn’t too busy in the afternoons he might pop in and help explain something to you. As the person who oversaw all these transactions, he was your best bet at explaining some of their more convoluted financial practices. Like Jongho claiming farm exemptions on his martial arts school. Except it WAS a farm, and a school, and apparently Jongho was very dedicated to the fact that his students live seperated from society to focus on their sport or something like that. Either way it was a really complicated way of saying, yes, his 35 acres are eligible for educational and agricultural exemptions. There were at least 5 cases like this for each of them, and your head was pounding from the explanations. The information dump you were going through on this case was worse than college.

San drove you home after he locked up for the night, or if he was staying late, he’d send you home in a car with the guards. After you’d started at ledgers until your eyes burned, you had to go talk to Agent Heejin. Sometimes she called you, other times she visited your apartment. You’d talk for as long as she deemed necessary, sometimes for upwards of two hours. Occasionally, you had something suspicious to report, but it was a rare occurrence. Usually you ended up chasing the same half a million dollars around in circles for the whole day across different accounts until there was no where else for you to follow it. It was exhausting. And so far, there was nothing groundbreaking to report, which meant you just got to spend a couple extra hours being grilled every night.

Fun daily routine, right? Not in the slightest.

Well, that wasn’t completely true. It was a little fun. Especially when you saw San dressed like a trainwreck with his glasses off, frowning down at a stack of papers. Or when you caught him looking at you from the doorway with a pencil held behind his ear. Or when he rolled his shirt sleeves up so he could go get you a document you couldn’t find. Or when he smiled at you in the cutest way, or well, any time San was being cute. Was that kinda super unprofessional? Yeah, but you’d be done with this case eventually and maybe after that something could happen? It wasn’t as though it was completely one sided. Someone didn’t just start picking you up and taking you to work just because you lived in the same direction. And you’d heard the guards gossiping around the water cooler about how they could never convince their boss to let them choose what to eat for lunch, but he always asked you before making a decision nowadays. And then there was that time you‘d turned your head too fast when he was leaning over your shoulder, and you’d both been trapped in that moment with your noses nearly touching for way too long. San had finally blinked and cleared his throat and you’d both awkwardly avoided each other’s eyes for the next hour.

Your mildly flirty and mostly boring routine was broken when your new supervisor asked you to come in for a status report. San dropped you back off at your office, and told you to call him once you were done so he could send a car to take you home, since you’d left yours at your apartment. You went back up to your floor for the first time in weeks, and made an hour long presentation on your progress with this case (which was miniscule to say the least). Your boss thanked you for the update, told you you were doing a good job, and let you know he’d be sending the notes you presented to the administration.

After you left his office, you stopped by your cubicle to tidy something’s up, grab some extra supplies you needed,

“Y/N! How’s it going?” Jacob said, catching you on your way out.

You couldn’t remember the last time you’d seen him, and you gave him a hug. You had missed your cubicle neighbor.

“Slowly. I don’t know if I’ll ever be done with this case.” you sighed.

Jacob chuckled and patted you on the back.

“You got some time? We could grab dinner, maybe a couple drinks?” he offered.

You checked your phone for messages from San, only to find that it was dead. Ah, might as well.

“Yeah I could do dinner. You had somewhere in mind?”

Dinner with Jacob was…. Nice. You didn’t realize until halfway through the meal that maybe Jacob thought this was a date. But you still weren’t sure. You were sure that Jacob was more than a little nervous, stuttering over a lot of his sentences and fidgeting. But he wasn’t overbearing or making you uncomfortable. He was nice. Jacob was nice.

He drove you home after the meal, walking you to the front door of your building. You told him you had a nice time. He smiled at you and said the same. Then he awkwardly scooted back into his car and drove away.

You headed up to your apartment, putting your phone on charge the second you got in. You fed Noodles, got ready for bed, and put on some TV to watch before you went to bed. When your phone turned on it started buzzing wildly, startling Noodles.

“Who was calling me like that?” you wondered out loud.

Flipping your phone back over, you saw you had 50 text messages, 34 missed calls, and multiple voicemails. All from San. Begining from the time you were supposed to call him, the messages increased in frequency and worry even through your dinner with Jacob. Your phone buzzed to life again suddenly, San’s name and picture flashing on your screen.

“Hello?” you answered.

“Oh, my god Y/N! I thought you were dead in an alley somewhere or something! You were supposed to call me when you finished at the IRS. ” San said, sounding relieved.

“Oh gosh, I didn’t mean to worry you. My phone died and then I went to dinner with my work friend Jacob. Besides, I told you, I could Uber home or something.” you said.

“Yeah, but you would have at least answered my call from an Uber. I didn’t know what had happened to you.” he huffed.

“Well, I’m fine and I’m sorry for worrying you. I’ll buy you lunch tomorrow to make up for it.” you offered.

“Fine. But letting your phone die can be dangerous. What if something happens and you can’t call me?” he says.

“Shouldn’t I be calling the police if I’m in danger?” you counter with a chuckle, but San is serious.

“No, you should call me. So, promise me you won’t let your phone die, and you’ll answer me when I call.” he says.

You sigh and agree.

“Fine, I’ll watch my phone battery and I will always pick up if you call. Are we cool now?” you ask.

San chuckles, “We are, but you still owe me lunch tomorrow.” he says.

“Of course. Good night San.”

“Goodnight Y/N.”

You shake your head and look at Noodles.

“He’s such a character isn’t he?” you ask him, and Noodles just meows in response.

You chuckle and turn the TV off, falling asleep.

The next day it’s back to the same grind. It’s like that for most of the week. On Thursday you get an email from your supervisor, asking if you know where Jacob’s gone. You reply that you don’t know, but you’ll reach out to him. When you call him after lunch, Jacob’s phone goes straight to voicemail. Weird, but you’ve got a lot on your plate right now, so you’re not really worried about it.

You see Jacob again on Saturday, but not in the way you were expecting, or ever wanted to see him. You got a call from the police station early that morning, asking you to come in about something. You thought it had something to do with San or the case you were working with the IRS. You never thought that they’d be calling you down to help identify Jacob’s waterlogged corpse.

It wasn’t a pretty sight. Whoever had done this, had been angry and well versed in the art of murder. His right hand was broken, shattered more like. So were both of his legs, one at the femur, one at the shin. He’d been garroted, a sharp wire choking him and cutting into his neck until he either asphyxiated or bled to death, whichever came first. That the coroner wasn’t quite sure of. What they were sure of, was that Jacob’s body had been beaten and mutilated before he’d been killed. His heart had been carved out of his chest cavity after the fact though. They’d found the charred remains in his car, which had been pushed deep into the woods and set on fire. Jacob’s body had been found in a lake not far from there, only because the killer had messed up when puncturing his lungs to prevent his body from floating.

You didn’t process this all at once though. You’d walked into the morgue, noted the awful smell, and the coroner had asked you to peel back the white sheet. You had, and nearly fell over in shock. That was your friend on the table. You stumbled back a couple steps, your ears ringing. You faintly heard the officer who had walked you here asking if that was Jacob on the table, and you nodded absently. You’d been handed a file on Jacob’s autopsy and then ushered out of the room by the officer who brought you there. You stumbled along like you were in a dream, not realizing that the cop was leading you to an interrogation room.

“We have reason to believe you were the last person to see Jacob alive, so we have a few questions for you…”

You sat there, shell shocked and more than a little traumatized, while the police questioned you for hours about the last time you saw Jacob. Nervous, but happy. A little excited, like an overgrown puppy. Different officers came to ask you the same questions, and you knew what they were doing. Trying to get you to crack, to admit something that didn’t happen, to find some flaw in your relationship, and easy out, a motive. But after you’d sobbed for three hours, you were too tired to even keep crying, and eventually they released you, emotionally numb and exhausted.

The sun was still shining outside the precinct, like the day had the right to be happy. You looked at your car, unwilling to drive, and on impulse, you called San.

Y/N?”

“Yeah, San can you come pick me up? I’m at the police station, I don’t think I should drive.” you said.

“What? Why are you at the police station? I’ll be there soon just hold on.” he said.

“Okay.” you sighed and hung up. You sat down on a bench outside, and after a few minutes, it began to sun shower. You snorted, but just sat there, getting soaked as other people ran around you for cover. You only realized San had pulled up when the rain stopped and you heard him fussing over you.

“You’re gonna catch a cold, sitting out in the rain like this. Come get in the car.”

You let San basically manhandle you into his car, realizing that you were about to get in his expensive Italian sports car sopping wet.

“Sorry, send me you upholstery bill.”

“One, no. Two, you can’t afford it. Three, the leather was getting kinda worn anyway. Do you want to tell me why you were at the police station?” he prompted.

You just shook your head, gazing out the window.

“Later. Just take me home please.”

You zone out as San drives, watching raindrops slide down the car window.

“Y/N, we’re here.” San said, snapping you out of a daze.

“Will you come up with me? I don’t want to be alone right now.” you ask.

“Of course.”

San parks his car in your spot, and follows you up to your apartment. Noodles comes trotting out when you open the door, avoiding you when he sees that you’re wet and rubbing uo against San instead.

“Go take a shower, put on some dry clothes. Should I order food?” San asks, scooping Noodles up in his arms.

You don’t want to eat, but you say yes anyway. You leave San to his own devices in the living room and go to take a shower. Maybe you’re crying again, but there’s no way to be sure. You end up standing under the hot water for nearly an hour. When the food he ordered arrives, San knocks on your bathroom door, letting you know that you should get out and eat while the food is hot.

You towel off and get dressed in pajamas, trudging back out to the kitchen, San is sitting at your island with a large pizza in front of him. You sit down next to him and take a slice, chewing slowly. It’s good pizza. You say as much. When you finish, San puts away the box and stands infront of you, cupping your face in his hands.

“Do you want to keep processing, or do you want me to distract you?” he asks, looking into your eyes.

You answer without even thinking, wanting to stop feeling so awful.

“Distract me, please.”

San smiles sadly, bringing your faces together and connecting your lips gently. You’re trembling a little, and San feels solid and real pressed against you.

“I’m sorry.” he says.

“It’s not your fault.” you mumble.

San doesn’t reply, just kisses you again, and again, and again.

#ateez #san #ateez san #choi san #choi san x reader #ateez x reader #san x reader #san fanfic #san imagines #san scenarios #ateez fanfic #ateez scenarios #ateez imagines

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vaguelybohemian · 4 years

Text

Baldwin Montclair/OC

Chapter Five - The Teeth of Time

Baldwin had offered me a ride home, which I respectfully declined. I lived only a few blocks down and really just needed the air. He seemed agitated and wiry, as if he knew something that should have kept me from walking home. But without him saying anything, why should I really worry on just that feeling?

After gulping in cool autumn air, it was nice to finally be home, and have more time to think about the fact that I would be fined for not returning resources. “Would they have even allowed that if I stayed? I just shouldn’t have left the library. Dammit!”

I leaned against the locked door, glaring bitterly at the flight of stairs I had yet to climb, kicking off my “work shoes” and trading them for a comfortable pair of house shoes. I nearly fell over trying to pull the backs of the shoes over my heels. That was something that would seem a constant in my daily routine. I turned off the porch light and climbed the ancient staircase. I discarded my bag on couch in the foyer, turning on the lamp as I moved on to put water on for a bath.

“Hot water and another glass of wine,” I thought, pulling off my sweater. I stopped the motion of throwing it in the hamper when I realized it smelled the same as Baldwin’s jacket. I put the soft article to my nose and inhaled. It smelled unlike most men’s products, delicate and indistinguishable because of it. At once it smelled of fresh earth and firewood as it did of fennel and berries, making my head swirl with the possibilities.

I threw it in my hamper spitefully as the aroma had sent me into a spiral of thought about the latest events.

“Why are men like this?”, I huffed, throwing open the cabinet to find the jar of Epsom salt that seemed to migrate around my bathroom storage. I drew two handfuls, throwing each in angrily and not waiting for the water to start foaming them.

The static from taking my sweater off made the wisps of hair around my face float. I pulled my scrunchy from my hair, feeling the solid weight of my hair shifting in one tug.

Wine was at the bottom of my pantry, forcing me to kneel. I gently sorted through the dozen bottles I kept for department parties to find the bottle of Zinfandel I bought when I moved into the apartment almost a year ago. It still remained unopened. Until today.

Ten minutes later I was dipping into hot bathwater, music playing, window open and wine in hand. I certainly had become vain when I could afford it.

I spoke allowed to myself as I planned. “Tomorrow I will go straight to the university, return my resources, email the archivist.” Sip. “Apologize profusely and get straight back to work. I should be finished with the new resources by the end of the week and on to organizing my notes for a draft. Ha!” I still had yet to request images being taken of the manuscripts and would also need to issue that request by the end of the week. I was glad it was a Sunday and could do these things out of order for a change, as my days were mostly spent in classes, taking meetings, and marking students’ work. As much as I longed for a sabbatical, there was likely another decade after my dissertation before I could even hope for tenure.

“Unless you had financial help,” a sneaky little voice told me. I felt terrible for thinking of Baldwin Montclair at that moment. “He is rich, and you must think him handsome…” That little voice must have been the wine. I looked over at my nearly empty glass and nodded to myself. It was the wine. I sank into the bath, letting my hair submerge and scrubbing my face roughly, hoping it would aid in keeping away the good buzz I had started.

From my phone Hozier warbled “Sweet music playing in the dark/ Be still my foolish heart/ Don’t ruin this for me” and I had to roll my eyes, hitting shuffle on another playlist.

I shuffled from the bathroom up the stairs to my second floor, nearly tripping on the carpet at the top of the stairs. I was far groggier than at this time of night, and I blamed the wine yet again. Usually I became rather energetic at this time of night, getting another two or three hours of work or reading in before finally being able to head to bed. Tonight, however, I breezed through my study and went straight for my nightgowns.

“Well, hopefully I will sleep better than ever.”

I turned on the overhead fan and cracked open all the windows and the balcony door. It was always so stuffy at this level of the house, as heat rose from all three flats in the house and accumulated right in my bedroom. Winters were phenomenal, but during the summer I found myself spending a great deal of the night dozing on the porch swing. My landlady, Ms. Andersen, ended up giving me several lectures on the ‘indecency of a young woman sleeping outside on her porch!’ Alas, tonight the wind easily took the hot air from the apartment and allowed me to snuggle into my bed.

I was floating, except I wasn’t because that couldn’t be possible. It felt like that part in every dream that comes right before you wake up with a jolt, except I felt some control and eventually felt my bare feet touch grass. I was walking now, and everything moved so fast past me, hurling me toward what looked like a spotlight.

I got close enough to see a group of people around the spotlight, and a person with long hair directly in the light. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t move from that spot, feeling my lungs burn with excursion as I peddled my legs to get to them.

“- by Mars let this sa… Praise be… Hold us up on high… with Grace...”

They sounded like a radio coming in and out of signal, my ears only picking up a little of what they said. My heart dropped when I watched three of the figures pounced, and the girl in the middle shrieked with terror.

I kicked my legs harder, pumping my arms. “I can save her,” I thought, “I need to save her!” I inched forward, watching in horror as they held her down. A hooded figured knelt over her, cutting into her arms as she thrashed and screamed, and I was close enough to see tears rolling down her cheeks as the ground dropped out from under me.

I landed with a rough thud, and now the light was above me. I quickly got to my hands and knees, not seeing anyone else near me. On the ground was a circle of… salt? I dabbed a finger and licked it to find it was. I stood, looking down at the pattern formed below me: a circle intersected with lines, and alchemical symbols within three circles.

My fingers felt odd and when I looked down there were markings on each arm. I turned them over to see symbols cutting into the skin and my blood rising up from them like I was upside-down.

I did what anyone would do. I screamed.

I felt like I hadn’t drunk water in ages, and my eyes stuck together when I pried them open. The clock on the mantel claimed it was three in the morning, and it was eerily silent outside without the sounds of traffic on the main roads.

I pushed myself to a sitting position, cracking my back as I did so. I looked around my room, completely disoriented from whatever dreams I had just moments ago. The room smelled of frankincense, a mixture of spice and woodsmoke, reminding me of the aroma clinging to my sweater before I took my bath.

Frowning, I rose from bed and crossed the room to the mantel where I kept candles and matches. I lit a bergamot candle, throwing the match into the bare firebox, and waited for the scent to fill the room and pick up on the gentle wind that still traveled through the room.

I rubbed my arms roughly and decided to return to bed.

#Baldwin montclair #baldwin de clermont #a discovery of witches #Deborah harkness #all souls trilogy #romance #fan fiction #archive of our own #horror #vampire #witch #original female character #vaguelybohemian #nightmares #sleep terrors

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mystery-inc-unsolved · 5 years

Text

Psychosis- Part 1/5

Written by, Matt Dymerski

Sunday

I’m not sure why I’m writing this down on paper and not on my computer. I guess I’ve just noticed some odd things. It’s not that I don’t trust the computer, I just… I need to organize my thoughts. I need to get down all the details somewhere objective, somewhere I know that what I write can’t be deleted or, changed. Not that that’s happened. It’s just… everything blurs together here, and the fog of memory lends a strange cast to things.

I’m starting to feel cramped in this small apartment. Maybe that’s the problem. I just had to go and choose the cheapest apartment, the only one in the basement. The lack of windows down here makes day and night seem to slip by seamlessly. I haven’t been out in a few days because I’ve been working on this programming project so intensively. I suppose I just wanted to get it done. Hours of sitting and staring at a monitor can make anyone feel strange, I know, but I don’t think that’s it.

I’m not sure when I first started to feel like something was odd. I can’t even define what it is. Maybe I just haven’t talked to anyone in a while. That’s the first thing that crept up on me. Everyone I normally talk to online while I program has been idle, or they’ve simply not logged on at all. My instant messages go unanswered. The last email I got from anybody was a friend saying he’d message me when he got back from the store, and that was yesterday. I’d call with my cell phone but the reception is terrible down here. Yeah, that’s it. I just need to call someone. I’m going to go outside.

Well, that didn’t work so well. As the tingle of fear fades, I’m feeling a little ridiculous for being scared at all. I looked in the mirror before I went out, but I didn’t shave the two-day stubble I’ve grown. I figured I was just going out for a quick phone call. I did change my shirt though because it was lunchtime, and I guessed that I’d run into at least one person I knew. That didn’t end up happening. I wish it did.

When I went out, I opened the door to my small apartment slowly. A small feeling of apprehension had somehow already lodged itself in me, for some indefinable reason. I chalked it up to having not spoken to anyone but myself for a day or two. I peered down the dingy grey hallway, made dingier by the fact that it was a basement hallway. On one end, a large metal door led to the building’s furnace room. It was locked, of course. Two dreary soda machines stood by it; I bought a soda from one the first day I moved in, but it had a two-year-old expiration date. I’m fairly sure nobody knows those machines are even down here, or my cheap landlady just doesn’t care to get them restocked.

I closed my door softly and walked the other direction, taking care not to make a sound. I have no idea why I chose to do that, but it was fun giving in to the strange impulse not to break the droning hum of the soda machines, at least for the moment. I got to the stairwell and took the stairs up to the building’s front door. I looked through the heavy door’s small square window, and received quite the shock: it was definitely not lunchtime. City-gloom hung over the dark street outside, and the traffic lights at the intersection in the distance blinked yellow. Dim clouds, purple and black from the glow of the city, hung overhead. Nothing moved, save the few sidewalk trees that shifted in the wind. I remember shivering, though I wasn’t cold. Maybe it was the wind outside. I could vaguely hear it through the heavy metal door, and I knew it was that it was constant, cold, and quiet, save for the rhythmic music it made as it passed through countless unseen tree leaves.

I decided not to go outside.

Instead, I lifted my cell phone to the door’s little window and checked the signal meter. The bars filled up the meter, and I smiled. Time to hear someone else’s voice, i remember thinking, relieved. It was such a strange thing, to be afraid of nothing. I shook my head, laughing at myself silently. I hit speed-dial for my best friend Amy’s number and held the phone up to my ear. It rang once, but then it stopped. Nothing happened. I listened to silence for a good twenty seconds, then hung up. I frowned and looked at the signal meter again - still full. I went to dial her number again, but then my phone rang in my hand, startling me. I put it up to my ear.

“Hello?” I asked, immediately fighting down a small shock at hearing the first spoken voice in days, even if it was my own. I had gotten used to the droning hum of the building’s inner workings, my computer, and the soda machines in the hallway. There was no response to my greeting at first, but then, finally, a voice came.

“Hey,” said a clear male voice, obviously of college age, like me. “Who’s this?”

“John,” I replied, confused.

“Oh, sorry, wrong number,” he replied, then hung up.

I lowered the phone slowly and leaned against the thick brick wall of the stairwell. That was strange. I looked at my received calls list, but the number was unfamiliar. Before I could think on it further, the phone rang loudly, shocking me yet again. This time, I held the phone up to my ear but said nothing. I heard nothing but the general background noise of a phone. Then, a familiar voice broke my tension.

“John?” was the single word, in Amy’s voice.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Hey, it’s you,” I replied.

“Who else would it be?” She responded. “Oh, the number. I’m at a party on Seventh Street, and my phone died just as you called me. This is someone else’s phone, obviously.”

“Oh, ok,” I said.

“Where are you?” She asked.

My eyes glanced over the drab white-washed cylinder block walls and the heavy metal door with its small window.

“At my building,” I sighed. “Just feeling cooped up. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

“You should come here,” she said, laughing.

“Nah, I don’t feel like looking for some strange place by myself in the middle of the night,” I said, looking out the window at the silent windy street that secretly scared me just a tiny bit. “I think I’m just going to keep working or go to bed.”

“Nonsense!” She replied. “I can come to get you! Your building is close to Seventh Street, right?”

“How drunk are you?” I asked lightheartedly. “You know where I live.”

“Oh, of course,” she said abruptly. “I guess I can’t get there by walking, huh?”

“You could if you wanted to waste half an hour,” I told her.

“Right,” she said. “Ok, have to go, good luck with your work!”

I lowered the phone once more, looking at the numbers flash as the call ended. Then, the droning silence suddenly reasserted itself in my ears. The two strange calls and the eerie street outside just drove my aloneness in this empty stairwell. Perhaps from having seen too many scary movies, I had the sudden inexplicable idea that something could look in the door’s window and see me. Some sort of horrible entity that hovered at the edge of aloneness, just waiting to creep up on unsuspecting people that strayed too far from other human beings. I knew the fear was irrational, but nobody else was around, so... I jumped down the stairs, ran down the hallway into my room, and closed the door as swiftly as I could while staying silent. As I said, I feel a little ridiculous for being scared of nothing, and the fear has already faded. Writing this down helps a lot - it makes me realize that nothing is wrong. It filters out half-formed thoughts and fears and leaves only cold, hard facts. It’s late, I got a call from a wrong number, and Amy’s phone died, so she called me back from another number. Nothing strange is happening.

Still, there was something a little off about that conversation. I know it could have just been the alcohol she’d had, or was it even her that seemed off to me? Or was it… yes, that was it! I didn’t realize it until this moment, writing these things down. I knew writing things down would help. She said she was at a party, but I only heard silence in the background! Of course, that doesn’t mean anything in particular, as she could have just gone outside to make the call. No, that couldn’t be it either. I didn’t hear the wind! I need to see if the wind is still blowing.

#creepypasta #scary #story #scary story #thriller #horror #psychosis #creepypasta story #readme #notmystory #creditgoestoauthor #credit goes to the owner

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fell-in-love-didnt-you · 6 years

Text

Royals; Part 3: SnowBaz Fanfiction

Has smut

The flat seemed glaringly empty when Simon walked in.

He set his drenched coat in the laundry room to the left of the door and emptily walked through the kitchen they hardly ever used. They had a cleaner come in once every two weeks to tidy things up that they never touched. It was almost as redundant as being a chimney sweeper for a lot of chimney-less homes. In fact, theirs was a chimney-less home.

Simon’s hand danced lightly over the marble countertop of their island where they ate the majority of the food. He couldn’t even remember the last time they used the formal dining area, which was just off the side of their enormous living room. Everything there was plush and expensive and made of cloth that came from the most desired corners of the earth.

“Are you living off my son?”

Simon couldn’t help but have Mr. Grimm’s voice bounce through his head. Of course, the first thing he wanted to say was no; he had his own job and could support himself without a prince’s endless bank account. If Baz dropped him the next day, he could support himself from the bottom up. He’d done it for years before he’d ever met Baz at the pretentious sports club he had to work at. There was a time before Baz where money was tight, but Simon did it.

There was a tight feeling coiling itself around Simon’s chest. It was crawling through his throat and forced itself out in an ugly noise. Simon clasped a hand over his mouth before he remembered that no one was home. There was no reason to guard himself so tightly in the place he lived.

Could it even be considered his home if Baz had refused to let him pay even a small portion of the bills? He definitely lived here. He had his own office up the stairs and to the right. He had his own computer and bookcases and shitty romance novels. He had his own collection of video games and the same gaming console he’d had since he was nineteen. It was the first large purchase completely for fun he had made in his undergrad years. It was one of the only things he’d kept that he’d had before he moved in with Baz.

There were so many distinct periods in Simon’s life. He could probably map them out like a smaller version of the geological time scale with every part filled until now. There was the Orphanage Era, with many different and dingy homes filled with an aura of sadness separating themselves into periods. Next was definitely a much smaller time frame: Familial Era. This one had two periods: pre-leaving and post-leaving of his father, a most respected man who couldn’t be bothered with a child while he was off making political ties for himself.

And then…then there was the Baz Era. Pre-Baz was easiest to remember. Those were the months of living off of ramen noodles and Indian takeaway in his and Penny’s shared flat in a shithole complex with a terrifying landlady and more than a few crazy neighbors. Then there was the smidge at the vey end of post-Baz where Simon got the job at the club. He nearly went broke for that fucking awful place. Ven now, Simon could recall the dropping feeling in his stomach as he made the decision to suck it up and take the job, even if it meant paying a ridiculous fee. The first week’s pay would cover it.

The Baz Era was still happening. Now, it was Post-Baz, or at least Post-Meeting-Baz. There were fancy dates and suits and expensive wine bottles all handed on a silver platter to Simon, and he’d honestly not known how to deal with it the first time around. He’d needed to run to the loo and frantically call Penny for advice (to which she’d actually laughed at loud for minutes, and only after she’d calmed down did she actually give proper advice).

And then Baz revealed he was a prince which had sounded like a real-life email scam read off to Simon in Baz’s old apartment, and Simon had laughed and made fun of Baz and told him that he’d never fall for a joke like that. And then it was true. And now he was here, in a too-big apartment with a too-big bed and a too-big anxious ball of something lurking in the back of his mind. It was always there making its little noises of doubt and protest, and Simon did his best to ignore it.

But now…it was starting to seem truer than the truth.

Simon walked up the lavish staircase that had no safety railing up to their bedroom. The bed was empty, and the air was cold. A draft that had no purpose being there swept over him and through the room. There was no life here. This place was cold and dead like the other unused rooms of the flat. There were too many to count, really.

Simon pulled his small duffel bag with pen marks and unintelligible Sharpie writing on it from the closet. He went to his small section where there were graphic tees and old jeans hanging. Baz’s clothes were mostly suits and nice button-ups, and he had only a few pairs of jeans and old shirts. Even then, they were much nicer than Simon’s. That’s just how it usually went.

He slowly packed a pair of underwear, some shirts, and two pairs of jeans. If he had been thinking, Simon might’ve packed some socks or a comb or something, but he just walked into the bathroom and pulled his toothbrush and medication from the countertop. The clanking of the small pills in the bottle was the only indication life was inside this place. Simon couldn’t even hear his own breathing or footsteps over the sound of the anxious ball speaking to him.

Simon zipped up the camo green bag and felt its weight in his hands. It was so fucking light. There should’ve been more things he was itching to pack, but it made him realize that this place was clearly not his. There was no mark of him other than his small wardrobe, toothpaste stains, and occasional pictures in frames that were scattered. His office was hardly filled. Besides his freaking PlayStation, everything there had been handed to him.

He walked down the stairs and found the notepad that both he and Baz used to make shopping lists, and he wrote a small paragraph explaining he was going to Penny’s, that Baz shouldn’t worry, and he’d call him sometime this week. Tentatively, he also wrote that Baz should not come find him. He needed space, and while the flat certainly provided a lot of that, it was more of the kind of space that required a few streets and buildings and people in between it. And Simon hadn’t realized it before, but he was crying. If this felt like the right thing to do, why did it hurt so fucking much?

He closed the flat door behind him and rang a cab.

…

Penny was less than enthusiastic about this.

Simon had explained to her everything that had happened the day before: Baz’s excitement, his own nerves, and the treatment he’d gotten from both the duchess and duke. And then she’d hit him over the head with a spare magazine.

“What the hell, Penny?” Simon asked, his voice shrill. A low throb was sounding off behind his head, and he realized magazines shouldn’t hurt that much.

“You’re a twat, Simon Snow,” she replied, placing her magazine down by her side. Of course, it was one Micah had written in. He was on the front cover in a stylish suit; Simon wanted to ask about that, but something told him now was not the time. “You really left after one day interacting with his parents? I mean,” she stood up and walked into her kitchen where a small window let Simon see her, “it’s not like they’re the final say in what happens between the two of you anyways.”

Simon touched the throbbing spot on his head and said, “It was like being back at that club, except this time, Baz’ father had a true vendetta for me.”

“Look, Simon, you know I’m not gonna sit here and say that job was the best thing that ever happened to you or anything,” she yelled over the screech of the kettle on the stove, “and I’m also not gonna say that what the duke did was fine either.”

She walked back into the sitting room a few minutes later with two steaming cups of tea in her hands. As she sat down, Simon asked, “Then what are you going to say?”

Penny took a long sip of her tea, seeming to think over the question before she answered. “I’m going to say that Baz is a good man and that he’s been very good for you. I’m also going to say that your feelings towards his father are legitimate, but associating those feelings with Baz also is fucking moronic.”

Simon choked on his tea and spat it out in harsh coughs. Penny just sat on her couch and sipped her own tea, waiting for him to stop so she could continue. “Sins of the father, Simon,” was all the explanation she gave. “Sleep on the couch tonight, but I’m making you go and explain yourself tomorrow.”

“I left a note,” Simon mumbled into the couch cushion as Penny threw a fluffy blanket that was perfect-sized for her but too small for him. She purposely aimed the pillow at his head, and Simon could hear her laughing to herself as she walked down the hallway to her bedroom. He put the pillow behind his head and arranged himself so that he was curled on his side and protected by the blanket. As Simon tried to figure out how he could possibly make this up to Baz in the morning he fell asleep. Damn chamomile tea.

…

It felt weird to be knocking on the door to the placed he’d lived for a few years, but it also felt weirder to try and walk in like nothing had happened. Simon had his duffel in his right hand, head hanging as he heard the door open. He was faced with Baz’s cute little bunny slippers where the ears were flopping down nearly into the eyes of the fake animal. It was late at night, and this made it obvious to Simon that Baz had been preparing for bed.

He saw the little slippers move to the side, and (taking that as an invitation to step inside) Simon walked into the flat and turned around, feeling like a child about to be scolded. He’d been in that situation enough times to know what it felt like, but this guilt he felt was much more intense than anything. He’d hit a girl when he was five or so in an orphanage, and even then, this was so much worse. Simon had let down a person he genuinely cared about.

There was an awkward silence between them before Baz finally said, “A note? That’s how you were planning on leaving me?” Simon didn’t try to protest. He had no right to speak. “You didn’t even want me to come fight for you.”

The break let Simon get a word in. “I wasn’t leaving you.”

“Really?” Baz demanded, stomping over to the kitchen island and then coming back with the note in his hand. Simon finally turned his head up, expecting an angry Baz but instead seeing someone virtually broken, and he had done that. “You call this not leaving me? You didn’t call, you didn’t say anything, and you certainly didn’t warn me!!” His voice was shrill and watery, and Simon felt like every little word was a tiny nick at his heart. “Have you got anything to say?” Baz asked.

“Yes,” Simon replied defiantly. “You have no idea what it’s like to face a room of people who automatically hate you! You’ve never had to look people in the face, knowing you’re less than them, knowing you’ll never matter to them, and knowing that no matter what you do or say they will find a way to hate you! I come from nothing!” he yelled, his voice filling the empty space around them and echoing back.

Simon was furious. He stomped away from the kitchen and up the stairs, making sure that each of his steps echoed around him. He could hear Baz walking behind him, but he still slammed the bedroom door shut and threw his duffel at the wall, screaming angrily. He felt like a total teenager in his range, and he wasn’t even sure why he was so angry. Simon lifted a hand to his cheek and realized he was crying. Fuck, he thought. How was he supposed to stay mad if he couldn’t even keep himself together?

The door opened behind him, and Simon turned to see Baz in his fucking robe and bunny slippers, and this felt like the first fight they’d ever had: Simon was crying, Baz was balling his fists at his sides, and the room was charged with electricity. Simon desperately wanted to reach out and kiss Baz, but his fiancé beat him to it.

This also felt like the first fight they’d ever had. It always ended in sex. It could be angry sex or sappy sex or emotional sex or all three, and Simon wasn’t complaining in the slightest.

It was easy to push Baz’s robe off, and then it was Simon’s turn to be naked. And this was the part that always went slow because Simon was always shy and tried to cover himself, but then Baz would kiss his neck and collarbones and every fucking mole on his body. It was the type of care and adoration like this that made Simon cry harder. And Baz kissed his tears away then.

“You can’t leave me, Simon Snow,” Baz whispered in his ear, and Simon nodded. One hand was threaded in Baz’s hair, and Baz was hovering above him. They were both naked now, and the warmth of Baz’s skin against the chill of his own reminded Simon how much he loved this…how much he loved Baz.

“I won’t,” Simon whispered back minutes later when his brain decided to work again. Feeling Baz thrust his fingers inside his body always made him sluggish. It was all Simon could do to make his lips form around the words and push the sound out. Besides that, there were just little breathy moans and whimpers when Baz’s finger would brush against his prostate. It was always slow in this stage. Baz treated him well and never did anything without permission.

As Baz put a condom on and leaned over Simon, pressing the head of his prick right against Simon, Baz asked permission, and Simon melted, collecting Baz in his arms and pressing his face into the crook of Baz’s neck. Baz begin to slowly thrust, hearing the punched-out moans right in his ear. Simon could feel his nails digging tracks into Baz’s back. A tight heat was coiling itself in the bottom of Simon’s belly just minutes in, and it truly reminded himself of how long it had been since they’d properly had time to fuck. As Baz was thrusting harder inside him, Simon was crying again, holding Baz’s back and keeping his legs wrapped around Baz’s waist. Simon could feel the muscles contrasting in Baz’s lower back as he got closer, and Simon came first, crying out into Baz’s shoulder.

When the room calmed down, Simon was able to stop crying, though he was still trying to get a handle on his breathing. His bottom lip was still being sucked into his mouth as he breathed, and when he finally did calm down completely, Simon tentatively curled himself up into Baz’s side, and Baz wrapped both arms around him.

#snowbaz #simon snow #baz pitch #carry on #rainbow rowell #SnowBaz fanfic #SnowBaz fanfiction #SnowBaz au #au #alternate universe #SnowBaz alternate universe #fluff #smut #angst #gay

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calliopesquill · 6 years

Text

A Year in the Life - Chapter 1

Cross-posted on AO3.

It’s been almost two years since Miguel’s adventure in the Land of the Dead. Music has been returned to the Rivera family and everything is going great. But why does Miguel keep dreaming about the bridge? And why is this strange tourist asking him about astral projection?

Nell is a graphic novel artist who has come to Santa Cecilia in search of inspiration. What she finds is a strange boy with a marigold glow and strange abilities that he is only starting to realize.

When an old grudge rears its head and Miguel is stolen back across the marigold bridge it is up to Nell and the Rivera clan to bring him back before it’s too late.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Year in the Life

Chapter 1: New Arrival

Santa Cecilia was a postcard.

That was Nell’s first thought as the cab wound its way through the small town. With its colorful buildings and half-paved streets, it could have belonged in any decade at all from the last hundred and fifty years, with only a few hints of modernity. This was a place that moved at its own pace, that respected tradition as much as convenience.

This was exactly the atmosphere Nell was looking for, the perfect setting for her next novel. Well, graphic novel. With a mini-series, a stand-alone graphic novel, and a recently-complete web-series under her belt, Nell was more than eager to start her next project.

There was a kind of familial nostalgia that brought her to Mexico from her home in western Canada. Her great-grandparents had emigrated north at the turn of the century to settle in Montana. Their own children had continued the journey, living a couple of years in Vancouver before eventually settling in Kelowna. Though the small village that her ancestors had once called home no longer existed, Nell could feel the spirit of them here and hoped that the months she planned to spend in Santa Cecilia would help her reconnect with her roots as well as provide the inspiration she needed for her upcoming book.

She had the look of her grandmother when she was young, with soft brown skin and thick chestnut-colored hair. She’d gotten the color from her mom’s side, but the unruly waves of it definitely came from her dad. Most of the time she kept it tied back with some thick ribbon or in a braid of some kind, just to keep it out of her face. The light scattering of freckles that dotted her face came from his side as well. She dressed for comfort as much as style in a pair of cropped blue floral-print leggings and a white sleeveless tunic with crocheted lace insets. The sky-blue sweater she had worn for warmth on the plane was tucked away in her purse, unneeded in the heat of the late-afternoon sun.

Her fingers itched for her pencil as the taxi’s route took them through the town square, her toe tapping to the beat of the song that played through the crackling radio. The driver turned left down a street marked with a shoe, reaching to turn the music down as he did so.

Nell shifted in her seat, moving to gather her purse and carry-on, thinking they might be close, but the driver turned down another street and turned the volume back up again. His passenger gave him a strange look as she released her purse strap. What was that about?

The driver must have caught a glimpse of her expression in the rear-view mirror as he gave a casual shrug. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Pardon?”

The man shuddered and said something about “la chancela”. Whatever that meant.

Nell’s spanish was passable, the result of a few solid months of binge-studying and review with her mother’s parents. Slang, however, was something she still struggled with. She was pretty sure that a “chancela” was a sandal, but why would someone be afraid of a shoe?

The cab slowed to a stop in front of a three-story building painted a cheerful orange. Nell checked the address on her phone against the map she’d been following and smiled. She was finally here.

Nell stepped out of the car as the driver moved to the trunk to retrieve her butterfly-printed suitcase. She’d packed lightly for this leg of the trip, taking only one piece of luggage with her on the plane. The old steamer trunk that carried the rest of her things she’d shipped off a few days ago, and would be arriving later in the week.

She paid the driver, then moved to knock on the front door, trading the sunglasses that she was wearing for the regular prescription glasses that she had stashed in the case in her purse.

The woman who answered it barely came up to Nell’s chin. She was slight, almost birdlike, the image only enhanced by the bright peacock blue of her day dress. Her dark hair was streaked with grey, tied back in a loose tail.

“Siñora Montero?” Nell asked.

“Si!” The woman smiled. “Ah, you are Penelope, yes? Bienvenedo! Please, come in.”

Nell tried not to flinch at the use of her full name. “Ah, gracias. And please, call me Nell.” Only her grandparents called her Penelope. Growing up everyone else had called her “Penny”, but she decided to start going by “Nell” once she started university. But Siñora Montero had refused to call her anything but her full name since seeing her identification early on in their correspondence.

Her landlady continued to chatter cheerfully as she led her inside. “I see you made good time on your flight. My son, he lives in Mexico City, and he flies all over for work. I do not like planes. I would much rather keep my feet on the ground. Come, I will show you to your room.”

“Thank you, Siñora.”

Her landlady waved her off. “No no no. None of this formality. You will call me Tia, or Tia Caro. We are family while you stay with us.”

“Oh, um…. Okay. Gracias, Tia.”

The apartment she would be renting for the next few months was on the second floor. It was more like a bachelor’s suite, with the bedroom and living room sharing the central space, and a small kitchenette off to one side with a stove and a sink and a small refrigerator. If she needed any more space, Tia Caro told her, she was free to use the main kitchen on the ground floor. Oh, and she hoped that Nell would join them for dinner, as the tenants all ate dinner together most nights.

The furnishings were simple, with a wood-framed couch set against the end of the double bed in the center of the room, a couple of end tables, and a kitchen table with two chairs off to the side. The walls were painted bright white, contrasting with the muted orange of the floor tiles. A pair of hand-knotted rugs framed the bed, a third spread under the coffee table in front of the couch. The windows, Nell was told, could be opened, but did not have a screen. She should make sure that they were locked overnight, or if she was going out for the day.

“Ah, but you are tired after your long trip. I will leave you to settle in and you will join us for dinner tonight, si?”

‘Tired’ was a bit of an understatement. Flying was approximately equivalent to the seventh circle of Hell to someone like Nell, who was prone to debilitating motion sickness. The Gravol that she’d dosed herself with that morning had become her best friend by the end of the day, allowing her to sleep through most of the flight.

“Ah, si. Gracias, Tia Caro.”

“Ah, de nada!” Caro smiled. “Here, I will leave your keys on the counter. The square one is for the front door, and the round one is for your apartment. If you have any questions at all, I will be downstairs.”

Nell saw her landlady out and locked the door behind her. She didn’t bother unpacking, didn’t even take off her little ballet flats. She barely managed to shuffle over to the bed and fall face-down on the covers before falling into an exhausted sleep.

Nell was awoken some time later by a knock on the door. From the sound of it, they might have been knocking for a while. She surfaced blearily, rubbing her eyes with one hand, knocking her glasses askew.

“Penelope, are you awake?”

“Ah…. yeah. Si. I’m awake.” Mostly.

“Supper will be on the table in a few minutes if you want to join us downstairs.”

Nell’s stomach grumbled loudly in response. “I’ll be right down. Gracias, Si— ah… Tia Caro.”

As the sound of her landlady’s footsteps retreated down the stairs, Nell glanced around. Some time during her nap she had kicked off her shoes and wrapped herself up in the covers like a human burrito. She ran one hand absently through her hair, finding it escaping from its braid in mad, staticy frizz. Nell released the braid with a sigh, combing through the tangles with her fingers. That seemed to only make it worse so she dug her comb out of her carry-on to attempt to tame the beast before she met the rest of the residents.

She knew from earlier emails that most of the people who lived in the building were related to Caro in some way. The non-family tenants lived on the second floor with Nell.

It appeared that most of them had already gathered in the dining room by the time Nell had made her way down. She could hear them from the stairwell, a cacophony of loud voices carrying snippets of conversation that she only half-understood.

Tia Caro reigned over the kitchen with a wooden spoon and a floral-printed apron. A younger woman – her daughter? – followed behind her with a giant tray heaped with tamales that she placed in the center of the gigantic dining room table. Three young girls, the oldest maybe eight years old, were seated between their parents at one end of the table. Two older gentlemen, one with a truly impressive greying moustache, sat across from them. There was also a middle-aged couple and another older women in a white blouse and purple skirt seated next to them.

The landlady grinned when she saw her. “Ah, Penelope! You are awake! Come, come! Join us. Everyone, this is Penelope, our newest tenant. Penelope, mi familia. My daughter Esperanza and her husband, Juan, and their girls, Maria, Anabel, and Lia. Across from them is Antonio, and Carlos. My sister, Lucia, is there at the end of the table with Nico and Renata.”

Unsure how she was going to keep all of their names straight, Nell waved. “Nice to meet you all. Is there anything else that needs to be grabbed from the kitchen, Tia Caro?”

“No no, everything is here. Come, sit!” Caro insisted. “We will get to know you.”

The moment Nell sat down she found herself loaded with questions, her plate loaded with food.

“So Nell, what brings you to Santa Cecilia?” Lucia asked

“Do you have family here?”

“Of course she doesn’t, Carlos. If she did she would be staying with them.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe they don’t have room.”

“Familia es familia. There is always room.”

“Why is your accent funny?” That one from the middle of the sisters – Anabel?

“Woah, woah! One at a time,” Nell laughed. “First, please call me Nell. Penelope makes me feel like an old Victorian lady.”

“But it is such a lovely name!” Renata protested as she served herself from a plate of arroz con pollo.

“Gracias– Renata was it?”

“Si.”

“Gracias, Renata.” Nell said with a nod. “I like it too, but I feel like it’s a little mature for me, you know? For now, I think ‘Nell’ suits me better. I came to Santa Cecilia because I’m doing some research for a new project. I don’t have any family nearby, or at least none that I’m aware of.”

“You are family while you are here,” Caro said with a kind smile from across the table. “Penelope is a very talented artist.”

“A real artist or one of the ones who scribbles on a blank canvas and calls it art?” Antonio asked from behind his giant moustache, flinching away with a sharp ‘ay’ when Caro clipped the back of his head with her hand. “Just asking…”

“I’d call myself a real artist,” Nell answered evenly. “But I suppose that would depend on if you consider graphic novels to be art.”

Maria, the eldest of the girls, raised her hand as if she was in school, waving it in the air. “Ooh! Ooh! What’s a graphic novel?”

“Graphic novels are like….Como lo dices… big, fancy comic books. I have four out in total right now, and an online series that I’ve just finished that will be released in hard-copy volumes in a few weeks.”

“Chido!” The little girl declared. “Can I see? I wanna read comics!”

Nell hesitated. Her work tended to be a little more PG-13 than Maria’s parents might approve of. Shooting them a quick glance, she made a mental note to let them take a look before they let the kids read them. “Ah… I have a couple copies up in my room. But I can show you some of the pictures later if you want.”

“SI!”

Nell slept late the next morning. Having stayed up late into the night getting to know the other residents, she felt she deserved a bit of a lie-in. Today was for settling in and exploring the town where she would be living for the next few months.

And, she thought as her stomach growled at her, getting some groceries.

But first, a shower. After spending most of the day before travelling, Nell was feeling more than a little scuzzy and was eager to test out the shower in the bathroom that was opposite the kitchen. It was narrow enough that Nell could have rapped her elbows against each of the tiled walls – something she did entirely by accident while she washed the soap out of her hair.

Refreshed, Nell stepped out of the shower to dry off. Drying her hair was a battle she simply did not feel like fighting today, so she did the best she could with her towel and spent the next few minutes muttering curses as she tried to fight a comb through the tangles. Then she twisted it up out of the way in a messy ballet bun, securing it in place with a large hooked hairstick.

That done, she pulled a bottle of sunscreen from the drawer under the sink. If she didn’t want to turn into a walking sunburned freckle within five minutes of being outside, she was going to have to make sure she covered herself before she left the building. With this in mind, she double-checked her purse for the smaller, travel-sized bottle that she had packed with her.

Her outfit for the day was a split-back apricot-colored tee-shirt printed with little rainbows, paired with mint green capris and a pair of heather grey ballet flats.

As Nell double-checked her purse, she heard the chime of incoming mail on her phone, and smiled when she saw that the message was from her parents.

Hi honey!

Glad to see you’ve arrived safely. Loved the pictures of your new place. It’s so cute! I can’t wait to see how it looks once the rest of your stuff arrives.

Do you know when your trunk is supposed to get there? Dad is worried that it might get lost in transit. Do you still have your tracking number?

We have been looking up Santa Cecilia on google and it looks like such a cute little place! I am sure you will find lots of inspiration for your book there.

Dad’s been learning to use the Skype on his phone. He’s almost got the hang of it now. We will give you a call later tonight and you can give us all the details!

Have fun! Be safe.

Love,

Mom and Dad.

Nell chuckled, shaking her head as she typed out a response. Her dad was fairly helpless when it came to technology, her mom not much better. Until recently email had been the extent of their expertise. The idea of her parents im-ing or attempting a video chat was just funny.

Hi Mom,

I checked the tracking when I got up this morning. My trunk should be arriving tomorrow afternoon.

I’m heading out for groceries right now. My landlady gave me directions to the market so I’m going to grab some bruch and explore a bit this afternoon.

I will call you tonight and spam you with tourist pictures.

Love you!

Nell

Message sent, Nell tucked her phone into her purse, grabbed her keys from the kitchen counter, and headed out.

She might have gotten lost once or twice but she did eventually locate the post office, the grocery store, and a little bakery that she couldn’t resist. With a paper bag full of breakfast pastries, Nell wandered off down the street.

She must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because instead of finding the grocery store, Nell found herself in a wide stone plaza with a large wooden gazebo erected in the center. A sort of farmer’s market was set up around the perimeter against the backdrop of an old church with a tall bell tower. There were people everywhere, haggling over produce, drinking coffee at the little cafe, or catching up with their neighbours on the latest goings-on in town.

Nell immediately lamented leaving her sketchbook at home. This was exactly what she had been looking for when she came to Santa Cecilia. This sense of tradition married with modernity, and a sense of timelessness behind the daily hustle and bustle. She could spend days sketching here, capturing the imposing sweep of the bell tower, the bright paper banners that criss-crossed between the buildings.

Oh, and the music! Nell’s exposure to mariachi was fairly minimal, but there was something truly incredible about seeing a performance in person. It was the perfect backdrop to the scene.

Nell immediately wanted to get a closer look at their costumes, drawn to the contrast of the gold braid against the deep blue of their charo suits.

All except for one, a kid who looked like he might have just started high school, dressed in worn jeans and a white tee shirt. His fingers flew over the strings of a pearl-white guitar, picking out a complicated melody that blended perfectly with the other band members.

He played well, she thought. For someone so young. And given the ease of which he played off of the other musicians and engaged the small crowd that had gathered to watch them, he was no stranger to performing.

But what really caught her attention was the glow.

An aura of golden orange surrounded the boy, flaring around him as he played, visible even in the bright glare of the sun.

Well, visible to Nell at least. Seeing auras was not entirely new to her, though it wasn’t something she experienced very often. But never in her life had she been able to see one so clearly, and never under direct sunlight!

Damn, who is this kid?

The band finished with a flourish and a series of loud, ringing gritos that had Nell jolting.

How did they even make that sound?

Nell shook her head. Not important. What was supposed to be doing again? Right. Getting groceries. Well, at least she was in the right place for that.

She left the plaza a short time later, wondering if Tia Caro would let her keep some of her purchases in the main fridge as she might have overestimated how much food her little fridge would hold.

And if she got turned around a couple more times on the way back home, well the only one who would know that was her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope you’ve enjoyed the first chapter of A Year in the Life! I’ve got a lot of fun stuff planned for this fic and my goal is to release a new chapter every week or so.

This chapter was much more Nell-centric just to give you all the chance to get to know her, and I will be introducing POV sections for Miguel and the rest of the Riveras as the story goes on.

If you want to follow the fic on AO3 as well, you can do so here.

Also I am searching for a beta reader to help me edit and to bounce ideas off of, so if you are interested please pm me and let me know!

Thanks for reading!

#coco #disney coco #pixar coco #coco fanfiction #fanfiction #miguel rivera #hector rivera #rivera family #cross posted on ao3

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slartifartbast · 3 years

Text

True story time! Mostly depressing, but some sexy stuff happens.

An evening of firsts

CW: Depression, explicit sexual content, internalized fatphobia, severe self-loathing & insecurity, STDs, uhhh, and if you think of something else that belongs here, please let me know so I can add it.

I’m giving my friend the pseudonym Leeta because she is, in fact, smoking hot, and she spent some time working as a burlesque dancer.

Before we get to the juicy details, the plodding backstory!

Late summer, 2002, Brooklyn, NY. It was my second year of renting a bedroom in a 4-story brownstone house near what is now referred to as the Atlantic Barclay’s Terminal. I was 23 years old and feeling somewhat secure in my place in the city again. I had a full time job, a relatively short commute, and had some spending money. I was thinking about “thinking about” dating. Spent some downtime at work looking at the Onion’s personals site, and realizing that there’s no way any of the women there would find me interesting (the dull personality persists).

One of the other rooms in the house had become vacant, and so Leeta applied. She was a 20 year old student at a nearby college. Imagine, if you will, Christina Hendricks’ physique and complexion. Morph Christina Hendricks’s face about 1/3 of the way to Kristen Schaal’s face, and you now can imagine Leeta perfectly.

The landlady had one major rule for the house: no fucking. She’s not getting any, so no one else is, either. Anywhere else, fine, just not here.

That was a rule I had no problem obeying. Hindsight tells me I had a reason to break that rule many times over. But we’re not there yet in the story.

Leeta and I became close friends. We’d watch movies together, hang out a bit after work/school, whatever. When the landlady went away on vacation, Leeta would platonically share my bed. If it was summer, I had the A/C. Winter, an electric blanket. The first time, I asked if I could cuddle with her. She found this endearing and consented. After a few minutes, she said “you’re not very good at this; where’s your legs?”

“To be embarrassingly honest, I’ve never been this close to anyone before, and I’m completely aroused. You didn’t sign up to deal with that.”

She grabbed a spare pillow to put between us, I got closer, and we fell asleep. So that was our relationship. Caring, affectionate, with some teasing here and there about my utter lack of experience. We supported each other when we had romantic prospects.

A year later, the landlady decided to retire and sell the house. We moved out, went our separate ways, hanging out once in a while. I still had all kinds of feelings for her, but never made them known. We went to the movies once, and she did the “yawn, stretch, arm around the shoulders” thing to me. I blushed, smiled, and held her hand. At dinner afterward, she showed me a portfolio booklet that she had modeled for. The cover was a picture of her, nude, laying in a bathtub. Just full frontal everything. I lost the capacity to speak for a few minutes. Upon recovering, I managed to compliment how the angle, composition, and lighting perfectly captured her delectable curves. We hung out a few more times, but eventually lost touch for a couple of years.

I was dealing with depression, anxiety, and self-loathing. I got back into the habit of eating my feelings. There was someone else I was developing a friendship with, who seemed to be interested in more, but by the time I figured that out, she had moved on to another guy in our circle of friends. I was devastated and miserable and withdrawn and just completely fucking hated myself. At this point, I was working second shift and the idea of dating was HARD. There were attempts, but I never knew what to say or do. My inbox was always empty. On a whim, at the end of 2006, I emailed Leeta to see what she was up to.

A week later, she responded: “Call me.”

And so I did! We agreed that she’d meet me at my job the next day around 7 PM, because we’d be alone by that time of day. I reminded her that my boss has an unpredictable habit of leaving work at 6, going home from Manhattan to New Jersey for a few hours, and then returning for no apparent reason.

Leeta showed up at just the right time and we greeted each other with a warm hug. We caught up on what she had been up to. She got on my computer and pulled up a website with pics of her at work, dancing in various states of undress. I tactfully complimented her, and eventually she changed the subject to me. I explained why I was in a bad way.

She took my hand, and lead me to the day-glow orange IKEA foldout couch, and sat me down. She turned away from me and began dancing. Then she sat on my lap and started grinding.

“Leeta, despite what you can feel through our pants...if this is out of pity, I don’t want it.”

She got up, turned around, mounted me face to face, took off her shirt, pulled her breasts out of her bra, and pulled my head to her chest. Hearing and feeling her heart beat, I kissed my way up to her collarbone, neck, and face. When I got to her lips, she hesitated. Her fingers ran through my hair as I held her other hand, and I asked her to please kiss me back.

28 goddamn years old, and begging for my first kiss.

After a moment, she did. Deeply, passionately. Her tongue surprised me, becoming a tornado around my own while she went back to grinding and groping me. She sat up a little, pushed my face between her breasts, and I worshipped them for what felt like either an eternity, or 0.68 seconds. I could have spent the rest of the night doing so, but my attention was eventually needed elsewhere.

“Mmmm, I’m wet. Here, feel.”

I obliged, because I’m a dutiful scientist. It’s really difficult to reach down someone’s jeans when they’re sitting on your lap. She unbuttoned and unzipped, and I was able to verify her condition.

We stood up. I pulled out and unfolded the couch while she took off her shoes & pants. She laid down and I got on top, kissing and licking from her head down to her toes, pausing briefly at her hips to slowly pull off her underwear. On my way back up, she opened her legs and guided my hand. I’d seen enough educational porn to understand what she wanted. I “come hithered” until she couldn’t take it any more, slurped her juices from my fingers, and went right back at it. By the 7th or 8th time, she was convulsing and grabbing at me. We kissed as she came down from the high. She got up on her knees, bent over and proclaimed, “I like it rough. Spank me?” I admired, caressed, squeezed, kissed, licked, and finally spanked her glorious ass. I moved to a better angle so I could finger and spank at the same time. I don’t get the whole pain/pleasure thing, but she certainly enjoyed herself.

It was then that Leeta noticed that I was still fully clothed. Not even slightly unbuttoned. I was (am) terribly uneasy about being naked with anyone, even with someone who wanted me. My face and body look like sacks of potatoes, and I felt unworthy of proceeding further. On top of that, I didn’t want to lose my virginity in my office, surrounded by dust and fumes, where my boss could return at any moment and I’d lose my job.

Unfortunately, she internalized my insecurity. “Is it because I’m ugly?” she asked.

“I’m the ugly one here. I’m so grateful to be with you, but this place is disgusting, my boss could be here soon, and I don’t have a condom. Your place or mine?”

“I can’t, I have to go to work.”

“How much do you need for tonight’s shift? I can cover you. Please, I want to be with you.”

“That’s not it; if I don’t show up, they won’t let me come back.”

I gathered up her clothes and “helped” her get dressed, kissing her all over. When she was ready to go, we embraced and made out for another minute. She proposed a FWB situation, to which I agreed.

Looking back, I realize this was out of insecurity, and she possibly wanted more. If she had asked, I would have said yes. I just didn’t know better at the time.

I let her go, and texted her as she left the building. “You’re wonderful, I can’t wait to see you again.”

I finished my shift uninterrupted, went home floating, and did some...“scientific research”.

I didn’t hear from her for weeks. The first week, I texted her every day. The messages quickly transitioned from Thirsty to Worried. After getting no response, I gave up.

Another week or so passed, and I sent a “I miss you, I hope you’re okay” text.

Finally, a response: “I have herpes.”

“Funny! Seriously, it’s ok if you don’t want to sleep with me. I can take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“I’m not kidding.”

I was not well. I was sad and angry, mostly for selfish reasons. I kept it all in, though, figuring she was going through enough stuff. I took her to dinner that weekend, and she explained what happened.

Leeta felt rejected because I didn’t have sex with her in my office. After her shift, she met a guy on the train ride home. He seemed nice. She went home with him, slept with him, spent a lot of time with him. A week later, she was at Planned Parenthood for an exam, pointed to a sore, and asked a nurse, “what’s that?”

She went to the guy, who had no idea. He had been kicked out of a very strict, religious, and anti-science (also, anti-“science”) home at an early age, had no knowledge about, well, anything. She decided to help him get his shit together. We parted that night, and I hugged her for what was probably an inappropriate amount of time.

A few months of friendly texting followed, and eventually Leeta expressed the idea of setting me up with one of her friends. The three of us would meet at a jazz club, with Leeta as a mutual wingwoman. “Denise” was super cute, and we had some common interests. It was awkward at first, but we had a good time. We shared a cab home because we lived on opposite ends of the same neighborhood. Sadly, Denise and I had opposing work schedules, and despite my efforts, we never saw each other again. It was also the last time I saw or heard from Leeta.

I have missed her ever since. But more selfishly, I miss the way I felt when I was with her. With Leeta, I never felt any kind of pressure to work and earn her affection; it was just there, and I reciprocated it. I never had a relationship like that since.

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fluffyllamas-23 · 6 years

Text

Yes, hello, hi, it’s @taylor-tut‘s birthday, and she deserves all of the happiness and celebration in the world.

Paisley feels like she’s on the verge of a mental breakdown. School and work have been hectic, leaving her with little to no time to sleep, and she’s exhausted. To top it all off, Logan, who keeps her sane, is away for a week and a half on a family camping trip. He had asked if she wanted to come, but as much as it sucked to say no, she couldn’t afford to spend that much time without service. So, she and Ashton decided to use this time to finally hang out, because it’s been way too long since they’d actually spent time together.

The week had come and gone, and before Paisley knows it, it’s eight PM on a Friday night, and she’s ready to forget all of her responsibilities and just relax. Lord knows she needs it.

She walks through their apartment, and Ashton, who’s been waiting for this moment for the last twenty minutes, launches herself onto Paisley’s back.

“Yo, Logan is great and all…but I’ve missed you, and that butthead has been stealing you from me,” Ashton says, wrapping her arms around Paisley’s neck.

“Ashton, you fat ass, get off,” Paisley grunts, staggering under Ashton’s weight.

“I am not fat, you jerk. Anyways,” she says, climbing off of Paisley, “did you read the email she sent us.”

“Who’s ‘she'?” Paisley asks, rubbing her eyes tiredly.

“Um…the um…the landlady,” Ashton says, gesturing wildly.

Paisley raises a brow, “dude, we’ve lived here how long, and you still refer to Jackie as ‘the landlady’?”

“…In my defense you know I’m bad with names. Whatever, did you read the email she sent us?”

“No…haven’t had time. What’d it say?”

“There’s gonna be construction for the next few days and they might have to cut the power.”

“Great,” Paisley groans.

“Yeah…it sucks…okay, off topic, but can we please have a girls’ night? I bought wine.”

Paisley grins, “um, yes.”

Ashton’s face lights up, “I have face masks too! Oh! Oh! Oh! WE NEED TO GO TO THE STORE!”

Paisley’s eyes widen, “WHAT, WHY? AND WHY ARE WE YELLING?”

“Because we need to go raid Target.”

“Um,” Paisley blinks, stifling a yawn, “not sure why that required yelling, but alright. What do we need at Target?”

Ashton grins, “junk food. ALL of it.”

“Yes. Perfect, who’s driving?”

“I will, you look dead on your feet, dude.”

“I’m just a little tired.”

Ashton narrows her eyes, “when’s the last time you’ve even slept?”

“Um…it’s been a day…or two…I can’t remember.”

“Paisley.”

“What? I had papers to write.”

Ashton rolls her eyes, “let’s just go, you ready?”

Paisley and Ashton are cuddled up to each other, shivering beneath a pile of blankets. The power had gone out an hour and a half ago, and taken the heat with it, so they were watching Netflix on Paisley’s laptop. Open bags of chips and candy are scattered on the coffee table and floor, their half-empty glasses of wine have been abandoned in favor of staying completely covered by the blanket.

“We shoulda bought a space heater or s-something,” Ashton shivers.

Paisley scrunches her nose, sniffling slightly before she ducks her head into the blankets, “Ihn’gstch! N’gstch! *snff* Mmm…yeah, I agree…s’cold.”

“Bless you…you okay? You’ve been sniffling all night.”

Paisley nods and nuzzles her face into the blanket with a sniffle, “it’s just cold…s’messing with my sinuses.”

“You mean you're sick.”

“Um, no. That’s not what I meant.”

Ashton rolls her eyes, Paisley has been sounding like she was coming down with something for a few days now, and she’s sure that this is just going to kickstart whatever it is.

“Dude, you’re sick.”

“No…s’just cold,” Paisley murmurs sleepily, drooping over until she’s curled up on the couch and completely covered by the blankets.

“Alright…well, you should go to…” Ashton pulls the blankets down past Paisley’s face and she chuckles lightly when she sees that Paisley’s already fast asleep. “Well, you lasted longer than I thought you would,” Ashton whispers, patting Paisley’s shoulder fondly before turning her attention back to the screen.

The sound of a jackhammer yanks Ashton from her sleep, it’s still dark out, but she has no idea what time it is. She looks down, expecting Paisley to be up and awake, because she’s the lightest sleeper on the planet.

Except, Paisley is still fast asleep in the same position she fell asleep in, and Ashton feels a spike of panic when she realizes that Paisley is probably dead. That’s really the only reason why the construction work hadn’t woken her up yet.

Or…

Ashton hesitantly feels Paisley’s cheek, and then inhales sharply at rolling heat that meets the back of her fingers.

“Dude, dude, dude, dude,” Ashton says, shaking Paisley, “wake up.”

After a few moments, Paisley groans weakly and attempts to bat Ashton’s hand away.

“Go ‘way…mb’sleepind’.”

“Are you okay?” Ashton asks, sitting up.

Paisley shivers, and grimaces at the sharp pounding in her head, “umb…c-cand I have s-sombe Advil?”

“You’re sick.”

“I’mb just t…heh…hih’ngxcht! Nngsh! *snff* ohhh…mby heeeeead,” she moans, coughing lightly.

“That’s the fever,” Ashton says, eyebrows knitting together, “you sound awful.”

“I have to study,” Paisley groans, her face crumpling as she stifles another trio of congested sneezes.

“You have a fever. You need to sleep.”

“I’mb sure it’s ndot that high.”

Ashton quirks a brow and holds a thermometer up, “I’m about to call your bluff.”

Paisley frowns, “where’d that combe fromb?”

“…I just went and grabbed it. You stared at me while I was getting it, too.”

“I…huh?”

“Damn, how high is it?” Ashton hisses, sticking the thermometer in her ear.

“Ash?”

“Yes?”

“I dond’t feel well…I wandt Logand…he mbakes everythindg better,” Paisley sniffles, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I know,” Ashton sighs, and stares at the thermometer, “and I know that a one hundred and-whoa…I know a one hundred and three degree fever can’t feel good…but hey, you have me. I’ll get you better.”

“Everythindg hurts,” Paisley mumbles.

“How about some medicine?”

“How ‘bout and axe to the head?”

“Sorry, dude. No can do.”

Paisley hides her head under the pillow with a tired groan.

Paisley is sitting up on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket as she blinks tiredly at Ash. She insists on studying, although Ash isn’t sure why.

“Are you sure about this? You should definitely be sleeping right now.”

She sniffles and rubs her eyes. She blinks once, “what?”

“Alright, how exactly do you plan on studying when you can hardly focus on our conversation?”

She grins lazily after a beat, “you’re goindg to help…will you? Umb…help me, I mbeand.”

“You already asked.”

“…I did?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Oh…sorry.”

Paisley watches Ashton through heavy lids as she struggles to stay awake.

“It’s okay…just…I’m going to get everything set up, and then I’ll make you some tea, and we’ll get started, yeah?”

“Okay…that sounds like a pland…but…uh…” black dots dance in her vision, and she squeezes her eyes shut with a weak shake of her head.

“Paisley?” Ashton frowns, pressing her hand to her friend’s forehead, “you okay?”

“Mb’finde…dizzy.”

Paisley sounds like she’s just barely hanging onto consciousness, her words are slurring together and it sounds like her tongue is sticking to the rood of her mouth.

“Alright, it’s bed time.”

Paisley blinks heavily, her expression slowly changing into one of rage. Except, the rage is muted by her glassy, fever bright eyes and bright red flush across her cheeks.

“You said you’d help mbe study.”

“Yeah, and that was before you looked like you were about to pass the hell out. Come on, you need to sleep. You can study when you’re feeling better.”

“I-“

“-I swear to God that if you don’t lie down and sleep, I will tie you to your fucking bed.”

Paisley sighs and drops down on her side, tugging the blanket tighter around her shoulders, “I’mb just gonnda ndap…wake mbe up ind like…twendty mbindutes.”

“Okay,” Ashton says, not wanting to argue with her.

She has no plans on waking Paisley up though, and instead she tucks her in and pats her burning cheek gently before getting up and walking into the kitchen.

#HAPPY BIRTHDAAAAAY #I apologize for this shitty fic lol but I hope you liked it #i also hope you have a great day <3 #platonic lady friendship whump #OCs #also shoutout to collegeanon-sickfics for her prompt list

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itispossibleihaveissues · 7 years

Text

Another Perfect Catastrophe -7

AUTHOR: Mikimoo PAIRING: JayDick RATING: Mature

WARNINGS: Non Consensual drug use, Non Consensual touching, Non Consensual kissing, humour, slight mayhem

SUMMARY: Dick goes undercover as himself in order to catch a gang of international thieves. Jason reluctantly tags along as his long suffering bodyguard. During the ensuing mayhem they get to know each other again and build a few bridges.

Thank you to burkesl17 for the beta!

Notes: An embarrassingly long time ago, the amazing and very, very talented Pentapus invited me to do a reverse bang style exchange, and drew me an amazing prompt. I have no idea how this story was the one that emerged from the many options I had, but such is the creative process I guess! Anyhoo, many thanks to Pentapus for both encouragement and patience, and of course the incredible art! (which will be included at the end of the appropriate chapter)

Chapters: 1, 2, 3 4 5 6

GO HERE FOR THE AMAZING ART BY THE AWESOME PENTAPUS!

“Nice undies.”

Jason blinked his eyes open to see a gray haired, wind bitten man looking down at him. “Not really the weather for skinny dipping though,” the man continued, thoughtfully.

Jason attempted to say 'what?' but all that came out was, “Nugh?”

“Rough night was it? You're lucky you didn't freeze to death down here.”

“Huh?” Jason's head was throbbing and felt like it was full of cotton wool. He was becoming increasingly aware that he was freezing his balls off, though. He appeared to be on a beach, dressed only in an undersized t-shirt and a pair of Wonder Women boxers. Beside him, Dick was wearing even less, just underwear and bruises. That triggered a flash of memory. Garner striking Dick's face, and Jason snapping the fuckers neck. He couldn't remember getting here though, and he was suddenly afraid Dick wasn't breathing. He made the mistake of trying to sit up.

“Christ,” he said, swallowing bile. He squinted at Dick and felt a rush of relief when he realised he could see the steady rise and fall of his chest.

This was worse than his most appalling hangover, but he managed to flail an arm out and poke Dick on an unbruised part of his face.

“Eughh,” Dick said, eloquently, rolling over and squinting blearily at him. “Why?” he moaned, and he sounded as piteous as Jason felt. Dick flopped back over and looked up at the man, still calmly watching them, sipping from the big blue mug he was holding. “Are you Captain Briton?” Dick asked, groggily.

The man laughed, “No, son. I'm Peter Hobson from the White Hart. What were you boys drinking last night?”

“A brew straight from Satan's ass,” Dick muttered, unhappily. Hobson laughed again, louder.

“Well, come on back to the Hart and have a cup of tea to warm you up. You can't go wandering around town dressed like that.”

“Thanks,” Jason groaned, attempting to get to his feet without falling over. He vaguely remembered swimming, and feeling euphoric. But now everything hurt and he wasn't sure what exactly he should be doing, other than sleeping off whatever shitty chemicals were working there way out of his bloodstream. He leaned down to offer Dick a hand up, managing to avoid vomiting on him when the world spun sickeningly for a moment. Dick whimpered but gained his feet, holding on to Jason's arm in a weak grip. Together the staggered after Hobson as he lead them back up the beach.

The White Hart turned out to be an old, quaint inn, with a rustic hearth and sea views. Dick somehow managed to turn on the charm, despite being mostly naked, shivering and suffering the same sort of hangover as Jason. The landlady took one look at his big blue eyes and swelling jaw and the next moment they were both swaddled in blankets and drinking giant mugs of sugary tea. It was close to heaven. Dick had somehow cobbled together a story of drunken woe, involving copious amounts of alcohol, an almost comical mugging and going for a midnight dip – possibly an ill advised attempt to swim back to the USA. He had them all laughing, and completely wrapped around his little finger in minutes, it was a wizardry that Jason by himself could never hope to match.

“Can I make a call?” Dick asked, after regaling them with a story about drunkenly attempting to escape the muggers in the sand dunes. “I'll call my dad and get him to wire us some money, we can rent a room and perhaps order some clothes.”

“It's no worry,” Mrs Hobson said, handing him a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel. “You shouldn't be talking so much with that swelling on your face.”

“Jay can make the call, can't you, Jaybird?” Dick was said, turning apparently innocent eyes on him.

“Oh sure, I can make the call. But I'm not going to. This is your fault, you tell daddy what happened.”

Dick's eyes seemed to grow in size, and his face became piteous and pleading. His lower lip even wobbled with sadness. “Please, Jay?” he asked.

To his eternal shame, Jason buckled.

But only because he had no intention of calling Bruce.

He took the cordless phone outside, still wrapped in a cocoon of blankets and clutching more tea. Then he called Tim.

“Hey,” he croaked, the short journey to the patio and bright morning light having caused another spasm of pain to his already aching head.

“Are you okay?” Tim said, in that rushed way he had when he was anxious and had a lot of stuff to say and no time to say it. “You fell off the grid last night, I've been worried sick. I wasn't sure if I should get the cops involved or not, but after I couldn't find any trace of you I called them anyway. Sorry if that screwed things up, but it was all I could do,” he added defensively. “Where were you? Why didn't you check in?”

“If I could get a word in?” Jason said, he kept his voice bland, despite the overwhelming urge to mock Tim for his concern. He realised that Bruce and the Bat brat's near miss probably had him on edge already, so Dick falling off the grid after Jason's call the previous evening probably had him frantic.

“Sorry,” Tim said, sounding a little sullen. “Where's Dick, he okay?”

“Yeah, he's fine. Bit bruised and with a drug induced hangover that feels like a night spent in a cement mixer, but otherwise fine.”

“So, what happened?”

Jason sighed, he really didn't want to go into details, but he sat his butt against a picnic table and gave a brief rundown of the previous night’s events. “...and then we woke up on the beach, and some local dude took us to his bar, and now we need cash,” he finished.

“I'll wire you the money,” Tim said, but there was something in his voice that sounded a little off.

“What? You got something else to say?” Jason snapped. “What happened after the cops were called, anyway? What happened to the gang?”

Tim was quiet for a moment. And Jason rubbed at his face tiredly as he waited for the kid to come out with whatever was bothering him.

“I laid some false trails, tide some stuff up for you, basically wrapped the gang up with a bow and dropped them in the cops lap,” he said at last.

“Thanks,” Jason said, slowly. There would have been a lot to tidy; DNA, video footage, the paper trail. A dead guy.

“You accessed their security system, you saw what went down,” Jason guessed. He felt another wave of tiredness wash over him, he really wasn't feeling up to a fight, but it was against his nature not to defend his corner.

“Yeah.”

“And? You going to make something of it? Forward it to the cops or to daddy-dearest?”

Tim was quiet over the line for a long moment, perhaps collecting his thoughts. Jason let him be, and squinted out across the bay. The morning was crisp and bright, full of the fresh promise of spring. It was calming, but he really wished he had a nice warm bed and at least nine hours uninterrupted sleep before he had to deal with this shit.

“When I got into their computer,” Tim finally began, “I tracked some emails back to Garner’s home system. I found footage he had taken, of the things he did to the other victims. He was going to do those things to Dick.”

“Yeah.” Jason didn't want to think about that, it made the red mist of rage bubble in his gut, and he just didn't have the energy for it. Instead he took comfort from the memory of the feel of Garner’s neck breaking in his hands.

“I got into their security system too. I saw what happened, why you did it.”

“Figured you did. Question is, what you going to do about it?”

“It's done already. After you escaped into the sea, they felt that you had probably both drowned. But on the off chance you hadn't they cleaned house and ran for the airport.”

“Cleaned house?”

“They disposed of Garner's body and started to erase any evidence of you being there. No fingerprints, no DNA that couldn't just be transfer from the times you spend together in London.”

“That was very helpful of them.”

“I thought so. I let them do that while I prepared my case for the cops. Then I let them get as far as the airport before having the police pick them up. You and Dick are in the clear. Richard Grayson wasn't involved with them after London and they killed Garner in a double cross. Only you and I know any different. Well, and the gang, but they would lie about that wouldn't they?”

“That's remarkably reasonable of you,” Jason said, perplexed. “You're not going to tell the B man?”

“No, although I won't lie if he asks. He probably won't though.”

“That doesn't compromise your overly-inflated Bat morals?”

Tim went quiet for a moment, and Jason silently cursed himself out for pushing dispute being thrown a bone.

“It does, but it’s a compromise I'm willing to take on this occasion. Don't think I'll do it again though,” Tim said, firmly.

“Not unless the situation warrants it?”

“Something like that,” his voice was clipped and tight. Not such an easy choice after all.

“I knew I liked you best for a reason, Replacement,” Jason said, trying to lighten the moment. He was all too aware he owed the kid big time for this one.

The tension stretched for a long second, then Tim huffed a laugh. “Oh you do, do you?” he said, his voice suddenly amused and mocking. “Didn't look that way to me, Jase.” The way he said the name was in the exact same way as Dick - no - Richie, had said it after they had played out that scene in the bedroom. It was an incredibly good imitation – so good it made Jason flush. Because of course Tim had seen that footage. Had probably seen far more than Dick, like the way Jason had to adjust himself after Dick had climbed off him and headed down to dinner.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Jason tried, half-heartedly.

“Sure you don't, lover boy.”

“Shut up. And never say that sentence again, it's just wrong coming out of your mouth. Anyway, I may owe you for sorting out this clusterfuck, but don't push your luck.” Tim's silence seemed both loud and mocking, and Jason squirmed. “It was just acting, okay?” he said at last. “It's easy to get swept up with the moment, that's all. We're fucking professionals.”

“Hmm.”

“Oh shut up. Look, you can mock me all you want later, but right now I have the mother of all hangovers and I need cash. All I have to my name at the moment is my underwear and a child sized t-shirt.”

Tim laughed, the jerk.

“Will you send funds to this inn direct? We'll need papers and shit to get out of the country too.”

“Sure. I like you better when you're hungover, much easier to jerk your chain. Although the distance helps too.”

“Yeah laugh it up, Sunshine. But let me give you one piece of advice for free - if you ever decide to be a proper teenager and sneak out to have fun, drugs are bad.”

“Thanks for that little pearl of wisdom, Jason.”

“Really, really bad.”

Dick looked about ready to keel over when Jason headed back inside. He peered up hopefully, his jaw looked painful, and he had a black eye, but he still somehow managed to look attractive. It really wasn't fair.

“Spoke to our brother,” Jason said to the room at large. “He's booked us a bed for a few days, and is sorting out clothes and contacting the embassy about our missing passports.”

“That's a relief!” Dick said, “I'm ready to sleep for a week.”

“You boys are brothers?” Mrs Hobson asked doubtfully, looking between them.

“Same father,” Dick said smoothly, standing with the blanket still wrapped around him. “Did Tim say anything else? I assume it was Tim, due to the lack of shouting.”

“Nope, just that he's dealt with the legal side of things for us. Apparently I phoned him last night when I was drunk.”

“I suppose you boys will be wanting to sleep off those hangovers now, will you?” Mrs Hobson asked.

“That would be amazing,” The full force of Dick's smile was slightly hampered by his fat lip, but it still managed to charm Mrs Hobson, the woman was practically swooning.

Of course, ever the dickhead, Tim had booked them a king, no doubt he was back home in Gotham laughing his ass off. Well he wouldn't be laughing when Jason got home and zip tied him to a lamppost.

“Oh,” Mrs Hobson said. “Are you sure this is okay? We have two singles available at the moment, although they are on different floors, and a double room opening up after midday if you want to wait?”

“No this is fine,” Jason said. It wasn't only that he was ready to crash though, he could still feel the residue of fear in him, and he wanted someone to watch his back as he slept. It was very much something left over from before Robin, that he had never really grown out of, the need to be sure of his own safety before sleeping in a new environment. Even this exhausted he doubted sleep would come without a level of reassurance. And if he was being honest, he wanted to keep an eye on Dick, too.

Hell, maybe Tim wasn't such a jackass after all.

Dick shot him a considering look, like he knew the direction of Jason's thoughts, but then nodded and smiled at Mrs Hobson, gushing at how lovely the small, neat room was. Jason was sure it was nice but he was already shuffling towards the bed, clutching his blankets and blocking out Dick's continued chatter. Then the door shut and they were alone, too tired for awkwardness Jason slid under the warm duvet and when he felt Dick do the same he let his eyes slip closed and blessed sleep take him.

He woke once during the long day, adrenaline spiking at the unfamiliar room and strange smells of dried flowers and sea air. Beside him, Dick was sleeping quietly, his face peaceful, cheek pillowed on one hand like a small child. It was soothing, and Jason used the soft sound of his breathing to chase away his anxiety and slide him back into sleep.

#Jason Todd #jaydick #dick grayson #nightwing #red hood #Catastrophe #mik trys to write stuff #My writing #My fic

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illuminating-dragons · 7 years

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Dreams And Visions (1/51): A Matter of Family

Series Summary: Some days and nights in the lives of Sherlock and John, and Holmes and Watson after the Dream. They're not always happy, they don't always win, but they will always be together, and maybe that's all they need, in the end.Sequel to 'Sleeping on It'.

Chapter Summary: John’s got some skeletons in the closet, and Sherlock decides to rattle them.

Read it on AO3

Sherlock didn’t want to talk about It.

He and John had been as blissfully happy as an irritating older brother, infuriating Yarders and an overly-indulgent landlady could allow a couple to be. Nearly two months into their new relationship, they had yet to have a ‘couple-fight’ (This was established after John had pointed out that the domestics they had before they were a couple didn’t count as their first fight, no matter what. Sherlock had lost that argument—“which isn’t a fight either, love”—and had been careful ever since.)

Moriarty had been quiet, there were enough cases to keep them busy but not too busy, still plenty of time for candlelit dinners at Angelo’s and afternoons looking over cold cases, and they’d even gone to the cinema together. Sherlock wanted very badly to protest this arrangement, but got caught up in the spy story. (He did not ‘have a spy thing’, not at all. John was simply extrapolating from two film preferences, and anyways, John had chosen the films, hadn’t he?)

And Sherlock was happy, really happy for the first time in his life. Even early days with John, before the Dream (John called it the Night, but that wasn’t very specific, it had nothing to do with ‘magic moonlight’, as Mrs. Hudson said). He had a lover, something he’d never asked for, and found that it was better than everyone always said. Things were so usually backwards to that, and he didn’t want to spoil it.

So Sherlock didn’t want to talk about it.

But he couldn’t forget.

He tried, but he couldn’t delete the look on Holmes’ face when he asked whether John had told him about his family. How Watson hadn’t told Holmes about it until after fifteen years of friendship. How it was that revelation, more than Afghanistan, the horrors they saw as detectives, or even the ‘solution’ to Moriarty, that taught Holmes that Watson ‘hides his pain well’.

Sherlock heard John scream from nightmares every so often from the first night they shared a flat. He saw him turn green at the sight of an arson that killed a family of seven, saw a flicker of fear in his eyes when Moriarty was mentioned. They were normal reactions, subdued perhaps but still appropriate to the situation. Before the Dream he assumed that John Watson was as English as his name, and emotion was simply not done.

Now he knew for a fact that wasn’t true. John was open with his affection, clear with annoyance and laughed as loud as Sherlock did at crime scenes (well, they weren’t supposed to giggle, what else could they do?) It was only pain he hid, and Sherlock wanted to know why. He needed to make plans, specific to important details, so that John would never be hurt again.

Talking about it, on the other hand…

In the end it was John who started the conversation. They were sitting on the couch together, Sherlock paging through his email while John typed up their last case, head on Sherlock’s shoulder. Mrs. Hudson had gone shopping, as there were no more biscuits for tea and that was a Bit Not Good.

The sun was coming in at an awkward angle and John grumbled as he tilted his laptop screen back and forth, always coming back to the same position. Sherlock grinned.

“Mycroft does that too.”

John looked up at him. “What?”

“Well, he normally does it with books. He insisted on reading outside so Mummy wouldn’t fuss at him for exercise—he needed it even then—and the sun was his constant enemy. He kept trying to make the light fall differently, but he would always end up holding the book the same way without even realizing.” He sighed. “Should have known then he was going to be a controlling, stubborn…”

“Alright Sherlock,” John said, but he was smiling as he stopped moving his screen.

Sherlock hesitated only a second. If this wasn’t the right time, when would it be? “Did Harry do anything like that?”

John stopped typing. “Like what?”

“You know, those mundane little habits that people pick up in childhood and never get rid of?” Sherlock ached to watch his lover’s face, but he knew that wasn’t a good idea.

John leaned away from him, just enough to make it seem natural. “I don’t think so, not really. She’s quite a bit older than me, you know.”

Sherlock looked at him. “Mycroft and I are seven years apart, while you and Harry are barely five. You would have been around her more often than I with Mycroft. Why don’t you remember?” Sherlock felt his gut tighten. John had an excellent memory.

“I don’t know,” John said. “You tell me.”

It was a joke between them, a come-on for Sherlock to use his “bloody brilliant” powers and coax the information out of his silent but smiling lover. It was fun, although apparently it ranged from ‘adorable’ to ‘vomit-inducing’ in public.

John wasn’t smiling right now. He had pulled away from Sherlock completely .

“You were never close,” Sherlock said.

“Well, no, obviously not—I already told you that bit.” John was tense.

“But were you ever close to anyone?” Sherlock mused. “I don’t think you were, though I can’t imagine why.” How could anyone not love you, John?

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say.

John stood up quickly, backing away from the couch. “Yes, I know, family’s meant to care about each other. I think you’d better drop it, Sherlock.”

“Why?” Sherlock challenged. “I want to know.”

“What do you want to know?” John snapped. “That I have no living family?”

“Yes you do,” Sherlock replied, baffled.

“No, Sherlock. No, I don’t, and I haven’t for most of my life.”

“They abused you,” Sherlock guessed.

That was very clearly the wrong thing to say.

John stepped back, closed his eyes. His left hand was trembling. He turned around and walked up the stairs to his old room. A few seconds later, Sherlock heard the door slam.

Not Good.

Sherlock was so wrapped in his own misery that he didn’t hear John come downstairs in the darkness, long after tea had been forgotten. Didn’t notice him at all, in fact, until he was standing in the doorway of their room.

“Sherlock?” John sounded tired and…sore, the way he sounded after a long day of work and chasing criminals. Sherlock’s heart ached in response.

“Sherlock, I’m…I’m sorry dear.”

Sherlock, who’d been on the point of reciting his thousand apologies, looked up in amazement.

John stood in front of him, hands in his pockets. His eyes looked funny, though they weren’t red. He’d probably not been blinking enough, Sherlock deduced—John did that when he was upset, it was one of his tells.

Sherlock laid his hands by his sides. “I don’t follow. You have no reason to apologize to me, I intruded on a painful subject and made deductions after you told me to stop. You’ve been attempting to teach me common courtesy when dealing with strangers, and here I can’t maintain the proper behaviour with my own lover. The blame is entirely on my side, and I don’t fault you for losing your temper.”

John shook his head. “I wasn’t mad at you. I mean, yes I was, because you did push it, but…I didn’t want to talk about it, and that wasn’t really fair.”

“It clearly caused you discomfort,” Sherlock frowned. “Why is that unfair?”

“Maybe because you’re my lover, and my flatmate, and my friend, and you deserve to know why I don’t want to talk about my family?” John retorted.

“I could deduce that for myself,” Sherlock said.

“You shouldn’t have to,” John said quietly. “Don’t you get it? There’s supposed to be talking and…baring of feelings, in relationships. You’ve told me about your family, and your nemeses, some of whom you think are your family" (Sherlock rolled his eyes)…"hell, you shared your whole world with me.”

“Not all of it,” Sherlock admitted, feeling a little uncomfortable. Since when was he the open one of the two of them? “Just the parts that I think will interest you.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t even ask if you were interested in my life before you, I just didn’t say anything and let your deductions be enough. That wasn’t fair to you.”

Sherlock thought this over. “I am interested,” he said carefully, “but not because I particularly relish the details. I am interested because your past is part of you, and I am beginning to realize it shaped you in ways I did not consider.”

John rubbed a hand over his face. “I wish it hadn’t. I tried not to let it.”

Sherlock hesitated, then patted the bed next to him. John came over slowly, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed. Sherlock held out his hand and John took it.

John took a deep breath. “I don’t think I’m ready…to go into all of it.”

Sherlock waited.

“But you deserve to hear the broad strokes, at least.” John’s grip tightened on his hand.

“My parents didn’t want me. They as good as told me right from the beginning, and I was expected to deal with that. I was never starving or anything like that, but when I wasn’t perfect…well, Father always made his displeasure clear.”

Sherlock thought back to the marks he’d seen on John’s back, his shoulders. He’d known they were too old to be from war, too deliberate to be from rugby accidents…but he hadn’t asked.

“Mother wasn’t unkind to me, but she died when I was eight and then it was just Harry and I with Dad. It was bad for quite a while—when she came out, when she started to drink as much as Dad, when she refused to go to school anymore—well. I had to be the perfect child. There was no reward in it, no congratulations: I wasn’t supposed to be alive so I had to make up for the mistakes of the daughter he adored. Still adores, despite everything.”

Sherlock realized he was gripping John’s hand too tightly. He tried to loosen his grip, but John hung on more tightly.

“I got good grades, and I was smart, and I got into uni a year early. I saved what I could and I had some money from my granddad. He was good to me; gave me my first Gray’s Anatomy, actually. He was a soldier when he was young.”

That detail, a throwaway sentence to anyone else, explained everything.

“So I got into pre-med and became a surgeon, then I went to war. Why not? I wanted to do some good in the world, and it wasn’t like anyone would miss me. I did three years in Afghanistan, got shot, and flew into an airport with no one there to greet me.” John smiled, but it was shaky. “Then I met a madman and fell in love.”

There was a long pause; Sherlock could tell John wasn’t quite done.

“I tried to love them,” John whispered. “More than anything. But I just couldn’t.”

Sherlock pulled John into his arms, letting him bury his face in the crook of his neck. “They didn’t love you,” he whispered.

“Why should that matter? They were my family.”

Sherlock just held him for a few long minutes, running his hand up and down John’s back, trying to avoid the scars. He pressed a kiss to John’s bad shoulder, then to his temple then tilted John’s face so he could kiss his forehead. John stared back at him, eyes soft with pain.

“There was nothing you could have done.” John tried to protest but Sherlock held firm. “John, they hurt you. They made you think you were nothing. You were very lonely, weren’t you?”

John didn’t reply, trembling in his arms.

“And you grew up into a kind, brave, wise man anyways,” Sherlock continued in a low voice. “And you fell into company with others like you, but you couldn’t see that, because no one ever told you that you were wonderful. And why would they tell you that? They must’ve thought you knew.”

John buried his face in Sherlock’s shoulder. “Sherlock, I’m not—”

“You were wrong about one other thing too,” Sherlock whispered.

“What?”

“You’ve got a living family. You’ve got Mrs. Hudson, Greg…even Molly and Mycroft.”

John wasn’t trembling so badly anymore, but he still wasn’t looking at Sherlock.

“And you have me, too.” Sherlock made John look at him. “I’ll be your family as long as you want me. You love better and stronger than anyone I’ve ever met, and if you can’t find it in your heart to love those you were born to, the fault’s on them, not you.”

John kissed him instead of replying, but Sherlock knew what he meant.

“If you do want to talk about this another time, we can.”

John wiped his eyes. “I think that might have done it. I didn’t know I was worrying about all of that.” He smiled. “You did, though. Thank you, dear.”

“It’s my business to know, especially about you,” Sherlock replied.

John kissed him again, longer this time. “Thank you for being family. For sharing yours. For everything.”

“You’re not alone anymore John,” Sherlock said seriously. “And you never will be again.”

He knew he’d have to say it again, maybe a thousand times before John would believe it, but he’d say it every day for the rest of their lives if he had to.

That’s what you did for family, after all.

#sherlock fanfiction #sherlock holmes fanfiction #johnlock #sherlock AU #crossover with original canon #dreams and visions #sleeping on it 'verse #crosspost from AO3 #acme146 fanfiction #tw past child abuse #hurt/comfort

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deputychairman · 7 years

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@boxoftheskyking tagged me in this ages ago and I ought to be answering an email from a cousin who always makes me feel guilty for not being in touch so of course I cast around desperately for a displacement activity

a - age: as old as Oscar Isaac b - biggest fear: death? I don’t even get out of bed for less c - current time: 10.22pm although by the time i get to the end it will be muuuuch later d - drink you last had: i am currently sipping neat vodka: does it make it better or worse that I bought it hungover in the duty free at Moscow airport? better, right? #humblebrag e - every day starts with: a small child snoring in my ear f - favorite song: something by the Mountain Goats, probably, (although I copy pasted this ask meme and deleted the previous answers, oddly leaving only the letters ‘ra’ so my subconscious was trying to complete this with Boney M’s classic Ra Ra Rasputin. So maybe that?) g - ghosts, are they real: I always wanted my dad to come back and haunt me but he never has h - hometown: London, England i - in love with: well this is the hardest question in here. The creativity of fandom? My children? this vodka? the friends we made along the way? j - jealous of: my high-flying contemporaries who i should never have stayed in touch with because who needs that kind of negativity in their life? I fucking hate LinkedIn “X has a new job as Superimportant Well-Paid With A Social Conscience! Congratulate them!” uh no how about I just sit here and feel bitter instead, huh LinkedIn? How about that? k - killed someone: not yet but I know where I’d start l - last time you cried: reading Tom’s Midnight Garden to my kids, or masochistically clicking an article about DEATH m - middle name: secret, but it is my mother’s name and Child 1 has my name n - number of siblings: 1 whole, 2 half, 2 step. yeah we’re one of those families. o - one wish: that my children be happy p - person you last called/texted: I sent 3 emojis to Child 2 on Friday and Facetimed my mother q - questions you’re always asked: “Have you replied to [email I definitely haven’t replied to]?” “oh yes!” I lie “But I’ll chase them, they haven’t got back to me yet”. And “mummy, can I have a biscuit/a drink/an entire packet of sweets 3 minutes before dinner” r - reasons to smile: fanfic exists, the slant of the afternoon light in spring s - song last sang: that one from Moana, in the street with Child 2 t - time you woke up: when I was a student I did non-degree Spanish classes with Proper Grownups and one of the first things you start learning is all the “what time do you wake up.” I was horrified when they all said around 6.30am, and reassured when our 20something teacher was like, 10am, and I clung to that hope like a beacon in stormy adult seas. But now I am a Proper Grownup myself and have experienced the existential dread of getting up late and teaching a foreign language in the afternoon, I’ll take 6.30am any day. u - underwear color: black v - vacation destination: i haven’t been anywhere that wasn’t my mum’s house in Cambridge since 2013, but i do live 5 minutes walk from the Mediterranean and I’ve got the keys to my landlady’s pool w - worst habit: incubating simmering resentment x - x-rays you’ve had: none, but i have several ultrasound printouts of my uterus with babies in it at 12 and 20 weeks, and others showing my uterus with an IUD in it. Not sure why they thought i wanted copies of those but anyway i have them. y - your favorite food: asparagus z - zodiac sign: Libra

ugh dammit out of questions i guess I have to answer my cousin now. anyone else need a displacement activity? @hereeatthiskitten @clevermanka @ineptshieldmaid @bomberqueen17 @crabsandlobsters @nothingbutthedreams @theniftycat @hawkbi-pierce @ifeelbetterer

#that wasted 35 minutes for me #and i enjoyed them

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consultthisdick-blog · 7 years

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The Beginning

Or, A Study in Pink, Part II

Read on AO3

Summary: After being invalided home from Afghanistan, John Watson was only looking for some peace. Instead, he managed to get himself caught up in a whirlwind of serial killings, car chases, and awkward dinners, and it was all thanks to a man by the name of Sherlock Holmes.

After the tragedy of Series 4, let’s take some time to rewind back to the beginning, back to when John and Sherlock first met. ‘Back to Baker Street’ tells the story of BBC Sherlock, the way it always should have been

Part I

Later that afternoon, after John returned to his bedsit with the groceries, he fished his phone out of his pocket and sat down on his bed. He couldn’t help but be curious, so he checked his sent messages to read what Sherlock had been texting. He had hoped that it would provide some explanation to his character, but all it did was confuse him even more.

If brother has green ladder arrest brother. SH

‘Arrest brother’ couldn’t be interpreted in many different ways. Arrest meant arrest. Arrest can’t mean anything other than arrest. But why was Sherlock Holmes calling for an arrest?

After several minutes of pondering the text, John shoved his phone back into his pocket, sat down at his desk and pulled out his laptop. He closed the webpage showing his blog, and only hesitated for a moment before typing ‘Sherlock Holmes’ into the search bar.

The search results showed a single website: The Science of Deduction.

John read through the site, which was apparently Sherlock’s own blog. He skimmed through most of it, but was able to come to one logical conclusion about him: he was absolutely mad. And for some bizarre reason, John felt compelled to write about him.

He entitled the post ‘A Strange Meeting.’

I don’t know how I’m meant to be writing this. I’m not a writer. Ella thought keeping a blog would help but it hasn’t because nothing ever happens to me. But today, something did. Something happened.

John paused for a moment and bit his lip before continuing.

I was walking in the park and I bumped into Mike Stamford. We were sort of mates when we were students. We got coffee and I mentioned that I wanted to move. He said he knew of someone in a similar situation. So we went to Bart’s and he introduced us.

Except, he didn’t. He didn’t introduce us. The man knew who I was. Somehow he knew everything about me. He knew I’d served in Afghanistan and he knew I’d been invalided. He said my wound was psychosomatic so he didn’t get everything right but he even knew why I was there, despite the fact that Mike hadn’t told him.

It didn’t occur to John that this was the most he’d ever considered posting on his blog. But he kept writing, as if writing this post was going to somehow make sense of everything that had transpired.

I googled him when I got back to the flat and found a link to his website, The Science of Deduction.

It’s mad. I think he might be mad. He was certainly arrogant and really quire rude and he looks about 12 and he’s clearly a bit public school and, yes, I definitely think he might be mad but he was also strangely likeable. He was charming. It really was all just a bit strange.

So tomorrow, we’re off to look at a flat. Me and the madman. Me and Sherlock Holmes.

John posted it before he had a chance to talk himself out of it, let out a deep breath, and leaned back in his chair. So, perhaps he wasn’t entirely honest; saying that Sherlock looked about 12 was slightly unnecessary hyperbole. It was better than the alternative. John couldn’t afford to like someone like Sherlock Holmes.

His head somewhat clearer, John closed his laptop and placed it back in the drawer, ready to prepare himself a cup of tea before bed. John closed the drawer, and didn’t give his gun a second glance.

When John opened his laptop the next morning after brewing his usual cup of coffee, he found that Harry and Bill Murray had taken to conversing in the comments. Again.

What the...?!?! Harry Watson

Mate, have you gone gay? Bill Murray

Hahahahaha!! He can’t be! The way he used to look at Clara! Harry Watson

Any word from her? Bill Murray

Nah. It's fine. Anyway we're talking about my brother!! Harry Watson

John downed the rest of his coffee and brought his fingers to his temples. He re-read his post from the night before and grimaced, knowing that it sounded more like something found in a purple diary under a pillow than on the public blog of a retired soldier.

Can’t you two email each other or something? This is meant to be for me to record my thoughts John Watson

He knew that his response wasn’t going to do anything; it would take more than that to get Harry off of his back. John wished quite frequently that he was an only child, and Harry, as the years went on, had only fuelled this desire, uncouth as it might be. Harry had to know that John had never looked at Clara like that, that he wasn’t jealous of Harry for having Clara. It was far more complicated than that, and sometimes John wished that it was as simple as quietly pining for his sister-in-law. Ex sister-in-law, now. Clara was lovely and kind and witty, and deserved so much more than Harry could give her, even Harry knew that.

But what Clara had represented to him…that’s what John had wanted: a place to find comfort and support and love, someone to care for. John was a doctor. Caring for people was his job, it was his purpose. And now, as he gazed around the dingy room, he knew that he couldn’t even care for himself.

His cane felt heavy in his hand and John remembered the gun in his drawer.

Turning away, John made his way into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, his cane leaning against the sink. He stared at himself for a while, his mind somehow drifting back to Sherlock Holmes and wondering how a man could read his life story just by looking at his face.

John stood there for a long while, looking, trying to see what Sherlock saw. He didn’t understand; the man must be mad. When John looked at his reflection, he didn’t see his military records or his doctorate or his history of unsuccessful therapy. John saw tired eyes and thin lips and worry lines that weren’t carried by most young men. He saw simple clothes shielding a body that wasn’t as strong as it looked. Flexing his shoulders and straightening his back John stood to attention the way he used to, in the hopes of once more seeing the soldier he had been. For a moment, John thought that he could see Captain Watson in the mirror, but it faded before he could get a closer look.

He shook his head and splashed his face with water, trying to shake the sound of gunfire from the back of his mind.

Back in the other room, John’s laptop sounded a notification. He sighed and sat back down at his desk to view the new comment on his blog. It was from Bill, not Harry.

Not denying it then? Bill Murray

John frowned at the comment and tried not to retaliate too hard. He wasn’t gay, that much was true, but if Sherlock was, he didn’t mind at all. So that’s what he said.

I'm not gay. He might be. I don't know. It doesn't matter. John Watson

It wasn’t a lie. But it certainly didn't feel like the entire truth. Bill didn’t need to know that. Neither did Sherlock, as far as John was concerned.

That evening at seven o’clock, John walked past the final few houses on Baker Street before number 221. 221B was a black door with a gold knocker next to a shop with a red banner that read ‘Speedy’s Lunch Bar & Café’ in strong white letters. John knocked on the door of 221B and heard a car pull up on the kerb behind him.

“Hello.”

John turned to see Sherlock thanking a cab driver, wearing a different suit but the same coat as he had been the day before.

“Ah, Mr. Holmes,” John said, extending his hand in greeting.

“Sherlock, please,” he replied, taking John’s outstretched hand and shaking it.

John immediately dropped his gaze and gripped at his cane. “Well, this is a prime spot,” he stated. “Must be expensive.”

“Mrs. Hudson, the landlady – she’s given me a special deal. Owes me a favour,” Sherlock explained, speaking to what must have been a very interesting spot over John’s left shoulder. “A few years back her husband got himself sentenced to death in Florida. I was able to help out.”

“Sorry, you stopped her husband being executed?” John asked, stunned.

“Oh, no,” Sherlock replied, finally catching his eye. “I ensured it.”

Before John could make heads or tails of it, the door to 221B opened and Sherlock stepped up to tightly embrace the woman behind it, whose arms had opened graciously when she saw him.

“Sherlock,” she smiled, releasing him. “Oh, hello, dear.”

Sherlock stepped down from the doorstep to let John into view. “Mrs. Hudson,” he said, “this is Doctor John Watson.”

“Hello,” Mrs. Hudson said, this time her warm smile directed at John. “Come in.”

“Thank you.” John nodded at her and stepped over the threshold, with Sherlock close behind.

Once they were inside and the door closed behind them, Sherlock looked at John and gestured at the stairs. “Shall we?”

John nodded and his cane was a deadweight in his hand. He gazed up the stairs after Sherlock, who had bounded up them to the first floor landing. With a clenched jaw, John followed him up the best he could, willing his leg to be kind to him today.

Once he made it up the stairs, John found Sherlock waiting patiently for him by the door to the flat. John nodded appreciatively and Sherlock opened the door for them both, and John watched as he stepped proudly into the centre of the room.

John looked around the living room and nodded to himself. It was more spacious than he had expected, with tall bookshelves framing either side of a large fireplace, in front of which sat two large armchairs. Opposite the fireplace on the other side of the room was a large couch and coffee table, and separating the two was a hardwood desk. Above the desk, a strange animal skull was mounted to the wall between two grand windows. John turned around to take in the rest of the flat, first its odd wallpaper, and then the snug kitchen that branched off the near side of the living room, and then of course the monumental amount of clutter that really had to be sorted. Despite its eccentricities, John liked it.

“Well,” he said, “this could be very nice. Very nice indeed.”

Sherlock smiled and breathed what John was class as a small sigh of relief, had it been anyone else. “Yes. Yes, my thoughts precisely.”

There was a comfortable pause, and then the two began to speak.

“Just as soon as we get this rubbish cleaned up…”

“So I went straight ahead and moved in.”

John paused, realising that he had just mistaken all of Sherlock’s belongings for boxes of rubbish, and shifted in his place. “So this is all…?”

Sherlock, clearly embarrassed, stepped across the room and began to shuffle his things around, trying to minimise some of the mess. “Well, um,” he said, throwing some folders into a box, “obviously I can, uh, straighten things up a bit,”

John moved to protest but Sherlock, with his back to him, didn’t notice. Instead, John watched as Sherlock moved in a haste of billowing coats, taking a small pile of unopened envelopes from the coffee table on one side of the room over to the fireplace on the other, before placing them on the mantelpiece and stabbing them through with a penknife. Next to the mutilated letters, John noticed something else.

“That’s a skull,” he said, gesturing to it with his cane.

“Friend of mine,” Sherlock smiled back, before pausing to revaluate. “Well,” he continued, “when I say ‘friend’…”

Anything John might have asked about Sherlock’s ‘friend’ was cut off by Mrs. Hudson, who had come up the stairs behind them.

“What do you think then, Doctor Watson?” she asked, picking up a teacup and saucer from the coffee table as Sherlock took off his coat and scarf. “There’s another bedroom upstairs, if you’ll be needing two bedrooms.”

John glanced at Sherlock, who had is back to them, and then back to Mrs. Hudson. “Well, of course we’ll be needing two…”

“Oh, don’t worry, dear!” Mrs. Hudson fussed. “There’s all sorts ‘round here. Mrs. Turner next door’s got married ones.” She said ‘married ones’ in a strong whisper as she gestured to number 223. It dawned on John a second too late that she thought he and Sherlock were together. He looked over to Sherlock again, expecting him to confirm to Mrs. Hudson that they weren’t involved in that way, but Sherlock simply continued his awkward mission to tidy up. John wondered for a moment if Sherlock actually knew what was being insinuated.

He decided that he wasn’t going to question it, and so he brushed off the armchair closest to the kitchen, fixed the cushion, and sat down, resting his leg after climbing the stairs. While Mrs. Hudson was in the kitchen, John watched Sherlock for a brief moment, before deciding that it was time for at least a partial explanation, or, at the very least, conformation that Sherlock Holmes was as mad as a hatter.

“I looked you up on the Internet last night,” John said.

This apparently sparked Sherlock’s interest, as he turned to face him, the movement smooth and elegant. “Anything interesting?”

“I found your website. ‘The Science of Deduction.”

The corners of Sherlock’s mouth quipped upward. “What did you think?”

John said nothing and raised an eyebrow, still not convinced of Sherlock’s honesty on the blog. Sherlock’s face fell into a frown.

“You said that you could identify a software designer by his tie and an airline pilot by his left thumb,” John said, in the belief that this was enough to justify his scepticism.

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed. “And I can read your military career in your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits in your mobile phone.”

“How?” John asked.

Sherlock simply turned away, smiling to himself, and John still felt like there was a joke that he wasn’t in on.

“What about these suicides then, Sherlock?” Mrs. Hudson came back into the living room, this time holding today’s newspaper. “I thought that’d be right up your street. Three! All exactly the same.”

John heard the sound of a car pulling up outside the flat, and Sherlock moved over to the window and pushed back to curtain to look.

“Four,” he said, voice grave as he peered out to Baker Street. “There’s been a fourth. And there’s something different this time.”

“A fourth?” Mrs. Hudson asked, glancing between Sherlock by the window and the paper in her hands. John stared at Sherlock, only breaking his stare from the elegant silhouette at the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

A young yet silver-haired man wearing a dark coat strode into the room, and John watched as Sherlock whirled around to face him. The intruder made no move to acknowledge either John or Mrs. Hudson, but looked at Sherlock right in the eyes, his shoulders tense and his face morphed with regret.

“Where?” Sherlock asked, not seeming to bother with introductions.

“Brixton, Lauriston Gardens,” the man replied.

Sherlock frowned. “What’s new about this one? You wouldn’t have come to get me if there wasn’t something different.”

John watched the exchange intently, soaking up every word.

“You know how they never leave notes?”

“Yeah,” Sherlock nodded.

“This one did. Will you come?”

This had apparently sparked Sherlock’s interest, and John watched as the excitement danced on the corners of his mouth and his eyes.

“Who’s on forensics?” he asked.

“Anderson.”

Sherlock grimaced. “Anderson won’t work with me.”

“Well, he won’t be your assistant!”

“But I need an assistant!” Sherlock protested.

The man ignored him. “Will you come?”

For a brief second, John’s heart leapt wildly in his chest and he momentarily hoped that Sherlock would ask him to fill that position; the near promise of being useful again – of some kind of adventure – was fare more tempting to him than wasting away alone in a dingy bedsit. But Sherlock did no such thing, and John sat in silence.

“Not in a police car,” Sherlock replied. “I’ll be right behind.”

John saw the tension in the man’s shoulders release as he let out a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you,” he said, before leaving the apartment and going back down the stairs.

At the sound of the front door slamming, a wide grin spread across Sherlock’s face and he leapt into the air, clenching his fists in excitement.

“Brilliant!” Sherlock exclaimed, twirling around the room with the most enthusiasm John had seen in a very long time. “Yes! Four serial suicides and now a note! Oh, it’s Christmas!”

He picked up his coat and scarf headed for the kitchen, not sparing John a second glance. John supposed that he had been right all along: Sherlock Holmes was barking mad.

“Mrs. Hudson, I’ll be late,” Sherlock continued. “Might need some food.”

“I’m your landlady, dear, not your housekeeper,” Mrs. Hudson quipped.

“Something cold will do! John, have a cup of tea, make yourself at home. Don’t wait up!”

John couldn’t help the sinking feeling in his stomach as Sherlock left the apartment without him.

“Look at him, dashing about!” Mrs. Hudson said pleasantly. “My husband was just the same.”

Not knowing how to reply, John said nothing.

“But you’re the more sitting down type,” she continued, turning toward the kitchen. “I can tell. I’ll get you that cuppa and you rest your leg.”

“Damn my leg!” John said, with much more force than was necessary. But, in the heat of the moment, he couldn’t seem to control himself. His bloody leg was the reason he was in this mess. He was supposed to be a soldier, he was supposed to be in Afghanistan, and not sitting in a chair while his madman of a flatmate was gallivanting around London doing God knows what and his landlady made him a cup of tea.

Mrs. Hudson, the poor woman, had gasped at his outburst and turned back to him shock.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry,” John said, immediately apologetic. “It’s just that this bloody thing…” He trailed off and hit his bad leg with his cane.

Mrs. Hudson smiled and waved it off. “I understand, dear,” she said. “I’ve got a hip.”

“A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you,” John nodded, picking up the newspaper that she’d left on the arm of his chair.

“Just this once, dear,” Mrs. Hudson said. “I’m not your housekeeper.”

“Couple of biscuits too, if you’ve got them.”

“Not your housekeeper.”

She left the flat and went downstairs, and John folded the newspaper in half, skimming the headlines. His eyes narrowed at the story on the front page, ‘Transport Minister Third Suicide.’ It was the third suicide that he’d heard about on the radio, the ones he’d written about on his blog just the other day. But it wasn’t the large picture of Beth Davenport that had caught his attention. No, underneath the headline was another picture, one of the man that asked Sherlock to come with him to Brixton. And underneath this picture was a small caption:

DI Lestrade, in charge of the investigation.

Detective Inspector Lestrade. What would a Detective Inspector want with Sherlock Holmes? Before he could read more, Sherlock’s voice interrupted him.

“You’re a doctor.”

John put down the paper and looked to Sherlock, who was standing in the doorway putting on his gloves and had apparently been waiting outside for Mrs. Hudson to leave.

“In fact, you an Army doctor.”

“Yes.” John staggered to his feet as Sherlock walked toward him.

“Seen a lot of injuries, then?” Sherlock asked. “Violent deaths?”

John frowned. “Yes.”

“Bit of trouble too, I’ll bet.”

“Yes, of course,” John said quietly. “Enough for a lifetime. Far too much.”

Sherlock smirked. It was almost seductive. “Do you want to see some more?”

“Oh, God, yes!”

Grinning broadly, Sherlock spun on his heels and lead the way out of the door and down the stairs. John followed him as fast as his leg would allow, and called out to their landlady.

“Sorry, Mrs. Hudson, I’ll skip the tea,” he said. “Off out.”

She was there when he and Sherlock reached the bottom of the stairs. “Both of you?”

“Impossible suicides? Four of them?” Sherlock gushed, taking her by the shoulders and kissing her loudly on the cheek. “There’s no point sitting at home when there’s finally something fun going on!”

Mrs. Hudson looked from Sherlock to John and tried not to smile. “Look at you, all happy,” she chided. “It’s not decent.”

“Who cares about decent?” Sherlock opened the front door and gestured for John to follow him, which he did, eagerly. “The game, Mrs. Hudson, is on!”

John followed Sherlock out onto Baker Street and closed the door to 221B behind them. Sherlock hailed a taxi and the two got in, the air between them thick with anticipation. John, still feeling uncomfortable staring at Sherlock for too long, divided his attention between the busy roads outside the cab window and Sherlock, who was studying his smartphone intently.

They sat in silence for a long while and a million and one questions floated in and out of John’s mind, each more complicated than the last. Sherlock, however, seemed completely at ease leaning elegantly against the cab door, his face illuminated by the light from his screen.

Just when the silence was becoming almost unbearable, Sherlock lowered his phone and turned to John. “Okay, you’ve got questions.”

“Yeah, where are we going?” John asked, every other question he had come up with suddenly evaporating.

“Crime scene,” Sherlock answered. “Next.”

“Who are you?” John continued. “What do you do?”

“What do you think?”

John thought for a moment, hesitant. “I’d say private detective…”

“But?”

“But,” he continued, “the police don’t go to private detectives.”

Sherlock smiled, apparently pleased with this answer. “I’m a consulting detective,” he explained. “I’m the only one in the world. I invented the job.”

This still didn’t explain much but, at this point, John didn’t find that surprising at all. “What does that mean?”

“It means that when the police are out of their depth, which is always, they consult me.”

“But the police don’t consult amateurs.”

This was apparently the wrong thing to say, as John found him subjected to a very poignant look, so tastefully executed that he wondered if Sherlock had practiced it in front of a mirror.

“When I met you for the first time yesterday I asked you ‘Afghanistan or Iraq’,” Sherlock stated. “You looked surprised.”

“Yes,” John affirmed. “How did you know?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I didn’t know; I saw. Your haircut, the way you hold yourself says military. But your conversation as you entered the room said trained at Bart’s, so Army doctor – obvious.”

John stared at him and opened his mouth to interrupt, but Sherlock paid no attention and continued.

“Your face is tanned but no tan above the wrists. You’ve been abroad, but not sunbathing.” Sherlock looked down to John’s cane and then to his bad leg. “Your limp’s really bad when you walk but you don’t ask for a chair when you stand, like you’ve forgotten about it, so it’s at least partly psychosomatic. That says that the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic. Wounded in action, then. Wounded in action, suntan – Afghanistan or Iraq.”

Lost for words, John racked his mind for something to say. “You said I had a therapist,” he managed.

“You have a psychosomatic limp,” Sherlock stated. “Of course you have a therapist. Then there’s your brother.”

“What?”

“Your phone.” Sherlock held out his hand and John fished it out of his coat, handing it to him. “It’s expensive. E-mail enabled, MP3 player, but you’re looking for flatshare; you wouldn’t waste money on this. It’s a gift, then.”

Turning the phone over in his hand, Sherlock ran his fingers against the back. “Scratches,” he said. “Not one, many over time. It’s been in the same pockets as keys and coins. The man sitting next to me wouldn’t treat his one luxury item like this, so it’s had a previous owner. Next bit’s easy. You know it already.”

“The engraving,” John supplied, watching Sherlock tap the words with his forefinger.

Harry Watson From Clara xxx

Sherlock hummed in agreement and resumed his monologue. “Harry Watson…clearly a family member who’s given you his old phone. Not your father, this is a young man’s gadget. It could be a cousin, but you’re a war hero who can’t find a place to live. Unlikely you’ve got an extended family, certainly not one you’re close to, so brother it is. Now, Clara. Who’s Clara? Three kisses says it’s romantic attachment and the expense of the phone says wife, not girlfriend. She must have given it to him recently – this model’s only six months old. Marriage in trouble, then – six months on and he’s just given it away. If she’d left him, he would have kept it. People do; sentiment. But no, he wanted to get rid of it. He left her. He gave the phone to you, and that says he wants you to stay in touch. You’re looking for cheap accommodation but you’re not going to your brother for help? That says you’ve got problems with him. Maybe you liked his wife. Maybe you don’t like his drinking.”

“How could you possibly know about the drinking?” John asked, completely baffled.

“Shot in the dark,” Sherlock smiled. “Good one, though. The power connection: tiny scuff marks around the edge of it. Every night he goes to plug it in to charge but his hands are shaking. You never see those marks on a sober man’s phone; never see a drunk’s without them.”

He handed John back the phone, who took it and placed it back into his pocket.

“There you go, you see – you were right,” Sherlock said.

“I was right?” John asked. “Right about what?”

“The police don’t consult amateurs.” He turned away from John, who gazed at him in amazement. For a moment, they lapsed into silence.

“That…” John began, his mind buzzing as he tried to comprehend even a small percentage of what had transpired. “That was…amazing.”

Sherlock’s head whipped around to look at him, and he stared at John so intently that he wondered if he’d said something wrong. For the first time since they’d met, Sherlock Holmes appeared to be struck dumb.

“Do you really think so?” he asked, after a long stretch of silence.

“Of course it was,” John gaped. “It was extraordinary; it was quite extraordinary.”

“That’s not what people normally say,” Sherlock admitted.

“What do people normally say?”

“‘Piss off.’”

John laughed and shook his head, and Sherlock chuckled along with him before turning to gaze out of the cab window.

“We’re here,” he said, the cab slowing down and stopping a few hundred feet away from a road barricaded by police tape. The street was illuminated by the red and blue flashing lights from both the police cars and an ambulance, and Sherlock thanked and paid the cabbie before leaping out, bounding around the back of the cab, and opening the door for John before he could even reach for his cane.

“Did I get anything wrong?” Sherlock asked, leading John toward the police tape.

“Harry and me don’t get on,” John admitted. “Never have. Harry and Clara split up three months ago and they’re getting a divorce. Harry’s a drinker.”

Sherlock looked mildly impressed. “Really?” he asked. “I didn’t expect to be right about everything.”

John smirked. “Harry’s short for Harriet.”

Realisation dawning on his face, Sherlock stopped in his tracks and groaned. “Harry’s your sister.”

“Look,” John said, diverting back to the situation at hand. “What am I supposed to be doing here?”

“Sister!”

John looked around uncomfortably, noticing that they were at the receiving end of quite a few dirty looks from the officers surrounding the scene.

“No, seriously,” he said, much quieter should any of them be listening. Vulnerability wasn’t very attractive at the current moment. “What am I doing here?”

“There’s always something!”

Sherlock, still apparently hung up on his mistake (and quite an understandable one, at that), ignored him and marched up to the police tape, where he was met by a dark-skinned police officer with sharp eyes and a disapproving mouth.

“Hello, freak,” she jeered.

“I’m here to see Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Sherlock said, his voice cool and scarily monotonous. It struck John that this was Sherlock being professional.

“Why?” the officer interrogated.

“I was invited.”

“Why?”

“I think he wants me to take a look.” John could tell that Sherlock had very little patience for this woman, and he wondered if she always taunted him like that; it was obvious even without Sherlock’s deductive genius that the two did not get on.

“Well you know what I think,” she chided, “don’t you?”

Sherlock smiled pleasantly and lifted the police tape, ducking under it. “Always, Sally,” he said, then taking a dramatic breath in through his nose. “I even know you didn’t make it home last night.”

“I don’t…” she began, before finally noticing John. She jabbed a finger in his general direction and turned back to Sherlock. “Who’s this?”

“Colleague of mine,” Sherlock replied. “Doctor Watson. Doctor Watson, Sargent Sally Donovan. Old friend.”

John smiled, but it was lost on her.

“A colleague?” she asked. “How do you get a colleague” Then, she turned to John. “Did he follow you home?”

Caving under the tension, John turned to Sherlock. “Would it be better if I just waited and–”

But Sherlock lifted the police tape defiantly and John, who apparently had no other choice, stepped through.

Donovan scowled at Sherlock and John stepped between them, defensive of his new…colleague.

“Freak’s here,” Donovan said into a radio, deciding not to pick a fight. “Bringing him in.”

She turned away from them and began to walk toward and old house swarming with police officers and people in protective clothing. Sherlock walked beside him, and John found the gesture oddly comforting. He watched intently as Sherlock’s eyes roamed over their surroundings, analytical and inquisitive as they approached the façade of the old house.

The door to the house opened and from it emerged a small team of forensic investigators, all wearing the same protective coveralls. One of them, a sour-faced man with thin lips and dark hair, approached them, glaring a Sherlock with obvious distaste.

“Ah, Anderson,” Sherlock said, addressing him pleasantly. “Here we are again.”

Anderson pursed his lips. “It’s a crime scene,” he sneered. “I don’t want it contaminated. Are we clear on that?”

“Quite clear,” Sherlock smiled. He then took in another deep breath through his nose, just like he had next to Donovan. “And, uh, is your wife away for long?”

“Oh, don’t pretend you worked that out,” Anderson scoffed. “Somebody told you that.”

“Your deodorant told me that.”

“My deodorant?” Anderson took a step toward Sherlock and crossed his arms, his glare never once wavering.

“It’s ‘for men’,” Sherlock dramatized quirkily, as if he were speaking to a child.

Anderson blinked. “Well, of course it’s for men! I’m wearing it.”

“So’s Sergeant Donovan,” Sherlock said, and John looked over to see that Donovan’s eyes had widened in shock, confirming the accusation. John tried to hide his smile as she and Anderson shared a panicked look, and Sherlock bounced on his heels proudly.

Sherlock sniffed the air again and didn’t look Anderson in the face. “Ooh, and I think it just vaporised,” he said, glancing over to John. “May I go in?”

“Now whatever you’re trying to imply…” Anderson began, angrily pointing a finger at Sherlock.

“I’m not implying anything.” He strode up the path to the front door of the house, his eyes wide and innocent. “I’m sure Sally came ‘round for a nice little chat, and just happened to stay over. And I assume she scrubbed your floors, going by the state of her knees.”

John ducked his head and tried not to laugh, following Sherlock through the door and into the house and made sure to take a quick glance at Donovan’s knees as he passed her.

“You shouldn’t have done that, you know,” he whispered to Sherlock, who lead him into a small room on the first floor.

Sherlock shrugged. “I know. But my way’s more fun, don’t you think?”

John didn’t reply, as the room was uncomfortably full of officers and investigators, including Detective Inspector Lestrade. They were all wearing the same blue coveralls.

“You need to wear one of these,” Sherlock said, pointing to a pile of the coveralls on a table, and John nodded, leaning his cane against the wall and picking one up.

Lestrade looked at him, confused, and turned to Sherlock. “Who’s this?” he asked.

“He’s with me,” Sherlock answered, curtly.

“But who is he?” Lestrade pressed.

“I said he’s with me.”

John, despite this constant reassurance from Sherlock, really didn’t feel like he belonged beside him at a crime scene. He was very out of place — more so than Sherlock would be at Sunday mass — with his limp and his cane and his wary eyes. For a moment he wished that he was back at Baker Street drinking tea and doing crosswords with Mrs. Hudson; Sherlock appeared to be the only one who wanted him here and, by the looks of things, Sherlock wasn’t even wanted here.

He looked over to Sherlock, who had bypassed him and Lestrade and had picked up a two pairs of latex gloves, handing one over to him.

“Aren’t you going to put one on?” John asked, noting Sherlock’s lack of coverall.

Sherlock shot him a look, and John rolled his eyes and accepted the latex gloves, making no further comment.

“So,” Sherlock said, turning once more to Lestrade. “Where are we?”

“Upstairs,” Lestrade replied, moving over to the staircase.

Sherlock followed him and looked back at John, making sure he was still close behind. John’s cane clunked on the old stairs and he grimaced, wishing that old houses didn’t sound so hollow.

“I can give you two minutes,” Lestrade said as they reached the second flight of stairs.

Sherlock looked up at the winding staircase and put on the latex gloves. “May need longer.”

“Her name’s Jennifer Wilson according to her credit cards,” Lestrade continued. “We’re running them now for contact details. Hasn’t been here long. Some kids found her.”

He stopped once they reached the second landing, and John’s bad leg thanked him. Lestrade opened the door and lead them in, Sherlock following quickly and John not too far behind. The air in the room was musty, and the floor was ridden with dust. John looked around, the muted grey of the walls reminding him of his bedsit, and he didn’t find the comparison terribly comforting. The room itself was devoid of furniture except for a rocking horse in the far corner. Old scaffolding poles braced the far part of the ceiling, not too far from where a couple of large holes had been knocked through one of the walls. Everything else John assumed had been brought in by the police; portable lighting had been set up, illuminating the room with a weak glow. In the middle of the floor, a beacon within the monochrome walls, lay a woman’s body, face down on the bare floorboards, and dressed head to toe in bright pink. Next to her hand, five letters had been scratched into the floor: RACHE.

First as a doctor, then as a soldier, John had seen many corpses in his life, but the harrowing shock was the same every time.

John looked over to Sherlock, and was surprised to see that, as he stared at the corpse, his face was twisted with regret. The three of them stood in silence, all focused on the body of Jennifer Wilson, before Sherlock whipped his head to look at Lestrade.

“Shut up.”

Startled, Lestrade shook his head. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking,” Sherlock clarified. “It was annoying.”

Lestrade then looked back at John, and the two shared a surprised look. John didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know if he could say anything without disturbing Sherlock, and so didn’t say anything, watching, intrigued, as his flatmate stepped slowly toward the corpse. He moved swiftly, moving around the body with smooth, lithe movements, his coat pooling around his ankles as he crouched down for closer examination. John didn’t know what he was looking for, or if there was anything to be looking for, but, somehow, he knew that if there was, Sherlock Holmes would be the one to find it.

This carried on for another minute before Sherlock abruptly stood up, appearing to have finished his investigation.

“Got anything?” Lestrade asked.

Sherlock shrugged, nonchalant. “Not much,” he admitted. He peeled off the gloves, reached into his coat pocket to retrieve his phone, and began typing.

“She’s German.”

John turned around to see Anderson leaning casually against the doorway.

“‘Rache’,” he elaborated. “It’s German for ‘revenge’. She could be trying to tell us something—”

He was cut off by Sherlock, who had walked briskly over towards the door and closed it in Anderson’s face, not glancing up from his phone.

“Yes, thank you for your input,” he said. The door slammed loudly and John watched as Sherlock moved to stand in the middle of the room, once more beside the corpse of Jennifer Wilson.

“So she’s German?” Lestrade asked.

“Of course she’s not,” Sherlock replied, not offering anything else on the subject. “She is from out of town, though. Intended to stay in London for one night…” He smiled smugly, turned off his phone and pocketed it. “…before returning home to Cardiff. So far, so obvious.”

“Sorry,” John said, speaking for the first time since entering the room. “Obvious?”

“What about the message, though?” Lestrade urged.

Sherlock ignored him and turned to John, who faltered slightly at the intensity of his stare.

“Doctor Watson, what do you think?”

“Of the message?”

“Of the body,” Sherlock clarified. “You’re a medical man.”

Before he could move to get a closer look, Lestrade stepped forward. “Wait, no, we have a whole medical team right outside.”

“They won’t work with me,” Sherlock said, repeating his words from back at Baker Street.

“I’m breaking every rule letting you in here!”

Sherlock smiled through his teeth. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Because you need me.”

Lestrade stared at him defiantly, before lowering his eyes in defeat. “Yes, I do,” he said. “God help me.”

Smiling, much more genuine now, Sherlock turned back to John. “Doctor Watson.”

“Hmm?” John glanced from Sherlock to the body, then from the body to Lestrade, silently seeking his permission to comply with Sherlock’s request.

“Oh, do as he says,” Lestrade muttered. “Help yourself.”

He turned and opened the door, stepping outside and leaving Sherlock and John alone with Jennifer Wilson.

“Anderson, keep everyone out of a couple of minutes.”

Sherlock took that as his cue to move, and he ushered John to where he had stood beside the corpse, squatting down beside it. John followed the best he could, his leg twinging in protest as he awkwardly lowered himself onto one knee, using his cane to support himself the best he could.

“Well?” Sherlock asked, eyes bright and triumphant.

John glanced at the closed door and leaned over the body so Sherlock could hear him.

“What am I doing here?” he asked softly.

“Helping me make a point,” Sherlock answered, mimicking his whisper.

“I’m supposed to be helping you pay the rent.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Yeah, well, this is more fun.”

“Fun?” John questioned. “There’s a woman lying dead.”

“Perfectly sound analysis,” Sherlock noted, “but I was hoping you’d go deeper.”

Well, it was too late to back out now. John dragged his bad leg into a kneeling position and saw Lestrade reenter the room as he leaned in to closer examine the body. First: cause of death. Swallowing and trying not to think about the number of times he had done this in Afghanistan, John put his head close to hers, sniffed, and pulled away, then examining the skin on her right hand before looking again across to Sherlock.

“Yeah…” he began. “Asphyxiation, probably. Passed out, choked on her own vomit. Can’t smell any alcohol on her. It could have been a seizure; possibly drugs.”

“You know what it was,” Sherlock said. “You’ve read the papers.”

John had only read one paper, the one back in 221B, but he knew to what Sherlock was alluding. “What, she’s one of the suicides? The fourth…?”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade interrupted. “Two minutes, I said. I need anything you’ve got.”

Sherlock stood, and John followed, albeit much less gracefully, and leaned once more on his cane.

“Victim is in her late thirties,” Sherlock began. John recognised that voice; Sherlock had used it twice on him already. That was his deduction voice. “Professional person, going by her clothes; I’m guessing something in the media, going by the frankly alarming shade of pink. Travelled from Cardiff today, intending to stay in London for one night. It’s obvious from the size of her suitcase.”

“Suitcase?” Lestrade asked, eyebrows furrowed.

John, sharing his confusion, looked around the room in search of such suitcase. He found none. Sherlock, however, was too wrapped up in his own head to notice.

“Suitcase, yes,” he continued, distractedly moving about the room, his coat flouncing behind him in a dark wave. “She’s been married at least ten years, but not happily. She’s had a string of lovers but none of them knew she was married.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lestrade moaned. “If you’re just making this up…”

“Her wedding ring,” Sherlock interrupted, pointing down to the woman’s left hand. John saw the wedding ring, and it looked completely unremarkable, exactly like every other wedding ring he’d seen his entire life. “Ten years old at least,” Sherlock stated. “The rest of her jewelery has been regularly cleaned, but not her wedding ring. State of her marriage right there. The inside of the ring is shinier than the outside — that means it’s regularly removed; the only polishing it gets is when she works it off her finger. It’s not for work. Look at her nails! She doesn’t work with her hands, so what, or rather who, does she remove her rings for? Clearly not one lover; she’d never sustain the fiction of being single over that amount of time, so more likely a string of them. Simple.”

“That’s brilliant.” The words tumbled out of John’s mouth before he could catch himself, and he awkwardly smiled as Sherlock paused to look at him, eyes wide. “Sorry,” he said, urging Sherlock to continue his explanation.

“Cardiff?” Lestrade prompted.

Sherlock frowned. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“It’s not obvious to me,” John admitted, knowing he spoke for both himself and the Inspector.

Sherlock looked between the two of them, baffled. “Dear God, what is it like inside your funny little brains? It must be so boring.” And, before either John or Lestrade could get another word in, Sherlock was off again. “Her coat: it’s slightly damp. She’s been in heavy rain in the last few hours. No rain anywhere in London in that time. Under her coat collar is damp, too. She’s turned it up against the wind. She’s got an umbrella in her left-hand pocket but it’s dry and unused: not just win, strong wind — too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she was intending to stay overnight, so she must have coma decent distance but she can’t have travelled more than two or three hours because her coat still hasn’t dried. So,” he paused, fishing his phone out of his pocket. “Where has there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time? Cardiff.”

He held out his phone to show John and Lestrade the webpage he was looking at earlier; it displayed today’s weather for southern Britain.

“That’s fantastic!” John gaped, stunned in utter awe at this brilliant madman.

Sherlock turned to him and leaned in. “Do you know you do that out loud?” he asked.

“Sorry,” John apologised. “I’ll shut up.”

“No,” Sherlock countered, quickly dismissing him. “No, it’s…fine.”

John stared up at him in surprise and saw Sherlock give him a brief, shy smile. He realised that Sherlock was pleased with the compliments, he liked the compliments. Then, he remembered earlier in the taxi when Sherlock had deduced him; Sherlock had said that people didn’t usually react well to his deductions. John wondered if there was anyone else at all who thought them to be brilliant, and if Sherlock had ever heard them say it. With that thought in mind, John told himself that, throughout the night, he would remind Sherlock at every possible instance of his mad brilliance. If he got to see that shy, private smile again, it would be worth it.

Lestrade coughed loudly, and John looked away from Sherlock and down and the floorboards.

“Why d’you keep saying suitcase?” Lestrade asked.

As if he had just remembered that they were at a crime scene, Sherlock spun around in a circle looking around the room. “Yes,” he muttered. “Where is it? She must have had a phone or an organiser. Find out who Rachel is.”

Lestrade crossed his arms. “She was writing ‘Rachel’?”

“No,” Sherlock retorted sarcastically. “She was leaving an angry not in German. Of course she was writing Rachel; no other word it can be. Question it: why did she wait until she was dying to write it?”

“How d’you know she had a suitcase?”

Sherlock pointed down to the corpse. “Back of the right leg: tiny splash marks on the heel and calf, not present on the left. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand. Don’t get that splash pattern any other way. Smallish case, going by the spread. Case that size, woman this clothes-conscious: could only be an overnight bag, so we know she was staying one night.” He squatted down by the body, fingers ghosting over the backs of her legs as he examined them more closely. “Now,” he said, “where is it? What have you done with it?”

Lestrade shook head and said, “There wasn’t a case.”

Sherlock looked up at him. “Say that again.”

“There wasn’t a case,” Lestrade repeated. “There was never any suitcase.”

At this, Sherlock immediately stood up and headed for the door, walking straight past John and Lestrade and called out to the police officers standing outside. “Suitcase!” he shouted, hurrying back down the stairs. “Did anyone find a suitcase? Was there a suitcase in this house?”

“Sherlock!” Lestrade called out behind him. “There was no case!”

“But they take the poison themselves,” Sherlock said, slowing down and looking up the stairwell at them. “They chew, swallow the pills themselves. There are clear signs. Even you lot couldn’t miss them.”

“Right, yeah, thanks,” Lestrade grumbled. “And…?”

“It’s murder!” Sherlock expressed, gripping the railing. “All of them. I don’t know how, but they’re not suicides, they’re killings — serial killings.” He clasped his hands together in front of his face in delight. “We’ve got ourselves a serial killer. I love those. There’s always something to look forward to.”

Lestrade looked to John who shook his head, having no clue what Sherlock was talking about. “Why are you saying that?” Lestrade asked, shouting down the stairs.

“Her case!” Sherlock gasped, almost having reached the ground floor. “Come on, where is her case? Did she eat it? Someone else was here, and they took her case.” Then he spoke more quietly, talking to himself rather than John and the baffled Inspector. “So the killer must have driven her here; forgot the case was in the car.”

“She could have checked into a hotel,” John supplied. “Left her case there.”

“No, she never got to the hotel,” Sherlock said, shaking his head. “Look at her hair! She colour-coordinates her lipstick and her shoes. She’d never have left any hotel with her hair still looking…Oh!”

Sherlock stopped, realisation dawning on his face, and John for the life of him couldn’t understand what it could be.

“Oh!” He spun around in pure delight.

“Sherlock?” John called down to him.

Lestrade leaned over the railing. “What is it,” he asked. “What?”

“Serial killers are always hard. You have to wait for them to make a mistake.”

“We can’t just wait!” Lestrade said.

Sherlock began to hurry down the last flight of stairs. “Oh, we’re done waiting. Look at her, really look! Houston, we have a mistake! Get on to Cardiff: find out who Jennifer Wilson’s family and friends were. Find Rachel!” He reached the bottom of the stairs and John watched him disappear from sight.

“Of course, yeah,” Lestrade called, waving the officers around them to follow Sherlock’s instructions. “But what mistake?”

Sherlock ran back into view, his eyes ablaze with excitement. He leapt up the first few stairs and looked fervently from John to Lestrade and back again. “PINK!”

And he was gone again.

Lestrade turned to John, who shook his head, baffled, before going back into the room while Anderson and his team followed closely in his wake.

“Let’s get on with it,” Anderson grumbled, pointedly ignoring John as he passed.

Seemingly forgotten by everyone else, John hesitated on the landing for a moment before deciding to go back downstairs to find Sherlock. He turned to say goodbye to Lestrade but saw that the Inspector was too engrossed with giving stressed orders to his officers to notice John’s awkward fumbling. So, John began the long and painful descent down the stairs. As careful as he was, John was still occasionally knocked about by hurried police officers, who pushed passed him without so much as a second glance. His grip tightened on his cane as his hand threatened a tremor. Slowly, but surely, he eventually made it to the bottom of the stairs, where he removed his coverall and latex gloves, his head bowed so as to attract as little attention as possible. He put on his jacket and left the building, making sure to stay out of the way of the people who were actually supposed to be there. Once he was back out in the street John looked around in search of Sherlock, or for any sign as to where he had gone.

“He’s gone.”

John looked over to Donovan, who was standing back by the police tape.

“Who, Sherlock Holmes?” he asked, walking over to her.

“Yeah, he just took off,” she said. “He does that.”

A heavy weight settled in John’s chest, as he realised that he had been, once again, forgotten. “Is he coming back?”

Donovan shook her head. “Didn’t look like it.”

“Right.” He looked around the street, trying to think of what to do from here. “Right, yes. Sorry, where am I?”

“Brixton.”

“Right. Er, do you know where I could get a cab? It’s just, er…well…” John glanced down at his cane, “my leg.”

Donovan’s face softened slightly and she lifted the police tape. “Yeah,” she said. “Try the main road.”

“Thanks,” John smiled curtly, ducking under the tape. He was about to walk away when Donovan spoke again.

“But you’re not his friend,” she stated, and John turned back to her, confused. “He doesn’t have friends. So who are you?”

“I’m…I’m nobody,” John said. “I just met him.”

“Okay, a bit of advice then,” Donovan offered. “Stay away from that guy.”

“Why?”

She laughed. “Do you know why he’s here? He’s not paid or anything. He likes it. He gets off on it. The weirder the crime, the more he gets off. And you know what? One day just showing up won’t be good enough. One day we’ll be standing around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there.”

John stared at her and tried to process her words; they didn’t really make sense. Sure, Sherlock was a bit mad and wasn’t exactly the most tactful of people, be he didn’t seem to be violent. “Why would he do that?” John asked finally.

“Because he’s a psychopath,” Donovan said, so nonchalantly that it made John uncomfortable. “And psychopaths get bored.”

Back from the entrance of the house, Lestrade called over to her.

“Donovan!”

“Coming!” she said, before turning back once more to John. “Stay away from Sherlock Holmes.”

John watched as she walked toward the house, mulling over what she’d said. From what he had seen, Sherlock was no more than a strange young man with an even stranger mind, but these people had known him for longer than he had and they all hated him, tolerated him at best. Perhaps it was best if he just went home — to his bedsit — and forgot that this had ever happened.

Sighing, John turned away from the scene and began to limp down the street in the direction of the main road. It wasn’t too long before he came to a telephone box, which began to ring as he passed it. John stopped and looked at it for a few seconds, wondering if he should answer it, but decided against it and continued down the road. The phone stopped ringing.

It wasn’t long before John made it to Brixton High Road, and he tried (and failed) to hail a taxi three times before stopping on the corner outside of a busy restaurant. He stood there, defeated, as the wind picked up and nipped through his too-thin coat. As he was about to walk off again, the payphone on the wall of the restaurant began to ring. John looked over at it cautiously, watching as one of the waiters from the restaurant moved to pick it up, but it stopped ringing before the lad had the chance. Shaking his head, John continued on down the road, weaving in and out of the crowd.

He walked firmly past another telephone box determined not to look at it, but it too began to ring. Mystified, John stared at the phone and wondered whether or not he should answer it. Curiosity got the better of him, it always did, as he pulled open the door and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

The line was filled with static, and a man’s steely voice spoke to him. “There is a security camera on the building to your left,” it said. “Do you see it?”

John frowned at the odd message. “Who’s this? Who’s speaking?”

“Do you see the camera, Doctor Watson?”

He froze when he heard his name, and immediately recognised that he had stepped into something much larger than himself. He looked through the left window of the phone box and scanned the building for the camera. He saw it, a CCTV camera high up on the wall, and pointing straight at him.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone. “I see it.”

“Watch.”

John complied and watched as the camera, which had been pointing straight at him, swiveled away to point at an unremarkable part of the road.

“There is another camera on the building opposite you,” the man said. “Do you see it?”

John looked across the road to the second camera, which was also pointed toward the phone box. He hummed his acknowledgment, staring. The camera immediately swiveled away, just like the first one.

“And finally, at the top of the building on your right.”

Like the first two, this camera also turned away, and John was completely off the record. He could disappear right now and no-one would be able to tell what happened to him…

“How are you doing this?” John asked into the phone, growing slightly panicked. He tried to keep himself calm, steadying his balance, but it was months since Afghanistan and he had forgotten what it felt like to be in danger.

A black car pulled up at the kerbside by the telephone box. It was clean and sleek and expensive and obviously well looked after. John’s grip on the phone loosened as the driver got out and opened the door to the back seat.

“I would make some sort of threat,” said the man’s voice on the other end of the line. “But I’m sure your situation is quite clear to you.”

The phone went dead and John put it back down, weighing his options. He could make a run for it, but running was completely out of the question given his leg and, even if he could run, he didn’t think that it would do much good. If whoever had called him was able to watch him from CCTV, then he could be under surveillance anywhere in London; trying to hide seemed quite foolish. Knowing that there wasn’t much that he could do, John left the phone box and got into the car.

An attractive young woman sat next to him behind the passenger seat, her eyes fixed on her BlackBerry, ignoring him. Sherlock had ignored him too, and that was why he was in this mess.

“Hello,” John said, hoping to start a conversation (and potentially find out where he was going).

The woman looked up from her phone and smiled brightly at him “Hi,” she said, and turned back to her phone.

“What’s your name, then?”

“Er…” The woman contemplated his question for a minute before answering. “…Anthea.”

John huffed. “Is that your real name?” he asked.

“No.” She smiled at him again in the same way that John suspected she would at a small child. Or a dog.

He twisted around and tried to look out of the rear window, but it was darkly tinted and he couldn’t see anything other than muted lights from cars and street lamps.

“I’m John,” he said, turning back to Not-Anthea.

Not-Anthea smiled down at her BlackBerry. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

John felt like he should have suspected that. And he was growing quite tired of feeling like everyone else knew more than he did.

“Any point in asking where I’m going?” he asked, growing impatient.

“None at all…John.”

John nodded, his lips pursed. “Okay.”

He didn’t speak again for the rest of the journey.

#johnlock #tjlc #asip #sherlock #btbs:1 #fanfic

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