#did i go work 6 hours a day until i figured it out? yes. after i figured it out did i feel like a wizard? yes.

[vpofcookies]

Unpopular opinion but stereonets are rad and they make you look like a little geology wizard. Little sigils of locate fault zone.

Also I love that beach ball diagrams exist that's so silly. Put your earthquake data in a beach ball, okay, alright

#bro idk why I'm thinking about this rn but I'm right #did i go work 6 hours a day until i figured it out? yes. after i figured it out did i feel like a wizard? yes.

[ughgoaway]

also omg?¿ you've probably seen the clips of matty completely breaking character upon seeing gabbriette in the front row (😭😭) like stop i literally cannot take how cute they are but....... its giving spotting teacher reader in the crowd and the way he just m e l t s entirely (the band teasing him after and even annie jumping in oh bye!!)

(he can't help but keep looking your way and the way he absolutely can't stop his smile from growing oh its so bad i fear...)

- (bff anon also needs to learn to stfu)

(THIS IS SO LATE I APOLOGISE BESTIE)

(its also not proofread so apologies for that too)

omg yes I literally must've watched those clips about 20 times over, every new angle that pops up I am LOOKING.

okay, okay, I'm imagining this is after you're already together and have been for a little bit. Obviously, you can't go on tour with him because you do have a job, and matty is MOPEY.

like he just won't stop waiting by the phone for you to text him. Anytime anyone's phone goes off, matty is jumping to his phone to check if it's you. Time difference makes it difficult, but you facetime and text as much as humanly possible.

even just little updates throughout the day, "the staff room had run out of tea bags. call the police." or "I know I shouldn't say this about a student, but ohmygod, timmy o'donnel might be the dumbest kid I've ever worked with. he'd 6, and he STILL spells his name with just one m. HOW!??!?"

sometimes, matty can't respond straight away (much to his disappointment), but when he gets back from sound check to see a text from you? my man is SWOONING. the boys all make fun of him for how giddy he gets, "dude you're like a teenage girl in a movie kicking her legs in bed and twirling the chord around her finger" "shut up"

It's not term time (do other countries call it that? like school time?? idk), so Annie is with Matty, but you're still in work on staff training days. the most boring days according to you

"I mean kids are hard work, but so is having to sit in a room with Mr. Smith for 5 hours as he tries to flirt with me" (needless to say, Matty is NOT a fan of Mr. Smith after this comment, but you assure him that no one could ever get you away from him, and you then tease him about the pink dusting on his cheeks when he hears that)

so one day, when Matty doesn't get a good morning text from you, his heart breaks a little, but he figured you had just woken up late and forgotten. but then lunch rolls around, and usually you Facetime and chat while you're on break, but still, radio silence.

he's worried, are you mad at him? Did he say something wrong? he messages asking if you're okay, but 5 minutes before he's due on stage, there's still no response. To say he's sad is an understatement. Everyone knows to give him a little space today because he is out of sorts.

but also, they know you're coming. you managed to convince your boss that you're sick (think mean girls "*cough cough" I'm sick") and sneak away to come to the Paris show. You had told the boys your plan, expecting some pushback or judgment. But, you got a unanimous "thank god" message because if they had to deal with matty missing you for one more day, they'd fly you out themselves.

you meet Mark outside, and he gets you in and has a spot at the front of the pit waiting for you. you are buzzing to see Matty, and you can't wait until he notices you in the crowd. You're wearing merch that you stole from his drawer, so you're hoping that will catch his eye.

matty gets on stage and distracts himself from thinking of you the whole show. The crowd is crazy tonight, and it's giving him the energy he needs. you're on Ross' side, and he clocks you immediately, waiting until Matty isn't looking when he waves at you sneakily.

the girls around you scream and swoon because who wouldn't when Ross waves at them? you giggle and wave back, but your eyes are immediately drawn back to Matty.

ever since that first concert, your eyes have been drawn to Matty, and seeing them live means so much more to you after that show. seeing it just brings you back to the night of your first kiss (working on this fic btw) and you feel giddy at the sight of him all smiley and dancey.

the good crowd and the sight of annie dancing around at the side of the stage keep matty pretty distracted, so for a good few songs, he doesn't notice you. but when he finally does? it's obviously to everyone in that room that he is looking at something he loves.

he is doing his usual stage antics but stops on the spot and does a double take when he sees you. you can hear the smile in his voice as he sings, but considering how wide it is on his face, you've sure the entire venue could see it anyway.

he finishes the song, doing his best to connect with the whole crowd, but he can not stop his eyes from drifting over to you. by the end of the song, he mouths to you, "I love you," whilst laughing in disbelief, and you just giggle and teasingly wave at him.

now does he call it out on stage??? perhaps... I think if he does he doesn't point you out or say your name he simply says, "I've just spotted by girlfriend in the audience, she's totally surprised me by being here so if the rest of the show is shit- you all know why"

I like to think the fans know matty has a gf but nothing else, no name or what you look like. because you're a non celeb, and he doesn't want you to have to deal with everything he does, and you don't mind either. any way you can stay out of the daily mail you're happy with

the show finishes, and it's not shit like matty said it's amazing as always. you get ushered off just before it ends to stand side stage waiting for matty.

you greet Annie when you get up there though, she's ecstatic to see you and asks whether you're staying, and you tell her you're there for the whole weekend and she shrieks and hugs you again and again. before the boys come off stage, someone comes and grabs Annie to wait in the green room. It's what's safest when there's so much commotion and movement.

she wanders off just as the boys come off stage, and you are immediately engulfed with just matty.

he hugs you, initially holding you tight and burrowing his face into your neck. He smells vaguely of sweat, wine, and cigs but somehow still smelt good.

he pulls back and hold you face between his hands, staring at you and flicking his eyes all over your face as if to confirm it's really you.

Once they hit your lips, he seems to remember he hasn't kissed you yet, so without a second thought, he pulls you in for a passionate kiss. you immediately moan at the contact, and matty uses the opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth. your hands rake through his sweaty curls.

a wolf whistle from Ross breaks you apart, and you immediately go red and hide in mattys shoulder, he's of course, unashamed and simply throws Ross a wink, which makes everyone around you burst out laughing.

about an hour later, you're all sat in the green room, and the teasing begins;

"mate you should've seen your face I thought you were about to faint"

"I don't think I've seen your eyes go that wide since Sarah Marshall flashed you her tits at your 18th" (George covers Annie's ears as he shares this anecdote, much to her annoyance)

"I'm surprised you remembered the lyrics after that. You forget them at the best of times"

"OKAY, OKAY, let's all calm down, enough of the teasing, please," matty begs

"You did look very funny though daddy" annie says with a giggle fiddling with ross' hair as she sits in his lap.

everyone laughed at Annie's comment and she lit right up, matty however groaned and burrowed his head into your chest, you teasingly said "there there, it's so hard being a simp I know baby" whilst petting his head.

the laughter continues, and he pulls back with a gasp, open-mouthed at your cheeky comment. but he soon settles back on the sofa and pulls you into his side, and before long, Annie comes running over and burrows herself in between the two of you.

both you and annie fall asleep on the sofa, and matty sneaks a picture before he wakes you up to go to the hotel.

it's his background for the next 6 months.

(also bff, never stfu I literally love you)

blurb masterlist here :)

#this has been in my drafts for a minute #oopsie #but yes simp matty supremacy. #he loves his girl... so what???? #annie would so take the piss of him bc she loves how it makes her uncles giggle #sometimes they feed her lines #teacher au! #anon! #bff anon <33333

[michelleleewise]

Chocolate and promises

Pairing: Avenger Loki x Female reader

Warnings: anxiety, nerves, pining, all the feels, angst to fluff,

Summary: you and thor head to New Asgard, hoping it's not too late........

Part 5 -- Part 6-

You ran out of the elevator, sprinting across the roof, Loki's cloak billowing behind you, making it to the jet "d..did you get...everything?" You asked trying to catch your breath "yes y/n, everything on your list is in the back." Thor said smiling. "Awesome, ok...let's go." You said tossing your bag down following him to the cockpit. You strapped Into the seat feeling the thrum of the engines. "How long until we're there?" You asked looking over "a few hours at most" Thor said flipping more switches "and he's still there?" You asked bunching the cloak in your hand "I am not sure. I haven't heard anything, but I didn't known he was planning to leave either." Thor said sighing.

You slowly opened your eyes hearing Thor's voice "y/n, wake up we have arrived." He said shaking your shoulder. "Oh shit, sorry. I didn't mean to fall asleep." You yawned stretching. "It's quite alright, let's get everything..." he trailed off looking to the back of the jet. You got up, making your way to your bag hearing voices "I'm sorry y/n." You vaguely heard Thor say before he gripped your shoulders "Thor, what the..." you trailed off as he pushed you into a locker, quickly closing it behind you when you heard footsteps. "Brother, What do I owe the pleasure?" You heard Loki ask "oh, well I...just thought I would stop by" Thor said nervously. "Riiight..." Loki said, hearing his boots echo through the jet. "Can I not just come to see my brother?" You heard Thor ask. "I suppose.." loki said, suspicion in his tone.

"Come, let's go to the tavern I am parched after the journey." Thor said. You heard the footsteps retreat, letting out a sigh you went to get out of the locker, unable to find a latch. "Shit.." you breathed, running your fingers along the metal "Thor you...grr." you growled pushing on the door realizing you were locked in. You tried to ram your shoulder into the door, groaning when it wouldn't budge. Leaning on it you sighed trying to figure out how you were going to get out when the door suddenly opened, landing you on the floor. "Oh..I'm so sorry!" You heard behind you, rolling to your back seeing a young boy looking no older then ten standing there "prince Thor sent me, my name is Talvi." He smiled holding his hand out. "Well hello, and thank you for letting me out." You said shaking his hand.

You got up dusting yourself off "Prince Thor told me you are here for Prince Loki, are you a surprise?" He asked looking up at you. "Yes, L..Prince Loki doesn't know im here." You said grabbing your bag. "Oh, I think he will be very excited, he's been rather sad lately." The boy said following you "has he?" You asked looking at him "yeah, he never leaves his house except for meetings, but you'll make him happy." He smiled again. "Oh...how do you know?" You asked smiling "well, you seem nice...and your pretty." He said looking down, a light blush on his cheeks. "Well thank you Talvi." You smiled.

"Now, where does Prince Thor live?" You asked piling everything at the back of the jet. "Oh, he and Prince Loki share a house, they said the people needed the space more then they did." He explained making you smile. "Well, they went to the tavern, so.." you trailed off not sure what you should do. "Oh, Prince Thor has spent days in the tavern, it is legendary." He said laughing "oh...hmm." you thought to yourself "well, I'll be waiting here until he gets back" you said sitting down "Well I must return to my family, I hope things work out as you wish my lady." He said bowing as he took off out of the jet. You leaned back in your seat stretching your legs out, hoping Thor wouldn't be gone for days.

When she sings, she sings "come home"

When she sings, she sings "come home"

You opened your eyes, looking out the windshield seeing it was dark outside as you heard singing In the back of the jet, loud and drunken singing, peeking out seeing Thor and Loki sitting on the bench.....

I stormsvarte fjell, jeg vandrer alene

Over isbreen tar jeg meg frem

I eplehagen står møyen den vene

Og synger: "når kommer du hjem?"

You had no idea what be was singing, you only heard him speak his native tongue a few times, usually when he was mad at Thor. but his voice was angelic, entrancing. the deep baritone sending a shiver up your spine feeling your heart swell. You could listen to him until the end of time.

Men trærne danser og fossene stanser

Når hun synger, hun synger "kom hjem"

Men trærne danser og fossene stanser

They sang together, Thor laughing as Loki slumped down next to him, his head laying on Thor's shoulder "I miss our times in the tavern brother." Loki slurred making you giggle, you had never seen him drunk before, remembering him saying our alcohol was "sub par." "I miss them as well, we shall have to do this more often." Thor said laughing when Loki sat up "Thor..." he said shifting to face him raising his hand pointing at himself "I have decided to depart." He finished, waving his arm in the air. "Oh....where to?" Thor asked "no idea...just not here." Loki said pressing his back against the wall "and what would make you depart?" Thor asked "because I have lost the one person I truly love." He said laying his head on Thor's shoulder again "you don't know that, wait and speak with her first." Thor said "it doesn't matter...she won't have me, and I don't want to be here if I can't have her." He said sighing.

You heard Thor say something but couldn't make it out as you sat back against the wall in the cockpit "h...he loves me?" You whispered to yourself pulling your knees up wrapping your arms around them. You weren't sure how long you sat there when Thor crept in "y/n...come we must hurry." He whispered waving you after him. You got up, walking to the back of the jet seeing Loki sprawled out on the bench, his long curls fanning above his head, one hand on his chest the other over his eyes. "He won't sleep long so we need to be quick." Thor said grabbing your equipment heading outside. You grabbed your bag taking one last look at Loki before following Thor, carrying everything to the main hall.

"Ok, you do what you need to, I will go take Loki home, when you are finished come over and I shall sneak you in." Thor said setting everything down giving you directions to the house before starting for the door "oh Thor.." you called out seeing him turn "Thank you, for all of this." You said smiling "for my brother and you...anytime." he smiled walking out the door as you got to work setting everything up, hoping you were right and things wouldn't backfire...

You stood in the small room, fidgeting with your fingers hearing the main room fill with people. Apparently the town decided to throw a feast in Thor's honor so the entire town was here. Luckily for you he had drug Loki out of the house first thing in the morning, sending a seamstress to the house who then called for a small army of women to put your outfit together while they attended council meetings all day. You looked in the mirror, the long silk jacket went down to your wrists, leaving a large slit open in the front where your black lace teddy showed front and center, your belt holding it together at your waist as it cascaded down to the floor "God I hope I don't trip." You said adjusting the belt, smoothing out the skin tight leather pants, the forest green hue matching the jacket.

You sat down, grabbing your heels taking a deep breath. If you were wrong about this you were about to make an utter fool of yourself in front of the entirety of Asgard, and Loki. You bent down, lacing your heels when you heard a knock on the door, seeing it slowly open revealing Thor. "You look magnificent y/n." He said smiling. "I think im going to throw up." You said leaning over feeling Thor sit down next to you "remember y/n, above all else he is your friend, he loves you and I believe he will be honored by your bravery." He said rubbing your back. "Now, I will announce that someone has prepared a song for the Prince, and you come out when your ready." He smiled standing up. "Thor.." you started, grabbing his hand "He won't say no, trust me." He said squeezing your hand before leaving.

You stood up, fluffing your hair checking you makeup hearing Thor's booming voice "ladies and gentlemen, we have the honor of listening to a very talented performer who has prepared a song for our very own Prince Loki! Let's make them feel welcome!" He said as you heard the room erupt in applause "Well, now or never." You said walking towards the main hall. You looked down, keeping your hair covering your face as you made your way to your machine, finding the song you hit play as the lights dimmed. Turning your back to the crowd you closed your eyes, taking a deep breath lifting the mic to your lips.

Again, you're gone, off on a different path than mine...i'm left behind, wondering if I should follow

You had to go, and of course it's always fine...I probably could catch up with you tomorrow

But is this what it feels like to be growing apart?...When did I become the one who's always chasing your heart?

You turned to the crowd, the train of your coat whipping behind you as you looked out to the packed room, your eyes meeting his...

Now I turn around and find I am lost in the woods...North is south, right is left, when you're gone

I'm the one who sees you home, but now I'm lost in the woods...And I don't know what path you are on

I'm lost in the woods

You took a few steps forward, looking around the room seeing people smiling at you, your eyes traveling back to the front of the room seeing Loki sat stock still, his cheeks a light pink.

Up till now the next step was a question of how...I never thought it was a question of whether

Who am I, if I'm not your gal?...Where am I, if we're not together forever?

Now I know you're my true north, 'cause I am lost in the woods...Up is down, day is night, when you're not there

You held eye contact with him, wiling him to feel everything you felt for him as you strode through the room, your palms sweating the closer to him you got.

Oh, you're my only landmark, so I'm lost in the woods...Wondering if you still care

But I'll wait for a sign that I'm on your path...Cause you are mine...until then, I'm lost in the woods

You felt the base run through you, the look in his eyes not betraying whatever emotion he may be feeling as you stode closer, seeing Thor's smile widen.

I'm lost in the woods...I'm lost in the woods...I'm lost in the woods...I'm lost in the woods...I'm lost in the woods

You made it to the bottom of the high table, Loki and thor sat with several others high above you as you took a breath, closing your eyes feeling your heart race in your chest.

I'm lost in the woods

The room thrummed with applause, Thor's loudest of all when you looked to Loki, you're eyes locking with his you lifted the mic to your lips knowing this was either the best decision of your life or the worst "jeg elsker deg Loki Laufeyson" you whispered, seeing his breath hitch as your hands shook, the anticipation eating you alive when he suddenly got up, his face indifferent as he slowly made his way down to you, stopping in front of you you saw the red spread across his cheeks as he genlty wrapped his hand around yours, lifting the mic to his lips "jeg elsker deg min valkyrie" He whispered, a smile spreading across his face as you grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him to you you pressed your lips to his, pouring every emotion you had into him, feeling his hands glide up and down your back when be pulled back just enough to look at you

"i..what about our friendship. I don't want to ruin that." He said gazing into your eyes "loki, I'm definitely going to need you to do that, immediately if possible" you said as he smiled, leaning back in, his lips engulphing yours as he cupped the back of your head, his tongue pressing past your lips as he deepened the kiss, moaning onto your mouth you felt his hand slide down your your belt as he pulled back, you both panting "I do believe I am ready to ruin you my dear." He purred, his fingers fanning over your cheek when you grabbed his hand pulling him behind you, stopping at the door you looked back "Thank you Thor!" You yelled blowing him a kiss as you drug Loki away into the night, excited for what the future may hold......

A/N- graphics by: @harlequin-hangout..the song Loki and Thor were singing was the one Loki sang on the train on Lamentis....

Translations- "jeg elsker deg Loki Laufeyson"--"I love you Loki laufeyson."

"jeg elsker deg min valkyrie"--"I love you my valkyrie."

@vbecker10 @lokisgoodgirl @sinsandguilt @high-functioning-lokipath @mochie85 @slytherclaw1227 @jaidenhawke @budugu @xorpsbane @schizonephilim @lokidokieokie @holdmytesseract @your-taste-on-my-lips @lokixryss @asgardianprincess1050 @tallseaweed @aniar4wniak @sekaishell @lokispetblogs @loopsisloops @trojanaurora @lonadane @yelkmelk @stupidthoughtsinwriting @silverfire475 @goblingirlsarah @commanding-officer @glitterylokislut @kkdvkyya @cueloki @daggers-and-mischief @sititran @witchyblue @verycollectivecreator @nixymarvelkins @chantsdemarins @shinraski @usagishira @filthyhiddles @dukes2581 @assemblingavenger @lulubelle814 @irishhappiness @wolfsmom1 @luvlady-writes @lovingchoices14 @thomase1 @myworldgoesboomz @huntress-artemiss

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[readerlovr]

For Richer or for Poorer

Pt. 2

Pt.1

This past week has been the hardest I have ever worked. Growing up seeing my dad and brothers work, I always knew was difficult, but doing it yourself is on another level. So I can only imagine what the boss feels. It’s Friday so luckily it’s the last day of the week for us.

Although Mr. Beresford has two meetings today which I have to attend. As I am organizing my planner for next week, I get an email. It’s from one of the companies we have a meeting with saying they can no longer meet at 3, and can only meet after 5. I would normally look skeptical because the normal work day ends at 5, but Mr. Beresford stays in his office long after I leave for the day. Before I send the company a confirmation, I check Mr. Beresford’s agenda and I see that he has a free period between 5:30 and 7. So I gather my notepad and walk my way to Mr. Beresford’s office. Once I’m there, I knock, then crack the door.

“Mr. Beresford, your 3 o’clock rescheduled for a later appointment, so I put you down for 6.”

“Thank you, Ms. Y/l/n.”

I close the door as I go back to my office, and send the company the confirmation for 6. They respond swiftly saying that they will be here at 6. I mentally prepare myself for a long day after the normal work hours.

I wonder if Rachel has any tips on my note taking, so I decide to speed dial 5.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Rachel I was wondering if you have any tips on how to take notes for the meeting. I have been taking notes this past week but Mr. Beresford didn’t seem to need them. But because there is two meetings today, he might need them to recollect the specifics the different meetings.”

“Yeah of course.” She gives me the spill of how she used to take notes, but she says Mr. Beresford did not like the way she took notes, because she wrote it in her own understanding instead of his.

“Okay, because we have another meeting after the one that starts in 15 minutes. And it’s after 5 o’clock, so I definitely need to take notes to the best of my ability. Or his I guess.”

“Get used to that.” She says with a sigh.

“What taking notes? Or staying after 5?”

“Well, both actually.”

“I have to stay after 5, everyday with him?”

“Well, yes. Haven’t you been doing that so far?”

“No, I have been leaving around 5:30.”

“Y/n, no. The assistant stays with the boss until he tells you to leave.”

My father has had assistants but he never kept one long enough for me to see how they were supposed to behave.

“Oh no. Why didn’t he tell me?”

“I don’t know, he probably thought you’d just know given your father has a business.”

“My father did everything on his own.” I say curtly. I hate discussing my family and their success, the reason why I left is to start my own. So when someone brings them up, I try to be tight lipped about them.

“Also, it wasn’t in the job description.”

“It’s not, but it’s commonly preferred.”

I think for a bit. I feel bad that I possibly left Mr. Beresford to do everything alone. I never suspected I was doing anything wrong. Every morning when I entered after giving Mr. Beresford his coffee and breakfast, notes he took from the previous night was sat on my desk.

I look over at the time and see it’s 5 till the meeting.

“Hey Rachel I have to go.”

“Okay, talk to you later.” She says before promptly hanging up.

I grab my notepad and get up to walk down to the conference room. When I get there I notice Mr. Beresford and a couple of our staff is already seated. I quickly take the seat on Mr. Beresford’s left. Once I sit, he looks up from his laptop and smile.

“Mr. Beresford.” I say greeting him.

“Ms. Y/l/n.”

I look around at everyone else engaging in their own conversations. I scoot a bit forward closer to Mr. Beresford.

“Why didn’t you tell me I was supposed to stay after with you everyday?”

“I supposed you knew. And if not you’d figure it out eventually. Plus I’ve been used to-“ he pauses and looks back down at his computer, “working alone.”

Just as I about to ask what he meant the company we are meeting with walked in. Mr. Beresford stood up, which caused me to follow suit. We all greeted each other by shaking hands.

Once everyone was aquatinted and seated, Mr. Beresford walks to the other end of the table with no chair.

“Shall we get started?”

_________________________

I tried to take notes most accurate to Mr. Beresford’s. Mimicking his note taking style from the one he leaves on my desk every night. Based on the meeting details, I could give him the notes at the end of the day so I have enough time to tweak it if I see something unfitting.

It’s now 30 minutes until the 6:00 meeting. We had lunch at 3 since the meeting was pushed back. Although, I like to work better with a snack so I decide to go downstairs to the donut shop to get a donut and a coffee. After I gathered my purse, I knocked on Mr. Beresford’s door.

“Mr. Beresford, I’m going downstairs to get a donut, do you want anything?”

He doesn’t respond. After a minute of waiting, I knock on his door again, then open the door and peek in.

“Mr. Beresford?”

He looks up at me from his computer with a stoic look.

“No thank you. I am not supposed to be eating that stuff.”

I notice he seems a bit down so I don’t push him on it.

“Okay, I’ll be right back.”

I am back within 10 minutes. I finish my coffee before I make it back to my office. As I’m walking back I contemplate either going to my office or Mr. Beresford’s. I decide on Mr. Beresford’s office of course. I knock on the door once again. He doesn’t respond like normally but I decide to turn the knob anyway. As I come in the room uninvited, he looks at me confused.

With my donut in hand I decide to sit in a seat in front of him.

“Hi.” I say before taking a bite of my donut.

“Hi?” He says confused. He continues to look at me confused as of to say, why are you here.

“What?” I question his confused look.

He shakes his head. “Normally people don’t just come in my office and sit down. Just to say hi.”

“Well I’m not normal people. I’m your assistant so I can do that.” I say with a smile.

He smirks a bit before changing his face to serious.

“Look. I know I met you before the job interview. And I gave you a well deserved compliment based on your looks, but our relationship needs to be strictly professional.”

What he said caught me off guard. I wasn’t trying to come onto him. Even though he is insanely good looking. I just wanted to start a conversation given he was so busy this whole week.

“Oh.” I say as I nod and start to get up to leave.

“But-“ he says as he sees me get up. “You can stay. At least until the meeting starts. We can walk down together.”

“Okay.” I say with a small smile. I don’t want to say the wrong thing because I don’t want him to think I am trying to build a relationship that’s not professional.

“So, why don’t you eat donuts? Is it your diet?”

He once again looks down at his computer. I know he was down earlier but I thought he was okay now. Before I was able to apologize for prying he answers.

“Yeah, it’s my diet. I actually haven’t had a donut in 5 years.”

“Really?”

He nods and looks up at me from his computer. I give him a cunning smile and hold up my donut.

“You want a bite?”

“No, I’m okay.” He says chuckling.

“Come on. It’s a bite. What is a bite gonna do?”

He looks at me for a couple seconds before he lightly nods. He motions his fingers for me to bring the donut closer. I stand up to bring it close enough for him to take but instead he bites it straight off the donut. My heart skips a beat with his held eye contact on me. As he pulls away I have to mentally tell myself to act normal. I sit back down trying to shake that hot memory out of my head. I look up to him and he’s still chewing. I wait a couple seconds after he swallows it and I’m met with silence.

“Well?”

He starts smiling. Like a real smile, not a smirk.

“That was really good.”

“See I told you. You just have to trust your smart assistant sometimes.”

He smirks and huffs out a laugh. I check my watch and realize it’s seven till 6.

“Oh, we have to go.”

I stand up and he follows after me down the hall. It’s just us when we enter the conference room.

“Where is everybody?”

“Well the staff isn’t required to stay after 5, so we’re just waiting on the company that we’re meeting with.”

We continue to wait for exactly 7 minutes before Mr. Beresford stands up.

“Where are you going?”

“They’re late. I’m leaving.”

“Wha- leaving? Just like that?”

“Yes, just like that.”

As he moves to walk out the conference room door, the company walks in the door.

“Shall we get this over with?” The man who comes in first says, throwing his coat at the woman who came in after him.

Mr. Beresford looks back at me before turning to the man who spoke.

“Mr. Johnson, we are not going further with this merger.”

“Why not? I put in a lot of money for this deal.” The man named Mr. Johnson says.

“You can keep your deal, and you can keep your money. I’m all about creating jobs for people. I need my partners to be punctual as well as considerate. Because if not, I know you will treat your employees the same way. And so far from what I’ve seen,” he gestures to the woman behind him, “you are not very considerate to your employees.”

I don’t know why, but that whole scene made me have a heartbeat in my core. My mouth is agape. I have never seen anyone respectfully decline a disrespectful person regardless of their money.

“Come on, Ms. Y/l/n.”

I immediately jump up to stand beside him. He puts his hand on my back as he guides me out of the room.

“You can see yourself out.” He says as we past them out the door. Just before we leave, I give a sympathetic look to the woman.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, people like that really get under my skin.”

“Don’t apologize. You did the right thing.”

He looks down at his feet as we continue walking together.

“Could you… come back to my office with me. I like the company.” He asks seemingly nervously. I smile up at him before nodding.

“Sure let me just get the rest of my things.” We reach my office door and he goes inside of his. I gather my purse and previous notes. I stay in my office a bit longer than suspected, checking and responded to thank you emails on Mr. Beresford’s behalf. I’m finished about 10 minutes later and I start to walk to Mr. Beresford’s office. I knock on the door, and there wasn’t an answer like usual.

“Mr. Beresford, it’s me.” Still no answer.

I open the door expecting him to look up at me from his computer, but he wasn’t there. I know he didn’t walk out of his office because I would’ve saw given that my office is right next to his corner office.

“Mr. Beresford?” I ask looking around the office. I notice that his chair is a bit pushed back than normal. I walk over to his chair to see why and immediately my heart drops. He is passed out on the floor behind his desk.

“Oh, shit! Mr. Beresford!” I kneel down to feel his forehead I don’t feel it being warm. I fumble for my purse to grab my cell to call 911.

I tell dispatch what happened and what building and floor were on. They had an ambulance out here in minutes once they found out it was Clay Beresford. When the officers get here, I have Mr. Beresford’s head in my lap so it wouldn’t be on the hard ground. They remove him off of me and put him on a stretcher.

“Be careful with him. I don’t know what happened.” I say with a shaky voice.

One of the officers that is not carrying him turns to me.

“Ma’am, calm down. We know how to deal with a heart transplant patient.”

Once he says that I am stunned.

“A what?”

“4 years ago Clayton Beresford, had a heart transplant from his mother after the whole doctor team tried to murder him. It was on the news for weeks.” He looks at me like the information he gave me was so obvious and everyone else knew about it.

“Wha-“ I can’t even process what he just said. As his assistant why wasn’t I notified of his condition. 10 million questions run in my head but I realize as his assistant I should be with him also. I find the stamina to get up on my shaky legs and follow them to the elevator. Once we get outside I climb in the ambulance after they put Mr. Beresford in it. I stare at Mr. Beresford seemingly lifeless body, and it scares the shit out of me. I grab his hand and hope everything is okay.

Once we get to the hospital, he gets put on an IV. And i have to wait in the waiting room while they check to see what’s wrong with him. I rock in my chair nervously wondering what I’m going to do if he doesn’t make it out of this. He was just starting to become my friend even with him saying he wanted a strictly professional relationship. As I am thinking to myself as Beresford was called. I stood up and walked to the doctor.

“How is he?”

“Mr. Beresford is doing just fine.”

I let out a long relieved sigh.

“He had a small relapse due to his heart transplant.”

“Do you know what caused it?”

“We can’t be sure. With heart transplants, this could be caused by anything. Did he recently have any changes of diet, or exercise?”

I shake my head no, trying to think. Then suddenly it clicks.

“I gave him a bite of my donut. Do you think that what caused this?” I say devastated. I can’t bear a man’s life almost ending because of me.

“I’m sorry, but that’s a very real possibility. It’s the most probable possibility given that everything was fine until tonight.”

I look around and cover my mouth, knowing that I almost killed Mr. Beresford.

“Can I see him?”

“Of course but he’s resting right now. It might be a little while before he wakes up.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

She puts her hand on my should in sympathy and walks me to his room. Once I go in I see him sleeping on the bed with 3 different tubes attached to him. I put my hand over my mouth as I sob looking at him. I did that. I walk over beside his bed and sit in the seat that was there. I grab his hand and wait for him to wake. As I wait, I dosed off to sleep still grabbing his hand.

__________________________

He starts stirring which wakes me up. I squeeze his hand tighter with purpose letting him know that I was here for him. He squeezed it back but his eyes are still closed.

“Mr. Beresford.” I whisper as I stand up to get closer to his face. He hums and opens his eyes. He looks around confused before his eyes land on me, shocked.

“What happened.” He says groggily.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shakes his head in confusion.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your heart?” I say before I full on sob right in front of my boss. “It was my fault, I’m so sorry.”

He looks at me confused still.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, take a breath.” He says and he grabs my other hand with his other hand. “What happened?”

“They say you had a relapse because of the donut I gave you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you to eat it.”

“Hey. Y/n, I am an adult. You didn’t push me to do anything. I ate it because I wanted to.”

I am too hysterical to realize that was his first time calling me by my first name.

“Do you want me to call anyone?”

He looks into my red, puffy eyes then looks forward.

“I don’t have anyone.” He says softly.

I don’t know what he means by that but he’s gone through enough so I don’t push him on it. It seems like I’m the only one going to be here from him tonight. I start to sit on the bed next to him slowly waiting for any signs of his uncomfortably. He nodded for me to continue to sit, still having both of our hands holding. I look him in the eyes and my eyes start to water again.

He wipes my tears with his fingers.

“Stop it. It wasn’t your fault.” He says as he tugs my hands so I can go closer to him. He pulls me into a hug, which causes me to have to lay on his chest. I carefully avoid the tubes attached to him, not trying to mess him up further.

“I’m going to be okay.”

We stay like this in silence for a couple of minutes.

“I thought you wanted to keep a professional relationship.” I joke through a sad voice.

“Screw that.”

______________________________

That sure took a turn. 😬

#clay beresford x reader #clay beresford #x black fem reader #x black reader #hayden christensen x reader #hayden christensen

[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Can I Stay? (A Baekhyun Story) Part 9.

Pairing: You x Baekhyun

Rating: M

Word Count: 6.1K

Warnings: Light angst. A romance between two adults with an unspecified age difference between them, an English story that uses the word Noona for lack of another word in English that carries the same feeling, if you don’t like this, then don’t read this story.

Author‘s note: remember all those years ago I said I’d write a Baekhyun x Noona fic? This is that fic.

Inspired by the Ray LaMontagne songs Can I Stay

Tag List: @andimoon @his-mochi-cheeks

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

Work was different.

After the cosmic shitshow of a Saturday had passed and it seemed like everyone had lived to see another week. Your Monday morning workday was back to normal.

But it was so unbelievably outside of anything normal you had ever experienced. There was so much that had changed in such a short amount of time.

You’d woken up very early that morning — you did not have an exact hour to call it but you knew you’d caught brief glimpses of the dim light of a freshly rising sun through your window. You’d only caught small bits of that particular shade of dawn with your sleepy eyes and your otherwise-occupied mind registered even less through the soft moans, indulgent touches, and wordless love-making that started your day.

Baekhyun had to leave quite early to go home and get changed for work; all the while lamenting on the distance and even going so far as threatening to sell his apartment and buy something in the fancy new high rise that had just gone up across the street from your building. Or better yet (his words), he could just move in with you and never have to wake up without you in his bed ever again.

You had to gently remind him that all of that talk sounded pretty abrupt and dramatic for a three-day old relationship and his face worked through a variety of emotions before finally settling into a deep pout that would not leave his face even after your many assurances that no, you weren’t planning breaking up with him, and yes, you really did love him even more than he loved you —which in itself involved much back and forth until you both just agreed to disagree.

So work today, it was back to normal but normal seemed to have a brand new definition. You were busy but not too busy. You were floating through your tasks with the ease that came along with the familiarity of it all, all the while doing your absolute best not to just sit and watch him all day long.

It was actually quite difficult — keeping that look out of your eyes whenever he was around you. That look that a woman gets when she looks at the man who had pressed her back into a mattress for hours the night before.

You had to make an effort. Your eyes were so easily and naturally drawn to his face; your ears to his laughs; your smile to his smile; your goosebumps to his secret touches; your hushed giggles to his close whispers.

He’d watched your face too closely and much too knowingly when you declared in your best manager's voice that the blinds to your office would stay open all day long without exception and he was expected to remain out of touching distance from you whenever he was in here.

His whispered ‘Yes ma’am’ did not inspire any confidence at all. In fact hearing that triggered something in you that made everything worse.

You wondered when this powerful spell would wear off enough for you both to be able to act like normal functioning adults with full-time jobs around each other. You figured the close proximity wasn’t doing either of you any favors but you still couldn't stand the thought of sending him away so you could get some actual work done.

It was just before lunchtime when the first real close call happened. A mere 3.5 days into this brand new relationship and already — already.

Yes, it was your fault. In fact, Baekhyun had been the better behaved of the two of you. It was probably because it had just been so long since you’ve felt this feeling. It had been so very long since you’d had someone to love and genuinely felt loved by someone that you had simply lost your mind a little bit.

Baekhyun had been hovering near your desk holding your schedule calendar in his hands as he flipped through, reading an occasional line from the upcoming week. You had a few meetings, most that he read out loud, one that he mumbled his way through that would be coming up later today. You only half listened as you watched him speaking from down in your desk chair. You’d pulled the lever below your seat and leaned way back in the chair, looking up at him as he spoke and he took occasional glances down over the top of the book he held up covering part of his face. You could see only from his cute nose upward but every now and then his hands would drop the book just a little and his pink pouty mouth would appear as he emphasized some word he was saying for importance. Every time those lips pursed outward it reminded you of kissing him. When his lips parted you caught the occasional tip of his soft tongue.

You weren’t really listening. He was very pretty when he spoke. You liked the sound of his voice and the way his lips moved when he said the word ‘Noona.’ Which for some reason he was saying again.

‘Noona.’

‘Noona?’

‘Noona!’

Oh shit, he was talking to you.

“You aren’t listening at all,” your brain sharpened to the words. “I’ve been talking for ten minutes. Did you hear anything I just said? The final reports, the wrap party venue, the one-two-three meetings after lunch? Hello?”

He was right. The very mild frustration you heard in his voice was adorable. You pulled your lips into a frown because you were very sorry, even if you weren't that sorry you knew you were acting up right now. This was just so very hard. Maybe it was because you were very sore all over and actually quite sleep deprived from the three (!) times he woke you up last night.

“Sorry, Baby, my mind was wandering,” you confessed easily, hearing the dreaminess in your own voice as you said it. And you heard the long and slow sigh that came from his chest. He was closing his eyes up and he was steadying himself before he spoke.

“I’m not going to ask…not going to ask,” he said to himself a few times and he held the calendar closed with one hand, a slim finger stuck In between the pages to mark his place and he lifted his other hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“I’m not going to ask. I don't want to know. Do you hear what I said? I said, I do not want to know what you were thinking about. Do not tell me. I am not asking.” His eyes were wider now and you could make out a bit of desperation in his voice.

You lifted your foot, pointing the tips of your toes and you lightly traced the outline of his thigh.

“Gonna get caught. The blinds are open. Put your foot down.” He was speaking under his breath and you felt his hand come down and push your foot away when you’d slipped your foot around the front of his hips. Despite the admonishing words, you could very clearly see the smile at the edges of his lips and you could hear the playfulness in his tone. You giggled when another pass of your foot around the back of him, poking his butt earned you a harder slap and he took the smallest step away from you.

“Noona.” He hissed through gritted teeth, doing his best impression of a very serious man who meant business and you spun around in your chair laughing harder at the sound of him.

The spin was harder than you meant and it made your chair hit your desk. A small metal cup you kept full of pens that was on the edge of your desk went flying and you turned back around to see them go. They landed across the space behind where Baekhyun was standing.

You looked down at the mess on your floor and Baekhyun also turned to look down at the mess on your floor.

His eyes were just kind of wild looking when he turned back to look into your face and you looked at his face with what you imagined was a similar expression.

Neither of you moved right away and your mind whirled with the best way to clean this mess up. Did you risk the closeness and clean it up together? Did you get up and do it yourself, knowing that he would likely join you on this floor behind the couch, behind the desk, behind the view of those open mini blinds? Did you just watch him do it? You did really like the way his butt looked in his business slacks…

“Did you do this on purpose?” He whispered the question harshly and it didn’t sound like he was joking, but you felt the laughter rise up in your chest at his accusation.

“No, Baekhyun, I didn’t, I swear.” You were laughing while you said it and that didn’t do anything for your credibility. It was true. You really did not. But you sounded so guilty.

“Did you do this so I have to bend over in front of you and pick them up?” His smile on his face as he asked this follow up question was widening and you placed a hand on your stomach to try and stop your own laughter.

You stood up from the chair.

“I’ll get them.” You raised a hand and his own hands waved you away dramatically.

“No.” He said flatly, putting the calendar down on your desk. “No, no. I’m the one sleeping my way to the top. I should get the full sexual harassment experience. Do you want me to pick them up one by one so it lasts longer? Do you want me to struggle while I do it — act like they’re really hard to pick up?”

You felt at a loss. You were laughing too hard to be of any use in this conversation and he was grunting noisily as he bent at the waist and picked up the first pen.

“Ohh..Miss Manager, it’s so heavy,” he mewled suggestively and he placed the pen sideways in-between his teeth as he stood up slowly, arching his back seductively as he did it.

His voice changed and lifted into something more naive sounding, “Miss Manager, you said I could have a promotion if I did this, right?”

You caught a movement out of the corner of your eye that snatched your attention, your laughter, and your breath at the same time.

You heard someone clear their throat at the same time as a knock sounded out on your door. Your door had been opened just in time for his last sentence to have been heard by whoever was at your door.

“Assistant Byun,” you said flatly with a very serious tone taking you over. The change was so abrupt that Baekhyun straightened his spine and spun on his heels, quickly dropping the second pen from his mouth and dropping the other two he had already picked up. They landed on the floor at his feet adding back to the mess.

Your heart had dropped down into your stomach and all traces of your earlier laughter had stopped dead and you stood up straighter, running your hand down over the front of your blouse and smoothing out your skirt just in case anything has been out of place to make this situation look worse than it already did.

“Sorry, I was joking,” he said with his voice back to as normal and as professional and flat sounding as possible. “Bad joke, my apologies.” he added quietly with his head hung down in shame directed at you but only for the benefit of whoever it was that had just come in.

At your door, doing an awkward little glance back and forth between your face and your assistant standing with his chin pressed down into his chest was Sandi, one of your junior translators whose desk was just outside of your office. If she had any thoughts about what she had just walked in on, she didn’t seem to dwell for long on them.

“Manager, Sophie’s 1st is here for you. Should I let him in?”

Baekhyun’s head had lifted and you caught the drift of Sandi’s eyes as they touched on his face and she had a sweet smile on her lips directed at him.

“Hi Baekhyun,” she whispered lightly and his hand lifted with the smallest wave with a pretty smile before he was spinning quickly to squat down on the floor to quickly gather all of the pens.

He made quick work of the mess and Sandi was really standing at your doorway for much longer than necessary you thought briefly before your quiet appraisal of the danger of the situation you both had stupidly put yourselves into, well not both, this had been entirely your fault. You really had lost your entire mind. Your blinds had been open and you always emphasized your open door policy with your team. They only ever knocked when you had the blinds closed and even then you’d never minded their interruptions before.

“Manager?” Sandi’s quiet voice interjected and when you pulled your eyes away from the slim fingers that carefully arranged the pens neatly inside the metal cup that was sat once again on your desk where it belonged to look back up into her questioning face.

“Do I let him in?” She asked again.

“Assistant Byun, do I have a meeting with Chet right now?” You leaned and whispered to your assistant from a completely appropriate distance for a strictly professional relationship and Baekhyun straightened his posture, straightened his suit jacket, his tie, and adjusted the lanyard with the ID badge around his neck so it hung just so.

“Yes ma’am. I mentioned it when I was going over your schedule.” There was an edge to his voice as he said it. You felt weirdly blindsided. You grabbed for the schedule and flipped to today’s entry, finding a single four letter c-word that did not say Chet written in carefully penned tiny capital letters. Right there in his handwriting it sat.

‘CUNT-11a’

“You can let him in,” you called out to Sandi and when you looked up at the girl she had a weirdly familiar dreamy lost look in her eyes as she looked at your (boyfriend) assistant. It took her a few moments to register your words and she left your doorway with a nod of her head and another small wave in Baekhyun’s direction which he, again, returned with a sweet smile.

Your mood felt off.

Now Chet was here and Baekhyun had so much female attention in this office the man probably couldn’t go five steps without running into an admirer. Now you had to deal with Chet, the misogynistic hugger and why was he even here? You half hoped he would try and ask you out again just so you could once and for all burst that hopeful bubble of his, tell him it wasn’t going to happen now or ever so he should just give up and set his sights on some poor other girl in this office.

Not that there was anyone here who deserved that kind of attention.

You settled yourself down well behind your desk seated deep in your office chair and you noticed instead of his usual seat for these meetings at the far corner of your office where he wouldn’t be an interference of a distraction, Baekhyun parked himself just at the side of your desk, leaning a hip against the window sill that stuck out just enough for you to hit your elbow on it whenever you got up too carelessly.

Standing there, very much in between you and whoever might want to get back here with you for a hug — he felt like a bouncer to some exclusive night club.

Chet came in a few moments later with all of the charisma of a used car salesman trying to unload a lemon on some poor sucker and walked up to the edge of your desk with a wide smile on his face and his hands outstretched, clearly expecting you to come around for the usual hug. You didn’t stand and you didn’t move anything but your mouth to speak.

“Chet, what can I help you with today?”

His hands hung in the air and his smile faded just a little before it widened again, this time not reaching his flighty eyes. The man was clearly taken aback and he stood there for a while just watching your face with that same fake smile on his lips. After a while you saw his focus shift over to Baekhyun before you had his attention again. He did it a few times and you stared into his face as you waited for him to come to terms with whatever he was coming to terms with. It took a while. He was looking between you and your assistant who was, it seemed, carefully examining the leaf of the fake tree that stood by your window.

“Ahh, you never returned my call. Did you get my message about the uhh—final edits?” His confidence sounded a touch rattled, which you had never before heard from him.

You furrowed your brows and pouted your lips. Genuinely curious now. You hadn’t heard of any new messages from him. You had been rather distracted all day though, perhaps your flawless record at work had finally been shot by your own silliness all morning.

You were genuinely thinking now.

Message? What message? Did you miss a work message from Chet? You looked at your computer screen and found nothing unread in your inbox and your latest direct message chain with him was from a week ago. Nothing unread between the two. You looked across your desk at the beefcake and lifted your chin in the direction of your suspiciously quiet assistant while keeping your eyes on the man standing in your office.

“Assistant Byun, did I get a message from Chet?”

Baekhyun didn’t answer right away and you noticed that Chet’s focus looked just a little more frazzled than it had when he first walked in. He looked like his edges were just a little hazy. Like he was beginning to show some signs of annoyance with you, or with Baekhyun or maybe with the pair of you. The longer your assistant stood silent the more Chet’s patience seemed to be wearing out and after a few moments of it he looked to be openly glaring in the direction of where that fake tree stood by your window.

“Umm,” it took him too long to finally respond and when you did look, Baekhyun was posed with an index finger pointed up to his chin; on his face a look of confusion. “I don’t—think there was anything from Chet.” He was shaking his head in response.

“I left it with you.” Chet spoke up suddenly, directing his voice at Baekhyun without his any hint of his usual pep. You heard some attitude and a challenge now.

Baekhyun still wore that same exaggerated look of confusion and his head was shaking back and forth with his eyebrows raised. With what you knew about Baekhyun you were nearly positive this was intentional. He knew exactly what Chet was talking about and he was playing a game.

“It was just this morning.” Chet added in a downright hostile tone and you heard a sudden gasp from beside the tree. Inside of your stomach, a bad feeling was brewing. It felt a lot like whatever this was would not end here with this quick and unexpected meeting in your office.

Baekhyun’s mouth was open now. Sudden remembrance. He was snapping his fingers and making a big show of it.

You had to bite down on your tongue to keep from making any sounds.

“Actually, you know what? I think I do remember something, but Noona it was,” he lifted his fingers in front of your face, holding his index and his thumb about a centimeter apart from each other, “very small.”

He whispered the last two words and his lips pulled into a dramatic frown and he shook his head back and forth. You covered your mouth with your open hand and you held your breath, dipping your face so it was hiding behind your computer screen.

“What did you just say?” Chet asked humorlessly. Clearly he got the joke and took its intended offense. “Do you have a problem man?”

Baekhyun’s hand was on his chest and on his face was a look of exaggerated pity. He ignored the second question.

“Happens to a lot of guys, bro,” Baekhyun whispered and he frowned his face again.

It took you a moment to compose yourself enough to remove your hand from over your lips. You recognized that you had to intervene before this grew any more out of hand than it had already grown. You should not be encouraging this. It was childish and juvenile of a joke and your hidden laughter was only encouraging Baekhyun to act this way.

Baekhyun took a few steps closer to where you sat, coming into the space right beside and you very much behind your desk. He was obviously in the exclusive club that Chet had no admittance to.

He pointed to the notepad you kept beside your phone and in the very bottom corner, written with the finest point pen and in what had to be nearly microscopic handwriting was a just barely legible, ‘Sophie needs FE approved -Chet.’

You looked down at the note, lifting your attention to the big burly man standing with a face full of annoyance and his arms crossed over his chest and you had to look back down again at the note.

You swear you didn’t do it on purpose but the second you felt your vision strain over the tiny letters and you had to pull your eyes into a genuine squint, you heard a not very well concealed snort of laughter beside you.

He coughed into it but it was not at all subtle.

“Ahh, I see now. Yes. I’ll get that to you within the hour. And Chet, honey?” you let your face pull into one of sympathy. “You didn’t have to come down for that.”

He cleared his throat and you heard the beginnings of some sort of rebuttal.

“You’ll get it when you get it, Chet.” You raised your voice as you dropped the smile.

He absolutely didn't need to be here for this. You absolutely would get it done and send it over quickly and you felt extremely done with looking at the man now.

“Within the hour. Sophie’s been up my ass about this,” he said with a scowl on his face. His eyes touched on yours but every other breath had them bouncing over to your assistant’s face. He lifted a hand and pointed a finger in your direction, it felt a little bit like a threat. The action felt unlike anything he’d ever done to you and you watched his face with the most stone faced expression you could manage. His true colors had shown themselves and they were hideous. You wanted nothing more to do with him than you absolutely had to.

“You take care, Chet.” You refused to be bullied by this guy. He was at least three pay grades below you and it was pretty telling how little he respected you with the drastic drop in basic decently the second it became clear that he had no chance of sleeping with you.

A few moments after he had left and the quiet settled over your office you signed the final approvals and sent them over to Sophie’s office.

“Baekhyun?” You called out sweetly toward the man who was typing something out on his phone.

“Didn’t we agree not to mess around when it came to work?” You didn't want to scold him. You really didn’t. But you had both promised each other that the work was so important to the both of you that there would be no silly games.

You had his attention. He had let the phone sag in his lap and he was looking across the office at your face without any immediate answer for you. After a moment his eyes dropped another foot and he was staring ahead of himself without focus.

“I don't want you meeting him,” he said after a moment. His eyes lifted back up into yours and his face ticked back and forth a minimal amount. “I don't like you meeting him.”

“Sometimes I have to meet him,” you said with a sigh. You didn't like it either but at least for the next few days until the wrap, you really did not have any choice.

“Noona,” he began and you watched his face as he inhaled a small breath to speak and let his lips hang open without continuing his words. His lips closed back up again and he shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said softly and he pulled his eyes away from yours as he looked back down at his phone.

“Say it, Baek.”

You definitely didn’t want him to feel like he couldn't speak his peace.

“Nah, it’s stupid.” He said and he was scrolling on his screen. You could see the agitation rolling off his shoulders. You could tell something was up.

“Just tell me though, what is it?” You could be as stubborn as he could be and after a while he stood up with a defeated sigh carrying his phone in his hand, he walked up to your desk and sat it down with the screen up.

On his screen you saw your instagram profile, which you hadn’t even known he knew about, and he had the tab opened with your likes. You saw with your own eye the tiny heart you’d placed on a picture there. It was something Chet had posted, and you had no memory of having done this. The picture that you had hearted was just of some sunset he must have posted. Something innocuous and unconcerning but it clearly had bothered your boyfriend enough for him to be pointing it out to you right now. You did remember scrolling mindlessly before you got ready for work this morning. Could that have been when you’d done this?

“I don't like you meeting him. I don't like you liking his pictures. Especially not pictures he posted this morning, after I left your bed.”

You didn’t remember doing it. You looked down at the evidence and it was right there.

“I’ll block him,” you said quietly. “I didn't even know that was his picture, but that doesn’t matter because it’s obvious that I did that and I am sorry. It definitely won't happen again.”

Baekhyun was watching your face and you quietly pulled your own phone out, opened up the app and did just as you told him you would. You’d meant to block Chet after the mop-water incident but it honestly had just slipped your mind. So much had happened since then, your mind had been a bit of a mess. You just forgot and here you’d accidentally hurt Baekhyun’s feelings because of your carelessness.

He was swallowing and he blinked his eyes slowly as he looked away for a second.

“Now I feel like an asshole,” he said under his breath.

You pushed your lips into a small pout and his eyes glanced down at your face, lightly sniffing his nose once before he looked around again.

“It’s done,” you held your phone up and waved it at him with a smile. He groaned and closed his eyes up.

“Don't encourage me, Noona. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. I told you it was stupid.”

“I was going to block him anyway, I just forgot to because I was distracted by my sexy boyfriend.” His mood still seemed a little down but maybe after a few compliments and perhaps some lunch he would smooth out a little.

It turns out Baekhyun had plans for lunch. He did often share a meal with a few of his fellow assistants and today it seemed like the day. The plans had been in place for a while now. He also reminded you that he had already told you about it, at least twice today, back when you had lost your mind.

It was fine. You could use the quiet for an hour. You had your headphones and you could even take a walk around the block to help your food digest. You assured him that you were a big girl and you could handle a few solo lunches. You’d had plenty of them before he arrived, and you’d been just fine.

And you were. You went for your stroll, you listened to some music and you ate something tasty from a shop around the corner. You drank too much water during your walk and when you came back you had to make a stop at the bathroom. It was perfect because you could refresh your lipstick and make sure you didn't look too much of a mess after venturing outdoors.

As expected, your hair was a bit messy but nothing a few fingers run through it couldn't fix. Your outfit was cute though and you slipped into the stall to empty your bladder.

After a few moments you heard the telltale sounds of office gossip; a group of girls whose voices felt oddly familiar to you came in giggling about the latest news.

Apparently someone was eating lunch with one of their friends. Someone who was ‘so hot’ and ‘single’ and ‘rich’ and looked ‘so good in the blonde hairstyle.’ Your ears sharpened to the words they were saying immediately. You also lifted your feet just in case they checked under the stall for spies. You weren't born yesterday, you knew the best gossip was obtained through illicit means.

It took you no time at all to understand the subject of their gossip. You felt a strange chill run through your chest.

He was eating lunch alone with her. Was it really only one other assistant? Not a group of friends but him and her alone? She was a young pretty thing and they made such a cute couple. Apparently they had been spotted giggling together. Flirting together, as he was often seen doing with lots of girls. You hadn’t really noticed his overly friendly behavior with the girls but the memory of the lovesick smiles Sandi sent toward him today pinged against your heart. Of course he flirted with you but the idea that this might not be strictly reserved for you made your heart clench. It couldn’t be true. It had to be nothing.

The conversation drifted naturally when one girl spoke your name out. You held your breath for the quick dismissals. No way. You were too old, there’s no way he’s into an older woman. The other quiet voice that defended you, called you smart and pretty enough for someone like him, had even seen some moments between the two of you that would raise a few eyebrows, that one quiet voice was quickly drowned out by the naysayers. If anything it was one sided. If anything it was pathetic for you to even hope. If anything you should know your place.

You’d heard enough and wanted no more of it. You hoped their lunch hour was going to be over soon so you didn’t have to hear any more.

Your hopes were realized quickly enough as you quietly washed your hands and exited the bathrooms. You could not calm your mind though.

How much was true. You trusted him and you believed in him but your feet carried you in an odd direction. You walked the long way around. It would eventually take you to the elevators that led up to your floor but, goddammit, you found yourself making a detour with your curious eyes watching the tables near the company cafeteria.

You were looking for something that was nothing. Something that meant absolutely nothing. You knew it was nothing.

Baekhyun was walking side by side with a bright smile on his face and his attention drawn to her words.

You had seen her before, she was the assistant of one of the other managers. You were pretty sure she was under contract for only a few more months. Like him, she would soon be moving on to something new. Like him she was young and green and still had so much to learn. Perhaps they talked about how hard their jobs were; bonding over having to cater to a picky manager's whims.

She was giggling. She was laughing loudly and she reached a hand out and laid light fingertips on his forearm. That uncomfortable feeling inside of your chest throbbed.

This was nothing. You didn’t have to turn it into something when it was absolutely nothing. The gossip that you overheard had been baseless and it was wrong. Yes, you knew for a fact that they had been wrong about you. Because he was into you, he loved you. If they could be wrong about that, then they could have just as easily been wrong about this too.

You felt a need for an escape. You longed to hide from this. They were taking an exit path that would put you in front of them and you felt like a fool as you ducked behind a pillar just in time for them to walk by.

“Yeah, yeah definitely. I’ll call you,” he was saying to her.

“Okay, let me know. Bye, Oppa.”

Younger than him. On friendly enough terms for that sweet nickname too. And he was going to call her.

Your mind was a mess. You wandered your way through the hallways headed probably somewhere that would eventually lead you up to your office. It took longer than you intended to make it back up to your office, but still not long enough.

When you walked inside he was already seated at the spot he usually occupied when he was busy with something and didn’t want his typing to disturb you. He only kind of glanced up to look at you as you entered and his eyes were back down on the screen of his computer. He had a chat window open there. He was talking with someone.

Talking to someone about something that was probably nothing.

You were acting like a fool. This man had taken a once smart, capable, and intelligent woman and in just 3 and a half days had turned her into a fool.

You scrolled through your emails, finding a thank you message from Sophie for the quick turnaround and a waiting direct message from Chet.

You clicked on the flashing bar and the message popped up.

‘I need to speak with you, can we meet?’

You didn’t have the patience for any of it and you sighed noisily and covered your face with your hands, momentarily and genuinely forgetting that you weren’t alone in your office. Before you could take the sound back Baekhyun had walked over to your desk and had looked at the message window on your computer screen.

You stared at your computer screen, your eyes focused on that one message from Chet. You could smell him, his hair smelled like your shampoo. Baekhyun had stepped into your space and he was bent at the waist reading the message on your computer screen, the message from the man he had been butting heads with through his little message games and deprecating jokes. Out the corner of your eye you saw his hand land over your mouse, he was moving the cursor and the arrow hovered just over the X to close the window.

You lifted a hand and laid it over his just before he clicked the X to close out the window.

“I said I don’t like you meeting him.” He was staring ahead at the screen with a darkness in his eyes and his jaw was clenched down tight.

“Assistant Byun-” He physically flinched when he heard it. You felt a burning inside your stomach, “I can handle it myself.”

[To be Continued]

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

#exo #exo fanfiction #exo smut #baekhyun #exo fic #exo scenario #baekhyun smut #baekhyun fanfic #byun baekhyun

[lamppost-t]

Hey babes !!!! If you aren’t comfortable with this that’s okay but I had an idea for a Joel miller fic.

This is in a universe with no clicker virus…. But ANYWAYS imagine being close with Joel and being a mother figure to Sarah??? And Joel is getting really comfortable with you around and he’s just so happy to see his daughter with a mother figure again :((( I wanna take her shopping and go on family outings with them and see them get their happy ending.

- Yours truly …. Harmonica

UGH YES I LOVE THIS SM

Girls day out

Pairing: Joel x reader, Sarah x Motherfigure!reader

Warnings: None just fluff and barely any usage of y/n

Summary: You take Sarah out for a girls day out for her birthday

Authors note: I had so much fun writing this btw its Fem!reader but I'll write more Gn!reader soon I swear TRUST, Thanks harmonica your literally my home girl!!

not edited, tell me if theres anything wrong it the comments (ᗒᗣᗕ)՞

The hot blaring sun hit your eyes as you held Sarahs hand navagating through the outdoor mall. you guys had been out for hours, you wanted to treat Sarah to something special since Joel was working till around 6 and thought it would be a great time for you guys to bond, so you took a day off of work. "where do you want to go next?" you asked

"Uhm can we mabye stop for a drink?" she replied flashing a smile

You guys madeo your way to a small local coffee shop, one of your personal favorite that you grew up going to. you bought Sarah and you drinks and you guys sat down looking over your mountains of shopping bags. "thank you for this, I had alot of fun" Sarah said softy

"no problem I love having exuses to spend time with you" you replied, to be honest you loved seeing Sarah happy, Sarahs mom had left both Joel and Sarah a bit after Sarah was born and Joel put his all into raising Sarah. still, growing up without a mother figure was hard on Sarah and Joel had noticed. Joel felt horrible for her but there was really nothing he could do. when you and joel started dating and as you got closer to Sarah, Joel noticed Sarah become happier. "I'm really grateful for you y'know" Sarah said taking a sip from her drink "I'm grateful for you too"

When you got home Sarah put on a fashion show for you and Joel of clothes you had bought her.

"Are you ready?" she asked from behind the door, her voice emanating excitment.

"come on out" you laughed glad to see her so happy.

she came out in a purple dress she had been the most excited when she saw it, even though it was very expensive, you didn't bat an eye, beeing able to give Sarah nice things was something you loved doing. Sarah did a small twirl before looking at the both of you

"do you love it or do you love it?" she squealed

"its absolutely gorgous!" Joel said, a smile plastered on his face

"thanks Y/n got it for me!" Sarah joked smiling at you

the rest of the night you, Joel and Sarah watched movies and ate cake until it got late. Sarah had fallen asleep on the couch and Joel picked her up and brought her to her room. you followed and you both put her to sleep. you placed a kiss on her forhead and as you pulled the covers up you stepped back to make sure she was comfortable. you felt Joels hands wrap around your waist as he placed a kiss on your shoulder

"thanks for taking her out today" he said "I don't think shes ever been that excited" "no problem" you smiled.

you enjoyed spoiling Sarah and had no plans to stop.

#joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #the last of us fanfiction #sarah tlou #tlou #the last of us #joel miller #joel tlou

[luna-andra]

The Shadows Return | Simon 'Ghost' Riley x OC Retired AU | Chapter 5: Apologies

Summary: Ghost has to make up for lost time somehow, and figure out what the hell is going on in his backwater village

Author's Note: Already working on chapter 6, this story is starting to ramp up!

Content warning: slow burn, eventual smut, 18+ only, fluff, mentions of mental health

If this is the first time you're seeing this, Chapter 1 is here. You can find the rest on my masterlist!

Word count: 5.8k

Johnny only caught the tail end of their conversation. Andra sounded pissed. Oh yeah, she really gave the door something to fear with how hard it slammed. Johnny turned to Simon’s direction, “What happened?”

His glare could cut a man. “Nothing.”

Johnny went to open his mouth but said nothing. He came back to the front for something work related, and he really didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever went down between the two.

He knows Simon has been reclusive the past several days. Or has it been a few weeks now? Either way, this was feeling like one of his inevitable episodes. The kind that makes him shut everyone out, starting with the people less close to him. Johnny gauged it that way, and he knew if it came down to Simon shunning him out, then it’s getting bad.

Johnny put down the tablet on the countertop beside Simon’s arm. “Thomas completed the diagnostics on the red sedan, call ‘em for me will ya’?”

A comprehensive grunt was all the acknowledgement Johnny was going to get out of Simon right now. He pivoted on his foot and headed straight back into the garage. A minute later, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

Thank you for helping me out these past few months.

Johnny’s lips fell into a thin line on his face. Does this message have anything to do with what went down in the lobby? He didn’t like how finite her words sounded, like she was bidding the both of them farewell out of her life.

Andra took a while to respond back to Johnny, giving him time to focus on the brake pad change he needed to finish up. He wiped his hands clean before picking up his phone.

Sort of.

Okay, yes.

I don’t want you to feel obligated to keep in contact with me now that everything is gonna go back to the way it was.

Johnny sighed, shaking his head softly as his fingers flew across the screen. You’re OUR friend now, you’re not getting rid of us that easily, lass. He made sure to put ‘our’ in big letters.

This would pass. Johnny knew that, Simon would come around once he’s had his fill of solitude, but Andra didn’t see it that way. Understandably so, she had every right to be upset. She’s given Simon a level of grace and patience that would only come from a caregiver. Johnny has noticed the way she would shake her head and sigh after reading the short, one-worded messages she would get from Simon, and to be frank, Johnny couldn’t excuse his best friend’s behavior any longer. 

He could feel a pair of glaring eyes burning into the back of his neck from his supervisor, so Johnny shoved the phone back into his pocket and returned to work.

Simon was being a real prick.

-----

It was Andra’s first Sunday morning with her truck. After she picked it up from the shop, she drove it around for a few hours, having to blow off the irritation she felt after that interaction with Ghost.

It was running, alright. She made it drive out to a neighboring village and then back home. Even when she came home, the spurn of Ghost treating her that way kept nagging at her like a mosquito bite on the back of her neck. It shouldn’t have bothered her for days on end, but it did.

But today was Sunday, and Andra was determined to start the week off on a better note. Fixed truck, crop rotation was only a few weeks away from a new season, she had much to look forward to. Along with an empty seat at the stand.

She thought until a familiar truck drove up her driveway.

Andra finished tethering her trailer to her truck and went out to meet Johnny at the front. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

Johnny shut the door and hit the lock button on the key fob, setting off the short chirp of the horn. “What does it look like? You didn’t think I was gonna stop comin’ just because you got your truck back, did you?” He clicked his teeth and shook his head with faux disappointment and a smirk. “Besides, I like havin’ more money in my pocket from not goin’ out to the pub to drink it away, our Sunday mornings have been keepin’ me sober.”

She couldn’t help the smile escaping her. “That’s good to hear. I’m almost done loading everything, just help me with the table and chairs.”

“You got it.”

Autumn never fails to bring the gloomy overcast for majority of the season. And with the temperatures dropping enough, it allowed for Ghost to wear a light hoodie to keep the misty sprinkles of rain off of him. He tried to ignore the out-of-place energy that worked hard to veil over him. It was one thing to wear the mask in the shop, or when he was at least around Johnny, but going to the farmer’s market made him feel severely out of place.

He took one more second before grabbing the paper-wrapped parcel and left his truck, then followed the sporadic groups of people heading towards the vending stalls.

To think he had driven past this parking lot several times on Sundays and never thought to shop here. Ghost didn’t even like doing his own grocery shopping, that’s why he spends so much money on grocery deliveries. And purchasing anything else felt like a waste on him, unless it was ammunition and new guns.

As he neared the rows and rows of stalls, the chatter of customers and sellers became coherent. If people were looking at him, he paid no attention to the curious and apprehensive eyes. He was looking for Andra, gripping the now faintly damp parcel a little tighter. After wandering through the second row, Ghost spotted the forest green truck chockfull of crates of vegetables, parked in reverse and the tailgate open to the little figure with chestnut brown hair, loosely curled.

Her hair has grown.

That’s what happens when you don’t see someone for a while, Ghost sniped at himself.

He rounded the corner and strode closer to her stall, customers in his path giving him a wide berth, and caught sight of her lost in concentration as she packaged a customer’s brown paper bag. Her warm smile of farewell did something to his stomach. It was his turn to approach her.

Andra lifted her head long enough to see him, and her face relaxed from the smile she had. “Hi, stranger.”

Whatever he had prepared to tell her, it went off like a land mine and left him with nothing. There was a passive-aggressive tone in her voice, not that he blamed her. He basically cut her off with nothing to justify as to why. Guess this was part of seeking forgiveness.

“Surprised to see you here.” She kept prepping more brown bags as she waited for his response. “Or were you looking for Johnny?”

“No, he’s probably trying to slip out of his date’s bed.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “So you knew about his date with the girl from the chip shop, too? Glad to know he didn’t get the cutoff I did.”

His eyes looked down at her moving hands. “I deserved that.”

Andra stopped concentrating on the bags and rested a hand on her hip the way a fed-up mother would. “You deserve a lot of things, Ghost, but I don’t have it in me to be cruel.” Her eyes caught a glimpse of what Ghost was clutching to before she looked back down. “Found something you like at one of the vendors?”

“Actually,” his hand placed the wrapped parcel onto the table and slid it towards Andra. “It’s for you.”

Andra's expression shifted to curiosity. “Is it some kind of peace offering?” She picked up the rectangular parcel, probably knew what it already was given the shape and the weight of it.

“You could say that.” Ghost watched with apprehension as she meticulously peeled back the wrapping, sliding out what she discovered was a hardback cover of the next book in the series she was reading.

Her eyebrows relaxed; a softness overwhelmed her eyes. “You got your hands on a hardback?” she tilted the book to see the pages. “With the sprayed edge?” Her fingers traced the pattern of sigils and swirls decorating the pages. “This is a special edition…” Andra looked back up to him, her expression had his insides tangling. “I haven’t even seen one of these.”

Ghost didn’t know what to do with his hands, so they stayed by his side clenching and relaxing over and over. “The cranky, old stager that runs Raven & Crow helped me get my hands on it.” He wasn’t going to bring up how much of a pain in the ass the geezer was for him, nor was he going to bring up how the old man knew immediately who he was trying to get this for. He told Ghost a lovely young woman was coming in frequently looking for the sequel, but by the time she showed up, the one or two copies he ordered were gone. The payoff was well worth it.

Andra held the book to her chest like a schoolgirl clutching a textbook, tapping her index finger on its back. “I’ll have to think on your apology.” Ghost was about to nod when she gave him a smirk. “Okay I forgive you.”

His shoulders fell and he let out a gentle laugh. “That’s wonderful to hear.” There was a couple of people behind him that formed a line, agitated with how long they have been waiting. “I’ll let you get back to your business –“

“I have an hour here left,” Andra spoke up before he could move. “If you want, I have another chair that you can pull up. That’s if you don’t have anything else to do…”

Ghost stepped aside to let customers walk up. “I was going to find things to keep myself busy. I’ll help you bag, but I can’t guarantee I’ll be as useful as Johnny.”

Andra laughed hard at that. “You give him way too much credit.”

It had been years, more like decades by now, since Ghost had done any sort of grocery bagging. It brought him back to his first part-time job at the corner convenience store he had during his last few years of secondary school. The money always found its way into his mom’s wallet or purse when she wasn’t looking since she never accepted it from him directly. It was unfortunate when his dad got a hold of it, using it for booze and drugs instead of the water and heat bills. It was even more unfortunate when the old man ended up with a bloody nose for leaving them cold.

Ghost enjoyed watching Andra work in her element. This was her expertise, and everyone delighted in her energy. It even had Ghost grinning beneath his mask. There were a few patrons that gave Ghost double take looks as if they wanted to say something but didn’t.

He found himself scanning the faces of her patrons and passersby that took a glance at stalls here and there. Old faces, young faces, faces of children, faces shrouded by umbrellas or hooded jackets. And a face that he swore he’s seen more than once, coming around again and again in the time he decided to sit down with Andra beneath the canopy. The person’s behavior and body language made him tense.

Andra’s patient explanation about difference between the various species of squash and tomatoes pulled him away from the man that caught Ghost staring him down.

“The B grade-lookin’ veggies go in that crate,” Andra pointed behind her. “I take them for myself, or in this case I’m gonna take them to the ranch for the breeder’s animals.” There was excitement in her voice. “I’m gonna visit my new goats.”

His eyes went back to the spot the man last was, only to find someone else in his place buying from another vendor.

“I remember you saying something about them.” Ghost recalled, suddenly feeling shame since it was on the day she was picking up her truck. “Are you taking them home?”

Andra shook her head. “No, they have a few more weeks with their mama.”

Ghost looked at her with mild surprise. ��There’s multiple?”

“Just two, they’re twins.” Andra said goodbye to the last customer for the day and started to pack up. “Would you like to come with me to meet them? Since it sounds like you have time in that busy schedule of yours.”

Ghost didn’t miss the nibble Andra took at her lower lip. “I can fit some time in.” He quipped back.

-----

The book looked like it belonged on her shelves. Andra grinned to herself as she angled it just the right way to stand out, giving the book its own moment of fame amongst her collection. A really smooth apology gift, in her opinion. Andra was simply happy that Ghost came back around.

Even though Ghost didn’t explain his sudden absence, Andra had a feeling that this was one of those times Johnny had warned her about. She just wasn’t prepared for how much it would impact her. At least he seems to be doing good; the bags underneath his eyes weren’t as dark as the last time she saw him.

Andra locked up the house with a happy Sammy in tow, letting her roam free off of a leash. She was bringing Sammy along to meet the new goats, part of the process of making sure the animals weren’t going to be a threat to each other and getting used to each other’s scents.

Ghost had transferred the crate of B-grade veggies to the bed of his truck on his own accord. Andra was about to ask when he started, “You mind if we take my truck?” He scratched the back of his masked head sheepishly. “I only ask because I got more leg room in mine…”

Andra held back a giggle as she approached the passenger door. “Not at all, as long as you’re okay with Sammy in the back.” He gave her a nod of the head, leading Sammy to the back of the opened tailgate and shutting it once she hopped up. “I’ll punch in the address in your Maps.” She slid in for what started to feel like an all-too familiar truck, and realized she didn’t have to adjust the seat like she’s done before. Andra tried hiding the grimace from the blossoming thought of another woman being in his truck.

She realized how ridiculous that was when he easily passed an open phone to her. Not even to his navigation app, but the home screen with the default earth background still on it. Before opening the navigator, she opened the camera and angled the phone to catch a shot of her and Ghost on the screen. “Hey.”

Ghost glanced in confusion, and blinked after he heard the sound of the fake camera shutter. He shook his head with a soft laugh and started the truck. “I trust you with my phone for the first time and you’re over there snappin’ pictures.”

Andra’s fingers tapped against the screen as she typed in the address. The navigator started and Andra placed the phone on the dock Ghost had set up on the dashboard. “Who told you it was a good idea to do that?”

Ghost shifted the truck’s gear to drive and made a U-turn to drive towards the shared road, the navigator chiming away its directions. The ETA displayed a twenty-minute drive, and Andra comfortably filled the silence with conversation.

He missed how magnetic her energy is, making his guilt come back with a vengeance. But listening to her talk about how business is going, how the truck has been running better than it was before, and how she was preparing for the winter season made all of that melt away.

If Andra wasn’t holding it against him, he needed to put it to rest.

“And what about you?” Andra turned to Ghost. “Anything interesting with you?”

Her sudden pivot to him threw him off. “No, just work.”

She sat up in her seat, her eyes still fixated on him. “Just work? You don’t have any hobbies, or places you like to go to mull things over?”

Ghost just shook his head. He didn’t really know what to say. Okay, that was a lie, but he didn’t want to go in depth with how he got too close to her, how her jasmine and vanilla scent wouldn’t leave him, the same way her scent was now filling the cabin of his truck once more. He didn’t want to explain how feeling her silky skin took days, weeks, to leave the calloused pads of his hands, and how it took all of his will to pull away from her.

Andra continued. “Or how about a night out at one of the pubs to find yourself a pretty lady to share the company with only to regret it in the morning?”

He fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I’m not Johnny. And what about you?” He challenged. “Found a lad to take you out on the town?”

She laughed at that. “No, there’s no one coming to pick me up and bringing me back before eleven.”

Ghost’s hands gripped the steering wheel a little too hard. So, who’s black sedan was driving down the road then? His motion sensors had alerted him of a car he’s never seen before a few times throughout the time span they weren’t in contact with one another. He thought about looking up the license plate a few times, but let it go out of respect for Andra’s privacy.

That hesitation went right out the window with this new development brought to him.

Andra shifted in her seat, relaxing further into the drive. “I guess we’re alike in some ways.”

“How do you reckon?”

“Too busy focused with work to let anyone else into our lives.” There was a tone of sadness in her voice she was trying to hide. “But I have a feeling you’ve grown too comfortable with being alone.”

Ghost felt like she was peering into him, and he didn’t know how to feel about that.

Andra took a second to speak again. “Did you distance yourself from me because of…” she couldn’t finish her question, but she didn’t have to for Ghost to know what she was alluding to.

Every muscle in his body tensed, and his mouth went dry.

“Your destination is on the right.”

The navigator interrupted the tension between the two of them. Ghost turned into the gravel road, passing underneath the wrought iron gate that displayed Blue Crescent Ranch.

Ghost parked a distance away from the other vehicle on the property and killed the engine. Andra looked straight ahead as she murmured, “You don’t have to answer that, sorry I brought it up.” Before she could open the passenger door, Ghost reached across her and stopped her, his hand gripping hers.

Andra’s head twisted to face him, her honey eyes wide with question. Fuck, that look did things to him. “It wasn’t your fault.” That wasn’t necessarily a lie; he wouldn’t blame her for his self-destructive tendencies. “I needed some time alone.”

Her eyes darted back and forth, looking into his eyes as if she was trying to delve deeper into a place she shouldn’t be. But she nodded. “Okay.” That single word was charged with so much trust and understanding, it twisted his heart.

Ghost removed his hand from hers, pulling himself back from the extreme close proximity he had put them in. “Let’s go meet your goats.”

A smile returned to her lovely face. “Okay.”

 Andra couldn’t say enough good things about Jasmine. She had met her at the farmer’s market – shocker – a few years ago and stayed in touch with her here and there after she had bought the chickens off of her. In truth, Andra wanted to be close friends with her, but both of their jobs kept them busy enough to not have any time to catch up very often.

Such was her life about all of the cool and wonderful people that have come and gone in the past years.

-----

A gorgeous, umber, brown-skinned Jasmine strolled out from her lovely cottage home to meet her guests, sporting fitted blue jeans and a long-sleeve plaid shirt and boots, her dark kinky hair wisping in the gentle breeze. Her jade green eyes crinkled with her smile as she went in for a warm hug, and Andra accepted her graciously, taking in her scent of orange and bergamot on her hair. “So good to see you again,” Jasmine greeted, her accent just as rich as Ghost’s.

She pulled away and acknowledged Sammy’s bubbly presence, giving her a good rub down and cooing praises. After the happy canine had her fill, she found Ghost lingering behind Andra like her shadow.

Before Jasmine could ask, Andra reached out to Ghost, summoning him to her side. “Jasmine, this is my neighbor, Simon, but we call him Ghost.” Something about saying Ghost’s first name made her stomach flip, and by judging his body language, it must have done something to him, too.

Jasmine extended her hand out politely, and Ghost shook. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

Jasmine turned to Andra and waved for the two of them to follow her, walking on a path that led them to the acres of rolling, green fields. “Ready to meet your kids?”

Andra beamed a wide smile. “I’ve been thinking about them all week! How did mama do during labor?”

“She did so good!” Jasmine turned to Andra once she walked beside her. “I had those kids delivered in the middle of the night. She started contractions early in the day, I had everything prepped for a week now.”

Andra crooned an ‘aww’, the smile on her face growing brighter. Talk of the goats made the conversation in the truck fade away, and it felt like Ghost was putting it on the back burner as well as he started asking Jasmine about her ranch.

Jasmine had inherited Blue Crescent Ranch from her family and cared for her aging father while running everything. It was massive, and from the look of it she had several employees to help her take care of all of the animals. Goats, sheep, cows, horses, alpacas, and some emus.

They arrived at a cowshed that was housing the mother goat and her kids. “I am letting them bond before they go out and meet the rest of the goats, so that means Sammy is going to meet them before the rest of the flock.”

Ghost stood at the entrance of the cowshed. “I’ll let you have the first moments with ‘em.” He crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against the doorway.

Andra nodded and handed him her phone for him to hold on to, then kept following Jasmine to the back stall. Jasmine’s voice was low, “So, your ‘neighbor’?”

Her cheeks warmed at the insinuation. “Yes, my neighbor.”

“And when did you start talking to your neighbor who happens to wear a mask?” Jasmine’s eyebrow shot up.

Andra looked over her shoulder to make sure they were out of earshot and found Ghost occupied on a phone call. “We met in the summer, he found me off the side of the road after my truck died on me, and fate had it that he’s a mechanic and he helped me get it fixed.”

“Right,” Jasmine nodded as if she’s processing this information, “And why the mask?”

Andra leaned against the wooden post she stopped beside. “He’s ex-military, I don’t really know why.”

“Have you ever seen his face?”

Boy, she was getting the full interview right now, and it had been so long since she thought about what she felt about his decision to hide behind a mask. It was unsettling for the very first time they met, but when Johnny treated it with just as much normality as if it were a N-95 mask, Andra never pushed the subject with Ghost.

“No.” Andra answered, trepidation apparent in Jasmine’s eyes as if what Andra was saying was completely insane. It probably was. “But I respect it.”

Jasmine blinked. “So I have no description to go by but a man in a skull mask if you ever go missing.”

Andra nudged her. “He’s nice. He’s never given me a reason to feel in danger and I’m friends with his best friend who served in the forces with him.”

“I think I’ll stop asking questions while I’m ahead.” Jasmine started walking again, and Andra followed. “Here they are.”

Andra squealed as she saw the two little black baby goats nursing on their sleep-deprived mother, little tails wagging faster than Sammy’s ever could. Sammy’s nose pressed against the bars of the enclosure, sniffling curiously.

They were adorable. Both of them were jet black, one of them had a tuff of white on the end of its tail.

“Both of them are boys,” Jasmine began to open the stall while Andra commanded Sammy to stay, “Did you want to come in?”

Andra was so ready to meet them. She had to gain the trust from mama first before she could get close to the kids, and it took a minute before mama allowed them to hop onto her lap. She sat on the clean bed of hay with the babies, giggling in immense joy as they sniffed and licked her.

Ghost met up with them after attending to his phone call to find Andra snuggling the baby goats. She caught his silhouette in her peripheral and looked up with a wide smile. “Aren’t they precious?”

Andra swore he was smiling beneath that balaclava. “You got names for them yet?”

Her focus returned to the wily kids competing for her attention, thankfully she had two hands to pet both of them. “Oh yeah, I got names for them already.” Andra picked up the jet black kid to showcase him to Ghost. “This one will be Phantom,” then she picked up the other in the same fashion, “And this one is Shadow.”

Did his eye twitch? It made her mischievous grin harder to hold back. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“You had things to say about me naming my chicken Ted, so I figured I’d take a page out of your playbook.”

Jasmine was holding back her laughter and turned away.

Andra was too consumed by the copious amounts of affection the animals were giving her to realize what Ghost was doing until it was too late. “Andra.”

Her head shot up at the sound of Ghost saying her name to find him holding up a phone in a similar angle that she had done not too long ago, crouching down to make sure he had her in the frame. “Say payback.”

Ghost took the photo, and her mouth went slack in surprise. “Is that my phone!?”

Sammy trotted happily up the steps of the front porch and sat with a windshield-wiper tail on full blast, patiently waiting for Andra to open the front door. The energetic dog darted inside seconds after Andra swung the door open and left it open behind her. The two of them lingered on the front porch, Andra leaning against the threshold and Ghost standing close with his hands fisted in his jacket pockets.

“Thank you for coming along with me.” Andra started. “It was good seeing you again.”

“It was a pleasure.” Ghost looked out to the gray skies, the sprinkle of rain continuing its descent like it had been the whole morning. “I hope I didn’t make your friend uncomfortable.” He turned back to Andra to gauge her reaction.

“Oh no, she’s really lovely.” Andra’s lips turned up into a grin. “She’s just looking out for me.”

Ghost nodded. “I get why she was asking if you knew what I look like underneath the,” he pointed a finger to his masked face.

Now it was Andra’s turn to look away, nibbling at her lower lip from learning that he still heard what they said. “I just told her that... I respect it, and I honestly don’t mind.” His eyes were intense when she looked back at him, and her insides turned hot. “Is that weird?”

He let out an amused huff. “Completely bizarre.”

Andra shifted her weight onto her other foot, standing straight now and looking up to meet his gaze. “I respect your choice to remain hidden.” Her hands began to feel warm and clammy. “I had made the assumption in my mind that you pretty much wore it through your time in service, and – I don’t know...”

Andra struggled to manifest the thoughts into words even though this was something she has thought of before, but Ghost waited patiently, giving her his full attention to what she had to say. “Maybe it’s a physical metaphor of not being able to put that all behind you. As if the shadows have returned.”

Ghost looked extremely uncomfortable from her deduction. “The shadows haven’t returned, they just never left.” It sounded like he was struggling to keep his voice from faltering, and instead his response came out gruff.

Andra’s heart dropped to her stomach. His shadows were comparatively darker than hers, but they both had shadows all the same. She recognized that conviction in his words, believing so firmly that he’s still damaged and haunted by things that won’t stay buried. Her eyes softened once her gaze returned to his. “I hope this doesn’t mean you’re gonna disappear on me again.”

The pleading in her gaze pierced him in the chest. “I’ll do better.”

Her face turned up with a glimmer of faith. “I’ll accept that.”

“I’ll do you one better.” Ghost removed his hands from his pockets, palming his phone in one. “If you’re not doing anything Saturday morning, I would like to take you somewhere.”

Andra held herself back from looking too eager. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

“Doesn’t have to be a date. Just a little morning excursion if weather permits.”

Ghost really was trying, and it swelled something fierce in her heart. “Then I accept this invitation for our not-date.”

“I’ll see you Saturday morning, then.” Ghost left her front porch and hurried off to his truck to avoid getting rained on. Andra watched his truck drive back down the gravel path and make the left turn onto their shared road.

Her phone started to buzz in her pocket, Jasmine was calling to finish the conversation they had started. “Hey, no I’m free I just said bye to Ghost – oh my God, you’re impossible.”

-----

Ghost booted up his laptop after receiving Laswell’s brief message letting him know she sent over any information she could dig up with the license plate number he had given her. He had called her when they were at the Blue Crescent Ranch and while Andra was fawning over her goats. Shadow and Phantom... that woman. Ghost muttered a curse to himself after looking over the registration documents.

It was a dead end.

The license plates were registered under a 65-year-old woman, and the make and model of the vehicle did not match the black sedan that were sporting the plates.

Ghost sighed and leaned back in the chair, staring at the screen as he pulled off his balaclava. This new development put his defenses on high alert. There shouldn’t have been any reason for a person driving with stolen plates to be coming down their road as frequently as this one has been. Shouldn’t have stolen plates at all. A one-time occurrence wouldn’t be enough for him to look into it, but after reviewing every motion sensor alert, this car had traveled down the road and back a total of seven times since July. A week after Andra had gotten her truck from the shop.

It was now September.

Ghost detested himself for feeling some kind of relief when Andra first had told him she wasn’t seeing anyone. He still felt that way, but the distress of this unknown person superseded that. He also remembered that Andra didn’t have any form of security on her property.

He would have to rectify that. She would most likely agree with him that it would be rational to set up at least a few cameras around the outside of her house, and maybe he could convince her to set one up near her mailbox as well. There were a couple of spare cameras he had in storage from when he first set up his own security system back when he moved in.

Johnny, much to his chagrin, had helped him set up the cameras. He had set up his own at his flat, but it seemed like he only checks his doorbell camera every time he gets packages delivered as of late. He wasn’t as concerned about being hunted down the way Ghost was; the 141 had faked his death a year before they had actually completed their contract. It seemed like no matter how many times Ghost had faked his death, it felt like someone out there still knew that he would never stay dead.

Christ... Ghost rubbed his burning eyes and closed the laptop. What was he doing? He recalled what Price told him the day they were on their flight back home. Let Simon have a life now. It was clear what he meant; put away the mask, live a civilian life, find a nice woman, or man, to warm his bed.

Ghost wouldn’t allow himself the luxury of living, he managed to sabotage any connection that wasn’t Johnny, Price, or Gaz. He was certain Andra would have told Ghost to jog off after the cold shoulder he had given her.

Until she hadn’t.

And then she had to go and showcase how much she just might understand his issues. Her metaphors of shadows made his knees feel like they were ready to give out. It was like he was out in an open field with no cover, and she had him in her sights of a scope. Vulnerable.

Ghost picked up his phone sitting beside the closed laptop and found himself looking at the photo she had taken in the truck. He saw her cheery smile on the screen, reaching up all the way to her eyes. With his unexpecting glance in her direction in the background. There was an iridescence about her eyes, it had him looking for what felt like several minutes. He didn’t want to think about what those eyes looked like the day she left the auto shop.

A message from Andra startled his train of thought. What’s the dress code for our morning rendezvous?

The corner of his mouth turned up slightly as he responded. Wear sensible shoes for walking.

----------

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#simon ghost riley #simon riley x oc #call of duty #call of duty mw2 #cod mw2 #ghost cod #simon riley smut #ghost smut #slow burn #retired au #cod mwii #john soap mactavish #soap mactavish #soap call of duty #ghost x oc #simon riley

[jpitha]

Just a Little Further 21

Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Fine. I admit it.

The Royal Dawn is a really nice hotel.

And the best part is, after my... demonstration to the Administrative offices today, I didn't have to order the Hotel to give us some rooms! They just offered rooms to us the minute we walked in!

I was given 'The Empress Suite.' I giggled at the name. I wonder if this had something to do with the royal retinue back in the day. Between the opulence, the name, and the theme it feels possible.

It is possible. There was always more than the Throne for you and your retinue. Every Starbase competed to offer you the most luxurious accommodations. After all, if you didn't like them, you could just rest on your starship.

My room - my suite of rooms actually - are easily the nicest place I've slept in my entire life. I made sure Omar, Ava, Um'reli and I each had our own rooms and while I'm glad that they have their own space, I'm too used to being around other people in the close quarters of FarReach or Starbases back home. I rattle around the rooms opening cabinets and drawers until I see it in the corner near a window overlooking the promenade.

They have a bath here!

It's made of some kind of golden flecked white stone, and is carved to look like it was weathered by the wind and water over millions of years. I figure out the taps, and set a bath going.

Once it's finished, I take off my outfit - Ugh, I wish I packed, this is my only clothes unless I use the Nanites to make more - and slip into the bath. It's blissfully relaxing.

I'm laying back in the tub, just floating, and I wish Ava was here with me.

Where did that come from?

I think for a split second about calling her in, but decide against it. I'm sure she'd come running if I called, I'm sure she'd be... enthusiastic about it, but I don't think I'm ready yet. I comfort myself with the thought, and soak for nearly an hour.

After, I dry and climb into the bed naked. I'll deal with clothes tomorrow.

More wild dreams.

My ship, operated and led by my most trusted Builder, Aeche, carries us to her prized Starbase. Built on her order for me, it's beautiful. She takes me on a tour, and we visit all of the highlights. She is especially proud of the transit system, the largest off planet in the Empire.

A team of 10 Builders live and work at the Reach operating in shifts to make sure all the needs of the residents and builders that live here are taken care of. It's one of the most complex Starbases yet and one of the most impressive.

That night, she comes to my rooms while I'm in the bath. She asks to join me, and I accept. For her, this is a culmination of months of jockeying and positioning to catch my eye, it's the realization of a goal years in the making.

For me, it's a fun night. She is easy on the eyes though, I see no harm in keeping her around for a while.

The next day, she leads me to the Throne. The only larger one exists back home on Imperia and I get the impression that this one is smaller only out of courtesy.

Sitting upon the Throne, with a full contingent of Builders behind me, I'm able to instantly take stock of my Empire. Things are going well. There are new reports from the frontier, and I set them to my ship, Worldshaker, so I have something to read while en route to the K'laxi.

This is the last stop before I go see the K'laxi, turn their Gate back on and remind them what the price of insubordination is. Worldshaker is getting reprovisioned and refreshed as the trip is longer than normal and I want to make sure we can stay a while if needed. On my way out, I'll touch the Gate, and commit an upload.

That night, Aeche visits me again, and we have more fun. After, we go to bed and I lay awake thinking about next steps. Aeche sighs and rolls over in her sleep next to me. I stroke her hair gently. Yes, things are going quiet well. It's nice to have some quiet.

I wake up in my bed, alone, in the hotel room, fully myself again. Not only was that the most... idyllic dream I've had yet, it's the first that I felt like it was me doing the things, not some other Empress.

Yes, the Nanites are doing well. You can probably integrate with the Throne if you were to try. It's up to you however. But remember you told The Smell of Soil after Rain to bring everyone today. We should head over there.

Hmm Good point. Okay, let's get up, get dressed, grab everyone and head over. I look over at my outfit from yesterday. It's nice, and it's impressive, but if I'm going to be presenting as Empress to everyone, I need something... more.

I concentrate and think about what would be right. I don't think about specifics, I let the Nanites take my whims into consideration and see what I get. The fog cloud of them surrounds me and my outfit from yesterday and I when they finish I turn and look in the mirror near the bath.

I'm still in royal blue - good, I like that color - but the outfit now is a... strapless ball gown? It's rather severely low cut - I wonder if that's from dreaming about Aeche - and the dress clings on the top half and billows and flows on the lower half and ends in sparking stars and nebulae on a train that flows behind me, rippling gently as if a breeze is blowing it. I check and... yes, it's not touching the ground. That's a neat trick. I'm wearing taller heels than yesterday too, but at least they're comfortable - for now. It's not something that Lieutenant Mullen would ever wear, but it seems... right for Empress Melody The First. I'll roll with it. In deference to who I am, there is a way to mount my rifle on my back. I click it in place and feel complete. I wonder how many Empresses were armed?

Many were. We even have records of a few who would carry a battle rifle with them.

That brings me some happiness. Even after how different we are, there are still some things that I share with Empresses across time.

As I open the door to leave, I see Omar, Ava and Um'reli in the hall already dressed and ready. They turn to see me and Ava and Um'reli both gasp and blush. Omar grins wickedly. "Melody, I have to say that this is the first time since you told us you were an Empress that you look the part. That is an amazing outfit."

I curtsy slightly "Thank you Omar. Did you all sleep well? I have a hunch with the Nanites you had... intense dreams?"

Ava snaps her had up to me. "I did! I dreamt that I was running a Starbase. We were preparing for your visit and I had so much to do, but I knew how to do all of it, and I had a really strong team, and you complimented our readiness when you arrived!"

Um'reli looks at me with an odd expression. "I did too, but... I dreamt I was a human. A Builder. I was operating a Starship, the Sunrunner. We were tasked by you directly to tour the frontier worlds and build a report about how they were doing, if they needed anything and if we thought there was any unrest. We were very proud because you had personally asked for us."

"What about you Omar?" Ava turns and looks at him.

"Yeah, I had a vivid dream. I dreamt that I was a planetary administrator. I ruled over more than a billion people on a world with two suns. One was white and the other was larger and redder. I remember clearly the odd shadows it cast, and how everything had an odd coloration. You had requested an increase in the delivery of Magnesium. We were able to meet the new quota this time, but I was worried that if you had requested to keep the quote high, how we would be able to make it without overworking the miners."

"Wow, so not only did you dream about being a Builder, not only did you dream about being a powerful Builder, but you all were in direct contact with the Empress. I wonder if that's because you received your Nanites from me directly."

"Who knows?" Um'reli looks at all of us. "But I for one am starving. Let's get some breakfast and go back to the Throne. Melody has a performance to give."

We head downstairs and sure enough there is a restaurant attached to the Hotel. We sit down and immediately I ask for a carafe of boiling hot water to be brought. While we wait, I take out my hand grinder and scale and make some coffee. By the time the water arrives, everything is ready. The Mariens who brought me the water is watching curiously as I make the coffee. Soon enough, it's finished, and I take the first sip of coffee in nearly three days.

Ahh, now, I can rule.

"Pardon my asking, Empress, but what is that?" The Mariens points to my beverage.

"It's called coffee. It's the roasted seed of a plant that's native to the planet we lived on. I like to drink an extraction of it made with boiling water. It does have a chemical, called caffeine, that offers a stimulant effect to Hu-Builders, but we've found it to be toxic to other Sapients, like our friends the K'laxi here. You can smell it if you'd like though." I hold out the cup.

The Mariens leans in and gently inhales. They lean back sharply and look at me. "That smells amazing." Their body language expresses wonder. "Truly, the Builders do amazing things. Now, what will you be having for breakfast?"

We order and eat and walk towards the Throne. As we're walking this time, people are not ignoring us. Children wave, people follow us with their eyes. They don't seem to be fearful of us, more respectful this time. As we turn a corner, I see Rapid River Roaring and The Smell of the Ocean. They look worse for wear. Both of them have matted feathers, even a few bare spots. Wild eyed they're looking around. River is clutching a bag of some kind.

Uh oh.

They turn and see me. Relief washes over them and they run up to me "Empress! My Empress!" They both approach me and bow low, head touching the ground. "We have completed your task. We have found Vivvix and Zemmlin and brought them to you."

Ava looks around. "But, where are they?"

I know where they are.

River opens the bag they're carrying.

Inside are most of Vivvix and Zemmlin.

"I see..." I try to not look unsettled. Omar's face darkens and he turns away. Ava look in and nods, satisfied. Um'reli doesn't look in, but she isn't unsettled by this development either.

Well. What's done is done. "I would have preferred they be brought to me alive, but my fault for not specifying that. Where were they?"

"The cowards were hiding in the docks. They were attempting to board another ship and catch up to that traitor, Ottarn. We were able to surprise them, and carried out your order, Empress."

"Yes, I can see that. Er, thank you both for your hard work. Go to High Line and find Starlight on a Moonless Evening. After this presentation, I plan on visiting the ship to assess it for refitting.

They both bow again. "Empress."

Part 22

#humans are deathworlders #humans are space orcs #humans go on adventure #humans are space oddities #sci fi writing #writing #humans and ai #humans and aliens #the k'laxiverse #jpitha #just a little further

[imhereformr]

Waking Up... And the clock reads yesterday for Riven please (:

Guess who's aliiiiiiiiiiive (sort of)

Riven thought sleep would never come, but it did. It was a cruel, fitful sleep that had him tossing and turning all night. After the nightmare day he'd had, restless sleep was the best he could hope for. And really, even restless sleep was better than being awake.  

His alarm went off at 5:30. Riven silenced the phone, dropped it beside his pillow and rolled back over. He could skip his morning workout just this once. His muscles wouldn’t deflate if he missed one day of weights and his legs wouldn’t stop working if he didn’t go for his morning run. What was the point anyways?  

I can’t do this anymore; we’re not working. 

That was what she’d said. Quick and simple, like she was trying to get the words out before they got stuck in her throat. He had nodded, gotten up from the bar and walked away. He didn’t want Musa to see him cry. A year and a half of having his worthless life blessed by her love had come to a crushing halt yesterday, November 12th at 6:37 pm. The walk home had been a numb blur of crossing streets the streets of Gardenia and having people move around him as he rushed home to the safety of his room.  

He had almost fallen back asleep when his alarm blared in his ear. Riven cursed himself for setting a backup alarm for days when he didn’t feel like getting up. He fumbled for the phone and stabbed the silence button, returning the room to its previously dead state.  

Outside of his room he could hear Brandon and Sky joking about something. Brandon’s loud, borderline obnoxious laugh echoed through their far-too-small-for-six-people apartment, grating on Riven’s nerves. He twisted the pillow around until he was almost smothering himself, but their incessant chatter seemed to not care about solid objects because it got no quieter.  

Exasperated and unable to sleep, Riven sat up. Apparently, he would be working out this morning. It was that or lay in bed and ruminate on how he’d fucked up his relationship. He would wait until Brandon and Sky had left, though. By now, Musa had almost certainly told the other girls about the breakup and Stella had inevitably opened her big mouth and told Brandon who had also inevitably opened his somehow bigger mouth and told the other guys. And the last thing he wanted right now was Sky and Brandon’s pity. 

He grabbed his phone, determined to mindlessly scroll through social media to avoid thinking. Though, maybe he would stalk Musa’s page? Or maybe not. That wouldn’t do him any good. But really what more harm could it do? He already felt empty. He couldn’t possibly feel more empty, could he?  

“Hey, Riven, are you coming or not?” Brandon shouted through the door before Riven could even turn on his phone. 

“I’ll, uh, see you guys there” he shouted back, thankful that Brandon didn’t pester him about more than whether he was getting his ass moving. He would break Brandon’s pretty little face if the squire so much as thought to ask how Riven was feeling.  

“K. Cool, see you later.” 

Riven laid back in bed with a sigh and turned on his phone. He nearly dropped it onto his face when he saw the message that had popped up.  

Musa (6:14 am): Hey, are you free tonight? 

He clicked the message instantly then froze when the full chat screen appeared. He didn’t know what to say. Did he just say yes? Did he ask why she wanted to see him? Did she miss him? Did she regret her decision?  

Riven stared at the screen for what felt like hours, reading over her words, trying to decipher the hidden message that wasn’t there, to figure out what was wrong.  

Then it hit him. 

This was the same message she’d sent yesterday morning while he was heading out with Brandon and Sky. And every message that had followed – his confirmation that he was free, her suggesting that they get a drink, his letting her know that he’d be a bit late – was missing. It was like yesterday had never happened.  

He fumbled his way back to his home screen, nearly dropping his phone again in the process. He stared at the picture of him and Musa on their first anniversary – they'd gone to a “romantic” fancy restaurant that Helia had suggested. After they had eaten the, admittedly, delicious food, they stripped into much more casual clothes in the unnervingly fancy bathrooms and gone to a free concert in a park where they’d spent the night making out and barely paying attention to the show. He took the picture near the end of the night – long after the band had finished, and people had left – when they were lying on the grass and joking around, both trying to avoid having to call it a night.  

Back when they were happy... Before he’d gotten scared and started to pull away from her. Before she’d started getting frustrated with him and his unwillingness to open up. Before she’d stopped trying to talk to him.  

Right there, just above Musa’s head, was the second most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. He felt hope bloom in his chest. He could turn this around. He could make her change her mind. He could save them. His phone read November 12th, 6:58 am.  

For safe measure he looked up the date and nearly cried tears of joy when he saw that his phone hadn’t glitched.  

And then he called Musa. She answered on the first ring.  

“Riven? Shouldn’t you be under a few hundred pounds right now?” 

“I didn’t go to the gym. Do you have time before work? We could get breakfast.” 

She didn’t. She had to be at work for 8; she had to open the music store that day. He suggested dinner or a show – he could probably find some concert or comedy show. She countered with drinks. Exactly what she’d suggested yesterday right down to the place and time.  

“Yeah, that sounds good” he replied. He was determined not to let her plans to break up with him get him down. He’d take the day to think about what he wanted to say to her and then hopefully not freak out when he got there and lose the ability to speak like he tended to do when emotions came up. He wasn’t giving up that easily. 

He sucked at his job that day. Not that he was ever great; customer service was not his strength. He was particularly bad that day. So many orders were wrong, a few plates got dropped, some poor man got soup on his leg. It was not a good day to be his customer.  

It was a good day to be Riven though – or as good as it ever really got, anyways. He knew exactly what he wanted to say. And because he didn’t trust himself to get the words out, he also wrote it down.  

He got to the restaurant Musa had suggested at 5:45 – no sticking around work today. He sat at the bar and ordered for both of them: two blackberry beers that sounded exactly like something Musa would like.  

Musa got there at 6. She looked tired and stressed. Had she been like that yesterday? He couldn’t remember. Musa had never had a great sleep schedule – she usually got up around 7 after having been up for hours the night before doing something or other: usually writing, but sometimes it was studying or, for a few weeks after her foray into the Golden Kingdom, crying. Despite her not-so-great sleeping habits, she’d had never looked quite this tired.  

“Listen, we need to talk” she started, taking a large sip of the beer. “That’s good...” she mumbled before taking another large gulp. She was nervous. How had he not seen that? It seemed so obvious now that he knew what was coming.  

“I thought you’d like it...” 

He was stalling. The words he wanted were there, they were in his mind all lined up waiting to go, he just needed to get them out. He had practiced this. He had recited the words he wanted to say all day at work – sometimes accidentally saying something meant for Musa to a client – and the entire walk to the restaurant.  

“So... uh...” Musa fidgeted with her sleeves. Now, while she was trying to get the words out, was his chance to tell her everything. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words he wanted died on his tongue.  

Again. 

And again. 

And again.  

And why couldn’t he get the stupid fucking words out? He was growing increasingly irritated with himself and it was starting to show, and Musa would think it had to do with him and then she’d definitely leave and WHY COULDN’T HE JUST GET THE WORDS OUT?!!?!??

“Riven” she sighed, “I ca-” 

He pulled the paper – the one that contained every word he wanted to say to her – and held it out. It was a last resort. He wanted to tell her everything; to show her that he could do this whole boyfriend thing properly. A last resort would have to do. Musa startled a bit. Her questioning eyes lifted from the paper in his hands to his, tears pooling in her blue eyes. God, he really was a jerk. How could he not have noticed that she was on the verge of tears yesterday? 

“Please” he whispered.  

Musa took the paper between trembling hands and unfolded it. He watched, unable to breathe or move or think, as she read. Every shuddering breath he took tore him apart and every soft smile stitched him back together. A tear escaped her eyes and slid down her cheek, dropping onto the page.  

He wanted to reach out: to brush the tear away even if it had already escaped her face; to take her hand; to kiss her forehead; to touch her knee; to tell her he loved her. He just couldn’t. Not until he knew she understood that he would go to the end of the universe for her. That he would always come back to her. That he would kill for her. And die for her. And live for her. Riven had spent his entire life insisting that he would never fall in love and never be one of those idiots that was willing to give up everything for a girl. Then Musa looked at him and smiled at him, and all of it – the stories, the love songs – made sense.  

There were still tears in her eyes when she looked up, but it was different. When she’d come in, she looked dejected. Now, she looked at him with a love so fierce it burned him up in the best possible way. It horrified him to realise that she hadn’t looked at him like that in weeks when a year ago that (and utter rage, but he could pretend that one didn’t happen) was the only way she ever looked at him. 

“I’m sorry” he whispered, stretching his arm to offer her his hand. 

Musa smiled at him. She folded the paper and shoved it into her pocket. “I’m keeping this” she told him as she took his hand and pulled it into her lap.  

“Okay” he chuckled, rolling his eyes. The plan had been to burn the paper so no one would ever know he had feelings, but if Musa wanted to keep it, that was okay too. Anything was okay, as long as she was happy.  

“One more try” she nodded. “We give us one more try.” 

“I’ll do better” he assured her.  

Musa pulled her chair closer to him, all the while never letting go of his hand. “Me too.” 

“Muse, you have noth-” 

“Clearly I do” she scoffed. “Riven, I had no idea you... that you felt this way about me. I was so sure you didn’t care, and I’d gotten so in my head and started convincing myself that you were... I don’t know. Whatever” she shook her head. “Flora told me I should talk to you weeks ago. Clearly, she was right...” 

“The bitch” he deadpanned.  

“For real. Like, fuck her” Musa laughed. When her laughter subsided, she took a deep breath. “I’ll talk to you even if...” she trailed off. 

“Talking about it fucking sucks?” 

“Yeah.” 

“You could just write me a song” he suggested.  

“And you can just write me a letter” she countered with another laugh that made his heart flutter. “But we talk. However we need to.” 

And they did talk. All evening. They talked through four pitchers of beer, a split plate of “mixed starter platter”, a lot of tears – some from him, as much as he loathed to admit it – and one very annoyed bartender that hated that they were the last two people in the place. They got everything out into the open and, much to his surprise, he didn’t care that people could hear them.  

When they finally left, it felt like a weight that he didn’t even realise had existed had been lifted off them; like they were back in that honeymoon phase. Riven walked Musa home and kissed her goodnight when they reached her door. He turned to leave but she pulled him back into her before leading him up to the girls’ second floor apartment.  

They settled into bed. Musa curled herself up into him and Riven buried his face in her hair. He could feel her fingers tracing lazy circles into his back until she fell asleep. And then, he forced himself to stay awake, not wanting to miss a moment with her. When he finally allowed himself to go to bed, sleep came easily.  

#winx club #winx #winx musa #winx riven #rivusa #muri #set in season 4 #oneshot #prompt

[ladysomething]

I love everything that you’ve written for F1 so far (you are just the most incredible writer, I could read all of the fics you’ve written a million times and never get bored) but you’ve truly outdone yourself with Where You Go, I Go!!!! I literally read chapter 2 like 4 times last week and I’ve just been counting down the days until I could read chapter 3 (but I pinky promise I do not mean that in a “write faster” kind of way, I mean it in a “I was excited that I audibly squealed when I saw you posted today” kind of way). And ABO is something that I hardly ever read. But you just do it SO well. I LOVE the world you’ve built. And this fic is just SO incredible. I wasn’t sure how you could top the first two chapters, but eek CHAPTER THREE. The way that Charles going into pre-heat prevented any questions about Max and his intentions from getting answered (the tension is buildingggg) and Pierre showing up and Charles getting claimed, oh my god every scene was incredible and I am SO EXCITED to find out where this is going, because I genuinely don’t know what to expect!!! Thank you so, so much for sharing this fic with us!!!

I am a different anon than before, but I was very interested in reading your response about if you found writing long fic to be daunting. Like prev anon, I am a numbers girl, so learning a little about your writing process/philosophy was super interesting!! I have another question if you don’t mind me asking- how do you decide on your posting schedule?! Although I would literally read this whole fic in one sitting, I do love the 1+ weeks between updates because I love getting excited for a new chapter and looking forward to it, but you said in the ask that you were already writing ch6, so I’m curious what made you pick the schedule you did!!

thanks again for sharing this fic with us, we are truly all so lucky to read it!!

ahhh!!!

well firstly I can't take the entire credit for this fic. @saiyanwitcher reached out to me after I wrote Give Me That Fire and offered to beta for me. As we were getting to know each other, she asked if I'd ever consider writing an Omegaverse fic, and I said yes, and here we are. But if there is any reason why this fic is better than the others, it's all because of her! She has spent so many hours brainstorming with me, proofreading, and pulling me back from the edge when I said "I want to do THIS" and she said "girl what" (she didn't really, everything I propose she says "alright, lets figure out how we can make that work").

I'm so delighted to hear you loved chapter 3! this whole fic is sooo different to anything I've ever written, but I LOVE exploring new themes and topics and ideas in fic - you'll never really catch me doing the same thing twice. pushing boundaries is what I love about fic, but it doesn't always pay off, so I'm SO happy to hear that people are loving this fic as much as they are.

as for your question ... which, firstly, like most artists I am extremely self involved, so talking about myself is like my fave thing to do lmao. I will answer literally ANY question you could ask.

but, posting schedule. after many years of trial and error while posting long fics, the thing I've found that works for me is that I need to have a fairly sizeable amount of the story in the can before I start posting. I usually like 5-6 chapters, but, more importantly, I want to know that I have the feel of the story before I start to post, because once I post I can't go back and change things. at about that 5-6 chapter mark, I know that I'm deep enough into a story that the plot is right, the characters are right, and the tone I'm using is right, and then I feel comfortable starting to release it out into the world.

from there, I post a chapter only when I finish a chapter. so I finished chap 6 on Tuesday, and then I worked on chap 3 on Wednesday, gave it to @saiyanwitcher to beta on Wednesday evening, and then by this morning she'd done a final check and I was okay to post.

my own personal goal is to write one chapter a week, with Wednesday being the day I'm always aiming towards. so this week I was actually a little later than my "schedule" because ch 6 was giving me a headache and it took longer to write than I wanted.

at this point, I know roughly how long it takes me to write one chapter for this story (a week), but I also know some of these chapters are harder to write than others so I HAVE to give myself some extra leeway (hence the maximum of 2 weeks).

I hope that kind of explained my thought process and as I said, I'm so happy to answer any questions!

#where you go i go #anon ask #lestappen fic

[moonlightchey]

Happy birthday Mikey!!

⚠️THIS IS A NSFW STORY!!!⚠️

WARNINGS : NSFW, COCK SUCKING,

Its Michaels birthday. (June 21st) surprisingly your boyfriends birthday came along quite fast to be real! You have no clue what to do for is birthday.

Its 6 am, the normal time he gets of of work. You were already panicking about his special day and what to do until you hear the door unlock and he comes in..

Quickly you throw the Red covers over your head and pretend to go back to sleep but of course you were very tired so you just went back to sleep. You wake up to hands around your waist cuddling you,he was still awake watching tv but then a strange and not kid friendly idea popped into your head..

“What if I were to suck his dick for his birthday??”

The best idea ever!! You and Michaels relationship was getting more intimate so might as well try it (with consent first) you get up and say

“Good morning Mikey happy birthday!!”

“Thank you y/n” he says with a smile on his face. “what are we gonna do today??”

“Today is all about you. What would you like to do?”

“I’m not sure, what about we go to this animal cafe??” Michael says.

“What..”

Definitely not what you expected. You expect probably a trip to the mall or maybe go get some coffee?? A picnic?? But you didn’t expect an animal cafe.

*time-skip*

A few hours go by and it’s late 8pm you guys wanted to watch a movie and “go to sleep” but that’s not what you had in mind. (Wink wink🤭)

After what FELT Like hours you guys finally pick a movie and it starts, Michael has his hand on your shoulder and now it’s time for your plan.

You slip away from his grip and he gives you a questionable look. You get down on your knees and smile at him. You are know in front of the couch on your knees in front of Michael. YOU ARE NOW IN.FRONT.OF. MICHAEL. He finally realizes what your intentions were and his face goes very pink.

“You know Michael..I’ve always wanted to do this for you. This will be the best birthday you’ve ever had and I will make sure of it. May I??” You say, as you open his legs and rub his thighs.

“U-uhm..yes.”

God he looked so hot from that angle.

You could’ve came right then and there. You unbutton his pants and his pants drop to the floor. You could tell he was nervous. All you guys ever did was make out and sometimes that went too far but not this far!!

You rub his cock through his boxers, his breath hitched (took a sharp breath in) you did this for a few seconds until you took down his boxers and omfg. HE WAS HUGE?? You were so shocked that he was hiding all of this from you?? You rub his pink tip and then you take him whole. He was very loud, lots of moans and whimpers coming from his beautiful mouth.

But you wanted to tease him a little bit. You took your mouth away from his cock to see his reaction.

“Y-y/n why did you-“ you cut him off with a kitty lick (a lick going up from the shaft of his dick)

God he was so hot. I’m pretty sure by all the noise he was making the neighbors will be giving you guys some looks the next day…

After taking him whole,You kitty licked his dick again and he came right on your face.(sorry to the people who wear glasses I feel your pain…)You figured this is a time to stop. You got up praises Michael for being such a good boyfriend and you get up from the floor and wash off your face. Michael was left speechless…



#headcanons #michael afton fluff #michael #michael afton headcanons #michael afton hcs #michael afton imagine #michael afton x reader fluff #michael afton fnaf #michael afton smut #fnaf smut #michael afton x reader smut

[otomehoneyybearr]

　　　Act 12

Episode 6: Secret Base

Working w/ Maybelle Lace

Note: As you read, you will see that some sentences highlighted in a different color, this is what they indicate. Pink: Flashback Blue: Characters are acting

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Zen: Welcome.

Izumi: Sorry to bother you after closing.

Syu: Don't worry about it. It happens all the time.

Reni: I'd be too concerned over people watching over us if it was during business hours.

Zen: Since when did my restaurant become a secret base for old men?

Zen: I heard you’re a curry fan, unlike Yukio.

Izumi: Wait, you’re also going to serve food?

Zen: Green curry. It's a special menu item.

Izumi: Wow, thank you!

Izumi: Thank you for the food. It was very delicious.

Izumi: By the way, what spice mixture did you—

Zen: I'll tell you later.

Izumi: Thank you!

Reni: Now, let's get down to business.

Reni: I had kept quiet until now because of who the other party was and I didn't want you to get involved in it, but I can no longer keep using that as an excuse.

Izumi: ...

Reni: It was Keiju Amadate who instigated Kusumi Ikaruga to plagiarize twice and drove Tachibana out of the theater world.

Izumi: …!

Reni: As you know, he is a board member and the chairman of the Hyakka Theater Company on top of having a tremendous influence in the theater world.

Izumi: Why would Amadate...?

Syu: I was told that he was looking for Hakkaku's scripts. I don't know if this is true or not.

Izumi: Hakkaku's...

Reni: The attempt to cause a plagiarism scandal with the God Troupe and Mankai Company's act off was probably aimed for that purpose as well.

Izumi: So, Amadate was also the reason that some of my troupe members were attacked before the act off...?

Reni: Yes. Though it ended in failure.

Izumi: Then that means the scandalous spread of Banri fighting through a video recording of that attack was also under Amadate's order...

Reni: Mankai Company is coming close to getting the Fleur Award again, so they're putting out all the stops to seriously crush it.

Reni: Tachibana also knows that Amadate is the one pulling the strings behind the scenes. That is why, he didn't say anything to keep you out of it.

Reni: That's why, I don't feel comfortable asking you to do this...

Izumi: I will do whatever it takes to protect the theater company. If there is anything I can do, please let me know.

Izumi: The new Mankai Company is being targeted right now. They are not unrelated.

Syu: I found someone who could provide me with the data we need to corner Amadate, but they designated you as the receiver.

Reni: Of course, we will be there with you. We will do our utmost to avoid any danger.

Izumi: I’ll go. Please let me do this.

Izumi: I felt bad for relying so much on Reni about matters concerning Dad.

Izumi: I'd be glad if there's something I can do to help.

Reni: I appreciate you saying so.

Izumi: I saw Dad in person the other day, and he’s still fully devoted to acting.

Izumi: He is still the same dad that I respected even back then, but he still misses you all in the first gen.

Izumi: I want him to come back to Japan soon and see everyone again. I want him to be able to perform theater wherever he wants to.

Izumi: Besides, I think my mom has a lot of things she would like to say directly to him.

Reni: I suppose so. I'm surprised they never got divorced.

Izumi: Me too.

Syu: The problem is where to deliver the data.

Syu: We have to receive the data from the provider within the next few days before the board meeting to indict Amadate.

Izumi: Who is the person providing the data?

Reni: Although he goes under a pseudonym called K, he seems to be a central figure of Hyakka Theater Company. It seems like he and Amadate have been friends for a long time.

Syu: Lately, Amadate's subordinates have been watching the places where Reiji and I go through.

Syu: If they detect the transfer and steal the data back, it'll all be over. We have to be careful.

Reni: If the delivery is discovered, K's safety may be in jeopardy. They want to avoid that risk.

Izumi: So that means I need a place where I can contact K without Amadate finding out about it...

Izumi: But if Reni or Syu were to do something strange, they'll be found out...

Izumi: Can't we meet at this restaurant?

Syu: It's not unnatural for us to come and go outside of business hours, but I think it'd be difficult for K.

Zen: Even if you visit as a customer during business hours, your meeting will be discovered.

Izumi: A place where everyone can go in and out without suspicion, but where outsiders can also be seen... That'll be difficult to find.

Izumi: By the way, when’s your next board meeting, Reni?

Reni: It will be held at night in five days' time.

Izumi: (In five days... that'll be the day of the performance. I got it!)

Izumi: How about inviting this person to the performance? I'm pretty sure that K is also involved in theater.

Izumi: During the performance, only people who are on our attendee list can enter the Mankai Theater, and it's a place everyone can gather together naturally.

Izumi: Even if it's just to hand the data over, there's the pretext that they just attended a show, so it shouldn't seem unnatural...

Syu: I see. That's a good idea.

Reni: It'll also be convenient as the Board of Directors will meet immediately afterwards. That way there will be little risk of the data being taken away after the handover occurs before the board meeting.

Izumi: The question is if K will accept the performance invitation...

Izumi: It WOULD be unnatural to invite someone to the performance without knowing their identity or if they plan on using a fake name...

Izumi: Oh!

Reni: What is it?

Izumi: ——I'll give him a call!

Banri: ‘Sup.

Zen: You here for a part-time job?

Banri: Nope.

Izumi: Banri, do you have Kabuto's contact information?

Banri: Yeah. He pushed it onto me at the last session of the workshop.

Syu: I guess he liked you.

Banri: If you think so.

Izumi: There’s something I really need to talk to Kabuto about. Could you give him a call?

Banri: ...Sure, but right now?

Zen: You don’t seem too fond of the idea.

Banri: I don't think he’ll have anything nice to say.

Kabuto: "...Yeah?"

Banri: This is Settsu.

Kabuto: "Perfect timing. There's a role I'd like you to play in a performance six months from now."

Banri: That ain’t happenin’!

Banri: The general director of our theater company has something she really wants to talk to you about.

Kabuto: "...Hm?"

Banri: Izumi.

Izumi: Hello, I asked for a call with you. My name is Izumi Tachibana and I'm the president and general director of Mankai Company.

Izumi: Is this Kabuto Amadate?

Kabuto: "Yeah, that's me."

Izumi: "I apologize for the last minute notice, but I would like to invite you to the upcoming performance of our newest work in five days..."

Izumi: And to have a brief chat in the theater afterwards.

Izumi: ...We will pick up your items at that time.

Kabuto: "...I see. You’ve put some thought into this."

Izumi: (As expected, Kabuto is...)

Izumi: I apologize. I only ended up inviting you to just the second part of the performance...

Kabuto: "I've watched the first part of the performance from the stream, so it's fine."

Izumi: Oh, really? Thank you very much.

Izumi: The show starts at 2 p.m. Just give us your name at the entrance and you will be admitted.

Kabuto: "I look forward to talking with you."

Izumi: Likewise.

Izumi: Thanks, Banri. Kabuto will be coming to the performance.

Banri: Huh?! You serious?!

Zen: We'll also be there, by the way.

Banri: That's totally gonna bother me during the performance.

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Prev | Next

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#a3! translation #a3! act addict actors #act! addict! actors! #a3! game

[fatummortem]

Hey everyone, I'm very sorry for going quiet for so long, I wasn't expecting it honestly & I'm sadly not back. Work, planning & adapting to family drama has kept me extremely busy over the last few months, unfortunately. Well to put it mildly. I am in my own apartment if I hadn't said, however the kiddo will be coming 6 months to a year ahead of schedule & arriving by the end of next month. \o/ That is the positive from everything going on.

If you want a more detailed thing about the gaslighting or bs that's been going on click the read more. If not. No harm. I do make jokes about my family trauma bullshit, to help myself deal with it. Fair warning.

So the least BS of everything is that I've currently turned into the only opener at work during the weekdays. If I'm not working I'm trying to plan things so everything is good for when Jynx, the kidddo, comes to live here. Except each time I rearrange my plan my mom finds some excuse to move the date up, while I'm getting reports my mom will not provide hair cuts, deoderant or medical attention. Well my mom said once they just gone to the docs but one times i just had to respond with 'You do realize I've been on the phone with her all morning right?'

Other than that I've felt I've been playing a chess game against a hacker, Where they transform a Pawn into a Queen in the middle of the board. Because whenever I get everything situated she just has to alter it and move up the bloody date while I keep my child's mental health up, figure out what i need to BUY and other sane things.

Then a few nights ago happened. My Mother, got into it over a day old dirty pan. Both sides from the sounds of it were way outta line arguing with each other. But once the pan was cleaned & dried, my child wanted ice cream. Because the pan was not put away, my mother in her infinite wisdom, thought it smart to reach around my child, try to wrestle it from her. So my child headbutted her and got a hit to the head for her trouble. To me the headbutt is self defense. Course i was at work, acting like an adult when this went down, got off with messages from both so I of course CALLED MY CHILD.

I ended up chatting with my kid calming her down, y'know because i'm a parent. At the same time I was helping a friend clean an area of his place, to help him with his mental health. we started at like 4:40pm and didn't finish until 10pm. So I was like "i ain't dealing with your shit.' I told her I'd try calling her after work. Because who wants that kind of conversation before work. Because y'know being calm is something I'd like to be so this doesn't blow up worse than it already is.

So I check my phone mid-day, when I'm finally able to take a break, apparently because I didn't respond and call her RIGHT THAT SECOND OR WHEN i AWOKE, my child would be put into jail if i didn't magically shit out a plan to move her (it's a thirty hour drive alright. I moved that fair away, yes i did). Course when i started getting things in order, the jail BS was put to the way side. But dear old mommy wanted an 'I'm sorry' because i didn't get her side of it from her panic attack inducing text messages while i was at work.

And I'm amazed & flabbergasted that I was informed my mom's arms are too short to reach around my child to wrestle her, that no the headbutt happened in a different time and MY CHILD TRIED TO BODY SLAM MY FATHER. See I still haven't gotten an answer on how the headbutt happened.

So once I was able to calm from my panic attack, the rage (i so raged and i so terribly hate raging), i sat here and tried to put my head around my 5 foot 86, POUNDS, XS wearing, 18 year old child trying to BODY SLAM my 5'9 broad shoulder, fuck if i know his poundage, slightly chunky 75 year old father I about died. She does have some Karate under her belt, when she WAS 14 YEARS OLD. She made it to yellow belt and got stuck there because she kept getting into it with my mom and they took the next belt from her and i was just 'DO THEY TEACH BODY SLAMMING FOR THAT?'

Needless to say I'm still working on getting things planned for Jynx to get here, EVEN THOUGH I WAS GOING TO BUY A BED TWO MONTHS FROM NOW. trying to figure out what the shit to buy & I have yet to respond to my mother's tale. mainly for the fact i'm so tempted to ask her if she appeared in the move 'Meet the Robinsons.'

#ooc #ooc update #tw gaslighting #tw assault #tw abuse

[thecloudstan]

(Prt. 6) Came back after a few hours and saw your post. Enjoy your weed. XD I hope it's okay if I continue my ramblings (kinda forgot where I left off). Anyhow, one of the things that also really struck me about AC was showcasing the similarities and differences between Rufus and Cloud. They're strong, intelligent, and proud men that went through a lot after Meteorfall with geostigma and suffered a lot because of it. Rufus regrets his past actions and is always looking towards the future by AC.

In contrast, Cloud is stuck in the past and suffering from depression, unable to move forward due to his regrets. While Rufus is determined to stay alive while throwing off Kadaj in AC, Cloud has resigned himself to death. It takes a combination of Aerith, Tifa, Marlene, and even Vincent to finally push him forward to take action after avoiding everyone for so long. Cloud's and Rufus's respective struggles in AC are foils to each other, while serving as the biggest obstacles to Kadaj.

As mentioned before, I thought it interesting to be that in AC, Rufus was the person Cloud used as an excuse to run from his issues that led me thinking about their dynamic and characterizations. It made realize (and later confirmed in the Ultimania Omega) that at the end of the day, Rufus and Cloud never truly hated each other, even back in the OG. Sure, Rufus was a total cliché villain in the OG, but it had more to due with differing goals and philosophies that Rufus did grew out of.

I think I'd mentioned this briefly in one of my previous posts, but I really like that Rufus can understand Cloud enough to try and draw him into a partnership with honeyed words, which almost worked if not for Reno's mouth (lol), and Cloud knows Rufus enough that he isn't telling him the whole truth and calls him out on it. Honestly, their blunt interactions were so REFRESHING to see because they can say what's on their minds without tiptoeing around each other in AC.

And it's precisely because of that bluntness between them, as well as their similarities/differences, is what I think Rufus and Cloud would actually make a good couple. I know it'll never happen and it's just an overall opinion, but I don't think what Cloud needs people is always coddling him and not being able to speak their minds until something bad happens. Same thing with Rufus because he doesn't need a yes-men enabling his bad decisions/habits.

I'll end it here because it's past midnight in my timezone, but here have two strong, prideful men who hide their insecurities and loneliness though stoicism and going through severe inferiority-superiority complexes through the FFVII titles. It's a dynamic that works because they see each other as equals and worthy opponents and good allies. I strongly believe they complement each other as a result all of that and can find solace and a tender intimacy if they overcome their issues.

My response under the cut:

Yes yes yes, exactly this stuff. The distinct scene between Cloud and Vincent, specifically, about Vincent having never tried to forgive himself...I'm sure Cloud has this moment where he feels he's looking into his future if he doesn't shape up. It really is this whole story about how everyone around him is acting, and he's frightened into paralysis again. It's understandable, because Remake/Rebirth Cloud aside...he's fucking terrified of himself in the original. He did some horrible things (because of the Jenova/Seph influence), and then failed to do some very heroic things (by his own definition, at least). But the reality had to strike him, eventually, that...even fucking Shinra is trying to figure out what Geostigma is and how to stop it. Like...this is the new world. The Planet hasn't rejected them, it's just still getting FUCKED by Jenova. It was interesting and, ultimately, necessary character development for the Turks and Shinra Co. to evolve. It would make Rufus seem kind of like a short-sighted moron if the world practically ended because of the empire his father built, and then...he just repeats the same actions??? Nah. It wouldn't make sense and it would make them all really flat, I think. They would kinda cease to be characters and remain plot devices for Cloud's story. Which they definitely aren't!!

I don't want to give Cloud's friends too much shit. They have the very difficult task of getting that boy off his ass and out of his head. They're constantly relying on him, pushing him to Do Stuff, and I can see from his perspective how that would just be so crushing and anxiety inducing at times. Which honestly makes it that much more tantalizing that Rufus lured him in the way he did...with sugary speech and a yes/no proposition (as opposed to a guilt-trip, lbr).

I think in Cloud's case it's a lot more complex than simple coddling, but I know what you mean. I think Shinra Sr. had more of a 'yes-men' problem than Rufus, at least inasmuch his people never even TRIED to stop him from doing LITERALLY everything he wanted. I suspect the Turks could speak to Rufus more plainly than any of Shinra Sr.'s lackeys could speak to him (hence the dressing down Rufus gives them about dropping the plate in Rebirth). Or, maybe the Turks would just complain to Tseng and make Tseng go talk to Rufus XD idk.

At any rate, I do mostly agree with you, I just can never go so far as to say who would be the 'best' for one another (I really do think all characters have different interesting dynamics to bring to the table and I love too many different ships). But I respect your analysis and I ship tf out of them so I wouldn't be anything other than tickled by them being together in some capacity. I'd love for my poor country boy to have a wealthy bf who can pay off his student loans (wait...)

And I'm really happy you felt this was a safe space to share all this because fandom really needs that! I'm flattered. I hope people continue to feel that way. I'll be honest about my feelings but I'm never here to judge anyone. 💞

#stanswers #Anonymous #ff7 #ff7r #ff7 rebirth #ff7 rebirth spoilers #ff7r spoilers #final fantasy 7 rebirth #final fantasy 7 rebirth spoilers #final fantasy vii rebirth spoilers #rufus shinra #cloud strife #ruclo #strifra #rukura

[koolkat9]

NedCan Week 2023 - Day 6

@nedcanweek

Prompt: Sharing Clothes || Colours

Rating: M (no sex, just a paragraph that is kind of suggestive)

Pairing: NedCan

Word Count: 845

Read on AO3

Figuring it Out Together

It would be his first heat with his partner.

Matthew was a late bloomer, so it was a complete surprise when his very first heat sprung on him. Jan had been in the Netherlands during the whole thing, unable to get away from work (not to mention the concerns of consent surrounding an omega in heat), leaving him all alone with only toys Arthur dropped off as soon as he heard. At least phone and video calls with Jan had eased some of Matthew’s thirst.

But now, they were prepared. Jan was coming for Matthew’s preheat to take care of him, then the main event. He was excited, sure, and he'd get proper release this time around, but he couldn't calm his skittering heart either.

Yes, he had sex before, many times. But that was when he thought he was a beta. He mostly topped. And when he did take it up the ass he would be riding. That was how Jan and he had shared his first time. Now he was an omega, and society had many expectations of him when it came to sex. Whether Jan held these expectations too was what had Matthew’s stomach in knots. Though, to be honest…He wasn’t even sure what he wanted anymore, his mind and his primal desires battling.

He fell back onto the bed after about half an hour of pacing–from anxiety or preheat restlessness he didn’t know. Jan wasn’t even arriving until tomorrow morning. With a groan, he buried himself into his blankets.

The sheets still had the faint scent of Jan despite it being a couple of weeks since he last stayed over. Perhaps the preheat has made his nose more sensitive. Either way, Matthew couldn’t help, but nuzzle into them.

Nest. Right, a nest. That could keep him busy and his mind off everything. He reluctantly left the comfort of his bed and threw open the closet. He pulled out some of Jan’s clothes and began to arrange them on the bed until he was completely enclosed. To top it all off, Matthew slipped into one of Jan's shirts.

He hadn't planned on falling asleep that early, but after the previous night of worrying and now surrounded by the scent of his alpha, he couldn't stop his eyes from drooping. It wasn't until the next morning that he realized he had fallen asleep and slept through his alarm at that.

Matthew went to get out of bed quickly before remembering his nest and then getting out a bit slower. Throwing on some sweatpants and grabbing his keys he rushed out the door and to the airport. As long as traffic was good, he'd make it in good time.

Crowds had never been Matthew's thing, but with preheat heightening his senses, everything was much more overstimulating. He pushed through the hordes of smells and sounds, finally laying eyes on Jan. Luckily, he was hard to miss with his spiked hair and towering height.

As soon as Jan laid eyes on Matthew, the Dutchman’s brows furrowed and he strode over. “You shouldn’t be out,” he fretted, caressing Matthew’s face, and pushing his hair back to get a better look at him.

“I’m fine,” Matthew scoffed. But the universe decided to be cruel, and as soon as those words left Matthew’s mouth, a dull pain trickled through his lower abdomen.

Jan caught his slight wince. “You should be resting.”

“Okay…Maybe you’re a little bit right. But this is far from the worst pain I’ve experienced. And there is no way I was going to let you deal with my public transport.”

Jan sighed and shook his head, guiding his stubborn lover out. He was definitely raised by Arthur. At least Matthew agreed to let him drive.

When they arrived at Matthew’s home, Jan made Matthew stay seated so he could open the door for him. Then he proceeded to carry him all the way back to bed. Matthew couldn’t help but giggle. Sure Jan tried to pull out surprising romantic gestures, but this cliche and this constant was new. Then again, he had always heard that alphas tended to be more doting towards omegas approaching their heat.

Matthew stretched out in his nest, already feeling a bit better being surrounded by his lover’s belongings. Jan brought over a heating pad, draping it on Matthew’s stomach before standing awkwardly next to the bed.

“Thank you, but what are you doing?” Matthew asked, propping himself against the headboard.

“Uh…well…It’s disrespectful to enter an omega’s nest without their permission.”

“Oh…Well, come in then.”

Jan crawled in beside him, cuddling up to his side, protective arm around Matthew’s middle. He gripped at the fabric of the shirt Matthew was wearing. A smirk grew on Jan’s face. “My shirt?”

Matthew looked away, red-faced. “Yeah so?”

Jan nuzzled Matthew’s shoulder. “You look cute.”

Matthew rolled his eyes.

Though the thoughts of the planning they still had to do lingered at the back of Matthew’s mind, for now, he just wanted to enjoy the presence of his lover. They’d figure it out. Together.

#nedcanweek2023 #hetalia #hws #nedcan #hws canada #hws netherlands #omegaverse #suggestive #omega canada #alpha netherlands #fanfiction #hetalia fanfiction #my writing

[g-girlshavingfun]

A sister’s vigil: 5 times Rachel visited her sister in hospital, and 1 time she didn’t.

2/6

Word count: 5,285

‘No’ was Abby’s favourite word. Until of course someone dared say it to her, then it suddenly became ‘yes’. But she was also impatient, and sometimes she was more impatient than she was stubborn, so Rachel was pretty sure she could win this one.

———————————————————————

Chapter 2/6

“Can you take me to the park?”

“Not today Abs.”

“Pleeeeeeease! Pretty pretty please!”

“It’s raining Abby why would you want to go to the park?”

“Cause that’s when all the best worms come out and I need to get them before Corey or his worm hotel will be better than mine!”

“…What? No. No worms, no hotels, no park! Just, go read a book or do your homework or something.”

“But that’s so booooring.”

Rachel was going to kill her. She loved her little sister, she really did. She loved her when she spilled paint all over Rachel’s Countries of the World summer assignment. She loved her when she practised her back kicks in the house and broke their mother’s fancy china. She even loved her when they came home from the park and she had handfuls of mud and worms falling out her pockets. But Rachel had an Arabic essay to write, a CoveOps assignment to work on, and a start of year Culture and Assimilation exam to study for. She was going into her senior year this September. This time next year she’d be starting as an agent at Langley. She needed to ace these assignments, these exams, this year, and she couldn’t do that with her little sister draping herself over her shoulder and begging to go collect worms.

“Can we play Home Invasion? I’ll even let you be the invader!”

Rachel was going to kill her.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” for the first time in hours, Rachel removed herself from her desk. She grabbed her little sister by the armpits, swung her up in the air, and started lugging her out the room. Thankfully, Abby was still pretty tiny to Rachel, tiny enough that she never struggled to haul her around when necessary. “You, are going to go downstairs and find someway to entertain yourself. Don’t start any fires, don’t break anything, and don’t bring any animals into the hou- YES worms count as animals Abby. I am going to stay up here and work until dinner. Then we can play after dinner okay?”

She dropped her sister onto her feet at the bottom of the stairs, crouching down to catch the troublemaker’s eyes.

“Okay?”

Growing up, Rachel listened to every word her parents said, every word Sarah said, and every word her teachers said. She hung onto their requests, their instructions, and she always complied. Even when she didn’t want to, because they were older than her and smarter than her and they knew best. Once, she found a stray cat in town and begged her parents to let her keep him. She picked out a name - Felix - and promised to take the best care of him. She outlined her plan to fill a cardboard box with newspaper and sand and put it in her room. To change it every other day and let Felix sleep on a spare pillow under her bed. There was space under there after Abby had added Lupa the Labrador to her growing collection of stolen goods. Cats didn’t need walks but she figured Felix would get bored cooped up in her room all day so she would carry him out to the garden every lunch time for a run around. She even got Sarah to agree to mind him when Rachel was away at school.

One stern look from her mother and she crumbled. Felix was taken to the nearest animal shelter right then and there. It was probably for the best. Abby would’ve fed him worms, or stepped on him, or built a canon to shoot him out of somehow. The point was her mother knew what was best, and one stern look could always convince Rachel of that.

She tried to emulate her mother’s stern face now. Clenched jaw. Slightly narrowed eyes. A small crease digging into her forehead. Until a few years ago, Rachel couldn’t imagine anyone saying no to face she was trying desperately to copy.

‘No’ was Abby’s favourite word. Until of course someone dared say it to her, then it suddenly became ‘yes’. But she was also impatient, and sometimes she was more impatient than she was stubborn, so Rachel was pretty sure she could win this one.

Sure enough, after about a minutes silence between the two, Abby’s nose began to crinkle. Rachel’s used to do the same when she was thinking hard, until her CoveOps professor told her that it was a tell that would get her killed one day. She bribed her roommate, Heather, with CIA case reports she borrowed from her mother’s office in exchange for watching Rachel do her Computing assignments all semester. Every time her nose crinkled Heather had her full permission to spray her with water. Her nose hasn’t crinkled since.

Abby would need to lose the tell as well one day. Otherwise it would get her killed.

But for now Rachel appreciated the crinkle, she loved the crinkle, because it meant she was winning. Sure enough, her little sister pursed her lips, shifted her weight back and forth from one foot to the next, and huffed a tiny frustrated breath from her nose. With all the attitude of Tristan’s annoying younger sister and all her preteen friends, Abby rolled her eyes, scuffed her foot against the floor, and grumbled in agreement before darting off to do who knows what.

“Okay. Back to work.”

———————————————————————

“Rachel?”

Caroline Cameron’s voice echoed through her eldest daughter’s room. She had obviously just got home from work - her hair still pulled back in a bun, her beige pantsuit still immaculately pressed, and her heels still high despite the late hour.

“I grabbed pizza on my way home. It’s in the kitchen. Your sister’s already inhaling it.”

And with that she retreated back to her office to continue working. She’d remain in there until at least one of the Cameron girls had gone to sleep, maybe both, at which point she’d reemerge to eat a single slice of cold pizza and stare vacantly out the kitchen window. That had been her routine - except when she was away on assignments - for the past year now. Ever since her husband died.

Rachel sighed. She was going to regret this.

“Will you join us?”

Every now and then, when she was feeling brave, she’d do this. Ask her mother to break her routines. Tell her that there was a world outside of foreign dignitaries. Beg her to please, please, notice her children who still needed her. She hadn’t much success yet, but she was hopeful.

“I have work to Rachel.”

Or maybe delusional.

Rachel’s mother sent her a stern look as she closed her office door. And that was that.

Two summers ago, the three Cameron women had huddled together in a hospital waiting room of in the middle of the night. An ex-filtration of an undercover Interpol agent out of East Berlin had gone badly wrong, leaving several of the operatives involved, including Michael Cameron, injured in the fallout. The call had came late in the day, when Abby was already in her pyjamas and Rachel was already curled up with a book. When the doctors broke the news that their father would live with no lasting effects other than a limp, Abby was asleep in her sister’s lap with one hand clinging to Monty the sheep - short for Montauciel - and the other to Rachel’s hand.

He was the only surviving agent.

A year later he was dead.

He wasn’t a field agent anymore, was barley an agent at all. He decoded the occasional foreign intelligence and went on long walks, drowning himself in the guilt of surviving. Of attending six funerals in half as many weeks. Of outliving agents decades younger than him. Of outliving his best friend. Physically, he was fit aside from his leg, but he wasn’t well. Their mother never told them how he died, but he was perfectly healthy, only in his early 40’s. He no longer had job where he put his life at risk. He didn’t drive. Didn’t drink or smoke. He didn’t do much of anything. He was just sad.

Rachel knew how sad people died. She knew how her father died.

She was terrified her mother would die the same way.

She was also terrified her sister would choke to death on subpar pizza before she reached her eighth birthday.

“Slow down Abs, the pizza’s not going anywhere.”

“Shmighte choo.”

Rachel assumed that was mouth-full-of-food for something snarky, so she gave her a light cuff round the head as she walked past. It earned her a tiny glare, which did nothing in the way of intimidation and only made her hide a smile, but thankfully the farm yard animal in their kitchen swallowed before speaking again.

“I’m sick of pizza.”

“Yeah you look it.”

“We’ve had it four times this week and its only Wednesday.”

“What kind of seven year old complains about too much pizza?”

“One whose slowly dying of nutrinchel defi- deficies!”

“First of all it’s nutritional deficiencies, and you don’t have any. Second of all tone down the dramatics and I’ll ask mother to get Chinese tomorrow instead.”

“Can’t we cook something?”

No.

The possible outcomes of a Cameron using the kitchen for anything more advanced than making coffee included major food poisoning, a house fire, or a city-wide blackout.

“Sarah would cook burgers on Wednesdays.”

Sarah got married last year, a few months before Michael Cameron died. She still worked for the family after the wedding, but she lived with her husband in an apartment on the other side of town. At 7:00 everyday she would make her way across town, make Abby breakfast and tame her hair, take her to the park to hunt for worms or to school to hunt for trouble, make her dinner in the evenings and talk with her about whatever Abby wanted. Just as she did with Rachel.

After six months being married she found out she was pregnant, and she made the tough choice to start focussing on her own family. It made sense, and Rachel understood, and she didn’t miss her at all.

Abby did though.

Their mother hired a temporary nanny until the end of the school year, but Abby’s been Rachel’s responsibility over the summer. She hopes her mother remembered to hire someone new for September or her sister will end up running wilder than usual.

“Fine, I’ll ask mother to bring home burgers tomo-“

“Tomorrow’s Thursday!”

“-rrow if you just shu-“

“Thursday is pasta night!”

“-t up and EAT!”

She didn’t mean to yell, really. But she’s been up since 6:00 working on her Arabic and her COW assignment still needs rewriting and she’s definitely not going to ace her start of year Culture and Assimilation exam. She misses a father that was hardly ever around and a mother that isn’t even gone, her sister is getting on her last nerve, and this shouldn’t be her responsibility.

“Just, eat your dinner Abs then you can go play before bed.”

“…We can go play.”

“What?”

“You said you’d play with me after dinner. I made new booby traps for Home Invasion! Oh, speaking of you should definitely wear thick soled shoes… some of them are pointy…”

She couldn’t, she really couldn’t today.

“I’m sorry Abs. Tomorrow, I promise.”

When Abby started school she got in trouble all the time. She spoke over her teachers and shot spitballs at her classmates and never seemed to sit still. Rachel told her parents that it was just because she was clever and bored, but her mother pointed out that Rachel was clever and bored at school, but they never received phone calls about her rigging a bucket full of glitter above the boys bathroom door. When Abby started getting in trouble, she quickly learned that if she cried, the teachers would go easy on her. It was a flawless tactic. It also helped her get her way with Sarah, but it never worked on Rachel.

Rachel knew that even when her sister was really upset, she didn’t cry. She never cried when she had nightmares, or when she was scared of storms at night. She didn’t cry as they sat in the waiting room waiting for news about their father, didn’t cry when their mother told them he was dead, didn’t even cry at his funeral. She cries when she wants something, not when she’s upset.

When she’s upset, her lower lip starts to shake and her chin starts to wobble. The blood vessels in her eyes pink up, bold against the green of her iris’, and they shine with immobilised tears. A small crease begins to form in her forehead and a wave of trembles spreads from her head to her toes. She swallows once. Maybe sniffs. And then her jaw clenches and her eyes cloud in anger, narrowing into slits as the rest of her body stills.

That’s what she looks like now.

“Abby…”

That’s what she looks like before she turns on her heels and bolts out the room.

———————————————————————

Rachel is just finishing up the second edition of her COW assignment when the doorbell rings.

She waits a moment in the hopes that someone else will answer it. It’s unlikely that her mother would leave her office at this time for anything short of the fire alarm going off, and Abby isn’t technically allowed to answer the door by herself, but not being allowed to do something hasn’t stopped her before. Unfortunately, Abby has apparently chosen this moment to do as she’s told for once, and the bell rings again.

And again.

And again and again and ag-

“What!”

When she was storming down the stairs and planning the murder of whoever was using their doorbell as a pincushion for their finger, the last face she expected to see was Tristan Marley’s.

She supposed it should’ve been high up on her list of possibilities, given that he lives just across the road, but ever since they broke up a year and a half ago they both made a strong effort to avoid each other.

Initially when Tristan asked her out she said no. It was the winter after her father’s injury and she was halfway through tenth grade. It was an important year. She had just committed to the CoveOps pathway over research and development and she didn’t want to be distracted by boys when she was already distracted by her family. It didn’t matter that he was cute, with floppy blonde hair and bright blue eyes, tall for his age and just beginning to develop some muscles. It didn’t matter that he was smart, for a civilian at least. It didn’t matter that he was kind, always laughing at her jokes and tolerating her sister’s nonsense and smiling at her parents when he saw them. None of that mattered. But her father ranting about how he was a respectable boy from a good family who would make something of himself one day, her mother explaining that civilian allies were important as long as they were influential like Tristan’s family were, Sarah gushing about how cute the two of them would be together. That mattered. The only person who wasn’t thrilled when she finally said yes, was Abby, who called him boring and stupid and a butthead.

She was only five but maybe Rachel should’ve listened to her.

“What do you want Tristan?”

All the Culture and Assimilation classes in the world couldn’t make Rachel be courteous to that two-faced two-timing weasel.

“It- It’s-“

Of course the unathletic moron couldn’t even walk across the road without getting out of breath.

“-A-Abby, sh-she f-fell and sh-she’s hurt. Come on.”

It’s a good thing Tristan had grabbed her hand and started running, pulling her down their gravel driveway and past the towering gates that bordered their estate, because Rachel’s brain had momentarily stopped working.

“Wha-what do you-“

“Just come on!”

He dragged her across the road without even looking because he’s an idiot and they came to a stop in the yard outside his window where her baby sister was lying crumpled on the ground. She was curled up on her side clutching at her left leg. Her breathing was shallow and ragged, her face pale but splotchy. Tiny whimpers clawed out of her mouth and punched Rachel in the chest as streams of tears ran down her tiny face.

That didn’t make sense. Abby doesn't cry.

“What the hell happened?”

Rachel dropped to her knees next to her sister’s head, ignoring the pain shooting through her legs. She ran a soothing hand through dark hair and tried to force comforting noises past the lump in her throat as she scanned her tiny body for injuries. There were flakes of blood in her hair and the way she was breathing made Rachel worry about her ribs, but it was clearly her leg that was the problem. Halfway between her knee and hip there was a massive lump that was already beginning to bruise, purple and blue and red wrapping around her leg that was growing to twice it’s normal side.

Oh God she’s broken her femur.

“I have no idea what she was doing or that she was there I just came home and my room kind of smelled like feet so I opened my window a bit more and-“

A discarded bucket lay on it’s side nearby. Ever since Tristan and Rachel had broken up, Abby had found great pleasure in playing pranks on him. There was a tall tree with branches extending to the boy’s window that she uses to access his room. She smuggled a small family of birds into his bathroom. She coated his nicest pants in itching powder. She even wedged planks behind the front wheels of his car so he couldn’t reverse out the drive. Rachel was sure she had done more but Abby had gotten pretty good at not getting caught. She must’ve been setting up a bucket of something above Tristan’s cracked open window when the window opened and knocked her out the tree.

Worms.

A glance upwards confirmed her suspicions. The little liar had been collecting worms for a stupid prank on Rachel’s stupid ex-boyfriend and now her stupid baby sister was-

“Call an ambulance Mr Marley.”

That was her mother’s voice.

“Now please.”

“Right. Right yeah.”

Her mother was supposed to be in her office working. Not out in the cold and the rain in her high heel shoes and finely pressed pantsuit crouching at her daughter’s side.

“Ca-can’t you drive her?”

“No. I’ve been drinking.”

She said it quietly. Like she was ashamed. Which didn’t make sense because her mother didn’t feel shame. She was proud and loud and assertive and she doesn't drink alone in her office on a Wednesday evening.

“I can drive.”

“Your hands are shaking and you can barely see.”

They are?

They were. One alternating between sweeping the hair off Abby’s forehead and the tears off her cheeks, and the other holding tight to two tiny hands, but both were trembling and she couldn’t stop them. Her vision was blurring too. She didn’t know why since she had just eaten and she was well rested and the rain was starting to let up so there was no reason for her vision to be blurry. Or for her breaths to be coming out in tiny gasps. Or for her voice to be catching and stuttering when her voice was always meant to be strong and assertive.

“Tri-Tristan can drive.”

“I’m not trusting that boy with my daughter.”

She hadn’t felt like that a couple years ago but whatever.

“Stay here and wait for the ambulance, I’ll go pack us a bag.”

And with that she got up, turned on her heel and headed back to the house, ignoring the pitiful cries Abby let out as she did.

“Shhh Abs its alright, she’ll be back in a moment. You’re okay, you’ll be fine.”

Tristan was being characteristically cowardly and didn’t reemerge from his house, leaving her alone with her sister as they waited for the ambulance to come. Abby’s cries were slowly getting quieter and less terrifying, but they wouldn’t stop coming, and Rachel still didn’t know what to do. How to comfort her. How to fix this. Where was their mother? Children in pain want their mother right? When Heather gave Rachel a concussion in Protection and Enforcement in the eighth grade all Rachel wanted was her mother to sit by her side and smooth her hair until the world stopped spinning.

Abby must want their mother.

“Hurts Rach.”

“I know, its alright. You’re okay, you’ll be fine.”

But all Rachel could give her was the same platitudes as they waited for the ambulance, for their mother, for everything to be normal again.

———————————————————————

When their father was airlifted to a DC hospital after being stabilised in Europe, he and the two other agents that survived long enough to make the journey were placed in a private wing with members of the secret service on every door and some of the best doctors in the country assigned to their care. They were highly ranked and respected agents recovering from injuries sustained on an important operation so they received the best, most efficient care the country could offer, and their families were kept well in the loop.

Apparently the same luxuries were not afforded to seven year olds who fall out of trees.

When the ambulance initially arrived at the ER and the three Camerons were hastily unloaded, they were met with a swarm of activity. A nurse ushered Rachel and her mother away as doctors fought over access to Abby like vultures picking off pieces of meat from a corpse. She overheard scraps of their conversations, “displaced femoral fracture”, “potential pneumothorax”, “mild concussion”, all phrases she understood but was struggling to comprehend, the words moving sluggishly through her brain and failing to activate any centre of knowledge. The only thing she could comprehend was that her sister was still crying. She was gasping and spluttering on the air that she forced into her lungs. She whimpered every time one of the nurses or doctors brushed their hands against her skin. She was still crying and Rachel couldn’t fix it.

They took her away for surgery soon after and Rachel and her mother had heard nothing since.

That was four hours ago.

“Sit down Rachel.”

That was four hours ago and now Rachel was pacing.

Her mother had no right to tell her to sit down. Her little sister was having surgery on a broken femur and she was worried. The pacing was helping distract her from the worry.

“Everyone in this waiting room can tell that you’re worried. It’s a tell. Sit down.”

She sat down.

“Aren’t you worried?”

Her mother wasn’t pacing, but that was probably because she didn’t want everyone in the waiting room to know she was worried. Mothers worry about their children when they were hurt. When they cry even though they never cry, when they struggle to breath, when they get dragged to surgery and no one updates them for four hours. Her mother must be worried.

“No.”

Or maybe not.

A tight band wrapped itself around Rachel’s chest and began to squeeze. Heat spread from her head and heart to her cheeks, her fingertips, her toes. Tension wove itself into her muscles and pulled tight, leaving her jaw and fists clenched and her body shaking. The anger came over her suddenly. Unexpectedly. Uncontrollably. She exploded.

“Of course not! Why would you worry about your daughter, your seven year old daughter, whose scared and in pain and in surgery? Why would you worry about her when that would require you to care about her-“

“Of course I care Rachel.”

“-and think about her and generally acknowledge her existence? Much better to just ignore it right, that’s what you’re good at. Just ignore when your children need you or want to spend time with yo-

“I doubt I’m the one she wanted to spend time wi-.”

“I was busy! I already got her breakfast and lunch and did her hair. I spent all of yesterday helping her with her left hook and all of the day before playing Home Invasion. I spend time with her every day, every week, trying to keep her out of trouble, but I have my own life. I have work to do!”

“Your school work doesn't keep the roof over our heads Rachel.”

“No and neither does drinking whiskey in your office all night.”

“How dare y-“

“Mrs Cameron?”

The doctor looked embarrassed to be interrupting our conversation, though everyone else in the waiting room looked relieved. Her mother looked embarrassed as well. Not in any obvious way, there was no flush to her cheeks or averting of her eyes, she hid her emotions like a perfect operative, but Rachel’s words had struck her.

Good.

Rachel couldn’t bring herself to care about her mother’s embarrassment, distracted by the doctor telling them that Abby’s surgery had gone well. That they used screws to stabilise the bone and it should heal perfectly in a couple of months. That she has three broken ribs on her left side, but no pneumothorax or bruising of the lung. That she was recovering in room 14, awake but groggy, and has been asking for them.

Before the words had fully left the doctors mouth, Rachel began stalking down the hallway, nothing able to stop her except the sound of her mothers voice.

“Rachel. Take the bag with you.”

With me?

“You… you’re not coming?”

The silence was answer enough.

Anger surged through Rachel’s body again. How could she not be coming? How could she not be coming when her daughter is asking for her? As quickly as it took over her, the anger left. Only a tired resignation, an emptiness she felt in her bones, remained. So she simply shook her head, grabbed the rucksack at her mother’s feet, and stormed off.

———————————————————————

“Thought I told you not to break anything?”

“At least I didn’t start a fire.”

“Well there’s plenty of time until summer break ends. I suppose you’ve still got time.”

Abby gave a little giggle at that, grimacing at how it pulled at her chest. From where Rachel was perched on the right side of the bed, her breathing still looked shallow, but it was slow and even now. Though she still looked pale, a bit of colour had returned to her cheeks. Her eyes were drooping with exhaustion but she was no longer crying. Overall, despite the bed dwarfing her tiny frame, and the massive red cast covering half her leg, she looked okay.

“Where’s mother?”

Sitting in the waiting room. Getting a cab home. Going to the bar across the street.

“Tracking down something to eat. No pizza, I promise.”

“What’s in the bag?”

Rachel had no idea. Whatever their mother felt was more important than comforting her injured, crying child as she waited for an ambulance. A case file, a change of clothes, a bottle of whiskey, anything could be in that bag and their mother would’ve found a way to justify its importance. So Rachel didn’t show her sister the contents of the bag as she opened it, just in case all it revealed was disappointment.

But the bag’s contents didn’t fill her with disappointment or anger. It didn’t stoke the flames of frustration she felt towards her mother. Instead her chest felt the tinniest bit warmer, the tinniest bit fuller as she unzipped the rucksack.

Sitting at the top of the bag was a ball of white fluff with four brown stumps for feet. Roughened and dulled with age but still distinguishably recognisable. Rachel removed Monty the sheep from the bag and placed him carefully on Abby’s chest, enjoying the way an embarrassed flush spread across her sister’s cheeks.

“I’m not a baby! I don’t need a stupid stuffed toy!”

“Stupid? Need I remind you I bought you that toy. And you better keep your voice down, you’ll upset poor Montauciel.”

“Monty can’t hear me he’s stuffed.”

The grumble and the pout weren’t convincing Rachel that her sister wasn’t a baby. Nor was the tiny hand reaching up to grasp at one of Monty’s feet. She looked back down at the open bag to hide her grin from her bashful sister and caught sight of the yellowing foot of a stuffed dog.

“Now you definitely don’t want this one, in fact I’m fairly sure she belongs to me.”

Her sister tried snatching Lupa out of her hand anyway, probably jarring her ribs in the process though she didn’t let on.

“No! They’re best friends, they have to stay together.”

“Only if you admit you stole her.”

“She was lonely in your room! You never even play with her.”

“Oh you mean you still play with the stuffed toys?”

“Shut up that’s not what I said.”

The way she clutched both toys to her chest, Lupa now held tightly in her right arm as though guarding her from her sister and Monty held more cautiously on her injured left side, really wasn’t helping her case. She was beginning to get frustrated though, forehead creasing, cheeks flushing, and jaw clenching. Usually this would’ve egged Rachel on further, but she decided her sister had had a hard enough day. They all had.

Instead she ran a hand over her sister’s head and lowered herself down next to her.

“Sorry about earlier”

The words, barely a whisper, barely a breath, were met with a tiny shrug.

“S’okay.”

“Are you okay?”

“Hurts a bit.”

“Get some sleep, you’ll feel better in the morning.”

“Will you sign my cast?”

“I’ll track down some sharpies in the morning. Sleep now.”

Usually an instruction to go to sleep was met by an abundance of protests, but the combination of a long day, the hour being past past midnight, and the multitude of drugs she’d been given today had Abby’s eyes drooping closed almost immediately as she exhaled a deep sigh and relaxed into her sister’s arms.

“She hides them in the same place you used to hide the dog. You should warn her that under the bed isn’t exactly the secure hiding spot she thinks it is.”

It was sloppy of Rachel not to notice her mother lingering outside the door. Or it would’ve been if her mother hadn’t been highly trained, one of the best operatives there is. If Rachel hadn’t been more exhausted, more emotionally drained than she had been in a long while. If she had really cared whether her mother was eavesdropping on her children rather than joining them or not.

“Her name’s Lupa.”

“Hmmm.”

Heels clicked against the floor. Slowly. If it was any other woman Rachel would’ve called it hesitantly, but her mother isn’t a hesitant women. They came to a stop on the left side of the bed where she slowly - slowly not hesitantly - reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Abby’s ear. Her eyes were red.

Why would they be red?

A moment of pause, then she leant down and pressed a lingering feather-light kiss against the girl’s forehead.

“I convinced the nurses to let you stay the night. You should get some sleep too.”

With that, she pressed an identical kiss to Rachel’s own head, turned on her heel and left the room.

Rachel, exhausted from the days events and confused by her mothers uncharacteristic behaviour, did exactly as she aways did. She did as her mother told her to and joined her sister in sleep.

———————————————————————

Authors note:

What do you mean one of the Cameron parents was destroyed by the guilt of losing their best friend and the other by losing their husband? Hope nothing in their daughter’s lives ever parallels these events, with the exception that unlike their parents who suffered in their grief alone and failed to reconnect with their family, the girls return to their home and lean on each other/a mutual friend in order to overcome their grief for the good of the child(ren) in their lives.

Not sure if I’m happy with this one or not, the pacing feels a bit all over the place and I got taken on a lot of tangents, but wanted to add a bit more to their backgrounds.

I envisioned kid Abby as a slightly bratty, overactive, evil genius. We know from the series that she’s not a fan of rules and that definitely caused a lot of grief growing up. We also know that Rachel is always on top of the girls shenanigans despite only having a couple years experience as a headmistress, and though I’m sure the spy training helps, I definitely think she got a crash course in troublesome kids from Abby growing up.

Also, Montauciel is the name of the sheep that went on the first hot air balloon ride in 1783. Abby wanted to name him fluffy but Rachel intervened. Lupa was named after the she-wolf from Roman mythology so the stupid stuffed sheep had to have a cover name as well.

#gallagher girls #gallagher girls series #gallagher girls fanfiction #Rachel Cameron #rachel morgan #abigail cameron #Abby Cameron #sisters