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oonajaeadira · 1 year

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Nadie Espera un Milagro (No One Expects a Miracle)

Fandom: Narcos / Javier Peña

Pairing: Javier Peña x f!reader

Reader: Sassy, confident, American ex-pat female who finds her parents a little tedious and enjoys both her independence and her job as a high-level admin at the DEA. No physical descriptions, no use of y/n.

Rating: T

Warnings: era-”appropriate” behavior of men towards women in the workplace (but a lot better than it was, Steve and Javi are actually pretty respectful). Overbearing and slightly infantilizing parents. Author doesn’t know anything about politics or law enforcement.

Summary: When your parents come to visit you at your job in Bogotá, you figure it’s just easier to paint a picture that will put them at ease. The idea is simple. The plan is flawed. The execution is just fluff.

A/N: Written for my Year of Tropes (part of @yearofcreation2023) Fake dating seemed like an easy trope for a busy month, which is why I chose it for February. (Whoops. Happy April!) With all of these tropes I like to challenge myself a little and I feel like the character choice alone for this one was challenge enough for me. Not only do I not know anything about politics and law enforcement, I haven’t written Javier much. And, of all the boys I do write, I feel like he’d be the least likely candidate to participate in and fall for fake dating, so I had to figure out how to make it believable for myself. Which is why there’s more plot than I intended and reader ended up with some backstory. This is season 2 Javi, obviously not canon, and maybe a bit too soft, so sue me for yearning. Yes, reader’s parents are cartoon versions of my own parents, why do you ask?

“Well hey there, sunshine,” a wisp of smoke accompanies Steve’s greeting as he leans back in his chair and crosses his long legs at the ankle to the side of his desk, leaning over momentarily to stub the cigarette out into a shared ashtray. “We don’t often get the pleasure of a visit–looks like you remember we exist.”

“Ha ha. I could say the same about you. Did you boys finally get your morals whipped into shape, or are you just over the thrill of making me break the law for you every other week?”

There’s a halt in the clack clack clack of Javier’s typewriter as he turns at the sound of your voice. Standing to reach across the desk, he scrubs out his own cigarette, makes a futile attempt to wave away the smoke, and watches you descend the stairs into their working arena. “Hey, Sully,” he smiles like a man not accustomed to it and rests his hands on the waistband of his ridiculously out-of-fashion jeans. “That’s a new dress.”

You flash him a grin and shake your head. “Stop. Don’t waste your flirting on me, Peña. You know I don’t need greasing.”

He only shifts his weight to one hip. There’s no response but a compliant tick of his jaw.

It’s second nature with Javier. He knows he’s good looking. Knows all he has to do is flash those puppy dogs and throw some attention, and ladies will give him anything he wants. You love it and hate it. Hate it because it’s insulting to be targeted for manipulation just because you’re a woman. But you love it because the man is Javier Peña and you’d be lying if you said those big brown eyes weren’t beautiful and you’re happy to have an excuse to have them pointed your way with warmth rather than the chill he reserves for the more bureaucratic workers. It’s a safe kind of crush, the kind you can play with as long as you never expect too much.

Javier’s been stopping by your office since before there was a Steve Murphy, buttering you up and asking for favors–access to a file here, a release stamp there–hell. You’ve expedited more requests on his behalf than all of the upper cabinet combined. And how many times have you distracted the clerk in tapes archives just so Javi could walk by and flash a request form without having it scrutinized for certification?

Every request starts the same, with his awkward little smile and an actual compliment. And every mission accomplished gains you a “Thanks, you’re a miracle worker.”

“Like Anne Sullivan?” you’d asked after the tenth or twentieth time.

“Huh?”

“Anne Sullivan. Hellen Keller’s teacher. The Miracle Worker.”

That caught him off guard. “Uh, yeah. Anne–?”

“Sullivan.”

“Right. I guess you’re an Anne Sullivan. I’d be lost in the dark without you.”

You’d allowed yourself to be charmed. “Careful there, Agent Peña, or you’re gonna make me rather fond of you.”

Nothing makes a grown man blush faster than to out-flirt the flirter. Not that it was hard with Javier. He was adorably miserable at it.

But it was always fun to watch him try…and to periodically beat him at his own game.

Once Steve landed in Colombia, you got two for the price of one. But Murphy knew you could see through his games and didn’t even try. It endeared you to him that he approached you sincerely. And you knew you could always do the same with him.

“As a matter of fact, it IS a new dress,” you chirp, twisting your shoulders one way and then the other, fluttering your lashes and fanning yourself with a hand in a mock display of coy preening. “My parents are flying in tonight and I’m taking them out to dinner.”

“I thought the trade conferences weren’t for a few days,” Steve frowns and shoots a concerned glance at his desk calendar.

“They’re not. But they’re coming through to spend some time with me and tour the city. Mixing business with pleasure. That’s…um…actually why I’m here. I need to cash in a favor.”

Javi chuckles as he settles back into his chair, throwing one heel and then the other onto the desktop. “Time to pay the piper. Name it.”

“Actually,” you cringe, turning to Steve, “I thought I’d ask Murphy here.”

Throwing a surprised but self-satisfied grin over at his partner, Steve puffs out his chest. “Well I guess I can be the hero for the day. Anything you need, sunshine.”

Thankfully Javi seems to feel the need to show he’s not offended and returns to his typewriter to peck out his report. Good. This is an embarrassing enough ask. You don’t really need witnesses to this.

“So, this is going to sound like a big deal but it’s really not. My relationship with my folks is just…complicated,” you assure him, priming the agent for the stupidest thing you’re ever going to ask for in your life. “It would make my and everyone’s life easier if I was seeing someone? Because then my mother wouldn’t bring it up and pressure me and irritate my father, and he wouldn’t worry about me here so much thinking I’m a woman all alone…it’s just…it’s…,” you sigh, irritated. “This is so dumb.”

Clackety clack clack ding whirr. You look up to see Steve gaping at you.

“Are you asking me to pose as your boyfriend?”

Silence. You’re sure if you turned to look over your shoulder, you’d see a frozen Javier, two fingers of each hand hanging above his typewriter like a little T-Rex.

Oh for a trapdoor or hand of god…. Suck it up. They owe you.

“Yup.”

“Uh….”

You expected this. “I’m not asking you to make a show or….they’re coming in tomorrow and I thought if you were here you could just meet them for a second. And if you’re not, I could just point to your desk–”

“Doll,” Steve releases a confused laugh, “I’m married, you know.”

“Yeah, but Connie’s not here. Like I said, they won’t delve. If I just point at a man, they’ll accept it and leave it alone.”

“So you’re going to lie to your parents.”

A confident nod is your first response. “Absolutely. And if you’d met them–when you meet them–you’ll understand why that’s best. Or you won’t. You really won’t get to talk to them long enough to find out. Just give a couple of handshakes, be nice and I’ll move them along. It’s that easy.”

Gritting his teeth, Steve gives a disbelieving shake of the head. “I dunno. I mean, the ruse won’t stand if they mention my name to anyone. Why me? Why not that new guy in the mail room who’s been watching you walk away?”

“Jimmy?” you scoff. “Yeah, no, not my type.”

“Really. Dark hair and pretty blue eyes and a six-pack he doesn’t mind showing off isn’t your type?”

“Wellllll, when you put it that way…sure he’s not your type?” Now it’s Javi’s turn to huff a silent laugh and you give him a conspiratorial smile before rounding back on Steve. “He’s dull, Murphy. My parents know me well enough that I’m not going to go for dull. So take that as a compliment. And he’s a bedpost-notcher. I don’t want to encourage that kind of behavior. I may be lacking in male companionship but I’m not that lonely. Yet.”

Your no-nonsense, shut-em-down tone quiets both of them and for a moment you think you’ve won. But his response makes it obvious you’re going to have to cash in all your chips.

“Still. There are enough single guys around here–”

“Because,” with one hand on the corner of his desk you lean in to conspire even though his partner is three feet away and can obviously hear you, “most of them are a bunch of lazy sit-abouts and you’re always out and busy. It not only paints a good picture, it’s the perfect excuse not to join us for dinner because my mother will do her best to insist. And,” you wheedle, lowering your voice further, “because you owe me.”

“I would counter that I owe you a lot more than he does.” Javi keeps his voice at a stage whisper in mockery of your own and shrugs as you and Steve swivel your gaze to him. “What.”

“Lying to the Assistant Trade Rep of the Western Hemisphere about intimate relations with his daughter sounds like a good time to you? You can have it.” Steve taps your shoulder before pointing at his partner. “He’s not hitched. Why not Javi?”

Rolling your eyes, you stall for time as you try to find a better answer than the truth, but when one doesn’t come, a sigh paves the way. “Because you dress more respectable than he does–”

“Hey.”

“--and my mother is judgy!,” your heartfelt insisting pushes through, doing your best to placate Javi–handsome Javi–who really does know how to keep the last decade’s fashion in fashion. “Javi, you’re lovely and you look good and I don’t want you to change. But my mother is going to take you for a ladies man, which you are, you know you are, and she’s going to pick apart your choices with wanton disapproval which is almost more unbearable for me than not being attached to anyone at all because then I’ll spend hours defending you for nothing–”

Steve and Javi finally break and their sudden laughter shuts you down. It’s all you can do not to give both of them the finger and a good ol’ fuck off.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Steve says through his trailing amusement, taking his turn now to placate. “Fine. We’ll make ourselves scarce and you can use the imprint of my ass in this chair as proof of warm-blooded human male. But maybe a false name, yeah? Like…Peter or…Harvey or something.”

“Harvey?” Javi scoffs. “How about Dick. Dick Bob Jones.”

“That sounds like a hillbilly name.”

“Yep.” ________

According to your mother, your apartment is “charming,” the streets of Bogotá are “interesting,” and the department headquarters are “surprisingly up to date.” In the car on the way to the office, you managed to dodge most of her questions about your personal life, dropping one-word answers before pointing out the window and explaining certain buildings or neighborhoods.

As promised, Agents Murphy and Peña are out in the field when you walk your parents past their desks on your way through to your own department. “Well,” you wave with half commitment at it and move on, “looks like he’s out doing his job and catching those bad guys. Too bad. Maybe next time.”

The crisis is momentarily averted, but while your father ducks into a nearby restroom, your mother can’t seem to let the matter pass.

“So what does he do then? He’s a cop?”

“I told you. He’s a DEA agent. He’s on the team trying to stop the drug trade from reaching the States. Have you heard of Pablo Escobar?”

She scoffs and looks past you. “Everybody has heard of Pablo Escobar, dear. That naughty man. Oh. Oh! Is that him?”

“Hmm? Escobar?” Following her gaze and turning to look back into the atrium, you’re gifted the sight of tight jeans stretching over a familiar backside and tanned arms yanking open drawers on Steve’s desk, obviously looking for something. “No, Mom, that’s just–”

But before you can correct her, she’s striding over in her Prada heels, ruffled blouse bouncing and pearls clicking, reaching forward into an eager handshake as she interrupts the very visibly hurried agent. “It’s so nice to meet you!” she chirps. “You must be Harvey!”

“Mother–!”

Javi stops digging, having found the warrant he was looking for, looking up in surprise at this forward, fussy, American woman, his lower lip hanging in a soft V, before taking her hand courteously and introducing himself, “Javi.”

“Oh, I knew I was right! The minute I saw you I knew you had to be her Harvey, you’re certainly her type.” Her hospitable countenance flickers only for a second as she takes in his tight shirt. “She says you’re quite the cop.”

“Mom, Javi’s a government agent and–” As you catch up to her, the momentary confusion on Javi’s face melts into understanding spiced with just a hint of amusement. “--and, as you can see, he’s in a hurry so–”

“It’s okay,” he beams, continuing to shake your mother’s hand. “I can take a minute to meet the woman who raised mi milagra.”

What.

Something in your brain hits the panic button and your mother chatters on to him as your backup generators whir into gear. He gives her his full attention, smiling as she babbles about how proud she and your father are of you and how nice it is that you’ve found someone to spend time with and…did he just say–

“We’ve got a lead on a collaborator and I was just ducking in to grab some paperwork,” he explains, waving the warrant in one hand. But his other hand– “What a lucky coincidence” –dips behind you– “that you happened to stop by,” –slides across your back– “because my girl here has told me so much about you,” –settles on your hip– “ma’am,” –and pulls you flush to his side.

It’s a smirk. A smirk that he has the brazen balls to grace you with then, and it’s hard to tell if he’s fucking with you or if he’s just really enjoying being your hero and sharing a joke that only the two of you know about.

And it’s equally hard to tell if you’re about to laugh or swear or….melt… he’s holding you so tightly and he smells like cigarettes and his surprisingly light cologne… his shirt is damp, your blouse is damp, it’s a humid day and you’re sticking together a bit and he wears such fitted clothes and one of his few buttons is strained enough to give you a peek at his smooth chest beneath…

“Well, if you have to go, Harvey, I don’t want to distract you from your work, but my husband is using the facilities and he’ll be sorry to have missed you. Will you be working all evening? Why don’t you come join us for dinner! You know how well my daughter cooks and she’s making her carbonara for us–”

“Mom–”

“Your carbonara?” Javi questions you before turning back to your mother and squeezing you tighter against himself, causing you to stumble closer. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

Her delight is evident. “Oh wonderful!”

“If you’ll excuse me though, my partner’s waiting. I’ll see you tonight, honeybunny.”

The world tingles a moment as a mustache and warm lips bush your temple and then you’re watching broad shoulders and slim hips swagger away from you and up the stairs.

Honey…bunny? Honeybun–

Fuck.

“Javi! Wait!” You hold up a hand as you pass your mother. “Stay here for a second, I have to…I forgot to tell him… uh…”

He stops at the top of the stairs, leaning in, anticipating your quiet brand of ire. “Your mom’s sweet.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“What. Seems to be going well, I mean, apparently, I am your type, so it all works out. I think that performance down there earned me a dinner. I fucking love a good carbonarra.” The glare you serve him loses its bite under his soft smile lacking in any sarcasm or hazing. This is the Javi you know, the conspirator that finds you working late at night and is grateful for your help in the file room or in the microfiche lab, the one that noticed yesterday that your dress was new. Doing you a favor. What else would you expect? “If you want, I’ll wear baggier pants.”

“No, just…” you sigh. “I should give you my address–”

There’s a thing he does with his smile, something that gets you every time, a little jaw tick that comes with a quick downward bounce of the eyes and a single shake of the head. “Don’t need it. I know.”

“Okay, but…. Wait. What?” You call after him as he trots toward the door.

“I’ll come hungry!” _____

“Sir,” Javi bobs his head in reverence as he meets your father’s handshake. It’s above and beyond your requests, as is the cleanup of the five-o-clock shadow, the change to his black button up shirt, and his showing up on time. And in true commitment to the bit, he didn’t even knock, just came in and found his way to the dining area like he spends most of his time in your apartment.

“Good to meet you, Javi.”

“Dear,” your mother chirps from her watchful eye at your shoulder by the stove, “it’s Harvey.” She doubts herself. “It is Harvey, isn’t it?”

Completely disregarding your mother’s interjection, your dad gestures to a spot across from him at your modest dining table set for four and offers him a packet. “Sit down, sit down, agent. Smoke?”

“Ah,” Javi falters, and when you turn your head to your shoulder, you catch him checking in with you out of the corner of your eye. “She…doesn’t let me light up in here.”

“No? Heh. Well. I don’t know how she does it but it’s always been her way or no way. I see she’s worked her magic on you.”

“That’s for sure.”

You can’t help but smile as you give the noodles another good swirl in the pot and set the spoon on the counter. That little display just earned him a treat. Pulling out two glasses from the cabinet, you give a generous pour of the whiskey you picked up on the way home especially for him and bring them over to the table without a word for the two men.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” hums your father.

Javi glances at the glass, then up at you and your cocked eyebrow that queries him don’t I get a ‘thank you sweetheart’ from you too?

But oh, he came to play.

Ignoring the glass and taking your hand, his thumb skips across your knuckles. “You need any help, hon?”

There’s a microsecond between you where laughter is very very possible. The game is on. So you up the stakes by pushing a little curl of black hair behind his ear before trailing your fingers down to pinch his chin. “No, baby. You just relax and enjoy yourself.”

The smallest flush of pink and flash of panic that you catch on him as you turn away (only because you’re looking for it) tells you that you’ve won this round.

Back at the stove, your mother’s taken over, having drained the noodles and now attempting to pour the sauce into the noodle pot rather than your tried-and-true method of bringing the pasta to the sauce pan.

“Mom! Could you not–”

You see it coming a second too late, the sauce hasn’t thickened properly and a good portion of it misses the pot and splashes onto her blouse.

There’s commotion, a shriek and an overreaction, and you reach for a towel to catch the sauce before it stains, but the towel is dirty with spills and bacon grease and you’re both trying to keep the sauce pot from toppling off the stove. “Just…hold still, Mom, here…let me get a clean towel–”

“I’m on it,” Javi jumps up, heading down the hallway.

Great. Here’s another thing splitting your attention from timing the sauce. “Javi??” you call, “The towels are–”

“I know! The cabinet behind the door!”

How did he….doesn’t matter. The woman who raised you is in need of someone to mother her at the moment and you’re doing your best to calm her down before she causes even more of a mess. In a matter of moments, your stand-in man is back with a hand towel and you join her at the sink to help her dab it off.

“Oh, well this is just dandy,” she whines. “Now I have to sit here in a wet blouse in nice company…”

“It’s fine, Mom. You can wear one of mine.”

“The pink one or the blue? She can change in the bedroom,” Javi gestures, offering to show the way. “Ma’am?”

“Uh…the…blue….” This time you don’t have time to veil your shocked and confused expression. If Javi truly notices it as your mom swans by him, he doesn’t let on.

The rest of the evening is uneventful and pleasant, your father and Javi carrying most of the conversation as the older man drills the agent on the particulars of the cartels and Escobar’s influence with his communities, how it’s affecting customs and trade, and what that means for the conference your father is here to attend in his duty to the Trade Rep.

After a couple of hours, he makes it known that it’s time to get back to the hotel, that he has an early morning as his boss is flying in.

“Already? Dear! You boys spent all this time talking shop and I have all kinds of questions for Haaavi.”

“Well, my bride, you’re just going to have to wait to satisfy your curiosity. I’m sure it will keep.”

“Are you free for dinner tomorrow night?” Javi asks just as you take a sip of water and try your best not to choke on it. “If you’d like to try some of the local specialties, I know a place not far from here. Sancocho to die for, made fresh every day.”

The fire in your eyes is shielded, soft, but directed straight at the side of his face, hot enough that he can surely see it from his periphery if not feel the flames. The corner of his mustache rises the smallest fraction of an inch.

“That sounds a real treat, son,” your father says, rising and crushing Javi’s shoulder in a squeeze. “Tomorrow night then.”

Javi joins you at the front window when they leave so you can wave them off, having the balls to wrap his arm around your shoulder as you do. Once their car pulls away into the night though, he retracts it and ambles back to the table, gathering up a few stray plates and taking them to the sink. “Well, that went well.”

When you don’t answer, he turns to find you with a level expression and your arms folded across your chest. “What was that?”

He has the audacity to look surprised. “What?”

“We are going to address tomorrow night in a minute, but I’d love for you to explain to me why you know the location and the layout of my apartment, Agent Peña.”

Now he catches up, nodding slowly and returning to you at the window. With one hand on a hip and the other pointing to the nearest streetcorner, he explains, “Did you see that car that pulled out of there after your parents? Security. I sat in a car in that exact spot for three weeks after you were appointed to the agency. Couple days while you were at work,” he waves a hand, gesturing to the apartment as a whole, “I spent quite a few hours in here on a deep scan for taps.”

Now it’s your turn to carry the surprise. “Excuse me?”

“Standard procedure for government employees to be shadowed for a probationary period, eliminates the suspicion of inside involvement. You got a deluxe security detail treatment on top of it because…well. Your…family’s connection to Washington.”

He’s kind enough to wait for you to process this. “Wait. You mean,” peering outside at the location he indicated, noting the straight-line view into your living room, “you watched me? For three weeks???”

He turns back in search of his glass. “You dance when you’re happy. You could stand to be happy more often.” Giving you the time it takes for him to pour another finger of whiskey to stew over this, to grind through the gears of your mind and work out if you might have done anything embarrassing under the gaze of the DEA, he finally assures you, “Don’t sweat it. You’re usually a stickler for keeping your curtains closed. It was about as uneventful as a watch is possible to be.”

“So this is what they pay their agents to do? Babysit a government employee’s daughter? That seems below your pay grade.”

He downs the drink and shrugs. “I was lower on the pole back then.”

“Not that low.” But then…. The jaw tick presents itself again. His lack of eye contact confirms a sudden suspicion. “My…father paid for it.”

His nod hangs silent and sorry between you.

Independence. That’s why you took this job. Something you thought you could do on your own without your father’s help, run away from America, go live abroad and work somewhere new, somewhere exotic. How naive to think–for three years now–that you’ve done all this on your own.

The embarrassment burns.

Javi slowly runs a finger over a plate, raising a dollop of sauce to his tongue. “This is good. You’re a hell of a cook, Sully.”

It’s meant to lift your spirits, make you feel accomplished at something in your life. It’s appreciated.

“Thanks. It’s not that complicated.” Moving past him into the kitchen, you pick up your tongs from the counter and quietly start heaping half of the leftover meal into a bowl. “What’s this place you’re taking us to tomorrow? You’ve seen what a holy terror my mom is about food.”

He comes to lean against the refrigerator. “Dos Rosas Cocina.”

“I know it. Good choice. Atmosphere’s… rustic, but the food’s amazing.” Tying the bowl up in a clean towel and placing it in his hands, you sigh, all the stupid, terrible tension you didn’t know you were holding this evening seeping its way out. “I can’t believe you’re electing to spend more time on this little act.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I don’t remember thanking you, but thank you.”

“What’s this?”

“Leftovers. Lunch. Enjoy.”

“Thanks. I will.”

“You’d better.”

Later, after the dishes are done and the leftovers stowed, you curl up on the couch with the novel you’re battling your way through. But not a single page is turned. An hour goes by as you think through the interviews and steps you took to get this job, to land your working visa, to find this apartment in a nice part of town, how easy it had all seemed at the time, how accomplished you’d felt. And then there was that little look of realization and regret in Javi’s eye. That he knew. That he was the one that slipped and let you figure it out, that he never told you before. That nobody told you before. Had you come off as stupid in that moment? Innocent? Naive?

You need to confront your father about it. Probably not tomorrow, not in front of Javi. But soon.

Dammit.

You’re not getting any reading done so you turn off the light and head to bed.

Your pajamas are folded and the bed’s been meticulously remade.

Of course.

No wonder it took longer than it should have for your mother to change her blouse.

How is it you get to be a grown ass adult and your parents will never see you as anything but their little girl, even at this age?

________

“Soooooo, how’d you two meeeeet?”

Having arrived early at Dos Rosas Cocina, Javi already has a drink in him, so your mother’s question earns a contented smile. “Well–”

“At work, Mom. Obviously at work.”

It’s not a lie. It was at your desk. He needed something notarized and your new stamp hadn’t arrived yet so he wrote his direct extension on your desk pad, asked you to ring him when it did. You remember thinking that his eyes wandered too much but couldn’t be mad when you realized yours must have too if your first impression was that his pants were a good fit.

Later that night you’d come here, to the Cocina, charmed by its walls lined with picture frames full of the owner’s ancestors and descendants, how it seemed to be the center of time itself reaching backward in it’s colorful mountain-style decor and forward in its state of the art cashier’s computer and cd jukebox.

The owner had served your meal himself and sat down to chat with you, to practice his English, he said. It was a slow night and you had nowhere to be and he put you at ease right away.

“Dos Rosas,” he explained, “it means two roses. You see the sign? One red, one white. You know what it means?”

You shook your head and smiled, mouth full of some heavenly empanada.

“The red rose is for love. The white rose for friendship. Dos Rosas is a place my father made where he wanted guests to come with love and friendship.” And then he produced a single white rose, slipping it into the vase on the table. “For your luck. You are welcome here, friend. Someday you will bring someone who will share a red one with you, si?”

It had been a favorite place ever since.

Javier had been there that night too, now that you remember it. Sitting in the dim corner away from the basket lamps, nursing a beer and a plate of arepas, the curtain of his cigarette smoke nearly hiding him from view. Back then he was just the agent who needed some papers stamped and who just happened to be at the same restaurant that night.

Hindsight and new information reframes the nearly-forgotten memory now. Of course. He must have been tailing you then.

“I think,” Javi says as he drapes an arm across the back of your cane chair and leans in, “she understands where, milagra. But what she wants to know is that I couldn’t keep my eyes off you.”

Your response comes with a sweet smile that hides a challenge. “I know. You watched me for three weeks straight.”

“And then some.” He doesn’t let your jab throw him off the act. “And then there were the times I had to get into the file room for nothing in particular, just a reason to come down and talk to her.” On the contrary, he hooks a foot around the leg of your chair and yanks it closer to his own, effectively throwing you against his chest. “She used to laugh at my flirting; made fun of me, thought I wasn’t serious.”

The clench of your stomach, the cold wave of your blood pressure dropping, every method your body has to signal and react to danger begins to take over as Javi keeps you locked from pulling away with one arm, hazy smile inches from your face, his heavy-lidded gaze dropping to your mouth.

A warm hand folds gently over one of your own, floating it upward, his fingertips guiding your palm until he ducks his head half an inch to meet your knuckles to his lips. Big brown eyes beg at you and that cold wave rebounds now as a hot tsunami.

And all you can do is stare, stare at this display of tenderness that seems so very unlike the Javier Peña you know. Gone is the indifferent agent, the shielded ego, the preference for solitary. As his kiss lingers on your hand just a second longer than necessary, you get a glimpse behind the curtain to the man beyond. For one moment you witness a vulnerability and care, a fleeting tease of what it must be like to have his perfect attention, his devotion. It’s literally breathtaking.

And then something in him stalls, shifts, as if he notices the same in you.

Is he going to kiss you? Should you kiss him? Right here in front of your mother? Why is he so warm? What is that amazing cologne? Is his shirt unbuttoned further than usual? Is that a cymbal roll in the music coming from the jukebox or is that your blood rushing in your ears? Does he always breathe this forcibly? How have you never noticed that little crease in his bottom lip or realized just how dark his eyes were?

Just as his tongue flicks forth to wet his lips, your father returns from the phone booth in the back.

“Well, false alarm. Seems the ambassador just had some bad fish, but it’s passing. Conference is still on.”

Oblivious to your predicament and drawing your mother’s attention, he’s happy to answer her questions regarding the type of fish and how long it was prepared, and she offers her wisdom to nobody in particular as to preventing such a thing as food poisoning. Neither of them notice as you slowly twist yourself out of Javi’s loosening clutches and both of them obviously assume your hasty retreat has more to do with wanting to powder your nose than calm your racing heart.

The restroom is one small room, looking like a much older sibling to the restaurant itself as if it had been built first and the rest of the building added later. You count fifteen cracks in the wall over the solitary, rust-stained toilet before a knock falls on the door, momentarily spiking your softening anxiety. It’s an old man’s voice enquiring in Spanish if you’d fallen in.

You’re far from convinced that you’re ready to face or deny whatever’s going on in your heart. But you wash your hands–one of them still stubbornly holding the tingle of Javi’s lips and mustache against it–surrender the room, and find your way back to the table where the man who is not your boyfriend leans forward on his elbows, spinning stories for your parents.

“But we’re zeroing in on him now. He’s made more than a few mistakes and we’ve just barely caught them by turning around at the right second. It’s only a matter of time.”

A smile pulls wide over your father’s face as he leans back in his chair. “That’s what I like to hear. Damn, son. I admire your tenacity. We’re lucky we have talented young men like you down here catching the bad guys.”

“And we’re also lucky to have you here looking after our daughter,” your mother helps.

“Thanks, Mom, I can take care of myself. I mean, that is,” To one side, you feel Javi’s focus tilt your way, “as long as Dad’s willing to pay for it, I guess.”

Silence blankets the table as the waiter sets down four bowls of sancocho, a plate of flatbread, a candle, and a red rose in a vase in front of you all before hastily retreating.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Staring at the rose and trying to sort out your thoughts, you’re not sure why you chose this moment to bring up the subject. Maybe your body is just in fight or flight mode and perhaps you’re diverting your fluster to this deep-seated frustration. Something is shaking the cage of your heart and wants out, wants to cause some damage–

–but Javi’s hand comes to a gentle rest on your knee, soothing whatever savage beast had awakened, somehow turning frustration and fear into calm strength instead.

“I know about the money, Dad. I appreciate the help, I really do. But it’s okay. You don’t have to pay anyone to babysit me and pull strings just to make my life easier here. I came to Colombia to challenge myself. I can’t do that if you’re sneaking in and slapping training wheels on me all the time.”

For a split second it looks as if he’s going to deny it, play dumb. Instead, he softens.

“Well, sweetheart, you’ll have to forgive me. Your mother and I can’t help but look out for you. It’s what we’ve done all your life. It’s a hard habit to break.”

The confirmation stings, but you can’t deny that you set yourself up for it. “Did you do the same for Kennie?”

“Your sister has a husband and a family. She doesn’t need us to look after her anymore.”

A frustration wells up inside, burning, humiliating, full of futility. It doesn’t matter what you accomplish, how many times you have to prove yourself, they’re just not going to change. They’re never going to overcome what their generation has held as truth all their lives, even past the recent wave of feminism and push for equality. They’ll never ever see you as complete unless there’s a man involved. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anyone can do.

And perhaps that’s the conclusion that makes Javi’s actions feel like the only heroic course as he rubs a side hand over your back and explains, “Sir, you don’t have to worry about her. She’s capable. Thriving. She’s in no danger here. If there were any threat at all, she could hold her own. And even so, I’d do my best to make sure trouble never came near her.”

“Oh, Haaavi. You’re so good to her. She’s so lucky to have you.”

With a defensive flick of a hand, he continues. “It’s not luck, ma’am. And it’s not goodness. It’s simply part of my job. Even if she was nothing to me but another clerk that’s too smart and too bold for her position, I’m an agent first. As a U.S. citizen and employee of the DEA, I’m going to put her life before my own. With all due respect–and I’m sorry to be so blunt–but to doubt that she or any American isn’t safe here is an insult to Colombia, to me, and all government agents on a professional level.”

The hard drag of conviction in his tone. The realization on your parents’ faces. The understanding sinking in. The steadying warmth of his arm around you.

“But she doesn’t need me. She doesn’t need anyone. Most self-sufficient and confident woman I’ve ever known. I’m the lucky one; lucky she’s bored enough to keep me around. Must be for entertainment.”

Wow.

And all at once, you regret that you hadn’t taken the chance to kiss Agent Javier Peña. ________

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a ride back to her apartment, son? It’ll be faster.”

“Thank you, sir, but I’d like to walk her home.”

Javi takes your hand in his, waving at your parents with the other, and quietly pulls you away from the car window down the dark street toward your place.

Half a minute later he’s still silent. And still holding your hand.

It feels awkward not to let go. And yet rude to do so. So you find a middle ground and squeeze instead, “Thank you. For that. Back there. I hate that I have no power to convince them of my autonomy on my own, but I think they just needed to hear it from…”

Who? A man? A government employee? A “cop”? A workaholic who is cranky most of the time because he disregards his own health and safety and refuses to sleep in his never-ending quest to quash every last cokeslinger within a thousand-mile area?

His nod and squeeze in return says he knows. “You know it’s love, right?”

Your heart trips over his words. “What?”

“Your parents love you. Doesn’t matter how old you get. Doesn’t matter how far you run. Doesn’t matter how long the flight is and how repulsive they find the local guaro, they’re gonna love you.”

In the shared laughter that follows, your hands naturally part and you double over, remembering the look on your mother’s face after tasting the aniseed liquor Javi ordered for her.

“It was so beautiful!” you crow. “She tried so hard to smile and be polite…and the tears! You could almost see the fumes pushing out of her tear ducts!!!”

“It broke my heart to do it to her, but she insisted I order for her–!”

It’s not often you see Javi laugh and smile–really smile–with unrestrained joy. Playful smirks, weary grins, the occasional shy blush perhaps, yes. But it’s not until this moment that you see him genuinely happy. It takes years off him, as if he’s shed responsibility like a coat and gone skinny-dipping into life for a minute. His eyes crinkle deeply when he truly smiles, they shine and sparkle. Like stars on this dim street.

The giggles and chuckles continue as you near your block and it’s in a resurgence of his that he casually just reaches out and takes your hand again, as if dropping it had been a little mistake that needed correcting.

And suddenly, it doesn’t feel so awkward. It should be, but it’s not. It’s like you both decided it doesn’t have to be and yet, it doesn’t have to mean anything either. If anything, a shared happiness. A familiarity.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”

“Hmm?” His attention is slowly returning to the street, constantly scanning, every second a chance to gather information, find the next piece of the druglord puzzle.

“This. Being the perfect boyfriend. Having someone’s parents just think the god’s ass of you for once. Playacting chivalry.”

That last bit sobers him. “Yeah, well, at least I can put on a good show.”

There’s something in the response that rings…tired. You’ve hit on some old hurt, some buried regret. Knowing Javi, addressing it would only cause him to close off and dig it in deeper.

“Well, I’m enjoying it. I feel like I’m getting good value for all of the favors I’ve done for you and prettyboy Murphy. You’re good at this. A girl could get used to it. That story you told my mother about how we met? Let nobody tell you that you don’t go above and beyond in every way, Agent Peña.”

You can’t see the little grin that pulls at the far corner of his mouth, but you know it’s there. An eyebrow cocks. “So you’re saying my tab’s clear? I can put in a new order to the miracle worker?”

“Order up,” you laugh. “After all, now that I know Dad’s pulling strings, who’s gonna fire me? Bring your worst shenanigans!”

It doesn’t have quite the reaction you expect from him and he stops just short of the steps to your apartment building, deep grooves forming between his brows. “You know, it’s not unusual; landing any job has a lot to do with who you know. Keeping it is the part that’s all you. Even if you didn’t get it on your own, you still made it your own.” When you can’t seem to meet his eyes, his tone softens. “You’ve got a lot to be proud of here. Why did you feel like you had to perfect some image of your life by toting me around?”

Flustered, you scoff and jump at the chance to dodge the question. “I’ll have you remember that I asked Steve, not you. You’re the one that jumped at a free meal.” It doesn’t work. His stance demands an honest answer, his face says it’s required more for your sake than his. “It’s… a long story. There are checkboxes in my family… my sister got married and had kids and I never did. I never really felt it was important… or that anyone would put up with my attitude. i’m not exactly the picture of perfect wife material. I mean, of course I’d like to find someone someday, but it’s never been the main goal… but my parents–”

“I couldn’t do it,” he says. Not an agreement; an admission. Simple. “I walked away from the altar. Left her standing. It just felt like there was a responsibility there to be ‘the husband’, and–like you said, same thing–check off the boxes. I didn’t know if I could check off the same ones everyone else thought were necessary.”

It takes a moment to say anything. To move past the fact that he’s just confided a piece of his past and his personal life to you. That he’s let you in. It explains a little about why he doesn’t get close to anyone, why he prefers feminine relations without hangups. Which makes this admission very weighted and precious. You see that he trusts you not to judge. And perhaps it’s his way of letting you know that you’re not alone in dodging the tried-and-true life path.

“Everyone had expectations. You thought you couldn’t be a good husband. So you ran away to join the DEA because you knew you could do that spectacularly.”

Now it’s him that can’t look at you. “I wouldn’t say that I’m doing that well–”

“Javi.” That catches his eye. “You’re a damn good agent. I know you’re going to get the job done. Why the hell do you think I’ll jump at the chance to break every rule in the goddamn department to help you do it? Like I said. Who’s gonna fire me now if I do?” Something shifts in him, like he’s been slapped or sharply woken. As if it’s something he’s been needing to hear and didn’t have the right person to tell him. You’re suddenly honored to be that for him. He needs it. And so you gift him a little more. “Obviously you don’t have to do everything by the book to be good at something. Look at the past couple of days. Thank you for being nice to my folks. And for the encouragement. That’s all it takes sometimes, you know? You’ve been a damn good stand-in boyfriend. Your little stunts included, you asshole. That’s what made it fun. I’m sure you would have been a great husband.”

He opens his mouth to speak, but thinks better of it with a tick of his jaw. Regrouping, he gives you a pained look to say, “I’m sorry that you feel you were lied to…with the surveillance and all. And that’s how you found out. I meant what I said back there, Sully.” He swallows. “All of it.”

It’s so serious and vulnerable, an obvious effort for him to say. He’s a good man, Javi. You’ve read the reports. You’ve heard the rumors. He may keep others from getting too close, may come off as flippant and impatient or pour his focus into his work. But his moral center is pointed in the right direction and he’s the first person to discard his own needs in favor of someone else.

It’s probably what overwhelms him–caring about others but not allowing anyone to care for him–bubbles up so far that he has to visit his girls to vent it. He says they’re his informants, everyone’s heard that, but nobody buys that’s all it is. He needs to be cared for, but the money keeps him safe, keeps the lines drawn. It’s an exchange he can allow himself to make.

Something about that suddenly twists your heart. You could ask him in. You could take care of him. It’s tempting. It’s what he needs.

But you’re not sure if the inevitable fallout and distancing is what you need right now. It would be too easy to want him to stay.

It’s fine to fall in love just a little with Javier Peña, as long as you don’t expect too much.

Instead, you squeeze his hand. Big and warm and gun-callused. “I know you did. Good night, hero. Thank you.”

He lets you go, this transaction settled. Doesn’t ask anything more. As you expected. The perfect gentleman. When he puts his mind to it.

________

You’ve lost count of your yawns.

Even though you brought leftover carbonara for lunch the following day, you need to escape. There’s twice as much work with the ambassador’s conferences, more calls coming through and the agents and policia all have their regular requests. And you didn’t sleep soundly the night before; something whining at the back of your mind, like something forgotten or missed… Every form and file feels like an effort and you’re just so out of it. If your mother were to stop by and take you out to lunch–a real possibility–that would just be too much.

Half an hour in the outdoor cafeteria should help, even if it’s another hot day. Air and sunshine are usually good revitalizers. And you can hide in the crowd.

Or so you thought. Just as you’re settling in with a bowl of rice and veggies, a long shadow falls across your bench and you look up to see broad shoulders and dark hair.

But the eyes you meet are blue.

“Hi, Jimmy.”

“Well hey there. Mind if I join you?”

Without waiting for an answer he perches on the bench next to you with his sandwich and starts talking. About nothing. About the heat. How it’s hot here, how it was hot back home in Arizona but nothing like the hot here. Humidity. Dry heat. Sweat. How he once baked a cookie on the dash of a car parked in the sun. How he never understood the calculations between fahrenheit and celsius, just that one is higher and one lower. Something about mercury in thermometers.

You stop listening after a minute and just chew and smile and nod. You’re not that lonely. Yet.

There’s a little old man who sells flowers from a bucket, sets up a little stall on the sidewalk across the other end of the courtyard. He’s out here most days. He’s out here today. Carnations, chrysanthemums, birds of paradise, roses…

You should get some flowers for your desk. Something nice. Might wake you up a little. You watch absently as the flower man speaks to someone in a tan shirt. A man with dark hair like so many others here. He looks like Javi from the back.

You’d rather not think about Javi’s back. Or front. Or deep brown eyes.

So you listen to Jimmy ramble for a while before he finally asks you a question.

“Don’t you think it’s hot?”

“Yeah, Jimmy. It’s hot.” _______

“I’ll take one red and one white, por favor.”

The little old flower man’s smile is even warmer up close.

On your way back into the office you muse that you’ll put the roses in a vase and let them decide for you, depending on which one lasts longer. Do you really feel the need to entertain the possibility of infatuation? Or can you be content with the easy friendship you have?

But upon arriving at your desk, you find that your little bouquet will be unbalanced and one of the two choices will have twice the advantage.

There’s already a red rose laying on the credenza.

Next to a bowl that held carbonara leftovers when last you saw it.

And a note. Fast scratches on a torn piece of yellow steno paper. Probably from the ripped piece on your desk. Next to your pen.

“I meant all of it, Sully.”

Suddenly the clack of keyboards and whine of printers and ring of phones fades away. You lift the little note to read it again. “All of it.” As if the words aren’t enough, as if you need more empirical evidence–or maybe because it was with the flower–for some odd reason you bring it close to your nose only to confirm what you knew you’d smell there.

Rose. And cigarettes.

All of it? That’s the last thing he said last night. I meant what I said back there, Sully. All of it.

It had been a heartening thing to hear, reinforcing how he would protect and serve, how he thought you were competent and confident, but why remind you now–

Oh.

Oh. Not just that part.

All of it.

“I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. And then there were the times I had to get into the file room for nothing in particular, just a reason to come down and talk to her. She used to laugh at my flirting; made fun of me, thought I wasn’t serious.”

Suddenly you understand what was keeping you awake last night.

The look on his face as he stood by your steps. The way he rethought the words before he spoke. It wasn’t easy for him. He tried to tell you and you just…

All of it.

You just thanked him and walked away.

He’s been…this whole time…he’s…

“Darling?”

Yanked from one confusion to another, you turn to find your mother rounding your desk–even though you told her not to, that only government officials are supposed to be around your files–coming to take your hand.

“Your father and I are going on a tour of the city with the Representative. I dropped by to see if you’d like to join us.”

“Hi Mom. No… no, thanks. I’m…swamped today. I’m sorry.”

She coos, worriedly. “Are you alright? You seem tired. Those are pretty…”

Blinking down at the roses in your hand and stepping slightly to the side to shield her view of the third on your credenza, you agree, “Yeah, just tired today. It’s the heat. Here,” handing her the flowers, you smile. “The red one is for you. Please give the white one to the Representative’s wife. I hope you have a nice tour.”

“Oh. Thank you, dear…but…how did you know I was coming?”

“I didn’t. There’s a nice old man who sells them. Sometimes I buy some to cheer up my desk.”

“You’re buying your own flowers? We should stop by Haavi’s desk and tell him he needs to do that for you.”

“Oh. No need. He does.”

Once she’s on her way, you swing out to the atrium, but find Steve and Javi’s desks unoccupied. There was talk of a situation on the east side of the old town, no doubt the whole department will be out most of the afternoon.

Good. Maybe you can get some work done.

Still carrying the note, you flip it over on Javi’s desk and scribble five words with the same pen–

You know where I live.

–tuck it under his typewriter with just the tiniest corner sticking out, and head for the coffee room. One cup and three more work hours should shrink that stack of paperwork on your desk.

If you can just shut it all out and concentrate.

And try not to expect too much. ________

The door to your apartment is unlocked when you get home. Well, he certainly jumped at your note.

It shouldn’t surprise you. There’s got to be department keys in some file somewhere. After all, how could he have done all that snooping around when you first got the job?

Dropping your bag and keys on the table in the hall, you head for the main room. “Javi? You here?”

Heart ramming against your ribcage, you emerge into the apartment…

…and find your parents seated at your dining table. Waiting.

“Mom. Dad. How…how did you get in?”

“Your father talked to the landlord. It wasn’t difficult, dear. We wanted a word.” Even though there’s an endearment, your mother’s tone is anything but.

“Okay. That’s kind of excessive. You could have just swung by my desk, you know where I–”

“This is a more delicate matter and we thought you might appreciate the privacy,” your father grumbles. “Sit down, sweetheart.”

There are two things on the table. Your mother’s purse, and a box of tissues. Not the brand you own. Provided for.

“I don’t think I will. What’s going on?”

They share a glance, a starting gesture as if to choose who will begin, even though it was always going to be your mom.

“We had a very nice tour of the city today. We saw the opera house and the capital. It’s a beautiful city. You must really like it here–”

“Representative wanted to go into some of the deeper parts of the city,” your father interrupts, already going off book it seems, “to see the neighborhoods that really reflect the majority economy, get a feel for the true people of Colombia.”

What’s this all about. There’s a silence. Of course there is. They’re waiting for you to prod them. “The old town. I know it. It can get rough, but mainly only if you’re already involved in something shady.”

“Well, there’s plenty that’s shady there, I’ll tell you.” Your mother’s nose lifts more than slightly. “Did you know that it’s crawling with brothels?”

“I do, actually. There are a lot of women who don’t have any other way–”

“Well, Haavi certainly knows about those brothels. We saw him coming out of one today.”

Oh. Shit.

Wait. What?

Fuck.

Your mother continues, something about being sorry to be the one to tell you, something about your heart and how it must be breaking, how it’s hard to be lied to….

The tissues sit on the table, a pretty pink box with daisies on it. They expect you to break down. Cry. How good of an actor are you?

“...and if you want to come home for a while, you know you are always welcome–”

Not good enough.

“Javi’s not my boyfriend, Mom.”

The silence that follows is thick, it mingles with the humidity, curdles it like cream in the air. You let it sit until it sours.

“He posed for me so you wouldn’t worry about me here. Like you always do. As if I could never make it on my own without someone.” Their shock sustains. The quieter they become, the easier it gets. “And Javi went along with it because he works with me. Day in and day out. If anyone ever thought I was in danger here, or couldn’t hack the agency, he’d be the first to say so. And I trust him.” Your mother opens her mouth to run her tongue, but you cut her off at the pass. “I trust that man. Yes, you saw him coming out of a brothel, but I’m not his girlfriend and he’s there for his job. Those women sleep with the people Javi’s trying to catch. It’s a brilliant tactic, actually. And they trust him too. Because he is good to them. He’s a good man; one of the best I know and deserves respect. He takes care of them and protects them as much as he would anyone else. You should have seen what he did for this girl Helena–”

It’s here that you notice something out of the corner of your eye and turn to find Javi standing silent in the hallway, still close enough to the door that your parents can’t see him around the corner into the room. But you can. Wide eyes. That tight fitting tan shirt. Slightly off balance as if he came to a stop immediately at the knowledge of walking in on something.

Why do you feel….caught?

“Anyway,” turning back to your parents with a sigh, “I appreciate your concern. But you don’t have to be. Not about him, not about me, not about anything. I’m sorry I lied. It just seemed…easier. Because you have never just believed I was fine. I’m fine. I’m more than fine. Like Javi said the other night, I’m thriving here. Even if he was posing, everything he said was true…”

But if everything he said was true…

A glance to the hallway finds it empty again. Even if the door is slightly ajar.

“Well. You can’t blame us for wanting the best for you, sweetheart. You’re never going to stop being our daughter.”

“I know, Dad. You keep saying that. It’s right there on my birth certificate.”

“There’s no shame in accepting help if it’s given freely and if it helps you achieve a goal.”

“I understand that, but I really wish you’d told me about it rather than let me think I did it all on my own. Do you understand how that feels? To be lied to?”

Your mother huffs. “I do now.”

Thank god for office coffee. Without the edge taken off of your exhaustion, you might have had more bite. But for now, you’ve said what was necessary and you’re not up for a fight or managing their feelings; you have enough of your own to sort out. If they care about you as much as they say they do, they’ll let what you’ve said sink in and not push the matter.

“Are you flying out tomorrow morning or afternoon?”

“Tomorrow morning, sweetheart.”

You nod and move into the kitchen. Seems they do care. You have to give them credit. “Okay. Do you want some dinner? I’ve got leftovers.”

“We have a dinner scheduled with the ambassador.”

“Well good. I’ve had a long day and I’m really tired. I probably wouldn’t be good company anyway. You’re coming back in for the trade agreements in January?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Good. I’ll get to see you for a whole week then.” The sad smiles you exchange with them signal that everything’s going to be okay. For now.

There are hugs and kisses, a wish for safe travels and a promise to call in the coming days. Your mother apologizes loudly for cleaning your bathroom mirror. Your father apologizes softly for your mother’s volume. This time, you walk them all the way out to the street.

Your mother’s halfway to the car when your father doubles back, digging in his pocket, just barely remembering to give you the key he got from the landlord.

Or maybe he didn’t really forget.

“Your mother and I are proud of you, sweetheart. I’m sorry if we gave the impression that we weren’t.”

“Thanks, Dad. It’s good to hear.”

“I should have said it sooner.” He hovers as your mother gets into the car. “You tell Javi that it was nice to meet him. And that we’re proud of the work he’s doing here too.”

There’s something in the way he tells you this. Another apology. Or a knowing. You’ve never been sure with Dad.

“I will.”

As they pull away, waving, your plan is to go collapse on your couch and just be alone for a minute.

As you come back into your apartment, you have to amend that plan to collapsing on your couch next to Javier Peña.

“Hey.”

“You heard all of that?”

He doesn’t answer the question. You sink in, lean back, let your eyes close. He sighs.

“You mind if I smoke?”

“I do, actually. You know I do. And I don’t have an ashtray. There’s still some whiskey if you want though. Knock yourself out.”

The couch shifts a bit as he gets up. The pop of cabinet doors. The clink of ice against glass. After a few seconds, the couch shifts again and a cool tumbler slides gently against your hand.

You open your eyes to ice water.

“Thanks.” You take a long drink, not knowing what to say. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“I never do. Bed’s too big. Sleep better when I’m not alone.” When you look him in the eye, he knows enough not to turn away. “One of the girls was called into one of Escobar’s regular haunts. Didn’t see him, but got a good look at some clients he’s courting. It was info worth delivering a retainer. And a final thanks.”

You do your best to keep your hope from shining through your cracks. “Final thanks?”

“Yeah. For all the…help in the past couple of years. Told them there’s a woman I’d like to spend some time with. Get to know better.”

The sly smile spreading across your face will not be contained. “Really. You told your informants that you were shoving off to the boring world of dating.”

“No. But I did let them know that if there’s a next time I darken their door, I won’t be in a very good mood. I don’t have a Jimmy to turn to if this doesn’t work.”

“Oh. So that was you today in the courtyard. That’s what inspired this? You jealous of Jimmy?”

“Nothing to be jealous of. He’s not your type. But. It might have sped up the process.” When you don’t laugh at that, he sighs. “Listen. I’m not good at this.”

“Yes, you are, I told you that you arrrre,” you yawn and go after another sip. “But I’m the one who’s going to be cranky and crap at it unless I take a nap. I’m sorry. It’s been a day.”

“Can I join you?” His dark eyes search yours as you empty the tumbler.

There’s something like a hope there. And something else, not quite an apology, not quite yearning, a worry that he’s going to do this right or die trying and he waited far too long to start.

Like he’s fighting the urge to expect too much.

“I said a nap, Peña.”

“Good. We were called in early. I could use it.”

It comes naturally. A smile. A matching smile. A whispered okay. He leans forward and slowly, softly, presses his lips to yours. Lingers a moment. Traces your nose–one side then the other–with his own.

“And what happens when we wake up?” you ask quietly in the space between you, in the space before the next slow, lingering kiss.

Javi stands, wraps three fingers around your glass and lifts it gracefully out of your grasp. Setting it on the end table, he reaches for your hand to help you up. “This is technically the third date, isn’t it? We could just…check off the usual boxes.”

“I think we established that I don’t especially love to do everything by somebody else’s rulebook.” Using the inertia of you coming off the couch to pull you straight into his arms and into a deeper kiss--one full of holding breath and clutching fingers--he chases it with a nip to your lip, which coaxes a chuckle. “But I’m open to actually following some rules for once. Especially the good ones.”

“Good. I think it’s time I worked you a miracle or two.”

“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you. Well, lead the way. You obviously know where the bedroom is…”

He smirks, guiding you by the hand. “I’ll give you the tour.”

________

MASTERLIST

CHARACTER MASTERLIST

#narcos fanfiction #javier peña #javier peña x reader #javier peña x f!reader #year of tropes #javier peña x fake dating

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xappetites · 29 days

Text

point of intersection

John Price x f!Reader | Lieutenant John Price finds himself trying to resolve a hostage situation with nothing but a blessedly reasonable and cooperative diplomat and a bureaucratic system that's more concerned with covering their own ass than the lives left behind | word count: 3,421

1. the vault | Jakarta

The worst day of your life starts as any other does. The same chaos commute, the same boring paperwork of looking over everything the ambassador doesn’t have time —doesn’t deign himself— to deal with.

Rubber stamping in and rubber stamping out, the familiar monotony of bureaucratic work on foreign soil.

Then, as noon crawls around through the mud of the day, the alarms go off.

You know they’re there, have known, in theory, all along. This office pod carved out of an ancient bank building was sold to every soul as the state of the art in security the moment you set foot in its checkerboard lobby. That doesn’t mean that the sound isn’t anything but confusing for the first couple seconds of it, followed closely by the screaming. The very many footsteps bolting away from the center of the building, towards the stairs, running for the exits. And it has you standing before you fully process it, phone and wallet in hand.

You try to follow the herd, away from the ambassador’s corner office, past the bathroom door that swings open almost in your face only to show a haggard George Ogilvey, the First Secretary to your Second Secretary, with his shirt still half out of his waistband and a laptop bag hanging from each shoulder.

Against all odds, George smiles at you. He’s charming, handsome and a right bastard if you’ve known him for more than half an hour, but he sort of likes you. Treats you like the embassy’s pet because you keep to yourself and do your work; not to mention, you look younger than you are and report mostly to him. So you figure it feeds his ego to think of himself as your ‘mentor’ in the ‘scary, crime ridden streets’ of Jakarta. Like he’d know the streets of Jakarta, taking every lunch with the ambassador on plush sofas. Or, frankly, as if London is any better.

“Here,” he shoves one of the bags your way, nearly catching you in the knees with it, “let’s go.”

It’s instinct too, to toss the strap over your shoulder, shuffling sideways to make way for him and all his bluster.

“What's happening?”

“An emergency? I have no more details, caught me in the middle of something, dear.”

He’s a step ahead of you down this horrid long hallway, so he luckily doesn’t see the sneer you don’t have the wherewithal to hide at the moment. He should know, he has to. George was supposed to be in the archives down on the ground floor, a straight shot from both a bathroom and the fire door to the back of the building, with no need to risk his hide to reach the first floor unless he knew he had to get these computers out no matter what.

“Weren’t—” the little color band in his calendar comes up in your head like a neon sign, “weren’t you supposed to be with the interns in archives?”

“Nature called. I’m sure the kids heard the alarm too.”

You stare at his back as he rounds the corner to the main stairway, blending in with the stragglers. You both know that’s horseshit. The archive room, windowless and musty and hell hot most of the year, used to be the bank's vault; the walls are too thick to drill through, so there’s no PA system installed in it and the sound is so deadened there that the building could collapse around it without anyone inside even noticing.

A gunshot rings out from the front, a chorus of screams and on its heels a shout in accented english:

We are looking for your ambassador, the rest of you have thirty seconds to leave the building.

The voice, a man, repeats his sentence, louder this time, with another shot to make his point. George looks back at you, more than a little annoyed that you won’t just be a good little girl and panic so he can rescue you.

“C’me on—“ he reaches for you, waving his hand in the universal gesture for ‘move’ . But you’re not frozen, or whatever it is that he assumes, you’re just making a split second decision.

And maybe it’s because of that assumption that he can hardly call out for you when you turn in the opposite direction, sprinting for the emergency stairs that run throughout the back of the building.

It’s insane, you’re aware, the sudden rage in your chest that has you stumbling forward out of sheer stubbornness, narrowly avoiding a wipe out when you hit the landing. Barreling your way past the heavy door to archives, propped open with the usual old broomstick.

You sour the mood immediately. Three sets of eyes look up, alarmed, to take in the absolute mess you are at the moment. But you can’t even verbalize the danger you’re all apparently in before the same voice that boomed instructions reaches you. Which means he’s close, too close— enough for you to catch a glimpse of body armor reflected on a nearby glass door.

Now, in clear sharp russian, the man seals your fate; leaving you no choice but to kick the broom away and lock the vault door behind you.

Seal the building, find the ambassador, get rid of whoever’s left.

…

Calling them kids is a bit unfair, actually. The youngest of this group of fresh graduates is no more than four years your junior. All of 20 years old and stuck in a shithole office halfway around the world, with russian paramilitary on the other side of the door and nothing but you, holding up your hands to shush them, on this one.

“What—?”

Someone tries, only to have you shoving your open palms more aggressively in their general direction. It’s silent, eerily, for a second that feels eternal. Then the locking mechanism clicks, sliding like an icy drop of panic down your spine. The handle jiggles in your grip but it doesn’t give, and the harsh buzzing that indicates a wrong code blares through the room.

It happens again: click, jiggle, buzz. And once more for a third time. Those are the sole sounds you can make out, no muttering or nothing, though you’re sure there has to be talking out there. You’d settle for simple swearing at this point just to have a better idea of what’s happening.

There’s not even footsteps when everything stops, merely the fact that you can’t stay this tense forever, so you end up slumped against the cool metal of the door.

“What the hell?”

Now it’s a curt whisper, from the same girl as before. Pearl, you think, or Opal, maybe? It’s not like you’re exactly familiar with any of them, you haven’t spoken to a single one for more than passing pleasantries. They exist in the periphery, spending their half days here doing whatever admin work other people don’t feel like doing. Which inspires in you some notion of siblinghood, but nothing more than the kind of empathy your row of prefabs shared throughout your childhood back home. The bone deep surety that you’re all stuck together in a less than desirable spot.

“There’s people out there, armed, all men, I think. Russian.”

You try not to make it a shocked mumble, still catching your breath as physical sensation comes back to you in pieces. The sweat running down the back of your neck, the soreness of rolling your ankle at the foot of the stairs and the strap digging into your shoulder.

That tickles an idea in your mind, has you moving to set the bag down and wrestle the laptop free.

“Are you—? Is this a fucking joke?”

The computer in your hands is a Macbook Pro, maxed specs, from late last year. You remember because it had fallen on you to put in the request for them. Twinsies, one for the ambassador and one for good ol’ George.

“Do I look like I’m taking the piss?” You blink up at Pearl/Opal, laptop hoisted in the crook of your elbow while the other hand digs around the back of the nearest desk for an ethernet cable, begging to whatever might be listening for a flash of luck on this shit day.

“We didn’t hear any alarms”

“Nor the gunshots, I’m sure, or you wouldn’t still be in this room.”

That comment sends a chill across the space, stunning everyone where they stand, including you. It makes you consider that perhaps you were supposed to offer some comfort in this situation, older and higher up the bureaucracy chain that you are.

“It’s the fucking thick walls,” you amend, much softer, “good thing is that they can’t hear us out there either.”

The cheery tune of the computer startup finally shakes them into a flurry of hushed questions you have no answers for. Like ‘why are they here’ and ‘what are we gonna do’ .

You don’t know . But at least the picture that comes up is a very professional portrait of the ambassador. And now this is an answer to your prayers, because this is the one password you’re privy to; and this is the only laptop in the building with full open access to the security systems.

Funny, a stray corner of your brain thinks, that the ambassador was so insistent on blowing the budget on good cameras just to catch his own kidnapping in hi def.

The feed pulls up, tiny windows to the world outside this fucking vault, each with their own little button for sound, all except for the very office three of the russians are currently breaking into. It’s unsettling for it to be this quiet, watching both sides of the fancy double doors as they bend and give in a rush of motion. Black gear against crisp white shirt and no doubt of who’ll win in the end.

“What are you doing?”

“They have the ambassador.” You croak it out, gesturing vaguely at the screen, flinching against your will at imagining the sound of the fists currently meeting flesh in the ambassador’s office. “The sink in the tea corner still works, right?”

Someone nods, so you stand as steady as you can, walk straight as possible over to the adjacent room, the weird amalgamation of server room and kitchen that keeps the tiny metal drawers of the safe room, stacked floor to ceiling over the far wall, as a postmodern sort of decoration. You run your hands under the blessedly cold water for a second or two and then offer your breakfast back up, the one good thing this god awful day hadn’t taken from you.

…

You’re still heaving when Matthew, whose name you only know because George has taken to call him Mild Matt behind his back, comes looking for you.

He doesn’t offer sympathies, gladly. Just stands in the doorway looking like he doesn’t quite know how to interrupt your very important meeting with the contents of your own stomach.

“Pearl’s counted the men,” he watches you nod and swish a mouthful of water to try and focus back on solutions to the problem, instead of the blood pouring out of the ambassador’s nose, “there’s seven the cameras can see, two on the back and the main doors and the three in the ambassador’s office.”

“Okay–”

It shouldn’t matter, at this point you’re sure the normal annoyances of sharing a limited space are the least of anyone’s problems; but you fish out a half stale peppermint cream out of a bowl anyway, to try and wash away the taste and smell of vomit before you step back into the archives room.

“What’s— what— why“

You look at Matthew where he follows you, really take a second to see what George considers mildness and you only now understand as a mind running too fast for the mouth that speaks for it.

“I really don’t know, I wasn’t thinking we’d end up trapped in the building, being honest.”

“So—” Pearl looks up from the computer, catching wind of the conversation, but the girl standing next to her is faster this time. Marie, with the same name as your sister; who you keep your distance from, to avoid finding out if she has the same personality too.

“Did Ogilvey leave us? On purpose?”

Bile rises again in your throat, this time with the same sort of rage that got you in this mess.

“Yes,” it comes out like a croak, hoarse and sharp, “I ran into him coming out of the bathroom upstairs.”

“There’s a bathroom right next door here—“

“I know, but those were up there.”

Marie doesn’t deflate when you point out the computer, just turns to Pearl looking so hopeful that you doubt for a second if what came out of your mouth was, in fact, what you meant to say.

“Okay, well if they want the computer we can give it to them and be done with this, right?”

“Wait—“ both remaining interns beat you to the punch, Pearl clinging to the laptop and Matt moving in to block the path to the door.

“They won’t hesitate to kill us, if we give them what they want they’ll have no reason to let us live.”

The sentence beats a rough rhythm against your ribs, spilling rushed out of you. It’s reasonable, it’s the correct response; but you can’t hold it against Marie that she throws her hands up in the air and paces.

“Then what the fuck do we do? Shouldn’t we call someone? The police?”

You’re pretty sure the police know already. If not by the less than subtle entrance that started this whole thing, by some of the understandably hysterical workers that did manage to make it out. You nod anyway. Move out of the way to let them beeline for the closest office phone and take guard in front of the camera feed instead.

There’s a lot more blood now, in a silence so eerie that it makes you unmute the camera right outside the vault as background noise. The long hallway to the back exit and the steady footsteps of the men assigned to keep an eye on it.

A low hum comes with it; just the crackling of empty air that the camera’s microphone picks up. And you think at first you’ve gotten lost in it enough that it feels like it’s vibrating against your skin. Until you realize it’s your own cellphone going off in your back pocket.

It’s a scramble to pick it up, though you don’t recognize the number; because frankly, very few things could make this situation worse. So unless you’re about to hear that there’s an asteroid heading for this building specifically, the smooth, deep voice on the phone that asks to confirm your name and rank is a welcome one.

“Lieutenant John Price, SAS,” he offers in return and you immediately take back that earlier thought, no matter how nice he sounds.

You know her majesty’s timing as well as any bureaucrat, so you expected nothing but six lines in tomorrow’s Guardian, if that. SAS means this random hostage situation is important for crown and country, which means shit is far bigger, far worse than you could ever imagine.

…

This is never something John wants to do, which, in fairness, can be said about many things in his line of work. But within the specifics of hostage situations, contact with someone on the inside holds far too many variables for his taste.

He can’t ever know for sure what kind of mindspace they’re in, how useful the interaction would be for either side. Then there’s the expectation, natural and understandable, that his presence itself is an assurance of safety. That he’ll promise to get them out no matter what, which isn’t something John ever allows himself to do. He might not be a good person, but he will not bet a life on that lie. Especially not with some diplomat or other breathing down everyone’s neck about a fucking laptop.

George Ogilvey, John commits the name and face to memory, just in case he loses the man in the crowd. Though, at the moment, it seems unlikely, no matter how hard he wishes to not have him following close along the makeshift blockade.

“—you do understand how dangerous it would be for the ambassador’s laptop to fall in unwanted hands?” Ogilvey makes the same point he’s been prattling on about since John’s team got here, unrelenting and completely fucking useless. “Last I saw it it was with my Second Secretary, but I doubt she’ll hold under torture if it gets to that, her name is—“

“I have her file,” the man has the gall to scoff when John dismisses the twentieth iteration of this title-name-phone number litany, waving his phone in his hand so the asshole can see it clearly trying to connect as he walks away.

It takes a minute longer than he’d like, but the woman who takes the call is steady on the line, and she listens politely as he does his own knee jerk title-name spiel to explain why he’s here.

“They have the ambassador in his office,” is the first thing she says, shit news and useful information in the same measured tone -all in all, better than he expected, “we’re stuck in what used to be the vault but we have access to the security feed.”

Then a second’s pause, a hopeless little chuckle.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

It hits John weird in the chest, the fact that under the sharp, rushed breathing pattern of fear and the conscious decision to remain calm, he can hear genuine curiosity from her.

“They’re threatening the ambassador’s life for their demands—“

“And the Crown wants him alive.”

“Not for anything good”

It’s a slip up, which John hopes will get lost under the sudden ruckus of voices that erupts on the other end of the line. This woman is a hostage, no matter how cooperative, not part of his team. And the fact that he adopted her as if she was, so immediately, sends a thrum of worry down to the pit of his stomach.

“Are there more people with you?”

“Three interns,” she answers. Interns Ogilvey failed to mention, three lives that are clearly not as important to the man when they don’t happen to be in possession of what he wants. “Could I put you on speaker?”

There’s a beat of hesitation where he wonders how good of an idea that is, with the level of noise these interns have proven themselves capable of. But the Second Secretary must still carry some sort of weight even now, because there’s anxious silence to greet him when he finally agrees, just the unmistakable hollow sort of reverberation of speakerphone.

“We’re ready for you, lieutenant.”

No, you’re not. He thinks. No one is ready for what he’s about to tell them. Hell, if it was him in there he’d have strong opinions about the paper pushing cunt who decided on this approach.

“They’ve sent us a negotiator, at the request of your First Secretary, ETA is ten minutes.”

“A negotiator?” Another woman’s voice cut in, more frantic than the Second Secretary but still quite measured. “Why can’t you just come in?”

“Command’s deemed the risk to the ambassador’s life unnecessary.”

“What about our lives?”

John lets the silence drag on for a second more than he normally would, not because he doesn’t know what to say but because the least he can do, when it took this long for someone in there to break, is not be unkind. They know their survival has been deemed a non essential, they don’t need him to verbalize it to them any more than he already has.

In the background, the line lights up again with a shuffle, a clatter, a sob choked back. Another explosion of noise that moves into the distance as he’s taken off speaker. He feels it as tension running down his spine, thinking he’s lost connection to the only point he has into this mess.

“Right,” the second secretary comes back though, still measured, and he’s starting to think that it’s not out of a stellar handling of the situation at hand, but of a general lack of trust in the system that landed her where she is “so you’re not our extraction team. What can we do for our chances?”

“Stay put,” it’s logic, it’s all he can give her. It’s not enough, “And stay on the line.”

#m: cod #r: gen #for now #captain john price x reader #personal #this is the longest chapter for anything i've ever written i think

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hotcheetohatredwastaken · 2 months

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Alt 1: Human Shield -- The Captain's Sacrifice

tw: death, injury, kidnapping

Crash!

Warrior woke up with a groggy start. For a second, he was nothing more than mildly annoyed with the definitely not out-of-the-ordinary disturbance. Despite Time threatening the boys within an inch of their lives to stay quiet and not make a mess while they stayed in different eras’ inns so that they weren’t thrown out, it was more than often than not that they’d stay up late into the night in their shared rooms, talking and roughhousing and getting up to general tomfoolery. It wasn’t Warrior’s business as long as he himself got his beauty sleep. They all had a busy day tomorrow, and he was tasked with both taking the heroes to meet his Zelda and dealing with the bureaucratic mess caused by his sudden absence due to the portals. So they could be as tired as they wanted, as long as he got his rest. Warrior turned over, pulling his pillow up over his head and jamming it over his ears with a low groan.

But even the pillow could not drown out the noise, once the screaming started.

“—Get off of me! Get off of me, you dirty—!”

“—elp! Help! Time, Warrior, we’re—!”

Warrior sat up with a jolt, his pillow thrown to the side as he listened. Those were Wind and Four’s muffled voices, respectively, echoing down through the floorboards directly overhead. They had tried to get adjacent rooms when checking in that afternoon, but the inn was just too full, so the two were relegated to sharing a room with Wild on the floor above the rest of them. Warrior met Twilight’s gaze across the room—similarly startled awake, wide–eyed in the dark—and then they were both scrambling out of bed, shooting down the hall and up the spiraling inn stairs in less than a few seconds.

“—ilthy landlubbers! You’ll never take m—!”

Metal clanged against metal, audible even from the end of the hallway down which Warrior and Twilight bounded. Something as heavy as a dresser was dragged to the ground, and it landed with a near earth-shattering bang!

“Help, help! Guys! We’re being attacked, there’s some sort of mmmph—!”

“Get your hands off of him!” Wind’s scream reached its fevered pitch. “No! Don’t hurt him! Don’t—!”

Warrior hit the boys’ door first. He bounced off of it—locked from the inside. Shouts of alarm from Wind and Four, low grunts of exertion and vile swears voiced by unfamiliar voices, and the sounds of an intense scuffle sent a deadly chill across Warrior’s skin. Warrior did not recognize those deep, rough voices—there were grown men in there with little brothers, on the other side of the firm wood. He drove his shoulder into the door once, twice, but to no avail. It creaked, bending beneath the force of his blows, but stood firm.

“If you aren’t gonna get it open, get the hell outta the way!” Twilight barked. Warrior complied, and Twilight gathered himself up, then pushed off and kicked in the door with a shower of splintered wood. They dove inside.

The scene that met Warrior’s eyes made him falter. Wild was on the ground wrestling in eerie silence with a man twice his size, both of their hands fixed around the other’s throats as they rolled across the debris littered floor and battled for dominance. The corpse of a stranger lay next to them, face down in a pool of fresh blood with Four’s silver-hilted knife sticking out of his back. Four sat up against the wall, bleeding sluggishly from a cut on his temple and clutching his arm to his chest, his eyes far away and fixed on the body. And Wind… Wind was gone. The window at the end of the room was thrown open, its long curtains blowing mournfully in the cool night wind. Broken glass littered the floor.

Twilight promptly pulled Wild’s assailant off of him and slammed him into a wall, snarling in his face. The man scratched at the arm holding him against the inn’s roughly boarded walls, spitting curses and threats, but he was no match for Twilight’s strength. In no time at all, Twilight had thrown him down to the ground and captured his wrists and one leg in a hogtie fashioned from his own belt.

“What—I-I-I can’t—Twilight—they-they-they took —,” Four stuttered out as he blinked rapidly, reaching up gingerly to touch his own head. He seemed to nearly swoon at the sight of blood on his fingers. “The-the-th-th-the window—th-they—”

“Four, get up and get Time in here, now,” Twilight snarled. The man beneath him bucked and fought as he cursed every drop of blood in Twilight’s veins, but Twilight only clung tighter, keeping him pressed to the ground. Four flinched. “GO, Four, now!"

Four stood unsteadily, staggering with his first steps, but nevertheless fled without delay into the hallway towards Time’s room, his arm still held close to his chest. A ruby trail of blood followed him across the wooden floorboards and out the door.

“Warrior, help Wild up,” Twilight said tersely. “Make sure he’s okay and see what he knows.”

Warrior shook his head to disperse his inaction and did as commanded, helping Wild sit up from the glass-littered ground though the teen tried to wave him away with an apologetic wheeze. There was a swollen, purple ring of bruising around Wild’s throat, and his hair lay frazzled and bloodied around his shoulders. A blood vessel had burst in one of his eyes, turning the white of it a startling red. He stared straight ahead, dazed and wheezing.

“Wild, look at me. Are you okay? Where’s Wind?” Warrior asked, patting his cheek until the boy’s eyes snapped to him. Pupils even. Good. Warrior scanned Wild’s body—no injuries, at least no visible breaks or bleeds. He only hoped Wind could be as lucky, unlikely as it seemed.“Did they take him? How many of them were—”

‘I’m fine. Three of them.’ Wild held three fingers up in answer. His hand went to his throat as he grimaced, swallowing hard. He gestured with the other towards the far end of the room. ‘They took him. Out the window.’

Warrior left Wild and flew to the windowsill, uncaring of the shattered glass that crunched beneath his boots as he peered out over its edge. The rooftop sloped down from the window, obviously how the assailants had gained access to the sleeping boys. Warrior followed the angle of it with his eyes, along the street and across the tops of buildings—

There. He spotted just a flash of Wind’s signature blue shirt before it slipped out of sight around a curve of the roof.

“I’m coming, Wind!” Warrior shouted, slamming his hands down on the windowsill and vaulting out the window after them. His boots touched down, and then he was off, scrambling over the steep shingles in pursuit. “Just hold on!”

“Warrior, wait up!” Twilight’s voice rang behind him, his shout growing quieter and quieter behind Warrior. “You can’t chase ‘em without backup!”

Warrior clambered after them across the roof tops, the occasional shingle slipping underneath his foot and shattering noisily against the dark street below. Then, he leapt from the rooftop and slid down a pile of crates, plunging into the alleys zigzagging the city below. Hesitating at intersections, chasing Wind's occasional shouts, the captain's pursuit followed dark alleys and sharp corners, urged on by mere glimpses of the shadows and smears of blood. Pounding footsteps caught up to Warrior—Legend, of all people, he must have followed him out the window—and they ran side by side until they came upon the group suddenly stopped at the other end of the alley.

Wind was slack in his assailant’s grip, his face white and his eyes nearly closed. Warrior slowed to a stop as he got a better look at the men holding him—big and muscled with short haircuts and trained holds on their swords—they were soldiers, he realized with a widening of his eyes. They’d wiped out all of the traitors’ forces after the war ended—Zelda had promised him that they’d wiped them all out, and there hadn’t been any chatter in months—but here they were, how—?

“Not another step, hero,” one of the men called out. “Or he gets it.”

A sword was held threateningly across Wind’s throat. Warrior moved his hand to the hilt of his sword, and Legend unslung his bow from his shoulders, nocking it with a simple, threatening arrow. The assailant holding Wind hoisted him up and closer to his chest, using him as a shield. Legend tsked underneath his breath—he was a good shot, but he was no Wild– that they both knew–and he would not risk hitting Wind.

“Let him go,” Warrior projected his voice as confidently as he could manage, “and no one has to get hurt.”

“No one has to get hurt if you step back, hero,” one of the traitors shot back in a taunting lilt. That sword pressed in deeper at Wind’s neck, drawing a line of blood, and Legend growled beside Warrior, his grip on his nocked arrow shifting. “No harm will come to the boy. Just let us go, and your companions will have him back before dawn breaks.”

“Captain, we can’t just let them—”

“Legend, stop.” Warrior stepped forwards, towards the traitors at the end of the alley. “What do you want from us? Whatever it is, we can give it.” Another step. The men noticed, and they pulled Wind further back.

“You’ll be made aware of our demands soon, hero. You, and your weak queen, and all of Hyrule.” Suddenly, a wagon rattled up behind them, and they jumped into it without delay, pulling Wind after them. “See you soon, hero!”

Legend went after them, nailing one of the men in the arm with an arrow and then another in the thigh. But with a crack of a whip, the wagon was rattling down the street. No matter how hard he and Warrior ran after it, it was gone from sight in mere moments.

Once it was clear that their effort was futile, Legend stopped, bending over to pant for breath with his hands braced on his knees. “Did Wind seriously just get kidnapped by a bunch of randos?” A hysterical laugh left him—Warrior pretended not to notice the little tears dripping off the end of his nose, the ones that he swiped off with his long sleeves hastily. “Oh, Time is not going to be happy about this.”

Warrior couldn’t breathe. Horror and helplessness weighed heavy on his chest, making it nigh impossible to draw breath beneath them. Wind… Wind was gone. He’d slipped beneath their fingers like a minnow in a river, and now he was gone, caught in the grasp of those… soldiers. Traitors . Traitors that wanted Warrior and everything he cared about—including Wind—dead in revenge for their own losses and suffering during the war. The war that they believed that he had caused with his cursed pretty face.

“We… we should probably go back to the others,” Warrior said softly. “I… I have some ideas on who might have taken him, but… they were supposed to be gone by now, the last of them weeded out of the army on Zelda’s orders. We’re going to need to contact Hyrule Castle, get their constables looking for him… contact Zelda…”

“Warrior, you’re hurt!” Legend suddenly reached for his hands, taking them in his own. “Let me see.”

Warrior hadn’t even noticed the slices in his palms from the sharp glass he’d vaulted over to make it out the window in his haze of panic, even then he still didn’t feel it once he saw the blood and the shining shards. He tried to clench his hand into a fist, and his fingers twitched awkwardly, hanging limp. He couldn’t have fought the assailants even if he did catch up, unable to hold a sword in a firm grip as he was.

“Let’s get back to the inn, Captain,” Legend agreed. “Regroup and get your hands fixed up. We can figure out what to do with the others.”

Warrior nodded faintly, his head spinning. “That sounds like a good idea.”

Read this on ao3! The Captain’s Sacrifice

Or check out the whole series here! HotCheetoHatred's Febuwhump

#linked universe #lu #linkeduniverse #cheetowrites #febuwhump 2024 #febuwhump day 16 #whump #kidnapping #wind linked universe #warrior linked universe #legend linked universe #linked universe fanfic #linked universe fanfiction

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jaxteller87 · 1 month

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A Sanctuary for Burning Hearts(big papa 10)

I had just gotten back from a run and decided to stop by the Clubhouse to check up on things. I had been out of Charming the past three days, and I left Tig in charge while I was gone. No big deal, I took care of everything before I left; all he had to do was make sure the place didn’t burn down until I got back. There was a party going on when I walked in, and amidst the chaos, a solitary pen perched on the edge of the bar caught my eye.

“Tiggy, did we get a beer shipment today?” I picked the pen up to look for a company name.

“I don’t think so, why?”

A sickening wave washed over me, and I felt the color drain from my skin. “Everyone out, now!” I shouted. One good thing about being VP is when you yell, everyone listens. It was a matter of seconds until the place emptied out.

“What’s going on?” Tig shot up from the barstool he was sitting on.

“Where’s Amber?” I grabbed the collar of his shirt.

“Dorm room,” Tig put his hands up like he was expecting me to hit him— leave it to Tig to actually let me if need be. Not this time, Tiggy.

“Amber, shit!” I yelled, bolting down the hallway. I burst through the door and saw her sleeping on the bed. She wasn’t supposed to be here when I was out of town. Not that she wasn’t allowed, but I run with bikers, and bikers aren’t the most trustworthy people. Not that any of SAMCRO would try anything, but you never know who we’re entertaining, how much alcohol they had, or what kind of drugs they’re on. Amber is my responsibility, and no one else’s, especially at the Clubhouse. Even so, most of the guys, especially Juice, Ope, and Tig, would break a few skulls for her if need be. Even so, I didn’t go out of my way to put any of them in that situation, at least not often.

“What the hell is going on, Jax?” she squealed as I slung her over my shoulder. “My chair! Don’t forget my—”

“No time!” my voice boomed off the walls. For a moment, I sounded like Clay when he was starting to lose his shit. Fuckin’ Clay— I’ll get to that in a minute. “Keep your eyes closed!”

“Jax?” I could hear the worry in her voice. I rushed through the Clubhouse like a coked-up bull in a China shop. I stepped out of the front doors and saw everyone gathering in the parking lot. I took a few more steps before our biker sanctuary exploded behind me. I saw the orange light from the burst reflect off the buildings in front of me, followed by a warm sensation. The gust from the explosion threw me into the air, but I was able to twist myself before landing, ensuring that I broke Amber’s fall with my body. We all watched as the Clubhouse went up in flames. I don’t know what happened while I was gone, but something told me this had Clay’s name written all over it. Oh, and guess who was on day three of their five-day stay in Belfast? That’s right, Mr. President himself, Clay Morrow.

The following morning, I had to go down to the burnt mess of a Clubhouse and talk to the fire chief. After that, the boys in blue stopped by and took some statements— but this wasn’t a Jonny Law matter, so they were basically just tickin’ boxes like good little bureaucrats. When I got back home, Amber was awake and packing a duffle bag. “Win a cruise or something?”

“Packing to leave. I’m doing what I’m told as an old lady,” she hissed.

Yeah, I deserved that smartass comeback. I tore into her on our way home last night, going as far as cursing her out for being at the Clubhouse instead of home. Not only was she there, but she fell asleep in the dorm during a SAMCRO party. I yelled and yelled, and she just took it. I told her that he needed to fall in line, pack a bag, and head to New York until things cooled down a bit. It wasn’t the impromptu NY trip that was the problem, but more in my delivery of how I suggested it.

“Jackson, I mean, really, what the hell?” she seethed.

Yeah, she’s still mad. She only calls me that when she’s furious. “I’m sorry, darlin’. Clay just has me lookin’ over my shoulder right now, and I admit I’m not thinking too clearly.”

“Has his greed really gotten that bad?” she stopped what she was doing and stared at me, waiting for an answer.

I sat on the bed in silence, unable to muster a response, just meeting her gaze.

“People could have died. It’s a damn good thing Donna and the kids weren’t there,” Amber took a deep breath, thoughts about what could have been trickled through her head.

“I know,” I murmured. There was no disputing that. “It’s a damn good thing nobody did die, too.”

“This time! Something’s gotta change, Jax. The Club, or us. Because there’s no way in hell I’m raising our kids in this violence. This wasn’t the dream we had all those years ago. The Club, yes, but not like this.”

Why did I get the sinking feeling that I was losing her? If it came down to it, I’d choose her every damn time.

With that, Amber rolled out of the room, bag in her lap, and into a taxi bound for Mary’s. I lit a cigarette and poured myself a glass of Scotch. I took a swig and sat on the bed, staring at my kutte slung over the chair. One thing was certain: I had a huge decision to make.

Amber’s POV

So, it’s been a few days since I’ve been crashing at Mary’s. I packed a bag and hightailed it out, Charming like Jax commanded. What a good little housewife I am; too bad that cocky piece of shit is too full of himself to notice. I was planning on getting a hotel, but Mary wouldn’t hear of it. I knew she would insist that I stay with her because we’re so alike, and it’s precisely what I would do in this situation.

“You sure you’re really at your wits’ end?” she asked, handing me another beer.

“I’m sure. You know what— do you think my old place is still up for rent?”

“Wow. It’s that serious, huh?”

“Absolutely, Mary!” I scoffed, “If Jax were a few minutes later than he was, my ashes would be spread across Charming right now.”

“Alright, fine. So what, do you think you could get your old job back?” Mary cracked open a beer of her own and sat down at the table.

“I left a message for my old boss, I told him he can call me here. I hope that’s okay,” I sipped my frosty beverage.

“You’re really serious? Throwing the Cali life all away, huh? No more masquerading around as the King and Queen of Charming?” Mary chuckled. “Never thought I’d hear that out of you.”

“Ha ha,” I rolled my eyes. “I’m dead serious. The violence has spiraled out of control. I mean, it’s always been rough, but I mean, come on. And if I’m going to dance with the devil and almost meet my maker, I sure as shit don’t want to be catching holy hell from my husband because he can’t articulate his words in the face of danger. Whoever set that bomb didn’t care who they killed. Hell, half the Sons weren’t even there— there were a bunch of crow eaters, hangarounds, and some nomads—”

“I’m not even going to pretend I know what any of that bike slang is,” Mary chugged half her beer and slammed it down on the table. “But when it comes to danger, Jax is usually Mister Joe Cool.”

“Yeah, I guess. I kid you not; it’s been a solid two months since he’s come home without blood on his clothes. Keeping that kind of stuff pent up takes its toll on a man,” I confided. “And Club rules say I’m not allowed to ask why. Sometimes, I try to inquire anyway, just to get hit with the ‘I’m better off not knowing’ quip.”

“You’d seriously leave Teller?” Mary raised an eyebrow.

I paused, pondering the question. Would I? No, deep down, I didn’t want to. But my safety was important to me, and if it meant dragging him back with me, I would. It was something I swore I’d never do — make him choose between me and the Club. But this was a different time, a different Club than the one that we rode for years ago.

Out of nowhere, a red bird flitted into view, perching itself on a nearby tree branch. I couldn’t help but smile to myself as we sat in the kitchen, my decision weighed heavily on my mind.

Jax’s POV

I knocked on Mary’s front door, the chaos of recent days finally subsiding enough for me to make the trip to New York and see if I still had a wife waiting for me.

“Hey there, Jackson,” Mary greeted me with a smile as she answered the door.

“Is she here?” I asked anxiously, bracing myself for the fallout.

Mary nodded.

“How much trouble am I in?”

“A lot,” Mary frowned. “I don’t know if trouble is the word I would use, though, but you definitely have some baggage to work through, that’s for sure.”

“Amber, Look who the cat dragged in,” Mary announced as we entered the kitchen. “It’s the piece of shit.”

“Whoa,” I reared back. “What’s with the name-calling?”

“Oh, sorry— that’s been your nickname the past few days,” Mary winked at me. I knew she was just breaking the tension the only way she knew how, with her sarcastic assertivieness.

“Hey, Amber,” I greeted her with a smile.

“I’ll leave you guys to it. I’m gonna take Lady for a walk. Beer’s in the fridge. If you drink it all, Teller, you owe me a case,” Mary said, glancing down at her dog before disappearing out the door.

“I’m sorry,” I began, taking a seat at the table. “I should never have yelled at you, especially like that.”

“You’re right; you shouldn’t,” Amber smirked. We had a little conversation and about thirty minutes later, Mary had returned with some subs.

We sat down to a nice dinner, catching up with Mary as we ate. After a few more minutes of conversation, we made our excuses and headed back to the hotel I had booked earlier. Mary offered for us both to stay at her place, but the apartment was already a little tight and I didn’t want to impose. Plus, it’s been a few days since I’ve spent any time with my wife, so I was looking for something a little more intimate.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, nuzzling my face into Amber’s bare neck.

“I know, that’s what makes this so hard,” she admitted softly. “Jax, what are we gonna do?”

“I’m ready to pack up and drag you back to Charming with me,” I said sternly. She chuckled at the remark, but her eyes were still full of doubt.

“I mean, this is a deal-breaker for me, and that’s incredibly upsetting. I told myself years ago I’d never make you choose,” I confessed. I could feel the weight of my allegiance to the Club pulling against my allegiance to my marriage.

“Well, back then, the Club wasn’t as cutthroat as it is now. We didn’t have as much to worry about. A few stray bullets here and there, I mean, I get it— you’re a biker in a big biker gang, but Jax— they blew up the Clubhouse and half the garage. If you weren’t—”

“I know baby, I—”

“Just listen! If you weren’t there, the bodycount would have been over two dozen. And only seven Sons. Whoever did that wasn’t trying to kill you; they were trying to hurt you by killing your friends and family!”

“You’re not wrong,” I agreed with everything she was saying. “This isn’t one of those pass-the-blame moments, but everything that’s happened, all the added violence— Clay’s been dabbling in something, and I have no idea what.”

“I mean, can’t Bobby or hell, Piney, talk some sense into the old man?” Amber suggested.

“They tried, apparently. But Clay just won’t listen. Piney even threatened him with some philosophical ‘what ifs’, but that didn’t do the trick either.”

“That could have been your Mom in there, Jax. They could have killed Gemma—”

“They could have killed you,” I took her hand. “Please don’t leave me,” I whispered, kissing her bare shoulder tenderly.

“I’m not,” she whispered back. “But something’s gotta be done, babe. I’d like to start trying for a family soon.”

“Oh, really? Well, in that case, may I suggest some practice?” I smirked, glancing down at our entwined bodies.

“Maybe,” she smirked back, running her finger over my cheek.

“I went to the doctor a few weeks ago. I know my disability is not genetic, but I wasn’t sure if it would take me a little longer to get pregnant. And my doctor said no. All things considered, I’m in pretty good health. He said that anytime I wanted to stop taking the pill, we’re good to go.”

“So... have you?” I asked, curiosity burning in my chest.

“Have I what?”

“Stopped taking the pill?”

“No, I wouldn’t do that without talking to you first. What kind of croweater do you take me for, Jackson Teller?”

“My apologies,” Jax blushed, “you know how the culture is.”

“Yeah, alright,” I flicked his nipple. “Anyway, I had a little plan... Have a nice dinner, a movie maybe, then talk about it. And see what happened from there,” she chuckled, pressing a kiss to my shoulder.

“Well, I would say once everything calms down, because you’re right, trying to have a baby now would be...”

“Stupid?”

“I was going to say less than ideal,” I admitted, “but stupid works.”

“Are you ready for a little Teller running around?” she giggled.

“Ain’t nobody ready for that, darlin’.”

#jax teller imagine #jax teller fluff #jax teller x disabled reader #jax x oc

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dumdumsun · 2 years

Text

To Nightfall

A/N: I actually really enjoy writing Harlan scenes, believe it or not

Warnings: blood, guns, gunshots, gore, death, mentions of alcohol

Word Count: 4282

—————————————

Chapter 8: For Reason Or For Love

“You’re serious?”

As Luther asked, the siblings grouped together in the poolroom with him and Sloane, aside from Klaus who was babysitting Stanley, and (Y/N) who had not yet arrived from whatever business she had been taking care of, and Five who was still gone with Lila.

“We use Sloane as an olive branch,” Luther explained. “We let her go as a gesture of peace, along with the bodies of Jayme and Alphonso.”

“Once I’m back with my family, I can convince them the old guy had nothing to do with you and get them to stand down.” Sloane added.

Diego shook his head. “You wanna let her go after attacking us? Uh-uh.”

“Me? I lost two of my siblings to you and your murder troll.”

“Again,” Luther started, trying to ease the tension. “Harlan is not with us.”

“Well, he’s not not with us.” Diego defended.

“He was just trying to protect me.” Viktor quietly spoke.

Sloane sighed. “This only works if I can convince my family he isn’t a part of your team, so is he with you or not?”

“Harlan saved our asses. He can stay here as long as he wants.” Diego leaned away from the table and looked straight at Luther. “You know what, Luther? He can take your bed. Since you’re sleeping with the enemy.”

“Watch it.” Luther warned. Before anything else could go down, Viktor quickly moved to stand between his brothers.

“Guys, come on. Having an ally on the inside could help us right now.”

“Right?”

Allison crossed her arms and falsely smiled. “Yeah, but how do we know we can trust Gravity Barbie?”

Luther sighed. “I trust her.”

Diego snickered. “Yeah, you trusted emails from a Nigerian prince.”

“Tunde was not a prince, he was a king! And he was unjustly deposed!”

“Okay,” Sloane moved to stand so she was facing Allison. “So, rumor me again. Go on, not hiding anything. Whatever it takes.”

Allison’s eyes moved up to her brother. “Do whatever the hell you wanna do, Luther. That’s on you. I got bigger shit to deal with.” She spat before walking out of the room, Diego following after her.

At the Commission, Five had been talking Lila’s ear off about his frustrations with what they needed to do in order to save the universe as they climbed a flight of stairs. “This is just like a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit. There’s no clear directives in here about crisis management. You know, Lila, I shouldn’t even be here. I was… I was out. I was done, and yet here I am, swept back into the chaos.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Why can’t I just… escape this hellhole?”

“Because you love it.”

They reached the top of the stairs, but their conversation momentarily paused when a squeak of flatulence sounded from him. He slowly turned around with a slight look of embarrassment. “My bad.” He muttered before continuing on.

“Face it, Five,” Lila continued. “Apocalypse problems are the only things that get your heart pumping.”

He scratched his neck as his nerves spiked. “That is entirely untrue. I don’t know why people keep saying that. I don’t actually like chaos. I don’t want disorder. I… I want retirement.”

She let out a short laugh. “Yeah, right. What? A normal life of groceries and taxes? You would die of boredom.”

“A normal life of groceries and taxes with my wonderful wife who is probably worried sick about me right now. I’m a married man now, Lila, I can’t afford this life anymore. Not after everything I’ve promised her.”

“Oh, yeah, a promise to get back to her little rugrats so you could be a supportive uncle-slash-stepdad to them, only to find out they don’t even exist in this timeline. You know, whether or not they were born, you would’ve grown tired of those three, trust me.”

Five opened a door to another hallway. “And trust me when I tell you that those three would make me the happiest man alive,” He tightly smiled. “Besides, you’re not exactly cut out for domestic bliss, either.”

Lila masked the hurt on her face as he turned around and walked through the door. “‘Course I’m bloody not,” She stepped in behind him. “Thank god!”

Soon, the two were descending a staircase, still having their quiet banter along the way. “I mean, maybe it’s a tone thing? I don’t know, but you could really work on, like, the way you speak. It’s very… It’s irritating.” She followed him down a hallway and climbed over a box before landing on the floor again. She turned to see Five smugly smiling. “I’m just saying, it’s something you can work on, you know? For the future… Why you smiling, you little pisspot?”

“‘Cause of that.” He pointed forward. Lila grinned.

“Well, you could have led with that.”

Not wasting another second, the two walked through the door labeled, ‘OPERATIONS BUNKER’.

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

(Y/N) let out a slow breath as she and her older self stood before a home she knew very well. She felt seventeen again with a bag on her back and a piece of paper with an address on it. She had done the same thing of breathing deeply to ease her fear before she knocked on the door. But now, it wasn’t her who needed to do it. It was Sparrow (Y/N).

“So, this is where she lives…” The woman slowly nodded. “Wow.”

“I know. It’s gonna be a lot. But I promise you, she will be so happy to see you.”

Sparrow (Y/N) scratched her cheek before walking up to the front door of the house and ringing the doorbell. Umbrella (Y/N) came up to her side, setting a comforting hand on her arm.

The sound of clicking locks could be heard before their mother opened the door. She didn’t look any different from when (Y/N) left her in the original timeline. Her smile was still kind, her eyes were still soft and she still wore those purple slippers in the house.

“Hello. How can I help you?”

“Hey, Mom,” Sparrow (Y/N) grinned. “It was so nice to finally meet you.”

Umbrella (Y/N)’s heart dropped to her stomach when her adult counterpart took a handgun out the waistband of her skirt and cocked it, pointing it right at their mother.

“No!” She screamed, tackling herself to the ground just as the gunshot sounded. She snapped her head over to the woman at the door, who fearfully stared at the two with a dropped jaw. “Get in the house! Get back in the house right now!”

Once the woman had shut the door and locked it, Umbrella (Y/N) straddled her double and shakily raised her fist, ramming it into her cheek. Sparrow (Y/N) grunted in pain and took another punch before she blocked the next with one hand, slashing her nails across the young girl’s cheek with the other, no doubt adding to the myriad of scars already on her face. Umbrella (Y/N) cried out in pain, but didn’t halt her punching, her squeaks and whimpers sounding behind her opponent’s groans.

“Why did you do that?” She sobbed.

Sparrow (Y/N) narrowed her eyes at her. “Are you crying?”

“Why did you do that?! Why the fuck did you just try to kill your own mother?!”

“Because that woman ruined our lives!”

“No!” The girl blubbered. “She loves us! She- She regrets giving us up!”

The Sparrow rolled her eyes and let her head fall back into the grass. “Three-point-five million dollars,” She growled. “That’s how much she sat there and negotiated with our father so he could take us and toture us! Some fucking paper bills meant more to her than we ever did!”

“That’s not true! Her mom needed surgery or she was gonna die! Sh-Sh-She was gonna lose her house!” Umbrella (Y/N) punched her again, her wedding ring twinkling. “She had things she needed and the money would have helped her! We got in the way!”

Sparrow (Y/N) caught the girl’s wrists in her hands with a frown. “How different would your life be if a rich man showed up on your doorstep and wanted Michael? What if he offered you over three million dollars for Jada? You would never have had your world… your everything.” Tears streamed down her face as she wheezed. “Why didn’t she want a world with us…?”

Her breathing stuttered and Umbrella (Y/N) noticed. Looking down, her mouth ran dry at the blood between them, painting their clothing. “O-Oh, god… (Y/N)... Y-You sh… You shot yourself…”

Sparrow (Y/N) raised her head and looked down at the gunshot wound in her abdomen. “Oh… I did.” She hummed and sat up, pushing her child self off of her. She shakily got to her feet and held her seeping wound. “Shit, I need to get home. I’ll, uh… I’ll see you later, little sister.”

“No. No, I’m coming with you and making sure you get home safe.” Umbrella (Y/N) wrapped the woman’s arm around her shoulders and helped her walk. She prayed that nothing would happen to her adult self, as whirling as the storm of their relationship was, but she knew she would be fine. Because for some reason, she wasn’t reacting to her pain at all.

As the sky darkened, the Hotel Obsidian’s car rode down the street with Diego in the driver seat and Allison beside him, loudly slurping on her drink. She let her mouth off the straw and turned to her brother. “You know, when you said you’d take me for a drink, I had something a little stronger in mind-”

“Do not disrespect the slushie,” He tried to hide his smile at his sister’s scoff. “Check the glove box.”

With a suspicious smirk, Allison did as she was told, her smirk growing mischievous as she pulled out a flask. “Oh, thank god.” She whispered, opening the flask and pouring half of the alcohol into her slushie. Diego parked the car across the street from a bar and watched her with a small smile.

“You know, you’re a lot more fun these days.”

She raised a brow as she handed the flask back to him. “Excuse me?”

“Telling off Luther and melting Sloane’s brain. You were always the nice one of us.” He chuckled at the look she gave him. “Okay, okay. You know, grading on an umbrella curve.”

“Yeah, well, getting stuck in the past without Claire, then leaving Ray, thinking she’d be waiting for me in the future only to discover that she doesn’t exist in the present… could do that to a person.”

“Jesus,” He turned to her. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on. You know, I’m a great therapist. They call me Dr Fuego.”

“No one calls you that.”

“They should, though.” The two laughed. “That shit sounds badass.”

The tone in the car shifted when their laughter died down, Allison’s grave expression downcasted. “I’ve never felt so hopeless in my life. Even after my voice came back, I knew the cost of standing up and speaking out. Living everyday under constant threat that you or someone you loved would disappear or… fall victim to some heinous crime. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“That shit lingers, huh?” Diego quietly asked.

“Yeah,” She rasped, looking out the window with a clenched jaw. “I know we all got stuck in Dallas. I just… I don’t think some of the others really understand what it was like for me, you know?”

He fell silent for a second in thought, but he eventually nodded. “Yeah. I know. But hey, we’re here now. We made it back, right?”

“Yeah, and for what? Ray and Claire were the two things keeping me together, and just like that, they’re gone, and I am…” She sighed. “I am so angry. I don’t know where to put any of it.”

Diego rubbed his face. “You remember that vigilante shit I used to do?”

“Yeah. Bargain Batman.”

They shared a laugh.

“Smartass.” He chuckled. “You know, you guys all laugh, but that shit helped me, man. Kicking assholes in their assholes is like therapy, but for cool people.”

Allison nodded at him before looking forward. “Yeah, trust me. I wish I had somebody I could hit…”

Diego inhaled. “Well, you spend enough time in the city, you get to know a few things.” When Allison looked at him in confusion, he nodded towards the bar across the street. “People in there… hate people like us. We go in there, get a drink, see if they start something. And we make damn sure we finish it.”

Her eyes zeroed on the group of white men drinking beside a wall that held up a confederate flag they had to have put up themselves.

“Or we could just drive home.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You know.”

In the sixties, Allison could do next to nothing about the racists she encountered without the risk of facing serious consequences. But in this period of time, she could get away with a bit more than she could have before. Morally, the idea wasn’t bad or good, and her anger didn’t have any morals.

“I could really use another drink.”

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

When Sparrow Academy’s car pulled up, Luther and Sloane separated from their hold on each other. Ben, Fei and Christopher all exited the car and waited for the Umbrella family’s next move. The three watched as Luther loaded two body bags into the back of their car before they followed him back to Viktor and Sloane.

Sloane avoided eye contact with Luther as she crossed his path, running straight into her sister’s open arms. Christopher welcomed her back before Ben turned to Luther and Viktor.

“Well, this is it,” Viktor shrugged. “This puts an end to it.”

“No,” Ben smiled. “We want the old man, too.”

Fei glared at him. “What are you doing?”

“You wanted a plan. Here it is.”

“It’s a stupid plan.”

“He isn’t a part of the deal.” Viktor shook his head.

“He is now.”

“Ben they aren’t working with him,” Sloane defended. “They had nothing to do with the attacks-”

“Then they won’t mind finding him and handing him over. It’s simple. Bring us the man who killed our siblings, and this will all be over. If not…”

He shrugged before leading his family to their car and driving away, leaving Viktor and Luther dumbfounded and defeated.

At the Commission in the operations bunker, Five followed Lila into a restricted area as he viciously scratched at his neck while sweating bullets. She walked up to a giant vault and leaned towards a scanner, a blue light running over her face before it beeped. Above them, a short alarm buzzed.

“Unauthorized access.” A robotic female voice sounded.

“We’re screwed.” Lila sighed before turning to Five. “Jesus! You’re sweating like a dodgy shrimp on ice. What’s wrong?”

Five froze when he let out another fart. Suspicions raised, he went up to the vault and leaned towards the scanner. The blue light ran over his face before it beeped and chimed.

“Access granted.” The voice sounded before the door unlocked.

“I guess you’re essential personnel.” Lila mumbled. The door opened to reveal a white tiled room with hardly any furniture. “Wow.” She stepped inside. Five trailed in behind her, his scratching coming to a halt when the itch faded. He looked around in perplexity as the door closed behind them.

On the other side of the room was a full body ventilator, hissing as it released air to the body inside. Lila stepped up to it and examined the inside, her smile falling when she saw the wrinkled bare legs inside. The only part of the body that wasn’t in the machine was the person's head, their mouth barely opening to take in raspy breaths.

“That’s him, huh?” Five set down the handbook before walking over to the machine. “The founder.”

“Looks like tinned beef.” Lila tsked. “I was expecting more man and less… can.”

Five hurried over when he realized who was laying in that ventilator. He blinked as if it would somehow wake him up from the neverending nightmare, but the old man was still there every time he opened his eyes. “It can’t be…”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s me.”

Lila stared at the man resting in front of her before bursting out in laughter. “No way.” She clapped. “This whole time you’ve been complaining about the Commission, and… you’re the one who founded it. Classic!”

Five tried not to let her mockery get to him in this very trying time. “If I did, I have no memory of it.”

“So, here I was thinking you were a maverick, but you’re a company man, down to the bone. I mean, you…” She laughed harder. “You literally cannot breathe without this place!”

“Something’s not right,” He shook his head. “I don’t have paradox psychosis. I could feel it outside, but in here, it’s… nothing.”

The raspy voice of Old Man Five sounded, “Never were too bright, were we?” He shakily inhaled as his eyes rolled back. “The operations bunker is… paradox-proof. I constructed it as a panic room… in case of a collapse in the time continuum. In this room… all permutations of yourself can exist. You must be here because of a… Kugelblitz.”

Lila tilted her head. “Is that like a cheese blintz?”

“It’s German for ‘ball of lightning’.” Five answered. “It’s an extra kinky kind of black hole.”

“The kind that can suck up entire timelines…”

Old Man Five wheezed. “Bingo.”

“So, how do we fix it?” Five asked.

He gave a chuckle before choking and coughing a bit. “You don’t.”

Five began to twitch as his blood boiled and his patience ran thin. “If you created all of this, then you must have created a solution.”

The old man whimpered as he choked some more, a difficult thing for Five to watch himself do. “All that will be left is… oblivion.”

Five’s eye twitched the less the man’s answers made sense. “Oblivion?” Lila asked, leaning against the machine. “What do you mean?”

The latches of the machine came undone and the old man’s body moved forward, revealing his one-armed form. “This is what you have coming.”

“Listen to me, you ass,” Five seethed. “I just spent the last twenty days running around, saving the world from apocalypses, only to keep trying to save the world. Now I am stuck in this pubescent body, my hormones are raging, and all I wanna do is go out and buy a 1970s Corvette Stingray so I can drive my wife to Creeper Gallery for our honeymoon!”

“Take it easy on him, Five-”

“Lila, this is between me and myself, so stay out of it. Thank you,” He turned back to himself. “Now, this Kugelblitz, it is not some tiny leak that we can simply fix by patching up a couple of pinholes. It is a giant trash compactor which is grinding up the universe and consuming it whole. So tell me… how to stop it!”

Old Man Five whimpered. “Whatever you do…” He choked. “...don’t save the world.”

His heart monitor beeped rapidly before he closed his eyes and went still, the power within the room powering down and shutting off. Five fearfully widened his eyes.

“What do you mean, don’t save- Five!” He shouted at himself before the lights went out. “How do I fix this?!”

Lila felt for a pulse and nodded. “He’s dead, Five.”

It seemed that after forty-five years of isolation, tiring work for a company he apparently founded, and dragging his family through hellhole after hellhole, Five still would not catch a break. Nothing could be an easy fix. After everything, he’s left with yet another dead end. He was physically sick and tired of it and he wanted to cry more than anything, but Lila was still present.

“Can I have the room?” He choked out.

“Er… I don’t think I should leave you two alone-”

“Lila, I need the room.”

With a sigh, she silently left the room. Five scrubbed at his face and inhaled deeply. Even by himself, he couldn’t cry.

He missed (Y/N), as sappy as it sounded. The two of them never had time to be in the lovey-dovey-honeymoon-puppy-dog-eyed period of their relationship, so he was usually forced to keep the urge to grab her face and kiss her all over, to himself. He craved affection from her every second he was with and without her, and right now, a temporary solution to all his problems would be to see her. To hug her, to kiss her. Even just her smile would satiate his desires for now. But yet again, he would have to wait.

“Son of a bitch…” He muttered to his dead self. The missing arm was a mystery and he wondered when it would happen, but the even bigger mystery was the cryptic tattoo centered on his chest. “What’s this?” He whispered, taking out a knife and beginning to cut it out of the dead man’s chest.

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

When the Sparrows entered their home, they paused almost immediately. In front of them, painting the tiled floor, was a bloody footprint trail that led somewhere in the house. “What the hell?” Ben whispered, leading his siblings to where the prints stopped.

Inside of the infirmary, Grace quietly hummed as she tended to (Y/N), who was staring up at the ceiling. Her clothes had been discarded, leaving her in a sports bra and shorts. When they stepped into the room, Ben widened his eyes.

“(Y/N)?”

She turned her head with a smile. “Oh, hey.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Nothing,” She sat up, not even wincing in pain. “What’d you guys do today?”

The four glanced at each other in bewilderment, silently noting that their sister was behaving oddly.

At the hotel, Harlan had heard a distant scream and took off his headphones. “Viktor?” He called out, turning off the sound of birds he was listening to. He stood from his bed and walked out of the room. Harlan wandered the halls of the floor until he entered the room Viktor and Allison shared. “Viktor?” He peeked in, but there was no answer. He stepped inside to find an empty room, his fists clenched anxiously. He hoped Viktor was fine.

When he turned his head to the table in the room, his heart sped up at the six articles gathered. He slowly approached the table and exhaled sharply at the women he recognized with each of the Umbrella’s names written beside their picture.

An Irish woman named Efa. FIVE’S MOTHER?

A Mexican woman named Elena. DIEGO’S MOM?

A Swedish woman named Monica. LUTHER’S MOM?

A South African woman named Victoria. ALLISON’S MOM?

An Amish woman named Rachel. KLAUS’S MOM?

And a Russian woman named Tatiana. VIKTOR’S MOTHER?

Harlan felt sick to his stomach. He quickly grabbed the articles and stumbled out of the room, catching himself against the wall. His face scrunched and his brows furrowed as he thought. What was he going to do? Those women were their mothers? That Russian woman was… Viktor’s mother.

“Harlan, you need to stay in your room.” Viktor’s voice sounded from behind him. When Harlan turned around, Viktor’s face grew worried. “What’s wrong?”

He held up the papers. “Why do you have these? Huh?” He hurriedly rushed up to him. “Why?”

Viktor backed up in fear, never seeing Harlan this way, until he saw what he was holding. “Do you know them?”

He tilted his head before grabbing hold of Viktor, their energy emanating from their skin. He needed to show him.

Harlan showed him the day Sissy died. He didn’t mean to, but his emotions went haywire, his power tossing around hospital beds and tables and chairs within the room. He had turned away from his mother to not harm her, for when his pain spread, his power erupted from him. Unbeknownst to him at the time, his pain had reached several women around the world.

A Swedish woman giving a presentation leaked blood from her nose and eyes before falling to the ground. Monica.

A Mexican woman preparing a meal bled from her eyes and nose while blood burst from her ears. Elena.

A South African woman taught a class when she began bleeding from her eyes and gums before her ears shot out puddles of blood. Victoria.

An Amish woman completing her chores bled from her eyes, nose and ear before collapsing. Rachel.

An Irish butcher happily chopped up meat when her eyes reddened and blood shot out of her nose. Efa.

And a Russian swimmer was just about to dive into a pool when she coughed out blood and crumpled to the floor. Tatiana.

Harlan would remain unaware of this until news of twenty-seven women around the world mysteriously dying on the same day by the same brain hemorrhage, would spread and shock every nation on the planet.

When Viktor was free of his grasp, he gasped out and slowly looked up at Harlan, tears blurring his vision. He couldn’t believe it. Harlan, of all people, the culprit and source of their problems. “It was you? You killed our mothers? You caused all of this?”

Harlan’s lips trembled as he shut his eyes. He turned to Viktor, words dying on his tongue every time he tried to speak. Yes, it was him. Yes, he killed all of their mothers.

And yes, he was the cause of the end of the world.

—————————————

Taglist: @natewrightt @sapphicsyn @m00n-sh @starcurrent @alexander-hamilhoe @youcandalekmyballs @wonderlandfandomkingdom @yrdadjstcallsmekatya @sm0kingcrack @sbyderman @moatsnow @bubblegumflamingos @starstormssymphony @meowiemari @magicalgothpandamaker @keayastitties @hehehehannahthings @harryshomeismyhome @rhain3 @deigobonitooo @xxeiraxx @camerondiaz48104 @theyaremorethanjustfictional @that-can-of-fizz @luckyzipperscissorsbat @0range-slices @molzsecretspace @officialjypofc @dragon-master-kai @justsomecreaturewandering @fandomxo00 @roman0ffsheart @idktbhloley @wifeofcamillamacaulay

#the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #umbrella academy x reader #tua #tua fanfic #tua x reader #tua five #five hargreeves #five hargreeves x reader #number five #number five x reader #five x reader #of starlight #and dusk #to nightfall

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unseelie-robynx · 1 year

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Um…hope you don’t mind me trying to guess this but about the recent ask about Oblivion and the Wife-ified character’s designs and the hints to the newcomer…would it happen to be Tripataka? (Like, we know the newcomer will be involved with Sun Wukong and Macaque because of the sun and moon thing and Tripataka needed Wukong’s protection thought the journey and I remember you mentioning Mac finding a bug so…yeah. I’m officially more worried now)

Refrencing @vegalocity 's POST

Ok so anon wins the 'reading the tags' award as well as the 'making very sold jumps in reasoning from very little directly provided details' so go you.

But yes. In one of our Bad Ends, the Tang Monk does, in fact, get caught.

See a certain Monk isn't happy with the celestial realm's strict, stay the hell away from there until we know what's up, policy. And so he's very much breaking the rules to help Sun Wukong and is one of the main reasons said monkey is still mostly sane and not heavily brainwashed. In the 'middle ground' ending, he's one of the major players in finding out the origins of oblivion and how to stop it.

However, because Sanzang can only do so much, SWK is sill getting brainwashed and there were certain things that pushed him over the edge about the Jade Emporer's rules and... well lets just say that a certain Monk might have thrown a certain staff at a certain bureaucrat's face and then left.

Which, while awesome and enabling him to help more directly, means that he's also around, somewhat. Physically there and tangible because he went to see Macaque (who is ally but also there's a whole clusterfuck of stuff there)

And being physically present means that there's the opportunity for him to be... found.

And caught.

And a certain Prince has a certain calabash that has been remade to blast Oblivion and overwhelm whoever's inside it.

And there's only so long anyone, even an enlightened being, can hold out against that.

And, well, just maybe a certain monk has been pinning and in denial for a very, VERY long time. And maybe something get's said inside the calabash that sparks a whole chain of other unpleasantness, and a crack in the armor that a certain Tyrant Prince can use to break him.

All of this started with an Oblivion induced confession after all, things are just staying true to their roots

#lmk #lego monkie kid #monkie kid #tyrant prince AU #oblivion series #this ending MAYBE came from a half asleep morning #and the mental image of a brainwashed Sanzang with Vega's signature static eyes #and hearts in the pupils #and 'Yes My King'#and I went...#whelp #time to make things even WORSE for everyone #rob responds

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not-available-for-comment · 1 year

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Ok, so Firefox’s pocket suggestions have been trying to get me to read a list of “8 life-changing nonfiction books selected by top authors” and while I don’t really feel like reading that article, I think it could make a cool prompt. Nonfiction tends to have a rep for being dry or trite, but I think it can be powerful and engaging as well. I probably don’t have near enough followers to be doing a book rec post, but whatev, I like talking about books, we’re doing this.

Prompt: List 5-8 Life-Changing Nonfiction Books

In no particular order:

1. The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani (2008)

This is probably the book I’m most scared to go back and read, because I suspect parts of it did not age well. I think she’s released an updated edition and I’m interested in revisiting that one. That said, as someone raised in a very conservative environment, this book completely revolutionized my thinking on harm reduction strategies like needle exchanges and free condoms from the cOnDONinG bAd beHaViOr bullshit I believed when I was younger to “oh look, a way to keep people alive and healthy”. She also had some eye opening comments on the “rescuing women from developing nation brothels” charities that were so popular in the 90s. I still think about the insights in this book often.

2. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler (1993)

I don’t know if I can even describe how foundational this book was for me when I first read it in my early 20s. Kunstler describes the way cars have usurped human comfort in American architecture, land management, and city planning in meticulous detail. It made me look at my environment with new eyes, and appreciate alternatives I had barely even grasped, in spite of having traveled internationally. I don’t recall Kunstler’s book explicitly speaking to the disabled community’s concerns with anti-car rhetoric, which have gotten increasingly relevant over time. But I still highly recommend the book as an excellent introduction for USians interested in improving our lived environment and anyone else who wants to know What The Hell Happened With The US And Cars.

3. Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman (2009)

I’ve never been an intuitive cook: the kind of person who can look in the cupboard and throw together a dish based on what I can see. I actually started out baking almost exclusively, because the precision of baking recipes helped keep me from going astray. Ruhlman’s book was the first to help me crack the cooking code. Ironically, I’ve made very few of his recipes, which tend to have an overly fussy, professional chef ring to them. But learning about the basic ratios and techniques that went into popular western dishes helped me start to understand how cooking worked. It’s been 10 years since I read Ruhlman’s book, and I still often cook with a recipe. But sometimes I don’t. And his book is part of the reason why.

4. My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Nagata Kabi (2009)

I’m sure this one isn’t new to a tumblr audience, but it deserves its excellent reputation. This graphic memoir is hard to quantify accurately. It is, of course, an important work on the experience of being queer in Japan. But it’s also a searching, thoughtful, and sometimes brutal examination of the self, a coming of age story that is unsentimental but insightful and, I think, ultimately hopeful. I bought the book several years after it came out, at a time when I personally felt like a failure and a disappointment to my parents, and devoured it and felt less alone. Highly recommend to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. (Note that it does at one point describe the author’s eating disorder.)

5. Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose (2017)

This book revolutionized the way I thought about personal essays. This is not “I had a mildly risqué experience as a young white middle class cis woman which I will now recount to you for money.” Nor is it really my much-beloved genre of creative nonfiction that combines rapturous descriptions of the taste and scent of peaches with rigorously researched discursions on the history of the state of Georgia. No, this is a creative explosion, raining color and candy, flashing by your face too quickly to be fully registered but delightful all the same. Chew-Bose writes stream of consciousness, but one loaded with sharply observed images and quicksilver thoughts, tangents to tangents to tangents, some circling back and some not, personal memory and constant cascades of cultural commentary threading together into universal but deeply personal tapestries. If you have any taste at all for either essays or virtuoso writing you MUST read this book.

I think that’s a good stopping point for me. Curious to see if anyone else does this prompt and if so, what they pick.

#book recs #rocky rambles

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haru-sen · 10 months

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Wanted: Alpha Readers

Hitting a wall with the original series. Looking for someone who's interested in reading a WIP and giving feedback. Bonus if you're good with me word-vomiting at you while I refine some concepts. (I promise I'll keep crying fits to a minimum.)

Book 1: The Foxglove Pact

Welcome to Illium, City of Lies, a home to man, monsters, and magic, where the cardinal rule is “don’t draw attention to the occult underground.” Except it’s not so underground any more: it lives down the street, goes to PTA meetings, and occasionally eats your pets

Private investigator Feng Yue “Claire” Giles is skeptical when a client, with severe credibility issues, comes in convinced that his child was switched for a Fey Changeling. He claims that he killed the impostor, and now he wants his real kid back. Worse, he has the influence to make her take the job.

Claire is not in this alone. She has a potential ally in the scarred mercenary Dreyson, though his past is even more checkered than hers, and none of her allies trust him. But both are on the job and under threat, physically and romantically, from the Fey Court enforcer known as the Crow Knight.

Claire has a very strained relationship with the law and a layman’s grasp of the supernatural, a combination that forces her to walk a very thin line, but also makes her precisely the right person to take this case. Especially when one of the Changelings shows up to hire her to find their human counterpart. However, the Fey Courts, preternatural civil servants, and local mercenaries all have their own agendas: not everyone wants her digging up the past. Changelings start turning up dead and this alleged baby-switching case has far-reaching consequences for the city, the children, and their families. Now Claire needs to move fast to find the Changelings and their human counterparts before it’s too late.

Book 2: The Wolfbane Trail *Contains spoilers for the Foxglove Pact

Welcome to Illium, City of Refuge, where a disgraced knight, an exiled princess, and traumatized Changeling children can give therapy a test run. Here, there is also a Family Law Division of the Shadow Courts, so yes, supernatural custody disagreements can turn into all-out war, but that isn’t really so different from everyone else; if you ignore the involvement of another sovereign state, generational curses, and murderous tree-people.

Feng Yue “Claire” Giles is now employed by the diplomatic half of the Lares, the bureaucratic guardians of the city. Her interest remains in protecting both the Changeling children (human and Fey) and the Vernal Princess, the true heir to subjugated Spring Court. Both the current ruler and an exiled uncle make a bid for custody, their political machinations and the violence of the Courts spilling over into the city. Claire opposes returning the young princess, and this stance unfortunately, puts her on the same side as the Crow Knight, who seems hellbent on courting both her and the mercenary Dreyson.

Worse, werewolves are going missing, their body parts are turning in black market shops, with no clues as to how they are disappearing. With everyone focused on the violence of the Fey Courts spilling into the city, a few missing werewolves aren’t the priority. Even Claire’s boss and close friend, Thomas Remington, refuses to help the Special Investigations Unit on the case. Against her better judgment, and everyone else’s advice, Claire agrees to look into the matter.

With tensions high, and alliances shifting, Claire needs all the help she can get to keep the children safe, stay alive, and push the Fey fighting out of the city, before everything goes straight to hell.

Book 3: The Pain in My Ass WIP

So much family drama, lol.

#writing

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whimsicalworldofme · 1 year

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Saving Grace: Chapter Forty-Nine

When the world needs the Avengers, Steve Rogers won’t stop at anything to keep it safe.

After spending the whole morning battling to get anything actually productive done, Grace gave up. Bruce had holed himself up in the command center, which is what her dad called the largest conference room that had all the toys and tech the Avengers would use to plan a mission, and was coordinating with whatever members of the team he could get hold of to get them up to speed on what was happening and get a response team in motion. Everyone else had made themselves busy. Pepper had meetings with partner companies that couldn’t be put off because she couldn’t very well tell everyone there was an alien invasion pending and take the day off. Grace had insisted she was fine, but she couldn’t focus, couldn’t think of anything but the looming threat and the nagging feeling that something had gone horribly wrong, which caused her father’s current state of silence.

“Friday, please let Pepper know I’m going out for a walk around the property,” she told the AI after conceding that nothing would get done and changing into a pair of yoga pants, a Led Zeppelin tee, and her comfortable sneakers.

“Of course, Dr. Turner,” the AI answered.

Pulling her hair into a ponytail as she walked down the hall towards the front door, she contemplated which trail she wanted to take. Her dad had set up quite a few nice trails around the compound because he and Pepper had recently taken up running together in Central Park.

“Uncle Rhodey?”

She halted when her dad’s best friend stepped through the front door just as she was about to head outside. He’d insisted she start calling him Uncle when they’d spent so much time together developing his leg braces and working together during his physical therapy.

“Hey Grace.”

He flashed a guilty half-smile, the sort that gave away that something was off. Before she could ask what it was that had him looking so guilt-ridden, Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross stepped through the door behind him, adjusting the sleeves of his suit jacket.

“What the hell is he doing here,” she glared daggers at the old man whose lips curved up in a sharky smile that made her want to throw a solid punch right at his smug, stupid face. Clenching her fist, she did her bet to fight the urge.

“The situation that’s developing is something only the Avengers can handle,” Rhodey explained gently, taking a step to the side to put himself physically between her and Ross, just in case. He knew well enough by now that she had enough of her father’s tendencies to be the sort who could be an absolute menace and either insult the Secretary of State or throw an unsolicited swing at him. “Like it or not, he has to be involved.”

“As head of the Avengers—” Ross began and something in Grace’s brain snapped.

“My father and my fiancée are head of the Avengers,” she spat. “You’re just a bureaucratic obstacle in a cheap suit.”

“I don’t expect a civilian like you to understand the importance of the government’s oversight—”

“Oh, fuck off you overinflated stooge,” Grace rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Grace,” Rhodey laid a hand on her upper arm, trying to calm her, his eyes flashing an unspoken message of caution.

“Don’t worry about it, Uncle Rhodey. It’s not like he can send me to the superhero supermax prison for calling him names,” she stated before leaning around her uncle so she could shoot another potshot at the secretary while looking him directly in the eye. “Can you, you vacuous waste of oxygen?”

“Colonel Rhodes,” Ross growled in warning.

“Grace, there’s a line,” Rhodey cautioned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“He shouldn’t be here,” Grace lowered her voice, leaning in to whisper to him. “I don’t want him anywhere on the compound unaccompanied.”

“I will keep him in the command center and make sure I’m on him at all times.”

“And the instant your meeting is over, I want him off my father’s property,” she added.

“I will take care of it,” he promised.

Grace nodded, the momentary lull in her anger giving way to the unsettling fear that had been hovering over her the last few days. She felt her eyes stinging with the threat of tears and she sniffed, eyes dropping to her feet.

“My dad’s missing, isn’t he?”

Rhodey made an unusual, grunting sound as he fumbled for an answer and Grace looked back up at him, seeing the truth in his eyes, just in case his lack of words hadn’t made it clear.

“He would’ve recommended meeting with Ross in the sewers before he suggested bringing him here. And if he had to bring him here, he never would’ve allowed him on the premises without being here to keep him from snooping around.”

“Don’t let your brain go to worst case scenario,” Rhodey tried to comfort her, but since Grace’s brain had already ventured down that path, she couldn’t stop. “He’s gone missing before,” he reminded her. “He always turns up eventually, just give him a little time. He’ll be back before you know it, promise.”

Always with the promises. She wanted to roll her eyes but she knew he was only trying to help, so she tamped down her anger and simply nodded.

“Colonel Rhodes, this is a time sensitive issue,” Ross huffed from behind him.

“I’ll catch up with you after, ok?” Rhodey looked her in the eye and she nodded again. “Good,” he turned on his heel and stepped towards Ross, gesturing for him to make his way down the hall with him. “Follow me, Mr. Secretary.”

Despite Rhodey’s calm insistence that her dad would turn up, that everything would be fine, Grace couldn’t help the anxiety attack that she felt coming on. It felt like a heart attack, her chest tight, breathing shallow. She fumbled with her bracelet as she stepped out into the sunshine of the morning, hitting the button that unleashed her nanotech suit.

“Dr. Turner are you all right?” Friday’s voice inquired as the armor encased her and the visor of her helmet dropped. “I’m detecting elevated heartrate and low blood oxygen levels.”

“Just a panic attack Friday,” she gasped. “Gotta focus on something else, so please don’t ask again.”

“Of course, Dr. Turner,” the AI agreed as she shot off the ground, straight up into the sky.

Flying provided a good distraction as she skimmed over the top of the property’s manmade lake, dragging just the tips of her toes through the water, which threw up a rooster tail behind her, like a speedboat. She broke from the open spaces and began zipping through trees along one of the wooded jogging trails. Having to keep her mind fully on what was in front of her kept her from descending into a total and complete breakdown. After a while, she rocketed straight up into the sky, letting out a primal guttural yell to vent all the twisted knotted mass of emotions roiling around in her.

“Dr. Turner, there’s an incoming aircraft, please divert your course,” Friday stated and a dotted line display popped up on the screen of her visor to guide her out of harm’s way.

“Thanks, Friday,” she sighed and followed the charted path down and back towards the compound. Rolling onto her back she saw a quintjet approaching and wondered which Avengers were on board. With Bruce and Rhodey there already, her dad missing, and half the team on the lam, she racked her brain to figure out who it might be.

It wouldn’t be Thor; he’s got his own stuff going on. Maybe Clint? Would they bring in Hill? Where’s Fury? Oh, what’s Ant Man’s name? Scott?

She lingered in the air, keeping her distance from the quintjet as it landed, slowly getting closer as the gangplank began to descend. She came to a landing at the foot of it and opened up her visor in time to see Wanda, Vision, and Sam, in his Falcon suit, exit the jet, Vision between the other two, clearly injured and needing assistance to walk.

“Oh my god,” she gaped, hitting the button to have her armor retract into her bracelet. Dashing up the ramp, she met them halfway. “You guys can’t be here. Secretary Ross is here. He’ll arrest you.”

“Good to see you too, Doc,” Sam snorted a laugh, clearly unbothered by her warning.

“Vision, are you going to be ok?” She couldn’t see any visible injuries, but clearly, he needed help. “Do you need me to help out in the workshop with anything?” Since he was a humanoid android or sorts, he needed tech assistance, not medical. She wasn’t as knowledgeable as her dad, but she could do little things here and there.

“I think I can manage, Dr. Turner, thank you,” Vision replied.

“I can get you into the building undetected but you’re going to have to lay low,” Grace felt a knot in her stomach, worrying about how to keep her little family of superheroes safe from the snarly government official she’d riled up lurking in the command center.

“Ross knows we’re coming,” Nat stated as she came down the ramp. She was dressed in her usual black spy suit and her usual red hair had been dyed platinum blonde and cut short. Coming to a halt in front of Grace, she crossed her arms over her chest, giving her a stern look. “What, no hug?” She asked in a flat tone that made Grace burst out laughing when a second prior she’d felt like doing anything but. A grin cracked Nat’s serious expression and they hugged, like sisters that hadn’t seen each other in years.

“Oh my god, I’m so glad to see you all,” Grace felt her heart full to bursting as she and Nat each took a step back, hands on each other’s shoulders. “Are you going to be safe here though, with Ross?”

“I will let the Captain explain all that.”

Nat tipped her head back towards the quintjet and then stepped aside just as Steve stepped onto the gangplank causing Grace’s heart to leap into her throat. With a gentle squeeze of her arm, Nat headed the off with the others into the building, leaving her momentarily too stunned to move or even speak to the man she loved. It felt impossible and somehow unreal, to the point that she didn’t trust her eyes.

“Hey Grace,” Steve said softly, a shy smile on his lips.

It was enough to break her out of her stupor. She bolted up the ramp, crashing into him, feeling warm and woozy as he wrapped his arms around her. Slinging her arms around his neck she held him tight, getting as close to him as she possibly could, all her fears and anxiety momentarily forgotten. She breathed deeply the scent of his skin and relished the feel of his hand on her back as he pulled her close. He let out a contented sigh, nuzzling her neck, giving her goosebumps and making her heart flutter.

“What are you doing here?” She asked, almost on the brink of tears. “Ross is going to try to arrest you the minute you walk into the room.”

“Bruce called,” he explained. “Told me something was coming.” They parted just enough to look each other in the eye. “I’m not about to leave the earth defenseless just because I’m not government sanctioned anymore.”

Grace nodded, crestfallen. Things were worse than she’d feared if he was about to charge in there with Ross and take command back. It also confirmed even further that her dad was truly missing in action.

“I know you’re scared,” he cupped her face, running his thumb along her cheek, his soft blue eyes earnest as they met hers, “I’m not going to tell you not to be. I can’t make promises, but I’m going to do everything I can to keep you safe and bring Tony back home.”

“Thank you for not making promises. I’m so sick of everyone making promises they have no way of keeping.”

She let out a burdened sigh and leaned into him, pressing her forehead to his chest. Steve kissed the top of her head and wrapped his arms tightly around her.

“We should get inside,” he said without making a move to go. They stayed like that for a minute, wrapped up in each other. Taking in a deep breath, he finally broke from her. He kissed her softly before taking her by the hand. “Come on,” he offered a grim half-smile, “let’s get this over with.”

With a nod, Grace allowed him to lead her by the hand away from the hangar back towards the residential building. She couldn’t help herself from staring at him, overwhelmed by her feelings for him in that moment. His hair had gotten longer since she’d seen him the previous year in Wakanda and he had a full beard. Just an affectionate glance from him, his eyes crinkling slightly at the corners as he smiled, set her whole body aflame. But there was a sorrow mingled into the moment, the weight hanging over both of them that this was another brief moment together before Steve charged head first into danger. He squeezed her hand and she leaned against him, taking a deep breath and trying to steady herself.

He's home and he’s safe. Just try to enjoy this moment, right now.

She leaned into him, resting her head against him, taking the time to commit to memory the way his hand felt around hers, their fingers interwoven, the feeling of safety and comfort his presence brought. It almost felt like they had stepped back in time to when Steve was training the newest Avengers, when they would take afternoon walks along the lake and talk about wedding plans, thoughts on the future, how many kids they wanted, what kind of house they wanted and where, and what they would do with their time once they were free from their superhero entanglements. It felt like a whole other lifetime.

Grace walked with him all the way to the command center, where they could see most of the team, sans her dad, gathered around the table, almost all of them avoiding Ross as much as possible.

“Come find me when you’re done,” she cupped his face affectionately, not really wanting to leave him, but knowing she didn’t belong in that meeting. Going up on her tiptoes, she drew his face down to meet hers, which made him chuckle, and kissed him sweetly. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” he grinned, kissing her one more time before slipping out of her grasp and making his way into the command center.

Running one hand up and down her arm, she lingered for just a moment, watching Steve confront Ross. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Ross’s facial expressions conveyed the gist, which picked up her mood enough to feel fine about walking away and carrying on with her day.

Chapter 48

Masterlist

Chapter 50

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