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orionwhispers · 4 years

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Tear In My Heart // Alfie Solomons

(A/N - hehe im back. im working on a bucky oneshot and a tommy series but both of them are super long and i wanted to take a little breather. this was supposed to be a drabble but you know me... ive got a few more ideas for shorter imagines like this with tommy and alf, requests are open! hope you enjoy. pls reblog and comment. love u see u soon xoxxo - also this is like the smuttiest thing ive written even though its not explicit but wow who am i)

warnings: violence, mention of fights and blood, protective alfie, heavily implied smut, lots of terrible language.

You knew something was wrong when Ollie practically crashed through the door. He took off part of the frame and made the hinges tear from the wood, nails and screws clattering onto the ground. The afternoon had been wonderful, perhaps too wonderful, and as always, real life found a way to shatter your rose tinted glasses.

It was starting to fall into autumn, the air chilly but comfortable, the streets slick with rain and the leaves turning into a sweet, buttery caramel all around you. The house was silent save for the birds singing in the trees and the rattling whip of the wind against your windows. The quiet was a perk of having house out in the country, far away from anything and anyone. Just the way he liked it.

Because to him, all he needed was his girl.

Well, and his dog.

The sun had barely risen when you got up - much to your husbands protests. You felt him stirring from beside you, a solid wall of warmth as he snaked his arms around your waist and pressed sleepy, half drunk kisses onto your spine. You laughed tiredly as his hands curled over everything they could reach, long calloused fingers roaming against your bare skin. He grumbled as you swung your legs from under the duvet and onto the floor, throwing on his white cotton shirt and letting it fall to your knees, trying to ignore the threats he was mumbling about what he was going to do to your boss for making you come in so early.

He made one last feeble attempt to grab you, exhaustion clouding his brain so he could do no more than swipe at the top of your thigh, making you laugh at his wandering hands.

“Stay.” He said, voice raspy and muffled by his pillow.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“Alf.” You sighed playfully, grabbing your strawberry slip dress and beaded heels and fur coat, darting into the bathroom to wash up and change. Through the noise of the running water you could hear the bed springs creak as he shifted, the entire frame groaning almost as much as him. Cyril watched you with his big chestnut eyes from the doorway as you fluffed up your hair and patted on coffee coloured lipstick, pinching the apples of your cheeks for a little flush.

You rummaged through your handbag as you made your way to the bedroom door, lost in your thoughts until you heard him speak, all low and gravelly and sending shivers up your spine.

“Oi. C’mere you.”

You rolled your eyes but walked into his outstretched arms, his body completely slumped and covered in thick duvets and pillows, just his tattooed skin and coarse, tousled hair poking out from underneath. He pulled you close into him, smelling like green apples and rum and sex and sea salt, like home. He mumbled something that you couldn’t quite make out, the sun starting to shine through the cracks in the curtains and as you started to get up he tugged you in tighter, placing messy, sloppy kisses down your throat and onto your collarbones.

You smacked his shoulder, grabbing his jaw and holding it still, placing a kiss on his lips, feeling him smile against your mouth.

“Bye, my love.”

“Hmph.”

You made it halfway down the hall before you heard: “Fred is driving you. Don’t even bloody think about walking alone at this time.” Followed by grunts and groans and finally deep, throaty snores.

———————————————————-

You accompanied your boss to a few meetings, taking notes and helping him check stock. After a few hours filled with cinnamon lattes and finger cramps and ink stains, he took you aside at the office and gave you the rest of the day off. You were a little suspicious, and had a feeling his good deed might have had something to do with your slightly intimidating husband, but you accepted it nonetheless and headed to Camden after lunch.

The air was brisk and you pulled your scarf tighter around your throat, dodging puddles and fat droplets of rain as they dropped from the trees. You stopped off at a little cafe on your side of town, buying turkey sandwiches, a garden salad and a platter of seasonal fruit, ignoring the fried sugar donuts and sausage rolls and thick, crispy cuts of bacon. A routine check up to the doctor had lead to Alfie being told that perhaps a healthier lifestyle would benefit some of his ailments, so despite his grumbling and childish ways you were doing your best to make sure he was eating his five a day - no matter how much he protested.

But at the last second you grabbed a cherry jam donut. His favourite.

The rain had become torrential by the time you left, the clouds morphing into a block of ashen, sooty grey, teetering on black. Once upon a time the impending storm would have made you feel nervous, the rattling trees and flashes of lightning had been the reason for many sleepless nights when you were a child, but now you looked forward to it.

Because now it meant something different. You, Alfie and Cyril curled up in bed, the fire roaring and flickering a brilliant orange gold. Your husbands arms tight around you, squeezing softly every time there was a clap of thunder, his kisses warm and protective across your throat, knowing that he’d never let anything hurt you. Drinking tea spiked with rum and playing cards, listening to the rain against the windows, feeling the white burst of lighting every time it struck the sky. Falling asleep next to each other, Alfie always waiting for you to doze off first, unable to sleep unless he knew you were alright.

You had once hated storms, and now you wished for them.

Your umbrella was totally battered by the time you got to the bakery. The bottom of your dress was damp from puddles and your shoes were on their last legs, the satin ruined and black with mud, but you didn’t care, walking through the side entrance with a smile bigger than the moon. A few of the old boys saw you instantly, straightening up and grinning at you, welcoming you with whisky soaked aprons and calloused hands. Back when you and Alfie started dating he had all but forbidden his staff from looking, talking, or even thinking about you, but over the years you had formed a close relationship with his workers - something about your warmth and light easing up the darkness. At first Alfie huffed and puffed about it a little, but he couldn’t exactly blame his men for loving you - he was a perfect example of how you brought a strong man to his knees after all.

“Is he upstairs?” You asked George, one of the distillers. As soon as he nodded you left, your heels clicking against the cool basement flooring. You didn’t bother knocking as you approached the big, intimidating door to his office, instead just grabbing the brass lion head knob and twisting it, hearing the hinges whine in protest.

“What the fuck?” His voice was as deep and rumbling as a low tide, his tone so dark and sharp that it might have scared you, if you didn’t know him as the man who fed the ducks fresh bread at the park and cuddled Cyril when the vets had to give him an injection. “How many fucking times do I have to ask you lot to fucking knock. I mean it’s a - ”

He stopped short when he saw you, eyes going wide and lips twitching upwards just a little. He slipped into business mode whenever he sat at the leather chair behind his desk, but you always managed to chip away at his foundation.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too.” You laughed, walking around his desk to see him, his legs naturally opening to let you stand in between them, his eyes following every curve and line of your face, settling on the natural rosebud flush of your lips.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes.” He mused, ring clad fingers darting around your waist and pulling you in. He toyed with the buttons on your dress and the jewellery around your neck, his fingers rough and large and as hot as a fire. His day had been shitty so far, but seeing the sparkle in your eyes and the loose curl of your hair had made everything much, much better.

“Hmm.” You said, leaning into his touch, batting away his hand as it slipped somewhere a little too low. “Marcus gave me the afternoon of so I thought I would come and surprise you.”

He blinked up at you, all wistful and love drunk and making your knees turn into blackcurrant jelly. “Did you now?”

“Yep.” You smiled, brushing your nose against his before pulling back and teasingly shaking the paper bag of baked goods in your hand. “And I bought gifts.”

“Yeah. Yeah. In a minute.” He barely registered them, instead dragging you into him, pressing kisses to your lips and letting you wash away any thoughts from his brain, not stopping until he was totally, completely drowning in you.

——————————————————-

That was how you ended up cross legged on the sofa, devouring your new novel and sipping on the rose and oolong tea Alfie kept in the cupboard for when you visited the factory. You could hear the rain pattering down the windows around you, mixed with the scratch of Alfie’s fountain pen and the sound of him rifling through his papers. It was fun to watch him as well as listen to him, the way his eyebrows raised when he read something he didn’t like, the twitch of his nose and the way that he ran his fingers through the coarse hair of his beard, moulding it to a peak at the bottom of his chin.

He watched you as well. When you got so into your book that your brows furrowed and your nose wrinkled. The way your hair was loose and wild, your stockings a soft pink under the stormy sky, your eyes wide and frantic, desperate to read as much as you could. He smiled at the way your leg bounced, how you tried to pick the stems from your strawberries with one hand but then accidentally squished them, the juice running down your wrist. He especially liked the way you were using his winter coat as a blanket, drowning in the fabric like a child, the collar snug around your chin.

Everything was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

You heard Ollie before you saw him, the crash of his laced black boots thundering up the stairs, the way that he collided with the door rather than opening it first. You and Alfie stood up at the same time, his eyes immediately darting to you, gesturing for you to get behind him.

“Eric’s here.” Was all the boy said, and you watched the colour drain from Alfie’s face.

“Eric?” You said, “Eric Martin?”

Your question lingered in the air as the two men walked around one another, gesturing wildly and talking under their breath; Alfie completely frantic and flustered. You had only heard of Alfie’s new business partner in passing, the two of them had spent the better part of a year talking through agreements and shipments and trying to manoeuvre a deal where the two of them could co exist happily - Alfie’s rum and Eric’s stolen goods sharing a boat so that the city checks would be easier. Alfie had never been particularly quite when it came to business. He liked to include you and get your opinion on things, he trusted you most of all anyway, but he had been secretive when it came to Eric.

You had heard through Ollie and rumours at the club and whispers in the factory that this “Eric” was a man not to be trifled with. Apparently he was unpredictable and violent, and he belonged to one of the major crime gangs in Cambridge. None of this scared you though, many people thought the exact same of the man you shared your bed with, and you knew a side of him that nobody else saw. The gossip was barbed and cruel though. They said he was conniving and underhanded, and that his last two wives had been admitted to hospital with broken and fractured bones.

So Alfie tried cutting him out as much as he could, never wanting to say his name or talk about him in the safety of his home, not with you around. Your home was his solace, and he wouldn’t taint his life with you in blood red - you were too important. You never thought much of it, but watching his reaction, his sudden overprotectiveness and stern frown and rattled demeanour, made you just a little bit frightened.

“What the fuck does he want?” Alfie snapped, pulling your coat over your shoulders frantically and starting to button it up, then helping you tug on your boots and lace them.

“He’s pissed about the Brighton shipment, he says his liquor didn’t get there on time.”

“Stupid fucking...” Alfie’s voice trailed off like smoke, something downstairs on the factory floor clattering loudly followed by distinct, angry shouts. “We told him it was too risky with the police there, he should have fucking listened. We were due a meeting next week, tell him to fuck off and come back then.”

“He won’t listen.”

“Make him.”

“I...” He started, but Alfie cut him off again, standing next to you and taking your face in his large, calloused hands.

“Right, pet. Stay here for a little bit, and when it clears up, Ollie will take you out the back, alright?”

“Alfie...” You started to protest, before exhaling and sighing as he turned to his protégée.

“You got that, Ol? Nothing is to happen to her.”

You were getting a little hot with being ordered around, but the visible anxiety swimming across their faces like the midnight sea was enough for you to close your mouth. Instead of agreeing with his boss, Ollie shook his head, sucking on his lower lip as he tried to think of a way to convey the sincerity of the situation.

“He’s really angry, Alfie. You need to go down, now. Before he decides to come up.”

“Yeah, alright.”

Your fingers clenched, and you darted out to tug on the edge of his sleeve before he left.“Alfie. Please be careful.”

There was a smog of anxiety in your stomach and warning signs ringing like alarms in your mind as he pressed a tender kiss to the top of your head, his lips brushing your hairline. You chewed on the edge of your lip as he left, and you wondered how your blissful afternoon had turned into this: your body shaking with nerves as your husband descended down the stairs and into the belly of the beast.

Ollie reached out and touched your shoulder, trying to help you feel calm but his face was the colour of tepid dishwater, paling by the second.

“He’ll be fine.”

You crossed all of your fingers and toes.

———————————————————————

About twenty minutes passed, and the shouting had gone from ear piercingly loud to a low hum, which you found oddly comforting despite everything. You watched as Ollie fiddled with his pocket watch, the two of you waiting until it was safe to head downstairs.After a moment you heard the sound of the giant metal door opening, the one right at the front where the workers came in and the bakery goods were delivered, a clear indication from Alfie that Eric was leaving.

Ollie leapt up and smiled faintly at you, edging you towards the door as you swung your handbag across your chest. You scoffed a little as you walked, turning to face him.

“If Eric is gone, why can’t I stay?”

Ollie merely rolled his eyes, his hand migrating to your lower back as he all but pushed you forward. You might have been able to get away with ignoring Alfie’s orders, but he certainly wouldn’t. “You know Alfie won’t want you here after that. There’s no use fighting him about it, he’ll want you back at home.”

You sighed but conceded, allowing yourself to be guided down the staircase. At least at home you could distract yourself and have Cyril with you, his big treacle eyes were the perfect remedy to a bad day.

You were right beside the back door and ready to leave when you heard a voice cracking like thunder from behind you, something as sharp as a knife and as loud as a church bell. You both froze instantly, every nerve in your body feathering, your heart aching to know that Alfie was alright.

“You little fucking liar.” Cut around the room like barbed wire. “How long were you planning on hiding this shipment from me?” There was another crash, and you could hear liquid trickling and dribbling into a puddle, followed by the sweet, sour smell of alcohol.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re on about mate.” It was Alfie speaking now, his voice lowered to a dangerous octave, and you could picture the lightning like anger on his face. “Calm down.”

“Calm down? Calm down? You’ve been sending things off without my knowledge!”

“I said. Fucking calm down.” The sound of a hand slamming down on wood, as fierce as a slap on the face. “You don’t want to make an enemy of me.”

There was another scuffle: rapid footsteps on the floor, the crack of knuckles and the smell of ash. A couple of the boys darted in from the other room, their shirts untucked and hands turning red. You watched them curiously, stepping forward on unsteady heels to try and pinpoint the commotion. You felt Ollie's hand reach for you but you leapt out of his grasp, at the same time a body flew from the next room and landed in a heap next to barrels of aged rum and whisky, the wood heaving from the strain.

You glanced at the man on the floor, his body oddly contorted, his bald head glistening with sweat and his body reeking of putrid alcohol and cigarettes. This was obviously Eric. Your eyes widened in disgust at the drunk, violent man taking swings at whoever he could, wanting nothing more than to get away from him. You saw Alfie emerge from the shadows, his gaze flitting straight to you, his hands swollen and his face flushed with visible anger at the man sprawled on the ground.

Before you could retreat, Eric’s wide, black eyes landed on you, practically bulging out of his head with adrenaline and anger and excitement. “ You know, Alfie.” He asked through bubbles of saliva, scrambling to his feet as best he could, lunging for you. You saw Alfie and a few of his best men move forward, hands ready like cocked guns to strike if they needed to. Eric ignored them, wanting to pack as many fatal blows in whilst he had the chance. “Everybody at the club talks about your little whore of a wife, Solomon’s.”

The room fell deadly silent. His words didn’t affect you at all, but you felt a pool of dread settle in your gut and you stepped backwards, warning him with your eyes. He was at the back of the room, but you could still feel the anger vibrating from your husband, and you heard him smack his lips as he tried to calm himself down.

Eric ignored your alarmed glare, spitting onto the concrete and looking you up and down with pure disgust and shameless lust. “You know that people only do business with you to get to her?”

“Don’t. You. Fuck - ” Alfie’s boots thundered like a stampede, his voice as dark and raspy as midnight, his words sharpened like butchers knives.

“Maybe I’ll have a go at her. Maybe it’ll teach you a little respect. If I have a go at that smug little whore and slap her around a little and....”

He didn’t finish his sentence, Alfie’s cane smashing against the side of Eric’s head with enough momentum to send his teeth flying, small milky white canines lying a few feet in front of you in a pool of sticky blood. He made some kind of noise from on the floor, his hands coming up to protect what was left of his face, his polished shoes desperately trying to grip onto something to help him up. There was a second hit. And then a third. Each accompanied by ear splitting cries, and the sound of flesh against stone.

“Don’t you ever, ever, speak about my wife like that again.” You could just about make out Alfie from the darkness, his silhouette mighty and terrifying, leaning over the shattered body on the floor, filled with a hatred that seemed to overpower him.

“I - ” Eric tried to speak but only blood pooled from his mouth, his body weakened and damaged from the attack. He tried to cover himself with his hands but failed, another ear piercing crack echoing around the room.

You lunged forward, wanting to stop your husband before he went too far. “Alfie! Stop! You’re going to kill him!”

He blinked up at you, his pupils swallowed by black. His gaze lowered from you onto the wailing man on the ground, his words playing on a loop in his brain, digging their nails in every time the record restarted.

He had said those evil things about you.

He glanced at Ollie, finally opening his mouth to speak. “Take her home.”

You struggled in Ollie’s grip, desperate to see your husband and knock some sense into him. Your heart hung heavy in your chest, equal parts terrified that he would either end up hurt or in a more dangerous situation than the one he was already in. You fought hard but Ollie’s hold was tighter, his fingers squeezing you tightly. He tried to be kind but forceful as he pulled you out into the alley, your heard turned back to face your husband, watching as him and the shadow on the floor faded to a dull, awful, obsidian.

—————————————-

You were certain you were going to make holes in the wood. You had been pacing back and forth the living room floor for almost an hour, and Cyril had abandoned his mission of trying to cheer you up, and instead watched you protectively and cautiously from his wicker basket beside the sofa.

You had chewed your sunshine yellow nails down to the wick, and your heart hadn’t stop thumping since you had left the warehouse. Ollie had left you to your thoughts, keeping watch outside to make sure nothing harmed you, and also that you didn’t harm somebody else.

Dealing with hysterical women wasn’t really his forte.

There had been no word from Alfie since you had left, and so you watched the teal wall phone endlessly, hoping that it would ring and you would know he was alright. You were greeted with nothing but ice cold silence, and so you resumed your pacing, biting down on the skin of your thumb until you could taste blood.

Right before you were about to lose all control and demand Ollie take you to see him, you heard the crunch of the gravel outside, and saw lemon headlights flash against the wall. Cyril’s head lifted quickly, and his tail began to thump, but your feet turned to concerted and you were unable to do anything other than wait.

You were as still as a spectre as you stood facing the door, your body prickling with anxiety and adrenaline. A car - you assumed Ollie’s - coughed and spluttered over the rocks and into the road, leaving you alone with Alfie. You heard the key in the lock, practically felt the metal ridges running over your spine as he pulled and twisted and finally came inside, the sky a gloomy, smoky grey, rain falling so harshly it was almost hail.

He was shaped so strongly, his figure so barbed and brawny and beautiful. You felt totally mortal beside a man like him, and he looked even more so like a God when you saw him under the icy white lamp light in the hall.

He was covered in blood. Soaked in it, really. It was matted in his hair and in ugly brown splotches across his once pristine shirt and under his fingernails and smeared across his boots in a shade of red you had never seen before. It was obvious he had tried to clean himself up judging from the uneven patches and water marks, but he had given up, deciding to risk everything and drive through the streets like an abattoir worker, just so he could see you as quickly as he could.

You let out some kind of noise and stepped forward, he caught you effortlessly, the way that he always would.

“Alfie.” You said, wide eyed and innocent and good, and he felt like a sinner holding something so angelic in his arms.

“I’m alright. I’m alright.”

There was blood in his beard, and a plum sided bruise turning nightshade on his upper arm. “Oh God, Alf.”

He shook his head, pulling you in and smelling the orange and cinnamon of your shampoo and the vanilla perfume on your neck and felt the softness of your hair and the curves of your body. The day had been bad. It had started so wonderfully and ended up shattered and splintered into something so awful and malevolent, and now there was nothing he wanted except you, his home.

“We need to - ” You started, but he frowned, his arms engulfing you and tugging you in. He pressed his lips to whatever flesh he could find, open mouthed and desperate, sucking and biting and aching for you.

“No. No.” He whispered into your neck, his voice so small and desperate that your heart throbbed. “I need you, my love.”

You knew what he wanted. How we got when he was like this. Touch starved. Greedy. Insatiable. How he wanted nothing else but the feel of you under him, the weight of your ribs and the feel of your body and love consuming him until nothing was left. Fuck his back and his cane, he needed to claim you and mark you and show you just how badly he needed you. He needed to find religion at the alter of your pliant, yearning body. Show you how much he loved you on the cold kitchen tiles with the rain casting grey shadows and his lips biting your own as the thunder clapped above.

————————-

The tap was still leaking.

Alfie had promised to fix it weeks ago and yet it still dribbled lukewarm water continuously, you didn’t mind for once though, the soft noise it made as it bounced into the water was somewhat calming.

His legs around you were as thick as tree trunks and covered in curly, coarse hair. His arms were tight around you, and you played with the jewels on his fingers as you both relaxed, letting the hot steam cover you both. You were cradled in front of him despite your instance that his back would hurt and it would cause more harm than good. He simply got in the water and dragged you on top of him, letting the pink bath salts do their job.

You hadn’t really spoken since you’d made love like teenagers on the kitchen floor. Afterwards, he tugged you on top of him and held you close, the two of you skin to skin, letting your pulses synch and breathing calm all whilst he stayed warm and throbbing inside of you. Needing to be joined with you for as long as he could.

Then you ran a bath and filled it with all of the expensive lotions and potions you had stockpiled. Cherry and rose and sweet mint and chocolate and lime, things that might have clashed but would easily cover the smell of sweat and sex and thick, coppery blood. The two of you sat in the water, not speaking but filled with love, despite all of the unspoken tension in the air.

You felt him shift behind you. His huge body sent water and bubbles lapping wildly over the tub edge, coating the floor in marshmallow pink. You giggled softly, and the sweet, angelic noise gave Alfie the final push to tell you everything.

“I know what you want to ask me.”

“Hmm?” You murmured, letting round, iridescent bubbles fall through the cracks in your fingers, knowing exactly what he was about to say but feigning innocence anyway.

“You want to know if I killed him.”

You didn’t say anything, but you didn’t need to, he continued anyway.

“I did.”

The bathroom fell silent again and Alfie could feel you stiffen under him. You knew from the moment he swung his cane across Eric’s head that he would be buried six feet by the end of the day, but it still hit you like a punch to the windpipe to hear the words aloud.

“Does that bother you?” He asked after a moment, the words thick and raspy, as though they had been stuck in his throat like congealed honey.

“I’m not sure.” You said finally.

It was the truth. You weren’t sure.

You knew he had killed people before. You knew what the war had made him do, what it had turned him into. You weren’t stupid, either. You knew that he often came home with dirt under his nails and blood splattered on his boots and that glazed look in his eyes that made your stomach tie itself in knots. You knew because you had been there through it all, cleaning him up and disinfecting his wounds, talking him down when the memories of gunshots and trenches got too loud, listening to him tell you all of the secrets that lingered in his mind like flies around a carcass.

But if you were being honest, you didn’t care that he had killed. You never judged Alfie or his choices, you understood the way his brain worked and how he made his decisions. Most of the men had been awful. Abusers and violent thieves and con men with dirty intentions. This was the business you had signed up for when you fell for the six foot man with questionable morals but a heart of solid gold. There was no way you were turning your back on him now.

It wasn’t murder that scared you, it was the possible repercussions that led you to sleepless nights and bloody, bitten lips. You were terrified that one day everything would catch up to him, and it would be your husband that ended up in a coffin. He was so powerful and dangerous and magnificent, but he wasn’t invincible.

You were about to say as much but he continued, the water sloshing around the two of you. “Don’t let it bother you. I’d do it again. Kill a fucking million men if I had to. If anyone talks about you like that - if they even think it. They’re gone. Bloody scum. The lot of ‘em.”

You sighed, shifting up and grabbing his hand under the water. You rubbed circles across his palm, conveying your love through actions. “I don’t want to be the reason you have blood on your hands.”

“I’m a big lad right, I can make my own decisions.”

“I know you are Alf, but you know how I worry.”

“Listen to me, right.” He muttered, the candles flickering clementine, his fingertips pressing gently onto the bare flesh of your hip. He cleared his throat, feeling the rise and fall of your chest against his belly. “After the war I had nothing - and then I met you and fuck me you changed everything.”

He paused, reminiscing internally about how you met and your early dates, thinking of toffee kisses and giddy, pure love and fucking in back alleys and winter walks and finally feeling something after the war had shot everything right out of him. “And you are my wife. I’ll never let anything happen to you.”

You tugged on his big toe, making him wince and playfully hit you, the air lightened just a little bit, but enough so that the two of you could breathe. “I don’t care that you killed them, Alf. I never have. But God, if something were to happen to you! What if the police start looking? What if...”

A million fucked up scenarios of your beloved in silver cuffs and a bullet in his head made you feel completely nauseous, but he held you tight, grounding you back to reality.

“I’m not going anywhere. And for the cops - they should be thanking me. Got rid of a lot of nasty criminals without them getting their hands dirty.” He pressed kisses to the back of your neck, the tip of your spine, the crook of your ear. “I promise you, my love, everything will be alright.”

The future was uncertain, but you knew that when you married him. Some days were just bad.

Clouded in darkness and tinged with blood and rust. Your relationship had always been a little unconventional, a little rough around the edges and at times, like a small wooden boat on a rough sea. But despite everything your love had been unwavering, as solid as a steel, the kind of dreamy infatuation that people longed for. For every bad day and every fight and every knot that wound itself in your belly - there was also so much good. Sleepy kisses and pillow talk and sharing the parts of yourself that no one else saw. A language without words, the safety of his arms, the home in your hips, domestic mornings and a love that could last through anything.And in that moment, with the storm starting to ease and the sky starting to lighten and his arms around you and Cyril starting to whine for his dinner downstairs...

It was enough.

Because you weren’t just the girl he would kill for. You were the girl he would live for.

#alfie solomons imagine #alfie solomons headcanon #alfie solomons oneshot #peaky blinders oneshot #peaky blinders imagine #alfie solomons x reader #writing #alfie solomons hc

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piracytheorist · 3 years

Text

A Kiss for Good Luck (8/15)

Summary: So this is the story of one born lucky, and one born unlucky. Fate will keep making them cross paths, but is it to bring them together, or to test them? Captain Swan AU.

A/N: This will hurt. I am sorry.

Rating: T (make sure you’re okay with the warnings on AO3) Warnings: This chapter contains character death, some depictions of violence, depictions of poor and unhealthy coping mechanisms, as well as a toxic relationship. Any intercourse and physical touch in general is fully consensual, but emotionally the relationship may appear upsetting to some. Also there are some elements that may resemble emotional self-harm.

Word count for this chapter: 4k (48k in total) AO3

Read from the beginning: Tumblr | AO3

Chapter 8: Killian Jones, October 19th 2011 – October 24th 2015

The kiss is deeper than he expected. Killian pushes the woman back, but gently. He was the one who gave her permission to kiss him, after all.

"I thought it would be a quick kiss. I have a girlfriend."

Her brows are going wild. "Shit. Sorry."

He's so stupid. What would Milah think? "'Salright. Go pee."

"Yes. That,” she slurs. “Thank you again."

Just as the woman closes the bathroom door behind her, Milah appears above him.

“You okay?” she says.

He looks at her confused, before he realizes it's not that normal to sit on the floor while at a club. “Yeah,” he says. “Just very, very drunk.”

She gives him her hand, he takes it, then she starts pulling at him. “Let's go outside for some air. There's too much smoke in here.”

“I wanna pee!”

She drags him up. “You can pee outside! Let's go!”

It feels better outside. The cool, clean air wakes him up a bit.

Milah throws her arms around Killian's neck and pulls him to lean his forehead on hers. He smells the martini in her breath, landing hot against his lips.

He closes his eyes. He could stay like this forever, and how he wishes this moment lasted that long...

“How sweet,” a sharp voice says from the side.

They turn together to see Gold staring at them, his hands crossed on the handle of his cane. There's two big guys flanking him, and Killian pulls Milah aside, stepping in front of her.

“What do you want?” Killian says.

“I did wait,” Gold says. “I held back, let you take my wife away from me.”

“Shut up,” Milah says, moving to Killian's side. “Our marriage was over long before I met Killian.”

Gold looks at her, hand grabbing the cane hard.

“You... you followed us here?” Milah says, suddenly realizing. “What the hell? Where's Jack?”

“You have no right to ask about him,” Gold says and takes a brisk step forward. “You went against my conditions for meeting him. You brought that bastard with you!”

Milah flinches, and Killian's left hand grabs onto hers.

“And you?” Gold looks at him. “Going behind my back to take my son on your side? Trying to buy his love?” His face seems to barely contain his rage as he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a handgun.

Killian's hand squeezes Milah's as his other one raises up in defense. “Whoa, Gold, wait-”

Gold shoots.

Though Killian’s ears are ringing from the exploding sound, he hears Milah's trembling sigh. It feels like it's hours later that he turns to look at her, eyes going straight for the growing red spot on her chest.

And then she's falling.

“No,” he whispers and holds her, gently breaking her fall.

Her eyes are moving wildly, then she coughs and a thin trail of blood runs from the corner of her lips.

“No, no. Milah...”

She focuses on him. “I love you,” she whispers. She gasps one last time, then she's limp in his arms.

It's like even more hours pass. He feels her hot blood staining his hands.

Her eyes are closed. She's not breathing. Only her blood moves, dripping out of her body even though her heart has stopped beating.

“No,” he says.

He hears the tapping sound of a cane, and he looks up to see Gold standing above him, gun aimed at him. His henchmen also aim their handguns at him.

“What are you waiting for?” Killian says. “Finish it.”

What else can he say? It's not as if he'd leave him to tell the tale.

“Oh, no. You won't be so lucky,” Gold says, but he doesn't move.

Killian manages to hold himself back only long enough to set Milah down gently, then he lunges at Gold, grabbing the gun.

It all happens in half a second.

Gold shoots, Killian's ears are ringing again, and he sees two fingers fly off in a sudden fountain of blood.

He drops down to his knees. His left hand hangs limp in a way no hand should. The thumb and index finger are missing, and there's a gaping crescent hole, starting under his middle finger and reaching to the middle of his wrist.

The pain hits him suddenly and a scream erupts from his throat.

His vision comes and goes; one moment Gold is standing above him, the next Killian is leaning over Milah, the blood spilling from his hand onto her unmoving body.

There's more people screaming; people shouting; sirens, blue and red lights...

Then white. So much white.

Killian is just three days younger of twenty-eight when he once again thinks how he's cursed.

Milah is dead, there is no doubt about that. His hand was amputated, and he has to spend a whole week in the hospital before the doctors clear him for a transatlantic flight.

In the meantime he learns that Milah's body was sent back to England, per Gold's request.

At first, he finds it impossible; but the cops who'd questioned him about the assault soon inform him that Gold has solid alibi in London at the time of the murder.

Killian almost shuts down in the week he has to spend in there; Gold must have stolen Killian's phone before fleeing the scene of the crime, and Killian has no way of contacting Nemo, and he didn't let him know the specifics of his trip in the first place, like when exactly his return trip would’ve been.

If Nemo had known, he would have worried after not getting any news from Killian the day he was supposed to return. He would have contacted hospitals, would have found out about the assault. Probably would even honor Killian's request to attend Milah's funeral in his place, if Killian had the guts to actually ask him for that.

And to top it all, Nemo's phone at home is out of order. Why didn't he ever bother memorizing his cell phone? Now all Killian can do is lie in his hospital bed and do his damnedest to avoid looking at where his left hand is no more.

The blasted week goes by; Killian spends the rest of his savings into a new return trip, the only one he can afford has two stops in between.

He's dead tired, hungry, with fresh dog crap under his sole, and somehow he's not surprised to see his apartment has flooded.

It's three in the morning and he contemplates walking through the ankle-deep water anyway and collapsing in his bed.

He stands so long in front of the open door of his apartment that eventually the downstairs neighbor comes to complain about water dripping into his place.

One call to the fire department later, Killian picks up his two bags – he didn't have the heart to throw Milah's stuff away – and takes a taxi to Nemo's place.

Nemo obviously got out of bed to let Killian in, and of course, he asks Killian what happened.

It's like he's seventeen again, unable to react to one of the most life-changing news he ever received, only the opposite, in the most grim way that he never dared imagine.

He's hiding his handless arm inside his jacket pocket and silently walks the stairs up to his old bedroom. He doesn't answer Nemo's questions next morning, he doesn't even sit down to get breakfast. He goes straight to the lawyer Milah had during her divorce.

Gold is paying people to give false testimony, and Killian is gonna take him down.

Too consumed in his own hatred for the man, the whole week he spent planning his comeback he didn't think of the problems the lawyer is listing now; Killian was drunk – as evidenced by hospital records – enough for his testimony to be considered debatable; he also has motive to want to get back at Gold, stronger than Gold's motive to kill his unfaithful wife three whole years post their divorce which concluded in his favour; and of course, one has to prove first that Gold's witnesses are lying before questioning Gold's alibi of more than five thousand kilometers away from the scene of the crime.

Killian doesn't return to Nemo's place. His own apartment stinks, damp and moldy, half of his furniture and appliances were ruined, but at least his bed is functioning, and he can't deal with Nemo's sympathy right now.

He needs to take Gold down. He can't have any more distractions.

It takes him a month to remember his therapist. He checks his emails for the first time since the assault, and he feels he loses another part of him at the news of his therapist moving towns to study for a doctorate; she's suggested other therapists at him, followed by two more emails of asking if everything is okay, then nothing.

Killian looks at the names and phones of the suggested therapists as if they're threats to his consciousness. He actually laughs. Dr. Eriksen had him since before he was even an adult and she knew everything about his fucked-up adolescence. Where would he even begin with someone new?

He deletes the email.

For two years, his whole life centers around finding weak spots in Gold's armour. He quits from Shakespeare's boat rental and works at stock in the harbor. It's a tough, time-consuming job, but it keeps him in view of the sea and gets his mind off his pain. Alcohol takes over that job in his time off.

He stops drawing; Milah used to draw with him and it nearly breaks him to pick up a pencil to sketch. The last thing he sketches is the design for the tattoo with her name on it that is soon permanently inked on his arm.

Two years of trying, as much as his exhausted psyche and a mind always leaning towards booze can handle, and the best he manages is to break into Gold's house, hack through his computer and locate some suspicious activity between Gold's bank account and the one of one of his witnesses.

Thirteen years of no spots in his criminal record mean nothing to the law when there are spots in it in the first place, and he's arrested for breaking and entering.

Nemo responds to Killian's call to bail him out, even though Killian has barely spoken to him in two years. However, the disappointment is, for the first time since Killian met him, visible on his face.

“It's your decision,” Nemo tells him after Killian is out. “Your path to choose, and your life to ruin.”

If it were anyone else, Killian would be flipping him off. But Nemo is the one who took Killian in as an assortment of broken pieces and put him back together, loving and patient all throughout. The one who has always been too good to be called a mere father.

“It's not just wanting to get back at that bastard,” Killian says, nearly shouting. At Nemo's small flinch, Killian breathes in and out. Among all his losses, it's the first one that has filled him with such rage. “That monster killed her in cold blood. And he's out there now, not paying for his crime-”

His voice is too unsteady now to accommodate shouting.

“It's not just personal. He killed her-” A soft sob breaks his sentence in half. “-and he's walking free.”

“The world is not fair,” Nemo says in a very soft voice, hand resting on Killian's shoulder. “Come home, son. This isn't what you need right now.”

“No. I need to see him behind bars.”

“You need to grieve.”

Killian scoffs, laughing mirthlessly. “It's been two years.”

“Exactly.”

He drops his gaze. If he looks at Nemo's face right now, he may crumble, and his efforts of two years – albeit not very successful – will be rendered pointless. The time he lost, the damage he's done to himself, to his relationships with everyone, Nemo, Shakespeare, Will and Tink, it will all be for nothing.

And worst of all, he'll be yet another one who will do Milah wrong. If he gives up, he'll be doing to her nothing better than what Gold did, and the very thought sickens him.

There's only one thing he changes. His drinking has reached new levels, and he needs, if nothing else, to survive in order to bring Gold down. So for now, AA meetings are something.

At first, he only talks about how he manages to stay clean, how he slips and how he tries to not beat himself up over it. His fifth meeting is on a particularly bad day; the story of watching the love of his life die slips from him, and across the circle he gets looks of pity that he hates.

If only he told everyone about the furious thoughts for revenge on Milah's murderer that have been plaguing his every waking thought for the past two years.

He slumps in his seat and stays silent for the rest of the meeting. He shouldn't have come today, he should have known he would be too emotional to think rationally before speaking.

The meeting ends and he's already made up his mind to look into other AA groups before he even exits the building.

“Excuse me,” a voice calls at him.

He turns. It's Eloise Gardener, one of the attendees.

“On the last meeting you mentioned that mental activities keep your thoughts away,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“I'm hosting gardening classes, two evenings a week at the Bare Feet Greenhouse. I thought I could invite you to join, they're already quite cheap and I'll give you a discount.”

“Your name is Gardener, innit?”

She smiles. “And I am a gardener. Shocking, I know. But I've found it's a good distraction, especially knowing you're taking care of a life. You get the satisfaction without committing to... raising a child, let's say.”

Killian decides it's worth a try; unlike the AA meetings, raising a plant actually has visible proof of progress.

He stops coming to the meetings, but Eloise doesn't ask him why. She teaches him and guides him through providing a good environment for his plants.

One night after class, she helps him move the pots with his grown plants to his apartment. He doesn't truly invite her in, and when she initiates a kiss with him, he takes a few seconds of thinking before he realizes he doesn't mind that much.

It's just fuck, and Eloise doesn't seem to be thinking it's anything deeper than he does.

If he thinks it's any deeper, he'll just be haunted again by that miserable thought, that the last person he kissed before Milah died was not Milah herself, but a random stranger whose face he wasn't even sober enough to remember.

Eloise leaves and within minutes, he's left as well to search for any open store that sells booze. Rain is pouring down, cars splash him until he's soaking wet, but he finally gives up when he trips and falls, his leg hurting too much to take him too much further.

Even the couple of hours he stays in the hospital while they put a walking cast on him feel unbearable. Two years have gone by and the memories of hospital misery are still too raw.

Eloise doesn't comment on the cast nor his continued absence from the AA meetings. She invites him to her place and after they have sex he asks if he can stay the night. That way it's much easier to avoid looking for a drink to deal with how disgusted he feels.

Even the other people attending the gardening lessons wouldn't imagine Eloise and Killian are sleeping together – and Killian is attending two different classes side by side. Not that there's anything to show for it. They just fuck, sleep in the same bed, and that's all. She keeps him from running out for a drink in the middle of the night, better than any AA meeting managed, he gives her a person to have control over the way she wants, and they scratch each other's itches.

Nemo keeps trying to stay in touch with him, and Killian nearly blocks his number out of pure shame. Perhaps if Nemo realizes he's been blocked he'll stop bothering.

Killian has practically moved in with Eloise now, or she with him; in any case, they'll sleep in the same bed every night, whether it's the one in Killian's apartment or the one in Eloise's house.

He cannot connect who he was before with who he is with Eloise now. Before Nemo even adopted him officially, Killian had allowed him to pick up his pieces and make him a functional human. With Milah, it was Killian who was the whole, the rock she could lean on.

With Eloise, he can once again be broken, but without any expectation to get fixed back up – and he's too tired for unrealistic expectations. He can stay the mess that he is, sharing his body and his space with her so that he can feel something, even when the feeling isn't the best. Eloise is controlling and demanding, and Killian's feelings for her range from fear to disgust, but he prefers those over pain, grief, rage, and a continuously burning thirst.

It's easier to hate his... “partner” than to hate everything else in his life, including himself.

He's actually shocked to realize two years have passed since his first time with Eloise, and nothing at all has changed. Their feelings didn't change towards one way or another; they just kept fucking, sleeping next to each other, and going by their day without thinking about each other.

He almost hates it when she asks him to ride with her to a concert in Maidstone. Not only because she's making ensuring no-one assaults her sound like a chore, but also because he's still not ready to enjoy music he used to love. Especially not in her presence. Being in her company is not a circumstance that fits happy thoughts.

There's a lot of things he's been denying himself since Milah died. Everything that used to make him happy, even the company of his family, feels sullied now.

He doesn't expect to enjoy the concert. But Eloise buys his ticket and drives the car, so he decides that he can tolerate one night of being a boy toy to discourage sleazebags.

It doesn't even feel that special that his birthday is tomorrow; he lost Liam a few days after his fifteenth birthday, and Milah a few days before his twenty-eighth. Maybe it's just not in the cards for him to celebrate it again.

For three whole hours, he forgets everything. There's just the music, and the lights, and his throat getting sore from singing without a care.

There is, of course, the occasional groping, people stepping on his feet, even getting an elbow to the ribs, but for him it's all par of the course now. Including checking his pockets afterwards and realizing that twenty pounds are missing. And Eloise being... well, Eloise.

“You were supposed to stand by my side,” she starts complaining after the concert is over and people start dispersing.

“I can assure you I was touched against my consent far more than you were.”

“Is that supposed to be an excuse?”

Ugh, her arrogant, calm face she makes when she tells him off. He hates it.

“If you wanted an actual bodyguard, you should have hired one. I only have one hand,” he bites back at her.

“Really? I get you a birthday gift and you consider this an appropriate response.” There’s no question mark in her tone.

“Oh, piss off. As if you've given a fuck about my birthday all these years.”

Her lips purse together, but her voice keeps that cool tenor that irritates him to no end. “I wanted to make it a good one for you. Just because you don't care about it doesn't mean no-one else does.”

He sighs. He actually had a good time and he doesn't want it ruined by her gaslighting. He's experienced people actually caring for his birthday, and he knows Eloise's words are just words. Next, she'll say that she contacted Scorpions themselves and asked them to have a concert the day before his birthday.

She shakes her head and goes for the portable toilets. At last, he can have some time on his own. He turns his head away and back to the scene, now completely empty.

No One Like You wasn't exactly the song he liked the most tonight, but it's the one he can't stop humming. He's humming!

Maybe he does owe Eloise a bit. Just a bit.

"Catchy tune, huh?" he hears from the side.

He turns, seeing a woman with a wide smile on her face.

"Oh, which one isn't?" he says, smiling back. "What a night."

The woman nods. "Did you have fun?"

The words pour out of him like vomit. "A lot of people stepped on me, I got groped, pick-pocketed, and I got in a fight with my...” – How should he call her? – “friend, but you know what?" He shrugs. "Bloody worth it."

"Oh.” Her face softens. “Sorry that you were mugged."

"Ah, it was like, twenty quid. I've known better than to carry credit cards where hands can easily reach." A very dedicated hand, maybe. There's only so many hiding spots he has.

"Do you have a ride back home?" the woman says.

He stares at her, and he feels his jaw drop when he realizes. "Bollocks. I overshared, didn't I?"

She just smiles. "I mean, I have a car, and space for two... how many of you are there?"

He scratches behind his ear. "Don't worry. We've got a car. And we going right back to Brighton, anyway."

"Oh.” She seems to think for a moment. “I don't even know where that is."

He holds back a laugh. "Figured so. From your accent."

Her smile widens. "I'm Emma," she says, extending her hand.

"Killian," he gives his hand back, careful to keep his left arm inside his jacket pocket. She's still looking at his face when he drops his hand to his side. "So... you know that they're actually having a few concerts in the States for this tour, right? How come you decided to fly all over to here?"

"Well, today... or more like, yesterday," she pauses as she checks her watch, "was my birthday. This was more like a birthday gift to me, and of course I'm going to see them in-” She pauses suddenly. “What?"

She's obviously cut off by the expression on his face. "You're not kidding? Tomorrow- or, today, is my birthday."

"Wow. Happy birthday, then."

"Happy birthday to you too. Seems it was a great one."

Emma seems happy as she looks back at the now empty stage. "I'd say one of the best ones. Does your birthday seem promising?"

His chest feels twice its normal size when she turns to look at him. Somehow, with their birthdays being so close, it feels as if her having had a great birthday is feeding his own satisfaction for that day, for the first time in four- no, five years.

Some of her slightly messy hair is sticking to her face – she probably went all out dancing tonight – and her eyes seem to droop in drowsiness, but she's absolutely glowing.

Glowing and looking at him.

When she takes a step towards him, it feels like it's gravity that's pulling his own body to her.

"It seems that way, aye," he replies.

Her eyes close when she's a few inches away from him, but he waits for the moment his lips touch hers to close his eyes.

(A/N: I want to remind the readers that this chapter is told from Killian's point of view, distorted as it is from grief, rage and isolation from the people he loves. Emotional progress is almost never visible in the short term, especially regarding addictions. Killian might have thought the AA meetings didn't help him, but it doesn't mean that giving up and depending on a controlling person to keep him clean was the healthy thing to do.

I know it's a work of fiction but some lines are easily confused, so the message I want to pass is that if you or a loved one is trying to let go of an addiction, keeping up the effort when progress isn't directly visible may be hard, but it's worth it and will eventually help.)

#Killian Jones #Captain Swan #captain swan ff #cs ff #ouat ff #akfgl #captain swan movie marathon #I swear I hadn't planned on posting this on Colin's birthday 😅#it's just how it came up #piracytheorist writes

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stuff-of-pi · 4 years

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50 Questions You’ve Never Been Asked

@back-in-silver-and-green tagged me and I thought this was super fun!!!

What is the color of your hairbrush? Pink, but I use my mom’s a lot and that one is black.

A food you never eat? Celery. I hate that stuff. Icky!

Are you typically too warm or too cold? Too cold! Someone should totally come cuddle me to fix that <3

What were you doing 45 minutes ago? Eating dinner with my folks :)

What is your favorite candy bar? 100 Grand bars!!! SO GOOD!

Have you ever been to a professional sports event? Heck yeah! I got to rugby games with my family all the time. When I was younger, we used to go to Colorado Rockies games, but baseball is boring (sorry my baseball lovers!)

What is the last thing you said out loud? 我愛你爸爸！(I love you dad!)

What is your favorite ice cream? Extreme Chocoloate Moose Tracks

What was the last thing you had to drink? Water :D

Do you like your wallet? I guess so? It’s really old and is a “masculine wallet”, which my mother never fails to rag on me for

What was the last thing you ate? 滷肉 (LuRou - pork braised in soy sauce) and rice. It was very salty and very yummy

Did you buy any new clothes last weekend? Nope! I was on a road trip with my dad :)

The last sporting event you watched? Highlights from men’s volleyball! So good!!!

What is your favorite flavor of popcorn? Mixed butter and chocolate covered popcorn. Or just popcorn and M&Ms

Who was the last person you sent a text message to? My group chat named “老師’s disappointments” (referring to our Chinese teacher) with my bffs, Allie, Andrew, and Steven. I said “You bitches don't appreciate my memes but I love y'all anyways”

Ever go camping? Yes! I love it a lot and there are TONS of camping spots here in CO! Although our govenor has suspended camping for the entire season :(

Do you take vitamins? Every so often I’ll take 15 mg of zinc and iron bc they help with migraines that appear behind the eyes :)

Do you go to church every Sunday? Yes, I do! Though we haven’t been physically going to church for a couple months now

Do you have a tan? Not currently, but I tan pretty well in the summer. It’s the Sicilian heritage

Do you prefer Chinese food or pizza? Chinese food!!! If I could only eat one ‘genre’ of food so to speak for the rest of my life, it would be Chinese food

Do you drink your soda with a straw? I don’t often drink soda, but when I do it’s usually just straight outta the can

What color socks do you usually wear? Black

Do you ever drive above the speed limit? Literally everytime. I got pulled over once for going 19 over in a residential area and got off with just a warning. Since then, I make a point of never going above 5 over...

What terrifies you? Being alone or having important people in my life abandon me and never receiving closure for that. Also, I’m really terrified of bees when they get close

Look to your left, what do you see? My huge makeup kit

What chore do you hate? Anything to do with dishes

What do you think of when you hear an Australian Accent? @are-you-being-sirius being a little shit in the best ways possible. Also my sunshine hype man, @chaser-not-a-seeker

What’s your favorite soda? Once again, I don’t drink it very often, but I enjoy Dr. Pepper the most!

Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive thru? I usually grab fast food when I’m already running late to a rehearsal downtown, so I do whatever is fastest which tends to be the drive thru

Favorite cut of beef? I don’t really eat beef (bc I don’t like it) unless my 阿姨 (Taiwanese aunt) has cooked up some Korean BBQ

Who’s the last person you talked to? My dad

Last song you listened to? Grace by Surfaces

Last book you read? The last book I physically read was Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, but my dad and I were on a road trip this weekend and we were listening to Otherworld by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller

Favorite day of the week? Friday, ofc!

Can you say the alphabet backwards? If I try really hard and you’ve got a lot of time, probably

How do you like your coffee? I don’t drink coffee :)

Favorite pair of shoes? I love me some flip flops or plain old boat shoes

At what time do you normally go to bed? During quarantine, somewhere around 4 am. Otherwise, usually 11.

At what time do you normally get up? During quarantine, anywhere between 10 and 11 am. Otherwise, 8 or 9 am.

What do you prefer sunrise or sunsets? Sunset :)

How many blankets are on your bed? Currently, five

Describe your kitchen plates? Our ‘fancy’ glass ones are white with a ring of gold around it and grey scratch marks from utensils. Our nice plastic ones are multi colored stripes or all blue. Our everyday plastic ones are all scratched up solid colors

Do you have a favorite alcoholic beverage? I do not drink alcohol, so no, I do not. My favorite fancy drink though is a Shirley Temple. And I can appreciate a virgin Piña Colada

Do you play cards? Yes! But only the simple ones that don’t involve any actual skill bc I can be Big Dumb

What color is your car? White

Can you change a tire? Nope, but I’m sure YouTube could help me

What is your favorite state/providence? I really do love Colorado and Utah! All of the outdoors stuff is great. Especially where I live, I’m 30 minutes from just about anything I would want to do

Favorite job you’ve ever had? Obviously acting, but for ‘real jobs’, I loved being a waitress for an assissted living center. Most of the old folks were great and made the job fun. Management is what lead me to quit

How did you get your biggest scar? I have a rubbery scar along my spine that’s about 3 inches long that I got from a free soloing rock climbing accident. I have another inch long rubber scar on my chest from when I stabbed myself with a pencil rocket in the third grade :)

What did you do today that made someone else happy? I played the piano for my dad and then we went on a walk together!

I’ll tag @stjernfaerie, @are-you-being-sirius, @chaser-not-a-seeker, @whatsupitswendy, @transaurus, @thisaliennerd, @sugarxbeanie, @w0tchermarauders, and anyone else who thinks this looks like fun/wants to!

#tag game #pi stuff

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chaandknight · 5 years

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Let me | Brian May |

Summary: Brian just wants to be your man. You let him. 4.2k words

A/N: Inspired by anons and also the song Let me by the one and only Zayn I swear I’m not promoting his new album or anything.

Fluff isn’t my strong suit. Enjoy.

Tags: Fluff, smut, dash of angst, dumb word play, +18 content

Anonymous said: Could I get something with Soft Brian? Like fluffier than his hair? He’s just the sweetest human in existence, in my opinion. A picnic or night in with movies or like bowling lol 🖤

Anonymous said: Please can i have some soft brian may sin x it does things to my heart

This was a new call. Some new hotshot band you didn’t bother remembering the name of. Your friend had called, asking you come to the show and work your magic. You really shouldn’t of gone, an unfinished essay sitting on your table and seven other sheets of research journals to pour over and make notes for next week. There was a part of you that regretted getting into this life sty But you needed a break, so here you were. Crammed into a hall filled, people all around you. Honestly you couldn’t wait for the show to be over. People were ridiculous. You had the breath knocked out of you at least five times thanks to various elbows.

The band weren’t that bad. You actually enjoyed their music, finding yourself dancing along and singing blindly with them. After the band finished someone came up to you, security you presumed and asked you to come with them. You obliged, knowing full well why you were here. It wouldn’t take long, men were easy enough to seduce after a show. High off the show, not drunk enough for the after party yet. You just had to pretend to be interested, be sharp with your banter and not bruise your egos. You didn’t have a problem so far.

You were led to the bar at the back, the after party just starting. You thanked the man, making your way to the bar to order a drink. You made small talk with the people around you, not really paying too much attention to anyone. You suddenly wanted to get home, it wasn’t a good idea to come.

From the cheers at the door you could tell the band had just entered, you joined along with the crowd. Despite not knowing the band you still felt they deserved a cheer, it was a show well played. Not many bands could handle a crowd so easily like that. You stayed at the bar for a bit longer, watching the band disperse into the crowd. The blonde drummer already had a girl on his arm, he looked pretty enough to be a girl. Despite being exactly your type you didn’t want to work for his attention. The lead singer was the center of the crowd, still working off his stage persona, you didn’t want to work for his attention either. You divert your attention to the other two men. The guitar player and the bass player. The bass player seemed quite, more content just spending time with people instead of talking needlessly. Perhaps. You watched him for a while, wondering how he fit into the bands equation. Maybe it was your unfinished psychology essay that made you stay on the bar stool, slowly going through the crowd and coming up with fake personalities for each person in the room.

“Drink not strong enough?” you jumped slightly at the voice beside you, not expecting someone to be in such close proximity. The drink you had sitting on spilled, leaving a ring of beer around your glass and on your hand. You reached out for napkins quickly, not wanting the liquid to spill onto your clothes, he beat you to it though. “God, I’m so sorry. Let me, its the least I could do”

It was the guitarist. You smiled up at the tall man, the slightest bit intimidated by his height. He was busy cleaning up the spilt beer and so you had the chance to admire him for a bit before he finished. His hair was black, with curls falling down his shoulders and you had the urge to ask him if they were actually real but you bit your tongue. His lips were moving but you couldn’t quite remember what he said,

“Sorry, what?” you asked, confused. He just laughed, ordering you another drink.

“I’m Brian”

Sweet baby, our sex has meaning

Know this time you'll stay 'til the morning

You cleaned yourself up as best you could. However you couldn’t help your wrinkled clothes or the scent of sex that clung to you. Brian had gone to shower and you took that as your cue to leave. Usually they’d tell you to leave themselves, as soon as they were finished. But Brian didn’t seem like that. He was actually nice. Chatting to you at the after party, actually finding out your name and buying your drinks. You didn’t want it to be awkward so you took the decision into your own hands. Deciding to get dressed and leave before he came out of the shower. There was one problem though, you couldn’t find your bangle. The solid gold, priceless bangle that your late grandmother had given you. You dropped your jacket in frustration, going down to your knees to look under the bed. Something was sparkling in the light and you just knew it was your bangle. You reached out, struggling to get it.

“Where are you going?” Brian’s voice came from the door of the bathroom. You froze, sitting up, a sheepish smile on your face.

“I uhm...I was going home?” you said, unsure of yourself with the way he was looking at you. He frowned and walked towards you, a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Why?” is all he asked, confused. He seemed so genuinely confused that you couldn’t find it in your heart to turn him down. You took a beat to think up an excuse for leaving so soon,

“I wanted to get home, I’ve got class tomorrow”

“l’ll drop you off tomorrow, it’s not a bother” he insisted with a smile. He was on his knees, reaching underneath the bed and using his significantly longer arms to grab your bangle. “Let me,” he whispered, taking you hand in his. He took your arm, gently sliding the jewelry onto your arm. You felt your heart flutter, watching him kiss your knuckles gently before pulling away.

So you stayed the night.

Duvet days and vanilla ice cream

More than just one night together exclusively

You tried not to laugh, wondering just how long it would take for Brian to realise. He was eating his ice cream with such purpose, enjoying it so much that you didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was some on his nose. You grinned, watching him from over your glasses. Your ice cream was long finished, the summer heat forcing you to eat it messily before it melted. You never were the clean type, something Brian had teased you about mercilessly.

“You realise that I can see my reflection through your glasses right?” he asked, wiping his nose. You laugh, taking a tissue from the bedside table and wiping the rest off for him. You shrugged, turning your attention back to the book in front of you. A test tomorrow and you hadn’t left Brian’s flat for the past two days. You couldn’t believe yourself. He’d insisted on you coming over for the night, instead keeping you here for two days. Two whole days and you still felt like it had been just hours. The time passed quickly when you were with him. You had seen him more about three or so weeks. You wondered where all that time went, musing over the fact that you had stopped your band antics with your friends as well. You wondered if he had noticed. Or if he even really cared. Neither of you had discussed what this really was.

“Are you even listening to me?” he demanded, drawing you from your thoughts. You shook your head, a smile on your face. You tried hard to read the words on the book in front of you. You felt a weight drop on the side of your bed. You huffed, shuffling over to make room for the man who had just jumped on the bed. He rested on his stomach, his head on your thighs. He whined, actually whined like a puppy. “I need attention” he mumbled, trying to distract you by running his hands over your thighs. You pulled your legs away, trying to fight the smile on your face.

He reached out, but you were too fast for him. You pulled the book out of his grasp giving him a look. He didn’t falter under your gaze, instead sitting up and reaching over for the book you were just attempting to read. You leaned to the side, trying to push him away. You laughed as he covered your body with his in an attempt to grab the book.

“Oh, come on” he said, stretching out to reach the book. You pushed his chest, trying harder to stretch out your arm to keep your book out of reach. He adjusted his position, now almost laying on you to reach it. “Just, let me..,,get....” he strained, grabbing the book from your hands. You huffed crossing your arms.

“Brian I need that” You protested, trying to grab it from him. He dodged your attempts, sitting up reading the page you were on. He tutted,

“You already know all this, why do you insist on reading it again?” He remarked, throwing the book away. Before you could scold him for it his lips were on yours again, pulling you into his lap.

Baby, let me be your man

So I can love you

“Babe?” his voice came from down the hall. You were busy trying to gather all your things. Pens, pencils, calculator just incase. Notes shoved haphazardly into your bag. You would pass this final with flying colours. At least that what you told yourself anyway.

“Hurry up breakfast is getting cold!” he yelled out again. You suppress a laugh. He was very adamant about making breakfast the morning before an exam. You grabbed your bag, rushing through the kitchen. You grabbed the breakfast wrap he had made you, pressing a kiss to his cheek before chugging the orange juice. He smiled at his handy work, “Here, let me get your bottle. You always forget it.” he handed you your favourite bottle. You smiled gratefully.

“What would I do without my fantastic boyfriend?” you mused, not realising what you said yet. He grinned,

“So I’m your boyfriend now?” You laughed, pressing a kiss to his lips and running out the door.

And if you let me be your man

Then I'll take care of you

You blew your nose, doing your best not to make too much noise. Brian shook his head,

“You said it was just allergies.” He had a hint of annoyance in his voice, still fed up with your insistence that you were fine. And you were. You just needed to rest for a day or so and you’d be better. They were just allergies. That lasted a day. Or two. But he didn’t have to know that. You drew the blanket around yourself tighter, closing your eyes and trying to ignore his constant reprimanding. He seemed to be like your mother, mumbling about how you never took proper care of yourself.

“Bri, they are just allergies. I’m fine” you insisted, blowing your nose yet again. Maybe your voice was deeper than before, and maybe you had finished all your herbal tea in an effort to soothe your throat. He stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed. He wasn’t buying it.

“Just let me take care of you, stop being so stubborn” he pleaded as he walked up to you, gently placing his hand on your forehead to feel your temperature. At this point your head felt like it was filled with cotton. You just wanted to sleep and if letting him be a mother chicken was the only way you could do this, then so be it.

We're drinking the finest label

Dirty dancing on top of the table

You couldn’t name a better way to spend the year. The party was well underway and you found yourself in the middle of the makeshift dance floor. Laughing and giggling like a school-girl. Brian held you close to him as you danced terribly next to him.

“Brian” you murmured, wrapped your arms around him and trying to get him to dance with you. He just laughed, gripping your waist and pulling you close. “Why aren’t you drunk?” you mumbled, running a hand over his chest. Brian wasn’t really the one to let go, especially at a crowded party like this. You’d have to get him drinking now, just to ease the self control he always had. He pressed a kiss to your temple, guiding you to the couch that was to the side of the room.

You pouted as he pulled you into his lap, holding you close to him. He pressed a kiss to your neck, making you shiver. You hands were on his shoulders out of habit, smiling at him.

“Why won't you dance?” You asked, pecking his lips. He was clean shaven tonight, hair falling over his shoulder - as curly as ever. You let your eyes go over his profile, admiring how good he looked and how he was completely yours. You felt your heart flutter at that thought, fiddling absentmindedly with his hair.

“I want to see the fireworks properly” he confessed, tucking a loose strand of your hair behind your ear. You nodded the slightest bit, encouraging him to continue. He let out a small laugh, leaning back against the sofa. His hands firmly on your waist, as if it was a sign to all the men (and women) in the room that you were his. It sent a thrill through your spine. Whenever you both were out he would have to be touching you somehow, some form of physical contact was needed for him.

“They're just….explosions you know?” He tried explaining. You tilted your head, still confused as ever. He pulled you closer, so you were resting against his chest.

“Let me explain properly…” And that was it for the two of you. The party long forgotten, you were captivated by his explanation of fireworks. You both somehow drifted from that topic to space, supernovas and such to exact. Maybe it was just how time passed when you were with him. Maybe it was the twinkle in his eye when you showed enthusiasm whenever he ‘nerded’ out. But in that moment you realised,

“I love you” you blurred out, interrupting his explanation about the formation of the Earth. He paused, processing what you said. You bit your lip, trying to stop the nerves forming. You had no idea how he would react. He tried to stop the smile on his face. Tried to hide it but he couldn't. Instead, he leaned forward, enveloping your lips in a kiss.

“I love you too” he whispered as he pulled away. Your heart soared, and you wished you could describe the feeling that was coursing through your veins. You were so filled with love for the man in front you. The only thing you could do was pull him close and kiss him over and over. He reciprocated with just as much enthusiasm. The two of you stayed that way for god knows how long, just kissing each other. You pulled away properly first, leaning your head on his shoulder, whispering those three words again. You couldn’t help it - you really, really meant them.

“You know love is actually a chemical reaction?” He supplied helpful. You laughed, lifting your head up to look at him,

“I know.” you pecked his lips, “studying psychology remember?”

Maybe you hadn’t noticed that everyone had cleared out of the room, crammed onto the balcony. It wasn’t until Freddie came parading in, plopping down on the couch next to you did you realise that the count down was already over.

“Happy new year loves!” he declared, grabbing your face and planting a kiss straight on your lips. You jumped back, mortified. “Fred!” you exclaimed. You looked to Brian, to see what his reaction was, but your view was blocked by the back of Freddie’s head.

“Thought I’d share my new years kiss with everyone I love!” he declared, getting up and literally flying off to god knows where. You watched him disappear into the crowd. Brian and you looked at each other for a second, before laughing at the absurdity of the situation.

He pulled you back into another kiss.

Long walks on the beach in April

Yeah, I promise, darling, that I'll be faithful

The day had been too long. You were tired and drenched in sweat. Maybe it was everything that had happened in the past week leading up to your foul mood. Your final essay, fifty thousand words long, lovingly typed up and rewritten three times had somehow been set on fire. Your request for an extension, also ruined by a tea spill. Your car breaking down, your best shoes being broken. It was just a bad week for you in general. To top it all off you were left alone in yours and Brian’s shared flat.

He hadn’t called in three days, which was rare for him. Usually he’d call as soon as he got into a new town, giving you the number for the next hotel they were booked at. The lack of phone ringing made your anxiety grow. You had spent the past two nights by the phone, practically begging it to ring. It was probably nothing. He was probably tired from playing every single night and then travelling to a new venue the next day. Busy with interviews and such.

That was until you had heard whispers from your friends, something about groupies and the band. A friend of a friends who managed to seduce one of the band members, coming back to them again and again after three shows. You felt your heart sink. It couldn’t be Brian...Could it? John was head over heels in love with his girlfriend, Roger didn’t bother with connections, Freddie was much the same as Roger. That left Brian. Your Brian.

Your thoughts were working against you that day, constantly coming up with various scenarios. It was your insecurities praying on you, the previous line of unfaithful boyfriends coming back to haunt you. You grew tired of the gossip, you excused yourself not bothering to say goodbyes and headed home. The past weeks exhaustion came crashing down on your as soon as you stepped through the door. You crawled into bed, only bothering to kick off your shoes before wrapping the blanket around yourself. You tried convince yourself that Brian was here with you as you drifted off to sleep…

You woke, images of Brian and some other woman in your head. You felt sick, tears already forming in your sleep riddled eyes. You felt like you couldn’t breath for a few seconds, the thought of losing Brian to someone else too overwhelming for you. The phones ringing still continued. For once you were thankful to be dragged out of sleep because of the phone. You made your way over to the counter where the phone was attached, picking up,

“Hello?” your voice was thick with sleep.

“Oh god, I didn’t wake you did I? I checked the time I thought it would be okay to call?” Brian’s voice came from the other end of the line. You felt a lump form in your throat, the thoughts from before weighing on you, forcing you to grab the phone set and sit on the floor.

“No, no.. I uhm..” you wiped away stray tears falling, cursing yourself for falling apart like this.

“Darling? Is everything alright?” concern in his voice. You sniffled, trying your hardest not to burst out crying,

“I just… Miss you and my friends were talking about some groupie and how she’s with the band all the time and how she’s made one of you fall in love with her and you’re ready to elope with her and I just didn’t want to think it was you but what if it was and I couldn’t handle it Brian I fucking love you and I hate being so far apart from you and I just -” you were cut off from your blabber,

“Sweetheart, we haven’t been at a show in three days” he explained. You paused, tears still on your cheeks and mind still racing.

“What?”

He just laughed,

“Our bus broke down in some desert. We had to wait for two bloody hours until someone drove past and gave us a ride. Let me tell you, the town we were in was horrendous. Honestly it had dirt everywhere and I can’t even begin to describe the smell…..”

You zoned out for a second, processing his words. Your heart leapt, all your worst fears were just that. Fears. You took a breath to steady yourself.

“I’d never betray you. You know that right?”

Give me your body and let me love you like I do

Come a little closer and let me do those things to you

You were going to explode. At least, that’s what it felt like. Waking up to have Brian’s head between your legs was almost like a dream. He had chuckled when you stirred, remarking about how long it finally took for you to wake up. It didn’t take long for him to get to work once you were awake and willing, threading a hand through his curls. His tongue was skilling in eliciting the loudest noises from your mouth. You could feel it against your clit and you let out yet another moan, afraid that the neighbours would wake.

You were a mess as his tongue explored your folds, bringing you to the edge faster than you could possibly imagine. Your hands alternated between tugging his hair and gripping the sheets on your sides. It was like you had no control over your body, your mind only focused on one thing. You gasped his name, feeling your breath quicken. You were close, the only thing coming out of your mouth was his name, chanting it over and over like prayer.

You let out a breathless moan as you came, one hand tugging his hair and the other fisting the sheets. You let your eyes close, trying hard not to float away into another universe. That was until his fingers were on you again. You could of cried when he slipped a finger into you, coaxed in easily by your own wetness.

“Bri...…” you whimpered, gasping at the intrusion. He shifted, now laying next to you, thumb against your clit and pushing another finger into you.

“Relax darling” he murmured, pressing kisses to your collarbone. “Let me make you feel good..”

This feeling will last forever, baby, that's the truth

Let me be your man so I can love you

“Stop fiddling and just let me take the photo” he whined, trying his best to get a good shot of you in your graduation gown.

“God I can't believe I'm actually here” you remarked, fiddling with the flimsy cardboard in your hands. Brian chuckled, placing a hand over yours to stop you from tearing the graduation program further. He put his camera back into his back, stepping closer to you. He pulled you closer, pressing a chaste kiss to your temple.

“You worked hard to get to this point, love” he gently titled your chin up so you could face him. Your nerves were getting the better of you. Your stomach was in knots and you could feel your hands shaking. You looked at him, uncertain and shaken with anxiety. He just smiled back, the same reassuring smile he always gave you during late night study sessions. The same smile he gave you when you went to submit your final essay. The same smile he was wearing when you were about to open your results letter. It grounded you, shushing your anxiety so it was just a faint hum in your head.

“Now, you're going to go up there” he started, adjusting your hair the slightest bit, “you're going to shake the Dean’s hand” he made sure your cap was on properly. “And you are going to walk off the stage” he kissed your nose “like the Queen you are” he finished. You gave him a small shove, smiling despite your previous anxiety attack. You pulled him into a hug, on your tippy toes so you could kiss his cheek.

“Thank you” you whispered into his ear before pulled away. He grinned,

Baby, let me be your man

So I can love you

And if you let me be your man

He was on one knee, ring glinting in the candlelight. You felt tears prick at your eyes. Honestly speaking you had found the small box a week ago. You had hid it well, unable to stop the butterflies building in your stomach. It was just a matter of when. He didn’t disappoint.

Brian had brought on the beach for a picnic. You didn’t expect it then, it was normal to go out for picnics. But when he dropped to one knee as you were getting ready to pack up you couldn’t help the small gasp.

“I had an entire speech prepared, a song as well but I honestly can’t remember any of it..Let me be your husband… please..” he pleaded, eyes desperate. He was a little unsure, sure you had talked about it before but there was still a part of him that doubted himself.

You nodded frantically, dropping down to your knees. Unable to helpful yourself, you kissed him, almost toppling him over onto the sand.

Then I'll take care of you,

For the rest of my life

For the rest of yours

For the rest of ours

Requests are closed, but feedback is always welcome!

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bbq-hawks-wings · 6 years

Note

Hello friend! I just went to a wedding and it was incredibly beautiful! So I was wondering if you could make a scenario of hawks getting married to his female s/o? This was my first time sending a request so I hope I did it correctly! Thank you and have a nice day! :)

This man makes me w e a k, and don’t worry anon, you nailed it.

I’ve always wanted to plan a wedding and see it play out. Maybe someday I will for real. Done, anon. (P.S. If you want an idea of where I got the color pallet in this chapter, may I draw your attention to my favorite ring in the world.)

The day he had asked you to marry him and you said yes was the happiest day of his life. He had spent time getting to know you, opening up and being truly vulnerable for the very first time, and you had never done anything but give and give and love him. He would rope the stars and the moon if you asked him, and he wanted so badly to declare his love for you to the world. However, your relationship had remained quiet and out of the spotlight. Especially since you were actively avoiding the attention he had taken measures to keep your meetings clandestine, to keep your name and face out of the public eye. A watchful fan might be able to sense something amiss (he couldn’t escape the spotlight forever), but they never had enough to do anything but throw out mere theories.

He wanted to give you the biggest fairy tale wedding money could buy, and he wanted to invite the entire country, if not the world to watch; but he understood your reservations about it. For your safety, privacy, and peace of mind a small wedding was worth the price. As well for him, the fact that you knew he would hand you a blank check for whatever you wanted but you still tried to keep spending down because you didn’t want to treat him like an ATM made him fall even deeper in love with you whenever the subject came up.

He agreed to whatever venue and theme you wanted on two conditions: one, let him order some custom wedding ring designs because he wouldn’t have his one of a kind girl wearing a piece that hundreds, maybe thousands, of other women were also wearing; and two, spare no expense with the dress! He knew that a wedding was mostly for the bride at the end of the day; and he wanted to let you feel like a princes- no, a QUEEN on your wedding day without worrying about the price tag. He told you that come what may, when it came to looking back the photos of him fawning over you in that dress would be able to give you happy memories whenever you needed them, and anytime the everyday stresses of the world dragged you down he wanted you to be able to look at that ring and let it remind you that you were like no one else in the world to him just like that little piece of jewelry.

The venue was small and private. Only both your immediate family and close friends - heroes, high school, or otherwise- were invited. Just trusted people who had known you were together to begin with. He didn’t bother to mention the event to his sponsors. He wanted them and their world as far separated from you and your new lives together as possible. They didn’t care anyway.

It was a small, chapel-like building. A few rows of pews on either side flanked the aisle which was laden with a soft, white carpet and red trim. White chiffon hung up on the walls and lined the inside of the pews with small bouquets of red roses, ferns, baby’s breath and tiny sprigs of acacia blossoms. It was dark outside, and the light in the hall danced and sparkled from the crystal chandeliers which allowed the stained glass windows to display their full range of color without distracting and taking from the scene inside. That alone was picture perfect as Hawks waited at the end of the aisle, proud of your planning but increasingly nervous for the upcoming ceremony.

You’d caught that he was self conscious about the color of his wings in your wedding photos - lamenting that they might distract others from how beautiful you were in that white dress. Red was a far more dominant color, he explained. White disappeared and took a seat next to it unless it was an accent color, and his wings were just too big to pass off as some kind of “fashion statement.” He even complained that even if they were white it would be more attention on him than he wanted. But you were clever - or at least you had clever hero support friends with a knack for design!

You had called on their expertise to tie in the concept of white and red mixing together and complimenting each other instead of fighting for dominance. They came up with a fantastic solution of tying in two other main colors - stunning pink gold and humble burnt umber - as intermediate accents and trim. His tuxedo consisted of a white jacket and trousers, red cummerbund and tie, with pink gold and satin brown trim lining the lapels, pleats on his shirt, and shiny gold buttons and wrist cuffs with modest brown shoes. Though he didn’t usually appreciate formal wear he felt really good when he put it on, feeling like his wings actually fit the design instead of distracting from it. He was just anxious to see if this was how you dressed him, what did YOU look like? Luckily after the hours of nervous pacing, anticipation, and anxious bouncing on his toes for the ceremony to start he would see.

The music played and all the guests rose as the doors at the front of the aisle gently parted for you to make your way down. The sight of you in that dress was beyond magnificent and took his breath away.

You had taken him seriously when he asked you to go all out. The flowing white skirt of the ball gown possessed a gorgeously understated gold lace layer over it and fell around you gloriously, demanding room and reverence around you though your gait denoted a calm spirit unburdened by the gaze of others. The white bodice pulled in at your waist and gently flared out to a Bataeu neckline that was a perfect balance of alluring and elegant - the shoulders of which were red chiffon blending in perfectly with the red bead work on the bodice fading down to white, and in the center of the neckline sat a simple round brooch with a brown gem centerpiece, small white jewels around the edges in a rose gold setting. You wore a choker of gold with red and white rhinestones that draped across your otherwise bare shoulders and dipped down in an arch delicately. Your chapel length veil possessed gold and satin brown trim around the edges to mirror the ensemble of your groom, though the smallest of red and pink rhinestones hidden in the lace would sparkle and reflect an extra splash of color. It wasn’t immediately obvious from the front, but as you walked up the steps to stand next to your husband-to-be a bright streak of red ran from where there were the gaps in the shoulder straps on your back (a subtle set of wings as a nod to his nickname, “Angel,” for you Hawks would come to learn later), together into the waist of the bodice, and then in one demanding band of satin red in a dramatic flair all the way down the monarch train of your skirt where it bled off into the red, pink gold, and satin brown lining for the lace layer that would sweep up into the two side panels that met again in the front at the bodice, allowing the gold pattern to end spectacularly around you and leave the panel of pure white unblemished in front of you, tying back into the solid white part of the bodice.

He couldn’t tell by virtue of being absolutely star struck in the moment, but he very well almost cried at the sight of you. Like everything else, you blew his expectations out of the water. Whatever he gave you or asked of you you always managed to return to him two, five, or tenfold times beyond his wildest dreams. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you as you approached, sure that he was either going to wake from a dream or just drop dead from the overwhelming weight in his heart. He noticeably jumped when the minister spoke up at the end of the music. If not for the rehearsal the night before, he would have forgotten to turn shoulder to shoulder to you, though he wished mightily he could just stare into your eyes for the rest of eternity.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…” and the rest was lost on Hawks’ ears as he desperately tried to continue looking at you through the corner of his eye, which only made you blush and smile when you noticed. How the hell did you just manage to be even more beautiful than what he witnessed just now?! The ceremony continued on for both far too long and not long enough when he was finally broken out of his trance.

“(Y/N), will you have this man to be your husband; to live together with him in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful unto him as long as you both shall live?”

“I will.” Your words were clear and even, though the way you blushed under your eyelashes as you looked to him betrayed the way your heart was racing.

The minister then addressed Hawks, “And will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together with her in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful unto her as long as you both shall live?”

“I wi-Ihl-” His voiced unintentionally cracked around the lump in his throat, and you could both hear a chuckle from the pews behind you. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I will.”

“With that, we would have the bride and groom exchange wedding vows and rings. May the ring bearer please come forth.”

Tokoyami had been incredibly surprised when Hawks had not only invited him to the wedding, but asked him to be the ring-bearer. The experience he had gained during his internship he had considered generous enough, but to think Hawks could have taken enough of a liking to him for this honor was beyond him. Reverently approaching from his place to stand next to the both of you, he offered your ring to Hawks with respect and Dark Shadow offered his to you with excitement before they both returned to their spot.

“Sir, please take (Y/N)’s left hand and repeat after me.

“In the sight of all these witnesses, I, (state your name), take you, (Y/N), to be my wife,”

He repeated in kind back and forth until they reached the end.

“...to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”

He looked down as he readied the ring he had spent so long designing onto your ring finger as he continued. “I give you this ring as a symbol of my love, and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you.” With that, he slowly slipped on the ring and allowed you to admire it - this being your first time ever seeing it. The band was made of small silver feathers that swirled together into a spun gold nest-like setting with a magnificent round fire opal as the centerpiece flanked by small white diamonds and a few, tiny, inconspicuous silver feathers tucked into the gold strands of the nest.

The minister then turned to you and asked you to repeat the same vows before you readied Hawk’s ring as well and placed it on his finger when you had finished, “I give you this ring as a symbol of my love, and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you.” It was a wide, masculine band, but in it were many gold feathers stemming from the shaft of a silver arrow that wrapped around his finger - the feathers meant to symbolize all that he had to give you; and the arrow his vow to protect you, his desire to provide for you like a feather carries an arrow to its target, as well as a personal point on the compass to point him home to you.

The minister gave one last address to the congregation gathered as you held hands and gazed into each others’ eyes, excited for the part to come next. “Now that these two have given themselves to each other by solemn vows, with the joining of hands and the giving and receiving of rings, I pronounce that they are husband and wife.

“You may kiss the bride.”

A thousand thoughts raced through his head as his hands gently, slowly moved to raise the veil from your face. This was it! In everyone’s eyes you were his missus, his wife, maybe the only thing in the world that was truly his. Your relationship had not been an easy one to establish by any means. There were tears and heartache and pain; and there were times he was sure that there was nothing he could do for you but to let you go; but even in the worst of circumstances you had returned to him time and time again and done nothing but hold him and love him. Everything in his world could crumble out from beneath him, but he would be able to fall safely into your arms - and really, wasn’t that what it meant to truly have everything?

He had genuinely meant to make the kiss short and sweet, but like many other things in his life his thoughts spun in his head too fast for his own good; and in the first split second he went from a gentle, chaste kiss with your face in his hands as the crowd applauded to pulling you close by the waist in a deep, passionate embrace to the sound a few whoops and jeers.

“Save it for the honeymoon, love birds!”

The comment made both of you blush as you pulled away from each other, but at this point, he didn’t really care any more. There was no more doubt, no more uncertainty, no more gaps between you. This was the first day of the rest of your lives together. He had you now, and he was never letting go. He lifted you up into the air and spun you around without regard, nearly knocking over the rest of the wedding party in the process.

This was truly the happiest day of his life!

#bnha hawks #mha hawks #hawks x reader #hawks x reader bnha #hawks imagine #hawks x reader imagine #bnha imagines #mha imagines #ugh I'm such a sucker for love stories!#Especially from men's point of view!#thanks for this anon I loved writing it!

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kappel46dideriksen · 2 years

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dancer4813 · 6 years

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Courtesy of @notalwayweak and @arkhamarchitecture, this oneshot was born from me rolling on a table, the challenge being to write a fic exploring the relationship between two PCs for the new campaign.

I rolled Travis and Marisha, and while I love Fjord and Beau as Gays I think they have their eyes on other people ;) Thus, this little pseudo-sibling relationship fic was born, also featuring Jester because how could I not?

got my eye on you

“That was a fucking trip, man,” Beau said, falling back onto her bed once they were safely in their room at the inn. “I never thought we’d have such an exciting day when I woke up this morning!”

“Do you think Molly and Yasha are going to be okay?” Jester asked, curling into herself beside the door, her tail drooping low instead of perked up as it usually was. “I do not like the thought of us leaving him there in the prison all night, or of her out on her own.”

“If anyone can take care of herself, it would be Yasha-” Fjord started, Beauregard interrupting him with a “Hell yeah!”

“Did you see the arms on her?” she continued, sitting back up, eyes alight. “Gods above, I’d pay five gold for each if I had the money, but you know, even being in them for a couple minutes? Mmmm, totally worth it.”

“I am sure that she can take care of herself, but I still don’t like either of them being alone for tonight,” Jester said, shrugging. “You know? No one should be alone.”

“I understand,” Fjord cut in, before Beau could ramble more about Yasha’s arms. “But there’s really nothing we can do tonight. We don’t have enough to bail him out, and we don’t want to deal with the Crown Guards, trust me. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow, after they’ve finished their investigation. If he’s got nothing to hide, we don’t need to worry about him.”

“I suppose you are right,” Jester said reluctantly, unfolding her arms and scratching one of her horns. “I will wait until tomorrow. Do either of you want a drink?”

“Are you buying?” Beau asked, coming out of whatever daydream about Yasha’s arms she had been lost in.

“That was the plan, yes.”

“Fantastic!” She turned to Fjord, who only had a split second to compose himself for her unexpected change of focus. “What sort of drink would Yasha have?”

He laughed, unable to help himself. “You want to get a feel for who she is?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

Fjord laughed again, this time at the distant look on her face. For someone who could punch his lights out, Beau was a hopeless romantic at heart.

“Can’t say I’m too solid on that,” he said, shaking his head with a smirk. “Didn’t she order something when they stopped by earlier?”

“She didn’t get the Bombauk – I remember that!” Jester said. “They’re such assholes. I don’t see why they have to keep messing with stuff.”

“Ale then, usual fare,” Fjord said with a nod to Beau. “Does that ring a bell?”

Beau shook her head, licking her lips as she gazed off into space. “I was too busy looking at her shoulders to catch what came out of her mouth. Won’t make that mistake again, though.”

“I’ll see what they have for ale then,” Jester said with a grin. “Maybe I can surprise you!”

Beau just hummed, and Fjord shook his head, rolling his eyes.

“Anything you want, Fjord?”

“Some sort of red wine – anything’ll do.”

“Excellent,” Jester said, looking much happier with something to do. “Any sort of wine and some ale, coming right up!”

She headed out, and Fjord was left alone with his hopelessly enraptured friend still staring at the ceiling.

“Do you need to blow off some steam?” he asked. Beau just shook her head.

“I just want to stare at her forever. You’re no good at drawing, are you?”

“Can’t say I am,” Fjord said, shaking his head. He moved to sit down on one of the chairs in the room, taking out his falchion and sharpening stone. “But you could try your hand at it, certainly.”

“I’d ruin it. Strong, silent… I’ll just have to remember her until I see her again.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Fjord murmured, drawing the whetstone down his blade once, twice, checking its edge against his thumb, then following the curve again.

“And don’t think I didn’t see how you were looking at those guys we met,” Beau said, turning to him. She waggled her eyebrows. “I might’ve been busy with a certain woman, but no one could miss the way your eyes followed them.”

“Followed who now?” Fjord asked, genuinely confused.

Beau’s lips, which had been drawn into a smirk, wilted a bit as she murmured something under her breath. It sounded like “Except you”, but that only made him more confused.

“The guys we met today,” she continued, gesturing out the window. “You know, we went to a carnival with them and everything?”

Fjord scoffed. “You mean the one who never spoke and the one who never stopped?” he asked blandly.

Beau snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”

“It’s hard not to watch them – Caleb looks shifty, and he and that goblin were eying our coin earlier. Molly’s just… a lot. Again, hard not to watch.”

He thought of the purple tiefling’s too-wide grin, and the other man’s tattered coat, nearly rags.

“You’re picturing them in your mind’s eye, aren’t you?”

“Lay off, Beau,” he scoffed, reaching over to his bed and throwing a pillow at her.

She laughed, delighted, and caught it, throwing it back at him.

He grabbed Jester’s pillow and threw both of them at her, only to be hit with the pillow from Beau’s own bed a second later.

“Hey guys! I have your- whoa!”

Jester had opened the door to the room, only to step back out as one of Fjord’s thrown pillows hit the door. Beau burst into laughter, and Fjord joined her, both of them cackling too hard to keep up their “fight”.

“Are you guys finished?” Jester asked, warily peeking back in the room, and Fjord nodded, calming down a bit. These kids would be the death of him, he was sure, but he’d be damned if he left them to their own devices. “Good! I have your drinks – Beau, I got you a Husseldorf – the bartender remembered what she got the “big grey lady” earlier, and here’s your red wine, Fjord-“

She passed out the drinks and, before Beau could down her whole cup, Jester raised hers in a toast.

“To new friends! And not being killed by the zombies!”

“To not dyin!” Fjord echoed with a chuckle.

“To ladies who can pick you up with one arm!” Beau exclaimed, and took a deep swig from her ale. “Gods, that hits the spot.”

Fjord grinned as he took a sip, watching as Jester moved to Beau’s side, pointing out that she, too, was quite strong, as if Beau hadn’t noticed.

They’d get the tiefling out of prison the next day, and hopefully find some clues about what exactly that monster had been. In the meantime, though, he’d drink his wine and watch the two of them bicker playfully.

It was certainly better than being alone.

#critfic #critical role #jester the tiefling #fjord #beauregard #did my best to avoid adding backgrounds lol #hope you like it #this was fun to write #^_^#my writing #my fic

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stressful-and-deathy · 6 years

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each step draws us closer to the aisle

“Hey, babe.

Because I’m an amazing work AND life partner, I know you pretty well.

That means I knew there’d be a very high chance you’d be getting all nervous and stressed out about things going right right now. But listen, that’s not your job today, okay? The only thing you have to do is show up and marry me. Let your mom and Kylie and the rest of the wedding party put out the fires and try to relax a bit.

I made you something that I hope will help you do that.

Don’t press play until you turn the first page. And no peeking!”

link to previous chapter - (x)

song #2 - together we stand, divided we fall

read on ao3 or click on Keep Reading below!

“Amy, do you have your first aid kit in there?” - Rosa asked again. “Nikolaj’s allergies are attacking again and he needs your epipen. If you want your flower boy to actually be able to walk down the aisle you should probably open the door.” “Coming!” Before Amy even registered anything Rosa said, she was already getting up and picking up the phone, the still opened book and the box as she hastily moved to open the door. For some reason, she felt like a child getting caught stealing candy from the kitchen cabinet in the middle of the night.

“Hi, Diaz. Rosa. Hi, Rosa Diaz. Which is you. Hi, you. What’s up, girl?” Amy managed to say after opening the bathroom door while fumbling with all the items she was trying to hold. That, of course, resulted in the scrapbook being dropped to the floor and Amy immediately diving to catch it.

Rosa stood there for about five seconds with a “Do I Really Have to Deal With This Right Now?” look on her face until she decided that no, she didn’t. There were more pressing issues at the moment. “Okay, just move before Nikolaj’s throat closes up.” Rosa moved past Amy, spotting the small kit on the counter top behind her.

“Oh, that’s really great for him” - Amy mumbled, completely distracted by the new page of the scrapbook that had been revealed when it fell. She didn’t really understand what she was seeing at first. There were no pictures, just hundreds of very small printed sequences of numbers and letters, that at first seemed completely meaningless, organized in about nine or ten columns under the title “SONG #2”. On the bottom of the page, a small massage in Jake's chaotic handwriting that said: "It sucks A LOT less when I get to do it with you".

She picked up the book, and moved towards the couch, still mesmerized by the curious inscribed numbers, but before she could actually sit down, Kylie, who was still on the phone, grabbed her arm and moved her slightly to the side, avoiding the fact that Amy was about to sit on a bunch of Gina’s makeup, therefore, saving her life from certain murder.

Kylie threw her an exasperated look but Amy didn’t even look up, so she rolled her eyes and went back to yelling into her cellphone.

Amy put on the headphones again just as she began to suspect what all those numbers were. She pressed play and when “Let’s Work Together” by Canned Heat began playing, she was sure. That was the song Jake made her, and everyone in the precinct, listen to whenever they were assigned to work together on a case for at least two years into their partnership.

Every time Jake left Captain McGintley ‘s office with a file in his hands, playing air guitar while making his way to her desk, singing “Let’s get on the ball and work together. Come on, Come on. Let’s work together”, Amy would take a deep breath and accept the fact that she was in for a long ride.

But that’s the thing, though. After a while, she stopped believing that all his buffoonery and childish behavior interfered on his abilities to do his job, he had proved time and time again what a great detective he was, there was no denying that. And more importantly, she stopped believing that the two of them would never work well together because of their very fundamental differences. Turns out, their partnership was so powerful and solid because each brought their own strengths to the table and even though Jake had insisted for a long time that he was a lone wolf and worked best alone, they both knew that was not accurate at all. When they were solving crimes together, they found a balance that just made everything easier.

Those series of numbers on the page were actually the numbers of cases she and Jake had solved together as partners, since day one up until the grand larceny case they worked on a few weeks ago. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

Amy was thinking about all the work Jake had put into getting all of those files and wondered if Kylie had actually helped him, as she scanned the page once more, just now noticing a few small drawings around some of the numbers. Some of them made her sigh lovingly, for example, surrounding what she recognized to be number of the Augustine case, there were dozens of badly drawn tiny hearts.

Others made her roll and eyes and smile, like the drawing of (barely recognizable) car keys around what was probably the number from the case of that crazy woman, who insisted she had every right to leave her small children locked inside her car alone and actually tried to swallow her car keys to prove that point. They didn’t know how long those kids had been inside the car, so Amy acted on impulse and literally shoved her hand down that woman’s throat, successfully recovering the keys while Jake already had her on handcuffs. She’d never forget seeing Jake with his mouth hanging open and a look of complete wonder on his eyes, as if she was his own personal hero.

Also there was what she assumed to be a vulture next to the numbers of every case they had almost lost to Major Crimes but managed to solve first. And lastly, she noticed the small drawing of a green and a white bar, intercalated between gold vertical bars, that was probably an attempt to reproduce the Excellent Police Duty Medal, which both she and Jake proudly wore on their uniforms. She ran her finger softly over the number next to it as her mind drifted once more to a time when she would’ve laughed out loud if told that she’d be marrying her partner.

It was a little less than a year before Holt became their captain and Jake and Amy were working on a huge case. Their informants were hitting at a new guy in town who had begun a big distribution ring in Brooklyn. After months of investigating, they found out his name was Gregory Giordano, he was the youngest kid in the Giordano family, a huge name in the mafia active on the West Coast. From what they had managed to gather, it seemed that Gregory had a major falling out with the rest of his family, so he decided to fly solo and move to New York.

Everyone they arrested with information about him would said he wasn’t like any other boss they had ever had before. Because he didn’t have an established network he could trust, he was very hands-on and liked to oversee every operation himself. They described him as a large man, who was very passionate and blew up very easily, especially when talking about his family, but still was very careful and did not do things without thinking them through first.

Finally, after weeks trying some way to approach him, they got intel that indicated he had a new dealer he was training on the streets. That meant he would be watching the new guy work throughout the day to evaluate him and accept him or not into his operation. They knew they had to get Giordano to take down the ring and that was their best shot.

It was settled that Jake and Amy would go undercover, act like they wanted to buy drugs from the new kid and try to get Giordano to engage, hoping for at least a first contact with him. They would be surrounded by backup and Rosa and Charles would also be strategically positioned in case anything went wrong.

They were in the car, about to drive to the location, and Amy was really nervous but hearing Jake babble about his ridiculous made up story for their cover in the driver’s seat actually helped a little.

“So, let’s go over it one more time: I am Jack Daniels, a successful motocross rider that has but one flaw — he is an adrenaline junkie and being on two wheels in very dangerous roads is just not enough for him anymore. Now, he started to do cocaine hard. Like, right before the doping tests so he never knows if he’ll be picked or not. You see, it’s like russian roulette but it’s his entire career on stake, not his life. Well, metaphorically his life is at a stake too, because, you know, motocrossing is his entire life. And you are, Stephanie Garcia, my trusty assistant who would do literally anything for me because you’ve been secretly in love in with me for five years now. You don’t want me to be recognized so you’ll do the talking with the dealer while I’ll just hang here wearing these cool sunglasses.”

“Sure, okay. Just drive already, we’re gonna be late.” - Amy answered.

It was less than twenty minutes until they arrived on the street where the dealer supposedly was and they quickly spotted a skinny kid, looking like he couldn’t be older than seventeen years old hanging around a black SUV.

As instructed by their informant, Jake drove to the front of a abandoned football camp, and parked beside a “Keep Out” sign. He did the code, which was to honk twice and roll down all four windows and waited. It wasn’t long until the scrawny looking boy came their way.

He stopped by Amy’s window and said “Sup”.

Amy took a deep breath, looked at him and muttered the following words: “May I have some cocaine, please?”

It was dead quiet for about five seconds.

Then Jake started to cough nervously and the kid jumped, taken aback.

“The fuck, dude. You guys fucking cops or something? What the fuck.”

At the sign of trouble, a huge guy left the SUV followed by two man dressed in suits. Both Jake and Amy noticed how all three of them kept one their hands on their waist, indicating they were all armed.

The large man, who matched Gregory Giordano’s description, reached their car after pushing the kid back and looked inside. It seemed that the kid was wearing a wire and Giordano was listening to the whole thing in the small device he was still holding.

“Is there a problem here?”

Amy was about to answer but Jake was faster.

“Oh man, not at all! You have to excuse my girlfriend. It’s the first time she’s doing this and with her kind of backstory, it’s hard to let some old habits go.” Everyone, including Amy looked at Jake like he had literally lost his mind but he just kept going.

“You know, she’s embarrassed to say it but… Jacintha here is actually the only heir of the family that owns all of the… art places in New York City. Or should I say…” - He took of his sunglasses in a dramatic manner for effect - “... was the heir, because you see, Jacintha was done with being told what to do and how to behave, she was sick of being the princess who had her future set in stone without being able to choose what she wanted to do with her life. She had a very formal upbringing and we met when she was forced into grad school, then Jacintha fell in love with the bad boy, which is me, by the way, if you can’t tell by these awesome sunglasses I’ve got here. So, I took it as a mission to show her the darker, more fun side of the world with the drugs and the um… staying up late. Anyways, that’s why she’s so formal, she had to grow up like that, but we are actually super chill and my girl here is just really inexperienced with this kind of thing, thanks to her family.”

Giordano was now staring at Amy, as if he were carefully examining every aspect of her face. She just tried to keep on smiling, whispering a small “sorry” through clenched teeth.

“You wouldn’t let anything bad happen to a happy couple in love that’s just looking for some cocaine, would you?” - Jake said, holding Amy’s hand and flashing him the best smile he could muster.

Giordano, who had never taken his eyes off of Amy, said: “So, your family’s just a bunch of assholes, huh?”

“Hm, yes, sir. They most definitely are.” - Amy managed to answer.

“I know how that feels like. Having your stupid family telling you what you should do and shit. Fuck them. I feel you, I really do. But listen to me, the best thing you can do is get the hell away from them and get your sweet revenge, you know? Like me, my dumb family was planning on moving to New York and shit. To expand the business. Guess what I did? I moved here first, took all their little plans and now I’m about to become the motherfucking main king of the area. Right in their fucking ugly faces. So yeah, I got your coke. On the house. And if you look for me again in about a week, I’ll be serving some meth, too. ‘Cause business are going great, baby! Those fuckers never saw this coming.”

He was very altered, basically yelling for anyone who wanted to hear.

And Jake and Amy were smiling from ear to ear, because just when he turned around to get the drug from the kid, he was faced with Detective Diaz and Detective Boyle, who had already taken down the three remaining people in the scene, pointing their guns at him.

Amy left the car with her handcuffs ready - “Gregory Giordano, you are under arrest.” and after she had gone through the Miranda Rights, Jake whispered to Giordano - “I’m sorry your family never loved you, dude”.

A few days later, Jake and Amy were at a ceremony in which they’d be receiving the Excellent Police Duty Medal for “an intelligent act materially contributing to a valuable accomplishment”.

Right before they were called up on stage, Jake turned to Amy and said: “I guess you are a pretty good detective.”

Amy smiled and was about to return the compliment but he kept going before she could say anything.

“Not better than me, of course. But second best is not that bad.” That made Amy’s face transform immediately, going from a soft thankful expression to furrowed eyebrows and incredulous look.

“What? Are you kidding? I am obviously a much better detective, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You wish. If I hadn’t made up that story for you insanely soliciting drugs in perfect grammar, we wouldn’t be here today.”

“Well, if I hadn’t done that in the first place, there would be no story for you to create and Gregory would be selling meth left and right. And, oh yeah, that’s right, we wouldn’t be here either.”

They kept going back and forth all through the night and until the next day, when they were all in the conference room before the morning briefing. The rest of the squad could not take anymore of Jake and Amy's banter, everyone was sick of hearing the two of them discussing about who was actually the best detective.

“You guys should just make a bet and settle this already.” - Gina suggested.

After the small crowd, including Jake, hollered in approval of the idea, Amy put her hands on her hips and asked: “Okay, but what are the stakes? And don’t say money because I know you’re in debt.”

Before her mind could take her down that path, the song ended and she hadn’t even turned the page when the next song started. As her mind caught up with the familiar beats, Amy laughed out loud.

“Oh, my God. You didn’t.”

#finallyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy #i'm sorry it took forever #i'll try to not let that happen again #anyways #let me know what you guys think!!#fanfic #b99 fic #jake x amy fanfic #peraltiago fic #my writing #my stuff

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ineffablecolors · 6 years

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You Plugged in the Lights (a NWIH story)

So this is a warm little Christmas-y piece which you can totally just read without much ado.

It is also an epilogue to a two-year-old fic named No Way In Hell which I promise gets kinda good around the 5th chapter and which still has my heart and which I might start reposting on AO3 soon.

It is also and most importantly a present for the absolutely wonderful and incredibly thoughtful and generous @shady-swan-jones who remembers stuff I’ve written ages ago (see: No Way In Hell) and seems to still hold love for them - I’m so sorry this wasn’t ready for Christmas but hey, managing before New Year’s earns me some points, right?

You Plugged in the Lights (a No Way In Hell story); ~ 3, 000 words; FF.NET || (hopefully) soon on AO3

All her life Emma’s Christmases have been marked by one defining characteristic – noise.

Christmases in group homes were loud with the screams of a multitude of kids, the yells, the trampling feet, the fights over the few good toys that people had dropped off – more often to make themselves feel good rather than the children.

Christmases in foster homes were loud with the shouting of foster parents, the never-ending arguments, the pointed hints about how grateful one should be there – an indebtedness that made the hardest of cookies even harder to swallow.

Christmases in bars were loud with the merriment of other people, the clanking of forks on plates, the jokes and conversations that you were decidedly not a part of – the very invisibility of those that were there to be pretty, to bring plates and take them away, to get up on stage and entertain, to welcome, to clean up after – never to be part of it all.

Christmases at LA wanna-be parties were loud with the laughter of people you didn’t know, the compliments of people whose opinion you didn’t care about, the seizing glances and occasional glares of people who didn’t care for you – the fakeness of it all.

Christmases at Hollywood supposedly-made-it parties were loud with the expectations of glamour and glitter, the necessary witticisms, the inescapable over-the-top flattery, the eventual scheming for the awards season – the anonymity of the dazzling crowd.

But her first Christmas with Killian is quiet.

David takes Mary-Margaret to visit his mother without his usual apprehension that Emma will be spending the holiday with a bottle of wine and some store-bought slices of turkey. It is the first time since he became her agent that he doesn’t try to convince her to make an appearance at one of the multitude of parties she has been invited to.

It’s been a little over half a year since Killian’s accident and neither of them has shown much interest in rejoining the world of flashing lights and black-tie celebrations.

It is the first time she realizes exactly how much tact David actually has sometimes, definitely not the first she sees how much he always looks out for her – for the both of them now.

Ruby is a bit harder to shake. But her obvious desire to take Belle somewhere high in the mountains with plenty of reasons for them to snuggle together under warm blankets and warmer caresses is… well, obvious.

And Gold’s secretary that came forth with all her knowledge and unexpected bravery and solidified their case while winning the heart of the plaintiff’s sister is a whole other story-

And Emma can’t help but be glad. She knows that Killian loves Ruby with all his heart but sometimes… sometimes she can tell how hard he tries around his sister, how desperately he fights to go back to someone he was before he lost his hand and then even further back – before he knew loss at all.

And much as Emma knows how special a family Christmas can be for all of them, she also knows there will be time.

A happily ever after worth of it.

There will be time for huge trees and lavish dinners and tons of presents under said trees and the whole patchwork family around the table. In a year or two.

But for this year, maybe they are still too fragile, maybe they are still sweeping their broken pieces together, maybe they are still trying to fit them with each other’s. Maybe Emma just wants what she has never had – a quiet Christmas. And she doesn’t think Killian minds one bit.

They think about staying at home at first.

Yes, ‘home’ is now one and the same thing no matter which of them is talking and that’s still new and exhilarating and scary and just…

Or rather, they don’t think about it so much as for the first two weeks of December they just wake up as usual – with the sunlight shining on Killian’s back as Emma stubbornly hides her face in his chest, with her lips eventually reaching his ribs and waking him with little kisses and nibbles, until she feels his hand looking blindly for the waistband of her pjs and his stump brushing away her hair so he can lavish the same kind of attention on her neck.

For the first two weeks of December Emma resolutely starts her days with her morning run, while Killian fluctuates between joining her – mostly so that he can join her in the shower as well afterwards – or staying behind so he can greet her with breakfast – an endeavor whose success rate also fluctuates – from a welcome of aromatic coffee and perfectly golden pancakes and syrupy kisses to a flour-littered floor and a smashed plate and a frustrated Killian with nailmarks on his left bicep.

For the first two weeks of December Emma works on her script and Killian works on her pirate vocabulary, she familiarizes herself with the production side of motion pictures and he goes to physiotherapy and fixes things around their new place that Emma thinks they can simply call someone for just to prove that he can.

He can. 6 out of 7. Not that she ever doubted him.

For the first two weeks of December they just fall asleep as usual – with Emma’s nose buried between Killian’s shoulder blades, hand stroking through his hair or over the valleys of scars on his forearm, or with cooled mugs and a laptop glowing in the dark while they try to fit all their limbs on the small couch that they keep meaning to replace.

For the first two weeks of December they don’t plan on doing much of anything with the last two weeks of December. At some point Emma buys some plain white Christmas lights and presents them to her boyfriend with a shy smile because lights and a boyfriend happen to be two things she has never had before on Christmas – let alone together. And Killian smiles at her and kisses her forehead and her nose and does his best not to get frustrated at the process of untangling strings upon strings of little bulbs one-handed, until Emma herself says fuck it and decides that huge balls of bunched up lights are a good enough decoration for the time being.

Almost all those damn lights are properly spread out and illuminating the windows by the time – well into the third week of December – Killian suggests they follow little sis’s example and go somewhere with an actual chance of a white Christmas. Somewhere less populated and sports-orientated than the resort Ruby and Belle had chosen. Somewhere warm and cozy.

“A little cabin in the middle of nowhere. Big fireplace, small bed we have to share. What do you think, Swan?”

What could she think about anything that makes his eyes sparkle like that?

He pulls some strings to get that perfect place that she is pretty sure he had his eye on even before mentioning it to her and Emma packs for the both of them with the kind of confidence and ease that makes her stop half-way through to go find Killian typing away on his laptop and throw her arms around him.

She drives and he presents her with a roadtrip playlist made to be sang to. She drives through Nevada belting Mr Brightside so hard Killian’s ears must ring all the way to Utah but he grins at her as if she just discovered a new note and makes her pull over just so he can mess up her ponytail and kiss her until she cannot remember the lyrics to any song she has ever heard besides the one her heart is beating out against his chest.

They drive through the night with only stops for coffee and hot chocolate and Snickers bars and somehow manage to eat all the sandwiches Emma rolled her eyes at the day before while Killian just shook his head and spread butter with the patience of a man who has never used margarine.

What are we, a football team of teenagers?

Well, you can certainly eat like one, love.

His shoulder is probably still slightly purple from that one.

It’s the winter wonderland they promised themselves. Plus cheek-cutting gusts of wind and precariously swaying icicles and three feet worth of snow that they have to trudge through with their bags slung over their shoulders after taking the car as far as it could possibly go.

The wind convinces Emma’s scarf to whip her in the face four times before she unwounds the bastard and then has to chase it in a direction that is most certainly not the direction they are going in. Killian finds her dropping her bag to run after her errant piece of clothing as some sort of an invitation for a snowball fight. Once her indignation has blown away with her scarf and she actually takes aim at him, he realizes exactly how long it takes him to make a proper snowball with one hand and seems to think tackling her into the snow an appropriate change of tactic.

Her scarf ends up on a branch that she fruitlessly jumps at for a solid five minutes before Killian lifts her onto his shoulders.

Without satisfactory warning or preparation, mind you-

And Emma takes great pleasure in pulling hard on the branch and watching the snow come down on his head even as she faces a similar fate.

It's the cozy little getaway they were aiming for. Plus a boiler that takes a couple of hours to heat up enough water for one person (Killian thinks it the perfect excuse for joined showers but Emma knows their joined ‘showers’ last three times as long as her regular ones), an intimidating fireplace with a much less intimidating pile of firewood beside it and a Christmas tree that somehow found itself in the living room but avoided the weight of a single ornament.

Killian ‘teaches’ her how to chop firewood for a solid hour before she discovers that he has never held an axe, even a prop one. She ‘learns’ how to chip off splinters from a log for another half hour before they discover the little closet-like space filled to the brim with firewood. She lets Killian carry all of it inside just because she can still see the tense set of his shoulders from when she got one of those splinters in her palm and watching her act the lumberjack stopped being a source of amusement and endless innuendoes. He arranges the logs inside the frankly outrageous fireplace and she strikes the match and settles in his lap to kiss his red nose and each corner of his mouth and brush away the cobwebs in his hair that he seems to have gathered along with the wood.

They make tree ornaments out of the dozen pinecones they manage to dig out of the snow and the tinfoil left from their sandwiches and check two boxes of Christmas lights to end up with barely three short strings of working ones.

They are drinking cocoa made with hot water, buried in enough blankets for ten people, in the feeble glow of those three strings and the roaring fire and she can still see the way his fingers rub nervously at the cup handle.

“A little cabin in the middle of nowhere, big fireplace… we might not even make it to the bed,” she whispers in his ear and buts her head under his chin until he chuckles helplessly and slings his left arm around her shoulders to draw her that last breath closer.

“You are awfully bad at keeping your hands off me, darling.”

She scoffs and puffs and grumbles but there’s nothing quite as telling as the way her fingers have slipped under his sweater to play along his collarbone.

“Do you foresee that changing anytime soon?”

It takes her a moment to process the question and another to detect the slight change in tone. She pulls back to give him her most incredulous look but his gaze is firmly focused on their scanty lights as his jaw ticks away with the seconds and the crackling of the fire. So instead she turns around and takes the cup from his hand to set it on the floor and straddles him with little preamble.

Her lips find his Adam’s apple and the scruffy line of his jaw, his cheekbone and the light arch of his eyebrow. Her hands drift down both his shoulders to cup his left wrist and intertwine with the fingers on his right hand and she waits for him to look straight at her, takes a moment to appreciate the soft yellow-red light reflected in his blue eyes and shakes her head for a good ten seconds before finally replying.

“No.”

He waits a beat, looking at her, into her, reading the soul she has bared to him long before they made it to a cozy fire and a pile of blankets in the middle of nowhere on Christmas Eve. Then he nods, lips quirking up in almost-melancholy, almost-joy, almost-certainty.

“Thought as much.”

She looks at him as he looks down at their hands and plays with her fingers in movements reminiscent of the way he was fidgeting with his coffee mug mere minutes ago. She looks at him as he looks up and the tears in his eyes make every organ inside her body seize up as her fingers clamp harder around him.

“It’s…” he swallows and his gaze slips back to the little lights. “It’s not terribly different from the way you check each bulb in a string to make sure they lights up. Except…”

He wets his lips and squeezes her hand and Emma desperately needs him to get where he is headed with all this so she can breathe again.

“Except they were all out. All the lights. Each one would… flash up for a moment… and then go out. And then there was you.”

His eyes find hers again and she almost startles as she feels a tear make its way down her cheek instead of his.

Killian’s left wrist twitches in her hand for a second, another has him furrowing his brow, head tilted as he slowly, consciously and so very slowly reaches up and brushes the teardrop away with his stump.

“You were the only light that kept on shining, glowing in the dark so steadfastly that soon the dark was just shadows and even those often… scared away by the sheer luminance of… of you.”

“Killian-“

“I don’t… I didn’t think… I couldn’t come up with a metaphor that didn’t make me the darkness to your light.”

She shakes her head, violently and desperately and-

“But then I thought… maybe I could be the tree you wrap around. Maybe-“

She drops her forehead to his and it earns her the breath she needs to tell him.

“No.”

“No?”

She shakes her head and feels a strand of hair stick where his own face is not dry any longer.

“No. You-“ another shake and a choked laugh. “You are the one that dug me out and finally plugged me in.”

Her head tilts with his as he seems to consider her metaphor submission.

“You are the one that lit me up.”

He is about to say something. He reconsiders and kisses her instead – firm and thorough and putting the fire at her back to shame.

“It might very well be selfishness and self-service rearing their ugly heads,” he says when he pulls away and she hurries to blink away the fog of his mouth to follow what is coming from it now. “But I feel like I have done what I could to assure you that you can do much better than this one-handed ex-HanSolo-wanna-be.”

She growls at him and digs her fingers into his ribs in admonishment.

“Ah-ah, Swan. I said I feel I’ve done what’s within my power – I have probably broken a full set of your pretty daffodil plates by now-“

She doesn’t give a flying fuck about the daffodil plates, they can eat off the counter for all she cares-

“and I have inflicted multiple shopping trips with Ruby on you. And yet…”

His hand runs down her hair and twirls the strand it ends up with and his lips go up again – almost-wistfulness, almost-delight, almost-certainty.

“And yet here you are. Shining… Supposedly because I plugged you in,” he tackles on with a face that tells her exactly how much her metaphor is ruining his pretty speech and yet.

His eyes are amusement and fondness and so much love and almost-almost-certainty.

“And… and I want nothing more than to be in your light, to… hopefully, possibly… reflect some back to you… for the rest of our lives.”

He lets go of her hand for what feels like the first time in hours and she almost has a chance to miss him before he digs the ring out of his pocket.

“Emma Swan, light of my life… do you think you can possibly find your happily ever after… as my wife?”

She doesn’t watch the light play in the diamond, she watches it play in his eyes and she reaches up to cup his face so she can feel his smile when she says it.

“I don’t think I can find it any other way.”

He smiles and she kisses him – light and warmth and love and certainty.

#captain swan #cs ff #cs au #cs fluff #cs christmas #captain swan fanfiction #no way in hell

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lavender-lotion · 6 years

Text

Don’t Come For His Family | 6,355k

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In the three years Stiles had been with Peter, the man had only talked about his family a handful of times - and as far as Stiles knew had never once spoken to them. So he wasn’t exactly excited to see the mans family, even though that’s exactly what they were about to do.

It does not go to plan.

‘ November 30: Dealer’s Choice - None of the theme suggestions catch your fancy? Maybe you have something completely different in mind for Steter week. Space pirates? Gender and/or sexuality exploration? Movie or book crossover? Historical AU? Create a Steter fan work that makes you happy! ’

Stiles had to let out another sigh. His heart was beating too loud and too fast inside his chest and he looked over at Peter again, trying to force his insecurity to the bottom of his chest. They’d already been through so much together, overcome their own challenges during their time as a couple. They had taken everything thrown at them and tossed it all back, becoming stronger for it. They had stuck through the hard times and they were solid.

This - this was just bigger. This wasn’t them arguing over the bill or Stiles’ eating habits. This wasn’t Stiles freaking out because surely five months was far too soon to move in together. This wasn’t Stiles fucking up Peter’s laundry and shrinking his favorite pair of lazy-day jeans, or Peter ‘borrowing’ Stiles’ paints and leaving the caps off, causing them to dry out. This was Stiles meeting Peter’s family for the first time, and fuck it, he was terrified.

He was terrified.

Stiles was not ignorant to how they looked as a couple. He was fully aware of the picture they made while standing next to each other. Peter, to Stiles’ surprise, was not wearing a suit. Rather he was dressed in black slacks, expensive loafers and a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up - if only to bring further attention to his rolex.

The top few buttons of the man’s shirt were undone and his chest hair was peeking out, his hair perfectly styled and beard trimmed short and neat, no more of his god awful super-villain goatee. The man was ridiculously attractive despite the grey edging his hair line.

And Stiles was wearing skinny jeans. Black, rips littering both knees from use, though he had cuffed them in an effort to appear more put together. His hair was askew - as per usual - and his glasses were once again falling down his nose, the thick black rims not staying still. His converse were scuffed, dirty and worn and in desperate need of new laces.

The shirt he had grabbed this morning was one of Peter’s and it hung loosely on his frame, the low v-neck the man usually wore exposing much more of Stiles’ chest. His neck was decorated with a ring of bruises, indents from Peter’s teeth still pressed into the darkest spots of his skin.

So he knew how the looked together. Peter was more than graceful in his late thirties and Stiles a clumsy, freshly turned nineteen. Peter, the rich and successful lawyer and Stiles, who worked at a small cafe to buy painting supplies. Peter who was made of clean, sharp lines and Stiles who was swirling ink all over and two rings in his left brow.

They looked a certain way and because of that people tended to make assumptions on their relationship. They would assume things worked between them a certain way, or were together for certain reasons, and nothing angered Stiles more. It wasn't so much that people often hinted at him being some kind of gold digging sugar baby, it was the insinuation that he didn’t love the man he was with.

And he did, love Peter. They had been together longer than necessarily legal - Stiles had graduated before his peers, getting his diploma at sixteen. He had then went to college and had met the man soon after.

Stiles had paid a small rent to hang a few of his paintings in a local coffee shop and Peter had contacted him for a commission. Discussion of the piece had turned into coffee dates that had turned into dinner dates that had turned into breakfast dates.

Stiles had moved into the man's penthouse right after his seventeenth birthday and had been together for nearly three years now. And honestly, he wasn’t sure why anyone thought it their right to do so, but permission or not people added their commentary. It wasn’t their relationship, or their life, or their fucking business, but whenever something was even remotely controversial, suddenly it's a free for all.

Stiles had dealt with more than enough during his time at University. He wasn’t shy about having Peter as his partner and would bring the man to outings. He didn’t think it fair that everyone else got to be with their significant others except he, and it annoyed him that it was expected of him to go out on his own. So he brought Peter out, often and shamelessly - the man was hot, okay - and people decided to comment on it. Whether is was the ’wow he’s really old’ or the ’dude isn’t he, like, your dad's age?’ Stiles had heard it all - and all of it was unwelcome.

From what the man had told Stiles about his family, he was preparing himself for the worse. Apparently they were a judgmental group of people and Stiles dealt with that enough in his day to day life. It was hard dating a man nineteen years his senior, even when they lived somewhere as open minded as San Francisco.

So was he excited to meet the man's family? Not particularly, no. Peter had never talked about them in a particularly positive light - going so far as to insult them more than he complimented them. The Hales’ were a relatively large family and apparently they could be opinionated, as well. One of Peter’s older sisters - Talia - was apparently the matriarch of the family, and after his parents passed away had taken on the role of the ‘head’ of the family.

She was married and had five children - though there was a considerable age gap between her three older ones and her younger two, Cora and Dylan being nine years apart, the biggest age gap between Laura and Alexander at 13 years. Then there was Peter’s other sister and her husband with their twin girls, one married and the other engaged.

They were all going to be at the dinner.

The dinner they were standing outside of. Or, technically they were standing outside the house, but specifics. Stiles was holding a hideously baked pie - trying desperately to stop the shaking of his fingers. Peter was holding a canvas - large, and he struggled to carry it one handed - a piece he had painted exactly for this night. It was a wonderful mix of colour and texture and it had been something Stiles had been working on for the past few days, trying to quell his anxiety over the night's events as he powered through the work.

Peter had told him he was being silly every time Stiles refused to join him for meals, too engrossed in his work to leave. Though, he was also the same man who had admitted he had not seen his family for three years because of how crazy they all supposedly were. Really, Stiles had no idea why they were even here. Okay, well that was not true. Apparently Laura had seen Peter out and about in Beacon Hills and had told her mother who hadn’t stopped calling Peter until the man finally answered.

Stiles could attest to this, since he had sat beside the man and they watched call after call be sent to voicemail. They had ate dinner with Stiles’ father, gone for a quiet walk around the little park at the edge of town and then had a nice round of slow, sweet sex. When Peter finally checked his phone before bed his missed calls had been in the two hundreds and they had both stared at the phone wide eyed as it started to ring again.

At that point Peter really did answer it, if only to yell at his older sister. Somehow the man had agreed to dinner - though the man had admitted it was just to shock his family with his ’hot young piece of ass’. Stiles had smacked the man over the head then flushed at the compliment - even after years of being together still embarrassed when Peter complimented his body.

While Stiles enjoyed the compliment, he did not enjoy the insulation and Peter knew that, knew how sensitive Stiles was about that sort of comment. So in apology the man had woken him with breakfast and a blowjob and Stiles had quickly forgiven him, though he did force the man to cuddle for the rest of the day - ignoring the fact that they would be meeting the man's whole family that evening.

When evening did come Stiles had just sighed dramatically, dressing easily and pulling the pie he had made the night before. He wished a good night to his dad, the man laughing at his dramatics as he pretended to faint in the doorway - claiming illness so he could stay home.

Peter had not let him stay home.

Peter had also just rang the doorbell, the traitor, so Stiles plastered a smile onto his face, his hands shaking under the pie tin. He hoped it wasn’t obvious, especially given how ugly the pie was to begin with. He was an artist, he was not a baker and he told Peter that, explained to the man that there was a reason Stiles hadn’t once baked in their entire relationship. The man had just instead they make something, and while making a mess of his father's kitchen had been fun, the result was hideous.

Stiles was not sure what he was expecting when the door opened but having to look down was not it. The boy in the doorway was wearing cargo shorts and a neon yellow shirt - his hair even messier than Stiles’. The boy just looked up with big eyes, his small hand holding the door open.

“Hello, Uncle Peter,” The kid said with zero affliction, his voice incredibly flat.

“Hello, Alexander,” Peter said equally without tone, but a moment later both smiled wide, the boy throwing himself at Peter’s legs.

Alex pulled back and Stiles watched with a tilted head as the boy stared up at Peter before reeling back and punching the man in the stomach, “That is for going three years without so much as a phone call!”

“Well you could have called me,” Peter argued, though his free hand was holding his stomach. The punch had looked a little painful.

Stiles was almost proud of the look the kid leveled his boyfriend - he hadn’t realized so much attitude could exist in such a small body, “I am thirteen. I do not have a phone.”

Stiles snorted at that causing the boy to look over at him, “Uh hi?”

“Who is that?” Alex asked, looking back up at his Uncle.

“That is my boyfriend.”

“He’s pretty. Marvel or DC?” Stiles ignored the first part of the comment, though Peter did make a questioning noise at the assessment.

“DC, duh.”

“Uncle Peter, I approve.” Stiles smiled wide, offering the kid his fist and internally jumping with joy when the boy bumped theirs together, finally moving aside to let them step into the house.

“Small one, take the pie.” Peter said to the boy, smiling when the kid grumbled.

Stiles had never really thought about children. Sure, he had always sort of wanted his own, but it was more of a far off, abstract idea. He had definitely never thought about having kids with Peter, though it was less to do with the man and more to do with the fact that he just - hadn’t. Spending the rest of his life with the man? Yes, he had thought about it and yes, he was planning on doing so. He couldn’t see himself being with anyone else, didn’t even want to think about it.

But he was still young, in absolutely no rush to have kids but - but he couldn’t help but thinking what Peter may want. The man was nearly forty, surely he would want to have kids soon? Unless Peter didn’t want to kids at all, which Stiles really hoped wasn’t true. Seeing him interact with his Nephew was giving Stiles a fairly good preview as to what Peter would be like as a dad, and even if he hadn’t thought of it before now, he wanted.

He passed the pie off to Alex who was dutifully holding his hands out and he stepped closer to Peter as the man ruffled the boy's hair before sending him off. Stiles wrapped an arm around Peter’s waist and stepped close, the man smiling softly down at him.

“Do you want kids?” Stiles blurted out - and okay, not how he was going to do it. Though in all fairness, nothing ever worked out how Stiles thought it would.

“Well, I would like to, one day,” The man said, cocking his head to the side as he continued to look down at Stiles

“Like, when one day? And how many?” Stiles asked excitedly, smiling wide up at the man. Peter also wanted kids, score!

“Is this really a conversation we should be having right now, darling?” Which was a good point, and Stiles flushed slightly, turning his face into Peter’s neck.

They stayed like that for a long moment before Peter stepped back, leaning Stiles’ painting against the hall for later. The house had seemed big from the driveway and it looked far larger now that they were inside. The ceiling was high and they were in a sort of entry way, closets on both sides of the front door. Peter took his hand and pulled him further down the front hall, a staircase set into the wall at their left. To the right was a large living room, big, L shaped couches and loveseats scattered about. The entertainment table was large, shelves surrounding a big TV.

There was a fair bit of art on the walls and Stiles was already feeling better about his decision to bring something. He startled when a head popped up from behind one of the couches, a small boy peering over the arm. The kid looked young and Stiles was having trouble placing him. Peter had told him about his family and Stiles had taken notes, quizzing the man until he was sure he would know everyone's name by the first moment he walked into the house. The boy walked over slowly, shyly stepping in front of Peter before he looked up.

“Dylan, this is Stiles,” Peter introduced, crouching down the boy's level. Stiles didn’t have a lot of experience with young children, and he knew Dylan was ten, though he hardly looked more than six or seven.

The boy blinked up at Stiles though he didn’t say anything for a long moment. When he did finally do something it wasn’t to talk, instead he stepped forward until he was standing directly in front of the man and poked him on the wrist. Stiles had a grayscale butterfly there, one of the many, many tattoos he had. It was fairly large, overall the size of his palm and it wrapped around his wrist.

The wings were incredibly detailed and it was one of the first pieces Stiles had got, his friend Erica still training but already an amazing artist. He got a great deal because it was done by an ‘ammature’ and was still one of the better pieces he had.

“That’s cool,” The boy breathed with wide eyes still poking at the ink.

“Thanks!” Stiles said happily, crouching down so he was eye level, “Do you like the butterfly? Because I have another on my back if you want to see it?”

The boy just stared before he started nodding rapidly and Stiles grinned wide, turning and lifting his shirt to show off the collection of butterflies he had on his lower back. Fingers ghosted over the ink there, small fingers gently stroking the skin along his side. Stiles grinned up at Peter only to find the man watching them with a warm smile.

’I love you,’ The man mouthed at him and Stiles smiled wider, his heart fluttering stupidly in his chest when he mouthed it back

“What’s this one?” Dylan asked, his fingers pushing harder against the middle of his spine.

“That is a sprig of lavender.” Stiles said, biting his lip to try and control his smile.

He loved when kids enjoyed his tattoos. They still weren’t as accepted as he would like and he was used to getting strange looks because of them. So for Dylan to be so curious and to be getting to much enjoyment out of them pleased him, especially because the boy had seemed so timid at first.

“It’s pretty.” The boy said and the awe was apparent in his voice.

“It smells good to!” Stiles said, resting one hand on Peter’s thigh to help keep his balance when Dylan pushed harder against his back, laying his palm flat against Stiles’ skin.

“So cool,”

“Dylan!” A woman called, startling the boy so bad he would have fallen if Stiles hadn’t whipped around right away, catching the boy and tugging him against his side with his free hand.

“There ya go, buddy,” Stiles said once the kid had regained his balance, flashing the boy a smile as he tugged his shirt back down just in time, since a tall woman strode in, wearing slacks and a blazer and looking entirely too put together in the soft light of the room.

Peter had straightened his back as soon as he heard the woman's voice, his ’I am an amazing lawyer and will take all your money’ smirk firmly in place. Stiles thought it looked a little less intimidating without the goatee, but he did not regret making the man grow the thing out one bit.

Stiles stood when the woman entered, having made sure Dylan was good on his own. Peter took a step forward, putting himself between Stiles and the woman, presumably one of his sisters. Stiles wasn’t sure if it were Talia and Marissa, both being close in age and apparently having similar appearances. Though by the outfit and the tightness of her posture, Stiles had to guess it was Talia.

“Peter! When did you get in?” Talia - certainly Talia if the way Peter’s shoulders tensed further was anything to go by - asked, ushering Dylan out of the room and back down the hall without a word.

“Talia,” Peter said flatly, not stepping up to shake the outstretched the hand. Stiles looked between the two nervously, shifting his weight to one foot - Talia’s eyes snapping towards when as he did so.

“Oh, and who is this?” She asked and Stiles didn’t know her, but she could tell the cheer in her voice was faked.

“This is Stiles,” The man said simply, offering out his elbow and Stiles stepped forward to take it, wrapping his hand softly around the mans arm.

"Peter you never told us you married!" Talia exclaimed and Stiles watched as she smiled, fake.

"That would be because I never did, sister dear," Peter’s voice was colder than Stiles had ever heard it, and it made him look over at the man in concern.

"Well, who is this if not your stepson!?" Peter bristled at the comment and Stiles was having none of it. You did not come for his family.

He sidled up close to the man's side, plastering himself to his boyfriend's body and looping an arm around his neck, tangling his hand in the man's hair and pulling Peter’s face into his neck. His let his other hand rest on Peter’s chest, tucking a few fingers into the gap between two buttons and turning his head to look at Talia.

“Sweetheart, I thought you told me your mother died? Who is this woman?” Stiles asked, smiling just as widely and just as falsely as Talia was - after all, he learned how to deal with bullies long, long ago.

The insult hit its mark and the woman took a step back, hand going to cover her mouth, “I am his sister.

“Oh dear! I am so sorry,” Here Peter buried his face deeper into Stiles neck, chuckling silently against his skin, “I just assumed that with your age…”

“Why yo-” Talia began, though she was cut off when a girl Stiles’ age came barreling into the room, jumping onto Peter’s back and knocking both himself and Stiles off balance.

“Uncle Peter!” The girl shouted, disentangling herself from her Uncle only to stare at Stiles for a long moment.

Stiles was sure he knew her, but he couldn't quite decide who she was. He then felt incredibly stupid for not making the connection earlier and smiled wide at the girl, before exclaiming, “Cora Hale!”

“Stiles Stilinski!” She called with just as much enthusiasm, rounding Peter for a hug that Stiles gladly accepted.

“Dude,”

“Dude,” She said again, looking between himself and Peter. Stiles just nodded and smiled smugly, stepping closer to the man.

“You two know each other?” Peter asked and they both smirked at the man at the same time before bumping fists, much like he and Alexander had done.

“Also,” Cora said, before turning and punching Stiles hard in the arm, “That is for disappearing!”

“I did not disappear!” Stiles exclaimed, rubbing at his arm, “I graduated.”

“You did what?!”

“Yeah, I took extra classes each year and summer, then I graduated and went to San Francisco like we always planned and I got a job as a barista,” Stiles explained, greatly over simplifying his struggle, and the help he ended up receiving from Peter.

“Do you still paint?” She asked, her eyes bright with excitement. They had taken art all throughout school together, often being the top of their class.

“Yeah, that’s how I met Peter,” Stiles admitted, pointing to the hall, “I brought a piece for the house.”

“Yeah,” Cora began, scrunching up her face, “I can’t believe you’re fucking my Uncle.”

“Cora!” Talia loudly scolded, alerting them to her presence. Stiles had figured the woman had left, but it seemed as though her and Peter were stuck in some sort of staring contest. Peter still looked stiff and Stiles smirked before he sauntered closer.

He looked over at Cora and shot her a wink before once again tangling his hand in Peter’s hair, though this time he brought their mouths together, licking inside the man's lips and sucking on his tongue, moaning lowly as he pressed their bodies together. He was mostly putting on a show, though Peter was an amazing kisser. Either way it was hard to pull back, though when he finally did the man's face was flushed and Cora was giggling.

Talia looked horrified.

Perfect.

“Come, I want to meet everyone else!” Stiles demanded, dragging Peter by the hand and linking arms with Cora on the way, walking past Talia in obvious dismissal.

Apparently, the kitchen was down the hall. After passing the living room the house opened up wide, on his left an extravagant dining room and his right a large kitchen. A couple was standing at the island, talking lowly to one another and by the ages Stiles figures it were Marissa - Peter’s other sister - and her husband, Austin.

“I’ll meet you guys out back!” Cora called with a grin, alerting the two to their presence as she slipped past the hall and out the back door, leaving the sliding glass open behind her.

Peter offered his elbow once more - Stiles taking it with a kiss to the man's cheek - and led them forward, smiling widely at his older sister. It was nice to see Peter so happy to see someone. Sure, the man had friends back home - they both did - but most of Peter’s friends were work friends, other lawyers - and most of them were just trying to get a leg up in their world.

Peter’s practice had been successful for the half decade it had been around, and it wasn’t unusual for the man to come home from lunches muttering about corporate sharks. Thankfully he had joined a basketball team a couple of years ago. It keeped Peter active and in shape - why the man was glad he joined - but it also gave him people who he could socialize with in a healthy way - was Stiles was glad he joined.

“And this is my other sister,” The woman was gorgeous, and although she did look like Talia, the woman's face seemed much younger - smiles lines and crow's feet sat etched into her skin while Talia had deep wrinkles running across her forehead, around her mouth. Marissa had aged with grace, the happiness she lived through clear on her face while Talia only looked like stress.

“Oh good! I have been waiting to meet you,” Stiles said, smile genuine. Because of everything he had heard from Peter, Marissa - and Cora - were some of the only family Stiles didn’t already dislike. So when the woman opened up for a hug Stiles went with it, allowing the woman to pull him in.

“Brother, introduced us!” She demanded with a laugh and Stiles grinned at his boyfriend, watching him smile softly

“Stiles this is Marissa, the sister I actually love, and Marissa this is Stiles, light of my life,” The man said, ending the sentence with a slight bow and Stiles snorted at the man's dramatics, turning to drop a quick kiss to the man's shoulder.

“Peter has never brought anyone home before, you must be special,” She said with a smirk and Stiles’ own softened into something sweet.

“Well I’d hope after three years…” Stiles trailed off, sending a teasing grin at the man and missing how Marissa’s mouth dropped open in shock as she gaped at the older man.

“The-three years?”

“Yes, sister.” Peter said, and they shared a series of looks that apparently constituted a conversation, since they both seemed to be on the same page when Peter finally nodded, only looking away to face Stiles, kissing the boys cheek.

“Uhm, so…” Stiles trailed off, unsure of what exactly just happened.

“So! Come and meet my girls!” Marissa said, grabbing Stiles and pulling him outside, both men trailing behind them.

The backyard was large, backing the preserve. There was a large table set up in the middle of the yard, delicately decorated. It look more like it was for show than practical use, especially sitting on grass. The table was a dark wood, covered in a cream table cloth and set with expensive looking plates and glasses. There was a bottle of wine on each end and another, smaller table with just two plate settings that Stilles assumed were for the boys.

It was outrageous, Stiles thought, though he only had so long to stare before Marissa was dragging him across the yard, barrelling towards two girls who look older than himself.

The twins looked much like their mother, though they made Stiles a little uncomfortable. Their introduction had been a little awkward, and it was clear neither girl particularly cared for their Uncle. He also couldn’t help but feel strange that he was younger than all the man's family - save Talia’s two younger sons and Cora, who he was the same age as. Besides that, neither girl seemed particularly welcoming, though Stiles did have a decent conversation with Mike, Crystal’s financé, about video games.

It was just - their age difference was obvious yes, but not to each other. It didn’t come up in their daily life as a couple, and sure other people were quick to point it out but in all honestly they didn't go out all that much. Stiles was an artist first and foremost and while he was taking part time classes at the local college, he spent most of his time working on commissioned pieces or working shifts at Starbucks, enjoying the job even if he no longer needed the money.

Peter just worked a lot, and they would often be in their office/studio, both working, existing together in companionable silence. So, the age gap in their relationship was not very often relevant to them, and Stiles didn’t like being put into situations where it was. It wasn’t as though he wanted to ignore it or pretend it away, it was that it didn’t matter.

Soon enough Talia was calling for dinner, her voice ringing clear as Marissa’s husband, another man around the same age and one only a few years older than Stiles began carrying out trays of food. Stiles was a little surprised that they didn’t have a service for this, but he figured that may be a little too much even for Talia.

He took his seat beside Peter, sitting on the far side and leaving a few empty seats next to each of them. They were the first to sit and figured there were sitting in the most neutral position possible. Marissa had sat next to Peter and Cora had sat next to Stiles, bumping their shoulders together and grinning.

Stiles had to admit he did not listen to Talia’s speech. Peter’s hand was a comfortable weight high on his thigh and he was fiddling with the man's fingers, distractedly tracing shapes and designs into the mans skin. Talia sat herself at the end of the table and her - at least Still assumed the man was Patrick - husband sat at the other. The rest of the kids - Talia’s and Marissa’s children - sat on the side opposite Stiles and he couldn't say he was glad when Laura sat across from him.

He - he knew about Laura. Stiles’ father was the Sheriff of the town and he was a respected, well loved man. The people of the town adored him and even though he was getting old, he was still more than competent at his job. Laura - Laura was a recent officer and one who thought she knew how to do everything.

Often during their second-nightly phone calls his father would complain about the girl questioning his work, or how he assigned shifts, or his authority. And it wasn’t just his father, either. Jordan Parrish was like a brother to Stiles, the man having been on the force since the boy was thirteen. They had developed a deep friendship founded in Star Trek and never looked back. They still talked at least once a week and although Jordan had a very obvious crush on his father, they were close.

Jordan had also been quick to point out Laura’s flaws, ranting about the new girl who thought she was all that. And it wasn’t just his dad Laura criticized, either. She was quick to go after Jordan, picking apart cases the man was working on and trying to poke holes in his theories or tarnish his witness’. Really, she was a bitch who thought herself better than others, and Stiles wasn’t surprised now that he had met both her and Talia.

It was quite after Talia’s toast and Stiles was just happy to be able to eat. His pie was sitting in the center of the table, looking even uglier now that it was on display next to fancy, expensive food bowls and servings instruments. He loaded Peter’s plate - the man engaged in conversation with his sister - before going about making up his own, really only grabbing from the things he or Cora could reach.

“So Stiles, you never did mention what you do for a living?” Talia asked, staring down the table at him. He had only just taken his first bite and although the chicken were good, it was rather bland.

“I’m an artist, actually,” He said, grinning. He was good at what he did and he figured he was allowed to be proud of himself for it.

“Oh,” Talia said, disapproval heavy in her tone, “How exactly does that work.”

“I personally work on a commission basis. So people will essentially hire me to paint a specific painting,” Stiles tried to explain it as simply as he could. He didn't have the energy to explain how his business worked to someone who so clearly did not care, either.

“I see.” Thankfully Talia had turned to her food, and the dinner had continued on. Cora pulled Stiles into a conversation about San Francisco, and Stiles began excitedly telling her about their life there, waving his hands as he spoke.

He was startled out of his conversation by Laura, an ugly smirk on her face when she asked, “So Stiles, how old are you, anyway?”

“Uh, yeah I’m nineteen?” Stiles admitted with a shrug, the entire table going quite as he did so.

“I mean I already knew that,” Cora added, sending a small smile to Stiles. He was thankful for her support, and god he hoped they could reconnect. He had missed few people, but she was one of them.

“You know what, this all makes a lot more sense now,” Laura muttered, taking another sip from her wine cup. Stiles wanted to punch her, a little.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, just the arrangement you two have.” She said it like it were simple, an accepted fact that the others were all in on. At this point Stiles really wanted to punch her.

“Are you seriously implying that I’m what? His sugar baby? A whore?” Stiles spat the word, old hurt quickly resurfacing. If there was one thing dating an older, financially successful man caused, was name calling. It may have been easier if Peter was nothing more than a sugar daddy, but he wasn’t. Stiles loved the other man, planned to spend the rest of his life with Peter. He hated when people insinuated he was only with the man for his money because it wasn’t true.

“Look, the gig is up. We all know what’s going on.” Laura said again, smile still on he face.

“No, I really don’t think we do?” Cora added from his side, squeezing his knee under the table.

“I mean, why else would anyone be with Peter? It’s not like Stiles would be with him willingly!” She laughed then, looking around as if to see who else would agree. Other than Talia, no one looked interested what so ever. Peter’s hand had gone tight on his thigh, the man's jaw set heavily.

Peter - Peter had been treated badly before. It took nearly two years to find out a little more about the man's dating history, and Stiles could understand why. Peter had dealt with people dating him strictly for his money before, one girl going so far as to be with him for over two years. Peter had proposed - and Stiles could guess that was why he had yet to do the same for Stiles - only to find out the girl had been with him strictly for his money, and had taken off.

Stiles couldn't even imagine what that may feel like, but he knew how deeply it haunted Peter. The rockiest parts of their relationship had been due to the money imbalance, and Stiles had kept his job at Starbucks and a separate bank account in case they ever broke up - at Peter’s insistence. It had taken Stiles months to convince the man he really cared for him, that it was more than the material things Peter could provide that attracted him.

“You really don't need to pretend. I mean, we all know what happened with Ashley.”

“Say one more word about him and I swear to god you’ll never work so much as a security position in all of California!” Stiles hissed, slamming his hands flat on the table and leaning forward, staring her down until she relented, shifting her eyes and hunching her shoulders forward.

“How dare you talk to my daughter that way!” Talia protested, glaring at the boy.

“Hey, hey! How about you shut up, sit down, and the rest of us will go back to pretending that we don’t know you’re a money laundering, whore buying bitch.” Stiles said cheerfully, grinning wide at the other woman, “Oh, wait was that a secret?”

Stiles watched with disinterest as the woman screeched, throwing herself out of her chair before literally throwing her wine at Stiles, the liquid soaking his hair and dripping down his face. Stiles carefully picked up his napkin and dabbed the wine out of his eyes, not a care in the world. At least, that’s what he hoped he looked like.

“That was so much fun!” Stiles exclaimed, giggling as he watched Patrick all but wrestle Talia into the house, literally picking her up and carrying her inside the house, the door slamming behind them.

“Well, it was lovely meeting most of you!” Stiles exclaimed, raising to his feet and clapping his hands together to hide how they were shaking.

That - that did not go over as planned. He had gotten dirt on Talia as a safety precaution, a last resort. He hadn’t even meant to share any of what he knew, hadn’t even told Peter. He just needed to be prepared for the worst and some of the things Peter had told him about his sister had made him overly cautious. And he knew what he had done maybe wasn’t right - definitely wasn’t legal - but he had a super lawyer for a boyfriend, and if it could get Peter’s shoulder to relax and his jaw to unclench, he’d do it.

He pulled the man out of the backyard, circling around the house instead of making his way through, not willing to see Talia again. He had no idea what could be happening right now, and frankly had no pleasure to find out. He knew he had probably ruined any relationship he would have with a portion of Peter’s family, but he couldn’t bring himself to care - not when they acted like that.

“Marry me,” Peter breathed against Stiles neck. They had just made their way to the car when Peter had spun him around, pining Stiles to the jeep door and pressing their bodies together, mouthing at the boy’s skin.

“I'm sorry,” Stiles muttered, embarrassed.

“I’m serious.” Peter insisted, voice cracking, and he leaned back to look at Stiles with tears in his eyes, smile on his lips, “I love you, I love you. Marry me?”

Stiles could only nod, laughing bright.

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lavenderprose · 7 years

Text

A sampling of some of the many, many universes in which Viktor Nikiforov and Yuuri Katsuki didn’t somehow manage to avoid each other for TEN+ YEARS and are already happily married (Inspired in part by the musings of @kiaronna and @pearlo on this topic from this post):

In 2010, Viktor is leaving an Olympic after party because it has just more or less dissolved into an orgy and that’s not Really his scene. In this universe, he decides not to go back to his room and instead finds his way to an outdoor seating area, which is not very heavily utilized given the fact that it’s February. There is only one other person out there–an athlete with his back turned, curled up onto a bench. The lettering on his jacket says Japan. “Mind if I join?” he asks, and the other man turns to reveal dark hair and the deepest eyes Viktor has ever seen. “Oh,” he squeaks. “No. Go ahead.” They sit, and talk, and three hours later exchange phone numbers. Instead of going to America to train, Yuuri Katsuki goes to Russia to train under Yakov Feltsman. He takes National gold in 2011 and marries Viktor in 2012.

Phichit accidentally posts a video of Yuuri doing a bit of Viktor’s 2013 free skate to Instagram, instead of the hamster video he meant to post. The video makes its way through the figure skating grapevine until, obviously, reaching Viktor. Viktor immediately DM’s Phichit, begging to know who the man in the video is. Yuuri wakes up to six missed calls, 609 Instagram notifications, 49 texts and a DM from Viktor Nikiforov. “I WAS ASLEEP FOR AN HOUR,” he shrieks. Phichit takes complete credit for their marriage in his speech at their wedding less than a year later.

Through the careful and judicious saving of money for several years, and because in at least one timeline the main waterline in the onsen and the transmission on the family car don’t go kaput in the same year, Yuuri’s family is able to send him to one of Yakov Feltsman’s ice skating boot camps when he is fourteen years old. Viktor is there, all shining hair and huge smile and new celebrity. He has just placed at the Turin Olympics and is on his way to becoming a Russian household name, and Yuuri has been in love with him for two years already. “Yuuri!” Viktor coos across the ice, over the heads of the fifteen other skaters in the bootcamp. “Keep your hips even! It won’t make it so hard to turn into your Axel!” “Yuuri! Don’t hunch your shoulders on the spread eagle!” “Yuuri! Your thigh should be parallel to the ice on that sitspin!” “He’s incredibly skilled for his age,” Lilia tells Yakov in the back of the rink one day. “And Vitya has been behaving remarkably well, since he came here.” She fixes her eyes on Yakov, deep and determined. “He’ll be old enough to make his senior debut next year. If we groom him through his last year of juniors, he could bronze in his first GPF, or better. I want him, Yasha.” Yakov Feltsman is not in the habit of denying his wife those few things she asks of him. Yuuri Katsuki returns home after that bootcamp to pack his things and collect his dog and hug his parents goodbye. “I’ll take good care of him, Mr. and Mrs. Katsuki,” Viktor assures from a Skype call. “He’ll be getting the best training in the world. I even have a poodle, so Vicchan won’t be lonely during the day!” Hiroko and Toshiya just smile knowingly. Yuuri Katsuki is newly fifteen when he moves to Russia and begins sharing a condo with Viktor Nikiforov. He is sixteen when he wins his first GPF silver, and eighteen when the Vancouver Olympics roll around and he stands below his best friend on the podium and accepts silver for Japan as Viktor accepts gold. He is nineteen when, after five years of glances and touches and shared secrets and tears and laughter, Viktor pulls him into bed. “About time,” is the general consensus to that. They have only been dating, dating-dating, for five months when Viktor asks him to marry him. “I know it’s quick,” Viktor says, “but I feel like–I feel like we’ve known each other all our lives, anywa, so what’s the point in waiting?” Yuuri, of course, feels the same way.

Viktor makes a split-second decision to touch up his make-up before a press conference at the Trophee de France 2011, and as he’s patting the sweat marks off his temples hears the definite sound of someone crying. “Um,” he announces to the otherwise silence bathroom. “Are you okay?” “Yeah!” comes the answer, shrill. “I’m totally fine!” “You don’t sound fine,” Viktor says, and ducks his head to see which stall has feet under it. In the last stall, he sees a pair of badly-abused sneakers. He straightens up and knocks on the door. “I’ll leave you alone if you want me to, but I can–if you want, I can show you a better place to cry. Than here.” It takes a moment, but the door opens. The man in front of him has watery eyes and puffy red cheeks and Viktor isn’t sure he has ever found someone so beautiful. “Okay,” he whispers, and Viktor leads him onto the roof where instead of crying, he stares out over the skyline and tells Viktor about his home town. Viktor never does discover why Yuuri was crying, but he does get his phone number–and he does visit his hometown with him, a year later, to tell Yuuri’s family that they’ve decided to get married.

Yuuri is somehow convinced by Phichit to go out with a group after Skate America in 2013–Phichit is in his element, leading people around the city with expansive gestures and the effortless social confidence Yuuri has come to know of his best friend. “You’re from this city too, aren’t you?” asks someone at Yuuri’s shoulder, and Yuuri turns from Phichit’s monologue to see Viktor Nikiforov of all people. Yuuri, distantly in the back of his mind, realizes that he didn’t see Viktor before because he is wearing a hat, scarf, and enormous sunglasses. “Um, not from here,” Yuuri says, trying not to squeak, “but I–we both live here, Phichit and I.” “But you know the city,” Viktor says, “so that means you would know a place where I can get the most disgustingly greasy food imaginable and you and I can go there and my coach never needs to know?” “Yes,” Yuuri says immediately, because he may be timid around most people, and especially around his idol, but he has more than enough sense to realize that His Time Has Come. “I can absolutely do that.” Yuuri takes Viktor to American Coney Island, where they eat loose burgers and chili fries and drink diet coke, which is the only cession to their diets. “Oh Yuuri,” Viktor laughs at the end of the night, a speck of chili cheese still at the corner of his mouth, “I could fall in love with a man like you.” And he does.

Celestino wins a radio lottery and receives tickets to Champions on Ice in Las Vegas–he decides to take Yuuri and a rinkmate. Yuuri’s rinkmate is nice, but he doesn’t know her very well, and he’s several years younger. She also has friends in Nevada who she wants to meet up with, and Yuuri doesn’t know anybody in the state for obvious reasons. On the first day they are there, Yuuri’s rinkmate disappears with her friends and Celestino takes his wife and goes exploring on the strip. Yuuri stays in his room and plays Pokemon and Skypes his mother. On the second day, Yuuri goes shopping for souvenirs for Yuuko and his family, and stares far too long at the billboard of Viktor Nikiforov’s face that is advertising the ice show. That night, he debates which of the three posters he brought with him he should bring to have Viktor sign, before deciding on none–the odds that he will meet Viktor Nikiforov tonight are practically not any higher than they were when the were on opposite sides of the world, and Celestino won’t want to wait in the long autograph lines. “Don’t you want an autograph, Yuuri?” Celestino asks after the show, and Yuuri thinks it’s nice of him even though they both know that the polite thing to do is say no. “No,” Yuuri says, staring at the long line, and continues out of the building. They branch off then–Celestino has dinner plans with his wife, and Yuuri’s rinkmate is meeting back up with her friends for some clubbing. Yuuri is walking back to the hotel when he bumps headlong into somebody’s solid chest. “Oh, sorry,” they say, and steady him with hands on his shoulders. Yuuri looks up and finds the same icey blue eyes frm that billboard yesterday staring back at him. “Oh,” Yuuri whispers, wide-eyed. “You’re–” “Shhh,” whispers Viktor Nikiforov, pressing a finger to his own lips. “Don’t give it away, I’m hiding. “VITYA,” someone from the alley leading back towards the ice center screams. “Come on,” Viktor laughs, and tugs Yuuri away by the hand. It’s the spring before Viktor will cut his hair, and it flies out behind him in a magnificent cascade as they run. They find their way into a club, where Viktor buys them drinks and laughs and laughs no matter what Yuuri is saying, and then drags him out onto the dance floor. Yuuri has not yet met Phichit Chulanont, who will drag him to pole dancing classes and teach him how to move his hips like a weapon, but he and Viktor get by in the crush of bodies, pushing against each other. “I think I love you,” Viktor breaths against his neck, and they’re both three sheets to the wind, but Viktor is Russian and Yuuri is a college student and their tolerance is astronomical. They aren’t even stumbling. “I know we only just met, but I think I love you.” “Then let’s get married,” Yuuri blurts before he can help it, and Viktor beams. “Yes!” he cries. “Yes, let’s do that!” It isn’t hard to find a place that will marry them–even though Viktor’s signature on the certificate looks more like a drawing of a tree, and even though Yuuri’s tie ends up around his forehead halfway through the ceremony. In the morning, Yuuri wakes up with the worst hangover of his life, fully-clothed next to Viktor Nikiforov, and says, “We can–this happens all the time, we can have it annulled.” Viktor stares down at the ring on his finger, tangled hair all over one shoulder. Yuuri realizes that he doesn’t even rememer where the rings came from. How much did they cost? “I would rather not, if that’s okay,” Viktor murmurs, and so they don’t. Yuuri carries out the rest of the year in Detroit, wearing the ring around his neck on a chain and thinking about his husband, half a world away, waiting for him.

#victuuri #yoi #yuri on ice #viktor nikiforov #yuuri katsuki #maggie's fic

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unashamed-shipper · 7 years

Text

Living With You

read on ff.net and ao3

one / two / three / four / five / six / seven / eight / nine / ten / eleven / twelve / thirteen / fourteen / fifteen / sixteen / seventeen / eighteen / nineteen / twenty / twenty one

rating: t+ for sexual joking, swear words, and violence

pairings in this chapter: nalu, gajevy, and gruvia

characters in this chapter: natsu, lucy, gray, juvia, gajeel, levy

Natsu woke up with a grumble, realizing it was still early. His alarm had yet to go off, but he needed to wake up at this time for a reason. Today he had to be at work early because he had taken time off at the end of the day to go on a date with Lucy.

It was a surprise for her, after all, and it was a big date that he planned. He had been planning this for a while, and everything was about to fall into place. He was just excited to see everything happen and to hear Lucy’s reaction.

Stretching for a moment before throwing the covers off himself and getting out of bed, Natsu headed to the shower with renewed energy and excitement for his date with his girlfriend. It felt weird to call her that, but that’s what she was now. They had only been dating a week, but it felt as if they had gone through life together as an old married couple. Helping Lucy with her anxiety had made him feel closer to her than he had ever felt for another person, and such a thing could possibly become dangerous. He did not want to hurt her or make her feel like he was going too fast...but he also wouldn’t mind kissing her more and spending time with her physically.

Reminding himself that he wanted to go slow, he showered quickly and changed into his work clothes with a bounce in his step. “Morning,” he greeted Gajeel, who was still up watching TV reruns. The man had to watch his cooking shows, and apparently the only time they were on was in the wee hours of the morning when Natsu awoke for work.

Gajeel shushed Natsu violently and pointed toward his lap. Natsu peeked around the couch and find that Levy was asleep with her head on Gajeel’s thighs. Natsu smirked, turning around and beginning to make his breakfast. He didn’t want to tease the man further, as he would most likely become grumpy and start yelling, causing his girlfriend to wake up. And when Levy didn’t get her solid eight hours of shut eye, she became a monster that scared even her own boyfriend.

Tiptoeing out the door after preparing a lunch, Natsu saluted his roommate before leaving the apartment and making his way to his car. Now all he had to do was schedule an alarm so he could text Lucy good morning and then drive to work. He always had wanted to text the girl of his dreams good morning when she woke up, but since Lucy worked in retail she had a rather interesting schedule. She would work four days in a row then not for another two, then for six days and then she would be off for three. It made their date times quite rough for scheduling, but Natsu had her work agenda in his phone so he could message her at any time whenever she had to wake up for the day.

Planning the alarm to go off at 8:59 sharp so he had time to text her a sweet message, he slipped his phone back into his pocket and grimaced as he realized he hadn’t made coffee. Oh well, guess he’d fall asleep on the ride there. Or at work, which was even worse. His boss was great, but a bit of a hardass when it came to people sleeping on the job. She enjoyed putting on a fairy outfit and tapping people on the head with her wand, making an ugly face before they awakened. It would scare them awake, and she would chuckle and whip her red hair while walking away and going to work on a computer or wake up another unfortunate soul.

But it didn’t matter if he fell asleep, or if he didn’t make coffee this morning. He had a date with Lucy tonight, and that was what mattered for today.

Now, if he could only get through work without messing up on a computer because of tiredness…

Lucy’s alarm blared, playing Ke$ha’s new song at a level that scared even Lucy out of her slumber. She was like Levy--wake her up during her sleep, and she was a zombie for the rest of the day. Though, Levy was a little ruder than Lucy. The woman was positively sweet most of the time, but if the two had a sleepover, their boyfriends would be confused as hell to see them in their tired state.

Searching around for her phone groggily, Lucy sucked in a breath when she turned her phone to check her messages. The brightness of the screen was blinding in the dark room, and she had to push her phone closer to read her emails. Ever since she had gotten contacts, she had to take them out every night before falling asleep. The nightly ones were too expensive, and she was worried that if she got the ones she could sleep with on that it would get lost in her eye and never come out. It was an irrational fear, yes, but it was still a fear.

When her emails finally loaded, Lucy was excited to discover that her package of books she had ordered a week back would arrive today. It was almost too tempting to fall asleep and wait for the doorbell to ring. But, she resolved, she needed the money from work to pay for more books, bills, her portion of the rent, and helping out the boys with their eating habits. If it weren’t for her being one of the primary cooks of the house, she swore the boys would eat fast food almost every night.

Lucy noticed that a text was sent to her phone, which was confusing. Usually the entire group of the six of them used a messenger app to communicate, making texts rare. Clicking on the text notification, she saw that Natsu had sent her a message.

‘Good morning, Luce!’ it read, and a smile curled around her face as she scanned the words. ‘Hope ya have a good day at work. Check the note on the kitchen table to find your next clue!’

“Clue?” Lucy wondered aloud, “Clue for what?”

Scurrying out of bed and taking the blanket with her, she waddled over to the kitchen table and searched around it with her eyes squinted. She didn’t have her contacts in, and her glasses lay forgotten on the nightstand in her bedroom. Finding the piece of paper with the note on it was going to be rough. And she had just woken up, too!

Grasping her glasses and shoving them on her face when she made it to her room, she exited her bedroom once more and began to read the note. It told her that there was to be a package for her outside with her name on it. Lucy’s mind was rather addled with all of these new things arising, but she was determined to figure everything out.

Lucy opened the door and let the chilly autumn air in for a moment; the cold aided in awakening her tired eyes and body. Her eyes searched across the stoop on their apartment until they caught on a package that said her name in big letters. Natsu’s handwriting was unmistakable, and Lucy ripped it open after going inside without a moment’s notice.

Inside the box was a gorgeous olive green dress that Lucy had been fawning over last time she and Natsu had gone inside a store together. The neckline was very low, but it went down to her ankles and slit up to her knees on both sides of the dress. So Natsu did remember that she wanted that one! It had been weeks since she had been shopping, so she hugged the new dress to herself as if it was life-giving. Included were a pair of gold strappy sandals with mid height heels which would make her tall enough to see eye to eye with Natsu. Checking the shoe size, she found that they would even accommodate her high arches.

Snatching up the note, she studied the words Natsu had scrawled over the pink paper. It told her to go to work and then report to a store she had never heard of at five thirty sharp. Natsu was never one to tell her to be somewhere ‘sharp’ or buy her expensive clothes for that matter. Every piece of the ensemble had come from her favorite store and did Lucy ever know how expensive that store was. Each item was over $60 at least, and she loved drooling over every handbag, hat, top, shoe, and skirt the store had to offer.

With a smile, she hugged the items to her body and squealed, bouncing around the room until someone from the apartment below told yelled up at her to shut up. Even that did not quell her excitement, and Lucy bounded into her room and picked out her clothes for the day with a bounce in her step.

Nothing could ruin this day!

...Except customers. Lucy swore that they knew when she was having a good day because they would be in an exceptionally bad mood that particular moment when she walked into work. She had just stepped in the door when a woman with her chihuahua in her designer bag stormed up to her and began to complain.

“Miss, this hasn’t reduced my stress at all!” a woman said, shaking a lavender incense in the air in Lucy’s face, “I swear I have such bad anxiety that I should be admitted to a hospital!”

Lucy hardened for a moment. Did this woman even know the difference between stress and anxiety? She certainly did, and she was starting to feel it at this very moment. Her head began to hurt with a headache pulsing at the very back of her mind, and ice spindled up her stomach and clutched around her neck as if threatening to suffocate her. Lucy tried to speak, but she could barely breathe, much less talk to someone.

“What can Juvia help you with? Lucy needs to go put her apron on in the back, so please excuse her.” Juvia said from behind Lucy with a hand on her hip. The other hand shooed Lucy away in a firm but gentle way that reminded her that Juvia had her back. A small smile was shared between the two before Lucy hustled to the back, closing the door behind her with a relieved sigh.

Lucy breathed steadily in for eight seconds and out for five for a few minutes before her anxiety began to dwindle, and she cursed herself for working in such an environment that would give her such bad attacks such as this. But with her coworkers at her side, Lucy felt more empowered than ever. She had Juvia to thank for being such a lovely boss. She would figure out some way to repay Juvia for the kindness she had just given to her someday.

Tying her apron around her back twice, Lucy put her hand on her hip in a power pose that wouldn’t quit. She wanted to convey that she was confident to the customers even though her anxiety still prodded. No matter what would happen to Lucy today, she had a date with Natsu tonight, and that was all that mattered.

Now if she could only get those shelves to stop being so dusty every day she came in…

After work was over, Lucy dragged herself home and crashed on the couch. Her shoulders and arms ached from how long she had been dusting shelves, and she hated how messy her hair was. She had just taken a shower this morning and now her hair was full of dust and dirt. With a sigh, she flopped down on the sofa and let herself fall asleep for just a few minutes.

Peeking at her clock, she noticed it was five thirteen. Jumping off the couch with a shriek, she quickly searched on the internet how far the address was from the apartment. Ten minutes. If she hurried with getting dressed and brushing her hair, she could still make it in time!

Running a brush through her hair while practically ripping her clothes off, she shoved the dress on her body and applied a little mascara. She wiped underneath her tired, baggy eyes with a makeup wipe and reminded herself to put on a little lip gloss. With a turn to stare at her reflection in the mirror, Lucy sighed when she saw what she looked like.

It would just have to do. She knew Natsu would love her no matter what she looked like. But still...she wanted to look nice for him no matter where they were going.

Slumping over, Lucy frowned at her reflection in the mirror one last time before making her way to her car. She waved to her neighbor on her way out, who gave her a thumbs up. Well, at least someone liked how she looked today!

Her spirits a little higher, Lucy broke the laws of traffic to get to the address. But when she got there, it wasn’t a restaurant at all. It was a...salon?

Well. Maybe Natsu really did think of everything.

Stepping inside, she was greeted by the sweet brown-eyed, plum haired receptionist named Shana who told her to have a seat while she grabbed Lucy a mimosa. Eyes widening, Lucy took the stemmed glass with a meek thank you and a smile. Shana told her that her nail tech would be right with her.

‘Nail tech?’ Lucy wondered, looking at her nails. Grimacing, she noticed for the first time that day that there was dust on top of them and underneath them, and the mold she had scrubbed off the corners of the bathroom made them appear yellow underneath. Maybe Lucy really did need a manicure.

“Hello, Lucy! Nice to meet you. I’m Evie.” Lucy looked up from her glass and saw one of the most stunning women she had ever seen in her life. Her long brown hair was wavy at the bottom and rivaled Cana’s in terms of silkiness, and her eyes were a forest green not unlike Natsu’s. Lucy shook her hand with a soft flush on her face, cursing her bisexuality for being so obvious.

“Come on back here with me,” Evie said, motioning toward the nail table. Once Lucy sat down, she asked what color her dress was.

“Olive green,” Lucy replied, thankful for the mimosa for loosening her up a little. “What color nails would you suggest?”

“I think a french tip with gold tips would look stunning on you, Lucy. l will go get the polish right away! Do you want gel polish or gel with acrylic?” Evie stood, staring Lucy in the eyes for a moment.

“I--I don’t know what any of those words mean,” Lucy said with a blush, partially because she was embarrassed. She was a woman, she should know!

“It’s alright,” Evie laughed, “We’ll go with regular polish for now, and if you decide to come back to me, we’ll discuss afterward.”

Lucy looked at her nails as Evie shuffled to the back to pick the perfect color for her. Evie knew what she was doing, and if she did well enough with nails, she would definitely come back. Lucy would definitely have to thank Natsu for getting her pampered.

“What do you think of this gold?” Evie asked as she sat down across the table from Lucy, displaying a gorgeous gold with glitter that was sure to go well with Lucy’s coloring. Lucy nodded her head with a grin, and Evie’s lips curled up into a smile too.

After all the shaping, filing, massaging of the hands, and the base coat was finished, Evie began to paint and have a conversation with Lucy. Both women found out they were writers and shook their heads about the problems of being one on the internet. Evie asked a few questions about Natsu, and Lucy told her new friend about how Natsu romanced her and the entire story they had gone through.

“What do you think?” Evie asked, showing Lucy’s pinkie to her. It looked more polished and beautiful than her nails had looked in quite a long time. Nodding with a soft squeal, Lucy knew she was coming back now. She could afford it after paying all of her bills for the month--and it wouldn’t hurt to get pampered once in a while!

Evie finished up in around an hour, and Lucy sat with her hands underneath the blue light in order to harden them. As she turned to leave, Evie stopped her.

“You’re not done yet, Lucy! We still have hair and makeup to do!”

“H-Hair and makeup?!”

A little more than two hours later, Lucy walked out with soft highlights in her newly trimmed hair and a makeup look that was sure to stun Natsu. She barely wore makeup around him, but when she did he was shocked. Now she wore eyeliner, mascara, a bit of eyeshadow, and a highlight that was going to knock out everyone around her.

Shana handed Lucy another note from Natsu with another address on it--thankfully being one for an actual restaurant--and Lucy headed on her way to her actual date. Ruffling her hair up a bit to give it that sexy, lived in look, Lucy stepped out of the car and into one of the fanciest restaurants she had ever been to. If she had thought the salon was fancy, she should have looked at this place first. There was an honest to God chandelier in the entrance!

“Name?” the guy at the front desk asked, and Lucy gave him hers. Leading her to a table with Natsu at it, she was surprised to see a few other familiar faces at the table.

“Levy! Juvia! What are you two doing here?” Lucy said with a large grin as each woman got up to hug Lucy.

“We were just as surprised as you, Lu! Gajeel planned this for me too!” Levy smiled, twirling a tendril of curled blue hair. Her dress was a silver which Levy would have never picked out herself, but she looked gorgeous. The straps on her dress were thinner than Lucy’s, and the sweetheart neckline and mid length gave Levy height that she so desperately desired. On her feet were black heels that were higher than Lucy’s but slightly lower than Juvia’s.

Juvia wore a purple number that highlighted her legs and made them look long enough to go on for days. The neckline was high, but so was the length of the dress. Her heels were a darker color than her dress, but even they made her look taller than Lucy had ever seen her. Juvia wore a grin brighter than the lights in the room, and when Lucy looked at Gray he seemed content just gazing at his girlfriend.

“Gray-sama told Juvia to get off work early so she could go get her nails done. Juvia thought that was the only surprise, but Juvia was shocked even more to go to this place!” Juvia said, clutching Gray’s arm with a smile.

The six sat down from where they conversed, each couple across from each other. Natsu tapped his fork against his wine glass, and everyone turned to pay attention to him. Raising his glass in the air, he grinned as each person followed suit.

“I’d like to make a toast,” Natsu said as he stood once more, eyes focused on Lucy. “To Lucy Heartfilia, the world’s greatest girlfriend. She made me into the man I was supposed to be a hell of a long time ago, and she’s helped us all out a lot. To Lucy!”

“To Lucy!” everyone echoed with large grins, clinking glasses and taking drinks of their sparkling wine.

“Now,” Natsu replied, “Let’s eat!”

Hope you all enjoyed! If you could please leave a reblog/reply, that would mean the world to me. Thanks so much!

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meer-katnip · 7 years

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tired, never gonna finish this, so have a fic thing. this is like 4k-ish words of infodumping about this au, i hate this. i hate that it’s a fucking Fairy Tail au wft this manga is really awful. i hate it. i hate it?? but i love it too because it’s my comfort thing and also mk is a lesbian with a sword and that’s wonderful

ignore me. i’m just really idealistic and i love the self-indulgent versions of everyone in pnws/pra that i’ve built in my head. also i hate myself.

i put so much thought into this slay me

"I'm Nic," says the man with the messy hair and bright green eyes, swivelling around to give Richard a genuine, beaming smile reminiscent of a golden retriever. "I, uh, sometimes partner up with Alex."

"But usually he teams up with us!" calls a man from across the room, who's cradling a beer in one hand and he claps the shoulder of a woman whose fingers are dancing across thin air- and blue light- in front of her. She pursues her lips, and shoves him away from her with a movement that's both playful and forceful at the same time.

"Move the hand if you don't want to lose it, Geoff," she says lightly, and quickly turns her attention back to whatever she's doing.

Richard nods at this, eyeing the two of them for a moment, and then looking back at Nic. "If you don't mind me asking… what sort of magic do you three have?"

Alex raises an eyebrow at this- and judging by her expression, asking about somebody's magic so suddenly is borderline taboo. It looks like he's made a mistake, and he doesn't feel much like apologizing.

Thankfully, Nic doesn't seem to mind. "I'm a Celestial Spirit Mage," he says, and reaches into a pouch at his belt, pulling out a ring of keys. "I'm- well, I'm pretty much useless in hand-to-hand combat, but-"

"Too damn right you are!" comes another yell from the man across the room.

Nic grimaces. "Okay, there's no need to rub it in."

"There's plenty of need to rub it in!" continues the man, who Richard has now surmised is 'Geoff'. He seems just on the sober side of drunk, but not in a disruptive sort of way. Just kind of. Loud. "Remember the cultists?"

Nic groans, drops his head to the table where it lands with a clunk. "Yes. Yes, Geoff, I remember the cultists."

"And the tea?" Geoff is now leaning accusingly across his table, folding his arms. "We can't forget about the tea."

"We don't talk about the tea incident," interjects the woman, who's doing a very good job of looking as if she's not paying any attention whilst simultaneously maintaining deep engagement in the conversation.

"If we don't talk about the tea incident, it's going to happen again!" argues Geoff loudly. "History repeats itself!"

Nic just groans and flaps a hand vaguely in their direction. "Oh my god, shut up, you guys." He turns back to Richard. "Celestial Spirits can be summoned to this dimension if I have a contract and the corresponding key." He flips up a key with an indent shaped a bit like a bird's foot on it. It's bright, shiny silver, like it's been polished many times. "This is Corvus!" He beams down at it for a second, and then frowns. "I can't summon them today- it's not on the contract. But when I do, they can come and help me with… things."

"Things," says Richard.

"Yeah, they're a flock of birds." Nic tilts his head slightly, and then shrugs. "Crows, or ravens, I guess. They can lift me up a fair way, scout out places from above. Sometimes they even fight, if they feel like it. It's hard to tell with birds, you know?"

Richard eyes the rest of the keys. There's five in total, with only one being a bright gold and the rest being silver, like the Corvus key. "And the rest?"

"Ah, well…" Nic reaches out a finger, and taps on each of them in turn. "Cetus, Pegasus, Ara, and this one," his smile turns fonder, "that's Pisces. They're my only Golden Gate key."

"A Zodiac constellation?" Richard asks, having noticed a pattern with the other keys. "Does that make it special?"

"I guess?" Nic shrugs again. "I mean, maybe it makes them a bit more powerful, but really- who knows?"

Richard nods, satisfied. "And I suppose you can gather more keys, through various means."

"I buy mine, mostly," Nic replies, "but Pisces was a gift. Um." He turns to Geoff, and flaps a hand vaguely in his direction. "Care to explain yours?"

"Sure," Geoff shrugs, and rises easily from his seat. He's a lot taller than he looks- easily tall enough to rival Richard himself in height. He blinks a couple times, and then inclines his head at Richard. "Okay, try to fight me."

Richard just blinks. "I'm sorry?"

Geoff's smile grows wider. "Fight me. Try to land a punch or something, I don't mind."

Alex's laughing softly in the background, not really making any sort of sound, but her body is shaking in mirth. "Go on, Dr Strand."

He glances between Alex and Geoff, who are both clearly finding something extremely funny, then over to Nic, who's folded his arms and laid his head on them with a smile that clearly says he knows something. His keys have been inexplicably packed away when Richard wasn't watching, but he dismisses that as unimportant for the moment. It's when he glances at the woman still working at her screen of magic on the table that's been abandoned by Geoff, and he notices that even she is smiling with barely-concealed mirth that he folds his arms across his chest and gives an answer.

"No," he says.

The side of Geoff's mouth twitches downwards. "Aw, really?"

"Evidently it's funny enough that you're challenging me to a fight." He gestures around himself. "There's got to be a reason why there's no way I can win. It's likely that the result, had I decided to fight you, would have been quite embarrassing or amusing."

"Spoilsport," Alex says teasingly. "Okay, Nic, show him."

Nic sighs, and gets up, facing Geoff. He sways back and forth for a second, before suddenly ploughing straight forwards and directly into Geoff, who stumbles back a step as the full weight of an awkwardly-proportioned Celestial Spirit Mage . Going off the look of surprise on both their faces as Nic sprawled to the ground in a tangle of legs and arms, Richard surmised, this was not the thing that was meant to happen.

"You gotta come at me with ill intent, dude," Geoff says with a frown as Nic gets up, brushing himself off.

Nic screws up his face. "Okay, okay, um… you're a jerk for calling me weak! Rrgh!" He makes feeble fists with his hands, and everyone in the vicinity promptly laughs at him. Even Richard cracks a smile.

"Pathetic," calls the woman across the room. "You need to do it like this." She snatches up an empty beer mug with one hand, weighing it, and turns around for the first time. She glances at Geoff over the top of her sunglasses, smiles sweetly, and pitches it, hard, in his direction.

About half a metre from Geoff's head, where it was aimed, the mug seems to bounce straight off an invisible forcefield. It changes directions rapidly, and collides with the ground at high velocity, shattering into millions of pieces.

There's scattered applause and a few groans, and somebody exclaims indignantly; "I've got to clean that up!" but Richard is impressed despite himself. "Some sort of shield?"

"Pretty much," agrees Geoff, sitting down again. "It's always active, even when I'm sleeping, and pretty much impenetrable if you're trying to hurt or kill me. I mean, there's some ways of getting around it, but-"

Nic slides up next to him easily, and grins evilly before going straight for his stomach with outstretched hands. Geoff's sentence is broken off as they both collapse into giggles.

"Not in front of the new guy!" Geoff protests, but Nic is relentless.

"Yeah," concludes Alex after it becomes apparent that they're not going to stop. "And then there's MK."

'MK' waves from her table. "Hello, yes. That's me. Who wants to know?"

"I've heard of Archive magic before," Richard says. "I don't need it explained to me."

MK presses her lips together again, like she's trying to stop herself from smirking widely. "Oh, is that so?"

Alex is grinning again, and she nudges Richard with the back of her wrist. "You might want to rethink that. MK is, not to put too fine a point on it, a genius."

"First off, I prefer the term 'Information Specialist. Second of all, well…" MK holds her hands up to the interface she's been working at, actually grasping it like it's a solid object, and flipping it around to face Richard and Alex. "Archive magic is all well and good, but I felt like it could be improved." She taps at the screen, and blue-green symbols go flying across it. "I've created my own O.S. to work from, and I've developed a couple of new apps that can improve its use."

"'Oh Es'?" Richard's brow furrows. "'Apps'?"

"Operating system, applications," MK explains. "General terms used by those in the Archive community. Don't worry about it too much, you'll probably never hear those abbreviations again. But hey, want a demonstration?"

Richard glances dubiously over at the participants in the last magic 'demonstration', who are still tickling the hell out of each other. MK quirks an eyebrow, and pushes her sunglasses up her nose. "I don't bite, Strand. Here, catch."

He only has time to give her a quick nod of assent before a blue disc comes sailing in his direction, and only barely manages to catch it. He holds it up, and examines it. "What is it?"

"Portable manifestation of my magic." MK's holding up an identical disc, and she taps at it for a second. "Okay, we got a connection. Say hello to the other side of the room, Strand!"

He frowns in confusion, but looks down at the disc. He's surprised to see an exact projection of MK's sardonic features, displayed in minute detail.

"I call it 'Skype'," she says.

When she talks, he can simultaneously hear her voice coming from across the room, where she's present physically, and from the disc. There's only a very slight delay between them. The effect, overall, is astounding.

"It tends to work especially well when some moron in our teams says something like, 'hey, we should split up!'," she continues. "Keeps us in touch, you know?"

"That was literally once!" Nic complains.

"You could have died, Nic," Geoff shoots back.

MK looks at Richard through the interface, and gives him an unreadable look. "After the incident that Nic here probably doesn't want to talk about, I developed this. So now if one of us is going to die, the rest of us can now see the gory details in real-time, and they don't have to die alone."

Richard isn't quite sure if this is a joke or not, so he just nods. MK's sense of humor- if you can even call it that- is a bit hard for him to get a hold of. "If you don't mind me asking," he starts, and then trails off.

"Go on," Alex prompts.

"Well, you stated before that the three of you," he indicates MK, Geoff and Nic with a hand, "work together frequently. And judging by the sorts of things that this guild has a reputation for, I assume that 'working together' often involves fighting people and things."

"That's right," Alex says with a nod.

Richard frowns. "It seems to me that the three of you aren't quite… shall we say, compatible?"

Geoff stiffens, and maybe Alex does too, but it's hard to tell. Nic, however, sits up, and places his hands, outstretched on the table. "Okay, I'm trying my best not to be offended here, but- um, maybe explain?"

Richard sighs. "I meant no insult, and I do apologize. I simply meant that your particular skillset is… well." He nods at Nic. "Although you do have some offensive capabilities, they seem to be constrained by your 'contracts', which limit you to certain days of the week, and in the short time I've known you, you and your friends have reiterated several times that you're not a fighter. Although, er, you," he nods at Geoff, "seem to have quite a powerful means of defence, you have no visible attack to speak of. And the interesting use of Archive magic is certainly useful, but I don't see how it would do much good in a combat situation."

The three of them exchange glances for a second.

"I mean, he does have a point," Geoff says after a moment. "He could have worded it better, but…"

"Oh good, the jerkass has a point," MK says, rolling her eyes. "Everything is all right now, obviously." She stands up, dispelling all of her screens with a casual flick of her wrists. "Listen up, Strand. Magic isn't the only way of winning a fight." She reaches underneath the table, and pulls out a thin leather sheath, throwing it roughly onto the table between her and Richard. It thumps as it hits "Know what this is?"

He eyes it. It looks like a sword. "It's a sword."

"Wrong," she snaps. "It's a modified Épée." She pulls it out of its sheath with a satisfying-sounding grind of metal, and holds it in one hand with the blade pointing to the ground. "Normal Épées bend easily, and mainly get used when rich fuckers want to show off. This," she holds it up, as if to prove a point, "has been strengthened, sharpened and could probably cut your head off in one slice. I carry this around because it's lighter than most other swords, and people tend to estimate a girl with a weapon that's usually used for mock duels."

"This is a backsword," Geoff adds, unsheathing his own from a large bag that must be bigger on the inside, if it's able to contain a sword that large. "I have no idea what people usually use it for, but it can do a lot of damage."

"And the entire guild has agreed that we shouldn't, under any circumstances trust Nic with any sort of short-range, non-magical weapon," MK concludes. "At least, not until he apologizes to Carly about nearly taking her head off."

"She's avoiding me," Nic complains.

"We can take care of ourselves," Geoff says, turning to Richard. "Other members of the guild sometimes join us if the job looks difficult, but that doesn't happen often."

"Usually the sight of MK is enough to scare any attacker away," Nic says with a sudden grin.

MK doesn't even glance over at him as she almost casually holds a middle finger up in Nic's direction. "Fuck you, Silver. You'd be dead a million times over if I wasn't around to save your sorry ass."

Nic laughs, crossing his legs as he turns again. Sometime during the last couple of minutes, they've all arranged themselves so they're congregated around one small table. "You wouldn't have to save my 'sorry rear end' as much if you'd actually teach me how to fight."

A slow, terrifying smile curves across MK's face. "Are you asking me to fight you, Nic? Because I can and will fight you, given half the chance."

Nic suddenly looks intensely worried. "...please don't hurt me."

"Geoff," says MK. "Go find a job for us while Nic and I discuss just how much he'd have to pay me to not kick his ass."

Geoff snaps off a quick salute in her direction and makes a hasty retreat towards the request board. "Gotcha!"

Richard watches them for a second- bickering, laughing, happy, then turns back to Alex, who's doing the same. "Miss Reagan-"

"Alex," she says, "please."

"Alex," he says cautiously. "I'd like to apologize. That was... rude of me."

"It was," she agrees with a small laugh, "and you should honestly be apologizing to them. But yeah. I get what you mean. They don't look like they could take on anybody more powerful and survive, do they?"

Richard frowns, tilts his head. "But can they?"

"Who knows?" Alex shrugs, as Geoff returns to the table, a scrap of paper torn off the board in hand. He begins to speak to MK and Nic in a low voice, and they both lean in, visibly interested. Alex scratches her arm absently for a second, looking thoughtful. "Hey- want to see how the request process works?"

"I-" Richard begins. "-yes. That would be… good."

"Come on, then." Alex stands up, and they join MK, Nic, and Geoff at their table. Alex takes a seat, looking comfortable in their presence, but Richard hovers awkwardly a few feet away.

"What's up?" Nic asks with a small smile.

"Dr Strand was wondering how the request process works, and we were hoping you guys could walk him through it," Alex explains, with a small flap of her hand in Richard's direction. "Hey- come on over. They don't bite."

"Speak for yourself," MK says with a small snort, but lays the paper scrap on the table in front of Richard as he cautiously approaches. "Okay, so this is basically how it works. Anybody with a certain amount of money can pay to have a request put in the guild of their choice. Sort of like Craigslist."

"'Craigslist'?" Nic asks, looking confused.

"Archive magician thing, don't worry about it," MK sighs. "Anyone who's in the guild can take a request, but they have to consult with either the guild master or somebody acting in place of them first. You can't just go running off on a job with no warning. For example," she taps the request in front of her, "this."

"'Seeking Tanis, runner available'," Richard reads, peering over his glasses. "Two million jewels." He frowns. "That's very vague."

"Yup." Geoff pops the 'p', and grins. "Which is kinda unusual, usually they're a lot more detailed than that. But hey- two million jewels! Money is money!"

"So how do you know where to go?" Richard asks, eyeing the sparse sheet of paper. It doesn't look like it contains any further information.

"Well, we talk to one of the guild masters," Nic says, and gestures towards the bar counter, where a girl with glasses and her hair pulled into a high ponytail is reading a book, frowning slightly. "Or Carly, who's in place of them at the moment. She'll probably say yes, if she's not annoyed at whoever asks, and then she'll give us more details."

"I'll do it," Geoff volunteers. "She's not annoyed at me."

Nic sighs. "Look-"

"Yeah, yeah, dude, we know, you didn't mean to swing that sword at her head." Geoff crosses his arms. "However, the fact still stands that she'll probably smite you if you try to file that request."

MK rolls her eyes. "Just get on with it. And maybe don't try to flirt with her this time, or you'll be the one on the receiving end of that smiting."

Geoff leaves with a huffy sort of flounce that's entirely unsuited to somebody that's as physically imposing as he is. It looks like it'd be more suited to a teenage girl.

"Carly's girlfriend is missing," Alex says to Richard. "Geoff didn't know when he first met her, and Carly forgave him, but nobody will let it drop."

Richard frowns again. "I see."

She grins, and he sees that she realizes that he really doesn't. He thinks it's nice of her to explain everything to him, even while he's being his normal self- distant and almost cold.

"Guild masters?" he says instead of voicing this thought, putting emphasis on the plural. Alex nods, crossing her arms.

"There's two of them- Terry and Paul," she explains. "They share the responsibility, I guess? Except Paul is pretty much invisible all the time." She frowns. "And I mean that literally. I don't think I've actually seen him for about a month. Oh, and Terry does Transformation Magic," she adds. "Specifically, Nic."

This is a complete non-sequitur, and Richard is completely baffled. "Nic?"

"He can transform into literally anything," Alex says with a frown, "and I mean literally anything. He's insanely powerful. He could probably rule the country if he wanted to." She pauses and sighs. "But guess what he does instead? He turns himself into a mirror image of Nic Silver, and walks around the guild, messing with us. It's completely impossible to tell them apart, they even sound alike. And what's worse, I'm pretty sure Nic's in on it as well."

"I see," says Richard again. He doesn't, and Alex recognizes this once more, smiling at him.

"Yeah, we're a pretty eclectic guild."

Geoff returns, looking triumphant. Richard risks a glance back at Carly, and, true to form, she doesn't look like she wants to smite anybody in particular at the moment. "We got the job!" Geoff announces, exchanging a slightly awkward fistbump with Nic, who looks like he's not quite sure what he's meant to be doing.

"And now," MK says to Richard, looking utterly deadpan. "We go off on yet another suicide mission, with absolutely no regard for our personal health and safety. Hooray."

Geoff grins and claps MK on the back, opening his mouth, but before he even begins to speak, she grabs his wrist, and twists him easily into a headlock. He blinks from the hold, looking slightly bemused. "I was going to say; how about we meet at the train station at noon today? But if you want to kill me first, I'm fine with that too."

"Any reason for your collective morbid sense of humour?" Richard asks, echoing Geoff's bemused expression. MK laughs sourly.

"We're all depressed pieces of shit, and this is our coping mechanism," she says flatly, letting Geoff of her grip, and nods in his direction. "Midday sounds good. I'll go get packed." She stands, gathering her blue magic in front of her. "See you around, Strand. Alex looks like she likes you- maybe she can keep you."

He blinks, and she's gone, the hem of her loose shirt whipping around the doorframe.

"I guess I'll go pack, too," Geoff says, stretching. "Nice to meet you, Dr Strand."

Richard inclines his head, not sure how to respond, and watches as he leaves too, leaving just him, Nic and Alex behind.

Alex pats Nic's arm across the table, and meets his gaze in a oddly serious manner. "Be careful."

"I will be," he laughs, and pats her hand in return, standing up. "Don't worry about me. MK'll beat the shit of anyone who looks threatening."

"Cultists," she calls after his retreating figure. "Don't forget the cultists, Nicodemus!"

"I wish everyone would!" comes his returning cry, and then he's gone, and it's like the world is just Richard and Alex once more. Alex smiles at the doorway briefly, and then returns her attention back to Richard.

"So," she says. "What do you think?"

Richard takes a moment to think about this, staring around at the guild, with all the people gathered into groups, and the bright atmosphere. He doesn't believe in auras, but if he did, he would think that the entire area glows with welcoming energy, and Alex Reagan most of all.

"I think," he says, "that this is the perfect guild to take a request from me."

"Oh?" She looks confused, but mildly pleased as well.

"Miss Reagan," he says, and allows a genuine smile to crack across his face. "I would very much like it if you would help me track down somebody very close to me."

(thats it)

#tanis #tbtp #rabbits podcast #pnws #kitty.doc #nic #alex #mk #geoff #strand #carly #the whole gang's here #ruby's the bartender probably #the rest of the guild is literally interns #also amalia is terrifying and amazing #god i wish i could get this done why #i want to sleep or maybe die #anyway #yes

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austenmarriage · 5 years

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Pop Quiz for All You Students Suffering Spring Fever

Today brings a little fun and games in celebration of spring. (It comes late to the high desert in Oregon. Our trees are just now in bloom. See the dogwood by the headline.) Today’s blog features a quiz on a variety of Jane Austen topics. There’s no rhyme or reason to topics or order. The quiz has thirty questions. It’s so long I’m putting the answers just below each one. Otherwise, you’d spend all morning scrolling back and forth. It’s an honor system, but keep your score.

Let’s compare scores! Challenges to answers also welcome.

Ratings/Austen Equivalent:

0-12: Mr. Collins, who knows not what he does not know.

13-20: Edward Ferrars/Edmund Bertram, solid but not setting the world on fire.

21-25: Henry Tilney, learned on topics from muslin to crown lands to Udolpho.

26-30: Liz Bennet, fiercely demolishing all comers.

What American game does Jane Austen mention several decades before it was supposedly invented?

In listing the games that Catherine Morland likes to play as a 14-year-old, Austen mentions cricket, running around, riding on horseback, and—baseball.

What was Jane Austen’s pen name during her life?

“A lady.” She never published under her own name during her life.

What American rock star tried to buy Jane Austen’s ring in 2013, but was thwarted by English Janeites who raised £152,450 ($232,836) to keep the ring home?

Kelly Clarkson.

When did readers learn that Jane Austen was the author of “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice”?

December 1817 or January 1818. Her brother Henry provided her name in a short biographical essay when he published “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion” after her death. The books became available in December 1817 but the official publication date was 1818.

How did Jane Austen’s sailor brothers make much of their money while in the service?

Through the sale of captured ships. Captains received one-fourth of the total prize money (reduced in 1806). Charles might have made £5,000. Frank might have made £10,000, which also included bonuses for escorting merchant ships home from India. Neither approached Captain Wentworth’s £25,000.

What item did her brother Charles buy Jane that is mirrored in “Mansfield Park”?

A cross and gold chain to be worn around the neck. Charles bought Jane a topaz cross, and another for his sister Cassandra. William Price buys his sister Fanny an amber cross.

John Murray published Scott, Goethe, Melville, Darwin, and Austen. But who was his most popular author?

Byron.

What Austen family members are known to have denounced slavery?

Jane’s oldest brother, James Austen, criticized slavery in a college periodical he produced, the Loiterer. Another brother, Frank, in a letter home while stationed on the island of St Helena in 1808, criticized slavery in any form.

Where does the Regency era get its name?

King George III of England, in his second madness, gave way to his son, who was named Prince Regent in 1811. The Regent had most of the powers of the king. Parliament wrestled with the legality of a regency because the King, now mad, would have had to sign off on the transition in power. The son became George IV on the death of his father in 1820.

Why do we know so little of the period between 1802 and 1809 in Jane Austen’s life (which is the time of my trilogy “The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen”)?

Jane’s sister Cassandra burned the vast majority of Jane’s letters and any diaries or journals she may have kept. No one knows why. Frank’s daughter, also named Cassandra, burned his large correspondence with Jane.

How many known proposals did Jane Austen receive during her life?

Only one, from a young, callow Harris Bigg-Wither, in December 1802. She was courted by several other men, including a mysterious clergyman in 1801, who died before he could propose. Though the Bigg-Wither proposal shows up in every biography, its provenance is sketchy. It was not reported until sixty-seven years after the fact, by a niece who was not alive when it allegedly occurred.

What is the most surprising thing about the last few years of the life of the great abolitionist William Wilberforce?

After giving away hundreds of thousands of pounds to charitable causes, Wilberforce died in poverty after an investment with one of his sons collapsed.

How could black slaves in English possessions in the New World earn their freedom?

By joining the British army, either to fight the American revolutionists in the 1770s on the mainland or later to fight the French in the West Indies.

What critical domestic device did Jane Austen have control of?

She had responsibility for the keys to the expensive luxuries: sugar, tea, and wine.

Once she settled in the village of Chawton, how did Austen keep her writing private?

A squeaky door would alert her to anyone coming her way; when it squeaked, she would put her writing aside.

In round numbers, how much money did Austen earn from her writing in her life?

£640. Her work earned another £700 or so after her death, all of which went to her heir, Cassandra.

After his high life as a banker came crashing down in bankruptcy in 1816, what career did Jane’s brother Henry pursue?

He became a clergyman like his father and oldest brother.

What is the most commonly cited reason for Jane Austen’s death in 1817 at age 41?

Addison’s disease, a disorder of the adrenal glands, though no one really can say for sure. This modern diagnosis is based on her complaints of skin discoloration, which could have been caused by a variety of illnesses.

Why were the officials at Winchester cathedral baffled by an increasing number of visitors to Jane Austen’s crypt over the years?

They knew her only as a clergyman’s daughter.

What was the sad truth about the lives of women in Austen’s time, as exemplified by her sisters-in-law?

Five of Austen’s six sisters-in-law died young, three of complications from childbirth.

Beyond showing that she had a tall, spare figure, what does a detailed examination of Jane Austen’s clothing tell us about her physique?

The shape of her torso indicates that the wearing of constrictive clothing when she was a young woman caused her ribs to flatten.

France’s power on land and England’s on the sea caused Napoleon to compare the two nations to which imposing animals?

Buonaparte said the long stalemate was a battle between an elephant (France, unbeaten on the continent) and a whale (England, unbeaten on the sea), because neither had a way to defeat the other.

Who is the only man in Austen’s novels to marry a woman older than he?

Mr. Collins is twenty-five when he marries Charlotte Lucas, twenty-seven, in P&P.

Who is the only female protagonist in Austen’s novels to marry “beyond her bloom”?

Anne Elliot in Persuasion, who is in her late twenties. Except for Emma, who had just turned twenty-one when she married, Austen’s other heroines were in their teens.

During the Regency era, what was the only way by which a husband and wife could divorce?

Through an act of Parliament. Only the wealthy and connected could afford divorce. Only two or three women obtained a divorce on their initiative.

In Austen’s six major novels, how many described kisses are there?

In all six novels, there are only five described kisses; one almost kiss; and one likely sneaked kiss, according to Austen scholar John Mullan.

What major character has the shortest time before becoming engaged in an Austen novel?

Catherine Morland becomes engaged to Henry Tilney in eleven weeks in Northanger Abbey. They married “within a twelvemonth.”

What secondary character has the shortest time before becoming engaged in a Jane Austen novel?

Charlotte Lucas becomes engaged to Mr. Collins after one day of courtship in Pride and Prejudice.

Who coined the term “Janeite”?

George Saintsbury coined the term Janeite in his 1894 introduction to a new edition of Pride and Prejudice.

Who popularized the term “Janeite”?

Rudyard Kipling popularized the phrase in his short story, “The Janeites,” about a soldier in World War I who believes there is a secret society of people, the Janeites, who read the author’s work.

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The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, which traces love from a charming courtship through the richness and complexity of marriage and concludes with a test of the heroine’s courage and moral convictions, is now complete and available from Amazon and Jane Austen Books.

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