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comic-sans-chan · 9 days

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Fic I'll never write where Dukat decides the biennial Cardassian Festival of Whatever the Fuck (it is never actually specified) should be hosted on Deep Space Nine as a way of bridging the gap between the Cardassian and Bajoran peoples. Sisko and Kira are both Ehhhh about it, but Dukat is obnoxiously persistent until finally the Bajoran government and Federation higher ups are like “K”, on the condition that no Cardassian military (or Order) personnel be allowed. All security for the event will be handled by Odo and Starfleet. Dukat is suspiciously cool with this, which puts everyone on alert, but soon Cardassian vendors and decorators start showing up and they turn out to be pretty chill people, so they let it happen.

While the preparations for the festival are underway, another operation has started. A motherfucker from Garak's past is doing typical motherfucker things on the station. One of these things is scouting Garak's quarters, learning the layout, tracking Garak's routine. It becomes clear very quickly that the rapidly increasing number of Cardassians on DS9 is putting Garak on edge, though, because he seems to be fiddling more with his security protocols, so the motherfucker realizes they need to make their move and they need to make it fast.

They succeed. Sort of. With the circumstances as they are, they had to get a little... creative, but it should do the trick.

By early next morning, every PADD, screen, and computer system on the station is streaming seventy-two different poems on a constant loop. Love poems. Ardent, anguished, often utterly indecent love poems, all with the central theme of being about one Doctor Julian Bashir.

Quark is one of the first to notice the problem, being the type of asshole who opens early despite this only increasing his bottom line by a fraction of a fraction. At first, he's furious that his systems have been tampered with, but after reading a few lines of what his normal menu and advertisements have been replaced with, he's laughing, and by the end of the third poem, he's on the floor.

"Odo!" he shouts, banging on the bastard's door twenty minutes later. "Odo, open up! We've got a problem!"

Odo slinks under the door and slips up between it and Quark's pounding fist with a glare. "Quark! I'm not on duty for another hour. What could possibly be so urgent?"

Quark's sharp little rat teeth are splitting his face clean in half as he holds up the PADD. "Take a look."

Odo scrolls through a couple poems, then squints and scrolls through several more. "Erotic love poetry? I didn't peg you for the type."

"To like erotica? Hoo, I thought you paid better attention than that, Constable."

Odo returns the PADD with a dry expression. "To read."

"Oh, you're hilarious." He taps Odo's chest with the PADD. "The whole station is filled with this stuff. My bar, the Replimat, the Celestial Cafe, the promenade. Someone's either desperate to make a statement, or we've been sabatoged."

Dramatic sci-fi music swells and we get a close-up of Odo’s eerily hairless face and nasal cavity.

The next few hours are dedicated to trying and failing to seize back the servers and briefing the bridge staff on the situation.

"Are we sure these are all about Doctor Bashir?" Sisko's voice booms across Ops. He's on his second cup of coffee and a pile of useless PADDs lay beside him.

Julian has remained stoic throughout the discussion and he remains so now, avoiding eye contact with anyone who's smiling a little too wide. Like Jadzia. "Oh, definitely," she says. "He's mentioned by name in three of them, and several others make a point of highlighting the subject's 'golden sand dune skin', 'aristocratic' features, and 'voice that never stops singing.' Sounds like Julian to me."

A few snickers break out, but Sisko is taking the matter seriously. Thank fuck, Julian thinks. It actually looks like it's giving him a headache, which would make two of them if Julian was capable of having headaches. The captain's rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "And the source..."

"There's a clear data trail back to Garak's quarters. Whoever did this, they wanted us to know where it came from," Kira reports. A muscle jumps in Julian's cheek.

"I tracked Garak down for his statement on the issue," Odo says, gruff, "and he told me he had nothing to do with the virus. In fact, he denied ever having laid eyes on the poems in his life. He's claiming he's been framed." He rolls his eyes.

"Okay," Jadzia says, "we all agree he's lying, right?"

"But which part..."

"Oh, they're Garak's. I've read enough Lloja of Prim to be familiar with traditional Kardasi meter and syntax, and that isn't even going into all the parallels drawn between our doctor and Prime. Sand, heat, rainforests. Bit of Romulan imagery in there, too, if I'm not mistaken. A lot of flowers and vines. Wasn't Garak a gardener?"

"I see no reason why anyone would want to embarass themselves like this," O'Brien cuts in before Jadzia can make it worse. "Even if he is trying to distract us or something, this seems counterproductive in the long term. Everyone’s watching him now, not just us. The rumor mill is running rampant. Not exactly a spy’s MO."

"He did blow up his shop once."

"Because someone was trying to kill him," Julian pipes up for the first time, looking concerned. "Do you think this might be another cry for help?"

"Oh, it's a cry for something," Jadzia quips, and Julian shuts the fuck up.

"Dax," Sisko snaps, like the good benevolent Wormhole Alien Jesus he is, and Dax shuts the fuck up, too. Sisko gives them all the stink eye. "Constable, you're nearly as familiar with Garak as the doctor is," he says, and holds a hand up before any jokes can be made. "What do you think?"

"I don't think he's behind this, sir. None of the pieces add up, and he seemed genuinely agitated when I spoke to him, in his way. At present, I believe he is as much a victim here as the rest of us."

Sisko sighs. "All right. Do we have any idea who is behind this?"

The room is silent for a time, before Odo reluctantly answers for everyone, "Not yet, sir."

"Find out," Sisko demands, "and Chief, get these damn poems off of my reports. Dismissed."

Julian is out of the room before anyone else has stood up.

The rest of the day is spent ducking in and out of his office, only treating those who ask for him by name and keeping all conversations strictly professional. Any mentions of poetry, the festival, Cardassians, or Garak are firmly sidelined, and on a couple occasions, rewarded with a none-too-gentle hypo. He skips lunch altogether and extends his shift by two hours to avoid the dinner rush.

By the time he's leaving the Infirmary, it's late. Unfortunately for him, not late enough that the halls aren't still speckled with observers to his personal soap opera. With the Festival of Frank’s Hot Dogs less than a week away, DS9 is becoming increasingly crowded with tourists, mostly Cardassian, but a surprising amount Bajoran, too–apparently this festival was a rare bright point during the Occupation, when their oppressors were not only lenient with them for once, but generous with food and drink and freedoms. It doesn't hurt that the only Cardassians on board are civilian rather than military, so the atmosphere is rather more colorful, courteous and conversational rather than cold, dark and aggressive. It would make Julian smile if he wasn't so busy being gawked at.

"I don't see it," one Cardassian man grumbles and Julian's accursed augmented ears pick up. "He's even smoother than a Bajoran."

"Oh, yeah," his companion replies, "just think of how easily he'd slide around."

"Tanett!"

"Oh, hush, Grandpa. You're just xenophobic. He's cute."

"Well, you be careful who hears you say that. That Garak fellow is in the Order, you know. Ears everywhere. You don't want to know what things a man like that is capable of."

"Wasn't he exiled? Hardly intimidating now. Apparently all he's capable of anymore is whimpering over an alien like a pakrela."

Julian covers his ears and walks faster.

But that just brings him within range of a cluster of Bajorans. "Oh, there's the doctor now," one is saying, up on the balcony.

"The one the Cardassian tailor wrote about?"

"That poor fool. He thought they were friends, but here this whole time it was perverse. I can only imagine how much that hurts."

"Happened to my friend once. He thought a glinn was being kind because he was having a crisis of conscience and wanted to help him escape. No, he just wanted to–"

He could go to his quarters, but a flash of memory - Garak's bright eyes at the end of his bed, his figure encased in shadow - sends him in the opposite direction. Before long, he finds himself on an oft-unused Observation deck, since it offers no view of the wormhole or either Bajor or Cardassia's suns. It's blessedly empty, as usual, and Julian settles on a bench and stares into the dark nothingness of space for a long time.

At some point, he finds that his hand has retrieved the PADD from his medical bag, and the screen is lit up automatically with the first poem.

He reads well into the night.

—

The next morning finds Garak with a tall glass of rokassa juice and two eggs, staring intensely into a mysteriously operational PADD at the far end of Quark's bar. Quark pops out of his backroom like a jack-in-the-box.

"Ha! Well, if it isn't the man of the hour himself, gracing my fine establishment so soon after nearly destroying it. Do you know I've had to have menus printed, like we're in the dark ages? Do you have any idea how extensive my menu is? I ought to sue you for damages." He catches a glimpse of the PADD's screen and its decidedly unpoetic contents. "Hey, you fixed it? How?"

"It was just a simple virus. Viruses can be purged," Garak says without looking up. He barely seems aware of Quark's existence.

When no other words are forthcoming, Quark huffs. "Well, can you purge it from the rest of the station, then?"

"I gave the program to the Chief last night."

"And he didn't immediately come here to fix my bar? I'll have to file a complaint.”

Garak offers no reply. Just continues to stare into his PADD.

There are other customers he could be seeing to, but Quark can't pass up this golden opportunity. He's known Garak a long time and known of him even longer, and now that he has the guy's guts all neatly lined up on several dozen isolinear rods, he's never felt closer to the man. He makes a point of knowing things about his customers, but before yesterday, the most he knew about Garak was that he was an assassin, a tailor, a mean, weepy drunk, and friends with Bashir, Odo, and a smattering of other shopkeepers. That was it. But now...

He leans over the counter, closer to Garak's unblinking face. "You know," he says, with a smile rising slow on his cheeks, "if it's humans you like, I have a couple holosuite programs that might be just what you need."

Garak's gaze ascends as if on a motor, smooth and mechanical.

Good. He’s considering the bait. Now he just has to get him to bite. "All completely customizable. Skin, eyes, hair. You like long legs, they've got long legs. Scrawny, they're scrawny. Whatever you want. Although if you're really hung up on the one face, that can also be arranged. For the right price." When Garak just looks at him, Quark switches tactics. "Or maybe it's the uniform that does it for you? I've got 'em, but I'd suggest something out of my lingerie databases. I've still got some little Cardassian numbers filed away that I think even a man with your discerning tastes could appreciate. Just imagine, Doctor Bashir in a–"

He doesn't see the hand coming until it's already crushing his windpipe. Quark claws at it for several long, desperate moments while Garak continues to look.

Leeta scuttling over and yanking him away is what ultimately puts a stop to it, and it's while Quark is gasping in dramatic bursts of air that Leeta says in a rush, "Garak, please! Whatever he said, he didn't mean it!"

"Oh, I meant it," Quark coughs out with a high, strangled laugh, "he just didn't like it."

"Whatever conclusions you've drawn in the last twenty-six hours, allow me to dispel them," Garak says primly, as if he hadn't almost committed murder in broad daylight. "I am not a xenophile and I do not have feelings for Doctor Bashir. There are no less than two-hundred Cardassians currently aboard the station, and I assure you, none of them like me. Those poems were obviously planted."

Oh, but Quark is a little pissed now, unwise as that is. "Please, Garak," he says, "who has time to write that many poems about Julian just to mess with you? Two or three, maybe, but over seventy? If you're going to lie, at least don't insult our intelligence."

Garak's eyes flash and Quark ducks behind Leeta, repentant. Leeta sighs. "Garak, what's so bad about loving Julian?" she asks softly. "I thought the poems were really touching. It’s sweet how much you care for him."

But he's already staring into his PADD again. "I'm sorry, Miss Leeta, but I am a bit busy. Perhaps we can discuss my hypothetical feelings for your paramour another time."

"Julian and I have never been serious," she tries to assure him, but he's engrossed again, or at least pretending to be. Her and Quark share a look and leave him to it. Lesson learned.

"Let the bastard be pent up and miserable, then," Quark grumbles from the other end of the bar as he pours Table 3's drinks. A prickle on his neck has him looking up and there Garak's eyes are again, piercing, and Quark rushes off to deliver the drinks.

The three young Cardassians there are much more friendly. One has their nose stuck in one of the useless poetry PADDs while the other two smile at Quark while he sets out their orders.

"Three Raktajinos, extra bitter," Quark says, and is thanked. Polite. One even praises the drink's exoticness. Klingon coffee, exotic. Heh. "Your food will be out in a few."

Before he can finish turning, though, a hand is touching his arm. "What is the title of this anthology you include at every table?" the young man asks.

"Oh, that's not..." He sighs. "It's new. I can't remember."

"Find out for us, please," he says. "Works like these can be hard to come by on Prime and we make it our business to collect them. Whoever this author is, they're very unique."

"If these aren't banned on Prime already, they will be soon," his friend comments with a giggle.

"No doubt."

"'In my desolation, I am as weeds: Cut my roots and Let the waters take me, To drown and bloom anew, in You,'" the one with her nose in the PADD reads aloud, and shivers. "They'd burn the whole Central Archive down just for this one. It's so explicit."

"Let me see that," the boy demands, as the other one is already surging over to read over the girl's shoulder. Watching them fight over the PADD has Quark thinking back to the isolinear rods in his safe, and he hums thoughtfully, glancing over his shoulder.

Garak isn't looking.

—

Glinn Halon Duvur. Former underling of Gul Dukat. Out of uniform, vacationing on Deep Space Nine with his wife and nine children. Spends his days gambling while his kids play unsupervised in the holosuites and his wife visits old friends.

Beloved uncle sent to trial by the Obsidian Order in 2356 and executed that same day for crimes of attempted sabotage against Cardassia.

Garak watches the man wander down the promenade sans his proud lineage, jingling a fat little bag of gold-pressed latinum and yet-unconverted leks. He wanders out of range, so Garak switches to the next camera and there that unfortunate face is again. He drums his fingers on the desk. It won't be long now.

An alert rings in his ear and he almost initiates the shockfield on impulse, but the flash of smooth, brown skin on a monitor stays his hand. The knocking comes, and that haunting voice calls out, "Garak! Are you there?"

Garak rests his head next to the surveillance screens.

Predictably, the doctor tries to input his override, but the door remains shut. There's a long pause.

"Garak..." Julian sounds irate. Garak hums. "Did you deprogram my override code? Nevermind how illegal that is, that's dangerous! What if you're injured? Or fall ill?"

He says this just after attempting to abuse his station privileges for personal reasons. Infuriating hypocrite.

"Oh, my barging in at random, odd hours is no less than you deserve, Garak," Julian says as if in response to Garak's thoughts. "You set that precedent in our relationship yourself."

Terrible man.

"Fine. I'll give you some more time, since you want it so badly, but I'll be back and when I am, that override had better work. If it doesn’t, I promise there will be hell to pay, my friend."

Beautiful man.

"Goodbye, Mr. Garak."

Goodbye, Doctor.

Glinn Duvur dies two hours later of alcohol poisoning while his wife is in bed with Gul Rilimn's wife.

—

“I just can’t believe it,” Kira is bitching. Jadzia smiles and sips her drink, looking out over the Replimat balcony at all the happy brunchgoers. “A Cardassian writing poetry about something that isn’t conquest or the wonders of dictatorial rule or, at best, the pride of the traditional family nobly bowing and scraping. I’ve never seen it.”

“It would certainly seem to run counter to Cardassian values.”

“And about Julian!” she shrieks in her inside voice, slapping her hands down on the table. “Garak the spy, writing love poetry about Julian. Going on and on about his–his...”

“Ass?” Jadzia offers.

“Eyes. His eyes! Ohhh, I knew he wanted to have sex with him, everyone knew that, but to write about his eyes like... like that? It’s practically Bajoran.”

“That’s true.”

Kira stops long enough in her tirade to eye her, and presses her lips into a thin line. “How are you so calm about this?”

Jadzia takes another sip. “I’m just fascinated,” she says. “I’ll admit, I’ve been looking at this more through Tobin’s eyes than my own. Have I ever told you that he met Lloja of Prim during his exile?”

“He did not.”

“He did, and Lloja flirted with him outrageously. It was embarrassing, looking back. Of course, nothing ever came of it, because Tobin was always hopelessly blind to those sorts of things even without the language barrier, but his children liked to joke that many of Lloja’s poems were about him.”

Kira’s jaw is hanging. “Were they?”

Jadzia grins and shrugs. Kira laughs.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Perhaps,” Jadzia allows, “but I do wonder... Being able to call nervous, asexual Tobin the lover of Lloja of Prim would have been quite the notch in my belt. Think of the stories I could have told! And now here Julian is with the opportunity. I know it’s not the same, I mean, it’s Garak. But, you have to admit, to write about him like that...”

“He must really love him,” Kira finishes for her, stumped. “I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

“I didn’t see it, either,” Jadzia confesses. “I was still wrestling with the idea that they were actually friends. I thought their association was strictly professional and all the books and flirting were just a front.” She cradles her head in her hands suddenly and sighs. “Ugh, but those poems. The poems are so good! Kira...”

“I know,” she moans. “They’re heart-wrenching. Which one are you on now?”

“Thirty-nine. I came back home, but I came back gone.”

“Ouch.”

“I know.”

A shout from below interrupts them and they both shoot out of their seats. Below, a Cardassian man has just had a beam fall on top of him. Jadzia and Kira bound down the stairs to him, Jadzia already slapping a hand on her comm badge.

“Dax to Infirmary, a man has just been crushed, possibly impaled. Send a medical team to Replimat and be ready for emergency beam out.”

“Acknowledged, we’re on our way,” Girani says, but already Kira is looking up at Jadzia helplessly, the man’s wrist laying limp between her hands.

“He’s gone.”

“Shit!” Jadzia hunches over, hands on her knees. “That’s the third one today. Are Cardassians always this accident prone? No wonder you won the war.”

“No,” Kira says. “They’re not. You don’t think...”

“I don’t know,” Jadzia says grimly, and looks around at the crowd that’s formed. All Cardassian, all terrified. “But we need to find out.”

—

A Cardassian is sitting at the bar. This isn’t an unusual sight now, with the Festival of 90s Funk and Beyond coming up, but seeing one so young and looking so hunted is odd. Quark approaches him casually.

“What’ll you have?”

The Cardassian’s eyes dart. “Uh...” He leans over suddenly, cups both hands over his mouth, and whispers, “E. G. Special.”

Christ, these kids are going to kill him. “Coming right up,” he says in a normal person voice, and reaches under the bar for a glass. A little drink-mixing magic later, a beautiful fizzy blue drink is sitting between them, with an isolinear rod tucked neatly in the straw.

The Cardassian takes the drink between both hands excitedly, and Quark snaps his fingers in front of him. “Oh! Right,” the kid stutters, and all but launches the latinum at Quark’s face. “Thank you!” And off he goes, out of the bar with the glass still tight in his grasp.

“Idiot,” Quark mutters to himself, crouching carefully down to pick the latinum up off the floor without dirtying his expensive pants. “You’re supposed to take the straw, not the entire glass. That’s it, I’m switching to plastic. These little rebel brats don’t deserve my ni—Oh, hello, Constable! I didn’t see you there. What can I get you?”

Odo looks as unimpressed as ever. “That’s a funny question since last I checked, I don’t drink.”

“Ah, right, because you’re a liquid. How could I forget. You know, one of these days, I ought to serve you up with a little umbrella, see how people like it. I’d bet you taste bitter.” Odo harrumphs, and Quark makes himself busy with wiping down the counter. “Well, out with it then. What nefarious scheme am I up to now? I love to hear your little stories.”

Four isolinear rods drop onto the counter, right where Quark was just cleaning. “Hey now,” he says, throwing a performative glare at the changeling. “Careful. If you shatter glass in my bar, you’re cleaning it up.”

“I just had the most interesting conversation with the Tokal family,” Odo says, steamrolling right over him. “It seems their four darling children had somehow come into some questionable reading material. They tried searching for it in the Central Archives and yet, despite it being clearly Cardassian in origin, they could not find it. And I don’t need to tell you that when a piece of Cardassian reading material isn’t in the Central Archives...”

Quark, from his plastered position on the floor, stares up into Odo’s face directly horizontal to his and smiles. “What?”

“It’s illegal,” Odo sneers, stretching his body even further over the bar and nearly sending Quark starfishing.

“Okay! Odo! I get it! But what does that have to do with me?”

“Quark!”

“Okay, okay! Whatever it is you think I’ve done, I’ll stop! I’ll stop, okay?”

“I know you’re going to stop, because I am going to confiscate every copy of Garak’s poetry that you have absconded with and destroy them.”

Quark gasps. “Book burning? In this day and age?”

“Garak did not give his permission for you to sell his work! He didn’t even want anyone to see it in the first place! Those poems were stolen. Now, I expect a list of every person you sold a copy to and a full and complete refund to be issued by tomorrow morning. Do I make myself clear?”

Quark glowers. “You’ve made yourself something, all right.”

“Quark...”

“Okay! All right. Consider it done.”

Turora Lumok. Obsidian Order operative and old colleague. Usually in deep cover in the Organian sectre, but has abandoned post to explore the space station. Barren, unattached. Cold. A model agent, if you ignore her unfortunate habit of going rogue and eliminating civilians on a whim.

Recruited into the Order by Enabran Tain’s former right hand, Euluk Bucun, who was assassinated by Elim Garak in 2341 under orders from Enabran Tain for suspicions of treason. Turora Lumok disciplined shortly afterward by Elim Garak for complaining that she had wanted to be the one to kill that bitch.

Garak watches as the woman pretends to touch up her makeup while scouting for cameras. “Oh, Lumok, you always were woefully obvious. Have you been expecting me? I wonder why.”

Satisfied with the positions of the cameras, she puts away her mirror and strolls out of sight.

Garak shakes his head. “Fool. You forget how long I’ve lived on this wretched station. I don’t need to see you every second to know where you are.”

But then, the smell of antiseptic. Starfleet issue soap. Herbal shampoo, unique, robust. Gels. Oils. Sweat.

He’s near.

Forcing calmness with a deep, measured breath, he takes off his eyepiece and slips it into his sleeve. He pays for the food he barely ate. He stands. He turns.

And is promptly thrust into the dark, deep woods of Julian Bashir’s eyes. “There you are, Garak! I’ve been looking all over for you,” the doctor says as if it’s just a regular day on Deep Space Nine. His hot, mammalian body caging him tightly in place against the table betrays the ruse. “Who was it you were talking to?”

Garak tries to step around him. Julian steps with him. “Oh, only ever myself. Forgive me, but you’ve caught me just on my way out. I have a strict appointment at 2.”

There’s Julian’s hand now. On his shoulder. Garak is calm. This is normal. “Well, why don’t I walk you there then.”

“My dear Doctor, I couldn’t rob you of your meal. Clearly you’ve just walked in.”

“Actually, I’ve found I’m craving something a bit different now.”

Garak makes to step around Julian again, and still Julian’s steps match his. It’s like they’re dancing. He doesn’t let this deter him. He’s not sure he’s capable of letting anything deter him now, with his heart trying to pound out of his throat. He keeps stepping doggedly forward, and Julian keeps mirroring, still with that damned hand burning through his tunic. “Well, you only have so much time before you must return to the infirmary, I know. Do not allow me to delay you in securing a table at a different locale.”

“Oh, but you’ve already delayed me so long. What’s a few more minutes?” A peek of teeth, a hint of warning. “Though I will admit... I’m not sure how much longer I can wait.”

“Then don’t.” Finally, Garak manages to elbow past this madness and shoot out of the restaurant. The station is so crowded these days, it’s short work to get lost in it. In a sea of ridges and black hair, Garak slips his eyepiece back on and lets the wave take him.

“Garak!”

Oh, for the Union’s sake—

He does not run. He does not stumble. He walks normally and not desperately, keeping his eye on both the path to the turbolift and Lumok. She’s down the corridor now, pretending to check her makeup again like an imbecile. Just a few paces more. Almost there...

“Garak, you’re the best dressed one here! You are not difficult to spot, you ridiculous dandy! Oh, no offense, Ma’am. Lovely scarf. Excuse me.”

There.

In the reflection of the mirror, Garak makes eye contact with the rogue and taps in the correct sequence on the device sewed into the seam of his pants just as the turbolift doors close behind him.

Like that, Turora Lumok is beamed into space and dies instantly, without a soul to mourn her, and Elim Garak walks back to his quarters with a hand over his mouth and a warmth on his shoulder, without a soul to mourn him, either.

—-

The Festival of Fierce and Fantastic Frogs is two days away and already it is being protested.

Outside Quark’s Bar is a growing army of dissident children with voice amplifiers and holoprojectors shouting to the stars that if they don’t get their porn back, they’ll tear it all down. Signs are projected in the air with essays cycling through them that look to be several pages each, a small holographic fire barely reaching ankle-height is lighting up the length of the promenade, and – perhaps most disturbingly – a comically inaccurate approximation of Odo is rotating at the center of the group, fitted in the typical regalia of the Cardassian military and holding a Klingon bat’leth. It is certainly... something.

“They’re Cardassians,” Quark is saying as he pours out some root beers. “They’ve probably never seen a protest in their lives, they don’t know what they’re doing. The Union puts an end to things like this pretty fast on the surface.”

“Heh,” Jadzia says, “what happens on DS9, stays on DS9.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Kira asks.

“It’s something Julian likes to say. Basically, they figure they can get away with speaking their minds here.”

Kira drums her fingers on the bar, staring into the flailing protestors thoughtfully.

Right then, Odo arrives back on the scene. It looks like he’s trying to get through, respectfully, but the protestors are not making it easy. Jadzia and Kira come to his rescue just as about fifteen Cardassians start forming a blockade around him.

“I walked around as you do, investigating the endless stars,” one young woman is yelling at him while he stands there with big helpless baby eyes, “and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked, the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind!”

“I don’t know what that means,” Odo says consolingly.

“Clearly!”

“Okay, okay, let him through!” Kira wiggles her way between the crowd and Odo, snatching him by the arm like a fish with a hook. “He’s not your enemy here, he was just upholding your laws!”

“The Cardassian government has no jurisdiction on a Bajoran station!”

“He made his choices!”

“Beautiful Julian would be ashamed of you! Repent! Repent!”

Kira and Jadzia manage to reel him most of the way through the protesters and he shapeshifts the rest of the journey. The protestors try to follow, but Quark bustles over to stop them. “No, no demonstrations inside! Remember who your allies are,” he says, and they all cow back. “Thank you.”

Odo ripples his form a couple times to make sure everything’s back in the right place and harrumphs. “Allies, Quark?”

“Yes, allies. It’s terrible what you’ve done to them. You can’t police art, Odo–-this is culture we're talking about here, the very bedrock of society.”

“And I’m sure this virtuous attitude of yours has nothing to do with the incredible profit you made and lost at the expense of our mutual friend.”

“Oh, I did him a favor.” Quark uncaps another bottle of Kanar and gestures back to the entrance, with its swarm of frothing Cardassian children. “Look, he’s got fans!”

“How has Garak been handling all this?” Kira asks Odo, sharing a look with Jadzia. “I haven’t heard a peep out of him since he gave us that antivirus program.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Didn’t you have breakfast with him yesterday?”

“Hmmm, that would have been routine. Except he didn’t show. When I made it back to my office, I found a message from him apologizing, telling me he’s so busy with orders he’s lost all track of time.”

“How has he been getting commissions?” Jadzia asks. “His shop’s been closed all week.”

Odo rolls his eyes. “Oh, I’m sure the reality is he’s simply avoiding the issue. Dr. Bashir has informed me he’s been treating him like ‘the black plague’ as well.”

“Julian’s one to talk. He practically pole-vaulted over a vedek the other day to get away from me.”

“Speak of the devil,” Quark says, looking towards the door, and everyone turns just as the commotion starts–or, more accurately, the commotion abruptly stops.

The protestors have all gone quiet, in apparent awe as they part around Julian like the red sea around Moses. He’s smiling stupidly as he stands in the center of them, nodding at something a Cardassian man is exclaiming. It’s an incredibly awkward scene, and Quark starts choking at some of the things his ears are picking up. “They’ve deified him,” he tells them, and Jadzia bursts into giggles at the idea, but Quark isn’t joking. “Really. He might as well be one of the prophets to them. You read the poems. You know.”

Ugh. Kira wrinkles her nose in disgust. The worst kind of blasphemy–horny blasphemy. “What is he even doing here?” she asks.

“Getting his head inflated,” Jadzia says dryly, because now that Quark has mentioned it, it’s pretty clear from the shit-eating grin on Julian’s face that that’s exactly what’s happening.

“Poor Garak.” Quark says it absentmindedly, but the comment gets several eyes turned on him. He’s shaking his head as he watches the scene unfold. “First, he falls for a human… humiliating… but then that love becomes public knowledge and several young beautiful Cardassians decide that he’s onto something, and now that human is going to get more action in a week than he’s seen his entire life. I’ve witnessed the rise and fall of more than a few star-crossed romances, but this might just be the saddest.”

“Julian wouldn’t have an orgy the same week the whole station found out Garak’s in love with him,” Jadzia says, insulted on his behalf.

Quark hefts a tray up onto his shoulder. “He just did,” he says as he leaves to go do his job, and Jadzia whips her head around to see Julian escorting two attractive Cardassians away from the protest. Her jaw drops.

“Bastard,” Kira spits, surprising everyone, herself most of all. Those poems must’ve affected her more than she realized.

Odo clears his throat unnecessarily. “I’m no expert on the behavior of solids, but it seems to me that neither party is handling this situation well.”

“I’ll tell you how the pakrela should be handling this,” an older Cardassian sitting at the far end of the bar cuts in, with a twitch to him that makes it clear he’s more than a few deep. “He should be settling his assets, because he doesn’t have long now. Whatever his human is doing is the least of his worries. Ha. Hehe. Being a traitor wasn’t enough for him. No, now he’s gone and corrupted the next generation with his degeneracy. Exile was too soft a punishment. Uh-huh.”

Kira opens her mouth to tell him to fuck off, but Odo touches her shoulder. “You speak as if you know him,” he notes mildly, because of course, the exact reason for Garak’s exile isn’t public record. It’s barely even private record. The Order doesn’t work that way–or didn’t, as it stands. It is interesting that this man is acting like he has classified information despite being a civilian.

But then, sometimes day drinkers just like to spout speculation as fact.

The man looks into his glass and laughs at his reflection. “Who doesn’t know Garak these days? But that’s temporary. He’ll be forgotten soon enough, just like the Order.” He finishes his drink and gets up. He insincerely mutters some friendly Cardassian farewell and starts to walk past them, but Kira can’t let it go.

“Excuse me, but what’s your name, sir? You’ve been so informative.”

He looks at her for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he says, and elbows past the protesters.

—

“Solt Mebol, left behind a widow and child six years ago when he was tragically killed in a transporter accident. In reality, he accepted an undercover mission which required him to fake his death and have his bond dissolved. A significant sacrifice. Certainly not one many Cardassians could have made.”

The Cardassian stares at Garak sitting on his couch. Turning, he tries to exit his temporary quarters, but the door won’t open.

Garak tuts. “Oh, you know better than that, Mebol.” He taps his disruptor with his forefinger, resting harmlessly against his knee. “The festival isn’t for another couple days, yet here you are. Catching up with old friends before the festivities, I assume? Only I haven’t found you in anyone’s company but your own. You must be lonely. Please, let me alleviate your loneliness for a while.”

The Cardassian sighs at the closed door. “Solt, is it?”

“I can tell you the names of your wife and child as well, if you’d like, and the city they live in. Do you know your wife never rebonded? Unusual behavior for a Romulan. Quite dangerous, as I understand it.”

Solt steps carefully into the small living space and sits in the chair opposite Garak, with the coffee table between them. “As one of the last living members of the Order, I don’t suppose you would consider letting me go?”

Garak smiles pleasantly. “I would be delighted.”

“Would you? I had a deal with Central Command and they’ve been good to me so far. You, however, have been known to…” He eyes the disruptor casually turned in his direction.

“Yes, I imagine I must be something of a mystery these days to my people. I have been… squirrely, is what I suppose a human would say, and I must as well now that I’ve been painted with their brush. Oh, it is an incredible sin, I know. That I should enjoy the company of an attractive alien while in exile.”

Solt snorts. “You expect me to believe those poems were the natural result of a fling?”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything you do not wish to. I only say that it’s convenient that I should be seen as even more traitorous just as a swarm of Cardassians should enter the station.”

“What’s convenient is that you’re still alive. You have friends in high places willing to go to bat for you, in spite of everything you’ve done. It’s a disgrace. You are a selfish disloyal anarchist and no one is holding you accountable, because you just happened to be good at your job once and everyone likes the idea of having you as a potential weapon should the need for one arise. Until then, they’re content to keep you in a cabinet collecting dust and sentiment. You can wave that disruptor all you want, but we both know you make a poor operative now. You’re in love.”

Garak is still smiling, but Solt can see the signs of a grimace. Dusty, indeed. Too passionate. Too human. “I’m hardly so foolish. You know better than I the dangers of such things in our line of work. You’re little better than a puppet now that you’ve had a whiff of the truth, Mebol.”

“You’re right.” Solt attempts to raise one eye ridge, despite it being unfit for such maneuvers, and leans forward towards that disruptor. “Pull my strings, then, and let’s test that grip Bashir has on yours.”

—

Kira crashes into Garak’s quarters and kickflips past all his booby traps like Indiana Jones’ hotter cousin.

“What the fuck, Richard?” is basically what she says, only it’s in character, so it’s more like, “What the fuck, Garak!”

Garak spins around in his maniacal villain chair with a look of surprise. “How did you get in here, Major?” Miles bustles his way in after her with his impractically enormous toolkit, and Garak lets out an, “Ah,” then, sedately, “I suppose Dr. Bashir filed a complaint about my tampering with the door codes. Of course, there’s a perfectly logical explanation. You see, it–”

“This isn’t about door codes, Garak,” Kira yells. “What I want to know is why our best suspect for the sudden influx of murders on the station was just found drowned in his own toilet!”

“Oh my,” Garak says. “What an unfortunate end.”

“Don’t play dumb. Not now. We know what you’re capable of, but we’re good people and we didn’t want to accuse a victim until we had exhausted the rest of our line-up. Only, interestingly enough, they’re all dead, so now…” she marches over with the fury of the Prophets on her heels and stands imposingly over him, her teeth clenched, “here we are.”

“That is interesting.” He runs a hand down a roll of fabric in his lap, smoothing it. “I suppose you must have some of that ironclad evidence that the Federation so treasures.”

Kira glares at him.

Garak feigns looking around. “Oh, but I can’t help but notice the good Constable isn’t here with you. What could that mean? Surely not that you broke into my quarters without due cause or a hint of warning–at your own word, not even to fix my glitching door. For all you knew, I could have been in here writing one of my vaunted Bashir epics.”

Kira’s hands are in fists now. “The evidence we have would be more than enough to have your face plastered on every viewscreen in Cardassia and you know it.”

“The Federation and Bajoran legal processes do seem a tad inefficient in moments like these, don’t they?”

“Okay,” Miles cuts in, because he has Turbo PTSD and is not in the mood for a flare up. “I think I'll just wait in the hallway, then. Holler if you need me. Good luck, Major.”

Kira and Garak spend a few moments watching him waddle out of the room and then go back to staring each other down.

“Look, you ass,” Kira starts, “we couldn’t link every victim to the Cardassian government or some third-party organization, but we were able to link enough of them to recognize that these aren’t just random nobodies having ‘accidents.’ Someone was able to break into your computer and embarrass you and you don’t like that so you’re pitching a fit. I can’t have Odo arrest you – yet – but I can tell you to cut it out. This vigilantism isn’t helping–”

That gets a reaction. “Vigilantism!”

“Well, what would you call it?”

“Self-defense.”

“They attacked you?”

“Possibly.”

“Goddamn you, Garak! Just… don’t do this anymore, okay?”

Garak looks at her with innocent astonishment, like he’s still bewildered by her totally plausible accusations. “Well. You have my word, I suppose,” he says, bemused.

—

Gul Skrain Dukat. Blessed with a wife, seven children, two sets of living parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, minus one father. Habitually cheats with lower ranked military officials, slaves, and barely legal adults, unbenownst to his family. Father was interrogated by Elim Garak and executed by the Union over live broadcast in the year 2350 for the crime of being a piece of shit.

Elim Garak was shortly thereafter levied with an amateurish execution attempt by Gul Dukat. It failed.

The second attempt will succeed, but at a great cost.

The Festival of Filthy Fucking Foot Fetishists has officially begun, but Garak is struggling to feel any enthusiasm. He is surrounded by his people. The station has been dimmed by 15% to better suit Cardassian eyes and misting stations have been set up in limited locations. Extinct and invented flowers crafted by Cardassian and Bajoran artisans decorate the banisters and doorways. A wash of blue, green, and sparkling gold lights up every direction. There is the smell of freshly prepared Cardassian sweets on the air, a gentle warmth suffuses the atmosphere, and children are laughing on the promenade. It’s the first time the station has felt not just tolerable, but nearly pleasant, in years.

But then, Garak has never felt particularly welcome among his people. As a child, he was an orphan generously cared for by service workers and sponsored by a government official, and as an adult, he was a member of the Order, which granted him more fear and loathing than it did admiration and respect. Companionship, in its truest form, was a rare thing to come by and not something he was encouraged to come by at all.

Perhaps that is why Dr. Bashir blindsided him.

In any case, Garak is delicately balanced on the line between proper misery and numbness. He gave up imbibing around the same time that he gave up the implant—or rather, the implant gave up on him—but he’s on his third cup now, wandering through the festivities with no particular direction in mind. The exact spot of this last operation isn’t important, only the timing.

He finishes his drink while a group play a spirited game of cold moba in front of him. It shouldn't be long now.

All the nearby screens suddenly flicker from the event schedule to Dukat’s sharp grin and Garak hums. There we are. He knew the bitch wouldn’t be able to resist showing his face.

“Welcome everyone to the biennial Festival of–” a baby wails, “generously hosted here on Deep Space Nine by Bajor and the Federation, and of course organized by our own prodigous Detapa Council. Ah, that wormhole… quite the view, isn’t it?”

Garak looks around for another food stall that serves alcohol.

There aren’t any stalls in his immediate vicinity, but there is a young Cardassian couple marching towards him while making dogged eye contact.

Oh no.

Garak starts to make a break for it. Not too fast, it won’t do to cause a stir, but there are a number of very good reasons for him to stay far away from any Cardassians who might recognize him right now. Especially if the source of that recognition is those damn poems he was too stupid and sentimental to destroy.

Before he can make it more than a few steps, however, he looks up to see another few Cardassians working their way towards him, also making eye contact.

No, no, no.

He makes to move towards the stairs then, only for his eyes to land squarely on him.

Him, wearing the silky green outfit he lovingly crafted for him a few months ago. Him, shining in the festival lights, casting him in an even more arresting shade of gold than usual. Him, looking determined and coming straight towards him.

Oh, fuck no.

“Garak,” Julian calls out, likely reading the panic on his face and stance and soul.

“Today, I am not a Gul, though,” Dukat is saying. “I am but a humble representative of the Cardassian Union in its totality, and as such, I would like to thank Colonel Kira Nerys and Captain Benjamin Sisko for their hand in this week’s festivities. They have been nothing if not accommodating these last few weeks while our coordinators ran rampant through their halls.”

He should have accounted for the possibility of this. Thinking of Julian had become excruciating as of late, but that was no excuse. Whatever interaction Julian had been hoping to have with him couldn’t be allowed, not now, and not only for the sake of Garak’s traitorous, disgusting feelings. Even if it would give the sweet man closure, it would not be worth his life.

“Now, it may be a bit unorthodox, but I thought it would be only fitting if the first Reenactment was carried out by our benevolent hosts, and the Lakarian City Acting Troupe were all too happy to take them under their wing.”

More eyes are turning towards the screen now, the laughing and playing and sloshing of cups quieting down. Julian is nearly with him, his approach halted only by the gathering crowd, and Garak can only pretend to be interested in Dukat’s speech while he racks his brain desperately for a solution. Any solution. Anything.

“I trust that the history of Cardassia is in capable hands.”

The screen flickers again and changes to a shot of one of Quark’s holodecks, where a lone Bajoran man stands in a beam of red light.

A hand grabs Garak roughly by the arm, and he nearly cries with relief when he sees that it’s Lumok.

Well, Lumok with the face and attire of a Bajoran, but that ever-present spark of unchecked malice in her eye is quite unmistakable to someone who worked with her for over a decade.

“Surprised, you ugly old regnar?” she asks under the actor’s impassioned opening monologue.

He sucks in a breath as the sharp edge of something presses into his back. “Impossible. They found your body caught on one of the station’s spires.”

“A simple bait and switch,” she purrs, pressing the weapon closer, slicing through his tunic. A pity. This was one of his nicer ones. “You’ve gotten sloppy.”

He manufactures a smile. “A knife, then? A favorite of yours, I recall, but terribly messy for such a public venue. Not to mention if your aim is even an inch off, I’ll be in and out of the infirmary within the day, as if nothing at all had happened.”

“Don’t lecture me,” she growls. “You can’t do that anymore. You’re not anyone to anyone. Your master is dead, and what did you do the second you were off leash for the first time in your life? You went and choked yourself on the first Starfleet sotl you could find. You’re pathetic.”

It took incredible effort to keep his eyes from rolling to the back of his skull. “Oh, just stab me already.”

“I’m not going to stab you. I’ve done a bit of outsourcing, in fact.” She slid the knife from his lower back to his side and looped her arm through his, pinning him in place with a wide smile. “All I had to do was suggest to my new friend that you were infiltrating the Federation. That you were poisoning them against Bajor from the inside, uniting Cardassia and Starfleet in a secret alliance under the guise of wooing the CMO. No, no, you won’t be killed by one of your peers. Your death will be at the hands of a perfect stranger. A pointless death for a pointless man.” She leans in and whispers into his aural ridge, “It always was so easy to make people hate you.”

The next few seconds are a flurry of chaos. One second he’s watching as Human, Bajoran and Cardassian actors alike are all holding hands and reciting ancient poetry and the next he’s on the floor with a searing weight bearing down on him from calf to shoulder. There are screams and footfalls coming from all directions and Odo’s voice is immediately discernible shouting over the commotion. His back is on fire, he can’t breathe, and there’s a slash in his side, but he doesn’t miss the thump of Lumok’s body a few feet away, dead before she hits the ground.

“Garak? Garak?” the weight on him is speaking frantically, pawing at his head and shoulders. The weight shifts and the hands flip him onto his back. Those same hands pat him down, blazing a path down his chest and his stomach and his sides, stopping at the superficial gash near his rib, and Garak knows who this is before he even opens his eyes.

“Garak,” Julian sighs with relief. Garak was meant to be dead by phaser blast right now, but instead Julian Bashir is smiling down at him like he’s important, kneeling beside him, his hands on him, branding him with their incredible heat. It shouldn’t be possible. No one could be that fast.

“Doctor,” he manages on a wheeze. One of his ribs might be broken, actually.

“Dukat,” Sisko growls from the monitor in billowing robes and a long flowing wig, surrounded by flowers.

—

“Explain,” Sisko commands.

Having decided that showing weakness right now can only help his case, Garak is sitting hunched to the side, holding his reeling head in one hand. It’s through a hiss that he replies, “A woman named Turora Lumok was responsible for sabotaging the station with those poems forged with my data signature. The Bajoran woman who was just assassinated–she was no Bajoran, but rather one of the last remaining members of the Obsidian Order. She was hired by Dukat to kill me during the festival under the guise of a hate crime. No doubt because of her indomitable reputation, I’m sure. A number of Cardassian casualties these past several days were at her hands.”

Sisko walks to the viewport to stare out into the stars for a moment, processing this. “All his talk of friendship between Bajor and Cardassia…” he trails off, the ghost of a sneer on his lips as he turns back around. “His goal was just the opposite. He wanted to destroy any hope of cooperation.”

“And get me out of the way in the process,” Garak grumbles.

Sisko hums and wanders over to Garak’s side, looking down at him thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me who assassinated Ms. Lumok?”

Garak stares at the floor through his fingers, his eyes glazed.

“Or who your informant is on Dukat’s involvement?”

“Captain,” Garak mutters, not looking up, “I have sat here concussed after an attempt on my life and shared with you everything that I know, and here you have not even told me who the tailor of your magnificent robe is.” He tugs half-heartedly at a strip of embroidery on the fabric. “I must admit, I am feeling a touch betrayed you didn’t come to me.”

Sisko flicks his eyes up to Julian, who has been standing in the corner with his hands behind his back. “Very well, Mr. Garak. I release you into Dr. Bashir’s care for now, but I expect to continue this conversation soon.” He massages his forehead. “Once I figure out what to do about this damned festival.”

Julian comes over to help Garak out of his chair, but Garak snaps upright and to the door before he can touch him. Sisko takes the opportunity to lean into Julian’s face and whisper, “Get more information out of him.” The doctor nods.

Julian isn’t angry when he steps out of Sisko’s office and sees that Garak is walking in the exact opposite direction of the infirmary, but he is disappointed.

“Mr. Garak,” he says urgently once he’s caught up to the idiot.

Mr. Garak interrupts him in the same tone, “Now, now, my dear doctor, we both know I have a dermal regenerator in my quarters, so we need not extend–”

“And I think we both know this is about much more than a few bumps and bruises. I’m afraid the time for beating around the bush passed quite a while ago.”

“You’re right, Doctor,” Garak says, coming to an abrupt stop and rounding on him with wild eyes. “There is an urgent matter we must discuss.” Julian’s eyebrows raise, and Garak nods severely. “Oh, yes, let us not ‘beat around the bush.’ We should talk about how you threw yourself directly into the line of a lethal phaser blast on the one in a millionth chance that you might save my life. The cost of such an action being almost certainly your own life, and yet, here you stand, and here I stand. Will wonders never cease.” Julian opens his mouth, but Garak raises a finger. “Nevermind that I was in the middle of an altercation with a very dangerous, very volatile woman who would not have hesitated for a second to dispose of you. She had a nasty habit of that. Now I knew that you were naive, Doctor, Doctor! I knew that! What I did not know – what I never could have guessed after all these years – was that you are an idiot.”

Julian stares back into Garak’s hissing face, unimpressed. Garak feels a wave of deja-vu and does not like it. It has no place here. And yet, Julian takes in a breath and smiles, raising his shoulders. “All right, Garak. If it’s really so important to you, we can talk about your suicide attempt.”

“What?” Garak bites out.

“You were going to let yourself get shot, yes?”

“I was n–” Garak starts to lie, disgusted, but is stopped by Julian stepping entirely too close. He stumbles back a step, then another when Julian attempts to crowd him again, and the familiarity of the routine has him shutting his eyes, rueful. They’re dancing again. It’s humiliating, the things this man makes him do, how effortlessly he can gain the upperhand. Most of the time without even having to lift a finger.

“You figured out Dukat’s plan and arranged for Lumok to die if she succeeded, but you expected her to. You didn’t expect to be saved,” the doctor tells his blank, unresponsive face. His eyes are still closed, his hands tense at his sides, but he knows Julian’s stepped closer again by the heat of his livid breath. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Very well. I didn’t figure it out. I was informed.”

“So, the captain was right.” He sounds bored, but Garak seizes his chance. His eyes open in a sudden burst of animation.

“Yes, I had an informant. I believe the major was familiar with him, a fellow by the name of Damoc who was recently presumed dead? Though I knew him far better as Mebol. We first met on Romulus, you see. In the event of my death, he had strict instructions to reveal Dukat’s plot in my stead and protect my remaining assets. In return, he was to receive some valuable coordinates, which by now he will have long accessed. I suppose he’s already booked passage off of the station, if he hasn’t already gone.”

“Quick to abandon you,” Julian says, completely off-script. Garak’s carefully measured breathing stutters.

“Surely Captain Sisko would like to have a word with him.”

“I’m sure.”

“Doctor…” Garak says, lost. “There isn’t time to was–”

Suddenly there are two hands slamming into his chest like they’re iron forks and he’s a slab of meat, rocketing him back into the nearest wall with a loud thud. Garak gasps at the strength of it, astounded, but all his attention is quickly monopolized by Julian’s snarling words.

“Stop trying to distract me, Garak! Stop racing away before I can even properly get into the room, stop begging off lunch, stop ignoring my comms, and stop acting like your bloody life is over just because it was found out that you have feelings for me!”

“I–I don’t–”

“Lke hell you don’t! Thirty-seven.”

Garak blinks several times. “What?”

“Thirty-seven. That’s how many direct references to our literary discussions are in your poems. All chronologically concordant with the dates of those discussions, and six of which from that classic Earth album I recommended to you a year ago that you swore up and down sounded like a pack of voles had been crammed into a bucket and shaken around. I knew you were having me on. You love Mitski, and you love me.”

Garak’s face shutters.

Finally, Julian takes a step back. His hands remain on his chest, pinning him in place, but he allows him some oxygen. Exactly twenty seconds pass like this, before the doctor becomes impatient and huffs, “You can’t possibly have nothing to say.”

“What would you have me say, Doctor?”

“I would like you to admit it.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve heard it from friends and coworkers and strangers and every tourist on this damn station, it feels like, but I haven’t heard it from you.”

Garak is silent for a long time. Finally, he quietly asks, “You would further humiliate me this way? Knowing what you do? My dear friend…” He, carefully, with only the gentlest of pressure, puts a hand over one of Julian’s. “Please. You’ve read everything I could possibly have to say. What more could there be?”

Julian’s hands are unforgiving, but his eyes soften at the simple lowering of the curtain. It’s not the direct confession he was looking for, the I love you completely, traitorously, ruinously that his poems professed and a deep, broken part of Julian desperately wants to hear, but it is, it is. For Garak, this is as explicit as it gets, and Julian can feel his heart trying to catch in his throat.

“Garak,” he starts to say.

Garak isn’t scowling anymore. His eyes are shining as he looks away and sucks in an aggrieved breath. “Oh, please, let us skip this excruciating precursor. I have no intention of remaining on this station.”

Julian goes unnervingly still. “Excuse me?”

“I will need time to pack up my shop and settle my lease, but then I promise, you will never suffer the consequences of my unfortunate… condition again.” When Julian only stares at him with mounting alarm in his lovely eyes, Garak grimaces. “You must know I had no intention of pursuing you.” At least, not after the implant had been shut off and he’d realized what horrors he’d stumbled into with the doctor while under its influence, and by then, it was already too late. He was too weak to stop speaking to him, but he was not a complete monster. “I wouldn’t have. My writing was never about nurturing the emotions, only managing them.” A bit of a lie, but only a bit. He does love to languish and he never could resist a good innuendo. Their friendship had been infinitely precious to him, though, and he couldn’t bear the slow death it would undergo now that everyone knew the truth.

The worsening rumors that would spread. The suffering of Julian’s reputation, career, and love life with the Cardassian spy’s drastic affections hanging over everyone’s heads. The danger it would place them both in, the damage it had already done. The way Julian would know every time Garak flirted now, it was never idle. It had never been and could never be.

It would be a torture hitherto unthinkable. Better to sever the limb before it could rot.

Still, Julian is silent. The pressure on his chest is more a suggestion than a command now.

“Doctor, I…” he swallows back anymore hideous truths. “I apologize. Your rage is understandable, but I swear to you, I have every intention of righting this wrong.”

“Oh,” Julian says then, softly, as if he isn’t speaking to Garak at all, “you don’t know.”

“Doctor?”

He makes a bizarre human gesture, skimming the heel of his hand off his forehead. “My God! Of course. I thought it was pride, or shame, or paranoia. Anything and everything but this, but of course you would be this ridiculous. Well. That’s an easy enough problem to solve.”

“Doctor–?!”

The hands on his chest are gone. Instead, they’re seizing him by the head and pulling him up to connect his mouth to Julian’s.

Oh.

If Julian’s touch was a brand before, this is lava running down his throat, into his stomach and down, down, down to eat through the twenty inch thick duranium floor. Slow, thorough, and final in its devastation. A transformation that cannot be persuaded. He grapples with it, hands scrambling stupidly over and across his doctor’s shoulders. Whether it’s to pull him closer or push him away, he doesn’t know. He’s too busy being brutally altered to give it much thought.

His hands settle for burying themselves in his hair at some point. When doesn’t matter. Time holds no power here. It happens, and then he knows how soft Julian Bashir’s hair feels, and there is no going back.

The loss of control becomes alarming enough that he finally manages to pry himself away, gulping in desperate, anxious breaths of frigid station air. It works. The fire and the madness that followed it calms down and he manages the strength to push Julian back, but the wet smack of their lips disconnecting will echo in his dreams for the foreseeable future, as will the dizzy grin on Julian’s face inches from his own. There’s a hand on his ass keeping him from tumbling through the hole in the floor and a couple unlucky passersby gawking at the gruesome scene and Garak is a different creature entirely, incandescent and strange, forged anew in the curious fires of mutual attachment.

He feels insane.

“Doctor, you cannot truly be this naive.”

Julian looks anything but naive right then. He can’t focus on that, though. He needs to focus on the fact he was nearly assassinated; the fact that the kindest man alive nearly died with him out of some misguided terran idea that all lives are of equal value and importance.

And yet, Julian is leaning in to kiss him again, so Garak puts a hand on his chest and says, “You know what I am.”

Julian’s expression turns complicated and it’s clear he understands. Garak’s roiling emotions can’t settle on being relieved or horrified. How to go on after this? After knowing intimately what he almost had, with the smoke of it still thick in his eyes and his throat and his heart?

A gentle hand on his jaw brings him back to the moment, where Julian’s eyes are serious. “I know,” he murmurs.

Garak sucks in a wet breath.

“The question is,” Julian continues, even quieter, “do you know what I am?”

His head is spinning. “Doctor?”

Julian just smiles sadly, and it's clear that there are some long conversations in their future. But for now… “About that dermal regenerator in your quarters,” Julian begins, and Garak is relieved to find out that whatever stupid, lovely thing he’s become can still appreciate an innuendo.

—

Not long after, in the middle of telling Sisko all about Mebol over Julian’s comm badge while its owner watches expectantly in a state of teasing half-dress, he’s horrified to find that whatever thing he’s become is also rather eager to please.

—

A couple days later, the two of them are picking from a generous cut of flaming taspar in the Replimat.

Or, Garak is picking, anyway. Julian is stuffing his face. Ordinarily, this would mildly scandalize him, but the fact it’s taspar, one of the most traditional delicacies of his homeworld, being shoveled enthusiastically into that pretty face makes it so he can feel only hope.

Rather than giving into that inadvisable feeling, he takes a dainty sip of his tea and tries to look nonsuspect. Cardassians from all sides and angles are staring.

“About Miss Leeta…” Garak begins.

Julian wipes his face with the side of his hand. Disgusting, but oddly compelling. “What about her?”

“When will you be breaking the news to her?”

“Oh.” Julian smiles, bemused. “She knows.”

A tightness in his chest dispels slightly. “Does she?” he says faintly.

“She’s the one who first brought it up. We performed the Rite of Separation days ago. She said it was great timing, what with the festival and all. We didn’t even have to leave the station.”

“So you were together then.”

“Well, in a sense. We weren’t in love, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Garak takes another sip, lowering his eyes. “I wasn’t worried. Only concerned for the young lady’s feelings.”

Julian’s face is incandescent. A Cardassian to his far left is openly gaping. “Of course, of course.” He leans suddenly over the table then, moving a hand forward to rest on his knee. “So, should I take this line of questioning as an indicator that you’re open to a relationship with me?”

Garak shifts a little in his seat, moving his knee further under the table and its shadows, but otherwise doesn’t pull away. “It would be unwise,” he says quietly, without actually saying no.

The hand squeezes. “It isn’t as if people won’t assume anyway.”

“Rumors can be dispelled. Redirected. Altered.” He reaches forward to take a small saucière and pours a bright red sauce over a couple groatcakes. “There would be no coming back from a confirmation.”

Julian’s hand falls away. “Would it be so bad?”

“I don’t know,” Garak says, splitting a cake up into three neat sections. “Would it, Doctor?”

A Bajoran couple walks past their table then, and while one purposely avoids eye contact and seems to be giving them a wide berth, the other throws a meaningful glare Julian’s way. This is the fourth judgemental or pitying look he’s received since they came in for brunch. Julian calmly returns the look, refusing to be the first to look away, until finally the man averts his eyes and Julian looks back to Garak with a stern smile. Garak inclines his head.

“Be careful, Doctor,” Garak goes on. “Rumors can ruin lives. End careers.” He scoops up a bite of his cake, dripping with red sauce, and lifts it to his mouth. “Kill,” he finishes, and eats.

At that, Julian leans back in his seat with his arms crossed tight. Garak gives him his time. It’s a relief to have finally made a dent in Julian’s lovesick, idealistic conviction–and Garak can admit, after the last few days, that it is lovesickness. Julian’s decided he loves him back and there will be no stopping him from pursuing this, but there may yet be some tempering. A small, equally stubborn, sentimental part of Garak despairs at the whole horrid affair, but the behemoth of his good sense squashes this part down with little difficulty.

It’s this moment that a smattering of young Cardassians, accompanied by one Jadzia Dax, arrive at their table. Immediately, Garak recognizes them as the ones that nearly intercepted his meeting with Lumok and his stomach drops. Julian, on the other hand, brightens back up.

“Well, hello there,” he says warmly.

Jadzia responds first, with each elbow leaned on a Cardassian’s shoulder and a knowing sparkle in her blue eyes, “Hello to you.” The Cardassians all echo with similar greetings, some shy, others giddy.

One young woman standing at the front, with her hair in three elaborately plaited braids and little makeup, is looking at Garak with particular interest. “You’re the one who wrote the poems about Julian.”

Garak looks at the girl coolly. “Do you mean Dr. Bashir?”

She goes blue. “Oh, um. Yes. I do.” She tucks an imaginary lock of hair into her perfectly coiffed hair and lowers her head respectfully. “My apologies, Doctor.”

“Hey now,” the doctor scolds with good humor, “none of that. We’re all friends here.”

The girl throws another searching glance Garak’s way. “Friends?”

That’s enough of that. “This is certainly quite the surprise,” Garak says genially, plastering on his most pleasant smile. “Is there something you needed? As Deep Space Nine’s resident Cardassian tailor and reputed troubadour, I’m always happy to be of service.” Julian sends him a sharp look, which he ignores.

Jadzia is looking as foxy as she ever does, with a grin nearly to her spotted ears. “Julian asked me to bring them here,” she says too happily, and Garak has to sit back in his seat to process that. Julian scratches his neck with a guilty smile, obliviously alluring. It cannot be overstated that there are, still, eyes on them from all directions and angles.

“Garak, sir,” the Cardassian woman-child begins again, earnest, “let me start over. My name is Inia Milam. I am the President of the Ivory State Liberation Library. We collect–”

“Madam,” Garak interrupts her quietly, stunned. “This is hardly the time and place.” He blinks, still shocked stupid by her brazenness, and leans towards her, peering into her distressingly young features with beseeching desperation. “And I am hardly the audience.”

Milam doesn’t appear to process his warning at all, though. She just continues to look inquisitive. She has that gleam in her eyes that is common in Cardassian women, calculating and intelligent, but there’s something else there. Something indefinable that he’s seen hundreds of times over an interrogation table, but without the fear to staunch it. Without the hopelessness. It makes his stomach flip. “On the contrary, you are exactly the sort of person we look for.” She bows her head. “Dr. Bashir promised that if we assisted him a few days prior, he would introduce us so that I could formally welcome your book of poems into our shelves. I apologize if this comes as a surprise. I wish only to thank you for your excellent contribution, E. G., and tell you that we hope to welcome many more pieces from you in the future. I’ll be in touch. Dr. Bashir.” She nods to him, returns his gentle smile, and walks confidently away. The rest of the group mirror her, voicing similar words of polite farewell and appreciation, and leave.

Garak forces himself not to track their departure and instead picks up his fork again, as if nothing world-shattering has occurred at all. The cake is tasteless in his mouth.

Julian is concealing nothing of his thoughts, however. He’s staring openly at Garak, as if he’s a bomb and he’s trying to figure out which color wire to cut.

Ultimately, it’s Jadzia that breaks the tension. “Well,” she says, “that is some harem you’ve got there, Julian.”

“Jadzia,” Julian barks. She laughs.

“I’m teasing, I’m teasing.” Uncharacteristically, her impish smile turns regretful. “Now that that’s out of the way, I do have to bring your friend in for questioning,” she says, and that explains that. “I’m sorry, boys. I stalled Ben as long as I could.”

Garak polishes off the last of his meal and takes one last gulp of his tea to wash it down. With that done, he stands with a placid, conciliatory smile.

Julian puts a hand on his shoulder before he can take a step. “I’ll come see you after my shift.” Those lovely, dark, deep eyes search his, pinning him like a moth above his fireplace. “Okay?”

Garak inhales. “Without end,” he murmurs, waits for Julian’s eyes to light in understanding, and then aloud says, “I am at your disposal, Doctor. Good day.” With that and a firm, friendly pat on Julian’s hand, he limps away.

Jadzia rather pointedly watches him limp to the exit for a few long seconds before throwing Julian a rakish grin. “Well, well,” she says largely. Julian pretends not to notice, and Jadzia pivots on her heel after Garak.

“Before we lock you up and throw away the key, could you sign my datarod,” Julian hears Jadzia asking, and he shakes his head, unsuccessfully trying to rub away his smile.

Without end Do I think of you and so Come to me at night. For on the path of dreams at least, There's no one to disapprove! Ono no Komachi

#my posts #garashir #I wanted to post this on April 1st but LONG SIGH it didn't work out #at least it's still april. pranking people on the 1st is so predictable anyway #fics I'll never write #credits to ono no komachi cynthia cruz and pablo neruda #really weird how tumblr just lets you publish blank posts like this one #this entirely blank post with nothing in it at all #very strange

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ooshu · 1 year

Text

bus stop

summary: haechan rides the bus. you hop on the same ride. minutes later, you two were a couple. he never questioned why.

genre: fluff ! | word count: 1.1k

- haechan loves old stories. hell, he’s the king of hearsay and gossip. but his favorite genre? love stories--nostalgic and the most unusual ones.

he loves how his grandmother met his grandfather at a local bakery shop almost every single day. the two would often bump with each other every seven in the morning, en route to their school in the late seventies, then the rest was history.

he loves how his mother missed the train and his dad suddenly gave him a handkerchief when she cried for missing a job interview. desperate times, they said. it was the nineties. things were escalating quickly, and they had to chase the developments, even if they had to sacrifice some bits of their dreams.

but out of all the stories he heard, his favorite story is when his friend mark recalls how the two of you met.

haechan was sitting on the bus, two more stations until his next stop. then you hopped on the ride, and swear to god, you were the most beautiful person his eyes ever laid onto. you sat near him, and if haechan could actually burn holes behind your head, he thinks it probably would have happened.

then you suddenly gasped.

haechan, all alarmed, was waiting for your next move. he saw a man walking forward, looking for an occupied seat. he can see you were slightly panicking. you looked at every possible vacant seats, most of them were occupied. until you saw haechan’s, the other one being available.

you got up from your sit, backward facing the man whom haechan is most curious about is still looking for a vacant. then haechan starts to realize that you are coming in his direction.

you hurriedly sat down next to him, and haechan swears his heartbeat doubled and his heartbeats were beating so loudly, a person could hear if the air conditioner was not turned on.

haechan saw you desperately keeping your head down. your eyes closed, almost so forcefully. you let your hair do all the hiding, too.

then all of the sudden, “are you okay?” he said.

you jolted at the sound of his voice. haechan starts to panic as well.

“sorry, sorry!” haechan shook both of his hands open. i didn’t mean to—”

“could you pretend we’re together for a bit?”

haechan, who was confused, asked. “like boyfriend?”

“yes!” you whispered loudly. haechan saw the man looking at where you are seated. he starts coming on both of your direction, your eyes were still closed and your head still facing down, haechan figured it was time to do it.

so haechan extended his arm and wrapped it around your shoulders. you leaned toward him. it felt warm, just right, haechan thought. but he could still feel you were tensed.

he asked, “is this… tell me if you’re uncomfortable, okay?”

“okay.” a faint voice he heard. haechan couldn’t help but to smile. on the other hand, the man is already set on his seat, a bit farther from where you are both.

haechan did not tell you that the man is not looking anymore, he does not know why, but he felt like you needed this the most right now. so he just let you be. hell, he did not even ask you why. he just straight-up trusted you. being such a simp gets him into deep shit sometimes, he realized.

haechan looked at the window and figured this was his stop. you, who is still bit shuddering, noticed he is reaching his bag while his arm is still wrapped around your frame. you looked at him and said, “can i… can i go with you?”

he no longer asked why. fuck it, haechan thought.

he removed his arm around you and he let you stand up while the bus is still moving, almost near the next station. haechan put his backpack on his shoulder and followed your gestures. and when the bus stopped, you slowly headed toward the exit while your head is still facing down. when haechan noticed you were near where the man was seated, he hurriedly followed you and walked clumsily. he did it to get the man’s attention to focus only on him, and not yours.

once you exited the bus, the wind slightly danced and grazed its touch on your face. the sun hit your pretty features, and haechan was again, starstrucked.

“thank you, oh gosh.” you said with a relief. “thank you, thank you!”

“it’s okay…” haechan chuckled. “can i ask why, if it’s… okay?”

“he’s my ex-boyfriend.”

“oh?”

“oh.” you copied him. he thought it was silly—a cute silly.

“yeah, he cheated on me and i kind of slapped him in the face, so…”

“oh.”

“yeah…”

you noticed his features. to you--this unnamed cute boy--had tanned skin. his body frame looks huggable, which was proven earlier, by the way. he is a bit taller than you but you would not mind looking up just to see him laughing while his head falls down because of embarrassment.

but shit. you have to go back to reality now.

“ah, shit!” you looked at your wristwatch. “i have to get to class. i’m sorry i—”

“it’s good! it’s fine.” haechan said. “happy to help.”

you moved a bit forward from the waiting bus shed and called for a cab. when the car stopped and your things were placed inside, you spared one last glance at haechan and said, “thanks, boyfriend. you look… good, by the way. hope you know that.”

haechan blushed. he reached for the cab’s door and closed it. and when the cab started hitting the road, haechan was left on the sidewalk, muttering shit!

he forgot to ask your name.

“and that’s why haechan’s the stupidest person to ever!” mark raised his voice, almost singing it in a happy tune. “exist!”

jaehyun and johnny laughed along. haechan looked defeated. even though he never got your name, it was still his favorite story in the world. it could have been his “and kids, that’s how i met your mother!” story, almost qualifying to how endearing his grandparents' and parents’ love stories were like, a one-of-a-kind—but the universe had other plans for the resident simp.

and so it did.

haechan, who came from the subway and headed toward the bus waiting shed, stood and listened to his morning playlist. he opened his can of orange juice to start his day. he did kind of struggle, though. the juice started flowing on the floor, making his black shirt a bit damp. he looked around to only see a garbage bin and an empty vending machine that could have had a pack of tissue.

then his eyes landed across the bus waiting shed.

there was you, eyebrows scrunched as if you were also trying to see who was on the other side.

and when you realized it was him, haechan started waving his free hand like a little kid. like, who the fuck cares if his clothes and other hand were now sticky, right?

you smiled, almost so beamingly, so lovingly.

and haechan never thought he would believe in fate until he finally and officially met you.

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erwinsvow · 2 months

Note

I think fratboy Rafe has so much potential!! What do you think? In my opinion he’d be the perfect combination of cocky and annoying but also secretly and hopelessly pinning

-bk anon🤨

(Apparently I’m signing off now?? Lmao)

omg bae tysm for the message! love hearing from u and love the new abbreviation <3

and yesss i mean i've seen this trope tossed around for rafe a lot and i do lovee it because he's definitely CHASINGG you. like i can imagine like a lot of ideas but primarily running into you at a frat party and he can definitely tell this is your first time at one. tries to get you a drink but you don't take it because you think ur gonna get roofied, he's offended but then he runs around for 15 minutes trying to find you a hard seltzer thats not open in a can or something. he's like "high standards for a girl at a frat on saturday night. here, princess, i'll get you a brand new one." eeeeeee<333 ur friends drag you away but you don't miss the way he smiles at you while watching you go.

can also imagine like he comes to the party next weekend trying to find you, but not seeing you anywhere. super dejected until he runs into you in the library and just sits down with you at the table (WITH your friends.... he loves to embarrass you) and just start talking like the two of you are already a couple. "so my roommate was being crazy this morning, you remember him, right princess? yeah him, so he-" and "got more of those seltzers you like. you'll come with me on friday, right? theme's seventies or something-"

you'd be so flustered and trying to privately tell him you don't even know him and he's like "got plenty of time for that, don't we?"

however since i see him chasing you, you'd for sure deflect and not accept his offer to go get dinner this weekend before the party. you'd say you're busy and that ur sure he has some sorority girl to attend to. then begins the hunt: bringing you coffee everyday while you study (how he knows your exact order is a mystery...), quieting the loud guys sitting behind you that are annoying you, bringing you real food when you have an exam the next day because he knows you hate the dining hall crap. you don't even realize you're being chased, think it's crazy that the rafe cameron is interested in you, but then you get an a on your exam and the first thing you do is run to tell rafe who is waiting in the library at ur usual table.

he's sitting there with your lil drinky and a muffin to celebrate and you just leap into his arms to hug him smiling so wide because ur so happy!! not even the exam, because he's so happy that you're happy. you kiss him in the library. people walking by stare bc it's cringe.

ofc i love scummy rafe (or... yknow... rafe) as much as the next girl but i think pining chasing rafe is so good... ur so big brained because you described the perfect emotions in your message.... i love you & hope ur doing well!!!!!! <33333333

#📮 asks #rafe cameron

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bleucaesura · 4 days

Text

STOLITZØ - SEVENTY

The following morning, Blitzø sat on the couch wrapped in a big fluffy blanket. He watched as Stolas shuffled over in his robe and bunny slippers, with two mugs of coffee.

Blitzø unwrapped half the blanket and pat the cushion beside him. Stolas smiled warmly, handed Blitzø his mug and cozied up next to him. Blitzø draped the blanket around Stolas’s shoulders once he had settled.

Stolas grabbed the tv remote and started flipping through channels. Blitzø looked over at him lovingly. When Blitzø went to have a sip of coffee, he realized it was iced. He looked down at the cold drink in his mug, tears welling up unbidden.

F*cking birdbrain…

“Darling?” Stolas looked over at Blitzø. “Goodness! What’s the matter?!” Stolas clambered to get out of the blanket so he could turn to face Blitzø.

Blitzø calmly put his mug on the coffee table. He climbed on the couch and knelt in front of Stolas, putting the owl’s face between his palms and smooshing his cheeks until they fluffed in that adorable way Blitzø loved.

Blitzø smiled happily and gave Stolas a quick light kiss.

“Darling?” Stolas blushed.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Blitzø grinned happily through tears.

Stolas sniffled, tears springing up; he threw his arms around Blitzø and they fell back on the couch laughing, tangled in each other’s limbs, tails and the blanket.

The TV buzzed in the background.

“666 NEWS”

“I’m Katie Killjoy”

“And I’m Tom Trench”

“Ha. Ha. No one f*cking cares who you are, Tom!”

“On our show today we have a very special guest! That’s right! The big guy who put the big ‘O’ in Ozzie’s. The sexiest sin himself. The lustful leader, Asmodeus is in the studio with some scintillating updates on a new product to hit shelves later this month!”

The audience erupted in applause.

Blitzø and Stolas looked over at the TV.

“Welcome your majesty!” Katie clapped enthusiastically as she slid down the news desk to make room for Asmodeus, hip-checking Tom off his chair on her way over.

“Thank you, Katie.” Asmodeus leaned in front of and across Katie and extended a hand to Tom as he was pulling himself back up into his chair. “And great to see you, Tom! We still on for Friday?”

Katie was NOT impressed.

Blitzø had started drinking his coffee and almost shot it out his nose onto Stolas. He started to choke. Stolas thumped his back trying to help him breathe through his choking laughter.

They missed Katie’s next comment through Blitzø’s coughing and laughter.

“Thanks for having me this morning.” Asmodeus smiled his celebrity smile. “If I could be indulged a moment?”

The audience clapped.

“Before I get down to the… Nitty gritty,” Asmodeus winked at the camera and purred in a deep gravely voice. “There’s something more personal I’d like to touch on first.”

The camera focused on him completely.

“As many, if not all, of you know, Fizzarolli and I have gone public with our long term romantic relationship.”

The audience erupted with cheers and applause. Asmodeus smiled unabashedly and waited for the applause to die down.

“And while I embody the sin of Lust… I DO love Fizzarolli. Yes he and I are in a loving and monogamous relationship... Being in love doesn’t mean the lust disappears. I say it makes it deeper, and even more… Pleasurable.”

The sex absolutely oooooozed off of his words. The audience was rapt. Blitzø and Stolas looked at each other, blushing.

“But I digress.” Asmodeus chuckled, breaking the spell. “I’m here to say: I AM a hypocrite.”

The studio filled with gasps, whispers and confused chatter.

Katie, desperate to get back in frame, slid her face along the news desk until she was at Asmodeus’s elbow. “And why do you say THAT, your Highness?”

Asmodeus casually pushed Katie’s face out of frame and continued, unfazed.

“I embarrassed a fellow Royal, and friend, at my club when I called out his relationship with an imp. I was wrong to do so. Not JUST because I hurt a friend.” Asmodeus’s demon flames grew. “But because I don’t AT ALL believe in this elitist BULLSH*T division of classes.” The lights all but went out in the studio as Asmodeus’s flames erupted.

A second later, it was as if a switch had been flipped and Asmodeus was back to his charismatic, charming self.

“So! Prince Stolas? Blitzø?… Owner of ‘I.M.P.’” Asmodeus winked and said conspiratorially behind a hand to the camera.

“I’m truly sorry. And my blessings to you both!”

The studio was silent for mere seconds before the audience erupted in applause and chaotic conversations.

“What…”

“The…”

“Actual…”

“F*CK!”

Blitzø and Stolas traded expletives while starring unblinking and agape at the tv.

“Now!” Asmodeus rubbed his hands together, excitedly. “Who wants to hear about my revolutionary new vibrator coming out next month?!”

Tom raised his hand and nodded enthusiastically.

Katie stomped off set screaming into a phone.

Blitzø turned off the tv.

“Did that just f*cking happen? Or was I f*cking hallucinating again?” Blitzø stared wide-eyed at the screen.

“It happened,” Stolas said just above a whisper.

They looked at each other.

Blitzø threw himself at Stolas, burying his face in his chest feathers.

Stolas fell back, surprised. He hugged Blitzø to him.

Blitzø nuzzled Stolas and hugged him back.

“Is… Is this ok?” Stolas stammered.

“Eez comfy” Blitzø mumbled from his snuggle spot.

Stolas chuckled. He stroked Blitzø’s horns affectionately, feeling somber.

“No… I meant…” Stolas paused, unsure what to say.

“Is WHAT ok?” Blitzø looked up at him.

“That,” Stolas looked toward the tv. “All of Hell knowing…”

“F*ck yeah!”

Stolas was startled. Blitzø grinned at him. His eyes shone.

“Free f*cking I.M.P advertising from Asmodeus on the 666 News?! F*ck YES!” Blitzø pumped his fist and laughed maniacally.

Stolas stared flatly back at him. He hoped he had his best ‘What-The-Actual-F*CK’ face on.

Blitzø grinned at him and burst out laughing. He grabbed Stolas in a tight hug and nuzzled his neck.

“Stolas, you birdbrain…” Blitzø whispered. “I want the whole f*cking universe to know you’re mine.”

*****

#helluva boss #blitzø #stolas #stolitz #fanfic #blitz x stolas #helluva boss fanfiction #666 news #blitzø x stolas #stolitz fanfic #helluva boss stolitz #katie killjoy #helluva boss asmodeus #tom trench #vivzieverse #vivziepop #vivienne medrano #brandon rogers

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thefallennightmare · 1 year

Text

Soldiers-one

credit to whoever made the gif, found on google/pinterest.

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x Reader.

Warnings: angst, language, fluff, violence, smut.

Summary: Reader has spent the last seventy years in hell as a prisoner soldier; Hydra's greatest weapon. Well, second greatest weapon after The Winter Soldier. The only thing that got her through that hell was him, even if she was the one behind his biggest pain.

Authors Note: here we go! As usual, I'm unsure how long this story will be. I always go with the flow with my stories.

Tags(open): @elizacusi-blog @pattiemac1 @yvessaintmuerte @mdpplgtz03 @mayjaysthots @broadwaybabe18 @sebsgirl71479 @yourfavunsub @themorningsunshine

The clock ticked loudly and slowly, another day wasted by me sitting here in this room, more so prison. They hadn’t needed me the last few days for any missions or another round of serum injections. Thankfully the last one hadn’t happened in over a week because there was no way I could handle the pain. Every time the serum was a bit stronger than the last which destroyed my body, me being holed up in my bed, cries echoing down the halls.

It had been like this for the last five years, since I was sixteen years old. I used to be a runway, seeking solace with whoever would grant me it and I found it in Johann Schmitt. He was my savior, granting me access to his mansion along with other kids that wanted a safe place from their troubled homes.

Or so we all thought.

What we thought was a safe place turned out to be a prison where Schmitt experimented on us. The ones that survived were able to stay while the others, the failures, left in a body bag.

What started as a group of ten of us slowly dwindled down to three over the last five years but for the past six months, I was the lone survivor. Whatever Schmitt injected all of us with, my body didn’t reject it like the others did. It took me so long to get used to the feeling that filled me. Super strength, super hearing, and immortality.

I realized after the third year of being their weapon that I hadn’t changed in my looks, almost looking younger. That was when Zola informed me that the serum is what made me immortal; I could never die.

But yet the biggest change of all still scared me to this day.

With a snap of a finger, electricity sparked at the tips, and I watched with the same awe I did the first time it happened. It was as if I held the power of lighting in the palm of my hand.

Which is why Schmitt and his scientist, Arnim Zola, used me as their weapon, Hydra’s weapon. Whenever they needed an enemy taken out, they sent me to take care of it. I obliged every time, not wanting to risk being kicked out of the only home I had known for the last handful of years.

Or worse.

“Voin.”

I looked away from my hands over to the guard who appeared in my room, the name they had given me echoing loudly in my ears. It meant warrior in the Russian tongue.

A smaller figure entered behind the guard while adjusting the glasses on his nose.

“How are we doing this morning, Y/N?”

My gaze fell away from him. “I’d be better if you didn’t inject me with more serum, Zola.”

Arnim clicked his tongue and sat on the edge of my bed which made me pull my legs closer to my chest.

“Luckily for you, I need you for something else today.”

“Another mission?” I asked with a raised brow.

“No,” he shook his head. “Come.”

He motioned for me to follow him and not wanting to disobey his orders, I followed a few steps behind as Arnim led me down the long, dark hallways of the compound that we had recently moved too. With the current war, Schmitt never risked staying in the same place for long.

My ears perked up when I heard some kind of commotion coming from the room down the hall. It was different than the usual sounds of war that I heard on the other end of the battlefield. There was a deep voice muttering something over and over again. It was a name followed by a bunch of numbers, the voice sounded so quiet and broken. The only way I was able to hear it was because of my super hearing.

I froze when the familiar room appeared in front of me, Zola’s laboratory. He experimented on me countless times here and the table that I would lay on had a different body on it. The dog tags on his neck indicated that he was in the army, on the opposing side.

“What is this?” I asked Zola.

“Nothing you need to worry about. I only need you for one thing.”

I finally looked into the man’s eyes, the broken gaze staring up at me. When ours locked, my breath caught in my throat while my heart jumped on my throat. Whoever this man was looked absolutely breathtaking, his soft features hidden underneath the stubble on his face. I traced a thumb over the small wound on his cheek but it was then that I realized exactly what he was hooked up to.

The tubes and i.v.’s were sticking out both of his arms, the dark blue liquid filling him.

Fire eyes stared at Zola. “What did you do to him?”

“James Buchanan Barnes. 32557038 T41 42 O.”

The man, James, kept repeating the same thing over and over while I glared at Zola.

“I need you to use your powers to erase his mind.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. I programmed your powers to do so,” Zola informed. “All you need to do is think about erasing his memories. I need you to make him forget the last twenty-four hours.”

I looked back to James and my heart shattered, knowing that whatever he went through in this room would change his life in the most drastic way. His eyes reached mine again and when the small smile pulled at his lips, I let out a low sob.

Even with his smile, James looked out of it from Zola’s experimenting.

“I won’t do it,” I shook my head.

Zola looked to his left at the guard who stood next to him and nodded towards me. Within seconds, there was a gun pressed into the side of my skull, tears now falling from my eyes.

“Do it,” Zola ordered. “Now, Voin!”

His sudden loud voice made me jump so with shaking hands; I ghosted them over both sides of James’ head. I couldn’t touch him, not yet.

The gun pressed harder into the side of my head and I cried out, the electric sparks appearing at my fingertips.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered to James.

He watched with fear in his eyes as I grabbed his head, his body stiffening with my touch. His own screams echoed throughout the room, piercing my soul, while the electricity zapped into his brain.

My apologies to him were drowned as our eyes locked again, him staring at me with confusion as to why I was doing this to him. The lone tear that fell from his eyes was the final straw and I pulled my hands away into my chest, stumbling away from him.

I did not like this feeling, so I silently prayed that this was the one and final time that Zola needed me to do this.

#the winter soldier #the winter soldier x reader #the winter soldier x you #the winters soldier and you #the winter soldier and yn #the winter soldier and reader #james buchanan barnes x you #bucky barnes and you #bucky barnes and reader #bucky barnes x reader

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bellaxgiornata · 11 months

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Falling For the Devil [Part seventy-five: "The Hangover"]

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader

Summary: Matt wakes up feeling miserable after his night out with Foggy and you take care of him.

Or Matt clings to you for comfort. And somehow still is a huge flirt.

[Series of one-shots about Reader meeting, falling for, and dating Matt Murdock.]

Warnings: 18+ for this series; contains humor, fluff, romance, angst, smut (like...a lot of it later in the series), language, some violence

Word Count: 2.8k

a/n: Matt is feeling terrible after his night out drinking with Foggy, so Reader gets a clingy, half-naked Matt. Because who doesn't want that? You can find the entire list of installments for this series on tumblr here.

Something pressing firmly into the back of your left shoulder woke you, your eyelids gradually fluttering open. There was a faint bit of sunlight filtering in across the room, your brain taking a moment to realize it was morning. Further movement behind you caught your attention and you realized it was Matt at your back, his arm tightening around your waist as he tried to bury his face into your shirt-covered shoulder. He released a groan that quickly broke into a faint whine.

You shifted, trying to see him behind you. "Matt?" you groggily called out.

He hissed out a breath behind you, shoving his face further into your shoulder and preventing you from moving. Frowning, you tried to turn towards him again, but his firm grip around your waist held you in place on your side facing away from him.

"Loud," he croaked softly against the back of you. "Hurts."

Brows drawing together, your sleep addled mind tried to make sense of his behavior. Why was he clinging to you so desperately and complaining about noise? You'd spoken at a normal volume, why would that have bothered him?

And then the memory of Matt coming home drunk last night hit you. He had drank a lot at Josie’s with Foggy before he had returned and you had managed to get him to bed. Now he was probably hungover after all of that alcohol. Were his senses making everything worse? It would make sense, you supposed. Everything was louder to him to begin with, it probably would be absolutely terrible to experience that with a hangover headache.

"Sorry," you whispered as softly as you could. "Headache?"

He nodded against you, a soft whimper escaping him in response. You frowned; he absolutely appeared to be struggling.

Trying to break out of his death grip, you pushed lightly against his forearm wrapped around you. He only somehow further held you to the front of him, his head shaking back and forth along the back of you.

"Need you," he whispered so softly you almost didn't hear him. "Grounding."

"I can get you water," you whispered back to him. "Ibuprofen." Pausing a moment, you remembered those ear plugs. "Noise canceling ear plugs–where?" you asked him, trying to use as few words as possible.

"Front door," he muttered back.

You tried to pull away from him again but he only clung tighter to the back of you, the faintest noise of discontent leaving him.

"Don't go," he whimpered.

He pressed his solid body flush to your back, his strong arm gripping you impossibly tight around your waist. If Matt wasn’t in pain and having a hard time right now, the extreme closeness of him molded to the back of you would have been drawing forth a different reaction than concern right now.

"I can't help if I can't get up," you explained gently. Your hand came down, fingers lightly running back and forth over the soft, dark hair along his forearm. "Let me help," you begged.

It was a long moment before Matt reluctantly loosened his hold on you, his large palm slowly retreating back across your stomach and over your hips. Gradually he pulled his face away from your back and you quickly slid off the bed before he could latch onto you again. Rising to your feet, you turned around and saw him grabbing your pillow, pulling it against his body just as tightly as he’d been holding you in his bare arms. He buried his face into the silk as he curled into a ball around it. Your heart ached at the sight; you couldn’t imagine how awful he must feel with everything blaring at him.

With a soft sigh you headed to the bedroom door, trying to slide it back as quietly as you could. Matt made a faint noise behind you and you flinched, but there wasn’t anything else you could do. You needed to open the door to leave the bedroom.

You first headed towards the kitchen, padding as softly as you could along the floor. You grabbed a clean glass and filled it with water. Afterwards, you made your way over to the ibuprofen that was out on the counter where he often kept it lately. Opening the bottle, you very softly shook a couple of pills into your hand before screwing the cap back on.

Glass in hand and pills in the other, your bare feet padded along as you made your way to the front door in search of the ear plugs. Thankfully you spotted them in the bowl he kept his keys in on his console table. Reaching out, you plucked them in the same hand the ibuprofen were in and then shuffled your way carefully back to Matt in the bedroom.

You found him buried under your pillow when you returned, his large hands splayed wide as he held it over his head–though thankfully not entirely over his nose. Making your way over to his side of the bed, you sat down on the edge and set down the glass of water and the pills on his nightstand. Turning around towards him, you reached a hand out to Matt and lightly ran it along his bare stomach, the sheets having fallen down towards his thighs now. He slowly drew the pillow up off of his face, his sightless eyes landing along your chest. His dark hair was an absolute adorable ruffled mess along the mattress as he eyed you questioningly.

“Ear plugs,” you told him.

Your other hand stretched towards him, gently bumping into his own hand. Matt’s palm opened and you dropped the little ear plugs into his hand. He wasted no time slipping them into his ears afterwards. You watched as the creases of pain on his face visibly lessened.

“Better?” you asked him.

He nodded, a faint smile on his mouth as he slowly sat up. You grinned, turning to the nightstand and grabbing the glass of water and two little pills. Handing them both to Matt, you quietly told him what they were. He accepted the pills, dropping them into his mouth before drawing the cup of water to his lips and guzzling the liquid down.

“You want more water?” you asked, taking the empty glass from him.

“No,” he answered.

“Want me to make you some food?” you tried next.

He shook his head, an almost sheepish look crossing his face. You eyed him curiously, wondering what was going on in his head.

“What do you need, Matt?” you questioned.

He pouted at you, actually pouted. His bottom lip pushed further forward, his mouth turning downward at the corners as a soft look overtook his eyes. You already felt yourself giving in to whatever he was about to ask for.

“You?” he whispered. “Just hold me?”

Nodding, you climbed along the bed and slipped under the sheets next to him, your back resting against the wall. You had barely situated yourself on the mattress before Matt was turning over and curling up around you. He had slid one of his bare thighs between your legs, his left hand snaking its way around to your back and pulling you up against his mostly naked body. His face burrowed along your chest, his chin resting just above your breast.

You heard him sigh happily as he nestled comfortably up against you, apparently grounding himself with your body. Left hand rising up, you gently carded your fingers back and forth through his hair. Your right hand was affectionately stroking along the plane of Matt’s bare and scarred back as he lay halfway on top of you. You could feel the goosebumps rising along his skin and the way his body further relaxed into you under your touch.

Eyelids slowly lowering, you felt yourself relaxing beside Matt. Shifting just a little under him, you managed to rest your cheek against the top of his head, your left hand moving to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. He nestled his face more comfortably along your chest in return, his other arm encircling around you. You felt his fingers gently tracing soothing patterns over your shirt.

You loved quiet moments like this with Matt. Not that you liked how much pain he was in currently, and you were certainly hoping the ibuprofen kicked in for him soon, but you truly enjoyed the times you and Matt would cuddle up together. Whether it was the couch or in bed, time always felt like it slowed down whenever you both were like this. And you loved every second of it. Just the feel of him wrapped around you, his body heat warming you, the gentle, affectionate touches you both would give each other. You often felt loved being with Matt, but it was in these moments you couldn’t deny his feelings for you.

It was a long while before Matt finally began to move and you lifted your head from where it had been laying atop his. His head rose from your chest, his face turning so he could glance up at you. He was wearing a sleepy smile, his eyes half-lidded as he gazed up at you. You smiled back down at the sight, your left hand sliding around to lightly stroke his cheek, fingertips rasping along the stubble there. Your heart fluttered happily in your chest when he leaned into your hand–you would never tire of that.

"Thank you," he murmured.

"Of course, Matty," you answered. "You feeling better?"

"Little bit," he answered.

He leaned forward, pressing his lips to your chest, just beside your collarbone. They lingered there for a moment and you felt your pulse quicken in response, a faint shiver running down your spine. A moment later his lips were drawing into a smile against your skin before he pulled back, looking back up towards you.

"I love you," he whispered.

You laughed lightly, your hand still stroking his cheek. "You told me that quite a bit last night," you teased him. "And I love you, too."

"Was I a pain last night?" he asked with a wince. "I remember stealing Fog's phone in the taxi but…not everything after that."

"You grabbed my ass," you told him. "A lot, actually. You honestly wouldn’t leave it alone."

He sent you an apologetic smile, his cheeks turning pink. "I'm sorry, sweetie," he mumbled.

“Quite determined to ‘take care of me’ as you continually put it,” you said, shooting him a grin. “I have to admit, I’m surprised I held back. Apparently even being really drunk you’re still suave as hell.”

“Suave as hell?” he questioned, his dark brows rising onto his forehead. “Good to know. But for the record,” he continued, shooting you a cheeky grin, “you are always welcome to have sex with me when I’m drunk, sweetheart. Or to…let me take care of you.”

He sent you a wink that had your cheeks heating. You rolled your eyes at him playfully in return. He was somehow suave as hell all of the time and really it was unfair.

“Okay, yeah, you’re clearly feeling a lot better if you’re saying things like that right now,” you pointed out. “So on that note,” you said, smiling wider at the sound of his chuckle, “why don’t I make us some breakfast? I’m assuming you have eggs?”

He grinned back at you, the warmth of it reaching his eyes. “That’s about the only thing I have in my fridge, sweetheart,” he answered.

“Alright, well I’m getting you some damn groceries today,” you said. You nudged Matt’s thigh that was still wedged between your legs with your right knee. “Let me up, Matty. I’ll go make us some eggs.”

He released the absolute most dramatic sigh you’d ever heard as he reluctantly pulled himself off of you. You bit your lip, fighting down the urge to laugh at him as he gradually made his way to the edge of the bed before rising to his feet. Following after him, you scooted your way to the edge of the bed yourself, but you paused for a moment as he was rubbing a hand over his face. Your eyes dropped down to his ass in his tight, black boxers. You internally fought with yourself for a very long moment until inevitably you reached your left hand out and gave his ass a gentle squeeze. Matt’s hand quickly fell from his face as he glanced over his shoulder at you, both of his brows high on his forehead.

“Just trying to even the count here,” you muttered, retrieving your hand and rising from the mattress. “You grabbed mine a lot last night.”

A smile tugged at his lips at you in response before you quickly turned and headed towards the kitchen. You had barely made it to the bedroom door before Matt was on you. A startled noise fell out of you as he wrapped his arms around your middle and pressed himself to your back. His face soon buried itself along the back of your neck, his warm breath raising goosebumps along your forearms. Your eyes closed for a moment, your hands coming up to rest over the top of his.

“What’re you doing?” you asked softly.

“Can I still use the excuse that I feel bad just to keep holding onto you?” he asked back just as quietly.

“You’re…going to stay attached to me like this while I make eggs?” you questioned him curiously.

“Are we only speaking in questions now?” he replied, the smile apparent in his tone.

You laughed lightly, turning your head a bit over your shoulder towards him. “I don’t know, baby,” you whispered, loving the way his arms tightened around you at the term of endearment, “why don’t you tell me?”

“Mmm, do you think you can cook like this?” he mused.

You snorted as he clearly accepted the unspoken challenge before making your way out of his bedroom and towards the kitchen. Matt stayed wrapped around you, matching your pace as you walked to the fridge.

“Aren’t you afraid you might get burnt by the stove holding onto me like this?” you asked him in return.

You awkwardly pulled the carton of eggs out of the fridge as Matt continued to cling to the back of you with absolutely no interest in letting you go. If it would have been anyone else so desperate for contact, you’d probably have gotten annoyed by this point. But it was Matt. And you were glad he was feeling better than he had been when he’d first woken up. And, admittedly, you really weren’t going to complain that his half-naked Greek godlike body was holding onto you so tight.

“Aren’t you afraid that taking care of me,” Matt began as you set the eggs on the counter before turning to grab a pan, “might lead to me taking care of you?”

Unable to help yourself, you giggled as you brought the pan to the stove before maneuvering around his kitchen to find a bowl. All the while Matt still kept his hold on you, his chin resting along your shoulder as you turned on the burner.

“And why would I be afraid of a good time?” you questioned innocently.

A pleased purr vibrated in Matt’s throat, the sound loud with him so close to your left ear. The effect of that sound was immediate on your body, and judging by the way Matt’s fingers dug into you over your shirt, you knew he’d picked up on it. He turned his face just a bit more towards you, his mouth beside your ear when he spoke again.

“Would you like to have a good time after breakfast then, sweet girl ?” he murmured, emphasizing the endearment he knew got your pulse racing.

It took everything in your power to focus on carefully cracking the first egg into the bowl with how your body trembled. Your hips shifted against Matt behind you, your body apparently still worked up from last night when Matt had come home and been very flirtatious.

Dropping the egg into the bowl, you slowly replied, “And what if I said yes?”

Matt huffed out a laugh beside your ear, responding with a gentle kiss just beneath it. You froze when he spoke next, his next question instantly sending your blood rushing southward.

"How many orgasms do you want for taking such good care of me?" he whispered.

Swallowing hard, you tried to focus on cracking another egg into the bowl with your shaking hand. "How–how many do you think?" you stammered out, voice quivering as you tried to remain focused on making breakfast.

Your only answer was Matt's deep rumbling chuckle filling the kitchen as his hands tightened around you.

You were certainly in trouble this morning.

#matt murdock x reader #matt murdock x you #matt murdock fluff #matt murdock x f!reader #matt murdock x fem reader #matt murdock series #matt murdock fic #matt murdock fanfic #daredevil x female reader #daredevil x reader #matt murdock #fftd

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fourraccoonsinacoat · 2 months

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Head Full of Ghosts: Chapter 3

Pairing: Astarion x Dark Urge

Summary: Takes place during the events of Baldur's Gate 3 and explores the romance between Astarion and the Dark Urge, as well as the friendships and relationships she has with her companions. Plus, everyone gives shit to Gale about his cooking. Tags: Slow Burn, Angst, Pining, Humor, Violence, Friends to Lovers, Developing Friendships, Developing Romance, Spoilers for the Dark Urge and BG3 in general, Dark Urge as Original Female Character Rating: Mature (Will eventually be Explicit, just not there yet.) Current Chapter Count: 3/? Read on AO3 Current Word Count: 13,050

Author Notes: I'm finishing up the fourth chapter and realized I never uploaded this chapter to Tumblr. So here we are! Getting this fic back on track and should have the next chapter up soon.

Chapter 3: Monsters

“You know she is a hag, yes?” Lae’zel’s severe and even voice cut through the sticky swamp air like a hot knife through a wedge of Durinbold cheese.

The bog was a foul place, both in atmosphere and in smell. The air was thick with humidity and an ever-present smell of wet rot. Trees sagged and bent at jagged angles, their tired limbs wilting in the gloom, and a thin fog seemed to permeate every corner of the swamp. A hazy light filtered through the tree canopy, casting blotchy shadows upon the muddy ground.

The path the four companions were following sank into marsh every several yards, forcing the group to pick their way through mire and muck. The slog was slow, and there was much complaining. Especially from one particular high elf who no one had told not to wear freshly polished leather boots.

“I am like…seventy percent sure she is a hag, yeah,” Eli answered as she carefully stepped over a rotted tree limb, half submerged in murky filth. “I mean, she’s entirely too eccentric to just be a normal human, right?”

She looked over to Astarion for support, who was currently trying to rub some manner of sludge off his doublet.

“She certainly isn’t playing Three-Dragon Ante with a full deck, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Astarion replied coolly before throwing up his hands and huffing in irritation, the stain unyielding.

Lae’zel hummed for a moment, considering. “Gale is eccentric and a normal human, is he not?” she questioned, amber eyes fixing on their resident wizard who, at the moment, was trying to free the hem of his robe from the clawing grasp of a gnarled tree root.

Eli sighed. “Gale has a magic bomb capable of leveling entire cities in his chest. I would not call that normal.”

“You wound me, Eli.” Gale responded in a good-natured tone as he tugged his robe free and the group began moving once more.

“You consumed an enchanted bracer yesterday at breakfast,” Eli quipped, recalling the morning fondly. Karlach had been fascinated, quickly trying to get Gale to absorb several other items from their camp hoard and asking him if he “took on their powers,” as she put it.

Eli chuckled at the memory before concluding, “You’re as deranged as the rest of us and it’s not up for debate.”

Their little group really had become a hodgepodge of oddities over the past few days. Karlach was settling in well, because where else would she fit other than with their traveling sideshow which included a vampire who could walk in the sun, a warlock who was recently transformed into a part-devil by his patron, an amnesiac with the compulsion to murder anything that looked at her crossly, and all the rest of them.

Eli was starting to wonder if she had a penchant for picking up emotionally constipated strays. They were all kind of outcasts in some way or another. People just trying to get along in a world that had kicked them in the teeth and tossed them out with the garbage. She still had no idea why they’d all just sort of accepted her as their group’s figurehead, but she was beginning to feel a certain affinity for their gang of misfits. They were all fighting battles both within and without, and Eli couldn’t help but feel a certain kinship with people who were struggling with their own personal demons, just as she was.

At least as the day wore on her constant headache had faded to a dull throb, rather than the brain splitting white-hot pain she’d been experiencing. Her memories were still lost, and whenever she tried to call upon them she was only met with flashes of red violence. Images of mangled bodies, ruptured limbs, stringy viscera…it all melted and jumbled together in a confusing blur of chaos. Her dreams were no better, and her nighttime raids on the camp’s supply of books and wine were no secret among the party. Both Shadowheart and Karlach had even joined her on separate occasions. Hells, she’d have a proper book club up and running soon.

“So,” Lae’zel’s stern voice brought Eli out of her musings. “You trust this hag?”

“No,” Eli nearly spat the word out in a laugh. Auntie Ethel, as she called herself, was a lot of things, and trustworthy was not one of them. Astarion’s assessment of Ethel as ‘positively demented’ was accurate, and hags were not known as an honest sort.

“Good,” said Lae’zel, slightly drawing out the word in approval. “Lest I remind you that the only way to remove a ghaik tadpole is a Zaith'isk.”

Eli could feel the gith’s eyes on her and she did her best not to bristle under what she was sure was a judgmental stare. “I am aware,” Eli said, trying to sound unfazed and relatively certain she was failing miserably.

Lae’zel continued to press. “And a Zaith'isk can only be found at a gith creche.” She laid emphasis on the last two words, as if she were pointing something obvious out to a very dimwitted child.

Eli felt the back of her neck and ears start to go warm as irritation stirred in her chest and tightened her shoulders. The throbbing headache at the back of her skull began to growl.

“You don’t say…” Eli replied, quietly pleading to whatever deity she couldn’t remember worshipping to please just let her have the rest of the day without feeling like her brain was on fire.

“I just did say.” Lae’zel shot back, drawing a sidelong glare from Eli.

Eli liked Lae’zel. For the most part. When she wasn’t threatening tiefling refugees or complaining about the lack of spice in Gale’s cooking. Though, to her credit, Gale’s food was kind of bland.

The gith fighter was blunt, stubborn, opinionated, fierce and one hell of a talent when it came to steel and blade. Eli appreciated Lae’zel’s steadfast loyalty and belief in her people’s culture, and even felt a slight pang of jealousy for it. It grounded the warrior and gave her a perspective from which to view the world, something Eli did not have. Culture, family, heritage…they were the building blocks of a person. Even if a person rejected or outgrew those foundational aspects of themselves, they still provided guiderails – or at the very least an anchor for one’s identity.

Without those things, Eli felt adrift and directionless in a vast and swirling ocean, constantly beaten upon the rocks before being dragged back down to drown.

“Explain to me why we are seeking this hag who you do not trust and who cannot remove the tadpole,” Lae’zel said, driving at a point Eli knew was coming and one she wasn’t sure she had a decent argument against. “Instead, should we not be pursuing a more productive course of action?”

Eli sighed, rubbing at her temples as her headache began to mount. “I’m curious,” she responded rather lamely.

“I see,” Lae’zel said with a tone that indicated the gith was wholly unimpressed by Eli’s reasoning. “So, the situation at Emerald Grove continues to escalate, goblins continue to terrorize the Sword Coast, the druid healer remains missing, and the tadpoles in our brains remain unremoved.” Eli internally cringed at the chiding way in which Lae’zel spoke. “But, let us humor your curiosity. What is the worst that could happen?”

The question hung in the air uneasily. The worst that could happen was…really fucking bad. Everyone could die. Eli and her merry band of misfits could all turn into mind flayers. The Grove could fall under the absolute rule of a tyrant and racist. And the Sword Coast could get fully and aggressively fucked. Why was this all her problem, again?

“Lae’zel, was that sarcasm I just heard?” Astarion chimed in, and Eli felt a pull of appreciation towards him. He probably hadn’t meant to run interference between Eli and her interrogator, but she was thankful for it all the same.

Truth be told, there was a small part of her that hoped Auntie Ethel did have a solution for their tadpole troubles. While they weren’t the most honorable of sorts, hags were rather enterprising and shrewd. And given the nature of their unconventional problem, an unconventional solution would more than likely be required. Besides, if things went south, they could just kill her. That seemed to be a particular specialty of their group.

“Sarcasm often accompanies truth,” Lae’zel said with a pointed tone.

Astarion chuckled lightly and Eli felt something not unlike faint affection flutter in her chest. She very quickly shoved it down into the black hole within herself where all the things she didn’t want to deal with went. Nope. That wasn’t good. That was the very last thing she needed right now.

It had been happening more and more since the night she’d made a complete fool of herself, drunkenly asking him if they were still friends. Still friends. Gods, she was such a loser, and Astarion surely thought she was a total basket case after that encounter. But, every now and then, he’d give her a smirk or say something that caused a laugh to bubble up, and then that weird and endearing feeling would creep up and holy shit was this not the time or the place! Besides, that man had more red flags than a circus, and it wasn’t like Eli was a bastion of sanity, so together they’d be about as functional as wet hot garbage.

“How profound,” Astarion continued, oblivious to Eli’s distressing mental spiral. “This little jaunt in the swamp does seem to be a rather unhygienic deviation from more pressing concerns.”

The appreciation she’d felt for him earlier poofed away, and Eli glared. “I will turn this whole party around if you all don’t stop your complaining!”

Astarion’s eyes lit up with delight. “Oh, please do! I worry the putrid scent of squalor and anguish is never coming out of my clothes.” He ran his hands down his doublet, trying to smooth out some wrinkles, and sighed in an overdramatic fashion.

“I, for one, am looking forward to seeing Ethel again,” Gale chimed in as they continued to trod down the muddy path. All of them would be washing muck off their clothes for days. “Fey and the like often have access to magic that even a wizard of my caliber cannot wield. This deviation - as you put it, Astarion - could prove very advantageous if we play our cards right.”

Eli resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder at Astarion, who had surely just rolled his eyes so hard he could see up into his own skull. She could practically feel the disdain radiating off of him and pointedly kept her eyes ahead, scanning the dreary bogland for any sign that they may be nearing Auntie Ethel’s dwelling.

It took Astarion all but two seconds to quip back at the wizard. “Gale, your opinion is like the filth on my boots. Unwanted and irritating,” he said with all the cheer of a muddy wet cat as he paused to kick some grime off the bottom of one of said boots.

“It is a wonder any of you have survived this long,” Lae’zel said, glowering at Astarion as he continued to preen.

“We are a rather astonishing group, aren’t we?” Eli asked with a small smirk, glancing back at the gith.

Lae’zel just rolled her eyes.

Eli was glad for the banter, as it provided some distraction from the pulsating headache growing behind her eyes. However, as they rounded a bend in the path where the trail began to climb upwards towards the interior of the bog, snaking away from the swampy shoreline, Eli was struck with a surging agony that flashed white hot throughout her head. She doubled over, the heel of her hand pressing into the ridge of her brow as a hiss escaped from behind her clenched teeth. Her stomach churned angrily, a hunger rising from deep within that neither food nor drink would satiate. Her head felt as if it were shattering into fragments, her conscious self being pulled apart at the seams as something else tried to push its way to the surface. Something feral, and frenzied and starved.

From somewhere behind her, Eli thought she heard Gale muttering a question. She then felt a hand on her shoulder and wanted nothing more in the world than to seize it and dig her nails into the supple flesh. She wanted to smell the crisp metallic tang of blood in the air as her fingers peeled back skin as if she were pulling the rind off a particularly ripe fruit, bloody pulp exposed and raw. The thought of her fingers sliding between muscle and skin, slick with blood, feeling fibrous sinew tear away and hearing the wet squelch and pop as she degloved flesh from limb…

Fist clenched, her nails dug into the palm of her hand as she fought to keep control. A pleasurable shiver ran down her spine as her mind entertained depraved thoughts, and for a moment she thought she may vomit where she knelt. She was not herself. Her mind was splintering with a hundred craven desires…she wanted to walk across fields of ruptured bodies and feel the viscera turn to jam between her toes. Her muscles tensed and she flinched away from the hand, standing in a near delirious state and muttering some nonsense about “needing a minute” before stumbling off into the fen.

Eli needed to put distance between herself and her companions. At least for the moment. At least until her head cleared. She slogged through the wetland, unfocused on where she was going, until she felt a dampness seeping through her boots. She stopped and blinked, trying to wrench her consciousness back from the brink. As her sight cleared and the world around her came back into focus, Eli found herself standing ankle-deep in water near a riverbank, looking out over the vast and gloomy expanse of the Chionthar River - the opposite bank obscured by fog.

Sloshing her way back to shore, Eli stepped back onto somewhat solid ground just as she heard a rustling in the thicket. Her eyes shot up to see Astarion picking through the snarl of brush and weeds that bordered the muddy shoreline. His expression was one of exasperated frustration, brow furrowed and mouth pulled into a grimace, as he tugged a booted foot free of the clinging bramble.

“Gods below, this entire place needs to be tossed into Avernus,” he grumbled as he plucked a bur off his doublet and flicked it to the ground. Astarion then glanced up at her, crimson eyes guarded, although Eli thought she caught the glimmer of something else in his gaze…a flash of something softer. But it came and went like a spark catching alight then burning out just as quickly. “Are you…alright?”

His tone was hesitant and uncertain, as if he were unused to the concept of asking after someone else. Astarion had an edge about him that never seemed to dull, as if he were always acting under the assumption that those around him would lash out at any given moment without warning. Eli wasn’t sure why, but she felt as if she recognized that particular brand of uneasiness. It was a tension that came from an impartial distrust of anyone and anything. A response to a life lived in a constant state of conflict, always ready for fight or flight. Something gnawed at the far recesses of her mind, tugging at a memory she couldn’t quite grasp. She understood that feeling, though she did not know why…

“I think I am. Now, at least," Eli said, rubbing at her eyes as her headache growled but remained tempered. Her mind seemed to be clearing and realigning itself to the present, no longer at risk of breaking and letting loose whatever atrocity lay coiled up inside herself. “You didn’t have to follow me out here. I just needed a moment to collect my thoughts.”

Astarion eyed her and raised a brow, disbelief apparent on his face. “My dear, whatever just happened in that pretty head of yours is not nearly as frivolous as you’re trying to make it seem.”

Eli winced internally. He was right, of course, and it wasn’t as if she had been subtle when she’d walked off aimlessly into the bog after being doubled over and obviously in pain. Hell, given how she must have looked in that moment, he’d probably followed her to make sure she didn’t trod blindly into a sinkpit or end up ensnared by some flesh-eating swamp ficus.

She sighed and ran a hand absentmindedly through her silvery hair. “I just don’t want to worry people,” Eli conceded. “We have enough to deal with, without adding my violent mood swings and absconded memory to the mix.” She spread her hands out, as if the gesture could represent the absolute shitstorm they dealt with on a daily basis.

Astarion considered her for a moment, expression thoughtful and impassive, before he shook his head with a small smile. “I believe you were the one who pointed out earlier that everyone in our weird little group is ‘deranged,’ as you put it.” He emphasized her choice of wording with a gesture of his hands, pantomiming plucking the word out of thin air.

The action brought a soft smile to her lips. She enjoyed Astarion’s embellishments and dramatics. The elf had a flare for the extravagant that she found both endearingly silly and strangely alluring…

Nope. No. Stop it. She shoved that twinge of attraction back down into the deep dark hole within and refocused herself. “Yeah, well, one of us needs to at least act somewhat sensible,” Eli quipped with a smirk. “Can’t have Zevlor and his lot figuring out how truly unhinged we all are. We may not get paid,” she said the last bit with more than a little fake indignation.

Astarion played along, pretending to be scandalized and clutching his nonexistent pearls. “Now that would be a tragedy. I have every intention of hiring a witch at the first opportunity to hex Gale’s cookpot so it will only produce boiled squid,” he said cheerily. “I’m assuming that won’t be cheap.”

Amused with himself, Astarion tipped his chin up, smirking at Eli with all the wiliness of a fox. For her part, Eli just rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop a grin from spreading on her face as she imagined Gale, flustered and put out, ranting about the juvenile use of magic.

A thought occurred to her, then. Something unbidden and completely inane, but one she latched onto desperately. It was a joke that had bubbled up from the deep recesses of her broken memory, and though she had no idea where she heard it or in what context, she was delighted at the prospect of finding something among the rubble of her ruined mind. It set the tiniest flicker of hope alight within her that maybe, eventually, she may be able to recover more.

Eyes bright, and with a reserved sort of hopefulness stirring in her chest, she gave Astarion a genuinely dorky grin and blurted out with all the self-restraint of a toddler; “What do you call a magician who cooks?”

Surprise overtook the elf’s face, and he tilted his head curiously with a small laugh, thrown by the sudden and highly abrupt tangent. Before he could speak, however, a snap sounded in the brush behind the pair. Both Eli and Astarion turned to find a man, tall and well built with slicked back hair the color of burnt coffee. His mouth, framed by a neatly kept goatee, was turned down in a grimace, jaw clenched, and in his hands the man held a very large crossbow - loaded and aimed in their direction.

“I’d think twice before you get much closer to him, miss,” the stranger warned, eyes darting from Eli to Astarion as if he expected the elf to set upon him any second. “He’s dangerous.”

Eli frowned at the stranger, fingers curling reflexively into the beginning gesture for her Eldritch Blast incantation. “And yet you’re the one with a crossbow pointed at me,” she said warily, watching the man’s fingers for any twitch or movement on the trigger.

Next to her, she could feel Astarion stiffen defensively, but he remained quiet. Had the stranger not had a crossbow bolt aimed in her direction, Eli would have been more curious who he was and his connection to Astarion. Due to his comments, she assumed he was aware of Astarion’s vampirism, though she couldn’t be certain. Her curiosity, however, would have to simmer in the face of their current predicament.

“Call it a precaution,” the stranger said before tipping the crossbow in the direction of Astarion. “You know what he is? Vampire spawn.” He said the last bit as if it was supposed to be some revelation, venom laced within his words.

Eli studied the tip of the crossbow bolt, noting how the sharpened edge glimmered faintly in the hazy light. Silver? She glanced back and caught the man’s eyes with her own, a growing dislike darkening her expression.

“Old news, my friend,” she said with more than a hint of antagonistic sarcasm. “Known that since I met him.”

This drew a somewhat startled noise from Astarion, whose gaze she could suddenly feel turn to her. “You did?” he asked with a genuine note of surprise in his voice.

Astarion had not admitted to being a vampire spawn until the night Eli caught him creeping in on her as she slept, hungry and poised to bite. Up until that point, though, he’d done a rather poor job of concealing his nature. What with the bite scars on his neck and his pale, almost pearlescent, complexion. The fact he could walk in sunlight was an oddity, of course, but given that she’d just flown through Avernus on a mind flayer ship after having an illithid tadpole inserted into her brain, a vampire traipsing about in the sun wasn’t even the weirdest thing she’d seen that day.

She chanced a quick sidelong glance at Astarion and quirked an eyebrow. “Well, yeah. It was kind of the worst kept secret in Faerûn. Shadowheart and I even had a bet about who you’d try to bite first.” Eli still owed her a bottle of sweetwine, come to think of it.

She shook the thought from her head and turned her attention back to the stranger who still had his crossbow trained on them. “Mind introducing yourself before you start a fight you’ll regret?” she asked, watching his body language for any sign that he may back down now he knew Eli was fully aware of her companion’s condition.

The stranger glared at her, and Eli sighed. Another day, another fight with some ignorant douchecanoe who was wasting the last moments of their life antagonizing her. That darkness inside of her, the thing that craved slaughter and whose language was only violence, shifted restlessly like a dog in a cage, pressing at the barricades with a cruel need. She fought to push it back, but gods she could imagine her hands tearing into his gut, ripping dying organs from the yawning wound, warm and wet. The iron scent of blood in the air. The agony twisting his face as he writhed. It would be beautiful brutality.

Her headache was mounting once again, and through the throbbing pressure she heard the man say; “You can call me monster hunter.”

He braced his crossbow, targeting Astarion, and Eli was moving faster than coherent thought. She felt a force collide with her left shoulder, nearly knocking her off balance, and then the world melted away into a manic savagery that was both achingly familiar and terrifyingly transcendent.

Flesh would rend. Bone would snap. And her hunger would be sated. For now.

The headache faded, and Eli was suddenly aware of a thick and deep pain radiating from her shoulder. Her mind swam dully, like a bobber struggling to stay above water as forces tried to pull it down. She felt…tired. Dazed.

Why was she on the ground? Was that her blood spattered across her bracers? Why was Astarion yelling?

“Godsdamnit! Why would you do that!”

Something jostled her, and the pain in her shoulder flared. She groaned and tried to turn her head towards Astarion’s voice only to find she was propped up against him. He was kneeling next to her, a hand braced against her back to keep her seated upright while his other hand pressed into her shoulder. She grimaced, trying to ignore the searing agony rocketing down her left side, but found herself unable to focus.

She looked up into Astarion’s face, head bobbing to the side, and squinted at him. A range of emotions flitted across his face as he looked down at her. Anger, frustration, exasperation…all common day-to-day expressions for the snarky and uppity elf. But there was something else, too. Something in the clench of his jaw, the tightness of his lips and the way his sharp, clear eyes stayed fixed on her. Concern…

“Do…what?” she asked, confused.

Eli continued to watch his face, thinking dully about when she’d ever seen him worried and coming up with nothing. Well, she wasn’t in a great state of mind at the moment and kind of just wanted to go to sleep. She was probably just forgetting…

Her mind drifted…eyes closing wearily…

Astarion shook her gingerly and she let out a noise somewhere between a hiss and a growl. “That bolt you idiotically decided to jump in front of was laced with poison! Do. Not. Fall. Asleep.” He pressed at the wound on her shoulder and her eyes wrenched back open, pain flooding her senses and slamming adrenaline into her system.

“Fucking rude!” she yelped.

Then, the pain was fading and a slow numbness was creeping down from her shoulder. It felt cold and soothing, and she was so tempted to just relax into it and fade away. Her head dropped and came to rest against his chest, eyelids fluttering closed again.

“I think I just like to annoy you…” she said weakly, then gave a hiccupping sort of laugh.

Astarion was trying to jostle her out of the daze again, only this time there was no pain and she felt too content to open her eyes as her head rested against him.

“Eli! Eli! Shit!” He sounded so far away. So far…far…away…

“What do you call a magician who cooks?” Astarion asked, a hint of panic coiling around his words.

From somewhere very distant, Eli remembered she hadn’t finished telling him her joke. A small laugh caught in her throat as she thought about it…but she really didn’t feel like talking right now. Gods, she wanted to sleep…

Astarion was shaking her again. “What do you call a magician who cooks! Eli!”

Fucking hell, he was loud.

Eli groaned and tried to lift her head. Too heavy…

…she needed to finish the joke…

“A…saucerer…” she said lamely, then laughed, head still slumped against his chest. She’d have to tell Gale…

There was some muttering, then a feeling of being lifted. The ground was gone. Her arms sagged.

“You will not die,” she heard Astarion say from miles away. “You will not die because that was just awful, and it will not be the last thing you ever say."

Eli smiled to herself. She was hilarious…

Everything went dark.

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goodluckclove · 9 days

Text

Various "Failures" From My Google Docs

Good morning! I'm at my usual coffee shop and got inspired by the troubles of a few friends to embarrass myself.

Sit down with me. I'm enjoying my usual blended chai. There's room on the couch if you'd like to join me.

So I've written thirteen novels. I think thirteen, I've actually lost count. Let's say, like, five full-length plays and twelve to fourteen finished novels. Impressive, right? Maybe. I'm realizing that I consider that not much of a brag, if only because I know the amount of trips and stumbles it took to get to one completed project.

I've ditched a lot of ideas. A lot. If I need to I can dig into my old hard drives to find all the doc files from my youth, but I also have the same Google Docs I've had since middle school.

It's mostly plays and ghostwriting assignments, but if you did you'll find some snippets from my constant attempts at growth.

Some stuff like this is okay. The line "hair slicked back/suit black silk" is pretty good, but a little too the writer thinks they're clever for me now. I don't really remember where I planned to go with this. I think the narrator was somehow going to be given the identity of Roy Fontaine. I was really fixated on the surname Fontaine at the time. I don't know why.

But then there's also a lot of stuff like this:

Hey look it's Fontaine again! I guess he's a doctor, too! Also I am astounded by how casually the main character just pulls out the Necronomicon. He pulls it out? From where? His pocket? Is it a zine?

I don't know why, but something about how suddenly this jumps in terms of dropping specifics makes me think that Sonic the Hedgehog is about to show up. I can't explain it.

This is the only thing in a Doc titled "Psychosis". I have zero memory of what I was planning on doing with this. What's kind of crazy though is that I wrote this in 2014, and six years later I'll use essentially this exact bit in a finished novel without even realizing it.

Another bit from 2014. No clue what I planned to do with this. It's hilarious to me that something stopped me from finishing the sentence. What am I, Franz Kafka writing The Tower? I didn't die. I wasn't raptured. I just apparently tried to think of something a large oak door would do and immediately gave up. It was 2014 I had finished, like, four novels. And this idea was fully stalled by what had to be a fucking huge oak door.

My favorite part of this radio play I tried to write is that somehow, believe it or not - when I wrote this I did not fully understand the Quantum Suicide thought experiment. And for along time I still kind of thought that this could be salvaged into a good idea, until last night when I asked my wife to put on a video describing the experiment and I immediately found it so dumb. Just ridiculously stupid. The only good thing about Quantum Mickey is that the title kicks ass and I'm definitely keeping it for something.

I've written a lot. A lot. I've earned the severity of carpal tunnel I currently have. If I had to put it into a statistic, I'd say maybe seventy percent ends up finished. fifty percent ends up polished to be read or published. Thirty percent actually ends up being read or published. I'm okay with this, because I enjoy the work. But for me, part of enjoying the work is not panicking when a project doing work.

If I need to end a project in the middle of a sentence, I do. I've clearly proven that I do. Sometimes I write for thirty pages and lose interest, other times I get a paragraph in and get distracted forever. That's okay.

That's okay. As long as you're doing something.

I could've included segments of Carnation, my first novella that was supposed to be a novel but I never finished it. But I fucking guess that's getting it's own post when I hit 150 followers so I hope you're prepared for what the type of stuff I enjoyed in middle school.

There's an Irish child that speaks exclusively in slang. You aren't ready.

#writeblr #writing community #on writing #writers on tumblr #authors of tumblr #writing #writing advice #writing tips #writing inspo #writing inspiration

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planetpiastri · 1 year

Note

for the meet cutes: number 1 is so bob it hurts

writing this had me giggling twirling my hair blushing so bad <33 enjoy angel my love!!!!

1. losing something and the other picks it up and calls after them

word count: 1.2k

When you’d been called back to TOPGUN with the other graduates, you’d looked forward to long days of training up in the jets, pulling off feats of aviation that left bystanders appalled, late nights out at the Hard Deck, and early mornings on the carrier, overlooking the water.

What you hadn’t looked forward to was a seven-in-the-morning call time for a long-as-balls briefing that went over by at least forty-five minutes.

When Maverick finally dismissed you all to get geared up and get down to the tarmac, you were very tempted to just stay at your desk and fall asleep. You’d been the last pilot to get in last night because—irony of ironies—your flight had been delayed, and you could already tell that the exhaustion that lined your eyes was different from the exhaustion that lined your teammates’.

You knew it was customary to meet up at the Hard Deck the night before a new mission starts, but you’d just been too tired, and you were already paying for it. It was clear everyone had spent the night before making introductions and getting acquainted, and they already had little in-jokes and shorthands. It didn’t help that seemingly half the recruits called back had graduated from the same TOPGUN class.

Your spirits weren’t very high as you suited up and headed out to the tarmac with your gear. A cluster of maybe five or six recruits were all walking ahead of you, laughing and chatting like old friends. Even the quietest one at the end was still getting included in the conversation, like the other ones were making sure he had the opportunity to speak if he needed it.

You climbed into your jet, for the first time in your naval career feeling a bit sorry that you hadn’t been assigned a backseater. Instead, you were a solo flier paired with Payback and Fanboy. They were nice enough, but as the sun began to kiss the tarmac and you pushed up into your seventy-second push-up, you could only find them irritating.

When Maverick finally let you all go and get changed, you didn’t even bother looking back. You were tired and sore and annoyed with your teacher, who had decided the best way to start off three weeks of training was by proving that he was a better flier than all the rest of you. Not a single one of the best pilots the navy had to offer had been able to shoot down Captain Pete Mitchell. It was an insult on top of injury.

You were so caught up in your own thoughts that you didn’t hear your callsign being said until the person calling you was right behind you, a hand falling gently on your shoulder and nearly scaring you half out of your wits.

“Jesus!” you swore, putting a hand over your heart. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry,” said the pilot in front of you with a sheepish smile, gesturing a ways back down the tarmac. “I was calling you for a while. Guess you didn’t hear.”

You shook your head. “A lot on my mind. Sorry….”

Embarrassed, you realized you didn’t even know his name. He was tall, and the only pilot called back to wear glasses—what did they call them in basic? Birth control goggles? But behind the glasses was a keen, perceptive pair of big blue eyes. His hair was tousled from a day of flying, but you couldn’t help but think it suited him. He shifted nervously in place, and you glanced down, seeing his helmet held in his hand.

“Bob?” you said, more surprised than anything.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. That’s me.” He glanced down to the helmet and shrugged.

“That’s your callsign?” you asked skeptically.

“Um…yeah.” He blinked. “You weren’t at the Hard Deck last night, were you?”

You pursed your lips and shook your head.

“Sorry!” he said quickly. “That wasn’t—I just—they all kind of heard the shpeal before, I just figured—I didn’t see you—I would have recognized you—”

“It’s okay,” you said, holding out a hand to get him to stop talking. “How can I help you, Bob? Or were you just stopping me for some small talk?”

He jumped like he’d also forgotten that he was the one to flag you down and reached into the pocket of his flight suit, riffling around for a moment before pulling something out and holding it towards you, saying, “You dropped this.”

You took the item carefully, holding it up. “A…pen?”

The apples of his cheeks turned a bit rosier, but that might have just been the setting sun on the horizon hitting the desert. “Yeah, after the debrief. It fell and I grabbed it and I just never got a chance to—”

“You’ve held onto this since the debrief?” you asked, your voice small. You couldn’t even look at him; your eyes were stuck to the small pen in your hand. It was nothing special, just a basic black-ink ballpoint Bic. You had to have at least a dozen more in your bag back at your bunk. But he’d grabbed this one, and kept it in his pocket while he flew in a F/A-18F all damn day, and now he was giving it back.

He shifted nervously in place now, his mouth pulled back in a tight line, like he was worried you were going to toss the pen back and just walk off.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

“Oh,” he said, somewhere between confused and worried by your overly-touched reaction. “It’s not a big deal. I just—I know I go nuts losing pens all the time. Like, where do they go, right?”

“I know where this one went,” you said with a smile, tucking the pen back into one of your own pockets.

“There you go,” said Bob, finally starting to smile shyly. He looked at you then, his eyes examining your face, and you felt your breath hitch in your throat. The noise—small as it was—seemed to wake Bob up from some sort of reverie, because he shook himself and said, “Um, well, that was some great flying up there today. You were the only one who came close to taking Mav down.”

You snorted, turning and beginning to walk back to the barracks, beckoning for Bob to walk with you. “That’s not true. Rooster came pretty close, too.”

“Yeah, but Rooster wouldn’t have done it anyway,” said Bob.

“Did you know him before today?” you asked.

Bob shook his head. “Just heard things from Phoenix. And you pick up quick on things when you’re in an environment like this.”

You nodded, slowing to a halt as you reached the barracks, knowing you and Bob had been given different rooming assignments. The both of you stood there for a moment, rocking back and forth on the balls of your feet, trying to think of something to say. Finally you pulled the pen out and said, “Thanks again. For the pen.”

“No problem,” he said quickly.

“I hope I can repay the favor someday,” you said.

He shook his head. “I mean, I’d appreciate it, but there’s no need. It’s just the right thing to do.”

“Right,” you said, fighting back another smile. “Okay. Well. I’ll see you tomorrow, Bob.”

“See you,” he replied, offering a three-fingered wave as he pushed open his door and disappeared within, leaving you with the warmth of the setting sun at your back and the hope that maybe this assignment wouldn’t be so terrible, after all.

#bob floyd #robert bob floyd #bob floyd x reader #bob floyd x you #bob floyd fic #bob x reader #bob x you #bob floyd fanfic #bob floyd fluff #bob fluff #bob fanfic #robert bob floyd x you #robert bob floyd x reader #top gun maverick fanfiction #bob floyd blurb #bob floyd imagine #vinny fics

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a-boca-do-inferno · 2 years

Text

aloha, baby (logan howlett x human!reader)

summary: Logan is your driver and he’s accompanying you in your vacation. While there, he confesses something you’d never expect.

warnings: cheating, fluff, smut

words: 2.6k

notes: this is way too specific lol maybe the tags are a bit misleading but whatever im not good at tagging. enjoy it anyways <3

You let out a long sigh as soon as you arrived at the airport, followed suit by Logan. The fresh air of Hawaii welcomed you both with open arms and you smiled. He watched you in silence behind his sunglasses, but you didn’t notice his little smirk seeing you so happy. This was a trip long coming and you couldn’t be more excited for it, as the past few months had been really trying at your job. You just wanted to relax and Logan knew that, so he was glad for you. You deserved to rest, finally.

“I’ll get the luggage.”

You nodded to your driver, already heading towards your rented car. “Alright.”

Feeling the heat of that morning, you realized your current clothing wasn’t suited for it at all, so you leaned against your vehicle and took off your heavy coat. A sigh of relief left your lips and you checked the time; it was almost past noon. Your stomach gave a little grunt and you figured the in-flight snacks weren’t enough to satisfy it. It’d just have to wait until you get to the hotel, however, as you were really tired and needed to lay down as soon as possible.

Your thoughts are interrupted by Logan approaching you with a baggage cart. “Kinda hot in here, ain’t it?”, he mumbles, stopping beside you as he takes off his glasses. He pulled out a cigar from God knows where, lighting it up and taking a drag as he studied his surroundings. It wasn’t his first time in the place, but it sure was different from the early seventies, when he’d visited it.

“Hawaii for you, my dear friend”, you grinned, taking a piece of paper out of your bag to use it as a fan. You watched as he unlocked the trunk and stowed your things inside. “Not gonna lie, I really like this warm, relaxing feeling.”

“Thought you hated the heat”, he commented, still with the cigar in his mouth.

You shrugged. “When I’m working, yes.”

“Right.” He closed the trunk with a thud, unlocking the car in the process. Logan opened the door for you and you thanked him briefly, settling into the passenger seat. He did the same and started the vehicle without further ado. “How long are you planning to stay, by the way?”, he furrowed his brows, switching his gaze between the road and you.

“Two weeks, at least. I wanna rest a little before going back to the craziness again.”

“So, I’m booking the first flight back home in two weeks?”

“Yeah, you can book that one. And put us in Executive Class, please. I wanna eat well for once!” He laughed, turning a corner. You took out your cell phone and noticed some missed calls from your boyfriend. He probably called while you were still on the plane. You told him you were on your way to the hotel and turned your attention back to Logan. “Are you really gonna stay here with me? You’re sure you don’t wanna enjoy your vacation, visit your friends in Westchester or something?”

“I already saw them this year. Plus, can’t leave a damsel in distress all alone in a place she’s never been before.” You rolled your eyes, but kept listening. “And technically, I’m on vacation with you. The difference is that I’m still getting my pay check for these two weeks. Only wins.”

You two exchanged a quick glance and you shook your head, staring at the red light in front of you. “I cannot believe you sometimes...” Logan was quiet, then started the car again when the light turned green. You sighed. “You staying in the hotel with me, yeah?”

“’Course.”

You looked deeply at his brown eyes, trying to find something you didn’t really know what it was. You used to do that a lot with Logan. “Same room, right?”

Logan stared back at you for a little longer, now. He tried to spot any amusement in your features, showing that perhaps you were only joking, but found none. His hands brushed the steering wheel slightly as he looked ahead again. “What would your boyfriend think of that, (y/n)?”, he questions at last, feeling a bit uncomfortable for having to say it out loud.

Logan knew you both weren’t in exactly good terms, but still; it didn’t feel like his place to “interfere” somehow, no matter how much he wanted to be close to you. Not because of some respect he held for that guy, he really couldn’t stand him whenever he was around, but rather to keep your honour. He knew people back home were all very quick to judge when you announced you’d be taking him to your vacation, so he didn’t want to give them any more food for thought.

You, on the other hand, were still staring at your driver, and all you could do was roll your eyes. Sometimes you felt like Logan was too prude for his own good and you hated it. You knew he was way older than you, what with his mutant abilities and all; however, it offended you a little bit that he’d think you were planning to attack him once you’re alone in a room.

You scoffed, trying to keep your cool. “He will think nothing of it, you’re my friend. And besides, it’s not like I’m gonna jump your bones the first opportunity I have, Logan.”

“You know I didn’t say that”, he states matter-of-factly, too calm for your taste.

“But you implied it”, you grumbled, then turned to look at your window. “And I might dump him anyway, just so you know.”

“You’re still with him, though”, he takes a drag, opening his window to let out the smoke.

“You’re insufferable.” He shrugged and said nothing, unyielding. You cleared your throat, giving him a pleading look. This always worked with him. “You know it would be much better if we stayed in the same room. That way, I won’t have to call you every time I need you. Plus, what if somebody tries to break in and I’m alone? I might get hurt. And what about my lady necessities, who will go buy them for me? Or you’re gonna leave a damsel all alone in a place she’s never been before?”, you dramatically shook your head, disapproving of his response in advance.

He only gave you an unimpressed look, but couldn’t hold back an incredulous laugh. “You’re so spoiled, my God.” You shrugged without answering him, then he sighed in defeat. “Fine, same room.”

“Yay!”, you clapped your hands like a happy child, which made him roll his eyes, even though there was a small smile on his lips. “Aloha, baby!”

The rest of the way was in a rather pleasant silence. Arriving at the hotel, you got your keys with the receptionist and went straight up to your room. It turned out you wouldn’t be in separate rooms even if you wanted to, since they were all booked. It was the end of the year after all, people went on vacation and they travelled a lot to Hawaii.

You were now sprawled out on the double bed while your driver brought your bags. You kicked off your shoes, tying your hair into a loose bun as you went barefoot to the bathroom. You didn’t usually put on makeup for long trips, so you simply splashed some water on your face to freshen up. You could take a bath later, now you just wanted to relax before going back to the madness that was your life.

“I got everything”, Logan announced, returning to the room for the second time with two carry-on bags. He frowned and pointed to the bed. “I thought it was two singles.”

“So did I”, you shrugged, taking your baggage and opening it. “The lady at the reception must have mixed up the rooms, but I don’t think it’s a problem. Unless you don’t want to share a bed with me?”, you looked at him inquiringly.

“You know that’s not it, (y/n)”, he said categorically, as if it was obvious. Logan sat next to you and analysed your face, smiling sideways: “and I bet it’s you who wouldn’t wanna sleep with me.”

“Sleep?”, you arched your eyebrows amusingly. “When did we jump from ’sharing the bed’ to ’sleeping together’? Logan, you naughty boy...”, you pushed him jokingly.

“You get it, stop being cute”, he said with an annoyed expression, pushing you back a little. You took that as a challenge and threw yourself on top of his body with all your strength, causing him to lie on the bed under you. You laughed like two kids as you tried to take control of the situation, until you eventually won. You held his wrists in place and glared at him triumphally. You noticed a certain tension in his features, then Logan’s deep voice rang out in a silent murmur: “(y/n)...”

“What?”, you frowned, genuinely confused. You played like that all the time, it was kind of an inside joke of yours. “Did I do something wrong? If I did, I’m sorry….” You hurried to get off his body, but he stopped you with his nimble hands.

“No, no... It’s not that.” He begins, making you look at him more confused than before. Logan seemed a little disturbed, incredulous and frustrated at the same time. A loud sigh left his lips. “You just... You better not do these things anymore.”

“But I always did and you never cared”, you considered weakly, after all it was not your intention to make him uncomfortable. You just wanted to understand why that reaction. “I’m heavier, is that it? I thought I got fat, that pizza from last week...”

“It’s not that, (y/n)...” He let out another disbelieving laugh, this time looking you in the eye. The hands that once held your arms were now squeezing your waist gently. “You look beautiful, there’s nothing wrong with your body.”

“So what’s the problem, already?”, you asked impatient, getting so close to his face you could feel his heavy breathing.

Logan was silent and this only made you angrier. You opened your mouth to complain again, but you were silenced by his lips crashing against yours in a burst that felt like a flash, at the same time it happened in slow motion. The hands on your waist pulled you closer, making you groan in his arms on instinct.

You let his tongue invade you freely, each time it came into contact with yours causing a gentle shock. You were already out of breath when he sucked on your bottom lip like a hungry animal, which only fuelled the heat in your stomach. You were erupting and not even the AC above the two of you could cool you down. You took advantage of your position and thrust your hips into his, brushing your intimacies. The grip on your waist immediately went down to your ass and the pressure increased there, making you smirk.

“This...” Logan says, panting, pausing for a second. “This is the problem, (y/n).” He finished with another sigh, avoiding your gaze.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because I thought you’d never look at me like that. You always treated me like a friend.”

You shook your head, still a little dizzy with all that information being thrown at you. “But you are my friend, Logan.” You smoothed his stubble and he finally faced you. His brown eyes lost their earlier frustration, now bathed in something you guessed was affection.

“I am, but I don’t wanna be just that.”

“Are you asking me to date you?”, you smirked and he just nodded. “I’m going to need a verbal confirmation here, Logan.”

“It’s kinda hard to ask this to someone who’s already dating... But do you want to date me?”, he questioned finally, causing you to roll over in bed next. Now you were under him and he was holding your wrists with no escape. “Won’t you answer me?”

“I do.” You’re honest, somehow putting together all your certainties about Logan in a simple sentence. But that was it, you wanted it. You could think about your boyfriend later, for now all you cared about was those brown eyes on you. You smile affectionately, holding his gaze as you punctuate, “you’re handsome, smart, affectionate, caring, funny...”

“What else?”, he caressed your neck with his nose, leaving kisses all over it.

“Hot, strong... Ah...”, you moaned involuntarily when his lips descended to your lap, threatening your cleavage.

“I’m listening...”

You opened your mouth to continue, but the words became another loud moan as he unceremoniously pulled your tits out of your shirt. His wet tongue circled your nipple and you couldn’t help but arch your back. You watched Logan deftly sucking you, like his very life depended on it. You closed your eyes as he bit down lightly, shifting his attention between your breasts, cupping them in his hands and giving them little squeezes. He was so entertained and eager to please you that it made you chuckle slightly.

“Looks like you’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, huh?”, you panted, still watching his movements intently. Logan only smiled sideways without letting go of your nipple, this time brushing it with his tongue without any shame. “Fuck...”

“Does he make you feel that way, that guy?”, he teased, starting to suck you so hard it hurt a little. But you loved it.

“Sometimes…” You’re honest again, tears of pure pleasure already struggling to come down your face. He finally seemed to get tired of the torture and deliberately squeezed your breasts this time, leaving wet kisses on every spot. His lips then returned to yours, giving you a kiss as wet as before. “Are you just going to play around or are you fucking me?”

“Whatever you want, I can play with you all day...”, he pointed out, like the smart-ass he was. You rolled your eyes and ruffled his hair, taking in his gorgeous face. “I love you, you know that?”

“You shouldn’t”, you couldn’t keep it to yourself, taking a deep breath before continuing. “So many pretty women out there, Logan, and you go on and choose someone taken. And I’m not even that pretty...”

“I didn’t choose it, but I’d definitely choose you to love if I could.” You smiled a little embarrassed and looked away, however he held your face to keep staring at him. “And ‘not that pretty’? Sometimes I think you don’t have a mirror at home, sweetheart.”

“You know, I love you too.” You ignored his last comment, studying his features. “But I also kinda love him. I guess I have a big heart, huh?”, you laughed humourlessly.

“I know. I get it.”

“I don’t wanna do this you, though. You don’t deserve to be only an affair.”

He stops for a second, then nods. “I wanna be with you anyway. I just want to be with you, doesn’t matter how.”

You raise your eyebrows. “I’d never take you for the romantic type, Logan Howlett.”

“I’m not, this is all your fault.” He let out a low chuckle. “Maybe if I hadn’t met you, I’d still be living as some hermit, without any purpose in life. Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

You’re taken aback by his words, blushing terribly. You cup his face to place another peck on his lips, suddenly feeling warmth in your chest. “I’d choose you too.”

Logan responds by kissing you deeply, the blue sky of Hawaii outside of the window as your background. You were sure these were going to be the best two weeks of your life.

He undresses you from your pants as he huffs in your ear, making your whole body shiver, “aloha, baby.”

#logan howlett x reader #wolverine x reader #hugh jackman x reader #logan howlett imagine #wolverine imagine #x-men imagine #x-men x reader #wolverine #logan howlett #james logan howlett #hugh jackman

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lumosinlove · 1 year

Text

Vaincre

Details and full fic on Ao3

April Part Two

Oh, this is gonna be a big one, isn’t it, Lee?

Sure is. We’ve got—well, I’ll say a complete top line. Black and O’Hara tearing it up as usual, but we’ll be missing sorely someone who’ll be across the ice this time, eh?

That’s right, Logan Tremblay—oh, there he is now. Skating out in blue.

“Your New York Rangers…” came the drawn out roar around Madison Square Garden.

Remus shifted back and forth on his skates. He could already feel the coolness of the ice from down the tunnel. He could feel Sirius behind him, doing the same thing.

“All right, boys, big game,” Thomas’ voice came from somewhere closer to the front of the line. “Big game, big game!”

Coach Weasley confessed in his pre-game interview that Winter was supposed to start tonight in net, but it’ll be Knut instead. He didn’t go into details, but it’s not a secret that Winter’s been battling injuries for quite a few seasons now.

It’s true, Dean. But Knut has been proving himself over and over again. We’ve heard from his teammates how important he is in the room, also how hard he is on himself after a loss. Tell me, Dean, we see this a lot from net minders. We see the way they place weight on themselves—Kasey Winter, too. Do you think that’s something Knut will have to manage down the line?

You know, Lee, I think he’s a kid. He’s so young—so much of the Lions team is so young—hell, their Captain is so young. I think its in their nature to be hard on themselves, they’ve all been working for this life for a long time. That isn’t to say I don’t think you can be too hard on yourself. And that’s tricky territory, especially given the fact that—now, I don’t want to say this, I really don’t—but given the fact that Knut could be looking at the starting spot soon.

Oh, yeah.

Madison Square Garden booed when they skated out, and the rattle of Sergei knocking the pile of pucks down off the boards for warm-ups was drowned out. Remus gathered one for himself, pushing hard around the back of the goal before tucking it neatly into the upper crossed corner of the still empty net. The music boomed, some lyric-less bass-heavy beat that Remus could tune right out. He didn’t look across the ice, to the blur of blue jerseys just at the corner of his vision. Sirius stayed at his heels, pulling to a hard stop just beside him.

“Seventy-one,” he said. “I didn’t think about the number.”

“What?” Remus asked, looking up at him. Sirius only nodded across the ice, and Remus took a breath, and then looked. He found Logan almost immediately, TREMBLAY in white across his shoulders rather than black, and, below—

Remus frowned, before realizing. Artemi Panarin already wore ten. Now, Logan wore 71 on his back.

“Leo’s 1, Harz’s backwards,” Sirius said, and then turned to smile at Remus, tapped a glove over where his necklace rested. “Guess you’re not the only one who likes to play with numbers.”

“Weird, huh?” Leo said as he skated up beside them, mask propped on top of his head. He jerked his chin across the ice. “He’s always been ten. In school and everything. Ask Finn.”

“Really weird,” Remus said, and Sirius gave him a loving nudge before skating off for his routine, Leo towards the goal. Remus headed for his usual spot in one of the corners, where he bounced a puck off the boards a few times, but at the last second, he changed directions. If he couldn’t change his routine, he didn’t like that. He took a long, slow breath and thought of earlier that morning, Sirius’ warm arms locked around him. He thought of how well Sirius knew him. How thoroughly. He tried to keep that thought playing through his mind, willed it to be louder than the music, than the chorus of winwinwin in his head.

Remus skated to the bench instead, lightly checking into Finn, who resolutely had his back to the ice.

“How’s he look?” Finn asked, squirting water into his mouth.

Remus glanced over Finn’s shoulder, only to see Alex skating up to them, coming to hard stop that sprayed Finn’s lower body with ice.

“Ugh,” Finn said and squeezed the water bottle at his brother’s chest, squirting the front of his jersey. Remus just laughed, knowing that the cameras were catching this for sure.

“Hi, baby brother,” Alex said, throwing an arm around his neck. “So glad you’re here. Ready to get your ass kicked, bud?”

“You wouldn’t kick my ass,” Finn said, and pointed to the top of the stands where the Rangers’ team box was. “Not while Mom and Dad are watching. We both know only I could ever get away with that.”

Alex just grinned and sent a wink to Remus. “He wishes. Hey.” He knocked his and Finn’s visors together. “Gotta tell you something.”

“No,” Finn pretended to put his gloves over his ears. “La-la-la, I don’t know what you’re gonna do but I’m not falling for it.”

“No, really.”

“La-la-la—”

Alex slapped at the side of his head. “It’s about Tremz.”

Finn lowered his hands, still looking suspicious. “What?”

“Don’t mind if Sir Lupin hears?”

“Oh, believe me,” Finn said, sending an identical grin to Remus. “Loops has heard it all. What, you weirdo, spit it out.”

Alex raised his glove near his mouth for privacy in case any cameras were on them, but he was still smiling—Remus actually thought his eyes looked a little bright. “In the locker room yesterday, Saint was talking about some book series and Lo just basically goes—” Alex gave Finn’s shoulders a little happy shake. “Oh, yeah, my boyfriend loves those.”

Remus’ heart squeezed as he saw Finn’s eyes go a little unfocused on the ice. He set the water bottle down on the boards, swallowed, and closed his eyes, like some final part of him surrendered to the belief that it was real. That this was real. Remus remembered that feeling well.

“Yeah?” Finn breathed.

“Yeah,” Alex said, softer this time. “Yeah.” He smiled, pushed Finn’s helmet down over his eyes, and skated a few strides backwards towards his own side of the ice. Finn pushed his helmet back up and watched him go.

“You fucking crying, Al?” Finn laughed, but he sounded choked up himself.

“Yes!” Alex called. “Love ya!”

Looks like the O’Hara brothers already have their competitive streak up and ready. As usual. Hey, what a treat it’d be to see those two play together on an Olympic team or something, eh, Dean?

Finn cleared his throat. Remus saw him finally look for Logan, saw him find him on the ice—saw Logan find him back and raise his stick with a soft look. “I love you, too.”

Before he crossed the blue line, Alex picked up a water bottle and squirted it at Kasey, who barely flinched. He was dressed in gear, but playing back-up tonight, baseball cap shading his eyes. “What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”

Kasey just shook his head, smile small, brown eyes challenging. “Rangers stew.”

Alex scoffed, but skated closer to knock their helmets together gently, before darting off towards Montague in the Rangers goal just as the whistle blew, signaling the end of warm-ups.

The first few face-offs were a blur of adrenaline. Remus watched Sirius line up against Zibanejad. He kept waiting for Finn and Logan to end up shoulder to shoulder, but it never happened. Each time Logan was on the ice, Coach called Finn off of it. Thomas and Olli hardly let Logan near Leo’s net, either, double-manning him, predicting his every move. Remus saw Sirius and Pascal share slightly wolfish grins when Logan hit his stick against the boards in frustration.

Looks like Tremblay’s having himself quite the time out there against his former teammates. Haven’t seen him share the ice with his old college line mate yet. Had a bit of a tussle with Dumais, though, ha! Do you think that’s on purpose?

Tremblay and O’Hara go so far back, man, so much history. Played together at Harvard. Best friends, too. I don’t know why you’d keep two opponents who know each other’s game so well off of the same ice. I’d say you’d want that advantage, but, then again, that could backfire real quick, huh, Lee? I suppose I just want the show! Ha!

Oh, I’d say so.

“Jesus, Montague’s on tonight,” Sirius panted between drinks of water as the whistle blew for a deflection over the glass by the Rangers.

Remus nodded as he dragged a towel over his visor, clearing any sweat and steam away. “So’s Nut.”

“Ouais.” Sirius held his hand out for the towel and Remus handed it over. “We’re both locking each other down.”

“Better than the alternative.”

Sirius shrugged noncommittally and knocked on Remus’ helmet, making him laugh.

“That was an observation, not a jinx.”

Sirius didn’t look convinced, only glanced up at the clock. Six minutes to go in the first and no score. “If you say so.”

The Garden was still chanting Saint’s name after that last save. Saint, Saint, Saint, like they had stumbled in on some holy ritual. Remus took a moment to gaze up and around at the seats. Never in his wildest dreams had he ever thought he would get to play here after his injury. Never again, and now he had done it a few times. He didn’t think the effect was likely to ware off anytime soon. He watched Logan skate out, watched him check what line he was against—Pascal’s. Pascal said something as he took the face-off against Trocheck, and Logan smiled and rolled his eyes.

There we go, saying hello to an old friend, eh, Dean?

Tremblay lived with Dumais. The old joke is that they couldn’t get him to leave! My wife’s obsessed with Tremblay’s instagram, lots of pictures with Dumais’ kids. We know Tremz is the baby of three sisters—youngest child’s secret dream, to be the oldest?

Hey, I’m the baby of my family—no way I’d give up that leverage for anything.

Trocheck won it and Remus allowed himself a moment to settle into his old, familiar routine of watching Logan skate, the way he used to when he had spent all of his time on the bench. Sirius would always be his favorite—light, even strides that were soundless when he cut into the ice—but Logan skated like he was prepared to go miles and miles for what he wanted. His edges were clean, he could stop at the smallest touch, which meant it was hard to get around him and even harder to take the puck from him. Remus guessed that was why the Rangers coach had put him with Panarin. He shouldn’t be enjoying the way the two seemed to see lanes on the ice that looked closed, angles that looked impossible, but he was. Beautiful hockey was beautiful hockey, and Remus had always been able to appreciate that no matter what.

Logan narrowly avoided Evgeni, who definitely hadn’t gone in for the hit with his usual force, but it did make Logan pause for long enough that Evgeni was able to poke the puck away with his long reach, and right into Pascal’s waiting tape. Pascal turned and pushed hard up towards the other end—Logan on his heels.

“Très étrange…” Sirius breathed from beside him as the two whipped by.

“Yeah,” Remus said. “Strange.”

“Black!” Coach called when Evgeni came for a change. “O’Hara, go!”

Sirius was over the boards in a flash, well-rested from the whistle break. He caught Logan easy, Pascal blocking any shot he might make from behind. Logan liked to do that, no look passing. Finn had been on the receiving end of those for his entire career. Logan would keep his green eyes narrowed on the guy in front of him and then fake a shot, only to knock it back to Finn with his backhand for Finn and his speed to race half-way up the ice.

He couldn’t pass to Finn now, though, but Remus saw him hesitate, like the muscle-memory of it was fighting with him as he saw Finn in front of him on the ice. Finn shouted something to him that Remus couldn’t make out.

Oh, here we go, finally. This should be a show. Tremblay surrounded by familiar faces in the Rangers’ zone, knocks it to Panarin who can’t get it through, sends it around the boards to Fox, holding, holding, can’t get a lane—Black’s got it! Picked his pocket right up, looks like—is he gonna go coast to coast, Dean? Tremblay’s at his heels, can’t catch him—

Remus was on his feet as Sirius widened his stride the closer he got to Montague’s net. Saint was making himself big, blocker and glove out, knees ready to drop.

“Fake left,” Remus said under his breath. “High, high, c’mon…”

Sirius’ right leg raised, but Saint didn’t move the inch to follow where Sirius wanted him to go. Sirius’ shot was hit right out of the air by his blocker—God, the very edge of his blocker.

“Rebound!” Jackson shouted from beside him. “Cap, let’s fucking go!”

Sirius scrambled for it, but Logan got there first and knocked it all the way down the ice. The whistle blew for icing on the Rangers, and Logan’s line would have to stay on the ice for another shift, tired as they were.

Jesus, not often do you see a chance taken away from Sirius Black like that, do you, Lee?

Nope. No, you do not. Sebastian Montague, in these past few years…well, he’s been making a name for himself, yes he has.

Logan and Sirius were panting, sticks on their knees, not quite looking at each other. Logan bent to hand the puck to the ref, and Remus watched him send a glance to Sirius, watched him say something. Sirius turned and, after a moment, smiled, then reached his stick out to lightly wack Logan’s shins. Remus felt something release in his chest, looked to Finn who was watching them as he skated towards the boards for a change. He looked like he was feeling something similar—complicated and relieved, happy and sad.

“Mind staying out, Harzy?” Coach said when Finn reached the bench. Coach had an equally complicated look on his face as he raised his calling card to his mouth so the cameras couldn’t read him. “You distracted him good out there. Black got close, I think he can get close again before clock runs down.”

Finn looked surprised for a moment, then grinned. “Oh, Coach. I was born to distract Logan Tremblay.”

Remus was drenched in sweat by the time they were making their way down the tunnel for first intermission. They were still 0-0, but it was one of those games that just felt good. Difficult and evenly matched, low on hits, high on skill. It was always like that with the Rangers. Remus handed Lars his sweaty gloves to be dried with a nod of thanks. The locker room wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t quite. It wasn’t frustration exactly that hung in the air. More like will power. They wanted this. All of them.

Remus cut through the puck-marked tape on his stick once he was sitting in his stall again. Finn came into the room near the end of the line, just ahead of Leo, and let out a very loud, meandering sigh-like noise that made Leo laugh.

“Okay, Harzy?”

“This feels like a really weird dream. Like…” He paused to pull his jersey over his head, then stripping his pads off, leaving only Logan’s fleur-de-lis around his neck and his pants. “Like one of those dreams that you wake up and try to figure out what the fuck it means but you just sit there confused.”

Thomas laughed from beside Remus. “That was a whole thought.”

“I have a lot of them, occasionally.”

Remus just smiled and got up for the bathroom to rinse the sweat off of his face and neck. Within, Kasey was at the sink, stripped out of his pads. He was strong and tall, but always looked smaller, more fragile, in the moments just after he had removed all of the bulky goaltender gear. Kasey met his eyes in the mirror, twisting on the tap.

“Hey, Loops.”

“Hi, Bliz,” Remus said.

“Intense so far, eh?”

“Yeah,” Remus smiled. “Hey, gonna see Alex later?”

“Yeah, but we’re going out with a few of the guys first—not sure if the Cubs are coming, too, but I think they are. Old Harvard teammates and all that. And, from what I’ve heard from Leo, Tremz probably wants to do some sentimental shit like—I don’t know, serenade them?”

Remus laughed. “It’s sweet. I didn’t know he was like that, but it’s damn sweet.”

Kasey made a show of rolling his eyes but he was grinning, too, shutting the water off. “Yep. It is.”

“We’ll probably come, too,” Remus said. “But if we don’t win, I can’t promise you-know-who will be any fun.”

“Oh, you’ll wring some fun out of him, I know it.”

Remus leaned over and splashed water over his neck. “I always seem to, don’t I?”

Kasey was silent for a moment, but he wasn’t leaving like he normally would. Like any player, he had a strict intermission routine. Instead, he stood there, half-turned towards Remus.

“So, Cap asked you to marry him,” Kasey finally said.

“So he did.”

“I want to marry Natalie.”

Remus couldn’t help the way his head snapped towards him, couldn’t help the grin that crossed his face. “Oh my God, Kasey. That’s—” But then he noticed Kasey’s conflicted expression. “What’s up? That’s great, man.”

“It is.” Kasey nodded. “I’ve only been thinking. Our relationship with Alex is newer…well, Alex feels like my oldest friend in the world, but in this way, the way we three are now, it’s new. Very new. I don’t know how to tell him that I want to marry Natalie without him thinking that…without him worrying that I don’t think of him as permanently mine like that. Because I think I will want that. I think Nat will want that. I just…it feels different. We’re in a different place. I want to marry one person, but I want to keep the other.”

Remus nodded. He couldn’t picture wanting anyone but Sirius, couldn’t imagine having any room left over in his heart, but it filled him with warmth every time he thought of the Cubs, or when Kasey had told him about Natalie and Alex. Kasey was so quiet about it, but he was a bit like Finn, Remus sometimes thought. He had endless things to give.

“I think…I think you should tell him.”

“Yeah?”

“I think—I mean, maybe you’d be better of talking to Finn or Leo or Logan—but aren’t both of your relationships proof that things develop at different rates? That more than one thing can develop at once?”

Kasey nodded. “I…yeah.”

“I mean—okay, now that I’m thinking, even me.” Remus crossed his arms, leaning against the counter with a hip. “Maybe I don’t want two different people, but I wanted to kiss Sirius before I knew I was ever going to be friends with him. That shouldn’t really make sense, but that’s how I felt. And then he became my best friend while I was also falling in love with him. At the same time.”

Kasey smiled. “Yeah, I think we all knew about your little crush.”

Remus laughed. “I’m trying to say that I think…I think you should talk to Alex, ask Natalie, and…” Remus huffed out a laugh. “And wring out all the best that life has to offer. You’ve got a good hand you’ve been dealt.”

Kasey was quiet for so long that Remus started to worry that he’d said something wrong. That maybe he’d wanted or needed something else. He looked away from Kasey, trying to give him space, but kept an eye on his expression in the mirror—it was crumbling, slowly.

His voice came out so soft that even the bathroom’s echoes barely caught it. “I think I need to retire, Remus.”

And part of Remus felt like crumbling, too. Kasey was so quiet about it, about all of it, and Remus suddenly felt painfully grateful that someone like Kasey trusted him like this. He was thankful for his old job, and all that it had given him. If he’d started as a player, he wasn’t sure he would’ve gotten that.

“I know,” Remus said just as softly. How many hours had they spent together, trying to make the pain go away? Remus leaned his palms on the counter, freezing to the touch. “God. I know, Kase. You’ve been hurting a long time, huh?”

“They tell you to fight through it,” Kasey said, eyes down and unfocused. “That’s the thing about hockey. That’s probably what wrecked me and Alex for so long. What wrecked Sirius. They just tell you to fight through what hurts and it’ll go away. And if it doesn’t go away, ignore it. Pain means you’re an athlete, you asked for this.” Remus watched Kasey close his eyes. His face would have looked almost peaceful, if his voice hadn’t had a fine tremor to it, words barely audible by the end of his next sentence. “I’m so fucking tired of it. I’m so tired.”

Remus straightened and put a hand on Kasey’s back. “Kase…”

“I don’t know what’ll happen,” Kasey said.

“What’ll happen is you’re so fucking young. They make you feel old at twenty-eight in this game, and it’s bullshit. You can do anything you want. What’ll happen is you’ll choose something incredible, Kasey. I know you will. I know that because you know how to take your time. Believe me. I understand.”

“I—I want to finish the season. Give myself that.”

Remus nodded. “All right. Layla and Lars will help you.”

Kasey looked at him. “Will you help me?”

Remus had to take a minute. He squeezed Kasey’s shoulder and nodded fiercely. “Of course I will.”

Kasey sent him a quiet smile. He put his hand over Remus’. “Guess I’ll start with choosing Nat, then, huh?”

Remus smiled back. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”

Finn just wanted to get back out onto the ice. He had thought he would be sad. He thought he would have woken up with dread and a dry mouth at the thought of seeing Logan in blue. But he hadn’t taken into consideration that now Logan’s eyes would always be on him, storm-ridden sea green, trained on him, looking for the best way to beat him. Finn could see it now, even as he mindlessly taped fresh sticks for period two. It riled Finn in a way he hadn’t known it would.

“Hey,” Leo said, sitting down in his stall beside Finn. “I know we said we were all going to Lo’s but…lots of the boys are going out tonight.”

“You want to go, babe?”

Leo shrugged. “Kinda. Don’t know if Lo knows about it, though. He won’t be looking at his phone now, gotta see after the game.”

Finn tore the tape with his teeth and smoothed his finished work. “I think we should. Today won’t be complete till I’ve got my hands all over your hips while everyone’s looking. We don’t play tomorrow, we can fly back after the team does.”

Leo’s answering smile was bright and he leaned forward to press a kiss to Finn’s cheek. “That sounds good. So good. God, this game.”

“How’s it feel to you?” Finn said. “Because its getting me unexpectedly…toasty.”

Leo snorted. “I know, I can tell. I…” He paused. “I just—I really don’t want to let one of his past me, you know? It’s stupid, but oh my god, I don’t.”

“It’s not stupid,” Finn said. “Believe me, I feel the same.”

Leo leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “He looks good out there. Blue suits him.”

“You look good out there,” Finn said.

Leo offered him a small smile, eyes lingering over Finn’s, then Finn’s mouth. “Harzy?”

“Yeah?”

Another beat of silence, another flick of his eyes up, then down. “I—miss you.”

Finn started a little, blinked, sat up straighter. Leo smiled a little bashfully, looked down, and Finn reached out and put a hand on his thigh. “You miss me? Le, I’m…”

“I just mean…I feel better. And I can tell you feel better. We were all so different, for a moment there. And I’m—I guess I mean that I’m happy.” Leo put his hand over Finn’s. “That’s all. I’m happy. I don’t know.” Leo squeezed his fingers. “I—yeah, I don’t know.”

Finn nodded, slowly, understanding. He thought of the horribly still nights that they’d shared after Logan had first left. All of their trying, all of their tight grips. It did feel better now. Finn scooted closer, took Logan’s necklace from around his own neck and slipped it over Leo’s surprised, soft expression. He took Leo’s chin gently between his fingers and kissed him, because he could.

“I love you happy.” Finn said. and tapped the necklace and kissed him again. “For luck.”

“The necklace or the kiss?” Leo’s smile was bright.

“The necklace. The kiss is because I love you. Here’s another.” Finn kissed Leo’s forehead, then rested his own against it. “And I miss you, too. I don’t know exactly what I mean, either.”

Leo let out a breath. “Yeah…”

“But I do.”

Leo closed his eyes and nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

The second period started off with a bang. Evgeni took on Reaves—and Finn honestly couldn’t be sure who won, only that they were both still talking a mile-a-minute on their way to their penalties.

“Does Reaves speak Russian?” Finn leaned in to say to Jackson, who just snorted.

“Kuns doesn’t care if you know what he’s saying during fights. It’s the feeling, Jackson, the feeling. They scare.”

Finn smiled. “Right. Reaves totally looks scared.” They looked like they were going to break down the glass.

“17, on Tremblay.” Coach tapped Finn’s shoulder. “Remember.”

“Oh, Coach, I remember.”

Finn next jumped the boards beside Sirius to swap out with Pascal’s fourth line. He narrowly avoided a hit by Blais with the puck on his stick, and managed a slick pass to Olli, only to have the puck snatched out of the air by Montague. Chants of Saint filled Madison Square Garden again. Saint, Saint, Saint. When he saw Panarin jump the boards, he fell in at Sirius’ shoulder.

“It’s not working up high.”

Trocheck followed Panarin, and then—

“Tremz’ll know if you go low.” Sirius was chewing on his mouthguard, eyes on where Logan was skating towards the face-off circle—towards Finn. “He’ll block. If he’s not shooting, he likes getting up in the crease to protect the goal.”

“We’ll have to try and get him unmatched from the Panarin line, surprise him. Their guys seem to like Lo and him together.”

Sirius nodded as they turned back to the face-off. “Try to trap him in the corners, maybe the others will go for a change.”

Sirius bent across from Trocheck, and Finn—well, he stopped for a minute. He had known what would happen just now, but he hadn’t realized exactly what this would mean, facing Logan’s line. He looked right into those familiar green eyes. They hadn’t been this close all night, and now Finn leaned forward, skate braced against Logan’s, snug shoulder-to-shoulder. Distract.

“Sorry, what’s your name again?” Finn said, and pretended to look back at Logan’s jersey. “Huh. Can’t pronounce that. I’ll just have to call you seventy-one.”

Logan suppressed a smile but said nothing. He kept his eyes forward, but there was a blush to the back of his neck.

And there are the old teammates. Chatting it up—well, O’Hara is, anyway.

“Seventy-one,” Finn said, mockingly thoughtful. “Got the last pick, eh? The dregs?”

“Harzy,” Logan said in a low voice.

“Hey, remember earlier today when we made out?”

That made Logan look at him, eyes pleased and fiery, just as the ref dropped the puck. Logan cursed and gave Finn a nice, hard shove, but not before Finn got the puck from Sirius and sent it up the boards. That was as good as a starting gun for Logan, and Finn gave chase. He saw his chance and took it. He pushed through one hard stride, then another, before pinning Logan not too softly against the boards, the puck trapped between both of their skates.

“Hi there, Tremblay,” Finn breathed, mouth perfectly positioned against Logan’s neck.

He knew Logan could feel his breath there, especially when he let out a frustrated noise low in his throat, and tried to shove back against Finn, free up the puck, but Finn fought right back.

“This? You want this?” Finn groaned as Logan shoved an elbow back against his ribs. “Oh, ouch, what was that for? Thought you loved me.”

“Finn,” Logan said through his teeth. The crowd was beginning to get restless and loud, but Finn just wanted to smile. He couldn’t help that they were matched for strength, that they could predict each other’s every move.

“Never felt you fight me like this before, huh?” Finn made a try for the puck but Logan’s broad shoulders edged in front of him again, making him have to switch to his other side. He could feel Logan’s sweat against him from the damp curls of his hair peaking out from his helmet, taste the salt of it. It was all him.

Logan let out a low groan of effort again and finally knocked the puck free. Both of them dived for it, only to find Remus there, snatching it up, tapping it to Thomas, back to Remus, back to Finn to tapped it in a quick east-west to Remus who pulled his stick back for a slap-shot—it rattled off the crossbar and into the Rangers’ net.

Finn put his arms up with a shout and Remus turned towards him, pointing his glove at him.

“Yeah, Harz!” Remus grinned as they crashed together, Thomas putting one hand on each of their helmets.

“Having fun in the corners there, Finnegan?” Thomas said.

“Very much so. Gonna get an earful for it later, though.” Finn laughed as he skated down the bench to tap gloves with his teammates, receiving a slap on the helmet from Coach as he used the gate to get into the bench. He glanced up and caught green eyes staring at him for just a second.

“My boyfriend loves those,” Finn said quietly to himself. “My boyfriend reads those.”

Wow, all smiles from O’Hara. Certainly pleased with himself over that goal.

Finn looked down the ice at Leo, and he couldn’t really see his eyes, but he could tell that Leo was looking back by the slow, exasperated and fond shake of his head.

“You say something?” Evgeni asked from beside him.

Finn pointed to Leo. “My boyfriend’s the goaltender for the Gryffindor Lions.”

Evgeni made a face, brown eyes confused. “Harzy, I’m know this?”

Finn just smiled, letting out a long breath. “I know. I just wanted to say it someone.”

Logan sat back in his stall with his eyes closed.

“How you doing, kid?” Alex’s voice said.

“I’m a little…fluttered.”

“You’re…fluttered?”

“I think I said it wrong.”

“Flustered?”

Logan rubbed at his eyes, then laughed. “I guess. Turned on feels closer.”

Alex must have been drinking water because there was a snorting sound and then he was choking through a laugh. “Oh-kay. Okay, Tremblay, wow. Zero to one-hundred.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Alex laughed again, taking another sip of water. “I mean, keep in mind I believe you’re referring to my brother’s little clean hit, but don’t be sorry.”

“Huh,” Percy said from where he was re-lacing his skates. “I believe Finn was hoping it would be perceived as a bit more dirty, actually.”

Logan laughed. “Shut up.”

Logan felt easier in this locker room. Part of him worried it was only due to the mere proximity of the Lions, of Leo and Finn, of Sirius and Pascal. He had been living without the promise of see you tonight and he still got sad going home to an empty apartment. But he liked this team. They were kind and tight-knit. They pushed each other and uplifted each other. Even the quiet, somber ones like Luke—though, Logan guessed he could be considered a quiet and, sometimes, somber one himself.

He stood up. “They’re starting on the power play, which is dangerous.”

Percy put up his hands. “I didn’t trip Nadeau. Fucking refs.”

“Cap—uh.” Logan shook his head, threw his jersey back over his head so he’d miss any second looks he got for that. “Black is probably really fired up so. Dangerous around the net. Whether you tripped him or not.”

“So?” Alex said. “You’ve got a slapper that can go the distance.”

“Non, they’ll expect that. They’ll put Walker right in front of it.”

“Hm.” Alex stood, too, throwing his shoulder pads on over his bare chest and beginning to smooth the velcro.

“Well,” Percy said. “You know Knut better than any of us. We’ve watched tape, but…”

That brought Logan up short. He looked over at Percy, his fair hair wild from drying sweat.

“What?” he asked, though he’d heard him.

“What’ll work?” Percy asked, like it was obvious.

Logan opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of a single thing to say. What’ll work against Leo? He knew, obviously, but…

“Five-hole.”

They all looked over at Saint, who had spoken—who rarely spoke between periods usually. He was sitting in his stall beside Luke, cold towel around his neck.

“He’s tall,” Saint continued. “Long legs, he can’t get down as quickly as he always should. But he’s good with his hands, he’ll snatch anything glove-side right out of the air.” He looked over at Logan, eyes knowing. You can’t do this, so I’m doing it for you. “He’s been doing it all night. But so have I.”

Logan couldn’t keep his eyes off Leo. The way he came back out for the third, marking up the freshly smoothed blue paint in front of his goal with precise, measured strides. He was all the way at the other end of the rink, but Logan had a feeling Leo was watching him, too. When Leo came to the bench for a full water bottle before the first puck drop, Logan saw that he was right.

Logan almost didn’t want to look over. Finn had caused enough of a stir in him. But he couldn’t help it. He found Leo’s blue eyes. He had his mask up.

Hi, Logan saw Leo mouth.

Logan bit his lip. “Hi.”

Then Leo reached into his jersey, brought out a necklace, and kissed it. With a start, Logan realized it was his fleur-de-lis. He felt himself flush hot. He felt himself smile. He touched the place on his own chest where the pendant had once rested. Leo smiled, pulled his mask down over his face, pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then at Logan.

Logan recognized the challenge.

Ha! A little message from Leo Knut there. We’ll see if Tremblay rises to the bait and evens out this game.

They had been right about the power play. Sirius was buckling down and fierce. Logan felt the same. Any hyper-awareness that he’d had about playing against his old team faded to the back of his mind. Muscle memory took over. He didn’t hit—he didn’t think he could bring himself to really let that go—but their faces blurred and the Gryffindor red could have been Detroit’s. After each shift, he barely wanted to sit on the bench.

He found himself shoulder to shoulder with Finn again, determined not to give into him this time. Determined to maybe feed him a bit of his own fire.

“Do you remember,” Logan began. “That first summer we spent in New York together, and you read me those books?”

Finn smiled. “Ha, you can’t get me. Alex already told me. Ha-ha.”

Logan kept his eyes ahead. “I think I was already in love with you.”

Logan had the puck on his stick before Finn could even close his mouth.

Oh man, this is what Tremblay’s famous for, Dean. As fast backwards as he is forward and—those feet. One of the best skaters in the league. He passes to Morgan, Morgan to Panarin—the magnetism! Wow, back to Tremblay, over to Marshall, narrowly avoiding O’Hara on his way down the ice, Tremblay, back to Marshall, back to—Oh! And he scores! Tremblaaay!

Oh, what a look on Tremblay’s face! That’s bliss, man. That’s bliss!

Logan slammed up into the glass with a shout, Percy just behind him.

“What a pass!” Logan managed to say from beneath Percy’s glove all but trying to smother his face.

“Like old times, eh?” Percy laughed, then turned to call to Finn. “Eh, O’Hara! Owe you one, you fucking beauty!”

Finn waved him off, but the gesture did draw Logan’s eyes to Leo. He was tracing the blue paint with his stick, like he always did after a puck got past him, head down, trying to re-focus. Logan knew that this was normal for him, but that didn’t make the twinge of guilt in his gut any better. He had, for the first time, been the one to cause that look on Leo’s face. Leo was hard on himself. Logan knew this from many sleepless nights spent with him. The fact that it was Logan who had scored…he knew that didn’t make it easier for Leo.

And even still. A certain triumph. Leo. He’d gotten one past Leo.

But the victory didn’t last. No more than four minutes later, Finn and Remus were like hounds on the ice. Logan had almost forgotten. They were playing for the playoffs. Remus squeezed one in beneath Saint’s left pad with three minutes to go, and then Finn, nearly swiping Alex’s feet out from under him in the process, pulled the Lions ahead of the tie for a clean win. A clinch. They were two play-off teams now.

Logan was happy for them. He wondered if they would get to meet each other in the first round, depending on who the wild card ended up being. But Logan couldn’t watch them all celebrate on the ice, piling against Finn by the glass, gloves on the ice. That, he couldn’t quite do.

Remus could feel the happiness coming off of Sirius. They had done it. They were going to the play-offs. Sirius had even been almost receptive when the reporters had surrounded him in his stall. He’d even forgone his baseball hat that usually kept his eyes shaded and unreadable. Remus had had a bit of a moment, watching him push his sweat-drenched hair out of his bright eyes, answering questions in English, then a few in French.

“Thank you, Sirius,” a few of the writers had said, and then Sirius had smiled with a merci.

Remus joined him by the fridge that held sports drinks and water. He nudged their shoulders together. “Merci.”

“Shh,” Sirius said. He sent Remus a smile, though, pressed a kiss to his temple.

Finn’s parents were at the game, of course to watch both of their sons play. Remus had only met them a handful of times, but the energy they brought with them into the room was classic. Remus could practically smell the early morning practices, alarm clocks and high school locker rooms and jerseys on clothing hangers in stalls.

“How you doing, kid?” Finn’s mom grinned, pressing a hard kiss to Finn’s cheek and rubbing his back. “What a game. Almost a hatty. How’d it feel?”

Finn’s dad, Ramsey—a tall man with the O’Hara’s soft brown eyes and a handsome face with tortoise-shell glasses—rubbed a hand through Finn’s hair. Remus could tell he’d been doing that since Finn had only come up to his knees. “So weird to see Logan in blue.”

“Yeah,” Finn said. He still had his arm tightly around his mom’s shoulders, and his knuckles looked like he was really holding onto her. If Remus didn’t know better, he’d say there was a bit of emotion in Finn’s voice. He thought of what Alex had told him. My boyfriend reads those. He thought of how long Finn had been waiting for a sentence like that from Logan. “Yeah. It was weird, but it was good. See Alex yet?”

“Not yet, came to you first,” Ramsey said. “Al said he was gonna come down here to you, anyway. Oh, Leo—” Ramsey smiled at Leo as he came to Finn’s shoulder, and held out his arms. “What a fucking game, man. Hot hands on you.”

Leo accepted the hug and the slap on the back, then pointedly ignored Finn’s exaggerated look at his hands. “Thank you.”

“Aw, Leo,” Haley put her hands on his cheeks. “You’re looking good. I’m so glad, you boys are looking so good, I was…I was worried there.” Then her eyes caught on someone behind Leo and Remus looked to see. “Kasey Winter, what the hell are you standing all the way over there for? I see those shy eyes of yours looking at me.”

Kasey came over in his usual, almost sheepish way. Remus felt a pang go through him, thinking back to seeing that expression just over an hour ago, trying to be strong.

“How you doing?” She had her hands on his face like she had with Leo. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.” Kasey nodded.

“Hm.” Her eyes went over his face. “You know Alexander never shuts up about you.”

“I don’t think I shut up about him, either.” Kasey’s eyes went to Remus’ for a moment. “At least not in my head.”

“Good.”

Remus smiled. He looked over at Sirius. He had been going to ask if they were joining the others at the bar, but the look on Sirius’ face stopped him in his tracks. He was staring at the O’Hara family, grey eyes without walls. It was such a rare sight that Remus reached out for him without thinking, put his hand on Sirius’. Sirius blinked, watched Haley O’Hara lean up for Finn to whisper something in her ear, watched the way she put her hand over her heart and looked up at her son with that heart written all over her face.

“I’m fine,” Sirius said. “I just—wonder sometimes. About—I mean, if I had had…”

“I know.” Remus rubbed his thumb over Sirius’ knuckles.

Sirius squeezed his hand before clearing his throat and standing, reaching for his shirt.

“Hello, mon fils.” And Pascal was there suddenly, arm going around Sirius’ shoulders, squeezing tightly. “Going out with the boys?”

Sirius swallowed, leaned into Pascal a little, then nodded. “Ouais, we’re going.”

Remus thought about what he’d said to Kasey. They were all so young. And he suddenly wanted his family there. He wanted to see Julian for more than a few weekends a year and a month and a half in the summers. He had an almost aching want for a family with Sirius. And everything, all the time that came with that. It knocked his gaze unsteady for a moment. He looked at James, who was on the phone with Lily, one AirPod in and laughing as he did up his game suit tie.

“Put him on,” James was saying. “Harry totally knows what icing means, Lils!”

Remus smiled and reached for his towel to dry his hair one more time, only the room erupted around him. Logan and Alex had walked in. Alex immediately ran at Finn, dodging around his parents to put his little brother into a headlock.

“Ugh, Alex—” Finn scrabbled at Alex’s grip. “No—Mom.”

“Alexander, release your brother, he won fair and square.”

Leo, who had his arms around Logan, laughed as Logan imitated Finn. “Mom.”

“Ooh, it’s Tremblay,” Evgeni said, knocking Logan’s hat down over his eyes as he passed by, already dressed. “Big bad Ranger boy. We smush you. Smush.”

Jackson, behind him, righted his hat with a pat. “See you at the bar? What’s it called—uh, something-something?”

“Sure,” Alex called, still with a fighting Finn under his arm. “I’ll have Logan put it in the group chat.”

“Finn reached up to wack blindly at Alex’s face. “C’mon, man.”

Finally, laughing, Alex released him and accepted a hug from his mother. With access to Finn now, Logan gave him a shove.

“You fucker.”

“Tremblay,” Alex said, arm around Haley. “Language around my mother.”

Haley scoffed. “Oh, please.”

Remus laughed with the room just as his phone started ringing. A photo of Julian’s nostrils popped up beneath his name and Remus shook his head.

“When did you do that…” he muttered to himself, and then answered. “Hey, bud.”

“Such a good game! And—so weird that Tremzy? But like so cool to see him and Finn, like, like—battle for it. And also good goal! With Harzy. Really pretty.”

“Hi, sweetheart,” his mother’s voice came. “Oh, yes, we just went wild!”

“Hey, thanks,” Remus smiled. “Yeah, it was pretty weird.” He glanced over to where Finn had his hands up in surrender still, half talking, half laughing as Logan spoke a mile-a-minute in French.

“I wanna talk to Sirius,” Julian said matter-of-factly.

“Ooh, yes, put Sirius on for a moment. I have a wedding idea.”

“That you can’t tell me?”

“It’s about you! Hand him over!”

Remus rolled his eyes, but smiled as he nudged the phone at Sirius. “Jules and my mother demand your attention.”

Sirius looked down from where he had finished up half the buttons of his shirt, eyes going happy. “Give it.” He wedged the phone between his shoulder and cheek as he finished the buttons. “Ça va, Jules? Avez-vous regardé le match?”

Remus felt all warm inside at how slowly he spoke. Julian had started learning French in school, and Remus could hear his OUI! from where he was.

Sirius smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling, as he listened to them.

See? Remus mouthed, and Sirius just reached out to stroke through the wet hair at the base of his neck. Remus leaned into it and listened for a few moments as Sirius replied to whatever Julian or his mother was saying. Soft hums and sounds of agreement until he finally said, with a wicked grin at Remus, “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”

Remus flicked him in the ribs.

“Non, not flying home,” Sirius said. “We’re going to hang out with Logan and some of the Rangers because we miss him.”

“I heard that!” Logan called over.

“Just a little!” Sirius called back, then held the phone in his hand, suit jacket over his arm. “Okay, Jules. Okay, I’ll tell him. Good night.” He laughed. “Yes, I know. Okay. Okay. Ouais, okay.” Remus put a palm to his forehead, shaking his head as Sirius tried to hid his laugh. “Okay, yes. Got it. Ouais, promise. Okay. Okay, night.”

Sirius handed the phone back to Remus. “I don’t want him to grow up any more.”

Remus sighed and accepted Sirius’ gentle kiss. “Me neither.”

The bar was loud and dim, with seemingly endless worn booths and many pool tables— also, everyone seemed to know Alex. The bartenders, two middle-aged women in black tank-tops and a sun and moon tattoo on their upper left arms that had to go together, each gave him long, hard hugs. Kasey, too, which Remus shouldn’t have been surprised about. The walls were plastered with photographs of the two women with different players—Rangers and otherwise. Above the bar was a great big sign: No Autographs, No Pictures. If We See A Flash—You’re OUT!

Remus smiled. He could see why Alex liked it here. Public, but no where they’d be mobbed should it come to that.

“I guess you’ve been coming here a long time,” Sirius said, coming to Kasey’s shoulder.

“Oh, yeah, Cap. Since the old days.”

“My Lord,” one of the women said—thick braided hair that was died pink at the ends and tied back in a long twist. She had soft eyes, russet-brown skin, and she stood tall like a dancer. “Kasey Winter, you have brought Sirius Black into my bar. Finally.”

Kasey just laughed and tapped Sirius’ chest. “Sirius, meet Holly, and that’s her wife Jude over there.” He nodded towards a woman with a blond pixie cut and green eyes that were almost as startling as Logan’s. She stood with one hand in her back pocket, pale skin covered in various tattoos. She was laughing at something Evgeni was saying before replying in Russian.

Remus thought Sirius looked a little overwhelmed by it all. He drew his gaze away from the surprisingly big space and towards Holly with one of his shyer smiles. “Nice to meet you.”

She laughed, a contagious thing. “You really are a formal one.”

Kasey rolled his eyes. “Not really.” He reached around Sirius to put a hand on Remus’ shoulder. “This is Remus.”

“Hi there,” Remus said. “This is an amazing place you’ve got here.”

“Oh, thank you, darling.” She reached over the bar and put her hand on Remus’. “You know, my wife grew up in your hometown. We followed your story all through college. We were so sorry when that nasty Grayback…He should have been banned from the League a long time ago. God, and then everything with that fucking Snake team. And I know we don’t know each other but we feel a lot of pride about you.” She gave a hard nod.

That nasty Grayback. Remus had never actually heard anyone blame him before. “I—oh. Wow.”

“I’m proud, too.” Sirius’ arm found his waist and Remus was so, so grateful.

“Sharmall.” Remus jumped a little at a very much higher-pitched version of Finn’s voice.

“A’Horo,” came the response from Percy Marshall, already standing with Alex and Will Morgan at a pool table.

Remus watched as Finn, coming in with Logan and Leo, all but launched himself at Percy, and he couldn’t have deciphered the noises that came out of their mouths if he wanted to.

“You fucking M&M! Fucking snack!” Percy held Finn’s face between his hands. “Treat you a two? A three? Crack the egg.”

Finn shook him by the shoulders. “Fuckin’ crack it.”

“Do you…understand this?” Remus asked Logan, who was greeted by Holly by a very loving and rather comforting hand on his cheek.

Logan was just shaking his head. “Yes. Only because I was there.”

“And?” Leo asked, looking just as bewildered as Remus.

“They’re going to have beers,” Logan said. “And they’re saying hello.”

Leo blinked. “I—okay.”

“I told you,” Logan said. “They’re crazy together.” He sighed, smile exasperated, and looked to Holly. “Hi, Hol. Sorry about them.”

“Oh, we’ve seen worse.” She held up her hands and poured Logan a drink—quick shot of rum, crack of a coke bottle. “Sorry about the loss, honeybee.” Her eyes moved to Leo. “And don’t I know who this is. Congrats on the win.”

Logan accepted the drink with a smile, and put his arm around Leo’s waist. “This is my boyfriend. Leo.”

Remus watched the way Leo’s expression caught, surprise and something so bright that Remus could barely look at it.

Holly pressed her lips together in a smile. “Hi, sweetheart. Can I pour you something? I can’t tell. All thought I couldn’t tell with Tremblay here, either. Jude googled him—ha!”

Leo nodded, hand going to his wallet. “I can—do you want…”

“I believe you.” She cracked the cold bottle from the fridge that Sirius has asked for. “Some of the older boys try to bring in the rookies sometimes. They know they can’t get passed us, though.”

Remus turned to look up at Sirius while the others moved onto the game from that night. Sirius shuffled him down the bar a little ways before tapping a stool for Remus to sit on so that they were eye-to-eye.

“Okay?” Sirius asked quietly.

“Yeah, totally.” Sirius looked at him and Remus smiled, put a hand on his chest. “I really am. I promise. It just—his name takes me off guard. I was surprised—most people just go sorry about the hit, not—you know. Not like he meant it. Not like—I know no one knows what really…happened. But it was nice to hear someone get close.”

Remus took a breath, realized he was rambling. He rolled his shoulder a little. It would never move quite in the way it used to, scar tissue and stress, but he was lucky.

Sirius nodded quietly. “Ouais. I see.”

Remus straightened, smiling when he saw Evgeni hurtling towards them, pushing right through Finn and Percy to do it.

“Hey, Kuns,” Remus said.

“Loops.” Evgeni put his hands up, one holding a beer. Who knew where his jacket was but his tie was barely hanging onto his neck and his shirt was unbuttoned almost all the way, showing some of his tattoos. “The party is me.”

Remus raised his eyebrow, but nodded. “Sure is.”

“Cap,” Finn said, tugging Evgeni’s tie up to catch over his face. “Percy insists I introduce you properly, whatever the hell that means.”

“Hello.” Percy looked star-struck as he shook Sirius’ hand. “Sir.”

Remus tried to bite back a smile but Finn snorted. “Perc, what the fuck.”

Percy was pink around his ears. “Hello, not sir.”

Sirius just smiled wryly. “Hi…”

“I love you,” Percy said plainly.

“Okay, that’s enough.” Finn put an arm around Percy’s shoulders to steer him away. “And you’re not even drunk, I forgot how fucking weird you are.” He pressed a sloppy kiss to Percy’s temple. “Fuckin’ M&M.”

“Kit-Kat.”

“Jolly Rancher.”

Remus hid his laugh in Sirius’ chest, where he felt the rumble of Sirius’ own. Sirius’ palm came up to cover the back of Remus’ neck, thumb stroking gently.

“Loup,” Sirius said softly beneath the music playing. “Something made you sad earlier, though.”

“What? Oh. Yeah,” Remus smiled a little, pleased at the way Sirius was pressing so close. “I can’t actually say. It’s not about me.” His eyes went to Kasey. “You’ll know soon.” Sirius’ eyes followed his. “You probably already do.”

Sirius looked for a long time. Alex and Kasey, sitting snug in a booth together, looking like they were having a soft, earnest conversation. Kasey might have been crying a little, but they were laughing, too, and Alex touched their foreheads together.

“Ouais…” Sirius said finally.

Remus smoothed his hands up Sirius’ chest, around to clasp behind his neck. “I like this. I like us all together again.”

He looked at Pascal, Thomas, and Leo, standing and watching Finn, Will, and Logan saying something that sounded like it was about Harvard. Percy was beside Leo, seemingly whispering extra details into his ear.

“Speaking of sad earlier,” Remus said, and tilted Sirius’ face back towards his own. “I saw you watching the O’Hara’s—or A’Horo’s now, I guess.” Sirius half smiled, thumb still tracing lines down Remus’ neck. “Our families are yours. Especially mine. Okay? All of us…even some fucking Rangers.”

Sirius barely had time to smile when, as if on cue, Holly announced the arrival of a few more.

“Saint Montague,” she said, voice somehow carrying over it all. “Get your ass over here, sweetheart.”

“Monty!” Percy called as Saint came in, followed close by Luke Deveaux, whose eyes went immediately to Sirius and Remus, tangled up.

Saint put a palm up to Percy. “Nope.”

Percy let out something close to a cackled ha! and turned back to Leo.

Saint was really something to behold, Remus had to admit—by Sirius’ face, he could tell Sirius had to admit it, too. He had tan skin and hair that had been streaked blond—it was a strange cross between angelic and something akin to punk. Remus caught Sirius’ eye, whose mouth quirked. They watched as Holly clasped his hand, saying his drink was on the house—sorry about the game, darling, I know how you hate to lose.

Saint gave off an air of arrogance that should have dulled the effect. His chin tilted like he knew just how good he was. But it didn’t dull anything. Especially not when his light, liquid sun eyes looked Remus up and down once. “Lupin.”

“Montague.”

His eyes flicked to Sirius with a challenging little smirk. “Black.”

Sirius only nodded. Saint’s eyes went back to Remus.

“Pretty little things you do on that ice.”

Remus arched a brow. “Thanks…Good game.”

“It was fine. I’ve had better.”

“Obviously,” Sirius muttered.

Remus glanced up at him and Sirius huffed, but only took a drink of his beer.

Saint just smiled, then looked back at Luke as he called Holly over again. “You want something, Tweedle?”

Luke simply nodded and came to his side, leaning against the bar and watching Saint’s profile as he ordered for the both of them. Sirius glanced at Remus again. Remus would do anything for Sirius to keep sending him those little silent communication looks.

Be nice, Remus mouthed.

“You know,” Saint said, turning to Sirius. “Your boy was pretty wrecked when he first got here.” He looked towards Logan.

Sirius blinked. “Logan’s trade was a surprise.”

“Yeah, even we can agree to that,” Saint nodded. “But all I’m saying to you is that…” Saint hesitated. He looked down at Luke, then back to Sirius. “He’s doing okay now.”

“I know.”

“We’re good people.”

“Never said you weren’t.”

Saint laughed and rolled his eyes before throwing an arm around Luke’s shoulders and steering him away. “So stop looking at us like we’re just a bunch of Rangers! Oh—” He looked over his shoulder. “But we are going to have to do something about him calling you Captain all the time in our room.”

“No deal,” Sirius said.

Saint laughed again, but turned away.

“Meanie, Captain.” Remus smiled, knocking his knuckles lightly into Sirius’ arm.

“I love Logan,” Sirius said in a low voice, taking a drink. “But we are still hanging out with a bunch of Rangers.”

“What do you want, Tremz?” Remus heard Finn call from across the bar. “Another round, I’m buying.”

“You know what I want!”

“Bleh, sugar-water,” Finn said, then grabbed Leo’s hand and pulled him between the tables. Leo barely had time to let Logan take his drink from his hand and send a laugh over his shoulder. Finn spun Leo around a few times before settling his hands on Leo’s hips and resting him against the bar, murmuring something gentle to him. Remus smiled at Leo’s smile.

“Do you think they’re going to be okay?”

Remus looked up at Sirius, who had something akin to his game face on—maybe a little more worried.

“We were okay.”

“Yes.”

“And we’re okay now.”

Sirius looked down at him. He was biting at the inside of his cheek. “Yes.”

“Yes.” Remus reached up and stroked a thumb over the taut cheek until Sirius relaxed. “They’re getting to choose.”

“That doesn’t mean everything’s going to be in their control.”

“They know that, I think.”

Sirius nodded. “Ouais…”

“Cap!”

They looked up at Logan’s voice—met Saint’s pointed look on the way—and watched Logan wave at him, standing with Pascal.

“Come here. I want you in this photo.”

“Oh, of the night we beat you?” Sirius called back, but he was smiling, slipping out of Remus’ arms. Remus just shook his head and watched him go. “I thought we weren’t allowed photos?”

Logan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but we’re the ones taking them.” He gave Sirius’ suit jacket a tug, surprising Sirius into one of his real smiles, so that Percy could snap the picture.

Everyone seemed reluctant to leave—reluctant to have enough drinks to risk a hungover flight or practice tomorrow, but reluctant to leave all the same. Neither Holly or Jude seemed to mind that they all ended up just sitting around a pool table, rolling some of the balls back and forth across the felt mindlessly and laughing much too loudly, though the bar was emptying out.

It stirred a fond memory from college for Remus—something that didn’t happen often. It even included Grayback. Something that happened even less. There had been a blizzard, power out, locked down in their team houses, four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches each, and with a mission to drink the cold beer before it got warm.

Remus looked around from his place settled between Sirius and Thomas. Evgeni was trying to tell a story that was half in Russian and Jackson was giving what was sure to be a very wrong translation until Saint finally raised a finger and said he spoke Russian. This resulted in a very sloppy kiss on his cheek from Evgeni. Luke might have scooted Saint’s chair a little closer to himself.

Logan and Finn had Leo between them, touches casual and happy. Percy and Will had had the table in fits telling Harvard stories, and Kasey had actually put his full, large palm over Alex’s mouth to stop him from telling an old story from them being on the Rangers together.

It felt like a family. And Remus had had that feeling in college. A sickish wave of fear washed over him then. He didn’t want now to feel like then, promising that anything could go horribly wrong. He looked at Sirius, but he was turned away, talking to Alex. Remus shifted, wished he had some water. Remus felt a nudge from his right.

“Heyo,” Thomas said softly. “What’s up?”

Remus shook his head. “Nothing.” He smiled. Took a breath. “Nothing. I just…I love this.”

“Hurts sometimes, huh?”

Remus huffed out a relieved laugh. “Yeah. Exactly, T.”

Thomas put an arm around his shoulders, across the back of his chair. “I got you, Loops. We all got you.”

From his other side, Sirius kept talking to Alex, but he seemed to hear. He put his hand on Remus’ knee, warm and familiar.

“Ooh, I took his spot,” Thomas mock-whispered, and Remus laughed.

“No,” Remus said. He felt more grounded. He would enjoy this. He was enjoying this. “You stay right where you are.”

Logan had watched how close Finn held Leo, hands on his hips. Their heads ducked together, cheek to cheek. Right there in the middle of the crowd. Each time he had looked over, Logan had gotten different views. Finn saying something, Leo’s eyes closing as he laughed, Finn ducking to press a soft kiss to Leo’s neck. Leo sending him a wink over Finn’s shoulder, Finn grinning at him over Leo’s.

And then Leo had leaned into Logan’s side, ducked down to whisper in his ear. Take us home.

God, this place, his New York apartment, called home in Leo’s voice.

Now, Logan kept Finn close, his back against Finn’s chest as they leaned against his kitchen counter to watch Leo open his fridge, and let out a long sigh at the empty shelves.

“Oh, Tremblay. Tremblay, Tremblay, Tremblay.” He picked up an unopened bottle of ketchup and stared at it sadly. “As my mama would say, this is just asking for trouble.”

“I’m sorry?” Logan said.

“What are you eating?”

“At the rink.”

“We’ve FaceTimed, though! You bought stuff! I walked around the grocery store in your hand, they have the lettuce you like and everything.”

“Ouais…I do better when you give me really good instructions.”

Leo sent him a bland look around the door. “You need really good instructions to buy lettuce?”

“I make egg and ham sandwiches?”

Leo turned to the stove where there was still evidence of said sandwich on a spatula and pan. He made a face. “Remind me to get you a spoon rest.”

“Okay,” Logan laughed, and then tilted his head to the side to give Finn more room where he was beginning to kiss his neck.

“Kitchen looks good, though. From what I was expecting.” Leo opened a few barren cupboards and made a hmm noise.

“But I hang the towels up,” Logan said, and Finn’s answering snicker washed over his skin warmly. “And, regarde, the key bowl. By the door.”

“You don’t even have your tea,” Leo’s frowned was actually concerned now. “Lo.”

“I don’t know,” Logan sighed. He tucked himself back against Finn more. “It’s not…”

But what did he want to say? It’s not the same? That’s for at home. But this was supposed to be his home.

“It’s okay, baby,” Finn said softly, pressing gentle kisses to his jaw that bled into one another, into his words, too.

“No,” Leo said. “No, this is his home, Finn. I want him to have the things he likes here.” Leo looked over at them, and his expression softened. Finn held out his hand for him, and Leo took it, letting Finn pull him in, peppering his jaw in those same kisses. Leo smiled, hands going to thread in both Logan and Finn’s hair.

“I did have it. At one point. I guess I just…” Logan took a breath, and Finn when to speak but Leo put a hand over his mouth, making them all laugh. Logan sighed and knocked his forehead against Leo’s chest. “If I don’t have too many things, then it’s not…”

“I get it,” Leo said, and then released Finn and bent to press a soft kiss to his mouth. “They should call you Talker.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Finn said. “But Leo’s right. This should feel homey. Otherwise why would we come and visit?”

Logan scoffed and elbowed him in the ribs.

“Ouch, Tremblay.”

“Oh, non. Don’t even get me started again on the ice today.” Logan rolled his eyes.

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Blame Coach.”

Leo snorted. “Oh, Coach told you pin Lo up all hot and heavy?”

Finn just grinned. “I’d call it being willing to play the corners, but you can call it whatever you like, Nutter-Butter.”

Leo just shook his head, laughing. “C’mon. I want out of this fucking suit.”

“That can be arranged.” Finn looked down at Logan as Leo wandered towards Logan’s bedroom, peaking none too subtly into the bathroom on his way. Finn tugged on Logan’s tie. “Sorry. I should let you talk.”

“Don’t be,” Logan said. “You’re still not used to it.” He smiled. “Me neither.”

Finn laughed. “Guess so. Come on. Show me the Tremblay Chamber.”

“Stop with the last name,” Logan laughed, but took his hand and pulled him up from the counter. “Makes it feel like you’re still on the other team.”

“Logan,” Finn said in his ear, still close to his back as they walked. “Lolo.”

“Non.”

He dropped to a whisper. “Lo, baby.”

Logan just glanced at him, biting back a smile.

“Yeah, you like that.” Finn’s voice was cocky as they pushed the bedroom door open to find Leo seeming to be checking Logan’s lightbulbs on his bedside tables. “Okay, Leonardo. What is happening.”

“These pre-furnished places come with harsh lights sometimes! Like the cool toned ones, like a hotel—” Leo ducked down to see beneath the shade. “Logan likes the yellower warm ones.”

Logan’s heart squeezed. “Le, the light’s fine.”

“No, they’re cool and you will just live with it. Okay, tea and lightbulbs.” Leo straightened, shrugging out of his suit jacket. “That’s my list so far. Oh, no, spoon rest. I should write this down.”

“No, you should sit down,” Finn said. He nodded towards the bed. “There, right there. Go on. Sit, and I’ll give you a fun surprise.”

Leo look suspicious, but he sat on the edge of Logan’s bed. Finn turned Logan around by his shoulders and walked him backwards until he fell back into Leo’s lap. Logan laughed, but rested his head back against Leo’s shoulder.

“A good surprise,” Leo said softly, and kissed the underside of Logan’s chin.

Finn lowered himself to one knee in front of Logan. “All this Rangers blue…” Finn tisked his tongue. He smoothed his hands up Logan’s thighs, the material of his suit catching against his fingers. “Even made it into your socks and tie.” Finn looked up at him. “That has Alex written all over it.”

Logan took a steadying breath. “He, um—took me to his tailor.”

“I bet he did.” Finn kissed the inside of his knee. “And he had to trace this inseam…” Finn’s mouth trailed up his strong thigh, hand against his knee. “Lucky human.”

Logan couldn’t help spreading his legs a little, eyes on Finn’s mouth. Leo adjusted behind him, feet tucked back and knees against Logan’s hips.

“It is a nice suit.” Leo’s hands went to the navy blue tie in question and gave it a little tug. “But I think we should take it off of him now.”

Finn’s hands went to Logan’s belt and he did a little whistle to the tune of it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas as slid the leather free from its buckle.

Logan let out a soft laugh, leaning back into Leo as he slid the tie out from around his throat. “Shh.”

The nights were lonely. Logan always felt himself as the lone weight in his bed acutely, like he was sinking into it. It had been even been worse in his dorm bed, at Harvard. Narrow space, no room for anyone but him. He’d curled into himself, back against the window with the rattling AC. Finn, oceans away on the other side of the room, breathing and shifting and talking until neither of them could keep their eyes open. Laughing too loud and Percy banging on his ceiling to get them to shut up.

And then Finn’s bed, in his parents’ New York brownstone. Bigger. Stepping over the air mattress on the floor in the morning. Him and Leo sharing a hotel room on the road, each with their own double bed. Wishing so hard to throw off his own covers and just—just climb in and close those inches of ugly hotel carpet between them, sleep turned into Leo’s chest instead of trying to block out the blaring red numbers of the clocks on their respective bedside tables.

And now there was this. Leo behind him, unbuttoning his shirt from his shoulders like it was some sacred rite. Finn coaxing him into lifting his hips off of the bed, the jingle of his belt hitting the floor. Hot mouth around him, Leo’s fingers against his ribs, mouth on his neck, the weight of Finn’s elbows pressing into the mattress around him.

“Got one past me tonight,” Leo said in his ear. “You know I don’t let things like that go.”

Finn’s mouth was replaced by his hot cheek on his thigh as he laughed, breathless. “I thought no hockey in bed.”

The pillows behind Logan’s neck felt cool and gentle when they lay him back against them. He didn’t have to ask to watch them shed their clothes, too. And when Finn eased him back when he tried to help with his buttons, his large hands pressing against his chest, Logan thought of the boards. Finn pressed up against him, Leo all the way on the other side of the ice, what if I closed the distance? That thought that had circled in his mind a million times, for both of them. What if I came to them?

Finally, he had.

“Hold me,” Logan said, breath shaky through the words.

Leo just smiled into their next kiss, unbuttoning his own shirt. “We are.”

“Non.” Logan took Finn’s hand that was cradling the side of his neck and moved it down a little, to the front of his chest so that the V between Finn’s thumb and forefinger was settled just over where his collarbones dipped apart in the center, where Finn could feel his pounding heart. Finn’s lips were wet and parted as he watched Logan put his own hand over Finn’s and press down on his chest, watched his eyes go hooded with it.

Finn’s expression did a complicated thing. He applied a little pressure of his own, barely even at all, but Logan felt it in his chest, let his eyes close with it. It was good. It meant they were there.

He put his fingers around Finn’s wrist and guided his hand down more firmly.

“Ah.” Finn grinned, eyes going to Leo who had made another hmm noise, not dissimilar to his one from the kitchen. “I see.”

“I miss it. Please.” He used his feet to press Finn’s hips harder against his own and looked to Leo. “Please, I miss you so bad at night. I miss you so bad at night.”

“Aw, Tremz,” Leo said softly.

And just like that it was back. Tonight had been so happy. But reality was still in the room.

They didn’t let him linger in it. Leo’s kiss was short and sweet, hard enough to draw Logan to him as he pressed up all along Logan’s side. Leo let Logan guide his fingers carefully to where Finn’s were. He lay each one in the spaces between Finn’s, right over his heart. “We’re right here.”

Logan let out a harsh breath, tilting his chin back, giving Leo room. Leo leaned down and brushed his lips against Logan’s cheek. “Good?”

“Ouais, ouais—” Logan could barely stand that look in Leo’s eyes. It was as good as seeing the intensity of their blue through the mask. Better. “So good.”

Logan’s necklace glinted around Leo’s throat, pooled by their joined hands on Logan’s chest as Leo leaned over to kiss him.

“God, Lo, look at you,” Leo breathed, drawing Logan closer like he needed it. “Okay, maybe I’ll let the goal go. Was gonna make you wait for it but…just for tonight.”

“First kiss day,” Finn added, and Logan grinned into the next kiss he received.

The held him together, on either side, even when their hands made him feel like he was unraveling. Finn’s hand slipped away from his chest, down, down. Slick and fiery and steady, pulling his hips up in time with their movements like he couldn’t help it. The tension of the game melted away, right out of his muscles. Leo’s hand stayed right where it was, making his heart feel like it was pounding against something more than just himself, like it was trying to knock down whatever skin and bone was left between them. Logan didn’t remember locking his hand around Leo’s wrist, but he did, he held on even as Leo’s mouth bled any strength out of him, throat bared as Leo kissed him gentle and calm against the pile of pillows behind them.

He didn’t feel alone. It was such a relief.

When Finn got as close as he could, Logan was warm. Heavy against the sheets. Finn bent over Logan in a rush, arms scooping under Logan’s back this time, one pressing just above his ass, holding them together like he wanted to knock it all down, too.

Logan could only wrap his arm around Finn’s back in return, the other still locked on Leo. It brought Finn close, his stomach rubbing up against Logan’s cock perfectly, the scent of his sweat heavy on Logan’s tongue where his mouth was pressed into the hair that curled against Finn’s neck.

“Yeah, you like that,” Finn whispered gently, pressing a kiss to Logan’s jaw. “You like this, always have.” When Finn began to grind into him, it was shaky and needy. He barely pulled away at all, but Logan didn’t want him to. He opened his mouth against Finn’s skin, breathing hard, pressing his teeth into Finn’s skin gently to muffle the low sounds he was making.

“Leo,” Finn managed, voice tight, then at Logan’s teeth, laugh shaky. “Ouch, Lo.”

Leo laughed, too, smoothing Logan’s hand into his own and kissing his knuckles before ducking to get at Finn’s neck and shoulders, too. Logan caught his mouth in a sloppy kiss, trailed his hand down Leo’s chest until he could take him in hand.

“Did I mention you scored on me?” Leo’s brows drew together at the feeling, forehead resting on Finn’s should. “And—ah…I don’t forgive easily.”

“Ouais,” Logan said, voice sounding shot to his own ears. “I’ll make it up to you.”

Logan eased Finn off of him with a lingering kiss, a sigh at the loss, but Leo was plains and stretches of pale, bare skin flushed pink.

Logan had missed them, but they had missed him, too.

Logan straddled Leo’s hips, feeling how badly Leo wanted him, feeling the arch of Leo’s back as they pressed together. They kissed and kissed, Logan’s palms against Leo’s chest this time, then his neck and jaw, smoothing his hair back. He pushed his hips down again, and again until Leo was muttering urgent sounds and gripping his hip, keeping him still as he spilled needy and white between them.

Logan kissed over the sweat at his temple, lips parted in something between a smile, triumphant, and a need of his own. Finn was there, then, soothing the tremors in their bodies.

“I missed you, too,” Logan heard Finn murmur into Leo’s mouth.

Logan knew he would live in this moment until the next one like it came. It would be where he fell back to, when he needed something to weight him down and ground him, whenever the changes became too much. He couldn’t have said where he stopped and they began. He didn’t know the hours, he didn’t know the degree of light in the sky. He knew their skin, and their laughs, and brown and blue, red and yellow. Getting up in the pitch black just to come back and find both of them there. A memory for later, though it’d make him sad more than anything. He’d paused by the window, where the moon fell on them. He got up again to see the same sight in the blue light of the early morning. He just wanted the feeling of settling back in between them, their mindless sleepy hands finding him without trying. A glimpse of blue, Leo pulling him closer, who’s sleepless now? Finn, hearing their voices. His warm palms going around Logan’s wrists, pinning them above his head, hips settling together again, again, again.

Logan was tired, but not of this.

Leo, scrambling eggs at his stove, singing softly along to the music playing on his phone. Finn, sleepy at the counter, tennis ball beneath his foot, rolling out sore arches. Daylight. Logan left the room just so he could come back in and see them there.

He’d leave again, later, kissing them goodbye right there on the sunny sidewalk. He’d come back in to no one in his kitchen, the bed a mess. Practice in two hours. It was funny, as he stared at himself in the mirror brushing his teeth, how he looked so rested after no sleep. It wasn’t as funny how part of him had managed to convince himself that he was going to see them every night, like his body had needed to put that on a loop in his mind in order for him to enjoy it so much. But no, tomorrow they were just playing the Stars.

Twelve hours had barely passed than did Logan come home from a practice to find an express package waiting at his door, addressed in Leo’s handwriting. Inside was a box of his mint tea with a great big smiley face drawn on it in sharpie, and a set of lightbulbs. Logan smiled and set his kettle on.

#vaincre lumosinlove #smut #hockeyhockeyhockey and more hockey #wolfstar #o'kntuzy #sweater weather lumosinlove #sirius black #remus lupin #wolfstar fic #Logan tremblay #Leo knut #finn o'hara

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mlove44lh · 1 year

Text

Don’t hurt yourself- Prologue - En version

Masterlist here

Chapter 1

Lewis Hamilton x reader

warnings: just fluff

Words: 1.163

Summary: Six and a half years. Seventy-eight months. That was how long Lewis and Y/N's eternal forever prevailed. Love is a gift, but when it is not accompanied by the purity of fidelity, it becomes just words, and this Y/N learned in the most painful and raw way. How long does an "I love you" last?

Notes: English is not my first language. I did my best with the translation, but I know there are going to be many mistakes in the writing. I was inspired by queen B Lemonade album to write this story. Each chapter will be named after a phase of “post-cheating” grief, like on the album. My focus will be all on y/n and how she deals with everything that happens, not on the betrayal itself.

I don't know what caused me to wake up that morning; maybe the sound of the ocean outside, the lingering light breeze that hit my face, or just the human mechanism letting me know that I was sufficiently rested from the day before. I only know that when I opened my eyes and realized where I was, it was like my whole life had been leading up to that specific moment. I felt like that morning was the highlight of my entire existence like it couldn't get any better.

And it really hadn't.

I could still feel the euphoria that lasted for so long. My heart was pounding as if I had just run a marathon. And all of that was beautiful and exciting, it was the feeling of love in its purest form, it came from within the soul.

The room was shining by the sunlight from outside, the bungalow balcony doors we'd left open let the wind in, and the curtains danced across the ceiling. The large bed covered in white linen made everything even cleaner and shiny. Everything was beautiful. It was much more than I had dreamed of having one day.

The new weight in my left hand made me smile as I remembered what I was carrying. I brought my hand to the front of my face and admired for a few more minutes what I had already admired for hours the night before. The sparkle of the diamond could blind. It was a big ring, but at the same time, very delicate. It was noticeable even from across the room. It was more than perfect.

“You look so hot wearing only this diamond and nothing more.”

Only then did I realize he was also awake. And looking at me as he lay on his stomach. The sheet rested at the base of his spine, giving me a wonderful view of his tattooed back, and the smile on his sleepy face made me feel like I could kiss him endlessly.

The butterflies in my stomach fluttered even more when I realized that I had woken up for the first time next to my now husband. I couldn't help but smile back at him.

I dropped my hand and placed it on top of my breasts, covered by the sheet. Neither of us moved. We were only enjoying the presence of each other and the moment. Recovering the memories of all the fun and happiness of the previous day.

“You know what?” His eyebrows arched, waiting for the continuation. He was still a little sleepy. “You got even sexier after becoming my husband.”

“Looks like the new title went down well for both of us then, Mrs. Hamilton.” Lewis pulled me under him in one movement. Laughter echoed throughout the bungalow. “I don't think I'll ever get tired of saying that. My wife.”

“No. Never stop saying that.” My smile was big and truthful, and Lewis's was no different. “Sounds so damn good.”

Lewis came closer to me and sealed our lips in a long peck. Sleep still consumed us, but the desire to have each other and to show our love and happiness was bigger than anything else.

Lewis took his hand to the edging of the sheet resting on my chest. He pulled it up lightly and slowly and took the fabric off my body. My attention was entirely on him as his gaze roamed all over my naked body.

“I'm the luckiest man in the world for having you with me.”

His slow kisses started at my collarbone and worked their way down to my breasts. Lewis wasn't in any hurry with his movements, it was like he wanted to postpone every second, so he could take more advantage of the situation.

“You make me the happiest woman in the world.”

“I promise I'll make you much happier. Starting today, right here on our honeymoon.”

He didn't take long to come back to kiss my lips, and he stayed there for some time. I was surrendered and intoxicated with his love.

His strong hands squeezing me was enough to make me sigh. His touch had a powerful effect on my body.

Lewis's kisses became more intense. Sometimes he left my lips and started kissing my neck and torso, lightly nibbling some parts.

I held his face in my hands and deepened our kiss as I wrapped my legs around his hips.

Lewis pulled me up and in one fast movement sat me on his lap. His fingertips trailed over my back as he stared at me, his forehead resting against mine.

“I love you so much.”

I smiled and closed my eyes, clinging to that unique feeling that only he could bring me.

“I love you.” My voice came out low. We almost didn't need to say anything. It was as if everything could be said through our touches and stares.

“Look at me.” One of his hands left my back and went to my face, moving me a few inches away. I opened my eyes and looked at the glowing black orbs staring back at me. “You have become the most important thing in my life, and I will never let you down. And if one day something goes wrong, I'll be here, and we'll be able to talk and solve it, all right?”

His eyes held pleading and agitation, but I was calm. I was sure that everything was going to work out no matter what. At that moment, there was nothing more important in the world than the two of us, our words and our promises.

“Alright.”

The kiss that followed was deep and said what words couldn't express. We were complete at that moment, exposed to each other, to care for. A new stage of our relationship that had absolutely everything to work out; two people who love each other and want to make it happen.

Our bodies fit together like they were custom-made for each other. I couldn't believe I had achieved this just for me.

I remember wanting more than anything to stop time at that moment and stay there forever. Something deep in the back of my mind told me to enjoy every second of it.

I didn't know it, but that would be the memory that came back every time I reflect on our marriage again. The memory of the warmth of his arms around me the day after our wedding, loving me and promising me the life I've always dreamed of having by his side since the day I met him. The perfect moment.

But nothing is perfect. And the unbeatable, eternal marriage we believed we had had an expiration date after all.

Six and a half years.

Seventy-eight months for infinite love to come to an end. At least on one side.

#au fanfiction #lewis hamilton #lewis hamilton fluff #lewis hamilton smut #lewis hamilton x reader #f1 x reader #fanfiction #smut fanfiction #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #lh44 #lewis hamilton fanfiction #mercedes amg f1 #fanfic #formula 1 #formula 1 fanfic #formula one #formula one fanfiction

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hp-lawofattraction-fest · 8 months

Text

Week 1 Masterlist

digital art by @fantalfart, origami art by @crazybutgood

Week 1 is over and we've got six amazing works featuring the complexity of the artistry of creating, believing and being.

Start and End:

Title: Red Wine Supernova Creator: @mono-chromia Subtheme: Start Rating: Explicit Word count: 42,376

Summary:

Harry is vaguely aware that he's once again staring, and there's a voice in the back of his head that sounds like Luna's that's chastising him for it, but between half a joint and some boob-temperature beer he doesn't have the wherewithal to tear his eyes away. And that’s how she finds him when she leans over the balustrade of the deck to smoke her cigarette; starstruck and staring up at her from the grass. "Watcha doin' down there, stud? You're looking awfully lonely." or The multitudes of a whore in gogo boots.

Title: You’re horrible (and I love it) Creator: @vukovich Sub-theme: End Rating: Explicit Word count: 11,775

Summary:

Between you and me, my favourite thing about Harry might be that he ended before we even began. If you catch my drift.

Faith and Doubt:

Title: Closet Space Creator: nocturn Sub-theme: Doubt Rating: T Word count: 3,910

Summary:

Ginny shifts onto one foot and realizes she should probably say something semi-coherent. "So our exes are getting married," she offers. At least it feels like she's offering—it’s not quite a peace offering, but an offering nonetheless. "And I'm getting drunk," Pansy finishes. She flings her handbag over her shoulder, strides across the room, and pulls open the door. Then she glances over her shoulder and says, "Coming, Weasley?"

Title: When two hearts beat as one. Creator: digthewriter Sub-theme: Faith Rating: G Medium: Digital Art

Summary:

It was a long road but through faith in their friendship and surpassing any doubt these two eventually fell in love.

Artist and Artist's Work:

Title: Angel, Can't You See? Creator: @dodgerkedavra Sub-theme: Artist Rating: E Word count: 15,505

Summary:

Harry Potter has been missing for two and a half years when the Wizengamot passes a Marriage Law during an emergency session in the dead of night. When morning comes, Hermione Granger finds herself assigned to none other than Draco Malfoy. It’s hideously unjust, but simple: she must stay at Malfoy Manor for seventy-two hours, after which she and Draco will be married in a Ministry-supervised ceremony. Hermione stays at the Manor for seventy-two hours. As for the rest of the Ministry’s plan…

Title: the muse is fickle Creator: beeprescott Sub-theme: Artist’s Work Rating: Teen & Up Word count: 560

Summary:

It's finals season and Professor McGonagall has decided that group projects are necessary. Pansy, Draco, and Harry are grouped together.

#hplawofattractionfest #loaf #hp fests #lawofattraction #hp fandom #mod post #harry potter fests

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faegoddessog · 9 months

Text

Seventy Two Hours of Bliss Ch. 40/41

Chapter 40: Mangoes and English Oak

Chapter Warnings: Explicitly mature content, 18+ only, cunnilingus, fingering, sexual mangoes reference, Sex while eating, Unprotected PiV (play safe ya'll) female dominated PiV, Pinky and the Brain reference (lol)

Series Masterlist

Series Summary:

You are neighbors with Austin Butler on the Gold Coast of Australia just prior to shooting Elvis. You become just friends because he is taken. However, after he is single again, you both find out just how attracted you are to one another and things get unrelentingly hot.

SERIES WARNING: Explicitly mature content, 18+ only, here there be lemons.

Authors Notes: I started writing this while remodeling my kitchen, so that informed the slightly quirky narrative. It starts slow, but once it heats up, it is on fire. I have tried to pull facts from RL as much as I could, but obviously there are some assumptions and flat out dreamy wishes involved here.

Chapter 40: Mangoes and English Oak

Whatever it was that had been built between you seemed to evaporate with the mad fucking, the crying, the confessions and promises. Suddenly it’s like no time passed at all.

You two rummage in the kitchen, half clothed, pulling out what few things were there, clearly you need to hit the market. You nibble on toast with jam and tea with canned pears while leaning on the counter.

You talk about your travels here and how nervous you were feeling to see him again. He talks about how he was anxious to see you too. You both smile at how you felt the same way. It feels comfortable again, finally.

You hop up to sit on the counter kicking your shoes off, closer to his height now. You tell him you have 8-10 weeks, before going to begin the project for Tom and Rita.

“When you go, maybe we can visit on weekends?” he suggests.

“Oooo I like that, or meet in the middle, I do want to spend some time in France and Italy while I’m here,” you say.

“Oh I would love that! We could fuel the French rumors more!” he laughs.

“Oh my god,” you laugh. “We could really keep them guessing! Do we need to address that whole situation soon?"

He shrugs, "It's not really anyone else's business. Let them figure it out for themselves, it'll keep them busy."

You nod.

"Oh! By the way, Marissa called me last week. She wanted me to thank you for setting her up with Kate. She says it’s been a dream come true. I think she may actually be really good at it,” you smile at him.

He moves his body between your legs, sliding his hands to your waist. Your breath catches just a bit.

“It was my pleasure," he says, then hears what he said and who he said it to. He cracks a smile.

You can’t help but crack up, forehead to his chest, suddenly reminded of your inside joke about Chick-fil-A. He laughs too, putting his hand on the back of your head. "Do you suddenly feel like a sexy shower?"

"Pavlov says yes... but the shower here looks tiny," you retort looking up from his chest.

"We could always wait for a rain storm, I've always wanted to fuck in the rain..." he looks outside.

"Mmm, yes please, let's mastermind that" you say, rubbing up his chest to his neck and pulling him down for a slow kiss.

After a long minute. He breaks the kiss, rubbing your thighs.

“Do you know what your schedule will be like?” you ask, trying to handle the mundane in amongst the magical.

“We just finished our mini boot camp yesterday, so we have a couple days off. I am told we should be working only during the week, so weekends should be ours. We’ll see how true that’ll be.”

“It is ok if I stay here, right?” you realize that you hadn’t asked him at all, you just assumed.

“Oh my god Kitten, yes please. I don’t think I could stand it if you didn’t. I need you all to myself for a while,” he wraps his arms around you rocking slightly side to side.

It’s amazing to be in his arms again, almost surreal.

“I’m all yours sweetheart, morning, noon and night,” you look up at him.

He smiles down at you. A wave of awe strikes you. This amazing man loves you. Your mind is pulled to the little black box. You dutifully shove it away, ‘everything in perfect timing’, you tell yourself.

“How long do you think Tom and Rita’s will take?” he asks, thinking about more time apart.

“Oh, geeze,” you reply, thoughts pulled back to the now, “I can't even guess until I see it. Honestly it will depend on how fast materials get there and since it’s on an island, that will be an interesting twist!”

“Then you’ll be done, huh, with your 7 continents,” Austin remarks, “then what?”

“I don’t know,” you shrug, ”I suppose we will see what life lays at our feet.”

“Our feet?” he says with a smile, “I like the sound of that.”

“Of course baby,” you say snuggling up to him, “this, this right here is my dream now.”

“Oh Kitten,” he lets out a huge breath, his arms tightening around you.

He leans forward to kiss your sweet mouth. The light kiss expands into parted lips, while tips of tongues solicit for entrance. Every other thought melts away as his kiss deepens.

Kissing him feels like the oxygen you can’t live without. It’s like you’d been slowly suffocating for months without realizing it and now you can finally breathe deep.

He pulls back from you, looking into your eyes.

“Is it alright if I take you to the bedroom?” he asks in a slightly cautious, but sultry voice, “I think I’m ready to take my time sweetheart.”

You bite your lip and nod. A smile spreads across his lips, like he was worried you’d say no. Silly boy, like you could say 'no' to him.

He leans down and kisses your mouth. His hands glide down your back, snapping open the clasp on your red bra, almost as an afterthought. He pushes his hands between your ass and the cold tiles of the counter. He bends his knees and your legs wrap around his waist, your skirt bunched up around your hips. He pulls you onto him. Your arms wrap around his neck and shoulders, helping to hold yourself on his lean body. He has gotten stronger, you have too.

He carries you, kissing you gently, to the bedroom.

He lays you down on the side of the bed, your bra sliding off. His still undone jeans, underwear and shoes come off and he stands naked in front of you.

It feels like the beginning again, even though he fucked you silly an hour ago. That was different, full needy desperation and all the difficult emotions that had built up between you. But this: this is tender wanting, laced with love and all the feels.

Your knees fall slightly together as you bite your lip. Your eyes are slowly taking in his Adonis-like form from head to toe and back again. Just the sight of him standing above you makes a little moan escape from your lips. Fuck he is magnificent.

He leans down to the bed, one finger tracing up your leg, the hem of your skirt still up near your hips. Its drape drags lightly along your bare and sensitive pussy lips as he slowly pulls the fabric across and out of the way. The barest of shudders slides down your spine.

Then his knees are on the floor and his fingers are barely stroking your lips. He gently pulls your labia apart, stretching the skin around your clit just enough to make your inner lips contract. You inhale an audible gasp. Pushing them back together, his fingers squeeze gently on the outside, near the root of your clit, massaging back and forth. Wetness seeps from between your lips.

You blow out a little moan, fuck he remembers. He pulls you apart again, blowing on your clit. The cold air makes you whimper.

The tip of his tongue runs up and down the smoothness of your labia, teasing at what is to come.

He is definitely taking his time, lips nibbling and tongue licking slowly, but not touching your clit. Not yet.

Your breath quickens.

“Lord, I missed this,” he says, almost as a prayer.

Then his fingers pull you wider, open and exposed. The tip of his tongue touches your clit. You gasp as a zing jolts you. He blows on it, then touches it again. Pause. And again.

He is watching your reaction. His blue eyes peering over your mons with his tongue out long. Fuck, he is gorgeous.

This please. Yes, this please, forever.

Gradually his touches become tip-of-the-tongue undulations up and over your nub. Deeper, rolling his tongue farther down, down, down and into your entrance.

Your breath is shallow and fast, little moans escaping with each new sensation. Then his tongue ripples up against your inner lips. His mouth closes around your clit with pulsing suction.

“Oh my fucking god,” falls from your lips as you curl towards him, hands in his blonde hair, “did you get better at this?”

His eyes open to yours and you feel the vibrations of chuckle against your labia.

“Mangoes,” is all he says with a cock of his eyebrow and a lick of his lip. Then he dives back to the veneration of your cunt.

Thank fuckin’ mangoes! Is there a god of mangoes? Because you need to deliver upon them all your offerings and praise! All hail mangoes, and Austin's tongue!

He pulls your clit into his mouth, tongue lightly flicking back and forth, then suction again. His fingers slide so slowly inside you. He is moaning into your pussy. Your body is curled tight, flexing against his face. Then his fingers curl against your front wall and like a spring you uncoil, deep moans rumbling from your chest. The back of your hands beating the mattress.

Beautiful, sweet release.

He laps at your slit, drinking in all the juices that leak out as you shake on the bed. Then his comforting weight is on your heaving chest. You stare almost dumbfounded into his eyes. He pets your hair, moving it out of your face.

“Ready for more, my pet?” he asks.

You can only nod still panting from your orgasm.

His lip curls up in a tiny smile, his little dimple appearing over the left corner. His hips rock, his cock rooting gently around your snatch, begging to be let in. You lift ever so slightly, giving him room. Then he is barely in you, just an inch or so.

He freezes. Your hips strain up to his, getting him in you a scant inch further. He lifts back, teasing you. Your hips roll and you wrap your arms around him in an attempt to pull him to you. He refuses to let you.

“Oh my,” his voice deep and penetrating, “what a needy girl you are.”

“Uh huh” you nod.

“Do you need me in you?” he says, “is that what you want?.”

"Want, need,” you moan, “please, please yes.”

Slowly, he pushes himself into you. Every inch in and every inch out has your eyes fluttering and your body shaking. Then he stops, holding himself up on his elbows and toes, letting you rut up to him. Writhing against him, your body begs for more. You do your best to fuck yourself on his cock, but it’s not hitting right.

“Let me…,” you say, pushing him off and rolling him over. You stand between his legs which are bent off the bed, feet on the floor. You plant your right foot on the bed next to his hip, your knee bent almost to your shoulder.

Rising up on the toes of your left foot, you grab the base of his cock and sink down onto him with a groan. He can’t really thrust here more than flex his glutes. He smiles as you take charge.

You place your hands on his hip bones, hunching over him like a big cat getting ready to pounce. Your hips start rolling forward, tilting along his length, then pushing down and back in a slow steady rhythm. Each stroke rubs him along your g-spot.

Oh my god it feels so good to ride him like this, to work yourself back and forth on him, angling right where you want him to hit.

His thumb slides to your clit, giving you something more to rub against, something more to moan about. Your hips move a little faster, your orgasm building deep inside He is watching you grind yourself on his cock and hand.

“Fuck yeah, that’s it,” he spurs you on, "god you are so hot.”

His other hand rises to rub his fingers across your nipples.

“Ohmigod, yes, play with them,” you start to flood his dick as the sensations from your nipple shoot right to your pussy. You are so close to unraveling on him.

“Oh lord, you are so wet, you are dripping down my balls,” he moans.

He pinches your nipple and for a split second it’s too hard.

“Not too…” you begin saying, then it unexpectedly pushes you that last tiny bit, “haaaaaa yes, fuck yes, fuck yes.”

You are exploding onto him, the contractions of your core riding him hard. You curl up over him, shaking with how good he is in you, riding the wave of your orgasm. You shake down to a stop, catching your breath.

“Oh gods, Kitten! Don’t stop, please don’t stop,” he begs. His fingers dig into your hips now, intent on pushing you back and forth on his cock. Fuck. You can’t leave him hanging.

“You like this,” you breath out, moving on him, “me mounting you this way, riding you? Yeah?”

“Yes, I do,” he moans, eyes closed, head tilted back. You had forgotten how sexy his neck was. You realize how dominating this position feels for you, you are in control, you have the power.

“You like it when I claim you?” your words coming out of their own accord in lieu of the moans of pleasure you feel bubbling up.

His head raises, lust shrouded eyes meeting yours. He nods, biting his lip. Fuck, if that’s what he wants… a slow smile sneaks across your face. You grind down on him. Shit it’s good, almost too good.

His eyes flutter closed.

“No, no, look at me Austin,” you tell him, pulling his chin. His eyes open, lost in sensation.

“You are mine. Your mouth is mine, your fingers are mine, your cock is mine, your cum is mine. I want all of you.” You put your hands on his chest, pushing him down, nails heedlessly digging into his skin, snapping your hips back and forth over him, overstimulating yourself in the best way.

“Oh fuck!” his pupils are blown, his heart is racing in his chest, he is close to spilling into you, “I’m yours baby, yours! All fucking youuuuur,” he groans out as his eyes roll back in his head. He is so hot when he cums, it sets you off again.

“Oh god Austin, yes, yes YES! ” your clit grinding on to the tight muscles of his lower abdomen as your internal muscles clamp down onto him. He groans, pleasure surging through you and through him. Your bodies are buzzing, vibrating together in shared bliss.

After you catch your breath, you climb off him and sit, leaning against the headboard. You spy the picture of you in your black dress in a frame on the bedside table. It makes your heart melt.

Austin curls up, head in your lap and his arms around your waist. You watch him breath for several minutes, his eyes closed and a relaxed smile touching his lips. He could be sleeping. Your fingers lightly connect the freckles on his left cheek in a curve then down his neck and arm.

“God I love you, Austin,” you whisper.

His smile broadens, not asleep. He turns his head to look up at you, his baby blues shining.

“I have never loved anyone like I love you, Kitten,” he says softly, finger tracing your jawline.

You stare at one another, lost in the quiet of the moment, lost in each other. You slide down next to him after several heartbeats, wanting to feel all of your body on all of his.

“This feels so good, so right,” you remark, snuggling close against him.

“Oh Kitten,” his palm is tapping his chest, “I didn't realize how much missing you weighed on me, how much it hurt. I’ve been living like that so long, the weight of it became normal.”

You nod, totally understanding what he means.

“I haven’t felt this good in months,” he says, ”and it just dawned on me that I don't hurt anymore.”

“Oh my love…” you move his hand and plant kisses on his heart, “never again.”

You spend the next several hours in the ebb and flow of one anothers embrace. You doze, you talk, you kiss, you slowly make love, you shower, you eat naked in the kitchen, you talk, your passion flares in a fiery kiss, you fuck hard, you eat again. In the wee hours of the night, you are both finally spent and curled up together. Just before you fall asleep, you press his hand between your thighs, cupping your mons. His fingertips lightly press against your labia. It’s oddly comforting. You smile and drift into a deep relaxed sleep.

………

You wake up the next day before he does. You sneak out and go buy groceries at the Sainsbury’s down the street. When you come back in, the house is still silent. You peek in and he is still dead asleep. Apparently, waking up early in distress was an Elvis shoot thing.

You had decided to make french toast when you were at the store. You even bought cream to whip, which you end up doing by hand because there was no mixer.

“Awoken by the whisk, I guess it’s better than the whip,” his deep voice resonates from behind you.

“Hey! Good Morning,” you turn around, whisk and bowl in hand. He is leaning against the door with only pajama bottoms on. He looks divine.

“Hungry?” you ask, rising on your tiptoes to kiss him.

“For you? Always.” his hands come to your waist and pulls you into a passionate good morning kiss.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” you say when your lips part.

“No, it was good,” his hands remain around your waist as you turn back to the counter to set down the bowl. “I was waking up already. When I realized you weren’t in bed, I almost had a panic attack thinking it was all a dream. Then I heard your racket in here.”

“My racket is almost done and is going to be delicious,” you smile, dipping your finger in the white creamy fluff and offering it to him over your shoulder, he slowly licks it off your finger. A little involuntary moan whispers from your lips.

“Mmm, that is good Kitten,” he says.

“Is it?” you dip your finger in again. Turning around, you wipe it on his chest, just over his nipple.

You lean forward, tongue out, flicking his nipple lightly as you lick up the slowly dripping vanilla flavored sweet cream. Then you cover his nipple with your mouth, gently sucking and biting.

When you pull away, he is watching you from lowered lashes.

“Mmm, is that how it is this morning?” he asks.

“With you? Always,” you nod, looking up at him, “take your pants off and go sit,” you nod your head towards the table.

A look of bewilderment flashes on his face, then he nods, untying the drawstring. Pulling his pants off right there, you see he is half hard.

“Go, I’ll be there in a minute,” you turn your back to him, un-doing the top several buttons on your blouse and kicking off your shoes.

“Yes ma’am,” he does as he is told, watching you.

You cut up some french toast into bite sized pieces, syrup, butter and whipped cream on them. You grate a little nutmeg and cinnamon on top. You grab one fork and bring a generous cup of tea. You walk over and set them on the table.

“Thank you,” says Austin, reaching for the fork.

You bat his hand away. “No, wait,” holding up a finger.

His look of confusion is priceless.

You pull his chair perpendicular to the table, so he is facing sideways. Stepping back, you slowly unbutton your jeans and make a show of taking them and your underwear off. You slide your hands into your blouse removing your bra in the mysterious way all women know and all men wonder about. You lean over him, giving him a generous view of your dangling breasts. You see he has gotten harder with your little strip tease.

Perfect.

His hands go instinctively to your hips as you lean further to kiss him deeply, passionately. Your hands slide around his neck and your legs open to straddle his lap, trapping his now hard cock against his belly. You pull away from his lips, kissing along his jawline and down his neck. His hand slides into your hair to the back of your head, pressing you to continue. His other is wrapped around the curve of your ass, pulling you closer to him.

“Are you hungry Austin?” you ask quietly, deviously. Your fingers slip the last button of your blouse out of its hole, exposing your front to him.

“Um… yes,” almost more question than statement. He is totally unsure of what is happening here, “but…and.. ”

His words hang in the air as you grab the cup of tea and pass it to your non-dominant hand. You pick up the fork, stabbing a piece of french toast. You offer it to him, letting him take the bite off the fork as you sip the tea. As he is chewing you rise up and sink your pussy over his cock. His eyes close for a second as he stops chewing to inhale through his nose.

You nonchalantly take another sip.

He swallows with a shaky breath.

You slide up and down slowly continuing to offer bites to him. His breath comes little moans as he keeps taking food off the fork.

You put the tea down.

Neither of you say anything, eating and fucking is all your brains can process at the moment.

Words would ruin it.

It’s unexpectedly erotic.

Thinking would break the spell.

He takes the fork from you, turning the tables. He offers, you chew. He flexes and pushes into you. Your eyes go wide, then your tongue rolls the flavors in your mouth, then you swallow as he pulls back.

Your breath comes out wobbly before he offers you a second bite. Again and again this slow fucking and feeding continues.

By the time the plate is empty, syrup, butter and whipped cream has dripped unheeded onto your tits due to his having to use his non-dominant hand. One drop is trailing dangerously close to your vulva. Remembering that you don’t like sugar there, Austin places the mostly empty plate on the chair next to him as you finish off the tea. As one motion he grips your ass, fixing you to him, and stands up, laying you back on the table, stopping the runaway drips of liquid sugar in their tracks. His cock pulls back as he slowly lowers his face to your vulva. He catches the drop and backtracks its pathway with a lapping tongue.

The empty tea cup slips from your fingers unnoticed.

He finds each drop of syrup, each plop of whipped cream and luxuriates in slowly licking each, nibbling his own path between each one. By the time he is done, your heaving chest tells him you want more.

He pulls back, double checking his work. He looks curiously at your breasts, realizing that they had been unsullied by thick, sweet fluid. Then he swirls his finger in the plate of cream and syrup, bringing up a creamy mix reminiscent of sweet cum. The idea of it being cum makes you want to tip the whole plate onto your chest.

You watch as he lets it drop onto a nipple, then offers it to your mouth. Greedily you suck on his finger, eyes closed. The taste makes you want to break your rules and coat yourself in it. When you open your eyes, he is watching you suck his finger, lips slightly pursed and blowing out a breath. You are guessing he’d like it all over his cock too.

He pulls his finger out and wraps his talented tongue around your nipple, holding your breast in his hand. He sucks it into his mouth, brushing the nipple with his tongue, holding it in a gentle bite with his teeth.

You moan, your clit throbbing all of a sudden. He pops it out of his mouth and works his way to your neck. With hands kneading and rubbing your breasts, he sinks his teeth into the meat of your neck. Goosebumps spring up along your arm and down your side. He pulls back, running a finger along the tiny pebbles, evidence of your arousal.

Then he is staring at your eyes, soft and full of desire at the same time. He leans down slowly and gently rubs his lips to yours, side to side. Not hesitant, but sultry. You coax him closer with your tongue darting out to touch his soft, full bottom lip. He slowly gives in to your lingual seduction, diving to deepen the kiss. Lips open, mouths press, tongues explore.

It’s hard to tell who is tempting who.

Before you know it, one hand is gripping the table edge next to your head, the other having trailed down your side, over your hip and under your ass. He lifts you just slightly, enough to give himself a straight route to your core. His mouth never leaves yours as he slowly presses into you.

A long whining moan resonates in your sinuses as he buries himself deep in your wet and wanting pussy. He takes his time to pull out, focusing more on devouring your mouth with his.

Then he thrusts in hard, using the table as leverage.

You gasp through your nose, vocal cords vibrating on the exhale, whimpering against his tongue.

Pulling out, his hand adjusts on your ass, almost massaging the flesh of your glutes. Then another hard thrust and his fingertips dig in.

God it feels so good, he is hitting you in all the right places inside.

He continues his pattern of kissing you while pulling out, and digging in his fingers while thrusting hard.

In this moment, he is beautifully masterful in his authority, his immense self control. His energy is all male, but not noxiously so. By taking his time, going slow, every thrust is slowly luring you, pushing you, enticing you to orgasm. Soon your hips are tilting up to meet his thrusts. His mouth leaves yours as he starts to moan in his own pleasure. He seems almost lost in place and time

He has you balancing on the head of a pin, for long minutes as he builds slowly.

Your breath is panting, despite the slow pace. Your hips are vibrating against him, wanting more, needing more. Just a little and you will fall apart.

He leans back, his other hand sliding under your ass. He stops for a moment, watching you squirm under him, a little decadent smile on his face. Your eyes are begging him, your hands are opening and closing, shaking, fingertips rooting at your teeth, not sure what to do with themselves.

With both hands digging into the muscles of your butt, he unleashes on you. Giving you everything you wanted and more.

Your hands fly to the edge of the table, holding on for dear life. The way his hands are digging, massaging into your ass feels exquisite, adding that much more to your orgasm. His cock is giving no quarter as it pummels into you.

The imagined weight of your eyes rolling back tilts your chin up, your throat vibrating with deep guttural groans. Sharp undulating waves roll up your spine, arching your back further and further up with each pass. Your whole body shakes with force of his hips. You ride the high as he rides you, deep and fast.

His scream comes from his gut; loud, resonant, primal. His hands squeeze deeper, pulling you onto him as he thrusts become hard and jerky, eyes closed and teeth bared. His breath holds as pushes deep with little thrusts, giving all of himself to you.

“Oh gaw,” bursts from him as the vacuum is released from his lungs. He stumbles a little against the table, lightheaded.

You pull him down to you, his torso laying on yours, his hands still trapped under your ass. Your chests heaving together, heavy breaths blow across your breasts.

Eventually he pulls his hands out from under you, standing upright. He helps you off the table, now messy with more than just syrup.

“Wow, sturdy table” he says, pulling you into his arms.

“Probably English Oak” you say without missing a beat.

You both giggle, still euphoric.

“Well, that’s one way to have breakfast,” he says.

“Right! It was freakin’ sexy though, more so than I thought it would be,” you admit.

“Yeah, I would’ve never thought to do that… but it worked. I don’t think anyone but you could pull that off though, further evidence that you are a sex magician, wait no, Enchantress” He smiles, remembering that night on the top floor of the Emporium.

“Fuck yeah!” you respond with a giggle, leaning in to gather a kiss from him.

“I’m actually still hungry,” you say, “shall we clean up the table and just like… eat?”

“Yes please! Can I have my own fork this time?” he asks with sly smile.

......

After second breakfast, Austin cleans the kitchen up while you go and actually unpack your bags. You are humming happily to yourself, hanging things up in the wardrobe, tucking things away. There is an antique vanity on the wall opposite the bed complete with a trifold mirror.

You figure you might as well use it for what it’s for and put your hair brush, makeup and brushes there along with what was left of the little bottle of essential oil Austin sent you. You also decide to be cheeky and artfully arrange your collections of vibrators and butt plugs there too, giving the blue sapphire one center stage. The whole thing makes you giggle out loud.

“What’s so funny,” Austin comes in, drying his hands on a kitchen towel he has slung over his shoulder. He’s, again only in his pajama bottoms.

“Tah Dah!” you say arms stretched out to your sex toy display.

“Oh geeze Kitten,” he chuckles blushing a little, “what if someone comes over?”

“Well, if they are invited to the bedroom, then they should know what they’ve agreed to,” you give him a sly smile.

He nods, deciding not to argue with your logic. “Well, in that case,” he walks over to a drawer in the dresser and pulls out his two hanks of black rope, the lube and his own set of butt plugs you bought for him. He hangs the rope from the corner of the mirror and puts the lube and plugs in amongst the arrangement. “There, no holds barred now!”

He grabs you in a huge hug, kissing your forehead.

“What are we going to do today Brain” you say in your best Pinky voice.

“The same thing we do every day Pinky,” he answers as Brain, without missing a beat, “try to take over the world!” He dramatically clenches his fist.

You both giggle, sharing the weird childhood memory.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” you say, sexily, leaning up to press your lips to his.

“I think so” his voice husky, his lips rubbing against yours, “but burlap chafes me so.”

You completely lose it, like in the absurd way that makes other people look at you like a loon. You are laughing so hard tears run down your face, you can’t breathe and you fall onto the bed.

Your ridiculous laughter makes him laugh too. Soon your bellies are sore and you are in a heap together on the bed, catching your breath.

His arms surround you. It’s the most comfortable you’ve felt in months.

“I do want to play with you later today, if that’s ok,” he asks.

“Yes please, anytime is a good time for playtime. What do you have in mind?” you ask, cuddling up to him.

“I have some ideas taking shape, but I think you’ll have to just wait and see,” he says… kissing your nose.

“Oooo, antici……” you leave the word hanging.

#Austin Butler #Austin Butler smut #Austin Butler x reader #Austin Butler fic #Austin butler fanfic #@purejasmine #@slowsweetlove #@richardslady121

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pagesoflauren · 2 years

Text

Seeing Blind Ch. 5

Colin Shea x pregnant!reader

Summary: After a one-night stand, you find yourself pregnant. While navigating your pregnancy, the father of your baby seems to have another task at hand.

Warnings: angst, swearing, jealousy, eventual smut, slowish burn, in-depth descriptions/discussions of pregnancy, descriptions of mafia dynamics, Colin is a little shit

A/N: It’s been a minute since I've written; been going through a lot of mental health issues. I'm still working through them. I hope the next few installments of fics I post can make up for the delays. Thanks @eightcevanscentral.

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Series Masterlist

The park is crowded, teeming with people having picnics, walking their dogs, and letting their children run loose along the grass and walkways.

Everyone here seems to be more intimately involved. They hold hands or have their arms slung around their partners in one way or another. If they’re not attached physically, they walk in close proximity to each other.

It makes Colin and Aly stick out. They look like an awkward pair, staying about half an arm’s length from one another as they search for the picnic area where Aly’s next ex is meant to be entertaining a seven-year-old’s party.

“There it is,” Colin points out.

It’s the classic picnic-in-the-park birthday party with bright foil balloons, food everywhere, and kids running amuck with water guns and silly string. Parents are day drinking out in the open, not paying attention to whatever havoc their little monsters were creating.

Colin gulps when he realizes this is in his future. Over-the-top birthday parties for kids who probably won’t remember a single second of it, stupid presents, and mingling with actual adults who know what they’re doing.

He’s way out of his depth. He should’ve known he was punching out of his weight taking you back to his apartment; you were the only woman smart enough to leave before he woke up. His usual targets are the girls who have only a fraction more desperation than he has. It’s why they stay in the morning hoping for something more and what’s led him to running around Boston tracking down his neighbor’s exes.

“Well, there he is,” Aly’s voice comes, jarring him from his thoughts.

He spots a little wooden theater where two homemade farm animal puppets appear to be arguing. The kids burst into laughter while Colin and Aly exchange a look.

As the show comes to a close, it doesn’t get any stranger, but it gives Aly an opportunity to say hello while the kids get cake and watch the birthday celebrant open presents.

To avoid looking like a strange man lingering around a child’s birthday party, Colin makes his way to a tree and sits among the roots. He contemplates his impending fatherhood while people watching from his vantage point.

It’s not just stupidly expensive birthday parties coming. He watches a dad catch his kid mid-fall–it’s that too. He sees another lugging a diaper bag in one hand while his baby flails in his grip, but his hold never falters.

Colin looks at his hands. Can I do that?

At the birthday party, a man mediates a situation between two boys. One boy says something, he looks at the other one. On and on, until the man speaks once more and the boys hug before playing together again.

Will anyone teach him how to do this?

He thinks about his own father; Chief of Police in Salem, a well-respected man who produced two sons who have made a name for themselves in their own rights.

And a third who had no part of his life together, trying to usher a baby into the world with a woman he had a one night stand with.

“Well, that was a disaster,” Aly’s voice jars him from his thoughts, the ideas rattling in his brain before dissipating like smoke.

“Huh?”

“Didn’t get much out of that encounter other than the fact that I remember why we broke up.”

“And…?”

“His puppets creeped me out. Anyway,” Aly pauses as she opens her purse and digs through it. “Here is…twenty, forty, sixty, seventy.”

She hands him the cash and it crumples in his hands.

“You wanna grab a taxi back to the building? I need some wine.”

Colin shakes his head. “No, I’m just gonna head a few blocks that way before I head back.”

“What’s over at ‘a few blocks that way’?”

“Just gotta pick up some stuff,” he says as he shoves the bills in his pocket. “I’ll see ya around.”

She nods and walks on her way to the western entrance of the park.

Putting his hands in his pockets, Colin stands up and begins to walk down the path when a male voice catches his attention.

“Hey, Free Licks.”

Looking up, he finds Mateo, donned in all black with shades perched on his nose. Colin can’t help but note the difference between the two of them again; he was wearing stained jeans and a faded t-shirt.

Colin greets him with a nod. “Detective.”

“What brings you to the park today?”

“Oh, you know, the sunshine, the fresh air.” Colin inhales through his nose obnoxiously.

Mateo raises an eyebrow. “I see. Well, I was here on business from Y/N, but…when I see suspicious activity, I have to follow up on it, you know?”

Colin shakes his head, a little incredulous. “What? She’s got you spying on me?”

“Not you, but a point person. BPD business. There was a drop that was meant to happen. You know anything about that?”

Pursing his lips and raising his brows, Colin gestures “no” again. “Nothing that I’ve seen.”

Mateo reaches into his pocket and hands him his card. “Well, if you see anything, you’ll let me know, right?”

Taking it between his thumb and forefinger, the card nearly falls in his weak grip. Colin doesn’t know what to do with it or why Mateo is giving it to him. “Sure…?”

“Good. See you around, Free Licks.”

- - - - -

“I wasn’t expecting you to actually show up,” you scoff with a smile. “But, while you’re here, you can push the cart.”

You let go and the cart still moves, wheels squeaking as it glides down the aisle and Colin scrambles to get a grip on the handle. When he eventually gets it, he cranes his neck to find you studying the different boxes lining the shelves.

“What are we looking at?”

“Changing tables.”

“Like the ones in ladies’ bathrooms?”

“Not quite, but same idea. Just a space where you can store everything for changing a diaper and keep the baby safe while you’re grabbing stuff.”

“You make it sound like it’s a whole process,” Colin snorts.

You look at him. “You’ve never changed a diaper before in your life, have you?”

He scoffs, lying through his teeth. “Psh, what are you talking about? Of course, I have.”

“It’s okay if you haven’t, you know that right?”

How are you able to see right through him?

It seems his face shows his bewilderment, and you respond to it, “Colin, like I said, I didn’t expect you to do any of this. I still don’t expect a lot from you–not that I don’t welcome this, but because I can do this on my own if I need to.”

He doesn’t reply. Looking at his face, his cheeks look particularly round like a child’s, casting a sort of innocence on him that doesn’t reflect the person you know him as. He’s goofy and charming, things that attracted you to him in the first place that fateful night when all of this started. Along with that, he’s experienced, but you can see there’s a thought rattling in his mind that his mouth won’t say.

“Look, whatever your decisions are for doing this—if you’re trying to prove yourself to someone or if you’re putting expectations on yourself–you can’t let that bother you. I don’t know the extent of what I’m getting myself into. This kid could be like me, or they could be like you. But however they turn out, I’m gonna do my best to make sure they live happily. And that’s all you can do: your best.”

He nods, but you don’t think it’s really getting to him.

“Maybe I can sign us up for a parent coaching class. I’m sure we’d hardly be the first unusual pair of parents a teacher has seen.”

His cheeks turn red first, then his ears. He smiles and nods again. “Yeah…yeah, I think that’s a great idea.”

“It’s a deal.”

You grab his hand and hook your pinky with his.

“Now, while we’re here, can you do me a favor and put that box in the cart?” you ask, pointing to the one you want.

“Yes, ma’am.”

As he does what you request, you bite your lip and blink slowly.

You can feel your non-expectations–the ones you still hold on Colin where he’s welcome to do as he pleases–slowly metamorphosize. There’s a flash of him bathed in the morning sunlight, smiling up at a giggling baby he’s lifting over his head.

“Anything else from this aisle?”

The image is gone in a puff of smoke, trailing in the air before disappearing completely.

You shake your head. “No, but I need to go to the next aisle and look at rocking chairs.”

- - -

Hauling everything to the cashier for check out, your items are ringed up and bagged while you reach for your wallet.

“Oh, here…I have this.”

Colin shoves his hand in his pocket, pulling out some crumpled up bills and awkwardly setting them on the counter. Just by looking at it and the grand total of the items on the counter, you know it’s not enough.

“Colin…it’s okay,” you say, pulling out your card and handing it to the cashier.

As he gathers up the money, you ask where he got it.

“I did a favor for a friend.”

“And they paid you that much money for a favor?”

Grabbing the last bill, he puts it back into his pocket. “Well, she owes me.”

You don’t have time to wonder too much about why he’s being so vague, not with the cashier asking for your signature for the payment and asking if you want to join the store’s rewards program.

With all the items bagged, you and Colin hail a taxi to go back to your apartment. Every once in a while, you consider pressing further, your suspicion a by-product of the analytical mind that got you the position you work in.

Deciding against it, you send Colin on his way and prepare for work tomorrow.

- - - - -

You yawn as you exit your apartment, pivoting back to lock the door behind you.

A flash of blue stuck on your door as it closes behind you catches your eye. When you look at it, you realize it’s a note, probably from one of your neighbors.

The words become clearer as you reach for the note, peeling it off the surface and reading it.

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop.

You huff. Rolling your eyes, you stuff it into your canvas bag–your newly-designated lunch bag ever since your appetite grew so that you could “eat for two.”

And prevent yourself from rage-quitting your job out of hunger-fueled anger.

Figuring it’s just the young kid on the second floor playing a prank, you head out to work.

- - -

“Bebitaaaa,” Mateo sings as he enters your cave of computer monitors.

He places a hand on your shoulder to straighten your spine.

“You need to work on your posture,” he remarks.

You scoff. “And you need to pack your own snacks and stop taking from a pregnant lady,” you speak, but are certain he couldn’t hear you over the sound of wrappers crinkling.

“Speaking of you being pregnant, I ran into Colin at the park yesterday..." he trails off. "What’s this?”

“Hmm?”

Your chair swivels as you look at him, finding the note from your door in his hand. “Bebita…where’d you find this?”

“Oh,” you exhale dismissively, “that’s nothing. I found it on my door this morning.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“Tell you about what? It’s a note. Probably from the little boy upstairs.”

Mateo’s eyes narrow. “How old is that kid?”

“I dunno,” you shrug. “Fourteen?”

“I don’t think fourteen-year-olds play tricks like this.”

“Just because you didn’t because you were a damn genius who went to college at sixteen doesn’t mean other fourteen-year-olds don’t.”

“Bebita, I don’t think you understand this. ‘If you know what’s good for you’? That’s a threat.”

“Mateo, come on, after that it says ‘you’ll stop.’ Stop what? If this is a threat, it’s a pretty empty one.”

“We’re in a dangerous line of work, did you even consider that maybe this is a guy from the mob? Or maybe one of them put the kid up to writing the note to try and hide their scent?”

You roll your eyes, “Knock it off, Mateo. There’s no way they know who I am, much less where I live–”

“You don’t know that, you don’t know what they’re capable of–”

“I know what I’m capable of, and I’m pretty sure my work is completely untraceable.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then grabs your phone from the desk. Unlocking it, he swipes through and taps before showing you the screen. It’s Colin’s contact information. His thumb hovers over the call button.

“Don’t make me do this.”

“Oh my god,” you roll your eyes again, your head lolling back in annoyance as your arms cross. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He taps the button and he brings the phone to his ear as the call begins.

You hear Colin on the other line. “Hello?”

“Hey, Free Licks.”

“Oh, it’s you.”

You snort and Mateo’s eyes drift up in exasperation. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m calling though because Y/N found a threatening note on her door but doesn’t think it’s a big deal.”

“Wait, what?!”

“Yeah, it said, ‘if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop.’ I think the mob knows where she lives.”

“You really think they would?” Colin’s concern comes clearly through the speaker.

“I think anything’s possible,” Mateo says pointedly, throwing you a look. “But like I said, she’s pretty confident in her ability to be untraceable.”

“But if the note was on her door…”

Mateo nods slowly, smugly. “You get it.”

“Is she there?”

“Right in front of me.”

“Can I talk to her?”

You take the phone, sticking your tongue out before you speak, “Hey Colin.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the note when we were texting earlier?”

“Same thing I told Mateo,” you sigh, getting really irritated that you keep having to repeat yourself. “It’s not a big deal, it’s probably nothing.”

“But it was on your door.”

“I’m sure a lot of people find notes on their doors.”

“Not threatening ones!” Colin says into the receiver as Mateo nearly shouts the same thing in front of you.

“God, how do I turn off the surround sound in here?”

“Bebita, you might take this lightly, but I’m not.”

“Yeah…yeah, and neither am I!” Colin tacks on.

“A woman’s life is most endangered when she’s pregnant because that’s the time she’s most likely to get killed.”

You’re shocked Mateo would bring that up to you now, placing a hand on your lower stomach.

“I’m not taking any chances with you, especially with Riona Maher’s arrest at Logan happening earlier this week.”

You swallow, pushing your pride down as you look away from Mateo. You feel like a teenager getting lectured by her father.

“Promise me if you see anything else like this, you’ll tell me right away.”

You don’t reply immediately.

“Promise him,” Colin pleads from the phone.

“Fine, I promise. But only because I’m still pretty sure this is nothing.”

“I’ll take it,” Mateo sighs. “And Colin’s a witness.”

“Thanks for including me.”

Mateo says, “You’re welcome,” as you say goodbye and end the call.

“I’m gonna take this down to forensics and see if they can pull up anything.”

“You’d be wasting time,” you taunt as you turn back to your computer.

“And I’m driving you home tonight and picking you up in the morning.”

“Mateo–”

“Nothing you can do about it, my mind’s made up.”

He shuts the door behind him, leaving you typing away as you shake your head.

I’m the pregnant one, your mind gripes, I should be the one who overreacts to things, not them.

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#Colin Shea #Colin Shea fanfic #colin shea fanfiction #colin shea x reader #colin shea x you #What's Your Number fic #chris evans fanfic #pregnant!reader #Colin Shea x pregnant!reader #Chris Evans x pregnant!reader #pol!Seeing Blind #ficsofpagesoflauren

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