#need to find a display case for him so he doesn’t get dusty :))) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whisker-biscuit · 7 months

Text

SlyFox Day 3: Hide

Mildly suggestive themes for this one but nothing warranting more than a T-rating.

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

It starts innocently, like it often does.

A light bump to the arm as they’re passing each other in the hall; a gentle brush to the shoulder while they’re both using the same corkboard wall to track down criminal movement; the slightest contact of two tails when he sits at his desk with a case file and she hovers over his chair.

It starts innocently, very often, and just as often it ends with them finding a remote corner of the building to make out.

Sly’s touch is tender and reverent where he’s running his fingers through her hair at the back of her skull, and Carmelita has him pressed against the wall with her hands cupping his face as if he might disappear out from beneath her at any moment. They kiss each other in a back-and-forth of chaste to sensual, sensual to rapid-fire, rapid-fire to chaste and then the pattern repeats again. Anyone else might see the display and wonder if they were actually drunk, but in truth they are simply making up for lost time.

There is a lot of lost time to make up for, after all. Lost time and lost kisses.

This time, they’ve tucked themselves away in an empty conference room that looks like it hasn’t seen visitors in at least a decade. The door to the hallway doesn’t have a lock on it, and Carmelita cannot help the thrill at the thought of how risky this new spot is – how someone could come in at any moment and catch them in an act that isn’t technically illegal but feels so very much so.

Then the thrill turns to horror as they hear footsteps coming their way.

Sly moves first, used to reacting to a sudden threat before he can be caught, and pulls her immediately through the opposite door on his left side. It’s not an escape – this is a cramped, dusty closet for housing extra chairs and portable tables – but it is a hiding place, and it’s just in time as Carmelita closes the door nearly-silently right before they hear the other one open.

She holds her breath like it will make her quieter as she presses one ear to the wood and listens for motion on the other side. Whoever crashed their party seems to be moving with purpose, doubling back and forth across the room, and she realizes with panic that they are probably setting up the large conference table for an actual upcoming conference. The fox prays to all that is holy that they don’t need more chairs.

Her partner is right behind her, but his presence has all but vanished. The only reason she can sense him at all is from instincts long-since honed to do so with him and him specifically. She might as well be alone in the closet for how unobtrusive he’s become.

That is, until she feels warm breath at her neck and gentle kisses at her cheek.

Carmelita stiffens, and Sly pulls back immediately. The unspoken apology radiates off of him in waves, but mixed in is a tentative sort of question that she doesn’t even need to turn around to know is on his face.

The stranger is still moving around the room proper. The inspector considers their predicament. If they are found in here, it’s going to be obvious what they were doing no matter how innocently they try to play it off. Sly seems to have already come to that conclusion and then followed it up with the decision that they might as well get something out of it while they’re stuck.

Carmelita hesitates, and considers. The thrill from before slowly begins to trickle back, subdued but no less potent and, with a final prayer that her boss will forgive her if the worst comes to pass, nods her head once in the dark.

The kisses resume, silent and careful and downright dangerous.

She keeps perfectly still as her partner peppers them across her cheek, down her neck, along the slightest bare of her shoulders where they meet her collared jacket. She closes her eyes and pretends it so that she can hear into the other room better when he silently moves her braided hair aside and starts in earnest at the base of her head. She refuses to breathe, refuses to squirm, refuses to show any reaction as he tries his absolute best to make her do the opposite.

She very nearly breaks when he presses his lips to her spine and hums. He hums so low and so quiet that she can only hear because they’re touching, and it almost makes her lose the game when, at the exact same time, the stranger outside their little haven makes a more audible sound than usual.

Carmelita manages not to shiver by sheer force of will, but she feels Sly’s smile against her skin and knows that he knows that he almost has her. Bastard.

Then, all at once, the stranger leaves, and she waits until the raccoon says a soft “they’re gone” before throwing open the closet door and rushing for the other exit. She can feel the heat in her face all the way up to her ears and refuses to look back at her partner the entire speedwalk back to their shared office.

As soon as they are safe in real privacy, she whirls on him and wants to either kiss or slap the stupid smug smile that’s there to greet her.

“Well,” he says, as unconcerned as if they’d just come back from lunch together, “that was certainly exciting.”

The inspector gives him a dirty look that is contrasted greatly by how red she still is. “We are never talking about this again.”

“You sure that’s what you really want?” Sly’s grin grows and grows and grows. “Cause it seemed to me like you were kind of into it. The risk of getting caught is awfully addictive, isn’t it?”

She can’t even argue; the thrill in her core over what they were doing is still making her heart want to beat out of her chest. Carmelita crosses her arms and huffs, then stops as an idea pops into her head. Her own crafty smile begins creeping across her mouth.

“I suppose it might be,” she gives a fake admission, “but I’m going to need more evidence to be sure.”

His eyes flash with impulse and passion. “Oh, yeah? Can I help you gather that evidence?”

“Perhaps…” The fox taps a finger to her upturned lips. “But to do that, we’re going to have to find out when that conference is being held, first.”

It takes a moment for her meaning to set in, but oh, the delight in his gaze when it does. Sly crosses the room in two strides and pulls her in for another kiss, and she returns it with zest. Later, she will decide whether this idea is one she’s shameless enough to go through with – but not now.

Right now, she has a raccoon in her arms and a thousand kisses to make up for, and that’s all that matters.

#slyfox #slyfoxweek #suggestive themes #sly cooper #carmelita fox #fanfiction #for the record they're not actually going to do anything spicier than kiss in that closet again #if they ever actually go through with their plan #I'll leave it up to y'all whether they do ;)

13 notes · View notes

joonlaksme · 3 years

Text

October 19th

Kim Namjoon - Heels

It was pretty normal at your “woman’s” shoe store that you’d see men. Usually, they’re there to pick up orders, shop for their family or significant others. However, you could tell this man was different. A tall man stood out as he was at the corner of your store with his eyes laid on a particular shoe you were proud of designing. It must’ve been a few hours by now that he was standing there. But instead of having one of your employees approach him like you usually do with a curious customer, this was a special case. You decided to go up to him yourself. It was close to closing time anyways and you rather not make your workers do more when they shouldn’t have to.

“May I help you sir?” You ask, putting on your best customer service voice. When he turns to find the person who owns that voice, your jaw nearly drops to the floor. High cheekbones, colored with dusty pink and plump lips had you at a loss for words.

“I- um…” He looks down to the floor, “Are you closing, now?”

“Yes, we have to close a bit earlier today since it’s Friday.” You reply, trying your best not to stutter.

He smiles a little and you can see dimples pop up on his cheeks. “And…you’re the owner, I assume?” His eyebrows raise.

You nod, a bit surprised at how he knew that but you keep it to yourself. Maybe it was an educated hunch.

“Then…I know you’re closing now but I’d just like to see…these.” He points to the black stiletto on display. A sleek and skinny gold colored heel reflects his face. Many people are drawn to it and it’s one of your best sellers.

“Oh, of course.” You say but then you pause. The storage room must be closed for the night and you’d rather not take half an hour trying to mess with the lock until it opens until tomorrow. “But…can you fix locks?”

When he tries to open the door, sure, the door is finally open now. But now your door knob is gone. This is an appropriate time to have your jaw meet the floor. How was that even possible? To pull a doorknob so gently with what looks like grace and for it to just as smoothly, come off.

He’s not as surprised as you are but let’s out a disappointed groan. “I’m sorry about that. I’ll pay for it.”

You chuckle, “No need, we were going to replace it anyways-“

“I can ask my friend, Yoongi, to come and fix it. He’ll probably be pissed but he gets the job done.” He smiles, and it makes your heart warm.

“I’ll take you up on that.” You wink, and then immediately regret it as he follows behind you in the storage room. You find exactly what you’re looking for and take them out of the box. “We don’t have many sizes but if you aren’t in a hurry to get them, I could tailor them to whatever size you need and your preference.”

“I…” He scratches the back of his neck. “I know this is a weird request but- can I see them on you?”

You laugh, but only for a short while. He’s dead serious. But honestly, you’ve been asked far worse. You tell him as much and then nod to his question. Slipping them on is easy, they’re a size bigger than what you prefer. And yet…

“Oh…” He breathes out. You look up and see him analyzing them as if they’re the most interesting thing he’s seen all day. That’s when it hits you.

“You know…I have one that might be able to fit you…” It’s a risky comment but you were right on the dot. His face explodes with heat from his blushing, going off in ranting and stuttering. It’s cute to see him freak out about you finding out his secret. “Are you interested?”

It’s when he seemed done with his shock, is when you asked him the question. At first, he nibbles on his lips, trying to think of an excuse. Maybe some way of convincing you that he’s not like ‘that’. Whatever ‘that’ is supposed to mean. But then he realizes this might be his only chance. He takes his time to look you in the eyes. Sure, there’s plenty of amusement there but he doesn’t see any disgusted or annoyed expressions like he thought he would. He mumbles something.

“What was that?” You ask, leaning in closer.

“Namjoon. My name.”

With a soft smile settling on your face, you reply with, “And I’m Y/N. But you probably already knew that.”

It must’ve been only mere minutes later that you were sitting on Namjoon’s lap, in a creaky chair at the corner of the storage room. Your lips were on his, intensely grinding your body in some unknown rhythm. He put on those black stilettos but you never knew how amazing they could look on a man such as himself. You never knew until now. You practically jumped his bones as soon as you saw them.

“What do you like so much about them?” You ask, lips buried in his neck as you look for a spot that’ll make him go wild.

He can’t get a word out, let alone a sentence. He’s never been this turned on before and especially by this kink that he can’t understand. All he knows is that he’s sensitive from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. Every wave of satisfaction has him taking in another big breath.

Things are going fast. To the point that you’re stuffing your hand down his pants to get him off, while in this weird position just so he can see your heel and your legs better. You can tell by the way his eyes glaze over, how much he enjoys the view.

“You do such a good job at wearing them.” You whisper. You want to kiss those captivating lips again but you aren’t in any position to do so unless you want to hurt your leg. He moans breathily at your compliment and that’s enough for you.

Today, specifically, is your favorite. Maybe you’ll make some more men sized heels. Just. For. Namjoon.

#bts #bts rm #bts drabble #kinktober masterlist #kinktober #bts kinktober #kim namjoon #kim namjoon x reader #dom reader #namjoon x female reader #sub namjoon #dom!reader #sub!namjoon

144 notes · View notes

musette22 · 3 years

Note

Local museum volunteer Chris explaining all the items and history facts to teacher Sebastian and his 20 kids on a school trip or to single dad Sebastian and his twins (one who is really into it and ask a lot of "but why?" And the other one who just sticks his fingers up his nose and yawns lmao)

Okay so I was just on a walk and I started thinking about this ask again (I am so so so sorry for how long it took me to reply to this, I suck wow) because I couldn’t get that new pic of Seb looking like a literal DILF out of my head, but I couldn’t remember the specifics so what came out is slightly different from what you suggested but not much – hope you still like it (I personally screamed into my fist multiples times while thinking about this – I’m furious at how cute this little scenario is, thank you so so much for this!)

Disclaimer: I literally wrote this just now so it’s unbeta’d and probably riddled with nonsense, but I hope you guys like nonetheless! <3

*********************

“Hi, guys! Welcome to the Concord Museum. My name is Chris and I’ll be your guide this afternoon.”

Chris eyes the little family – a father and two young kids – standing in front of him in the entrance hall of the bite-sized museum, then makes a show of looking around the otherwise empty hall. “Seems like it’s a quiet one today, so you’ll have me all to yourself!”

The father smiles, his sparkling, blue-grey eyes crinkling in the corners in a way that Chris shouldn’t be thinking of as ‘adorable’, but does nonetheless.

“Fantastic,” the man says warmly. “It’s nice to meet you, Chris. This is Margot,” – he gestures to the girl of about eight standing next to him – “and this little guy here is David,” he adds, lightly bouncing the three or four-year-old, curly haired boy on his hip. David gives Chris a wide eyed look before promptly burying his face in his father’s neck. “He’s a little shy,” the dad says fondly.

“That’s fine,” Chris tells them. With a smile, he ducks his head to try and catch David’s eye. “You’re not the only one, kiddo. I’m a little shy myself sometimes, you know.”

“I’m not shy,” Margot pipes up.

“No,” her dad agrees with a chuckle, “you certainly are not.”

Chris turns his eyes back to their father’s face. “And your name..?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man says, “I’m Sebastian.” He holds out his hand for Chris to shake, warm and dry with long, elegant fingers that fit nicely against Chris’s own, studier ones.

Sebastian, Chris thinks. Perfect name for a perfect guy. The term ‘DILF’ flashes unbidden through Chris’s mind – wildly inappropriate, given the circumstances, but oh so accurate. Sebastian has a sweet, charming smile, incredible bone structure, and dark, wavy hair, swept up in a quiff-like style that manages to make him look both sophisticated and a little boyish at the same time. There’s a hint of grey at his temples as well as in his beard that has Chris placing him at maybe two or three years older than himself.

“New York?” Chris guesses, as he reluctantly lets go of Sebastian’s hand.

“That’s right,” Sebastian nods. “Well, formerly, anyway. We just moved to the area, actually.”

“Oh, really? What brought you all the way out here?”

Sebastian runs a hand through his hair; a nervous habit, perhaps. “Oh, um. My ex-wife got a job in Boston last year, and I didn’t want to be too far from her and the kids, so I decided to follow suit. Only moved down here last month. This is my first full weekend with these guys at my new place, so I thought I’d take them out to do something cultural, learn a little about the local history, y’know?”

“Well, we’ve got plenty of that here,” Chris assures him. “In fact,” he adds sheepishly, “that’s kinda all we've got.”

Sebastian laughs, causing Chris’s brain to glitch, which is probably why the next thing that comes out of his mouth is – “Divorce, huh? I’m sorry, that must’ve been tough.”

When Sebastian doesn’t answer straight away, Chris wants to kick himself for running his big, stupid mouth. As usual. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes hastily. “That’s none of my business. Just tryin’ to make small talk, but I always seem to forget I’m really bad at that. Just forget I said anything.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Sebastian assures him, flashing Chris a quick smile. “Thank you. These things are never easy, but it’s better this way, you know?”

“They’re not fighting or anything,” Margot chimes in again, from a few feet below. “Mommy and daddy only got divorced because mommy’s a girl and daddy likes boys better than girls. Right, daddy?"

Well. Chris tries not to be too obvious about glancing at Sebastian’s face to see his reaction to that bombshell his daughter just dropped, but he’s not sure how well he manages.

Sebastian closes his eyes for a moment as if praying for strength. “That's right, sweetheart,” he says with a grimace. “But I'm sure Chris doesn't need to hear about all that."

Chris begs to differ – he’s actually extremely interested in hearing about all this, but before he has a chance to say anything in reply, Margot squares her jaw and crosses her football jersey-clad arms.

“Why not?” she asks defiantly. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Some girls just like girls and some boys like boys, it’s totally normal. It’s not prola- probu –" She sighs in frustration, looking up at her dad, who’s watching her with something like pride on his handsome face.

“Problematic?”

“Yeah,” Margot concurs, “not probametic.”

Chris hums in agreement. “It’s not, you’re absolutely right. I’ll tell you what,” he tells her conspiratorially, “I happen to like boys better, too.”

Margot’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You do?”

“I do.”

Suddenly, Margot’s little face lights up, her shrewd eyes flitting to her dad’s face for a second, then back to Chris. “Do you like my dad?”

“Margot,” Sebastian cuts in, a hint of exasperation in his tone. “That’s enough, honey.” When he tuns back to Chris to give him an apologetic look, Chris can’t help but notice the slight blush coloring his cheeks. “I’m sorry about that. She’s gotten it into her head that she needs to find me the perfect man ASAP, or I’ll waste away or something.”

Chris laughs, throwing back his head in genuine mirth. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine,” he assures them, then claps his hands together to change the precarious subject. “So, who’s ready to learn a little bit about what living in Concord was like over a hundred years ago?”

******

Chris always enjoys volunteering at the museum – it’s nice to give something back to the community that’s been his home for his entire life, and to chat to visitors from all over who have come to visit the land of Little Women, among other things – but what Chris likes best is when he gets to show kids around the place. Some of them need to be won over (after all, a dusty old museum isn’t quite as exciting as a trip to Disney World), but others are instantly captivated by the strange objects and old-timey atmosphere – Sebastian’s kids, fortunately, seem to fall in the latter category.

There’s one room in particular that’s an invariably a favorite with kids – the one that houses the old children’s toys. Trains, dolls and dollhouses, most of them made from wood, all arranged in a colorful parade, with a few screens set up in front of the glass display cases on which kids can watch animations of the toys being used. To Chris’s delight, Margot and David are both immediately taken with the display, David pressing his nose against the glass while Margot fires off question after question that Chris answers patiently and to the best of his ability.

“You sure know a lot about them,” Sebastian remarks, not without a hint of admiration, once Chris has finished explaining the mechanics of the miniature train set.

“Ah.” Chris rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I guess you could say I’m something of a toy enthusiast myself. I’ve actually got a carpentry workshop – that’s my real job,” he explains. “I’m just a volunteer here – and I dabble in some toy making sometimes, too.”

Sebastian’s eyes widen. “You’re kidding. I used to want to be a toy maker when I was a kid, you know,” he says wistfully. “Probably just saw Pinocchio one too many times, but it just seemed like the best job in the world to me, at the time.”

“It kinda is,” Chris grins at Sebastian, getting lost in his dancing grey eyes for a moment. “So what did you end up doing for a living, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I’m a journalist. I love it, don’t get me wrong. It’s enriching, challenging. But there’s just something about working with your hands, creating something tangible, something useful…”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Chris nods. He bites his lip, hesitating for just a moment before deciding to bite the bullet. “Hey, I don’t know if you guys have plans after this, but my shift ends in a few minutes. I live pretty close, maybe a ten minute drive – if you want, I could show you my workshop? Maybe the kids can try out some of the things I’ve been working on, see if they’re actually any fun to play with?”

There’s an excited collective gasp from the kids, both of them immediately turning big, hopeful eyes on their father. “Oh, daddy,” Margot pleads, tugging on his sleeve. “Can we go see the workshop, pleaaase?”

Chris tries to ignore the way his stomach drops when Sebastian visibly hesitates.

“I don’t know, guys.” Sebastian looks back at Chris. “I don't want to intrude. It’s almost dinner time on a Saturday. I’m sure you’ve got plans, maybe with your partner..?”

Oh, Chris thinks, chest expanding with hope. He shakes his head. “No partner,” he says, holding Sebastian’s gaze. “Just a dog.”

“A dog?” Margot squeals. “Oh my god, daddy, he’s got a dog. We have to go.”

Sebastian chuckles, rolling his eyes. "They've been hounding me about a dog for months, excuse the pun. I want one too, but I'm just not sure I'm home enough.”

Chris nods sympathetically. “Yeah, it can be tricky if you work full-time, but there’s usually a solution for this kind of thing, in my experience.”

“What’s your dog’s name?” Margot interrupts, bouncing excitedly on the balls of her feet.

“He’s called Dodger,” Chris tells her, unable to keep the pride out of his voice as he talks about his beloved, four legged-rescue.

From Sebastian’s other side, a small voice suddenly joins in. “Like the one from Oliver?” asks David. His big, brown eyes are wide as he stares up at Chris.

“That’s right,” Chris confirms, dropping to his haunches to level the playing field a little. “Exactly like the one from Oliver. You like that movie, huh?”

David nods, looping one arm around one of his dad’s long legs while clearly fighting the urge to hide behind him completely. “It’s my favorite,” he mutters, then quickly sticks his thumb in his mouth to signal the end of the conversation.

“Really?” Chris asks, beaming at him. “It’s my favorite, too!”

David actually smiles at that, doing an excited little wiggle on the spot. “Daddy, can we go see Dodger, please?” he asks his dad, not bothering to remove his thumb from his mouth.

From his spot on the floor, Chris looks up Sebastian too, probably looking just as hopeful as the kids are – maybe even more so.

Smiling, Sebastian shakes his head. “Sure, buddy,” he laughs, ruffling David’s hair. “How could I resist all these cute little faces, huh?”

There’s a chorus of cheers from the kids that gives Chris a much-needed moment to recover from the euphoria of hearing Sebastian call him cute. Well, sort of.

“Alright,” Chris says, getting to his feet again. “I’ll just go grab my things. Meet you guys in the parking lot?”

“Sounds good.”

Chris nods and is about to head in the direction of the staff room, when Sebastian halts him with a hand on his arm. Chris stops in his tracks, swallowing as he tears his gaze away from Sebastian’s elegant hand on his bicep, back to his face.

“Thank you,” Sebastian says, giving him a look from under his eyelashes that can only be described as coy. “I really appreciate this, you know.”

Holding Sebastian’s gaze, Chris lifts a hand to cover Sebastian’s with his own, giving it a quick squeeze. “It’s my pleasure,” he replies honestly. “Trust me.”

Smiling, Sebastian bites his lip, no doubt noticing the way Chris’s eyes flicker down to his mouth when he does. “I do.”

Chris’s foolishly romantic heart can’t help but skip a beat.

“See,” Margot says suddenly from beside them, breaking the moment and sounding awfully smug about it, too. “Not prolametic at all.”

Chris barks out a laugh while Sebastian covers his eyes with his hand. “Whatever you do, never have kids.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Chris chuckles, giving Margot a wink and David’s hair a quick ruffle. “I kinda like yours.”

Sebastian clears his throat. “Alright, guys. Let’s go find your jackets and we’ll go see what Chris has in store for us, huh?”

#evanstan #rpf #kid fic #minnie answers #my fic #my writing #Anonymous

344 notes · View notes

squishycheekanon · 3 years

Text

When Dusk begins.

Part Two.

Warnings: none yet but there will be smut in upcoming chapters.

SERIES MASTERLIST.

“What just happened?!” You shouted over the loud wind that brushed harshly against your skin. The slight pricks against your cheeks; a hint of realisation hit you as you felt the warm unstable ground you were sinking into. “We’re in Egypt.” You whispered in disbelief. Your eyes widened and a swarm of panicked breaths swirled around you. “Ahkmen! Ahkmenrah!”

“I’m here!” He yelled. You turned to see him climbing over the sand to you. He grabbed your hand pulling you closer as if protecting you while he was surveying the area. You looked over his face, the way his jaw was clenched, his eyes were stern. You couldn’t help but smile thinking of the smiling teddy bear he was earlier.

“That’s my home.” He pointed to the large palace. Your breath caught in your throat. You were seeing an actual ancient Egyptian palace up close. Ahkmenrah pulled you along with the words ‘let’s go’.

“Wait. We can’t go there. We don’t even know if it’s safe. We don’t even know how we got here? How do we get back? What happens if we can’t get back?!” You started to panic; all the horrid thoughts spiralling in your head. Ahkmenrah frowned cupping your face with one hand.

“Listen to me. It’s going to be okay. No matter what happens, I will protect you.” You saw the truth in his words with the way his face shifted. He was serious. You took a deep breath and nodded, putting your trust in him.

Three days earlier...

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. You couldn’t think of one thing to say. Out of the amount of questions you had built up over the years. All the things you wanted to know; why didn’t you just ask something.....he was just so distracting.

“Y/N!” You blinked out of your daze. “Are you even listening to me?” Your friend smirked at your far away look.

“No,” you began sheepishly, “I’m sorry. I am now. Go on.” You smiled.

“As I was saying. He told me I was too mindless to be with him since he was looking for a serious relationship——-“

You loved your friend Alyssa. She was like the sister you never had. But no matter how many times you tried you couldn’t find it in yourself to be interested in her love life. It was huge. Her ‘love life’ stretched across the whole city. She complains about being dumped but you know for a fact that she doesn’t care, especially since she had a plethora of men left at her disposal.

“So yeah we’re not seeing each other anymore. Oh and I got a hot date this Saturday with a guy called Spence. He’s cool.” It caused you physical pain for you not to roll your eyes there and then.

“That’s great hun.” You thanked Larry more than ever when your phone went off with an ‘emergency’ halfway through Alyssa’s explicit story of last nights one night stand.

You got to the museum just before sun down. It looked so strange with nothing walking around. It felt so empty. Standing at the front desk you waited for Larry to show up. After a while you began to wander about, it was not long before you found yourself at Ahkmenrah’s exhibit. You walked inside really examining the place. It felt so much like home to you, so strange.

Your eyes laid upon the sarcophagus. Frowning at the thought that he must have been so lonely all those years stuck inside the box. Just as you placed your hand on the glass case, a glow shone brightly from behind you. The golden shine was magnificent, you watched the tablet come to life in awe.

A loud sound echoed through the walls of the exhibit as Ahkmenrah started to scream. You acted quickly, removing the glass top and pulling out the pins of the coffin. With a grunt you pushed off the lid. Ahkmenrah sat up pulling off the dusty bandages.

“Thank you Y/N.” You really weren’t used to him saying your name. No not yet.

“No problem.” Both of you smiled at one another. He dusted himself off and placed his crown on his head turning to you. You suddenly felt awkward, he noticed you shifting your shoulders uncomfortably.

“So Larry tells me you like Egypt.” He said making you laugh.

“You could say that. More like.. it’s my life.” You giggle sheepishly. His face brightened at your words, happy to find someone who shares the same enthusiasm about his life.

“Well I could tell you abo—“

“Y/N! AHK!” Your head snapped to Larry who was looking about frantically.

“What’s wrong?” You asked standing up, instantly feeling the warm presence behind you. Somewhere in your mind you had convinced yourself that because Ahk was basically dead, theoretically he would be a cold, with lifeless features. But his warmth and comforting tropical scent proved you wrong.

“The cavemen left the museum. I need you to use the tablet to bring them back!” He rushed out. Ahkmenrah nodded with urgency and grabbed the golden tablet out of the wall.

“I’ll go wait by the door.” Larry said before running off.

Your eyebrows raised in surprise at the golden glow that shone when Ahkmenrah pressed a few buttons on the tablet.

“That’s cool.” You grinned like a idiot not noticing the Egyptian King grinning at you, he couldn’t help but smile at the wonder in your eyes. He was so focused on you that his thumb slipped and pressed a button...

You screamed so loud you thought your lungs would burst. You fell into swirls of gold and fluorescent turquoise. With a thump you landed coughing. The unclear air made you uneasy....

You and Ahkmenrah made your way closer to the palace. It was so beautiful and grand. The light colour used made you feel hopeful that nothing bad was going to happen, or maybe that was Ahkmen’s hand in yours.

You stumbled over your feet as you saw guards with spears stationed at the entrances. They kneeled looking down the moment they saw Ahk.

“That means they can see us.” You whispered panicked. He rubbed his thumb gently over the back of your hand in a way of calming you. Pulling you passed them qucikly, practically running. He grabbed a piece of cloth from a pile that a woman was carrying, much to your confusion.

He pulled you into a room closing the big door behind both of you and shoving the cloth in your hands. “What’s this?” You frowned unfolding it to show a very light yellow almost white gown.

“They can see us. Which means they can see your modern day clothes. Until we can figure out what’s happening the best thing we can do is blend in.” He explained, you nodded agreeing. You looked at him waiting for him to turn around.

“Could you, yanno turn around?” You asked sheepishly. He chuckled with a look of understanding before turning to face the doors.

“Right. I forgot that nudeness is a big deal in your time.” He said making you unbelievably scoff at the thought of him being naked 24/7 in his time.

“Okay. I’m done.” Your fingers brushed over the beautiful soft gown. It felt so lushious. It went all the way down to the floor, swaying with the breeze. You looked up to see Ahkmenrah staring at your with an emotion you couldn’t quite decipher.

He stepped forward taking a piece of the material in between his thumb and forefinger. Your breathing increased at the look in his eyes. He tilted his head sideways shamelessly examining the skin on your neck and chest that was on display. He was so near now you could feel his hot breath tickling your nose. You were both inching closer unknowingly, it felt so good to be close to someone. It felt so so so nice.

“Ahkmen?” You both jumped, blinking quickly pulling away and turning to see a woman. She was gorgeous, dark dark hair with braids here and there. Beads of gold hung delicately on strands. A white gown covered her body, a shiny collar clung to her neck. A magenta sash tightened around her waist. Ahkmenrah’s hand squeezed yours tightly, moving his arm to pull you behind him and out of line of vision. Your eyes widened at his words.

“Mother?”

#ahkmenrah x reader #ahkmenrah #night at the museum #pharaoh #x reader #squishycheekanon

198 notes · View notes

after-witch · 4 years

Text

Oh Sugar Sugar (Part 1) (Yandere L Lawliet x Reader)

Title: Oh Sugar Sugar (Part 1) (Yandere L Lawliet x Reader)

Synopsis: You’re the loving owner of a cute little pastry shop. A new regular falls in love with your pastries... and in love with something else, too.

Word Count: 1754

Notes: yandere

You hummed a little to yourself as you set out this morning’s special goodies in the display case. In addition to the daily treats that customers had come to expect--morning muffins, assortments of bagels, fruit tarts and crispy macarons with fillings that changed every day--you had a daily case filled with more detailed small pastries and cakes. You loved making these most of all, because they allowed you to truly take your time and focus on small, lovingly made details that weren’t present on bagels or muffins or the treats people liked to buy in bunches of a dozen.

These treats were far too ornate and time-consuming to make in large quantities, and sometimes there might be only one or two of each treat available. You especially loved when customers would eat these in the cafe itself; you loved seeing them snap photos for social media, then take that first bite and immediately forget about their phones as they savored the caramelized crusts or gooey handmade fillings or delicate chocolate ganaches.

You glanced at the candy pink clock on the wall, noted the time, and undid the latch keeping your little bakery closed to the public. At exactly 7 AM every morning, La Belle Pâtisserie--you secretly hoped that regulars would call it “La Belle’s”--was open for business.

You cheerfully placed yourself behind the register and waited with ease for the customers you’d come to expect every morning. A businessman whose schedule was so tight that you always had his order ready and waiting by the register before you opened up; a mother and daughter on their way to the girl’s school, grabbing macarons and sometimes a special cake to tuck into her lunch bag; ordinary people with ordinary lives, and you couldn’t be happier that your little place was part of that.

After the morning rush, you usually had some time to pop back into the kitchen and work on batches for the after-work rush or sometimes for tomorrow’s case. As you pulled out a tray of cooling blueberry macarons, you heard the doorbell chime go off and immediately piped up, sweet as--well, blueberry macarons: “Just one moment, please!” You heard a noise of affirmation, and as soon as you could set the tray down to cool, you walked back behind the register.

It was an older gentlemen, with salt and pepper hair and a business suit. Maybe a businessman on his break, you thought.

You smiled, bright and peppy. You loved your work and you hoped it always showed through how you interacted with clients, ‘customer service voice’ and all. “Is there anything in particular you’re looking for, sir? I don’t recognize your face, and I know all of my clients, so I’m happy to help you with any questions you have about our offerings today.”

His smile was cordial, if a bit stiff. “Thank you.” His eyes glanced over your cases, quickly taking in treats, cookies and cakes. Finally his eyes rested on your special case, filled with the delicacies and pastries that you poured your heart and soul into every night. “Do you have more of these in the back? I would like to get as many as possible.”

Your smile turned sympathetic. “Oh, I’m sorry, these are special items and I only have what’s in the case. They take much longer than our other items.”

“Hmm.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, then sighed and took a wallet out of his pocket. “I suppose I’ll take everything in that case, then,” he said, gesturing to your special case.

You practically sputtered. “The--the entire case? Are you sure, that’s a lotta--I mean, the total will be… are you sure?”

He gave a low, throaty chuckle. “I’m perfectly sure, miss.” He handed over a few large bills, enough to cover everything in the case and then sum. “I assume you accept tips. Please keep the remainder as a tip to make up for the pain of packing all these up.”

You accepted the money gratefully, stuttering out a few questions about bags before practically dashing around the register area like a mad chicken as you dutifully packed up each and every item. Of course, you took care to pack them as nicely as you would for someone buying just a single pastry--presentation was about the entire package, not only the pastry itself but the box, the ribbon, the daintily embossed logo in the center.

You thanked the man profusely on his way out, and when the door shut behind him--how he managed to balance all of those boxes, you’ll never know--you immediately yanked your cellphone from your apron pocket and texted your best friend about the enormously large and unusual sale.

The older gentlemen, as it turned out, became another one of your regulars. A few times a week he would come in and make a large purchase, leaving you with a nice tip. Once it became clear that he liked to empty out your entire specialty case, you began making a few extras each evening, since you didn’t want your other regulars to feel put-out by a complete lack of your familiar special pastries and cakes. It took more time, and you found yourself napping during your lunch break to catch up on much needed-rest, but the happiness of your customers was a deeply entrenched priority for you.

The older man always came in the late morning, during a lull, which was why you found yourself almost gaping when you turned around from your not-quite-closing-but-getting-there cleaning and saw him standing at the register.

“Oh!” You said, turning on your customer service smile. “I’m surprised to see you here this late!” You took a moment to look him over, and noticed that he looked slightly disheveled. It was unusual, but then, he was perhaps rushing to your shop to make it before it closed.

“I’m sorry to come this close to closing,” he said, slightly out of breath, confirming your suspicions. “But it’s an emergency.” He paused. “Well, a pastry emergency. I need one of your cakes.”

You chuckled. “You know, I shouldn’t say things like this, but too many sweets might not be good for you! I hope you aren’t eating them all at once.”

“Ahh,” he said, fiddling with his front suit pocket. For a moment you worried that you may have offended them. Good going, you thought to yourself, being rude to a loyal customer.

“Actually, I’m not a fan of sweets.” Your confusion must have shown on your face, so he quickly continued. “I’m buying them for an… associate. He can’t get enough of them. Especially when he’s busy working on something stressful--but he doesn’t want cakes from other bakeries now, only yours. Which is why I came so late, you see.”

“Ohhh.” It makes sense. The idea that someone wanted one of your cakes so much that they avoided other bakeries and sent someone running down before you closed is incredibly flattering, though you can’t help feel a twinge of sympathy for the older man who’s been running--well, cake errands.

“In that case!” You smiled, setting aside your flattery and slight pity. “I will pick something special out for your friend. Hopefully it will help him de-stress! One moment please.” You quickly dart into the kitchen and head to your decorating table. You were just finishing up a cake that was supposed to go in the case for tomorrow morning, but you didn’t have any specialty cakes left in the case. It was a crepe cake, strawberry flavored, with a special hardened chocolate ganache top.

You quickly grabbed some boxes and ribbons to pack it up, but paused. He said his associate was stressed, and this associate was technically a great regular customer of yours, so why not add something extra nice? You picked up an icing tube and quickly scooped a batch of strawberry icing inside. With a practiced hand, you made a few strawberry shaped dollops on the chocolate disc; you dipped a toothpick on the pot of chocolate ganache and used them to make the seeds. Then, almost as an afterthought, you used the tube to add small, decorative hearts next to the strawberries.

You took great care to wrap the box up extra nicely, tying the ribbon picture-perfect, before you brought it out to the register. You dutifully took the payment (and, as you noticed, another excellent tip) and held out the box for inspect. The elder gentlemen took the box and, upon noticing that you’d written something on the top, raised both of his eyebrows, but said nothing. He thanked you for finding something suitable and promised he’d be back again soon.

Little did you know that your sweet little gesture would be your undoing.

Watari set the box down on the coffee table in front of L, who glanced up from a laptop screen.

“The video?”

Watari fiddled with his front pocket, then pulled out a tiny electronic piece from inside. “Just as you asked.”

L nodded approvingly. “Good. Hook it up to that monitor.”

Appeased, L finally glanced down at the cream-colored box, wrapped with a dusty pink ribbon and finished off with the personal scrawl you’d delighted in writing earlier.

It was L’s turn to raise his eyebrows. Watari watched as his lifted the box up with both his hands, bringing it inches away from his face for inspection.

L set the box in his lap, then brought his thumb up to his lips. “Watari. Make the arrangements. I want to meet them as soon as possible.”

He retraced your loopy scrawl on the top of the cake box with his finger, seemingly entranced.

“Please enjoy…. made… with love.”

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere death note #yandere l lawliet #afterwitch writes #ngl this is just the set up for part 2 where actual yandere stuff happens #but y'know #\o/#watari's a good tipper pass it on

478 notes · View notes

adorethedistance · 3 years

Text

British. Handsome. Charming. - Harry Styles x Reader Retail!AU

Sorta requested.

Warnings: Swearing, suggestive situations, I say titties like once

Words: 2108

Summary: When your coworker calls out and leaves you alone for a graveyard shift, you unintentionally enlist the help of a certain British, handsome, and charming retail employee from next door.

A/N: Hello this is my piece for @meetmeinfleetwood ‘s “to lovers” fic challenge! I put my ‘to lovers’ trope as Coworkers Harry and Y/n but I’m kind of riffing off of that trope because I wanted to do employees at different stores in the same section of the mall.

“So, Ziva just called out...” I hear my manager Kelly break the news from behind me. A groan threatens to escape my lungs but I fight the urge as best as possible to save face in front of customers. This is the third time Ziva’s called out of her graveyard shift in the past two weeks. Tonight, we were supposed to unpack the new shipment of holiday tees, gag gifts, and decorations. On a normal night, I can handle floor set by myself, but the added challenge of holiday items and displays is a different story.

“If I take another lunch right now, I can stay and help with the floor set.”

“No,” I wave her off, already dreading the exhaustion that is bound to set in, “Go home. You’ve already done your full eight, I can fly solo for tonight.”

“Are you sure?”

“Go before I regret letting you!” Kelly smiles with the tip of her tongue peaking through her teeth. She thanks me for freeing her and I finish straightening the last of the yellow champion hoodies on the rack in front of me.

“The boxes are on the left side in the backroom.” Backroom… got it.

Working at Tilly’s was supposed to be my high school job. At the end of Junior year, I opted for a minimum wage position to earn some extra spending money. If I’d known I would be attending the most local university in this godforsaken town, I would’ve picked a better gig; one that pays more. Or at least one that doesn’t schedule me from 7:30PM to 3AM.

The store closes at ten but the other four ish hours are for rearranging the entire floor layout. I have to redistribute the table full of graphic tees strategically around the store to make room for the holiday items we just received. With someone else’s help I could expect to be finished by 12:30. Maybe 1. Ziva calling out wasn’t part of the plan however, so I don’t expect to be finished early at all. If anything, I might have to rush to finish before my shift ends.

Not to mention I have a prose analysis final draft due tomorrow by midnight. Ziva better have some damn good excuses when she gets back.

Readjusting the waistband of my favorite jeans against my body, I head to the dressing rooms to double check for any stragglers. Upon finding myself alone, I go lock the front doors and flick off the glowing “open” sign in the front window. Hopefully time will fly faster than it has since I got here. I should’ve asked Kelly to grab me a coffee or a coke to get me through the rest of the shift. Maybe I should do some coke to get me through the rest of the shift.

Okay. What did Kelly say?

Backroom... Was that all? I hesitantly prop the storeroom’s door with the small, tan, rubber wedge before trying to take in the overwhelming mess of the backroom. The room has painfully bright overhead LED lights illuminating my path; the brightness is mirrored off the polished concrete floors under my feet. Considering there’s no holiday bullshit directly in front of me, Kelly must have given me more directions than just ‘backroom’. Graphic tees, sunglasses, jewelry. Nothing.

In my most goddamn genius idea yet, I search the top of the self of the storeroom to see the holiday boxes sealed and intact. Lovely. I can graze the surface of the top shelf with my fingertips just enough to get them dusty, but not enough to pull down any boxes.

Fuck.

This is what we have a ladder for, but we lent it out to the Zara next door. I don’t know what time they close but intuition tells me it's soon. Figuring I have nothing to lose, I dash out of the back room and unlock the front door to round the corner into Zara. Right as I exit the store, I run into someone hard enough to lose my balance, but not hard enough to take the other person down, thank god.

“Woahhh, you alright there?” British.

I look up to the face of the person I collided with. Handsome.

“I’m so sorry, I need to get to Zara.”

“I’m afraid you’re too late for that.” The handsome stranger’s statement catches me off guard and the fog of my rushed mindset disappears. Charming.

“What?”

“Jus’ locked up, I’m afraid.” I look at the completely dark storefront, and then back at the stranger. His gleaming green eyes catch mine and, cliché-ly, I’m rendered breathless by the exquisite nature of his face. Employee.

“You work at Zara,” I state dumbly.

“That, I do. And you work…?” Dropping my eyes to my worn work shoes, I’m suddenly overwhelmingly shy about working at Tilly’s.

“Tilly’s, next door. We lent you guys our step ladder and I need it back.”

“Shit,” the man smiles softly, nervously scratching the back of his neck. “I have the key to the store, but I don’t have the key to the supply closet where we kept it.”

“Dammit.” When I pull out my phone to check the time, I groan at the loss of another ten minutes. “By any chance do you guys conveniently have a step ladder that isn’t in an inaccessible closet?” The beautiful man laughs at my question and shakes his head no.

“We don’t, but I am pretty tall, maybe I could help?”

“You’re not that tall.”

“Taller than you.” My teasing is cut short by the man’s quip and I lead him into the store with conviction.

“Basically, I’m supposed to reconfigure the entire floor layout around the table for all the holiday merch, and the shipment came in but someone brilliantly placed them on the top shelf of the back room.”

“Which is why you need the step ladder from the closet that I can’t open. Gotcha.”

“If you could just get those three boxes from the top shelf right there that’d be wonderful.” After clocking the boxes in question, he nods wordlessly, and slips off his nice coat, no doubt a piece from the store next door. Underneath, he’s wearing a grey button up of which he begins rolling up the sleeves to. The action made me stop breathing for a second. His forearms are littered with tattoos of various drawings, one in particular catching my eye.

It’s a two dimensional mermaid figure with no seashell-bra, her skin transitioning into scales only after exposing her pubic bone. In the fluorescent lighting of the store, it’s clear as day that this is quite possibly the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. What’s he doing working at an outlet mall?

Zoning back in, I see he’s already hard at work. With a box no doubt full of gag gifts on his shoulder, he speaks again.

“I’m Harry by the way.”

I return the gesture and he smiles when he hears my name.

“Pretty.”

Returning his attention to the second box, he reaches up to slide the box closer to the edge of the shelf. When he does so, the hem of his grey shirt rides up to reveal a tiny strip of his toned abdomen, where two mirrored stems of fern leaves are tattooed in strikingly black ink.

I blink quickly a few times to redirect my focus, and divert my attention to the floor where he’s set the first box. This leads me to notice the brown suede chelsea boots he’s wearing. Black coat, grey shirt, brown shoes. Interesting.

“Oh shit!” I hear him mutter in a hushed voice. Looking up to the top of the shelf, I see that the last box has already been opened. Harry is balancing it between both limbs, his shoulder, and his head, but any movement would cause the contents of the box to fall out.

I rush forward to help. Moving the flaps of the box back over the top, I reach across Harry’s body to move them. Then, to keep them shut I place one palm on top of the seam, and use the other hand to support the bottom of the box. It isn’t until I stop moving that I notice the position I’ve put us in. I’m reaching up as far as I can to secure the top of the box which has placed the entire front side of my body to the back of his. I’m painfully aware of how my hips are pressed against his ass, and he must be painfully aware of the way my titties are pressed against his upper back.

“I’m gonna move backwards so it’s off the shelf. Just hold the top in place until I have it right side up again, yea?” I nod dumbly in response before realizing he can’t see me.

“Yeah, got it.” And with that he begins to back up little by little, moving at a pace slow enough for me to consistently adjust. The box is almost intact, but I’ve run out of space from standing behind Harry, and I have to maneuver myself around him whilst keeping the box shut. I cringe before doing what I have to do, and shuffling around the side of Harry’s body, my frontside pressed against him the entire time.

Finally, it’s over and we can set the box down on top of the other two. Harry stands up straight again and dusts off his hands. He adjusts his jeans, pulling them back up his hips, and I have to keep myself from staring once more.

“Anythin’ else I can do for you?”

“I don’t think so? That’s pretty much all the heavy lifting I have to do tonight.” He nods understandingly and… dare I say disappointed? I’m probably just projecting.

“Are you alone tonight?”

“Yeah, my coworker called out, but it’s fine. My boss Kelly got most of the work done earlier when she unpacked a lot of the boxes and folded the shirts into piles, so…”

“I could help.”

“You don’t need to do that. You’re already off and I’m sure you’re exhausted and-”

“I want to.” I guess I wasn’t projecting.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. That way you can go home earlier.” His smile is soft and lopsided until we connect eyes, in which case it brightens to reveal his pearly teeth. I fall shy under his gaze and avert my eyes to the concrete floor below us. My cheeks are radiating at about 1000° and I hope he doesn’t notice.

“Thank you,” I say, more flustered than I would have liked. Why am I getting so nervous? He’s just a retail employee at Zara.

A gorgeous employee at Zara.

“I don’t mind staying back... Spending more time with you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Since I already know what you do for a living, what are your hobbies?” He ignores my question.

“I don’t have much time for hobbies. I’m only part-time while I’m in uni.”

“No way, what are you studying?”

I proceed to tell Harry all about my major and my career aspirations post-graduation and post-retail. I enjoy telling people about my dreams and yet, Harry’s the first person I’ve met in a long time that’s shown any interest in me and my dreams. The way he nods attentively despite having to fold misconstrued t-shirts and holiday sweaters, ignites a fire in my stomach that warms my heart. They way he asks hyper specific, prompting questions to learn more about my plans contrasts the fire inside me by sending chills down my spine.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What are your dreams?” Harry stops folding for a moment and exhales a conflicted sigh.

“I’m not too sure at the moment. I’m content at Zara for the moment, and I haven’t decided what’s next. I do write music though.”

“You do?”

“A bit, yeah.”

“What kind of music?” He stops to think again, a bit less conflicted than before.

“It’s like, indie-folk-pop-rock ish.”

“Indie-folk-pop-rock ish?” I can’t contain the laughter spilling from my lips over the mountain of folded t-shirts.

“Yeah. A good bit of variety, really.”

“Well, it’s nice you have something to be passionate about.”

“Judging by how you talked about your dreams for an hour, I wouldn’t say I’m as passionate as you are about your studies.”

“Passion isn’t a competition. It’s what moves you forward as an individual.” It’s Harry’s turn to laugh at me.

“Okay, Gandhi.”

“Hush! I’m allowed to be philosophical.” His laugh draws into a closed-mouth smile, from humor to an adoration of sorts.

“You’re cute when you’re flustered.” I unintentionally mirror his affectionate smile.

“Promise?”

***

A/N: This was absolutely one of those fics that, the longer I stared at it, the more I hated it and cut it down so here’s what’s remaining before I destroyed the whole thing. It’s def a puff piece and not an in depth fic but nuance is not my friend right now so, sorry about it :(

Taglist: @curlybrownhairedboys @meetmeinfleetwood

#Harry #Harry Styles #Harry Styles fanfiction #Harry Styles fanfic #Harry Styles fic #Harry Styles writing #Harry Styles imagine #Harry Styles oneshot #Harry Styles one shot #Harry Styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #Harry Styles fluff #Harry Styles angst #Harry Styles smut

190 notes · View notes

dulce-pjm · 3 years

Text

cheek to cheek

request for taehyung from @kidcoredreamz (thanks bae!!)

listen to “cheek to cheek” by ella fitzgerald and louis armstrong and “i get along without you very well” by chet baker for maximum effect

make your own request here using these prompts!

cheek to cheek

word count: 3.1k

genre: fluff, arrangedmarriage!au

summary: it’s night like these that you wish things were different

Taehyung is guaranteed, always has been.

From the minute your tiny fingers could interlock with his, you were dragging each other around the mansions and garden parties, sneaking off to corners with desserts and chocolate milk and getting sugar rushes together. Time with Taehyung comes easy and passes quickly, the hours with him condensing into minutes and the few minutes without him stretching into lonesome years.

You’ve seen him through thick and thin. Through acne flare ups and awkward conversations and never-ending games of tag. You’ve seen him pick his nose, cry over spilled milk (or, in his case, a broken remote-control race car), get caught sneaking out. You’ve comforted him while he felt broken, laughed until your sides were aching. You know his ins and outs, his rough edges and corners, his soft spots he tries to hide.

Marrying him should be a blessing.

To spend the rest of your life with the person who’s stuck by your side throughout everything is a future some can only dream about. To have someone understand you so perfectly, to understand them like no one else will. It should be a blessing.

It should be.

The digital clock reads 11:57 when he knocks on the window.

You’ve always had a weird thing about having a room on the ground floor, when possible. It’s closest to the front door, in case of an emergency. And there’s no risk of tripping downstairs when you’re sleepily moving around in the night. And, most importantly, it’s easy to sneak out when you need to.

While you’re a little startled, you’re nothing close to afraid. You know exactly what face to expect as you throw open the sheer curtains, silken pajama sleeves hanging over your fingers and eyes swollen from sleep.

The moonlight makes his silvery hair seem otherworldly, a soft glow coming off of his locks. A few months ago, you’d been more than opposed to his sudden need to dye his hair, but you really shouldn’t have been surprised. The odd color just makes him more ethereal.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” you hiss, opening the bay window and letting the frigid air slam you in the face. Your eyes comb over the rest of his figure, your brows furrowing at his dark hoodie and sweats, a black hoodie crumpled in one of his hands. Anyone else would have assumed he was an intruder.

“Visiting my fiancée?” he tries, flashing a lopsided grin. “Thought we could sneak out again. For old times’ sake.”

“We’re not kids anymore, Tae,” you huff.

“That doesn’t mean we have to be boring.”

You cross your arms as a chill runs down your spine from the cool breeze. “It’s midnight. I’m in my pajamas.”

“Well, then you better change.” You stare at him indignantly for a moment, wondering just how much of a doormat he thinks you are.

“Please?” he adds, batting his lashes teasingly. “I have a surprise. You’ll like it, promise.”

“But will I like it more than I’d like crawling back into bed? Can’t it wait until morning?”

“No. Let’s be a little spontaneous, like we used to be.”

You won’t lie. The soft duvet, still warm, is calling to you strongly. You know that as soon as your head hit the pillow again, you’d be out. Sleeping like a baby.

But it’s Taehyung’s half-assed pout and an unfortunately strong curiosity that compels you to slip on the nearest t-shirt and sweats for the designated “not-dirty-enough-for-the-basket-yet” chair and climb out the window with a sigh.

“It’s Dad’s latest passion project. It was my suggestion, but I think he’s enjoying it more than me.”

You’re enjoying yourself more than you’d like to admit, too. You aren’t sure what urged Taehyung or his wealthy, CEO father to pour their time and effort into a run down museum, but you sure are glad they did. It’s like walking through a ghost town, dust coating the walls and old exhibits. Only some of the lights work and there’s renovation supplies littering the floors. You and Taehyung stick to each other’s sides in the poorly lit areas to avoid tripping and meeting a sorry end via paint roller.

This certainly isn’t the first time you’ve been out late with Taehyung. When you were in high school and determined to rebel against your parents’ constricting ways, the two of you often found yourselves roaming the city and laughing much too loudly during a time when you should have been catching up on sleep or homework.

Being with Taehyung was never too much of a risk. His parents always fell victim to your innocent smiles and mumbled apologies, while yours believed Taehyung could do no wrong. After they yelled and scolded and nearly tore their hair out, soon they were only shaking their heads and smiling at each other knowingly. It was hard to be mad for long when things were really working even better than planned.

“What do you think it means?” Taehyung asks as the two of you stare at the large mural. It’s filled with wide strokes of color, abstract shapes littering the foreground with seemingly no pattern or reason. You really can’t even see the whole thing, when Taehyung turned on the lights for this room, only two or three managed to flicker on.

You tap your chin, deep in thought. “Well, the red is clearly...” You tilt your head. “It’s clearly having a battle with the yellow. They represent good and evil. And the purple in the back is hope.” Taehyung tilts his head in the same direction as yours, brows knit in concentration.

“You really got all that from... that?” You snort.

“Nah, I just bullshitted it. I have no idea what it means.” Taehyung giggles, shoving you in the side. You stumble, yelping dramatically and nearly crashing into a probably very expensive bust of some historical figure you wouldn’t recognize.

“I was being serious, Y/N.” You laugh at his pouty expression, resisting the urge to poke him in the side in revenge. You don’t want to start a fight you know you can’t win.

After trying to make sense of the abstract mural for a few moments, you move out of the art exhibits on to the historical section, looking at the old skeletons and fossils and relics from years and years ago.

It’s fun trying to guess the names of the different dinosaur skeletons, cackling obnoxiously at all the ridiculous things you can combine with “—asaurus.” You take turns reading the puns scattered on the colorful signs throughout the exhibit, groaning at the bad ones and acknowledging the okay ones with a tiny chuckle. You laugh the hardest when Taehyung spots the fake alligators and climbs onto the display, insisting you take his picture so he can look cool.

“Tae, you can clearly tell you’re inside!” He scoffs.

“Just take the picture!” he insists. “Don’t I look like Steve Irwin?”

The photos all come out insanely blurry, your arms shaking too much as you try to hold in your giggles.

When you were first told of the arrangement at age sixteen, you cried. You sobbed and you wailed and you screamed and you locked yourself in your room in protest for an entire day. Your parents couldn’t understand it. You loved Taehyung. More than your own family. More than anything else. They loved him too. He was the son of a close friend and a union would benefit business, certainly.

When you eventually came out of your bedroom, you refused to talk about it. You only mumbled that you were sorry and your parents knew better than to ask questions and so, that was the end of it.

“Taehyung!” you shout, grabbing his wrist and dragging him across the antiques exhibit. You’d both already tried (and failed) at using the dusty typewriter and moved on to playfully arguing about who should pose with the guillotine when your eyes locked onto an item across the room.

“What is it?” he laughed, stumbling after you, all smiles.

“It’s a phonograph,” you explain. It appears in near-perfect condition despite the circumstances, the brass horn shiny and golden like it’d been made yesterday. “You can play records on it.”

He nods in understanding. “We should try it.” The idea is tempting, but your hopes for it working are fairly low. “There’s already a record on it, just try to get it to play.”

You lean forward, fingers mentally crossed as you fiddling with the needle and try winding the crank. The gears squeak terribly inside the main compartment, making you cringe. But you keep winding it, stepping back and squeezing your eyes tight in anticipation.

When you’re met with silence instead of music, you sigh in defeat. “Well, I guess that’s alright, it’s pretty old anyway, let’s—”

Suddenly, the machine fizzles to life, record slowly turning on the turntable and a jazzy tune carries through the air. Taehyung cheers, clapping on the shoulder.

“You did it!” Your smile quickly stretches into your cheeks, exhaustion long forgotten as you relax in the nice sound, soft piano and pleasant singing filling your ears.

You begin subconsciously swaying to song, fingers drumming to the beat absentmindedly on your thighs. Taehyung seems to know the song, quietly singing a few lyrics every one and a while.

“Let’s dance,” he says suddenly. Your stomach tightens.

“Let’s not,” you reply quickly, arms hugging your sides. You stare ahead, trying to focus on the song rather than the person beside you. Out of the corner of your eye, you see him lean slightly closer, lolling his head to the side.

“Why not?”

You sigh. You don’t really have an answer.

Your hand finds his, fingers interlocking as you let Taehyung guide you out into a relatively clearly spot, tennis-shoe clad feet shuffling lightly to the music. You’ve danced with him in other settings, with many more eyes watching. You’re normally dressed perfectly, not a hair out of place and a thick layer of makeup coating your eyes and cheeks.

“Remember that time your mom made us take dance lessons when we were twelve?” Taehyung asks, a glint in his eye.

You scoff. “I remember the part where you gave me laxatives right before the first lesson, yeah.” Taehyung can barely keep his grip on you, moving his other hand to your waist in an attempt to steady himself as his shoulders shake with laughter.

“I really thought it was regular tea, I promise.”

“Sure you did.”

“I did! I thought we were being all fancy like our parents and drinking fancy tea like fancy rich people.”

“Then why didn’t you drink the laxative tea, huh?”

“I don’t like tea. I just put milk in my teacup and hoped you wouldn’t notice.” You snort, hands settled all to comfortably on his shoulders as the smooth voice croons and echoes off of the walls.

It’s intimate. There’s nowhere else to look but his eyes as he places a hand on your waist, pulling you closer with a soft smile. The room feels warmer, his breath barely skimming across your face at the close proximity.

It forces you to think about the things you’d much rather keep inside.

This should be nice. It should be normal and romantic and sweet, to be slow-dancing with your fiancée. Your smile should be light and endeared and love-struck, not forced and fake.

There’s a heavy pang in your heart as you remember. Remember how much love him. How much you care. How much you want to hold him close, press your lips on his without a single bit of hesitance.

But you can’t do those things, knowing the things you do. To Taehyung, this marriage is a convenience. It’s a way to please his parents and strengthen his business connections and do it all with his best friend. He’s always been perfectly content with the arrangement, perfectly content to marry for everything but love.

And how are you supposed to feel, wanting to marry him for the very thing he doesn’t feel for you?

He’s all you’ve ever wanted. You would have left this life a long time ago, but it would mean sacrificing him. You’re too selfish to do that. You want him all to yourself, every part that you can get.

You’ve seen every side of him, the weird and the sad and sweet. You want it all. But you’ll never have it.

You wish it were real. That this were a romantic night away, that you’d wake up in the morning all tangled in his arms. It’s this intimacy that you crave but can never enjoy, not when you know it’s all fake.

And he knows you too. Knows something is up when that little knot between your brows forms and your eyes grow just a little glassy.

“What’s wrong?” You quickly straighten your spine, blinking away any tears pricking at your eyes.

“Nothing, I’m fine.” But Taehyung knows. He leans forward slightly, dark eyes piercing through your very soul. You gulp as you feel his body heat on your own skin, releasing your hands from his shoulders in your panic.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No,” you breathe. Your gaze falls as you step back, the music tapering off as the phonograph finally gives out and the moment is fully broken.

But instead of letting you slip away, his grip tightens, look growing desperate.

“Wait! Just a second.” You can see him itch to run his hand through his hair, but his arms don’t leave you. “You’ve been acting so weird lately. Is it me? Did I do something wrong?” You furiously shake your head.

“No, that’s not it. I just—” You stop yourself before too many words spill out and you say something you can’t take back.

When you don’t elaborate, Taehyung’s face falls further. “Seriously, what is it? Am I really making you that upset?”

“No, I—”

“Is it because I dragged you out so late? I’m sorry, it’d just been so long since I saw you and I missed you—”

“Just shut up!” you cry, shoving him off of you for good. A few tears wet your cheeks and your face heats with embarrassment. “It’s because you pull this kind of stupid, romantic shit that makes me love you even more than I already do but I know you don’t see us that way.”

Taehyung’s eyes go wide, but you suppose since it’s all on the table, you’ll keep going. “I know this is all just fun and games and easy to you but it fucking hurts, Taehyung. You can’t lead people on like this. You can’t do this shit and expect me not to feel something for you.”

The phonograph crackles in the corner of the room, unable to play pretty tunes or sweet songs anymore. It sounds restless and broken and unpleasant to hear.

“Maybe I wanted you to feel something for me.” You whip your head up, cheeks still hot from mortification and anger.

“What?”

“You heard me. I wanted you to love me. Because I love you.”

When you kiss him, it’s like a breath of fresh air. It’s hungry and rushed as your fingers gently tug on his hair and his palm is splayed on the small of your back, pulling you as close to him as humanly possible.

At some point, you end up pressed against the wall, euphoric as he trails pecks down your jaw and neck incessantly, like he’s trying to make up for every time he wished he’d kissed you. You whine when he parts his lips, tugging on his hair as he fastens your body against him. He tastes like the peppermint chapstick he always keeps in his pocket. The habit had ruined a pair of his dress pants before when it melted all in the pocket, but he’s always been too stubborn about chapped lips to learn his lesson and carry it elsewhere. You can smell his shampoo and the faint scent of his cologne. Everything that fills your senses is him and only him.

You feel a few tears sting at the corner of your eyes but you ignore them, gasping for breath between long kisses, a few giggles escaping you when you see you’re not the only one lightheaded.

After what feels both like hours and seconds, Taehyung pulls away, his lips swollen and pink, but stretched into that adorable grin that hasn’t changed since you were kids.

“Sorry I didn’t say something earlier,” he murmurs. “I never could find the right words to say it and I knew it’d make everything awkward if you didn’t feel the same way.” You laugh mirthlessly, cupping his face gently with your hands.

“Same here.” You sigh. “Guess we’re both idiots.”

“Guess so.”

It's a little frightening to stare at him like this. You’ve always held your guard tightly whenever you felt even close to your feelings being compromised, but that weight you’d carried for so long as suddenly detached itself from your shoulders, leaving you free floating. Yes, it’s like floating untethered through the air or being caught in the ocean with your life jacket. It’s scary and daunting and unknown. But it’s nice to know that you’ll have Taehyung’s hand tightly holding yours the whole way.

“Since I confessed first, I think you should pose for a picture with the guillotine.” Taehyung’s intent stare breaks, his face crinkling in disgust.

“But I kissed you first.”

“Only because I said I loved you.”

“If you really loved me, you’d pose with the guillotine and I could pose like I’m the executioner.” Now it’s your turn to be disgusted.

“That’s so fucking morbid, Kim Taehyung.” You smack his arm, but he keeps you against the wall, thigh between your legs as he leans in again.

“Only for you,” he murmurs, planting his lips on yours again.

The scoff about to leave your mouth is caught in your throat as you’re enveloped in his embrace, kissing each other dizzy until you’re certain the sun must be rising soon.

You wouldn’t mind too much if it did, though.

As Taehyung keeps trying to convince you to take stupid photos and explain abstract art to him, you aren’t sure how much a blessing he is. All you really know is that he’s your guarantee, your anchor in this unforgiving world. You aren’t sure where he’ll take you next, what random time he’ll decide is the best for your future adventures. You can’t know what the rest of your life holds, only that he’ll be next to you as long as he can.

And that’s enough for now.

#dulce-pjm: request #kidcoredreamz #taehyung #taehyung drabble #taehyung fluff #taehyung angst #this was uh #not supposed to be this long #nice #thank you for the request! i loved your prompt

68 notes · View notes

mourntheantagonist · 3 years

Text

#HarringroveApril Day 23: Picnic

***

Billy’s favorite memories of his mom were always at the same place. That same little place that was outside those suffocating four walls where instead of just the aroma of beer and tobacco where the light came just from one flickering bulb in the ceiling, the sun shined through the branches on the maple trees over fields of dandelions, where his mom would always hold one up to his lips and tell him to make a wish.

They spent that time eating. She would pack a big basket full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sliced fruit and juice boxes, and always something special and home made for the desert. They would sit out on a ratty old blanket and play with the ladybugs and enjoy their time away. Together.

It was always so perfect. So peaceful. He had to be physically dragged back home to the dingy and dusty apartment every time.

The day he used the dandelion to wish they could both just run away was the day he first stopped believing in it.

In the months leading up to his mom ditching, trips to the field were nonexistent for the most part, aside from the last one. The one that took place just two days before she packed her bags and left without a trace, without notice, nothing but a note left on the fridge granting Billy just one phone call before he would never hear her voice again.

He still went back to the field. He would sit with his back to their favorite tree until the sun began to set, waiting for her to come back. Waiting for her to emerge from the distance with that same contagious laugh and picnic basket in hand. He did that every day until he couldn’t anymore. Until seeing the sun set just one more time and seeing no blonde figure walking over through the horizon became too painful.

It got to a point where he wasn’t sure he’d be happy to see her if she did, just angry. So unbelievably angry. He would have shown her all of the cuts and bruises she left for him to bear all by himself. The one person he had in his corner left him high and dry and without even so much as a basket full of pb&j’s and her famous apple pie.

After waiting and hoping became too exhausting, the anger followed suit. It soon became easier to forget than to stay mad. It became easier to shut himself down when it was time for the belt than to curse her name for leaving him there to take it all alone. He’d let the rage fade away and think of only fields of green, yellow, and white, and the smile on his mom’s face, the mother that stood between him and the monsters, not the one who fed him to the dragon.

His happy place.

It didn’t take long for him to lose sight of that too. He could hardly remember what her face looked like anymore, and day by day, beating after beating, his happy place became too closely associated with pain, that it was just another place. Just another place he couldn’t successfully escape to anymore.

And the memory was lost. Just like that. Suppressed along with all of the others, and Billy could only recall her face in the few pictures he managed to keep away from the fireplace. He had nothing to replace the sounds of leather striking his skin or the taste of blood in his mouth, so he was left there to just take it. Unable to fight back, unable to breathe. He’d just stay there, hold back the tears, and keep telling himself that it would all be over soon.

He’d forgotten. Memories out in the field chasing butterflies and picking flowers and smearing jelly all over his face were replaced by red, replaced by pain and grief and a dark tunnel with no conceivable light on the other side. No more hope.

He’d forgotten until he found the same old wicker basket while cleaning the garage.

The old ratty blanket was still inside.

It was all still intact.

And the memories came flooding back like a fifty foot wave crashing over the top of him, drowning him, leaving him panicked and unsure of what to do next, where to go, how to proceed. He just held it in his two hands and let his eyes fall closed, seeing the green, yellow, and white displayed on the inside of his eyelids, feeling that happiness inside of him just one more time. The memories were far away, barely in reach, but they weren’t gone forever.

He could almost smell the lemon perfume and hear the buzz of the bees she attracted.

There were many steps that had to be taken in between point a and point b that couldn’t even be considered a mistake, but it felt a little bit like one when he was driving in the car to Steve’s house with a picnic basket in the passenger seat filled with beer and chips and whatever snacks he could find lurking in the back of their kitchen cupboards.

And of course, two quickly and poorly made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Steve had been the memories that filled the silence for him. It was Steve’s laugh that he heard when he needed the tears to stop, it was the feeling of his lips against his own that made the pain go away, it was the feeling of his arms around him, holding him tightly when Billy didn’t want him to let go, feeling like it was always too short when he did, that made it seem like only a second. A blip.

He wanted to have a picnic with Steve. He wanted to bring use to the abandoned basket and play with the ladybugs in Steve’s hair and make wishes on dandelions.

He knocked on Steve’s door with one hand, the other holding the picnic basket.

“Hey, you didn’t say you were coming over.” Steve said, eyes looking only to him and not noticing the basket just yet.

Billy held it up a little higher, right in Steve’s view. “I had a stupid idea, are you free?”

“I’m literally always free Billy.”

Billy laughed and pulled Steve outside by his hand, helping him down the step like a gentleman. “Y’know of any good places for a picnic around here?”

Steve guided him somewhere not too far, just ten minutes south of Hawkins where there was a large field with a pond nearby, quiet and vacant and perfect, and absolutely littered with dandelions both yellow and white. Despite the short trip, Billy had to slap Steve’s hand away from opening the basket more than one time.

It was freeing walking hand in hand through the field. There was nobody around to see them, but the open space made it feel public. No tight walls or car doors holding them in and hiding them from view. Just that little bit of freedom was enough. They found a little patch with a little bit of shade and laid out the blanket on the grass. It was just like he remembered. Tattered and worn blue cloth, it still had the grape juice stain on the corner from when he laughed so hard it came out of his nose.

Steve sat down and looked up at Billy with little puppy dog eyes that asked “can I please open it now?”

Billy just nodded his head and Steve immediately started pulling out the chips and the beers and the little saran wrapped sandwiches.

“It’s not gourmet or anything, but it’s food.”

“Don’t knock a perfectly good pb&j,” Steve said, already beginning to unwrap it. “What’s the special occasion anyway?”

“No special occasion, I just wanted to take you on a picnic.” Billy said, hesitating, wondering not only if he should go forward, but wondering if he even could. Would the words even come out if he tried to say them. “My mom and I went on picnics a lot as a kid.” He says it all in one hastily quick breath, sighing heavily when he reached the end of his sentence. “I thought this could help keep the memory alive.”

Steve took a bite of his sandwich while Billy worked on unwrapping his own, looking down and away from Steve as he finished chewing his bite. “You don’t talk about her much.” he said, and Billy chanced a look up, and Steve was giving him a soft toothless smile. Warm and inviting like it always was.

“She left when I was ten. It’s not like there’s a lot to talk about.” Billy took a bite out of his own sandwich, a large one just in case Steve decided to begin some type of interrogation, that way he’d have at least a little bit of spare time to think of something to say.

“What was she like?”

Billy smiled, the memories coming back again. He remembers doing somersaults and cartwheels in the grass pretending they were training to be gymnasts, even if Billy fell on his ass every time and got grass stains on his jeans that didn’t come out no matter how many times they ran them through the wash. He was also remembering all those times Neil would scream at her for letting him ruin another pair, and hearing her scream back at him just as loud.

“She was strong.” he said, smile only faltering for a second.

“I figured you had to have gotten it from somewhere.” Steve said, he managed to finish the first half of the sandwich in just the time it had taken Billy to answer. “What else? What did she look like?”

“She was blonde, bright blonde, and tall. She was beautiful.”

“So you didn’t get the height from her.” Billy nudged him in the shoulder and laughed. He pulled out two cans of beer from the basket and passed one over to Steve. “You think she would have liked me?”

“I’d just love to say no, but yeah. She would have adored you.” Billy said, because she would have, she would have loved to have a buddy by her side while she poked fun.

“Do you still miss her?” Steve asked, and Billy tensed enough that Steve noticed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“No, it’s okay.” Billy took a deep breath. “I think for a while there, I forgot to miss her, but I think I always will.” he shut his eyes and bowed his head. “Sometimes I feel like she hurt me worse than my dad ever did, so I shouldn’t have good memories of her.”

Steve moved across to the other side of the blanket and pulled Billy into his side, one arm wrapped around him and Billy just let his head tilt to the side and rear on his shoulder. “She betrayed your trust. I can’t even begin to imagine how much that hurt, but you’re still allowed to have the good memories. She doesn’t get to take those away from you too.” Steve rubbed his hand against Billy’s arm, the friction making him warm and sending a chill up his spine. “And missing her, remembering good things about her, it doesn’t have to mean that what she did after was okay. It doesn’t forgive her.”

Billy doesn’t realize he’s crying until Steve’s wiping away a tear from his cheek.

“Hey, I love you,” Steve said, holding Billy’s face in both hands and looking him right in the eye before giving him a short and chaste kiss to the lips, “and I’d love to hear more about her if it helps you remember,” Steve kissed him again, longer this time, pushing a strand of hair back and tucked behind his ear, “and I want to help you replace the bad ones with better ones if you’ll let me.”

Billy smiled and wrapped a hand around Steve’s wrist that was still holding his cheeks. “You already do, everytime I see you.”

Sitting on that blanket, eating from that basket, it sent a lot of forgotten memories rushing back in a flood, and as Steve kissed him there was one that kept pounding at the front of his skull.

When his mom held the dandelion to his lips, and he made the wish…

“I wish I will fall in love.” he said it out loud for his mom to hear and she just smiled.

“Anyone would be a fool not to love you.”

That one came true.

He was in a sea of dandelions ready to be wished on, but he didn’t budge from his spot, because there was nothing he could think to wish for. He had everything he wanted right in front of him.

And he tasted just like peanut butter.

#tw: child abuse #harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #stranger things #mandi writes tresh #ficlet #harringroveapril #harringrove april

39 notes · View notes

katehuntington · 4 years

Text

Title: In Bad Waters - part eight Word count: ±2900 words Episode summary: Still in possession of the Winchesters’ belongings, Zoë meets up with the hunters on her next case. When it turns out to be a little more complicated than anticipated, she accepts their help in order to make an important deadline. Part eight summary: Zoë might have accepted the boys help, that doesn’t mean they get along. If the hostility between them isn’t enough, Sam and Dean have some unresolved issues of their own. Episode warnings: Dark! NSFW, 18+ only! Descriptions of domestic violence/child abuse. Drug use/addiction. Angst, gore, violence, character death. Description of blood, injury and medical procedures/resuscitation. Swearing, alcoholism. Supernatural creatures/entities, mentions of demon possession. Descriptions of torture and murder, drowning. Illegal/criminal practices. Mentions of nightmares and flashbacks. Author’s note: Beta’d by @winchest09 and @deanwanddamons. Thanks, girls! Gif isn’t mine. If you are the creator or know who made it, please tell me so I can credit you.

Supernatural: The Sullivan Series Masterlist

S1E02 “In Bad Waters” Masterlist

A little less than an hour later, Sam, Dean and Zoë are sharing a table in In-N-Out. All three scheduled in some time to trade their business suits for their everyday clothes. The boys are comfortable in plaid shirts, worn jeans, and dusty old shoes, while Zoë looks like a totally different person now that she left her black pumps, blazer and dress pants in her hotel room. She’s wearing her hair down, her blown locks playfully curled up after last night’s shower. Her grey shirt has the famous Pink Floyd logo on it; a ray entering a triangle and breaks off into a rainbow when it exits. The brand new biker jacket hangs over the back of the bench while she plays with the loose tie of her All Stars shoe, wiggling her foot rhythmically.

U2’s Beautiful Day is playing in the background. It fits, considering the clear blue sky and warm sun outside. Satisfied, Dean and Zoë devour their burgers while Sam has settled for a milkshake, since they don’t have salads at this restaurant. Stunned and a little disgusted, he watches how Zoë intends to break the world record, tailed by Dean. The younger Winchester stares at them both, as the huntress swallows the last bite of the massive Animal Burger and starts on an additional cheeseburger she ordered. Apparently, Zoë doesn’t feel the need to hold back, despite having company, but then again, she wouldn’t change her demeanor for anyone.

Dean doesn’t even notice her manners as he shares her appetite. He’s more annoyed that she finished her burger before he did. He looks up for a moment as she licks the sauce from her fingers after finishing, then continues eating even faster than he did a moment ago.

“Dude! Seriously, a food race?” Sam chuckles. “Wholth?” Dean says with his mouth full. He swallows his bite, which apparently was a little bigger than he anticipated. He coughs and hits his chest with his fist, Zoë can’t help to laugh when she sees tears appear in his eyes. “What are you? Fuckin’ five years old?” she grins. “I wasn’t racing you,” he mutters hoarse. “Oh, you so were.” She sniggers, dipping one of Dean’s fries in mayonnaise. “Are you gonna eat that?” Obviously enjoying herself, she waits for his reaction. He watches her move the fry to her mouth with a look of shock and repugnance on his features. How dare she? Zoë chews on the snack provokingly. as expected he goes for the counter attack. “Don’t touch my fucking food,” he warns, pulling his portion of fries to his side of the table, clearly annoyed with his colleague stealing. “And I wasn’t racing you, ‘cause if I did, you would be many burger lengths behind, woman.” “That’s what’s bugging you the most, isn’t it? Dean Winchester just got defeated by a girl,” she nags. “I can take you with ease,” he claims, confidently. She laughs in return.“You wouldn’t stand a chance.” “Wanna bet?” “Knock it off, you two.” Sam breaks it up and looks from one to the other. “Now, could we concentrate on the case? We all got better things to do.” “I have better things to do. You on the other hand just have an unhealthy obsession with helping me,” she corrects, as she drinks from her milkshake through the straw. “Whatever,” Sam counters with a huff. “Let’s focus here. We’re dealing with a frustrated child spirit most likely on a killing spree.” “Yeah, but how the hell is she still here? I already burned her bones,” Zoë brings to mind. “She must be connected to some kind of object then, are you sure you burned everything?” Dean checks.

Zoë slightly tilts her head and glares at him with an attitude. Is he fucking kidding? “We’re sure, I was there with her,” Sam confirms, jumping in before the huntress can snap at his brother. “Nothing more romantic than a night at the graveyard,” Dean comments with a little grin, earning a death stare from Sam, and so he continues seriously. “We need to figure out what’s keeping her here before she goes all Mike Tyson again.” “She probably targets the people who are directly or indirectly responsible for her death. I don’t think she’ll rest until she kills every single one of them unless we do something about it,” Zoë speaks up. “So, who could be her next target?” Sam wonders. “It could be anyone, but the biggest candidates for a one way ticket to the land of the dead are probably Mrs. Shire and her son, maybe even Mrs. Dawlson,” Zoë realizes. “Who?” Sam and Dean question at the same time. “Her teacher at Elementary School. She knew about the abuse,” she informs, sipping her shake.

Dean seems confused. After all, he knows Zoë only arrived here last night. “How do you even know that?” “Because I had a fucking chat with her, asshat,” she claims, snappy. Dean bites his tongue and shakes his head slightly, letting a silent sigh slip from his lips. This woman is unbelievable. If it wasn’t for Sammy being so dead set on helping the bitch, he would get the hell out of dodge. Ignoring her comment, he picks up a few fries and stuffs his mouth full, not noticing the exchange of looks between Zoë and Sam. As soon as the youngest Winchester makes eye contact, he knows she didn’t talk to Mrs. Dawlson; she saw something in one of her flashbacks. “There could be a dozen more possible victims we don’t know about,” Sam states, quickly filling the void before it becomes noticeable. “True, but to figure out who might be next, we need to find more info on what happened to Laura,” she declares. “We already know what happened to her. Her dad abused her till death followed, nothing to add to that,” Sam says. “No, I mean after that.” Zoë leans forward, snitching another fry from the hunter across from her, who snaps his head up to her, staring her down and wondering where she got the nerve to steal his food twice. “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that no one found out about this murder yet? Because that what it was; murder. Her father killed her. Child services should have been all over this, especially with another minor in the household. Laura was buried without a conviction, while she obviously did not die of natural causes,” the smart woman brings to mind. “Why is that?” “I mean, the system is flawed. Maybe they missed it?” Sam suggests. “No, I don’t believe that. She must have been a mess, considering what her victims look like,” she ponders. Both boys nod as a sign of agreement; she has a point. Dean rubs his chin as he thinks. Then his facial expression changes, the metaphorical light bulb switching on in his brain. He glances up at the woman opposite of him, who watches him questioning.

“Dr. Hughes”, he says out of the blue. “I know that name,” Zoë realizes, trying to remember where she has heard it before. “It’s the doc from the morgue that we talked to,” he fills in. “He did the slicing on Shire’s dead body and also mentioned Ronald was a friend of his. I thought he responded weird when Sam mentioned the Hobbit dude.” “Is the Methodist Medical Center the only dead men’s storage in town?” Zoë asks the whizkid on Dean’s right. “Not sure. Let me check.” Sam takes out his laptop and sets it up on the table. As he works the computer, Zoë continues their brainstorming session.

“One way or the other, we need to get our hands on Laura’s death report and we need to figure out who wrote it. I’m guessing someone covered for Shire,” she speaks up. “How is that even possible these days, with all the paperwork and the forensics?” Sam rubs his temple, taking in Zoë for a second, but then returns his gaze to the laptop screen in front of him. “You think we’re the only ones who lie and deceive?” Zoë returns, smartly.

“We need to talk to more people. Someone who was there and experienced the abuse first hand and might know more about the cover-up. The Shire dude’s wife maybe?” Dean suggests. “We can’t turn up on her doorstep and confront her. If she doesn’t know her husband possibly erased evidence, it’s just gonna bring a shit ton of drama and a hell of alot explaining to do when she starts asking questions,” Zoë makes clear.

She forks her fingers through her hair and checks her phone for the time; shit. It’s almost 1 PM. Frustrated about the many blank pages of this case, she sighs, pulling at the corner of her bottom lip with her teeth. There’s so much about this job that doesn’t add up. “I don’t get how she could still be here. There was nothing left of her remains,” she sighs. “There has to be an explanation for that,” Sam ponders, as he stares at the address on display. “Anyway, there are no other morgues in town besides the one at the hospital on W. Kingshighway.”

“I tell you what.” With a neat throw Zoë tosses her empty plastic cup into the garbage can across the aisle. “Sam, you keep an eye on the Shire family. Dean’s gonna have a chat with Dr. Hughes, see if you can get some info on the death report. I’m gonna tail the teacher for a while,” she decides. Sam nods approvingly before his brother can object. He folds down the laptop screen and gets up. “Sounds good to me.” “Make sure you keep your eyes open, that little pain in the ass manages to beat up grown ups without the people next door noticing,” Zoë warns as she picks up her helmet from the bench. “You think this is our first rodeo?” Dean responds with a scoff. “You didn’t see me coming the other night in Rochester,” she counters sassy.

As she passes him she pets his shoulder, the one she put a bullet in only two nights ago. Dean flinches when a dim pain shoots through his arm again. That fucking b-- Before he can call her names, she exits the fast food restaurant, probably expecting the Winchesters to follow like obedient dogs. Stunned, he watches her walk over to her motorcycle, huffing in disbelief. First she doesn’t want their help, and now she’s giving out orders like she rules the fucking world. He didn’t think it could be possible, but his detest for her just grew to an all time high.

“Mark my words, one of these days I’m gonna shoot her down,” he announces frustrated. “Ahuh,” Sam responds, cynicism on his tongue as he puts the laptop in his backpack. “Just make sure you don’t pull a gun on her in public, will you?” “Can’t make any promises.” His brother huffs. “Anyway, you can have the car if you drop me off at the hospital. Let’s get this over with so that we can put some distance between us and the Wicked Witch of the West.”

Sam’s lips form a constricted smile, luckily his brother doesn’t notice. He has to admit that he’s enjoying the fact that his big brother is being told what to do by a girl, while normally he only takes orders from one person and one person only; their dad. What he finds interesting, however, is that despite a few muttered objections, Dean actually follows through with it.

“And you know what’s the fun part about all this?” Sam nags as they exit In-N-Out. “What?” Dean responds, annoyed, scanning the parking lot in order to spot Zoë’s Road King. “You have to dress like a penguin again.” The younger Winchester grins as he opens the door to the passenger’s seat.

His brother stares at him over the top of the car, realizing he’s going undercover as the FBI Agent Young once more. “Ah, come on! Can’t we trade?” he asks desperately. Sam laughs and sits down. “No way, dude.” Dean does the same and closes the door, complaining. “Man, I hate suits.” “You think I’m comfortable in one during these temperatures?” Sam returns. “Sam, even if I’d be freezing my ass off, I will never be at ease in that ridiculous outfit,” Dean states while turning the ignition, allowing Gimme Three Steps by Lynyrd Skynyrd to play on the cassette deck.

“I’m not trading places. I can work some stuff out while I’m guarding the house,” Sam explains, looking outside the window, squinting his eyes to protect them from the sun. “What stuff?” Dean questions, making sure it’s not just some lame excuse. Sam looks aside and hesitates for a moment, but then tells him anyway. “I want to call some friends of Dad,” he admits.

He feels Dean’s piercing gaze, but doesn’t look up. It’s only a matter of seconds before Dean pops the first question. “Why?” Dean asks sternly. “Why?! I don’t know about you, Dean, but I wanna find him,” Sam returns defensive. Dean grips the wheel a little tighter; as if he doesn’t want to find Dad. Seriously? “So do I, but I don’t think it’s wise to start calling random hunters to ask where he is, Sam.” “I won’t call ‘random’ hunters. I’ll call a few old friends, and why the hell not?” his brother questions. “Because Dad doesn’t want to be found,” the oldest of the two claims. “How could you possibly know that, Dean?! Seriously, do you have some kind of telepathic connection with the guy or what?” Sam reacts. “Hey, you’re the psychic one, not me,” Dean counters. “If Dad wants us involved in his hunt, he will contact us one way or the other. You know that.” “No, I don’t! I haven’t heard a word from him since I left for Stanford. I don’t understand the blind faith you have in the man,” the younger brother argues. “You were the one who fucking left, Sam. And let me tell you somethin’,” Dean pauses to enforce his words. “I trust him because he’s a damn good hunter.” “He’s human! He makes mistakes just like anyone else, only this time you won’t be around to back him up. It’s not some monster that he’s hunting, this is the monster! The one that killed Mom, that killed Jess!” Sam adds up. “You think I don’t realize that?” The car stops at a traffic light and Dean turns to him, his piercing green eyes judging his brother, the same way John so often has. “Of course I’d rather be backing him up right now, but he decided to do this alone and I accept that.” “Why the hell, though? Just because he says so?” Sam huffs, shaking his head disappointed. “Hell yes, because he says so!” his brother snaps. “He leads this mission, and we stick to the orders he gives us. It’s about fucking time you show him the respect he deserves.” “He has to earn that first,” the younger Winchester responds. “He earned that a long time ago. Every time he protected you, protected us. Everything that we were taught, all the skills that we’ve learned. You were so caught up in the illusion that school was gonna work out, that when he objected because he didn’t want you to be on your own, you cut all ties,” Dean barks at him as he accelerates faster than necessary. “Why the hell do you want to find him so bad if you hate his guts, huh?” “I don’t hate his guts,” Sam says, his voice a lot less hostile than a moment ago.

Dean takes his eyes off the road again and glances at the passenger, noticing the defeated expression on Sammy’s face. Annoyed with himself he looks ahead again, shutting his eyes for a second when a pang of guilt distinguishes the anger in a matter of seconds. He meant to give his little brother a reality check, but all he did was hurt him. “Sam, I get you want answers. But calling his friends isn’t the way to do it. We just gotta be patient.”

His brother's jaw clenches and he looks away, not denying nor confirming that Dean is right and that he himself will listen. It doesn’t matter anyway; there’s no way he can turn his brother’s mind around. And Dean claims Sam is the one who is like their old man? Just now he was sure to sit next to a younger version of Dad.

He can't agree with the reasoning behind Dean’s actions, though. His older brother dragged him out of school to find Dad and now that it’s coming down to that, he doesn’t want to go out on a search. Sam on the other hand, he has to find him. Not only does he have some unresolved issues with his father, John is also the only hunter who has been tracking the thing that ruined their lives. He is the key to finding answers. It’s all he can think of; hunting down the bastard that killed Mom and Jessica.

Without saying another word, Dean drives his Impala to their motel, convinced he made his point, even though he hurt his brother’s feelings to get the message across. But Sam isn’t going to let go, neither will he trade places with Dean on their jobs. During his hours of watching the Shire family, he’s gonna make those calls and he is going to find their father. Whether Dean likes it, or not.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate every single one of you, but if you do want to give me some extra love, you are free to like or reblog my work, shoot me a message or buy me coffee (Link to Kofi in bio at the top of the page).

Read chapter nine here

#Supernatural: the Sullivan Series #Supernatural OFC series #Supernatural fanfiction #Dean Winchester fanfiction #Sam Winchester fanfiction #Dean fanfiction #Sam fanfiction #Dean angst #Sam angst #Dark!Supernatural #supernatur #spn #stss #1x02 in bad waters #Zoë Sullivan #Kate Huntington

56 notes · View notes

doc-pickles · 3 years

Text

never thought i’d see it break

okay listen.... i am sorry for this fic, mainly because i know some of y’all are going to drag me into the ground for this. but i wanted to write some angst and while it might not be super angsty in theory it definitely counts because our favorite idiots don’t end up together. like at all. so once again, sorry for any mental anguish i may cause, i promise i’ll make it up to you guys tomorrow.

also i cried writing this so good luck

Halloween 2020

She really didn’t think that the day would hit her so hard. The days leading up to it had been uneventful, the decorations lining the halls at work not fazing her in the slightest as she went about her daily routine. But when Jo woke up on Halloween morning, it felt like the past year of her life was slapping her in the face. The cold harsh reality of her husband up and leaving her sat deep in the pit of her stomach, her mind reeling as she laid in bed.

“Are you getting up today,” Levi looked at Jo from his position on the couch, eyeing her warily. “Because I had plans but I can cancel them.” “Get out, go away,” Jo’s monotone voice was barely above a mumble as she stared menacingly at Levi. “Let me wallow once again in the realization that my marriage has failed and I will probably die alone. Or with you. Can’t tell which of those is worse.”

Levi blew out a short breath, gathering his things and letting Jo know he was going to hang out with Nico for the day. Once the door to the loft was closed and locked, Jo reached beneath her bed and pulled out a large black box. Pulling the lid off, her breath caught in her throat as she took in the contents of the box.

Laying on top was a ratty tshirt, one that Jo had once religiously worn as she climbed into bed every night. The faded Iowa State logo stared up at her with a menacing aura, the memories that came with it too painful for Jo to relive. She set it aside and reached for the photo album below it, the dusty jacket brandishing a name she’d wished she could forget but rang through her mind everyday.

The Karev’s.

She knew it was torture, opening the book up to look at photos of a day that was once happy and beautiful but now filled her eyes with tears, but she did it anyways. The shades of blue and yellow that graced the pages, the smiling faces of their friends, of him, were like a glowering unwanted sign that her life had taken a detour that she had neither wanted nor anticipated. It didn’t help that there was a Polaroid tucked into the back page, her and Alex grinning at the camera with fake blood and vampire fangs adorning their faces.

Hastily shoving the photobook and shirt back into the box, Jo ignored the numerous photos, ticket stubs, letters, and other memorabilia from the years she’d spent with Alex and shoved the box back under the bed. Why she’d thought taking it out was a good idea she would never know, but the feeling that had been blossoming when she woke up was now taking over her entire chest in a painful display.

How had her life been so different a year ago? Sure it wasn’t ever picture perfect, her and Alex had their differences but they’d always worked through whatever was thrown at them together. His dad, DeLuca, Paul, him getting fired, her mom… every single problem they’d faced in their seven years together had been done exactly like that, together. Whether by choice or by reluctant agreement, the two were always there for one another, but apparently ex wives with two children she kept a secret for five years was where they drew the line. Where Alex drew the line.

Knowing she wouldn’t be doing the laundry that was piling up or scrubbing the sinks that needed some TLC, Jo settled back into bed, eyes watering as she scooted to the right side of the bed and clutched the now unused pillow that lay there. It didn’t smell like him any longer, but the comfort of holding the fabric to her chest still held.

That’s where Meredith found her hours later, tear stains across her cheeks as she slept through the afternoon. A heavy sigh left the blonde as she settled onto the edge of the bed, one hand patting Jo’s shoulder affectionately as she woke.

“Schmitt texted, he said you were wallowing in misery so I figured that was a cry for help,” Meredith let out a chuckle at Jo’s angry expression. “Come on, you can come take the kids trick or treating with me, it’ll be a good distraction.”

“I don’t want to move,” Jo mumbled into her pillow, eyes barely moving to meet Meredith’s. “I want to lay here until I sink so far into the mattress that no one can ever find me again.” “Jo, it’s been months. And I know it’s not easy, but you’ve been so strong through all of this, I’d hate to see one day ruin everything for you,” Jo sighed at Meredith’s words, knowing her friend was right. “If you get up now I will pour wine into a tumbler for you to drink while we walk around.” “Fine,” Jo rolled out of bed, glaring at Meredith as she did so. “But I’m only getting up for the wine.”

Halloween 2023

“You know I don’t normally interact with other humans on Halloween.”

Jo stood in the doorway of her apartment, a grin on her face as she looked at the man in front of her. His grin was threatening to overtake his face as he leaned down and kissed her sweetly, one arm wrapping around her waist, “I brought beer and scary movies, will you let me in now?”

“Okay fine, only because of the beer and not because I like you so much,” Jo rolled her eyes and opened the door fully, letting Jack into the apartment and locking the door behind him. “Please tell me you have Scream in your collection, otherwise I don’t think this is gonna work out.”

Jack pulled out the aforementioned DVD case, eliciting a cheer from Jo as he set up the movie. She really didn’t think she’d been this happy in a long time, the feeling of happiness bubbling in her chest as she grabbed popcorn an altogether new experience.

When she’d picked up a Safe Haven baby from Station 19 four months ago, she hadn’t expected to have an hour and a half long conversation with Jack Gibson, who’d been sitting with the little girl before she’d arrived. Their conversation flowed so easily that the two had picked it up over dinner that night and the rest was history.

She hadn’t seen anyone since Alex left, she hadn’t wanted to waste time on something that was going to leave her heartbroken again because she just couldn’t do that. But the connection she felt with Jack was real and exciting and something Jo hadn’t realized she’d needed until she had it. It almost distracted her from the fact that today her and Alex should be celebrating four years of marriage together. Almost.

“Are you dazing out again over there,” Jack’s voice was light and cheery, but Jo could see the concern etched on his face as soon as he took a good look at her. “Hey, what’s wrong? We can watch Poltergeist if that’s what you want.”

A heavy sigh left Jo as she realized that she’d have to tell someone else exactly why today was one of her least favorite days of the year. Of course Jack knew that she was divorced, he’d met Alex once or twice when bringing in patients but he didn’t know everything. It wasn’t something that you should burden your partner with four months into your relationship, the ways that you failed in your previous marriage.

“I was married. Obviously. And we got married on Halloween, so that’s why I don’t like being around people today, because it still sucks,” Jo’s gaze was concentrated on her fingers as she spoke, not wanting to see the pitiful expression on Jack’s face as she relayed her tragic backstory. “And I didn’t really wanna bring it up because you… you are the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time and I don’t want to ruin that by talking about my failed marriage.”

Eyes finally flitting up to look at Jack, Jo was startled to find empathy instead of pity in his expression. She knew he’d had a rough upbringing like her, that neither of them had been handed anything they had in life, but the unexpected compassion and Jack showed her always took her by surprise.

“You are a badass. And for the record, you’re the best thing that’s happened for me in quite awhile too,” Jack wrapped his arms around Jo and brought her into his chest, pressing a kiss into her hair. “Would it make you feel better if we played a drinking game and got ridiculously drunk?”

“You know me so well,” Jo giggled as her eyes met Jack’s, his green eyes sparkling with that same sense of compassion that he always wore so brightly when he was around her.

The two settled in for a night filled with laughter, shots, and scary movies as Jack cracked jokes all night, making sure that the smile on her face never left. For once Jo didn’t feel like the day consisted of her replaying all of her past mistakes. Instead, for the first time in a long time, Halloween felt like a new beginning.

Halloween 2025

“Oh man it is too early to be awake,” Jo’s groans echoed through the empty fire station, her feet leading her towards the soft voices she heard. “Hello? Anyone here?”

“We’re in here,” a smirk played onto Jo’s face at the sound of her boyfriend's voice, not expecting to see him today. “Hey there.”

“Hey yourself, who do you have there,” Jo walked further into the room that Jack sat in, a tiny bundle settled in his arms. She peeked over his shoulder, taking in the dark curls and soft features of the baby he held. “Well aren’t you a cutie. How long have you had her?”

“Just an hour or so, she’s been perfectly calm,” Jack looked up to Jo, gladly accepting the kiss she placed on his lips. “Usually by now they’re screaming at me, but this one hasn’t wanted anything except snuggles.”

“Maybe you’ve just got the magic touch with this one,” Jo settled into the chair across from Jack, giggling at the faces he pulled as he tried to entertain the baby. “She seems content there.”

“It sucks, she’s got no family and she doesn’t even get to celebrate her first holiday,” Jack’s finger ran across the baby’s cheek, eliciting a quiet coo from the little girl. “Oh I know sweetheart, maybe if you’re lucky the nice doctors will sneak you a lollipop.”

Jo’s heart leapt at the sight before her, fingers twisting the silver chain across her neck. She’d been to the fire station to pick up babies more than she’d like to say in the past few years, but seeing the tiny infants cradled in Jack’s arms always made her heart burst.

“How do you feel about stealing a baby,” Jack’s eyes widened as they met Jo’s, a grin taking over her face at the shocked look he wore. “Cmon, trust me on this one. It’ll just be for a little bit, plus you’re off now right?”

“Yes, but now I’m concerned about what my girlfriend has planned for this poor innocent baby.” +

“I give you about ten minutes of this before someone calls you out and we get arrested,” Jack’s eyes nervously flitted around the bustling Peds ward. “I will give you props though, she looks pretty cute.” Jo turned from the sight of children running down the hospital halls to the infant in Jack’s arms. They’d stopped at Target before coming to the hospital, grabbing a pumpkin costume to put on the newborn before they took her around the Peds ward to trick or treat. Jack and Jo both knew that they were being a little silly, but they wanted the little girl to have at least one day where she felt loved.

“Of course she does, she’s the cutest little baby in the world. Aren’t you Hallie? Yes you are,” Jo grabbed the infant’s foot, looking up to Jack who was staring her down with an unamused expression. “What? She needed a name and I watched Parent Trap last night. Plus it’s kind of fitting, Hallie… Halloween… Oh you’re just a party pooper!”

“Jo! What’re you doing here,” Link sauntered up to Jo and Jack with a smile, sleeping baby strapped to his chest. “Woah who's baby is that? Did you hide a pregnancy from me for nine months?”

Jo’s eyes widened as she stared her best friend down, lightly slapping his arm, “No you idiot, this is Hallie. She’s a Safe Haven baby, but we wanted to dress her up and let her have some fun before we turned her over.”

Links gaze floated from the baby still cuddled against Jack to Jo who was perfectly settled into his side. He held his hand out, a knowing smirk on his face, “Give me your phone, I’ll take a picture of you guys.”

Without hesitation, Jo handed the object over and both her and Jack wore bright smiles as Link snapped the picture. He handed the phone back, both adults leaning in to look at the photo in awe.

“I give you about a week,” Link chuckled, both Jo and Jack too caught up in the infant with them to notice his words. “I’ll see you guys later!”

Jo absentmindedly waved her friend off, grabbing Hallie from Jack’s arms and bringing her to her own chest. The little girl blinked up at Jo before settling contentedly against her, eyes closing in a matter of seconds.

“You know, she seems pretty content with us,” Jo looked up from the baby to her boyfriend with wide eyes, not believing the words she was hearing. “What? She does, she’s barely cried since I got her this morning and looks so comfy snuggled up with you.”

“You are pretty cute, I’m just gonna sneak you out and take you home,” Jo squeezed the hand of the infant, looking up at Jack who was staring at her with an awed look. “What? Do I have baby spit up on me?”

“Nothing, you just look good. You’re a natural,” Jack brought Jo back into his side, pressing a kiss to her head. “I love you.” “I love you too,” Jo laughed as the baby burped loudly before settling herself back against Jo. “And I think she likes you too.”

Halloween 2030

“Bailey, I just finished my charts and I am heading out,” Jo sighed as she set her arms on the nurses station, head leaning warily against one hand. “I’m off for the rest of the day, I’m just going to check on Mr. Olsen in the ER before I duck out. Pretty sure my kids are driving their dad nuts and the addition of sugar tonight won’t help with that.”

Bailey let a laugh out, dismissing Jo for the day and letting the younger woman know she wasn’t needed the next day. A sigh left her as she climbed into the elevator with her purse in tow, Jo finally feeling a small sense of relief.

“You are not making my job easier, you’re much more troublesome than your brother,” Jo settled one hand onto her growing baby bump, a strong kick meeting her hand as she rolled her eyes. “Typical. You’re going to have your sister's attitude aren't you?”

The elevator dinged loudly, bringing Jo away from her conversation with her unborn child and into the real world. As she stepped off the elevator, her hands dug into her purse in search of her phone. She’d finally dug it out when she ran straight into whoever was walking in front of her.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I was ju-,” the air in Jo’s lungs left suddenly, as if it had been sucked away by a vacuum as she met the eyes of the person she’d bumped into. “Oh my god. Alex.”

Alex Karev, ten years older than when she’d seen him last, was standing not even two feet in front of Jo. Her heart was hammering as she stared at her ex husband, his presence the last thing she’d expected, especially today of all days.

“Hey Jo, good to see you,” hearing his voice almost brought tears to Jo’s eyes as she stared dumbly up at Alex. “I’m working on a case with Hayes for the week. You look good, happy… round.”

A small laugh escaped Jo then, her hand falling to her bump as she finally found her voice again, “Yeah, this one kinda popped out right away. Between that and my constant morning sickness, I couldn’t hide being pregnant for very long.”

“I’m glad, that you’re uh happy, that’s good to hear,” Jo watched Alex’s eyes flit to the wedding set on her left hand, then back up to her.

“Mama!”

Both Alex and Jo turned toward the excited voice sounding down the hallway, a head full of black curls flying past Alex as the little girl they belonged to wrapped her arms around Jo’s legs. A second shorter head of messy brown hair crashed into Jo’s legs, laughter escaping her as she tried to wrangle both children, “Okay you two, mom can’t breathe!”

“Sorry, they escaped as soon as I walked through the door,” Jack appeared next to Jo a second later, pressing a kiss to her cheek before turning to Alex. If he was shocked to see the man, he hid it well as he extended his hand towards him. “Hey, Jack Gibson. Alex, right?” “Yeah, nice to meet you,” Alex shook Jack’s hand with a small smile, Jo’s heart skipping a beat at the unusual sight. “You guys have some good looking kids.”

Jo laughed, her face lighting up as she looked at the two children now preoccupied with a game of tag, “I can’t take all the credit, Max is Jack’s clone and Hallie just kinda… fell into our laps. She’s got my attitude though, if that counts for anything.” “That counts for everything, you know she uses that to get whatever she wants,” Jack slung his arm around Jo’s shoulder as she leaned into him, her hand coming back to her burgeoning stomach. Jo could tell Alex was watching them, but she didn’t have the words to verbalize how odd it made her feel.

“I gotta go, but it was nice to meet you Jack,” Alex waved his hand at the other man, before turning to Jo. Their eyes met for a second and it almost felt like that day eleven years ago standing in a courtroom in the most ridiculous costumes. Jo’s throat tightened as she offered a watery smile to Alex, his own eyes glassy as they finally broke away from hers. “It was good to see you again Jo, it really is good to see you happy.”

Jo could only nod, lifting her hand in a wave to Alex, “You too Alex. Have a good stay.” Alex turned and left then, Jo’s eyes watching him until he turned a corner and was out of her view. The sight tugged at her heart strangely, her mind bringing up the image of him walking into an airport so many years ago and never turning around. She doesn’t realize there’s tears floating down her face until Jack nudges her lightly.

“You okay?” “Yeah,” Jo swipes at the tears that have pooled on her cheeks, turning to Jack with a smile. She leans up to press a kiss to his lips, holding on a bit longer than she normally would in public before pulling and meeting his green eyes with her brown. “I’m perfectly fine, just another Halloween. You guys ready to go?” Jack pauses for a moment, holding Jo’s stare before turning back to their kids who are still running around the hallway, “Yup, we just came to pick you up before we headed to Meredith’s. Hallie! Max! Let’s move it!” The two kids followed Jack and Jo out of the hospital, a string of laughter following the family as they made their way into the chilly Seattle air. Jo’s eyes lingered on the trauma bay as they left, remembering a day so long ago it felt like another lifetime when she’d first met the man she’d been married to. A swift kick to her ribs pulled her out of her thoughts, her fingers squeezing Jack’s as they made their way through the parking lot.

Just another Halloween….

#jolex #jolex halloween #alex karev #jo wilson #jo karev #jo x alex #jolex fanfic #jolex fic #greys anatomy #greys anatomy fanfic #nina writes

27 notes · View notes

bibliocratic · 4 years

Text

‘this is the trouble, even now, with being an archive’

or: Martin’s not the only one overly susceptible to the Lonely

nebulous post-160 domestic future, hurt/comfort and softness, jonmartin and the cottagecore life they deserve

Jon loses himself in the odds-and-sods shop.

The sign on the door makes promises of it being a cosy bookshop. And there are books, certainly, stalagmites of tomes and paperbacks and collections teetering graspingly up towards the ceiling.

The books are absent flatmates however compared to the boisterous gaggle of stuff that takes up room everywhere else. Teacup candles balanced on Norton Anthologies. A wooden rocking horse keeping the dusty Faber and Faber poetry company. It's bizarre flotsam of the most incomprehensible comforting sort, and it sometimes bustles its way to star in the shop's equally manic window display.

Which is why Jon first came in. He'd told himself that this trip into town was an in-and-out only affair; pick up the spices he couldn't get at the small-stocked village shop, buy more firelighters and return some of Martin's horde to the library from whence it came. He's entertaining some thoughts of making a start on pruning back some of the more frivolous bushes in the garden if the weather holds, though he knows his knees won't credit the idea by the evening if he does so.

But then he saw the pen in the window. Silver filigree engraved at the end like frost spiralling up a window, the base colour deep and blue.

And it's not anywhere near Christmas, and there's no birthdays for another few months, but Jon looks at it and he can see Martin sat in the two-seater in their living room, holding the pen, tongue between his teeth as he worries at words, scratching and rewriting and humming when he's caught upon a phrase he feels sits well.

He goes inside with all the furtiveness of a guilty cat. Maryam is at the counter today, and she beams to see him. And he intends – completely – to pick out the pen and be done with it. But Maryam gets talking even once he's pointed out and paid for the pen, and he's twisted up in the soft and easy twirl of her conversation. The pen does come with a box, a regular black affair, but she mentions that they've got in a few antique pen cases down at the back of the non-fiction isle – covering P for Persian Empire to T for Travelogues – and Jon fancifully commits to having a leisurely look because he's going to have to wait for the next bus back anyway, quite taken by the idea of being able to leave such a distinguished looking surprise on the side-table near Martin's armchair for him to find when he comes in from work.

He considers the cases with a furrowing frown, as though weighing up some great decision. For so long in fact, he doesn't notice the shop dip quiet, the muffled steps and page-flicking of other patrons muted to silent.

He glances up, around. Puts back the supple brown leather case he was thinking over, stepping out of his isolated row.

There is no one at the front desk. No one in the other shelves. Through the clogged-up and slapdash window display, he sees no one on the street outside and a sky starting to grey with the threat of rain.

He notices – far away, like glancing through the wrong end of a telescope – that his breathing is getting faster.

“Maryam?” he says, but his voice croaks heatless. He tells himself that he's too old for this now, to be taken in by such worn-down ghosts, that she's gone in the back, that it's just gone quiet, that's all. But the silence is a terror that begets greater, stronger strains, a cycling distress of pin-balling fears and memories, and there is no one around, no one coming, and the panting of his own body is so loud in such an empty space.

And he has always been more easily enveloped by some fears than by others.

He hears the wash of mile-distant waves, as though behind the shelves to the front of the shop, and thinks not here, not here.

He tries to shake his head loose of the fog beginning to bind it like cobwebbing wisps. But the world has such terrors in it, and the Archive keeps record of them all. And that's what Jon is, in the end. A dutiful collection of horror, cruelly moulded into such service by a long dead man. He's long since unshouldered the mantle of Archivist, yet Archive has proven to be such a long-lived, enduring post.

Behind his eyes, he plays out the washed-out retellings of all those almost lost to the Lonely.

He's the statement of Zoe Aristidou, who moved to a beam-bright city but brought her fog along with her, who lost her face amongst the impartial crowds, sanded away like a wind-abused statue.

The statement of Keira Hurley, who struggled to make friends, who drank thinking it might stuff up the gaping absence inside her where the fog was beginning to spark up like struck flint, who would lose her keys, and her wallet and whole days to unremembrance.

There is the echo of beachland nearby and Jon's lost sight of the shelves. The layering cares and carefully tended wards that make him up are starting to peel away.

He rubs at his hands and the colour wipes off like highlighter on whiteboard, smearing before vanishing, his skin blotching with an absent glass-colour of nothing at all. And it's not real, it can't be, it's years since he sighted this muted, mist-encrusted shoreline, the way it gnawed at and sapped Martin's skin translucent, younger then, his hair still unpicked by white.

But it's so easy to return here even after all that time. Like tripping over your own feet.

It is peaceful here. It always is.

Jon grips the pen, feeling the drunken choke of the statement of Keira Hurley, how it makes his legs unmoored and unbalanced, and he thinks no, no, I'm going to give this to him, I'll surprise him, I'll leave it on his side table to find when he gets home. And the statement is thick on his tongue, as he recalls how she woke up, head woozy, and she had not known where she was, had forgotten her address, her name, and the muted panic of her fear sleeked her face with tears, and Jon shakes his head fervently to try and clear it.

He thinks of how Martin will glow, pleased, will say something like you shouldn't have, or even, you know I don't need any more, and Jon will say, I know but I wanted to, I know but I thought of you, I know but I wanted to make you happy.

There is sand crunching underfoot as he walks, and he's getting lost.

He is the statement of Agneta Blom regarding her grandmother Ebba Blom, swallowed by the fog in her later years at a nursing home; the statement of Lakshman Hamal, the last member of his regiment far from home; the statement of Finlay Erskine, a lone lighthouse keeper midst a terrible storm.

And Jon is one man but he is also all these stories – he breathes in salt-damp from a wave spray that leaves freckles of water struck across his face, he feels the knotted ache in his legs from where he's crouched, tense and gripping his kukri for hours, the over-softness of blankets and pillows and the faded mist of lavender down an empty hallway.

He feels his fingers cramping around the sides of the pen, and he wants to think of Martin, to fill up with recollections of him, but Martin is someone Jon knows, someone Jon loves, and it is so very hard to remember he is Jon at the moment.

The fog that subsumes him like a dust cloud, it's muffling. Quiet. He who is Agneta Blom and Lakshman Hamal and Finlay Erskine and so many other names that are layering palimpsest over Jonathan Blackwood, he wanders the beach to the shoreline, letting the sea lap over his shoes. The sky is expectant with dour rainclouds, and his jean cuffs are getting wet, and he hears a distant tumult of voices ever so far off. Like a muttered conversation in another room, a tune playing in a building he is walking past.

“...call the school.... It's Mr Blackwood, Conor... one of his turns.... don't crowd the poor man, let him be...”

The Archive drinks in the flat, null landscape with interest and lets the fog bury into the soft spaces of him. It wants to walk out into the shallow waters and see what swims there.

There's a pen in his hand, and it's heavy, and it weighs him down shore-bound.

“Jon? Hey, hey, Jon. Don't go out so far, yeah?”

The Archive sucks in a breath. It is not salted with a harsh coastal grind, it does not bite at his throat. The air is warm, dry with indoor heating, and the people he is not, Agneta and Lakshman and Finlay and Mairead and Pavo and so many more witness to Forsaken, begin to slough off him like autumnal leaves.

There is a hand on his arm, someone being shushed, a breathing like someone's been running.

“That's it, you're doing so well, you can do it.”

He is Jonathan again. He blinks loose the crisping grains of salt that have begun to sediment in his lashes. There are tears streaming down his face, he realises belatedly, and he is trembling like he's freezing.

He looks at Martin who makes up such a happy horizon to be greeted by, looking down. His tie become loose, who has come from work, sweat-patches at the front of his chest, his throat and face reddened with exertion, who is still wearing his navy lanyard, has board pens clunking in his pocket. Martin who is grounding him.

“I...” he says, clearing his throat feeling stupid, and then he is thrusting out the pen almost bullishly. “I got you a pen.”

Maybe Martin doesn't understand how important it is for him to see. But he nods delicately, and carefully nods, takes it from Jon's shaking fingers – You shouldn't have, you know, he says like Jon's foolish, but fondly, ever so, just like Jon thought he would, and Jon almost sobs to be granted such a small victory.

“You wanting me to call Doctor Varma, Mr B?” comes the tentative, worried voice of Conor at Martin's elbows – sixteen, his voice breaking awkwardly, helping out in the shop after school; Jon remembers lending him books when he was a precocious, demanding child, voracious for knowing.

“We should be ok,” Martin replies kindly. To Jon, he says:

“Julienne's car's out front.”

Jon frowns, confused, before remembering – theirs is in for its MOT, Martin must have borrowed it to cross the three miles between the villages. There is something heavy around his shoulders, warm and scratchy, and he wants to wonder but the questions are sunken in the softness still lingering in his head.

“Do you need...?” Jon starts, and the words are thick and phlegmy in his throat. “The school...?”

“Julienne's covering my last class,” Martin says soothingly. “They understand.”

Jon nods. Years ago, he might have apologised, stewed in how much he needed Martin today, but time has wasted away those anxieties.

“Thank you for coming for me,” he replies instead, his voice still sea-bitten and hoarse, and lets Martin lead him wobbly-legged out of the door so they can drive home.

#tma #the magnus archives #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #cws for disassociation #cws the lonely #hurt/comfort

246 notes · View notes

issabangtanfic · 4 years

Text

[Jungkook] The Windmill House (Chapter 5)

Masterlist

Synopsis: When for once rich doesn’t rhyme with Christian Grey.

Pairing: Jungkook x OC

A/N: Feel free to submit a cover! Tell me what you think in my inbox! Enjoy!

“What the hell are you doing?” I splutter, recoiling from him as his fingertips graze my shoulders. I turn around, giving him a look of pure confusion. He looks down at me with a wolfish grin.

“Getting an early start?” He shrugs, taking a step towards me. I frown deeply. What the hell is he talking about. I step back, replaying our encounter from the beginning, trying to figure out where I messed up.

“I should have called dibs, but Jungkook won’t mind if we start without him.” He explains, taking his suit jacket off and throwing it carelessly on the table where multiple dildos are displayed. He follows me as I back away from him. What the heck is he saying? Did I really just agree on a three-way without realizing it? Am I that drunk already?

“What? I breathe, still trying to escape him. The back of my knees hit the edge of one of the strategically placed beds, and I plop down on it with a squeal. His hands come down to his belt.

“Now- “

“No!” I shout, my hand coming up to hide his groin from my sight. He frowns, but his eyes stay playful.

“What do you mean, no?” He asks me. “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

My jaw drops open, and my frown deepens. How dare you?! Do I look like being a bloody hooker is my side gig? Where the hell did he get this idea from? I’m so offended, I struggle to form words. All I can do is scoff, and he’s quick to move on. I

“Or are you into pretending you don’t like it?” He tilts his head to the side. I start to panic. One of his hand reaches behind my head as he pushes his fingers in my hair, gathering a fistful of it before tugging sharply, tilting my head back. He brings his face close to mine.

Oh hell no.

“I really don’t mind- “

I jerk one leg with all of my strength, kicking him in the balls.

“AAAAAAARGH!” He cries out in pain, letting go of me to attend to his wounded testicles. Heaving, I shove him and he falls to the ground. I get up and grab the adjacent dildo displayer, pulling down and making it fall on him.

Adrenaline pumping through my veins, I run out of the room as quickly as I came. Not sure whether he’s following me or not, I make a dash to get my bag.

“Miss Fair?” Mr. Jeon is walking towards me, frowning at my panicked state. He looks clueless, but apparently he’s in on this. He’s made me understand so many times he wants to have sex with me.

“Get away from me!” I yell at him, pulling out my pepper spray. I’m armed. He better not try anything stupid. At the same moment, his brother emerges from the room, still groaning in pain and hunched over, I back away so the two are in my sight.

How the hell am I getting out of here? Mr. Jeon is standing in the way to the front door and I don’t know this place enough to figure out another route.

“What happened?” Mr. Jeon asks, taking slow steps towards me. I back away.

“What kind of fucked up trap is this, huh?! You guys are sick!” I shout, glancing between the two in case one of them tries something. I have to be smart about this. If they both attack me at the same time, I’m done. I only took so much defense classes. I lost interest when the hot instructor got replaced.

Mr. Jeon turns to his brother, his face a knot of confusion.

“What did you tell her?” He asks Eliott.

“Nothing!” He replies, still struggling to stand upright.

“Nothing?! You assaulted me!” I retort.

“I thought we were playing!” He counters, seeking support in his brother’s eyes. Mr. Jeon doesn’t give it to him.

“Playing what, Eliott?! Are you fucking stupid?!” He bellows, shoving him against the double doors of the red room. He could be pretending. Hargreeves said he was in on this. He said he was supposed to join us.

Taking advantage of the commotion, I decide to turn on my heels and run. I’ll find a way out of this place.

“Maya!” I hear Mr. Jeon call after me. I run out of the hall and close the first door I find, which happens to be French doors that give onto the extension and its spiral staircase. Despite Mr. Jeon trailing me, I decide to stop to lock the door and slow him down.

“Maya, wait!” He bangs on the glass, startling me. “It’s really not what you think!” He shouts, his voice muffled. Yeah, sure. Not taking any chances, I start running again, climbing the stairs two by two, and retracing my steps but from one floor above. This is the same place he brought me the first time, so I know how to get out from here. When I make a left turn to take the stairs, I bump into Mr. Jeon’s firm chest.

“Maya, stop!” He orders, grabbing my shoulders. He gets a kick in the balls as well. This is something I have wanted to do for a long time.

“Aaaaargh!” He groans, falling down on one knee. He deserves it. I make a final dash down the stairs and to the front door, successfully getting out of the mansion.

“Maya, you’re pissed! You can’t drive!” Mr. Jeon screams after me. In this frenzy, I still manage to pick up on his British accent, which I had never heard before. I unlock my mini and jump in, but the gate is closed.

Shit.

Mr. Jeon appears at my window, banging on my door.

“Maya, I swear this is a misunderstanding. Let me explain.” He begs.

“Leave me alone!”

Without me even beginning to think about a way to drive off, the gate lights up, buzzes and starts to slide open. Mr. Jeon disappears. This is my chance.

“Don’t open the bloody gate! Fucking dingus!” I hear him yell in the distance. When the gap is big enough for my mini to speed through, I start the engine and drive off. I speed down the long and dusty road that leads to the mansion, but I soon hear the loud roar of a sports car.

I look into my rearview and see a bright red, low car speeding up behind me. The rich bastard. My mini is no match. In less than ten seconds, the car passes me and blocks the road, making a sharp turn to the right and effectively blocking me. I’m forced to stop.

I watch is Mr. Jeon steps out of the car, pacing towards me. I turn on my main beams to blind him, but it only works for a coup of seconds. I lock my doors.

“Get out the bloody car, Maya.” He orders once he’s at my level. His eyes are hard and stern, his frown subtle.

“No!”

“I’m not moving my car, you bash it and I sue you.” He points a threatening index at me.

“I’m calling the police!”

“Maya, this is a misunderstanding! My brother got the wrong idea!” He exclaims. He definitely did, but I’m pretty sure he’s the one who put that idea in his head!

“You two had planned on having sex with me!”

“No!” He says categorically. "I mean, I want to, but not with him. I wouldn’t share you with anyone.” He explains. Share me?

“He said he should have called dibs and that you would join us.” I counter. He just shakes his head.

“He's got the wrong idea.” He repeats. “And he’s half as pissed as you are."

I glare at him. I don’t know if he’s being honest, but I want to leave this place.

“He’s… I don’t even know why I bother with him.” He says, dropping his head in defeat. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if I believe him. I don’t care at this point. I’m safer in my car, and I just want to go.

“He’ll apologize.” He promises after a beat, looking back at me. I don’t need his apology; I need to get home!

“Maya, I promise you. I would never do anything like that to you.” He says when I don’t reply.

“You just did.” I counter. He puts a hand up on the roof on my mini and leans further down so he’s at my eye level.

“No, my brother attacked you and I’m sorry. But you have to believe me, I had no idea he would do that.” He says slowly. I don’t know anymore. That could be true, but I’m more interested in getting out of here.

“I don’t ever want to see him again.” I declare. He lets out a sigh of relief.

“That’s fine. That’s even better.” He murmurs. "I wouldn’t have let him touch you. Consenting or not.” He adds on a more serious tone. Consenting or not?

“Whatever.” I mutter. “You can move your car now.”

“Maya!” He says disapprovingly. Oh what now? Can I just go home already? I just want to get away from here.

“I just want to go home!”  I cry.

“I’ll take you home, then! I’m not letting you drive after all the wine you've had!” He raises his voice as well, visibly losing his patience.

 “I don’t want you to take me home!” I retort. Who the fuck is he? My dad? Who in the ever-loving hell does he think he is to boss me around like that? Like it’s not even his fault I’m in this situation in the first place?

“Then I’ll call a bloody cab for you! Be fucking reasonable!” He bellows, his wrath making me shake like a leaf. Tears spring to my eyes.

“Stop yelling at me!” I shout. He flinches, removing his hand from my car. Fuming, I storm out of my car and slam the door closed. He takes a step back as I point an angry index at him.

“I am done putting up with your arrogant, abusive, and perverted ways Mr. Jeon.” I declare. "You have done nothing but make me uncomfortable and put me in danger.”

His eyes widen and his eyebrows connect.

“I am going to tell everything to my boss so I don’t have to spend another minute and you and your pervert of a brother. I am not going to endure another fucking second of this!” I spit at him, and it feels liberating. He stares at me, wide-eyes, speechless. His eyes search on my face. He doesn’t know what to do.

“It’s your cue to piss off!” I lash out, my voice echoing in the silent night.

“Let me get you a cab.” He says quietly.

“I’ll get it myself! Bye!” I yell. I can’t stand this man anymore. He thinks he’s so important to me, that I need him, that he has control over me, but he’s just another rich piece of shit. They all are.

“I want to stay and watch you get in.”

“And I want you to get out of my sight!”

“Okay!” He exclaims. “I get it.” He says more quietly. “But I’m leaving until you’re safe. Deal with it.”

What a stubborn little shit. Alright, then. I can’t physically make him move so I have no choice but to endure his presence a for an extra 20 minutes.

Sighing loudly, I pull out my phone to order a cab. The screen refuses to light up.

“You’ve got be joking me.” I mutter, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“What?” Mr. Jeon enquires.

“Phone’s dead.” I mutter.

“Is it, now?”

“Stop.” I hiss at him.

“Maya, it’s late. You’ve had a pretty rough night, and you don’t want to see me- I get it.” He says to me. “I just want to drive you home. I won’t talk, I won’t try anything. The quicker you accept, the quicker you’re home.” He proposes. Exhausted by tonight’s events, and with the alcohol making my temples ache, I lose all will to fight him.

“Just don’t fucking talk to me.” I mutter, stomping my feet and walking over to the passenger side.

“Thank you, Maya.” I hear him say from behind me.

Mr. Jeon parks his car in a more decent way before climbing into mine. I buckle my belt and look out the window, wiling to twist my neck until in aches to avoid his eyes. For once since the first time we went, Mr. Jeon is respectful of my boundaries and doesn’t speak to me.

With this week’s stress, the adrenaline rush, and the now strong effects of the wine, I start to drift away and completely doze off by the time we reach London.

“Maya.” I hear him call my name. I convince my eyes open, feeling disoriented, and a little bit nauseous. I blink a few times, looking around.

“We’re at your house.” Mr. Jeon says to me. Already? The hammering in my head begins. I’m in my car, still sitting on the passenger seat, the door open, Mr. Jeon crouching down in front of me.

“I have your purse. Can you walk?" He asks me. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I nod weakly, though I’m not fully awake. I unbuckle my belt and step out, but my heel gets caught on the side walk.

“Easy.” Mr Jeon, says, wrapping a strong arm around my waist to keep me steady. I’m against his chest, and he’s looking down at me. Okay, now I’m awake. Hello.

“Hi.” He says to me. Why does he have to be so bloody beautiful? Thanks to the alcohol in my system, I have an excuse for turning crimson red. I feel my cheeks heat up.

This won’t do.

Clearing my throat, I push myself off of him, finding my balance again. I am tipsy, not drunk. I can walk. I smooth my dress down and take my purse from his hand.

“Thank you for the ride. Good night.” I tell him keeping my tone icy and my eyes as cold as I can manage, not waiting for a reply, I turn on my heels and head for my front door.

“Maya?” I hear him call behind me. I decide to grant him a last piece of my attention. He stands there, one hand in his pocket.

“For what it’s worth, I’m truly sorry for what my brother did and for how I’ve behave with you.” He says to me, his eyes apologetic. His puppy act misses my sozzled brain. I will not let him get me like this.

“Trust me, you’re not sorry yet. Don’t bother sending me flowers.” I reply coldly, before stepping into my home without another look.

#jungkook #jungkook scenarios #jungkook smut #bts scenariios #bts smut #jungkook imagine #jungkook fanfic #kpop #kpop fanfic #kpop scenarios #jimin #park jimin #park jimin scenario #bts jimin scenarios

38 notes · View notes

dapperappleton · 4 years

Text

I’ll Be Seeing You Part 2

A/N: I know this is a Moriarty x reader series and he wasn’t really in this one or part 1, he’ll be in the next part, I promise. I am so sorry for taking so long to write this, I just sorta forgot.

Part 1

Pairing: Implied!Moriarty x reader, platonic!Sherlock x reader, platonic!John x reader, platonic!Mary x reader, Mary x John

Word count: 1,487

Summary: Sherlock’s back

Warnings: Mild violence (John attacking Sherlock), like one swear word

“John’s got on with his life.” Mycroft looked ever so slightly smug that he got to tell Sherlock this. “Y/N’s about the only one who hasn’t entirely moved on.”

“Why wouldn’t they have moved on? They knew I wasn’t dead didn’t they?”

“Well, brother mine, they are still upset. I will not tell you why, you must find that out for yourself.”

“What does that mean Mycroft?” Sherlock spat, he always hated when Mycroft spoke in riddles. “Why are they upset?”

“Goodbye, blood.”

***

Sherlock walked into the busy restaurant. He looked around, and without even looking at the man, told the host that his wife’s contractions may have started. He kept walking before “accidentally” spilling someone’s wine glass in order to take their bow tie. He grabbed a menu and some glasses off another table and eyeliner from a lady’s purse.

“May I help you sir?” Sherlock’s French accent was bad, but apparently just good enough to fool John.

“Hi, I’m looking for a bottle of champagne.” John didn’t look up like Sherlock wanted. “A good one.”

John continued to not look up even when Sherlock kept trying to hint at things, calling a particular champagne “a face from the past”. Sherlock didn’t know what to do, so he just kept talking about it. It didn’t work and he decided to just go off anyways.

John sat at the table and looked at the ring for Mary. She came back, looking stunning as always. John was nervous, that much was clear, but he was confident that he was going to pop Mary the big question. He started talking about how important meeting Mary was to him and how much he loved her.

He was just words away from actually asking Mary to marry him when Sherlock rushed back with a bottle of wine. It was impeccably awful timing, exactly Sherlock’s expertise. Sherlock really didn’t know when to stop. He kept talking in that weird French accent and kept hinting about “the face of an old friend” and other things that any person wouldn’t think twice about, particularly if you were trying to ask such an important question as John was. Mary actually found it funny.

“No, look, seriously. Could you just...” John finally looked up at Sherlock.

“Interesting thing, a tuxedo. Lends distinction to friends and anonymity to waiters.” Sherlock had messed up, but he couldn’t even see it.

You could see so much in John’s eyes. So much emotion.

“Well, short version, not dead.”

Sherlock had messed up, so badly. John was losing his cool, and Mary, bless her, was trying desperately to help him. John was breathing heavily, fist grinding into the table. He had to whisper in order to not shout. John tackled Sherlock to the ground, choking him in the middle of the restaurant.

They left to go to a deli to talk, and Mary asked Y/N to come, knowing they would keep both John and Sherlock (mostly) in check. The four of them sat at a table, John still angry as ever.

“I don’t care how you did it, Sherlock, I want to know why.”

“Why? Because Moriarty had to stopped.” Sherlock took in the look on John’s face. “Oh. Why as in... I see, yes, why. That’s a little more difficult to explain. Actually, um, that was mostly Mycroft’s plan.”

“Oh, so it was mostly your brother’s plan?” John asked sarcastically.

Mary piped up, “oh, what, he would have needed a confidant... sorry.”

John looked up at Sherlock again. “But he was the only one? The only one that knew?”

Y/N tensed up before Sherlock listed off the people that knew. Molly, Y/N, and twenty five people from his Holmes’s network. John didn’t even register that Y/N was mentioned before again tackling Sherlock. New deli, same conversation.

“Wait, Y/N, you were in on this?” John finally turned to them, fire still burning in his eyes, but much less because it was Y/N. “That whole time, you knew? Well, then. I suppose I always guessed that you were hiding half your pain because you were hurt twice as much as us, but you were really only upset over Moriarty?”

“Yes, and I am sorry John. I would have told you, or given you some sort of hint, but they wou—“

“I’m sorry, hold on a second.” Sherlock looked very confused. “You were upset over Moriarty dying, but not me?”

“Sherlock, I’m sorry about that too, but you weren’t here when I told everyone. That is not my fault. I, well, how do I say this without you getting mad at me since you’re the only one who doesn’t know? I was dating Jim Moriarty, starting about four months before that pool thing happened.”

Sherlock looked very confused. He wasn’t used to not noticing things like that, particularly when it had to do with important people like Y/N and Moriarty. He had never even suspected Y/N was dating anyone, let alone a psychopathic murderer. He was brought back to reality by John’s screaming. John was still very angry and an angry John is not good. Of course Sherlock had to go and say some bloody stupid thing about John actually missing cases with Sherlock. They got kicked out for the third time that night when John smashes his head against Sherlock’s face. He did deserve it though.

“I still don’t understand.” Sherlock pinched the bridge of his nose, head tilted back. “I said I’m sorry, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

“Gosh, you don’t anything about human nature, do you?” Mary was looking up at him, she seemed very interested in him and his odd personality.

“Nature, no. Human? No.”

Mary laughed. “I’ll talk him ‘round.”

“You will?”

“Oh yeah.”

They looked up as John called to Molly, a cab waiting in front of him. Y/N hugged him before walking back to Mary and hugging her goodbye as well. They stepped beside Sherlock, both of them looking straight ahead.

“Why is he so mad?” Sherlock’s face scrunched up. “And what did you even see in Moriarty?”

“Well, John’s mad because if your best friend jumps off a building and you accept their death, if they show up two years later after not giving them a sign, of course they’re going to be mad.

“As for Jim, well, he was smart, fun, chivalrous, and surprisingly caring. He really did love me, by the way. I wasn’t a pawn like your brother thinks. He’s an utter ass sometimes, by the way.”

Sherlock scoffed before starting to walk. He muttered a “come along” to you without stopping to wait. Y/N took large steps to meet him.

“You like being back, don’t you?” Y/N looked up at Sherlock. “I mean, you don’t really understand that people change, but you do enjoy being back and around everything you knew?”

“Yes, I do enjoy it, but you can’t tell anyone else. And I don’t understand why everyone’s saying John’s changed. He can’t have changed, he can’t have moved on because I was gone. It’s just... no.”

Y/N hummed in recognition. They understood that Sherlock’s autism made change like that hard to comprehend and accept. But he would adjust eventually.

“I’m glad you’re back. Really. I knew you weren’t dead, but it was still hard without you.”

Both of them kept staring ahead. The two of them walked in silence until they reached 221B Baker Street. Sherlock opened the door and let Y/N in first, using what little manners he had.

Y/N had been to the flat a few times in the last two years, but it felt good to be back with Sherlock. They walked up the stairs and into Sherlock’s dusty, but still exactly the same, flat. The smell of old books and stale air greeted them. It honestly looked like a mood board from Tumblr, Y/N noted mentally. It felt like home.

However, being back there, seeing Sherlock again. It brought back memories of Jim. Good ones, bad ones, memories that didn’t even have any relevance or emotion attached to them. It still hurt Y/N, knowing that he was gone.

“I miss him, Sherlock. I really do.” Y/N looked down.

Sherlock tilted his head and scrunched his eyebrows together. Were they talking about Moriarty? He straightened his head and his eyebrows lifted again. He didn’t really understand emotions, but he did understand what it was like to miss someone.

“I know, Y/N, I know.” He pulled Y/N into him and rested his head on theirs, a display of affection that he saved only for Y/N.

They stayed like that for some time, Y/N sniffling every once and awhile. Sherlock placed a kiss on the top of their head and pulled them even closer to him. He didn’t understand why Y/N liked Moriarty, but he’d be sure to make sure that Y/N was alright regardless.

***

Moriarty stood across the street as Sherlock and Y/N walked into the flat.

“I’ll be seeing you.”

60 notes · View notes

herradhighpriestess · 3 years

Text

Deliberate Exchange

Chapter Twelve: Something in the Air

As Esau and the men closed the distance between themselves and the still, unmoving red dot, Elka stared down at the new ring, she turned her left palm over on her lap and stared at the heavy ring on her fourth finger.

He snuck a peek over at her as she scrutinized the ring.

Bane spoke over the radio, “how’s your hand?”

“It hurts some, but I put a fresh bandage on it earlier.”

He turned the volume of the radio down before speaking. “What kind of house would you like to live in eventually?”

“I’d like a place with some acreage. I’ve always wanted a big garden, those don’t work well in a penthouse,” she added. She opened her mouth to continue and instead of words, a giggle slipped from between her lips.

Bane watched her cover a smile, “don’t do that,” he whispered as he reached over and pulled her hand away from her mouth. “What made you smile?”

“It just sounds unbelievable; it doesn’t seem like it can be real.”

“It will be,” he said strongly and closed his hand over hers, adding with a gentle squeeze. “I will do anything to ensure your happiness.”

Elka turned the radio volume back up to a comfortable level as they continued to drive for hours. While the odometer counted the passing mileage, Esau and his armed men parked their bulky, gas guzzling SUV fifty yards from the still stationary red dot on the planted GPS tracker.

The men communicated a plan before slipping silently from the large vehicle and closing in on the parked semi-truck. The driver of the truck was off getting a blowjob from a toothless tweaker who hung out around the truck stop.

Esau moved in first and the rest of the men advanced towards the rear of the truck. An ex-military man with long hair in a braid that fell to the middle of his back, moved past Esau to cut the heavy steel lock on the cargo doors.

The dangerous man with the beautiful hair severed the sturdy lock, he didn’t see the thin wire that Bane had wound surreptitiously around the lock’s metallic loop. The severing of the grey wire activated the detonation of a solid pound of C-4 that Bane had crudely mashed until it looked like a lumpy potato. The C-4 rapidly decomposed and released an abundance of nitrogen and carbon oxide that wiped out the men’s lives with its undiscriminating explosive touch.

Hours in the other direction the hotel finally came into view. Elka let out a relieved sigh that he heard when he cut the engine.

She felt his hand come to rest on her thigh and looked over to find his eyes on her face.

“Are you okay?”

Elka nodded and shook her head, “yes, fine. I’m tired and hungry and would really like to take a bath.”

Bane squeezed the top of her thigh as he turned the engine over again and backed the SUV into a spot at the rear of the lot.

She watched him pull a few crisp bills from the vehicle’s console. “I need you to go reserve the room, this place doesn’t take credit cards, there’s even still a handwritten ledger.”

Elka looked around the dingy lot, noticing a lot of dry rot, sagging roof and an unkempt exterior.

She smoothed her hair back as she pushed open the door and made her way across the dusty lot. She could feel his eyes on her back the entire way.

Elka was able to check in with a woman that couldn’t have been a day older than 150 years old and had such an advanced state of cataracts, that her pupils were nearly swallowed up by the milky spill of white.

She paid cash for two nights, realizing she had neglected to find out how long he wanted to stay. “Two nights is a safe bet,” she thought.

As Elka returned to the car, hours away in the truck stop parking lot, the sloppy trucker blowjob was interrupted as the C-4 reached its peak level of velocity and slammed into the armed men.

Esau and his brothers-in-arms were completely disarticulated. Many hours later, the medical examiner would have the anatomical challenge of matching up the limbs and building bodies from the burnt pile of remains.

Some of the extremities were so burnt, they resembled firewood when stacked for transport.

As the charred human remains were loaded into vinyl body bags, back in the SUV in the rundown hotel’s parking lot, Elka watched Bane slip his mask off for the walk to their ground level room in case any unwanted eyes were drawn to his masked, hulking form.

The room was plain but clean, it boasted a faded comforter slung over a full-sized bed. Elka peeked into the bathroom, relieved to find a small, cramped tub, but still a tub she could fill with hot soapy water.

She stretched her arms high overhead and yawned deeply as she walked around the small room, her legs tight and uncomfortable from too long in the car.

Bane stepped in front of where she was walking circles in the room and swept her up in his embrace, being mindful of her hand.

He captured her lips with his and cut off her startled gasp as she felt her feet leave the floor.

“What was that for?” she asked with a flutter and smoothed her clothes back into place when he set her down.

“No reason,” he said and brushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear, letting his fingertips linger before he added. “Food or bath first?”

“Food please,” she said with potent relief. “I want pancakes for dinner and enough coffee to fill a pool.”

“There’s a diner right next door, you’ll need to make the trip on your own. Will you be okay doing that?”

Elka nodded and watch him retrieve another bill from his jacket.

She slipped on a heavier coat and closed the room door behind her.

The diner had a single glass door for the entrance and had the hours painted in a garish red. A bell dinged over her head as she yanked open the door and was met by a waitress with a rectangular name tag that read Sonya.

Elka briefly glanced at the menu and found a special that included pancakes, she ordered two along with coffee.

She thanked the waitress and asked for a coffee while she waited. She took a sip of the piping hot French roast from the mug. Elka tore open several pink packets of an artificial sweetener and stirred it into her coffee.

Back in the hotel room, Bane hated that he couldn’t accompany Elka to the diner but being in public was an increased risk by his sheer appearance not to mention the amount of eyes Talia had peppered around the globe.

Bane also needed her out of earshot for the phone call he was about to make.

He knew that Talia would’ve been notified about losing Esau and the small clutch of men in the fiery blaze. Bane also knew that Talia would immediately turn to Barsad for fatal assistance.

He affixed his mask back into place before he activated one of the additional burner phones and dialed Barsad.

Bane listened as the call seemed to take too long to connect. Barsad picked up with a sleepy grunt after seven crackly rings.

“Brother,” Bane said to Barsad’s incoherent greeting.

Barsad was instantly awake when Bane’s distinct musical tone sounded through the poor connection.

Bane heard a lot of commotion on Barsad’s end before he spoke again.

“I’ve been dispatched to neutralize you and the woman,” Barsad stated.

“Yes, that would be the proper course of action.”

“I will not be able to find you.”

Both men were silent for a while, their shared camaraderie meaning more at the moment in time and space over Talia’s psychotic and misguided totalitarian regime.

“Gratitude brother,” Bane finally said before adding in a musically conspiratorial tone. “There’s something else.”

“End her?”

“Yes.”

“Done. Anything else?”

On the other end of the phone, Barsad nodded wordlessly as Bane gave him orders that were rooted solely in toxic jealousy. Barsad repeated the penthouse suite address back to Bane.

“I’m indebted,” Bane said.

“No, you’re not, you’re out of the Pit for good. Be well brother.”

Both men ended the call without another exchanged syllable.

Bane stared down at the cheap phone and its oval plastic buttons, the display screen remained blank, save for the time in green digits.

He slipped out of his heavy coat as Elka sat in the diner and rubbed her eyes, the fatigue crawling through her limbs as she waited for the food. Elka could’ve folded her arms and fallen asleep. Sonya returned with a plastic bag within twelve minutes and assured Elka there were creamers, utensils and a variety of condiments tucked into the bag.

Elka thanked her and balanced the bag and drink tray as she made the short return walk to their hotel room. She found Bane sitting on the edge of the bed, his coat slung over one of the room’s mismatched chairs.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted anything, so I ordered you pancakes too,” she said as he stood and took the bag and tray from her hands.

Elka slipped out of her coat and kicked off her shoes as she dug through the bag for one of the Styrofoam containers.

She waterboarded her pancakes with sweet, sticky syrup and smeared a fat glob of butter over the fluffy round stack.

Bane watched Elka dump a handful of miniature creamers into her coffee.

She looked over at him unexpectedly and caught him staring. “I forgot to mention, I booked the room for two nights.”

“No more than that for the sake of keeping in motion.”

Elka nodded and sipped at her coffee. She shifted on the uncomfortable chair and her movement caused the light to spill across her face in a way that pulled Bane back to his time of turmoil and pain in the Pit.

Elka felt the weight of his gaze before she turned to meet his eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked with concern creasing his forehead as he rose to his feet and began walking towards her.

Bane nodded wordlessly as he knelt to his knees in front of her. She felt her breath catch in her throat as he lifted a large hand to cup her jaw, his thumb tracing the outline of her full lips before he spoke on a melodic rasp.

“I’ve lived in a world composed of darkness and bitter turmoil before I met you.” His eyes were on her face, but his mind reminded him of the hope of looking up at the sunlight streaming in through Pena Dura.

Elka danced her fingertips along the straps of his mask and fumbled the clasps until she could tug the titanium covering his face free. She traced her fingertips along the visible scars of his face and strong line of his jaw.

As Elka leaned down and pressed her lips against Bane’s, hundreds of miles away, in the corner office of the East Coast penthouse, Calvin was on the phone with his accountant and getting money together for Elka. Every time his phone rang, he expected her to be on the other end of the call, telling him where to send her money.

Calvin fumbled for his phone when it rang sharply. It wasn’t Elka. It was her boss, Trisha Stevenson.

As she waited for Calvin to answer, Trisha still couldn’t shake the feeling that Elka was in some kind of trouble.

“This is Calvin Green.”

“Hello, Mr. Green, this is Trisha Stevenson. I worked with Elka at the Reserve.”

“Hello Trisha, please call me Calvin, I didn’t believe we’ve met but Elka speaks of you fondly. What can I help you with?”

“I don’t have anything to base this on but when I spoke to Elka, she didn’t seem like herself. I’m worried….”

Calvin interrupted her, “Trisha, thank you for your concern. Please keep this between you and I, Elka and I are getting a divorce and she is moving out of the city. It’s still not public knowledge.”

“Oh, Calvin, I’m so sorry,” Trisha rambled. “I had no idea.”

“It’s for the best,” Calvin said and tried to inject hopelessness to his tone. “We tried to make it work but this is the best chance for either of us to have a healthy existence. I don’t have a forwarding address for her yet, but I will send it to you as soon as I receive it.”

“Thank you, Calvin.”

“Thank you for your concern Trisha,” Calvin said in a businesslike tone and ended the call.

After Calvin ended the call, Trisha had stared at the phone, she still couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was amiss. She pulled up her phone’s contacts,

“Should I call Elka?”

“No, I’m going to give it a few days and then I’ll call Elka just to make sure she’s okay. Calvin didn’t sound ruffled in the slightest,” she said to herself out loud in a stern tone.

As Trisha tried to shove her concern to the back burner, in another part of Gotham City, Barsad knocked on the smooth double doors of the luxury condo that Talia leased under the name of the glamorous Miranda Tate.

Talia yanked open the doors, anticipating Barsad’s visit after an earlier telephone call.

Barsad kept his smile to himself as his eyes fell upon Talia’s smug face. Her pathological narcissism kept her from hearing past Barsad’s lies through the phone line.

“Well?!?” Talia demanded and practically stomped her feet when she didn’t see Barsad dragging a manacled Bane behind him. “Did you kill them both?

Barsad nodded as Talia shut the door behind him and pointed at the kitchen island and its tall upholstered bar stools.

“Where are the bodies?”

Barsad remained wordless as Talia poured two healthy squat glasses of bourbon.

“Where?” Talia repeated as she set the nearly full glass in front of him.

“Under the bridge, they’ll never be found.”

Talia took a long swallow from her glass, regarding Barsad over the rim. “Take me to them.”

Barsad pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen a few times before turning the phone towards her.

He held the phone too far away for her to discern the pictures clearly which made her automatically lean closer.

Talia never saw her death coming as Barsad let the phone clatter to the counter as he simultaneously shot his hand out to close in the luxurious fall of her silken hair.

He closed his hand into a fist until the tension made her arch her back, causing her neck to lengthen, the skin pulled tight over her rapidly pounding carotid artery. Talia’s arterial and venous intersection was exactly what Barsad only had eyes for.

He quickly dragged a sharp, curved blade across her neck, parting the smooth flesh, coaxing her blood to spout with no sign of stopping until she was drained dry. She succumbed to cardiac death in less than thirty seconds.

Barsad released her hair and her beautiful corpse thudded once on the quartz countertop before falling to the floor and landing in her spilled blood.

He stared down at her a beat before retrieving his phone and dropping it back in his pocket. Barsad wiped both sides of the blood stippled blade on the thigh of his well-worn cargo pants before leaving the condo.

The luxury floor plan that reeked of money now began to compete with the metallic, coppery scent that began to fill the air from Talia’s copious blood spill.

As Talia’s body was left with the company of Venetian tile, hundreds of miles away in the small hotel room, Bane rose to his feet and crushed her against his body.

“Let’s go get to that bath,” he murmured musically as he shifted his grip and carried her into the cramped bathroom.

#Bane #Bane x OC #batman #barsad #talia al ghul #Miranda Tate #The Dark Knight Rises #Bruce Wayne #violence #language #grey consent #fanfiction #gotham city #Gotham Exchange #commissioner gordon #Selina Kyle

1 note · View note

lu-undy · 3 years

Text

Chapter 48 - SBT

Here it is!

Mundy parked the van about a mile away from the palace Duchemin lived in. It was the end of the afternoon and the sky was turning orange. The endless desert ground was hard, dusty and brown where the few cacti would cast their growing shadows.

"It's all on me now."

He slipped out of his van and shut the door.

"Right. Let's find the bloke."

The Aussie adjusted his rifle on his back and climbed on his van's rooftop before scoping in to watch over the impressive mansion. There were guards patrolling and…

"Sick bastard…"

Mundy had to do a double take at the impressive number of lightly dressed females lounging in the gardens, the same French gardens him and Lucien had been in back when -

"Ugh…" He sighed but shook his head. Those days were over. The days where his heart would feel warm at the sight of the expensive suits and the alluring man wearing them.

Mundy focused on his scoping again. The ladies weren't a problem in itself, no, the problem was that they looked young, very young, no doubt even... illegally young.

However, Duchemin wasn't with them. So Mundy moved the scope to align it with the windows and tried to get a glimpse of what was happening through them.

"More guards… More goons… Ugh… Where the hell is he…?"

He followed one of the guards going down a flight of stairs until -

"What the hell?! Where is he gone to?"

The man had disappeared underground.

"Wait, so there is an underground to this place? Alright…"

Mundy stayed a bit longer, counting the number of guards and watching them patrol around.

"Right, I won't see more without getting closer. But there are cameras… I hope those bullets will do the trick…"

The Aussie loaded his rifle and one by one, the CCTV cameras went off.

"Perfect, now the guards…"

Mundy changed his bullets for his double-chambered sleeping darts and started shooting. Thank God for the suppressor, no one heard him shoot and the guards fell limply one after the next, starting from those on the rooftop. When he was done with the dozen or so, the Aussie came down his van and got closer to the gardens. He found the young girls next to the pool, where he had first seen them.

"Hey - Ssh! No, don't shout, don't scream! I'm here to free you up!" He took one as a hostage to make the others obey. The poor girls were scared to the bone in their bikinis. He released the little girl that he had in his arms and looked at them earnestly. "Listen, if you run that way for about a mile, you'll find a van.. It doesn't have much space but you can hide there until I come back and take you somewhere safe, ok?"

"What about Arthur?" One of them asked. "He'll find you and kill you and us for it!"

"Nah, I'm here to kill him and look around you, no guards, no alert, nothing. You're safe. Besides, this might be your only chance to get free. Now, tell me anything you know about where he is."��

"He must be underground… I heard him say that something important would happen today…" A young black-haired girl said, in tears.

"Yeah, he's about to move his merchandise someplace else…" Another added.

"Alright, how do I get underground without being seen and what's my best bet to get to him?" Mundy asked.

"There's a… A sewer pipe, it's actually a whole network of them… He uh…" The poor girl couldn’t continue.

"That's where he gets rid of the corpses." Another one explained and Mundy's pupils shrank.

"Bloody sick bastard… Alright, where does it lead? If I find the end of it, I can just work backwards to him, yeah?" Mundy asked.

"You'll have to go around the house, look down and you should see a manhole."

"Alright, I'll do that. By the way, are there any others like you?" He asked.

"There were."

Mundy gulped down hard and frowned.

"Alright. Go to my van and stay there, ok?"

"Thank you so much! Be careful!"

Mundy left them and followed their instructions. He walked in the maze of hedges that he knew from that time in the party. The only difference was that this time, the sunlight was enough to see and…

And Lucien wasn't there.

"No!" Mundy said to himself and shook his head.

No, Lucien wasn't there and that was the whole point of it. Mundy would find Duchemin and kill him such that his goons would go after him and not after the Frenchman. He had a cat to raise and someone he longed for.

Mundy finally found the manhole. He moved it with great effort and took the ladder down until his heeled boots hit the floor.

"Bloody hell, that's some stench…!" He winced and switched on the light on his little keyring.

Mundy wasn't surprised by the existence of the bad smell, after all, he was now walking in the sewers. No, what surprised him is the nature of the stench, he could clearly identify rotting flesh in the air…

"Sick son of a whore…" He mumbled to himself as he progressed in the tunnels.

He had no idea where he was going exactly or where he should be going. But as long as he kept moving, he was bound to find something. Eventually.

"Fuckin' hell, that bloke has a thing for mazes or what…?"

Those sewers proved to be another kind of mazes, just like the hedges in the French garden; only this time, the visibility was extremely low. The little flashlight on Mundy's keyring wasn't powerful enough to help him greatly and the Aussie started to regret not having taken a torchlight with him. But how could he have known that he would end up travelling in some disgusting and no doubt highly contaminated sewers?

Mundy sighed and put his hat in front of his face like a mask. The lingering smell of his soap in his old, leather hat was better than the filth floating in the air.

He walked and walked, wishing he had something to mark his way, just to make sure he was not going in a circle…

Mundy let the little light explore left and right around his feet and the sight wasn't one he wished to remember. In the dirty waters he could clearly see remnants of what used to be living beings. Sometimes animals, sometimes not. He winced in disgust and pulled the light higher up in front of him.

The cracks in the walls spoke for the age of the building Mundy was exploring, the rats too, although he didn't meet that many of them.

"That's always a good sign, isn't it? If even the rats don't want to live here…" He grumbled and kept walking.

He had no idea how deep the network of undergrounds ran, or where Duchemin would be with respect to them. And even if Mundy wanted to spin on his heels and make it back home, where the hell would he go…? Through which tunnels…? Every fifty metres or so was a junction and with it came multiple possibilities not to find the damn criminal, but to get lost entirely!

However, Mundy didn't lose patience. He thought about his parents and carried on. His parents were not shown any mercy and they were put through hell itself. There was no reason why Mundy wouldn't do the same, as penance, to pay for his absence on that day, ten years ago.

He went on, walked, and with each junction came a choice and with each choice his rage grew.

"Oh bloody hell, no, not now!"

The battery on Mundy's light decided to die, leaving the Aussie in the dark. He took a deep breath and waited a minute or so, for his eyes to get accustomed to the darkness. There, that's a bit better… And he went on.

"Huh?"

There was a metallic clinking noise. It came from his left. For lack of any other clue, Mundy went in that direction. He walked further but the noise had died and there was no way to see where it had come from either.

"Hm…"

Mundy put his ear on the walls.

Rumbling.

Distant but continuous rumbling, a bit like a boiler maybe, or a power generator. The Aussie tried to walk towards the noise, his ear always probing the walls left and right. And the rumbling grew louder and louder until he managed to identify what it was.

"Oh bugger…"

It sounded like a waterfall. The sewers actually went in small cascades lower and lower down in the ground. Mundy sighed.

-- Meanwhile, in town --

"Richard!"

Lucien had barged in the tailor's shop throwing politeness and courtesy out of the window.

"L?"

"Please, I need equipment urgently!"

The tailor nodded.

"Paul, occupe-toi de la boutique!"

[Paul, come and deal with the shop!]

Both Richard's sons came out of the workshop and shut the front window.

Fortunately enough, there were no customers that afternoon. Richard nodded to Lucien and jumped to the wall with the fleur-de-lis handle before pulling on it. The secret wall opened and both slipped in.

"What will you need?" He asked as Lucien ran to the display cases.

"This gun," Lucien pointed right. "With a suppressor, please..."

"Ammunition?"

"Both non lethal and lethal, please."

Richard opened the display cases and collected the items as fast as Lucien was listing them.

"Do you still have watches?" The spy asked.

"I'm afraid they are a bit outdated and modern agents don't use them much anymore nowadays…" Richard answered.

"Do you have them?!" Lucien exclaimed, furious. "There is no time to lose!"

Richard got startled but he nodded and opened a drawer that was connected to the wall.

"Here there are."

Lucien jumped to them.

"I will need this one."

He pointed at the one with the silver strap.

"Of course." Richard gave it to him and Lucien fastened it around his left wrist in a flash.

"Do you have earpieces?"

"Yes, we do, how many do you need?"

"Two, please."

Richard opened another drawer and tossed them over to the Frenchman.

"Merci… I will also need a balaclava… this one, here." Lucien pointed at the black one.

"Do you need a matching suit? I have a few black ones in stock, one of them should suit you…"

"Oui, please, and hurry!"

After a few minutes, Lucien exited a changing booth dressed in a black three-piece suit: jacket, vest and trousers, even the shirt was black.

"Parfait, merci Richard!"

[Perfect, thank you Richard!]

"Here, a utility belt with throwable knives and additional ammunition. And this is a special pair of garters with an additional hidden blade in…"

Richard threw the items above the curtain of the changing booth and Lucien caught them with ease. About a minute later, he exited the booth.

"I don't have much time, Richard. See you!"

And the masked man ran out. He hopped on his motorcycle and dashed out of town. He drove as fast as he could through the desert, not even on the asphalt itself. He needed to get to Duchemin's palace as fast as possible.

What on Earth did Mundy think he could accomplish on his own? Find Duchemin, in broad daylight and then what? Kill him then and there?! That would for sure end up in Mundy's death!

The Frenchman saw the van in the distance and switched the motorcycle to silent mode. He parked next to it and turned it invisible before dismounting it.

"S'il vous plaît, mon Dieu, faites qu'il soit encore dans son van ridicule…"

[Please, Lord, tell me he is still in his ridiculous van…]

"Mundy…?"

Lucien approached the van and heard some muffled noises coming from the inside which fell completely silent after he called for the Aussie.

"Mundy, I can hear you are in there, come out and I promise to stop punching your idiotic self before you die."

Nothing.

"Bien. You have chosen poorly, for if you do not come to me, I will come to you!"

Lucien took his blade out and forced the lock open before slamming the door wide open. His jaw dropped as he saw a group of young teenage girls in bikinis, scared to the bone, trying to all hide and fit in the van. They all screamed with their high-pitched voices at the sight of the man with the mask.

"Mon Dieu! Mais qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?!"

[My God! What the hell is that?!]

"Don't kill us, please!" One of them cried.

"I will not kill any one of you, what are you doing here?"

"Fuck! Duchemin's gonna kill us…!" Another one said, sobbing in her hands.

Lucien jumped in the van and they all gasped. He knelt down and put a hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Listen, my… friend is the owner of this van. He is off to kill himself and I am trying to save him. Have you seen him?" Lucien asked.

"He saved us… We were Arthur's girls…"

"His girls? I thought he had no children?" Lucien asked, confused.

"N-not his children…"

"What do you - ? Oh mon Dieu…"

[Oh my God…]

Lucien couldn't be more disgusted if he had wanted. "Don't tell me that…"

The girls grouped around the sobbing one and hugged her.

"I am truly sorry for what you have lived with that man. But please, tell me where I can find him. My friend, you see… He is my best friend. I can't let him die."

There was a kind of honesty in Lucien's eyes that the young girls understood without really knowing what it was.

"He is off to kill Arthur. He freed us and asked us to hide here until he comes back."

"Do you know where I can find him?"

"Your friend or Arthur?"

"Both."

"Your friend is going through the sewers to find Arthur. His offices are-"

"Underground, oui, I know. Stay hidden here. I will call someone who will pick you up and hide you."

"How will we know that it's not one of Duchemin's men?" One girl asked and Lucien looked in her eyes.

"Ask them who sends them. If they answer L, they are an ally. If they answer anything else…" Lucien looked around the van and saw a few kukris hung on the wall. He pointed to them. "Use them and do not think about any consequences. You are now under protection from the French government."

"French?" One the young ladies asked.

"Oui, in coordination with local authorities. But you do not care about this nonsense. And remember what I told you: a friend of L is your friend. Anyone else…" Lucien took the three kukris and gave them to the girls. "No hesitation. It's you or them. Understood?"

They all nodded.

"My friend will be here shortly."

Lucien exited the van and shut the door. He pushed a button on his watch and put the earpiece in his ear.

"Richard…? Yes, it is me. Call Maurice and ask him to send a van or a minibus here. There are young girls who need to be evacuated. They are safe in a van so far."

"Will do immediately."

Lucien pushed the button on his watch again and headed for the gardens. The sun was below the horizon now and the Frenchman took advantage of the dark to make very fast progress.

When he arrived in the maze of hedges, he was only half surprised to find Duchemin's guards down, all struck by a double-chamber dart to the head or the neck.

"Hm. The guards are still here and asleep. No one has found them yet and I hope that the same can be said about Mundy."

Lucien headed for the house and switched a button on his watch. He looked at his reflection on a window and couldn't see any.

La bonne vieille montre d'invisibilité.

[The good old invisibility watch.]

He nodded to himself and entered through the window.

Ah, la bibliothèque…

[Ah, the library…]

The Frenchman was standing in a wooden room filled with endless rows of books. No guards there. He went to the door and peeked through the lock before slipping out of the room. He found himself in a corridor with doors left and right.

He walked through it until he met a guard and passed him without being seen.

Je ne comprends vraiment pas pourquoi les agents actuels n'utilisent plus ces montres, elles sont divines!

[I really don't understand why modern agents don't use these watches, they work wonders!]

He thought to himself as he soon found the stairs. He took them and spiralled down, stopping at each level and trying to find any way to see where the sewers could connect with him.

Lucien was on the third level underground when he overheard a conversation between a group of guards. They were sitting around a table with drinks and playing a game of cards.

"The bloke stinks like there's no tomorrow…"

"How long has he been in the sewers?"

A card was placed on the table and the guards frowned, planning their next moves.

"No idea, but when Russel found him, he got a decent beating and his nose is broken now. Thank God I arrived in time with Jimmy to help."

"The Boss knows about it?"

"Of course, we told him, he might be with him now or something, I don't know."

Another card and another second of thinking.

"Jimmy told me the bloke was weird, I mean, apart from the smell."

"Yeah, he was carrying weird stuff. When we searched him, we found a blowgun, some darts, a sword of some sort, like a machete, and some bullets."

"Just bullets?"

"Not just bullets, they're a rifle's bullet, a big one, like a sniper would use. I've seen some like that back when I was serving."

"Bloody hell… And what did he want?"

"Finding the Boss and killing him."

Another card landed on the table and the guards burst out laughing at the idea that a single man had gone through the sewers to try and get the most protected man in the whole of Oz at least.

Lucien frowned.

"Oh, God, that's a funny one, mate…" One of them resumed the chat as he laid another card on the table.

"Yeah, I know. Well, I guess the boss is gonna kill him and throw him with the others, eh."

Lucien's pupils shrank. The others?

"Yeah, I reckon he'll just scare him off a bit before killing him and poof, back to the sewers but this time, dead."

They shared a laugh around the table as they raised their glasses and had a drink.

"Oh I don't know about that, he took him down to cell 1."

Lucien frowned. Cell 1.

"Cell 1? For a dude fished out of the sewers?"

"Yeah, the Boss asked us to do that after having had a quick chat with him."

"Might be more serious than that then, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but the bloke's alone and smells of rottin' shit. He can't do much."

Lucien had heard enough. He needed to find Cell 1, which he felt was a bit of a special one, from what the guards said. He took a quick look at his watch and slithered against the wall back to explore the place.

One of the guards had said 'down to Cell 1', so presumably Lucien had to go down some more stairs…

And he did until he came across a very useful plan of the place. Finally! He had been looking for it! As secret as a place might be, there always is a fire escape plan somewhere on the walls, finding it reveals a lot of information on the building.

Lucien stared at it and studied it carefully. He was looking for a floor with cells, so presumably, a row of small rooms… Hm…

Ah! There! Two levels below him! Those must be cells!

He thurtled down the stairs as silent as a shadow and went through a few doors before finding that he had been right. He found a corridor with cells left and right and in front of him, at the end of it, was a larger cell with a man chained to the wall from his wrists and his ankles.

Lucien winced. He passed a table on which was Mundy's blowgun, his darts and a few bullets. He came closer to the prisoner and, after making sure no one was around, he tapped on his watch. Out of a thin cloud of smoke, the silhouette of the Frenchman appeared in thin air.

"Ugh… Spook…? Oooh, you look like a burglar, dressed all in black like that…" Mundy was sitting against the wall limply, he was speaking comically slowly and Lucien guessed he had been drugged.

"Ssh! Bushman, I will get you out of here but you must stay quiet!" Lucien whispered as he took his cigarette case out. He flipped it open and took the pins concealed there to pick the lock.

"Eh… Spook…? You came here through the sewers too..?"

"Non, but I can clearly smell that you did. Now, keep your mouth shut!"

Lucien managed to pick the lock and entered the cell before shutting its door again. He went straight to Mundy's wrists and ankles and started picking the locks there too when a door opened in the corridor. The spy tapped his watch again and turned invisible.

"Woohoohoohooo Spook…? I thought only yer bike could do that…!"

Lucien didn't move and just watched the guard approach.

"Eh… Eh mate? See the Spook? Hey! Can you see him?" Mundy drunkenly asked.

"Shut up in there, will ya?" The guard shouted back. He looked in the cell and judging that everything seemed normal, he left.

Lucien waited for the man to be completely gone before reappearing and dealing with the cuffs.

"Bushman, keep your mouth sealed. If they learn that I am here, we are both doomed."

"Yeah but at least I'll get to be… I'll get to be with you, eh? I mean…"

Lucien blushed but kept on trying to free his stinking friend. The ankles were free, time for the wrists.

"Ssh, Bushman."

"No, no… Listen… I mean… If we both die here and now… I mean… No… That's not what I mean… Pearl needs you…" Mundy raised an index finger and stared at it. The poor man was seeing double under the drugs he had been fed. "And there's this bloke you like… Ah, damn him… Damn him to hell and back…!"

"Oh for that, I couldn't agree more. Damn him because he can't keep his mouth shut!"

"No, not for that, Spook…" Mundy missed the meaning entirely. "Damn him cause you… you like him and that's a problem, see?"

One wrist free. Now the other.

"It's a problem cause… See, I like you…"

Lucien stopped his picking of the lock on Mundy's wrist and raised his eyes to him.

"Bushman. Stop talking before I make you."

"No… But seriously… I like ya… You're…"

Lucien expected a compliment.

"...weird." The Frenchman rolled up his eyes. "But a good kind of weird, eh…?"

"Bushman, listen to me."

"Huh?"

"If we want to make it out of here you will have to stay quiet. We can't afford to be spotted, especially you, running free outside of your cell. How often do these guards come and check on you?"

Lucien helped the Aussie up and Mundy naturally put an arm on the Frenchman's shoulders. The spy realised that he had been beaten up quite badly when Mundy started limping. They moved to the table and Lucien took Mundy's equipment that he stuffed in the poor man's pockets.

"I don't know, mate… Quite a bit of time… Gets lonely here y'know… So I just think of my parents… Heh, keeps the motivation goin'... And I think of you too… Keeps me warm inside… Can't help it…"

"Listen here. Let us make a bet, shall we?" Lucien tried another strategy to make his rescue shut up.

"Yeah, alright, anythin' for you…"

Lucien rolled up his eyes again.

"I bet that you cannot remain quiet until we reach your van."

"What's in it for me…?"

"If you succeed, I will owe you a dinner. If you fail, we will however both end up back in this cell before getting killed and thrown in those infamous sewers you went through. How does that sound?"

"Dinner… with you?" Mundy asked.

"Oui. Dinner with me."

"Just you and me…?"

"Just you and me."

"Like… a date or something?"

Lucien sighed.

"Oui, Bushman. Now, do you take the bet, yes or no?"

"Right, I'll uh… I'll shut up until we get to the van… Easy…"

"Good."

Lucien tapped his watch and both turned invisible. They went to the stairs and started climbing them. To his honor, the Aussie stayed silent even though he looked like he was suffering immensely while taking each step up. His gait was slow and heavy but Lucien was patient.

When they finally made it back outside and on ground level, Mundy tapped his friend's shoulder and asked for a break. Fine, Lucien stopped pulling him and gave him a moment.

They were in the middle of the maze of hedges and no one was around them except the bodies of tranquilised guards.

"Huh…" Mundy frowned. His vision was blurred and seeing double did not help, especially in the middle of the night. The lights from the lanterns in the garden waved and danced before his eyes and his whole head was spinning. "Ugh…"

"Mundy?!"

The Aussie collapsed but thank God Lucien caught him before he hit the floor. He carried his limp body over his shoulder all the way to the van. When he arrived, Lucien went straight to the passenger's seat and laid Mundy there. The Aussie was only unconscious, thank God.

Lucien fastened his seatbelt to secure him before going to the back door.

He opened it and the girls had gone, the kukris were all back on the wall as well. Good. Lucien rummaged through the Aussie's belongings before he found some deodorant. He grabbed it and went outside again. There was one detail to arrange: the motorcycle.

Lucien double tapped it and it appeared. He fiddled with its dashboard for quite a long time before he managed to make it understand that it had to follow the van. Once it was done, the Frenchman went back to the van, on the driver's seat this time.

"Oh…!" He winced at Mundy's smell and sprayed some deodorant on him. There, that would do, at least momentarily. For now, the Frenchman raced through the desert back to town. He needed to get Mundy to the Doctor's.

#tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #sniperspy #SBT

11 notes · View notes