i'm not just here for the porn...

FIC: This Fierce Vein [Bruce/Natasha | porny | 13k]

atrata — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 20:24:49 GMT

title: This Fierce Vein
pairing (fandom): Bruce/Natasha (MCU)
rating: explicit
content: sex pollen, edging, some cock bondage
length: 13k

summary: "Turns out I'm nearly as difficult to contain as you are." Bruce, Natasha, some sex pollen, and a panic room.

@ao3: this fierce vein

a/n: I don't know. I really don't. This got totally out of control. It was meant to be a fast and easy PWP, but two months and 13,000 words later, here we are. Set sometime before AoU, because you're not ever going to convince me they weren't already fucking in that movie. Just think of this as a sex pollen romance!

crossposted from http://atrata.dreamwidth.org/179505.html. comment anywhere.

FIC: the long tail [tony/pepper | 9600 words]

atrata — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 14:45:17 GMT

title: the long tail
author: atrata
pairing: Tony/Pepper (MCU)
rating: explicit
length: ~9600 words
summary: "Dummy would be even worse at board membering than whatshisname, the narcoleptic with the Hawaiian shirts. And anyway, you'd just dilute my shares."

link: the long tail

a/n: Two stories in (almost) as many months! Weird. And apparently I'm just not ever going to get away from Tony Stark. This is something between a missing scene and a coda to IM2, starting after Tony and Pepper kiss on the rooftop and ending shortly before Tony tells Nick Fury he's in "a stable-ish relationship." I got a bug up my ass to write about Pepper during Age of Ultron but it turns out I'm way too much of an obsessive to do that without deconstructing the entire trajectory of their relationship prior to that point, so now this thing exists where they have a lot of sex and argue about stock options. :D? All thanks to destro for doing that thing she does and basically making this happen.

crossposted from http://atrata.dreamwidth.org/179222.html. comment anywhere.

FIC: My Unshaped Form [MCU | Bruce/Natasha]

atrata — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 22:10:27 GMT

title: My Unshaped Form
fandom/setting: MCU, between Winter Soldier & Age of Ultron
pairing: Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanoff
rating: explicit
content: semi-graphic violence, blood, mentions of past brainwashing, psychological torture & suicide attempts, scary medical science, needles
length: ~26k
summary: Of all the people they could have sent, they send Bruce Banner. In his defense, he seems to realize he has no chance of finding her.

AO3: My Unshaped Form

notes/credits: I think I wrote a romance. I think I wrote anything at all.

I spent some time in Prague in the summer of 2010 and all I thought about when I was there was Natasha, so I had some vague ideas that got less vague when Avengers came out. Shit happened and I didn't write for years, and then Winter Soldier came out and I picked this up again. Put it down, AoU trailer, picked it up. Put it down, realized the movie was coming out and I would lose this story if I didn't finish it first. I loved it too much to lose it, so I picked it up again and here we are, just under the wire. Hi. It's been a while, huh. <3

Alternate summary: Five funerals and a science experiment.

Massive thanks are owed to hive, who put up with innumerable emails about this story over the course of months and responded with patience, tolerance and gifs of Mark Ruffalo's mouth; to my science and medical advisers (e & j, respectively); to my crack team of beta readers and plot trolls (murklins, luna, amonitrate, destro); and all the people in my life who had to listen to me talk about this story and were kind enough to do their eye-rolling in a place I couldn't see it. As usual, all the best ideas in this story belong to other people and all the mistakes belong to me.

The title is one possible translation of the word "golem." I had a big list of which pieces of canon were used and which were ignored, but even I don't care about that anymore. Ask if you want to know. The quote at the beginning is Aleksandr Pushkin (via Chekhov), as is poetry snippet at the end. The translation is by Maurice Baring and can be found in Poems, Plays, and Prose of Pushkin, edited by Avrahm Yarmolinski.

crossposted from http://atrata.dreamwidth.org/179118.html. comment anywhere.

FICLET: Interactions [Iron Man | Tony gen | PG]

atrata — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 03:38:33 GMT

title: Interactions
characters: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts (the Tony/Pepper is there if you squint, I guess)
rating: PGish
warnings/kinks: none
length: ~400 words
summary: Hubble is dying, and Tony is drunk.
notes: gabs asked me for extremis & Hubble a million years ago. This is comics extremis, not IM3 extremis. And it's not much, but hey, it's better than nothing.

[ao3] link: Interactions

***
...so hi! I have no idea if anyone is still around! Is this thing still a thing??

It doesn't actually SEEM like it's been more than four years since I posted any fic, and yet! Here we are. I'm always hesitant to declare myself Back, but I've been around a lot more the past month and I'm definitely writing a lot, so that's something. I'm not sure WHAT exactly, but something for sure.

Anyway, I am kinda sorta hanging out on tumblr but I don't know what I'm doing there so basically I'm lurking until I figure it out. I have found a few of you, but I haven't done much Tracking People Down -- I'm taking it slow so I don't get too freaked out/overwhelmed. That said, feel free to (a) complain about tumblr or (b) find me over there and say hi.

<3

crossposted from http://atrata.dreamwidth.org/178743.html. comment anywhere.

FIC: Jupiter Crash [Iron Man | Tony/Pepper | NC-17]

atrata — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:12:24 GMT

title: Jupiter Crash
pairing: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts
rating: NC-17
warnings/kinks: Pegging. ...bruiseplay? Injuryplay? Is that a thing? IT IS NOW.
length: ~1,600 words
summary: There's a bruise across his ribcage, a mottled purple mess, yellow-green around the edges.
notes: This is not the story I've been working on. This just kind of happened between the hours of midnight and 7am. Please note that I start a new job at 9. Title from the Cure song, because I am still 15, and at some point in the last week Tony Stark and Robert Smith grew some kind of emotastic connection in my head that now I cannot get rid of. Great! (FYI, that idfic meme that went around recently? This is why I didn't play, right here. I don't want to know. I just don't.)

link: Jupiter Crash

FIC: Almost No One Makes It Out [Iron Man AU]

atrata — Wed, 05 May 2010 04:10:34 GMT

title: Almost No One Makes It Out
fandom: Iron Man (movieverse)
rating: R (for language)
characters: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts. Jim Rhodes.
summary: What would have happened if Tony hadn't been born filthy rich? A military AU.
length: ~28,000 words
notes: There is a mechanical bullriding scene. If that does not entice you, you are dead to me. This story is an AU of the first movie, based on the question, "what if Tony Stark hadn't been born with more money than god?" My answer was, well, obviously, he'd be in the Army. I've been working on this for two years now, and it's very close to my heart in ways I cannot possibly articulate. All I can say is that many of my friends and most of my family serve[d] in the military, and I never did; this story is for them. I'm sure they will all be super thrilled to receive a pseudononymous fic dedication in return for their service.

The Hivemind provided invaluable inspiration and cheerleading for this story, especially in its initial stages and its concluding stages and all stages in between. In particular, it would not have been written at all if not for quigonejinn, who provided the initial OMG WHAT IF scenario. The beta was done by committee, and I am hesitant to name names because there are a LOT and I will forget someone and then I will feel really guilty, so, basically, if I had contact with a person at all, ever, over the past two years, that person contributed to this story in some way. That said! inediblebuddha did the military beta from a tent in the desert of Undisclosedistan, and my brother did the JAG Corps beta from the Pentagon. Any remaining errors -- and there are a few, I know -- are my own, and are either unwitting or left in for the sake of Plot and Drama.

Title and cut text from 'Almost Is Good Enough,' by Magnolia Electric Co. Also, apologies to Aaron Sorkin; bits of A Few Good Men appear every once in a while. And now that this is out of the way, I've got some vital squeeing to do about IM2. Holy shit.

link: almost no one makes it out

FIC: (Why Can't I) Stop Where I Want To Stay [Men With Brooms, Amy gen]

atrata — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:53:20 GMT

Title: (Why can't I) Stop Where I want to Stay
Fandom: Men With Brooms
Characters: Amy gen; ensemble (sans Cutter)
Rating: PG-13
Contains: Drug use. Swearing. Alcoholism. Curling jargon. Bad name-related puns. An inexplicable zamboni.
Summary: Set [mostly] pre-movie. Amy spends four summers looking for the curling rocks, and finds something else entirely.
Length: ~10,000 words
A/N: Written for tharaist for midsummer2009; prompt was "half a life." Jesus, this story almost killed me, but in the best way possible. Thank you for the chance to write it! I really hope you like it. murklins, my other half, refused to come sleep on my couch while I was writing, but her other services included hand-holding, beta-reading (she did this VIA TEXT MESSAGE, OKAY), soundboarding, stupidity blocking and neuroses calming. Many thanks, M, as usual. Thanks also to meresy for reassuring me halfway through that I wasn't losing my mind, among other things. Title from "Tournament of Hearts," by The Weakerthans. Cut text from "Your Rocky Spine" by the Great Lakes Swimmers, which I listened to on repeat for days on end while writing this story. There is nothing more embarrassing than my last.fm right now. As usual, comment wherever.

Link: http://atrata.dreamwidth.org/91153.html

FIC: The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Westley and Buttercup

atrata — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:38:21 GMT

Title: The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Westley and Buttercup
Fandom: The Princess Bride
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: This is apocafic. If you're looking for a feel-good Princess Bride story, I cannot urge you strongly enough to keep looking.
Summary: The sign on Miracle Max's door read, "In case of apocalypse, GO AWAY."
Length: ~6,000 words
A/N: Written (as a pinch-hit) for magistera in the 2009 apocalyptothon. Mags, I hope you like it! I honor movie canon over book canon where they conflict, but pieces of the book do show up every once in a while. Thanks to amonitrate for the super-speedy, super-fantastic last-second beta, and to inediblebuddha for taking me to Steak & Shake and telling me this story so I could write it down.

Link: The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Westley and Buttercup

FIC: That Late I Led [Slings & Arrows | Geoffrey (Geoffrey/Ellen) | NC-17ish]

atrata — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:53:49 GMT

Title: That Late I Led
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Characters/Pairing: Geoffrey (Geoffrey/Ellen)
Rating: R? NC-17? somewhere in there.
Summary: Life is small in the holding cell.
Length: ~1,500 words
A/N: Written for meresy's C6D porn tag game, in which I signed up to write surprise porn in 24 hours. isiscolo gave me the prompt 'loneliness,' which I have shockingly turned into something that is less about fun happy porn and more about SOUL-CRUSHING DESPAIR. murklins and tangleofthorns looked this over for me, as usual. Posted at DW, but if you'd like to comment, you're welcome to do so in either place.

Link: http://atrata.dreamwidth.org/89705.html

another DW announcement!

atrata — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:30:31 GMT

Apologies to anyone who's seen this out of me in 16 different places. Mostly I'm posting it so it's actually on my LJ. Anyway, I keep totally changing my mind about how I'm dealing with dreamwidth, but I think what I'm doing is this:

Moving! I'm going to post my fic over there in the future, because they are nicer about the kind of fic I tend to write (okay, the kind of fic I used to write) and because they have bigger posting limits so I don't have to break up longer stories. (Hey, it happened once! It might happen again!)

I'll post announcements here that there is new fic, just like I'd post here if I wrote something and stashed it in a community.

There is atrata_dw if you don't plan on moving to dreamwidth and do not trust that I will remember to post announcements. And, of course, there are the rss and atom feeds if you want to go the feed-reader route instead of the LJ/IJ/DW/whatever route.

Locking fic offends my sensibilities, and I will not do it, ever; access to that journal won't be a problem for anyone. If you want to comment with openid, or anonymously, or not at all, everything's good with me.

I imported all my entries, and then I deleted some of them, and then I deleted the rest of them. Then I imported more, and then I deleted them again. I am tentatively planning to break that ridiculous cycle and stop importing things and just start with an empty journal. I'm not quite sure I see the point of importing. I'll just post fic there going forward, and try to make it clear that the best place to find pre-DW fic is here or on my website.

The non-fic account is here, and that's where I'll be posting regularly and hanging out. I've already started doing that, in fact, and this is not an advocacy post but I really fucking love it over there. Anyway. I am not sure what to call the non-fic account; I don't post fic there, but I babble fannishly and spout off about the many exciting aspects of my life, of which fandom is a big part. Anyway. My RL account here at LJ is entirely f-locked; the one at DW is not locked at all. I haven't figured out how much of it I'm going to be locking in the future, but I do plan to be fairly open with the access until I figure it out, at which point I'll reassess. I don't know about subscriptions just yet; I'm trying to balance the people I already know, the people I've been secretly and not-so-secretly stalking for five years now, new people who seem awesome, and the fact that I can only handle reading about 150 journals regularly before I get fired from my job. Right now I might as well be closing my eyes and clicking the mouse button; my subscribing/accessing/whatevering is about that methodical.

And that's it! I will not say anything else about this, and my profile has been updated to reflect what's going on, and I will go back to posting a story in a new and completely random fandom every six weeks or whatever. I hope you all are well in the meantime, though. <3

That all said, I have some invite codes to pass out if you want one. Shoot me an email [atrata at gmail dot com] or drop me a comment [beware they're not screened] and I'll see what I can do. First-come, first-served, no waiting. (Well, maybe some waiting, since I plan to sleep soon. But very little waiting!)

FIC: The Train Goes Slow (dS, F/K, NC-17)

atrata — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:20:41 GMT

Title: The Train Goes Slow
Fandom: due South
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Ray is patience fucking personified, and he hasn't wanted to punch Fraser in days.
Length: ~11,500 words
A/N: For murklins, who did not help me write this story. (This may be the first time that has ever happened.) It's un-betaed, so if you see anything that needs fixing, please feel free to let me know.

*
The next time Ray hits Fraser, they're in Ray's kitchen, and he doesn't have to talk Fraser into hitting him back.

He hadn't thought Fraser pulled the punch last time, but his back slams into the counter and he realizes he was wrong, wrong, wrong-o-fucking-rama. His knees crack against the hardwood as he hits the floor. He can't even feel his jaw, it hurts so bad, and maybe it'll do him a favor and fall off.

"Ray," Fraser says, and Ray holds up a hand, tries to focus. He's dizzy, and he can't stand the sound of Fraser's voice right now, and if he gets up again, one of them is going to end up in the hospital. Maybe both of them.

"Don't," he says, and there's blood in his mouth. Fraser doesn't.

The floor swims back into focus just in time for Ray to see Fraser's boots moving.

Fraser doesn't slam the door. Ray's not breathing so good.

*
Fraser shows up at the precinct the next day, bruise on his jaw and Stetson in his hands, and if anyone notices that Ray's got the same bruise, only nastier, they keep that observation to themselves.

*
"Don't do that, Fraser," Ray says over his shoulder, heading for his desk. "I thought we talked about this, and you weren't gonna do that."

He knows what Fraser's going to say, and he's right: "Do what, Ray?"

Ray slams himself back into the chair and shoves a toothpick in his mouth, bites down hard. Fraser's in the brown uniform today, and he takes off the jacket and hangs it up before he sits down on the other side of Ray's desk, starts rolling up his sleeves.

Ray starts to tell him, starts to say something about partnership or duets or hogging information, but what's the point? They've had this conversation a million times and either Fraser's a moron or Ray's no good with words, because nothing seems to change. And Fraser's not a moron and Ray isn't good with words, and Ray doesn't know where that leaves them.

"Hang on," he mutters, and digs in the middle drawer for the baseball that's back there. "Catch," he says, and tosses it to Fraser. Fraser's arm comes up, and Ray jerks forward and snatches the ball out of the air seconds before Fraser's hand closes around it.

"Sucks, don't it," he says, and it's not really a question.

Fraser frowns, and Ray leans back in his chair, juggling the ball a little. Fraser's hand twitches, like maybe he wants to grab for the ball, and Ray shoves it back into the drawer. "Mine," he says, and he's not sure why.

*
"Who the hell are these guys?"

Machine gun fire rips into the dumpster they're using for cover, and Fraser cracks his neck. "I don't know, Ray," he says, and he's not lying, but it's a long way from the truth.

Ray reaches around the corner of the dumpster and fires a few shots at the noise. Fire, return fire, usual drill, and Ray starts digging for his glasses. Fraser's next to him, one licked finger in the air, doing whatever Fraser does. Math, Ray thinks, something about wind speed and trajectory and ricochet angles, and then he moves into a crouch and starts edging into the alley. Ray grabs his shoulder. "Don't even think about it, Fraser. Do not--"

But Fraser's already thought about it, and he shrugs Ray's hand away and stands up. The bullets start flying and Fraser dives for a dumpster on the other side of the alley, rolls into another crouch. He makes a circling motion with his hand, and Ray guesses that means he's supposed to go around the block and come up on the guys from behind. Ray glares at him, because Fraser could have told him the plan three seconds ago, but he didn't, and now Ray has to guess. Ray's tired of guessing, because one day he might guess wrong, and so long, sayonara. He shakes his head and frowns and tries to signal for Fraser to wait, but Fraser's stopped looking at him.

He's looking at Fraser, though, sees Fraser's thumb flick at his nose, which means it's time for Ray to stop thinking and start running.

He makes the block in time for the fight to really get started, in time to get a real good look as Fraser takes a two-by-four to the stomach. Time does that thing it's always doing around Fraser, goes all slow and sharp, and Ray watches as Fraser's body crumples and slides to the ground. One of the goons points his gun at Fraser's head, and Ray loses his mind or something, shoots the thing right out of his hand. Dangerous and stupid and too close to Fraser, but then Fraser twists up off the ground and Dief flies in out of nowhere and someone gets a few shots off but they're all alive alive alive, and time goes back to normal.

From there, it's three-on-three and over quickly, and Ray hears the sirens as he's slapping cuffs on the last guy. His hands are shaking and Fraser has to prompt him twice during the Miranda portion of the show.

"Are you all right, Ray?"

"No," Ray snaps, and it's all he can do not to put his fist into a wall or a window or Fraser's face. "No, Fraser, all right is not something I am. I almost shot you."

Fraser reaches for the hem of his peacoat and puts his fingers through a bullet hole Ray didn't even know was there. He feels his mouth working but he can't say anything, can't do anything, and he slides to his knees and grabs at Fraser's coat, his own fingers through the bullet hole and his head against Fraser's thigh.

"You didn't shoot me, Ray," Fraser says, reasonable and calm and infuriating. He's not moving, and his fingers are still and steady against Ray's, which won't stop shaking. Ray hits him in the thigh with his free hand.

"Shut up, Fraser," he mumbles.

"You have very good aim when you're wearing your glasses."

Ray shoves himself to his feet, jabs at Fraser's chest with two fingers. "That's not the point." The point is they should have waited the thirty fucking seconds for backup. The point is that no one should have shot Fraser in the coat, because the coat is really close to the Fraser. The point is that Ray keeps seeing Fraser's body bent by that two-by-four, hitting the ground. The point is that Ray can't fucking breathe. "My aim is not the point."

"Ah," Fraser says, and clears his throat. Ray walks to his car before Fraser asks him what the point is, then, and Fraser has to ride back to the station with Huey and Dewey.

*
"Got you something," Ray says, and hands Fraser the forms.

"Thank you," Fraser says automatically, and then he gets all uncomfortable as he reads. He tugs on his collar and rubs at his eyebrow and there's no way reading the forms is taking him this long.

"Me and Welsh and Thatcher did all the work already," Ray tells him. "All you gotta do is sign."

Fraser clears his throat and looks up. "And then what?"

"And then what? And then you can carry your gun, maybe I'll have some actual backup."

"I see," Fraser says, and then he gets up and walks out of the station, Dief on his heels. The forms are still on Ray's desk.

Ray swears under his breath and puts them through the shredder.

*
Fraser is telling him a story. It's something about toy soldiers and ballerinas.

"Wait a second," Ray says, and Fraser bites off his sentence. There's kind of a hitch in his breath, like he's annoyed that Ray's interrupted him, but Ray wants to get this right. "What color is this guy's uniform?"

They're on a stakeout, parked on a Logan Square side street, waiting for something -- anything -- to go down in the condemned building up the block. Nothing's happening, nothing's going down or up, but Ray can't look at Fraser, has to keep his eyes front. He can tell that Fraser's looking at him, though, even if he didn't see him turn his head.

"It hardly matters," Fraser says after a second.

That's bullshit, Ray thinks. "Then you got no reason not to tell me."

"Red and blue," Fraser says. His tongue drags across his bottom lip, a flash of pink in Ray's peripheral vision.

Ray nods. "Yeah," he says, more to himself than to Fraser. "Yeah, okay. Keep going."

There are a few seconds of silence, and Ray gets twitchy. He digs in his pocket for gum. Fraser finally clears his throat and says, "Soon it began to rain," and it does, water falling in sheets from the cracked-open sky like in Fraser's story.

"What the fuck," Ray says. There's not much point to being on stakeout anymore, not with visibility down to nothing, but Ray just stares out the window, watches the shine of the city on the newly wet asphalt, and listens as Fraser talks about rain and rats and cardboard boats.

"Wait a minute," he says again, but this time he turns and looks at Fraser. "Is this a true story, Fraser?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Ray. It's a fairy tale."

"Like the turtle and the rabbit."

"I believe you mean the tortoise and the hare, and that's a fable. A fairy tale--"

"I know what a fairy tale is, Fraser."

Fraser frowns, looks confused. "Then why--"

Ray ticks it off on his fingers. "One, you got a soldier guy, wearing blue and red. Two, soldier guy gets thrown out the window and b, I know you been on boats, Fraser, because I been on boats and ships and submarines with you. Then he gets swallowed by a fish, like a... like a sign, right, like on the boat, because then the fish gets caught by the people who threw him out the window in the first place." He pauses, but Fraser doesn't look like he's getting it. "And that, my friend, is exactly the kind of crazy shit that happens to you."

"Ah," Fraser says.

"And me, I guess."

Fraser sighs and shifts a little in his seat. "It's just a story, Ray. I've never been eaten by a fish. Although, well, there was one instance of-- ah." He clears his throat. "It's not important."

"I bet," Ray mutters, and taps his fingers on his thighs. "Okay, so how does it end?"

"I believe the stakeout's over, Ray."

"Yeah, but the story isn't. Finish it."

"All right, if you insist." Fraser's irritated. "He dies."

"How?"

"One of the children throws him into the stove."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

Ray nods slowly and starts the car. "Great story, Frase."

"Thank you kindly, Ray," Fraser says, and his bitchy tone matches Ray's exactly.

Ray throws the GTO in gear and heads for the Consulate. Fraser stares out the passenger-side window and doesn't say anything.

"Wanna know what I think?"

"Almost always," Fraser mutters. They're at the Consulate, but Fraser's not getting out of the car.

"I think the toy soldier--"

"Tin soldier," Fraser says.

"Tin soldier, whatever. He was stupid. He didn't have to die. Any time, he could have said something or done something, asked for help, but he was too worried about his uniform. People would've helped him. He just, he just let it all happen, like he didn't care."

"He cared very much, Ray. The fact that he was unable to disregard his duty doesn't mean--"

"I didn't say nothing about disregarding his duty," Ray snaps. "I know about duty. But what good is he all melted in a stove? What the hell kind of duty is that?"

Fraser tugs at his collar. "Ah," he says. "Yes, well," and then he puts on the Mountie face and his voice gets all loud and proper. "Excellent observation, as always, Ray. It's been a real pleasure. And now, if you don't mind, I'm really quite tired."

Ray rolls his eyes and waves a hand in the air. He does mind, but trying to talk to Fraser when he's like this never does any good. "Yeah, g'night. I'll see you tomorrow. Eight?"

"Yes, if you don't mind. Thank you for the ride."

"No problemo, buddy."

*
"Express train to Crazy Town," Ray says.

There's an old guy in his living room, pacing in front of the television with his hands behind his back. He's wearing a parka and a big fur hat. "Buck Frobisher and I didn't speak for three years," the guy says.

"All aboard for not-at-all-fun times," Ray mutters, shifting on the couch. He has no idea who this guy is; he was there when Ray woke up from his nap.

"And Caroline and I-- well. She always refilled the butter dish."

Ray rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands, but the guy doesn't disappear. "Do not pass go," he says. "Do not collect two hundred dollars. In fact, here." He reaches for his wallet, tosses a twenty on the table. "It's all I got."

The guy frowns at the money, and then at Ray. "Are you unhinged?" he asks, and Ray throws back his head and laughs.

"Ray," the guy says, and then he says it again and he sounds so much like Fraser that all the names click into place in Ray's head and the laughter shrivels up and dies in his throat.

"You're Fraser's dad," he says, his eyes narrowed.

The guy nods and smiles. "Very sharp. I knew I liked you." He looks pleased.

"Great," Ray says. "That's me. Friend to dead assholes everywhere."

The smile falls into a frown. "You don't even know me," he says, another echo of Fraser, all calm and reasonable and faintly offended.

"Don't need to. What do you want?"

The guy's eyebrows go up, like that was the last thing he expected Ray to ask. "Well," he says, thinking about it. "I suppose I'd like to not be dead."

Ray makes a loud honking game-show sound, and the guy jumps a little. "Wrong," Ray says. "Wrong, nuh-uh, you do not want to be not-dead, because I know what that looks like, and it ain't pretty." He puts his arms out and jerks his torso around, zombie-like.

"Have you hit your head?"

Ray grunts and drops his arms, and he starts pawing through the clutter on the coffee table, looking for a piece of gum. "Yeah," he says. "Probably. Maybe. Definitely. I'm talking to you, so that's a big fat yes-o-matic."

"Yes-o--"

"Whatever, you only get a few tries with this, and your first one sucked. I can't help you with being not dead, and you know it. Try again. What do you want?"

"I want my son to be happy."

Ray swallows and turns his head to look out the window. He wants to say he can't help with that, either, but the words won't come. He can feel Fraser's dad looking at him. Ray isn't sure how silence between him and an imaginary pain in the ass can be awkward, but it is. They sigh at the same time, and the guy clears his throat. "To that end," he says, and then stops. "Well. To that end, I'd like to tell you that a partnership is like a marriage, and--"

Ray is suddenly off the couch, up close and personal with Fraser's dad. "I know that. You do not get to come here and--"

"Ray."

"--tell me that, I know that."

"Ray."

"I know about partners and I know about marriage and--"

"Ray."

"What? Jeez, I guess that's where he gets it. What. What?" He shoves his hands through his hair and can't believe he's having this conversation.

"I know you know."

Ray frowns, and sits back down on the couch. "Then--

Fraser's dad sits down next to him, lowers his voice like he's got a secret. "Benton doesn't."

"What?"

"I've been trying, but-- well, you know Benton. He's stubborn. That's what I came to say."

"You came to tell me he's stubborn? Gee, thanks, Mr. Fraser, that's a good tip. Real helpful."

"Oh, didn't I say?"

"Say what?" Ray closes his eyes and drops his head back, suddenly exhausted. He's never going to call Fraser annoying again, not now that he's met his father. Can you meet dead guys? Ray's got no fucking clue. He realizes Fraser's dad is still talking, and tunes back in.

"--experience. He's trying. I understand that you're not a patient man, but you should know that he's trying. Give him some time."

When Ray opens his eyes, he's alone.

*
"Yes, thank you, I'm well aware of-- Ray."

Ray looks around Fraser's office. Empty. "Who're you talking to?"

"There's no one here."

"Huh."

"I wasn't expecting you for--" He looks at his watch. "--another half-hour."

"How's your dad?"

Fraser goes ramrod straight, his eyes widening like he's in a cartoon. It lasts about half a second, and then it's gone. "He's dead, Ray, but it's kind of you to ask." His voice is cold.

"Huh," Ray says again, and puts a toothpick in his mouth. "He's pretty chatty for a dead guy."

"What?"

Ray tries on a grin. "Relax, Fraser. I'm not calling the men in white coats."

"Ray, I don't--"

"He came to see me the other night. Good talk. Remind me about him the next time I call you annoying, okay?"

Fraser's mouth works for a few seconds, and Ray's grin takes a turn for the real. "Hey," he says, holding up his hands. "Keep going with the not talking thing, and let me get this out."

Fraser swallows and says, "Very well," but he doesn't look happy about it. He puts his hands behind his back and stands there at parade-rest. Ray rolls his eyes and leans against the doorjamb.

"He said you're trying to make this work, but you don't know how, and that I gotta be patient and help you out. So, okay. I'm not so good at patient, but that's it. That's what I came to say: Okay."

Fraser frowns at him. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Well, buddy, that makes two of us. You about ready? We gotta go talk to that pawn shop guy about the Veelander case."

"I... yes, of course." He reaches for the Stetson and follows Ray out of the Consulate.

*
Ray goes undercover.

He doesn't know how that works, exactly, since he's already undercover and underundercover is stupid, but Welsh doesn't care. The stagehands' union's getting played, something about smuggling fake Rolexes into town and selling them at merch stands, which would have been one of the stupidest things Ray had ever heard, except he's been working with Fraser for a while now. So Ray agrees to work shows at a club and keep an eye out, and Welsh agrees to get him some extra cash for the job, and Ray figures there are worse fates in life. And because one of those worse fates is having to argue about the assignment with Fraser, obviously that's what Ray's doing.

"Fraser--"

"Ray--"

"Fraser--"

"Ray--"

"FRASER."

"Ray!"

Ray feels his hands curling into fists and he turns around and shuts his mouth. Maybe he's itching for a fight, maybe his muscles are tense and he can't stop moving and maybe there's this buzz underneath his skin like he needs to hit something or fuck something or feel something, but he doesn't know where Fraser fits into any of that except the buzzing's always worse when Fraser's saying his name like that.

"Ray, I'm simply suggesting that I set up a stakeout point in a suitable location, where I can monitor the situation."

"Monitor the situation," Ray mutters, and rubs at his eyes. He takes a few seconds and calms down a little -- patient, he thinks, patient, he is patient -- but when he turns back around and looks at Fraser, Fraser's wound all tight and that makes Ray jittery again. "The situation where I run cable at the Double Door for an hour a night? That situation?"

"I believe you're scheduled for significantly more than an hour a night, and I--"

"Do not do that right now, Fraser." He stabs one finger in Fraser's direction, takes one step closer. "Do not correct me."

"I wasn't--"

"And do not correct me about if you corrected me, because we both know what happens next, and it sucks, okay?" Fraser'd taken a step forward, too, and Ray is leaning and Fraser is leaning and they're only a few inches apart and Ray is going to vibrate right out of his skin. He brings his hands up to touch Fraser's shoulders, maybe shake some sense into him, but then he jerks them back and into the air before they make contact. He spins around, hands above his head, and gets some distance, gets some movement. Fraser's spine springs back into place. "It sucks," Ray tells him, "so just shut up."

"You're being unreasonable," Fraser says, and there's this gleam in his eye and this set to his jaw like he wants Ray to hit him.

Ray doesn't think about it, he makes a fist and drops his shoulder and twists his body, and yeah, Fraser braces for a punch Ray doesn't throw.

"Fuck that," Ray says, because he is patience fucking personified, and he leaves to go be unreasonable somewhere else.

*
It's Saturday, and Ray's got a few things to take care of at the precinct before he starts his underundercover gig. He shows up around 11, expecting the place to be pretty empty, but Fraser's there, sitting at his desk in civvies, the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows. He's rummaging through the piles of paper on Ray's desk.

"Hey," Ray says.

Fraser doesn't look up, just keeps rummaging. "Good morning, Ray."

Ray drops into the chair on the other side of the desk and shoves his hands in his coat pockets, runs his fingers over the keys, the pack of gum, the wads of paper, the change, whatever the hell else is in there. "Looking for something?"

"Yes," Fraser says, and keeps looking.

Ray watches him, and when it's clear Fraser's not going to say anything else, he asks, "Wanna tell me what?"

That gets Fraser's attention, and he goes still for a few seconds before finally sitting up and looking at Ray. He looks tired, like he didn't sleep very much. He didn't shave that morning, either, and Ray spends a few seconds too long trying to figure out if he's ever seen Fraser with that much stubble.

"You're quite right, Ray," he says. "I apologize. I shouldn't be going through your things like this without permission. I didn't expect you in today."

"Oh, I get it," Ray says, raising his eyebrows. "You're sorry you got caught." Fraser clears his throat and opens his mouth, but Ray cuts him off with a laugh before he can make with more apologies. "Whatever, Frase, I don't care. My stuff, your stuff, same difference." He waves a hand in the air and then uses it to swap toothpicks. The one he's got is getting soggy. "I thought maybe I could help, is all."

"Ah," Fraser says, and Ray feels like he fucked up somehow, because Fraser doesn't say anything else.

"All right," Ray says, sighing. "Okay, you're not going to tell me, fine. I can work with that, Frase, I can." He sits forward in the chair. "But you gotta help. You say yes or no."

That little line shows up between Fraser's eyes. "Right now?"

Ray grins and shakes his head. "No, it's like twenty questions. I'm gonna ask you something about what you're looking for, and you say yes or no. Is it something about a case?"

"No," Fraser says. "Yes." He frowns a little more and looks like he wants to say something else, but Ray shakes his head real fast and grins.

"Or both. Yes or no or both, it's all good." He doesn't want Fraser tying himself in knots about this, and it's just as helpful to know something can go both ways. "Is it a file?"

"No."

"Is it a form?"

"Yes."

"Hmm." Ray chews on his toothpick and leans back in the chair, pushes the front legs off the floor. Forms Fraser doesn't want to talk about. "Oh," he says, and lets the chair drop back down with a bang. "I shredded them, Frase."

Fraser stiffens in his seat, but plays dumb. "Shredded what?"

Ray rolls his eyes. "The handgun permit. That's what we're talking about, right?" He opens his coat a little so Fraser can see the badge, and he taps it with his middle finger. "Detective, see? I detected it right outta you."

Fraser clears his throat and turns his head, but he nods a little. Ray waits, his right leg bouncing up and down.

"I-- ah. Well, when you presented the forms to me, you indicated that -- at least, it seemed to me an indication that you considered me to be-- I mean-- that is, uh, if the situation is less than satisfactory--"

Ray takes pity on the guy and holds up a hand. "Stop right there. Lemme think a sec." It had been a few weeks since Ray had given him the forms, and they hadn't talked about it again. He tries to pull up the conversation, play it over in his head, put it together with what's going on now. "Oh," he says, when he gets it. "Oh, shit. Fraser. No."

Fraser's head swivels around slowly. "No," he repeats, his voice flat.

"No," Ray says again, and leans across the desk. He realizes he's about to grab Fraser's hand, and grabs the stapler instead, moves it out of the way. "Fraser. I want you to listen real good, okay? Pretend I'm telling you a brand-new caribou story you ain't never heard before, and it is the best one ever." Fraser turns his head away again, and nods. "Okay, good. I said the wrong thing when I gave you those forms. I said, what, something about 'real backup,' I think--"

"'Actual backup,'" Fraser interrupts, quietly, and Ray knows he's right, knows Fraser's been in knots about this for weeks. Christ.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, that. And it maybe gave you the wrong mis... the wrong con... thing, whatever, it was wrong. You are actual backup and you're a good partner and I want you to carry because I worry about you, that's all, and I drink a lot of coffee and my stomach lining ain't what it used to be. I need you on this case, this stupid underundercover thing, but I do not need you there with me. You gotta be my partner on this like always, and do the shit I can't do because I'm stuck in the club. I didn't mean I don't need you at all, or that I don't need you unless you got a gun, or-- or anything, whatever. I do."

Fraser's still looking off to the side somewhere, his eyes distant and his jaw clenched hard. Ray stands up, his palms flat on his desk. He leans in, most of the way over his desk, and he's close enough to smell Fraser's soap, close enough that their foreheads are almost touching. Probably too close, but this is important.

"If I wanted a new partner, Frase, I'd tell you. I'd tell you and then I'd get one. You gotta trust me on that, I'd fucking tell you, straight up." Fraser doesn't move, and Ray pushes himself off the desk, shoves his hands in his pockets. "Okay, I'm gonna get coffee. Want some? Or tea?"

Fraser kind of shakes himself out a little. "Thank you, Ray," he says, and Ray doesn't think he's talking about the tea, but he goes to get some anyway.

*
One of the bartenders at the Double Door looks a little bit like Fraser, and Ray's had a little bit to drink, and he and Fraser are fighting again and Ray doesn't even know why -- their truce lasted maybe two days -- and the guy drops to his knees in the bathroom stall and Ray thinks being underundercover isn't so bad after all. It's not the best blowjob he's ever had -- a little clumsy, and the rhythm's all off, but it's been so long since Ray's dick felt anything other than Ray's right hand that it doesn't take long before his toes are curling in his boots and he's jerking at the guy's hair to warn him. The guy pulls away and Ray finishes himself off, his teeth sunk into his bottom lip so he doesn't make any noise.

He reaches down to return the favor when his cell phone rings, and he shoots the guy an apologetic smile and zips up. His shift was over a while ago, and Welsh needs him at the precinct, so Ray buys some bottled water and catches a cab to the 2-7.

Fraser shows up a few minutes later, and Huey and Dewey come in a few minutes after that, fresh from a crime scene, double homicide in Bridgeport, tourists, which is great. Because it's Bridgeport, the mayor already knows about it, and he's taking it fucking personally, so the commissioner's on Welsh's ass. It sucks that Huey and Dewey are running this one, but there's a look in Welsh's eyes when he tells him and Fraser they're on backup that says they're not really on backup.

"What about this underundercover thing?" Ray asks.

Welsh rubs at his temples. "Take a few days off, Detective. Call in sick. Dead bodies in Bridgeport trump union guys selling fake Rolexes to college kids."

"All right," Ray says. "All right, okay, Fraser, we gotta get caught up before we can do anything else." He turns to leave Welsh's office, and when he passes Fraser, Fraser gets real tense, real fast. "Unless you got a better idea," he says, stopping.

"No," Fraser says, his voice weird and tight and angry. "I think that's a fine idea."

"Great," Ray says, and snatches the incident reports and crime scene photos off Huey's desk on the way to his own. He sits down and spreads them out in front of him, grabs a pencil and pad of paper. He sort of expects Fraser to sit down across from him, but Fraser pulls the other chair around and sits behind Ray, leans in too close and looks over his shoulder. He clears his throat, his breath huffing over the skin of Ray's neck. Then he does it again. Ray breaks the pencil in half.

"What, Fraser? What?"

"You've been drinking," Fraser says.

Ray drains his bottle of water. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I was out, and I had a few beers, and now I am drinking water because I am not a moron. And anyway, nothing like some dead bodies to sober me up."

"Did you drive here?"

"Jeez, Fraser, no, I did not drive here. I took a cab. Anything else? Wanna check my ID? Maybe drag me into one of the interrogation rooms?"

Fraser doesn't say anything to that, and Ray thinks maybe he can work now, but then Fraser's moving closer, Fraser's got his nose almost right against Ray's neck, under his ear, Fraser's sniffing him. Ray grinds his teeth and bounces his leg and drops the half of the pencil he's still holding, and then he doesn't know what the hell happens. Fraser grabs his wrist and pulls his arm up and back, and then he licks Ray's palm, his tongue hot and wet and rough.

"Fuck," Ray mutters, and he wants to say something else, but there are too many other people in the room. "What was--" and then he remembers where he was, remembers jerking off in the bathroom after the bartender'd been sucking him, remembers being in too much of a hurry to wash his hands, and he doesn't know how he'd forgotten any of that in the first place. His dick twitches in his pants and he wonders how much of it Fraser can smell on him, how much Fraser can taste.

"Fuck," he says again, and Fraser drops his hand. Ray looks over his shoulder, and Fraser's tongue is moving in his mouth, the way it does when he's trying to figure something out. Finally he swallows and sits back in his chair, his eyes unreadable.

"You broke your pencil, Ray," he says, and there goes the tongue, over his lower lip.

"Yeah, well, I was a little distracted."

"I see."

Ray swallows and wishes he had more water. This is... he doesn't know what the fuck this is, and he has to remind himself there are other people in the room, kind of a lot of other people. He can't see or hear any of them, though, because the only thing in his head is Fraser. "I bet you do," he says. "Can we work now?"

"Certainly."

*
The dead tourists in Bridgeport aren't dead tourists, so much as they're dead Russian mobsters. On the plus side, it gets Ray out of that stupid underundercover job, because no one gives a shit about fake Rolexes when the mob comes to town. On the minus side, they had to call in the Feds, which means Ray and Fraser have to pretend to investigate tourists who got caught up in a mugging.

Ray gets it -- they don't want the Russians to know the Feds are on their tail -- but Fraser's not so good at pretending or turning the other cheek or anything other than single-minded, relentless pursuit of capital-J-Justice.

"I think they were in town to pursue new business opportunities," Fraser says. "They had a meeting with--"

"Stop, Fraser, just stop," Ray says. "We are investigating dead tourists, okay? We are running ballistics and interviewing witnesses and digging up security camera footage. We are not looking into the activity of the Russian mob. We are not."

"But--"

"No. That is not our job. We have a job, and that is not it."

"I just don't think the FBI realizes--"

"Probably they don't, Fraser, but that is not our problem."

"Understood."

*
There's scratching at his door. Ray pulls his pillow over his head and tries to ignore it, but it doesn't stop. He drags his eyes open and looks at the clock -- three in the morning -- and he stumbles out of bed and into a pair of sweatpants, pulls the door open. It's Dief. The bottom drops out of Ray's stomach, and he is suddenly, horribly awake.

"Dief, what's wrong? Where's Fraser?"

Dief whines and scratches at the floor and turns in a circle, looks down the hall. "Shit," Ray says. "Shit, shit, okay," and he's dressed and out the door in record time. Dief's waiting by the car, and Ray opens the door to let him in.

"Um," he says. "Okay. How's this work? Where to?"

Dief noses at the glove box, so Ray opens it, and Dief pulls out some pamphlet about the glorious majesty of Canada. Ray doesn't know where the hell it came from, but whatever. "The Consulate it is," he says, and floors it.

No one opens the door after too many seconds of Ray pounding on it, so he kicks the damn thing down and runs for Fraser's office. He's not there, but there's no sign of a struggle. "Dief? Dief, what the fuck am I looking for?"

Dief jumps on Fraser's chair and paws at a pad of paper. It's empty, so Ray grabs a pencil and does a rubbing, gets an address. "Elston and Wabansia? That sound right to you, Dief?" Dief yips and heads for the door, Ray right behind him.

It's probably a 15-minute drive at this time of night, but Ray makes it in less than ten. The area's all abandoned warehouses and old storage places, an old industrial neighborhood sandwiched between the river and the train tracks that the yuppies haven't gotten their hands on yet. Dief's out and running as soon as the car slows down, and Ray draws his weapon and follows.

Dief just runs the fuck into one of the warehouses, and Ray barrels through right behind him. Dief wouldn't let him run into an ambush, which means Fraser's by himself, which means it's okay for Ray to be shouting Fraser's name at the top of his lungs. He finds him, finally, in a big empty room near the loading dock, beat to shit and tied to a chair, duct tape over his mouth. Ray's still running, and he drops to his knees and slides over the concrete floor, right into Fraser.

Ray holsters his weapon and reaches up to put two fingers on the pulse point in Fraser's neck. The pulse is there, a little thready, but good enough, and Ray sits back on his heels to assess the damage, maybe get his own heartbeat under control. Fraser looks pretty bad, like maybe his nose is broken, and his left eye is swollen shut and crusted over, a cut above it still leaking blood.

Fraser's tunic is hanging open, and there are stains on the henley underneath, blood and dirt and sweat. "Jesus," Ray breathes, and kneels up again, cups the right side of Fraser's jaw. Fraser flinches away from the touch, and Ray pulls his hand back. "Fraser," he says. "Come on, Frase, wake up."

Fraser's right eye twitches and then opens slowly. "Shit," Ray says, because he had been cold and icy fucking calm, he had been in crisis mode, and now Fraser is alive and awake and Ray feels like someone hooked a car battery up to his spine. He's got his hands on Fraser's thighs, and he digs his fingers in. He's trying to stop his hands from shaking, but he ends up shaking Fraser instead.

Fraser blinks at him and lifts his head.

"Shit," Ray says, focusing on Fraser's bad eye, which is still bleeding. "That looks-- hang on." He takes off his holster and strips out of his t-shirt, tears it into a few pieces and kneels up between Fraser's legs to press one of the pieces above his eye. He slides his other hand around to the back of Fraser's head to steady him. "That okay?" He doesn't feel any bumps back there, and his hand isn't slick with blood, and Fraser doesn't jerk away, and that's a yes.

"Fraser," he says, and there's more to that sentence but he doesn't know the rest. Fraser blinks again, his good eye looking as wounded as the rest of him, and Ray takes another shot. "Fraser. You-- no. Fuck."

He drops his head to Fraser's shoulder, takes a few deep breaths of wool and dust and blood and sweat. He knows he's not putting as much pressure on Fraser's cut as he should be, but Fraser leans his own head forward and takes care of that for him. "Look, Fraser. You do whatever you want, okay?" Ray says, not moving his head, talking to Fraser's chest. "But I cannot keep doing this. I know you got some higher purpose or whatever, duty and honor and justice and the righteous Mountie way, but I am not a Mountie and that's not what I meant to say. Shit."

He looks up, and Fraser's got his good eye trained on Ray, watching.

Ray takes a deep breath and tries again. "This thing with us, Fraser, it is a thing. Right?"

There's no reaction from Fraser for a few seconds, but then there's a flicker of acknowledgement in that eye, and he dips his head enough to be a nod.

"Okay," Ray says. "Okay, so the thing about this thing is that I don't know what kind of thing it is, and I wanna find out, but I can't do that if you're gonna keep pulling this shit. You don't care about yourself, that's fine, but you gotta think about me. I can't-- this is gonna kill me, Fraser, okay? This thing is gonna kill me."

Fraser closes his eye and presses his head a little harder into Ray's hand. He takes a deep, rattling breath and then the eye opens again, nearly knocks Ray over. It's like Fraser took the lens-cap off or something. He's sorry, he's so fucking sorry, Ray can tell. The apology hangs unspoken but thrumming in the air between them.

Ray nods a little, and the look in Fraser's eye changes to a question. "I don't know," Ray says. "I don't know, okay? I don't want you to stop being Fraser, that ain't what I'm asking. You gotta do what you gotta do, I get that, you are who you are. But it's... it's like the tin soldier guy, right? You gotta ask for help sometimes, because who are you gonna be if you're dead? What good's that gonna do anyone?"

And Fraser... he thinks Fraser gets it, maybe, the look gets understanding and then goes back to sorry, and Ray can't deal with this anymore.

"Yeah, okay, that's enough," he says, and rips the tape off Fraser's mouth. Fraser sucks in his breath but doesn't move his head at all, leaves it pressed against the shredded shirt in Ray's hand.

Ray waits for him to say something, and there's something in his chest that feels a lot like hope, like maybe they're finally on the same page and Fraser's going to tell him something real.

Fraser's jaw works silently for a few seconds. "I-- ah." His voice sounds shredded, rough and rusty, like he hasn't used it in a few days, or he's been doing a lot of screaming. Ray's stomach churns, and he swallows the bile that crawls up his throat.

"Come on," he says. "Say something and we'll get the hell out of here."

"Thank you kindly," Fraser says, and Ray feels it like a punch to the gut. Fraser's eye is back to being shuttered.

Ray sits back on his heels and nods a few times. "Yeah," he says, pushing himself to his feet. "Yeah. It figures we can only talk when you've got tape on your mouth. Okay. I'll have to remember that."

They don't talk on the way back to Ray's apartment, except when Fraser says, "You didn't call for backup, Ray," and Ray tells him not to fucking start. They don't talk while Ray bandages him up, and Fraser doesn't protest when Ray tells him to take the bed. He leaves a message for Welsh, tells him what happened, and then he takes Dief and runs until his legs are jello and he can barely walk. He collapses on the couch a little after dawn.

When he wakes up, Fraser's gone, but Dief's still there. Ray calls in sick, and spends the next few days refusing to talk to anyone about anything, especially the Russian mob. He reads in the Sun-Times that there's a big bust a few days later, and he takes Dief out for another run.

*
Fraser's on an ethnic food kick, which is cool with Ray, because he likes new things and he likes good food and most the time he likes Fraser, but right now they're at an Ethiopian restaurant in Uptown and Fraser's got his eyes closed and he's sucking on his fingers and he's been lecturing Ray about the huge variety of cooking oil used in traditional Ethiopian cuisine. Between wondering about the lubrication qualities of the oil and all that licking, Ray's so hard it hurts.

It doesn't help that Ray hasn't jerked off in ages -- days, definitely, maybe longer -- because every time he starts, all he sees is Fraser. It's like now that they've admitted there's a thing, Fraser is all Ray can think about. Fraser, who smelled his skin and licked his hand and then almost got himself killed. He stares at Fraser's mouth and wants it on him, stares at Fraser's fingers and wants them in him, and he's going out of his fucking mind and Fraser's Fraser. Ray refuses to jerk off and think about Fraser if Fraser's going to insist on those stupid stunts.

He knows Fraser's sorry, knows Fraser's been trying for the last week to make it up to him, but his eye's still swollen, and every time Ray looks at him, all he can think about is that sick feeling he got when he pulled open his door and saw Dief. And that thought's pretty much all it takes for Ray's dick to settle down, and at least that's something.

Fraser pulls his finger out of his mouth and opens his eyes, and for a second, Ray is sure he knows what Ray's been thinking. "Ray? Is everything all right?"

"No," Ray snaps, and Fraser's eyebrows go up. Ray shouldn't do this, he shouldn't, he shouldn't, but he opens his mouth anyway. "Why you gotta do that, Fraser?"

Fraser's lips thin and he sits back in his chair. "Do what, Ray?"

Ray waves a hand at the food. "You bring me to this place where they don't even use silverware, and then you gotta yell at me about how I'm eating with the wrong hand, and you won't let me order what I wanna order because it's not as good as what you wanna order, and you won't shut up about the fucking oil, don't let me talk about what I wanna talk about, and it ain't cool, Fraser."

"I'm sorry," he says, his voice flat and not quite as earnest as it usually is. "I didn't realize. What did you want to talk about?"

"Like you care," Ray snaps. He feels itchy, and his legs are bouncing, and he knows this is the stupidest fight he's ever picked with anyone, but he's got all this shit inside him and he doesn't know what to do with it. "You're not sorry. If you were sorry every time you said you were sorry, you'd be-- you'd be-- I don't know, in a coma with all that sorry."

Fraser's lips twitch like he's about to laugh.

"That is it, Fraser," Ray snaps, and he stands up so fast the chair topples over. "That is enough. Let's go." He rights his chair and throws too much cash on the table and storms out of the restaurant before Fraser can say he's not finished eating.

He gets in the car and turns up Big Black so loud the windows shake with it, and he turns it up more when Fraser asks him to turn it down, but then he sees Dief in the back with his paws over his ears. He swears and bangs his fist on the steering wheel and turns the music off entirely. "Sorry, Dief," he says, "but that is the end of me buying your deaf act." Dief snorts.

"Ray," Fraser says. "I can't help but feel that I've done something wrong."

Ray grinds his teeth, swerves around a bus, and does his best Fraser impression. "Something wrong, Fraser? That's just silly. Mounties never do anything wrong."

"That's not true, Ray," Fraser says. "Mounties--"

"Yeah, I know, the killers of your father, I've heard it. A lot."

"Ah," Fraser says, and Ray lays on the horn, yells out the window for the cabbie in front of him to pick a fucking lane already. "I wasn't referring to the killers of my father."

"Oh, yeah? You referring to yourself, then, Frase? What've you done wrong?"

"I don't know," Fraser snaps. "I don't know, but I've obviously done something."

"Yeah," Ray mutters, and pulls on to Ridge, heading for Lake Shore Drive. "Yeah, of course it's you. You ever think it's me?" Because it is, he thinks, it must be him, because Fraser's Fraser and Ray likes Fraser, doesn't want him to be someone else. He doesn't know what the fuck he wants.

"I don't understand," Fraser says, and it's obvious he doesn't, and Ray suddenly feels like the biggest shitheel in the city.

"Yeah, I know." He sighs. "Listen--"

"No," Fraser says, and Ray's so surprised that he shuts his mouth. "No," he says again. "I won't. Do you honestly believe I don't know you're picking a fight simply to pick a fight? This isn't about what happened last week, and we both know it. And that's fine, Ray, that's very mature. If you'd like to argue, I can argue--"

"Don't I know it."

"--but you do not get to be angry with me about communication issues in the future. Because this is not communication, Ray, this is--"

"Bullshit?" Ray suggests.

"Yes," Fraser says, and slumps back in the seat, crosses his arms over his chest. He's practically pouting. "This is bullshit."

"Yeah," Ray says, and then he laughs so hard he almost crashes the car into the guardrails on the S-curve. Fraser starts laughing, too, and Dief howls along in the backseat.

*
Ray pulls up to the Consulate early enough that there's easy street parking, and he hasn't had enough coffee to be in a good mood, exactly, but it's not a bad one. He pounds on the door and keeps pounding until Fraser pulls it open.

"Hey," Ray says, and he suddenly feels weird because Fraser's still in his red pajamas and his hair's all messed up. He's barefoot. "Hey, sorry, I thought you'd be up."

Fraser squints over Ray's shoulder at the sky. "It's five o'clock in the morning, Ray," he says. His voice is rough. He looks at his watch. "Not even that."

"I know," Ray says. Fraser hasn't pulled the door open to let him in, so Ray pushes past him and ignores Fraser's body, sleep-warm and too close. Ray should get a commendation from the mayor. "Aren't you usually up this early?"

Fraser sighs again and closes the door. "Not on my days off, no."

Ray nods and shoves his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. "You got the whole weekend, right? I checked on my calendar." Fraser doesn't have a calendar at the precinct, just writes his schedule on Ray's.

Fraser nods and heads for the kitchen, but he stops about six feet away and looks over his shoulder. "Is everything all right, Ray?"

"Huh? Oh. Sure, yeah, everything's good."

Fraser nods again, duty apparently satisfied, and Ray follows him into the kitchen, watches him look at the tea and then put on some coffee instead.

"So," Ray says, and sits down, and stands up, and sits down. "So, you've got the whole weekend, and I've got the whole weekend, so I thought we could do something."

Fraser's reaching for mugs, and he stops, one hand in the air, his pajamas stretched tight over the muscles of his back. Ray waits.

"At five in the morning? What'd you have in mind?" Fraser's still standing there frozen, talking to the cupboard.

Ray shrugs, but Fraser can't see it, so he says, "I dunno. Camping, maybe. It's spring, right? I heard there's birds or something we could look at."

Fraser forgets about the mugs and turns around, leans against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. "You want to go bird-watching?" He sounds pretty skeptical.

Ray examines his thumbnail. There's dirt or something under there, even though he took a shower, and he picks at it with his pinkie. "I dunno," he says again, shrugging one shoulder. "I wanna..." He looks up at Fraser, but Fraser's face is totally blank. "I want to do something you want to do," he says carefully.

Fraser's eyebrow goes up. The coffee machine gurgles. Dief wanders into the kitchen, yawning, and Ray reaches down and scratches behind an ear. "Sorry to get you up, buddy," Ray tells Dief. He keeps his eyes on Dief and says to Fraser, "I checked, and there's a state park, maybe three hours away if we leave before traffic starts sucking, and they got horses and birds and camping and hiking and I brought my sleeping bag but you gotta bring the other stuff, because I am not buying one of those stoves."

When he glances up, Fraser's still got that not-look look on his face. Finally he says, "Diefenbaker--"

"Yeah, we'll have to leash him to get him in, but then we can let him go. It's like a million acres, so no one'll notice." Dief whines a little, and Ray goes back to scratching behind his ear. "Yeah, I know, they don't get it," he tells Dief. "Just be a few minutes, though, and then you can do your wolf thing."

"Ray, that's illegal."

Ray rolls his eyes. "City's got leash laws too, Fraser, and I don't see you caring."

"On the contrary," he says. "I've told Diefenbaker on numerous occasions--"

"You've told your deaf half-wolf about the leash laws and you think that counts as caring? Jesus, Fraser, if you don't want to go, just say that. It was a stupid idea." He pushes his hands through his hair and stares off into space, too aware of the unmoving column of red in front of him. He should leave, but he doesn't really want to.

"Yes, I know," Fraser snaps, under his breath, and he sounds angry. "This is not really a good time, in case you haven't noticed."

That does it. "Oh, I noticed," Ray says, standing up to go, not looking at Fraser.

Fraser's suddenly in front of the door, his hand out, fingers spread. "No," he says, and Ray blinks. He hadn't even seen Fraser move, and there he is. "No, please, I wasn't--" He breaks off and sighs, and his hand droops. "I didn't mean for you to leave. I apologize, Ray. You took me by surprise and I'm afraid I'm not at my best right now."

Ray looks at him for a long time, digs in his pocket for a piece of gum. "So?"

Fraser's hand droops some more. "Quite right," he says, and Ray can hear that it doesn't mean fuck off like it usually does. "There's no excuse for--"

"No, no, Fraser, that's not what I meant. Everyone has shitty moods, you apologized, maybe your dad's here, whatever. I just meant, so, d'you wanna go camping or not?"

But Fraser looks at him like he's waiting for the punchline. "Well," he says, eventually.

"Well what? Jeez, Fraser, it's an easy question."

"Obviously not," he mutters. He rubs at his eyebrow, leans one shoulder against the doorjamb, crosses his arms again.

"Why not? I'm no good at waiting, Fraser, and traffic's getting shittier by the second and if you got other plans or problems, just spit it out already."

Fraser nods a little, takes a deep breath. "You said you want to do something I want to do."

"Oh," Ray says, and puts his own hands in the back pockets of his jeans. "Oh. Well, yeah. You wanna do something else? That's fine. That's great. I don't care what we do, Fraser."

He expects Fraser to argue with that, too, but Fraser just says, "I see."

"Yeah? Think you can see your way to your room, maybe pack a bag?"

It takes a few more seconds, but then Fraser actually relaxes, shoots Ray a goofy grin. "All right," he says. "Yes. I'd very much like to go camping this weekend, Ray, thank you. It's... very considerate." He pushes off the doorjamb. "I'll just go pack. I assume you can handle the coffee?"

"Yeah, yeah, coffee I can do," he says, relief swimming through his veins. He grins back at Fraser like an idiot. "Go."

*
Ray keeps falling asleep on his couch. Fraser's dad doesn't come back.

And Ray's tired of being patient, and he's tired of not jerking off, and things with him and Fraser are mostly good again, they're solving crimes and hanging out, they're a duet, and he hasn't wanted to punch Fraser in days, so he figures it's time to go pay the guy a visit.

"Hey," he says, letting himself into Fraser's office at the Consulate. "Your dad around?"

It's pretty early, before business hours, and Fraser's not dressed. He's standing there in the pumpkin pants and nothing else, the suspenders hanging off him, an undershirt in his hands. "I-- ah, as you can see, Ray, there's no one here."

Ray closes the door behind him and leans against it, trying not to look at Fraser's bare chest. "Because he said to be patient, Fraser, and I am. Mostly. Sometimes." Fraser raises an eyebrow. "Sort of, whatever. But I am tired of being patient, Fraser, and I don't even know what I'm being patient for. So I thought maybe you could ask him for me, next time you see him."

"Ah," Fraser says, and his posture gets all Mountie-stiff, and he drapes the undershirt over the back of his chair. "I don't think that's a good idea, Ray."

Ray pushes off the door and moves closer. "Why not?"

"Well," Fraser says. Ray expected him to back up, but he doesn't, he stands his ground and licks his lip and says, "I think perhaps you ought to do what you'd like to do, and not be quite so invested in the opinions of the dead."

"Yeah?" Ray says, and he's still moving, closing the distance, and that buzzing's back under his skin, but it's the good buzz, the one he gets from dancing and fucking and laughing. "Follow my instincts, you mean?"

And Fraser's not moving, Fraser's never moving, Fraser's standing there staring at Ray's mouth. "Yes," he says, his voice thick and deep in his throat.

"What if it ain't logical?" And Ray's only a few inches away, but Fraser still hasn't moved.

"I was under the impression that you found logic to be overrated in certain circumstances," Fraser says.

"Overrated," Ray repeats, but he can barely hear it over the noise in his head, the buzzing and the blood, and he doesn't know if he moves or if Fraser moves or if they move at the same time, but their lips are touching and Ray is coming apart and Fraser is putting him back together.

"Ray," Fraser says, a million years later. Ray is hard and sweating and he doesn't ever want to stop kissing Fraser, but Fraser turns his head and pulls away. Ray feels like shit for a second, like maybe he pushed too hard, but then he gets a good look at Fraser, with his messed-up hair and too-red lips and heavy breathing. Ray immediately feels better. He takes his hands off Fraser, puts them on his own thighs, bends over and breathes like he does after a run. Fraser leans on his desk and Ray can hear him trying to breathe, too.

"I'm sorry, Ray," Fraser says, "I have to work."

Ray nods. "Yeah, it's okay. I know. Queen and country. You done at three?"

Fraser looks at him then, and there's a weird look on his face like he doesn't know how to answer that, or like he'd maybe expected Ray to say something different. He doesn't look lost, exactly, and the kiss made it pretty fucking clear that Fraser knows what he's doing, and that he's not freaking out. Ray doesn't know what the hell the look is, but it's gone before he can figure it out, and Fraser nods.

"Okay," Ray says. "So, I'll come by a little after that, give you some time to walk Dief." He pauses. "Bye." He forces himself to walk out of there, to walk slowly down the hall and out the door, and then he can't do it anymore, he shouts and dances his way to the car, punching the air and grinning and loving everything.

*
"Criminals, Ray!" Fraser says, and throws himself out of the car. Ray swears and swerves and goes to back up his partner.

It's a liquor store holdup, and they bring in the perps without talking, just eye contact and hand signals and weird partner mind-reading, and Fraser doesn't do anything stupid and no one almost gets shot. Ray beats his fists against the roof of the car and whoops and dances in his seat.

"See, Fraser, that is what I am talking about!"

Fraser grins at him from the passenger side, and Dief licks his ear, and they laugh and bicker over pineapple-pemmican pizza and the designated-hitter rule for the next four hours. They don't kiss, but that's fine by Ray, because Ray is patient, he is zen, he is one of those fish or rocks or whatever in one of those still and peaceful ponds, and he can wait for Fraser.

*
Ray can't sleep. He's been staring at his ceiling for what feels like hours, and sleep is a thing that is not happening for him. He rolls out of bed, pulls on a pair of sweatpants, and heads for the kitchen. Popcorn will help, he thinks, but there's a knock at his door right when the microwave beeps.

It's Fraser -- who else? -- in his civvies, and Ray jerks his head a little by way of welcome before he heads back into the kitchen.

"I thought I gave you a key," he says.

Fraser comes into the kitchen and leans against the island, puts his hat down near the phone. Ray grabs the popcorn and leans against the counter opposite him, the warm bowl held against his bare chest.

"You did, yes," Fraser says. Ray's not sure if he's looking at the popcorn or at Ray.

"So why don't you ever use it?"

"I do," Fraser tells him, and that's true enough. "But when you're not expecting me, it seems... well. I wouldn't want to interrupt."

Ray puts the popcorn down, and Fraser's eyes don't follow it. "Interrupt what?" He crosses his arms over his chest, and Fraser mimics the gesture.

"I don't know, Ray." Fraser's voice is low, and Ray starts getting hard. Fraser notices, Ray knows he notices, he stands there and watches and licks his lips and Ray gets harder and hornier and more turned on, and Fraser hasn't even touched him. He's just watching it happen. Hell, Fraser's making it happen.

"Jesus, Fraser," Ray mutters, and thinks, what the hell. He plants one hand on the counter and reaches the other into his pants, wraps it lightly around his dick. Fraser sucks in his breath and doesn't move. "This? You wouldn't want to interrupt this?"

Fraser's staring, his mouth a little open and his face a little red, and he doesn't take his eyes off Ray's hand moving under the sweatpants. Ray's grip is pretty light but he's feeling it anyway, pleasure arcing through his body. He's not sure what Fraser's going to do, if he's going to run away or offer to help, and Ray watches Fraser watch him and waits for him to decide.

It takes a while, but Fraser doesn't do either one. He doesn't move or say anything stupid like need a hand? Instead, he grates out, "Show me," his voice low, and that's better, that's way better than anything Ray thought of. Ray grins, shoves his pants down to his knees.

Then he stops, squeezes the base of his cock a few times, and waits for Fraser to look at him. It takes a few seconds, but he finally does, finally looks up. "Jesus," Ray says again. "You--" But he doesn't know how to finish the sentence, doesn't know how to tell Fraser how his eyes look right now, like a storm over the lake, raging around him. He shakes his head and holds out his hand. "Lick."

Fraser doesn't break eye contact as he slowly raises his arm, wraps his hand around Ray's wrist, his grip steady and strong and warm, and licks one broad stripe over Ray's palm. "Yeah," Ray says, "yeah," and if he keeps looking at Fraser he's going to come right there. He closes his eyes and throws back his head and goes back to jerking off.

It doesn't take long. Not with Fraser's spit on his hand, hot and wet and so fucking good. Fraser's not touching him, but he might as well be -- Ray can feel him there in the room, hot and watching and waiting and wanting, and he can hear him breathing, knows he's leaning forward, probably licking his lips.

Ray's been wanting this for so long, so fucking long that he can't-- he can't, fuck, and he pries his eyes open at the last second to see Fraser's hands white-knuckling the counter, his entire body tense and ready and shaking, and the whole thing goes gray around the edges as Ray comes all over himself, his teeth deep in his lip, his mind totally fucking blown.

Except no, no, apparently his mind isn't blown enough for Fraser, because Fraser drops to his knees and closes his lips around the head of Ray's softening cock, sucks it gently into his mouth. Ray moans and sags against the counter, and then Fraser's licking all the come off his body and Ray is twisting and writhing and it takes all his control to keep from tackling Fraser to the ground.

He doesn't, though, he manages to stand there with his eyes closed while Fraser licks him clean, but when he hears Fraser's zipper, he can't do it anymore. He drags his eyes open and looks down, and Fraser's kneeling in front of him with a hand on Ray's side and his tongue on Ray's stomach, and he's got his jeans open and his dick out, and if Ray hadn't come a few seconds ago, he's pretty sure that sight would do the trick. As it is, his cock gives an interested twitch.

Fraser comes pretty quickly, his forehead against Ray's hip, his breath harsh and panting and damp over Ray's skin. Ray waits a few seconds and then slides to his knees, drags his hand through Fraser's come, and then taps at Fraser's mouth with his two sticky middle fingers. Fraser's mouth opens and he sucks on Ray's fingers, licks at his own come, and Ray twists and closes his own mouth over the whole mess, kisses Fraser through his fingers, fights him for a taste.

He's not really surprised when, a few minutes later, Fraser jerks away and zips up makes some noise about Dief and the Consulate.

"Yeah, yeah, okay," he says, cutting off Fraser's babbling. He staggers to his feet and pulls up his sweatpants. Fraser's already at the door. "Hey," he says, grabbing Fraser's hat off the island. He walks over to the door and hands it to him with as much of a smile as he can muster. "Hey, don't forget your hat."

"Thank you," Fraser says.

"And, uh, next time? Don't knock."

One side of Fraser's mouth pulls up in that crooked grin, and he takes the hat out of Ray's hands. "Understood."

FIN

FICLET: Observatory [due South, Fraser, PG]

atrata — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:56:30 GMT

Title: Observatory
Fandom: due South
Pairing/Characters: Fraser, really, but the F/K's there if you're looking for it.
Rating: PG
Length: ~400 words
Summary: For 400 words? Um. Fraser hangs out in the Hancock and looks at stuff. So does Ray.
Disclaimer/Spoilers: These characters are not mine. This story doesn't spoil anything, except there are some guys in Chicago.
A/N: I have been resisting due South for years. I finally caved. I pretty much blame Paul Gross. I thought about turning this into something longer, and I still might, but who knows.

*
Benton stands in front of the eastern windows, stares out at the dark expanse of the lake and tries to ignore the glare of the city, tries to see all the way across to Michigan. It's absurd -- the lake is 75 km wide at this latitude -- but this is what passes for a clear night in Chicago, and he can turn his head to the south and see Indiana clearly enough, so Michigan ought to be just there.

It's not. Benton moves to the southern wall of windows.

The view looks the same as the view to the west, to the north. He's on his third circuit of the observatory, and of course there are differences, skyscrapers to the south and a glowing coastline to the north, but he finds the overall uniformity surprising and discomfiting. It's just a grid, eight streets to a mile, unnatural order burned onto land that used to be a swamp, that still is when it rains too much.

He'd rescued a hunter once, an American from Oklahoma who had never been north of Iowa and who'd disappeared near the Aklavik Channel. Benton had found him two weeks later, shelter built and stove in working order, but he'd lost one of his stuffsacks, the one with his compass and other navigational equipment, and once he realized it was gone, he'd stopped moving and waited for someone to come for him. He'd squinted at the horizon and shrugged and said, "All looks the same to me," and Benton hadn't understood.

But from up here, from the 94th floor of the Hancock building, Chicago looks the same to him, that relentless grid, stretching out as far as he can see, broken only by a few obliques and by highways rising like the knotted veins on the back of his hand.

He moves to the western side, where Ray's had his forehead pressed against the cool glass for the last ten minutes. Neither of them has gone out on the skydeck. Benton doesn't know why they're there.

He watches Ray out of the corner of his eye and considers asking: Why are we here? What do you see? He thinks Ray might be able to show him how to see something other than those straight bright lines, but Ray's looking at Chicago the way Benton looks at the Mackenzie Delta, and Benton moves to the northern windows and tries to see Wisconsin. He thinks he can.

Two circuits later and Ray still hasn't moved, and Benton stands next to him for several long minutes before he realizes Ray isn't looking at Chicago at all. He's watching Benton's reflection in the glass.
FIN

FIC: Come Ruin or Rapture [Slings & Arrows | Ellen, Geoffrey/Ellen | R]

atrata — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:36:26 GMT

Title: Come Ruin or Rapture
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Characters/pairing: Ellen. Geoffrey. Oliver. Geoffrey/Ellen.
Rating: R
Length: ~7,600
Summary: Pre-series. Ellen returns to New Burbage, gets ambushed by Oliver, meets Geoffrey, drinks too much coffee, and really hates Romeo & Juliet.
A/N: Anyone who has spoken more than two words to me in the last, like, two months has heard about this story, and I need to thank everyone I know for not just killing me for being annoyingly obsessed. I especially need to thank murklins, and I know I always do that, but I really mean it this time, because this story would be either unwritten or really terrible without her. She was much more than a beta reader and I don't know how she stands me. tangleofthorns also did beta duty, thank god, because murklins and I drove ourselves more than a little crazy and needed to walk away. The title and the cut text are, I think, from Shakespeare in Love.

*
"Ellen, darling, I'm so sorry." Oliver Welles closed his hands over her shoulders and leaned in to kiss her on both cheeks. "Such a tragedy. We'll all miss him very much."

"Oliver, thank god," Ellen said, relieved to see a friendly face. "I'm all right. Better now that you're here." She was probably supposed to smile and kiss his cheek in return, but she didn't bother -- she knew he'd see right through it.

"It's good to see you again," he said. "I only wish it were under happier circumstances."

"Me too," she said. Oliver squeezed her shoulders before moving off to the side to let someone else through. Ellen couldn't remember his name, some director friend of her father's who'd wanted her to be in commercials when she was six. She reached for a smile and her voice, managed to deliver yet another convincing reading of, "Thank you for coming." The words were chalk in her mouth, dry and ever-present, like she was trapped in one of those nightmares where she only knew one of her lines and repeated it for hours, while everyone else tried not to stare. She needed a cigarette.

He muttered about his condolences, patted her shoulder awkwardly, and then headed for a group of ancient drunken actors in the other room, passing around flasks, red-faced and sniffling. Ellen watched them and rolled her eyes; they would inevitably break into stories of Life In The Theatre, but she hoped they'd at least wait until she was out of earshot.

Oliver, still standing next to her, glanced briefly in their direction and then turned his gaze on Ellen. "How are you holding up?"

"My father just died in a freak fishing accident. He didn't even like fishing! How do you think I'm holding up? Shit." Ellen held up her hands in apology. "Sorry, sorry, it's been a long day."

But Oliver didn't even flinch at her tone; instead, he grabbed her upper arm and tugged her into a corner a few feet away. He was up to something, his intentions so clear that Ellen wondered if he'd forgotten how to act in the intervening years, or if he wasn't bothering to try. "Well," he said, practically rubbing his hands together, "I think I have something that will cheer you up. Do you have a few minutes to talk?"

Ellen looked around the room, hoping he might take the hint and realize where they were. "A few minutes to talk? Oliver!" People glanced in their direction, and Ellen lowered her voice. "Oliver, I am at my father's funeral. Can't it wait?"

"I know," he said, putting both hands over his heart. "I know, I'm sorry, it's terribly tacky, but it's really quite important. You know I wouldn't ask otherwise."

Ellen knew no such thing, but she also really wanted a smoke, wanted to be anywhere but trying to avoid looking at her father's casket while standing right next to it. "I--" She looked around again. The viewing had only just started, and there was already a crowd inside and a line outside, more people than she would have thought come to pay their respects by participating in this morbid fucking ritual. Maybe the drunken actors in the corner had the right idea. "Oh, all right... Christ, just stay here. I'll be back."

Her very pregnant sister was sitting in the other room on some godforsaken floral-print couch, a relic from the 80s, glaring at Ellen like she'd murdered their father and a handful of small animals besides. Her husband hovered ineffectually. Ellen took a deep breath and headed in their direction. "Diane, I'm really sorry, but I need to go out for a short break. Do you think you could..." She trailed off and gestured toward the casket.

"A break? They opened the doors ten minutes ago, and you haven't done anything all week! I had to drag you here in the first place, and now--"

"Sorry," Ellen said. "You know I don't do well with people."

"What do you mean, you don't do well with people?" her sister asked through clenched teeth. "These are your people!"

"No, these are festival people! I left--"

"Oh, I know."

"--and these haven't been my people in a long time, and I need a fucking break! Why--"

Diane's husband tried to step in. "Ellen, look, she's due any day now. Can't you--"

"Oh, shut up, Rob," Ellen snapped. "Take a chair over there or something."

"His name is Ed!" Diane lumbered to her feet, her face going splotchy with the effort. "I can't believe--"

"Thank you! I'm sure it's what Dad would have wanted, you meeting his friends. I'll be right back. Thanks again, and sorry!" She shot Diane a smile and a wave, and then shouldered her way to where Oliver was lurking behind a large plant.

"Okay," she said. "Outside." She pushed him in front of her and followed him out, trying to disappear, but she got stopped four times before she made it to the door, people she hadn't seen in years hugging her, apologizing, getting their snot on her suit.

"Fuck," she said, once she finally got outside, her chest loosening with each breath of damp air. They walked around the corner of the funeral home, out of the sight of the crowd. "I hate funerals." Oliver, his eyes serious, offered her a light and didn't say anything.

"There are just so many details involved! I haven't had a chance to think about anything. God." She took another few drags. "Okay," she said, gesturing with her cigarette. "You've got until I finish this. What's so important?"

Ellen recognized his slow smile, and knew it wasn't a good sign. He only smiled that way when he wanted something very badly and had every intention of getting it. He reached into her purse, pulled out her cigarettes, offered her the pack with a flourish. "Have another, Ellen, darling, and then come back to the festival."

Ellen recoiled. "The festival? Oliver! This is a funeral! What is wrong with you?"

"Oh, please," he said, waving his left hand. "First of all, it's not a funeral. It's just a viewing. And anyway, your father was in the theatre. He was in this theatre. He would have understood."

"This is--" Ellen's mouth worked for a few seconds as she tried to think of something suitably scathing to say. "Fuck off, Oliver." She snatched her cigarettes out of his hand and shoved them into her purse. "Jesus."

She turned to go inside, but Oliver's voice stopped her; it had taken on that nasal whine it got when the universe was considering not giving him his way. "Ellen, wait! Please, just listen. Hear me out. If you don't like what I have to say, you can go back to those pap productions you've been doing for schoolchildren."

Ellen ground her teeth. The productions weren't the problem -- they were good, solid shows, introducing Shakespeare to children. But Ellen wasn't good with kids, and no matter how hard she tried, the cast Q&A sessions invariably ended with a bunch of sobbing 10 year-olds. She wasn't sure how much longer her director was going to put up with it.

"Talk," she snapped.

"This is John's last season as artistic director, and of course it's going to be a great one, but then, Ellen... then we'll be going in an entirely new direction! We need an actress of your caliber on the front lines, someone versatile and fearless and beautiful."

It was a cheap trick, and Ellen was falling for it anyway. "Stick to the topic," she said, with less anger than she'd wanted.

"You are the topic! But honestly, Ellen, it's time for you to come home. Your father would have wanted it. He never understood why you left, you know."

"He never asked, and you're a manipulative bastard, Oliver."

"Please, Ellen, we really do need you. And there's someone here I think you should meet."

"Oh, fuck." Oliver was a prick, but he was usually right about these things. "Who is it?"

"His name is Geoffrey Tennant. He's a genius, Ellen, I--"

"Not him again." Ellen rolled her eyes but turned to face him fully. "Oliver, you've told me about him every time I've seen you for the last, what, ten years?"

"Yes, and now he's here, and I'm here, and you're here--"

"I am here for a funeral! Not for you, and not for the fucking festival."

"Yes, I know, and it's as if the stars have all aligned! Please, just talk to him. Stop by the theatre tomorrow morning, do a reading. See what you think." He clasped his hands together and looked like he was about to drop to his knees.

Ellen took another drag of her cigarette, and exhaled the smoke directly into his face. "I hate you, Oliver."

His smile got wider. "I know, darling. It's all right. It's magnificent, in fact."

*
Ellen was running late, and Oliver, of course, wasn't in his office. She made her way through the building and tried not to notice that it was the same as it had been the last time she was there, different fliers on the walls but the same two light bulbs burnt out in the hall. She stuck her head into too-familiar rehearsal rooms, but Oliver wasn't in any of them. There was really only one place he could be, and Ellen felt frustration gathering under her skin, twisting her muscles into knots. She swore under her breath as she made her way backstage, through the wings. Enter, stage left.

"But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?" A melodic voice, intimate and well-projected, greeted her as soon as she stepped onstage. Ellen assumed it was the actor she had come to meet, Geoffrey Tennant, but the voice was coming from behind a pile of flats downstage right, and the only thing she could see was a flash of wild black curls.

"Oh, Jesus," Ellen said. "Oliver, what the hell is going on?"

Oliver, sitting at the table with some stage manager, smiled and gestured for them to keep going. There were a few other people there, too, scattered about the theatre, sitting forward in their seats. Ellen was caught, on stage in front of a waiting audience, too warm even under the rehearsal lights. The only thing she could think to do was put down her purse, and begin.

"It is the east." Geoffrey's voice seemed to surround her, and Ellen headed slowly for center stage with no real idea what she was going to do when she got there. There wasn't any scenery, no balcony for her to stand on and pretend she couldn't see him, so she just turned her back and waited. He seemed to be waiting, too, and spoke as soon as she turned. "And Juliet is the sun."

Fuck. Two lines of Shakespeare, and Ellen could feel herself shifting and changing and falling -- into Juliet, a fucking teenager, and 32 was too old for this -- but she'd been here before and knew it wasn't worth fighting. She closed her eyes and evened out her breathing, focused on Geoffrey's voice, tried to spin it into something she could grasp, something tangible to work with. She could sense him moving closer as he spoke, felt the air change and the boards shift, and then he was behind her, his voice a low rumble straight into her ear, "O, it is my love!"

Ellen, her eyes still closed, crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed at the goosebumps crawling down her body. She felt Geoffrey move again, felt him turn and put his back to hers, using her body as a wall. She did the same to him, grateful for the resistance as he spoke, used it to anchor herself as she ran her hands up her shoulders, over her neck, her face. "O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!"

Her line was only two words, more sigh than sentence, and it wasn't hard to hit her cue. Her body moved with Geoffrey's as he sucked in his breath, and she realized she was as attuned to his breathing as she was to her own. She felt him say, "She speaks!" more than she heard him, and when he implored, "O, speak again," there wasn't anything she wanted more. But it wasn't her line and he didn't stop talking, his head falling back to rest against the top of her own, their bodies molding together.

Seven lines later, their heads were turned so they were cheek-to-cheek, his skin rough and warm against her own, his breath rushing across her lips. Ellen was frustrated and Juliet was near tears, begging him, "deny thy father and refuse thy name," and the pressure was becoming unbearable. She and Geoffrey were still pushing, their arms spread and their palms sliding together, vibrating with tension from the fight to keep them open. Ellen couldn't get her breathing under control, and she hurried too quickly through her next few lines, wanting to turn and look at him, drop the pretense and acknowledge his presence, figure out what the hell was going on.

His stubble scraped against her cheek as his mouth moved, his lips drifting closer to hers, "call me but love," and Ellen'd had enough; she turned and shoved him away, rolled right over the rest of his line to demand, "What man art thou?" Her first good look at Geoffrey, and Ellen forgot everything: her line, the scene, what was happening. He was lit from within, breathless and beautiful and shining, and if Ellen had needed confirmation that she was well and truly fucked, she was looking at it. She stared, flushed and panting, until his lips curved into a slight smile that she felt the need to get away from. Backing up, she tried her line again. "What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night, so stumblest upon my council?"

The smile stayed, and somehow, Ellen made it through the scene. Geoffrey was a fucking force of nature, on his knees and all around her, his hands on her face and her waist and her hair, his eyes laughing and glittering and pleading. That last surprised her, actually, the raised eyebrow and the quirk of his mouth, the slight tilt of his head; she'd lost her distance and she knew she wouldn't recover it if she let him kiss her, but she nodded anyway and then his lips were against hers, and Ellen was undone. Someone offstage was playing the Nurse, calling for Juliet, and Ellen managed to tear herself away, but Geoffrey kept coming at her, dancing closer, and Ellen was as bereft as Juliet when he was finally gone.

Ellen didn't move, stayed where she was, her head down and her eyes closed, the silence stretched and heavy as she tried to find herself again. She couldn't stand it very long, and she looked up, directly at Oliver, who was watching her with a smug smile. Their eyes met and he stood up, clapping, and then everyone else was applauding, too. Geoffrey bounded back out onstage from the wings and took her face in his hands, long fingers sliding over her cheeks and into her hairline, and kissed her quickly. "Ellen Fanshaw," he murmured, his tone almost reverent, his lips against hers. "That was incredible." Then he started tugging her downstage, shouting about chemistry and Shakespeare and poetry and Ellen found she was too angry to listen.

"That wasn't incredible," she snapped, snatching her hand away and smacking him in the chest. "That was a dirty trick." She hit him again for good measure, and his smile started to fade as she poked him. "You ambushed me!"

His eyes widened as he looked between her face and the finger she had jabbed him with. "I-- What?"

Ellen's eyes narrowed. "Nothing to say? Fuck you." She turned to glare at Oliver. "And fuck you, too!"

"Ellen," Geoffrey said. "I-- oh." His eyes cleared and his lips curled into a wry grin, and then he turned to jab his own finger in Oliver's direction. "You said she agreed!"

"She did," Oliver said, his hands out in front of him. "She said she'd come to meet you and do a reading."

"That was not a reading!" Ellen and Geoffrey shouted it in unison, and Ellen gestured at the stage, at Geoffrey, at the entire place. "You brought in a fucking audience!"

Oliver smiled. "You did it, though, didn't you? And it was glorious. You know it was, I can tell. Don't try to deny it."

He was right, of course, the bastard. "Oh, fuck off, Oliver." She turned and stomped off stage, intending to leave, but she could feel Geoffrey watching her, and it stopped her short. She stood there, waiting, and then tilted her head enough to say over her shoulder, "Well? Are you coming?"

"G'night," Geoffrey called out, at 11 in the morning, before Ellen had finished her question. Oliver started sputtering, called them both assholes, but then Geoffrey was beside her, that ridiculous smile on his face, and Ellen's lips curved into an answering smile before she remembered she was supposed to be angry.

*
Once they got outside, Ellen wasn't sure what they were supposed to do. Geoffrey was vibrating next to her, barely contained, like a greyhound at the starting line, and Ellen glanced at him, sidelong. She didn't know anything about him except that he could act, he could kiss, and somebody should buy him an iron.

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat and then pulled them out again, rubbed them together. A smile broke over his face and then disappeared, as if he hadn't meant for it to happen but wasn't able to help himself. "I'm sorry about the ambush," he said. "I really didn't know."

Ellen lit a cigarette and eyed him through the smoke. He seemed sincere. "Oliver's a prick," she said.

"Yes," he said, giving free rein to that smile. He was older than Ellen had first thought, maybe her age, laugh lines showing around his eyes. "Yes, he is. But he's also a genius. Ellen, that was..." His hands went back in his pockets and he spun in a circle, his coat flapping in the wind. "I don't know what that was," he called to the sky, his head thrown back. "But I want to do it again and again!"

Ellen took another drag of her cigarette, stalling for time, not quite ready to admit she wanted the same thing, and certainly not ready to shout it to the heavens. Geoffrey stopped spinning and leapt in front of her, walked backwards down the sidewalk.

"So," he said, "Where to?"

Ellen had a million things to do. Her father's memorial service was in the morning, and she needed to get to her sister's house to help with the last-minute preparations, something about photo collages and flowers. She wasn't sure why she needed to be there -- weren't there people who did that sort of thing professionally? -- but Diane had insisted.

"Buy me a coffee."

"Sure." He nodded and offered her his arm.

*
Coffee turned into lunch turned into wandering aimlessly through New Burbage, and they found themselves at the river complaining about Toronto theatre critics when Geoffrey stopped, mid-sentence, and pointed.

"Ellen, it's a swan boat!"

"You've been here for three years," she said. "This can't be the first time you've seen one."

"Well, no," he admitted, one side of his mouth curving into a grin. "But it's the first time I've wanted to get in one." He bounced on his toes and held out his hand. "Come on."

Ellen wanted to tell him they weren't particularly thrilling, but he looked so excited that she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. She cast about for a better excuse. "It's getting dark. It'll be too cold on the river."

"Ah," he said, stripping his coat off. "Easily fixed!" He draped it over her shoulders and leaned back to survey his handiwork, smoothing the lapels. Ellen was already wearing a coat, and didn't need his, but as soon as he glanced up and met her eyes, whatever she was about to say in protest died in her throat. Geoffrey, for the first time all day, had gone entirely still. Ellen wasn't even sure he was breathing; she sure as hell wasn't. "You do become an old coat well," he murmured. One finger slid across her neck, skirted around the edges of her scarf.

"Thank you," she managed, breaking eye contact and shrugging his hands off. His coat was too long for her, dragging in the grass as she walked. She snuggled into it anyway, and the warmth from his body seeped through all her layers and into her skin, curling around her spine and settling low in her belly. Seeking distraction, she cautiously put her hands in the pockets, not sure what she'd find. They were empty, full of holes, and she stuck her fingers through and wiggled them at Geoffrey, her eyebrows raised.

"Pockets are useless," he declared.

"Well, these pockets are useless."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "No, all pockets are useless. They're not big enough for books, and everything else you need, you carry in here." He patted his chest.

"I need lipstick," she told him.

"Hm." Geoffrey pursed his lips and made a show of studying hers, bending forward at the waist with his hands clasped behind his back. "No. No, I don't think you do."

Ellen swallowed the sudden lump in her throat and went for another distraction. She bumped his shoulder with hers, knocking him off balance, and made for the swan boats. "All right," she said. "But pockets have to be good for something, or they wouldn't be so popular."

"Oh, well, yes. They're good for theatrics."

"Theatrics?"

"Yup. Go on, try it. Put your hands in the pockets and cock your elbows in so the coat opens a bit." He demonstrated, and Ellen took two seconds to debate before she mimicked him. "Good. Now... run!"

He turned and went running full-tilt at the dock. Ellen didn't hesitate this time, the laughter bubbling out of her throat as she ran after him, his coat flapping in the breeze.

She fished some money out of her purse while Geoffrey examined several of the boats and finally settled on the number six. It lurched under them as they clambered into it, both of them unsteady on the slippery surface. Ellen tried to grab his arm to balance herself, but he reached for her at the same time, and they fell into the boat in a tangle of limbs.

"Well," he said, extracting himself. "Good thing they made these idiot-proof. I don't see any lifeguards."

Ellen settled on the bench next to him, her shoulder pressing into his, and couldn't think of anything to say. The boat tipped again and their thighs bumped together, and she felt suddenly awkward, stuck in a boat with a stranger with nothing to talk about. She cleared her throat and glanced sideways; Geoffrey was staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched tight, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. They started paddling in unspoken agreement.

"I can't believe I've never done this," he said, too many minutes later, his voice both hushed and somehow strained. "It's beautiful."

Ellen looked around and tried to see what he was seeing, the shocking green of new spring grass, the way the light of the setting sun shattered over the surface of the water. Even the swans were nice, she thought, as long as they didn't get too close. "Yes," she said. "I suppose it is."

"Why'd you leave?"

"Hm? Oh, you mean New Burbage?" He nodded and she shrugged. "I grew up here. It's not exciting when it's home. I guess I just wanted to do something different for a while. I always meant to come back."

"Good," he said, and she could tell he was trying not to grin. She rolled her eyes and leaned a little closer.

He opened his mouth to say something else, but Ellen cut him off. "Shit. I think that's my sister."

"What? Where?"

There was a bench coming up on their right, and Ellen pointed. "There. That's Diane and... I don't know, her loser husband. He has some trucker name. We have to hide."

"Hide? All right." His brow furrowed in confusion but he slid down onto the floor of the boat anyway, his legs bending awkwardly. It must have been cold, but he wasn't complaining. He held an arm up and waved her forward. "Come on, then, duck." She curled against him, her head on his chest, his arm settling heavily across her stomach.

Ellen stared up at the darkening sky and listened to his heart beat and tried to keep her hands from wandering over his stomach. He was warm and solid and comfortable; all trace of their earlier awkwardness had vanished. "Why am I here, Geoffrey?"

"Because I dragged you," he said.

"I wasn't talking about the boat."

"Neither was I. You said you meant to come back, right? I think it's a sign. I think I brought you to New Burbage."

"You killed my father?" It was probably a shitty thing to say, but even so, Ellen hadn't expected him to go stiff with shock.

"I-- what? No! Is that why you're here?"

Ellen tilted her head so she could look at him. He certainly looked surprised: eyes wide, mouth open, hair standing on end. "Oliver didn't tell you? He ambushed me at the viewing and badgered me into coming to the theatre for a reading."

"Christ. I... I'm an asshole. But I'm not sorry."

His fingers curled around her waist, and Ellen went back to looking at the sky. "Neither am I."

*
"Favorite play," he said, sliding into the booth and signaling the waitress at the counter for coffee.

Ellen wasn't sure she had one, so she repeated his question and stalled for time by putting her hair back up; it had come undone at some point and she hadn't really noticed. Geoffrey watched her, and she tried to come up with an answer. She had favorite parts and favorite scenes and favorite productions, but she'd never managed to choose a favorite play based on the text alone. "I don't know," she finally admitted. "I know how that sounds. I'm an actress, I should have a favorite play. But I can never decide."

Geoffrey tilted his head, his eyes narrowed slightly. "But it's not Romeo & Juliet."

"God, no. I hate that play." She just hadn't thought it was quite so obvious.

"Why?"

"They're idiots." The waitress came with the coffee, and Ellen stirred in two creams and two sugars. "Greatest love story in the western world, and it's two moronic teenagers who think the world should stop because they want to get laid."

Geoffrey's head tilted in the other direction. "Huh."

His scrutiny was making her uncomfortable. "What? You don't agree. But it's ridiculous. What do teenagers know about love?"

"Nothing," Geoffrey said, splaying his arms across the table. He bent his head to sip at his coffee without having to move it, and Ellen caught herself staring at his lips, remembering how they felt against hers. "But that's the point. I mean, what you just said, you hear it all the time. You hear it with music, these 18-year-old kids singing about their heartbreak on the fucking radio." He sat back up and rolled his eyes as he leaned forward, his chest pressing against the edge of the table. "And it is ridiculous, but Ellen, do you remember what it was like to be that young?"

"Yes," she said. "It was horrible."

He grinned. "Yes, it was. Because everything was the end of the world. We were totally open to everything, hadn't built these walls around our hearts. Now we're old and terrified and cut off from our feelings. Teenagers are idiots, but when was the last time you felt anything that deeply?"

Twelve hours ago when I was on that stage with you, she thought, but what she said was, "I'm an actress, Geoffrey. I feel everything that deeply."

His eyebrows went up and he wrapped his hands around the coffee mug. "I'm an actor, Ellen. You'd be insane."

"Maybe I am."

"Good," he said, grinning wider. "Then our R&J is going to be magnificent."

"Our what? No. Geoffrey! I haven't even said I'm coming back! And anyway, we're in our 30s. We're way too old for those parts. This morning was fun, but-- no. Oliver wouldn't do it."

"I guarantee you Oliver's already pitched it to the board." He reached across the table and caught her hands in his, his thumbs brushing across the insides of her wrists. "Ellen, weren't you listening? It's a cautionary tale, but it goes both ways, and everyone ignores the second part."

"What are you talking about?"

"Transformation! Ellen. Ellen." He bounced their hands on the table and then let go. Ellen took the opportunity to pull her coffee closer, afraid he was going to knock it over as he spoke. "Ellen, it can't just a be story about stupid teenagers falling in love and dying, and everyone goes home and says, 'oh, well, what the fuck do teenagers know about love anyway?' It's so much more than that. Part of it has to be about being open to the experience, no matter how old you are, no matter what happens, and everyone goes home and says, 'I want a love like that!'"

Ellen raised her eyebrows and stared at him over the rim of her coffee mug. "But they can't have it! Love like that doesn't exist. And they still die."

He groaned and flopped back in the seat, one arm over his eyes. "It does," he insisted, his voice garbled. "We're just too cut off to notice."

She stared at him, slumped in the booth like she'd stuck her fork through his heart. "Well," she said. "I like that you think it matters. It's been a long time since anyone talked to me like that."

He shifted his arm out of the way and peered at her through one eye. "Like what?"

"Like theatre can make a difference."

"It can," he said, and shot forward to snatch her hands again. "You'll see. Come back, and do this play with me and Oliver, and you'll see."

Ellen sipped her coffee and changed the subject, and they made it to his place, eventually, after too much caffeine and another rambling walk through town and an argument about Cymbeline in which Geoffrey ranted for 15 minutes straight about the RSC's 1980 production being either under- or overrated. Ellen couldn't quite follow it, his words a cyclone in her mind, fast and dizzying. She felt drunk, and they stumbled to the steps to his building, arm in arm.

He spun her around and backed her against the wall, and the smile died on her lips. "Don't say it, Geoffrey," she said, and put two fingers to his mouth. "Don't even think about it."

"But--" The words were there already, gleaming in his eyes.

"I swear to god, if you start talking about parting or--"

"As many farewells as there be stars in heaven?"

"--yes, or that, I won't be able to leave."

He caught her hand as she tried to pull it away, pressed his lips to her knuckles. "And would that be so bad?"

"Jesus, Geoffrey, it's not like I'm out ten minutes past curfew." She twisted her hand, trying to see her watch. "The service is in... Fuck, it's in four hours! Really. I'll come to the theatre when it's over, okay?"

"Shit," he said, dropping her hand like it had scalded him. "Shit, I'm sorry, I keep forgetting." He reached out to squeeze her shoulder and peered down at her through narrowed eyes, his head cocked to one side. "You don't seem... I mean, are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine." She thought it was even mostly true. "We weren't close."

"Oh," he said. "Me too."

She shook her head, strands of her hair snagging on the brick behind her. "No, it wasn't like that. He didn't understand why I left the festival. He thought... I don't know what he thought." She shrugged. "But I told you already, I just wanted a change. I don't know why that was so difficult for him."

"Well," Geoffrey said. "My father hated the theatre. Detested everything about it." His eyes had gone dull and distant, and Ellen wanted to do something comforting, but she didn't have any ideas. She reached for his collar, thinking to straighten it, but dropped her hand before it reached him.

"I need to go," she said. "But I'll see you tomorrow. Today. All right? Later today."

His eyes came back into focus and they stared at one another for a few seconds, the silence pulsing between them like a heartbeat. "All right," he said, and stepped back.

Ellen tried to turn around and start walking, but even though he'd moved his body, his gaze was still pinning her to the wall, his eyes shining in the porch light. "Fuck." She couldn't stop looking at him.

She thought the sound he made next was her name, low and long and deep in his throat, and if one of them moved, Ellen didn't notice. All she knew was that she was sliding into him, her body into his arms, her hands into his ridiculous hair, her tongue into his mouth, hot and still tasting of coffee. He sighed against her lips and she swallowed it down like it was all the air she'd ever need.

Ellen pressed closer, licking into his mouth, and he stumbled backwards and might have tripped, but he recovered by sitting down on the steps and pulling her onto his lap. Their teeth clicked together but he didn't stop kissing her, and she felt his hands dig under both the coats she was wearing, warm fingertips pressing through the silk of her blouse, against her ribs, into the notches of her spine.

It was like being on stage, she thought, the blood rushing through her ears, the high of adulation. Like sex in public, and she wanted to try it, wanted to tear their clothes off and fuck him right there, outside on the concrete steps at six in the morning, where everyone could see. She wrapped her legs around him, slid down his lap until their hips met, followed his gasp with her tongue. He shifted under her, grabbed her hips and pulled her toward him, his erection obvious and pressing between her legs.

"Oh, shit," she said, her voice ragged. "Stop," she said, and he did, threw his head back and sucked in a long, shuddering breath, the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp relief.

"Sorry," he said, his eyes closed, his hands still clenched tight on her hips, thumbs pressing into to the hollows of her hipbones. Ellen's hands were on his shoulders and she tugged down the collar of his shirt, drew her thumbs along his collarbone. She leaned back in his arms, but that only pushed her hips into his again, and they both gasped and swore under their breath and tried not to move.

"No," she said, when she thought she was going to be able to make coherent noises. "No, I... the funeral."

He nodded, but he didn't open his eyes, didn't ease his grip. She dropped her head onto his shoulder, gave in to the urge to lick the salt from his skin, felt another small shiver pass through his body.

"Sorry," she told him, her lips against his neck. "I have to go."

She didn't move. He did, though, rotated her hips in a slow circle against his, pressed up into her, dropped his own head against her shoulder, his stubble raking against her skin. "Fuck," he said. "All right. What's happening?"

"I don't know," she said, grinding back against him without meaning to, needing to leave but unable to put any space between them. "But it's okay. I... it's been a long day. Very intense."

He laughed at that, short and strangled, his breath hot against her skin. "Right. Intense."

"I have to go."

"I know. You keep telling me."

"Okay, then."

"Okay." She pressed another kiss to his jaw, one to his lips, and then ripped herself out of his arms and ran down the street, his coat still dragging behind her. She didn't dare look back.

As she neared her sister's house, Ellen started steeling herself for the inevitable lecture about responsibility and family and whatever other bullshit Diane was going to come up with. Not that she didn't deserve it, really; she'd skipped out on the second viewing and the rest of the funeral preparations to stay out all day and all night with Geoffrey, and she was slinking home at six in the fucking morning like she was in grade 10. Maybe she wasn't too old for Juliet.

She expected Diane and her husband to be awake, getting ready, which at least meant her brother-in-law would have made coffee. But when she let herself into the house, it was strangely silent. No noise, no coffee, just a note on the kitchen table, barely legible:

Diane in labor. At hospital. Funeral service on you. Thanks for all your help! --E.

"Fuck." Ellen balled the note up and threw it on the floor. "Fuck!"

She sank into one of the kitchen chairs and tried to figure out what to do, but her mind was blank and spinning, and she couldn't look away from the crumpled ball of paper. She felt like she might throw up, all those countless cups of coffee roiling in her stomach. Her next coherent thought was that her father would probably know what to do, and she choked on a sob when it hit her that she couldn't ask him anything, ever again, and the last time they'd spoken it was a shouting match about something stupid, some shitty review, and fuck, fuck, fuck.

Ellen repeated it in her head, because at least it was something, and she stared at the note and sucked in air and tried to get herself under control. She could handle this, she'd be fine, she was sure Diane had made the fucking collage or whatever it was she'd wanted Ellen to help with. But when she was finally able to look at something other than that piece of paper, she took a quick glance around and didn't see a collage, didn't see any flowers, didn't see a big pile of papers that said "Funeral Instructions," and Ellen fumbled for the phone before she lost control again.

"Hello?"

Oliver's voice was groggy with sleep, and she wanted to say something reasonable like, Sorry for bothering you this early in the morning, but I really need your help, but she wasn't able to make her voice work, couldn't say anything at all. She managed another choking sound.

"Hello?" he said again, sounding more alert. "Who is this?"

Ellen took a deep breath and got his name out.

"Ellen? Oh my god, what happened?" She could hear movement over the phone, the rustle of bedsheets, footsteps on the floor.

"I can't do this, Oliver," she said, her voice gaining strength. "I can't do this by myself."

"Do what? Ellen, darling, for the love of god, slow down and tell me what's happened."

"You owe me!"

"Yes, fine, I owe you. What happened?"

"Diane's having her baby and the funeral is in four hours or three hours and there's no one to help me and I don't know what to do, Oliver, I can't do this alone and you--"

"Breathe, Ellen, breathe. I'm getting dressed now, and I'll come straight there. You're at your sister's?"

Ellen swallowed the bile in her throat and nodded. "Yes," she said, and gave him the address.

Oliver hung up and Ellen stared at the phone, her cheeks wet and her chest heaving. She hadn't even realized she was crying, and she rubbed at her eyes and tried to stop, went through every piece of hackneyed acting advice she'd ever heard trying to come up with something that would help. None of it did; everything she heard was suddenly in her father's voice, and it was too easy to picture him on the living room sofa telling her to fully commit or she might as well not bother. When she was young, it had been advice, and when she'd told him she was leaving the festival, it became something else entirely, as if New Burbage were the only place in Canada she could be committed to her work.

"Fuck," she said again, and dropped her head into her arms and committed herself to crying. She was still there when the doorbell rang a lifetime later.

"Ellen? Ellen!" She heard Oliver let himself in and run down the hallway, calling her name, and then he was there beside the chair, on his knees, his hands on her shoulders, shaking her. "Ellen, look at me. Focus. It's going to be fine."

She tried, but his face was a blurry mess through her tears, and she shook her head. "No, it's-- I can't, Oliver. I can't! They're going to want me to say something and we were arguing, Oliver, what am I going to say? That nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it?"

"Oh, honestly, it wasn't that bad."

"I know! I know it wasn't. Fuck!" She was crying again, not making sense, even to herself. "Jesus, I hate this."

"Hush," Oliver said, standing up and pulling her with him, into an embrace. "Hush, I know you do, but I promise you, it's going to be all right." She felt his lips, dry and cool, press against her temple. "I'm here, and--"

"Hello?" Someone else was in the house, a voice she knew but didn't quite believe, shouting her name and getting closer to the kitchen.

"In here," Oliver called, and smoothed his hands over her hair. "See? I'm here, and Geoffrey's here, and we're going to get through this."

"Shit," Ellen said, shoving at his chest. "You called Geoffrey? I met him yesterday, Oliver, he can't see me like this!"

But it was too late. Geoffrey was already in the kitchen, his arms sliding around her waist from behind, holding her close. "Yes," he said, his lips moving against her hair. "And the very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly to your service."

"Oh, Jesus," Ellen said.

He bent his head and rubbed his cheek against hers. "And you stole my coat."

Oliver beamed at the both of them, his hands still on her shoulders. "There, see?"

Ellen sniffed and tried to glare at him. She hated that tone of voice. "Don't be patronizing," she said, but Oliver only smiled wider, and Ellen closed her eyes against it. That made her more aware of Geoffrey's presence behind her, warm and comfortable and far more familiar than it should be. "Fuck," she said, but there wasn't any heat to it, and at some point, she'd stopped crying.

She still had that sick sinking feeling of being off-book before she was ready, though, the disorientation of not having any idea what to say or where to go. She obviously needed help, wasn't going to be able to get through the service without them, or at least Oliver, but it was just as obvious that something bigger was going on, that they weren't just talking about a funeral.

She opened her eyes to see that Oliver's smile had faded, and he and Geoffrey were having some kind of silent conversation over her head. When he noticed her watching him, he squeezed her shoulders and kissed her forehead, and then kissed Geoffrey's, too. They stood like that for a while, their heads pressed together in the kitchen, and Ellen started to relax, to think maybe they were right, that whatever the hell this was, it was going to be fine.

"Just trust me, Ellen, please," he said, pulling away, and Ellen wanted to.

Geoffrey, with instincts that would probably terrify her if she let herself think about it too hard, tightened his arms and pulled her closer; Ellen tilted her head back so she could look at him. He looked like someone who'd been up all night, dark circles under his eyes and too much stubble on his cheeks, and she was pretty sure she'd seen birds' nests neater than his hair. "You look like hell," she told him, and his eyes creased and his lips curved and he planted a kiss on her temple.

"Yup," he said, sounding pleased. "And you look beautiful. Are we doing this?"

She didn't have to ask him what this was; his eyes were glittering the same way they had during the balcony scene, in the diner, outside his apartment. Ellen's breath caught in her throat, and she realized she'd given in as soon as she'd set foot on that stage.

"You're both assholes," she said, and they hit her with matching grins. "All right. Yes. Fine. Thank you."

"Welcome home, Ellen," Oliver said, as Geoffrey hugged her tighter and Oliver wrapped his arms around both of them, still smiling. "The three of us are going to be just fine."

-FIN-

FICLET: Common Spirits [Slings & Arrows | Geoffrey, Anna, Richard | G]

atrata — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:08:44 GMT

Title: Common Spirits
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Characters: Geoffrey, Anna, Richard
Rating: G
Summary: "I have hopped," she says, affronted. Geoffrey, Anna & Richard let off a little steam.
Length: 800 words
A/N: Okay! I have been doing pretty much nothing but watching Slings & Arrows for the past, I don't know, two months, and now I have written a rather pointless, fluffy character vignette. I don't know what's wrong with me. There is no angst anywhere! And no UST! Oh god. Anyway, this is for murklins, with thanks to obsession_inc for some hand-holding. ~~Also, shit, I need icons. This one doesn't quite work.~~ Welcome to 2009!

***
Hop. Hop. Hop. His feet thud onto the boards, the noise bouncing and echoing through the theatre. It's pleasing, although his hopping isn't as graceful as he'd like. He's too heavy, his boots too loud. He takes them off, tosses them to the wings. One left, one right. Hop, hop, hop. That's better.

He runs and jumps and slides across the stage, stretching his arms out, his coat flapping behind him in his very own breeze. He likes the wind in his hair.

"Geoffrey?"

He crashes and burns, his feet trying to follow his boots and the whole ordeal landing him flat on his back.

"Hello!" he calls to the ceiling. His eyes are closed, and he laces his fingers behind his head and crosses his feet at the ankles. He can hear Anna getting closer, can feel her footsteps reverberating through the wood beneath his back. She stops, and he can feel her looming over him.

"Everything all right?" She asks. She sounds unconcerned, and he loves her for it.

He opens his eyes and smiles. "Peachy. Do you need something?"

"Yes," she says, with a heavy sigh. "There's a grant proposal--"

"Oh, god," he groans, and closes his eyes again.

"I'm sorry," she says, and actually does sound apologetic, unlike some people he could name. "The deadline is tomorrow, and the application needs a statement from the artistic director."

Geoffrey throws an arm over his eyes. He misses the wind in his hair.

"That would be you," Anna says.

"I was hopping," he tells her, trying to sound mortally offended, and he moves his arm a little, enough that he can peek at her with one eye. She's smiling like she doesn't really want to be, and then she sighs and sits down next to him.

"I saw. I... why were you hopping?"

He gasps dramatically. "Anna." He covers his heart with both hands. "Anna, if you had ever hopped, you wouldn't have to ask." He rolls over on his side, suddenly, and props himself up on one elbow. The look on his face is deadly serious, and he can see she's trying valiantly to match it.

"I have hopped," she says, affronted.

He bounds to his feet and holds out a hand. "No," he insists. "You obviously have not hopped. Come on."

She arches an eyebrow and takes his hand, pulls herself up. "You want me to hop?"

He puts his hands in his coat pockets and bounces on his toes. "Or jump, if you prefer. Leap. Bound, perhaps? Or just..." He finally loses control of his face and grins, wild-edged, and goes sliding to the other side of the stage.

Anna crosses her arms and looks skeptical.

"Come on, Anna! I will not jump with common spirits!" And he flies toward her again, happy in his breeze.

Anna toes off her shoes and hops carefully in place, once, and Geoffrey throws his head back and laughs and hops in a circle, center-stage, until she does it again.

The doors to the theatre slam open. "Geoffrey, what on earth is--"

"Richard! Join us." He spreads his arms and bows. "We are hopping."

"Anna?" Richard is aghast. Or possibly constipated. Geoffrey can never really tell.

"You told me I should have more fun, Richard," she says primly, and then hops a few more times.

"But--" Richard walks down the aisle, sputtering. "But this isn't fun, this is lunacy!"

"Lunacy is so ordinary," Geoffrey complains, and runs downstage, straight at Richard. Richard takes a few steps back, shrinking in his suit, and Geoffrey manages to slide to a halt before he flies off the stage. He flops on his stomach and hangs his arms off the edge. "Richard," he says seriously, "I am getting a feel for the space. I am becoming one with the Rose. I am working. Anna is assisting." He can feel her behind him, still hopping, and he fights the urge to laugh in Richard's face. "What do you want?"

Richard's mouth opens and closes a few times, and then he finally sighs and shakes his head. "Never mind," he mumbles. "Forget it. But I need that statement from you today, before you go... wherever it is you go."

Geoffrey rolls, leaps to his feet, waves a hand dismissively. "Yes, yes. After the hopping, there will be grant proposals."

"Good," Richard says, though he doesn't appear to believe anything Geoffrey says. He turns and starts to leave.

"Richard," Geoffrey calls out. "You really should join us. Balance is important." He spreads his arms and hops backwards, grinning in what he hopes is an inviting manner.

Richard looks at him, at Anna, still hopping downstage right, and at the doors. Geoffrey goes from hopping to jumping, his feet slamming into the boards, the impact jarring his bones.

"All right," Richard says sternly, and Geoffrey nearly falls on his ass from the shock of it. "Ten minutes of hopping."

FIN

FIC: 'What are they going to call you?' 2008 MIT Commencement Address [Iron Man, Tony gen, PG]

atrata — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:59:26 GMT

Title: 'What are they going to call you?'
Fandom: Iron Man
Characters: Tony Stark
Rating: PG
Summary: Commencement Address, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 2008. Speaker: Tony Stark.
Length: ~2,000 words
A/N: So, I am pretty clearly quigonejinn's bitch, because yesterday at like 2 in the morning she said, "Hey, so you know how Tony is supposed to give the MIT commencement address? WHAT DOES HE SAY?" And I said, "Good question. I can write that in, like, 2018." And yet here it is. She wrote one, too, and I haven't read it yet but I am nonetheless confident it's awesome. It's here. (ETA: and here is another one by gabby_silang! /ETA) Anyway, for this one, thanks to quigonejinn and murklins for helping me whip it into something resembling shape. It's in transcript form, and has taught me that I am no Sam Seaborn.

***
Hi there, thanks, good morning. I know the guy there, what is he, the MC? The Master of Ceremonies? I know the Master of Ceremonies just told you I need no introduction, but here's the thing: doesn't everybody need an introduction? Seriously, who am I? Who are you? And who cares? Maybe no one, I don't know. Maybe that's the problem.

Let me back up. Hi. My name is Tony Stark, and I'm... well, I don't know, actually, that's a good question. I've been called a lot of things, like the time-- oh, sorry, is this being filmed? It is, isn't it, it's being filmed? Yeah, okay, so I can't tell you most of the things I've been called. Don't worry, moms, your kids are safe.

But here's one: "The most famous mass murderer in the history of America." Hmm. So maybe they're not so safe.

Because here I am, on this beautiful day, in front of you, a few thousand of the world's greatest up-and-coming minds, on this of all days, and I'm supposed to give you some inspiring speech. Something that's going to set your soul on fire, make you want to leave here and change the world now, today, no partying beforehand. I'm supposed to dig deep, tell you some illustrative stories about myself, maybe hold up some of my better character traits for you to emulate as you tilt at the world's windmills.

Really? Is that what you want? Is that what this is about? Emulating a mass murderer?

Oh, I'm making you uncomfortable. I see you shifting in your seats, looking at each other. Whispering. "What's he talking about? A murderer? I thought he was a genius who slept with a lot of models and took two weeks to single-handedly advance the robotics field by 20 years." Sure, why not. I'm that guy. I'm also the guy responsible for the framed bullet holes in the Du Pont gym because when I was sixteen, I rigged up the weight machines to present a "credible threat" and the campus police came and killed them. I see you guys grinning; you've heard about it? Yeah. So, that's the kind of thing I get called: legend, visionary, genius, inventor, mad scientist.

There. I've even got the mad scientist laugh down pretty well, don't you think? Feeling better? More comfortable? Here are some more: playboy, dilettante, prankster, alcoholic. Arrogant, irresponsible, irreverent.

When I was asked to give this address, that's who I was. Maybe that's what you expected, maybe you thought this speech was going to be full of hilarious anecdotes and inspiring words. Well, that's something else I've been called: a disappointment.

That guy who called me a murderer, though, was he on to something? You tell me. I'd heard it before, of course: war profiteer, merchant of death. You think it made a dent? I've got money, looks, brains. You think I cared what anyone called me? Do you think I ever once asked myself, "Tony, who are you? How do you want to be remembered?" I didn't. And even when this guy said it, I almost shrugged it off. He was a terrorist, pretty high up in an organization called the Ten Rings, maybe you've heard of them? I never had. Why should I? You think Steve Jobs knows the name of everyone who buys a Mac? He doesn't. Why would I know the name of everyone who buys my guns?

Aaaah, there it is. I'm starting to see lightbulbs over your heads. Good. Because this guy, this Ten Rings guy, that's what he was: my loyal customer. Well, maybe "loyal" isn't the best word. Most people who are loyal probably don't ambush their suppliers in the desert, attack convoys full of kids -- kids younger than most of you -- and drag the survivor to a cave. But that's what happened. I woke up with an electromagnet embedded in my chest, run by a car battery, keeping the shrapnel out of my heart. I woke up and they said, "build us a missile," and they took me outside and it was like a Stark Industries warehouse out there. Hundreds of weapons, my name and my fingerprints on every one of them. Missiles, rockets, smartbombs, grenades, rifles, you name it. If it blows up, I've built it, and they had it stockpiled.

They threatened me with guns I'd designed, drew the schematics for myself, over in my cozy California mansion. The shrapnel in my chest -- yeah, it's still there -- is from a Stark Industries rocket, material I signed off on, said, yeah, use that, it'll be very effective.

It's effective, all right.

What would you do? If you were me, honestly, what would you have done? Are you saying to yourself, well, I never would've gotten into that situation in the first place? Really? Because this is not a black-and-white thing. I'm not some hippie standing up here telling you that guns are evil. My father, maybe you've heard of him, Howard Stark? I think there's a building or two on campus named after him. He worked with Oppenheimer, helped give the world the atomic bomb. Don't think I'm unaware. He went on to found this company I run, the one that inspires such loyalty and devotion from its customers. A lot of people consider him a hero.

Sometimes that's what they call me, too: hero, patriot, great American.

My father died in 1991, when I was younger than you guys are now. I never asked him any questions. It never occurred to me. I just liked building things, you know? Oppenheimer said it best, actually, said, "When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do with it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb."

You all know how that feels. You know what it's like to get lost in the wires and the code and the design, and you're just building something cool. And then, when it works, when you're looking at an actual physical model of a thing you've been dreaming about for months, maybe longer, maybe your entire life, it's like your whole chest opens up and you can breathe and you can't wipe the smile off your face for a week.

And then you watch as the cool thing you built kills three kids in five seconds. As the cool thing you built lands in the dirt a few yards away, as it explodes in such a well-designed way that the only hope you have to keep the shrapnel from killing you is to embed a magnet in your chest and cross your fingers. That's a pretty cool thing, huh?

Anyway, I don't know what you would have done, but I told them I wasn't going to build them a missile. They held me underwater until I changed my mind. Then, and not to disparage the intelligence of my hosts in any way, they gave me access to tools and that Stark Industries weapons warehouse I was talking about, and left me to it. Me.

You could see the explosion from space. That was pretty cool.

Well, except for the part where I wasn't the only one in that cave, and the other guy didn't make it out. He was supposed to. I had a plan. He had a plan, too, though, and his was a little different. His involved running headlong into machine-gun fire so I'd have the chance to make it out. His plan worked, and here I am. Lucky you. I don't know... I don't know what to call him, actually. That all along, all that time, he was planning to die, and it was worth it to him, worth giving his life for me and all my labels to make it back here, to make a difference, to stand in front of you today and give this speech and hope you're paying attention.

I usually don't have much trouble getting people to pay attention. When I got home, the first thing I did was hold a press conference, and I said that I wasn't going to make weapons anymore. That was the difference I was choosing to make with the chance I'd been given. I had my reasons. The system wasn't working. Somehow, my customers weren't the people I thought they were. The weapons I'd built with the very honest and earnest intention of keeping Americans safe, those weapons were killing children. American children, Afghani children, other children. There is no accountability, no responsibility, nothing. There is a body count, and it's growing right now, as we sit here in the sun and admire the sky.

Well, people were definitely paying attention to that, and they started saying I had post-traumatic stress. They called me crazy, unstable, unhinged, depressed, suicidal, insane.

Yeah, maybe.

I've said a lot of things here today. I've said I didn't care what people called me, said I never asked my father any questions. That's just the tip of the iceberg, though. The bigger issue is that I never asked myself any questions, never cared what I called me. Who am I? Dilettante, genius, hero, murderer, playboy, lunatic. Do I want any of those labels? I'll take "murderer," actually, because it was the wake-up call I needed. It made me stop, look around, ask myself the hard questions. So, what about you? Do you want any of those labels? How do you see yourself? Who are you? How are you going to be remembered? What is your legacy going to be? Pick something, do it now, build it in the sky up there with the space elevator, and then take your run. See if you can get the world to agree.

And I can stand up here and sell you some bullshit about how to do that, if you want. How all it takes is some platitudes, that the future is what you make of it, it's yours for the taking, yours for the changing, do what you love. Go forth, and build cool things, and everything else will follow.

Except, don't. Don't do that. Don't get so lost in designing a propulsion system that you forget to ask what you're propelling. Don't build bombs before you know what they're going to blow up. Don't build bridges or engines or computer chips or circuit boards or furniture before you think about how it's going to be used. Don't mix up a new medicine, a new genetic hybrid, a new cocktail without asking who's going to drink it. Don't publish an article, an academic paper, a book, don't give a speech to a bunch of impressionable kids, don't do anything without asking some questions.

It's not going to be easy. There aren't always going to be answers to the questions you ask. I sure as hell don't have any. They call me a lot of things, but wise isn't one of them. Answer Guy, also not on the list. Maybe you ask about the propulsion system and you decide it's a worthy cause. Fine. I'll trust your judgment. At least you asked.

And even if you lose sight of that, even if you wake up tomorrow and never ask yourself another question, do something for me today. Ask yourself one question, and think very hard about the answer.

What are they going to call you?

june fic roundup

atrata — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:10:31 GMT

My personal jury is actually still out on the concept of the fic roundup, for weirdo neurotic reasons, but here's the thing. I have never in the history of ever written enough fic over the course of a month to warrant a roundup. So, it's a thing for me, and I might never do it again, but I am doing it now. So, in order:

Follow Your Shame. Tony/Pepper, sort of. R. 1,000 words. No matter how many times they dance, she'll never sleep with Tony Stark. Pretty fucked up, if I do say so myself.

Successful Secrets of the Sexual Kind. Tony/Pepper, NC-17. 2,819 words. Five times they don't have sex, and think about it anyway. I wanted to write porn. Then it got a little heartbreaking.

Turning Your Orbit Around. Ensemble gen, PG-13. 848 words. Five Terribly Inappropriate Gifts Tony Stark Has Given. Utter, utter crack. So much fucking fun to write.

People Who Know My Sins. Tony/Pepper, PG-13. 1,971 words. Dancing is not in her job description, but neither is mopping up blood at 4 in the morning. She does it anyway. UST, hi. I honestly thought I was writing fluff, this time, and then I read it. God, these two.

The Mathematics of Betrayal. Tony/Obadiah, R (actually, probably NC-17 on general principle). 965 words. Fifteen minutes is a very long time. The Tony/Obie noncon on the couch. Not a nice story by any stretch of the imagination, but I actually think it's one of the better things I've written. I'm still too close to it to say, I think, but I maybe like it as much as I like Nine Adulteries.

God, I haven't written like this in ages. I... am about to get weird! I am having so much fun in this fandom right now. I'd forgotten what it was like. I'd forgotten it was even possible. (I remember quite clearly, sitting in the hospital, talking to some shrink, and she asked me if I got any joy out of the things I liked doing, and I stared at her for a long time and then I laughed and said, "I'm sorry, but I can't actually think of anything I enjoy doing." When she asked me what I used to enjoy doing, I couldn't remember. It was just gone.) I was afraid, I think; I was so sick for so long and my depression was such a huge part of me and my writing that I was worried that once I got better, I wouldn't be able to write. I think that kept me from even trying to get better for a long time. Then, once I was better (and this is recent, so so recent for me), I was worried. What if I can't do it. What if the words aren't there. So I didn't try. But, you guys, the words are fucking there, and I'm happy, and I didn't remember what it was to be happy. It's not just fandom, obviously, but I'm happy, is all I'm saying, and also, yay fandom. So much fucking love. I'm a little high on it.

FIC: The Mathematics of Betrayal [Iron Man, Tony/Obadiah, hard R]

atrata — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:26:55 GMT

Title: The Mathematics of Betrayal
Fandom: Iron Man
Pairing: Tony Stark/Obadiah Stane
Rating: hard R
Warnings: Noncon. Not a nice story. I mean it.
Summary: Fifteen minutes is a very long time.
Length: ~1,000 words
Disclaimer: These people belong to Marvel. I am not Marvel.
A/N: This would be the noncon on the couch with the paralyzer thing. Yeah. Someone had to do it, right? Might as well be me. Thanks to the hivemind, for providing real-time peanut gallery services. Also, murklins, just on principle. Also, OMG, crazy-awesome prequelish thing over here, courtesy of quigonejinn and dafnap.

***
Fifteen minutes. Nine hundred seconds.

"Breathe," Obadiah says, and Tony does.

"Easy," Obadiah says, and Tony starts counting.

He gets to 53 seconds, 12 inhalations, 125 beats of his heart, and then Obadiah says "fate" and he twists his hand and Tony's not breathing and his heart is. Is.

Is erratic. His pulse rises and falls with the pitch of Ob--. The pitch of Stane's voice. He makes it to 68 seconds, and then he feels this wrenching separation, feels it in the marrow of his bones, feels himself gasp around the sudden emptiness in his chest. That gaping fucking hole.

The blood trickles down his neck at an estimated rate of four millimeters per second. The sweat at his temples is faster, maybe six. He's so hot and it's so cold and there are 755 seconds left when Stane starts to walk away.

He doesn't, though. He makes it 19 steps and Tony takes four breaths, loses seven more seconds, and then there's nothing. There should be a door opening, closing. Instead, there is silence for four seconds. There are 19 more footsteps. There is a knee on the couch, against Tony's thigh. There is a spasm in his quadriceps that gets him nowhere. There is Stane's hand on his chest and Stane's breath on his face and there are 731 seconds to go.

"Actually," Stane says, all bitter cigars, "we've got some time, and there's something I'm curious about." Two fingers through the hole in Tony's shirt, four strokes over one piece of skin, just above the socket wall. The skin there isn't sensitive, too much scar tissue, but no one's touched Tony like that in days gone uncounted. It makes his skin crawl, eight tendrils of terror skittering around his spine, settling low in his belly, deep in his throat.

Stane shifts to sit on the couch, his arm stretching behind Tony's shoulders, pulling him into something that might have been an embrace three days or six months or 12 years ago but probably never was. One finger this time, just behind his ear, seven strokes up. Four quick exhalations against his other ear. Tony feels himself being jostled around, feels his side pressed closer to Stane's body, and spends two seconds trying to close his eyes. Another three wishing he could.

One button on his jeans, 57 teeth on the zipper, only two seconds gone. One layer of fabric, one palm pressed to the base of his cock, 17 days of adrenalin crashing down around him right now, gathering right there, just under Stane's hand, and Tony keeps counting as the unnumbered seconds he's supposed to have left dwindle into thousands, into hundreds.

No, he thinks, no, thinks it eight times a second, thinks he'll think it every second for the rest of his life, all 689 of them. No, as Stane's palm twists, presses twice and twice again, moves and slides and there are no layers of fabric and two layers of skin and no, Tony thinks, no. One finger and one thumb ringing the base of his cock, three fingers curling around his balls, a zero percent chance of control. He built this thing and he knows that and no he thinks anyway, no and no and no again.

No, with every stroke of Stane's hand, four, eight, sixteen times no. "Stop fighting it, Tony," Stane says, six syllables in his ear, hand moving steadily, slowly, not even one stroke per second, coaxing too much of Tony's blood straight into his cock. Eight more strokes to get hard, 37 seconds to shame, seven sharp intakes of breath. His, he thinks, but maybe Stane's. His heart's beating too fast, up to 246 beats per minute, and Tony's running out of seconds faster than they're going by.

"That's it," Stane says, pausing, taking four of Tony's seconds, taking his hand and putting it inside Tony's shirt, letting it sweat on his skin. "Relax." Then two hands are moving, one on his chest, around the edges of the socket wall; one on his dick, stroking and squeezing and twisting at the tip. One hand speeds up and one hand slows down, and Tony stares to the left and counts counts counts. He loses almost a minute to this, loses 55 seconds to 72 strokes, to 72 repetitions of no.

Stane keeps talking, his breath hot on Tony's ear, and Tony tries not to listen, tries to sit and stare and count. Three seconds and "you'll come" and no, Tony thinks, and then probably. Six more seconds and "you're going to die" and yes, Tony thinks, yes yes yes.

He's got 561 seconds left, 9.35 minutes, still more than half, and he wants them all. He'll come in Stane's hand, he knows, he can feel it; no matter how many times he tells himself no, it's still going to happen. So, yes, he'll come in Stane's hand but no, he won't die in his arms. Not like this. So he gives up some seconds, hands over 24 of them, and lets himself go. He tries to think of other things, of women and whiskey and laughter and smooth silken skin, but he can't close his eyes and Stane's beard scratches his face and the hand on his dick is too big, too rough, and Tony has to hand over two dozen more.

He comes with four jerks of his dick, one catch of his breath, and 503 seconds to go. Stane laughs and Tony counts around his splintered thoughts, around no and please and yes and no yes please why no. Two swipes of his hand on Tony's shirt, six more syllables in his ear -- "That's what I thought, Tony" -- and Stane is moving and standing and leaving, 19 more steps to the door.

FIN

FIC: People Who Know My Sins [Iron Man, Tony/Pepper, PG-13]

atrata — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:39:17 GMT

Title: People Who Know My Sins
Fandom: Iron Man
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dancing is not in her job description, but neither is mopping up blood at 4 in the morning. She does it anyway.
Disclaimer: I am not Marvel. Really.
A/N: Is this fluff? Hmm, no, I guess not. Written to three titles from McSweeney's list of lists. I had them as section headings, but murklins talked me out of it. If you're curious, though, I used one for the title, and the other two were, "other things the road to hell is paved with," and "jobs that have salaries arguably incommensurate with the work they entail." Thanks (as usual) to murklins, and to dafnap and obsession_inc for miscellaneous handholding at various points of the process. Also, I totally swiped murklins' summary, because I cannot write a summary to save my life.

***
"Dance with me."

"Oh, no, I'm--" But he grabs her hand and pulls her close and Pepper goes along with it.

It's fine, really. His hands don't wander and there's a completely appropriate amount of space between them, but there's something in the way he looks at her that Pepper doesn't like. Or likes too much. Or something.

"We should do this more often," he says. "All the time. We'll have a morning dance routine."

"That sounds... awful, actually. Too much like Jazzercise."

"You weren't into Jazzercise? You're killing me, Potts. I've got this great mental image of you in pink legwarmers. You're doing this thing with your--"

"Okay," she says, laughing. "Okay, that's enough."

"Evening dance routine, then." And then his hand does wander, just a quarter-inch, but Pepper feels it all the same.

"You want to dance in the living room?"

"Sure, why not? Jarvis can walk us through new dances. We'll tango. Foxtrot." He does a quick three-step. "Cha-cha-cha."

She leans back in his arms and looks at him, trying to figure out exactly how serious he is. He's smiling, eyes shining, all teasing. Not too serious, then. Good. "You've been watching Dirty Dancing again, haven't you? It's not going to happen."

He pouts dramatically. "Nobody puts Tony in a corner."

The next night, as she's leaving, Jarvis is pumping a D'Arienzo tango through the speakers, and she finds a single red rose on the seat of her car.

***
"Ow! Fuck, Pepper, I don't think my arm is supposed to bend like--OW!"

Tony howls as Pepper yanks the armor off his left arm. He was apparently shot out of the air by a surface-to-air missile, and then a building fell on top of him. Pepper doesn't even have words for this level of terrifying idiocy. The suit is crushed, so shattered she doesn't even need to cut him out of it; the lining underneath is shredded and bloody, adhered to his skin. His ribs are cracked and his shoulder is dislocated and there's blood, so much blood. If he moves too much, he's going to puncture a lung on one of the broken ribs, and as she listens to Jarvis catalog his injuries, Pepper is overcome with the urge to finish the job and kill him herself.

"Be quiet," she says. "Just stop talking."

"But it-- OW! Okay, fuck, okay. Can I at least have a drink?"

"Good idea," she says. "Blood thinners when you're in need of 547 stitches." She prods at his injured shoulder and then, with no warning whatsoever, slams it back into place. He screams, wounded and wrecked, and then throws his head back and laughs maniacally.

"Wow, okay," he says, rolling his shoulder experimentally when the laughter subsides. "That's better. Where'd you pick that up? Are you secretly-- ow!" He yelps as she wipes too much antiseptic over a gash just below his collarbone. "God, never mind, you're clearly not secretly a doctor. I'm pretty sure even secret doctors get training in how not to-- fuck, Pepper, seriously." She has more or less just punched him with the gauze.

"No, I am not a secret doctor," she says, leaning into him. She's basically in his lap, kneeling over him, pressing him into the couch, both hands working to staunch the bleeding. It's overkill. It's hurting his back, putting too much pressure on his bruised spine. "I am not a secret anything. I am your personal assistant, and apparently that means mopping up your blood at 4 in the morning even though you can afford to buy an entire hospital. Now, stop moving. You'll puncture a lung."

"Bet you'd like that," he mutters, not looking at her. "Then you'd be rid of me. Always trying to get rid of me."

"Shut up, Tony." That's as much as she should say, but she's angry and exhausted and her mouth just keeps moving. "If I wanted to get rid of you, believe me, you'd be gone."

"Nah, I could take you," he says, and she leans into his chest until he groans. "Okay, okay, you're a formidable foe, I was totally wrong. I couldn't take you. Please don't kill me." His voice is weak, rough.

"Stop tempting me," she says. He looks at her for a second, his eyes like black holes, red-rimmed with pain and exhaustion, drawing her in. Her breath hitches and then he just melts into the couch, dropping his head back with a sigh. She watches the long line of his throat as he swallows, watches his chest as he tries to breathe, listens to his lungs rattle, stares at the soft but thankfully steady glow of the reactor. He brings his right hand up to rest lightly on the crease of her hip, his thumb brushing the ridge of her pelvic bone, moving in small circles. She realizes she's straddling his thigh and looks up, a little startled, but his eyes are closed, eyelashes unmoving against his grime-streaked face.

She is suddenly and shockingly overwhelmed by his smell, sweat and blood and fire curling through her lungs, and her breathing abruptly shallows to match his. She shakes her head a little, trying to clear it, trying to focus on something other than the sheer force and physicality of his presence.

"You're angrier every time I come back," he says.

"You're more hurt every time you come back," she tells him, and eases up on his chest. The blood's soaked through the gauze pad, and she grabs another, tapes it down, starts peeling strips of spandex from his skin. He desperately needs a shower, needs to clear out the dirt and shrapnel and sweat so she can see where the blood is coming from. There are lines, though, and showering with Tony is definitely on the other side of one of them. So she grabs a clean cloth, dunks it in the tub of warm water on the floor, and starts washing him off.

Pepper doesn't work well with silence; she's not used to it. She's used to Tony's chatter or his too-loud music or CNN. She's used to being the eye of the storm that is Tony Stark's life, and in moments like this, when the storm has passed and all she can see is the unending, grueling aftermath, she doesn't like it. It feels like her skin is on backwards. Here, now, it's just the soft slosh of the water and Tony's quiet gasps of pain, and she can feel the tension building between her shoulderblades. Her touch grows less gentle, and finally he says, "It's not like I'm trying, you know. I don't do it on purpose."

She feels her lips thin. "You don't not try, either. You're reckless, Tony." His chest is mostly clean, now, and she's got gauze in one hand and Dermabond in the other, and when did this become her life? His thumb hasn't stopped moving, presses into the hollow of her hipbone.

"I'm not."

"Why isn't there stealth shielding on the suit?" She glues shut a small cut on his left pectoral, and then another below the arc reactor, a little to the right.

"Why are you wearing my clothes?" His thumb crawls under the too-large t-shirt, finds skin, sends heat up her spine. "I know my sweats are comfy, but--"

"Don't distract me," she says, and regrets it immediately. He opens one eye and lifts his head just a little, just enough to make the tendons in his neck stand out.

"I'm distracting?"

"You're changing the subject," she says. "If you'd added stealth capabilities to the suit last time I asked you about it, you wouldn't have been hit by a missile. A missile. God, Tony."

"And then you wouldn't be in my lap. Seems like a fair trade to me."

"Don't. Don't do this. It's not funny."

"I'm not laughing," he says, and he's not, and this is bad. This is very, very bad.

Time passes, maybe, and then Pepper gives in and slowly lowers her head until her forehead meets his collarbone. She breathes in the scent of him, of antiseptic ointment and sweat and burnt metal and blood. Inhales once, twice. His hand tightens on her hip. She inhales again. Straightens. "Put your head back down," she says, and he does, and she returns to the work of putting him back together.

***
"You moved in, didn't you? You're living in my house."

Pepper looks at Tony over the rim of her coffee cup, takes in the state of his hair and the stains on his t-shirt and the shade of the bags under his eyes, estimates he hasn't slept in 36 hours. "Two weeks ago," she says. "Some genius you are."

He grabs one of the chairs, spins it around, and straddles it. "Jarvis, you are a traitor. You're supposed to tell me when people move into my house."

"Must have been a programming glitch, sir," Jarvis says. "I'll be sure to inform you next time."

Pepper smirks into her coffee cup, but when she looks at Tony, he's not smiling. He's just staring, arms crossed over the back of the chair. Pepper's throat feels suddenly thick, but she just raises her eyebrows and waits for Tony to say something else. He doesn't. He keeps staring, and then eventually gets up and pours Frangelico into his coffee. He turns, leans against the counter, stares some more.

"Wow," Pepper says, nervous. "You're quiet. I should have moved in a long time ago. I would have, if I'd--"

"I don't need a babysitter," he says, his voice hard.

Pepper disagrees, but has the sense not to do it out loud. He's angry, and he's tired, and he's probably drunk at 8 in the morning. "No." She is careful to keep her voice calm and level, and the fact that she has to do it makes her a little angry, too. "Nor do you need media reports about your PA making 4 a.m. house calls. Nor do you need to wait for me to get here when you do need a 4 a.m. house call."

He takes a sip of his coffee. "It was fine before," he says, and Pepper loses it. She puts her cup down, hard; coffee sloshes over the sides.

"It was fine for you," she snaps. "It was not fine for me, getting texts from Jarvis while I was in your meetings, trying to run your company, while you were flying around getting shot by missiles and rushing back here to wait and worry and wonder if you were even coming back and I never had clothes and I didn't know and I couldn't keep doing it, Tony, I'm sorry, I couldn't."

She stops talking and looks away from him, stares at the table, her chest heaving, blood roaring through her ears. She refuses to cry. She is dimly aware of movement, and then he's next to her chair, crouching, trying to catch her eye. She takes a deep breath, but she's pretty sure she can't look at him yet. She watches his hand move, reach out, pull back without touching her.

"Hey," he says softly, leaning a little further, forcing himself into her space and into her field of vision. "Pepper, come on, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Because you didn't think," she says quietly.

"You're right, but I'll start. I'm a genius, remember? I know how to think."

She shakes her head. She knows how this goes. His resolve will last for three hours and 37 minutes.

"Don't be mad, Pepper, please."

"I'm not mad." It's more complicated than that, but she doesn't even have words to explain to herself, let alone to him.

"Okay. Good." His tone is decisive, and he stands up. "Dance with me," he says, holding out a hand.

Pepper takes it, and holds on tight.

Fin.

FIC: Turning Your Orbit Around [Iron Man ensemble, PG]

atrata — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:12:08 GMT

Um, okay! So. For Porn Thursday, I apparently wrote this piece of Obie/Tony wrongness, totally out of turn. In theory, there is a cracked-out high school AU, but so far it's just full of Obadiah's skeeze. I have subsequently renamed my journal for the first time ever. It is now called, "OVERCOME BY OBADIAH'S COCK." Subtitle: "your father is a sorry cocksucker."

Anyway, I asked for prompts, and here is the first of them, for takhys. I am, needless to say, not going in order.

Title: Turning Your Orbit Around
Fandom: Iron Man
Characters: Tony, Pepper, Rhodey, Obadiah, Happy, Jarvis (gen, omg.)
Rating: PG (?)
Warnings: Crack. ~~Seriously, I think this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever written.~~ It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever written, until I stayed up all night writing comment fic about SecretNudist!Obie. Yeah, I don't know. Read the comments for more! Or don't, actually; that will be better for everyone.
Summary: Five terribly inappropriate gifts Tony Stark has given.
Disclaimer: Not mine, etc.
A/N: Unbeta'd crack, I don't even know. You guys. Seriously, I mean it: crack. Thanks to takhys for the prompt. I think she wanted gifts that were completely inappropriate but kind of thoughtful, but I totally fell down on the thoughtful part. These are pretty much just inappropriate. Anyway, I am pretty sure all of the ideas in this fic belong to other people (in order): takhys, murklins, dafnap, obsession_inc, and more dafnap. Also, thanks to inediblebuddha for the WoW beta. Yes, you read that correctly. Oh, god. What have I become.

***
one.
"I made it myself," Tony says, and Pepper feels terror clutch at her heart. Nothing good has ever come of that sentence. She offers him a wan smile and gingerly accepts the gift.

"Thank you," she says, and then she tries to open it, but Tony's idea of "wrapping" apparently consists of a shoebox entirely covered in duct tape. They have to go down to the shop and get a knife.

She puts it on a table, cuts the top off, and stares. There is no other possible reaction. She is pretty sure her mouth is hanging open.

Tony comes to stand next to her, and they both look down at the open box. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"Um." Pepper swallows. "Wow. Tony. Is this. Is this a--" She feels the blush stain her skin, and she can't actually finish the sentence.

"It's a vibrator, Potts. Don't tell me you haven't seen one before."

The thing in the box looks nothing like any vibrator Pepper has ever seen. "Wow," she says again. "Is it. Is it glowing?"

"Yeah," he says, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "It's got an arc reactor in the base so it doesn't need batteries, and there are 37 different vibration patterns and frequencies." He points. "That's sound dampening, so it's totally silent. And the, uh, that part there rotates. Variable speed, of course."

"Of course." Pepper repeats numbly, still staring. "If there aren't any batteries, what's that for?" She points to something that looks like it should be a battery compartment.

"Oh, that's the fluid reservoir."

"The fluid reservoir."

"It squirts!"

"Oh my god."

two.
"I made you a mix tape."

"A mix tape? What, is it 1992?"

"Settle down, Popsicle, jeez. I made you a mix CD. Happy now?"

"Not really, no. Do I even want to know what's on it?"

"I think you do."

"I'm pretty sure I don't."

"Come on, I'm trying to do you a favor, here. It has--"

"A favor?"

"--not escaped my notice that you could use a little help with the ladies."

"You are unbelievable."

"Just trust me, okay, Pumpkin Shell? I have some experience in this area. Come on, pop it in."

"All right, all right, it's in. This-- Tony."

"Yes?"

"Is this. Tell me this is not a CD of you having sex with some chick."

three.
Obadiah is not the sort of man who wears flannel pajamas. Or any pajamas, for that matter. Tony knows this, and yet every year for Christmas: pajamas. It never fails.

He holds up this year's pair, a fairly sedate plaid, hunter green and navy blue shot through with black. He inspects them carefully, but they don't have COME AND GET IT stitched across the ass like the ones Tony got for him last year. They appear to be perfectly normal pajamas.

What the hell, Obadiah thinks. This is going to be his last pair. He puts them on.

He takes them off a few hours later, when he realizes they are programmed to play "Let's Get It On" when he unbuttons the fly.

four.
Happy's doorbell rings as he's in the middle of dinner, which is weird; he's not expecting company. He carries his slice of pizza to the door, opens it, and almost drops the plate. There's a blonde standing there in white knee-high patent leather boots, with heels higher than anything he's seen Pepper wear; white fishnets; and a very small red and white striped dress. It has crosses on the pockets, and she's wearing a little red hat.

"Um," he says. "Can I help you?"

She smiles, licks her lips. "Happy Hogan?"

He nods. "That's me."

"Strippergram, courtesy of Tony Stark."

five.
"Jarvis, I need to do some repairs."

"It'll just be a few minutes, sir."

"What do you mean, it'll be a few minutes? You got better things to do?"

"I am otherwise occupied at the moment."

"Otherwise occupied. By what?"

"The Black Temple, sir."

"The Black... oh, no. Jarvis, are you playing that game again?"

"You did purchase me a subscription, sir. I have almost defeated Illidon the Betrayer."

"So?"

"I am hopeful that this time, he will drop the Bulwark of Azzinoth."

"Wow. That sounds impressive. Okay. Show me."

"I don't think--"

"Jarvis."

"Of course, sir."

"Is that... is that you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why do you look like Pepper?"

"This avatar has been specifically designed to maximize the gold I get when I dance in front of the auction house."

"Riiight. And... youch, that looks like it hurt."

"I'll be fine, though I thank you for your concern. I am a level-70 warrior with the majority of my talent points allocated to the protection tree."

"Okay, I'm man enough to admit it. I have no idea what that means. Sounds noble, though."

"It means I can take the hit, sir. I am a warrior."

"If you're a warrior, why aren't you wearing any pants?"

"I don't mean to be rude, sir, but can this wait? I rather need to concentrate."

"Jesus christ. Yeah, okay, I'll be on the couch. Drinking."

FIN

FIC: Successful Secrets of the Sexual Kind (Tony/Pepper, NC-17)

atrata — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:36:58 GMT

Title: Successful Secrets of the Sexual Kind
Fandom: Iron Man
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Five times they don't have sex, and think about it anyway.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not real, no money, no harm, etc.
A/N: OMG, the tenses on this thing practically KILLED ME. Argh. One day, I swear to god, I will have a pairing for which I do not have to resort to weird shenanigans to get them into bed. But not today! Title from Billy Bragg's 'The Busy Girl Buys Beauty.' Also, I am a sap.
Credits: I have become someone who needs a small army to keep me sane and on track while writing. Thanks to obsession_inc for early and late handholding, for channeling the porn force to come up with 2/5 of the scenarios, and for helping me make the end not totally suck; thanks to murklins for doing the beta despite her hatred, and also for putting up with me as I turned into a fucking raving lunatic and TEXTED HER ON HER WALK HOME about my story because, you know, I could not wait the ten damn minutes; and thanks to snubkin for the shoe beta. Seriously, I think I wrote four words about shoes in this story, and they were WRONG. If anything else is wrong, it is emphatically my own fault.

***
one.
He doesn't fuck her in the limo after the fundraiser.

He doesn't even know what fundraiser it is this time, puppies with cancer or something, but he's too drunk to care. He's sick of this, of fundraisers and benefits and openings and premieres and parties, except for the parts of them where Pepper wears gowns that leave very little up to his very good imagination.

So they slide into the limo at some socially acceptable time that Pepper is aware of -- he's aware of all he needs to be, which is her hand on his elbow and her voice in his ear -- and he pours another drink and slouches in the seat and says, "Trying to get me alone?"

Her thumbs are flying over her Blackberry, and she doesn't look up when she says, "Desperately."

He spreads his arms wide, smiles slowly, and says, "Do your worst."

What's supposed to happen is this:
She puts down her Blackberry with a smile that matches his own, slow and sultry and with a kind of alarming amount of teeth, and she slides off her seat and onto his lap. She doesn't hesitate, and there's no worrying about what people will think or if he'll have to fire her in the morning; there's only lips and tongues and his hands on her back and her teeth on his earlobe. He scrapes his five o'clock shadow against her neck and her gasp is hot in his ear.

He has to stop himself from tearing the gown off her body, and instead he shoves it up to her waist and lets it pool around their legs. She fists her hands in his lapels and hauls him closer, kisses him harder, and then she pushes him back, shoves the jacket off his shoulders, yanks on his tie, rips at his buttons to get at his skin.

His laugh is soft, low in his throat, and he slides a hand up her leg, around and between her thighs. Her hips jerk forward, just a little, just enough, and he leans forward to lick at the ridge of her collarbone. She drops her head back to let him and he leans a little more, arching her over and back, her hair hanging free, and he pauses to stare at the long line of her neck because nothing is ever going to be this hot again.

After a few seconds of this, of watching her skin heat up as his fingers skim higher up her thighs, she gets impatient and he gets impatient and he moves, slides her off his lap and back to her own seat, slides to his knees and spreads her legs, and he licks at her cunt through the wet silk of her thong. Her hands fist in his hair, too hard, and she breathes his name like it's the only word she knows.

He does this for hours.

At least, it seems like he does it for hours; he loses track of time, kneeling on the floor with two fingers inside her and his tongue on her clit as she spasms around him again and again, boneless and helpless and falling apart.

What actually happens is this:
She arches an eyebrow and informs him that 'her worst' involves scheduling him for an entire day of meetings and then forcing him to go to every single one of them, so he should just be quiet and let her do her job.

He takes a sip of that drink.

two.
She doesn't jerk him off in the restaurant.

She thinks about it, because they're having dinner with a group of senators from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Armed Services Committee, and Tony is being more obnoxious than usual. So obnoxious, in fact, that Pepper is afraid he's going to tank the pilot program before it even gets off the ground, before they can sign the contracts to deliver arc reactors to the national laboratories.

They're in an overpriced steakhouse in Washington, one that borders on the obscene, all dark-paneled walls and navy blue booths, very old-boys-club, in a semi-private room at the back. Pepper does not reach over and rest her hand on Tony's thigh, lightly, just enough so that he feels it and reins in the story about the time he got laid in an F-22 doing maneuvers over the Med.

And because she hasn't touched him, he doesn't glance at her, doesn't swallow, doesn't smirk and keep telling his ridiculous story, and she doesn't take it as a challenge. She doesn't slide her hand up farther, under the napkin draped over his lap. She does not press her palm against his cock, feel it harden inside his pants, listen for the telltale hitch in his breath.

Instead, she bides her time, waits for everyone else to be laughing loudly at something inane, and she says under her breath, "Tony, a little help would be nice."

And because she doesn't have her hand on his cock, he doesn't realize what this means. He doesn't drain his drink and look around, his teeth sinking into his lower lip as he tries not to give anything away. She doesn't squeeze and twist her hand one more time, urging him on; can't read the "fuck it" in the way his lips twist slightly; doesn't move her hand as he reaches under the table and unzips.

She very definitely does not reach down and cup his balls, roll them in her palm, all the while explaining the cost/benefits analysis she put together and the money the government would save by putting an arc reactor at Fermilab alone. She doesn't notice the way Tony shifts a little bit closer, spreads his legs a little wider, and finally, finally, stops talking.

Once he does that -- not that he does, because this is not happening -- it's a point of pride to keep going, to keep talking as she strokes him steadily, squeezing a bit at the tip, his cock hard and silken in her hand. She doesn't need to keep one eye on him, watch his jaw clench and his eyes cloud over, watch his knuckles go white around his glass, listen for the catch in his voice as he asks the waiter for another scotch, no, make it two, what the hell, save yourself a trip.

When he comes, because he doesn't, she doesn't watch his eyes close briefly, throat working, jaw clenching, shoulders tightening. She doesn't listen to him laugh, too loudly, covering for the noise he doesn't quite manage to stifle, and there is no moment of quiet triumph in which she's satisfied that she managed to shut him up long enough to seal the deal. She doesn't smirk as she very deliberately licks her hand, complimenting the crème brûlée and listening for his breathy whimper, daring anyone at the table to say a word.

No one does. Instead, Tony keeps on with his story, and she kicks him, hard, under the table. He pauses to grin at her, and she pairs her blandest smile with her most murderous eyes and says, "I'm so sorry. You were saying?"

He blinks. The smile that comes over his face both terrifies and reassures Pepper, because it means he's about to say something absolutely ridiculous, and that it's probably going to work. She's not wrong: "Sorry, I was saying that I think getting laid on the F-22 was not the best sexual experience of my life because I like things that go fast, and the Raptors only go to, what, Mach 2? Because they don't have variable intake ramps, which they're missing because Lockheed had to cut corners and keep the prices down, which they wouldn't have to do if they weren't wasting so much energy by not having arc reactors in their factories. That may be fine for Lockheed, but you represent the U.S. government. Stop cutting corners, gentlemen."

They do.

three.
He doesn't fuck her on the balcony of their suite at the Plaza, overlooking Fifth Avenue, while they're on break from a full day of board meetings.

He comes out of the bathroom, feeling better -- or at least more awake -- after splashing cold water on his face. If he actually wants to feel better, he needs a drink, but he's pretty sure Pepper will kill him with her eyes if he starts drinking at two in the afternoon with five more hours of meetings to go.

"Pepper?" He frowns when he sees she's not in the suite; she didn't say anything about going anywhere, but then he notices a slight breeze wafting through the curtains. He walks over, moves them out of the way, and stops dead in his tracks.

She's outside, leaning over the railing, not talking on the phone or working on her Blackberry. No, she's just enjoying the moment, watching the city, the sunlight setting her hair ablaze. She hasn't noticed him yet, so he's completely free to let his eyes wander, starting with the pair of strappy silver four-inch heels that he doesn't understand but can't complain about, not when they lengthen and shape her legs like that. His gaze travels up the legs in question, and up and up and up that smooth expanse of skin. Her suit is navy blue, perfectly businesslike, totally professional, but right now the railing's got her skirt rucked up her thighs and it's stretching across her ass, and his mouth goes more than a little dry.

He's probably not supposed to fantasize about her. He doesn't care.

So he thinks about what she would do if he were to come up behind her, put one hand on the small of her back and another on her hip, and just hold on. She'd try to straighten, maybe, or she'd tense her whole body and wait for him to do something else, up the ante in this game they're always playing. Or she wouldn't do anything, wouldn't tense, wouldn't stand, would just turn her head a little, a smile flitting across her face, and say something deceptively innocent like, "Ready for another round?"

She could mean another round with the board or another round of drinks, but he's going to take it the way he wants to take it and say, "With you, Potts, always," and he's going to lean in close just to see if she'll let him.

It's his fantasy, so she's totally going to let him. He'll run one hand up her back and she'll round into it. He'll slide the other hand around to her ass and she'll push back, sighing quietly as his hand moves lower, as his fingers play at the hem of her skirt. He'll lean over and then pull her back and up, wrapping an arm across her waist and burying his nose in the hair at the nape of her neck.

Neither one of them will say anything as she reaches up and wraps an arm around his neck, as she lets her head fall back against his shoulder, as he sucks at a spot just under her jaw. She'll push and he'll pull, trying to get closer, nestling his dick against her ass. The heels, he is pretty sure, put her at the perfect height for this, for reaching underneath her skirt and hiking it up out of the way.

He'll need to pull back, need to unzip his pants and unbutton his jacket, wrap it around them both in case the people in the suite next door come outside, in case the people in the building across the street look out the window.

He'll push her underwear to the side, skim his fingers along her slit and dip one inside, just to see how wet she is -- she'll be wet and ready and waiting -- and then he'll be pushing into her, bracing them both against the railing, panting against her ear as he--

"Tony?"

"What? Huh?" He shoves off the doorjamb, caught.

She peers at him suspiciously, frowning. "What's wrong? It's time to go back."

"Nothing. Nothing's wrong. Why do you always think something's wrong?"

"You weren't drinking in the bathroom, were you?" She moves a little closer, sniffs at the air.

"You wound me, Potts," he says, both hands over his heart.

"I will," she says. "Let's go." She starts for the door.

"Hey, Pepper? Nice skirt."

four.
She doesn't fuck him when he comes home after his latest insane mission, battered and bruised, his suit in pieces.

She doesn't say anything, either, just presses her lips into a thin line as she grabs the first-aid kit from the cabinet in the kitchenette. Jarvis and the rest of the robots get him out of as much of the suit as possible, and then it's up to Pepper to pull the pieces out of his skin, to staunch the bleeding and patch him up as best she can.

He sits carefully on the couch, still and pale, and his eyes are empty, staring right through her as she smears the antiseptic cream on a gash over his left eye. She doesn't want to know doesn't want to know really just does not want to know, but she asks anyway, "What happened?"

His voice breaks as he says, "Land mine. Africa. I couldn't."

She should push him more, probably, but she's not his therapist (not that he has one, though if anyone she has ever met is in need of a therapist, it's Tony), and so she doesn't.

It'd be the easiest thing in the world to lean in and kiss him, to tug him close and let him lose himself in her, show him that she doesn't care what happened over there, how many people he saved or didn't. He's Tony, and that's more than enough, and she puts a hand over his reactor and tries to say it without saying it, without losing herself the way she knows would happen.

He looks at her, finally focusing, and the pain in his eyes almost breaks her, almost makes her do it. She cups his cheek for a few seconds, lets herself imagine what it'd be like: harsh and hard and mindless on the floor, animals in their sweat and grime and blood, the edges of his reactor digging into her breastbone, the whole thing too bright and too sloppy and over far too quickly.

It wouldn't help. She moves on.

five.
He doesn't fuck her in the bed, on the couch, over his desk, or against the windows in the living room. He doesn't go to sleep next to her or wake up with her body draped over his, one leg between his and her hair in his mouth. He can't bury himself inside her when the nightmares wake him up, can't talk her into blowing off a day of work and spending it in bed with him instead, can't kiss her goodbye when he's flying to some presentation and she's not coming with him, can't let her know quite how serious he is when he calls her, bored, and says he misses her.

But he can say, "Morning, sunshine," at six a.m., when he wanders into the kitchen and she's there, making coffee, setting out breakfast. "What's cookin'?"

"You know I don't cook," she says. "I brought bagels and fruit."

"Mmm," he says, and he can't kiss her good morning, so he reaches around her for two bagels. "Hand me the bread knife?"

She does, her fingers nearly brushing over his. He takes it without comment and slices their bagels, scoots behind her and throws it all in the toaster. "Jarvis, you're in charge."

"I'm honored, sir."

"Just don't burn my bagel. You can burn Pepper's, though, she likes it when they're crispy."

She sticks her tongue out at him and he can't lean in to capture it with his mouth, can't pull her close and stand with his arms around her, waiting for their bagels. He digs silverware out of the drawer while Pepper grabs plates and mugs, and the toaster dings at the same time the coffee finishes. She pours it for them and he grabs the bagels, and the easy routine makes him wonder if life would be different if he didn't pay her to take care of him. If she'd do it anyway.

"Hey," he says, sitting down. "If--"

She sits down next to him, stirs sugar into her coffee, and raises her eyebrows. He loses his nerve. "Hey, how much do I pay you? Enough?"

She sets her coffee down and reaches for the fruit. "Enough for what?" she finally asks, chewing thoughtfully on a grape.

He shrugs and takes a sip of coffee. "Give yourself a raise."

"No," she says, tilting her head a little, smiling in the sunlight. "No, it's more than enough."

FIN

iron man ficlet... thing

atrata — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:06:01 GMT

I don't know. I needed a break from work, and a friend said, "What if Tony wants Pepper to try on the suit?" and I meant to write some porn but instead I took half an hour and wrote this. It's about 500 words of unbetaed cracktastic fluffy proto-fic that may or may not go somewhere porntastic at a later date. God only knows anymore. I am not in control of this Iron Man thing.

***
"Pepper, I need you for a few minutes."

"Be right there," she says. She quickly finishes e-mailing the MIT alumni committee and heads down to the shop. Tony's sitting on the floor, surrounded by pieces of his suit and what appear to be fabric samples. He is... sewing? She can't tell, but that doesn't seem right. "You called?"

She turns down the Black Sabbath just in time to hear him say, "Yeah. I need you to take off your pants."

It's not often that he renders her speechless, but that does it. It's not the phrase, exactly -- she is pretty sure he's told her to take her pants off on several occasions -- but the way he says it: casually, without looking at her, and in the same tone he uses to ask her to order a pizza.

"I'm not wearing pants."

"Your skirt, then," he says, still entirely focused on whatever he's doing. "Off."

"Tony."

"Pepper, I don't have all day! I need your help."

"And this help requires me to be without pants."

The frustration in her tone must have gotten through to him, because he finally stops fiddling and looks up at her. He blinks, and for a second he seems impossibly young, sitting there cross-legged on the floor, covered in grease, surrounded by toys. Then he ruins it with a slow, too-knowing grin. "I always require you to be without pants, Pepper."

"I'm leaving now." She turns to go.

"No! No, seriously, sorry. Look, the suit needs new lining and I can't wear it and also work on it, so you have to wear it. And yes, that requires you to be without pants. And your shirt, but I was going to wait until you had your pants off to tell you that."

He looks apologetic, but only a little.

"Don't you have robots for this sort of thing? Get Butterfingers to take off his pants."

"Butterfingers doesn't have skin, and I'm trying to test skin stuff."

"Skin stuff." She crosses her arms. That probably means he's going to set the fabric on fire and see if it hurts.

"Okay," he says, rolling his eyes and brandishing one of the samples at her. "I'm testing the moisture wicking and the carbon polymer--"

"You want me to take my skirt off so you can test the moisture wicking of your suit liner? First of all, my legs are not sweating--"

"There's a hose right--"

"And you still haven't given me a compelling reason--"

"Pepper." He puts down the fabric sample and stands up. "Stop talking. I was kidding about the hose. I've already tested the moisture wicking, okay? I don't need to test the inside of the fabric. I need to test the outside and how it reacts with the next layer of lining, and yes, that requires an actual human being with an actual body temperature."

He takes a step closer, and she can see the grin hovering on the edges of his eyes. He sounds mostly sincere when he says, "I promise I am not just trying to get you naked. That would involve, I don't know, better music."

"All right, all right," she says, rolling her eyes. "Don't hurt yourself rationalizing." She reaches for the zipper.

FIC: Follow Your Shame [Iron Man | Tony/Pepper, sort of | R]

atrata — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:45:58 GMT

Title: Follow Your Shame
Fandom: Iron Man (movieverse)
Pairing: Tony/Pepper, sort of
Rating: R
Warnings: ummm... a strange sort of voyeurism, I guess? And fuckedupitude.
Summary: No matter how many times they dance, she'll never sleep with Tony Stark.
A/N: The working title of this story was "An Office Romance." The hilarity of this will be apparent later. Thanks to murklins for beta duty and hand-holding. Um... yeah. New fandom! Just what I needed.

***
one.
She smells like Tony. It's not surprising, really, but Pepper's never had reason to notice before. Now, though, there's a sobbing girl in her arms and Pepper is trying to be comforting, sort of. Most of Tony's women get what they deserve (or they get what they want; Pepper's not innocent enough to believe none of them are using him), and Pepper doesn't even blink when she kicks them out of Tony's house, Tony's room, Tony's bed.

This one, though, is a little on the young side, a lot on the naive side, and Pepper opens her arms and rolls her eyes and says, "Look, he's just a jerk. Don't let him get to you." She even mostly means it. The girl cries harder.

When she kisses Pepper, giant alarm bells go off -- ISSUES ISSUES ISSUES, they scream -- and Pepper means to pull away gently and send the girl on her way. But she tastes like whiskey and sex and Tony, and Pepper licks it all out of her mouth.

two.
Pepper has never thought of herself as an idiot, but she seems to be proving herself wrong. She doesn't know what she's doing, why she's doing it, or even how it keeps happening; she just knows that it does. She never pushes them, never makes the first move, but somehow it gets easier, goes farther, and eventually she's fucking them in a bed still damp with Tony's sweat.

Jarvis never says anything.

three.
There are some things Pepper knows. Actually, there are a lot of things Pepper knows, and one of them is that no matter how many times they dance, she will never sleep with Tony Stark. Tony has relationships with robots, not women, and maybe Pepper is frighteningly efficient with her Blackberry, but she deserves more.

Still.

Sometimes Pepper wants it. She can ignore it and deny it and hide it, but she never manages to kill it. She hates herself for this, a little -- not for wanting to get laid, but for thinking Tony would be different with her -- but it doesn't seem to matter.

Other things Pepper knows include the way he sounds in bed; she's walked in on him enough times by now that she can recognize it all: the way he sighs when the foreplay's over and he finally slides into a woman's body, the way his voice changes when he's close to coming, the hoarse moan when he finally gets what he wants. The bodies change, but those noises never do.

And maybe she can't sleep with him, but she can play those noises in her head and look at those bodies for herself, can trace the route his fingers took, can bite the skin he's bitten, can mix her sweat with his. She can fist her hands in hair he's pulled, can lick his come from between wet thighs.

She can hear him and smell him and taste him and feel him and really, what else is there?

four.
Here is another thing Pepper knows: she is very, very screwed up.

five.
She's pretty sure Tony knows something is going on. He calls her earlier in the mornings to clean up his room, and when they pass in the hallway (that part's new, too), she can feel his eyes on her back as she tugs on the bedroom door. She's wet before it gets a chance to close.

'Pretty sure' changes to 'entirely sure' when he comes up behind her one morning as she's making coffee. He stands too close, puts a hand on either side of her hips, and traps her against the counter. She can feel his heat behind her, and her heart only pounds like this when he staggers home with the suit in pieces. He bends his head to her neck and she closes her eyes, and he smells like Tony and so does she, and they stand there, just breathing, until the coffee's ready. It is the slowest pot of coffee Pepper has ever made.

The coffee finishes, and before Tony moves away, he leans in closer. His voice is low and a little rough when he says, "How'd it go?" and Pepper just wonders how long he's known.

six.
There are cameras in his bedroom, and Pepper stops turning them off when the women start looking like her. It's gradual but noticeable; they're taller, paler, all long legs and red hair and light freckles. Pepper would wonder where on earth he finds them all, but she doesn't much care. She's more concerned with what he's trying to tell her.

Normally, she's good at this; her job depends on being able to read him and anticipate him, and she's very good at her job. Unfortunately, she left "normal" three states back and is more than a little lost.

Her one consolation is that it's obvious Tony's lost, too. The fact that she even thinks of it as "consolation" tells her something, makes her feel like an awful human being. He drinks too much and tries to kill himself in that suit, and she's sleeping with his women while he watches from the shop, and the best thing would be for her to quit.

She doesn't.

seven.
It turns out, she doesn't have to. Tony does it for her. He just stops bringing home women one day, and Pepper isn't actually sure how she feels about that. It wasn't a good routine, obviously, but it was a routine, and Pepper likes routines.

She finds him one morning passed out in the shop, on a cot he got from God knows where, still in his jeans and greasy t-shirt. She watches him for a few minutes, sets his coffee on the floor by his phone, and turns to go.

"Pepper." His voice is sleep-roughened and exhausted, and something about it makes her stomach clench. She stops in her tracks and doesn't turn around.

"Pepper," he says again. "There isn't anyone else."

FIN.

insta-rec

atrata — Mon, 26 May 2008 22:46:09 GMT

Holy shit, I read a Snape/Harry story. I was going to write a really long post about why I did it, and how it came to pass, but no one cares. Not even me!

The point here is, if you like my Snape/Harry stories, you will like this one over here, I am pretty sure. It's 'When the Rose and the Fire Are One' by perverse_idyll and it's like 80,000 words long, and it's all things I feel Snape/Harry should be: namely, it's ugly and hard and tense and snarky and complicated and obsessive and fucked-up and hot. So, yeah. If you have not read it already, set aside an afternoon, and do it. Then talk her into writing moar, because this is her first fic, and no one wants it to be her last.

That is all. Now back to your not-so-regularly scheduled... other stuff.

DWP FIC: There is a Light, Andy/Miranda, PG-13

atrata — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:35:15 GMT

Title: There is a Light
Fandom: Devil Wears Prada
Pairing: Andy/Miranda
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Pure crack. Also, zombies.
Summary: The fact is that Andy and Miranda are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and Miranda is standing there in a gray Bill Blass suit with a shotgun and she wants to talk to Patrick.
Length: ~2,000 words
Notes: Yeah, I don't know, either. Blame somniesperus for this, or at least her list of prompts, which doesn't actually say anything at all about zombie apocalypse fic. Oops? Thanks to murklins for doing beta duty.

***
"Andrea." Miranda's voice is its usual calm sharp self, and thank god, because Andy's falling apart. But she can say, yes, Miranda, and mean it and pretend everything is totally, completely normal.

So she does: "Yes, Miranda?"

"There is a shotgun in my wall-safe."

Andy blinks. This is insane, she thinks. This is insane, or it's a dream, or it's an insane dream, and any second now I am going to wake up and go to my normal journalism job at my normal newspaper and none--

"Andrea!" Miranda snaps, jolting Andy out of her reverie. "Did you lose your hearing in the six months since I saw you last?"

"No, Miranda. Of course not."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"Um." Normal. I am waiting for normal. "The combination?"

Miranda's eyes narrow, as if the last thing she'd expected was for Andy to come up with an intelligent question. As if somehow Andy asking about the combination was far more surprising than the ZOMBIE HORDES outside the Elias-Clarke building. Oh, god. Wake up ANY TIME, she thinks furiously.

"I see I'll just have to do it myself," Miranda says under her breath. "As usual." She stands up and glides into her office, leaving Andy standing, speechless, in front of her old desk.

Andy's jaw drops when Miranda calls out, "Get me Patrick!" like it's a perfectly normal day. Miranda cannot possibly be serious. Andy takes a few seconds to gather herself, and then walks to the door of Miranda's office. Miranda has opened her wall-safe, and is standing in the middle of the room inspecting a pump-action shotgun the way Andy watched her inspect the Dior fall line. Andy is actually wearing something from the line in question, a navy pantsuit, and she assumes that's why Miranda hasn't said anything nasty about letting herself go.

"Miranda? Don't you think we might want to..." But she doesn't finish her sentence, because she has no idea what they might want to do. There are zombies, and they are converging on the building, and Andy doesn't know why she's even there except she saw something on CNN and wanted to make sure Miranda was okay. Stupid, stupid Andy. Of course Miranda is okay.

"Do you have Patrick?" Miranda doesn't even look up.

"You can't be serious. I know you've seen the news. We need to get out of here!"

Not that Andy has any idea where they'll go. It's not just New York; it's everywhere. They -- and Andy has no idea who they are, probably the government or scientists or journalists -- have come up with some scientific name for it, but the fact is that Andy and Miranda are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and Miranda is standing there in a gray Bill Blass suit with a shotgun and she wants to talk to Patrick. Andy rubs at her head, where a zombie bit off most of her hair. Maybe Miranda has lost her mind. She hasn't said anything about Andy's 'hairstyle,' or her lack of shoes.

"Don't be ridiculous. We can't go anywhere. The next issue goes to press in three days."

"...Miranda? Don't you think, I mean, with the impending apocalypse and all, that maybe people aren't going to be very concerned about fashion?"

Miranda looks up and raises one perfect eyebrow. "If you can't care about looking good when you die, Andrea, you might as well never have cared at all."

Then she pumps the shotgun, one-handed, and the loud click-clack shatters Andy's hopes of ever waking up in her normal life again.

"Shit," she says, and she doesn't even want to know where Miranda learned to do that without so much as disturbing the black scarf around her neck; it remains perfectly knotted. "Miranda, you have seen the news, right? Of course you have, you have a shotgun, but we can't just. I can't. I'm not even your assistant anymore! Fuck, we're going to die." She rubs at her missing hair.

"Oh, please." Miranda waves a hand. "Aren't there movies about this sort of thing? How difficult can it be? They're zombies. You move slowly, and if they spot you, you decapitate them. We'll be fine."

"Ohmygod," Andy says, and it's very hard not to drop to the floor, go fetal, and whimper. She doesn't even know what's more disturbing: the idea of Miranda watching zombie movies, or the idea of Miranda decapitating actual zombies. She wraps her arms around herself and tries to breathe, tries to tell herself that if Miranda is so confident in her decapitation ability, maybe there's nothing to worry about. It doesn't work very well.

"Andrea! Pull yourself together." Miranda is suddenly right there, right in front of her, close enough to smell and feel and wake up wake up wake up. She doesn't wake up, and it's beginning to dawn on her that this isn't a dream. She is sick with fear, sweating in her Dior, and Miranda grabs her by the shoulder and shakes. Her perfectly manicured nails dig into Andy's skin through the wool of her jacket.

Andy takes a second to be self-conscious about her missing hair, and then her vision swims back into focus. Miranda is still there, beautiful and perfect and composed and Andy hates her, a little bit, maybe, or it's the fear talking or possibly she's just plain stupid, because she leans in and kisses Miranda. Kisses her, and no, this is definitely not a dream, because there's a pause, one of those pauses that stretches long and impossibly wide while her stomach drops to her feet, but then Miranda is kissing her back. The shotgun is... somewhere, whatever, Andy doesn't fucking know and it doesn't matter, because Miranda Priestly is kissing her back. Andy fists her hands in the lapels of Miranda's jacket, and there will probably be wrinkles because the jacket is more silk than blend, but she leans in close and doesn't care.

Miranda kisses pretty much exactly the way Andy imagined she would, if she'd imagined it at all, which obviously she hasn't. The knot of fear in her stomach dissolves into something else, something hot and electric, and tendrils of desire curl around the base of her spine. Miranda's tongue sweeps into Andy's mouth, hungry and possessive and maybe a little bit mean, and it's even meaner when she pulls away.

Andy does not whimper.

Miranda smirks.

They're still standing very close together, close enough for Andy to feel it on her lips when Miranda breathes, and Miranda leans a little closer and whispers, "Andrea?" Andy nods and swallows, her eyes fluttering shut. "Get me Patrick."

Then Miranda turns and goes back to doing whatever Miranda does, leaving Andy standing there cold, alone, jagged around the edges. Patrick, she thinks. Get Patrick. She staggers out to her old desk and dials. I can do this, she says to herself over and over again. I can do this. But the phone rings forever and there's no answer, and the zombie-apocalypse thing crashes back down around her. It had been momentarily displaced by the kissing-Miranda thing, but now it's back: They're going to die.

She goes back to Miranda's office and drops in the chair in front of her desk. She'd never dared before, and can barely believe she's daring now, but there are some seriously extenuating circumstances, like the fact that she's too freaked out to stand.

"I'm sorry, Miranda," she says, and she really truly is, "but there was no answer."

Miranda looks up from her computer. "Did you try his cell?"

Andy is approaching hysterics, but Miranda's business-as-usual tone calms her down a little bit. "Oh. I. No."

"Honestly, Andrea, if you can't even get--"

"Where's Emily?" Andrea interrupts, something else she never would have dared to do before. Before. Before. "Where's... anyone? Why are we the only people here?"

Miranda's eyes narrow briefly, and then she looks away. "They're in the Closet."

Andy opens and closes her mouth three times. Then she repeats, "They're in the Closet."

"My idiot second assistant got infected this morning."

"So you..." She trails off, unable to follow Miranda's train of thought. Miranda shifts in her chair and looks uncomfortable.

"I didn't realize," she finally snaps. "She seemed a little slower than usual, of course. But we have a run-through tomorrow, and I can't be expected to keep track of how each member of my staff is feeling."

It's a good thing Andy's already sitting down, because she's feeling kind of faint. She twists her hands together in her lap. "Your assistant was bitten by a zombie and you didn't notice?"

Miranda just glares at her, and she still hasn't said anything about Andy's missing hair. It's getting kind of weird.

"Okay," Andy says slowly, shaking her head. "Okay, so that doesn't explain why everyone is in the Closet."

"By the time I realized she was infected, she had infected several others. Obviously something needed to be done."

"Obviously," Andy says, but the only obvious thing about this situation is that Miranda is a lunatic. "And you locked them all in there with the clothes?"

"Don't be absurd," Miranda snaps, and Andy's chest loosens with relief. Except then Miranda says, "I took the clothes out first."

Oh, god. "Of course you did," Andy says, and she's choking on horror as something dawns on her. It's hard to breathe. "Miranda... you did only lock in the infected people, right? You didn't lock up anyone who hadn't been bitten?"

There's another one of those impossibly long pauses, and Andy tries to breathe around the hole in herself as she waits for Miranda to say, No, Andrea, I did not just condemn a bunch of innocent clackers to their deaths.

But what Miranda says is, "I."

It is not the reassurance Andy was looking for. "Oh, god." She thinks she might throw up.

"They'd all been infected."

"Oh." That's... better, Andy guesses, because it means Miranda is only guilty of overwhelming narcissism, and that's always been true. She's not guilty of murder, though, so Andy supposes things could be worse. Also, it makes her feel a little better about their impending doom, to think that Miranda just ordered all the zombies into the Closet, and they went. Maybe there is some hope of getting out of this alive.

"Okay. I'll go try Patrick's cell," she says, because she's all Miranda has left, and Miranda wants Patrick.

There's no answer. She tries everyone who's programmed into speed dial, everyone whose number is in the computer or in Miranda's planner or rolodex or PDA. No one answers, anywhere.

When the power goes out, she sits on the couch in Miranda's office and asks how many shells Miranda has for the shotgun.

"Twelve," Miranda says, her voice soft. The locks in the office are electronic. The Closet doors would have unlocked when the power failed.

"How many are in the Closet?"

"More than twelve." They can hear them, now, clacking and groaning and shuffling, and it sounds like a lot more than twelve.

"We're going to die," she says, and she's calm, so calm, and the only thing left to do is kiss Miranda some more before the zombies show up and kill them. She gets up off the couch and moves closer.

"What are you doing?" Miranda's voice is sharp and cold, with no hint of fear or uncertainty. It's nice, to hear her like that, at a time like this.

"I thought I might kiss you again, before the zombies get us."

"Don't be ridiculous," Miranda snaps, irritated. "You can kiss me once we have dispatched the zombies."

Andy blinks. They are not going to dispatch any zombies, let alone all of the zombies, but she nods her head anyway, as if Miranda's strength of will alone is going to get them through this. She pushes Miranda's desk in front of the door, as much of a barricade as they have time for, and then she ducks behind the couch.

Miranda does not duck. She stands her ground, moonlight glinting off the shotgun and her silk-blend pants, and she waits. Andy takes a deep breath, stands, and goes to wait next to her.

FIN.

FIC: Our Life is Not a Movie (Or Maybe), Veronica/Lamb, NC-17

atrata — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:28:50 GMT

There are a million other things I should be doing right now, but I am doing this instead. Yeah, it's fic. It's Veronica Mars fic, but it's still fic. (Weird, right? Yeah.) I wanted to write 1,500 words of wallsex and ended up with more like 15,000 words of trainwreck. ANYWAY. I could fuck with this story for another month, but I have decided to post it before it just kills me. Not that I have any idea WHERE to post it, but I will figure that out later.

Title: Our Life is Not a Movie (or Maybe)
Author: atra (atrata)
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Pairing: Veronica/Lamb
Summary: Whatever she's up to, he's pretty sure it's a fucking stupid idea that's going to end up with her in mortal danger and him looking like an idiot. Again.
Rating: NC-17 for sex and Lamb's foul mouth
Spoilers: Uh, goes into a sort of AU after 3.09, "Spit & Eggs."
Disclaimer: I'm totally not Rob Thomas.
A/N: This story would not have been written without murklins, who put up with my obsessing and didn't kill me while I was writing it, even though I bet she wanted to. The list of other people who held my hand through this is far too long to go into, but even my mother is on it, so. You know how it is. Also, massive thanks to threerings for the excellent beta. Title from the Okkervil River song.
Feedback: Yes, please. This is my first VM fic. So. Yeah. *bites nails*

***
"You're fucking kidding me." Don is pissed.

"Sorry, Sheriff," Sacks says, but Don is pretty sure he's just saying it so he has something to say. "How do you want to play it?"

He wants to ignore it, is what he wants to do, because Don Lamb, Sheriff of Neptune, doesn't give a fuck about prostitution rings. He has actual crimes to solve, but now there's a story in the paper about hookers and strip clubs and fleeced 09ers, and he's going to be expected to do something about it.

*
He changes into civvies and goes to The Seventh Veil to investigate. He knows it's not going to do much good: He's not exactly a regular there, but he's close enough to one that people know him, and it's not like anyone's going to try selling him any sex. Really, he's hoping that the combination of the article in the paper and the sheriff putting in an appearance will make the prostitution thing disappear.

He plans to go in, look around, have some drinks, buy a lap dance or three, and go the hell home.

It's an unexpected bonus that he can, apparently, buy the lap dance from Veronica Mars.

*
He sees her the second he walks in. She's perched on some suit-wearing asshole's lap, laughing like she means it, wearing black stripper shoes and a bunch of shiny plastic clothes. He doesn't know what the hell she thinks she's doing, and maybe he doesn't hate her, but he's definitely sick of her shit. Whatever she's up to, he's pretty sure it's a fucking stupid idea that's going to end up with her in mortal danger and him looking like an idiot. Again. He's also pretty sure it involves this prostitution thing, and if Mars is involved it usually means there's something to be involved with, and that means he's going to have to do actual work.

Later.

In the meantime, he heads for what he thinks of as the Lap Dance Room -- which is stupid, because you can get dances anywhere you want, but whatever. He tells a waitress on his way that he wants to try the new girl, points at Mars, and then sits down to wait.

It doesn't take long before he starts to worry that the room isn't private enough. It's lined with high-walled booths, big enough for two people (three if they're friendly), but that's not the issue; the issue is the area in the center, filled with tables, perfect for anyone who wants to wander in and watch the show. He doesn't know what this particular show is going to look like, but he sure as shit doesn't want anyone else watching. He heads over to the bouncer stationed at the doorway, slips him a fifty to keep out the other customers. The guy hesitates, but it's a slow night, and Don holds up his hands and promises to keep them to himself. The bouncer pockets the cash.

Don grabs a chair from one of the tables and drags it to the corner booth, where he sits, props his feet up, sticks a piece of gum in his mouth, and waits.

*
Mars takes her sweet time showing up, and when she finally saunters over, Don almost chokes on his gum. Her stripper shoes have eight-inch heels on them, and when the fuck did she learn to walk on those? She makes a pretty picture in her thigh-highs, though, even topped by the trashy plastic miniskirt and tacky glittered tube top.

When she plants one of those eight-inch heels on the chair he's using as a footrest, Don can tell she's nervous. She's already trying too hard, making too much of an effort to flash him some trim, paying too much attention to how far she has to lean over to give him a view of her tits.

He looks. They're nice tits.

"Hey there," she says, in a voice he doesn't recognize.

"Hey," he says with a grin. The booth is backlit, and he can tell she hasn't recognized him, but she's definitely trying. He knows he needs to pick his moments with Mars, though, and so he keeps his face in the shadows.

She bends at the waist and leans over him, practically shoving her tits in his face. His eyes close as he inhales. She smells good, but strippers always do. "Hey," she says again, whispering in his ear, hot breath scraping his skin. "I'm Misty, and if it's okay with you, I need to move that chair." She curls a hand around the back of his neck, and he knows she's trying to get him to look at her. "Your song's about to start."

He doesn't say anything as he lifts his legs and kicks the chair out of the way. It almost sends Mars sprawling into his lap, and he digs his fingertips into the booth to keep himself from catching her. She catches herself pretty nicely, though, swinging her leg over his and sliding onto his lap like it's where she wanted to be all along. She doesn't even snap at him the way she probably wants to. He spreads his legs a little wider, leans back in the booth, puts on his best shit-eating grin, and looks her in the face.

She freezes, does a great deer-in-the-headlights, and Don is careful not to react. He has no idea if she's going to go through with this, but Don's had a shitty day, and playing with Mars, seeing that panicked look on her face, makes it all better. The look only lasts a second, if that, and then she manages to school her face back into some semblance of fucked-up stripper professionalism.

"Well, Misty," he says, glancing up at a speaker in the corner of the room. "Song's started. I wouldn't want to have to tell your boss you ripped me off." He smacks his gum and smiles.

Her back stiffens and that familiar fire catches behind her eyes. She smiles back, and Don can tell she's going to play. She trails a finger down his jaw, her nail dragging a little too roughly against his five-o'clock-shadow, and starts to dance.

*
Mars is pissed. Don's enjoying himself. He hasn't moved an inch, didn't ask for another dance, but they're three songs in and Mars is down to her shoes and her thong and okay, Don is really enjoying himself. She's straddling him, grinding down against his hard-on, rubbing her tits all over his chest. She's probably hoping she's irresistible, hoping he'll grab himself a handful and get his ass thrown out. He's the sheriff, though, and he'll have to grab a lot more than a handful before they kick him out. Still, he might do it, because god knows it's tempting -- but not yet.

She twists her hips again, rakes her nails across his jaw, and leans in close to whisper, "What's the matter, Deputy? I know you want to fuck me." She grinds against his dick to prove her point. "I'm only 17, but I know you don't mind."

She sounds triumphant, like that should be something that stings, but he doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. He goes for the obvious lie instead. "Oh, Misty," he says, snapping his gum and keeping his voice bland, "don't lie to me. You've gotta be at least 18 to work here." He shifts slightly, sits up a little straighter, rocks his hips up into hers. Her breath hitches.

"Lucky for you," she says, soft and sweet, running her hands down his chest. "But I'm sure you wouldn't get in trouble. The Sheriff's department doesn't investigate rape, statutory or otherwise." Don's a little fuzzy on the logic of dry-humping him in a strip club, asking him to fuck her, and then calling it rape, but whatever. He knows she hates him, but it doesn't stop her from grinding a little harder on his cock and saying, "So how 'bout it, Deputy? I know you wanna."

He grins, briefly, and decides he's had enough. He moves fast, wrapping an arm around her, and grabs a handful of hair. He pulls, not too hard, but hard enough to force her head back, and then slides his other hand down the column of her throat, between her breasts, over her stomach, under her thong. The thong's soaked through, and he stops there, his fingers hovering just over her clit, so close he can feel the heat pouring off her.

She sits in his lap, stiff and shaking, and he hopes she's pissed, because scared is not something that looks good on her. He's not trying to scare her, except that he is, because she has no business being here.

"Oh, I'll fuck you," he says, pulling her closer and breathing into her ear. "Even if you are a disease-ridden pain in my ass. But not until you ask me for it." He pauses, debating, because he's still on this side of the line -- barely -- but fuck it. He licks behind her jawbone.

She goes stiff in his arms, digs her nails into his shoulders. "I will never ask you for anything," she hisses, hot breath stuttering over his neck. "It's not like you're capable of--"

"Mmm, yeah," he cuts in, not bothered. He knows what she thinks. He knows what everybody thinks. He doesn't care; they're wrong. He goes back to the scaring-her-not-scaring-her part of his fucking-her-not-fucking-her plan. "You'll say, 'please, Sheriff Lamb, fuck me.'" He bites a line down her jaw. He can feel her grinding her teeth. "And then," he says, "and then, maybe, if you mean it, and if you haven't pissed me off in, I don't know, the last 24 hours? Maybe then I'll give you what you want." He pulls on her hair a little more, forcing her to arch into him, and he licks at the hollow of her collarbone. Her skin's soft. She tastes good.

"You son of a bitch," she says, "I don't waaaah--" He still has a hand between her legs, and he moves it, tapping twice on her clit and then leaving his fingers there, just a hint of pressure. Veronica's whole body convulses and she grinds against his fingers, arches against his chest, and it's not an orgasm but it'd be only too easy to give her one. Their eyes lock, and he can see she knows it. "Fuck," she says, and she's shaking in his arms.

He catches movement out of the corner of his eye and glances over her shoulder to see the bouncer heading their way. Laughing, he shoves her into the chair and stands up with his hands in the air. The bouncer gives him the evil eye, but backs off, doesn't try to kill him or throw him out, so Don can only assume the guy didn't see very much.

He digs out his wallet and throws a wad of cash at Mars, who's sitting on the chair. The effort it's taking her to be calm is obvious, but he can't tell if she's angrier than she is horny, or vice versa. He watches her for a few more seconds and then reaches down and deliberately adjusts his jeans. "Be seeing you, Misty," he says, and walks away.

He expects one of those shoes to fly at his head, but nothing happens.

*
He has Sacks bring her into the station the next day, and he spends a while smirking at her across the interrogation table while she tries really hard to pretend last night never happened. He has to admit she does a pretty good job.

"You look better without your clothes on, Mars," he says, letting his eyes linger.

She arches an eyebrow. "And looking good without clothes on is a crime now, Deputy, or were you just hoping for a repeat performance?"

"Sheriff," he says automatically, smiling with one side of his mouth. "And if I want a repeat performance, Mars, I know how to get one." She actually shifts a little in her seat, and he grins before adopting a serious expression. "So. What were you doing at the Veil last night?"

"Getting pawed by greasy old men." She gives an exaggerated shudder.

He looks around the room, wide-eyed. "I hope you're not talking about me, Mars," he says, standing up and leaning over the table. "Because I didn't hear any complaints."

Her mouth tightens and she crosses her arms, and he decides to stop fucking around. "Tell me what you were doing there." He sits back down.

"Dancing."

"Mars. I--"

"What were you doing there, Deputy? Was that your idea of an investigation?"

He just stares at her, chewing his gum. She sits back in her chair and shoots him an icy smile. "What, you think if you stare at me long enough, I'll crack under the pressure?"

He keeps staring. "You think I won't throw you in a holding cell?"

"Oooh, will you? Can I try cell A this time? I'm getting bored with the view from cell B."

God, he fucking hates her sometimes. He can't make her tell him anything, and they both know it. "All right," he says. "We'll do this your way. What do you want?"

She looks around. "Excuse me?"

He sighs. He shouldn't have brought her in here. "You're working some case, and I'm guessing it has to do with this." He slides a newspaper across the table. "Tell me what you know, and maybe I can help you out."

She stares at him for a full ten seconds, and then she laughs and laughs and laughs.

"All right, Deputy," she says, when she's finished laughing at him, which takes a really long time. "That was a good one. Just for that, maybe I'll help you out."

"Gee, thanks."

"You only get one shot at this, so you might want to pay attention." She pauses and shoots him a sugary smile. "A friend of mine dances there on weekends to pay her way through school. She and some of the other girls were hired by Robert Friedrich for a private party, strictly dancing, no big deal. So she goes, and it's fine, and she leaves a few grand richer."

"Okay," he says, to show that he's listening.

"But then the owner of the club gets a call that my friend ripped Friedrich off, and suddenly there's a story about prostitution, and she doesn't know anything about any of it. She hired me as a pre-emptive strike. She was worried that Friedrich would call you and you'd arrest her, along with all the other girls at the party."

This, he thinks, might actually be good news. "So there's no prostitution ring?"

She snaps her fingers. "Keep up. That's what I'm trying to find out. If he really got ripped off, and if so, who did it and why my friend got blamed."

"Well, I'm sure the citizens of Neptune will sleep easier with Girl Detective on the job."

She doesn't respond, but he knows it was a pretty weak jab. "Are we done?" she asks.

"Who's your friend?"

"I'm afraid that's confidential."

"You're not a lawyer, Mars," he says, grinding his teeth. "Or even a legitimate detective. You don't get confidentiality."

"Hmm," she says, nodding seriously. "I think that also means I don't have to talk to you at all."

He wants to strangle her. Mostly, though, he just wants her to go the hell away, so he smiles his least-sincere smile. "That's true, because Friedrich never reported any robbery," he tells her, and he's not really sure what that means for the bigger picture. "So I won't be arresting your friend until he does."

She looks at him for a minute, either like she doesn't believe him or like she thinks he's a moron -- or probably both -- and then shakes her head. "Great. Thanks so much. Can I go now?"

She doesn't wait for him to answer before she stands up and breezes out of there.

*
He skips a night, gives himself a much-needed evening off from dealing with or thinking about Veronica Mars, and then he goes back to the Veil. She's there, working the room like a pro in her naughty schoolgirl clothes: plaid skirt that's not long enough to cover her ass cheeks, collared shirt that laces up the front and has no shoulders. It's a pretty terrible outfit, actually, and Don wears a lot of brown polyester and so he knows about terrible outfits, but he figures hers probably comes off easy.

He watches her for a few minutes before sitting down at a corner booth and ordering a drink. He stays there for hours, closes the place down, and buys dances from damn near every stripper in the place who isn't Mars. He ignores her completely, in fact, even though he can feel her eyes on him the whole time.

*
The doorbell rings just as he's falling asleep, and he stumbles out of bed and into a pair of boxers as he's on his way to the intercom. He checks the clock and figures anyone showing up at the sheriff's apartment at three-thirty in the morning has a damn good reason. He hits the buzzer without bothering to see who it is.

There's a knock at his door a few seconds later, and when he opens it, it's Mars. She's clearly come straight from the club, is still wearing that schoolgirl getup, is covered in glitter and makeup, and Don isn't sure what to think.

He doesn't move out of the doorway. He doesn't know what the hell she wants or why the fuck she's standing at his door in her slut suit or what she thinks is going to happen. He tries to keep the confusion off his face, covers it by looking at her, by taking his time checking out her bare thighs and her tiny waist, the way that skirt hugs her hipbones, the way her tits strain against her too-small shirt.

He starts to get hard, and she's staring at his chest, at his rising cock, and that's only making him harder. Her tongue darts out, wets her lips.

"Yeah?" he says, shooting for somewhere between bored and amused. He usually pulls that one off pretty well. She shakes her head slightly, as if to clear it, and looks at his face.

Her smile is blinding, gorgeous, and not even a little convincing. "Please, Sheriff Lamb," she says, using that faux-breathless she'd adopted at the Veil. "Fuck me."

He doesn't laugh. Instead, he lets her stand there for a few seconds before he slams the door in her face.

*
Thirty seconds go by, and he spends them looking around his apartment, making sure all the blinds are closed and that there aren't any assholes with telephoto lenses trying to set him up. He wouldn't put it past her, and he looks even though it's not like he's going to be able to see any assholes-in-waiting. Still, he's pretty sure they won't be able to see him, either.

There's another sharp knock at his door. He sighs and yanks it open again, but before he can ask Mars what the hell she wants this time, she slaps him across the face. She's wearing a ring, and it hurts, and that is quite the fuck enough.

He's pretty sure he's growling when he shoots an arm out and grabs a handful of hair to yank her inside. The breath rushes out of her lungs as he shoves her against the door and closes his mouth over hers. He tastes coffee, and then she bites and he bites back and there's blood and bile and bitterness between them. It doesn't stop her from wrapping her arms around his neck, though, and when he slides his hands down to her ass to pick her up, her legs lock tight around his waist.

He presses her body against the wall, pinning her with his chest, and reaches one hand below and between her legs. Her skirt's not in his way, and soon her thong isn't, either; he pushes it aside and slides his fingers against her slit. She's already wet and he almost comments on it, almost sinks his teeth into her skin and asks her what she's dripping for. Instead he just slides two fingers in, feels her flesh part easily, feels her dig her nails into his shoulders and her heels into his back.

That's good enough for him, and he fucks her with the fingers of one hand and fumbles for his jacket with the other. It's easier than it should be; she doesn't weigh anything at all and she's wrapped so tight around his body that their skin all feels the same, all slick sweat sliding together as he searches through the pockets of his jacket for a condom. He's got a box in the bedroom, but fuck that. Anyway, pay-dirt.

"Hold on," he says, hiking her up a little higher and pulling his fingers away. She whimpers and he kisses her again, swallows the sounds she's making, and he doesn't know if he's ever been with someone so much smaller than he is, but he's liking it so far. He keeps her pinned to the wall, tries to concentrate on something other than the feel of her tits against his chest, her thighs trembling against his hips, her heat pooling against his stomach. He manages to reach underneath her and open the condom, get his dick out and the condom on, and then he pushes her thong out of the way and lifts her by her hips.

"Say it again," he says, positioning himself against her, where he can feel the heat radiating off her. The second the word "please" comes out of her mouth, he buries himself inside her in one smooth motion. She throws her head back and cries out, an almost hurt animal sound, and goes still in his arms. He leans back a little and waits, lays a line of kisses down her neck. He probably shouldn't have done that, probably should have gone a little slower, given her more of a chance to get used to him, but it's too late now. She feels amazing, quivering around him, and this is maybe the only situation in which he's going to exercise any patience. He's content to enjoy it, to enjoy sex in general and sex with Veronica Mars pinned against his wall in particular, and he rocks against her, giving her a few seconds to get used to the way he feels inside her. He could certainly get used to it; her cunt is tiny like the rest of her, holding him tight, and he thinks he could do this forever.

She shivers with her whole body and then makes some kind of agitated movement with her shoulders, and so he grabs her hips and bends his knees and proceeds to fuck her through the wall.

*
"Stop," she pants, and he doesn't hear her the first time and doesn't believe her the second, because she's seconds away from coming and they both know it. She claws at his shoulders, and he wonders if he's hurting her. "Stop," she says again, her voice a little more firm, even if she is still pumping her hips and clutching his back. He's not hurting her. "Seriously, Lamb. Don. Stop." It's the use of his first name that convinces him she means it.

A very large part of him says to just keep going, that they're both almost there, that she came to him, that this is clearly a part of some fucked-up game she's playing. But, well. Maybe, if she weren't Veronica Mars, maybe he'd listen to that voice, he'd keep going, he'd get them both off and make no apologies later. But he won't be that guy, not for her, not even if -- especially if -- she wants him to be. So he slows down, stops, shudders, pulls out, practically drops her on his way to the kitchen for a glass of water. He trashes the condom and is opening the fridge when he hears the door slam. He looks into the living room, and Mars is gone.

*
A week passes before he sees her again, and this time, she appears in his office like some nightmare stage magician.

"I thought maybe you'd want to try something new," she says, throwing a file on his desk. "Arrest some actual criminals. There is a prostitution ring."

"Actual criminals, huh?" he says, raising an eyebrow and flipping briefly through the file. It's been just under two weeks and he has more or less fucked Veronica Mars, but his world hasn't changed so much that he suddenly likes busting up prostitution rings. He smacks his gum and drops the file on his desk. "Swell," he says, an insincere smile on his face. "I'll look into it."

She rolls her eyes and takes a deep breath like she's about to bitch him out for not doing his job, but instead she says, "Not a lot of guys would have stopped." Her voice is quiet.

Don snorts, and before he's thought about it, he says, "Yeah, well, if that's your idea of rape, Mars, it's no wonder you're always crying wolf."

Her body jerks like he's just punched her in the stomach. Shocked, painful surprise registers on her face, but it's gone so quickly he's not actually sure it was ever there in the first place.

"I was drugged," she says, her voice tight and ringing with fury. "If you-- Never mind." She stands to leave, and he's blocking the door before he really registers he's moved.

"Mars," he says, but she won't look at him. "Veronica."

"Get out of my way, Deputy."

"No. Jesus Christ, Veronica, I didn't mean--"

"What? You didn't mean what?"

He runs a hand through his hair. "Fuck it," he mutters. "Whatever."

"No, I don't think so," she says, still furious. "Let's talk about our feelings. You started this whole thing, and just when I thought maybe you weren't a complete waste of space, you go and accuse me of--"

"Of what?" he snaps. "Of playing games? Gee, Veronica, I don't know how I would ever have gotten that impression. You show up, ask me to fuck you, and freak out when I do."

"That's not what was supposed to happen!" she yells, and Don doesn't really know what the fuck is going on. He knows he should have kept his mouth shut, but he doesn't quite understand why she's shocked that he doesn't trust her. He never has before, so it's not exactly new. He hooks his thumbs in his belt, but stays in front of the door.

"Really. And what was supposed to happen?"

That seems to take the wind out of her sails, somehow, and she looks down, takes a deep breath, gets herself under control. "It wasn't supposed to go that far."

"Oh," he says. "I see," even though he doesn't. "And that's not a game... how, exactly?"

"I didn't say it wasn't a game," she snaps.

"And you're pissed that it didn't go exactly the way you wanted it to. Jesus, what are you, twelve?" He rolls his eyes and gives her the most patronizing smile he can manage. "Get the hell out of here, Mars. Go home to your daddy." He moves out of the way and sits down in his chair, picking up the file she'd left for him and propping his feet up on the desk. He doesn't look up when the door slams behind her.

*
Two nights later, he goes to The Seventh Veil, and when the bartender tells him that "Misty" just quit, he goes out back and dials her number. He has no idea why, really, or what the hell he's going to say if she picks up, but he'll think of something.

It rings, and he hears the theme from "COPS." He grins despite himself and then realizes it's coming from the dumpster down the alley. The hair on the back of his neck stands up and he wishes for his gun. He left it in the cruiser, but he makes his way slowly down the alley anyway, keeping his eyes open for movement. The theme song's still playing when he peers into the dumpster and shoves some trash bags out of the way, and then he sees a flash of blonde hair and pale skin.

He stares for a few seconds too long and then he's over the side, hip-deep in trash, digging her out and swearing under his breath the whole time.

*
It's not like she's heavy, so he gets her out of the dumpster with no problem and then slides to the ground, cradling her to his chest. She's alive. Don kind of wants to kill her. She's covered with cuts and bruises and she won't wake up, but she's breathing and her pulse is steady. He slaps her cheek lightly. "Mars," he says. "Veronica, come on, wake up."

He should call the paramedics. He should take her to the hospital. He should do anything other than sit there in a dirty alley with an unconscious girl and yell at her, but that's pretty much what he does. Amazingly, it works. Her eyes flutter open an eternity later, and she looks at him, confused and hurt.

His mouth opens and closes a few times, and he realizes he has no idea what to say. Asking her if she's all right is stupid; she's clearly not. Asking her what happened is pointless; she's not going to tell him. Telling her she's an idiot is out of the question; he can tell her that any time, and it's not like it's going to help if he does it now.

She saves him from having to figure it out by asking, "What are you doing here?"

"Howdy, Mars," he says, plastering a bored smile on his face. "I'm rescuing you. You want to tell me how you ended up beat to shit and thrown out with the trash?"

Her mouth tightens.

"Didn't think so," he says. "All right. Come on."

"What? No. I'm not going anywhere with you."

"I'm not giving you a choice, Mars."

"Are you seriously arresting me? For getting beat up and thrown in a dumpster?"

He rolls his eyes and stands up, still carrying her. "Yeah. That's exactly what I'm doing."

The sarcasm, for once, goes right over her head, and she starts struggling to get away. She shoves at his chest and tries to kick him, but she's tired and hurt and tiny, and he has no problem manhandling her into the cruiser. He shoves her into the passenger seat and leans in close. "Are you going to make me cuff you?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

He smacks his gum and smiles slow. "You know it."

"Bite me, Deputy."

He shuts the door, gets in the car, and starts driving. She curls up in her seat, shaking slightly, and he doesn't know if it's anger or fear or shock or what.

She finally looks over at him. "Aren't you going to read me my rights?"

"Shut up, Veronica. I'm not arresting you."

"Oh, so you're kidnapping me. Awesome job, Sheriff." She gives him a thumbs-up. Her hand shakes.

"Veronica. Shut up."

"I don't believe you," she says, her voice hard. "I hand you everything on a silver platter and you still manage to screw it up. And somehow you're taking it out on me, like you're pissed off that I got beaten up, when it was your fault in the first place."

He looks over at her. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I think you need to go see the Wizard, Lamb," she says, her voice mocking. "Ask him for a clue. Who do you think beat me up? Hmmm." She puts a finger over her lips. "Let me see. You think it might have been the vindictive ring leader you completely failed to arrest?"

"For fuck's sake, Mars," he snaps. "Get over yourself. You are not god's gift to crime-fighting. I know you don't understand things like procedure or due process, but you can't just march into my office with a stack of illegally obtained evidence and expect me to arrest everyone you point at. That isn't how it works, and I've been telling you that for years. Your father has been telling you that for years. And if you would fucking listen to someone for once in your goddamn life, you wouldn't need people to drag you out of dumpsters. Now shut the fuck up or I'm dropping you off on this street corner without your phone and you can walk your ass home." He's yelling by the end of it, his hands are white on the steering wheel, and he desperately wants a drink.

She, naturally, does not shut the fuck up. She yells right back. "Well, if you would do your job and actually investigate crimes instead of staring at yourself in the mirror all day, maybe I wouldn't have to run all over the place digging up evidence to help you out. You--"

"Help me out? You were trying to help me out? Tell me, Veronica, in what POSSIBLE way does it help me out for you to run around digging up crappy, inadmissible evidence that holy shit, there are women out there who fuck for money? Then, what, you probably marched in there, all high-and-mighty and full of self-righteous bullshit and did one of your big reveals so everyone could see how smart you are, only you fucked it up and got your ass handed to you. Thanks a ton, Mars. Where should I send the gift basket?"

They are, thank god, in the parking lot of his apartment complex. "Get the hell out of the car," he snarls, throwing it in park and getting out. He's halfway to the front door and about to hit the lock on the remote when he realizes she isn't behind him.

He stops, sticks another piece of gum in his mouth, takes a deep breath, and walks back to the car. He pulls open the passenger door and drops to his haunches. She's struggling with her seat-belt.

"Need help?" he asks, and he means to be nice, but it comes out through his anger and doesn't sound nice at all.

She freezes and doesn't look at him.

"Veronica, seriously, let me help you get out."

"Fuck. You," she says, and her voice is not loud or steady or angry. It's young and small and miserable. He leans over to look at her, and she's staring very intently at the gearshift, tears streaming down her face. She closes her eyes and trembles.

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "She cries," he says to himself, because he's surprised, because he's seen her holding a gun on Aaron Echolls, cool as you please, and whatever happened tonight can't possibly compare. He doesn't say it loudly, but a sob wrenches its way out of her throat, sounds like it tears something, and her whole body shakes. She shoves a fist in her mouth and bites down.

He has no idea what to do. He goes for honesty. "Veronica," he says, his voice low and as sincere as he can make it. "I don't know what to do."

Her eyes fly open and she stares at him, still fighting back the sobs. He reaches for her but she jerks back, and he pulls his hand back to his knee. "Just leave me alone," she says, her voice ragged. "Please. Just leave me. The fuck. Alone."

He nods, closes and locks the car, and goes inside.

*
Once he's inside, he takes a quick shower and sits by the window with a beer. He has a view of his cruiser, and he stares at it, at her small form inside it, and drinks for what seems like a very long time.

*
However much he drinks, it's not enough to get her out of his head, and he stumbles downstairs a few hours later to check on her. She's asleep in the back seat, curled up under his jacket, and he shakes his head. He's not sure he wants to analyze that one: she can't get out, and he's the only one able to get in, and he doesn't know how to feel about that. He figured she'd call someone to come get her and take her the fuck away from him, but no. She's apparently still his problem. He opens the back door as quietly as he can, slides his arms around her, and carries her inside. She sighs, stirs, but doesn't wake up.

Once he's inside, though, he's not sure what to do with her. He can't just put her to bed. She's been in a dumpster, for fuck's sake, and she smells bad and she's covered with cuts and bruises and needs to get cleaned up. He sighs and lays her down on the couch. Yeah, this is going to go really well.

He changes into swim trunks and latex gloves and then strips her down, throwing all her clothes into a trash bag. He doesn't want to keep it around, really, but they might need it as evidence later. Contaminated evidence he stripped off the victim himself, but whatever.

Once her clothes are off, he takes a minute to check out her wounds, now that it's not dark and they're not in the alley and he's not worried she's about to die. She's badly bruised, but nothing is broken, and none of the cuts need stitches. Looks like she was worked over with a blunt instrument of some kind. His jaw clenches, and he swallows the bile that rises in his throat.

He picks her up and carries her into the bathroom, setting her in the tub and sliding in behind her. She still doesn't wake up, and part of him can only think, thank god, because it's five in the morning and he can't handle another shouting match. Another part of him is worried, though, and he keeps stopping to check her pulse and listen to her breathe and make sure she's okay.

It takes a long time. She's a mess, and she's hard to maneuver, and he's trying to be careful. But when he finishes, she doesn't smell like trash and her injuries don't actually look too bad and maybe he's going to get out of this before she kills him. Maybe, but he's not very optimistic.

Quickly, he rinses them off in the shower and then carries her into the bedroom, where he towels her off and tucks her into bed. She sighs and snuggles under the blankets. She looks young and terrible and beautiful, pale bruised skin against his navy blue sheets, and fuck it. There's going to be shouting in the morning anyway, and so he dries himself off, takes off the swim trunks and slides into bed next to her.

Part 2