you're too young & eager to love

Just a little warm-up piece! Focusing on family dynamics and the morning after.

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Their cinder block house has shifted. Like snow melting in the gutter - all that pristine pureness disappearing to reveal dead leaves and decay - something rotten is being exposed. Sam Elders isn't much of a philosophical man, and he certainly isn't well read enough to recognize a climax when it's happening in real life, but he knows moods. And when there's a bad one, thickening up the air with invisible rot, Sam almost always thinks there's a woman to blame.

The only woman he has to point a finger at is his daughter, and she looks as fresh as summer rain. Fresh, reinvigorated, flush with youth. Still, the mood lingers. The mood reminds him, persistent and nagging, as offensive to him as the sour smell of garbage.

Sam leans with his bad hip pressing against the edge of the kitchen counter, drinking his coffee black and watching his daughter. He scratches his jawline, calloused fingers rubbing against three days’ worth of stubble. He isn't sure what exactly is different about her - she has the same patch of freckles spanning her left knee, the same unabashed frankness, the same blonde hair streaked with tones of honey and gold - but he knows in his gut that something has changed.

Haven's wearing cut-off shorts and a velour sweatshirt in camo print, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows as she sits at the rickety lawn table (it's been posing as a kitchen table for four years now, oddly at home against the chipped mugs and hard plastic plates), spooning off-brand cereal into her mouth. She slurps as she eats, drinks the sugar-milk at the bottom of the bowl once she's devoured the last of the floating marshmallows and toasted oat pieces. Sam hides his frown, but he thinks even the way she licks milk from her mouth seems off, like the cat who finally caught the canary.

"Is this your way of telling me you're off to join the military or something?" he finally asks, clearing his throat with a lift of his greying eyebrows and a pointed glance to her sweatshirt.

"Well, there was a recruiter at the job fair last week at school." Haven taps her spoon against the rim of her bowl and runs her mouth across the back of her hand. She flashes him a playful smile - and there it is again, that something that's different, a smile that's more fox than lamb.

He snorts. "Job fair. What a bunch of bullshit."

She nods along, her easy agreement often punctuating her father's sentences. "I think Luke got polled as a potential police offer, do ya believe it?" Sam scoffs his answer as Haven watches her brother emerge into the hall as she speaks - he's stumbling out of her bedroom, thick with half-sleep and one hell of a hangover, struggling with pulling a pair of ripped jeans up over his naked hips. Haven thinks there’s a reluctant, dejected air about him. He’s slow to make his way into the kitchen, and when he does it’s with a yawn that hides the wince of his eyes.

Luke’s hair is sticking up in the back. Haven reaches out to smooth the unruly strands, her fingers coaxing them into submission slowly. Luke groans under his breath, folding his body into an out-of-place wicker chair at the table. He drops his forehead to the counter, his arms folding around his face as a makeshift pillow; his sister’s fingers keep digging through his hair, working their way down his neck. She can smell him: stale sweat and beer, cigarette smoke and ripped denim.

"Long night?" Sam asks.

Luke grumbles something the rest of his family can't hear.

"Jaime Holster had a party last night," Haven says by way of explanation.

"Yeah, well, your sister has been up for an hour." Sam has a way of speaking to his son that’s purely admonishment.

When Haven starts to rub the outside of his ear, Luke shrugs away from her irritably. His body jerks as though burnt. She grins and pats his shoulder as if to say no hard feelings here before getting up to put her bowl in the sink.

“I’m going to the mall. There’s a pair of boots for sale at Macy’s that I’ve been eying for a week now. Figured I’d treat myself.” She snatches the keys to the truck from the counter and kisses Sam on his grizzled cheek, heading out the door with a pep in her step and an off-key whistle on her lips.

Sam eyes his eldest, still dejectedly curled at the table. He pours him a cup of coffee – black, like his own – and places it down by Luke’s nearest elbow.

“Maybe take it easy on the Budweiser next time, son.”

Sam means it jokingly but Luke snarls something into his arm, head still buried in his self-made crevice of skin and table. Sam remembers being seventeen himself, full of spit fire and testosterone, his throat desperate enough for cheap Bud and watered-down vodka and his dick willing to rise for just about any free hand, mouth, or snatch, so he resists the urge to smack his son across the top of his head. The truth is, as much as it bothers him to admit it, Sam Knows Luke doesn’t have the same attitude, although Sam sometimes wishes he did. Luke is his mother’s son, through and through, bursting with too much self-control in his bones and willful ignorance in his brain.

But as Sam likes to say, there’s always a woman to blame.

Trying to get into the mindset of a new character - thanks to my Muffin for letting me join in on her madness.

Ladies and gents, may I present: Ms. Haven Elders!

(this is just unconnected scenes interrupted by lines of poetry by Reyna Biddy.)



----


“maybe I’m ashamed
to love someone just like me.
someone unafraid to bruise.
someone who knows how it feels to constantly lose the battle.
someone unafraid to be left empty.”



Her first experience with betrayal starts with her lungs burning. Her legs and arms pumping, blurring, the line of her body slick with sweat as she runs on her doe legs. In another life, she could have been a track star, a homecoming queen, a valedictorian, a silver screen starlet with a thousand different faces. In this life, she sprints away from the shouts of police and the glow of their flashlights, hurdling over a tangle of brush and a downed oak, the adrenaline coursing through her veins as raw as her daddy's moonshine. She's thirteen years old and as full of piss and vinegar as she is with fear.

She runs until she feels faint, and then she runs some more.

By the time she makes it home, her head is pounding, and her chest feels too small to contain her wildly beating her. Her shirt is soaked with sweat, her legs and arms scratched red from where branches and vines snapped her skin. Hands on her knees, pitched forward and gasping for air, she doesn't hear Sam Elders open the screen door of their cinder block house and step out into the night.

"Where's your brother?" Her daddy asks. He has the look of a parent who knows exactly what his children have been up to, but it lacks shock or regret.

"What?" She chokes out while her mind suddenly sends a warning as loud as a siren through her brain: Luke.

It's the first time she's thought of him since she started running.

She spins on her heel, still reeling, and is honestly surprised that he isn't behind her, just as out of breath and red-faced. She waits a full minute, somehow hoping to hear the woods crack at his approach. There's nothing but the wind and what might be distant, far off shouts.

"You leave him?"

When she stares back at her father, sloe-eyes wide, her daddy clicks his tongue. The sound is full of disappointment.

"I didn't - I thought .... what?"

"You're turning into your mama more and more, girl. Just running blindly ahead, not a look back."

Now Haven really thinks she might be sick. She pushes a hand back through her hair feeling the sweat gather on her palm. "He was right behind me."

Sam Elders spits near his daughter's foot. "We'll pick him up from the station in the morning." The screen door squeaks in protest when he opens it again and knocks against the frame once he's disappeared back into the house.

Haven stays outside, heart hamming in her chest, and waits for the sick feeling in her gut to pass.





“I wasn’t the kind of person you could love every day.”




Theirs is a town the rest of the world has forgotten: houses little more than shacks and row homes as slanted as roof barns, cracks battling with the weeds for space on the sidewalks, one solitary high school caging in boys who grew up hunting, fishing, and fixing trucks and girls who favored boots, crop tops, and smoking Pall Malls over Marlboros. Most of the kids turn into their parents, adults that are satisfied with hot dog eating contests every July 4th and frequenting a bar every Saturday night that seconds as a tow-truck company. Theirs is a town full of blue-collared workers – some of them good, some of them mean, and some of them Elders. For a place not known for its extravagance by any stretch of the imagination, the Elders are a different kind of folk altogether.

The live in a cinder block on the outskirts of an already dilapidated area with tick-infested woods as their backyard and crabgrass as their front lawn. They aren’t exactly social, but they aren’t private either. Most of the men have shared beers and burgers with Sam Elders for years, just as most of them have watched him lose money the same way he lost his wife. Rick Thorton is the closest thing Sam has to a best friend, but Rick can’t seem to figure out which parts of Sam’s life are fiction and which parts are fact, and that’s after twenty years of knowing each other. Janet Winters feels the same way, and she’s known Sam’s kids for half her life, having babysat for them when they were still toddlers and didn’t know beans.

It’s Janet that gets an odd feeling once the kids are three-fourths of the way to twenty. They’ve been taken care of themselves for years, but she still brings over tuna noodle casserole and tater tot delight once a month or so, figuring Sam never was much in the kitchen. Janet considers herself a good Christian woman despite smoking two packs a day and indulging in a box of wine per week, so she thinks it’s her duty to spread a little generosity - all of the Elders are in-and-out of trouble as regularly as the sun rises.

Balancing aluminum-wrapped Tupperware on one hip, Janet knocks too loudly on the paint-split door. She’s surprised when Haven answers rather than Sam and more surprised to see the girl in a tank top that brushes the tops of her thighs but little else. Haven yawns, scratching the back of her neck behind her knotted hair, and pushes the screen door open with a half-awake but cheerful hello.

“You’re gonna catch your death in that getup, child. Heavens.” Janet says as she comes in, letting Haven take the Tupperware from her. “May I?” She shakes a pack of cigarettes she dug from her purse once her hands were free.

“Sure, Mrs. Winters.” Haven passes her an ashtray half-full of butts before putting the Tupperware on the counter and perching on the edge of an old recliner.

Their living room isn’t much, just like the house isn’t much. The windows have blinds that are half-cocked, like they’ve been stuck trying to wink, and the light that filters in is low and hazy. The carpet is stained, dirty, and Janet isn’t sure how Haven feels clean with so much skin showing.

“Where’s you dad?”

“Working on Mr. Tucker’s truck. He should be back in a few hours.”

“And your brother?”

Haven grins, an expression that splits her mouth and makes her look wide awake. “In bed.”

Janet rolls her eyes knowingly, puffing on her cigarette. “Is that where you came from too?”

“Yeah, but he steals all the covers. I’ve been trying to steal them back for half an hour.”

Janet makes a noise like a hum then coughs on the smoke in her mouth. “Aren’t you a little old to be sleeping together?”

For a moment, Haven’s expression turns cold. She plucks Janet’s cigarette from her left hand, surprising the old woman, and inhales smoothly. When she exhales, the smoke filters down over her bottom lip like fog. “Yeah, I’m all grown up now.”

She smiles before Janet can say anything and hands back the cigarette, sliding from her perched position to open the door. “Thanks for the casserole, Mrs. Winters. I’ll tell dad you came by.”

Janet smiles back, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She murmurs something about enjoying the rest of the day and leaves without a second glance. As she heads towards the Ford she’s parked in the Elders’ driveway, she thinks about Haven’s expression, and the uncharacteristic coldness in the girl’s blue eyes. Janet’s known Haven her entire life, and she’s never seen that look before.

Not from her, at least.




“It’s just some nights I crave you when I know I shouldn’t.”




She’s seventeen, and Jaime Holster is throwing one of his notorious backyard parties on a Saturday night. Most of the adults in town know about Holster’s parties, including the local cops, but they’ve brokered an unspoken truce with the youth – a don’t ask, don’t tell policy that would make Clinton proud.

Haven wears shorts that are too short to be anything other than denim underwear and a crop top that shows how long and lean her stomach has become. Her blonde hair is thrown up into a messy bun, and there’s barely a lick of makeup on her face except for some eyeliner and strawberry flavored lip balm. She has an effortless attractiveness that other girls envy and try to emulate to little success. When Holster blares rock from a stereo system haphazardly balanced on the top railing of his deck, it’s Haven that starts dancing first.

She has a cold bottle of beer in one hand and the other in the air, her fingers tapping the beat along with her hips. When she tosses her head back and forth, her knot of hair shaking from the effort, two other girls that she could have called friends join in. Holster, never missing an opportunity, is the first guy to start dancing. He has the same confidence Haven possesses, and they grin at each other knowingly. By the time Manson starts playing, most of the party has become a pit of thrashing bodies.

Haven is sweating, throwing herself against the hive of arms and chests around her, laughing in a way that’s almost ugly, full-throated and close to a horse’s bray, her beer spilling and running down her arm, leaving her sticky and amber-smelling. She pulls her head back, avoiding an aggressive looking elbow, and leans into the escape Holster offers when he throws an arm around her waist and lifts her feet off the ground. He pivots, turning her in a half-circle, and she wraps her long legs around his hips, the majority of her weight supported by the gyrating bodies behind her and Holster’s hands under her ass.

She still has some of her beer, and she takes a drink even though it’s turned lukewarm, looping her free arm around Holster’s neck. He says something against her neck, something hot and half-drowned by music. She can feel that he’s hard and that he’s rutting against her, the fabric of his jeans chafing her thighs.

From across the yard, she can see Luke watching them. Watching her.

Haven winks and drags her nails down the back of Holster’s head.

So this is just short of 1000 words, but I'm counting it as a win since 1) I wrote the majority of it on my phone while in bed and 2) it's more dialogue than I usually ever manage.

Roman and Sun AU snippet!

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Sunniva's hands don't shake, and Roman isn't afraid. 

He’s the opposite of what afraid should look like, she thinks. He’s posing like an emperor, spread across a cot, his lanky, muscled body taking up too much of the narrow space. His trousers are on, but he's removed his shirt. His dog tags hang, silver and cold, against his naked chest. There are old yellow bruises bartering his left ribs, the ones closest to his navel fresh enough to still be blue and purple. Angry gaps of skin jut against each other from where some inexperienced field medic tried his best to keep Roman's insides from spilling out with a needle and thread. Most of the wound has healed and started to scab, but he knows to expect another chunk of scars. He’ll be a map of wounds soon.

Sunniva's hair is pinned up, rolled under to hide its length; looking at her in her ill-fitting man's clothing as she fills a syringe with medicine, Roman is once again surprised at her capability. Most of the women he knows have been hardened or destroyed by the war, but not many adapted to it.  

"You're clever," he tells her, leaning over to the makeshift nightstand beside the cot to drink from a flask full of gin. "I never expect cleverness from beautiful girls."

"I know exactly what it is you expect from them." Sunniva rolls her eyes, but her smile is amused.

She soaks some fresh bandages in antiseptic then unceremoniously pushes a hand against his chest, forcing him into a more prone position before wrapping the medicated gauze over his gashed side. His muscles ripple beneath her hands. As a nurse, she's efficient but here, now, with him, she’s not always the gentlest - she thinks she sees Roman flinch, just a little, at the pressure of her fingers. Part of her knows he deserves the pain. Part of her feels guilty for even thinking so.

"I mean it,” Roman says. “The beautiful ones don't need to be clever. All they need to do is wake up in the morning." 

"And spread their legs at night." She sounds more bitter than she means to. Her eyes, bluer than usual in the dim light from the kerosene lantern, are grave and watchful above her frown. 

Roman scratches his beard and shrugs his opposite shoulder. "That's their choice."

"Not always."

He nods like he understands, but Sunniva knows he doesn't - Roman is and always has been a taker, a man who grapples hungrily through the world. When she finishes with his side, she sits back. She swats his hand with the easy briskness of an older sister when he reaches for the flask again. He laughs without much humor, wincing when he settles back onto the cot more comfortably. 

"You know, we don't think of you that way." His tone is deadly in its gentleness, and she glances at him warily because of it. 

With a clear of her throat, she rolls her shirt sleeves up to her elbows, washing her hands in a basin with lukewarm water. "What way?"

"Like you're a whore." He can't be sure, but Roman thinks he sees Sunniva's spine tighten. "If that's what you're worried about."

"Why would I worry about that?" She doesn't look at him. She washes her hands a second time, more slowly, rubbing the lemon scented soap into her knuckles and beneath her nails. 

"One woman. Six men. You run without consideration, you fall into a hole."

Sunniva feels her frown flip and a smile begins to broaden the side of her mouth. "Haven't heard that one before. I'm not sure it even really fits here. Am I the person running? Or the hole?"

"Which would you prefer to be, darling?" 

She laughs a little, a tad exasperated, and wipes her hands on the front of her army pants. Sometimes talking to Roman is like finding your way through a maze - you make the wrong turn, and you don't know where you are anymore. 

She pulls a three legged stool up to the side of his cot and sits. She doesn't mind when he touches her arm. When he reaches for the flask next, she doesn't stop him. Instead, she takes the drink he offers after his own sip. 

His eyebrows knit together when he shifts to his side.  Sunniva brushes a piece of his hair away from the cut of his jaw without thinking about it. The ease of their friendship should surprise her, and it does, but not in the way she wants it to. She wants to distrust it.  

"I heard you were part of the trenches before being stationed here. Slit a German's throat when the tunnel caved," she says, business-like, her tone no-nonsense. She says it like she's trying to figure him out more than she already has, like it isn’t intended to hurt.  

"People tell all sorts of war stories."

"And there was a woman. French. Popular with the boys."

"Creature comforts, darling." He flashes his toothy grin, but it looks more like a grimace. 

"Is that what I am?" 

He shrugs again, so casual, so composed. "Depends on who you're comforting."

She makes a noncommittal noise and Roman eyes her curiously. 

"It's alright, you know," her tells her after a moment. "It's alright if you want it to be Palmer you're comforting." 

The legs of the stool scratch across the floor when Sunniva distances herself.

She rubs her arms self-consciously and tells herself it's from the cold, not the conversation. 

This thing upon me, howls like a beast
You flower, you feast
- “Woman”



His weight beneath her anchors Augusta in the moment, binding her sails and building her moorings. She feels almost child-like - a woman grown, tall as a willow, her body devoid of grace and molded into severe lines (the resulting aftermath of a life of trials and tribulations, of crossing into adulthood fully) - but she is made minuscule by Radomir's mountainous size. She is used to having control, to maintaining order, to fulfilling responsibilities; she's grateful for the freedom and comfort his body provides. It's refreshing, even if it doesn't change the fundamentals of their dynamic.  As if to further establish this point, Augusta's arms cage his head, her wrists locking behind his neck, mimicking the way her legs circle his waist. She has circled her way around him, as much as possible. If she leans down more, she'll find a shelf for her head in the shape of his shoulders and chest. If she arches too much, her oak-colored hair brushes the top of the Cadillac. 

They are a knot, insidiously twisted, and difficult to untangle. 

Radomir's heavy hands grip her hips. When she rocks down, grinding against the hard length of him, he holds her like she's the anchor instead of the ship. It makes her laugh, slick and needy, against his lips. 

Forehead pressing against hers, and in-between uttering a Slavic curse and a groan, Radomir asks her what's so funny. 

"Sometimes I think you forget what you're capable of," she tells him, trailing her palm from the nape of his neck to his jawline, feeling the scratch of the day's stubble against her skin.
 
Radomir grins, leaning back against the leather seats, spreading his arms out over their curves. "No. I never forget."

She quirks an eyebrow at him, her mouth a thin scar of a smirk, then nods briefly. "You're right." Her hand scalds him as she runs her fingers down his neck, deliberately traveling the length of his jugular, circling away from his heart as she traverses over his broad chest, burning lower and lower until she palms the outline of his hardness completely. He grunts, guttural, and looks at her from between half-lidded eyes. 

"Show me then," she says, licking the corner of his mouth. "Show me what you can do." 





Augusta could talk the devil into setting himself on fire. 

She could get into anyone’s brain – into their teeth as well as their ears. She could vibrate in the knot of nerves below the breastbone and seem to eat the damp and delicate tissue behind the eyes.

Radomir knows this. He has accepted it, has let himself be convinced by all her words and plans and promises, has even been enamored by it, but when he's deep inside of her, his hands buried in her hair, her body wet and yielding to him in all the ways he has often yielded for her, he wants to be the one who is silver-tongued and solid. He wants to lead as she follows. He wants to pave a path to a future where their footing is on equal ground, where he does more than guard her life, open her doors, and fuck her in secret. 

But then she catches his neck with one of her hands - hands that make him think of doves in their elegance and long-fingered poise - or her sweat leaves salt on his lips as he mouths the curve of her jaw and the desire to satisfy her, to be hers, battles with his urge to claim. 

Augusta is silk, spread beneath him, a leg curved over his hip, the other pinned down at the thigh and held open by his right hand. Her body is pressed against and into the Cadillac's back seats. The windows are fogged over. They're both sweating. She has a rope of pearls around her neck that glisten, sticking to her collarbone, the ends of her hair clinging to them. But she is still removed, still distant - he's only pushed up her skirt, only undone his trousers - and he's bracing his bulk above her, forced into the back of a car that suddenly feels like a coffin. His left hand had gripped the front seat for leverage and balance, but now he uses it to pluck at the matching pearl buttons of her blouse. Quick. Nimble. Too precise for a man whose history has covered his hands in blood. 

"Hold on," he murmurs, like his words are sticking to his tongue, then scowls when she groans with impatience. 

Augusta pushes her hands back through her hair, looking down at the progress he's making, inches of her skin slowly coming into sight as her blouse spreads open. "Radomir." There's a note of annoyance in the way she says his name - it's subtle, but he's been trained to notice it. 

"Augusta." He mimics, leaning down to kiss the tops of her breasts, his teeth dragging over the expensive lace of her bra. He guides the shirt off of her slowly, rolling it away from her shoulders, and feels her acquiesce when she arches up to help him. It slips from her arms, a snake shedding expensive skin. 

He curves a hand back, against her spine, and works the clasp of her bra next. When he moves to the line of buttons on the side of her hiked skirt, she huffs again. A simmer of anger from her mouth, disguised as a sigh. 

"Radomir," this time her tone is clearer - more obviously sharp, "we don't have time for this." 

"Why not?" he asks, the only part of him moving now his fingers at her hip. He's still inside of her, thrust to the hilt, but he is a creature of self-possession. 

She slaps him, her hand a viper. Three quick successions. His eyes flinch, but the crack of sound is louder than the pain. 

"No time," Radomir muses, feeling the sting of her nails. He lowers his eyes to her exposed chest, to the slender inward curves of her waist, his hand rubbing the buttons of her skirt now, feeling their worth. 

He seems reflective - humbled - so Augusta is surprised when he looks her squarely in the eyes. 

"Do you have time to undress for your brother?" The impudence is more in his eyes and the smirk his mouth makes than in his voice. That he keeps even and low. 

Although she considers it, Augusta decides to answer him earnestly rather than make him apologize. "No.” She uses her slapping hand to run her thumb over his full bottom lip, her nail scratching at the corner where his smirk is the most evident. “… and I don't fuck him in the backseat of cars either."

"Where then?" He undoes a button.

"Where I bury my skeletons."

Another button loosens, and now he can unwrap her fully, smoothing away the fabric to feel the way her thighs shiver and how her bones battle with her waist. He hums his understanding and dips his head to kiss her neck.

Slowly, ignoring the time she cherishes, he starts to move. He thrusts deeply, one hand at her hip, one arm curling around her lower back to pull her up and closer to where their bodies are joined. Augusta drags her nails across his shoulder, hooking her leg further behind him.





They fuck into dusk. Until Augusta’s skin is slick with sweat and flushed from her toes to the crown of her dark head. Until Radomir’s breathing hitches and his blood stutters in his veins.

She has crawled on top of him in the low-light, the muscles in her thighs straining, her fingers trembling. She mirrors how they began – arms around his neck, legs caging his waist – and his hands cup her ass. She rocks above him, chasing her rising crescendo.

When she comes, she bites his shoulder, stifling the cry torn from her mouth. Radomir, never the nosiest of fucks, groans with pride.

Augusta nuzzles into the side of his neck, contended.

“What does Hatchet sound like?” The question settles along his throat and constricts like a noose.

Radomir wonders how long she’s been waiting to ask. He runs his hands over her back, counting the notches in her spine. Augusta laughs, breathy, at his silence. She nips his earlobe. “Did you think I didn’t know? What you do when you aren’t with me.”

“I am always with you,” he says, “even when I am not.”

“How romantic.” She knocks her knuckles against his heart.

Even though she’s patronizing him, he kisses her – long and deep - satiating himself.

Augusta presses her fingers to his mouth. “Are we done here?”

He nods. When she slides from him, the sudden loss of her is a void.






Radomir leans against the side of the Cadillac in the darkness as Augusta dresses. He smokes a cigarette, watching the horizon. There’s a clutter of brush along the seaside. Come fall, most of it will probably be dead, but now the branches bear leaves and makes it hard to see the crashing waves. A narrow dirt road, scattered with sand, curves back towards the city. Traffic will be light he thinks, and pitches his cigarette to the ground.

In the night, Augusta can hardly make out anything. She adjusts the fall of her necklace and pins her hair carefully using the rearview mirror. Her blouse sticks to her skin and her skirt is wrinkled, but her strict spine and sharp gaze are enough to make her look composed. She touches her swollen mouth and smiles before knocking on the window.

Radomir grips the steering wheel once he slides into the driver’s seat.

“I could kill him,” he says.

Augusta lights her own cigarette, following the train of his thought easily. She speaks around the smoke in her mouth. “It isn’t him I want you to kill.”

They look at each other, and Radomir says nothing (except with his eyes, and Augusta can read them easily, can see the way pain and obligation twist him up like a tourniquet, can see, too, how quickly his love for her outweighs his devotion to any other). He starts the engine, one hand falling to the gear shift, the other balancing on the wheel. Augusta places her hand on top of his, tracing the lines of his veins above his knuckles.

With Radomir in the doorway, even Chason, usually so bold and daring with his stares, ducks his eyes.

Radomir – or The Russian, as he is known in the Boardwalk districts – takes up most of the threshold. Chason cleans his bar and avoids looking to his left. It isn’t fear that stops his gaze from roaming, although The Russian is the most lethal of the men on the Vries’ payroll, but this: Chason knows a guard dog when he sees one. Just as he knows that a man’s nickname can be as telling and as intimidating as a scar or a burn across a face. Some men do not need the burden of adjectives. The description gets in the way, as though whatever could be said of the men in question would only diminish the true effect they had in person. Chason suspects that minimalism has always suited Radomir, the way war had suited him, so working for the Vries is just another war for The Russian. The landscape changes but not the battle. And if Chason has to keep guessing, he would say that Radomir’s nickname probably amuses him too … in the way certain soldiers are amused by a bloody kill and a hard rape.

The Russian picks at his nails with a Bowie knife, standing with his feet shoulder-width apart, and looks bored. He checks his watch once, seems unsatisfied by the time, and murmurs something in his Slavic tongue.

Chason doesn’t understand the language, but he knows intelligence when he hears it. Intelligence and anger. That’s the true horror, he thinks. Not The Russian’s sheer brawn, but the fact that his brains are just as developed as his muscles. One of Palmer’s busboys, a chocolate-skinned youth of sixteen with eyes like a doe and a name like a curse, once told Chason that hope slips away when The Russian arrives at your door. You expect the worst because here is a man whose body casts a giant’s shadow, who once crushed another man’s skull between his palms, whose smile is rabid.

Chason moves to restocking the whiskey and keeps his head down.

Outside on the wet city streets, beyond the threshold The Russian blocks, The Emerald’s Ford has parked at the curb and Palmer is already opening the passenger door for Sunniva. She slides into the curve of his offered arm the way water slides across stone. There’s a soft, foreign flush on her cheeks, and a dangerous hint of laughter on her tongue. She doesn’t even mind when Palmer keeps his hold on her waist, when she leans a little into his weight to balance out the natural hitch her prosthetic leg causes as her good foot searches for traction.

He whispers something into her ear, his nose pressed against her dark hair, and she hits him lightly on the arm. It’s too kind, too gentle, too full of unacknowledged intimacy.

An hour remains before sunset, but they don’t know that they’re already late.





Augusta hates waiting. She spent most of her life waiting – for the right moment, for ascension – and now impatience pains her like a cancer. “They should be here by now,” Augusta says, the irritated pitch in her voice contradicting the sharp, glasslike glare of her eyes.

“Wait,” Harrow tells her, smoothing a thumb across her knuckles with a sneer.

She pulls away, curling her hand more fully around her tumbler of bourbon in the process. She doesn’t drink, but she holds the glass, liking the chill against her palm.

Harrow lights a cigarette with a gold lighter while turning his head at the sound of approaching feet; he raises his eyebrows at his sister pointedly, smugly. Radomir has heard the noises too – he’s rolling forward onto the balls of his feet, sliding his knife back into its hiding place, cracking his knuckles with anticipation – and the air inside of The Emerald’s otherwise empty dining room simmers with smoke and feeling.

Sunniva notices the club’s silence before Palmer does. They still have an hour before even the early dinner guests typically arrive, but for all the windows do not reveal to the streets, The Emerald should be a hive of activity inside. Her mouth twists into a frown and trepidation crawls over her body as Palmer pushes the batwing doors of the dining room open.

He’s mid-grin, his oxfords bright against the checkered flooring, when he stops in his tracks. The Vries are in the middle of the room, as timeless as the clean linen tablecloths or the crystal glasses covering the tables around them. Augusta has the pose of a predator, much like her brother seated across from her, and although her hair is darker and her eyes are more hazel than blue, their relation is obvious by the sharp lines of their bones. The self-possessed way they sit with steel spines and feigned ease. The sensuous coldness of their thin mouths.

“Here be monsters,” Palmer murmurs, trying for tongue-in-cheek. His hand tightens around Sunniva’s waist.

Sunniva manages to seem sober, whatever warmth and unguarded happiness that had colored her face before sliding away into a mask of granite. Her shoulders stiffen. It’s the same body language she had adopted during the war, when blood was common, and danger threatened from each desolate corner of the world. As though remembering the fundamental loneliness of those times, she steps away from Palmer, not fully enough for the distance between their bodies to suggest tension to any casual observers, but enough for Palmer to notice and dislike the coldness that seeps into the space where the warmth of her had been. He feels it keenly, distractedly.

“You’re late,” Augusta informs them.

“I did not realize we were scheduled to meet.” Palmer runs his hand through his hair, collecting himself. He brandishes a smile the way other men brandish weapons.

“I trust Chason treated you well while you waited.” Sunniva does not look at the bartender, but Palmer sees him grin.

Neither of the Vries acknowledge her statement.

Radomir stalks forward. Sunniva thinks anyone unfamiliar with the battlefield would be surprised by his grace and lightness of foot, but she knows all too well how quick the unsuspected can be. Palmer is unperturbed; he holds his arms up without being told to, shoulders squared and body pliant as The Russian runs his calloused hands up and over his chest, arms, hips, into the pockets of both his suit jacket and trousers. Seemingly satisfied, Radomir turns his attention to Sunniva and conducts the same inspection. He moves back to the exit without speaking.

“Don’t worry, everything’s Jake.” Palmer assures the Vries, a gesture that even he knows is pointless. If things were not alright, he’s sure his neck would be snapped before he could grace the world and his current audience with another worthwhile quip.

Sunniva joins the siblings first, slipping into one of the open chairs across from them, her demeanor professional. Palmer follows but chooses to stand, one hand resting on the back of Sunniva’s chair.

“Is this about the Chicago deal?” Sunniva asks when neither Augusta nor Harrow speaks.

“What makes you think that?” Harrow drawls, his words thick with smoke from the cigarette between his thin lips.

“The last time we spoke, with the delivery – ”

“I didn’t speak to you.” Harrow leans forward and snubs his cigarette out into the crystal ashtray at the table.

Augusta raises her hand in an impatient gesture, her fingers long and glimmering with rings. She looks at Harrow briefly, a line of annoyance splitting her forehead, before she settles more comfortably back into her own chair. “Chicago is not our problem.”

“So, there is a problem then.” Palmer says.

“He’s very perceptive, isn’t he?” Augusta scoffs, glancing at Sunniva as though for confirmation. “Yes. There is a problem. We have a rat.”

“We think we have a rat,” Harrow echoes, his tone suggesting that he does not share his sister’s concern.

“Impossible.” Palmer’s confidence makes Augusta raise an eyebrow, the expression eerily similar to Harrow’s.

Beneath the table, Sunniva curls her hand into a fist, digging her nails into the fabric of her dress.





Roman is an oil spill, the lines of his body blending effortlessly, slickly, into the darkness around him. If it wasn’t for the burning cigarette between the fingers in his right hand, glowing bright in the shadows, Sunniva would not have seen him.

She remembers him from the war, and how he was the best suited for night time errands, for bringing death from a distance. He still possesses the same skills: wearing silence as a shroud, merging his body into his surroundings, turning his gaze to that of a hawk’s. Not for the first time, she thinks he’s wasted as a doorman, only now she feels doubt cloud her perception of him.

She takes his cigarette without asking, and he steps more to the left, making room for her to lean against the brick beside him.

“What did you do, those years after the war, before you came back?” Her question is too layered in suggestion. She regrets it immediately, but she knows their shared history is no protection for either of them anymore.

Roman arches an eyebrow. “Hello to you too, Pirate.”

“Wasn’t there a woman?”

“I lost count,” he says with a grin that splits his entire face, his teeth white against his lips.

Sunniva hears Palmer in his response and fights the urge to roll her eyes. “The French one.”

It’s too dark to make out his eyes, but for a moment she thinks she sees a flicker of emotion in his gaze. A crack in his otherwise hardened armor.

When he doesn’t answer her, she passes him his cigarette. He takes it easily enough.

“We have a problem, Roman.”

“When do we not?”

“This one involves vermin.”

“A rat?”

She makes a hum of acknowledgement and waits.

Roman has finished his cigarette by the time he decides to speak. “You do know this is all just another game, right? A way to pass the time before the big sleep. Even Palmer’s pretending, but he knows. Someone always loses. We were already lucky once. We won’t be lucky again.”

“Forgive me if I do not share in your nihilism. I still value my life.”

Roman laughs, short and cynical, pushing himself from the wall in a clean motion. “We died a long time ago, Sunshine.”

She catches him by the crook of his elbow; he stops, looking down at her from a half-step away. “Don’t call me that,” she says, her voice no longer suggestive, but not unkind.

He shrugs away from her fingers, pulling his arm free. When he leans closer to her, she does not back away. He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, his fingers brushing the side of her jaw. When he smiles, she smiles back.

No hard feelings.

She won’t feel the same in the future.

More AU Madness! I don't know why my mind went to 1920s bootlegging ... but it did. Oh well!

This piece is a bit of a trickster. It looks like it's going to be a full piece because of how it starts, but oh no, nope, no way. I fizzle out at the end. But hey! Writing! That's a thing.


------




They don’t talk about the war.

Decades from now, people will reflect on this stoicism and say it’s unnatural. They will discuss the effects of trauma in sympathetic tones and try to imagine the cold-blooded horror of the trenches, of men choking on yellow gas, of soldiers clutching their breasts while the old world tumbles. They will speak of war from a distance with all the nuances poetic imagery grants. The Great War, they will say, is a World War. The Great War that bred the Greatest Generation.

In truth, their silence is a shield. Their shattered lives only pave the way to more pain.





Unloading crates of alcohol isn’t much different from unloading medical supplies, food rations, or weapons. It’s the same push and pull of muscles, the same overseeing of inventory, the same hurried, methodical ways. If it wasn’t for the back-alley exchanges, shipments arriving in covered trucks armed by men with metal guns as black as night, Palmer wouldn’t know the difference.

He steps lightly over the wet cobblestone, slicking his hand back through his hair before lighting a cigarette. There’s a dozen men around him; their shirts are sweat-stained, the sleeves rolled up to their elbows, their hands full of boxes and callouses. They speak in grunts, ferreting the crates into the back of The Emerald with all the efficiency illegal activities like theirs require.

Sunniva stands close to the car at the front of the line of trucks. She seems out of place against all the masculinity. “How many boxes does that make?”

Harrow is a knife sliver, leaning gracefully against the side of his Cadillac, the car a mix of intimidating steel and luxury glass. He glances at Sunniva the way men glance at wasps and turns to Palmer to respond. “This should cover you for the month. We have another shipment coming in from Chicago in two weeks.”

“Chicago? What do they have that we don’t have right here?” Palmer grins as he pulls an envelope from the inside of his pin-striped jacket. He hands it over with the smooth flourish of a man accustomed to dealing cards.

“Ask my sister. It was her idea to expand business and all.” Harrow lets his driver take the envelope. They’re already ducking inside of his car, but he hesitates at the last moment, sticking his head partially out the passenger window. Sunniva steps away, shifting to let Palmer slide past. “How’s the new girl working out?”

“Fine. She can light cigarettes and deliver drinks. About all we need.”

Harrow’s nod is curt. He thumps his fist on the hood, and his driver takes the signal. The engine rattles powerfully as they drive off.

“You didn’t tell him?” Sunniva asks once they’re out of sight and the last of the loading men are shuffling to their trucks.

“What’s to tell?”

Palmer recognizes the look she gives him – one mixed with disapproval and surprise. He’s seen it plenty of times before, but they don’t talk about that either.






Chason has dark hair, dark eyes, and, as far as the majority of The Emerald’s clientele believes, skin that’s a touch too dark to be white. They think he’s one of those wops, another filthy immigrant suckling at America’s great teat, or a spy sent in by Masseria to compete with the Vries’ booming business. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. To them, he’ll always be the bartender who can’t speak their language, his mouth too slick with olive oil and his mother’s tomato sauce to get any words out properly. To them, he’s fit for shining shoes and sweeping stoops.

He could tell them that he doesn’t speak a lick of Italian, wouldn’t understand a single word if he heard it, and that his mother would burn water before making any type of sauce. He could tell them that he was born in Atlantic City, that he knows the boardwalk and the beach as well as he knows his bones. He could tell them that their affluence doesn’t protect them as much as they think it does, that their blood is the same as his. But he doesn’t. He cleans his bar, he gets their illicit drinks, and he lets them think what they want.

When the Vries deliver a new shipment, he oversees where the crates are stored, choosing certain unlabeled bottles for the back of the bar. He’s lining up glasses when the pianist arrives for the night, cracking his fingers dramatically before sitting at the stage and beginning his warm up. There’s a few working girls around, smoking cigarettes and sipping champagne, resting their heels before the night begins. They all have freshly sheered hair, their bobs softly curled and framing their heart-shaped faces. They look like dolls – replicas and waxen – and their clucking chatter mingles with the piano melodies.

The one whose name he can never remember has a bridge of freckles across her nose and a shock of red hair. She’s Irish, still fresh off the boat after six months of American living, but the women at The Emerald bond over shared bruises, broken hearts, and booze all the same. He’s about to offer her a light for the cigarette she’s been holding, but they go silent, their words cut off abruptly. Chason follows the path of their scrutiny, pocketing his lighter.

Coming in from the faded street, the new girl is a fresh field of snow, her arms so white that they seem to shine. She’s wearing another slip of silk, the silver fabric iridescent and cut on the bias so that it bunches and gathers near her hip, the folds somehow sinuous and showing stretches of leg as she moves. A rope of ivory beads shivers around her neck. With her hair slicked into a neat chignon at the nape of her neck, not a strand out of place, she looks more like a guest than an employee.

The smile she wears is cautious, and none of the other girls return it.






“Are you seeing him again tonight?”

The question is sudden, jarring, and for a moment Ita thinks the bar itself must have spoken to her. “I’m sorry?” she asks, her voice as silvery as her dress, and more quiet than the voices Chason is used to hearing.

He pours her two fingers of whiskey and slides the tumbler across the bar. She palms it awkwardly and fixes him with a curious look.

“Would you prefer champagne?”

“That’s what the other girls drink?”

“You don’t seem like the other girls.”

Ita is surprised he doesn’t tack a sweetheart onto the end of his sentence like Palmer and the other men would, their drawling accents syrupy thick with drink and suggestion. The corner of her mouth flips for a moment, trying to picture the way his voice might lilt at the syllables, and then she blushes. “You don’t really know me well enough to say that, do you?”

Chason’s face is indecipherable. It makes her blush more. She ducks her eyes and takes a sip of the whiskey, her lipstick smearing the rim of the glass.

“… It’s not bad,” she says at last then takes another sip.

Chason laughs, a barking, biting sound. It’s harsher than it needs to be. She smiles anyway, softly.

When he turns to leave, she says, “I’m not with him.”

Chason pauses, wiping a nonexistent spill from the bar top before meeting her blue gaze evenly. “That isn’t what I asked.”

Ita doesn’t say anything, so the silence fills the space between them.







The Emerald is in full swing when Harrow arrives.

Chason isn’t surprised to see him.

And although Ita’s smile remains cautious, she finds herself pulled to his table and his entourage. When he fingers the rope of beads around her neck, she bears it.

Posting some bits! I'm not unhappy with this, per say, but I also wasn't sure what tone or mood I wanted for the overall piece. I still want to do the whole Roman-pack-fight eventually.

The conversation is supposed to be between Roman and Knight, but it sounded too formal and melodramatic.

-------


"He isn't blood. And he isn't family."




He is cold. With her palm pressed above his dead heart, his skin feels the way glass or metal does.





"This is not up for discussion," Anders says, using his stern voice, but there's a softness around his eyes and mouth - a questioning look - that seems to ask why. Why shouldn't it be discussed? His allegiances are to his pack; Roman is an outsider.

Lene steels his shoulders. He tilts his chin up in a gesture of defiance. He is silent and sure. The pack has not seen him in this shape for some time now. He knows their ways - how what you earn here is determined by strength and capability rather than gender, but he's always thought they listen to him more, respect him more, in the guise of a man.

Roman looks more relaxed than he should. He sits with his elbows on his knees, his shirt threadbare and cut off at the shoulders, showing the fine muscles in his arms. His hair is loose, slipping against his jaw, and when Lene catches his eye, Roman grins - his teeth are very white in the darkness.





"You know you don't smell like anything? Nothing. You're the absence of a scent."

"So I have been told."





"You think you can win? That you can persevere? Outlast their malice by hiding in these western mountains? I know men. I've seen what they are capable of, how they hate what they do not understand, how they fear what they cannot create or control. They are weeds. They will cover everything until there is nothing left, and then they will turn on themselves. It is what they do."

"You speak like you aren't one of them."

"I haven't been for many years now."

"So why are you here? Why did you join the insurgence?"

"What else was there to do?"

"The last man standing."

"Until the sky falls."

"And her? She has enough protectors. If you're staying because you feel obligated, don't. You aren't doing her any favors. Prolonging the inevitable."

More bakery AU! Featuring gossip, coffee, awkward run-ins, and some sex.

This gets smutty, but honestly not as smutty as I thought it would get.


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The coffee shop holds open mic events the third Friday and Saturday of every month. They've grown in popularity since they started a year ago, but it's still a hit-or-miss on how well the performances will be. That's the nature of improv, Sunniva assumes, standing with her arms crossed in the archway between the pick-up point on the counter and the hall designated for Employees Only. She's stiff even outside of her work clothes, her purple summer dress doing little to soften her. She hasn't smiled in half an hour. She's watching the guests drink their table wines and order their coffees split with sweet vodkas or syrupy Bailey's, and she frowns, knowing from experience how dangerous easy booze and lackluster poetry readings can be to one's will power. 

"I don't get it either," Eda tells her, stopping on her way to clear a recently emptied booth. "We should really ask why every staff member has to be here for these events. You shouldn't have to come back after working all day." She's misread Sun's expression, but Sun doesn't correct her.

"Augusta likes a full house. It's easy promotion. Besides, they're here too." Sun inclines her head to one of the far tables and Eda's eyes follow. 

Augusta is sitting with her husband, her brother, Roman, and Radomir. She's holding hands with her husband on top of the table, blatantly declaring her devotion, her fingers much smoother and younger than the ones clutching hers. Sunniva thinks her body is leaning towards Rad though, that Augusta is resting the tips of her heels on the bottom rung of Rad's adjacent stool. 

"Sort of an odd social circle, isn't it?" Eda asks, shifting her weight to one hip along with her obvious envy.

It's an accurate assessment though – odd indeed and unbalanced. The Reinhardts’ clothing alone could pay the entire staff's salary for a month, and although Harrow is just as well-dressed, his antisocial tendencies are showing. He keeps glancing towards Ita's lean figure behind the counter; Sunniva has lost count on how many times he's gone to get a refill of what might be water. Roman is texting, somehow able to manage the shop and take a whole hour of break time without actually overseeing anything, and Radomir’s bulk causes him to look out of place anywhere that isn't a war zone. It doesn't help that they're also the most serious of the clientele - the mood noticeable chillier. All the other tables are full of laughter, chatter, cheers for the performers on the half-circle stage. 

Eda and Sun watch as Radomir shifts and digs his phone from the back pocket of his working class distressed jeans. He looks down at the caller ID, answers with an apologetic glance to the table, and rises, stepping towards the bathroom. One hand holds his phone, the other covers his left ear to drown out the cacophony of noise caused by a singer’s croaking rendition of Ring of Fire. He looks a bit like the secret service, shouldering past a crowd of fresh-faced twenty-somethings. 

"Do you think he's talking to anyone?" Sunniva asks, amused. 

"What do you mean?"

"I don’t think anyone is on the other line. Watch, I guarantee Augusta follows him within the next five minutes."

"Can we just look at how he walks? Parts the crowd like Moses. I heard he used to work for the government. One of those special ops, hush-hush types of situation." Eda says, her envy shifting to judgment.

"Roman said he was a personal trainer?" 

Ita shakes her head from behind the counter, having caught the last bit of the conversation, and places two steaming cappuccinos down under the Pick-Up sign dangling from the ceiling. "Here, these are for you two. And I don't think that's true. People just assume. He told me he graduated from Harvard. Studied linguistics. He can speak a number of languages, actually." 

"Really?" Sunniva picks up one of the cappuccinos with a hint of a smile. "How did he end up working for the Vries? I don't think bakeries need translators." 

"He doesn't. Not technically. He works for Mr. Reinhardt."

Sunniva makes a hum of interest. She isn't surprised Ita knows any of this - Ita seems to know everything, but she's mostly a sealed vault, and she's never been the center of the gossip in the shop. Unlike Eda with her frank expressions and beguiling mouth. 

"That is one rich man," Eda says, turning her attention to Augusta's husband and his expensive suit. Even from a distance, the three of them can see the glare of Augusta's wedding ring. "How do you get that rich?" 

"Bonds?"

Sunniva shrugs. "Sell your soul, more like it."

"Maybe you should start taking bets," Eda teases, heading to the booth still in need of cleaning. She's got her coffee in one hand but she motions subtly with the other towards Augusta. She's standing and smoothing her hands across her skirt. She whispers something to her husband before following Radomir's path. 

"Told you," Sunniva says to Ita, the blonde merely shaking her head in response. 





"I want to fuck you," Radomir speaks into the shell of Augusta's ear, his need outlined more clearly by his roaming hands than his voice. There's a slight hitch to his words - some accent long-ago muffled - that warps his consonants whenever he gets like this, but Augusta doesn't think anyone else would notice. She doesn't think anyone else has the same effect on him as she does - at least not in two years - or that he talks much without first being prompted. 

"No, you don't," she corrects him, pushing a hand against the center of his broad chest. 

She's perched on the edge of the wide sink, her slim-cut skirt pushed up against her thighs, her silk shirt missing its top two buttons so the lace of her bra and the swell of her breasts are showing. There's scratch marks there, against her cleavage, from where Radomir's beard has rubbed her skin raw. 

"Augusta." Rad says her name the way a petulant child might, and she tsks at him, feigning disappointment. 

His giant hands trace the length of her calves, roaming upwards, circling the curve of her knees, until he treads her thighs with his fingers. Standing between her legs, he looms above her, her hands tiny, pale butterflies that flutter over his chest and shoulders. He could crush them, could pin both her wrists above her head with only one hand, but he doesn't. Rad leans down instead, pushing his forehead against hers, and she lets him kiss her the way he likes to - soft and too tender, like he would swallow her if he could, if it meant he could keep her safe inside of him. 

Augusta runs her sharp, pointed nails down the back of his neck and bites his bottom lip hard enough to taste blood. He jolts a bit, groans, and when she snakes a hand between their bodies, she finds him painfully hard. She cups him with her palm. He's hot and straining against his jeans. His groan is wet against her mouth. Needy. 

"Hands only. And make it quick," she tells him in her best boss-voice. The noise he makes in response is a tortuous sob. 

But he's eager - eager and willing and thrilled by her. He slides one of his hands between her legs, tearing aside the flimsy strip of lace he finds there to push three fingers into her. She's wet enough, but it still hurts, a kind of burn-ache that fills her as much as his fingers do. Her legs are confined by the contours of her skirt, so his knuckles dig into her thighs. Her gasp is more of a grunt, an exhale of hot air. She keeps her nails like claws in his neck, anchoring him as she arches up from the sink, his head buried against her chest, teeth scraping down over her bra and biting at the hard point of her nipple. He's mouthing all types of obscenities against her skin as his fingers piston in and out of her. He's only ever loquacious during times like these. 

A stoic thing, undone by her. 




Fifteen minutes after Augusta has returned to her table, looking a little warm but otherwise composed, Ita takes out the garbage. 

The alley smells damp and dark with an herbal sweetness that drafts towards her. Ita shoulders the trash, headed to the dumpster, and gives a yelp of surprise when one of the shadows speaks. 
"Do you want me to get that?" 

She recognizes the outline of his jaw and the way he carries his shoulder before she places his voice. "... You startled me." It comes out quiet and tongue-tied. Ita clears her throat. "Most people don't lurk in alleys, you know." It's meant to be joking, but it comes off as a scold, which makes a blush creep awkwardly across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. 

"Sorry." Chason flicks the last of his joint to the ground, smears it in the gravel with his work boot. She's not sure if he's apologizing for smoking or for startling her. "I like things back-alley. Used to them."

Ita doesn't know what to say to that, so she doesn't say anything. She's distinctively aware of the trash bag in her hand and how it's started to leak. 

"Guess a girl like you wouldn't know anything about that though, huh?" Chason shoves a hand through his dark hair, his eyes bright beneath his lashes, and grabs the trash before Ita can protest. He throws it up and into the dumpster easily. 

With her hands empty, Ita can't decide what to do with them. She settles them on her hips and again is aware that this was the wrong choice. She looks like a mom about to begin lecturing. 
He stares at her, waiting, but she doesn’t know what for. It seems to be her perpetual state of being whenever he’s around: confusion. The silence sinks over them. She feels crushed. Chason looks amused.

He quirks an eyebrow. “Well.”

When she still doesn’t respond or even move, he laughs, a bit of a biting, scoffing noise that’s meaner than it should be. “Okay. Nice talking to you then, tiny dancer.”

She turns to her side when he passes, avoiding the brush of their bodies.
When she gathers herself enough to go back inside and continue with the last orders for the night, her hands are shaking.





The girls forget to lock the back door, the one that leads to the alley. Whoever closes for the night inevitably remembers before leaving (thanks to the security alarm), but throughout the duration of the shop’s business hours, the door is unlocked – there’s too many smoke breaks and trips to the dumpster. Sunniva, more fastidious as a manager than Roman, rarely thinks to complain about it, but she makes a mental note to mention the need for added security at the next staff meeting when Palmer pulls her into a supply closet by her wrist.

She hates the way her heart skips and the quick moment of panic that causes her pulse to startle before she realizes its him.

He smells like the bar and cigarette smoke and leather. She hits him square in the chest, which causes him to laugh, then pulls her hand free. “Palmer. Jesus. What the fuck? What are you – twelve? I’m trying to help Ita close up here.”

“Shut up,” he murmurs, pressing his taller body against hers and circling an arm around her waist. She’s as stiff as a board, unrelenting, and the sigh she exhales is pure annoyance.

“You’re coming off more than a little rapey.”

“I thought you hard-to-get types liked an element of surprise.”

“Let’s not start that again. Do you ever actually work at that job of yours? Don’t you need to be pouring some shots right now?”

“Got off early.” He keeps his voice low, the same grey murmur, but when he looks down at her, his mouth splits into a grin that makes him boyish. He looks younger than his age, and Sunniva knows that’s supposed to be part of his charm. “Speaking of getting off …”

When he thumbs the hem of her dress, she smacks him across the side of his head. Palmer rolls his eyes, catching her hand mid-air when she tries to hit him again, forcing her backwards until her spine collides with the cold metal of a shelf. Supplies tumble and there’s the sound of breaking glass. Sunniva thinks she hears sugar scratch beneath Palmer’s shoes.

“I’ll scream,” she threatens.

“Bullshit.”

She opens her mouth, and Palmer clamps his palm over it immediately, turning his face into her neck and bracing his body against hers. He hisses when she bites, but he pushes the heel of his palm further against her teeth. It doesn’t really hurt, and she isn’t really fighting, and he knows if he were to skim his hand down across the insides of her velvet thighs that they’d come back wet.

She’s a good faker though, and he appreciates the game.

She makes a noise against his hand, her eyes throwing daggers at him, and he trails his mouth up to her ear. Palmer thinks she shivers. “If you insist on screaming, at least let it be on my terms, Sunshine.”

He kisses the hot curve of her neck, scraping his teeth down to her collarbone, mouthing the thin strap of her dress at her shoulder. She isn’t exactly responding, but she isn’t trying to leave either, so he plays his odds and lets go of her mouth, his hand falling to clutch her hip.

“I hate you,” she finally says, voice twisted into a tangle of emotion that another man would think more about.

“That’s fine.”

“… Five minutes.”

Palmer keeps one hand on her side but reaches back to click the lock on the closet. “Good, I like a challenge.”

There’s a surprising amount of grace to the way he slinks to his knees in front of her, fisting her dress up to her hips. Sunniva wishes her stomach didn’t twist with lust at the sight; as repercussion, she sweeps her fingers back through his dark hair and pulls – hard. Palmer doesn’t seem to mind though. He’s too busy wrapping a hand around the backs of her thighs and nudging her back. She complies, stretching her arms out on the shelves and leaning back, settling her weight into the metal frames. It’s surprising how easy it is for her to straddle his face like this – he keeps his hands on her thighs, her ass, supporting her as much as the shelves, her knees draped over his shoulders. His own knees must be killing him, and the angle cannot be the easiest, but she doesn’t want this to be easy. She wants him to suffer a little.

“Four minutes,” she says, fingers still tight in his air, and feels his laughter against her slick skin.

There’s a minute to spare when Sunniva all but tumbles out of the closet. She’s smoothing her dress across her legs, fixing a strap from where it fell down her arm, and shoving her hands back through her hair. She isn’t as disheveled as she thinks she is, but her eyes scan for Ita nonetheless.

Palmer steps out after her, rubbing his jaw, smirking.

She takes one look at his face and rolls her eyes. “Oh, fuck off.”

“My dick’s hard as a rock, but you’re the one who’s angry? That makes sense.”

She doesn’t bother answering, already heading to the front.

Palmer opens the back door and takes a step out, pausing in the threshold. “Sunshine?”

Sunniva doesn’t stop or look back. “What?”

“You should really keep this door locked.”

Bakery AU! This is so cute and fun and how nice is it to write something that doesn't require pressure?

Thanks to my Muffinpants for letting me join in her madness.

--



Roman’s hair is sweat-slicked and pulled up into a bun - it’s the type of hairstyle that Lene knows he adopts with an attitude of apathy that is too forced to be genuine. Lene smirks a bit, picturing him in front of a mirror, adjusting the stray strands that fall against the sides of his long face, trying to capture what he imagines effortlessness looks like. They catch his eye and he grins, bypassing the counter and Ita’s expectant face to stalk towards their corner. In typical Roman fashion, he ignores Lene’s paperwork and in-work-mode expression, standing so close that his crotch is nearly eye-level. Lene knows that’s intentional.

“You smell like the gym.”

“You’re very observant on this fine Tuesday morning.”

“I meant you stink. Fucking bad.”

As if reveling in the effect, Roman lifts his arms and stretches. He’s wearing grey sweatpants that dip across his stomach, and his sleeveless shirt lifts enough to show his hard-worked, finely etched abdomen and the cut of his hipbones. “Stop acting like you’re unimpressed. This body takes hours of dedication. Hours.”

Lene’s eyes roll. They’re about to say something or even jab him with an elbow and demand a refill on their coffee, but the door’s censor twangs its familiar chime, interrupting the banter before it can really begin.

“Saved by the bell,” Roman quips, heading back to the counter where he meets Radomir and Augusta.

Augusta looks flushed in running pants and a slim tank-top, but her dark hair is still neatly held in its French braid and there’s barely a sheen of sweat on her. She’s already transitioning into her more formal professional self, scanning the shop for any signs of disarray or problem spots to report back to Harrow while the men nod at each other with an easy familiarity. Radomir is just as sweat-stained as Roman, but he’s all bulk and force where Roman is lean, carved marble.

When they approach the counter, Ita catches some talk about weight lifting and sets between the men. They’re engaged with one another while Augusta stands to Rad’s left, but there’s a pivot to their stances that Ita thinks says more than they realize – the way Rad is a half-step behind, the subtle lean of Augusta’s hip towards the man’s mountainous form. Ita smiles when they finally turn to her and knows it’s too tight, but the good morning she chirps at them still manages to be cheerful.

“Soy Tazo Chai Tea Latte,” Augusta orders without looking up from her phone. “Medium. He’ll have a coffee. Black. No sugar. What size?”

“Small,” Rad answers.

“And for you?” Ita asks Roman, her fingers hovering over the cash register.

“Same as him.”

None of them say please or thank you, but Augusta slides her Platinum American Express across the counter.

Ita hesitates, trying for another smile. “You really don’t have to pay, Miss Vries.”

“Mrs. Reinhardt,” Augusta corrects with a touch of annoyance creeping into her voice. She flashes her left hand where a rock of a wedding ring burns against her finger. “You must be thinking of my brother. And I’d like to pay. As a principle.”

“Oh, um, right. Yes. Of course. Sorry, I forgot.” Ita gives a little shake of her head, sliding the other woman’s card in the machine.

“Can’t imagine why,” Roman murmurs, and Rad turns his head to hide his grin.






“They all work out together?” Eda asks later, helping Ita wipe down the counters. It’s the mid-afternoon lull, so the two clean to keep themselves busy.

“Apparently. I had never seen them come in together before.”

“What does Augusta look like outside of pencil skirts and silk?”

Ita lifts a narrow shoulder in a shrug. She doesn’t like to gossip, but Eda has a sweetness about her that’s difficult to ignore. Some of the workers distrust her, and Ita isn’t naïve – she’s seen how Sunniva and Eda talk – but Ita sometimes longs for the easy female comradery she sees between others. “Pretty. But she’s not the type of woman who looks like herself in casual clothes. She’s so …”

“Severe?” Eda offers.

“Do you think she’s that serious when she fucks?” Palmer interjects. Ita hadn’t heard him approach, but she should have guessed given the time – Sunniva’s shift is about to end, and Palmer always seems to arrive around that time.

Eda laughs, but Ita blushes. “I don’t like to think about it,” she says, and she means it.

“Ask Rad,” Palmer suggests without any slyness, and Ita chews on the bottom of her lip, wiping an already clean counter. Radomir has never been rude to her, not in the blunt way Augusta has, and he’s never disregarded her in same cold manner as Augusta either, but there’s something about him that unnerves her all the same. Ita doesn’t want to think about how the feeling amplifies whenever she sees Augusta touch Radomir’s arm, when he idly brushes a chunk of the woman’s hair from her neck with all the easy entitlement of intimacy, or how much stronger it might be when they’re alone and less restrained.

Ita would rather not go to bed imagining their particular forms of depravity, but Palmer might, if his grin is any inclination.

“Palmer!” Eda snaps her towel at his leg disapprovingly, echoing Ita’s unspoken sentiments. “She’s a married woman. That counts for something to some people, you know.”

Palmer’s grin is wolfish, and he catches Eda’s towel easily when she tries to snap it at him a second time. He pulls her forward until he can wrap an arm around her tiny waist and speaks against her temple. “Ever the romantic, aren’t you?”

Eda lets him tease for a moment longer before wiggling out of his grasp.

She bumps Ita’s shoulder good-naturedly when making her retreat, curving towards Sunniva’s office. “Careful with this one,” she sing-songs over her shoulder. “He can’t be trusted.”





Kim is mixing batter for a new batch of White Chocolate Blueberry Oat Cookies in the kitchen when Sunniva sticks her head through the door to check in a final time before leaving. She can hear Palmer arguing about the upcoming Red Sox game with that construction worker Ita is clearly fond of, so she’s in a hurry to get going and is grateful Kim is never demanding.

Kim raises her eyes, her dark hair caught in a knot at the nape of her neck, and wipes her hands on her apron. “We’re almost out of whole milk.”

This is usually how Kim interacts; she disregards niceties and generalities, heading straight to the point, hence Sun’s appreciation. “I’ll have Roman pick up some on his way in for tonight to hold us over and adjust the order for Calder next week. That all?”

“Do people really eat these?” Kim glances to the batter pointedly while pouring in a cup of oats.

“One of our best sellers. Why, you don’t like them?”

“Too sweet.”

“Some people like their sugar.”

“Some people are morons,” Kim suggests, and Sun laughs.

She’s about to linger, to seize the opportunity to exchange a few more words with her typically aloof baker, but she hears Palmer’s voice pitch to a tone he usually reserves for political rants and ducks back out the door, one hand waving a quick goodbye.

This is a warm-up, I guess, so it's not very pretty, but oh well. I wanted to write about vampires and Roman was kind enough to offer himself.

This is most likely AU.


--


There’s blood on his jeans.

Sunniva notices this, as well as his clean hands, and the way his bones smell of absence. His palm comes back sandy when he runs a hand through his disheveled hair, the strands cutting across his bearded jawline. He’s a whole head taller than Palmer and imposing in the way of all men who are well-sharpened blades.

“You’re outside of the Vries’ jurisdiction,” she says, “but money is money if it’s all the same to you. We don’t allow any trouble here.”

“I doubt that. With a face like yours.” His grin widens his entire face and Sunniva finds herself smiling. He glances across the marble entrance, taking in the thick columns and the smell of wet stone. “I’m not here on business. Only passing through.”

She nods and gestures for him to pass.

Most men push money into her hands and choose a girl. They circle like scavenger birds attracted to easy meat. Roman is different. He finds a seat at the bar and lets the women come to him. He talks easily, one of his big hands occasionally lifting a tumbler of scotch to his mouth or reaching out to stroke a tanned arm. After half an hour, Sunniva sits beside him, her silver dress shivering across her thighs. She flicks her fingers at the bartender and the woman hands her a glass of fig wine.

“We have others, if you don’t like – ”

“Do you miss it?”

She blinks, surprised. “Sorry?”

Roman reaches down between their bodies and strokes a palm across the back of her prosthetic leg, the metal as cold as his skin. She can almost feel the sensation. Her shoulders tighten and her mouth becomes a hard line.

“It’s beautiful work. Fine craftsmanship. But you still feel it, don’t you? Your lost limb.”

She swallows and cuts her eyes at him, shifting her legs so her good one folds on top of the other. He retracts his hand but not as quick as she would have liked him to. With a forced smile, she tucks her fingers under her chin, her elbow resting on the bar, and cants her head at him. “You must be well acquainted with loss. But overstep again, and I’ll ask you to leave. I am not one of my girls.”

Roman raises his eyebrows. The expression makes him look smug. Sunniva imagines he wears the look often.

“What are you?” She is usually too professional for such bluntness, but he’s already crossed a line. There’s a hint of coyness in her tone, as though she’s asking a question she already knows the answer to.

“Hungry,” he says with another grin. “I’m hungry.”

“We have a fantastic cook. Although most of our clientele don’t come for the food, I admit.”

He tsks at her, disappointed.

She pauses before signaling to the bartender. “Could you send for Odina, please?”

Odina smells like the mountains when she arrives a minute later. She has a spread of freckles across her face and shoulders, her hair the copper of worn pennies. Sunniva runs a hand down her arm invitingly when she comes to stand beside them. Her smile is shy and directly disproportionate to the frankness of her gaze. The lavender of her dress doesn’t suit the color of her skin or the pink flare of her bee-stung lips. Roman likes her immediately.

Sunniva brushes a few strands of Odina’s hair behind her ear, speaking low and close although she keeps her eyes on Roman. “Our guest here has special tastes. Oblige him.”







When Roman catches her jaw in his hand, she does not shy away. She has a bear’s heart, and it hammers bravely inside of her chest. He grips one of her long arms with his other hand and sees a flicker of realization in her eyes.

“Cold hands.”

“Mmm,” he concedes and pushes into her space, walking her backwards until she’s bracketed by her bedroom wall and his body. He has to lean down to press his face into her neck, and he breathes in the smell of her, the hot, youthful blood right below her fragile skin beckoning to him.

“I haven’t seen one of you in a while. Not as a customer.”

Roman pauses, his mouth humming across the slope of her shoulder. When he speaks, Odina can feel the press of his fangs against her flesh. “You’re too young to have seen one of me, mädchen.”

She laughs a little, digging her fingers into his hair and arching up into the length of him. “Don’t be silly. You’re not common, that’s for sure, mister, but we cater to all types here at the Isle.”

He growls, pinning her more forcibly against the wall, and craning her neck to the side. For all his physical threatening, he doesn’t hear her heart skip even a single beat.

“The last one said I tasted like apricots. Do you remember what those taste like? Smooth but sweet and tart.”

She bites her bottom lip and strains against his hands – not to get away, but to press closer. Roman wants to call her a minx, but now all he can think of is velvet skin and golden fruits. He presses his nose into her shoulder again, trailing his mouth up, letting the ache settle in his groin and thrum through his veins.

Hunger like drowning. Burning. Suffocating. All the sensations he has never experienced firsthand and probably never will.

He sinks his teeth into her without warning. He gets hard at the way she cries, a quick, sharp gasp from her slavish mouth. The blood spills across his tongue, thick as syrup but so much sweeter. He’s vaguely aware of letting his hands drop to his waist, of fisting the fabric of her dress at her side until he’s crushing her against him, and she just keeps arching and yielding and relenting herself to him. Roman knows she’s wet and he’d like to fuck her until she comes against him, her hair a blaze across her soft cheeks, blood smeared across her collarbone, but he lets himself get lost in the thunder of her heartbeat for a few more moments.

He’s too old to be careless. He rears his head back with a growl well before her pulse begins to flutter, circling an arm across her hips while lifting the back of her thigh until she’s looped her legs around his sharp waist.

Roman keeps his fangs out. He drags them across her collarbone, over her chest, leaving a trail of red to stain the lavender edge of her dress.

When she tells him she wants it, he bites again, against the swell of her breast.

She’ll stroke the fading imprint of his teeth for days to come.