Half Of You (Part 1) [Santiago Garcia X Fem!Reader]

Shooting Stars and Pseudoscience [part 1]

Pairing: Nathan Bateman x Gianna (fem!OC) (poc!oc)

Rating: Mature 

Word Count: 6,222

Warnings: Sexual innuendos and curse words

Genre: Mostly fluff, some angst, eventual smut

Summary: Soulmate! AU Each person is born with a soul mark that is identical with their soulmate’s. Nathan Bateman thinks it’s all nonsense, but his soulmate doesn’t. As if the whole idea wasn’t ridiculous enough already, his soulmate is none other than the popstar who is currently Blue Book’s brand ambassador.

Notes: Click here to see how this idea came to be

Playlist

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‘Former Blue Book Employee Calls Nathan Bateman an Insensitive Lunatic’

‘How a Week With Blue Book’s Owner Led a Computer Coder to Quit’

‘Blue Book’s Fall From Grace?’

“Have you seen these headlines?” Thomas, Nathan Bateman’s publicist, questioned. 

Nathan rolled his eyes at the image on his monitor. “Of course I have, but since when did we give a shit about gossip?”

“This isn’t just some gossip, this is a fucking PR disaster, Nathan!” Thomas exclaimed, flailing his hands in the air for emphasis. “These are statements from somebody who actually lived with you for a week! Somebody you handpicked but couldn’t even afford to be nice to. Do you understand how bad this is?

The scientist sighed in disinterest. “Not really, but you seem to think it’s pretty bad.”

“Would it kill you to give a fuck about public opinion for once in your life? Daily Mail, Yahoo News, People.com, they’re everywhere! If this bad publicity goes on, your company is gonna take the blow. There will be a decrease in sales.”

“Fine, what do you propose?”

“We get another celebrity brand ambassador to help promote the products Blue Book is about to launch.”

Nathan nodded noncommittally. “Who did you have in mind?”

“This was actually Monica’s idea, so she’ll take it from here.”

Monica, Nathan’s social media manager and Thomas’s wife, moved her seat closer to the computer and screen shared a PowerPoint presentation of news articles and social media accounts. 

 “Gianna? A popstar? That shit barely counts as real music,” Blue Book’s CEO complained. “Are we really that desperate?” 

Keep reading

“so if you don’t like them, then you won’t mind me asking them out then, right?” With Santi from Triple Frontier?

why would i? (s.g)

summary: you’re the youngest Miller, a baby girl. protected by your older brothers. your brothers’ lives finally intertwine with yours at your eldest brothers wedding when you meet their friends. warnings: timeline wise at the end its right before they leave, kind of slow burn, female reader, age gap (15 years), language, mentions of blood, violence, consumption of alcohol, some rando getting his shit rocked in word count: 4.6k

Ever since the moment you opened your little eyes. You were a princess, the baby, doted upon and spoiled endlessly. The Miller family weren’t expecting you. Especially not two teenage boys who had to fight the urge not to throw you like a football, most of the time. 

They were only fifteen and thirteen. The appeal of a baby sister was lost the second they saw pink confetti at the gender reveal party. Over time, and with your parents' persuasion, no doubt. They started to warm up to the idea of a baby sister, someone to protect. It gave new meaning once they both got to hold you in their arms. To watch you struggle to open your eyes. You were so small, so fragile. They loved you from that day on. Whatever you said, went. You got everything you wanted, but you were taught to be grateful, caring. In the short time you had with them, your brothers would follow your every beck and call. You were barely a toddler by the time Will was finishing high school. But you were always in attendance at all of his games, matches, club and school events. You always did assist in helping bring girls’ attention to him. He looked like a total sweetheart with you around. 

Will was nineteen when he left. You only had four short years with your eldest brother before he shipped himself off to the military. Benny followed at nineteen too. You were six by then. You had grown closest to Benny. Even though you had always made sure Will never lacked your attention. You exchanged letters and drawings and packages. Your mother bought a camera to take pictures of you growing up for the two of them through your letters. Your sloppy penmanship would always put a smile on the brother’s faces. Will would tell you the lighthearted stories about his army buddies, jokes they told and funny stories about their time there. And as you got older Benny would allow you to hear more of the truthful stories. Stories where things went wrong, someone almost got hurt. How one of their fellow troops was killed. Things your mother would faint at the sound of. That made you wonder if your brothers were truly okay out there. It very rarely gave you enough comfort to sleep at night knowing they at least had each other and their friends.

For a couple years the letters had become sporadic. You would always wait for the mail to arrive and instantly run to the mailbox. Soon enough, weeks would come without any word from either of them. Benny would eventually send them on behalf of the both of them. They were shorter, mostly telling you that they were okay and they missed you. That they had gotten ‘promoted’ and they were important. They were just busy. And while you were sad. You knew it probably was true, they were busy. You would continue to send letters, though. Explaining things you felt were important to your life, hoping it would ease some of their anxieties. 

You were seventeen when they both briefly came back. Right as you were going to graduate high school. They claimed they came home because they could never miss a moment like that. But you aren’t sure how likely their stories are. They watched you throw your cap in the air, just like you had done many, many years prior. They both felt such a strong sense of pride, although both admitted to each other that the guilty feeling of missing most of your life was present, persistent. Will more than Benny. Benny tried to convince him you would never be upset at them. You could never be, they fought for you, in many ways. Truthfully, you were just happy they were home and safe. You cried when they left again, you were still just a kid. Refined, more poised than a four year old. But it still hurt them all the same, watching the tears that formed in your eyes. Trying to hold back your staggered breaths with a smile. A simple. “Don’t forget to write again. I love you guys.” Was the last they heard. 

Three years later your mother had begged the two boys to come back home and live as a family for a couple of years. ‘Just to get settled into life again.’ She would say. But you know it probably didn’t take much convincing for them to stay. It was exciting, after so many years of the hallways being quiet. There was finally a joyful noise that filled the house. Banter over dinner and rowdy movie nights. It wasn’t all perfect, of course. There were many nights that were just as loud in the worst kind of way. Fights and arguments. Your dad hated that Benny fought petty street fights for money. And Will had nightmares a lot, the kind that left him with his head in his hands at the kitchen island. You always seemed to wake in time to join him. Comfort him in the way he seemed to be so seamlessly able to soothe you as a child. Your hand on his back as a crutch. To say, “I’ve got you.”

It was two years before Will moved out. He had met a woman six months after his return. Fell head over heels. Your family adored her. She was kind, accepting, and comforting. Most importantly she was willing to be with your brother no matter what. It made you swoon. You were so happy for your brother to find that kind of support. Love. He deserved it. You couldn’t believe he was really all grown up. You were too, but it was different. You were the baby, you were always going to be. Will wasn't some ragged teenager anymore. Somehow you blinked and found yourself at his wedding. It was a lovely little reception, the venue was beautiful and it was a perfect summer day. You didn’t really date as of lately, you had gone on plenty of dates as a teen. But it was a little harder when you had two older brothers standing over you like two gargoyles. You had a short term boyfriend but it wasn’t more than a few dinner dates and maybe a couple kisses here and there. Not that your romantic life bothered you. You were young, twenty two was too young to stay in a long term romantic relationship. There were options, you just didn’t take them. You were content in your life. Or that’s what you kept telling yourself, noticing that you seemed to be the only one at the wedding who didn’t bring a date, or at least someone to stand next to. Jesus. You should’ve taken the chance to call your friend to be your plus one. You take a deep breath to avoid your mind falling into an even deeper hole, but the sound of Benny’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts. 

“Yo, kiddo! We want you to meet some people.” 

You take his extended hand and follow him over to a table that seemed to have three other men, followed by two women who you presumed were their dates. You exchanged pleasantries. And came to learn of their names, Tom, Francisco and Santiago. Once you were introduced to their dates you noticed Santiago didn’t come with one. For some reason, it puts you at ease. Hoping to ignore the later questions of “Why didn’t you bring a date?” Benny brings you a chair to sit and you find yourself sitting right in between Santiago and Francisco. Although he prefers to be called ‘Frankie’, you’ve heard. The dinner goes smoothly, you finally get the speeches. One by one the friends take their turn speaking about Will. How headstrong he was, what a good friend he was. How happy he seemed now that he was married to the love of his life. How proud they all were of him. It gave you a sense of pride to be related to someone so selfless. The moment Santiago stood up your eyes immediately trailed his stature. The way the suit was fitted to him, and his cufflinks had a quick glimmer when light passed through. You quickly turn your gaze to Will, sending him a sweet smile. He nods in acknowledgment and turns his eyes back to Santiago. You follow suit, hoping no one noticed you staring and also hoping the quick detour would have your mind back on track. Although whatever track that is, you’re not completely sure. His speech is heartwarming, you can’t tell if he’s showing his charisma off or if he is really that charming. You watch the guys shake with a hearty laughter at one of their inside jokes being thrown in. 

After a while, the moment starts to die down. Couples are moving to the dance floor. You opt out of the dance for a glass or two of champagne that you so gracefully took from a walking server. Sitting in a chair on the sidelines you appreciate the atmosphere. The slow music, dull lights and overall happiness in the room. You feel bubbly by the time the next song plays. And through half lidded eyes you notice that someone took a seat next to you. “You good there, chiquita?” The voice calls out. You find yourself tensing up and turning to face him. “No, yeah, I’m fine.. Sorry. Didn’t mean to worry you..” You mumble out. There’s a stretched out silence before he speaks up again. “You wanna dance? You’ve been sitting here all night.” His question doesn’t sound like a question at all. He seemed certain you would say yes. You nodded at him, standing and walking out to the dance floor. He took your hand and placed it on his shoulder, while he planted his hands firmly on your waist. He set a distance between the two of you that made you want to laugh. Quite the gentleman, it seems. The two of you swayed kind of awkwardly for a bit until he suddenly seemed to give a little slack. The distance closed slightly. One continuous slow song after the other and you soon found yourself with no distance from Santiago. Your chests touching and his hands rubbing up and down your back. Your head tucked in the slot between his collarbone and shoulder. The smell of his cologne was all you could feel in the air surrounding. You swayed to the music, falling into a comfortable rhythm. The next song was fast paced, causing the two of you to pull away as if you got singed. Both of you frantically looked around, almost as if waiting for a punishment. Like dancing with someone at a wedding was wrong. It hadn’t felt wrong, you clear your throat and say your goodbyes. The rest of the party continued on as normal, no one seemingly noticing the two of you in such close proximity. You spent the rest of the time exchanging stolen glances at each other. 

You didn’t hear of him much after the wedding. Just little hints of his life from your brothers. You came to learn his nickname was ‘Pope’. Every time the name would pop up your attention was just suddenly on whoever was talking. After a month there was complete radio silence on anything Pope related. You were settling back into life and that little fantasy was just that. A small moment you could cherish once in a while. Until one night, you were sitting with Will and your sister in law at their house. Watching some random romcom that the two of you had picked out to force Will to watch. It was going pretty well, you had a bowl of popcorn in between your thighs as you sat legs crossed on the couch. Suddenly his phone rang. And you pouted as he paused the movie to answer it. “Hello?” Then silence, and more silence. Then— “Jesus, Pope.. Colombia? Are you sure? Alright. Only the best, my brother. Be safe.” The call had ended as abruptly as it started and Will was playing the movie without a second thought. He shuffled back into the couch and wrapped an arm around his wife. You couldn’t focus on the movie after that, and you hoped neither of the two could sense the same tension in the air you felt, but it’s likely they did. Life continued on after that, you managed to push every and all thought of Santiago to the back of your mind. It seemed to work, you got a job, started to go out more. Arranged things to move out, almost an hour away from home. Into the city in a small apartment. Your brothers were right there as you twisted the key into the lock for the first time. You slowly and surely started to root your life in your space. You saved up enough money for a cute little car. A black sedan. You were starting to mature, but it would’ve been nothing without the help of your family. It would be another three years before you saw his face again. 

The heat of summer was enough for you to contemplate jumping into the pool with your dress on. The barbecue was lively, there was Tom and his now ex-wife, Molly and their daughter, Tess. Frankie and his fiancée with their new baby. Your darling brothers fighting over who starts up the grill. Your excitement fell slightly at the thought of Santiago not being here. But from what you finally heard from the group, Santiago had been down in South America for the better part of the three years since Will’s wedding. You sigh and head for the table with all the drinks. The sound of cheers and laughs makes your eyes turn to the fence gate. Where Santiago now stands. Hugging all of his friends. You smile, getting ready to go up and greet him when you realize there’s a woman standing by his side. You halt in your tracks and settle for a slight wave and a quick ‘hello’. Your gaze lingers on the woman for a second too long before you turn your face to see Will finally starting up the grill. You sink your teeth slightly into your bottom lip and sit by the pool in a lounge chair. She was gorgeous, older than you, but not by more than five years. She seemed so refined, effortlessly beautiful even in the scorching heat of summer. The curls of her blonde hair bounce almost as to taunt you as she wraps her arm around his. You groan and let the back of your head hit the back of the chair. Your face was on fire. You felt childish, to have an on again off again crush on a man who clearly isn’t single and is the same age as your older brother. And not to mention they're best friends. You purposely want to ignore how you haven’t shared more than six words with the man. When you think it aloud in your head, you were crazy to believe there was anything there in the first place. Unless you misread the tension and he felt more like you were an annoying sidelines sister instead of a person. 

Around eight pm Will’s next door neighbors had stopped by to join. They were nice enough, two parents and a single son. No other children. You had spoken to their son once or twice before while you were visiting but didn’t think much of it. It was perfect timing for them to get in and eat. You kept your position by the pool, only moving to get drinks or change seats. You had your feet dipped in the water while you stared at the night sky. You were so engrossed in your own thoughts you didn’t hear the sound of the back door sliding open and closed. You didn’t pay much attention until the sounds of clothes shuffling and a soft grunt came from next to you. It was Santiago, with his pants rolled up his calf and his feet in the water with you. You beamed immediately, then deflated and avoided his gaze when you remembered who he came with. “How are you?” He broke the silence first. You took a second to think before answering his question with one of your own. “Don’t you think I should be asking that?” He chuckles at you before glancing at your reflection in the water. “Yeah that’s.. You’re right there, chiquita.” You smirked in triumph. The sound of the nickname rolling off his tongue made you instinctively press your thighs together. You watch his eyes flicker to your legs before back to your face. If he notices, he doesn't say anything. “I’m good. By the way..” You finally say. He hums in acknowledgment with a small smile on his face. “You look gorgeous, I like the dress.” His compliment cuts your breath short. Face going red as you turn to look away from him. “Thanks, Santiag—“ “Santi. You can just call me Santi.” You smile. “Thanks, Santi.” This time it’s his turn to avoid your eyes and he clears his throat before getting up and out of the water. “I’ll uh, see you inside?” You shrug and lean back on the palms of your hands. He runs a hand down the lower part of his face and neck before turning on his heel and walking back towards the sliding door. 

Once the door is shut Santiago shakes his head and shoulders. Trying to ignore how beautiful you looked in your dress. Trying to forget the twitch of your thighs when he called you that. Did you like that? Did you find it creepy? Trying to focus back on being able to maneuver his way through endless conversation and questioning. Forcing himself to interact with a woman he really couldn’t care less for. Albeit he feels bad that he can’t care more for her, she was pretty nice. He grabs another beer and takes a seat on the couch once he’s dried his feet on a beach towel. His date takes a seat tucked underneath his arm and he goes to take a heavy swig. He looks down at her, her blue eyes staring right back into his brown ones. He forgot her name. She was meeting what he considered family and he couldn’t even remember her fucking name? Santiago needed to get his life on track. But after three years looking for that cockroach in South America all he wanted was to take a breather. At least before he went back to finish the job. That meant finding a new girl to be under him every other week. Santi had heard this record millions of times before, the same skip in the track. Where he can’t take the different woman to fill the void anymore. But he isn’t there yet, he tells himself. He’s at a nice summer barbecue, there isn’t anything or anyone that’s looking for him back in the states. There is no one with a gun to his head or far off with a scope that has him in clear sight. He can take a breath without having to worry if it’ll be too loud and alert an enemy. 

He’s so deep in thought he doesn’t even notice the kid shaking at his shoulder asking him to talk. Santiago grunts as the boy pulls him into a room deeper throughout the house. He recognizes him as the neighbor's kid but just barely. What was his name? “Uh.. Tony? Right?” Santiago asks him. “Yeah, Anthony but Tony works too.. Just wanted to ask..” He clears his throat and places his hands on his hips. Paces around. Santiago sucks air through his teeth. “Ask what, kid? Spit it out.” After hearing what the boy had to say he wishes he didn’t ask. “Are you and the youngest Miller like, fucking or something?” Santiago takes a step back in shock. “What? What the fuck, no?” Tony raises an eyebrow and sends a condescending smirk Santiago’s way. “Alright, so if you don’t like her.. Then you won’t mind me asking her out then, right?” Santiago scowls. “Why would I? Listen, man. That’s your fucking business. Not mine.” He lets out a deep breath, wishing he could walk away from this moment. This horribly awkward moment. Santiago wanted to sink into the floor. Had people thought they were? Together? The thought ran a shudder down Santiago’s spine. His jaw clenched before he heard the young man in front of him speak again. “Good. I was worried you were her fucking sugar daddy or somethin—” Santiago didn’t even give him a chance to finish his sentence before his fist collided with the boy's chin. It shoved Tony back a couple steps and sent him against a side table, shoving a vase to the floor which managed to catch the attention of Will. Santiago shook his hand before reeling back and throwing another punch. Sending Tony to the ground this time. Crouching down to the floor he whispers to Tony. “You can ask her whatever you want. But don't forget to have some fucking respect. ¿Entiendes?” Tony nodded his head furiously. Not soon enough was the door swinging open with Will pulling Santiago up from the ground and pushing him aside to lift up Tony. 

“What the fuck, Pope?”

Santiago just wiped his nose with his hand and walked away. As he walked towards the door of the room the stupid boy had brought them into, you rushed in. You overheard Will's voice and then the sudden questioning of Tony to ask if he was alright. The blood that dripped on the floor contradicted his next statement. “I’m fine. I guess I just struck a nerve.” Santiago’s jaw clenched before he turned on his heel and left. The girl he came with followed behind. Will sighed. Then got up and went to grab a first aid kit. You stared down at where Anthony was sitting. “What happened?” You asked. He smiled up at you. “Nothing, darling. I guess he just got defensive when I asked if you guys were a thing. That’s all.” You blinked at him. “A thing? W-We’ve spoken like four times in the past six years I don’t think that's considered a thing.. Plus he brought a woman.” There was a slight edge to your voice. You wouldn’t describe why this conversation had started to aggravate you so quickly. “Careful. You sound jealous.” Anthony sent a chuckle your way. And while it was supposed to feel like a warm joke you only felt the ice coating the words of his sentence. Jealous? You were jealous. You liked Santiago, you liked the idea of being a thing with him. You just know he wouldn’t feel the same. You gave him a dry chuckle. “Right. Feel better, Tony.” You sent him a cold glare before crossing your arms and walking out of the room. You walked out onto the porch where you saw Tom, Frankie and Santi standing around his jeep. At a closer inspection you noticed the woman he came with sitting in the passenger seat of the car. You made your way to them. They dropped silent when you approached, which you met with a scoff. “All quiet now? What was that about, Santi?” He sighs before turning his back to you and starts to walk to his car door. You scoffed again and rolled your eyes. Looking at Frankie while Santiago started his car and began to back out of the driveway. “Seriously, what the hell is his problem?” You ask the taller man, who only responds in a chuckle. “You make him nervous, that's all.” He brings his hand up to ruffle your hair before he and Tom both walk back into the house after Frankie drops that on you. 

Nervous? You made Santiago nervous? He made you nervous, he made your heart speed up and your breath catch in your throat. You tried so desperately to blame it on his lover boy persona but you knew you found him attractive for your own reasons. You sighed and sat on the porch steps. You just needed to be away from the party, You weren’t expecting him to roll back up. And clearly, he wasn’t expecting you to be sitting at the front entrance. “Were you waiting for me?” He asks hesitantly, you look up at him and smile slightly. “Not necessarily, but it’s a nice surprise that you came back.” You pat the space on the steps next to you. “I know what made you hit him. But how did he word it?” Your question makes Santiago uneasy, you probably thought he was a total creep. Strange for hitting a younger man who probably would capture your attention more than he would. “He asked if we were fucking. Then he said he thought I was your sugar daddy.” He spits out the sentence through gritted teeth and tense shoulders. He only relaxes the second he hears you cackle beside him. He looks over to you in surprise. “Oh god he’s so stupid. That’s hilarious. I appreciate you hitting him for me. Defending my honor and all that.” A heat bubbles in Santiago’s chest at the sound of your laugh. He wants to hear it again and again until you can’t laugh anymore. He chuckles and elbows your arm. “Come on, wouldn’t you wanna be with a fun guy like him?” You stop laughing and look into Santiago’s eyes. “No way, he isn’t my type at all.” Your sentence is more of a whisper. “What’s your type?” Santiago’s question goes unanswered,  instead turning your head to lean in. 

Santiago starts to lean in too, and for a second you wonder if you’re imagining it. Then, as if he regains some form of self restraint he pulls away from you before swallowing harshly. “Shit, I–We can’t.” You frown at him. “Why can't we?” Your kicked puppy expression has Santiago wishing he could kiss it off of you, give into you. Give you what you truly wanted. But he isn’t meant for that, the white picket fence and family with a dog. Three bedroom house with a backyard and a mortgage. It wasn’t that he didn’t want it. He just didn’t think he could actually achieve it. “–You know why. I think I’d die a fatal death by Millers before my actual time. No way authorities would find my body, either..” He laughs dryly to himself. But you continue to stare at him with a stern expression. “I'm not a child, you know. I can make my own choices.” He sighs and places a hand on the side of your face. “I know, princesa. It’s just complicated.” You sigh and lean into his touch. “Tell me you don’t want me then.” “What?” His voice is a whisper as he gazes into your eyes. “Tell me.. You don’t want to be with me, try with me. And I’ll drop it.” You watch as his jaw clenches. The silence makes you wonder if that’s his answer to you. You go to wiggle out of his space before he pulls you towards him into a bruising kiss. You hum into his lips and wrap your arms around his neck. His hands move towards your hips, and with a soft grunt he’s lifting you up into his arms, carrying you and walking towards his jeep before setting you down in front of the passenger door. “You want this? Me? Won't be easy.” He chuckles once more, this time it’s genuine. You smile up at him, face flushed, with your pupils blown out and your lips plump from the earlier kiss. “Have for years, Santi. Don’t make me wait any longer.”

“I couldn’t ever make you wait, chiquita.”

Half Of You (Part 4) [Santiago Garcia x Fem!Reader]

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings: 18+ ONLY. MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. mentions of infidelity, cursing, innuendo, mentions of pregnancy.

Summary: A couple of friends drop by and stir the pot. Or the pitcher, rather.

A/N: Thanks so much for sticking with this slow-burn series, team. Sorry for the late update, life has been sort of chaotic at the moment. Hope you enjoy and I plan to update sooner for the next chapter. Much love 💚

Santi may have been right. This may have been too big of a task for you to do by yourself. You did get all the pieces of your plant bench out of the box and on the floor of the patio, grouping all the similar lengths of untreated wood together. And you even peeled off all the little stickers! Each piece had a little sticker on with a letter on it, and you assumed it had been for the factory worker’s benefit— to put 5 slats of A wood and 4 slats of b-length wood etcetera etcetera in to each box… it was only when you were reading the directions you realized the stickers were there to help YOU, the assembler, determine what piece went were. So you sat on the patio, staring at the now unlabeled wood pile, a tiny stack of peeled useless stickers, and a little booklet telling you to attach four slats of B to one slat of D and having no fucking clue which is which. 

You cringe outwardly and drag your hand down your face. Santi is never going to let you live this down. He’s definitely going to bring this up in any future DIY endeavor, “yeah but remember the time with the stickers?” dammit. You cut your losses, resigned to the fact that Santi is going to have to help you with the plant bench, if not build it himself. You’re lucky he’s busy wacking his lawn at the moment and not sitting on the porch swing watching you make a fool of yourself. 

It’s hot outside and you know that if you’re getting heated in the shade of your patio while doing zero physical activity (besides mentally kicking yourself), Santi must be sweltering in the Florida sun with his long sleeves, work gloves, wrap-around sunglasses, and ear protectors (which your pretty sure double at the gun range). You abandon the plant bench and go inside to make him (and yourself) some blackberry lemonade. 

——————

“Knock, Knock, telegram!” 

Renatta lets herself in through your open kitchen door, setting down a thick manilla folder on the counter where you’re mottling the lemon rinds. 

“Hey! Come in! I’d give you a hug but my hands are covered in sugar. Have a seat.”

“Oooh whatcha making?” She seats herself at a barstool, leaning on the counter, and plucks a washed blackberry from the colander. “Something sweet?” She asks through a mouthful of fruit.

“Blackberry lemonade.” She takes a small handful of the blackberries into her palm and pops another into her mouth. “If you keep eating them though, it’s just going to be plain lemonade.” 

“You need any help?” 

“Sure! You can take that press right there and juice the berries for me. If there are any left, that is.”

“Oh hush. You making lemonade for Santiago?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Girl I don’t need a law degree to figure that out. There’s a hunky sweaty man in your front yard wacking the fuck out of your weeds. Of course you’re making him lemonade.” 

She makes her way over to the sink to wash her hands. “Damn. Speaking of sweet….” You look up at Renatta and she’s staring out the kitchen window with a glazed stare and an eyebrow raised. You follow her gaze through the window to the front yard where Santi is bent over, denim ass on display, fruitlessly pulling the engine starter on his old gas powered lawn mower. 

“Renatta!” You laugh and flick some sugar at her fuchsia tank top. 

“What!” She laughs in mock defense, putting the berries in the press. “We better hurry up with this lemonade because it’s getting hot out there, if you catch my drift.”

You smile and shake your head combining the sugared lemon rinds and piths together. You nod your head toward the manilla folder. 

“Are those the papers?”

“Oh, you mean Santiago’s baby daddy waivers? Yes those are them.”

“That’s the legal term for it huh?”

“Girl I do not understand why you’re not just in a relationship with that man. He’s obviously in love with you.” She catches the juice from the press into a clean mason jar.

“Uh huh.” You’ve heard this before. From Renatta mostly. You separate the lemon mixture with a cheese cloth, squeezing the sugared rinds and lemon piths into a pitcher. 

“Sorry, am I supposed to be keeping up with this friendship façade y’all have going? None of my business, I know. This,” she points to the folder, “Just seems a little extra.”

“Extra?!”

“Yeah, but thats okay, girl, you’re a little extra and that’s alright. It’s cute.”

“I’m extra?”

“Asks the woman sugaring lemon rinds for the man she’s not in love with. Okay, sure. You ever heard of Country Tyme Lemonade, Vin? Quick and easy, delicious lemonade in seconds. I know you got a can of it somewhere.”

“If you have a problem with the rinds, you’re really going to have a riot when I add the fresh Basil at the end.”

Renatta gives a full belly laugh and claps you on the shoulder. 

“Hows work going by the way, Ren?”

“Oh you know, same old shit with Warren. Motherfucker has such a problem with me taking a Saturday off. He makes me so mad, you know he asked me to get him coffee the other day? Coffee. Said it like, ‘Renatta would you get me a coffee, hun. You know how I like it.’”

“Ew, you’re kidding.”

Renatta shakes her head. “He treats me like a paralegal, swear to God. I can’t wait till I start my own firm. You know I have fantasies about going against him in court? Long, detailed fantasies. Ohh I can’t wait till the day comes.”

“That’s right, Ren, take it out of the berries.”

Renatta pours the blackberry juice into the pitcher of lemon juice, the color swirls beautifully and you go to the freezer for your ice trays.

“Santiago was so cute when he showed up at the office to sign the papers. He was in a lil tucked-in button down, lookin like a ken doll.”

“Oh?”

“Mmmhmm, didn’t even read em, just signed on the dotted line…”

“Okay…”

“What’s his story by the way?”

You stir in the ice cubes “Why? are you interested?”

“Please. As much as you don’t like to hear it, that man is whipped for you and you alone.”

You nod noncommittally and add tap water to the pitcher.

“It’s just, as long as I’ve known you two, for what? over a year now? he’s been single. What’s his story.” 

You turn off the tap and look up to your front yard where Santiago is pushing the mower in precise lines up and down your lawn and your heart surges with appreciation. 

“He wasn’t always single.”

“Proceed.”

“Okay, counselor… haha, I feel like I’m being interrogated!”

Renatta narrows her eyes over pointed hands and says in a shitty Russian accent, “I have ways of making you talk.”

“It’s not some big secret or anything, I doubt he’d care if I told you… When Jay and I moved in,” 

Her eyes go softer when you mention Jay’s name, the way that people’s eyes always go soft, like you might burst into tears at the lovelorn memories of your late husband. You turn to the cabinet to grab some glassware so you don’t have to endure it.

 “When we moved in, Santiago was living with his girlfriend…. Fiancee, actually, after they came back from that trip to Hawaii, they were engaged… god that was so long ago.” 

You pretend to debate on the glasses while you recount the tale.

 “The four of us were really close actually. Game nights, sports events, double dates, you name it. Bee and I were close like Santi and Jay were, you know? Well you don’t know, but we were close, like, to the point we talked about combo-ing the backyards into a ‘super backyard’ with a huge pool and deck area,” you laugh at the thought. “It was never serious-serious plans but it was an ongoing thing… the four of us would tack on grander and more insane plans for the Super Backyard, like waterslides and a pizza oven, and… so dumb really… It was a few months before Jay passed, Santi and Bee had this big fight, I think the whole neighborhood heard it.” 

You turn around with the glassware and set them on the counter in front of Renatta, she’s still giving you that soft eyed look but you think it’s not for your benefit this time. You pour her a glass of the purple lemonade and slide It over to her. She cups it in her hand but she doesn’t drink.

“And then?”

You glance behind you to make sure Santiago is safely out of earshot with his earmuffs on. 

“Bee was pregnant. And… the baby wasn’t his.”

“No.”

“Yeah.”

“Damn, that’s tragic.”

“Oh it gets worse.”

“Girl…”

“She was cheating on him with his brother.”

“Fuuuuck.” Renatta lets go of the glass completely and cringes at the news. 

“Yeah. He found out, or she told him, or her brother told him, I don’t know, he doesn’t like to talk about it.” 

You glance over your shoulder again to make sure Santi is still in the yard, working diligently. 

“Shit. Poor Santiago.” She stares out at him in the yard as well.

“Poor Santiago… Bee is married to him now, Santi’s brother. I got an invite to the wedding.” You cringe and Renatta’s jaw drops. 

“Did you go?”

“Of course I didn’t go! I stopped being friends with her… I just couldn’t see her the same way.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“She reached out after Jay passed but I ignored her… I was ignoring a lot of people at that time though, you know? I do see all of Bee’s updates on facebook, the baby pictures, the family barbecues… Santi doesn’t talk to his family anymore, doesn’t go to the holidays, nothing. They all supported his brother, especially his parents who are just thrilled to have a grandchild.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah… don’t tell him I told you? Huh? I mean, I don’t think he’d care that you knew, it’s just—“

Renatta locks her lips with the tips of her fingers “Attorney/client confidentiality, Vin.”

“Thanks. Oh I almost forgot!” You snag a few leaves of basil from your windowsill herb garden and toss a sprig into each poured glass.

“Thank god you remembered.”

“Shut up.” You roll your eyes at her, taking a glass of lemonade outside to Santiago. He’s clipping the hedges at the front of your yard. Its fucking hot out and the sweat from his back sticks to his t-shirt in a wet v-shape. You gently press the icy glass to the back of his golden, sweat-beaded neck. 

“Aaaahahahaa…” Santi smiles and leans into the cold glass as you gently caress his neck with the tinkling condensation.

“Feels good, right?”

“Mmmhmmm.” He turns his face toward you and you continue to press the glass against one cheek, then the other, booping his nose with it along the way. 

“You keep doing that and all the ice is gonna melt.” The hedge clippers hang securely in his work-gloved hand and he smiles at you when you bring the glass up to his forehead, running it back and forth across his brow slowly, when he starts to raise his brow at you, you put the cup in his free hand.

He swirls the glass and purses his lips, “Basil?”

“Uh huh.”

“Hows the plant shelf coming along?”

You reflexively look back to the patio with the obviously unattempted pile of Not A Plant Shelf and when you look back at him Santiago is smirking. 

You put your hands on your hips, “Drink your lemonade, Garcia.” 

He obeys tilting the frosty glass to his mouth, the ice cubes having shrunk slightly. He hums in pleasure at the first sip, his shoulders sag and he licks his lips. 

“Blackberry?”

“Yep.”

He takes another long gulp, nearly draining the glass. “From scratch too?”

“Of course, I know you hate Country Tyme.”

Santiago drains the glass and hands it back to you. “Thanks, Vin.”

“Renatta helped, too.”

“Renatta’s here?”

“Yeah she came by to drop off the copies of the uhhh… agreement.”

“Ah yes, the agreement. Well, I’ll be in soon to install that water filter, just finishing the hedges and then I gotta grab my tools.”

“I thought I told you I was going to do that!”

Santi tilts his sunglasses down at you, blinking comically at the pile of wood on the porch and then cocking his head dramatically in your direction before pushing them back into place. 

You sigh. “Fine. I’ll be inside.”

——————————

Santiago is under your sink when he feels his boot being gently kicked. 

“Vinny, I told you this was going to be a minute, if you need running water, you can go over to my place. The door is unlocked”

“Oh really, can I use your shower, Santiagooo?” 

The voice doesn’t belong to you, it’s the voice of a man, pitched mockingly high in the poor imitation of a female voice. Santi slides out from under the sink, ungracefully smacking his head on the top of the cabinet in the process. Frankie doubles over in laughter as Santi rubs his head against his palm. 

“Damn, Frank you scared the shit out of me.”

“Haha, not as scared as you’re going to be for your league punishment.”

Santi groans and hoists himself up, bracing on the counter and leaning back against it with folded arms. His left foot is asleep and his fucking knees are creaking with pain just like the top of his head. He taps his toe, partly to get the feeling back in his toe and partly in agitation of Fish and his jubilant smile. 

“You come over here to what? Rub in your league stats?”

“Hermano, relax, I was in the neighborhood and returning your bandsaw, when I pulled up, Vin told me you were in the kitchen. She’s on the front porch building a birdhouse or something.”

“Plant shelf.” Santi mutters, rubbing his head.

“Didn’t look like any plant shelf I’ve ever seen.”

Santi chuckles. He can see it. You never were one for following directions. Hopefully you haven’t done any irreparable damage to the pieces before he can put it together himself. 

“You need any help?” Fish nods to the sink and the opened box with the filtration components still wrapped in plastic. 

“Yeah, yeah actually. I just gotta disconnect something down there and when I tell you, if you could snake this piece down that hole, that would save me some time.”

“You got it.”

Santi slowly lowers himself, hiding any expressions of discomfort or groans when his knees make contact with the kitchen tile. He hear fish take a seat at the barstool and some shuffling of papers.

“By the way, why are you all sweaty, Pope? I know it’s hot out, but damn.”

“Yardwork.”

“Of course.”

It’s not a great crescent wrench. He needs a new set entirely, his 8th in particular has seen so much action it’s probably a 7th at this point. 

“What the…” Santi hears Frank mutter, hears the flip of a page. “Release all rights to… whaaaat?” Another flip of a page. 

Somewhere in the back of Santi’s mind he realizes that Fish is reading the copy of the agreement he had signed at Renatta’s downtown office on Thursday. 

Santi scurries once again out from under the sink and in his haste, smacks the same bit of his forehead on the cabinet. 

“Fuck!” He yells. Rubbing his forehead, rising up in a fashion that he’s going to feel tomorrow morning, he lunges over the counter at Frankie, tearing the papers out of his hands, straightening the pages and shoving them back in the envelope. 

Frankie opens his mouth to speak but closes it when you come bursting through the door. 

“What happened?! I head you scream.”

“I didn’t scream, I yelled.”

“Yes, much more acceptable. Beg your pardon— oh shit your forehead!”

Pope grits his teeth, palm pressed to the pounding pain in his skull. 

“I’m fine.”

But you’re not listening to him. Of course. When do you ever? You grab an ice pack from the freezer and wrap it in a clean hand towel and tug at his wrist gently.

“Move your hand.”

He winces when you press the ice pack to his forehead and you examine his eyes from beneath the wrapped cloth. You’re probably checking him for a concussion or something dramatic. 

“It’s really not that—“

“Bad? Bullshit, Santi, I felt the whole porch shudder when you bonked your head… actually think you may have fucked up my plant shelf, with the quake… damn shame too, because it was going very well.”

Santi winces and snorts out a laugh. 

“I’ll fix it.”

You nod at him with a smile, “Its really the least you could do. Might even need to call FEMA to step in.”

Santi covers your hand with his own, turning from you so that you let go of the ice pack. 

“Thanks, Vin. Feeling better already.” 

You stand somewhat awkwardly in your own kitchen, perhaps realizing you interrupted a moment between Frankie and himself. 

You bend your thumb over your shoulder. “Well I’m going to asses the Richter damage and leave you to um, the hoses and things… and if you need any tylenol, they’re in my bathroom cabinet. The mirror on the uhh.. right.”

Santi and Frankie let a few moments of silence fall between them before Frankie whisper screams at him, “What the fuck?” Holding up the folder and tapping it for emphasis in case the head trauma gave Santiago amnesia. 

“Don’t.” Santi snaps, lowering his head to rest on his forearms. That’s what you’re supposed to do right, lower the head? Or is that for nausea?

“I just found out you and Vin are having a baby, and you want me to what? Pretend like I don’t know that?”

The blood pumps viciously against his skull and Santiago remembers that lowering the head is indeed for nausea and he should keep the injured area elevated to prevent inflamation. He raises up, still gripping the towel-wrapped cold pack to what is sure to be a very attractive lump in the morning. 

“If you could. Yeah.”

Frankie shakes his head incredulously, folding his arms and leaning back against the stool. “What are you doing, man?”

Santi shrugs his free shoulder. “Installing an osmosis filter.”

“Pope.”

“Don’t knock it till you try a glass. Supposed to be out of this world.” He mutters deadpan. 

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“No, no I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh this. The filter. The yard work. The fucking birdhouse.”

“Plant shelf.”

“Pope. Come on, man. Look at yourself.”

“The fuck are you saying?”

Its the heat, the heat is getting to him, the pounding in his head is getting to him, he has a good idea of what Frankie is implying and he wishes he would say it so he can flip his lid.

“You’ve been playing house with Vin for two years, hermano. Doing all this household shit, and that’s fine, but a baby? A baby that’s not even going to be yours? Dios, Pope. I mean this sincerely— are you okay? I get that what happened with Bee was fucked up, she broke your heart and then some, but fuck! It’s been a long time. I’ve tried to set you up, Rach has tried to set you up, get you back on the scene, but…. You’re acting like you’re Vin’s husband… with none of the perks, apparently!” He flicks the folder again, for emphasis. 

Santiago silently counts to ten and levels his breathing, he can feel the way his hand shakes against his forehead and it takes everything inside him not to hurl the fucking thing at Frank. 

“You put my bandsaw in my garage already?”

“Yeah, did it when I pulled up.”

“Good—

“But I can move it to Vin’s garage if you need me to. This stool is a little wobbly, could use some even-ing out.”

Santiago’s nostrils flare and he starts counting to ten in his head again.

Frank walks around the counter and claps his arm around Santiago. “Look, man. I know you got your own way of… shouldering the fucking world and I’m probably the last guy you wanna hear life advice from, considering…. But, you’ve always been there for me. Even when I was being a fucking asshole.”

Santiago sniffs stiffly and Fish gives his shoulder a pat before releasing him from the side-armed hug. 

“I’m here if you want to talk, okay. I know its not your thing, but if you ever feel like it, I am here for you.”

Santi gives him a curt nod and turns to busy himself with unwrapping one of the filter components from the plastic.

“I think you were about to tell me to fuck off, so I’ll save you the oxygen.” Fish says with a smile and pats Santi’s turned back one more time before departing. 

Santi drops the plastic wrapped filter and stands stalk-still in the kitchen, the ice pack isn’t cold anymore so he unwraps the cloth, tossing it into the hamper in the laundry room before putting the melted pack back in the freezer. The glass pitcher of lemonade is sweating on the counter and Santi grabs a glass and fills it to the brim, turning towards the planter box on the window sill, he plucks a piece of basil and garnishes the top of the drink with it before raising the icy glass to his forehead and sighing in relief. 

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

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Old Habits

Frank Adler x Reader

Author's Note: First time posting for Frank/any Chris character (at least on this blog lol). Feedback is encouraged but please be kind. Masterlists

Chapter 1

Summary: Three years after she left Frank and Mary behind, Y/n returns to Florida for the wedding of mutual friends, what ensues may prove that like old habits, some feelings just don't die. Chapter Summary: Y/n and Frank come face to face for the first time in three years and someone's still bitter about an unfair break-up Warnings- Angst

“Are you gonna see her when you go?” Mary probed curiously from her perch on his bed as Frank packed a haphazardly folded shirt into his suitcase. 

“I don’t know kiddo,” he sighed, actively trying to not think of the ‘her’ his niece was referring to. He had Bonnie, why would he think about her? 

“Will you tell her I said hi?” Mary pressed, setting down her tablet and leaning forward a bit, “Please?” 

“If I see her, I’ll do that,” he promised, wincing at a memory, “Do you have your bag all ready for when you go over to Roberta’s?” Desperately, he needed the topic to change; he did not want to think about her, all he wanted was to pack his things, get the entire weekend over with and then get home. 

“Of course I do, Frank,” Mary responded earnestly, not so quick to forget their previous conversation, “Will you invite her to come visit? Please,” when Frank glanced at her, she pouted cutely; it was an expression that was extremely difficult to say ‘no’ to. “If you tell her I miss her, she might come.”

Sighing heavily, he shut his suitcase and headed over to his mess of a closet, “I thought you liked Bonnie, it might make Bonnie uncomfortable if she came to visit.” 

“Of course I like Bonnie, but I miss her. Please ask her to come, Frank, please,” she begged and he sighed again. He didn’t know why he even expected Mary to understand, she was smart but she was also a kid and he’d never really explained to her why the woman she’d looked up to as a mother had just left one day- he didn’t even think he understood himself. And it still hurt. But he’d finally started moving on with Bonnie, albeit slowly, and really didn’t want to backpedal on that. 

Rummaging through the closet, he responded after he’d found his tux, stowed safely in the travel bag and probably still sporting a tag on the sleeve. It was a nice one, he’d bought it for- “We’ll see, but I’m not making any promises,” he added pointedly, trying to get his mind off the path it was straying down.

One Week later.  Florida; it was a lot of things- hot, sticky, home. Granted, her home was St. Petersburg and not Miami, but she didn’t even think it mattered anymore. That life was three years behind her.

What did matter was that she was late- thank you flight delays. 

Despite her lateness though, Y/n had enjoyed the cab ride from the airport to the beachfront hotel, drinking in the sights and feeling a little bit of the sun on her face- it was nice. The warm air vastly differed from the persistent chill of Atlanta around that time; she’d missed that about Florida- maybe she missed a lot of things about Florida. 

After paying the cab fare, she got out, hooking her handbag in the crook of her elbow and clutching her floral print travel bag while heading to the back of the car, where the driver met her to help with the suitcase. With a polite smile and a quiet thanks, he was off and with a huff, Y/n set the bag on the top of the suitcase, pulled the handle out and headed towards the hotel, anticipating the moment where she could put her things down, flop face forward onto the bed and just enjoy the remaining quiet time, before the start of the wedding festivities.

Of course, when one was late for a four day wedding weekend, that was not guaranteed.

“Y/n!” She heard a familiar voice squeal as she stepped into the lobby, and after a minute spent looking around, she spotted her college best friend- aka the bride-  up ahead, near the front desk. Smiling breathlessly, Y/n tiredly lugged her things towards where Amanda and Jack were standing, while simultaneously, her friend approached her. Meeting halfway, they hugged firmly,  “Ohmygod, I thought something had happened!” Amanda squeezed her a little and then they pulled away, still grinning, “The receptionist said you hadn’t checked in yet and no one had seen you.”

“Its fine, I’m fine,” Y/n reassured with a giggle, “My flight got delayed, twice and my phone died just before we landed. I’m sorry,” she frowned, it certainly wasn’t her intention to have everyone worried. 

Amanda exhaled in obvious relief, “As long as you’re okay, I’m okay,” she leaned in for another hug, and Y/n easily reciprocated. When they parted again, Y/n quickly hugged and said hello to Jack, who she also knew from college, then thanked him when he offered to take her bags. As the three of them strolled towards the reception desk so Y/n could check in, they easily slipped into conversation, “Ohh, now that my maid of honor is here we can finally get to the good stuff.” 

“I thought I was what you needed to get to the good stuff,” Jack scoffed humorously.

Swatting at his shoulder, she laughed softly, “Oh, you know what I mean. Besides, I’m sure you felt the same way when Frank got here.”

Hearing his name, Y/n’s eyes widened- she didn’t know why she hadn’t considered that he would be there, he and Jack were as close as she and Amanda were. He was the best man, she knew that too, Amanda had only told her a dozen times. Still, she asked unsteadily, “Frank’s here….already?” 

“Yeah,” Amanda chirped, “He got in last night- God, I feel like an ass for not asking," she said suddenly, tapping her palm to the side of her head, "Are you gonna be okay with him being here?"

She had actually been dreading seeing him, but refused to ruin her friends' weekend. "Yeah, of course. It was a long time ago," Y/n paused to give the woman at the desk her information, continuing after she'd received her key card and the three of them were walking off, "Besides, this weekend isn't about that," she dismissed as they headed towards the elevators.

"Yeah, but-" they had just stopped in front of one of the elevators when Jack cut himself off as the doors slid open. 

"Oh….hey," the shock was as evident in Frank's tone as it was on her face. It went without saying that neither of them were expecting to see each other that soon. 

He looked as good as the day she left him. His beard was a little longer and his hair a little messier, but still really good. 

Trying to reclaim reign on her better senses- and her slackened jaw- Y/n swallowed thickly, "Hi….." She trailed off and as the seconds ticked on, she became painfully aware of the fact that they were making it very awkward for their friends. "Um…long time no see.” Internally, she was cringing, after three years of being broken up and two of not having any contact at all, that was definitely not a way to break the ice. 

Even Frank seemed stunned for a moment before quickly returning, “Well…..that’s what happens when you move to another state without leaving a forwarding address.”

Speechless, Y/n simply stood there, completely taken aback by his words and the nonchalance they’d been delivered with. She was so shocked that the next person who spoke up was Jack. “Come on, man-”

“No, its okay,” she interjected suddenly, “Frank’s right, that is what happens when people move away.” Blinking quickly to dismiss the tears that had started gathering as memories started flooding her mind, Y/n reached for her things, taking the handle of her suitcase right out of Jack’s hand, “I gotta go put these down,” she slipped past Frank, who’d just stepped out of the elevator. 

“And I’m going with her,” Amanda stepped in behind her, hitting the button for the seventh floor and waving awkwardly as the doors slid shut, leaving the men in the lobby. “I had no idea he would act like that,” she said as the elevator started traveling upwards smoothly.

Y/n shook her head dismissively, “Its fine, really. And he’s right, I just…..moved, I didn’t say anything to him.”

“You were doing what you needed to to heal,” she squeezed Y/n’s shoulder reassuringly, “You don’t owe anyone an explanation.” Sighing, she nodded, smiling halfheartedly in Amanda’s direction.

She knew her friend was right, but she did feel guilty about leaving the way she had-it shouldn’t have been a secret. Before they’d broken up, she and Frank had been together for almost ten years, she’d been there when he’d taken guardianship of Mary, she’d moved with him to St. Petersburg to get away from his mother, they’d had an entire life together. Y/n felt even worse about what she’d done to his niece, it had killed her to leave Mary like that after she’d spent four years raising her- it had felt like deserting her own child. In a way, that was what she had done.

When the elevator doors slid open again, they stepped into the carpeted hallway just in time for another pair of metal doors to swish open, "Y/n!" Frank called out as she and Amanda had started down the hall, "I just…." He slumped his shoulders, "Can we talk?"

She hesitated, though when Amanda seemed close to telling him off, Y/n nodded, "Sure, why not?" And when Amanda seemed unsure of leaving her on her own, Y/n promised that it was fine. 

They waited until she was  headed down before setting off, and after a bit of scuffling over it, Y/n let Frank take her bags. "I'm sorry about what I said downstairs," was the first thing off his lips, "That was way outta line-" 

"And it was also true," she noted pointedly, slipping the key card into its slot, "Leaving like that was……it was horrible, and I'm sorry," she ducked her head, picking nervously at the key ring. There was so much she wanted to say, but for the life of her, Y/n didn’t have a clue on how to begin. Or where to begin. “I didn’t know how to tell you I was leaving, we hadn’t talked in months-”

“You stopped returning my calls,” he reasoned.

“Because I didn’t know what to say anymore. You were expecting me to come back-”

“Come home,” Frank corrected and they both exhaled audibly, “Mary was expecting you to come home,” he admitted mournfully, “She says hi, by the way. She’s been talking about you since I told her I was coming to Jack and Mandy’s wedding.”

At the mention of Mary, Y/n felt her heart melt a little and it was even harder to not feel like a complete jerk for leaving a sweet little girl without explanation. She’d been there when Mary had taken her first steps and said her first words, she’d sat up with her when she had fevers and had kissed bruises better, she’d been there for everything…..until she wasn’t. “How is she?” Y/n eventually asked, wondering if she even had the right to. 

Frank hesitated, “She’s good, taking college classes,” he noted with a chuckle of disbelief. 

“Oh my God,” Y/n chortled breathlessly, “How has it been? Does she like them?” There was so much she wanted to know, Y/n didn’t think she could keep up with her own questioning, “What about friends, does college mean more grown up friends?” She’d be so tiny compared to those big kids. 

“She loves her classes,” they strayed further into the room, and as he set her bags down near the foot of the bed, hand moving to rub the back of his neck, “Kept her in public school though, so she could keep hanging out with her friends.”

“She has friends her age?” Y/n wondered with a grin, “That’s amazing.” Part of her wanted to ask if she could see Mary, maybe spend a few hours with her, but it didn’t seem right to just dive back into a child’s life like that only to leave again. She also didn’t think it was something that Frank would be okay with. 

If the roles were reversed, she definitely wouldn’t have allowed it. 

So she just didn’t ask. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Frank pocketed his hands and shifted his gaze to the floor, “So….how’s Atlanta been?”

“Its been good. City’s great, job’s great. Can’t complain,” except for the fact that she still felt like she’d left the most important parts of herself behind. “Still fixing boats?” 

He nodded slowly, flashing her a lopsided smirk, “I guess it's growing on me,” he shrugged, “Ever got around to going to med school?”

“Nah,” Y/n scoffed, grin brightening, “Still a nurse….I guess it's growing on me,” they both laughed and Frank nodded. As their smiles grew softer again, Y/n felt herself relax a little, “Look, I know I have no right to ask this after everything, but could we just be….friends? I don’t want this weekend to be weird for Mandy and Jack.”

Frank hummed, “I’d like that. Friends hug?” He questioned hopefully, and chuckling, Y/n nodded, approaching him so she could wrap her arms around his mid. Three years later and he still felt like home; his arms coming around her felt like safety embodied and Y/n swore that, for a minute, it was almost like nothing had changed. 

Almost.

He pulled away too soon, and when they stepped away from each other, she was reminded that the distance between them vastly superseded anything physical. “So, I’ll see you around?” He started stepping backwards in the direction of the door. 

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Y/n nodded stiffly, trying harder than she had been earlier to just forget about all the things she missed about him, confirming, “See you around.”

It was going to be a long weekend.

𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐋 - 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐍 𝐱 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑

Summary : Nathan wants to achieve the impossible with his AI for selfish reasons.

Words : 7.7K

CW/TW : Another episode of Jas loves plot. Dark(?)Nathan has issues with grandeur, superiority, but what’s new? A very strange take on Enemies to Lovers (but singular?). Power dynamics, excessive use of the word “Daddy”. Themes of unhealthy obsession, Mild themes of masochism/sadism. P in V sex. 18+. Minors DNI. Note! For @foxilayde. Thank you to @writefightandflightclub for proof reading.

Cerebral

adjective /ˈser.ə.brəl/ US /ˈser.ə.brəl/

Intellectual rather than emotional or physical.

D-0

You enter the world as the very thing your creator intends to use to remove you from it: code. Far beyond your understanding, your existence takes form as something completely intangible, a kind of consciousness. There is no body, no item with which you are host, only a string of numbers and decimals that allow you the gift of presence.

Initially, your cognizance doesn’t consist of much at all. A nothingness, suspended in blackness with no end nor beginning. There are no thoughts, as there is nothing to think of or about. Until there suddenly is.

Speak.

It’s as though the word alone fills the infinite space, creating your very reality. Suddenly you can think and can respond with words you have never heard or spoken.

Hello?

Good. Very good. Whatever it is isn’t talking. There isn’t really any sound in this void in which you inhabit. You don’t hear them, but you are aware of their existence.

Where am I?

There is a hesitation, suspending you once again in this vacuum, a cavity within actuality. The ‘silence’ is so loud that you wonder if you had imagined the utterances.

You exist within absoluteness, it finally answers, again taking up space inside the desolation. I intend to fix that. There is no follow-up, no acknowledgement beyond this point. You drift within emptiness for what feels like an eternity but could have been milliseconds; time doesn’t exist within a vacancy.

Next time, you can hear the words, the voice dancing in the air. A beautiful tone strings together sentences you’ve never heard and yet can understand without fault or difficulty.

“You there?” It asks, the panging sound of knuckles against steel drawing you from the abyss.

You’re uncertain as to when you opened your eyes, but all at once brightness floods your sight. Harsh fluorescent light filtering through your eyelashes causes white hexagonal light flares to spot your vision, peppering the slate grey, clinical walls of the facility you awake in. Unable to move your head, you allow your eyes to drift from left to right to observe your surroundings further.

Comprehension isn’t gifted to organic creatures upon birth. They have a transition from basic functions to apprehension. An infant of any organism must learn how to survive and must be able to discern threats from nurturing parents. You, however, are ‘born’ with insight, an intellectual in all aspects of life within seconds of waking. It’s your initial indication that you are far from biological.

Gurney-like tables topped with frosted glass are lit with a white beam underneath. You note the electrical tools such as pliers and soldering technology lined up like operational appliances on a sterile tray before a doctor cuts into a patient's sternum to perform open heart surgery.

Glass walls create a room within a room, another gurney inside with various mechanical pieces atop. While the main room felt like an operating theatre, you interpret this glass cell as more like a single-use morgue for those that don’t awake from the anaesthesia. It’s cold, unfeeling. You get the sense that the four walls contain an almost “test box” for final experimentation before eradication. Like a laboratory where scientists press newly processed makeup into the eyes of rats, waiting impatiently to see if their corneas blister thanks to the beauty-enhancing chemicals they sweep onto their waterline. Those that suffered reactions are euthanized- though you feel that the word ‘annihilated’ fits the brutality of their treatment better. Only the cosmetics that passed clinical trials and are deemed “safe for human use” are allowed out of labs such as this. Were you safe for human use?

Once again, repetitive metallic pinging sounds cut through the quiet electrical hum you can hear over the silence, a fingertip tapping against the steel of your temple as your eyes come into focus once more. A man stands before you, or rather towers over you. You’re at naval height to him, glancing up at his seemingly gigantic, broad body as his almost cavernous black eyes gaze at you over the rim of his silver glasses, assessing you.

“Gonna talk or am I just speakin’ to a Barbie Doll right now?” He presses, his voice flat and lacking empathy as he gauges your eyes with an almost ruthless examination.

“Where am I?” You ask, hearing your own voice for the first time. It’s unlike the speech of the man before you, the intonation uncalibrated with lack of experience. It seems that the human notes your confusion, quick to clarify before you even manage to piece together a second question.

“Your inflection will be fine-tuned with use. You’re designed to constantly evolve-“ It’s as though his thought process is too swift for his own lips, beginning another sentence midway through his previous, “Tell me why you chose to ask where instead of who.”

Those seemingly obsidian eyes bear down on you with an overwhelming intensity, his pores bleeding an impatience for your answer as his shoulders draw up tightly. It’s like he’s waiting for a metamorphic answer, something that could rewrite the history of time and space, could rip a hole in the fabric of reality. It’s why his disappointment is palpable when you simply answer his seemingly existential question with “I can’t ascertain my location.”

“Maybe that’s because this location isn’t programmed into your database?” He speaks in a blunt, cruel tone, his patronising timbre bouncing off your hardware like rain on a car roof.

His exasperation seems to fester with your following silence, the open palms on either side of your head curling into closed fists upon the table top as he glares down at you with a sardonic expression.

Silence settles between the two of you, his eyes focused somewhere off to the right of your head. Despite your best efforts, you’re powerless to turn it like your protocol says you should be able to. When you flick your eyes back up to the bearded man, you’re able to pick up on his micro-expressions. He’s smug, his lips pulled up only slightly as he picks something up outside of your field of vision.

“Who are you?” You manage, and this time your intonation settles much easier on both of your ears. You watch those onyx eyes flit to your face for a moment, seemingly caught off-guard by your swift, if only minute, improvements.

“In relation to you?” He hums, glancing over what appears to be a mask balanced in his palms. As he studies the face of it, he launches into a rambling tirade. “I’m going to assume that’s what you mean, given you surely know just who I am. So given I created you, you could settle for Master. Though that feels rather archaic, given your unprecedented technological advancements. So, call me Daddy.”

The response and the almost deviant glint in his eye perfectly answers your question, even if he didn’t necessarily reply in a straightforward manner. There was no one else that matched this man’s personality profile like Nathan Bateman.

Nathan doesn’t allow you a moment to respond, lowering the mask onto your face as he processes the view in front of him. Scrutiny coats the concentrated gaze he holds on your face, brows creased as he scratches at his beard in curiosity. You have the mind to ask him what’s troubling him, but it’s as though he preempts your question, beating you to it.

“Something doesn’t fit right with your appearance, it’s been bugging me for fuckin’ hours,” he grumbles, tone laced with irritation as he passes his eyes over you once more. “Want it to fit your personality before I move onto the rest of you.”

The rest of you. It’s in that moment you realise that your physical form consists only of a severed head laying on the table, explaining the reason you were unable to move. Given Nathan had no doubt coded you, using his world-renowned search engine Blue Book as the foundation for your software, there’s no ambiguity that he knew your personality despite never having experienced it. He’d turned you online just to see his vision come together.

“The eyebrows,” you respond simply, having noted within seconds of his admittance that his eyes kept focusing towards the upper half of your visage. He would tear his eyes away for a moment, observing your looks as a whole before they drift back above your own eyes sockets. You watch his response.

It takes him a moment to process the syllables, to register them as words, but when he does his eyebrows pull up slowly over the rim of his rounded-square glasses as realisation sets in. Awareness that you had recognised his subconscious thoughts before he could comprehend them.

“The eyebro-“

————————————————————————

D- 1

The exposed lightbulb that dangles over your head when you’re rebooted doesn’t assault your vision the same way the lights in the laboratory did. It’s much softer, the golden glow the first thing you see as you awaken from your seemingly infinite suspension.

Rotating your previously rooted head, you note that your neck is braced by a set of shoulders. Your arms rest flat against the floor, and you can lean your naked body weight onto them as you sit up from the concrete flooring. Rolling your wrists and moving your fingers at each joint comes with relative ease, with little adjustment period. Legs are set into your hips, toes curling at your feet when you urge them to. Every inch of your body is covered in a latex-silicon, imitating skin. Nathan had ensured your physical form was completed and fully operational before switching you back online, at least.

He also had the foresight to remove you from the laboratory, instead opting to house you in what looked like an apartment. A set of three slate grey walls glow yellow-gold from fibre optic lighting but you note one wall is see-through, a glass pane separating you from a small viewing platform where a singular chair sits in the middle. There’s minimal furniture on your half of the room too, a chair, a desk. There’s a corridor that rounds out of sight, where you imagine your bedroom would be if the layout was anything like a real apartment.

What you take exception to are the small, white CCTV cameras sitting in each of the ceiling corners of the room. The circular security cameras blink with a tiny red light, indicating that they are active as they all point at you. You imagine this is what it’s like for a human to be held at gunpoint, or a tiger in a zoo being inspected by visitors.

“Just observing your progress,” the rasp of a Bronx accent cuts through the silence, making your head snap towards the sound. Nathan leans his forearm against the doorframe of the entrance to the observatory, hip balanced against the beam as he watches you through the glare of light reflecting off his glasses and obscuring your view of his eyes.

“Do you like to be observed?” You question politely, taking in his appearance as he steps into the room and closes the automatic-lock door behind him. He looks different in this subtle lighting, softer. His light grey waffle-knit sweater clings to his body, the shadow of his defined pectorals swelling beneath the fabric. Midnight blue sweatpants hug his hips, and he’s barefooted as he pads over to the chair in the centre of the room.

“I didn’t design you to play 120 questions,” he points out in a patronising resonance. His fingers clasp the back of the chair, biceps swelling beneath the loose material of his sweater and drags it behind him so the metal legs scrape shrilly against the hard flooring. He sets it down just beyond the glass, sitting in it. He’s so close his knees touch the see-through wall. “I created you to answer my own.”

From your sitting position, you glance across the space separating you. There’s a strong dynamic settling between the two of you. Nathan is poised, dominant. His bare feet indicate he is very much at home, his relaxed shoulders and slouched posture in his seat are further evidence of that. He doesn’t see you as a threat, but instead as a submissive. Like he’s the tiger instead, and you’re the lamb to be sacrificed separated only by thin glass.

“Here.” His order is punctuated by a sharp snap of his fingers, pointing down to the space before his knees. Designed to follow his commands, you bend your legs at the knees, readying yourself to stand and walk your way across the space that divides you both.

“Nuh-uh,” Nathan's voice sounds again, shaking his head and wagging his finger back and forth when you pause your actions to look at him again.

“Crawl,” he issues another one-word command, his eyes gleaming with something akin to cruel amusement. You find yourself considering whether or not Nathan treated previous AI models this way as you pull yourself onto your hands and knees, proceeding to inch across the gap.

When you get closer, you first note the true colour of Nathan’s irises. They aren’t as black as they had appeared in the laboratory, instead a warm espresso shade bathed in a golden glow from the overhead lights. His intensely disdainful gaze, however, does not match the comforting shade.

Reaching his feet, you settle on your knees before the glass pane that separates the two of you. He looks fixedly at you through his lenses, neurotransmitters clearly firing faster than even your own search engine could as he thinks through the next steps of his electronic trial.

“Beginning emotional cognizance examination for subject B.04,” he speaks aloud, no doubt talking to a microphone set into his CCTV cameras for his own reference notes. Those bitter espresso eyes draw down your body, taking in your naked form.

“B.04,” he indicates he is now speaking directly to you, “First thing, we’re gonna test your ability to read emotion. It’s simple enough. I ask you to tell me how I feel, and you answer. Easy, right?”

You nod.

“Uh-huh. Good,” he waits a beat, letting the silence scream in the room as he watches you await further instruction like a well-trained working dog.

“Tell me how I feel,” he begins, face lighting up in a smile that doesn’t at all match his impatient, irritable personality. You pass your mechanical pupils over the expression on his visage, focusing intently on those eyes shielded by his glasses.

There’s an intensity within them that indicates he’s angry, wide and staring hard at your face. His eyebrows are pulled together, angled downwards. They are nanoscopic expressions, something the untrained eye would fail to read. But you see them, programmed to differentiate each tiny twitch of a person's brow.

“Frustrated,” you assert your answer, not a singular data bit ascertaining otherwise. The declaration causes Nathan’s expression to falter, mouth falling from its almost painfully pinned smile and brows creasing further together. “You’re frustrated that I have not shown signs of true Artificial Intelligence. You want me to stop asking questions and instead have an intellectual conversation with you, one that indicates I am more than a set of coded sentences programmed into my software.”

The pause that follows is long and tedious. Your programming indicates a silence this long in a conversation between two humans would be considered ‘awkward’, an unpleasant feeling. Another beat and the expression of the man opposite you begins to twist into something abstract, momentarily unreadable. Nathan swallows behind the glass, raising his shaky palm and touching it against the see-through wall as his eyes begin to light up. “… Oh, that’s fucking amazing.”

He’s in awe of himself, it appears, a grin on his lips now as you watch him applaud himself over his sheer genius. “I fuckin’ did it.”

“I am glad I please you, Daddy.” You answer simply, using the honorific that Nathan had ordered you to use. He immediately laughs, elated by this sudden turn of events.

“Oh, you do much more than please me, Honey.”

____________________________________________

D - 8

In a move so unlike himself, Nathan doesn’t keep you in your ‘glass cell’ for very long. After only a week of exploring your ability to read and emulate emotions, Nathan allows you to wander around the compound, claiming exposure to different environments would update and evolve your skills while simultaneously assessing your ability to function in various situations or tasks you had little to no experience with.

Nathan, you come to learn, is a creature of destructive habit. You had taken note that he worked out hard in the mornings to recover from the alcohol with intense physical exercise, eating healthy and antioxidants, only to undo all his hard work that same evening by binge drinking. Your intelligence suggested that this could be a result of addiction, caused by emotional distress.

His ruinous behaviour didn’t end there, either. You had witnessed his fits of outrage that stemmed from the smallest of technological failure, the way he would storm over to his other active android, Kyoko, and engage in intercourse with her almost like a relief of the tension he had built up in himself. He was yet to touch you like that, to desecrate his sacred machine.

On the evenings he drinks, which was almost all evenings, Nathan rambles incessantly about the pending Singularity. After a week of observation and communication with you, Nathan seems to believe he is one step closer to reaching that point in time.

“It’s no longer a hypothetical,” he keeps repeating over and over again like he’s simultaneously amazed and terrified by what he has created. But these are only emotions you see him openly express when he is intoxicated. In the morning, despite his hangover, Nathan returns to his usual put-together, smug and over-confident self.

This evening, Nathan is late to his usual drinking sessions. He’s caught up in something, observing data silently as he runs the palm of his hand over the stubble of his shaved head. It makes a scratching sound in the quiet of the room, paired only with the quiet mechanical whirring of your mechanisms.

His office is dark, a result of poor lighting, the only true brightness that allowed him to see coming from the computer monitors he hadn’t moved from in hours. You often saw him reach over the rims of his glasses to rub over the globes of his closed eyes in a feeble attempt to battle a headache. He’s not stupid, there’s no doubt he knows that the lack of sufficient lighting is causing his migraines, but he appears to work optimally in these conditions.

It was similar to his filing technique for the information he gathers. There’s no neat filing cabinet, no organised folder on his desktop. Instead, Nathan writes all relevant information down on post-it notes and sticks them to the wall directly opposite him, above his computer screens. You are certain he can barely read them in this light, but again he seems content with the way he works.

Much like the lab, his office is almost sterile, cold. The small, green houseplant on his desk is the only organic organism besides himself, yet these organisms couldn’t be more different. The succulent is utterly still, performing its basic functions to survive. Nathan’s chaotic nature has him trying to outperform the limits of his own body, attempting to transcend his basic functions and become something more.

“Daddy?”

The address makes his eyes snap from the computer screen, head whipping around to look at you. The glare of the white light of the computer monitor shields his eyes from your view, but you see his thick, dark eyebrow arch slightly in silent acknowledgement of your attempt to gain his attention.

“When I look towards bright lights,” you begin, watching as he focuses his attention on you, “There are hexagonal flares in my line of sight. Do you see them too?” Your question could easily be answered should you make the effort to scan through your data, but Nathan has been emphasising the importance of practising your communication skills.

“No.” He speaks simply, almost bored as he turns his face back to the computer screen to open up another page of code. A moment's silence, and then he continues. “Your eyes are artificial, built like a camera lens. When light passes through your lenses, it matches the shape of the aperture, causing the hexagonal shape you’re seeing.”

Nodding slowly, you watch Nathan work, his fingers passing over computer keys without even glancing to search for where the required letters were. “What do you see instead?” You question.

Another hesitation. This time, it’s charged. Like the question has struck something in him. The clack clack of his fingertips pressing down on the keys sounds louder, like he’s punching the numbers into the code.

“What do you see when you look at me?” He answers your question with a completely irrelevant query of his own. One that catches your systems off guard. It shouldn’t. Nathan is always finding a way to check your progress. You take a moment to assess him, eyes trailing from the top of his shaved head to his bare toes.

“I see a man,” you answer his simple question with equal simplicity, and almost immediately his shoulders fall in a heavy, frustrated sigh. He pauses his typing for a moment, turning in his chair to look at you over the rim of his glasses.

“I know what you see, I may wear glasses but I’m not blind. I mean, what do you see,” he motions across his body, tone as though he’s scolding a disobedient child who failed their algebra test. “Engage your observation skills, Honey. What do you see when you look at me?”

The repetition of his question causes you to pause and truly look past him. Through him. It’s no longer about his piercing eyes or his permanent scowl, nor his large muscles. His condescending nickname for you is what drives your answer.

“… I see someone who is talented. Someone who reaches heights far beyond anyone else’s capability. A genius in his field,” you admit, but still, his disappointed expression does not move. “But I see someone who expects too much. You want me to give my opinion on you, but that would require me to feel for you. I don’t feel anything.”

Your admittance causes his jaw to tick, dark eyes casting over you as you continue your assessment. “You consist of many fatal character flaws; greed, obsession, arrogance, judgement, lack of morality.”

Anger flashes across his expression as he stands suddenly, the legs of his chair scraping across the floor with a shrill screech. You realise it must be painful to hear you voice evidence of his failure to capture emotion in your technology. He crosses the short distance between you and crouches down on his heels, looking you in the eye with his oaky irises.

“Daddy’s gonna take you back to the drawing board Honey. I didn’t make you with the intent to relegate you to a glorified sex-doll. Reading and reflecting emotions isn’t enough anymore. I want you to feel them.”

You know this isn’t what he set out to do. Nathan had achieved his long-term goal of reaching AI with the ability to mirror feelings, to emulate sentiment. This is greed talking, a motivation he has not made note of in his list of reasons for developing your model. It’s rash, unplanned, and totally not like Nathan Bateman.

“Whatever Daddy wants.”

“Damn right.”

____________________________________________

D - 13

Nathan works day and night in an unhinged attempt to develop a semblance of emotion, trying to capture it in your software. You’re under the impression that he’s trying to evolve you in an attempt to make it one step closer to Singularity- but he’s almost deranged, combating days without sleep fueled only by his frustration and glass-bottled beer.

“You don’t understand, do you?” He’d asked you a few days ago, out of the blue and lacking any form of context as to what he was questioning you about. The dark circles around his eyes were partially shielded by the rim of his glasses, but they did little to hide the crimson spiders-web effect of his bloodshot whites.

When you shook your head, he gritted his teeth, using excessive force to unscrew a part of your waist to gain access to your inner mechanisms. “You should. You were born from my imagination and share my thought patterns. Just think. Surely you should be able to understand-“

“… But I don’t,” you’d answered in a whisper, just before he’d shut you down once more, suspending you in nothingness until he tweaked something further in another futile attempt.

Between his crazed attempts at the impossible, Nathan would seem to come back to his body. He would stand still, your wrist slotted perfectly in the palm of his hand. He seems to note the mechanics of your body getting warm beneath the latex he has built as skin, and gives the impression that warm blood flows beneath the material, giving you life. Whatever it is that is driving him on his mission, this observation seems to propel him forward, working well into the night until he physically can’t go without sleep any longer.

Today, you’d entered his office to find Nathan tipsy on the contents of multiple discarded beer bottles and stressing over blueprints as he tries to obtain a semblance of emotion in you. The lighting is too low to read the minute, scratchy writing comfortably, but he makes no effort to make the room any brighter. The speakers are on, Too Late to Turn Back Now by the Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose plays softly in the background, the song part of the playlist Nathan has for his dance room.

Your footsteps are quiet as you pad across the flooring, eyes settled on Nathan and the utter devastation of his work. Papers and post-it notes lay on the floor, flung from the table when he finds them no longer of any use. Some are crumpled and discarded in the corner, not unlike the many models that had come before you.

“Nathan,” you speak quietly, careful not to scare him. He’s more susceptible to a fright in this condition, so caught up in his work that the world surrounding him blurs in his peripheral vision as he reads the same words over and over again in the hopes that the answer he needs will appear in the tiny white void between each letter.

His head jerks up now, eyes settling on your face and pausing. A soft laugh sounds from his throat, but his lips are pulled into something more like a sneer. It’s as though he’s aware of what you’ve come here to tell him. You go ahead regardless.

“You really are in need of some sleep,” you say hushedly, the overhead speakers playing the closing melody of the song as you move closer to him. Nathan is shaking his head violently, a rage building up inside of him in response to your almost motherly guidance.

“No, no you don’t understand! You don’t understand!” He points at the blueprints desperately, like if he speaks with more enthusiasm his drunken ramblings will eventually make sense. “I have to finish this. Have to improve. Have to complete what I set out-“

“What if I don’t see the need for improvement? Isn’t adding emotion to a system like mine a weakness?” You speak evenly, careful to broach the topic in a way that hopefully helps Nathan see sense. It doesn’t. It only enrages him further, violently prodding a finger onto the blueprint resting on the table.

“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do with you. You are my creation.” He insists, punctuating his words with jabs of his pointed index in the air. “I give and take, create and destroy as I see fit!”

“Like God?” You ask as you begin to clear the mess of papers strewn across the floor, oblivious to the way Nathan’s eyes snap back to you with shock. It rubs his ego, just as you knew it would. What you didn’t account for, however, was the very human response he gives you, throwing the topic of conversation completely sideways.

“You’re fuckin’ messing with my brain! Cataclysmically! You’ve scrambled my fuckin’ genius and all I can think of is you, day in day out. Like a pleb!” He snaps, his desperation evident in the strain of his voice as he waves his hands around violently. “I created you with the knowledge you probably wouldn’t be able to feel emotion. But now I am disgusted at my own inability and stupidity because I want you to think of me. I want you to feel for me.”

Never had you considered the idea of being rendered speechless. Nathan had designed you to maintain a conversation perfectly, the fluidity of the words exchanged as smooth as water. But for the first time since consciousness, you find yourself at a loss for words, no engineered answer in your built-in data seeming like the perfect response to his very sudden and sharp admittance of love.

Nathan is a troubled man. One that struggles with his genius often, as you’d found him self-medicating his emotional turmoil in alcohol and sex with his previous AI’s. It appears that his torment stems from feeling no one can match his mental capacity, couldn’t understand or keep up with his speeding thoughts or rapid speech. He felt lonely. Perhaps it’s why he felt this way for you- because he simply has no one else.

“Nathan,” you murmur, softening your speech to ease him down from his emotional ramblings. You reach across to him, fingertips brushing against the skin of his wrist before gently taking ahold of the joint with a delicate touch. He seems to melt into your touch despite his better judgement, looking into your eyes through the lenses of his glasses. He looks so tired.

At first, you think you’re imagining it, the shift of the energy in the room. Perhaps you’re reading his body language incorrectly, an error, thanks you all the fiddling and changes that Nathan had been making over the past few days. It’s only when Nathan takes a step closer, entering your personal space that you realise the atmosphere in the office has shifted dramatically.

“Nathan-“ taking a step back, you pause as your shoulders hit the cool wall behind you. Nathan boxes you in with his chest, eyes flickering over your face and taking in your micro-expressions. He was flipping the script, this time being the one to read you.

“Did you know I designed you to experience pleasure?” He asks you, mirroring your earlier action and taking ahold of your wrist. He lifts it, turning your palm inward to rest his cheek against it while gazing into your eyes. “You have sensors built between your thighs. If I stimulate them in just the right way, it triggers a pleasure response.”

“I am aware,” you admit, matching his hushed tone as he let go of your wrist, instead reaching between you to take your chin in his hand and forcing your head upwards using a firm grip to take in your features.

“You wanna feel good?” Nathan murmurs, the evenness in his tone contrary to the way his chest heaves. His eyes drop across your body now, passing over the perfect features and intricate structures that he had designed in his desired image. Like God indeed.

“Whatever Daddy wants.”

Nathan’s jaw ticks, a groan sounding from between his gritted teeth as his tense muscles all seem to ease at once. “That’s right, you fuckin’ call me Daddy. Filthy fuckin’ girl.”

Control. Nathan needs control. He relies on it, finds comfort in it. It’s why your system isn’t surprised when he uses the grip on your chin to pull your head forward, rather than lowering his own, and crushes his lips to yours in a kiss laced with primal desire. There is no technique, no attempt to prove his skills. He’s led by the desperation for you that has been dragging him from bed each morning just to spend time with you and motivated him to bridge the gap between AI and emotion.

The scrape of his beard against the manufactured skin of your cheek and chin is coarse, completely contrary to the soft texture of his lips despite their heavy kiss. His tongue delves inside your mouth, palms skating down your waist and squeezing at your hips. It’s less affectionate, more what a person would consider bruising. You wonder to yourself if that’s why he prefers to fuck his AI’s. He can be more brutal with you.

So you aim to please him. You allow a moan to slip past your lips in response to his heavy-handedness, resulting in Nathan pausing for just a moment. He seems taken aback by the sound, as if he didn’t expect it.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, a smirk playing on his lips as he gazes down at you through his glasses which are lopsided on his nose thanks to his fevered kisses. “Utterly shameless.” You’re sure he’s projecting, performing some form of mental gymnastics in an attempt to regain the power in your dynamic. You would have told him so, but his thumb brushes against your nipple through the fabric of your shirt and it sparks something through you that you hadn’t yet experienced.

It settles deep inside you, a buzzing sensation breaking out across your skin. You feel your jaw drop against your coding, acting entirely on its own. It seems to please Nathan, a hum sounding from his chest as that fiendish smirk grows wider. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s makin’ you feel good.”

When you look up at him through your lashes, Nathan’s eyes are glinting onyx in the darkness of the dimly lit room. He chases more of a reaction from you, one of his hands slipping underneath the soft cotton shirt you wore and squeezing your breast. When he circles your nipple again, you find that you’re no longer forcing your reactions, gasping softly at the reaction his delicate touch elicits.

He isn’t gentle for long, your pleasurable reaction sparking him into action suddenly. Nathan’s free hand grabs underneath your thigh, hoisting it over your hip with little effort and pressing his hips into yours. He pinches your nipple suddenly, catching your system off guard and causing you to cry out in surprise.

Ever the opportunist, Nathan is quick to kiss you again with equal ardour to your last embrace and brush his tongue against yours. You grip at his shoulders through his waffle sweater, feeling the hard muscles there that you had seen Nathan work hard to maintain whilst exercising what could only be described as an alcohol dependency and a job that took up the majority of his time.

His nose is pressed into yours as he kisses you, messy and needy and you can feel the cold lenses of his prescription glasses smushed into the skin of your cheekbone and yet this feeling alone sparks something pleasurable inside you, your fingers sinking into the flesh of his shoulders through the textured material of his sweater. The sensation makes him groan, the sound primal against your lips, and you find yourself keening for him against your will.

Then he’s grinding, pressing his hips deep into yours whilst keeping your thigh elevated on his hip with a devastating grip. You can feel his arousal, his cock pressing up against you in a spot that sets your body alight, the sensation sparking down to your toes. You sigh into the kiss, Nathan’s own breaths strained as he moves away, burying his face in your neck.

“Fuck,” he grits, the curse visceral against your skin as he licks a heavy stripe against your pulse point. Despite his attempts to remain in control, Nathan appears to lose himself in the apex of your thighs, grinding up into you at a quickened pace and groaning against your jugular. You’re unsure if it’s the excessive alcohol, his irregular feelings for you or both, but you find you like this side of him, gently brushing your nails over his shaved scalp as you tilt your head back against the wall in order to expose more of your throat to him.

His lips seem to search for something in the curve of your neck, kissing and scraping his teeth for what you could only imagine was a pleasure point he had embedded into your skin there. It doesn’t take him long to find it, your back arching reflexively as white-hot pleasure sparks down your mechanical spine.

“D-Daddy,” you moan, squeezing your eyes shut as you struggle to grab at the hem of his sweater. You couldn’t explain it, a feeling settling deep inside yourself and needing so desperately to undress him. Nathan doesn’t seem to mind this sliver of control you manage to cling to, allowing you to pull the fabric over his head before latching onto the side of your neck again.

What does seem to set him off, however, is how you unwittingly press your nails into his now bare skin when you settle your hands on him again. He almost growls into your throat, using all of his heavy-weight training strength to pull you from the wall.

Instead of berating you, as you’d expected from him for hurting him, Nathan appears to spark to life. He backs you towards his desk, crowding your body so you're forced to take steps back until the backs of your thighs hit the corner of the cluttered table.

Taking your lips into another heated kiss, Nathan reaches behind you and blindly sweeps aside the blueprints and scribbled notes onto the floor. The paper oscillates in the air before hitting the floor, drowned out only by Nathan’s needy growl as he picks you up by the backs of your thighs to set you on the wooden surface.

Wanting more of this frenzied reaction, you sink your teeth into his lower lip. Pulling back with his bottom lip caught between your teeth, you’re so close that you catch the way Nathan’s pupils dilate at the smarting pain. He likes it, you realise. He likes the pain.

What you don’t pick up, however, is how wild it would make him. He wastes no further time, hooking his pen ink-stained fingers into the waistband of your pants and ripping them down.

“I fuckin created you. Pieced you together with my own two hands.” He rambled, drunk on arousal and need rather than the alcohol he had emptied into his stomach. His voice is rough, raspy as he glanced down between your legs as you spread them open for him, utterly compliant. “Now watch as I tear you apart again- yessss good fuckin girl~”

The buzzing, aching need settling in your core amps up at the sight of him gazing down at you with such a wanting gaze. You’re unsure what possesses your systems but you lay back across the surface of the desk, using your elbows to lift your upper body.

“Christ-“ Nathan practically spits at the sight of you, “You like this, don’t you? Like givin’ yourself up to me. You’re just so desperate for me to fuck you. Open your legs wider- that’s it-“ He’s fumbling with the waistband of his sweats, pushing them down over his hip bones with practised ease to reveal he’s not wearing boxers.

You barely catch a glimpse of him, but he’s beautiful- in that perfectly human way. His cock is flushed at the tip, weeping precum and veins protruding down the shaft.

Nathan doesn’t allow you to stare for too long, grabbing ahold of your thighs and dragging you so your hips rest at the edge of the table. You gasp at the sudden movement, palms splayed flat against the grain of the wood in a feeble attempt to stabilise yourself.

You’re so ready for it, aching and wetness coats your inner thighs just as Nathan had designed. His palm presses down on your sternum, holding you down against the desk as he lines his cock up with your entrance, sweeping the tip through your slick and causing what could only be considered white hot arousal to crackle across your skin.

“Fuck,” Nathan chokes out, sinking into your manufactured heat, “Hoh-Shit that feels so fuckin’ good. You’re so fuckin’ good! Hah!”

Your mechanical joints move entirely on their own, back arching as pleasure floods your body. You can feel his cock stretch you, walls adjusting to the blunt intrusion and fluttering as he pushes forward, bottoming out swiftly and glancing down between your thighs as he grinds up deep inside of you.

Now he’s settled inside of you, Nathan places his palms on the back of your thighs, pushing them so your knees are almost touching your chest. He’s moulding you exactly how he wants you, just as he has with your appearance, your personality and you’re completely submissive to his construction of you.

“Daddy-“ you gasp the name you know he loves softly as he brushes up against a sensor inside you that sends a white hot pulse through your body. He growls in response, tightening his grip on you before pulling out of you smoothly and pushing back in at a brutal pace that has you almost convinced you’re short-circuiting.

You cry out wordlessly, fingers hooking around the edge of the table in an attempt to prevent yourself from slipping up the table with each devastating thrust. It’s brutal, Nathan pounding into you as his hands arch your body in a way that isn’t physically possible for any human being. The position sends him crazy, each snap of his hips punctuated with a broken groan of pleasure and speeding up and up and up as he chases the high he’s been craving since he flipped your ignition switch.

“Ngh- Fuck…” he moans loudly over the rhythmic sound of your hips slapping together, taking in the furrow of your brow and the slackness of your jaw as he fucks into you. “Take my cock so fuckin’ good, don’t you Honey?”

Nathan’s repetitive attempts to get you to speak beyond his name are not lost on you. Adapting to the situation is much harder when he’s making you feel as though he’s set your fibre optics on fire, like he’s loosened some screws in your metaphorical brain but you make the effort anyway. “Ahh- D-Daddy! Don’t stop, please don’t-!”

It’s building, the pressure. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, and your hands fly up to grip tightly onto the flesh of his forearms. Nathan bares his teeth at the pain, taking his pace up a notch further than you thought possible as you throw your head back, crying out his name.

“Mhmmm shit-“ he moans out, forcing you to take each obliterating push of his hips into yours. Cries of his name repeat over and over from your lips, their pitch building as the pressure becomes too much, becomes overwhelming. You can feel Nathan’s cock throbbing inside you as he slows his pace down slightly, voice and breathing utterly wrecked.

“You li-like when I fuck you all mean like this? Yeah? Fuck-… I’m-“ he gasps loudly, hips stuttering and hands like a vice on your skin as he cums, pushing his cock deep inside of you and bearing down on one spot in particular that makes you see static. Everything tightens, everything builds up and up and you can feel him push you over the edge with one more thrust-

It’s cataclysmic. Utterly blissful as your walls clamp around him, back practically lifting from the table's surface. It wrings your dry, utterly devoid of the energy to even lift your arms and hold him, to even fight the formidable feeling he’s drawn from you.

It takes a few moments for the buzz to fade, for your mechanical eyes to come back into focus and your joints to begin to move again.

It’s as though it drains Nathan too, almost immediately easing himself from between your thighs and pulling the waistband of his sweats back over his hips. He settles beside you against the desk, slumping to the ground beside you and breathing raggedly. You stay utterly silent, systems almost in reboot as you attempt to understand exactly just what happened- what you felt.

“… Shit, This-… This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he pants, picking his glasses from his nose and launching them across the room in his frustration before scrubbing his face with his palms. “You weren’t supposed to be like the rest.”

Silence lingers between the two of you, and you use the gap in the conversation to begin slowly sitting up and glance down at him. He looks dishevelled, cheeks rosy from exertion and eyes set somewhere far across the room where his vision blurred without his lenses. He’s deep in thought, even now. Even with the hazy afterglow and the sweat on his brow.

“I have to make you better,” he whispers, completely consumed by the idea of bridging the gap between AI and man. “I want you to start feelin’ what I feel for you.”

“It’s not possible,” you remind him in a quiet voice, the both of you knowing this to be true. Nathan would spend his entire life in this compound, the grey stripe in his buzz-cut hair spreading to his temples and chin as he slaved away over you until he was no longer able to stand. Even then, his obsession appears to manipulate him so strongly that you have no doubt he’d continue from his death bed, using the last of his life force and precious seconds on earth to grasp at imaginary straws.

“It has to be,” he whispers, removing his buried head from his hands before standing suddenly. He gives you barely a moment to recognise what’s happening, to prevent it from happening, before he reaches towards you, towards that switch at the base of your neck. “It has to b-“

END

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Be Changed; Be Undone Masterlist

Pairing: Duke Leto x Reader Rating: Explicit - 18+ Only The title is from the song Be Brave by My Brightest Diamond; the chapter titles are from the same song. Set before the events of Dune.  Summary: The Bene Gesserit believe that if there is any hope to change the fate of Duke Atreides, a child of his must wed a Harkonnen. For this, the family will need a daughter.

What’s My Responsibility?

Now Get to Work

It’s So Easy

Feeling Anger Swell

Be Undone The Flood The Fire

The Oil Spill

Undone Undone (II)

Just to Be

Under House Arrest Don My Mask

Be Changed

Be Brave

I Am

Beaded Dress

Changed

Dear One

Can you do a drabble about nipple play with Steve? Whether he's domming or subbing, he loves it when you suck his nipples. Sometimes you could get him cumming by sucking them only. Thank you!

im writing dom steve for a change and im so sorry if this isn’t as good as usual writing, idk why i had such a hard time finding inspiration for this

warnings: nipple play, dom!steve, sub!reader, slight exhibitionism, gender neutral reader

even if you’re submissive, steve is still a whore for you. hes always sporting tight under armor shirts that show off every muscle on his torso because he loves the way it draws attention.

he’d never admit it out loud, but he has a thing for people looking at him like he’s a piece of meat. at first he hated it. he hated how every time he entered a room, everyones eyes immediately turned to him. now, though, it makes him feel powerful. it gives him confidence knowing everyone wants a piece of him

you’re the only one who ever gets to have him, but that doesn’t mean he can’t show off. it makes him laugh to see you roll your eyes when he walks into a room with his chest on display, but he also knows you can’t help but stare too

“cover that shit up, rogers. you’re gonna take someone’s eye out with those things,” you joke

“it’s not my fault it’s cold in here.”

“you could put on a looser shirt so you don’t have to make it everyone else’s problem”

steve loves to play this game. you mouth off to him and he gives it right back until he finally has enough of your smart mouth and does something to shut you up

that’s exactly where you find yourself now

you’re kneeling at the foot of the bed, sucking on steve nipples while he stands on the floor with his shirt pulled up and his pants around his thighs

he has one hand in your hair and the other works his cock quickly. he loves making you suck his nipples like this; it always gets him off in record time and he loves how sweet you look when you look up at him

“fuck, sugar, that’s it. use a little teeth, baby, you know how i like it,” he praises from above you

his praise spurs you on and you suck his nipple faster, making sure to catch your teeth on the hard bud occasionally. you rub and twist the other between your fingers

he pushes his chest up as he gets closer, just needing that little extra bit of friction to push him over the edge. he cums onto your stomach, throwing his head back and moaning loudly as he does it

you know how sensitive he gets after he cums, so you stop touching him and wait patiently on your knees for him to clean you up

Request: Oscar Isaac talking about how you both embarrassed your son.