Another one for the Reds fans
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otakuspirit requested "TEF!Reds on a school trip end up getting separated from the group and have to spend a night in a motel room together" (a classic).This one underwent a few different rewrites which I'll maybe get into later this week. Also, disclaimer that this is not part of TEF!canon and basically assumes the Reds have had no significant interaction (certainly not romantically-inclined interaction) between where TEF is currently at (ch10a) and the timeline of this ficlet.
Also, still not exactly happy, but less sad than the last one.
Stealing the title from the song that was included in the prompt: Dust to Dust.
***
Cell reception up here was hell, especially with the storm raging, but she was able to get Buttercup and Bubbles on the landline. Her sisters had stayed with the bus and gotten everybody to safety before the worst of the mudslide hit.
“Guess we’re taking a literal raincheck on that camping trip,” Buttercup said. “How are you guys doing?”
Blossom rummaged through the drawers, looking for some stationery or something to write a Thank You to the front desk. They had rescued the woman who owned the place from getting swept down the mountain and in return she’d offered them a couple of rooms for the night. The weather being what it was, they had taken her up on the offer.
“I’m okay. Brick got a little beat up.”
“By you or nature?”
Blossom obliged her sister a laugh. “Nature,” she said, and shut the nightstand drawer, blushing. Someone had left a couple of condoms underneath the Bible.
“Divine intervention, then,” Buttercup said. Thunder cracked outside, and the lightning caused the room to flicker. “Did you guys hear that where you’re at?”
“Yeah. I better take a shower before it blacks out.”
“Talk in the morning?”
“Mmm.” Blossom had located a notepad and a working pen. “Yeah.”
She hung up. Now that the conversation was over, she could hear Brick showering in his room next door. The walls were thin and she couldn’t help herself.
Maybe I’ll wait on that shower, she thought, and scribbled a note of gratitude to their rescuee-cum-rescuer.
***
Brick being next door was distracting.
After cleaning up she had dimmed the lights and tried to go to bed. Despite the intensity of the storm, the sound of rain soothed her, and she had imagined sleep would come easily.
Instead she sat curled up at the head of the bed, hugging a pillow to her chest as she leaned against the fake headboard panel, and wondered if he was asleep.
I’m pathetic. And a bit of a stalker.
Blossom shook her head. She needed to work on more positive self-talk.
Maybe he’s doing the same. It was an idea, him sitting at the headboard himself, trying not to listen to what she was doing on her side. She wondered if he read at night; if he did, what kind of books he might read. Fiction or non? What genre? Poetry, maybe? Or something pulpy and lowbrow to help him relax?
Tonight’s rain was a torrential spring downpour, power-washing the earth clean. Summer was coming. Blossom had already been fitted for her graduation gown.
She hugged her knees a little tighter to her chest and let her gaze wander around the room. It was an old-fashioned motel, complete with faux finish wallpaper, a dark red carpet marred by the occasional bubble, and an unobtrusive watercolor painting of a sailboat.
‘Old-fashioned’ didn’t just refer to the décor. It was fitted with doors between adjoining rooms for families, and it was here where her eyes rested, here where they were riveted to the door connecting her room to Brick’s.
It’ll be locked, she thought, even as she floated toward it. She glanced down at what she was wearing—an old shirt from a dance competition, way oversized so it covered the important bits.
And flattering underwear, thank God.
She shook her head and blushed.
It’ll be locked.
She reached for the doorknob.
Locked. Definitely locked. Locked. Locked. Locked.
It clicked open.
***
Brick had fallen asleep on top of the covers in what looked like sleep clothes. The shirt and pants were different from what he’d been wearing when the mud had overwhelmed him earlier in the evening.
She sat next to him, folding her legs daintily underneath her. He had his back to her and there was only his ubiquitous cap on the nightstand, no book. It occurred to her he probably hadn’t brought anything along to read anyway.
There was no thunder or lightning now, just the steady pulse of the rain as it drummed against the roof. Blossom leaned carefully over him and thought it wholly unfair that Brick wasn’t drooling or snoring or doing anything else that would deter someone who kinda-sorta had a crush on him from kinda-sorta crushing on him. The ever-furrowed brow was there, but sleep had softened its line, and with his mouth only gently parted instead of set in a scowl the question of why she bothered liking him at all seemed only a faint protest.
She sank fully onto the bed, an arm’s length away from touching him. When she first came in she had thought she might just try to talk to him. Just chatting, or closure, whatever. But here he was asleep and now she just didn’t want to leave.
Just a little longer, she thought. Then she’d go back. Definitely.
***
Brick woke up and panicked. It was a restrained panic, one that didn’t involve flailing or movement of any sort, really, and it didn’t rouse Blossom from slumber.
But he definitely panicked.
At some point he must’ve hit a lull in his sleep cycle, and whatever counted for his sixth sense had told him something about the room was off. He had blinked his eyes groggily open, slowly realized there was deep breathing in the room that wasn’t his own, and turned just enough to catch the curve of a hip and a shock of red-orange hair in his peripheral before jerking back to his side of the bed.
My side? he thought. This entire bed was technically his.
Something was in his throat now. He hoped the steady patter of the rain outside did enough to mask the sudden shortness of his breath.
What is she doing here?
This was definitely his room. He had remembered falling asleep facing his deadbolted door and the window that immediately opened on the parking lot. He chanced another glance behind him. There was a connecting door that stood ajar. He had thought about locking it after his shower.
Why didn’t you?
He avoided looking at her and turned away again. Maybe he should get up. Go next door. Sleep in her bed.
She rustled a bit in her sleep and a jolt skated across every nerve in his body. The heavy breathing resumed. He counted an agonizing thirty seconds, then exhaled, his breath feeling like static in his throat.
Still asleep.
He stared at his front door, imagining what she must look like. Hopefully awful and unflattering, he thought, but it was edgeless, without bite.
A touch at his back. He blinked, confused, then stiffened, the jolt back again, now rolling across the entire surface area of his skin as Blossom drew herself up against him.
Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.
He felt the warmth of her breath through his shirt as she brushed her lips against the fabric and he frantically wondered how it was possible that she could not sense his heart hammering in his chest, how the severity of its vibrations could not wake her. He felt her lips move.
“Why did you break up with me?”
The heart that had seemed so intent on drumming itself out of existence a second ago stopped. He might have thought it sleep-talk, but there was emotion behind it, a weightiness to it that couldn’t have permeated the miasma of sleep.
Here the rain seemed a curtain, the steadiness of its rhythm masking all other sounds. Brick stared at the light dancing behind the blinds. He took in a breath.
“We weren’t exactly going out,” he murmured.
She gasped and jerked away from him, scooting back to the far edge of her side.
“Oh my God, I had no—were you awake this whole time?”
“No. Just now.” He scratched at his pillowcase and thought about turning over but didn’t. “What are you doing here?”
He heard her shift on the coverlet. “I just… thought I would talk to you. Originally.”
His first instinct was to pick her apart. If talking had been so important, why sneak through the connecting door; why lie next to him instead of shaking him awake; why now, with the end of the year and, in turn, his departure from Townsville and her life approaching?
He didn’t act on instinct, though. The rain did something to it, something hypnotic and deadening and somber.
“About what?” he said, so quietly that he was sure even with the superhearing she’d have to strain to hear him.
A long moment passed before the weight on the coverlet shifted again. He sensed her coming closer, and then his chest was vibrating again, his heartbeat escalating to a feverish pitch as he felt her hand gently alight once more on his back, followed not by her lips this time, but her forehead. She ran her hand up and down his spine, an almost-caress. He wanted to ask her again, to press her for an answer, but her touch felt like heaven, sent him reeling, and he realized whatever she had to say would pale in comparison to this simple, physical act of—what was this? Loneliness? Affection? Both things, all at once?
“Do you,” she started, and then the pressure of her forehead against his back increased. “Do you have to go?”
The childishness of her voice upended him, the rain louder and more intense than before, and he turned, saying “I,” before he knew what would follow after.
But no words followed after. He rolled towards her, his gaze gliding across the shimmering light behind the blinds, the pockmarked popcorn ceiling, that familiar and agonizing dome of red-orange hair before she eclipsed it all and caught his mouth in hers.
***
There was that frozen, endless moment of pressure, a valve straining for relief. Blossom closed her eyes against Brick’s stunned face and parted his lips with hers to release it.
Controlled chaos, then. Their hands fumbling for the other’s, then in each other’s hair, twisting and pulling. Her mouth became a weapon, a blade against his that he met thrust for thrust. His breath hadn’t yet taken on the sourness of sleep, instead it tasted like the motel’s cheap mouthwash, sweet and sharp, and she tried so hard to breathe it into her, to pull the entirety of his self into her, an infection that she would let invade her body and being, that she could house forever, like a parasite.
Because that was what this was, wasn’t it? This feeling for him had burrowed into her heart, a metaphoric micropredator setting up residence inside her and gnawing bits and pieces of herself while she withered away, none the wiser. It had left her so hungry and weak but it was familiar to her now, a known entity, and now she could not imagine functioning without it.
And better a parasite than a ghost. She did not believe in ghosts. She refused to let this one haunt her.
They kissed each other until the sensation of doing so escalated to a dreamy numbness and the sound of the rain returned, the too-smooth feel of the motel’s coverlet cooling their heated skin. Blossom tangled her hands in Brick’s hair and brushed the nape of his neck, reeling from the fact that she could be allowed to touch such an intimate place, to stay her hand there and feel wanted and known.
Her own hair had gotten in the way, some of it caught in her mouth, and he swiped at it now, gently brushing it behind her.
“Thanks,” she whispered, pulling lightly at those fine hairs at the base of his skull, the ones that tapered to a delicate point before giving way to skin.
He said nothing, glancing down. She noticed his gaze catching on her chest and waist before hastily looking elsewhere, and then his room suddenly felt very cool, cold even, and her cotton shirt was kind of flimsy and she had definitely floated in here with no pants on, so she reluctantly pulled her arm away from around his shoulders to cover her chest.
He glanced at her hand, now resting on the bed, and after a second covered it with his own. The gesture made her heart twinge, made her brave, and so she bent one of her knees forward, bumping it against his thigh.
They laid there for a while, all that contact possessing an air of tentativeness, both of them reluctant to revisit her question from earlier.
“It’s cold in here,” she finally said.
“Yeah, it is.” He looked around the room. “I can adjust the thermostat.”
“That’s okay.” She was already pulling at the covers, letting go of his hand to wriggle between the sheets. Brick stared for a moment, then followed suit.
“Is this your idea of talking?” he asked.
“No,” she said, a little indignant, and shimmied closer to the warmth of his body. “But I don’t hate it.”
He didn’t pull back, though for a second she thought he might. Instead he wrapped an arm around her, his hand settling on her neck in the same spot she had just been playing with on him.
She traced the jut of his collarbone and kissed it. “You’re warm,” she said. He inhaled, deep, which made his collarbone rise to her lips again. She gave it another kiss.
“You, too.”
“You feel nice.”
His hand caressed the nape of her neck. “You, too.”
The sound of the rain rose to fill the silence that followed, and Blossom was grateful for it as she closed her eyes, Brick’s heartbeat indistinguishable from her own.
***
When Blossom slipped back into consciousness, she found their positions had shifted and dawn was filtering through the blinds, sending dim horizontal lines of light against the wall. She laid on her back with Brick’s arm around her and his head nestled underneath her neck. She wondered when the rain had stopped.
She rested her gaze on the line of his shoulder, rising and falling with his breath, unwilling to shift and risk losing that closeness. Morning painted the room differently; sunlight had dialed down its magic. She stared at him for what felt like hours, but when she heard the rattle of the housekeeping cart, still several rooms down, time had seemed to pass so quickly.
She gave it a few more rooms, waiting to see if he would move.
“Brick,” she said, finally. The cart was two rooms away, now. She had to call her sisters, and from there the trip would continue as planned, or maybe it was home they were headed instead. In any case they had to leave.
Bye, she thought, and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Brick,” she said, a little louder now, because he hadn’t stirred. “We have to go.”
His arm tightened around her.
“Wait,” he whispered, and it was the smallest sound she’d ever heard him make, in all the time they’d known each other. She opened her eyes and stared at that retro, textured ceiling, the memory of last night’s rain filling her with a sudden sadness.
“Not yet,” he said, his voice impossibly small as he squeezed her closer. “Just… just a little longer.”
***
Thanks for your patience, as always. ♥
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thank you so much for this treasure! i love, love, love it klfvhdkljckldjcdjkdhj
i love the way they're both so gentle and vulnerable with each other. of course this would never happen because brick has the emotional maturity of a remote control, but one can dream.
you definitely captured the song's spirit.
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“Summer was coming. Blossom had already been fitted for her graduation gown.” What a poetic line.
Also—and maybe this is weird feedback—but I really appreciated how you pulled the unspoken possibility of sex to the forefront at different points without the fic itself ever getting racy. That’s so rarely done, and it felt very honest and organic. Like, obviously the characters would feel that possibility under these circumstances, they know it, the readers know it, but the history you wrote for these two into the fic is a real obstacle that makes them both hesitant and a little gun-shy. Great execution.
The little internal debate Brick has over the semantics of “my side of the bed.” He is so bad at sharing.
Tries to play it cool while having an overwhelming emotional reaction barely short of a panic attack – also Brick.
Low grade resentment of the other person’s physical attractiveness is a staple of sbj!reds.
Brick being so socially inept that all he can do is repeat Blossom’s compliments back to her. Love it. But not as much as I love Blossom getting fed up of all the nonsense and just going “you know what, executive decision, tired of all the bs and I’m sleeping in here because I want to, there will be no objections GOODNIGHT.”
Finally, on a personal note, I enjoyed reading reds fic from you that wasn’t quite so emotionally torturous! Don’t get me wrong, you’re good at emotionally torturous. But this was a nice change in pace!
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Re: the role sex plays in the fic, I'm actually really really happy that stuck out to you. Thank you for mentioning it. I didn't want them to just, you know, do the thing where they fall into bed together and wind up having sex even though that's one of the obvious conclusions you jump to in a "And there was only ONE BED!" fic. But I did want the emotional intimacy of it. So thank you, thank you, thank you for mentioning it. xoxo
(Also literally lol'ed at the sbj!reds staple; you're right and I can't believe I've never realized I have my own brand of Reds.)