Prompt: Adam and Charlie (who are together) are celebrating their first NHL game. They pop champagne and are having a good time when there’s a knock at the door to their apartment. Charlie answers it to find someone he never expected to see: his father.
Ok. So I've had this ask for months but I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it, how I wanted to resolve the whole Charlie's dad showing up thing. So, I decided not to, and instead made this a comforting moment between Charlie and Adam, because when it comes to fathers that don't deserve their children, I honestly have zero sympathy, though I do think canon Charlie would have struggled. (Ya boy has some serious daddy issues lol) I hope you like it anyway, anon, even though it's hella late a little off prompt-ish.
This isn't really a microfic and I'm actually awful at keeping things micro anyway. So. For 2024 we'll do Minific Monday instead haha! (Read the rest below the cut)
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"I'm sore all over and I still can't believe it's real" Charlie laughed as Adam opened the champagne, only flinching the tiniest bit at the aggressive pop.
"I can believe we're here" Adam said, pouring them each a glass, not caring at all about the overflowing bubbles or his shaking hands. "What's unbelievable is that we're here together. I can't... I never..." his words got lost in a small, strangled clearing of his throat, and Charlie smiled, knowing exactly what he meant.
It was incredible, really, how they seemed so destined to be together. In a world where Charlie felt like everything was constantly falling apart- people leaving, dying, dreams fading away- Adam was like gravity. Like his own grounding force the universe had gifted him, tethering him to his senses, to himself, to the present, even while the future never stopped hurtling toward them.
"What do you get out of this?" Charlie had asked him 3 years ago outside of Mariucci Arena their sophomore year of college after a particularly trying game when he brought it up, angry despite himself as Adam helped him limp back to the dorm with a jammed knee.
"I get you" he'd replied, and Charlie kissed him. There hadn't been many questions since. Just the two of them sticking it out together, pushing, chasing, loving.
And here they were. Their first NHL game on the ice instead of in the stands. A loss, but they couldn't help celebrating anyway. They'd come so far from the two kids they were at 11 years old, barely teammates, barely anything more than two dreamers on the same stretch of ice.
"To many more games, hopefully most of them wins" Charlie said, lifting his champagne flute with a wide smile.
"Hell yea" Adam laughed, clinking their glasses together with a playful nod.
They hadn't even gotten the glasses to their lips when the doorbell rang out through the apartment. Charlie glanced at his watch- 12:13am- and gave Adam a small, confused shrug. It could be one of their teammates, or maybe Adam's brother who had flown into Chicago for the game. He'd said he would see them at breakfast, but plans change after drinking through an entire hockey game, and Mark had seemed pretty well tipped in the lobby.
"I'll check" Charlie said, setting his glass back down with a small sigh.
He half expected it to be Jones, drunk off his ass and begging them for a place to crash closer to the city so he didn't have to Uber all the way back to the suburbs, but it wasn't.
There, in the doorway of the apartment he shared with Adam, his safe place, his home, was the absolute last person he expected to see.
"Hi, son" the man said with a small, almost apologetic smile.
And Charlie wanted to scream at him to never call him son, that he had no right after over 17 years without so much as a phone call. But there was still that little boy inside of him that ached to reach out and hug him, to bury his face in his chest and cry like he remembered doing at 6 years old before his father left the last time. He did neither of those things, though. Just stood there frozen, both parts of himself warring loudly and violently in his mind while his gut turned.
"Who is it, Charlie?" Adam asked, making his way around the corner. He stopped just behind Charlie and smiled benignly at the stranger in front of them.
"Hi" he said to the man, then turned his attention to Charlie with a quieter, "who is this? Are you ok?" as he rubbed Charlie's back in small, soothing circles.
"Hi" the man replied, holding out his hand to Adam. "I'm Ethan, Charlie's father."
Adam went ridged, looking between father and son, then moved to stand in front of Charlie protectively, drawing himself up to his full, considerable height as he closed the door in Ethan's face.
He turned to Charlie and immediately pulled him into a tight hug, and Charlie let himself fall apart there in the arms of the only man that had ever really cared to stay. "I've got you. Let's go sit" Adam said, steering them both back toward the dining room.
"We can't just..." Charlie started, gesturing toward the door as the bell rang out again. "What if he doesn't leave?"
"Do you want him to leave?"
Charlie thought about it for a long moment, unsure. The bell rang again and he dropped his head into his hands. "I can't do this right now. I... I don't know."
"I'll handle it" was all Adam said before he stormed back toward the door.
Charlie couldn't hear his father, but he could hear some of what Adam said.
"It's fucking midnight, now is not the time."
...
"...his decision, not mine."
...
"You don't deserve him. You don't even know him!"
...
"I'll give it to him, but I'm not pushing. And I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you."
...
"Yea, alright. But if you ever show up here again without an invitation I'll have you arrested and out under a restraining order for stalking."
...
The door closed and Charlie took what felt like the first real breath in ages.
"He's gone?" He asked as Adam came back in. "What did he say?"
"Yea, he's gone." He placed a piece of scrap paper onto the table with a sigh and ran a hand over his face, only just now really looking like he'd played a whole hockey game. "He said to call, if you want to."
Charlie stared at the paper for a long moment, the seconds ticking by as those two parts of himself waged war again inside of him
Pick it up. Call him.
Rip it up. Throw it away.
"Would you really have him arrested?" Charlie asked, surprising himself with how shaky his voice sounded to his own ears.
"Yea" Adam said, sitting down in the chair next to Charlie, taking his hands in his and bringing them gently to his lips. "I'll do whatever you need me to."
Adam. His tether. The gravitational pull keeping him upright when the world shifted beneath him.
"What do you get out of it?" He asked, smiling weakly as he rested his head on Adam's shoulder.
Adam kissed his forehead and nuzzled his face into Charlie's hair.
"I get you" he said easily, and Charlie felt the universe settle around him, everything falling back into place, right where it should be.
It was only natural, Adora supposed for her sister to come when she heard the girl’s screams. Some things, even after you’d gone mad with power, didn’t change. Adora’s breathing had calmed, (she had briefly slipped into more of a panic when she’d seen Audrey come in) but she hesitated to get close to her. The girl sat with her knees drawn to her chest, eyes adjusting to the dark and shadows of her bedroom.
“Not really,” She whispered not bothering to glance at her older sister. “There’s nothing to talk about... they were statues again... bodies laying in heaps, I couldn’t wake them up...” They may have been visions in her nightmares, but they were real too, Memories she couldn’t shake. Adora’s lip quivered, as tears swam in her eyes once more. “I don’t wanna go back to sleep,”
Redrawing The Maps is a series in 2 parts that follows best friends Charlie Conway and Adam Banks (Mighty Ducks fandom) as they cope with their feelings and fears after Adam confesses his love for Charlie just before getting onto a bus to play college hockey 10 hours away the summer of 2000.
Part 1 is Charlie's perspective, and part 2 is Adam's. Both parts take place over the same stretch of time, will be 3 chapters each, and will have a lot of overlap in content, but their thoughts and actions are unique to each of them. I hope that if you read it, you enjoy it, and follow both parts.
This is a labor of love that has been on my mind for actual years and is my fix-it/follow up to @alleyskywalker 2010 fic Before You Go.
"i'm not gonna ask what you did with veronica at cheryl's. but i'm asking you now, right now, if you love me, archie. or even like me?”
so i was re watching riverdale last night and i was thinking of writing a ‘x reader’ one-shot for jay from descendants with this quote. mostly just “i’m asking you now, right now, if you love me?” it will be gender neutral and the basis of the idea is that the reader has been dating jay for a while and constantly adapting to his way of dating. reader’s friends ask one day if they’ve said the ‘l’ word yet and the reader says no. their friends bring the reader to realize it is not unreasonable for them to want this one thing after everything they have done for jay.
“Why did she have to do it?” The words were soft, as the sad, tired eyes of the youngest daughter, met those of the eldest son. Adora hardly left her room anymore, only leaving it to take care of and ride her pony. “Why’d she have to hurt everyone? I mean, she was hurting, and Grammy wasn’t helping, but... who cares if Ben doesn’t love her. we love her...Mama, Papa, Philip, you...”
She could still see them in her dreams, the statues, their parents just asleep on the grass... servants on top of each other in heaps. There she’d been, unable to help any of them. “Why weren’t we enough for her?” Why wasn’t I enough for her? was her real question. The child’s voice had returned to her, but with it came the anger and the sadness, and too many feelings to make sense of. “I just don’t get why she was so hung up on a future that couldn’t happen anymore, I’m never worried about a future, and most days I’m not even sure I’ll have a future,” Adora huffed kicking her legs in frustration. She just couldn’t wrap her brain around it, hence why she was talking Preston’s ear off.
Adora looked up at the sound of the door opening, frightened eyes meeting those of her older sister. Her heart clenched in her chest, as tears once again made their way into her eyes. She huddled closer to the window seat, trying to forget all that she’d seen. The bracelet meant to help her had spared her from Audrey’s curse, but it had also left her behind. How she wanted to scream at the older girl as the older girl had often done to her. How could Audrey do this? to their family and friends and for what? the affections of someone she couldn’t have. The words refused to come out of her, instead she whimpered, hugging her knees to her chest. The stubborn little hothead she’d been was gone leaving only a confused, hurt, mute child in her place.
“Donations! come drop off your donations!” Adora calls from the table she’s set up. Boxes of toys, clothes, medicine, and non perishable foods sit in a neat orderly fashion atop the pristine pink linen tablecloth. An obviously handmade sign with the words ‘Love for the Lost’ stands by the girl’s side. “Drop off your donations for the children on the Isle!”
