more than you know

Sleep shouldn’t have come as sound as it did these days. Nemo was still out there somewhere, either under a rock somewhere in the foulest corner of town, or back in Emiliano’s lair in New Orleans, whines like a chastised puppy rising into those raging screams as delusions bit again. He wasn’t here though, sticking himself back under his nose, finally back to something resembling its normal grizzled lines months after Nemo had broken it again, or under Mikey’s, sending his brother snarling and fighting the way Agnelli had probably hoped he would. The seeming quiet hadn’t left him sitting on his ass though, out on the streets of Mystic Falls every day Chase felt like he’d been in some constant state of watchfulness, just waiting for that moment, when his life would blow up again.

Last night he’d shuffled into the apartment with Roxxi, finger to her lips before he’d pressed his own there to keep the noise from dragging Mikey out of bed. There was telling his brother about this woman who’d fed him to busting, whose mouth could have had Lucifer himself blushing and there was shoving it under his nose when the guy had spent twenty years without a woman in touching distance. He wasn’t gonna be asshole about it but the day was coming when those dinners were gonna end up here, the three of them around the kitchen table with candles flickering and some decent beer and pizza on the table. A day when those looks he snuck when he thought Roxxi wasn’t looking were gonna spill into stuff tripping out of his mouth in the clumsy poetry sorta way she had tripping through his brain.

Chase had eased over her when she’d slipped under, curled into him like he was the radiator beneath the covers not her, dragging his phone back to his side of the bed to set his alarm – work wasn’t gonna slide away cause he had someone to tug him back into that hot pocket. Forbes wouldn’t care about that, just about the pile of files building up on his desk while his family agenda had taken front stage. His arm had slipped around her, drawing her back into his chest to press a kiss to that tender little spot behind her ear before he’d fallen asleep too.

Most nights he dreamed now – the wheel wrenching itself out of his hands as the car had slid sideways, the yelp of the dog that always had his heart lodging itself up in his throat (what kinda fucking sicko would hurt an animal?), the sick snap of bone and dull thud of fists. Dark doorways and stoops, blood drying on his skin to flake away under the shower, ruby runnels of water rolling down over his feet as he’d shook with adrenalin and confusion. Not last night though, with Roxxi there he’d gone into that dark like a rock into water. Drifting down, still and hidden in all that black under light had sparkled again.

Burying his face in the pillow, one arm crawling across the tangled, cold sheets, Chase swatted for his phone alarm for the other. In the dark of his bedroom it was still, no quiet trill of the alarm. ’Chase…’ What? He grunted, turning his head just far enough to catch sight of Mikey outlined in the doorway, the hall behind him barely lit. There was enough light though, enough to see that Roxxi wasn’t in bed anymore. No clothes on the chair in the corner of the room, no lingering warmth like she’d just slipped out to the bathroom. Just that quiet confirmation from Mikey that the brunette – like there was more than one woman sharing his bed – had gone. ”Fuck.” The curse slipped out quietly as he flopped onto his back to squint up at the ceiling. His palm pressed flat against the sheets where she’d been, the frown cutting deeper into his brow. What the hell, Roxxi.



Forget getting back to sleep in any sorta meaningful way. He’d spent most of the night laying there in the dark, wondering why she’d gone without a word of explanation – not even the full on bullshit excuse of having to teach next morning. Half an hour before the alarm started to buzz Chase had slipped out of bed. A quick shower, dressing in that semi-dark in his room, the quiet pad out to the kitchen cause Mikey hadn’t come crawling out of his room yet – probably hiding out til he’d gone to work and there was no chance of him sulking ‘round the place, maybe.

He had toast cooking and coffee dripping into the pot when his brother finally emerged. The curse on his lips like a greeting until the real one came. Chase hitched brows but shoved a second cup into the machine all the same as he sipped from his. ”Mornin’.” No good about it really, especially not when Mikey brought Roxxi up again. ”You said last night,” he crabbed tiredly. ”Roxxi tell you why she was heading out? You know, since it was kinda unexpected. Thought maybe you’d finally end up meetin’ over breakfast. Finally breaking toast you know?” Like she was actually slipping into his life instead of balking at the last minute, slipping back in after with a kiss and some glib comment. His jaw tightened, his posture going stiff as he heard a sound at the door. Like nothing had happened. Fuck indeed.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI & MIKEY BUCKLEY * Word Count: 933

He wasn’t one to get himself in other people's lives. If he spotted a neighbour kissing goodbye to someone who wasn’t her husband he didn’t give a shit, but whatever the fuck was going with Roxana and Chase involved him. Unfortunately. He knew Mystic Falls was small, but this was too much. The woman who helped to lock him up every full moon was lying in bed with his brother.

He watched as his brother slipped another cup into the machine as Mikey bit down on his tongue gently. Soon. She said she would tell him soon, so he was prepared to give her some time to come clean to Chase. Technically, they’d done nothing wrong. It wasn’t as if she was hoping in bed with Mikey one night and then Chase the next. At first, he was a little thrown off when Chase referred to her as Roxxi. “Um… no not really. I think she said something about… a family emergency.” It was the only lie he could think of that sounded plausible. Now he was sitting praying that she wasn’t some orphan who had no family.

Fuck. He hated this but tried to shake it off and pretend everything was okay, but his body stiffened up again once he heard the door open, then close again. He predicted it was her before she walked through the kitchen door. Her heart was racing just as fast as his. His eyes ticked up at her as she placed the bagels and coffees down on the table, her tone bright and cheerful as if there was no tension in the air. Chase seemed irked that his woman dipped out in the middle of the night and Mikey was trying his best not to wear his emotions on his face.

His eyes fell down on the food for a second before Roxxi spoke again, throwing her words at him. “I— What?” He’d barely said good morning to his brother before she came bursting through the door wearing a huge grin.

“For fuck’s sake, Mikey, did prison teach you nothing about being a snitch?!”

His gaze darted straight at his brother, with a deep frown on his face. “You told her?” He exclaimed as he got to his feet, the chair legs scraping along the floor loudly, “You can’t just go around tellin’ people I went to prison. You know I gotta keep a low profile ‘ere.” That was his story to tell, not Chase’s. One word to the wrong person could have the Agnellis flocking to town for him or even the neighbours starting some crazy petition to have him removed from town. He’d heard stories about ex-criminals moving to small places like this only to be forced out a few months later after everyone found out they’d served time. “What else have you told her?” Did he tell her about the Agnellis or Georgie? Did he tell her how Mikey did jackshit when Chase got beaten up? Or how disappointed their parents were with Mikey?

The dread he felt before had been replaced with anger. His secret was out thanks to his brother and Roxxi had probably run home to type Mikey’s name in Google. A part of him wanted to defend himself, explain to her that he wasn’t the person painted out by the press, but someone who lost his way in life. He wasn’t a thug or a violent criminal like they said. He was just a kid trying to fit in.


ROXANNE BRASCHI & CHASE BUCKLEY - over to ange

The feeling of a knife in the back shouldn’t have been unfamiliar to either Buckley brother by now. Emiliano and his boys had jabbed one deep enough into Mikey to wreck decades of his life. The cops had a word for it now, PC as hell, but pretty on the nose. Life changing injuries. That had been what they’d done to his big brother. What Roxxi had done? That wasn’t quite on the same level. Chase could still feel it though, that prick of a knife tip in a heart that had gone more than a little tender for her.

He curled a hand over his chest, rubbing, like he could somehow massage it away. There’d been looks when he’d joined the PD in New Orleans, people who knew the exact sequence of events in that bodega. They hadn’t had any of the context that had led up to Mikey following Georgie into the place, but it hadn’t mattered. Guilt was guilt and until he’d proved that he wasn’t his brother there’d been those looks – narrowed eyed suspicion, the inability to believe that the same brush hadn’t tarred both brothers.

Maybe it was a little cowardly, but he hadn’t wanted to see that same look in Roxxi’s eyes. He’d met her a world away from all of that, in a new life where Mikey was supposed to be able to escape from that past and not carry on being Chase Buckley’s criminal big brother. Now it was all out in the open, spread on the breakfast table like the damn bagels that just felt like a gloss of bullshit on whatever had happened during the night.

Chase’s head ticked back and forwards, a faint burn behind his eyes matching the one in his chest. A faint snort as Roxxi told him to fuck off. Nah. He was the one with the blade twisting in him now, he wasn’t gonna take it, not from someone he’d thought was better than that. His fingers curled, nails biting into the skin beneath the t-shirt, tiny red crescents burning into his skin to join the scars their ‘shitty situation’, as Roxxi was now putting it, had already put on him. ”Not the whole story,” Chase said hoarsely. He met her eye for a second as her gaze ticked to him and then looked away, his mouth pursed as she tried to make this better. His throat went tight as Mikey went to defend him. ”They didn’t report the whole of any of it.” Mikey had been used by the Agnellis, tossed to the jackals when Emiliano’s own screw up son had ended up bleeding out on a bodega floor because he was a fuck up, like all of them.

Fuck. Why’d she have to smile when his eyes were locked on her mouth, expecting to see more of that outrage, not the pride that started the blade sliding out again. A warmth glowing over that nick in his heart like she was gonna heal it with just a couple of words. How much of a fucking sap had he turned into? ”The guy she keeps runnin’ into, who didn’t deserve a little privacy?” OK, maybe that was a low blow. Chase licked his lips, forcing his eyes up to hers. He’d told her to protect her, cause that feeling didn’t stop buzzing in that primitive bit of his brain and Nemo, that fucking lying snake Emiliano had sent after him, could curl around her throat and bite her just because he knew just who’d feel that pain then. ”I’m a cop, Roxxi. We try and protect people. I woulda told anybody …” His hand left his chest, scrubbed over his face as he frowned. What kind of cop was he that he hadn’t done the same with her? The kind that trusted. Foolishly perhaps.

He’d seen what he wanted to, hadn’t he? A stunning woman who didn’t recoil from him like he was about to grab her purse or assault her, like he really was the brute his face made him out to be. Maybe he should’ve known it was too good to be true. Roxxi had read what the newspapers portrayed him and Mikey to be, that was the guy she’d gotten all hot under the collar over, that was the guy she’d slipped out on last night with another lie. She couldn’t even look him in the eye as she came up with her excuse.

Lips pressed together, Chase wondered if he was gonna puke up the couple of mouthfuls of coffee he’d drunk, they were definitely curdling in his stomach. He glanced away, met Mikey’s eye and then looked down at his fingers where they rested on the edge of the table. Thick fingers, short nails – not bitten, he wouldn’t allow the nerves to get that bad – scarred at the joints. ”Stupid?” he echoed, a touch of that strained humour at the edge of it. Like she was admitting it had been a mistake. Chase hung his head, pressed his shoulder blades back into the slats of the back of the chair. She was looking at Mikey now, like he was the one who was gonna say yeah or no to this.

Slowly, at her urging, Chase shifted in his seat. Mikey was already reaching for the bag, snagging one of the bagels and pushing back from the table like this was the one thing he had the power to run from now. ”Mikey,” Chase croaked, ready to call his brother back. ”You don’t have to…” Go. Like he was about to kick Roxxi out and shut the door on her, the two Buckley boys sticking together. Mikey was out instead, that label of ‘criminal’ slapped on his back again because Roxxi hadn’t known to leave it all well enough alone.

”We’re not done with this,” Chase said hoarsely when they were alone. He tugged the bag towards him, the nausea still swimming in his gut stealing any appetite he’d had. ”He’s not part of that world anymore, OK? I don’t want you pryin’ into any of that with him.” She could pick at him, he could take it, but Mikey was off limits. He hadn’t invited Roxxi into their lives, or into his heart … that was all on him. Chase lifted out one of the breakfast bagels, picking a piece off the edge just to force something down his throat, like it would remove that lump lodged there.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI & MIKEY BUCKLEY * Word Count: 1079

So much for the fresh start. Mystic Falls was a town where everybody’s nose was in everybody else’s business but nobody here had a clue about the all the shit Mikey had gone through. Maybe Forbes had it in her little black book that his brother had been incarcerated, that would’ve been stamped all over his record, but she could see it for her damn self that he was jumping through every hoop they asked him to. He hadn’t started dealing out of the club or knocking over the local liquor store. The Buckleys were out from under the Agnellis thumb and it was gonna stay that way – with Mikey’s fresh reputation in-fucking-tact.

Ah, why did it have to be her? Fuck. It just made it worse. Roxxi had seen every ugly part of him, every scar impressed on him by years of trying to take the Agnellis down, of trying to clean up the city and she’d let him know that she’d seen the beauty in every damn one of them even when he couldn’t see it. Every ounce of the ugly it really was slid down into the pit of his stomach, swirling around until Chase wanted to throw it up all over the kitchen table.

Hope got you nothing but an extra twist to that knife when it slid in. His parents had hoped that Mikey wouldn’t be found guilty for a murder Georgie had committed, they’d hoped their boy would somehow find his way free of the trouble that’d been dragging him down. Once the Agnellis had got their hooks in him that was all fucking hopeless. If it had been Emiliano’s own son up there on the stand they would’ve twisted the law until he slid free. Mikey wasn’t really his though. No matter how much his little brother had tried to get him free, it hadn’t fucking happened for twenty years … or at all. Roxxi had slid those cuffs back around Mikey’s wrist with a single admission. She already had them around his.

Chase’s eyes met hers and he wanted to fucking curse. That blade was double sided and he was twisting it just as bad now, some little part of him wanting her to feel a little of the pain those bastards had inflicted on his family for more than twenty years. Only the tears she was blinking away were threatening to fall like the blood that’d drip from his fingers as he stabbed her back.

Fuck. Rubbing at his face didn’t stop him from hearing that pained croak to her voice or from seeing her brush a tear away. One that he’d put there.

What the fuck did it say about him that even now, when was hacking away at all that hope he’d been holding on to like the world wasn’t fucking shitty enough to his family that they were never gonna break, that those tears were threatening to take the steam out of his hurt. Roxxi had been stupid, he had been too. So damn trusting that he’d stopped trying to see when the other shoe was going to drop. For that Chase knew he owed his brother an apology. This was on him.

He didn’t blame Mikey for running the hell out. It wasn’t stupid for him to try and escape that slap of a past that had come over what was meant to be a pleasant breakfast, one where he got to share those two parts of his life, safe in the knowledge that neither one was smeared with the Agnelli curse anymore.

Focusing on the bag, on the bagels that were undoubtedly a peace offering, Chase tried to draw the line in the sand. Would it get nudged further out if they got past this? Maybe, but it was gonna be there no matter what, because he’d failed protecting Mikey once, he wasn’t gonna let it happen again. Chase swallowed hard, the bread sticking in his throat as Roxxi mumbled at him. ”You just wanted to know, about me,” he said almost numbly. She’d tumbled down that rabbit hole, silently digging instead of just asking him or trusting what she saw on face value – like he had.

Another chunk of bagel torn free, squeezed practically back to dough between his fingers as the truth really began to pour out. Still excuses, stopped dead in their tracks as she approached. The piece of bagel dropped, the bit he’d eaten feeling like it was wedged somewhere in his chest. ”You coulda told me,” he said hoarsely. ”About all of it. I thought you knew you could speak to me .. about anythin’.” Because he liked her too, and that, that was so fucking rare it had been hard to believe at first. Someone like her, wanting to be around someone like him, those little barbs she tossed out with that wicked edge just jokes to get him laughing, blushing.

Chase’s fingers curled into Roxxi’s as she took his in both of hers. So delicate, so warm, yet capable of sweeping away a shitty day at work in just a single touch. This … this wasn’t so easy to fix. Still, he frowned, his fingers tightening like he could hold her there. Should he be holding her there? God. ”Don’t,” he rasped. ”I didn’t want you to go last night, even with …” The laugh was strained when it emerged, like it was gonna help loosen the lump in his throat. That mouth was what had gotten him in the first place, picking him out of the crowd, slipping under his skin.

Dark eyes rolled up to study her face. Mikey had covered for her, cause he was a decent fucking guy, passing on the truth as he knew it, not throwing the table and those bagels across the damn room when the actual truth rolled out. ”He didn’t call it bullshit when he told me. He trusted what you said, I trusted it …” He trusted her, and maybe that was gonna come back to bite him on the ass now. If she hadn’t brought up Mikey’s being in prison this all woulda melted away by now, leaving maybe just a little sting in his pride. That bullshit had all come to light though and now it was scattered between them like the tattered bagel on the table.

Nodding slowly, Chase held her eye when she finally looked at him again. A fucking world in those glassy eyes – genuine pain, genuine apology, still everything he’d imagined that they mighta ended up with. He swallowed again, the lump loosening this time. ”Accepted.” He gestured towards the door with his other hand before it curled slowly around the back of her thigh. ”He deserves to hear it too. This is … his life he’s tryin’ to make here. Mikey deserves to be able to do that, if you read everythin’, you should believe that too.” The breath rolled out of him long and heavy, his head tilting back slowly. ”This wasn’t the breakfast I expected … the bagels are … good though. You gonna stay?” That question came with a weight, one that would sit like lead in his stomach, tearing a hole right through him if she said yeah now.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 1211