Repose

One

"Do you have any desire to stop being on the run from the law, now that you've graduated?" Luke muses, staring across at his best friend of six years. Sierra and Luke were sitting in some upscale club in Darling Point, late in the night after Sierra's graduation ceremony finished. It was nearing 12am, some hours after Luke also would have graduated had he not gotten pregnant and dropped out of school—though that was only temporary. Luke was at a snotty private school that did the international baccalaureate, so he decided to re-enrol in his year 12 in the September–May school year. Luke and Michael's daughter, Avery Violet Clifford, six months old, was with Luke's better half back at home.
"I'm not on the run from the law," Sierra rolls her eyes melodramatically.

"Shall we recap?" Luke teases, clasping his hands together and leaning back in the millennial pink, velvet, chair. "In July you got a warning, in August you got issued a $1600 fine for not having gone to the DIR within six months of becoming legal, in October you got charged with 'failing to meet civic duties' and now, it's November. Nine months since you turned 18."
"You make it sound worse than it is," she huffs, crossing her arms like a petulant child.
"Sierraaaaaa," Luke whines, taking another slurp of his cocktail through the metal straw, "you just need to go to the DIR and find out your role and soulmate."
"I might consider it," she hums, "now that I'm not busy with school. I just don't want to."
"Need I remind you, I'm getting married in January, and given the guest list of 400 people, and a flurry of media attention—I'd appreciate it if one of my attendants wasn't wanted by a federal agency," Luke counters.
"That still gives me two months," she shrugs.
"No," the blonde groans exasperatedly.

"Can we please go get drunk?"
"I was going to say no but I haven't gotten drunk since before I was pregnant, haven't even drunk much at all. I'll text Michael, you order some shots," Luke grins.
"That's what I like to hear!" Sierra cheers, waltzing over to the bar to get some vodka shots.

Luke – Michael: Getting drunk, I'll get a taxi home

Michael – Luke: Stay safe baby, let me know if you need anything xo

Luke – Michael: xxo

Luke and Sierra got obscenely drunk. Plastered, hammered, pissed, shitfaced, smashed, wasted, sloshed; whatever euphemism for completely off their faces you'd like to use. Sierra had been hit on by more doms than they could count, but she didn't even care to give them the time of day. A few optimistic ones even had the audacity to hit on Luke, despite his prominent collar. They had had a lot of cocktails and danced on the sticky floor, stumbling out of the club just after 2am.

They were gripping onto each other tightly for balance, so that they could walk in a mildly straight line down the street. A few police were approaching them, just doing a general patrol of the area. The officers probably wouldn't have bothered too much, but the teenagers wanted to turn around and go in the opposite direction. Their inebriation caused their legs to get tangled in the haste, and they fell face first onto the concrete. The motion caused Sierra to throw up all over the footpath, she was the drunker of the two, but Luke was still far from sober.

"Are you alright?" one of the cops asks, she had dyed blonde hair and looked to be at least a decade older than Luke and Sierra, all three of them running over.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Sierra groans, panting and trying to regain her breath from the fall and the vomit.
"Let me help you up," a different officer, this time a man, smaller and younger than the last officer, offers. Slowly the three police help Luke and Sierra to stand up, and start guiding them towards their car.
"Where are you taking us?" Luke slurs.
"We're just gonna sit down and have a chat," the blonde says calmly.
"No no no," Sierra rushes so fast she becomes dizzy as soon as she sees the police car, "please don't arrest us."
"Let's just talk for now," the last says, she looked the youngest but still comfortably five years or so older than Luke and Sierra. She was clearly a dom and had a terrifying aura, "what are your names?"
"I know we're drunk," Luke adds, words melted together and body leaning on the car for stability. He forgot how he was going to finish his sentence so he just stops talking.

"I'm Sierra not-gonna-tell-you Deaton," Sierra replies proudly, in her head feeling very accomplished.
"What's your name?" the small man asks Luke, the scary looking woman was already searching Sierra's name on their database.
"Luke," he starts, stopping to burp very disgracefully, "Cli—no wait, Hemmings."
"Do you not know your name?" the man purses his lips.
"I'm engaged. Will be a Clifford, not yet," Luke answers, eyebrows furrowed because such coherent sentences take an extensive amount of brain power right now.

"Because you're drunk, we're taking you back to the station until you sober up," the oldest cop, blondie, announces.
"No thanks," Sierra mumbles, looking three seconds away from passing out.
"Are we being arrested?" Luke drawls once he's sitting in the back seat of the police car.
"We'll talk about it back at the station," young terrifying woman, who was driving, replies. Blondie stays behind in the streets.
"Can I text Michael?" Luke asks.
"It's is, siz, 'is fiancé," Sierra stumbles over her words.
"We'll contact your next of kin's when we get back to the station," the small male police officer informs them.

Luke and Sierra spend the 15 minute car ride whispering and giggling about how exciting their evening is and then cooperatively stumbling into a cell together, where they're given food and water and told they have to stay until they sober up and can go home.

A/N: IT'S HERE. I'M BACK. It feels so good to be posting again I could cry. I restarted writing this so many times and never intended there to be a time gap of a year between the end of ease and start of repose, but this is how it worked out.

I can't wait for you to see how the characters have grown, the new drama, the new characters, ahhhhhhhhh!!! I'm gonna stick to chapters just once a week for now but I hope to speed them up, so I'll be back with more next weekend!

I seriously can't thank you all enough for your patience.

–Grace Williams xo