Don't Come Knocking fic O.o - (2 Parts)

[Tarkus]

Hi all, like I posted over in the Obs, Stories, Art section, I had to write something Tim Roth related before the plot bunnies in my head threatened to pop out of my head and create havoc in the living world

...Anyway, I wrote a fic (which I may or may not continue, I haven't decided) based off a small indie type movie called Don't Come Knocking, which has the delicious Mr. Roth as a kind of parole officer named Sutter.

The movie itself is about an aging western movie star who just now discovers he has a family and sets off to find them and ditches the movie he's supposed to be in to do so. That's where Sutter comes in. He has to track the runaway star and bring him back to finish the movie

My fic would be considered AU since I put in an original character of my own.

Okay, now I'm done, so onto the fic!

“nkgt-chuh…heh-nkgssh, ngkt!”

“Bless you, bless you, bless you. Shouldn’t do that you know.” Gabrielle said, idly flipping the page of her book.

“Do what?”, Sutter asked, sniffling once.

“Stifle. A sneeze is caused by an irritant of some kind entering your nose. The sneeze itself is your nose trying to get rid of whatever irritant’s bugging it. If you stifle your sneezes,” she licked her finger and turned another page, “ you don’t get the irritant out. So you keep sneezing until the irritant’s gone, which is why people who stifle generally sneeze more than once.”

“Heh-ngtsh, ngtsh, heht-ktsh!” Sutter sneezed again, stifling all three into his wrist. He sighed afterward.

“When a person gives someone advice, they don’t give them that advice for the hell of it. They give them advice because they think that person could benefit from it.”, she said, glaring at him reproachfully from her book.

“I don’t think I should necessarily take the advice from someone who broke parole in Virginia and traveled all the way to Montana, causing her weary parole officer to track her all the way there.” He glared back at her.

“If I‘m not mistaken, that’s your job, and if you were any good at it, you’d have caught me long before I got to Montana. As for the advice, I was just trying to be helpful.” She answered innocently.

He sniffled, this time wetly, in response, and they sat in not-quite-uneasy silence for the time. But Gabrielle was never one to sit back and enjoy the silence. Sutter sniffled wetly again.

She turned her attention to him. “Sooo, do you think we oughtta stop soon? It‘s getting pretty late and you‘re sick.”, she asked, peering intently at him.

“I’m not sick.” He sniffled again and his breath hitched twice as he began raising his arm off the steering wheel. He blinked hazily, tensed, then sighed , the sneeze having presumably backed off or vanished.

“Yea, as if that little display didn’t just prove my point” she snickered, finally shutting her book and rewarding him with her full attention.

“Maybe I’m allergic to something” he mused, more to himself than his passenger.

“If you were allergic to something, you wouldn’t be able to hold your sneezes back for that long”. She took this time to curl her legs up beneath her body in the seat. “And your eyes would be watering a lot more.” She cocked her head and leaned closer to him. “And when it’s allergies, your whole nose usually gets all pinkish. If it’s a cold, usually it’s just your nostrils that turn pink. Like yours.” She smiled.

“And when did y-heeeh…” His breath hitched unexpectedly and he raised his arm off the wheel to stifle.

Gabrielle sat up quickly in her seat. “I mean it, don’t…”

“Heh-ngxxxt!, hah-gkxt!, knxt-ah!”

“Fine!” She growled and threw herself back into her seat. “I don’t even care. You can just keeping stifling and getting sicker. I don’t care anymore.” She glared blatantly out the passenger side window and continued pouting.

She sulked in her corner of the vehicle for the next few minutes until her eyes lit up with the spark of an idea. She turned to him and smiled, “Hey, can I turn on the radio?” she asked, reaching for the dial.

“No.”

“Alright” She retracted her arm. “Guess I’ll have to make my own music then…” She then began humming, as off key as humanely possible, the rhythm and words to Lion King’s Circle of Life.

After a few minutes of her horrendous humming and him gritting his teeth, Sutter finally spoke.

“Alright” He narrowed his eyes over at her “what am I going to have to do to make you quit that noise.” His last word came out in a hiss.

She happily stopped and turned her attention to him. “Sneeze.” she said, grinning over at him.

He looked over at her, frowned, and repeated slowly, “Sneeze?”

She nodded vigorously, causing her handcuffs to clink and clang together in a type of harmonious discord. He continued staring quizzically at her until she laughed, “Oh, don’t look at me like I just asked you to jump out of the car or something!” She stopped laughing and slid closer to him in her seat. “I just want you to sneeze, without stifling, so you can see how much better you’ll feel.”

“I can’t sneeze on command.” He gave an experimental sniffle. “And I don’t feel any right now.”

“That’s okay,” she said, digging around in the pocket of her blue jeans and extracting a cherry Tootsie pop, “ I can wait.” She shot him another Cheshire cat grin before occupying her mouth with the sugary stick.

As her Tootsie pop dwindled down to nothing more than brown, sticky goo with bits of cherry hard candy, she froze long enough to watch him give another wet sniffle and rub at his nose. He followed this with a short but chesty cough.

“That cough doesn’t sound too good.” she said “And, it’s like eleven o’clock at night, so I think we better stop soon if we wanna stay at a halfway decent hotel…” she trailed off and leaned over as she watched Sutter knuckle at his nose again.

"Huuuuuh….” He placed his wrist under his nose to try and hold back the impending sneeze.

“C’mon” she purred, eyes bright, “Go ahead and sneeze.”

He glanced blearily at her a moment and raised a cupped hand before a loud “Huuuh-uh…HAH-EISHOOO!” exploded into his palm.

Hand still covering his nose and mouth, he stared blandly over at her. “Satisfied?”, he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She smiled smugly over at him. “Very” she answered and nestled back into her seat “And I bet you are, too”

He sniffled into his palm. “ Cad you opend the glove box? There should be a pag of travel tissues.”

She sat upright in her seat again. “Yea, sure” she said brightly. She opened the handle on the glove box and shuffled through a few papers and the vehicle registration before extracting a orange packet of Kleenex.

She stared at them and turned them over a few times in her fingers. “Orange, huh” she snickered before opening the pack and handing him three.

“They were discound.” he replied briskly. He took the proffered tissues and blew his nose softly, all while keeping one hand on the wheel. He sniffled, nose still slightly runny even after he blew his nose. He gave another painful cough and pinched the bridge of his nose, probably due to a headache.

“I think we should stop” he said tiredly, rubbing at his temples.

“Cool beans.” Gabrielle responded happily yet trying to keep the small undertone of worry out of her voice as Sutter pulled off onto an exit.

TBC?...

Anyway, comments are loved and appreciated. They keep the muses (well, and me ) happy

I hope y'all liked it!

[starpollen]

Mmm. Nice.

[strawberrypie010]

amazing!!!! write more please! :]

[a red nine]

While I don't know the fandom, I think this is very cute and nicely described. I'd love to read more if you wrote it! I've already become attached the characters.

[Zane]

That was amazing! I loved it! I'm sorry but I don't know the fandom, but it was really amazing and just so I LOVE IT!!!!

[Aprilcot]

I like! Please do continue!!!

[Tarkus]

I have returned and I bring moar fic!

Thanks to all of you for your fantabulous comments! You're all so sweet!

Now, I find this part kind of okayish, but I kind of speed wrote it because I wanna get on to writing the next part, which is the two of them... alone...in a hotel room so it's not as good as I would like, but I hope you, the reader, still enjoy it nonetheless.

Anywayz, enough rambling, onto the fic!

They drove around two miles until they came upon what looked to be (from the road, at least) a moderately vacant Holiday Inn.

He pulled up to the front entrance and got out. “Stay there” he said, before shutting the door. Gabrielle frowned at his retreating form. She was handcuffed to the damn car, like she was going to go anywhere. She sat back in her seat and let out a small huff of frustration.

She glanced around the dimly lit parking area beyond and began counting as many red sedans as she could spot in the darkness. Soon growing bored, she adjusted herself in her seat so she could see Sutter in the lobby. The appeared to have reached some kind of lodging agreement, since the attendant was holding the room key and seemed to be explaining some boring, mandatory rules to him.

Gabrielle felt a burgeoning smile as she watched Sutter’s nose give a few quick twitches. She pulled herself forward and tried to lean as far as possible in on the driver’s side without having the handcuffs sink into her wrist too deeply. The pain was worth seeing what she knew was bound to happen next.

She couldn’t hear any of the sneezes but she was perfectly content to watch them. Her grin deepened as she watched Sutter’s eyes start to lose their normally sharp focus and his face dissolve into that expression of helplessness she so truly loved.

Her breath caught as she watched his body tense and rock forward with one, two, three, and…a fourth sneeze. No, wait, a fifth! She could see from the attendant enthusiastic looking blessing that the fifth had been poorly stifled. She smirked as the attendant gestured to a box of tissues sitting on an oak table adjacent to the reception desk. Sutter ignored the attendant’s gesture and Gabrielle sighed. She was going to have to find a way to make him stop stifling sometime. Ah, well, she had the rest of tonight and probably tomorrow too to figure something out.

She busied herself staring at her acrylic nails until Sutter returned. “Get your bag out of the back. I got us a room here for tonight.” he said, already opening up the back of the car to retrieve both their “luggage”, as if either of them had enough stuff in their bags to qualify as luggage anyway.

“So, what are the sleeping arrangements?” she asked, trying to make that phrase sound as innocent as possible, when in her mind it clearly wasn’t.

“One room, two queen size beds.” He answered, already coming around to her side of the car to uncuff her.

“Are they gonna be in the same room or separate?” she asked, rubbing her wrists tenderly after he’d freed them.

He shot her a questioning look. “The beds.”, she specified.

“We’ll be sleeping in the same room with separate beds.” he replied, briskly walking ahead of her through the sliding entrance doors while still keeping an eye on her to ensure she was still following him.

“Don’t wait up”, she mumbled, starting at a slight jogging pace to match up with his before winding down to match Sutter’s brisk walk.

“We’re in Room 312.” he said, passing through the lobby quickly and pressing the button for the elevator.

“Someone’s in a hurry” Gabrielle huffed, skidding to a halt at his side.

“I’d just like to get to our room.”, he said, beginning to pace a bit on his feet waiting for the elevator.

“Why? ‘Cause you’re sick?”, she said accusingly.

“We have to have an early start tomorrow morning if we’re going to make it back to Virginia from Kansas. We both need rest.”, he said shortly, wrinkling his nose and rubbing at it until it acquired an unhealthy pinkish glow.

She made no reply, hoping for another sneeze from his apparently still ticklish nose, but when none came she resigned herself to silence. He sniffled again and reached into his pocket and procured another orange tissue, which he placed under his nose. Gabrielle mentally pouted, for although his nose was running, he showed no signs of a growing sneeze.

She looked up as the elevator light binged above them and the doors slid back. There was no one else in the elevator and they both walked quickly inside. Sutter sniffled and pressed the 3 on the elevator pad, the button giving off a soft orange light once pressed.

She felt the slight sinking in the pit of her stomach as the elevator rose. She leaned back on the rail but straightened again as she watched Sutter’s eyes began to flutter closed.

“Iht'Choo! HEI-Chsch! HAHT-Esschu!”

She blinked in surprise. Those sneezes had not been stifled. At all. Although the sneezes had no doubt been attractive, they had sounded painfully wet and seemed to have taken more energy then he had in him at the moment. He hadn’t even attempted to hold them back. “Hey, umm…”, she started, strangely at a loss for words, “are you…alright?” she finished lamely. Concern was not particularly her forte. “Why didn’t you stifle?” she asked and almost immediately kicked herself for doing so.

He snuffled into the tissue and gave a wry smile. “You’re a hard woman to please. First you tell me not to stifle my sneezes because it’s bad for me, and now you want me stifle them?” he asked dryly, quirking an eyebrow.

She frowned and ignored him. “Why didn’t you stifle?” she asked again.

He smiled, and Gabrielle felt an unexpected fluttering in her stomach, mainly because a couple days on the road with him had shown her what a hard ass he could be and that smiles from him were a rarity and she had garnered one. “I was afraid you’d start tryig to hum somethig worse than the Lion Kig, like the Hamster dance or somethig” He shot her a glare over the tissues.

She let out a short laugh. “I didn’t think you’d even know what the Hamster dance was!”

Gabrielle felt like she was making progress and wanted to keep chatting with him but the elevator binged at their arrival on the third floor and they both stepped off the elevator.

TBC...for sure this time!

[Aprilcot]

GOOD!!!!

This is soo amazing!!!! It's unbelievable!!!!

Can't wait!!!!

[doggo]

Don't know the fandom, but this is lovely.

[snuffle-bunny]

Ooh, yes, please continue!

[elements]

holy WOW!!! what a wonderful story premise!!! i caaaannnt wait for more!