Penelope Levine has been "promised" to notorious mafia boss, Brock Rumlow, in order to pay a family debt.
The night before her wedding, she meets James Barnes, the owner of Underworld, one of the most infamous nightclubs in New York. Their spark is...
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Here it is! The long awaited prologue! Please vote and comment. As always, I'm nervous to drop new fics.
CW: Forced marriage, extremely toxic and fucked up family dynamics (god, this might be the grossest thing I've ever written in some respects), smut (bathroom sex, dirty talk, possessive Bucky).
Author's notes are at the end.
Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice And she said 'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device' - The Eagles, "Hotel California"
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, 2022
Penelope's little garden is her favorite place in her apartment. She built it herself on the patio over a weekend one warm afternoon just before spring arrived. It's the thing she's the most proud of, aside from her blossoming acting career.
There are small tulips blooming, soaking in the last of the sunlight. There's a large basil plant, pentas, and vibrant purple heliotropes. She spends at least an hour a day tending to them, making sure that they're watered and cared for. They're the most beautiful thing she's made in this place. New York is a hard place to live in, but her flowers and her friends make it a little bit easier.
Penelope loves her apartment. It's soft and cozy, with large plants in every corner of the room and vines crawling along the tops of the walls. She's decorated it exactly the way she likes - simple furniture, posters and framed photographs from her various plays and film shoots, and an entire wall that she covered in chalk paint so that her friends could write messages at parties.
Right now, the only message one the board is SUCK ON THIS with a dick drawn beside it courtesy of her best friend and neighbor, Scott Lang. Penelope doesn't have the heart to remove it because it horrifies her mother whenever she comes over. Danielle is prim, perfectly refined, ladylike, and proper. She's everything Penelope isn't.
Penelope sits near the windowsill, her audition sides in her hand. Everything is messily highlighted and her sprawling handwriting adorns the script - notes to herself, beats to remember, places to pause and breathe, and encouraging notes. She always brings them into audition rooms, but never actually needs them. It just feels nice to hold something, to gesture with it. The script is a security blanket during the audition, and something that she can always come back to if she needs it. She rarely does.
She has an audition tomorrow for a Broadway show. She's been trying to get work for a month after her last play finished its run. Penelope barely made any money doing it, but it was the most fun she'd had in her entire life. Her mother is a former opera singer, and told her to pursue film. There's more money in it, but Penelope loves the impulsivity and unexpected nature of the theatre. You feed off of the audience's energy, and whatever they give to you, you give right back. It's electric, hundreds or thousands of people glued to their seats watching you. It's the most rewarding thing she's ever done.
