#* thread — open-eyed‚ entangled in promises. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

novelconcepts · 5 years ago

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fic: learning a lot (about being alive)

So much of the story is the same. Dani. The kids. The lake. So much of the story is exactly the same--only, this time, there is no gardener working at Bly Manor.

The young woman is tired. Exhausted, if she’s truly honest with herself. She feels as though there must be an endpoint to running, a marker down the road that says a person has gone as far as they are able. Rest now, she imagines that marker saying in a cheerily-bold script. Fall down now. Let go.

She isn’t there yet, she’s pretty sure. Not quite. She doesn’t know how much a person can be expected to carry, or for how long, but at least...at least she has a little left in the tank, yet. Enough to get her affairs in order, if nothing else. Enough to try a little longer to find solid ground.

***

It was a matter of escaping home, to start with. A matter of escaping old ghosts and older expectations, and that Dani Clayton found all too quickly how easily ghosts can follow a person across miles and miles of world was...unfortunate. It had been naive, maybe, to think she’d leave Eddie behind with the simple act of crossing an ocean. One of those you never know before you try things.

Try, she did. Succeed, she did not. Not at first.

Still, there were bright spots. Travel hadn’t been a large part of her life back home; Edmund was a homebody, her mother always had opinions to offer when Dani mentioned family trips, and there were the kids at school to consider. Reliability had been her middle name, if not by choice, at least by necessity. She’d been twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven years old, and all she’d seen of the world was small-town Iowa.

And then, unexpectedly: the thread of courage that had pushed her to break things off with Eddie.

And then, even worse: the screech of tires, the scream tearing from her own throat, the awful gurgling sounds Eddie had made as he lay spread-eagled on the blacktop.

And then, the worst thing of all: glasses, gleaming bright with no sign of Eddie’s laughing eyes behind them, flashing at her from every mirrored surface in the room.

It had been too much. Too much for anyone to bear, Dani was sure. Who could blame her, for running away? Who could blame her, for needing a little space?

Her mother, for one. Eddie’s mother, for another. Even so, she had gone. Packed three bags, bought a guidebook to Europe, jumped a plane for the first time in her life. Bravest thing she’d ever done--or stupidest--and it had been a week before she’d stopped waking up trembling with adrenaline.

She had some money--enough to get by on cheap hostels and simple foods--but she’d kept her eyes on the listings in every paper all the same. One in particular seemed to burn a little brighter within the newsprint. A charming manor in the countryside. Two children. Live-in au pair required.

A good, solid job. Money in her pocket, and a path forward through a world that maybe wouldn’t demand Danielle of her any longer. She’d stretched for it, closed her fist tight around the opportunity.

Those kids had been wonderful. Strange, at times, but what children freshly mourning their parents aren’t strange? The other adults at Bly Manor, too, had been charming and kind--Owen, with his bad puns and his delicious dishes, and Hannah, who had taken Dani by the arm with motherly affection almost before Dani had even introduced herself. They were good people. For a few weeks, she’d felt more at home than she had ever been with people who had known her since childhood.

Still, there had been shadows cast over the summer. Miles, aggressive without provocation. Flora, sleepwalking. Owen, unexpectedly losing his mother. Hannah, growing more and more distant.

And, finally, the night everything comes apart. A lake. A spectral form with a too-solid grip around Dani’s throat. A child, screaming in terror. A phrase, falling from her lips before Dani can even process the words.

Dani says them like a spell. Dani says like them a promise. Dani says them, and blinks, and Flora is in her arms, squeezing so tight around her bruised neck, she thinks she might pass out.

She almost tips over in cold, dirty lake water, but someone is splashing toward them. Henry. Henry Wingrave, still dressed for the office, bug-eyed and grasping for his niece with panicky hands. Dani gives her over gladly, feeling as though all the strength has been wrung out of her body.

None of this makes sense. A summer spent at this house, making a warm little hole in the world for her to crawl into, only to culminate in this? In Owen shouting for Hannah, in Miles shaking all over, in Flora weeping and Henry trying to look as though he isn't about to start doing the same?

She can’t handle it. Suddenly can’t stay here. There’s...something happening beneath her skin, something cold and sharp and terribly foreign, and no one is looking at her. No one is seeing the way her hands convulse as she forces them into fists.

She hears herself say, “I have to...have to go...” and knows no one is listening. Owen’s gone, sprinting off toward the chapel. Henry and the kids are a mess of hugging, shaking, crying bodies.

A quick stop in the house, a quick stop upstairs to shuck off sodden sweater and mud-encrusted pants, and then she’s climbing through Henry’s still-open car door. Backing down the endless drive. Leaving the manor and all its eccentric shadows in her wake.

***

Dani Clayton can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t drive, either, not really, but she’s made it this far. A few miles down the road, to a little village where most everyone is likely to already be asleep.

There’s a pub next door to an inn, and she thinks, Nobody will care if I stay the night. Just one night.

She has no idea what comes after. Is sort of afraid to think about it much. Tonight hasn’t made a lot of sense--her brain is still buzzing with it’s you, it’s me, it’s us, with Flora’s screams and her own gargling panic as an impossible hand tightened around her throat--and maybe that’s fine, for now. Maybe one night of not making sense is an acceptable loss. She’ll just walk into this little pub in this little village that doesn’t know her name, and maybe she’ll feel better after a drink. Or two.

Or seven.

She’s not much for hard liquor, and her tolerance ought to be negligible, but there’s just something about this night that has unbound her. Alcohol is doing very little to take the edge off this gut-wrenching feeling that she isn’t...right. Isn’t quite who she was two hours ago. Isn’t...alone.

No, she thinks with firm certainty, no, that’s the crazy talking. The crazy I thought I fixed after Owen’s mother’s funeral, but maybe not, maybe it’s still...

She tips back her glass, polishing off a scotch she’d never have thought to order yesterday. Her face contorts; it hurts to swallow, even without the burn. She should probably give up, probably head next door and book a room to sleep this off.

“All right there?”

Her eyes snap to the owner of the voice, which is both thickly accented and alluringly curious. A woman--small, brown hair mussed, eyes watching Dani like she sort of expects Dani to start trouble right here in the smallest pub in England--is leaning against a neighboring table. Dani lets her empty glass drop with a thud against oak scored with initials and curse words.

“Fine,” she answers shortly. The woman’s brows raise.

“Only,” she says in a voice much more level than Dani’s own, “you don’t look fine. Look a bit like you’ve had the worst night of your life, in fact.”

Why should she care? Dani wonders. She licks her lips. “That,” she says, “would be an understatement.”

She’s too aware that she doesn’t belong in a place like this--smoke hazing the air, men laughing too loudly near the bar--and that a woman like the one watching her through guarded eyes does. Too aware that her pastel sweater and scrunchie probably label her as an outlier even faster than her American accent.

This woman, on the other hand, has the look of someone who spends most nights in pubs like this one. Her face is pretty--very pretty, Dani realizes with the belated interest of one just opening her eyes--but there’s something of a shield around her smile. Her clothes are clean, but not particularly fashion-forward: a pair of jeans, a ratty t-shirt, thin suspenders. She doesn’t look like anyone who has ever wasted a breath on Dani Clayton.

But she’s raising her glass in a small salute. Dani raises her empty one right back, glancing at it with mild distaste.

“Another?” the woman asks, still in that attention-grabbing, almost familiar tone. Dani starts to shake her head--she doesn’t accept drinks from strangers, as a rule, particularly strange women who look at her in ways that make her stomach clench--and changes her mind at the last second. Another. Sure. What harm could it possibly do?

***

Jamie’s back strikes the wall of the women’s bathroom with such force, she almost bites her own lip. Might have done, in fact, if not for the other woman’s lips in the way.

She didn’t get a name, and figures that’s probably for the best. Bad enough she’s going down this road at all on a first glance--Bly isn’t big, and word travels impossibly fast. Jamie’s spent years keeping her head down, avoiding just these such entanglements.

But the woman has incredible eyes--one bright blue, one a shocking brown--and accepted a free drink with the air of one who desperately needs a good time under her belt. When Jamie slid seamlessly from her own table to the stranger’s, the woman only smiled. When Jamie let her hand rest lightly on the pocked wood, fingertips grazing the woman’s wrist, she’d taken her lower lip between even teeth in a manner Jamie will probably think about for the rest of her life.

Bathroom, then. Locked door. Bad choice, but one Jamie’s comfortable enough with so long as this woman is kissing her.

She’s a damn fine kisser, and seems to have no qualms about showing Jamie as much. Her hands are fleeting, desperate, grabbing anywhere she can reach--Jamie’s collar is the current target, gripped so tight, it’s a wonder the thin material doesn’t tear--and she’s kissing Jamie like this is the most natural thing in the world. Like Jamie’s hand sifting through her ponytail, grabbing hold and tugging to urge her closer, is more welcome than that drink had been. Like Jamie, lips parting to accept a seeking tongue, is more welcome than--

Just a girl, Jamie reminds herself. Just a girl without a name, even. American. Probably won’t see her again, so might as well just enjoy what I get now.

And what she’s getting is good, certainly. The woman has pressed a thigh between her legs, is riding against her with a panting ferocity that makes Jamie woozy. Her mouth slides from the woman’s kiss, searching for more skin to taste, her nose bumping against gold hoop earring as she licks a spot just below the woman’s jaw. A soft groan is her reward, and she grins against the woman’s skin, grazing with gentle teeth as she dips lower--

“Jesus,” she breathes, leaning back. Her fingers brush the woman’s neck below the collar of her sweater. “Hey, are you--”

“Fine,” the woman says, dragging Jamie’s bottom lip between her teeth and biting down hard enough for Jamie to hiss.

“These,” she says, pulling slickly away again, “look like bruises--”

The woman is staring at her with a hard expression she can’t quite deconstruct. There’s something feverish about the way she looks at Jamie, something hunted and more than a little disconcerting.

“I’m fine,” she says again, stiffly. “Do you want...?”

She almost sounds nervous, and Jamie realizes the opportunity for a pleasant evening is rapidly diminishing. Push now, push too hard, and this woman is going to turn on her heel and march out of this bathroom. Maybe out of Bly altogether.

“If you do,” she answers, like this is nothing more than two bodies searching for something to hang on to. She leans back in, half-expecting the woman to shrink away, the moment already in its grave. Instead, she finds herself making an incredibly undignified noise as the woman slides her tongue into her mouth and a hand up the front of her shirt in the same motion.

It feels both teenage and foolish, arching into a strange woman’s hand in a pub bathroom. Fascinatingly unwise, letting this woman scramble excited fingers against the seam of her jeans. Truly, just idiotic, sinking to her knees and pulling the woman’s trousers down just enough to seek out hot, wet skin with her tongue.

Any other place, any other time, any other woman, and Jamie would know better.

It’s just once, she reminds herself, groaning as the woman bucks into her mouth, slick and desperate, her hands tangled hard enough in Jamie’s hair to hurt. One stupid night with one stupidly attractive American. Life’s short. It’ll never come up again.

***

Dani is pretty sure her head was removed last night and screwed back on the wrong way.

She wakes in a heap in an unfamiliar bed, still in last night’s clothes. Her hair is a bedraggled mess around her face, her brain slamming itself repeatedly against her skull like a tiny, terribly angry man trapped in a very small room. Her mouth feels like she forgot to close it all night, her lips feel swollen, and her calves feel...weirdly sore. Like she’d spent the night clenching every muscle in her legs. Like she...

Oh, she thinks, quite unable to convince herself to open her eyes. Right. Like she’d spent the evening with a strange woman in a pub bathroom. A strange woman who had...with her mouth...and a wellspring of eager talent...

“Shit,” Dani says in a very small voice.

If she doesn’t open her eyes, she thinks, there can be no proving she made choices last night the old Dani Clayton would never make. No proving how many scotches she’d downed. Certainly no proof of the woman whose thrusting tongue had caused Dani to...

She cracks one eye open, relieved when she finds herself in an empty and incredibly boring room that can only belong to some kind of motel. The inn, she realizes, sitting up with a wince. She’d made it to the inn, with its twin bed and its single lamp and its sad little flower print on the far wall.

By the looks of things, she made it to the inn alone.

That makes it better and worse at the same time, somehow.

She’s far too tired and far too hungover--far too something else, too, something that has not at all diminished with the rising of the sun, and she will not look at it, will not think about it, will not--to care how she looks. Staggering downstairs, hair scraped back from her forehead, clothes rumpled, she gives the innkeeper her best approximation of a smile.

“Excuse me, do you serve--”

“Breakfast next door,” the man says dully, jabbing a pen toward the exit. Dani’s mouth twitches, an old anger pressing itself against her ribs. If there's one thing she can’t tolerate on a hangover and an empty stomach, it’s a man speaking to her like she’s not even there.

Forget it, she thinks with some effort. One perk, she supposes, of having dragged herself in at who-the-hell-knew what hour last night is the lack of packing up to do this morning. No bags. No sign she was ever even up there. She’ll just go next door, get a cup of coffee and maybe a little toast, and...

Ah. I stole Henry’s car last night. She heaves a sigh.

“No breakfast after all?” the man adds as she stands in the doorway, peering out in search of wherever she parked a much-too-expensive vehicle without Henry’s consent. She considers flipping him the bird. Decides no version of Dani Clayton is quite that crass.

Even one who spent last night riding some strange woman’s--

“No,” she says primly. “No, I should be getting back.”

***

Henry, to her extreme relief, has not even noticed her absence. Things have been a bit hectic, she gathers. The children are all right--as all right as they can be, anyway; they’re still in bed when she sneaks into the house--but they’re the only ones. Henry, seated at the kitchen table with a mug of cold tea between his palms, looks bruised around the eyes.

“Long night,” he says, though Dani hasn’t asked. “Are you...?”

“Fine,” she says, as bright and cheerful as she can muster with her skull throbbing. “Where’s Hannah?”

Henry looks at her like she’s just buried a kitchen knife between his ribs. Her mouth goes dry.

Hannah was not, as it turns out, in the chapel last night. Hannah was not anywhere at all. Not the part of her that counts.

“I can’t explain it,” Henry says in a low, urgently exhausted voice. “If I hadn’t...if it had been any other way, I’d have said I hallucinated the whole thing.”

It’s impossible, and yet, Dani can’t discount the story. Something about this house and its grounds, its atmosphere (its lake, she thinks and pinches a torn bit of cuticle to distract from the word), has her believing in things she’d have said were children’s fairytales a year ago. Ghosts aren’t real; anyone with any amount of sanity knows it. And yet...

You. Me. Us. She shudders.

They’d gone out to the old well first thing, Henry tells her. He and Owen, walking in silence, both knowing what they’d find and knowing just as well that it was an unacceptable discovery.

“I offered to go along,” he says hollowly. “When the authorities arrived. He wouldn’t hear it. Must have been an accident, they said, a terrible fall...”

How, Dani wonders, does a woman like Hannah Grose fall into a well?

As if that’s really the question. As if the true question isn't how does a woman like Hannah Gross fall into a well, and just continue about her life for the next few weeks without pause?

Ghosts aren’t real. Can’t be, in a sane reality. And yet, the coroners told Henry there were signs of decomposition going back many days. Hannah, who had been talking and laughing at this table just yesterday night, had been down there alone for so long.

Can’t stay, Dani thinks with sudden venom. Can’t stay here anymore. Isn’t home anymore.

It’s the same thought she had in that little blue house across the pond, staring at things that had been Edmund’s--had been, for better or worse, theirs--and understanding some changes are permanent. Some places, once haunted by certain kinds of grief, cannot remain your own.

As if reading her mind, Henry pushes back from the table. “I’d like very much to thank you for your services this summer, Miss Clayton. I truly don’t know what the children--what any of us--would have done without you.”

She tries to smile. The bones of her face ache. Everything about her is a single rabid pulse of pain, except maybe the smallest corner of her mind, the smallest corner of memory where she is back in a dirty pub bathroom, watching a woman sink to her knees, feeling her eyes roll back as that woman touches--

“It was my pleasure,” she says, and isn’t lying, exactly. She’d do it again, she thinks. All of it. The job. The little family she found so unexpectedly. Rescuing Flora from something she can’t, even now, process. She’d do it all again if asked, and do it exactly the same.

It hurts no less, for that.

***

“You’re sure?” Henry asks yet again. He’s out of the car, holding her bags out, his face that of a worried father. Dani thinks he’ll make a good one to those kids, in his own way. “You could stay a little longer. I’d never ask you to--”

“I know,” she reassures him, slinging the backpack over her shoulder. “But honestly, it’s better this way. The kids don’t need me hanging around, and I...”

Can feel her, she doesn’t say. Can feel her moving around, way down where I can’t even catch a glimpse of how or why. If I stay there, if I let it, that house will call to her like a magnet again. Like gravity.

“It’s time for a new adventure,” she says instead, smiling. He believes this smile, she knows. Anyone would. She’s gotten so good at faking it.

He hugs her once, quickly. It is appropriately awkward, and she even laughs a little. Flora, hanging out of the backseat window almost far enough to fall, looks miserable.

“You’re really leaving?”

“I am.” Bent at the waist, Dani looks the girl in the eye. Flora’s face is uncharacteristically solemn. “But I promise I’ll write. Call, too, if your uncle gives me the number.”

“Where are you going?” Flora presses. Behind her, Miles lays a clumsy hand of reproach on her shoulder. Dani favors him with a small, comprehending smile. Miles has gone through things none of them can fathom, things he may never be able to talk about. She aches for the too-adult cast about his eyes.

“I don’t exactly know yet,” Dani tells them both. “Like I said, it’s an adventure. Might end up anywhere.”

“But happy,” Flora says uncertainly. “Right?”

“I’m sure,” Dani says, dropping a final kiss to the top of her head, “it will be perfectly splendid.”

She keeps the smile on her face as Henry ushers Flora back through the window and into her seatbelt, as they pull away from the curb and down the curve of Bly’s main intersection. When they turn the corner, disappearing from view, she lets the expression drop with a sigh.

A week. A week since the lake, since finding Hannah’s body, since the impossible set up shop in her head. A week of Henry learning to parent in a slapdash rush, of Owen’s face more serious than she’d ever seen it, of yet another funeral. Hannah’s had been a quiet affair, properly spiritual as she’d have liked, and Dani had spent the entire thing trying not to think about the last funeral she’d attended.

And now, a week later, she’s here. Standing in front of Bly’s one and only little pub once more. It’s barely afternoon; she figures this is as good a place as any to sit for a few hours with a beer and her thoughts, until she figures out what comes next.

Nothing comes next, she finds herself thinking. You’re carrying a time bomb. You can’t understand it, can’t get rid of it, and there’s no one left to hold your hand as you wait for it to go off.

Defeatist thinking. Stupid, hopeless, miserable thinking. She’s tired, but she isn’t out of the game just yet.

Make a plan, she tells herself, slipping through the pub’s front entrance and taking a seat at the bar. Get a drink, make a plan. There’s always a next step.

Except, this time, she doesn’t know if she believes it. Not really. Not knowing things she isn’t comfortable knowing. Ghosts exist, and ghosts can hurt--not just your grasp on the world, not just your sanity, but you. They can throttle. They can manipulate. They can steal the life out from under you, if only you invite them in.

Not that she can say any of this aloud, not ever, not to anyone.

Get a drink. Make a plan. Something that doesn’t involve Mom, or Iowa, or Danielle.

She drops the backpack between her knees, slides the other bags under her seat where she can keep an eye on them. She’s sure she looks exhausted in a hooded sweatshirt, a denim jacket, the skin around her eyes nearly purple with sleepless nights. Pub at noon on a Thursday--maybe no one will notice.

Not that there’s anyone she’s trying to impress.

“Just a beer,” she says when a shape appears in her periphery. “Please.”

“Sandwich as well?”

Her head comes up so fast, something in her neck cramps. The bartender, back to her, is filling a tall glass. Cloth over one shoulder. Brown hair a messy tangle of curls.

“It’s--it’s you.”

The woman meets her gaze with a smirk Dani is simply not equipped at noon on a Thursday to cope with.

“Last I checked,” she says calmly, setting the full glass in front of Dani and wiping her hands on the cloth. “Ought to be, too, seeing as how this is my pub.”

***

Oh, this is rich. This is rich, and this is wonderful, and this is fucking bad.

Jamie, who has been watching this woman loiter outside the pub for the better part of ten minutes, has had exactly this long to come to terms with her own misfortune. Ten minutes, to recognize the world is a shallow, cruel prankster. Ten minutes, to recognize this does nothing at all to stop a woman she’s been dreaming of for a week from walking back through her door.

I know what you look like when you come, she thinks with a recklessness she truly thought she’s outgrown. And now I'm meant to serve you ale like we’re complete fuckin’ strangers.

For all her nerves, watching the woman hug an older man, lean into a car to speak to some very small children, Jamie thinks she’s still the better off of their twosome. After all, she gets to decide how she’s going to stand--off the side of the bar, furthest from the door, buying time--and when she’s going to make her entrance. This woman?

Well, judging by her wide Bambi eyes, this woman could have done with a little preparation herself.

“White or rye?” Jamie asks when the woman continues to gape at her. “Or we can get you a fish and chips plate, if it suits you.”

“I don’t understand,” the woman says. Her hand is clenched around her glass like she’s dimly considering tossing it like a grenade and bolting for the door. Jamie hopes she’ll restrain that impulse. Glass would be a bitch to clear up during the impending lunch rush.

“Well,” Jamie says, leaning her elbows against the bar in a show of carelessness. “When you order the fish and chips, see, they come wrapped in a little newsprint. And the grease makes for--”

“I know,” the woman snaps, “what fish and chips are. I just. I...” She lowers her voice, looking around like anyone’s in the mood to eavesdrop. “Do you...remember me?”

For a split second, Jamie is back in the bathroom, biting at soft thighs, loving the way this woman leaves scratches down the back of her neck.

“Yes,” she says placidly. “I remember.”

“Okay,” the woman says, leaning towards her so far, she almost topples off her stool. “Okay, listen, I don’t--I mean--I didn’t--”

“Mean to do it,” Jamie suggests wryly. She’s heard this song more times than she can count. “Tripped and fell onto my lips, did you?”

“No,” the woman hisses. “I just--don’t normally do that.”

“Women,” Jamie says. It’s sort of nice, how empty the place is. Gives her plenty of time to sarcastically shift away from caring about how this woman is gazing at her.

“No--I mean, I haven’t. Before. But I’ve wanted--doesn’t matter.” She’s practically playing jump rope with her own tongue, this poor beautiful woman. Jamie takes pity on her.

“You mean you don’t normally stride into a small-town pub, put away more booze than the meanest local miner, and drag a stranger back to, ah. Improve your evening?”

“Yes.” The woman slumps against the bar, relief shining like starlight in her mismatched eyes. “Yes, exactly.”

“Was an accident, then,” Jamie says with studied calm. The woman shakes her head. Looks like it hurts, frankly, she’s putting so much behind it.

“Not an accident. Just. Was a really strange night.”

And this, Jamie thinks, is a very strange conversation. The most she’s ever talked to a woman after sex, in fact. Stranger still, she feels like it was always going to happen, eventually. Like this woman was always bound to stroll back through her door.

“Well,” she says, giving the bar a decisive rap with her knuckles. “I can be an adult about this, if you can. Agree to behave as though I haven’t, ah--”

The woman raises a single finger in warning, her face flushed. “Don’t.”

Jamie laughs. “Right. Anyway.” She extends a hand, takes the one the woman is jabbing in her direction. “Jamie. Bartender, terminally afflicted by the poor decision to settle in Bly.”

“Dani,” the woman says, squeezing her hand with surprising strength. “Teacher. Au pair. Unemployed.”

“All of the above, or one at a time?” Jamie grins. Dani releases her hand, touches her forehead lightly as if warding off a headache.

“Honestly, I’m not even sure it matters.”

Strange woman, Jamie thinks. “You’re heading out of town, then? Only, I saw your taxi service come and go...”

If she says yes, that’s all this business taken care of before Jamie can bring herself to think on it too hard. It’d be best, she thinks. Best to let this too-beautiful woman swan right back out of her life, let her become little more than a jarringly-electric memory sneaking up on Jamie at odd moments. Jamie’s got a nice little life here in Bly--boring, but simple. She really doesn’t need anything upending that for her.

“I don’t know,” Dani sighs. “I don’t exactly have a job anymore. Or a place to stay.”

“But?” Jamie turns her attention toward cleaning glasses, if only to keep from staring at this woman. She looks like it’s been days since last she slept, but there’s something about her eyes Jamie can’t seem to stop glancing at.

“You’ll laugh.”

“I won’t,” Jamie says. Dani’s mouth twists, a crooked little grin that doesn’t sit quite right on her face.

“Won’t believe me, then.”

Jamie says nothing. Some people don’t take kindly to being told to trust. Some people need more to put their faith behind. She can’t begrudge it of this woman, or anyone.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dani says, pausing to take a hearty sip from her glass. Her neck looks better, Jamie notes--the finger-shaped bruises have faded to near invisibility. Not that she’s thinking about Dani’s neck. Not that she’s remembering the way Dani sighed and clutched at her back as she kissed--

“I just don’t want to go back,” Dani says, oblivious. Jamie nearly fumbles the glass in her hand, sets it carefully down on the rack.

“To your old job?”

“Home.” A surprising amount of venom fits into that single syllable, rolling off of Dani’s tongue. Jamie can certainly understand that.

“So, don’t.” She turns her back, barely able to believe what’s about to come out of her own mouth. It’s foolish. It’s foolish and dumb and silly, and still: “Stay here.”

Dani’s mouth makes a rather funny sound, falling open. Jamie keeps her eyes on the bar mirror, watching surreptitiously for signs of revulsion in the other woman’s face.

“Could use a waitress,” she goes on, as if this is the most normal conversation in the world. “Just for a few weeks, mind. Through the fall, maybe. Boss man’ll be back by then.”

“Boss?” Dani repeats. Jamie flashes her a quick grin over her shoulder.

“I don’t actually own the place. What on earth would I do, ownin’ a goddamned pub in Bly?”

***

She doesn’t mean to say yes. It’s complicated, saying yes to Jamie. Knowing what happened between them, and knowing it happened on a night she can’t explain, is bad enough. Knowing all of that and taking a job working alongside the woman every evening?

It’s a bad idea, and, somehow, that’s the only reason she does it.

She can’t explain it, the recklessness living inside her chest. Doesn’t like the feel of it, curled up against her good sense as though it will, at any moment, open its jaws and consume her best judgement. All she knows is there is something waiting for her to trip up. Something waiting for her to give up. Something that may take her at any time, no matter how she feels about it.

Without something to hang on to--without something to close her fists around, something to focus all of her attention on--she’s going to give in to it. Sooner than she’d like.

She doesn’t want to go.

So, she stays in Bly, of all the places to start an adventure. Small, quiet, boring Bly. With...Jamie.

Not with Jamie, she thinks briskly. Not with Jamie-with Jamie. Just. Alongside Jamie. As a co-worker. A normal, casual, my-tongue-has-not-been-in-her-mouth relationship.

She’s been telling herself this for three days. Three days spent learning the ins and outs of the pub, learning how to navigate the unfriendly, untrusting stares of Bly locals as Jamie hovers just off her periphery. It has been...an experience, to say the least.

“You’re doing great,” Jamie says at the end of the third night. They’ve just ushered the last of the patrons out into the brisk moonlight, and Jamie is in the process of moving chairs on top of each table Dani wipes down. They’re a good team, Dani thinks, a better team than a week of knowing one another has any right to produce.

“I spilled a drink in a man’s lap,” she says, to distract from this not-entirely-unwelcome thought. Jamie leans conspiratorially close, shoulder brushing Dani’s as she drops her voice to a whisper.

“You only spilled it ‘cuz he bumped you trying to get a look at your ass. Served him right, I’d say.”

Heat climbs her neck, taking root in her cheeks. She hadn’t noticed. “Really?”

Jamie shrugs. “Does that to every girl who walks through that door. Not our most pleasant customer, to be sure, but he orders enough to keep our doors open, so...”

She makes conversation so easily, Jamie. Like Dani’s been here for years, bustling awkwardly between close-set tables, making small talk around drink orders. She makes conversation so easily, and Dani finds herself responding in kind. Nights here, at the pub, wearing a black apron and a smile that gets a little less plastic every time Jamie leans close and whispers a barb about some customer or another, leave her feeling the most stable she’s been in days.

“How’re they treating you next door?” Jamie asks, sliding her half of the tips across the bar. Dani pockets the money without really thinking about it.

“Good. It’s quiet. I’m...not used to it, yet.”

She doesn’t say the rest--that she misses those kids, misses the way Owen and Hannah would peck at one another like no one could tell how deep their love ran. That she misses small feet tearing up and down a huge staircase. That she misses having someone who needs her waiting just around the corner.

Can’t say the other part, either. The part where the room is quiet, and the walls seem not to exhale like they did at the manor, and everything is perfectly still...except for the little spot at the back of her head. That spot where she senses something waiting. Something she doesn’t understand, something that is so unbearably silent...and so incredibly furious.

“Hey--Poppins. Still with me?” Jamie’s hand touches hers lightly, a bare flourish of fingertips across her knuckles. Dani jumps.

“Poppins?” she repeats, smiling despite herself. Jamie shrugs.

“Said you were a nanny, didn’t you? For those, ah, rich beasties up the way.”

She had said as much, yes--last night, when Jamie asked what brought her out to England in the first place. “You’re as American as they fucking come,” Jamie had said with a grin that made Dani’s stomach feel like it was falling. “What on earth could have led you to Bly?”

Don’t, a tiny part of her had warned. Don’t tell her. There’s so much story, and so much of it is truly crazy. But Jamie had been leaning her hip against the bar, watching her with gentle interest, and Dani hadn’t been able to resist giving some of that story anyway. The simplest version: had to get away from home, wanted to do good in the world, best skills are with kids. Took the job because it was everything she’d thought she’d needed.

“And?” Jamie pressed gently, when Dani had faltered there. “Was it? Everything you needed?”

You. Me. Us. She’d closed her eyes, felt the world swim around her for one excruciating second. When she’d opened them again, Jamie’s hand was on her elbow, steadying.

“I don’t know,” she says now, as she did then. Jamie’s mouth quirks a little to the side, like she wants to smile solely as a reassurance.

“Long night.”

It was--every night since the lake has been longer than Dani knows what to do with--and she’s not sure she can stand the idea of spending it alone in her room. The inn is warm, well-lit, and makes her feel like a tinderbox seconds from going up. Restless energy, is all--she’d felt it at the manor, too, that pent-up need to leap from her bed and roam the halls each night--but for some reason, it scares her.

Jamie is watching her still, and Dani is struck with the wild notion that she could ask for Jamie’s company. Could ask not to be left alone tonight. Jamie would probably say yes to anything she asks for, and they’d have a good time together. It would be a campfire in the woods, maybe, just a little light to break up the shadows, but it would be better than nothing.

Not fair, she tells herself. Not fair to her. Not with whatever it is I’m carrying now.

“Thank you,” she says aloud, touching Jamie’s hand quickly, her thumb swiping across Jamie’s skin in a manner so brisk, it might as well not have happened at all. “You probably want to get to bed.”

Something she can’t--won’t--look at too closely in Jamie’s eyes. Something that makes her whole body clench with a need she isn’t capable of dealing with just now.

“Yeah,” Jamie says softly. “G’night, Poppins.”

***

Dani is better at this than she thinks, Jamie sees right away. Not just the serving gig, either; doesn’t take a mastermind, to take drink orders and drop off plates of bad chips to drunk townies. She’s good at the real heart of the job, the reason people like the citizens of Bly flock to the village’s one and only pub.

She catches sight of her doing this very thing, probably without even realizing, on a Friday night. The room is packed with bodies, sweaty and laughing and half-gone on half-priced ale, and Jamie’s been looking for her for ten minutes. When she locates her at last, Dani is standing in the very back of the pub, hands on her hips, smiling at the oldest woman in the world.

Jamie moves just near enough to pick up the gist. The woman, a fixture of Bly in her late eighties, still making her weekly venture to the pub, is regaling Dani with what very well might be her life story. And Dani, rather than looking impatient, rather than letting her eyes slide away in search of something else to do, has her head tipped to the side. Her posture is easy, the first time Jamie’s seen it as such, her focus absolute.

Just listening. Just listening to this ancient woman like there’s nothing going on around her.

“That was something,” Jamie says in her ear when Dani finally extricates herself from the one-sided conversation and makes her way back.

“What was?”

Jamie inclines her head toward the old woman. Dani looks embarrassed.

“I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore the other tables, I--”

“Easy,” Jamie says, neatly stepping in the way of Dani’s breakneck sprint toward a panic attack. “You aren't in any trouble, I just can’t recall the last time I saw someone chat her up.”

She watches Dani relax, charmed by the way Dani smiles almost sheepishly.

“She said she’s been here her whole life. Can you imagine that? Staying in one place for almost ninety years?”

“Can’t imagine being anywhere for ninety years,” Jamie says without thinking. Dani’s brows go up, a comedic little arch that pulls at her heart. She hastens to add, “Only mean it’s been...a life. Not always lived with the best of intentions.”

Dani looks interested, and for a terrifying moment, Jamie thinks not only is she going to push, but that Jamie is actually going to tell her. Everything. Home life, foster care, prison term. Everything that stacks up behind her walls to remind her of why she built them in the first place.

But Dani, thank fuck, only says, “We all have our baggage, right?” There’s something sad about the way she says it, the way she smiles with what Jamie is coming to think of as a half-light. There’s something going on behind a smile like that, and Jamie knows it isn’t safe to even wonder. Isn’t simple, to even consider caring.

But you do, something whispers. Don’t you? Even knowing she’ll be gone in a couple of weeks, you do.

“It’s funny,” Jamie says, a quick-change that doesn’t quite cover the heat she feels has cropped up between them. “That she’d come talk your ear off. She’s not much for words most nights. Thought she’d have gotten her fill at old Mrs. Sharma’s funeral last month.”

There goes Dani’s face again, forming that expression of pure surprise. “Wait. She knew Owen’s mother?”

“Who didn’t?” Owen Sharma, Bly’s kindest, least eligible bachelor. If Jamie had a dollar for every beautiful woman who made moon eyes over the man, she’d be up at least the price of a nice meal.

Shame about his mother, really. Margaret had been at least as kind as her son, prone to slipping Jamie a wink and a chuckle while Owen blatantly missed all flirtation sent his way. It had hurt, seeing her grip on her own mind slip away. Had hurt worse, knowing Owen was up at that big old house only because it was the nearest he could get to Margaret’s deterioration.

“Good woman,” Jamie says gruffly. “Kind woman. Hated seeing her go, but if I’m honest, maybe it’s easier on Owen this way.”

“He didn’t seem to think it was easier,” Dani says, but there’s a bit of hesitation in her voice. Like she knows what Jamie was trying to say, and maybe she doesn’t like it, but can’t entirely discount the idea, either.

“Hang on,” Jamie says, jumping back a few steps. “If you know Owen--”

“Worked with him,” Dani agrees. “At the house. He was our cook.”

Of fucking course. How could I have missed this. “If you know Owen,” Jamie repeats, feeling very certain and very warm all of a sudden, “then you were at the funeral, too.”

The funeral. A surprisingly sunny affair, where the weather was concerned, and utterly miserable in every other way. Jamie, in honor of a woman who once made her feel more welcome in this tiny village than just about everyone her own age, had dressed carefully. Her only black dress. A fine jacket. Neat silver earrings. No one to impress but ghosts.

And she’d felt...incomplete, somehow, standing over the grave. Incomplete and terribly small, as Owen tried to make sense of his mother’s death under the cold stares of fifty strangers. This, they seemed to say with their eyes alone, this is the boy who thought he could get out. Thought he could escape. But Bly calls everyone home, in the end, doesn’t it, Owen?

She’d hated seeing him up there, tears leaking down an uncharacteristically solemn face. Hated the way their eyes followed him as he bowed his head over Margaret’s grave. Owen’s a bit of a prat, a little disconnected, totally unaware of the grip he has on the women of Bly, but he deserved so much better than this. So much better than judging eyes and whispers.

But, then, who was Jamie to fight his battles for him? This man who might have been a friend, in another life, who is really little more than an occasional customer. She’d shaken her head, tapping a cigarette out of a crumpled pack, and set off a ways for a break from it all.

And there, behind a tree, had been a woman.

Jamie hadn’t seen her face. Had, in fact, stood intentionally back a few steps to give the woman a spot of privacy, because the sounds she was making did not invite onlookers. She seemed to have her hands over her mouth, dragging in great hitching sobs that made it sound as though all the air had gone out of the world.

“All right?” Jamie had asked. Such a stupid, silly thing to say. But the woman had frozen.

“Yeah.” Voice choked with obvious tears she was just as obviously trying to hide. Jamie had settled the cigarette between her teeth, flicked a lighter, cupped her hands around the infant ember.

“Funerals,” she’d said, a bit stupidly. No idea why, even. No one in Bly needs her to play nice with their panic attacks. “Truly the worst.”

“Yeah,” the woman agreed, breathless. Jamie could just make out a layer of black dress, cut higher and less conservatively than the village prefers for its more somber events. A bit of black dress, a swatch of blonde hair. Not much else.

Not my business to look, she’d thought, taking a long drag. Shifted her weight from one boot to the other. Hesitated.

“S’all right,” she’d said at last. Voice smoke-roughened and more than a little embarrassed by her own forwardness. “I cry three, four times a day, even when there’s no fresh body in the ground.”

“Mmhmm,” the woman replied in a tight voice. Jamie sighed.

“Only, no one would judge. Or,” she added, thinking of those pinched faces following Owen’s every broken step, “no one who hasn’t earned a punch on the nose for the trouble.”

To her surprise, the woman laughed. Not a big laugh. Just a snort, really, swallowed again just as quickly. Jamie, raising the cigarette back to her lips, fought down a grin.

“You owe ‘em nothing,” she’d said, with a finality she didn't quite understand. Then, when the woman didn’t answer, a second time: “You owe ‘em nothing.”

Now, with the world of patron and alcohol abuzz around her, she peers into Dani’s face. “You,” she says quietly. “It was you.”

***

What are the odds? That the woman who had talked her down from a small mental breakdown at the funeral had been Jamie. That the woman who had, in fact, sparked something Dani couldn’t explain even to herself had been Jamie. That the woman who, in saying those four tiny words--you owe ‘em nothing--had lit the match she’d used to burn Eddie’s ghost out of her had been Jamie.

“Look a little pale,” Jamie observes. Her hand is loose around Dani’s upper arm, and Dani realizes she is swaying in place. Her heart is a jackrabbit, her head spinning.

How? How could I not have noticed?

She’d thought Jamie had sounded familiar, hadn’t she? Right at the start, with Jamie raising her glass in a flirtatious little salute. She’d thought that voice rang a bell, and chalked it up to alcohol, to the pounding in her head, to the adrenaline high.

“Have you ever,” she hears herself say dizzily, “met someone and felt right away you should have known them all along?”

It is an insane thing to say. Jamie ought to bolt for the door, words like that. Instead, brow creased with concern, she leads Dani behind the bar and sets her down on a stool.

“Stay here a minute,” she commands. Dani drops her head into her hands.

That night, after the funeral. Hadn’t she been thinking of this woman’s words when she’d taken a bottle of wine and Eddie’s glasses out to the fire? Hadn’t those words been vibrating between her teeth as she’d stared him down, this shadow of the man she’d once loved in all the wrong ways, for the last time?

I owe you nothing anymore, Eddie. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re gone, and I’m sorry I was the--I’m sorry you felt you had to run from the truth. But I can’t live like this. Not anymore.

Drunk words. Sober reality. She’d woken the next morning feeling for the first time in almost a year like each inhalation actually inflated her lungs.

“Here.” Jamie, reappearing like a magic trick at her side with a glass of ice water and a damp rag. “You’re off the rest of the night, Poppins. Can’t have you fainting on me.”

“Don’t want to go,” Dani begins blearily. Jamie presses the glass into her hands.

“Not kicking you out,” she promises. “Just. Stay posted up here a while, yeah? I’ll be back.”

It’s an oath she keeps faithfully for the next several hours, performing a perfect balancing act between serving drinks and checking in with Dani. She ought to be embarrassed, Dani thinks, watching Jamie smile and fill glasses and glance back at her every so often to make sure she’s still where Jamie left her. This ought to be mortifying.

Why isn’t it mortifying?

She watches Jamie, the natural way she glides from joke to joke, order to order, all steady hand and quick smile, and it’s like...like watching a movie you haven’t seen since you were a kid. A movie you used to put on in the background when you were sick, or sad, or lonely. She feels certain that she still knows all the words, the music cues, the parts where she always had to close her eyes against tears she didn’t yet understand.

In a month of truly strange events, a month littered with ghosts and terrible heavy silences, this is the strangest yet. Looking at Jamie just in time to catch a wink that makes her hands slip against the glass. Looking at Jamie and thinking, I owe her nothing--and that’s the way it ought to be.

“Feeling better?” Jamie asks when the doors are locked and there is only wood and glass listening in. Dani nods, clutching the now-empty glass and trying to find an expression for her face that will betray none of what she’s been thinking.

“I’m sorry. It’s been a strange...” She shakes her head. There are words you can only say so many times before they begin to crumble on your tongue. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Seems as though it does,” Jamie says. She hoists herself up onto the bar, legs swinging, looking very young all of a sudden. Dani smiles.

“It’s a long story.”

“Got time,” Jamie replies, and though it’s two in the morning, and Dani’s body is heavy with exhaustion, she can’t help leaning a bit closer. With Jamie seated this way, she’s a little taller than Dani for the first time, her eyes searching Dani’s face for clues as to...what? How she came to Bly, really? How she came to this pub, really?

How she came to carry whatever it is she can feel watching her every move, matching her step for step, really?

“You’ll think...” She swallows hard. Closes her eyes. Waits for Jamie to say I won’t, or try me anyway, or think what? Jamie doesn’t. Jamie remains quiet, and when she chances another glance, the expression on Jamie’s face almost undoes the small amount of calm she’s been collecting over the last few hours. She’s never seen anyone just...look at her like this. Like they really do have all the time in the world.

“You’ll think I’m crazy,” she finishes at last, smiling such a hard smile, it feels as though it might snap right off her face. Jamie leans forward, elbows resting on the knees of her overalls.

“I think you are,” she says, “one of the sanest people ever to walk through this shitty little town.”

And then, without quite knowing why, Dani is talking. About all of it. Dani is spilling things she can’t explain, can’t quantify: about Eddie, about deciding no longer to allow him ownership of her life even in death; about Hannah and the well, the way the woman had been so lovely and so strong and so not there at all, in the end; about the children and their unexpected passengers, about how Rebecca Jessel had tried to the last to rescue Flora from a fate Dani can’t imagine, even now.

And she tells her about the Lady.

She tells her about the specter with its hand like a claw, who had picked her up like a squirming sack of flour and dragged her through that house. About how Flora had saved her life in the way only a child can think to try. About how she’d saved Flora in return, even if she can’t explain it.

Jamie listens. To all of it. Eyes serious, mouth drawn in a gentle frown. She’s nodding, Dani realizes. Nodding, and watching Dani’s eyes the whole time.

“See?” Dani says at last, and realizes she’s crying. The silent tracks of tears are warm on her cheeks, skidding off her chin and into her lap. She’s crying, and she’s breathing through it, and somewhere deep inside, she thinks she hears the crash of waves. “Crazy. Think I’m crazy. Think I’m going--”

Jamie, so gracefully, she almost doesn’t see the change, pushes off the bar and crouches beside the stool. Her hands find Dani’s, a gentle grip that makes the world stop swaying for a moment.

“Think you are,” she says in the most determined voice Dani has ever heard, “surprisingly sane. All things considered. And I want you to know, you don’t have to--”

Dani’s got her by the shoulders. Dani’s dragging her upright, surging right off her seat, pressing her back against the bar. Dani, who understands on a level that is conscious and legitimate and wise that this is her co-worker now, and finds she does not particularly care, kisses her with such desperation, she nearly moans into Jamie’s mouth.

Jamie should push her off. Jamie should be gentle and solid and certain in her dismissal. This is a bad idea. This is a bad--

“I have a flat,” Jamie breathes against her lips. Dani realizes Jamie’s hands are in her hair, Jamie’s mouth is flushed pink, Jamie is looking at her eyes. “I have a flat upstairs.”

***

“I want you to know,” Dani pants against her neck, “I’m not doing this because I’m--”

She hesitates, apparently not quite invested enough in what they’re doing on Jamie’s couch to use the word haunted. Jamie catches one hand, brings it to her lips, kisses each finger slowly. Taking her time, letting her tongue drift from index to middle to ring, watching Dani’s eyelids flicker.

“Want you to know,” Jamie replies, when she feels certain the welling panic in Dani’s eyes has been effectively banished once more, “you don’t have to explain. And you don’t have to do this, either. If you don’t want to.”

Dani, sitting in her lap, shifting her weight so her torso presses against Jamie’s, gives her a truly hilarious look. “Does this feel like I don’t want to?”

Jamie grins. There’s just something about being in this situation that is funnier than she knows what to do with--Dani, having just told her the kind of life story better suited to a horror film, in her flat, on her couch, kissing her neck. It feels like the wrong genre, somehow. Like the wires of the world have been crossed, and Jamie would give anything to leave them this way.

Fact is, she hasn’t liked the way anything feels the way she likes this. Hasn’t liked the presence of anyone in her world--her town, her pub, her home--like she likes Dani.

Known her five minutes, the intelligent, ever-shrinking part of her brain protests, even as she lets Dani coax her head back on the arm of the couch, even as she lets Dani suck gently at the skin just below her ear.

Kinda knew it after one, she thinks, hands flexing on the back of Dani’s sweater.

This isn’t like before, she recognizes. Last time, there was a hunger in Dani bordering on feral, like she was running so hard from something Jamie didn’t even know existed that only Jamie’s body had stopped her running right off the edge. Tonight, Dani looks at her and Jamie is confident--confident in a way she’s never been with anyone in her life--Dani is actually seeing her. Actually choosing her.

“You said,” she hears herself say, even as she’s gripping Dani’s waist. Dani has moved to straddle one thigh now, is rocking slowly back and forth, making soft whimpering noises into every kiss she leaves on Jamie’s skin. “You said there are people you meet...”

Dani groans, and Jamie pulls at her hips faster, harder, liking the way Dani is panting against her shoulder. “You feel you should have known all along,” she finishes, turning her head to kiss Jamie’s lips. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“Me too,” Jamie says, her own body straining to get closer. There are way too many clothes between them, she has decided, but it’s up to Dani to take them further. Up to Dani to decide what she’s okay with. After everything she just told Jamie downstairs, it’s the least Jamie can offer by way of comfort.

When Dani pushes up enough to take Jamie with her, shoving the straps of her overalls down and dragging her t-shirt over her head, she figures she made the right call.

“You too,” Dani says, looking at her--at her; Jamie feels quite certain this is what it feels like to jump and find yourself flying--as though she never again wants to look at anything else. Jamie nods, pressing their foreheads together, trying to catch her breath even as Dani is sliding curious hands down her chest.

“Minute I met you. Minute I saw you. So, who’s crazy now?”

Dani laughs, and it’s the sweetest sound Jamie’s ever heard. This is different, she understands, so different from a quick fuck in a bathroom. This is going somewhere, even if neither of them have a map.

She brings Dani to bed, wanting on some level deeper than decision to do this properly. It feels right, to guide Dani back onto clean sheets and cheap pillows, to help Dani out of her clothes in small, measured movements. It feels, she thinks with the clearest head in the world, like Dani was always supposed to be here. That no matter how the story unfolds, no matter how many roads it takes to get them here, this is the endpoint. Dani, gazing up at her, hair messy, smile angling against Jamie’s mouth. Dani, arching under her hand, saying her name in a sharp, heady way Jamie suddenly can’t do without. Dani, who says she’s crazy, who doesn’t say she’s haunted, clenching tight around Jamie like she was always supposed to be here.

“Please,” Dani sighs, “Jamie.” And Jamie thinks, Whatever it is, yes. Whatever you need, yes.

Five minutes, that nearly-banished whisper repeats.

Knew after one, she thinks again, curling two fingers and watching Dani spiral.

***

Jamie sleeps like she’s never been afraid of anything hiding in the dark. Lips parted, arms tossed without care, she sleeps more deeply than Dani would have guessed. Even when Dani rises, carefully removing the hand she had kept tucked around Jamie’s middle all night, Jamie barely stirs.

I haven’t slept like that in years, Dani thinks with a rush of fondness. C’ept maybe last night.

She wants to blame it on the sex, on Jamie working her over once, twice, three times before she’d even been able to reciprocate. Wants to say only good sex can knock a person out, banish nightmares that have been so present for so long, they’re really more like old friends.

Wasn’t that, though, she thinks, pulling Jamie’s discarded t-shirt on and perching on Jamie’s side of the mattress. Was something else.

There is a catharsis, maybe, in telling your story to someone who is really listening. A release not found anywhere else. She hadn’t meant to tell Jamie everything--had certainly not expected Jamie to, if not understand, accept it without a word of discouragement. If Dani had been listening to that story, with all its hidden bumps and screams, would she have been able to nod and kiss the storyteller without so much as a chuckle?

Maybe it depends on the storyteller. Or maybe it’s just Jamie. Jamie, who has seen her naked in two very different ways, and has yet to flinch from either. Jamie, who even now is sleepily rolling onto her back, groping along the pillow where Dani ought to be.

“Dani?”

Her heart lurches, squeezes, the sound of her name as the first thing out of Jamie’s mouth bringing tears to her eyes.

“Here,” she croaks, and Jamie--eyes still shut against the burgeoning sunlight through thin curtains--stretches until her fingers find Dani’s wrist. Her face relaxes, her smile soft.

“Thought I’d scared you off,” she says, a joke that isn’t a joke at all. Dani bends over her, kissing her cheek. She can still taste Jamie, can still feel the way Jamie gripped the sheets in both hands as she let Dani explore uncharted territory for what had felt like hours.

“Not going anywhere,” she hears herself say, and though the terrible silence in her head seems to tighten, she feels as though it is true, somehow. For how long, she can’t say. But there is a confidence in the sentiment all the same, an assured little edge to it like a promise.

“Good,” Jamie mumbles, curling toward her until her face presses against Dani’s hip. The kiss she leaves is clumsy, but Dani feels the heat of it go straight to her core all the same.

How can I know I want that kiss every day for as long as I’m here? How can I possibly know that?

“You’re worrying,” Jamie says, nuzzling against her skin, eyes still shut. Dani smiles, sifts gentle fingers through tousled curls.

“How can you tell?”

“I am,” Jamie says in a voice like one tumbling back into sleep, “a genius.”

“You are,” Dani laughs, “still asleep.”

“Nope.” To prove her point, Jamie cracks open one eye. “See? Perfectly present, Poppins.”

Dani is, for the first time in a long time, perfectly present herself. It scares her a little--not as much as the beast scares her, not as much as the weight of exhaustion fitting itself around her shoulders and pressing down scares her, but all the same. This is fear, of a kind. And excitement, of another.

And hope, maybe. Just a little scrap of it, lining the bottom.

“I should go,” she says, and Jamie opens the other eye, groaning.

“You should stay,” she suggests, sitting up and pressing close to punctuate the idea. As small as she is in sleep, she feels like she could take up the whole room, now. Dani licks her lips.

“We open--”

“When I unlock that door,” Jamie finishes for her, something sly and delicious about the way she’s looking Dani over. “S’that my shirt?”

Dani shrugs, liking the way Jamie’s eyes make her feel like she needn’t have bothered with covering up at all. Jamie cups her cheek, kisses her with all the slow careful energy of a woman revving up for something glorious that might take all day.

“You’re not...I mean...you remember what I said last night?” Dani doesn’t really want to be saying it, doesn’t really want to drag focus away from the way her entire body goes shock-bright when Jamie’s tongue slips into her mouth. Even as the words are coming out of her, her hands are sliding up Jamie’s body, familiarizing themselves once more with sleep-warm skin.

“The part about feeling crazy?” Jamie breaks just enough to speak, still within kissing distance. Dani steels herself.

“The part where I don’t understand what’s happening to me. But it is happening, Jamie. Whatever it is.”

Jamie, holding the back of her head, peers into her eyes. Dani holds her breath, waiting for the flinch, waiting for Jamie--no longer sex-addled--to find some sign of the beast behind her gaze.

“I only see you,” Jamie says, as if reading her mind. She smiles, almost self-conscious. “I only see you, and I’d...like to keep seeing you. If you’ll stay.”

She should say no. Should say it’s unprofessional at best, utterly unwise on a deeper level at worst. Should say Jamie’s better off without her, everyone’s better off without her, who knows how much time she even has before the thing she’s carrying like a disease comes to call--Jamie, you can’t take this on. It isn’t fair.

Don’t think fairness much comes into it, a voice very like Hannah’s echoes. She squeezes her eyes shut.

“Hey.” Jamie isn’t trying to kiss her now, is holding one hand anchored to her ribs like she believes it’s the only thing keeping Dani from floating away. “Poppins. I’m not asking for your hand in marriage, all right? Just...I like you. Like you quite a lot, as it turns out. I’d like to see where...where this goes.”

She’s waiting, Dani realizes, for Dani to laugh at her. To say absolutely not. To say there is no chance in hell. How many women have said as much to Jamie before? How many women have shot her down for less?

I’d like to find out, she thinks with surprise. I’d like to find out everything about her.

“I can’t make promises,” she says. “I don’t know how much--”

“But you have now,” Jamie says, somehow managing to interrupt without stealing the words from Dani’s mouth. “Yeah? You have right now. In this bed, with me. Wearing my shirt better than I ever have,” she adds, plucking at the hem until Dani can’t fight a smile.

“Yeah, but--”

“So,” Jamie says, shifting gently until Dani is laying beside her, hip sinking into the mattress, eyes barely a breath from Jamie’s. “I promise today. Here. In this bed, with you...probably not wearing my shirt much longer, if I’m honest.”

Dani laughs. She’s moving toward Jamie without meaning to, their legs tangling. Jamie kisses her once, very softly.

“And I promise you this afternoon, if the morning goes all right. And this evening, if you aren’t screaming up the road by then. Tomorrow, we re-evaluate the whole thing. Decide how we feel then.”

Dani is nodding. Can’t seem to stop nodding.

“Each day,” Jamie says, punctuating every word with a long kiss Dani has no desire to see end, “on its own merit, Poppins. One at a time. If they stack up, they stack up.”

Dani, unable to resist, pulls her close. One at a time, she thinks. I can do that.

***

She isn’t there yet, she’s certain. As certain as she gets these days, anyway. She doesn’t know how much a person can be expected to carry, or for how long, but at least there is Jamie. Jamie, who grins at her as they bustle around the pub like clockwork, who takes her to the stockroom under guise of replenishing the peanuts and has her muffling sighs against an open kiss, who looks at the calendar at month’s end and says, “Y’know, Poppins, boss man’ll be back next week. Thinking I could use a break from Bly. What d’you say?”

One day at a time, she thinks, but the idea of a road trip with Jamie is too much, too wonderful, to say no. It’s only an idea until it happens, she reminds herself. Only an idea until they’re in the car, Jamie’s hand covering hers, Jamie pressing down the gas pedal like the whole world is theirs to claim.

She’s tired. Been tired a terribly long time, if she’s honest with herself. And maybe that’s just the way it goes, for anyone, even those too lucky for ghosts. Maybe the trick really is just finding someone to be tired around, someone who is willing to hold your hand, learn your secrets, kiss away your monsters.

She might not be okay forever. Might not even be okay much longer. But Jamie’s making happy murmurs about Vermont and wanting to start a garden, and there’s a light in her eyes that makes Dani feel more alive than she has in months.

A little longer, then. If the days stack up, so be it. It’s enough, just to try a little longer to find solid ground.

#the haunting of bly manor #the haunting of bly manor spoilers #fanfiction #dani x jamie #jamie x dani #I know I said the next one would be sad #but this one wanted to be written immediately so y'all get a brief reprieve by way of AU

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elysialm · 3 years ago

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From Aponia: ❛ i kept this dream hidden away . ❜

@veqva

There are countless who fear and avoid those who are different; differences makes people scared, but the one whose heart loved all and everyone saw such difference as beauty. A simple yet true approach, she always spoke her honest words without hiding them away. What she liked and what she dislikes, what she wished for and what she hoped for, what she fought for and what she protected. Her wishes were in plain sight, but so many would wonder if it is true and genuine. Elysia could only showcase this through her repeated actions and words, she will not allow love and hope to die. Even if she must be shot to protect the future, she will happily open her arms to the one who will pull the trigger. (Ah, Kevin, you must pull the trigger if the situation calls for it, promise me that.)

Elysia looks at Aponia and sees her suffering, those beautiful blue eyes now clouded with her endless sights on the unchangeable future. Her kindness precedes her, those hands without any scars reach out to embrace and to save. She thinks they are beautiful, she thinks they are the hands of a savior who truly wishes for the best in this world and it warms her heart. People like her were the reason why this world would continue to shine: this genuineness and this love that Aponia shows to others makes the pinkette sight dreamily, leans on the armrest as she watches her teammate speak in her hushed yet melodic voice. Aponia has always been like this ever since they've met, filled with determination that many would not be able to hold onto and who would give up. However, she can see the way this maiden of butterflies and broad skies reaches forward to grasp those threads. Even if they become entangled, Elysia thinks that there will be hope at the end. As they remain united, the future will be bright. They must be together, they must continue fighting for what is beautiful in this world, they must remain together. At least, their legacy would be able to lead others forward.

" It sounds like you to keep something sad to yourself, " the second-in-command would get up from her sofa and walk towards the fragile maiden whose gaze is filled with love for others yet always misunderstood. Was she not doing everything for the greater good? It wasn't her fault that things were getting out of hand, she only wished for the best. This was Elysia's view on Aponia: a maiden just as pristine and kind-hearted as her own self and Eden!

Without missing a beat, the blue-eyed maiden would get on one of her knees before Aponia who sits on another couch, she reaches out to touch the other's hands without any fear. Everyone fear Aponia's touch, her powers, her gaze, her very existence-- not Elysia, not the one who looks at her with the same kindness and openness as always. No matter what, she will always 'see' Aponia as who is deep within without any doubt. " But you do not have to. It hurts to keep such thoughts to yourself, is it not? You can always talk to me or Eden or Su! Mobius might be a bit busy and is always in her lab, Kalpas probably wouldn't get it, Kevin is a bit dull when it comes to a girl's heart aside from MEI's, hehe. "

Jokes are thrown in to make the other smile even just a bit. Aponia always looked the most magical when a smile would come onto her face, a soft blush and a look of relaxation. The very truth that hides within this soul is crystal clear to someone who wishes to see the 'true self' of those she works with. Each one of them carried a burden, but they must not carry it all on their own.

" You are not alone, Aponia. If you had a dream that worries you, do not be afraid to tell me. I will always be here for you, no matter what others tell me, " she gives the hands she holds in her own a light squeeze, giving the Blue Butterfly a bright smile. A bright as the sunshine itself, warming others who would look upon her. If she can help it, she will remind of this fact over and over again. (As long as I am here, I will always adore and love you as I do others.) " After all, you are just like the tender moon watching over those who struggle, giving them the light when they are lost in the darkness. However, you aren't the only one! ” The young woman puffs out her chest, straightening her back even more to add some more brightness and color into the conversation. Her tone is still bright and cheerful, but there is tenderness within it just like in her gaze that doesn’t look away from the maiden of a quiet prayer. “ Such burden should be shared if it is a sad one. We are friends, we are comrades, we are a team. Now, will you tell me of your dream? I cannot such a cute girl like you keep such a sad look on her face when your smile charms everyone around you, including me! "

#veqva #*cries over how aponia met elysia the first time* *CRIES OVER HOW APONIA AND EDEN WERE PROBABLY THE CLOSEST TO ELLIE*#I HOPE THIS IS ALRIGHT ODILE!!#∴∵ ❁ ∴∵ 「 THE BEGINNING OF YOU AND I. 」 in character.

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ruffboijuliaburnsides · 5 years ago

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🥰 for the Witcher of course

A/N: Milos was created I believe by Fayet on AO3 who writes Hibernating With Ghosts which you should all read.

[surrounded by love]

Vesemir was the first person to love Geralt, he thinks. He doesn’t remember if his mother loved him, and he has significant doubts about whether she did or not, since she left him to be raised as a witcher.

But Vesemir was gentle with him, gave him a name of his own, took him back to Kaer Morhen with admonitions that it would be a hard life but that his brothers would always look after him. He didn’t understand the “if he survived” part until later, when he was a bit older, but it was true nonetheless. There was a fair amount of bickering and bullying among the younger boys who hadn’t gone through the trials yet, but if it came down to it they always had each other’s backs, just sometimes they weren’t nice about it.

Vesemir taught him to hold a sword, to fight with a sword, to keep moving even when he wanted to fall over. Vesemir, he learned years after the fact, had pushed back against the choice to put Geralt through a second round of the Trial of the Grasses, said that they needed a witcher who came through the first round in such (relatively) good shape. And it was Vesemir who was the kindest to him and the most protective of him, in his own rough and hard way, after he emerged from the second round different and strange and uncertain. And he’s never stopped.

Eskel loved Geralt immediately. They were of an age, though Geralt had been in Kaer Morhen longer when Vesemir brought Eskel to the youngest boys’ dormitories, but Eskel had been bigger. Just a little taller, just a little stronger.

“I’ll protect you,” the boy declared with complete childlike confidence, taking Geralt’s hand and jutting his chin out as if daring anyone to argue, and Geralt said, “Ok,” and let it happen.

When there were bullies or injuries or sickness, Eskel was always right there. When they came through the Trial of the Grasses (the first time, for Geralt), Eskel was worse off but still managed to crawl his way to Geralt’s cot and squeeze onto the tiny thing with him, holding him even as he trembled nearly out of his skin from the pain and the fear.

(Geral never tells Eskel how much that moment meant to him, even if he wasn’t so badly off. He never tells Eskel how much any of the things he’s done over the years mean to him. Eskel doesn’t need him to.)

And after the siege that destroyed their brothers and their home, Geralt came back to find Eskel had arrived much quicker than he had, that he and Vesemir had already dealt with the bodies and the worst of the bloodstains. And even hollow-eyed and grieving, the first thing Eskel does is walk to Geralt, pull him into the tightest hug of their lives, and ask if Geralt is okay. If that’s not love, Geralt has never experienced it, but he’s pretty sure it is.

Lambert loves Geralt in the same way he hates Geralt: loudly, intensely, and jealously. Their relationship is fraught, always. When Lambert is twelve, he begs Geralt to take him away onto the Path, promises he’ll earn his keep, and in the first big city he can go his own way. Geralt declines, and Lambert’s hatred crystalizes in that moment, from idolization to jealousy.

But other times, as he gets older, especially after the siege, Lambert also provides comfort. He’ll needle Geralt to the point of lashing out, and at Vesemir’s command to “take it outside!” they’ll get their swords and spar for an hour, sometimes more, and when the fight eventually ends, even though it almost always ends with Geralt’s sword at Lambert’s throat, Geralt feels better and Lambert looks satisfied and relieved.

It’s almost as if Lambert doesn’t know how to care for someone without hating them a bit too. Geralt tries not to think about it, because Lambert deserves to be able to pour out that love he carries inside himself without having to lace it with hatred and violence.

Coën loves Geralt, in the way you love a cousin you were never close to. The Gryphon isn’t a regular winter resident in Kaer Morhen, exactly, but then neither is Geralt.

Coën teaches him moves that his school perfected, that don’t naturally mesh with the way the wolves were trained to fight, and talks at length about Milos and how he learned it.

Milos was a smallish, blond-curled Wolf who was killed in the siege. By all accounts, from Vesemir and Eskel, it looked as though he’d died doing his best to protect the littlest of children. He’d travelled with Coën (inasmuch as witchers travelled with each other, which was to say mostly meeting up every few weeks in a previously determined location) for over a decade. They would never let Coën go with that sort of connection. They knew it was there.

And Coën is always a little worried about them all. He may not love them the way he loved Milos, but he doesn’t want what happened to Milos to happen to them.

Jaskier loves Geralt.

Sometimes facts are just facts, and a best friend will always love you.

Jaskier loves Geralt steady and true until Geralt can’t stand it anymore and breaks his heart and pushes him away.

(And even still, that broken shattered heart keeps loving him, even when he doesn’t remotely deserve it.)

Yennefer loves Geralt, though not always the way either of them want her to. The draw is the djinn, they realize eventually, but the feelings are her own. It’s complicated in the end - she doesn’t want to be kept or bound, and he doesn’t want to be left behind, and yet somehow both of them have managed to entangle the other in the things they want least.

“We could’ve been a great love story,” she says one evening, years down the line, sitting at the fireplace in Kaer Morhen’s library after dinner. “Something your bard would’ve been fit to burst about writing.”

“Hmm,” Geralt says, and falls silent. It’s a long time before he says, “I don’t think that was what we’re meant for,” just before Eskel and Jaskier come in bearing alcohol and glasses, Lambert carrying a tray of bread and cheese. It doesn’t leave Yen any space to argue, or agree, or say anything.

Geralt’s not sure he can handle hearing too much about exactly what kind of love she feels for him. Not just yet. He can’t quite handle the thought of Jaskier writing a song - well, another song - about them, especially after the heartbroken bitterness of the others.

Ciri loves Geralt with all the joy and power and carelessness a traumatized child could hope to love.

She is fire and passion and anger and bitterness and kindness, and it’s all Geralt can do to open himself to accepting all her emotions and trying his best to give back even half as good as he gets.

He doesn’t. But he tries. He’s her father, and he will always try.

Jaskier loves everyone. It’s not clear at first, how much he loves. Geralt sees him with Ciri, combing her hair and holding her after nightmares and singing silly songs and pretty songs and songs that he clearly wrote about Geralt but with more subtle imagery than Geralt’s used to from him. He’s always known Jaskier was talented, even if he didn’t enjoy the fruits of his labor, but this is something else entirely, a story that is clearly about Geralt, the most honest songs he’s heard about himself from the bard’s lips, but without ever once mentioning wolves or witchers. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t heard these songs, or why they exist. He’s afraid to ask. Ciri seems to already know them well.

Geralt sees Jaskier with his brothers, even with Coën, and feels like he might burn from the warmth in his chest. The lazy ease with which Jaskier interacts with them. It’s not that he’s not nervous, he clearly wants to make a good impression, but Jaskier is warm and open and most importantly not afraid of any of them.

He is never afraid, and it terrifies Geralt more than anything he can think of, and makes him improbably proud to have been the bard’s first witcher. His brothers love Jaskier right back, in their ways, Eskel with cheerful-yet-terrifying facts about monsters and witchers and the dark places of the world, Lambert with insults and very restrained physical harassment, Coën with solemn offers of helping him train to be a better swordsman than he is, so he can protect himself out in the world.

He sees Jaskier with Yennefer, their previous animosity softened somewhat. They still snipe at each other, pulling at the threads of each others’ insecurities and fears, but if they go too far, they back off, which they never did the first times they met. Geralt sees Jaskier say something saucy (judging by his expression) to Yen one day, and expects Yen to retaliate or slap him, but instead Yen laughs - bright and loud enough that even as far away as he is, Geralt can hear her - and kisses Jaskier’s cheek. He doesn’t know what they’ve built, but he’s glad it’s there, holding them up if he can’t be there.

Vesemir is an enigma in some ways, but Jaskier manages at least to get into his affections, judging by the strict tone he takes with Jaskier while he watches him train with Eskel or Coën, or the firm way he steers the exhausted bard to the dinner table, or the baths, or his own room. It makes Ciri laugh, and Jaskier always sighs when this happens, just following along with a teasing (but somehow also respectful), “Yes, Papa Vesemir.”

And then...

And then.

Jaskier loves Geralt.

It doesn’t make sense. And after some time away, Geralt can process and internalize that it was never meant to be solely platonic. That Jaskier was willing to take whatever love he could get, but that the love he gave was more than that. It overflowed to everyone in Geralt’s life, spilling over and over and over, doing its best to fill everyone up, and somehow Jaskier manages to do this without coming out of it drained and exhausted and unable to love.

He kisses Geralt one day, after singing Ciri to sleep.

“I can’t handle this anymore,” he admits, and Geralt doesn’t know what he means. He tries to say it, pained and uncertain and terrified that Jaskier’s leaving, but Jaskier watches his face and the strange openness of his expressions, and he smiles.

“You can’t either, can you?” he asks softly, and Geralt lets himself whimper, just a tiny bit. “Well,” Jaskier says, a spark of heat and delight in his voice as he presses against Geralt’s body. “We’ll just have to fix that, won’t we?”

Every important person in Geralt’s life loves him, and when it matters they all love each other as well. And while he doesn’t know how to process or handle this fact, he knows that he never in a million years would give it up for anything short of saving their lives.

And all the people around him continue to love him.

#the witcher #jaskier #geralt #geralt of rivia #geraskier #ciri #yennefer #eskel #vesemir #lambert #coen #the witcher fic #askbox meme #my fic #i'm actually really pleased with this

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kieraswriting · 5 years ago

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Searching for Home Chapter Twenty-Two

Masterpost

Dee had a strange man asleep on his bed. Not that he didn’t sympathize, but it was entirely not what he had expected out of the trip.

Virgil poked his head through the door a bit. “Can I come in now?” he whispered.

Dee gave him a rather tired smile. “Yeah, come on in.”

Virgil scanned the room carefully, only coming inside once he saw that Logan was asleep. “What was all that?”

Dee opened his arms, welcoming the hug that Virgil needed as well. “He’s lost his son.”

There was a moment of silence. “Oh. Are you going to help find him?”

“Well, I was hoping we would help find him,” Dee said.

Virgil immediately nodded. “I want to help. Yes.”

Dee smiled and ruffled up his hair. “I knew you would. Why don’t you go ahead and take a nap? We’ll have a long night tonight.”

Virgil nodded and went to lay down in the second bed. Dee smiled. It wasn’t fair, really, how cute he could get to be just by tucking himself under the blankets. A pang shot through his heart at the thought of losing Virgil, and he promised himself yet again that he would help Logan find his son.

To start with, though he hated the thought more than almost anything else, he had to know. He went out and found that first shop.

It wasn’t the shop you’d expect to be run by such evil people. It was large, and new, and open, and right in the middle of everything, claiming to have ‘the largest assortment of magical supplies and items in Keatheas’.

Dee took a deep breath, and walked in the door.

“Dee!” the lady behind the counter cheered. He’d never learned her name. “Haven’t seen you in ages! How’s it been?”

“Please, you know I’ve never been one for small talk,” Dee said.

She quirked her lips. “No, you haven’t. So where are the scales?”

“I don’t have them, that’s not what I’m here for.”

The light in her eyes changed from welcoming to something harsher. “Oh? What are you here for then?”

“A boy was kidnapped a day or two ago, and you people always have your fingers in things like this.”

She shrugged, getting a cloth and wiping down an already sparkling counter. “I don’t know anything about a boy, and surely you wouldn’t think of accusing us of something as awful as kidnapping without any evidence.”

Dee smiled slowly, cockily. “Oh, of course not, I was merely thinking about becoming very annoying.”

She looked up at him, very unimpressed, but he knew as well as she did that every expression the two had exchanged was as fake as those brown ‘harpy’ feathers on the wall. “I will knock your price down again, Dee. Don’t think I won’t.”

Dee’s smile got a bit of real triumph in it. “Do it. I don’t care. This is more important to me.”

Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Look, Dee, the kid got taken back. We don’t have him. It won’t help you to make enemies over this.”

“His father would say otherwise,” Dee said icily.

She shrugged. “I never said who took him back, just that we don’t have him.”

“But you know who it was.”

“That’s the kind of thing that’ll cost you, Dee-Dee.”

Dee froze at the familiar nickname. He wasn’t sure what was being threatened, but that was absolutely a threat. He smiled though, as if he didn’t know. “Well, as far as philanthropy goes, it’s not quite far enough to pay. Thank you, though, always a pleasure doing business with you.”

Her smile was bright and sharp. “And with you. Come back soon.”

Dee left the shop feeling far more than one pair of eyes focused on his back.

••^*^••

Both Virgil and Logan were asleep, which gave Dee time to think and plan. A dragon. And an independent one. What could a dragon want with a child from the middle of the city? Surely it was easier to take one out in the country. Unless the dragon could tell that this was a selkie child.

Dee shivered. He knew well why people took selkies. It was sick. And from Logan’s story, he hoped that Patton would never remember his young life. But a dragon? Well, there was also the possibility of this being a shifter.

He looked at the map the innkeeper had given him. The dragon’s island was too far away to swim to, but Dee wasn’t sure that he would have enough money to rent a boat and buy everything he and Virgil would need. And of course finding this child ranked above that, but the island could well be a dead end. It was a small island, after all, more a glorified rock than anything a human could call home.

Although, before he could tell how much money he’d have, he had to sell the scales. Or rather, Virgil would have to sell the scales, with his help.

Dee sighed. He really didn’t like entangling Virgil in this, no matter how willing Virgil might be to let himself become entangled.

••^*^••

Virgil woke not long after, though Logan was still soundly asleep, save the perpetual frown that had remained, despite the slightly magical sleep.

So Dee got himself and Virgil dressed in their newer, nicer clothes, and took Virgil to find somewhere to sell the scales.

He walked past several places that just gave him a vaguely bad feel, and from Virgil’s expression, he felt it too.

Suddenly Virgil grabbed his hand, hugging close to his side.

“What is it?”

“Sorry.” Virgil tried to back away, but Dee put an arm around his shoulder.

“It’s ok, but what is it?”

Virgil’s eyes darted over to a man standing outside a shop, eating something and watching the crowd. He didn’t look like anything special to Dee, but Virgil was currently hiding from him behind Dee, so there must be something.

“I know him,” Virgil finally whispered. “He’s mean.”

Dee glanced back at the man, starting to move forward again so he wouldn’t be suspiciously still. The man didn’t look like the kind of person that would be unkind to children. But then again, he already knew that his first impressions of people were often incorrect. He’d learned much since he was young, but not trusting his first impression had to be the hardest lesson to learn.

“Alright, we won’t go near him then. You let me know if there’s anyone else you want to stay away from, ok?”

Virgil looked up at him, surprise and gratitude mingling in a very adorable way that Dee wished he wasn’t seeing. Even as cute as it was, he wished that Virgil knew that of course he would go out of his way to make him more comfortable. But he just smiled and ruffled Virgil’s hair with his free hand.

Finally they stopped in front of a house. It looked normal to most people, but Dee saw the sparkling thread woven in the curtains that showed to those who knew that magical items were sold inside.

He knocked on the door.

Virgil tugged slightly on his hand. “I’m selling them, but you’re talking, right?”

Dee nodded. “You don’t have to speak a word if you don’t want to.”

The door opened, and a woman peeked out. She glanced from Virgil to Dee and then back. “I want nothing to do with selling kids.”

“That is not at all what we’re here for.” Dee said immediately. “We have fairy-made scales to sell.”

Her eyes lit up. “Oh! Yes, come in, please.”

She offered tea and sweets, which Dee made sure to wait until she’d eaten some of before allowing Virgil to partake. The actual bartering didn’t last long, especially with Dee going starry-eyed at her offered price. It was easily three times the price he’d gotten used to. And he’d known that they kept knocking his price down at every perceived slight, but he hadn’t known how much.

So as they left, both Dee and Virgil were extremely pleased with the results of the sale, and went back to the inn with a large amount of carefully concealed money.

#sanders sides #virgil sanders #janus sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #remy sleep #emile picani #roman sanders #remus sanders #fantasy au #platonic anxceit #platonic logicality #platonic remile #selkie patton #my own work #searching for home

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cheezritsu · 5 years ago

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Atsumu Miya || Unravelling

[Uhn•rav•uhl] verb, informal. to take apart; undo; destroy

Warnings: implied sex, mentions of sex, quick depiction of self harming behaviors (not explicit.) Inspired by SZA’s Supermodel

It must be considered deviant and demonic how the constant the thud thud THUD! Rings out with an even pace in the hallway of Tokyo’s finest apartment complexes. If it weren’t for the fact that calling the police would no doubt result in a press field day none of the residents of Park Mansion Akasaka wanted, someone would have filed a noise complaint. It’s a shame they did not—perhaps there might be a certain clout that comes with exposing MSBY setter Miya Atsumu’s intimate life, but it would also have saved time, money, and tears in the long run.

But, the residents of the 9th floor could not see into the future. They were instead, attempting to mind their business and not be bothered by Miya trying to make back beats by fucking someone into a mattress.

That little comparison was Osamu’s first scathing critique, until he froze completely. The disgust melted into horror as he turned his head to his companion.

“Hey-,” he starts, but as he catches the expression, the words dry up.

Yes, it would have been nicer—no, merciful—if the residents of the 9th floor had called the police when this happened, if only to spare you from witnessing it yourself.

Your hands get so clammy, the plastic bag in your hand nearly slips out. You catch yourself before the beer bottles can shatter on the marble floor that costs more than your entire block. It’s an easy clean up, but it would probably be very sticky, and disastrous, you think. Almost as disastrous as—

It starts up again, rhythmic and constant like an orchestrated performance. You and Osamu are mere steps outside the apartment, and you can hear the manic, frayed screams coming from the walls. It sounds like they’re in pain; just the way Atsumu likes it.

“Y/N,” Osamu tries once again to get your attention. The pity in his voice is unmistakable, and you hate that of all the emotions the usually stoic twin shows you, this is the one he’s chosen. Pity. Sympathy.

“Guess that’s why he didn’t pick up the phone,” you remark casually, refusing to look Osamu in the eye. “I’ll just leave it by his door with a note.”

Osamu says your name, this time with a firm edge that demands attention. You don’t give it to him. You’re too busy trying not to actively throw the takeout and beer you bought out of your measly paycheck to help your friend (attachment, entanglement, dick appointment, are all better words than friend) feel better after a crushing defeat at the hands of the Saitama Spears. (Crushing, like his hands must be around her neck for the moans to sound so strangled.) No matter, you say to yourself, hands shaking as you send him a text. Something cute and sweet with a properly sickening amount of heart emojis, like any good (not quite) girlfriend would do. Whatever it takes.

Ignoring how the click of your heels mesh with the steady thrum of Atsumu’s two thousand yen headboard against his 100 million yen walls, you march back the exact way you came; down the white, sterile hallway and passed the doors that housed the rest of the 9th floor, who would, unknowingly, pay for the mistake of not asking the shameless Atsumu Miya to please, please keep his fucking at a tolerable volume. Fame and infamy come with perks, one supposes, but they also come with karma.

You’re not thinking of revenge, though. You’re wondering how you’ll make it to the elevator without completely coming apart at the seams. Something in you unravels, much like it might if Atsumu were playing you like the fool you were; perfectly manicured setter hands curling, scratching, plucking at all the right places. No, this unravelling is much slower, much more painful, as if the single thread that creates your existence is being snipped in half. When you push the call button for the elevator, you think the thread is severed completely, because you have to lean your head on the cold steel to steady yourself.

Osamu’s approaching footsteps really only register in the very depths of your mind. The heavy breathing doesn’t really sound like yours—how could it be anyways, when you were miles away from your body, floating in the ether like a ghost; forgotten, discarded, alone. Untethered.

You lift your head up only to bang it against the wall. The soft thud is reminiscent of the moment that just transpired, and you—subconsciously, like you were possessed—start bashing your forehead to the same piledriver waltz Atsumu had played.

“Y/N!” Pity. Bang! Worry. Bang! Sympathy. Bang! Could you crush your skull this way? The mystery woman’s screams tangle in your brain like an earworm, the salacious sounds on repeat. Bang!

When Osamu’s hand lands on your shoulders, it feels like he’s tethered your soul back into your body. You wrench yourself out of his grip.

“Don’t!-” you begin to scream, but you catch the look he gives you. His grey-brown eyes are wet with concern, darting between the growing red spot on your forehead to the watery snarl on your lips. You take a shuddering breath to keep the hysteria from bubbling into your tone. “Don’t touch me. I’m fine.”

Osamu doesn’t even raise an eyebrow in pretence. His mask of neutrality and sarcasm is completely gone, replaced with anger. “You were banging your head into the wall like a patient in a psych ward.”

“That’s unnecessarily stereotypical, Osamu. I thought you were better than that.”

Crossed arms. He’s seconds away from blowing his lid. “Yer not funny.”

You wonder what would happen if Osamu blanked on you in here. Would these good-for-nothing neighbors actually call the police then? What a headline: Miya twins apprehended in two separate noise complaints. Kita would probably stop sending Osamu rice out of embarrassment.

You don’t want to fight Osamu anyways. It’s not his fault that the bearer of his face is fucking another girl as you speak.

The elevator dings, and you step inside. It’s fortunately empty. Osamu stands right next to you, hovering like an overprotective parent. The chrome doors of the elevator slide shut and you’re face to face with your own reflection: hollow, sunken eyes the most expensive concealer can’t fix; posture hunched from years of slaving over work and school; nails short and busted from part time jobs that barely pay the bills. Nails that have been raked down the chiseled, marble back of a man who didn’t belong to you, and never did.

Her nails were probably nicer. Probably manicured. Maybe he paid for it. You can’t even see your nails anymore, because your head is in your hands, shielding your ugly cries from Osamu, who bears the face of the man who doesn’t love you.

“I should have just taken the fucking hint,” you sniffle, wiping the running eyeliner from the corner of your eye. “Shoulda left him alone.”

Osamu just hums. You wished it was anyone else but him. Osamu isn’t bad at a lot of things, but comfort was one of them. He just stares vacantly at the doors, a grimace replacing his usual thin lipped look, but other than that he appears unbothered.

And then, like he’s reading condolences off a list, he says: “I’m sorry.”

The words in their sincerity sound foreign on his tongue. With one big sniff you pull the thread keeping you together tightly, gathering yourself. “What’re you apologising for? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Sorry my brother is a complete piece of shit.”

“Well, we both knew that, didn’t we.”

Osamu can’t place what he dislikes about that phrase, but the elevator interrupts his thought process. The doors open to reveal one of the security guards eying you two up and down. His eyes narrow for a moment on Osamu’s face, and then dip down to yours.

“There a problem here, Miya-san?”

On any other day he might have pulled a fast one on this guard, but you promptly walk out of the elevator, leaving Osamu to follow your lead wordlessly. The world outside the Park Mansion Akasaka is still turning, still bustling with people catching trains home from work, their patent leather shoes from office jobs clicking on the sidewalk to a rhythm you can’t match. The thud of the salarymen’s briefcases hitting their legs echo like the headboard off Atsumu’s walls. It’s everywhere, everywhere, and your insides churn sickeningly.

You stop, one hand leaning against the glass. Osamu catches up, hands halting just before they reach your back. “Stop running away from me, name,” he says softly, exasperated. “I’m trying to help.”

“How long.”

Osamu blinks. “What?”

You’re nearly doubled over with nausea, your free hand pressed flat against your chest to keep your lungs compressing. “How long has he been with her?”

“I don’t know.”

“I swear to god, if you’re lying to me-“

“(Name) I would never do that to you.”

The promise doesn’t reassure you. Osamu runs a hand through his hair. “Look, I know this is a lot to take in right now. And I’m not going to say anything—“

“Like what?” You look at him over your shoulder, eyes squinted in malice. “Like I told you so?”

Your insolence is wearing out Osamu’s sliver of empathy. You’re unbearable like this, you know that, and Osamu is less tolerable than most. “Your words, not mine.”

“Your brother is cheating on me.”

“You’re not together.”

“There it is!” You let your head fall back in rumbling, humorless laughter. “I was waiting for that.”

“I don’t want to be a dick right now.”

“Too late, ‘Samu.” You haul yourself up, buttoning the front of your coat. “Go home, work on your winter menu. I’ll be fine.”

The statement is met with rightful skepticism, but when you start to walk away, Osamu doesn’t follow. You can’t decide whether or not this hurts, because the all encompassing pain finally registers to the rest of your body. You try to numb yourself, dissociating as every step towards home becomes a blur. Akasaka’s beautiful lights and towers fade into lesser Tokyo’s decrepit neighborhoods, with sketchy alleys and dimly lit streets. Your apartment complex is a shoebox to Atsumu’s tower residence, and it feels just as claustrophobic when you step into your crowded, tiny apartment.

It’s nicer than what your friends can afford, but that doesn’t make it any better. Your couch is also your bed, and your desk faces the window even though you can’t properly study this way. The kitchen is perpetually clean because you can’t cook anything in it. You’re sure the fridge is empty, but it’s fine, because you simply peel off your clothing and curl into a ball on your bed.

It’s not even late. You have work and assignments to do, but as you check the time on your phone, you’re immediately taken to your camera roll, where a picture from several days ago stares back at you mockingly.

It’s from his bathroom, the one that has a television screen by the bathtub, the one with hotel lighting that makes you look glowy and ethereal no matter what. You’re half dressed, in the middle of putting on your morning skincare when Atsumu comes up behind you, arms around your waist. Your face is obscured, but you remember how happy and loved you felt to have his lips pressed against your temple, the heat of his body in your side. How surrounded and safe and warm you felt.

But moments are as fleeting and fragile as glass. The illusion has been shattered, and you’re left in a cocoon of blankets nowhere near as satisfactory as his body heat, in a dark and dingy apartment you will probably stay in for the rest of your life.

Just as you’re about to set your alarm for the morning, a notification pops up. The sparkles around his name indicate that Atsumu has finally, finally texted you back.

✨T’sumu✨: sorry I missed you babe I was not in a good place

✨T’sumu✨: you got work tmrrw? You always know how to cheer me up

It’s as if your heart has been snatched out of your rib cage; your chest hollows and collapses as a sob hiccups in your throat. Something wet slides across your temple. It’s not Atsumu’s lips, not even close. You wipe the tears with the back of your hand, and throw your phone across the room.

It shatters.

#atsumu miya #miya atsumu #this makes him seem shitty and hes not #This was hoing to be a very long and spiralling fic where the reader slowly descends into hysteria over being cast aside #i wanted to illustrate how compleltly devastating and upending this is #and i love the word unravelling #haikyuu!!#hq!!#atsumu miya x reader #miya atsumu x reader #reader x miya atsumu #reader x atsumu miya

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turning-the-kaleidoscope · 6 years ago

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“Undefinable” - Part 1 / 2

They say psychic powers can manifest under extreme or traumatizing circumstances...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Seri?”

Serizawa doesn't have the leisure of drinking in the scene. It's shoved down his throat like poison, burning all the way down and scorching a hole in his stomach.

The room is filled with spirits. Screaming, convulsing spirits, blasts of black and white and every type of gray in between. The floors are cracked. The ceiling is blown full of gaping, gnawing holes opening up to a dark, smoke-filled sky.

In the middle of it stands Reigen, twisted around to face Serizawa. He's standing in a thick pool of acidic green, up to his ankles. It's on his hands, splayed in his palms, dripping like dark ink from the tips of his fingers. His eyes are wide and unseeing.

"Reigen, what happened?" His head spins with the world around him, voice barely above the screaming din of writhing spirits. "What happened? What's going on?"

"I thought they killed you," Reigen says, staring through his eyes instead of into them. His voice is steady, but it isn't the Reigen that Serizawa has come to know and love. "I thought... I thought they killed you, I..."

And now is when Serizawa realizes the ring of acidic green in Reigen's irises.

It's when he realizes the green is spreading.

It's when he realizes it isn't acid. There's power behind it. Energy. Scared. Unfamiliar. Psychic.

It's when he realizes the green isn't on Reigen.

It's from Reigen.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It happened easily enough, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that should happen whatsoever, at any point, at any time, at any magnitude, to anyone.

Serizawa shouldn't have let Reigen go alone, but Reigen is more than capable of taking care of himself, and he'd proven that on more than one occasion, more times than Serizawa really wanted to think about. It isn’t as though he’s helpless. Not being a psychic doesn’t mean he isn't capable. And he’s probably the most capable person Serizawa had ever had the pleasure of knowing and the privilege of working under, not just as an employee, but as a friend.

But as a psychic, he shouldn't have let Reigen go on his own. He should have considered the bad outcomes, the things that could have gone wrong. The fact that being capable didn't necessarily translate to ‘capable of dealing with spirits.’

But of course, Serizawa hadn't thought about that. Neither of them had thought about that, until it was too late to think about anything at all.

Serizawa is in the middle of a long stretch of hallway, lined with lanterns and doors on all sides. It gives him an awful sense of claustrophobia, but also a sort of familiarity, like he's been here before. It reminds him of being alone in his room as a child, how constraining it'd been in comparison to the wonderful breath of freedom he has now that he's working under Reigen and is surrounded by so many wonderful, incredible people, who love him as much as he loves them.

It's another reason why he shouldn't have let Reigen go alone. Reigen would never leave Serizawa to go on his own if he thought there was anything dangerous afoot. At the very least, he'd offer to tag along, just in case the worst case scenario actually happened.

Serizawa guides the flashlight along the cracks in the ceiling, searching. A spider skitters across its web; a rat skurries across the floor and almost trips him in his start. He drops the flashlight, and when he picks it up, has to brush dust and dirt off of it. The place is a wreck; an old, abandoned, maze-like structure, but built entirely out of wood, with a ceiling to boot. Who designed this place, why it was designed this way, Serizawa can only guess. And his guesses don't amount to anything sensical.

He keeps walking. He isn't even thinking about Reigen now, as his footsteps leave soft echoes in the space behind him and the corridor gnaws ahead of him, gaping and dark. He clutches the flashlight tighter, just to have some sense of reassurance, but it doesn't help. There's spiritual activity here, he feels it. Not just in the thrum beneath his feet, but in the beat of his heart, in the marrow of his bones, in the blood of his veins. It's deep and leaves him with dread in his stomach, but at least he's sensing the spirit here. Now he thinks of Reigen, but only in the sense that he should call, that they should regroup, because now he knows where the spirit is.

He should have called a lot sooner.

He shouldn't have let them separate at all.

He's making his way down the hallway, shining the flashlight this way and that, when the entire building gives a lurch and a rattle. He staggers on uneven floorboards and his knees hit the ground, flashlight spiraling and whirling out of his grip and down the darkened hallway. He reaches for it, but can't get close before another shake rattles him to his bones, and he throws up his barrier just in time to block a panel of falling ceiling loosened in the tremble.

His first thought is earthquake. But that's only for a moment, in the space between being thrown to the ground and the dawning realization of a new presence, of a second spiritual something. Something he doesn't recognize. Something that hadn't been there before.

And he scrambles to his feet, hits the ground running, heart in his lungs. He doesn't bother with the flashlight; the faint, amethyst glow of his barrier gives him all the light he could ever hope for and then some. It lights the way ahead of him. Rats scurry in the opposite direction down the hallway from whence he'd come. The spiders are suddenly eerily still, right where they're at, as though frozen in time. Serizawa leaves common sense and reasoning behind him and lets his pounding heart take charge as he bursts down the hallway, footfall after footfall, unable to breathe.

It occurs to him now that he shouldn't have left Reigen to himself. Not when they didn't know what they were dealing with. It didn't matter how insistent Reigen had been, how hard he'd pushed it, he shouldn’t have let him go.

He runs faster.

"Reigen!" Shrill, loud, slamming into walls and bouncing back at him like a rebounding bullet. "Reigen! Reigen, where are you!? Answer me!"

Another shake, only this time, he realizes it isn't a rattle. It's an explosion.

He doesn't remember making it there. He doesn't remember the moment he made it to that room, slammed open the doors so hard that they banged the walls and snapped off their hinges, and came to a horrible standstill in the open air beneath a blown-out roof, before a scene that would embed itself a tattoo in his mind for whatever foreseeable future he has.

"Seri...?" Reigen's voice. It isn't his. That aura isn't his. It shouldn’t be. "I... I thought they killed you, Seri, I thought—"

His voice is so haunted, so shaky, so not him that it leaves Serizawa with a knife in his gut and another one twisted in between his ribs. And Reigen stumbles back, tripping in the entanglement of aura at his feet, twisted around his limbs like vipers. He doesn't try pulling away—Serizawa isn't sure he can—but his eyes stay wide, and he looks down at his green-splattered hands, wide-eyed, aghast. Trembling.

The spirits behind him are still screaming, still shrieking, and Serizawa is just about to exorcise them himself when they burst from the inside out in a firework of green. Remnants go flying, but vaporize before they make contact with anything or anyone. The smoke burns in the sky above them. Reigen's breaths come ragged, short, and rasped.

"Wh-What did I do?" Reigen chokes, and he shouldn't. He was never meant to sound like that, never meant to sound so scared, so unsure, so frightened. Least of all at himself. "S-Seri, I don't—y-you were dead, you were dead, I-I thought—you were dead, they killed you—"

He's babbling, as tears gather in the corners of his green-stained eyes, and Serizawa lets his heart lead once more. It carries him across the broken floorboards in long leaps and bounds, until he can capture Reigen in his arms and hold him tightly. His skin is hot to the touch. His forehead burns like a brand into Serizawa's collarbone. His aura—green, sickly, with the consistency of tree sap—clings to them, weak and frightened and desperate and Serizawa doesn't push it away. He doesn't try pulling Reigen off of him, or out of it. He knows it would do more hurt than good.

“It’s okay,” Serizawa promises, without knowing whether anything is, or will be again. "It's okay, Reigen, I'm okay. You're okay. We're okay.”

“B-But—what did I—”

“It's okay,” Serizawa reiterates, but can't quite keep the wreck out of his voice this time. “It's okay, I promise, I promise you, it's okay. We have to get you home, now, we can talk about it, we'll fix this, we can find a way to fix this—”

In his heart, he knows that there's no fixing this. There's nothing he can do now that will fix this present he's stumbled upon. This presence he had a hand in building.

Reigen's sob comes dryly, sounding more like a choked noise of a someone strangled than an actual cry. Serizawa squeezes him tighter, screwing his eyes shut and trying to keep his breathing steady. He doesn’t know how the spirit did it. How it tricked him, perceptive as he is. But Serizawa can’t trick Reigen. He has to be present. He can’t break down, not now.

“Seri, I…”

"Reigen?" Serizawa opens his eyes, and Reigen becomes a heavier weight against him, heavier and heavier. "Reigen!?"

He slumps completely, the last thread of his consciousness leaving him in a desperate exhale, and Serizawa drags him up and into his arms, mangled aura and all. Reigen's eyes are closed, chest barely rising and falling, and it's all Serizawa can do to swing himself around, and run like hell.

#cloud writes #mob psycho 100 #mp100 #serizawa katsuya #reigen arataka #fanfic #fanfiction #queerplatonic serirei #hurt/comfort #i wrote this in like a little under half an hour please forgive if it's rough sjkflsldf

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blueboxesandtrafficcones · 5 years ago

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The Nuptial Necessity - Chapter 30

A 12xRose Human AU

Despite an unglamorous job description, Rose loves the work she does with The Thistle Foundation, a charity founded by her best friend’s great-uncle. It doesn’t hurt that her boss, her friend’s father, is easy on the eyes. With a great job, wonderful friends and a loving family, life couldn’t be better – except for having someone to share it with.

All of that is threatened, though, when the great-uncle dies – and sets a strange condition for his nephew to inherit, jeopardizing the Foundation and Rose’s future, sparking a chain of events that might just get her everything she dreamed of and more.

Chapters will be posted on Saturdays and Tuesdays. Many thanks to my beta, @stupidsatsuma

Rated: Explicit, for smut

@doctorroseprompts

AO3 | Masterlist

—

Thursday (very, very late)

“I have something for you,” Malcolm murmured, kissing her ear.

“Huh?”

He’d cleaned up the worst of the mess they’d made, and now that the sweat had cooled and dried, they were snuggled together under the blankets, her back to his front, their arms entangled and folded together beneath her breasts. Thoroughly sated, warm, comfortable, and happy, she was almost asleep when he spoke.

He rolled away from her, and by the time he came back she had turned to face him, pillowing her head on her arm as she watched him. His hands appeared, one clenched around something, and her breath caught. “What-”

“Rose,” he cut her off, not unkindly, “you… you are a breath of fresh air. You-”

Unable to help it she yawned, face scrunching with the size of it- it seemed to go on forever, and by the time it was over, he was biting his lip, watching her with a raised eyebrow.

“I don’t want to bore you.”

“Mhmm, you’re not,” she promised, snuggling closer, “but I’m exhausted. My husband had me up ridiculously early to watch the sunrise this morning, then he shagged my brains out.”

“Sounds like quite the catch.”

“He is.” She grinned up at him. “And I’m going to return the favor and blow his mind- well, something- as soon as I’ve gotten a kip.”

Malcolm hummed. “Well, I’ll let you get to it, but first- I’ll save the drawn-out romantic speech for when you’re more awake, but…” Holding out his clenched hand in front of him, he turned it over and opened it to reveal a ring, with a decent sapphire stone set in gold. It was beautiful, and delicate, and she loved it.

“Oh, babe,” Rose gasped softly. “That’s wonderful.”

“Do you really think so?” Surprisingly shy, he held it out to her. “If so, I want you to have it. If not, there’s plenty more in the family vault, but- I wanted you to have this one. I’ve wanted you to have it for… a while.”

“Are you sure?” She took in carefully, holding it up to her eye to examine it better. “It looks old. Not in a bad way, just in a valuable way.”

Her husband slid his hand over her waist, pulling her closer. “Yes. I didn’t give you an engagement ring, because… but now that our feelings have been resolved, that it’s all out in the open, I want you to have a pretty ring to show off.”

Rose looked down at the simple gold band she’d been wearing for the last week, and felt her heart melt. “I’m very happy with the ring I already have,” she told him softly, “because you gave it to me. I think this will be a perfect addition.” Then she handed it back.

“Wait, what?”

Rolling her eyes, she held out her left hand to him, grinning. “Go ahead, put it on me. ‘S only right.”

He did, carefully guiding it up her finger and over her knuckles, settling it at the base of her wedding band before bringing her hand to his lips and kissing both rings gently. “Perfect.”

“I agree.” Bringing her hand to her face, she admired how they looked together – like they belonged next to each other. “That wasn’t necessary, but… thank you.”

“You deserve the world,” he shrugged one shoulder. “A ring- a family heirloom at that- is nothing.”

Smiling, she leaned forward, kissing him sweetly. “Let’s get some sleep,” she sighed against his lips. “Then when we wake up, I’ll thank you properly.”

He kissed her back. “No thanks necessary.”

“Oh, I think it’s very necessary.”

Friday (very, very early)

Yawning, Rose padded back to bed from the loo, on her way eyeing the clothing strewn across the floor, abandoned where it had fallen. At first glance it would be impossible to mistake what had happened, and she felt awkward at the idea of the maid finding them like that. Sending a longing glance towards the bed, she quickly gathered up the items and piled them on the chair so they didn’t look quite so much like victims of torrential passion – as they had been.

Climbing back into bed, she snuggled down next to Malcolm in the hopes of falling back asleep, but it was soon clear that that wasn’t going to happen. Her mind was wide awake, and a heat low in her belly begged for relief. Grunting in frustration she opened her eyes, taking in Malcolm’s profile in the moonlight. In his sleep he’d rolled onto his back, one arm bent above his head, the other across his chest. The sheet had slipped down to his hips, and she licked her lips at the slight tenting occurring there.

Glancing back up at his face she found him sleeping soundly, and debated whether or not to wake him up. On the one hand, she saw no reason they should both be awake just because she couldn’t sleep. On the other, if they were awake anyway…

Malcolm drifted towards consciousness, hazily aware of a wet warmth on his stomach. Stretching his arm out beside him, his eyes shot open at realizing he was alone in bed, Rose’s side cool and empty. He didn’t have to wonder long, though, before solving both mysteries at once – his wife was stretched out on her side perpendicular to his waist, drawing shapes on his stomach with her tongue as she propped herself up on her forearms.

“Good morning,” he rasped, threading his fingers through her hair, eyes following the tip of her tongue. “Having fun?”

“Technically, it’s not morning,” she replied with a grin, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to his navel. “But, I figured you wouldn’t mind. Tit for tat, and such.”

He raised an eyebrow, feigning disinterest with a mere, “Oh?”

Her grin morphed into a smirk, and she tugged at the sheet covering his hips; it didn’t move, just pressed down against him, accentuating the tenting happening there. “I mean, if you’re up for it.”

“I could probably be persuaded to be a team player,” he drawled. “For the right price.” Anticipation had heat pooling low in his belly, but he was enjoying the game- he loved how playful she could be, how she brought that same quality out in him. Sex with Rose was fun, in a way it had rarely been throughout his life.

“Is that so?” Freeing one hand, she trailed her fingertips along his length over the sheet, making his obscured erection bob and his stomach clench. “I’ve been known to broker a fair deal or two in my day.”

He stole her abandoned pillow, using it to prop himself up to better see what she was doing- and what he desperately hoped she would be soon. “Rose.”

Rose snickered, and he flushed at his inadvertently-whiney tone. “Yes, dear?”

She drew the sheet away from him, and he helped kick it down to the end of the bed, far out of the way. The cooler air of their bedroom felt wonderful on his heated flesh, and he watched with pleading eyes as she examined his length, abruptly realizing that though they’d been intimate a handful of times now, she’d never really seen him- not like this, and he eyed his sometimes-errant member with suspicion. Don’t ruin this for us, he warned it- no need to remind her that he was officially closing in on ‘middle age’.

Apparently, though, he didn’t need to worry.

“You’re beautiful,” she murmured, making him twitch in response. “Lovely. Really.” Leaning forward she flicked her tongue against the head, drawing a sigh from him. “And big. Who knew you were hiding this in your trousers all those years?” Her tongue darted out again, and he sagged back against the pillows, hand returning to her hair and combing through the loose strands, gently untangling them.

He let her tease him for far longer than he would have liked, her soft kisses and licks doing nothing but making him ache for her, despite the sensual beauty of the visual. She was on her hands and knees next to him, breasts hanging freely. His eyes lingered along her smooth side, taking in the pert bum wagging slightly in the air with her movements. She was the epitome of art, and were it not so personal and he so possessive, he would insist that her likeness should hang in any of the great art museums in the world, so anyone and everyone could marvel at her sheer, erotic beauty. Eventually, though, the tension became unbearable, and he shifted restlessly on the mattress, his focus narrowing to the imminent pleasure.

“I’m starting to think you’re all talk.”

His beautiful bride looked up the length of his chest to meet his eye, gaze taking its time to peruse the view on the way. “Is that all men think about?” she asked, biting her lip, unable to hide her smirk. “Getting their cock sucked?”

“It is when a beautiful woman promises to do so then doesn’t.” He arched his eyebrows. “You’ve made your husband a promise, Mrs. Tucker, and I expect you to see it through.”

She laughed. “Mrs. Tucker. I like that.” Her fingers wrapped around him, starting a lazy glide along his skin. “You know, this is only fair, after how you tortured me last night.”

“Tortured you?” he said indignantly. “I didn’t know orgasms were considered torture. I won’t make that mistake again.”

Arching one eyebrow up at him, she dipped her head and finally, finally, slid her lips over the head of him, sucking lightly as her tongue explored him.

“Guh.”

Her chuckle was almost silent, but the vibrations from it were amazing over his aching flesh, and he grunted, fingers tightening in her hair. It had been a long time since his last relationship (if one could call it that), and to be here, with the woman he’d quietly loved from afar for so long, still felt dreamlike. He hoped he never lost that feeling.

Rose pulled her hand and mouth off of him then, grinning at his involuntary protest. “I’m just making myself comfortable,” she soothed, shifting around to settle herself between his thighs, kneeling over him. “I suggest you hold on.”

This time, when she lowered her mouth to him, it was without any of the languidness of before- taking half his length in on the first pass, she began a seemingly-complicated rhythm of bobbing and sucking, her hand pumping the parts her mouth couldn’t reach, all of which worked to short-circuit his brain and send him spiraling towards the abyss.

“Oh, Rose,” he groaned, fisting the pillows next to his head, trying to keep himself from spending too quickly. “So good. Too good.” The suction she was able to generate was incredible, his eyes rolling back into his head in delight.

In response she just took him deeper, his tip bumping the back of her throat twice before she pulled off, coughing. “Okay, can’t do that,” she giggled, breathing deeply. “How do you want to…”

He had to fight to open his eyes, especially once she returned to sucking at his head. “Ngh.” Thought was difficult, all his senses focused on the pleasures of her mouth, but he decided he didn’t want to come alone. “Fuck me.”

“You sure? I can-”

Malcolm reached for her, catching her hand and using it to pull her up his body. “Please.”

Straddling his hips, she rose up for a moment to line him up before sinking down onto him, taking all of him in one go. “Mhmm.”

“Yes,” he grunted, gripping her hips and starting to thrust up. “C’mon.” She started slow, her movements more of a rock then a thrust, before she leaned forward, bracing her hands above his shoulders and dipping her head to kiss him. “I love you,” he whispered against her lips, drowning in pleasure. “So much.”

“I love you too.”

She wormed her tongue into his mouth, flicking it against his own as her hips began to pick up speed, rolling over him in a delicious counterpoint to his own thrusting. Letting go of her hips he wrapped one arm around her waist, holding her against him, as his right hand slipped between them, finding her clit and rubbing it desperately.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Rose keened softly, head bowing as she rode him harder. “Mhmm, yeah.”

“Come, Rose,” he pleaded, rhythm stuttering as he fought to hold on, waiting for her to catch up. “Please.”

“Hang on.”

He stopped instantly, and panting for breath, she shifted over him, straightening up and setting her hands on his chest as she got her feet under her. His limbs trembled, unsure how much more he could take, but she tossed her head, hair flying behind her, and opened her eyes.

“Okay.”

And then she was riding him, all finesse lost in favor of chasing release. For a moment he forgot to start moving himself, captivated by her beauty- her sweat-slick skin shining in the moonlight, the building pleasure on her face, her breasts bouncing with the force of her movements.

“Malcolm,” she whimpered, and he sprang to life, one hand returning between them to pleasure her, the other reaching up to pinch and twist a nipple just the way she liked.

She broke with a sob, freezing above him, head thrown back, body shaking with the strength of her release, before collapsing down onto him. Rolling her onto her back and settling above her, he hooked one knee in the crook of his elbow and began to move. It only took another half-dozen or so thrusts before it was his turn, gasping her name as he finally found sweet release, sagging down to cover her body with his own.

“I love you,” she whispered, face buried in his shoulder.

“I love you too,” he sighed, enjoying the looseness in his muscles and peace in his heart. Nothing in the world felt better against his skin than hers, wrapped up in each other as they were, and he couldn’t have left her in that moment for anything.

She pressed a kiss to his clavicle, one arm weakly wrapping around his waist. “We’re gonna have a brilliant life.”

“Fucking right we are.”

#bbatcfic #ficandchips #Doctor Who #doctorroseprompts #Human!12xRose #Human!Twelfth Doctor #Rose Tyler #Human AU #AU #The Nuptial Necessity

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granddaughterogg · 6 years ago

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Azrael is a kinkster, yo. Part 2. Excessively lemony (grapefruity even?)

Chapter 2

The fucking begins in earnest

You were on fire.

Skin flushed, muscles taut, pulse quickened. Your body longed for some more. And all it took was Azrael kissing you.

Quite intensively, but still.

You could not wait for what he prepared next.

That he did prepare for this – meticulously - was beyond doubt. The angel was a master of strategic planning after all. At least that was the official side of him. The one that you got to know so far.

Right now his slender hand rested on your back, politely, but firmly directing you towards a long corridor. You could hardly feel the marble floor under your feet. A sudden thought flashed through the fog that filled your brain: do you actually know this man at all?

The mystery shrouding his personal life fascinated you. But it also made you feel small and inadequate. There he was, a wise, powerful, ageless being put in charge of some of the most crucial tasks in the Universe. And there were you, a human girl who got entangled in all this by a fateful accident. Yet somehow you stood your ground. That alone was a lot to be proud of, but of one thing you felt sure: someone as glorious as Azrael and someone like you could never be equals.

And now this belief started to shake. Maybe this desire could bring you and him to a common level. After all, passion renders all its subjects alike.

Did you actually dig the guy? Yes, very much. You didn’t even realize it before coming here today. But your body somehow knew. And it was eager for him.

You smiled to yourself. Apparently, you had it for men who were much taller than you and commanded authority.

Like Death.

You decided that you’re not going to think about him right now. It wouldn’t be fair towards Azrael. Later, much later you will tell your favourite Horseman all about this. He’ll undoubtedly be amused; maybe he’ll even throw his head back and let out this raspy little chuckle that you’ve learned to know and love. It turned out that the Nephilim had no concept of a sexually exclusive relationship. Heck, you even had to explain to him how being faithful or unfaithful works in most human cultures. Death didn’t care much about those customs, which to him felt foreign and pointless. The deal was that both of you can sleep with pretty much whoever you want, as long as you communicate properly. He knew that you love him first and foremost, and you were sure that he feels the same way about you. End of story.

Death would never stoop to jealousy. Not because he was such a noble creature. (He wasn’t.) But it just never have been taught to him. Ingrained into him.

How you adored this carefree pagan attitude to all things sexual. You wished that more humans would adopt it.

Speaking of high and low. You glanced towards the angel. He was actually walking. Like a regular human being! Up to this point you’ve mostly seen him soar on those majestic wings.

Your head could hardly reach his armpit. He was so tall and graceful, his body otherwise an enigma under the lavish robes. You’re going to crack this mystery really soon; the realisation hit you so hard that you trembled.

That was one long-ass corridor.

It ended in a wide, sunlit room with white walls and the biggest, most luxurious bed you’ve ever seen. It too was white. Had a canopy and all.

„Living the good life, eh, Azrael?” you murmured, smiling.

„Oh, usually I don’t sleep here” he answered. „It’s a guest bedroom.”

„Where do you sleep then?”

„Most of the time,” he said, arching one silver brow pensively, „I just don’t.”

You looked at him like you never did before. Striking bone structure, yes. Wide forehead marked with those bright lines, that undoubtedly carried some arcane meaning. Sensitive mouth, which could work you up in no time. Pale eyes, full of eternal patience and wisdom. But also deep, bluish circles under. Lines on both sides of his Greek nose. Hollowed cheeks.

He was tired. No, he was exhausted. For who knows how long.

Your heart fluttered with sympathy.

„But you’re gonna sleep with me tonight, aren’t you?” you asked, reaching out to touch his face. You had to stand on your toes to make that happen. „I hate being left alone after sex!”

He covered your hand with his and gave you a reassuring smile. „Of course.”

You strutted across the bedroom, pretending that you’re not thrilled - and scared - as much as you were. „I’m looking forward to being your guest!”

„So am I.” Suddenly he was very close to you; long, cool strands of his silky hair brushed your back. His hands reached from behind and swiftly unbuttoned your dress.

When it hit the floor, you shivered.

„It’s really happening now, isn’t it?” you whispered, leaning into him.

„Are you afraid?” His voice was calm as a pond.

„Yes.”

„Do you want me to stop?”

„God, no!”

He gave out a little musical laugh.

„What did I tell you about using that word. Also: that’s the spirit.”

You didn’t expect an archangel of Heaven to know his way around a human bra. Yet he made short work of those fancy straps. The bra was down.

Azrael brushed your collarbones with his long, cool fingers. He cupped your exposed breasts, squeezed and then massaged them a little. Your nipples hardened and dug into his palms. You let out a small groan.

He spun you on your heels; suddenly you were facing an angel caressing you with a glinting stare.

„Look at you” he hummed. „You’re a work of art.”

Your face was on fire; your whole body was. Your insides wet and tender, eager to be touched.

Of course, he knew.

„Away with that,” he said with a smile, sliding your panties down your legs. He had to kneel down before you to do that; obviously, he didn’t mind. For a moment you had a unique view at the top of the angel’s silver head. How many kings have?

And then you were naked before Azrael.

He reached his hand again and touched your lips. No, the other lips. He tipped their soft, supple, tender warmth. Then he slid his fingers inside you - maybe for an inch. You sighed urgently.

He took them away.

„Hell no!” you cried. „Don’t do this to me! Don’t keep me waiting...”

Azrael shot you a glare and pushed two fingers in at their whole length. It was such a sharp, forceful movement that you cried out again. This time mostly from pain.

He rose to his full height and looked down on you – in every possible way.

„Do you want it to be short and painful?” he asked with a clipped voice. „Because I can make it short and painful. Which is not at all what I had in mind, but if you keep rushing me, that is what I’m going to do.”

You felt faint – and confused by this sudden coldness.

„No...” you said. „I didn’t mean that...I didn’t mean to...I’m just so, so ready! Please, Azrael...Please?”

There it was: you were pleading. That holy bastard got you good.

It was incredible how fast his features changed. The disdain disappeared as if wiped away by magic and the kind-eyed archangel was back in town. You wondered how many facets this guy’s personality really had. It was beginning to get freaky.

Except that you like freaky, you thought to yourself. You thrive on it. You spent a month or two once enjoying a lover whose face you didn’t know, cause it was always covered by a bone mask. Always - even when he would fuck you so hard that you screamed.

Freaky is the name of the game.

You looked the angel in the eye and smiled.

„Sorry for being such a spoilsport,” you said. „I’ll be more compliant from now on.”

„Good girl.”

Azrael wrapped his arms around you and brushed his lips on your exposed shoulder. Then on the neck. Then on the soft skin behind your ear. He covered you with slow, leisurely kisses until you softened in his embrace. Until the stress from a moment ago was all gone, your body relaxed and pliant once more. Then he took you by the chin, leaned over and kissed you on the lips again. It was a long, tender kiss. Softer, more considerate this time.

He was so attentive to your reactions; apparently he could read your body like a book. You felt lightheaded; out of breath, out of control. It was akin to threading on a cloud.

You felt safe.

„So, where were we now?” he whispered into your neck. „Ah, yes. Disrobing you, then tying you up.”

You let out a breathy giggle and hid your face in his arm.

Azrael tightened his grip around your waist - and suddenly you became weightless. Airborne.

Those large wings rustled and spread around you in all their glory. You squeed upon realising what is going on.

He soared - and took you with him.

„I’m flying!”

„Oh, you will be” he promised.

Azrael landed in the middle of the bed and carefully put you on your back. The sheets were pleasantly cool and soft as whipped cream. He lied next to you, supported himself on an elbow and touched your exposed skin; from the collarbone, between the breasts, down your stomach and finally to your sex. He caressed your pubic crease for a while, playing with the kinky fuzz that covered it. Then he brushed his fingers over your slightly swollen clit but made no further attempts this time.

This time you didn’t whine. You just moaned a little and begged him with your eyes.

„Honestly, I am torn,” said Azrael in a light tone that contradicted his words. „You are so beautiful and yearning right now, I’m considering just...going for it.” The archangel tilted his head and sent you a mischievous smile. His fingers started moving in a circular manner. You let out a sigh.

„But...” Azrael’s other hand crept up and pinched your nipple rather forcefully. „...I have promised you something, and promises should be kept.”

He sat up. Something colourful appeared in his hands out of thin air. Your eyes went wide open; it was a coil of fine rope, as blue as the sky behind the large arched windows.

„Now that looks like a binding proposition!” you quipped (although rather breathily.)

Azrael uncoiled most of the rope, letting it fall across the bed. It brushed your abdomen. It was velvety to the touch.

„It’s so soft...” you murmured.

„Have you ever been bound like this before?” he asked, tightening a small section of the cord in his hands and grazing your breasts with it. Your nipples were already hard, but now they went painfully tender.

„Azrael,” you said softly. „You do realise that I am not a virgin?..”

„I very much hope so” he chuckled heartily. „I would not dare to do such twisted, sinful things to someone inexperienced.”

„Well, then why are you asking me this?”

He turned serious.

„Being tied up is a very distinctive sensation. Not everyone enjoys it. I’d rather ensure that you do. It’s not fun at all if you’re only in pain.”

„Only?...”

„But a little pain can go a long way” he finished with an easy smile. Something fluttered inside of you. Figuratively. You started to adore that strange, strange man. Angel. Person.

Azrael.

„So,” he said in a conversational tone, tying the rope to the nearest bedpost. „Did Death ever tie you up?”

„You know that if I tell you, he will have my head. And then yours for good measure.”

„That’s true” he chuckled, walking around the bed to reach another bedpost.

„I’ve been tied up before Death. Before this whole Apocalypse business kicked off. By human men. Most of them would use hemp rope, which is rather stiff and abrasive, but I liked it anyway. Even the prickling...” You sorted through memories long gone. „And the rope marks after. Yes, I liked it. A lot.”

He went silent for a long while.

„You know that I can never beg for your forgiveness enough,” he said. „For what has been done to the Kingdom of Men and to you. For what I’ve done.”

„We talked about it, Az” you smiled. „And tonight I’m supposed to be the one who does the begging. Now come over here and kiss me.”

He got on the bed and leaned over, covering you with those magnificent wings, with long strands of hair. Your world suddenly became very small and full of rosy scent. Full of Azrael. You gripped at his collar and parted his lips with your tongue, urgently, hungrily, with conviction. You wanted him and only him right now. Not memory. Not remorse.

The kiss was long and almost bruising. Finally, the angel broke contact and looked you in the eyes with such desperate tenderness that you gasped.

„Give me your hand,” he said.

He coiled the rope around your left wrist, then the right one, made a few swift adjustments here and there – and suddenly you were firmly bound to the bedposts, your arms stretched and raised upon your head. It wasn’t that uncomfortable...but it was restricting. You tried to move them. There wasn’t much that you could do.

„Do you like it?” The purest smile coiled his lips. „I thought that we’ll start with something basic and see from there.”

You got so wet. You were dripping. Your inner thighs probably glistened from all this wetness.

„Oh, I see...” he said in a low voice. „You do like this, don’t you.”

All that left your mouth was a small „Ah-hah.” You couldn’t find the words. Being in rope always took you apart, every time. There was something about the sensation of being bound, the thought of being at your lover’s mercy – that struck a match next to the pool of gasoline that was your soul.

Azrael was beaming.

„I could take you right now” he mused. „ And it wouldn’t be painful. Oh, maybe eventually. I can get carried away sometimes.” The angelic chuckle was like a string of silver flown between your ears.

You arched your back, parted your legs wide open, presented to him like an animal in heat. You just didn’t care.

„Or maybe...” he brushed your calf with those long fingers, „... I will take my time. Want me to tie you up some more?”

„Yes,” you breathed.

„Yes what?”

„Yes, please do, Azrael.”

He planted a quick kiss on your ankle before binding it too. And then the other one. Soon you were completely immobilised, splayed across the bed like a naughty rendition of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man.

You got in a daze. The taut rope dug into your skin, its velvety grip reassuring, pleasant and cruel at once. You had no control over what happens to you now. It was like getting high – almost the best kind of high that you’ve ever known.

Apart from the actual fucking.

„Azrael” you whispered, careful not to slur the words, „When does the fucking begin in earnest?”

„Soon,” he said, observing you from above. He was soaring again. You could tell that he, too, got into a zone of his own; those milky eyes have never been larger. His lips parted. He was probably admiring his ropework.

No...he was admiring you.

You could feel his blistering gaze, taking in your parted legs, your weeping, wanting slit, your soft stomach, breasts with hardened nipples and finally, your burning face.

„How ravishing you are like this,” he said hoarsely. „Oh, you have no idea. What in the Nine Hells. I’ll whip you later.”

He fell down on you like a diving hawk. Suddenly there was only fluttering of long white feathers. There was rosy smell on your lips, on your tongue, at the back of your throat. The taste of his mouth in yours. His fingers caressed every inch of your skin, his lips went everywhere. You gasped when he slid his tongue inside you and got to work.

„Just...don't stop”, you cried tremulously. „I..can’t...hold...your head...like this...but don’t you stop!”

But he did. He sucked on your throbbing clit – you started to give out prolonged moans - and then he ceased to. Abruptly. You let out a whine of frustration and lust.

„What did I tell you about rushing me?” he said, looking you dead in the eye. There were mischievous sparks dancing in his. „Now you’ve gone and done it.”

Your heart pounded against your ribcage. You were on fire. Your juices poured all over the posh bedsheets. You’ve been in no state to judge whether he’s serious or joking.

Then some cheeky spark flashed in your muddled brain and you said with a small voice:

„Aren’t you gonna be awfully uncomfortable in those robes? This silk is going to get everywhere.”

Azrael’s face turned blank for a second. Then he snorted, genuinely amazed at your sass.

„Do you want to see something fun?” he asked.

„Yes!”

The archangel snapped his fingers and his clothes were gone.

Just like that. Gone. You had a completely naked, silver-haired angel lying on top of you. Holding you by the bounded wrists. Pressing his rather...very erect dick against your soft, wet, pliable lady parts.

„Oh God,” you said. „Oh, God. Oh, God.”

„Shush, my sweet” he pressed a finger to your lips. „That is blasphemy. Now the fucking begins in earnest.”

„But I want to touch you! I want to touch you everywhe-”

„Next time.”

He just went into you like a knife in butter.

You were so worked up at this moment that it didn’t hurt much, even though he was considerably big. Bigger than you somehow thought he’d be. And harder.

But even so, the sheer force of that thrust amazed you. You gave out a low guttural moan.

You wanted to embrace him so badly. To dig your palms into his slender back. To cup his face and kiss him; and then maybe lick him. Lick all over those white tattoos that rendered his otherwise subtle features slightly feral.

Hell, to brush away some of that hair. It was getting in your eyes and mouth. It covered your face with a silky, fluttering curtain. You couldn’t see much.

But you could feel him moving inside you with sharp, rhythmic thrusts. His hipbones pounding against your softness. He was all over you and all inside you. He filled you up, body and soul.

You moaned practically nonstop. It was a very undignified sound. You didn’t have any power over your vocal chords anymore.

„I love it when you sing” he gasped, stopping for a little while and giving you a frantic stare. The pupils of his eyes were crazy dilated. You got lost in them while he fucked you.

Then the pleasure rose in you – this velvety wave, which started somewhere in the base of your spine and hastily crept upward. It was like drowning in dark honey.

„I’m close now” you whispered with a rueful smile. You sincerely wish you’d lasted longer.

„I know” he breathed. Somehow Azrael got even paler, if for the exception of vivid crimson colouring his cheeks. „Go ahead. I’m not going to stop though.”

And then you opened your mouth and cried some more. Dark, sticky sweetness sunk your brain, covered your eyesight. Your throbbing insides constricted around Azrael’s cock. He went on anyway, so relentlessly that he was hurting you now. Azrael was hurting you now, just like he said he will. Somehow that made it all the sweeter.

#Darksiders #darksiders azrael #darksiders lemon #lemon #lemons #grapefruits?#i honestly can't tell #handle with care #azrael/reader #azrael x reader

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greennightspider · 7 years ago

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Fated Instinct Chapter 13: Relax. Breathe. And Jab.

Summary: Sequel to Cabin in the Snow. Akari finds herself in a predicament after an accidental overnight stay in a cabin grants her the title of fiance to the chieftain-to-be M’Baku himself.

Author’s Note: This chapter is a tad longer than the last, usually I’d split them up into two chapters but it just seemed too abrupt to divide it mid-scene. An important note is that a lot of times I will reference things from Cabin in the snow so I do recommend reading it, just or context of things like in the previous chapter.

Warning: Get’s a little frisky

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7 Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 19(2), Chapter 20, Chapter 20(2), Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24

M’Baku x Akari (OC)

M’Baku watched as Akari and N’Ceba left the room thankfully unscathed, unbloodied, and surprisingly, not hateful. Runi had propped herself up on a chair against the wall watching the small switchblade twirl in her hands, while Kwhezi had long since excused himself. Each of them had a content, mutual understanding in their eyes, but hidden under their smiles he could see a serious resolve. He knew both women well enough to know there was something between them now, something that he wasn’t privy to. But for now he decided not to push it, content enough that they were both on civil terms.

Runi hopped off her chair and watched as N’Ceba left with her minions, peering at her perky backside. “Sooo we ain’t tag-teaming her ass?”

Akari laughed. “Nope, or at least not yet.” Akari knew that if even a morsel of what N’Ceba said was true, then that meant she needed to be on her guard, and that N’Ceba herself may be the least of her worries. It seems that some for her previous fears about this engagement were not entirely unfounded, and she knew that she would have to look into it more. She sighed before turning to her best friend. “You finished for the day?”

Runi shrugged. “You know it.”

“Sweet, I might head back home before going in early. I’ll see you tonight for the session?”

“As if I’d miss an opportunity to whoop Zahkele’s ass.” Runi grinned mischievously as she walked away, leaving Akari with a very apprehensive M’Baku. “Anything I can help with Kari?”

Akari sighed. “Trust me, after the talk I just had? All I need to go do is relax. I’ll probably head to the training centre early tonight, it is Tuesday after all.” M’Baku quirked his head to the side, and Akari endeavoured to elaborate. “Every Tuesday me and my family head to the training centre together to let off steam, to de-stress, and just spend time together as a family.” Akari smiled, before biting her lip and eyeing M’Baku’s curious look. “Would you like to come along?”

“Sure, why not?” M’Baku grinned.

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Relax, she said.

THWACK! Zahkele threw a spear at his target, managing to pierce the board itself and the board behind it.

De-stress, she said.

Kaia spindled up the training ropy like a spider to its thread, proceeding to hang upside down from her rope with her dagger in her mouth.

Spending quality time as a family she said.

Watching M’Baku with his mouth open at the spectacle around him, Zahkele decided to offer the newbie a bone. “Baku, c’mere. Lemme give you some advice.” Zahkele gestured, pulling M’Baku into his armpit so he could whisper in his ear. “Look. Here me when I say, you can’t be pulling your punches here. You gotta go full strength no matter who you’re up against, because they’ll do the same to you. And, maybe, just maybe.” Zahkele chuckled as he backed away. “You’ll survive.”

The intensity in the room was unreal. Eshile was watching Zahkele’s form while Akari and Runi were throwing hits using gloves, with . While it was not a menacing aura, M'Baku felt the atmosphere in the room had changed from the happy family dynamic, to a stoic and serious gaze he could only see from the guards.

“Is this a normal night for you guys?”

Akari stopped sparring with Runi and called out to Zahkele to come and swap, as Akari ducked out of the ring to meet M'Baku on the mat. “Well I mean, I mean its normal for us, it keeps our skills sharp, and lets us get out our aggression healthily.” Akari grunted as she rolled her neck, tightening her boxing pads on her hands before settling into a receiving stance. “Now let’s go.”

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Zahkele and Runi kept sparring on the mat until both were upright entangled in each other’s limbs, neither one willing to fall. Wrestling was a favorite past time with these two, having kept score for almost a decade. Runi’s leg was tucked behind Zahkele’s knee, ready to whip his feet out from under him, if only she could untangle his hold on her arm and hip. But she knew as soon as he fatigued, the slightest slip even for a millisecond would cost him his footing. And there was no way he could hold up forever. “Might as well give up Kele.” Runi snarled.

“Or what?” Zahkele grinned, locking eyes with Runi in a mischevious smirk. “You gonna flash me again like you did the other night?”

Runi’s mouth dropped open, and in her shock Zakhele managed to push Runi off balance. Runi landed on her back and growled propping herself on her eyebrows and eyeing her haughty opponent, making a mental note to smack that grin right off of his smug face.

“Oh its on.”

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“Akari!” Eshile yelled, walking away from Zahkele and towards the couple, who instantly halted at the sound of the commanding voice. "May I have a turn with M'Baku?”

“Father…”

“I promise I will not break your betrothed, you have my word.” Eshile rose his hand with the other to his breast, Akari’s weary gaze softening but not dissipating.

“Its okay,” M'Baku lightly grabbed Akari’s arm. “I’m sure your family knows my American style pancakes are too good to let me die, or at least good enough to let me keep my limbs,” M'Baku joked, wanting to see Akari’s smile again. She gave him a warm nod, his touch enough to assure him that he would protect himself at all times.

Akari walked away towards Kaia, who had settled on hanging upside down from two of the long ropes hanging from the ceiling. She grinned at the sight of her very nimble sister, before taking a deep breath and starting the climb.

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“Does your father know you’re doing this?” Eshile asked, pointing his spear at M'Baku, who tentatively grasped his own with both hands. “No sir, although I have not forgotten your words from the first time we met.”

“And you still think it’s a good idea?”

“No sir. But I’m willing to learn from the best.” M'Baku spread his legs into a horse like stance, tentatively gripping his spear with both hands. “Plus, I thought maybe this would be a good way to impress Akari.” M'Baku joked.

“Son,” Eshile chuckled before snapping into a more flexible wide’ legged stance, tucking his spear under his left armpit and leaving his right arm free to curl his fist. “You picked the wrong opponent for that.”

Within a split second Eshile was in M'Baku’s face, and the younger opponent barely had enough time to bring his spear across his chest in defence. M'Baku ending up sliding a good meter across the dark grey floor. He curled his toes trying to plant his feet, anything to get a good footing against the man in front of him. Finally Eshile stopped advancing, and grinned as he freed his hold and began attacking at close range with no mercy.

Blow after blow he fired at M'Baku, who in his defense was outmatched, but barely managing to hold his own. Eshile was not only fast but dextrous, as each movement seemed to be part of a furious dance, the spear a very extension of his own limb. M'Baku could see the same style when he fought with Akari, a powerful skill that he admired. Once again M'Baku was brought face to face with his father in law, and as the metal from their spears screeched against each other. “You can hold your own. Impressive.” Eshile admitted. “Not as fluid as Akari but you have strength and quick thinking.” Eshile’s eyes shifted to the side, and with a quick glance M'Baku met the sight of Akari advising Kaia on how to throw a spear, and the way her face lit up in pride for her younger sibling. M'Baku’s gaze shifted back, now realizing what this match was.

“You are right sir, but I hope to be one day. In all honesty I am grateful to have her.” M’Baku answered confidently.

In one swift motion Eshile unlocked their spears and the two began circling each other once again. “That is good to hear.” Eshile acknowledged before he crouched low. “I can see my daughter is fond of you. And you treat her well that much I can see. You care for her greatly.”

“I do.” M'Baku gritted his teeth as he tried to wrestle out of Eshile’s grip.

“Then hear me when I say boy that you must keep your guard up, always. Not only for your sake but for hers.” M’Baku fended off several more hits before he worked up the courage to ask a question that had been forming in his mind.

“Then would you ever consider training me?”

Well isn’t this boy just full of surprises.

"And why would I do that?”

“Because I want to have the strength to keep your daughter safe.” Eshile swore he saw something dark flicker in M'Baku’s eyes during his words. “And you have shown me that I have a lot to learn.”

Eshile grunted as he eyed up the boy in front of him. Daluxolo must have told M’Baku of who he was, who he used to be. And judging from the look in the boy’s eyes, he was dead serious.

“Okay then.” Eshile twirled his spear, throwing it up in the air before catching it. “Let’s get to work.”

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As the night drew long, Kaia had headed home first, as she had always been an early sleeper. Zahkele had headed off after her, and Runi did the same, although she decided to run back to the house as her cooling down from training. Which left Akari, Eshile and M'Baku.

“A good first day of training your highness.” Eshile grinned, his normal cheery demeanour now settling in as normal. “I hope this won’t be the last time you join us.”

“That is if my body can move tomorrow.” M'Baku waggled his eyebrow at Eshile, who laughed at his future son-in-law’s wheezing form. Before heading to the changing rooms to grab his things, but not before turning to the former royal guard in gratitude. “Thank you for letting me come and train with your family.”

“Eh, that’s okay, just tell our chieftain that I gave you a good workover eh?” Eshile winked, knowing full well Daluxolo would just be surprised his son came back alive. “Well I best be heading back, I think Akari is still in the changing rooms though…”

“I will wait for her to walk her home.”

“You do that.” Eshile pointed the spear at him before walking away. “Make sure she rests somewhere safe tonight.”

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“Kari!” M'Baku called into the changing room as he walked in, looking around to make sure no one else was around. “I brought your gear you left on the mat…”

As M'Baku turned the corner he felt a shift in his pulse as he peeked at his betrothed in her naked form. The ends of her long hair settling into the small of her back, just before her plump ass. He watched as she closed her eyes and let the water run down and caress her body, maneuvering the soap suds this way and that around her skin. Almost immediately M'Baku dropped his back, finally gaining Akari’s attention. Looking back at her lover with a small but subtle smile before turning her back to him. At once M'Baku started undressing, and made his way into the showers, coming up behind Akari and letting his fingers caress her hips, taking the soap from her hands.

“I can help with that, usana.”

Akari let her head fall back and lean on M'Baku as he worked the soap into a thick lather on his hands, before abandoning it to roam free on her body. He first massaged her stomach, moving upwards to grab her breasts, slowly squeezing each one with every contented sigh that came from the woman in his arms. M'Baku moved towards her back, softly massaging her back, moving lower until he gave her a small pat on her ass with a chuckle. Akari turned to M'Baku, bringing her arms around his neck in a slow kiss under the pitter patter of the shower. In this moment all of Akari’s tensions and worries were washed away, all but forgotten. In M’Baku she found her solace. And in Akari’s small smiles between their kisses, her lovingly gentle caresses, and the way her eyes sparkled even under the stream of water as they looked at him with love, M’Baku found his happiness. A happiness that he would vow to protect, no matter what would come their way.

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Taglist @skysynclair19 @junesbride @great-neckpectations @muse-of-mbaku @hippiesandpeacesigns @jackburtonsays @coonflix @hi-looo12 @bonyg @romanceoftheeveryday @someareblindtoitsbeauty @wheredidallthedreamersgo @msblkshot710 @peaches-bbygrl @theunsweetenedtruth @blackpinup22 @airis-paris14 @macgruberrrsimplyyamberr @blackpantherreblogs @wawakanda-btch @im5ftbutmythroat66 @vanitykocaine @iamrheaspeaks @aykanna @laketaj24 @letsshamelessqueen-m @leahnicole1219 @cutewylie @titty-teetee @babygirlofwakanda @chefjessypooh (Tried my best to fix em tags but I have a feeling half of them still ain’t working >.<)

#fated instinct #m'baku x akari #m'baku x oc #mbaku x akari #black panther fanfiction #m'baku fanfic #m'baku series #mbaku fanfiction #lets see how i feel about this in the morning #editing will probably be in progress #greennightspider #m'baku fanfiction #mbaku fanfic #m'baku

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resultsmeasuredineffort-blog · 7 years ago

Text

When Children Stand

The hype was real. His father had agreed to letting him go on the college tour with the other seniors. Hamza smiled and stretched his arms out wide. His phone buzzed, Asr, it notified. There’s enough time, Hamza thought to himself.

Musa and Ubaid were betting on who could slide down the banisters with the most flair, while the rest of the tour group was listening to the guide’s speech about the founder of the school. Hamza was only partially listening.

“And this is Westhaven Building, also known as The Haven. It is a common area for all students who are looking for a quiet place to study for a test. It was donated to the school by Samuel Westhaven…” the sophomore explained as Hamza sent a snapchat of the old time, gothic building. It was an ominous castle, even sporting a few gargoyles, and looked anything but like a Haven.

The students looked around, like excitable puppies, the song from Aladdin playing in their hearts. A whole new world, indeed.

“Hamza,” Musa yelled from the steps, stretching out the ending. “They’re going to leave you,” he wailed, ghostlike.

The boy in question tore his eyes from his phone, which flashed a low battery message, to see the tour group disappearing around the corner.

“I promised your mom I’d make sure you go back safe,” Musa continued yelling.

“I’m here, stop being an idiot,” Hamza jogged over.

Musa was not quite done being an idiot. He cupped his hands, even though Hamza was now two feet away and bellowed, “My boy!” He was wheezing like an old man.

“Do you need a change of the nappies?” Musa finished the part, coughing asthmatically.

Hamza smacked him behind his head, “No, but if we’re changing things—your face should be pretty up there on the list,” he grinned, all teeth.

They continued throwing jabs at each other until they caught up with their group. Hamza joked with a few people, talked with others, and was overall feeling very at home, away from home. He had known these people for the past four years, either through school or Facebook. There were also a few lingering parents, who were raptly paying attention to the guide’s every word, some were even taking notes.

While Musa and Hamza exchanged insolent comments regarding their respective dignities, Ubaid was being a bit cleverer. Ubaid’s specialty was knowing how to make people talk, in the gentlest meaning of that phrase. He didn’t even need the bat or cement shoes.

Frivolities aside, Ubaid had learned quite a bit about the school, which he had taken a shine to. He bragged about his immense wealth of knowledge to his friends.

“Just tell us already,” Musa swatted away Ubaid’s guessing game.

“Fine. Okay, so Steven told me that his sister goes to this school and she knows where to get the answer keys to all the tests.”

There was a pause. Hamza gave Ubaid a blank stare. Musa began snickering.

“What?” Ubaid asked, following a tennis match between Musa and Hamza’s face.

Hamza sighed dramatically, and just covered his face with his palm. Musa decided to educate their unworldly friend.

“We thought you had some good stuff, the way you were banging on about it. Like, I know something you don’t know,” Musa explained, pretending to wipe away a tear.

“What, and having answer keys isn’t good stuff?” Ubaid frowned, affronted by their dullness.

The three began a heated debate on what qualified as ‘good stuff’, which ended in a miffed Ubaid, who muttered, “When you morons need help with your finals, don’t come crying to me.”

The sun was shining, the foreign birds sang beautifully and the youth were carefree. School was out, this was their final summer as kids and they all wondered about the nearing initiation to adulthood. But not for too long, because updating social media was a consuming task.

The university offered a complementary lunch, and who was Hamza to refuse? They all ate sandwiches on the grassy field, under umbrella tents.

While the sun’s fierce glare was shaded, the warm nostalgia slunk beneath the umbrellas. The youth seemed to know that this was the start. This is where their bonds frayed, and ran into millions of smaller threads that connected, separated and reconnected. Infinite opportunities, riding on the wings of their individual choices.

After refueling, they began the final leg of the trek around campus, which was to end in front of the dorms. They would spend some time there, before the bus came and picked them up in the late evening.

But burdened with food, laziness swept over the youth, like fairy dust in a Shakespearean play, and there was a group vote to just spend the rest of the time on the grassy lawn. The majority voted to just chill, and so summer time lethargy ensued.

Hamza, Musa and Ubaid were sitting under the shade of a tree, each with their back to one side of the trunk, when they heard the news. Rather, they heard their phones ding and they were fed information straight from the magical highways of the internet.

“Crap, my phone died. Where did they say it was going to be?” Hamza asked, pushing up into a sitting position.

“Uh, let me check with Sarah,” Ubaid typed a question, and sent his thoughts travelling to Sarah.

A second later, they heard an urgent ding, and Musa read over Ubaid’s shoulder. Hamza already knew they were going; he didn’t hesitate.

“She says she heard it’s gonna be in front of the mall we passed by.” Hamza remembered the squat complex and did a mental calculation. It shouldn’t take them more than twenty minutes to get across campus then to the mall. Fifteen, if they ran.

“Avengers Assemble?” Musa asked, reading Hamza’s thoughts.

“Avengers Assemble,” Hamza confirmed.

“Are you guys sure? My mom always warns me about this stuff. You never know what might happen. Once—”

“Avengers,” Hamza said through gritted teeth, and Musa finished for him, “Assemble.”

Ubaid knew a lost battle when he saw one, and reluctantly stood up to join his friends. The three of them went over to discuss with their larger group of classmates. They were young, they were fearless and they knew they could change the world.

Given that Hamza’s generation was known for eating tide pods, the youth were often side eyed by their elders. So, it was an unspoken agreement to leave the adults out of their decision to counterprotest the alt-right protest.

No need to have adults protesting their need to counterprotest a protest.

Anyways, this generation was also known for the March of their Lives and so they gathered their belongings and walked off campus.

Right, they were young. Right, they sometimes made dumb choices. Right, they had a particular aversion to rules. But there was no moral quandary here. They knew racism, sexism and blind hatred were wrong. They were emerging from their techy cocoons, spreading their wings and opening their eyes on a divided world. It was as though the hateful whispers, once entangled in between the lines of society, were suddenly shouting, an orange-hued trumpet amplifying their voices in exchange for power.

If they listened to those elders who would have them quiet, then the shouting would eventually turn to a deafening silence of a society combusting, crushing the hope of a future.

The word on the vine was the alt-righters were annoyed about a recent local election; a Muslim was elected. And she had the nerve to be a Somali immigrant. And now she was trying to run Springfield? According to the alt-righters, she was bringing sharia not only to Springfield but all of America. There was talk of confederate flags and swastikas. Basically, the tiki torches were still burning.

Hamza was not having it.

It was pretty easy to find the protesters. They heard the shouting from a few streets away. Then they saw the cops, in riot gear, standing in wait for some danger.

The alt-right group was ponied up in all sorts of hate symbols. They had swastikas on their clothing and posters. The confederate flag was flapping in the wind, held aloft by several members. They shouted, roared and chanted. Hamza could hear some of them just barking, “Hu hu hu,” a sickening background music that thudded in his ears. More than a few had drinks with them.

The counterprotesters were handing out signs, posters and other symbols. Hamza and his friends grabbed some and went to stand alongside the silent group. He noticed the louder the protesters became, the quieter the activists were. The latter refused to engage in the decisive commentary, and Hamza watched in silent awe. His own face sported a tight frown, waiting for a hairpin trigger. The protesters were shouting incendiary comments and making rude animal noises at him; he stood in the front lines.

“White lives matter!” They punctuated that slogan with “You will not replace us! Terrorists and rapists should die!” And of course, the ever present, ever confounding “Lock her up!” All of their colorful slogans were accompanied by that mad-dog guttural sound.

Springfield was not a large city, and the closeness of the protests made the adrenaline flow. The students around him had faces to match his own and as the protesters began to march down toward Town Hall, the activists began to move. They barred the pathway, creating a human wall, stood, without a word, and stared down the alt-righters.

The protesters were infuriated, and began mocking the individual activists; Hamza, standing front and center, was a good target.

The cops in riot gear began to look jumpy. They saw the alt-righters begin to approach the activists, and Hamza could see a fear in their eyes. They got on the loudspeakers.

“Please clear a path. Stand away from each other,” an authoritative man said clearly.

The alt-righters looked like rottweilers being held on an invisible leash; they were dragging at it. The cops were trying to regain control of the situation, but the activists’ silence was thunderous against the petty anger of the protesters.

Hamza felt the electricity in the crowd; he knew something was about to happen. The cops must have felt the same pulse because they got back on the speakers.

“Those who are not with the Conservative Springfielders, clear the square. Leave the streets. Exit toward the south side,” came the official voice. Hamza felt his face grimace. As if.

The way he saw it, the alt-righters were the ones pushing forward. The activists didn’t make a move; the protesters looked expectantly at the cops.

Then it happened, the trigger. The man right in front of Hamza spat on him, and turned his flag, and pushed it against Hamza and the activists. There was a thrilled roar from their radius of space.

Hamza was caught by surprise, and he felt his blood boil at the oceans of blind hate in the glob of spit. He opened his mouth and almost lifted his fist.

Then, there was an acrid crack, as though the world’s ears were popping. And the smoke began to rise from the midst of their crowd. The activists scrambled as their throats began to fill with the tearing gas. Hamza cursed, coughing and blinking away tears. Being in the wave of human bodies, all struggling in different directions away from the epicenter of the attack was entirely consuming. Hamza went on autopilot as humans diffused like droplets of water on oil.

He just ran. There were no protesters, no activists. Only the struggle for preservation. It seemed as though death was imminent.

More cracks emanated from behind Hamza, but he didn’t turn to look back. How he managed to disentangle himself from the writing mass was inexplicable, especially by him. In any case, not focusing on specifics, he ran. Head down, sweat plastering his back to his shirt, he ran.

At some point, it became clear to him that the rioting noises had become a victim of distance, and only a faint whisper of it remained. And even that may have been his imagination. More so than anything else, Hamza heard his pounding feet and his trembling heart. Nervousness, mixed with being thoroughly winded, made Hamza’s head feel like smoke, spiraling towards the sun.

When he slowed down, one thing soon became extremely apparent. He was lost.

“Low key, but crap,” he came to a stop in front of a restaurant and pretended to observe one of their sample menus. Though he was bereft of energy, he was thankful the run hadn’t stolen his wits.

Unfamiliar town, a large population of racists on the loose, and a lost dark-skinned boy. The math was clear enough.

Not reading over the menu, he scanned the streets and tried to remember which direction he came from. He thought he was doing a pretty bang up job of not looking lost, when a waiter from the restaurant walked out and asked him, “Are you lost?”

He was a few years older than Hamza and startled the latter out of his covert operation.

Hamza being as quick witted as a dancer on tip toes responded, “Nope, just checking something for my mom, thanks.”

Maybe his self-observation was a bit out of focus because the waiter eyed him oddly. Nevertheless, he nodded and walked back inside. A civil war erupted within Hamza.

He felt stupid for not asking directions, but then countered by saying, well that’s exactly how people get kidnapped in the movies.

And at the same time, he knew if he couldn’t find his way back in time, he’d be stuck in this strange city; the bus would leave without him.

To which he responded, How hard can it be? I can figure this out—cities are pretty standard.

Hamza put the menu back and took a few steps. His legs were straws, barely able to support his weight, and his palms were clammy. The sun beat down on the entire world.

Hamza realized something: his youthful bluster was largely maintained by the support of his friends. Now that he was alone, he was second guessing everything. It was a stark contrast to his self image, as the underdog, stiff upper lipped, with his first to the world’s audacities.

The thought struck him like a veil being pulled from his eyes: did his friends make it out? Guilt took him. He was the one friend who, if he didn’t get a response back, he assumed tragedy. It seemed to him, in the vast matrix of possibilities, the probability of death was alarmingly high. He hoped they hadn’t gotten caught up in the mess. He hoped they were okay. He pulled out his phone, reflexively wanting to text Musa and Ubaid. Then he closed his eyes and mouthed a word. He had drained the last bits sending a snap to Aisha.

A gut sickening feeling seeped into him as he watched his wrongdoings become manifest against him. Without realizing it, he made istighfar.

“Okay, just get back and it’ll all be okay,” he whispered reassuringly.

He remembered something. During his Usain Bolt impression, he remembered cursing at a hill. During the upward climb, he was panting and mentally destroying every bit of earth under his feet.

If he could find the hill, then he would have a good vantage point of Springfield. Then all he had to do was find the castle walls of Westhaven and he would be back in time to not face the wrath of his family.

While he did his best to sort out his footsteps, Hamza realized that he would have done it again. He would still have gone to the protest and stood against those who tried to condemn the voices of minorities. Even with only a few suns beneath his belt, he had grasped a universal truth—if the weak allow their voices to be muted, then deafness becomes a justified pride.

Unfortunately for Hamza, the small city was full of buildings and offices that looked exactly the same. He passed by the same office three times, before realizing he was walking in a circle. When the waiter saw him again, Hamza had to pretend he dropped something. Quick witted indeed bro, he thought to himself. After, he avoided that street entirely.

A few attempts and several suspicious Springfielders later, Hamza was at the foot of the hill. Matchbox houses surround him, sprinkled in between the trees, each standing superior to its predecessor. He breathed a breath of thanks and began the climb. This time around, he took a break every so often. Hamza checked his phone several times, and the dead battery forced him to berate himself about his loose snapchat morals.

Finally, he was at the top and before gazing on the city, he said the basmalah. And when he turned his eyes on the city, the first thing they fell on was the angst filled establishment. Westhaven Building. He whooped, joy-rushed at finally succeeding. He breathed another thanks and made a mental map of how to get back.

Then he ran down the hill, hands flailing in the air, leaving behind a stream of laughter. The fifteen-minute trek up the hill was cancelled out by a minute of wind in his hair and wings on his back.

He danced to a stop, still chortling and looked around. He knew he had to make a right at the end of the street and saw that it was the only way he could go. The street was lined with tall, ominous trees and he heard a raven’s caw in the distance. Hamza could have sworn he felt a cold chill.

He took a breath and calmed himself. He wasn’t three years old, and he could make it across without his parents’ help. The sun was preparing to set, and rain clouds filtered the orangey glow into an eerie cast on Hamza’s face.

He began walking and told himself to stop imagining things. He was glad Musa and Ubaid were not here to watch him make a fool of himself. Sweating over the sunset. He shook his head at his childishness.

But there it was again, that noise. He hoped it was just his brain playing tricks on him, but it was getting louder. He looked around for the source but his ears failed him.

“What is that?” He asked himself, already knowing the answer. Then he shook his head. “No. No, hopefully not. Maybe it’s a –” his brain took an impromptu vacation.

He could no longer deny the doppler effect; in the narrow street, lined with dark trees, the source of the noise was beelining towards him.

He glanced down at his hands, covered in liberal wrist bands. And his shirt, dotted with pinback buttons. Not to mention his kufi, which he had decided to wear that day. And aside from all the counterprotest paraphernalia, the worse case against him was his dark skin. There was no denying what Hamza stood for. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans.

The large crowd was doing their rumbling chant, interjecting it with the occasional bark. “You will not replace us,” he heard their chant. “Hu hu hu,” was the replying chorus.

The group was at the end of the street, having just turned the corner and began to slither towards him—a depraved snake made of posters, swastikas and confederate flags.

Hamza looked around and saw his one man against their hundred. They blocked out everything else like a wave of hatred over his world. Hamza felt a calm wash over him.

He coolly estimated his options. He could outrun them; there was a direct correlation between their racism and their obesity. But something in his chest stopped him from running back up that hill. Firstly, he was sure they had seen him—he had been walking toward them. And more powerfully, he refused to be a coward.

A thought occurred to him: if this was his day to die, then there was no two ways about it. If God was going to take his soul today, then Hamza was going out standing up for what was right. The cold directness of his decision shook a more emotional part of his heart, but it was drowned out by the chanting. Hamza began walking towards them, not making a sound. He was fully prepared to meet, in the best case, hospitalization. He said the name of God and stepped.

Their footsteps ate away at the distance and before he knew it, Hamza was inches away from the man who had spit in his face. He smelled like alcohol. Their deep warbling was deafening in his ears, pounding at him in waves. Hamza stared forward, not meeting any eyes, and still stepped.

And the crowd parted. Not one at a time, but simultaneously as though the whole thing was rehearsed. Or as though they were being forced to walk around him. They created this narrow path for him, a stone making its merry way along a river.

Hamza hid the astonishment that melted into paranoia. They’re going to close in around me, and swarm, he thought. He formulated the ways they would attack him. With their beer bottles, he supposed. Maybe a hate flag to the head? Hamza’s heart was the eye of the storm, as he stepped through tearing ignorance. He heard their rude comments and their curses, but not once did they acknowledge him.

He felt the impulsive nature of youthhood to grab one of them and ask, “Can you see me?” Biting his tongue, he kept walking, invisible.

The entire lot of them walked around him, regrouping once they had passed him. When Hamza made it out on the other side, he inspected his body looking for the wounds. Nothing. He stopped walking and turned back toward the still chanting crowd.

Not one turned to look back at him. Hamza’s face broke into a stupid grin as he turned the corner, looked up at the sky, and felt a newness in his chest. He ran the rest of the way back to Musa and Ubaid.

#hamza #youth #islam #protest #activism #story time #creatve writing #stand up for what's right #writers #humans against hate #stand up #muslim writer #muslim #fiction #youth in america #america #stories

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