#cacti. a flower with a question mark. the only other plant from there that keeps popping up. with its flavor text to boot.

[eggrolls-and-fandoms]

Every day I wake up and think about the Kel/Mari parallels and cry

[bitchiha]

Excuse me sir 👀 May I ask a question?? What kind of flowers do you think Naruto, Kakashi, and Gaara will give their s/o? ❤

Flowers for their s/o

A/N: OHHH I like this it got my brain whirring, I did Narutos with his crush instead of his significant other, but its okay shhh. Also these are kinda short, but I think they’re cute. 

Warnings: not proofread :D <3

Naruto

Naruto gets you flowers to ask you out on your first date.

Gosh this boy wants to give you the prettiest flowers, but he lacks any ability to take care of them. It’s a disaster, truly. He also has zero idea what kind of flowers you’d like, the only kind he knows are like.. dandelions?

He thinks flowers are the perfect way to show you his true feelings. Everyone loves getting flowers, ya know? But, oh Gosh.. He couldn’t wait to see them make you all flustered, to see your lips part way for a surprised giggle as you gently pulled them away from his hands happily. Would you rush back into the house to put them into a vase, or would you bury your nose into them and inhale the loving scent that reflected Narutos feelings for you? Either one would make his heart swell in its constricting cage...

He asks Ino for help. After all she works at a flower shop, but then he just gets flustered because of her bombardment of questions as to who they’re for, so he ends up leaveinh all huffy and puffy.

Wanders around the Leaf looking for another flower shop, but he doesn’t find any. Instead he stumbles upon a patch of flowers peaking out from a bush. As he stares at them, depressed about his failure to buy you your own, he gets an idea. Then suddenly he’s on his knees picking them from the bush as carefully as possible for Narutos standards. He stares for a moment at the silkiness of the petals and how delicate they were in his hands, it reminded him of your skin. He picks a bunch, plucking and plucking like every flower was another confession of his own wild love.

It takes all his patience and care to actually bring the flowers to your doorstep. But in the end he makes it to your doorstep and he hands the white Camellias to you with a proud smile. They had a few petals missing and some scuff marks on them, but it’s the thought that counts. Your face is unreadable at first and as he stands at your doorway a nervous red hue began to colour his cheeks. Did you... did you not like them?

You take the bouquet in your hands, ducking inside to place them down. For a second he thinks you’re gonna close the door on him, but once your hands are free your springing at him. Arms slinging around his shoulders and legs wrapping around his waist, he realizes that you were hugging him after a few moments. As he finally came back to himself, he could hear your thank you’s muffled by your head buried into his neck.

Your reaction makes his heart beat so fast that it felt like he was overheating, he was surprised you weren’t burning. He watched you (with a grin from ear to ear and a face so red it looked painful) as you hurried inside to place them in a vase. Mission successful.

White camellias: a symbol of adoration and love

Kakashi

Kakashi gives you flowers when he wants to remind you of his love.

It was your one year anniversary and Kakashi was spending it cramped in a tent with a very sassy Sasuke and a hot headed Naruto. Kakashi was crushed, not only by the weight of Narutos body colliding with his as Sasuke yanked his leg out of his blanket, kicking the blonde with all the strength his sleepy body had, but he was also crushed by the fact he had been neglecting you for weeks.

He was hardly ever around you anymore, constantly on missions, babysitting Team 7... There was no mistaking your disappointment when had when he told you he was going to miss your special anniversary. He had been cancelling plans with you for a while now, hardly ever able to even make it for Friday date nights — all because of work. You were always so understanding, even when he knew how hard it was for you. And he missed you. He really fucking missed you.

He missed wrapping his arms around you, his face snuggled into your hair as he breathed in that watermelon scented shampoo you always used. The way your plush lips would part in surprise as he caught you off guard, bending down to meet your ear and whisper about all the things he wanted to do to you. It always ended up with a stern look and a scolding “kakashi!” but he knew both of those reactions were half hearted as you pulled yourself closer to him. Your apartment, cramped and tiny but still the most homey place he had ever been...

When he finally gets home after the mission, he’s rushing through the busy streets in search of the Yamanaka flower shop. Roses. Kakashi needed to buy you roses. His face was on fire due to all the teasing he got from Ino. “Ohhh Kakashi-sensei, these are really pretty! Are they for y/n?” She always did this when he came in to buy you flowers, but he never complained. She was the one who told him your favourite flowers were roses, so he decided he could tolerate her.

Then he’d be at your doorstep with a lardge bouquet and a puppy dog look on his face. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy, y/n. And gosh.. I missed you. Please let me make it up to you...”

Queue the best fucking makeup sex ever

bye lol 

Not bye I forgot to add this.. red roses: longing, love or desire

Gaara 

Gaara gives his significant other flowers like they’re boxes of chocolates, they’re the best way for him to communicate his feelings towards you. 

This man is constantly showering you in plants like oh my lord. Your apartment is full of plants, ranging from the bouquets he makes for you all the way to the cacti and succulents decorating every surface of your windowsills. 

They keep you pretty busy too, with having a Kazekage for a boyfriend you often feel neglected, but the plants keep you occupied. Honestly his love of plants grows on you as your relationship goes on. Like whenever he comes over to your house he will make sure that you are keeping the plants healthy and gives you tips and random facts on them. 

The first time Gaara ever decided to give you a flower was when he was going to ask you to be his girlfriend. The two of you were so close it was almost like you were practically dating already, but Temari told Gaara that he needed to solidify the relationship. 

This man was dumbfounded as to how he was supposed to ask you that and when he told Temari of this dilemma she simply suggested he get you some flowers. He felt stupid that he hadn’t though about it before considering that he literally has his own garden that he adores. 

With that, he picks out his favourite and most beautiful flowers that he could find in his garden. He enjoyed putting the bouquet together so much that he couldn’t help but go a little overboard. 

At first he had been so puzzeled as to which flower you may have liked, but then he thought about what kind flower you reminded him of and he realized that you reminded him of all the plants in his garden. All of them had such unique aspects and qualities that made them so wonderful and there was always something about every plant that had his mind pulling towards you. 

So the bouquet he gave you was huge and absoloutely gorgeous. When he gave it  to you at your apartments door step he was so nervous and embarrassed, like oh my gosh he thought he was gonna pass out. But your reaction made all of his butterflies fly away. 

All fucking the flowers ever: Gaaras coping mechanism for his nerves

[star-captain]

Chapter 5: The Long Road

A job well done by fireflower117 and an anon for solving my cipher and discovering the hint! Enjoy the anguish! I think I’m going to do a few more of those, so keep an eye out for more clues left in my favorite cipher.

Red and Avon continue their journey, and while Red wishes Avon would talk to him, Ecto wishes the feeling of not being alone would go away. 

Red belongs to @theguardiansofredland​

Ecto belongs to @ectochoir​

It’s been a week of traveling. Red and Avon had followed the coastline until they could no longer, which is when they turned inwards. They always traveled westward. That’s the direction that Avon feels her home is, though she isn’t one hundred percent sure. They wandered forests, plains, and hills. 

Right now, the pair walk through tall spruce trees, watching the sun as it begins to disappear on the horizon. Red tries to strike up a conversation. “So...uh, what’s your house like? Your home?” 

Avon stays silent, like she always does. The silence draws out, and after a minute, Red sighs. No matter what they try to talk about, Avon never answers. Not unless it’s something pertinent to the journey. If Red asks about where they are, or how far they’ve walked, Avon will speak up. But anything else, any attempt to make conversation, to fill the silence is only met with a cold wall. It’s been a long week for Red. 

Avon knows that Red wants to chat, she hears all the questions from them. But she never answers beyond necessary knowledge. It’s safest that way, for Avon. She’s spent her whole life keeping to herself, this little journey isn’t going to change that. Dragons are solitary creatures, even though it seems kiplings are the opposite. 

They’re an odd traveling pair. In the mornings, Avon leaves to find food while Red packs up. Today, Red was delighted to see Avon had brought back sweet berries from the bushes all around. However, she noticed that Avon’s hands were covered in scratches from the plant. When Red offered to clean them, Avon only tucked her hands under her cloak and began to walk. 

Most of the day they wander, following the sun. Sometimes, while Red is resting her sore feet, Avon takes off into the sky to check their surroundings. Red doesn’t know how Avon can walk so much and not have aching muscles. He thought swimming would have prepared him for this, but Avon rarely slows her consistent pace. The walk is mostly silent, though sometimes Red will begin to hum to himself as he observes his surroundings. He’s never been to places like these before. Where trees grow so tall they could stick out of the ocean, or fields filled with flowers of every color and shape. He tries to strike up conversations, but is almost always shot down with silence. And every time, it hurts a little. Red wants to befriend the mysterious girl, but Avon doesn’t seem interested in being friends. She seems to care about Red’s wellbeing, but not enough to notice that the silence is killing him. That he just wants to be friends, just wants to talk and share stories. Of their homes, of their families, of their life. 

When the sun begins to set, that’s when the two stop. Avon finds a clearing large enough for them, one close to a source of water for Red. Red feels bad that her sea pickles haven’t come in handy. She never realized that they don’t glow out of the water. Avon starts up a fire while Red sets out her bedroll, though Avon always rests on the opposite side of the fire. Red’s noticed that Avon doesn’t sleep much. When she goes to bed, Avon is up- often watching the darkness. And when Red wakes, it’s the same. They share food, cooked fish caught nearby or meat that Avon has hunted. 

“We should stop here.” Avon announces, looking around. It’s a small cove near a river, flat enough for the two to make camp in. Avon makes it official by digging the prongs of her trident into the dirt. Claiming it like her weapon is a flag. 

“This river is so deep. Look at all the fish!” Red grins, peeking below the surface by dunking her head in. This evening is going to be good for her, she can get a swim in. Red always feels relaxed when she’s in the water. It feels like a mother’s arms, cradling her. Protecting her. 

Avon doesn’t answer Red's exclamation, already putting together the fire. They go through the same motions they’ve gone through every night for the past week. Fire, bedroll, dinner. Red takes some time to soak in the river, feeling her scales become healthy and hydrated in the cool water. She swims as deep as she can, and turns over so that she’s laying on the sand. Beyond the surface of the water, she can see the stars. Glittering, distant pinpricks of light. Red is usually too deep under to get a good look at them. They make patterns in the sky, patterns she starts to name as she watches them twinkle. 

A black shape soars across Red’s vision. It startles him at first, but after a second he remembers his traveling partner. Avon must be stretching her wings, or doing ‘patrols’ like she says she does. The fresh water starts to become chilled, the sun no longer warming it. That’s Red’s cue to return to the surface. Just as he suspects, the campsite is empty. Avon’s trident is still stuck in the ground, so she must not be far. She hardly ever lets that leave her sight. Red wonders how she came across it, if she lives in the End. Do they have drowned in the End? 

There’s a shuffle in the leaves behind Red. He turns just in time to witness Avon narrowly avoid hitting one tree, brush past another’s leaves...only to strike into a tall tree on the far side of the camp. The entire tree shutters, leaves falling at a much slower speed than Avon. She comes crashing to the forest floor, her arms still wrapped around her head to protect it from the crash. The mysterious protector rolls down the hill, wings askew and hair full of twigs. 

“I can’t be-leaf what I just saw.” Red giggles out, looming over Avon. She’s still dazed from her crash landing, but it doesn’t take long for her to recapture focus. And immediately, Red sees her pale face become as red as a salmon. 

“That...that was intentional.” Avon stutters out. 

Red’s giggles grow into full laughter as Avon stands up, plucking the twigs from her hair. Red isn’t trying to be mean, but the circumstance was just too much not to crack a laugh. “That was quite the hot landing, how’d you miss a tree that big?” 

“I saw it coming, I was coming in too hot and needed to make a fast landing.” Avon tugs her cloak back into place, dusting dirt from her wings. She stiffens her shoulders and tries breathing to stop the growing red across her face. 

“That was not a landing. That was a crashing.” Red’s doubled over with laughter. This is the first time he’s ever seen Avon not in that stoic, cryptic stature she always carries. She’s actually showing emotion- beyond anger. She’s stumbling over her words, embarrassed that Red saw what he just did.

“It was a rapid deceleration. Not falling.” Avon storms past Red, putting her hands over her cheeks to cover the color that betrays her. She didn’t want Red to see that- ever. Avon is a great flyer. But landings in the Overworld are tough. So many trees and mountains, sometimes she calculates things wrong and ends up hitting them. She’s done it a few times this trip, but luckily Red wasn’t around. This time she wasn’t so lucky. 

“You’re quite the clumsy person, Avon. First you knock yourself out in a shipwreck, and now you crash into a tree!” Red sobers up a bit, wiping tears from the corner of his eyes. “It’s okay, I’m just glad you aren’t hurt.” Red places a hand on Avon’s shoulder. As soon as Avon feels the pressure through her cloak, she raises her wings like curtains. Pushing his hand off of her. 

“I-I’m not clumsy. This is why I prefer the End.” Avon is thoroughly embarrassed. She never wanted anyone to know anything about her. To never let anyone see her as anything less than the protector she is. Nothing less than a dragonheart, and nothing more. She doesn’t want Red to see her as weak in any way. How could Avon possibly be a decent fighter if she can’t even evade a massive tree? She grabs her trident from the ground, keeping her face out of direct firelight as she sits down on the ground. She buffs out marks on her weapon, hoping that maybe if she can get rid of the blemishes on it she can get rid of the embarrassment as well. 

Red sits down on her bedroll, shaking her head. For once, Avon feels like a real person. Not the silent, static soldier she tries to portray. A real being, with layers and flaws and the ability to have emotion. While the crash was embarrassing for Avon, it only reinforced one thing in Red- that there is hope in Avon. She’s not immune to feeling. And it only encourages Red to keep picking away at the tough exterior. 

----------------------------

Ecto feels like she’s constantly being watched. Just over the dune, just beyond the horizon, just below her cacti monuments. It’s not husks, no. They don’t even have eyes to watch her. She feels like someone is drilling right through her back with their gaze. Someone who shouldn’t be in her desert. 

She’s started to make precautions. The door into her home, burrowed in the dunes, is now surrounded by cacti. She has to crawl over them to leave, but she’s used to the spines. She’s a master of plucking them out of her hands. Ecto has no weapons, but she’s been on the lookout since the feeling started. Hoping that a husk would be carrying it’s blade even through death, or a pyramid would have a weapon stashed away. But she’s been out of luck. All she has is her wits, her mind, and her cacti. 

Ecto is clever, she knows if something were to really happen, she’d make it through without a problem. She just hates this feeling of being watched, of some intruder in her home. There’s a village on the other side of the biome, but she never visits. There’s no need for her to. The villagers don’t bother her, and she doesn’t bother them. But they wouldn’t be the ones spying on her, not after all this time. 

This is something new. Every so often, Ecto catches a whiff of that awful scent again. What she smelled that day in the sandstorm. The melted sand footprints are still there, though they’re getting buried by the constant flow of sand. It’s most often near the swirling monument that Ecto feels like she’s being watched. It’s starting to drive her mad. Every evening, she hunts for husks that may have a weapon. She’s always carrying a cactus on her, separate from the cacti she snacks on.

 Tonight, Ecto brushes the sandy grime from her face after killing a horde of husks. The sensation is back as she wanders home. Boring deep into her, though she can never see who is always watching. At the mouth of her home, she suddenly turns around and shouts into the night. “Go away! If you’re looking for a fight then come get it!” 

She’s not backing down. Whoever this is, she’s going to fight for invading her desert and making her so uncomfortable. When she finally sees who it is, they’re going to wish they had brought better gear.

[rosethesongbird]

Scenes from a Cottage

A collection of short scenes from Aziraphale and Crowley’s life in the South Downs. In four parts, inspired by the four cardinal virtues (but here in its entirety). Please enjoy! 

You can read this work on AO3 here.

—Part I: Prudence—  In which Aziraphale has a brown thumb.

prudence (noun): the quality of being prudent; cautiousness; “the ability to discern the appropriate course of action to be taken in a given situation at the appropriate time.”

Aziraphale sighed, standing defeated on the porch in the back garden, plant mister in hand. 

Crowley was going to kill him. 

He had been entrusted—due to his own repeated pleas to assist with the growing botanical garden—with Crowley’s small collection of succulents. He had been given a detailed albeit short description on how to care for them. 

“All you have to do is make sure they get plenty of sun, so they don’t stretch, and don’t overwater,” the demon shook his finger emphatically. “When you water, make sure it wets all the soil so it comes from the drain holes at the bottom, then wait until it’s completely dry before you water again. Understand, angel?” 

“Of course. Sounds easy,” he had said. 

And it was easy! —For several weeks, anyway. Crowley complimented the supple fullness of the leaves, free of a single wrinkle yet firmly attached to their stem. He had even said that as the weather continued to heat up, some of Aziraphale’s succulents may even grow flowers—imagine that! Flowers! Aziraphale could grow flowers! He had never been able to keep any sort of plant alive short of a miracle, and now to be tempted by his own lovely, wonderful flowers!

However, the angel had perhaps bitten off more than he could chew. 

Anathema had told him, at one of their semi-regular meetings for brunch, that you could turn the edges of the leaves a lovely shade of red by “stressing” the plant, even pulling up some lovely photos on her cellular telephone. He had asked her if she wouldn’t mind kindly looking up how, exactly, to achieve this coloring, to which she said “Well, this page says to give them more sunlight, and water them less.” 

Of course, Aziraphale was nothing if not a rule follower, and did exactly what Anathema had said the experts recommended—more sunlight, less water. Possibly to a fault. 

The soil in the pots was bone dry, the once-supple leaves of the plants wrinkling up and falling off, browning on the edges, cracking under the touch of even the tips of soft angelic fingers. And alas, it was time to “face the music,” as his lifelong partner would say. 

“Crowley?” The angel began to worry the ring on his finger, twisting and twirling it around his pinky. “Will you come out here for a moment?” 

The demon sauntered out the door, raising his eyebrows, questioning. His red hair was piled in a bun at the back of his head, haphazard but effortlessly fashionable. 

“I, um,” the angel pointed to the withering selection of cacti, too ashamed to speak further on the state of the vegetation. 

“Oh,” Crowley crouched, eye level with the echeveria, brow furrowing, thin fingers gently touching the perishing plant. “What happened?” 

“I, er, well, I wanted red leaves,” he muttered, voice growing soft as Crowley rose, slowly, menacingly, back turned to the angel. He pressed his lips together, grimacing, waiting anxiously for whatever was coming. 

Crowley took a deep breath, shoulders rising, then falling. He cracked his neck, head tilting to one side then the other, straightening to his full formidable height before exploding in a shower of epithets. Aziraphale shut his eyes tightly, turning his head away from the noise. 

“You’re an idiot, an absolute nob, and you should FEEL BAD! You’re WORTHLESS! You DISGUST  me, and I wish I had NEVER brought you HOME!” 

Aziraphale felt this was really a bit too far, I mean after all it was just a plant, and this seemed very harsh seeing as they had known each other for so long—a tear began to threaten appearing at the corner of his eye—and he had begun to believe that Crowley really did love him, and now—

“Grow. BETTER!” 

The demon turned on his heel. “All done, angel. Next time, it may be prudent to let me know before you nearly kill them.” He strode into the cottage, gently shutting the door behind him, any and all malice in his serpentine body drained.

Aziraphale’s mouth fell open. 

The succulents were back to their healthy state, leaves arranged in flawless rosettes, the likes of which he had not seen since the Garden. 

And best of all?

The very tips of the tender leaves were beginning, before his eyes, to turn ever so slightly… 

Red. 

Fin.

—Part II: Justice— In which Crowley and Aziraphale keep a delicate balance.

justice (noun): the quality of being fair and reasonable; fairness; “the most extensive and most important virtue”

Aziraphale turned the page of the aged book in his lap, seated on the cushy loveseat Crowley had insisted upon bringing from the bookshop. His eyes danced over the yellowing pages, relaying tales of times long past, long-forgotten words, ancient oration. The angel eagerly licked his lips, brimming with joy over being the first person in years—centuries, perhaps—to drink up the knowledge contained within. 

Ah, yes. Drink. 

He reached for his mug on the side table, unable to tear his gaze away from the tome. His hand brushed the corner of the vessel—he had meant to grasp the winged handle, but had instead, in his zeal, accidentally slapped the porcelain rim; hot, rich, milky cocoa coming to the edge of the cup as it slipped from its coaster, sweet-smelling elixir spilling out, oh no—

A choked gasp burst from the angel’s lips as Crowley walked through the small living room, raising his hand to snap his fingers, not even breaking stride on his way to the garden. 

The mug was returned to its coaster, once half-full, now just full enough that it would not spill over; the precious volume in Aziraphale’s lap untouched by even a drop of the sugary beverage. 

He closed his mouth (having fallen open in shock at the near catastrophe he had just witnessed) and raised his eyes over his glasses, a coy smile flitting across his face as he watched the demon saunter out the back door, not even glancing back to the angel to watch for his reaction. He turned to the next page, and—carefully this time—took a sip from his mug.

Well, then. 

The ball was now in his court. 

~

Crowley could have sworn it was there yesterday. He scratched his head, standing bewildered in the gravel driveway of the cottage. 

After returning from a trip to the flat in Mayfair—Aziraphale had finally relented, allowing him to bring the enormous throne chair home, and getting it inside the Bentley was just a minor miracle, really—he had noticed a long, white, hideous, scratch on his beloved car. He had been so angry at the time that he stomped into the cottage without even touching the accursed mark, thoroughly confounding Aziraphale with swear words even he wasn’t sure how he knew. After a good night’s sleep, he had felt more optimistic, and went out determined to diagnose the scratch and whether it could be buffed out or would require a miracle. Whatever the answer, no price was too great for the Bentley. 

Then to tie his hair back, roll up his sleeves, put on his work pants, and find nothing? Not even a hint of a scratch, and the century-old car shining like the day she was manufactured? 

He opened the door. The, er, reduced in size throne chair lay across the back seats, exactly where Crowley had left it. The upholstery smelled like fresh leather, every fingerprint on the steering wheel and radio absent, even the ignition was free of key scratches. Not a single molecule of dust rested on the dash, and the dirt that always seemed to permeate the loops of the carpeted floor mats (short of a miracle) was curiously missing. 

Short of a miracle. 

Ngk.

The question was not who, or how, but when. The demon and the angel had spent all the time since Crowley had come home together. When did he have a chance to do the miracle? 

No matter. Such a good angel deserved a reward for looking after his partner’s most prized possession. The only remaining question was how to make the two equal. 

~

“Hey, angel?” The front door’s creaking sound mysteriously silenced, halfway through its “oil me” cry. 

“Yes, dear?” 

“Did you…fix up the Bentley?” 

The angel turned to look over his shoulder, standing at the kitchen counter cutting a peach, half-smiling as his gaze met shiny black glass out of the corner of his eye. “Hm. I don’t recall doing much of anything involving the Bentley in recent days,” he returned his focus to the sweet snack. “Why do you ask?” 

A smudge Crowley had intended to wipe from his glasses really must have never been there in the first place, slit pupils unable to find it again.

“Oh, no reason,” Crowley’s serpentine body sidled up behind the angel, seeing through the teasing ruse. “Just thought it was strange that the scratch was gone, and perhaps I would want to repay whoever might have…assissssted,” he hissed, as the hairs on the back of Aziraphale’s neck stood up from the sensation. The peach was suddenly so juicy, its pit a lot smaller than the angel might have previously thought—and the fruit so tender you would almost think it fell apart into thin slices before even touching the paring knife. 

“Well, whoever gets rewarded will be very lucky indeed, won’t they?” A lock of hair about to fall into Crowley’s eyes pulled itself back into the bun. 

“Oh, yes, of course.” Aziraphale’s mug, sitting on the side table next to another weathered book, filled itself with piping hot tea. “After all, it’s only fair.” 

Fin.

—Part III: Temperance— In which Crowley holds back.

temperance (noun): the practice of self-control, abstention, discretion, and moderation of desire; also known as “restraint.” 

Hell was not exactly a friendly place to be. 

I mean, it was kind of their thing, really, down in Hell, to be nasty, rude, and angry all the time, hurting each other for no reason, feeding each other to rats and dogs for fun, pushing and shoving in that literally godforsaken hallway, a well-placed elbow to the ribs knocking the wind out of you when you least expected it. 

But this? 

Ngk.

Not even Hell was so cruel as this. 

Oh, no. This form of torture was something else entirely. Sharing a damned—er, sorry, blessed—domicile with a soft, tender-hearted bastard of an angel, peering at that little upturned nose over a book, fluffy white-gold curls brushing your face accidentally when he nods off (claiming, of course, that he doesn’t need to sleep, although he does enjoy a nap from time to time), yellow serpentine eyes trying desperately to tug themselves away from the curve of his perfectly ample bottom as he walks to the kitchen for another mug of cocoa or a slice of cake. 

Beelzebub themself could only dream of being so wicked. 

Gentle touches of soft fingers brushing a lock of red hair out of your eyes. 

A choked cry of “Slow down, Crowley!” escaping flushed lips when you drive—well, when you drive at all. 

And—oh, Satan—what a demon might do for a sweet, sweet glimpse past the ubiquitous bow tie, behind the stark white buttons; a peek at the hint of chest hair, the rolls of soft pink skin cultivated by six thousand years of hedonistic indulgence interrupted by only the most perfect belly button one might ever see in their entire life, to put their corporeal hands all over—

“Crowley? Are you quite alright?” 

A pair of eyes—eyes you could practically dive into, glacier blue—ripped Crowley out of his inner monologue. 

“I’m fine. Tickety-boo. Why?” 

“Well, it’s just… you were, um, as you say, ‘zoning out.’” 

“Oh, you know. Just thinking.” 

“I was thinking myself, actually; I’ve just been reading, and pondering how utterly fascinating Saint Augustine’s idea of time is, for a mortal, and—“

Aziraphale started up what was certain to be a long comment on Saint Whatever’s idea of something-or-other, he could go for hours on stuff like this, a perfect opportunity for Crowley to get lost in the eye crinkles and rosy cheeks. He needed only to nod, saying “Ah, I see,” and “Fascinating,” every so often, and the angel would be spurred on. 

He had always felt this way, since the angel admitted to him that he gave the flaming sword away, a thousand lifetimes ago. It had only gotten worse as time went on, when fleeting meetings by chance in Roman restaurants became Bentley rides and lunches at the Ritz. 

And then the Bentley rides and lunches at the Ritz became sharing a whole house (they technically shared a bed, also, but since Aziraphale didn’t sleep at night, it was Crowley’s bed in practice) and enjoying home-cooked meals together. 

That was when the real torture began. 

It took all the self-control Crowley had—an odd thing for a demon to have, really—to not be kissing every heavenly centimetre of those tempting lips every second of every day. It was taking all the self-control he had right now to not halt the angel’s monologue with the kind of kiss where you can hear your teeth clashing together, tongues aching to dance with each other, oh Satan help him, Aziraphale must taste so sweet—

Interrupted once again, this time by the sensation of the softest thing he had ever touched gracing his forehead, blood rising to cheeks and ears with the realization of what just happened. 

Aziraphale’s lips broke contact with Crowley’s forehead as he pulled back, blushing also, smiling a loving smile the likes of which Crowley hadn’t seen since 1941. 

“You’re such a good listener, my dear,” said the angel, standing up from the loveseat to retrieve a cookie from the kitchen. 

As soon as he was out of earshot, Crowley sighed, releasing a breath he didn’t know he was holding. 

It paid off to be restrained. 

Fin.

—Part IV: Courage— In which Aziraphale and Crowley overcome their fears.

courage (noun): the ability to do something that frightens one; also termed fortitude, forbearance, strength, endurance, and the ability to confront fear, uncertainty, and intimidation.

“I know it’s unlikely, but what if—“

“Angel, if you keep on ‘what-if’-ing you’re going to drive yourself insane. And me, you’ll drive me insane too.” 

“But, we should be prepared! For, well, you know,” 

“I know what?” the demon poked his head out of the covers. It was the middle of the night, and Aziraphale was standing in the doorway, glasses pushed up onto white-gold curls that were sticking out every which way, uncharacteristically unkempt for the angel. “Can we please talk about this tomorrow?” 

Aziraphale started wringing his hands, frantically worrying the ring on his finger. “I’m just… oh, I’m terribly worried, Crowley.” 

Crowley sighed, sitting up out of the bed, bare chest and freckle-kissed shoulders emerging from the comforting depths of dark grey sheets. He patted the space next to him on the bed, tilting his head in a gesture he hoped was communicating “get over here, you lovely, wonderful, bastard.” The angel plunked himself down unceremoniously onto the fluffy comforter, lips pressed together, shoulders slumping. 

“Look, angel. We can’t—“ he pinched the bridge of his nose. “We can’t live out the rest of our whole lives wondering when the hammer will come down.” 

“I know. But you simply can’t tell me to just—go back to how things were before.” 

Crowley smirked. They sat there silently, thinking. He wasn’t wrong, after all. They were in purgatory, for lack of a better term. They had—for now—bested the powers of heaven and of hell, joining the growing ranks of earth. The world had changed—though the vast, vast majority of the people living on it had not noticed—and there was no going back. How were they to know what was to come next? They had lived their whole lives to this point knowing, in the back of their minds, that someday it all would end, spectacularly and with great fanfare, and then when that actually came, it… didn’t. And it was, for the most part, thanks to them. They had stopped it, together.

Together. 

“Aye, there’s the rub,” as Hamlet would say. (Crowley would maintain that he still preferred the funny ones.) 

Aziraphale had been… contemplating, as of late, this togetherness. It had brought him great joy, and yet… he could not shake the feeling that eventually this would all end, when Heaven or Hell decided they had had enough with this foolishness and they were really going to end things once and for all, angel and demon be buggered. He had always been a worrier, hedonistic joys of earthly life being mere distractions from the thoughts buzzing around that never quieted. It was almost easier, before he and Crowley were so… linked. He had less to lose. Now? Oh, now. Now this was all. This was everything. This life, where they lived here—together—on earth as though they were people, living like they would die someday, when the alternative was unthinkable. “For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.” “Shuffling off this mortal coil” was a preferable alternative to separation, an eternity in their questionably corporeal spaces knowing the other is there and not able to reach them. 

And yet Aziraphale couldn’t close his mind to the thought, as Crowley lay there next to him, in the bed that they shared (in name only, Aziraphale still refused to sleep), that maybe the demon would be better off not… with him. Maybe then Crowley could enjoy his little part of the world without Aziraphale’s meddling, and avoid the meddling of Heaven and Hell in the process. A tear threatened to fall from the angel’s eye as his train of thought sped up, uncontrolled, hurtling toward a bridge that was most definitely out. 

“Aziraphale, I—“

“Crowley, I��ve been thinking—Oh,” 

After all the silence, they had interrupted each other. 

“You go first,” said Aziraphale, politely as ever. Maybe Crowley would be thinking the same as him, and spare him from having to confront his fear. 

Crowley laughed, looking intently at the covers. His laugh had a certain quality to it—nervousness? apprehension, maybe?—whatever it was, it was highly unusual. Aziraphale steeled himself for what he knew was coming. “I think I’m moving out,” or “I’m not sure about all thissss,” with the telltale hiss of Crowley saying something he didn’t want to say, at all.

“Angel, I—“ he swallowed something in his throat, an unwelcome emotion threatening to rise—“Well, I don’t know how to say this. It feels so, I don’t know. Wrong? Right? But I’m sure of it, even still,” 

Aziraphale agreed, nodding silently. It felt so wrong, having to leave this all behind. He really had enjoyed it, while it lasted. But at the same time, protecting Crowley was the right thing to do. 

“Aziraphale, will you marry me?” 

Aziraphale gasped. His train of thought came to a sudden, screeching halt, thankfully just before falling off the cliff it was heading toward. That was not what he had expected. It appeared the momentum of his train had transferred itself to Crowley, as the demon exploded in a wholly unnecessary explanation, cheeks and nose reddening as he spoke.

“I mean, I don’t have a ring or anything, and I know what we have now is-is special, sure, but I can’t help but feel like I want something to… express it. Our, um, relationship, I mean.” 

Aziraphale’s jaw hung open, still in shock. He lost the battle with his corporation, the battleground being his tear ducts. “Crowley, I—you—“ 

Crowley waved his hand flippantly, turning away from the angel. “No, it’s fine. I know, I go too fast, and I’m sorry. Just… forget I said anything.” 

They sat silently again for a moment, Crowley’s jaw clenching, Aziraphale still furiously processing what his partner had just said. 

“Crowley, of course I will,” he smiled, eyes still pouring out hot tears, apparently not getting the memo that he was happy now, they could stop; instead making the angel cry in earnest. He haphazardly wiped them away with his sleeve. “And here I was, thinking maybe you would be happier without me—“ 

He was interrupted by a gentle, tender kiss; the touch of thin bony hands on his cheek, wet with saline water. 

“Angel, you’re the only reason I wanted to keep this stupid world in the first place,” Crowley whispered, against Aziraphale’s still-trembling lips. “It’s all bollocks except the parts with you in them.” 

Aziraphale touched his forehead to Crowley’s. “Oh, Gabriel will be absolutely incensed,” he laughed.

“And we’ll let him be,” said Crowley, mischievously. “He can’t intimidate us anymore. Not when we’re ballsy enough to get married, of all things. None of them can.” 

The angel released his breath, and with it, all the tension he had been unknowingly holding. “They can’t scare me,” he said. “They’ll have my fiancé to deal with.” 

Crowley gave the man another kiss before burrowing back into the covers of the bed. 

“You know, I was scared you’d say no.” 

“Well,” said Aziraphale, taking his rightful place under the covers, clicking off the light, glasses lying on the nightstand. “It was very courageous of you to ask.” 

Crowley hummed in response, already falling back to sleep, exhausted by the release of tension and use of mental energy. 

“Goodnight, Aziraphale.”

“Goodnight, my love.” 

Fin. 

[mullersturtleneck]

Sticking With the Schuylers (2:2)

Hi! I’m here! I’m starting one million things soon and my life is about to be utter chaos but I’m trying really hard not to let this story die-I have always had a bad habit of abandoning too soon. 

I saw Hamilton over the weekend (finally. I worked my ass off for those damn tickets.) and I felt so much personal inspiration. But I also felt so much for this story-these characters-their portrayal and where they could go. There so much more to be said here, that’s why there’s a book 2! 

If you’d like to be put onto the tag list for this book, let me know. Until then, here’s another piece of this very, very long love letter to Eliza Schuyler.

1  2  3  4   5   6   7   8   9   10   1112   I  13  14   15   16   17   18A  18B   18C I19   20   21   22   23   24   25  26   27  28   29   I  30  31  32 33 34  35 36  3738  39 40  41  42 I 43  44  B 45 46  47 48 49  50 ---------- 2:1

Happiness looks impossible without you here.

Through the glass, the chill and the snow and the impassable fog of white

Through the storm, you are here.

I am here. We are here.

There has never been a lovelier word than us when it hops into the air from your lips, dripping sweetness, gold as hard-sought honey I selfishly store for storm filled days.

It is a sweetness I will never grow accustomed to.

In your eyes, I am enough.

I have never been enough before.

To sweet kisses and small smiles; to the harmony of your voice reaching my eager ears, healing.

To you, my Eliza.

                 Alexander likes to write her letters. Sometimes they’re short, a stick-figure representation of himself with a smile bigger than his face, a few choice words like good luck or miss you or love you. He writes down things he sees throughout his day, keeps them in his pocket in a list he brandishes the next time they’re able to talk. There isn’t much organization to the way he pens his scatter-thoughts onto paper for her, only in that it has become a custom for him to do such a thing. Sometimes the words come on napkins, slightly crinkled with a stain on a corner, circled with a sorry written over artfully formed espresso droplets. (She finds them artful, almost provocative with some of the words that trace their outline. Her friends find her collection of napkins and cut-outs from coffee cups to be a bit much. She doesn’t care.)

The best letters are the ones Eliza finds later than intended, another habit Alexander has grown accustomed to. Instead of giving her each of his thoughts at one time he hides them, stuffs them in drawers or shoes or the pockets of her jackets when he thinks she won’t notice. He doesn’t need her immediate feedback-or any feedback at all, really-but he receives it with a smile and a boost to his own morale. She’ll call, or text, to let him know that she’s found one.

               “It’s number 104, on the back of a gum wrapper in that big tan bag I bring to class all the time. I almost threw it away, Alex. What would I have done without being able to see a word like temptress written in your handwriting?”

               He numbers the letters, starting with the back of a takeout menu on the night they’d first met. They grow from 1 to 10 to 100 as rapidly as his feelings progress; alarming and sudden, and with the rushing of thoughts he can’t keep to himself. He doesn’t know that she’s keeping them until 150. He’s in the room when she finds it, wedged between the pages of her well-worn copy of Pride and Prejudice. She reads through the shorter phrases then, his words fighting their way off of the page to wrap her in protection. She grins, kissing his cheek and moving to her closet.

It’s there, in a powder-blue box hidden behind a stack of jeans, that she puts the folded up literature. He peers over in her direction to find the contents of the box nearly spilling out, gum wrappers and napkins and haphazardly folded sheets of paper gathered in one space. She tucks the wrapper within its mess and sneaks the box back to its original place, and when she’s turned around again his eyes are wide, struck with amazement.

               “Were those my letters?”

               “All of them, except for the ones I’m sure I haven’t found yet. I’m going to need a bigger box pretty soon.” Her voice lifts, presents itself with air that fills her lungs and lifts her soul, allows her to brandish that smile. It’s that smile that’s produced his thousands of words. It is the perfect, silent instrument; whether it is accompanied by  bell-toned laughter or sleepy yawns, a hand in his hand or her lips on his, it sends beautiful tones of bliss to his once worn-down soul. It’s that smile that produces letters 1 through 150, and it’s that smile that will produce hundreds more.

               She finds letter 160 in the middle of a session; there, in between the neatly placed  layers of books and pens and charcoals within her canvas bag, is a handed-back math test graded in red pen with a 98%, Alexander Hamilton written in his scratched handwriting at the top. At the edge of the numbers and red-inked markings are words for her.

               Happiness looks impossible without you here;

               She smiles to herself, skims the writing and lets his words find their way to her heightened stress. It hasn’t been long since she’d found the last letter, handed over to her between classes earlier in the morning. These things have a way of keeping their meaning, staying sacred in the way that they appear to her by more than just serendipity. His words come to her in the times she needs them, whether their meaning directly ties to her current stressors. Eliza interprets them in fortune-cookie manner, taking his words and stretching them to match what he would say if he was there at the moment she found them.  

Happiness looks impossible without you here;

There are two big potted plants in the corner of Lisa’s office. One sits on the windowsill, overlooking the darkness of the winter nights and the fog that rolls steadily in with continually changing temperatures. There are lush green plumes of aloe, bold and thick, accompanied in a long ceramic planter by two rounded cacti. One is smaller, symmetrical, with spines like peach-fuzz on boys who played hockey for their private school and pretended they didn’t smoke weed in the locker room. The other is larger, a bit grander. It stands perfectly in its place; performing, almost. In the months Eliza had gone over to the window in this room, stood and studied the cacti while feigning thought and killing time, she’d seen the bloom of a sharply hued flower, full and pink. She’d come back the next week to a barren cactus and a lecture about her matching journal.

She hadn’t written much of anything; a few sparse details lined the pages, although she carried the book in her bag consistently. There were things to be written, of course; a barrage of memories often came while speaking to Lisa, or on her way back from a session. Most often they came at night, when Eliza had hung up her video call with Alex and rolled over in bed, sighed the breath of loneliness that had only come with their parting. And then the wall hits.

They come in groupings of two or three, typically; small things, little moments she’d tucked away in the far reaches of memory. They’re dusty, of course, but as the sessions wear on and the healing increases, the recollections are polished.

               From her side of the fog, there is nothing; he is there, but as a presence she remembers with fondness. When she tries to reach out to him her limbs become numb, her mind littered with phantom movements and phrases and calls for help that never quite articulate. As the fog increases it seems to swallow her whole, carrying her bell-toned laughter and waist-flared dresses, her heels and curled hair and sunny optimism. There isn’t much to life within the fog; voices murmur, their words unrecognizable as she struggles to take note of their lectures. Her body aches and groans with each movement, pulsing and throbbing as if to scream, to beg for breaks she gives willingly each time. There is far more sitting within the fog-far more staring and numbing and waiting for the time to change to another day, a better day. In the fog, there aren’t many better days.

               Her journal is clouded in waves of grey paint; it’s the way of communication that lends itself most easily to Eliza, who has not spoken much at all the past few weeks. Each session begins with Lisa’s thumbing through the pages, wordless as its contents are, taking notes-always taking notes-of the greyscale patterning of paints. She attempts to ask, more than once-

“What’s the significance of this…of this murky grey covering all of these pages?” Eliza shrugs.

“Have you written anything yet? Have you remembered?”

She shrugs again, and for a moment the fog dissipates. There are flashes of red- a dark and brilliant merlot spilling through the steam. Her ears begin to ring, sharp and overbearing, taking over each of her senses with boundless amounts of pain. There is no way to decipher one brutal noise over the other; a cacophony, a curse. Her body burns and her head aches with the allowance of the flood, aches until she forces the fog to drive everything back once more. In the fog, there is no communication-but in the fog, there is no pain.

Are hearts meant to endure pain?

She ponders the question often; there is a surprising amount of moments to think throughout the day, even when Eliza has made it a point to keep herself busy. Thoughts can occupy the small, empty space at the forefront of her mind with an alarming colonization. Her spirit is wounded. She can see the expanse of Lisa’s room even when she is away from it, hear the splashing of the fountain or the curated racing of a black-inked pen on a yellow legal pad. She wonders often in these moments what kinds of things could be written on these lines, especially when she is barely able to complete a coherent thought for herself. What kinds of things could this stranger be inferring about her silence, her struggle?

Eliza finds silence to be her best company; if she does not speak about the pictures that resurface from the corner of her mind, there is a stubborn sort of hope that in time, they will be erased. If she does not permanently pen the thoughts to paper, or paint them as a master making careful copies, the pain will vanish as it is forgotten. It works, for a while. Eliza lets the fog roll forward as she pours her soul into her work, hard-headed and determined. For a moment in time she is unwavering, a week of compliments and successes, passed back projects that echo the success of forgetting.

Even this does not last long. The first week of February brings Lisa’s new assignments;

“Sit down in the silence. Sit, and think. Let yourself feel. Write it down.”

She nods. She tries. There is one night, straight after Lisa’s request, where Eliza attempts to recall everything she’d pushed aside. She carves out the time-it isn’t hard to come by now that she has to live alone. Setting out the barely altered canvas of the journal she had been given, Eliza stares at its pages with tear-brimmed eyes. The night’s session had been spent in a similar manner, Lisa guiding her through an exhausting meditation process, Eliza talking through a sharpening recollection of a night just a year before.

               There were words, slanderous and fierce, spilling from his drunken lips with the last few droplets of vodka he’d yet to consume. She can barely hear them over the searing strength of physical pain; a row of fingerprints already reddened on both arms, a raised line of red along the left side of her shoulder. The echo of bone against wood fills the apartment, but the chilling sound is only momentary. He muffles her cries with a hand over her mouth. She lets her ideals of romance consume her thoughts, taking over in silent cries wondering why this moment doesn’t feel as ‘right’ or ‘whole’ as what she’d been taught to believe.

“Shut up! You wouldn’t have been playing games with me if this isn’t what you wanted.”

Words fly from his mouth like weapons, hitting her harder than the physical wounds as they consume her naivety; maybe there is truth within him. Maybe she had been teasing him. Maybe she deserves it. She lets him take over. She closes her eyes and prays.

There’s a song Eliza’s mother used to sing to them each night, all three girls tucked up to their chins in Angelica’s full-sized bed after story time. They’d be a mass of tangled limbs and hair falling into each other’s faces, three girls whose mother whispered words like ‘sweetheart’ and ‘honey’ and brushed her hand over each of their rosy cheeks. It was some sort of catholic hymn, something sweet and slow. It talked of miracles and love and a happiness that has finally been found. Her mother used to tell her girls that she was “generously blessed with all the right things” before tucking them all in, side-by-side, a sisterhood crafted by fate rather than biology. They’d snuggle close, all three sisters, because even as children they understood the comfort of each other’s company. Eliza would find herself between Peggy and the wall, listening to their mother’s docile voice with drooping eyelids and a blissful soul, falling asleep far earlier than her sisters. She’d fight to stay up for the hymn, however, even when her tiny body ached from the playground playing, picture coloring tasks of the day. She’d always wait until the last resounding “all my love” to let her eyes shut and her body curl into Peggy’s.

The night she began to remember the things she’d shut out, her mother’s song flew into her head. Eliza disguised her tears just long enough to call her, to ask her to sing the song one more time. Catherine, taken back by the sudden request and the time of night, only let the confusion last for a heartbeat. She sighed into the song as if she were meant to sing it-it’s her song, she has taken command of it by the way it has engrained itself into her daughters’ memories. For a moment, Eliza is just a child tucked up to her chin in blankets, soothed by the breathing of her sisters and her mother’s forehead kisses. For a moment, she’d forgotten the way she’d closed her eyes to that song just a year before, with James’s weight over her body and resignation in her soul.

She’d forgotten.

Pain had been an abstract feeling until it became her normality. Each day became a choice; do I walk the line of a fog-filled existence, or do I let my bare feet touch the hot coals to get to the other side? For a while the coals had been enticing; the reddened embers underneath hadn’t seemed like much, and the promise of a brighter future felt closer and more attainable. But after the first night, after the entrapment of vivid memories and calling her mother, Eliza chose to escape into the fog.

Sometimes, Lisa asks her about Alex. Eliza begins to notice this early on, intuitive and curious about her current standings as if this were a classroom instead of a place of healing. She answers, recounting calls in the middle of the night when he couldn’t settle on a phrase for his writing, or the voice he would use when ordering takeout over the phone. Eliza recognizes the use of these questions, the way Lisa herself seems to sit back a bit when she asks them. The room expands a bit during these moments, broadening and brightening and making room for her to breathe. It’s lighter when she’s able to pull out her letters, share what she has chosen as she recites his words through widening grins.

“The letters make my day. It’s incredible-I can be coming home from class, hanging up my coat and there’s one in my pocket. The other day, there was one in the fridge with the eggs. Even today, with this one falling out of my bag…he knows when I’m down, and he’s always the first one there to help me back up. And he doesn’t do it for recognition, or for his own benefit.” It helps her breathe just thinking about her tucked-away moments of happiness, the way they brighten and lift and pull her away from everything for a bit. She settles back on the couch, holds the old math test in both hands as precious cargo as Lisa allows her a moment of reflection. When she looks up the air hangs a bit heavier, almost unnoticeable except for Lisa’s near silent sigh, not so well hidden from Eliza’s skills of perception. She’s tempted to ask what might be bothering her therapist but stops herself. There is still a bubble of safety. This zone of comfort is an enjoyable break from the unavoidable.

“What does Alex think about your separation?”

A question that knocks her from her sanctuary; his name has not yet been wrapped around bad feelings, and her intention to keep him from the association with words like hurt or sad has been slowly slipping from her grasp from the moment she’d met him. She shrugs at first, folding and unfolding the latest letter in busied fingers. Eliza watches each intricate crease of the paper come together seamlessly, then fall back apart with her own actions. It feels unfair.

“He’s…dealing with it. We’re working through it.”

“Do you talk about it often with him?” Eliza, unwilling to let the initial desire to hide  away upon the swell of emotions running relays through her torso, hums as she waits to formulate her response.

“I really believe in communication. Honesty is the one thing I’ve always tried to have…”

“…but?”

“But there are things I hesitate with. Like, when our appointment is over and I call him and he asks how everything went…sometimes, I don’t know what to say.”

“What do you want to say?”

“That’s just it, I don’t know. Sometimes I want to tell him everything, if I feel okay and I learned something new, or if you’ve told me that something might help us as a couple.” Eliza takes a pause, training her eyes on the flowerless cactus on Lisa’s windowsill. The hum of the cheap electric fountain has become a permanent installation to her own breathing pattern, it seems, and she rides with the feeling as she sorts herself out. “Sometimes, I don’t want to say anything at all. Honestly, there have been days where I’ve left here feeling ten times worse than when I came, and I just want to go home and process it all on my own.”

“And do you?”

“Usually, but I just-I feel so bad. I don’t want to drag him down, but I also don’t want to leave him in the dark. It’s the communication, I just…I end up feeling like I’m keeping secrets from him.”

Lisa nods. She jots a few things down, Eliza envisioning the connection of lines and patterns that indicate an answer, some kind of sign. Still shaking over the earlier memories, it is a welcomed moment of reprieve to sit and watch her therapist work. It’s the way she brings it back to James that makes her so brilliant, so compatible to Eliza’s past and her mindset. She explains subconscious actions as if they were second nature. It’s not you, it was him. You’re not a bad person if you don’t share, you’re human. Alexander should understand, if his notes are any indication of how he feels about you. It’s worth a conversation. It’s this validation that carries her through, the thought that her actions have a cause and a purpose. That validation is freeing, and Eliza breathes a sigh of relief just by the nurturing look the crosses over Lisa’s kind eyes.

It’s become a task to leave the office, shrug on her coat and fasten each button, carry herself down to a car she’s called to give her time to sit and process everything. This night is no different; the relief is still there, but is coupled with the heavy exhaustion of remembrance-of the journal in her bag covered in numbing greys and violent flashes of red. It is a mark of her life, the lack of structure and the busy rush of painting, not too much but just enough to relay her feelings without having to write the words that would seal them to paper. It’s a step, toddling and nervous. The wave is still there, rolling along and carrying her mindlessly with it, but her head pokes above the water. Fresh air has never felt more relieving.

“Hey, how was it tonight?”

“It was okay…” Her hesitation leaves a lingering pause on the line between them. The tires of her car roll gently along the pavement, occasionally squishing across piles of slushed snow and mud, browning them and wrecking their perfect, freshly fallen illusion. “I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it-not all of it, anyway.”

“Okay.” It is an immediate answer, one that comes in crisp through the line and tips up the corner of her mouth. “Want me to come over, or would you rather be alone?”

“Can we just talk tonight? Tell me a story?”

When Alex leads in to a tale from his economics class and some crazy feud with an upper-classman, when she leans her head over to feel the cold of the window on her cheek, there is something else that stirs within the roaring wave and the relief of Lisa’s words. She smooths a rosy pink in circular patterns over a fresh page of her journal, letting it build on the edge of her hand. The pigment is fresh, without a dent made on its surface although blacks and greys and reds within the same package have been replaced multiple times. Hope isn’t a feeling she’s been able to manifest on paper, but the look of its warmth within a wash of despair is something to hold on to.

[kitkat1003]

Your hair must be fall, it’s changing like the leaves.

@alcordraws @snarkyowl @egoiplier-shenanigans

So this is basically an after the whole BMC plot ends and follows Jack(Rich) in the aftermath of everything

Sean basks in the light of the sun and the fresh air, breathing in and leaving the noxious scents of hair products and sweat behind as the door to the hair salon swing shut. He feels…lighter, if anything, reborn into something that feels right.  He doesn’t know if he should feel this way; after all, it’s only hair.

Well, it’s more than that.

Green has colored his life for nearly two years.  Green and black, back to back.  Fear grips him when the colors appear too close, too sudden, and he knows it’s silly but he can’t help how the two hues send panic shooting up his arms, just like he can’t help listening for another voice or checking behind him for a flickering program that is no longer there.

Well, again, that’s not entirely true.

Freshman year had been…hard. Moving from one country to another as high school’s open maw grabbed you in isn’t an easy adjustment.  People mocked him for his accent, his loudness, his everything, so he shut himself down, didn’t speak, and became invisible. Even then, it wasn’t enough. Whilst the losers like Mark and Tyler and Ethan hung out and rolled with the punches, Sean was left alone to handle the bullies who tripped and belittled him.  They all wondered when his burgeoning alcohol addiction would spring in, when he’d grow orange hair, when he’d show them his gold.  The jeers and physical abuse left him defenseless, and the voices, the people in his head he’d created didn’t help.

‘A change was just what ze doctor ordered’

‘It’s like before!  Presto!  Like magic!’

‘Heroics come in small forms, like making changes in yourself’

‘You look good, dude!’

They whisper now; what used to be loud, almost mean-spirited suggestions tumbling over each other are now quiet, uplifting comments.  Robbie and JJ don’t talk, but Robbie groans in approval, a near humming sound, and he can hear JJ clapping excitedly.  The original four all learned from before, when Jackie told him that his indecipherable accent wasn’t becoming of a hero, when Marvin told him that disappearing was the best act, when Schneep told him that he perhaps could use medical assistance to fix himself, when Chase told him that he had to be cooler.

They were listening to his thoughts and trying to help as best they could, but they weren’t sure exactly how, and the eventuality was that their comments hurt more than they helped. They know now, from the events that transpired with the SQUIP, what they could’ve done.

‘Jack, what on earth are you doing?’

‘You told me to change, and I did!  What more do you want from me?!’  

‘Yez, but ze things zat you have been doing with Anti, it-‘

‘What, it makes me cool?  He makes me popular!  People like me now!’

‘But, bro, he’s-‘

‘Anti’s done more for me than you four have!  Y’know what, I’m done!  I’m done listening to any of you!  Come back when you’ve decided to care about me!’

Robbie and JJ came later. They are quiet, reflective of the moments when Sean needs to settle.  There is Jack and there is Sean and Sean cannot be everything Jack is sometimes, but that’s okay.  No one minds. No one who matters, anyway.  Sean has learned to distinguish those whose opinions matter, and those whose opinions don’t.  Bullies don’t matter.  People he doesn’t know don’t matter.  His friends matter(and he has them now; friends!).

Anti is silent on the change.

Sean had been dreading the appointment because of said murderous glitch.  Even if the SQUIP program had been deleted from his body, even if Anti no longer had the power to control him, Sean still feared the screaming, the demands to change it back.  Yet, there are none.  Anti has no complaints, and the corner reserved for Anti in Sean’s head is still.

Somehow, that’s even more foreboding than the expected.  What if Anti’s waiting for Sean to let his guard down, before taking him over and forcing him to watch as the glitch uses Sean’s body to change the color back? What if Anti actually gets angry enough to kill him?  What if-

‘We’ll protect you.’

Shaking him out of the spiraling train of thought are four resolute voices in unison.  They all spread warm comfort through him, and he nods in reply, taking in a deep breath to calm himself.

It wasn’t the actual loss of control that had made Sean so terrified, because Anti, well, SQUIP Anti anyway, had never expressed taking complete control of Sean.  No, it was the slippery loss of a line separating Sean from Anti that scared him.  It was him waking up late, freaking out, and suddenly finding himself at school on time. The memories would filter in the moment he questioned the lack of memory; of course he rushed to make breakfast and then caught a ride with one of the popular girls to school, how could he be so silly to forget?

And yet, he could never place himself in those memories, like he wasn’t the person in them.  That was the terrifying thing, how the moments where he was Sean and the moments where he was Jack and the moments where he was Anti were no longer differing to a noticeable point.  The loss of who he was, until he didn’t know if the green hair was something he liked or if it was because Anti wanted it.

He remembers the flames licking the soles of his shoes, mind so loud with the laughter of Anti that I became a buzzing quiet, screams of teenagers around him petering out as they left the burning building.  He remembers sitting on the edge of the bed and waiting, so, so terrified but numbly excited, the excitement not him but Anti and the code splitting the glitch apart as they collided.

He remembers the sounds of fighting, four voices screeching over the laughter to stop, before Jackie had taken his limbs, his body, and forced him up and out of the second story window into the bushes, using his voice to shout so the firefighters and paramedics would find him.

He remembers sobbing in the hospital room when his parents finally left, and the chorus of voices whispering apologies in his head as he breathed through a mask and had bandages on his back for the burns.

What he remembers now, continuing to walk to towards where he and Signe had agreed to meet, is Signe coming to his hospital bed, tears in her eyes, and asking the question everyone else had.

Why?

And he had told her everything.  She was the only one, but he told her every single thing, until he couldn’t speak over the tears and she had hugged him.

They’re together now, and he’s so, so happy.  The girls he bounced around with he cared for but never loved the way he should have, what with the SQUIP Anti pushing him to do this and that, until he couldn’t find the emotion to care about anything, much less the people.  Signe loves him, loves Sean and not the person he pretended to be, and that’s more than he can say for a lot of people.  He loves her too, and the others in his head seem to approve.

Slowly, Sean is rising to be himself.  Slowly, his accent is coming back.  It didn’t leave completely, but it was hidden for a long, long time.  Now Signe points it out with a smile, or Mark will laugh not unkindly at the way he says car, or he’ll get excited enough to run into Mark’s game room and shout “TOP OF THE MORNIN TO YA LADDIES” just to hear Mark and his friends burst into hysterics.

He’d apologized to Mark, when it was over.  Apologized for th bullying and for recommending the SQUIP, but Mark had shrugged it off.  

“If yours did anything to you like mine did to me, I get it,” Was the response.  They’re friends now.

Sean finds himself surrounded by friends now.  It’s amazing. Robin, Ethan, Bob, Wade, Felix, Mark; they’re all there for him now, a group to hang with at lunch and to play games with over online, picking on Wade as the running joke and playing with each other’s accents and laughing like there’s no tomorrow.  

“If you ever need to talk about.” Mark had gestured to his head.  “I’m here.”

Mark has a near million people in his head to talk to, and Sean wonders how the man isn’t insane at this point, much less sane enough to offer help, but he’d nodded at the time, and they’d been on their way.

Signe had been the one to coax him to finally get his hair back to brown.  He’d let it fade to a lighter green, now that he no longer was forced to re-dye it every two weeks to keep the dark, dark green SQUIP Anti favored, but to fully go out of his way to change it back to brown, to go in complete defiance of SQUIP Anti’s wishes, was a daunting task.

“You don’t have to if you really can’t,” She’d said, a hand grasping his gently, “But if you can, I think you should.  It’ll help.”

He’d found the courage and the money somehow, and got it done.  

When he’d looked in the mirror after, he’d seen his freshman year self staring back.

His head is quiet save for the hum of his thoughts when he reaches Signe.  She’d proposed that she go shopping whilst he got his hair done, and she is surrounded by bags and…plants?

When she sees him, Signe jumps up, grabbing a little potted plant to show him.

“I got some cacti for my room!  Aren’t they cute?” Then, seeing his hair she gasps.  “It looks great!”

He smiles, and she hands him some bags and a cactus she picked out for him- it is adorable, with teeny purple flowers sprouting from it along with the needles-and conversation picks up, discussions of the daily as Signe suggests a place for them to eat lunch.  Sean feels bright, happier than he has been in two long years.

As they walk, a burst of static erupts in Sean’s ear, almost swallowed by the rising hackles accompanying the four very defensive people in his head.  After a moment, they lean back, and the static hums softly with a whisper.

"̰̜I̤͍t̲̯͉͓͟ s͏̪͉̥u͓̠̤̤̹̼i̯͇t̤̣̩͝ş̮͕̗͈͇͖ ̬y̠̰͎̤̜͝o̤̞̖u̺͟."̬̳̺

Sean never expected an apology, but this is a start.

[crop-stomper]

Brutal Honesty Hour ask: C, D, F (Pre-THG SYOTs or Post-THG SYOTs? THG, in this case, stands for 74th-75th Hunger Games in canon. Bonus marks if you explain why), K, L, M, O, P, Q, S, U, X, Y, and Z (what are your favourite tribute ship(s) and non-tribute ship(s) in Danzón, personally? If you wanna explain why, go ahead).

C - How long it's been since I've kissed.

Mmm, got a kiss after separating with the boy after church, so... Two hours?

D - If I have a preference for boys or girls.

Boys, in almost all aspects of life. Romantically, boys. Characterwise, I submit and tend to like the boys better. Friendship why, many of my friends are boys. Girls are good friends as well, though, all of my best friends are girls. Well, except my twin brother, he’s not a girl.

 F - Give me any options, like 'hot or cold?'

Post-THG because you get the opportunity to break away from the canon, “no one under 14 can win and nobody from D12 can win” and make your own world. That’s why all my full SYOTs are post THG, my partials are a lot more controlled by me so they’re pre-74.

 K - What my full name is.  

I won’t give out my full name, but my first name for those of you who don’t know is Emma, and my middle name is Kay.                                                                 

 L - If I have siblings. 

Yup, two. One is here, lgkavanagh, my older sister. I also have a twin brother.    

 M - If I forgive betrayal.

Mmm I guess... I can forgive but I cannot forget. But I only forgive if the other party is genuinely sorry for it. 

 O - Where would I like to travel

Ireland! I’d love to see the whole country, not just a city or two. I’d also love to go to Minnesota, for no other reason than Dreamer lives there, lol. And to my boyfriend’s hometown, as well, someday.

                                                                                                     P - What kind of music I like.

All of it. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a song that I just couldn’t stand to listen to. Except country, lmao, country is dumb.                                                                                     

 Q - Favourite flower?

Not totally sure! I love to keep cacti and succulents in terms of plants, and flowers I just like them all, honestly.

S - 2 habits.

Being a chatterbox and biting my lip (especially when I play instruments I don’t use my mouth for like the cello or guitar)

  U - Favourite time of year, and why

I really like beginning of the school year, like September-October. I like the weather being warm still and the energy that surrounds a new school year. And October is great because Halloween.                                                                                                                            

 X - 3 turn ons

Commitment/Romantic chemistry, my ears, and the right music get me really into it.                                                                                                  

Y - 3 turns offs

Being a shitty human being XD Physical pain, and um... Idk. I’m generally a laidback kind of person.

                                                            Z - Ask any question you want.

I think my favorite tribute ships are kind of obvious because they got the most attention, and those would be Giggs, Kaelyn, and Numiper. Most of the other ones I couldn’t see being endgame, but those three ships are the ones I can’t imagine being not endgame. (Random fun fact, but in the very first draft for this story I almost put Chance and Jacques together.... LMAO).

Favorite non-tribute ships. Well, that’s hard because there are a lot of them. I think the highlights are Helekyn, Thorbrose, and PriaPhil. These three are also the most fun because they’re between me and another character creator, which for some reason just makes things way more fun than having ships between my own characters. The RP also allows for development and generally for having fun with development and headcanons.

I didn’t even realize this was here but here it is! Thanks for the ask!

[marilynnewbury-blog]

Oh, My Bleeding Heart!

"How long before Mom kills this one?” my children predict, more than ask, every time I bring home a plant.  My husband and daughter-in-law chime in their agreement.

I laugh to myself.  I’m not sure that it matters, as plants are cheap.  Their survival is not as important as the colour and design of the pots, the contours of the leaf shapes, and the vibrancy of the flower hues - in the rare event that one of my plants actually blooms.  If one dies, I replace it as I would a broken dish.

I am not attached to plants like my house cleaner, Angelica.  She talks to my plant victims and apologizes for my neglect. If a plant is unresponsive or dying, I give it to her.  After a few weeks, she shows me pictures of the now-humongous plant with gorgeous blooms.  Oh well, I think. The plant would not fit in its pot, anyway.

When my daughter, Julia, was growing up, I would let her pick out plants for her room.  Under my tutelage, she would choose one for its visual attractiveness and how it would match the room colour.  If the plant died, I just bought her a new cheap one, always of the smallest size, since my budget had to withstand many plant purchases.

Julia now has her own home and has discovered that her mother never knew anything about horticulture.  Ruth, my son-in-law's mother, has blown my cover.  She is teaching my daughter to consider such boring factors as the type of soil, time and quantity of sunlight, and when and how to water the plant.  Apparently, even the pot size matters.

Too many things to think about, in my opinion.  It is so much easier to just consider how the plant foliage will look next to the colour of the pot.

No wonder none of my plants survived.  I placed them in rooms where they looked best and didn't worry about sunlight.  I gave them a good dousing when I thought of it or happened to notice their wilted appearance.  Unfortunately, I often forgot to look, especially during the first three months of my pregnancies when I absolutely did not think about feeding greenery when I myself could barely drink tea or eat crackers.  All plants needed replacing.

When we moved to our current residence, I decided to cease my growing efforts.  I gave all of my plants to Angelica and successfully kept my house plant-free for over a year.  Then I read on facebook that we would sleep better if we had certain oxygen-emitting plants in our bedroom.

I dutifully traipsed off to Rona to buy these supposedly insomnia-healing plants.  The clerk, probably thinking that I had failed high school biology, patiently explained to me that ALL plants give out oxygen, not just the five facebook recommends.  But I persisted, and purchased four of the five suggested specimens - with plant pots to match.  I resisted the rest of the colourful displays until a cute cactus with bright yellow blooms caught my eye, reminding me of my father's love for both cacti and the colour yellow.  Four plants became five.

My family did not admire the plants, not even the sentimental purchase, but rather engaged in another round of mockery in the game of How Long Will These Last?  They did not have to wait long, for one soon to show signs of dying.

For Mother's Day, my daughter offered to help me weed and plant the small flowerbed under my front window. I politely tried to distract her from this line of thought, hoping to avoid another plant disaster, but she persisted.  I finally gave in, knowing that I needed help, given my questionable skill level with dirt and living plant organisms.

My artistic side wanted to immediately shop for new plants, but Julia wisely insisted that we needed to weed first.

The flower bed was a disaster, in the same state as when we purchased the house.

Two huge rocks, a profusion of weeds, two stone ladybugs, renamed Poop by my grandson, and one lone plant, awkardly placed - a bleeding heart.

Amazingly, I actually knew the name of this plant.  My grandmother, Julia, (also my daughter's namesake), grew this perennial.  I remember her telling me the legend of the bleeding heart as she pulled the flower apart, showing me the bunnies, earrings, slippers, sword, and stabbed heart.  I will forever treasure the precious times sitting beside my grandmother, feeling her love and affirmation in those suspended-in-time moments, as she retold the same story over and over.

For those memories, I had to keep this plant and so ruthlessly transplanted it to a better spot,

figuring that any plant called a bleeding heart could survive being cut off at the roots.

My daughter does not think it will survive, but if it is still alive next summer, she will buy me dinner.

As usual, most of the remaining plant choices were for their design and colour scheme of white, pink, and periwinkle blue with a splash of yellow.

Some made the cut for sentimental reasons.

Spirea

I partially chose this shrub as I had grown it with modest success in a more northern climate, but mostly because it reminded me of my wonderful Aunty Betty who once had a lovely profusion of spireas by her front walkway.

Silver Mound

My cousin, Sherry, is a successful gardener, despite our shared gene pool.  Ever since she told me how much she loved her Silver Mound, I try to plant one everywhere I live.  She told me that no matter how you damage it, it will always grow back to a round shape.  We'll see.  My daughter is doubtful.

Jack Frost, but I call it a Forget-Me-Not

As I recall, my Dad loved forget-me-nots.  My Mom had a forget-me-not china tea set - because Dad liked them, she told me.  In any case, I like the periwinkle flowers, and will think of my father every time I look at them.

Nameless Plant - My Substitute Rose Bush

For my father, who loved yellow roses

Actually, yellow was the only colour he could easily recognize, due to his colour blindness.  He failed Kindergarten because he coloured tree branches brown and tree trunks green.  Too bad the teacher did not notice that his suns were always coloured yellow.

A few years before he died, he commented that he recognized how much I loved colour:  this meant a lot to me, since he saw colours differently than most.  He deserves yellow flowers in his honour.

For my mother, who loved roses, especially red ones, and could grow them anywhere

I admit, the flowers are not red, and they are not roses, but I am not foolish enough to attempt to grow roses - of any colour.  The yellow flowers on the nameless pseudo-rose plant will have to do as stand-ins for red in honour of my mom.

It was a good day.

My daughter and I bumbled along together, guessing at how deep to dig the holes, how much water to use, and how to follow the instructions to massage the roots. With high hopes for success, we randomly sprinkled bone meal and mixed soils with varying degrees of proportion.

I named the first two shrubs Betty and Betsy. My daughter said that I couldn’t use alliteration and so named the third Caroline.

Mostly, we giggled at my lack of skill and knowledge. She laughed when I told her that I had considered marrying a farmer and that a higher power had saved me from such a disaster, knowing that I would be better suited to managing unruly students in a classroom than rampant weeds in a vegetable garden.  My daughter said she was happy for the said farmer.

We laughed as we threw newspaper on the ground and covered it with mulch because the internet said we could.  We disagreed amicably and proudly viewed our work.

Not all of our days have been so.

Somewhere, starting in the preteen years, the arguments outnumbered the good times.

Pictures of family events do not always evoke pleasant memories.

Thankfully, my daughter and I are finding a new rhythm in our relationship.

Hurting hearts lie mostly buried and new growth is emerging as we share experiences of marriage and motherhood,

preferring the safety of common ground to unpacking potentially explosive landmines of the past.

New pictures of family are emerging...

My daughter and I in front of my new beautiful flower bed with all of its colour and variegated foliage.

I treasure the memories this day symbolizes, of easy mother-daughter banter and the sounds of Julia singing “Sweet Caroline”.

Other Thoughtful and Symbolical Mother's Day Gifts from my Family...

A hand-carved wooden spoon made by my son-in-law, Jeremy @Lotholz and Company

Multi-coloured daisies from my husband, Cliff, each colour representing a different season in our marriage.

His message in my Mother's Day card was appropriate for this as yet unwritten article:  You ground me.

An African Violet from my daughter-in-law, Breanna, displayed on my Grandma Ida's sewing machine, well-used in days gone by.  Breanna had no idea how much my mother loved African Violets.

A framed picture from my son, Stephen, and his wife, Breanna.

To make this beautiful keepsake, Breanna used dried flowers from a birthday bouquet from my siblings and a quote from my blog.

My son, Stephen, and I are taking our relationship to a new level as he repairs our basement and edits my blog.

Grandchildren...sharing the scents and blooms of the fresh growth.

I am grateful for the opportunity for forming new family relationships.

A  red rose bush from my son, Michael, in honour of his grandmother and me, his mother.

My relationship with my son, Michael, is marked by elements of unpredictability and the unexpected.

Once, before he could even talk, I asked him for a kiss, but he kissed the wall instead.

I love the times when he surprises me with a symphony concert or a rafting trip.

Today, as I watch him plant the roses, I celebrate the past, present, and future of family.

While I wonder how to cope with the inescapable challenge of growing these red blooms, I embrace the pain and struggle of nurturing both roses and relationships.

Meanwhile, the jury is still out on the bleeding heart's survival,but it is showing new buds and flowers, boding well for the future.

Perhaps human bleeding hearts can also survive - and even bloom.

POSTSCRIPT

I just saw a facebook post about six plants that repel mosquitoes.

Tempting..

Previously published on https:www.marilynnewbury.com