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theflyingfeeling · 2 years ago

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💖 it's here, it's pink, it's sparkly, and full of fluff 💖

Hiiiiii and welcome to witness my attempt at an Olli/Allu Advent Calendar, in which I'll give you ~a cute little something~ about these two idiots in love almost every day until December 24! My plan is to use prompts from this list to either write a fic based on the prompt or just some good ol' delulu thoughts if all else fails. I cannot guarantee there'll be a post literally every day, but I'm really excited to try this out and I thank you for your support along the way in advance 💝

The biggest thanks and a million hugs go to one of my favourite human beings @kraeuterhexchen for making the adorable banner!! I mean helloooooo?? 😭 Go show them some love ❣️

For December 1, the prompt list is titled One True Pairing Moments, and the prompt I chose was 'calling just to hear their voice' 🥺 You can read the fic below, I hope you like it <3

PS. Even though this is an advent calendar of sorts, I'm not planning on making this particularly Christmassy. I hope no one minds terribly!

Falling for Aleksi had, in a way, sneaked up on Olli, at least if he fooled himself a little. He could pretend he didn’t feel any different about the man than he did about, say, Joonas or Tommi, but that strategy only worked for so long – that is to say, approximately until Aleksi as much as smiled softly at him from across a room or bumped his shoulder into his jovially when walking down the street and Olli would feel his breath getting caught in his throat or stumble in his words, his tongue tangled like shoelaces, which was so unlike him as well and frustrated him to no end. It really took a special kind of fool to not only develop some level of feelings for a friend, a colleague, a bandmate for Christ’s sake, but also become so hopelessly enamored with him that you rolled awake in bed in the dead of night, grabbing your phone and tossing it back on the nightstand again and again because you couldn’t decide whether or not you should, on some erratic 2 o’clock impulse, call him to let him know he was the very reason for your insomnia.

Turning on his back, Olli groaned (only a little desperately) as he remembered losing himself in the lingering hug they had shared just before the arrivals lobby at the airport, inhaling Aleksi’s scent and wishing they wouldn’t have to go home just yet, even if Olli was more than ready to finally sleep in his own bed again. Ironically, ever since they had returned home from tour, Olli had spent night after sleepless night missing Aleksi terribly: his stupid jokes and playful banter that bordered on being flirtatious if Olli allowed himself the benefit of delusion; his quick, subtle smiles that probably meant nothing; his little touches Olli hoped meant something; his smell and his touch and the softness of his hair at the back of his neck, compared to which the blanket Olli was grasping in his fist was like sandpaper. (How he had come to know of the qualities of Aleksi’s hair in such detail, he preferred not to dwell on too much to save himself from the heartache, so let’s just leave it at ‘stressful, emotional week far away from home’ and ‘a little too much to drink’).

Above all, Olli missed Aleksi’s voice. He hadn’t even thought that was possible, until the other morning when Olli had woken up to a voice message Aleksi had left just hours earlier, rambling about a song idea he had gotten in the middle of the night – something he did from time to time – and Olli had spent the next several minutes replaying it over and over again as he had lied in bed procrastinating getting up and and instead closing his eyes to better imagine Aleksi lying there beside him, turned on his side to face Olli, talking to him sleepily like they often did when they shared a room on tour and were just too lazy to join others at breakfast. Much like the hug at the airport, Olli wished those moments would have lasted way longer than they did, often ending abruptly when either of their phones would go off with Santeri’s name on the screen, a passive-aggressive interruption to the soft, low tone of Aleksi’s early-morning thoughts. (Sometimes, when Olli was lucky enough, he had been blessed with the bliss of feeling the light touch of a fingertip tracing along his collarbone, cut short just as frustratingly by their well-meaning tour manager politely enquiring whether the two of them had plans of dragging themselves downstairs for some toast and coffee, or if they’d rather starve until lunchtime, for which he wasn’t at all sure they’d even have time that day.)

The lovesick idiot that he was, his thumb hovered over the ‘play’ button of Aleksi’s voice message, probably for the millionth time that week. The chest-carving hesitation turned into a heart flip when he noticed Aleksi was online.

Then Aleksi began to type, and Olli held his breath the entire time until a new message appeared in the thread, anticipation holding him by his throat.

You awake?

Olli exhaled and typed his affirmative reply, leaving out the reason why.

He blinked at the screen, waiting for Aleksi to ask him a random question that clearly couldn’t wait until morning, or perhaps talk about something related to another late-night Twitch stream (from what Olli had gathered, Aleksi had been doing a lot of those recently, and with his last remaining braincell Olli had managed to resist the temptation to watch every single one of them, because he knew that if he did, it would only dig his grave of pining and longing deeper, seeing Aleksi smile and giggle about but not being able to do that with him or snuggle up next to him when he was wearing that flannel Olli often used as a blanket in the tour bus). But instead of another text appearing on the screen, Olli’s phone began to vibrate in his hand, and it took him an embarrassingly long while to understand it was because Aleksi was calling him.

“Hi,” he sighed when he finally collected himself enough to speak. He prayed he’d be able to hear what Aleksi was going to say from the thumping heartbeat echoing in his ears.

“Hi,” a soft voice said. “Sorry, I know it’s late…”

“No, not at all,” Olli hurried to say, “I mean, I wasn’t sleeping. Not even close, actually.” Part of him hoped Aleksi wouldn’t ask about it, but in some foolhardy way the possibility intrigued him.

Nothing much, he would have likely said anyway, but what would happen if he told Aleksi how it really was? That he squeezed his pillow imagining it was him instead, or wailed into it because something had reminded him of a moment-that-was-probably-not-a-Moment™ they had shared? What would Aleksi say if he knew Olli sometimes touched himself the way Aleksi had touched him That One Night they never talked about? The only obstacle between Olli and that knowledge was a bottomless ocean of cold sweat and cowardice, and Olli had never been a great swimmer.

“So, ummm…,” Olli said when Aleksi’s end stayed silent. “What’s up?”

A short breath of laughter sounded through the phone line.

“Honestly? I don’t know, I… It’s just been a… weird week, I guess.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, like… my head’s just been so full of… everything and… I’ve been so busy and kinda tense and… fuck, this is going to sound crazy,” Aleksi laughed that brief laugh again, although to Olli it didn’t sound particularly cheerful. Tired, more like. Strained, somehow. Not sad, but definitely a little troubled, and Olli intended to find out why.

“I’m all for crazy, you know.” Olli hoped his sorry attempt to lighten Aleksi’s mood would work, and so he smiled in relief when he heard Aleksi chuckle at his comment.

“I know,” Aleksi said softly, in that tone of voice that had Olli melt against his bedsheets. “So yeah, it’s been a rough week, but… in between all that stupid shit, I’ve been thinking a lot about… umm… well, the tour and– and… about you, for some reason,” (the troubled laugh made its return) “and… yeah. That’s sort of helped me a lot recently.”

Olli listened to the words carefully, not fully believing what he was hearing, yet clinging on to them until they were all but swirling around in his otherwise empty head like dry leaves in October wind.

“And tonight I just couldn’t fucking sleep for some reason and nothing I did seemed to help and so I thought I’d call you. And I’m–” If it hadn’t been dead silent otherwise, Olli wouldn’t have heard the shaky breath Aleksi paused to take, “I’m sorry I’m calling you at this hour and bothering you with this all but I guess I just… wanted to hear your voice. To see if that would help.”

“Does it?” Olli asked. Aleksi’s confession had made him clasp his blanket close to his chest, as if that would do anything about his rapidly beating heart.

“Yeah. It does. So maybe just… keep talking?”

Despite his mind living a life of its own, completely unfit to form a single coherent thought, for Aleksi’s sake Olli tried his best to think of something to say, but everything he came up with was something he was not ready to tell him quite yet.

“Uuummmm…” he said to buy himself some time, but while he waited for his useless brain and mouth to form any actual words, Aleksi spoke again.

“Fuck, I’m– I’m sorry, this is too weird, I shouldn’t have– I’ll let you go back to–”

“I miss you,” Olli blurted before Aleksi would hang up on him. He squeezed his eyes shut when Aleksi went silent, too silent for too long for it to mean any good.

The line stayed open, however, which Olli took as a positive sign, even if the seconds during which all Olli could hear was Aleksi's quiet breathing seemed endless.

“And I you,” Aleksi finally replied. “A little too much, probably, or at least that’s what it feels like,” he chuckled. Olli almost missed the quiet sniff that followed.

He had to steel himself for his next question.

“What do you mean?”

“Just… forget it.” Aleksi said quietly. Contrary to Aleksi’s request, Olli knew he was going to all but ‘forget it’ for the next 3-5 business days; mentally he booked all his evenings as well as most of his mornings and noons for pondering what exactly had been in Aleksi’s mind in that moment or why he had sounded so sombre, almost disappointed. He’d probably never come to any satisfactory conclusion about it though, at least not without a little help from Aleksi himself.

A ridiculous idea popped into his head, and before he could stop himself, the words flooded out of his mouth.

“Do you wanna come over some time? To hang out? When your schedule’s a little less tight, I mean.” He sucked on his lips and closed his eyes as he waited for Aleksi’s answer, ready to hang up the moment he’d decline the offer on some obvious and logical reason for why Aleksi couldn’t possibly make nor want to take a trip to the north to see him, such as ‘didn’t we just spend over two months on the road together?’ or ‘damn, buddy, I miss you alright but not quite that much, I’ve done enough sitting in public transportation for one year, thank you very much lol’ or ‘what about Rilla?’

“You could take Rilla with you, you know.” Olli hurried to say, just in case, the deranged part of his brain thinking there might be a chance Aleksi might be at least considering it.

“Oh! Well, umm… I actually might have time next week? If– if you’re actually being serious about this.”

Funny you should ask, Aleksi; I’ve actually never been more serious about anything in my entire life than I am about having you here with me so that I can hold you and be held by you and see your face when I wake up in the morning and say goodnight to your annoyingly cute face instead of via text message and maybe, if the stars are in position and the northern wind won’t discourage me too much, I might actually be brave enough to torment you with the knowledge of just how miserable I’ve been since we last saw each other.

“I think it would be cool,” he said, because he had a feeling what he wanted to say would’ve been a tad too much and sudden. “I mean, if you’re up for it, of course. I understand if you can’t make it though, I know you have all those side projects.”

“No, I think it might actually do me some good to get out of the capital area for change.” Then there was a muffled ‘ouch’, followed by a laugh that sounded much brighter than any of the other ones Olli had heard from Aleksi that night. “Sorry, correction, it might do us some good. Rilla just told me she’s most definitely coming too. Rilla, stop nibbling on my toes!”

Olli smiled tiredly at the mental image that was painted in his mind of Aleksi and Rilla cuddling in bed, both minding their own business from what it seemed while still minding each other as well, very much indeed.

“I’ll be sure to set up a bed for her in the guest room.”

“The guest room? Do you not know her at all? If she’s not getting the master bedroom, she’ll ruin all your rugs and most of your shoes. Probably also gossip about you to all the neighbourhood dogs. And she’s brutal.”

Olli held his stomach as he laughed, tears almost forming in the corners of his eyes. In his defence, it was late and he was finally becoming tired, thus too far gone to help himself, let alone feel embarrassed about being in stitches about something Aleksi had said that was only mildly amusing. (It wasn’t the first time that had happened either, and likely not the last time.)

“So yeah, ummm, I can take a look at some flight options for next week and let you know, alright? I’m gonna let you sleep now and… I should get some myself too.”

Olli wanted to tell Aleksi he’d love to stay up chatting until dawn, but the yawn he let out when he opened his mouth to speak implied Aleksi had a point.

“Yeah, let me know. And… thanks for calling, I… you have no idea how much I needed this tonight.”

That was as close to a confession as Olli was able to get as of now.

“Probably not half as much as I did.”

Olli chuckled at Aleksi’s response, mostly to hide his own agony.

If only you knew. If only I knew how to tell you.

It didn’t take long for Olli to doze off after they hung up, and when he woke up to the kids from next door having a snowball fight under his window in the morning, he noticed new messages from Aleksi, sent half an hour after their phone call had ended, complete with screen captions of airplane schedules.

Would these days work for you? I might be free all week actually 😇

Olli cuddled into his pillow while typing his reply, hoping it wouldn’t wake up Aleksi.

yeah I’m free as well. I’ll pick you two up from the airport 🖤

From then on, Olli started counting the days until he’d see Aleksi again.

#blind channel fanfiction #blind channel rpf #ollixallu #24 days of gift-giving by theflyingfeeling #<- that's the tag i'll be using for these btw #everyone stop and look at the banner!! 🥺💖#it's not QUITE like the original one ju made first but maybe one day you'll get to see that masterpiece as well 😏#but ooff the way i've gone from having 'a plan' to having 'a better plan' to having 'no plan whatsoever' with this? 😂#so yeah idk what kinda fics/posts there'll be in this series... stay tuned and see for yourself! 🤭#some of them might be in the same universe/plot. others may not. who knows? not i 😌#(...but as you can see from this fic the door for a multiple-part story is definitely open 👀)#some of the fics may not even be based on a prompt though if i'm not feeling like it. honestly i'm curious to see how this will turn out!#(and if this ends up being the only post i ever make that's alright too! i refuse to bully myself with a hobby i'm doing for free <3)#however: i'm not taking requests per say BUT feel free to snoop on the prompts for each day and send me your ideas or hopeful wishes 👀#there are certain ones i'm more drawn to but i haven't really set anything in stone #one could say i'm just going with the flow. fuck around and find out if you will ✨#also: not sure if/when i'll be bothered to post any of these on ao3 #probably i'll just see how many fics i manage to actually finish and dump them all at once on ao3 on christmas day lol #anyway! enjoy & let me hear from you <3

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sailforvalinor · 2 years ago

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Joker and Ace: Jester's Privilege

Chapter 2

“Remind me,” the girl whispered as the music struck up and he led her onto the floor, “what dance is this again?”

He glanced down at her, mildly alarmed. “It’s a waltz, Miss,” he said, more bluntly than he intended. “Don’t you have a dance card?” Did she even know how to dance? Some of his sisters’ speculations about who she might be sprung into his head unbidden.

She gave him a wry look. “A waltz?” she repeated, ignoring the question. “In a ballroom in Bath in 183-? That doesn’t seem exactly…proper.”

Theodore didn’t see what the year had to do with anything--but at least she sounded like she knew what she was talking about. “My father’s balls attempt to mimic Almack’s in every manner. But if you’d rather wait for the quadrille…?”

The girl smiled dazzlingly. “Oh no, of course not,” she said, then, with a quick glance about her at the other dancers taking the floor, assumed the beginning position for the waltz with startling ease.

He bowed, she curtsied, and Theodore took her right hand in his left and placed his right on her shoulder blade almost mechanically, having done this so many times he barely had to think about it. She was quite a bit shorter than him, he realized--the top of her head barely came to his shoulder, and from that vantage point, he noticed that her hair seemed to almost sparkle, as if she’d dusted her hair with tiny diamonds. How on earth she’d managed that he had no idea, but the thought of how envious his sisters would be at the sight of it made him crack a slight smile.

The strings struck up, and Theodore was struck with them with the strange look the girl had given him when he’d first approached her. “Do I…know you from somewhere, Miss?” he asked carefully.

She couldn’t read the expression that came over her face. “I don’t believe so.”

The waltz began, and much to Theodore’s surprise, the girl moved through the intricacies of the dance effortlessly--it was like dancing with a cloud on his arm. She knew exactly what she was doing, but still let him lead. He’d rarely danced with a better partner, and so distracted was he by this that it took him a moment to realize that, though he usually regarded it as a necessary nicety of polite society, he was actually enjoying dancing for once.

If he were being honest, it made him feel a bit uneasy.

“So,” the girl said at length, “Mr. Theodore Ace--for I believe that’s who you are, though you didn’t introduce yourself--I must ask, do you often ask girls you haven’t been introduced to to dance?”

“I don’t generally make a practice of it, no,” he said as they glided past the punch bowl, guests staring at them in shock as they clutched punch glasses and fans.

“Why ask me then? Were you so enchanted by my beauty that you couldn’t help yourself? Or--” she suddenly looked at him very shrewdly “--are you dancing with me because you deemed it the best way to scandalize your sisters?”

So stunned was he by not just the substance of the question, but by the fact that something so shrewd and direct had been said in such a soft, gentle voice such as hers that it uncharacteristically left him floundering for a response. “Uh--”

“--don’t feel the need to answer that,” she cut with an amused smile on her face before he could come up with something clever to say. “I’ll take your intentions at face value, if you’d like--although, don’t look now, but that’s rather difficult when I can feel your sisters’ eyes burning holes into the back of my head.”

Disobeying her, he allowed himself a quick glance up at the balcony--and sure enough, Angeline’s face was flushed red with anger, Emmeline’s white with shock, and the both of them whispered to Ida furiously. However, Ida’s face was expressionless, almost placid--something that should have made him uneasy, but at the moment he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Hmmm,” the girl said thoughtfully, “doesn’t listen to instructions, clearly hates his family, given that he’s perfectly willing to embarrass them in this manner, but still dependent on them for the moment, quiet, a little bitter, dances like a dream, a bit unapproachable, probably reads Eliot--wait, no no, that’s too soon,” she cut herself off. “Tennyson?”

“Um, yes,” he answered, startled. How did she know that? “What exactly are you doing?”

She giggled. “Trying to make out your character, of course.” That phrase sounded vaguely familiar, though Theodore couldn’t put his finger on why. “As one does in ballrooms.”

“Well, I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage there, Miss,” he said, trying to regain some control over--well, whatever this was. “What’s your name?”

“Oooh, you’re asking me this now?” she asked, the smile on her face almost broadening into an unladylike grin, but not quite. “Hmmm. Well, I will tell you--just not now. Later.”

It was all he could do not to gawk. “What? You won’t tell me?”

“No, I said later I’d tell you,” she said in a lower tone as another couple spun past them, clearly trying not to stare.

“Are you acting mysterious for your own amusement, or are you truly hiding something?” The thought briefly crossed his mind that she might be making some attempt at infiltration into his father’s circle, but he dismissed it almost immediately--no one making such an attempt would show their hand so plainly.

She laughed. “Yes and yes.” She craned her neck over his shoulder for a moment to peer at some of the other dancers. “Oh dear, do you think I’m a little overdressed?”

“Then may I ask what exactly you’re doing here?”

“I’m dancing. With you. That’s generally why girls go to balls--not to dance with you specifically, of course, just to dance. Although,” she said, looking around the room, “I suspect from many of the looks I’m getting that that certainly applies to many of the ladies in this room.” She smiled up at him. “Aren’t you popular?”

“If you’d just wanted to dance, you could have gone to any of the assembly rooms instead of stealing into a private ball,” he said, really more curiously than accusingly.

She shrugged fractionally. “Perhaps I heard that this ball was the thing.”

The girl caught the disbelieving look he shot at her. “Ooh, alright, I suppose I can give you a bit more than that. I’m--well, how to put it--” she lowered her voice to nearly a whisper, causing him to have to lean close “--I’m casing the joint.”

“You’re casing the what?”

“You strike me as quite clever, Mr. Ace, if you don’t mind the presumption,” she said. “I’ll leave that up to you to parse. I’m sure you can manage.”

Theodore certainly didn’t feel clever--he’d never felt less so in his life. Every time he felt he’d felt he’d found some semblance of footing with this girl, it crumbled beneath his feet faster than he could blink. He really shouldn’t have been letting it needle him as much as he did--after all, he had accomplished his object in dancing with her, his sisters were undoubtedly beyond livid--but despite his desires and better judgment, he found himself too intrigued by this girl to stop asking questions.

“In your object of ‘casing the joint,’ as you call it, you decided it was wise to leave your escort at home?” he asked.

The smile on her face that so far had not wavered flickered suddenly. “I’m afraid there was none to leave.”

A sudden cold fear for her gripped him at those words, remembering what sorts of people spun about them in this ballroom, watched them from the edges of the room, from the balconies. He remembered the impassive look in Ida’s eyes as she stared down at them, and fought the urge to glance up at her again. He became aware that the waltz was swiftly coming to an end, and as he led her through the last motions of the dance, he pulled her slightly closer than was strictly necessary. “Listen,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t know what you think this ball is. I don’t know what your purpose was in coming here. You might know what you’ve walked into, you might not. But I’d feel morally responsible if I didn’t tell you that you’ve walked straight into a viper’s nest in coming here, Miss--everyone in this room could bring you harm in almost any way you could imagine, even more so if they knew of your circumstances. And you’ve ensured that you’ve attracted the attention of everyone in attendance--even more so by dancing with me, I’m afraid.”

He couldn’t tell if the girl was taking the gravity in his tone seriously. She studied his face carefully. “‘Everyone in this room,’” she repeated. “Are you an exception to that rule, Theodore Ace?”

The music swelled and came to an end, partners separating and facing each other. “I should think so,” he said as he took his bow, more steel in his tone than he had anticipated.

“Good,” the girl said as she rose from her curtsy. Her radiant smile returned. “That’s exactly what I wanted to know.”

He offered her his hand, and he led her off the floor, now ignoring the stares and whispers as they passed by.

“Also, thank you for the warning,” the girl said softly. She seemed to have a knack of speaking at the perfect volume so as not to be easily overheard, he noticed. “It was quite honorable of you.”

Her hand slipped out of his as they came to the edge of the room. “If you appreciate it,” he began, “perhaps you could--”

He turned to her, but she had vanished.

“Hmm.” He looked around to see if she had slipped into the crowd somewhere, but he couldn’t find her. Shrugging, he strode off towards the exit, ignoring other guests’ attempts to speak to him, hoping the girl would heed his advice--and wondering how soon he would inevitably regret dancing with her.

<- Chapter 1 / Chapter 3 ->

#🎶she makes the whole place ✨SHIMMER✨🎶#joker and ace #this chapter feels rough but it was so much fun #oc ace #oc joker #salt and light #val's ocs #also how soon do you think this should go up on ao3? honestly i'm not sure

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