#''A man in his twenties isn’t going to be much of a balm for anyone’s soul'' DAMN ODASAKU

[originalaccountname]

there is so much to unpack in such a little excerpt. This is from the exchange between Mori and Oda near the start of Dark Era.

[loversandantiheroes]

Can. Can we talk about how dexterous and clever Whiskey’s hands are. Can we talk about how strong and nimble and skilled they are. Can we.

(Hands anon) And honestly I’m a Frankie and Mando girl as well, you KNOW they hands are just as good 👌🙌

I want you to know I have tried to come back to this ask I don’t know HOW many times, but I always get incredibly distracted and just kind of stare into space with my eyes glazed over for like forty-five minutes.  Can’t imagine why...

1.8k words of pure hand-related yearning featuring Din, Frankie, Whiskey, and a bonus Ezra bc I was compelled.

Din’s hands are exactly what you’d expect in some ways - broad and strong as vise-grips, but meticulously deft when it comes to things that require care, whether that’s stripping down his weapons to clean them or patching your wounds (a surprise in and of itself given the impatient, almost flippant way he tends to the holes in his own hide).  What is surprising is just how soft his hands are under those ever-present gloves.  If you ever bring it up he’ll only huff a laugh, insisting his hands are as much a part of his toolkit as his weapons and his armor, and he wouldn’t be much of a Mandalorian if he didn’t take care of his tools.  Unpainted beskar needs to be cleaned and polished frequently, his guns need to be maintained, and the leather of his gloves need oiling to stay supple.  And his hands, too, need maintaining.  And well, hide is hide, and the oil he uses on his leathers goes a long way towards making sure his hands don’t crack or chap.

He’s a man of opposites, especially once you start to get past his defenses.  He can be absolutely unyielding and also shockingly gentle.  With the armor on he can be almost brazen about the way he touches you, particularly if what’s between you is purely physical.  Just scratching an itch?  Oh, he can do that, that’s easy.  And those hands can lock you down better than any binders.  But if it becomes more than that, if he starts pulling you close when he’s just down to his flight suit and there’s no cold press of metal between you, and finally works up the courage to pull those soft-worn gloves off?  It’s hard to imagine this is the same man.  He’s hesitant.  Nearly timid, you think at first, until you realize his hands aren’t trembling just from nerves but from the effort of control.  Touch is a luxury Din has never been afforded, something new to learn in the dark of his bunk with you pressed up against him with your back to his chest, overwhelmed by the simple contact of his fingers curling hesitantly around your own.  Give him time to breathe, to process, to touch without fear that it will overload him or that he might by some pure accident of excitement touch too hard and hurt when he doesn’t mean to (it is, he still thinks on his more rueful days, what he is built for; not this tenderness).  Your patience will absolutely be rewarded.

Frankie’s a bit of a different story, bless his heart.  His nails are starting to look a little less ragged these days - the nicotine gum has gone a long way towards both helping him back off the cigarettes and keep him from chewing them ragged when his anxiety’s off the rails - but given when he’s grounded he tends to go for more hands-on jobs, his hands can take a horrible beating.  If he’s not seeing anyone he doesn’t bother much trying to take care of them beyond pumice soap and the occasional application of vaseline or bag balm in the winter time when they get chapped.  But if that should change, suddenly he’s blisteringly self-conscious about his hands.  The spots where the skin is rough and peeling, the calluses that he’ll never be able to file down and the ones he is only just beginning to see fade (index finger, between the first and middle digits - his thumb still worries over it absently, as if trying to rub it out).  He buys a nail brush, starts using balm every night, trying to work the coarseness out of his hands before he ever dares to touch you with them. 

And god he wants to touch you.  Touch is a grounding thing for him, a much-needed anchor to keep him in the here and now.  If he’s near enough you’re almost certain to find his hands on you - snaking his fingers between yours, or resting his hand light and warm against your thigh when you come along for a drink with the boys, or pressing his palm flat and solid against your back to keep you steady when he walks you to the car after.  And that’s maybe the thing that clings to your bones the strongest: how safe those hands make you feel.  He’ll learn your body until he knows every dip and curve, knows the paths to skate his fingertips along, where to press in deep, where to only graze until he’s got every nerve singing.  But it’s that sense of safety that overwhelms you, that feeling when his hands cup your face or settle gently on your hips or close warmly around your own that there isn’t a force in the world that could hurt you as long as he’s there. 

Tell him so.  Fold his hands up in your own, brush your lips over his knuckles, and tell him that you know you’re in good hands - in the best hands.  It’ll nearly crack his heart in half to hear it.  He knows what those hands have done, no matter how hard he’s tried to wash them clean of it.  But if they can make you feel safe, then maybe they’re worth something after all.

Whiskey is too vain not to take care of his hands, let’s be honest. Though there is a bit of practicality to his vanity - there always is, somehow, like the grain of sand that spawns a pearl.  He learned early enough that if he was fool enough not to take care of his hands it played hell with his ability to use them properly, and much like Din, he fully recognizes that his hands are as much a necessary tool as anything Statesman could provide him.  Decades of experience with his lasso, whip, and guns have left the palms of his hands thickly callused (his right only slightly more so than his left), but careful attention has assured they’re never outright rough.  The way he uses those hands, though, that’s a different story.  They’re strong and shockingly clever, and just as greedy as the rest of him.  Whiskey has a permanent case of Roman hands and Russian fingers, all too likely to have his hand dangerously high up your thigh in public (and far higher still if you’ll let him), but always just out of the view of the people around you.  He’s a menace, through and through, but rest assured, he won’t be putting his hands on you unless he’s sure you want that (and if you do, he will absolutely make every second count - he is as greedy for your pleasure as he is his own).

If he’s managed to get himself in a state where there’s more than just his libido involved, well, it’d be disingenuous to suggest that tactile greed ever goes away, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that, but it does change.  He still wants to touch you (there isn’t a second in the day this man does not want to be touching you, somehow in some way), but it’s different.  It’s smaller touches among the big ones, almost innocuous.  Fixing your necklace when it’s crooked.  An idle stroke of his thumb along your wrist, or a brush of his fingers along your forehead to sweep the hair out of your eyes.  Helping you in or out of your coat, or taking a knee to do up the laces of your winter boots, or nuzzling ever so briefly into the back of your neck while his clever fingers cinch up a knot into the new apron you bought while you were on a baking kick.  The man’s got twenty years of latent domesticity stored up and he can’t quite help it if you bring it out in him.

When you meet Ezra, he’s down to just the one hand, though you don’t quite notice at first.  You're making your introductions - new dig crew, small, but seemingly well-seasoned, even counting the young girl that keeps a nervous orbit around Ezra - not quite clocking the way his right arm moves just a little different under the thick fabric of his suit until you close your hand around his and feel the hardness of metal under his glove.  If anyone is bold enough to ask how he lost the arm, he’ll just give a grin and insist it is not lost: he remembers exactly where he left it.  His remaining hand is striking somehow when you first see it without the thick gloves on.  Wide palm, thick fingers, a prominent thumb joint.  A small black target tattooed there in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.  But his right hand, his new hand, he never takes the glove off of that one.  It’s accident the first time you see the thing in full, poking your head in his tent to let him know breakfast is running a little late on account of a brief problem with the water pump.  You find him sitting on his bunk in a battered thermal shirt with one sleeve cut off, his suit shoved down to his waist as he wrestles the prosthetic into place as Cee adjusts the harness over his shoulders.  It’s by no means top of the line, but it’s no cheap thing, that much you can tell.  The fingers, you know by now are fully articulated, and you can see now the digits and palm are thickly padded with silicone grips.  Ezra’s face hardens at the intrusion, Cee freezing behind him like a startled deer.  But then he sees it’s only you and the tension drains, his face softening, and he assures you they’ll both be out in a tick, just as soon as he’s made himself presentable.

It’s weeks later that you realize he’s only ever touched you with his right hand once.  Just the handshake that first day.  It’s tough to notice, honestly.  He’s not one to crowd into your space if you don’t want it, unless of course he’s trying to make a point.  You remember the floater that had wandered into your camp trying to make trouble, and the way Ezra had put a seemingly amiable hand on the man’s shoulder as he talked, smiling big and broad, and it wasn’t until the man cried out, dropping to his knees and clutching uselessly at his shoulder that you realized the full strength he carries in that prosthetic.  But every time Ezra is close enough to you to touch, it’s his left that finds you.  He makes a point of it, even going so far as to stay to your right when you walk together, but you don’t fully notice until one day he turns to you with an awkward twist to take hold of your arm with his left rather than his right.

It’s later, much later, in the dim quiet of your own tent, when the small touches finally snowball into something larger and more urgent and finally you feel that hand on you, bare and broad and warm as he cups the back of your neck to draw you close, and he almost laughs into your mouth when you suddenly ask him why he does that.

“Dear heart, if I am to touch you, I mean to feel it.”

Perma-Tag: @missredherring @dovesnroses @astroboots @magpierhymes @alienprincesspoop @aasimarr @maythxthirstbxwithyou @recklesswit

Pedro Perma-Tag: @ithinkhesgaybutwesavedmufasa @corvueros @thirstworldproblemss @littleferal @krissology @frannyzooey @Forallthestarsinthesky @princess76179

[juniorgman187]

Serendipity (Reid Fic) Part 1

A/N: If you’re wondering if this is at all based on Rosie and Marco’s storyline in “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” then you should know - it totally is.

Summary: An FBI gathering brings Reader and Spencer together after years of distance. This one night changes not only their future, but their perspective on the past.  Category: Angst, Smut, *NSFW content Pairing: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid Content Warning: Mentions of traumatic childhood, child neglect, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, menstruation, pregnancy Word Count: 10.2k

I originally thought I would be able to fit everything into 1 part, but after further reconsideration, this will be a two part series. 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　

Serendipity: (n). Finding something good without looking for it.

A word I would only come to truly understand many months from now on a warm Thursday morning in May at St. Mary’s Hospital. 

But whenever my thoughts drifted back towards the past, I would always remember that this was how it all began - on a chilly Saturday night in the heart of D.C.

Not more than four hours ago, Emilia and I drove down here for an F.B.I function that hired us. Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t have agreed to be the caterers for an event so far away, but we eventually signed on after learning that there were at least 600 people attending. That meant a considerable amount of customers and an exorbitant amount of money. Saying yes was clearly a no brainer. 

Just to put it into perspective of how big this event would be, Emilia and I got lucky if we could park somewhere with 80 customers. 80. So this event would be colossal for us.

But who would have guessed that in a crowd of 600, I would run into the one and only - Spencer Reid. 

To preface, this wasn’t just any old birthday party, parade, or festival. It was a celebration and a grand one at that. Considering it was a private event at the Washington Monument, we were given special instructions to abide by the black-tie formal dress code that guests had to follow, too. I guess the caterers can’t look like slobs in the United States’ Capitol, now can they?

I definitely spent more time than I should have deciding on what outfit to wear, but my conscientiousness, or rather indecisiveness, did pay off in the end. For I would run into someone worth the trouble of impressing. 

My hair, unlike Emilia’s, was down and curled in big waves, and on one side, some of my hair was tucked behind my ear and designed to stay that way thanks to copious amounts of hairspray and an ungodly total of bobby pins. Emilia lent me a black, floor-length dress that had a plunging v-neck that didn’t fit her anymore, but luckily, fit perfectly on me. Although I would have to remember not to lean over too far tonight, otherwise, the customers might get a show they didn’t pay for. I, however, didn’t look half so good as my business partner. 

Emilia was clad in a navy blue silk dress with puffy sleeves and a high collar; the dress clung to her every curve, including her newly protruding belly bump. She looked regal and pregnant all at the same time, qualities I hadn’t seen coexist in anyone but the Queens and Duchesses in England. 

“Well, don’t you look hot?” Emilia purred, running her fingers through my curls, then letting them fall and sway back into place. 

“Are you kidding? You are quite literally a sexy mama.” I gushed to her, receiving a light chuckle in return. 

“Yeah, well, when you’re five months pregnant, tell me how sexy you feel in a tight dress.” She remarked, turning her back to me while she arranged all the supplies in the kitchenette behind me. But even as she faced away from me, she still managed to recognize the effect her words had. Maybe it was something in my silence, or our sister-telepathy, but Emilia immediately felt the room depress. In an effort to take back the remark that turned the room cold, she sweetly added while hugging me from behind, “You’re gonna be a mom one day, too. I promise.” 

I leaned into her embrace, feeling guilty for ruining the moment while also feeling burdened by the reminder of the terrible reality I had to face every day.

Ever since I could remember, I thought I was destined to be a mother, but that destiny had yet to be fulfilled.

Emilia was born only three years after me, and though that age gap isn’t big enough for me to be mistaken for her mother, I, she, and our younger brother Saul would all agree that in many ways I was their mom. I was the parent our parents never were. I was there for everything - soccer games, dance recitals, winter musicals - never getting the chance to participate in my own, but always attending their’s. 

I had to admit sometimes it was a burden, having to grow up so fast and help raise my siblings while still trying to navigate through my own struggles of adolescence, but I saw it as something I was meant to do. 

See, I wouldn’t have minded all the responsibilities of being a parent so much when it’d be my own kids that I’d be fulfilling them for - when it would be by my choice to fulfill those responsibilities and not by unfortunate birth order. 

However, as the years have gone by, my calling to be a mother has gotten quieter and quieter and quieter until eventually, I don’t think I’ll be able to hear it anymore. 

It’s not that I can’t have kids, but the fear of rushing into having one is what’s stopped me from pursuing that dream. 

As someone who grew up with divorced parents and practically became my siblings only reliable caregiver, I knew what having a baby too soon could do to a family. So rather than repeating history, I chose to wait to have kids. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes my parents did, and so I lived my life. I traveled all across the globe, I met new people, tried new things, I even started this taco truck business with Emilia. 

But still that gaping hole in my chest remained. A hole that nothing could ever fill the way that a child would. 

No amount of living could make up for the emptiness of a life with no family.

I could pretend all I wanted that I was happy living out my twenties, but the truth was I didn’t want to spend the rest of my years working in a food truck, amounting to nothing more than a mediocre cook and middling entrepreneur. That was never my dream - as exciting as it was. 

My real dream was to have a good life. The kind my parents never had thanks to the unplanned arrival of me. The kind my baby sister was already living out. 

“You know what? It’s a really nice night out. I think I might go for a walk. Do you wanna come?” Was this my blatant avoidance of breaching the subject of pregnancy? Yes, but it was also my escape from this food truck that felt like it was getting smaller and smaller and smaller by the second. 

“No, I’m okay. I’ll just get everything ready.” Emilia resigned. 

She knew why I was really leaving - sister-telepathy, I’m telling you - but she didn’t feel the need to acknowledge it. For that, I was thankful. Maybe we were better at communicating with no words at all. 

I carefully stepped off the back of the truck, making sure to hike up my dress high enough so I wouldn’t trip over the mess of fabric when my feet hit the floor. The nippy December air felt like a cool balm on my hot skin. I was burning up in that truck, and maybe it was nerves or something else, but I just had this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. There was no explanation for it, but I realize now that the pit in my stomach was caused by something my intuition could sense but something my mind couldn’t understand. 

Someone important from my past was here tonight.

As I sauntered around the monument, I took in the breathtaking view of the structure’s silhouette against the blazing orange sky that melted into an ocean blue. I regretted not bringing my phone to take a picture of it so I could show Emilia when I got back, but that one regret quickly turned into another when the night sky’s breeze brought a rude awakening. My body shivered at the frigid gust of wind that blew through and I suddenly started to regret not bringing a jacket.

“Are you cold?” A gentle voice asked me from behind. 

I slightly recoiled out of shock of someone being there. When I turned around though, I couldn’t quite make out any distinguishable features. All I knew for sure was that this was certainly a man, and a tall one, too. 

“Um, just a little.” I bashfully admitted, crossing my arms to hug myself and maintain some warmth. I hadn’t even thought about my dress’s plunging v-neck or the fact that I was practically squeezing my breasts together, accentuating them even further, but by the time, I realized, it was too late. He was already looking. But not at my chest. Somewhere far more invasive. 

My eyes. 

“Here, take my jacket.” 

My small protests did nothing to stop him as he inevitably slipped the coat around my shoulders anyway. He’d come so close that I could finally see him and smell him. And let me tell you, if the sight of him wasn’t enough to break an overflowing dam of memories, then his smell certainly sent a flood that would.

“Oh my god,” I quietly gasped, my hand flying to my mouth to cover its un-ladylike gaping. 

“Spencer Reid?”

I squinted my eyes and cocked my head even further to find evidence to support my assumption, and sure enough, I found exactly what I was looking for. 

I was frozen in place as I deeply examined his face. My God! I mean, in many ways, he hadn’t changed a bit since the last time I saw him. Same dazzling hazel eyes. Same uniquely adorable nose. Same over-stimulated pink lips. I wonder if he still bit them as much as he did back then? 

But at the same time, he was so different. Of course, I could still discern the same features I used to study endlessly back then, but his face had transformed into a man’s. He lost the glasses for one thing, but he also had a softer jawline, longer hair, and for lack of a better term, a beefier build.

He was all grown up now, and yet, I could still identify the same boyishly handsome charm that made me fall in love with him more than a decade ago.

“I knew it was you, (y/n).” He chuckled, sounding half proud of himself. My heart fluttered at the sound of my name on his tongue and the action that followed. With his eyes locked on mine, he tucked strands of my hair back behind my ears; it’s as if he were saying, “Let me get a good look at you.” 

“How? It’s almost completely dark outside. You could barely even see me.” Certainly, you can understand why I was skeptical. Sounded too good to be true, if you ask me. 

He shook his head lightly with a smile, seemingly questioning how I couldn’t possibly know the answer to that question. “No one else looks like you. Not even in the dark.” 

His words spoke to a part of my soul specifically reserved for him. They were so genuine that I almost didn’t want to believe them because how could someone speak such lovely things and truly mean them? The world wasn’t that good a place. Certainly not good enough for Spencer Reid. 

In that moment, I flew out of my own body and watched this entire scene unfold from up above. I could see the version of a girl I hadn’t seen in years, not since that last interaction with Spencer. She had these big lovesick eyes as she swooned over a man with just the same lovesick look. 

The excessive upward tilt of my head and the way his neck craning down must’ve made it seem like we were about to kiss, but I knew better than to expect such a thing from Spencer Reid. And if anything, what we were doing right now was much more intimate than kissing. 

“Wow, you ... you really grew up. You look great.” My own voice sounded unfamiliar to me after the words slipped from my mouth without even registering in my brain first. 

“Are you kidding? Look at you! I mean, you are just ...” He paused for a moment to look me up and down, and I nearly shivered at the thought that he was practically undressing me with his eyes. “You’re absolutely beautiful. But you always were.” 

I was almost completely in a daze when I heard a hideous squawk of a bird flying overhead. This wouldn’t make sense, but it nearly felt like a sign. Like the bird knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, reminding me of where I belonged - reality - not in this fantasy with Spencer. 

“Um,” My head spun as I drew back from him. “I should probably get back. I’ll see you later.” I touched his upper arm gently as I passed by him, and it stunned me how warmth just radiated off of his body. 

To my all too quick goodbye, he simply waved and watched me walk past him with a pursed-lip smile. And just before I got too far, I thought I heard him say, “I hope so.” 

Though my feet were carrying me away from Spencer, my thoughts were only drifting closer to the memory of him, and we did have so many memories. 

11 Years Ago ...

I was at the ripe age of 16 when I got my driver’s license. And to anyone else, this would seem like a given milestone, but to me - it was so much more. With the obtainment of my license, I also gained access to a whole new world. Opportunities poured at the seams. I could drive anyone and anywhere I wanted to and though it wasn’t true, it felt like I could do anything, too. But like all things good in my life, it fell apart in the face of responsibilities. 

My newly obtained license was just another way for my parents to exploit me. Now, they didn’t have to drive Emilia and Saul since I could. Looking back, I have to wonder if the only reason they funded my driver’s ed classes were for the exact reason that if I took them, I’d sooner be able to take on yet another helping of duties they were too lazy to fulfill.

There’s one particular moment I can remember from this age and that same moment could also be regarded as the catalyst that would set off a series of events for the next 11 years to come.

It was the end of the school year and summer vacation was right around the corner. I was a sophomore at the time, and the prospect of being a junior the next year excited me. 

To kick off the start of summer, Melody Hanes was throwing a pool party at her house. Everyone knew she was filthy rich because of a dead grandpa or some other, not to mention, she was also in student government so she had just as big of a role in school as her grandpa’s death did in making the Hanes family wealthy. 

Though I never knew her personally, I did have third period chemistry with her for the entire year, and I sat right in front of her for pretty much the entirety of second semester. She must’ve only addressed me a handful of times, but she still invited me to her party anyway. Proximity, I had to admit, did play a part in that though because if I sat just a seat farther away, then I wouldn’t have been. 

I came home that day, thrilled to tell my mother about my invitation. It would’ve been my first party that wasn’t a distant relative’s birthday celebration or a childish sleepover in elementary. It was my first real high school party, and for once, I thought - maybe I’d finally get the quintessential ‘high school experience.’

But of course, I never did. 

As soon as I got home, I parked my car in the driveway, got the mail, and came inside the house to see my mother sitting on the couch watching TV, as per usual. While I was telling her about my invitation, she didn’t bother to lower the volume or even look away from the screen to give me her undivided attention, and when she did look away, it was only to take the mail from my hands. 

“Your sister’s science fair is on that day, and you have to take her because I’ll be working from 1 to 7.” My mother never once looked up from the mail she was sorting through to address me. And her words, while incredibly monotone, were also spoken with such finality, like what she said was the last she ever wanted to speak on the topic. No room for discussion. 

I’m not still losing sleep over it, but at the time, it felt like for once, I could actually just be a teenager and be young and reckless like everyone else, but that it was just taken from me. I never got the chance to be a kid again.

With the exception of Emilia’s science fair.

I knew my father wouldn’t be there, and obviously my mother wouldn’t, so I stayed to watch her presentation and to walk around the rest of the time. She deserved someone in her corner, and that someone was me. Even if no one was in mine. 

As I serpentined through the cafeteria, a bittersweet feeling came upon me. From paper mâché volcanoes to potato batteries, I observed a childlike sense of wonder that I hadn’t felt for years. 

Here, I was surrounded by children who got to be just children. They got to occupy themselves with trivial matters, like how gardens grow or if video games actually do rot your brain. 

Their problems had solutions and their questions had answers, and it almost made me wish that I could revert back to a time where life was that easy, but I couldn’t because it never was … not for me. 

So to sum it up, it was precious and heartbreaking all at the same time. 

While browsing the fair, I stumbled upon a man that didn’t quite seem to fit in, and maybe it was my own unfitting appearance that made me recognize his. He could’ve very well been the brother of one of these children, but something about the way he was dressed and the way he carried himself made me highly doubt that. 

He couldn’t have been a parent either, for he was not too far off from my own age, and if he was a parent of one of these eighth graders, that would have to mean that he had a kid when he was in kindergarten. So for all intents and purposes, he wasn’t someone’s brother or someone’s father. Who he actually was - I didn’t know, but I was determined to find out.

After that first observance, I spotted him a couple more times, but it wasn’t until we were looking at the same project that we actually spoke. 

“Fascinating, isn’t it?”

The sudden sound of his voice alarmed me, but only because it seemingly came out of nowhere. Generally, before someone speaks to you, you notice signals that they’re about to, which helps you prepare for conversation. Whether it’s nervous twitches, a look in your direction, maybe even a small acknowledging smile, you’ll recognize they want to or plan to talk to you, but none of those signs were given to me. Even when I turned my head to give him my attention, he was still fixated on the project in front of us. 

“Yeah, it really is,” I politely agreed. I awkwardly looked around the room as if I’d find an answer as to what to say next because I did want to keep talking to him, but the longer I stayed silent, the more I fear he’d begin to think I didn’t want to. With nothing else to ask but the question that had been bothering me since I first laid eyes on him, I simply went for it. 

“So, who are you here for?”

For the first time, he turned his head to the side to look right at me. With a quizzical expression, he responded. “Oh, no one. I’m just a judge here.” 

It was my turn to possess a quizzical expression. His statement wouldn’t have been weird, except for the part where any judge I’d seen or talked to were all well into their forties or fifties. 

“Aren’t you kinda young to be a judge? You’re, like, what? Seventeen, eighteen?

“Nineteen actually. But I regularly come to judge the Summer Science Fairs here since I went to this middle school eleven years ago.” 

Again, I would’ve taken his word for it, but the math didn’t make sense. “You were in middle school at eight years old?” 

“Mhm. I ended up graduating high school at twelve.” He said it so nonchalantly, but for how big of a feat it was, I thought it would’ve deserved a more prideful tone, yet he still maintained such a cavalier one. Did he not think himself to be impressive? 

“Jeez, you must be really smart.” 

He shoved his hands in his pockets, which made me notice that he wasn’t carrying a clipboard like the other judges, which was probably another reason why I didn’t take him for one. How would he be able to remember the projects that he was considering for awards? He’d have to have some magical memory for that.

Before answering, he began to walk away, but nonetheless he continued addressing me, so I followed him where he went. 

“Mmm not necessarily. My IQ isn’t high enough to suggest I’m a provable genius yet, but I do have an eidetic memory and I can currently read 16,000 words per minute, which definitely helps. I hope to be able to read 20,000 words per minute in the future.” 

Despite answering my question, he only left me with many more. 

“What is your IQ right now?”

“131.”

My eyes widened. Even I, with my limited knowledge on intelligence quotients knew that was high, especially for someone as young as he was. 

“So what IQ score do you have to have in order to be considered a genius?”

I couldn’t help but notice how he barely took anytime to think before answering me. It’s like his brain just knew everything, right then and there. 

“A score of over 140 is considered a genius or near genius.”

“Wow, so you’re almost a genius then?”

“Almost, but not quite. If I receive diverse stimulation at a consistent rate for the next few years, I predict that I’ll have an IQ of 180 or higher by the time I’m in my early twenties.”

You would think he would leave me speechless, but I still went on to ask him about what an eidetic memory was, and he explained to me that he could remember things exceedingly well, but that it was not the same thing as a photographic memory. He made that distinction very clear to me. 

Our conversation droned on for the rest of the fair as we continued to circle the cafeteria. I can’t count how many times we lapped around the same projects, but we never seemed to run out of things to talk about. Once those first few seconds after meeting him, when I didn’t know what to say, passed, I never again felt a sense of not knowing. We could talk for hours and hours, and it wouldn’t matter. I would never get bored. 

How could I? When I was with him, it felt like the rest of the world just faded away. Our discourse flowed so easily, no pressure, no awkward silence. It was just me and him, and if you ask me, that’s quite the opposite of boring. 

That was the first and final time I ever truly felt like a kid. Just like the ones in the science fair. Not a care in the world except for my morbid curiosity of the marvel that was him.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and I inevitably found myself being ripped out of my trance when I felt an aggressive tug on my sweater.

“We can go now.” Emilia interrupted. 

I hadn’t even noticed that a majority of the poster boards were taken down and that an even larger majority of the people were long gone, too. I got so lost in the conversation that I didn’t realize we were one of the last people still there. 

Emilia’s eagerness to leave was apparent as she pulled me away from my interesting conversationalist. 

“I had a nice time talking to you!” I called out to him, walking backwards to lengthen the period of time I could keep looking at him. 

“Likewise.”

I turned around fully just before I finally realized something. “Hey!” I yelled across the distance. “I never got your name!” 

He bashfully smiled and looked down at his feet briefly. “It’s Spencer! Spencer Reid!” 

I stood there for a moment, silently processing his name. 

“What’s yours?” He yelled back. 

I chuckled mischievously. “I guess you’ll have to find out next time.” My ambiguity puzzled him and intrigued him all at the same time. 

“Next time?” 

With the intentions of leaving him without a true answer, I simply turned on my heels and started walking away. 

“Bye, Spencer!”

Even if he didn’t have an eidetic memory, I knew after that first day, he could never forget me. 

- Present Time -

By the time I made it back to the truck, people were already lining up to order. 

“Get over here!” Emilia squealed excitedly from the window, her hand rapidly waving me over as if it’d suddenly increase my speed. I ran back as fast as I could in a dress and heels and climbed into the truck, mirroring my sister’s zeal. 

When I stepped in, Emilia took one glance at me and furrowed her brows. “Where’d you get the jacket?” 

Had she not mentioned it, I would not have remembered the foreign fabric that wrapped around my shoulders. 

“Oh, shoot!” I palmed my forehead after the realization dawned on me. I should’ve noticed sooner that I still had it on, but honestly, it didn’t feel unusual or out of place. It was comfortable and familiar, like it was meant to be there that entire time.

“I’m so sorry to do this to you, but do you think you can handle this alone for just a second? I have to return this to a friend.” I asked while slipping off the coat to ready myself to leave, even in the event that Emilia said she wouldn’t let me go. Luckily though, she understood it was urgent. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine. Just hurry back.” 

I extended my head to look out just past the side of the truck to look for Spencer while still being concealed within the vehicle. Now that there were more people here, I wasn’t exactly sure I should be caught mingling with the attendees, so instead, I decided to search for him from the truck, rather than wandering around the party, giving the impression to the people that hired us that I wasn’t doing my job and was just here to socialize. 

Luckily, there was something about my attachment to Spencer that was supernatural. I had this metaphysical ability to spot him even in a crowded place. I could find him anywhere. But whether that was a blessing or a curse was to be determined because right as my paranormal power kicked in, I found him. And there he was - standing next to another girl, a proximity much too close and a smile much too big to be anything less than flirtatious.

I paused to recall the image I had of myself earlier, when I floated up and out of my own body. I looked just like her - an oversized grin combined with lovesick eyes. 

But that’s not the worst part. 

The worst part was he was returning just the same look of attraction to her. 

“Um, actually,” I re-entered the truck completely, tossing the jacket aside haphazardly. “I’ll just return it later.” 

“You sure? You can go. I’ve got things covered right now.” She said between multitasking at a rate that even I, a very-much-not-pregnant-woman, could manage. 

All I could mutter back without giving away the sharp ache in my heart was, “Yeah, I’m sure.” 

_ _ _

After hours and hours of non-stop working, the night, at last, was coming to a close. The large crowd had sized down considerably, until I could no longer hear the sound of a thousand voices meshing. All the decorations were already coming down by the time Emilia and I finished packing up the truck. Without the hectic energy to cause adrenaline to course through my veins, it should’ve been peaceful, yet my heart was not at peace. 

I couldn’t shake the gut-wrenching feeling of seeing Spencer with that girl, but that wasn’t really why I was upset. It was more about the fact that I’d actually believed for a second that I had any chance with him. I should’ve known he wasn’t single, and the fact that I let myself swoon over him again angered me all the more. If I ever had a chance with Spencer, the time to act on it was long gone.

Now, I had to live with that. 

“You sure you wanna stay here alone? I’ll come with you if you want me to.” 

Emilia’s question was referring to my proposal to stay in D.C for the night while she drove home. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but I realized I couldn’t handle being in another suffocating car ride with Emilia. It had nothing to do with her - just that I needed alone time to process everything by myself. If I knew my sister as well as I thought I did, I knew she would’ve sensed something was wrong and tried to coax me into talking about it, which I was not in the mood to do. Plus, traveling for so long made me nauseous just thinking about it. Although, I didn’t have a plan, I knew that I just wanted to hail a cab and find a hotel somewhere here for the night. 

“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about me. Call me when you get home.” I tapped on the back of the truck twice to let her know she was good to drive away, and I felt the car lurch forward per my request. When the truck finally did move, out from behind it appeared the tall figure of none other than Spencer. 

I was surprised, but only for a second, when that surprise turned into pain once more. Playing it cool so my afflictions wouldn’t be suspected, I nonchalantly stated, “Here’s your jacket, by the way. Sorry, I forgot to give it back to you earlier.”

I extended my arm far enough so that we’d still have a great distance between us when he went to grab it, but sure enough, my actions were all for naught when he not only refused to remove his hands from his pockets to take it but also walked two steps closer to me than he needed to be. I looked like an idiot just standing there with my arm so outstretched, only for him to not grab it and to let it simply press against his stomach as a complete avoidance of getting it back. 

“You were supposed to keep it. That’s why I didn’t ask for it back.” He curtly replied, finishing his statements with a cheeky grin. However, I wasn’t in the mood to return it. I simply stood there and shook the jacket in my hand to emphasize its presence. 

“Take it. Please.” My voice was full of contradictions. I tried to be assertive with my command, and yet my plead only softened the order and showed a defeat I wasn’t even aware of until I heard how sad it sounded. “I don’t want it, Spencer.” 

He no doubt saw the shift in my demeanor but still wouldn’t pacify me by taking the jacket. “What’s wrong? What did I do?” His voice got quieter, as if speaking any louder would shatter me in this fragile state of being. 

“Nothing, I’m just tired and I want to go home.” This wasn’t a complete lie. I was exhausted from working for hours and hours on my feet with no breaks in between, but it wasn’t exactly the full truth either. He could tell. 

“Just tell me what’s wrong.” He persisted. “Please.”

The only way I could describe what I happened next was like the vision of a boiling pot. Gradually, I was heating up until I finally got so overheated that I just boiled over and exploded. 

“What don’t you get, Spencer? I don’t want your jacket!” Fury consumed my tone. “And I don’t think your girlfriend would want that either.” 

“Girlfriend? What girlfriend? What are you talking about? I don’t have a girlfriend!” His words were flying out of his mouth at 100 mph as he desperately trying to mend what couldn’t be fixed. 

“Don’t play dumb. I saw you with that blonde girl. How close you two were standing, the way you were looking at each other.” Just having to recount the interaction made the horrid memory come back vividly into the forefront of my thoughts, and it broke my heart all over again. I shut my eyes painfully as though it would turn off the image of them together, but this only allowed for Spencer to wrap his warm hands around my upper arms and pull me closer to him without my knowing. I flinched unconsciously at the sudden feeling of his touch, to which he instantly let go. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His hands shook with remorse for letting them touch my body in a way that elicited that reaction. They hovered in the space between us, not knowing where to go that would suddenly make things okay. “But she’s no one, okay? She’s just a coworker.” 

I wanted to believe him. I quite possibly did believe him, but there was still a sharp pain in my chest. Call it intuition. 

“No, she’s not,” I shook my head. “She’s not ‘no one’... you love her.” 

Spencer came closer but still didn’t let himself touch me again out of fear that I might draw back even further. 

“Listen to me - whatever feelings I used to have for her are long gone. She’s married, (y/n). She has a kid. And none of that even matters because the way that I used to love her is nothing compared to the way that I-” 

“Don’t.” I held my hand up in protest. “Don’t say you love me.” 

His eyebrows knit together with dismay. “Why? Why not? It’s true. I love you. I always have.” 

With one big sigh, I finally resigned to my emotions. “Then why didn’t you ever do something about it?” 

Judging by the deflation of his shoulders and the far off look he got in his eyes, he knew exactly the moment I was talking about. 

Two days after Emilia’s science fair, I drove to the library to pick up books I needed for my summer homework. I was already on my way out when I just happened to glance to my side, noticing a lone figure sitting at the bus stop. I didn’t think anything of it, but when I looked back, I partially recognized him. I shaded my eyes from the sun and squinted harder to confirm my suspicions. 

“Spencer?” I wondered out loud.

The figure’s head turned around, narrowed their eyes, and waved. He stood up from his seat and made his way over to me with a precious little jog-walk. Although we had only met once before, we still embraced each other like lifelong friends. 

“Do I finally get to know your name now?” He jokingly inquired after pulling away. 

It completely slipped my mind that I’d denied him the knowledge of my name, but for my own satisfaction, I wouldn’t let him get off that easily. 

“Do you have any guesses of it could be?” 

He pouted childishly. “Are you kidding? In a population of 350 million people, there would be about 4.4 million names. But if every country on Earth had the same nominative diversity we in the US have, that would suggest about 750 million unique names exist.”

I must admit it was fun watching him melt into a flustered mess of facts, but I was growing just as impatient as him. “Come on, just guess. You might be right.”

He rolled his eyes but indulged me willingly anyway. “Okay ... um ... Catherine.” 

“Nope.”

“Nicole.”

“Nope.”

“Gertrude.” 

“Seriously?” I raised my eyebrows. He shrugged. “Nope.”

“Olive.” 

“Pretty,” I smiled, making his face light up, too. “But no.” His smile fell. 

“This is nearly impossible.” He sighed. 

“Nothing’s impossible.” My delivery wasn’t as cheesy as the line itself, so it touched us both in a way that made that silly phrase feel like it’d never been said before. With a visible passion reignited in him, he continued. 

“Francis.”

“Okay, maybe this is impossible.” 

My blunt joke brought us closer together, our heads almost knocking into one another’s as we clutched our stomachs and leaned forward to support our all-consuming laughter. When we finally calmed down, I finally confessed. 

“Okay, okay - it’s (y/n).” 

He stood there completely silent. There was no expression of his face that indicated he planned on speaking, so I elaborated. “It’s not as good as the name Spencer, I know I know -”

“I’ve never known anyone with that name before.” His hushed voice cut into mine so innocently. 

My cheeks heated from the slight compliment. “Well, now you do. And don’t you forget it.” I teased. With nothing further to say, I brushed past him to start walking away, when unconsciously, I spun my keys around my index finger and heard the familiar jingle of the metal, reminding me of something. 

“Hey, Spencer?” I turned on my heels. “Can I give you a ride home?”

And so began our routine for the entire summer. I would bring my summer homework to the library, and Spencer would help me understand it, or even complete it, and then I’d give him a ride home. We’d go to the park and read, or we’d go to the movies, or we’d hang out at a diner. And each time, I’d drop him off. 

The more time we spent together, the more I learned about him and his life. He told me about his mom, his dad - everything. I did just the same. I told him about my mom, my dad, my siblings - everything. 

Perhaps we enjoyed spending so much time together because it was a sweet escape from our houses that weren’t homes. But every time we did hang out, we just got closer and closer, and by the end of the summer, I knew my feelings perfectly clear. 

I love Spencer. 

If missing that pool party at Melody Hanes was what it took to find the absolute love of my life, then what a small price to pay it was. I wouldn’t have traded a million pool parties for that one chance encounter with Spencer at the science fair. 

One day, we were pulling into his driveway after having a picnic at the country club, and I’d just let him out of the car, when unconsciously, I said, “Bye, Spence! Love you!” 

He caught the words faster than I did. He looked like a deer in headlights, and it took me at least two seconds more to figure out why. That entire day I’d been thinking about saying it, but by the end, I decided it’d be better not to, and yet, it just came out anyway.

“You love me?” 

There were two ways I could’ve answered. The first was to deny it and say that I only meant that I loved him like a friend. The second was to be brave and validate my unintentional confession. 

In the heat of the moment, I chose the latter. 

“Yes.” I nodded, smiling from my own courage. You only live once right?

In a cruel twist of fate, Spencer never tried to speak, and instead, ran to his front door. 

“Spencer!” I yelled. “What are you-” 

He gave me one last look over his shoulder before he opened the door and closed it right behind him. That was the last I ever saw him. 

I learned, that day, that you do only live once. 

But you can die over and over again.

From that point on, he’s lived in my mind as the one that never was. 

Regret and shame manifested on Spencer’s face. “I never wanted to hurt you.” He dejectedly began. “But I was young and-and dumb and just ... so scared. God, I was so scared.” He finally looked up, if for no other reason than to gauge my reaction. “I liked you so much, but I, I just couldn’t open myself up to the possibility of being hurt by another person I loved.”

Much like my own life, Spencer’s was riddled with traumatic experiences. Except rather than being expected to take care of younger siblings, he had to take care of his mom. And having to be a parent to your own parent? That’s something I would never wish upon anyone else. 

“I ... I get it.” It was a sweet surrender, my words. After years of pent-up aggression borne from humiliation, rejection, and deep sadness, I could finally understand. “But as selfish as it sounds, I wish your past hurt hadn’t gotten in the way of our potential happiness.” 

He took each of my hands in his, encasing them with palms of warmth. “Then don’t let the same thing happen right now. Don’t let the stupid, broken teenager I was cloud your judgement of the man I am now. Let me prove to you that I’ve changed.” 

I stood there silently, an eerie parallel to how Spencer reacted to my confession eleven years ago. 

“When I saw you, it felt like a second chance. A second chance to do what I was too afraid to do back then. And I couldn’t let myself make the same mistake twice.” His eyes were piercing through my soul. Every word plucked at my heartstrings, until I could no longer keep up with the symphony they were playing. 

There was the slightest hesitation behind it, but I did inch forward. And in no time at all, Spencer saw the movement and made his own. 

His hands released mine and shot straight for my cheeks to cup them gently, while kissing me firmly. He wasn’t the same shy boy he was, and this kiss was only proof of that. The way his lips were moving so fervently made me weak at the knees. He was so desperate and needy, like even with our lips touching, he still wasn’t close enough to me. Unleashed upon me was years of yearning wrapped in prominent lust. 

“I love you.” He blurted clumsily on my lips. I didn’t return the sentiment, but that wasn’t why he said it. He wanted to say it so I’d know, not so that I’d say it back. 

“You should know,” I muttered between kisses. “I’m not leaving D.C. until tomorrow morning.” 

The biggest smirk creeped onto his face. Bastard. 

Once we’d exhausted all the things we could possibly do in public, we ran to the nearest cab we could find and exhausted all the things we could do in that, too.

It was already past midnight when we arrived at Spencer’s apartment, and though we should’ve been quiet so as not to disturb the neighbors, we were still breaking out into a fit of giggles like a bunch of teenagers sneaking around as we ran up the stairs. We hadn’t even made it past the doormat, before he seized my hips in his hands and spun me back towards him. Forcefully, he pressed me against the door while simultaneously unlocking it. That shut me up real good, lemme tell you. 

As soon as we crossed the threshold, he gave me a reprieve when he held me closer so as to stop pinning me against the door. In an effort to do the impossible, we stumbled through his apartment in a frenzy trying to undress each other while maintaining our bodily contact. With one giant tug of the zipper on my back, my dress fell to the ground. To his atonement, he left me in just a thong. Whereas he was much too overdressed in my opinion. 

No sooner did I gracelessly unbutton his shirt than we ran into a plant against the wall. Our smiles practically ruined the kiss at the sound of the crash, but it remained nonetheless. I knew I was in for something, when Spencer paused to wait for me to unbuckle his belt. That was the first time we ever really stopped in place, but just as I anticipated, I was in for it. 

When I finally freed his waist of the garment, he just as quickly placed his hand on the back of my thigh, and in one swift motion, hoisted me into the air high enough to allow my legs to wrap around his waist. My arms were loose around his neck and the feeling of his warm hands touching my bare skin sent a chill down my spine. 

Due to Spencer’s essential hand placement on my body, I had to be the one to fumble with his bedroom’s doorknob until it finally gave way. Once more, we staggered through his room before he let our lips break apart to lightly toss me onto the bed. I giggled at the squeak of the bed, driving him visibly crazy. 

He hastily unzipped his own dress pants, while I propped myself up on my elbows. When he met me on the bed, he hovered over me to the point of having to lay back down again just to see him clearly. He felt too far away so I drew him nearer by lacing my hand through his soft curls. I twirled one around my finger, which must’ve been too merciful for him to handle. 

He placed his hand on the back of mine and slid it down to his cheek. He held my hand there for a moment, leaning into the skin of my palm prior to placing a chaste kiss on it. 

He didn’t need to say it again for me to know what he was thinking. 

I love you.

The anticipation was killing me and in the most impatient manner, I pulled him down to my level, mimicking his similar habit of face-grabbing during a kiss. I knew his hands would’ve flown to my face the way they did just minutes ago, but one was too preoccupied keeping himself up and the other was busy toying with the band of my thong. I shivered at the sensation of him slipping one finger under the material and letting it glide over my tender skin right above my heat. 

“Spencer,” I mumbled in a kiss to bring his attention back to me. Although I was certainly interested to know the hidden talents of Spencer Reid and his fingers, I was restless. I’d been waiting years for this moment, and unlike most people, I didn’t want to wait another second. “I need you now.” 

He pulled his head back so he could get a full view of my face to examine my sincerity. He wanted to know if I was sure, and my eyes told him such. He nodded in acknowledgement with such speed that I was sure he was craving this as much as I was. 

Rather than looking at where our bodies were about to meet, I had to close my eyes so I could fully feel everything without any other sense taking that away from me. In a painfully slow manner, he lined himself up at my entrance. At first, he only lightly pushed in, and it was this slacken movement that made me cry out and grip his shoulders for stability.

He pushed further in until he was fully sheathed inside of me. There was a slight moment of regret for not letting him engage in foreplay before, but that quickly went away when the pain turned to pleasure. He gained more confidence in himself with each stroke, and I could feel it. The more powerfully he thrust, the more I felt myself tightening around him. The over simulation was a stark contrast from the stimulation I denied and so the sensation I was feeling was only heightened by the absence of it before. For that very reason, I knew I was already close. And maybe he knew it, too and just as sweet revenge, he decided to send me over the edge by pulling my leg over his shoulder to thrust into me a new angle. As I’m sure he predicted, I threw my head back as tears began to prick the corners of my eyes. He rode the ever exquisite border between pain and pleasure, and my tears were a manifestation of that. Not even a minute passed, before I tried to moan but pathetically failed, not even being able finish the pitiful wail without the both of us finishing together.

Our heavy panting synchronized and reverberated back to us while he slowed down his pace and pulled out. 

Perhaps in the heat of the moment, we lost all logic and reason, considering that even up till now, neither of us had realized that he didn’t use a condom. 

But what would eventually happen in the future as a result of this action, or inaction, would surely make us remember.

Spencer lowered himself down to kiss me breathlessly; strands of his hair clung to his forehead as sweat glimmered on both of us. Not until we were ready did we make our way to the bathroom so he could help clean me up. Once we returned, I gathered my clothes, but he made sure to grab my panties before I could even notice.

“Have you seen -“ I cut myself off when I saw what was dangling in his hands.

“Looking for this?” He teased.

All my energy had been spent on him that I couldn’t be bothered to fight for them back. 

“Keep ‘em.” I smirked, my hand reaching down to pick up his jacket off the floor and hold it up. “Consider it a fair trade.”

No arguments from him. 

Needless to say, I did end up finding a place to stay the night. Where and with whom you might ask? 

Well, you can probably figure that one out for yourself. 

_ _ _

I wish I could tell you I got a good night’s rest, and I could - it just wouldn’t be the truth. 

Spencer and I spent the rest of the night just talking. We filled each other in on nearly ever second of the past 11 years, and once again, I found myself reverting back to the teenager I was at the science fair. The entire world revolved around us as we spoke to each other effortlessly, like no time had passed. Even in the periods of silence, I felt comfortable. 

Spencer and I were lying on our sides facing one another when I felt compelled to profess that “I can’t talk this way with anyone. It’s just you.” 

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with a small smile on his lips. He didn’t need to say that he felt the same way because I already knew. His hand never left my face but instead made its descent down my jawline and stopped at my chin. He raised his thumb to reach my lower lip, letting the pad of his finger graze over the soft skin of my lip. 

It felt like he was tracing every detail of my body, running his eyes over every inch at least twice so as to fully commit everything to his memory. 

At last, the tension broke when he positioned his hand comfortably at the back of my neck, bowing his head forward to kiss me. This one was quite different than our first, for it was gentler and warmer. We weren’t forcing ourselves to make up for lost time. In fact, this kiss was saying, “We’ve got plenty of time.” 

Plenty of time indeed. Which we were happy to spend making love again. 

And I will be the first to admit that if our first round of unprotected sex didn’t solidify our future predicament, this time certainly did. 

Six Weeks Later ...

“Hello?” Clearly frustrated, Emilia waved her hand in front of my face to harness me back to earth. I hadn’t realized I zoned out until she scoffed at me. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

“No, sorry. Could you repeat it one more time?” 

She set down the papers in front of her and sighed unhappily. “What’s going on with you? You’ve been so distant lately.” 

It hurt to hear, even though it was the truth. I wasn’t intentionally being despondent, but it’s hard to be present when there’s so much occupying your mind, and there was one thing in particular that was keeping me up late at night recently. 

My period has always been irregular. For as long as I’ve had it, I’ve always missed a few weeks, then it would become consistent, then it would be sporadic again. In fact, there was one year where I only had four periods total. So it didn’t strike me as odd when I realized three days ago that my last period was about seven weeks ago. 

What did strike me as odd was the other symptoms I was experiencing. Menstruation cycles are known to closely mimic the symptoms of pregnancy, but with the knowledge that my period wasn’t coming, it was disconcerting to me that I was suffering the discomforts without the actual period itself. 

To me, there was only one clear explanation for this anomaly. 

I was pregnant. 

Earlier in the day, I bought a pregnancy test and was late to work because of it. If Emilia hadn’t been suspicious of my behavior before, showing up late only made her suspicion greater. 

I didn’t know when I’d take it, probably at home after work, but the anticipation was eating away at me. I would pace around the truck until Emilia finally told me to stop because the vehicle wouldn’t stop swaying with my every movement. I was biting my nails and chewing on each little piece that grew back just to bite it back down to the nub. My hands couldn’t stop shaking, my breathing wouldn’t slow down. I was a hysterical mess. 

I didn’t tell Spencer any of my concerns, of course, but being as perceptive as he is, he noticed my strange mannerisms despite my best efforts to hide them. 

“Your breathing just got faster. Are you feeling okay?” He paused the movie we were watching to check in on me one time. It should be known that the scene that caused my heavier breathing was a scene of a woman finding out she was pregnant and being absolutely devastated. I quickly brushed it off as just being too warm, to which he turned on his air conditioning. Luckily for me, he didn’t make the connection. 

And it’s not that I didn’t want to tell Spencer - I really did - but why should I make a fuss about something if there ended up being nothing to worry about? That would just be extra stress, and the last thing a new, blossoming relationship needs is additional strain. 

So without Spencer, I had to opt for the next best thing - my sister.

I’d reached my wits end, and I couldn’t keep up the act any longer. I was walking on eggshells with practically everyone I knew, and I’d sooner go crazy if I didn’t tell someone what I was really feeling. So in response to her question, I finally told the truth. 

“I think I might be pregnant.” 

You can imagine the shock on my sister’s face. Emilia’s jaw became one with the floor as her eyes widened so big I thought they would pop out of her head. 

“You’re pregnant?” Already her eyes were welling up with tears of joy. 

“I don’t know yet.” I put my arms around her to keep her calm and stable while the emotions began overpowering her. I wanted it to serve as a reminder to not get her hopes up, otherwise she’d get mine up, too. 

“Well, have you taken a test?” 

I reached for my purse behind her and rummaged through it until I finally retrieved the box. Holding it up, I reluctantly suggested, “I thought maybe you could be there for me when I did?” 

She squealed with joyful elation, practically shattering the window pane with the high pitch of her voice. On top of that, she was jumping up and down with elegant grace that I had to wonder how her pregnant body could even manage to do such a thing. 

“Of course, I will! Come, come, let’s go.” 

We hopped off the truck and to the nearest restroom, which admittedly wasn’t the nicest of places, nor was the place I ever imagined as a child that I’d be finding out I was pregnant in, but it had to do for now. 

When I first came out of the stall, I set the test face down on the sink, so that we wouldn’t see it until it was ready. Emilia set a timer for 10 minutes, but in the meantime, all we could do was wait. Neither of us could stay still; Emilia bounced up and down, rubbing her belly while facilitating some sort of breathing exercise. Meanwhile, I kept tapping my foot impatiently. 

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Emilia’s alarm scared the shit out of me, and we both were startled by the blaring sound. It was so jarring, but even that wouldn’t compare to the fear I felt when I realized it was finally time. 

“Do you wanna look or should I?” She asked. 

“You look.” I said at first. But when she lunged forward to take it, I did, too. “No wait, I should.” Then another moment of hesitation. “No, you do it. I can’t.” 

I held my hands over my mouth while I watched her carefully lift the test off the sink, maneuvering it in such a way that only she would see the results. I watched her expression closely for any sign of a reaction, but she was stoic as can be. I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed, happy - nothing. Complete and total poker face. 

“Come on, Emilia! What does it say?” I blurted anxiously.

“Well, first, what do you want it to say?” 

That was a question I hadn’t considered. I was so busy worrying about what I didn’t know, to pause and think about what I wanted to find out. On the one hand, I’d be ecstatic if the test confirmed that I was pregnant. I’d jump for joy because that was what I always wanted, right? But on the other hand, if it said I wasn’t pregnant, then I’d be sort of sad because I got so close to that lifelong dream. But after that, I’d probably just be relieved to have dodged a bullet.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I don’t know-”

“Don’t think. Just tell me. What do you want it to say?” 

Without missing a beat, I replied, “Positive.” My sister and I alike were stunned by my answer. “Yeah,” I nodded slowly. “Positive. I want it to say positive.” I repeated, to cement my earnest desire. 

Emilia’s facade melted away as she began to shake her head. “I’m sorry, (y/n). There’s only one line.” 

We both knew what that meant, even if she didn’t explicitly say it. I sighed dejectedly, which was a surprise to even myself. I didn’t expect to be this disappointed, and yet I was. The knot it my stomach worked itself free, and where that pit used to be was just emptiness. My heart sunk and steadied itself, and my breathing resumed its normal pace. 

“Well,” I bit my lip. “I guess that’s that.” 

Emilia instantly drew nearer to pull me in for a hug, one I was not ready to accept but welcomed anyway. “I’m sorry, (y/n). But I mean, sometimes tests just come out with false negatives.” With her face still buried in the crook of my neck in our hug, she mumbled, “Not this one, though. This one’s positive.” 

Immediately, I retreated from our hug and pulled her in front of my view. The sneaky girl had a huge grin that took up 99% of her face. 

“You’re pregnant!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, shaking my body violently. We embraced each other in another hug while simultaneously jumping up and down. “I just wanted to trick you so you would know how you really feel. Now you know!” 

And I did know. I did know that I wanted this baby and that I was glad it even existed. 

Not long after our mini-celebration did I start to come down from the high of my euphoria. A certain realization dawned on me like a cloud of gray hanging above my head to rain on my parade. 

What about Spencer?

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　

PART 2 HERE!

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[brujahinaskirt]

First Line Meme

Thanks for the tag @jawanaka! I tag @megendary, @maranzalla, @mangocats and @weterali

List the first lines of your last 20 stories. See if there are any patterns and choose your favorite opening line!

ONCE UPON A TIME in a majestic green valley out West, there lived a princess and her boy. But this princess was not like most princesses, and her boy was not like most boys. He didn’t have to go to school or shovel shit on a farmstead or make bottlecaps in a factory, because the princess and her boy were free.

THE PRINCESS-BOY (Chapter One – The Kingdom in the Valley) / Red Dead Redemption 2

One day, the black water came, and no one was ready. The kingdom in the valley had to run for their lives.

THE PRINCESS-BOY (Chapter Two: The Blackest of Water, the Most Terrible Men) / [Not yet published.] / Red Dead Redemption 2

She calls them curatives. Little bottles of peppercorn attar, jars of minty ointment, sour cherry balms. If she called them potions, these good Christians would collect her business tax in fire.

HUMBLE MEDICINE / [Not yet published.] / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Be careful, Henry, Theresa tells him. She tells him all the time.

WITH HORN AND LEASH / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

If you should ever get it into your head to become a fine lady, know now that a wise girl should really first consider the following list: MASTER BUTCHER ZBISLAV’S SHORTLIST OF UNFINE THINGS THAT FINE LADIES CANNOT DO.

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD (Chapter Three: A Dozen Tiny Favors) / [Not yet published.] / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

In regards to his personal affectation as it pertains to the dwarven monarchy, and indeed one monarch in particular, Master Baggins has not been entirely, shall we say, forthcoming.

WORDS UNANSWERED (Chapter 17) / Tolkien

IN THE NAME OF GOD AMEN, and in the very unhappy event of my awfuyl death by sword, sickness, falling, cryshing, drowning, goring, lyghtnyng-striking, kattle-stampeding, choking on my supper, or other kalamity unforseen, I—HENRY, born of SKALITZ, Infantryman of the Rattay garrison—make my will in this way.

IN CAES OF DISASTUR / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

God save him: Henry was learning how to write.

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD (Chapter One: Among Friends) / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

The first letter anyone had ever sent him went: Dear Henry, it is my regret that I have not yet told you how sorry I am over the death of your father.

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD (Chapter Two: The Most Important Things) / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

In her dreams, sometimes, she dances.

A LONG TIME FOR DANCING / [Not yet published.] / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

For the first time in twenty-two years, you dream.

INSTEAD OF STARS / Half-Life

The Sasau Monastery is the loneliest place in the whole world, he thinks. He would rather be lost deep in a dark wood.

LOST IN THE TREES / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

The horses are prettiest when the day’s work is over, and they are let free.

WITHOUT HOME / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

In springtime, the forest flowers with bones.

IN SPRING / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

There is honey in the linden tree, but Theresa has always had a sharper taste for fruit.

A STRANGE HUNT (Chapter One: The Hound) / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

When he is small, he drinks a grail of holy water. He pulls it from the altar behind the baptismal priest’s back and he swallows it down.

A STRANGE HUNT (Chapter Two: The Stag) / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Henry wakes up in Skalitz.

A STRANGE HUNT (Chapter Three: The Lion) / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

If you happen, at some point in your life, to leave Lonely Erebor through the Lion Door, you will see it. There isn’t much to see. It is just a darkness, rocky with coal, that rises like crumbled gravestone from all this grass gold. Ravenhill.

WORDS UNANSWERED (Chapter 16) / Tolkien

Here's a story for you: In the City of Angels, a rich white man is born grown. Blue-eyed and blond-headed, he comes into second life—a sharpening of his first life, if you please. A new, better, sleeker life, one with all the baby fat scraped off.

DESERT OF GHOSTS (Chapter One) / Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

The time has come for one last note about hobbits, I suppose. Not all hobbits—but one hobbit in particular. The hobbit, if you must.

WORDS UNANSWERED (Chapter 18) / [Not yet published.] / Tolkien

Patterns: I'm a devotee of hooking in 1-3 lines, so I like really jangly voicey first lines that get a reader's boots on the ground of a scene/setting by zooming in on a concrete image, object, or action. Short and punchy with some exceptions for rambly narrators where I need to establish deep POV quickly, such as unreliable narrators or story-within-a-story (or that one second-person Half-Life fic which is really just a canon-character study in disguise). Most of these lines are bold claims by a POV character where I then proceed to break those claims down, but a few are more neutral observations about place instead. Only with Tolkien do I veer into straight-up character musings where the narrator is obvious and meant to be noticed more so than the image. Often times I try to build in an overt reference to the title, but one with extra significant that will only become clear after reading the whole fic... but I don't always manage.

Favorite: I still really like the first chapter of Desert of Ghosts in general. I think it captures anger and character voice really well without being too in-your-face about either at the start, and it was fun to see people go: "Ah okay, so your OC ripped off Nines Rod--OHHHH NVM IT IS HIM"

[ecampbellsoup]

Outlander Moments of Impact: I Have No Life, But You

To be attracted to someone is often merely the submission of the senses; and even more often than not, it’s outside of our control. We are drawn to whom we are drawn. There’s no formula.

To love someone is a choice. To choose to stay, to choose them over and over and over; to choose them when you hate them, when they’ve betrayed you. To wrap your life into their arms and decide on them regardless of what will follow.

Jamie and Claire Fraser’s love story is about as unconventional as it gets. 

Some might claim it’s over-the-top...that it lacks realism. And not simply because of the time travel involved, but because of the events surrounding their love; who could endure all of that suffering let alone love the person on the other side of survival? 

The Frasers have been through hell and high water this much is sure. Yet it is the tender moments when they confess their love that gives this relationship a truth that allows it to transcend from page, screen and directly into our hearts. 

A scene that exemplifies this in a pure, simple, yet lovely way is in 5x4 “The Company We Keep” when Jamie and Claire share their love, their doubts, their desires in the forest. And they choose each other again. 

Let’s break down this scene for some context, shall we?

The tension of the day melting away by the firelight, the Frasers finally have a moment of reprieve. Basking in a rare occurrence of fun, they dance. 

Taking her hand, Jamie spins Claire with adorable delight. They have lost so much; to watch them enjoy life is nothing short of wonderful. 

Claire beams, glows, is alight with love. Laughing with glee, unable to contain her joy, she watches Jamie dance for the first time. She just loves him loves him loves him. 

Drawing close to each other, arm in arm, the walk away together from the party escaping the crowd.

Sweetly, Claire confesses, “I didn’t know you could dance like that.” Even to this day, she continues to learn things about Jamie; she relishes discovering him. 

Unable to contain their unbridled happiness, they giggle the whole way. Teenagers once again, they savor every second in soft, warm affection. 

Taking her hand, Jamie twirls Claire again, before tucking her into himself. He wants her always close to him. 

They go further and further into the isolated woods. Bursting out in a chuckle Claire questions, “Where are you taking me?” Jamie chirps, “Away from prying eyes.” I want you alone. I want time with you, just you and me. 

Claire flirting, “Well, I should warn you: my husband’s as jealous as he is handsome.” 

Continuing to play, sneaking out from under his arm, Claire states, “And you should know, I can knock you off your feet, sir.” Seeing her wobbling, Jamie jokes, “You can’t even walk in a straight line.”

Humorously, Claire inquires, “Can you recite the alphabet backwards?” Throwing it right back, Jamie responds, “I expect so. English or Greek?” It is almost as if these two have just met and are exploring one another; their humor mingling with their desire. 

Conceding, “Oh, well, never mind. If you can recite either of those forwards, then you’re in better condition than I.” Claire captures Jamie’s waist, kissing him. 

Walking away from her, the mood shifts ever so slightly to something more serious at hand. Tentatively, “There’s a…a question I want to ask you.”

Eyes still twinkling from him, “What?”

Pausing for just a second, face shining, Jamie asks, “Do you want wee Bonnie? Do you want to keep her?”

Approaching Claire he continues, “We have a big house. And I’ve seen you wi’ her, Sassenach. I’ve seen how you would’ve looked with Bree. And I thought, maybe this might be the last chance for us to raise a bairn together.” Jamie’s face is full of emotion: loss from having missed out on Bree, desire for every experience with Claire, and hope for their future hand in hand. He wants to offer Claire the world. He would lay it at her feet that she would lack no good thing.

Silently listening until now, Claire knows she must inquire, “What would you think if she stayed?” She understands well what this conversation means to her husband, but she also knows that there is another couple who have suffered the loss of a child, and they have the opportunity to give them one. 

Not understanding yet, Jamie presses, “Here? In Brownsville?”

Taking Jamie’s hand, “It’s been suggested. Lucinda’s taken a liking to her And I think she needs our wee Bonnie more than anyone. She’d be in good hands.”

Practically, Jamie agrees, explaining it would be a blessing to the Brown’s estate. But then he adds, “I have no life, but you, Claire.” He sees she is his world. Everything he is, he desires, culminate in the woman standing before him. She is it. 

“But if you wanted another child, I thought that perhaps I might give ye one. One that you wouldn’t have to suffer carrying.” He seeks that she miss out on nothing with him. Yet he also wants her to bear no more pain than she already has.

Overwhelmed, Claire’s eyes fill with passion. She struggles, searching to even find the words. Who this man is to her. 

Claire leans into Jamie, affirming, “Please know, that if it’s at all possible, I love you even more for wanting to take the chance.”

“And I also regret that we were never parents together.” Claire is making sure Jamie knows that she feels exactly as he does. Despite being able to raise Bree, she missed him every second and felt his absence with every breath. 

Yet Claire is nothing if not honest, so she claims, “But, regret, isn’t reason enough.” Jamie’s face falls ever so slightly as he grasps the truth of Claire’s words. 

Sensing his masked disappointment, his grief, Claire professes with every fibre of her being, “l love our life.”

“I love our home together.”  Slowly, she is healing the wounds of his heart with the balm of her professed love, her choice of him regardless of the cost.  

“But, would we even be the best home for her? And then there’s our obituary.” Even in their desire, Claire practically recognizes their reality: danger follows them. 

Holding her hand, Jamie brings it to his lips and kisses it. All these gestures continually show Claire she’s not alone anymore in the world anymore. They aren’t alone. 

“I am grateful for every day we have.” You and I: we are enough. Every second we have is enough. You are more than enough for me, Jamie.

With that sparkle in his eye that only Claire can give, Jamie agrees, “As am I.” And they kiss.

Throwing her arms around him, squeezing him tight, tears flow down her cheeks. Claire holds fast to Jamie. She can embrace him and he is really there. 

And then, for a brief glorious moment, they linger in each other’s atmosphere. 

When Jamie and Claire made the decision for her to go back through the stones, and back in time and space, they did so for her child: Bree. Claire would have gladly died with Jamie that fateful day ...if not for their Bree. 

They made the sacrifice so that their flesh and blood could live and the legacy of their love would walk the earth. 

Despite the fact that she knew her life and the life of her child would be spared at Culloden, Claire also knew well that a piece her heart would perish with Jamie. Something that could never be replaced. Something that no amount of time exists to fix. 


When Jamie released the most precious and dear person on earth to him to sustain their lives, he did so prepared to die, prepare to not have to go on living without them. Yet, he survived. 

The chasm between Jamie and Claire was tangible to all around them, even if it remained unspoken. You can burn the clothing, you can force yourself to never utter their name, but you cannot erase their fingerprints on your heart. And they both had to choose to go on every day for twenty years silently calling through the skies for their lost one. 

But on this night in the woods, the same setting where their love sparked, the home they once lost has been restored. Their daughter is alive. She is well. She is with them. They are both alive. They are well. They are together. 

Confessing and claiming their love yet again they affirm: you are my home and you always will be. You are the lean-to that keeps out the rain. You are what gives me life. And that is enough. 

Despite it all, they would make the same choice again and again and again. 

“Then kiss me, Claire," he whispered, “And know that you are more to me than life, and I have no regret.” 

“I do know this: even now, after all the pain, and death, and heartbreak that followed, I still would make the same choice.”

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 85

Okay, so this chapter is a bit shorter than I usually like to post, but I’ll be honest: I love, love, LOVE the way it turned out.  Huge thanks go out to @dierotenixe for creating this character and letting me use her.  She’s been floating around in the background for a while, but I finally got to show her interacting with Sophia, and I honestly don’t think the chapter would have been even half as good without her.

As always, special thanks to @satan-parisienne and @baelpenrose for not only beta reading the story as it goes, but also keeping me sane on a day to day basis. @charlylimph-blog that includes you, too, on the sanity scale!

Three weeks had passed since Jokull Bjornson attempted to confront me in the corridors.  Three weeks of carefully worded family dinners to avoid topics my sister couldn’t discuss. Three weeks of being escorted back and forth any time I left my quarters, by a group of people on a rotation I was not privy to. At one point, even our resident mermaid walked with me for five levels, from my office to the archives.  To be honest, with the relatively-recent replacement of her tail, I actually expected her to be back in the water.  When I asked, however, her only explanation was to give a very ladylike huff and something regarding the construction making the water ‘unsatisfactory’ for swimming. She even insisted to Grey’s people to quarantine the wildlife for the duration.

During our walk, I learned all about her lost lover - a vampire secret agent, how she became exiled from her kingdom - apparently for kindness of all things,  and her absolute conviction that her son was on board the Ark.  Truthfully, my heart went out to her; regardless of the truth of her story, any life that led someone to believe they were being punished for being kind was a sad one in my book.  And honestly? I didn’t even know her that well, but here she was, taller than most women I met in my life, with flaming red hair, casually gesticulating as she told her story, as though she wasn’t wearing forty pounds of diving weights.

If nothing else, no one dared approach us.

However, being escorted everywhere only stopped any further direct confrontations.  What didn’t stop were the hushed voices I heard all over the ship, only this time it wasn’t just the groups we suspected of having an agenda.  This time, it felt like everyone I passed was staring at me and chattering.

Rumors.  Everywhere I walked, I heard rumors.  Some were slightly ridiculous:

“Yeah, I heard he hit the Councillor, and her friend just tore him to shreds.  He had to be carried away, and now the other woman is being investigated,” a woman I didn’t recognize whispered, bangles clattering.

“She is not… She was defending the Councillor after he knocked her out!” her companion groaned.

“He couldn’t even walk. It was overkill.”

“That programmer broke the Baconist bitch’s hand and face, and he wasn’t even charged. I don’t believe you.”

Yet another pair gave it a romantic spin:

“Jokull Bjornson almost killed her, I heard. Over a man,” someone hissed.

“That’s not true.” Laughter from the person they were walking with. “It was over a woman, silly.  One of the artisans, the one who always wears a hat.”

“Ooooo, I thought she was dating that programmer. Zach something?”

“She’s dating them both. And Jokull.  Who would have thought?”

Before I could correct either group, Nixe tossed her head and scoffed. “So many important things to discuss right now, and they perpetuate lies. Terrible.”

I wanted to grin at her casual demeanor, but other gossip was surprisingly close to accurate:

“I heard that big Bjornson guy almost got his throat ripped out by her sister.”

“No, it wasn’t her sister. It was one of the engineers.”

“The one she’s dating?”

“The smaller one, in the hoodie.”

“But his throat?”

A growl bubbled up in my throat at the disgusted tone, but a firm and gentle hand stopped me. “As if the Harper girl would be so crass,” my escort’s tone rebutted privately, equal if not greater in her disgust, albeit for the opposite reason. “Surely had she intended to do such a thing, the man would be dead.  That girl is many things, but a failure is not one.”

The worst, though, were the absolutely outlandish ones….

“Check it out, she’s already out of the medical bay!”

“Dude.. what about her friend?”

“No one’s heard from her.  Who knows how long she’ll take to recover?”

“At least he stopped before he killed them.  I heard it was a close thing.”

“Do you blame him? Someone told me the Councillor over there is trying to take out any opposition to the Council.”

“Seriously?”

“No, it makes sense if you look at it. First, a Baconist got on board somehow? Better yet, not just one, but twenty? And then that virus, which would only talk to her? Wasn’t that a little too convenient?”

“Dude, come on…”

“A lot of people think she is just trying to make sure we fall in line with the current political climate -”

“Josh, we’re on a ship -”

“And they are in charge. They don’t want anyone else doing it, because they think they know better.  They don’t want anyone else showing a different way things can be done.”

“But she almost died - “

“Did she? Did she really? Or is that the story she’s telling after selling out the rest of them? How do we know she isn’t just some power hungry bitch trying to take the reins over what’s left of us?”

My jaw ached from clenching it as I tried to keep walking, even while my eyes stung with frustration of knowing that I almost wanted that one to be true.  I wished Else had been convenient, instead of giving everyone on the ship nightmares trying to talk to them.  I wished I hadn’t almost died, only to be left traumatized… I’ve only been able to wash my hair for six weeks. It was only a mild balm, knowing that Charly wasn’t laid up in some medbay, she just stopped long enough - under protest - to be scanned for an all clear. Hell, I hadn’t even been checked over, much less had to stay for injuries to be treated. And power hungry? Hell, I’d give up my job to anyone who asked. They didn’t even have to be polite!

Just as I was about to turn around and say all that to the men behind me, I felt a hand brush my elbow. Nixe was standing beside me, face unperturbed. “We’ve reached the archives, and you promised you would help me find an original copy of The Little Mermaid, so I can make sure it’s accurate.” She tossed her braid over her shoulder with an imperious shake of her head - honestly very impressive, considering it trailed the ground and I would have dislocated something trying that maneuver with a quarter the amount of hair. Before I could say anything, she leaned down to speak directly in my ear. “Besides, I heard that you negotiated a peace treaty with a newborn race that could have killed us by accident, saved my life in the process, and did everything possible to make sure this vessel was able to voyage again.”

All I could do was gape as she straightened to her full height. The moment I was able to find my voice, she cocked an eyebrow and silenced me. No wonder she thought she was a queen. “Much madness is divinest sense, to a discerning eye. And sense, the starkest madness, ‘tis the majority…  Come, help me find my book, please?”

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[slothgiirl]

gonna put you off (alex turner oneshot)

alex turner/age difference!reader oneshot in which you are visiting your boyfriend in london from the midlands

You take the last train of the night down to london. Traces of stage makeup still clinging to your skin as you collapse into the seat, a few days clothes tucked into a duffle bag with the tackiest floral print you'd though was chic when you'd seen it at a thrift shop, but had been on many flights with you since, sticking out among a sea of black and navy. As the clock strikes eleven, feeling very much like cinderella as you wipe the remains of the makeup away, the train whizzes past dark countryside, too dark to make out anything. 

In two hours you'd be in London. In two hours you'd be with Alex again. You're still wearing a leotard under your many layers of leggings and sweatpants topped with a turtleneck, flannel, and jacket--in that order. Not remotely like the fashionable girl you'd felt having been dressed by Simone Rocha. It helped that you'd been dressed. 

After years in ballet, most of your wardrobe consisted of warm and practical cotton clothes to shepard you to and from rehearsal. You couldn't give a damn about what you were wearing when you were waking up before sunrise. You'd much rather be warm and not pull a muscle thank you very much. At some point, somewhere in the midlands, you fall asleep. Exhausted to the bone from a weeks worth of shows and only three days to recover. Though you'd probably fit in a few hours of practice during your stay with Alex. 

The announcement for King's Cross wakes you up, a crick in your neck from napping while sitting. You scramble to stuff your headphones into your pocket and grab your bag as you hurry to get off. It's past one in the morning. There's no crowds for you to push through in order to depart, but the sleep-full grogginess gives way to electric anticipation. You have to force yourself not to run off the train. Because Alex. 

You'd seen him just last week. 

He was coming up to Birmingham this week. 

But it didn't matter. You couldn't deny the giddy happiness that you get at the thought of your boyfriend. It was so different from the calm resolve that made you dance for ten hours. Or the serene delight when you twirled about on stage, the heat of the lights blinding you to the audience leaving only room for perfection, one step at a time. 

Just as the train is mostly empty. So it the platform. 

So is the station. 

It's easy to spot Alex, in dark jeans and an equally dark leather jacket, a bouquet of roses in his arms. 

You suck in a breathe, consciously having to stop yourself from speed walking as a smile breaks out on your lips. This is a perfect day in your eyes. "Alex," you tell him, still a couple of steps away. 

His gaze mets yours, the grin on his well formed mouth complimenting yours, as Alex wraps his arms around you and wow is the station freezing. You hug him right back, not caring that you're in public when you reach up to cup his cheek, pressing your lips to his, savoring the taste of him in your mouth. 

" 'ello love," he whispers against your lips. "I take it you had a good show?"

"It was great," you admitt, hands around his neck as you lean back and drink the sight of Alex in. Unlike you, he definitely got enough sleep last night. You've probably been awake for sixteen hours at this point. "but I won't lie. I'm looking forward to these three days off."

Alex laughs. "I brought you flowers," he notes with too much casualty as pink sneaks its way into his cheeks. But he doesn't make to pull away, and the flowers are much forgotten in his grip as you gaze into each others eyes. 

"Thank you," you reply, the happiness bubbling up into your voice. 

"Do ya wanna get outta here," he asks, smile shifting into as smirk as his dark eyes full of the nights promise meet yours. 

"Yes please," you demure, unable to help yourself and add, "I need more tubs of tiger balm than you use of gel right about now."

Alex takes your bag, letting you carry the bouquet as you both get a cab to his flat. His hand never leaving yours. 

** *

Your ballet friend's older cousin, who'd bought alcohol for you both when you were still in high school and incredibly sleep deprived trying to juggle school and dance, works for some company that does PR for a couple of fashion brands. You're not really sure about all the connections, but when she hears you're moving to England--England not London-- she sends you a dm. 

Want to go to fashion week. 

You think Julia might have told her about your plans for after ballet, because as much as yo loved dancing and it was your career right now, like with most sports, it wasn't a long career. But again, you're not sure and seeing as she offered and you don't know anyone else in the entire country, you reply yes. Twenty isn't that young of an age to leave home at. There's lots of ballet stories about young kids leaving at 11 or 13. It isn't any less daunting to leave everyone you know behind. But Birmingham meant a job contract, a steady job. A rarity in dance. 

So you somehow find yourself sitting third row at Simone Rocha, filling in the seats behind celebrities and Anna Wintour. It's like something out of a dream. You wear a dress from the last collection that's worth more than your paycheck and try not to spill anything on it as you get invited by the man sitting next to you, Pierre with three dangly earrings in one ear, skin as rich as creme brulee's crust.

He takes one look at you and says, "new?"

You laugh, caught like a fish out of water, "yeah. I'm still not sure how they even let me in."

"Because you're a size 0," he jokes, which isn't true but you have that toned look that makes you appear slim, exchanging instagram's before the show, then taking you out for a night on the town like you're the latest it bag. It's nice. And easy. You drink beer, and make faces, trying not to think about how awful you'll feel in the morning. You meet writers and buyers, head spinning as you network between drinks and house music, feeling wobbly in heels the way you never would in pointe shoes. Pierre takes you out on the dance floor, where models tower over you. 

Photographs don't do them justice. But instead of feeling insecure the way all those carefully edited selfies do, you just appreciate the edge they each have. The perfect girl next door, all heart shaped face. The perfect cold scandinavian poise, every feature perfectly complimenting each other and poreless HD skin that no amount of makeup could hope to achieve. Like you, having put years into making dancing on pointe seem effortless and painless, they've just perfected their natural beauty. 

And being five one means you have no hopes of being a model. 

Pierre grins shamelessly after making eyes with some photographer in a sequined blazer in some Bahaman themed club, over his latest cocktail, "do hit me up," before disappearing into the crowd. 

You snort into your drink, trying not to feel out of depth. 

In three days you'll be back to your usual routine, settled in at a new studio. Seattle had been home for so long, had been where you first wore pointe shoes and learned to bang the sound out of the wood, smacking each pair of shoes as you all groaned about the piles of homework waiting for you at home.  

You should go. 

Another man slides into the space Pierre had left behind. He's handsome in a classically english way, hair quiffed like some 50s greaser or maybe you'd just thought the 50s were exactly how Grease depicted them. Either way, hot. Unlike most people out and about in during fashion week, his outfit isn't outrageous, trying to attract street style photographers, or a fit for the gram. 

But there's still something sharp about his well fitted blazer and carmine dress shirt,  confidently wearing sunglasses indoors. 

He catches you looking, and without missing a beat, you lie, "sorry my friend ran off with some guy and I was waiting to see if I'd been ditched or not."

You play it off, trying to sound cool and not like you are completely lost and contemplating going home before one in the morning like a loser. You'd already missed out on house parties to the nutcracker and swan lake. You weren't about to let this night go to waste just because you didn't know anyone. 

He smiles, taking a drink from his whiskey, the line of his shoulders relaxing. 

Maybe he thought you were some fangirl. 

There were plenty of famous people here who probably wanted to avoid being hounded while they were just trying to party. 

"Do ya want another drink," he asks, nodding at your empty glass. 

"Sure," you reply lamely. It's not so surprising when he leads you of the club, your hand in his. "So its your fist day in london," Alex parrots, glancing back at you, just to make sure. 

"Yeah," you nod, grinning like an idiot and it wasn't just the alcohol in your bloodstream. Alex's smile could make any girl weak in the knees, you were sure of it. Plus that swagger. You finally understood the meaning of swagger. "Got of plane a couple of hours ago. haven't even seen Buckingham palace."

"No," he shakes his head. 

"I'm serious. I had to head straight to Rocha and get my outfit and makeup done. First time getting my makeup done actually. Found out I've been doing my foundation wrong for years," you ramble on, internally wincing. No one wanted to hear about foundation especially not men you'd only met an hour ago. And Alex was definitely a man, not like the boys you'd gone to high school with and laughed when your health teacher went over a diagram of a vagina. "so no, I haven't seen any london-y things."

"Well we can't have that," Alex utters, flagging a cab down habitually, somehow lighting a cigarette at the same time. 

"To Buckingham Palace through Piccadilly Circus," he tells the cab driver as you both slid in. "Traffic'll be hell though."

"The company's not bad," you comment, watching as his eyes crinkle up from laughter. It softens the line of his face, revealing the baby face beneath the pomade and gel. 

"So what brings you to london," he asks. 

"Work," you admit, your gaze leaving Alex for the first time since you'd laid eyes on him as you watch the city go by. It's a slow crawl as you hit the center of London, views you recall from movies, "Birmingham National Ballet offered me a contract.  I'd be stupid not to have said yes. So I'm just in London for a few days."

"In a very nice dress," Alex says, voice thick in a way that has blood pooling in the pit of your stomach. 

"In a very expensive dress," you add, "that I made sure to take lots of selfies in earlier before I have to return it tomorrow. 

"So ya dance for the posh people."

"Yes," you groan, "and no one thinks it's a real job. Or sport!"

Alex chuckles, smirking, "I've watched Black Swan. I know it's fookin' hard." "2009 was a very good year for ballet." Granted you were too young for anything other than the child parts in The Nutcracker, but still. "What about you?"

He's about to reply, the lights of Piccadilly Circus, still full of life at one in the morning, filling your eyes, when the cabbie interrupts. 

"He's in the arctic monkeys," the cabbie says, taking his eyes off the road. You peel your gaze off the window and turn back to Alex, and his admittedly expensive attire, "Oh so you're actually famous famous?"

He looks down bashfully, nothing like the confident greaser air he put on, "ya could say 'that." 

"Would I have heard-"

"One of our songs," Alex continues, "probably. Me mate says we're properly overplayed now."

"Well you're no One Direction," you counter, teasingly. 

You spend the rest of the night making out in front of Buckingham Palace's fountain, before you invite Alex back to yours. 

** *

Alex laughs as you peel off another layer, laying on his bed, only to uncover another moth eaten sweater. It was annoying when all you wanted was Alex's hips against yours. "Patience love," he manages, but you can hear the want in his voice. 

"Don't be an ass," you counter, "or I'll suddenly remember how tired I am." In response, his lips meet yours, shoving back any intention of sleep away as your skin burns with want, his tongue exploring your mouth, hands abandoning any pretense in favor of shoving your sweatpants down.

"Of course there's leggings," he half groans, half moans against your lips, breathlessly. 

You giggle, pulling your shirt off, "wait until we get to the leotard."

"Can't they have those buttons babies onesies have," Alex mutters, tugging off his shirt. 

"Would be awfully convenient," you admit. There was no sexy way to take a leotard off, but apparently no one had told Alex that, because his hands are helping you tug the leotard down your thighs, fingers leaving burning trails on your skin as he goes, sucking kisses down your neck. 

You moan, closing your eyes in bliss. 

" 'm genuinely surprised your not wearing of these things," he mutters against the crook of your neck. 

"Oh take your jeans off already for fucks sake," you retort, trying to act like your voice isn't all choked up. 

Alex chuckles, but does as you ask, his dark gaze meeting yours as he unbuttons his jeans painfully slow, sitting up between your thighs. It's hot and all, but you are horny. You're twenty, and so turned on, having lost your shoes in the hall. A coat in the living room. 

You reach for him, your hands deliberately brushing against his cock, before helping him tug them down his hips. 

"I'm flattered," Alex teases, voice hoarse. 

"Oh," you counter, when you finally get him out of his boxers, "I see, you think this is about you," you tell him, cupping his jaw as he presses down against you, his hips meeting yours, his fingers brushing against your core. And then you aren't thinking very clearly at all, pleasure taking over as Alex's nimble fingers elicit the most debauched moans out of your lips. 

Callused fingers slid into you as he nips at the skin of your collarbone, knowing exactly where the rub to make you see stars. Yours hands wrapped around his neck, keeping him close, wanting him and only him. And- "There. there there," you manage, aware of how wet you were, toes curling. 

His other hand digs into your hipbone, as you writhe beneath him. 

You whimper at the loss of his touch. At the loss of his fingers curling so deliciously inside you. 

You can feel how hard his cock is, on the inside of your thigh, wet with precum and your breath hitches when he enters you, Alex pressing his lips hard against yours, kissing you with all the passion and lust you'd both laughed around earlier, like it would take the sting of separation away, hand still wet with you as he twists his fingers in your hair.  

He's anything but patient as he trusts into you now, his body meeting yours. Your legs wrapping around his waist, that little extra in the angle as he thrusts into you, has you whimpering into his mouth. Your eyes flutter shut as you hold him near, his pace relentless. 

So. 

Worth. 

Taking. 

The. 

Midnight.  

Train. 

"come for me, love," Alex manages, voice cracking, lips bruising your own. The reunited with your long lost lover bruising kiss that you'd thought only existed in movies. 

You come with a shudder, exhausted, satisfied, in that afterglow, stars dancing across the back of your eyelids as you lean back limply into the bed. Alex coming seconds after, collapsing onto the other sider of the bed, spent. You don't care about anything after that. 

Having been awake for eighteen hours. 

A good fucking day. 

** *

You wake up to thirty six missed messages. Mostly from Pierre and Vivian, your fellow corps ballerina you'd told you where all the cheap AND good bars were in Birmingham were. 

They're all along the same lines. 

Links to articles like, "Black Swan for Arctic Monkeys Lead Man." Which okay, was a great movie. "Alex Turner New Flame Confirmed." Again, true. "Teenage Love for Arctic Monkeys Singer!" Which was fucking gross clickbait. You were twenty. Had been for months even if sometimes you felt much younger than that, like when you realized you had to buy pots and pans, they didn't just magically appear. 

And, "New Arctic Monkeys Album? Alex Turner All Loved Up." 

You rolled your eyes. 

For once you were up after sunrise. And after Alex which wasn't surprising. He rarely woke up before noon if it could be helped. 

You reply to Pierre, "officially a sugar baby now lmao [eye roll emoji]." 

And just heart some of the links Vivian sent you. You'd be seeing her soon enough. 

Nine years. Alex was nine years older than you, but it wasn't really something you thought about of ever really talked about. He was just Alex, your boyfriend, once he'd gotten back from tour and had spent more than three days all cooped up in your hotel room bed having the best three days of your life. It wasn't that big of a deal. Just something you hadn't specifically mentioned to your parents during your weekly facebook messenger video call. They would worry. Your mom would go on a rant. Your dad would definitely bring up how you should've gone to college before pursuing ballet and how this was supposed to have helped you get into a university not be a career.

And you'd have to keep them from taking a flight to the UK. 

Besides, your parents knew how to google people. They weren't dumb. Just worried about you living so far in general. 

Even you hadn't ever really thought about, it hadn't crossed your mind, to date someone so much older than you. Alex had a house. He had an established career. 

You couldn't even legally drink in the states. 

But after the initial shock of the band and his age, you'd fallen into easy conversation, ordering room service, Alex's lips at the apex of your thighs while waiting for a full english breakfast because you just had to see what that was about, and it had slid from the forefront of your thoughts. 

Now the tabloids had of course, decided to be an ass about it. 

You got up and slipped into the shower. The water steaming as you quickly got ride of last nights seat before heading downstairs, interested in what Alex had scrounged up for breakfast this time. 

Last time you were here, it'd been frozen waffles, an avocado, and margaritas. Alex is frying eggs as you take a seat on a barstool, watching him cook. You hated frying eggs. You could never get them to not stick to the pan.

"Matthew," Alex tells you as he plates the eggs along with toast and slices of tomatoes, "sent me a load of articles. 'fink they know who you are."

"Had to happen eventually," you respond, watching as a line forms between his brows. Maybe you should talk about the elephant of the room. Just because something didn't bother you didn't mean it wasn't bothering him. Though the whole famous thing in general annoyed him. "Pierre sent me some too. Though he works for some fashion website so he always sends me a bunch of things to read."

He'd also heavily hinted that should you ever decide to try being an influencer he'd love to get you in touch with small fashion brands. 

The man loved his Laquan Smith. 

Alex frowns as he takes a seat next to you. A set up you personally hated and never failed to bring up at least once while staying at his flat. How could you hold a conversation like this! face to face was the way to go. 

Trying to lighten the mood you joke, "I've been twenty since July."

He doesn't smile. Or reach for his food. Alex had the bad habit of just sitting, following his train of thought, as he lapsed into silence. And his thoughts didn't always lead anywhere good. 

If you thought that hard, you'd probably be depressed. It was a good thing you generally were too busy remembering counts and steps to think, and got home to tired to do much other than sleep.

"Alex, baby," you tell him, "who gives a shit what they think." 

"Ya ever 'fink," he says instead of shrugging it off, "about how when I was twenty ya were 11?"

"No," you answer plainly. It had crossed your mind once but-"Well I thought about it once," you tell him honestly, putting down you fork, "but what's the use thinking about it? I didn't know you then. It's not like your some family friend that knew me when I was five. That's fucked up."

Alex snorts, his eyes meeting yours. For once his hair isn't full of gel. Strands falling into his doe eyes. "Ya know what I'm trying to say...your-I'm. Nine is. . .I grew up with the strokes ya grew up with One Direction."

You reach for his hand, intertwining his fingers with yours, warmth spreading in your hearth when he squeezes your hand. "Nine is not a small gap. Or a huge one. It's not like your some fifty year old man dating a woman young enough to be his daughter."

This time he really does laugh. " 's true love but. . .don't ya want someone. . .I'm-I don't want you to miss out on doing what twenty year olds do."

You roll your eyes. "Alex you're also twenty not some grandfather. I'm not missing out on anything. It's not like we don't go out. And more importantly I want to be with you. Now let me eat my eggs before they get cold and rubbery."

"It's just. . .ya. . .," he turns his whole body so he's looking at you, even as you dig into your breakfast because you just knew if you kept talking about this Alex would just keep going in circles and your much rather eat and then fuck your boyfriend on the couch before wandering around london. Or curling up to watch telly. "ya sure-"

"Alex," you meet his gaze head on, "nine years isn't nothing, but it only really matters if you were rushing to have kids and get married or in some different stage of life which you're not. Fuck the tabloids. When have they ever been your friends."

Alex runs a hand through his hair thoughtfully and you finally start eating. Which okay, your boyfriend could fry an egg.  It was much better than the oatmeal you'd had for the past few days because you hadn't stopped by a store even though you lived a block from one. 

"I really love ya," Alex mutters softly. 

Out of natural instinct, you reply, while smashing some egg onto a slice of toast, "I love you too."

Then realize what he'd just said. What you'd just said, and look over at him all bug eyed. It was the first time you'd ever told a boy than. And it sent the same little thrill through you as kissing him in front of Buckingham Palace had. 

"Alex, I love you," you repeat just because you can, smiling softly over at him.  

"I haven't put ya off yet love?" Alex asks, smiling sappily over at you. 

"Never." You smile in response. 

[wizardwomenwisdom]

i don’t actually ship anyone in the big three (best three? pogue three? pjk? idk they need a name) but i had this idea this morning while listening to conan. enjoy.

heather (or, kiara)

JJ wasn’t sure when it started. He’d tell you it was after he watched Kiara and Pope kiss on the dock, after John B left, but the truth was that it’d been going on a lot longer.

It was every longing look in her direction, every whispered conversation that JJ wasn’t part of. It was whenever Kie wore Pope’s sweatshirt to bonfires.

The sweatshirt that Pope insisted not so long ago looked better on JJ.

It was October, and John B.’s 17th birthday almost passed without any acknowledgement. At the last minute, JJ decided they needed to get drunk, so he showed up on Pope’s dock with a case of cheap beer and a bottle of something stronger. He shot Pope a text and told him they’d go pick Kie up.

Only, Kie and Pope came out together.

“JJ!” Kie yelled, bounding down the boardwalk. He steadied himself with one foot on the doc and gave her a big hug. He pulled her into the boat like that, and the boat kicked away from the doc slightly. Pope reached out and pulled in back in with one hand. Then, he and JJ gave each other that sort of asshole hug that they always made fun of, where they high fived and hugged and acted like dip shits.

“Where to?” Kie asked, settling down at the back of the boat.

JJ glanced at Pope. “You didn’t tell her?”

“We’re heading to John B’s for his birthday,” Pope answered. He wouldn’t even look at JJ.

Kie’s face fell, and JJ’s stomach hurt. This whole situation felt so shitty all of the sudden. He tried to convince himself that it was only because John B. should’ve been turning 17, but he knew it wasn’t.

They stayed silent all the way to John B.’s house, and all while JJ built a fire, and all while they passed around the hard stuff. It wasn’t until Kie started singing happy birthday that the silence finally broke. The tension didn’t.

At some point, Kie started shivering and Pope jumped to wrap his arms around her. JJ felt sick.

He tossed a sick into the bonfire.

“God, I miss them,” Kie said quietly.

“Yeah, whatever,” JJ mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

“What was that?” She leaned out of Pope’s reach, towards JJ.

“Nothing, forget it.” His tone told everyone that it wasn’t nothing.

“Tell me, JJ.”

Suddenly, he stood up. “You lost, what, Kie, two people of twenty? Thirty? I lost everything.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t miss them.” She stood up too, accepting his challenge.

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“The fuck?”

“Where were you when I was cleaning out his house? Or when I called to tell his uncle?”

Kie took a step back and crossed her arms. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it though, Kiara?” JJ shook his head, and turned away from them. “Whatever. Just put the fire out when your done macking.”

JJ had John B.’s key, but it didn’t matter. He almost always left the door unlocked. Pogues didn’t steal from other Pogues, because there was never anything valuable, and Kooks didn’t steal because they didn’t have to. So tonight he just stormed in through the porch, listening to the satisfactory snap when the thin door hit the frame. Without thinking, he headed straight for the kitchen. It was almost always empty, so he could easily lean against the counter and seethe.

After a few minutes, he heard the screen door again, and the familiar creek of the floorboards. Kie, coming to talk about what happened.

“Fuck off,” He snarled, turning to face her. Only, it was Pope who stood in the door way.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He asked slowly. It was a very “Pope” thing, calm and quiet but still commanding. JJ just stared at him. “Why the hell would you say that?”

The only excuse was the truth, and it was a pretty shitty excuse at that. He took a shaky breath. “Fuck, she’s such a good person,” He said. “But sometimes, sometimes I wish she were dead.”

Pope stepped towards JJ slowly. “You don’t mean that. I really fucking hope you don’t mean that.”

JJ could feel the tears in his eyes, from anger and sadness and this fucking kitchen. Hadn’t he once told John B. they couldn’t leave Kie here?

“She has everything Pope. She has the family and the money and you—“

“Is this because we kissed?” Pope almost laughed, and JJ could tell. He could always tell. And now Pope was right next to him, leaning against the counter too. “That was a one time deal. Look, man, you’re welcome to try for her. I’m sure you’d make her a lot happier—“

“It’s because she could kiss you!” JJ exploded. He stepped in front of Pope, so that they’d almost completely switched places. “It’s because you’re only breaking one rule if you kiss, because you still can go back to being friends and sharing food and fucking around at parties. Because that’s an option for you.”

Pope just stared at him. “JJ, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Fuck, I just I were... I were... Fuck this.”

JJ couldn’t do it anymore. He pressed one hand against the counter next to Pope’s, and the other against Pope’s stomach. And then he kissed him.

To say JJ had dreamed about this moment was an understatement, but now it was real. And this is how it went.

Pope’s lips, a bit hesitant at first and then fluid and working so hard against JJ’s. They were soft, and tasted too much like generic cherry lip balm. Pope’s hands, which searched for a landing place on first JJ’s back, then his shoulders, then in his hair. Pope’s smell, just like the Heyward’s store. Salt water and plain soap and heavy wood and skin.

Kie’s voice.

“Holy fuck,” She said from the doorway. JJ jumped off Pope faster than he’d ever done anything.

“Kiara,” He said shakily. He wiped his lip with the side of his hand. “Fuck. Um, you guys need to leave.”

Pope glanced at him. “What?”

“Get out. Please. Just... Fuck.” The tears from earlier finally spilled. JJ leaned against the counter as sobs racked his body.

Kiara had her arms around him first, pulling his head into her chest like she always did. Her hands ran through his hair, petting it slowly.

Pope came second, his arms going around JJ’s waist and keeping him steady. JJ leaned into the two of them, trying to create the words he needed to say. “I just... I can’t and I want to but my dad and if and fuck.” He was blubbering, but they knew what he meant.

Pope whispered, “JJ, we’re never gonna let that happen.”

“We’re all we have,” Kie added.

That just made him cry harder, because of course John B wasn’t the only thing he had to lose. He had them.

After what seemed like an eternity, they broke apart. JJ shook with the cold and his tears and everything that had just happened.

Pope and Kie looked at each other, and without hesitation, he took off his sweatshirt and held it out to JJ.

It was JJ’s favorite, one from a college that Pope had found and fallen in love with before their ill fated treasure hunt. They found it at the thrift store, barely worn, from some Kook kid who’d failed to fit the bill.

Now, he pulled it on over his head, thankful for the familiar smell and the soft interior.

“You still wear it better,” Pope whispered. And then, much to JJ’s surprise, he pressed a kiss on his forehead. JJ blushed.

“Mmm, not gonna lie,” Kiara said, “But that was little gay you guys.”

The three of them burst out laughing, and for the first time since that day on the dock, JJ didn’t feel so bad anymore.

[andrea-lyn]

If you're still taking prompts, how bout Malex fall in love (xmas is their fave time of year.) Then A finds out M is a prince who is supposed to marry (it's arranged.) M doesn't want to, wants A, but A walks away because he thinks it's the right thing to do and feels unworthy of M and royalty. M tells his parents/advisers he's not going to marry who they want him to. Chases after A, convinces him he's all he wants, proposes and they marry at xmas time and A becomes a prince. It's a fairy tale!

On his fifth birthday, Prince Michael is introduced to Princess Isobel of Antar.

“One day, she’ll be your wife, son,” his father tells him and nudges him to go talk to her. Instead, Michael bursts into a fit of tears and storms off. It’s not that he doesn’t like Isobel (he does, they’ve been playmates since they were babies), but the idea of his future being handed to him at that age is too much.

He doesn’t want a wife. He’d much rather have a shiny new toy.

His parents need to drag him back towards Isobel, who doesn’t understand why her betrothed is throwing a tantrum and weeping about his lot in life.

Over the years, Michael’s anger doesn’t diminish, but he gets better at hiding it. He also learns that he’s not the only one who has reservations about the impending marriage, though it takes longer for him to find that out. They’re thirteen when Isobel tells him bluntly that she’s not sure that she could ever grow to love him like the princess does the prince in all the fairy tales.

“You’re…a brother to me,” she says, wrinkling her nose.

Clearly, she’s expecting that to be the worst news in the world to Michael, but instead he’s wildly relieved. He thought he’d been the only one to feel that way. Instead, he gets a partner in crime, someone in the exact same situation as him, and someone who feels as wary about it as he does.

When they’re sixteen, they devise a plan.

“When one of us meets someone that we really love, properly love, then we’ll go to our parents,” Isobel says, the brains behind the operation. “I know that it’ll happen. It just has to happen before we turn twenty-one and they marry us off,” she says.

With five years to go, anything could happen.

Michael’s hoping that she meets someone, because he can’t see it being him that ends up calling the wedding off because he’s met someone. He’s more invested in his experiments and his theories. Love is something that happens to the other people in their family, but not him.

He’s okay with that, too.

If he ends up marrying Isobel, he’ll make it work. He just never considered a loveless marriage as something that he’d be a part of. Still, at the start of every year, Michael goes to sleep thinking that maybe this will be the year that things change. Maybe this will be the year that Isobel meets someone and saves them both.

Or maybe, impossibly, it will be him.

*

When they turn eighteen, everything changes.

Michael still hates being betrothed for the principle of it and especially loathes the hoops they have to jump through in order to act the part of the happy young couple in love. Today, he and Isobel are meeting up for their first official portraits together as an engaged couple. That’s when he meets him.

“Who’s that?” Michael breathes out with awe, staring at Isobel’s cluster of guards.

Isobel glances over her shoulder. She’s nibbling on a tart and doesn’t seem interested in the fact that one of her new guards is the most beautiful man in the universe. Clearly she’s gone blind if she’s ignoring him like that. “Who? Alex?” she shakes her head. “I wish,” she says with a snort. “I tried to corner him for a little fun, but he wasn’t having it. He only likes men,” she says dismissively.

The thing is, he and Isobel don’t love one another. At least, not like that.

Given who they are, there’s a ticking time bomb looming in their future, so they’ve both decided to find fun where they can.  

“He’s from Earth,” Isobel says, “his father reluctantly agreed to send him with the last batch of soldiers, and just in time for Yule.” She gives him a long sigh, her eyes fixed on his ass (and okay, so she’s definitely noticed how good he looks). “It’s a shame.”

It might be a shame for Isobel, but Michael’s much more flexible. Maybe he can get something out of this. They’re both waiting for someone to come along that they can fall for and bring to the council to demand the betrothed marriage vanishes.

Until that happens, they’re each other’s known quantity.

If Michael demands they dissolve the engagement, he could be paired with anyone, and he’s really not ready to take that risk. There are far too many planets out there who want an alliance with Antar and Michael’s met some of their sons and daughters. Isobel is the safe choice, she’s the known choice, and luckily, he knows that a marriage with her might be romantically loveless, but she’s like a sister to him.

They’d make it work.

It’s what he’s told himself for years. It’s not exactly the stuff of true love, but Michael thinks it could be worse. He could be arranged to marry one of the distant cousins who seem to view Antar only as a powerful war machine and nothing else. That doesn’t mean Michael has to enjoy any of it. He suffers through the photos and allows himself to be rearranged to make Isobel look good, letting the tailors tug on his suit and adjust his cufflinks, all while letting his gaze drift to Alex.

He doesn’t think he’s imagining it, but he swears that Alex keeps looking back at him.

When the photos are done being taken, Michael drifts over to make his introductions. “What’s a cute human like you doing on a planet like this?” is his opening gambit, with a flirty wink to go along with it. The other Antarian guards snort and drift away, willing to let Prince Michael have a go at the newbie.

Alex looks flustered and Michael is charmed by how adorable it makes him.

“You know why I’m here, you’ve been briefed.”

“I know, you’re here because your Dad sent you, but what made you want to do it? Why’d you come?”

Alex gives Michael a dubious look. “If you had an overbearing abusive dick for a father and all of a sudden the opportunity to get a galaxy away from him opened up, wouldn’t you take it?”

Michael feels a sudden burst of anger seize him as he imagines this asshole that Alex has had to deal with. “It’s still a long way to go. You could have taken a plane and found a new city a few countries away,” he points out.

“This is better,” Alex assures calmly. “It has some finality to it.”

That sounds to Michael like Alex intends on staying here on Antar for the rest of his life. He’s not sure why that makes him so pleased, but it does. At least now he knows that Alex isn’t going to flee, which means Isobel will be kept safe and Michael can still take his time looking at him. He changes the topic from there to ask what Earth is like, leading Alex over to the couches where they’d been posing for pictures earlier.

They’re still taking a few shots, mostly to check the lighting before the next round, and Michael makes a note to ask for them later, of him curled up on the couch and Alex sitting the same like a mirror image, their knees pressed together.

Alex tells him about New Mexico and Roswell, about the spaceship crash that began their alliance fifty years ago. He talks about music on earth, and fashion, and his friends, and Michael finds himself entranced both by the stories and the way Alex tells them.

When the photographers call Isobel back so that she and Michael can take another round of pictures, Michael stares forlornly after Alex as he leaves, not even realizing that Isobel has rejoined him (in a new dress) until she pinches his forearm, making Michael yelp.

“The photographers are pissed you wrinkled your suit pants,” she tells him, slyly grinning as she looks at Alex, then to Michael. “I hope it was worth the bitching you’re about to hear.”

Michael stares off to the side where Alex is talking to the other guards, adjusting his uniform and casting glances back at Michael every few moments.

“I don’t know that anything has ever been more worth it.”

*

The Yule party is Michael’s absolute favorite time of year.

The holiday has always been a highlight for him as a boy. It’s a time for overindulgence, whether that be in the way of affection, food, merriment, or mischief. As with all years, they annual party is approaching with speed and Michael leans into it happily, knowing that it’s the start to the season and from here, the whole planet will be suffused with the warmth of the holiday.

This year, his dresser had slicked down her hair with pomade before putting him in a sleek grey suit, handing him a dark ornate mask that covers most of his face, tied behind his ears and showing only his lips. They’ve also applied the softest of pink balms to his lips to give them a radiant shine in the twinkling white lights of the party.

He mills through the party and despite the impending arranged marriage growing closer, he still won’t let that ruin his night.

That becomes an easier task when he looks across the ballroom floor and sees Isobel with her glittering silver gown, flanked by her guards. She’s a vision, but his eyes shift to the side to something even better.

Alex is dressed in a pressed navy-blue suit that fits him like a glove, and his mask is a thin thing that covers only his eyes, making them seem to glow (and he swears there’s eyeliner on them to help). Michael feels his stomach bottom out, his fingers flexing as he itches to touch that suit. Luckily, Michael’s small cache of guards are busy drinking and it’s easy for him to slip away from them. When Isobel’s party begins to move, he stops to spare a whispered moment with her, asking for her permission.

She casts a mischievous glance over her shoulder to Alex, then nods at Michael. With a blue-lipstick tinged kiss to his cheek, she walks away, but not before she turns to Alex.

“You are officially off duty,” she says. “You’ve been doing such a good job lately; you deserve to enjoy the party.” Her eyes flick to Michael and her smile grows even wider. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

There’s a panic in Alex’s eyes, like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do. Michael can’t help his fond smile, wondering if he’s already had that sense of duty instilled in him, but he hopes to change the night.

“Dance with me?” Michael requests hopefully, extending his hand out to him after performing a sweeping bow to treat Alex more like a prince and not Isobel’s guard.

Alex looks suitably charmed by it and he reaches out to take hold of Michael’s hand, allowing himself to be led towards the floor to the tunes of an old Antarian carol for Yule, one that features the violin strings in a sweet, romantic melody that makes it easy to dance to. Even if Michael hadn’t been taught dancing for over a decade, he could manage.

He leads Alex in sweeping turns around the room, loving the way that each increase in speed elicits a breathless burst of laughter from Alex before he squeezes Michael’s shoulder, protesting, “Slow down!” and leading them into more of a gentle swaying dance than anything too choreographed.

It might be the lights and the exertion, but Alex is glowing.

They settle into an easy dance, with Alex’s cheek resting on Michael’s shoulder as they sway, closer now than before. When the orchestra dies down, Michael only tightens his hold on Alex’s hand.

“One more,” he pleads, but he doesn’t have to worry. The magic of Yule is in the air and Alex appears transfixed. He nods and they begin again to a slower beat, slowly drifting towards one another until Michael’s arms are draped around Alex’s neck and their sure steps have become lazy swaying ones.

One dance becomes three and then somehow turns into five before the band is signing off for the night, replaced by a tinny version of carols from around the universe. Through it all, Alex and Michael haven’t stopped dancing.

They don’t until Alex glances up and bashfully smiles, ducking his head down.

“What?”

“I never thought that I’d have this much fun at this party,” Alex admits, “and it’s my favorite time of year.”

“Mine too,” Michael admits, though he dreads the future when he has to come to these as Isobel’s husband, not expected to have any fun. “Listen,” he says, his voice rough from all the talking earlier to noble guests and other royal dignitaries, “do you want to get out of here?” His heart is beating faster and he thinks that maybe he might not be ready to say it out loud, but he thinks he knows in his heart that there’s something between him and Alex.

Could he be the one?

Michael knows that he has to be sure when he goes to his parents, and he’s not yet, but he thinks with every passing moment, he gets more confident.

When Alex breathes out with a little hitch, he says nothing, but he nods.

Michael leads Alex with a hand to the small of his back down to one of the back hallways that’s only used by the waitstaff. Once there, he slides his fingers up to the ribbon of Alex’s mask, intending to untie it, but then his fingers brush the soft hair at the nape of Alex’s neck and he gets distracted. He slowly walks Alex three dedicated steps backwards until Alex’s back hits the wall.

For a long moment, Michael stares at Alex’s lips, and neither of them say a word.

They breathe in tandem – when Michael inhales, Alex exhales, and they follow each other’s lead – and soon, Michael is tired of only stroking Alex’s neck with his thumb.

“Can I kiss you?”

“You didn’t even go to the trouble to find us some mistletoe,” Alex teases, glancing up (which elongates his neck in the prettiest of ways) and Michael bows his head to start pressing soft kisses to Alex’s neck, his pink balm leaving a light sheen of pale color and glitter. Alex turns back to him, giving Michael a path to his jaw, then to his lips, but he waits for permission. “We’ll make do without,” he whispers to Michael, which is all the encouragement he needs.

Michael doesn’t ask what mistletoe is, assuming it’s some Earth tradition, but he takes his time to frame Alex’s cheek with his palm, staring at his lips like the present they are.  

“Yes,” says Alex. “Kiss me.”

He demands no further encouragement as he grabs Alex hard by the neck and tangles his hand in his hair so that when he backs him against the wall, Michael’s hand hits first. It’s not a gentle kiss, because those kisses had been his fantasy when he’d first met Alex. Now that he’s had time with the fantasy of him, the tenderness has bled out little by little, replaced by desperation.

Alex clearly doesn’t mind given the hungry moan he lets out, hands circling Michael’s waist and grabbing at him to yank him in, parting his lips to deepen the kiss. His mask quickly goes askew, and Michael’s fingers fix it (trembling, so nervous) as he kisses someone for the first time out of passion and need, rather than duty and responsibility.

He didn’t know that it could be so good.

Soon, he needs to breathe. He needs it, and his heart almost feels like it’ll burst from his chest because it’s beating so fast. Michael drifts back from Alex, dazed as he looks at his wet lips. He can hear someone calling Alex’s name (one of the other guards, he imagines), and he wants Alex to enjoy himself with his friends, especially when Michael is being assaulted by a thousand different thoughts at once, most of them demanding to know what Michael plans to do about this. “Go,” he encourages, leaning into the touch of Alex’s hand to his cheek, rubbing against it like an animal. “Have fun with your friends.”

“They’re not my friends.”

From the gleeful way they’re calling out Alex’s name, Michael could make an argument that he’s absolutely mistaken, but Michael steps back. “Go,” he says again, and begins walking out.

He’s back to the main party where the music is beginning to get loud again, filling his ears. He thinks maybe Alex had been saying something, but he sees the way the guards rush past him in drunken chaos in Alex’s direction and Michael laughs as he watches them go.

“You let them off the leash?” he teases Isobel as he comes to stand with her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

She gives him a proud look. “I’m a nice princess. They deserve a night of fun.” She lets her gaze slide over his lips and gives a self-assured little nod accompanied by a pleased sound. “I’m glad you found some of that yourself.”

“Yeah,” Michael agrees breathlessly. “Me too.”

That night, he’ll be dreaming of the way Alex’s lips had tasted as they kissed (of peppermint, soft with a balm and the hint of rum and egg nog on his lips). He needs another chance soon, because he’s fairly sure that now that he’s had it, he can’t live without it. Maybe Isobel’s going to get her way after all.

Luckily, Michael feels ready to withstand her smug glee, so long as it means he gets those kisses from Alex.  

*

Isobel’s satisfaction with Michael plummets within twelve hours. It’s happened before, but never so quickly and never in such a quick turnabout.

“Michael,” Isobel hisses when she sees him. “Yesterday was supposed to be your chance!”

Michael’s still barely awake, but he rubs the sleep out of his eyes to see Isobel standing beside his bed. He reaches behind him, but no one’s there like he’d been dreaming about. He ought to be disappointed, but he’s grinning like an idiot. He’d sent Alex off after the kiss, feeling like he could float on air. It makes Isobel’s angry presence a confusing thing.

He adjusts the heavy blankets and sits up to make room for Isobel beside him. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “We danced all night and then we kissed. I’m pretty sure as far as taking my chance goes, that’s at least an A+ effort in it.”

“It would be,” Isobel agrees sweetly, “if Alex knew who he’d been dancing with all night or if he knew who kissed him.”

Michael’s brain completely stops, struggling to restart. “I…what?” he demands.

“He came back late after the dance to rave about what an amazing time he had with this man, someone with slicked back hair and in a gorgeous suit that he doesn’t know.”

“But, my voice…” Michael protests, thinking back to the night. He’d gone hoarse fairly quickly because the music had been so loud that he’d needed to shout above it the whole time when he’d been in the midst of his diplomatic conversations through dinner. By the time he got to dancing, his voice would’ve been raspier, rougher, and not at all like himself.

“Tell him,” Isobel says sharply.

“I will,” Michael promises, even though he’s still trying to understand how they could have such a romantic and perfect night and Alex not know who he was.

Isobel shifts on the bed, smiling warmly. “Good, I’ll send him in.”

“What the fuck, Isobel!” Michael says with alarm, reaching for his shirt to yank it on in a hurry, dislodging his gelled curls and making a mess of them. “I didn’t mean right now!”

“I did,” she says. “The way he’s talking, Michael, this could be it. This could be the one.”

He knows that she’s right. They’ve only had a few conversations, but between the way they feel connected and last night, Michael knows that what he could have with Alex is enough to fight for, and that it’s the first person he’s ever met that stands a chance of him wanting to take on his parents and the advisers in the impending fight.

There’s no stopping Isobel, despite his frantic attempt to sprint out of bed and lock the door. He makes it to the door just as Isobel sticks her head out to call for Alex. “In here, please,” she says, and steps back to give Michael a pointed look. Tell him, she mouths. Michael is wearing only a loose-fitting shirt and his pajama pants, but he stumbles back to try and look suave and put together, leaning up against one of the pillars of his four-poster bed.

“Oh, hey, Alex,” he greets, rubbing his hand through his hair. “So I uh,” he keeps going, even if Isobel is already throwing him disbelieving looks, “I heard you had a great night at the party.”

The tips of Alex’s ears go pink and he looks taken aback. “I…what…?”

Michael knows the impatient look on Isobel’s face. She’s about to ruin the whole thing (though, can she really ruin it, if Michael has already done that by being so stupidly awkward?).

“Michael was your Prince Charming last night,” she says. “I’ll leave you two to discuss that.”

With that bomb dropped into the conversation, she glides away (and Michael glares at her both for shoving things along like that, but also looking as stupidly perfect as she does after a long night of drinking). Michael turns back to Alex, feeling vulnerable and nervous, because he has no idea what to expect. Alex had been so happy the night before, but then he’d left before Michael could ask him out again. He watches as Alex gently touches his lips, but then he seems to steel himself. Michael doesn’t know what to expect, but Alex approaches him cautiously.

“Your hair…?” Alex stares at his curls, like he’s recalling the night before.

“What?” Michael asks, then remembers the gel. “Shit, oh yeah. They slicked it down, said something about it being a lot better looking.”

“They were wrong,” Alex says bluntly, then looks guilty for having said so. He swallows so hard that his Adam’s apple bobs and he gives Michael a casual shrug. “I mean, you’re handsome, and you were charming, but you look…your curls are…” He stares up at the ceiling, laughing with such an empty and hollow ring to it that it tears at Michael’s heart.

Something’s wrong, but it shouldn’t be.

They’d danced under the sparkling Yule lights and Michael had felt more at home and comfortable than he has in his entire life. When they’d kissed, it felt like his eyes had been opened for the very first time.

He knows that Alex could be the one, but he wants to make sure that if he is, then Michael treats him right.

“Alex, do you want to go out with…?”

“No.”

He’s cut off before he can even finish and it knocks Michael back. He stares at Alex with a wounded look on his face, not knowing why he’s been rejected so harshly. “I…” He’s speechless, unsure what to even say because he hadn’t been expecting that, especially not after they’d had such a good night. “Why?”

“Because if I’d known, I wouldn’t have danced with you all night.” Alex looks like he’s in physical pain, but he keeps going. “It doesn’t matter how much I liked it, and it definitely doesn’t matter that kissing you felt like I was floating. You’re Isobel’s fiancé and I’m her guard, meant to keep her safe. If that means making sure that nothing happens between us…”

Michael is staring at Alex, his mouth open and his brow furrowed. It hurts so much, especially knowing that Alex had felt it too.

“Alex, please,” Michael begs.

“I can’t,” he whispers. “You’re betrothed to a princess. That means something. You can’t just run off with one of her guards because you feel like it. You have a duty and so do I. Mine is to protect Princess Isobel.” He looks absolutely crestfallen and he gives him a sad look. “This is how I can do that, by making sure I don’t steal her husband-to-be.”

Michael’s stunned, completely lost as to how it is that Alex doesn’t understand what’s going on.

“Alex!”

It’s too late. He’s already left Michael in an emotional haste to be out of the room.

*

“I don’t understand how you could make such a mess of this,” Isobel hisses at them when they’re at one of their standing lunch dates. Michael’s been mooning over Alex, staring at him with wide eyes and wanting to go over and talk to him again, but Alex is standing with his back to Michael, a pointed rebuff that says that he doesn’t want to talk to him.

Michael wants so badly to slide his arms around his waist, tug him back into Michael’s warmth, and plead his apologies with kisses and soft touches. He wants him so much and he’s been dreaming about him constantly.

“He won’t even talk to me,” Michael says miserably, poking at the food on his plate. “I asked him to go out with me, but he won’t because of you. And I can’t even tell him that it’s not actually a big deal, because what if it is! It’s not like I can guarantee that I could be with him.”

He lets out a wracked sobbing sound, so frustrated with the situation.

At the noise, Alex glances back like he’s curious about why Michael is sounding like that, but his quick glance isn’t enough. Michael stares at his profile and his lips, remembering what it was like to kiss them.

“Is he enough?”

“What?” Michael asks, distracting from his longing stare. “Enough for what?”

“We have three years before the impending marriage,” Isobel says. “And when that happens, you know as well as I do that divorce isn’t an option.” She reaches across the table to take Michael’s hand in hers, giving him a tender look of affection and fondness.

It’s awful, but the only thing Michael can think about is, please don’t let Alex look at this and think it’s something it’s not.

“You’re the genius, so tell me this,” Isobel begins. “Three years. We’ve been engaged for thirteen and you hadn’t met anyone in that time. Neither have I.” Of course they hadn’t, because their worlds are so narrow and confined to the palace that there’s rarely anyone to meet. The fact that Michael had met Alex at all has been a miracle. “Do you really think that three more years is going to open up a wealth of options? Or is Alex the one you’re willing to take a risk on. Even if he’s not your soulmate, even if it’s not true love, isn’t some romantic love better than nothing?”

“He won’t even talk to me, Isobel,” Michael reminds her, despondent and crushed.

“He thinks that you and I are fated, that you’d be stolen from me. Make him understand the reality of our situation, Michael,” Isobel says sharply. “You know what you have to do.”

He does, too.

“Go talk to your parents.”

It’s a daunting task that faces Michael, but for once it doesn’t feel like an undertaking that he’s afraid of. He’s been shown a sliver of a life that he can have with Alex that’s full of excitement and brightness and so much more. If it takes one good argument to his parents to convince them to let their son find happiness, then he’s ready for this fight.

*

It takes Michael two hours to convince his parents that this is the right choice.

“He’s a human,” is the main argument. “He’s a guard,” is a close second.

Michael helpfully points out that it would strengthen relations between Earth and Antar and might even bolster the guard program if they see one of their own at such a high level. Michael is assuming, of course, that Alex will want anything to do with him, but he can’t exactly approach his parents and say that he wants to try with Alex.

It has to be all or nothing, at least in this pitch.

“I don’t love Isobel,” Michael says firmly. “Not like that. If we marry, there won’t be children. I’ll refuse. I’ll run off the planet,” he warns, knowing that he’s close to being the petulant teenager that he is, but he needs them scared. “Let me marry Alex and strengthen our relations with a planet that I know we’re struggling with. Either way, there won’t be children, but at least with Alex, you’ll get something out of it.”

They don’t look happy about it, but his parents confer with the advisers for an hour, which is just long enough that Michael knows they’re taking this seriously, but not long enough that he’s worried it’ll be a no. Every time they glance back to him from their little huddle, he plasters on an air of confidence, like he can fake it until he makes it.

“We don’t appreciate you threatening us,” Rath says calmly, “but you’ve managed to find some sense in your emotional plea.”

“We do want you to be happy,” Mara adds, as if Michael’s ever thought otherwise. “We thought that you and Isobel got along so well, we never bothered to amend the arrangement.”

It looks like they’d done some of this to themselves by being so tight-knit, even if it had never been a prelude to a great romantic story.

“Are you saying…?”

“You can marry the earthling,” Rath says with a sigh. “We’ll discuss it as the coup it is for our relations between Antar and Earth. Isobel can find herself another suitor of her choosing, so long as it still benefits the planet.”

He feels like he’s gone deaf for a moment.

He can marry Alex. They’re letting him be with Alex.

Oh, shit, now he has to convince Alex to marry him after a night of dancing, a few conversations, and one intensely perfect kiss. His eyes widen in shock and he rushes over to hug his mother tightly, giving his father a dutiful bow of his head, getting ready to run before any of them can change their minds.

“One more thing,” he says, darting forward and getting something wildly important. “I need that in writing.”

Three minutes later, he’s running through the halls of the palace with a note in his hand that says that his marriage to Isobel is dissolved. His first stop is to Isobel’s quarters to show her the note, kissing her cheek excitedly.

“What are you wasting time with me for?” she demands, eyes wide. “Go!”

He doesn’t need telling twice. Alex isn’t far because he’s guarding Isobel, so Michael only has to run another two rooms over before he comes to a skidding stop in front of Alex. He’s panting breathlessly, staring at the other guard posted at the door. “Isobel…wants you…” he gets out between sharp breaths.

The guard glances to Alex, raising a brow.

“Just you,” Michael insists, because Alex isn’t going anywhere.

The other guard gives Alex a bewildered look, but he’s not in a position to argue with a prince, so he goes. It leaves Michael alone with Alex, which is exactly what he needs. He’s finally calmed down and he moves to stand right in front of Alex, making sure that he can’t dart away before Michael has a chance to talk to him.

“Michael,” Alex pleads quietly. “Don’t.”

He says nothing. He does nothing. It’s because Michael doesn’t need to. He proudly hands over the elegantly written card to Alex that declares his engagement over and waits as Alex studies it cautiously before taking it and flipping it open. He reads what’s inside, but then he doesn’t look up. From the look on his face, he’s not sure what to make of it.

“I don’t understand.”

“Isobel and I, we were never gonna love each other like that,” he says, knowing that it’s awful to say, but it’s the truth. “She’s like my sister. I’m her brother figure. We were arranged at five years old, Alex. Five,” he says with a scoff. “And you know what the craziest thing is? I genuinely think that if it had been you that they’d betrothed to me, it would’ve been different, because with you, I feel different. I feel connected and I know you feel the same.”

Alex has closed the card, but he’s eyeing Michael warily and he’s not saying anything.

“I don’t get to just cancel one betrothal without another,” he admits, and digs in his back pocket to find the mask that he’d been wearing at the Yule party, along with a piece of mistletoe that he’d found in the Earth section of one of their museums.

Tying them together, he gives Alex a hopeful look, handing it to him as a sort of bouquet.

“I only want you,” Michael says. “And they’ve given me permission to ask you to marry me, but that doesn’t matter. The only permission I need is yours, and not for marriage. I’m not going to make you spend eternity with me, but I want to spend every day with you, and then the next, and the one after that.” He tips his head to the side, swallowing past his nerves. “I guess what I’m saying is that the only person I want to spend the rest of my life with is you, learning about you, finding out more. Maybe it’ll fall apart,” he admits with a shrug. “But somehow, I don’t think so.”

Alex reaches out for the mask, holding it against his chest.

“Michael, are you sure? It’s one night, a few discussions, I…”

“I’m sure enough. Are you?”

Alex has this hint of hope on his face and around him that has Michael completely on edge. He thinks that he knows what’s coming, but he’s not sure he trusts his own happiness. He’s never been this lucky before, and here he is, waiting on the edge of his seat to see if Alex will give him a chance to be this happy.

“Kiss me,” Alex says.

Michael doesn’t need another demand, surging forward to grab Alex by the hips, pinning him against the doorway with a kiss that has Alex dropping the mask and mistletoe to the ground beside them. They sway – Michael on his toes, Alex back on his heels – and then reverse as Alex pushes Michael back so his balance is off-kilter, the kiss getting deeper with every passing moment.

When Michael eases back, his eyes are half-lidded and he’s staring at Alex in a daze, like he’s not sure this is real.

It better be, because when Alex says, “I’m sure,” Michael’s body flushes with warmth and he knows this is it. This is what it’s meant to be like, being in love with someone, and having your whole future ahead of you.

And fuck, but what a feeling it is.

*

“Now, please put your hands together for the newly married couple,” the magistrate announces from in front of the large doors they’re standing behind.

Michael grins at Alex and reaches for his hands to squeeze them both at once. He knows that he’s nervous, but he wants to make sure he’s not too worried. It’s going to be perfect because it’s them. “Hey,” he whispers, “The hard part’s over,” he guarantees. He watches as the doors are unlocked, and the guards prepare to present them to the planet. “All we’ve got now is loving one another for the rest of our lives.”

Alex turns to Michael and his eyes are soft, looking almost like they’re filled with tears. “That’s the easy part?”

“When it’s loving you,” Michael says softly. “It’s the easiest.”

“…Prince Michael and Prince Alex of Antar!” They’re announced to the planet as the doors open wide.

Michael grins as he takes Alex’s hand and leads him out towards the Yule party that’s been adapted to be a celebration of their vows as well, because Michael couldn’t imagine marrying Alex at any other time of year. This is when they fell in love and this is where they’ll dance tonight for the first time as husbands, with their family and friends watching.

Michael had never planned to be a part of a fairy tale, but now that he’s living in one with his prince, he can’t find it in him to be upset, not for a single moment.

It’s time for him to go pursue that happily ever after, with Alex at his side.

[missmarquin]

A Love That Burns Like the Sun

Their love burns like the sun, seemingly forever until it blinks out. The moments before a star's death are always the strongest though and the older they get, the more they love and love and love.It’s been a long time since Sylvain has drowned in the darkness that was space. Sylvix, Oneshot, Modern AU.  Read on A03 for better quality! ---

A Love That Burns Like the Sun

Sylvain’s waiting for his coffee to cool as he watches Felix flit back and forth, his chaotic energy filling the room as he readies for the morning. There’s a piece of toast in one hand and one leg in his trousers as the other tries to pull them over his hips. He trips in his haste, barely catching himself on the kitchen table. Sylvain doesn’t laugh, but he watches the familiar scene fondly, lips quirking into an amused smile as he settles into the hard wooden chair. 

The kitchen set is the only thing he’d taken from his parent’s and not because it was theirs; no, his grandmother had left it for them in her will-- them, not him-- as one final fuck you to his father and the way that he deals with gay sons. 

Of course, the words his father had used so many years ago had been far more colorful-- so colorful in fact that Sylvain’s grandmother had slapped his father across the back of the head before kicking him out. 

“Felix,” Sylvain finally says, “Sit down for a moment. Have some coffee with me.”

Felix pauses. He’s finally shimmied his pants over his hips and there’s a bite out of his toast, his cheeks reddened with his haste. He snatches the food from his mouth to reply with, “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m already going to be late for work.” 

“So be late then,” Sylvain tells him with a shrug. 

“I can’t--”

“You’re the boss. You can do whatever you want.”

“My students, Sylvain,” Felix bites out. The words aren’t harsh, just punctuated and so very Felix in their tone. He puts a lot of stock into the fencing school and Sylvain loves that about him, he loves how much Felix loves his students. 

There’s a but though, as there is with many things. 

“How often do we get mornings together, Fe? Just the two of us?” Perhaps it’s a low blow, but Sylvain’s never claimed to be a good person, and judging by the way Felix pauses, it’s worked. 

Felix drags a hand down his face, pulling at his skin tiredly. “Syl,” he sighs, eyeing the empty chair across from Sylvain. 

“We never had a moment alone, darling.” Sylvain’s lips practically curl around the endearment and he sees the tremble of Felix’s lips. He’s got a retort ready to throw at him, but to Sylvain’s surprise, he drops into the chair instead. 

“What’s another ten minutes?”

“Only ten?” Sylvain pouts at that, finally taking a sip of his coffee. 

“You’re pushing it,” Felix warns, but it’s all bark and no bite. He reaches for a mug and pours his own coffee, wrapping his fingers around it to warm them. I only drink it black, like my soul, he’d once joked, years and years ago. 

Felix had been wrong of course. If anyone had a soul as black as the night, it’d be Sylvain. He only showed his good parts to people, so practiced at wearing a false smile that fooled so easily. And even if it’s gotten better, even if it’s changed over the years, Felix was the only one who’d really ever seen him at his worst and maybe that’s why Sylvain loved him so, so much. He’d seen him amidst those dark moments, pulled him from them without judgement and he’d never left. He was still there, face still cranky and annoyed as ever, but he was still there.

“What?” Felix asks, vexed, and Sylvain realizes that he’d been staring. He’s always staring, really; was Felix just now noticing?

“It’s nothing,” Sylvain promises, flashing him a thin smile and Felix narrows his eyes at him. 

“What’s wrong?” There’s a tinge of concern in his voice, just the tiniest bit and it makes Sylvain’s heart practically ache. 

“Fe, it’s-- No really, there’s nothing wrong.”

“You were staring,” Felix tells him, concern bleeding into prickliness and as soon as it had come, the man’s worry is seemingly gone.

“Since when have I not stared at you?” Sylvain replies smoothly. Honestly and earnestly, and Felix’s eyes widen slightly as he sputters before turning away to hide the pink dusting across his cheeks. “Flustered even now,” he continues to tease. “Fe, we’ve been married for nearly fifteen years.”

Fifteen years, Sylvain thinks. Incredible and astounding, everyday better than the one before because he gets to wake up with Felix by his side. Their love burns like the sun, seemingly forever until it blinks out. The moments before a star's death are always the strongest though and the older they get, the more they love and love and love. 

It’s been a long time since Sylvain has drowned in the darkness that was space. 

“Idiot,” Felix mutters, sipping at his mug to stop himself from saying anything else. 

“Forever and always.”

There’s a long moment before Felix speaks. “I know you Sylvain. What were you thinking about?” The question is quiet and probing in its approach, but Felix isn’t trying to back him into a corner. He always allows Sylvain to bolt if he wishes. 

“Us,” Sylvain answers immediately. Felix blinks, opening his mouth to reply, but Sylvain raises a hand. “Goddess Fe, nothing bad. Just…” His words fail him as he fingers his mug, the warm ceramic a balm across his cold skin. “It hasn’t been easy for us,” he finally says, “But look at us now. I get to wake up with the morning and watch you trip over yourself as you get ready, every day.”

“How mundane,” Felix snorts, dropping his mug back to the table. “What a silly thing to enjoy.”

Waking up every morning next to the love of his life wasn’t something that Sylvain would have thought he’d have, twenty years ago, so he’ll take pleasure in the most mundane of things. Even if it’s as simple as watching Felix trip into his pants, while shoveling breakfast into his mouth. 

“I enjoy you,” Sylvain tells him instead, reaching out to grasp at his hand. Felix doesn’t pull away and Sylvain rubs his thumb along the back of his hand. “Stay home today,” he asks. “Call in on your students. Cancel class and laze away the day with me. We can do nothing if you’d like, stuffing ourselves full of snack food and watching shitty romantic comedies. 

“Or we could go out, have a picnic or go to a museum. Whatever you want to do.”

“Insatiable,” Felix tells him, but it’s in jest, the closest to telling a joke that he ever comes to. 

“You say that like it’s a problem,” Sylvain counters, narrowing his eyes slightly and Felix returns the expression, his own amber eyes practically glowing at the implication. Impulsively, Sylvain places his mug down and reaches forward, grabbing Felix’s chair. He pulls him impossibly close, pressing his fingers into his shirt and pulling tightly-- 

“Sylvain, you’ll crinkle it--”

He yanks Felix close but doesn’t kiss him, only rubbing their noses in a childish show of affection that has Felix grumbling in response. 

“Childish oaf,” Felix chastises, but Sylvain can tell by the hiccup in his breath that he’s not unaffected and resists the urge to further tease him about it. The annoyed tone and burning peach across his nose is plenty enough.

“Have you forgotten what day it is?” Sylvain asks him quietly. 

Felix blinks, pulling back slightly to cock his head to the side. It’s not the first time that Sylvain’s remembered something small and silly, holding onto it until he can bring it up later. And really, he doesn’t expect Felix to remember, not really, because Sylvain is the one that’s overly sentimental. 

Felix hasn’t put his hair up yet, so Sylvain reaches up and tugs at one of the locks. “It’s the day you said yes.”

Felix looks confused, just like Sylvain knew he’d be. “I said yes in the middle of December,” Felix says seriously, as though he were concerned that Sylvain was losing his damn mind. It’s a tone that he uses more often than Sylvain would like to admit. “I remember because you thought a midnight picnic would be romantic and all I got out of it was a boot full of snow.”

Sylvain frowns at that. “You got a husband out of it.”

“No, I got a husband later on. I remember that because you insisted on a private ceremony at the beach and I spent the entire day with sand in my--” 

“It’s the day that you said yes,” Sylvain repeats, pressing his lips to Felix’s cheek in a chaste peck. 

“That’s what you said earlier--”

“I’m not talking about the proposal.” Sylvain is quiet when he leans back a little, moving his hand to cup Felix’s cheek instead, thumbing the soft skin and the hard line of his jaw. “I’m talking about--”

“Oh,” Felix breathes. “Oh.” 

The night that they never mention, the one where Sylvain spiraled into a drunken panic full of self loathing and regret. The one where an ex-girlfriend dumped a drink all over his lap at the mere sight of him at a club, causing Sylvain to bolt like a coltish fawn before anyone could see the tears of hatred for himself. The night where Sylvain cried and cried and cried, screaming that there was no one, that he’d be forever alone because the one person he actually loved wouldn’t give him the light of day. 

The one where Felix grabbed him harshly by the face, pressing their foreheads together and calling him a fool. Where Felix said fucking yes and it was the beginning of the end, but a good change, the best change.

Felix doesn’t like to talk about the night. He’s always been one part embarrassed, one part ashamed about his actions years prior to it, but Sylvain loves that night. He loves that night almost as much as he loves the man before him. 

Felix reaches out to grasp Sylvain’s hand gently, squeezing it as he leans forward, pressing their foreheads together like that night so long ago. Sylvain closes his eyes, willing himself to take deep breaths, feeling Felix’s presence before him and soaking it in, taking in the fresh clean soap scent his face. It anchors him, Felix anchors him, he’s always been Sylvain’s roots, ever since they were literally children. 

It’s a love that was born with their meeting, carefully crafted over their lifetime until it’s flared into this, into whatever they were, and Sylvain wouldn’t trade the world for Felix. 

“I still wonder if you’ll ever settle down,” Sylvain finally. “Every morning is a whirlwind for you.”

“Buffoon,” Felix breathes against him. “Dim-witted fool. I’m here, aren’t I? If that’s not settling down, then I don’t know what is, because only a moron would settle for you.” Sylvain hums at that, smiling into Felix’s hold. 

Sylvain pulls back and Felix kisses him, slow and calculated, intent on pulling everything from Sylvain that he can. It’s not like Felix, but Sylvain likes it, he’s into it, he pulls him closer and responds in kind. 

“I guess I can play hooky,” Felix murmurs against Sylvain’s lips, fingers reaching up to thread through his hair and scratching at his scalp lightly. “Whatever you want to do,” he finishes. 

“I just want to enjoy breakfast with you everyday, forever.”

Felix’s face hardens into annoyance and Sylvain laughs. “Sap,” Felix complains. “Sentimental dolt.” But he doesn’t let go of Sylvain either, fingers still laced together as he reaches for his coffee. The sip he takes is a clear distraction. 

Sylvain smiles at him, watching Felix like he’s the sun, squeezing his hand lightly once and then twice. Felix glances back, mug held close to his face as his lips contort into a near snarl. All bark, never any bite; not with Sylvain at least. 

But Felix squeezes back and Sylvain files it away, for a rainy day. 

Not that he’ll ever need it. 

[the-blackest-spider]

send me a misconception you think people have about my character and I'll explain if it's true or not. | Accepting

@inanisvitae​ left a message:  Misconception: that Nat is not exactly capable of loving, that she's mostly in for herself, that her past as a double agent of sorts makes her unreliable.

I am quite amused at how we asked each other similar questions for this. :) Also this is so damn long because I decide heeey let’s talk about canon and then briefly touch on headcanons other verse things!

Below the cut because yeah, looong post.

But this is, yeah such a very misconstrued thing about Natasha, because it is both true and not. Natasha has these lines that she has created throughout her life that she balances herself upon most of the time, but also crosses one way or another as she so desires or unfortunately needs to.

She very much loves and so very hard and deep. Even despite, depending upon the verse who created her and tried remove the capability from her to do so.

In her canon, the other twenty seven girls she started in the Red Room with, they were allowed to be friends, to get along and find comfort in one another and then one day they were taken for a training exercise in the harsh, unforgiving Russian wilderness with only enough provisions for one to survive. It was a traumatic experience, and while not much detail beyond that is given, I’d like to think that her “sisters” forced her hand, that the situation made them all realize that it was me or them and in order to survive, as us humans are predispositioned to do, Natasha (Natalia at this time) learned her first lesson that she could do what was necessary, even if it killed some part of her to do it.

It was probably that scenario that made her begin to develop that closed off, keep to herself defense mechanism that she has often displayed when it comes to how close she lets others get to her at first, even though all she wants is just a normal, every day, average connection with someone.

Another instance in her canon, from which this quote comes from. She was either fifteen or sixteen years old and fighting with worn soldiers in the countryside of Slovakia and there she met the first love of her life and probably, honestly given the circumstances the most tragic, Nikolai, who was not much older than she was. They married with ribbons for rings when she became pregnant and it’s figured that he was killed in action before she gave birth, to their daughter, stillborn because of the enhancements the Red Room gave her. She named her Rose and buried her in the Slovakian woods near the home of the midwife that helped her give birth and then ever since has visited the location throughout the years when possible (I headcanon she does it every Mother’s Day).

Then there’s her tryst with as she knew him at the time, The Winter Soldier or Soldier or Soldat, James Barnes. He was to train her to become even more of an asset to her Mother Country, but in each other they found refuge from their situations and taught one another how to love despite the world they were a part of. But then of course it all gets ruined as their affair is discovered and for punishment, the Soldier is frozen and stored away in a warehouse like some object. Natasha makes the mistake of trying to find him and does, the horror of seeing him in that cryo tank is a sight that would forever haunt her, and it was her fault he was put there.

Then her country decides to let her have a “normal life” of course under their wants, they allow her to marry a man, Alexei Shostakov, a famed pilot in the Russian army. But again, someone she cared about is taken from her at the whims of her creators, who decide that Alexei is to become Russia’s take on Captain America, Red Guardian, and thus a crash is staged that he perishes in, leaving Natasha as an actual widow for the second time in her life.

So, I reason because of all this and other moments in her history, that she is afraid to love people, to allow them to get close to her, because everyone she’s loved, something bad happens to them and clearly it has to do with their association with her. A Black Widow indeed.

But, at the same time, all these moments, as she says are the ones that taught her to love, and she keeps that part of her so very protected and safe because she values the ability to do so, she fought so hard and struggled to retain it after all. Most who would go through these kind of situations would probably be done with love and make sure to keep people away from them, to keep them safe and to a degree I think she does this, for a time, but she so badly craves love, that her walls fall down after a time and she instead does everything in her power to keep those she loves as safe as utterly possible rather than keep them at arms’ length or make them want to not love her.

Now all of that, was not really used in her MCU version, but still, obviously some stuff happened that makes her guarded and fiercely protect those she loves, that makes her so selfless to sacrifice herself for an entire universe.

The MCU shows how her balancing on those lines she has created, especially with her love for others can make her have to make choices that divides her or puts her in the middle of situations. Perfect example, Civil War. She wants to keep her Family together, she says as much to Steve after Peggy Carter’s funeral. But at the same time, she understands Steve’s stance. She respects it, because she cares about him, and even though she and Tony often butt heads, she cares about him too, which is why she berates him after the battle at the German airport to stop being selfish and thinking only of himself. She knows he’s better than that, she knows they’re all better than what they had just done Which is why at the last second, she made the choice to let Steve and Bucky escape, because for her, it was the right thing to do and she realizes in the mess of that whole conflict that none of it should’ve happened in the first place and she should’ve done whatever was necessary to stop it from going that far.

So yes, her actions in Civil War are a good example of her being in something for herself as far as love is concerned, but again it isn’t about her specifically, but her seeing the big picture of a situation, which draws me back to her comic canon and the fact, that when she has to, she makes tough calls and does, again as I said, what is necessary.

“If you could take Hitler out, would you do it? Sure. Yes. Easy. Most of us would. What about Oppenheimer? That’s when things get interesting. Could you follow orders to kill a man because the product of his genius would become a weapon of war? Could you pull that trigger? Yes. I can. I did. And that, as much as anything, is what makes me the Black Widow.”

As Fury tells Steve, in Winter Soldier, Natasha is comfortable with everything. She is willing to do the things that others cannot or should not do. She is willing to cross lines, do terrible things, horrors, to keep the weight of guilt off the shoulders of others and she could, even though it could possibly, literally kill her too, kill someone she loves because they’ve gone too far. Would it be a last resort? Absolutely. But, she could do it. Some would say that makes her heartless and cold, and they’re not wrong, but she is capable of many things, she is not one note or two note.

So Tony calling her a triple imposter, isn’t wrong. Because she is, she has to be, to be capable of what she is and to some, that does make her unreliable, untrustworthy and so on, because they don’t understand her, they don’t know her or everything she’s been through that has made her the person she is.

Natasha loves because of what she is capable of, because it soothes her soul (when she had one) and is the balm to all the terrible things she’s done that she would ultimately do again and does keep doing.

This all extends to the other two major verses I’ve created for her. In Star Wars, she tries to run from the man who uses her like an assassin attack dog, and treats her like his play thing, she finds escape a couple of times, but for one brief moment in her past she does with the man she loves, who trained her (my headcanoning of James Barnes/Winter Soldier for Star Wars) and is chased down by another operative and he is most likely killed as an example to her not to step out of line again. So she is of course so very reluctant to get close to anyone after that, but she does and she does everything in her power to keep them safe from her Master.

In her Final Fantasy VII verse, she doesn’t remember that she had a whole other life before she was a Turk, because Shinra ripped it from her and made her kill the man she was going to marry (which she also doesn’t remember properly), who was trying to desperately to give her the life he felt she deserved. But still she knows, she feels so strongly she is capable of loving and she’s loved before, otherwise why would she get these feelings? Why would she care about her fellow Turks and others she comes to know? Again, as with the Red Room, Shinra tried to make her into this weapon to be used, but they couldn’t rid her of her capacity to love. They can continue to try and control her with the mako injections and the lies, but they cannot change the core of who she is and will always be, a woman ruled by her heart.

The Red Room couldn’t do it, Palpatine couldn’t do it and no one else ever can either.

TL;DR: Despite all of the terrible things Natasha has been through or continues to go through in any of her verses or canon and the horrors she is capable of committing, she has a big heart, she loves both unselfishly and selfishly like anyone else. It is because of the things she has experienced that she loves, because it is the one thing that is important, and that gives her hope and makes her feel human even though she often doesn’t feel she is. But at the same time, do not let her ability to love make you forget what she is, she is a killer too and she will do what she has to do if it comes to it, if she has no other choice. And if you hurt someone she loves, there is no where you can hide or run that she cannot find you.

[jmeelee]

Hey! For the mini fic prompts, please can I request no. 21, things you said when we were on top of the world? For Sterek, if possible, but if you feel more inspired to write something for one of your other ships then go for it. Thank you!😊😘❤️

This prompt made me think SPACE!! So here is a Sterek + The 100 AU

The prisoners line up, two by two, a solemn procession through a wide, deserted corridor and down a steep launch ramp into the dropship, and the symbolism isn’t lost on Derek. Up until a week ago, Chancellor Argent probably fashioned himself a benevolent god, sparing two hundred juvenile delinquents from certain death while attempting to ensure the survival of the human race. But that death, while certain, was at least humane. A pin-prick to the vein and eternal oblivion. Today Chris Argent lords over the proceedings with a grim, stoic face as his only child—his daughter, Allison—boards the ship in her gray penitentiary jumpsuit, her heavy, rubber-soled boots squeaking against the floor, echoing over the persistent, invasive hum of the rocket engines. Today the Chancellor can’t deny what this really is: a probable suicide mission.

Allison makes her first of three stops before claiming her seat in the shuttlecraft, pausing in front of a guard who removes her handcuffs. Thus far, the guard has pushed each young man or woman roughly toward Nurse Melissa McCall, but he gently nudges Allison forward, a wary eye darting toward her father. With shaking fingers, Nurse McCall wipes antiseptic over the porcelain skin on the inside of Allison’s right arm, fastening a metal bracelet with colorful blinking lights around her wrist.

“It’s a vital transponder,” Melissa informs Allison. “With this, we’ll be able to monitor your blood pressure, breathing rate, radiation levels, and all sorts of things from right here in the control room of our space station.” Melissa offers a reassuring smile, but it trembles like her hands. Moments ago, Derek watched her fasten a transponder to the arm of her own son.

Now Allison faces to her father, the final stop on an assembly line sending kids to slaughter. He gives her the same canned speech he has to all the others. “When you walk onto this ship, you are hereby pardoned of your crimes. I hope you’ll use this chance to atone for your impermissible behaviors and mistakes. This is an unpress—“

Allison shoves her metal-cuffed wrist under his nose, stopping his spiel. This isn’t freedom, as her father would have the prisoners believe; she knows it, Chancellor Argent knows it, Melissa McCall and the rest of the Council know it. They’ve simply traded one set of shackles for another. She tilts up her chin and holds her father’s eye. “Good bye, Dad.” Derek swears more streaks of gray crop up at Argent’s temples, grooves deepening at the corners of his eyes. She turns away and takes her seat next to Scott McCall—the star-crossed lover for whom she’s defied both Colony law and her family—sitting back and letting Officer Camden Lahey fasten her harness. She doesn’t spare her father a second glance.

Chris Argent’s wounded face broadcasts so much pain Derek prays he’ll call an end to this crazed endeavor, but he straightens—the same steel in his spine hardens Allison’s, allowing her to walk with grace out of a detention cell and into what will likely become her coffin—continuing on with the pomp and circumstance. Derek’s rekindled hope burns out like a dying star.

When Derek averts his eyes from the dramatic family scene he spots who he’s searching for, prisoner 129, Stiles Stilinski, watching Derek with dawning horror, tension festering at the hunched line of his shoulders.

Stiles is smart. Too smart. Keen brown eyes take in Derek’s blue uniform, shirt fitting looser around his broad shoulders in the half-year they’ve been parted, and the other puzzle pieces snap into place. He’s working from the outside edges—extra rationing, his father’s execution, his stint in solitary confinement, this culling of convicts—but as he twists each piece this way and that in his mind’s eye, the picture becomes clear. There is a reason why capital punishment is the new norm for breaking the most mundane Colony laws. Their space station is dying; the powers that be are dropping extra cargo in the hopes of surviving a little longer. This time, it happens to be human cargo.

Every teenager who files into the ship brings Derek and Stiles closer together, until Stiles is passing right in front of him. Heat radiates from Stiles’ skin, like steam from a rare hot shower. Derek sways closer, imagines reaching across the infinitesimal space and having Stiles’ body under his hands one more time. He’s one of less than a dozen guards accompanying the prisoners to what will ultimately be their freedom, or their deaths; it would be so easy, and to do so after this period of separation would be a balm to his bruised soul. But now is not the time. The time has been cruelly stolen from them.

He’d happened upon Stiles, perched in a window seat on G deck during his first week on patrol. “This corridor is off limits,” Derek had told him, still high off the power trip of his newly earned guard title.

“Yes, sir.” Stiles offered a jaunty little salute and a sardonic smirk, and Derek was a goner. Stiles knew it, too, because he kept coming back, day after day, and Derek let him. Eventually, Derek had come to think of their meetings as cosmic kismet.

“Of all the windows on all the stations, you had to park your ass in mine,” Derek joked, watching Stiles doodle in his sketch pad with the graphite pencil Derek pilfered for him. “Why this particular window?”

“It has the best view,” Stiles whispered, brown eyes abandoning the page he’d been intently focused on, zeroing in on Derek’s face instead. But Stiles was right. Everyday, without fail, ten minutes before Derek’s shift was due to end, Earth came into view out the window, bursting with blues and greens and whites, the colors vivid, alive; nourishing their souls after a constant diet of stark, muted grey aboard the ship.

“When I see it, I feel like I’m on top of the world. Like anything is possible,” Stiles said. “It gives me hope for the future.”

“That’s funny,” Derek replied, heart beating a frantic tattoo against his sternum.

Stiles laughed, eyes twinkling. His face was pale as the moon under the circadian lights of the ship, a constellation of moles standing out in stark relief along his jawline. “Why is it funny? Because Earth is a toxic wasteland and won’t be able to support life for another hundred years?”

“No.” Derek smiled, softly. “Because that’s how I feel when I look at you.”

Now, as Stiles passes by, Derek feels anything but hopeful. Stiles shakes his head, the move tiny, imperceivable to anyone else, a flick of brown hair—grown long in his six-month confinement—off his forehead. Don’t be a hero, it screams.

He watches the transponder get fastened to Stiles wrist (I sucked a bruise there on our first night together), memorizes the hard line of Stiles’ mouth when the tiny needles inside the cuff pierce his pallid skin (his lips were always so soft when I kissed them). Derek shoves the memories to the back of his mind, where they need to stay if he has any hope of going through with this.

Once they’re all loaded into the shuttle, strapped into rows of harnessed seats, a Council member steps up to the small box mounted on the adjacent wall, presses a series of buttons, and a three-minute timer pops up onto the display, flashing green as it counts down. Hot beads of sweat roll down Derek’s spine, seeps through his shirt, but he ignores that, too.

00:03:00

When he’d first gotten wind of the culling, he’d gone straight to Erica Reyes—his friend Vernon Boyd’s girlfriend and an apprentice engineer—and bribed her to give him a breakdown of the launch process.

“Hypothetically, how could they make this happen?” Derek had desperately questioned, cutting through her technical muttering.

She shoved the extra ration coins he’d slipped her in the pocket of her moth-eaten lab coat. “Each station is equipped with cargo crafts, but the Council would never touch those. It’s too public, everyone would know they were launching defenseless kids into space. The only thing I can think of is the hunk of junk ferry rocket on S desk they use for spare parts.” She shook her head. “It’s prehistoric. I’m no rocket scientist, but that thing would be lucky to survive reentry into atmosphere.”

“There will be children on board, Erica. Most are eighteen, coming up for parole, but some are as young as twelve.”

She’d frowned, the coin’s jingling in her pocket. “I’m sorry, Derek. You don’t send people into space in a relic if you care whether or not they make it to their destination. Whether they’re twelve or twenty, the Council doesn’t give a shit.”

“So tell me what I can do.”

00:02:00

The Chancellor stands before the doors to the ship, monologuing like a villain, gaze focused on the harried teens in front of him. Some glare back, some blink away tears, some struggle against their restraints. “You’ve been given a second chance at life,” Chris Argent tell them. “You’re the pioneers; the course is yours.”

00:01:00

Derek’s eyes dart around, counting a total of sixteen adults, including the Chancellor, remaining on the deck. He’s lucky they valued secrecy over security today.

00:00:30

The time comes.

The descending numbers on the launch pad flash red, as Erica told him them would. He has twenty seconds before the hatch automatically shuts, and manual override becomes impossible.

Argent is still droning on, telling the teens they are making history, they will be the first humans to leave this space station in over three hundred years. They should be proud.

He steps up behind the Chancellor, pulse skyrocketing, and taps him on the shoulder. Chris Argent pivots, eyebrows lowered. “What is it, Officer Hale?”

Derek’s green eyes drop to the pin on the collar of the Chancellor’s shirt—the insignia of their Colony, that once stood for unity. So it’s in the spirit of togetherness, for better or for worse, that Derek lets his hand quickly drop to the holster attached to his belt, and before anyone can think to move, there’s the sharp sound of a gunshot.

Chris Argent grabs at his stomach, blood flowing like a river between fingers, splattering Derek’s boots like droplets of rain.

The sight of the Chancellor’s wound pulls the remaining people on the launch deck toward them like a black star, and Derek ducks under the arms of the guards who reach for him instead of helping their leader, rolling under the hatch as it seals shut, locking him inside the dropship. Furious banging erupts on the doors as he falls into the unoccupied seat next to Stiles, tucking the still-smoking gun between his knees as he buckles his harness.

“I could have survived anything, if I thought you were up here, safe and alive,” Stiles tells him. Derek can read the fear in his wet eyes. “Even if it was only for a little bit longer.”

A series of bleeps emit from the instruments in the cockpit. The purr of the engines becomes a roar, and Stiles’ fingers dig into the plastic armrest like claws.

“I couldn’t have lived with myself if I let you go alone,” Derek replies, wiping the star-bursts of blood off his face. “So here we are.”

Stiles nods. “Here we are. We won’t be on top of the world for much longer, but at least we’ll be together.”

With a jarring blast, the ship detaches from the space station, and they free-falling, barrelling toward Earth, a planet left for dead three hundred years ago, at a thousand kilometers an hour.

The first leg of their journey is relatively calm, the sun outside the windshield a red thumbprint against a blue-black sky dotted with stars. Some of the passengers pray, some excitedly discuss the probability of surviving on the surface of a world ravaged by nuclear and biological war. Stiles reaches over, squeezes Derek’s knee, and he jolts, losing the grip on his gun. It floats weightless through the cabin, prompting some of the former inmates to unfasten their harnesses and somersault through the air. But soon the stars fade, as does the light, replaced by smokey-gray clouds of atmosphere.

“Everyone, get back in your seats!” Allison Argent warns.

One boy mockingly laughs as he floats in front of her. “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do? Just because your daddy was the boss doesn’t mean you get to be in charge. You’re not—“

A loud bang on the port side cuts off whatever he was going to say, their calm voyage turning abruptly terrifying as turbulence jerks their vessel. The boy crashes into the front window as the ship lurches downward, his head leaving behind a smear of blood. He speaks no more. Muttered prayers become shrill screams, and the acrid scent of vomit fills the cabin.

The ship shakes, primal roar of the engine mutating into a piercing wail as they plummet. “Derek!” Stiles yells as grey smoke gives way to red flames and spiderweb cracks splinter the windshield. Erica’s voice fills his ears, warning him the shuttle’s sensor systems may be too antiquated to safety guide them through strong winds and dangerous atmospheric conditions. The prayers return at a fevered level, some people crying desperately for their mothers and fathers over the stuttering grind of failing mechanics.

“Give me your hand,” Derek yells back, locking their fingers together. The desire to say something profound flares in his gut, to use his last words to convey how much finding Stiles in that window seat on top of the world meant to Derek.

“Stiles,” He rasps, hardly recognizing his own voice. It’s the only thing he has time to say.

They are a meteor, burning fast and bright through the sky. Derek closes his eyes, and makes a wish.

The crash rattles every bone in his body, his front teeth slicing through his bottom lip like a razor through silk. His neck lolls with abandon, body jerking like a rag doll, but his harness—and Stiles’ solid grip on his hand—hold him secure as the shuttle skids to a halt, a gaping wound torn through the outer and inner hull on the starboard side. The smell of stale vomit is overpowered by melting metal, burning fuel and coppery blood.

“If the outside air is still poisonous, we’ll be dead in minutes,” Stiles gasps, and no one gets up, searching each other for signs of radiation sickness.

None come.

“It pains me to say this,” Scott McCall grimaces at Allison, “but maybe your father didn’t heartlessly send us to our deaths after all.”

“Maybe,” she concedes. “But he’s still a dick.”

One by one they slowly exit the ship. The buckle of Derek’s auto-release jams, so he pulls a utility knife from his holster with numb fingers and saws at the neon orange straps. He unhooks Stiles, and together they stumble, arms wrapped around each other’s waists, toward the laceration in the wall, holding each other steady as they adjust to the gravitational pull of Earth. They step outside.

Derek blinks, jaw dropping. It’s not the ravaged, nuclear wasteland they’ve read about in their Earth Studies textbooks; the unsurvivable world.

All around him chirping birds sing and clicking crickets jump. The sweet scent of soil fills his nose, sharper than anything he’s ever smelled aboard the space station.

Snow-capped mountains dot the distance landscape, a lush green canopy hangs above them, multi-colored blossoms bloom around their feet, and warm sunlight kisses Stiles’ moles.

“I’ve never seen so many colors,” Stiles exclaims, eyes roaming over the verdant hills, listening to the wind whisper through the tall grass.

“You were wrong,” Derek tells Stiles, cradling his smiling face between his palms. He laughs. “This is the best view.”

Their lips meet in a kiss that tastes like fresh air, like freedom, like hope.

They’ve hurtled through space, crash-landed in the dirt to face insurmountable odds.

They’re the lowest they’ve ever been.

They’re on top of the world.

Send me a pairing and a prompt and I’ll write you a mini fic

[daywillcomeagain]

fëanor

i’ve started a series in which i do retellings of the events of a tolkien character’s life, from their perspective, framed to make them sympathetic and help the reader understand their choices. you can read the others here.

3.7K words under the cut!

i want you to imagine.

you are ten years old when your mom dies. (it is because of you. everyone is careful not to say it like that where you can hear them, but you can tell just as well by the way that they carefully talk around it. you wish they would just come out and say it and end the pointless game of careful implication.) nobody has ever died before, nobody, not in the long history of the universe. and now they have. because of you. she was kind and gentle, soft and sad, always kissing your imaginary injuries and rocking you to sleep. you were too much for her. fëanáro, she names you, soul of fire, because you have stolen all her fire, because she has given all her soul to you and kept none for herself.

you keep vigil by her grave for a time. then, you throw yourself into your work. you loudly correct everyone who says her name wrong.

when you are nineteen--still a very small child; later, they will say that elves in their twenties are comparable in appearance to human children of seven years old, though more skilled with words and tools, and they do not say how they compare in emotional maturity--your father falls in love again. she is nothing like your mother. she laughs often and loudly, and sings brash and joyful songs that make all who listen to them want to dance. you are still grieving, still working. he's never around anymore. it would be easier if you could hate her, but you don't fully, not really. or maybe you do. you hate something. you are not sure what you hate. (you would hate the world, for being so unfair, for tearing her from you, but that can only mean two things. either you could hate her, for choosing to die, and you never could do that--or you could hate the gods, for lying to you, lying to everyone, when they called this place the Undying Lands, and you are pretty sure that's blasphemy. it's easier to hate her, for taking your father away from you.)

the debate happens when you are twenty-nine. you hear the whole thing. it is a debate on whether your father should be allowed to remarry. in truth, it is a debate on whether you are evil or whether your mom is. they declare that your birth was a portent of evil, that it proves that you yourself are evil--they declare that your mom is at fault, for having no strength left, in those last days, exhausted and miserable--

--and you don't hate them. not yet.

they declare that your father may get married again.

(but. if.)

they declare that it is unnatural, for anyone to have more than one living spouse. (indeed, they have said repeatedly that it is unnatural for anyone to fall in love more than once, ever. they are compromising on this only because they cannot control it.)

your father can get married, so long as your mother stays dead forever.

she was always so insistent that she would never wish to return, but--you had dreamed, so often, that she would. that she would get her energy back. that she would recover. that she would change her mind. if she marries your father, they are issuing a sentence: that she will stay dead forever, no matter what, no matter if she begs and pleads to see you again.

they get married five years later. a short betrothal, as the elves reckon it. she makes your father happier than you had ever seen him. she pronounces your mother's name wrong, every time.

you think maybe you hate her a little, now. you don't tell anyone. you wonder if this is proof that the valar were right when they said you were evil.

you take on an apprenticeship to the only vala who had said, no, the death of míriel þerindë cannot have been a sin, because fëanáro is untainted and so is she.  you learn the forge. you hammer your hatred into metal, you make the rock beneath you do what you tell it to do.

they have another child, and another, and another. a daughter, a son, a daughter, a son. you don't hate them, but nor are you friends--you are not famed for your cool head, and you have not stopped grieving. all of them, all of them, say your mother's name exactly the way she hated it.

you have not stopped working. you hammer metal and study linguistics and cut gems and experiment with chemicals. you learn the language of the gods, the language that nobody else can quite pronounce. you invent writing--phonetically perfect, each letter conveying voicing and place of articulation, spelled exactly how it's pronounced. (you make sure her name is spelled the way she wants it pronounced, and you didn't invent sound but you invented writing, if you teach them this is how you spell her name they can't disagree with you.) you invent long-distance communication.

the playing with chemicals goes well. you invent artificial light. it is your city now, bathed in the light of your lamps, their glory written in your letters.

you keep working and working and working, trying so hard to bring beauty to this world, because somewhere in the back of your mind you are not quite sure that you can ever make up for your crime of having been born. (you killed your mother, and perhaps in a different world, writing and light and long-distance communication could have saved lives, but this is paradise, and so they are trinkets, curiosities, and your mother is dead and your half-family still does not pronounce her name right no matter how many papers you write railing against the linguistic evolution of quenya that made the thorn obsolete, and you have changed nothing.)

melkor is released. he promises he is penitent. you do not trust him. almost everyone else does. perhaps it is because you are the one of only two people in the whole world who understand the stakes. it is after a debate, of course, and you wonder at these gods, who are so willing to pardon torturers and so willing to decry children. of course, that isn't quite fair--you were never sentenced to three thousand years chained in the Void--but you think it anyway.

when you were still a child, you had passed a girl on the street, who was arguing passionately that you can't just REPLACE his mother, mothers aren't INTERCHANGEABLE, even rocks are different and mothers are certainly even more so. you hadn't seen her again until now. you are wandering aimless, hiking in the great wilderness, because at dinner your father had called her your mother and even that ever-present balm of overwork is not enough to calm your stuttering heart. and you run into her.

her hair is shockingly red, curls of frizz trying to escape the knot she has it in. freckles dot her skin. her lips are thin, her nose crooked.

as soon as you see her again, you know you are going to marry her.

you do. you learn that she is named nerdanel and that she is a sculptor and that she apprenticed under the same vala as you and you fall in love all over again when you see her statues, looking as though they are about ready to jump into life. people gossip on the streets about how the crown prince's bride is not beautiful, and you forge two rings and cut two jewels and you do not care what people on the street think. you have seven sons. your father's name is finwë. you are curufinwë--skilled finwë. your half-brothers: ñolofinwë, wise finwë; arafinwë, noble finwë.

you name your first child nelyafinwë. third finwë.

you have seven sons, all in all. every time, you are terrified that your wife is going to break, that this one, this one, she will run out of soul. they say that that is why women do not work as craftsmen or composers (--or broidresses--), staying instead to mathematics and astronomy, theoretical work, observational. they say that is why women do not have many children, only three or four. every time a woman creates, she gives away a little bit of herself. (they say that is why your mom died. they say that is why you are a genius at creation. she was already putting energy and soul into her weaving, and then she created you, and she had no more to give.)

she gives birth to your sixth and seventh children--twins--and kisses you on the forehead and goes back to work chiseling at a statue and tells you that it is nonsense.

you work. somewhere deep, where even you do not fully know it, you are terrified that they will realize who you are, and you hope that your inventions will buy you time, will buy you love, because you know that they will never ever be enough to buy penance, to buy redemption, to buy your mother life and joy again. you demand unconditional loyalty from your family because you are certain that, if it is conditional, you will lose it. you are terrified that, one day, you will go too far and discover the conditions.

gems and artificial light shine in your workshop. finally there is a breakthrough.

you work non-stop for almost a decade, day and night. nerdanel brings you food and water when you don't get enough on your own. you observe the trees, that light-which-is-more-than-light, more than lamp or fire, that light that finwë gave up the stars for, that caused elwë to grow so much taller than anyone had ever before imagined was possible.

finally, you have your breakthrough.

the silmarilli shine more beautifully than you had thought possible.

gradually, things change.

you hear whispers, in the forge, of how to make armor and weapons from steel. in the street you hear that your half-brother means to put himself above you in succession for the throne.

you go back to the forge. you invent the first sword.

it has not been a week before your half-brother is wearing one.

it goes on like this for twenty years, the slow escalation. you know your work isn’t enough, anymore. you clutch to the allegiance of your wife and sons like a drowning man would to a rope. you are not sure you can trust anyone else. you have decided that maybe you hate all of them, your half-brothers and your stepmother, all those who play-acted family while pronouncing your mom's name wrong. you hold the silmaril light close to your chest and wonder what stars look like.

finwë calls a council. ñolofinwë (not fingolfin, not yet) comes early, of course. he begs finwë to restrain "the spirit of fire". he says that you mean to leave valinor, which is true enough, and to drive him out of the city, which is not, yet. he says that, if finwë disowns you now, then at least he will still have two loyal sons.

you come in with your sword drawn. its tip hovers barely a hair's width from ñolofinwë's chest as you speak.

a trial is called, a council, a debate. the valar mean to judge you, of course. it would be more interesting if they had not judged you guilty the moment your mother died.

it comes out in the trial that the past twenty years have been melkor's lies. that he whispered of weapons and plots of overthrow to the people at both of your forges, that he used every escalation on either side as proof. you still do not love each other, but you forgive each other. ñolofinwë says: "I will release my brother."

the valar sentence you to exile for twelve years. they do not find melkor, and they cannot sentence someone they cannot find. you leave the city without speaking a word. your sons come with you, as does your father. your half-family remains.

they invite you to a festival. you go in forge-clothes, hair tied up loosely, a sword hanging at your belt half out of spite and half out of unfounded paranoia. your silmarils you leave at home. they do not deserve to brighten the halls of the valar. you have to go--it is only an invitation out of politeness, it could so easily turn to command, or at the very least turn to more proof of your inherent evil--so you go, but your family remains in exile. in protest.

ñolofinwë is there. he turns to you and says, i forgive you, unconditionally, and i would still like to be your brother, if you would have me. his hand is out, his eyes trusting. he is wearing no sword.

so be it, you say, and shake his hand.

it is that moment when everything goes dark.

at first, the dark is terrible, oppressive. it is not the absence of light; it is a presence, almost tangible, of void. it is a claustrophobic sort of darkness, a thick thing through which nothing could pass.

the winds clear it away, eventually, and then it is just a regular sort of darkness, a vast emptiness. you can see the stars; they're as beautiful as you had imagined. maybe more.

finally, someone speaks, and then everyone speaks at once, as though a spell had been broken. you all gather together, in the square, to see the dead and withered forms of the two trees that had once lit up all of valinor.

you realize then that you are no longer afraid to hate paradise, to hate the gods themselves, so you do.

they call a silence, after not too long. they beg you to break your silmarils, to destroy your jewels, to light up the world again.

you want to sob. you have lost everything, and this--this--

you, of all people, know that elves can die of grief, that elves can die because they have poured too much of their own soul into their creation and there is none left over for themselves. you know that breaking your jewels would be signing your own execution. and here they are, asking you to kill yourself so that their city might be brighter, because the stars are not enough for them to show off the lovely paradise they have built.

you tell them this. the worst part of it is that you know that they will take this as the proof they have always longed for, that you are evil and selfish and prideful and corrupted. you say that if they force you to do otherwise, you will regard that as the first murder.

"not the first," námo says, and for a moment you wonder if he has finally admitted what he did to your mother when he allowed your father to remarry.

i say it is only for a moment because, a moment later, your oldest son arrives.

"your father is dead."

and with that--

you give melkor a new name. moringoþo, you call him, black foe of the world.

and then--

you scream. and you run. you run and run, into the darkness, into the wildness.

everyone searches for you. they are terrified you have killed yourself. you are not entirely sure that they are wrong to be afraid of that.

but eventually, you are found. there is more news: the silmarilli are gone, stolen by moringoþo. and, well--

"you're king now," someone tells you, softly, and it is then that you begin to break.

only two people have died since the universe began, and you are an orphan.

you hear that moringoþo, who took your light and your father, who stole from you all that you loved, is in middle-earth now. well, you had always wanted to go there.

you are still exiled, technically. you don't really care anymore. you don't care much about anything other than making him pay. you arrive in the streets of the capital and call on all to come, to listen to you. your speech is wild with grief and anger, all the hatred you have held in for three thousand years spilling out in the cracking voice and perfect words of a linguist and writer. (the valar name it pride, rebellion. they say it is the wicked lies of moringotto that come from your lips.)

you swear a terrible oath, anguish on your voice, that you will pursue anyone who takes your silmarils, whether they be a monster or the brightest of valar. you swear that you will pursue morgoth to the ends of the earth and past it. whatever it takes. you say that you will be damned worse than death if you fail. your voice rings stronger than the most sacred of vows.

you are so, so comforted, when your sons leap up without hesitation to take the same vow beside you. that you are not alone, that not all that you love has left you. that, with dead parents and a wife who refuses to follow you, that the loyalty and the people you have clung to has not entirely failed.

you are king now. you tell your people to follow you back to middle-earth.

the valar say they do not intend to trap you. at first you are almost grateful.

you discover soon enough that you cannot cross the Grinding Ice. you must go by sea.

you have no boats.

you beg for boats. you are told: no, we will not give you boats, they are our heart's love, as dear to us as your silmarils are to you. you beg to be taught to make boats of your own. you are told: no, we will not teach you to make boats, not without the blessing of the valar. (and of course you will not get the blessing of the valar. you remember when they told you that you were free to leave, and almost curse yourself for still wanting to believe them.)

and with every minute of delay, moringoþo is out there, having killed your father, the silmarilli shining proudly from his brow, having faced no consequences. and you are in paradise, doing nothing.

eventually, you tell your people to get in the boats, draw up the anchors, man the oars.

the teleri throw your people into the water.

it is only then, hoping with all your heart that they knew how to swim, that you draw your sword.

the valar doom you, of course. the valar declare you as evil. the valar are proven right in everything they have ever said about a small, grieving boy. the valar name you kinslayer. the valar promise to forgive you--not if you help the survivors, not if you send aid and food and let them keep all their ships but one, but if you repent of your rebellion and stay in valinor.

you do not particularly care if you are doomed. you cannot live with this in your heart without leaving and fighting. you have made an oath, and you are not about to break it. you would rather die a million painful deaths, fight a thousand hopeless wars, than spend another day in paradise. and so you speak your own doom, as true as theirs. you say you will never be a coward. you say you will never be forgotten.

námo has no answer, to that.

there are boats, now, but not enough. the trust so tenuously built between you and ñolofinwë has come crashing down again. arafinwë has forsaken the march altogether, leaving his children to go to middle-earth alone.

that night, everyone is asleep but you. you cannot sleep here. you are not sure if you can ever sleep again.

you wake your sons and the most trustworthy of your people. you take the boats.

safely on the other side, surrounded only by people you trust, you burn the boats. you do not want ñolofinwë camping in the dark, in the cold, waiting for a return trip that never comes. sometimes destroying all hope is its own sort of mercy.

your sons help you set them ablaze. all except one. finally you have gone too far, discovered the conditions for the loyalty of your oldest son. your arm throws torches with as much violence as it can. you laugh, but your laughter is not lighthearted. the fire glitters on your cheeks.

in truth, you are grateful when the battle comes. finally your hatred can be unleashed upon a worthy enemy; at last your sword can break the ribs of people who are to blame instead of merely in the way. in so many ways, this has all you have ever wanted. with every orc dead, you are making a difference, a real one, not just giving trivial trinkets to people who already have everything they need. you are too much, too marred, destructive and short-tempered and evil and finally you are only hurting and killing people who deserve it. it requires focus, precision, as much as the most detailed smithing, and for a moment you can almost forget the grief in this whirlwind of death.

you keep going, and going, and going. you lose everything in the haze of sight and sound, the black blood of orcs and the great fire of balrogs-- --so many balrogs-- --too many balrogs-- --but you're too far in now and you knew this was going to happen and you don't care, exactly, when you fall to the ground with a sickening thump.

your sons carry you away when the battle ends. you gasp out your dying wish: you want them to keep their oath. you want to die comfortable in the knowledge that the person who did this, to you, to your father before you--you want to know that he will pay for it. (you never said you weren't selfish.)

they promise. you dissolve, then, into the fire that always burned inside your soul.

in the years to come, your grandson will denounce his family and then carve your symbol into the stone wall of a door. your sons will come to hate your oath, though they will never break it. thousands and thousands of years later, they will call you a monster with the letters you invented, by the light of fëanorian lamps, and the weapon at their belt will be a sword. and one day, a hobbit will ask who you are, not knowing the answer, and he will be told by an old wizard that you were fair beyond imagining.

[scurvgirl]

Wild Woman

More House Witch AU!

Black Magic Woman | Devil Woman

Featuring @selenelavellan‘s Selene, Darevas, Felasel, and Haleir.

Warning for blood and for shitty parenting.

Serahlin steps through the threshold of Selene’s house, the hairs on her forearm rising at the prickle of the wards.

She shifts the bundle in her arms to remove then hang her hat on the coat rack by the door. Her shoes clack across the floor as she invites herself into what looks to be the formal sitting room.

“Is the moon treating you well this cycle?” Serahlin asks. Selene gestures to the sofa and Serahlin takes a seat. Selene sits in a chair, her hair shining in the light even during the day. The full moon empowers her even now. It’s a good prediction for how Ileth will be when he is grown. But she must remember, as powerful as he will be during the full moon, he will be as weak during the new moon.

“As well as it can. Felasel has been up all night.” She can hear the exhaustion in Selene’s voice, but it is the only indicator that Felasel’s inability to sleep has been a strain. “I have been too, so it works out, but there is a certain tiredness that comes with tending to your child for an entire twenty-four period period.”

“Ileth has been practically crawling the walls at night. At one point, I let the moonlight flood his room and he got so excited, he unintentionally levitated a few inches off the floor.” She had been so proud to see the space between his feet and the floor, his face canted up to the light streaming into the bedroom. Serahlin is also exhausted, though for...other reasons that just tending to her son. Her nails tap against the plastic holding the muffins.

“He must be close to his birthday,” Selene says.

“Three more months.” She is almost sad about it. Not losing the power, that would be a horrible thing to mourn since the power is rightfully his. It is the sadness of her baby growing up so fast. She feels like he just took his first steps, said his first word.

“Darevas and Felasel have six more months.”

“Good,” Serahlin says, deciding that there has been enough small talk, “that means there is plenty of time to handle Haleir while you are empowered.”

Selene’s face flushes and her eyes flash, “That...will be difficult to accomplish.”

“When Darris took my book, I swore I’d get it back, win my freedom. But years passed and I grew convinced that I wouldn’t ever gain my freedom.”

“He took your book, too?” Selene says softly, horror and sympathy clear in her voice. Serahlin gives her a reassuring smile, full of the self satisfaction of murdering Darris only two nights prior.

“He did, and up until two days ago, it was his. But we moved only a month ago into the new house and my familiar found it, poorly warded in a box. He broke the wards and I got it back. That night I exacted my revenge. He will never take anything from me or anyone again.” The lights flicker at her intensity and Selene looks envious at Serahlin’s victory. Her fluffy white familiar mrows in approval, jumping up onto the arm of the chair Selene is in.

“Two days ago? That was the bake sale….”

“The day I finally recognized you for what you were. And I realized that if you had not approached me after all this time, then you too must be in a similar position. So I brought a few gifts.,” she picks up the tupperware, removes the lid and reaches past the first layer of muffins to pull out a pink candle. It sits in a silver carrier with the ancient tongue carved into the handle and around the holder.

“A searching candle,” Selene breathes.

“Yes. One of my favorite recipes. Now, is there a picture of Haleir around? I will also need a strand of your hair.” Selene rises from the chair and pulls a picture frame off the fireplace mantle. In the picture, Haleir is younger, standing in the woods with the sun high overhead. His induction ceremony to his coven. Certainly a precious memory for him, how perfect.

Serahlin lights the candle and Selene hands over the picture then plucks a strand of a hair and hands that over too. The picture is burned first as Serahlin whispers the spell.

“Reveal what Haleir hides, search for what he took, so that we find Selene’s spell book.” The candle’s flame sputters then turns a bright pink, smoke billows into the room. The lights flicker for a moment before the flame dies down.

“Now we walk the house to find it. When the flames start to flicker pink again, we’ll know we’re close.” She rises from the couch and they begin to walk through the house, slow and methodical, making sure to move the candle into every nook and cranny.

“How is Ileth adapting to not having Darris around?” Selene asks after several minutes of silent searching. Serahlin glances back and contemplates for a moment.

“I don’t think he quite realizes yet that his father isn’t coming home. I don’t think it will be that hard on Ileth, only because Darris was only minimally invested in Ileth. He was always a byproduct of Darris gaining control over me.” Darris was uninvolved in parenting. Uninterested. Ileth came home with artwork and Darris wouldn’t so much as glance up from whatever report he was reading. He didn’t shop for Ileth, didn’t plan parties or meet friends.

Serahlin came home late one night thanks to a parent-teacher conference to find Ileth sitting in his room crying.

“Why doesn’t Father like me?”

It broke her heart.

“My son deserves the best, and Darris was never that.”

“At first I thought I could leave, just disappear into the night but I can’t leave the twins. Not with Haleir.”

“And you shouldn’t! The boys may not fully understand why they will never see their father again, but it is for their benefit for him to leave their lives.” Selene will know peace and freedom soon, and it will be the balm to all the wounds of being held captive for so long. Serahlin understands that the wounds won’t heal overnight but gods, it is a beginning.

“Finding the book is one thing, but how do you propose to get Haleir to leave?” Selene asks and Serahlin laughs.

“Leave? Dear Selene, we are going to kill that husband of yours. I poisoned Darris, but Haleir may suspect such a thing. You know him best and I will assist you in any way I can.” In addition to be a talented witch, Serahlin is also educated in hand to hand combat and even knows her way around a knife. She has been carving up all the pigs and turkeys and chickens for the last few years, she doesn’t imagine carving up an elven man is much different.

Selene stops in the middle of the kitchen. Serahlin is holding the candle in front of the microwave, trying to discerns if there is a slight shift in color.

“You hardly know me, why are you doing this?” She asks softly making Serahlin turn to her with a soft knowing expression.

“Because you deserve better and Haleir deserves to be in the ground.” She takes a deep breath and shrugs, “And because I need a coven as does my son and I think so do you and your boys.”

“To have a coven again...it’s almost too much to hope.”

“I do not offer hope,” Serahlin says, moving from the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement, “I am making a promise, offering allegiance. As well as muffins, I made too many for the bake sale.”

Selene chuckles, “Felasel will enjoy that. He has a terrible sweet tooth.” The descend the stairs. Serahlin waves the lights on and eyes the flame.

It flickers pink for the briefest moment.

“We’re on the right track.”

The basement is set deep into the earth as is custom in this area. The ceilings are taller, making it an excellent place to hide witchy items. Serahlin is convinced that the people who originally settled this town were witches and set in place ordinances to allow for easier witchcraft. It’s a good place for witches, a small town that sits at the border of the Free Marches, Orlais, and Nevarra.

Now if only the Chantry wasn’t so inconveniently strong here. If only there wasn’t a horrible past of witch hunts. Templars may be mostly extinct, but the fear of their kind rising up once more is a real fear most witches have.

The descent to the basement builds with barely restrained hope and excitement, but also doubt.

“Des and I have looked in here but have found nothing,” Selene says.

“But your magic was limited, he would of course obscure it as best he could. He is sun blessed, yes?” They reach the end of the stairs and turn into one of the rooms. The candle flickers pink once more.

“Yes.”

“Then where is a window? He’d want to cast it in sunlight.”

“There’s an egress window, over here,” Selene calls from a room adjacent to the one Serahlin is in. She quickly moves over to the room and there is indeed a window there.

The candle sends up more pink, so frequently the entire flame is almost covered.

“Serahlin -

“It is here, Sister.” Serahlin slowly moves the candle around the room, watching for any changes in the flame. There! On the wall opposite of the window. They step closer and the flame changes fully to pink.

“What you hide, reveal what is inside,” Serahlin whispers, then blows the flame and the smoke out over the panel.

It clicks, then slides down.

Atop a small shelf sits what appears to be an innocuous copy of Good Omens.

A warbled sound escapes Selene, “You found it. My book.” She reaches for it only for a barrier to appear over the book. One last security measure. Selene lets out a cry of frustration.

Serahlin runs a hand along the barrier, ignoring the uncomfortable heat in her hand.

“It is a blood ward. It will only disappear if he removes it or if he is dead,” she says with grave solemnity. A plant catches fire in the corner of the room, purple flames climbing the trunk and curling around the fronds. Even this slight proximity gives her a boost in power, even if it is minimal and erratic at best.

“Selene, it is alright, we will figure this out. We were always going to kill him, this...is just a different order of things.” She sets the candle down to turn to Selene, taking her hands in her own. “You will be free. We know where it is, we know the course. We just need to figure the rest out.”

It takes a few minutes of breathing exercises and talking Selene down for the flames to dissipate and for the panic to ease from her face. Serahlin pulls her into a hug. She’ll get through this, Serahlin will make sure of it.

**

Selene and Serahlin plan until it is time to pick the boys up from school. They take Selene’s larger vehicle since it can hold all of the booster seats. The boys are all still energetic from the day - especially Ileth and Felasel who just seem to feed off each other in terms of excited energy.

“Memae! Memae! Mr. Paenir told us that that that next month’s an eclipse!”

“Truly?” Serahlin asks. Selene perks up from the driver’s seat as Serahlin turns in her seat to look into the back seat.

“He said it’s a solar eclipse,” Felasel clarifies.

“Did you hear that, Selene? A solar eclipse.” A wicked smile spreads across Serahlin’s face and it is mirrored on Selene’s.

“Isn’t that convenient.”

**

The day after the last night of the full moon, Haleir returns. It is not quite safe to return to Selene during that time, but they have set up most of their plan anyways. He is also scheduled for one more business trip before the eclipse.

With such a rare event the sun-blessed witches stay home in their most protected place. There are wards and family to help them weather the debilitating reduction in power. If moon-blessed witches are reduced in power during new moons, then sun blessed elves are near mortal during a solar eclipse. And Haleir has grown cocky, thinking that his safest place is at home with his magically neutered wife and still-without-power sons. He will be sharing a home with someone who wishes him all the harm in the world, has every cause to harm him, who will be exponentially more powerful than him for a few hours.

A week passes before Ileth looks up from dinner and stares at Darris’s old seat.

“Is Father coming back?” He asks softly.

She looks at the seat, not missing her dead husband in the least. But she can see the confusion on Ileth’s face, the hurt that he isn’t there. He brought home more artwork today, and even after Darris never so much as glanced at the other art pieces on the fridge, Ileth still stepped into the man’s old office searching for approval.

Serahlin reaches over and takes his hands, directing him to meet her eyes, “No, your father is not coming back. He was not a very nice man. But Ileth, this was not your fault. Never your fault. I made your father leave because he was mean and he made us feel bad.” He still sniffles and rubs at his eye. Serahlin sighs and picks him up, pulling him into her arms. He cries and cries and cries some more.

That approval Ileth he desperately sought he will never get now. Serahlin has no regret, but she wishes she could take away the hurt from Ileth without doing something horribly unethical. She could take his memory away, she supposes, make it so that Darris never existed to Ileth. But those sorts of spells are always revealed in the future - the holes in the memory, other people remembering Darris and asking Ileth about him…. No, this is something Ileth will have to grow from, as much as it hurts.

She gets him ice cream after dinner and lets him sleep in her bed that night. He curls against her, and for a moment she feels a magical pull in her chest. It’s his power, growing every day and waiting to go to him. There is so little time left before he is six. He’ll get his familiar and he will need to be trained to use his magic.

Moonlight streams into the room and Ileth shifts in his sleep, soft little snores turning into brief snorts as he moves unconsciously to be more in the light. She runs a hand through his moon-white hair and thinks of how quickly he has grown. If Darris had not been evil, if she had been with someone good and kind, she would have another. Motherhood has been her light in the darkness, a reason to continue on even as Darris made it almost unbearable.

Morning comes and she drops him off at school like any other day. Another day of moving around the house and plotting and reading awaits her. A restlessness fills her. She could go back to school, finish the law degree Darris had so rudely interrupted.

She could become a divorce lawyer and help other people leave their terrible marriages.

The idea is too tempting to ignore. Further investigation shows that she will need full access to both her and Darris’s funds. He took her savings and put it with his money, granting him even more power over her because her book wasn’t enough. She almost wishes she could kill him all over for that.

Instead, she finds a picture of a death certificate and creates a copy with magic. She signs it, notarizes it, and brings it the bank. Decked out in black and crying tears of happiness, Serahlin gets the accounts turned over to her since she is legally now Darris’s widow.

All his money is hers.

Serahlin is a rich, rich witch. She celebrates by buying herself a new pair of shoes - a beautiful black leather pair that makes her feel divine. And very wicked.

By the time all her errands are done, it’s time to get Ileth from school. She spies Selene in the carpool line and waves to her.

She decides after she has helped Selene with her husband, she is going back to school to become the lawyer she’s always wanted to be. It will be good for Ileth to see her succeed after the loss of Darris.

The month passes. Haleir leaves for a trip. Selene and Serahlin firm up their plan until he comes home. A week later and it is the day they have been waiting for.

After the boys are dropped off at school, Serahlin transforms herself into a cat and slinks over to Selene’s house with her familiar in toe. Selene lets her into the house before walking down to the basement where Haleir has secluded himself. While Selene places the small enchanted bundles to bring down any ward, all connected to Selene’s growing power, Serahlin walks the rest of the house. She seals all the exits and opens all the curtains, allowing the altered light to flood the house.

Haleir is a strong witch, stronger than Darris who quite frankly was a disgrace. Selene is going to need all the power she can get. When the moon begins to cover the sun, Serahlin rushes downstairs to find Selene staring at the door between her and Haleir.

Selene takes a deep breath and opens the door.

“What are you doing?” Haleir accuses, so quick to suspect as he is right to do. Serahlin slinks into the room, behind Haleir while he is distracted by Selene.

“I will give you one last chance - give me my book,” she demands.

Serahlin paws in a small rune into the back of the chair Haleir is sitting in, chanting the spell in her head.

All who sit here

Cannot move,

Become electric chair

To electrocute

Haleir laughs. “Selene, no. We’ve been over this, I thought you understood by now -

“I understand that you have your heir, any debt there was is repaid. It’s my book,” Selene holds firm. Serahlin waits for the moment, but they are running out of time.

“It was never your book to hold, that is the point.”

Selene casts her green eyes to Serahlin and in a moment she is no longer a cat, but an elf.

“What a shame, Haleir, that you are too stupid to just hand it over,” Serahlin purrs. With a shout, Haleir launches himself out of the chair. Or, he attempts to. Electricity shoots over the chair and into Haleir. He collapses against the furniture, panting.

“Release me and I won’t kill you, bitch!” He grates. Serahlin tilts her head and smiles wickedly.

“Tsk, tsk, Haleir, see that is what we are going to do to you.” Without any more warning, Selene and Serahlin start to walk in a circle around the chair, chanting in the old language. Des and Risin join in the walk between their mistresses.

It is an old spell they use, one to strip the magic first, pulling it from his body.

“Once imbued with power, no more, cede your power to us,” they chant as they weave the magic purposefully into him. Haleir screams and thrashes as his magic is rent from him.

“Where man walked, where life bloomed, death lies, death consumes.” They repeat the chants three times before there is a pop and they feel Haleir’s magic separate from him.

They stop walking as Haleir begins to thrash in his chair. Serahlin kicks the chair to recline as Selene flicks out the knife she has been carrying. She leaps on top of him, hair and eyes glowing as the moon reaches its peak.

She is the last sight Haleir sees, a glowing witch of death as she drags the knife across his throat. Blood flows from the wound as his eyes go wide in horror, as if only realizing what is happening.  

“Die, bastard,” she murmurs.

Haleir gurgles, and dies.

Magic coils around him then snaps. The house trembles as all his wards come crashing down. Selene climbs off his body, dropping the knife as she moves to the wall. The false panel falls, Haleir’s magic no longer holding it up.

The book rests inside. Selene reaches for it and lets out a cry of relief when her fingertips finally touch its cover.

“My book,” she cries, grasping it firmly to her. The air around her moves, rustling her hair as her power is reunited within her. She holds the book to her chest as it flickers from its Good Omens cover to its true form of a leather bound tome emblazoned with Dirthamen’s symbol.

Serahlin glances down at Haleir’s corpse, covered in blood and grimaces. She’s never much liked the mess of sacrifices and this is no different. Still, it had to be done, and when Selene turns to her, full of incredulous gratitude.

“I do not know how to thank you,” she says, eyes still glowing.

Serahlin smiles, “You’re free, you can do anything you wish. Though I do hope that perhaps you would consider forming a coven with me?”

“Yes,” Selene says without hesitation. Serahlin raises a brow.

“You do not want to return to your coven?”

“No, my father sold my book to Haleir in the first place.” That bastard. Perhaps if he comes to town soon, they can kill him too. Only if Selene wishes of course.

But now she simply smiles and hugs Selene close, “We will make our coven good and raise our children to be better.”

Selene nods against Serahlin’s shoulder. Serahlin doesn’t even recoil from the blood. They will need to cement the coven bond with blood and a small rite, but already she can feel the bond begin to form.

Her book, Darris dead, and now a coven, even as small as it is. All within a month.

“Now, time to dispose of this bastard,” Serahlin says pulling away from Selene, who wipes her eyes and nods in response.

“Right. There is a spot at the edge of the backyard that will do.”

Together they wrap Haleir’s body in an old blanket that Haleir brought from his coven then haul him out into the yard. Selene guides them into a small copse of trees. They lean over the brush, casting beautiful shadows as the moon starts to uncover the sun once more. They start to dig, and dig, and dig some more until the hole is deep enough.

They toss Haleir in and cover him once more. Selene casts the spell for a tree to take root to harvest the last of Haleir’s energy to prevent him from haunting the house and the boys.

Once he’s buried and the tree is properly seeded, Selene and Serahlin return to the house for a proper cleanse. They burn incense and murmur incantations as they shift the decorations of the house to resemble more of Selene’s style. The altar to Falon’din is replaced by a modest look desk with an inkwell, quill pen, a book, and a blackened raven skull.

The furniture grows softer and a purple fire roars to life in the fireplace. It is truly Selene’s home now. A place that is free of the malignant presence that was Haleir.

“How did you tell Ileth his father wasn’t coming home?” Selene asks, standing in the middle of the room, still covered in dirt and blood but looking more vibrant with every passing moment.

“I was as honest as I could be without saying ‘I killed him because he was an evil sod.’” Serahlin sighs. “It’s not easy, but it is for his own good. Already he was feeling the sting of Darris’s inability to properly parent. And it wasn’t like he was getting any better with me.”

“Right. Haleir was a terrible father, I’m glad my sons are free of him.” But there is the concern that her sons will hurt from this. Serahlin places a reassuring hand on Selene’s shoulder.

“Whatever struggles you face, I will be with you, Sister.”

Selene looks up and smiles, placing her hand atop Serahlin’s, “Thank you, Sister.”

[visionshadows]

Um, my mind always goes blank. Ummmmmmm. How about the Pens managed to not only draft Geno but also the identical Crosby twins, Sidney and Seth. Poor overwhelmed Geno!

Zhenya learns about the Crosby twins from Sasha who learned about them from his agent. They learn about them more when they’re getting ready for World Juniors and their coaches give them dossiers on all of the teams.

The Crosby twins are kind of goofy looking, crooked teeth and too big smiles, looking way too young to be on the team. Sasha had shook his head and just pointed at the stats. “Best forwards no matter how young. Sid is better than Seth, but together they’re a nightmare.”

Zhenya’s cocky, young and promising in a way that meant he thinks he’s better than everyone, especially if he has Sasha on his wing. He tells Sasha as much and Sasha just laughs, snuggling into Zhenya’s side.

They’re not better than the Crosby twins. Especially not after Sasha gets hurt. Zhenya doesn’t know whose hand he’s shaking when they lined up across from each other, his eyes blurry with tears. All he knows is he isn’t good enough.

Zhenya watches as Mario Lemieux pulls off the unthinkable and manages to draft the Crosby twins to Pittsburgh. He does it without losing Zhenya himself or the goalie they drafted first the year before Zhenya. They won’t have a first round pick for a few years and Ryan Whitney is gone, but they’ve got the Crosby twins.

Sasha calls him up immediately, “Are you going to Pittsburgh now?”

Zhenya’s stomach roils. “I can’t. I have a contract for another year.”

“Oh Zhenya,” Sasha says with a sigh. “I wanted to beat all of you for rookie of the year.”

Zhenya barks out a laugh at that. “You’ll never beat both of them.”

“Watch me.”

Sergei Gonchar is a familiar face that Zhenya clings to like a life raft. When Sergei introduces him around, he gets to the twins and says in Russian “I can’t tell them apart with their clothes on.”

“Evgeni, Sidney and Seth Crosby.”

Zhenya shakes their hands, not knowing who is who. They smile almost identical smiles, shake hands with equal pressure. One of them speaks in too quick English and the other elbows him in the ribs.

“Hello. Welcome to Pittsburgh,” that one says in shaky Russian. “I’m Seth. That Sid. He bad speak. No Russian.”

Zhenya feels tears prick at his eyes. He’s so tired and Seth is trying to speak Russian and he’s so far from home. Sergei puts a hand on his arm, steadying him.

“You have to use English, Seth, or he won’t learn,” Sergei says, not unkindly in Russian. “Right, Evgeni?”

Seth frowns at that. “Can do both or I not learn too.”

Mario Lemieux (Mario. Lemieux. Holy. Shit.) interrupts them and gently urges everyone to the dining room and Zhenya is starving. He sits next to Sergei with Seth on the other side of him. Sid sits across from them and Zhenya eats, barely listening to the conversation since most of it is in English. Seth whispers bits of things in fractured Russian and kicks at Sid across the table.

It’s weird and wonderful and just like eating dinner with Denis.

Zhenya is so, so tired.

Seth and Sid don’t room together and Seth convinces whomever makes up the road roommates to put him with Zhenya. He promises he will speak English with him and not be a bad influence.

Zhenya learns pretty quickly that Seth and Sid are pretty different off the ice. Sid is very focused and responsible, silly yes, but definitely the more serious brother. Seth is competitive with Sid, but is otherwise pretty laid back and happy to let Sid take the media and team responsibilities.

And Seth wasn’t kidding about how bad Sid is at Russian. His French is slightly better, good enough that he doesn’t embarrass himself when talking to the Quebecois players, but he can’t say anything more than hello to the Russian players. Seth can talk fluently in French and decently in Russian.

It’s a relief to be able to go back to their hotel room and talk to Seth in Russian, to be allowed to think in his own language for a little while. His head constantly hurts from all the English, the immersion so stark and rough. Seth’s Nova Scotia accent rounding out Russian words is a balm for his brain.

Soon enough Seth’s hands are a balm for his aching body as well. It starts as drunken jerking off which eventually leads to Geno offering to blow him because Seth is cute and awkward (not as awkward as Sid) and he likes him. It’s fun and silly and it’s not at all serious. They don’t actually have any chemistry with each other, but casual sex is good when neither of them feel like trying to pick up.

Sid knows. It’s obvious Sid knows because he has entire conversations with Seth in looks and frowns and tilts of his head and elbows in the ribs. Geno just rolls his eyes and lets them talk about it their own silent twin way.

Now that Geno knows them, he doesn’t understand how anyone can confuse the two of them, but people always do. Their teammates can’t tell them apart unless they have their jerseys on or they’re wearing something with their numbers on it.

Sid stands differently than Seth, his body weight shifted to the right compared to Seth who shifts to the left. Seth speaks with his hands while Sid tends to shove his hands in his pockets. Seth’s teeth aren’t as crooked as Sid’s because most of them are fake.

Geno knows it’s not just because he’s hooking up with Seth because even after that stops in his second year, he can tell them apart with a quick glance.

Somehow they all stay together, Sid and Seth and Geno. They win a Cup. Sid and Seth win a gold medal. Sid goes down with a horrible concussion and Geno tears his ACL. Seth manages to keep the team going during that time period, but it’s tough. It’s the first time he’s really played without Sid and he’s in the spotlight. People expect him to be Sid and he’s not. They don’t even play the same position and without Sid centering him, Seth’s production goes down.

Geno spends a lot of time at Sid and Seth’s house when he’s injured, curled up on the couch with Sid who feels like shit and is worried about his brother. When Seth gets home, he joins them and pretends he isn’t mad about the shit people are saying about him. So they’re like a house of grumpy boys, none of whom can really cook, so they eat a lot of take out and Nathalie drops food off for them and not so silently despairs of them.

Things get a little better in the fall when Geno is on the ice again. He centers Seth on the top line until Sid comes back and then again when Sid goes back out. The two of them put up a ton of points and Geno has a career year. It’s all for naught though when they’re bounced in the first round of the playoffs by the Flyers in an ugly matchup that results in multiple fights and Sid popping off about how he hates everyone on their team.

“You should date my brother,” Seth tells Geno one day when they’re sitting in a cafe in Magnitogorsk during the lockout. “It is a great idea.”

Geno drops his fork into his water glass and just stares at Seth who is calmly eating his blinis. Why Geno ever thought it was a good idea to bring Seth to the KHL during the lockout he didn’t know?

“Sid is in love with you. He break up with Tony last month. None of us like him anyway. You are single and you love him. Is perfect plan.”

Geno fishes his fork out of his glass, glancing furtively around. “Not a good idea. It would be weird. I’ve slept with you.”

Seth waves a hand. “So? Sid and I not same person. You know that best. Just think about it.”

Geno does.

Apparently he doesn’t think about it fast enough because two months after they get back from the lockout, Seth locks him and Sid in a training room “accidentally” with Duper and Flower’s help. Geno wonders why he ever thought Seth was his friend. He misses Gonch.

“So what did you do to Seth?” asks Sid from where he’s trying to pick the lock.

“Why I do something? Maybe you do.”

Sid straightens up, rubbing his hands on his thighs. Geno tries not to look, but it’s hard. Sid’s got amazing thighs. And an amazing ass. So much better than Seth’s.

“He gave me the last protein shake this morning so I know I’m on his good side,” Sid says easily, sitting on the table next to Geno. “So this is obviously on you.”

Geno sighs and looks over at Sid. He spent the entire lockout with Seth, seeing him every single day. By the time they came back, he figured he would be at least somewhat numb to what Sid and Seth look like but no. Sid is somehow a million times more attractive than Seth and looks a lot different than him now.

“He think we should go out. You and me.”

Sid purses his lips and then nods. “Yeah, he mentioned that. I didn’t think he’d lock us in a room though.”

“You know when he and I do stuff, we not serious. Was just for fun. He kind of gross,” Geno says, nudging Sid lightly. “Like you a lot better.”

Sid smiles softly, nudging him back. “He told me. He’s been trying to get me to date you for like three years now. Probably since you guys stopped hooking up.”

Geno laughs at that. “He know I best. Want the best for you.”

“Why do I like either of you?” Sid groans.

Geno reaches up and touches Sid’s chin lightly, turning his face. “This okay?”

Sid nods and leans in, pressing their lips together softly. Geno kisses him back, sliding a hand to Sid’s neck to keep him close and not thinking about Seth once.

Seth lets them out twenty minutes later and declares himself Geno’s best man when they get married because Geno is too much of a loser to get anyone better. Sid can have Taylor as his best woman.

[magnuslightwoodbane]

like gold through trees

it’s their 50th wedding anniversary, and magnus has a gift for alec

3.2k words

(warning for minor character death)

[read on ao3]

The sun rose on their 50th wedding anniversary just as it did every other day, but Alec would have sworn it shone extra golden for them alone – as if the sun itself wanted to congratulate them, and convince them that a few more minutes in bed wouldn’t hurt now, would it. Not that Alec needed much convincing. He had all the time in the world now, and he intended to spend it with his husband.

He also wouldn’t put it past Magnus for the sun to personally owe him a debt, somewhere along the line, and be repaying it thus.

Many things had worried Alec when he’d first become immortal; very briefly, he’d worried about whether things would simply stop surprising him after a while, until other things swiftly jostled their way to the forefront of his mind, for him to concern himself with.

He needn’t have even wasted time on the thought, it turned out. And in the decades since, Magnus – no matter how familiar, how safe he became - still surprised and delighted Alec in the best of ways. Much to the (performative) chagrin of his siblings and children – Alec knew that they were truly happy for him – they still acted like newlyweds, passion still burning hot over the slow and steady current of a love like lava.

As the golden sun of their golden day crept over golden sheets and bodies, Alec breathed in deep. He was curled at Magnus’s back, face buried between shoulder blades, runed and scarred arms wrapped around his waist, and legs tangled with each other. Fifty years of waking up with his husband, another five before that, and Alec’s first thought was always about how damn lucky he was. Five hundred years could go by, Alec thought, and I’d still be thanking the stars that he’s mine.

They hadn’t fallen asleep together, but at least they’d woken up together. It was hard to pull Magnus away from his work generally, even harder when he was brewing up a potion or something equally time-sensitive or –restricted (a sight restoration balm, this time); it was a trait Alec had always admired, and even if it did sometimes piss him off he loved Magnus for it. He knew he could be the same, sometimes. He often tried to stay up for Magnus, to end the day together, but clearly this time he’d failed.

He still had this morning, though.

They had plans for their day of celebration, but not until this evening, so Alec had no qualms about pressing soft kisses to Magnus’s neck, fingers running down his torso, teasing. Magnus was particularly fond of being woken up this way, and Alec was grateful that they both still retained the stamina of younger men, so that morning sex didn’t derail the whole day the way he heard it did for others who aged.

Magnus hummed contentedly, stirring from sleep with a smile on his face. “Mm, good morning Alexander,” he said softly.

“Good morning, Magnus. Happy anniversary,” Alec replied, the same gentleness in his voice.

Magnus turned over to face Alec then, smile and eyes as golden as the day – Magnus frequently left his eyes unglamoured around Alec. “Happy anniversary,” he pressed a kiss to Alec’s mouth. “Wait here.”

Magnus rolled out of bed with an easy grace for someone that had just woken, and Alec watched him go, confusion written on his face. He headed over to his concealed safe, unlocking it quickly and withdrawing a small, black book. Magnus turned, winked at Alec and made his way back to bed, sitting on the edge as the safe locked and disguised itself behind him.

Alec was still confused, the safe generally being for items that held great personal significance to Magnus. Some of the things in there were reaching nearly 500 years old.

“This is for you, hatiku,” Magnus pressed the little book into Alec’s hands. It was covered in a black leather, pages crinkled through use and gold letters stamped on the front proclaimed “People I need to remember”.

Alec panicked a little. “I thought- we agreed we wouldn’t do presents.”

“I know, I know, love, and this isn’t really a present,” Magnus soothed. “I bought this in the early 1980’s, as a way of keeping record. All the people I’ve known have shaped me in some way, so this book is representative of me and my history.”

Magnus took a breath. “Alexander, you may be part of my past, but unlike anyone before, you are my present and my future. I want you to take every part of me with you, so. I’d like you to read this.”

Alec looked at him, soft smile painting his features and heart aching with affection. He covered Magnus’s hands with his own, and slowly took the book from him.

“I’d love to read this, but- every part of you will always be with me, Magnus, you know that, right?”

Magnus nodded, smiled the smile that was reserved only for Alec. “I know. I’ll go make some coffee.”

 Alec opened the book to the very first page, ink from ninety years ago still clear and dark on the page.

 Mama. I don’t even remember her name anymore. I remember her hair though, her lips kissing my forehead goodnight, the way she smelled, even. But not her name.

If someone’s name is lost, does that mean they’re truly gone? Are my memories enough?

Catarina Loss, Warlock. I saved her from being burnt at the stake in the 1640’s – or was it 50’s? 30’s? It’s foggy. Although I remember the day being bright – this was in Spain, after all. Even facing certain death, I could see how kind her heart is. We’ve been good friends ever since.

Ragnor Fell, Warlock. I first met Ragnor when I was in my early teens, when he’d come to meet the Silent Brothers for some reason or another. I forget what led to this, but he called me a fool and I, surly and hormonal, called him a cabbage brain. I thought that would be it until he showed up again to help me save Catarina. He called me a fool. I called him cabbage brain. We’ve been friends ever since.

I’m eternally grateful to have had Cat and Ragnor with me throughout the past nearly four centuries, and with them, I’m excited to see what the next four have for us.

Galileo Galilei, human, Italian polymath. I was a young man when I first became aware of his work – I was in my early twenties when he published Il Saggiatore and I found his written tone immensely entertaining. However, it wasn’t until 1632 with Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo that I had to meet the man, and in 1638, I travelled to Florence in order to be the one to give him medical advice. We spoke briefly, and I got the chance to test out (with his permission) an experimental potion I’d been working on to cure his blindness. (Unfortunately, no results and I had to abandon the idea. One day, though.)

Magnus returned with their two favourite mugs – he’d gotten into the habit of actually making it after Alec insisted decades ago, using the very same coffee machine Alec had first bought (and if it’d been enchanted to work a little more efficiently, live a lot longer, well). Alec accepted his cup with a smile, and as Magnus sat back against the pillows, Alec settled between his legs, back and head resting against Magnus’s chest.

He read in silence, Magnus watching him, the only noise that of pages turning and coffee that never got cold being drunk. There were names he knew, like Raphael Santiago and Dorothea Rollins, ones he recognised even if he didn’t know the person (Will Herondale, Marie Antoinette, Axel von Fersen) and those he couldn’t recall Magnus ever mentioning, even though he may have done – Alec thought Aldous Nix and Imasu Morales rang a bell.

Alec turned the page following Clary Fairchild – the first child I’ve ever seen grow up, like he had so many before already, only to be met with a rough sketch of… himself? He looked up at Magnus, as though seeking permission to read. Magnus nodded.

 Alec Alexander Lightwood, Nephilim. Early 20’s? Tall, around 6’3, not sure he quite knows what to do with all that length when he’s not fighting. Hazel eyes and a bone structure to die for. Probably Maryse’s son, the one she mentioned in passing years ago as though it justified what she was doing. I believe I called him a brat. I was wrong, I think.

I only met him today, and yet I feel as though he may be important.

 “You called me a brat?”

“I think the exact phrase was “doubtless repellent brat.”

“I don’t know if I should be retroactively offended by that.”

Magnus snorted, and Alec read on. There was an entry for Isabelle, a brief one for Simon and a briefer one for Jace following his entry, and also preceding it.

 Alexander Lightwood (I guess he gets 2 entries)

 He’s 23.

Oh, this poor boy has such a loving heart behind so many chains, I can’t help but relate. Without a second thought, he gave me all he had to help me, someone he barely knows, help someone else he barely knows. We spent yesterday evening together – I thought he would want to stay, after he said yes to drinks the day before. Duty called, but I offered him a choice and he took it, waiting until the morning to run back to that Institute. He’s so… intriguing. I’m concerned about how much I like him already.

Also, I don’t think he knows that I know it was his birthday. Happy birthday, Alexander.

  Already, he’s breaking my heart. Was she right all along?

  God, I despise how ass-backwards Nephilim culture is. I won’t deny that yes, I want Alexander, but this isn’t about that. It’s not about me. I’ve seen a hint of the capacity for love that man has, especially after Isabelle’s trial, and to lock it away because he’s not allowed to love men is – well. It reminds me of my youth. Not that I’ve ever cared particularly what strangers thought of me, but tolerance has ebbed and flowed over the centuries and I’ve had to spend some decades hiding from interfering people with sticks up their backsides, mundanes, downworlders and shadowhunters alike.

The point is, I get it, I do. But Maker, I’m so fucking mad. If it’s not me, I’ll get over it. But he deserves to know love.

 Alec leaned up and pressed a kiss to Magnus’s cheek, and kept reading. The rest of the page was blank, and the page that followed only had one line in the middle.

 I lost my cabbage brain.

 Alec knew about Ragnor, had heard countless stories of their adventures, and knew how Magnus still missed him.

“I wish we’d met.”

“Me too, darling.”

 Alexander kissed me today. He walked away from the altar and kissed me in front of everyone he knew. I don’t quite know what I was expecting when I got there, not really, only that Isabelle had invited me because she, too, was unwilling to compromise on her brother’s happiness.

I’m proud of him.

We agreed to take things slow, especially after Camille crawled her way back in to my purview. She’s still a snake, and I thought she might have scared Alexander off – I would have been disappointed, but certainly not surprised, were that the case. But he didn’t go anywhere. He pulled me closer.

I don’t want to get my hopes up, but what if this is it?

 “I guess I couldn’t help getting my hopes up,” Magnus commented into Alec’s hair.

“Well, I hope I didn’t disappoint,” Alec smirked.

“9.8 of 10.”

Alec twisted around to look at him. “Oh? What deducted the point-two?”

“You’re talking instead of reading. Also I still think you should wear a shirt less. But we can work on that.”

Alec laughed softly as he turned to continue reading.

 We had our first official date yesterday. I found out he’d never had any kind of relationship before. He found out I’d had many, of varying degrees of intimacy. I couldn’t help but read his panic as a comment on my past. I won’t apologise for it, but it still hurt.

Of course, it turned out he was panicking because he thought that his lack of experience would put me off.

But we talked it out, and even though his damn brother came in and killed the mood stone-dead, I feel relieved.

And we’ve finally been on a date. I think we’re officially boyfriends now.

 “He was so good at coming in at the wrong moment, wasn’t he?”

Alec smiled. “Until the very end. Still, him blindly following Clary led me to you, so. I almost wish he could do it again, one more time.”

“Yeah,” Magnus whispered, kissing the top of Alec’s head as he took a moment to breathe.

 He thinks my eyes are beautiful. He told me my eyes are beautiful. That I am, too.

And for the first time, I think I believed him.

 We had sex, officially, for the first time, and he made me lose complete control. Is it morally right to dedicate pages to describing his body? What a work of art.

 I was terrified when the glamour dropped and I couldn’t get it back. So many have looked on my eyes with disgust, turned me away, even my mother… I don’t know. I know Alec’s different to most anyone I’ve met, but I was gripped with this paralysing fear that he’d get up and leave me. And he surprised me yet again.

He thinks I’m beautiful.

I think I’m in love with him.

  I’m definitely in love with him.

  He told me he loves me.

He told me he loves me and I do not feel I deserve it, not yet, but I’m getting there. The fear when I hadn’t heard from him, the fear that the worst had happened and the shadowhunters didn’t care enough to tell me was palapable. I had to try and hide it from Madzie, who was telling me that I was just as big as her tall friend Alec, and how she didn’t want to hurt him. I had to hide my flinch at her words, but Catarina saw. She told me to go find him.

I found him and told him that I love him.

  The male High Warlock of Brooklyn dating the male (now, finally, official) Head of the New York Institute. Whatever would the Clave of centuries past think?

I find I care even less than I do about the current Clave, which I thought was impossible.

Alexander has set up a Downworld cabinet, designed to meet regularly and discuss issues relating to the Downworld, and remarkably, he’s the only shadowhunter on the thing. Each faction is represented.

I’m so proud of him, and I’m so elated to finally begin to see change. We live in dark times, yet I can’t help but see my Alexander as a shining beacon of hope. We’ll all overcome horror together.

 I told him about my mother and father today, and he still hasn’t decided I’m too much. Can Raziel himself be summoned somehow, so I can thank him for Alexander? I’m pouring out the worst parts of me to this wonderful man and he still thinks I deserve his love.

 “You deserve the world, Magnus Lightwood-Bane,” Alec said. Magnus’s breath hitched, and his fingers stilled where they were playing with Alec’s hair, momentarily. Magnus didn’t think he’d ever not feel a surge of amazement at hearing their joint name.

 Oh, this hurts.

 Another blank page, followed by this in the middle of the next. Alec knew exactly what this referred to.

“I didn’t write any more than that about it,” Magnus explained, “because I was furious with you, I wanted to be furious with you, but I knew if I read any of this back I’d realise how much I love you.”

“You deserved to feel that anger.”

Magnus hummed. “Yes, I did. And I still loved you at the same time. Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

 He came back.

“I don’t think I can live without you” he said. I don’t think I can, either.

He’s been on my mind this whole time. We fought because I felt like I couldn’t fulfil my duty, protect my people, with him, yet without him I could only just about keep it together.

Kissing him felt like coming home.

Valentine is dead, but I feel like this is the end of one awful chapter and the beginning of a new, worse one. I’ll stay on my guard, but for now, I’ll appreciate my time with him.

 Alec laughed at the understated accuracy of Magnus’s prediction, quickly reads and absorbs three years’ worth of recollections and commentary, dwelling on only a few paragraphs here and there.

 I know I’ll never forget him as long as I live, but I have to remember it all. The way his eyes sparkle when I show him something new, the gruff way his voice is in the morning (he never remembers to bring water to bed), the way his body curls into mine like we were made to fit each other.

Were we?

If this book ends up just being filled with Alexander, I’m okay with that.

 He turned over, to find he was already at the very last page. Alec felt anticipation, and sorrow, at reaching the end, not sure what part of their story the book would close on.

 Alexander has been granted immortality. Gifted or cursed, I’m still not sure, but in the most selfish of ways, I’m delighted. He’s not going to leave me. (Of course my anxieties are telling me he may choose to leave, and I’m not sure I’d be strong enough to stop him if he wanted to, but I don’t think he will).

 We’re engaged, for fuck’s sake. He wants to marry me, I want to marry him. My anxieties can be quiet for once.

Technically, he doesn’t need to be in this book.  I’m never going to forget him, I’ll never have the chance. But nonetheless, I’m grateful for this record of before he was mine, and before he was mine forever.

 I’m so happy. Before now, I’d never been able to have someone I could really, seriously, consider marriage with, consider starting a family with. And now I have him, my fiancé.

 I’m going to start another journal, just to chronicle him, us.

Magnus & Alexander Lightwood-Bane.

 Alec breathed out slowly, eyes and heart full of love. He remembered everything as though it were weeks ago, not years, felt the trepidation of a crush, the sting of heartbreak, the validation of love, as though it were new and raw.

“Thank you, Magnus,” he breathed. “Did you ever keep that other journal?”

Magnus’s eyes sparkled. “I guess you’ll find out on our 100th anniversary, my love.”

Alec grinned. He could wait, if it meant another fifty years of being Alexander Lightwood-Bane, wildly in love with Magnus Lightwood-Bane.