#I don’t think I’d ever seen a father and a teenager be so tender with each other in broad daylight

[flerns]

one of the most striking memories I have of bunkasai is of a first year high school student walking with his dad to the station, just a father and son holding hands

[babydarkstar]

cacoethes

part two: bring your sweet loving 

rating: E (18+ ONLY) || pairing: ezra x f!reader || word count: 10.5k

chapter summary: as the night winds down and tensions simmer, we learn more about you, pieces of your past, and your relationship with ezra.

 warnings: ezra’s gigantic mouth that won’t shut up (suggestive language) and two criminals not knowing how to act; caretaking, i guess? reader cleans ezra but it’s nothing erotic; SMUT; handjob and graphic depictions of a glorious dick; dirty talk; dubcon maybe bc painkillers but he’s enthusiastic abt it; praise kink; switches having a great time; ezra’s subby in this but i promise he’s a dom too just not tonight; mentions of death, killing, tattoos, scars; mention of past drug use, bad coping mechanisms; mm i hc that ezra is a tiny tattoo guy so there’s that; fluff bc im sweet; author is a southern peach, forgive her if it gets a little slow and twangy up in here

a/n: un-beta’d bc mistakes are sexy. i’ll go back later and fix whatever i find but for now. enjoy. i’m literally just making shit up about this universe as we go but it’s working out for the best so bear with me. lmk if u want me to add u to be tagged here. tagging: @pedros-mustache @jk7789    

crossposted to ao3 :) || playlist || one || two || three

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“Here, Cee,” you said, adjusting the threadbare blanket over your cot and splaying a hand over it while she eyed you from across the tent, still standing amongst the carnage of a violent field surgery, “I’ll sleep on the floor tonight.”

The poor girl was scared. Well—not scared, not anymore.

Vengeful, for certain, though it seemed to dwindle with every minute she watched you interact.

Definitely wary of the two of you.

Which was appropriate, given that Ezra had killed her father and left her alone on an uninhabitable moon, only to be scooped up by his partner and deceived into thinking she was safe, and then forced to perform impromptu surgery to hack off an arm. But she appeared more wary to accept help from you than wary of you.

And honestly, if Ezra hadn’t just lost a limb and you didn’t want to hover beside him after not seeing him for a month to make sure he didn’t slip the veil in his sleep or disappear beneath your fingertips—and if you weren’t trying to earn her trust, you’d have made her take the floor.

But things were different now, they might always be. She had saved his life. You owed her your cot to sleep on.

“Wait,” Ezra said, swallowing thickly as he blinked, seeming to just process the words you had spoken, “You think so little of me that I’d let you sleep on the dirt after the day you’ve had? Now, I agree that our guest should find comfort in a cot of her own, but I will not deny you the simple respite of sleep. That would prove me an unworthy companion.”

“Ezra,” you said, giving him a look of incredulity that seeped into your tone, “You can’t be serious.”

He eyed you and clenched his jaw, still stomaching the fact that he had one less limb to worry about, and a bunch more problems to deal with. It was a look that told you he was not arguing with you, you were going to sleep on the cot. He would not be coddled like a child just because he lost an arm.

Which was, in itself, ridiculous. You didn’t plan to coddle him—you weren’t the type, not really. But. He’d lost a fucking arm. But he was also still delirious from the anesthetic, so that didn’t help his desire to prove something to the universe.

“You’re taking the cot, I’m not having this conversation,” you said, wiping his sweaty brow with your sleeve, “Tap into the ruthless outlaw inside of you and take it without regret. You know I hardly sleep anyways, I’ll live without a bed for the night.”

“Then I must insist you share it with me, precious angel,” he sighed, and you could almost see the cogs in his head turning as his distant gaze darkened into something hungry, “I’ve longed to feel your body pressed against mine since I left with Number Two. The divinity of your skin.” He hummed, eyes fluttering shut, “More…more precious than the ore we risk our lives for. Sweeter than fruit. Fresher than a rainstorm.”

“Ez,” you warned, snapping a glare at him.

“Your body…so tender, warm,” he continued, entranced in his own fantasy, not even hearing you when you warned him yet again, “All soft and pliant beneath my touch. It has been far too long since we partook in a pleasure as indulgent as one another—before our partnership with Two, if I can recall. Grant me heaven tonight. I deserve the satisfaction of watching you drip honey for me—”

“Hey! None of that,” you snapped, cocking an eyebrow—and fighting the flutter in your chest and the heat tingling down your core, “There are young ears present, Shakespeare Erotica. Not to mention young eyes.”

You would do no such thing with him as long as this teenager remained in close quarters and under your care. He turned to look at Cee, as if he’d forgotten all about her for a moment. Or maybe it was that he didn’t care. Bastard.

“I’m okay as long as you guys don’t fuck in front of me,” Cee sighed, resigned to have dealt with too much in her past to be worried about flirting—no, verbal-fucking.

“We won’t be doing any of that,” you assured her, giving Ezra another pointed look before slinging his arm around your shoulders and helping him to the cot. He grumbled incoherently, moaning and groaning the few steps it took to ease him down into the squeaky frame.

When you finally got him down—forced him to lay down—he let out another soft whimper of pain, followed by your name. “Don’t go.”

Brushing the hair off his sweaty forehead, you bent down to press a kiss there, “M’right here, Ez. Rest. I’m gonna clean you up, okay?”

It was the least you could do—and that way you could take inventory of every inch of him to ensure he didn’t have any other wounds hiding and festering and threatening his life. Just as this wouldn’t be your first time tending to him while he laid incapacitated, he’d done the same for you plenty of times. There was very little, if anything at all, the two of you hadn’t seen of each other. Vulnerability had another name here: normalcy.

“After—” he rasped up at you, coughing and then righting himself, “After we find our way off this Kevva-damned moon—which we will—I understand if you no longer deem me…worthy of your affections. It’s the only explanation I can find for your denial of my offer to dote on you. I only pray you make good on your long-standing promise to drop me where I stand should I ever disappoint you, dear heart of mine.”

Okay, you didn’t know where all the insecurity and sentiment was coming from, especially hearing it from the mouth of your dear old confident mean-streak Ezra, but he couldn’t possibly be serious. It made you ache to think that he didn’t trust you to stay with him, that he viewed himself as lesser because he lost his arm. Well, he was lesser, but only by mass.

Also, really? The only explanation he could find for you not wanting to sleep with him was that you hated him and didn’t want him because of his injury? He couldn’t think of any more glaringly obvious reasons, those of which had just been pointed out to him?

With a sigh, you brushed your thumb across the silvery scar on his cheek, “Rest now, chatterbox. I’ll be here when you wake up—and every morning after, for as long as I can. Only death could pry you from me, and me from you. You’ve got me, forever….I still see you as you are—a hundred percent you, a hundred percent mine.”

The words felt foreign on your lips, but he was bound to forget them the moment he fell asleep, so you didn’t feel as weird waxing poetic right back at him. The man had rubbed off on you in more ways than one. You normally didn’t speak to one another so frankly—at least, you didn’t, given the nature of what it meant to care out here and how you’d already unofficially established that you two were something more—but tonight you couldn’t fucking help it.

Ezra leaned into your touch, pawing at it with his hand, grabbing onto your fingers and kissing into your palm. A dull smile poked at his mouth and he let it engulf him. “Quite the charmer you are, siren.”

You didn’t respond, only half-smiled and wriggled—reluctantly—from his grasp to grab a few clean cloths and fill a bucket with water. After squirting the sanitizing solution in the water, you simmered the lights down to the lowest setting, to where your eyes had to adjust for a moment before you could make your way across the tent. His gaze bore into you—no, both Ezra and Cee watched every move you made; one in lazy admiration and the other in curiosity.

“Do you need me to put a drape over the post? I’m strippin’ him,” you asked Cee as you slung Ezra’s clean shirt from off the drying line onto your shoulder—you smiled at the floor, thanking yourself from hours ago for deciding not to burn it. You grabbed the bucket and tottered over to him, nodding at him to scoot. He obliged, giving you room to sit by his hip so you could ease his clothes off.

Cee shook her head when you looked to her for a response, opting to sit on your cot facing away from you with her nose in her book, so you shrugged and tugged the fabric off of Ezra in slow, deliberate motions, wincing every time he grunted.

As you took the time to clean off the grime and dirt and sweat of the Green, he told you about running into Cee and her father Damon; how he tried to take his entire harvest from the few cycles he’d spent with Two; about Two’s untimely, irrational outburst that cost them their life. About the Queen’s Lair and the mercs, and the plan to ravage and plunder and take it all for themselves. You thought the Queen’s Lair was a rumor. Not even a rumor—a myth, a legend, something fabricated by desperate fools with hazy minds of dust and their eyes set on fortune. But Ezra told you he’d seen part of it marked on Cee’s map, that her father was contracted to help extract the deposit. Cee even pulled her map out to point to the marked areas, albeit with clinical movements and short words.

So you made a plan to head out at first light, with the trip taking most of the daylight, and they’d be cutting it close but there was no way you’d let Ezra hike so many klicks in his state—not without a few hours’ rest first.

After you’d managed to clean his legs, his hips, his feet and get him into something more comfortable than compression pants, you moved to his torso and traced over each scar marring his skin, each jagged edge where something hadn’t healed right or wasn’t stitched properly. He’d lost some weight under the harsh conditions of the Green—you both had. But he still held onto muscle from the toil that came with survival on such harsh terrain; and he was naturally broad, he always would be, which made him sturdy.

Your fingers ghosted over a few microtattoos he’d gotten; one beneath his ribcage, one on his hipbone, and the one you’d given him yourself on his lower sternum. That one, as you brushed over it with a wet cloth, never failed to make you smile. A sad smile, but a smile nonetheless.

A tiny, unfilled heart, a mere outline, barely a centimeter in size. It was messy, simple, done in minutes. But it meant something, meant exactly what you’d never quite been able to voice.

My heart is yours. Take it.

You’d done it one night when the two of you had gone on a two spin bender, which happened more towards the end of your glory days, when the drugs came easy and heavy and the illusion of time slipped by like sand on the wind.

Any time someone hired your services as cleaners, it took a toll. They didn’t do it often because of that, but the payout was worth the work. No matter how many times you swore you would never do it again, you went back. Because it was hard to ignore the way it felt to flood a deserving someone’s mouth with the taste of their own blood, or to slip a knife in between their ribs and let it slide like butter and watch the light die. It was hard to ignore that you liked it, especially when it was so violent—one of the worst sins to commit, and you enjoyed it.

The act of killing had become cathartic for you. It made you feel more alive, reminded you that you had a beating, bloody heart, and a brain, and veins that pumped blood, and muscles that tore apart and rebuilt themselves stronger. Killing came easy when you didn’t know the target. It felt like a game.

Ezra didn’t enjoy it as much as you did—not to say he didn’t enjoy it at all, for he most certainly did. But he didn’t process it the same way you did. He saw killing as a means to survive and a means to get where he needed to go. He enjoyed turning it into a game, making fun out of whatever circumstance presented itself.

But that one—the last one—it had gone wrong. Messy, slow, noisy, choppy. There was only supposed to be one person in the house: typical target, a man who owed the wrong people a whole lot of money and refused to pay up.

One man.

One man was all you’d expected.

One man was all you’d been instructed would be in the condo.

He went down easy enough, quiet enough—Ezra snuffed him and stuffed him and you’d made to transfer his points into the right pockets.

And that was that.

They had tossed the bodybag over the high-rise balcony and into the pits of the bottomless highway next to the building, with a blinker-bomb inside just in case.

That was that.

Except it wasn’t, it was so fucking far from it.

Ezra, being himself, had wanted so bad to sneak in a quickie before heading back—an unholy, immoral ritual you two had initiated, to fuck where you killed—and who were you to protest? Who were you to say no to pretty words and soft eyes glittering with an untamed wild? To say no to the hands that already ripped at gear and pushed beneath underwear just to get a taste—you couldn’t, it was impossible.

Fresh off a high of adrenaline, pulsing with nervous energy—he was always so good, he always got you right where you needed and then that much further.

And Ezra—being himself—could not keep his fucking mouth shut. The stereotype about men holding in their moans, about them never whimpering or whining or groaning or grunting—yeah, that was a load of Bearkie-shit.

Maybe it held true for some men, but.

Not your Ezra. Not even a little bit.

He talked like heaven’s mouthpiece—or maybe the devil, given all the sinful things he’d whisper to you in the crux of any given night. He let loose whatever noise he deemed necessary to make.

They’d only just made it to the dried, bloody stain on the carpet (a bed on which to copulate), knocking over a floating hilolamp and pulling a chuckle from your paramour, when a shout rang through the apartment and shattered your moment into a thousand pieces.

It was only supposed to be one. One man.

Instead, you were met with another man who you’d later learn to be his brother, the target’s mother, and his pregnant wife.

The man held onto some type of curved sports bat, keeping it up threateningly as if warning you of something imposing. Ezra didn’t hesitate to shoot him in the head, not even bothering to get up from where he’d pressed his hips between your legs. But then you’d had to go and check the other rooms, effectively killing any mood the two of you had shared.

Because fuck, where the men had no fight in them, the women wouldn’t go down without a struggle. Or maybe it was that you pitied them, and it distracted you. They’d already peeked their heads out from behind the door of the master bedroom, worried and doe-eyed and determined.

Maybe if they hadn’t seen your faces—if they’d still been asleep while you swept for warm bodies after the first assailant—maybe they’d have gotten out with their lives. But who were you kidding? You killed without thought. You’d likely have put a pillow over their heads before aiming your thrower and firing twice for good measure, had you been sharp and not distracted by a tongue in your mouth.

Instead, Ezra had the audacity to try to bargain with them. Something about having a soft spot for mothers—his own having been a beacon in his life until she left him orphaned as a young boy. He made it a point not to kill women and children. It was one thing in which he remained unwavering. (He’d kill a grown woman if she gave him reason to, like he had on Exon-5, but that was another story for another time, and a different circumstance which called for such measures, namely that of protecting you.) But he should have known better, he should have known not to try something like that. He should’ve known that he’d have to let go of the final shred of morality he held onto.

So Ezra took down the old woman in a way you still have yet to ask about and don’t care to know; and you’d ended with the pregnant woman choking on her own blood when you twisted your knife into the dip of her throat—and you felt awful about it after watching her crumble beneath you, but she’d hit you upside the head with a thick textbook of outdated skimmer-craft modules and it made you see red among pinpricks of stars.

And that night, after all was said and done they’d spent a fortune on getting high—just to forget, just to be okay.

That night they’d locked themselves in a self-imposed prison of satin sheets and destructive tendencies. Two days buzzing with no food, little water, just him and you and needles and spoons and eyedroppers and blades and pills. Like you couldn’t breathe if he didn’t fill you with all of him, you wouldn’t be able to stand upright if he took his hands off you and stopped letting you flood your veins with a chemical glow. Heavy eyelids, messy sex, raw arms and red eyes.

It felt fucking awful, coping that way, but it felt too fucking good and it made you forget about the lives you’d taken in (somewhat) cold blood.

So after sprawling beside him on the gigantic plush bed with his hand ghosting over your spine, you’d found a part of yourself snagged at the corner of this wild-eyed man’s tar-black soul, and you had thought about what could have happened in an alternate universe.

A moment when he was the target, you were (somehow) the pregnant wife, and you watched him die before succumbing to the dark of your own soul escaping you. And it made you desperate to cling to him as he was in the moment, desperate to know that he was yours and you were his. It was then that you’d asked him if you could mark him. Claim him, to know that he wouldn’t leave you like that, and if he did, he’d have a piece of you everywhere. He’d go down with a piece of you.

Ezra had been delighted, of course, as he was always one for symbolism and deeper meaning even if he didn’t quite understand the rhetoric. And it wasn’t the first time you’d marked each other, just a different time with a different meaning. So he let you dip a sterile needle in ink and plunge it into the tender skin of his chest.

You had one too, a heart on your sternum. Nestled between your breasts, just close enough to your heart to feel like it mattered, like it meant that he felt the same. But you didn’t even let yourself go that far—you two were doped up and delirious and he enjoyed marking you in any way he could, so an opportunity to stick and poke his way further into your skin than he already had was an opportunity he could not pass up. At least, that was how you saw it. Nevertheless, it made you happy to see it there on his chest, and to have one that matched.

Ezra’s soft voice snapped you from the memory.

“What’s crossed your mind to make you so delicate in your touch, so solemn in your stare?”

You realized you had stopped your ministrations and had planted your palm on his chest, staring just over his shoulder and onto the canvas beside him. With a careful hand, you resumed gentle motion over his pecs, up his clavicle, his throat.

“Thinking about Beta-Mobilia,” you whispered, unable to meet his eye, “And after.”

“Mm,” he grunted in recognition, the vibration tickling your fingertips, “Regrettable night. Unavoidable, necessary. But I dwell in shame identical to yours.”

“I don’t deserve to be here after that. I didn’t deserve to live after the Exons, The Grime. Why am I still alive?”

“We’ve discussed this in great length by now, siren. Don’t doubt your existence. It’s beyond sense, beyond comprehension.”

You nodded, still unable to look at him. But then he latched onto your wrist, brushing his calloused thumb over the delicate skin there, and this time you couldn’t keep your gaze away from the soft smile that begged to form on his lips.

“And I appreciate your tender care, wildfire,” he hummed, eyes glittering up at you like two dark pools of amber, “Where would I be without it? Mmm…mhm. Dead, likely. Or bitter. Wicked with taciturn rage. No meaning could come from that.”

“You, bitter and unspeaking? Unthinkable, I’d sooner pronounce you dead,” you drawled, thankful for his kindness to grant distraction, and he granted you an eye-roll. But his expression softened when you sat him upright and maneuvered behind him, wiping down his back in gentle strokes. You folded the cloth over once the side turned brown with grime, and moved up to his neck, scrubbing over his shoulders and giving short strokes down his nape and behind his ears.

“So you planned to go ravage the Queen without me, huh?” you asked quietly, irked that he hadn’t even come to find you before setting out on that venture, “Planned to leave me to rot on the Green, take the money for yourself and steal away with the girl.”

Ezra sighed, and you could see from behind his shoulder how he worked his jaw, formulating what to say.

“Understand that I do nothing without you willingly. Birdie over there’s about as fleeting as a real one. But trust that I planned to come get you—I’d never leave you stranded. I just couldn’t introduce another person into the threadbare alliance I had forged until the time was right.”

“She likes me,” you countered, smiling over at Cee, who now laid with her back facing you as her ribs contracted with the first breaths of sleep. A sign of trust. You didn’t know when exactly you’d earned it, but you’d accept it nonetheless. She had also taken both of your throwers (something you protested and Ezra waved off), so maybe that helped.

“No doubt—there’s plenty to like about you.”

Ever the flatterer, even when delirious with pain.

With a coy smile, you scrubbed over his head and then his face, careful to avoid his snapping mouth that reached out ever so often to nip at your hand—there was that playfulness, the natural effervescence of his presence. When you decided your work was done, you eased him back down on the cot and he allowed it with no protest.

You fluffed his pillow and moved the book you’d stashed beside it. He turned his head and pressed his nose to the pillow, grunting in mild appreciation.

“Smells like you down here,” he remarked with a half-smile, eyes drooping, “You sleep on my cot while I was away?”

“I missed you,” you whispered, nodding, just now aware of how much his presence affected you. To think that you had resolved to try to move on without him—it seemed ridiculous now.

“I missed you,” he returned, “You haven’t the slightest idea how much I wanted you beside me. Number Two was a fond ally but not a companion. Nothing like the banter we exchange, nor the secrets we share.”

“They never talked. I imagine your time away was just as lonely as mine.”

“Absolutely. I regret agreeing to leave with Two. But you know we couldn’t have trusted them to stay at camp while we went off—not absolutely. Not when they’d never spoken a word,” he chuckled and then coughed, a quiet rumble you felt against your leg as it zigzagged through his chest.

Thank Kevva you had a plan to leave now. The spent filter had taken a toll on Ezra—and it wasn’t even his to begin with. He insisted on giving you his when the one your new suit came with was almost completely used up.

Fuck the man for caring about you; he’d gone soft during your time on the Green, and you hated how much you loved it. Hated it because he needed to focus on himself, needed to stop putting you before him. Hated it because every day it made you feel like somehow, he loved you back. That somehow, he thought of you as more than just a constant in his life, more than a body to fuck and a brain to pick.

You’d grown used to each other. But his unpredictability oozed into every aspect of himself, every nook and cranny of his life, and you were too worried about fucking up a good thing over a simple conversation. All it took was one sensitive topic breached and you’d surely find yourself shit out of luck. He was all you had left of the scraps of a fucked up life. Without him, you’d make do but not without a struggle and not without reluctance. Some part of you knew he’d be the same even if he initiated a split.

The thought had you hurrying to tug his shirt on before gathering the cloths and scurrying to place the bucket near the front of the tent.

And you shouldn’t have been so scared to be honest with him—the two of you rarely kept things to yourselves. But to love someone so fully within your heart, to never want to be away from them, to never grow tired of their presence no matter how tedious they may be or frustrating they could get, it scared you.

“A kiss for the wounded?” Ezra asked, brown eyes wide and mouth pouty enough to break you from your racing mind. You softened then, padding back over to him on tiptoe and settling back at his side for a brief moment.

With a gentle smile, you leaned down to grant him a kiss to his lips—the first one you’d shared with him in fuck knows how long. Too long, that was for sure, because when your lips notched with his chapped ones you melted, every worry and every qualm simply washed away in a swirl of pink pleasure.

You couldn’t help yourself—an indulgent, quiet moan pooled in your chest and slipped from your throat before you could stop it, and he hummed right back when his tongue pushed between your lips and you let him devour you. Always the ravager, ever a greedy bastard when it came to his pleasure, he licked up into your mouth and tangled his tongue with yours. It took very little for you to melt right into his chest, pressing your own against him and whimpering when he sneaked his hand up the hem of your shirt to rub circles over the skin of your back. You remained sloppy and almost lazy but intentional as you held either side of his nape and toyed with the strands of his still-damp hair, pouring yourself into this kiss like you’d never kiss him again.

Fuck. Fuck, you wanted him so bad. You missed this man with every vibrating inch of you. You missed his body, you missed his voice calling to you from the very depths of himself, you missed everything about him, and you needed him as close as possible. Closer than close, you needed him.

But fuck. You couldn’t. When you pulled back for air, it didn’t surprise you when he pressed his palm flat on your back to keep you from moving too far.

“Mm, baby—you’re divine. I ache for you,” he all but whimpered into your mouth, breath brutally hot and heavy as he fed you his soul, “Come sit down on me—come take what’s yours. I want to feel you strangle me, show me just how much you—”

“No, Ez,” you cut him off in a biting whisper, lips kiss-swollen, hating how, if there had been literally any other person in the tent beside you, you might’ve taken him up on the offer, “I want to, I promise you that. But she’s a kid and I have limits—one of those limits is fucking in the same room as one.” You glared at him with half a heart, then leaned down to run the tip of your nose along the curve of his ear, smiling when he shivered, “I swear, once we get out of here I’ll make it up to you so many times you’ll forget your own name. You get first choice—however you want me, I’m yours to take.”

“Fuck—alright, I apologize for my eagerness,” he smiled, tilting his head to kiss your forehead.

“But,” you whispered, your heart racing as you glanced over to be sure Cee had fallen asleep before inching up to look back into his eyes. Fuck it, he deserved it. “If you stay quiet, I’ll take care of you right now.”

His eyebrows raised in deft interest at your offer.

“Will you let me take care of you, Sailor?”

Ezra would never admit it, and you’d never tease him about it because it made you feel some kind of way—but he fucking adored when you used his callsign. You were his siren, after all. Only made sense for him to draw to you like a dying man at sea when you called for him. You used it rarely aside from in the field, opting for your preferred chatterbox—because he was more that than anything else—so it came as a treat when you decided to pull it from your bag of tricks.

“I can hardly refuse such a tempting offer.”

“Quiet, though,” you reminded him, tiptoeing your fingers across his chest and tugging the waistband of his pants and his underwear down. Just enough to spring his cock free, which was already hard and leaking for you.

Fuck, he was such a gorgeous sight, and you couldn’t help the urge to cup his balls and nudge them free too, to admire every glorious inch of him.

Spreading your fingers out over his groin through the coarse curls gone wild with mistreatment, you paid extra attention to the white patch of hair ghosting over the base of his cock and spreading out near his abdomen before stopping abruptly on the left and diverging back down into dark brown. You remember when you’d first noticed it and had all but squealed in delight.

Every bit of him was a pleasant surprise, just as you’d found yourself more than eager to let him ruin you for anybody else with the sheer size of him.

Nobody fucked you like they were dying and you were salvation; nobody but him. And shit, did he tear you open. As if he’d carved a space inside of you just for him, each time he’d leave you with a hollow ache that only he could sate.

“Baby,” you purred in a whisper, kissing his hipbone and then leaning up to wrap your hand around the girth of him, rubbing your thumb over the weeping red of the head, “You’re so pretty for me like this.” Forever a glutton for compliments, he whimpered his soft appreciation and you hushed him accordingly. He was so thick, so big that you struggled to touch the tip of your middle finger to your thumb, so long that if you had planned to swallow him down tonight, you would’ve been needing your hand to help. But tonight you could not risk the absolutely filthy noise of you gagging on him; he’d likely cum faster and in less time to worry about waking up a certain tentmate, but you wanted to watch every muscle in his face twitch, wanted to see him take his pleasure unobstructed by your tears. This way was quieter.

So with that thought in mind, you shifted to straddle one of his thighs so you could watch him without tiring your hand in an awkward position. Then you let a string of spit drool down and over him and you gave him a twist and then more, sharp and sudden and fast in your movements as opposed to the slow, appreciative way you’d unsheathed him.

Ezra hissed out a curse, bucking up into your hand, “Shit, darlin’—“

Arching an eyebrow, you halted your work on him immediately. His pulse beat through the throbbing vein jutting out

“What did I tell you?” you snapped. With your free hand you reached up and wrapped your fingers around his neck, feeling the column of his throat contracting as he swallowed. Wide brown eyes looked up at you, a tinge of amusement in their stare.

“Are you gonna be good for me?” you asked in a low rasp, tightening your grip on his neck and giving him a little shake before going slack again, “I don’t wanna hear a single word come outta that pretty-boy mouth. If I do, I’m blue-balling you. Fair?”

Ezra nodded, his gorgeous fat mouth blessedly shut for once.

“Good boy,” you cooed, kissing him before forcing his jaw open and spitting in his mouth. It would’ve been cruel but you meant it so affectionately, and his gentle moan told you he was more than willing to accept it.

You felt his cock twitch beneath your fingers and you simpered, giving a little shimmy of your shoulders in appreciation.

Controlling this stubborn man, resorting him to silence made you feel powerful. It made you feel respected, worshipped; if the man who never shut up and always called the shots would gladly take the backseat and grant you the power to take charge, that meant more than you could wish for.

So you resumed pumping his cock, working him with both hands and then switching to hold onto his throat again before going back to two hands. The act still made quite some noise—filthy and wet and sloppy—but at this point you were less concerned about it than you had been prior. When you decided, despite his tip dripping precum, to spit down onto him again for the fun of it and twist him with a gentle tug, he couldn’t stop the whine that left him even with his bottom lip pulled between his teeth. It had you darting to clamp over his mouth, shooting daggers down at him as he stared up with a silent apology in his eyes, one you might have taken as genuine if not for the way the brown of his irises had disappeared into black, blown out with lust and glassy with pleasure.

“If you’re gonna cum, let me know so you can do it in my mouth. I just cleaned you up and I’m not doing it again.”

The last bit came out harsher than you meant but he took it all the same, biting back a grunt in the form of a sharp exhale as he twitched violently in your hand. Yeah, he didn’t really need to let you know when he was about to blow; you knew him too well. At that, you took it upon yourself to remove your hand from his mouth in favor of scooting to lean down and put your mouth over his angry, swollen tip, flinching at the way the frame creaked but ignoring it and opting to swirl your tongue over him instead.

“There it is,” you whispered with an arguably evil smile—quickly, before pulling him back into the heat of your mouth, resuming your work and grunting when he bucked up into your mouth, chasing the high you were drawing out of him.

Ezra came with a muffled, broken sob, his face buried in his arm as he bit down on his bicep, flexing and squeezing his fingers. A thick stream of his cum hit the roof of your mouth and you indulged him, taking him in further so you could swallow everything he gave you. Ropes and ropes and ropes of cum, like he hadn’t let himself get off in so long, like he’d been saving all of it for you. The thought made you whine around him, and you pulled off when he finished, flashing him your dripping tongue with his spend still on it and drawing it back in before any of it could spill.

“Holy fuck, baby,” he sighed, letting out a quiet, breathy laugh as he tugged on the front of your shirt to kiss you, tasting himself on your tongue.

This time when you pulled back and smiled, you granted him a toothy grin, goofy and knowing. It took you a minute not to giggle like a little kid as you carded your fingers through his hair. He grinned right back, still catching his breath. To you, he was gorgeous, inside and out, flaws and all. You wanted to fuck him right then. You wanted to make love to him, to let him fill you entirely and to sob into his mouth, showing him everything you couldn’t tell him.

“Get some sleep,” you settled on instead, slipping off the cot with little grace after replacing the waistband of his pants, “We head out early tomorrow.”

“Hey now, what about you?” Ezra asked, brows drawn together in concern that you wouldn’t find the same enjoyment he did.

“You’ll just owe me.” You winked then, and gave him one last kiss, which he hummed into with a great appreciative rumble.

Then you pressed your forehead into his, “Mine—you’re mine. Never leave me again or I’ll hunt you down and kill you myself. You’re everything.”

Because he was.

“Nothing without you.”

That was his response, always always always. To hear it again pricked tears in your eyes, so much so you squeezed them shut.

And once again, you caught yourself wanting to say it. This time it had ghosted in your throat, almost making it into the curve of your mouth for you to hold its shape and give voice to a thought. But you stopped it before it could get far. Those three words, the same ones that now haunted you since you’d decided to indulge in every reminiscence involving them. Somehow he had come back to you, a feat which could not be commended enough, but now you ached for him—yearned for him even stronger than if he had well and truly died.

As you settled down onto the floor beside him, those three torturous words surfaced into a memory. The one that, among other fears, made you ever so hesitant to admit just how much you loved him.

————————————

“—In that vein, I don’t find myself in particular need of a great, star-shattering love story. If love is all-encompassing, I can do without the obstacle. Romanticizing my life and its quarrels is satisfaction enough.”

You didn’t know why you were still listening. You just knew that if Ezra kept it up, you’d find a way out of this cell just to break into his and strangle him. Anything to get him to shut the hell up. Banging your head methodically against the wall that separated the two of you, you didn’t even try to hold back your groan of displeasure as he rambled on.

“Now, don’t doubt my skill in worship. I have plenty of practice in the art of copulation”—you could hear the shit-eating grin on his face—“To say I haven’t affixed my interests on one soul or another at some point in time would ordain me a liar. I simply prefer to remain lovers in action…and not in name nor feeling. Companionship…yes, it’s something we all yearn for. It can’t be helped. A warm body, a brain to pick. All wonderful facets to enjoy for the sake of one’s own baser desiderata. But—“

“Shut up,” you bit out through gritted teeth, tugging at the roots of your hair when he kept going and you had to repeat yourself, “Shut up, you goddamned chatterbox. I don’t give a fuck about your love life. Why are you even talking about this?”

A brief silence occupied the space, as if he was thoroughly perplexed by your outburst. Then he let out a huffed laugh, amused.

“You inquired about the specifics of my occupation, little thorn.”

Every time he used that nickname for you—the thorn in my side—it made you bristle. Especially when he used it almost affectionately, soothingly, full of calm and charm that had you balling your fists and pricking the skin of your palms with your fingernails. You despised him, and he treated your existence as a joke, or as a little pet he would grab from its cage and admire before tossing it back and neglecting it until he deemed its presence acceptable again. Everything was funny. Everything could be laughed at. Sometimes you didn’t mind when the guards came to beat him bloody; it made him shut up, whether from pain or because he had passed out.

“Prospecting has nothing to do with love,” you snapped, shoulders tense despite the ache in your body. If these fuckers holding you captive didn’t kill you, the stress of surviving next to this fucker surely would.

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed, suddenly serious, “Love for others, at least. Love for the dig, love for the hunt and the adventure—that’s a different narrative altogether. Which is why I deemed it appropriate to explain such measures. The lifestyle I settled for is no small undertaking. It comes with sacrifice.”

His condescension was unintentional but still stabbed and poked at you like keepers at a circus.

————————————

It comes with sacrifice. That it did.

That long-ago night haunted you to this day.

But Ezra had his mind focused on softer dreams as he broke you from your self-destruction once more.

“Nights like these make me keen to hear you sing for me again,” he lilted out through the dark, a reminiscent simper pulling at his mouth and crinkling his eyes as he shifted to look down at you, “The melody of your voice haunts the halls of my midnight reveries. But it is such a sweet possession—as though I willed a ghost to enchant me with her gift. A siren indeed. Lure me into the sea of your deception, try to pull me under like the rest of them. But not me. No…not me—I float like driftwood in the breeze…follow the tides of your affection. Somehow I remain unscathed, and you lap at me in gentle waves.”

“Such powerful words from a man who should be asleep,” you chuckled quietly, pressing your lips to the back of his hand where you held onto it now, fingers laced.

“I am but a vendor of poetry. And you, a weaver of melody. Sing for me, siren,” he murmured, his voice thick with the drowsy pull of lassitude. He hadn’t asked that of you in so long you had almost forgotten what it felt like to hear it. Almost. And you would have agreed to it, but—

“No, the girl, she—“

“I don’t mind,” Cee interrupted, quiet and soft. It surprised you; you thought she had fallen asleep—you didn’t want to wake her with your singing. And then you were—

Shit. You sincerely hoped she had just woken up due to Ezra’s long-winded soliloquy about your singing, and hadn’t heard anything else beyond that. Mm, no. You think she would’ve said something about how fucking gross it was. Or pulled a thrower on you.

“As well you shouldn’t,” Ezra chuckled, turning his head to grin at the girl where she had turned to face him on the opposite cot, “She sings like Kevva strung her throat with gold. Or the very strings of a harp.”

You blushed and ducked your head into your shoulder, embarrassed by his flattery. Looked to him and found his honey-dark eyes drinking you in from above, the ghost of a smile on his lips as he flattened his palm over your chest and rubbed it affectionately. “What would you like to hear?” you asked, running a hand over your hair and shifting on the floor to calm your nerves.

It was just Ez.

…and a girl who harbored a teen angst bigger than ten moons; fuck if you wanted her to judge you.

“Whatever tickles your fancy,” he replied, his grin wider now that you’d agreed, “You know I’m not particular to any one hymn—I find myself enraptured by it all.”

“Okay.” You pondered for a moment before settling on one of your favorites.

Then you sang.

Quietly, nervously at first in an unpracticed rasp, then growing more steady and mellow and soft.

Some swirling folk melody from your childhood in your native tongue, one you’d never forget even if someday you lost your memory. A lullaby for village children; a lilting work song for the women to hum when laundering clothes at the stream, soothing the babies strapped to their backs or their chests or both.

It told the story of a curious young girl who loved the stillness of the ocean, found peace in its silky depths. She liked the silence so much that she would spend hours beneath the water, training to hold her breath and exploring the creatures of the reef and listening to the wavering silence.

Until one humming summer night she swam so deep the water turned black. She was scared she wouldn’t be able find her way back home but she reveled in the quiet—the quiet that not even the nighttime forest could provide, nor the village when the hunters and scavengers left for work. It was then that she saw a light shining from the deep, and decided to chase it.

Down, down, down.

And down. Until the light became so bright it surrounded her, seeped into her until she did not know where she began and it ended. No pain, no fear surrounded her. Just a sense of calm, and peace.

And she became the moon, the biggest one in the sky. The silence up there was incomparable.

The song was meant as a warning to the village children not to wander too far from the town and somehow find themselves in the cove breaching the outer mountain range. A warning to stay away, else you’d become one of the many moons in the sky, never to return to your family and the life you loved.

But you’d always found it more compelling than that, more meaningful, because the story originated from a similar legend of the moon goddess your village worshipped, the deity of the biggest satellite in your skies. The minor difference came in the detail that she chose to become the Great Moon after divine conversation instead of chasing a light down into the deep on a whim. And there was a ceremony held to initiate her transition into a celestial body.

When you’d wrapped up the lullaby you found yourself more at peace than you’d felt in a long time. You didn’t like to think about your planet, nor your village, nor the tragedies that occurred there. But this memory was a happy one, filled with sleepy eyes and chubby fingers grabbing onto mothers’ cloaks, and getting tucked into warm soft blankets by a fireplace.

“Sweet siren,” Ezra whispered in a drowsy slur, giving your hand a gentle squeeze as he turned to rest on his back, “Never fail to soothe me even when ’m in utmost anguish.”

And with that, he left you in silence, and you knew he wasn’t far from sleep.

By the time his breath evened out, you felt your eyes drooping.

Fuck, you were exhausted.

This spin had been arguably more eventful than any you’d had in a long while, and it didn’t occur to you that you could be tired when you’d hardly done much until the action rolled in.

The floor was actually not half bad, given that you laid on the tarp that absorbed heat but quickly cooled when you moved. The nights here got cold, surprisingly. But Ezra’s hand hanging down and resting across your chest felt so good. The weight of him, the heat of him, it grounded you. You circled patterns into his upturned palm until you became too sleepy for that, settling on threading your fingers with his and feeling his pulse beneath your fingertips.

How dare he think you’d care for him less with only one arm? If anything, it showed his perseverance, his will to move forward and make hard decisions. Only something a man with determination could do.

He felt so warm and sure—steady. He was safe now that he had come back. You felt the inky black of sleep begin to wash over you as organized thought became jumbled feeling.

You didn’t have to worry anymore, not about his whereabouts. Everything was alright. It was as good as it had been in quite a while.

Everything would be alright, you could just…

Just…

“I wish my parents had loved each other like that,” Cee murmured in the quiet dark of the tent, rendering you wide awake with a jolt, as if someone had plunged a shot of adrenaline into your chest.

“They separate?” you managed, knowing it came out strange but not wanting to confirm or deny anything about you and Ezra. The silence that greeted you implied that she had had no intention of you hearing it. But she spoke regardless.

“No,” she scoffed, then went quiet for a moment, “My mom died when I was little. And I can’t remember what they were like together. We were always working so there wasn’t a lot of time for love between them.”  

Oh. An orphan. It softened you a little more for her, made you more sympathetic to the fact that Ezra had killed her last living parent. You were an orphan too. So was he.

“We’re all missing parts of our family in some way or another. People with worldly attachments don’t usually sign up for this level of intensity. Not the strays, anyhow.”

“But you have each other,” she insisted.

“By chance alone. We didn’t start off liking each other. And we’re not…married, or anything.”

The last bit came out strangled—you’d never…said something like that aloud.

You and Ezra, married? It was odd, to say the least. You never thought of yourself as one to desire marriage in any respect—ceremonial, legal, the like. It just didn’t sit well with you. Too many complications, a lot of governing body involvement that you didn’t care for.

And Ezra…he wasn’t too fond of it either. But not because he didn’t want it, that much he’d admitted to you one night after admitting the complications of his feelings on his love life, ones that somewhat contradicted the first time he told you about it all; he couldn’t have it, he’d never let himself believe even a fraction of him deserved it. The life of a floater—and sure, just as Cee’s parents had prospected and been married (you assumed) and had a kid, many others did the same. But then you supposed it ended with kids like Cee, and she was lucky to not lay dead next to her idiot father, or trapped and sold as a body in the Dark-Spawn Trades. Lucky Ezra wasn’t filthy and depraved, lucky you were once young and scared like her and so took it upon yourself to keep her in your sights for now.

“How’d you meet?”

A chuckle bubbled out of you as you sat up and ran your fingers through Ezra’s hair, watching his chest rise and fall in even strokes, thinking back on that night so long ago.

“Stealing supplies from the same drop company. Two feral dogs fighting over who deserved it more. We bickered and threatened so much we lost track of time and made a mess and a ruckus and got caught.” A smile threatened to break your features and you let it, for just a moment. It faded as you recalled your awful encounter, “Captured, tortured for information because they thought we worked for a rival mining company. They wanted the locations of dig-sites we didn’t have, mining techniques we didn’t know. When he brought up the Wastes earlier…that’s what he meant. Surprised we didn’t die, but they really thought we were valuable or something.”

You gave yourself a minute before continuing. In a panic, you rubbed circles over the tattoo on the web of Ezra’s hand between his thumb and forefinger, trying to ground yourself as wicked, blood-specked memories flooded your head.

Deep breath. You’re safe, he’s here. This will be good to get off your chest. You’ve never spelled it out to anyone before. Nobody’s ever asked. Maybe this girl is a gift from the universe, maybe she was sent here to give you space to heal. Deep breath. You’re safe. He’s here.

You eventually pressed the back of his limp hand to your cheek, and found your voice once more. You didn’t need to worry about waking him; once he conked out into REM sleep it took a freight train to wake him up. At least, when he was with you he always slept deeper. He’d told you one night; how it helped to have you there, like you dragged all the bad memories and nightmares away, pulling them so far out of reach he only found thoughtless, worry-free sleep.

“Hearing someone’s screams from the other side of a cell wall makes you more susceptible to care about them. A bonding experience, so to speak. He’d talk to me for hours on the nights they made us sit and anticipate another session. Recited poetry, recalled stories from his time as a prospector as an escape from our reality. I would sing for him, when we knew the guards had left. It was how we got to know each other. It’s—that’s why he calls me his siren. The reason I call him a chatterbox, among other obvious explanation.”

“How’d you get out?” Cee asked, resting her cheek on her hands as she laid on her side, watching you with keen interest.

“Killed them,” you rasped, not wanting to go into the gory details, “Every single one.”

For nights you had laid awake, haunted by memories of blood staining your only pair of clothes, blood splattering into your mouth, chunks of brain matter on Ezra’s gloves as he dragged you through a maze of tents and established buildings, viscera on your recovered suit, the way you’d had to swallow bile back down your esophagus at the sight of all the lives you’d taken. But you had to do it; it’s what you told yourself when the images would replay every time you closed your eyes.

Vengeance, necessity, paired with Ezra’s seemingly insatiable bloodlust—and your own. Your own shameful desire to incite violence, one you bred in the early years of your youth and had stuffed away until needed.

But you hadn’t been able to deny that, when Ezra shot a man who’d pinned you to the ground and then finished him off with a knife spurting blood out his neck, it stirred your blood something wild. Hearing him panting through the transmitter, grunts and curses as he tore through humans and humanoids and alien creatures alike right beside you. Hearing him call out targets, watching your six, taking single-word direction from you when you did the same.

They worked like a well-oiled machine, like you two had never not known the other. And he was sloppy in his technique, grounded more in brute force than strategy—but you made up for that in quick, evasive maneuvers and stealth. Both of you had near-perfect aim and could work around the clunky gear of your suits.

Messy—pools of blood, the sickening crunch of bone and cartilage crushed beneath your hands and your feet and your knife and whatever other weapon you scavenged along the way.

It felt like a ritual. A baptism of carnage that ensured neither one of you could live without the other.

So of course, when it all was over and the last vertebra snapped—

—there had been filthy, unhinged, surely unsanitary, bio-hazardous fucking in a tent surrounded by carnage.

Fucking in way you could only describe as feral.

Unrestrained.

Hot, Kevva’s saints was it brutally hot and so needy—but also so, so tender.

Full of soft emotion. Unspoken, even for Ezra’s standards. Almost loving.

Your aching bodies, exhausted and weak and battered, dragged lazily against one another once both of you had ceased the initial writhing pace of passion and the adrenaline ebbed. It tasted tinny like blood and musky like spit and salty with sweat and tears, and if nothing more, it was real. Whispering about how fuck, they’d made it and god, they were on the same level, we made it, baby—can’t live without you, I need you I need you I need you—

That day was quite possibly your favorite memory as well as one of your darkest. The day that you knew, in the charred, most twisted part of you, that you’d follow this man to the ends of every planet, to the far reaches of the universe—and he’d very well do the same.

Of course, you shared none of that with Cee.

“We took down the main base of the entire company. They were small but well-endowed. Got to transfer points into our accounts and sort through the mining equipment and the food,” you offered instead after a long bout of silence, “And the spoils of their labor. We were rich, could have retired early.”

“Why didn’t you?”

You debated whether to lie or tell her the truth, deciding on the latter. This girl wasn’t a threat, she genuinely wanted to know. “Ezra and I have—had a certain…interest in finding thrill wherever we can.”

Cee quirked an eyebrow, and you elaborated, “It’s not something to romanticize, we certainly weren’t smart about our spending. Gambling, drugs, slingshot scooter racing, smuggled creature ring-fights. The risk makes winning worth it. It was addicting. We earned a lot. Uncountable amounts of money. But we spent it all and then spent more. Pulled stunts that not even the most daring would try. Heists, intel-theft for enemies of certain people. We got caught up in it. Eventually drowned in a swamp of debt and unrequited favors. Got put on watchlists by the head crime syndicate and peace officers alike in the Core Worlds because we got cocky. Sloppy. So many people want our heads on a stake that we’d be better off dying out here. It’d be ironic, given the executions we deserve.”

You shuddered at the thought of Karolclan and their unusual procedures for punishment. They wanted you the most—you owed them the most. Them and Omni-Five. But Karolclan was decidedly worse.

“Why are you still mining? Wouldn’t it be easier to hide somewhere less dangerous?”

“We have debts to pay, bird,” you sighed, fond of the nickname Ezra gave her as it fit her well, “It’s the only honest work we can get without a biotracker recognizing our scans or someone realizing that the burner names and scouting codes we give them are bullshit. We work alone—no drop company, no mining corps. Until we can get our names cleared and our bio-scans off the watchlist, we can’t do shit else.”

If nothing more, Karolclan did allow debt payoff. But only if you could evade their capture, and only if you had the means to satisfy compounded interest. They were brutal, ruthless.

“He said you had a crew…and a ship…before you ended up stranded.”

“We did. A group of people like us. But you can imagine that a group of outlaws don’t always see eye to eye—buncha hotheaded criminals. Fought over aurelac, argued over fair shares, resources, everything.”

That wasn’t the whole story.

It started as a dispute over aurelac, but had quickly turned into a spat against Ezra, why he had so many successful harvests and surely he was stealing or cheating, how it wasn’t fair that you two were attached at the hip and didn’t section off when you split into groups to cover more land. In the heat of argument and the desperation of man, that had morphed into threats against you—Why don’t you fucking share her, Ezra? We all have needs and she’s barely good at the dig-sites. Put her to use somewhere else or we’ll find a use for her, and that devolved into Might take her right from under you if you don’t watch yourself, don’t be surprised if you hear her struggle tonight.

You had gotten used to the crude commentary, the snickers and wolf-whistles when you bent over, and if they had tried to somehow steal you away in the night, they’d have been reminded that you slept fully armed and showed no mercy to anyone who touched you unless they knew just where to start—and only one person did.

But that…that had not gone over well with him. It ended before you even knew what he did, and pretty soon you had a dead crewmate spilling blood over your boots while the familiar sound of throwers charging up rang in your ears, all of them pointed at the man panting beside you. The only one from the group to live and remain on the Green had been Two, and honestly you were never fond of them but weren’t surprised when they helped you and Ezra take the heat off your backs—they always teamed up with you two and they were good at what they did. It was a shame they were gone—despite their silence and threatening demeanor and sometimes uncalculated moves in a plan, they never made a move to harm either of you; they just wanted to harvest and get out like you did. Better them than Ezra, though. You’d have genuinely lost your mind if they had shown up in his stead.

“Did you kill the crew too?”

“Only a few,” you said honestly, “The others left us stranded when they realized we’d kill them next. Number Two was our only ally. Now they’re dead.”

You laid back down and put Ezra’s hand across your chest again, “Get some rest now. We’ve got a long day ahead of us. And if you choose to kill him while we sleep—kill both of us.”

You didn’t know why you’d felt compelled to say that, but revealing such a dark part of yourself to her convinced you that she’d plant a bolt in you or Ezra’s head and run. Ezra was the more likely target, given his history with the girl. It was irrational, for the most part; if she truly wanted him dead she would have let his wound kill him. Or she would have shot him sooner. But you couldn’t be too sure.

And you’d sooner die than wake up to him cold next to you.

[scuttling]

California

Fandom: Criminal Minds Pairing: Aaron Hotchner/Latina OFC Sophie Cortes Word Count: 4,547 Tags: SFW, Making out, Phone calls, Getting to know each other, Mentions of sex Summary: Monday, the first full day they spend on the case in Los Angeles, after vacation, is tough. The week gets better, and gets worse, as cases like these do, but there are moments of light in the darkness. Collection: Sophie Cortes timeline, 1 year-1 year 3 Months at the BAU (See Masterlist for reading order) Link to AO3 or read below! Monday, the first full day they spend on the case in Los Angeles, after vacation, is tough. The unsub they are looking for brutally tortures his victims—his teenage victims—and he’s escalating, kidnapping the third child just 72 hours after the second, so everyone is on edge, working themselves to the bone.

They don’t get back to the hotel until well after eleven, and Sophie plans to take a quick shower and then crash pretty hard after such a draining day, but something makes her head for Aaron’s room after her shower instead.

“Hey,” she says softly when he opens the door, and he smiles, looking as exhausted as she feels. “I just wanted to check in with you really quick. I’m sure you’re tired.”

“Yes, but I always have time for you.” He steps back and lets her into the room, and she fidgets nervously—why, she’s not entirely sure. Maybe because this is their first face-to-face in the real world, no hazy, happy vacation feelings making everything softer and easier? She’s not certain, and when he closes the door they just stand there, looking at each other for a moment.

Whether she or he or they both bridge the distance, Sophie can’t say, but one moment they are staring at each other with an electrically-charged foot of space between them and the next they are kissing hot, slow, sultry. One arm wraps around her waist, the other touching her face, her wet hair, and she moans softly against his lips.

Kissing him is everything she thought it would be and more: his hands are strong, but gentle, his lips soft but firm, his body as she presses against him big and solid and delicious, and if he expects her to break the kiss first, he’s going to be waiting a while.

When he eventually pulls back, he rests his forehead gently against hers, smiling down at her like there is some sort of inside joke between them. “Coconut,” he murmurs, and when he presses his nose to the hair at her temple, she understands, smiles back.

“Didn’t realize you like it quite that much,” she teases, still a bit breathless, and he chuckles softly, pulling back a little and putting space between them.

“It’s not just the shampoo I like. I think you’re an incredible woman.” She smiles, maybe a little shy about such a direct complement, and he touches her cheek gently. “I knew that from the moment I met you, but working so closely l got to know you as a person, and I really like who you are.”

“I really like you, too. I like how, in front of outsiders you’re tough, impervious, unmoved, but when it comes to the people you care about you’re just a marshmallow.”

“A marshmallow?” he says, pretending to be offended, and he leans down for another kiss, this one less heated but more indulgent: to Sophie, it feels like the first one, he just needed to get out of his system, but the second is all about tasting her, feeling her. It makes her knees weak, honestly, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders so he can support them both.

“I’ve thought about this,” he murmurs into her ear when they break apart. “Of what I would do if you came into my room, in your little pajama shorts,” he emphasizes by squeezing her butt affectionately, “and told me that you wanted me.” She leans back at that—because he’s hot, so hot, and she gets to look openly now, to touch—and presses her hands against his chest.

“Hmm. What’s your plan, in this situation? When I tell you that I want you?”

“I give you what you want, of course. Anything you want.” She bites at her bottom lip, because she could get really used to hearing that, and takes a few steps back, pulling him with her; she lays down on the bed, guides him so that he hovers over her, and his eyes are dark and wide. When she tugs him closer for a kiss, his hands find her waist again, pushing up the bottom of her shirt.

It feels so good to be under him, another taste of making out like they did on the couch at the beach house. He is a solid line of heat along her body, though he keeps himself from fully dropping his weight onto her, and his hands are deliciously rough on her skin, his teeth perfectly sharp as he nips at her ear. It’s heaven after months of wanting him, absolute heaven.

“Anything I want, you said,” she murmurs, looking up at him when he pulls away, and she brushes a hand through his hair. “Because I want a lot more of that, maybe even a little of this?” His tie is already off, the top button of his shirt unbuttoned, and she slips the next two free, eyes on his face to make sure it’s okay.

“I did say anything,” he confirms, voice low, and he’s breathing hard above her, and that makes her think deeply dirty thoughts...

Someone raps on the door, and Aaron jumps up like she burned him, and she slides off the bed and into a heap on the floor.

They exchange a look, and Sophie hurries to the desk chair across the room. She smooths the front of her clothes, and he buttons his shirt, exhales long, and then opens the door.

“Hey, Hotch; sorry, I know it’s late, but I saw the light on.” He swings the door wide, letting Morgan in, and he looks apologetic when he sees her sitting at the desk. “Oh. I didn’t realize you were here, Cortes. I can come back.”

“No, that’s okay, I got what I came for. It’s getting late, anyway.” She stands and makes for the door, briefly pausing between the two men. “Thank you, Hotch. We can finish that discussion tomorrow, if you like.” She tries to convey a few different things with her eyes, and judging by the gleam in his, he understands them all.

“Absolutely. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. Night, Morgan,” she says with a nod, and she smiles softly as she ducks out of the room.

Twenty minutes later, when she’s lying awake thinking of the feel of his hands on her face, her phone chimes.

AH: I’m sorry our discussion ended so abruptly. I was enjoying it very much.

SC: Me too. So was I.

SC: I have high hopes for the future, though.

AH: So do I. I’ll be hard at work coming up with a plan for our first date.

SC: Mmm, I love it when you talk plans.

AH: Now now. Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.

SC: Goodnight, Aaron.

AH: Goodnight, Sophie. Tuesday doesn’t go any better, is spent canvassing the neighborhoods and schools and parks near the dump site and basically praying they don’t find another victim. Sophie stares at the crime scene photos, truly some of the most gruesome she’s ever seen, for so long that she’s not even sure how she falls asleep that night, but she’s out as soon as her head hits the pillow. Wednesday is better, in a way. A fourth child is taken, but the unsub makes a mistake, and they get a partial plate which leads them right to him. The third and fourth victims are found alive, if a little worse for wear, but they’re reunited with their families by the afternoon.

Sophie plans on having some pizza and a couple of beers, maybe a bubble bath, to celebrate the victory, but they are all gathered in the lobby of the hotel when JJ’s phone rings, and by the look on her face, it’s not time to celebrate just yet.

“An acquaintance of Strauss’s is asking for our help in San Diego. She wants us to head there right away, since we’re already in California.” Aaron looks a little irritated at the case coming from above him, but he nods—what can he say, no?

“Alright, change of plans, then. Sorry everyone.” There is a chorus of groans—clearly Sophie wasn’t the only one with a different idea of how her evening would go—and they board the jet for a new destination.

Sophie doesn’t even register it’s San Diego until Aaron takes a seat next to her on the flight.

“Hey,” she says quietly, looking around them. It’s suspicious as hell, she knows, but it’s instinct.

“Hi. I used to sit here and talk to you all the time, before; don’t make it weird,” he says with a half smile, and she matches it fully.

“Sorry, have you met me? I make everything weird.”

“I know. I like that about you.” She wants to grin, and keep on grinning, but she knows she looks smitten and tries to tamp it down. “I was coming to ask if you planned to let your brother know you’d be in town.” Realization must dawn on her face, because he frowns. “I take that as a no.”

“Well, I hadn’t planned on it. I didn’t even really put two and two together. And I’m not sure if I should, anyway.”

“I don’t know if I’ve earned the right to weigh in on something like this, yet,” he begins, and she tilts her head, surprised.

“You earned the right a long time ago. I’ve trusted you with some of the most guarded, tender parts of me. I would have thought you knew that already.” He looks into her eyes, nods.

“Yes, I did know that. I just don’t want to overstep.”

“Weigh in all you like,” she says with a soft smile. “If you overstep, I’ll let you know.”

“Okay, well. I think you should at least make an attempt to contact your brother while we’re here. If he doesn’t want to see you—that's his loss, but at least you know you tried.”

“What’s the point, though, if I’m 99% sure he’s going to say no? Why put myself through the heartache?” She may hide it well most of the time, but not staying close with her brother after their father’s death is one of her biggest regrets in life. It hurts deeply, and often.

“I don’t know about you, but I’d hold onto hope for the 1% if it meant one more day with someone I love.” She exhales deeply, wills the sudden rush of tears to leave her eyes so she doesn’t cry on the plane, nods.

“You’re completely right. I should at least try. Nada arriesgado, nada ganado. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” His face is soft, and she can tell he wants to touch her, comfort her, maybe kiss her, but there are too many eyes on them. Even Reid is watching their interaction curiously.

“I just want you to be happy, and it’s clear that losing your brother like this has hurt you. This could be your chance to patch things up.” She swallows, puts her hand on his arm; she’s done it before, in front of the others, and it’s painfully obvious they’re having a heart to heart, so it shouldn’t be too unexpected.

“Thank you. Really. I appreciate you.”

“I know. And I appreciate you. Let me know if you need a couple hours, we’ll make it work.” She agrees, and picks up her case file; he does the same, and doesn’t leave.

That night, she can’t sleep, and when a text to Aaron confirms he’s still awake, she presses 'call’, sinks back against the pillows while it rings.

“Hi,” he greets, his voice deep and quiet, and she closes her eyes, soaking it up. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I thought it might get suspicious if I ended up in your room every night, but I wanted to talk to you. Is this okay?”

“This is great. It’s funny how I can miss your voice even after being around you all day.”

“Yeah, for me too. I miss hearing you say my name. My first name.”

“Sophie,” he whispers, low, and she licks her lips.

“Hmm, that’s better. Is there anything in particular you want to talk about?”

“Anything is alright with me. Did your brother ever text you back?”

“Yeah, he said he’ll call me when he wakes up tomorrow—so, around noon, probably,” she says with a laugh, and he chuckles too.

“Well that’s something, at least. A good start.”

“Yeah, it is. Thank you.” She feels herself getting emotional again, and hates that vulnerability, so she forces herself to brighten up. “Maybe we should talk about our previous relationships.”

“Okay. I can go first. You know Haley was my high school sweetheart. We met when we were 15, went to college together, got married at 25. Divorced at 37.”

“Because of your work,” she recalls sadly.

“That’s right. I tried to be very present when I wasn’t working, but it wasn’t enough, of course. We grew apart.” He sighs. “Honestly, she put up with me longer than she should have.”

“It’s the nature of our job, and our personalities. We obsess. It’s not an excuse, but I get it.” She turns onto her side, curls up against her pillow. “What was your favorite thing about her?”

“I always liked how optimistic she was, and ambitious. She was with me every step of the way as I became a prosecutor, then an agent, unit chief, and she became a teacher, then vice principal, principal. For a long time, I thought we were growing together.”

“And for her to encourage you to join the FBI, to do the job you love, and then leave you over it… that must have been hard, even if she had legitimate reasons for wanting to end things.”

“It was hard for me to reconcile for a while. It made more sense when I found out she fell in love with someone else.” Her heart sinks.

“Oh, Aaron.”

“She didn’t cheat on me, but I gave her the time to fall in love with him by not being there. They’re married now, with two kids.”

“Do you still see her?”

“We meet up once a year for coffee, to go over what’s been happening in our lives. I always talk about work, and you can see it makes her feel like she did the right thing. And I’ve started to think that maybe she did.”

“I’m a little biased, so no comment. But I am sorry your heart was broken. Did you date much after?”

“I dated one woman for about 4 months, but we broke up because I wasn’t available.”

“This job makes it hard to be available for anything else. In a way, I’m glad I don’t have much family, that my brother doesn’t want to see me often.”

“I think that’s why we come together the way we do. Found family. It’s almost necessary.” He sighs, and she can tell that’s it for him. “So I know you have said you don’t date much.”

“Yeah, my last real relationship was back in Chicago. Taylor. He works Fire and Rescue.”

“What did you like the most about him?”

“He had a way of making people feel comfortable that I’ve always admired. He makes friends easily, and it translates well to his work, when people are scared or hurt.”

“How long were you together?”

“A year. Doesn’t exactly compare to 22 years, but it’s the longest relationship I’ve ever had. I was busy with school and didn’t really have time to date. Then work got in the way.”

“So you’ve been alone for a while. No family here, no boyfriend.” It makes her sound kind of pathetic, and she laughs lightly.

“Yeah, I guess, but I get by.”

“I know you do. What did you like least about Taylor?”

“He wasn’t like this at first, but before we broke up he… I’m not trying to take this down a sexual path, but the story involves sex, if that’s okay.”

“Of course.”

“Okay, so you know that a lot of women need direct clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm. I don’t, particularly—I like it, but I don’t need it, I can have an orgasm from intercourse. Well he would just batter my clit, all the time, to the point that it hurt. And when I told him it hurt, he basically mansplained my own body to me, and how that couldn’t be true because he knows ‘the clitoris is one of the most sensitive erogenous zones due to its high concentration of nerve endings’, like he was reading it out of a textbook when a living, breathing woman is sitting there telling him it’s too much. It was the first time I ever cried during sex, and when I can’t trust you with my body, I lose all emotional regard. Things just kind of fell apart from there.”

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that. That he broke your trust that way.”

“Thank you. I think that’s another reason I don’t date. It’s hard for me to fully give myself to another person, to trust, sometimes.”

“I promise I will listen when you’re telling me how you feel, physically or otherwise. I would never do what he did.”

“I know. I trust you. I don’t think we’d be doing this if I didn’t.” She takes a deep breath, blows it out slowly. “Okay, let’s lighten it up. Um… If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?” He hums thoughtfully.

“What a question. I’m assuming this is strictly based on what I want to eat forever, without taking nutrition into account.”

“Of course. What would make Aaron Hotchner smile every time he takes a bite?”

“Okay,” he begins, and she can hear the smile already. “I’m sorry, vegetarian, but it would be a big, juicy cheeseburger, with lettuce and tomato and extra pickles, the skinny French fries, and a cherry Coke.”

“How All-American of you. That’s cute.”

“And what meal would you eat for the rest of your life?”

“So, my instinct is to say tacos, but there’s this jalapeno popper pizza at the shop by my house… If it were legal for me to marry this pizza, I would have done it already.”

“Wow. That must be some pizza. I’m a little jealous.” She laughs softly.

“You probably should be, it’s amazing. It has jalapenos, obviously, but two other types of peppers too, and three kinds of cheese, and ranch sauce. So I’ll make a commitment and say, that pizza. For the rest of my life.”

They talk a little more before heading to bed, and she’s so happy it makes even the prospect of meeting up with her brother seem a little bit less daunting. Thursday is a blur of interviewing witnesses who worked with the victim, but she’s able to sneak away at two to meet her brother Leo for lunch. He looks taller, somehow, more like 6’2” than 6’0”, and darker, from all that good California sun; she grins when she sees him. “Hola, broki. Creciste!” she says, marveling at his height, and he pulls her into a hug, smiles the same goofy, charming smile as always.

“I haven’t grown, I think you shrunk. And you’re so pale.”

“That’s life on the East Coast for you,” she explains as they pull apart, and they take their seats.

“That’s office life, hermana. You need to get out more. I bet your lungs are tired of all that recycled air.”

“I get out when I can. Been soaking up your sun and air the last few days working on this case.” The waitress approaches, and they order drinks; Leo’s a regular, knows what he wants to eat right away, and she orders the same to make things easy.

“The murder of that financial guy, right? Stockbroker, or something?” She raises her eyebrows, surprised he knows that much. “I heard on the news the FBI was on the case, figured that meant you, when you texted.”

“You watch the news?” she teases, because he has always been type to avoid real life at all costs, and the news is about as real as it gets.

“It was on at the DMV; don’t get too excited.” She laughs, because some things never change, and they chat a little more about the case, about what’s going on in his life—girlfriends, boyfriends, parties, surfing—as they eat.

“Actually, I wanted to tell you,” she says after a tale about a tall, dark, and handsome guy named Daunte, setting down her fork, “I have a boyfriend.” His brows shoot up his forehead.

“A boyfriend, ‘mana. I never thought I’d see the day. You’re such a lone wolf anymore.”

“Not by choice, by necessity,” she mutters, stabbing at her salad. “But yes, I have a boyfriend now. It’s really new—like, less than a week new—but it’s been a long time coming.” He takes a sip of his lemonade, smiles softly.

“He’s a Fed like you?” She must appear surprised by his astuteness, because it morphs into a grin. “You’re at work 24/7, Sophia, where else would you meet him?”

“Oh, for a minute I thought you were taking after your profiler sister there, buddy.” He frowns down at his plate.

“You don’t have to worry about that. I hate how you can get into people’s heads.”

“I do it to catch bad people, Leo. Rapists, murderers. I don’t do it to you, and you know it.” She sighs. “I didn’t want to talk about this today, anyway. I just wanted to come see you, catch up. It’s been nice.”

“Yeah, it has,” he agrees easily, and they steer away from the topic of her work, onto safer things. He pays for their meal—she almost falls out of her seat just to get a laugh out of him, and it works—and she has to get back to the precinct, but they make a pact to talk more often, so she considers the whole thing a success.

When she walks into the conference room they are using, she catches Aaron’s eye, points down the hall. “Can I borrow you for a sec?” she asks, and he excuses himself, follows her to the other end of the station; he presses his palm to her lower back when they are out of eyesight.

“Did everything go alright?” he asks seriously, and she pulls him in for a hug. His arms wrap around her easily despite their location, and he sighs, rests his cheek on the top of her head.

“It was really great, Aaron. It was hardly tense at all, and I… I would never have done it if it weren’t for you. So thank you.” When she pulls back, she tries to show him how grateful she is with her gaze, and he can tell, she knows it.

“You’re welcome. I just want you to be happy.” Their people aren’t around, but other cops are, so this is already bordering on too much PDA; she wants to kiss him, but restrains herself, takes a deep breath.

“What can I do to help?” she asks instead, and he fills her in on the new details of the case.

“So what’s your favorite movie of all time?” she asks that night, over the phone again. They’re all hoping it’s their last night in California, that the lead they have will pan out so they can finally go home, but no one more than Sophie and Aaron.

“A Few Good Men.”

“Oh, that’s so lawyerly of you. I probably would have guessed between that and… Witness for the Prosecution.”

“That movie is older than you. It’s older than me.”

“I like old movies. My mama always watched the classics in black and white, so I find it soothing.”

“What’s your favorite?”

“Oh, that’s such a hard question. Maybe… The Maltese Falcon? I love the drama of noir films, but I also like romances like Roman Holiday. Or anything with James Stewart.”

“Now I know why you’re attracted to me; you’re an old soul,” he teases, and she laughs softly.

“There are many reasons I’m attracted to you; I’d list them, but I can’t afford to keep you up all night.”

“Not tonight, anyway,” he murmurs, and she sinks her teeth into her bottom lip, smiles like an idiot.

“Right. Not tonight.” She hums as she thinks of another question to ask him. “If you could only use one of your senses, which would it be?”

“Forever?”

“That seems cruel. Let’s say, just for one day. And you wouldn’t have to work, so don’t take that into consideration.”

“Would I be with you?” he asks, and her heart feels soft.

“If you want to be.”

“Then hearing, I think. The way your voice wraps around me when it’s just the two of us, it feels almost like we’re touching, anyway.” God, she’s such a sap, melting completely at his words. She says nothing for a moment, and he clears his throat. “You?”

“Oh, touch, for me. As much as I love the sound of your voice, I’m very tactile, and I don’t think I could go the day without touch without losing my mind.”

“That’s good to know. Explains why you’re always hitting Morgan.” She laughs.

“Yeah, that’s an easy way to get some touching in for the day. I prefer softness, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“I’ve got a question for you, and then we should probably get some sleep,” he says after a moment. “Which of your personality traits are you the most proud of?”

“Hmm, I don’t know. Resiliency, I guess? I’ve always been able to push through hard times and focus on my goals. I’m very fortunate in that way. What about you?”

“I would say rationality, I think. It makes me better at what I do, even if it’s not always appreciated.”

“You know that you’re more than this job, right? I mean, I know we agreed that we obsess over it, that we let it be a part of who we are, but it’s not all you are. I can think of so many great traits you have that make you a good person, Aaron.”

“I don’t often tell myself that I’m a good person. A good agent, sure. A good boss, sometimes.” She frowns, feels for him.

“In that case, I’m happy to be the one to tell you. Often. Loudly.” He breathes a laugh, then yawns. “Yeah, I’m ready for bed, too. Maybe tomorrow we’ll get to go home, and we can work on having one of these conversations in person.”

“I would really like that. Sleep well, Sophie.”

“You too. Goodnight.” Friday morning, they catch the murderer, put him behind bars. It’s high profile, and Sophie’s there when they take him in; she hates having cameras in her face, hates California because there are always cameras, but she feels a rush of satisfaction when she gets the killer in the squad car and shuts the door in his face.

A couple of hours later, when she’s packing her bag, she gets a text from Leo: Nice job, hermana. Te amo.

Maybe some things will change after all.

[fatefulfaerie]

Thank you for your really nice content, it’s such a pleasant thing to see your name on my dash! And congrats on 500 followers!

I’d like to request a sickfic where Link is out with the flu (like, feverish, no energy, vertical problems, that sort of thing), and is very out of it and a tad touch-starved with Zelda watching out for him please! Just a sweet little hurt/comfort fic, as we crave in these trying times 🥲 Thank you!

A Tender Moment

“And then from there you meet with the lords and ladies of the court in the banquet hall for supper, but you’ll only have so much time until you are to go over with your father the particulars of the speech you are giving tomorrow night—”

Impa stopped herself.

“Princess, are you even listening to me?”

“Hm?” Zelda said, looking over to Impa, who had doubted very much that her highness was paying attention in the slightest, looking out at the portion of Hyrule she could see outside her tall window. Although she was leaning against the wall as she did so, in such a way that would have made for quite the dramatic portrait, she began to pace on her own feet as she walked toward her vanity.

“Yes, of course,” she said as she crossed past Impa. “Please continue.”

“Then after you meet with your father and he has approved the content of your speech, you are free as bird.”

Zelda swiveled around to face Impa.

“I thought I had a meeting with the champions.”

Impa shook her head.

“Cancelled,” Impa said. “Harsh weather conditions. The champions have each requested an extra day of travel because of the storm. Honestly I think Revali could make it, he just doesn’t want to mess up his pristine feathers.”

“Did he actually say that?”

“He may as well have.”

Zelda rolled her eyes

“What else is there?”

“Some papers for you to sign when you can find the time,” Impa said as she flipped through the stack of papers she held, “an inquiry from the kitchens, and your knight attendant is sick. He will not be accompanying you today.”

Zelda seemed to show more interest in that than anything else the royal advisor had briefed her on, stepping forward and taking the parchment from Impa’s hand, written in the messy handwriting of the castle doctor.

“Your Highness?” Impa asked as Zelda’s green eyes scanned the words before her.

Folding the paper up, Zelda walked straight out of her chambers, no concern at all for the obligations of her day that Impa had just taken an hour to relay.

“Your Highness!” Impa repeated just before Zelda latched the door closed behind her, Impa left alone in Zelda’s chambers. She gave a sigh.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Your Majesty, she just walked out,” she muttered to herself as she stood up to follow Zelda, as if practicing explaining what happened to the King. “You gave me the job of wrangling a teenager, what can I say?”

——————————————————————————————————

“It’s really nothing to concern yourself over, Your Highness,” Zelda heard the doctor continue as she stared at Link, the princess hugging her arms close, “he’s not contagious, he’s just running a high fever. Until his temperature goes down, it’s infirmary policy to keep patients for observation. We’ve already given him a chilly elixir. All we can do is let him rest like he is.”

Zelda nodded in understanding, and yet still did not glance at the doctor. Link slept so peacefully that she could only watch as she thought about how sick he must have felt to actually come forward and say he couldn’t perform his duties.

“Zelda,” he murmured in his sleep.

Zelda’s face fell and so did her arms.

“He’s been saying that every once in a while, Your Highness,” the doctor added. “But there’s no need to accuse him of losing his decorum, he is definitely asleep. I wager with his work ethic, he’s protecting you even in his dreams.”

Zelda heard the doctors footsteps pace away.

She honestly wasn’t sure what to do, left alone with her knight attendant who had fallen ill, who she had never seen in such a state of vulnerability, who she had never even seen sleep.

Zelda stepped forward before sitting on the bed he lay, brushing the backs of her fingers along his warm cheek.

“Link,” she said, with the gentility of the mother she lost and the softness of the lover she yearned to be.

She reformed her hand to curve around the edge of his jawline.

“I don’t know if you can hear me but I want you to get rest, okay?”

Blue irises began to breach from closed eyelids.

“Don’t worry about—”

Zelda stopped herself, noticing that Link was awakening, his lips turning into a small and yet genuine smile. Zelda considered retreating her hand to subdue the embarrassment of such a tender touch until Link’s hand met hers where it sat on his cheek. The warmth of the connection between them radiated into the depths of her heart, and thus, couldn’t help but spread onto her cheeks as well. Her expression melted from one that anticipated embarrassment to one that absolutely oozed with love and care. Impa, who had decided after finding Zelda in the infirmary to simply watch by the doorway, couldn’t help a small smile at the sight.

“How are you feeling?” Zelda asked Link.

“I’ve been better,” Link said, in a coarsely rough voice that sounded like it hurt. Zelda immediately regretted asking the question, her green eyes filled with pity.

Zelda nodded with a slight chuckle.

“Yes, I believe you have,” she agreed. “Be sure to rest as long as you need, okay? You don’t have to worry about me. Besides, I’m going to need you rested and ready for whenever our next adventure is.”

“For the calamity, too,” Link said, in such a broken voice that Zelda wished he hadn’t.

Zelda moved her thumb ever-so-slightly so that it brushed his lips.

“More importantly,” Zelda said, a bit slower. “Be sure you are rested for you.”

It was foreign, the way they were interacting with each other, in ways that blurred the lines between platonic and romantic. Neither of them seemed to mind, especially as Link nodded with a smile, brushing his own thumb along the soft hand on his cheek, that belong to a princess he was truly beginning to love beyond his duty.

--

Instances I’ve done something similar to your prompt in case that didn’t meet your expectations:

Honesty part 6/7

Enraptured

[misskittysmagicportal]

can i request something to do with the thing about vincent having tics while giving oral or just vincent giving oral general i love the way you write things

I Think We're Alone Now

(Vincent Rhodes x Fem!Reader)

Warnings: language, talk of mental health, fem!receiving oral

A/N: With the pandemic keeping you and Vincent apart, he was glad that being alone didn't mean being lonely.

Vincent Rhodes didn't tic as bad or as much in his thirties. He wasn't cured. He didn't take medicine that made them magically go away. He took meds for his anxiety, and the “cure” was still going to therapy with Dr Rose. He didn't go daily or weekly or even monthly anymore. He managed every other month. Sometimes, perhaps, every three to four months. Yet it took twenty-five to finally accept a cliche: Tourette's wasn't Vincent, Vincent simply HAD Tourette's.

Don't worry though, cunt is still his favorite word.

Vincent also did all the things he told Marie he wanted to do. He finished school and went to college online. He found himself rather good at computers and a job that required the bare minimum of human interaction. His Tourette's was under control, but his social anxiety never seemed to be. We digress!

He had a job, and a place to call home that wasn't a treatment facility or a hoarder’s house bogged down by sadness and alcoholism. Vincent didn't find it shameful that his father bought him a condo. He and his roommate had an agreement to pay utilities and work on the re-election campaign.

Vincent finally had a dog. A dog he had to fight for because his roommate had.. Rituals. Rituals that also weren't as bad as they used to be thanks to the same therapy and right medication. Just like you can't get rid of Tourette's, Vincent couldn't get rid of Alex either. That was his first, and really only, friend. As tumultuous as they started out, if you survive a road trip with two neurodivergents, you're pretty much bonded for life. Alex was sometimes more work than their dog.

Vincent and Alex did things in their late twenties and early thirties they never thought they'd do. They went out. They dated around. They had awkward sex and one night stands that the two of them could finally laugh about. Vincent could hide, or save his tics from popping up during his dates. He could even manage to hold them off when he had sex. He was relaxed and focused on the woman beneath or above him.

But then he would spasm, or twist and pop his mouth. He would unintentionally squeal or swear, call her names or flip her off. Instead of understanding Vincent, or talking to him, whoever the girl of the moment was would leave and never come back. Fuck her, Vincent would think. I can't help that I have Tourette’s; she can help being an asshole.

-----

There could not have been a worse time in anyone’s life for you to meet quite possibly the single hottest guy in your neighborhood. At least, you thought he was in your neighborhood. You kept running into each other at various stores to the point you found yourself quoting an old movie from college.

“Are you stalking me?” You boldly questioned him one afternoon as he pondered Mcintosh versus Fiji apples. “Because that would be super.”

The man jumped. Then to your shock, he spasmed almost violently. His neck twisted to the left as his hand held on to his chin and yelled out, “Brown haired cunt! Grass licking big tits.”

You laughed. It wasn't malicious or in jest. You were nervous and stunned. Still you replied, “Normally a guy has to date me for a while before he calls me a cunt. Now as for grass licking? That was only once, but I was high and we were playing truth or dare.”

He stared at you, mouth agape. A violent spasm rocked his body again like an aftershock. It caused him to excessively blow a dark curl back from his forehead several times before his body relaxed and he appeared to sink in on himself. Embarrassed. A pink hue spread along his cheeks and angled jaw as he gazed at the apples again with large green eyes.

“You ok? I wouldn't say I've got big tits. They're more like medium sized. Unless you were talking about the melons.” You held up two cantaloupe in front of your chest. “I’m y/n”

Again with the mouth open staring. Then he came to, “Vincent. I've never had someone react to Arthur that way.”

“I'm from New York. That was a Saturday night in the village. Who’s Arthur?” You looked around. “Are you being held hostage? Scream cunt for yes. Vagina for no.”

Vincent laughed. It was almost a giggle that you weren't sure was a laugh or his thing. “Arthur is my Tourette's. He's the clown who shits in between my thoughts. My tics. You scared the piss out of him.”

“You named your Tourette's? You can't do that, they never go away once you name them.”

Vincent rolled his eyes, “ DAMMIT! I'll take away his bowl of food and dog bed too. Maybe I'll finally be cured!”

You didn't want him to think you felt something was wrong with him. “Mostly with all of this, I meant I keep seeing you around. Thought I'd say hi.”

“How about we exchange phone numbers, and you can say hello more often?” Vincent cocked an eyebrow.

“Bold of you to assume calling me a cunt is flirting! But you got it out of the way now instead of down the line. Give me your phone.”

He obliged and you put your number in. As you handed it back you joked, “Should've told me you had a much sexier friend.” You indicated Alex on the phone’s wallpaper.

“He's gay.”

“Damn! Lucky for men. Anyways, I work most days. Don't know how long with everything happening out there. Call me sometime?”

Vincent twitched and wolf whistled. He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, but promised he would nonetheless. But then pandemic happened, so all you had for the next six months was your phone

-----

You met Alex and learned his rituals and empathized with his panic to follow or abide by heath guidance. His OCD aggravated by everything going on. Vincent couldn't even go for a run without his friend completely freaking out, so he just didn't. Their balcony was it for fresh air.

You took tours of each other's apartments. Had dinners and breakfasts together. Shared what books you were reading and watched movies together. Vincent teased you about your fat, lazy cat and you did likewise over his ten pound shih tzu. Although, you admitted, it was because she got to share a bed with him.

Somehow in month 5 you were roped into a three way phone call with his dad. Senator Rhodes and Vincent seemed to have an easy relationship, but you were filled in later that it was anything but for a very long time. So you turned the tables one night, and introduced him to your entire family.

Forgetting about his Tourette's, because you had really grown used to it all. To the tics, the whistles and excessive use of the word cunt (Pandemic drinking game, Vincent’s idea) that his biggest episode since you met stunned not only you but your clan. Vincent had buried his face, you were terrified of your mistake. But you got it from somewhere.

“Sure you ain't from Brooklyn, kid?!” Thank Christ for meathead brothers.

“This is dating right?” Vincent asked after their dinner. “Pandemic, COVID, for now dating. Even though,” he paused to twist his neck, “One of my coworkers has uh, dick appointments all the time?” He snapped a finger several times and shouted something about a whore and syphilis.

“Hey! Tell Arthur to fuck off. Sexual liberation. She's not a whore, she's in her twenties!” Vincent laughed. “Are you nervous about something? Usually the bedtime part of our phone calls are the least tic-ish.”

“Wanna have sex?” He was straightforward.

“Right now? Facetime sex?” You scrunch your nose but more to be cute than creeped out.

“Here. Alex is asleep. Come over? We've been isolated for months.”

“God, I love you.”

“What?” Vincent laughed. “Are you sure about that?”

“I'll be there in twenty minutes.”

-----

Vincent opened the door and implored you to take your shoes off at the door. You expected nothing less as you complied and followed him in the stillness of the apartment to his bedroom.

The moment the door was shut, Vincent was on you before you could even adjust to the dark. Only street lamps from the neighborhood below showed through as his mouth consumed yours.

Your tongues at war with each other as the two of you scrambled to undress. Your lips broke apart long enough to throw shirts over heads and step out of flannel pants or yoga pants. Then they crashed together again as Vincent let his hands splay out the length of your back and shoulders.

Your one hand ensnared by his messy hair. The other under the waistband of his boxers and over his ass. You drew his body to yours to melt into. His erection strained and throbbed against your hip as you hungrily pushed your tongue as far inside him as you could.

The both of you eager like teenagers shot with adrenaline. Anxious and hoping Alex caught you as Vincent twitched and his shoulders shrugged up to his ears. His fingers fumbled with your bra made worse by his tics. Tics that frustrated only him; you reached and undid it for him. Your breasts were free for him to look at.

Vincent attempted to choke back his words but failed. “Tit fucker,” a sour look on his face as his eye involuntarily clamped shut, “huge nipples.” He swallowed his lips, mortified.

“Hey!! They make up for yours being the tiniest nipples I have EVER seen on a dude.” You took Vincent’s hand. “We can slow down if you want. I don't know what's up, do you tic like this every time you have sex?”

The two of you laid side by side on his bed, hands traced over inches of bare skin. Vincent was silent for a while as he let his fingers trail over you, his lips not far behind.

“I don't. I'm usually too focused. The last time I loved someone, it fell apart immediately. It's making me anxious.”

You held his head to your body with a tenderness. “I loved you first, didn't I?”

His mouth made its way amongst your breasts as he gently laid you on your back. His lips warm on your stomach and hips that he exposed by tugging your panties down over your knees and off. Vincent laid down between them and almost nuzzled his nose in your soft pubic hair before his tongue dove inside of you.

Your hips rocketed up into his mouth as you grabbed the back of Vincent's head. He licked and sucked on your sex. Small tics caused him to push his tongue and lips in further than before. They closed in on your clit. His tongue attacked it with a lapping motion that you could only bend to, helpless.

Vincent was insatiable, his mouth in a frenzy. Your fingers caught up in the sheets as the sensation of his mouth on your clit spread along your body. Now your words were a shock as they came screaming out into the quiet of the bedroom.

“Tongue fuck me! Faster!”

Instead Vincent looked up at you with a grin, “I see Arthur came to visit.”

Tag: @robertsheehanownsmyass @slutforrobbiebro @super-unpredictable98 @magic-multicolored-miracle @sean-falco @elliethesuperfruitlover @bisexualnathanyoung @bwritesstuff @firstpersonnarrator @rob-private

[dadsbongos]

Treehouse

Movie/Game/Show: My Hero Academia Dynamic: Katsuki Bakugou/Reader (and a lot of other people) Warnings: Spoilers for bakugou’s hero name ahead!!, songfic for this song Summary: Katsuki’s grown a lot since middle school, hasn’t he? ~~~

Do Not Enter's written on the doorway. Why can’t everyone just go away? Except you. You can stay.

Katsuki looked down at the girl in his arms, eyes fluttered shut and lashes fallen over her cheeks. Lips parted ever so slightly to let out puffs of even, laxed breathing. The golden sunlight shone in her hair as it beamed through his thin curtains, soft warmth spreading over both of their bodies. His fingers carefully danced over the tender skin of her arm as he held her close. Her head over his chest and he was sure that the sound of his thunderous heartbeat would wake her eventually.

It felt nice, he concluded, to hold his love so dearly. To let his chest deflate and not have to be the best of the best. He didn’t have to be anyone. He didn’t have to be Bakugou, Katsuki - top of the class. Bakugou, Katsuki - Dynamight. Bakugou, Katsuki - Kacchan. Bakugou, Katsuki.

If he didn’t want to, he didn’t have to be anyone. She’d hold him just as close with any other persona he wanted to wear. It was his real security. His real home - right in her arms. A home he didn’t want to leave.

He wasn’t sure when it hit him. Just one of those random thoughts you never expect but deep down, you knew the entire time. Something so simple and yet so earth shattering that merely breathing it into existence seemed catastrophic. He wasn’t sure when it hit him that he was terrified of losing her. So innately terrified that the very thought was enough to send his muscles a tremor.

The feeling, it wasn’t nice. But he knew exactly what was - living the life he could with (Y/n).

What do you think of my treehouse? It's where I sit and talk really loud. Usually, I'm all by myself.

“Man, you’re really saving my ass here, Bakubro!” Eijiro grinned, exposing his unnatural shark teeth.

Katsuki huffed, “Don’t think about it, shitty hair. You’re still not passing.”

“I know, I know,” the redhead nervously grinned, eyeing the rolled up newspaper in Katsuki’s hand as he did so, “It’s just manly of you to help me is all. You’ve changed, man, it’s kinda cool.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious!” Eijiro put down his pencil, “It’s cool.”

Katsuki rolled his eyes but didn’t retort further. Whether he was ready to admit it or not, that usually would’ve gotten Kirishima, Eijiro a first-class newspaper swatting but he supposed he could let it pass. Just this once. 

I’m the captain but you can be the deputy. I'm really glad you think I'm so funny. I don't think I'm ever gonna let you leave.

Denki bit at his bottom lip in concentration, more effort going into thinking about cracking the egg in his hand than actually cracking the egg in his hand. His brows were drawn tight toward his face, contemplating how he should go about his cracking to avoid a mess. The last time he was trusted to crack eggs, he’d gotten shell in the bowl and yolk all on the counter and his fingers. The last time he was trusted to crack eggs, he felt like an utter fool. 

Looking over to the electric blond, Katsuki snarled at how little the boy had gotten done. Walking over, he took the egg still encased in its roughened shell from Denki in one hand and a bowl in the other. Tilting the porcelain bowl just right, Katsuki snapped the egg against the lip of the dish, pulling his fingers apart to hold the crack in the egg open so the yolk could drool down. Tossing out the eggshell, Katsuki watched as Denki took an egg for himself before copying exactly what the explosive teenager had done.

As two yolks drowned together in whites within their little bowl, Denki sung the praises of his dear friend, of Bakugou, Katsuki - and in Denki’s opinion, apparently, a masterchef. 

Nodding stiffly, Katsuki turned back to his own task at buttering the pan as it laid atop its burner. He let silence rule the kitchen until Denki would break it with a lame joke he would never admit he liked.

Do Not Enter's written on the doorway. Why can’t everyone just go away? Except you. You can stay.

“You have such great lid space, though,” Mina clasped her hands tighter, “I think it’d be fun!”

Katsuki grumbled under his breath before sighing and tossing his head back, “I’ll give you twenty minutes. Starting fucking now.”

Squealing, Mina hopped onto the common room couch before unzipping her makeup bag, “Thanks, Bakugou!”

“Whatever,” he rolled his eyes, barely managing to hold his underlying frustration inside, “Your damn funeral if you fuck up.”

“I won’t…” Mina pouted, “C’mon, don’t you believe in me? Just a little? You’ve seen what I can do.”

“I’ll believe for now.”

What do you think of my treehouse? It's where I sit and talk really loud. Usually, I'm all by myself.

“Oh, didn’t know the balconies were occupied,” Hanta awkwardly muttered.

Katsuki looked up from the ground below, brows furrowed and eyes stinging, “If you say anything to anyone, I’ll kill you myself.”

Putting his hands up, Hanta showed off that stupidly large, stupidly infectious grin, “Hey, man, everyone needs a good cry. I think it keeps us sane.”

Nodding silently, Katsuki stood at his railing, head hanging over and eyes clenched shut in a new effort to keep his tears in.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“I’d rather die.”

“Maybe, instead of dying, you could just vent to a trusted friend who cares about you?” Hanta suggested, “You go to (L/n), right? Well, now you can come to me, too. We’re friends, Bakugou, we’re there for each other.”

I’m the captain but you can be the deputy. 

Stirring inside his mind, were the thoughts he’d been keeping to himself since that fight. His real fight with Izuku. Where Katsuki won. The successor to All Might and boy wonder was beaten by Katsuki. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

Izuku was making progress fast, far too fast. He was leaping towards the top and Katsuki could only watch on, feet trapped in the cement. The ground swallowing his body as Deku, the Quirkless one, the useless one, the crybaby, bound forward in success.

It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t enough. Bakugou, Katsuki was simply not enough.

That’s what he was beginning to believe; where he couldn’t even save himself from villains, Deku came rushing in to save him and succeeded. 

Sitting at the kitchen island, alone, in the middle of the night, that’s what Katsuki was beginning to believe.

Lights flicker on, “Kacchan?”

Closing his eyes, Katsuki pretended there was no voice. Nobody behind him. No one but him awake at this awful hour.

“You’re usually in bed by now. Way before, actually.”

There was no reply. There didn’t need to be one. Izuku sat beside Katsuki all the same, an uneven, slightly nervous, smile on his face as he did so.

Katsuki opened his eyes, looking at the other boy from the corner of his peripheral, “You’ve made the power yours.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not as useless as I thought.”

“Thanks… you know, I’ve been meaning to ask… would you- would you train with me sometime? I think that I could really improve if I fought someone like you.” 

“Someone like me? The fuck does that mean?”

“Strong. Well-versed in your Quirk. Other than Todoroki, you’re probably the best at Quirk application, so I wanted to see if I could fight you.”

“Ask daddy issues.”

“But then we couldn’t have our rematch. I still need to beat you, Kacchan, you know?”

I'm really glad you think I'm so funny.

Katsuki found himself staring at the back of Izuku’s head, brows furrowed. Anger. Frustration. Confusion. He couldn’t tell what exactly it was. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see her. (L/n), (Y/n) smiling at him softly, perfect lips tugged into a perfect grin on her perfect face. God, what he wouldn’t give to just grab her and kiss the smile off her face just to do it all over again. What he wouldn’t give to scream to the world he loved her.

“You okay? You’re tense.”

Glancing to the front, Shota still sleepily tucked in his sleeping bag in a corner of the room, Katsuki nodded, “Fucking fine. Just thinking.”

Setting her chin in the palm of her hand, (Y/n) tilted her head ever so slightly, “Wanna tell me about it?” shaking his head, the ash-blond went to refuse when she spoke up again, “Not here, if you wanna wait.”

He felt almost unworthy. Losing to Deku, killing the legacy of All Might, getting kidnapped by villains - Bakugou, Katsuki felt unworthy of his own lover’s comforts. Looking at the face of an angel would make you crazy - at least that’s what his father told him once. And so, he nodded slowly, “Sure. Later. Alone, though, I’m not talking shit in front of Raccoon Eyes and Dunce Face.”

“Whatever you need,” she murmured, giggling quietly to herself, “I’m here.”

I don't think I'm ever gonna let you leave.

“I’ll say this once.”

He burned the image of them into his brain. (Y/n) and Eijiro on either side of him on the common room couch. Denki just about ready to cut through the carrot cake Mina and Hanta slaved over despite trashing on the choice the entire time. Izuku was slightly off to the side, ready to hand off gifts to his childhood rival.

Katsuki sighed quietly, looking to his feet when a hand grabbed his, (Y/n) rubbing her thumb into his skin. He swallowed his pride before letting everything he felt about each and every person in the room manifest into the best phrase someone like him could imagine.

“Thanks. For everything.”

[ikuzeminna]

Scene Analysis - Heero’s Farewell

AKA The Helmet Scene

This is one of the most famous scenes in the entire series. And it’s certainly one of the most interesting as well, thanks to a number of factors. We have a mood change, we have Heero finally fulfilling his promise to Relena to bid her farewell, we have a clear picture of how their relationship has evolved throughout the series, we have a retcon of the previous episode to make this scene work and a million other things, frankly. So, let’s get to dissecting it.

First, the setup. The previous two episodes, episode 46 and 47, present us with a Heero who, in my opinion, acts a lot like during the beginning of the series. It may just be me, but he comes off as rather brusque. Sure, he and Relena may be throwing compliments at each other, but there is a curtness to his tone and the ordering around (”You’ll stay here with me”) that annoy me personally. When Relena initially asks him if he came for her he even deflects, claiming that Noin and the others are worried about her. Sure.

Again, I don’t like it.

If I had to guess, I’d say Ikeda’s intention of not making their relationship romantic but keeping it symbolic paired with being unable to write normal teenager relationships is at play here. I’m putting the blame on him since he is the director, but I may be wrong, so sorry if I am. In any case, the farewell between Heero and Relena is just a loaded glance. They don’t speak, there is a huge distance between them, they just look at each other meaningfully and then Heero gets ready to fight. It’s pretty much Earth and Space, ever at a distance, yet bound by ...uh, something.

Come episode 48, the other writers apparently bound and gagged Ikeda, locked him up in a closet and gave us take 2 of the farewell, which the fandom knows as the helmet scene. And it really shows that someone else was in charge during the last two episodes because we suddenly have the most gentle, most tender sounding Heero in the entire series, complete with sparkly eyes and teddy bears.

And this, I like because the point of Heero’s character arc is regaining his humanity. So having him act like in the beginning kinda ruins that. So thank you, person, who made these decisions.

To clarify, episode 47 has Relena in a dark hangar with her helmet in her hands looking up at Heero who is about to board Wing Zero. He then enters the cockpit and closes it. That’s apparently the end of their interaction. Come episode 48 though, the hangar is lit, the helmets are on and the cockpit is wide open for Relena to jump up and talk to Heero one last time.

And here we see the aforementioned mood change. Gone is Heero’s brusque tone and his weird reluctance to admit any kind of fondness or affection. Instead, he freaking pulls her in during the conversation, because an inch from your face is the ideal distance when speaking to a person apparently. And not just that; he is softly smiling at her the whole time and instead of making it an order, he gently asks her to let him go.

I trust everyone can see how glaringly different this is from their interaction in the previous two episodes.

And there is so much more still. In their conversation Heero reveals his newly made promise to protect Relena (and the Earth Sphere). This goes aaaall the way back to Cinq, where he initially told Quatre he didn’t see much sense in fighting for Relena or her country. Through the various events, he did end up protecting her though, then he was forced to attempt to assassinate her again as Chief Representative of Romefeller and now we are at the point where the peace Relena promises, or at least wants to fight for, is something that Heero believes in.

This is so important for his character because he was the guy who would spout stuff like peace only being the result of war and not believing in it. This is also the lesson he later tries to make Wufei see in their fight in Endless Waltz. Heero is not a soldier anymore at that point; he has become a normal kid who belongs to and wishes for a peaceful world. So yeah, very important moment here.

It really makes me wonder why anyone thought the loaded stare of ep. 47 was enough.

Even more so because here Heero finally fulfills the promise he made Relena back in Cinq: he bids her farewell before leaving. Back in Cinq, and frankly, in all their previous interactions, Heero would just up and leave without a word. It started in episode 6, it happened in 10 and again in Cinq when he went on the suicide mission to Luxembourg. And Relena didn’t even ask anything special of him. She just wanted him to let her know when he’d leave. She didn’t demand a reason, she didn’t want to give him permission, it was just a simple goodbye she wanted.

Yet, Heero does all of the above when they talk. He tells her why he leaves to fight, he asks her to let him go and when she refuses, thinking he is intending to kill himself again for the billionth time, Heero shines even more light on his character development by telling her to believe in him. He isn’t trying to die on the battlefield.

Heero pushes Relena out of the cockpit at this point and gives her a look that honestly creeps me out a little even to this day, as the cockpit closes and he maneuvers Wing Zero into position to take off. Relena, placated by his plea and stare, says the she does believe in him.

And then, because he may not plan to die but is prepared to do so nonetheless if it can bring peace, he actually holds up his end of the promise and tells her that which she previously wished to hear. And it’s wonderful, because he really shouldn’t have.

See, at this point Relena has witnessed and heard of seven attempts and brushes with death of Heero’s. On the beach, at the harbor, falling down the side of the hospital, blowing himself up with his Gundam, asking the Noventas to kill him, nearly getting slaughtered by Zechs and then later by the mobile dolls in Luxembourg, this girl has seen a lot with him. So it’s a very reasonable assumption of hers to think he would do the same thing again here and throw his life away. Which is why Heero has to assure her that’s not his intention.

But because he knows the risks, he knows this might be the last time they talk, so he kinda chickens out a bit there after that bold “believe in me” and bids her farewell nonetheless, just to be on the safe side, I assume. Because he later also tells her not to worry over him since his life isn’t worth much anyway.

And while getting her wish of hearing a goodbye should normally make her happy, Relena freaks here. Here he is, a friend she has known for a long time and who means a lot to her, as he was what gave her the strength to carry on after her father died, sounding like he isn’t going to return. And Relena is heartbroken because Heero is important to her. The parallels to her father show us how much Heero’s death would affect her.

Her crying out Heero’s name in that agonized manner isn’t meant to be taken romantically. This is a girl fearing her friend will die.

I really love this entire scene because it not only gives us heaps of character development and normal human interaction, which those two sorely lack, it also brings a bunch of stuff full circle, illustrates their personalities well and makes for another interesting break from traditions.

What I mean with the last point is that normally (or at least in the 90s), the guy is all business when he has to go out and fight, being all stoically manly about it, while the woman will be emotional and initiate one final time of intimacy, and the guy may respond before going off to battle. I have this overblown image of Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Clint Eastwood type of flicks in my head. You know, the manly stuff.

And here we have Gundam Wing, where Relena doesn’t even care about herself or her feelings for him, but instead is only concerned about Heero’s well-being. Which is why I would have totally bought Relena’s feelings for Heero being purely platonic had Endless Waltz with that super tender caress not happened.

Which also portrays her natural selflessness, in contrast to Heero’s credo of living life acting on your emotions. And boy does he act. He is very much cranking up the romance here with how close he pulls her to him and how very tenderly he speaks to her. Ship it or not, it’s obvious here he likes her. Which in turn tints all their previous interactions.

Ikeda might have wanted a purely symbolic relationship between them, but the geniuses behind this episode ruined that. They gave us Heero displaying his feelings for her, which in turn made all that came before a massive slow burn of sorts.

Hah.

This is something I find highly amusing personally. If you removed the helmet scene and that caress from Endless Waltz, I wouldn’t see it. But those two scenes are enough to make me believe there are feelings there and it’s amazing to see how little it takes to make me change my mind. Then again, Gundam Wing is big on subtlety so this is practically on par with screaming it from the rooftops.

But still, thank you. Thank you writers for inserting this scene and generally giving us two amazing final episodes. You hit all the right marks in my book.

[ibijau]

Sometimes, you just get a random idea for a thing that demands to be written, so... here’s a no-Sunshot-Campaign AU where the Wens are still the worst, but in a different way :)

warning for character death, implied sexual abuse, and some descriptions of a corpse

It's not the most interesting Night Hunt they've been on, but Nie Mingjue is always glad when Lan Xichen makes time to spend time with him. It was hard for a while to be around each other, but they're starting to move on at last. All they have to do is avoid one certain topic, and things are fine. 

And so they are walking together in that forest, keeping within reasonable distance of the road that traverses it. Nie Mingjue had heard reports of terrible monsters, but so far they've found nothing but a few fierces corpses. If he had known, Nie Mingjue would have brought juniors instead of bothering Lan Xichen with this. He did hesitate after all, unsure how his friend would feel about getting so close to Qishan Wen's territory. In the end, Lan Xichen seems fine. It's been over four years, after all. 

Still, as they get closer to the border, it's Nie Mingjue himself who gets uncomfortable. He's about to suggest they head back and let the Wens deal with whatever is on their side of the forest when they hear a desperate cry coming from further away. 

The voice, unmistakably, is that of a child. 

Without so much as sharing a glance, Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen rush ahead, running among the trees until they find the source of that shout. 

There is, in fact, a child. A toddler really, clinging tightly to a teenager in clothes too light for the weather. The older boy has a sword in hand which he seems ill at ease with, pointed at a large group of fierce corpses. He seems to have managed to dispatch a few already, but he's struggling, too frail for a fight like that, especially while protecting the little boy in his arms. 

The teenager is panting, breathing hard, but when one of the corpses comes closer he attacks without hesitation. 

Without skill as well. Whoever taught that kid to hold a sword did a terrible job of it. His movements are wrong for the weapon in his hand, though his posture isn't awful, meaning he does have some training. That boy is dreadful at fighting, and yet there's real skill to his movements, something almost familiar. He manages, somehow, to decapitate the fierce corpse, but loses his balance and falls, angling his body so the toddler in his arms won't be hurt. 

The child cries again, while in Nie Mingjue's hand Baxia nearly vibrates with rage. 

Even if they have to be careful not to hit the two children, Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen effortlessly dispatch the fierce corpses and purify them before turning their attention to that odd duo they rescued. 

And they are odd indeed. The teenager's clothes aren't just too light for the middle of fall, they are spun in delicate silk and beautifully embroidered. His hair is disheveled from the fight but still retains elegant gold decorations shaped like the sun, like Wen concubines usually sport. This would explain the Wen sword in his hand, but only partly. The Wens don't usually let their concubines Night Hunt, or cultivate at all unless they are particularly beloved. 

Still curled up around the toddler, his eyes closed and panting hard, the boy flinches when Lan Xichen kneels next to him to check on him. 

"It's fine, you're safe now," Lan Xichen says gently. "They can't hurt you anymore." 

The boy's eyes snap open, and he stares at Lan Xichen like a poet stares at the moon. It's not an unusual reaction to seeing the First Jade of Gusu Lan, but something about it rubs Nie Mingjue the wrong way, especially when the boy's eyes turn to him and he gets so overwhelmed he starts crying. 

"I made it," he sobs, holding the toddler closer against his chest. "I made it, I made it!" 

Surprised as well by that reaction, but getting suspicious as to the reason behind it, Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue exchange a glance. If it is what they think, it's lucky it's only the two of them. The more people know, the harder it is to deal with these situations. 

"Did you come here all the way from Qishan?" Lan Xichen asks, with all the gentleness he's capable of. "From the palace?" 

The boy flinches again and sits up, pulling the toddler in his lap. There's a calculating air to him, but that's to be expected. He wouldn't have made it this far if he weren't careful. 

"My name is…" the boy starts, before stopping to look at both of them, his face turning harder. "My name is Mo Xuanyu," he says slowly, almost like he reciting a lesson. "My father gave me as a concubine to Wen Chao. The little boy is Wen Yuan. His mother was another concubine of Wen Chao. I think she's dead now. I hope she's dead." 

His arms tighten around the toddler who cries out in protest but doesn't try to escape. 

"Why do you think she's dead?" Lan Xichen asks, his voice perfectly steady even after hearing that name, while Nie Mingjue kneels next to him.

“You have to promise you’ll help us,” Mo Xuanyu retorts. “That you’ll help him at least,” he corrects, petting Wen Yuan’s hair. “If they find us, we’re dead. I don’t care. Dying isn’t that scary. But A-Yuan is just a baby, and his mother stayed behind so I’d have a better chance of taking him to safety, so I have to repay her. Take him at least, Nie zongzhu.”

Nie Mingjue frowns, wondering briefly how that boy recognises him. He’s dressed as simply as a regular Nie disciple, never seeing the point of bothering with regalia when he’s just Night Hunting with a friend. Before he can ask though, Mo Xuanyu tears little Wen Yuan from where he’s clinging to him and pushes him into Lan Xichen’s arms. The toddler cries of course, and reaches out for the older boy.

“It’s fine, Lan gongzi is a good person,” Mo Xuanyu says, tenderly petting the child’s hair with a gesture that makes Nie Mingjue’s heart clench. “It’s okay. You can trust him. He’ll take care of you. And Nie zongzhu will help us as well.”

Nie Mingjue will help indeed.

He would have helped anyway, but he sees the way Mo Xuanyu is petting that little boy’s hair and it makes him nearly sick with a sorrow he thought he’d learned to control.

It also just makes him sick in general. Mo Xuanyu can’t be much older than seventeen. If he has met Nie Huaisang, then he must have been no more than twelve or thirteen when he was taken in Qishan. It’s frightfully young, even by Wen Chao’s standards. Or did that gesture get passed down among unlucky concubines, just as Nie Mingjue did for his brother what his mother did for him when he was young?

It should bring him comfort, that something of Nie Huaisang managed to survive, that he left a trace even after what happened.

“There, you’re going to be good now,” Mo Xuanyu tells Wen Yuan when the toddler calms down, unable to resist the combination of that caress and Lan Xichen’s aura. “Everything is going to be fine, you’re safe now, A-Yuan. I’m done fulfilling my part of the deal now.”

“The deal?” Nie Mingjue repeats.

“With… with his mother, and someone else,” Mo Xuanyu explains, distractedly touching his forearm. “One half of it was to take A-Yuan to safety. That was his mother’s price with helping.”

“And the other half?” 

The boy, Mo Xuanyu, smiles. 

Nie Mingjue shudders. 

"I killed Wen Chao," Mo Xuanyu announces, his eyes shining feverishly. “Slit his throat. He choked on his own blood, exactly as he deserved. It took him for ever and I watched the entire time,” he adds, his expression nearly blissful.

Nie Mingjue freezes. He feels, distantly, that Lan Xichen has grabbed his arm and is holding too tight. 

He remembers. 

They both do, no matter how badly they want to forget.

Nie Huaisang’s body, already starting to rot, scavenged by foxes, his throat slit so deep his head rolled when they tried to move him. He’d been gone for months, not a trace to be found until anonymous messages came to Qinghe, telling Nie Mingjue that Wen Chao had a new concubine, one who had arrived to Nightless City right as Nie Huaisang disappeared, one who nobody was allowed to see. The message had urged Nie Mingjue to act fast.

He hadn’t been fast enough.

Just as Lan Xichen and him were preparing to storm Nightless City to get Nie Huaisang back, they’d been told about that body near Caiyi Town.

Near the last place anyone had seen Nie Huaisang.

An accident, everyone said. A robbery gone wrong maybe, the fishermen who found the corpse said. There were bandits in the area and Nie Huaisang was never the strongest of cultivators.

A sure way to get rid of an inconvenient witness, some whispered. Wen Chao had picked the wrong person to steal away this time, and his father had dealt with the problem to protect his son.

Or perhaps it had been Wen Chao himself. One of his discarded concubines, who had managed to escape, said that one of them had tried to kill him, once, and got so near to it that he’d managed to leave a scar on Wen Chao. Nie Mingjue liked to imagine it had been his brother. Nie Huaisang wasn’t much of a cultivator, but he was a Nie, and he wouldn’t have gone without a fight… or so Nie Mingjue told himself.

He had to find comfort somewhere.

Right now, he finds that comfort in a tender gesture that Mo Xuanyu must have learned somewhere, and in the knowledge that his brother was avenged by a boy hardly older or stronger than Nie Huaisang was.

A boy who can’t be allowed to fall in Wen hands.

Death isn’t the worst thing that Wen Ruohan will do to him if he really murdered his favourite son.

“Can you fly on that sword?” Nie Mingjue asks.

Mo Xuanyu gives his blade an appraising look, and grimaces.

“Badly. Slowly. I don’t have a golden core. But I can do it, yes.”

“That won’t be enough. You’ll fly with me.”

It’s something Nie Mingjue normally avoids, because Baxia doesn’t like to deal with strangers. She’s usually angry when she’s made to carry anyone, except Nie Huaisang who she tolerated with the same sort of feigned reluctance that Nie Mingjue used to show toward his brother’s antics. 

Today she tolerates Mo Xuanyu with surprising ease as well. She must feel Nie Mingjue’s gratitude toward this nothing of a boy who did what they couldn’t do.

Wen Chao is dead, and Nie Mingjue will protect his murderer, the way he failed to protect his brother.

[let-the-dream-begin]

In My Daughter’s Eyes Chapter 6: End of the Rope

Chapter 5

Read on AO3

Claire was supposed to be looking at charts on the computer in front of her, and she would, of course, right after she finished checking her phone for any messages from Mrs. Lickett.

“Beauchamp!”

Fuck.

“That’s the third time I’ve caught you on your phone. You trying to get fired on your first day?” 

Her supervisor, Doctor Moore, was the most Nurse Ratched type Claire had ever seen in real life: tyrannical and unforgiving. The only difference was the grating nasality of her thick Long Island accent. Claire opened her mouth to defend herself, for the third time, but Ratched cut her off.

“Plenty of other doctors have kids at home, Doctor Beauchamp. Do you see any of the rest of them with their heads buried in their phones like teenagers?”

Claire could feel the tips of her ears growing hot with rage, but she swallowed it down and answered as levelly as possible: “No, Doctor Moore.”

“Get going. Your team is waiting for you.”

Claire exhaled heavily as soon as the tight-faced woman bustled out of the room, clenching her teeth to avoid outwardly groaning.

“The Ratched already on your nerves?”

Claire practically jumped out of her skin. She turned in the swiveling chair to see a kind-faced black man about her age, perhaps a bit older, smiling at her. He was sitting at a computer as well, craning his neck around to look at her. His eyes were dark, but soft.

“Did you read my bloody mind?” Claire stammered, still slightly alarmed.

He gave a short, barking laugh. “Seems I did. Everyone calls her that. Not to her face, mind you.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” Claire’s eyes widened at the thought of doing so.

“I’m Joe, Joe Abernathy.” He stood and crossed the room to shake her hand.

“Claire Beauchamp,” Claire returned, taking his hand.

He chuckled as he returned his hand to his side.

“What?” Claire said, face scrunching in suspicion.

“Just thinking about you asking if I read your bloody mind,” he said, flashing his teeth in a wide grin. “I heard you were English, but to hear it is another thing.”

Claire rolled her eyes, though she couldn't suppress her own smile as she turned back to the computer to complete her given task.

“Kids at home, huh?” His tone was sympathetic, having heard Doctor Moore’s reaming out of Claire.

“Just one,” Claire said. “I’m quite aware there are other parents here,” she continued hotly, though her anger was not directed at the man standing before her. “But I’d like to know how many of them are single parents of a daughter with special needs.”

Joe nodded in quiet understanding. “That must be tough, leaving her all day.”

Claire nodded, fighting the urge to check her phone again. “I’ve never left her alone with a babysitter this long. When I was in school I was still married, so she wasn’t ever alone for too long even though her father was a professor. After the move and the new schedules…I’m just worried.” All the while, Claire kept her eyes on the screen, scanning over charts and making mental notes. “The woman’s a marvel; I wouldn’t have hired her if she wasn’t. I just can’t help it. She’s nonverbal, my daughter. Autism.”

“Ah.” Joe nodded. “Gotcha.”

“So I just keep waiting for a call that she’s having a meltdown and that even the all-knowing, licensed professional can’t calm her down because she can’t tell her what’s wrong.” Claire shook her head, sighing. “It’s silly, I know.”

“Nah, not at all.” Joe shrugged, keeping his tone casual, but his eyes still shone with sympathy.

“Christ, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to unload my whole life story on you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I get it. I’ve never personally known anyone with autism, but you see it come in and out of the hospital often enough. It’s scary as hell when there’s something wrong and they can’t tell you, even the verbal ones sometimes.”

“Right.”

“I didn’t mean to make you worry more,” he said quickly. “I’m sure everything is just fine. All I’m saying is I get why you’re worried. And Ratched sure as hell doesn’t. I’d like to tell her to kiss my ass.”

Claire chuckled through her nose, taking note of one more thing on the computer before turning to smile up at him.

“Thanks, Doctor Abernathy.”

“Please, none of that in private.” He waved her off. “Just Joe when there are no patients.”

“Alright, then.” Claire logged off the computer and gathered her things. “Thanks, Joe.”

“No problem. Good luck out there, Lady Jane.”

She paused in the doorway. “What was that?”

He grinned. “One of the other residents called you that. Said your accent sounds like you just had tea with the queen.” He held up his hands, pantomiming holding a teacup and saucer, sticking his pinky out.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.” Claire laughed, rolling her eyes as she wrenched the door open.

“Toodle-pip, my lady!” She heard him call behind her.

Christ, was she doomed to have nicknames thrown at her reminding her of her Englishness for all eternity?

Her heart warmed at the thought of that soft Scottish burr saying Sassenach, and more laughter bubbled in her chest at the thought of her newest title.

She supposed she didn’t mind.

——

Claire was dead on her feet by the time eight o’clock rolled around. She briefly glanced back at the hospital in her rear-view mirror as she pulled away, and despite how her head and feet throbbed, she was thrilled at the prospect of every day being like this one.

When she’d done her research on specialities back in the days before med school, she’d read of the unpredictability of Emergency Medicine, of never knowing what kinds of emergencies would burst through the doors at any given moment. The prospect had thrilled her then, and experiencing it first-hand now was even more thrilling. Today alone, she’d saved a man’s finger after a cooking knife incident, put a shoulder back in place, stopped a head wound from bleeding long enough to see the patient into a successful surgery, and saved a pregnant woman and the baby after trauma-induced labor from a car accident.

It was quite a heady feeling.

Despite the thrill, however, there was nothing Claire craved more than the sight of her little girl’s face, the sound of her happy humming to see that Mummy was home.

The whole day had gone by without a hitch, unless Mrs. Lickett was hiding something from her. The only updates she’d gotten were positive ones, prompted by Claire’s frantic “is everything ok??” texts.

Claire had washed up and changed out of her scrubs at the hospital so that she could spend whatever little time was left before Faith’s bedtime with her on the couch, and then she could fully shower and decompress once Faith was asleep.

Claire turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door, but before she could take a single step into the living room, a little body was plastered against her legs, wrapping itself tightly around her.

“Hello, baby!” Claire cried out joyously as a buzz of humming filled her ears. “Oh, Mummy missed you so much!” She pried her daughter off her legs and scooped her into her arms, dropping her bag on the porch. Claire held her close, kissing her cheek.

Faith nuzzled her face into Claire’s, rubbing her mother’s cheeks as their foreheads rested together.

“Hello love,” Claire whispered, rocking her gently in the doorway. “I missed you, too, baby. Yes, hello.”

Claire gradually moved them into the apartment, kicking her bag inside and nudging the door shut with her knee.

“Hello, Mrs. Lickett,” Claire said, struggling to meet her eye around Faith’s pawing of her face.

The older woman was smiling warmly. “Hello, Miss Beauchamp.”

“Everything was alright today, then?”

“Sure was,” Mrs. Lickett said. “Faith was a very good girl, right Faith?”

“Is that right, lovie? Were you a good girl for Mrs. Lickett?” Claire shifted her onto one hip and bounced her, eliciting a few giggles. A glance at the telly told her that Finding Nemo was nearing its end; Mrs. Lickett had paused it upon Claire’s arrival.

“How was the first day at the hospital?” Mrs. Lickett said, gathering her things.

“It was…a lot. But good, very good.” Claire crashed on the couch with Faith, trying to settle her and failing. Faith very firmly insisted on remaining in Claire’s lap. “I did miss her very much, though. It’s been a while since I’ve been away from her for so long.” She wrapped her arms around her and pressed a tender kiss to the crown of her head.

“I understand. I could tell she missed you, too, but I kept her pretty busy.”

“I appreciate that.”

“We started some basic signs today,” Mrs. Lickett beamed. “Might be a while before it registers, but at least she knows now. The more you start using them around her, the better.”

“Right.” Claire nodded. “I’ve been watching those videos you sent me every night.”

“That’s good.”

Faith made a rather indignant noise, pointing toward the telly.

“Somebody wants to get back to her movie,” Mrs. Lickett said.

“Right.” Claire forced a smile. She wanted to stop her from leaving, to sit down at the table and spend the entire night talking about every minute of the entire day, every little accomplishment, everything Faith was learning. But she supposed if she wanted that much involvement, she’d be home with them herself instead of pursuing a career as a full-time physician.

Jesus, Beauchamp. You sound like Frank.

Shuddering at the thought, Claire adjusted Faith so she could watch Mrs. Lickett go. “I’d see you out, but I’m a bit pinned down at the moment.” She gestured with her head to Faith, sitting in her lap and locking her grip on Claire’s arms around her.

“No problem. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Say goodnight, Faith,” Claire said, releasing an arm so she could wave to the woman. Faith mimicked her, waving emphatically as Mrs. Lickett shut the door behind her. The second she was gone, Faith groaned again at the telly, and Claire smiled.

“Alright, be patient.” Claire reached for the remote on the coffee table. “I’m quite eager to see if Nemo escapes to the ocean, as well.”

Claire, of course, had the movie memorized, along with the rest of the DVDs in their vast collection. Perhaps it was Faith rubbing off on her, but she didn’t think she’d ever tire of watching them over and over again, especially not if it meant she would always get to spend this time cradling her little girl.

When the movie ended about fifteen minutes later, Faith slipped out of Claire’s lap and waited expectantly by the DVD player. Normally, Faith liked to listen to the music during the ending credits, so Claire didn’t make any moves to take the disc out yet. Only when Faith grunted and started tugging on Claire’s hand did she get the message.

“No music tonight, darling?” she said, puzzled, as she removed the disc and handed the box to Faith to file away. She was buzzing with excitement. Something was up, and Claire was none the wiser. The very second the DVD was away, Faith bolted into her bedroom, leaving Claire bewildered. She’d only just started to get up when Faith returned, holding a pile of colorful paper in her hands.

“What’s this, now?” Claire’s face lit up at the sight of Faith’s toothy grin, holding up the construction paper. Claire could see they were cut into the shape of little fish, and they were plastered with glitter, pompoms, google-eyes, and marker.

“Did you make these, Faith? Did you make these little fishies?” Faith hummed loudly and jumped up and down. “Oh, they’re marvelous, darling! You’re quite the little artist!”

Claire perused every single colorful fish, and she made a note to thank Mrs. Lickett. Arts and crafts were something Claire had never been into as a child herself, and something she didn’t have the time or the creative mind to think of. It was obvious now that Faith adored creating, and Claire wanted to smack herself upside the head for not thinking of it sooner. God bless that Mrs. Lickett.

“No wonder we watched Nemo tonight, hm? Are these Nemo’s little friends, then?” Claire held up a bright pink paper fish and swam it around in the air, much to Faith’s delight. Faith joined in the little game, and though Claire knew that bedtime was rapidly approaching — for both of them — she couldn’t bring herself to stop.

After a few minutes, Claire led Faith into the kitchen so they could use magnets to put the fish on the fridge. Claire let her arrange them to her heart’s content, only leading her into the bathroom when she was satisfied.

Teeth brushed, pajamas donned, Faith tucked in, and nightlight on, Claire finally allowed herself to fully feel the exhaustion of her day. The adrenaline of seeing Faith had kept her wide awake on the drive home, and then actually being with her had chased away any thoughts of sleepiness. Now, she barely had the energy to prepare a shower, and she very well almost crashed into bed, fully dressed. It was sheer willpower that finally got her back into the bathroom. This reminded her that tomorrow was bath night for Faith, and she sent up a brief prayer that she would cooperate for Mrs. Lickett. She’d considered waiting until she got home and just taking her into the shower with her, but that would have interrupted the movie, and God forbid that should happen. But if she’d waited until the movie was over, it would have been too late, and the routine would be disrupted. No, it had to be Mrs. Lickett.

Washed and dressed for bed, Claire was wide awake, despite how weariness was etched into every muscle and bone in her body. She could not stop thinking about all of the silly little things that could go wrong while she was occupied at the hospital, of all the possible triggers for a meltdown that she would not be able to stop. No matter how well today had gone, no matter how wonderful Mrs. Lickett was, she’d never stop worrying. Maybe not never, but it would certainly be a long time. At some point in her fevered, internal ramblings, Claire teetered into oblivion, grateful for whatever sleep she was lucky enough to get before her alarm screamed again.

——

Claire drove home the following Friday, her knuckles white on the steering wheel and her vision blurred with tears. She’d been so damn grateful to clock out at four o’clock, and she’d barely made it out of the locker room without falling apart in front of Joe.

She lost a patient for the first time today. Paul Castano, forty-seven, much too young for the heart attack that killed him.

Claire had been beside herself, and Joe had soothed her, told her there was nothing she could have done.

“Go home and hug your daughter, Lady Jane,” he’d said. “Enjoy the horses. You need it as much as she does right now.”

And, Christ, did she.

Claire hugged Faith just a little too hard for the slightest bit too long when she got home after nearly bursting into tears at Faith’s joy to see her. Faith did not tolerate being held as such for very long, and she squirmed out of Claire’s grasp. Today, not only was Faith happy to see her mother, she was excited: she knew it was horse therapy day.

Seeing Faith so happy to see her and so excited to get to the stables was a welcome distraction from the anguish Claire was feeling. The drive over to the stables was calming as well, though Claire was now paranoid about the change in appointment times. Toni hadn’t called her at all, so she had no reason to believe that the switch hadn’t gone over well. She supposed after the day she’d had, she’d be prone to overthinking just about anything.

Upon arrival, she calmed considerably at seeing Faith’s exuberance, and even laughed when she began tugging on her hand, willing them to get inside faster.

Leave it to you to get me laughing on the worst of days, Faith.

The door to the visitor’s center opened, and Faith began humming loudly.

“There they are, the Beauchamp girls!” Toni greeted warmly.

“Hello, Toni. Say hello to Miss Toni, Faith.”

“Hello, Faith!” Toni called as Faith waved timidly.

Erica was standing by the counter, and she crouched down to greet Faith. “Hello, Princess. I’m so happy to see you again!”

Faith smiled shyly and hid half of her little body behind her mother’s legs.

“I’m gonna take you guys out to the stable today, get her started with the hellos and leading her to the riding hall.” Erica stood up to address Claire. “Jamie will join us when we get there.”

“Alright,” Claire said, exhaling deeply. “Shall we?”

——

Joe had been right. Claire needed that hour at the stables just as much as Faith had. As they were driving home, Claire felt something resembling peace settle in her heart. Faith was humming happily, kicking her legs, waving the newest Minion Happy Meal toy in the air.

She did very well again today. She was gentle with Pippi, she didn’t protest about the helmet, she was attentive to both Erica and Jamie. Claire kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to go terribly wrong, but it just never did. Not at the stables, at least.

They arrived home, Faith zipping up the stairs to the front door as usual. Claire was grateful to get to watch an entire movie with Faith tonight, to decompress, to hold her little girl and be soothed by her oblivious, youthful happiness. When they passed through the front door, Claire dumped the contents of her arms onto the couch as usual and started toward the kitchen, but Faith did not follow. 

“Faithie, come on! Don’t you want your chicken?”

Faith didn’t seem to hear her. She lifted Claire’s purse and looked underneath, and then let out a groan.

“What’s the matter darling?”

Faith made a beeline for the front door, and Claire sprinted to lock it, having forgotten to do so upon arriving home.

“No, no, no,” she quickly blocked Faith’s exit. “What are you doing, Faith? What’s wrong?”

Faith began whining and pawing at Claire, hitting her thighs.

“Do not hit, Faith.” Claire crouched down and grabbed her wrists. “What is wrong? Hm? Hungry? Tired? Pain?” She did the signs that she’d learned from the videos Mrs. Lickett had sent. “Can you sign for Mummy? What’s wrong?”

Of course, she couldn’t. It was much too soon for Faith to be carrying out conversation; she’d only just learned any signs at all.

Faith suddenly began wailing.

“Faith, baby, it’s alright, I’m here…” She wrapped her in her arms, but it only lasted for a moment. Faith clawed her way out and began pounding on the door. 

What could possibly be wrong? What was she looking for on the couch…?

Then it dawned on her.

Horsie.

She hadn’t checked to see if Faith was holding the stuffed horse before they left the stables.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

“Oh, darling, it’s alright!” She stroked her head and tried cupping her cheeks. “Can you look at my eyes, Faith? Faith…it’s alright. We’ll get Horsie back next week. He’ll be alright.”

She was inconsolable.

Claire exhaled heavily and stood up to retrieve the Happy Meal from the coffee table.

“Aren’t you hungry, darling? McDonald’s! Your favorite!” She held the box in front of Faith’s eyes. “Come on, lovie, let’s go eat.”

She reached to grab her hand, but Faith shrieked and pulled back, apparently having no intention of eating a thing until Horsie was returned. She’d be quite hungry by next Friday.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ…” Claire threw the Happy Meal back on the coffee table and ran a hand through her hair.

She needs to eat dinner. I have to make this stop. There has to be something…

“Do you want to watch a movie, lovie? How about Frozen?”

Claire scrambled to get the DVD in, holding her breath until the movie started, praying that she’d be drawn to the screen and sit down to watch quietly, and then she could gradually coax her to eat on the couch.

But she just continued wailing.

Claire knew full well once a meltdown was in motion it had to run its course. And this particular meltdown would not run its course until the missing object in question was found.

But she can’t not eat, she can’t not sleep…

Claire didn’t realize she started crying until it was too late.

It was just too much. She’d held a man’s hand today while he died before her eyes, and then hugged his inconsolable wife while she came to terms with having to tell her children their father wasn’t coming home. And then Claire had come home and sought comfort in her own child, and she’d gotten a bit, but of course it didn’t last long.

She knew by the time she drove back, the stable would be closed, so she could not go and pick it up. She tried calling the stable, but no one answered. Apparently, everyone had already gone home.

Faith gave a particularly loud shriek, and Claire felt all her nerves go shot one by one. Hands trembling she scrolled through her phone for something, anything.

Jamie.

Toni had provided her the stable number, her own number, and Jamie’s number in case the main phone was busy. He’d mentioned that he and the other therapists took turns staying after closing to see to the horses. She threw up a quick prayer before clicking on his contact to start a phone call. Even if he wasn’t the one that had stayed today, perhaps he could tell her who had and give her their number?

As the line rang, she felt surges of panic go through her. Was this even appropriate? To be contacting his personal cell number for something that wasn’t really an emergency?

Faith started pounding on the front door again, screaming her head off all the while.

Claire suddenly didn’t given a fuck about what was appropriate.

——

Jamie was sitting at his kitchen table, enjoying the stir fry he’d made for himself and his usual glass of whisky. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he made a note to check his texts later, but then it kept buzzing. Somebody was calling him.

Curious, he pulled out his phone and saw a number he didn’t recognize.

“Bloody telemarketers,” was his first thought, but the area code was local. Eyes narrowing in curiosity, he swiped up to accept the call, setting his fork down.

"Hallo? Who's this?"

"Uh...hi, Jamie. It's Claire. Claire Beauchamp. From the stables.”

Jamie felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

"Oh...Oh! Uh, hello, Claire. What's uh...what's going on?"

Someone on the other end shrieked, and his stomach lurched.

"Is that Faith? Is she alright?"

"Yes, she's perfectly fine. Physically, at least. She left her horse at the stable, the stuffed one. She's absolutely beside herself and she won't stop crying. Nothing is calming her down, none of her other toys, not putting on a movie or music, not even food.”

Jamie felt his chest tighten. Her voice sounded strained, and she seemed completely frazzled. The second he’d laid eyes on her at the stable today he could tell that something was wrong. It wasn’t the usual sadness he saw in her eyes, it was something different, something visceral. Whatever was happening now was certainly not helping.

“She won't eat, and I know she won't sleep either. I called you because no one was picking up at the stable and I was hoping you'd still be there but just not near the phone?"

"Yeah, I'm still here. Just in the stable. Canna hear the phone," he answered without thinking. What the damned hell are ye doing, lad?

"Oh, thank Christ. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

"No," he said quickly. "I'll, uh, I'll bring it to ye."

"What...?"

"Wouldna do fer ye to be drivin' wi' Faith as she is now." Though Jamie was making things up to cover the fact that he was already home, he wasn't entirely wrong. Even if he was at the stable, he wouldn't feel comfortable with Claire driving twenty minutes with a screaming bairn. "Wouldna be safe.”

"But...it's...are you sure...? You wouldn't get in trouble?"

"Nah. I'm sure other therapists have done the same fer some o' their kids." 

Keep digging, James.

"But you haven't done it before?"

"No."

"But others have?"

"Aye." Liar.

"Alright...as long as you're sure it's not inappropriate."

"Only inappropriate if we make it so, Sassenach."

Why the bloody fuck did I say that?

Claire cleared her throat. “Right. So…you’ve got my address from Faith’s file?”

“Aye.”

“So...twenty minutes? Half hour?"

"Aye. Just about."

Idiot. Bloody feckin’ idiot.

"Alright. See you soon."

"Bye, then."

Jamie hung up, threw his phone on the table and slapped an exasperated hand over his face.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What is wrong wi’ ye?”

[cavalierious-whim]

Whelp (FE3H)

Sylvix | Pre-Game | Canon-Compliant AU | Teen

It’s long been said that a Gautier who graces the battlefield is Death incarnate. But Sylvain's not just a wolf, he's also a boy, and all he wants to do is enjoy his youth.

----

A/N: So let's consider this: Crests aren't a boon, they're a curse. What's it like to live with that? This is the first in a collection of stories called 'Of Crests and Curses'. The storyline is that of the game, which is why I've tagged it Canon-Compliant AU. Read here on AO3 for better quality! And follow mere here on Twitter.

----

It’s long been said that a Gautier who graces the battlefield is Death incarnate.

A boon, gifted to the bloodline by the Goddess. Nearly feral with rage and born to ravage the battlefield as beasts, the Gautier family see themselves as harbingers of death: if you meet one in battle, then you’ve met your end.

Time wears on and views change. The Gautier blessing is now a blessing only to their own. The rest of the world whispers of a curse instead, carefully concealed behind titles and lordship. Those who carry the burden are nothing but beasts, bred to bring death and destruction upon their foes, relishing it.

The Margrave Philippe Alexandre Gautier has a reputation to uphold. He’d done his duty for King Lambert, loping across enemy lines and battlefronts, and then later, he’d held the North against Sreng. He still holds the North against Sreng.

But, Philippe’s reign of terror is regrettably over; his bones ache a little bit more with every shift, and his nose isn’t good for much nowadays.

Miklan is a disaster. He’s got the bloodlust required of a Gautier but no crest to match it. Phillipe frowns at the mere thought. It’s a pity. Gautier men need that bloodlust, they thrive on it, but the beast is also required to temper it. When left alone, it’s more like gunpowder, prone to exploding when you least expect it. A careful balance is required.

There’s a scream from the other room and his head snaps up, fighting the instinctual urge to go be with his mate. Not quite a man and not quite a wolf, but that deep-seated connection thrums through his heart. The midwife won’t let him in and he does his best to maintain hope.

And so, Phillipe waits, pacing the long corridor of the Gautier fortress. Even in the summer months, Gautier can be frigid, the bitter cold seeping deep into the stones of his home.

Eventually, the screaming stops. The midwife opens the door and Philippe slips in quietly. There isn’t any crying, but his wife doesn’t look distressed. She holds a bundle close to her, her face tired and red and sweating.

When Philippe peeks into the folds of the blanket, he sees fur, wet and sticky, a deep auburn red.

“A crest,” says Philippe to his wife. “Our--” He pauses and waits, looking back to her, his tongue-tied.

“Son,” says his wife, her voice raspy from hours of crying out. “Our son has a crest.”

Pride swells within Philippe as he takes the bundle from her breast. Their son is a small thing, his eyes still closed. His maw is wide open, pink, and toothless gums on display. He’s the most beautiful thing that Philippe has ever seen.

But more importantly, he’s the most useful.

“There are big plans for you,” Philippe says, petting the downy fur at the crown of his son’s head. “Big plans indeed, my precious Sylvain.” Philippe pulls the boy closer so his son can learn his scent.

Yes, incredibly useful indeed.

#

If there’s one thing that Sylvain Jose Gautier can’t resist, it’s a good tail wag.

Well, that’s a lie. He also loves a really good smell, the kind that sticks in your nose all day. Or a really good cut of steak, tender and juicy and more on the raw side than not. Okay, so, there’s a lot of things that Sylvain loves and it’s too hard to pick just one, so he’ll try to enjoy them all, he thinks.

Fraldarius Manor isn’t as large as his home, but it’s busier. Servants bustle to and fro, guards stand here and there, and there’s a massive assortment of sights and smells and noises and--

Sylvain knows that he shouldn’t get ahead of himself, but his foot twitches, ready to explore. Small as the manor is when compared to the Gautier Fortress, there’s not a doubt in his mind that it holds more secrets than he could ever sniff out. He’s excited to try.

There’s just one problem.

Before Sylvain can even turn to him, his father reaches out and grabs the back of his neck firmly. He doesn’t have a scruff in his human form, so Sylvain winces. Not painful but it doesn’t feel great, and Sylvain resists the urge to wiggle out of his father’s grasp like a slippery little snake.

“Sylvain,” says his father in a hiss. “Quit your fidgeting.”

Sylvian whines in response, but it only causes his father to grip a little bit harder. He’s not angry, Sylvain thinks. It’s just a warning, Sylvain tells himself. Sylvain doesn’t get very many warnings.

“Duke Fraldarius is meeting us here at the entrance and he’s bringing his sons. Be on your best behavior.”

“I don’t want to meet his sons,” says Sylvain, lips pulling into a terse frown. He wants to sniff out things, to explore, to get stuck in tight little places. He’s got a sense of adventure that itches to be scratched, nearly as bad as that one time he’d gotten fleas as a toddler.

“You will,” says his father, his grip pinching. Sylvain doesn’t whine this time, his mouth snaps shut in a grimace. It’s better to not show pain, to just put on a brave face and bear it. Finally, his father lets go with a sigh. “There’s plenty of time to satisfy your curiosity later on. Until then, behave. We are Gautiers. Act like one.”

Act like one. Sylvain huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. Familiar words that he’s tired of hearing. Sometimes, Sylvain feels as though it’s the only thing that his father knows how to say. Gautier, this, Gautier that. Gautier boys are expected to hold the north and strike down their enemies.

Gautier boys are expected to do a lot of things that Sylvain has no interest in.

He doesn’t want to strike down any enemies, he wants to find that delicious grilled meat whose smell is stuck in his nose. Besides, there aren’t any enemies here at Fraldarius Manor. His father has spoken at length about the Duke and his kin. The Fraldarius family has long since been framed as something to both admire and admonish; their loyalty to the crown is unmatched, but also their downfall.

“Watch them carefully and learn,” said his father one night. “Learn from their drive and then their folly, and combine that with our strength. You will be unstoppable, pup.”

Servants of the Fraldarius household watch him and his father warily, skirting around them with a wide breadth. Their guards aren’t nearly so feared, but then again, they aren’t wolves. Sylvain had once asked his father about it.

“They know what we are, and so, they fear us,” said his Father. “As they should.”

Sylvain doesn’t want to be feared but he’s got little control over it, so he makes do. He’s ten and has other things to worry about, like the way that mud squishes between his paws.

Duke Fraldarius takes his time to greet them, but eventually, the double front doors open wide. The duke is a rat-like looking man, with thick and wavy hair, but a thinning goatee. A tall, slightly gangly teenager treks behind him, and their group is rounded out by a boy who looks younger than Sylvain.

They all have wild, wavy dark hair, but the boys have theirs tied back and out of their faces. The older boy looks tired but stands alert, and the youngest hides behind him, grabbing onto his thighs as he sneaks a peek.

“Philippe,” says the Duke with familiarity. He steps forward and they clasp hands, and for the first time in years, Sylvain sees his father smile the slightest bit. They must be actual friends. Amusing. Sylvain has always thought his father had none.

“Rodrigue,” says Sylvain’s father. “Thank you for having us.”

“Nonsense,” says the Duke. “There’s more than enough room and coming here is easier than traveling to the palace.”

Sylvain’s father nods. “When does his Royal Highness arrive?”

The Duke lets out an annoyed huff. “I have no idea. The King does as he wants, which includes showing up late.”

“So he’s late, then?” The Margrave laughs. “And Count Galatea?”

“Nearly here,” says the Duke. “The Count will be bringing Ingrid of course, to spend time with Glenn.”

Sylvain can’t help the face that he makes when he hears that. He’s never met Glenn or Ingrid, but his father has spoken of their betrothal before. Sylvain risks a glance at the older boy that stands before them. This must be Glenn. Sylvain’s not sure what he expected, but the somber-faced and weary teenager that stands there isn’t it.

He looks boring.

“How is the arrangement going?” asks the Margrave.

“Well, I would think.” There’s a pause as the Duke casts a glance in Sylvain’s direction. “I wish you luck in your efforts, of course.”

At his words, it’s as if his father finally remembers that Sylvain is there. He reaches out and presses his hand against Sylvain’s head, ruffling his hair. “I have no doubt,” says his father. “After all, Sylvain possesses a crest and good breeding.”

The Duke’s little smile twitches slightly at that, but then he nods in agreement. “Let’s lead you inside then and get you settled. We’ll talk about such things later. I’m sure you’d prefer some rest.”

“I’d prefer to explore,” says Sylvain before he can stop himself. His father’s smile slips and Sylvain can nearly smell the annoyance that radiates off of him.

The Duke, however, looks genuinely amused by this and before the Margrave can reprimand Sylvain, he says, “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

#

Glenn, as it turns out, isn’t boring at all.

The Duke had asked his sons to give Sylvain a proper tour of the place, but the moment that Rodrigue had turned his back, Glenn cocked his head to the side, gave Sylvain a wide smirk. “I bet that’s not what you want to do at all, is it?”

Sylvain likes to explore and Glenn likes to pull pranks and cause mischief. The two of them together are a hellish pair and they’ve barely begun their antics.

“So, what about your little brother?” asks Sylvain. They’re skirting around the eastern edge of the manner, Sylvain walking atop a parapet with Glenn following alongside below him.

“Felix?” asks Glenn. “What about him?”

“He’s not here?”

Glenn lets out a long and deep laugh straight from his belly. “Felix would never,” says Glenn. “Not unless Father made him. He’s too much of a crybaby.”

“A crybaby?” Sylvain then remembers how Felix had hidden behind Glenn’s legs. “How boring.”

“I pray to the Goddess every day that he’ll grow out of it,” says Glenn. “What’s the point of having a little brother if you can’t wreak havoc together?”

Sylvain can’t imagine. Glenn cares for Felix, something that Sylvain’s never seen in Miklan. Miklan only has curses and balled fists for Sylvain, and he’s learned the hard way that it’s easier to run and hide than try to play.

But then, Sylvain’s reminded of his father’s wish to befriend the boys. He opts to smile wide at Glenn and not think of Miklan. “I’m not your little brother, but I am younger than you.”

Glenn shoots him a smile back, but it’s a little more lopsided and a lot more conniving. “Want to go cause some mischief?”

“Not really,” says Sylvain, “I smelled some grilled meat earlier that I have to find.” He pauses, giving Glenn a knowing look. “But you know, if you want to cause some problems on the way there, I won’t say anything.”

Glenn reaches out to nudge his cheek affectionately. “I knew that I liked you the moment I saw you. Come on then; I’ll show you where Meryl’s stall is.”

“Meryl?” asks Sylvain.

“Meryl,” confirms Glenn. “Only the best cook in this entire complex. No doubt it’s her food that you caught a whiff of.”

Glenn leads him along the western side of the grounds. It’s not like the Gautier Fortress which is all cold stone and even colder weather. Fraldarius Manor is warmer and brighter, part stone and part wood, and bustling with activity. It’s like two different worlds, but Sylvain already loves it here because there’s too much to see in just one day.

And Miklan isn’t there, which is a bonus.

“You said that you’d smelled it,” says Glenn. They’re watching the stall from afar, leaning against a column. Trying to look inconspicuous. Glenn succeeds rather well, but Sylvain fails to capture his ease, looking awkward instead. The servants find it cute, giggling softly as they walk by.

“Smelled what?”

“The meat.” Glenn waves to the stand. “We’re not exactly near the entrance gate.”

Sylvain’s mouth parts slightly. “Oh, that.” He shrugs. “It’s part of being a wolf, I guess. I have a really good sense of smell.”

“Wait, the wolf thing is literal?”

“Haven’t you read the histories?” Sylvain frowns. His father’s made him practically memorize entire books; centuries of stories about Gautier men and women leveling the battlefield as Death incarnate.

You know, typical bedtime stories.

Glenn watches him for a moment, hand on his chin, thinking. Then he says, “I’ve always assumed that it was more of a metaphorical thing.”

“What’s metaphorical ?” asks Sylvain. Glenn laughs.

“Don’t worry about it, pup,” says Glenn in jest.

Sylvain makes a face. “Ew, no, don’t call me that. That’s what my father calls me.”

“All right, all right.” Then, Glenn gives him a mischievous grin. “Hey, I know how good your nose is, but how good are your stalking skills? You know, getting down low and sneaking up on prey?”

“As good as any wolf’s,” Sylvain says, sticking out his chest haughtily. It’s a lie. Sylvain hasn’t gotten a lot of practice in, but he wants to impress Glenn.

“I’ll distract Meryl while you sneak up and grab a couple of meat sticks grilling over the coals.”

“Wouldn’t she just give them to you, if you asked?” Glenn is the Duke’s son. There’s no way that the vendor wouldn’t just comply with his request.

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”

Sylvain shoots Glenn a conspiratorial glance in return. He decides right then and there that he likes Glenn, and wishes he were his big brother instead. Maybe Felix will want to be his brother too.

#

Sylvain hasn’t met a lot of girls in his short life, but he’s fairly certain that most aren’t like Ingrid.

He’s read books, both fiction and non-fiction. Girls and women have their place within packs. Sylvain thinks of his mother, lovely and demure, always dressed nice and smelling like flowers. Quiet unless she’s spoken to, with kind eyes and an even kinder smile. The only person that his father genuinely loves, most like.

And then there’s Ingrid, a wild child covered in dirt and dust, smells like sweat, and whose eyes gleam with a challenge. She wears trousers like a boy, she wields a wooden lance, and she curses like a sailor when Glenn knocks it from her grip.

Sylvain’s mouth falls open in surprise. Ingrid’s only a year younger than him and at nine, she shouldn’t say such things. But Glenn doesn’t mind, shooting her a menacing little wink, and Sylvain is certain that he’s figured out who she learned such words from.

It’s not that women in the Gautier family don’t fight, only the wolves do. And there hasn’t been a female crest bearer in the Gautier line for decades. Ingrid isn’t a wolf, therefore seeing her in the training grounds with the rest of them is a bit of an adjustment.

Sylvain learns that he likes things that are a little different, though. His father drones on and on about propriety and the way that things are supposed to be, but Sylvain only finds expectations to be confining. He longs for the freedom to be himself and do what he wants.

He knows he won’t have long to enjoy it.

“What’s he staring at?” asks Ingrid rudely, and Sylvain realizes that she’s talking about him.

“You,” says Glenn, unapologetically. “And all those sticks in your hair.”

Ingrid gasps, running her hands through her blonde locks, but when there are no sticks, she lets out an annoyed shriek, throwing a rock at Glenn. Glenn throws his hands up and runs the length of the training yard, Ingrid chasing after him.

Not for the first time over the last few days, Sylvain wonders what it’d be like to have a brother like Glenn in his life.

And then, Sylvain thinks of Felix. Glenn had told him that Felix was a crybaby and scared of everything. Sylvian’s barely seen the boy-- once or twice, and the moment they lock eyes, Felix hides away again. Behind Glenn’s legs, behind their father, around a corner or even running from the room entirely.

Sylvain frowns. Crybaby indeed.

“Ridiculous, chasing each other around like that.” Sylvain turns to his father who stands beside him. The Duke is on his other side.

“Philippe, it’s harmless,” says the Duke. “They’re children.”

“It’s never too soon to learn manners.” Sylvain’s father gives him a pointed look. “Take Sylvain for instance. Always properly behaved. Always an example.”

Sylvain hides a smile behind a cleverly placed cough. The Duke smiles at him, just a little quirk of his mouth. So, maybe he hadn’t hidden his smile well enough. Rodrigue then gives Sylvain’s father a disappointed tut. “I’ll say it again: they’re children. Let them enjoy themselves. Eventually, they’ll answer the call of duty and they’ll never have time for fun again.”

Sylvain’s father huffs at that. “There’s no room for fun when you’re a lord.”

“There’s a little bit of room for it,” says the Duke, measuring a small gap between his fingers.

“You sound like his Royal Highness.” The Margrave sighs wearily. “That’s not surprising though.”

“His Royal Highness knows how to balance work and family.”

“Speaking of family, where is Felix?” asks the Margrave.

“Ah, Felix,” says the Duke. “Off hiding, no doubt.”

“Hiding--”

“It’s nothing, really,” says Rodrigue. “He’s young yet and he’s shy. It’s as simple as that.”

“Sylvain used to be shy.”

“Used to be?”

“We fixed it.”

Sylvain’s not smiling anymore. Instead, Sylvain’s thinking of kneeling on his knees for hours on end during his father’s meetings, listening to political talk. He’s thinking of reciting lines and missed meals when he’d cowered before another adult. Not really in fear, but overwhelmed by smells and sights and sounds.

He’s not overwhelmed anymore. Sylvain’s learned to tune things like that out.

Sylvain thinks about what his father likes to say.

“It’s not a matter of whether you want to, it’s that you will. Until then, it’s on your knees.”

Sylvain tells himself that his father isn’t cruel, that this is just the way of the wolf, but the older gets the less he believes. Just like Miklan. Sylvain knows that it’s not normal to throw fisticuffs at a boy half your size and age.

But if he tells himself that it is, it’s easier to pretend.

The Duke’s gaze slides from his father to him, and his lips tug downward slightly. Sylvain thinks that Rodrigue is good at reading people, and maybe he sees more of Sylvain than Sylvain wants him to.

“I’ve been thinking,” says the Duke, “What if Sylvain came to stay with us during the summer? He would be exposed to a different part of the court and different advisors. He could spar with Glenn, and perhaps even Dimitri. Spread his legs, as it were. And, it would give you and Amelie a break; I daresay you haven’t had one since your boy was born.”

The Margrave considers this for a moment so long, that the Duke continues.

“It might be good for Felix. He has no one else his age aside from the prince. And I know that you’re all about opportunities.”

“Perhaps Felix can come to the Fortress and spend winter with us, then. We’ll make it an exchange.”

The Duke considers and then nods. “I’m amenable to that.” They shake on it, a strange gesture that Sylvain’s come to learn as a show of good faith.

Except, anything that concerns his father is rarely in good faith.

“Sylvain,” says the Duke, snapping him back to attention. “Why don’t you go off with Glenn and Ingrid? I’m sure that you can learn something.”

Sylvain wrinkles his nose at the mention of Ingrid, mostly because girls are gross and Ingrid is the grossest of them all, but anywhere is better than being here. So, he scampers off.

#

Sometimes, Sylvain forgets how natural it feels to be a wolf. He spends so much time as a boy walking awkwardly on two feet, that he forgets the relief of sinking his paws into the soft earth.

And you know, claws are pretty neat too.

“Sylvain?” hisses Glenn when Sylvian pads around the corner. Glenn had told him to sneak out from his room half-past ten for some late-night fun. He hadn’t been expecting Sylvain to show up like this.

Sylvain runs a circle around Glenn’s legs. He’s the size of a large pup, not fully grown into his paws. Long and lanky legs, massive pads, and a head that’s just a little bit too large for the rest of his frame. He’s got growing left to do. His tongue lolls out the side of his mouth as he beams at Glenn.

“Are you smiling? I think you’re smiling. Oh, that’s a little weird.” Then Glenn pauses, pointing down the corridor. “I’ve already got Ingrid waiting around the corner.”

Ingrid doesn’t like dogs, Sylvain learns, but she’s not afraid of them. It’s just that she prefers horses. Ingrid relaxes a little when Glenn explains that he’s Sylvain, and then her eyes narrow as though she realizes how odd it is that he’s a shape-shifting werewolf.

She keeps a solid three feet between the two of them at all times.

Glenn doesn’t have much of a plan aside from wandering the manor grounds. “Even though it’s been nearly a week, there’s still a lot that I want to show you,” says Glenn as they round a corner.

“Glenn?” The three of them freeze at the sound of Felix’s voice, and Glenn shoots Sylvain a panicked look.

“Change!” hisses Glenn, shaking his hand at Sylvain. “Change back!”

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Felix must be afraid of dogs. Or animals. Or anything, really. And, while his wolf form feels as natural as the moon high above them, he hasn’t quite mastered shifting back.

Sylvain had once asked his father if they were human or if they were a wolf, and his father had only laughed, citing that it was a ridiculous question. They were human, of course, gifted the boon of Death. Sylvain had told him that being a wolf had felt better, and his father had given him a weird look before a feral smile covered his face entirely.

Then, Sylvain’s father had quoted some archaic Gautier family motto and promised him the Lance of Ruin upon adulthood.

Sylvain snaps to attention, trying to pull his human side forward. He imagines standing on two feet, unbalanced and awkward. He thinks of blunted teeth and a shorter tongue, and a dull sense of smell. He blinks, pulling forth those feelings, urging his body to shift back into place. His bones creak and he pants.

It’s not a fun transition and it’s slow going.

“Sylvain,” warns Glenn, which spurs him into action.

Sylvain’s a boy again the moment that Felix rounds the corner. He’s wearing a loose shirt, half-tucked into a pair of trousers. His hair is tousled but his eyes are awake and alert.

“You’re playing without me,” accuses Felix, cheeks pink and eyes narrowed right at Glenn.

“Felix, it’s late,” says Glenn, rubbing at his neck sheepishly. He shoots Sylvain a look that’s half relief and half worry.

“Ingrid’s here. We’re the same age.” Felix pouts and Sylvain finds it adorable. Not that’d he’d ever tell him that; Felix might be a scaredy-cat, but being perceived as one is his biggest fear. He tries to bluff, playing it cool. Especially around Glenn.

“Ingrid is--” But Glenn doesn’t finish, because Ingrid kicks him in the shin.

“If you say that I’m special, I’ll kick you again.”

“But you are--”

Ingrid kicks Glenn again and Glenn lets out a groan of pain. Sylvain winces because he knows that she packs a punch, even with her tiny size. Not that Sylvain’s much bigger. Felix rolls his eyes and crosses his arms.

“A brute, isn’t she?” asks Sylvain in jest, leaning toward Felix.

Felix moves toward Glenn in response, half hiding behind his leg. Sylvain sighs. Felix knows Ingrid, he’s used to her because of her betrothal to Glenn. Sylvain’s still new to him and Felix is a boy that likes the well-familiar. He doesn’t like change.

Glenn sighs, dragging a hand down his face. “I wasn’t planning on babysitting tonight--”

“You said you wanted to play,” says Sylvain.

“And I do, but three against one? That’s a little unfair.”

“Then we’ll just explore,” says Sylvain. “That’s what I wanted to do anyway.”

Glenn thumbs his chin and then cracks a smile. He ruffles Felix’s hair, and then Sylvain’s, and then he presses a dainty little kiss against Ingrid’s knuckles. She makes a face and mimics vomiting in response.

“Exploring it is then,” says Glenn. Then he leans over slightly, his tone pitching soft. “It’s too late to be out of bed though, so we’ll need to keep quiet, alright?”

Ingrid’s eyes flash at that. “Beyond the gate then?”

Glenn shoots her an impish smile. “Beyond the gate,” he confirms. “Just a bit. Should be fine if we all stick together.”

Felix is the one that looks troubled. “Glenn, we’re not supposed too--”

“That’s the point, little brother.” Glenn gives Felix a steady look, brows raised. “Of course, you’re more than welcome to go back to bed.”

“No!” The three of them shoot Felix a look after his outburst, and Felix fidgets behind Glenn’s leg. “I’ll be fine,” he then says bravely, face held high and pert little nose in the air.

Glenn shuffles them to the front gate, a finger held to his lips. He’s on good terms with the gatekeeper, chatting a few friendly words and then slipping a few gold coins into his palm. Then the gatekeeper winks at the kids before turning a blind eye.

Ingrid and Sylvain bounce on their heels, but Felix walks rigidly beside Glenn.

“There’s nothing out here to be concerned about. We’re close to the manor,” says Glenn, ruffling Felix’s hair once more.

“It’s--”

“Spooky,” cuts in Ingrid, a delightful little grin spreading across her face.

“I was going to say that I wasn’t scared.”

“It’s alright, you know,” says Ingrid, matter-of-factly. “Glenn will protect us.”

Glenn does, not that it’s hard. The three of them are eager to enjoy their outing, so they play by the rules and keep close to his side. They don’t go far, barely dipping into the trees. They chase each other around, digging underneath rocks and even climb low-hanging limbs.

Even with his dulled senses, Sylvain follows the smells of the wild, his heart beating wildly. He’s entirely unused to the freedom of exploring. While his father actively encourages his wolf, he also keeps him on a tight leash. Ingrid inches closer to him, seemingly having forgotten that he’s more wolf than man, asking him what it is that’s caught his attention.

Felix still shies away when Sylvain tries to engage, albeit with a brave and determined face. He even meets Sylvain’s gaze head-on.

“Glenn’s read me the stories, you know,” Felix says. “I know all about your family.”

“Our fathers think we should be friends.” Sylvain nearly laughs at the way that Felix’s nose crinkles in response. “They are friends themselves.”

“Ugh. Who’d want to be friends with my father?”

Sylvain does laugh this time. “Who indeed?” Rodrigue seems nice at a glance, so different than his own. Sylvain can’t imagine the Margrave with a friend; he barely sees him with his mother. Felix doesn’t come closer or say anything else, but he doesn’t go to hide behind Glenn either.

When they slip back through the front gate, the Duke and the Margrave are waiting for them. Rodrigue stands with his hands clasped behind his back, but there’s a soft hint of a smile on his face, amused.

The Margrave isn’t amused. He stands there tall, arms crossed over his chest and his face hardened into a frown. Sylvain winces at the sight; his father had already been in a sour mood and this will only worsen it.

Glenn stands tall and says, “Father--”

Rodrigue holds up a hand. “Out late I see, and with the others in tow. I hope that your little adventure was fun?”

Glenn’s mouth snaps shut and he nods. “Yes.”

“Good. I’ve played my share of games when I was younger,” Rodrigue says, “but never the night before Royalty is due to visit. I usually waited until Lambert was here.” A pause. “Are you trying to get out of your duty tomorrow?”

“Of course not,” says Glenn.

Rodrigue watches him for a long moment and then sighs. “Phillippe,” says the Duke, turning towards Sylvain’s father. “What are we to do? Extra training? Perhaps a proper spar with Dimitri?”

Glenn turns a little pale at the suggestion and Sylvain doesn’t understand the hesitation. Training with the crown prince doesn’t seem like a too-terrible punishment. Sylvain thinks of worse ones, looking to his father.

He’d rather a bout with the prince.

“You can handle your sons,” the Margrave says, leveling Sylvain with a stern gaze. “I’ll handle mine.”

“They were only having fun. Nothing too egregious, surely.”

“Propriety is still expected,” says Sylvain’s father. “There’s much to be expected from the heir of the Gautier line.”

“Phillippe,” says the Duke quietly, “perhaps--”

“I will handle it,” repeats the Margrave.

Rodrigue drops the subject and nods. “Of course. I didn’t mean to impose.” There’s a pause before he continues with, “My boys will extra rounds in the field tomorrow with Dimitri. You should send Sylvain.”

“Rodrigue,” warns Sylvain’s father.

The Duke turns to Glenn. “Boys, off to bed. Ingrid, you too. I’ll speak to your father in the morning.” He turns to take his leave but then stops to give one last look at Sylvain. Hesitating. But, in the end, all he does is big them a good night.

The moment they’re alone, Sylvain’s father lashes out and grabs the back of his neck roughly, like he would his scruff. Then he tugs Sylvain along, back to the rooms where they’re staying.

His father loves him, Sylvain tells himself. He tries to think of those good moments; being taught how to shift. How to sift through scents and recognize a pack. How to track your prey.

The worse memories always weed their way in, though. Punishments that bend the will, but don’t entirely break it. Just enough to crack the slightest bit under pressure. Like Sylvain kneeling against raw grains of rice.

Or throwing him into the ring with Miklan and coming out with bruises instead. Miklan likes to hit and Sylvain isn’t quite fast enough to always avoid him.

Eventually, his father deems the lesson learned and Sylvain rises on tired limbs. He brushes the rice from his knees as his father calls a servant to come to sweep them up. Sylvain goes to bed, legs aching, but not nearly as busted as he feels.

Your father loves you, he thinks. Your father cares. This is how he teaches.

The older he gets though, the emptier the words feel.

#

Dimitri is a short little thing with blonde hair styled into the world’s worst square-cut bob. He stands there in the training grounds, feet shuffling awkwardly as he holds a wooden training lance in his hands. Glenn reaches out to ruffle his hair.

Sylvain shoots the crown prince a smile and a wave, and Dimitri returns the gesture, a small smile on his lips. He’s the same age as Felix and a few years younger than Sylvain, but unlike the youngest Fraldarius boy, Dimitri isn’t terrified of everything.

He’s just reticent about sparring.

“Glenn,” says the Prince, “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

“I agree,” says Glenn bluntly. “The last time we sparred with each other, you broke my rib. I’d prefer the dummies just as much as you.”

Sylvain gapes at the idea that Dimitri could have landed such a hit on Glenn. Dimiri is smaller and slim when compared to the wiry muscle of Glenn. And it’s not that the elder Fraldarius boy is that much older or larger, but he’s more honed in his ability.

Not to mention it’s Glenn’s job to protect Dimitri, not the other way around.

Felix watches the lot of them, standing closer than usual. He and the prince seem to get along well. Ingrid, on the other hand, watches Dimitri through narrowly slitted eyes, arms crossed over her chest.

“You’re holding it wrong,” says Ingrid, pointing to the lance.

“Oh,” breathes Dimitri, changing his grip on the practice weapon, fingers tightening just the slightest bit. There’s a sudden crack as the wood splits between his palms, and Dimitri’s left holding to splintered pieces of teakwood in each hand.

Sylvain’s mouth drops open in surprise, but everyone else seems to have expected it.

Glenn sighs. “Well, better the lance than me this time around, right?”

“This is why I prefer the dummies,” says Dimitri, resigned. He motions for a new lance.

“Glenn, put him in the ground,” says Ingrid none-too-lightly. She’s always rooting for Glenn and Sylvain suspects that she doesn’t find their betrothal as gross as she likes to pretend.

“He’s the prince,” hisses Felix, leveling her with a disgusted look.

Ingrid sniffs. “Put him in the ground, please,” she amends. Then she rolls her eyes. “It’s your job to follow him loyally. I’ll talk about him however I like.”

“Ingrid,” says Glenn, hiding a smirk behind his hand.

“Your highness--” starts Sylvain.

“Dimitri, please,” says the prince. Then he looks at Glenn. “Glenn, do we have to?”

Glenn winces, looking off to the side where his father sits in the shadows. Sylvain’s father is there too, sharing a pot of tea, his dark gaze penetrating as he watches on. Waiting. Expecting. Sylvain swallows thickly.

“It’s a punishment,” sighs Glenn. He rubs at the back of his neck. “We snuck out last night.”

Dimitri looks a little put-out. “You couldn’t wait until I arrived?”

“Well, the plan was to sneak out again, but I think that’s been speared in the foot.” Glenn pauses, eyeing the new lance in Dimitri’s hands warily. “Just keep it below the neck and above the belt, okay?”

Sylvain snorts out a laugh, Felix turns bright red in the face, and Ingrid looks between them utterly confused. Girls, Sylvain thinks.

Sylvain and Felix stand off to the side, watching Glenn and Dimitri stand opposite each other in the center of the field. Glenn isn’t afraid, but he’s hesitant, and once the match is started Sylvain sees why.

Dimitri hits hard without meaning to, seemingly unable to hold back his strength. Sylvain’s watched Glenn spar with others over the last few days, but never quite like this. Glenn usually charges into the fight, blade raised and mind focused, calculating several moves ahead.

With the prince, however, he’s on the defensive, dodging to the side and trying to avoid a glancing blow. You broke my rib, Glenn had said earlier. There’s power behind Dimitri’s sloppy swings and now Sylvain can see just how he’d managed it the last time he and Glenn sparred.

Ingrid looks annoyed that Glenn is only blocking hits instead of giving them, her mouth tugged into a disapproving frown. Felix watches, enraptured. Sylvain knows that he wants to be a knight just like his father and brother. And, just like Felix who’s read about the Gautier family, Sylvain’s read about his in turn.

The Fraldarius’ are born and bred to protect the crown. Felix is no exception.

Finally, Glenn sees an opening and lashes out. Dimitri skids to the side, barely avoiding a glancing blow. He retaliates, sweeping his lance to the side in an arc-- and entirely misjudges his move.

Dimitri trips over his own feet, stumbling slightly. His lance swings wide, flinging towards Sylvain and Felix. He doesn’t see the two of them, preoccupied with finding his footing and narrowly avoiding Glenn.

Sylvain doesn’t think as he feels his bones shift and change, as instinctive as the rough howl he lets loose. One moment he’s a boy and the next he’s a wolf, his coarse fur ruddy under the midmorning sun. He darts forward and grabs Felix by the hem of his shirt and yanks him back with his teeth.

Felix tumbles overtop Sylvain. Everyone in the training yard freezes: Glenn’s eyes are glued to Sylvain. Dimitri stumbles in the opposite direction upon the sight of Sylvain as a wolf. Ingrid stands before Glenn, high-alert like she’s the one who’s going to protect him instead.

And then there’s Rodrigue and Sylvain’s father, the Duke pulled to the edge of his seat, mouth parted as his gaze flashes to Felix, worried. Because he knows that above all, Felix is a crybaby and scared of everything. A ticking bomb, really.

Sylvain’s father doesn’t seem angry, he seems proud, smug even, like the speed of Sylvain’s shift had pleased him. It’d been second nature, Sylvain acting entirely out of instinct.

He sits back on his haunches, heaving heavy breaths. Waiting for Felix’s inevitable yowling. But it never comes. Felix sits up and regards Sylvain with bright eyes and pinking cheeks. He looks at him with a strange mixture of awe and wonder.

Glenn is the first to seem confused.

Then, Felix stands and ambles over to Sylvain. Sylvain barks, tongue lolling out of his mouth, pleased that he’s at least prevented a terrible head wound. Or a fatal one, considering Dimitri’s apparent strength.

Felix rushes forward and wraps his arms around Sylvain’s neck. “Puppy,” he breathes, incredulously. “You’re a puppy.”

Sylvain wants to take offense to that, but he doesn’t. It’s the closest that Felix has gotten to him over the week and all it’d taken was for him to just be himself. Felix’s hands tighten in his fur, scritching over his skin and Sylvain just can’t help the way that his leg kicks at the touch.

Rodrigue looks utterly baffled. Sylvain’s father looks like he’s eaten a lemon and Sylvain can already hear the monotonous speech about how wolves are proud creatures, not pets. But, at that moment, Sylvain rather likes being like a pet, his lineage be damned. His father talks a lot about his future and legacy, but this is the first time that he’s felt like he means something.

“I’ve never been able to have a dog,” says Felix into his fur. “But I guess a wolf as a friend is even better.”

Sylvain licks the side of his face and instead of cringing, Felix laughs, a soft sound like a calm breeze on a warm summer morning.

That’s when Sylvain falls in love, even if he doesn’t yet realize it.

[vashak]

The Catcher In The Rye

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

This is the famous passage from The Catcher In The Rye that gives the book its title. Here, the rye field is most commonly interpreted as the innocence of childhood, with the catcher in the rye being responsible for preventing the children from being tainted by the corrupt and superficial world of adults and losing their innocence.

When I read The Catcher In The Rye for the first time back in September, my first thought was “Oh my god… The catcher in the rye in Banana Fish is Eiji!” As the fandom often discussed at length, Eiji’s quiet presence helped Ash get in touch with his humanity after all that he’s been through. His unshakable faith in Ash and his heartfelt tenderness (as emphasized in the preface of New York Sense) helped preserve Ash’s innocence and prevented him from becoming the monster he thought he had become.

Besides the desire to maintain one’s innocence, one other parallel theme between Banana Fish and The Catcher in the Rye is distinguishing what is genuine and fake in life. It so happens that “phony” is one of the most often used words in The Catcher In The Rye. Throughout the story the protagonist complains about the people around him (mostly adults) of being fake.

“One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should've seen the way he did with my roommate's parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Haas would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills.”

This quote from the beginning of the book reminded me of this exchange between Ash and Blanca.

Ash found something genuine in Eiji for the first time because Eiji saw Ash to be no different than himself. In his eyes, he was just a teenager. And Ash is just that: a teenager. He feels like one but is not allowed to be one nor matter how much he craves it. Except when he’s around Eiji. Then he can relax and let his guard down.

Blanca (thinking): “He” was like a lion’s child… Hiding behind an armour of a beautiful but blank expression, he hardly ever laughed.

But this young, lively American boy before my eyes was utterly defenceless, laughing like he didn’t have a care in the world. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that it was really “him.” But then…

All of a sudden…

He took notice of my presence.

And his demeanour changed completely.

This is the face Ash shows to the world out of necessity. And it scares everyone off, except for Eiji because he could see through his façade.

In the last episode of the anime, Eiji’s letter and the promise he makes (“My soul is always with you”) comforts Ash in his final moments. The last scene in the episode where Ash dies with a smile on his face (whether he chose to die or succumbed to his wounds) tells us that he was happy and at peace because he had someone who genuinely cared for him, who caught him at the edge of the rye field. That’s why the last episode was entitled The Catcher In The Rye.

Now the first episode of the anime is named after another literary piece by J.D. Salinger: A Perfect Day for Bananafish. As this person predicts very early on in the series, if we are to draw parallels between this short story and Banana Fish, we reach a very morbid conclusion: Just like how the war veteran Seymour couldn’t adapt to living in peaceful times and shot himself in the head, Ash won’t be able to escape from his demons after all and end his own life. But the last episode being named “The Catcher In The Rye” offers a much lighter perspective. If we interpret the events of the last episode with what “catcher in the rye” means in the context of its namesake novel in mind, then Ash did escape his demons. Ash’s soul was saved thanks to Eiji and instead of falling off that cliff, he could fly, he was relieved. Eiji was Ash’s catcher in the rye.

Then I did some reading and saw that other fans reversed these roles and thought of Ash as Eiji’s catcher in the rye (x & x), which works just as well. About that, let me quote something I wrote earlier to answer an ask.

“But throughout the series, Ash doesn’t only protect Eiji against danger [that threatens his physical wellbeing]. He also tries very hard to preserve his innocence. Notice how he doesn’t give Eiji a gun when they’re escaping from Golzine’s mansion because “one killer between the two of them is plenty.” And when they’re running away from Golzine’s men underground, he only reluctantly hands Eiji a gun because he himself is very weak physically. Come to think of it, Eiji never kills anyone in the series.”

Or perhaps, Eiji and Ash were respectively each other’s catcher in the rye. In a way, they saved each other. Eiji was feeling suffocated by his personal failures and found a new purpose in life when he met Ash. And Ash discovered that he was worthy of love without having to give anything back. Ash and Eiji brought out the best in each other and became each other’s strength. They protected one another body and soul. And they could be their true selves when they were together, just two boys playing in the rye.

The anime goes all out with the “catcher in the rye” symbolism in the second ending sequence, but the manga doesn’t make any references to the novel except for the artwork at the top of the post. However, the “That Summer” chapter (?) included in the ANGEL EYES artbook kind of gives me the same vibe.

[gustafsnightangel]

Shattered Lives Ch 14 Pt 2

As soon as the lock clicked his mouth was on hers, fingers demanding, enticing.

“Only for today.” He breathed and pressed her against the bathroom door. “There’s something about you today that I can’t get enough of.” He breathed. “I need you, all of you.”

He pinned her to the door and devoured her mouth. She’d never seen him like this, needing her like his life depended on it. The incessant need to fuck. She wasn’t much better if she was being honest. She’d wanted him to have her until she couldn’t walk ever since he got home Monday. They’d turned into a couple of randy teenagers intent on ravaging each other senseless.

He hoisted her up and wrapped those long legs around his waist, with a quick thrust he was buried inside her, both groaning at the sensation of filling and being filled.

“Fuck Sildie you feel so good love.” He growled and took what he wanted, what he needed.

His sudden explosive need for her only made her crave him more. Never had she been wanted by a man so completely, so passionately. Her fingers gripped tighter as he pounded into her, he’d have bruises tomorrow for sure, so would she.

“Harder.” She breathed and bit down on his shoulder, a cry escaping when he did as she asked. The primal need to feel him fuck her was taking over her system. The pleasure overwhelmed her both physically and emotionally her body trembling for release.

“Go over love, come for me.” He murmured and watched as she tensed and came hard. He followed her into bliss as her pussy milked him. A soft groan of his own.

Her cries as he pounded into her prolonging their pleasure were mixed with tears. The intense orgasm destroying the remains of her emotional defenses she’d put up for the day.

He’d expected the tears, not straight after sex, but he’d expected them sometime today. He held her there and soothed her as the sobs came.

“Did I hurt you?” He asked softly. She was silent for a moment which worried him.

“No. Just stupid emotions.” She mumbled and held onto him tightly. “Sorry.”

“You sure?”

He helped her back to her feet and pulled his sweats up, closing her robe with tender fingers. His hand cupped behind her neck drawing her in close. Standing there he held her as the silent tears fell, no words were needed as he knew why she was upset.

“You make me feel things so deeply.” She said softly.

“So do you love.” He kissed her brow and stroked the length of her back. “So do you.”

She made him feel like he was the only man in the world, so loved, so wanted. Those three little words stuck in his throat as she cried against him.

There was a knock at the bedroom door.

“Ama? Dinner’s here.” Brendan’s voice came through the door slightly muffled.

“Thanks, be right there.” She said as cheerfully as she could.

“So what’s for dinner?” He asked and wiped the stray tear from her cheek.

“Your favorite.”

“My favorite? Now where did you get that information?” He joked. “And I have lots of favorites.”

“Daisy. We talked.” She grinned.

“Oh shit! What else did she tell you.” He chuckled and kissed her, not really surprised the two of them had hit it off.

“Nothing that would get her fired. I like her.” She giggled.

“She’s my saving grace sometimes.” He said softly.

She went to move away but the hand at her neck pulled her back to him. His kiss was tender and loving.

“You sure you’re ok?” He asked gently.

“Yeah, I’ll let it hit me tomorrow. I want today to be fun and happy.” She kissed him. “I promised Lily when she was born I wouldn’t cloud today with tomorrows crap. I won’t do that to you either. Happy times, happy memories.”

“Well it certainly has been a happy day for me. Your mouth around my cock, two quickies, and my hands on you all day. I’m set.” He smirked and kissed her longingly. “I can’t wait for Saturday to see what else you’ve got planned.”

“I’m looking forward to adult time with you.” She grinned.

“Adult playtime.” His growl made her moan as he nipped her neck.

Brendan had started to spread out the feast of traditional Swedish food, she’d even got his favorite pickled herring.

“Where did you get all this?” He asked a little shocked, knowing full well which restaurant had these signature dishes and the price tag that came with them.

“Frantzen.” She said and sat down. She knew he’d probably get upset about it as it was one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city and had cost her a small fortune. But she wanted to spoil him, so something special for him.

“They don’t deliver.” He growled and kissed her jaw.

“Apparently they do for me.” She grinned. “Eat. Enjoy.” She kissed him sweetly. “Happy birthday love.”

“Thank you but pizza would have been just as good.” He looked at her and she could see he was thankful but irritated with her, she knew he would be.

“If I’d wanted pizza I would have bought pizza but I wanted this, for you.” She kissed him again and squeezed his hand. “Don’t be mad at me for wanting to do something nice for you.” She said shortly and kept her tone even. She didn’t want this to blow up in front of the boys and ruin a perfect day.

“I’m not mad, just...” He sighed trying to find the right words that wouldn’t cause a full on argument. “I know how much they charge and I don’t want you spending that kind of money on me.” He knew this would head to where it ended up last time they fought a it but he’d say what he had to say.

“My money to spend as I see fit.” She said and there was a bite in her tone as she threw his own words from a few months ago back at him. “And this is part of my gift to you.”

“Tuche.” He sighed. He gave in, he had to. There was no argument. Presents and food were off limits. He’d sprung for pizza so many times that this could be counted as her turn. Her turn for the next six months he thought to himself. It was only the babysitter and those sorts of things that they had their agreement on. Trust the lawyer to remember that verbatim.

“What are you smirking at?” She asked with a sly smile of her own.

“I just got played.” He chuckled and kissed her.

“No, I just used our agreement to my advantage.” She grinned.

“You lawyered me.” He said both shocked and in awe as his hand fell to her knee and he squeezed.

“Yes I did.” She said triumphantly and smiled at him as she ate. The food was to die for and well worth it.

“I won’t forget this you know.” His tone low and one that held a promise of seductive retribution.

“I’m sure you won’t.” She laughed.

They finished up dinner with jokes and laughter. Gustaf felling the kids funny birthday stories from when he was a kid. She sat back and watched the kids and Gustaf. It all fit together so well. Were Quinn and Dana really watching over them to make this such a seamless transition. Well whatever divine intervention is happening let it continue she thought, because in the back of her mind was that niggling doubt that it was all going to fall apart at any moment. They were both fragile people trying their hardest to make it work.

Brendan brought out his dessert and Gustaf had to hand it to the kid, it was fucking good.

“This was good.” He said pointing to the remnants of the meal from the restaurant. “That was better.” He pointed at the Kladdkaka and took another slice and watched Brendan’s face perk up, that smile so similar to Sildie’s, his fathers smile no doubt.

“I know who to come to when I need another one made.” He winked. “Which might be tomorrow.”

She watched as those words made Brendan’s whole world light up. Gustaf was so good for him, that bond growing stronger the more time they spent together. It still didn’t make her feel any less guilty, the thoughts of it should have been Quinn still running through her head.

He pulled Lily into his lap as she started to fuss while he finished the second slice.

“No, not for you Lily bear. You’ll be bouncing off the walls all night with that amount of sugar and caffeine running through you.” She heard him say. “And I have other plans while you’re sleeping.” The look he gave Sildie as he spoke to Lily made her pussy clench, undiluted desire.

Brendan helped Sildie clear the table and the twins set up the games. Gustaf sat with Lily and watched Sildie.

“Mum mums a little upset Lily bear. They’re all going to feel it tomorrow. It’s going to crash down on them so hard it’ll make them reel. I need your help ok?” Lily squealed and pulled herself up so she was standing on his thighs. With her tiny hands on his vast shoulders she bounced up and down.

“She’s going to crumble, so are the boys and we need to keep them together. Any thoughts on how we do that?” He asked her.

“Dad dad sooch.” She said patting her hand on his cheek.

“Sooches huh? That might work, good advice.” He grinned and smooched the little girl until she was giggling.

He put her down and watched her toddle off to play with the toys sprawled out on the mat. Sildie came out a while later with a fresh pot of tea and sat it on the table. He was lost in thought watching Lily play, that gorgeous face relaxed.

She waited until Brendan had gone to the couch with the twins to play games before she covered his hand with hers.

“Where did you go love?” She asked gently.

“Nowhere, just thinking.” He smiled and hoped she’d let it go. They would deal with all that tomorrow, not today. “Have you told the kids about Friday?”

She shook her head. “I wanted it to be a nice surprise for them after tomorrow.”

“Can we all fit in your car or am I driving separately?” He asked brushing his thumb across the inside of her wrist lazily.

“My car. Brendan can squeeze in the very back.” She sipped her tea. “Same for tomorrow if you want to come with us?” Her voice shook slightly.

“I’ll go with you to where ever you need tomorrow love. I’m not leaving any of you alone.” He leaned forward and kissed her tenderly. “I promised you that and I intend to keep it.”

“I don’t know if I can do this.” She whispered. It was stupid really because tomorrow was going to come whether she was ready for it or not.

“You can.” He hooked a finger under her chin and gently lifted her head so she’d look at him. “I’ll be right here with you. It’ll hurt, but you’ll start to heal.” His kiss settled her. Tender, loving, it warmed her.

“Gustaf can you come play games?” Liam asked politely.

“Sure. Let me finish my tea ok?”

“Ok.” Happy with the answer he ran back to the couch and flopped on it.

“I worry about them.” She said sipping her tea.

“I know love. We’ll get through it ok? Together.” He kissed her again and finished his tea.

“Now excuse me love, I have some asses to whoop.” He grinned that childish grin and her laugh made his heart soar. He leaned in and kissed her.

Don’t say it now the voice in his head said quietly, it’ll freak her out with everything that’s happening. He was sure she could see it in his eyes though. He kissed her again and joined the boys on the couch, scooping Lily up along the way.

He saw her curl up with a book in the one seat moments later and smiled. He liked seeing her not working or cleaning or insanely busy with the kids. Some decompression time even though the mind was still occupied. When Lily started to fuss he took her to Sildie’s room and put her down.

He sat on the floor and watched sleep slowly take her under. His finger tightly gripped in her tiny hand.

“I won’t let you go either little lady. Sweet dreams now.” He rested his head against the rails and made sure she was really out before even attempting to remove his finger from her hand.

When he came out the twins were just getting into the tub and Brendan was talking with Sildie. He let them be and decided to get the twins cleaned up and in bed quickly.

“Are you coming with us tomorrow?” Finn asked as he climbed into bed.

“I am if you want me to.” He said. He didn’t know where they were going but would hazard a guess it would be the Cemetary.

“I want you to come.” Finn said and punched the covers not knowing what to do with his hands or if he should even be asking Gustaf to be there.

“Me too.” Liam hugged Gustaf tightly. They were scared.

“Come here. Both of you, come here.” His arms wrapped around both kids and he pulled them in close. “It’s ok to be scared, it’s ok to be sad, its ok to be angry, it’s ok to cry. If you want me there I’ll be there, if not that’s ok too. You won’t upset me if you just want family.”

“You are family.” Finn mumbled into his shoulder and Gustaf tightened his hug.

These kids were his undoing. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for them, mountains he wouldn’t move. If they only they were old enough to understand what those words meant to him at this point in the relationship.

“Love you guys.” He said softly and with an I love you too they laid down so Gustaf could tuck them in.

“Are you staying tonight?” Liam asked.

“I’m staying until Ama gets tired of me being here and kicks me out.” He winked.

“So never.” Finn giggled.

“Here’s hoping kid.” He stood and watched them settle before flipping the light off. “Straight to sleep.”

He came out of the twins room to find Brendan standing at the door to his waiting for Gustaf.

“Night B.” He said and the kid hugged him tightly.

“Happy birthday.” He mumbled trying to keep those emotions that were suddenly so raw at bay.

“Thanks, and that dessert was fucking amazing dude. You need to meet my sister. She runs a nightclub and they’d go ballistic over that.”

“You really liked it?” His grin was huge.

“Loved it, I’m going to have it for breakfast tomorrow if I don’t eat the rest tonight.” He hugged the kid again, he was hurting so much already Gustaf could all but see the wounds to his heart bleed.

“Will you come with us tomorrow?” He asked eventually.

“Like I said to the twins just now, if you want me there I’ll be there, if not, that’s cool too.”

“I want you there, and Ama needs you there.” His voice quiet.

“You’re not alone this time B, neither is Sildie. I keep my promises.” The kid nodded. “Get some sleep ok.” Brendan nodded and with a final ’night ’ he closed his bedroom door.

He came out to an empty couch and saw her in the kitchen making tea. Closing the hall door he walked to the tv and turned on a movie. That would at least cover some of the noise he was about to have her make. Standing behind her he folded her into him, feeling her relax was promising.

“Doing ok?” He asked softly and kissed her temple.

“Yeah. Trying to keep it all in tomorrow you know?” She said and poured the tea.

“I get it. Thank you for an awesome birthday.” He kissed her again and breathed in her scent, it drove him crazy she smelled so good.

“Even though I lawyered you?” She smirked.

“Oh we’re so not done on that score love.” He growled and kissed her neck as he swept the strands of copper from his path.

“I’d say we’re even.” She sighed as his lips found the spot below her ear that made her knees turn to jelly.

“Not even close.” He chuckled.

“Don’t make me mad at you.” She warned.

“I’ll stay within our agreement, you found a loophole and now I’ll exploit it.” He murmured and slipped a hand under the silk of her robe to cup a breast.

“You’re impossible.” She chuckled and relaxed into him as his hands wandered.

“I am, and you’re stubborn.” His thumb grazed her nipple which earned him a sigh. “Finish your tea.” He purred and tugged the belt of her robe loose. “I have something else to exploit.”

“We have to be careful out here.” She warned, not really wanting him to stop.

“And we will be.” His voice low as his fingers pulled the fabric from one shoulder so he could suck at the silky flesh.

“This spot here is a favorite.” He whispered and kissed the dip in her collarbone letting his tongue graze it.

Slipping the fabric from her other shoulder he paid it equal attention. His hands cupped a breast each and her moan sent a shot of lust to his cock. Thumb and finger pinched her nipples as he devoured the tender flesh of her neck and collarbone. His large hands squeezing her breasts the weight of them heavy and exotic.

“I love it when you touch me like this.” She breathed and gripped the counter as his hand traveled lower.

Cupping her heat he pulled her hips to him and she felt his erection nestle between her ass cheeks. She pushed back and he growled into her neck gripping her breast tightly.

“I want you in me.” She whispered as his fingers slipped into her soaked pussy.

“Mmmm so wet for me love.” He purred and her breath hitched as he grazed a finger over her clit.

“I want to take you right here.” He growled.

The counter they were at was the only one slightly shielded from the hall door. Open plan living had its downfalls.

Her hand slipped between sweats and skin to find his hard member. She stroked it and that only spurred him on.

“Is that a yes?” He whispered.

She turned her head and snaked an arm up to pull him in for a kiss.

“Yes.” She breathed.

“Let me have you.” He bit into her shoulder gently and that soft cry of ’always’ fell from her lips.

He lifted her leg and placed a foot on the counter which stretched her hips wide open for him. Still holding her breast in one hand he gripped his cock in the other and ran the tip along her pussy. He pushed slowly into her savoring the feel of her heat swallowing him whole.

He groaned in ecstasy and bit down on the pulse at her neck. She held onto the counter for balance as his hand left her breast to slide up to grip her throat. The gesture was gentle yet erotic, the slight light headed feeling already pulsing through her. He eased off and kissed her below the ear.

“You like that too don’t you?” He smirked not needing an answer and kissed her again. The feel of her pulse quicken at his touch made him harder for her.

“Yes.” She breathed out as his hand tightened slightly and his hips started thrusting.

Her cry was soft as the different angle of penetration touched her in places she didn’t know existed. It wouldn’t be quick, he was going to take her slowly until she was wrecked. The feel of him plunging in and out of her like this was erotic torture, she never wanted him to stop.

He’d dreamed of taking her like this for months now, stretched wide and wanting, at his mercy. With each thrust he filled her, slow and deep. He kept his hand at her throat, supporting her against him with a muscled forearm between her breasts as the other grabbed a breast roughly and pinched her nipple hard.

He feasted on her exposed neck and shoulder as he plunged deeply, his teeth sure to leave marks by tomorrow. He felt her body tremble as she came close to her orgasm and he’d make sure it was mind blowing.

His hand at her throat gently squeezed as a finger slipped over her clit. The movie playing in the background drowned out her cry. He watched as her body quivered as he stroked and flicked her clit.

“Give yourself to me.” He whispered.

He thrust deeper as her body tensed. Felt her body yield, to him, to the pleasure he was giving her. He felt the pulse under his fingers quicken as she crested, and squeezed gently, just enough for a buzz.

“Harder.” She whispered and he did as she asked. She wanted to feel him claim her, pound into her, his cock bottoming out. She gave herself to him and felt her body tense so tightly she thought she’d snap something.

“Come for me love.” He growled and bit down on that sensitive part of her neck.

She wasn’t sure how loud she screamed but she’d never come so hard. Stars exploded in her brain, the feel of his hand around her throat, and the new sensations of him fucking her in this position almost made her pass out. He loosened his grip at her pulse as if reading her mind but continued his furious assault on her body.

She felt the second climax build so quickly she almost wasn’t aware it was happening until it was crashing through her. He’d pinned her to him, fucking her relentlessly now and she had no control. She cried out again as she came hard her pussy gripping and sucking at his thick cock.

She was beautiful when she came, lost to him and everything he was doing to her. He’d tip her over for another before he was done. She felt so good around him, hot, silky, and wet. The pulse of her pussy as it contracted only adding to the pleasure. He groaned as she cried out his name as she came again, he wouldn’t last another one.

“Gustaf please.” She begged him. To stop or to make her come again she wasn’t sure.

“Come again for me love.” He groaned as her pussy felt so incredibly tight as he pounded into her.

She screamed this time and even he was worried it would wake the kids. His world shattered as she came around him and triggered a powerful orgasm. He tensed and thrust hard, rough, and urgent. He rode out the pleasure with her as he filled her with his seed and slowed to a stop.

He kissed her tenderly where he’d bitten her before, hands caressing where they pinched and gripped tightly. He was also keeping his ears open for the hall door. Nothing yet, hopefully they would think it’s just the movie.

Panting she leaned her head back against him. She’d never been fucked so thoroughly. He kissed her neck and stroked tender fingers down her throat.

“Happy birthday.” She murmured when she’d found her voice again.

“Best birthday present ever.” He said softly and continued to stroke and soothe her.

He kissed her knee before helping her to place her foot on the floor again. Gently turning her around to face him he kissed her tenderly, her legs still shaking.

“I’ve wanted to have you like that for a while now.” He confessed and kissed her again.

“It was pretty intense.” Her finger trailed the scruff at his jaw.

“We don’t have to do it again if it’s too much.” And he was serious.

“I didn’t say that.” She smirked. “I like what you do to me.” She whispered and kissed him so seductively his brain melted.

“You can’t kiss me like that after I just fucked your brains out.” He growled.

“Yeah I can, it’s your birthday.” She giggled.

“Come with me.” He said and took her hand.

“I think I just did but ok.” She quipped.

“Smart ass.” He muttered and smacked her playfully on the butt.

He sat on the couch and pulled her into his lap. No kids venturing out of their bedrooms meant more play time. He wanted her wrecked so she’d pass out tonight and sleep well.

“I’ll give you a moment to catch your breath and then I’m having you again.” He said gently as he kissed her.

Curling her into his chest he held her there.

“Not if you hold me like this, I’ll be asleep.” She said and laughed as he pushed her upright with a chuckle.

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed that clever mouth.

“Fuck Sildie what did you put in my food today to make me want you so fucking badly.” He chuckled and kissed her again with a groan.

“Nothing.” She laughed.

“I want you just like this.” His hand was palm flat against her spine at her shoulder blades before it fisted in the robe and raked it down her body to feast on her breasts.

His talented mouth seizing a nipple and tormenting it until she was grinding her hips against him. Her hands clawed for the hem of his shirt and she had it off him moments later wanting to feel his chest under her hands. He lifted his hips slightly so she could pull his sweats down.

He groaned as she stroked his cock, long firm strokes that would have him hard again soon enough.

“Such talented fingers.” He murmured as she slowly pumped his cock.

“Such a clever mouth.” She grinned and a gasp tore from her throat as he bit down on her nipple gently.

She ran his tip along her entrance and circled it there. The hiss and groan from him urged her on. As he feasted on her breasts she slowly lowered herself onto him to cradle his cock deep within her.

His head tilted back and claimed her mouth feverishly.

“Fuck me you feel so good love.” He breathed as she started to ride him slowly.

Her hands cupped his face and she kissed him tenderly, she wanted him slowly, erotically. His hands gripped her hips as she rode him, both finding that pleasurable rhythm. As his mouth attacked her throat she tipped her head back, arms resting on his shoulders. His hands coasted over her body with a featherlight touch, arousing her further.

“Sildie.” He breathed as his fingers gently tangled into her hair and he kissed the spot below her ear.

“Give yourself to me.” She whispered and kissed those lips she craved, her eyes searching his.

“Anything for you love.” He whispered back.

Her fingers interlaced with his and she stretched his arms along the back of the couch.

“This is familiar.” He growled and kissed her tenderly smiling at the memory of her rocking his world and blowing his mind all in one evening.

He tipped his head back and let her ride them both to oblivion. She changed it up slightly as his breathing quickened by brushing her breasts against his chest.

“Shall I make you come love?” She purred and nipped his throat, his slight chuckle at his own words from earlier today made her smile.

“You first.” He groaned as she sucked on the pulse at his throat.

“You’ll have to wait then, I’m enjoying fucking you slowly.” Her voice was wicked.

His groan turned to a hiss when she circled her hips. She’d brought him to the edge to have him hover there until she was ready to come.

“That’s just...” He lost his train of thought as her teeth grazed the column of his throat.

“Just what? Use your words.” She teased gleeful at finally rendering him speechless.

She’d blanked his mind. He was so lost to her now he couldn’t form words let alone think. That erotic body slowly taking him deeper with every stroke down. Her silky folds grinding against the base of him.

She felt him throb inside her. The struggle to hold back the pleasure until she came first. She wanted to watch him come, the pleasure she gave him. Feel that thick cock pulse inside her, filling her.

“Sildie please.” He whimpered, it was his turn to beg and he knew it aroused her more to hear it.

She rested her elbows on the back of the couch and began to bounce gently. He lifted his head up and devoured her mouth as his cock slammed into her deeply and bottomed out.

“Faster.” He breathed and she denied him for now, keeping it slow.

“Please.” He choked, he was struggling to hold off his orgasm now as she took him how she wanted.

“Look at me.” She whispered and he did, those soulful blue eyes drawing her in. “Go over.”

His hands gripped hers tightly as she quickened her bounce. With a choked cry he came hard, his eyes fluttering shut as he gave himself to her. With the feel of him pulsing inside her, the quicker pace of glorious friction she followed him into bliss and shattered.

He claimed her mouth and kissed her as she continued to ride him, milking everything from him. Her hand left his and cupped his face. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her again.

“Now it’s a happy birthday.” He chuckled as they caught their breath.

“Now it’s take my worn out ass to bed.” She laughed. “I’m going to be so sore tomorrow.”

“A good sore I hope?” He always worried he was too rough.

“I’ll tell you if it’s not.” She said softly brushing her fingers from temple to chin.

She wondered if that’s something else Ana had done to him. Wanted it rough then accused him of hurting her. She couldn’t understand women that played those mind games, especially with someone as sweet and giving as he was. She wished he’d tell her, let her in.

She kissed him tenderly as his hands caressed her bare back, soothing, comforting.

“If you’re going to keep doing that I need to be laying down.” She chuckled. “It’s making me sleepy.”

He pulled the robe back up and held it out for her to stick her arms through. She turned off the tv and stood, helping Gustaf to his feet. He went to the bedroom while she checked on the kids, they were all sound asleep.

He was almost asleep when she climbed in next to him. She lay straight, running her long frame against his, the top leg curled over him, face buried in the curve of his neck, arm on his chest. She breathed him and her entire body relaxed, the stress melting off her.

“Gustaf?” She murmured.

“Mmmm.” He breathed as his arms wrapped around her pulling her closer.

“I don’t want tomorrow to come.” She said softly.

“I know love, but it will and we’ll be fine. I’ll be right here with you. Together remember.” He kissed her brow and heard her sigh it out.

“Sleep now love.” His whisper wasn’t answered, she’d finally let sleep claim her. Smiling to himself he followed shortly after.

[being-multishiper-be-like]

2) Midam week- touching

Word count: 1,6k

This being sequel for the first one

@midam-week

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” admitted Michael sheepishly, trying so hard not to crush Adam in his arms. He allowed himself to wrap his wings around the human and it took all of his self-control not to scream Mine! They just stood there hugging each other. Then Adam let go of him and Michael immediately took a step backward. It was slightly awkward.

“Me neither, Michael. I just want to prove to you that I also didn’t hate you. I was confused, scared even, but it never made me hate you. Maybe because I could feel you’re as much scared as I am. Which is why I was so confused. Archangels are not supposed to be scared, right?” Adam didn’t even expect an answer to this rhetorical question.

“You are right, we’re not. We’re supposed to-” He never got a chance to say more because Adam pressed his index finger on his lips. It took him just a fraction of a second to realize what he’s done and he withdrew his finger as if he got a burn. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to prove to you that you don’t always have to explain yourself,” he mumbled as he studied the floor of the Cage.

“Adam, look at me.” Michael waited a few seconds before he pressed his index finger to the underside of Adam’s chin and lifted it. “No one ever dared to touch me without my permission. You indeed are the bravest human I’ve ever seen. But I still don’t understand why are you doing this. You may not hate me, but-” Michael stopped. Something stopped him in the middle of that sentence. What was it he understood a second too late. Lips. It was a pair of perfectly soft lips. Adam kissed him. And Michael stood there petrified. When it came to human feelings he was struggling with things every three years old got.

“Congratulation Mr. Milligan, you just stole my first kiss. It was,” he paused for a moment “unexpected.” Adam’s face paled and he was about to apologize what Michael silenced him with a simple shook of his head.

“So I naturally have to ask, what had this meant for you, Adam.  And why have you done this?” The archangel leaned into Adam’s personal space, his face just a mere inch from his right ear, and whispered, “Or is it just a game for you? After I abused you for four centuries, you take an advantage of me? You have every right to-”

“No, Michael. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I kissed you because I wanted to? Because you looked like a kicked puppy and I couldn’t stand seeing you hurt?” Adam paused as he took Michael’s hand in both his and caressed it. “I may not love you yet, but I care about you. Deeply. That’s why I kissed you. I like you. I wanted to show you, that you’re not alone.” Adam paused again, as if he just now realized that he’s probably said more, that he was willing to admit even to himself. But he already started, so he had to finish it. “I want to be with you if you let me. But you have to talk to me about stuff. If you’re angry at me, tell me, if you have any problem, tell me, if you need anything, literally anything, tell me. Deal?”

“I agree. I don’t fully understand humans' feelings yet, but I still know how much you mean to me and also how difficult I made things for you. And although that you’ve kissed me. And I’d like to kiss you this time.”

“I’d like that, too, but I don’t want to rush things. Give it time. Besides, that is there something you’d like right now?”

“Yes, I’d like to hold you, again. This time without the anger that had caused it. May I?” Adam wrapped his arms around Michael in the stead of an answer. Michael did the same thing but added his wings. He waited for some protests from Adam’s side and when none came, he buried his head in the crook of his neck and inhaled his scent. They stood like this for a long time, suddenly Adam heard soft humming from where Michael’s lips almost touched his skin. He didn’t understand the words, but somehow he was sure it was Enochian. While Adam was thinking Michael went from humming to quiet singing, that grew louder with every sentence. When Adam started to worry about the increasing volume, Michael stopped. The song ended.

“That was beautiful. What was it?” Asked Adam with awe in his voice.

“It’s a song my Father used to sing to me and my brothers before he created Earth, and well before he left us. It reminds me of the good times of heaven, back then when I could call in my home. That’s how I feel with you, Adam. I haven’t felt this blessed even in Eden before it was corrupted. And you’re willing to give me all of this. I mean after everything I’ve done to you, you somehow managed to forgive me. Thank you, Adam. I thought I stopped seeing the good in Father’s creation a long time ago, but you prove to me, that just because I can’t see it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. So thank you, for being yourself.” Adam was glad Michael couldn’t see his face because, after his speech, he was blushing like a teenager who just got his first kiss. His luck didn’t last long, though. Michael lifted his head so he could look into his eyes. “You’re beautiful when you blush,” whispered Michael right after he leaned toward him again. Which obviously resulted in Adam blushing even more.

“Someone should kiss your self-righteous smirk off your face.”

“Than why don’t you do it?”

“Michael-”

“Relax a little, you’re way too tense. We don’t have to do anything you wouldn’t like, I just want to know one thing. If I kissed you, would you let me?”

“Yes, I would.”

After that Michael pressed his lips on Adam’s. It was soft and tender, but there was also a slight presence of despair. They were still locked in hell with the Devil (who fortunately was on the other side of the Cage, so they had at least some sort of privacy). But they tried not to think about it for this moment. They might not have a lot of things, but they’ve had each other.

They stood together a long time after Adam ran out of breath and they’ve had to separate. “Don’t you think I wouldn’t find out that you’re touching me with your wings every time I’m close enough.” Adam smiled and kissed Michael before he could answer. He felt his wings squeezing even tighter around him and moaned quietly into the archangel’s mouth. That had a very surprising effect on the archangel. Before Adam knew it he was slammed into Cage’s wall with his legs wrapped around Michael’s waist and arms around his neck. Michael kissed as fierce as he fought. Adam was breathless in almost no time, so he turned his head on a side to get some oxygen into his lungs. It gave Michael the opportunity to start kissing the exposed side of his neck instead. It was nice, but a little too much.

“Michael, stop.” Adam tried to say but it got lost in a loud moan as Michael bit down into his throat particularly hard. Adam panicked. “Michael, stop! Please, stop. It’s too much, slow down, Michael, please!” It took Michael more time, than he was proud of, to realize what’s happening. Then he took three quick steps backward, which caused Adam to fall on the floor because of the lack of support holding him. Michael leaned forward to help him get back on his feet, but Adam flinched away. So the archangel took another two steps backward to give the human he’s fallen for (quite literally) some space. Adam stood up and they stared each other into eyes, not knowing what to say.

Michael was the first one to find his voice. “I think I know now why my Father made lust one of the seven deadly sins. It’s overpowering,” he breathed out. “Which is not an excuse, I know, I’m sorry, I should have controlled myself.”

“It’s not entirely your fault, I wanted it to happen too. You just made the last step without me.” Adam said as he started walking toward Michael. When there was just a half step between them, he stopped. Up ‘till now Michael had no idea how hard is to look into someone’s eyes when you just did something wrong. But he forced himself to do so. For Adam. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you in my life. And fuck, even if I did, we’re literally trapped in hell. What I’m trying to say is that we should take things slowly, you know, given the last four centuries. I thought you hated me and blamed me for ever-” Adam wanted to continue, but Michael did the same thing he did before- pressed his index finger on his lips. “I know that and I’m sorry, but we can discuss this later, now I want to do anything to make you less tense,” Michael claimed with his finger still pressed on Adam’s lips. Adam pushed the archangel’s finger aside and asked “And would you kiss me?” Michael didn’t bother with answering, he simply pressed his lips against Adam’s ones. It wasn’t perfect, but it was everything he could ever ask for…

[afni-fics]

Tim arrives in Paris and reunites with old friends.

(a pre-New52 DCU/Miraculous Ladybug crossover fusion)

First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Chapter Index

It was a typical morning at the Dupain-Cheng home above the Tom & Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie. Thirteen year old Marinette Dupain-Cheng had overslept (again) and was scrambling to get ready for school on time.

“No time for breakfast, Maman!” the petite teenager said as she was dashing down the stairs while tying her shoulder-length black hair into twin pigtails. As she snagged her lunch bag from the counter and was preparing to leave their apartment, she noticed that she was alone in the kitchen. “Maman?” she called out as her blue eyes scanned the empty room.

That was odd. Usually her mother, Sabine Cheng, waited until her daughter had left for school before going to help her father, Tom Dupain, in the bakery.

“Are you down here Maman?” Marinette called as she walked into the kitchen of the bakery, slowing to avoid causing any accidental disasters before entering the main storefront. She paused in the doorway as she noticed her parents talking to a man she’d never seen before.

The stranger appeared to be in his mid-30s and was dressed in a pair of nice looking dark slacks with a stylish leather jacket. He was of average height with slim athletic build, despite being absolutely dwarfed by the presence of Tom Dupain, Marinette’s gentle giant of a father. His skin was pale and some of his short black hair fell slightly into his face. He also wore a pair of dark sunglasses that completely masked his eyes. Overall, the stranger looked like a fairly well-off gentleman, and it appeared her parents both knew him. Her petite mother’s eyes were glistening with unshed tears, though Sabine Cheng also had a warm fond smile on her face as she spoke with the man, who seemed a bit embarrassed by all the attention.

“Papa? Maman?” Marinette asked cautiously as she stepped fully into the shop.

All three adults froze, obviously startled by the girl’s appearance. “Oh Marinette!” Tom was the first to respond. “We thought you’d left for school already.”

“Almost,” she said as she stepped a bit closer, curiosity winning over caution. “I’m on my way out now. Who’s this?“

Marinette’s mother found her voice. When Sabine spoke it was with a great deal of affection as she watched the stranger out of the corner of her eyes, as if she was afraid he was going to disappear when she wasn’t looking. “This is Timothy Drake. He’s a very dear old friend of ours from the United States that we haven’t seen in… goodness… over a decade now.” The tiny woman reached out and placed a hand on the stranger’s arm. “And Tim, this is–”

The stranger slowly pulled off his sunglasses, and Marinette could see for the first time that this man had kind blue eyes. “Marinette,” he said with a small smile. Though he had a slight American accent, his French was flawless. “You probably don’t remember me. The last time I saw you, you were just a baby. God, look at how much you’ve grown.” He glanced back at Tom and Sabine and the smile he gave them seemed a bit sad at his eyes. “Really sinks in how long it’s been, seeing her all grown up.” Tim turned back at the girl. “You look so much like your mother.”

Marinette felt her cheeks grow warm at the stranger’s fond words. “Oh, I’m not all that grown up or nearly as pretty as Maman.” she said dismissively with a small smile. “I’m still really klutzy and childish sometimes and…”

“–and late for school?” Her father interjected with a knowing grin.

…and late for school!“ Marinette echoed without thinking. Then she thought about it. "OH MY GOSH! I’M LATE FOR SCHOOL!” She dashed to her parents and gave them quick kisses on their cheeks. “See you later!” She said before pausing at the door. “Oh! And nice to meet you M. Drake!” Marinette smiled brightly at him before rushing out the door as quickly as she could.

Once she was gone, the smile faded from Tim’s face and his expression became more guarded.

Before he was able to address Tom and Sabine again, the petite woman raised her hand to pause him. Then she moved to the front door of the bakery and flipped the sign to “Closed” and set a time for the “Back at…" clock. Then she beckoned the two men to follow her upstairs.

“There,” Sabine said once the door was closed behind the three of them and she motioned towards the living room. “That’s better.” She looked at Tim with tender concern in her expression. “Sorry about that. I thought she’d already left for school. Are you alright?”

Tim nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine,“ he said as he took a seat on the sofa.

Sabine gave Tim a skeptical look, but didn’t press him further as she day inn a nearby chair.

Her husband went to the kitchen and began pouring out several mugs of coffee. “I almost didn’t believe my eyes this morning when you came into the bakery.” Tom said as he set the mugs on a tray. “Last time we saw you, it felt like we were never going to see you again.” Tom had a sad expression on his face as he said this before offering the first of the mugs to his guest.

Tim sighed as he took a mug and stared into it. “I never thought I’d ever set foot in Paris again either,” he admitted.

“Is it because of Le Papillon?” Sabine asked after a small sip of her coffee. “Is he why you’re here?”

Tim nodded. “At first I was just going to slip into Paris undercover, figure out who this terrorist was, and deliver all the information to the authorities before slipping out again back to Gotham. No one was supposed to know I was here.”

“What changed?” Tom asked?

“The League got involved,” Tim answered. “And Bruce asked me to investigate personally. Now I’m on their radar.”

At the mention of the League and Bruce, both Tom and Sabine frowned. Tom looked mostly concerned while Sabine looked irritated. For a moment it looked like she wanted to say something, but instead chose to focus on drinking her coffee, swallowing her words along with the dark bitter liquid.

“You should have said no.” Sabine finally muttered under her breath. Then she shook her head. “No. They should’ve never asked you in the first place.” She looked at Tim with an expression that warred between frustration and worry. “Not after what they did.”

“If I hadn’t accepted, then they would’ve sent a team of my brothers and sisters from Gotham, and we would’ve ended up tripping over each other.” Tim set down his empty mug. “Or worse, Bruce might’ve decided to come himself to investigate.”

“So what brought you to the bakery?” Tom asked. “You could’ve still investigated for the League and we wouldn’t have even known you were here in Paris.“

“The League has evidence that Le Papillon may be directly targeting the children at College Francoise Dupont.”

Tom and Sabine gasped in alarm. “Is Marinette in danger?” Sabine asked immediately.

“I’m not sure.” Tim admitted with a frown. “We aren’t certain how Le Papillon is choosing his victims though there are some solid theories. However, the majority of his targets recently are either students from the school or adults with direct ties to them. Once I leave here I’m going to begin my investigation. I’ve got a few leads to chase down. Not sure how long this is going to take though.”

“Are you going to be undercover?” Tom asked.

“I’m actually going undercover as myself.”

Tom regarded him with a quizzical look. “How does that work?”

Tim smiled a little. “You’ll see in a day or two.” He revealed. “It’ll be fairly obvious.”

Then Tim reached into an interior pocket of his leather jacket. He pulled out a small package. “I really need to head out to the school myself to get things started. I’ve got an appointment with Principal Damocles today. However, I wanted to give you both this before I left.”

Sabine took the package from Tim and opened it. Inside was a pair of cell phones in two different styles and colors. One was silver. The other was red.

“The silver phone is a direct secured line to me,” Tim explained. “If Le Papillon puts either of you or Marinette in danger when I’m not nearby, call or text me. I’ll come immediately. I’m staying at Le Grande Paris for the week at least, and if it takes longer to hunt down Le Papillon I’ll be setting up in an apartment not too far from here. I don’t plan on leaving the immediate area until this investigation is complete. So I’ll be here if any of you need me.”

Tom nodded. Then Sabine picked up the red phone. “What about this one?”

Tim’s expression became more serious. “That is an emergency line straight to Oracle, my point of contact to the League. If something happens to me… if I get badly hurt or akumatized… I need you to send a message to Oracle. I need you two to let her know that ‘Mockingbird’ has been compromised.”

At that, both Sabine and Tom stared at Tim with open concern. “Then, I pray we never have to use this.” Tom said quietly.

“You and me both,” Tim agreed as he prepared to leave.

“It’s not fair.” Sabine’s sad voice caused Tim to pause at the door. “We’ve missed you so much, and we’ve wished for so long that you would come back to Paris one day, back into our lives, but not like this.”

Tim kept his gaze focused on the door, his brows furrowed before closing his eyes and bowing his head. “I know. But you both know why I couldn’t.“

"You know, you don’t have to pretend to be a stranger while you’re in Paris now, Tim.” Tom said hopefully. “Sure the reason you’re here is not ideal, and while you never intended to return you are here now.” He drew his wife into a sideways one-armed hug and smiled reassuringly at Tim. “Marinette knows you’re our friend, and if you’re here for awhile, it would be odd or even suspicious for you to not visit from time to time.”

Tim sighed. When he turned to the couple it was clear from his initial expression he intended to give a reluctant denial. “I can’t–” But the words got stuck in his throat as he looked at both Tom and Sabine, with their dual hopeful expressions. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I'll… think about it,” he finally relented.  

Sabine smiled and gave Tim a hug while Tom smiled and nodded. Then the pair of them saw him out of the bakery as he started out towards College Francoise Dupont.

—–

Meanwhile, a small purple and black butterfly was flitting towards that exact same school, pulsing with dark energies.

First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Chapter Index

[goddamnitkastle]

Light My Heart and Light My Shadow

I did say I was working on an Apocalypse Kastle AU fic and given the state of the world, it gave me the final push to finish the damn thing. While also getting inspiration from others sources and getting great support from @carry-the-sky and @witchygagirl. Thank you both for beta reading!

So the idea to write this AU first came about from If The World Was Ending by JP Saxe ft. Julia Michaels. Then Starkid came out with a new musical called Black Friday and well, once again, I am slightly ripping off another source material for their scenarios but then making it Kastle. That’s how I make my fics happen these days apparently.

If you’ve seen the musical, you probably know what’s coming but if you haven’t it’s okay, you can still go along with it. But also watch it cause it’s awesome (if you’re into apocalyptic musicals).

Either way, a year has passed since the hospital visit in TPS2, the world is ending now, and Frank and Karen are navigating it together.  

Enjoy!

It’s dark when Frank wakes.

But that doesn’t stop the flashbacks. Or really the vivid remembrance of the last week and a half. When the world ended. Or is it still ending? He doesn’t know at this point.

I swear Micro if you don’t find Karen...

It’s been a year Frank, you really expect me to go anywhere with you...

The world is literally on fire Frank you need to get out of here...

This is the apocalypse. This is the end, not even Daredevil can stop it. Find Karen, Frank. Take care of her for me. Tell her that I’m sorry and that Foggy will always be there for her. In this lifetime or the next. Just please... go.

Karen please... let’s go.

Frank realizes he’s lying in an aisle, a row of seats on either side of him. The floor is sticky and he can smell a faint trace of buttered popcorn underneath the smoke from the fires.

How the fuck did he end up in a movie theater? And where is Karen?

He gets up and his right side flares up in pain. He groans as he reaches out into the black to find a seat. He manages to find an arm rest to sit down on.

The lights turn on and a door opens. Frank whips around. It’s Karen.

“Hey you shouldn’t be up, you’re gonna rip the stitches...”

“Where the hell are we Karen?”

“In an AMC I think? I don’t know, it’s a movie theater and you were stabbed. I had to get us away from...”

“Right. Who were they?”

“I don’t know. People driven to madness? I wouldn’t rule out zombies at this point. You’re gonna be fine though, I don’t think the knife hit any organs as for as I could tell.”

“How’d you patch me up?”

“I found a first aid kit in the box office. I think we’ll be safe here for now, I checked every door and I locked it. And if I couldn’t lock it I barricaded it. Ticket stations, chairs, tables, anything I could find...”

“You did good Karen.” He reassures her.

“Thank you.”

“No thank you...”

He looks at her. Past the grime and the dark circles under her eyes she is still so beautiful. He notices her eyebrows are knitted together and he then realizes that she is waiting for him to finish his sentence.

“...For, uh, coming with me. Still trusting me even after the hospital...” He spills out.

“Well it’s hard to fake an apocalypse, Frank.”

The silence is tense but Karen breaks into a laugh and Frank smiles for the first time in a year. It’s a brief moment of respite in the middle of hell.

“The world didn’t need to end though. It shouldn’t have had to come to that. I shouldn’t have walked away from you. Stayed away as long as I did. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I forgive you.”

Frank turns to the movie screen. He leans all the way back and rests against the wall.

“Jesus I can’t remember the last time I went to the movies. Not like I’d remember them. I, uh, only went to whatever latest animated movie Lisa and Frankie were obsessing over that also happened to have merchandise to buy.”

Karen smiles, leans back and rests against the wall.

“I had to do a couple movie reviews for The Bulletin. Trust me, you really weren’t missing much on the non-animated side. It was either about superheroes or cars or... the end of the world.”

And just like that hell comes rushing back in and Frank feels his adrenaline spike.

“Yeah we shouldn’t stay here. We gotta keep moving Karen...”

Frank starts to get up but he feels her hand grab his wrist.

“No Frank. I’m tired. I’m so goddamn tired I just want to...”

He takes her hand off and clasps in between his as he sits back down.

“God even after a year you... you still rip my heart out Frank. Even as the world burns around us my biggest fear is that I’m gonna wake up tomorrow and you’re gonna be gone.”

“I’m not going anywhere Karen. I’m never gonna say goodbye to you unless you ask me to.”

“What if I give you a reason to?”

“No reason could ever...”

“I killed my brother.”

Tears start to fall but he doesn’t let go of her hand.

“I think that’s why... your case. It wasn’t just that something wasn’t right. I realized long after that trial... I think deep down somewhere I was reaching out to you like a lifeline. To help me make sense of this loss that just consumes me some days. On those days I can still smell the blood, the burning asphalt of the pavement, feel the scream in my chest when I looked over and saw Kevin motionless next to me...”

Karen covers her mouth with her hands and a muffled, strangled sob comes out. Frank has her in his arms a moment later and doesn’t let go for a long time. Mixed in with her cries she recounts that awful night to him, learns of Todd, her father, her mother.

“It’s okay Karen.” He keeps telling her. 

Nothing about what is going on is okay but he will say it for her. Say it until it’s a mantra and she believes it will be again.

...

They stay in that movie theater for a few days. All was safe and sound and Frank reluctantly agreed that he was also goddamn tired. He and Karen had been on the run, it was only a matter of time before they had to stop.

The movie theater turned out to be the ideal hideaway. Once Frank got one of the generators to work out they had electricity and plumbing. And when Karen found the stockroom, the food problem was solved. Yes it was greasy and sugary shit but it was better than nothing.

“I wonder if we could get the projector to work.” Karen muses while eating Raisinets.

“Then we really wouldn’t have a reason to leave.” Frank says as he bites into a chicken tender.

On their second night Frank finds Karen reading training manuals behind the box office counter.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Thinking of changing careers?” He asks as he cracks a side smile at her.

She rolls her eyes but a small smile appears.

“Come on, I got something to show you.”

Frank leads them to the auditorium and, hopefully, if Frank timed this right...

Let's all go to the lobby To get ourselves a treat

“You didn’t.” Karen exclaims.

“If you ever decide to open a movie theater, let me know if you need a projectionist. Only took me a day and half to figure out the damn thing.”

They go inside and take their seats. They have their snacks and Frank can almost forget what is happening outside.

“What movie are we watching?”

“Yeah about that...”

Jingle bells suddenly ring out and the movie title appears in bright red letters:

Santa Claus Is Going to High School

“Oh no...” Karen gasps as she leans forward, her hands gripping the back of the seat in front of hers.

“Yeah sorry this was the only movie that I could get to play.”

“Oh God I had to see this movie. For The Bulletin.”

“Shit. I would pick the one movie you’ve actually seen...”

“Yeah after that I told Ellison I was never going to do the movie reviews again and to give those pieces to the interns.”

“What’s it about?”

“Um.. so Santa Claus finds out that every kid in the world is on the naughty list. He realizes he may be out of touch so he turns himself into a teenager to... I guess to get back in touch with them? Or to spy on them... it’s bad Frank. It’s Never Been Kissed but make it Christmas.”

Frank laughs.

“High school, huh?”

“Yeah... why anyone would willing go back to high school I could never...”

“I would.”

Karen turns her attention away from the movie and onto him.

“Really?” She asks skeptically.

“Does that surprise you?”

“Kind of. Let me guess... quarterback?”

“Offensive line. And wrestling. I was a jock, what can I say? But high school... I liked the structure though and even the, uh, learning... when it wasn’t hard. What about you?”

“Please don’t.”

“Karen...”

“I told you I was...”

“You said yourself that was end of senior year. When you met Todd. Are you telling me that was when your life began? That there was nothing before the drugs?”

“Don’t be an asshole Frank. Okay? I played basketball, I contributed to my school’s literary magazine and... I’m not that girl anymore.”

Karen gets up but Frank grabs her arm.

“You don’t have to be.”

“What are we doing Frank? The world is fucking ending and here we are reminiscing about high school...”

“And? Jesus Karen I was just trying to...”

“What?”

“I don’t know, forget? Just for a moment forget all the shit that has happened to me? Who I’ve been for the last four years? Tonight I just wanted to be a man, seeing a movie with a beautiful woman, and hope that there was something still there.”

“Frank we can’t just... forget.”

“Why not? It’s you and me. You and me at the end of the world with no reason to run away or leave or to say goodbye. No past. No future. Just now. And I want you.”

He reaches for her and takes her hands in his.

“You’ve forgiven me time and time again. Even when I don’t deserve it. Please let me...” He pleads as he runs his thumbs over her wrists.

“Do you mean it Frank?”

“I do.”

His forehead lightly bumps into hers. The movie has been white noise from the start but in this moment the screen goes white, bathing Karen in a color other than red and black for the first time. It’s like daylight and he feels like he could cry. But then she pulls her hands from his and places them over his heart and the touch alone sends a shudder through him.

“We have got to work on our timing.” She whispers as her fingertips press deeper into his chest.

And then she kisses him. He opens his mouth as she grabs his face in fierce desperation. He goes to work on getting his flannel shirt off and she decides to help. They have both forgotten how buttons work but they manage to get it off. As Karen pulls Frank by his tank top, they fall on the linoleum floor in an ungraceful thud. Her fingernails dig into his shoulders and he’s got his hand under her shirt groping at her breast when...

“A red tricycle!”

“Santa!”

A crowd starts cheering and Frank is pulled out of the moment. He makes a face trying to imagine what could be on screen right now and snorts into Karen’s neck. She sighs and grabs the back of his neck like a puppy being pulled by their scruff. Her stare is deadly and Frank is all ears now.

“Really Frank? The movie is that distracting?”

Despite her tone her face and neck are flushed red and yeah, fuck that movie.

“Sorry. Let me see if I can...”

He sticks his hand down the front of her pants, determined to make that movie the last thing on their minds. The world is ending and it’s now or never to see where this thing between them will go. But whatever comes tomorrow, they’ll take it on together.

[thecloserkin]

book review: Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now (2004)

Genre: Young Adult

Is it the main pairing: yes

Is it canon: yes

Is it explicit: no

Is it endgame: yes

Is it shippable: yes

Bottom line: It finally happened, I broke my own “no cousincest—in this house we turn the TABOO dial up to eleven” rule. In my defense this book is gobsmackingly good.

Lately I’ve been mulling on the difference between books about teenagers and books for teenagers. This one is the former, and a joy to reread as an adult. Our American heroine Daisy is sent across the pond to live with her British cousins; a war breaks out; details are scant but who cares about the war, she starts fucking one of the cousins. She describes it as “falling into sexual and emotional thrall” she said THRALL I am living for it. On a scale from “pure” to “problematic” this ship is almost all light and no darkness—what darkness menaces our protagonists emanates from outside the charmed circle of their big ol’ farmhouse and their sheepdogs and their goat:

The real truth is that the war didn’t have much to do with it except that it provided a perfect limbo in which two people who were too young and too related could start kissing without anything or anyone making us stop. There were no parents, no teachers, no schedules. There was no where to go and nothing to do that would remind us that this sort of thing didn’t happen in the Real World. There no longer was any Real World.

The notion of carving out an idyll where you & the object of your desire spend all day doing nothing but drink each other up? It’s attractive even for those of us conducting mundane relationships in the “real” world. Maybe especially for those of us in the real world, where we compartmentalize our relationships and no one person can fill every filament in our universe. Daisy’s cousins live a cloistered life in the countryside and within a week she’s saying stuff like “I felt like I’d belonged to this house for centuries.” Which is an awfully dramatic way of saying she never felt like she belonged in New York. She doesn’t just fall for Cousin Edmond; she falls for the whole telepathic dog-whispering cousinly clan and their big anarchist energy. When Daisy, an only child, says “I had about as much experience with sex and boyfriends as I did with brothers and sisters,” she is intentionally conflating romantic and familial relationships and I am 1000% here for it. Sure it’s technically cousincest but it feels claustrophobic and codependent and everything I want out of an incest ship.

Every step of Daisy’s obsessive infatuation is chronicled with agonizing tenderness:

I wondered if that’s the feeling you’re supposed to have when your cousin touches a totally innocent part of your anatomy that’s fully clothed.

that’s right it’s the thought and the intention and the pining behind the touch, not the bare fact of physical contact.

Things were so intense I was sure that other people could hear the hum coming off of us.

Imagine desire rising like mist from the surface of one’s skin. And the “other people” part of the equation is important, because it’s the sneaking around behind the other kids’ backs that gives urgency to their coupling:

we started sleeping most of the daylight hours so we could be awake at night when everyone else was in bed … Then we would sleep for a little while and eventually reappear and try to act normal

But what is “normal”? There are no adults and no rules; nothing is forbidden save that they themselves deem it so. What then explains Daisy’s conviction that this is “not a good idea”? Why shroud their affair in secrecy if the most powerful reaction they provoke from smol!cousin who learns about Daisy/Edmond is “Well I’m glad you love him because I do too”? That’s pretty anticlimactic given the lengths Daisy & Edmond have gone to be stealthy. It also emphasizes (in case we’ve forgotten that Daisy has both no siblings and no boyfriends) how romantic & familial attachments spring from a common source. I think what the text is getting at here is that it’s dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket the way Daisy puts all hers in Edmond. It’s dangerous and unhealthy to make one person your whole world, as we see later when Daisy comes to much grief. At no point, however, does she regret her decision.

we could try and try to get enough of each other but it was llike some witch’s curse where the more we tried to stop being hungry the more starving we got.

That’s a hard-hitting simile right there. The thing about curses in fairy tales is they don’t always do what they’re designed to do; frequently they accomplish different ends entirely. If we look at what Daisy’s insatiable hunger for Edmond is displacing we note that Daisy is no stranger to the feeling of constant, gnawing, unsatiated hunger because Daisy has an eating disorder. In her own words:

at first not wanting to get poisoned by my stepmother and how much it annoyed her and how after a while I discovered I liked the feeling of being hungry and the fact that it drove everyone stark raving mad and cost my father a fortune in shrinks and also it was something I was good at.

…which is just about the world’s most cogent account of eating disorders as quests for control & autonomy. By the end of the novel she no longer experiences hunger as “a punishment or a crime or a weapon or a mode of self-destruction” and that's something, anyway.

Y’all know I’m a big skimmer right? I mention this because I want you to take my full meaning when I say I read every single word of this (very short) novel. The syntax helped—most sentences are structured like so: “… and …. and … and then …” but it was engrossing af and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use Ironic Capitalization to such devastating effect. The stylistic choice to use zero dialogue brackets means Daisy’s thoughts and Edmond’s thoughts (Edmond’s a telepath) and external action and internal commentary all run together. I didn’t find this confusing btw I just found it extremely effective.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Daisy and Edmond are separated at about the one-third mark and she spends the remainder of the book trying to get back to him, traversing a war-torn countryside with Edmond’s smol!sister and his dog in tow (since Daisy is a city girl who can’t even read a compass, maybe it’s more accurate to say smol!cousin + dog have Daisy in tow):

I guess the difference between Gin and me is that when Gin got shut in the barn she thought Edmond didn’t love her anymore but because I could feel Edmond out there somewhere always loving me I didn’t have to howl all night.

The parallel between Edmond’s girl and Edmond’s dog is not an idle one. There’s consistent strain of anticapitalist sentiment that runs through this book, that comes out most strongly in the relationships between Daisy’s cousins and their animals. Some military junta appropriates the farmhouse and displaces Daisy, her cousins, and the menagerie of animals that depend on them—that’s how Edmond and Daisy become separated, they’re “relocated.” The army is hierarchal and in wartime, the army is in charge. By contrast, Daisy’s cousins model a nonhierarchical kind of relationship with their animals, a relationship based on reciprocal obligations rather than dominating other people. “At times,” professes Daisy, “I thought I was more animal than human.” In other words, human beings live under an absolutely barbaric system, and it’s often more “humane” to behave like animals. It’s Edmond’s sheepdog who proves key to Daisy’s successful escape. City girl Daisy still can’t wrap her head around it:

one of the things I most dislike about nature, namely that the rules are not at all precise. Like when Piper says I’m pretty sure that mushrooms aren’t poisonous.

But nature’s strength lies precisely in the fuzziness of its rules! It encourages interdependence & reliance on others, rather than trying to go it alone as an atomized individual. So surviving on the run actually forces one to prioritize community (however you define it) over individual, which has salutary effects on Daisy, who reports “Somewhere along the way I’d lost the will not to eat.” She’s defeated her eating disorder, that’s good news. Unfortunately, Edmond and Daisy are not even reunited before she’s expelled from England and shipped back to America for Reasons. Dw she comes back! As soon as the borders reopen she comes back:

The soldier had stamped my passport FAMILY in heavy black capital letters and I checked it now for reassurance because I liked how fierce the word looked.

Very powerful passage but now for the ending. Let’s not talk about that ending. I don’t know why I called this a good book I am still incredulous we got THAT ending after everything we went through brb I’m suing Meg Rosoff for emotional damages