#I finally set up a shrine just for Mary herself after almost a year of work with her

[saint-stanthony]

Our lady🗡🥀

[corinnesamuels]

The One about the Cupholder

This is for @mppmaraudergirl, who mentioned a conversation about a cupholder on a couch not being conducive to cuddling on the jily discord. I spent all day thinking about that couch. And the next few thinking through this fic.

“Well?” He asks excitedly.

“It’s. . . a couch?”

James Potter rolls his eyes with a sigh. “It’s a sectional, Remus. Look at all this space! And the recliner!” He walks around the back so that he can gesture grandly at his favorite of the sectional’s amenities. “It has a cup holder!”

The third friend, Sirius Black, shakes his head in annoyed confusion. “We have a coffee table, James. What do we need a cup holder on the couch for?”

“Sectional.” James replies. “And for the convenience of it. Whoever sits here won’t have to lean over to pick their drinks up from the coffee table!”

James looks between Sirius and Remus excitedly, waiting for their unimpressed stares to dissipate and shift into fond acknowledgement of his forward thinking.

“Did the breakup addle your brain?” Sirius asks finally.

“Maybe it is a cry for help.” Remus nods as he looks James over curiously. “He really hasn’t had any time to process it.”

“True. The breakup and the betrayal were a hefty one-two combo.” Sirius says, rubbing his chin. “The betrayal was just one thing for us. We were happy to see the bird gone.”

“Nothing addled my brain!” James scoffs. “A man can’t want a comfortable couch to come home to after a long day’s work?”

“James, you work from home three days a week.” Remus says.

“That is beside the point, but thank you for remembering.”

Sirius rolls his eyes, clearly growing bored with the ordeal. “Look, if you want to get a couch, fine. It’s grey, it’ll work with most things. Looks comfortable enough. The cupholder seems unnecessary, but whatever. Can we go now?”

“Sectional.”

“Whatever.”

All in all, James considers it a win. And he could desperately use a win. In a month’s time, he had experienced a not-so-amicable breakup with his girlfriend and a betrayal by a friend he thought of as a brother. While the breakup had been long overdue, it meant that he had quickly needed a place to stay. The upside (if you could call it that) of their friend’s betrayal meant that there was a room available in Remus and Sirius’ flat.

On the other hand, the list of things stolen in the betrayal had included the couch they’d had since uni. How he’d managed, they had no idea. But Peter Pettigrew had been full of surprises, it seemed.

After a thorough cleaning, James moves into the vacant room and gets re-acquainted with Sirius and Remus’ daily habits. Soon, James instinctively knows when Sirius would be returning home from the motorcycle shop he owns, as well as which mornings he could expect to find a man or woman half-dressed in Sirius’ clothes at breakfast. He could tell when Remus would need time to vent or consume several stiff drinks as he trudged through his dissertation. It was almost like uni all over again.

Through it all, James gives himself time to sulk, drowning himself in FIFA, Call of Duty, and crisps after work. He knows that things will sting less over time, and for now, settles for being at peace and drama-free with his best mates. James spends the next year claiming the recliner portion of the sectional and keeping a drink in its trusty cupholder at all times. In fact, when teammates from the recreational football team he plays for on the weekends commented on the great shape he maintained even while eating his body weight in crisps, he credited it to the cupholder, saying hydration was always just an arm’s reach away.

Remus had raised his eyebrows and folded his lips inward at the comment but chose not to speak on it. Sirius just snorted and rolled his eyes.

Living with Sirius and Remus also meant spending more time with their friends that lived down the hall, who he’d known before, but only in passing. James finds himself watching football matches with Marlene McKinnon, a riot who often gives Sirius a run for his money. He makes it a point to ask Mary McDonald for the weather report (“You wanker, you know I do the traffic report and local stories!”). James also trades jokes in passing with Lily Evans, the cheeky pediatrics nurse who curses like a sailor and keeps her stash of lollies and stickers next to her stash of whiskey.

Cheeky and attractive pediatrics nurse.

James has no desire to interact with the opposite sex again anytime soon, though. For now, all he needs is his gaming consoles, his favorite spot on the sectional, and a drink ready for him in his cupholder. But the more their friends hang out, the more Lily seems to grow on him.

She didn’t do anything in particular. She was just . . . her.

He knows he is a lost cause when Lily manages to get herself locked out of her apartment one evening. Mary is covering a shift at the station, and Marlene and Sirius are out wreaking havoc on some unsuspecting establishment, so she waits it out at the flat with James until her roommates return. Lily has her hair in two buns atop the sides of her head, a sticker on her cheek, and is still in her scrubs, and James can’t help but grin at her as she walks in. He watches as she digs deep into her pockets and pulls out a handful of lollies, allowing him to take his pick. He takes a green apple-flavored one while she settles on lemon.

“Now, teach me how to play this FIFA game you’ve been playing nonstop since you moved in.” Lily says, picking up the second control and making a show of pressing all the buttons madly.

Sitting on either side of the cupholder, James and Lily play the game, joking and laughing the entire time. James realizes that though he had stopped moping some weeks before, he laughed more with Lily that night than he’d laughed in who knows how long. When Marlene and Sirius return, Lily thanks James for his hospitality and leaves a sticker and another green apple lolly in the cupholder as she says goodbye.

James spends the next few weeks subtly watching Lily when they pass each other in the hall or go out for dinner or drinks with the gang. He honestly doesn’t even really realize that he is doing it until one day he thinks he sees her watching him, too.

When Remus defends his dissertation, the gang decides to throw a celebratory party at the boys’ flat. Remus is deliriously drunk, taking votes on whether he should burn his dissertation or build a shrine to it. James mingles and laughs with their friends and Remus’ colleagues but eventually retires to his favorite spot and places a glass of whiskey in his cupholder as he pulls the lever to recline the seat. He looks over to the other side of the sectional and sees people squeezing themselves onto the cushions and sitting on the floor as they chat drunkenly. James smiles to himself, thinking of how the cupholder had ensured that he not only has his drink close by but that he also had enough space to relax. He toasts to his own foresight and takes a sip from his glass. It’s a brand of whiskey he knows is Lily’s favorite. James had gone to three different liquor stores to find it for the party.

Lily comes to say hello a few moments later and, seeing that there is no additional room on the sectional, chooses to sit next to him on the armrest of the recliner. While they talk, she reaches over him and takes his glass from the cupholder, stealing a swig of the amber colored liquid. She closes her eyes and smiles, relishing the taste. James finds himself very distracted by the euphoric look on her face—her closed eyes, head tilted back, dark red hair tumbling around her in waves, neck elongated . . .

He clears his throat to gather himself and reign his thoughts back to safer ground.

They talk about everything, or maybe nothing. James can’t be sure since he is still so damned distracted by her every move. He gets a reprieve when Sirius calls for a group picture to document the occasion. Mary has set up a camera and tripod that she, ahem . . . borrowed from work—though definitely not for the act of taking quality selfies, she says.

As Sirius makes his way to the front of the sitting room, he sees James and Lily talking and exchanges a devious look with Marlene that Lily sees too late.

Suddenly, Marlene shoves Lily off of the armrest. Lily attempts to brace her fall, but James’ reflexes kick in, and he catches her right before her back bangs into the cupholder. They lock eyes for a moment, or maybe a lifetime, before they seem to realize that James is holding her in his lap.

“I’m so sorry, Marlene pushed me and—”

“So incredibly sorry, Evans, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just didn’t want you to get hurt—”

They stop and lock eyes again. James watches as Lily’s cheeks grow pink, and when she tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, he wishes he could have been the one to tuck it there.

“I’m not uncomfortable.” Lily says, uncharacteristically bashful as she looks up at him through her lashes. James is so distracted by the way she is biting the corner of her lip that he almost misses it.

Oh. Oh.

“Yeah?” He asks, sounding out of breath.

“Yeah.” She confirms softly. Her hair falls out of place again, and this time James does tuck it back into place.

Around them, Sirius and Mary are getting everyone gathered and placed around the sectional. A drunken Remus sits in the front, holding his dissertation like he’s posing for a picture with a toddler.

“Everyone one say ‘PhD’ on three!” Mary yells over the lively crowd. James hears Sirius count them down, but James can’t take his eyes away from Lily.

“One!”

Lily rests a hand on his forearm.

“Two!”

James wraps an arm around her legs to hold her to him more securely.

“Three!”

“I’m not uncomfortable either.” James tells Lily.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“PhD!” The camera flashes, and everyone yells and cheers around them, clapping Remus on the shoulder and toasting with their drinks. But James and Lily still only have eyes for each other.

The previous year had been full of emotional upheaval for James Potter. But at that moment, he had never been so grateful for his cupholder or the fact that it meant there was less sitting room on the couch.

Sectional.

Whatever.

Read on ao3!

[rosethornewrites]

Fic: Love Language, ch. 6

[scrumptiousalpacadeer]

My Easter - Removing The Mask

Easter 2020 will forever remain in my memory as the one that hit me like a truck; an invitation I answered body and soul; the Easter where I fully allowed myself to ‘go there’, to pass through the impossible threshold of the crucifixtion and come out the other side. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened at the heart of the Covid-19 lockdown; Easter-time this year felt like a glaring luminous invitation to journey inwards. Besides, what else was there to do?! I couldn’t meet with friends, go to cafes or pubs. I was forbidden even to drive to the woods and romp in the leaves. All of sudden the world had stopped, there was no running away this time. I was called, finally, to confront myself with eyes wide open. It’s Holy Week, and I’m being given some very clear marching orders: “its safe to come out now. Its time to remove the mask.”

I can’t recall which particular day it was; perhaps Palm Sunday or Holy Monday, but I received a very clear instruction to write a full, unfiltered confession to myself of the real conditions of my life so far. Somehow it felt entirely correct that I would undertake this task whilst journeying with Christ through his betrayal and crucifixion, for I knew that in order to do this I would be visiting the blackest times of my life; times of pounding lovelessness and cruelty, impossible violence and running blood. I knew that I would need to visit the desolate landscape of my youth, to pull off the grim mask of civilization I’d worn all these years and fully encounter the betrayals by those who were supposed to love me. Hardest of all, I knew at the core of my confession was a fully sighted look at the violent, disconnected person those early losses had turned me into; I would have to gaze up at the sky-scraping height of the walls of defense I’d built around myself; wall that had at times fully eclipsed the sun. I would need to meet all the gentle souls I’d hurt betrayed since that time, believing so wholeheartedly that I was full of stinking rot and no consequence on this earth. 

Somehow I knew I wasn’t alone. The deal seemed to be that if I fully surrendered to this, as much as my consciousness would allow, that I would be fully met and held every step of the way. ‘Don’t worry’ a voice said, a deep silent voice inside, ‘it’s safe. I’m here. I won’t leave you..even when it might feel like I have, when things get sticky, I haven’t. I’m always here.’

I was being invited to set myself free and even though there was some trepidation, as with all big journeys into the unknown, there was also a deep excitement, for I knew that if I could come thorugh this portal, there would be a whole new world waiting; a new beginning.

So I jumped out of the plane without a parachute.  Upon guidance from The Christian Comunity Church I set up a small shrine on a chest of drawers in my bedroom. It consists of an alabaster statue of Mother Mary cradling a baby Jesus, three candle holders and a clay heart, un-painted and hastily sculptured by my daughter. This was a pilgrimage man must undertake alone; but the world was allowing me a luxurious amount of personal space – the only visitors would be delivery men (!) and my daughter was staying with her father just down the road. I didn’t know at the beginning that my confessions would take nine days, or that some days the words would come in such a torrent. My writing life has always been a response to a physical impulse, a ‘pull’ for something to come out, but never before had I been tugged like this, a fish on a hook. Some days I typed four or five hours straight.  

Each morning I breakfasted and went to my little church, dead on ten o’clock. I followed the service advised by the church. I turned off my phone, lit seven candles, read the Gospel aloud, attempted to clear my mind, and said the Lords Prayer – the first time, in forty five years living on this earth, that the words resonated within me with meaning. Every time I said ‘Thy will be done’ I was reminded that this was a task of surrendering to something far bigger than me, not something to ‘push ahead with’ in my head. Those days of intellectual figuring out were no help here. Often on those Easter mornings I asked for strength to keep going. I asked for my faith to be renewed when I felt lost. At the moment of Consecration, in my imagination I feasted hungrily on the bread and drank thirstily from the cup, in fact, it’s more truthful to say I gulped on the life force of Christ. I needed His strength for the day ahead; I needed to be lit up with his light.

Nights I slept in my daughter’s bedroom, waking up each morning of Holy Week to her glorious pictures of elves and sprites; her display of animals photos torn from magazines; a penguin she’d adorned with a speech bubble with the words ‘I’m cold’ scribbled in biro and a baby seal, that she’d adorned with a bow on its head. I woke up to her letter from Santa Claus tacked to the wall and her kitten calendar.  It gave me great comfort to sleep in an eight year old’s world, for I knew that my journey required me to be as vulnerable and awe-struck as a child; to recall what it was like to reveal my heart without any thought or consequence.   

My appetite lessened; I ate a lot of toast and drank gallons of tea. I typed sitting on the floor with my computer on an upturned crate. Often I wouldn’t dress until late afternoon. After writing I would reward myself with a walk out into the lanes and woodland tracks of Ashurst Wood. 

It seemed hugely significant that although I would be plummeting to my death, in the background there was an abundance of fuzzy life; Laura, our tortoise-shell cat had given birth to six kittens on  April 4th. They were still limp and blind, but fattening with each second in a cardboard den. As I typed in my daughter’s room, a dark beginning of life resounded silently from the kitten corner. 

I gave my confession the title Turning Point. One of the central themes of my Easter 2020 undertaking, if not its core, was letting my sister, Sally Ann, die. But to do this, to grant her her final wish, I knew I needed to tell her story as honestly as I could; to bear witness to her suffering and reveal it to the world; to not conjoin with the world we’d both been born into and ‘cover her up’. Only then would she rest in heaven; only then could I live on earth in freedom. Sally, my dark mysterious sister, ahead of me in the world by three years, committed suicide at our family home in January 1990. She was nineteen years old and I was sixteen at the time. 

Somehow I knew that journeying back to the hell of that that time, almost thirty years ago, back to her trimester of suffering when each day felt like a crucifixtion, would lead me into heaven. At some point during these days I experienced a powerful shift in my thinking; a revelation. I realised that for thirty years I’d been living with a fundamental ‘untruth’ - a lie that had at times proved almost fatal. This lie was two-fold and lay at the core of my heart, and in lifting the lid on it, I experienced such a physical release that I was able to kneel down and weep at my little church. I could begin to let go. 

The first lie was that I’d thought that I’d had to stop loving my sister because she was no longer here; because of the shame that society places on suicide; because there was no adequate help in the suburbs of Bedfordshire in the early 90s for such an act of self-murder in a three bed semi, because our relationship had been so difficult; because nothing I did seemed to make her happy; because it had all been so hopeless; because my father had told me to buck up two weeks after her death - ‘life goes on Christine’ - all of that meant that I’d detached myself from all the love I felt for my sister, I’d erased it all; I’d cut myself off from my history in shame, forgotten all the nights we’d shared sleeping in the same room; all the good times and laughter we shared,  despite her cruelty, despite the confusion. This Easter I was given the gift of remembering myself as a loving child; I recalled; I felt viscerally, in my body, that despite everything, I had loved her. Now wasn’t that something? Wasn’t that a miracle? And then the impossible happened; she took herself out of the game and left me here on earth in devastation. This Easter I needed to reclaimed my heart somehow. ‘It’s ok’ the voice said, ‘speak out. You have nothing to be ashamed of’. 

The second lie that I began to put to bed was that somehow my heart was ‘malformed’ or ‘useless’ in some way, because the love I sent forth hadn’t been able to save Sally. For the two months leading up to her suicide, every day when I returned from school, she only got worse, not better.  Somehow, and somehow I could offer this up this Easter, I had thought myself a ‘murderer’.

And underneath the civilized mask I wore, the truth was that I’d treated myself often as one would treat a murderous child; I’d kept her locked away, persecuted myself, let people and things I adored fall by the wayside, abandoning myself and my fellow man over and over. 

Somehow the grim violence of Christ’s death, the humiliation, the heart-breaking conversation he has with God before-hand ‘isn’t there another way we can do this?!’ rang out to me this year. I finally accepted the devastation of his death. I had to allowed the tsunami of grief and I sat at his feet through-out; I sat at the feet of my dying self in full compassion for her helplessness Only in opening myself to my full vulnerability would I get to the green pasture on the other side. Only by allowing the truth of the world of violence I’d been born into would I undergo the glorious transformations of those violences. Christ’s death reversed a big lie I’d been imprisoned by; that our shadow life is best kept quiet – ‘oh no, don’t you understand?’ he says, ‘the blackness is the very place from which light is born; the point where everything can change; the place where you’ll learn to love. But – and I know this is a bummer - you have to die first.’ If I truly wanted to continue living in my body then it needed to be with wounds revealed. It was so wholly, genetically, biologically different in every way to the life of appearance I’d been forging ahead with. 

On the evening of Easter Saturday I drank a small measure of gin for courage and sent Turning Point out into the atmosphere, emailing to my dear friend and writing partner Matilda Leyser. I hung in the balance, waiting for the world to change – daring to believe the unbelievable. Then things got weird; at almost exactly the same time of clicking send and removing my armour, I got attacked. I received a long email, aggressive in tone, from my neighbour informing me that my tom-cat, George, had got in to her house and urinated on her bed. “Please be a responsible pet owner”, she said. “and keep your cats locked in your house from now on.” Isn’t the world like that? I thought. We take the ultimate leap to freedom, and someone, someone you least expect, will swipe you with a long diatribe about cat wee. 

But I knew that this was a good sign; a sign that just in me trying to be real, the world had shifted. Wasn’t it time for me to confront the possibility that a good life was waiting for me? Wasn’t it time to forgive my neighbour her trespasses and move on -  to a place where I could play the piano without being told to shush? Wasn’t it time to stop communing with misery and take responsibility for my happiness? Doesn’t the resurrection tell us that there’s a chance; that we’re meant to live in abundance? 

Easter Monday I thought I’d be overwhelmed with joy but that came later – in fact, in took a couple of weeks of disorientation and yet more grief before I could begin to grasp the sheer revolutionary, upturning power of Jesus’s resurrected body. I read St Luke 24: 39 over and over; “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; hand me, and see;” He was back, wounds and all. He was eating with his friends and rejoicing. Their hearts were singing. The old dark world was gone and things could only get better. 

A week after Easter my daughter returned home and reclaimed her room. Like every human being on the earth at this time, we have no idea what is going to happen next. 

* * * **

A couple of days ago I watched the Billy Wilder classic The Apartment. It’s a simple tale of love and redemption in 50s New York,  but there’s a darkness at the centre of the film that surprised me. Fran Kubelik, a central character and love interest played (Shirley MacClaine) is ‘brought back to life’ after attempting suicide on Christmas Eve by the man who loves her, Bud Baxter (Jack Lemmon) and a doctor. and his neighbour. It’s a disturbing scene because she doesn’t want to revive; she’s injected, slapped, given smelling salts, extra strong coffee and finally walked up and down the apartment by the two men like a rag doll to keep her awake. Bud cares for her over the next forty eight hours, hiding his shaving razors for fear she’ll try again; just as my parents hid dangerous implements in high cupboards as my sister’s death wish intensified. 

She recovers, and in the glorious ending of the film, Fran has a sudden epiphany. Sitting in the restaurant with her cruel lover, she sits bolt upright, the camera focuses on her widening eyes: she realises that she’s in love with Mr Baxter, the kind man who saved her life. Perhaps she realises that she’s loved him all along. Choosing love, she leaves her old life behind, and sprints through the streets of New York to Bud’s apartment. Her high heels clack up the stairs to his apartment like rapid gun fire.  He’s packing up his apartment;  he wants something better than loaning out his home as a glorified knocking shop to his bosses and their mistresses. “What are you doing?” Fran asks him.

“I don’t know, …….I just gotta get out of this place’. 

They sit with glasses of champagne and prepare to play Gin Rummy: 

‘I love you Ms Kubelik. Did you hear what I said? I absolutely adore you.’ 

“Shut up and deal.’ 

And so, upon reflection I would say that my Easter has been a bit like those final scenes of The Apartment.  I’ve heard love calling, I’ve got up from the table and am running towards it. I’m moving quickly, with the chance at being human, allowing the wounds and scars of the old world to propel me into the new; coming alive from the inside.

I’m ready to drink champagne with friends and play with a whole new hand. 

In gratitude to Luke and the priests at the CCC for the milk and honey they provided this Easter: their correspondence, insights and guidance through this Easter-time.

May 2020                                                                  Copyright Christine Rose

[adelmortescryche]

yoimafiaweek - day 5

AN: I. Apologize in advance, @yoimafiaweek. In my defense, the tags practically begged me to go this route. You did say go the angst route. That said, here’s my fill for day 5, ‘Healing’.

Premise: tw for character death. Victor’s a hitman for the Russian Mob, Yuuri’s a businessman. But, I promise, this sticks firmly to the prompt ‘Healing’, though it does combine with ‘Smoke’ to some extent. It’ll hurt, but this fill is aimed at being a cathartic narrative. Have some Mari POV!

She’s not sure if she should be surprised or not, seeing the familiar sight of a tall, pale haired man standing right at the spot she’s headed to.

Mari paused in place, breathing in deeply. Wondered if it wasn’t too late to just turn around and head back home. But, no, she’d already avoided coming with her parents, earlier on. Hadn’t been able to stomach it, so she’d walked out of the house and ignored the sad look her father shot her as she stepped past him. She’d proceeded to spend nearly the entire day outside, drifting through their down. Down to the beach. Most people who’d seen her out had been kind enough to give her soft nods of acknowledgement before heading their own way, not bothering her more than necessary. The evening mist had already set in, a mix of the ever present humidity and the chilling air, enough so that Mari had found herself walking the paths of her childhood home in a misty haze, the road just growing dimmer in the growing twilight.

No companion by her side except her pack of cigarettes, which she’d nearly gotten through within the day.

…he’d have been so angry with her.

It’s like a signal set off through the space between them, really. She doesn’t even need to get any closer, or do anything. Victor is somehow able to tell anyway, his gaze switching from the stone to her in a smooth arc, catching, stilling. And while it’s about as difficult to meet his gaze now as it had been, three years ago, and in each year after that… she forces herself to step forward anyway. Because, really, she owed it to all of them.

“Mari,” he murmured, when she pulled up beside him, tongue still stumbling sharper than really necessary on the ‘r’.

“Fag?” she threw back brusquely, shaking her still open pack at him.

It makes him blink, and give an involuntary snort of laughter, reaching out without complaint. His fingers still over the cardboard and packing when he notices there’s only two left, but he gingerly tugged one out anyway, not saying anything.

Good. Mari isn’t quite sure she’s ready to hear anything about her smoking habits from Victor, of all people. It would hit too close to home.

Too close and but not enough- what the fuck was she supposed to do with the gaping hole in her ches-

“So. How’ve you been?”

The words are rough, especially so since they’d tumbled free of her mouth before she could say anything else more incriminating.

Victor gave her a long look over the click and flash of his lighter, and didn’t bother saying anything, instead taking a long drag of his cigarette. The smoke that escapes his lips and nostrils bleeds into the murk of the mist laying low over the graveyard, softly limning the stone monuments surrounding them. Mari feels her heart stutter inside her chest, and looks away, blindly shaking out the last stick left in her pack.

“Here,” he said, reaching out, and she obligingly ducked in to get a light.

It’s… hard. To meet his gaze, even now. Largely because there’s a beast breathing slow and deep somewhere in the vicinity of her gut. Just waiting to be unleashed, so she could get her due.

Her brother’s blood is on the hands of this man, and she can’t even hate him for it. Not when he hates himself so much more than she ever could.

So, unable to match gazes with him, she turns her attention back to their family shrine, eyes instead tripping over Yuuri’s name, already beginning to look worn in. It makes her blink, a persistent itch tugging at the corners of her eyes, but she ignores it, making herself take a quick glance around the family grave.

Freshly washed, and an offering set into place. Flowers, aside from the ones her parents left in the morning. But that would be Victor, again. He might be a gaijin, but he sure as hell wouldn’t let his ignorance of her, their, culture let him disrespect her brother’s final resting place.

Victor sighed, the sound hoarse through the smoke filling his lungs, and Mari wants to choke.

“You shouldn’t have come. You know you shouldn’t have come.” She bit out under breath, fingers clenching around the cigarette she still held. Nearly burning herself. It didn’t really make a difference to her, though. She’d burnt herself on them enough times in the last few years.

Victor doesn’t answer, and she’s tempted to throw her cigarette right in his face. Instead, she gets it back to her lips to take a deep, calming drag that settles her, just a bit.

It’s probably for the best she hadn’t stopped by the Nishigori household to see if Yuuko-chan was interested in keeping her company. While the younger girl wouldn’t have taken any of Victor’s strong-and-silent shit, she’d probably have made enough noise to attract unwanted attention to them.

“You do know that your being here like clockwork every year on this day makes it easy to find you, Nikiforov,” the words hissed out of her in a gruff rush. Not as emotional as what had been clawing to be let out before, but maybe just as honest for that.

They made Victor shift in place, and he reached out for her empty pack so he could tap out the ash inside. She didn’t say anything more when she handed it over, and her patience was probably what actually got him to speak in the end.

“Maybe. But I can handle myself. And this is more important,” he said, soft, his accent lining up oddly with his Japanese. So much more fluent than the previous year.

The fact that he’s still trying to learn makes the empty space in her chest throb.

They remain in companionable silence, after that. It doesn’t hurt as much as it did before, it doesn’t strain her nerves. The beast sleeping within her is content waiting for another day, breathing deep. When they finish their cigarettes, both putting them out on their heels before dropping their filters into her empty pack, for the first time, she feels ready to look up and stare him in the eye until he relents, quietly following after her when she leaves.

She has no words to speak. She’s spoken her pain to the small shrine they have at home, spoken it in the dark of night when her parents are fast asleep, in the halflight of dawn when the air seems to stand still. She’s stood before Yuuri’s picture, then, settled down on her knees, craving a fag and telling herself no because there isn’t quite anything like her baby brother’s two dimensional smiling face to make a twinge of guilt run through her.

Victor doesn’t glance back either. He’s probably said all he has to say.

Her mother’s seen him, on the edges of the graveyard when they go together in the mornings. Just close enough so they know he’s there, but far enough that he could easily draw away if they attempted to say anything. Mari has no idea why he chooses to stay when she comes, but she suspects it’s because it’s too late in the day and he’s too raw and yearning to back away even when he wants to.

She understands the feeling. She feels it every time she sees him, after all. Standing like an earthbound spirit in front of her brother’s grave. If she didn’t know better, she’d think that he was tied to the grave, for all that his name wasn’t writ on the stone like family would be. That she sees him on Yuuri’s death day each year at the same place, and he just… never leaves.

The thought makes her sick to the stomach. It couldn’t be what Yuuri wanted. This couldn’t be what Yuuri wanted. So-

“You should stay. At the onsen.” She said, the words tumbling out of her again, when they’re back on the streets. Victor ignores her, of course.

He looks alien in the dark of a Hasetsu night, with them surrounded by the small winding streets and old shops and residences of her and Yuuri’s childhood. The mist had finally lifted, making it easier to watch their steps, but she keeps glancing at him instead. Fitted fully in a black suit and waistcoat, down to a heavy black trench coat over the top. The black of his tie is stark against the white of his shirt. He’s so perfectly put together he looks like he belongs on a magazine cover, or in some American spy movie.

It feels like a lie, because she remembers him looking the same when he’d appeared at the onsen well after they’d been to the crematorium and come back, and everyone had gone home. Mari’s mom had taken one look at his pale face and the emptiness of his eyes in his head and had tugged him inside without even an ounce of hesitation, no matter that it was a social faux pas for him to be under their roof at all. He’d been perfectly put together even as he gracefully took off his expensive black shoes, had followed her mother in to the family shrine, and had collapsed there like a puppet whose strings had been cut, not moving for the rest of the night. Or the nights after. Not until he just disappeared, one day, without leaving any word of where he was going, or what he planned to do next.

The emptiness in his eyes back then had made her think she didn’t want to know, what he planned to do. She almost didn’t think she’d ever see him again, not until she died herself and met both him and her brother on the other side.

Another glance to the man walking beside her makes her think that he looks… better, now. More at peace. Still tired, and a little lost, but some of the emptiness had left his eyes to make way for something else, finally. Even if she couldn’t pin point what exactly it was.

He’s closer to her in age than her brother had been, she knows. He could have been another brother to her, in another life.

He comes to an abrupt stop when he recognizes the direction Mari’s been leading them in, but she just gets a hand out and around his elbow to keep pulling him forward, ignoring the tight sound that erupted from his chest.

“I can’t,” he said, the closer they got to the onsen. “Mari, please, I can’t.”

“You can, and you will.” She returned, blunt, and kept pulling him onwards.

By the time they’re in sight of the entrance to Yu-topia Katsuki, to her home, he doesn’t look nearly as well put together as he did before. She ignores it, though, and ignores the way his eyes have gotten pinched at the corners. And the way he seems to be gasping for breath a whole lot more than he really should – she knows he’s got a whole host of reasons to be more fit than her.

It’s like something cracks open the moment they step through inside, pausing at the genkan to switch their shoes out for slippers. He staggers forward, and almost collapses on top of her. It’s a good thing she’d been expecting something like this, though, because she’d probably have collapsed like a sack of rice with a slit in its side if she hadn’t. His height and weight were more than enough to overwhelm her when she was off her guard.

Even if she was certain she could get a punch in his gut to make him stagger back, if she had to. She just didn’t want to.

“Y’know, you and my brother are more alike than either of you ever thought you were,” she said, getting his right arm over her shoulders, and ignoring the pained noise that escaped him at her words. “You’re both so melodramatic. You’d think you’d have learnt better, by now. You’re certainly old enough.”

He looks like he’s going to keel right over if she tries to move him without any additional support, so she gets her free arm around his waist, easily holding him steady. It looked like years of managing the onsen’s more drunken day guests was finally paying off, because Victor had about as much control over his long, unwieldly limbs as they did.

There’s a gasp from the front of the entryway, and when Mari looks up, it’s to find her mother standing there, hands clasped over her mouth and looking like she wasn’t sure if she should laugh or cry.

“Tadaima,” Mari said blandly, and didn’t say anything when her mom rushed to get some slippers out for them both, seeing as Victor was all but indisposed and she was fresh out of hands to do anything herself.

*

“He offered to have me adopted into your family, you know.”

Mari blinks at him dully, head resting against her fist and a cup of sake grasped in the other. Her father’s dozing beside her, definitely done for the night, while her mother had stepped away into the kitchen to pick up something salty for them to end the night with.

Victor’s staring into his ochoko like it contains the mysteries of the universe, not the last dregs of the sake she’d topped it with a moment ago. The image he offers up makes her snort, casually ignoring the wounded look it makes him shoot her way.

The words themselves, though…

It makes her wonder, really. What the hell had happened between Yuuri and this guy, in those few months her brother disappeared off the map in St. Petersburg? He’d headed there for a business conference, a trip that wasn’t even expected to exceed 48 hours, and the next thing she knew, he’d been calling them from a burner phone and saying that he would be out of touch for a while. She’s heard of whirlwind romances, but she hadn’t thought Yuuri would disappear on one and bring back a blushing bride at any point.

Not that Victor was a blushing bride. Even imagining it makes her want to cackle a little helplessly, because it was a terrible mental image, one that actually sends a bite of pain through a chest when she thinks of just how much fun it could have been to tease her brother about it.

Her baby brother. Off romancing Russian hitmen on business trips, calling to say that he was probably running away to America. Coming back home on ice, with a specter of a man following the shadow of what remained of him.

A specter of a man who somehow looked a lot more human now, and relatable, with all his layers thrown off, left in just a thin white shirt and his trousers, the buttons at the top gaping open because he gave in to the need to breathe after downing some five cups of sake or so. At this point, he’s barely a specter, only a man. A tired and sad man who smiled up at her mother when she came back, patting him gently on the top of his head.

“You should stay, Vicchan,” she said, in halting English. For all that she was fluent with the language, and managed well enough with any foreign tourists they might have, she’d usually just deferred to Mari and Yuuri, or even her husband, more interested in making good food and keeping everyone’s bellies full.

Her words take a moment to register, but when they do, Mari is already ready to catch the cup when it slips from Victor’s grasp.

“You should stay,” her mother said. “Yuuri would want you to stay. Even if he isn’t here anymore, we could adopt you. And you could stay.”

Oh wow. He actually looked like he was going to cry, there. Mari shot her mother a look, but her mom didn’t bother to acknowledge it.

Okay then. Apparently they were going the hard route. Gotcha.

(No one seemed to believe her when she told people that her mother and Yuuri were the cruel ones. She and her dad were just big softies at heart – but her mom could cut people to the bone with words as easily as she could do the same with her kitchen knives.)

(Yuuri had been the same. Just the same. His taste in lovers had to account for something, after all.)

“I- I couldn’t. Katsuki-san, I- Hiroko-san-”

“Mama, Vicchan.” her mother says, with about as much inexorable strength in her words as the tide of the open sea.

Mari almost thinks she’s going to see him shatter into a thousand pieces all over again. But, instead, he finds strength in some untapped reserve, and blindly reaches for her hand so he could grab at the cup she’d just caught. She lets him, because really, her mom was being hard enough that she’d have needed a drink in his place, too.

He looks almost pathetically grateful when she leans over to pour him another cup of sake.

Her mom just kept on smiling, comfortably, settling herself down beside Victor, who looks like he’s not sure if he should stay in the same place or attempt to crawl away feebly.

You’d think he’d be made of firmer stuff than this.

You’re being mean, the Yuuri voice in her head murmured, sounding amused, and she sighed, pouring herself another cup as well.

When she checks in on him the next morning, sleeping in the room that used to be Yuuri’s but is now just a guest room, he’s still there. Dozing in faint streams of light coming through the window, looking like it’s the first time he’s rested in years.

*

“We need to leave. It’s not safe here, you know it’s not.”

“Yuuri- dorogoy (дорогой)-”

“Vitya, we need to leave.”

“But- what if- Yuuri I can’t lose you.”

The look on Yuuri’s face when he turns to look back is as steady as a mountain weathering a storm. It makes Victor’s heart ache, a biting sweetness that fills him to the brim, almost spilling over. He loves this man. It’s a present thought, a fear - he loves this man.

“We can go to Hasetsu,” Yuuri says. “We’ll be safe there. I know we will.”

Okay. Okay, Yuuri. Okay.

[adurnah]

Two days in Numazu (Love Live Sunshine real life setting): a report

Heya! I know I haven’t used my Tumblr in ages, but I didn’t know where else to put this so here I am.

So, I’ve been to Japan for two weeks in late February and I managed to spent two days (Sun 19th and Mon 20th) in Numazu and Uchiura, the places where all of Love Live Sunshine is set. It was an incredible experience, so I’ve wanted to write a report both for me to remember it but also to show other people the place. I can’t believe I procrastinated two months in this

From Kyoto (where we were before this) we arrived at Numazu on Sunday morning at around 8am, by night bus. This is Numazu Station, featured a lot of times in the anime. We’ve been really lucky and had a wonderful weather! at least for one day

After going to check-in to our hotel (if you’re interested in going, I really recommend you Sanco Inn Numazu Ekimae, it’s super close to the station and the staff knows English pretty well), we came back to catch the bus for Uchiura.

Right in front of the station there’s a collaboration cafè, Yudai Festa Sun! Sun! Sunshine Cafè. We went there later for dinner.

This is the bus stop to Uchiura. You’ll see Love Live is literally everywhere here. Unfortunately I already knew we had no chance to catch the LLSS collaboration bus if we didn’t want to waste time (the first was at around 11am iirc)

While we were waiting there for the bus, another bus arrived and a girl next to us asked us “Where are you going?” so I said “Izu Mito Sea Paradise” (since it’s the most known attraction from Uchiura and it was actually our first stop), and she said that that other bus that arrived was going there too. So we took that bus.

Random photo of the scenery from the bus.

Comes out, that bus wasn’t going to Izu Mito. I don’t know what happened, if she didn’t understood what I said or she was just wrong, but at some point on the road to Uchiura the bus changed direction. I kept looking where the f- we were going on my phone, and comes out we were going to the near city of Izu-Nagaoka. I tried asking to the driver if the bus was going to Izu Mito Sea Paradise (maybe taking a longer route) but he said “No, *something else I didn’t caught* Sea Paradise”. IDK. In the end I found with Google Maps that there was another bus going to Izu Mito from that area, so we dropped off the bus and waited for the other bus. 

The funny thing to all of this is that at that bus station in the middle of nowhere and far away from every LLSS location there was this:

No matter where you go, Love Live is there.

An old woman also asked us (in Japanese this time) where we were going and she confirmed that this bus was actually for Izu Mito and she was right this time. I got pleasantly surprised that people are so friendly there, even with weird gaijins like us.

This detour unfortunately cost us a lot of time, but in the end we managed to arrive to Izu Mito Sea Paradise! If you don’t know, this aquarium is the setting for the Koi ni Naritai AQUARIUM PV.

I forgot to take a photo outside This is the Show Stadium of the Aquarium, where most of the scenes in the KoiAQUA PV happen.

I loved this tank with sakura flowers inside.

I haven’t took a photo of the whole coloured jellyfish pool (where You is being emo in the PV) but I had a bit of fun photographing the single jellyfishes.

Shukas Otteeeeers so cute. I went to see them hundreds of time.

A dolphin came to say hi to us! o/

A nice view of Awashima Island and... Fuji-san being shy and hiding behind clouds.

Aqours images signed by the seiyuus. In front of this place is where you can see half of the aquarium’s audience are Love Livers, a lot of people came here to take photos of the posters. I loved the guy that posed next to Mari doing her “Lock on!” pose lol

Best grills and best seiyuus signatures

The aquarium shop has a literal aquarium with Aqours acrylic standees inside

YouChika under the sea and a fish staring at me

Aqours standees inside the aquarium shop.

The visit to the aquarium took us until midday, since we also saw the shows. After lunch, we went out and headed to our next stops.

First of all we stopped at the close Sannoura Tourist Center, aka the tourist center of the town. I tried periscoping inside of it so here’s a video: https://streamable.com/d5n33 (I can’t find a way to embed it sorry)

As you can see the place is FILLED with Love Live, it really is the main attraction there.

If I recall correctly this page in their signature book was signed by the seiyuus when they first came here in February 2016. I witnessed one of Rikyako’s best masterpieces with my own eyes I feel blessed.

After we looked around a bit the two staff members showed us a map of Japan where people put a round sticker for the place where they were from, and they also had spaces of overseas. For Europe iirc they had a space for UK, Germany and then “Other Europe” lel, so we put our sticker there. There were only 2 sticker on “Other Europe”, and I wondered who they were... comes out it was my friend and her boyfriend who come here in December :’D Not a lot of people are as crazy as us uh better for them

After this the staff girl asked us if the wanted to write a post-it with cheers for the seiyuus for their First Live. After I wrote mine, she took it, looked at it and asked “Yousoro?” (since I wrote it in blue and added an anchor), I said yes and then she disappeared for a bit and came back with two You keychains as a present for me WTF I was almost crying as I thanked her, so kind!! They also gave some Chika goods to my friend, I was speechless. As if it wasn’t enough, while we were going out the staff guy stopped us and gave us one of their big posters??

Like seriously WTF. Are they really so happy to see tourists?

I feel sorry that they also tried to make some conversation with me but unfortunately I’m still a beginner in Japanese and they didn’t know a lot of English ;; They managed to ask me if we were going to see some locations and I said that in fact we’ve already been to Izu Mito. They were so happy ;;

Another nice thing I didn’t expected is that outside of the Tourist Center we found a few itashas. Not comparable to the one you can see in UDX in Akiba but they were nice!

This one was very well made, except for the fact that one side was wrongly mirrored lol

This guy has good tastes.

We left the Tourist Center in the direction of the school. This is the place where Mari falls while running, in fact, to the school to meet Kanan.

A bit ahead we found this groceries shop called “Oh! Mos” that sells mikans and specifically the Jyutaro x LLSS mikans, and also has this big Aqours shrine. I told ya LL there is really everywhere.

Fun fact: Suwawa, Rikyako and Anchan went in this shop a few weeks later, when they were there for their DIVER photoshoot, and left a signature (that’s the shop twitter account).

We took a bag of mikans and when we went to the counter to pay, the old woman pointed at Chika’s image in the bag and said “anime?” to us, lol. When we said yes (?) she showed us that they even have the cardboard box of mikan, the megaphone and the sign that Chika uses in episode 1 to gather people for her school idol club, lol. SUKURU AIDORU BU DEEESU. My friend took a pic with them

Btw, mikans are really good.

Moving on, we went to the place where the girls (try to) shoot a PV in episode 6. The place is called “Nagahama Castle Ruins” but there really isn’t much except for a really nice view.

Actually, I had printed a lot of these postcards with anime screenshots to take this kind of photos, but unfortunately I realized taking a good shot takes a lot of time and effort, plus the wind was not helping me. In the end I gave up and took really a few of these. I still have all of them so maybe I’ll try again if I manage to go back in August.

If you turn back you can already see the school!

My friend took a panorama of the bay.

Moving on to the next stop: the little shrine where Kanan ends her morning run and dances under the stalkers other girls’ eyes.

I saw a lot of people thinking that the shrine where Kanan dances is the same as the one in episode 4 to where Ruby and the seconds year run, but it’s not: that one is in Awashima Island and it would have required Kanan to take the boat from where she starts her run. In fact it’s this one, a bit before the school. There were two other Love Livers there taking photos.

After this we finally got to the school bus stop! Featured in the ending, as well as in episode 1 when You joins the school idol club.

I failed this photo on so many levels.

Going up the hill to the school, such a nice scenery.

And here it is! Uranohoshi Girls Highschool is in real life a middle school called Nagaisaki. It was Sunday afternoon so no one was around, except for the gym where we could hear some people inside.

After this we walked all the way back to Izu Mito and beyond to see the other locations, like...

Yasudaya ryokan, aka Chika’s house!

And right in front of it, the beach featured in the very first LLSS image, as well as the scene in episode 1 where Chika and Riko talk. Someone already wrote Aqours on the sand.

And the pier when Riko tries to kill herself jump in the water.

Early blooming sakura.

Last one I tried to take. Kimi no kokoro wa kagayaiterukai?

Shougetsu Cafè! aka the place were a CYaRon radio drama is set, and also were the 2nd years seiyuus went during their Teku Teku. Of course we went to grab some mikan dorayaki! They are super good. I even bought mikan jam, but I still have to open it.

Photos and signatures of the seiyuus.

We were so lucky we even found the LLSS kitchen car! I bought the You Noppo keychain.

Unfortunately, at this point my organization failed me. We wanted to go to Awashima Island, but I got wrong the place where the boat docks. I thought it was in front of Shougetsu, where there actually is some kind of port, but it wasn’t. We lost time looking around and on the web (how come that the Awashima Marine Park website doesn’t say where the boat docks?!), then tried to ask to the girls in the kitchen car who managed to explain to me it was 20 minutes by feet to get there. Unfortunately it was already kinda late, and since we didn’t want to rush it we decided to go back to Numazu. While riding the bus I saw the bus stop “Awashima” and the docks. If only we had take the right bus in the morning I would’ve know. Too bad.

Even if we didn’t rode the LLSS collaboration bus there was still some Love Live on board. Someone likes OmoiNare ships here.

At Numazu station we finally grabbed some Noppo Pan! I bought the LLSS (caramel) flavoured one this time, and later I tried the strawberry chocolate too. In the same shop in the station I also bought some really good mikan cookies.

Going around Numazu by night. This shopping district appears in episode 6, and it also contains Maru-san (Maru’s favorite bookstore) and the cafè used as a background for Guilty Kiss first illustration

Obligatory visit to Numazu Gamers, or Numazu’s Little Demon shop.

Inside the shop.

Going to the collabo cafè for dinner! They have this fake UraGirls bus stop sign which actually resembles the real one (including the timetable)

I got the full You menu: Youkisoba (I even got the appropriate coaster), You’s drink and You’s Magic Tea (it’s a butterfly pea tea, it’s blue but when you put lemon in it it becomes purple). I really liked it tbh to be just a collabo cafè (not famous for the quality of their meals...)

And this concludes our first day in Numazu.

The next day we decided to do just a short visit to Numazu, since going back to Uchiura just to go to Awashima Island was too expensive.

Nakamise again.

We went to see Yoshiko’s house, a building called Natty Numazu. At the first floor of the building, on the other side, there’s a watch shop that even has some LLSS merch, and when the shopkeeper saw us looking at it they made us enter and sign their Yoshiko signature book lol

This tiny temple is right next to the alley where Yoshiko is seen in the last scene of episode 5 (before starting running away from the others).

Of course since You is best grill I couldn’t miss this place: You’s house! Which is not a house but a Western-style cafè called Orandakan.

Just from outside you can’t be wrong this is the place.

Their You shrine from inside.

When we entered an old lady came to us and made us seat. She tried failed a bit to talk in English and brought us their signature book (I swear every single place has signature books there). My friends told me she also said “Welcome to You’s house” but unfortunately I didn’t catch it.

Their menu is only in Japanese but luckily since the teas are all in katakana and the cakes had pictures we managed to order something.

Not bad but tbh kinda pricey, I paid 1010 yen for a tea and a piece of cake... but it was at You’s house! So it’s ok.

Our message in the signature book, I did the writing and my friend did the drawing.

Moving along Yoshiko’s escape route, we passed next to Numazu Deep Sea Aquarium (where the first years go in their KoiAQUA radio drama, aka the shiirakansu aquarium) and Numazu Hamburger & Cafè, where the first years also came for their Teku Teku.

I took a photo of this sign and not of the place, how fail I am.

We finally arrived at Byou (which I discovered actually means View-O), the water gate/observatory where Yoshiko finally stops running and also where You and Mari go talk in episode 11. Going up only costs 100 yen but due to some circumstances we decided not to go. The weather got bad in any case so we wouldn’t have seen anything anyway.

And this concludes our trip around Numazu, and is also where we suddenly started having incredible bad luck.

The weather was getting worse and worse, with strong wind and rain. On our travel back to Tokyo we wanted to make some stops: at Atami to visit the Plum Garden since the plums were in full blooms, at Nebukawa station (the station of feels in the anime), and Kozu station (the beach of feels- yes, they’re in different places). After riding the train we already decided that we would miss Atami, the weather was too bad to enjoy a garden. We could still stop at Nebukawa and Kozu, I mean, we just have to stop and take some photos, it can’t be that bad, right?

Wrong. The wind was so strong we were basically flying away, I’ve never seen something like this. We run inside the station and I only managed to take these photos.

Being the wind so strong we decided not to stop in Kozu, since it would’ve been a pain with our luggages and everything. But, after arriving at that exact station, the train stopped. We heard a lot of messages but we couldn’t understand them. We checked online and discovered that all trains in the Tokaido line were suppressed due to strong winds. And we were in Kozu. But we couldn’t go down. I couldn’t believe our bad luck, lol. The train stayed there for three (THREE) hours before leaving, and even then it was going slow and occasionally stopping, making our travel from Numazu to Tokyo 6 hours long instead of 2. But in the end we managed to arrive in Tokyo safe and sound.

Anyway, except for this last part, I really loved going to Numazu. It’s a bit of a struggle if you don’t know Japanese and it’s kinda expensive, but if you’re a Love Live fan it’s really really worthy. It’s not just “seeing” those places in real life, you can do that from photos... but being there, living like them, taking the same bus they take to school, eating mikans and Noppo pan... it’s an incredible experience. It makes it feels like everything is more real, even if it’s just an anime. I really hope I’ll be able to go back in August!

I want to give many many thanks to LuciaHunter for the LLSS Locations Google Map (link: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.3623197,139.0468361,10z/data=!4m2!6m1!1s1cL4tMTO0iVaz69hqK88wyetWkR8 )

and also u/MasterMirage and u/FliryVorru for their reddit posts, they all were a huge help in planning this!

This concludes my report of these two days in Numazu. If you really read this till the end thank you, hope you like it! And if anyone has any question feel free to ask!