#I think they’re oh so very neat rattling them in my brain

[waveringflowers]

They’re making spam musubis

[forasecondtherewedwon]

3 Simple Rules for Dating a Centenarian

Fandom: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Pairing: Sam Wilson/Bucky Barnes Rating: T Word Count: 2374

Summary: After seeing Steve's shield handed over to some stranger, Sam calls up Bucky, certain he's the one person who can properly commiserate. He doesn't really expect Bucky to answer though (the guy's become a bit of a recluse), or to hear the hints that he might be missing Sam as much as Sam's been missing him. Not that he'd ever say it straight out.

Sam is almost completely still as the feelings rattle through him like a roller coaster’s last run on a derelict track. He only lets it out—the blend of frustration, betrayal, and regret—in the way his fingers squeeze his knee through his jeans, skin damp against the denim. Keeping his hands clasped, and watching those clasped hands, was more grounding, but he needs one of his hands to hold the phone to his ear, and that activity is getting pretty damn tired.

Bucky’s voicemail clicks on for the third time in a row.

“Bucky,” Sam says, “I know you prefer calls to texting, so what are you doing ignoring me, man? Haven’t used your cell in so long that you’ve forgotten how to hit the answer button? At least it rang. That’s something, I guess.”

He sighs away from the speaker where it won’t be recorded for Bucky to hear later. Maybe he did divert his message from the snarky sarcasm he was planning to leave the guy, but Bucky doesn’t need to hear him sigh on top of that.

For a few moments, Sam taps his foot along with the muffled music of his nephews’ video game coming through the closed door. He knows the boys’ routine (and if he ever forgets, he sees the copy Sarah has on the fridge door) and that this isn’t their usual scheduled time for whatever they’re playing out there. Best guess: Sarah wants them hogging the TV so she won’t be tempted to peek at that government-sanctioned shitshow. Sam can’t blame her. Actually, he wonders if she blames him. The disappointment was so clear in her eyes before he stopped making himself meet them. He thought he was doing the right thing when he handed the shield over. Are there people out there who think he’s let them down, or just his sister? Just himself?

He can’t talk to Sarah right now and he’s thankful that she’s giving him some time to himself, but as soon as he got it, he realized he didn’t know what to do with it. Just like that shield. Dialing Bucky over and over—tapping in every number every time because that appears to be part of this pity ritual he’s performing—seemed like the thing he should do. Probably won’t answer. That asshole is terrible at staying in touch. Still, Sam’s heart feels a little heavier with every word closer he gets to the end of this message. Feels like he’s trying to keep the thing afloat in his chest, like his parents’ boat down at the dock. This is what he knows he should do when everything in him wants to sink—reach out, talk to people. Kinda self-sabotage when he picks the one person almost guaranteed not to answer.

Oh, he’ll hear back from Bucky eventually, probably a handful of choppy texts sent in the middle of the night two weeks from now. Sam knows his pattern; Bucky’s chattiest between 3am and 4am, so chatty that what are likely intended as longer blocks of text arrive in broken fragments because he wants to make everything into neat paragraphs, like he’s writing a damn letter, instead of just getting to the point, but he hits send too soon. Sam would teach him—with plenty of mocking and name-calling, but he would teach him—only while he’s been running ops all over the planet, Bucky’s shrunk his own world way down. He’s gone local to the extreme and it aggravates Sam, even though Bucky isn’t his responsibility, isn’t his other inheritance from Steve. It’s sorta just easier to feel like Bucky is a misplaced bequest than to acknowledge that maybe he misses the guy and his sharp-shooter’s eye and his caveman hair. He can’t keep calling him.

“Thought I’d give you a heads-up,” Sam says, voice weary with this half-true excuse. “Maybe you already saw.” He clears his throat and says quickly, “Anyway, guess I’ll hear from you when I hear from you.”

He’s pulling the phone away from his head and has barely ended the call when it’s ringing in his hand. He answers and catches Bucky’s voice saying his name before it’s even back up to his ear.

“Bucky?” Sam says. “You have a senior’s moment and forget where you left your phone?”

“Nah,” Bucky says. “I saw it was you and decided to ignore it.”

“But you called back.”

“You wouldn’t quit calling. Seemed like you needed me to tell you directly to knock it off.”

“Jackass.” Sam’s gaze darts to the door, but it’s still shut. No chance Sarah saw him grinning over this easy banter. Always the banter with this idiot. Always easy. He sniffs and turns his chair away from the black TV screen. “Did you see that joker on the news?”

Bucky’s either less self-conscious or more inept because he sighs right into the mouthpiece, an exhausted breath in Sam’s ear that has his fingers fleetingly digging into his knee.

“Couldn’t believe that shit,” Bucky tells him in a rough voice. He’s clearly holding back his own feelings about today’s events and, from the sounds of it, they’re more along the lines of anger, hurt, and a simmering desire to wrench the shield from the arm of the new Captain America. “You know that thing’s supposed to be yours.”

“You saying I should’ve done something to stop it?” Sam demands.

“Coulda.”

Sam forces his shoulders to drop, draws a slow breath in and pushes it back out.

“It wasn’t mine anymore, if it ever was. I gave it to the Smithsonian. They sealed it in this glass case and added it to the exhibit.”

“Not a very tight seal.”

“Guess not,” Sam agrees.

“You shouldn’t have turned it over,” Bucky says. Sam’s silent, frowning, and Bucky goes on. “Forget about the shield being given to somebody else—it shouldn’t have even been in a glass case. Doesn’t belong there.”

“I do just fine without it,” Sam assures him. The practicalities of carrying that shield around are more straightforward to discuss than his yawning uncertainty in the face of Steve’s legacy and his place relative to it. “The shield would only get in the way of the wings.”

“You and those wings.”

“Hey, they carried me over Tunisia recently. Show some respect.”

“Didn’t hear about that,” Bucky says in a tone that’s difficult to interpret, though Sam squints thoughtfully as he listens.

“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t even be telling the likes of you, but it was discrete. As far as the major players are concerned, I was never there.”

“So it was illegal?”

Sam’s head tips back as he laughs hard.

“Why, you wanna turn me in?” he jokes. “Working on the government’s trust? What’s the next level up from a pardon? Knighthood?”

“You are such a pain in the ass,” Bucky groans, which really does make Sam smile.

“I’m sure it would’ve been illegal if you were there,” he says automatically. Too fast, his imagination fills it in, a fictional alternative materializing in his mind. Him and Bucky, cocky in reckless freefall. Him and Bucky, fighting back-to-back in a plummeting aircraft. Sam screening Bucky from enemy fire with his wings. Bucky deflecting a stray bullet with his arm before it could hit Sam.

“Nah, I can’t do that no more.”

“Uh huh. I’m sure you’re an angel.”

“Anybody get hurt?” Bucky asks.

Sam glances through the window at the blue sky, the truck rolling unhurriedly past with the driver’s arm hanging out to catch the sun. Beautiful day. He remembers a kick that sent a guy through the door of the plane, sucked out into the sky, another guy tossed aside who tried to fight him in midair, and a helicopter aflame as it went down. He shrugs and figures Bucky’ll hear the gesture in his voice.

“Nobody who didn’t know the risks.”

“Of going up against Captain America?” Bucky probes. Sam rolls his eyes.

“You know, that would almost be a compliment if you got my name right.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not using the name just to avoid compliments from me.”

“I honestly can’t say which one would feel more wrong,” Sam says, passing a hand over his head as he leans back in his chair, “calling myself Captain America or hearing a little overdue praise from you.”

“I’m not really a words guy. Ask my therapist.”

Sam sits with that for a second. He’s happy that Bucky’s talking to someone. He needs it, badly, after decades of violence and being belted into the passenger seat of his own brain. It’s more than Bucky’s ever admitted to him before, but Sam would bet—and bet big—that seeing some stranger named as Steve’s successor today has gotten to Bucky as much as it’s gotten to him. Something like that is bound to open Bucky up a little. He’s the only other person Sam can imagine the news having such a monumental impact on.

“You could try words,” he goads, not wanting to leave Bucky hanging more than a few seconds after his admission. “What else do you have if you don’t feel like being a human action figure?”

“I have my system. My rules.”

“Oh yeah? What rules?”

“Three of ’em,” Bucky informs him. “Nothing illegal. Nobody gets hurt. Making amends for the actions of the Winter Solider.”

“You don’t have to make amends for something you—”

“Don’t. It… helps.”

And who is Sam to question what’s helping Bucky? After the multiple-lifetimes’ worth of hell the guy’s been through?

“Good for you, man,” Sam offers softly.

“Save it, Sam.” The words are clipped but light. Sam grins.

“No words for me either? You more comfortable with me sticking to actions? How are we supposed to talk to each other when you don’t come to Tunisia with me?”

“Wasn’t invited,” Bucky quips back.

“You mighta been if you answered your phone more often. I’m not gonna send you the details to a covert operation in a text.”

“You wanted me in Tunisia?”

“You get shit done,” Sam acknowledges simply. You wanted me in Tunisia? echoes in his head. His heart’s bobbing like a buoy now. You wanted me in Tunisia? You wanted me?

“Not like that.”

“‘Not illegal,’” Sam repeats. “‘Nobody gets hurt. Making amends.’”

“Right. Can’t do any of that.”

“Well, I’m glad this regime’s working for you, but you have to admit it’s weird that I saw more of you when we were fighting alien hordes.”

“What can I say?” Bucky asks in a tone that seems to consciously flatten the charm out of it. “I’m old-fashioned now.”

Sam snorts.

“You were old-fashioned then.”

“I assume you had a team on the ground.”

“I had to,” Sam says over the sound of a squabble in the other room. Immediately, he can hear Sarah’s voice rising slightly above, breaking it up. Just like that, there’s the looping music of the video game again. She’s raised those boys well. “Couldn’t wait around for you.”

“I might show up if you asked me on better dates.”

“It wasn’t a date, it was a goddamn op.”

It’s startling to hear the sound of laughter. Not hearty, deep, rich, or loud, but definitely laughter. Bucky laughs? Sam backtracks a minute. Bucky makes jokes? About dating? About the two of them dating? Evidently, that is something he’s capable of, along with returning calls during daylight hours.

Sam shifts in his seat.

“You could come around sometime,” he suggests, nervously rubbing a hand up and down his thigh. “If you like fish and you’re ever in Louisiana.”

“I do like fish,” Bucky says. “I’ve been going to this sushi place a lot lately.”

It’s not his taste that surprises Sam—it’s the readiness with which he responds to the invitation. He would’ve sooner guessed that Bucky would tell him to shove it up his ass. In a joking way, but still.

“On dates?” Sam asks, telling himself he’s providing some good-natured hassling and that it has nothing to do with the odd feeling he got when Bucky’s joke about them dating caught up with him.

“One. Mostly, I go with Mr. Nakajima.”

“And that’s not a date?”

Sam laughs and wishes he could shut his own mouth as firmly as he’s (many times) told Bucky to shut his.

“I’m pretty sure he’s in his eighties, so he’s more age-appropriate for me than most people, but I murdered his son,” Bucky says grimly.

“Amends?” Sam guesses, adjusting his tone to cope with Bucky’s emotional switchback.

“I haven’t told him yet, but, yeah, I’m working on that.”

They’re both working on something, Sam thinks. Both confronting something that feels too big to tackle—the decision not to announce himself as the new Captain America, guilt for assassinations Bucky had no control over but which span the better part of a century. Sometimes it seems to Sam that they go up against the easiest situations as a team and face the hardest stuff alone. But he called Bucky, and Bucky called back.

“You could bring some of those amends down here and trade them for a snapper dinner,” Sam proposes, aiming for irritatingly cheerful to pull Bucky back out of the dark.

“What do I have to make amends to you for?”

“Being a dick. I’ll text you my sister’s address.”

Sam swiftly ends the call. There are two possible sources to which he can attribute the small surge of adrenaline he feels: hanging up on Bucky and the fact that he might’ve just asked him on a date. When Sam dialed, he knew it was because he didn’t want to do this alone, but he thought that meant watching the appointment of an upstart Captain America. Although he believed he could count on Bucky’s understanding today and for the near future, asking him down to have dinner with Sarah and the boys (or tricking him into it, since he didn’t exactly say it’d be a thing with the whole family) lengthens the timeline. Near future? Inviting Bucky to meet his family and see where he grew up means recognizing that he’ll be in his life a little longer. Alone? Sam might forget the meaning of the word.

[childrenofthesunny]

Seek Him Who My Soul Loveth (1/2)

For my spin on @gayforgoodomens‘ Priest AU, for when she wondered off-hand how Crowley and Aziraphale might go about having sex for the first time, whilst simultaneously still pining/pretending they’re not breaking their vows. So, naturally, off I went to write what’s looking like will be a 6-7,000 word fic about it.

Listen, the only thing stopping me from turning this AU into a full-blown multichapter fic is (a) my knowledge of the workings of Catholicism being limited to some brief skimming of Wikipedia and what little of church I remember from when I was 7 and (b) I already have a multichapter WIP being posted, and I know I don't have the attention span to maintain two major WIPs simultaneously.

But I want to

(That being said, this is in two parts; part two should be done in a few days.)

If you prefer, you can also read this on Ao3 @ childrenofthesun.

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

"Ah, Father Crowley, there you are! So, this is where you've been hiding all evening."

 "Hardly a shock to find me out here, is it?" Crowley asked with a grin, squinting up at the cherubic middle-aged man now standing beside him. Like Crowley, he was wearing pants and a short-sleeved button-up with a clerical tab, in deference to the balmy summer weather. Unlike Crowley, he was very clean and neat, and not wearing a dirt-streaked garden apron. "I've been spending all of my free time this week working on the gardens, now that Shadwell's retired and can't go berating me for trying to do the job he wasn't even doing himself. Beyond me how he even got the job in the first place."

 The other man looked around fretfully, as if expecting the former groundskeeper to leap out from behind a poorly maintained bush and start yelling at him. "Oh, I know, but you mustn't be too hard on the poor fellow. The job was more to make him feel useful than anything. But Gabriel said we couldn't justify the expense anymore."

 "You were too soft on him, anyway, Aziraphale," Crowley admonished, smirking at the little huff Aziraphale let out when Crowley didn't address him by his title, as he was supposed to. "Letting him set up all that nonsense meant to ward off witches. It’s certainly never stopped Anathema from coming here to borrow one of your books."

 "At least it kept him busy," Aziraphale replied, sounding slightly aggrieved. His hands fluttered briefly by his wrists, as if he wanted to fiddle with the sleeves of the cassock that was his preferred style of dress. "Although it would have been nice if he had directed some of that energy towards the upkeep of the gardens. I did try to explain to him that the grounds are consecrated, and that surely would ward off evil, but in his eyes that wasn't sufficient protection."

 "I know, I tried to explain it that way, too," Crowley told him cheerfully. "Apparently, the fact that I wear sunglasses all the time means I must be in league with the Devil, so he didn't think my input was particularly useful."

"Is he not aware of your eye condition?"

 "I tried to tell him what photosensitivity is, but seems he's of the school of thought that science and witchcraft are basically the same thing. The tattoos probably didn't help me make my case either."

 Aziraphale made a face. "Ah."

 "Yup," Crowley confirmed, and Aziraphale shook himself suddenly.

 "You've distracted me, you wily old thing!" he chided.

 "Younger than you," Crowley pointed out, grinning impishly and making Aziraphale glower at him with impatience.

 "I was about to get cross with you," Aziraphale insisted. Crowley arched an eyebrow at him.

 "Oh? Whatever for?"  

Aziraphale gestured at the gardening tools in Crowley's hands. "That! It's far too late for you to be working out here, still."

 "Still light out," Crowley muttered, poking rebelliously at the soil with his trowel.

 Aziraphale rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in exasperation. "It's summer, of course it's still light out! That doesn't change the fact that it's almost nine thirty." He shifted his weight, arms now folded. The slowly dwindling rays of sunset caught in the white-gold curls crowning Aziraphale's head, making them glow as if from within.

 Lord, but did he look like an angel.

 Crowley hissed in displeasure as he begrudgingly got to his feet, the taut muscles of his back creaking in protest. Aziraphale gave him a reproving look.

 "'S not like it's going to weed itself," Crowley grumbled in a half-hearted final objection, wincing again. Now that he was standing, the ache in his back was really starting to settle in. He tried to straighten to his full height, which would give him a few inches over Aziraphale, but found that his spine would only comfortably let him stand with their eyes level.

 All right, maybe he had been overdoing it a bit over the past few days.

 Aziraphale pursed his lips. "Be that as it may, you mustn't work like this to the detriment of your own wellbeing. It will still be here in the morning. This is your home, Crowley, it isn't as if you'll be forced to leave if you don't turn the church grounds into Kew Gardens overnight."

 "S'pose I would've been kicked out ages ago, if that were the case," Crowley acquiesced, rubbing some of the dirt on his hands onto his gardening apron. "Y'know, when I first came here, I was really excited to see the gardens," he admitted. "I'd heard how lovely they were, especially for such a small church. Was a bit of shock when I saw the state they were in."

 What he didn't add was that, given Shadwell's constant undermining of any covert attempt he made to coax the gardens back to life, Crowley would have long ago gone and grovelled to the diocese to grant him a new assignment elsewhere. That is, had he not had a compelling reason to want to stay in Tadfield.

 A middle-aged, cherubic man-shaped reason, to be specific.

 "Well, you'll have plenty of time to restore them to their former glory, now," Aziraphale said kindly. "There's no need for you to rush anything."

 Crowley hummed in agreement, and went to bend down to pick up his tools, unable to stifle a groan as he did so. Aziraphale was quick to forestall the movement with a hand to Crowley's chest, his usual hesitance to so much as brush shoulders with Crowley vanishing under his concern. Allow me, he probably said, but Crowley couldn't hear him over the sudden rush of blood to his ears, pounding through his rapidly beating heart in a way that Aziraphale would surely be able to feel beneath his fingers.

 Aziraphale said something else that Crowley's brain refused to parse, too focused on trying to keep the other priest from realising the effect the simple touch was having on him. He managed to nod, not sure what he was agreeing to, but was rather proud of himself for managing not to whimper when Aziraphale's hand pulled away.

 "We'll just put these away first," Aziraphale told him, Crowley's brain function apparently restored now that they were no longer touching. Crowley dutifully trailed after him to the shed, putting his tools back in their rightful place. He grunted slightly when he reached to the small of his back to undo the ties of his garden apron, the motion tugging at the aching muscles of his shoulders. The sound alerted Aziraphale, who immediately fussed over him again, lifting the strap holding the apron around his neck for Crowley despite his protests. Crowley scowled as Aziraphale smiled serenely at him and hung the apron on its hook by the door. Secretly, however, he was glad that the dim, fading light meant that Aziraphale wouldn't be able to see that the tips of Crowley's ears had gone a hot, flaming red.

 Aziraphale took the lead again as they both headed for the rectory they shared, both toeing off their shoes and leaving them in the rack by the door once they'd crossed the threshold.

 "I imagine you'd want to shower before we begin," Aziraphale said as they headed into the living room. He picked up a book he'd left beside the sofa and took a seat, already thumbing it open. "Take your time, I'll be waiting here for you when you're done."

 Crowley glanced down at the dirt packed under his nails, felt the sweaty stick of his shirt against his back, and couldn't help but agree. Whatever Aziraphale had had him agree to, it probably would be best if he cleaned himself up first. Not to mention it would give him a little bit of time to collect his thoughts, to slow the still traitorously fast gallop of his heart.

 He headed upstairs, grabbed a change of clothes from his room, and did his best not to run to the bathroom, knowing Aziraphale would be able to hear the creak of the floorboards overhead if he did.

 Once enshrined in the privacy of the bathroom, shower turned on and old pipes groaning laboriously as they slowly heated, Crowley sagged against the door and let out a long, shaky breath.

 "Get a grip," he muttered to himself, flicking on the ancient exhaust fan. It rattled slowly to life, letting out the occasional whining protest, as the unbalanced blades scraped against the inside of the casing. "You're acting like… like he's about to lay down rose petals for you and take you to bed, when you know he couldn't find his way out of the closet if you gave him a torch and a map. And even if he could… he wouldn't do anything about it. You've both got your vows." He tore off his clothes and left them in a sullen pile on the floor, opening the shower door. Steam billowed out and he stepped inside quickly before too much could escape. He stood directly under the scalding spray, heedless of how his pale skin went instantly pink. His face was likely beyond sun-kissed, too, given the time he'd spent in the garden.

 There wasn't much he could do about that, but at the very least he could wash the sweat from his skin, furiously scrub the dirt out from under his nails. Whatever the evening had in store for him, at least he'd be clean.

 He fruitlessly tried again to piece together what Aziraphale had asked him, out in the garden. Now, though, naked and surrounded on all sides by steam, his mind only seemed to want to offer him lewd suggestions, each one more highly improbable than the last. Unbidden, he imagined Aziraphale walking into the bathroom to find out what was taking Crowley so long, then disrobing and entering the shower with Crowley, hot water cascading over them both as Aziraphale pressed him up against the tiles–

 With a burst of self-disgust, Crowley realised that certain areas of his body were getting very excited indeed by such thoughts, and were responding in a way that was meant to encourage him to keep thinking those exact thoughts as he took himself in hand. He'd done it a few times in the past, now, even though it invariably left him riddled with guilt and shame. Somehow, it seemed even more egregious than usual to have a self-loathing-fuelled wank over the man he worked with, when said man was patiently awaiting his return downstairs, none the wiser.

 With a sigh, he turned off the heat, standing under the cold spray for several seconds to try and keep his body from getting any funny ideas, before cutting off the water completely. Skin still pink in places, but at the very least clean, he towelled himself off, squeezing as much water out of his hair as he could. A glance in the mirror told him that he'd definitely been out in the sun too long. If he was very lucky, the skin wouldn't start peeling off over the next few days, but, given how his pale skin had historically reacted to overexposure to the sun, he wasn't exactly holding out hope. He applied some moisturiser to his face to at least draw out some of the heat, and resolved to stop being so forgetful about putting on sunscreen when he needed to.

 He put on his clothes quickly, only realising once he was done that he'd gone on complete autopilot, and dressed himself as if preparing for his clerical duties, collar and all. He felt a little stupid, but knew he'd feel even stupider if he went and changed again, so he decided to leave everything as it was, and headed back downstairs. Hopefully, wearing something symbolic of the Church would help remind his unruly body, mind, and heart how they were all supposed to be behaving.

 "Ready, then?" Aziraphale asked when he came back into the living room, glancing quickly at the page number before closing the book and setting it aside.

 "Yep," Crowley answered, still having no idea what he'd agreed to.

 "We can use my bed," Aziraphale decided. "Now that I've had a moment to think about it, the couch really is far too narrow to give us enough space to work with comfortably."

 "What?" Crowley squeaked.

 Aziraphale gave him an odd look. "I suppose we could do this here, with you laid out on the floor, if you'd prefer. I know that some people like a more solid surface beneath them for this sort of thing," he said, apparently unaware that he was giving Crowley a heart attack.

 "You… you want me on the floor?" he managed.

 Aziraphale shrugged. "Personally, I would have thought the bed would be more comfortable, but the choice is yours. This is to your benefit, after all."

 "…My benefit?" Crowley asked faintly, apparently unable to do much more than echo Aziraphale's words back at him.

 "Honestly, Crowley," Aziraphale replied huffily. Crowley managed to find space amidst his confusion to feel the little thrill he always did whenever Aziraphale dropped the honorific when referring to him by name. "The massage? That we discussed not twenty minutes ago, were you even listening?"

 "Massage?" Crowley couldn't help but parrot. Aziraphale pinched the bridge of his nose.

 "Yes. Massage. For your back. That I offered to you. Because you've been overworking yourself in the garden all week and can barely stand upright."

 "Oh. Right," Crowley managed, nodding like a dashboard bobblehead on an unpaved country road. "That massage. 'Course."

 "Honestly," Aziraphale huffed again, but far fonder in tone this time. "So. Out here, or on the bed?" "Bed," Crowley said before he could stop himself.

 Aziraphale nodded, standing. "Shall we, then?"

 Crowley nodded mutely, and when Aziraphale began to lead them both upstairs, he followed.

[tossawary]

Chapter 19: “Weddings and Funerals” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” random favorite lines with commentary because I’m doing a re-read. Not a full list or full commentary. 

-

 When Shang Qinghua told Mobei-Jun that he didn’t need Shen Qingqiu assassinated, it wasn’t because he thought everything would somehow work out if he just sat back and didn’t do anything. It definitely wasn’t because he was planning a so-called “perfect murder” and didn’t want the demon lord messing up his plans. The Problem of Shen Qingqiu has always been a lot more  complicated than “just get rid of the guy potentially making my nephew’s life a living hell”. That’s why it’s a real problem! 

- 

AN: Shang Qinghua’s thought process: “Can this problem be solved by: 

A) Waiting for the problem to go away? 

B) Murder? 

C) None of the above? 

If the answer is C... 

Fuck, it’s a real problem.” 

- 

 Shang Qinghua thinks that might actually be possible, though he’d have to do some research and smack his head until his Author God memories hopped into line. He thinks that the youth-restoration procedure would probably do the job, but he also thinks that Shen Qingqiu would probably rather be dead than be physically sixteen again or something (super fucking understandable) and have to start the cultivation process over from scratch (ah, that would be so annoying and embarrassing). 

- 

AN: Given that I actually invented a de-aging potion for this fic (if one that’s difficult to put together), the AU of “Original Shen Qingqiu is physically 16 again” has been rattling around inside my head ever since I wrote these lines. Shen Qingqiu was like, “Wait, let me picture how unbearably overprotective Yue Qingyuan would be... hmm... no, I’ll just stay like this.” 

- 

 Luo Jiahui seems a little anxious about the empty spaces at the table, but she fills the space as best she can by chattering about assorted restaurant business. At least until she abruptly takes a deep breath and says, “Hua-Ge, I have something to tell you.” 

 Shang Qinghua freezes in the middle of taking a drink. His unhelpful brain immediately races to guess the worst possible conversational subjects. His sister-in-law has somehow figured out that he’s a transmigrator?! His sister-in-law has decided that her son is not going to the Demon Realm under any circumstances?! His sister-in-law knows Binghe better than he does and has realized that the young protagonist is being abused after all?! Oh,  fuck, what is it? 

 “I’m getting married!” Luo Jiahui announces, breathlessly. 

 “Oh,” Shang Qinghua says, heart rate going at the speed of sound. “Wait,  what?” 

- 

AN: This chapter is why I didn’t go into the details of LJH/LQG in the last chapter, immediately post-timeskip. I wanted to blindside everyone with an “Oh, it’s THAT serious?!” moment. The last chapter established that “SQH is handling things”, then this chapter establishes that, as the plot goes on, “SQH is only barely handling things”. Which helps prep the following breakdown with the System World Update in chapters 20-22. 

- 

 “You didn’t have any time for yourself,” Shang Qinghua agrees, following this conversation of very obvious things that he already knew so far. He didn’t have any time for himself back then either, between organizing a conference and finding a cure on top of the usual day-in-day-out of the sect. “You did a really good job looking after them all by yourself!” 

 “They don’t always agree with that,” Luo Jiahui says, smiling but self-deprecating. 

 “Aha, well, they’re young.” 

 The disagreements of what was best for the children is why Shang Qinghua really had to get Fanli (who didn’t see herself as a child) out of the house by any means necessary. He was at a bit of a loss at how else to help. She was never part of  Proud Immortal Demon Way! Not even as a fragment of backstory mentioned in passing! Shang Qinghua struggles to compensate for these extra people who were never characters sometimes. 

 “Qingge was very understanding,” Luo Jiahui says. “But… well… then Fanli was gone and I had the restaurant keeping me busy, but that was all my own choice… and what good was waiting really doing us? It didn’t have to be everything or nothing. So… we talked… about what we wanted and what- what we were afraid of… and we decided to go forward slowly.” 

- 

AN: I said in the Author’s Notes on AO3 that I was going to use Jiage to shame Moshang and Qijiu, and I meant it. TALK TO EACH OTHER!!! Shang Qinghua, you need to talk to Mobei-Jun about what you want! Shang Qinghua, you can’t keep putting things on hold because of the plot! 

- 

 No offense to either his sister-in-law or his junior martial brother, but aren’t love stories supposed to be a little more… fiery? 

 “When I was younger, I thought that falling in love was supposed to be all excitement and passion and not being able to live without someone even for a second,” Luo Jiahui admits, a little wistfully. “I thought that it was supposed to be thinking about them all the time, not being able to stay away from each other, and needing to know what they’d been doing every second they were away. It was like becoming a completely different person. I thought that being in love was about one of us getting horribly jealous every time we even talked to someone else, doing things I didn’t really understand and changing myself just to keep him happy, and keeping secrets and sneaking around just to keep things from exploding. Because love is not being able to help yourself like that, right?” 

 Shang Qinghua can’t really manage to speak right now. 

 It’s like someone has cut his fucking throat. 

 Which is fine! 

 “But that ended really badly for me,” Luo Jiahui says, with a nervous huff at her own understatement. “It was very exciting, but looking back, being in that kind of love was also very frightening sometimes… and it was a little lonely too… being in love with someone I couldn’t really talk to or trust.” 

-

AN: This is more specifically vagueing SVSSS Bingqiu than Moshang, but it’s also shaming Moshang too. Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky wrote some extremely messed-up romances and he would have said, “Yes! It’s all super messed-up! That’s kind of the point!” But it also means that the man can’t really conceptualize (at least at first) or articulate the kind of relationship he would actually be happy to have with Mobei-Jun, especially when his relationship with Mobei-Jun had such violent beginnings 

- 

 The first person he tells himself is, weirdly enough, Qi Qingqi. Liu Qingge apparently already told both Liu Mingyan and Luo Fanli before he left, so Shang Qinghua heads over to see how the girls are handling it. (Also, he wants to pump Liu Mingyan for information on her mother’s opinions on weddings and marriage, in a really pathetic attempt to ready himself for the rumble.) He makes her agree to keep the information to herself before telling and she does, like a bro! 

 And then he tells and she laughs in his fucking face! Eventually, she realizes that he’s looking for sympathy, he’s not just here to let her enjoy his suffering, as a form of payment after everything he and Liu Qingge have inflicted on her. Then she laughs at him again, even louder. 

 Sure, he’d laugh too if he was in her shoes! But not to her face! Rude! 

 - 

AN: Qi Qingqi also pointed while laughing, I think. It’s funny because it’s not her dealing with Liu Family shit this time. 

- 

 Shang Qinghua expected, this time last year, to be laser-focused on the plot! His attention was not going to stray even a little bit, he promised himself; he was going to be 110% dedicated to making sure that everyone he tripped into caring about made it through the least shitty version of  Proud Immortal Demon Way  possible. He was going to be a  machine  of a transmigrator! No distractions! All he wanted was for his family to make it through the quickest, least shitty bare bones of a plot! And he was going to  achieve, damn it! 

 Instead, he finds himself planning his sister-in-law’s wedding and it eats up time he didn’t fucking know he had to give. Immortal Alliance Conference, eat your fucking heart out! Cang Qiong Mountain Sect? Did he work there? Nope, he’s never heard of the place! He’s the Peak Lord of wedding planning now! 

- 

AN: This is me telling myself I’m going to get my life 100% together and then getting into a new video game and baking cookies instead. Or ditching my housecleaning plans to hang out with friends at a moment’s notice. 

- 

 At the wedding itself, Fanli tells her sister’s father-in-law that Binghe is also  very into birds and Shang Qinghua’s nephew spends a good chunk of the rest of the celebrations (and his precious time away from Qing Jing Peak) held hostage by his own politeness, listening to his new grandfather earnestly tell him about the various migration habits of demonic birds. 

 Well! Better him than Shang Qinghua, honestly! 

-

AN: Inspired by that time we went on vacation and one of my brothers got mistaken by one of our travelling companions for a budding serious birdwatcher instead of someone who just thinks they’re neat - and also likes to point at them and intentionally call them by the wrong name. 

Also, LQG’s Dad in this fic and SY would probably get along super well. 

LQG and his dad in this universe have gone out on month-long camping trips to in which they pretty much don’t talk the entire time. They stalk monsters through the wilderness and have a great time.

- 

 Shang Qinghua is too busy keeping an eye on Luo Fanli and being  not talked to by Liu Mingyan, who is eighteen-ish years old now he thinks and still deeply embarrassed by the fact that he told her off for her real person fiction. (He doesn’t want to discourage her passion for writing! She’s pretty good for a kid! It’s pretty cute! Everyone needs their escapist hobbies! He just doesn’t want identifying information about his family being spread around freely, even if the characterizations of the couple are… uh… wildly reimagined, and he doesn't want to have to spend his very valuable time keeping a lookout for more illicit fiction.) It’s difficult to read her expression through the ever-present veil, but… yeah, she’s still pissed off at him.

 Ugh, teenagers. 

 Binghe is not allowed to bring several hundred nieces-in-law into Shang Qinghua's life. Just... no. Fuck, no. 

 He doesn’t even get a date to commiserate about this with. 

 It’s a very small wedding, family only (Luo Jiahui’s shitty parents  don’t count  and her older brother was forced to decline the invitation), so that Luo Jiahui and Liu Qingge can keep their privacy. Madam Liu huffed about it - the battles in talking her down were both great and terrible - but her son stood his ground! Sure, people might whine someday about not being invited, but the great thing about Liu Qingge is that they can more or less just say,  “Well, we couldn’t stop him from doing whatever he wanted!”  And people just have to take that unless they want to claim they could take on the Bai Zhan Peak War God! 

- 

AN: Trying to imagine the AU in which SQH brought MBJ as his date to this wedding. SQH would’ve liked to be able to bring MBJ as a date, but alas, they are not dating and the groom would probably try to kill the man. 

- 

 Shang Qinghua is not expecting, soon after returning from his sister-in-law’s happy and long-awaited wedding, to be solemnly informed that Shen Qingqiu’s health has only really deteriorated these past months. Wow, that’s a huge downer. 

 Also, he already knew that? He’s been getting Mu Qingfang all the right supplies to treat their shixiong. He didn’t actually abandon his duties to the sect for a family wedding. He knew that Shen Qingqiu had fallen sufficiently ill to need tending on Qian Cao Peak in the past month and he considered it, well, convenient timing in regards to Binghe’s permission to attend his mother’s wedding not being randomly revoked. Cold-hearted, maybe! But he had lots of other things to worry about at the time, like informing Mobei-Jun that his sister-in-law was getting married and so he’d be regrettably absent to attend the wedding. 

 Then he’s told that Shen Qingqiu is not expected to improve this time. 

  “Oh, shit, they really think he’s dying,” Shang Qinghua realizes. 

 This really wasn’t in  Proud Immortal Demon Way. 

- 

AN: I seriously contemplated cutting this chapter in half because of this mood switch. Like, I went in intending on writing a serious mood switch, but in practice, wow. It felt like a lot more in practice. 

- 

 “Our sect leader asks about the boy and his progress,” Shen Qingqiu rasps, his voice turning more and more accusing. “He’s  so very  concerned about the boy. We can’t have such a beloved child  crying  to his devoted family that he’s been mistreated or neglected, can we? How flattering these assumptions are. It makes a man wonder what exactly people think he’s going to  do to the boy.” 

 Shang Qinghua might have an itemized list somewhere, honestly. 

 “Ah, I can’t speak for anyone else,” Shang Qinghua says finally. “But please don’t take it personally, Shen-Shixiong. I don’t really trust anyone. Anything can happen behind a locked door, you know?” 

 Some honest cynicism can go over well with the man. 

 Shen Qingqiu laughs bitterly now. 

- 

AN: It can be fun in media where Character A is like, “Ahhh, I hope no one discovers my secret!” And Character B is like, “So, about this extremely obvious thing that you’re doing...!” 

Shen Qingqiu is as honest and open as he is throughout this scene because he honestly thinks that he’s dying. He’s determined to be blithe about it. 

- 

Shang Qinghua at least gets to see Mu Qingfang’s face journey as Shen Qingqiu accuses their sect leader of letting him think that he’d left him to die. As Shen Qingqiu yells about being treated like an unwanted ghost, as a potential blackmailer, as an embarrassing disappointment, as a petty troublemaker, as a spoiled child, as a problem to be solved, and as the last blemish on Yue Qingyuan’s reputation - anything but as someone worthy of being trusted with Yue Qingyuan’s problems and of being treated like an equal friend. 

 Yue Qingyuan tries to explain that he didn’t think Shen Qingqiu wanted to hear his excuses, and Shen Qingqiu shoots back that he would rather fucking die than beg the man he’d thought had forgotten about him to explain when exactly he became not worth rescuing as soon as possible. 

 Yue Qingyuan tries to explain that he didn’t want Shen Qingqiu’s pity or to force the man to be grateful that he’d  tried. 

 Shen Qingqiu tells the man to go fuck himself. How could it not hurt for someone he loved to hurt him and then just…  move past the hurt  like the pain wasn’t  who they were? 

 “All the world could revile me… reject me… leave me to die… and I would pay their hatred no heed! What do they truly know of what I am? Of who I am?” Shen Qingqiu demands. “But if  Qi-Ge  could throw me away… decide that I just wasn’t worth the  trouble anymore now that he’d had a taste of a better life… then I really must be wretched beyond all things at the root! If he believed it, then… then it had to be true.” 

- 

AN: Because I just wrote a Qijiu confrontation over this exact thing, like, a few days before, I thought that I could get away with writing out this entire confrontation in full. I think it works better if the audience has to imagine some of it. And because SQH is the POV character, it felt right that he not be in the room and not be a full witness to this scene. He doesn’t get to see everything. 

[dearlazerbunny]

Let it Go (Ch. 2 of ?)

Pairings: platonic avengers team x reader, potential background loki x reader

Words: 3000

Genre/Ratings: -WARNINGS- there will be an (unsuccessful) suicide attempt by reader- chapter will be explicitly marked in advance. Drug (pills) and alcohol abuse, lots of negativity and self loathing. There will be an arc, but said arc is going to start in the eleventh circle of hell and inch up from there.

Summary: *not far enough into this one to give an accurate summary, so this’ll have to be updated eventually. enjoy for now!*

He had just gotten used to the noise.

When he first woke up, it felt like he was suffocating him- always there, always cars honking and lights flashing and music playing and people going about their lives- the city that never sleeps. Someone told him that, he forgets who. He figured out what they meant the second he stepped outside for longer than a minute.

 Now there’s just the wind stirring up dust, and occasionally toppling over a loose pile of debris. City workers push brooms along the street, trying to clear a path. Machines groan and creak as they haul away pieces of the city- days ago, that window was hundreds of feet in the sky- like its nothing. Another day. Just a little quieter than usual.

 t’s hard to believe, even though he has the scars on his shield and healing bruises on his ribs to prove the aliens did, in fact, try to invade New York and take over the planet. Led by a god. And then he’d teamed up with another god- he still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d never been particularly religious, but Bucky was- the insufferable bastard Stark, two assassins and a green giant and became an Avenger of planet Earth.

 This wasn’t what he signed up for in 1941. Nazis or aliens, punching them in the face still uses the same muscles. Metal torsos don’t have quite as much give against the knuckles though.  

 He wanders the streets with no real purpose in mind, other than helping out with lifting here and there where needed. The war roars to life in the back of his mind, overlayed with the eerily calm day. His eyes mark the battle: here, where he launched Nat into the air, her dry words echoing in his ears; here, where Thor had very efficiently covered his back. Here, where for the second time in his life he watched a man who didn’t deserve to fall hurdle towards the ground.

 And here- something happened here. His feet remember even if his mind doesn’t- they’ve stopped in the middle of the road. He squints, resisting the urge to cough on a cloud of dust that gets kicked up in his face. Something… his shield, doing far greater damage than his fist ever could, and then someone… screamed?

Her. A girl, in the middle of the road, eyes sunken and skin so taught and paperwhite he’d wondered if the ghosts of this battle were already coming to haunt him before it was even done. She’s screamed at him to duck, and her voice was so raw it triggered something in the back of his brain from basic training and caused him to hit the ground before he fully knew what he was doing. Something had flown over his head- he could hear it cutting through the air- a thunk, a screech that would likely be added to his rotating litany of nightmares- then nothing, save the battle raging behind him. A Chitauri he assumed he’d missed lay twitching on the ground just inches from his neck, and sticking from its chest- ice. Solid ice. So cold that his gloved hand still recoiled when he reached out to touch it.

The irony wasn’t lost on him.

The girl’s face had been a roulette of emotions- a hint of pride, a darkly sarcastic flicker of her lips, and then her eyes widened and- fear. He watched her watch him, clenching and unclenching her fists. By the time he had opened his mouth to call out to her, she was gone, leaving only a trail of what looked to be frost on the ground before she disappeared around a corner- and something that slipped out of her pocket, jostled from her sweatshirt as she made her getaway.

He didn’t have time to think about her after that. A second later, his comm had crackled to life in his ear, and Stark started barking instructions, and Captain America had straightened his spine and grabbed his shield, and got back to where he was needed.

Steve Rogers, though, still has her tucked in the back of his mind.

The frost is still on the ground. Not as white as it had been, but a few grains of ice still cling to the cracks in the pavement. Strange. Magic? After everything he’s seen the past few days he wouldn’t be surprised. He follows the trail, irrationally hoping she’ll still be tucked behind an overturned car or crumbling building corner.

She isn’t. But there is a neon orange bottle tucked amongst the wreckage, and as he reaches for it he has a flash of memory of it falling from your pocket as you run. The contents rattle. A prescription bottle- like the ones medical gives him never get touched and sit collecting dust in a corner of his closet. Neat rows of print declare it Klonopin, 0.5 mg. Take once a day at bedtime, take an additional half as needed. Ingest with food. In the upper left corner is a name and address and phone number- Christian Heysworth.

The girl in the sweatshirt doesn’t strike him as a Christian. He should probably drop the bottle- it’d never be noticed among the rest of the chaos- and walk away. Worry about his own life and his own mess.

He tucks the bottle into his pocket. It might be a place to start.

…

The knock on her door is crisp and succinct, with no room for error. A soldier’s knock. She knows who it is before she turns the lock, because Clint doesn’t bother knocking anymore. When the door opens, she tries not to look as tired as she feels. “Captain.” It’s an easy acknowledgment, and it gives him time to categorize the healing gash on her cheekbone, covered with a butterfly bandage; the bruise blossoming on her collarbone that peeks just far enough above the neckline of her shirt to be seen. She doesn’t need the attention, but he needs a reminder that not everything is different since the forties. Same soldiers, different decade. Despite herself, the corner of her lip flicks up in the tiniest hint of appreciation. It has been a while since someone’s cared. “What can I do for you?”

“I need a favor.”

Interesting. “With?”

“Something stupid, most likely,” His voice is just sheepish enough to believe him. From his pocket, he pulls an orange bottle identical to the ones SHIELD’s psych department keeps prescribing her and the ones she keeps using for target practice.

Oh. Something deep in her chest softens and clenches all at once. She knows these questions all too well. “Cap. If you need help with- well. I can try my best, but I doubt I’m the best person to-”

Steve’s eyes widen. “Oh, no, these- they aren’t mine.” He hands the medicine over and she appraises it with a practiced eye. Klonopin, schedule IV drug in the United States, dose as low as one milligram to sedate an average adult male within forty-five minutes, effects greatly compounded by alcohol- “I, um. I’d like to track down the owner.”

Her brain is humming. “Any particular reason?”

“It’s a long story.”

Wordlessly, she steps aside, letting him in. “I didn’t have much to do tonight.”

Eventually, there are cups of tea in front of both of them, though she’s only taken a sip and Steve hasn’t touched his at all. He tells her about the girl who leaves frost on the ground in the middle of Manhattan and saves him with a spear made of ice. From the way he speaks, its almost like he isn’t quite sure if she was real or not- just a ghost or a very strange guardian angel. It’s bizarre, but not even on her top ten list of bizarre things in this week alone.

“So. I want to… thank her, I suppose?” He laughs without mirth. “I’m not really sure.”

“Think she’s enhanced?”

“Hopefully not by force.”

It doesn’t even bother her, anymore, the implication. Her breathing becomes more controlled on instinct. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Don’t think about it. “Let’s hope. Is she on anyone’s radar? SHIELD?”

“I wouldn’t even know how to check. And if I did, I don’t have anything to go on.”

Natasha glances down at the bottle of pills. But there is Christian Heysworth. She reaches under the couch cushion she sits on to produce a laptop from the gap. It’s wafer-thin and high tech enough that pulling up something as inane as Facebook looks categorically ridiculous. There’s a few Christian Heysworths, but they’re quickly narrowed down by what little information she has. “Christian Heysworth: junior at NYU, frat boy, wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got a couple of DUIs under his belt paid off by someone in his family-” she glances up, sharp cheekbones illuminated in blue light. “What?”

“I just… what are the odds he’d be in SHIELD’s databases…?”

“Hardly, Cap. Behold the wonders of the internet. So, are we wringing his neck, or were you thinking something more subtle?”

She says it to get a rise out of him and is rewarded by an aghast expression. “I just need to ask him some questions, Natasha, not-” he stops when her quiet smirk lifts a little of the weight from her eyes and laughs with her. “Fine. But I’m doing the talking.”

...

Natasha Romanov has infiltrated thirty-seven countries in as many or more disguises and has never been caught. She is failing miserably at attempting to camouflage Captain America into a generic civilian. There aren’t enough sunglasses and baseball caps in the world to make him a more manageable height and physique, and his t-shirt- at least two sizes too small for him- attracts the eyes of every wannabe pro sports player and every girl and guy hanging off of their arm. Honestly, they expect her to work in these kinds of conditions? Thankfully pulling her top a little lower and batting her eyelashes nets her enough information to direct her to her “absolutely earth-shattering one-night stand.” They climb stairs in a dorm hall that could be nicer than some of the floors in Stark Tower. She has the urge to crack the tile with something sharp.

Heysworth opens his door in boxers and smoke still on his breath. Heavy-lidded eyes barely focus on her face. “Uh, hey. Can I help you?”

Steve comes up behind her. “Christian Heysworth? I’d like to have a word with you, son.”

“I didn’t do nothin’.”

“I didn’t say you did.” Steve’s blue eyes are cool when he takes off his aviators; primly folds them and hangs them on the collar of his shirt. “Recognize this?” He holds out the prescription.

“Uh, I didn’t really-” Heysworth stops. Belches. Squints up at Steve. “I- wait. Wait, holy shit, you’re fucking Captain America! Holy shit man, I can’t even-”

As he rambles, Steve looks over to Natasha, who shrugs. “You must have one of those faces.”

Captain America holds up a hand to the kid’s face. “Just answer the question, son.”

“I, yeah, okay, um-” he turns the bottle over in his hands. “Shit, is this what that bitch stole from me?”

“Language. Who stole from you?”

“I met up with some chick downtown who wanted to buy them, but then those freaking aliens started coming and I- you didn’t hear it from me though, ‘kay?”

Steve sighs. “Do you know her name?”

“Nah, chat rooms and shi- stuff. Sorry. I have her screen name?”

He agrees to trade for a selfie with the Captain, which Natasha promptly deletes as soon as he hands over his phone, transferring data to her own. “She’s communicating from this address,” she murmurs, showing Steve the area it triangulated before wiping that information too. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Uh-huh. Hey, are you-”

Steve neatly closes the door in his face. “I don’t think he looked at your face once.

Oh, Steve. What a pure soul. “To be fair, I don’t think anyone has been looking at yours either.”

Their trail leads them to the backstreets, to an alley so covered in grime it looks like the whole place should be condemned. And many of the buildings are- covered in caution tape, stairwells crumbling, and fire escapes rusted over. Wind whistles through shattered windows. Foundations are rotting. And yet there are a few minuscule signs of life- a door that’s scraped the ground so many times there’s wear on the concrete, a few piles of garbage here and there. “She’s off the grid.”

“Can’t be right. She was a kid, couldn’t have been more than twenty-”

“You do what you have to.” She gives him a look. “You know that.”

His face goes stony. “Let’s just find her.”

Natasha sets off in one direction, Steve in the other. They both know how this works. It’s a practiced dance. Search the bottom floors first, find faults in the buildings and stairwells so you can avoid them the next floor up. She picks a lock that has managed to stay fast despite rusting over, he leverages himself through a windowsill strong enough to hold his weight. Eerily silent save for scraps of trash and the skittering of mice. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the construction in midtown, slowly shoveling away.

Steve’s mark is almost laughably easy to find. There’s a door tucked in a second-level corner whose seams are iced over three inches thick.

Her boots crunch in frost spilling out from under a crack in the door. She punctures the air with a bird call, and seconds later Steve rounds the corner. He reaches down to run a finger through the snow. “it looks the same.”

“Do you want to do the honors then?” He tests the knob once, twice- the metal doesn’t even rattle, it’s too frozen solid. He opts to kick it in with a well-placed boot, wincing at the sound of ice cracking and then shattering into shards.

The apartment is empty. There’s a table along the far wall stacked with a few cardboard boxes to use as makeshift shelves. Packets of potato chips are shoved in one alcove, a few granola bars in the other. Empty soda bottles litter the floor. The table itself is mostly covered with alcohol: a whole skyline of glass bottles glinting in the light from the newly busted door. Some are empty, some are half full, a few have broken necks. An inspection of the crooked drawers attached underneath reveals nothing but a junkyard of pills, none of which are prescribed to the same person more than twice.

Natasha opens a few of the safety caps, rattling them like a scientist with an interest. “There’s enough in here to put even you to sleep.”

“Is she here? She would’ve heard the door.”

“Maybe.” A door leads off to a molding bathroom and a small hall closet. The next, a makeshift bedroom. A grimy mattress sits in the corner, covered in blankets so dirty there’s no telling what the print of them might’ve once been. There’s also a girl. She’s curled up in the center, drowning in layers of hoodies and sweatshirts. The second Natasha steps in the room she can see her breath. Another step in and the air feels like home. Whatever water was in the air has crystallized and fallen to the ground in a tiny hailstorm, surrounding her like a halo.

She also doesn’t move.

The spy moves with ruthless efficiency, ignoring the cold as she kneels by the mattress. Too many layers. Can’t even see if she’s breathing. She tugs her sleeve up over her fingertips before beginning to shove aside tangled hoods and t-shirts, digging for the collarbone.

“Natasha?”

“Here. She’s almost-” she cuts off with a hiss of pain, wrenching her fingers back like she was bit.

“What-?” the girl is still sleeping. Steve only spares her a glance before taking Natasha’s hand in his, checking for damage. There’s no blood, no broken skin. But the tips of her fingers are white and hard, paler than normal and cold to the touch. He recoils on instinct. “Frostbite.”

Natasha is muttering low in Russian, tapping her fingers together to move the blood, and Steve is momentarily taken back to a plane going down in the middle of an endless ocean surrounded by walls of blue. No going back, only going under, and nothing waiting for him but frost and ice and cold-

“Steve!” He blinks. Natasha’s face swims back into focus. “Get out. Contact the tower. We can’t move her like this and she needed medical yesterday.”

“I’m fi-”

“No, you’re not. I can handle this. Russian, remember?” She tries to give him a small smile. He doesn’t return it. “Get out and coordinate removal. That’s an order.”

Orders, some primeval part of Steve’s brain can understand. He turns and hopes he doesn’t run from the apartment, not even bothering to navigate the stairs- just jumps over the balcony to land in the courtyard below, chest heaving. Unconsciously, he glances in a nearby piece of glass, ensuring his breath isn’t fog. He isn’t cold. He isn’t. He’s fine.

He isn���t thinking when he puts a beacon out for JARVIS to trace. He isn’t flexing his fingers to make sure they can move. He isn’t drowning. He isn’t on ice. He isn’t, he isn’t, he isn’t-

In the apartment, Natasha swears and wrings her hand as pins and needles race down her arm. She’s handled plenty of frostbite, but it never gets easier. The girl is still unconscious, heartbeat dangerously slow. Whatever she put in her system, she meant to knock herself out for a long time. Or worse.

And Steve is on the verge of a panic attack and if your heart stops she can’t perform CPR, so she sits on the edge of your mattress blowing on her fingers as you keep causing the air around you to quietly freeze and fall, a tiny secret twinkle of ice in the middle of New York.

[sanderssides-springfling]

Honestly I had a lot of fun with this, and I really hope you like it @penguinkool because it’s really just me rambling about things I think are neat. Here is your gift! (By the way, there is some slight Logan angst but for the most part he’s just a happy boi). It kind of fits into two of your requests and I hope that’s okay

-

Logan did not get to ramble very often. That was mostly because he would stop himself before starting, but he never wanted to bore any of the other Sides with his random and often useless facts. He kept them to himself unless it was necessary to share, and even then he was often brushed aside.

This is why he was surprised when he felt someone else sit beside him while watching a documentary in the living room.

“Whatcha up to, L?”

Logan turned to the gruff voice, finding Virgil looking back at him. He saw genuine interest in the other Side’s eyes, which was a bit unexpected, but he knew Virgil’s interest would soon pass.

“I am watching a documentary about DNA and the human genome,” Logan replied, expecting Virgil to leave. Why would he not? DNA was not something any of the other Sides had ever expressed any interest in.

“Do...” Virgil started, “Do you mind if I join you?”

Logan his his shock and nodded, letting out a sound of affirmation. This was unexpected, and it piques Logan’s curiosity.

“This is cool,” Virgil said, pointedly keeping his eyes on the screen. “All I really knew before was that DNA is kinda what makes stuff work around here.”

Virgil gestured vaguely around the Mindscape. He seemed to actually care about the topic, so Logan took a chance.

“Yes, deoxyribonucleic acid is quite fascinating,” Logan states, “For example, did you know that at least twenty percent of Neanderthal DNA is present in the human genome?”

“Really?” Virgil almost whispered, seemingly enticed.

Logan nodded. “Along with that, all humans have genetic material from a woman who lived roughy 200,000 years ago, known as Mitochondrial Eve.”

Virgil sat up a bit straighter, clearly wanting to know more. Logan had read about such verbal cues, but they had never been directed toward him before. He took it as a sign to continue, though remained wary.

“Scientists have even discovered that there are approximately 20,000 genes in the human genome.”

“That’s... a lot,” Virgil said. He was looking at Logan earnestly, encouraging him to keep going.

“It is,” Logan nodded, “In fact, one strand of DNA is about six feet long. If you were to put together all the DNA in one person, it would be about double the diameter of the solar system.”

“Woah,” Virgil muttered, “How do you know all that?”

“I am Logic,” Logan shrugged, turning back to his documentary.

After several weeks, Logan expected that to be the end of it.he was certainly not expecting Virgil to approach him one day with a question.

“How much do you know about space?”

“Well,” Logan said, “I suppose I know an adequate amount about space. Why do you ask?”

“Uh,” Virgil looked away, his face the slightest bit red. “I liked hearing you talk about DNA the other day. It was calming and I was hoping you could tell me about space.”

Logan blinked. He had not predicted that to be Virgil’s next statement.

“I can go,” Virgil mumbled, making Logan realize he had not responded. He jumped up from the couch, almost panicked.

“No!” Logan’s volume made Virgil flinch. Logan cleared his throat and tried again. “No, it is quite alright. I have time to tell you about space.”

Virgil nodded and perched himself on the arm of the couch, already smiling softly in anticipation.

“Did you know,” Logan began, “there is a planet called 55 Cacri e? It is part of the constellation Cancer, and scientists believe it to have a surface made of graphite and diamond.”

“Diamond?” Virgil questioned, “Really?”

Logan nodded continuing to rattle off his facts. “On Venus, one day is 243 Earth days. A year, however, is only 225 Earth days.”

Virgil shifted, making Logan glance up at him from where he had been looking at the wall. The logical Side was met with a smile. He shot a small grin back, not stopping his facts.

“Halley’s Comet will not orbit past Earth again until the year 2061,” Logan recited easily, “and neutron stars can spin up to 600 times a second.”

“Thanks, Lo.” Virgil was already looking at him when Logan lifted his gaze once more. The two shared a smile before Virgil got up and Logan summoned a book he had been wanting to reread.

The strangest occurrence yet was when Logan left his room to see Virgil face-down on the couch. Now, this part was actually fairly normal. What Logan said next was the weird part.

“Virgil?” Logan queried, “Would you like to hear about Ancient Greece?”

Virgil hummed in response, prompting Logan to begin sharing his knowledge.

“Did you know that there was an Ancient agree, god of beekeeping named Aristaeus?”

Virgil shook his head, face still buried in the couch.

“There was also a festival called the Thesmophoria, which was for the goddess Demeter, and was attended only by women,” Logan rattled off, hardly taking the time to breathe. “And of the main deities there were three virgin goddesses: Artemis, Athena, and Hestia.”

Virgil raised his head a bit to look at Logan, who caught a glimpse of dark circles under the anxious Side’s eyes.

“Throwing an apple at someone typically symbolized your love for them,” Logan finished, “and there are six types of love from Ancient Greece, still often used today.”

Logan prepared to get up, but stopped when he heard Virgil grumble something into the couch cushion.

“What was that, Virgil?” Logan asked.

“What were the six types of love?”

“Oh,” Logan said, “There is Eros, or romantic love, which shares its name with the love god whose Roman counterpart is Cupid. Then there is mania, or obsessive love, which is a very jealous and unhealthy type of love.”

Virgil was still staring up at Logan, and had curled up a bit to be more comfortable.

“After that is ludus, or playful love, which is often just considered an infatuation. Pragmatic is practical love, the love held between two people who work through problems and share a commitment. Platonic love is storge, the type of love held between friends.

“Lastly is agape, perhaps the most well-known type of love. It was mentioned in many separate occasions by Doctor Martin Luther King Junior. Agape is the love of everyone, an altruistic and giving love.”

“Thanks, Lo,” Virgil said quietly. He looked exhausted, eyes starting to droop.

Logan grappled a blanket, and carefully placed it on top of Virgil who was already beginning to drift off.

Just a few days later, Logan was in his room trying to figure a more productive schedule (the Roman would approve of) when he was interrupted by a knock at his door.

Logan furrowed his brow. Surely it was not time to eat already. Or had the others decided to film a video? Logan was still wracking his brain when he opened the door to see a smiling Virgil.

“My Chemical Romance is back.”

“... dopamine and norepinephrine?”

“No,” Virgil chuckled, though not unkindly, “the band. They broke up in 2013 and I just found out that they’re getting back together.”

“Ah,” Logan hesitated, “Would you like to listen to them with me?”

Virgil’s eyes lit up and he nodded, coming into Logan’s room with an extra bounce in his step Logan had never seen.

Virgil quickly chose a song to listen to, playing ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ louder than was truly necessary. Logan, however, did not complain. He just smiled, learning the lyrics and eventually singing along with Virgil.

And if the pair sang for hours before Logan began giving facts about the brain (“Information in the brain can travel up to 268 miles per hour, Virgil!”), then that was their business.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

“If I had my way we’d sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.” SCREAMS Reddie pretty please

Oh my GOD this is SO very much them I love how your brain works.

Richie is not, by most standards, a very romantic person. Granted, most of his attempts at romance are from when he was eleven, twelve, thirteen, and so on, a snot-nosed motormouth kid and then a snot-nosed motormouth teenager who thought helping Eddie sneak into the theater was the height of chivalrous gestures.

But he thinks, he’s pretty fucking sure, that he’s been managing to make his intentions really fucking obvious, here. Obvious enough that all the other Losers have noticed, anyway. Mike keeps smiling at him all proud and Ben will nudge him with his elbow like they’re having a silent conversation and Bev keeps giving him and Eddie these aww looks.

Stan keeps glaring at them but that might have something to do with how Richie keeps doing things like smuggling a bunch of handmade sock puppets into the hospital to re-enact the battle in the sewers using said puppets so that Stan’s all caught up on what happened while he was stuck on suicide watch.

Who doesn’t like sock puppets, is what Richie wants to know.

But Eddie - Eds, Eddie my love, Eddie Spaghetti, Edward Kaspbrak - Eddie doesn’t seem to have caught the motherfucking drift yet.

Either that, or he’s caught it and is politely ignoring it, and that... that would be so much worse.

Since the whole being impaled thing, Richie’s been on ‘look after Eddie’ duty, a position he finds wholeheartedly acceptable, nay, perfect, because now he’s got Eddie all to himself in his empty but very fancy LA home and he can spoil Eddie to his heart’s content and do what he had promised himself he’d do, what he’d begged and bargained and bribed the universe with, while he was sitting by Eddie’s hospital bed praying he’d live: namely, stop being a fucking coward and show Eddie that he’s in love with him (stupidly so) and has been for, oh, about 27 years, give or take.

He changes Eddie’s bandages. He makes the stupid health food that Eddie likes, even though Eddie now knows he’s not allergic to everything in the world and has a major fondness for Ding Dongs. He keeps the house clean since Eddie’s still a neat freak. He takes Eddie on long walks, asks Eddie’s thoughts on interior design and then does exactly what Eddie wants, and cues up all of Eddie’s favorite ‘80s movies like Lost Boys and Dead Poets Society.

Somehow, Eddie has failed to realize that his all translates to I want to suck your cock and also marry the fuck out of you. And Richie is at a loss.

Maybe he should just bite the bullet and say it? He’s not Ben, he’s not going to write a poem. And Stan, although adorable in his devotion to his wife, is a bit too sappy for Richie’s tastes--he’s not about to start calling Eddie ‘babylove’. But saying ‘oh hey I’ve been in love with you since I was twelve’ is kind of a lot to dump on a guy, right?

In fact, he’s wide awake debating this conundrum in his head when he hears a hoarse noise from Eddie’s bedroom.

Now, Richie’s got nightmares. Bad ones. He’s talked to Bev about it - about what he saw in the Deadlights, Eddie dead, ripped apart right in front of him, the whole horrible future unfolding - and the nightmares have lessened over time, fewer and farther between, but he still has them. Still dreams about Eddie heavy and cold underneath his hands.

Point is, he knows what nightmares sound like.

He’s up and in Eddie’s room before he can blink, and it’s only after that he wonders if he shouldn’t be here. If Eddie wouldn’t want him. But now it’s too late, he’s right by Eddie’s bed, and Eddie looks miserable, his face all pinched up the way it would get when he was talking about AIDS as a kid (Eddie’s number one childhood fear, and wow, if that metaphor wasn’t fucking obvious in hindsight).

So Richie puts his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and gently shakes him. “Hey, hey, Eddie. It’s okay, you’re safe.” Is he dreaming about dying? About being left alone in the dark? “You’re okay.”

Eddie’s eyes fly open and he flails, swinging like he’s being attacked, and he punches Richie right in the fucking jaw.

“Ow!” Richie stumbles back. “Dipshit, what the hell!?”

“Oh my God, what the fuck?” Eddie sounds exactly zero percent contrite. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“I was trying to help you! You were having a nightmare!” Only Eddie would get angry at someone for trying to help comfort him, Jesus fuck.

Eddie does look a bit contrite at that, though. “Oh.”

“Yeah, man, sounded pretty bad.” Richie rubs at his sore jaw and sits on the edge of the bed. “Nice right hook.”

“Thanks.” Eddie sighs, then looks at the clock. It’s two in the morning. “I think I’ll get some work done. Maybe clean the kitchen.”

“You’ll--what? Man, no, fuck that, you need sleep. You’re still healing.”

“Yeah, well, every time I try to sleep, I just dream about--” Eddie’s mouth snaps shut so fast it’s like he’s got lockjaw.

“...about dying?” Richie asks, wincing and hating himself even as he asks the question.

Eddie gapes at him like that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard Richie say. “No, you moron! About you dying!”

Now Richie’s gaping.

“Do you have any idea what it was like?” Eddie demands. “To see you like that? You had blood coming out of your nose and floating up, it was floating! Your brains were leaking out of your ears! And every time I dream I...” His voice turns into a croak. “I’m back there, and I don’t have a fence post, or I’m stuck, or something, and I can’t... I can’t save you.”

Richie lurches forward, hugging him, because he can’t not, not after that. “I’m okay, Eds. You’re never going to get rid of me. I’m like herpes.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Eddie says, but it’s weak, and he puts his arms around Richie, too.

“I dream about you,” Richie admits. “Dying. Worst fuckin’ thing. Losing you--I don’t know if I could handle it.” He could handle losing the others, but not Eddie. He might literally drink himself to death if he lost Eddie.

This might be the stupidest idea ever, but... “Hey, you want me to, uh, sleep here? Just... y’know, maybe it’ll help.”

Eddie pulls back and Richie expects a no, maybe even an annoyed joke, but Eddie just... nods. Shy, almost.

So Richie climbs in, and he tries to maintain his distance, he really does, but Eddie’s so warm and his body’s mostly healed so he doesn’t have to exclusively sleep on his back anymore propped up with some pillows, and it turns out Eddie’s kind of an octopus in bed and Richie doesn’t mind at all and he’s very warm and...

...and he’s so fucking groggy when he wakes up that for a second he can’t remember his name or where the fuck he is.

A few breaths later he’s sorted it out. Eddie’s the warm weight wrapped around him. That coconut smell is Eddie’s hair, from his shampoo. The light currently trying to kill him is from the sun, because it’s morning. He’s in his spare bedroom, in his house.

“Sorry,” Eddie mumbles, and to Richie’s horror he starts to pull away. “I can...”

Richie’s arms tighten around him before Eddie can get any further. “No, it’s okay, it’s... uh, I...” For fuck’s sake. “I like it. I want, uh, I want this. If I had my way we’d sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.”

Yeah, no, he is not romantic in the slightest. What kind of fucking metaphor is that?

Eddie blinks his big brown eyes up at Richie, those fuckin’ doe eyes that make Richie want to do stupid things like do a handstand if it’ll make Eddie notice, make Eddie laugh. “You... mean that?”

Richie nods. “I mean. We’d do other things at night, too. But like. Once we got to the sleeping part, that’s how it’d happen.”

Smooth, Trashmouth. No wonder he’s such a Casanova. If he didn’t have his hands full of Eddie he’d smack himself in the face.

And Eddie - Eddie is so much braver than anyone, including himself, believes - and he pushes himself up, a soft, shy smile tugging up the corner of his mouth, and he presses that smile right up against Richie’s lips.

Richie’s pretty sure he hears a goddamn chorus of bells.

“Wow, Eds, should’ve known that after all my efforts it was snuggling in bed with you that gave you the hint.”

“Efforts?” Eddie stares at him incredulously. “What efforts? I’ve been walking around in my shorts and all those tight shirts and you never fucking took the hint.”

“That was on purpose!?”

“Of course it was on purpose! You think I wear shirts that tight for comfort!?”

“You think I clean the house all the time for shits and giggles!? You think I buy kale because I like it!?”

“Oh my God,” Eddie says, and then he kisses Richie again, possibly to shut him up, but then they just... keep kissing, all wrapped around each other, and Richie’s so fucking happy that if he really was a rattlesnake he’d be rattling his tail.

Or something.

Do snakes wag their tails when they’re happy? Or is that just dogs?

Whatever. Richie’s not a romantic, not by most people’s standards, but if you ask Eddie (and people do, constantly) offering to cuddle someone to help with their nightmares is pretty romantic, and Eddie’s the only person whose standards Richie cares about.

[panpaincakes]

It wasn’t the first time B had found himself in a tight spot, tied down and no idea where he was. None of that was new to him and as the time passed by, excruciatingly slow, he found himself instead increasingly bored. His captors - who’d probably done so entirely righteously - had left him alone, for far too long. B had already gone through the why’s, the how’s and what’s next a hundred times when the door to the room finally opened. and so when the hero themself walked in, B smirked widely at them.

His prison, if you could even call it that, looked more like a spare room, a tea room with some chairs, a coffee table and a fireplace. He was tied down to a chair with his arm behind the back of it and placed in the middle of the room, his back too the only shuttered window in the room and facing the door. They’d had the wits to at least restrain him down with actual chains. Everything else, from the spare room to the thin door with a single lock, proved that B’s boss had been absolutely right about the band of heroes who were trying to claim back the city. They had no idea how to break someone, much less keep prisoners.

”Are you comfortable” A said drily, not a single true concern held in the words. B raised his eyebrows, amused. Trying to be sarcastic to intimidate? Oh, he knew how to play that game, and A would be loosing before they even got started.

”Actually, yes. Best chair I’ve sat on in years. And these chains, ” he shrugged, moving his arms and rattling his bounds for emphasis, ”are some high quality shit. Would be nice with a fire though… ” B nodded towards the dark fireplace, his grin only growing wider. A’s face darkened, getting the intended joke there but seeing none of the humour.

Well, B had probably burnt A more times than he could count, so he couldn’t really blame them for not laughing. Not that it showed. None of A’s team members had as much as a scar on their bodies. B guessed they had their healer, their personal walking first aid kit, to thank for that neat trick.

That’s all they ever seemed to be good at, lick their wounds and paint the world back into silly colors. B’s boss hadn’t even acknowledged the team as an actual threat yet. Sure they could be annoying, delaying their plans but they weren’t dangerous and never had been. Not according to B’s boss at least. And B was shameless to admit he was a bit curious about what they would come up with.

”No fire for you. You are going to tell me everything I need.” A took two more steps into the room, B only raised his eyebrows skeptically, jutting out his jaw and met A’s dark blue eyes with defiance.

”Sure, or else, right? You’re going to do what? Tickle me?” He let out a laugh.

”No… A truth spell…” A stated calmly. B snorted, trying to stifle even more of the laugh that threatened to become hysterical. ”…Bounded with blood.”

They produced a knife, seemingly from thin air and with that B’s face fell, his mouth slightly open in silent disbelief. The laugh died faster than the flip of a light switch.

”Good, now I’ve got your attention.” Now it was A’s turn to smirk, but it sounded more in their voice than it showed on their face, only a slight curl of their lips.

B shut his mouth with a snap and tried to regain the function of his brain that had seemed to just halt at the mention of the rare magic and the sight of the blade. His face still wore the skeptical furrow, but there was some uncertainty there he couldn’t hide.

”Uh, seriously? A, you don’t just joke about that…”

B didn’t know anyone from the hero team even knew blood magic. It was dark, way too dark and dangerous and unreliable. Not even B’s boss would use it because of what it could cost, what it could do. B, who himself had done nearly as many crimes as his boss, wouldn’t even wish blood magic upon his worst enemy, much less try and use it. He’d least expected this team to use anything even similar to blood magic.

They’d campaigned themselves as not only the ’good guys’ but as the non violent, pg 13, hug loving, rainbow team.

Before he could make another sound of protest A had made a slit in their palm and closed the other two steps between them, hand raised toward his chest.

”If it works, it will only hurt if you lie. If it doesn’t… it will hurt all the same.” A flashed him a smile, like they tried to be apologetic. B could see their eyes telling something else, something wicked glinting in the deep blue and his breath hitched. There was a fearful twist in his stomach as he realized he recognized that look, he’d seen it so often in the eyes of his boss’s henchmen and it was something he’d never thought he’d see in A’s.

A wasn’t joking.  

This could go wrong on so many levels even if A knew what they were doing. But from what B’s boss had told him about the heroes, their techniques and tactics, this was not something they usually did, at all.

He had been surprised that they had taken him prisoner in the first place, but he hadn’t thought them capable to even hurt him slightly. And even if he had, he thought that whatever they’d come up with, he’d already lived through worse. A tea room as an improvised prison cell was exactly the level he’d expected.

Dark torture magic wasn’t.

He hadn't expected blood magic.

He struggled against the chains, wriggling to either sides to try and get away from the bleeding hand A reached towards him.

”Be still, or it will fail. I haven’t had that much practice.” A muttered the last part, and it did nothing to calm B down, he struggled even harder, the chains starting to cut into him and when that didn’t work; ”Get the fuck away from me!”

”What are you doing?”

Suddenly C was by A’s side, grabbing their wrist and pulling the hand away from B.

”It’s just a truth spell. We need him to talk.”

A looked more irritated to be interrupted than surprised by Cs’ sudden appearance. B was left blinking, heart thundering in his ears and eyes darting between them trying to figure where the hell C had come from. His mind was reeling and his body buzzing with adrenaline and it took him a solid ten seconds to remember C’s powers were probably the cause of their sudden appearance. And he’d never been so happy to see C in his life.

Neither C or A was looking at him anymore. They seemed to have their own staring contest until C broke the silence.

”You were going to hurt him.”

”No…”

”Yes you were!” B gasped, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. He tried to cover his sheer relief with a scowl. He couldn’t believe how close A had been, not stopping, not bluffing. And they hadn’t even tried another tactic to get him to talk. They’d gone straight for the darkest option possible. The one way ticket to your friendly neighborhood hell.

”Shut up” they both said in unison to him, not letting go of the others’ gaze.

”You were going to use blood magic! A, you promised you didn’t do that!” C continued, voice pitching with emotion.

”They’re fucking crazy-” B chimed in again, hoping C would be more…reasonable?

”I said shut up!” C said at the same time as A turned to him, raising their hand as if to hit him but stopped themself. It made B flinch anyway and C gave A a scowl.

”We don’t do that.”  C continued, their voice turning stern and tired, like they’d had this argument before and believed the message came through only to find now that it hadn’t. A’s head snapped back to C.

”We are running out of options. This time there isn’t much of a choice-” A bit back but was once again cut short by C.

”There’s always a choice! You were the one who taught me that! We don’t do this! I won’t let you”

There were tears now in C’s eyes and just like that, A lost all frustration in their expression, melted away and changed in an instant. Their uncut hand went up to C’s cheek, trying to comfort them, stroke away the tears that had started to trail down.

B just stared, blinking confused and barely daring to breathe. He didn’t care for the tender moment playing out before him, the raw feelings they both seemed to wear on the outside like coats. He was used to guard his feelings deep inside, where they were safe, controlled.

Despite that, the threat of blood magic had come close to tearing those walls down and the last thing he wanted was to break the moment between the two team members, just to bring attention back to that. To him.

”They have [the healer].” A said quietly to C who had leaned into the touch and put their own hand over A’s.

”I want them back.” C replied softly, closing their eyes as more tears fell. ”I’m so afraid they’re hurt… or worse.”

”I know, me too.”

”And D is… We need them to…” C started to sob, unable to finish the sentences and A pulled them into a hug, stroking their hair and fighting tears of their own.

B wanted to melt through the floor. Or at least be able to look away. He felt like an intruder watching something way too intimate. He wasn’t used to see feelings thrown around so openly. And he couldn’t decide if it made him want to groan at how pathetic they looked or envy them for being able to be so vulnerable towards each other.

He’d never had moments like these, not before he joined his boss, and not after, not with anyone. He wondered what it must be like. How did they not feel ridiculous crying so openly?

Then his brain registered what they’ve been saying. About their healer, they had been taken. That must have been why the team decided to capture him. But why on earth would they think B even knew where their healer was?

Realization dawned on him and he swallowed, hard.

”Um… I, uh, I don’t know where your healer is.”

He cringed at how it immediately made A and C brake apart, like they really had forgotten he was still there. The look C gave him was absolutely venomous.

”You’re lying. Of course you know. You are your boss’s  sidekick. Their second in command, their right hand.”

”You think my boss has your healer” B deadpanned, it wasn’t a question. He realized this would become very, very complicated for him.

”We know they do.” A replied, turning towards him again and then looking down at their cut hand, blood still dripping from it. B’s eyes also trailed to the hand, the blood, and could hear his heart starting to pick up and thrum in his ears.

”Ok, but I don’t think… I mean I don’t know anything about that, seriously, you have to believe me.”

B wanted to swallow his own tongue as soon as he said it. Wrong choice of words.

”Oh, I’ll believe you, as soon as you’re under my spell.” A raised their hand again, making B flinch hard into the back of the chair.

”It’s not a spell, It’s a curse!” His voice pitched and broke with panic. ”You don’t even know what you’re doing!”

”A…” C’s soft voice made A look at them again, hand stopped still and held in the air between them. B felt ready to tip his chair into a backward fall if the hand came any closer.

”I know what I’m doing. I know how to work this.” A said to C, trying to convince them. C just shook their head.

”We have to get [healer] back. We don’t have time…” A’s voice turned soft too, wavering as they met C’s teary eyes. They held each other's gaze and B could swear there was something passing between them without words. Honestly though, even if there was more to it, at that moment B wouldn’t catch it. His complete focus was on A’s hand, watching it drop slightly as the seconds drew out, and he could remember how to breathe again and relax a fraction.

A would never do anything against C's will.

”Ok. But I won’t stay to watch.” C said and B could feel his stomach drop to the floor.

A just gave them a nod as C turned towards the door.

”No…” B whispered in stunned shock at C's back, and when they didn’t stop he raised his voice, desperation clawing its way through his throat.

”No, please! Don’t let them do-” The door slammed shut, cutting him off and leaving him alone with A. His eyes snapped back to them. He hadn’t felt this afraid, this desperate in a long time, but he recognized it well. His heart was hammering furiously inside him and his chest tightened so it became hard to breathe again. He looked on as A redid the cut in their palm, making new drops of blood pour out.

”No, no, no, please. You don’t have to do this. I don’t know…”

A finally looked up, their eyes were so dark, even though they were blue. How could blue eyes be so dark?

”Please, anything but this. I’ll tell… I’ll tell you anything, just, please, just don’t…” B trailed off. He hated that it sounded like he was pleading for his life, usually he would care, die inwardly off shame, but he was lost in fear of what was to come. What could be worse than death.

”I’d love to hear you beg some more…” A’s voice was low now, almost a purr. There was something so familiar in it. And B knew he was lost.

”But I need answers.”

And with that A slammed their bloody hand into B’s chest and his whole body dissolved into icy blinding pain.

[mononoavvare]

richard siken. “three proofs”. when you paint an evil thing / do you invoke it / or take away its power?

          Sai likes to walk home from training with the team each day. 

     He starts taking the street after a few weeks of simply running the rooftops back to his sparse apartment. The long roads home hold more life than any he’s ever seen-- residential districts, brightly colored homes with laughing children chattering on their way home from school, old women hanging laundry out to dry, young lovers whispering to one another with ducked heads as they scurry home in the hot, mid-afternoon light. Sai likes to watch all of this, as if it might give him some great insight into the minds of people. He likes to watch all of this like he might learn something important from them.

     On the way home, there is an old man. He sits in a wheelchair in an open doorway at the top of a set of narrow stairs and he frowns down at Sai the first few weeks he watches him pass. For lack of anything better to do, Sai always gives his plastic smile and waves, undaunted by the lack of friendly response in return. Walking past his door and his frown with a smile and a wave swiftly becomes a tradition, one that is broken after twelve days when The Old Man lifts a hand back and calls out, “Young man.”

     His voice is reedy, thin and his fingers gnarled like twigs but they do not shake in the warm summer air. The words stop Sai in his tracks and he turns to fully face the man, head tilted curiously. “Hello,” he greets politely, “My name is Sai.” 

     “I don’t care, kid,” The Old Man replies, beckoning him closer. Sai climbs the steps without thought as The Old Man continues, “I need your help.” He wheels himself back and Sai follows him inside-- the home is well-lit, full of pictures of smiling children and grandchildren, neat and lively in a way Sai didn’t expect. He is not sure what he expected to see instead, but he has little time to dwell on the minor curiosity. “I live with my daughters and their husbands,” The Old Man rasps, “and they never leave me enough damn water. I can’t reach the glasses or the sink in this, but the husbands loathe me and they never leave me enough damn water!” 

     Sai hums quietly in response and wanders into the kitchen, carefully picking through the cabinets until he finds the one with the glasses, and he gets The Old Man a cup of cool tap water while he waits in the doorway, tapping his bony fingers against the armrest of the chair. Sai is quiet, and the man looks at him suspiciously while he finishes off the water greedily, and holds the glass out for more. Sai obliges him. 

     That day, he leaves without saying another word, and The Old Man only grumbles a reluctant ‘thank you’ as he wanders out the front door-- Sai just hums in response. 

     Every day for the next few weeks The Old Man beckons him inside of his unexpectedly cheery home and asks him for a glass of water, and Sai silently obliges because really, he has nothing better to do. It’s a few minutes of his time spent on a mindless, simple task. Sometimes The Old Man is silent outside of his gruff demands, and sometimes The Old Man tells him about his family-- the successful daughters, the sons-in-law who hate him, the grandchildren who go to tutoring after school that are going to be doctors and lawyers and other such things just like their mothers. He tells Sai he is alone all day and the sons in law don’t leave him enough water to drink because they hate him and wish him ill, and Sai almost fondly thinks The Old Man reminds him a little bit of Lord Danzo. 

          The more time he spends with team seven, the less fond the comparison seems-- he tries not to think too hard on it. 

     After helping and listening to The Old Man rattle off whatever comes to mind for nearly two weeks, The Old Man tells him of The Neighbor’s Dog. The Neighbor’s Dog, he claims, barks relentlessly all day when The Old Man is alone, drives him up a wall. 

          “Well,” Sai responds mildly, “perhaps your neighbors leave her alone all day as well. Perhaps she is as lonely as you.”

     The Old Man scoffs. “I am not lonely,” he grumbles, gnarled hands curled tightly around the half-filled glass resting in his lap. “I am not lonely,” he insists again, louder this time, and he continues, “I want you to kill the dog, please.” 

     Sai’s expression does not flicker because he feels nothing, but he has to admit to himself that he doesn’t see much sense in the request. “You want me to kill the dog,” he responds flatly, crossing his arms when The Old Man nods at him with wide eyes. “Won’t your neighbors be upset if their dog dies?” 

     Shaking his head hard enough to nearly spill his water, The Old Man stares up at him with wide eyes. “No, no,” he insists, pointing a jagged finger at the wall to indicate which neighbor it is. “They leave her out all day and night! But she only barks when I am alone and she is alone. She barks and barks and barks, rain or shine. If you love a creature you do not leave it out at all hours in all weather, no? You care for it. She is just a thing to them.”

          Sai does not want to kill the dog. 

     He tilts his head and gives The Old Man a vague answer about seeing if he could talk to the neighbors, ask them to chain her elsewhere or perhaps bring her inside, and The Old Man reluctantly agrees that perhaps this is the less contentious solution. Sai then tells him he will be going on an assignment and won’t be in the village for the next few weeks, but he will see The Old Man when he returns. He slips out of the open front door before he can hear the grumbled response. 

          The Neighbor’s Dog is standing in the next yard behind the slatted fence at the very end of her chain, staring at The Old Man’s house when Sai emerges, just like she always is when he comes by. He has never thought it strange. When he approaches the fence and leans his arms against the warm metal and peers down at her, she turns her gaze slowly from the house to him, and it strikes Sai as ... uncanny, somehow. It strikes Sai that before now, he has never seen her move at all. 

     “Hello,” he greets blithely, defaulting to something familiar in an attempt to settle the strange feeling shifting within him. The Neighbor’s Dog drops her head and her tail and takes four steps back until she is settled on the neighbors’ front porch. “Oh, you don’t have to be afraid,” Sai says, hopping easily over the fence and landing in a crouch in the grass. “I just want to know why you bark all the time-- I will not hurt you.” 

     The Neighbor’s Dog creeps forward when he holds out a hand for her to sniff, her steps silent in the grass beneath her paws. She’s cautious, but she doesn’t growl or bare her teeth when he settles his palm atop her head and strokes her ears. They’re silk-soft against his two bare fingers, enough so that he almost wants to take his glove off and repeat the motion. They lock eyes when he draws his hand away. 

          Suddenly, he knows. 

     It’s like his skull has been cracked open and his brain has been half scooped out and replaced with something else and then his head was shaken until the original matter is indistinguishable from the new. Though he’s dizzy with it, he doesn’t reel or flinch back from her because such an instinct was trained out of him long ago. He doesn’t know exactly what he knows but he knows this: something is Wrong. The Old Man is in danger, and the golden-eyed mutt next door knows the truth. 

          “Oh,” he says. “I... What should I do?” 

     He isn’t sure there’s a protocol for reporting a danger to an old man just because a dog told you it existed. She isn’t even a ninken, she’s... Well, not normal. But she doesn’t talk. She doesn’t respond to his question, either, just slinks back to the front door and lays down on the porch with a long, canine sigh. Sai sits for a moment and he tries to pick apart the feeling but he can’t parse anything from it and it makes him nauseous so he takes the feeling and he puts it in a box and shelves it. “Okay,” he says, resolving to deal with this when he gets back from his mission, “okay.” 

     Sai goes home and he packs and, predictably, he almost dies multiple times on that assignment, like he always does with team seven. All manner of things crawl about in his feverish dreams and they whisper things he cannot hear or understand, like he’s under water or perhaps they are, and when he sits around the fire at night and Sakura’s hands rest warm and glowing green on his shoulder he starts to ask her what he should to about The Old Man and The Neighbor’s Dog, but there are bags under her eyes and his tongue doesn’t want to cooperate with him long enough to explain, so he just goes to bed. 

     And when he gets back to the village, he goes to see The Old Man in the middle of the afternoon at the usual time despite the fact that he is not training with team seven that day. The Old Man is sitting at the door like he always is, but his skin is pale and waxy and there are deep bags under his eyes and his hands tremble like leaves in the wind. Sai stands on the top step and stares for a long time before The Old Man speaks.

     “She’s dead,” he starts. Sai’s gaze turns to the empty yard, and then back to him. He wheels himself further into the house, and Sai follows. Gets him a glass of water. Stands in the doorway of his kitchen and wonders if the man ever goes outside. After an eternity The Old Man continues, “she started barking more often after you left-- when everyone was here, when the neighbors were home. Her barks... sounded like speech, to me, so familiar they were. Is that crazy?” 

     “The human mind can find patterns in almost anything,” Sai replies automatically, instead of asking what the dog told him. “Whether there is a pattern to find or not. We seek them out because we find them comforting.” The Old Man’s shoulders slump and he nods weakly, turning to look at the photos on the wall with a troubled expression. Sai opens his mouth and blurts, “I think you might be in danger--”

          “I am tired,” The Old Man interrupts him abruptly. “I am old and I am tired, young man. Why don’t you go home?” 

     Sai pauses, tilts his head, and then nods in acquiescence. He turns and slips out the door, closing it softly behind himself, and he stands in front of the neighbor’s house staring at the grass in their yard with his arms on the bars of the fence. He stands there until the sun starts to set and the air cools and the neighbors come home, and when he sees them he smiles politely and he greets, “Hello.” It rings hollow, but even though the man and the woman exchange glances he continues. “I was wondering-- Well, I usually see a dog here? What happened to her?” 

     The pair exchanges a glance, and the woman sighs sadly: “She got rabies or something... started getting all crazy and aggressive, wouldn’t stop barking and growling, all the time. We had to put her down.” Sai nods once, curtly, and bids them an insincere goodnight. He goes home. 

     The Old Man is dead within the week, he hears. Accidentally wheeled himself down the steep stairs outside of his front door he never left the confines of and crushed himself under his chair. A tragic accident. Sai stands in front of the house exactly once on the way back from the training ground and he peers in the windows like he might learn something, but there’s nothing to see at all. There is no movement inside-- the people are still gone from it during the day, and there is no one to beckon him inside and ask him for water. Sai doesn’t know what to... do. Who to tell, or how to tell it.

          So he goes home, and he doesn’t take the long way back from the training grounds anymore. 

[randomoranges]

so, my friend @allbeendonebefore sent me this link a few weeks back or photo of these actual real mugs and i was like oh my GOD they are the coolest. so i had to get one. because it’s so appropriate and a once in an event type thing. and then my brain went oh my god ed gets one for ét duuh. and then i had been thinking of other things and errthing got blobbed together into this thing. anyways. he’s judging you, okay - because you’re not wearing your facemask and you’re considering going to a massive party. don’t. 

Novelty Mug

 Étienne is surprised to find a parcel addressed to him in the mail box, having no recollection of ordering anything recently, but his name is on the box and there’s a giant “thank you!” written on the side. He doesn’t recognise the name of the company – doesn’t even really find anything alluding to a company name, but he brings the box inside and places it on his kitchen table while he goes to retrieve an X-acto blade to open the parcel. He must have forgotten about this order, he thinks, that or someone is playing a clever joke on him – wouldn’t be the first time.

 He sits at his table and carefully opens the box. It’s not a very big box, truth be told, and once he removes the layers of protective paper and such, he finds a mug sitting on a bed of even more protective paper. He’s confused at best, a little intrigued, as he pulls out the mug and inspects it closer. It’s white, mostly, and as he turns it in his hands he finds the side with written text and laughs aloud when he reads it.

 The mug, simply says, “I SURVIVED REMOTE EMERGENCY TEACHING”.

 He puts the mug down and takes a photo of it and then searches the box for any sign of sender or name of store. He finally finds a stamp on one side of the box with the name of a store and a location that he hadn’t seen earlier. He shakes his head, fond, exasperated, and amused, before he finds the appropriate contact on his phone and presses the call button.

 The phone rings twice before it’s picked up and his boyfriend almost sounds as though he’d been expecting his call.

 “Édouard,” He says in that tone of voice that means he’s chiding the other man, but they both know it has absolutely no effect whatsoever. Hasn’t had for years and years, really; probably never even had, but they like to pretend it’s useful.

 “Hello, my dear, how are you?” Edward asks him, all nonchalant and Étienne can hear the smugness in his voice and the grin that stretches from one ear to the next.

 “I’m fine, but can you imagine, a parcel from Edmonton arrived today.”

 “No, you don’t say!” Edward mock gasps and tries to sound surprised, but it doesn’t work either. Still, it’s worth the try.

 “You didn’t have to, Eddy,” Étienne adds, a little softer around the edges. He’d bet his money Edward’s smile has softened a little as well, but he doesn’t comment on it.

 “I know,” Edward says instead, “But when I saw it I had to get it for you – I mean you did do remote teaching! Hell, you did remote teaching four provinces away from where your students were – and I guess, it’s my way of saying I’m – proud of you; for what you do – what you did – what you’ll keep doing.” Edward rattles off. Edward – hadn’t known about the teaching. Not really, anyways. There had never really been an occasion to tell him, what with the drift, the not talking and the tentative new friendship. There had never really been any time, Edward had never really asked and Étienne hadn’t really known how to casually drop it in a conversation. So – he’d never told him. But when Étienne had been shepherded off to Edmonton out of worry from his sister, Edward had found out, more or less on the day Étienne had said he needed to be left alone in a room with a desk for a few hours. There had been questions, afterwards, and Étienne had explained – briefly, quickly, dismissively, and then term had wrapped up and that had been that.

 There’s a sharp intake of breath and it takes Étienne a moment to realise that it came from him. He thought they were over this – over saying these things that knock him sideways and leave him wondering if he missed a step. He’s glad they’re on the phone – that Edward can’t see the deep red of his cheeks, or comment on it. He’s a sap and a mess and Edward doesn’t need any more ammo. He has enough.

 “And, if it makes you feel any better,” Edward goes on, recovering almost as much as him from what he’s just said, “Part of the profits go to help teachers, so, there, and there’s a whole line of mugs as well! They’re really neat, I’ll send you the link – you’ll love the whole tongue in cheek of them – I have one myself!”

 This, Étienne thinks, is much easier and familiar. He asks the appropriate questions, gets Edward to go off on a tangent and he settles back, sparing a glance at his new mug every now and again. Eventually, the conversation winds down and they both have other obligations waiting for them; dogs that need to be walked, laundry that needs to be brought in, bike rides that need to be had and such.

 “Thanks again, really,” Étienne says and hopes Edward understands the sincerity behind the words.

 “Of course; think of me when you use it?” Edward means it as a joke, but there’s a point of honesty in it that Étienne catches, because of course he would.

 “How could I not? Miss you,” He wraps up, finger hovering over the handle of the mug.

 “Miss you more.”

 Étienne cracks a smile at that. They exchange another platitude or two after that – comfort sentences they’ve started using since Étienne has returned home. It’s rote, it’s familiar and it does what it’s meant to do; soothes them both a little and balms over the ache a smidge. Étienne waits until he hears the click on the other line and then puts his phone down. He then goes to wash the mug and leaves it out to dry.

 Later, that night, as he makes himself a cup of tea before bed, he pulls out the new mug and snaps a photo he sends to Edward, even though he knows his boyfriend is fast asleep, but he knows Edward will see it first thing in the morning and that by the time he himself will wake up, he’ll find the appropriate reactions to the photo.

 And, of course, without even trying, the mug becomes Étienne’s favourite, if only because Edward got it for him.

[voidwaren]

Don’t know if you’re doing them still, but here if you like any: “The door’s jammed and I really gotta go.” or “I’m on vacation, you take care of it.” Whale Song verse ; and “It started as a game, then she got hurt.” LiS/Zombie AU. Hope they help with your creative juices!!

finally, here we go. sorry this took so long, I got a little carried away.

probably going to save this one for part three, also, but after I expand it and probably change a few things so it’s somewhat new material. thanks for the prompt, it was a lot of fun!

When Warren woke up that morning, the last thing he’d expected was—well, Chloe, standing at the bottom of his bed with a can of shaving cream in her hand and her rapt attention centered on Nathan’s prone foot from where it kicked up against the bed end. That had definitely been unexpected.

Maybe a better way of putting it was that it was one of the last things he’d been expecting, because while he’d certainly not been expecting that to be happening (he’d question her morals later, because apparently a prank war was involved and he had no want of being a collaborator in any sense of the position), he also hadn’t expected to find out that Nathan might in fact be better dad material than Warren himself was, which went against all laws of humanity in his mind.

Nathan? Potential dad material?

Yeah, he wasn’t ready for that revelation, either.

How, you may ask, could Warren have possibly found out that Nathan’s parental instinct, seemingly despite all odds, was stronger than Warren’s?

Well, via Alice, of course. Kate’s pet bunny rabbit.

Fast forward through Warren crying out in sleep-fuddled confusion and Chloe fleeing the scene faster than the Roadrunner before Nathan could rouse himself and see her, and then the following morning ritual of actually getting ready for the day, and stop a good few hours in with Chloe returning to Warren’s side only to shove a key at him.

“The shit is that for?” Nathan commentates, throwing a look first to the key and then to Chloe herself.

Chloe raises her hands, giving Warren a blameless look. “Spring break, dudes. I got places to be and a death in the family is so not my issue.”

Warren whips his gaze to Chloe in alarm, blinking rapidly. “What? Who died?”

“Who cares?” Nathan cuts in before Chloe can explain anything, and Warren has to resist the momentary want of cramming something in Nathan’s mouth to get him to shut up a second. “What the shit is this key?”

“Do you have eyes, Prickdick?” Chloe taunts, pointing at the key.

Both Warren and Nathan drop their heads to squint at the text adorning the top. “Two twenty-two?” Warren tries. He looks up at Chloe again. “Why do you have Kate’s room key?”

Next to him, Nathan’s head nods minutely, like Warren had answered something he’d been wondering himself.

“Max wants you to feed the rabbit,” Chloe says. Warren blinks at her.

“You mean she wants you to do it, but you can’t be assed to, so you’re making us do it,” Nathan corrects.

“Damn,” Chloe says with a shit-eating grin. “Maybe you do still have a brain cell rattling around in there.”

Nathan flips her a double bird in response. Warren closes the key in his fist, slipping it into his pocket. “And you’re not doing it,” Warren states by way of an attempt at getting Chloe to explain herself.

She shrugs a single shoulder. “I’m on vacation,” she informs them, like she wasn’t a Blackwell dropout standing right in front of them in her hometown. “You take care of it.” And then, before either of them can say anything in protest, she turns heel and leaves.

“Why does Max have Marsh’s room key in the first place?” Nathan asks once Chloe has fled the scene and left him and Warren to deal with the blow they’d been dealt.

Warren frowns. “She usually takes care of the rabbit when Kate’s not around, but Kate left after Max, so.”

Nathan frowns in return. “We’re missing something here.”

“Aren’t we always?” Warren replies with a sigh. “Whatever, it’s not important. Let’s go feed this bunny so we can go eat in peace.”

“We?” Nathan repeats, looking offended. “Why do I have to go? I don’t even like animals.”

Warren grabs his elbow and tugs. Despite his protests, Nathan complies easily. “You and I both know that’s not true,” Warren says as they walk the path back to the dorms. “I’ve seen your browser history. You like cats.”

Nathan grumbles something in return to that accusation, but it’s so low that Warren doesn’t quite catch it. He knows he’s right, though, so he doesn’t push the argument further, and, after a few minutes of navigating to the girls’ side of the dormitories, they let themselves into Kate’s room.

It looks much the same as it always has the few times Warren has been inside it. Neat, minimalistic in a sense, and very, very Kate. Warren has to grab Nathan’s jacket by the collar almost the moment they’re over the threshold.

“Don’t go rifling through her things,” Warren warns. “It’s one thing to ransack my room. Kate probably doesn’t even know we’re in here, and we’re only here for one thing.”

The thing in question being the cage on the dresser to the left, housing a very small black and white rabbit. Warren didn’t know much about rabbits, but he figured with enough Googling, he could keep it alive long enough for Kate to return.

Which brought him to his first problem: how long exactly was he supposed to take care of it?

“Chloe didn’t say how long we’re supposed to feed it, did she?” Warren asks despite knowing the answer, releasing Nathan so he can pull his cell phone out and ask her. Nathan doesn’t offer an answer and smacks Warren’s hand for good measure before ambling up to the cage. The rabbit cowers in the corner, nose twitching madly, and Nathan shoves both his hands in the pockets of his jacket and slumps his shoulders, head lilting slightly.

No idea, probably a couple days, is Chloe’s answer to Warren’s inquiry, and Warren sighs as he stows his phone again. “All right, guess we’re taking it to my room.”

Nathan gives him a look. “You’re kidnapping Marsh’s child?”

“What? No. That doesn’t even make sense, I was asked to take care of it.”

“You were asked to feed it,” Nathan points out drily. “Not become a second mother to it.”

“I’m only taking it so I can make sure it’s okay,” Warren explains as he picks the cage up in both arms, grunting slightly when he struggles to keep it from tilting too much. The rabbit, clearly frightened, thumps the bottom of the cage.

“Look, you’re going to give it a heart attack,” Nathan offers.

Warren shoots him a look. “Shut up and get the door.”

“Touchy, touchy,” Nathan sing-songs, but gets the door all the same. Warren struggles to get the cage out in one go, but, thankfully, only bumps it once against the doorframe. Somehow, they make it back to his room in one piece, and Warren’s first mistake comes in the form of opening the rabbit cage before making sure the whole room had been rabbit-proofed. As small as it is, the rabbit immediately darts out the opening from under Warren’s arm and bolts for his desk. Warren makes a belated noise of alarm, startling Nathan in turn, and lunges way more than just a beat too late.

“Oh, fucking perfect, Gayram,” Nathan says acidically, dropping to the floor next to him. “How the hell are we going to get it out?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Warren mumbles, peering into the dark of the underdesk. “Eventually,” he tacks on, but at a whisper. Nathan, being right next to him, hears him and shoots him a withering look.

“I’m not sleeping in here with a rodent on the loose.”

“So sleep in your own room for once,” Warren retorts, but it’s more offhandedly ashe starts to think of a way to get the rabbit out. “Do we have anything a rabbit can eat?” he asks before Nathan can do anything with the previous statement. Nathan pulls back, looking at the cage, then shuffles along on his knees until he’s facing it.

“Get away from the desk,” he orders, sticking a hand into the open door. Warren scrambles away, waiting to see what Nathan’s going to do.

And that is how Warren learns that, as it turns out, Nathan’s fatherly instinct (if you could call it that) is indeed stronger than Warren’s, and Warren takes a brief moment to wonder how the fuck that ended up being the universe’s choice as Nathan reaches into the cage and fluffs the alfalfa in the center, making a soft clicking noise with his tongue. The rabbit’s nose pokes out from under Warren’s desk and twitches.

“What’s the thing’s name?” Nathan asks, almost under his breath, as he pulls a straw of alfalfa out and holds it in the rabbit’s direction, coaxing it just an inch further out.

“Uh,” Warren starts. He points to the label on the cage. “Alice, I think.”

Nathan turns to look with a frown. “How do you know that’s the name?”

“Well, it’s not Kate’s name, and she doesn’t have a sister named Alice.” Warren shrugs. “Process of elimination.”

Nathan turns back to Warren again. “How the hell do you know the names of her sisters?”

“Because Kate is my friend?”

If Nathan has an answer for that one, it’s lost in favor of Alice slipping a hop further from the dark recess of the desk, face reaching for the alfalfa. Warren holds his breath as, hop by inching hop, Alice makes her full way to Nathan’s outstretched hand and takes the straw.

“Shh…” At first, Warren isn’t sure where the low, hiss of a noise comes from, and it takes him a moment to realize Nathan is the source of the easy shushing. Slowly, with his other hand ascending from above her, Nathan touches a single finger down on Alice’s head, and Warren feels as if he’s witnessing a miracle when Alice makes no move to attack or run away again.

“How the hell did you do that?” Warren asks, not daring to raise his voice beyond a low whisper.

“I have a way with all women, assmunch,” is all Nathan offers, complete with a smirk that could grease Warren’s rusty car door, and Warren rolls his eyes in return.

“You know what this means, right?” he says once Alice has been coaxed into Nathan’s lap, a small pile of alfalfa littering the expanse of his jeans, while Warren himself has moved to the bed to watch the scene unfold before him. Nathan looks up at Warren with an eyebrow raised in question. “Obviously, you’re going to have to take care of her. She likes you.”

Instead of objecting or making some sort of scene like Warren had been expecting in response to his half-joking declaration, Nathan only frowns, turning his attention back onto the small black-and-white lump of fur.

“Guess so,” he finally says, then gives Warren a demeaning look. “You’d probably only kill her.”

“Hey!” Warren protests, almost too loudly, and is immediately shushed (rather rudely, he might add) when Alice jumps up from her relaxed position. He’s warned not to make another noise lest he wants to taste his own bed sheets for the next eternity, and has no choice but to leave Alice to Nathan’s relative devices until Kate’s return.

(In the end, he’s fine with that. He gets a few pictures out of the deal, which is more than enough for him.)

[spring-emerald]

express hospitality

This is my piece for @domestickurodaizine‘s Midnight to Morning Coffee: A Domestic KuroDai Zine.

Many thanks to Astrid (@cupofkoushi) for organizing this and making a kurodai zine a dream come true! <3

To my wonderful, wonderful beta Andy (@gulabijamuns) who endlessly cheered me on and provided guidance and validation, thank you so, so, soooo much!! <3

It had been such an honor to be part of this project, along with many other great writers and artists!

Kuroo sinks further into the softness of the pillow beneath his head, Daichi’s sleep warm body enveloping him. Their lips are eagerly locked against in each other in a slow kiss. A strip of sunlight coming through the small gap of the still drawn curtains is the only light in the room.

It’s been a while since they woke up together like this. Relaxed and unhurried, unlike how it has been for the past couple of weeks. It’s either one or the other who has to wake early, get out of bed ahead of the sun and leave just as it breaks over the horizon. Murmurs of sleepy goodbye and quick pecks had been enough to send the other off. While they still get to spend the evening together, they’re both too tired to do anything beyond light kissing and snuggling, both falling asleep in an instant the moment their arms wrap around each other and their heads hit the pillows.

But they both have a day off today, a first in a while. And they intend to spend it together as much as they could.

Kuroo takes his time to skim his hands across Daichi’s sides then slips it under his threadbare shirt, feeling the body shiver at the touch of his fingers.

Daichi gasps into Kuroo’s mouth, partly breaking their kiss when Kuroo’s calloused fingers brush over a sensitive spot. He soon dives back into the soft pair of lips, but doesn’t stay long and starts dropping wet and gentle kisses along Kuroo’s jaw, while his hands work their way to unbutton his pajama top.

Kuroo is starting to lose himself to the pleasurable sensation of Daichi’s warm lips, latching onto the prominent ridge of his collarbone when the shrill beep and rattling buzz of his phone disturbs the otherwise peaceful morning. He huffs, turning his head away from the sound, squeezing his eyes tighter and chases the feeling he was having before.

The phone beeps again and this time Daichi stops.

“Don’t stop,” Kuroo groans, placing his large hand on Daichi’s nape to prevent him from sitting up.

Daichi chuckles at the needy tone. “I won’t,” he promises with a light kiss on Kuroo’s clavicle, “but shouldn’t you take a look at it?”

“They can wait,” Kuroo cards his hand through Daichi’s short, soft hair, smiling at the way Daichi sighs and nuzzles at it. “But I can’t.” He shifts underneath Daichi to prove a point.

A breeze choose that time to sway the curtains, letting more light in. Kuroo briefly sees Daichi’s eyes alight with the same kind of want that he feels thrumming along his whole being, before the room plunges back into semi-darkness. Daichi hums in acquiescence and Kuroo smiles wider, knowing he’s convinced him to continue and forget about the disruption.

Daichi’s about to close their gap again when the blasted phone beeps once more.

Kuroo tilts his head back, breaking the almost kiss and vocally expressed his frustration.

Daichi just laughs at Kuroo’s reaction, then rests his whole body on top of him and burrows his face into the crook of Kuroo’s neck.

“They seem persistent,” he remarks, amusement coloring his tone. His breath tickles the side of Kuroo’s neck.

“I’m persistent too,” Kuroo grumbles. “I’m persistently ignoring them.”

“What if it’s urgent? There’s no harm in checking it.”

“But ba~be,” Kuroo whines, shrugging his shoulders as much as his limited movement allowed just to be petulant. Daichi idly walks his fingertips across Kuroo’s chest, tracing abstract patterns that served to calm the other man down.

“There’s no rush, is there?” He peers up at Kuroo and whispers. “We have the whole day to ourselves, after all.” He nips at Kuroo’s earlobe once, twice.

Daichi doesn’t play fair, Kuroo thinks.

And because it’s not like he can argue with that, he exhales a put-upon sigh and feels for his phone on their bedside drawer. His knuckles kept bumping on the cold metal stand of their bedside lampshade, trying not to get distracted by the way Daichi is now leaving soft kisses along his earlobe, trailing down the side of his neck. His fingers graze the edge of his phone a few moments after then he finally manages to drag it across the smooth surface and presses the home button.

Kuroo brings it up to his face, squinting at the sudden brightness that assaulted his sight. It’s a series of messages, all from his Mom. With a frown, he slides his home screen lock open and reads them. He unconsciously breathes in relief when he deems it as not urgent and puts the phone back on the bedside drawer, face down.

“So?” Daichi lifts himself up from Kuroo’s body to straddle him properly.

Kuroo smiles and reaches over to run his hands through Daichi’s hair again, then locks his fingers behind his neck and pulls him closer. “It's just mom.”

Daichi nods. “Nothing too serious, I take it?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d she say?” Daichi mumbles across Kuroo’s cheekbones which he was already showering with butterfly kisses.

Kuroo hums, savoring the affection before replying. “She’ll be around the area. So she’ll be dropping by for lunch,” Kuroo slides his hands to cup Daichi’s cheeks and starts angling his face for another deep kiss, but Daichi stiffens above him and braces his hands against his shoulders.

“What?”

“Come on, Dai,” Kuroo drawls, pushing himself up to meet Daichi halfway, eager to pick up where they left earlier, but Daichi pulls back instead.

“Wait. What time is it?” He turns to the direction of where the clock is hanging on the wall, urgency apparent in his tone.

“We’ve got plenty of time, Daichi. We have few more hours ‘til she arrives,” Kuroo sensually says, sliding a hand down Daichi’s exposed forearms. His other hand is on his face, trying to make him look back. “Don’t worry.”

Daichi huffs. Apparently, that had been the wrong thing to say.

Before Kuroo can pull him close and use his distraction to flip their positions over, Daichi is out of his personal space, hurriedly sliding out of the bed, very much like cascading water rapidly slipping through Kuroo’s fingers. He brisk walks to the window and quickly draws back the curtains, letting the sunlight bathe the room and them with its brightness and warmth.

“Daichi, babe, come back here,” Kuroo whines, squeezing his eyes shut and putting an arm over it, not risking blindness as he thumps his legs in immature petulance. “It’s still early.”

But Daichi doesn’t hear him, lost in his muttering as he fusses around the room wearing only one of his slippers, picking up discarded articles of clothing anywhere he can find, gathering them in his arms.

“Tetsurou, get out of bed and help me,” Daichi commands distractedly, walking out of the room and not really paying attention whether Kuroo did get out of bed or not. “Oh my god, the dishes,” Kuroo hears him exclaim in horror from the living room.

There it is, Kuroo sighs, dragging his hand across his face, accepting defeat. There’s no snapping Daichi out of his frenzied state of impromptu cleaning once he’s started.

So much for having the day all to themselves.

It’s not that he doesn’t like having his mom visit them or whatever. It’s quite contrary, in fact. If anything, he finds it quite a shame that they don’t get to see each other as much as he’d like, despite living in the same city. Though he must admit that her timing isn’t something he appreciates right now.

And Daichi had been really eager earlier and was focused only on him. Now, he’s anything but.

Kuroo sighs again before getting out of bed. He toes in his slippers and lugs his feet across the carpeted floor, not bothering to button up his pajama top. He steps out of their room, effectively sidestepping Daichi when he passes by him on his way to the kitchen. Kuroo grimaces at Daichi’s disgusted expression. He’s probably looking over the dirty dishes that had piled up.

While this is not the first time that something like this happened, they usually don’t let it get this bad. They are considerably neat in their own ways and by no means are slobs. It’s just that it had been really challenging to get any cleaning done because of their schedule.

Daichi walks out of the kitchen, passes by him again and disappears inside the laundry room, but not before unceremoniously shoving a rag into Kuroo’s hands.

Kuroo looks down at it dumbly for a few moments, before his brain cells kicked in. He walks into the living room, looking around in mild consternation, until deciding to walk up to the television cabinet. He inspects the shelf and drags a finger across its surface, only for it to come back with a considerable amount of dust.

Alright, maybe Daichi has a reason to worry about the state of their apartment.

Their earlier dalliance forgotten, they work together in relative silence to try and bring back the habitability of their apartment, the only noise is coming from the whirring of the loaded washing machine and Daichi’s near-constant shuffling all over the apartment.

But it soon got disturbed when he finds out that they don’t have enough ingredients to prepare a decent meal for lunch.

“We forgot to get groceries,” he cries. He walks up to Kuroo who had just finished wiping the shelves. “How can we forget groceries?”

Daichi runs a hand through his hair apprehensively, not knowing where to go or what to do first. There’s still some clothes on the drying rack out on the balcony that needs to be fetched and folded. But he’s got to make a quick trip to the supermarket to but some ingredients. And there’s still the state of the dishes and their kitchen.

He looks at the time and got more stressed out when he sees that they only have roughly two hours until lunch time and how are they supposed to finish everything in that short amount of time? They still haven’t taken a bath, for god’s sake.  

Kuroo rubs his hands across his shorts to get rid of the dust before interrupting Daichi’s monologue by sandwiching his face between his large hands.

“Daichi, babe, my handsome whirlwind,” Kuroo says forcefully, staring down at him and waits until he’s got Daichi’s full attention. “Calm down.”

“Auntie is coming and this is the state of our apartment,” Daichi gestures frustratingly around them, “I can’t calm down.”

Kuroo sighs. “Daichi, it’s just my mom. She’s going to understand that two guys living together wouldn’t exactly be the exemplary models of neatness all the time, especially considering their schedule. So don’t worry, okay?”

Despite his assurance, Daichi is still looking up at him with his big, worried brown eyes. “I can’t help it,” he admits, putting his hands on top of Kuroo’s and squeezes on them. “I don’t want her to think that I’m not taking care of you.”

Kuroo stares down at the earnest look Daichi is giving him. “I hope you know that you sounded like a newly wedded housewife, aiming to please her mother-in-law.” His heart throbs with utter joy at the sentiment, but he can’t help but tease.

Daichi pouts and lightly kicks him on the shin. “I’m being serious here.”

“I know.” Kuroo bumps their foreheads together. “But Daichi, you are. You are doing a good job of taking care of me. And I can only hope I’m doing the same too.”

Daichi nods his head that is still in between Kuroo’s hands. “Of course you are.”

Kuroo replies with a boyish grin, the one that hasn’t lost its charm after all this time they’ve been together.

The one that doesn’t fail to make Daichi feel lighter and he smiles up at him in return.

“God, you are so adorable,” Kuroo says suddenly, squishing Daichi’s cheeks before pulling him for a playful kiss. He manages to get a few more quick pecks despite Daichi’s squirming against the ticklish kisses, when his phone blares on their room, disrupting them, yet again.

“Tetsu, your phone,” Daichi pushes him lightly. Kuroo sighs and disentangles himself from Daichi. “The world is so hell bent on blocking us today,” he says dramatically, which made Daichi giggle. It’s a shame they have to break apart, but it could be urgent. And they still have lots of things to do.

“I know. But we still got tonight,” Daichi promises, leaning up to Kuroo to press a kiss on his pouting lips. Hopefully, they won’t have any more disturbances during that.

[cannibalisticshadows]

Doughnuts (A Dear Evil Heaven One-Shot)

Ao3 | FF

Fandom: Megamind

Pair: Megamind/Roxanne

Summary: During this time of year, Megamind always gets a little sad. Roxanne tries to fix that.

It’s the start of December, he notes with disdain, and festivities are running rampant in the streets, colorful lights hanging on houses, sugary food in abundance, calls for charity, the increased “family time”.

It makes his stomach sick.

And so, having barricaded himself in a dark state of mind in his own room, he completely shut out the world entirely. Not even the brainbots were allowed to disturb him.

It ended after a few days when Minion burst through the door and demanded he get out. Why, though, he wondered grimly. He always goes into a hibernation of sorts during this time of year.

“Ms. Ritchi has been calling non-stop,” he said angrily, not at his girlfriend, at him, mind you, “She just called me earlier saying if you came over tonight she’d give you a surprise.”

“Oh, goodie,” he mumbled, running a hand over his stubble. He hadn’t shaved in a while. Instantly he thought of the typical “Christmas Spirit” spiel, but knew Roxanne didn’t celebrate that holiday—though it was also secular, not religious, right? Either way the festive concept gave him seasonal depression.

“Just go, please,” Minion begged. “She’s worried about you, Sir. The only reason, Ms. Ritchi says, that she hasn't come over again to—“

“She came over?”

“Thrice this week! You wouldn’t see her, remember!? The only reason she hasn’t tried to see you today or yesterday is because she’s getting ready for some kind of party.”

He glared.

“No.”

“Yes. Go. Please, Sir. I’d like to go to a holiday cooking class this evening, and I don’t feel comfortable leaving you here alone.”

He groaned. “Minion, that happened one time in my childhood.”

“I’m still not taking that chance.”

This went on for ten minutes before Minion, taking matters into his own fins, ordered a pair of bots to take him by the arms and quite literally drag him to Roxanne’s.

Flailing, cursing, and overall hating life, he found himself being thrown on his girlfriend’s balcony in a undignified thud.

The first thing he notices, after pulling himself off the ground (besides being suddenly, painfully aware of his state of dress [loose sweat pants and a tight short-sleeved band top {yes, he wears normal clothes, like a normal person, every once in a while}]), was the smell of confection foods, chocolate, sugar, and—overall baked goods. Secondly, he noticed the starring woman, who was passionate about eating healthy things and banning anything with so much as a gram of sugar, baking these things.

Had he died and gone to heaven?

He must have been standing there for a while, staring at this wee woman who was bustling about in her kitchen, frying balls of dough, it seemed, with the countertops covered in baked goods, because she suddenly froze and turned around, and met his eyes through the glass.

She dropped a pair of tongs and came running over, throwing the glass door open.

“Roxa—ooof!” Her arms were thrown around his abnormally long neck, her face pressed against the side of his head.

“Oh my god, Megamind,” she gasped, then pulled away to look at him. Her hands grasped his shoulders.

“Hi—“ he grasped as she smacked him hard on the chest.

“Do you know how worried I was!?”

“I’m—“

“No, no, don’t explain yourself,” she said. “Minion told me everything. I should be the one who’s sorry. I tried to come over today, but—“

“But…”

“I—just come on in, it’s colder than ice out here. You’ll catch your death.”

Numbly, he let her pull him inside of her deliciously warm apartment. The lights were off in her living room, with the kitchen lights on. The TV was off, with the radio on to some music he immediately recognized as Hebrew, and near the balcony window, which he’s now noticing, is a—

“Is that your—me-nora?”

“Menorah. Yeah.”

It wasn’t terribly eccentric; small and neat, about half a foot tall, with four straight silver-plated branches on either side of one tall branch in the middle. Atop these branches were tiny glass cups. The middle one and three to the right had a bud of a wick, sitting in what seemed to be oil, burned brightly.

“Why aren’t the others lit?”

“It’s the third night,” Roxanne suddenly said, almost awkwardly.

He then remembered this. One new candle each night.

He had missed the other nights with her.

It made him feel--it didn't make him feel very good. Actually, it made him feel like a complete bastard.

“Aah.”

“Come,” she pulled on his hand. “Have a doughnut.”

“I—I’m sorry, but who are you and what have you done to my Roxanne?” He laughed humorlessly because in all seriousness he wasn’t kidding. Roxanne always nagged him when he ate sweets. ”You don’t eat enough as it is! Why put this junk in your body?” Most of the time, anyway. What she didn’t know didn’t kill her, after all. But yet, here she was, offering him—doughnuts. Doughnuts.Which she made.

“Here,” she said, ignoring his statement. She thrust a warm round doughnut into his hands, half wrapped in a napkin, overflowing with powder sugar and leaking red jelly. “Try it.”

“Is this a trap?”

“Eat it.”

He took a bite.

It was scrumptious.

“Okay. Seriously. Who are you?” He asked her through a mouthful of her sweet confection.

“It’s tradition,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Okay,” he said, understanding. “So, why all this…” he gestured to the dozens of treats around them. Not that he was complaining. If this was his “surprise”, well, he was certainly pleasantly surprised. He was already close to finished this superb doughnut. But, even this seemed a little over doing it.

Roxanne threw her head back and groaned, wiping her powdery hands on her flower-printed apron. “So, my co-workers know I’m Jewish now, and asked our new boss, Robbie, if they could do something Hanukkah-themed this season. Somehow it turned into me baking for everyone.”

“Mhmm,” he commented wordlessly, biting into his second doughnut.

“It’s tomorrow,” she stressed, picking up her tongs to place another ball of dough in a popping pan of crumbly oil. “And I just found out from Lucy down in Sports that a group of the managers and their secretaries are coming for this holiday party, and three of them are Jewish, too, so—now I have like fifteen more people to cater too. Do you understand? I’ve been on my feet for hours.”

He was about to answer with an offer of assistance, but she cut him off before he could get out a single syllable. “No, no, don’t listen to my problems. This is about you.” She turned to him. “I came over Monday, but Minion said you were still squirreled away in your room. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

She pursed her lips. “Okay. It’s just—Megamind, you know—“

He tilted his head.

“I love you. I love you very much.”

He licked his lips, feeling his tongue go heavy in his mouth, and his apitite forgotten. “Roxanne…”

“Shh, don’t say anything,” she said in a low voice as if this was some big secret he has vowed to keep. She became very close, all of a sudden, and she placed her little hand on his chest. He forgot how she was near his size, despite her being more—curvy, in areas. Which he very much enjoyed. It distracted him, with her like this. Her hair had grown a bit since last year when they first began this relationship. She had sweated in here (it was hot, actually, in her kitchen), and stings of hair clung to her flushed face. A smudge of powdered sugar stuck to her cheek, and she smelled like a bakery. Her apron hugged her waist like a second skin. Plus it made her chest and derrière look amazing. Megamind didn’t know where to look. He licked his lips again, wondering how he should handle this situation.

She suddenly leaned over and kissed him. It sparked against his skin, his nerves, sending a million signals to his brain. It felt like he was on fire, yet completely flat lining at the same time. This woman!

“I was thinking the other day,” she said critically once she pulled away from the rather chaste mouth-to-mouth, turning around to turn the doughnut over in the oil. “I don’t really give you enough attention.”

This brought him to the right state of mind immediately. “What? Of course you do!”

“No, I mean—This past year, it’s felt like—the spotlight’s been on me? Sort of? And I—I well, I wanted to do something for you.”

He wasn’t sure what she was talking about; until he began to withdraw from the world in general at the start of winter, they spent most of their time together. Enough so that he actually—he feels unnecessarily giddy—met her parents (again), and her brother, and that was—an interesting experience. Either way they were joined at the joint (is that how people say it?)? What was all of this, then?

He wiped his powdery blue hands down the front of his shirt, having finished his third treat.

Suddenly, Roxanne reached behind her and untied her apron. He stood there, confused and feeling, absurdly, oddly excited at her undressing. They’re usually very innocent in all their physical trysts, but—she’s dropping the apron to the floor, and she’s—and—she’s wearing a white short-sleeved blouse, with a little oil stain on the turned-up collar, and sugar sprinkles, a jelly smudge, and—and she’s beautiful, he realizes in his rattled, dead brain, standing there like the sacrificial lamb. A blue knee-ledge skirt, too, but—

She’s taking his hand and placing it on her left breast.

!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

“Not tonight, Megamind, but soon.”

“Soon…”

“Yes. Soon.”

He gulped.

“I—“

In the back of his alien brain, he knew she was trying to tell him something, because her hand was over his, which was over her clothed breast, but there was some annoying Christmas music playing in the distance. It wasn’t coming from Roxanne’s radio, that was playing very soft instrumental Jewish music, but from somewhere in the building. His ears were stronger than Roxanne’s, so—

It must have gotten louder, enough for her to hear because she’s perking up, and—

“Oh, shit,” his girlfriend curses, pulling away from him. “I told them not to come until eight!”

His internal clock made him say, “It’s eight fifteen.”

“Oh no!” She whipped around and grabbed her tongs, pulling the doughnuts out of the boiling oil and onto a plate covered in several paper towel strips. “Megamind! Quick, put most of these in the boxes,” she motioned toward a stack of doughnut boxes on her breakfast bar. “Hurry!”

Momentarily panicking, because, really, he had no idea what was happening, Megamind just went with it and starting packing doughnuts like it was life or death. Whatever made Roxanne happy!

The music was getting closer, and now he could tell it wasn’t just any Christmas music, but blasting notes of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town,” at the same time as “Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah,” turning up on what must of been the highest volume. To him, it hurt his ears. As it became louder and louder, he heard the familiar sounds of teenagers and children, stomping down the hallway of Roxanne’s floor.

“They’re here,” Roxanne cried, rapidly trying to stuff the doughnuts into the boxes, as if this band of holiday horrors coming their way would burn them alive if they saw these treats on the premises.

“Who’s here?!”

Before she could answer, the door was banged up on a pair of several fists. “MISS RITCHIIII,” yelled a young man. “SANTA IS HEEERRREEE.”

“Shit,” she said, wiping her hands on a towel. After packing the last doughnut, she took the boxes and put them into the cabinet, stacking them neatly on the floor. “Whatever you do, make sure they don’t see these. They’re for work.”

“O-kay…”

She got up and ran to her currently-being-abused door. When she threw it open, he scowled.

“Mickey, what the hell are you doing here?” He demanded, sliding up next to Roxanne. In the doorway stood a gang of loud, obnoxious young people, varying in age and skin tones. Mickey, the leader of sorts of this group, was a tall African boy from Kenya. Michael Otieno had moved to America as a young child, and having been orphaned shortly after arrival, and speaking not a lick of English at the time, he was completely lost and alone. It was not surprising Megamind saw a kindred spirit in that, and temporarily kept him under his wing for a while until he placed him in a group home that he will never, ever admit to founding. Now, Mickey was nineteen and a complete pain in his ass.

“I’m the black Santa Clause,” he shouted, storming in with the rest of his gang—all of whom he knew. All of them were bobbing and dancing to a mix of holiday music, wearing the most hideous sweaters he had ever seen. “And it’s bloody Christmas time. Hohoho, bitches!” He wore a big red suit and white beard, caring a big burlap sack with dubious objects inside.

“Happy Holidays, Mr. Megamind, Ms. Ritchi!” A girl in an equally ugly Hanukkah sweater, swearing flashing blue sunglasses and little dreidel earrings, greeted and hugged his girlfriend. He knew her as Rebecca Heys. She was an orphan too, plucked out of an abusive foster home when she was eleven. That was five years ago. “Are we too late?”

Beside Rebecca was a young couple, Missy and Paula, who he more or less, accidentally, put together, when he learned Missy (at the time, she’d had near-crippling depression) had the same interests as Paula. So he introduced the two and hoped it worked out. Wasn’t that how friends were made? And friends—help each other? He came back a week later to accidentally walk in on them making out. Paula rubs her hands together and says, “If we’re late, we’re fashionably late.”

“Yes, you’re right on time,” Roxanne laughed, clasping her hands. The gang of teenagers clobbered together as they began to set up—a party? He sneered as they pulled out cookies and sweets, confetti and even louder music. Mickey gave him a rather tight bear hug, which he made a great feat as to not respond. They all smelled like coffee and cocoa.

“We’re here to show you guys the time of your fricken’ lives,” Fox, a lanky ginger-haired teen said, dropping a bowl of popcorn on the counter. “And damn does it smell like the Pillsbury doughboy's asshole in here.”

“Oh my god it totally does,” William, an African-American fourteen-year-old said. He was wearing a Kwanzaa sweater.

“And it’s so fucking warm in here!” Mickey commented.

“It’s colder than my mom’s tits outside,” Freddy, another kid from the group home pipped up, slamming a jar of what seemed to be egg-nog on the table.

“Language,” Roxanne reminded. “And that better be alcohol-free!” She said, directing the boys and girls to the dining room. “Megamind,” she said to him, voice raised to be heard over the chaos, yet quiet enough for him to only hear. “This is for you.”

“What? Why? You know how I feel about this stuff.”

“It’s not about that,” she said, shaking her head, “You’ve been inside for ten days.”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

“Yes it has,” she crossed her arms. “I’m reminding you that people love you. And for the rest of this month, I want to find you here. With me.”

He pursed his lips.

“Okay. Fine. I’ll play.”

“Hohoho,” Mickey said again stomping up to him with his big sack. He dropped it at his feet. Megamind stared at it as if poisonous snakes would slither out.

“They're presents!” Missy said, giving him a hug. “From all of us!” All of them gathered to see his reaction. Instantly, he felt on edge.

“Uh—“ he didn’t really know how to respond. Presents? For him?

“Who’s hungry?” Roxanne interrupted him before he could make a bigger idiot of himself. She came up behind him with a big tray of fruits and candies. Where did that come from?

“Food!” Someone shouted, as a couple of them came storming over.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she whispered to him. “I’ve got your back. Now, make sure they don’t find the—“

“FFFFFFUCKING DOUGHNUTS,” someone yelled, and the loud whoop from the whole gang sounded, followed by them all grabbing a dozen of the confections from her cabinet.

“Crap.”

~.~.~.~

Three hours later, over half of his “children”, as they all called themselves, left Roxanne’s apartment. Luckily they all were good enough to clean up after themselves, and not much was needed to be done once the party was over. Rebecca was with Roxanne near her menorah, and the older of the two women was directing the younger in the lightning. Now two menorahs burned brightly in the window. Rebecca’s cat menorah had wax candles, whereas Roxanne’s was oil. Beside them were Paula and Missy, who sipped on some fruity tea Roxanne gave out.

“It’s nice, you know,” Mickey said, sitting beside him on the couch, watching the women. “The Holidays.”

“I suppose,” he answered, tired. The festivity had been nice. And to be honest, he’d choked down three more doughnuts, much to Roxanne’s distress. At Megamind feet was the sack of presents—some bought, others handmade, and at least a dozen cards with holiday sentiments in his (sometimes with Roxanne as well) honor. He didn’t know how to process all of this, but the kids got excited when he examined each item. He particularly liked the miniature figure of himself. Very handsome. That was made by Rebecca.

“Hey man,” his couch-companion said, making him turn away from his girlfriend to the boy beside him. “I know you hate this time of year.”

“Oh?”

“You never do anything for the holidays. Not even before.”

“Before?”

“Ya know,” Missy suddenly said, appearing before them. Her arm was thrown around Paula’s neck, smiling cheekily. “When you were all ’I’m going to rule the world!’”

He scoffed. “I wanted Metrocity. Not the world. That’s too much trouble. And I have Metrocity!”

“Yeah, sure,” the boy laughed. “Just—I’m glad to see you, old man. It’s been a while.”

“Like, three whole weeks,” Paula said as if it was the end of the world. “We never see you anymore.”

“Hm.” Megamind wouldn’t admit it, but it was good to see them all too.

“Come over moooore,” Mickey whined like he wasn’t practically an adult.

“I’ll put it on my to-do list.”

“And treat her right,” one of the girls said, tilting her head to Roxanne. “She’s a good woman. She came up to us at the house and asked if we could come over and cheer you up.”

“I knew there was a reason I kept you children around.”

Mickey punched him in the shoulder. “See? Knew you loved us.”

Megamind smiled behind his hand.

“Oh! And nice beard by the way.”

~.~.~.~

Missy, Paula, and Mickey had finally gone home, leaving behind a sound-asleep Rebecca on the couch. He wasn’t against the idea of housing orphans (he’d cut his hand off before admitting), but he knew Rebecca was good and safe at the group home (he made sure of it). Megamind just—kind of wanted to be with Roxanne. Alone.

“She’s never really celebrated Hanukkah before,” Roxanne said, handing him an over-sized t-shirt. “This was the first time she’s lit candles.”

“Really?” she commented, pulling off his over top to pull the new one on.

“Is it—alright if I teach her a few things? I don’t think she could ask me enough questions.”

He twisted his face up in confusion. “Why would I be against it?”

“I don’t know. Yeah, that was kind of a stupid question. It’s just—you’re like these kids father. You're a daddy.” It was probably extremely perverted, but he found instant gratification when she more or less called him daddy.

“I am the daddy.”

She shot him a look, but she was smiling.

It was late. Very late. Late enough that Roxanne ordered Chinese for them and the kids, and watched a Christmas movie called How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and then a Jewish movie called The Frisco Kid, with an actor Mickey said was, “Willy Wonka”.

“And Michael’s so sweet,” she said, washing some bowels and plates in the skin. He stood by, drying them off. “You never told me you practically raised him!”

“That’s because I didn’t.”

“Pish,” she brushed it off. “That boy’s just like you. Big heart and big brain.”

“My heart is a dried up grape,” he barked evilly, chuckling when it made her laugh.

“I doubt that,” Roxanne said, putting away the last of the dishes. “If it was, would you be affected by this?”

“Wh—“

She slid up to him until her form was pressed against his. She's always so warm, and her curves so, so, so soft. Uuuuugh. He sucked in a breath, his mouth dry despite the three mugs of egg-nog he drank. “Why, Ms. Ritchi, there’s a child sleeping in the next room.”

“She’s sixteen.”

“A child.”

Roxanne sniggered and laughed against the sensitive skin of his neck. She kissed him behind his ear, hugging him tightly. He gasped again, fighting the urge to grab her rear end.

“Now… I need to make more doughnuts. They ate two dozen and a half.”

“Hmm.”

“Help me,” she asked, giving him a pouty smile. “It’ll be fun.”

“Only if I can have some.”

“Fine. One more.” She rolled her eyes and turned around, swaying her hips together, side to side, side to side, as she walked over to the cabinet. He felt a shameful amount of blood rush to his nether regions.

It was then, he noted, he wasn’t in the same state of mind he was in when he first got here.

Maybe the holidays weren’t so bad after all.

[rileywrites-parker]

Saying Things

Peter Parker x Reader

So this is for the precious, most adorable person @dej-okay because she deserves only good things.

Summary: You’d lost count of how many times you’d thought of kissing him. You had never let yourself imagine that maybe, he thought of it, too.

“Or how badly I’ve wanted you like this,” and he didn’t have to explain what he meant...”

Warnings: None. Just A LOT OF FLUFF AND CHEDDAR CHEESE. Words: 3.6k

“Parker,” you cautioned as he not-so-gingerly picked up the beaker that was mostly full of blue liquid that resembled and even smelt a little like Windex, shaky hands bringing it over to your side of the lab table, mixture sloshing around the insides, goggles beginning to steam up around his eyes from how heavily he was breathing, tiny rogue hairs from fallen waves at his forehead fluttering as warm puffs of air escaped from the spaces between funny eye wear.

It had taken the two of you nearly half an hour to mix the contents in said beaker just right, waiting for the telltale appearance of that crystal blue to color the glass and signal the correct chemical change.

You’d both laughed excitedly as you’d watched with anxious eyes, two pairs of goggles level with the table; forgetting that you were still holding glass tubes and going in for a high five, catching yourself with a sheepish expression just in time. He’d offered an air five instead.

“Peter, carefully,” you urged when the clumsy boy caught a sneakered foot on the corner of the table, neon blue peeking at the edge of its container as it swayed inside, nearly raining down on top of the shiny black below it.

“I know, I know, I’ve got this,” a tiny smirk following his words, and you found yourself believing him despite the sound of glass clanking together as he began pouring that blue liquid into the compound you’d just finished mixing up. The puffs of air fogging up both of your goggles stopped as blue hit green and you held your breaths, the whole feel of him changing when that red precipitate formed in uneven clumps at the bottom of the beaker. Bubbly laughter spilled from his lips in a rush of air as the tension released from his lungs and the smile that lit up the whole of his face kept you from doing the same, kept you from breathing, and you weren’t sure if you would ever be able to bring yourself to draw air into tingling lungs again if he were going to smile like that around you, at you.

Because he was looking at you with the sun in his eyes and happiness making up the whole of his features in a way that warmed your heart entirely and made your body feel sluggish and uneven like the mess of chemicals in that beaker. The longer you looked, the more aware you became of how the color of your cheeks must match the color of that clump, and oh, but his eyes were glowing, and you were glowing, and his lips were pink and stretched prettily across white, mostly-even teeth in that charming way that only his lips could.

And that was the first time you realized that Peter Parker was someone that you could kiss. Peter Parker was someone you wanted to be kissing.

“Look, the nerds got it right,” Flash’s voice broke through your thoughts, your eyes ripping away from the sun to look at the group gathering around your lab table, every pair holding a various shade of blue or green between them.

“Go team nerd,” and this time your hand met with his, palms and fingers slapping together beneath rubber gloves, bright smiles and fluttery lashes hidden beneath hair and goggles too big for your face as he started filling out the lab sheet in his neat, even handwriting.

Peter didn’t notice, but Flash certainly did. And it was strange, to see that the boy who regularly lashed out at him, chose this particular moment, this observation, and you suspected, this shared feeling, to offer you a small, secret smile behind the back of a sweatered Peter Parker.

Peter had been blowing up your phone for the past two days, texting you at all hours, constantly checking in on you since you had fallen down the stairs in your rush to get to class. He’d actually been the one to find you at the bottom, tears welling up in your eyes and a tear in your jeans where you’d hit and skid across the tile, twisting your knee and shredding the skin.

He’d surprised you with his strength, and then again when he’d delicately tucked you into his chest, lifting you up from the ground with careful arms behind shoulders and a rapidly bruising knee, taking you to the nurse. You’d nearly laughed out loud, laughed at yourself when your body reacted to his closeness even after taking a tumble; the way your body felt pressed into the lines of his, the fluttery tingling you felt between nerves that were burning, how soft his voice had been as he’d uttered feathery words like: “It’s OK, you’re OK, I’ve got you.”

“Please, please don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll cry, and I don’t have any tissues, so you’ll have to wipe your nose on my sleeve, and it’ll just be one big mess. We can’t have that, can we?” His face had been inches from yours, concern painting his eyes as he looked down at you.

“No, we can’t. No snot for you,” giving him a watery smile, face tight as you’d tried to get up from the floor; his hands were quick, and warm, and sweet as one wrapped around your shoulder, fingertips brushing at the bare skin of your neck, a calloused thumb hovering over a delicate collar bone, the other tethering your thigh to tile.

“No, no, let me, your knee looks bad, it’s already changing colors,” his brown eyes were asking permission and his cheeks were flushing with color, funny eyebrows raised and waiting for your answer.

“Y-yeah, OK, t-thank you, Peter,” without even thinking your nose had pressed into the crook of his neck as soon as he had you in his arms and off the ground, drawing in the scent of the heated skin there, all sunshine, honey, and musky rain clouds, “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt like hell.”

“I-I kn-know,” words stumbling out of him as your breath puffed against fine hairs, tickling, moisture teasing, unbeknownst to you, leaving smatterings of goosebumps over tensing arms and an excited heart, “almost there.”

He’d stayed with you in the office, elbows on his knees and a pointy chin in his hands with caramel-flecked eyes that watched your every move as you lay there, knee propped up on a stack of pillows, pack of ice balancing precariously where it was most swollen. His sweater had come off at the first sign of a shiver from you.

“Please?” His fingertips brushing past yours as he passed it to you.

“Thanks, Parker,” brushing hair out of your eyes, using long, shy lashes as blinds, avoiding what rested beneath his own for fear of giving yourself away.

“Yeahyeah, no problem.”

He surprised you again when on the third day of your absence he was there, knocking at your bedroom door and peeking a head covered in messy brown curls past the frame. You moved quickly to cover your legs with your blanket, self-consciousness immediately kicking in at the sight of him so close to the bubble of your safe space, at the thought of him seeing your legs bare, at seeing you in a tank top, at seeing you in your bed in your room where his eyes had never been before.

“P-parker, what are you doing here?” He hadn’t pushed the door open yet, careful eyes scanning your face, eager fingers peeking past the wood.

“Can I – Is it OK that I come in?” You were nodding before your brain had time to process that Peter Parker, the boy who constantly blinded you with dazzling smiles and a heart made of the sun, who was secretly strong but always gentle, was entering your world. It was strange that it felt such a big thing, like it was important, like it should be noted, even though it was happening now with no ceremony, no bells or whistles, just rattling nerves and shaky smiles.

“Yeah, yes, enter at your own risk,” sweaty fingers pointing up at the sign hanging above his head. When he walked past that threshold and into a new world where Peter suddenly existed where you did, and his shoulders shook as he laughed, eyes crinkling and cheeks pushing at baggy, tired puffs of sleeplessness, your heart settled and you released a breath, deciding that this was good and you very much liked him here, with you.

Even when he stood in the middle of your room, hands stuffed in pockets, backpack hanging off of one shoulder and messing up the plaid collar peeking from under a grey sweater. Even when those chocolate eyes scanned over the little secret pieces of yourself, secret pieces that weren’t a secret to him anymore, and a lazy smile had found those lips. Even when he finally turned to you and stared, words lost, like perhaps he too was beginning to realize the step he’d just taken.

“I like your room,” he managed, “did you do those?” He pointed to the push board you had decorated with sketches of flowers, the moon, famous faces, your childhood home, and him. You were praying he hadn’t noticed the one of him. You nodded, trying to rein in the panic and prepare yourself for the embarrassment when he did.

If he saw, he was gracious and kind, as he always was and said nothing, “They’re amazing. I had no idea you liked to draw.”

“Sometimes,” your eyes followed him as he moved to take a seat at the end of your bed, dropping his backpack at his feet, “it’s all about inspiration.” You didn’t miss the pale pink coloring the tops of his ears as he took your words in. Of course he’d seen. His eyes focused on his hands, tracing the lines of his palms, as seconds turned into a minute, maybe two where you just watched him and he worked studiously to avoid your eyes. His silence was too much, he was too much, pink ears, dark eyelashes, and fidgety fingers were too much, so you broke it.

“What are you doing here, Parker?” Curls jostled, settling over too-big ears and temples as he whipped his head towards you to catch your voice and offer a sheepish smile.

“Right, sorry,” unzipping his bag, he pulled out an old, ratty looking quilt that smelt overwhelmingly of him, passing it over to you with this vulnerable look on his face and in his eyes, “I wanted to bring you this, you-you know, for comfort. To help you, with your knee. It’s mine-well, is mine now. It was my uncle’s before, you know,” Before you could say anything, before you could tell him in so many words that your heart was now a sopping puddle of adoration full of the heaviness of his gesture, he was already talking again, silence having been broken, he was now a bundle of nerves, an open heart, and a blur of words.

“Anyway, here’s all of the homework you’ve missed. I took notes for you, and I thought that I could, um, maybe go over them with you, h-help you with your make-up work and studying, or whatever,” he was digging in his bag again. Your fingers traced over swirling patterns and faded colors as you watched the way his mouth moved around the sounds, lost in thought, lost in all of the walls crumbling and the feel and smell of this new world you existed in, lost in that feeling you’d had many times since that day in chemistry where you realized how much you wanted his lips to know yours, too.

“Oh, and I got you these,” you looked up to the crinkling plastic of your favorite snack and a nervous smile, “I know you like them. I’ve seen you with a bag almost every day at lun-” you cut him off with a kiss to the cheek, too afraid of what else would change if you’d pressed at his lips instead, if you’d thanked him where your eyes always hovered, lingering, trying your best to convey everything you were feeling through the warmth blossoming where bodies were connected by blushing cheeks and blushing lips.

“Oh,” he whispered, like he’d clued in, like he was smiling, like he was singing.

“Thanks, Park-Peter. Peter.”

“Yeahyeah, no, uh, no problem,” he whispered again, eyes wide and full of the sun. Your fingers were pacing over fabric again.

“About this homework -”

“Right, right, so in Physics,” and he was a blushing mess as his fingers shuffled through the papers he’d brought you, smile on his face that brought that feeling right back, lips unsated, lips wanting more now that they’d stepped into that known world of his skin.

“You-you’re,” his answering laugh was uncomfortable, gloved hand rubbing at the back of a masked neck; gesture helping to ground your shocked heart because it was so familiar, “Peter, you’re telling me that you’re the Spider-Man?” There was doubt in your words where there was none in your heart. Looking at the shape of him and the way he held himself,  hearing him, that voice and his laugh, smelling him; that mix of sweetness, spring-time, and musk that was wholly Peter, you knew it was the truth, that maybe, perhaps you’d always known that Peter was more.

“That’s what I’m telling you,” the lines of his jaw and too-big ears hiding beneath red lycra nodding as he took a step closer to where you sat, where he’d told you to sit when he’d shown up at the time and place where he’d wanted you to be, yellow light from the lamp post above your heads casting shadows, accentuating the lines of him that you knew so well even beneath the disguise.

“Ok then, Peter, let me see,” shaky fingers pointing up at his masked head that he was already shaking in response.

“I can’t, not here,” he took a seat next to you, scratchy costumed thighs rubbing against the sides of softer ones as he leaned into you, shoulder burning as his pressed into yours, white reflective eyes peering, pleading with the last bit of disbelief gleaming in them, “but you know, I know you know.” Hesitantly, he placed a hand on your knee, warmth of him spreading through your limbs from that point, like he knew that touching you would be the punctuation mark you need for the questions you’d had swirling in your mind. He watched as your eyes traced over red fingers and the ways they molded around you.

“I do, I know,” you were looking at him, looking at those hazy white shields that hid chocolate brown eyes, “you’re so good, of course it’s you.” Warm fingers squeezed and you heard a sigh push past lips, sound muted through tight weaves.

“But, Peter, what you’re doing, it’s so-so dangerous. Why?” You were asking, but in your heart of minds you already knew the answer to that question, the words were still bouncing around your chest: because he is good, strong, gentle, kind, and warm. You remembered that day months ago where he’d picked you up from cold tile and carried you; the ease and grace he’d done it with surprising then, making sense now.

“Because I can, so I should,” the words were simple, but the weight of them pressed down on the red and blue of his back like the moon did the ocean. And suddenly there was that feeling again, only this time you didn’t just want to kiss him for yourself you wanted to do it for all of the times no one had, you wanted to leave hundreds and hundreds of ‘thank yous’ on his skin like craters, for all of the ‘because I cans’ and ‘so I shoulds.’

Instead, you wrapped your arms around the broadness of his shoulders and curled your hands around the back of his head, pulling him to you and holding as tightly as you could; indebted, giving him all of the worry that no one knew they should be feeling for the boy behind the suit, giving him the warmth and unspoken words of gratitude that no even knew to package and label ‘Peter Parker.’

But you knew, so you held him and whispered with your arms and heart.

Your lips kissed at where his ear poked through fabric, at his temples, lips spelling out everything for the boy who could, so did.

“You have got to stop,” your hands were linked together behind his neck, a few fingers twirling around loose, toffee curls, forearms resting comfortably on firm jacketed, shoulders. His hands were warm, holding on to your hips, steadying himself as you swayed with him, bodies brushing against each other as you moved.

“I have to stop what?” His eyebrows were furrowed, but the grin on his face told you that he knew. He knew what your heart whispered in that secret space inside your chest. His heart had heard it, had answered many times; had encouraged him to ask you to Homecoming. The last Homecoming.

“Saying things,” forehead leaning against his collar to hide your face, the look of him under the stars, dressed as nicely as he was, with that knowing look in his eye and that stupid smirk on his face too much.

“You want me to stop talking?”

“Yes,” you spoke to the flower pinned at his chest.

“So,” his hands were wrapped fully around your back now, pulling you flush with him, bodies humming and veins swimming with sugar and honey and syrup, “I can’t tell you how pretty you are?”

“Peter,” you whined, face, neck, and chest as red as the rose on your corsage.

“What about,” he paused, drawing out the sounds of his words to tease you further, your heart hanging on every syllable, “how you make my heart feel like its stopping and starting again all at once?” Your ear was pressed to his chest and you could hear it, hear what he meant, how that thing in his chest was flying like a bird does on a clear day. One of his hands had worked its way up your back and into your hair, fingertips sculpting warmth where they touched and pulled at your jaw, pulling your face up from the safety of his chest to look at him. You shook your head with fine, delicate brows furrowed and scrunched, a pout on your stained lips.

“Or how badly I’ve wanted you like this,” and he didn’t have to explain what he meant; that he had wanted to touch you, in all ways, to have your lines blurred, to share in breaths and warmth and feelings, worlds and secret pieces.

It wasn’t so silly to think that his lips probably begged to be with yours in his own secret place, too.

“Peter,” you whispered, that feeling that was always there now, the one that begged you constantly to just embrace his lips like your heart had all of him, was boiling over and you weren’t entirely sure you could keep yourself from it any longer. Not with those words and this night and the way the little points of light above you in that inky blackness were reflected and dancing in the warm, earthy honey colors of his eyes as they took in the sight of you so wrapped up in every part of him.

“I’m going to stop using words now, OK?”

His hands were cradling your face and all of the stars, save for the ones he was made of, disappeared when lips begged no more and instead started to sing.

They kept singing for a second, a third, a fourth, and for all times to come as he kept kissing, kept pulling and pushing in all of the ways you’d wanted to for months, years; the shape of his lips changing as he smiled, happiness leeching into happy kisses. Happy kisses full of bright light; of hearts colliding and a new Universe forming blazed through your body, your soul, when his lips finally blended with the world of yours, a new feeling blossoming as his lips and your lips, your lips; two lips now one, embraced and danced together in warmth, across new terrain and unexplored but well-mapped territory in a land with winds that breathed Peter across mountains, rivers, valleys, and oceans of emotion.

He was still hovering over wet, swollen lips when he found his words again, “Ok, wow, thank you,” thin lips stained a shade darker from the way you’d painted his, eyelashes fluttering over rosy cheeks.

“Really, what sort of dork says ‘thank you’ after a kiss like that?” You were laughing at him and taking in his face, the face of Peter stepping into a new world where you and he existed and kissed each other.

“Umm, the sort of dork you like?” And the way he said it warmed you further.

“And excuse me, but I wasn’t thanking you. I was thanking the Universe, because I was definitely dying tonight if I didn’t get to do that,” and the way he said it was magnetic and pulled your lips to his again, the sound of your lips pulling apart new and exciting and a sound you wanted to hear again and again because it was yours.

“Peter, you are the Universe.”

He smiled that smile that was made of sunlight, pressing those warm, moist lips to your forehead, lingering in that heat pooling where two points of crackling, sparking souls met and spun.

“You need to stop talking now.”

Let me know what you guys think. Feedback is always appreciated.

Tag list: @demigodofthesun @jadeindiamonds @radicalstars @klenasdmitry   @dej-okay @spiderling--parker @walkers-imagine  @kauffdrop  @ironspiderling

[knight-of-heart-and-art]

Rose Quartz and Citrine

  3500 words of Dirk being a dramatic idiot and Hal fixing stuff. Also of Dirk repeatedly getting distracted by the fact that Roxy's apparently better at creating humanoid robots than he is. 

 Somehow you never expected to be actively avoiding human contact when you had the opportunity and the desire to not be alone. Then again, up to a certain point in your life you never expected that you'd end up not being more or less alone on a drowning planet, but hey. Shit happens and everything's different now.  Some things are more different than others. Is that a stupid way to put it? You feel like it is. In your opinion, though, you're in a weird and stupid situation, so whatever stupid statements you make will have to be excused.  What the fuck are you doing right now, anyway?  There's a short and mostly-true answer to that question, and it is...nothing. Listening to music turned way too loud, sitting in a tipped-back desk chair with one sleeve of the sweater that it's too warm for pushed up so you can scratch absently at your arm, mesmerized and a little disgusted by the way crystalline streaks radiate out from where you touch and yield to flesh again as your fingers move on. It's a pretty quick fade—you're not the one who can make them stay. Roxy, Dave, Jake, John—the people you care about, their touch leaves your skin branded with rose quartz and citrine. It's not really like being branded, though. It doesn't hurt, and it's not just a surface thing, your skin literally changing with some strange alchemy that you can't explain or puzzle out.  Not that you haven't tried. You've played with the possibilities, spent hours in front of the mirror gingerly tracing your fingers across your arms, face, chest until your skin went translucent and fractured, cracks too fine to feel pulsing with gentle light that fades from amber to magenta and back again in a regular cadence. The beat of your heart, if you want to be specific. And that's what this all comes down to, isn't it—your heart? Or Heart. Your goddamn aspect manifesting again, for what reason you have no idea.  You don't know if you want to know, really. Your aspect only stirs itself up when it's needed, and that's almost never not meant bad shit. You're semi-okay with using your powers, seldom and cautiously; needing to use them is a whole other story. There's no way that scenario wouldn't be bad.  At least you figured out something was fucky before anyone else noticed. At least you had enough sense to cut yourself off. Sadly, you still can't figure out how to fix this shit; you've tested a wide variety of possible remedies that all ended up having exactly zero effect.  Well.  Other than the hard reset. Self-decapitation had an effect, all right, beyond making you feel stoned for six hours. Just not the one you were hoping for. Precisely the opposite, actually.  Thinking about that—waking up in the bathroom, pushing yourself off the floor and almost passing out again as you saw the not-quite-broken living crystal statue in the mirror, its eyes shifting coals of flame and its spun-gold hair dishevelled from when you hit your head on the floor—thinking about that, you dig your nails a bit harder into the skin of your arm, enough to wince and pull your hand away. It's just a few shallow scrapes on already-irritated skin (you should've stopped scratching a while ago, if you're being honest), but where the skin's broken the crystalline effect spreads out, persisting beyond what's normal. There's only a little bit of blood seeping out, but it glows gold for a few heartbeats before reluctantly darkening to dull red.  It's pretty. It'd be pretty if it weren't so damn wrong. You don't even want to be watching it, but it's happening and you're a stupid fuck, so yeah. You do watch, and when the crystal cast fades from your skin you lay your palm flat against the sore spot until it glows amber-rose again. It's pretty, yeah, but you can't forget that you're looking at it because you're trying to figure out how to make it go away for good.  You don't care to think how many hours you've spent doing this over the last few weeks. Too fucking many, for you to know as little as you do. Enough that you're beginning to suspect that the question of "how can I get rid of this?" doesn't have a good answer.  The only thing that might do anything is another hard reset. Despite the fact that it was decidedly unhelpful last time, you're vaguely considering trying again. The katana's still in the bathroom, even.  The abrupt cessation of the music playing over the speakers is enough to make you jump, snatch the sleeve of your sweater back down, and bribf the front legs of your chair back down with what seems like an earth-shaking crash. It probably isn't; guilt magnifies perception.  "Someone's jumpy." The voice is calm and amused and very, very familiar. It makes sense, too; who else is jacked into your electronics, can just tell them to switch off and have it happen? "What, you weren't expecting company?"  "Since the door was locked, not really." Control your fucking voice, asshole, you know you can do it. "What the fuck are you doing here, Hal?"  As you actually turn around to look at him it occurs to you that your eyes have a habit of not staying amber-orange when you're upset, now. Too late to conceal your movement, though; you're just going to have to pray that they stay the color they're supposed to be. You're calm enough, you can pull this off.  (You're such a fucking liar.)  And seeing him? That makes your state of mind several orders of magnitude less serene, and you're pretty sure you don't manage to keep your shock off your face, let alone out of your eyes. Roxy was the one to make him a body—after weeks of telling you to do it yourself and half-accepting your excuses she finally showed up, grabbed your shades off your face, manhandled a chassis out of your workroom and left without saying a word. To you, at least. She was talking to him the whole time—but god damn did she do a good job. There's fine wiring woven into his white hair, the suggestion of LED lights behind red irises, but where his skin doesn't show circuitry it looks fucking organic. And he doesn't move like any bot you ever built, there isn't anything but inhuman smoothness as he crosses his arms and smirks at you.  You didn't expect the two first emotions you felt at seeing him to be a painful mix of awe and guilt. Mostly guilt so strong as to qualify as crushing. You should have been the one to give him this. You weren't. Fuck.  "Can't I just come to check up on my pseudobro?" he asks sweetly, and it takes you a minute to remember that yes, you did ask him why he's here.  "No." Being short with him should definitely get rid of him. If you could take your eyes off him it might have as much as a 20% chance of success.  "Oh good, because that's not why I'm here." Hal grins, steps past you—how the fuck does he move that well? That...humanly?—and shoves everything on your desk two feet to the left to make room to sit down. A few books, a cup, and a handful of batteries crash to the floor. Amazingly the cup stays intact, but the batteries bounce and roll off to wherever shit that gets lost on the floor goes. "Most of the subset of the population of this universe that contains your friends have been seriously wondering if you'd managed to lock yourself in your room and die. I mean, their line of thinking was that it was the most reasonable explanation for your sudden and complete online and physical disappearance. Be careful when you do get around to opening your pesterchum, by the way. Whatever dechoose to open it on is probably going to crash from the sheer volume of messages on there."  "I'm alive. Feel free to go tell them that." Your hands itch. Out of the corner of your eye you can see that they're not precisely normal anymore, but looking down to see how bad it is is definitely going to attract Hal's attention. The pocket of your hoodie is deep enough to swallow them completely, and if Hal notices that movement he apparently writes it off as simple defensive body language.  "Oh, I knew you would be. We're hard enough to permanently kill that it's not a very viable option." Hal leans forward a bit, his amused smirk giving way to something less readable. "At some point it's just easier to come check on you than to argue with them about it. Besides, it's not like my digging you out of mental pits is anything new."  God you wish you had your fucking shades on. You're too rattled, and he's too close for comfort.  "I don't have anything going that requires your help in digging me out of, Hal."  And he has the temerity to scoff at that. "You," he says, and that tone of gentle amusement is so fucking irritating, "aren't just in a pit. You're in some kind of black hole, right now. Past the event horizon—nothing gets out, everything gets in, nothing actually reaches you, the pressure's working on compressing you into a neat little singularity of depression or panic or what have you. This is an epic pit. Legendary, even."  Accurate. "Fuck off."  "Nope. I'd have at least four separate people trying to dismantle me if I left without making you work this out."  "Bullshit your way out of being scrapped. I'm fine."  "Your eyes are grey."  He says that in the exact same tone he's been using the whole time. Thus it takes you a minute to process the statement. Unfortunately, your mouth keeps going while your brain skips tracks.  "It's none of your business what my—wait. Fuck." Is there really anything else to say? "Fuck..."  Hal seems less surprised than curious. He leans in a little closer, his eyes brightening. "Ooh. Yellow. Red. Black—damn that's creepy." Your hands are tangled up in your sweater, too slow to block his hand as it comes up to touch the side of your face. "...ah. Nice."  Part of your mind is registering that Roxy's somehow managed to get his skin to pretty damn close to human skin temperature. Part is noting that your own skin is going crystal around his fingers even faster than it would if you messed with it yourself. A gleeful little bit is analyzing just how great of a relief it is to have some fucking physical human contact, and how that positive reaction is neatly fitting against the rush of anxiety caused by totally failing at not letting anyone know about your shit.  "Huh." Why the fuck is he smiling? "There we go. Pink's a good color for you. It matches the skin. Hell of a lot prettier than what Dave got, if you ask me—you're going to look amazing next to Jake."  What in the name of fuck is he talking about? "Hal—"  "Wait." He blinks, taking his hand away from your face. "You didn't know about the aspect shit. You don't know? This whole panic-hermit thing is about your fucking aspect shaping you? Is that it?" And when you reluctantly nod, taking one hand out of your pocket to rub at the altered spot where he touched you, Hal stares at you for a solid five seconds before dissolving into helpless laughter.  "This isn't funny." That statement has absolutely no effect. He's losing his shit, definitely not capable of coherent speech, or anything other than vague gestures at you. "Hal." Again, you find yourself with a sense of low-level amazement over how human he seems overlaying your worry.  When he finally gets control of himself, Hal wipes at his eyes even though he obviously doesn't need to (is that calculated? or does he have your subconscious muscle memories that tell him that's just what you do in this situation? Okay examining him is less of a way to keep yourself from some flavor of panic and more of an unhelpful distraction at this point) and shakes his head. "Fuck, bro, do you never bother to talk to people about shit?"  "You know how I handle issues." He should. He does.  "Yeah. Badly. You handle them badly." He rolls his eyes, leaning over to try to touch your face again and refresh that fading crystal, but just shrugs when you knock his hand away. "Trust me, you didn't get the worst possible alteration. You're not waking up covered in sand that bled off your skin, you don't have teeny horrorterrors showing up in any reflective surfaces in your vicinity...you just look a little different. Not even bad, no wings or tentacles or shadow selves, it's something little and pretty."  You want to argue that it's not fucking little, but yeah. No. You have a dawning sense of mingled confusion and certainty that the past couple weeks were monumentally stupid on your part. It doesn't feel good. "What the fuck?" That is not a question that conveys any of the things you want to ask, but fuck it. "What the fuck?"  Hal raises one eyebrow, the amusement sliding off his face, to be replaced with something dismayingly similar to either fear or pity. "Holy shit. You actually thought you were the only one—Dirk, if you start crying I swear to god I'm going to leave and send Jake in instead, dealing with that is above my paygrade."  "You have a paygrade?"  "No! That's why you getting emotional is above it!"  "I'm not getting emotional, fuckwit." Not while he's still here, at least. Later you can have a full meltdown over how pointless this was, when you let the relief sink in. "Don't suppose you know how to turn this shit off?"  "Actually I can help with that." Hal flashes you a grin, sliding off the desk and putting his hands on the sides of your head. You'd have flinched at the brief arc of turquoise electricity as he makes contact, but he's holding you steady. "Mind and Hope are the two best aspects to straighten this out, as far as we know. Breath and Space are the absolute worst, if it matters."  "None of that should matter, since you're not even a player and if you were you'd be—"  "Heart? No offense, but not everything revolves around you. And full offense, but fuck you." He doesn't even sound mad, though—just irritatingly amused and condescending. "Nothing you just said is accurate...and stop trying not to look at me, dumbass."  You're not going to admit that you were definitely doing that. Instead you look at him, let yourself get caught up in trying to figure out how Roxy did this good of a job on him. Better than thinking about how you must look right now with his hands on your face.  "Stop panicking," Hal says after a few seconds.  "I'm not."  "Liar. What, don't tell me you're afraid of it?" He shakes his head, the movement tiny enough not to break eye contact. "You're panicking. And you're fighting it. And you're fighting me."  "Shh. Stop." He blinks, and you find that you need to blink too. Or maybe he blinks and does something to your head that you have to copy him. He's definitely in your head now; it's a little like when you used to dream awake except that the extra sensory input is coming from Hal instead of from the dreamself iteration of you. There is surprisingly little difference. "Your mind is such a mess, Dirk."  The rueful tone of those words gets a laugh out of you, for no reason whatsoever. "Tell me something I don't know."  "Mm." He considers you for a moment, the gentle pressure of him easing away from your mind even as the pressure of his hands against your head doesn't change at all. "It isn't going to hurt you, I swear. Dave was halfway metallic and Jake didn't look human at all before we worked out how to control it. Even if something goes a hell of a lot more wrong than it's going to, you—"  "Can't die."  "Well, not for long." Hal tilts his head, and you find yourself mimicking the motion. Damn but that's strange. "...oh. So you thought dying would make it go away, huh?" You don't mirror his wince, but you do vaguely appreciate how human it is. "Dirk, you idiot."  "It was worth a shot..." Shit, your mouth is on autopilot, probably because you're focusing on not thinking about the memory of waking up completely transformed, for the simple reason that you desperately do not want Hal to see it.  Of course, that's a lot like not thinking of a pink elephant.  "Elephants don't look like that."  "...fuck you."  "You know, that loses a lot of the annoyance value when I have a body I could use to get fucked with." He grins as you splutter wordlessly, that spark of teal flashing through his eyes. "Anyway, I don't need to pick images out of your mind. You're giving me a good look at what you look like when you let go, right now."  For the first time in several minutes, you break eye contact and look down at your hands.  Oh, fuck.  They're not just crystalline, they're glowing bright enough to shine through the fabric of your sweater. Or maybe that corona isn't ambient light at all but something different. An aura. And that's worse. That is definitely worse, there's no way you can hide that.  It's as bad as it can get, except it's not, because when you move to shove your hands back in your pockets and hide the crystal cast of your skin, an afterimage of them stays. Not an afterimage. The second set of hands is tangible, you can feel the weight of them in your lap, it's not an illusion—  A strangled sound forces up out of your throat before you can control yourself, and you close your eyes firmly. "Hal?" you say, when you can get your voice almost level.  "Yes?"  "Fix it." Shit, you really are panicking. "Fix it, fix me, turn it off, alright? I can't—you need to—just, fuck, I—"  "Shh." Hal sighs—another one of those baffling social reflexes, he doesn't breathe, does he?—and shifts his hands until he's cupping your head, fingers burying themselves in your hair, thumbs moving to rest on your eyelids, palms flat against your temples. "Breathe." You can feel him in your head, cynical and amused and so fucking complex that you feel dizzy trying to analyze him, surrounding you with something that it takes you a minute to classify as concern and caring. "Show me what you look like. I know you can visualize, do it for me."  "I—"  "In your head, bro. C'mon." Who taught him to be this gentle?  Okay.  He's right, you can visualize yourself pretty well. Not look like you are now—you can't handle contemplating yourself fully-crystal, traced with fractures and four-armed—but normal. Almost normal. The image in your mind wears a baffled expression between blond hair that you've actually brushed properly and the scar across your throat, arms crossed almost defensively across your chest. Or maybe it's in that pose because even though you didn't mean to include it, there's crystal blending into the skin above your heart, rose quartz and citrine curling in fractals out across your chest.  It stubbornly refuses to let you wipe it away, too.  You're so caught up with trying to amend your mental image that Hal's quiet laugh makes you flinch. "You're such a perfectionist."  "I made you, so obviously not." You regret the words as they leave your mouth—he doesn't deserve that, he's helping you.  "You wouldn't finish me because you knew you couldn't get me perfect by yourself, so yeah, you are." He doesn't sound offended. "Stop trying to make it all go away. You can't."  Hal takes his hands away, and you open your eyes to look down at yourself. Your skin is normal. You have two hands and no more. If the aura is still there, it's so faint you can't consciously see it.  While you're still examining your hands, Hal reaches over to ruffle your hair, completely ruining any sense of order it still had. "Check your pesterchum," he says. "I don't want to have to come back and drag you out." He's out the door before you look up.  You sit still for maybe three minutes after he's gone. Then you get up, find your phone on the counter, and start reading messages, formulating explanations and apologies. Or at least you try, because after a few minutes of reading through the messages they've left you, the concern and worry and unexpected love, you find yourself trying to wipe your eyes dry. It's less than effective and the tears stain your hands citrine again.  That's all right. That's fine. You can make it go away when you want to.

[hedaswolf]

your favorite stupid-cute family goes on vacation

(part 22 of the clexa eleven au)

You press your forehead to the window even though everything around you is rattling.

The whirring sound gets louder and louder and you have to grip the armrests to keep from sitting back in your seat. The last time you talked to Mike he explained the science of it to you -- something about force and velocity -- but you never imaged it would feel so clunky. Like riding a bike with a few loose screws.

Just when you’re about to turn around to ask your moms if this is normal, the rattling abates and your stomach swoops in a weird, pleasant kind of way. But you hardly notice, because the ground is rapidly retreating below you.

Soon cars and buildings look more like wind-up toys and building blocks, and the city streets become a checkerboard grid.

The last thing you see before climbing above the clouds is a slate gray lake. It’s not yours, you don’t think, but you imagine that it is. There’s a tiny fleck in the center and it takes you a moment to realize it’s a boat. It’s weird to think that there’s a person on there -- someone with plans and dreams and worries -- who you’ll never meet, who doesn’t even know you exist.

You hope they’re having a good day.

Dense fog obscures the view and you finally sit back in your seat. You wait to feel afraid, but if there’s any fear in you it can’t get past your brazen, astonishing joy.

You’re flying.

***

You wouldn’t have thought a foster kid could even get a passport, but it didn’t turn out to be too much trouble.

At least, that’s what your moms said. You didn’t find out about the trip until the passport came in the mail. Suddenly you understood why, a few weeks earlier, Clarke took you to CVS, where a teenage employee told you not to smile before taking your photo in front of a white screen.

When you opened the little blue booklet and saw your confused, unsmiling face looking back at you, you let out this high-pitched squeak and threw your arms around your moms waists.

Lexa laughed. “You don’t even know where we’re going yet,” she said, tousling your hair.

“I don’t care,” you replied, and you meant it. You could be going nowhere and you’d be happy just to have something that meant you could travel anywhere, if you wanted.

Clarke grinned. “Good. Because we’re not telling you.”

And they wouldn’t, no matter how much you pleaded.

Your moms were acting strangely, though. They spoke in these fancy accents while making dinner, but eventually had to stop because Lexa couldn’t stop giggling at how bad Clarke’s was. After dinner, instead of dessert you had milky tea and cookies, which your moms inexplicably called “biscuits.”

On your way upstairs to get ready for bed Clarke kept telling you to “mind the gap,” and when you came out of the bathroom after brushing your teeth Lexa placed a plastic tiara on your head.

You put a hand on your hip and sighed, trying to hide your smile. “Will you just tell me?”

“One more clue,” Clarke said, nodding toward your room. “Go and see.”

Waffles had discovered the clue first. The three of you burst out laughing as you watched him roll around on bed, scattering a bunch of multicolored slips of paper across your duvet. Lexa shooed him up near your pillows and gathered the final clues into a neat stack before handing them to you.

Not only were they different colors -- green and orange and blue -- they were different sizes. They had numbers on them -- 5, 10, and 20 -- and a symbol that kinda looked like a cursive “L.”

“It’s money…” you said. Your moms nodded, but didn’t offer any help. Clarke was bouncing on her toes in anticipation.

You laid the bills down on the bed and slowly turned them over. There were several old fashioned-looking people on them, but you noticed that they all had the same woman on one side. She was wearing a tiara, too.

No, not a tiara -- a crown.

Then you could’ve smacked yourself, because you saw they all said “Bank of England” in loopy writing at the top.

“Oh my gosh,” you whispered. “England??”

“Yes, well done!” Lexa said in that weird accent from earlier. “The capital of England.”

She was waiting for you to answer, but Clarke -- who was practically dancing in place -- couldn’t contain herself.

“London!” she cried, taking your hand and giving you a twirl. “A client referred me to a friend who wants to meet in person. They’re paying for my flight and hotel room, and the trip falls on a long weekend, so the stars aligned for a family holiday.”

London. Half of the stuff that you read about in history class happened in London. Mary Poppins lived in London. Peter Pan took place in London!

You put your hand over your heart, blinking back tears. You got that familiar feeling that this was happening to someone else. Since you started living here so many impossible things have become possible. It makes you ache, sometimes.

Lexa tucked a strand of hair behind your ear and began singing "Chim Chim Cher-ee" in a soft voice. Clarke joined in, then you, and the ache in your chest expanded until it popped.

By the time you reached “on the rooftops of London” your moms’ arms were around you and, for an instant, nothing seemed impossible anymore.

***

Clarke’s client paid for a black cab to take you from the airport to your hotel. You slept for most of the flight (only waking up once you landed, which was a little disappointing) so you were wide awake for the ride through the suburbs and into central London.

You and Lexa had read up on the neighborhood you’re staying in, which happens to be where Clarke studied abroad during college. You learned that it’s near a big park with a “small” palace (an oxymoron, you think), has rows upon rows of historic, white buildings, and is home to many “posh” people.

You don’t quite get what “posh” means, so Clarke has been pointing out posh things to help you get the idea. When the cab arrives at the hotel and a doorman loads your luggage onto a “trolley” Clarke whispers, “Doormen? Posh.”

The hotel isn’t like the big chains you’ve seen in the US. In fact, you wouldn’t know this was a hotel at all if you didn’t look closely -- it blends with the other white buildings on either side of it, aside from a flag and a small sign by the door.

Clarke beams at you and follows the doorman inside, but Lexa hesitates. You take her hand and squeeze it, hoping to convey that all of this “poshness” makes you a little nervous, too.

She squeezes your hand back. “If they could see us now.”

(You love when she uses the plural “they” like that, and you love that she knows you know exactly who she means.)

You’re both standing a little taller when you follow Clarke inside.

Once you’re checked in the receptionist directs you to your “flat,” which Clarke explains is a “suite,” which makes you shrug because neither word means anything to you. Aside from the inn you spent the night in for Lincoln and Octavia’s wedding, you never stayed in a hotel before. And this one is nothing like the inn or any of the hotels you’ve seen in movies.

It has two bedrooms, a sparkling bathroom with a deep tub, a sitting area with a sofa and TV, and a small kitchen, stocked with food that is both familiar and very different.

It says “crisps” on bags of potato chips and “Walkers” where it should say “Lays.” There’s a carton of eggs on the counter, which also strikes you as odd. You open the narrow refrigerator to put them where they belong but are quickly distracted by what’s inside.

“Look at this milk carton!” you say, holding up the oddly-shaped container. “What’s ‘semi-skimmed’ mean? Will it taste the same as 2%?”

Clarke grins and pulls out her phone to snap a photo of you and the milk. Lexa takes three glasses out of the cupboard.

“Only one way to find out,” she says.

***

Your moms didn’t sleep much on the plane and are feeling pretty “jetlagged” (your mind is spinning with all these new words!) so you stick close to the flat today. Clarke leads you on a walking tour of her old stomping grounds, and, while she hasn’t been back since college, she has no trouble finding her way.

“Something like that really makes an impression on you,” she says when you mention it. “Everything was so different it was like my brain freed up this extra space to store it all. Besides, I must’ve walked every street in this neighborhood ten times over talking on the phone to your Mum that semester.”

Lexa smiles and loops her arm through Clarke’s. She looks sleepy. You can’t imagine her and Clarke willingly spending that much time apart.

“Why didn’t you both go?”

“I couldn’t afford it,” Lexa says.

“Weren’t you lonely?”

“Yes,” they say in unison. Clarke kisses Lexa’s temple.

“We hadn’t met when I signed up,” she says. “I wanted to back out as soon as we got together, but--”

“I wouldn’t let her,” Lexa says, coming to a stop at a quiet intersection. “Didn’t want her to pass up that experience for me.” Her lashes flutter and she traces one of the buttons on Clarke’s denim jacket. “And we pinky swore that we’d come back one day, together.”

Clarke’s face lights up with a soft smile. She takes a step closer and gently moves Lexa’s hand away from her jacket so she can link their pinkies together.

“Took a little longer than I’d hoped, but here we are.”

She kisses the end of their joined hands like she’s sealing a promise rather than fulfilling one. You smirk and wait for Lexa to roll her eyes, but her gaze never leaves Clarke’s face. She kisses her hand, too, and then steps in to meet Clarke’s lips.

A man and a woman walk past you and smile at each other when they see your moms. The man kisses the woman’s cheek as they hurry by.

Maybe the jetlag is hitting you because you get a strange sensation, like this moment is dislodged from time. Your moms are still wrapped up in each other like they’ve just reunited after a semester apart, and you wonder, in a sense, who’s to say they haven’t?

Once they break away they each take one of your hands before continuing on down the street.

“Gross,” you mutter, because you can’t say the other stuff.

“Oh, please.” Lexa bumps you with her hip. “You don’t think we’re gross.”

(You don’t.)

As you approach the curb Clarke murmurs, “look right,” just like she’s done at every street you’ve crossed so far, just like she’ll do at every intersection for the rest of the trip.

***

On the first day -- the jetlag day -- Clarke brought you to her old “uni” flat, her favorite cafe, and the “newsagent” where she bought overpriced American magazines when she felt homesick.

You stopped at Sainsbury’s -- a grocery store -- last. You helped your moms fill a shopping “trolley” with more familiar-yet-different foods.

(Clarke said you’ll cook most meals at the flat because English food is bland, and you don’t mention that the restaurants you’ve passed have smelled delicious.)

(You try to pay for the groceries with your pounds, but your moms won’t let you.)

Clarke has meetings for all of the next day, but she leaves you and Lexa with a detailed handwritten itinerary, complete with cute little maps and sketches of landmarks. You and Lexa follow them to the T and take a million photos to show Clarke, which turns into a sort of mission, adding an extra level of adventure to the day.

You feel really brave when you follow other children climbing the monument in Trafalgar Square so Lexa can snap a pic of you atop one of the giant bronze lions. And your sides ache from laughing after you try to get a photo of Lexa holding up Big Ben as if it’s the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The third day in London is your first real day of sightseeing as a family. You’re still in awe of Clarke, who seems to remember several of the bus routes and “Tube” lines. The buses are your favorite -- especially the red double deckers when you get to sit in the front seat up top.

You check out a market in Notting Hill and watch the street performers on Southbank and hide behind your hands as Clarke makes funny faces at the Buckingham Palace guards, who she swears she got to smile once.

You don’t go inside anywhere that has an admission fee and your feet are sore at the end of the day, but you wouldn’t change a minute of it. Every so often you catch Clarke eyeing a tour bus when it drives by and you want to tell her you like your tour a million times better.

“I feel sorry for them,” you say instead.

Clarke raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? How come?”

You bite your lip, not having thought that far. “They’re seeing the tourist’s London,” you try. “We’re seeing the real London. You’re showing us the city as it really is.”

She smiles and pinches your cheek. “Quite right,” she says in her silly accent. Lexa laughs right on cue.

***

The fourth day is your last full day and you luxuriate in it.

You start off at a hole-in-the-wall tea shop for “Devon cream tea,” which sounded kinda yucky, but turns out to be delicious. You hum to yourself as you slather a warm scone with cream and jam, taking large bites between sips of sweet, milky tea. You don’t even notice your moms are recording you (or that you have jam on your cheek) (or that you’re holding the teacup with your pinky pointing out) until they show you the video afterwards.

After that you go inside the palace in the park near your flat. Even the admission ticket looks fancy. You got in for the child’s price and your moms said they were students, but it must’ve cost a lot, so you resolve to take in as much as you possibly can.

The part of the palace that you’re in is more of a museum -- not the home of any royalty -- but that doesn’t make it any less spectacular. You linger in every room, memorizing details about the palace’s history, following the brush strokes on the paintings, and imagining former monarchs living in the reconstructed rooms.

The last exhibit is full of gowns that belonged to a princess who died. In the photographs that line the walls she’s elegant and beautiful and young -- not much older than your moms.

They’re not far away, but you need to be closer. They make a space for you between them and drape their arms across your shoulders.

It’s weird to think that these dresses were made for a real person -- with hopes and dreams and worries -- who you’ll never meet, who no longer exists.

Just like your birth mother.

Clarke presses a soft kiss to the top of your head and Lexa smooths her thumb over the nape of your neck.

You wait for the tears to come. They don’t.

***

After the palace you finally venture into the park, or -- as they call it -- gardens. It’s bigger than any park you’ve ever seen. There are miles of tree-lined paths, a pond teaming with swans, and hidden treasures at nearly every turn.

Best of all, Clarke lets you lead the way.

“Whenever I called your mom that semester, I always wound up here,” she says. “Never with a destination in mind -- just wandered.”

Lexa reaches out and takes her hand. “I loved hearing where you wound up.”

As soon as you turn down one of the smaller pathways you understand why Clarke was drawn to this place. This is a major park in a city that’s home to millions, yet you three are the only ones on this quiet, shady path. For a few precious moments it seems like it’s all here just for you.

You try to channel younger-Clarke and walk aimlessly. You stumble upon a number of statues, a carousel, and a tiny art gallery. In one corner you come across a playground dedicated to the princess who died. It’s full of shrieking children, and you’re not sure why, but you think she’d like it.

Eventually you find another lake, lined with reeds and lily pads. You follow the path that runs along the shore and discover a statue where there’s no reason for one to be. And you think that’s the point.

The base is a swirling scene of animals and children and pirates and fairies chasing each other ‘round and ‘round. And at the top, looking out toward the water, is Peter Pan himself.

He looks a little different from the Peter in the Disney movie. You know that was based on a play that was based on a book, and you know it’s just a statue, but your heart is racing like it’s something more.

You glance over at your moms and think they might feel it, too. Lexa gets this dreamy look on her face as she leans into Clarke, arm slung low around her waist. Lexa’s eyes are on the statue, but Clarke’s are on you. She just smiles at you and nods and you get the impression that, somehow, this spot was the destination all along.

You nod back as you step closer to the statue. There’s so much to see at eye-level, but first you stand at the bottom and look up at Peter’s face.

He’s holding a horn to his lips, and you know it’s silly, but you close your eyes to see if you can hear it. There’s only the wind in the trees, the melody of songbirds, and the gentle murmurs of your moms, but you think there’s still magic in that.

The day seems brighter when you open your eyes. Your thoughts wander back to time and distance and how they overlap.

You think of Lost Boys and movie nights, of Neverland and trick-or-treating, of gold glitter that Clarke swears will never come out of the carpet.

The trees must’ve been a bit thinner, a bit shorter when Clarke wandered these same paths, talking on a heavy flip phone -- one she now uses as a paperweight -- to a girl an ocean away. You can just picture Lexa sitting on the floor of her dorm room, head tilted back and eyes closed, trying to imagine this city while Clarke described it to her.

You tear your eyes away from Peter Pan to look back at them. They’re standing to the side of the path, hip to hip, with their arms around each other. Clarke’s lips brush Lexa’s earlobe as she whispers something to her. You can’t hear, but you imagine they’re talking about time lost and found.

When you turn back to the statue it hits you that Peter is propped up by everything going on below him -- the whirring torrent of Neverland elevating him higher and higher.

Maybe that’s how time works. Seconds and minutes and hours and months and years build up, one on top of the other, until you get to where you need to be.

Before you met your moms your life seemed aimless, but maybe, somehow, this family was your destination all along.

***

You sit in the middle seat on the flight home. You hold your moms’ hands as you take off, but not because you’re scared.

Traveling together makes you feel closer to them, which makes you want to be closer to them. They lean in toward you, and when the plane levels off they each rest a cheek on your temples.

Once the flight attendants clear away the dinner trays (another flying perk you can’t wait to tell Mike) your moms have you choose a movie and Clarke counts down -- “3, 2, 1, play!” -- so that it starts on all three of your seat-back screens at the same time.

Your moms put their earbuds in and snuggle in close, watching your middle screen even though you jumped the gun and pressed play too soon. You guess they don’t care that their sound is slightly off.

***

You last until the interactive map says you’re two hours away from landing. A part of you thought you’d wait until you got home, but who are you kidding? You’re not good at keeping secrets anymore.

Your backpack is wedged under the seat in front of you and Lexa has to help you free it. When it’s finally in your lap your moms are looking at you with amused, questioning smiles.

“This trip is the best thing I’ve ever done... that’s ever happened to me,” you tell them as you unzip your backpack, eyes trained on your fingers. “I wanted to give you something to say thank you.”

When you get the courage to look up at them they look genuinely surprised and you’re so pleased. You didn’t think they noticed the times you slipped away, but you couldn’t be sure.

“This trip was our gift to you, El,” Lexa says. “You didn’t have to get us anything.”

“I know.” You shrug. “But I wanted to.”

The gifts are “wrapped” in plastic bags from the palace shop, but your moms’ eyes light up as if they’re decked out in glitter and ribbons. Clarke’s eyes get even wider as she pulls out the cream and turquoise letter set and traces her fingers over the embossed design on the top card.

“Aw, kiddo!” She pouts and pulls you in for a hug so tight your seatbelt digs into your side. “These are gorgeous. Posh, even. The only problem is I’m not going to want to send them to anyone -- they’re too nice.”

“Well, I was kinda thinking they could just be for us,” you say, feeling your cheeks heat up. “If you go on another business trip and we can’t come, you can write us.”

She presses her hand to her chest and makes sad eyes at Lexa, which isn’t all that unusual. What is strange, though, is Lexa giving her the same pouty look back.

Your mind goes to Clarke’s clunky old flip phone and the stack of yellowing letters beneath it. Glancing between your moms you realize you’ve stumbled onto something, here. Maybe that’s why those envelopes are smattered with so many stamps.

Clarke gently cups your chin ducks to kiss your forehead. When she pulls away you smile up at her and wait for her trademark over-the-top reaction. Instead, she slowly shakes her head.

“How did we get so lucky?”

Her voice is soft and it makes you nervous. Or excited. Or something in between. You’re not sure how to answer, or if the question is even directed at you, so you reach into your backpack for Lexa’s gift.

Or, more accurately, gifts.

You watch as she pulls them out one by one. The first is a little tin sign that says “Look Right” -- a Portobello Market find that draws a laugh from Clarke. You relax at the sound, the weight of her question slipping off your shoulders.

Next Lexa takes out a brass keychain shaped just like the unicorn on the palace gates. Anyone else might think it’s a boring gift, but there’s a significance to keys for foster kids, and judging by how she’s smiling at you you know she gets it.

The last gift in the bag is wrapped in tissues and fits in the palm of Lexa’s hand.

“It’s for both of you,” you blurt. “Well, all of us.”

You feel Clarke lean forward as Lexa pulls back the layers until three small, gray stones are revealed. They don’t make any sense without an explanation, but it takes you a second to find the words.

“They’re from the gardens. By Peter Pan,” you say. “One for each of us. To remember that we were all there, at the same time.”

It’s not exactly what you mean, but it’s close.

Lexa chooses the darkest stone, Clarke takes the lightest, and you’re left with the one that’s marbled and swirley.

“You’re so thoughtful,” Lexa says. She tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. “Your Ma’s right about us lucking out with you.”

You grin and turn to Clarke to find her holding her stone up to the overhead light.

“These could’ve been there since I did study abroad,” she says. She looks at you with a kind of awe as you nod.

It’s funny that they think they’re the lucky ones. For your whole life people have found you strange, but somehow you managed to find two people who accept and love and get you without even trying. If that's not luck, what is?

***

When the plane touches down you still feel like you're flying.