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sichore · 7 months

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Also 23 for the otp prompts!

tagging @nightklok because they asked for this prompt too! it got away from me a bit... like 2K words a bit.

23. Write about your ship supporting each other through a hard time.

MagJam | mention of MagCharles | 2271 words | post s2. ep. 19 Black Fire Upon Us | non-explicit sex

Mordhaus is attacked and the first thing Magnus feels is worry, sick and gnawing in his gut as he tries to go about the shop as usual. Are they okay? Did they make it out? And the anchorman goes on to say no, they did not.

All the money and fame in the world didn’t stop them from being infiltrated, invaded like the micronation of shit that they are, and now Charles is dead.

Charles is dead.

Time passes in a haze, swirled and blurred images of life moving on regardless. Nairi notices and asks what’s wrong and he can’t bring himself to tell his daughter the truth. “Nothing. I’m fine. How was class?” And Nairi’s furrowed brow is a mirror of his own, but eventually she stops asking, her hands no longer hesitating as she tells him about her day.

Charles is dead and the hate and resentment that’s built up over the past decade is numbed by a wave of grief so deep that Magnus finds himself visiting the liquor store more and more because he can’t bring himself to touch the bottle of arak in his cabinet. He’s far from sober, but he usually doesn’t let beer bottles collect in his recycling bin this fast. They gather like his regrets and dreams, empty and dusty and sometimes broken before he tosses them out, and then the pile grows all over again.

Two weeks go by. Maybe a month. And then Jimi comes back.

“Oh, hey!” She greets him in a scene like an echo of a time past and it takes his breath away. Jimi, standing in his kitchen with Nairi as they put away groceries, smiling as brightly as she did the first time they did this so many years ago when Nairi was much smaller.

“We were gonna make dinner, but we got a bit carried away at the store,” Jimi apologizes, shrugging, and holds up a takeout container. “How’s Italian sound?”

“Good.” Magnus swallows down the lump in his throat and hopes that eases in the hoarseness in his voice. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“Some stuff came up at work, so…” Jimi shrugs, doesn’t exactly meet his eye. “Here I am!”

Dinner comes from a local Italian spot that Magnus and Jimi had gone to once, together, the evening they decided that no, this probably shouldn’t be a thing. The bread is still soft, the pasta exquisite, and the sun-dried tomatoes far, far sweeter than Magnus remembers.

“There were some changes,” Jimi says, once Nairi retreated to her room for the evening to leave the two of them to polish off the bottle of white wine Jimi had picked up ‘for fun’. Her gaze stays focused on her stemless glass, swirling around her drink. “So I’m finally back here for the time being.”

“For how long?” Magnus ventures, trying not to think about how much his world has shrunk since Jimi started spending more time away at this mystery job than her apartment. Since he was left behind, three times now.

“Mmh, not sure.” And Jimi sets her glass down on the coffee table, curls a leg up onto the couch so she can face Magnus. “How ‘bout you? How have you been?”

Terrible. “Fine.” Spiraling. “Same as usual.”

“You look tired, Magnus.”

He doesn’t have an answer for her.

Jimi is home a lot now. His home, which could have been hers, too. Magnus doesn’t realize how much he’s been slacking on groceries until he starts coming home to the fridge constantly being stocked with more than takeout, leftovers, and beer. Nairi is bright and cheery the following weeks after Jimi takes her on a shopping spree, and frequently sports a colorful jacket from one of her shows.

One evening, Magnus comes home after closing shop to find Jimi asleep on his couch, having been in the middle of folding laundry. She’s not even that good about putting away her own clothes from what he recalls.

He reaches down to brush an errant curl, stops himself, and instead moves her glasses to the side table. It’s enough to wake up the artist.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” she says hastily, rubbing her eyes and sitting up. “I was just –”

“Jimi, what are you doing?”

The way she pauses and her eyes widen in embarrassment makes Magnus kick himself for his lack of tact, but he can’t bring himself to stop. “I mean, you’ve been –”

“Weird, ah, I know. It’s weird. Sorry. I’ll just go–”

“No. Shit, I’m sorry, don’t –” Don’t go, please. She starts to rise and he places his hand on her shoulder and the way Jimi looks up at Magnus makes him jolt. A dormant urge sparks to life and he’s not so quick to snuff it out. “I’m sorry. I appreciate everything you’ve done, really. I know I’m not great at showing it.”

And he pauses, the words sending him down a completely different train of thought. He redirects. “And Nairi’s been really happy to see you again.”

Ignoring the protest in his knees, Magnus kneels down to be more at Jimi’s level, and he sees the way she sucks in a breath, hands clasped in her lap. He tosses his hair over his shoulder with a jerk of his head. “You’ve just got me worried, is all.”

The way Jimi presses her lips together and her eyes harden, he expects her to challenge him right back, because he knows the bags under his eyes haven’t gotten much better since she first asked about them. That the recession is hitting everyone hard, the shop hasn’t been doing its best, and Jimi just seems to be biding her time while making sure Nairi has everything she needs.

And Magnus is grateful, even if his pride is wounded a bit. It’s really not a talk either of them wants to have. “Listen, if you need to come back to the shop for a bit, it’s not a problem–”

“It’s not that,” Jimi interrupts, then sighs, looking away. Her hands twist in her lap and this time Magnus doesn’t hesitate to take one. He watches Jimi’s shoulders sag, and the fight leaves her body, replaced with an emotion he can’t identify that’s gone as fast as a ripple. “I’ve just got a lot of time on my hands. Maybe I should go back to school. Actually finish this time.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“Mmh.”

He forgot how small her hands were compared to his, long and knobby and weathered as they are. Jimi holds his hand much more carefully than he handled all those bottles he knocked back. She looks at him now and her eyes are dark as midnight in the summer. He can see the glitter of stars, feel the warm breeze in his hair, the blades of grass on his skin.

“... hey, Magnus…”

“Yeah?”

Jimi squeezes his hand, worries her lower lip with her teeth. Soft, plush lips that he remembers should be treated delicately. “... Lemme finish up here.”

He’s not sure what he was expecting. He should be used to disappointment. “Right, yeah. Okay.”

Weeks and months pass and Magnus remembers feelings other than grief and monotony and apathy. Even tragedy can’t stop Dethklok from flaunting their wealth before the world and that familiar sneer of disgust curls Magnus’ lip, before he changes the channel away from news of that damn statue.

Charles is dead and Jimi’s back and the need for revenge still burns in his chest and Nairi is healthy and well. It’s not exactly his normal, because he’s missing more than he usually is, and maybe some part of him really did believe that negotiating his royalties wouldn’t be the last time he spoke to Charles. It was the band, the rest of those selfish assholes who cast him out, and Charles wasn’t much better than himself, casting away his heart in favor of reaching his goals.

Magnus feels like he’s on the verge of waking from a dream, like maybe he’s getting to the acceptance phase, when Jimi turns to him and says Nairi’s gone for the weekend.

And he snaps out of whatever haze he was in. “Oh?”

“Yep,” Jimi chirps, shrugging. She’s more relaxed as of late, did actually take up classes again. Went to see her family. Said work had slowed down, but it was fine, apparently. “Told her and Haséyá to go have some fun.”

That would explain the text he got from his daughter. “I see.”

“She won’t be back until Sunday afternoon.”

Jimi smells really nice today. “Uh huh.”

“So… I thought we could watch movies, or something.”

“... Oh.”

She does not want to watch no damn movies.

It’s Friday night and Magnus is not alone and he doesn’t really need to concern himself with opening the shop tomorrow. Or for the whole weekend. Jimi is dressed simply in a shirt and sweats and what seems to be little else, now that he takes a good look at the dips of her chest. Jimi is turned towards him on the couch, same as the first night she returned, only this time she’s not asking how he’s doing.

The offer has stayed open all these years and now she gives him an answer. Yes, now, because if not, when? Magnus’ breath catches, and her fingers brush his knee, and the walls he had started building up again atop his mound of grief come crumbling down.

Jimi’s hand is small against him. Her skull, too, feels tiny cradled in his hands as he threads long fingers into her thick hair to draw her face near. Magnus only sees half as well as he used to, yet he plainly sees that beneath the care and sweetness that is Jimi is a pain he can’t identify. He asks if she’s sure and she nods her consent. The last time they kissed outside of the holiday season was on that doomed date. Kissing her feels like tasting the rain after a long drought, only it pours, and pours, and pours.

Magnus pulls back from the deluge and the whimper Jimi lets out takes the rest of the air from him. He takes her hands in his own, kissing her palms and fingertips, unsure if they are promises or apologies. Jimi accepts them all the same. She accepts his touch everywhere; rough calluses over smooth skin, a vice grip on her soft hip, and his longing into the aching core of her.

For her, he tries to be a gentle lover, but Jimi doesn’t let him. She doesn’t look at him much, but they both have a lot of hair in the way, and with him having only one eye, Magnus isn’t sure if he wants to glimpse anything other than whatever pain drove her back here. This, at least, is familiar territory to him, so when she claws at him and holds him tighter, closer, he ducks his head down, and gives it back tenfold.

He buries himself in her and with it he tries to bury that grief, that guilt, the ‘what-ifs’ and ‘could be’s’ that haunt him every time he looks into the mirror and sees that pale ghost staring back at him. It’s far less than she deserves, but Jimi takes it all the same, and in turn does not allow him to ride the bliss that follows release. No, she drags more from him with biting nails and pleading cries, with a voracity that shatters any illusion of innocence he may have still held towards her.

Jimi’s arduous cries turn to shouts, turn to sobs, and eventually, their mingled, labored breaths. In the wake of the storm there is stillness, and silence, and for a while, there is no loneliness.

It’s been twenty years or more since Magnus has shared a bed with anyone through the night. He never did with Mari, and the last person he remembers doing so with is dead. But Jimi stays with him until morning and it’s not as strange as it could be when he wakes up and she’s smiling at him. Wearing his shirt. Pushing his hair from his face and chiding him for not tying it up.

He doesn’t ask if she was thinking of someone else, too, in the dark. In the morning light, she’s looking at him, kissing him, swinging her legs over his hips and sinking down onto him. Jimi moves like the waves and Magnus lets her pull him under.

Afterwards, once she’s cleaned up and he finally manages to rouse himself from bed and do the same, he finds Jimi in the kitchen. The tea she claimed she’d make is unbrewed. Instead, she stands at the sink, the water running over her fingers as she stares with an unreadable expression.

It’s the crack in the otherwise perfect image of her standing in his kitchen, in his shirt, still wearing his scent. Maybe this will only last the weekend. Maybe this is all he’ll ever have. But he had nothing before, has nothing with Charles dead, so he’ll hold onto what little he has, however long he has.

“Hey,” Magnus says softly, jolting Jimi out of her trance.

“Oh, hey.” Her smile is weary. “Sorry, I guess I just kinda zoned out there.”

Magnus says nothing at first. Just closes their distance and wraps his arms around her. With their height difference, her face presses to the center of his abdomen. “It’s okay.”

Jimi’s arms wind around him, too. For a moment, he feels the gravity of a collapsed star, and his raspy voice fills the void. “It’s okay.”

[Soft OTP Prompts]

#metalocalypse #magnus hammersmith #jamila calabash #mtl oc #magcharles #my writing #paint the sky #ask meme #thank you both for inspiring this monster of a prompt!#it'll go on AO3... eventually #magjam

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sichore · 9 months

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@thatwritingho tumblr got me FUCKED UP not letting me edit drafts that has asks in them. fuck. anyway!! I answered 5. a casual kiss in the previous round, so let's do the next step!

6. write about an intense kiss between your ship

exclusive preview of a future scene in paint the sky

“You know you don't have to do this, right?”

“Yeah, but… we gotta, don't we?”

Among the blankets and pillows of her cozy corner, the candlelight catches the glimmer in Jimi's dark eyes as she straightens up a bit. We. Jimi is so fucking tired, he can see the exhaustion in those brown eyes. But she's still here, and Pickles has been seeing the same shit as her, so why not do this together?

“I trust ya, Jimi.” He drops his gaze to their knees, clearing his throat. “So, uh… how do we do this?”

“I guess we just kinda…” Jimi tentatively reaches out and he takes her hands. It just feels like the natural thing to do. Hers are soft, small where he can feel them through his callouses. “Um, close your eyes, and breathe. With me. Let your senses take over and it should just… happen.” Her eyes close first, and she already looks so bare without her glasses. Pickles watches Jimi, taking in all of her in this strange moment of vulnerability. The way her curls spill around her face, even when piled high on her head. Her shoulders gradually relaxing as she breathes, in, out, rising and falling. Her comfortable work clothes with old paint stains. Her gentle, nervous smile. He closes his eyes.

The glow of the candles behind his lids give way to nebulae. He hears the rush of his own breaths, then Jimi’s, then – the both of them, breathing as one. The rush of air becomes the distant roar of the Waves, growing louder. Louder. Louder. The last thing Pickles feels in the physical world is the warmth of Jimi’s hands as their fingers lace together and become indistinguishable, and then he sinks. The Ocean greets them with a dazzling school of stars that flash and swim around them. Everything here is expanded in a way Pickles can’t quite describe, ignoring how he is – was – a lyricist. He doesn’t even feel like Pickles, the drummer, when he’s here. He doesn’t feel like Connor, either, who was once that angry kid who left home with nothing but a bag and a dream. Here, he just is. And so is she. Jimi. Unfamiliar, yet always recognizable. Colors and comets swirl around them in the current but he is only consumed with thoughts of the resplendent one. Long and luminous, she winds around him in wide laps, and the slide of her shimmering scales sing to him a sonata. Consumed with the need to feel, he reaches out to her with arms that are many and crimson. He reaches across galaxies for her and when they finally meet, their serpentine touch causes a symphony to ring out across all creation.

It is an experience unlike any before. They are exquisite and perfect. He feels the slide of himself against her, as her. Scale against sinew against soul, they move among the Waves and into each other. He drinks of her into all that he is and, in turn, pours into her, ruby and rapturous and rippling. The song of their union spreads throughout the universe and all that lies beyond. Chaos and cosmos, combined and complete, to bring forth all that shall ever be. World-devourer, star-swallower, divine and devouring one another, entwined and eternal as they should be.

Between the serpents that coil and writhe everlong is a power, mewling and newborn. The drag of their bodies across it is an orphic orchestra that is unheard of, unpracticed, unobtainable. For now. Discordance reigns and the distortion shatters them and they scream in their separation. Through her thousand eyes he can glimpse his thousand arms that seek her. The great crimson beast once more, rising, raging, reaching for the rhapsodic splendor of his – Lover. Pickles breaks through the Waves and crashes back into reality with a shuddering gasp. The candles at the edge of his vision are as stars, fighting against the rippling shadows of the Ocean that bathe the room. None of it matters. Nothing else fucking matters. His body is burning and drenched with sweat, trembling, volcanic. He breathes in ash and embers and air and it’s not enough, it’s never enough not when they’re so close. It all ends and begins with their entwined hands that hold the power of a thousand suns and he thinks Jimi feels it, too. Curls stick to her sweat dampened face as she gasps for air. A mirror of his own state as she would be, because… because… Why wouldn’t she be? Fuck. Why were they here? Why were they ever apart? What the hell is he thinking? Jimi’s lips are so plush, parted and panting and he remembers how easily she tore into him and the agony of their separation. The fuck. He’s hungry. Starving. He swallows hard, his throat having gone dry. What was he forgetting? His eyes flit over the rapid rise and fall of Jimi’s chest and he remembers the way her heart choked his throat. When he drags his gaze back up to her eyes they are like onyx and starshine and their hands tremble where they hover, still entwined. He tries to speak and all that comes out is a dry, wordless sound. Jimi leans towards him. The separation of their hands is torture because they can’t ever part but it’s a sacrifice Pickles makes to grasp her face and pull her forward. Their mouths crush together in a clash of teeth and tongue that some time ago, far from now, knew only how to consume and now they lap and bite and feed. Pickles kisses Jimi like he’ll never have another drink in his goddamn life. What could compare to this, this fucking – ambrosia on his tongue? Jimi’s hands fist in his shirt to hold him close and her body heat makes stars explode behind his eyes. Sparks fly from her lips to ignite a flame in his belly and he just knows he’s going to fucking combust. He only breaks the kiss when the burning in his lungs becomes too much and he gets light-headed. Even so, he licks his lips, swallows as though to imbibe every little taste of Jimi that he can. “I… shit.” “Mmhm,” Jimi agrees, just as eloquent and breathless. There’s thunder in his ears, he easily finds the rhythm in the pulse. That’s all it was, wasn’t it? A beat he had to map out. A song he has to write. He’s been searching for the melody all this time and there it was. It’s in her, painter, precious, and all they gotta do is lay the track. Harmonize. He pulls her to him again, one hand burying in the curls at the back of her head to brace her for his kiss. The other hand claws at her back like if he can just get her close enough he can smash her into his pounding heart and make it stop. Just kill him already because he’s dying.

The Waves dance around and through them and they chose to go under, they chose this, and emerged with this insatiable need to be inside of each other. He has no other word for this hunger, this feeling, this absolute loss of self as he became they and his senses burst beyond comprehension into… A sixth sense. The sixth way. Rise above the shell and partake of it anew. The Body.

[Soft OTP Prompts]

#my writing #pickles the drummer #metalocalypse #jamila calabash #mtl oc #picklejam #mmm gotta up the eldritch business in this one #paint the sky #ask meme

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