#The Wonderful Widow of 18 Springs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mir-osik · 2 years

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Magic is Here for You and Me - 1

Fandom: Triple Frontier Pairing: Frankie Morales x Fem!Reader Summary: While on vacation with his friends and daughter, a series of unexpected encounters makes Frankie wonder if 'happily ever after' isn't just for fairytales. Wordcount: 12.9k (Don’t look at me LOL) Rating: 18+ Minors DNI (Mostly soft given the nature of the fic, but there will be some spice at some point so just want to set my boundaries now :)) Warnings: children (Charlotte and her relationships with Frankie and the other guys feature heavily in this story so just in case kids aren’t your thing), widower!Frankie, brief mention of death post-pregnancy, mentions of grief, shorter-than-Frankie reader, eventual smut. The TF boys deserve their own warning. Read this if you like: meet-cutes, repeated chance encounters, found family dynamics, three four men and a baby, match-making friends, tooth-rotting fluff, Disney World, vacation romances, and hot men being soft men.

Author’s Note: Takes place some years after the events of TF, there’s a minor discrepancy in when Charlotte was born, but it never comes up in the plot so we’re just going to suspend canon for it :) This is a wholly self-indulgent series and I know it won’t be for everyone. I spent a week at Disney World and saw so many hilarious interactions with children and their dads and ended up being super inspired to create an entire ‘The TF boys take Frankie’s kid to Disney World every year for her birthday’ fic and here we are! So this one’s for my Disney bishes who wish they could meet a Frankie Morales at Disney World :) Thank you in advance if you check this out, it’s my first reader fic and Pedro character fic, and I hope you enjoy it! The title is part of a lyric from the song that plays during the current fireworks show at Magic Kingdom. P.S. Huge shoutout to Ren over at the-ginger-hedge-witch for letting me bother her with all my questions about posting reader fic, warnings, platforms and the like! She’s a gem!

Benny’s Disney World Itinerary: Chapter 1: Disney Springs Chapter 2: Epcot (7/29) Chapter 3: Animal Kingdom Chapter 4: Rest & Recovery Part 1 Chapter 5: Hollywood Studios Chapter 6: Magic Kingdom Chapter 7: Rest & Recovery Part 2 Chapter 8: Epilogue

Disney Springs

Benny has vacation planning for Charlotte Morales’ Disney World Birthday Extravaganza™ pretty much down to a science now, and thank god for it considering how disastrous the first year had been. He’d made the rookie mistake of cramming too much into too short a trip, and had grossly underestimated how much sleeping an infant actually did.

And how cranky four grown men could get, even at the happiest place on earth.

He’s picked up a trick or two over the last few years, like knowing how to cushion for a growing child’s unpredictable moods and naptime schedule, and accounting for the guys’ limits for theme parks and crowds. The end result has evolved into a rather solid itinerary.

The first day in Orlando is easy, it’s always Frankie, Charlotte, and her honorary uncles checking into their resort by late afternoon. After settling in, they head over to Disney Springs — Disney World’s special retail, dining, and entertainment venue — for dinner and a little shopping. The days following are meant for the parks, with a rest day in the middle and one at the end of the trip before the flight home.

If you ask Frankie, the week is a good length of time to get the most out of not just the parks, but the vacation itself. Benny’s figured out the perfect balance of doing stuff and actually relaxing, and there’s no better remedy for all of the stress and responsibility of work and being a single dad, than having the opportunity to do absolutely nothing.

They’re staying at Port Orleans Riverside this time, a first for them, and even he has to admit that Benny did well choosing a resort this year. The lobby is massive, the very picture of extravagance with its opulent period rugs and cherry wood furniture. Walking inside is like being transported directly back in time; he keeps expecting sharply dressed men with top hats and pocket watches tucked into their vests to round the corners, or to see women wearing hoop skirt gowns strolling across the floor, parasols clutched in hand.

It’s silly, because they’re on vacation, but he almost feels underdressed in the faded jeans, gray t-shirt and flip flops he’d worn for the flight. Will lets out a low whistle beside him and Frankie knows without looking that he is sharing the same sentiment as he takes everything in.

Benny comes up behind them, slinging his arms around their shoulders and leaning against them with his sunglasses pushed down to the tip of his nose. The posture of a man entirely pleased with himself.

“Go on, you can say it.”

“Say what?” Frankie asks, feigning ignorance and fighting back the little twitch of the corners of his mouth.

“That I’m amazing.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Will replies, eyes dancing with mirth.

Benny is quick, tightening his arm around Will’s neck and snagging him in a playful chokehold. “Are you kidding me? For this? At the rate we got? I’ll remember that next year when I get rooms at the Grand Floridian and your wallet weeps, William.”

Will ducks, twisting out of his brother’s grip and shoving at his shoulder lightly. He chuckles, readjusting the duffle bag on his shoulder and holding his hand up to catch the fist Benny swings in jest in his direction.

Frankie has to give credit where credit is due, though, and he taps the bill of Benny’s hat. “You did good, Ben.”

“Finally, someone who appreciates my efforts. Thank you, Fish.”

“I can’t work under these conditions!” Santiago calls, interrupting them. He’s several feet ahead, trying to wheel his two large suitcases and wrangle Charlotte at the same time. “Let’s go, you slowpokes!”

“Slowpokes! Slowpokes!” she giggles.

She looks like she’s doing her best to either pull Santi towards the General Store or escape the hold he’s got on her hand, Frankie can’t tell which. With Charlotte, it could be either or both.

“Why does he need two suitcases?” Will wonders, staring after them. “We’re only here for a week.”

“I’m actually concerned he only has two,” Benny mutters out the side of his mouth.

Frankie nudges him with his elbow. “What you really need to be concerned about is how long it’s going to take him to unpack.”

Will barks out a laugh at that while Benny throws his head back on an aggravated groan.

“Fucking shit,” he grumbles.

“Come on you, knuckleheads!”

“Yeah, knuckleheads!”

“Hey, watch that mouth, kid,” Frankie warns Charlotte. He gives Benny a sympathetic pat on the cheek before heading towards the check-in line to join her and Santiago.

He notes that the lobby’s ceiling is high and only challenged in grandeur by a large, gleaming chandelier that hangs in the center of it. Despite the hour and the current illuminated state of the lobby, it glows warmly with light. His gaze moves to the white pillars lining the inner part of the floor, eyes tracing the ornate gold accents at the top and the thin lines of gold running down around the columns. Above the pillars, on the architrave, are the names of various Louisiana cities done up in elegant, capitalized letters that he can’t help but read while they wait.

Perhaps the most notable design feature, though, resides even further up, where decorative arch panels hide Mickey-shaped heads in plain sight. He makes sure to point them out to Charlotte, hoisting her up onto his hip when she reaches for him so she can get a better look. The way her face breaks into a grin when she recognizes the iconic silhouette serves as a sweet reminder of why they keep doing these trips.

Adjacent to the lobby entrance, a set of doors leads out onto a pier and a little marina with one dock. They were told that a manmade river runs through the entire resort, connecting it to the Port Orleans French Quarter next door. When they get out there, he sees that its waters are murky and dark, the sunlight catching on the rippling surface and making it glimmer a mysterious blue-black hue.

Automatically, his eyes do a quick scan for gators. It’s unlikely they’ll see any; he knows the resorts have gotten really good about keeping their properties free of them, but he figures it couldn’t hurt just to be safe. He’s been out of active duty for years now, but the instinct to assess potential threats has never really gone away, especially with a small child around. If anything, having Charlotte has only continued to enhance that particular skill set.

The rest of the views are like a scene out of one of Charlotte’s picture books — cloudless blue skies, grassy riverbanks, trees everywhere. Pretty in all its greenness, magical in its tranquility. Impressive, Frankie thinks, and picture perfect.

As if to prove his point, a very large family stops off on one of the bridges above the river, cellphones at the ready. The chaos of attempting to get everyone into frame makes him glad their own group is so small in comparison.

A cool breeze ruffles his hair, drawing his attention to the way it brushes at his cheeks and offsets the heat of the sun. With it, a sugary sweetness permeates the air and has him lifting his nose up for a deeper inhale. The smell is familiar to him — warm, buttery, comforting.

Benny grins at him.

“Beignets,” he sighs, as if the scent alone were enough to satisfy his sweet tooth. He points in the general direction of Riverside’s sister resort. “They’ve got Mickey-shaped ones at French Quarter. We can pop in on Wednesday sometime.”

He tosses a look at Charlotte. “What do you think, Charlie? You want some Mickey beignets?”

“Yeah!” she agrees, nodding enthusiastically.

Frankie’s fairly certain Charlotte has no clue what a beignet is, but he knows that she’s figured out that if her tío Ben is asking, it likely will involve something to her benefit — usually something sweet for them to share.

As they keep making their way down the pier, he glances over to a quaint, brick-red water wheel attached to the end of the main building. He’s never been to the Old South, which is what the resort is meant to mimic, but he’s once again struck by how charmed he is by all the architecture, vegetation and general ambiance of the property.

All the thoughtful little details shouldn’t surprise him. If there’s one thing Disney knows how to do, it’s create an experience.

“Daddy, look!”

Charlie’s little gasp makes his head turn and he catches sight of a cream and blue ferry boat chugging slowly into port. It reminds him that the river serves an additional purpose: providing a water taxi service to Disney Springs. Their resort is the only one with that specific perk, a fact the front desk clerk had made it a point to boast about.

A fact that’s proven to be of extreme interest to Charlotte. She’s already begging for them to take it when they go later, her “Please, please, please, please” combined with her big puppy-dog eyes leaving Frankie and the boys little room to argue or deny her request.

Frankie sighs exaggeratedly, matching her smile and poking at the dimple in her cheek. The twin to his.

“If we must,” he says.

“Yes, Daddy, we must,” she echoes, her serious tone negated by the way she jumps up and down excitedly. “Right, Tío Will?” He’s the closest in proximity to her, so his validation is naturally required.

“That’s right, French Fry, you’re the birthday girl,” Will nods indulgently.

Charlotte catches one of Will’s hands, pleased by his answer. She keeps chattering absentmindedly at him while they walk — pointing out trees and the birds she spots in them, asking if alligators live in the river, when they can go to the pool, and if she can have a Mickey waffle for dinner.

Will is unbothered by her chattiness, he’s got patience for her in spades and is always attentive like she has the most important things to say. Even when it takes her a hundred years to get a sentence out or she repeats the same thing ten times. Frankie shakes his head in amusement, listening in on their conversation while he wheels his and Charlie’s suitcases after them.

The wood beneath their feet soon turns to pavement and rustic-looking buildings with tin roofs begin to come into view. Many of them are tucked off the main walkway, along more winding paths. They’re staying on the bayou side of the resort, so the swamp vibes are accentuated by bald cypress trees hanging over decorative ponds between the buildings.

It wouldn’t be a Disney World trip if they didn’t get lost on at least one wrong turn on the way to the rooms. Especially with Santiago and Benny insisting they each are reading the resort maps more correctly than the other.

“Ben, I’m looking at the map right here, I’m telling you, we have to go that way.”

“Listen old man, I’m looking at the map too and I’m telling you, it’s this way!”

“Can we go over here?” Charlotte asks innocently, smiling up at their scowls and making Will reach around to cover her mouth with his hand, effectively silencing her before she can get herself into any more trouble.

Settling in is a relatively easy endeavor once they finally get to where they need to be, the only one who ever gives them any trouble is Santi. He has a habit of unpacking his suitcase in its entirety in preparation for the week, and it tends to take an hour longer than Benny has the attention span for. With two suitcases this year, Frankie imagines it’ll be twice that.

Once Benny shoves his luggage into the corner of his own room — never to be opened until he’s rushing to get ready the next day — he meanders over to Santi’s to lay face down, spread-eagle on the bed. He lets his displeasure loose, whining into the mattress while the other man organizes his things.

“I’m hungry,” Benny complains, drawing out the vowels on the second word.

“Ben, you’re a grown-up with a wallet, go to the General Store or the food court and grab a snack.”

“It’s not the same!” he huffs, turning his head to watch Santi neatly stack socks, undergarments, and sleep attire inside the drawers.

“If you help me, this would go faster.”

“I would rather be eaten by the crocodile from Peter Pan.”

“Tick-Tock, Tío Benny!” Charlie chimes in.

She likes to be in there during this process too, giggling as she lays across Benny’s back and listening to Santi explain the benefits of putting things in their proper places while on a trip. It’s the same spiel he’s given since the first one they all did four years ago, but Charlotte doesn’t mind.

Even if she doesn’t always grasp the things he tells her, she likes to listen to him talk. She always has, since she was a baby. Frankie can’t even count the number of times he had called his friend in the middle of the night with a screaming infant in the background. His apology wouldn’t even be halfway out of his mouth before Santi would just simply brush it off.

“Put the baby on the phone, Fish, before she makes herself sick.”

He would tell Charlie stories, drowsily building fantastical worlds about whatever came to mind. Princesses. Puppies. Wizards. Anything and everything. Sometimes he’d recount shenanigans the team used to get up to, stupid shit that had Frankie chuckling quietly with nostalgia. Other times he would sing softly to her, Spanish lullabies his mamá sang to him when he was a kid himself, or Frank Sinatra or Etta James — the kid had an ear for the classics.

There were even nights where Santi would just come over, shuffling in wearing his slippers, pjs and bathrobe. He’d look so haggard, eyes bleary and curls sticking up every which way. Wordlessly, he would take Charlotte from Frankie and sit with her in the rocking chair in the nursery, murmuring to her until she calmed down and they both fell asleep exactly where they were.

So when she still seeks him out, eager for the comfort of his voice even after all this time, Frankie knows he’s more than happy to oblige. Santi smiles at her affectionately, and then resumes his unpacking.

Shirts, light sweaters and weather-appropriate jackets are hung up next, coordinated by color on the wall racks. He brings his own pants hangers, of course, and Benny can’t contain his eye roll when Santi pulls them out of his suitcase. Toiletries follow suit, set on the counter in the bathroom before chargers (yes, multiple) are plugged into the outlet near his nightstand. He places an umbrella on the table in the corner just in case, for unexpected rainy days.

Meanwhile, Frankie and Will usually set aside their suitcases for later so they can catch a cab or an Uber to the closest grocery store. They like to stock up on water instead of paying for the inflated prices in the parks, plus Will always insists on grabbing some healthier snack options for Charlie to munch on, rather than giving her park food all day.

By the time they make it back, drop off their haul, and change for dinner, Benny’s dragging Santi out of the room by headlock. The ruckus is only worsened by Charlie latching herself onto Santi’s leg koala-style.

“Mutiny!” Benny yells.

“Mutiny!” Charlie repeats, laughing like a hyena. “Hi, Daddy! Hi, Tío Will! Tío Santi’s our prisoner and we’re pirates of the Carry-bean!”

“Good job, French Fry,” Will grins, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels as he surveys the scene and her handiwork. “Don’t be afraid to use your teeth either, just like I taught you.”

Santi scowls at Will. “Carlota Xiomara Morales, do not bite me! And it’s Caribbean!”

Frankie rolls his eyes at them. There isn’t any heat behind the gesture, but he knows he needs to put an end to this chaos now, otherwise Santi will take Benny to the ground and they’ll wrestle right past their dinner reservation. He makes a show of grabbing Charlie around the waist and throwing her over his shoulder.

“Alright, ye scallywags, it’s time to set sail.”

She giggles some more, kicking her feet while she hangs upside down. It’s an old routine, one she very much delights in, but it gets the point across and the guys all fall in line behind them, their easy banter and laughter following him and Charlotte all the way to the docks.

When they arrive at the venue, it becomes apparent very fast that they’ve picked a busy night to head out there. Even from the docks, he can tell that the music normally playing over the speakers is muffled by the chatter of the crowd. There’s so many people, it almost feels like a park in and of itself.

If he had known it was going to be this lively, he might have suggested staying in for the evening and just ordering a pizza, but he knows the first night dinner is the only opportunity he’ll have to acclimate to the crowds and energy unique to Disney World. The frazzled parents and rowdy children, the bright-eyed first-timers and the seasoned annual pass holders, the obscenely long waits for everything — it can be a lot at times, and he always prefers to ease his way into the trip rather than diving in headfirst.

After they disembark, Frankie takes a second to bundle Charlie into a Haunted Mansion sweater, a thoughtful early birthday gift from Will’s best friend, Jasmine. It’s bright purple with the hitchhiking ghosts screen printed on the front in black and Charlotte absolutely loves it. He already has his doubts that he’ll be able to get her to wear anything else the rest of the week.

She holds her arms up when he’s finished, silently asking to be picked up, and it makes his heart ache sweetly in his chest. He knows these moments will fade away soon enough, so he always makes it a point to treasure them at every opportunity.

He scoops her into his arms and settles her against his hip, pressing his lips absentmindedly to her cheek. She reaches up to rub at the spot where he kissed her, where his scruff likely tickled, and he smiles at the way her nose scrunches up at him.

“Can I have a cookie now?” she asks, giving him that doe-eyed look she knows he can’t resist.

“If you finish your dinner.”

They’re working on compromising.

“Okay,” she sighs, and her pout looks so much like his, he wants to laugh.

“Okay,” he agrees, then, whispering conspiratorially, “But I bet you could get your tío Santi to get you that Little Mermaid bubble wand over there.”

He tilts his head towards the shop they’re coming up on and Charlie’s eyes light up like the Grinch before he steals Christmas. She wiggles to get down and Frankie chuckles softly as he watches her skip over to Santiago. Santi’s head tips towards her when she approaches, and from the smile on his face, Frankie knows he’s already wrapped around Charlotte’s finger before her hand even slips into his.

They're still early for their reservation at the restaurant that Will’s picked, so once they’ve secured Charlie’s bubble wand, they continue taking their time heading over there. The shops haven’t changed too much over the years, but there’s several they still frequent every visit. It doesn’t take long for Frankie’s mood to shift. It’s easy to be affected by that buzz in the air, the kind that only Disney magic can create, and he can’t deny that he’s already starting to unwind and enjoy himself.

Benny’s had a lot of idiotic ideas in his life, but scheduling that surprise first trip none of them had wanted to go on, forcing them to do it anyway, and turning it into an annual thing is definitely one of his better ones.

By the time dinner finally rolls around, Frankie is famished. Their group ends up in the outdoor seating area of an Irish restaurant and pub called, ‘Ragland Road.’ The table is a little cozy for five, making it difficult to get all the plates situated; he keeps knocking elbows with Will and confusing his and Santi’s drinks, but all of that is easy to ignore when the atmosphere is so homey and comfortable.

There’s a live band in the middle of a set playing a song he doesn’t know. The beat is cheerful in a folkish, knee-slapping way, and his lack of familiarity doesn’t stop him from tapping his foot along while he eats. When he catches Charlie wiggle-dancing in her seat as she takes a bite of potato cake Santi offers to her, he smiles at the sight.

The food is delicious and judging by the nearly finished state of the other plates around the table, the others would agree. Even Charlotte eats most of her meal, a huge feat to say the least, and he deems it another win for the Miller brothers. Between the resort and the restaurant, the trip is off to a great start.

Early into the evening, one of the staff had turned on the heat lamps strategically placed between tables, helping to ward off the nighttime chill. Frankie shed his jacket a while ago, having been warmed further by his meal and the beer he had as an accompaniment. He’s pushed his chair back a little, too, sliding down his seat so he can lean back and stretch his legs, take the pressure off his stomach.

He can tell the day’s catching up to him. Travel fatigue, in combination with being full and content, begins to weigh on his shoulders and make his mind feel a little sluggish, like he’s watching everything from behind a fog.

A bed sounds nice, and so does sleep for that matter, but the guys are chatty tonight and many years of experience has taught him that they’ve got at least another hour in them before calling it a day. He doesn’t mind too much; he’s happy just to sit and listen to them trade stories and laughs over another round of drinks.

They reminisce about the old days and catch up on life, not an unusual occurrence for them as they do this already at least once a week. The result of a camaraderie forged in military service and a brotherhood kept long after retirement.

There are dinners and weekend BBQs, random visits throughout the week. Hell, even game nights if Benny can get them drunk enough. Sometimes evenings at the local dive bar, so long as Frankie can find a sitter. Still, despite the regular meetups, it’s nice to be in a different setting and away from the ‘everyday’ of their lives for once.

“Daddy, I want to go on the balloon ride!”

Charlotte’s voice cuts through his thoughts, reminding him of the hot air balloon they’d seen earlier on their way to the restaurant. It’s been a number of years that they’ve been coming out here, but they have yet to actually ride it.

“Sorry, kid,” Santi tells her, tugging playfully on one of her curls. “The balloon ride is already closed. How about we finish coloring-”

“I don’t want to color anymore!”

Her pitch is one octave away from tantrum levels and Frankie frowns.

“Charlotte.”

She pauses for a second, contemplates the warning tone in his voice and knows she’s toeing quite closely to a reprimand. She ends up huffing anyway, “Well, I don’t!”

It surprises him, the way she snaps back, and it takes him a second to regroup.

“Alright,” he replies slowly, calmly. “That’s fine. You don’t have to color anymore if you don’t want to. But we can say that without yelling at people, okay?”

“That right, French Fry,” Will chimes in. “Sometimes if you yell at people, it can hurt their feelings, and you don’t want to hurt Santi’s feelings, do you?”

She eyes the both of them stubbornly, bottom lip poking out in a pout. He can see the way her mind is weighing out the repercussions of whatever she decides to say next and it simultaneously terrifies him and fills him with so much pride witnessing how clever and astute she is even at her young age. Eventually she shakes her head and Frankie runs his hand soothingly down her hair.

“I bet Santi would feel better if you said ‘sorry’ to him. What do you think?”

Charlotte turns her head towards Santiago, who is doing a terrible job of trying to conceal his smile. He breaks as soon as she lifts her arms and wraps them around his neck, leaning down to draw her tighter against him.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

“For?” Frankie prompts.

“For yelling.”

Santi presses a kiss to her temple and pats her comfortingly on the back. “You’re alright, pescadito. Thank you for apologizing, that’s very good manners.”

She’s tired, he mouths to Frankie, resting his cheek on her head when she keeps close.

He gets it, travel days are difficult enough as it is for regular adults and he imagines they’re even worse for tiny humans. Plus, there’s only so much coloring a kid can do on their placemat before they start getting antsy. But now that she’s gotten a little older and her attention span has gotten shorter, he’s started to notice that his sweet little girl is becoming a bit of a pint-sized demon.

When Charlie peeks out from her hiding spot in Santi’s neck, Benny beckons her over to him with a few crooks of his finger.

“Carlota, mi tesoro,” he sing-songs.

Frankie smiles at that. Benny’s accent is terrible beyond belief, but Frankie appreciates the effort he and Will have been putting in to learn Spanish in their free time.

Charlotte’s sad little pout transforms almost immediately as her tío Ben takes her hand. He gets up to twirl her beside the stage with the band’s latest tune playing in the background. Out of all of them, Benny’s always been the best at being able to redirect an impending meltdown and getting some of that energy out. Probably because he has it in equal measure.

The knot loosens in his chest with the situation effectively diffused. Her tantrums don’t happen all the time, thankfully, but when they do, they’re definitely not fun for either of them. While he’s doing his best to parent her through this new stage in her development, he’s finding it more challenging than he anticipated.

He’s never been more grateful that he’s got extra sets of hands to help him with Charlotte than during moments like these with the guys having his back. Teaching her, guiding her, loving her as deeply as he does. Loving her as if she were their own. It truly takes a village.

Frankie grins watching Benny and Charlotte together. Her dark hair fans out around her as she spins under his arm again, and the dimple in her cheek deepening with her smile is only further sweetened by her joy. He can feel his heart light up with her bright peals of laughter and he hopes that she always feels like this: carefree, happy, cherished. That’s all he could ever want for her.

As the night winds down, and Charlotte’s energy finally begins to wane, she climbs into Frankie’s lap to snuggle into his chest. Her little cheek presses right over his heart and the easy way she makes herself comfortable against him makes him sigh happily. He’s only half-listening to Santi chat about a woman he met at a bar recently. It’s decidedly inappropriate conversation for a five year-old anyway, so he’s glad Charlie picked that moment to fall asleep.

Her breathing evens out despite Benny’s antics and boisterous teasing over Santi’s taste in women. Or rather, the kind of women often attracted to him.

Frankie rests his hand reflexively over the back of his daughter’s head when Benny laughs again. The gesture soothes him as much as it’s meant to soothe her and keep her with her dreams.

When he glances up, he catches Will watching them, the other man’s smile soft around his eyes. Will leans forward slightly, lifting his hand to rub his thumb over a smear of chocolate on Charlie’s cheek.

Frankie brushes a kiss across her brow, taking in the sight of the guys around the table. They’ve been just this way hundreds of times before, hundreds more since Charlotte had come into their lives. It’s an image that is comforting in its familiarity, safe in its constancy, and he feels incredibly blessed to be celebrating another year of his daughter’s life in her favorite place, with all her favorite people. Mainly because they’re his too.

“One hundred dollars she tells you she misses you before the week is up,” Benny tells Santi, pointing a finger at him.

“She’s not like that,” Santi argues, throwing one of the leftover fries from Charlotte’s plate at his head.

Benny ducks out of the way at the last second but Santi is anticipating him and reaches over to flick his finger against Benny’s forehead when his lean puts him within striking distance. Benny swears under his breath, swatting Santi’s hand away playfully.

“She’s sweet,” Santi continues. “But she’s got her own things going on, you know? And thank god for that.”

“I don’t know, man, you’ve got a history.”

“What do you mean, ‘a history?’ A history of what, Ben?” Santi doesn’t snap, but his eyebrows pinch together with the question.

Benny looks to Will and Frankie for back-up, a habit ingrained from their days in the field, and gestures at Santi.

Frankie merely shakes his head and laughs quietly. “Ohh, no, no, no, no. Nope. I’m staying out of this one.”

Will shrugs beside him, and Frankie’s brow lifts in surprise as their eyes meet. It’s obvious that Will’s feeling loose-tongued tonight, and unafraid of the consequences; his smirk is all mirth as he raises his beer to his mouth for another sip.

“What Ben’s trying to say is that you’ve got a history, Pope…” Will claps Benny on the back as if to reiterate the point. “Of dating stage five clingers.”

Santi is unfazed by that assessment, however, and he doesn’t miss a beat as he leans back and rests his hands on the back of his head. “Well, when the dick is just that good-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Frankie’s response is immediate and protesting as he covers Charlie’s ear with one of his hands.

Will chokes on his beer, moving forward to let the fizzy liquid drip down onto the floor instead of all over him while he laughs through a coughing fit. Frankie, ever in dad mode, holds out a napkin to him with his free hand, glaring at Santi all the while. Benny just groans, dunking his fingers in his water glass before shaking the droplets at the older man.

“Hey, man,” Frankie chastises. “This is a family establishment!”

“Family establishment!” Santi says, his eyes positively gleaming. He shifts and holds his hand out towards Charlie. “She’s asleep! She’s not gonna know!”

“Yeah, but the kids at the next table have ears, pendejo, and so do their parents!”

Frankie has a couple more choice words for him in Spanish that make Santi snort with laughter but he holds his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, alright, alright. For the sake of little ears, we’ll keep it clean.”

It takes them another minute to all settle down again, the last bits of jesting and laughter filling the air. Once they do, Santi suddenly turns serious, and his gaze falls to him and Charlie. He nods at Frankie when Frankie’s eyebrow arches up questioningly.

“Hey, what about you, Fish, huh?”

He stills, eyeing his friend carefully. “What about me?”

Santi’s shrug is casual but Frankie knows him better than that.

“You think you’re ever gonna get back out there again?”

“Out where?” He keeps his tone nonchalant, his posture relaxed despite feeling his hands beginning to grow damp.

“We know you’re not that dense, in the dating pool,” Benny speaks up, reaching across Santi to pilfer one of the uneaten pickles off Charlie’s plate and grinning like a pirate.

Frankie wrinkles his nose at that, inhaling deeply while he thinks on his answer. Truthfully, with Charlotte getting older, the thought may have crossed his mind a few times. Albeit very fleetingly and far between.

He reaches up, rubbing at his bottom lip with his thumb and attempting to mask his anxiety behind the casual gesture. “Honestly, I don’t know, man. I’ve been so focused on Charlotte, it hasn’t been a priority.”

Benny whistles lowly in response and Frankie’s eyes drop to the table, his composure threatening to fissure under the combined weight of their attention. His emotional wounds begin to ache at the seams, dull yet insistent despite the many years he’s had to heal, and he wonders if he even ever really did. After his wife’s unexpected and tragic passing, his whole world has been nothing but his little girl and he’s just…never needed more than that. Never allowed himself to look beyond that.

“I mean, it’s fine. We’re doing okay just the two of us, I think.”

“Yeah, but how long has it been? Don’t you have…needs?” Benny wonders, eyebrows arching suggestively.

“Jesus Christ, Ben,” Frankie grimaces, feeling his face warm at the sudden scrutiny of his personal life. “Look, I’m not celibate if that’s what you’re asking!”

Will chucks his crumpled up napkin at Benny’s head. “Why you so interested in Fish’s sex life, huh?”

“Yeah, is your own a little lacking there, Ben?” Santi retorts with a snicker.

Benny, predictably, rises to the occasion, defensive and boasting about his own recent conquests. Frankie’s grateful for the redirection of the conversation, but with the truth laid bare and now at the forefront of his mind, he finds himself distracted from the rest of their heckling.

Sure, there’s been the occasional fling here and there, some one night stands just to scratch the itch, but nothing ever serious, and certainly not serious enough to disrupt Charlie’s life with.

Besides, Frankie’s grown quite comfortably into this version of his life without romantic love. He’d had to pivot in a way he’d never imagined, from husband and new father in one breath, to widower and single dad in the next. His entire world had plunged into a tailspin, and he’d nearly lost himself in the turbulent spiral of his shock and incomprehensible grief.

There had been many days where he just didn’t know how he was going to make it, where trying to balance the loss of her with raising their newborn child was too much to bear. She was his match, the love of his life, his partner in every way, and the abrupt absence of her had been debilitating, his heartbreak suffocating. He could never seem to catch his breath, choking on the air trapped in his lungs until they started to burn, until they felt near exploding, and even then, simply enduring.

Anything could set him off: seeing her toothbrush in the holder next to his, realizing he poured two cups of coffee in the morning instead of one, her favorite song on the radio. Even Charlotte smiling for the first time. That was perhaps the most difficult, all the little things and all the big things she’d missed and would continue to miss where their daughter was concerned.

But even in that darkness, even with all that despair, the light had always been Charlotte. She could steady him with a look, ground him with the grasp of her tiny hand around his finger, soothe him by simply needing him in the ways that infants need someone to care for them. To be fed, changed, held, loved.

And so he did.

And bit by bit she’d forced him to piece the broken shards of himself together. It hadn’t been easy and some of the pieces never really fit back properly, the remaining shapes made too small by his unending pain or too big by his lingering rage, but what had remained of himself he’d simply given wholly to her. He’d endeavored to be the kind of father she deserved, the kind of man her mother would have been proud of.

Some days it almost felt wrong to keep living the way that they had, to keep having those little slivers of happiness — her first steps, her first birthday, her first word (“dada”) — when half of Frankie’s heart was missing. He knows that’s what she would have wanted, but it never made it any easier.

There’s a bittersweet ache in his chest now, soothed only mildly by their daughter’s weight against him. He rarely speaks her name aloud anymore, but he still thinks of her everyday.

Time has stolen so much from him, though. It’s just��the shape of her in his memory now. An image no longer as crisp or clear as it once had been, the tangibility of her — her smell, her touch, her voice — all things he can barely remember anymore. But she still exists in other ways.

Snapshot moments in his mind, seconds of the life they once shared. Her smile the first time he tried to flirt with her. Her eyes welling with tears when he slipped her wedding band onto her finger. The way her nose crinkled when she laughed too hard. How pretty she looked in his t-shirts with her lips kiss-swollen and hair all mussed from his fingers.

She hated folding clothes even though she didn’t mind washing them.

She liked paperbacks over hardcovers, but disliked creased spines.

She played Sudoku like a champ.

She used to order onion rings as the side with her burger despite preferring fries because he liked onion rings more. His own were never enough, and he didn’t figure that out until after she was gone.

He thinks back to Santi’s question again, turning it over and over in his mind. The answer remains elusive, and perhaps it always would be. But that’s probably for the best.

He’s already experienced a big, big love once, and maybe once is all he gets. Maybe once will just have to be enough.

It would save him some disappointment, at least. Preemptively stave off any potential heartbreak — not just his, but Charlie’s as well. He couldn’t put them through something like that again. Not after everything they’ve been through.

He glances around at the table again, rubbing a hand over Charlie’s back. He’s not even sure what the guys are talking about anymore, but their laughter feels like a salve for his reopened wounds. So does Charlotte’s quiet snores.

And if this is all he gets for the rest of his life, this brotherhood, this camaraderie and family, and the generous love of his kid…he could be okay with that, he thinks.

Later, as they’re headed back to the resort for the night, Santi elbows him lightly in the ribs to get his attention and he turns his head towards his friend.

“Hey, about earlier,” Santi says quietly, just between the two of them. “Sorry if we overstepped.”

Frankie shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, Pope, it’s fine.”

“For what it’s worth, Fish, you and that kid deserve the world, and whatever that means for you, whatever that looks like, we’re always gonna have your back.”

“But?”

“What do you mean ‘but,’ there’s no ‘but.’”

“With you, Pope, there is always a ‘but,’” he smiles.

Santi rolls his eyes at him. “Alright, but…”

He trails off, inhaling deeply. Instinctively Frankie braces for the blow.

“You deserve a second chance at love. Juliana would want that for you.”

Santi shrugs then, clapping him lightly on the back. The gesture is meant to be casual, but Frankie feels the pressure of it all the same, just as he feels the heaviness of hearing Juliana’s name spoken out loud. A punch to the gut that has his hold tightening around Charlotte’s small frame.

“You’re a good dad and a good man, and some women find you easy on the eyes, though I can’t imagine why-”

Frankie reaches out with his fist, knocking Santiago lightly against his jaw and making him laugh as he maneuvers out of reach.

“I’m just saying, you’ve got a lot of stuff going for you still. It couldn’t hurt to see what’s out there! You might be surprised.”

Frankie hums noncommittally at the advice, adjusting his daughter in his arms as they approach the buses meant to shuttle them back to the resort.

“Yeah, maybe someday,” he mumbles, more for Santi’s benefit than his.

But he couldn’t have known that maybe that day was closer than he realized.

You love Disney World, truly, you do. But it’s almost criminal that there’s this many people at Disney Springs on a Monday night. Particularly during what should have been one of the least busiest weeks to go. It’s well after the holiday rush of Christmas and New Year’s but it doesn’t appear like everyone’s gotten the memo.

Bus after bus comes to take people back to their resorts and your little group of four frustratingly continues to end up on none of them. The line is moving, though. You can tell simply because eventually you’ll realize you’re in a different place in it than you were ten minutes ago.

Closer to the front, but somehow still not close enough to get on an actual shuttle. It imitates a park ride wait so perfectly, like an adult version of ‘Are we there yet?’ except you are both the impatient child and the irritated parent.

Disney magic at its finest.

“Is there a single rider option for this?” Your best friend, Taylor, mutters under her breath from her place behind you.

The question makes your mouth twitch at the corners, but as another bus pulls away from the curb, and another round of disappointed sighs and quiet grumbling goes up through the crowd, you can’t help but agree with the sentiment. At this point, you wouldn’t mind standing so long as you actually get back to the resort soon. Tomorrow is your first day in the parks and you and your friends are all eager to shower the day off before going to bed and resting up.

There’s little else to do while you wait for the next ride so you reach into your bag for your phone to check the time. You have to plan for tomorrow, calculate exactly how many hours you have until you have to get up. The number determines your sleep schedule and whether you do the long or shortened version of your nighttime routine, especially because you still have to decide on an outfit and allot time for getting ready in the morning. Oh, and making a coffee and breakfast run.

Your fingers dig around inside the purse, brushing against crumpled receipts, a tube of lip balm, and a small bottle of hand sanitizer before you frown.

Huh. That’s weird.

You grasp the bag, pulling it further in front of you so you can actually see while you’re rifling through it. Every item you know to be in there is mentally checked off as you touch each one: wallet, passport, some loose change from when you paid cash for a water bottle at the airport convenience store, dinner and shopping receipts, lip balm, sanitizer.

Everything is all accounted for; everything, that is, except your phone.

“Shit,” you mutter.

The panic hits you quick and sharp. You try to tamper the feeling down but it’s too late, you’re already on edge and the way your stomach clenches tells you that you’re spiraling fast. This is the very last thing you need on the first day of your trip, your mind racing with thoughts of fraudulent charges, emptied bank accounts, and scam emails being sent to your entire address book.

And what the hell are you going to do if you need to have all your cards canceled while you’re out here?

One of your other friends, Sasha, gives you a quizzical look as you start patting yourself down. Your movements are frantic, hands flitting between your jacket pockets, jean pockets and back on a second pass just to be sure.

“You okay?” she wonders, her voice concerned.

Your eyes flit downwards in a frenzied scan across the pavement as you search between people’s feet on the off-chance you may have simply dropped it. But then in your periphery you catch sight of a young boy just as he drops a piece of chocolate. It lands by his shoe and he’s quick to lean down for it, but his mother’s reflexes are quicker. She grabs onto his arm before he can take it back and attempt to put it in his mouth.

Shit. The Ganachery.

You can see it so clearly in your mind, how you’d been taking photos of the chocolate in the displays before setting your phone down on the counter when one of the employees came by and offered a sample. Absentminded and careless and entirely your mistake.

“I left my phone at The Ganachery,” you sigh, the sound frustrated and grouchy as your fingers press into your temple where you can feel a headache starting to brew.

“What?” Taylor leans over your shoulder, her ears ever sharp. Automatically, her gaze drops to the ground as well. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I don’t have it.”

“You checked your pockets? What about your jacket? Your bag?”

She means well, logically you know this, but there’s nothing more irritating when you’re on the verge of a minor crisis than someone trying to tell you to do the things you’ve already done. Another agitated sigh escapes between your lips.

“I have to go back,” you announce, wasting no time unclipping one of the ropes helping to designate the boarding line for the buses so you can slip out of line.

Reese, the fourth in your friend group, pokes her head out from behind Sasha’s. Her phone already tucked to her ear, no doubt attempting to call yours.

“I’ll go with you, so you don’t have to be alone on the way back.”

You wave her off. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll be quick. I’ll meet y’all back in the room!”

But Reese is insistent, saying your name in protest.

“Seriously, it’s okay! Just save me some hot water!” you tease, hoping your easy tone placates her.

She cups her hands around her mouth so her voice carries and you don’t miss the instruction. “Fine, but text when you find it and are on your way back!”

You give her a thumbs up before you turn, speed walking out of sight and back into Disney Springs. In all the years that you’ve been coming out here, you’ve never lost anything once, let alone something as important as your phone. It’s hard not to beat yourself up over it, your anxiety a heavy weight in your stomach as you make your way against the flow of traffic.

There’s a startled ‘Oof!’ that reaches your ears when you inadvertently bump into someone, but it does little to slow you down. All you can manage is a hurried ‘Sorry!’ while you breeze by. You miss the way they turn after you when you go, only left with the vague sense that you’d run into some guy in a hat holding a kid. Oh well, fingers crossed he’d at least heard your apology.

Your frayed nerves only begin to calm once the shop’s sign finally comes into view, and it pushes you to jog the last few steps, bursting through the double door entrance in dramatic fashion. The irresistible scent of sweetened cocoa slams into you, but it’s the looks from the employees and other customers that stop you in your tracks.

“Hi,” you greet the person behind the register, the word breezy and rushed as it trips out of your mouth. You recognize them, but aren’t sure if they recognize you. “Sorry, I was just in here about fifteen minutes ago with my friends. Did you happen to find a-”

“Phone?” The device is held up in their hand with a cheerful smile.

“Yes. Thank you so much!” Your shoulders sag with immediate relief. “You’re a lifesaver!”

“No problem, I was hoping you’d notice before you went back to your resort. Your friend called to let us know you were on your way to grab it.”

You cringe with mild embarrassment while you approach the register and your phone gets passed to you. Of course Reese did, she is notorious for being the ‘Mom friend’ of the group.

“Have a good night!” they say cheerfully, waving goodbye at you.

With your phone safely clutched to your chest, you back into one of the doors and push it open with your hip to leave. Now that you’ve caught your breath and the adrenaline is slowly working its way out of your system, your walk back to the shuttles is at a much more leisurely pace.

You notice the crowd has thinned out some since you had come through just minutes before, and that only the last stragglers looking to close out Disney Springs remain. You figure they’re staying to either make the night last just a little longer or wait for a less cramped ride back to their resorts. If you weren’t looking to catch some extra sleep, you might have entertained the latter yourself.

To your surprise, the boarding area for the Port Orleans resorts is much less crowded than when you had left earlier too. After you’ve shuffled your way back into line, you predict that the likelihood of you actually getting to sit for the ride back is looking pretty good, and though that comfort is merely just a little thing, sometimes the little things make all the difference.

You pick a seat near the front as you enter, planning ahead for easy access to an exit when it’s time to get off later, and busy yourself with your phone while you wait for other passengers to board and settle in.

The group chat is popping, 67 messages waiting for you as indicated by the red bubble on the top corner of your app. It’s mostly the other girls sharing photos from the day, with the occasional snarky text about Sasha’s horrible photography skills and Taylor’s obsession with food aesthetic photos.

You skim the rest of the messages, making a mental note to add your own photos later and to look at and save all the others at some point. At the bottom, Reese’s ‘Are you on your way back?’ is waiting for you and you let them know that you’re on the bus now and will be at the resort soon. A series of messages come in rapid-fire succession.

Sasha Vasiliev Be safe!

Reese Fraser Don’t talk to strangers!

Taylor Crawford Absolutely talk to strangers if they’re cute!

You shake your head at their antics, but the way your mouth curves up betrays your amusement. You’re just about to respond when a deep voice cuts through your thoughts.

“Guess it’s standing room only.”

It’s honey-sweet and slow as molasses, and when it hits your ears, you glance up without thinking.

Piercing blue eyes the color of seaglass meet your gaze, and then the owner of them smiles. You blink in surprise as you take in the rest of him, as you are caught off guard by his blatant attractiveness. ‘Hollywood Handsome,’ Taylor would say, with his dimpled smile and perfectly disheveled sandy-blonde hair that’s just edging towards brown.

His eyes light up at your expression and you don’t miss the way he gives you a flirtatious once-over.

“Hi,” he greets — all of the charm he can muster in that singular word — and slows his gait as he moves past you.

Oh, here we go.

Your own smile is small, polite, but you don’t say anything back, not wanting to encourage him.

The man behind him claps him on the back, drawing your attention and making you start. He’s older — if the silver woven through his dark hair and beard is any indication — and about half a foot shorter but no less striking.

Although ‘striking’ doesn’t seem to be a big enough word. Not for the classical angles of his face or dimples in his cheeks that have turned to creases with age. Not for his sharp eyes, rich like dark mahogany wood, or the crinkles at the corners of them.

He gives his companion a light push towards the middle of the bus where there’s space to stand.

“Leave the pretty girl alone, Ben,” he says, winking at you.

“What? I was just saying ‘hi,’' Ben replies.

He sounds innocent enough, but you’re not entirely convinced. Apparently, neither is his friend.

“Mmhmm, sure you were.”

After Ben moves as far in as he’s able, he turns and leans against one of the bars flanking the steps to the elevated seats in the back. One of his hands is full of shopping bags, the other slides into one of the pockets of his jeans, and his feet cross at the ankles while he waits for the bus to finish loading. It speaks to his confidence, how comfortable he is in his skin. The kind of man who takes up space not because he can — or should, or wants to — but because he just does.

He never drops his head, his posture, or his gaze for that matter, and as if on cue, it sweeps briefly over to you again. He beams when he catches you watching him and he gives you a little nod in acknowledgement, a little wiggle of his eyebrows with that relaxed smile.

You look away, electing to ignore his easy affection. Connecting with a random guy during vacation isn’t at the top of your priority list, regardless of if it’s just a little harmless flirting. There’s only three f-words you’re here for: food, fun, and friends.

Speaking of friends, a quick scroll through social media shows that the girls have already started posting some of the photos from the group chat. You distract yourself with them, examining each post and liking them as you go.

You’re just about to comment on one when past the side of your phone, you see a man’s boot-clad feet step into the space in front of you. You groan inwardly, preparing to tough out the bus ride with a stranger’s crotch in your face. He doesn’t move, though, keeps his hip to you and you’re grateful that he at least has the manners and decency not to angle himself in your direction. You keep your eyes averted anyway.

“Daddy?” a little girl asks sleepily.

The sound comes from directly above you.

“Yeah, baby?” he murmurs.

“I wanna sit.”

It’s not a whine, but it may as well be.

“Sorry, mijita, we gotta stand for now. Just for a bit, okay?”

“No,” she answers. “I wanna sit.”

Oh, you know that tone. You’ve been around Disney World kids long enough to recognize when a tantrum is impending, and realizing there will be no opportunity for escape due to proximity, you brace yourself for the full force of her inevitable outburst.

“You want me to take her?” you hear another man offer. He’s standing beside him, just to the right of you.

It takes everything in you not to look up and watch the scene unfold. Apart from it being impolite, you can already sense the stress and embarrassment from the dad. The last thing the poor guy needs is another pair of eyes on him.

“No, it’s alright, I’ve got her,” he answers.

He whispers to her in Spanish, too low for you to really hear, but instinctively you know it’s meant to calm her down just by the soothing timbre of his voice.

“Papá!” she grumbles, a few octaves higher now.

“Carlota,” he tsks.

And oh, you know that tone, too.

“There’s no place to sit. I’m sorry but we have to stand. It’s just for fifteen minutes-”

“I’m tired.”

You can make out the exhaustion in her voice as well as the frustration over not getting her way, and you feel for the kid. Big feelings for a little person; though you know not everyone will be as understanding. Or as patient.

That’s the only thing you hate about Disney World’s transportation service. It’s complimentary, yes, and hugely convenient for getting around their massive property, but making people stand and cramming the bus to breathing room only, is a bit excessive and torturous for people to have to endure. Little ones especially.

“I know, Charlotte,” he sighs. “You hang on to me and go back to sleep-”

“I wanna sit now!”

The words explode out of her, sudden and shrill, making the bus go abruptly quiet as all of the air is sucked out of the small space.

And then the waterworks start — deep, howling wails that pierce your ears and go straight to your head. You wince inwardly and take a peek up at her dad.

Your first thought, humiliatingly, is: holy hell because you certainly weren’t expecting the little zing of attraction that jolts down your spine just from the sight of his profile.

Your second thought, more appropriately, is: how can I diffuse this situation?

On a whim, you tap him lightly on the arm while he continues to try to pacify his child. His head jerks at the contact, turning towards your direction with an expression that can only be described as equal parts shame and dread. It looks out of place on his handsome face.

He stills when he sees you, regarding you with his deep, deep brown eyes. There’s a flicker of something in them, too quick for you to really discern. Then his whole demeanor softens apologetically, apprehensively, as if he is expecting a confrontation and dreading it. The fact that this would be his first reaction makes your insides warm with empathy.

“Hi,” you start, beginning to rise from your seat.

He shuffles away to give you a little more space to move, rocking his child all the while. She hasn’t stopped crying so you make sure to raise your voice a little in order to be heard over her.

“Forgive me for eavesdropping but…you’re welcome to have my seat.”

He blinks at you, mouth falling slightly open. “What?”

“It’s not a big deal, I’m happy to stand.”

You give him your most friendly smile and hope your voice sounds cheerful despite its volume. But his head shakes resolutely.

“No, Miss, please, I can’t let you do that-”

“Really, I insist! I mean, we’re about to head out so…” you trail off, gesturing at the bus driver sliding into his own chair.

You smile again — disarming, encouraging. He continues to look horrified at your suggestion, but between his screaming kid, the irritated looks of the other passengers, and the time he doesn’t have to argue properly, there’s really no other option than to do as you’ve offered.

Maneuvering around you is a little bit of an awkward shuffle, bodies bumping and brushing despite the attempts at propriety in such close quarters. You try not to think about how there seems to be so much of him, just…tall, broad, man tangled up in your space. Eventually he gets to where he needs to, and eases down onto the bench.

It’s a tight squeeze for the width of his shoulders between the other two passengers who had been on either side of you, but he manages to make it work. You have the fleeting thought that Taylor would rate him a ‘15/10 Hot Dad’ on that feature alone. Shamelessly, you might be inclined to agree.

At least in the privacy of your mind.

Almost immediately, his daughter’s crying abates. Her sniffles and occasional hiccups are the only remaining evidence of her outburst. She snuggles deeper into his chest, cheek laying over his shoulder, one of her hands clutching the front of his shirt.

She’s a cutie — cherub-cheeked, with curling chestnut-colored hair and a sweet little button-nose. Her eyes match his, and they’re already starting to droop, heavy with sleepiness.

“Thank you,” he says, and you can tell he’s sincere in his gratitude by the intent way he stares up at you and oh boy.

You don’t know how it’s possible to feel a look, but you feel that one. All the way down to your fingers and toes you feel it.

“You’re welcome,” you answer softly, swallowing the lump that’s suddenly formed in your throat.

Without a fussy child between you, distracting you, your attention turns to other things. Like the scruff along the sharp line of his jaw, and the neatly trimmed mustache sitting under a prominent nose. The facial hair’s a good look on him, you think; it saves him from appearing too baby-faced. He’s got a baseball cap on his head that is doing a horrible job of containing all of his wavy brown hair, but that’s a good look on him too.

It’s the eyes that really get you, though — kind and soulful, warm like smoky quartz.

You glance away when your skin starts to tingle, in need of respite from the full-force of his attention. It’s just your luck that his attention is replaced by his companion’s, the one who asked if he needed a hand with his kid earlier. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, rugged.

He has a full beard, hair almost down to his shoulder with half of it pulled back into a messy knot. He’s got a way about him that’s unnervingly intimidating; it contrasts with the gentle smile on his face, the cute braid that starts at his temple and is tucked back into the tie, and you can’t help but stare in bewilderment at him.

It would appear you are four for four on meeting gorgeous men tonight. Must be something in the water.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” you reply back, suddenly shy. He makes you feel like you need to fill the space with something other than his considering look but nothing will come to mind.

“Next stop, Port Orleans!” the driver abruptly calls out, pulling your thoughts away and saving you from continuing your awkward exchange with him.

There’s about a half second lag before the doors all close with a loud hiss and the driver hits the gas, making the bus jerk aggressively away from the curb. You grasp onto the strap dangling above your head as a reflex, but horrifyingly, you have no time to brace yourself.

The sharp movement disrupts your balance and you pitch forward with a sharp gasp — straight into Hot Dad — and the only thing stopping you from smashing your boobs into his face is the grip you manage to get on his shoulder, and his own steadying hand on your hip.

His very large, very strong hand.

You hover over him, so close you can’t help but catch the scent of his cologne — fresh and clean with a little hint of musky sweetness. It makes your head spin, traps the air in your lungs as your heart starts kicking against your ribcage, the harsh thump, thump, thump a resounding echo in your ears.

The edge of the brim of his hat lightly brushes over your cheek when his face tilts up to look at you, and your whole body heats up when your gazes meet again. It’s…strangely intimate, curiously familiar all at once, and that same spark of attraction from earlier unfurls in your stomach, like a flower blooming under the sun’s glowing rays.

It is a reaction your body most certainly has no business having.

“Sorry,” you tell him, the word rushing out of you breathlessly.

Then the lights inside the vehicle go out, abruptly turned off and plunging you into darkness. The blessed safety of it where you’re able to avoid the intensity of his eyes. Still, you know little relief, your heightened sense of touch proving to be the next dilemma to contend with, specifically because you’re still holding onto him.

And he’s still holding onto you.

The singular sensation of the pads of his fingers pressing into your skin through your clothes, knocks you off kilter more than the driver’s heavy foot. You make it a point to pull away.

“You alright?” he asks when you do, voice gruff in a way that makes your cheeks heat and your palms clammy.

Your laugh is airy as it passes between your lips, full of nerves you hope he doesn’t pick up on. “Yeah, I’m good.”

But you notice he doesn’t remove his hand until you’re stable on your feet.

“Sorry,” you repeat, trying to give him some room despite really having none to spare. You angle your body away from him, towards the front of the bus, and grip the strap like a lifeline. Your heartbeat is still thrumming in your head. “And sorry if I step on you or something. I swear these things are a death trap.”

He chuckles at that. “It’s okay, that’s why I’ve got steel-toed boots.”

The joke is lame, but you find yourself smiling at it anyway.

Trying to maintain your equilibrium is the most challenging part of the ride, nothing short of a herculean endeavor, especially with the way the driver takes the turns. You spend the next fifteen minutes obsessively conscious of the way your leg keeps accidentally knocking his knee on every break and acceleration of the bus. Apologies seem a little redundant at this point, though, so you keep them to yourself. But they still weigh heavy on your tongue.

It’s probably the most peculiar experience you’ve ever had on a Disney World shuttle, and you can’t say that you aren’t relieved when the Port Orleans French Quarter signage appears through the window. French Quarter is the first stop on the route which means your own stop is coming up quite soon. There are several drop-off locations on the Riverside route, but the lights at the main unloading area at the front of the resort are the brightest and most sobering. You blink against the sting of them while the bus pulls in, wincing when the interior lights flicker back to life again too and amplify the brightness. It takes your vision a few moments to adjust to normal and you drop your hold on the strap in the interim.

Oww.

The ache in your shoulder is instant, the muscles tense all the way down your arm. Hell, even your fingers feel stiff. You tilt your head from side to side, stretching out your neck and resisting the urge to reach across yourself and rub at the sore spot on your shoulder. With your luck, you’ll elbow Hot Dad in the face in the process.

Feet and bodies begin to shuffle about, the rustle of shopping bags and backpacks and other items filling the air as passengers eagerly prepare to disembark. Out of habit, you reach for your phone. You mean to look at the time but the screen blinks with a text message notification instead. It’s from Reese, undoubtedly checking on you.

And grounding you in a really needed way.

Food, fun, friends, you remind yourself.

When it’s time to go, you don’t bother to say goodbye to Hot Dad or spare him a second glance. Whatever spell this whole situation had previously cast on you is effectively broken. Whatever you’d felt in those moments, gone. With the reality of being back at the resort, he becomes just another face, another stranger in a huge crowd of them visiting the parks and being on vacation. You bet you won’t even see him again anyway.

You step off the bus, thanking the driver on your way despite his horrible driving and smiling when he wishes you a good evening. The temperature’s dropped even more since you left Disney Springs, and it makes you shiver as you begin the trek to your room. It feels good, even if your fingers are cold. You inhale the crisp air deeply, allowing it to fill your lungs before you exhale just as thoroughly.

If you’ve timed it correctly, the girls should just about be finished with their showers, which means you can get to yours as soon as you get to the room. Maybe even cram in a face mask after. If you hustle, you might just be able to fall asleep before Taylor too — she snores but will never admit it, and sometimes it’s difficult to fall asleep once she gets going.

You make it inside the lobby, past the doors that lead back outside to the little marina, and almost halfway across the bridge before you hear the distinct sound of jogging feet on the wood.

“Hey, wait up!” someone calls, and you turn out of reflex, before you can think better of it.

Your brows lift in surprise, particularly since you’d already convinced yourself the bus was all you were going to get.

“Hey,” Hot Dad greets when he catches up to you. His smile is sweet, if a little sheepish.

Attraction flutters insistently in the back of your mind, beating its little wings rebelliously against the rational voice trying to stress that you are on vacation — at Disney World — and don’t have time for any more of the indulgent thoughts swirling around in your head.

Especially about a stranger and a father no less. He could be married or otherwise attached. He could be a murderer, the nice guy act simply just a ruse. Hell, he could be a married murderer even. Okay, the last two might be a tad dramatic, but you’ve watched too many true crime documentaries and you know that sometimes you just never know.

“Hey,” you say back, noting that he is sans kid.

A flicker of movement behind him captures your attention and you lean out past his shoulder to get a better look. You instantly recognize Ben from the bus, along with his dark-haired friend. They’re just outside the doors of the dinning hall, next to the lobby entrance, standing together like they’re waiting around for something. Then you see that Ben is holding Hot Dad’s daughter, swaying tenderly and rocking her in his arms, and oh, they’re waiting for him.

Ben has the cheekiness to give you a little wink this time when he realizes you’re looking, and you’re 99% convinced he gets just about anything he wants with all that charm. Blondie joins them a second later, walking out the door with a bag from the general store clutched in his hand. He doesn’t wave but his curious gaze remains trained on you.

The dark-haired one does wave despite being semi-distracted with his phone, pacing around slightly with it pressed to his ear. His hand falls to his waist and you cant your head curiously. There’s an intriguing air about that one, like he’s fully in control of every situation at any given moment. Someone used to giving orders but not necessarily taking them. Suave, confident, a touch sophisticated. Like he would exude that same kind of power in a t-shirt as he would in a suit.

Seeing them all together is something of a sight and a bit of an enigma. Four men, all with differing dispositions, all gorgeous in their own ways. You haven’t figured out the connection yet, how the four of them are linked and bound together. But you just get the sense that they are.

“I knew Huey was with you,” you tell him. “But I didn’t realize Dewey and Louie were too.”

Confusion flashes across his face until he turns to follow where your line of sight had been. It takes him a second, and then he’s tilting his head back, a bright laugh rumbling out of him at your reference to Donald Duck’s triplet nephews. The sound is pretty in the night air, and the unexpected pleasure of being able to draw it out of him lights like a sparkler in your chest.

“Yeah, unfortunately,” he grins, turning back to you.

The corners of his eyes crinkle and a deep dimple winks to life in his cheek. It makes his face even sweeter.

He stands there watching you for a time after, and that look from the bus crosses his face again, like he’s working out an answer to a question only he knows. You start to shift your weight from foot to foot, self-conscious, unsure of what to do as the silence stretches on and the air pulses between you — all shimmering heat and endless possibilities. You tug your bottom lip into your mouth, chewing on it nervously, and it’s not lost on you that his eyes are drawn briefly to the action.

You swallow thickly.

“Did you, um…need help with something?” you finally ask, trying to ignore the pull to him you can’t seem to shake.

That seems to break him out of his trance and he reaches up to rub at the back of his neck, suddenly shy.

“So hey, listen…I just wanted to thank you again for what you did back there.” He gestures behind him with his free hand, in the general direction of the shuttle drop-off. “It was really nice and you- you didn’t have to. I appreciate it and I’m sure the other passengers did too.”

“Oh, don’t mention it. I was happy to help. I get grumpy when I’m tired, too, so I understand.”

You shrug and give him a playful scrunch of your nose that eases the tension in his shoulders and makes that cute little dimple appear again.

“Well, I’ve uh…gotta get back to my room,” you say softly when your cheeks start to warm from his unwavering gaze. “Early day tomorrow and all.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course.” He rubs at his jaw, fingers grazing over the scruff as he thinks on something. “I’d offer to walk you but, I know we just met and you probably don’t want a stranger to know where your room is…but, if you did want someone to walk you, it’s the least I could do.”

His rambling is terribly endearing but he’s right on all counts. “Thanks, that’s really nice of you to offer, but I’ll be alright. I’m pretty close anyway- oh! And I hope your daughter gets some rest.”

His lips curve at that. “Thanks, me too. Thank you for everything else. Again.”

You raise your hand in a parting wave. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” he murmurs back.

And it suddenly dawns on you that this could very well be the last time you ever see him. There’s a disappointed twinge in your gut that shouldn’t be there but is and it’s silly, but still very difficult to ignore as your feet start to carry you backwards. Your body is reluctant to turn away, your eyes unable to resist taking their fill of him — just one last, long, harmless look before you go.

“Wait!”

He says it just as you start to turn away and it makes you pause. You glance over your shoulder with one of your eyebrows raised expectantly at him.

“Yeah?”

“I’m Frankie, by the way.”

You know what he’s inviting by giving you his name — the choice to give yours back. What’s the harm, right? It wouldn’t change anything. You could tell him your name and it wouldn’t mean anything.

Instead, you give him another smile, the corners of your lips tugging up.

“Have a good vacation, Frankie.”

He shakes his head at you, amusement clear on his stupidly adorable face as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rocks back onto his heels.

“You too.”

This time, you force yourself to go, to keep your eyes ahead and your feet moving.

If you hadn’t, you might have seen the way he’d taken an unconscious step after you before catching himself, or the way his gaze had lingered on your form until you disappeared across the bridge.

The walk back to your room isn’t much further, just beyond the second bridge and right on the main path. Lucky for you since your mind is far too distracted for anything more than running on autopilot. You’re caught in a memory loop, incessantly replaying the night’s events over and over in your head.

You’ve read too many romance books, listened to too many love songs, seen too many romance movies. Have grown too fond of fairy tales and happily-ever-afters with their neat little ribbons and dainty bows on top.

You are on vacation, you remind yourself one more time, and you cannot romanticize a meaningless moment between yourself and a random stranger. One you are never going to see again. But even as you retreat from the bubble of that chanced encounter on the bus, and the subsequent exchange at the bridge, somehow, that man with his quiet demeanor and his sweet smile sticks with you.

End Notes: Re: Charlotte’s nicknames A ‘fry’ is a baby fish pescadito also translates to ‘baby/small fish’ mi tesoro means ‘my treasure’

Thank you so, so much for reading and joining the TF boys for vacation ;)

#frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x female reader #frankie morales #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales x you #triple frontier #triple frontier fic #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #santiago garcia #will miller #benny miller #my writing #mihfyam

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what-the--curtains · 3 years

Text

There Are No Wolves In the Desert

( Oberyn Martell x f!reader, Robb Stark x f!reader)

Part 1 - The Wolf and The Outsider

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Summary: The series of events that have lead to you being in Dorne and why you can never return home.

Authors notes: Oberyn is not in this chapter but he will be in all subsequent chapters! This part is mainly context corner to build up the character! The reader is a distant relative of the Targaryens but I only mention hair colour and eye colour everything else will remain non- descript! Let me know if you want to be tagged (or untagged) in this story 😊😊

Tw: Swearing, violence, mentions of and allusion to sex (none depicted), war, murder the usual GOT stuff, major character death (I wonder who it could be👀👀)

Word count: 5.7k

Tagged: @evyiione

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Kings landing

Cersei tilts her head, eyes thinning as she gazes out over kings landing, the moon illuminating the gold plated roofs of the upper class, the stench of the poor unable to reach her here. Jamie sits on the bed she had shared with her late husband, slowly re-donning the white armour of the king's guard. He turns watching as the summer breeze blows the ends of her golden hair. His shin guard is clipped into place just as three short knocks sound out against the wooden door, filling the quiet air of the night. Sighing loudly Jamie stands up to answer the door, a smile forming on Cersei’s lips as she trunks to greet the visitor.

“Littlefinger, to what do we owe the displeasure,” Jamie asks, sarcasm dripping off every word.

“Funny… I thought knights usually waited outside the bedchamber of those they swore a sacred oath to protect,” he queries smiling, the candlelight illuminating his prominent front teeth.

“Is it done,” Cersei asks through her teeth, tiring of the man’s desperate attempts to hold some semblance of power.

“Yes. Not a soul left alive that isn’t loyal to house Baratheon... or is Lannister perhaps more apt. The north is ours for the taking now the young wolf has fallen, and Sansa is under control here.”

“What of his wife?” she asks, walking towards a nearby table, decanting wine into a goblet turning with eyebrows raised. Littlefinger was not the only one in Kings landing with ears everywhere. She had heard a rumour, one she wished to squash as soon as she can.

“His widow, you mean,” Jamie states from the door frame, dissatisfied at being left out of the conversation.

“Gone, left in the wee hours of the morning from what I heard,” Cersei says, eyes staring into Littlefinger’s, locked in a strategic game of mental chess.

“So she’s alive, ” Jamie adds, despite his previous statement being ignored.

“Not for long,” Littlefinger states , brushing him off.

“Who saw her leave?” Cersei demands, a hint of concern slipping through as she swirls her wine around in the glass.

“No one left alive,” Littlefinger reassures

“So she's...” Cersei begins,

“She’s set to land in Dorne two days from now, she will be dealt with when she arrives. She is…inconsequential.” Littlefinger finishes.

“And so ends the reign of the wolves,” Jamie remarks, as Cersei raises her glass toasting the gods.

Dorne (2 days later)

You watch the docks appear along the horizon as the ship begins to reduce its speed. The sea spray from the trip spattered across your skin was yet to dry, cooling you off, as the southern sun bares down onto you. You lick your lips, the salty taste leaves you parched in a heat the likes of which you’d never known. You’d never been to Dorne, though you’d heard stories of it’s fair weather, people and architecture, and you were eager to see if they held true. You’d heard the wine here was the sweetest the world had to offer, you planned on returning home with some, even if Dorne was merely a stopover. It was not a honeymoon you were here for, no you were here to complete a task of utmost importance. You came in search of the so-called dragon queen at the behest of your husband. He wanted to see if the rumours were true and if they were he hoped to make an ally of her. He had sent you in hopes that your shared lineage, though distant, would work in his favour. The Targaryens held family in high regard, especially with so few of them remaining. You smile as the shore comes into view, the birds above singing to your arrival. The golden hues of the late afternoon sun paint the tents of the markets in the docks. A sense of bliss rolls over you as the crew ties the ship to the dock. It would be one of the last moments of peace you would know for some time. Your feet make contact with the ground, legs wobbling slightly at being back on solid ground. You stumble slightly and a man with a blue beard catches your elbow.

“Winter is coming,” he whispers and you look up as he discreetly passes you a note. You open it. The letter is long and the script rushed, but seven words stand out ‘the King in the North has fallen’ the sheet slips from your fingers and you drop to your knees. “Quick, we haven’t much time,” he says dragging you up, as the first arrow pierces the sky, hitting the captain of your ship in the neck.

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Winterfell, 7 years prior (age 17)

You had always stood out in the north, a caveat of the family you were born into, all of you were outsiders here. Your grandfather was a Targaryen, second cousin to the mad king and when war broke out he led a small rebellion that tried to push back the Baratheon troops storming the capitol, but to no avail. Your father and his brothers were there that day, fighting alongside him, but they were outnumbered, and no amount of skill would keep the combined Starks and the Baratheon forces at bay. After the capitol was taken, your grandfather was hanged and your grandmother took your father and his brother and feld while Robert butchered any descendents of the Targaryen line that would weaken his claim to the throne. Your father had split from his family opting to head north, while they trekked south. He never saw them again. Upon his arrival in Winterfell he built a small homestead outside the city walls and sought work, thankfully the distinctive hair and eye colour had skipped him and he could blend in with the northerners. He found work as a stone mason, crafting formidable architecture admired and paid for by the nobility. The payments allowed him to move up the social ladder and while he remained in the forest he had gained the respect of the elite and was accepted as one of them. His hands soon grew tired of creating. They craved the weight of a sword and so he gave up masonry and offered his services to Ned Stark. Your father became a confidant to the King in the North as he moved up through the ranks. He ended up training many of the soldiers, and for a while, even Ned’s own sons. His proximity to the crown brought him into the path of your mother.

A ball was held in celebration of their eldest child's first name day and your mother was in attendance representing the Tyrells. He spotted her across the room, and to this day he swears the sun shone down on her despite being inside a hall. He approached her that night and they married during the long summer, your brother Illirion was born a year later, then a year after that it was your turn. Their final child, your youngest brother Rhaevar was born two years after you, thus completing your family unit. While the honeyed eyes and dark toned hair of the Tyrells presented well with your brothers, the Targaryen traits that had initially skipped your father came through in your genetic composition. Your hair was as white as the snow that came to the north during the winter, and your eyes a lilac similar to the foxgloves that grew in the spring. You attended a local school until you reached the age where girls were no longer allowed to study. Whilst there you heard whispers from the other children. Every now and then a comment of “murderer” or “traitor” would be shot your way, much to your confusion. It wouldn’t be until years later than your parents would tell you why such comments were made. After school ended officially you continued your education at home and studied the methods of healing that your mother had been trained in while in Highgarden.

Your father insisted all his children learn how to defend themselves, the north was a dangerous place after all, and the threat of war loomed large. The stability between kingdoms was teetering, it had been peaceful for too long, a storm was coming. You’d proven to be of high talent, had it not been for your eldest brother's size you would have been the strongest fighter in the family. Illirion married at 18 to a noble girl of high status, and it wasn't long after that you lost many of your friends to marriage. Some of the pairing were good, some bad and some even for love. Despite being propositioned a few times, you had no interest in being a bride.Your parents did not mind now that your brother had secured a wife and would be able to care for you once they passed. Your father also had it on good authority that you all were to be cared for so long as a Stark sat at Winterfell.

You were acquainted with the family since childhood, though outside of parties you rarely saw them. During the gatherings you and Sansa often gossiped together and Arya would sneak you into the courtyard and beg you to train her. The time spent with them was greatly cherished. Their brothers were often gone during such events, off showcasing their prowess to girls of higher status than you, women who would one day be their wives. Little did you know, Jon and Robb had been told to stay away from you so as not to ruin your reputation. That rule had been followed until one day when a particularly cruel comment from a noble girl sent Arya running directly into your path.

You were out tracking a wolf that had killed one of your family's horses. It wasn’t revenge you sought, but its attack on your homestead meant it was getting closer to town, and growing far too bold for your liking. You’d stopped your trek once you realized it was headed back towards the wall. Approaching your house you see Arya sitting on a log outside your house near the fire pit. Her feet swinging, intermittently kicking at the dirt below.

“Arya?” you question placing your gear down on the ground as she turns to face you, her nose running, eye slightly red.

“Is Rhaevar around? I wish to play” she demands, her childlike nature apparent now more than ever.

“I’m afraid he’s gone off in search of the children of the forest, but perhaps we can find something to do together?” you offer sitting beside her, she was upset, evidently so.

“I have no want to stitch,” she huffs, causing you to laugh at her attempt to insult you.

“Good neither do I. I’m no good at it anyways,” you admit and she looks up at you “Well what do you wish, Arya? Perhaps I can be of assistance.”

“I wish to know how to shoot my arrow so it hits the target every time. I don’t care what Robb says, Jon thinks I can do it so I want to try.”

“Well, I can help with that, come I’ll show you a trick. You’ll hit it every time. Prove your eldest brother wrong,” your comment earns a rare grin from the youngest Stark daughter. After a few goes she gets the hang of it, hitting your practice targets one after the other.

“By the gods,” you chuckle, you’d never seen such natural talents before. Caught up in your admiration of her gift you fail to catch her turning to aim at a farther target still. The arrow soars through the air as two horses approach your homestead, the arrow only just missing them.

“Arya!” you shout, grabbing her arm “You must be careful!” you exasperate as she looks up to you her mouth ajar. The sound of the horses fast approaching.

“Get behind me,” you murmur, pushing in front of her and aiming the bow true.

“It’s Robb!” she shouts, pushing against you attempting to make a run for it. Despite her efforts to throw you off balance you manage to grab her arm, dropping your weapons in the process.

“Why are you running?” you ask, not releasing your grip on her scrawny arm.

“Because I don’t fit in!” she finally admits.

“Well a secret Arya, no one fits in, we're all different, it's what keeps life interesting and what will keep you alive in your years to come,” you say watching as she stops struggling a softness suddenly coming over her features.

“She said I had a face like a dog,” she whispers, chewing on her lip, eyes down. The cruelty of children was always surprising to you.

“Well I’d find it hard to find someone who does not see the tenderness of a pup, or the strength and beauty of a dire wolf. Either way, You have talents, beyond what beauty can measure, ones that will never abandon you,” you reassure. She sniffs and looks up at you offering a rare smile. You see her shift back into her tough persona, the scowl returning to her face as she runs towards the horses belonging to her brother and who you assumed must be his ward Theon. You watch the eldest Stark, now two years your senior drop down allowing Theon to help Arya, as he strides towards you.

“We’d be lucky to have you in our ranks, if you can teach her to nearly take my head off from a mile away,” he laughs, easing your nervousness slightly, his northern accent heavier than you had remembered.

“I did remind your sister to be more careful lest she be tried for treason, or worse yet, get me tried for treason. As for my services, they are always at the will of the Starks, if you wish me to join the army who am I to refuse,” you say, tilting your head and offering him a smile.

“Women are not allowed in our ranks, lest of all those who look like you,” he charms, an unexpected compliment from a man you rarely got the opportunity to speak with.

“Not yet, but rules are meant to be broken after all my Lord.” You retort, eyes meeting his steel grey gaze causing an unexpected chill to run down your spine.

“Are they?” he laughs, the warmth of it causing a sudden heat to rise within you, counteracting his gaze.

“You should remind your mother of that when you return Arya to her,” you offer, as he hands you the arrow that almost took off his head.

“Thank you for returning my sister, wolves have been prowling about, heaven forbid they got to her before us,” he says, concern etched in his face.

“The wolves have moved north, I do not believe they will return this way, and Arya is stronger than you give her credit for,” you assure, his brows raising at your competence.

“I know, and I think she does too, I fear she’ll outlive us all,” he offers, rubbing the back of his neck, the two of you standing there for a moment, the smirk that usually danced replaced by a nervous grin. His head dips down before turning back to the horse, but he stops one last time swivelling round to face you.

“My lady,” he calls after you.

“Yes my lord,” you say, turning back to face him.

“I look forward to our next meeting,” he offers sincerely.

“As do I,” you say curtseying in such a way to make him smile before you both head back towards your respective homes.

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2 years later (age 19)

“What is it?” you ask your father as you lay down your quiver and the pair of small pheasants you’d brought home for dinner. He takes a long drag of his pipe, gaze glued to the treeline. “Father tell me?” you stress, knowing he only ever smoked when bad news had arrived.

“Illirion, he’s...” He stammers and drops his head letting out a strangled sob. You shake your head at the suggestion. Your brother had gone down to kings landing a week ago to serve as a bodyguard to Ned Stark who had been summoned at the behest of King Robert Baratheon. Arya and Sansa had gone with them, leaving Catelyn and the boys in Winterfell, Robb currently ruling in his place.

“Ned Stark would never allow…” you begin, sure your father had once again fallen trap to the rumour mill.

“He’s dead, they’re all dead, all of them...” he whispers, dropping his head to his hands.

“What happened tell me everything,” you stress, pushing your own sentiments aside for the moment.

“Beheaded, Ned for treason, for the murder of Robert Baratheon, his greatest friend, unlikely story. They killed your brother as Ned’s head fell. Arya, is missing, presumed dead, Sansa is a prisoner, to be wedded to that horrible snot nosed inbred Joffrey.” He continues in fragmented sentences.

“Mother?” you question.

“She’s in bed still, hasn’t left, I dare not tell her the worst of it,” he admits tear streaked eyes meeting yours.

“What the worst of it?” you ask, unable to think what could possibly be worse. “Lean on me father, there is no else left for you to confide in, lend me some of the burden,” you stress rubbing his arm in encouragement.

“War is upon us and each family must provide a soldier. Since my knee… I am no longer able to fight, the Starks know this. So your youngest brother…” he starts, but a sob catches in his throat stopping him.

“He can’t go, he’s too…” you begin, swallowing as you try to think of the right word.

“Soft” your father offers.

“No, he’s just not skilled enough, at least not in the ways of the sword. Skilled as he is as a mason he wouldn’t last a minute on the battlefield,” you pause, only one path was clear to you “Let me go in his place,” You say, before you have time to process what you had just offered to do.

“No,” your father says without hesitation.

“Let me go and you may end this life with two of three children. If he goes, I will be the only one left and I could not bear it,” you say pushing back tears at the thought of losing another brother.

“Your mother...” he begins

“Knows I was the best fighter. I had the best teacher in all the seven kingdoms after all,” you say nudging him with your elbow. He places a reassuring hand on your shoulder, before pulling you into a tight embrace.

“When do I leave?” you ask.

“Tonight. It’s a good thing your brother isn’t tall, his armour will fit you, take this helmet. Do not remove it, keep your hood up, any trouble and cut off their cocks, or else I will.”

“I'll see you again, I swear it,” you state, with every intent of keeping your promise.

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The battle rages forward, men fall around you, but you refuse to meet a similar fate today. Your sword penetrates through the opening of a Lannister’s armour turning quickly to slice the backs of the knees of another soldier, both falling in tandem. You hear a horse whinny on your left and you turn to see Robb Stark fall from his horse becoming trapped beneath the dying creature. You weave throughout the battle towards him. Your blade intercepts the longsword of an enemy soldier just as it’s about to penetrate Robbs armour. You drop your shield to Robb and you push up against the attacker. Releasing your force he falls forward and Robb pushes the shield up hitting the man’s face swinging his head back. Grabbing the man by his hair you slit his throat. You drop your sword and pull Robb out from beneath the horse. He grabs your shoulders giving you nod before returning to the forefront of the battle. As the horn of retreat sounds you celebrate the victory with those around you, surviving the first of many attacks.

You're walking back to the tents when you hear a familiar voice call out to you.

“You, wait,” Robb demands, chuckling with those around him. You continue on your path hoping he was talking to someone else. “It is not wise to disobey your king.” He sounds out again, forcing you to turn towards him.

“Come now friend, we mean no harm. I wish to look upon the face of the man who saved me and invite him to ride alongside me.” he states.

“Perhaps he is too ugly to show his face, my lord,” one of his lieutenants states causing a laugh to erupt from the surrounding crowd of men except for Robb. Though a slight smile pulls at the corner of his mouth breaking the cold façade he’d donned since his father’s death. A moment passes then another until the silence is so prolonged you have no other option but to obey. Slowly you lift your helmet up your eyes meeting his for the first time in a year.

“A prize for the army, my lord?” one of the men questions, hungrily eyeing you up as he fervently steps towards you. Robb's arm stops him in his tracks and you draw your blade.

“Touch me and risk losing more than just your hand, I have fought alongside you. I am your equal. You will treat me as such,” you demand, your voice unwavering despite the uneasiness in your stomach.

“You have a cunt, you are not our equal, though perhaps in bed…” another from the crowd offers.

“Stop! Leave us” Robb orders, and the men retreat back towards the camp ground the sound of laughter and whistles picking up once out of range.

“I did tell you rules were meant to be broken,” you say, watching as he tries to suppress a smile.

“Well they certainly have been now” he chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Are you going to hang me, my lord? Or is it my King now?” you question, a bolder move than you should have felt comfortable making.

“To you it's Robb and no I am not going to hang you, but you are going to come with me,” he says offering you his arm which you brush by looking back at him to follow.

“How have you come to be here? Does your father know?” Catelyn stresses,eyes growing wide as she scans over you assessing the damage.

“My lady, yes, he does. You see when the war was announced and after my brother’s death, we knew someone from our family would have to fight. My father’s leg as you know isn’t... as it used to be, and my younger brother while talented in many ways, cannot hold a blade to save his life. My mother’s grief was already far too much for her to lose another child.” You say, eyes risking tears as she meets her gaze.

“So they sent you?” she explains to herself.

“Yes my lady I was the best fighter in the family, or the most skilled at least.”

“Well, we will not make your brother come to fight, but you cannot stay in the army,” she explains softly, hand running up and down your arms in reassurance.

“She saved my life today,” Robb interjects and Cat looks at you as you look at him.

“Then I am indebted to you.” She expresses.

“As am I,” Robb states the two of you not having dropped eye contact, much to the notice of Cat.

“Lady Catelyn, I am a capable fighter, but if you will not allow me to so, at least allow me to tend to the wounded or to serve you in some other manner. I am here after all, put me to use.” you say and she lets out a sigh.

“Well, if you believe yourself able to defend yourself, and if what my son says is true then I would be remiss to send you home, though you will not sleep out with the rest of the army, you will stay with me.” she says.

“And during the battle you will remain close to me,” Robb stresses “not for your protection, but for mine”

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1 year later (Age 20)

Robb watches as you kill another soldier, the sight never failing to impress him. You had remained close over the past year, both in and out of the battlefield. He kept you close at all costs, your company bringing him some semblance of joy, even in his darkest moments. Rumours swirled amongst the men and the other kingdoms, though nothing between the two of you had come to fruition. Due to the colour of your hair, the enemy soldiers had dubbed you the white wolf, in an attempt to link the Starks with the treacherous Targaryens. While the insinuations at your extracurricular activities with Robb pushed the narrative that he was impure, that northerners were savages, who did not abide by the values of the seven kingdoms.

As you wipe the blood from your eyes, an arrow catches you in the shoulder, the force knowing you back into a tree. Robb is at your side in record time, his hand stopping yours from pulling the weapon out.

“Medic!” he shouts, eyes not leaving yours.

“Go! you need to lead your people, I will be fine,” you emphasize and he shakes his head “Robb, it is a shoulder, nothing of importance lives there.”

“No but it is attached to something of the utmost importance.”

“Go you have a war to win,” you state as the medic helps you to your feet and brings you back across the line.

You sit in Robbs tent, despite your insistence at being treated in the same manner as the other soldiers, he had demanded you be brought there instead. A skilled nurse had removed the arrow from your shoulder just as you heard the rambunctious cheers of the men outside, victory had been secured. Unsurprising considering Robbs keen strategic mind, he was smarter than you'd have accredited him for in your youth. He enters the tent blood spatter still on his face, seeing you alive and fine he takes the moment to remove his armour. He pulls his undershirt off and walks to the water basin wiping himself clean of the sweat and grim coating his skin. Your eyes watch his bare skin intently, studying every scar, every freckle. He grabs a fresh cloth dunking it the basin and wringing it out before heading over to you. He kneels before you, staring up at you eyes telling you to drop the blood soaked rag currently held to your wound, and you oblige.

“I must confess I long hoped to share an intimate moment with you, though these circumstances are not as I imagined,” he says, gently dabbing at your wound, you smile at his concentration.

“And under what circumstances would you have hoped to be intimate with me, my king? At one of your fancy parties, in the secrecy of a barn, somewhere no one would know you had been with a Targaryen girl.” You ask trying to keep your eyes forwards and not at his muscular physique.

“Every man in Winterfell had dreamed of sharing a moment like that with you, though none have found any luck,” he says, standing up and walking back over to the basin.

“I have no need for a husband nor do I have the want to be wife,” you say, watching the muscles of his arm flex as he wrigns out the rag.

“and what about a queen?” he queries, as his hand braces against your thigh, continuing to clean your wound, his eyes still focused on the gash.

“Do you ask all your foot soldiers such bold questions,” you quip, laughing at the sheer absurdity of the situation.

“Only the ones naked in my chambers,” he retorts, eyes darting up a grin plastered to his face.

“A bare shoulder is hardly naked in your chambers,” you state, and he raises his eyebrows mischievously.

“My fondness for you was never allowed,” he admits, dabbing the cloth into a salve and applying it to the wound.

“Oh wasn’t it,” you ask as he looks up to you

“No, my mother feared one of us would ruin you,”

“A Targaryen In the north, perhaps it was fear of you boys being ruined.” you laugh, but when you look at him the tone has shifted.

‘When that arrow hit you, my feelings were confirmed, I no longer wish to be more than a few feet from you at any given moment. I wish to marry you. If you'll allow me”

“Don’t be stupid my king, you’re to be married to a princess from what I understand.”

“I'll be married to whom I please” he assures.

“Robb is that wise?” you question, unfamiliar with the high stakes games played with marriage.

“The Frey’s will recover besides, we’ve crossed their bridge already, and I have no love for anyone but you.”

“Love? We barely know each other,” you say.

“Only our whole lives,” he reminds you.

“I fear you’ll wake up tomorrow and regret your words, so I will not answer you tonight.”

“Then I will return to these chambers tomorrow morning and restate my intentions to make you my wife.”

“What will they say if you allow me to take your bed for the night?” you ponder aloud.

“I guess we shall see” he states, slinging his bloodied shirt over his shoulder.

“Goodnight my King” you offer, watching in amusement as he attempts to find the tents exit without turning around.

“It’s Robb. For you, it's always just Robb”

True to his word he returned the next day and asked again, and this time you accepted. You married a few days later under an old willow tree, with Catelyn and a few others standing witness. The morning after your wedding you awake in his chambers, the sun yet to rise. Robb snores faintly beneath you, the warmth of the fire sending a chill up your skin that had become exposed in the night. You scan over his features, a peacefulness you hadn’t before on his face. You reach over brushing the white patch of hair amongst the mass of soft brown curls on his head. As you do his eyes open looking over to you propping himself up on his elbow and learning over to kiss your forehead.

“What is it my love?” you ask, kissing his cheek, then his lips .

“I need you to do something,” he says, serious as always.

“What we just did wasn't enough, my king? How else may I please you tonight,” you offer hands dancing across his chest, he grins shaking his head slightly.

“You have pleased me in every way imaginable for the past year, and even more tonight. This favour isn't a pleasure of the flesh however, I need you to complete a task. You’re the only one I can trust,” he states.

“You shift up to face him, the furs falling off you slightly, “find the Targaryen girl. I wish to make an ally of her, to destroy the Lannister once and for all. You are likely the only family she has left, she may listen to you.”

“I'll do what I can, and I'll do it fast, I do not wish to be parted from you for long.” you admit as his hand traces over your back.

“Take this with you, that way i'll be protecting you even while we are apart,” he leans over grabbing his dagger, the one made for him by his father, offering it to you.

“Robb I…” you begin.

“Will return it to me a fortnight from now when you come back. I suggest we make the most of tonight, so you have another reason to return to me,” he states

“I'll always return to you, even in death,” you reassure and he wraps the blanket back over you pulling you tightly to his chest. And so as Robb took his seat in the halls of Walder Frey to watch his supposed bride marry another man, you were catching a boat destined for Dorne.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Present day (Age 21)

“Come with me now Lady Stark, your life depends on it,” the stranger says, pulling you to your feet and shuffling you into a nearby tavern ushering you quickly up the stairs. You see a pile of clothes laid out on the bed and immediately strip, all notions of decency erased in favour of time.

“You must disappear, make them think you are dead,” he says, averting his eyes as you change into clothes typical of local mercenaries.

“Who killed him, what happened?” you ask, needing some kind of answers.

“There is no time, and it's safer if you do not know.” He says eyes darting from you to the door.

“I have a right to..”

“The Freys betrayed you, everyone at the wedding is dead, you have no claim to Winterfell. The Lannisters have taken the North”

“Everyone at the wedding..” you echo, sitting on the bed

“Stay here..” the blue bearded stranger says, returning a few moments later with a cloak, sword and black dye in hand, placing them down and grabbing for the clothes and the dagger on the floor, Robbs dagger.

“That stays” you stress grabbingthe dagger from his reach.

“It’s too…” he starts

“It stays, it's all I have left of him,” you whisper harsher than intended, fighting back tears. He nods and you take it from him. You grab the dye from his hand and rub it through your hair, staining it a deep ember.

“Keep your eyes down, they're the only thing we can’t disguise,” he states

“Who are you, why are you helping me?” you question memorizing the man's face.

“You share a common enemy with powerful people. You have allies here. Goodbye Lady Stark I hope we meet again,” he says, and with a swift turn he exits the tavern leaving you alone with your thoughts. You wait a moment before donning the cloak and pulling up your hood. You walk out the tavern, putting as much distance between you and the docks as possible. Keeping your eyes down as men scoured the streets for the person you once were

#oberyn x reader #oberyn martell x reader #prince oberyn x reader #robb stark x reader #oberyn x you #oberyn martell #game of thrones fanfiction #oberyn martell x you

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henryobsessed · 4 years

Text

The Widow and the Witcher Chapter 18

Summary: Well its a wedding :)

Word Count: 2600

Warning: Fluff, Emotions, Acceptance

A/N awwwwww

Chapter 18 – The Wedding

It was night, the sun had gone to bed and the sky was blanketed with stars. As was the custom in this village he was preparing to ride to claim his bride. Geralt stood dressed in his formal dress blacks, the only Jewellery the medallion hanging around his neck. His thick hair the whitest it had ever been after Jaskier insisted that it be washed with some special soap. He smelt of Chamomile and Honey. Funny, Julia had never commented on his smell except for when he had been around the horses too much. But tonight, he would have bathed in the petals of roses if he thought Julia would like it, and Jaskier did understand the female gender better than he did. The last thing he held was his bouquet of flowers to present to Julia. As Visenna and Yen had walked home with him he had remembered Tobias the day he went to get his bride, and how important it had been that he got it right. Well, this small bunch of wildflowers they had picked on the way back to the inn was not expensive or exotic but they represented him.

His Brothers, Father, Mother, Daughter, and closest friends behind him on their horses moved through town to the road leading to the estate. He was not sure what to expect as he had been waiting at the estate when Tobias and Renee were given to each other. All he was instructed to do was to ride to the house and kneel before Tobias asking for his blessing as the man of the house. As they reached the road leading to the estate, he saw an eery glow, as he got closer, he saw Villagers lining each side. The whole village must have turned out because It looked like the road to the estate was completely lined with Lanterns.

As he slowly pasted each lantern the villagers smiled at him and fell in behind the small band so that by the time, he got to the estate a large crowd was following. Geralt had never felt so accepted and loved. He dismounted at the entrance to the estate and the rest of his family followed suit. Jolna, Petra, and another servant took the horses as the progression walked the final distance to the house.

As he drew nearer, he stopped, the breath knocked from him at the sight of Julia holding her lamp the symbol of her love for him. She was breathtaking, her reddish-brown hair hung in curls around her shoulders and the top part was braided around her head to symbolize a crown. It was dotted with small white flowers and covered with a thin sheer vale. Her dress was made with the finest white silk edged with ivory and a bright royal purple sash accentuated her small waist. Around her neck was the finest lace wire that held the most beautiful mix of purple and ivory crystals. To Geralt she was perfect.

With moist eyes he made his final steps to the house, as instructed he went to Tobias who was standing with Renee. Kneeling before him, Geralt suddenly felt nervous, the whole village was watching, listening, and the words seemed to have gotten stuck in his throat. He looked up at Tobias who was smiling down at him. This gave him courage so he spoke with a clear baritone voice "Tobias Son of Julia of Wolnosci I have come here today to humbly ask for your blessing, I have fallen in love with your mother, and I wish to ask her to be my wife. I promise to cherish her all the days of her life and to honour this family all the days of my life."

Tobias replied to Geralt an unshed tear glistening in his eye "Geralt of Rivia, Renee, and I have watched from the beginning of your time here. We both saw the spark that lit between you during the days of your recovery. It has been an honour to watch as that spark became a flame. I have also observed your integrity, compassion, and gentleness as you worked with the horses, shared chores with the servants, and assisted the community. The greatest joy I had was watching you with Ciri and Julia, your love was evident for them both in every action, tenderness in touch and cherishing of spirit. It would be my honour to give you our blessing and welcome you into our family as a husband to Julia and Father to our house. But I can only give you my blessing, there is only one who can accept your offer."

Julia watched as Geralt humbled himself before Tobias, this tall muscular warrior was on his knees for her. It made her heart swell when he made his pledge to cherish her all the days of her life and her family all the days of his. To know that even when she was gone he would still be there to protect and love her family filled her with joy to almost overflowing. Tobias was talking to her and a chuckle could be heard coming from the crowd making Julia realise she had missed something. Geralt's facelifted in a gentle smile as he looked at her holding out a beautiful bunch of wildflowers "Ohh" Julia spoke softly taking the simple and yet beautiful bunch which spoke of Geralt's heart for her. Turning to Tobias she said with a soft but mischiefs voice "sorry I was distracted by this handsome warrior before me, presenting me this sweet bouquet. Can you repeat the question?"

Laughter bubbled loudly from the crowd as Tobias said with a chuckle "Mother, Do you take this man to be your husband, to fight life's hardships together by his side. To cherish each day and hold the memory's close. As you walk life's journey together?" Julia looked up into Geralt's Yellow amber eyes moist with tears the most precious gift he could give her and said in a firm and loud voice "With every fiber of my being Yes I will"

A great cheer rose from the Village as Geralt lifted her vale and placed a chaste kiss on her lips. Together they turned to Geralt's family. Julia had practiced what she wanted to do next as unlike most weddings she would not be presented to Geralt's mother but before she could speak a woman with red hair stepped from the crowd of his brothers. She looked to Geralt who only nodded the unspoken request. She came close to Julia and held out her hand taking Geralt's and Julia's hands she said in a voice that carried across the valley "My name is Visenna I am Geralt's mother." Julia gasped in shock and surprise at this regal woman standing before her. Geralt's free hand drew Julia close to his side as Visenna continued to speak "I know this is a surprise for you but if you are willing I would like to say a blessing over you" Both Geralt and Julia tears now flowing silently down her cheeks nodded their consent.

Visenna began to sing a lilting melody that floated around Julia and Geralt "May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, may the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon the fields. May the light of friendship guide your paths together. May the laughter of children grace the halls of your home. May the joy of living for one another trip a smile from your lips, a twinkle from your eye and today may the spirit of love find a dwelling place in your hearts" Lifting her eyes to the couple before her, Visenna declared, "I pray that life will be sweet for you both but above all that you will live a long full life together." With that Julia pulled the woman into a hug holding her tight. At first, she felt the resistance and fear but the longer she was in Julia's arms the more she relaxed and returned the hug.

Standing back from Visenna Julia looked to the rest of the family. Seeing Ciri she beckoned her to come forward and pulling her into her side 3then smiled at the rest. Julia spoke loudly enough that all the Village could hear "To you Vesemir, Eskel, Lambert and Coen, To you Visenna, Yennefer, Ciri, and Jaskier. This Home is now your home this Village is now your Village and whether you stay a day, month, or a lifetime we will always call you family." The Village once again gave a cheer, Tobias who stood closest to the door now turned and said with his loudest voice "Welcome Family it's now time to celebrate"

Geralt, Julia, and Ciri turned together and were ushered to the front of the line to enter the house. Excitement grew in Julia as they headed to the banquet hall, she had been itching to see what the girls had prepared for her and Geralt. Hannah, Ruth, and Nessie were waiting by the door to welcome them to the banquet. All three of them had bright smiles and unshed tears in their eyes. Pushing the doors open they let Geralt, Julia, and Ciri into the room.

Julia quickly put her hand to her mouth as a sob escaped, the room was almost like it had been all those years ago. But it was oh so much better. The Columns had ivy wrapped around them from floor to ceiling and randomly were hung Crystals of every colour. The tables were adorned with Ivory clothe, Ivory and Gold crockery, and Crystal glasses. The centerpieces were mixtures of wildflowers representing all the colours of spring and Candles surrounded by Prisms creating floating rainbows that danced over every wall. To say Julia was overwhelmed was an understatement. She felt Geralt's hand on her back as he slowly ushered her to the honoured seats of the bride and groom.

The room filled to overflowing and Julia found out later that they had set up chairs and tables in every spare room to accommodate the whole village. This was her family that Wilfred and Julia had cherished and now they were cherishing Geralt and his family. It warmed her heart and so did the warm body beside her. Geralt had tucked her against him as a sign that from today if he could make it happen, they would never be parted. At this, the night progressed with delicious food wonderful music, and the sounds of joy and laughter.

As Midnight approached Geralt leaned down to whisper into his beloved's ear, "My love I think it will be acceptable for us to be excused now." A soft smile lingering on his breath. Chuckling Julia looked up into his handsome face, she could see the candlelight dancing across his strong jaw and white hair which she had noticed had been washed and was right now awash with coloured rainbows. This caused her to giggle maybe she should call him her rainbow boy from now on. Still, it was the look in his eyes that caused her breath to hitch. They were soft and yet held a hunger that she knew they had worked hard to keep in check. Returning his gaze and hoping he could see the same desire in hers she breathed "Yes"

Geralt stood and helping Julia to her feet lifted her into his arms, smiling to the room he declared "Well folks keep eating drinking and making merry, Thank you for celebrating with us but we hope you don't mind we are ready to go do some celebrating on our own." Julia blushed at Geralt's brashness but smiled a farewell to the room. As they left the banquet Geralt walked swiftly down the hall to their chambers while Julia snuggled deeper into his arms. This strong warrior was her husband they no longer needed to steal kisses and keep battling with temptation. Tonight, was theirs to enjoy.

Julia smiled as they entered their chambers, the girls had been busy. The Fire had been lit, and a small table of fruit, cheeses, and bread along with two wine goblets and a flask of wine was now placed near her chair. Around the frame of the bed was threaded with fresh honeysuckle the fragrance lingering in the air. Geralt let Julia down but not relinquishing his hold of her lifted her face to his. His eyes were shining with warmth as he lowered his head to hers. They both were now breathing in each other's scents, enjoying the closeness.

Julia lifted her hand to his hair and fingered it lightly smelling something different she brought it closer to inhale "Chamomile and Honey?" she giggled the only smells she associated with Geralt was sweat, onions, and horse. Grunting a slight annoyance Geralt replied "Jaskier said you would like me better tonight if I didn't smell like a horse. He insisted I wash with this" Julia made a mental note and planned on thanking Jaskier later. She felt Geralt's hand reach around to her back as if searching which made Julia slightly nervous. They had taken pleasure from each other but it was all done in the dark, and without thought. Tonight she wanted to enjoy, to take him in slowly but she was also nervous what if he didn't like what she looked like in the light.

Geralt felt strange, here he was finally able to cherish his beloved, and yet unlike the last few months, he wasn't sure how to proceed. He wanted to see her, to enjoy what up till now had been kept hidden so had started to feel for a tie, ribbon, or buttons to remove her garment. As he did he felt Julia stiffen in his arms. He halted and looked at her closely for a moment. Was she alright? Was she nervous? Noticing the blush in her cheeks He leaned in and kissed her gently on the lips and pulling back whispered "would you like some wine?" he felt her body relax and then she smiled at him nodding.

While Geralt was pouring the wine Julia walked over to the bed and spotted a light blue bundle tied up with a pale green ribbon with a note on top. Julia picked up the note and read "Julia, we wanted to give you this special gift I hope that it will bring you much joy tonight. Love Renee, Ruth, Hannah, and Nessie." Placing the note to the side she started to pull at the ribbon. She felt Geralt come up behind her, placing his hands around her waist ,and resting his head on her shoulder looking at what she was doing. The bundle came apart and she looked in awe at a piece of sheer ivory fabric. Picking it up she fingered it finding it soft, delicate, and almost completely translucent. Blushing Julia heard Geralt's appreciative hum into her neck as he whispered close to her ear "I'd like to see you in that" a shiver ran down her spine as his breath grazed her neck. Nervously giggling Julia leaned back into Geralt's chest. "How about we have some of that wine first"

Geralt turned around and picked up the filled goblets handing one to Julia, he watched as she gently tipped the goblet to her lips taking a mouthful. Her tongue licking a small trickle that had escaped her lips. She smiled a small shy smile at him and picking up the bundle turned and went into the bathroom. Ohh that woman, he didn't know if she knew what she was doing or if she just naturally made his body burn for her.

Previous Chapter Seventeen Next Chapter Nineteen

A/N Thank you for reading my story to this point. As a new writer, I am very interested in what people think and content, storylines.

What is your favourite path? have I any plot holes?

I have Tagged people who follow me and who I follow if you want to be removed or added please let me know :)

@keanureevesisbae @darkverrmin @viking-raider @littlefreya@madbaddic7ed @the-soot-sprite @thelastsock @lovetusilver20@crimsonrae @demivampirew @ladyreapermc@henrycavillobsessed @nitannichionne @runawayolives @heartfelt-pen @omgkatinka @star017 @llly113 @sad-ghost-of-garbage @ayamenimthiriel @starstruckkittyangel @lebguardians @summersong69 @notyouraveragemochii @imneonpanda @carriebee1 @ivyfatale @thereisa8ella @lucy930 @sarahmichelle5 @stuckupstucky @cleodoramer @kmuir1 @elliepower @xobriellaxo24 @xxxkatxo @supernovacocorocha @hennerslionhat @xo-mery-ox @waitedforlove743 @ladamari68 @coksy @wickedrum @harleyfranquinn @mysticalstrangerearthquake @justrae9903 @willkatfanfromasia @daddys-littlewhitegirl @cavilladdict @lebguardians @theblondetumbleweed @snowbellexx @radaofrivia @geralttheewitcher @acdd22 @thullyana @fanfictionaddiction99 @beckythfc1882 @heyheyharry @sauve-et-libre @shy-violet-soul @elliepower

#thewidowandthewitcher #geralt #geralt fanfic #thewitcher #henry cavill

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tabloidtoc · 4 years

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National Examiner, January 11

You can now buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Why JFK destroyed the Rat Pack

Page 2: The Sky Was Their Limit -- beloved celebs who lost their lives in air crashes -- Patsy Cline, Otis Redding, Rocky Marciano, Kobe Bryant, John Denver, Carole Lombard

Page 3: Ricky Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Glenn Miller, Will Rogers, Audie Murphy, Buddy Holly, Lt. Thomas E. Selfride

Page 4: Cher and her fashion in her movies

Page 6: Albert Bouria the CEO of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Pfizer says he hasn’t taken his company’s shot yet because he doesn’t want people to think he can jump the line

Page 7: The kids of The Waltons are all grown up and share some fond memories -- Michael Learned (Olivia), Richard Thomas (John-Boy), Kami Cotler (Elizabeth), David W. Harper (Jim-Bob), Mary Elizabeth McDonough (Erin), Judy Norton (Mary Ellen), Eric Scott (Ben)

Page 8: Avoid these common laundry mistakes

Page 9: Michael J. Fox: How I survived the darkest days -- Parkinson’s has not destroyed his hope and faith

Page 10: For the second year in a row Florida businessman Michael Esmond has paid the utility bills of families at risk of having them turned off

Page 11: Your Health -- watch for unhealthy buildup of anxiety

* Pantry/Fridge/Countertop -- where to store your food

Page 12: What do you get for a monarch like Queen Elizabeth who has everything including the crown jewels? Why, gag gifts, of course

Page 14: Dear Tony -- past lives you’ve both led have led to the Blame Game, Tony predicts many women worldwide will wear white this winter and he predicts there will be a lot more road rage

Page 15: For more than 15 years Carrie Fisher and her mom Debbie Reynolds lived next door to each other in Beverly Hills -- now Carrie’s only child Billie Lourd is combining the two homes into an estate where she’ll live with fiance Austen Rydell and their newborn son Kingston

Page 16: John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John grew close while co-starring in the hit 1978 musical Grease and that bond has supported them through thick and thin for four decades

Page 18: An Ohio man who lost his high school ring while washing his car in 1967 was reunited with it thanks to a good-hearted guy with a metal detector

Page 19: A whole community in upstate New York had been looking for a lost dog for ten days when a man with a drone stepped in and saved the day

Page 20: Cover Story -- John F. Kennedy and Frank Sinatra, along with the legendary Rat Pack, were the best of friends until JFK was elected president and then he and his powerful clan crushed them -- in early 1960 then-Sen. Kennedy was running for president and associating with the Rat Pack which consisted of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. made him look cool and it also helped fund his campaign -- JFK won the presidency and a thrilled Sinatra built an elaborate communications system and a helipad at his Palm Springs home in expectation of a visit but after the election Sinatra found himself outside the inner circle because Jackie Kennedy despised the singer and didn’t want him anywhere near the White House and Sinatra flaunted his friendships with crime bosses and JFK’s brother Robert Kennedy was the attorney general

Page 22: It’s been a little over a year since Felicity Huffman was released from prison after serving time for her role in the college admissions scandal but she’s starting to get her life and career back on track -- initially Felicity was nervous about working again given the controversy and everything that went down but she shouldn’t have worried so much -- she has landed a part in an upcoming pilot in which she’ll play a widowed owner of a Triple-A baseball team -- Hollywood has a short memory and people have been very forgiving towards her

Page 24: A church in Iowa bought and forgave a staggering $5 million in medical debt for people across the state

Page 25: Myths about digestion revealed

Page 26: 100 ways to 100 years -- you can live longer by following these simple suggestions

Page 32: Star Dreams -- what celebs wanted to be when they grew up -- Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, Reese Witherspoon, James Earl Jones, Matthew McConaughey, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Tony Danza, Goldie Hawn

Page 35: Winter Beauty Tips -- stay soft and smooth during the cold months

Page 40: Happy birthday to legendary singer Dionne Warwick who turned 80 years old on December 12 and couldn’t be happier

Page 42: Tony’s Mystic World -- the power of people

Page 44: Eyes on the Stars -- Jerry O’Connell with his dog outside his home in L.A. (picture), Gordon Ramsay (picture), when model Lauren Hutton was first starting out she was told to fix her teeth so instead she used a type of wax called mortician’s wax and stuck it between her two front teeth, Dakota Johnson and Chris Martin engaged, two days after the birth of his son Luca Patrick singer Robin Thicke paid tribute to his late dad Alan Thicke, production on Ted Danson’s latest Tinseltown project Mr. Mayor has been disrupted by COVID-19

Page 45: Chrissy Metz singing on the Hallmark Channel (picture), Christopher Walken says he’s never owned a computer or a mobile phone, country icons sing praises of Charley Pride

Page 46: A man in Maine met his biological dad for the first time at 43 years old and decided to recreate the scene from Elf

Page 47: Collect Them All -- weird wonderful passions of the stars -- Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Janet Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Hanks, Claudia Schiffer, Demi Moore

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oncexinxmyxdreams · 4 years

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OC Profile Laurie Venkman as a child (The Real Ghostbusters.)

Bio

Name: Laurie Macy Venkman.

Age: 2 years old when first introduced to Peter.

Ethnicity: Caucasian with melting pot of family roots. Irish runs from both sides of her family, but there's differences. French and Welsh from Mom's side. German, Dutch, and English on Dad's.

Species: Human.

Height: 29 inches.

Weight: 18 pounds.

Hair color: Dark brown like her dad’s.

Hair style: Chin length hair, but eventually grows to be shoulder length.

Eye color: Cornflower blue like her mom’s.

Birthday: September 13th, 1983.

Gender: Female.

Sexual Orientation: N/A for now.

Powers (if any): No...she’s a little girl. What would she have? Power to be adorable?

Distinguishing features (if any): Nothing too unique, but just for the sake of description she is a combination of her parents’ features. Besides the blue eyes from her mother, she has her defined cupid bow shaped lips and her round shape of face. She has the same turned up nose and shape of smile like Peter’s. She not only has the same hair color as him, but also has the slight curl to it and the widow’s peak hairline.

Blood Type: A-

Clothing

Day to day outfit: She wears all kinds of different outfits just for day to day. Overalls, jumpers and play dresses that have gingham or floral patterns. Has little black keds like her mom’s. First outfit Peter got her for is a peplum sweatshirt with kittens on it and Laurie refused to take it off.

Pajamas/What they wear to bed: Cute footie jammies. One time she was sent for a month to the firehouse by her grandfather with no pajamas packed so Peter bought her a fleece nightgown with hearts. Laurie loved it to much she didn’t want to change when she woke up.

Formal Clothes: Has a chiffon spring dress that belonged to her mom when she was little and also a velvety Christmas dress.

Work/School uniform: Not school, but as Ruth puts it, more like she’s dressed as if going for school. That would be the popular drop waist dresses that girls had back in the 1980s with tights and shiny black Mary Jane’s. Laurie actually likes these outfits.

Other (glasses, jewelry, etc): Just some play jewelry.

Health

Physical Illnesses: Normal toddler health issues like colds, ear aches and sore throats. She does get ill from pneumonia to the point she's in the hospital.

Mental Illnesses or disorders: Slow with speech. Average toddler speaks 50-100 words, but she speaks half less. She suffers now and then from night terrors which Ruth has wondered is result from Claire’s death. Even though Laurie’s 16 months old when Claire died, she would’ve realized that her mommy hadn’t come back. (There’s proof that babies do grieve.)

Medications?: No.

Addictions (Drugs, alcohol?): No.

General Health: Small for her size and a picky eater, but healthy since there's fruit and veggies she likes. At one point, when under grandfather's care-not Jim Venkman-, she's underweight from his neglect.

Life/Preferences:

Likes: Playing, coloring, peaceful sleeping, her plushies, being read to and being taken to new places (as long as she’s with family.) .

Dislikes: Not having her pacifier, certain foods, night terrors, bugs, wolves, timeouts and vitamins.

Career: Not yet.

Hobbies/Talents: Would coloring count as a hobby? Has an obsession with the show Misty the Cat.

Habits (good or bad): Sucking her pacifier even to the point that she develops a new habit of chewing on it. Ruth has a hard time weaning her from it.

Family: Her dad is Peter Venkman though he didn’t know she existed. Her mom, Claire Teague, sadly died, but Laurie was attached to her. On maternal side, Arnold and Ruth Teague are her grandparents. Ruth is easily the better grandparent between the two. There’s Caroline, Laurie’s aunt, but they don’t like each other. On the paternal side is Jim Venkman, her grandpa who changes his name around for aliases. She doesn't meet him for a long time. There’s her great uncle Alf that she’s never met. Does have deceased grandmother Lydia Venkman and her very distant side of the family, The O'Connors. Lydia and Laurie share the same initials: L, M and V.

Friends: Doesn’t have any because she’s very shy. She prefers her plushies as friends.

Romantic/Love Interest(s): Not until she’s older.

Pets: No pets, but she has two beloved plushies. One is a tuxedo cat named Misty (based on a TV show she loves) and Peter Rabbit.

Social Status: Born into a middle class family.

Favorite Food: Peanut butter sandwiches and Oreos.

Favorite Color: As of now, she likes pink, blue, purple, and green. She keeps changing what’s her favorite color.

Favorite genre of music: She likes the 1950s music that Ray plays when he works on Ecto-1. That often distracts Ray to dance along with her.

Favorite movie genre: She only watches Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and her favorite show, Misty the Cat. She watches Looney Tunes with Peter on Saturdays when she visits.

Favorite Animal: Three way tie between rabbits, sea lions and cats.

Degree of Education: Hasn’t even gone to daycare yet.

What language(s) can they speak?: Still learning to speak and that’s just English.

Can they cook?: She can pretend to cook.

Personality:

Positive Traits: Affectionate and playful. She doesn't throw fits when it comes to bedtime or naps. She likes sleep as much as Peter does.

Negative Traits: Has her times of disobedience, frustrations and picky eating just like a toddler would. She’ll grow into her own personality over time.

Archetype: The Innocent (Pippin from Lord of the Rings or Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.)

Way they interact with others: Shy around new people, but if they’re kind to her and spends time with them, she’ll get comfortable. Then she gets very attached.

Way of speaking: Speaks at least 25 words and she can’t pronounce all letters. If she says Granny, it sounds like Gah-ee or Egon sounds like E-gah. Eventually, she’ll learn to talk more and pronounce better. Like Jessica Lange for Claire’s voice inspiration, Laurie’s would be Judith Barsi …because she has one of the sweetest voices I’ve ever heard and she needs to be remembered.

Introvert or Extrovert?: More of an introvert at the time.

Backstory

Laurie was a true surprise since Claire, her mom, was told she'd never have children. By that point, Claire was back in Indiana and had sadly broken up with Peter because of their life differences. Claire was too nervous to contact Peter thinking he'd be angry and didn't want to prevent him from earning his doctorates. Laurie's birthday was the one year anniversary that Claire and Peter first said "I love you" to the other. Her initials are reminiscent to her paternal grandma, Lydia Molly Venkman. Laurie's maternal grandma, Ruth, was Claire’s biggest supporter and loved helping with her grandchild. Tragically when Laurie was 16 months old, Claire was killed. Ruth took up to raising Laurie and realized Claire had decided to find Peter. So Ruth took measures in her own hands and Peter was shocked by the news. It takes adjusting for him, but he slowly accepts this new change. Later on, Ruth became sick and suddenly died. Her husband Arnold always gave Claire disgusting comments about sleeping with Peter-use your imagination for those words- so he never cared for his granddaughter. Even Claire’s sister, Caroline disliked her and never wanted to even see her. Unfortunately with Laurie living just with Arnold, he neglected her. He was an alcoholic and it only got worse because he missed Ruth. He’d suddenly send Laurie off to New York without warning and not come back for her for weeks; once a whole month. Laurie loved it because she was happy to be away from Arnold and she grew close with the Ghostbusters. The rest would be spoilers, but we’ll get to those one day.

Life Goals

Laurie eventually does have one goal though she doesn’t fully comprehend what a goal is yet. All she wants it to live with Peter. When she’s dropped off at the firehouse, she’s the most happy and thriving. Ray, Winston, Janine and Egon grow to love her. Most important, Peter does as well. (When he sits back at his desk with newspapers or books, Laurie snuggles up against him with her juice cup or naps.) Unfortunately Laurie’s under custody of her grandparents, even with Ruth gone, and Caroline is always mocking Peter for not being a suitable parent even though she wants nothing to do with her niece. However, things change when Laurie is 3 and found to be in critical health. Due to Arnold’s drunkenness and negligence, she’s found to be underweight and incredibly sick with pneumonia. That just might bring her goal to reality...

#the real ghostbusters #laurie venkman #fanfic #fanfiction #peter venkman #OC #decided to do one for laurie as a little girl because when i tried for both ages it got way too long

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wesleyhill · 4 years

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Holy Tuesday: The Hope of the Resurrection

A homily on Mark 11:18-27, preached for the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham, Alabama, on Holy Tuesday 2020, Coronatide

I would speak to you in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Death is always in the headlines, in one form or another, but now, it seems, it is all that is in the headlines. Just before sitting down to write this sermon, I visited four or five prominent news outlets, more or less at random. The virus death toll was the leading story at all of them, and at one of the sites, virtually every headline on the main page was somehow about death and dying.

Of course, so many of you face your mortality courageously each day as you deal with various life-threatening conditions, but it seems we are all pondering death now in a way that I can’t remember doing before in my lifetime.

“In the midst of life we are in death,” says the Prayer Book.

Friends, the Christian hope in the face of so much death is the same as it has always been. And although we will not be gathering together on Easter Sunday to celebrate that hope together, we will still be celebrating. The Lord is risen from the dead, and because of that, we know that we will rise too. Death will not be the end of us. We will live again on the other side of death.

On Tuesday of Holy Week, after his demonstration in the temple, Jesus is approached by some religious leaders who don’t believe that. The Sadducees know that Jesus does believe in the resurrection, and, like candid-camera pranksters, they want to humiliate him in public by drawing him into a debate he can’t win. They want to expose how absurd it is for thoughtful, educated, politically savvy people to believe in a bodily life after death. And so they pose a scenario which, they think, will show the ridiculousness of it.

Suppose, they say to Jesus, that a husband dies, leaving his wife childless. The man’s brother then marries the widow, and he ends up dying too. This happens to five more of the man’s brothers. And then, after enduring the loss of seven husbands and still having no children, the woman herself dies. At that point, the Sadducees spring the trap: “In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her.”

They think they’ve stumped him. If Jesus says, “None of them,” then isn’t he in effect denying the doctrine of the bodily resurrection by cutting the link between this present bodily life and the next? If we aren’t raised as the same people we are now, then we won’t really be raised, will we? But, on the other hand, if Jesus says that she remains married to all of them, then he exposes the doctrine to ridicule: is everything that was true about our earthly lives somehow going to be reinstated in the resurrection? If so, that demonstrates how implausible and naïve the doctrine of the resurrection really is.

But Jesus evades the trap by denying the key assumption the Sadducees make and seem to think that Jesus must share with them. The Sadducees think that resurrection means taking up our old bodily life just as before, hence the reason why they cannot imagine believing in the resurrection. But according to Jesus, the resurrection means a transformation of our present bodily existence. The apostle Paul would later compare our present bodies to a seed awaiting its transformation into a great tree: “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44, NRSV alt.). That is what Jesus too indicates when he says that in the resurrection, people “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven”: in other words, trying to extrapolate from our present life to what our risen life will be like is not at all straightforward. We believe that we will still be ourselves — Jesus still had the nail scars in his resurrected body — but also “what we will be has not yet been revealed” (1 John 3:2).

I’ve always loved C. S. Lewis’s humorous way of trying to explain the disconnect between our present, limited perspective on the resurrection and what it will actually be like. In his book Miracles, he writes: “I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer ‘No,’ he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don’t bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it. Hence where fullness awaits us we anticipate fasting.”

We are awaiting a future transformation of our bodies that will represent, as Lewis says, a “fullness,” a satisfaction of our truest longings, that will eclipse the timebound longings whose satisfaction we spend so much of our life chasing.

But after having made that point, Jesus turns to the real issue at hand. Why should he believe there is new bodily life after death? His answer has to do with who God is: “[H]ave you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.”

Readers of Mark’s Gospel have often wondered why Jesus doesn’t quote a clearer prooftext for the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. For instance, he could have quoted these words from the prophet Isaiah: “Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!” Instead Jesus quotes a passage that isn’t so much about the future resurrection but about the new life that the dead have with God even now.

Thinking about the relationship between time and eternity is a guaranteed way to get a headache — fast. But Jesus here seems to point us in that direction, not simply to who God will be for his people in the future but to who God is now. He insists that God is presently the God of the dead — who are at this moment alive to God because of the hope of the resurrection. God, Jesus says, will one day raise his people. More than that, God has made the dead to live already. Those who have died “have not been lost but are hidden from the living by the thinnest and most permeable of membranes” (Joel Marcus).

“In the midst of life we are in death,” says the Prayer Book. Yes, and also: In the midst of death we have the hope of eternal life because God is not the God of the dead but of the living. And God will prove it in five days’ time.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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mtvswatches · 4 years

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Wynonna Earp 3x03 Colder Weather

Click here for previous recaps!

Stray thoughts

1) They’re doing a Dolls retrospective in the previously-on and oh God, it’s going to be one of those episodes, am I going to cry my heart out?

2) Wynonna is sad, drunk, and angry – a dangerous combination. Yep.

3) God, they even changed the music for this episode… They’re really going for emotional devastation, aren’t they?

4) So, the vampire lady that had Doc all tied up in the season opener is back. He called her Countessa, but then she begged him to say her name, and I wonder if this has some other meaning? Like, maybe she needs him to say her name for some spell or something? I don’t know. Anyway, apart from being a vampire, she moonlights as a seer. And she tells Doc that she’d seen a warrior would die – Dolls – and that he should give up trying to get with Wynonna because she loved Dolls, too, and he’d be forever competing with Dolls’ ghost. Ouch.

5) Really, dude?

6) Waverly and Nicole are having a very important conversation that everyone should have with their loved ones – what happens with my remains when I die? I’ve had this conversation several times with different people and they’re all very much aware of what I want to be done with my body, but I guess I’ll be dead and they can do whatever they want and I’ll never find out. Anyway, Nicole’s wish is to have a sky funeral, which sounds whimsical and cute but it’s actually pretty gross.

7) Uh-oh. Waverly has just found out that her father – well, not her father-father, you know what I mean – had only made arrangements for her mother’s and Wynonna’s burials, not hers… and that’s so unnecessarily cruel? Did they adopt her or were they charged with her? I really need to find out what’s the whole story about Waverly and the Earps!

8) Wynonna is in denial. She continues binge-drinking and shooting Peacemaker, but she’s not finding any peace. It’s Doc who can finally comfort her and convince her to pay their respects to Dolls. They actually comfort each other…

9) Who dis?

10) Waverly is kind of freaking out, saying she’s hungry and how that reminds her that Dolls will never eat again and then she starts laughing (her little breakdown reminded me a bit of Anya’s in The Body…) and Doc then smashes a glass against the wall (kind of like what Xander did in The Body…) They’re preparing a wake for Dolls at Shorty’s, which I guess we’ll end up being more like a sad party with everyone getting drunk and shots being fired because nothing can go right in Purgatory, not even a wake.

11) So, I took an instant liking to Star Hand guy for some reason, and thankfully, he seems to be Dolls’ friend. Doc is demanding evidence, as he should. Question is, how did he find out Dolls was dead? Is he a Black Badge agent, too? Did he come here to say his goodbyes or is he going to be a mainstay? And with this I’m reminded of…

12) Hmm. I have some questions…

NICOLE: My parents were travelling again and they told me I could go to this music festival with my aunt and uncle. Here. WAVERLY: In the Ghost River Triangle? NICOLE: There was an attack. A man in leather. So much screaming and blood. WAVERLY: The demon Dolls killed at the cliff? Bondage Bob? NICOLE: For years, my parents just told me that everybody died in a forest fire and that I had... I had somehow escaped, but... you know, it just didn't explain the nightmares. WAVERLY: Yeah, I've... I've heard them. NICOLE: Last spring, when... Widow Mercedes said his name... Bulshar... it was like this shotgun went off in my head. And Dolls helped me. He got me files, he... he told me that... Black Badge had been covering up these massacres for years. The Cult of Bulshar.

I’m not sure I’m on board with this backstory they gave Nicole literally out of nowhere? And the same demon that committed this massacre is the guy Dolls killed on the hill? The one Waverly names “Bondage Bob”? I just… I don’t totally buy it. I know it could be completely possible for her to have suppressed these memories because of trauma, but… it all feels a bit thrown together at the last minute? Why couldn’t she just be a human, a kickass human but a human nonetheless? Why does she also need a supernatural and traumatizing backstory? I don’t know, I’m still a bit iffy about the whole thing.

13) Will this turn into a supernatural version of “P.S. I Love You”?

14) Obviously, Dolls knew he was going to die, hence the ominous letter. Wynonna takes it out on Jeremy because he knew and he was trying to help Dolls but he didn’t say anything to anyone else, trying to respect Dolls’ wishes. Wynonna feels betrayed, but I don’t really get why? First of all, all of them know they can die at any time, that’s part of the gig, right? So yeah, Dolls being aware of his own mortality shouldn’t be that surprising considering his line of work. Second of all, they all witnessed that this dragon-power was taking a toll on him, didn’t they? Am I crazy? So yeah, Wynonna might have pretended it wasn’t an issue, but she knew, they all knew… I guess it’s easy when you’re mourning someone’s death to have someone to blame, but Jeremy hardly deserves it.

15) So, Quinn, Xavier’s friend, is all chummy with Doc and I’m here for it. Wynonna asks Doc if he knew Dolls was dying, and Quinn is like “duh! Of course, he was!”, which was exactly my reaction. Wynonna is not an idiot, so she had to be in complete denial not to see that he was dying. Anyway, apparently, he was also Black Badge.

16) Oh, great. The fucking revenants stole all the serum Doc had concocted for Dolls and are streamlining it. This should end well.

17) So, Jeremy placed a coded message for Dolls’ friends to come to his funeral. See? How can you be angry at Jeremy?

18) Wynonna wonders why Dolls didn’t attempt to do anything to get better, and the answer is blatantly obvious for both Quinn and Doc – because of her. I’m guessing she’ll take this information to further flagellate herself over Dolls’ death.

19) The vampire lady, Katalin, stole Waverly’s purse, for some reason, maybe she’s a klepto or something, but she didn’t use any of her vampire powers to do it? Like, she just grabbed and took off, awkwardly running in her heels? Kind of disappointing, but also super hilarious.

20) Ay…

21) Waverly enlists Doc to help her get Dolls’ letter back, and they sneak out all secretive, but… it’s a wake with literally 5 freaking guests… I think the three people left will eventually notice they’re gone?

22) “Why torture yourself? I don’t.” HA! Yeah, right!

23) Quinn suggests that Black Badge is not really gone – well, duh – and that they might come to retrieve what’s left of Dolls…

24) Yep. A bunch of jacked-up revenants have just crashed the party. Coolio.

That’s alright, Wynonna’s got it.

25) I do appreciate a good early 00s callback…

26) WTF

27) OMG, Waverly trying to lose it and turn the table but realizing it’s too heavy and then just throwing the cards on the floor and giving a little shout? *chef’s kiss*

28) Oh, shit, Katalin now knows what Waverly is?! What is she???

29) Aw, Nicole just set Wynonna straight, told her that everyone is grieving Dolls just as much as she is and that she should go apologize to Jeremy. I do really love their quiet yet strong bond.

30) Quinn is fucking torturing Jeremy with a goddamn stapler and why does everyone keep treating Jeremy like crap? Quinn wants to get Jeremy’s drugs to become a dragon and storm BB headquarters. Wynonna gets through to him by admitting that she is also haunted by the ghosts of the people she lost, but their best revenge is to go on living. Be brave. Live. For me.

31) Ouch, I didn’t know that something as small as Wynonna giving Quinn Dolls’ badge would hurt like a bitch, but it did.

32) Damn, damn, damn.

That whole scene simply destroyed me. Wynonna finally decided to cremate Dolls’ body to prevent BB from coming after it to continue experimenting on him. And then they bury him, each of them placing a personal item that symbolizes their relationship to Dolls. It fucking devastated me.

33) Waverly asks Wynonna what her plans are for when she passes, casually mentioning that she doesn’t have a spot on the Earp’s burial site. Wynonna doesn’t make a big deal of it, and instead, tells Waverly that they will live for about another 80 years and then, they’ll be buried together at the homestead. That’s all the reassurance Waverly needs. She might not be an Earp, but she’s Wynonna’s sister, and that’s all that matters.

34) Damn, Dolls.

35) Does Katalin spend the whole day playing with her Tarot cards? #quarantinemood

So… she admits that she only stole Waverly’s purse to get Doc’s attention. They have a short conversation about the days of yore and then…

Damn Doc, he can’t just keep it in his pants, can he?

36) That was an emotional rollercoaster of an episode. Dolls wasn’t one of the characters I loved the most, but I understand how important he was to the narrative and to each of the characters, so I’m glad to see he got a proper send-off. I really hate it when shows gloss over the aftermath of a main character’s death and skip forward all the grieving and uncomfortableness of mourning. That being said, this being a supernatural show and all, I’m skeptical that this was the last we’ll see of Dolls. Anything can happen, right?

37) Hope you enjoyed my recap, and, as usual, if you’ve got this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoy my recaps and my blog, please consider supporting it on ko-fi. Thanks!

#Wynonna Earp #Xavier Dolls #Doc Holliday #Waverly Earp #Nicole Haught #Wynonna Earp 3x03 #WE 3x03 #WE recap #recap #mine

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honekitteh · 5 years

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Tag! Get to know me!

Tagged by @a-muirehen, thank you 💜 💜 💜

Tagging: (Only if you’re interested) @joiedecombat, @storyknitter, @elveny, @queen-scribbles, @sheyshen

Rules: Always post the rules. Tag 11 new people you’d like to know better!

1. Dogs or Cats?

Cats, though I am fairly awkward with most animals. Only very specific dogs don’t make me nervous and most cats are fine. That and I am a cat sometimes in my head.

2. YouTube celebrities or normal celebrities?

Either are fine. And sometimes, there are a few awesome ones who do both (like Troy Baker and Nolan North).

3. If you could live anywhere where would that be?

A cabin in the mountains, somewhere in the woods. Preferably Appalachians.

4. Disney or DreamWorks?

The company creating the movie isn’t as important as the movie itself. If the movie is good, I’ll watch it. If it’s bad, I’ll hope my child never finds it to spam watch it.

5. Favorite childhood TV show?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (90s).

6. The movie you’re looking forward to most in 2020?

Black Widow. About. Damn. Time.

7. Favorite book you read in 2019?

The Old Republic: Annihilation. What could possibly go wrong with Theron Shan taking on an Imperial superweapon/ship in nothing but his underwear?

8. Marvel or DC?

Marvel for movies, DC for TV... though out of the DC TV, the animated shows from the 90s-early 2000s are my preference.

9. If you choose Marvel favorite member of the X-Men? If you choose DC favorite Justice League member?

I was a huge fan of Wolverine and Gambit of the X-Men back in the 90s tv show era. Wonder Woman for Justice League. I love Greek Mythology.

10. Night or Day?

Night.

11. Favorite Pokemon?

I don’t really know Pokemon very well, but I think I liked Nine Tails.

12. Top 5 bands/artists:

Troy Baker

Home Free

Pentatonix

Peter Hollens

Avril Lavigne

13. Top 10 books

The Deed of Paksenarrion, Elizabeth Moon

Codex Alera series, Jim Butcher

Dragaera series (Vlad Taltos) series, Steven Brust

Schooled in Magic series, Christopher Nuttall

Log Horizon light novel series, Mamare Touno

The Dresden Files series, Jim Butcher

Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Blood of Kerensky Trilogy, Michael Stackpole

Annihilation, Drew Karpyshyn

14. Top 4 movies

Return of the King

Moulin Rouge

Tangled

Wonder Woman

15. America or Europe?

America. Though closest to Europe I’ve ever been to is England and that was 19 years ago. I wouldn’t mind visiting, but I am quite fond of my home.

16. Tumblr or Twitter?

Tumblr. Better posting medium for pictures and fanfiction/stories. I’ve always prefered a blog format. Twitter is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, which some days I think we might be better without.

17. Favorite vacation destination?

Mountains and warm/hot springs.

18. Favorite YouTuber?

Troy Baker and Nolan North - RetroReplay.

19. Favorite author?

Elizabeth Moon.

20. Tea or Coffee?

Neither.

21. OTP?

Theron Shan x Jedi Knight, Hiccup x Astrid (How to Train Your Dragon) .

22. Do you play an instrument/sing?

I used to play percussion, more specifically mallet percussion (xylophone, marimba, etc.), in school. Also piano. Haven’t really practiced much in the last decade or so, but I probably could pick it back up if I put some time into it.

#about me #thanks for tagging <3 #a-muirehen #jae responds to tagging 15 minutes late with starbucks

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hollyhomburg · 6 years

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Dance To This

(Hybrid! Seokjin x Blind! Reader x Hybrid! Namjoon)

W/C: 14.8k

TAGS: Eventual polyamory, Blindness, Service hybrid au, non-explicit sex, non-physical intimacy, mentions of anxiety and depression,

A/N: This is so long wow! sorry it took me longer than i thought to get this out. namjoon dosent come in until the end of this but he’ll be in the next one. Also theres a bit of a social media au in this one! if you like this- please consider donateing to my patreon here!

(This is so fucking self indulgent I love it.)

- Seokjin was the runt of his litter from a prized show hybrid, he’d never met his mother- but everyone has always told him how much he looked like her; from his plump lips to his long limbs.

- The only thing he lacked was her grace- which happened to be his downfall.

- He was the only one out of his siblings that hadn’t been sold off by the age of 8. Seokjin lacked grace on the runway, often tripping over the carpet on his way in, his shoulders so wide that every single swivel seemed to lumber.

- Which is why- despite the fact that he was quite good looking, With silky black ears and a shiny tail that he kept meticulously groomed- he was sent to an adoption agency once he reached the age where it became apparent he was no longer going to be a show hybrid.

- Deemed UN showable by his first owner at the young age of 10- it only went downhill from there.

- He was adopted by another show couple, and then sent back when he tripped during a competition.

- And then he was sent to another show couple. And then returned for a third time after an incident evolving another show hybrid who Seokjin had accidentally stepped on- crippling him for the next competition.

- He’d been banned from all competitions after that. A laughing stock, his dreams crushed into dust. It had been a mercy almost- to be transported 2 city’s over to one of the largest adoption facilities in the country just shy of his 21st birthday.

- He didn’t mind the facility really- they taught them how to accomplish basic skills that they might be expected to do: like laundry and cleaning- things that Seokjin already knew how to do as a runt working in the show industry.

- Since He was one of the older hybrids at the facility he often helped take care of the little ones, looking after them just to pass the time- playing games with them and even staging a small fashion show every now and then in the communal playroom (of course with the consent of the caretakers.)

- The worst thing about the facility was their lack of outside time, though they always had excess to the outdoor play areas and were often taken out on walks they tried to limit their exposure to the real world as much as possible. The only time they really went out into society was to school visits and occasional PR stunts.

- At the facility, hybrids were grouped by age, and when he first got there he was one of 10 in the 18+ grouping. As years passed, that group shrunk significantly- until it was just him, just Seokjin in the older hybrids group. alone in his room full of empty bunk beds.

- It seemed like he would never get adopted. In the many years, he had cut himself off from the others a little bit, tired of the emotional trauma of having his friends whisked away never to see them again.

- A month before he turned 25, he was helping one of the hybrid children get ready for adoption, He overheard a conversation between two of the head caretakers that he had known for years.

- They were the ones that usually dealt with adoptions, and they’d personally overseen every failed meeting Seokjin had ever had with potential owners. it had been a few months since anyone had come to see him.

- “I hear there’s this breeding operation up north- we should call them and see if they want him, he is a purebred after all” and that was the last thing he wanted. The absolute last- possibility he would accept. He’d left and spent the rest of the day at the edge of the outside play area, looking over the hill and into the city, and refused to come back inside until they came and got him.

- He was too old to be adopted into a normal family now, he was too old- most parents looked for hybrids in the same age as their child (usually there was only one due to low birthrates) to be a companion for them and make the house seem more joyful and less empty.

- Only as the child grew and went off to school the hybrid remained as a second-class citizen, with few more rights than a house pet. There where even colleges that advertised hybrid friendly dorms as an incentive for prospective students.

- But now Seokjin was the same age as most college graduates.

- Every morning he woke with fear thinking that maybe today would be the day he was sold off as a stud, shivering as he thought about it. He had heard about the breeding operations- how they treated hybrids like little more than cattle.

- All these years without a home had Seokjin wondering if maybe he just wasn’t meant for that cozy life. A house with a family and laps to sit on and people to pet his ears. A warm body next to his to cuddle at night, someone to look after him and make sure he was taking care of himself.

- He wanted someone to take care of him and to be able to take care of them in return.

- But Part of him knew he wanted more for himself than just that, but he was a hybrid- and hybrid were only meant to be pets after all.

- But it didn’t seem like that was in the cards for him, to be a house pet- in the low moments of despair he poured over every mistake he’d made, how he stuttered the last time someone had come to look him over for adoption. How maybe he’d smiled a little too wide, showed his canines a little much.

- Maybe he wasn’t pretty anymore, maybe he wouldn’t even be any good at loving someone and they could tell just by looking at him.

- Maybe he just wasn’t worth a home.

- So when they call him into a meeting room- soft with light yellow walls and couches and a wide wooden table, he thinks the two head caretakers are going to try and break the news to him gently.

- “There is someone who wants to come to meet you today Seokjin, she’s a little bit unconventional as far as potential owners go, but we considered you because of your age and temperament.”

- Seokjin doesn’t know what he’s expecting, maybe an elderly woman, Seokjin might not mind an old lady as an owner. It might be fun, but then if they died in a few years he might just end up back here and even more UN-adoptable than before.

- Or maybe it was a hopelessly unsociable mid 30′s woman- but then they might end up lonely and horrible for other reasons, forcing him into bed when he didn’t want to which might have been just as bad as being a stud.

- Maybe they’d be someone horrible- but he swallows back his nervousness and reminded himself that anything would be better than the breeding operation.

- So when they lead you through the door, a young woman wearing a light grey sweater and a pair of ripped jeans, He’s more than a little surprised.

- His breath tightens in his chest. Because he didn’t expect someone like you- someone who looked so young, you must have been at least a few years younger than him.

- He didn’t expect to feel drawn to you like this. There was something beautiful about you that made Seokjin’s heart pulsate in his ears like thunder and his hands begin to sweat.

- Your features, which would separately have been plain, but when combined formed something like a masterpiece. His tail swished back and forth as he breathed in your sweet scent- something like spring mixed with vanilla.

- He didn’t expect to take in your every movement- He watches the way you wind the handle of your walking cane over your hands in a way that seems inherently nervous. Staring straight ahead with these listless but cloudy eyes, managing to look shy, like you can feel his eyes on you.

- Seokjin didn’t expect his new potential owner to be blind.

- One of the caretakers leads you to a chair to sit down across from and Seokjin watches you with careful eyes, unabashed to be so brazenly admiring you and looked you up and down freely knowing that you won't notice the impertinence.

- As a show hybrid, he would have been beaten for such an offense- looking into the eyes of someone who wasn’t a judge.

- Everything from your neutral attire to your natural face was rumpled but in kind of an adorable way, something about your curves was soft. There’s a knot under the side of your hair and Seokjin doesn’t think you’ve noticed but he can see it.

- The caretakers depart after a moment leaving you and Seokjin sitting at the table, some time to get to know each other, they say after you’ve exchanged names.

- “How long have you been blind?” Seokjin asks- unable to stop himself.

- “2 years ago, car crash, but I’m only partial- I can still sense light,” you say, gesturing to the widows. Most of the time you would have been offended by such a forward question about your disability, But this hybrid couldn’t have ever met someone that was blind before.

- “How long have you been here?” he bristles a little bit at your quick retort. But keeps it under wraps.

- Seokjin reconsidered his initial assessment of you- You might look meek- but the amusement toying at the edge of your mouth when you parried his blunt words made him think that you were anything but.

- “A few years- though I’ve been in and out of homes for the last 6 years since I-“ he trails off- shame choking his throat. as if you can sense his discomfort, you pick up effortlessly where he left off.

- “They told me that you used to be a show hybrid, they also told me that-“ you swallow, and Seokjin can tell that you’re choosing the words carefully. “That you really want to be adopted.” Seokjin makes a noise in assent.

- You remembered the caretaker's words, “he’s a little older and a little strange- not socialized enough, but he should be a fine companion for you.” there was something about the way they said fine that you didn’t like.

- His voice is nice though; sometimes deep and calm but somehow it sounded an inch away from laughing at a moment. You decide that you like Seokjin, even if you really don’t know anything much about him yet. You’re not surprised when he replies, “Yes, I really do.”

- The caretakers come back, with a folder full of paperwork, a little tentative because Seokjin had been almost adopted time and time again- and they know what will happen if you turn him down. But it seems their fears are dissolved.

- Because in all actuality- you really need a hybrid, not just anyone, however. Service dogs were slowly going out of use, but service hybrids, however, were becoming a pricey counterpart, more than 3 times as expensive as most service dogs.

- You come out and say it though before they had over the consent of adoption form to Seokjin. “The truth is: I still need help most days,” you start off. Wanting to be truthful to the hybrid with the good voice that sounded so hopeful. You don’t want to get him into something he doesn’t want.

- You talk him through it over the next house, making it abundantly clear that you’re looking for more of a service hybrid than anything else- but Seokjin’s answer doesn’t change whatsoever.

- Service hybrids start at 100k and from the look of your clothes- brand name but not designer- you certainly can’t afford one of those.

- Seokjin finds it in himself to not be disappointed. Reminding himself that being a service hybrid would be far better than the alternative. Being a caretaker himself is better than being nothing more than a stud, even if it’s not a companion like he really wants. and he’s willing to bet it will only take him a week to get pets out of you.

- So he jumps at the chance agreeing almost before they’ve finished outlining what he’ll need to learn- what you need him to be which is really just a guide when you have to leave the house to make getting around easier.

- Seokjin wouldn’t mind that at all. Anything to get him out in the world again.

- He hopes that maybe just maybe you’re not going to be one of the bad owners. The one that hits him or tries to force him into bed. And with your kind eyes and appearance, he doesn’t think you will be that way.

- All he has to do is take care of you right? Then you won't return him? The prospect of never being returned ever was another positive. You weren’t going to magically regain your sight. you’d always need him. It was the most secure placement he could hope.

- Seokjin barely gets the hang of is his first day- his hand hovering awkwardly when you reach for things unsure if he should grab them for you. You flinch more than once when his hands find yours without him saying it.

- You live in a light and airy 2-story loft with lots of windows and too many unused rooms near downtown and close to public transportation. Seokjin can only imagine how lonely it must have felt- with the noises of the city barely muted by the walls of your house.

- There’s even a small porch off the kitchen with wide double doors that swing out, a few steps down to a walled backyard that’s almost too small to be called a yard that’s covered with prickly crabgrass.

- The living room is a cozy affair, your couch fluffy and comfortable piled high with blankets. And wide bay windows that open out to look out on the street corner across from your house. Not that you can appreciate the view of the street and the city but you tell Seokjin that you like the way that the sunlight feels on your face and that sometimes you can even see shadows of things when the light is right.

- He’s surprised that you even have a television, a computer, and cellphone, he marvels a little over the voice and touch screen software that dictates to you and makes it possible for you to use the Internet.

- He gets a little shy when you tell him that you’ll get him his own once you get around to ordering it on the internet- seeing as the dictation soft where on yours might get a little annoying to use.

- Everywhere in the house, there’s evidence of the adaptations needed for you. The cups are all ridged so you can distinguish which ones you’re grabbing; the chairs at the small 4 seat dining table are light so that you don’t hurt yourself if you bump into them, which you still do often.

- The master suite where you sleep is on the first floor but your office and the spare rooms are on the second.one of them empty but the other sparsely furnished, Seokjin takes the corner room as his own.

- When you show it to him he goes quiet for a few minutes, it’s night already, and he’s got an excellent view of the city street below watching the red brake lights zigzag through the intersection. He knows that the sound of the car horns will keep him up at night and so will the light from the street lamps outside.

- “It’s so… loud” he says quietly, searching for the right word. But next to him you nod, understanding what he means, you vaguely remember what it looked like and how different it was from the countryside. The tangle and Pell-mell of it all.

- He’s a little overwhelmed with it all- he knows he dreamed about being able to get out of the facility but this-this mess of roads and cars and so many people is not what he expected, and maybe more than he bargained for. He can’t even imagine exploring it like he once wanted to now that he’s seen it.

- He’d have to take you along though- seeing as all unaccompanied hybrids where taken to the pound by hybrid control.

- You reach out for his arm, surprisingly finding it in the first try- and tell him to take it slow, that he’ll have time; the city will be there when he wants it.

- It’s such a kind sentiment that it shocks Seokjin as you turn and head down the stairs to your own room. Shoving down the warm feeling that your kindness ignites in him and saving it for another less overwhelming time.

- Eventually, he gets the story out of you, it was an accident that blinded you- and the house was bought via a massive settlement you got from the company that had caused it through negligence.

- You’d moved to the city for college before the accident and never left despite your family’s urgings to come home. You didn’t like how they coddled you, how they thought you couldn’t do things now that you were blind.

- Seokjin supposes he’ll meet them one day.

- The first few weeks are a strained sort of balance between the two of you- full of lots of tripping and stuttering words as you get used to cohabitation.

- But he doesn’t hate it- likes it even sometimes. The way that the two of you dance around each other even if not knowing if he should help you makes him anxious.

- In the first few days, Seokjin moves around the furniture so much that you can’t go into his room without tripping, so you avoid that space- though you tell Seokjin that he can repaint it any color he wants. You’ll go to the paint store across town together when he’s decided what color he’d like.

- You give Seokjin a surprising amount of freedom- more than he’s used too. The first few days he gets a little frustrated, he doesn’t know why he’s here. There doesn’t seem to be much to help you with- you have a cleaning service come in to clean once a week and though you go on walks every day and occasionally need to bring him to meetings uptown in the financial district. Most of the time you just work or watch tv.

- The paint arrives the day after his laptop and cell phone do, and while you work across the hall in his office, music and the smell of pain seep under your door, when you walk out into the hall you can sometimes hear him humming. Along to the music He plays from his laptop

- He finds himself awake one night- to make tea to help him go back to sleep and he sits at the round table in your kitchen tapping around on a new ap he discovered that day called Instagram when you come out of your bedroom.

- You say hello to him while you go to the cabinet that holds the bowls and He watches you pile too sweet cereal into your bowl at almost midnight and sit down across from him. His nose wrinkles at the artificial smell of it

- “Don’t you want to eat something real? Like a meal?”

- Seokjin was more than capable of cooking for himself, and he had made dinner for himself earlier that night- but you’d made it clear that it wasn’t his responsibility to make sure you did things like eat.

- “Ugh- I don’t really cook, never got the hang of it again” you confess, “microwavable food is about as good as It gets with me, and I’m out, we’ll have to go to the store tomorrow.”

- Seokjin had never thought of himself as much of a cook- all of his meals had been made for him in the adoption center and before that he’d been too young and his diet watch too closely for him to eat what he wanted.

- But he makes you poached eggs with a makeshift hollandaise sauce the next day because really- making two portions was just as easy as making one and he didn’t want to know what you did with the sugary cereal when you were out of milk (which you were thanks to him).

- You laugh when he calls fruit loops an atrocity of the food world. “I- uh, made a little too much if you want some?” you couldn’t tell that he’d purposefully cracked 6 eggs instead of three.

- He feels a strange sense of budding pride when he sees your face light up with you eat his simple eggs, “This is really good! Holy crap” you say appreciatively making a noise of appreciation at the food. And Seokjin is glad that you can’t see him blush at your compliment.

- The shopping center was surprisingly less intimidating then he thought- he’d seen them in movies but had never been in one in person, but he likes it, and you live close by it- only a 10-minute walk away.

- He carries two bags and you carry one home- carrying the milk in the other while you’re arm and arm with him. It’s easy for him to guide you; it surprises him that he learns the way back so easily.

- Seokjin starts to cook for the both of you after you assure him that you really don’t care if he does, Though you do get a little bit annoyed once because he doesn’t put things back into the same spot.

- At the mild scolding- which resulted after you put salt and not sugar in your morning coffee, was quickly remedied by you clueing in Seokjin to your system.

- Then he discovers something called the food network and he’s really done for. Starting to keep it going in the back round whenever he cooks, even writing down a few recipes to try, quickly amassing a stack of them to try.

- Seokjin loves the rhythm of the knife against the cutting board, the building of the burning oil as he adds the ingredients to the pan, the smell changing and how he can almost taste what he’s making before he’s even done with it. He likes it when you poke your head out from your office and call down to him that whatever he’s making smells good.

- The two of you fall into an easy rhythm.

- Most days you’ll wake up, eat a quiet breakfast with him and then go up to your office on the second floor, a room which Seokjin had been in only a few times- to get you for lunch and once, because he couldn’t figure out how to shut off the water in the shower.

- Seokjin watches you sometimes in the early mornings, the way that you’ll read your brail books over morning coffee, hair half in front of your face- he wants to reach out and tuck it behind your ear but he doesn’t- worried that it might startle you.

- He’s gathered that you’re some sort of consultant after he hears you on the phone arguing with some business executive- whatever it is that you do- you must be pretty good at it- since it seems like you’ve done fairly well for yourself if leisure by which you conduct your daily life is anything to judge by, he doesn’t think even a settlement could cover this.

- You know it must not be easy for your hybrid- to not be around people very often, to not have freedom to go out and do his own thing while you where stuck at home working- you make the effort to be a more engaging person for your hybrid, taking more than one daily walk or even supplying things for him to do.

- Then he discovers YouTube and starts making his own cooking videos. The first few are shaky and unrefined but he amasses a few followers in the first week, even more as he continues to make videos. You listen to the first few at his urging, laughing when he makes puns.

- “I’m not yolk-ing when I say this scallion pancake recipe is the best guys!” “Thanks for pudding up with me, guys!” “I yam so thankful for all of your wonderful compliments” he quickly becomes somewhat of a star.

- He reads the comments to you sometimes, “I would love to have you as my hybrid” some of them write, “your ears are so cute aigooo~” and you two laugh at the more thirsty ones, though Jin admits it feels nice to be praised- even if it is just from strangers on the internet.

- You’re not surprised that his daily vlog “eat Jin” becomes popular- there is something magnetic about your hybrid- he often gets comment complementing him on his nice voice and his technique.

- He records when you’re working most of the time so you rarely feature in his videos- but he does film you one time when he makes a pie, shouting “she liked it!” from behind the camera. Your head rising in his direction looking perplexed, cutting off just as the piece of pie falls from your fork. Most of the time he closes out the video with a short video of the two of you eating it.

- People have more than a few questions after Jin shows them you- obviously his owner to his few thousand subscribers he’s gotten over the last month but he keeps them at by for now.

- After his first video gets so much attention He knocks on the door to your office before entering, leaning his shoulder half in and half out of the room when your head lifts up from the computer that is activated by voice commands.

- He clutches the grocery list in his hands, as you ask him what’s up and he replies shyly, “I um- I saw this recipe for chicken pot pie on the television and we don’t have all of the ingredients or the pan I’d need and I was wondering if you could take a break and go with me?”

- You stretch- arching your back like a cat, Seokjin blushes when your shirt pulls up and he can see more of your skin. “Give me 30 minutes- I’m almost with my analysis and they need it by tonight.”

- A few minutes later you’re wandering downstairs and going to your room to retrieve your keys and your shoes. Seokjin’s waiting by the front door by the time you’re ready- calling out to you to let you know he’s there.

- You sense his hesitation, the way he lingers by the door toeing on his shoes, “what?” you ask, and you hear Seokjin let out a breath.

- “it’s just- your hair- do you mind if I?” your hand goes up instantly to the back of your head- finding your hair a little rumpled from sleep and from work, you frown but nod at his request, he scampers off, you head back to the kitchen while he comes back with your hairbrush, pulling out the chair on the kitchen table for you to sit, you sink down and pull the hair out of the edge of your jacket.

- Seokjin is nothing if not gentle- but then again he always is, the smooth run of your brush through your hair and the way he makes sure not to pull too hard at the tangles is careful. It feels nice- the hair on the back of your neck sticking up and making shivers go down your spine.

- “Have you done this before.” Seokjin makes a noise of assent. “When I was a show hybrid I would sometimes help with the younger kids- but I wasn’t a good enough stylist to make my upkeep costs worth it- not that I didn’t try.” He says, it’s the most personal words that he’s said since your conversation in the adoption Centre but they come easy.

- “I’m sorry that it didn’t work out for you- it seems like you really liked it.” Seokjin nods before he realizes that they’re no way you could know he’d agreed so he makes a noise, his ears flicking and his tail swishing,

- “I really wanted it to work at one point- but don’t worry, I like living here it feels like home.” he says out loud- not realizing that he’s saying it until its already out of his mouth, he covers his mouth with one hand but below him still seated you’re only smiling, and laughing a little.

- “Well then” he can hear a soft happiness in your voice, as he pulls through the last knot in his hair. “Let's go get stuff for pie.”

- Seokjin realizes quickly after that- that he really does enjoy taking care of you, and he doesn’t think it has anything to do with his latent want to be some sort of stylist or his desire to be kept and not go back.

- He likes it here because of you, he’d never had someone to call his own or someone to belong to but he certainly feels like he belongs here.

- Every time you let him comb your hair, or when he messes with the way your clothes are laying on you, untucking your shirt if it gets snagged- he feels this bazar possessive feeling well up in him. Fussing just to fuss and sate it sometimes, More than once he’s had to shove down the urge to pull you close. Especially when you pass other hybrids in the street.

- You don’t seem immune or uncomfortable with the familiar way Seokjin starts to touch you, blushing sometimes and smiling more. His hip brushes yours in a quiet hello in the mornings, your arms link closer when you walk, and you’ll lean into him when you’re in a particularly crowded place.

- Seokjin is just starting to think that he’s gotten used to the city when you tell him that you’ll have a meeting uptown in the financial district soon, where the buildings tower over the streets like cathedrals, Seokjin starts to feel anxious being walled in, but enjoys the subway ride.

- He wears the nicest black slacks and button up that he owns, while you wear a simple dress and low boots. Seokjin is allowed to sit in on the meeting and watches in awe as you transform from this soft and quiet person into this assured businesswoman, though he can see you crumple with exhaustion the second you get home.

- “ugh I hate those people” you gripe, facedown on the couch. “Come on you did so well! They certainly seemed impressed,” he said, his hands going to slide off your shoes and tossing them in the entryway, affectionately rubbing at your ankles.

- “You really think so?” you say sounding unsure, giggling and a little surprised when you throw your arms around him after he tells you that yes you did. But he returns your hug immediately, his tail thumping happily against the back of the couch.

- Seokjin makes sure that he makes you get out of the house at least once a day- eventually becoming bold enough to ask you for walks- usually on your lunch hour. Though sometimes in the afternoon when the light gets all golden and the garden path in the local park smells like freshly turned earth.

- You like it. And you tell him that you do more than once. Without Seokjin- before when you’d gone on walks it had been scary, you’d never been sure quite where you’d been going.

- Your phone with the voice commands an option that made it feel impersonal and noisy when all you wanted to do was listen into the world. You’d always been unsure if there was something or someone watching you. Paranoia and anxiety getting the best of you.

- You still kept your walking stick in your bag with you when you walked- but you didn’t need it when Seokjin would take your hand in his.

- What was better was the way he described people, usually in quiet voice under his breath that only you could hear- “the roots on the trees here look like they where some sort of monster that was frozen with the way their looping over each other- but it’s not scary more pretty.”

- “I love the way you describe the world- like its all somehow so strange but fascinating to you.” Seokjin just laughs his gorgeous laugh and runs a hand through his hair. Still unused to you giving him compliments but glowing with the praise.

- Or sometimes he could catch someone looking at you “that woman has the worse taste in clothing- I don’t care who you think you are mauve and orange do not go together- she has no right to give us such a dirty look”

- Seokjin makes you laugh, and smile more than you have in years- more than you have in a long time. Since even before your accident. But as always, there’s only a matter of time before you have a bad day. Or a few bad days in a row.

- Seokjin realizes it when he comes downstairs a little later than usual and finds no coffee brewing in the machine, the light turned off under your door which had never happened- you usually slept with the light on claiming the faint glowing left you with a sense of security.

- And he guesses your still asleep- after all you where a bit between clients at the moment- your next assessment wasn’t due until the last quarter of the year and you deserve a day to sleep in.

- When you still haven’t come out by lunch Seokjin gets worried- what if you’d fallen in your bathroom? What if you’d knocked yourself out or something? - He knocks at your door, and when you don’t answer he calls your name. He cracks open the door, sees you hunched body underneath blankets.

- Over the last few weeks, Seokjin’s started to know your scent better, and he can tell the faint off scent the twines with yours that they’res something wrong- that you’re sick. Closes it again, an hour later he comes back with soup and some fresh squeezed orange juice (because he refused to give you Tropicana when the natural alternative was so much better)

- “I figured you might be sick?” he says, teeth biting into his lower lip as he sits at the foot of your queen bed, he can tell you’re awake. He doesn’t gather how you’re sick until you start talking.

- Your voice is rough and choked- though not in the way it would get from a cough, it’s like you’ve been crying, and the realization is like an electric shock to his body.

- “I’m fine Jin I just want to sleep. Can you close the door on the way out?”

- He’d been so happy here the last 2 months, he didn’t even stop to realize whether or not you were. His ears pin to the back of his head as he immediately starts to wonder if it’s him that’s making you unhappy. But he hadn’t done anything wrong the day before. Hadn’t knocked over anything or lead you into a pole on accident again.

- As he breathes in deep, the discomfiting scent intertwined with yours- the harsh bite of cinnamon intertwined with the vanilla.

- “Y/n...” he says, leaning over to touch your folded legs, at his comforting touch you shrink into a ball and pull them to your chest, pulling your whole body underneath the blanket.

- “Please just go Jin,” Your voice comes out muffled. The human part of him urges him not to agree while something primal wants to follow your instructions- warring with the part of him that also wants to protect and care for you.

- But his protective side wins out. He sucks on his lower lip “Okay- but I’m going to leave this here ok” he indicated the food on your side table, you don’t nod but Seokjin leaves the room and closes the door behind him.

- He comes in again that night and tries to get you to eat something but you hide underneath the blankets holding them down so that he can’t pull them off of you.

- The soup next to you is cold. He takes it and throws away angrily.

- He doesn’t know how to help you and it’s driving him absolutely crazy.

- By the second day, Jin has taken to sitting outside your bedroom door in case you call for him, worry wearing lines into his lower lip with how much he bites at it. He sleeps on the couch, all through the night he can hear your quiet sobs, more than once he gets up and goes to the door, frustrated with himself that he’s letting you be in such distress but unable to push through the door and comfort you.

- He wants to knock but he never does.

- By the third day Seokjin tries the door to your room opening it to find you still under the covers hidden, he peels back the sheets opposite you and crawls into your bed. You stir a little bit, but don’t move away when he shimmies closer to you and pulls your small form against his chest,

- You’re shaking in his arms, though something about the way you melt a little when he runs his fingers through your hair, trying to detangle it makes him think it’s not because of him. He lets out a high-pitched whine that wakes you from your last bout of drowsiness.

- The warm body enveloping you is achingly familiar though he’s never been so close to you before, his scent musky but clean like cotton pressed against your nose, you didn’t think your hybrid was quiet so broad shoulders, but now pressed chest to chest with him you realize how much he dwarfs you.

- “Honey,” he says softly, his voice pained with worry, “I’ve made some of your favorite dishes again, do you think that maybe you could eat some of it for me? I’m so worried about you.” he confesses.

- You shiver a little at the pet name, but shake your head against his chest. Jin smells so nice, sort of like something spicy and floral rolled all into one,

- “For me?” he pleads, he nuzzles his face into the top of your head, his voice cracking a little bit, he feels you melt more, and then holds his breath as you nod, he’s shooting up to go retrieve your plate- already made in the kitchen.

- When he comes back, he can finally see your face, your red puffy face, and the blood vessels above your eyes, which have burst under your skin from days of sobbing red and angry. And it scares him a little bit- he’s never known someone to cry quite that hard.

- He doesn’t ask you why- worried that it would prompt you to shrink back under the covers again and disappear from him.

- The two of you eat dinner curled up under your bed barely talking and by the time you’re finished Jin manages to convince you to lay on the couch with him and watch some late night television under 5 different blankets, even the one from his room.

- He picks you up in his strong arms- and even you have to admit- it feels so strange to trust that he’ll hold your weight- after having no one to hold onto for so long.

- It feels good too.

- You’re surprised when Jin doesn’t set you on the couch, instead of sitting with your back pressed against the armrest and your thighs across his lap. Your cheek pressed against the warm skin of his shoulders, the television blaring softly in the background- just the news. He falls asleep with his cheek rested against the top of your head.

- The next morning he drags you out of bed to walk to a café all the way across town breakfast, you resist at first- but then agree pouting when he says he’ll brush your hair before you go out.

- After you confessed to him that it felt nice when he brushed your head the other day he’s been holding it over you to bribe you with things, (to which Jin teased “someone’s got a little hybrid in them”)

- You must have taken a shower last night because the smell of sadness no longer clings to you. And though when you come back from the walk you go back to your room to nap- Seokjin feels like he’s won a little battle.

- He quickly realizes that you have your good days and your bad days, on your good days Seokjin doesn’t even have to ask you to do things with him, on the bad days- well all you really need is some cuddles.

- Seokjin doesn’t mind that either- he tells you he likes it just because you smell nice and you’re warm but really he knows that’s not only the reason why he likes it

- Over the first few months, he’s been living with you the soft apprehension melt away into fondness at first, which changes into something soft and tender that scares him a little.

- He loves to make things in your kitchen, the way the city smelled when he sits on the back porch, loved the way you would sit with him and let your shoulders brush.

- The way you shivered when he brushed your hair, your smile, your laugh, the way that you never guarded your expressions around him. All of the small things. Like walking with your arm through his, the way your hand would skim along the bushes to feel the soft hairy leaves. The little squeaks you made when you bumped into things.

- The feelings of protectiveness sneak up on him.

- Seokjin goes to town, baking cakes and dinner for you each night, not because he feels like he has too- but because he wants to see your face light up from the sweetness.

- he loves the The way you raise your eyebrows and defiantly eat your too sweet cereal in his direction when he complains that cocoa puffs are garbage.

- And that makes things so much more difficult. Because he wants to pull you to sit next to him when you sit across the table. Wants to touch your cheek and kiss your lips when you make that shriveled nose expression.

- He feels the urge to do it so often that he’s worried one day you’ll lean in close and he’ll do it out of habit- because he’s imagined it so many times.

- He loves when you sleepily lie on the couch in front of the TV and pull him closer- complaining that a full belly makes you in the mood to cuddle with an adorable pout that pulls at his heartstrings.

- And of course you take care of Seokjin too- you hear the scuff of his shoes against the sidewalk and tell him that you two should go get new ones soon.

- When he starts to sniffle one night in front of a drama you wipe softly over his cheeks and hold him a little tighter. Running your hand up and down his forearm to comfort him.

- When you come down the stairs and ask him if he’d liked to go on a walk- because you had the feeling he’d be getting antsy on a nice day, not because you’d need to go anywhere. The way you watch each of his cooking videos before he posts it- gives you a little constructive criticism here and there.

- His tail gives away his mood when you rub his ears and pet his head- clacking against the metal chairs at the kitchen table. You back hug him in the early mornings, lingering a little longer in his arms every time.

- “I like this,” you say once, your voice muffled by the fabric of his rough cotton shirt. “I do too,” he mumbles, and the two of you pretend those words are enough for now when 3 other words are hovering on the tip of your tongues.

- Summer fades to fall and Seokjin and you go on walks to hear the leaves crunch beneath your feet, you lie back down in a pile of leaves and Seokjin drops a pile of the crunchy leaves on top of you, laughing and giggling as they fall into your hair making him throw pile after pile on top of you.

- He makes peach and pecan pies as well as apple and cinnamon and you sneeze several times in a row as you help him chop the apples. Which results in him almost rolling on the floor laughing at how cute you are.

- You curl up on Halloween watching scary movies and eating pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream and Kit Kat bars.

- For Thanksgiving, you take him to your parent’s house, the train from your city to theirs is a little empty so early in the morning. Seokjin’s toting 2 freshly baked pies; one apple and one pumpkin that impresses the socks off of your grandmother who also. His legs shake nervously and his tail thwaps against the seat impatiently the entire dinner only calming when you set your hand on it and rub circles onto his knee.

- Your family approves of him- especially when he manages to cook a turkey perfectly. Stopping your forgetful aunt from leaving it in the oven for too long.

- The two of you pile into your old room on the queen bed- seeing as all the other rooms in your house where taken by relatives. And though you fall asleep on the other side of the bed, when you wake, you find yourself curled into Seokjin’s side.

- His warm breath rushing over your face and his arm curled underneath you, holding you a little closer than before but still not suffocating you. When you start to stir an inch away he groans pulling you closer.

- “Come on Jinnie- we’ve got a train to catch,” you say lightly, “no- cuddles first” he complains, pouting cutely, not realizing the nickname you used until later. You cave and end up taking a later afternoon train back into the city. Somehow his hand finds yours on the train- when it jostles you and throws you up against him, and his hand doesn’t leave yours for the duration of the rest of the train ride home.

- One morning Jin watches you pull on a black sweatshirt over black leggings and he says offhandedly, “You know we really should get you some more colorful clothes” you make the expression of semi-raised eyebrows that was the same thing as rolling your eyes to him and just say “seokjin- baker extraordinaire and a stylist!”

- So the two of you go to the mall and he drags you into every single store trying to get you to try on skirts (which you initially refuse) but do relent when he selects some baggy sweater dresses in bright colors or muted pastels.

- He quickly realizes that fabric is extremely important- too soft or static fabrics could be uncomfortable for you- so he’s more careful with his selections as well. He even finds a few new items for himself.

- He flushes so hard when you reach out to feel one of his shirts and then hug him- rubbing your cheek against his chest as you mutter, “oooohhh so soft!” yup that sweater was defiantly getting added to their cart.

- Seokjin still can’t help but feel a little cooped up sometimes. He asks you why you never go out to bars or clubs like people your own age- and you complain that they never made you feel safe- with so many people brushing up against you and the fact that audio queues where basically nil.

- A few nights’ later Seokjin makes you take him out to a local restaurant “we never go out at night” he complains and also clarifies that he wants to start reviewing local restaurants on his blog/youtube channel/Instagram. You agree, knowing that he’d probably like a break from cooking too.

- The sauce is above par even if the food got a little mushy when it became cold but you like it. And from the sounds that he makes, the Ahhhs and pleasant hums- you figure his dish is good too.

- He even gives you a little spoonful of his soup and you make a noise as well. “Next time I’ll get that,” you say, already deciding that you’ll go out more often. Seokjin wants to try everything, you make it a Friday night thing sometimes more casual walks on the boardwalk to get fried food from street carts and other times to fancy restaurants that have a “no flats for women” policy which you detest.

- Seokjin reaches 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel just 5 months after making it. And you celebrate by going out to one of the more fancy restaurants that he’d wanted to try across town. You even get a bottle of white wine for the two of you to share which makes you feel rosy-cheeked before the end of the last course.

- He’s been getting so many requests for videos recently, more than he could reasonably do, but one of the more requested topics is a video about you. There aren’t many hybrids on YouTube, maybe more than a half dozen notable ones and his followers, both human and otherwise are more than a little curious about Seokjin’s “adoption story” as tubers commonly call them.

- And after your consent, Jin makes an answer video- talking somewhat candidly about the struggles he faced at the beginning of his life being in the show industry and failing, About his time in the hybrid facility, and about his mysterious blind owner.

- You even make a brief appearance, “I’d like to introduce you to my biggest flan” you cringe at his pun, “And my best friend Y/n.” “Technically I’m your owner- though it doesn't feel like it.” Seokjin laughs and agrees “No it doesn't,” you can't see it of course but later others will comment how Seokjin blushed and looked from you to the camera continuing to introduce yourself.

- Seokjin reads you a few questions, and you answer them, “my favorite dish of his would have to be his beignets!” Seokjin chimes in and notes that you have a sweet tooth. “if I made anymore sweets for you, you’d get a new cavity every other week!”

- Before you leave to answer more of the serious questions, you say goodbye to the camera “it was berry nice to meet you all! You’re all so sweet” Seokjin’s laughs offer you a chance to escape And he moves onto the heavier questions.

- “Before I came to live with Y/n, I was in a really tough place, I’d been at the adoption center longer than most of the employees because I was so old. I wish people would adopt old hybrids more- we can be just as good companions as any other hybrid. I’m really lucky that Y/n took a chance on me, I probably would never have been adopted otherwise.”

- The response from his video is immediate- a few days after he starts getting messages from his followers, them with pictures of older hybrids newly adopted- some even older than Jin. He even gets some before and after pictures of people who have adopted stray hybrids (who tend to be older in general and often escape from abusive homes) and Jin feels his heart swell.

- He didn’t expect it to make a difference. But it already is. He’s already made a huge difference. And that means more to him than anything.

- So when he crawls into your lap and holds you close a little tearful you just hold him tight, rubbing your small hands over his broad shoulders as you tell him how proud you are of him for making such a positive change.

- And Seokjin feels pride and a happiness so soft it feels like sadness well up in him and make him giggle tearfully. Scenting along your throat and pulling himself further on top of you as he smothers himself in your love happily.

- Your hybrid has always been soft and emotional and so in tune with what others need- you especially. And you confess that you’re the ones who’s lucky. Lucky to have him.

- On your weekly night out to a new local diner that week you dress in one of your new dresses, one that Seokjin called “a light mauve” that contrasted nicely with your undertones, whatever that meant. You attempt something that you haven’t in ages; something that’s daunted you since your accident- makeup.

- You don’t know why you where sure you wanted to be pretty today, but the thought of going out, being on Jin's arm- something that ordinarily wouldn’t make you anxious at all- sets you on edge.

- You fumble around with your old container of foundation and a beauty blender and that’s how Jin finds you, scrambling with the brushes unsure what colors you’re actually feeling. Trying to remember what pallets you’re holding and what colors where actually there.

- He touches your arm softly before you avert your face from him- “I just wanted to feel pretty” you say in a downturned voice, a little bit of shame clinging to your bones because really- this shouldn’t be so hard.

- And because- Well- you wanted to be pretty for him.

- He doesn’t say “Y/n you’re beautiful” like he wants too, confessing the first thing he ever thought about you, instead he swallows his words of praise- worried about making you uncomfortable and takes the makeup brush from you.

- “I can help with that you know- why don’t you sit” he’d had practice putting on makeup as a show hybrid- and though he’s a little out of practice he manages to blend your contour out perfectly on the first try.

- You sit down on the edge of the toilet, he brushes careful amounts of blush onto your face after he pats it with a bit of setting powder- it’s a little light for you, obviously a winter shade but he warms it a little with some bronzer at your cheekbones and your temples

- It feels nice- for him to treat you with such gentle movements, the soft unexpected brush of the fine soft bristles as he smudges on the light gold highlighter to your cheekbones, making you glow and shimmer to Jin’s eyes.

- Jin loves taking care of you in this way, loved taking care of you in general. he’s so enthralled by the particulars of your face the small marks, the upturn of your pink lips, the delicate brush of your lashes along your lower cheek and your perfect cheeks themselves.

- “Jin,” you say softly, and he can hear the emotion in your voice, “I’ve never thanked you- for all of this- for being” for being my person, you want to say, but you don’t think he’d understand, not really. Just how much he means to you.

- “You don’t have to honey,” he says, his breath brushing over your cheeks, “but still- I don’t know who I’d be or where I’d be if It weren’t for you,” a single tear drifts out of the corner of your eye. Seokjin stills above you, and you hear the clatter of the make up pallet and brush as he sets it aside.

- And Seokjin ticks, “that won’t do,” his large hands cupping your jaw.

- The sudden press of something so soft that they can only be his lips stuns you as he presses them over the tear on your cheek.

- You jump backward at the tentative and delicate touch. You can feel the press of his hair against your forehead as he slowly withdraws, pressing another kiss to your jaw on the way out. His lips trailing down your chin.

- He pauses, his breath brushing over your freshly painted lips, colored by his own hands; he sees your chest heave with gasps when he hovers.

- You move forward the half inch and press your lips to his, his hands hit the back of the toilet when he catches himself- because really- he never expected you to return his kiss, he didn't expect this white-hot feeling that’s finally bubbled up past the boiling point where he’d shoved it down in his chest.

- Your hands go up to hold him gently behind his neck; softly enough that he can pull away if he wants to.

- Your entire body feels on fire, and it feels like Jin is the one spreading gasoline as he kisses you with passionate fervor, lips parting against yours. He lets you break apart for air, tastes you on his tongue when he leans his forehead against yours, both of you breathing heavy.

- “You okay?” he asks, and you nod a little, smiling- but overwhelmed, you’d forgotten how sensitive lips where. In the absence of his they tingle. He stands up, pretending like he didn’t just kiss you, your face is flaming as you stutter out a yes but Seokjin still steps away.

- He wants to go slow, and he has a feeling that if you kept kissing- you’d go anything but slow.

- While Grabbing your setting spray and setting your make up he says, “there we go- perfect” though he’s not talking about just your makeup. “We’ll be late if we don’t leave soon- shall we?” he says, taking your hand, you let him pull you up to your feet.

- That night Seokjin treats you like a princess- and like before, every word from him makes you blush and stutter. You even indulge in a bottle of wine for the two of you. Though neither of you says it you both think that you might need something to soothe your nerves. The conversation flows like usual- more easily than breathing despite the lingering awkwardness from the kiss.

- Because you know him, and after these months together Seokjin knows you better than he knows the back of his own hand. There’s no need to be nervous around you.

- The second time the two of you kiss he’s the one who initiates it, he presses a kiss against your mouth while you dry dishes and he washes. It’s sweet and offly domestic but it feels nice when he presses into you harder, his teeth biting at your lower lip.

- His strong hands hoisting you up to sit against the counter. Slotting himself in-between your legs, when you run your fingers through his hair, nail scratching against his scalp and over his ears, making him groan against your lips.

- The third time you kiss it's you who seeks his lips out- he’s got his head in your lap on the couch- it’s late at night and the run of your hand through his hair and over his ears makes him almost groan with the delightful shivers.

- You laugh when he lets out a high pitched whine when you stop your trail against his ear, and you lean down- letting your hair spill over him before you kiss him softly with a gentle rhythm.

- He kisses you for longer, his hands hovering on your waist and itching up to press against your ribs under your shirt. Thumbs brushing your sternum. You don’t discourage his touches when they get heavier.

- Seokjin steals kisses from your lips on walks, when you crinkle your forehead when you laugh, kisses the smile from your face when you laugh at a comedian on late night television.

- You could never get enough of the taste of your hybrid. Though he was much more than just that to you.

- In the cold of late autumn, Seokjin pries the sweater off of you and finds you’re not wearing a bra underneath, and you commit to mapping every inch of his skin with your hands and mouth.

- You spend the morning with your bare chest pressed against his, your hands trailing and memorizing the elegant curve of his broad shoulders and tapered waist. Even going down further to twine your hands up and around his tail making him pant against you.

- It feels so intimate to have his skin pressed against yours, and you know based on the way that he sighs against your skin that he feels the same way. The connection between the two of you, the intimacy, makes your heart beat quick and your palms sweaty.

- He leaves love bites against your shoulders and begs you not to cover them up with makeup when you go out- even though you just raise your eyebrows at him most of the time and repeat your request for the cover-up. Even saying you’ll do it yourself if he won’t.

- But Seokjin can never deny your requests, even if he wants the whole world to see his claiming marks on you- even if you can’t see them yourself. He catches you sometimes running your fingers over them and pressing against them to feel the dull ache and memory of his mouth when you think he’s not paying attention.

- You get happier, bad days still happen, but now Seokjin just comes in to cuddle regardless of how you try to push him out. Even gaining the second sense as to when you’re going to go into a spiral- seeing the faraway look in your eyes and knows he shouldn’t plan on releasing a video the next day.

- Winter comes, Seokjin hangs up lights all around the house and even helps you pick a Christmas tree (you love how the smell of pine fills your home). The two of you decorate it with lights and buy each other presents as Christmas draws near.

- The two of you open up Christmas presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas day. Your mother gets Seokjin a fluffy pink sweater that he instantly loves and pulls on. Texting her that he loves it and thanking her. Which then leads to her calling the two of you for an extremely long video call with the rest of your family.

- You get him a couple’s wine and cooking night package scheduled for a few weeks away, along with something a little more personalized, a cookbook- but not just any old cookbook- it’s his cookbook.

- You put all his favorite recipes in it, complete with his comments which you recorded from eat Jin, and a few puny names, (such as chicken- pot- fine, for his pie recipe, and scalloped potate-no’s after his misadventures with that recipe.)

- You sent it away to one of those websites to get it designed; the book is spiral bound but glossy- with a photo of himself on the cover

- You spent nearly a day and a half talking with the printing designer over the phone to make it perfect- but you suspected they liked the project- after all, they were able to make most if not all of the design choices.

- The only thing that was totally you was the second part of the book- a mirror of the first only this one was in braille so that you could read it too.

- Seokjin almost cries when he holds it for the first time, sucking on his lower lip to keep in the tears when he sees the words “eat with Jin” in a swirly yet elegant font across the top.

- “Well do you like it,” you ask, taking his silence to mean something bad, but he just pulls you into his lap and nuzzles his head into your shoulder and no other words are needed.

- He gets you a fluffy fawn colored sweatshirt that almost goes down to your knees and an entire set of the harry potter audio books ready to be downloaded onto your phone.

- You giggle happily about- now you can listen to them everywhere and don’t need the old dilapidated radio to listen to them.

- That night the two of you watch the charismas specials (well he watches them- you just listen) until the late hours of the night wrapped in each other. Falling asleep with your head rested against Jin’s chest listening to his heartbeat.

- The two of you wake when the bells signaling the turn of the clock to midnight knock you out of your warm reverie, “Merry Christmas” you mutter to each other, meeting his lips in a kiss that tastes like the peppermint from candy canes and the promise of home.

- That night the two of you turn in, sleeping in your bedroom for once and not parting like you usually do. Underneath the too warm covers- you’re too hot in the sweatshirt he bought you so instead you shuck your pants leaving you only in your underwear.

- He takes off his pants too- leaving him only in his boxers and thin undershirt; you wind your bare skin in between each other and fall asleep breathing in each other’s breath.

- When Jin is sure you’ve fallen asleep, your hands curling and unfurling one in the covers another fisted on the shirt in his side, he whispers quietly into the winter air. “I love you.”

- You wake to snow the next morning- fallen overnight and the cold pressing in oppressively. Seokjin begs you to go sledding at the local hill and of course, you couldn’t say no to him.

- “You’ll be fine- just sit you between my legs” and of course it ends up okay, though the first time is a little terrifying, it’s been so long since you’d felt the wind and adrenaline rush through your veins, you shriek with laughter the first time down, and then jump up and say “again! again!” like a little kid.

- Jin just laughs, brushing the snow out of his hair before he presses a cold kiss against your cheek and guides you back to the top of the hill when the other kids are waiting.

- When you get home Seokjin is shivering and cold to the bone on account of having forgotten a pair of gloves behind. Concerned, you demand that Seokjin takes a warm bath in your bathroom (seeing as his bathroom on the second floor didn’t have a tub.)

- Drawing it for him and even popping in a bath bomb that you saved for a special occasion before he can tell you not to use it on him. he almost invites you to join him in the bath but the words fail to fall from the tip of his tongue before you close the door behind yourself.

- Seokjin spends almost an hour in the blissful lilac colored water letting the warmth relax his muscles, and he decides that he defiantly likes baths and will ask you to take more of them- with him hopefully- eventually if he ever plucks up the courage that is.

- You surprise him with a mug of warm hot chocolate with copious marshmallows and whipped cream. The two of you fall asleep curled up in each other’s lap and when you wake- though it might be dark outside the two of you are restless from the afternoon spent napping. And decide to go on a late night walk to burn off some steam.

- The city is cold and quiet in a peaceful sort of way with few people sharing the sidewalk with you as you navigate into the park already growing sleepy. A group of kids ambushes you with snowballs, peaking up over the edge of the boulders much to your surprise. Catching Seokjin with a snowball straight to the face.

- “You brats!” he cries scooping up a handful of snow on the side of his head and launching it in the teens' direction. He squeals and runs.

- But they venture off before long- eager to find an easier target after Seokjin pelts them with snowballs- feeling slightly proud of himself for defending you so well. Though he’d never admit it even after you tease him.

- He runs a hand through your hair clearing it of snowflakes, before you grin up at and asks, “Did I hit any of them?” Seokjin smiles at you and kisses the snowflakes off your lips and says that of course, you did even though the snowball he saw you throw landed off by about 10 feet.

- You walk further into the park, fat snowflakes starting to fall again, bursting on your face and melting when they hit like little sparks of cold.

- The two of you are just walking down the path when Seokjin yelps, taking a look at you- realizing that you’d lost your hat in the snowball skirmish “just give me a second! I’ll go back and get it” he’s letting go of your hand before you can say that you’ll walk with him.

- You suck on your lower lip, a little anxious as the sound of his footsteps disappear, you don’t have your walking stick but the garden path is mostly deserted and you’ve walked this way countless times before.

- But to stand there in the silence, the only sound the faint crinkle of the falling snow is unnerving. Your heart rate increases.

- The path might be safe and deserted the day after Christmas but there is something creepy about the silence of the woods and the fact that you know its dark around you, though you’ve lived with the darkness for long enough. Your breathing slowly speeds up, and you begin to lose sense of direction. “Jin?” you call out weakly. Unsure where he came from- your hands out in front of you.

- Seokjin couldn’t be more than 100 meters away from you- but he still doesn’t answer. A sharp noise echoes right beside you and you turn too quickly, your feet sliding, you take a step to your left and your legs slips- and suddenly you’re falling.

- Your bare skin touching snow as you turn over, your hand hitting a stone echoing with pain as you roll down a hill. You cry out as you finally come to a stop with your gloved hands fisted in the snow at the bottom of the slope.

- You call Seokjin’s name again and turn your foot a little tapping out with it, suddenly cold, ice cracks and your foot gets wet, the soft sound of gurgling arrests your ears.

- A stream, you’re right next to a frozen stream, you’re shaking now, the noise- the same one as before comes closer. You remember Seokjin mentioning a ravine around here more than once before and you truly start to panic when you realize where you are.

- “Hello?” you call out your voice shaking.

- “I’m sorry- I didn’t mean to startle- you were just about to fall and then you did cuz you got startled and-” a quiet male voice says the sound of footsteps and someone presence as foreign hands find you and start to help you up.

- you flinch but accept the help ”It’s okay” you say softly, trying to muster more strength in your voice. “Would you mind helping me- I- I’m blind and I can’t see my way out of here.” Warm bare hands grab at your wrist steadying you, and your pulse jumps- adrenaline reacting instinctively to a stranger.

- “You don’t need to be afraid I really am sorry- h-here”

- “How can you tell I’m afraid?” you inquire almost scared of the answer, he pauses, the silence pregnant, before he echoes quietly, “I could smell it on you.”

- “How could smell me!?” you ask, your foot slipping abruptly on something making you stoop to your knee, the stranger helps you stand again and you continue to climb uphill.

- Usually, you’d be more cautious and would never put your trust in a complete stranger, but you need him to get you out of here. “I’m a hybrid.” He answers softly. “Oh thank god” you relax instantly, “My hybrid should be around here somewhere, what kind are you? I’d love to meet your owner, what’s your name?”

- “Namjoon,” he says meekly “and I’m just a wolf mutt.” Your foot hits another slippery patch and you slide backward trying to regain your footing but failing. “It might be easier if you just get on my back.”

- “Okay” you agree, when he loops your arms around his neck and tells you to hold onto your wrist your arms brush over ears, bristly but somehow shorter than you’d thought, he stands when you arms are linked hunching forward. between your parted legs a tail swishes.

- “I got you,” he says, starting to lead you up the embankment. Feeling surefooted. It takes him seconds to ascent the slope with you on his back. “Here we go,” he says carefully lowering you down back onto the path. your front sliding down his wide back.

- “Y/N!” Seokjin yells, the sound of running immediately alerting you, you turn in his direction the same moment that his strong hands are dragging you behind him and away from the hybrid that just helped you.

- from Seokjin’s perspective, the hybrid looks grimy, obviously a stray, and a wolf from the look of it if his shaggy ears (one of them with a rip in it and the top tip of the other gone entirely), his unkempt tail, and unfiled canines where anything to go off of.

- His jacket was dirty and there was a smudge of dirt on his cheek- he was a stray- a stray hybrid like the ones that had been plaguing the city.

- The musky scent of fear coming from you cloying at his nostrils and making him go into high alert, his protective instincts making his temper flare. Who was this wolf threatening his mate?

- The low growl that echoes out of his throat cuts off your next words, “Seokjin!” you say alarmed, your hand fisting on the back of his jacket- pulling him back softly.

- In front of him, the wolf hybrid has his ears pinned to his head, backing up back towards the woods. “He helped me Jin! I slipped down the embankment and Namjoon was just helping me get out!”

- There is a moment that Jin stays ramrod straight, his tail curled threateningly, the other hybrids eyes are so wide as he shrinks back, one foot already in the woods, just before he turns and runs jin says, “wait- I’m sorry please-please don’t go” the other hybrid pauses by the edge of the path, a whine of fear high pitched and a little pitiful in the quiet winter air.

- Seokjin simultaneously is relieved (because he didn’t know if he was prepared to be in his first fight) and ashamed at himself for reacting with his instincts instead of his human head. now that he can see clearly he can see that The other hybrid looked anything but threatening

- “At least let us thank your owner for helping me” Seokjin casts a look at you-you can’t tell that he’s a stray. “At least let us feed you- to say thank you” Seokjin remedies, casting a glance at the wrists of the hybrid- they look so thin.

- Now that he’s taking a good look at him without the fear clouding his judgment Seokjin can see how unsteady the pup looks- he’s almost as tall as Seokjin but is at least 40 pounds lighter.

- He’s younger too, his shaggy grey-brown hair the same color as his ears, there’s a tare in the leg of his too short pants and his shoes don’t look anywhere near warm enough for the weather

- Seokjin’s shivering just looking at him.

- “Okay,” he says quietly. The three of you start to walk at a slow pace keeping a comfortable distance towards the edge of the park. You only let the uncomfortable silence fester for a moment before you’re saying “so….ugh Namjoon- where does your owner live?”

- Seokjin see’s the younger hybrid tense “ugh…my den is in the park?” Seokjin holds onto you a little tighter as you stumble when your foot hits a rock, he notices the mud on the back of your jacket from where you slid, the faint redness in your hand where you must have hit it when you’d fallen.

- He wouldn’t soon stop internally berating himself for leaving you alone for some time- how could he be so careless.

- “Wait you mean you live here? Out in the cold? You’re a stray?” Seokjin sees the stranger flush with shame and looks down, “it’s not so bad- I’ve got a lot of blankets and it warms up when I can make a fire.”

- “Please- let us help you, come back and sleep on our couch for the night” the fact that Seokjin is showing kindness your to Namjoon, whose head he’d been about to chomp off surprises you but makes you more than a little pleased, but then again Seokjin had always been kind.

- The other hybrid deliberates, sucking in his lower lip for a second, glancing at you- looking even smaller and non-threatening in a large puffy black coat. And then the other hybrid, who looked to be a few years older than him. Seokjin had the puffed up well mannered and well cared for look that stray hybrids never had, he’d never lived on the street, Namjoon was sure of it.

- Namjoon’s deciding shifting back and forth on one food before he says, “ok” and admits to himself that he really really doesn’t want to spend tonight in the cold and really just one night couldn’t hurt. Tomorrow he would leave and everything would be fine- his few possessions in his den wouldn’t be touched- especially since it was so well hidden.

- Your home is quiet and dark but unbelievably warm to Namjoon at first impression, almost stifling until he takes off his clothes, everything is so clean he immediately feels grubbier than ever, worried about touching anything lest he leaves a mark.

- You take Namjoon’s jacket from him and tell him, “We can wash these for you- and your other clothes, I’m assuming you’re a similar size to Jin?“ Namjoon nods before he realizes that you can’t see him do that. “Do you want to maybe take a shower or a bath?” Seokjin asks, taking your jacket off of the hook where you’d hung it up add it to the pile in your arms. You don’t comment on the extra weight.

- Namjoon can’t help but notice how the elder hybrid wrinkles his nose- he’s sure he doesn’t smell all that nice so he agrees, and the hybrid leads him upstairs to a bathroom that smells and offal lot like the dog-hybrid himself and sets him up with a towel and some fresh scented lavender and vanilla soap that makes Namjoon’s tail wag faster.

- He can’t wait to smell so clean- or so sweet, it’s been years since he’d showered in an actual bathroom and not just the stream or dealt with a gas station bathroom.

- When Namjoon exits the bathtub he finds the home filled with a lofty but rich scent as well as something that smells like burnt toast, he carefully grabs the clothes that have been left out for him and changes into the sweatshirt and stretchy pants. He heads downstairs his nose his guide to the heavenly scent.

- In the kitchen, he finds only Seokjin, but his sensitive ears picking up on some movement from the room to his right. “I hope you’re hungry- Y/n wanted me to make my vegetable soup tonight for you. please tell me you like grilled cheese, y/n has a thing for anything cheesy and greasy no matter how much I try to get her to eat healthily”

- “I like things as cheesy as you” you say as you exit the room next to the kitchen- what must be the master suite, wearing silky pajamas- it’s nearing midnight now.

- Seokjin laughs at your pun, a sound that makes Namjoon’s own mouth tug up in a smile. “Aish woman, stop tugging at my heartstrings.”

- “What’s a grilled cheese?” Namjoon asks, going over to look at the pot of soup- the spices hit his nose like a cacophony and Namjoon knows that if it tastes even half as good as it smells, he’s going to be dreaming about it for years whenever he has an empty stomach.

- You’re open-mouthed, shaking your head at Namjoon’s question. “ whats ah- Oh my god! You haven’t lived until you’ve had a grilled cheese- I’ll show you how to make one,” you say bounding over to the fridge in excitement about getting to show him.

- In your own space, your shoulders relax, and Namjoon can tell that you’re much more comfortable- and less hesitant now that you’re in your own space, Seokjin wordlessly hands you the cheese as you pull out the bread. Anticipating your hands reaching around for it before you’ve even voiced the question.

- It’s clear you’ve lived with the hybrid for a long time, and if Namjoon inhales a deep breath- he can tell that both of your scents has a little of the other Init. Namjoon’s a little jealous- but he tamps it down.

- The food is even better than it smells. And when Namjoon complements Seokjin on it the hybrid almost preens. “I swear I’ve gained 10 pounds since he came to live with me.” you comment. To which Seokjin replies “nonsense- you’re still nothing but skin and bones,” Namjoon can't help but notice how you used the words lived with me- instead of adopted.

- “How long have you been living together.” “Almost 10 months now.” Seokjin says, your hand brushes his on the top of a table. Namjoon averts his eyes- trying to be polite while still feeling like a guest and digs in.

- By the end of the night Namjoon’s belly is so full it hurts. And he’d eaten almost 4 bowls of soup and half a dozen grilled cheeses; even Seokjin had been impressed with how well Namjoon had eaten.

- And he was more than a little pleased that he’d barely been able to drowsily stumble to the living room where you were waiting with a pillow that smelled like you and a fuzzy gray blanket.

- “Goodnight Namjoon,” you say as he reclines on the too comfortable plush sofa- so different than the pile of old sheets and foam bits he’d manage to scavenge and put in his den. He knows the instant he lies down that he’ll fall asleep in seconds.

- You reach out, running your warm palm over his forehead and through his clean hair, rubbing over his ears, Namjoon makes a startled noise- halfway between a trill of surprise and a rumbling purr of pleasure.

- From the doorway he can hear you and Seokjin, “can we snuggle again tonight?” you ask Seokjin, “of course” he says, sounding glad you’ve asked.

- Namjoon knows it must not be easy- letting an unknown male into his den. It doesn’t matter that Seokjin’s a dog hybrid and not a wolf hybrid some instincts ran too deep. He’ll have to thank the elder when before he leaves in the morning.

- The sunlight comes too quickly, shining through the open windows as Namjoon wakes to the natural rhythm of the world far before either you or Seokjin. He resists the temptation to stay curled up underneath the warm covers and makes himself get up, He doesn’t think you’ll mind if he makes some coffee before he braves the cold outdoors.

- He notices some mud (probably tracked in by him) in the front entryway, so he grabs a broom and sets about cleaning up his mess and making it look like he was never here while the coffee maker gurgles. He's just finishing up and tugging his jacket on when the door to your bedroom opens and you exit, groaning and stretching as you bid Namjoon good morning.

- “Good morning! I made coffee- I hope you don’t mind.”

- “Not at all- though if you hand me a cup with cream and sugar I won’t mind even more.” Namjoon grins and obliges you pressing the warm cup into your hands.

- “I’ll be out of your hair soon- thank you so much for your hospitality. I really can't put it into words.” He watches your expression fall, your mug set down on the table instantly.

- “What are you talking about?” Seokjin says from the doorway, his hair pushed up around his forehead in an obvious case of bed head. “The temperature is in the single digits today, you can’t honestly want to go back out into that when you don’t have a warm place to stay.”

- “I- I don’t want to intrude.”

- “We’ve got more than enough room here Namjoon.” Seokjin counters, “I don’t want to be a bother.” He says quietly and Seokjin can see his resolve crumbling as he looks into the sunny and sterile cold world outside and then casts a glance at the warm inside of the apartment.

- “The winters only going to get colder Namjoon.” your hand extends to touch his arm, gripping his jacket. “At least stay until the spring.” Namjoon sucks on his lower lip. Torn between what he wants and what he knows he should do.

- He knows he has to leave. but he wants to stay more than anything. you were probably just being nice to him- you probably didn't want him to be there, he was probably only being a bother.

- Seokjin goes over to the fridge “we’re almost out of groceries and I’m going to need someone to help me carry them back- will you help Namjoon?” he asks before the hybrid can make a response, Namjoon glances down at you, a small smile playing at the edge of your lips.

- “Okay- I’ll help you,” he says after a moment, feeling his resolve flatten out as he crumples. it’s the least he can do after you’ve clothed and fed him. “I don’t want to go until after breakfast.” You complain, and Seokjin can sense the double meaning in the words. As Namjoon is manipulated into staying until after he helps and therefore after breakfast. “have you ever made pancakes before Namjoon?”

- “No,” he says, “but I’ve had them before.” He says when he notices you about to ask, you close your mouth with a smile. “Come over here and let me show you-but take off your jacket first- I don’t want your sleeves to get in the batter.”

- After a very long day in the supermarket that Namjoon sense’s you are both trying to draw out, He’s more than a little tired and chilly from the 10-minute walk back. His arms aching a little bit. “I’ll put things away.” You say as they plop the bags on the table.

- Seokjin guides Namjoon up the stairs into what must have been the hybrids room painted a lovely mauve color that’s almost white. Seokjin gives Namjoon some of the old clothes he doesn’t wear anymore, far more than the ones he loaned him yesterday, but these ones are ones he can have.

- By the time they go downstairs and Namjoon is wondering if he should leave again you’re already asking for his help to chop up some vegetables for a salad.

- And by the end of dinner Seokjin is making hot chocolate with marshmallows and before Namjoon knows it he’s falling asleep next to you on the couch while a movie plays in the distance, lulled to sleep by the gentle breathing of the two of you curled next to him as his head nudges onto your shoulder.

- You raise your hand and run it through his supper soft ears that are somewhat bristly at the ends. Fingering over the cleft in his side. Seokjin watches your expression, the way you seem to melt under the easy and deep breaths of the sleeping hybrid, and the way he’s melting into you, adorable dimples popping out as he smiles in his sleep.

- “Can we keep him Jin? Don’t you think it would be better if he stayed?” Seokjin reaches out his hand to thumb across the hybrids cheek. He’s so deeply asleep Seokjin could probably yell and the other wouldn’t wake.

- “Of course I do.”

~ PART 2 COMING SOON ~ MASTERLIST ~

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maddie-grove · 5 years

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The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2019

My main takeaways from the past year’s reading:

Sometimes you think something is happening because of magic, but then it turns out to have a non-magical explanation so weird that you find yourself saying, “You know what? I wish faeries or God were responsible for this. I’d honestly feel less disturbed.”

Stop bathing and changing your clothes and shaving for three years, three months, and three days. You’ll find out who your real friends are. I promise you that.

I want more books about bisexual ladies!!! Give them to me!!!

Anyway...

20. The Prodigal Duke by Theresa Romain (2017)

Childhood sweethearts Poppy Hayworth and Leo Billingsley were separated when his older brother, a duke, sent him away to make his fortune. Years later, the duke is dead, a financially successful Leo has come back to England to take his place, and Poppy has become a rope dancer at Vauxhall Gardens after a life-shattering event. New sparks are flying between them, but is love possible when so much else has changed? Leo and Poppy are believable and charming as old friends, Romain makes great use of obscure historical details from the oft-depicted Regency period, and I loved Leo’s difficult but caring elderly uncle.

19. Simple Jess by Pamela Morsi (1996)

Althea Winsloe, a young widow in 1900s Arkansas, has no interest in remarrying, but almost everyone in her small Ozarks community is pressuring her to remarry, and she still needs someone to help farm her land. Enter Jesse Best, a strong young man with cognitive disabilities who’s happy to take on the work. As he makes improvements to her farm and bonds with her three-year-old son, Althea gets to know him better and starts to see him in a new light. This earthy romance could’ve been a disaster, but instead it illustrates how people with disabilities are often...uh...simplified and de-sexualized in a way that denies them autonomy. Morsi has a similarly nuanced take on Althea and Jesse’s community, which is claustrophobic and supportive all at once.

18. Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli (2018)

Outspoken and insecure, bisexual high school senior Leah Burke is having a tough year. Her friend group is in turmoil, her single mom is seriously dating someone, and she’s caught between a sweet boy she’s not sure about and a pretty, perfect straight girl who couldn’t possibly be into her...right??? The sequel to the very cute Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, Leah on the Offbeat pulls a The Godfather: Part II with its messy protagonist, sweetly surprising romance, and masterful comic set piece involving the Atlanta American Girl Doll restaurant.

17. Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper (2006)

Kidnapped from her home in eighteenth-century Ghana, fifteen-year-old Amari is sold into slavery and winds up on a South Carolina plantation, where she faces terrible cruelty but finds friends in an enslaved cook, her little son, and eventually a sulky white indentured servant around her age. When their master escalates his already-atrocious behavior, the three young people flee south to the Spanish Fort Mose in search of freedom. Draper’s complicated characters, vivid descriptions, and deft handling of heavy subjects makes for top-notch historical YA fiction.

16. A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole (2019)

After her controlling politician father was jailed for poisoning a bunch of people in their small, prosperous African country, Nya Jerami gained unprecedented freedom but also became the subject of vicious gossip. Johan von Braustein, the hard-partying stepson of a European monarch, wants to help her, partly because he sympathizes and partly because he has a crush, but she thinks he’s too frivolous and horny (if wildly attractive). After an embarrassing misunderstanding compels them to enter a fake engagement, though, she begins to wonder if there’s more to him. I’m not a huge fan of contemporary romance, but this novel has the perfect combination of heartfelt emotion, delicious melodrama, and adorable fluff.

15. One Perfect Rose by Mary Jo Putney (1997)

Stephen, the Duke of Ashburton, has always done the proper and responsible thing, but that all changes when he learns that he’s terminally ill. Wandering the countryside in the guise of an ordinary gentleman, he ends up joining an acting troupe and falling in love with Rosalind, the sensible adopted daughter of the two lead actors. Like another Regency romance on this list, this novel celebrates love in many forms: there’s the love story between Stephen and Rosalind, yes, but there’s also Rosalind’s loving relationship with her adopted family, the new bonds she forms with her long-lost blood relatives, the way her two families embrace the increasingly frightened Stephen, and the healing rifts between Stephen and his well-meaning but distant siblings. Stephen’s reconciliation with his mortality is also moving.

14. My One and Only Duke by Grace Burrowes (2018)

Facing a death sentence in Newgate, footman-turned-prosperous banker Quinton Wentworth decides to do one last good thing: marry Jane McGowan, a poor pregnant widow, so she and the baby will be financially set. Then he receives a pardon and a dukedom at the literal last minute, meaning that he and Jane have a more permanent arrangement than either intended. I fell in love with the kind-but-difficult protagonists almost at once, and with Burrowes’s gorgeous prose even faster.

13. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (2013)

It’s 1986, and comics-loving, post-punk-listening, half-Korean Park and bright, weird, constantly bullied Eleanor are just trying to get through high school in their rough Omaha neighborhood. He’s only grudgingly willing to let her share his bus seat at first, but this barely civil acquaintance slowly thaws into friendship and blossoms into love. Far from being the whimsical eighties-nostalgia-fest I expected, this is a bittersweet love story about two isolated young people who find love, belonging, and a chance for self-expression with each other in an often-hostile environment (a small miracle pre-Internet).

12. Shrill by Lindy West (2016)

In this memoir, Lindy West talks about the difficulties of being a fat woman, the thankless task of being vocally less-than-enthused about rape jokes, the joys of moving past self-doubt, and the very real possibility that Little John from Disney’s Robin Hood was played by “bear actor” Baloo, among other subjects. I was having a hard time during my last semester of law school this past spring, and this book’s giddy humor and inspiring messages really helped me in my hour of need.

11. Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood by Karina Longworth (2018)

In 1925, very young businessman Howard Hughes breezed into Hollywood with nothing but tons of family wealth, a soon-to-be-divorced wife, and a simple dream: make movies about fast planes and big bosoms. He got increasingly weird and reactionary over the next thirty years, then retired from public life. More a history of 1920s-1950s Hollywood than a biography, this book has the same sharp writing and in-depth film analysis that makes me love Longworth’s podcast You Must Remember This.

10. The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan (1966)

In Civil-War-era Virginia, iron-willed Martha Farnsworth and her nervous younger sister try to run their nearly empty girls’ boarding school within earshot of a battlefield. When one girl finds Union soldier John McBurney injured in the woods, she brings him back to the house, where he exploits every conflict and secret among the eight girls and women (five students, two sisters, and one enslaved cook). Charming and manipulative, he nevertheless finds himself in over his head. Cullinan makes great use of the eight POVs and the deliciously claustrophobic setting; it’s fascinating to watch the power dynamics and allegiances shift from scene to scene.

9. A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian (2018)

Reserved tavern keeper Sam Fox wants to help out his brother’s sweetheart by finding and destroying a nude portrait she once sat for; disgraced gentleman Hartley Sedgwick isn’t sure what he wants after having his life ruined twice over, but he happened to inherit his house from the man who commissioned the painting...plus he’s not exactly reluctant to assist kind, handsome Sam in his quest. I wrote about this heart-melting romance two times last year; suffice it to say that it’s not only one of the best Regencies I’ve ever read, but also possibly the best romance I’ve ever read about the creation of a found family.

8. Frog Music by Emma Donoghue (2014)

Blanche Beunon, a French-born burlesque dancer in 1876 San Francisco, has a lot going on: her mooching boyfriend has turned on her, her sick baby is missing, and her cross-dressing, frog-hunting friend Jenny Bonnet was just shot dead right next to her. In the middle of a heat wave, a smallpox epidemic, and a little bit of mob violence, she must locate her son and solve Jenny’s murder. This is a glorious work of historical fiction; you can see, hear, smell, and feel the chaotic world of 1870s San Francisco, plus Blanche’s character arc is amazing.

7. The Patrick Melrose novels (Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk, and At Last) by Edward St. Aubyn (1992, 1992, 1994, 2005, and 2012, respectively)

Born to an embittered English aristocrat and an idealistic American heiress, Patrick Melrose lives through his father’s sadistic abuse and his mother’s willful blindness (Never Mind), does a truly staggering amount of drugs in early adulthood (Bad News), and makes a good-faith effort at leading a normal life (Some Hope). Years later, the life he’s built with his wife and two sons is threatened by his alcoholism and reemerging resentment of his mother (Mother’s Milk), but there may be a chance to salvage something (At Last). Despite the suffering and cruelty on display, these novels were the farthest thing from a dismaying experience, thanks to the sharp characterization, grim humor, and great sense of setting. Also, I love little Robert Melrose, an anxious eldest child after my own heart.

6. The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1974)

In 1550s England, no-nonsense Kate Sutton is exiled to the Perilous Gard, a remote castle occupied by suspicious characters, including the lord’s guilt-ridden younger brother Christopher. Troubled by the holes she sees in the story of the tragedy that haunts him, she does some problem-solving and ends up in a world of weird shit. Cleverly plotted, deliciously spooky, and featuring an all-time-great heroine, this book was an absolute treat. The beautiful Richard Cuffari illustrations in my edition didn’t hurt, either.

5. An Unconditional Freedom by Alyssa Cole (2019)

Daniel Cumberland, a free black man from New England traumatized from being sold into slavery, and Janeta Sanchez, a mixed-race Cuban-Floridian lady from a white Confederate family, have been sent on a mission to the Deep South by the Loyal League, a pro-Union spy organization. Initially hostile to everyone (but particularly to somewhat naive Janeta), Daniel warms to his colleague, but will her secrets, his shattered faith in justice, and the various dangers they face prevent them from falling in love? Nah. Alyssa Cole’s historical romances deliver both on the history and the romance, and this is one of her strongest entries.

4. The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite (2019)

Heartbroken by the death of her father and the marriage of her ex-girlfriend, Lucy Muchelney decides she needs a change of scenery and takes a live-in position translating a French astronomy text for Catherine St. Day, the recently widowed Countess of Moth. Catherine, used to putting her interests on hold for an uncaring spouse, is intrigued by this awkward, independent lady. I’ve read f/f romances before, but this sparkling Regency was the first to really blow me away with its fun banter, neat historical details, and perfect sexual tension.

3. The Wager by Donna Jo Napoli (2010)

After losing his entire fortune to a tidal wave, Sicilian nineteen-year-old Don Giovanni de la Fortuna sinks into poverty and near-starvation. Then Devil makes him an offer: all the money he wants for as long as he lives if he doesn’t bathe, cut his hair, shave, or change his clothes for three years, three months, and three days. This fairy-tale retelling is an extraordinarily moving fable about someone who learns to acknowledge his own suffering, recognize it in others, and extend compassion to all.

2. Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell (2013)

In this collection, Russell weaves strange tales of silkworm-women hybrids in Japan, seagulls who collect objects from the past and future, and, yes, vampires in the lemon grove. She also posits the very important question: “What if most (but not all) U.S. presidents were reincarnated as horses in the same stable and had a lot of drama going on?” My favorite stories were “Proving Up” (about a nineteenth-century Nebraska boy who encounters death and horror on the prairie), “The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis” (about a disadvantaged high school student who discovers an effigy of the even more hapless boy he tormented), and “The Barn at the End of the Term” (the horse-president story).

1. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (2016)

Lib Wright, an Englishwoman who has floundered since her days working for Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, is hired to observe Anna O’Donnell, an eleven-year-old Irish girl famous for not eating for four straight months. With a jaundiced attitude towards the Irish and Catholicism, Lib is confident that she’ll quickly expose Anna as a fraud, but she finds herself liking the girl and getting increasingly drawn into the disturbing mystery of her fast. Like The Perilous Gard, this novel masterfully plays with the possibility of the supernatural, then introduces a technically mundane explanation that’s somehow much more eerie. Donoghue balances the horror and waste that surrounds Anna, though, with the clear, bright prose and the moving relationship that develops between her and Lib, who grows beyond her narrow-mindedness and emotional numbness. I stayed up half the night to finish this novel, which cemented Emma Donoghue’s status as my new favorite author.

#books #reading #top twenty

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sanguinariae · 4 years

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I was tagged by @muddyviolets - thank you so much!

1. NAME: Brianna

2: NICKNAME: Bree, mostly. I think I prefer it sometimes! But I’m too shy to start going by it.

3. ZODIAC SIGN: Capricorn (someone who’s more well-versed in astrology explain to me how that’s possible. Hard-working? Determined? Where?)

4. HEIGHT: 5′ 3″

5. LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English.

6. NATIONALITY: American.

7. FAVOURITE SEASON: Spring or fall - mostly spring.

8. FAVOURITE FLOWERS: There’s so much context this depends on. Flowers I find growing on a walk? Flowers I’ve been given in a bouquet? Flowers I’m turning into a perfume or pressing into cookies? Now that I write this all out, I realize the obvious answer is violets. My instagram name is a species of violet - they tick all my boxes. But it’s worth adding the other flowers that capture my heart: bloodroot (wondering where my blog name comes from?), goldenrod (one of my tattooos), carnations (birth flower - my parents sent me a bouquet on my 16th birthday, and I kept those dried flowers for weeks and it solidifies by love of plants), grape hyacinth, roses, skunk cabbage (this counts, this fucking counts - and there’s really two species I’m thinking of called skunk cabbage, but both of them have crazy inflorescences).

9. FAVOURITE SCENTS: Old paper, vanilla, dry leaves. The air after a storm. And this mystery cologne that I’ll forget about until I catch a whiff of it on somebody on the street - I’d do blood magic to find out what it is. I can’t even describe it, but I wanna smell like it all the time.

10. FAVOURITE COLOURS: Burgundy, green, black.

11. FAVOURITE ANIMALS: I don’t even know if I can pick! I love them all. I’m sure I’ve got a vertebrate bias - particularly mammals and reptiles. If I had to pick one I guess I’d say the tuatara - the first time I saw one I started sobbing. Mason bees are a close second.

12. FAVOURITE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS: I’m gonna go with the characters I’ve been a fan of for years: Poison Ivy, Black Widow, Morgan le Fay, Ophelia. I guess I’m a fan of eccentric detective-type characters, too: Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, Will Graham from Hannibal, Sherlock Holmes (favorite versions: Basil Rathbone, Matt Frewer and Johnny Lee Miller. I wanna fight about it)

13. COFFEE, TEA, OR HOT CHOCOLATE: Coffee. I used to be a big tea drinker, but now I’ll find myself brewing a pot of coffee in the evening just ‘cause nothing quenches my thirst like that bitter bitter bean juice.

14. AVERAGE SLEEP HOURS: Phew, we talking before COVID-19 or now? I usually fell asleep by midnight and slept until 10:00 on days I didn’t have a class to teach or something. Now it’s all over the place - I’ve been oscillating between waking up at 8AM and waking up at 1PM, which then influences whether I fall asleep at 11PM or 3AM. It always seems to settle in about ten hours a night (which I tried to fight tooth and nail until my therapist suggested that maybe that’s just my norm. Now I’ve just gotta settle which ten hours)

15. DOG PERSON OR CAT PERSON: I’d say dog person, just because I’ve been around dogs most of my life - both my parents were allergic to cats. My dog and I are so similar it’s distressing.

16. NUMBER OF BLANKETS YOU SLEEP WITH: One, technically? A flat sheet, a thin blanket and a comforter if it’s cold out. I’d love to drown in fabric every night but I sweat in my sleep.

17. DREAM TRIPS: Fuck, I don’t even know. I have some places I know I want to go, but if the sky’s the limit I don’t know if they’re the dream. I’d love to do a tour of all the national parks in the US. But the only country I’ve been aside from the US is New Zealand, and there are plenty of other places I want to go.

18. BLOG ESTABLISHED: This one specifically? Probably in 2017. I had a blog on here around nine years ago, but I deleted it in a depressive fit. Unwilling to share any of my former blog names here because I have shame 👀

19. FOLLOWERS: 65

20. RANDOM FACTS: A cat gave birth in the passenger seat of my car once; none of her kittens made it and I didn’t get to keep her. I had a twin but we were two months premature and he died a week after we were born. (I just realized these are pretty dark). I have a scar on my abdomen and a birth mark on my ankle, three tattoos and thirteen piercings. I’m working on a Ph.D. in ecology - time will tell if I actually earn it.

I’ll tag @purzelbaumm, @mooonborne, @odetowanderers, anyone who’d like to fill this out.

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loretranscripts · 5 years

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Lore Episode 31: Lost and Found (Transcript) - 4th April 2016

tw: murder, gore, blood, human remains, cannibalism

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Teenagers have a tendency to get up to mischief when they’re bored, that’s as true today as it ever has been. So, when four teenage boys found themselves with a spring afternoon on their hands, they did what any English lad might have done in 1943 – they went poaching. They were only hunting birds’ nests, really. It was April and spring meant nests full of eggs, so they went exploring in their area of Stourbridge, there in the midlands of England. Over the course of that afternoon, their search brought them to a private park known as Hegley Woods, and that’s where they saw the tree. It was a massive elm with an overgrown trunk that looked more like a hedgehog than a plant, with thin, whispy branches that stuck out toward the sky. Locals called it the “Wych Elm”. It was strong, it was climbable, and most importantly it was perfect for nesting, so one of the boys scaled up the side. When he reached the top and began to look for nests, he found something entirely different – a skull was staring up at him from the hollow centre of the tree. The boy assumed it was from an animal and plucked it free from the branches. That’s when he noticed how large it was, and the patches of hair that were still attached to it – human hair. The grisly discovery kicked off one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in modern England. Beneath the skull, lodged in the hollow centre of the tree, was a complete skeleton. It belonged to a young woman of unknown origin and unknown identity. No one stepped forward to claim the body, no killer was ever found, but the public fell in love, and named her, and to this day people still wonder: who put Bella in the wych tree? Humans, you see, are fascinated by dead bodies. They’re the centrepiece of countless mystery stories and a vivid reminder of our own mortality. We can see that fascination in both the innocent wonder of films like Stand by Me and the gruesome realism of CSI. Real life, though, is more complex, it’s more dark than we’d care to admit, and while the odds are good that most people won’t ever stumble upon a dead body, it’s a lot more common than you’d expect. Corpses should be hard to come by, but unfortunately that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m Aaron Mahnke and this is Lore.

In February of 2013, a number of guests at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles called down to the front desk to complain about the water in their rooms. Some described how their shower would run black before clearing up, others complained of the odd taste and odour, and that age-old compaint that we all know and love, poor water pressure, popped up time and time again. So, the maintenance crew was sent up to the roof where the hotel kept water tanks used to supply the rooms, and it’s one of the tanks that they discovered a body. A human body, no less, and it had been there for weeks. It turned out to be a missing woman named Elisa Lam. Her parents had reported her missing in early February, but she had been seen last there in the hotel on the 31st of January, and it had been her decomposing body that had been altering the hotel’s water supply. Finding bodies in unusual places isn’t a new thing, though, and it’s not uncommon, either. In January of 1984, three students from Columbia University were walking home to their dorm when they passed an old carpet, rolled up and discarded on the side of the street. Now, like a lot of you, I’ve been to college, so I think we can all agree that curbside discoveries are frequently wonderful. A random desk, or that ugly couch that’s way too comfortable to be ignored. So, it’s hard to blame these three students for bringing the rug home. When they unrolled it, though, they found a body inside. The man, roughly 20 years old, had been shot to death, as was evident from the bullet holes in his forehead. Needless to say, they didn’t keep the rug and the police were brought in to do a full investigation. In December of 1982, staff were called to a room in a hotel in New Burgen, New Jersey. Occupants complained of a powerful odour in the room, and they weren’t the first. For a number of days leading up to the call, each guest had complained of the same thing, and it seemed to be getting worse. The motel staff finally discovered why: it was the body of Gary Smith, who had been killed by his autotheft partners and stuffed beneath the bed in the room. They had poisoned his hamburger then strangled him when waiting got too hard, and finally hid the evidence beneath the mattress.

In 2011, Abbeville National Bank in Louisiana began renovations to their second floor, an area they had used for storage for decades. Running between the storage area and the active bank facilities was a chimney, and it was just inside the first floor fireplace where workers discovered a few small bones. Climbing inside the fireplace and looking up, they found the source. A body, now little more than a skeleton, had been lodged in the flue. Dental records connected the skeleton to a man reported missing 27 years earlier, in 1984. The man had a criminal record and had been in trouble with the law shortly before his disappearance. Police can’t prove why he was in the chimney, but given the proximity to the bank I feel its safe to guess that he’d been trying to rob it, Santa Claus style. In November of 2011, Russian police raided the home of a historian named Anatoly Moskvin. Inside, they found 29 life-sized dolls, all women, all dressed in fancy clothing. But they weren’t dolls at all. Moskvin, it turns out, was a graverobber with a fetish. For years, the historian had been visiting cemeteries all over western Russia, as many as 750 by some counts, and occasionally brought home corpses that “interested” him. All were females between the ages of 15 and 30, and all had been dead for a very long time. It seems, if we’re to believe the newspapers and media outlets, that stumbling upon a corpse isn’t as rare a thing as we might expect. Maybe it’s a product of the times – with more and more people on the planet, I suppose the odds keep going up that we’ll eventually open a wall or dig a garden bed and find a body. But some bodies are intentionally harder to find. Some killers go to great lengths to hide the evidence of their dirty deeds, and that’s really the core of these stories, isn’t it? Because hiding a body is about more than just making an object disappear. It’s about concealing a crime and escaping the consequences. The trouble is, when those hidden bodies are found, their stories often reveal the greatest horrors of all.

She wasn’t always known as Kate Webster. Sure, when she gave birth to her son in 1874, that was the surname she passed on to him. She claimed to have married a sailor named Webster, but he had died. A decade earlier, though, she had been someone else entirely. Kate Webster had been born Katherine Lawler to a poor family in a small, Irish village in 1849. While most children might have helped out at home or perhaps played with toys, Katherine grew up fast. She spent her childhood learning to pickpocket, and judging by the way the rest of her life played out, it’s a skill she’d been born with. At the age of 15 she was caught and imprisoned for a short time, but by 17, she managed to steal enough money to secure herself passage on a boat to England. But she didn’t use her journey as a chance to make a fresh start. No, Katherine Lawler just kept upping her game. Within a year of arriving in Liverpool, she was caught stealing and sentenced to four years in prison. Once released, she found work cleaning houses in London, as well as working as a prostitute – and then she became pregnant. The father, according to Kate, was a man she called “Mr. Strong”. He’d been her friend, her lover, and her partner in crime for many months, but when he learnt of the pregnancy he abandoned her. Her son, John Webster, was born in April of 1874, and those who knew her couldn’t help but wonder: would this help Kate change her ways? The answer, it turns out, was a clear and obvious no.

Rather than seek reform, Kate simply evolved. She would rent a room in a boarding house and once there, she would begin to sell off the furnishings in her room. When everything was gone, she’d move on and repeat the crime elsewhere. Another thing she repeated, sadly, was prison time. In 1875, while her son John was only a year old, Kate began serving an 18 month term in Wandsworth Prison there in London. It was one of the many stints in police custody, even though she moved around a lot and used various aliases to disguise herself. And all the while, her friend, Sarah Crease, helped by watching and caring for young John. Some think Sarah was an enabler, that she gave Kate the freedom to live her life of crime without the burden of parenthood, but others view Sarah as a hopeful friend. She saw a young boy who needed looking after and she did her best to help out. She also tried to get Kate a real, honest job, something that had the potential to turn the woman’s life around.

In 1879, Sarah’s employer asked if there was someone who could do some house cleaning for a friend of hers, a woman named Julia Martha Thomas. Mrs. Thomas lived in the Richmond area of London, she was a widow in her mid-50s, and had a reputation for being a little strict and prone to anger. But it was a job, and Sarah immidiately suggested Kate Webster. The relationship between Webster and Mrs. Thomas began cordially enough, but quickly devolved into daily arguments. Webster claimed that Mrs. Thomas would follow her around and criticise her work, while Mrs. Thomas claimed Webster came to work drunk most of the time. Needless to say, it wasn’t a match made in heaven, but the two women tried hard to make it work. After a little over a month, Julia Thomas decided it was time to cut Webster loose. Kate, to her credit, tried to change. She begged for just a few more days of employment and, for some unknown reason, Thomas agreed to the terms, but the relationship was eating at her like an ulser, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She thought that Kate was stealing from her, but she didn’t have proof yet, and she feared for her life. On March 2nd of 1879, Mrs. Thomas showed up at church clearly upset. She’d just had another argument with Webster, and it had shaken her deeply. Her friends claimed that Thomas seemed distracted and agitated, and she left early to go attend to matters at home. But Kate was waiting for her there, and this time, they would trade more than angry words.

Julia Thomas thought the house was empty, but went searching for Kate Webster anyway. They had unfinished business, and it was time Kate found some place else to work. It was settled – as far as she was concerned, at least. While Thomas was upstairs in the hallway, Webster stepped out of a dark room and attacked her employer. The two women struggled for a moment, and then Kate gave the older woman a shove. Thomas stumbled down the staircase where she slammed into the floor below. Her skull now fractured and bloody, she began to scream where she lay. Kate was immidiately concerned that the neighbours might hear. There was a busy pub right next door, and if someone happened to hear the shouting, Kate was sure to be discovered and arrested. Launching herself down the stairs, she sat upon the injured woman’s chest and began to squeeze her throat with both hands. She wanted the screaming to stop. She needed it to stop, and after a few tense moments, it did. Julia Thomas lay dead on the floor of her own home, and Kate Webster had graduated from theft to murder in the course of just a few heartbeats. But Kate was stronger than her fears, and she knew she had to act fast. She grabbed a razor, a meat saw and a carving knife and set about cutting Thomas’ body into pieces. Later Webster would admit that, while she believed she had always had a strong stomach, this work in particular tested her limits. There had just been so much blood, she later told the police. Webster put the pieces into a large copper kettle and then boiled them in an attempt to reduce them to a more managable state. It was essentially rendering, a process where meat is cooked until the fat and protein separate. Witnesses would later come forward and talk of the stench coming from the home, but no one complained at the time. This was London in the late 19th century, perhaps people were just a little more forgiving of odd odours back then.

When the boiling was complete, Webster fished out each part from the remaining lard and placed them all into a box she found in the home – most of it, that is. She couldn’t seem to fit the head and one of the feet, so she had to get creative. She tossed the foot into a local trash heap, but the head was more problematic. In the end, she found a Gladstone bag, something like an old physician’s handbag, and stashed the head inside there. And then she cleaned the house, removing as much of the evidence as she could that something horrible had taken place there. It took her two full days to do it, but when she was finished, she put on a dress from her employer’s wardrobe and went to the pub next door to meet a friend for drinks. This friend, a Mrs. Porter, later told police that Webster arrived at the pub carrying a large, black bag. She kept it with her almost the entire evening, as if it contained something very valuable to her. Oddly, though, Webster excused herself from the table at one point, and when she returned a short while later, the bag was gone. Webster’s next order of business was to get rid of the box that contained what remained of Mrs. Thomas, so she enlisted the help of Mrs. Porter’s son to carry it out of the house and to nearby Barns Bridge. He carried the heavy box all the way to the bridge, and then she sent him home, claiming that a friend was on the way to meet her there. This boy would later tell police that, as he was walking away, he heard a large splash. It was as if something heavy had been tossed into the river. Webster had disposed of the body, and I can’t help but wonder if she perhaps sighed with relief when the box finally dipped beneath the surface of the Thames and vanished from sight. The following day, though, things got more complicated. Unware that the box containing Mrs. Thomas had actually floated to the surface and drifted to shore over night, Kate Webster dug in deeper. She took on the identity of her former employer while beginning to sell off all the items in the house. Old habits die hard, apparently. And it was about this time, according to a later witness, that Webster stepped outside and spoke to a pair of neighbourhood boys. She had two bowls in her hand, and they were steaming hot. She told them it was lard – from a pig, she added – and they were welcome to have it for free, if they wanted it. The boys ate two bowls each.

While the police were investigating the discovery of the box full of body parts, they had no clues that might point them to the killer responsible. It even took them a bit of time to figure out that the parts were actually human rather than butcher cast-offs, but even then, all they could be sure of was that the victim had been a middle-aged woman. Kate Webster, meanwhile, was making money hand over fist. She sold off the smaller items first – the jewellery, the knick-knacks, even her victim’s gold teeth – and then began to spread word that the furniture was for sale as well. And that lead to an agreement with a local man, who arrived on March 9th with a small group of men to help him carry the items out of the house. A neighbour woman saw the activity and approached one of the remaining men. “Who ordered the removal of these items?” she asked him. The man simply turned and pointed to Kate Webster, who stood on the front steps of the house. “She did,” he replied, “Mrs. Thomas.” When the police finally arrived, they entered the house and immidiately found signs of something tragic: a charred finger bone in the fireplace, bloodstains on the floor, splatters of grease – or lard – around the copper kettle. But the one thing they wanted to find, a killer, was nowhere to be seen. Kate Webster had skipped town. In the end, the authorities tracked her down in Ireland. She’d taken her son and made her way back to her hometown as fast as she could. When she arrived, she did so while still wearing clothing and jewellery taken from Mrs. Thomas. But her stay there was short-lived – the local police chief, the man who 15 years earlier had put her in jail for the first time, recognised her in the bulletin from Scotland Yard and quickly took her into custody. Everything after that moved quickly. Webster was transported back to England, and at every train stop between Liverpool and London, crowds gathered to jeer and shout at her. By March 30th, she had been formally charged with murder.

Of course, she tried to lie her way out of it. This was the woman who had changed her name dozens of times to outsmart the police, who had moved into room after room and sold off the possessions inside. She was a thief and a liar, so it was only natural for her to try and talk her away out of this too. First, she blamed the murder on Henry Porter, the husband of her friend from the pub, but when his alibi held up she shifted the blame to the man who had come to buy the furniture from the Thomas house. He too was easily dismissed. When it appeared that she wouldn’t be able to squirm out from under the charge of murder, she took credit for the crime, but claimed that she only did it because others told her to. In the end, none of it worked. The formal trial began on July 2nd of 1879, and just six days later, the jury declared her guilty. The judge, a man named Justice Denman, sentenced her to be executed. Yes, Judge Justice – I can’t make these things up. When asked if there was any reason why she should not be executed, Webster told the judge yes, insisting that she was in fact pregnant. A new jury of women were gathered together along with a physician, and after examining Webster they declared that the pregnancy, like everything else the woman had said, was also a lie. She returned to Wandsworth Prison, where she had served time before working for Mrs. Thomas, and it was there that she wrote her formal confession. She described all of the details of the murder, right down to how she burned the internal organs to get rid of them, how she chose her tools, and even how she removed the head. On July 29th, Kate Webster stepped onto the platform inside the prison’s execution chamber, a building that was ironically nicknamed “The Cold Meatshed”. A governer announced the time, a priest administered last rights, and then she was guided onto the trapdoors with a sack over her head. Afterward, she was buried in an unmarked grave, right there at the prison. The records of Wandsworth Prison contain the names of 134 people who were executed over the span of 110 years. Kate Webster was the only woman on that list.

It’s hard to nail down the real reason behind our fascination with death, but it’s safe to at least make a guess. Death puts our mortality on display. No matter how hard we try to avoid it as a topic, to ignore its slow, steady approach from the distance, we can’t seem to get away from it. Whether we want it or not, death will come for us all one day, and the dead body stands as that singular, visceral reminder of our death. In the horror movies, it’s the clue that’s dropped into our laps early on in the film. It highlights the danger our heroes find themselves in, it represents what’s at stake, what could happen if they fail and the true power of the killer. When the London police pulled the box containing the remains of a women from the cold waters of the Thames, they didn’t know a lot, but they did know one thing. There was a killer in London, and whoever it was needed to be stopped. Thankfully, they managed to do just that, but in a wild twist of irony, the body of Julia Thomas has been lost. It might have been a result of the way evidence was handled in the late 19th century, or the state of decay when the remains were found. Whatever the reason, there’s no grave for Julia Thomas, no tombstone with her name etched into the surface. Her body was lost, and then found, and then finally lost again. Well, most of it. As luck would have it, the neighbourhood where her house once stood has gone through some renevation. In October of 2010, a wealthy London homeowner was having an addition built in his backyard, when the work crew unearthed something small and white. It was a skull. The teeth were missing, but there was a fracture at the back of the head, and after doing a bit more research, investigators determined that the structure that once stood in the homeowner’s backyard was a stable – a stable behind the pub that stood next door to Julia Thomas. Her body might be lost forever into the pages of history, but the head that Kate Webster had tried so hard to get rid of has finally been recovered. Oh, and the wealthy homeowner who stumbled upon the skull? None other than English naturalist, Sir David Attenborough.

[Closing statements]

#lore podcast #aaron mahnke #podcast transcripts #kate webster #witch elm #bella in the witch elm #elisa lam #england #ireland #true crime #transcripts #31

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dailyaudiobible · 5 years

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12/22/2019 DAB Transcript

Zechariah 2:1-3:10, Revelation 13:1-18, Psalms 141:1-10, Proverbs 30:18-20

Today is the 22nd day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It’s great to be here with you today as we turn the knob and step through the threshold of a brand-new shiny sparkly week. This is the final Sunday in the season of Advent and that's been every Sunday this month, the season that that we use as Christians to put our…our hearts posture in the right place and that is certainly a contemplative journey as we consider the mystery of the arrival of the Savior, but also the longing that those in the time of Jesus shared in their hearts and had been sharing for a long time looking for a Savior, a Messiah to come and realizing that…that we identify with them, because although Jesus came and rescued us we still have that longing for his second advent, His second arrival, for his return. And, so, as we move obviously, squarely, straightly into Christmas week, this is a week representing peace. And with that we take the next step forward in our journey through the Scriptures this year. And on this Christmas week we will read from the Good News Translation. And we started the book of Zechariah yesterday and mentioned the fact that will be traveling with Zechariah all the way until the last two days of the year. And today we will read Zechariah chapters 2 and three.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for bringing us this far into the year, certainly, but we thank You for bringing us here into such a time of joy where in mere days we will celebrate Your arrival as an infant child, helpless, born into this world to save it. But not just to save it, You came as one of us and showed us what it looks like to live as a human being and what Your restoration has brought to us. And, so, we certainly rejoice in You, Father. And even as we move into these next few days, and they are certain to be busy and full of activity and any number of disruptions and we’ll find ourselves interacting with, perhaps people that we don't know that well, and certainly people that we've lived with our entire lives, and families will come together who have begun forming families of their own in other cities and will brush back up against each other and they’re be any number of opportunities for tension to arise. And, so, Father we pray along with the psalmist today, “Lord place a guard at my mouth, a century at the door of my lips. Keep me from wanting to do wrong.” This is our prayer Lord. In the disrupted times of life and seasons when things are coming at us in ways that they don't normally come out as, it's very easy for us to slip into just reacting to everything instead of waking up and being proactive and inviting Your Holy Spirit into every moment. So, we invite Your Holy Spirit here at the beginning of this week, that we move into a time that is actually full of joy. Joy to the world, the Lord has come. And may this be our focus in the days ahead we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

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And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, you can hit the hotline button in the app, the little red button at the top or you can dial 877. 942 4253.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you hear tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello DAB family this is Carla with a Broken Heart. I called some time ago about the troubles that I was going through, feeling lonely and heartbroken and feeling like God has left me alone. I know he hasn’t, and I received all of the prayers that you all have given me, and I thank you so much. I’m still in the midst of the storm but God is yet still bringing me out. I wanted to call in and say thank you to the young lady, she didn’t give her name, but she had a European accent and she sang a song about be still and let God be God. And the biggest deal that I’m dealing with is me missing my mother and the comfort of being able to go to my mother when I’m going through. And I want her to know that I appreciate her calling and saying how much she loves me and she’s praying for me and that she wished that she was here with me and she could give me a hug and just hold me and let me know that everything is all right because it meant so much to me. It really made me feel like my mother was here hugging me. And I don’t feel so lonely as I go through this struggle. I know God is bringing me out and I know I’m going to see happiness and I know it’s going to be joy coming and I just wanted to thank you so much for that love because it was desperately needed. And God bless you for that love and all of you out there who have prayed for me and all those who are heartbroken and who are suffering. Thank you, Daily Audio Bible family for loving one another and being there for each other and especially being there for me. God bless you all and thank you Lord for loving us the way you do God with Your unconditional love.

Hi, my name is Mary my husband just died a couple days ago, and I just need prayer to get through this time. Thank you.

Hi, this is Victoria Soldier. Just calling tonight to pray for some of the DABbers. Wanted to say hi to Slave of Jesus, it’s so good to hear from you Slave of Jesus and Ted the truck driver. I just want to say hi to you all and continue praying with you all on the highway, the byways. And I wanted to pray for the family members of Gabriel and Jeremiah. I want to pray for the lady who…that she’s got a broken heart, my precious sister Carla. I wanted to pray for you and your broken heart because God’s got someone who’s going to take all the breaks out of that heart, He’s got a special person for you because God has all good things. He said He wouldn’t hold any good things from them that love Him. I just want to let you Saints know that God is getting ready to do a magnificent explosion in the life of His people, He’s gonna explode in great and amazing numbers and just want to say that life and favor and traveling mercies to all and whatever the desires of your heart. Somebody who’s going through a stronghold right now, just asking God to bless him and relieve that stronghold, that strong desire, to kill that spider and knock down the cobwebs of your life so you can soar like none other. Lord You bless your people Lord, You bless Your mighty and young people who are calling, You bless the seniors who are calling, You bless the marriages Lord, the marriages that the devil is trying to break up. Who God has put together let no man put us under. I rebuke you wicked one, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Ghost. Lord you send him home. You send him home and let him come to himself like the young man who says I’ll go and tell my father that even the servants get even more than me. Lord pray for our nation that people will begin to…

Hi family this is Sally from Massachusetts and I’m calling to ask You to pray with me. Heavenly Father, we lift up every single person who is touched by the Daily Audio Bible in some way. We come to You Lord because we believe in the power of prayer, and as a community as a whole, we love You and we worship You we trust You and we know that You have a plan for us. Father God You know those of us who are struggling in our jobs. You know those of us who are struggling in our marriages, and You know those of us who are sitting at the bedside of a loved one waiting for them to die. Father God, You know our emotional well-being, You know our needs and our struggles. You bless us with our successes and our own debts, we praise You for this Lord. We ask You now for healing. We ask You for strength. We ask You for patience. We ask You for wisdom. We ask You for knowledge. We ask You for compassion. We ask You for strong hearts and steady hands. We praise You for this Lord and we ask You this in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Hi, this is Marilyn I live in the inland Northwest. I’ve been listening to this podcast since about October when I heard Brian on Chris Avery live and it has just made a world of difference to me to feel part of a family to not feel so alone and to not have to just play a recording from some app, to hear Brian’s voice. And to have a personal daily update day that he shares in the devotional and commentaries are just tremendously appreciated. I don’t feel… It has helped me emotionally and spiritually to be more consistent and to be able to pray for others and not…and know that I’m not alone in my struggles. And I just so appreciate the Prayer Wall. And I do say prayers almost daily for all the prayer…the prayer requests that come in. So, I just really appreciate the feeling of being part of the family and I can’t say how much…words can’t express what this has done for me spiritually as well to keep on board too when I have so many intensive, high maintenance dietary challenges and trying to get everything accomplished as a widow. And I listen over and over several times almost each day to…over and over and again to each podcast. So, anyways I hope you have a wonderful happy new year and thanks and God bless. God’s blessings to you and to…

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dragonnan · 6 years

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The Tiger and the Shark by dragonnan

Rating: Mature

Archive Warning: Rape/Non-Con

Category: Gen

Fandom: Sherlock (TV)

Relationships: (past) Irene Adler/ Sherlock Holmes, (pre-ish) Sherlock Holmes/ Molly Hooper (this is not a romance however)

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Molly Hooper, OMC, OFC, Mummy (Sherlock), Sherlock Holmes' Father, Greg Lestrade, Sally Donovan

Additional Tags: Charles Augustus Magnussen Mentioned, Allusions to HLV Deleted Scene, Rape/Non-con Elements, not graphic, However Could Be Quite Triggery, Sherlock's Mind Palace, Past Mary Watson, Staying Close to Canon, Until it isn't, Everything Hurts, Devastated Sherlock, Sherlock Needs A Hug, John Watson Needs A Hug, everyone needs a fucking hug, BAMF Mycroft Holmes, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Murder, Autism Spectrum Sherlock, Apologies to Mycroft as he gets a bit of Non-Sympathetic Treatment here at first, Although he IS an Absolute Prat, Flashbacks, PTSD Sherlock

Summary: “Do you find it less frightening; knowing what will happen? I'd rather imagine the opposite were true. You see, my husband was a master at psychological games – planting seeds of intent and letting them grow whichever way his assets chose. The torments they imagined were horrors of their own design. Charles loved that – knowing they only needed a little... pressure. What horrors were you imagining, I wonder, when you blew his brains out?”

Author Notes: This is currently 18 chapters long and continuing to grow! I hadn’t, at all, planned on writing such a long fic for my first introduction to the Sherlock universe but the story demanded otherwise. I know how hard a subject this is to read. By and large, fics like this do not tend to get a wide readership. I won’t pretend there aren’t difficult scenes to navigate. However there are a LOT LOT more scenes that aren’t specific to the trauma endured. I have a lot of happy times in here and MOST of this is comfort. And there’s quite a bit that (in my opinion) is even funny at times. So, I really hope you’ll give me a chance! Below is the first chapter. Thank you so much!

Flashing lights – purple haze... Not his ideal venue for client interactions, no matter how promising the game presented. John having made himself ill on whatever take away he'd wolfed down on the way to the flat that morning – leaving Rosie in the dubious care of Mrs. Hudson while he retired to his room to sleep it off; the end result being Sherlock was left to his own devices with regards to the current investigation. Hard to resist an 8, however.

Twenty minutes. Longer than he liked to wait for anyone, it was only the mild entertainment on the dance floor that had stayed him from an exit upon hitting the ten minute mark.

“Well you're a right pretty one.”

Comment filed and ignored – focus, instead, on the weaving steps of the fellow fifteen feet forward and knocking about the pub with seemingly no true purpose in mind.

A thick-skulled man; oafish, howling, to anyone offering a passing and uninterested glance. Sherlock, however, had rather a more curious focus. Not drunk – though slurring in a way to imply it while dragging his leg enough to leave a thin burn of rubber on the tile. Minimizing threat in one manner while presenting the inebriated brute to obfuscate intent. A character whom the average clientele would avoid and, should they remember him in any fashion, it wouldn't be for his face but for his slovenly discourse. Despite his uneven steps, he'd maintained a true course belying the affected intoxication.

A long digit, nail smooth and trimmed, ghosted along the curve of Sherlock's cheekbone. Head jerking away from the intrusion, he never took his eyes from his target while addressing his unwelcome paramour.

“I assure you, you will find no entertainment with me. However, if you wish to retain the use of your right index I would suggest you refrain from further physical contact.”

The oaf had, by now, made a steady journey past the dance floor on his way to the loo. However, rather than the gents – he brashly shoved into the ladies – expected caterwauling and the uptick of attention from the three bouncers who, rather than split duties and send an individual, converged en masse on the building chaos. Now, then, would be the start of the real action; when the accomplice would make his move. Easy money from the till or risky, yet greater, reward from the underground card game in the back offices?

“Ah, now, that wasn't what I was told. In fact... my employer had assured me you would be most... accommodating... Mr. Holmes.” Solid pressure – high and just under his left armpit while the other arm wrapped around his chest – for all appearances, to any distracted onlooker, guttered and needing a solid shoulder to ease him into the nearest cab. “Sorry I'm late, love. But I had to be certain dear John -boy wasn't going to scupper our date. Though I apologize about the Ipecac. Hope your boyfriend isn't too ropey.”

“Spiked his curry just to set up this little abduction; how dull. Should I be flattered?”

Breath heated against his ear – moist and tainted of expensive cigars and cheap kippers. “Oh, we'll 'ave plenty of time for chattering later, beautiful. For now, how about help a soused gent to the curb, yeah?”

Their journey to the door went unremarked. In minutes, the inside distraction would be hoisted out behind them – thus completing the little play-act that had been carried out with vexing success.

No shortage of villains who'd have wished him harm – creating this game to snare him for whatever vengeful purpose that struck their fancy. Moriarty was dead and, truth tell, this was nowhere the elaborate scheme he'd have imagined. For all of its effectiveness this had the earmarks of something recently contrived. A new enemy, then; angry enough to act swiftly rather than indulge in the long game. Case in point, the angular creature shoving him towards a waiting black sedan, while steady with his weapon, was loose with his tongue – having muttered several oaths about “that pig ugly old bint”. The rich blend of Liga Privada against the sharp stench of oily fish suggested a wealthy benefactor willing to entice and impress the less than affluent. Why? A skill-set, then, not in keeping with a higher class of criminal. Not difficult to ascertain said skills based on the overt displays of chilly affection. It also suggested a criminal whose services were not likely to end with a fat wallet but, rather, a slab at Barts. Hiring among the upper echelons invited questions when one of their number disappeared. Not so with the average street thug.

Though his body was being forced into the rumbling vehicle – aided along by the reappearance of the suddenly sober third member of their tiny gang, Sherlock's mind was already sorting and dismissing face after face from those he'd captured and those he'd aided – numerous enough foes among his clientele to include them as suspects.

By the time thick mounting tape had been wrapped around his wrists and a rough hood had been cinched beneath his jaw, he'd discarded twenty-five women from his list either due to age, inclination, or incarceration.

With the field condensed to only three remaining candidates, Sherlock tightened his focus on motive.

“Take it slow. Last thing we need is some rozzer berk nick us for speeding.” A shift – seat springs giving off a worn squeal. “Now then, how about a nice little nappy?”

Sherlock ducked but couldn't stop the hand closing around the back of his neck any more than he could wrest away from the heavy body pinning him into the corner next to the door. A moment later, he felt the pinching burn of a needle push into his arm. Drowsiness hit fast as a comfortable warmth blossomed through his belly – dipping his head down towards his knees. Though he fought the effects – speech an inarticulate slur – the drug could not be staved forever. Now gentle hands tipped him towards a lap – trousers rough against his cheek – whilst thick fingers pushed beneath the back of the hood and curled through his hair. Continuous motion carding from forehead to nape, he hadn't the will to shake free from the liberties taken. Roughly fifteen minutes on, one hand left his scalp to rest warm on his shoulder. Unconsciousness was deepening - bringing a thickening dark that surged up through his toes – a flooding swell that closed over his head like ink...

◦

Minimal conversation passed around him – heard but unimportant beyond cataloging. His eyes felt tacked shut and his body heavy – crumpled across the seat; head pillowed on hard thighs.

“...onna need to take one more left – up ahead, past that house, there.” A hand slapped, suddenly, on his arm and, though Sherlock didn't flinch, he tensed under the fingers that squeezed his bicep.

“Have a good rest, sweetheart?”

Fine layers of glaze peeled away to a molten haze. Blinking, no real aid, nor squinting – though at least the stickiness lessened.

No further stimulation from his abductors; no loss, that; he tuned back towards more fascinating contemplation – rudely delayed by the interruption of unconsciousness. So who was the spider at the center of this web?

“Pig ugly bint” - the oath one of several complaints with a misogynistic flair. His first list of candidates, then; female. Homely? Or merely deemed so due to assertiveness or rejection of sexual advances? Whom, among past and present association, held so strongly a grudge?

His suspects... just before the needle had slid into his bicep, he'd narrowed the field of possibilities to a trifecta.

He opened his eyes to white.

Three figures stood before him – similar only in gender.

Nettie Royston. Forty-three, widowed, with no children. A regular at NSY after a series of smash and grabs, she'd turned up on Sherlock's doorstep, two years previous, begging he investigate Scotland Yard, itself. In particular, its resident D.I. for harassment both of a psychological as well as a sexual nature. Determining that her primary goal was purely vindictive in an attempt to distract from her actual crimes, Sherlock had refused – leading to a sudden and startling rage at being rebuffed. Launching herself at the detective, she'd managed to smash one of Mrs. Hudson's prized tea cups against his temple before John had been able to subdue her. She'd threatened any number of imaginative retaliations while being led off by the constable. As it was, she had been on license for the last four weeks and would have had more than enough time to carry through with her scheme.

A warm chuckle as his back and he tipped his head to acknowledge the man behind him. Lestrade had his shoulders against the far wall of his mind palace – hands relaxed in the pockets of his trousers. “Nettie Royston? You really think she's responsible? You know, very well, she moved in with her sister in Inverness. I'm sure she hasn't had a spare thought for anything other than disappointing the little bit of family she has left. Besides, with her temperament, if she wanted revenge, she wouldn't hire hitmen – she'd take care of things herself. No doubt with a tire iron.”

“No doubt”, Sherlock muttered in return – the inspector fading away to smoke.

His remaining two possibles were equally as dodgy – a puzzle that brought a different take along with a companion to air the unasked question.

“What was it your highwayman said he gave me? Ipecac? You realize you can only get that by prescription. That isn't something some random yob is going to pick up at the local chemist.” John; sitting beside him in place of his captor while eyeing him in a blend of exasperation and humor. And it honed the thread of disquiet that had troubled him since the pub. The timing of it all – two levels of distraction carefully structured to imply sloppiness. Oh, he was slipping. It was a game with a far more clever master at the helm than he'd first attributed.

“And you have to admit – that bit about their employer – the “pig ugly bint”? Why go through all of this trouble to be quiet, now, yet carry on so much on the way to the car?” Molly – on his other side with her arms crossed and reclined against the window. Leading him by the nose... No need to hide a smile with the hood over his face. Still, his posture was a tell for the observant and he was swiftly becoming aware that the man he was swooning upon was watching with a keen eye.

“Ah... you got it now, do ya?”

Sherlock grunted; pushing somewhat more upright – the motion allowed and suggesting there was no longer a danger of being seen beyond the car windows.

“Not difficult with the pieces laid out so clearly – truly, was this subterfuge of your own crafting or is there a hand up your backside to play you like a puppet? I rather imagine the latter.”

Unperturbed by the insinuation of his words, the other man only chuckled – a far less painful response than a cuff to the head – but blind rage was the undoing of many a foe. A controlled enemy was a creature requiring a different sort of tact. No bargaining – no pleading for one's life nor appealing to one's better nature – this one was bought and sold and loyal to his master's coin purse if not loyal out of the moral code adhered to by those hired out and wishing to maintain a reputation amongst their fellow lowlifes.

“So whom is the puppet master...” He'd have steepled his fingers were they free – though he could make due by closing his eyes – backing through the past fifteen minutes plus lost time until he paused on the feel of dank breath against the back of his neck – the rouge revealing himself to his slow-witted prey.

“Past tense.” Snapped out observation and enough to pique interest from his unwelcome companion.

“What was that?”

Sherlock smirked. “When you spoke of your employer. A subtle, yet detectible implication in your words. You maintained an element of the past tense. The only time you altered tense was in reference to your alleged 'bint' – a valiant yet ultimately clumsy red herring and certainly not a misdirect a man of your intellect would be capable of, at any rate.” Now he sensed the anger – just there, under the laugh – a hesitation – a tightening of muscles. “I noticed the smell whilst you were affixing this hood over my eyes. Not the layered aromas of your breath, no, but the stench rising from your tread. The odor of manure – faint – beneath the cologne and shoe polish. And then there were your hands. Nails trimmed, clean but calloused – specifically between the ring and pinkie fingers as well as along the distal transverse. Spent a lot of time working with horses, did you? Not to mention the slight limp and distinct tang of liniment that no amount of body spray can quite disguise. But you're no stable master – you've spent almost no time astride as you lack the coordination and balance of a seasoned rider; though your age would suggest you should have attained such a station were your education up to the task. But you haven't been employed for some time though that does beg the question as to why you'd forego job seeking to heed the demands of a master who, as it appears by your blundering hint dropping, is dead?”

“Blundering...?”

“Had – not has. Was, not is. Past tense. And, yet, you are currently employed – a requirement when the game is chess but clearly you're playing checkers. These moves are not your own – no – this would require more sophistication than you're capable – your MO more in keeping with a back alley buggering than an extended stay with the veneer of interrogation. Ordered to keep hand's off, were you? You seemed to enjoy our little cuddle – given the uneven lap and speed of respiration so not just the clichéd' scare tactic but the clichéd villain. No doubt hoping the threat of sexual violence would break me down prior to arrival – make me malleable. Not to shatter your fantasy but this is boring. The on again off again cockney, however – ah – but that's interesting. Never measured up to the masters who employed you – always wanting to appear more than you were – smarter than you are – better than the Joe Bloggs you can barely stand to see in the mirror. 'ow does e' know I'm repulsed by my reflection?” Affected accent; mocking before he dropped back to his regular baritone, “The uneven shave could be deliberate – likely deliberate lest you stand out too posh at the club but uneven sideburns? That suggests maintenance without the benefit of visual oversight. Features average, aside from the rosacea across the nose and cheeks and a facial tic near your left eyelid. Adjacent to an old scar; did one of your victims fight back? Could have been an injury at the stable but victim seems more likely – three narrow lacerations – someone tried to gouge out your eyes. Your inadequacies are, very literally, written all over your face. Is that why your conquests are forced? Nobody else would have you?”

The flare of outrage, deeply inhaled breath and a shifting of the leather seat, was settling again as the other man leaned back with a breathy laugh. “Now that is impressive – no doubt. I mean, I heard about your talents but it's nothin like seeing it first hand.”

The car thumped hard, jostling them both and throwing Sherlock against his captor – another rough rocking the other way had him knocking his forehead against the rear passenger's side window.

“Oi! Slow it down on these roads, you josser! We ain't in a rush and we sure don't need a blow out!”

The absent sounds of traffic had already informed that they'd left London behind even before they'd come across such pitted roads. The scents of tar, oil, and exhaust gave over to the sweeter bloom of fresh dirt and white clover. But, more so than that... distant cries of seabirds and the ripening smell of saltwater.

And Sherlock knew where they were heading. More than that, he knew who had set all of this into motion – for all the good that would do him. A final, twisted game from beyond the grave. He really was slow to catch on...

“Come, now; don't beat yourself up, little brother. After all, it isn't often that one has two mortal enemies, is it. And both with their brains blown out, too, no less! A bountiful bit of irony, that.” Mycroft – sounding smug, as usual, brushed invisible dust from his lapel. Sherlock found that, whether flesh and blood or mental construct, Mycroft was equally insufferable. At least with this one he could banish him with a flick of his chin.

“So...” he intoned – hitching himself upright against the seat back, “how long have you known Charles Magnussen?”

◦

Hours, since the last encounter with the the cool ring of porcelain in the loo. Stomach cramped from heaving, stumbling through the kitchen for a cuppa and cursing the dodgy grip of his trembling hands that nearly cascaded scalding camomile across his lap. A wander back through the sitting room found it unexpectedly empty. While his flatmate was not above the occasional vanishing he'd been better, in recent months, about announcing his absences. At the very least a text after a few hours out. Well, nothing for it but to initiate contact. Maybe convince his friend to fetch home a few cans of broth – the flat, once again, devoid of comfort food beyond a stale package of digestives. Mobile in hand, as he sank into his chair, John tapped of a quick message before taking a cautious swallow of tea. Still too hot – lips wincing back at the burn.

It was the shatter of his cup, on the hearth, that startled him back awake. Christ, Mrs. Hudson would not thank him for demolishing one of her rose cups. Hours? Minutes? Watch check – half an hour. Bleary – belly still cramping but improving a bit.

He dug his mobile from the cushion where it had slipped and tapped to wake his screen. No reply. Sighing, John sent a second text – a bit more persistent, perhaps, but dammit he was shattered and not in the mood for moods.

Drifting, then, and half of a mind to switch on the telly were the clicker not on the other table and far from his fingertips. Not being in possession of a mind palace, John contended himself, instead, with drowsy blinks and an internal debate about whether he should risk the cricked neck to sleep in the chair or drag himself to the bedroom for a proper sleep. He checked his messages again.

That little thrill of concern was edging into actual worry, now. Sherlock may ignore him when hunched over a microscope or sulking in his chair – long fingers propped up beneath his chin. But in the wind – sick friend abed and foregoing any normal alleviation such as leaving behind a note to his whereabouts – that was no longer Sherlock's method. Not since Mary...

Switching tactics, John sat up a bit and rang his landlady – texting not really her forte, after all. Her thin voice picked up almost immediately. Probably had her portable sat at her side.

“Oh, John? How are you feeling? Can I get you anything? Rosie's fine – just got her down for a nap.”

“I'm fine. Look, have you heard from Sherlock?”

“Sherlock?” Distracted sounds, then – distinct clank of the kettle. “No – not for several hours, at any rate when he ran out of here, slap dash, and caught a cab at the curb.”

John rubbed eyes that felt as though they'd grown three times in size. “No word where he was headed?”

“Oh, goodness no, when have you lot ever told me anything of where you were going?” Rustle of slippers against the floor and another, softer, clink of porcelain. “Now, don't you fret. I'm certain Sherlock is just fine.”

He knew her reassurance should have set him at ease but the actual result was to sent his heart racing. Since when was Sherlock ever fine?

◦

“Never met the man.” Was the only reply he'd been given – just before another needle point pierced Sherlock's arm with an unskilled hand – the sedative more painful than the last injection and likely to bruise. Though not rendering him instantly unconscious, it had the benefit, to his captors, of leaving him uncoordinated and weak as the vehicle slowed – clearly nearing its destination to the large estate last viewed from the rising cockpit of his brother's helicopter. Driving round the back, the rushing thunder of the ocean dulled to ringing silence as they pulled into what must have been an underground car park.

The seat shifted – tipping Sherlock towards the failed stableman and the bloom of foulness gusting between his teeth. “Wakey-wakey, darlin' – we're home!” No room to battle nor gilded with the energy for thrashing, Sherlock was left with the ignobility of being carried over the larger man's shoulders and into a lift. The acoustics laid pressure against his eardrums as the doors clamped shut and the tiny room vibrated with a deep rumble. And then they started down.

Not given to visible displays of shock, Sherlock had a moment to ponder if Mycroft's people had uncovered the lower level before dismissing the likelihood of its existence almost immediately. Had they done, the property would be an odd choice for an abduction – not to mention the upcoming activities that would require both privacy and security.

Twice Sherlock felt himself being shifted on broad shoulders – his height making him an unwieldy burden regardless of the strength of the carrier. Not exactly comfortable for himself, either, his ribs digging rather painfully into the blunt angle of the other man's shoulder. The lift came to a halt after 6 seconds of travel. Assuming the average height of a standard floor multiplied by the speed of the lift itself – slower than average accounting for the smoother ride – he estimated they had descended 50 feet below ground.

While the doors slid open with the same gentle rumble as they'd shut – there was now the added electronic signature of a card reader followed by the mild squeal of hinges in need of service. Not a place frequented by its former owner – the fungal smell of damp earth and seeping moisture a vast contrast to the crisp perfection of the manor above.

The space was smaller, as well, forcing the two men to walk one behind the other. A hallway – the walls close on either side and the ceiling low enough that Sherlock could hear the echo of his captor's steps just above his head. No doubt he'd cave his skull were he to attempt raising it. At the very least he'd earn a frustrating injury that would do nothing to procure his escape.

They went this way for another 30 steps – stopping whilst the other man fumbled at a door and its unfamiliar lock. By the time Sherlock had been dropped back to his feet, unsteady and a bit nauseous, he had fully tired of the subterfuge.

His arms were fastened with shackles – breath speeding through his nostrils, only for a moment, as Serbia revisited with blistering presence – buried back beneath the flagstone of his mind as the hood was ripped dramatically from his face. Sherlock rolled his eyes and shifted his shoulders at the uncomfortable spread of his arms. At least they hadn't relieved him of his shirt. They'd even left him his belstaff and scarf.

The horse man belly laughed at the glare revealed with the removal of the offending hood. “Ah, dove, you do look a right sexy devil with that pout on!” He mocked a blown kiss while the other man, ignoring the exchange, tapped at his phone.

Too deep for a signal to penetrate and he didn't imagine their employer would enjoy them texting mid-abduction. A code, possibly... Thought barely formed when hard soles with a slow stride approached from beyond the only visible door in or out of the dank space.

Sherlock tipped his head. “So your employer is a woman.”

“She is, indeed.” Voice speaking beyond the closed door – so not sound proofed. But, then, why would it need to be? A moment's pause – dramatics? No, her shoulder led – hands occupied with a large tablet. She had yet to look up as she crossed the room. Sherlock indulged in evaluation.

Auburn hair – long, could fall to mid-back though kept coiled in a loose bun at the nape. Elegant and professional yet easy to loosen at a moment's notice. Eyes and lips made up but not ostentatious. Nail glaze clear, garment fitted; fabric a silk blend – no give to the fibers and designed to show off her curves with every movement. Heels... low, base broad – meant to be worn throughout the day. Her indulgence was jewelry – rings in particular as there were two on her right hand and a third on the left. The stones were smooth – though not all of equal value. Two of the rings were gold and inset with aquamarine and larimar, respectively. The third – older – ill-fitted on the right anular – narrow along the lower circlet, worn thin from years of spinning the piece – nervous gesture. Gold alloy showing a pale distortion near the stone – peridot from its distinctive golden green. Were the corrosion from a regularly handled chemical, she'd remove the jewelry and wear gloves. A mild erosion – built up over time. Years. Cleaning solution? No – again, necessitating the removal of jewelry. The stone was affordable – the setting implying a sentiment. The other two rings were gifts of extravagance when money was of no consequence. Moved to the right hand yet still in a place of honor. Widowed. Regular exposure to something with a moderate PH. Not enough to harm the epidermis but enough to erode the alloy over time...

“...you'll get used to it...”

Sherlock dug a molar into his cheek to stop the tremble.

The woman stopped in front of him, cherry lips angling into a smile as she tucked her tablet against her breasts. “Carlotta Alexis Magnussen, Mr. Holmes. You murdered my husband.”

#Sherlock fanfic #tw: rape

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