#a nice white room. self sufficient with two

[trophygony]

one thing to know about me is that they're unappealing colors

[formulaforza]

miss americana & the heartbreak prince

—02. over the ocean call —word count: 6.1k —warnings: language, sexual innuendos —a/n: don't get used to this update schedule my loves. school starts back up again on monday.

In late October, the sunrise is perfectly timed to be at it’s blandest point during Chris’ morning commute. 7:35am, and the sun painted the sky shades of pink and orange and yellow half an hour ago while Chris was curling her hair. Now, it’s not dark, but it’s definitely not light, either. More of a blue hue covering the entire state, painting the parking lot with the emotions of a sleepy Monday morning. For the first time since she landed back home, Chris is feeling the exhaustion of the weekend. 

She piles the bags onto her shoulder–a Jansport backpack and an Earth Day tote she’d been gifted by a student just before summer break last year. In one hand, she’s got a tangle of lanyards, one with her classroom keys and school ID, another with her car and house keys. In the other hand, an oversized travel coffee mug; one that made the morning commute perched between her legs because it’s too big for the cup holders in her car. 

She scans her badge at the office door, greets the secretaries while rummaging through her mailbox, ducks her head into the principal’s office with a single warning knock. He’s not in yet. Her keys jangle and the heels of her booties echo the entire length of the quiet hallway to her classroom. She unlatches the door with her elbow, opens it with her hip and flicks on the lights. The room still smells like shaving cream from the spelling activity she’d left for the substitute on Friday.

In the time it takes her to boot up her computer and answer some missed emails from the weekend, she finishes what’s left of her coffee and heads to the teacher’s lounge to brew another cup. On her way back, she swings by the cafeteria. 

Forty-percent of the district live below the state poverty line and qualify for free and reduced lunch. The lunch ladies are hard at work getting ready to start serving some hungry kiddos. All of the teachers in the district are allowed to eat breakfast and lunch as provided by the cafeteria, and even though Chris already ate breakfast, she snags a full tray–mini pancakes, syrup, a hashbrown, a clementine, and a carton of strawberry milk–and takes it back to her classroom. 

Chris has one student, Quinn, whose family can’t afford reduced lunch prices but also won’t request for Quinn to qualify for the free lunch. She thinks it’s an ego thing, that Quinn’s mom just isn’t able to accept that the family needs help. It’s a single parent household and the mom works two full-time jobs to try and make ends meet. After a newsletter was sent home in need of parent signatures at the beginning of the year and returned with Mama written in sloppy green crayon, Chris learned that Quinn was living a relatively self-sufficient life. As self-sufficient as a five-year-old can be. 

Chris sets the styrofoam tray down on the table in the front of the room and starts to get the place ready for students; she starts pulling down chairs, cleaning up the classroom library, updating the calendar on the white board and re-organizing the magnetic daily schedule. Normally she’d have a lot of this done before leaving the day before, but since there was a sub, nothing was done before locking the room up for the weekend. 

At eight-twenty, Quinn knocks on the open door and trudges in with a backpack that’s half the size of her. “Hi, Miss Elliott,” she says through a yawn, plopping herself into the chair in front of the breakfast tray and digging in. 

“Hi, Quinnie,” Chris smiles from her computer. Quinn relays that she missed Chris very much, a lot while she was gone on Friday and Chris’ smile grows. “I missed you, too. Did Mrs. Bliss do your hair up all nice?” She asks. 

Quinn nods around her spork, around a mouthful of mini-pancake. “She did a braid,” she mumbles. 

“You love braids!” Chris says, opens the bottom drawer of her desk and starts pulling out hair products. Quinn gives her a thumbs up as a confirmation of the braid love. 

She spends the next fifteen minutes brushing through Quinn’s tangled hair. Mondays are always the worst because Quinn has all weekend to get it knotted up. She settles for a ponytail, braids the strands after it’s all smoothed out and puts a pink bow at the base of the pony. After they’re both finished–Chris with the hair and Quinn with the breakfast–the kindergartener heads back to the gymnasium to wait with the rest of her classmates. 

She puts some final morning touches on the classroom before she goes to collect the kids and start the day, and like most Monday mornings around Robinson, time seems to move backwards. By the time she drops her kids off for their morning special–music on Mondays–she feels like she’s worked three ten hour days. She keeps busy during the downtime, making copies and grading word searches and putting newsletters into student mailboxes. It’s not until lunch, until her daily phone call with Hannah, that she remembers all about the unanswered text from the unknown number sitting in her phone just begging to be overthought. 

“Can I, uh, can I tell you something?” Chris asks Hannah. “You can’t tell Chase.”

“Did you kill somebody?” Hannah laughs, Chris doesn’t. Might as well have, she thinks, because flirting with a racing driver is just as bad, if not worse, when it comes to Chase. He and Bill forbid Chandler and Chris from ever getting with a driver, even just for a night, when Chris was barely old enough to conceptualize what exactly a one-night stand was. She was thirteen, at most, and was still under the impression she was supposed to stay pure until marriage or else she’d go to Hell. 

“Can I tell you, or not?”

“You can always tell me, c’mon,” Hannah says, and Chris suddenly feels guilty for suggesting Hannah was anything but trustworthy. They’ve been best friends for decades, a relationship that predates Chase and Hannah, predates Reid, predates puberty and elementary school and potty-training. They’ve always told each other everything, but, in the past couple years–since Chris’ best friend got engaged to her brother–she’s always a little hesitant with the stuff she doesn’t want to get back to Chase. 

Outside of the fact that she expects Hannah to put her partner before her best-friend, Chris hates the idea of having to put Hannah between the two of them. She hates it, but she needs to tell someone about the text burning a hole in her phone, and who else is she going to tell? “Okay, so,” Chris smiles, realizes she’s smiling, and forces herself to stop. “There’s a guy.”

Hannah audibly gasps on the other end of the line. “There’s a guy? What’s his Instagram? First and last?”

“Do you want his social security number, too?” Chris laughs. Do they even have social security numbers in France? She clicks the spacebar on her keyboard to wake the monitor, types the question into the search bar. Oh, they do. Now she just feels silly. “We met this weekend.”

“Oh?”

“He’s a driver.”

There’s a long pause. Chris chuckles, because she doesn’t know what else to do. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Hannah clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, exhales heavy through her teeth. “Is he hot?”

Chris nods, and with a smile on her lips again, “Very.”

“Did you hook up with him?”

“Hannah!” Chris whispers through gritted teeth, looks around the room for the sudden presence of prying ears, clicks the volume on her phone down a few notches. 

“Chris!”

“No, God. I just need to text him back.”

“You gave him your number?!”

She actually recoils out of surprise with Hannah’s tone. “That’s more absurd than the idea of me hooking up with him?”

“Yes,” Hannah deadpans.

“I don’t like you.”

“Well, little late on that realization, honey.”

“Can you just help me figure out what to say to him?”

“Yeah, but first,” Hannah pauses. Chris can hear the tapping of her freshly done acrylics on the glass phone screen. “I’m looking at a picture of all of them. Which one is he?”

“I’m not telling you that.”

Hannah groans, and Chris can imagine her pout so vividly. “You suck!”

“Okay,” she ignores Hannah’s temper tantrum. If she’s going to ask for help, she’s going to get the help. “So, he texted me and basically just said ‘hey,’ what should I send back?”

“Uh, just say ‘hi’ back?”

Chris pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs, “You literally have negative game.”

“I’m getting married in two months!”

“To my brother.”

“Got me there.”

Chris spends the next fifteen minutes drafting texts with Hannah as her peer-reviewer in the notes app on her phone. She doesn’t like any of them, they all feel forced, feel like they’re too strong or too weak or just all together strange and off-putting. Hannah calls her a chicken and Chris hangs up on her, sends a single kissy-face emoji in a text and calls it a lunch period. 

After lunch and after recess, Chris’ class does more English. They practice writing their names and their letters and working on the way they hold their pencils. Chris is a real stickler when it comes to the way children hold their pencils. She took an ergonomics class her junior year of college for extra credit and some of it still sticks with her years later. 

After that, it’s group reading and snack time. They read Rainbow Fish on the city-themed rug that came with Chris’ classroom when she started. They spend the rest of their afternoon crafting their own Rainbow Fish out of construction paper, glitter, and glue. 

The last task of the day, and arguably the most stressful, is pickup. She drops all of the bus-riders off in the cafeteria, and that’s the easiest part of it all. It’s the back blacktop that’s the horrifying part, the hoard of parents and the four and five year olds anxious to run off to their mommies and daddies without letting Chris know first. Everyday that she survives pickup without any of the kids being abducted is a gold medal day in her book. 

She heads to the Pre-K hall after that day’s episode of Survivor to pick up her nephew–Hannah’s son–Reid, and take him back to her classroom. She prints worksheets for tomorrow in the teacher’s lounge and when she comes back, has to re-tidy up the classroom behind Reid’s wake of destruction.

It’s not until she’s in the car, after she’s loaded up her bags and strapped Reid into his carseat, that Chris finally texts Charles back, and it’s about as creative a response as his original message. 

She regrets the double text before she even pulls out of the school parking lot, but there’s nothing she can do about it now. It’s been months since she updated her phone, and she’s sure she doesn’t have the ‘undo send’ feature in her outdated software. And even then, she’s heard it notifies the person that a message is unsent, and the only thing worse than regretting a double text is letting the other person know that you regretted it. 

It’s a fifteen minute drive back to Chris’ house, Reid in tow. By the time she gets back there’s a new message from Charles.

Okay, okay. The double text didn’t scare him off. He’s deeper than a Georgia frat brother, that’s definitely a check in the win column. 

Per usual, it’ll be another hour before Hannah is back from work to pick Reid up, so like always, he and Chris share an after school snack from her fridge. Reid is a talker. He can droll on and on about the most obscure, irrelevant moments of his day like they’re the greatest thing to ever happen to a human being, and can listen to the sound of his own voice until he’s blue in the face. He tells Chris all about his day, about play time with the kid who picks his nose and wipes his boogers on the rug, about David’s bad day from storytime and all about Chase’s race. If there’s one thing the world’s most talkative kid likes to talk about more than anything else, it’s Chase’s racing. 

Chris sips lemonade from a purple bendy straw and stares at her phone on the counter, open to the messages app.

“Are you texting to my mom?” Reid asks. 

“I have other friends besides your Mom,” Chris quips, slides her plate of animal crackers across the table to him. 

“Nuh, uh,” Reid shakes his head, chomps down on an animal cracker with the grace of a clown slipping on a banana peel, crumbs pouring from his mouth onto his shirt, his lap, the wood tabletop. Chris reaches over and swipes them onto the ground.

Chris laughs out loud, steals Reid’s attention away from playing make-believe zookeeper with the cookies in front of him. She wonders how quick he regrets sending it, or if she just has a one track mind. 

She giggles a kind of hair-twirling, blush-inducing, feet-kicking giggle that makes Reid sigh loudly. “I’m trying to focus!” He says, glares at her with a hippo in one hand and a gorilla in the other. She snatches the gorilla and eats it in two bites. Reid, dumbfounded, is met with a smile from his aunt who promptly and dramatically licks her fingers.

She wishes she could be having an, of course he remembers moment, but she is genuinely shocked by it, moreso by the fact that she doesn’t even remember telling him about it in the first place. It had to have been during the Hot Lap, surely, sandwiched between her screams at two hundred miles an hour and his giddy giggles with each gear change. 

Why would he ever remember that, she wonders. She’s sure that if she told Chase about it, under regular conversation standards on a regular weekend, he’d forget about it before the end of the hour, and he’s her brother. Her own blood. But here’s this guy, in the middle of this insane weekend, remembering a stupid little thing she tells him while he’s trying to focus on driving a car faster than any sane person’s reaction time could ever handle. It’s shocking. 

Reid is gone, picked up by Hannah, and dinner is started when she messages him again. Chris is terrible with crushes, really. She’ll tell you it’s one of her worst traits; how easily she falls into a crush, how quickly her adult exterior melts away into nothing but a teenage girl hoping to be asked to the homecoming dance. She’s simple, easy to attain. Call her beautiful or remember something she thinks is important and you’re in her good graces, racking up points in a pro and con chart in her head. Charles has already done both of those things.

Her phone rings three minutes after she sends it. Facetime call: Maybe: Charles. Crap. 

She checks herself out in the reflection of the microwave window. She’s still got on her morning makeup, and even it’s last leg is better than nothing. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, also from this morning, and falls messily around her face. She’s changed from work clothes into a pair of leggings and an old purple sorority hoodie, the neckline cut into a v and the ends of the sleeves tattered with tears and grease and loose threads from loving the cotton a little too hard. It’s not ratty… it’s just, comfortable. An acquired taste. 

Has her kitchen always been this messy? Did it come like this? Has she ever cleaned it? Why, why, why does she keep a high school picture of her and Hannah on the fridge?

She rolls her sleeves over themselves and tucks as many frizzy hairs behind her ears as she can manage before she sets her phone up on the counter, against the backsplash tile, and answers it. 

He’s greeting her with a smile, childlike almost, the way his dimples dig into his cheeks. Stupid. She remembered him as cute and she remembered right. She smiles back because even through a screen, even when you barely know him, it’s a contagious smile complimented with soft, warm eyes that manage to make it look like he doesn’t have a care in the world. 

“Hello, Chris Elliott.”

“Hello, Charles Leclerc.”

“Tell me all about this dinner you’re cooking?”

“If you insist.”

“I insist a million times.”

They talk all evening about dinner and rainbow fish and how Chris is not, under any circumstances, going to be one of his girls. His dimples make her worry that she could be convinced to, though. 

“Okay,” Chris says, sets her phone up against the hotel end table and takes a couple steps backwards so her entire figure is in frame. “Good? Bad?” She asks, spins, holds a thumbs up to the camera when she’s finished showing off the outfit. Charles smiles at the sound of her voice pouring from his airpod. “Keep in mind it’s the only thing I brought.”

She’s in a hotel room somewhere in Virginia. He doesn’t know where, exactly. He’s in Mexico, race day, breakfast in his hotel room with Joris and Andrea. The guys are bickering in the bathroom; Joris, attacking Andrea’s red on red ensemble, Andrea, attacking the seven hundred hair products Joris has stacked up on the vanity. They’d already eaten and knocked on Charles’ hotel room door until he woke up forty-five minutes later than he was supposed to. 

“You could wear a rubbish bag,” he answers because he’s almost certain she could, but also because he knows it’ll make her blush. He smiles when it does, when she pretends it doesn’t. “I don’t know that you should be asking me for outfit advice, my fans are not fans.”

“I think you dress well,” she hums, and he watches her catch her reflection in the mirror, analyzing the sundress from every angle. He doesn’t need to analyze it, always has been a fan of sundresses, no matter the color, no matter the fit. You can never go wrong with a sundress, he thinks. Never. “Like right now, you look sharp.”

“‘I’m in pajamas,” he says. 

“Sharp pajamas.”

He laughs, drops his head and shakes it. “You’re cute.”

“What about the outfit?”

“Cute too,” he says around a spoonful of food. “What’s under it?” He quips, bites the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t burst into laughter at her strawberry tinted cheeks. It’s exactly the reaction he’d been looking for, the one he’d found too much amusement in over the last few days. She blushes easier than anyone he’s ever met, and it’s more than just bright cheeks–it’s in her smile, pursed and big and adorable. It’s in her eyes, wide and unable to keep any semblance of direct contact with him. It’s a direct contrast to her normal state of being, to her normal attentive listening. She blushes too easily and he has too much fun making her. 

It’s her words that always seem to take him by surprise, when she moves close to her camera again and almost whispers, “You wanna see?”

He coughs, clears his throat and looks around the room to make sure neither of the guys have appeared over his shoulder. “Very much, I would like seeing.”

She laughs. “You wish.”

“You’re a tease.”

She shrugs, reaches over her phone and out of frame. She grabs her purse and when she does, the phone falls face down onto the wood. “Sorry,” she squeaks, picks it back up. “Good luck today, yeah?” She tells him, a confident smile on her face. He nods, mouth full, and holds up a thumbs-up, waves at her quick goodbye. 

It’s not even a couple minutes before his phone is buzzing against the plastic tabletop. A picture, from her, by her, of her. Her, and white lingerie and a little bit of imagination that has him doing all the blushing. 

Fucking sundresses, man.

She sends him a picture of the whiteboard in her classroom, decorated for the Halloween party that day with fake spiderwebs and ghost stickers and pumpkins and all things Halloween that don’t scare a five year old to death.  She also sends him a picture of two store bought sugar cookies with orange frosting, purple and black star sprinkles on top. 

It doesn’t take long for the time difference to bite them in the ass, for the optimal time for communication to be hindered by sleep and work and meetings and more sleep. An hour too early for him, a few hours too late for her, not that she’d admit it, miss I would be awake and grading these papers whether or not I was talking with you. 

That’s what she’s doing, sitting on her living room floor and grading papers on her coffee table. He’s making breakfast, but really he’s watching her grade papers and talking to her whenever she remembers that they’re having a conversation. 

It’s cute, he thinks. Extremely so, the way she struggles to multitask. The way her voice will trail out into silence in the middle of a sentence because she’s trying to decipher a kindergartener’s little chicken scratch handwriting. It’s cute, the way she carefully flips through her book of stickers to find the perfect one for each and every paper, the way she carefully puts them on and makes sure they’re pressed down firmly so they don’t fall off somewhere between her coffee table and their desk. It’s cute, the purple pen with the sparkly gel gripper. 

“I want to see you,” he blurts out in the middle of it all and it takes her a minute to process it. He watches the gears turn, watches her practically jump out of her skin at the sound of his voice like she really forgot he was there for a moment. 

“You’re looking at me.”

“In person,” he laughs. “I want to see you in person.”

“I’m going to Arizona this weekend,” she says, and he can’t even believe she’s entertaining the idea. He was sure, actually, that he’d be getting another one of her I’m not going to hook up with you, Charles, lectures. It would be the second or third of the week, and no matter how many times he’s told her do you think I’d be up this early for a hookup, she remains unconvinced of his motives. 

“I know.” She’s going with her brother. It’s the finals, or the playoffs, or something like that. He’s listening, trying to remember, he really is. None of it makes any sense, though. Formula One is so much easier to wrap your head around.  “What about next weekend? You could come to Brazil.”

“No,” she yawns. It’s gotta be at least one-thirty there, she should be asleep. He shouldn’t be keeping her up. “I’m too busy with work that week. How about the one after?”

“Abu Dhabi.” He says it like a statement, not a question. Like, if we're going to wait that long, might as well wait until I’m home.

“I could come,” she says, and it surprises him because nobody wants to come to Abu Dhabi. He doesn’t even particularly want to go to Abu Dhabi. It’s felt a lot this season like it just never stops. Like, no matter what he does, he and the car and the team can’t get in sync. He’s ready to reset for next year, really, to challenge Max instead of shaking Checo off his ankles for a few more weeks. 

“You want to come?”

She looks up from the papers at him, confused, clicking the back of her pen against the pages. “Do you want me to come?”

“Do you know how long that plane is?” He asks. “My family will be there,” he adds, and now you’d never guess he’s the one who wanted her to come in the first place. He doesn’t tell her all these things because he doesn’t want her there, he does. He just also wants to make sure she knows what she’s getting herself into, the lion’s den she’s climbing into, the shallow end of the pool and the nose-dive she’s taking. 

It’s crazy enough to meet up somewhere neither of them live. It’s a whole other monster to do it at a race, where his family is also present. 

“Do you,” she pauses, pointing the pen at the screen, “want me,” and then at herself.  “To come?”

He shrugs. “I would not have said I want to see you if I didn’t want you to come.”

Even though he didn’t want to keep her up all night, he kept her up all night with planning. And, despite the incessant need to make it clear she isn’t a hookup, Chris also refuses to come under the guise of any sort of label. He’s not mad about that, flying her in under the implication to anyone that she’s his girlfriend… especially when she’s not? It’s a recipe for disaster, for drama and death threats and cross paddock glares for just existing. It’s something he wants to avoid for himself, but more importantly, something he wants to avoid for Chris, who didn’t sign up for any of this, who doesn’t reap any of the benefits of his life. She’s too good for the drama, he thinks. 

Somehow, the conversation about the rooming situation requires more dancing than the refusal to put a label of any sorts on their… acquaintanceship. Where does she stay? With him, he wants to stay–stay with me, please stay with me. Does he see if someone can pull a few strings and get her a room in the same hotel, or would it be better for her to stay somewhere else? Better for who, he doesn’t know. He wants her with him, wants to pretend he doesn’t know half the drivers and half the teams stay at the same hotel, that people are always waiting in the lobby and outside waiting for pictures and signatures with their favorite zoo animals. 

He scratches the back of his neck, “You could stay with me, if you want to.”

“Yeah,” Chris nods. “If you want me to.”

“If you want to.” They both chuckle, horribly nervous and awkward because they’re so terrified of making a wrong move, of coming on too strong or too careless. 

“It’s your job,” she says, still fidgeting with her pen. Actually, now it’s just the glitter gel gripper that she's messing with. “Your life. I’m the intrusion–”

“You’re not an intrusion,” he interrupts, because she isn’t and he needs her to know he doesn’t think she is. 

She smiles, looks up from the pencil grip in her hand to smile at him. “Okay, I’m the… guest. Tell me what you want me to do.”

He wishes he could reach into the phone and grab her hand and still it from bouncing the gel grip against the coffee table. Softly, he replies, “I want you to stay with me.”

She nods, and equally as soft, biting down on a smiley bottom lip, “Then I’ll stay with you.”

She mentions to him in passing that she’s on Thanksgiving break for the week that follows, letting it hang in the air with silent implication. He knows her game, completely aware that she wants him to make the next move–invite me to stay, I'm not going to say no, she’s telling him. I’m not going to say no, you just have to ask.

And so he does ask. Something about it’s only fair that you see my home country after I’ve seen yours. Really, he couldn’t care less about being in Monaco. He just wants to see her. Her and the purple pen and sticker book and nose crinkle when he tells a bad joke and the tug of the corners of her lips when she tries not to blush. He wants to see it all in front of him, right there where he can reach out and touch it. 

He wants to take her on a date. He wants to take her on more than one date. Cook her dinner and show her around and memorize her presence when she’s not with her dad, when she isn’t screaming in a speeding car, when she��s not on the other side of the globe. 

“Well,” he hums. “Now I’m excited.”

“You should be,” she says, smiling at a stack of spelling tests as she tucks them away into a folder. “I’m great fun.” He pauses, watches her with a small smile. She yawns again, stretches her arms above her head with a quiet groan. She’s up entirely too late. He’s kept her up entirely too late. I bet, he thinks. “What?” Chris laughs. 

“You’re adorable when you are sleepy.”

She plays the voice memo and listens to his voice echo off the wall. He’s laughing, and she wonders what it would be like to be the wall his voice bounces from. You look like a commercial puppy, he says, it’s adorable. 

“You’re so annoying,” she says into the phone microphone, “How’s the weekend going?” When she listens to it back after sending, you can still hear the congested sniffle in her voice even though she’s regained her composure. 

Screwed by the weather, he responds. Sprint Race is soon. 

“Good Luck!”

Enjoy your movie day. 

—

He calls on Sunday night, late and unplanned. She’s already in bed, reading her book to wind-down before turning in for the night. His name on her screen makes her smile, even if she doesn't know the reason for the call. They’d been careful, when it came to calls, tried to make sure they planned them out so they didn’t spend all day, every day talking to each other. 

“Hi,” she greets, hesitant. “Everything okay?”

“Uh,” he chuckles, but it’s tired. Tired and upset and far away from the phone. He doesn’t really answer, he just sighs. 

She slides her bookmark between the pages and sets the book on her nightstand. “What’s wrong?” She asks, adjusts in bed so she’s sitting up straighter and pulls her legs close, crosses them under the sheets and puts him on speaker phone.

“I wish I was home,” he finally tells her. “Race today fucking… it’s like this, I don’t know.”

She didn’t watch the race. He knew she wasn’t watching it, that she was practically hibernating this weekend after a crazy week at work with what seemed like a never ending series of state testing. She didn’t watch the race, but now she’s really, really wishing she had. “You don’t have to show face with me,” she tells him. “Tell me what you want to say.”

“My fucking boss isn’t even here,” he starts, and he doesn’t stop. He’s got a lot to say. A lot to say about strategy and the championship and the car and himself and the season. It’s more than this race, it’s a lot of races, a lot of meetings, a lot of things she doesn’t really understand. 

Chris just listens, because it’s about the only thing she can do. She can’t give him answers or solutions or advice, and even if she could, it doesn’t sound like he’s looking for any of those things. 

She gets out of bed because she’s terrified that she’s going to fall asleep on him. She takes her water bottle and a blanket to her screened in porch, sits on the patio furniture and sips water and listens to the hum of the bugs and the sound of his voice on another continent. 

She calls him in the back of her Uber, on her way to Atlanta to catch her flight. She’d debated with herself about telling someone she was going, just out of pure convenience, saving the hour drive to the airport by just… flying there. That would require telling one of the two people in her life that know how to fly a plane–Chase and Bill–that she was going to Abu Dhabi and Monaco to see a racing driver. That would not go over well, even a little bit. So, she doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going and Hannah is the only person who knows that she’s going anywhere at all. Chris is sure her best friend could guess where she’s going, but she can’t prove anything, not when Chris has turned off her location sharing and refuses to confirm or deny what flight she’s on. 

“Are you gonna be weird when you see me?” She asks him, because this whole thing is so incredibly weird. It’s not normal, flying for seventeen hours across the world to hang out with a guy you haven’t even gone on a date with yet, a guy you haven’t spent more than a few minutes with. It feels almost illegal, letting a guy pay over a thousand dollars–he refused to tell her how much her ticket was, but she possesses the ability to use google flights–to come hang out with him. She’s not a sugar baby, right? Right? No, she isn’t a sugar baby. 

“Yeah,” Charles says through a yawn. He’s already in Abu Dhabi and it’s the middle of the night there, half past midnight, at least. He should be sleeping. “So weird.”

“You should go to sleep.”

He smiles. “Sleep is for the weak.”

Chris rolls her eyes with extra gravitas. She knows he sees it because he laughs. “Good night, Charles. I’ll see you in…” she checks her watch, “nineteen hours.”

“I can’t wait to be sooo weird when I see you.”

“I’m going to watch Cars 2 on the plane. As preparation.”

—

She does watch Cars 2 on the plane. She watches Cars 2 and eats a shitty chicken Caesar salad as dinner with a ginger ale, because ginger ale is only good when you’re on a plane or have a stomach ache. After the stale meal in the stale air, she takes two melatonin gummies, shuffles her favorite playlist, and sleeps. 

She wakes up an hour before they land in Paris, where she has a short layover. It takes the majority of said short layover to figure out where the heck she’s supposed to go. Once she’s figured it out, she spends the rest of the layover walking around the gate area, already exhausted with the idea of sitting still. She eats a chocolate croissant and has a coffee and listens to the people around her speak different languages with fluent ease. 

The flight to Abu Dhabi is shorter, but she’s awake for all seven hours of it, so it feels a million times longer than the first one. Also, somewhere between the first and last sip of what might be the best coffee she’s ever drank, nervous little butterflies have begun wreaking havoc in her insides. She’s giddy, the kind of giddy that should be reserved for little kids. Giddy and fighting a stupid little crush with the most insane stakes. 

It’s six o’clock local time on Friday evening when she lands in Abu Dhabi.

<last chapter masterlist next chapter>

[zepskies]

The Comforts of Home

Pairing: Sam Winchester x F. Reader

Summary: Sam forgets to take care of himself at times. You do your best to remind him, and be there when he needs you to lean on. But Sam Winchester’s getting a bit too heavy, and you’re starting to feel a little under-appreciated around here.    

Word Count: 5,500 Warnings: 18+ only. Mild smut, fluff, and rock & roll.

Sam Winchester was an incredibly self-sufficient man, most of the time.

Before you started dating, it was one of the things you admired most about him. The confidence with which he handled himself. The way he cared for and protected the people around him, including you.

But now that you lived in the Men of Letters bunker with the Winchester brothers, sometimes you felt more like a suburban soccer mom than a hunter. Here you were, picking up a mess of napkins, paper plates, and empty beer bottles (once again) from the table in the war room.

Is it too much to ask for these guys to pick up after themselves? you inwardly groused.

In fairness, you had all been up late last night, scouring the books hard for a way to kill Abaddon. Having her cut up into demon chunks in their basement just didn’t sit well with you, or anyone else for that matter.

And that long night had followed an even longer day for Sam and Dean, who had just driven sixteen hours from a hunt.

You sighed as the garbage went into the trash. The coffee was also done percolating, so you grabbed yourself a cup and set out two more mugs on the counter for the boys.

You were an organized person, so you always set up the sugar next to the coffee maker with a spoon on each mug to stir the creamer. A small thing, but you thought it looked nice to start the morning.

There were also various-sized jars for crackers and cookies—all of which you stocked according to Dean’s favorites. But of course, you always stocked one specifically with pretzels or Chex Mix for Sam. You even found a spice rack at a Goodwill, along with a few other things to make the rest of the place more lively and comfortable.

You just thought little touches like these made the bunker look and feel more like a home than…well, a bunker.

The guys didn’t seem to mind.  

You took a few more sips of your coffee before you started on breakfast. Unlike Sam, you couldn’t dive into another day of research until you had something to fuel yourself. So you settled on making some eggs and toast for the three of you. You had a feeling they would wake up soon, as they usually stumbled in around this time.

By the time Sam came downstairs to the kitchen, he was bleary-eyed and adorably frizzy haired. He was obviously still half-asleep, but he smiled when he saw you.

“You’re up early,” he noted, resting a hand at the small of your back. You felt his warmth as he towered behind you—his solid presence and familiar frame pressed against your back. It never failed to make you feel safe.

He laid a kiss on the top of your head and grabbed his favorite mug that you’d set out for him. It was a plain black and white mug that read: “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

An inside joke between you from his time under Zachariah’s spell, or on the “Geek Squad,” as Dean liked to remind him.

“I didn’t even feel you get up,” Sam mused. He yawned and poured himself coffee all the way to the brim.

You nodded, glancing at him from the corner of your eye. “Yeah, you were out cold.”

He rubbed a hand over his tired face.

“You okay?” you asked. He smiled again at your concern.

“I’m fine, just need some coffee.” He finally took notice of the breakfast you were making and eyed it, then you, appreciatively. “Thanks, baby. That looks great.”

“Who said it’s for you?” you teased. His smile kicked into a smirk. Noting the dozen or so eggs you cracked still piled up on the counter, he raised a brow.

“So what, you’re body building now?”

“A carton a day, according to my new fitness regime,” you quipped. Though you transferred a portion of the eggs onto a plate for him anyway. “Can you get the butter for the toast?”

“Am I allowed to eat said toast?”

“Maybe,” you hedge. When he turned around with the butter, you took it from him with a smirk. “If you’re a good boy.”

Amused, Sam played into your little game, sliding his arm around your waist and slowly pulling you flush against him. His free hand tilted your chin up to him.

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “What do I have to do, pretty girl?”

You hummed, pretending to think. Then the toaster popped behind you, lighting up your idea.

You smirked and slid your hands up from his arms, to twine behind his neck.

“Butter my toast, Winchester.”

He raised a brow, a certain smile curving his lips. “Is that all?”

“I don’t know, you may find it more challenging than you think.”

“Depends,” he said wryly. His hands molded to the curve of your waist. “Are we still talking about toast?”

You sighed dramatically, tugging on a strand of his bedhead hair. “Keep up, would you?”  

Sam nodded. “Ah, my mistake.”

He dipped down and finally kissed you. A deep, heady kiss that warmed you all the way to your toes. You sighed in content, slipping your fingers into his hair.

“Hey, hey, outta the way,” Dean said, waving at them like he was herding off a flock of pigeons. “You’re obstructing the food.”   

He was dressed in his morning robe, though the ties were precarious at best. You rolled your eyes and rested your head on Sam’s chest. While Sam shot his brother an exasperated look over your head.

“How about a thank you? She made it for us.”

Dean inhaled a couple of forkfuls of eggs and winked at you. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

You were used to the nickname by now (and Dean’s antics), but you hid a smile at the way it still kind of annoyed Sam.

Ah, well. You pat his chest and went to serve him a new plate, since Dean took Sam’s. First breakfast, then time to hit the books.

You were a seasoned hunter, but you were at a point in your life where you didn’t ride off with Sam and Dean as much as you used to. There were times when you really needed a break, and you enjoyed the research side of things.

Especially with Bobby gone now, you had sort of taken it upon yourself to help organize the other hunters, manage the phones (FBI, CIA, etc.), and do the heavy research that Sam and Dean didn’t always have time for when they were in the thick of it.

After the brothers inherited the bunker, you got them to help you move the old hunter’s collection of books and artifacts here with them. It kept a large part of Bobby alive with them (figuratively) in their home.

You had taken over the library as your office, essentially, and had things running like clockwork now. When other hunters called for help, you did your best to get back to them with an answer.

Sam liked that—the studious side of you. You two had that in common, of course. But without him realizing at first, he had come to rely on you more and more for answers to the supernatural mysteries they encountered.

You had also come to be a rare constant in his life other than his brother, and he relied on you. That was no small feat, and you knew that.

That’s why the next time he and Dean came home from a hunt, a three week long hunt, you had cleaned the entire bunker. And you let them know via text that dinner would be waiting.

And it was cooling in the oven by the time they walked through the door.

You weren’t Martha Stewart or anything, but you liked to cook and…okay, you did not like to clean. But when they were gone this long, you wanted your guys to feel welcome.

“Smells like a damn Bath & Body Works in here,” Dean muttered. He deposited the duffel bag he was shouldering onto the living room couch and dropped onto it himself, letting out a long sigh.  

“That’s the smell of clean, you ass,” you sassed. (Though you might’ve been burning an appletini-scented candle as well.)

It could never be mentioned enough that you were used to Dean being Dean, but you couldn’t help feeling a little deflated. He didn’t even notice that the couch was free of the many candy wrappers he’d left behind. Not to mention the ones he conveniently stashed between the couch cushions, instead of getting his ass up and throwing them away.  

You perked up though when Sam greeted you with a kiss.

“Have I missed you,” he said wryly. His thumb brushed your cheek and you smiled up at him, curling your fingers into his jacket.

“Missed you too, baby.” You leaned up on your toes to kiss him again. You had really missed him. Three weeks? Way too fucking long.

But he soon moved past you to drop his duffel in the middle of the hallway, tracking some dust on the newly cleaned floor. You frowned, but as soon as you might’ve said something, Sam asked you a question on his way to the kitchen.

“How was everything here?”

“Fine,” you said with a sigh. “Garth is driving me crazy though. How the fuck he’s lived past age thirty is a mystery to me.”

You followed him into the kitchen, where he predictably retrieved a beer from the fridge. But he didn’t find the can opener where he usually did, still in the sink.

“It’s in that drawer,” you supplied, pointing to the right one. He found it where you told him (in its proper place) and was able to open his beer and drink a long, refreshing sip.  

“Smells good in here too,” Sam said, though his brows furrowed. Smiling, you were excited for them to see what was roasted to perfection in the oven.

“Yeah, dinner’s ready.” You opened the oven for him to see: a whole chicken with vegetables, potatoes, the whole nine yards.  

“That looks amazing,” he said. But his lips pulled down in a frown and he looked almost upset.

You had a bad, suspicious feeling. “What’s wrong?”

Sam scratched at the back of his head in nervous habit. “I just wish you would’ve let us know…we actually ate something on the road.”

You tried your best to put a lid on your reaction (disappointment, annoyance, confusion). “But… you didn’t get my text?”

Sam’s frown deepened. He checked his phone, and sure enough there was a missed text from you.

Hope you guys are hungry! I broke out the special pans for dinner tonight.

Well, now he felt like shit. He grabbed your hand and tugged you into his arms.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. Let me ask Dean if he’s still hungry.”

“No, no. I’m sure it’ll be just as good tomorrow.”

Needless to say, you didn’t break out any lingerie that night. But when you got into your side of the bed next to Sam, you felt his side shift. His hand brushed your shoulder and his lips pressed softly against your neck from behind. His long hair tickled your ear, and you had to smile a little. But you tried to ignore him.

Eventually his lips paused.

“You still mad?” he asked.

“Maybe,” you replied. But you weren’t really mad. It was an honest mistake…and you weren’t angling for praise. But you were just getting the feeling that your boyfriend (and his brother) sometimes didn’t realize how much work you did around here just to maintain the bunker. Let alone everything you did for the Job.

“What do I have to do to change that?” Sam asked, gaining some flirtatious depth in his tone. His hand was large enough to span your waist, and his touch felt sinfully good beneath the blankets, down your hip and thigh, his thumb sliding beneath your shorts and underwear.

You hummed as he continued kissing down your neck, and you were unable to curb a smile.

“I don’t know. I sat outside the oven every fifteen minutes to make sure I didn’t burn that chicken. I don’t roast a whole bird for just anyone, you know.”

Sam brushed your hair back so he could kiss your cheek. You felt the shape of his smile there.

“What if I’m really, really good?” he said. The hand on your hip moved across your belly, then slid down into your underwear without taking them off. His long fingers reached down between your legs and traced the seam of your pussy lips teasingly.

You breathed in, anticipation and his touch already setting tingles across your warm skin. “I could be persuaded.”

That was all he needed to hear. His nimble fingers dipped inside and touched and teased in all the ways he knew you liked. He had you mewling for him before he even truly dove into you, gathering the wetness pooling there and rubbing over your clit until you sang for him.

His lips found the juncture between your neck and shoulder and bit down, just hard enough for you to gasp in pleasure. You reached back and grabbed his hair at the back of his head and held him there while his hand continued to work you over. Eventually he pulled a second release from you, and you shuddered, arching and writhing against him.

He stroked you more slowly while you came down, but he didn’t stop altogether. Until you turned around in his arms and grabbed his face and kissed him deeply.

“Damn it, you are good,” you said, though you were still fighting for breath. Sam smirked and moved to capture you beneath his body.

“We’re not done yet,” he promised, bending down to claim you in a devouring kiss.  

And he certainly wasn’t lying about that.

“You’re leaving again?” you asked in disbelief.

It had only been one day! They had just been gone for three weeks.

Sam gave you an apologetic look, but he still took up his bag to follow Dean out.

“Cas finally got us a lead on Abaddon, we can’t pass this up,” Sam said.

“Hold the fort, okay?” Dean called to you on his way out. You gave him a lazy, mocking salute, which turned into a choice middle finger behind his back.

“I saw that,” he called over his shoulder. He’d caught sight of you in a nearby mirror.

You rolled your eyes. And you had half a mind not to let Sam kiss you goodbye. But you never did that, no matter how annoyed or mad you might’ve been. With the lives you all led, you promised each other that you’d never waste a chance to say goodbye.

So you begrudgingly let him kiss you, but you both knew that you weren’t happy about it. Sam apologized with his eyes, and the way he stroked your cheek.

But then the two were gone and you were alone again.

Until the phone rang—the FBI phone. You sighed and got to work.

That evening you got a call from Dean while you had a CIA agent and a hunter on hold. The hunter wanted to know the best way to kill a wendigo without any fire or open flame on hand. You were going to have to tell the guy that he better sashay his way to a match or lighter quickly, or else he was gonna get his ass ate.

“What’s up, Dean?” you said, a bit distracted. “Make it quick. I’ve got a hunter about to become a casserole on Line 2.”

“Hey,” his gruff voice sounded on the other line. “I need you to look something up.”

“I know. What is it?”

“We’ve got something that feeds like a werewolf, got teeth like a werewolf, but it’s way too fucking spry to be a werewolf. And it don’t go down with a silver bullet.”

“All right, let me check. I’ll get back to you.”

“Make it quick. We’ve got three dead and more coming if we can’t catch this thing.”

Of course, you had to be quick. What did he think, you were just sitting here on your ass sipping lemonade?

Well, you were technically sitting on your ass, but you were working too, damn it.

You hung up on him and got the other hunter back on the phone.

“Listen, Garth, rub some twigs together and catch a spark before nightfall, or you’re gonna be what’s for dinner. Got it?”

After you hung up with Garth, you answered the CIA call and apologized for the wait. But you introduced yourself as Agent Dougherty and strong-armed the police chief on the other line into giving the hunter access to the police reports they needed.

Then you put on some Def Leppard music on your iPod (classic rock was one love you and Dean shared in excess, after all). And you spent the next six hours researching non-stop: from your double-monitor setup at your desk, to the shelves upon shelves of books on werewolf lore.

By nine that night, you were starving, realizing you’d blown past lunch and dinner. But when you picked up the book translated from its original Japanese, you had the answer you needed.

You called Dean, but it was Sam that picked up.

“You got it yet?” Sam said.

Hello to you too, you thought in annoyance.  

“Yes, I got it. It’s an okami,” you said. “You need a dagger blessed by a Shinto priest.”

Apparently you were on speaker, because it was Dean’s voice you heard.

“How the actual fuck are we supposed to find a Shinto priest?”

“I think I’ve got the right dagger here. I found it a few minutes ago in Bobby’s old things,” you said, pulling your bag over your shoulder, along with your car keys. “I’ll be over there in three hours.”

“Make it two!” Dean shouted. You could hear chopping and slicing on the other line.

“As soon as you can,” Sam added.

“As soon as I can,” you confirmed, and with a sigh, you ended the call.

You made it to them in a little over an hour, speed limits be damned, and stabbed the monster yourself.

All seven times.   

Sam and Dean didn’t come home with you after that hunt. Oh, they were supposed to. But they found yet another case on the way home, so they told you to continue home without them.

That ended up being a nest of vampires, and when the brothers eventually got home, you knew something was wrong. Sam was walking stiffly. Dean was watching him on their way in with a telltale Winchester frown—the look that told you Sam was walking wounded and trying to hide it.

You didn’t press him about it until you two were alone in your shared room, and Sam was about to disappear into the bathroom for a shower. He usually left the door open in case you wanted to come in and chat about the hunt while he showered. But this time he closed the door.

You were suspicious by the lack of sounds you heard (meaning he was trying to hide whatever it was that had his arm stuck to his side like a chicken wing). So you went by the door and knocked.

“Sam, before you shower can I grab my hairbrush?” you asked.

“I’m about to get in,” he said. That had never stopped you before.

“I’ll be quick,” you promised. But you reached into your bedside drawer and took out something you always had handy for times such as these.

When he finally opened the door, still fully clothed (as you suspected), you held up your first aid kit.

“All right, Winchester. Let’s do this,” you said. Sam sighed and let you into the bathroom, but his frown said it all.

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Sit down, please.”

He obliged you by sitting on the closed toilet seat. His long legs spanned on either side of you while you set down the first aid kit on the bathroom counter and helped him take off his jacket. He tried not to make any sounds, but his small grunts and hisses here and there were enough to tell you it wasn’t a “nothing” injury. The bloodstains on his shirt spoke to the contrary.

You unbuttoned it and found the problem. He’d stitched his own stab wound, just under his ribs. But already a few stitches had come loose.

“What’s wrong with your arm?” you asked. He had his arm tucked like he’d hurt his shoulder. Sure enough, he admitted that he’d dislocated it when a vampire shoved him hard into the Impala, denting the driver’s side.

“I’m sure Dean loved that,” you said, smirking to hide your concern. You knew it wouldn’t really hide anything from Sam, but you knew he hated to worry you.

Sam scoffed. “Yeah. He’s probably getting the dent puller out as we speak.”

“Well, for now let’s work on you,” you said. With a gentle hand, you redid his stitches and cleaned his wound, then brought a bag of ice to put on his shoulder.

“This didn’t happen today. The blood was dry, caked into your skin,” you said. Sam’s gaze fell away from yours after a moment.

“Yesterday,” he admitted. You sighed through your nose.

“Sam.”

“We had to take out the nest. There wasn’t time—”

“You gotta make time, baby,” you said. Soft, but with no room for rebuttal. You cupped his cheek with your hand, brushing your fingers against the unshaven stubble there. “I’m more than willing to do this here, but if you really don’t want me to worry, then you need to take better care of yourself.”

You almost added that he and Dean should take more time off between hunts. That you all should go on a little vacation once in a while. That you and Sam needed to go on a freakin’ date outside of this damn bunker.

But you didn’t say all that. You just kissed him and accepted his apologies, and helped him get into the shower without getting too much water on his wounds.    

A couple of weeks later, you woke up with the mother of all headaches.  

You turned on the bedside lamp, and that just made you flinch against the offending light.

“Oh fuck,” you groaned. You had a migraine. Probably too much time spent at your computer, not enough eating and sleeping at regular intervals while the guys were on the hunt again.

And your throat was scratchy as well. That didn’t go away, even after you brushed your teeth and went down to the kitchen to get some coffee into you. You coughed. Once, twice, enough that you thought you might hack out a lung.

Fucking hell, you thought. You couldn’t be getting sick. Not now.

You had so many calls to make. So much headway you had planned to get through on finding the First Blade—apparently the only thing that could kill Abaddon, a Knight of Hell.

And Sam and Dean were on a hunt again, meaning you were the only one left to hold the fort at the bunker.

With a sigh, you borrowed one of Dean’s robes over your fuzzy pajamas and got to work. Even though your eyes were bleary, and your head was pounding, you couldn’t afford to take a day off today. Everything was just too important.

Ugh, I’m such a hypocrite.

Whatever. You could rest when you were dead, you supposed.

So you got to work…for an hour or so.

You tried, you really did. You’d loaded yourself up with Dayquil and a side of crackers so you wouldn’t take the medicine on empty. But you only got through a couple of chapters in the book you were reading before your eyes just couldn’t take the lights anymore, and your exhausted brain just couldn’t handle the words on the page.

Your folded your arms on the desk and laid your head down, telling yourself five minutes. Your eyes drifted closed as Survivor’s “Rebel Son” played on your “Stay Awake” playlist.

But that rest was short-lived, just like your little internal speech about sleep being for the weak.

You were startled into consciousness by a phone ringing. Not FBI, CIA, or even Homeland Security. It was your cell, and it was Sam. You cleared your throat with a congested cough, wincing at the little knives doing their number on your esophagus. Your nose was running too.

Groaning at the wretched state of yourself, you grabbed a nearby napkin and dabbed your nose before you answered the phone.

“Hey, what have you been able to dig up on the First Blade?” Sam asked.

“Well, hello, sunshine. How are you this morning?” you asked. Heavy on the sarcasm.

“…Hey, sorry. Are you okay?”

“Nice of you to ask, but I’m fine,” you replied dully. You stuffed the napkin farther up your nose and let it hang there. “I don’t have much on the First Blade yet.”

“Nothing at all? I thought we were working on this round the clock.”

At that, your temper snapped a bit. “We? You mean me. I’m an army of one, Sam. I can’t just magically pull something out of my ass on ancient donkey blades that kill Knights of Hell.”

You heard Sam sigh. “Look, I know. I just thought you’d have something by now. Abaddon is holding the reigns in Hell, and whatever she’s cooking up isn’t going to be pretty. We’re cleaning up demon havoc left and right here.”

“You think I don’t get that?”

“I just think you need to remember that Dean and I are out here on the ground,” Sam said testily. “And it’s getting bloodier and bloodier every day.”

“Do you think I’m sitting here on my ass watching Judge Judy? I’m working too, Sam!” you said. Of course, you understood that people were dying. Sam and Dean were depending on you to help find the answers. That this was too important to drop the ball on, even for a moment. Or those people’s lives were on you.

Suddenly there was this ball of emotion getting stuck in your throat, along with something wild and frantic climbing into your chest. Like the feeling that you were falling without a safety net.

You felt hot tears welling up in your eyes, and you tried to quell it by taking a breath. It was shaky, even to your own ears.

“Every day, I give everything I can, Sam. First of all, you and Dean treat me like your resident encyclopedia, thesaurus, and almanac all in one. I’m your in-house maid, your nurse, your goddamn personal chef—with happy endings included!”

You knew you were raging, but even though it was making the pounding in your head worse, it felt good to finally get all this shit out.

Sam tried saying your name, but you cut him off.

“Look, I know people are dying,” you continued. “People are always dying. And I’m doing my fucking best—”

That’s when you dissolved into a series of rigorous coughs that shook your frame, and that triggered fresh tears in your eyes. You had to grip the desk and sit down to try and steady yourself.

“Sweetheart, are you sick?” Sam asked. You read the soft, contrite, worried tone of his voice.

It was enough for you to almost forget about your anger. Because what you really wanted right now was his arms wrapped around you so you could bury yourself in his strength and warmth. You wanted to take in his scent and hear his voice in your ear and know that everything was going to be okay.

“Yeah, I might be,” you said. And you sniffled, miserably.

After a long moment, Sam sighed. “All right. You need to take some medicine and go to bed.”

You shook your head. “I can’t, Sam. Obviously.”

“No. Forget…forget what I said. Get into bed right now. I’m going to check on you soon, and I’ll know if you’re still working. Please…do that for me.”

You wanted to be snarky that he was demanding anything of you. But with a request like that, you didn’t have the heart (or the energy) to argue anymore.

So you tacitly agreed and hung up. It took you a while to actually get yourself onto your feet, but you made it to the couch in the living room.

And once your head hit the decorative throw pillow, it was lights out.

You woke slowly to a dim, but not entirely dark room. You didn’t quite remember ending up in your bedroom, but you felt gentle fingers running through your hair. It felt so nice. You hummed, but even that sounded raspy.

Cracking your eyes open, you immediately shut your eyes against your bedside lamp. You heard a familiar curse, and the lamp was shut off. Whoever it was turned the bathroom light on instead. It was brighter, but it was farther away, so it lit up the room without beaming directly into your eye sockets.

You chanced opening your eyes again and found it easier. Sam came to sit at your side, on the edge of the bed, with a couple of pills and a glass of water. He smelled like a fresh shower.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “How’re you feeling?”

“Okay,” you croaked. You tried to sit up and he had to help you. You took the medicine he offered but struggled to keep it down with the water. You hadn’t eaten anything except a couple of measly crackers all day, but you had no appetite regardless.

Sam held your hand until the nausea passed, stroking the back of your hand with his thumb. He held his free hand to your forehead.

“No fever at least,” he said.

“Yay,” you twirled a finger, and tried and failed to suppress a cough.

Sam frowned. His eyes were filled with guilt, and he held your hand with both of his.

“I’m sorry. I know Dean and I’ve been pushing you lately. I never meant to make you feel like…like you’re not good enough. When all you do is pull our asses out of one fire and the next. And it kills me, that on top of all that, I haven’t been here for you when you needed me,” he said, and pressed your hand to his lips. Then he sighed. “With everything you do for us…I honestly don’t know how we’d do this without you.”

You wanted to insert a witty rejoinder, mostly to diffuse how uncomfortable you were with being praised. But you were emotional, and this was a tipping point. You felt hot tears slipping down your cheeks.

“But I love you,” Sam said. “So much. Above everything else, I want you to remember that.”

When you inevitably dissolved into crying pitiful tears, Sam went around to his side of the bed and sat up against the headboard. He wrapped his arms around you and tucked you against him, where you cried yourself out on his chest and let yourself be completely enveloped by his embrace. It was exactly what you craved and needed.

“If I wasn’t sick, I’d kiss you silly,” you said with a sniff. “Though at this rate, you’re probably going to get sick anyway.”

You started to pull away from him, but he held you close.

“Just rest,” he said, and brushed stray strands of hair away from your face. He kissed the top of your head and soothed up and down your back, encouraging you to sleep again.

“Dean is getting you some chicken noodle soup and actual tissues, so you don’t have to use napkins,” he added. You smiled. Dean was rough and gruff and all those things, but he was just like his brother. Soft in the middle.

“When I’m better, you and I are going on a date, sir,” you said, punctuating with a finger tapping his firm chest.  

Sam smiled in amusement. “Where do you wanna go?”

“That will be your responsibility as the boyfriend,” you informed him. “I wouldn’t be opposed to a weekend getaway, either.”  

He nodded. “Very much noted. Now do me a favor and sleep.”

“I’m not tired anymore,” you said. But it was a losing battle. Your body did, in fact, need more rest. You settled against Sam’s chest and let the feeling of his beating heart under your hand anchor you to where you felt safe. You smiled when he kissed your forehead.

“Love you,” you murmured.

Sam watched you fall asleep with a soft smile of his own. His guilt remained, but he had to remind himself of what was important.

He never thought it would happen to him again in his life, as long as he was a hunter, but he had happiness with you that was hard-won.

Dean was his home, and so now were you.

And that, he would always protect.

AN: So here's a nice long one for Sam! Let me know what you think. 😉

Sam Winchester Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Ko-Fi Me ☕

[icey--stars]

Before Everything, We Met Each Other

What happened when Azriel and Eris met each other for the first time?

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Day 1 of @azrisweek 2023 (Prologues and Prequels)

a/n: welcome to the first of a 7 day celebration of my personal favorite gay ship in the fandom- AZRIS! i literally am so excited for ya'll to read ALL of this (minus day 3 because it hated me). the alternate universe one? YES. the nsfw one? holy shit. the tropes one!? ah. anyway. ya'll get pristine proofread content this week.

now, for this fic... Eris: age 16, Azriel: age 31 (first year of War) also i don’t honestly see any mention of any of the courts that fought on the side of the mortals in the War but yipHEEE who cares. this is fanfiction.

WARNINGS: MENTIONS OF DOMESTIC ABUSE

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His father had called him to meet with the High Lord of the Night Court who was visiting to discuss more war strategy for this war between the courts. “For experience,” Beron had said. “Now hurry up and get dressed in clean clothing.”

Eris was now forced to wear his nicest clothing as he walks into the meeting room with his hands behind his back. He makes sure his head is down in submission for his father.

“You called for me, father?” Eris says as he reaches the familiar red-brown boots of the High Lord. He raises his head at last but keeps his gaze lower than his father’s chin. A perfect son like he was supposed to be. A perfect heir for Autumn.

“Yes, meet the High Lord of the Night Court, his son, and his shadowsinger,” Beron directs his gaze toward the other end of the table with a wave of his hand.

Eris looks over where he was told to look and swallows when he sees two violet-eyed males sitting with perfect posture. One looked younger, but going off of the bulging mass at the top of his clothing, he was trained and skilled. The Heir of the Night Court. A perfect son, just like him.

However, the one thing that really catches his attention is the male behind them, standing partially in the shadow of the wall. Shadows, or darkness seemed to roll off of him in waves… but he was also winged. Massive, leather wings sprouted from his back and his hazel eyes pierce Eris’s heart with fear. Eris sees an obvious dagger on his thigh as the male readjusts to look at the room better. A shadowsinger. An Illyrian. Eris knows these terms loosely, but here was the real thing right in front of him.

The male was downright stunning otherwise though. A sharp jawline and tousled black hair that settled over that tan forehead. The tan contrasted his own pale, milky white skin starkly.

“Eris Vanserra,” the High Lord regards him.

Eris stands up taller if that was even possible. He bows slightly. Still less than what he would do for his father. “High Lord,” he says gracefully.

The High Lord of Night seemed to take him in for a few more minutes before nodding his head as if Eris had given a sufficient performance. Eris didn’t dare relax.

“This is Rhysand, my son,” He introduces.

“It is nice to meet you, Rhysand,” Eris grits out.

“Take a seat Eris,” Beron orders.

Eris quickly moves to follow his father’s order. Maybe if he performs well enough right now, he wouldn’t have to bear through another round of lashes– verbal or physical. He looks at the shadowsinger again, drawn toward his shadows. They seem interesting, and as the male turns his head, the shadows seem to follow.

Beron and the Night Court High Lord begin to discuss strategy and the war as soon as introductions are over. Eris only half paid attention, if only to please his father when Beron asked him a stupid question like “And Eris, what do you suppose the course of action should be in case the enemy takes up camp on the hill, gaining the advantage?”

The obvious answer to anyone who even read one war book, or just a sense of self-preservation was to either take a subtle flank or use another natural barrier as a shield and wait for them to attack, or wait until they were out of materials because the soldiers had been cut off of any supplies. That one, however, usually took too long.

Beron seems to take it as a sufficient answer, as did the other High Lord before they continued.

When it was done, Beron and the High Lord of Night asked for privacy to speak High Lord to High Lord.

Rhysand, Eris and the shadowsinger filter out of the room, standing outside of the sound-proof doors.

Rhysand seems to be glancing both at Eris and the shadowsinger. He seems to be scanning Eris for any sort of threat, which was different from how he was looking at the other male.

“What is your name?” Eris asks, breaking the silence. He looked at the shadowsinger expectantly.

The male’s brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

Eris frowns. “It’s a simple question. What is your name? The High Lord of the Night Court didn’t mention it.”

“Azriel,” the shadowsinger replies gruffly.

-----

The Heir of the Autumn Court was speaking to him. It was utterly alluring seeing such a young, noble High Fae speaking to a lowly bastard like him.

Azriel had learned over the first year of the war that he was nothing but a pet dog for his High Lord. Even when he got to see Rhysand briefly for these moments, he was nothing but a lap dog.

Yet here was a noble High Fae asking him for his name. Azriel wouldn’t put it past Eris to mock him with it.

“Oh, that’s a cool name,” Eris says.

Azriel held back a confused frown.

Rhysand’s mind claws brush against the edge of his mind and he releases the tight hold he had on his shields.

You look incredibly uncomfortable, Rhys informs him.

Aren’t you confused? Azriel fires back.

Eris is young. He was born only sixteen years ago and has yet to see the destruction of war. Excuse his innocence.

I will, Azriel mutters before closing his shields as Rhys retreats.

“What does a shadowsinger do?”

Azriel swallows, his shadows unintentionally moving closer toward him, whispering things quietly.

The Heir is just curious, my lord. The Heir has wounds on his back, my lord, the Heir-

He sends them a silent warning to shut up. He didn’t need to pry into some privileged sixteen-year-old’s life.

“I control the shadows,” Azriel states ominously, raising a palm full of writhing darkness as an example.

“Can you really fly with those wings?” Eris continues.

“Yes,” Azriel growls.

“That’s cool,” Eris says with a little smile. It didn’t look like one of those fake ones he’d just put on for the High Lord of Autumn.

“What do you do for your High Lord?” Eris glances at them both now.

Rhys seemed to glower at the question. “Court work,” his brother grits out. “And I lead legions.”

Eris’s brows raise. Impressed, Azriel recognizes the emotion. “That’s cool. Father says I will be a general one day. What about you, Azriel?”

Azriel’s jaw tightens as he remembers exactly what he was tasked to do. “I gather information,” he replies instead. He gathered information that others didn’t want to share utilizing torture or observation. Torture, however, had been more common as of late.

“What kind of information? What information do you know about the Autumn Court?”

He’s insistent, Rhys says into his mind. Azriel sends back a little push of agreement.

“Information on the War,” Azriel answers. “What about you? What do you do for this court?”

That’ll keep him from asking questions, he thinks toward Rhys as his brother sends a questioning feeling through their little mind connection.

Are you sure you’re not just going to get him in trouble? Rhys asks.

You seem to care a lot about this male who will likely grow up just as vicious as his father.

I don’t, Rhys says. But I know what it feels like to grow up so pressured.

Azriel didn’t reply to that.

“Oh,” Eris sighs. “I don’t do much. Not yet. I’m just training and learning. My father wants me to gain experience before sending me out to the battlefields. I wish he’d just send me now-”

“Hopefully, this war won’t last that long,” Rhys speaks up, cutting the young boy off. “And you shouldn’t wish to get on that bloody battlefield.”

“Why not, Rhysand?” Eris asks.

Rhys didn’t reply. Azriel didn’t deign to pick it up either. They both knew the tragedy of war so early. Cassian was likely fighting in a battle or preparing to fight in one already. The fact that Rhys’s father had dropped Cassian off as a lowly foot soldier and not as a commander of the armies was a stupid decision, especially in this war. Cassian knew strategy. He knew how to fight and he was the most powerful in the goddamn army siphon-wise. And yet, as if to keep them entirely separate from each other, Cassian was considered nothing but a body.

The door squeaks as Eris opens his mouth to ask again, and the boy instantly changes. He stands up straighter, and trains his face to a neutral one, looking up at his father who exits the room for a moment before dropping his eyes to the floor.

Azriel decides not to care at that moment. He couldn’t. Not in this gods-damned world. It was too horrible and chaotic to even attempt to form any sort of care for anything. Rhys and Cass already cost him as a weakness. A weakness he needed for his sanity, but a weakness nonetheless. His High Lord regularly took advantage of that.

-----

Eris wants to know what Rhysand had meant by “shouldn’t wish to get on that bloody battlefield,” but his father had returned from his short meeting and he was forced to become that perfect son again. Rhysand didn’t even change. It seems either he didn’t care, or he’d been strictly polite with Eris the other time. The latter was more likely, he guesses.

“Go back to your lesson, Eris,” Beron orders.

Eris bows his head further as acknowledgment before slowly making his way down the hallway. Back to his studies on the history of the Autumn Court– the parts his father wanted him to learn anyway– sword practice, and magic practice. What a boring day, he thinks. Besides that shadowsinger. He’d been interesting.

-----

Azriel watches that boy leave and holds back a sigh. Eris would soon grow into the role of a cruel little master like his father. He knows this and would have to remember it.Even then, he couldn’t help but continue wondering what his shadows meant by “The Heir has wounds on his back.”

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TAGLIST (see post for getting added)

Tagged in all ACOTAR Stories: @bunnymallowo, @officiallyunofficialperson, @margssstuff, @rebloggiest-reblogger, @inpraizeof, @graciereads, @eos-princess,

Tagged in all Azriel Stories: @ladylokilaufeyson5, @marina468,

(please let me know if you'd rather not be tagged in Azris Week or if you'd like to be tagged!!)

[reginrokkr]

[ 𝐁𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐇 ] ― sender brushes receiver’s hair :)

Sentiments of embarrassment seldom make homage in the abandoned seraph's heart, or any analogous emotions for that matter. Perhaps it is a result of the poor social life he has being the occupied man he is with more important tasks towards the kingdom, or perhaps because never once there was anything sufficiently strong to awaken feelings like these. Whatever the case may be, it is not the same in this moment when Aria's moonlight penetrates through nigh transparent and white curtains and illuminates the two figures standing in the middle of the room.

It is not usual to be summoned to lady Lunafreyja's abode unless higher orders make him stay by her side when certain dangers loom closer and protection is mandatory, so imagine the surprise upon finding out that he was called for nothing more than to spend tranquil time together.

Dáinsleif did not anticipate her insistence to brush his hair, either. In his mind, it should be the other way around, her silky and moonlight-kissed hair being the one to be tended with careful brushing. He takes great care of his hair, yes, albeit this... it's fluttering, to say the least. Even so, he does a great job staying still where he sits while she brushes her fingers on his hair, feeling it smoothness and length as it goes. Hair tending is a comforting self-indulgence of his own, but only now he discovers how vastly different it is when someone else touches his hair, let alone brush it as she does as soon as she takes the brush in her hand.

A wave of warmth permeates the luminary whole starting from his fluttering heart and he hums low and deep, albescent lashes fluttering close to focus on the nice feeling her hands and the brush give him as she goes. It must be that his senses are prepared for the touch when he does it to himself, he ponders. However, when it is someone else, even if he can see them through a mirror... there is an unknown variable that can manifest in any way that he cannot control. Maybe that is why the sensory information reaches to his brain differently than it does when he brushes his hair himself.

Part of him feels like slipping a small jest, something about him not expecting that his hair was in such a poor condition that it needed tending from a second person, or that he did not know that she liked his hair so much that she wanted to have a chance to touch it and brush it herself. But nothing comes, finding the silence that blankets them and the room they're in more comforting and meaningful than any poor attempt to say something to break the ice. Because truth be told... there is no need.

Instead, Dáinsleif's eyes open and he turns his head enough to meet her cornflower gaze without disturbing her hand motions to his hair. The edges of his eyes crinkle in a smile, serenity and joy reflecting in his own stellar eyes as a quiescent way to communicate non-verbally that he enjoys this, the moment— her company. His eyes close thereafter and so he returns to his initial position, praying to the great Irminsul that he doesn't fall asleep as a result of the sleep-inducing act uninvited. Praying that more moments such as this appear in the future, just the two of them.

@moonichor ✦

[kinetic-elaboration]

August 16: AHS 5x02 Chutes and Ladders

Went grocery shopping today and then watched AHS. These episodes are so long. They are too long. I mean, I know that AHS tends long in general and that's, like, fine, it's part of it, but this ep was 71 MINUTES without commercials. 71!! That's a very short movie.

And it's not just long, it's self-indulgently long. Like, I know we all sometimes feel when watching certain shows that it's really a shame they probably had to cut so much and hurry it along and blah those TV studios or whatever right? But honestly more often that not, now that I've seen a sufficient number of Netflix and streaming shows that don't have set episode lengths, I've come to the conclusion that at least 80% of the time the creators benefit from the enforced time limits. Sometimes having variable episode lengths, including longer ones, is nice and it allows for some creative episodes or some extra content but usually to me it just feels like... bloated and indulgent. Like the creators weren't asked to cut and so they didn't and so they never made any choices about anything and it's just all out there, a mess.

Anyway, this is both OT and sounds much harsher than my feelings. And is hypocritical because I never cut jack but like I also don't write ~ professionally ~. I write in the Self Indulgence genre.

But the point is that this episode of AHS was so.... unnecessarily and self-importantly long. It did not have to be that long. It was not 71 minutes of information long. It was just that every scene needed to show off the scenery, the costumes, and the dialogue had to be slow and measured and etc. etc. etc.

This season is obviously very stylish, as I mentioned before, and I admire that. Lots of fancy gowns for Lady Gaga. Lots of Art Deco rooms. A whole weird white room that reminds me of an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? I like the look of it but I don't need so many scenes devoted to letting me look at the scenery.

And the content is like... fine. There are some characters I like (Liz! Liz! Liz!) and some story lines. Some of it just isn't for me, isn't for my taste. I don't think the Detective character is interesting. I don't think he's interesting after the twist. I don't really care about his kids either. I think the Countess and her vampires are okay but to me they're mostly style. I also don't really like vampires generally, as I also mentioned before--obviously they can be done well but they're not my favorite creatures.

I liked the model a lot, at least as a model just fucking around on the runway (what would Tyra say?) though he got less interesting after he turned and we entered Vampire Lore time. It was fun watching him and Original Vampire Lover interact especially since I'm also watching Freak Show and of course, the same actors playing very different roles opposite each other also appear in that. It's definitely enjoyable watching the repertory style cast over the seasons.

I really dislike serial killers and that this season makes me put up with TWO is just... infuriating. I just am not amused or impressed by sadism. I'm not! I'm not and I don't care. The whole Style of the Evan Peters Character backstory is very nice, stylish, of course, but then what's the big scary reveal? He's a bored rich baby who likes to kill people. Ah, yes, how unique and unexpected of him. Torture porn torture porn torture porn. I started zoning out when it was literally just depressing to me. And it's frustrating because, like, the concept of the hotel as a built-evil place with hidden rooms for evil purposes IS interesting. There IS something there. I just wasn't impressed with how it is actually played out or developed.

I did like Chloe Sevigny ranting about anti-vaxxers. She's right and she should say it! In every episode!

But yeah, overall, just... too long. I'm sure it's supposed to be lush and beautiful and disturbing and just the sort of thing you sink into and enjoy like a bubble bath but with blood and sex but like... I'm just not sufficiently into it and I'm a little annoyed that I'm being asked to put so much time into something that could be so much more efficient and compact.

[ravenousgoblin]

“In exchange for” taking Loverboy to the car lot, he helped us grab a new bed for me. We bought the frame yesterday(Wednesday) and now, today(Thursday), the mattress I had to buy separately 😔 will be here hopefully before I go to work. All three of us put together the frame and it was so hard for me. Those two are fucking pros 😒 I know ma is extremely self sufficient and also a literal mom who has had to do this shit for years, but Loverboy I guess is just used to putting shit together. Didn’t help that this shit is from ikea.

Anyways. Now I will finally have my own bed again and can reclaim my bedroom. We were originally gonna turn it into a game room of sorts and just get me a futon but honestly, I’d rather have a bedroom. I’ve lived in this house over a year again and have mostly been sleeping on the couch, save for the past weeks when I was sleeping in my sisters bed. It’ll be nice to have my own space. Especially because my sisters room looks like it got torn through by a fucking tornado. Like, I know I can be awful at keeping my shit clean but gIRL.

Anyways. I’m just excited for this. I’ll miss being so close to ma all night cuz I’m a baby, but literally because my sister is back(flight landed at like 9pm), I had to sleep on the couch again this last night and honestly? Not a vibe. Ma was accommodating tho. She knows I hate she sleeps with the lamp on and the tv can be…irritating. I was content to let her sleep like normal but she turned the lamp off, despite my sleeping mask, and she let the tv turn off naturally as she slept. Normally when she wakes up, because, like me, she wakes up quite a few times in the night, she’ll turn it back on. She’s either sleeping mad hard or she’s sucking it up without her white noise for me.

Also can’t wait to break in this new bed with Loverboy. It was a little awkward before just because it was my sisters room/bed but we tried the couch before and it was not ideal. So I sucked it up and put it out of my mind. Now we’re using MY stuff. That I bought. Like a big kid :)

Told Loverboy he could be rough(er) now because this bed would probably shake a lot less than my sisters old metal canopy bed, but we’re not sure how loud it’ll be and he’s so confident in himself he’s like “oh no they’ll hear when I’m going rough 😏” 👀 so push come to shove we put on some music and then get busy.

Hopefully soon I’ll be able to not hide it. I know ma doesn’t care, but for security and boundary reasons we haven’t said anything to anyone. Not sure if we will or not. I know ma had her suspicions that we were dating, which, technically I guess we’re not, and then had her suspicions that one morning she left and his car was out front. I supposedly just convinced her she was mixing his car up for another but I’m sure she’s just playing the part for our sakes. She is definitely rooting for us, I know that much. She called him “my future son-in-law” on Tuesday to me. Which, Yknow, I’m not complaining about, but it’s unlikely.

[onceupon]

London Boy

summary: Y/n finds herself all the way across the pond, trying to escape OBX. But much to her surprise, a certain someone might get in the way.

pairing: Rafe x reader (just an intro in this part, we’ll get there dw)

warnings: swearing, drinking, some mentions of anxiety?

word count: 3.2k

a/n: if you’re a sucker for a slow burn like me, buckle up and enjoy the ride. I plan on this being multiple parts and this is also my first time posting so please be gentle with me lol :’-) (not canon Rafe)

You huffed as you dragged your extra large and definitely overweight luggage down to the pickup area at Heathrow airport. You had just landed in London where you’d be going to school until the holidays.  You had decided to apply for, and actually got accepted into, your high school’s British exchange program. Every year Kildare Academy gave the option for 15 seniors to study for half the school year at Westheath Academy in London, a private boarding school, while 15 kids from their school came to yours. Normally, you wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving your friends and family for that long, not to mention missing out on half of senior year at home. But ever since the drama that erupted during the summer after your junior year that ended with you being shunned by your “friend group” (where they really ever your friends to begin with?), you practically jumped at the opportunity to get as far away from the Outer Banks as possible, albeit for a little while.

You didn’t know at all what to expect at Westheath, you had skipped the predeparture orientation at Kildare a few weeks ago, but you didn’t care - didn’t care who was going or what Westheath was like, all that mattered was that for the next few months you could finally breath. It was the clean slate you desperately needed, a chance to finally be around people and places you hadn’t known since birth. Sure there were going to be 14 other kids from Kildare there as well, but you had zero intentions of sticking with your OBX peers over the next few months. You weren’t going to let your small town suffocate you for a second longer if you could help it.

You double checked the license plate on your phone screen as the Uber you ordered pulled up.

“Y/N?” the driver called out from the front-right window (god that was going to take some getting used to.)

“Yep!” you smiled, huffing as you tried to pick up your luggage and step off the curb. Thankfully the uber driver was quick to your rescue, effortlessly lifting your suitcase into the trunk of the car. Leave it to you to overpack without even thinking to leave room for all of the clothes and souvenirs you were certain to accumulate - oh well, an excuse for a new suitcase you supposed.

Not in the mood for small talk, you were relieved that the Uber driver silently read your mind, playing a pop station as you both respectfully ignored each other’s presence. You anxiously tapped your thumb on your phone, eyes flicking between the screen where you watched your route progress and the view out your window of townhomes, pubs, and countless strangers passing by.

You hadn’t felt anxious about leaving for London the entire first half of junior year, so why was your stomach and head simultaneously churning now? You were so excited to experience a version of life that was the opposite of everything you were trying to get away from - a version of life that involved British accents, buzzing city life, and endless possibilities. But it was all of a sudden dawning on you how unfamiliar it all was. As much as you hated to admit it to yourself, no matter how far you ran, you would never be able to fully separate yourself from OBX. That damned small beach-town would always be a part of you, an inextricable thread in the fabric of your life.

The Uber pulled up to a halt in front of your destination. You hesitantly glanced out your window as you double checked the silver number on the building. Yep, 25 Brampton Rd - you were here. The Uber driver graciously lifted your suitcase out of the trunk for you and as he pulled away you let out a long breath - your fresh start was waiting behind the doors in front of you.

You rang the doorbell to the lobby, the security here no joke. You were soon buzzed into the building and you shakily pulled your suitcase in behind you, desperately trying to calm your nerves to no avail.

“Hi,” you croaked out as you approached the man seated at the front desk. “I’m- uhh here to check in to my apartment- uh I mean flat… I think… I’m with the Kildare Academy exchange,” you rambled, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. Despite your best efforts, your anxiety was taking over.

The man gave you a sympathetic smile. “Name please?”

“Y/n L/n,” you replied, pulling your lips into a sheepish straight-lined smile as you mindlessly tapped your fingers on the handle of your suit case.

“L/n, L/n, L/n,” the man quietly muttered under his breath as his pen traced over a list of names. “Ahh here you are. Alright Miss L/n, here is a fob, this lets you into the building, now this key lets you into your flat, you’ll be on the second floor - apartment 2C, and this key is for your individual room,” he began to fire off at you as he rounded the desk and came to grab your suitcase, beginning to walk as you hastily followed suit. “This packet will tell you everything you need to know about our building here - wifi, laundry, trash days,” he shoved some papers in your hand as you both entered the elevator, him pressing the button for the second floor.

You emerged on to your floor and a few steps later you two were at the door of your new home, which the man quickly unlocked gesturing for you to step inside. “And this, Miss L/n, is your flat for the next few months with us here at Westheath. Your room is the second right down the hall there and I believe you’re the first here. Two of your flatmates who are yet to check in are from Kildare, such as yourself, and the other two are students of our own here at Westheath. You know I’m surprised how early you are, classes don’t start until next week! But nevertheless I’ll let you get settled,” you stood staring blankly at your new surroundings, more or less registering the words this man was firing off at you.

“I’m Richard by the way, if you ever need anything you know where to find me,” the man extended his hand toward you.

“Thank you,” you smiled, accepting his handshake.

“Welcome to Westheath,” he smiled back and just as quickly was turning on his heel and back out the door before you could get in another word, leaving you in your new flat by yourself.

You slowly walked through the empty place, meandering through the kitchen and living area, down the hall, peaking into the bathroom, and then finding your way to your room. It certainly wasn’t the type of living arrangement you were used to back home - your family lived on Figure 8 in the Outer Banks meaning you had grown up surrounded by mansions and luxuries. This place was small, simple, and yet it was cozy and well… perfect. It was the exact opposite of your Figure 8 life and that alone was enough to make you love it. You smiled, content, as you sank on to your empty bed, taking in your new room. You had a nice sized desk, a decent shelf, and a wardrobe. Simple and sufficient. You could get used to this. The room was starkly barren, but since school wasn’t set to start for another week and no one was here yet you made a mental note to go on a little mission to find some plants and decorations to bring the white box that was your room a bit more to life.

——-

Three days had passed and still your other flat mates had yet to show. You were starting to wonder if they ever would or if you’d end up living in this flat all by yourself. Your room was now decorated, you had found some cute posters in a shop you had wandered into, some plants in another, and string lights in a third. You had acquainted yourself with the grocery store around the corner and the drug store down the street and you’d even gone on the tube all by yourself.

Being on your own these last few days had been decidedly therapeutic, leaving you unable to contain a cheesy grin every time it hit you that you were actually here, in London, far far away from OBX. But you couldn’t help feeling a little lonely, with a passing hello to Richard every time you left and returned to the building being your main source of human interaction these last few days.

You laid on your bed as you debated the decision you were about to make - you would’ve never dared to use Tinder back home. You knew virtually everyone on the island and would’ve been absolutely mortified to match with anybody there. But hey - you were in London baby! This was a fresh start and nothing was off limits. You sighed and gave in, downloading the app and quickly making a profile. You must’ve rearranged the order of your pictures at least a dozen times before you finally decided it was good enough. You started to swipe, an endless supply of British boys at your finger tips. You couldn’t suppress a chuckle at how funny the whole concept was, your inbox already flooding with cheesy pick up lines from your matches. You spent the next hour going back and forth with these boys, silly, meaningless, flirty conversations - god it was so much easier being a flirt through a screen, you would be positively flushed in the face in person, unless you were drunk of course (your drunk self was a dangerously confident flirt for sure).

Liam: are you free tonight? Down to grab a drink and chat?

Oh wow. Straight to the point wasn’t he. You knew the point of the app was to eventually get off it and meet up with someone, but now that you were met with the opportunity, your stomach was flipping upside down. Fuck it, what do you have to lose?

Y/n: yeah that sounds great, I’m in Hammersmith if you wanted to go somewhere there?

Liam: perfect so am I (: 8pm at The Ladle. See you there xx

Pure adrenaline coursed through your body as you started doing your hair and makeup, throwing clothes all around your small room to find the perfect outfit that was cute but simultaneously made it seem like you weren’t trying too hard. You threw your wallet and keys in your purse, chugged the glass of wine you had been casually sipping on by yourself, and quickly headed out the door before you could overthink it and change your mind.

——

You nervously approached the bar that Google Maps had directed to you, not sure what you were getting yourself into, but you had already walked all the way here so you’d be damned if you didn’t see it through.

“Y/n?” a voice called out to you. God, hearing your name in that accent sent shivers down your spine.

“Yeah that’s me, Liam?” you questioned back, staring up at the fluffy browned-hair boy approaching you.

“That’s me,” he winked, extending his arm out to you which you nervously grabbed, as he led you into The Ladle, spotting an empty table for the two of you.

“So Y/n, what are you doing here in London. Something tells me you’re not from here?”the boy across from you smiled as you two got settled in your seats.

“Hmmm I wonder what could’ve ever given it away,” you replied with a sarcastic smile, American accent in full force. “But I’m here for school, on an exchange at Westheath Academy.”

“Oh shit, that means we’ll see each other around. I’m finishing up my last year actually. And somehow you’re the first American I’ve had the pleasure of being on a date with,” he smiled with a devilish grin that felt like it was burning into you, you hoping the flush on your cheeks wasn’t too obvious with the dim lighting.

“Lucky me,” you smiled back, faking a sly confidence as best you could despite the fact that you were all nerves on the inside. Dating was not something you were familiar with, having maybe gone on two back home, if those even counted.

“First round on me, what are you drinking tonight Y/n?”

“Umm a vodka cran is fine,” you replied to which you were immediately met with a scoff.

“No way babe, you’re in a pub in England now. Should’ve figured as much coming from an American like you,” he chuckled with a shake of his head, his fluffy hair bouncing with it. “I’m getting you a pint,” he asserted, walking over to the bar and giving you a moment to breath and collect yourself. You hated beer but weren’t about to put up a fight, at this point you would down just about any alcohol in order to get some more liquid courage in your system.

He quickly returned, placing the tall glass of golden-colored liquid in front of you.

“Cheers, to new school mates,” he winked extending his glass up to yours.

“To new school mates,” you smiled back, bringing your glass to clink with his, taking a long swig and trying not to grimace at the taste of the liquid going down your throat.

——

The night passed by quickly, you and Liam going through three rounds of drinks as you both laughed and bantered with one another, your nerves all but dissipated by the alcohol now coursing through your bloodstream. Heck, the beer was even starting to taste… good? God you barely recognized yourself anymore, but in the best possible way. One by one you were letting the closely guarded walls you had built up over the years in OBX fall, and you were feeling better than ever before - you felt free.

You and Liam stumbled back arms linked to the building you found out you were both living in, Liam on the fourth floor. You rummaged for the fob in your purse and you both got on the elevator, Liam instinctively pressing both your floor numbers. The elevator dinged opening to your floor, Liam turning to you with a cheeky smile.

“See you around, Y/n,” he winked. Why did you find that so attractive, or maybe it’s just because you were slightly drunk.

“Goodnight Liam,” you smirked back, blowing him a kiss as you walked out the elevator, the doors closing behind you.

You couldn’t help but smile like an idiot as you unlocked your flat and stumbled into your room, immediately collapsing on your bed. London. It was definitely going to be an adventure.

——

You were woken up the next day by the sun peaking through your window. You yawned and let out a big stretch, still giddy from last night’s date. It’s not like you thought you had just met your soulmate or something, you both kept the evening light, mainly joking and flirting as you downed drinks. But god you couldn’t remember the last time you had that much fun or ended a night feeling so confident and carefree. You were embracing every ounce of the euphoria you were getting from your new life.

You slipped out of bed and made your way to the kitchen, still rubbing the morning crust out of your eyes. Just as you got a pot of coffee going, you heard the distinct sound of a key turning, startling you as you realized it was coming from outside of your flat’s door. You cursed at the fact that you were about to meet a new flatmate while in your flannel pajamas and messy bun hanging halfway off your head, but mainly you were excited to finally have some company.

“Dude it’s no Figure 8 living but fuck it I’ll live anywhere to not have my parents breathing down my neck these next few months,” you heard a voice say, now in the hallway of your flat.

You immediately freeze. That was a male voice, definitely a male. Of course it makes sense now that you think of it, everyone in the flat gets their own room so what does it matter if the flat is co-ed. The thought just hadn’t crossed your mind, you automatically assumed you’d be living with all girls.

“Yeah man, anywhere that’s 1,000 miles away from Ward sounds like the perfect place to me,” another male voice laughed in return. Ward? Ward Cameron? That couldn’t possibly be who the voice was referring to because that would mean you were living with- and before you could even finish your thought you were standing jaw slightly parted staring at Rafe Cameron and Topper Thornton  in front of you. Two of the most popular guys at school.

You weren’t really friends but your families knew each other so you inevitably saw one another at kook events every now and then. You couldn’t help but feel intimidated by them. You always told yourself you didn’t care about boys like Rafe and Topper or about fitting in with their crowd, yet you always became nervous in their presence.  They were cool. They partied a lot, were athletes, and had girls tripping over them, which you couldn’t fault considering anyone with eyes could tell they were attractive, but you’d never have the confidence to be so bold with guys like that. Unless you were drunk of course. And unless you were the new confident and carefree version of yourself that you had been on your date last night with Liam.

“Yo Y/n, no fucking way, I didn’t know we’d get to live with girl,” Topper smiled at you with a teasing grin.

You were suddenly acutely aware of how disheveled you look and how you weren’t wearing a bra under your thin pajama top.

“Uh hey w-what are you guys doing here,” you managed to choke out. That confident girl from last night had disappeared as quickly as she had arrived, leaving you now feeling winded in front of the two boys from your hometown. Why were you getting so flustered?

“Just on a little exchange program from Kildare, maybe you’ve heard of it,” teased Rafe sarcastically, a smile tugging at his lips, holding back a laugh at how caught off guard you looked.

“Yeah no yeah of course,” you stuttered, “I guess I just wasn’t expecting you two to want to sign up for it.”

That’s when you realized the obvious. Every year there was always a number of spots reserved on the exchange for athletes, and Rafe and Topper were two of Kildare’s star soccer players.

“What and get to miss an opportunity to play at Westheath and go to Premier League games all semester? No shot,” laughed Topper.

“Maybe you should’ve gone to orientation after all, roomie,” joked Rafe as he picked up his bag following Topper down the hall to their rooms. Rafe Cameron noticed I didn’t go to orientation?

You let your face fall in your hands with a groan only audible to you. You quickly picked up your head and shook yourself off, pouring yourself a cup of coffee as you tried to ground yourself from your frazzled state. Looks like escaping OBX was going to be harder than you thought.

---

Part 2

[robininthelabyrinth]

extra 1 for Tedious Joys, with thanks to all the suggestions from people engaged in the discussion on tumblr, your ideas were fantastic and I used all that I could fit in!

-

Before Lan Qiren left to attend the first discussion conference held after Nie Mingjue’s ascension to the position of Nie sect leader – a notion that still gave Lan Qiren a stomachache merely to think of it – Lao Nie made him promise three times over that he would keep an eye on his painfully earnest, straightforward eldest son and keep him from doing anything foolish.

“Of course I will,” Lan Qiren finally said, exasperated: any more nagging, and he was going to be late. When he’d thought to himself that he’d picked up a wife, he hadn’t really expected this part of it; if anything, he assumed he’d be the one doing the nagging. “You know perfectly well that he’s as dear to me as my nephews! I don’t know why you feel the need to even ask.”

“Your nephews have good self-control, a trait my Nie sect most definitively lacks,” Lao Nie said. “We’re all in agreement that it’s not yet time to challenge Hanhan. What if A-Jue forgets that and, I don’t know, punches him in the face?”

“He won’t,” Lan Qiren said. “He’s a good boy, your son; you’ve told him not to, so he won’t. Anyway, if it really comes to it, I won’t let him.”

Finally, Lao Nie let him leave, and Lan Qiren made his way to the Lotus Pier for the discussion conference. Nie Mingjue and his retinue had arrived shortly before he did, the circles under his eyes and the small signs of mourning he still wore making him look older than he ought to be; there was a scowl fixed on his face that did not disappear entirely even when he nodded to Lan Qiren, although it did soften a little.

Lan Qiren’s heart hurt for him. To manage an entire sect at fifteen – even with support, the pressures of it must be well-nigh unbearable, and it looked as though Nie Mingjue had started using his cultivation to get him through all the nights of missed sleep, as unwise as that approach was in the long term.

It was strange to go to the habitual meeting of the Great Sect leaders, the one they had with each other before they mixed with all the other sect leaders, and bow to Nie Mingjue as if to a peer, rather than to a junior.

Stranger still to see Wen Ruohan do the same, a mocking smile on his lips as he raised his head from the greeting.

“Sect Leader Nie,” he said, and there was almost some sense of satisfaction as he said the unfamiliar words – no one had had to use them when it was Lao Nie, of course. “I bid you welcome, as the newest member to the ranks of leadership among our Great Sects.”

Nie Mingjue did not respond with words the way he had when similar sentiments had been offered by others – no Please give me guidance here, though that was understandable given what the entire cultivation world knew he believed about Wen Ruohan – and contented himself by merely jerking his head again in a nod.

“Your father was a very involved member of our little group,” Wen Ruohan continued, and was he really going to offer Nie Mingjue his condolences for Lao Nie’s death? Propriety demanded he do so, but he’d never cared much for propriety, and given his actions it would be an offense to all sensibility. “One could hardly hope to match him in his passion and enthusiasm in all that he did. I look forward to seeing you...take his place.”

His eyes flickered over Nie Mingjue from head to toe, blatant in its unspoken unspeakable implication, even as Nie Mingjue’s eyes went round with disbelief.

A moment later, it ended up being Lan Qiren’s fist that found its way to Wen Ruohan’s face.

Luckily, Wen Ruohan found it funny - laughing at how he’d managed to break Lan sect discipline, rather than taking offense - and no war was started.

Whether that would last once Lan Qiren reported the substance of the conversation back to Lao Nie, however...

-

“You know,” Lan Qiren said, staring at the ceiling and wishing it would come down on top of him. “It’s very nice that you’re all such good friends.”

His nephews both bobbed their heads in a polite nod.

“I’m sure Mingjue and Huaisang greatly appreciate it.”

Another nod.

“However, they are now sect leader and sect heir, and we must treat them with the dignity that those positions require.”

A third nod. He was starting to wonder if they’d been replaced by dolls with loose necks.

“This is why they were assigned their very own rooms in our guest quarters, rather than spending their nights in yours.”

“Nie Huaisang will be lonely if he sleeps by himself,” Lan Wangji said, stubborn as ever. “My room is better.”

“Wangji. Yesterday, you chased Huaisang up two separate hills with your sword, sat on him, made him cry, and then wouldn’t let him up until he admitted you were superior in every respect.”

Lan Wangji smiled briefly, a rare and beautiful sight that warmed the heart. “Mm. Deserved it.”

Lan Qiren flailed a little. “Wangji, do you even like him?”

“No.”

“Then why do you care where he sleeps?”

“If he sleeps badly, he will do even worse than he already does,” Lan Wangji said. “Someone might make fun of him.”

“…and what happens then?”

“Bite.”

“Wangji! We’ve discussed this, no biting people. Not even if they’re making fun of your friend!”

Lan Wangji nodded in a way that suggested he was only being agreeable so that Lan Qiren stopped insisting on silly things like Nie Huaisang getting his own bedroom instead of sleeping on the spare bed in Lan Wangji’s and not actually agreeing in the slightest.

They were still working on the biting thing.

Giving up, Lan Qiren turned his gaze to his older nephew.

Lan Xichen squirmed. “…sometimes I go to stay in his rooms instead?”

“You’re not even planning on coming up with an excuse?”

“Lying is forbidden, uncle.”

Lan Qiren pinched the bridge of his nose.

-

“For this sort of thing, you go to your eldest uncle,” Lan Qiren said flatly, and after a moment of contemplation, Lan Wangji conceded that he had a point.

After all, Lao Nie had been married several times, presumably intentionally, whereas Lan Qiren had ended up with a wife through circumstance and luck.

Lao Nie was a very good wife, though, even if for some reason Lan Wangji was required to refer to him as eldest uncle rather than calling him aunt – though that was mostly his uncle’s preference. Lao Nie thought being called auntie was hilarious.

In retrospect, though, Lao Nie’s tendency to think things were hilarious was a lot less endearing when it was aimed at him.

“Just tell him you like him,” Lao Nie suggested, as if that wasn’t the most ridiculous Nie sect style advice possible. “Tell him you want to spend more time with him.”

Lan Wangji shook his head firmly.

“How is this Wei Wuxian supposed to figure it out, then?”

He wouldn’t. Obviously. The question was how to get rid of the feelings, not how to actually let Wei Wuxian know that they existed.

“I don’t know, I find sex works really well to deal with repressed emotions associated with pining.”

Lan Wangji wanted to die.

Or possibly find and bully Nie Huaisang the way he used to when he was a kid. Not that he would, of course, he was above that, and also Nie Huaisang was really good at getting revenge and he couldn’t risk that happening where Wei Wuxian might see.

“Sex is not a valid solution in all cases,” Lan Wangji’s uncle interjected.

“Ah, Qiren, Qiren. Are you still holding Hanhan against me?”

“Yes, I am. He tried to kill you.”

“So?” Lao Nie shrugged. “That describes basically everyone I ever slept with.”

“Have you ever considered that that may be part of your problem?”

“Don’t act like I’m the only one! Look at Wangji here; the first thing he noticed about this Wei Wuxian character was his excellent fighting skills – a moonlight duel on the rooftops, how romantic –”

“You don’t know what romance is –”

Lan Wangji was just going to go back to his unrequited pining.

It couldn’t be worse than having to listen to this argument again.

-

Lan Wangji was fighting frantically, but he already knew his sword would not be sufficient.

They were going to burn the library.

All those precious books..!

His uncle had already sent Lan Xichen away with the most important ones, but Lan Wangji didn’t want to lose any of them. These books had been his friends growing up, the source of his strength and the consolation in his loneliness – their pages bore silent witness to his childish tears, the imprints of his dirty fingerprints, the good times and the bad. There were books he had thumbed through a thousand times until he knew them down to the last idiosyncratic quiver in their calligraphy and books he had not yet acquainted himself with, had only seen on the shelves and thought one day. To lose them now, old friend and future friend alike, would be to break his heart.

There was a sound behind him and he spun, already tired, exhausted, and it was Wen Xu behind him, the leader of the invading Wen sect cultivators himself. He was smiling so cruelly, holding a fire talisman aloft like a flare, knowing that Lan Wangji wouldn’t make it in time to stop him –

A hand wrapped itself around Wen Xu’s wrist from behind, freezing the motion.

Freezing not just him, but all the Wen cultivators around him, each one of their faces twisting in horror as they realized that a cultivator dressed in astere mourning white that might be mistaken for the colors of the Lan sect had managed to get through their forces to stand at their master’s side, even if his hands were empty of any weapon.

Their horror quickly turned to agony, and then nothing at all, as the reconstituted Jiwei flew through the air, battering through their swords with overwhelming force and piercing their bodies, as vicious and free as if she were alive – there was nothing that quite compared to the Nie sect’s fierce sabers when unleashed at the beck and call of their masters, a weapon against which regular spiritual weapons had difficulty holding up.

With their bodies fell their fire talismans, their flares, and suddenly Lan Wangji felt hope thudding in his chest: one man could not change the tide of war, but he could change the course of a single battle, especially if he could convince Wen Xu to order a retreat.

If Wen Xu ordered a retreat now –

The library would survive.

“Tell Hanhan that Lao Nie said ‘hello’,” Lao Nie said in Wen Xu’s ear – his face was as pale as a ghost in the fire and moonlight, his lips red as blood and his smile full of viciousness like a slash across his face –and with a single twist he snapped the bone of Wen Xu’s wrist.

-

“It really isn’t me!” Wei Wuxian protested. “For one thing, didn’t the sightings of old Sect Leader Nie start before I took up demonic cultivation?”

“I don’t think it was you that did it,” Nie Mingjue said, not for the first time. His eyes kept flickering around the room as if seeking help, and his expression, to those that did not know him well, was stormy; Wei Wuxian saw this and clearly panicked, continuing to try to explain.

To those that did know Nie Mingjue well, it was immediately obvious that he was trying very hard not to laugh.

Lan Xichen sympathized.

It wasn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault that it served their purposes for the moment to have it be thought that Lao Nie was a spectre arisen from his grave in search of personal vengeance on Wen Ruohan – it was certainly causing Wen Ruohan no end of agony, judging by the way his strategy got a lot less rational and a lot more frenzied whenever Lao Nie put in an appearance – and if he was even slightly more discreet a personality, they would have simply brought him in on the secret already.

They were planning to – Lan Wangji had insisted, looking pained on his secret beloved’s behalf (secret in the sense that Wei Wuxian didn’t know about it, not secret in the sense that everyone else in their small family knew about it) – but they hadn’t had a chance. Lao Nie had insisted on being there to make things clear, since apparently he’d accidentally-on-purpose bumped into Wei Wuxian a few times in the Cloud Recesses while masquerading as a Lan sect elder so that he could evaluate his nephew-by-proxy’s crush, and he hadn’t yet arrived.

Which led to the current situation of Wei Wuxian being earnest and Nie Mingjue attempting to send mental smoke signals to Nie Huaisang in an effort to have the latter rescue him.

To no one’s surprise, Nie Huaisang was being no help at all.

In fact, his occasional well-timed sobs of “Wei-xiong! I thought we were friends! My father’s corpse! How could you?!” were in fact making things notably worse.

“I didn’t! I really didn’t!” Wei Wuxian yowled.

Lan Xichen was not going to laugh.

He wasn’t.

-

“And who’s to say the Yiling Patriarch won’t try to take charge of the Nie sect, too..?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m actually alive,” Lao Nie said loudly, and Lan Xichen flinched at first before relaxing. He’d forgotten, somehow, that Lao Nie had been the most shameless member of the last generation; it was no surprise that he, who could be as blunt as his son when he wanted to be, would address the whispered rumors drifting around them directly and without pretense. “Wei Wuxian may be a demonic cultivator who created a conscious fierce corpse, but no one has yet suggested with any plausibility that his abilities extend to living people who were just in hiding – which is a good thing, given how many people here would fall into that categorization.”

There was an awkward silence.

Sect Leader Jin coughed. “No one is suggesting that you’re Wei Wuxian’s puppet, Lao Nie,” he said, even though someone had very clearly been suggesting exactly that and if anyone believed that they had done so within Sect Leader Jin’s home without his knowledge then Lan Xichen was worried about what else they’d be willing to believe. “We’re merely expressing concern regarding his increasingly reckless actions – and on behalf of the Wen sect, no less! Especially with him having custody of such a powerful tool as the Tiger Seal, it is a little suspicious…”

“Wait, are you suggesting that you think Wei Wuxian has been possessed?” Lao Nie said. “By Hanhan? That’s ridiculous; they’re nothing alike. Wei Wuxian attended the hunt at Phoenix Mountain and didn’t hit on me once, there’s no way Hanhan is possessing him.”

Sect Leader Jin’s eye twitched.

Lan Xichen did not smile, but it was a challenge. Truly there was no one quite like Lao Nie when he was in full swing.

“Still, if people are having that sort of nonsense float around, I think it makes perfect sense for me to go check up on him to see how he’s doing,” Lao Nie continued. “I’m a respected member of the previous generation, and no one knows Hanhan better than me. Better still, I’ll take Qiren with me; we’ll make a holiday of it – it’s the least we deserve, really, now that we’re both retired sect leaders.”

“I suppose it would be more appropriate to send someone removed from active politics,” Lan Qiren said, voice a little toneless and neutral as always. “That would allow us to avoid any unfortunate implications that other sects were seeking to utilize the bad reputation of demonic cultivation to extract the Tiger Seal for their own purposes.”

Lan Xichen’s uncle was a renowned teacher, but equally well known for his inability to read the subtle nuances in social situations – no one else could have gotten away with just saying that when everyone was painfully aware that it was the subtext of Sect Leader Jin’s actions.

Though, actually, it was possible his uncle just hadn’t realized it was, in fact, meant to be subtext.

“I think that makes perfect sense,” Lan Xichen interjected before Sect Leader Jin – or Jin Guangyao, for that matter – could say anything. His sworn brother had never entirely forgiven Lao Nie for showing up at the last possible moment to murder Wen Ruohan personally before he could claim his head himself, even though the fame he had won for being their spy had still been sufficient to get him a spot in the Jin family, and as a result he was inclined to use his clever tongue to oppose Lao Nie just because he could. “Sect Leader Jiang, Wei Wuxian is a member of your sect, and therefore you have primary charge of him. Would you be willing to take Lao Nie and my uncle with you when you go to see him to act as impartial judges?”

“But I don’t want to be a third wheel on their old people sex honeymoon!” Jiang Cheng blurted out.

There was another moment of silence, and then Lao Nie burst out in howling laughter.

Nie Mingjue followed suit only an instant behind him, and of course once Nie Mingjue was laughing then there was no hope for Lan Xichen; he’d never been able to resist Nie Mingjue’s laughter, so rare after he’d become sect leader. Within moments, the tense atmosphere Sect Leader Jin had so carefully cultivated had been utterly shattered and the entire room was sobbing with hilarity, excluding only Lan Qiren who was scowling at all of them and Lan Wangji whose laughter was entirely in the way his eyes were crinkled in the corners.

“Sect Leader Jiang,” Lan Qiren said icily as his former student cowered in front of him. “I will have you know that Lao Nie and I are not in a sexual relationship –”  

“Wait, you’re not?” Sect Leader Jin blurted out, clearly despite himself, and that just set the whole room off again.

-

“Welcome to the Unclean Realm,” Lao Nie said.

“Since when do former sect leaders act to greet people at the door?” Wei Wuxian said, grinning at him: they had gotten on splendidly ever since the whole ‘did I resurrect you from the dead by accident’ question had resolved, and Lao Nie helping him out of the tough spot with the Wen sect by arranging his marriage to Lan Wangji had sealed his approval of him forever.

That was why he was arriving with the Lan sect delegation, after all, although Jiang Cheng had kicked his heels around at the entrance in order to ambush him – he wanted to ask some questions about Jiang Yanli’s upcoming wedding plans – and of course the Jin sect had gotten suspicious that they were up to something and waited as well so they were now coming in as one big group.

At least it gave Lan Xichen some time to chat with Jin Guangyao, who seemed much happier to be spending time away from the rest of his family; based on what he’d overheard of their conversation, they were scheming to get Nie Mingjue to relax a bit more and let his father temporarily take up sect leader duties again now that he and Lan Qiren were spending half the year at the Unclean Realm.  

“I’m on punishment duty,” Lao Nie said, looking delighted by it.

Which, hey, seemed weird, but based on everything Lan Wangji had told him about the former sect leader Nie (and his own mysterious ‘eldest uncle’, as he’d been known while he was at the Lan sect) and his former exploits, it seemed very in character for the man. And, well, Wei Wuxian wasn’t really in any position to throw stones…

“Eldest Uncle,” Lan Xichen said, looking over. “Did you do something to irritate Uncle again?”

“I didn’t! It was something different, actually, which I’m not at liberty to disclose to you.”

Oh, now Wei Wuxian was curious, and so was everyone else – Jiang Cheng sent him a ‘you don’t have shame, why don’t you ask’ sort of look at once – and since he did not, in fact, have shame, he asked, “Are you sure? What could it possibly be that you did?”

“Oh, Xiao Nie knows what he did,” an old woman in Nie sect colors said as she passed by. “And he’s going to stand there until he admits that he was wrong.”

“I’ll be here until I collapse,” Lao Nie explained proudly, but by that point everyone had stopped caring about whatever new thing he’d done in light of the newest twist.

“Did she just call you Xiao Nie?” Jiang Cheng said, sounding betrayed.

“…yes? She’s my great-grandaunt, she can call me anything she likes?”

“It’s just wrong,” Wei Wuxian agreed. “Isn’t it just wrong?”

“It is a bit wrong,” Jin Zixuan said, looking perturbed.

“Very wrong, even,” Lan Xichen said. “I didn’t know anyone did that.”

“No one does,” Lao Nie said. “Now stop gossiping and go inside already!”

“They say married couples start to act like each other,” Wei Wuxian said to Lan Wangji, who looked amused. “There really seems to be some truth to it – do you think he’ll start reciting Lan sect rules next? Ooh, or musical cultivation?”

Finding out that Lan Qiren was apparently the musical cultivation equivalent of a mad scientist in his spare time had been the happiest moment in Wei Wuxian’s life.

“Just wait until you see what Uncle is like when he’s drunk,” Lan Wangji said, and stop. What?

That was a thing?

Wei Wuxian had to make that happen right away.

[tsarisfanfiction]

A Little Fall Of Rain

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go Rating: Gen Genre: Family Characters: Scott, John

Here is my contribution to @tagminibang!  My artist was the absolutely fantastic @chenria and you can find her accompanying art over here.  Something nice and family friendly from us here (please don’t mind the title, it has nothing to do with a certain musical song), and of course some good old Scott&John because who doesn’t love that?

John’s pulled one of his disappearing acts again, and Scott can’t relax until he knows where he’s gone.

People.  There were people everywhere, all dressed to the nines and peacocking around.  Nothing particularly unusual for an event hosted by Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, where no-one in attendance was worth less than at least ten million dollars apiece and appearing to be the poorest in the room would make you a target for the vampires of the elite.

It was a gauntlet Scott would have gladly accepted, not particularly bothered by how others perceived him and his wealth, except the problem with being a Tracy was that his status of multi-billionaireness was well known, and he was actually richer than most of the aristocracy in attendance, even if there were a few Old Money families that looked down their noses at the Tracys for being New Money.

Still, the buffer of their wealth was, at least, sparing his brother from being preyed upon as the poor, charity case invited to look good.  Scott wasn’t sure who the actual poorest person in the room was, but anything to keep at least some of the pressure of the occasion off of John was always worth it.

It was a well known fact that John despised this sort of event.  Too many people, too much noise and gravity, too many expected conversations and a lot of interest in the elusive Tracy.  Scott still wasn’t sure why Lady Penelope insisted he attend these things, and knew that John was going to hide himself up on Thunderbird Five for at least a month and come down for absolutely nothing or no-one as soon as he escaped the party.  She called it good for him, and a breath of fresh air, and Scott only let it slide because John never actually said no.

Speaking of his brother, he’d once again lost sight of the distinctive ginger hair amongst the vibrant colours of the event.  Hopefully, that meant that John was just in hiding, rather than the chance he’d been dragged into a conversation out of Scott’s current sight.  He glanced around the room again, just to be sure, and when no flash of ginger caught his eye, set his shoulders and beelined for their host.

Resplendent in a stunning light pink ballgown, elegant hands covered with equally elegant white gloves and hair coiffed into something gravity-defying yet somehow not at all outrageous, Lady Penelope was entertaining an elderly woman who Scott had been briefly introduced to earlier in the event, some hours ago, as the Duchess of Royston.  As far as the British aristocrats seemed to go, she seemed quite amicable, so Scott had no qualms about stepping in as their conversation paused.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but have you seen John recently?”

“Have you lost him?” Lady Penelope asked, sounding the faintest bit amused.  If it was anyone else, Scott would have been annoyed at that, but a longstanding friendship with the Lady told him there was no malice or judgement behind it.  It was the amusement of someone who knew how much John hated crowds, and how much Scott could, according to his brothers, hover.  “I’m afraid I haven’t seen him recently.”

The answer wasn’t surprising, but it was a little disappointing.

“The redheaded young man?” the Duchess asked, and Scott turned to her.  “I do believe I saw him heading for the doors earlier.”  She gestured to the small side door that led out of the ballroom and, if Scott’s memory served, towards the gardens.

John was likely hiding, then.

Scott smiled at both women.  “Thank you,” he said, inclining his head a little towards the older of the two.  “I’ll leave you to your conversation.  Sorry again for the interruption.”

“What a charming young man,” he heard as he walked away.  “Penelope, I know it’s not my place to say, but you could do far worse than a man like that.”

Scott picked up the pace a little, determined to get out of earshot of whatever reply to that Lady Penelope would make, and making a note to never let Gordon know.

The rich like to talk to the rich, and although Scott was on a mission to find and check on his brother, he was waylaid by at least three other people all wanting to discuss all manner of things from International Rescue to, disconcertingly, his ongoing bachelorship before he was able to slip through the door and head down the corridor.

Soundproofing cut off the hubbub of conversation the moment the door clicked shut behind him, proving an excellent argument for why John would come this way, and Scott followed the hallway until he found a bay window that overlooked one of the many gardens in the Creighton-Ward estate.

John was perched on the window sill, although window seat was probably a more accurate term, looking out at the gentle rain falling from the sky.  Raindrops raced each other down the panes of glass, and Scott silently settled next to him, waiting to be acknowledged.

It didn’t take long.  “I’m fine,” his brother said quietly, still looking out the window rather than turning to face him.  Scott hadn’t expected him to.  “You can go back.”

Scott let out a wry chuckle.  “The hot topic right now seems to be how eligible a bachelor I am,” he said, leaning forwards on his knees and watching his brother out of the corner of his eye.  “If you don’t mind, I think I’d quite like to stay here until they move on to other things.”

His brother let out a hmm, sounding thoroughly amused at that, and Scott rolled his eyes.  He knew full well that John was more than happy for him to be the target of that particular type of conversation, because it meant most of them would forget to ask him the same questions.  Sibling solidarity only went so far, and perhaps even more so than the rest of his brothers, John was all too willing to throw him under the bus to evade the limelight himself.

“If they follow you here, I am leaving,” John threatened mildly.  “And then you will not be welcome to follow me.”  It wasn’t an empty threat, but that didn’t matter because Scott would always use himself as bait if it meant a brother could escape a bad situation.  Besides, John knew Lady Penelope’s manor far better than he did, and Scott knew if John really wanted to hide, even he wouldn’t be able to find him until the ginger was ready to be found.

It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.  John had never been a fan of social situations and had mastered the art of disappearing young.  Scott had many memories of running around frantically, trying in vain to find where his brother had got to after taking his eye off of him for two seconds.  For someone with such vibrant natural colouring, John was unfairly good at the vanishing act.

He sighed and settled back against the window pane more comfortably.  At least John was old enough now to look after himself if he did vanish, and would always come home eventually - even if it was only a necessary stop on his way back to Thunderbird Five and the stars while he recuperated from socialising.  It was a marked improvement from when he’d vanish as a child and leave everyone in a panic until he reappeared hours later.

Scott had never quite shaken the instinct to panic when he vanished, no matter how old and self-sufficient his brother was now.

“I can hear you thinking from here,” John said suddenly, and Scott glanced up at him again.  He was still watching the rain out the window, seemingly disinterested in paying any attention to his older brother - aside from the comment, which made it perfectly clear that John was, in fact, keeping track of him with at least part of that big brain of his.  “I told you I’m fine.”

“I know you are,” he assured him, feeling the cool of the glass seep towards his scalp from where he was resting his head against the window.

John gave a considering hum.  “In that case, I’ll assume you’re working yourself into a panic unnecessarily.”

Scott huffed, unwilling to concede the point.  “I am not working myself into a panic,” he retorted, a little defensively.

His brother finally turned his head away from the window slightly, enough for one turquoise eye to come into view.  The accompanying ginger eyebrow rose in challenging disbelief and Scott scowled in response.

“I was just thinking about all the vanishing acts you tend to pull at things like this,” he admitted after a moment.  The visible turquoise eye rolled at him before John turned back to face the window.  He didn’t say anything in response, but he didn’t need to; his body language broadcasted perfectly well that he thought Scott was being an idiot.

Scott was used to that attitude - none of his brothers ever seemed to fully appreciate what it was like to be their big brother, after all.  Gordon might proudly claim that his grey hairs were all down to his fish of a brother, but the truth of the matter was that they’d all contributed.

Still, Scott wouldn’t change any of them for the world.

Raindrops raced down the large window, merging and lingering and swallowing smaller ones before darting several inches further down in a blink of an eye.  It was a mesmerising sight; no wonder John was so captivated by the weather.

Then again, he didn’t get rain in space.

Scott was on his feet before his mind caught up.  His movement caught John’s attention, judging by the way the single, turquoise eye reappeared to regard him once more.

“Going back already?” his brother asked.  “I thought you were hiding from the discussions about your eligible bachelorship.”  There was no sympathy at all in John’s voice, just an undercurrent of amusement.  Scott suspected he wouldn’t be hearing the end of it for a while.

“No,” he said truthfully, which was apparently unexpected enough for John to look away from the window completely.

“Then where are you going?” his brother asked.  John was normally far too perceptive for Scott’s liking, and he probably shouldn’t be relishing catching him out as much as he was.

“Come on,” Scott invited in answer, tilting his head towards the window.  “Let’s go.”

John glanced back towards the window, raising an eyebrow at the rain still falling.  “You want to go outside?”

“Why not?” Scott shrugged.  “No-one’s going to chase us out there.”

“Because their clothes would get ruined,” John pointed out.  “Like ours will.”

Scott rolled his eyes.  He wasn’t so attached to the suit he was currently wearing that he’d mourn the loss, and he knew John felt similarly about his own formal clothes.

“They’re replaceable,” he pointed out.  “So, are you coming?”

John’s arguments didn’t fool him one bit - one thing his brother truly missed when he was amongst the stars was the cool sensation of rain on his skin, and Scott suspected that the only reason he’d been sat in the bay window instead of somewhere in the Creighton-Ward’s impressive grounds was because he’d known Scott would come looking for him sooner or later, and would have panicked if he couldn’t find him.

Sure enough, with one last sigh that was entirely put-upon, John extended his long legs and made his way to his feet.  “Lead the way.”

Scott wasn’t as familiar with the manor as his brother, but he had a pretty good idea where most of the external doors were.  John stayed at his shoulder as they passed through the hallways, bereft of any of the other guests, who were all no doubt still gossiping in the ballroom, and found a door that led outside.

The rain wasn’t a monsoon, but it was steady, leaving the sky heavy and grey, and misting out the trees on the far edge of the lawn.  Scott lingered in the threshold of the door for a moment, watching the weather, but his brother had no such hesitation.

A little brother he might be, but John had never needed Scott to lead the way.  With the assurance that Scott now knew where he was, and wouldn’t be hunting him down frantically, he strode out past him, the fabric covering his shoulder just brushing Scott’s, and out into the rain.

Scott lingered a moment longer, watching the way John tilted his face up slightly to greet the rain, the ginger curl of his bangs losing some of its volume as it dampened.  John didn’t beam like their brothers when he was happy, but there was a relaxation in his face and a draining of tension in his body that told Scott that he’d got it right.  John really had wanted to go out in the rain.

When his brother’s vibrant eyes slid closed, he took the final step outside himself, feeling the cool raindrops caressing his own skin and seeping into his hair.  His hair gel was going to wash out if he stayed out here for too long, but that was a small price to pay to see John enjoying himself down on Earth.

So was the suit.  The already black fabric of his jacket darkened even further with water almost immediately, and he knew that by the time John was ready to go inside again, it would be completely ruined.  As he’d said to his brother, though, the suits were replaceable.

John’s happiness was not.  Scott would ruin a hundred jackets if it meant seeing John so relaxed and content.

Jacketless, his brother’s shirt was quickly becoming soaked through, the white material clinging to his body - the same way his vibrant hair was starting to plaster to his scalp - gaining hints of translucency, and the thought crossed Scott’s mind that he’d have to make sure John didn’t get sick later.  The astronaut didn’t seem to care about that, though, standing stock still for several minutes with his hands loosely hanging by his side and his face tilted upwards.

Scott hung back, several paces away but still outside in the rain himself.  Cool droplets trickled down the back of his neck, originating somewhere around his hairline, and he could tell even without raising a hand to check that his own hair was plastering itself to his scalp in much the same way as John’s.  One droplet ran down from his forehead and caught the corner of his eye, tangled up in eyelashes, and Scott blinked twice to clear it.  Reluctantly it got the message and carried on down his face, running over his cheek and trailing down towards his chin.

They didn’t get rain like this at home.  English rain was strange, and definitely nothing like the tropical rains Tracy Island witnessed.  Even Kansas weather had been different to this.  The water was cool and refreshing on his skin, and after several moments Scott took another couple of steps forwards, towards his brother.

He didn’t enter his personal space, though.  If John wanted him there, he would make it clear - most likely by moving himself until he was within arm’s reach of Scott.  As they’d come out here to escape the crowds, however, Scott deemed that unlikely.  Instead, he wandered past him, away from the manor and large ballroom windows.  If the wrong person looked out and saw them, their little rainy peace would be broken by someone else who cared less for their clothes than chasing Tracys.

Scott made sure to keep John in view, not prepared to hunt his brother down if the ginger pulled another disappearing act, even as he found a lone tree standing proud in the middle of the manicured lawn and slipped around it, allowing the trunk to conceal him from anyone glancing outside.

Exactly what type of tree it was, he didn’t know, but it was large and broad, boughs extending out above his head and providing a meagre shelter from the rain.  It was the same as the trees that made up the woodland at the far edge of the lawn - also large and proud, but with enough space between some of them to hide a Thunderbird.  His own ‘bird lurked inside, concealed from view and waiting to carry the two of them back home the next morning.

Tonight, Lady Penelope had insisted, they would stay with her, and Scott had no reason to decline.  He did, however, hope that it was an invitation that hadn’t been extended to any of the other guests.  Evading their apparent fixation with his marriage status - or lack thereof - was not something he wanted to have to spend all night and breakfast doing as well.

No matter how amused John might be at the whole affair.

Speaking of John, his brother appeared to have noticed that he’d moved, because he’d opened his eyes and started moving forwards himself.

“I thought I was supposed to be the one hiding from the party,” the ginger commented, his voice dry and at odds with the wet shirt he was wearing.  The white had gone well and truly translucent now, clinging to his body in a way that Scott knew from experience would get John hounded by half the party the next time they saw him.

He made a mental note to sacrifice his jacket in John’s direction before they went back in.  It wouldn’t be a perfect fit, but it would at least keep the attention off of him long enough for John to scrounge up a change of clothes.

“Yeah, well,” he replied, shrugging.  “It wouldn’t matter which of us was hiding if they spotted the other, would it?”

John let out a small chuckle in response, rounding the tree in its entirety and therefore putting himself out of sight as well.  “Are you sure it’s not just because you don’t want them badgering you about being single?”

He huffed in response, crossing his arms and leaning back against the trunk.  The bark rubbed against the back of his jacket, but he ignored it.  The rain had already done enough damage - what was a little more?

“My relationship status is none of their business,” he grumbled, shooting his younger brother a considering look.  “Wait until they start on you.”

The smirk he got in return didn’t make him feel any better.

“They won’t give me a second glance while you’re around, big brother,” John pointed out with the air of someone who knew exactly what was up, and was quietly smug about it.  “No-one’s interested in the spare Tracy.”

Scott rolled his eyes.  “You know, technically you’re my heir,” he reminded him.  It did nothing to douse the smug smirk his brother was sending his way.

“They don’t think like that,” John shrugged confidently.  He was still out from underneath the protection of the boughs, rain falling on his skin and leaving trails of water across it.  Scott watched a raindrop run right to the tip of his nose and hang there; the astronaut didn’t even seem to notice, even though it made Scott’s own nose twitch empathetically.  “The only heirs they’re interested in are the unborn ones you don’t have because you’re still an eligible bachelor.”

Urgh.  Scott pulled a face.  “Did you have to put it like that?”

John’s ongoing smirk confirmed that yes, he did have to phrase it like that.  Little brothers - who wanted them?

Scott refused to give John any satisfaction by saying that out loud, although he suspected that didn’t actually matter.  If there was anyone who had mastered the art of mind-reading, Scott would put John right at the top of the suspect list.

“Well,” John said after a moment, shifting his weight.  “I’m going to go for a walk.  Are you coming, or would you rather hide under the tree?”

“I’m sheltering,” Scott corrected.  John made an uh huh noise in the back of his throat which he purposefully ignored.  Still, if John was offering company, instead of retreating into his own personal space, then Scott wasn’t going to turn that down.  The problem with John living in space was that he just didn’t get to see this particular little brother in person as much as he’d like.

He pushed off from the tree, straightening up and shoving his hands in his pockets as he took the couple of short steps back out into the rain.  John hadn’t bothered to wait for him, and he had to jog a couple more paces before he was at his brother’s side.

It felt like the rain had got heavier, but the droplets were still cool and refreshing on his face, even if he could feel his hair wilting under the weight.  Beside him, John’s hair had all but lost its usual curl, vibrant strands of ginger instead plastered to his forehead.  His brother didn’t seem to care at all.

Despite inviting him along, John didn’t seem particularly inclined towards conversation as he picked his way across the expansive grounds of the Creighton-Ward manor.  It was clear that this was far from his brother’s first time doing so; while Scott started getting a little turned around by all the identically pruned bushes and perfect flowerbeds, John continued unerringly as though it was his ridiculously large garden.

Not that Scott could really comment on the size of the Creighton-Ward estate when his own home consisted of an entire volcano.  Both the ranch and the Kansas farm spanned equally large acreage; the Tracys had never been a stranger to calling huge swathes of land home.

John had easily spent enough time in this manor during his Oxford days to have the entire estate mapped out in that impressive brain of his.  Scott resolved to never play hide and seek with him here.

The silence that hung between them was a comfortable one.  On some levels, it was more touching and heartfelt than if John had wanted to talk - John was a huge fan of personal space, and being invited to share it, trusted to share it, when he had so clearly hit his socialising quota already was akin to an honour.

Rain continued to fall, Scott’s jacket feeling more and more sodden by the minute, but John never headed for anything remotely resembling shelter.  The weather wasn’t particularly warm, either.  By English standards it might have been passable, but being used to the tropics meant that Scott found it decidedly on the cool side.

John seemed unaffected, but then again John spent most of his time in a rigidly controlled environment and hated the heat.  Scott still hoped he’d be able to persuade Parker to get them both a hot drink when they re-entered the manor building.  Then again, he wouldn’t put it past the older man to bundle them straight to their rooms with layers of blankets and disapproving mumbles.  The former crook liked to pretend he was as tough as nails - and in some respects he was - but he was also quick to fuss over the few friends he had.

Being counted amongst that number was almost as high an honour as being invited to share John’s personal bubble.

Sunbeams poked out from behind the grey clouds as they were strolling through one of several rose gardens - or maybe it was the same one and John had led them around in circles a few times.  In answer, the rain faded away into nothing and the world hung, heavy and still.  John stopped walking, and Scott followed suit.

Above them, the clouds were dispersing.  It seemed that the rain was over, at least for now, although the world around them shimmered a little like crystal as sun caught beads of water clinging to the flowers, the grass, the trees.  John glistened as well, his hair transformed into a burning halo as the sun caught the water plastering it to his scalp.

Hands in his pockets and face once again tilted to the sky, Scott’s little brother appeared to be considering something.  What, there was no point asking.  If John wanted him to be part of the decision making process, he’d say so.  Scott suspected he was debating if he wanted to stay outside or duck inside the manor to escape the reappearing sun.

John missed the rain on Thunderbird Five.  He did not miss the sunburn.

Sure enough, after a moment his brother turned to face him.

“I’m heading back inside,” John said.  “Are you done hiding from your eligible bachelorness yet or are you going to stay out here?”

Scott huffed at him, narrowing his eyes in displeasure at the jab.  John really wasn’t going to be letting that go any time soon.

“They’ll have moved topics by now,” he replied, a lot more confidently than he felt.  In all honesty, he had no idea how long it would be the hot topic for, but if he stayed out later than John he’d never live it down.

“That topic won’t be dropped until you’re married with kids,” his brother pointed out.  Scott scowled.  “But if you’re sure you’re ready to go back in…”  He trailed off meaningfully and, without waiting for Scott, started striding back towards the manor.

Not wanting to let his brother out of his sight, and maybe a little unsure of the paths back, Scott lengthened his stride to catch up with him again.  Turquoise eyes glanced sideways at him, and John’s face settled into subtle amusement.

Scott decided it was best for his pride if he didn’t ask what was funny.

He glanced up at the sky as they walked.  The shimmer of moisture in the air was fading as the sun grew stronger and the clouds continued on their merry way to deposit rain on some other part of the English countryside.  It wouldn’t be raining again just yet.

His foot caught something hard and he stumbled.  Instantly a vice-like grip appeared on his arm, yanking him back upright and steadying him.

“And you call me the clumsy one,” John commented lightly.  “Watch where you’re walking.”

Scott glared down at the flowerbed border he’d apparently walked into before switching targets to his brother.  John, as always, seemed completely unperturbed at the look.  Turquoise eyes looked him up and down, clearly making sure he hadn’t somehow hurt himself with his stumble, before the grip on his arm vanished and John continued down the path.

Sending another glare at the border, Scott followed.

Being behind John quickly brought back the reason why he’d been checking the sky.  While the rain had stopped, the white shirt his brother was wearing was still very soaked through, with the consequences of that on full display.  Scott shrugged out of his own, soaking wet, jacket.

“John,” he called, lengthening his strides to catch up.  His brother paused and turned back to look at him quizzically, jumping as Scott draped the waterlogged jacket over his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” the astronaut asked, making to shrug the fabric off.  “Carry your own jacket, Scott.”

Scott caught the fabric before it could fall to the ground.  “John, you’re wearing a white shirt.”

A single eyebrow raised.  “Your observational skills are unparalleled.”

Little brothers.  Scott huffed.  “And yours are lacking,” he retorted.  “You wore a white shirt in the rain.”

John looked at him, puzzled, for a moment, before comprehension dawned across his face.  A quick glance down had his pale skin reddening slightly.

“Oh.”

Scott shook his head fondly and draped the jacket around his brother’s shoulders again.  This time it was gratefully accepted.  They weren’t quite the same size, but Scott’s shoulders were the broader of the two, so while the fabric bunched a little oddly when John threaded his arms through the sleeves and fumbled the buttons until it was concealing as much of the wet white shirt as possible, it did at least fit.  Scott was grateful it wasn’t Virgil.

“You might want to go and get changed into something dry,” he suggested.  “Get out of those clothes.”

“I didn’t bring a spare suit,” John reminded him.  “I don’t have anything else with me suitable for Lady P’s party.”

Scott rolled his eyes and started walking again.  “Then just don’t come back to the party,” he said bluntly.  “That’s not exactly a tragedy for you.  You can see Lady Penelope again once it’s over - she won’t care what you’re wearing.”

“She will care,” John corrected, catching up to him.  “She’ll judge my outfit and everything.”  Despite the words being ones of apparent complaint, he didn’t actually seem that bothered about it.  Then again, he had survived going to university with the woman.  Their friendship was on a completely different level compared to the one the rest of the Tracys shared with her.

“Just go and get yourself out of those wet clothes and make yourself comfortable for the rest of the evening,” Scott sighed.  “I’ll make your excuses.”

“If I need to get changed, why don’t you?” John challenged.  Scott grinned at him and tapped his own shirt.

“Not white,” he pointed out.  Well, admittedly, he would call it white, but according to Virgil it was cream, and according to the weather that combined with the covering jacket meant that it hadn’t gone the same way as John’s white shirt.  “Ergo, still appropriate for polite company.”

John scrutinised him for several moments as they walked, as though he was trying to find an excuse why Scott’s outfit wasn’t appropriate any more.

“You’ll get sick if you stay in wet clothes too long,” he said eventually.  “Make sure you come up and get changed soon.”

“I don’t have a spare suit, either,” Scott admitted.  “I’ll be fine.”  It couldn’t be that many more hours before the end of the party, surely…

“If you’re not up in half an hour I’m sending Parker to extract you,” John said firmly.  “Virgil will have both our hides if you go home sick.”

“Half an hour?” Scott repeated.  “I’ll be lucky to talk to Lady Penelope by then.  You’ll have to give me longer than that.”  There was no point telling John not to enlist Parker at all - his brother would hum non-committedly then do it anyway the instant he was out of earshot.

John scoffed.  “You’ll find a way,” he said confidently.  “Just flirt your way through the crowds like you normally do.  Half an hour, then Parker will get involved.”

They’d arrived back at the manor itself, and John sent him one last smug grin before vanishing up what had to be a servant’s staircase before Scott could try another attempt to bargain for more time.  With a quiet groan, Scott adjusted his damp tie and headed back towards the ballroom.

His wet - and likely bedraggled - appearance caused a stir when he re-entered the room.  Conversations stopped, eyes stared, and then the whispering started.  Well, he’d take them talking about him over attempts to restart the conversations about his relationship status.

He scanned the room for the tell-tale flash of pink, locating Lady Penelope just before she came to a stop in front of him.

“I was under the impression you were looking for John, not trying to impersonate a drowned rat,” the Lady commented lightly.  “You also appear to have misplaced your jacket, Scott.”

He shrugged lazily.  “John wanted to go outside.”

“I see.”  From the fond look that flickered in her eyes, she probably did get it.  The British aristocrat was the closest thing John had to a best friend, after all.  “And where is John now?”

“Retiring for the evening,” Scott explained.  “Or at least until the party’s over and the stars are out.”

Lady Penelope laughed a little at that.  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” she agreed.  “And what about you?  I notice today’s main topic of discussion isn’t to your liking.”  There was a twinkle of amusement in her eyes that was entirely too similar to John’s reaction.

Scott decided the best thing to do was ignore it.

“I should get changed,” he admitted.  “I’ll see you after the party’s over?”

“I dare say you should,” Lady Penelope agreed, “before you turn my ballroom into a swimming pool.  Very well, I’ll see you boys later.”  She turned away, and immediately got caught in another conversation with a guest.

Scott took the opportunity to duck back out of the room, evading anyone who might want to corner him for further conversations that he really didn’t care for.

Parker was standing just outside the door.

“Ah, there you h’are,” the butler said as Scott narrowly avoided walking into him.  “h’I h’understand you’re done for the h’evening?”

Scott checked his watch.  “There’s no way it’s been half an hour already,” he said suspiciously.

“‘alf h’an hour since when?” Parker asked innocently.  “Master John said nothing h’about h’a time limit.”  No, of course John didn’t.  Pesky little brother.  “Well, h’as you h’appear to be trying to turn h’into a drowned rat, h’I’d say you need a nice warm drink h’and a change h’of clothes.”

“That’s the plan,” Scott admitted.  “I’ll see you later, Parker.”

“That you will,” the older man agreed, and Scott paused with his foot on the bottom step of the staircase.  “h’I’ll be bringing h’up some ‘ot chocolate for the pair h’of you in a few minutes.  ‘Onestly, what were you thinking, going h’out h’in the rain like that?”

Scott shrugged.  “John wanted to,” he said, before resuming his ascent of the staircase, knowing that Parker would make good on his promise and be up soon with the drinks.

The Creighton-Ward manor was huge, and the guest suites were equally so.  There was no sharing of bedrooms when they stayed overnight, but as Scott entered the room designated as his, he discovered a brother lounging on his bed, tablet in hand.  Ginger hair was ruffled and sticking up all over the place - a clear victim of a towel drying - and the soaked suit had been replaced by a much less formal shirt and jeans.

“Don’t you have your own room?” he asked, not breaking his stride as he headed for his overnight bag and pulled out a change of clothes.

“Parker’s bringing the drinks here,” John replied, not looking up from whatever it was he was reading.  “It makes more sense for me to be here.”  Scott huffed and worked his tie loose from around his neck.

“You just wanted to make sure I didn’t stay in the party,” he accused.

John didn’t deny it, and Scott rolled his eyes before heading into the ensuite to dry off and get changed into his more casual clothes.  No more formal suit and tie for him tonight.

When he re-emerged several minutes later, his own hair rivalling John’s for towel-dried mess and begging for another round of brushing and hair gel, Parker had arrived with the promised steaming mugs of hot chocolate.

“Drink up, the both of you,” the man demanded.  “Going h’out in the rain like that, I h’ask you.”  He shook his head despairingly.  “What will your Gran say h’if you go and get yourself sick?”

“We won’t get sick, Parker,” Scott said confidently, accepting his mug and letting the warmth seep from the ceramic into his fingers.  “We didn’t get that wet.”

“Don’t h’underestimate the English weather,” Parker warned.  “Drink that h’up and wrap h’up warm.”

John appeared silently at his elbow and claimed his own mug before retreating back to the bed.  Scott watched him burrow his bare feet under the covers and huffed.

“That’s my bed, you know,” he complained.  John lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“So?”

“So, leave some room for me.”  Mug in hand, Scott settled himself next to his brother, nudging him over gently.  John obliged, and after a few moments of shifting around, the pair of them were sat shoulder to shoulder with their feet under the covers.

Parker eyed them approvingly, and then tossed a blanket over their laps as well.

“h’I’ll be back once the party’s h’over,” he told them.  “Keep warm.”

“We’ll be fine,” Scott assured him.  “You don’t need to worry about us.”

Blue eyes surveyed him suspiciously.  “h’I know some people that’d disagree with that h’assessment, Mr Scott.  But duty calls, h’I suppose.”

Parker was clearly reluctant to leave them for some reason, but he did begrudgingly go out the door, shutting it behind him and leaving the two brothers to their drinks.

The hot chocolate was, unsurprisingly, good, and Scott found himself draining the mug in record time.  Beside him, John was almost as fast, and they set the mugs down on the bedside tables almost in unison.

“Parker makes the best hot chocolate,” John commented, and Scott couldn’t help but agree.

“He does,” he agreed.  “I could go for another.”

“Well, then, I’m glad I finished mine before you got it into your head to steal it,” John said dryly.  “You can ask him for another one later.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, leaning back against the headboard of the bed.  “I might do that.  This might all be overkill-” he gestured at the warm mugs and the blanket, subtly tucking them in the bed “-but even if we’re not going to get sick, that chocolate is worth it.”

The sneeze came out of nowhere.  As did the second, and the third.

The fourth sneeze came from his brother, and Scott glanced over at him with a sinking feeling.  Bright turquoise met his eyes, and John gave a wane smile before sneezing again.

“I think,” his brother said, before being interrupted by another sneeze, “that maybe this wasn’t so overkill after all.”

Scott buried his face in his hands.  It did nothing to stop the next sneeze, and he groaned.

“You might be right,” he admitted.  “Dammit.  Virgil’s going to- achoo -kill us.”

John groaned.

[kichous]

✧･ﾟ:*   addicted to a certain kind of sadness

summary. your son is a lip scar shy of looking like a ghost. series. how should i greet thee ? | part one . part two . pairings. past fushiguro toji x f!reader. minor oc x f!reader. warnings. implied postpartum depression. parental abandonment. word count. 2971.

You are horrifically out of place in his dorm room. It’s minimalist enough as it is, and you almost don’t want to move for fear of disrupting the gentle balance of a home nothing at all like yours. Megumi seems fastidious enough — but that in and of itself is yet another painful reminder. You don’t actually know your son very well at all.

Well, you know one of your sons quite well. Morinaga is the spitting image of you, just like how Megumi is practically a carbon copy of Toji.

Your daughter, Nobue, looks a lot like her father. Maybe that’s why you neglect her so much.

Whatever your relationship with his younger half-siblings, Megumi seems woefully ignorant of all things related to his blood. It’s likely the work of that white-haired brat. And Ougi’s daughter has no obligation to tell him the truth, not when she has her eyes set on his birthright. So really, you’re all that Megumi has left.

Or so you try to tell yourself.

He hands you a bottle of water and scratches the back of his head. He never makes eye contact, and you’re almost thankful for it. You want your son to look at you, but you also don’t want to meet the gaze of a man long dead. The unruliness of Megumi’s hair seems to be all that he bears of you, and that makes your heart ache just a bit.

A friend of his just died recently, you recall hearing. Sukuna’s vessel. The logical part of you believes it’s for the best, a threat ended. The part of you that yearns for your child’s affection demands that you comfort him somehow. But what could you do? He had pointedly avoided touching your hand, and the only reason you were sitting on his bed in the first place was because he hadn’t any other chairs to offer. You pat a spot on the mattress beside you, and Megumi reluctantly lowers himself onto it.

What do you say? ‘Hello, son. Nice to finally see you after fifteen years.’ That will be sure to go over well.

You inhale deeply, an action that causes Megumi’s chin to dip closer to his chest. You don’t know what to do with your hands, and you constantly shift them in your lap, clasping and unclasping fingers in different positions. Eventually, you settle on holding onto your elbows. “You look well,” you tell him. There are heavy bags under his eyes and every breath he takes is a hollow rattle in his ribcage.

His friend just died. Nice going. Mother of the year, you are.

“I’m okay, I guess.”

And then the silence persists.

Should you have even come at all? There’s no way he actually wants to see you. Inserting yourself in his life is 100% a selfish choice on your part. You want your son. You haven’t seen him since he was three months old, and so you need to know him, no matter how many hoops you have to jump through.

In your defense, Toji took him without your permission when he left. And you hadn’t wanted to disrupt Megumi’s already precarious home life when he was little by suddenly dragging him into the clan that ruined his father’s life. But you almost died this past winter — of illness, of all things! an anticlimactic end for a sorcerer — so you’re sure the powers that be can forgive you for being a little selfish.

(As if you haven’t been operating on self-interest for literally your entire life.)

It’s hard to reconcile the young man, perfectly self-sufficient and competent, with the tiny little baby you held into your arms over a decade ago. You still remember the first time he sneezed, his little face scrunching up and his little kushu!

“Ya okay, little man?” Toji had said, his voice quivering with laughter. Your heart had grown ten sizes that day. It stings to know how many firsts Toji stole from you. Steps, words. His first fucking birthday. You might’ve even ended up Megumi’s favorite parent, but because of Toji, you’re nothing but a stranger to him now.

The quiet is unbearable. Your forced cheery tone is perhaps even more so: “I’m so happy you decided to see me. I’ve been wanting to meet you for such a long time.”

“It’s nothing,” Megumi replies, bereft of the usual reassurance accompanying the platitude. You haven’t a doubt in your mind that you truly are nothing to him. The boy’s brow furrows as he worries at his lower lip, clearly deciding on whether to voice a thought. Megumi meets your eyes for the first time, and a jolt runs through you at the sight of familiar jade. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” you say, perhaps a bit too quickly. “Anything at all.”

His eyes narrow at your words. A skeptic, just like his father. A cynic too, then. His sightline drifts down to his hands, fingers steepled in his lap. He sits with his knees far apart — like Toji used to. It truly hurts just looking at him, but you can’t turn away. You won’t. You want to memorize every painful detail.

Megumi wets his lower lip with his tongue. “Why did you come now? After all this time… did you not look for me?”

Of course, it’s the natural question to ask. Part of the reason you hadn’t tried to snatch him away when you did find him was because you knew what it was like to have your home life chewed up and spit out by adults more concerned with each other than you. Both you and Toji loved Megumi — you know that from the bottom of your heart — but the two of you were also too vindictive not to get him caught in the crossfire.

What would it be like for a first grader to be ripped from his father, raised by two complete strangers he’d never met?

Saiichi was furious when you said you’d respect Toji’s wishes. It was really the only time you’d ever fought, which was saying something for six whole years of marriage. But the row alone had convinced you couldn’t allow him to raise Megumi as his stepfather.

“I did,” you tell him, reaching out to take his hands before halting at his flinch. You return your hands to your lap and squeeze them between your knees. He still watches them warily, as if they’re vipers ready to strike out at him. Oh, how you wish you could touch his face. “By the time I found you, your father had already remarried. I had heard that you had a stepmother and a stepsister. I thought you might be unhappy if I took you away from them.”

“So why now, then? Why not when Tsumiki’s mom disappeared, or when my sister fell into a coma?” There’s an edge to his voice, his words like papercuts on your skin. “You could’ve picked either of those times to waltz into my life but you didn’t.”

Your jaw goes tight, teeth grinding together. That little brat was always going to be a thorn in your side, wasn’t she? Her mother, you could ignore. You understood how easy it was to fall for Zen’in Toji and how empty the world seemed without him. But had it not been for Tsumiki, perhaps you might have gotten Megumi back.

You recall circular black lenses and the flippant, nasally drone of, “Mm, I don’t think he’d like you. Too evil stepmom-esque — more than his actual stepmom, how ‘bout that?”

All because you hadn’t wanted to take care of a bitch who wasn’t yours.

You settle on a half-truth instead. “I was afraid,” you whisper, letting your eyes drop. Megumi’s fingers twitch, and then he curls them into fists. He places them on top of his knees, crinkling the fabric of his pants. “That you would hate me. That you would never consider me your mother. And I was afraid of what this family would do to you. That’s why your father took you in the first place, you know.”

“No, I don’t.” He gives a short exhale, annoyed and bitter. “I don’t even remember him.”

...Does this mean that you win?

You despise the thought as soon as it comes to you.

Parenting isn’t a competition, and it is a damn shame that Megumi had no recollection of the man you made him with. Toji was a good father, in the months that you had seen the two of them together.

Such a large and hulking man, you had never seen him so delicate and gentle as he was with his newborn son. He would insist you continue sleeping, that because you had carried Megumi for nine months, Toji should be the one dealing with the baby when he woke crying at ungodly hours. He talked to Megumi a lot, sometimes parroting baby noises and sometimes monologuing a censored version of his daily routine.

He always had Megumi in his lap, and you recall times during meals when you had laughed at the baby’s wide eyes as they followed his father’s utensils in the belief they were to feed him. Toji built the crib and mobiles himself. The dumpy high chair was his own when he was a baby. He worked less and spent more time at home with you. It earned him ridicule, as it was typical of Zen’in men to leave child rearing to their women and servants, but Toji had only you and none of the latter, and so there was a grudging respect that he once more surpassed his kin in something other than sorcery.

At the very least, it appeared to most outsiders that Toji loved Megumi more than you did. The walls of the Zen’in complex are thin, and you are certain that most — if not all — of its inhabitants had heard you shriek that the baby was a disappointment two mere months after his birth. Toji’s wide-eyed look of betrayal, horror, and rage would stay with you forever.

That’s when everything was well and truly over, you think, but the reanimated corpse of your family had shambled along for another six weeks before Toji disappeared out of your life forever.

The last time you had seen your husband, he had just put your son to bed and climbed into your own, the broad expanse of his back facing you as he slept. The last time you saw your son, you’d wrapped him up tightly in a blanket the same shade as his eyes, and his lower lip had wobbled when you reached out to stroke a chubby cheek. There was a time when he would light up when you were near. He may not have understood the words, but perceptive little Megumi knew what you had said. He despised you. Toji came along and shushed him, and you had curled up under your covers in frustration and sorrow.

It’s hard to think of him as the same man who walked out on his second wife and children, let alone someone who married a woman who would abandon her children as well. You tried to resent Toji for leaving you — but you knew that you were a horrible wife and an even worse mother to his child. If your positions had been reversed, you’d have run off in the dark of night too. But it hurts now, knowing that he hadn’t lived long past his departure, and that your beloved son had grown up under the watch of a school rather than his only remaining parent.

“He sold me,” Megumi continues, each word a stab into your heart. “Clearly he wasn’t trying very hard to keep me away.”

“No,” you admit, lifting your head. “It must’ve been around the time you developed your cursed technique. I don’t imagine he would have done so otherwise. He thought you’d be happy here, as the heir.”

“Did he now.”

He freezes when you place a hand on his shoulder, though he doesn’t fight back when you wrap your arms around him and press his face into the crook of your neck. He’s tense, shoulders raised, and he doesn’t return the hug — but he doesn’t wholly reject you. You take that as a minor victory. His long lashes brush against your skin with each startled blink. “What are you doing?”

“I’m holding my son,” you say, using your other hand to stroke his back. You feel tears spring to your eyes, and you stop fighting them back for the first time in decades. They spill down your cheeks and onto his shirt, seemingly endless. “I’m apologizing — for both myself and your father. You deserved better from the both of us, and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that he left, that I never came for you, and that you have spent your entire life in a power struggle you didn’t ask for.

“This family is a festering pit, and it has destroyed everything it touches. Your father saw that, and while he had hope that they would treat you well, he was right to have doubts. He saved you from us — from me.” You chuckle bitterly. It’s much wetter and tearier than you intended, losing its edge. “You would have been miserable with us. He made the right choice.”

Megumi’s Adam’s apple bobs against you as he swallows. “If that’s what you think, then why are you here?”

You can barely see him when you pull back, wiping your cheeks with your sleeves. The heavy silks were not made for this. He sits further from you, clearly wary that you might touch him without permission again. If anyone had asked, you’d say it was worth it. The last time you held him, he was barely 60 centimeters. He’s bigger than you, now.

“Sorry,” you say again, leaning back yourself. He relaxes at the motion, if just minutely. You sniff and swipe the pad of a finger under your eyes. You smile at him and lift your shoulders in a shrug. “I suppose it’s because I’m selfish. I didn’t want to die without ever seeing my baby boy again.” You almost move before remembering to ask. “May I?”

His eyes are trained on your left hand as you lift it and extend it towards him. He frowns, ponders it, and then leans his cheek into your palm. He finds the affection uncomfortable, you can tell by the furrow of his brows, but he allows it. “So soft,” you chuckle as you rub your thumb over his skin. “Just like when you were little.”

He huffs quietly, and you choose to assume that it’s a laugh. Megumi shifts and scoots back towards you, meeting your gaze. His lips part, and he takes a second to gather his words. “I don’t know if I’m ready for… all this,” he says finally, fingers once more curled into loose fists, “but I’m… I’m glad you’re here —” He pauses, seeming to think better of it, before throwing prudence to the wind. “— mom.”

You feel as though your heart is about to burst out of your chest. You don’t deserve this, and that makes you treasure it all the more.

“I can’t wait to get to know you.” When you open your arms to him once more, he moves into them of his own accord. It’s still an awkward embrace, and it’s clear that he isn’t used to hugs, but you relish the warmth of his hand on the back of your neck as well. “I missed you, Megumi.”

You feel his jaw tense against you — a misstep, it seems. No matter. He’s here, and he’s in your arms. He shifts, angling so that he can rest his face in the junction between your neck and your shoulder. As you feel the light puffs of his breath against your flesh, you stroke his hair. Never in the past fifteen years did you think you’d ever be able to see, let alone hold, him again.

Between your husband and the boy’s teacher, the two strongest people in the world, there was a lot standing in the way of your reunion with your son. Greatest of all was perhaps yourself, the omnipresent guilt for ever letting something as meaningless as cursed energy turn you against your own child. You’ll never tell him what you said; you could never bear to see his father’s face twisted with hurt yet again.

Shortly after you gave birth to your second child, you imagined Morinaga was Toji’s. He bore little enough resemblance to Saiichi that it was a possibility he was a parting gift. You concocted a second life left only in your mind, of you having run away with Toji — away from the Zen’ins, from sorcery, from the entire world, to some house in the suburbs where all that mattered was your little family. Toji forgave you and you still loved each other. You hadn’t made the mistake of staying behind.

The four of you would live happily. You’d help Megumi and Morinaga (Toji would never have named him that) control their cursed techniques, but they’d grow up never hearing of the Zen’in family. Your perfect revenge against your foster parents would still be complete. You didn’t need any underhanded machinations, you just needed your family. You would be happy with the man you love and your two children.

Getting pregnant with Nobue killed off what remained of that fantasy, and you had resigned yourself to your misery. But now, Toji’s son is here, and he isn’t pushing you away. He’s holding you, and he’s real.

You would never throw away this second chance. You’d kill yourself trying to hold onto it forever.

[paper-n-ashes]

sparks and embers - chapter 4

Characters: Poe Dameron x Original Female Character, Kylo Ren x Original Female Character

Story Tags: Explicit (18+), Canon Compliant/Divergent (Set after TLJ), First Person POV, Love Triangle, Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, Porn with Plot, Hurt/Comfort, Kylo Ren hates Poe Dameron

Chapter 4 - Fun

Words: 5.7k

Chapter Tags/Warnings: The biggest warning I can give is that this was my first ever attempt at smut - ever. Mutual masturbation, one party technically unconsented.

Read on AO3 or Start from the beginning

~

It was paradise and torture, all rolled into one.

He looked unbearably delicious sitting on the ‘fresher stool, facing away, towel draped carefully below his waist. Steam rose in swirling clouds from the floor around him, making the air heavy as I drew in slow, measured breaths.

Poe didn’t look up as I moved past the open curtain, and I could only assume it was because he felt as uneasy as I did. Without much control over myself, my eyes traced the droplets wriggling down his back over his now unwound muscles, wanting nothing more than to draw my fingers over, to feel his smooth skin on the tips.

It was all so enticing, and the throb in my centre becoming harder to ignore. I was forced to put more thought into my movements as I stepped towards the shelf in front of Poe, wondering if he noticed the side glances I attempted to get a better view.

Now is not the time Alexys.

The remark shook me back into sensible thinking, realising Poe was in a vulnerable position, and he trusted me enough to see him like this. He wouldn’t want to be gawked at - he genuinely needed assistance.

With a newfound sense of responsibility, I took the shampoo from the shelf and rounded back behind Poe’s head, his hair glistening with moisture, looking at nothing but my hands. He was silent along with me, probably bracing himself for this stranger to mangle their fingers awkwardly into his hair.

I squirted a stream of liquid shampoo on his head, the icy temperature of it making him tense for a moment, noticing when he raised his bandaged hand to grasp the side railing of the chair. Timidly I began to run my fingers through the portion of I’d covered, building the soap up into a foam, continuing to spread it through the rest of his wettened mop.

There was a warmth that soon arrived, spreading through my chest as I drew my fingers in and out, a warmth that felt less salacious and more… kind. And it would have stayed that way if Poe hadn’t hummed a low moan.

Oh maker, you are not making this easy.

As soon as it bristled past his lips he bolted upright.

“S-sorry,” he stuttered, evidently surprised himself at the sound he’d made. “No one has washed my hair before, I mean if you don’t count my parents when I was a child. It just felt... nice.”

I didn’t respond, making the air hang thick with our silence. Nothing I could say was going to make the moment any less awkward for the both of us.

After briefly stopping the twirling movement of my fingers following the… sound, I continued my lather over his scalp, making sure every particle of dirt, sweat and most likely blood was caught in the froth of soap.

When content with my work I reached over his shoulder and unhooked the detachable shower head, my eyes still trained on anything other than his bare skin. After angling it down, I pressed the start button on the handle, the flow of water hitting my bare feet as I made sure the water was an acceptable temperature before letting the cascade of soapy water rush down his spine.

With my hand I began to guide him to tilt back so I could safely wash out the soap just above his forehead. In this position I could see more of his face, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, eyebrows wrinkled like he was uncomfortable.

“Is the water too hot?” I peeped, pulling the shower head away.

His eyes opened in a flash, startled by my question. “No! Not at all! I was just lost in thought about… Uh… How to fix BB-8. It’s fine, really.” He shifted in the chair, his bandaged arm still gripping onto the rail while his casted arm rested rigidly over his lap. As I moved the water stream back to his hair, his eyes closed again, this time without the tautness I’d noticed before.

After all the shampoo had been thoroughly rinsed I began the process again, only this time with conditioner. I didn’t ask if he actually wanted it, since it was more out of my own habit, but he didn’t stop me when I grabbed the bottle and jetted the thicker liquid into his hair, continuing to slowly massage it into his tresses.

It became somewhat relaxing, methodically weaving my fingers to evenly spread the silky lotion to every strand. He moved uneasily again, and I noticed the hand holding the rail was clutching tightly, his bicep tensed hard.

Maybe I’m terrible at this.

Deciding it was time to finish this embarrassing experience, I started up the water and rinsed Poe’s head free of conditioner, again seeing the strain washing over his face as he leaned back, like he was trying to conceal it from my view.

I rustled a fresh towel over his scalp, leaving his hair only slightly dampened. “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” I mumbled. “I’m not used to washing patients’ hair.”

Poe immediately twisted his torso, looking up to my face. I gritted my teeth as I registered his contracted abdominals. “What are you talking about? You didn’t hurt me.”

My eyes flickered to his arm. “You just seemed really... tense.”

“Uh,” Poe mouthed, the sound muted. I watched his eyes move down my chest, pupils swollen against his brown irises. He didn’t continue. He seemed lost for words.

I followed the trail his stare had made down my torso, sucking in an alarmed breath. I’d diverted so much of my thoughts towards Poe I hadn’t recognised the spray of water that’d soaked through my white cotton shirt, my bra now starkly visible through the dampened fabric. The cloth clung tightly to the curves of my breasts, leaving extremely little to imagination.

Of-fracking-course.

I laughed. A body shaking cackle that bounced off the tiled walls around us.

Any embarrassment in me simmered to hilarity at the thought of Poe’s face with my chest readily on show. His illuminating smile continued to flash as he chuckled along with me, and I couldn’t help but relish in it for the moments in which we continued to snicker.

When my laughter died down, I sighed, not exactly attempting to cover myself. He’d already seen what I had on display. “Well I think I’ve done just about as much as I can,” I jested, a smirk still drawn on my lips. “Do you think you can get yourself dressed? There are more night-clothes in the cupboard behind you.”

“I think I can manage,” he grinned back, seemingly relieved at the disruption from whatever tension had risen during this whole endeavour.

And with that, I sauntered out from the ‘fresher, closing the door gently behind me. My heart pounded to the beats of memories dashing into my mind, barely able to strangle a coherent understanding of everything I’d felt. It was all I could deliberate on as I entered my living quarters at the end of the hall and changed into new shirt - navy blue this time. My mind desperately tried to collect all the emotions I had experienced in the last 30 minutes and render some form of comprehension from them.

It was clear, I’d grown unprofessionally attached to Poe, so quickly, and more than any other human I’d encountered.

You like him.

It was a simple answer, yet it felt childish, to have developed a juvenile-like crush so soon after our meeting. I knew it was more to do with his appearance than our limited interactions, even though they were still somewhat endearing. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d experienced any of this heart fluttering emotion.

There were a few men that littered my past, but I had yet to experience the all-consuming, overwhelming need for someone that made people do irrational things, and I was sure no-one had ever thought of me in that way.

Only fleetingly had I endured any type of loneliness during my time on Raxus, and it usually passed as I woke to a new day - my work and my patients being wonderful distractions. I’d become so independent, so self-sufficient, that I never yearned to have someone become the centre of my universe.

Come now Alexys. You know that is not the reason why.

I gripped the sheets at the edge of my bed I had found myself sitting on.

You cannot let anyone too close. Not unless you want them to die along with you.

Before I could let the voice cause me to dive into an ocean of panic, I heard the ‘fresher door click closed.

“Alex?” Poe called from the hallway.

My feet planted onto the floor as I stood, letting the anxiety dissipate into the air around me. “Back here Poe.” I listened to his footsteps plod along the floor as he limped towards my living quarters, along with a few quiet huffs of effort. When he came into view at the entrance he still looked as appealing as before, even without his bare skin on show.

“You live in your clinic?” he questioned, looking around the apartment style quarters I’d constructed with the help of a few locals.

It was simple, efficient. The sizable room had everything a normal home would contain, all pulled into one. Kitchenette and dining table to the left, living room with a small two-seater sofa at the back wall, and my bed and closet to the right. A door leading to an ensuite ‘fresher was in the far right corner, one I only used if an overnighter patient was with me.

“It’s so I can still monitor a patient’s condition when they’re unable to return home yet. Remember, I’m the only doctor for thousands of kilometres.” I motioned to the holoscreen on my bedside table that would usually be displaying the vitals for any patients connected to monitor lines. There were only flat lines and zeros there now.

Poe cocked his head. “You don’t ever stop do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Being a doctor, looking after people. Even in your own quarters you’re still in that mode.” He hobbled further into the room, taking in the space around him.

“I’m sure you’re the same with your work for the Resistance.”

“True,” he conceded. “Being in the middle of a war tends to do that to people.”

I couldn’t hold back a cynical snort.

His eyebrows crinkled together. “What did that mean?”

Kriff. I wish I hadn’t done that.

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Just tell me,” he grumbled.

I pressed my lips into a hard line. I didn’t really want to start a heated discussion about the futility of this war with a Resistancepilot. But from the interactions I’d had with Poe so far, I doubted he was going to let this go.

“It’s just… Don’t you see the pointlessness of it all? Even if you overcome the First Order – how long will it be before another enemy rises up, or your new leaders become the same ruthless dictators themselves?” My voice grew less apprehensive, straightening myself into a more confident pose. “People are fickle. They change. Their emotions rule them beyond anything else, and because of that they can be manipulated so easily. People who swore fealty to one side can be dragged onto the other. The cycle never ends. There will always be more war, more fighting, more innocent deaths.”

Poe stared at me, bewildered. “You think it’s pointless to fight back against the First Order? People who conquer or destroy planets simply for more power? You’d rather we let them do as they please, letting billionsof innocent people die?”

“No of course not-” I started, already regretting every word I’d said.

“But that’s what you just implied, isn’t it? How can a doctorhave such a bleak view of the galaxy?”

I sighed, more at myself for opening my big mouth. “I’m just a realist Poe. People fight, we can’t help it. And those with the most power will fight to keep it, no matter how. I’ve just… I’ve seen too many people die, or damaged for the rest of their lives, for me to think war can ever generate peace.”

Poe’s eyes narrowed, his demeanour darkening. “You don’t think I’ve seen people, my friends, die or horribly injure themselves? You don’t think I’ve seen what war does? I still want to keep on fighting. I haveto. For the people that I’ve lost, who gave their lives for the rest of us, and the people I could save. Because people deserve a galaxy without a tyrant like Kylo Ren deciding who should live and who should die. Somehow, in your eyes, you think it’s pointless to even try?”

I didn’t have any type of acceptable answer. It was rude of me to point out the flaws of war with someone who had risked their life, and most likely come close to death because of it. “I’m… sorry Poe,” I insisted softly, settling back down on the edge of the bed. “It’s not my place to give my opinion on matters like this. I truly apologise if I offended you.”

I glanced up from twiddling fingers to see his delicately confused expression. He exhaled loudly, as he wobbled painfully to one of the chairs of the circular dining table across the room, straightening his injured leg out to rest it.

“I’m sorry too," he said, exhaling. “I’ve been living my life with the Resistance for so long I forgot there might be people who don’t believe in the cause like we do.”

“It makes sense,” I remarked. “Sometimes you get caught up in the bubble of the world around you, it’s hard to see beyond it.”

He nodded. “That’s very true.”

We sat in silence for a moment, both letting the heated exchange dry out into passing memories. Poe continued to peer around the room, his eyes scanning with a subtle scrutiny. “So what do you do when you’re not being a doctor?” he asked, the fierceness from before completely replaced by his normal cheerful tone.

“You mean in my free time?”

“Yeah. Do you have anything that keeps your mind away from all that... doctor work?”

I felt my face crinkle into confusion. “I… I don’t really.”

His expression mirrored mine. “You don’t have any hobbies? Something you do just for fun?”

“Uh…” I started, raking through my brain for anything I did outside the realm of my work. “Huh. I guess I don’t. I may just be the most boring person alive.”

Poe chuckled, and shook his head. “That’s definitely not true.” He met my eyes, flashing me a comforting grin. “You’re just hyper-focused on your work. Trust me, I get that. Sometimes all I even dream about are war council sessions and my ship interface. But you’ve got to switch off eventually, otherwise you’ll go insane.”

I was slightly dubious at that sentiment, since I’d made it over 4 years without slipping into insanity, but Poe’s question made me take check. Truthfully, I couldn’t remember the last time I had fun, when I felt joy in something other than making ill people better again.

Poe could see my face begin to fall. “Hey come on, let’s try now. You’ve only got me as a patient, and I am in no need for your treatment right now. Think of something you used to do, or always wanted to, and we can have a go of it together.”

His sudden eagerness to help made my heart swell. “Uh... sure. Okay.”

Poe nodded once without speaking, urging me to search through my mind for an idea. But it was hard to think when I kept looking at his face, now melted into an enthusiastic smile. I made my eyes glare at my feet, since they would be significantly less distracting while I attempted to think of a supposedly fun activity.

Even when I’d finished my work for the day, on the rare occasion I had no overnighters staying with me, I simply returned to these quarters to have dinner and prepare myself for sleep. In the moments between, all I tended to do was read over current news and research on my data pad, sometimes flicking through medical texts if I was stumped on how to deal with a patient’s condition, especially when it came to rarer alien species. Generally, I would be so tired from the day that I never needed to pass my time with anything remotely hobby based. My focus would be to eat, use the ‘fresher and settle into an easy slumber.

And in this singular moment, I realised how monotonous it all was.

Poe saw me struggling, although probably not knowing it was at the realisation that I had no idea what fun was anymore. “Okay, how about games? Surely you’ve played at least one holo or card game in your life?”

“Well yeah, but that was years ago, and I don’t have any-” I stopped mid-sentence, the flicker of a memory rising into my mind’s view. “Wait here a second.” Hopping up from my bed, I made my way to the office, switching on the light. A large wooden desk sat in the centre, littered with old patient notes I had been in the middle of updating when my life had been so suddenly interrupted with Poe’s appearance.

I ignored them to walk towards the storage cupboard behind it. It took a few minutes of rummaging through stacks of files and old pieces of obsolete medical equipment to find what I’d come in here for - a small, rectangular metal case the size of my two hands, snatching it from the shelf I’d mindlessly placed it on nearly 3 years ago.

Bringing it back with me into my quarters, I quickly sat at the dining table next to Poe, who turned to face me with a look of intrigue. I opened the case, exposing the contents inside. “An old patient of mine gifted this to me, promised to teach me how to play. He… never got the chance to.”

My mind wandered in the memory of the older gentleman who had been struck down with Quannot’s syndrome, only lasting a few days before his unavoidable death. I recalled how much I mourned his passing, distressed at how little I could do to ease his pain before he left this world.

“Sabbac!” Poe burst, interrupting my sombre reminiscing.

I shook myself back into the current reality. “You know how to play?”

“Of course, almost every being in the galaxy knows how,” he scoffed. Only after he noticed me shifting awkwardly in my seat did he realise what he’d said. “Uh, sorry. Come on, I’ll teach you.” He continued to pull the cards out of the case, laying them out face up in a specific order. “Okay, so this is the Flask suit...”

*

If we were playing for real money, Poe would have put me in the red.

“23? Again? You’re definitely cheating,” I grumbled, huffing into my seat, not for the first time of the evening. After I’d grasped the basic concept of the game, we’d played for hours, time passing quickly in the midst of bluffing and strategy.

Poe was evidently enjoying the immaturity of my tantrum, laughing softly as he pulled the last of my chips towards his already immense pile. “I guess beginner’s luck didn’t really work out for you in this case,” he sniggered.

I pouted, watching him stack the chips neatly in coloured towers. “Well, I’m out. You took me for all I’ve got.”

“But didn’t you have fun?”

I nodded and grinned, conceding even when I’d been horrendously beaten, but was a combination of both him and the game we’d played that made me feel an unfamiliar contentment warm my body. I eyed him marvelling his chips, an expression of pride filling his features. “You really like winning, don’t you?”

“Being with the Resistance, you kind of get used to savouring the wins when they occur. Doesn’t happen exceedingly often.” His thoughts seemed to drift away, and in his face I knew he was pondering over the state of affairs back at base with him missing.

“I have no doubt they’ll be searching day and night for you,” I soothed, hoping I guessed correctly.

Poe attempted a smile, but it dissolved when a large sigh breathed past his lips. “I’m doing my best not to worry. The people there, they’re all smart and capable, but we had a plan… and I haven’t been able to see it through. We were running out of time as it is. I can only imagine how concerned they'll be after not receiving a report in over two day cycles.”

“It’ll be okay,” I said softly, tentatively placing a hand on his upper arm, above where I’d placed the plastic cast. “I know it sounds kind of naïve, but when I’m overwhelmed, especially in my work, I break everything down into smaller problems, and try to face the most pressing one. The big picture doesn’t matter, it’s all about solving the most concerning challenge at the time. And little by little, the whole situation becomes… easier.”

“It does sound a little naïve. But… I like it.”

“It worked for me when I was trying to save you.” I gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.

Poe didn’t respond. He seemed to ruminate in his own mind, his mouth in a forced, hard line. I watched as his eyes glanced down to where my palm rested around his bicep, then back to me.

His gaze was suddenly heated, smouldering, so intense it locked me into place, a ribbon of flames darting through my veins. I noticed the speckles of gold hidden through his irises, as it occurred to me how close our bodies had become during the time spent sitting at the dining table. The air around felt dense, the only sound I could register my own gradual breathing.

Poe's vision wouldn’t move from mine, his blazing stare a stark difference from the rest of his softened features. It felt as if his movements were in slow motion, the way he lifted his bandaged arm, a hand reaching up to my face.

I remained unmoving, even when my entire being began to flicker with electricity, igniting sparks at every nerve ending on my skin. Fingertips finally touched my cheek, grazing over it so delicately, yet still making the energy glowing through me intensify, as if trying to break free from my body.

Poe began to lean closer, and unconsciously I mirrored his movement, wanting nothing more in this moment than to feel his lips on mine.

Stop this Alexys. Stop it now.

The voice caused me to jerk backwards, pulling myself away from Poe’s touch, rising abruptly out of the chair. “This is… this is inappropriate,” I peeped, rushing directly to my ensuite ‘fresher, clicking the door closed. With my back pressed against the door, I slid slowly down until my rear hit the tiled floor.

I could still feel the heat of Poe’s fingertips on my cheek, a painful reminder of what I’d run away from. But the echo of what the voice had demanded still rattled through, and I knew it was right. I knew I couldn’t let myself get too close - I couldn’t give in to the sudden desire that had shimmered inside my chest.

It would cost me my safety, my work, my purpose of being. I’d risked everything to get here, given up all I knew of home. I wouldn’t let it all be in vain on the whim of my emotions.

There was no way to stop it, the lone tear that strolled down my cheek. It was a mere fraction of the sobs I wanted to express, both despair and frustration gripping me in a strangling hold.

With shaking palms held front of me, I traced each creased line in the flesh with my eyes. Not for the first time, I cursed at the energy that flowed through them, unlocked from the depths of my consciousness and healed those who needed it the most, those who would have otherwise died when even the greatest medical care couldn’t save them.

I’d kept it hidden for my whole life, the Force I’d been born with and couldn’t escape from. I’d concealed it from everyone, including my parents, keeping a far enough distance to hold my secret within my mind.

Only two outcomes came with exposure. One being I would be recruited, trained as a Jedi and guilted by the Resistance to join a war I didn’t believe in. The other being hunted by the Sith, or any kind of dark side user, and killed for showing any type of prowess with the Force like so many younglings before, or swayed into the war to fight on their behalf.

There was no way either side would allow me to slip from their grasp once they knew. They would never tolerate my neutrality and let me stay here in the countryside of an Outer Rim planet, doing exactly what I wanted to do. Heal.

Why me? Why did this have to happen to me?

Because you do not want it.

That’s cruel.

Such is life.

*

I wasn’t sure how long I spent sitting on the ‘fresher floor, ceaselessly on the verge of tears, yet never allowing the emotion to fully break. A creeping feeling of humiliation had started to filter in a short time ago as I recounted over and over how abruptly I’d run from Poe.

My eyes hadn’t caught the glimpse his face after I wrenched myself away from his hand, yet all I could do was imagine it now, features struck with shock and rejection. I’d barely heard him leave my quarters after I’d shut myself away, faintly recalling his right leg still making a larger thumping sound when he walked into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

That memory had taken place hours ago, and my body was beginning to ache after another large portion of time connected to hard tile.

The only thing I wished for now was the comfort of my bed, to sleep away this evening and wake to a fresh day. But I couldn’t. There was still a patient to look after. I needed check on Poe’s condition, update vitals, make sure his wounds were still healing. For my own benefit, I would rather wait for the morning when some of the lingering awkwardness would have dissipated, but there was no possibility of sleep without being sure he was still in good health.

Plus, I hadn’t told him about the food supplies waiting in the clinic cupboard. Being so distracted by playing cards I'd never made us dinner, and he needed all the sustenance he could get to heal properly.

With a fragile resolve to get it done and over with, I peeled myself from my sitting position, joints popping at the movement after being inactive for so long. I peered slowly through the door, on the small chance Poe was out there waiting to greet me, but it was just the empty quarters that filled my view.

For a reason I couldn’t discern, I began to tread lightly towards the hallway door, the stillness of night sending a quick shiver down my spine. Before opening it I glanced back at my chronometer on the bedside table.0200.

He was probably asleep by now.

Hesitation washed through me, knowing if that were true I shouldn’t go poking him awake just to assess basic vitals. But the urge was too strong, pushing me to step into the hallway, tip-toeing cautiously over the floor.

I was halfway down when I heard Poe’s low exhale echo through the passageway.

Hm, maybe he was dreaming.

My movements halted, waiting for another sound to confirm my guess. Soon enough, a louder sigh floated towards my ears, tainted with an emotion I couldn’t name.

I continued to tread ever so lightly towards the clinic entrance, noticing the lights had been shut off except for the lamp at Poe’s bedside softly illuminating the room. I shifted carefully closer, almost at the doorway, Poe’s relaxed breaths still filling my ears as I took nimble steps towards the noise.

When a low, breathy moan swirled into the air, my body froze.

The fire in my lower abdomen crackled to life at the sound, making my limbs heavy, locking me where I stood, hidden from view.

Another moan, louder this time, rumbled past Poe’s lips, and I savoured the way it hit my body. My hearing strained to collect every wavelength of sound coming from just outside the hallway entrance. There was movement, a rustling of fabric of some sort, a slight creak of the bed frame.

I could feel my throat growing tighter, fearful of my breath alerting him to my presence, as the realisation of what was happening - what he was doing - finally dug its claws into my skin.

Poe groaned in pleasure as I began to recognise the sound of a repetitive slippery motion over flesh, the flames inside bursting into an inferno, the fever hottest between my legs.

I leant my back on the hallway wall closest to Poe’s hospital bed, fearing my knees would buckle underneath me. His breathing became faster, more passionate, as the pace of his movement grew more rapid.

Inside my mind, I was bombarded with hypothetical images of his body in the next room, a strong hand gripped tightly around the shaft of his length, shifting up and down. The gasps he continued to make fell into time with my imagination, the sound of skin making a slicking friction keeping rhythm with the urgent pumping of his hand I visualised with impeccable realism.

My fingernails scraped at the wall, eyelids shut tightly while Poe’s delicious moans sent shockwaves through my circulatory system. I’d never felt so much lust in my life, knowing if I caught any other male in this vulnerable position I would have scuttled away quickly, mortified. Yet the reality of Poe touching himself a few metres away, not knowing I was here listening to his rising pleasure, made an urgent craving throb between my legs, one that needed to be relieved. Now.

Little care had been paid to my sexual needs in the last 4 years on this planet. Suddenly, it felt like I had to give into it otherwise I might die.

Poe’s breath hitched, a sharp inhale indicating he was getting closer to his peak. The singular noise made me slip my hand down past the border of my leggings and under my panties, sliding a finger down in between my folds. A slick moisture was waiting, more than I’d ever felt in previous encounters.

Dragging two fingers through it, preparing myself, Poe’s groans became hungrier, desperate. As soon as I began the motion of relieving the ache below, fingers gliding gently over my swollen clit, the flames fizzled, only to be replaced with an immense sparkle of electricity radiating from low in my core.

I inhaled sharply, like Poe had done, and hoped he was too lost in his own pleasure to notice the sound I’d made. When the steady noise of his hand running smoothly over his shaft continued without pause, I knew I’d not broken my cover.

My thoughts intensified to him, envisioning his arm tensing as he held himself within his grasp, his chest bare with muscles contracting along with his movements, a thin layer of sweat glistening on his skin.

Fingertips slid quickly back and forth over my pleasure point as I pictured his face contorted in both effort and enjoyment, his mouth opening only slightly as luscious groans seeped from his throat. I grit my teeth to stop from moaning myself, an undeniable bliss growing stronger with each swirling motion. My chest heaved through silent breaths I couldn’t articulate with noise, mind muddled with overwhelming images of every part of Poe’s body I so desperately wanted to see with my own eyes.

But I refused to move. I didn’t want to break the course of the moment, wishing for nothing more than to hear the sound of his release, knowing it would push me into my own. He wasn’t rushing into it, almost as if savouring this time alone, moans rising only to fall as he slowed his pace again.

I didn’t do the same.

The circling over my clitoris continued to accelerate, tiny instances of my waiting climax peeking their way out every so often, telling me I was getting closer to falling over the edge.

My legs were shaking, being held up by pure resolve to prevent any noise resonating from my body. Poe was speeding up his movement again, but this time he didn’t slow, stuttered sighs escaping his chest, and it hastened my climbing pleasure. I was close, I could feel the tipping point bubbling under the surface of my skin.

Slowly, I heard him growl a few barely comprehensible words.

“Ugh… Alex... yes...”

My release abruptly exploded through me at the sound of my name on his lips, pleasure pulsing in overflowing waves over every portion of flesh. Front teeth bit hard into my bottom lip, preventing the whine I desperately wanted to set free. It was the most intense sensation I’d ever felt, sparks flickering in both the deepest part of my core and the nerves of my limbs, making me shiver in delight.

Quickly, I was all too sensitive, pulling my fingers away, eyeing the sheen of moisture that covered them. My attention was again caught in Poe’s moaning, as he too reached his peak, muted gasps coming in jolts as he finally came, obviously attempting much like me not to make any excessive noise.

Eventually he began to heave in relief, breaths hissing gradually through his teeth. We both stayed in our positions for a minute or so, relishing in the afterglow of our separate orgasms, the flames I’d felt down below settling into smouldering embers.

I was mulling over the pleasure I’d gone without for years, when I heard Poe rustle in his bed, feet softly plodding on the floor. It took two steps for me to finally realise.

He’s coming this way.

~

Next Chapter

Tag list: @tlcwrites @roanniom @foxilayde @blackberries45 @hopeamarsu @caillea @princessxkenobi @leatherboundbirate @blowthatpieceofjunk @mylifeisactuallyamess @poedameronloverx @lightsinthedistancee @paterson-blue

[adenei]

Hello! You are a wonderful writer and I love reading your works! Could you do something where Harry realizes the extent of trauma Tom Riddle inflicted on Ginny? Maybe after the war is over, and Ginny and Harry have moved in together, and then Harry comes to his senses?

Hi anon! Thank you so much! Sorry it’s taken so long to get this one to you. I hope you enjoy!

**********

Graduation Gift

It was a seemingly normal day spent out and about in Diagon Alley. The weather was seasonably warm, and Ginny was looking forward to a day out with Harry. She could count the number of times she’d been to the magical shopping district on one hand since turning eleven.

Visiting Diagon Alley wasn’t exactly one of her favorite activities to do, but Harry seemed excited about taking her out, so she’d obliged without pause. Ginny was happy to see that many of the businesses were able to rebuild. The streets were crowded with shoppers bustling along. Children were squealing excitedly at enticing window displays, and some, including Wheeze’s, looked completely full to the brim with people. 

Harry was on a mission, hitting each stop on his list with minimal dawdling in between. This was most likely to avoid the crowds and people noticing The Chosen One was amongst them. Ginny didn’t mind, since she was looking forward to a more relaxing afternoon at Grimmauld Place with her boyfriend. 

Their last stop was Quality Quidditch Supplies. He’d lured her there under false pretenses, claiming to need a new broom kit. But upon entering the shop, Harry insisted on looking at brooms for her upcoming training season. It was no surprise that Ginny had signed a contract with the Holyhead Harpies—who had scouted her talent at the first match of the season last year—but she was not expecting her boyfriend to insist on buying her a brand new broom.

“Absolutely not!” Ginny admonished.

“Come on, Gin, please? It’s your graduation present,” Harry reasoned.

Ginny shook her head. “It’s too much.”

Harry crossed his arms. “So, you’re just going to join a professional quidditch team with your Comet and expect to keep up in drills and matches?”

“As soon as I’ve earned enough, I’ll buy myself a new broom.”

Harry simply stared at her, willing her to process her words, which admittedly, did sound ridiculous. “I was going to pick one and buy it without consulting you, but what would the fun be in that? If you really want, you can pay me back, but that defeats the purpose of a gift.”

Ginny was used to being self-sufficient when it came to boyfriends. It was still strange sometimes for her to let Harry in, knowing she didn’t have to do everything independently anymore. After an extensive internal struggle, she’d relented. A half hour later, they exited the shop with the newest Firebolt model.

“This is still way too much,” Ginny griped, unwilling to admit that deep down it felt nice to be spoiled by her boyfriend.

“Well, like I said, you can always pay me back,” Harry said. He leaned in to add, “and it doesn’t have to be in galleons.”

Ginny couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her lips as they headed back to the Apparition spot. She almost didn’t notice when they’d passed by Flourish and Blotts. It was ridiculous really, that a bookshop of all places could make her feel this uncomfortable, but nonetheless a prickle of unease spread through her body. Flashes of white-blond hair and a secondhand cauldron flashed through her mind. It was only now that Ginny realized she hadn’t stepped foot in the popular bookstore since her first year.

“Everything alright?” Harry’s voice brought her back to the present.

“What? Oh, yeah. I’m fine!” 

Harry glanced back at the shop before casting a wary look towards her. Thankfully, he didn’t press further, and Ginny shoved the thought of the bookstore further from her mind. 

Upon returning to Grimmauld Place, Ginny brought her new broom up to Harry’s room for safekeeping with the promise that they could go to the Burrow later to test it out. When she returned to the sitting room, she noticed a small parcel wrapped in vibrant red and gold paper.

“I thought the broom was my gift.” A hint of accusation escaping her voice.

“It is! This isn’t nearly as extravagant, I promise. Go on and open it.”

She could tell he was nervous, and she wasn’t sure why. She hadn’t seen him like this since before they started dating in her fifth year. Or maybe the first time they all had dinner as a family after her parents found out they were officially together.

As Ginny carefully unwrapped the vibrant paper, she heard Harry muttering under his breath. 

“I hope you like it. Was Luna’s idea really, but it’s helped me a lot this year. Made me feel like I wasn’t bothering you by sending you too many letters this past year, and I could put all the thoughts of training and missions down without having to relive them as much in my head.”

She slid the paper off to reveal two small books. Both had a dark brown leather cover, and Ginny felt herself go into a cold sweat. For Harry’s sake, she opened the top one, and saw his handwriting on the inside. An introductory letter written to her, no doubt as an explanation of his recent rambling.

She tried to be strong for him. Ginny knew deep down it was such a romantic gesture, and one she honestly would have never expected from Harry. He’d never give her a cursed diary. She gave him a weak smile even as she was quaking with terror on the inside. Her hands moved of their own accord, shifting the books around so the second book was now on top. Against her better judgement, Ginny opened the cover to be greeted by a blank page of parchment.

Suddenly, as if the book became scalding hot, Ginny tossed it out of her hands with a yelp. She drew her legs in, hugging them tightly to her chest as she rocked back and forth on the sofa.

“Ginny!” Harry was by her side in an instant. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

Concern etched on his face. He wrapped his arms around her. She focused on the pressure of his touch as she took deep breaths in and out to help calm herself.

“It’s the journal, isn’t it?” the soft tenor of Harry’s voice grounded her, even as he spoke the truths she’d tried to bury deep inside and mend with avoidance. “I’m sorry, Gin. I didn’t know. I wasn’t thinking. I’ll get rid of it.”

Slowly, Ginny opened her eyes, allowing herself to return to her surroundings. Naturally, she was drawn to the object of her disdain. It was silly to think that just because the war was over and her schooling complete that her first year could officially stay in the past. No, avoidance wasn’t going to work anymore. She had to face her demons, and was relieved to know that Harry hadn’t shied away from her reaction.

“No. I want to keep it,” she told him. “It’s time I work through it all. I shouldn’t be afraid of a journal anymore.”

“It’s understandable, though. You lived with a Horcrux. It possessed you.”

Ginny shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Ginny looked up at Harry. It was funny how much a person could grow. Harry Potter, the boy who always interalized his emotions, asking her if she wanted to talk about hers. A slight smile grazed the corners of her mouth.

“I do, but not right now. I think I’d rather go have a fly on that new broom and clear my head.”

“Gin—”

“I promise we’ll talk, Harry. I just have a lot I want to sort through first.”

Harry looked as though he was about to argue, but luckily he relented. “Okay. Your mum will probably be excited for the surprise visit. Go get your broom.”

“Thank you.” Ginny untangled her limbs before pulling Harry into a tight hug and planting a kiss on his lips.

It was finally time to heal.

[mahalidael]

Those Familiar Spirits

(*sprints up to the podium* FIRST FLYNN FANFIC. sort of. if you don’t count the phantomrose96 one, but flynn doesn’t actually appear in that one so make of it what you will)

Danny was two years old when the police came to their house. He must have thought the flashing lights were fireworks; he ran outside alone to look.

He saw uniforms, a funny black and white car, and a great deal of shouting between the grown-ups. It was July, and very muggy. Flies buzzed around the police cars’ lights as Mom and Dad talked very quietly, and Aunt Alicia yelled, and the police said ma’am, please, we’re trying to help, could you just, ma’am. Ma’am.

Danny ran up to get a better look but was promptly swept up by a police officer and carried back inside as he craned his neck to hear what they were saying.

Mom went inside for a minute and made him and Jazz sit on the couch. She told them gravely, “We’re just going to talk to the nice policemen, okay? Don’t go out there.”

Danny huffed. Jazz noticed his irritation and spoke up. “Can we watch TV if we stay inside?”

“Mm-hm,” said Mom, looking out the window at the lights again, already standing up and gravitating towards them.

Jazz reached for the TV remote and hit the power button with an ease that a four year old will only exhibit when provided with sufficiently busy parents. Danny started chewing on his shirt sleeve as images flashed on the screen; they were big kid cartoons that he had no interest in.

“Mom?” said Jazz, peeking up over the back of the couch.

Mom paused in the doorway and addressed one of the policemen before turning back to Jazz. “Just a second — yeah?”

“Where’s Flynn? He likes this show.”

“Um,” said Mom.

She cleared her throat.

“That’s what the policemen are going to help us with. I’m sure he’ll be back before it’s over.”

Their cousin was not back before it was over. He wasn’t back at all, but this, like most everything else from when he was two years old, fell through Danny’s memory like it was water.

...

Jack had been wary of his sister-in-law coming over for a week. He’d also been wary when Maddie described her sister’s marriage as “getting better” and said that she was “calling off the divorce.”

Anyway, within two days of the visit Danny had gotten it into his head that his uncle’s name was Damn-It-Bob.

But the most disconcerting thing was that Jack couldn’t do much about the situation. Alicia was a notoriously private person, and considered the matter of her marriage between herself, Maddie, and Damn-It-Bob. Trying to get close enough to be allowed into that inner circle was an exercise in self-endangerment. He had tried exactly once in college, and the dislocated wrist he’d gotten out of that arm wrestling match nearly cost him his scholarship.

Getting through to Damn-It-Bob was even more frustrating. Alicia, at least, cared about Maddie’s studies. She didn’t understand them, but looked on with interest as Maddie expertly extracted a sample from the latest ghost specimen and held it up to the light for her sister to see.

Damn-It-Bob was worse than an outsider. He was a snob.

Damn-It-Bob looked like if Alicia didn’t already have a pickup truck, he’d drive a Prius, and if he ever tried tikka masala he’d brag about it. Jack had to assume that if Alicia married him, they had to have some kind of common ground, but damn if he couldn’t figure out what it was. And apparently neither could they.

He had a degree in aerospace engineering, which he constantly emphasized was a really useful science. Alicia didn’t even have to work at the logging company if she didn’t want to keep up the family business.

He tried to charm the kids with pictures of the rockets he’d designed. It worked on Danny, which, yeah, okay, he was two years old, but Jazz seemed to pick up his intentions and tried to steer Danny away. Jeez. If Jack left her alone for five minutes, she might be doing calculus when he came back.

And then there was the kid.

He didn’t even notice that he was there until the Walkers were standing in the living room. Jack had walked behind Alicia to hang up their coats and suddenly saw him standing right behind her.

The kid hadn’t said a word in the entire thirty-minute production of his family coming inside — or if he had, he hadn’t been listened to. He had this sort of rust-colored hair that stuck out in all directions, like they tied up a big ponytail on the top of his head and chopped it off instead of giving him a real haircut.

Getting closer,  Jack finally saw why the kid wasn’t talking. He had his nose buried in some book. Oh, so he was one of those, Jack thought. He hadn’t personally been a child who devoured books like a woodchipper, but Vlad had.

In any case, silent reading hour was over. “Hey, bucko!” said Jack. The kid nearly jumped out of his skin, one hand snapping the book shut like a cell phone at the end of a tense call. “Thirsty for knowledge, I see? We’ve got more down in the lab.”

He shrunk away. Alicia noticed and put a hand on his shoulder as she turned her attention away from Maddie. “—so that’s how the union settled. And you two remember Flynn, right?” she said, ruffling the kid’s hair. “We brought him to Danny’s baby shower. He was so shy back then you thought the table was set by a ghost for a solid thirty minutes.”

Maddie’s eyes landed on Flynn and lit up in recognition. “Oh, yeah! I remember. You were at least a head shorter last time we saw you.”

Flynn nodded, staring at his shoes. He hugged the book to his chest like it was a stuffed animal.

Alicia and her husband chuckled politely. “Well, you might have seen him earlier if you didn’t pull out your toys to try and find that ghost,” said her husband, less politely.

“Bob, could you please be civil?” Alicia said under her breath.

“The event was delayed by an hour and we missed our flight over a bunch of—”

“Damn it, Bob—”

“It was a poltergeist, technically,” Maddie laughed nervously, stepping between them, a note of oh lord not this again in her voice.

“Hey, kids, how about we go down to the basement and check out some cool gadgets?” Jack was itching to take Flynn and the children downstairs. He had to ditch the conversation before it went south. “Wanna see what ghost bones look like?”

Flynn actually looked like he was going to respond to that, but Damn-It-Bob cut in. “Flynn probably wouldn’t be interested in theoretical science. He likes studying useful things.”

Yeah, ectoscience was theoretical. You could tell it was bad because it was italicized.

Jack resisted the urge to get passive-aggressive right back. Not in front of the children. “There’s plenty of physical things in the lab that I’m sure Flynn’s gonna love. Every kid loves lasers. Right, Danny?” he queried his son, who was chewing on the leg of the coffee table.

Danny blew a raspberry, which he assumed was a yes. Jack managed to whisk them away before the Walkers started swearing at each other.

He put Jazz and Danny down in the little area of the lab that they’d sectioned off with a foldable plastic dog gate, where Jazz made herself busy putting all the crayons in a straight line before Danny picked them up and started scribbling on the rubber tiled floor.

“So, Flynn! We’ve got some whosits and whatsits to check out. That catches ghosts,” Jack said, pointing at the gadgets skewed across the counter like exploded, “this blasts ghosts, that catches and blasts ghosts, and this is a hot dog maker. What do you wanna see first?”

Flynn shrugged and shuffled an inch backwards.

Okay, this wasn’t going anywhere. Which was odd — they’d opened up the ops center to tourists in the past for alternate revenue, and kids always seemed to be the most excited about the gadgets.

Plan B, he guessed. “What’s that book about, anyway?” he said.

Flynn hesitantly held out the book. Jack took it. It was a big, heavy book, with a hard cover titled The Collected Jack London. Jack went to open it to a random page, but was interrupted when his leafing caused something to fall out from between the pages.

It was a flower. Flynn quickly snatched it off the floor and took his book back, scowling. “It’s sabatia geu — sabatia geutianoides,” he muttered. “It’s one of the rarest flowers in Arkansas, so I can’t pick another one.” He then very carefully flipped to another page in the book, counting the page numbers in whispers until he found the one he was looking for and slipped the flower back inside.

Ah. He could work with that. “Really? Is it the rarest one you’ve got?” he said, posing a challenge.

“Uh, I have Stern’s medlar, but just a leaf I got off the ground. They’re cruh — crit — crit-i-cal-ly endangered.”

“We’ve got some samples of a pretty rare plant ourselves.”

Flynn’s eyes lit up. “Can I see them?”

Jack took Flynn off into a side room. This room was mostly like the last, though being closed to visitors, it was far less organized. He picked Flynn up and lifted him over a heap of spare parts on the floor. “Watch your step.”

A cacophony of containers were heaped on a table in the center of the room. Only a few of them were planter pots that they’d already owned; the rest were old shoeboxes and burned-out pots and pans. They were all filled with soil. Their occupants stretched their purple-black stems towards the overhead sun lamp.

“Rosa sanguinea, also known as the Massachusetts blood blossom,” said Jack. “They were grown in the 1600s — apparently they release an anti-ghost vapor. Unfortunately, we can’t prove whether it works, since we don’t have any intact ghosts to test it on, but they’re delicious.”

“That’s so weird.” Flynn rubbed a black leaf between his fingers, as if he expected the color to come off. “Roses aren’t normally hardy enough to grow inside. And the leaves are naturally black?”

“Yep. Well, maybe. We think they were mutated by long-term exposure to ecto-energy. The biggest patch of them is around Salem, and that place is a hotspot for the natural portals to the dimension ghosts live in,” he said, pointing at the pictures of such that they’d pinned to the corkboard across the room. Jack himself couldn’t believe some of the places that they’d found natural portals in. One of the pictures on the corkboard was of a portal they’d found in a public toilet. “They’re stubborn little buggers, but only in ecto-energized soil — we had to cart the dirt in these pots all the way back from Massachusetts.”

Jack snapped his fingers.

“I’ve got an idea.” He picked up a blood blossom growing in a mason jar and handed it to Flynn. “That’s yours now. Take it back to Arkansas, and it’ll protect you from ghosts.”

“Really?” said Flynn, seemingly more awestruck by the plant itself than any properties it might’ve had. “I can have it?”

“All yours! After all, who knows when you might need it?”

...

Flynn hadn’t wanted to leave Arkansas. He hadn’t wanted to sit in Mom’s funny-smelling truck for ten-odd hours while listening to them argue about money, and ghosts, and damn it Bob, would it kill you to put the toilet paper in the holder the right way just once?

At some of the rest stops, Flynn had stood in the bathroom and stared in the mirror. The door was right behind him and Dad hadn’t left the stall yet. He could just turn around and run into the woods, so Mom and Dad would talk about something other than their horrible marriage.

Because Flynn was ten years old, and the problem that he saw was nothing as complex as an incompatibility of personality, or people growing apart. The problem he saw was that they needed to shut up about the divorce.

That was all he wanted. Something to come in and make them shut up, and make the divorce go away, and put things back where they were supposed to be.

But obviously that’s not how things work. Flynn went outside and picked dandelions that were growing at the edge of the parking lot, and he held them outside the window while they were driving so the seeds would scatter all along the road, and he still ended up visiting Uncle Jack and Aunt Maddie in New York, and Mom and Dad were still fighting over stupid stuff.

Flynn kept trying to put off the tour. He knew that Dad would hate the lab. He stuck with real things, metal and chalk numbers — never mind that one of the major points of contention was the slew of Young Living boxes sitting in their garage. A better statement was that Dad rejected any science he didn’t think he could exploit. Like, son, wildflowers are nice and all, but you know that the real money’s in saffron, right? It sells for twenty-five hundred a pop and it’s not getting any cheaper. Just think about it, son.

“ —converts ectoplasm into a power source.” Aunt Maddie was showing them something embedded in the lab wall. Flynn didn’t really like ectoscience either, but that was mostly because the topic freaked him out. He didn’t like when his friends played that pencil game that let you talk to ghosts, much less when his uncle talked about ripping them apart mmmolecule by mmmolecule.

It just felt kind of rude. They were people, at some point. Everyone knew a dead person.

“Quaint,” said Dad, turning over the hot dog maker he had found on the counter. “Very quaint.” It was his usual word of condemnation. “What’s that hole in the wall?”

It was barely a hole. Not so much because of size, but because it was so badly occupied by a tangle of wire that actually entering it would be impossible. Aunt Maddie said: “Our prototype for a stable portal into the ghost zone.” Dad scoffed, but she smiled tightly and ignored it. “With a reliable and stationary portal, we can collect data faster.”

“And it took you ten years to think of that?”

“Bob, if you don’t want to see it, you can just wait in the guest room,” said Mom, rubbing her temples.

“No, it’s fine, Alicia.” Aunt Maddie sighed. “We’ve been thinking of it. It just took this long to make sure building a portal large enough for a human to enter would be safe. A few years ago, a friend of ours was injured by one that wasn’t any bigger than a car tire — precautions needed to be taken—”

Dad put up his hand in a ‘halt’ gesture. “So, wait. You know that those things can hurt people, and yet you build a big one in your basement, and let your kids in here ?”

“They’re at a safe distance — they’re not even on the same side of the lab,” said Aunt Maddie, eyes narrow.

“Oh, thank goodness you let your toddlers play some paces away from a potential biohazard! ” Dad threw up his hands in fake relief. “I guess that makes it okay, then!”

Aunt Maddie looked like she was gearing up to shout. But she glanced at her kids in their little corner hutch, and seemed to think better of it. “Look, Bob, I — help me understand. Five minutes ago you were calling ghosts ‘fairy tales,’ and now you’re getting on about potentially endangering my children with something that, by your own logic, shouldn’t do anything. What’s your real problem?”

“My ‘real problem’ is that, ghosts or not — and there are certainly not — the fact that someone got hurt at all tells me that you’re tampering with something that you don’t understand—”

“Bob, that’s enough —”

Seed dispersion was one of the fundamental adaptations of the plant world. A seed that dropped straight down from its parent plant was a dead seed. It wouldn’t be able to access sufficient nutrition, water, or light so close.

Mom exiled him and Dad from the lab so she could have a good talk with Aunt Maddie. Uncle Jack awkwardly let them sit on the couch and watch NCIS with him.

“I just think that pseudoscience has no place in being the primary income for a family,” said Dad.

Uncle Jack nodded with a poorly disguised grimace.

“Anyway, have you heard that lavender has anti-autism properties?”

Uncle Jack suddenly excused himself to go to the bathroom. Luckily, Dad seemed to think that the distant laughter was coming from the TV.

Dandelions had a nasty taxonomy. They were wind-dispersed, able to fly up to sixty miles away from their parent plant, where they isolated and readily speciated. This was a large part of the reason why Flynn couldn’t appreciate them without every adult in an eighty-mile radius screaming it’s a weed!

By Sunday, Mom and Dad couldn’t be in the same room together without shouting.

By Wednesday, they wouldn’t speak to each other at all.

By Saturday, they started calling the divorce lawyer again.

That night before they went back to Arkansas, Flynn slept on his aunt and uncle’s couch. He could hear Mom and Dad talking in the guest room above. At indoor voice levels. He didn’t know whether that was good or bad.

The potted blood blossom sat on the end table atop Jack London.

He was woken up at two in the morning when something spritzed him in the face like he was a cat. Flynn squinted in the darkness for what it could be and was immediately spritzed again. He wiped the spray off his face and jolted at the sight of a red smear on his wrist.

A faint hiss was coming from the end table. Flynn watched as the blood blossom emitted a quiet red steam into the air.

He looked around the room nervously. Then he looked out the front window.

At the very end of the street, between the buildings, there was a faint green glow that looked very much like Uncle Jack’s pictures.

Well, of course dandelions were weeds. When something survived too well, humans inevitably got all up in their business, trying to trammel them in. It was a weed because it didn’t cooperate with that.

Flynn didn’t need to pack his bag; he had already loaded everything from the trip back in, but he added some more anyway. He got a knife, a frying pan, and a BIC lighter out of the kitchen. And of course, he took his book and the blood blossom.

Then he walked out the front door for the last time.

It was a muggy July night, and all the lights in the windows were out. The streetlamps pooled in the road. The green light creeped into the alleyway on tiptoe.

Flynn stood before a hole in the world and found himself alone. The hole didn’t appear to properly occupy the alley. It looked like a bad photoshop in person. Just standing a foot away from it, he could feel the static electricity. It felt like it was ruffling his hair in a gesture of approval.

There was a deep hum that might have been the portal, or the flies buzzing around it, or Flynn’s heart getting ready to tear itself from his chest in excitement or fear. He did not know which.

The blood blossom was beginning to overflow its mason jar with red condensation. Flynn poured it out onto the ground. It mixed with the dank puddles in the mundane depressions of the concrete that, absurdly, continued to exist in the presence of something so otherworldly.

Flynn reached through the portal. It felt like cold water — strange, but not icy enough to be unpleasant.

This was what he needed. Something he didn’t know, somewhere his parents couldn’t find him. He could find shelter with those familiar spirits for a little while, and his blood blossom would protect him as his parents looked for him, and then he would come back and they would be so happy and angry to see him that they wouldn’t talk about the divorce again for another year at least, and it would be nice, and it would just be so nice, it would just be so nice when he got back.

And then the light consumed his vision.

...

Twelve years later.

“Jazz? Did you just come through the portal?” Danny squinted at the readout on the specter speeder — the constant green light of the ghost zone made it hard to read at times.

“No?” she said over the speeder’s radio. “I’m still in the lab, why?”

“Because the radar’s picking up signs of life.”

[spicysoftsweet]

Chapter 13

Masterlist 

cw: nsfw, timeskip

 “Mmm.”

A soft moan of pleasure left Kumi’s lips as she continued to roll her hips slowly, a smile on her face as she leaned forward, letting her palms glide up her partner’s chest. His eyes seemed to glaze over with lust still as he looked upon her breasts, and she giggled.

It truly was nice to be with someone who definitely loved you more than you loved them, she thought fleetingly, then attempted to banish the idea from her own mind.

Perhaps it was an unkind thought. She liked the guy she was currently riding enough; Seiichi was nice to look at with heavy-lidded eyes, shaggy dirty blonde hair and an easy going smile, and he had been attentive and caring to her through these last couple of years as they futzed through medical school together.

At graduation just a couple weeks ago, he’d asked her how she felt about the two of them becoming official and she’d avoided the question, and he’d known better not to bring it up again. Kumi considered that he’d perhaps ask again now, now that she was hovering above him and his hands pressed firmly around her waist and she could feel her stomach coil tighter and tighter the longer they moved together.

He didn’t just like her more, he liked her too much for her comfort, she’d realized.

“Kumi, I-” he began, cheeks flushed, but then she’d cut him off abruptly.

“I’m moving back to Tokyo-” she blurted out, right before she felt herself snap and let out a strangled cry as she climaxed and promptly collapsed onto him. She could barely see his look of distress as he took in this sudden news, his cock softening inside her almost immediately, but she could feel the quickening pace of his heart. 

It was an asshole move.

“You’re what?” He asked.

Kumi shifted her legs as he slipped out of her, then rolled over to the side so that she was staring at the ceiling and not at him.

“I’m leaving this weekend,” she repeated, cheeks still warm as she recovered from her orgasm. The pensive, slightly amused look on her face was unchanging, as though she had simply told him about a funny dream she’d had, and Seiichi, who had thought he was making some progress all these years realized all at once that he’d never even cracked the surface of her frozen heart. The idea of him having wasted his time so thoroughly aggravated him suddenly.

“Were you ever going to fucking say anything?” He hissed. “Or did it just hit you spur of the moment to say something like this?”

She turned towards him, noting his now red-faced and angry expression, and placed a hand on his cheek, caressing it softly. There was something akin to pity in her look, but not love.

“I didn’t think it was important,” she replied simply.

She could have left it at that, and Seiichi may have calmed down and even considered bargaining with her - trips back and forth maybe, a vacation here or there, she just had to tell him that she still wanted him, in some capacity, and it would still be alright.

“You are important to me,” he said and attempted to mirror her action, but frowning, Kumi moved backwards and quickly made her way off the bed, redressing herself.

He watched her with anticipation, anxiety choking the words in his throat as she got ready to leave.

After an unnecessarily silent period of time, she turned to him and smiled widely, something unnatural and painful and flat all at once.

“I’m sorry, I don’t feel the same way.”

---

“Why did you decide to become a doctor?”

Kumi hated this question every single time it was asked. The truest answer was when my middle school boyfriend died in a gang fight in front of me, mostly due to self-inflicted injury that could have been preventable if only I had the skills, but it wasn’t exactly the answer that earned her points with anyone. If anything, it only invited more unnecessary questions.

Instead, she offered something generic like, “I’ve always had a passion to take care of others and found that I was interested in the science of the human body and thus pursued my passion in this way.” It was sufficiently true, she figured, even if it wasn’t as exciting a reason.

The interviewer seemed to be impressed enough with the lackluster response, as she expected. Her grades were excellent, after all, so this interview was somewhat of a formality. The only thing that worried her was whether or not she was ready to move back to Tokyo for residency, and decided after very brief contemplation that she was.

It had been so many years since that event had happened, after all. She couldn’t possibly still be hung up on the past.

People died all the time; years of medical school had taught her this. She could prevent some death but not all.

When she’d received the residency position, she was excited as the program was top rated in the country for emergency medicine training, but then recalled that she likely had no one left in Tokyo. Her parents had long since moved to the United States permanently along with her grandmother who had taken her in charge up until she’d started college, and her brother, many years older, lived on the other end of the country. They weren’t close, even if she had wanted to be.

She had no one left. She’d even briefly wondered if she could bring Seiichi with her, and realized it would be too cruel to use him in this way. Seiichi would remain in their city, pursuing specialization in pediatrics, so his goals and her goals wouldn’t be compatible anyway.

Why Tokyo?

Her mother hated even the idea of moving back there, and she’d had to reassure her repeatedly that more than ten years had passed, so there was no way she’d return to that dark place she’d been in the latter fourteenth and entire fifteenth year of her life.

“Are you sure?” Her mother pressed.

“Yes, mom,” she reassured her. “I won’t even be living on the same side of the city.”

And I’m past it, she thought.

With that, she moved to a small apartment in Tokyo alone on a Saturday morning and started her first day of work as a newly minted doctor that very Monday.

The first day was busy and the emergency department was as busy and as hectic as she should have expected being in a major city, but she survived after putting in her hours, clocking out sometime between 13 to 15 hours after the beginning of her shift, exhausted and with no one to go home to. As she sat on the train, trying not to let her tired eyes glaze over, she downloaded a dating app, swiped left and right on a couple of strange faces then sighed loudly.

It was a dumb idea to meet men if she was going to have no one to call in case of an emergency.

Kumi made it to her new home, hopping into the shower, and changing into soft shorts and a pajama shirt immediately before preparing some instant noodles for dinner. She made a mental note to buy some real groceries sometime this weekend. She then quickly texted a message to her parents to tell them her first day had gone well.

She would be fine.

As she ate her meal in silence, her mind flitted to Kaksi for a moment. She wondered how she was doing. Should she contact her? They hadn’t spoken in over a decade. Did she miss her? Was she even still in this city?

She finished her meal and shook off the thought of digging up past relationships. She wouldn’t want to burrow too deeply and be hurt by what she found.

---

Kaksi rested the ends of her chopsticks on the dark blue and white hashioki in front of her. Then her brown eyes wandered outside, enjoying Tokyo’s skyline through the large glass windows of the private room she shared with her friend. Blue eyes studied her features quietly, while slender fingers brought the white chopsticks to rosy lips.

“Did you not like the food?”

“Oh, I did,” Kaksi replied in a soft voice. “I’m just not very hungry.”

Senju didn’t say anything for a moment. By now she had memorised all of Kaksi’s habits, which made it usually easy for her to pick up on her emotions and thoughts.

“Are you nervous?” she asked before taking a sip of her drink.

Kaksi smiled.

“I guess I am.”

Was this moment shared together their goodbye? As much as Senju preferred not to dwell on the future, she couldn’t ignore the inevitable change that Kazutora’s return would bring into her life. She had made a mistake, growing too comfortable treating Kaksi like she was hers when she was someone else’s all along.

Senju had never met Manjiro Sano despite the similar lifestyle they shared but back when Kaksi would still talk about him, she compared them a lot. Brahman’s leader used to believe she was nothing like him, the idea of ever leaving Kaksi behind unthinkable to her but now she wondered if the reason behind their fall out wasn’t just Mikey trying to spare his own feelings, something Senju failed to do by falling for her best friend.

She had been foolish to think Kaksi would fail to keep her promise. While they had shared more kisses that they could both count and uncovered the secrets to each other’s body in between almost forbidden confessions, Senju still wasn’t the one Kaksi wished to have by her side, or maybe she did. It had felt like she did so many times and it still felt that way as they walked out of the expensive restaurant too close to each other.

Kaksi’s hands were always so cold but Senju liked to warm them up. Tonight however the brunette wouldn’t let her like she had been doing for the past months. Senju was being selfish again, she knew. Kaksi couldn’t say no, not to her, not when she would give her those pleading blue eyes or slide her hand around her waist.

“Sen,” she said, irritated and distancing herself from her best friend.

But this time she had to say no.

“I don’t think I can do it, Kaksi.”

Kazutora would be out of jail in a few days and Kaksi had already planned out a future for them, one that she had desired ever since they had promised to never leave each other’s side back when they were children. It was unfair that she couldn’t preserve what she had built for the past years but if it wasn’t her then who would watch out for Kazutora? There was an obligation Kaksi felt to him, one that she felt like she could never get rid of but this was also what she wanted.

“I don’t think he would be happy in Tokyo,” she told her.

Senju rolled her eyes at her answer. Why was it that Kaksi always had to make her life revolve around him?

“Aren’t you happy in Tokyo?” she asked, voice louder as her irritation grew.

“I need a change of air.”

“Do you need a change of air or do you think Kazutora needs one?” Senju replied. “Because those are two very different things.”

“I think we do.”

Senju stayed quiet for a moment. She wondered if Kaksi could see that what she felt was beyond jealousy. If Kaksi didn’t want to stay by her side that was fine by her, as painful as it was but she wished her best friend would choose herself instead of someone else sometimes.

“You know, you can’t make decisions for others, Kaksi,” Senju reminded her. “You can only make decisions for yourself.”

Kaksi chuckled but it was irritation that she felt.

“This is not how I want things to end between us before I leave for Osaka,” Kaksi told her.

Then you could just stay, at least.

“I don’t think there is any other way for it to end,” Senju admitted, her blue eyes not hiding a sadness she had been containing for too long.

Kaksi fell silent, not sure about what she could say if this was really how they were meant to say goodbye to each other. Senju took a deep breath.

“I hope Kazutora and you enjoy Osaka,” she said with a genuine smile, contrasting with the disappointment and sadness she felt moments before.

But she meant those words. Maybe she was the one who didn’t get it, maybe this was what Kazutora desired and maybe this was something only Kaksi could offer and wanted to offer. There was nothing rational about feelings after all but even after experiencing all of those emotions, Senju couldn’t help thinking only a bit of madness could explain Kaksi’s behaviour sometimes.

If she did get it though. Then there was only one thing she needed Kaksi to remember even though she was choosing Kazutora right now and had planned to always do so.

“But if you don’t then come back to me in Tokyo.”

Kaksi’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of Senju’s smile. She couldn’t smile back but she nodded as she watched her walk away, in a direction she wouldn’t follow this time.

---

“You said you grew up in the city, right?” The girl situated beside Kumi asked, turning slightly in the booth of the bar. The man sitting directly across from her, who from the beginning of the gaokon had seemed to have set his sights on her, perked his ears up.

“I thought you were foreign!” he asked, and she flashed her most charming smile in response despite mild irritation, accepting a drink from her coworker as she spoke.

“Nope, I’ve been here since early childhood. Briefly moved just outside Kyoto in my teen years, but I guess technically Tokyo is my home,” she explained.

The young man before her nodded, leaning just close enough that she began to grow uncomfortable. She couldn’t tell if the man’s interest was related to an expectation that she’d put out more readily than the other women on this date, and just because of that, she was determined not to spend the night with him. Instead, she focused her attention on the girl behind her who was also desperately trying to avoid eye contact with another guy who had latched onto her.

This group blind date was a bust.

Kumi didn’t feel too bad about it, however. She would appreciate anything that allowed her not to think about work. An adolescent boy had come in earlier in the day with a stab wound, and despite the fact that this was not the first time she’d seen injured children or the sequela of gang violence, perhaps the fact that she was back in this city made it such that the event had unearthed some trauma. She found that her hands shook as she stabilized the teen and for a moment, she thought she had even seen a flash of Baji in that young boy and temporarily forgot how to breathe.

That couldn’t happen again.

She should be over it. She had to be.

“Would you like to meet again?” The man whose name she’d long since forgotten - Tadashi? Satoshi? - asked her at the close of the evening, when she’d made it sufficiently clear that she was just interested in going home.

She should have said no, but instead she politely exchanged phone numbers with him, fully intending to block him in three to five days.

But who knew when she’d be lonely again?

---

A week later, Kumi could get over the haunting visage of the young boy who looked everything and nothing like Baji, but she couldn’t get over the sudden talk of gang activity on the news she let play in the background while she reviewed medical publications.

A horrific truck accident, involving a young woman about her age, had taken the news by storm. Listening closer, she heard a name that sounded familiar but not recognizable.

Hinata Tachibana.

It felt like a name she should remember, but she figured they might have interacted before she had relocated for high school, and most of the things and people from before then were essentially blocked out of her memory.

But not the name Toman.

Kumi perked up, sipping onto her tea and folding her legs beneath her as she sat on the couch, finally setting her paper aside, now that the television had caught her interest. There were no real suspects, but the death was thought to be related to this group, as were a series of other random execution-like killings. Kumi took a look at the still image of the young woman’s face, eyes wide, noting that she definitely looked familiar to her, like she’d seen her at least once or twice a long time ago. She couldn’t imagine her having done anything wrong or any act that would anger someone enough to order her death.

Toman doesn’t kill. Toman doesn’t do real crime, she thought.

But times had changed, and maybe they did do real crime now. She wondered briefly if Mitsuya was still part of Toman. What had become of Mikey and Draken, and the rest?

Did Kaksi know what Toman had become over the years?

Kumi unconsciously reached for her phone beside her to call, then caught herself. She hesitated for a moment, letting the sudden wash of anxiety run through her, then shut off the television instead and returned to her reading.

Let sleeping dogs lie, she thought, and she spent the rest of her night, minding her own business, minding her future.

---

She wouldn’t have broken if not for her dream that night.

“Bambi, you don’t ever stop crying, do you?”

Kumi’s eyes jolted open at the sound of that voice, the mischievous laugh she remembered from her childhood, even if it was richer, an evolved version. It couldn’t be, could it?

But she was no longer in her room. Instead, she was somewhere warm and blindingly bright, where her eyes could barely adjust, and her body felt… lighter?

She rose to a sitting position, shielding her watering eyes from the light, only to be startled by a warm hand taking hers, interlacing their fingers.

“Kumi-chan, look.”

Her eyes opened again, and this time, rather than light unfocusing her, there was a man before her, with a face that was foreign yet oh-so-familiar, crouched down on one knee and still holding her hand gently.

Fangs grinned back at her, and she gasped.

“K-Kei..?”

Her voice came out no more than a squeak and suddenly in her heart she was fourteen again, and her lip started to quiver as she repeated his name again.

What did this mean? To be looking at him again, a him that was no longer dead just days before he turned fifteen, whose dark, wavy locks were even longer and whose face had aged just as much as hers, but with the same fox-like brown eyes that she’d fallen in love with a decade ago as part of a sharper angled, handsome face?

She repeated his name yet again, heart thumping and tears welling up in her eyes, and he cupped her face in her hands, using his thumbs to wipe away her tears.

He frowned.

“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” he said, a pensive look on his face. He sighed, and Kumi felt his lips press onto her forehead. Warm, soft lips that felt every bit as real as she did, and it only made her hurt more.

She was hallucinating. All of this was impossible, whatever this was.

So why did it feel so real?

“I miss you so much,” she choked out.

A decade had passed, and here she was. Conjuring up an image of Baji as he could have been if he had lived, something that may not be real. She wasn’t even sure he’d look like this - might he have cut his hair, or gotten his teeth fixed? How did she know what his voice would settle to be like in adulthood, and if this soothing baritone in her ears was anything close? How did she know he would grow to this height he now stood at, towering over her once he’d pulled her to her feet and pressed her head against his chest? How did she know what his arms would feel like wrapped around her? Would she actually have felt this safe and warm?

Would he have still cared for her, had he lived?

“I miss you too.”

She sobbed harder.

“How can you miss me when you’re dead?”

He paused, and let a hand stroke through her hair.

“Pretend.”

Almost shocked, she pulled back and looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He smiled sadly at her and shrugged.

“Pretend I’m still here with you. I’ll stay with you till morning comes,” he promised. "I can promise you at least this much.”

There’s a point where it’s easier to live in the delusion, and it was at this point, where Baji leaned in to kiss her, then embrace her in a way they never could in life. They drank deeply of each other throughout the night, connecting with each other physically and emotionally, and the young woman hoped that the cursed morning would never come, where she’d have to give up on this dream or vision or delusion or whatever the fuck it was, and return to reality.

But alas the dead cannot commune with the living forever.

Kumi woke up in a cold bed where Baji was no longer inside her or beside her or with her, and there was nothing that remained but messy bed sheets, dampness between her legs and unrelenting, fresh pain in her heart.

She brought her knees to her chest, and felt new anguish for the first time in years. Birds chirped outside her window to welcome the dawn and light seeped through her window, and on this cool Saturday morning, she had regressed to the same child curled up in blankets, encountering heartbreak for the first time.

Why?

Why couldn’t she get past this?

Her father had said it first. It’s just a boy.

And here she was, a grown woman, who no longer could love, hanging on desperately to a ghost.

Kumi’s phone alarm went off suddenly - she’d forgotten to turn it off - and she reached for her phone, her whole body shaking like a leaf. She was pathetic, despite the fact that she so desperately wanted to be strong.

And thus, the moment she quieted the alarm, she dialed the only person who could understand the pain she felt. Even if it was selfish. Even if it had been a decade.

She didn’t expect her to pick up, but she did.

“Kumi?”

The familiar sound of Kaksi’s voice made her want to weep in a different way. Relief rushing over a wave.

She sucked air into her lungs and smiled, warm, thankful tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Kaksi, I missed you so much.”

[theolsentimes]

Ashley Olsen Spills Her Secrets

The personal-style icon and force behind two thriving fashion lines gives us a peek into her closet, and her life.

Written by Lucy Kaylin (Marie Claire, 2009)

VIEW GALLERY

There's something genius about seeing the chicest girl in New York all dolled up in tacky cowgirl fringe. I'm sitting with Ashley Olsen at a table in her Greenwich Village town house, looking through a scrapbook—compiled by her great-grandmother—that pretty much tells the story of her and Mary-Kate's blistering rise. The pages are filled with gently yellowed clippings from local newspapers chronicling their toddlerhood on the sitcom Full House through their early years as a two-headed pop-culture juggernaut: the Olsen twins on the publicity circuit in genie costumes; in fairy costumes; in terrycloth robes; in penguin suits; in trenchcoats; in mini-mogul drag; in, yes, cowgirl fringe ... "I look back at the things that we did and the clothes that we wore, and I think, Wow, we really were troupers," says Ashley—although, gazing at some hideous flowered overalls she was put in at age 6 or 7, she has to admit, "I remember really loving those." What comes across in the photos is the degree to which the girls' lives were engineered. "It was almost like I was in the army," Ashley says. "School, work, homework, fly to New York, get in at 2 in the morning, do a morning show at 5 a.m., then another one at 7, then a radio interview at 10, you know?" Cutesy, coordinated outfits were just part of the drill. The pressure was intense and the scrutiny even more so — "That's why I look at Britney, and I'm surprised I didn't end up like her."

To see Ashley now, it's difficult to fathom that part of her life. At 23, she is very much the master of her own fate, and an icon of defiant personal style. Today she's wearing beige corduroys made exponentially cooler by the fact that she's ripped them up the side seams from hem to shin—and the fact that she's owned them since she was about 15. (Understand: She never, ever throws out clothes. The genie and penguin costumes? All stashed in storage units in L.A. warehouses.) She's paired the beige cords with a signature piece from her and Mary-Kate's fashion line The Row—a supersoft white T-shirt with an artfully stretched-out neck, the short sleeves of which she likes pushing up over her shoulders. Add black flats without socks, tuck the fine blonde hair up under a floppy skateboarder's cap, and the look—at least on her—is just hip and effortless and right. "I think you're either born with a sense of style or you're not," Ashley says in her small, soft voice, giving her knuckles a loud crack. "Either you care or you don't. And we"—she and Mary-Kate—"love fashion. When we were going to NYU, I think that was the first time we were aware of the power of our personal style. Not the power of it, but the result of it. Between the big sunglasses and the Starbucks cup and the big sweaters, the hobo-chic thing, we were more shocked than anything"—by the endless commentary and tabloid coverage. "I get it; we were fortunate enough to have really nice clothes, and we put them together in this raggedy way. My mom wears glasses this big"—she mimes massive goggles—"from the '70s, and you wonder where we got it from?" She laughs. "The dark eyeliner, the scarf around the head—it's just so interesting and natural." Her family, she says, was "very bohemian." "Mary-Kate and I are very aware of trends and style, but at the end of the day, we don't even think twice about it. It's just, What do I feel like wearing today, and how do I want to put it together?" To some extent, Ashley buys the theory that years of being manhandled and styled bred an intense desire in both girls to dress themselves. Eventually, that meant cutting down and altering designer pieces to suit their petite frames—a habit that persists rather feverishly to this day. "The amount of beautiful things we've ruined—not having the patience for a tailor and cutting everything ourselves … My sister once took an Alaïa dress of mine and just cut the whole thing, and then she was like, 'I cut it too short.'" Ashley has to laugh. "Mary-Kate and I don't think about fashion as these clean, beautiful objects. We just kind of wear it and live in it"—and make it their own. When she bought the Daytona watch that's currently on her wrist, she promptly changed the white face to black and the gold links to a crocodile band. In other words, fashion is a way the otherwise elusive Olsens express themselves—most notably through two clothing lines that are somehow thriving despite the cataclysmic retail climate. Ashley and Mary-Kate collaborate closely on Elizabeth and James (named for their siblings), a line that commingles softness and toughness—for instance, slouchy boyfriend jackets and shirts with a flirty ruffle. The idea is to create "a tug-of-war in something with a masculine spirit and a feminine attitude," says Neiman Marcus Fashion Director Ken Downing. "The girls keep nailing it season after season after season. And they single-handedly brought the legging back into fashion." While Mary-Kate tends to conjure the overriding concepts—playing with movie references from Oliver Twist to Hook for the fall '09 collection—Ashley hones in on zippers and buttons and fit. "Nothing gets by them," says their Elizabeth and James partner, Jane Siskin. The Row, meanwhile, speaks more to their desire for a closetful of what Ashley calls "high-end basics": the perfect blazer, the just-so T-shirt, the cashmere sweater that sort of melts in your hands—with intriguing twists like a seam running up the back. "I just really wanted to make beautiful things," she says. "An educated garment." According to Debi Greenburg, owner of Louis Boston, "Because Ashley's a bit of a type A personality, there's perfection in the way the clothes fit, the way they're cut, that translates on the body beautifully. The Row has become one of my stellar collections here." Ashley leads me through a few rooms of her town house, haphazardly decorated in battered leather chairs with arms worn down to the stuffing; on the walls are a rare Basquiat self-portrait and three works by Keith Haring that she got at a pawnshop for $30 apiece. In the corner is a drum kit from the Wii game Rock Band, Ashley's new obsession (she plays it at least two hours a night). "I swear to you, it's brought out this whole new thing in me," she says. "I can be a very serious person, and I take my job very seriously, but at the end of the day, I need a break." Her boyfriend, The Hangover's Justin Bartha, also helps in that area. He just called from a press junket in Europe; Ashley signed off with, "Keep your phone by the bed" and "I love you." To say the least, it's been a relief for this pillar of self-sufficiency to have someone she can count on, who puts her ambitions in perspective. "It's more important than anything else in the world," Ashley says.