#and she's about three quarters of the one and a half people in this town who like me even a little bit

[alg3a]

muffins

viktor x f! reader

3.8k, MDNI, no use of (y/n)

description: Viktor had been so kind as to agree to help you out with your midterm prep, so you thought baking him muffins would be a great way to repay him. However, an accidental secret ingredient gets in the way of studying.

warnings: Age gap, roomie smut, more story than smut, p in v, sex pollen/serum (with pretty explicit consent), overall jolly good fun, no harm no foul, yippee!

a/n: inspired by @the-hidden-pages story, Human Testing because it’s one of the first viktor x reader fics i ever read and i STRONGLY recommend!

Any student should feel lucky to have the smartest men at the academy as their roommates. Being an undergraduate biochem student who had to work to pay her own tuition, going to lecture wasn’t always an option. That’s when you’d bake a tray of brownies or do some extra dishes and call in a favor from one of your roomies.

It happened all the time, which made you incredibly thankful to have one people-pleaser in the apartment. Jayce was always willing to put aside whatever he was doing and help you out on your Arcane Studies homework or your Bioengineering project. Last semester, finals week consisted of the two of you sitting criss-cross applesauce on the rug of the living room, paper scattered all over the floor as you tried to decipher the grading scale of your Organic Chemistry class to see what the lowest grade on the test you could get was and still wind up with a passing grade (something Jayce had done plenty of times in his undergrad years).

Viktor, on the other hand, had gotten somewhat tired of your constant requests for him to backtrack and dive into knowledge he hadn’t tapped for years now. He was never particularly rude about it, but you were very perceptive. When you asked him to repeat an explanation once or twice, you noticed the growing exhaustion on his face that bordered frustration and you stopped asking for his help going forward. It wasn’t to his own fault, you could be pretty needy sometimes, so more often than not, you just asked Jayce.

Only, Jayce was out of town for a Hextech press conference this weekend, the weekend before you had your Arcane Studies midterm. In a heartbreaking display, he had apologized profusely for not being able to help, inches away from getting on his knees and begging for forgiveness. You assured him none of that was necessary, and that you’d just stay up studying in the library or even reach out to your TA (who you’d never even spoken to before in class or outside of it, and who you were certain would be less helpful than Jayce).

To remedy your situation–even though you pinkie promised him you didn’t need him to–he took it upon himself to ask Viktor to help you cram study on Sunday night, the night before your midterm. While Jayce asked, you did your best to listen from your bedroom, the next room over. You heard some grumbling from Viktor and a muffled, yet compelling “She’s our roommate and she bakes us nice things” from Jayce.

Apparently that last bit must have been very rousing, because shortly after, Jayce was at your door telling you that Viktor agreed to a maximum of three hours of cramming that would begin no earlier than eight at night.

You worked for all of Saturday’s daylight hours, and then finalized your experimental serum for your Advanced Biochemistry project. For the biochem class, you’d been studying methods of enhancing senses for the first half of the quarter and your midterm project involved making a serum that could temporarily improve the performance of one human sense. Around three weeks ago, you and your classmates drew topics from a hat and your fingers emerged with “arousal” on a piece of paper. Needless to say, you were concerned. You thought the serum project would be fairly straightforward, and had already brainstormed ideas for vision enhancing serums or hearing aid serums, but arousal? You had to think out of the box for that one.

When you finished up your last touches to the serum, you were left with enough time at night to get ingredients to bake Viktor some muffins as a sign of your gratitude. You got enough stuff for twice as much as you would’ve made for Jayce and actually stuck to the recipe this time. Keeping Viktor happy was a very delicate ecosystem and there could be no tampering.

It wasn’t that he was a grump or even that he hated you, he was just too busy to want to help and too intelligent to want to backtrack. Once he had even looked at what you were studying and said, “I’d have to go too far back to help you.” That was inspiring.

You poured the contents of your tote bag on the counter.

On your better days, you and Viktor actually got along quite well. Those were the rare days when Viktor got more than three hours of sleep and ate a full meal before two pm. In his best conditions, the two of you were good friends.

The best days were when he and Jayce both come home early enough for you to make them a home cooked meal. Then you’d all curl up on the couch and watch a movie. The last time that happened, Jayce picked some superhero movie you’d never heard of and you and Viktor both fell asleep. You woke up the next morning asleep on Viktor’s chest with four blankets piled on top of you both. Jayce said he knew both of you ran cold, so he took the blankets from your beds. You and Viktor never talked about that night.

The exhaustion of your stressful Saturday had leaked into your studying Sunday, and in a tired stupor, you whisked together all the ingredients for the muffins and poured them haphazardly into the mold. They might not look pretty, but at least they’d taste good.

You pulled the freshly baked muffins from the oven and rested them on the stovetop. The sweet aroma of warm blueberry filled the apartment. It must have roused Viktor from whatever he was working on in his room, because he emerged a full quarter of an hour earlier than your agreed upon study time.

“Hey,” you said. “I made you some muffins as a thank you. They’re still hot, though, I wasn’t expecting you for another fifteen minutes.”

“That’s fine,” he said, setting himself at the kitchen table and sipping from a cup of coffee that had been there since Jayce was still in town. “Would you like to begin now?”

You grab all your study guides and homework assignments and your assortment of chicken scratch notes and slide them over to him on the table.

“Are your midterms cumulative?” He asked, finishing the remnants of his cold coffee.

“No,” you answered. Thank God. If you had to remember everything that was in the last midterm you’d be losing your mind right about now. “Everything past Arcane History will be on the test.”

“Mm. I see.”

He scans your notes for another five minutes.

“I’ll quiz you,” he decided, standing up to check on the temperature of the cooling muffins on the stovetop.

“Uh, okay.” You didn’t typically study by being quizzed, especially when you hardly went to lecture and didn’t even know most of the material. But you didn’t want to risk arguing with Viktor and have him decide to take his muffin to-go.

“Tell me why the Arcane can manifest in such unpredictable manners?”

“Because…” you started to think that maybe going to your TA wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Your TA was just a random graduate student. The roommate that was helping you study now was one of the inventors of Hextech, the researcher responsible for some of the greatest advancements in Piltover’s modern understanding of the Arcane. “...it reflects the intentions of the user.”

“Correct,” he says, affording you a rare Viktor smile. “Would you like a muffin?”

You had intended for the muffins to be entirely Viktor’s, but you hadn’t eaten all day and gods, they smelled good. Plus, it was like a reward for getting an answer right.

“Sure, thanks.”

You watch as Viktor plucks two muffins from the tin and comes back to seat himself at the table. He hands one to you and sorts through the papers you’ve scattered on the desk as he brings a small chunk to his mouth. You do the same.

Something tastes slightly off, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. It’s possible the ratio is off, and in your tired state you added too little vanilla extract or too much vegetable oil. Regardless, they’re not bad at all.

“Your notes are a little bit difficult to–” Viktor stops before finishing his sentence. He pulls out a sheet of paper from the pile and reads it, his eyes widening a bit as he does.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“These notes are from your biochem class,” he says, his eyes flickering up to meet yours for just a few seconds over the piece of paper. “This is an interesting assignment…”

“Oh,” you feel your cheeks growing hot. “Sorry, that’s not supposed to be in there.”

You reach out to take the paper from him, but he pulls it back as you do. He’s still reading it. You’d really like him to stop reading about your own aphrodisiac serum, but your embarrassment is a bit unwarranted. After all, you didn’t make the serum because you wanted it, you made it because it was a graded assignment. Nothing more. So what if you did eventually garner interest in the topic. So much interest, in fact, that you did extensive research into the properties your serum could afford and spent long hours in your lab experimenting with it. Shamefully, yes, you had tried some of it. Mainly to test its efficiency but also out of plain curiosity. You had determined that it was safe, most importantly, but you’d also learned that it tasted horrible. To counter that, you’d added some–

“Oh fuck!” You shout as you scoot your chair so far back so quickly that it topples over. You stumble over your bag on the floor as you sprint to the kitchen.

“Is something wrong?” Viktor asks from his seated position.

“Don’t eat the muffin!” You exclaim as you run to the counter space next to the stove, your heart pounding.

You confirm your worst fear. The bottle of vanilla extract you picked up from the supermarket sits on the counter, the protective seal still intact. Your arousal serum, however, is halfway empty a few inches beside the extract.

You turn around slowly to face Viktor.

“It’s a bit late for that,” Viktor says, holding up the half of his muffin that remains. “Did something happen?”

You eye your own muffin on the table, half eaten as well.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you scrambled back toward the table where Viktor sat, the serum held tight by your hand. “You’re not allergic to anything, are you?”

“No,” Viktor says, eyeing you like you’re crazy.

Come on, just get it out already. You have to tell him, it would be morally bankrupt not to.

“I accidentally drugged you.”

Okay, maybe not like that.

Viktor just stared at you, his expression unchanged. You sort of just wished he would yell at you so that you could get the encounter over with, but no such luck. He just sat, unphased, until he picked up the notes he was looking at earlier.

“With this?” He asks. Even his voice is still even. You knew that if the roles had been reversed you would be fracking out, absolutely bouncing off the walls.

“Yes, but don’t worry I’ve done lots of research on this serum,” you say, taking the notes from Viktor and looking them over. You read the list two or three times, scanning for any sort of antidote for ingestion. You saw none. “How could I have not included an antidote?” You mutter, mentally beating yourself up.

“It’s okay,” Viktor said and you couldn’t even bring yourself to look up at him from your notes. “It is safe, yes? It won’t kill us?”

“No, it won’t, but it’s a powerful aphrodisiac and I added half the serum to those muffins. If my math is right, you’re taking three times the recommended dosage.”

“But I only ate half the muffin,” Viktor counters. Again, you’re shocked by how unphased he is.

“Okay, then one and a half times the dosage,” you shrug off his comment as you look for anything in your notes that might reveal a way to undo this mess.

“I assume this means you no longer wish to study?” Viktor says.

“How are you so calm about this?” You finally burst out, slamming the paper down on the table to look at him.

Big mistake.

Once you see him, you become lightheaded and your knees buckle beneath you. You have to sit down to stop yourself from falling over.

“Are you alright?” Viktor asks.

“I-I’m fine,” you shake your head in an attempt to get some blood flowing to your brain. No luck.

“Since you’re obviously worked up about this, why don’t you tell me how it works and then we can go from there.”

“It’s a fast acting stimulant,” you say, burying your face in your hands. “The chemistry is irrelevant since I have no goddamn cure for it, but it works the same as any other aphrodisiac. It makes you susceptible to arousal and heightens it by three times at a normal dosage, and in our case… nearly five times.”

“Intriguing,” he says, eyeing the muffin that lays neglected on the table. “Such a strange class project. Aren’t there moral quandaries to be had for such a substance?”

“Yes of course there are, which is why I made it so that it only takes effect if there’s already a degree of attraction in place–”

You shouldn’t have said anything. Especially not when you’re so clearly affected by it in the presence of Viktor. Way to sell yourself out.

“So you’re saying…”

You groan out in frustration, but once you look at Viktor you’re reminded of why you had your face buried in your hands. Somehow every feature of his seems five times more beautiful than you normally regarded them. His perfectly angular nose, his narrowed amber eyes, his messy hair which fell in ways you could never recreate on paper…

“I have a feeling you know exactly what I’m saying.” You squeezed your eyes shut. If you couldn’t see him, he couldn’t torture you.

Or so you thought.

A tantalizing graze of his hand on yours shot shivers down your spine. You pulled away so fast that a few of the papers on the desk shifted from the shear force of the wind.

“Don’t do that,” you seethed, sucked your teeth as you pressed your eyes shut so hard that you saw stars.

“Because…it affects you?” His voice was raspy and slow, or maybe that’s just what the serum was making you hear. Every bit of what he was doing seemed five times as attractive as it would normally be.

You’d done such a good job at hiding your feelings for Viktor for almost a year now. Being roommates with someone you found incredibly attractive was no easy task. And now all of your efforts were thrown out the window because of a stupid baking mishap.

“You’re being cruel,” you furrow your eyebrows as you speak, your voice coming out whinier than you would’ve liked.

“I’m sorry,” he stifles a laugh. “Would you open your eyes?”

“I can’t,” you groan, shoving your hands against your face again. “It’s best if I just go to my room and wait it out. Thank you for trying to study with me but I’m just gonna have to accept a shitty grade tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, his fingers wrapping around your wrists and pulling them down from your face so that you had to look at him. “It’s been a long time since I’ve taken biochemistry, and I certainly haven’t studied aphrodisiacs, but the effects should go away after the serum is put to use, correct?”

You thought back to your experimentation phase. All the nights you spent alone in your lab trying out the efficacy of the serum resulted in the effects dissipating once climax was reached. It had certainly been the least orthodox experimentation phase you’d ever undergone.

“Yes, that’s correct,” you say reluctantly. It takes every ounce of strength you have not to let your eyes explore Viktor’s face, then his long, narrow neck protruding his sweater, his Adam’s apple bobbing with a deep breath, then the sharp clavicle poking from–

Get yourself together.

“If you’re willing to retake the class–a class you should easily pass, given your access to the two most prevalent scientists in the field–then by all means, go to your room.” Viktor pulls his hands away from you, then picks up the muffin, peeling off the paper from the bottom. He picks off a piece and drops it onto his tongue.

“What are you doing? You’re just going to make it worse!”

He smirks at you, then sets the muffin back down. “It’s a very good muffin. You’re an excellent baker.”

Fuck.

“You’re playing with me,” you shake your head in disbelief.

“No, dearest, I am not playing with you,” he says, standing up from his chair, then moving toward you tantalizingly slow. He takes a seat on the table in front of you, then crosses his hands on his lap. “You’re smart enough to recognize the alternative I am offering to you.”

Your heart stops. You look at his half eaten muffin, although more than half is gone now with the addition of that last bite.

“You…” The idea is almost impossible for you to grasp, let alone put into words. “You want to expedite the process?”

“That’s certainly one way of putting it,” Viktor laughs. He reaches for a strand of your distressed hair and pushes it behind your ear.

“But you’re not even attracted to me!”

“What makes you think that?” Viktor says, retracting his hand, only to place it over yours on the desk.

“Because if you were, you’d be much more affected right now. I mean, look at me!” You gesture to yourself with your free hand. “I’m a mess! I’m on the brink of breaking out in a sweat and my hands are clammy and you’re just sitting there!”

Viktor laughs to himself as if he’s in on some kind of inside joke that you know nothing about.

“I’ve had lots of practice in concealing my excitement around you,” he finally says, slowly, seductively, the words dripping from his chin as his cold eyes bore into you.

“What?”

You know what he said. In fact, you understand it perfectly, but you can’t be sure it actually came from his mouth because it seems so perfectly unreal. So dream-like, so idealistic, so fantastical.

“You’ve done a good enough job at hiding your attraction, too,” Viktor says. “I wouldn’t have known if it weren’t for tonight’s incident. Which is exactly why I’ve felt the need to hide my own.”

“You’ve liked me?”

You still can’t wrap your head around the idea.

“I’ve admired you,” he smiles, rubbing circles on the back of your hand, reminding you just how potent your little sex serum really is.

In fact, it’s so powerful that you hardly have to put any thought into leaping up from your chair and pushing your lips against his. Before you can third guess his affection, his hands are interlaced with your hair, pushing you deeper into his lips as his tongue begs to be let into your needy mouth.

Now it was clear to see how much the serum had actually affected him. In mere seconds, his hands grabbed at your thighs and pulled you up onto the table to straddle him with strength you didn’t even know he possessed. His breathy little moans sent you further into madness and you yanked his sweater off of his head, forcing your mouth off of his for just a few seconds, but once that sweater was off, your lips clung together like magnets.

Deft fingers unbuttoned your long sleeve shirt and he pulled it off your arms so quickly that you worried for a second that he might have ripped it. But you didn't care. You couldn’t possibly be concerned with a silly shirt when Viktor was beneath you on the kitchen table like a meal.

The serum didn’t exactly allow either of your minds to comprehend much foreplay. You fiddled with Viktor’s belt and he pushed your skirt up to your waist. Once both of you were exposed, he didn’t waste any time positioning you above his cock.

“So wet for me,” Viktor whined against your bare chest. “Is that the serum’s doing or is it mine?”

“Yours,” you whimper as Viktor slides his tip beneath your folds. “If it were anyone else in the room with me when I took the serum, I’d be unaffected.”

“I’m flattered,” he smiles cruelly as he thrusts up into you.

“Oh fuck,” you whine as your rest your heavy head on Viktor’s shoulder.

He brings his hands to your waist and guides you up and down as his hips meet your core in long, languid thrusts. The serum sets every single nerve on fire, making it seem as if each of his thrusts has the impact of twenty.

You moan muffled strangulations of his name into his neck, which only urges him to persist with his cruel thrusts. The sound of your cunt being abused fills the kitchen and you’re wildly thankful that Jayce is out of town.

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” Viktor pants. “You have no idea.”

You really did have no idea. He hid it so well. You silently thanked whatever force had caused you to accidentally throw the serum into the muffin mix.

“So have I,” you whined against his skin. “Fuck…don’t stop…”

Each thrust is punctuated by the creaks of the sturdy kitchen table below you. His motions become quicker, shakier, and more intense and you can tell he’s reaching the end along with you. Your legs begin to shake and you feel that familiar tickling sensation in your core that the serum does a beautiful job at emulating.

“Viktor, I’m close, I’m so fucking close,” you moan as you lift your head from the crook of his neck. You bring your lips to his and he delivers his final thrusts. As he fills you, your moans echo on each other’s lips, a feeling you never thought you’d experience with your own brilliant roommate.

Your breathing steadies and Viktor wraps his arms around you, bringing you close to him as he tries to collect himself as well.

“You…” Viktor pants, “are forbidden from using that kitchen ever again.”

You laugh as you bring yourself off of him, pressing a kiss to his lips as you collect yourself. “That sounds fair to me.”

[wesstars]

heaven on earth (ii)

wednesday addams x fem!reader (mostly gn, only term used is “girl friend”)

summary: your friends-with-benefits situation with wednesday isn’t so friendly anymore, but if you could only uncover your own eyes, you might’ve noticed. wc: 5.5k tags: explicit, MINORS DNI! all characters involved are 18+. kinda ooc wednesday, painfully oblivious reader, bad fluff, fluff to smut, top!reader and bottom!wednesday, semi-public (car) sex, mild blood, biting, mild overstimulation. a/n: not sure how I feel about this lol. special thank you to 🕷️ anon for her ideas and workshopping <3 comments/asks welcome, as always!

read part one here! this can be read standalone, but is intended to be a continuation.

masterlist

For the fifth time, Wednesday slapped your thigh to get your attention. “Turn it down.”

You huffed a laugh, and figured it was time. You were playing your ‘obnoxious’ pop playlist, full of mostly Taylor Swift and random Korean bands. It was collaborative with Enid, and likely one of Wednesday’s least favorites. Lowering the volume, you tossed Wednesday your phone.

“Alright, it’s your turn.”

The two of you were driving back from a day trip to a nearby town—actually, you were supposed to be driving back the rest of Enid and Co, also, but while Wednesday was beyond ready to leave, they all wanted to stay and do something called a “holy trinity.” How someone could have so much alcohol in so little time was so bizarre to you, but then Wednesday, of all people, rolled her eyes and downed three shots in just as many minutes, and seemed no worse for wear. 

Seemed was the key word there—not a quarter of an hour later, she’d grabbed onto your arm, grip slack, and her eyes were becoming unfocused, roving all over your face only to miss your eyes and tack onto somewhere lower.

You’d coaxed her to eat something after that. Post French fries and buttered bread (she’d kill you after she knew you’d made her eat such unrefined food,) as well as a bottle and a half of water in, she’d mostly walked it off. You figured it was time to get Wednesday home. As far as you knew, the rest of your friends were still out, though you’d made Yoko promise to text you when they were leaving and when they got back. The windows were open in the car; the wind lifted Wednesday’s fringe off her forehead. You glanced over to where she was gingerly operating your phone, punching in letters on Spotify. Your heart twisted.

You didn’t really want to admit that weird feeling you had the first time, and all the rest of the times, you saw Wednesday. It was a sort of jittery one, with a swoop in your stomach, that made you want to prod her into a conversation. You’d gotten quite a bit more than you’d bargained for, from that first fateful kiss in the classroom, to every secret, heady rendezvous after. The last time you two had been intimate—fucked, in your bed—had left an indelible mark, natural as a shadow settled neatly in your chest. The bickering and play fights had only made things worse, and you knew you had to ignore it all, for Wednesday. To keep things the same, because… something’s better than nothing, right?

You supposed that “something” was where you were right now. Being her ‘girl friend,’ with a space in between, sex and unrequited feelings included, was the best place that you could ever be with her. You had those close moments with her that you could cherish, but also that emotional distance that Wednesday undoubtedly wanted. Perfect. Your childlike sentiments were ones that you were likely to carry in your heart, deep down, for fucking forever. They were never going to see the light of day.

Lilting piano filled the car, shoving images of you and Wednesday seated together before the keys into your mind. Your phone dropped back into your lap.

“Nocturne? In E minor.” You blurted out before you could stop yourself.

“I’m surprised you know.”

“Hey!” Indignant, you nearly shot something back that was sure to start one of your bickering matches again, when an unfamiliar sound rang through the car, lovely as the music, but something you’d never heard before.

“Did you just laugh?”

Wednesday’s mumbled denial was covered up by your own laugh, bordering on hysterical as your heart picked itself up and started racing. 

“Do not insult me like that,” Wednesday grumbled, rubbing the hem of her sweater between her fingers. “Focus on the road. Dying with you in a car crash is too pathetic to even consider.” Though her words were sharp as always, her even tone had something in it that, if one wasn’t careful, could be mistaken as gentle.

You snorted again, unable to stop laughing. “And if a double decker bus…” you sang, tapping your fingers on the steering wheel. Wednesday’s glare nearly sliced you clean in half, and you were smart for once, shutting up immediately. She wasn’t laughing anymore, and some part of you mourned that.

After Chopin played Liszt, Liebestraum no. 3, and you wondered if Wednesday knew how to queue on Spotify. You followed the winding road up the mountain. You’d be back at Nevermore soon, but selfishly, you didn’t want this to be over. It was an odd time, with no bickering, no siege, no sex, and who could blame you if you were feeling particularly, disgustingly, sentimental? Blame the Liszt.

Turning the car off the road, you pulled into a deserted vista point. Carpe diem, you thought, throwing caution to the wind and the car in park. 

“Why have you stopped?”

“Weds, we’re looking at the sunset.”

“I do not need to see it, it happens every day—”

“Oh, come on,” you laughed, unlocking the car doors and stepping out. With the wind whipping around you, blowing your hair every which way, you ducked to peek into the car. “Humor me, I guess. Don’t you feel sorry for me, or something?”

She gave you a pointed look. “I do not.” But she followed you out the car anyway.

Leaning on the hood, you looked out at the scene as she joined you. Spiky evergreens stretched out across the stony slopes, with the last vestiges of snow clinging to the tops. The sun stretched its longing light into the rapidly darkening east behind you, pulling taut the shadows and blanketing everything in an aureate shine.

You glanced over at Wednesday—despite her earlier protest, it seemed as if she was tolerating this. The tension around her brow was gone, and her arms hung relaxed by her sides. The silence wasn’t rare, but it felt reverent anyway. Your heart adored her in her outfit; it was something your mind refused to register. She was in black knee high boots, made of some leather you couldn’t pronounce, an inky dress, flowing in the wind, down to her thighs, and a soft deep gray sweater. There was a sort of bleeding sentiment, beginning to seep into your everyday life, into wondering what Wednesday would think of the book you were reading, imagining her reaction to Bianca’s quip, overthinking her hand clutching your sleeve in the courtyard.

You deliberated, vaguely, what it would be like if you tumbled down the mountainside, into those trees—would the wood be cushioning or bruising? It was a serious consideration, with all that you were feeling. Those damned feelings, ones that Wednesday would undoubtedly scorn, made you kick up the gravel underfoot in frustration.

Beside you, Wednesday cast an uninterested look over you at the noise, silently judging. A beat passed. She grabbed the collar of your shirt, wrinkling it, and pulled you into a bruising kiss. 

“I am going in the car. The back seat. Be not afraid.” She retreated, and gave a little smirk, one reserved for the golden light and dark trees.

It was purely unfair, as the blood rushed from your head to pool in your stomach, making your heart work overtime. Stumbling to the back seat, you’d barely sat down before Wednesday reached over to the console and locked the doors. She’d taken off her boots, leaving her legs clad in white socks scrunched around her calves.

She climbed into your lap without preamble, squeezing your hips with her thighs. The car roof meant she had to duck her head just a bit, giving you the perfect opportunity to press your lips to hers. Having Wednesday on top of you was the kind of thing that made your head spin. And spinning you were, down into that deep unending abyss where there was only the smell of hot sugar, pine, and iron. 

The Midas touch of the setting sun made Wednesday seem even paler, from her exposed knees to her small hands, glowing like some ethereal being. She kissed you as if she could wrap her teeth around you, like searching for sweetness in the corners of your mouth. Sure enough, there was something about her, a sense of urgency, that threatened to take in all of you. 

“This dress is nice,” you murmured, pushing it up her pale thighs, rubbing away the red marks her boots left on her calves. Your hands continued upward, to the light dampness of her inner thighs.

“You said you liked it last time.” Wednesday immediately glanced away, as if she hadn’t meant to say those words. There was a faint flush to her cheeks again, but the two of you were fogging up the car windows.

You ignored the pulsing in your stomach that traitorously screamed she wore this for me? “It’s enchanting,” you said. “Like a witch of the wood.”

You nosed your way into the nape of her neck again, a favorite spot of yours, unable to stop your stupid mouth from running. “I adore it…” You pulled her tighter to your lap, skimming the seam of her underwear at the juncture of her thigh. “Can I touch you, Wednesday?”

“Get on with it,” she said, breathlessly, indulging you with a quick quirk of her lips. 

Skimming the back of your hand up between her thighs, you sent your other hand to palm her chest through her dress. You felt her through her panties, the fabric soft and smooth from her slick. Dipping your hand below the waistband, you wasted no time finding her clit. Her breath came down hard—it was her tell, you knew, even when her face remained mostly impassive.

She was sensitive today, back arching with a small gasp as soon as you touched her. Hand shooting past your head, Wednesday grabbed onto the headrest, hard enough for the leather to creak. Her outstretched arm was right next to your head, and you couldn’t resist leaning in to kiss the inside of her elbow. 

She sighed, unfurling tendrils of a storm in smooth skies. “You have all of me,” Wednesday said, something soft.

You press a kiss to Wednesday's forehead, equally soft, as you curl your fingers again. “If only, Wednesday,” you said, unthinking.

Wednesday froze, squeezing her other hand on your shoulder hard enough to leave pretty bruises under your collared shirt.

You pulled back, cocking your head. “What is it?”

She furrowed her brow at you, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, then glanced away quickly.

“What’s wrong?” Your fingers traced another circle around her clit.

“Stop asking.” Her voice was firm, but it had a waver in the middle, like she’d almost changed her mind. 

“I’ll stop asking,” you whispered, “if you tell me what’s up.” Her eyes were glazed over with a sheen not unlike her slick that coated your fingers, something shiny and sweet. 

“You’re hopeless,” she said, not even a second before she clapped her hand over your mouth.

What an Addams wants, an Addams gets, you surmised, blinking quickly. You rubbed your free hand up and down her thigh, trying to soothe her, but she only moved her hand to grip your jaw, her intent the sear of fire through the underbrush.

“I do not like repeating myself,” she said quietly, “so listen closely.” She shifted closer to you on your lap, car leather squeaking, settling on her knees so your nose was in her collar. She reached down and gave you a handkerchief from her pocket. Knowing what she meant, you pulled your fingers from her warmth, feeling a hard lump in your throat. “And make no noise.”

You nodded. She looked wild on top of you, hair mussed from your make out session, the apples of her cheeks a dusty rose.

“Honesty colors me,” she said by way of explanation. “And you talk too much, so this is how it will have to be.” She seemed to think for a moment, biting her lip. Her burgundy lipstick contrasted so starkly with her gray sweater, as if she was the only screaming color in a black and white world. She might hate that, you mused absently. Maybe she was more a whirlpool of the blackest black, sucking in all of the color and light around it so that you had no choice but to be drawn in, to the only real thing you’d ever known.

“You’re stupid,” Wednesday started, matter-of-factly. “Just like everyone else.” You nodded, used to this sort of thing by now. “But your particular brand of stupidity is showing its truth.”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes, arms automatically going around her waist while you leaned back to look at her. Where she was going with this, you had no idea. You only knew that that whirlpool was making its way closer and closer to you.

“At first, our… arrangement was indeed purely physical.” She paused. “But things have changed, quite drastically. I do believe I’ve reached a… point of no return, but I have since found a balance.”

Wednesday locked her eyes on yours, unflinching. “I give myself to you time and time again-” the words were unfamiliar from her mouth- “yet, you seem to give no indication that you know. ‘If only?’ It’s nearly laughable.” She gave a huff, though her gaze was contemplative. You cocked your head, mind uncomprehending, mouth dry.

“You have my heart, beating or still.” Her words rang quiet in the car. Your own heart started up again, with all the betrayal of a thrumming bass. You tried to push it down, but it didn’t erase the reality of what Wednesday had just said—did Wednesday ever lie? She was good at it, sure, but you’d long learned that Wednesday’s word was her end. “And it appears as though you are completely unaware.”

“Unaware?” You broke her rule, and you could see the tick of annoyance in her eyes. But you plowed on anyway. “Are you saying that you have my—that I don’t know that I have your—that you like me?”

“My devotion is more than that,” Wednesday said casually, “but it may be that you’re unable to handle that at this time.”

Sure enough, you could feel your body informing your mind that you were hyperventilating, Wednesday’s weight on your lap the only thing keeping you from shooting off to Saturn.

“I don’t—” you struggled for your words, the usual wit you showed while bickering with Wednesday, the strategy you’d used to defend Jericho, absolutely nowhere to be seen.

“Need I pull stars from the sky to prove myself to you?” she said, raising an eyebrow in amusement, as if she wasn’t blowing through every poorly stacked defense of yours. It would be just like Wednesday, for every word of hers to be devastating and world shifting. No one knew Wednesday Addams and remained unchanged—that was just the kind of person she was, romantic as murder via blade. Perhaps to her, your wide eyed reaction was enough of a damning confession. “You’ll be the end of me, but what bliss that would be.” 

“Um,” you started, eloquently. “You’re… you’re not thinking straight,” you rasped out, mind freezing. You could feel your back stuck to the seat, unyielding. “You’re—”

“If I didn’t know you and your oblivious tendencies, I would think that it is almost insulting of you to doubt me.” She gave a small sniff, chin held high. “You think that just because you do not recognize my words, means that I am not in a right state of mind?”

In one fluid motion, she pressed her forehead to yours, and cradled your face between her two cold hands. Your name felt like salvation from her lips; “believe me, I’m wide awake.”

Your jaw went slack, and you were sure you looked as much a dumbass as you felt.

“I intended for my… vulnerability,” Wednesday’s voice wavers on the word, “to be a sign for you, but either you are just that unobservant, or you are unwilling to admit to what is right before your eyes.”

“I’d never not pick up on something on purpose, Weds.” Your brain was wading through a thick mud, unable to turn at the speed that Wednesday wanted.

“Does that mean that you are willfully disregarding the way I show myself to you?” Finally, in her words, you were able to see the exact vulnerability that she had alluded to.

“No, I’d never, I just… didn’t want to hope,” you said, embarrassed. “Romance isn’t your thing.”

“It’s not,” she replied simply, quietly. “I understand your reservations.” Wednesday’s hands held an imperceptible tremble, but her gaze was strong.

“No—of course I—” your throat tightened, but you felt the weight falling from your shoulders anyway. That was something you recognized. “Of course I like you.”

The silence rang yet again, and Wednesday’s eyes widened, the onyx of them turning warm as molten metal. The exact expression in them was hard to place, but it calmed you, in the wake of speaking aloud something you’d been afraid to admit to yourself.

A thought occurred to you, more clear than any you’d had since Wednesday had opened her mouth. “Even if we’d never—if we never have sex again, I’d still l—like you.”

Despite the way you stumbled into and over your words, Wednesday’s dark eyes on yours grew warm, pupil blurring into iris; the corner of her mouth gave an upwards tick.

“In the cracks of light,” Wednesday whispered, reverent as prayer as her fingertips traced your cheekbone, “I see the heaven on earth I’ve won with you.”

She kissed you then, and you couldn’t hold back any more. It was something like pure relief—though your mind still didn’t quite comprehend Wednesday’s confession (confession!), your heart broke the dam, pulling you down past inhibition. Spiraling to Wednesday’s gravity, it was as natural as breathing to give in.

Wednesday, all knowing as always, must’ve seen the way your resolve broke. She slid her mouth against yours, open and hot, unhurried but eager. The car leather under your thighs was as warm as Wednesday on top of you—not even she was immune to the rays of waning sunlight, it seemed.

“You know,” you muttered, between capturing her lips, “it’s just like you to say all that about moving heaven and earth. Most people just say ‘I like you.’” It wasn’t a complaint by any means; with your hands on her waist, you’d have it no other way.

“As I said, it is more than that.” She took a breath, completely steady and confident, now. “You consume me, completely.”

“And you, I,” you said softly, as if you could do anything but agree to her heady desire. “I’ve got you, Wednesday.”

Her forehead dropped to your shoulder, arms wrapped tight around you. It took a moment for you to realize that in her silence after your words, she was grinding down, near imperceptibly, into your lap.

“Mmm, my love,” you murmured, the significance of the endearment not lost on you, “look at you.” Sliding a hand up her back to her hair, you felt her braids through your fingers. You ran your hands down once more, under her sweater to feel the muscles around her shoulder blades. The heat you felt through her dress from where she was pressed to you, through your trousers, was something out of a darkest dream, unable to be forgotten.

Wednesday leaned up again, eyes sharp as a lance, to brand you with a kiss. She bit your lip, breaking through skin, and you grinned at the pain. It was hard and harsh, comforting like the thin edge of a knife. You felt the blood seeping into the seams of your teeth, rain in scorched earth. Intoxicated, you seemed to float closer into that sweet and dark whirlpool.

“That hurt, Wednesday…” you leaned in, voice dropping. “I wanna…” There was a beat of silence where you could only taste the copper in your mouth, sweet as you knew the slick between her thighs to be. You shifted your grip to her hips, bruising, and the soft little moan Wednesday gave in response spurred you on. “I wanna hurt you.”

You did, helplessly. Of course, you would rain hell on anyone that so much as lifted a finger against Wednesday, but to hold her trust that came with pain—you wanted that from her, to know when she hurt, when she wanted to hurt. Whether it was holding her back from the edge, or flying and dropping together to the bottom, bodies crashing against one another, you wanted it. Like something out of a classical myth, with wings of wax or blood, you would burn and be burned to feel the weightless warmth of that golden light.

There was no hesitation for Wednesday, just a look in her eyes that you’d come to know intimately as hunger. “Hurt me.” Her voice was low, nearly fond, in your ear as her eyes tracked the blood collecting on your lips. She leaned towards you and licked, tongue to your teeth, translucent saliva mixing with the burgundy. “I want it to hurt—I want you to hurt me.”

When she leaned back, her lipstick was stained with your blood, and it made you want to bleed if only she was the one taking it. You leaned your temple to her jawline, eyes burning at the sun through the windshield. Your hands continued once again up her thighs, just as reverent as before. The two of you never could do anything by half—you were always Wednesday’s. Realizing it, speaking it aloud, confessing or not, couldn’t have changed that. Despite that, as you rocked back and kissed the blood off Wednesday, you felt as though you were on your knees, professing everything you were. Giving one last cheeky swipe of your tongue on her lips, you went to tug Wednesday’s panties down. She followed your lead easily, tossing the expensive garment somewhere to the side. 

“My sweet girl,” you sighed, something possessive curling in your words. “What would you like?”

“Everything.” There was a devout way about her utterance that had your hands shaking with the desire to fulfill her. “Touch me.”

Crossing one arm around her to clasp the back of her neck, you brought her face close to yours, the tips of your noses brushing.

“Everything? How much can we do with ‘everything’ when you’re so sensitive, angel?” On cue, Wednesday’s eyes slipped shut as you drew a finger along her pussy to find her wet and wanting.

“Don’t you think you should be the one to answer that?” Her voice, bold and challenging, shook up your stomach like champagne. You were completely, utterly ruined before Wednesday Addams, and it was a nearly celestial ruin, so bright and beloved it nearly hurt.

You didn’t hesitate, slipping your finger in and grinding your palm on her clit. You didn’t miss her knees sliding further apart, that elusive grin gracing her face as she tipped her head back. Only her tight hold on your shoulders kept her from falling into your lap. Your mouth tasted of iron, such a contrast to Wednesday’s burnt sugar sweat on your tongue as you licked a stripe up her jaw to bite her earlobe. Drawing every small sigh out, you took your time, curling your fingers the way you knew she liked. You squeezed your hand, heavy where her shoulders met her neck. The jagged breaths she took in response made you crave more, and your stomach burned with contentment when she let you press another finger inside of her.

Wednesday’s half lidded eyes tracked down your neck, hunter to the scent of fear, leaving a shiver in her wake. It was inexplicably easy to discern what she wanted, even as she threaded her hands in your hair, something tingling and distracting.

“Go ahead, I know you want to.” Like blood rushing back into white fingertips, her soft lips were on your neck, undoubtedly leaving a smear of lip stain that you’d have to be chastised to wipe off. Almost as if she’d read your mind, she was sucking at your skin, impatient. Already you could feel the raised welt, and the way her tongue soothed the strain.

“You’re mine,” she breathed out, harsh despite the way she was panting with every twist of your fingers.

“Yeah,” you whispered, the haze of being Wednesday’s blurring your every action. “I’m yours.”

You curled your fingers, and had to bite down a moan as her teeth sank deeper into your neck, a cause and effect that you’d kill for. You swore as she set sight on your jawline, the sweet shock of her hot tongue making you shiver. 

“Took you long enough,” she muttered darkly—it seemed she was satisfied with the state of your neck, since you could feel the skin throbbing pleasantly. She leaned back, proffering her own throat.

“I was always yours,” you said easily. “I can just…” you trailed off as your sharp teeth met her skin in the spot you knew she liked, making her cry out, “show you better now.”

Wednesday’s hands tightened in your hair, pulling a broken gasp from your throat. Her smirk, challenging as she took in your reaction, only spurred you on. It was pure selfishness, when you grinned lazily as she tugged. You gave as good as you got, though, each curl of your fingers and shift of your hand had her trembling.

She was close; you could feel it in the uneven cadence of her breath, almost as erratic as yours. Pulling the collar of her sweater aside, you worked your tongue against her jugular, her pulse tempting and honey sweet in your mouth. It was nearly tangible between your teeth, soft and solid, the pounding of her pulse, just milliseconds away from your own.

“C’mon, Wednesday,” you whispered in her ear, “just like that.”

Her breath stuttered, climbing up higher to the returning lump in your throat. It was always a marvel, the way that Wednesday was so incredibly responsive to you, your touch or your words. The hard catch of her lip between her teeth made you grin, and you reached out, tugging it free. You leaned in to kiss her forehead as you slipped your thumb in her mouth instead, your fingers never stopping. 

“Wednesday.” She turned her glossy eyes towards you, and it was the closest you’d ever seen her to coming without really falling. “Let go.”

At your words, she gasped, and you could feel her cunt pulse around your fingers as she came. Her teeth bit into your skin and her eyebrows knitted together ever so gently—you loved to watch her come undone. She was all soft moans and flushed cheeks, open in a way that she hardly ever was otherwise. It unfurled something bright and warm in your chest, spreading out into your fingertips. You felt as hazy as she looked, the smell of her spilling into the air and undoubtedly lingering in your chest.

“That’s perfect, love, you’re so good for me.” You shushed her as she panted, eyes unfocused beneath her mussed fringe, but searing into yours. You continued your palm on her clit, holding her tight as her body stuttered. You moved your hand to cup her face, smoothing over unshed tears along her waterline.

“You’re…” Wednesday gave a low groan as you hit that sensitive spot inside of her again, none too gently.

“Yes,” you answered gently. “You’ll tell me if you want me to stop, won’t you?” She nodded, eager, as she pushed her hips into your hand, even though it made her whole body shiver. 

“Fuck—”

You hummed in response, feeling her cunt open even easier now that she was impossibly wetter. As you worked a third finger into her, Wednesday’s spine went rigid, a whining, desperate sound you’d never thought you’d hear breaking from her throat. She grabbed your hand, and her palms were damp. Her grip on your wrist was tight, just as much keeping you from progressing as it was keeping you from pulling away. You leaned in by her ear. “Does it hurt?”

She gave a jerky nod, jaw clenched and lips parted. You would turn a storm on its head for those ways that Wednesday strayed from her control, especially when you were the one guiding that meandering path. Pressing the heel of your hand into her clit, you laughed, small and indulgent, as she clung tighter to you, a strained little cry escaping. 

“Good girl, Wednesday… you’re taking it so well, aren’t you? You’re taking me so well, darling…” Fisting the front of her sweater in your hand, you pulled her off balance, tugging her close so her lips fell to yours, easy as breathing. Swallowing every single prized whimper that fell from her, you kissed her slow. Wednesday was already sensitive, but this was intense for even her, you could tell. Her breath came shakily against you as you pulled away, having smeared her lipstick to your content. Fingers sliding punishingly against her clit, your laugh rumbled low in your chest as she keened, soft and just a bit pleading.

“Very good, Wednesday, my love,” you coaxed. Her gasp, more like a sob, washed over you in a satisfaction that made you shudder. The slick from her previous orgasm clung to your hand, making it easy to keep up your punishing pace. Her tears shined like sea glass in her lashes, as devout to the cause of ruining her cheeks as the dusk outside was to darkness. You had no idea how much time had passed, only that if she asked, you’d stay right here with her until daylight again.

“I’m—” A whine rose from her throat, and you couldn’t help but smile.

“You can do it, baby-” your thumb circled her clit as your fingers found their way impossibly deeper into Wednesday- “just for me, okay?”

“Okay,” she repeated, mindlessly. This world where Wednesday let herself trust you to take care of her was one you could live in, drown in, make your home in. You raised your hand to the juncture of her neck and jaw, heavy and comforting. Reminded of every time Wednesday had put her hand in that same place on you when you were on your knees in front of her, more intimate than anything, you tugged on her wrist, instantly missing her hold in your hair. Intertwining your fingers together, you held your hands together in between you and Wednesday. 

Without a warning, her fingers tightened around yours, so hard that her knuckles turned white. You could see that how hard she came took her by surprise, too—eyes wide open and pupils blown. It was breathtaking, you thought, just how much tension was in her, all tense shoulders and choked cry. Her nails dug into your skin, her grip tethering you from dropping off with her. It stung, and you loved it, the maroon of your blood welling up just enough to smear her fingertips. 

Wednesday’s head fell into the nape of your neck, nuzzling like she could find the world’s secrets in your skin. Hand still in hers, you wiped away the smeared burgundy around the corners of her mouth with your thumb pad, fingers lingering.

“That was devious,” she murmured, words blurring around each other.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” you chuckled. She nodded, somewhat resolutely. You eased your fingers out, tucking them surreptitiously into your mouth. The gesture didn't go unnoticed by Wednesday, but she only narrowed her eyes.

Even in her post-orgasm daze, Wednesday looked dangerous. Her fringe was all over the place, getting caught in her eyelashes, and you could finally attribute the pink in her cheeks to something a little more than the fogged up windows. Surely, this was heaven on earth, having Wednesday with you, steady as planetal orbit. You shifted her to sit sideways in your lap, making sure her knees didn’t burn from the leather. She was watching you, carefully. It was almost as if she was trying to memorize you, the studious way she looked at you, like she was the sole messenger for a world that wasn’t allowed to take you in. It made your heart pound, finally in accordance with your head. You let her take her time in your arms, rubbing her shoulders. The little press of her lips was back, something you had adored for something dangerously similar to ‘forever.’ She seemed content in a way she hardly ever was, the haze in her eyes clearing as she studied you. 

“You’ve changed a lot since I met you,” she commented, not unkindly.

You looked down into Wednesday’s face, at the night air drifting through her hair again. You could feel the sting from the little crescent shaped marks that her nails left. It was a warm contrast to her cold hand in yours, clasped between you. “You changed me, Wednesday.”

--

wednesday: you have bewitched me, mind, body, and soul… i love, i love, i love you. 

reader: huh?

a/n cont’d for those brave souls that made it this far: yes, wednesday’s dress has pockets. isn’t that wonderful?

I’m SO BAD at writing fluff. plus, reader is the most unreliable narrator to unreliably narrate. should’ve put “painfully oblivious” as a warning for part one too.

please do not repost, reproduce, copy, translate, or take from my work in any way. thank you!

masterlist

[eddiesghxst]

BESTIES DONT HATE ME BUT AYBY PT 3 IS NOT DONE FOR THIS WEEKEND🫣

TO BE FAIR i think you will be slightly happy to know that the only reason why it’s not done is bc it’s fucking long and i completely switched things around to draw it out hehe. that being said, since i did not keep my promise (twice in a row😔), here is a very very rough draft of a steddie idea i had when i needed a palate cleanser earlier, enjoyyy <3

18+ — MDNI

word count: 3.5k

Steve needed to get out of his hometown.

Familiarity was safety. Safety was easy, for some time, until it got boring. Until Steve felt like he’d been a body filling a job. Just a guy holding a camera and wasting film on still life.

The small town paper liked his eye for symmetry but hated when he got too close, too real. Too sad, his editor would say, looking over his shoulder as she rejected another frame that didn’t match the ‘local pride’ narrative. 

“More smiling.” She once told him. Didn’t like seeing people in action. Didn’t like busy photos. 

And Steve did what they asked. Still shots. Happy in one snap— that’s what they wanted. But the pictures still felt dead, every last one of them. 

So he left. Worked enough to get a one-way ticket out west and rode a bus for three days straight, wondering if he’d just ruined his life or started it. 

The bus drops him off in downtown LA with a camera slung over his shoulder, twenty-seven dollars in his pocket, and a busted leather suitcase filled with two shirts, two pants, two boxers, and two pairs of socks. 

It’s hot. Smog settles low like a second skin, clinging to his clothes like his uncertainty. He doesn’t know anyone here. Not really. Just a cousin who hasn’t answered his last three letters and a belief that something has to give.

He gets a gig on the first day. Shoots a wedding for a couple who met three weeks ago. They pay him enough to get him three nights in a motel. 

By the fifth day, he’s scoured just about every ad in the city, sat through another miserable wedding shoot where the groom smelled like cheese, and eaten three different variations of gas station sandwiches. 

His fingers itch for something real to shoot. Something messy, honest— alive. 

And unfortunately, with just a few dollars to his name and a bruised ego, Steve’s hope begins to dwindle. 

That’s when it comes.

Folded in the back of a grimy newspaper outside of a diner:

BAND SEEKING LIVE PHOTOGRAPHER. MUST TRAVEL. MUST NOT SUCK. 

PAY: QUESTIONABLE.

ART: PROBABLE.

He tears the page out and sprints to the nearest payphone, coffee forgotten on the sidewalk, heart racing in his chest, camera hung from his neck. He doesn’t even know the name of the band.

The phone booth smells like piss and hot plastic; Steve has to stick his foot in the doorway to keep from drowning in it as he shoves the newspaper under his chin and jams a few quarters in. The numbers are sticky beneath his thumb and the plastic phone could possibly be carrying a few diseases on it, but Steve couldn’t care less as he raises it to his ear. 

It rings twice.

Then: “Yeah?” A man’s voice. Gruff, half distracted, something going on in the background. 

Steve fumbles, grabs the newspaper from under his chin so he can speak properly, “Hi— uh, hi,” he clears his throat, wiping sweat from his brow, “I’m calling about the ad? For the photographer— the one for the band. I saw it in the paper. I have a portfolio, I mean— well, some prints, not on me, but—“

“You busy right now?”

Steve falters. Blinks. Heart thrumming in his chest. “No.”

“Great. Come to Valley Sound, Magnolia and Laurel. Studio 5, doors unlocked.”

And before Steve can grab a pen and ask him to say it again, the line clicks dead.

…Okay.

Magnolia and Laurel. Valley Sound, studio 5.

Steve repeats it to himself all the way to the bus stop.

It takes him almost an hour to get across town. One bus, one transfer, and one wrong turn that lands him near an adult video store before a disheveled man in front of a liquor shop points him back in the right direction. 

By the time he’s standing in front of Valley Sound, Steve’s sweating through his clothes. The building is squat and half-forgotten. The bricks are old, there's fading graffiti on the side, and paint is chipping from the stucco. There’s no sign— just a buzzer and a glass door that gives when Steve pushes it open. 

Inside, the place smells like smoke, spilled beer, and old carpet. Music leaks through the cracks of the walls, different rooms bursting with different sounds. Steve trails through it like an imposter.

He finds Studio 5 by the echo of an argument. 

“No, Rho, that’s not what the line says—“

“Well maybe the line’s wrong, Eddie. Maybe you’re wrong.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time..” Someone mutters. 

Steve inhales sharply, grasps the door handle, and steps inside. 

And because nothing’s ever gone right for Steve, his shoulder catches a guitar case left too close to the door. The thing tips. He lunges too late, watches it clatter to the floor and cut through the room's chaos like a gunshot. 

Everything halts. 

Six heads whip around. 

A girl with smudged black eyeliner and a sharp gaze. A tall, wiry guy with a cigarette hanging from his lips and a bruised ego in his eyes. Another man with a drumstick twirling between his fingers. A bassist in sunglasses, even indoors. And the guy, who Steve assumes is the manager from the phone call, is against the wall with a pad of paper, chewing a toothpick.

Steve stares back. Heart hammering, pits uncomfortably sweaty. He clutches his camera like a lifeline. 

“Sorry.” He blurts. “I’m— I’m Steve. Steve Harrington.” He says, though it sounds more like a question. No one moves, they all stare, the drummer’s jaw ticks around a wad of gum.

“I take photos. Mostly live stuff. Street shots, candid, whatever’s got soul. I saw the ad and—”

The manager lifts a hand, barely looks at him as he walks toward the sound board, “Start takin’ photos. We’ll look at what you got by the end of the day.”

And just like that, the room goes back to a buzz, and the band turns back to the lyric sheet.

The girl lights a cigarette.

The tall guy strums a sharp chord.

The drummer and the bassist follow suit.

Steve’s hands shake as he lifts the camera. From nerves, adrenaline, uncertainty— all of it.

But when he looks through the lens— adjust the finder, zeroes in— he sees it.

Something electric. A little broken. A little holy.

He clicks.

————

Steve ends up sleeping on the studio’s busted couch for four nights straight.

No one tells him to stay that first night. No one tells him to leave, either. 

The next morning, everyone just kind of operates like nothing’s changed. They include him a little bit. Someone slides him a lukewarm coffee, someone else cracks a joke about his shoes, and they even buy him a sandwich from the deli with too much mustard.

He officially learns everyone's names in the band by the end of the day— Eddie, Jeff, Gareth, and Rho.

He learns the manager’s name later that day.

“Binny. Not Benny. Binny. With an ‘I’.”

Steve gets the hang of their operation.

They’re a storm in motion. 

Steve watches them and thinks, this shouldn’t work. 

Jeff barely talks. Gareth seems like he’d follow anyone with a cigarette and a vague plan, and you and Eddie? You orbit each other like dying stars. Violent. Beautiful. Codependent. 

Steve’s never seen anything like it. 

But the moment you play— it clicks. All the screaming, the dissonance, the weird inside jokes, the low-level loathing—you pull it into the music and make something real. Something Steve believed existed, but only just now found.

On the third morning, Steve asks how you all met each other.

Jeff’s plucking a low riff, effortless like it’s been living in his spine. You’re scratching notes of a song onto a pizza box while Eddie’s hunched over the soundboard, and Gareth’s flopped on the couch, arm thrown over his eyes, claiming a “five-minute power coma” that’s already stretched into fifteen.

It comes out without thought, curious and soft— “How did you guys meet?”

Jeff glances up, still playing. You lift your head, curious, and Eddie smirks, still busy with the soundboard.

“High school,” Eddie says. “Shit hole of a place. Jeff and I were in a music theory class together. Both got detention for arguing with the teacher over a Motörhead chord progression.”

Jeff nods, gazing at the yellow tint of sun seeping through the blinds, “You were wrong, by the way.”

“Still got the better grade.”

“You cheated.”

Gareth groans from the couch, “Not this story again.”

You crack a smile, and Eddie moves on, “Gareth came in later— split from his old band. Shitty pop-punk sound that didn’t deserve his skill. We stole him.”

Gareth doesn’t bother opening his eyes when he cuts in, “You begged.”

Jeff grins, “We kidnapped him.”

Steve’s got a smile stretching across his face, fingers dancing over his camera like he wants to capture their past. “And then what? You just… formed a band?”

You grin, leaning forward, “No, they tried to form, like, three bands. One was punk. One was screamo. One was—”

“Don’t say it.”

“—an acoustic duo called ‘Twice Shy’.”

Eddie slaps a hand over your mouth, “Lies. Slander. Shut it.” You lick his palm, and Eddie pinches you with a grimace.

Steve tilts his head towards you, “So when did you come into the picture?”

Jeff drags in a breath and shrugs, “We booked it after graduation. Aimed for LA with eighty bucks and a demo.”

“That’s when we met Rho.”

You smile and offer a lousy bow with a wave of your hand. “I was playing a garage showcase in Barstow. Just me and a loop pedal. I was awful.”

Eddie grins, “She was magnetic. So we stole her, too.”

Steve watches, quiet and fascinated by the story. The way you tell it. The way someone remembers it wrong, and someone else interrupts to fill in the blanks.

“Sounds like fate.” He softly says.

You shrug, picking up a pen and turning back to your pizza box, “More like desperation and dumb luck.”

Eddie says the best things come from that anyway.

Later on, Steve asks another question— “What’s Rho short for?”

Gareth speaks around a mouthful of his sandwich, “Catastrophe.”

You smile with a wink, and Steve decides that makes sense.

By the end of the third day, he’s invited to sit at the soundboard and snap some more shots— and that’s when Steve realizes he might actually be staying.

You record all day and fight all night. Rho yells with her whole body, Eddie spits venom laced with poetry, and somehow it works.

Steve develops film in the back of the manager's office, hung to dry between unpaid invoices and rusty lamps. The pictures are beautiful. Devastating. Sharp and vivid, and so honest it makes Steve want to cry. 

Binny takes one look at them and tells Steve to get a suitcase.

On the seventh day, Steve isn’t sure what’s going on, but they’re moving like there’s a ticking time bomb somewhere. Then at the end of the day, Binny claps his hands and says, “Time to take this show on the road.”

Literally. 

Seven in the morning sharp, they’ll be on their way to San Diego to play their first show on a seven-week tour. Twenty shows, twelve states. 

Steve is wired.

It’s the night before they leave when Steve forgets his camera bag in the studio.

It’s late. Everyone’s asleep or passed out. Steve thinks he left his bag in the wrong room again, rookie mistake. The building is dark, uncharacteristically quiet, but there’s an orange light seeping out from under one cracked door. There’s a soft and quiet hum shifting through the air as Steve walks toward it.

His mind is stuck on finding his bag, and his body’s moving on muscle memory. He doesn’t think. Just pushes the door open. 

Your legs are around Eddie’s waist. Your hands in his hair. His lips at your throat. Both of you leaned against the soundboard. 

You moan— soft, but sharp. Eddie growls something low and filthy— grabs at you like you’re his lifeline, like he can’t get any deeper into you, like the rage isn’t enough.

Steve freezes. 

Eddie’s head turns. Their eyes lock. 

It’s only a second, but it stretches, long and thin. 

You don’t stop. You don’t even look. Like you know, and you don’t care. 

Steve backs out and closes the door. Slowly. Leaves without his bag, doesn’t care anymore.

He doesn’t find sleep easily, too busy running the last few days back and piecing things together because Steve could not, for the life of him, figure you and Eddie out.

At first, he wasn’t sure what you were. Lovers? Enemies? Codependents in matching leather jackets?

He watched from across the studio for an entire week— you curled on the couch, Eddie sat on the floor in front of you, arguing over a chorus, laughing mid-insult, you throwing an empty soda can at his head. 

There’s heat in the way you speak to each other. Hunger. 

Steve just wasn't sure if it was all out of anger or desire. After what he’s seen now, he thinks it’s both.

————

LA TO SAN DIEGO

The van smells like weed, old vinyl, and denim.

Jeff drives the whole way. You smoke in the back. Eddie rides shotgun and flicks ashes out the cracked window. Steve sits in the middle row, camera in his lap, ten bucks in his wallet, and wonders if this is how cults begin.

“We should do Velvet Static tonight.”

You say it in a rare moment of humming quiet, eighty miles out from San Diego. Steve’s body is stiff from sitting, and Gareth is zoned out beside him.

Eddie cracks a grin around his cigarette. Jeff sighs. Gareth groans and digs himself into the side of the van, mumbling that he’s taking a nap. 

Eddie lulls his head to the side, eyes trained on the road ahead as Jeff continues to drive. He lets the silence sit for a moment, a stream of smoke filtering out the window before replying, “No.”

Steve doesn’t need to look at you to see the challenging glare on your face. It’s in your voice when you speak, “Why not?”

Eddie huffs out a laugh, “Because it’s emo bullshit with a tambourine. It’s fake. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Jeff snickers. Easily earns himself a crinkled-up wrapper to his face.

“Fuck you— it’s necessary. It’s a fucking break.” You argue.

Eddie scoffs around a laugh, barely glancing back as he responds, “Exactly! It’s boring. No one’s there for a break, Rho. People want noise, they want chaos—”

“You want chaos.” You cut in, “It’s my song. I wrote it. I wanna play it.” You insist.

Eddie licks his lips like he’s tasting his words before saying them. Steve can see his lashes flutter behind his sunglasses, his fingers twitch around the body of his camera. 

Eddie shifts in his seat, kicks a foot up on the dash, and lets out a breath, “Crowds not gonna like it.”

“I don’t care.”

It’s final and sealed.

Eddie rolls his tongue beneath his cheek, glances out the window, and brings his cigarette back to his lips to take a long drag. 

Later on, when Jeff stops to get gas, Steve hears you humming the song to yourself.

Steve doesn’t say it, but he disagrees with both of you.

————

The venue is a pit.

Steve would say it’s a ‘hole-in-the-wall’, but even a hole in the wall would look better than this.

Low ceilings. Sticky floors. A single busted speaker hanging from a flimsy cable— Binny took one look at it and said, “They’re askin’ for a lawsuit.”. And Steve is a thousand percent sure he saw a rat scurrying around behind the bar. It’s the kind of place you don’t remember until it ruins you.

Steve’s sweating through his shirt, camera strap rubbing the back of his neck raw. His arms are shaking from carrying a heavy amp to the stage, but he says nothing, just shakes them out and flexes his fingers every now and then.

Binny invites him to grab a drink at the bar while the band does soundcheck. Binny gets a whiskey neat, and Steve gets a beer that’s disgustingly warm and makes him sweat harder than before. Gareth is on stage, spinning a stick between his knuckles behind his kit, and Jeff is tweaking his sound when your voice snaps through the room.

“This monitor is fucking dogshit.”

It’s directed at the sound guy, some lousy middle-aged man who’s definitely not getting paid enough to handle half of the bands that run through this place. “We’re working on it.” He bites back, maybe a little too hard. You step forward, sunglasses perched upon your face as you squat down at the edge of the stage to meet the guys level and casually tell him to ‘get your shit together or fuck off.’.

The man throws his hands up. Gareth chuckles behind his kit. Jeff hasn’t looked up from his bass once. Eddie shrugs.

Steve stands at the bar, watching it all unfold with some sort of detached awe, camera resting on the bar top, warm beer churning in his belly. Binny’s next to Steve, down to a few sips of his drink, watching you like someone who's seen this movie before. 

Steve glances over. Binny shifts in his seat and exhales slowly. “I ever tell you how I got here?”

Steve blinks, “Like… with the band?”

Binny nods, eyes still watching you and the sound guy go at it. “I was managing an indie band. Rho was standing on a merch table. Screaming like she was fuckin’ possessed,” he huffs out a laugh, “Called their old manager a limp-dicked coward sack of shit and told him he’d be choking on his badge if he ever crossed her again.”

Steve raises a brow, “Seriously?”

Binny sips his drink, “Dead serious. Eddie told me I was their new manager, and I just… didn’t say no.”

Steve lets out a quiet laugh, grabbing his camera and switching it on, “And you’ve been stuck ever since.”

Binny shrugs, Steve wonders if the lines on his face are from age or stress. “I’ve tried leaving. Once. Gareth sent me a handwritten death threat,” he grins, “It was adorable.”

They both look back toward the stage where you’re pointing now. Eddie’s leaning on the mic like he’s about to throw his voice in. Jeff’s sitting on his amp, chewing gum, unmoved.

Binny leans on the bar with a sigh, watching his kids like a tired yet proud father, “They’re like feral cats. Loud, untrainable. You feed ‘em once and they think they own you.”

Steve lifts the camera, snaps a shot of you mid-scream. He gazes through the lens for a moment longer as Binny adds, “I still haven’t figured out if I’m managing them or just… surviving them.”

Steve lets that hang in the air for a moment.

The crowd comes in like a blur of torn fishnets, leather, and denim. Backstage is really just one boxed room with a table for food, a dying mini fridge, and two couches that should’ve been thrown out in the 70s. 

Eddie’s nursing a joint and repairing a broken string. You’re doing your makeup in the bathroom mirror, grumbling at Gareth when he shoves past you to take a piss. Jeff is sitting cross-legged and tuning his bass like he’s meditating.

It’s a nice hum of anticipation. The calm before the storm.

And it doesn’t last long.

The crowd thickens, and the noise rises, and Steve sinks into the least questionable couch of the two. Nearly blends into the couch with how still he becomes. He holds his camera to his chest, sits patiently and quietly, and watches the band twist seven ways to hell in just forty minutes.

It’s a bit mind-boggling to see. There on the old, withered couch, Steve watches four band members who were nearly zombies two hours ago become something akin to hungry beasts.

You’re pacing near the stage door, cigarette trembling between your fingers and burning the tips of them, lips moving— in a chant or a countdown, Steve can’t tell.

Eddie’s back is to the wall, head tilted toward the ceiling, a sheen of sweat already built over his neck, whispering lyrics like he’s summoning something.

“Three minutes!” Binny calls.

Gareth taps his drumstick against his knee. Jeff cracks his knuckles and twists his neck.

You stub out your cigarette on your boot heel, and Eddie rolls his shoulders before tossing back a shot someone hands him with no explanation. 

Steve watches it all— this quiet, manic prelude— through a lens.

One click here. Two clicks there. Another for good luck.

Then someone yells— “You’re up!”

The band moves like a storm.

And Steve follows.

————

a/n: HIII, a little rockstar moment for the girlies :p like i said, this is a very rough draft and not at all proofread, but I'll be coming back to this probably after I finish ayby TEHE OKAY BYE, GOING TO WRITE BEFORE IM MAULED MWAH

[your-unfriendlyghost]

Thinking about your fic where Dallas is Tex’s older brother, where does mark come into play? Is there an au where they can be happy 😭💔💔

Well truthfully, in that fic, I think Mark’s in prison still, like at the end of That Was Then, This is Now 🥲

BUT let’s make an AU where they’re happy!

(TW- mentions of canon-typical violence/canon-typical darkness)

(Not a fic btw- just a rambly outline/headcanons)

In this AU, obviously Dally and Johnny live. (they still both have near-death experiences, but they survive yk?)

And canonically, Ponyboy and Mark Jennings are friends when they’re about 15-16ish. Now that we’ve made Dally survive, the two just end up meeting through Ponyboy. Now they know of each other, but they don’t know that they’re half-brothers. Dally thinks of Mark as a pesky kid who’s more annoying than Ponyboy but less annoying than Curly Shepard, and Mark thinks of Dally as a tough-hood-turned slightly pathetic guy who “Couldn’t even get the cops to kill him right smh” (crude I know but I genuinely think that’s what Mark would think 😭)

Then I’m gonna have Steve (he’s observant- in the book he was the one who found Johnny’s jacket in the lot, and the one who noticed Dally had taken his ring back from Sylvia) and Johnny (also pretty observant, just in more of a literary analysis way than in a physical way) discuss how similar the two are.

Eventually they mention it to Two-Bit, who’s like “Uh yeah they’re half brothers? Obviously?”

And Steve and Johnny are like “The fuck do you mean Pony’s buddy is Dally’s half brother??”

Two-Bit, who I’m making Mark’s cousin in this ‘cuz Emilio Estevez played both of them, goes “Yeah no- his mom, my aunt, cheated on her husband with Dally’s dad when I was like…four or five…which was how she got knocked up with Mark…y’all didn’t know that??”

Anyhow all three go tell Dally, who doesn’t initially care all that much. Mark’s got a stable life, and Dally doesn’t particularly feel the need to be part of it, although he does maybe start inviting the kid along to the drive in with him, Pony, and Johnny just a little more often

Mark is similarly indifferent when Pony tells him, just sorta says “Aw man, why’s Shepard get to have the cooler hood for an older brother??”

But that all comes crashing down when the events of TWTTIN come to pass. Now, instead of getting arrested when Bryon calls the cops on him, Mark remembers Dally. So he runs from the cops and shows up on Buck Merril’s doorstep just like Pony and Johnny did two years prior.

Dally’s initially mad about it- it’s one thing helping Johnny and Pony, and a whole other thing helping this annoying kid who got himself into this mess. But…he can also see himself in Mark, because the kid’s scared and helpless and alone, and is covering it with anger just like Dally always did.

So Dally lets Mark in. Angrily, and with a ton of complaints, but he lets him in all the same.

When the cops come around, looking for the runaway dealer Mark Jennings, Dally denies knowing anything, and the cops lose Mark’s trail and just kinda give up.

Then Dally forces Mark to dye his blonde hair brown (in a reverse-Ponyboy move lol), and bullies Buck Merril into giving the kid a job even with his record. (According to Mark on pg 147 of the book, he only started dealing to begin with because no jobs would take him with his police record) I’m pretty sure that Tulsa is actually big enough that no one recognizes him, especially with the dye job. I mean the town I’m from is a quarter of Tulsa’s size, and I still barely ever run into folks I know without planning it. And I get out a lot. So like if Mark’s at Buck’s place, I don’t think a lotta people will know of him- he’s sixteen, no one who goes there will know him. (And if they do, well, it’s Buck Merril’s place, nobody would dare to call the cops there anyhow.)

So Mark carries on like that, living low…ish…I mean c’mon he’s still Mark Jennings he still causes trouble. Just not so much trouble that Dally can’t keep him in check. He probably does still hate Bryon- just not enough to wanna kill him?? (Although again idk he’s still Mark maybe he wants revenge anyhow…he won’t get revenge tho ‘cuz I have other plot priorities and anyhow I think Bryon’s suffered enough)

Dally and Mark evolve to be kind of like fanon Tim and Curly- not particularly affectionate, but they care for each other. Mark shows it by helping Dally with chores occasionally, and sometimes stealing him stuff like rings and cigarettes. Dally shows it by letting Mark tease him, and by taking Mark places and spending time with him. And letting Mark call himself “Mark Winston”. (Again, Dallas acts like he doesn’t want to- hell, he probably believes he doesn’t want to, he’s pretty good at lying to himself- but he clearly does) (Tim, Johnny, Two-Bit, and Steve bully him mercilessly for this) (Sodapop doesn't ‘cuz he thinks it’s sweet and doesn’t wanna discourage it lol)

Then, about two years later, we’re at the start of my Tex fic, Hail Mary. That plays out about the same, except both Mark and Johnny convince him to help out with custody of a ten-year-old Tex.

Dally is annoyed still, but has begrudgingly grown to like these stupid kids- including Mason, who isn’t technically related to anyone but Tex, but hey he had a shitty cowboy dad too so he gets to be in the “shitty cowboy dad club” lol

I figure Dally stays in Garyville with Mason and Tex during the weekdays, and takes them to Buck’s on weekends ‘cause he does still have most of his life in Tulsa. Sometimes Johnny stays with them in Garyville too, ‘cuz yk, Johnny’s Dally’s best friend lol, and besides he’s not only an adult now too but is also an adult who is much more patient and easy to get along with than Dally.

Mark and Tex are a horrible combination to be around, even though Mark is eighteen now and really should be more mature than a ten year old. Dally has his mischievousness, sure, but neither Mark nor Tex were born with the little voice in their heads that says things like “arson is bad” and “actions have consequences”. Like Dally likes breaking laws- Mark and Tex don’t even consider laws. It’s bad. Dally and Mason leave them alone to go grocery shopping once and come back to see Mark has let the horses into the house, all because Tex triple-dog-dared him to. Another time, after Cole Collins tells Mason not to hang out with his kids anymore, Mark uses Cole’s car to teach Tex how to hot-wire things. Dally nearly murders him. So does Mason. It’s a problem…

Anyhow, those are my thoughts for now, lemme know yours!

[anguishedlurker]

Fog Lit Revelation

Another fic hits the blog! This ones for @half-deadmagicperson for "Lancer was driving home one night when something caught his eye.". Rings in at 2501 words, now enjoy the show!

~

A fact about Lancer was that he lived in Elmerton, technically.

It wasn't a bad drive to work at all, the barest of empty space between suburbs otherwise biting at each other's ankles. By all accounts he lived somewhere beyond where one would intuitively draw the line for Amity Park.

Intuitively is the catch. City designers wouldn't know the word intuitive if Shakespeare flew down from the heavens to impart it upon them.

It was a drive despite everything, and there was a bit of deadspace mostly taken up by trees to stare at whenever he drove. Which was basically every day.

A different fact about Lancer was that he was terribly overworked even amongst other teachers.

He needed to quit, he knew that. But it was hard to leave with Elmerton's own schools being in a hiring freeze, and knowing nobody would step up for Amity if he was gone.

Late nights were a part of the overwork. He refused to bring work home with him, but that meant hours and hours hunched over his desk under the flickering lights as he graded and stressed over the work that, frankly, should've been Ishyama's circus to manage.

It was hard to blame her for shirking the work though, as she was usually busy trying to keep parents from blowing their lids over the ghosts and possible dangers.

So the day's worse than usual, and he's on his drive at a sweet 8:07pm. He's a literature teacher above all else, but he knows the drive like it's addition.

It's twenty one minutes if nothings happening, and twenty seven if the Fentons are the thing happening. Lancer didn't like any other formula changes, but who did?

Everything was routine, the stoplights were as annoyingly timed as always and the people were much too casual about trying to honk him into submission.

He was as repressed unbothered as always. He would get home to drop into the couch and then bed sometime in the zone of 9:15pm, and wake up at 5:01am to begin the finalization for the days classes, because rarely if ever did he have the time or desire on the day before, and at 6:30am he would be out the door to try and circumvent any morning going ons.

The drive past the edge of what qualifies as Amity is truly nothing special, day after day. Sue him for not being terribly appreciative of nature, but it was the same trees every morning and night.

Same fog lights past sunset, because his brights were honestly horrid and worse at illuminating ditches than his brights on a good day.

Not for the first time Lancer pondered the half built house a quarter of the way through the trees, contemplating what must've made them abandon the project well before the ghosts came.

Not for the first time he cringed thinking of how bad the accident at the now fallen and twisted trees must have been. He hadn't heard anything good about the victim's survival odds.

And, three quarters of the way through, he saw something new on the drive.

He was ready to expect anything; Amity had proven that expecting sanity was futile.

But Amity's anything tended to be loud, and bombastic. Lethal because of the flying debris, lethal again for the raw powers of the ghosts hellbent on tormenting them all.

This new thing was disquieting, and crept instead of shouted its presence.

The trees were disturbed, and Lancer had opted to believe that a ghost fight had gone wildly out of bounds before dissipating, for there was no noise in the area.

Then the trees were more disturbed, glowing flecks of green appearing on some of the downed trees. Despite the continued silence, Lancer was ready to throw his car in reverse at the first sign of trouble, resigned to attempt to sleep in his car at the school once he'd absconded.

And then, not very far to the strip you'd think would still be amity because of how the town stretched in the north and bit at Elmerton's space, there was a lot of green in the road and trees.

He slowed, trying to remember ectoplasm's effects on rubber tires.

His fog lights shifted with the car, inching forward as he approached the puddle with caution usually reserved for the risk of gravity changing on oneself.

Off in the ditch, to the right, his lights cast a shadow on something that was glowing in its own puddle.

He desired so badly to turn around there and then, and simply not find out if there was something in the ditch.

But it was quiet in the trees, and the shadow in the puddle wasn't moving.

Another inch forward, then. And another inch after that.

The light shifted to show white and black, in a familiar shape. One on the news every day.

He did not hastily launch out his car, or even blankly walk in a zombie state to be forgotten. He sat, staring, as if something other than him could flinch.

He sat, like Phantom would sit up and laugh like it was a horrid prank.

Phantom did no such thing, and it was even more seconds until Lancer shakily moved to open the door and stand.

The air blew, crisp and acidic from the ectoplasm. Lancer figured the source was a fair bit more pertinent now, but couldn't tell.

With numb movements he grabbed the flashlight from the backseat. The keys remained in the engine, the car ready to go if he were to run into the seat and floor it.

Phantom didn't move as the light shone, though his wounds were certainly better illuminated than the fog light could've ever done.

Lacerations and punctured, mostly going up the torso in defiance of what a boy that size should be able to withstand. Lancer was pretty sure that was a rib, the white in the shining green and black.

Lancer once again did not zone out of his own head and come to have done something or other. Lancer once again stood in the silence, and had to think.

He most certainly could drive, either through the puddle or back to the school. He could make it not his problem.

But there was an already long dead teenager, broken and battered in a ditch. And maybe he was giving the Fenton's anti-ghost rhetoric too much weight before, because as he held the flashlight another several inches over Phantom's face lit up and something in him twisted.

It wasn't the first time they'd come face to face, no, but it was the first where there wasn't something else going on to make Lancer not especially care for details.

Phantom looked like he could be right at home amongst Lancer's freshmen class, cuts and bruises obscuring the almost peaceful look on his face as he continued to not move in the ditch.

Lancer didn't quite know what to do, because suddenly he knew he'd never forgive himself if he just drove away.

Lancer promptly had the worst-best idea he could have, and found himself a lengthy stick.

It brought back memories of watching his brothers gather around a flattened possum, trying to freak each other out. Lancer had not especially wanted anything to do with the matter, just like now.

Phantom didn't move at any prodding, Lancer precariously stood on uncontaminated grass to do this with. The green around them both flashed to be twice as bright, then calmed.

And, well, for a certain definition of alive that was a confirmation Lancer quite needed. But he was left in the dimming night with a stick and a ghost's body in a ditch.

He couldn't just take Phantom to a hospital; the wards in Elmerton would promptly hand him over to Amity, who would hand him over to the Fenton's. Even if they didn't, either of them, Lancer couldn't imagine that they knew enough spiritual biology to do much more than put stitches in. Provided they were willing to touch ectoplasm, as well.

Though, he did have half an idea as to how to move Phantom regardless. Lancer's neighbor had been doing painting, and courteous enough to warn Lancer to tarp his car if he didn't want to pay for a new paint job.

Even if the tarp was paint ridden, it might save his car's interior somewhat.

And distantly he remembered some different articles about ectoplasm's acidic properties. The media had largely concluded it seemed to depend on the ghost it came from, Phantom's being the least harmful.

Lancer still did not check out of the situation as he considered these things, because above all else he wasn't certain what his own plan was.

Did he simply wrap Phantom up and take him home? It seemed like a bad idea for many reasons. Could he rely on his neighbors to mind their business?

He wasn't so sure about it. An older single man coming home with a glowing teenager was certain to solicit at least one question he had no appropriate response for.

Somewhere behind him, there was a flash of light to bring him to reality. He nearly jumped straight back out of the ditch to start running, before pausing to assess where the light had even come from.

Somewhere just beyond his range of vision it flashed again, and Lancer had the dawning sense he was about to have to decide the kind of man he was within a few minutes.

"Hello?" He asked to nothing.

Nothing replied.

"I mean no harm to him, I just... can't figure out what to do. No hospital would take him, and it's... bad."

There was a gasp from the trees, but nothing else after some abrupt hushing. Multiple people, then. He couldn't stop himself from turning to the noise, but nobody was there as he pointed the light.

"I swear on my copies of Shakespeare plays I don't want to hurt anyone, if you'll just come out."

There were hisses in the trees, but nothing stepped forward.

"You can't be a ghost because none of them would be afraid of me, but I don't know what you or I can do as living humans." He reasoned, refusing to turn as footsteps walked away from his light beam.

Phantom remained silent in the ditch the whole while, and Lancer made the deliberate decision to completely turn from him as he scanned the road towards Amity.

"I can... take him home, I suppose. Let him heal on my couch. But I don't know what else I can do."

Someone darted across the road, and Lancer refused to turn. There was a very loud gasp, and a stifled retch noise. Lancer refused to turn, even as something in the back of his mind nagged he could probably identify who it was.

"I've got nothing otherwise. I can't imagine you have anything, either."

The clearly synthesized voice of one google text to speech started behind him.

"Go. Home."

Lancer examined his car as he considered.

"Home's past the puddle."

There was the furious clicking of buttons behind him, whoever it was desperate to respond with speed.

He should turn, but he was obviously on the cusp of a well kept secret.

"We. Can. Hide. Again. Leave. Now."

He should turn, but whatever he found out he wouldn't be able to take back.

... He turned without continuing the hiding game, because he had to know.

Tucker Foley stood, looking haunted in the light. Samantha Manson was clearly working on not having a panic attack, and one Jasmine Fenton was working on crossing the road.

"By Poe's The Raven I don't know what to say this time." He hummed, dull toned as Jasmine started also working on not having a panic attack.

"Nothing! Not a thing Mr. Lancer! Just- just drive on and you didn't see us!" Jasmine wheezed.

"Is he going to be safe with you three?" He asked, refusing to engage with the panicked nonsense.

Make no mistake, Lancer was in his own form of shock. He simply had the emergency response training and years of teaching to help with staying down to earth in a crisis.

"B-better than with you...! "Cause we can...! Uh... we're gonna have to call Vlad for this one."

Manson's voice was soft and quavering even with the bite behind the first half, the scene before her taking its toll as her eyes darted from Lancer to Phantom over and over.

Despite that, Lancer could only dimly register the Mayor's name.

"Do you uh. Need a ride? To..."

Lancer generally waved to his car, even as all three of them tensed.

"Nope! Leave!" Jasmine exclaimed, waving him away.

"I don't believe that." Lancer challenged.

"It's not about us, it's about you having your name attached to this." Foley grit out, finally speaking.

The boy stood firm in the light, his jovial humor entirely replaced with the attitude of someone who's been through this rodeo. Lancer didn't want to imagine it, but stood in silence anyways. Waiting.

"He's right." Manson spoke. "Mr. and Ms. Fenton won't be happy, Vlad loves new targets, so do the rest of the ghosts... Just don't."

"Yes, thank you Sam! Involvement is bad and you need to leave!" Jasmine hissed, stepping uncomfortably close as she continued to flail.

Lancer quietly considered the situation before him as he took a step back. And another.

And a third.

He knew, distantly, that this was probably the bad option. The one that made him a coward and a bad person. But he could see it, the cusp of a secret kept for a reason.

The cusp of a secret they were trying to say would get him killed.

The car had never been turned off, and both Foley and Jasmine darted out of the road to let him through.

In the mirrors, they clearly started arguing. Lancer could venture a guess it was about Vlad, though possibly not the one he knows of.

At 8:39pm he arrives home. He washes his hands and pretends he doesn't see his tires glowing from his window.

By 8:44pm he sits on his couch, and it's one of the few times he's conceded to himself it might be a good night to drink up old wine bottles he hadn't asked for from his mom.

Not much, never much. Enough for his head to buzz with something else and crawl into his bed.

At 5:01am he woke up, and could pretend for all of ten minutes he hadn't seen anything. A blissful period where he'd forgotten, and nothing happened the night before.

The rest of the morning was a haze, and not one he was inclined to make sense of. He was almost certainly better off forgetting the night before, and he could almost manage it as he marked the younger Fenton and Kwan as absent for the day while Manson and Foley refused to look at him.

[rosecoloredmac]

You Never Asked

Rating: G Summary: AAA Week Day Four: Teachers/Professors Jen attends a Westview girls soccer game and makes a shocking discovery about her coworkers. A/N: Please enjoy :)

@agathaallalongweek

Also on AO3

X

Jen doesn’t usually come to these things, but apparently all Alice had to do was smile and bat her eyelashes and Jen was putty in her hands. Her girlfriend is the assistant coach for the Westview High School girls soccer team and they made it into the playoffs for the first time since the 90s. Alice was over the moon at what she and the head coach Rio Vidal have accomplished with this team and Jen is nothing if not a supportive girlfriend. 

Jen is glad she had the foresight to bring her own folding chair when she lays her eyes on the packed bleachers overlooking the field. The whole town has come out to support the team. She finds a spot along the sideline where Alice can see her from across the field and drops into her chair. The teams are still warming up and Jen glances around at the other people set up in the grass and spots a familiar face.

“Agatha?” 

Agatha looks up from the book in her lap and Jen gives a little wave. Agatha gestures for Jen to come over and Jen immediately obliges. She grabs her chair and sets it back down next to Agatha’s. 

“Big soccer fan?” Jen jokes as she sits back down.

Agatha shrugs and looks back down at her book. “I’ve been to every game.” 

That surprises Jen. Agatha has been teaching history at Westview for over a decade. Her room was right down the hall from Jen’s and over the years they’ve formed somewhat of a friendship and she’s never mentioned attending a game. 

“Really?” Jen questions. 

“I don’t have a choice,” Agatha says dismissively, turning the page in her book. 

Jen wants to question what she means by that, but her attention is drawn to the field by the shriek of a whistle. The match starts and Jen finds herself getting into it. The excitement of the crowd is infectious and the Westview team is putting up one hell of a fight. Beside her, Agatha continues to read her book, only glancing up every once in a while to look out across the field before returning to her reading. 

Alice notices Jen at the end of the second quarter and waves excitedly from where she stands next to Rio. Even from this distance Jen can see the huge grin she’s sporting. Jen chuckles to herself and waves back. She hears Agatha snort beside her and whips her head around to pin her with a glare. 

“What?” Jen demands.

“You two finally got your heads out of your asses?” She questions with a raised eyebrow. 

Jen huffs and leans back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. Agatha was the one that called Jen out on her little crush on their coworker a few months ago. Jen denied it at the time, but it gave her the courage to just go for it and ask Alice out. They’ve been together ever since and as loathe as she was to admit it, Agatha had been right. 

“Shut up,” she says and turns her attention back to where Alice and Rio are talking to the team.

“I’m going to the concession stand,” Agatha announces as she stands from her chair. She drops her book in the seat and stretches her arms over her head. “You want anything?”

Jen shakes her head and Agatha leaves. Jen looks back across the field and watches the way the team listens attentively to Rio as she no doubt strategizes for the second half of the game. Jen doesn’t actually know that much about the other woman. She just started teaching Biology at Westview last year and took over coaching soccer this season. Rio kept to herself for the most part, but Jen knew she and Alice would hang out from time to time outside of work. 

When the team breaks out of their huddle, Jen’s eyes land on a kid who’d been standing in the middle, hidden from view by the much taller kids. He can’t be much older than three or four. Jen watches him go down the bench and give each of the girls a high five before hurrying back over to Rio and Alice. Rio ruffles his hair and directs him back to the little folding chair next to the water cooler. He plops down in it and cheers as the team takes the field once again. 

Agatha returns with her snacks just as they blow the whistle for the third quarter and drops into her chair. 

“Who’s the kid?” Jen asks, remembering Agatha said she’s been to every game. 

“Equipment manager,” Agatha answers with a smile tugging at her lips. 

“That’s cute,” Jen comments. 

Agatha chuckles and pops a french fry into her mouth. “His mother thinks so.” 

“Who? Rio?” Jen questions, looking back over at the head coach. It’s hard to make out any resemblance from this distance, but it makes sense. 

Agatha gives her a strange look but nods her head in confirmation. Jen focuses back on the game, though she can’t help but glance back at Rio’s kid in his little chair every once in a while. At one point Westview scores a goal, putting them in the lead, and he jumps to his feet, clapping his hands excitedly. Rio spins around and points at the chair and he immediately sinks back down in the seat. 

Agatha chuckles and Jen looks over to see her shaking her head at the kid. She catches her pointing across the field before pointing at the spot beside her. Huh. 

The game ends with Westview winning by one goal and the crowd goes absolutely wild. Jen smiles as she watches the team celebrate with their coaches. Rio lifts the kid onto her shoulders and he happily accepts high fives from the whole team, grinning from ear to ear. 

The bleachers start to empty out and Agatha stands. Jen follows her lead and folds up her chair. Agatha does the same and tucks her books under her arm. 

“Looks like they’re moving on,” she comments. “Will I see you at the next one?” 

Jen’s eyes find Alice still celebrating the win and knows she’s a goner. 

“Yeah,” she says, unable to contain the smile tugging at her lips. 

Agatha smirks and starts to head across the field. Jen’s brow furrows in confusion, but she follows after her. The team is packing up their bench while Rio and Alice are talking near the water cooler. The kid is still sitting on Rio’s shoulders with his chin resting on the top of her head, listening intently to Rio and Alice’s conversation. 

He’s the first to notice Jen and Agatha’s approach and immediately perks up when his eyes land on Agatha. 

“Mama!” he says, sitting up straight to wave at Agatha. “We won!” 

Jen stops in her tracks and looks from the kid to Agatha to Rio and then back at the kid. 

“Mama?” she questions, turning to Agatha. 

Agatha laughs and walks up to Rio, holding her hands up to help the kid down from Rio’s shoulders. 

“I saw,” Agatha tells him, ignoring Jen as she settles him on her hip. “And you did such a good job staying in your chair this time.” 

The boy beams and wraps his arms around Agatha’s neck. “Mami said that means I can have two scoops of ice cream tonight.” 

“Did she now?” Agatha questions, her eyes cutting to Rio who is suddenly very interested in what Alice is showing her on the clipboard in her hands. 

“Yeah!” 

“I’m missing something here,” Jen says, still unable to wrap her head around what she’s seeing. 

“Nicky, can you say hi to Jen?” Agatha says. 

“Hi, Jen. Do you work with my moms too?” Nicky asks.

“I do,” Jen confirms. 

Nicky grins. “Cool.” 

“Go get your chair,” Agatha instructs as she sets him on the ground.

“We’re gonna get ice cream right?” He asks, shifting from foot to foot, glancing back at Rio. 

“Yes,” Agatha confirms. 

Nicky smiles and turns to run over to fold up his chair. 

“You never said you had a kid,” Jen accuses. 

Agatha shrugs. “You never asked.” 

Well Jen can’t argue with that. 

“So, you and Rio?” 

“Married seven years,” Agatha says with a smile. 

Jen is stunned. She’s known Agatha for years. How has this never come up. 

Her attention is drawn away from this mind blowing revelation by Alice bounding over to her. She’s grinning from ear to ear and all thoughts of Agatha and Rio and Nicky are put out of her mind. 

“You made it,” Alice says, leaning in to kiss Jen’s cheek. “Weren’t they great?” 

“They were,” Jen agrees with a nod. 

“We’re taking the team out for ice cream, do you wanna come?” Alice asks hopefully. 

“I’d love to.” 

“Great, you can just follow the bus, that’s what Agatha usually does.”

Alice turns to go back to the team but Jen catches her hand to stop her. 

“You knew?” she questions, nodding her head toward Rio and Agatha who were standing off to the side with Nicky. 

“Not until Agatha showed up at the first game,” Alice answers with a shrug. “You didn’t?” 

“Not a clue.” 

Alice chuckles. “They’re like disgustingly in love.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah.” 

As if to prove her point, Jen catches Agatha stealing a quick kiss from Rio before taking her hand. Rio lifts their joined hands to kiss Agatha’s knuckles before she starts leading her and Nicky away from the field with the team. She doesn’t miss that Rio is now carrying both Agatha and Nicky’s folding chairs.  

And Agatha had the nerve to poke fun at her and Alice. 

“Come on,” Alice says and motions for Jen to follow. 

Alice slips her hand into Jen’s as they walk and gives it a squeeze. 

“So, think you’ll come to the next game?” she asks min that same hopeful tone she’d used when she convinced Jen to come to this one. 

“Yeah,” Jen answers without hesitation. “I’m invested now.” 

Alice’s smile is blinding and Jen feels herself melt at the sight of it. She thinks she’d agree to just about anything if it meant keeping that smile on Alice’s face.

[mariacallous]

We know this kind of novel. Reliable as the seasons, its opening pages disclose a familiar reality. A hovering, Godlike narrator looks down upon a European border town and begins to describe it. Since the novel is long—more than four hundred and fifty pages—and its title is also the town’s name, we anticipate a small world that will prove intricately large and tangled. The prose must first uncover the immovable furniture, then introduce the immovable inhabitants. This ancient place, doldrummed in an eastern corner of Austria, has a mostly ruined castle, a central hotel (the Tüffer), a couple of supermarkets, and a train station that, three times in the past century, has been demolished and rebuilt—each time worse. Like many European towns, it has a mazy old quarter, with cobbled alleys and crowded streets, beside an uglier new section. The inhabitants include a grocer, a travel agent, a general practitioner, a mayor. Then, in August, 1989, two mysterious men arrive. The clock of plot begins to tick.

But “Darkenbloom” (Scribe), a new novel by the Austrian writer Eva Menasse—her second, after “Vienna,” published two decades ago—is stranger than this suggests. The strangeness begins with that Godlike narrator, who flicks a diabolical tail. This narrator has attitude. She tells us, for instance, that the castle (or most of it: only a tower remains) was pulled down after the Second World War and that “someone must have profited back then, because someone always does.” The old part of Darkenbloom has winding streets and whitewashed houses; the newer half is “hideously functional, all steel and silicone, practical, easily wiped clean, just as people would have liked to be themselves, back then, in the period of reconstruction.” About this war: afterward, Darkenbloom’s inhabitants “just carried on, as everyone did—the majority, anyway. As everyone did who wasn’t excluded from carrying on; because they were dead, for example.” And these dead: like many Central European towns, Darkenbloom has a Jewish cemetery, neglected and overgrown. Why go there? You wouldn’t wander that cemetery without a grave to visit, and for a stroll “the Catholic and Evangelical ones were nice enough.”

So the novel’s faux-innocent narrator is also a knowing satirist, who sounds at times as if she still lives in Darkenbloom, and at other times as if she got out as fast as she could. Such existential doubleness is a basic definition of irony, which wears one meaning as its official uniform while hiding underneath it a meaning that might be its rebellious opposite. The Portuguese novelist José Saramago is a master of such ironies, in which a narrator’s bland clichés and platitudes hang in the air, neither quite owned nor quite disavowed, waiting to be ironized by the action of the novel. Nearer to Menasse’s home, the German novelist Walter Kempowski has used a wry, interrogative, omniscient voice to examine postwar German history, a point of view simultaneously close and distant, possessive and judgmental. (Menasse’s sure-footed translator, Charlotte Collins, has also translated Kempowski.) We might call this an epic voice, well suited for claustral communities and long historical perspectives—the effort of proximity, the fatigue of distance.

What might a typical, sunstruck August midday feel like in Darkenbloom? Not a soul on the streets—everyone at work or at lunch, “eating dumplings and brains with eggs and thinking, as they chewed, of nothing at all.” One of the two arriving strangers, a man named Lowetz, who grew up here, has a name for this average, brain-eating yet brainless citizen: Homo robustus. (He longs for the appearance of a more valiant resident, who might deserve the name Homo darkenbloomiensis.) Lowetz is returning after the death of his mother, who left a family house and belongings to sift through. Lowetz set off when young, settled in Vienna, and dreads coming back. This provincial place always stokes his anger.

The second stranger, another returnee, is more obscure. He takes a room at the Hotel Tüffer and ambles about, playing the part of an elderly, genial tourist. No one catches his name. Almost two hundred pages go by before his past emerges. He’s Sascha Goldman, son of a local schoolmaster, raised here until he was eighteen, when a notice appeared at the town hall, accompanied by a list of names: “By order of the Gestapo you are hereby informed that you must leave the municipality of Darkenbloom by 30 May 1938 at the latest. Sign below to confirm that you have noted these instructions.” Sascha and his father were on the list. Sascha, who now goes by a different name and lives in Boston, may have returned to search for his father’s remains; he is also searching for evidence of a mass grave.

Scores of European towns bear broken postwar histories, and in 1989 that past was still felt as a palpable sediment. From time to time, fields and forests had yielded up unexploded ordnance, even the nameless dead. Against this shadowed backdrop, certain dubious citizens preferred to ghost their own histories. But how do you live in a town steeped in near-universal amnesia, where nearly everyone chews dumplings and brains, quite deliberately thinking of “nothing at all”? Menasse’s novel has, as one of its epigraphs, a line from Robert Musil: “Historical is that which one would not do oneself.” The whole book might unfold under that motto. By this measure, Darkenbloom teems with willfully unhistorical souls who, when pressed to recall their war years, manage to have been elsewhere: history was what someone else was doing.

Homo robustus is outwardly placid but nervously awaits the moment when history might demand its due—as it does now and then, especially in novels like this one. Patiently, sardonically, Menasse shifts between present and past, teasing out the long, obscured threads of her characters’ lives from her vast tapestry. Take Zierbusch, a local architect and a former Hitler Youth member, who abetted a mass execution in the forest as the war closed, yet escaped charges. “Even now,” we’re told, “if the doorbell rang late at night or early in the morning, he was afraid that, all these years later, they had come to get him.”

Or take Resi Reschen, apprenticed at fourteen to the Hotel Tüffer, where she caught the owners’ attention and thrived as an employee. Then the war hit, and “soon the Tüffers were gone, young and old, with their clothes and hats and coats and boots,” never to return. (The Tüffers were a Jewish family.) Resi falls in with the right crowd, marries an antisemite, and eventually takes over running the hotel herself, never letting on “how much she feared the Tüffers’ return.”

In the summer of 1989, the town is in an uproar—the two returnees are poking around, but the real trouble is that a group of long-haired students has arrived from Vienna, authorized to restore the Jewish cemetery. Graves will be righted, brambles cleared. The old gates stand open, letting townsfolk drift in. All this excavation unnerves the locals. The mayor is powerless—the order’s from above, the money from elsewhere. So it’s free, at least: “No, it’s not costing us anything. Yes, of course, it’s true that the fiftieth anniversary year is finally over. But our chancellor also said that we shouldn’t remember Austria’s annexation only on the memorial day itself; that remembrance should be something that endures. The cardinal said so, too. Or was it even the president?” Menasse lets these words stand without comment; readers will note for themselves how talk of Jewish remembrance glides into Austrian remembrance—and self-pity. Elsewhere in the novel she mentions that Austria’s President in 1989 was Kurt Waldheim, the slippery ex-Nazi whose wartime role in Yugoslav and Greek atrocities had surfaced four years earlier.

Darkenbloom has its own Waldheim problem. At the war’s end, “wagonloads of half-starved, ragged creatures” rolled in from Budapest to build the South-East Wall, meant to be the last great defense against a righteously vengeful, breathingly close Red Army. (Two of these workers were Sascha and his father.) In fact, Soviet tanks soon crushed the wall, and townspeople pilfered the workers’ scant rations. One night as the war guttered out, while a wild party was held at the Darkenbloom castle, the starving workers were taken into the woods and shot by S.S. soldiers. Local Hitler Youth teens drove them to the site and dug the graves. (Zierbusch was among them.) The students’ work in the Jewish cemetery risks rousing this grim past, and most Darkenbloom residents want no part of such investigations. They’d rather think of nothing.

Menasse’s fictional Darkenbloom is based on Rechnitz, a real village in southeastern Austria near the Hungarian border. In March, 1945, as the war staggered to a close, some two hundred Hungarian Jewish forced laborers were executed near Rechnitz. Like the novel’s victims, they’d toiled on the South-East Wall. In 2007, the British journalist David Litchfield wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that guests at a ball at Schloss Rechnitz were invited to shoot Jews for sport—a claim disputed by historians, who do not dispute that the massacre took place. With the Red Army closing in, such gatherings, expressions of a desperate gaiety, a fin d’une époque efflorescence, weren’t rare. Nor were executions of prisoners and forced laborers, marched to a state of collapse. These killings doubled as cover for war crimes and a brutal shrug: what else to do with those cast as human refuse? The Austrian Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek wrote a play in 2008 about the event, “Rechnitz: The Exterminating Angel.” In her acknowledgments, Menasse informs us that she borrowed sentences from Martin Pollack’s “Kontaminierte Landschaften” (“Tainted Landscapes”), a book partly about the Rechnitz horror.

Menasse hews to the broad historical frame, but her novel justifies itself, as novels must, by doing what only fiction can. One could argue that “Darkenbloom” is too prosecutorial, and that none of Menasse’s characters especially surprise the reader. Greed, avarice, racism, and plain human weakness crop up right where you’d expect, in predictable doses. It’s no shock that provincial Austrians of 1989—Kurt Waldheim’s subjects, so to speak—would strategize in every possible way to bury the shameful past or, failing that, dilute personal guilt in collective moral haggling.

But it is Menasse’s style—which is to say, the way she uses her narrator—that makes the case for her deep and original reimagining of history. This teasing, searching, playful, scathing voice, half inside the community and half outside it, sometimes as bland as soup and other times as sharp as death, recounts history as no responsible historian could. The novel’s scornful power is bound up with the way it enacts and embodies its curious push-pull of identification and recoil, affiliation and disgust. Yet this doesn’t quite capture the book’s elusive tone, since the narrator’s identification with Darkenbloom is so highly ironized, while her recoil from Darkenbloom is at the same time so knowing, almost world-weary. Her novel may be set in 1989, but it’s very much a text of the twenty-first century, a document of cynical hindsight. This cynicism, though bleakly unsparing, saves the work from sentimentality or the unearned melodrama of inherited Holocaust legend. Instead, one has the sense of a kind of irritated prosaicism on behalf of the author, as if Menasse, in a distinguished Austrian tradition, were angrily quarrelling with her own countryfolk. As a result, despite its heavy history, “Darkenbloom” doesn’t read like some overdetermined historical “Nazi novel”; it reads like a satirical, intemperate, gossipy small-town novel, into which Nazi history just happens to have dropped.

If I were to select one of Menasse’s many threads as an example, it might be the tale—told in a brief, perfect chapter—of how the town’s prewar physician, Dr. Bernstein, was edged out of Darkenbloom. In 1938, two antisemitic thugs showed up at Bernstein’s home with the predictable ultimatum: time to go. These “two crooks” had been Bernstein’s patients since they were kids. With no Gentile doctor yet in place, Bernstein packs his bags and instruments and takes Room 22 at the Hotel Tüffer. For ten weeks, he continues to work—peering down throats, tapping knees, dosing digitalis for creaky hearts. Meanwhile, Darkenbloom, in a hasty and mistaken boast, hoists white flags to advertise that it is Jew-free—“beating its rival, the more bourgeois Kirschenstein, by a few hours,” our sly narrator remarks. Yet the townsfolk rather like seeing their old doc in his new digs: “As far as many Darkenbloomers were concerned, it could all just have stayed that way; they were used to and trusted him, and it even felt rather elegant, going to visit the doctor at the hotel.”

[slowd1ving]

I. THAT'S WHAT ALL THE PEOPLE SAY ･ﾟ FRANCIS MOSSES

"Your usual, Mr Francis Mosses?” you repeat with the same inflection. It has to stay the same. A name to a star will not make it any more personal – it’ll remain the same cold distance away, stay the same burning core of amorphous light, in a fixed set of constellations. It has to. But you’ve overlooked the most salient point. Humans are not stars. There's a reason you stuck with this shitty diner job: routine. So, why the hell does that keep changing for you? warnings + general: amab!reader, nsfw, depression, smoking + unhealthy habits, diner au, trauma, military background (made up unit for doppelgangers) so canon divergence, obsession lowkey

MISC. MASTERLIST

THAT'S LIFE MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

NEXT PART・

‘That’s life (that’s life), that’s what all the people say.’

Tinny, crackling music permeates the small diner. Sound waves echo against the chequered tiles bathed azure in the blue hour, and return to the record player in an endless cycle. Rinse and repeat. Devour yourself and be devoured in exchange. Ouroboros.  

Is there particular meaning to be found in musing over such philosophy? Maybe, maybe not – the only witnesses to tell you otherwise are the winking lampposts stationed outside the building. Thus, these thoughts keep you company on such cold days; there’s no one to tell you otherwise, after all. 

There’s not much else to do here. You’d change the record, but the only vinyl left behind by the old owner is the old ‘66 Sinatra. You’d clean up, but that’s all you really do. You’d talk to someone, but this hour before sunset isn’t the time slot of any of the usual regulars. 

Day in, day out, they come at their methodical intervals: Mr Henryk Jameson at quarter to five, a new woman on his arm each time; Mr Steven Rudboys at six, desperately rushing home with two takeout boxes for himself and his retired father; and Miss Mia Stone at half-past twelve, who talks a big deal about her students while she tucks into her onion rings and beef burger on her lunch break. 

There are others, of course, but these are the ones who remain most salient in these changing times. 

Here, there’s never a rush. It’s a languid sort of pace, one that allows you to be one of only two workers that run this place. The quarterly margin for the books is awful narrow; it dances on the line between profit and loss, and occasionally plays jump-rope with it. But you’re not here at the edge of town to make money.

You like the quiet life. 

You leave making money to the businessmen in the city, with their pinstriped suits and powdered foreheads. They’re regulars at lunch: hands gingerly poised to avoid greasing their harsh charcoal three-pieces, mouths pursed like an asshole sphincter as they sip their scalding instant brew, and eyes constantly honed in on other businessmen hawkishly. 

Some things just never change, just like this diner. It was the same three years back: same red retro bar stools, same fluorescent neon graphics, same polished black counters that left behind countless fingerprints. 

Still no customers. 

You slip a pack of Old Gold from your apron, lighting the last stick with the stovetop. At least you have the courtesy to step outside while you smoke, unlike some of your uncouth patrons. Some people just won’t understand basic manners, and that’s fine (it's not fine). 

The heady nicotine rush soothes you. At times like this, it reminds you of the field ration pack new recruits received on a weekly basis. 

Doppelgänger Detection Department: Special Extermination Unit. Honourable discharge, May 7th, 1973. Humanity’s adapted to its challenges well. 

You breathe the smoke out; it trails grey against the blue fog of the sky. The taste lingers: slightly nutty, moderately sweet. 

You know this flavour well. 

It preludes the adrenaline of battle.

‘You’re riding high in April, shot down in May.’

Why does the Special Extermination Unit want its cadets high on the rush while they fight? The answer’s surprisingly simple. 

Forget fear.  

It’s drilled into each new recruit. Fear clouds your mind. Fear leads to irrationality. Fear tears apart that which must remain compartmentalised. 

Better have cadets slightly out of the loop of the mind than pissing their pants in the face of a doppelgänger. Or faces (plural). Or lack of one. 

On the quiet road, a small van emerges from the mist. It’s nothing special; a white standard model awash with the indigo haze of dusk. You take a drag whilst observing it; when it pulls up into the diner driveway, its wheels crunch on the gravel with a sound that suspiciously resembles a breaking ribcage.

This is new. 

Your universe has been slightly tilted on its axis of rotation. 

When he takes a step towards the fluorescent light blinking from the joint, his breath comes out in neon puffs. Just like you – except, you know, your lung damage is significantly worse. 

You’ve never seen him before. Methodically, you observe him in your scrupulous capacity: a habit from your regiment that you’re hard-pressed to let go of. He’s of shorter stature than you, just an inch or two. Dark brown hair is slicked back neatly under a cap that blatantly reads ‘MILKMAN’ in bold letters. While his white shirt and dark trousers have been ironed, there are slight wrinkles in the fabric that betray his hard labour. 

While you observe him, he observes you. Those tired eyes gleam brick-red when you jostle the stick of nicotine in your fingers, and you don’t doubt the gleam in your own. He moves closer, and you can see the pronounced eye bags under his eyes and the gentle arch of his nose. Closer still, and your eyes can pick up his lashes, while your olfactory senses notice the milky, powdery scent that breaks through the smoke. 

Wordlessly, he moves past you. The heavy glass door swings shut behind him, and you swear quietly as you step on your still-lit cigarette to snuff it out. 

He’s waiting when you go in; his hands roughly loosen his bow-tie as he stands at the counter. No, he leans against it with his hip: tiredness more pronounced in the harsh neon incandescence. 

Your routine has been broken for the first time in three years. 

“Hard day?” 

“Mm,” he acknowledges laconically with a hum, not a word more of affirmation. You give up in your meagre attempts to further crash and burn this aforementioned routine. 

“What will it be for you, then?” The end of your question is markedly more flat. Boredom has seeped in once again. 

“House special.” His voice is low when he replies, vibrating at a frequency that sticks into your own sternum. “And a coffee to-go.”

“It’ll be ready in five or so minutes, sir.” You rip the small receipt from the pager and hand it to him – that marks the end of your conversation. 

Whilst the onion and beef cooks on the griddle, you take the time to watch him. He’s a singularity – an anomaly – in your Frank Sinatra-hazed day. Though, despite his strange role in your life as an unexpected variable, he seems painfully ordinary. His head’s tipped back against the cherry-red leather booth: eyes shut in a way that relaxes his face and makes him look at peace rather than exhausted. No, scratch that. Who are you kidding? He looks even more exhausted like this – hands unfurled on his lap, shoulders loose in their sockets as he slumps. 

Even his hat looks exhausted, deflating slightly on the seat beside him. His hair loses its slick quality; it’s messy in a way that pushes you to add an extra shot of espresso to his cup. He deserves it more than those stick businessmen in their suits, you think. 

You turn down the volume dial of the record player. Just a bit, until the vocals and instruments blend together as a singular ode to swing. It creaks from disuse – you don’t think it’s ever been turned. 

When you walk to his table, you do so soundlessly. Doppelgänger senses extend further and better than human ones; you know from ample experience. In the welcome video for new cadets, the crackling voice mentions such every few minutes. Even with your boots that squeak on newly-mopped floors, you manage the walk silently. 

Just as softly, you place his order down on the table and take that instantaneous moment before the aroma reaches him to observe once more. 

His face is serene. Soot-black lashes flutter as he finally registers the source of warmth and the caramelised aroma of the dish, and you take a step back. 

“Mm,” his hum is quieter this time – sleep-tinged. “Thanks.”

That short exchange is nothing less than your galaxy finally exploding. 

You don’t know his name. But you’ve got a great memory, and he’s currently the crowning supernova in the middle of it. 

‘But I know I’m gonna change that tune, when I’m back on top, back on top in June.’

The unexpected variable turns into an expected one. 

You haven’t seen him for a week, but he shows up during your shift seven days later – eerily at the same time he had previously. He looks the same – you’d know the signs of a doppelgänger, of all people – and you breathe a sigh of relief. 

Wait. 

Why would you care?

You thoughtfully thumb the plastic of the pack in your apron pocket as you deliberate the question. You’re not one to get attached to people – you’ve blown through the brains of faces that looked almost identical to your comrades-in-arms, with nothing more than indifference. 

So, why?

You really shouldn’t have started the philosophical thoughts at this time. It appears you’ve Pavlov’ed yourself into introspecting when dusk begins. 

He sits in the same booth he did last time, half-pressed against a window on the left side. His hair is mussed once more, while his bow-tie is strewn haphazardly on his cap. It almost feels like a routine is beginning. Except it’s not, since he’s awake this time. 

He looks at you with those dark brown eyes, and you don’t look back. 

And you’re determined to stick to your pessimistic and mundane world-view, so once you place his food down, you head into the azure realm to light a stick once more. 

You watch his white van, parked neatly in between those two pale lines while a stray cat circles around the warm tires. He watches you in turn. You can feel those pinpricks of pupils, boring straight into your back as you breath the menthol in, and out, and in, and out. Those instincts and reflexes of yours have been honed to a furious degree, after all. This much is child’s play. 

Are you a deviation from his routine, as much as he is to yours?

You’re not sure what to think. 

‘I said that’s life (that’s life) and as funny as it may seem, some people get their kicks, stomping on a dream.’

It’s the third time meeting him that you learn his name. It’s not like you learn it on purpose, but you’ve finally got a name to put to your blue-tinged anomaly. 

“Your usual, sir?” Your voice is polite, yet anyone could sense your exhaustion clear in your cadence. It’s been a long day, filled with numerous Miss Mia Stones after she brought her colleagues over – an exponential increase of imaginary students to talk about. Ever since he began eating here, there seem to be more deviations to your peaceful boredom. 

“Francis Mosses,” he replies without a hum for the first time. You pause in pre-filling the pager. The world grinds to a halt for a brief, starry moment. 

“Your usual, Mr Francis Mosses?” you repeat with the same inflection. It has to stay the same. A name to a star will not make it any more personal – it’ll remain the same cold distance away, stay the same burning core of amorphous light, in a fixed set of constellations. It has to. 

But you’ve overlooked the most salient point. Humans are not stars. 

“Yes, please.” He maintains eye contact this time. Perhaps it’s the fatigue that’s trained his gaze on you. Perhaps he’s slightly delirious. Perhaps it’s neither. 

Regardless, you can feel a slight shift in attitude, and you don’t like it. 

It’s different when the Businessmen in Pinstripe Suits come by. They’re very Important, they proclaim, so don’t mess up their Coffee and get it done Pronto. They don’t give names, only business cards. They don’t give names, only leave smoke from their Marlboros behind. They don’t give names. That’s how you like it. 

Their seats remain fixed – prime positions to glare at each other while simultaneously flaunting their contracts and suits and new watches. These constellations remain constant. That’s the rule of nature you’ve noticed. It shouldn’t diverge.

It shouldn’t.

It can’t.

You won’t get close to anyone. This is fact.  

‘But I don’t let it, let it get me down.’

The typical reasons for joining the Doppelgänger Detection Department: Special Extermination Unit, colloquially dubbed “Execution Squad”, are one of three: a strong sense of patriotism, a keen desire for revenge, or a death wish. 

You are not a patriot, and you’re definitely unenthused at putting yourself through hell simply to die at the hands of a doppelgänger. Really, there are easier and quicker methods at killing yourself that don't involve this infernal training regime. 

Those invasive pests had broken apart your family. You pick up the weight of the gun to return the favour, losing a bit of your humanity in exchange. 

You take the dangerous jobs �� risk is nothing with the nicotine and fury bubbling through your veins. You raid the abandoned warehouses, negotiate and exterminate the intelligent doppelgängers, and cull the ones impersonating animals. 

With each mission, you lose part of yourself. 

You shoot people who look like your friends, fellow humans like yourself. Children. Elderly. It’s exceedingly difficult to remind yourself it’s not human blood coagulating on your hands. 

Your sacrifice serves you well. Your anger bolsters your righteous path as Captain. It doesn't quite feel like revenge when it’s paved with gold and a heavy salary, but what do you know?

All stars burn bright before they die, right?

‘Cause this fine old world, it keeps spinnin’ around.’

It’s been a little over two months, and the supernova has become part of your galaxy. 

He orders, he sits, he takes a short rest. While he eats, he watches you smoke. You think that’s the end of that, but it’s not. 

Mr Francis Mosses stops coming weekly. Rather, he’s begun coming nightly.

Just as the clouds begin turning that alizarin blue, he parks his compact van in the driveway. You hear him before you see him – senses enhanced by your years in this country’s pseudo-military, muscle and sinew tensed in anticipation. Each gravel crunch is a signal, each careful step a firework. You can hear the engine hum as though it was by your ear. 

You don’t know when the anticipation started. You don’t particularly like it. 

“Mm,” his voice has become slightly rougher. Those dark shadows beneath his eyes look particularly deep tonight, when the dusk coalesces faster. “What do you recommend?”

This is new. This is uncharted territory, but your supernova always throws out the map regardless. 

You blink, thoroughly perturbed by his sudden question. Self-consciously, your fingers thread through your apron ties. 

“I don’t know.” You’re carefully neutral, to the point where you’re even boring yourself. “I haven’t really given it much thought.”

You really haven’t. It’s not like you particularly care about what you eat; smoke distorts your perception of hunger, and you just pick whatever’s closest to you.

“Pick something for me, then, anything at all,” he offers. You stare at him like he’s grown another eyeball. This, you think, is the most words you’ve heard in a row from him. It’s slightly disturbing. “I think I’ll like whatever you choose.”

You stay silent, with neon lights dancing on your impassive face as a response. 

When you make his strawberry milkshake and chicken club sandwich, he’s not closed his eyes. Rather, he watches while you work, much like you’d watched him when he first came to the diner. And rather than his usual booth, he sits right on the cherry-red stools at the bar counter, right in front of the kitchen station. 

It’s unnerving.

The streetlamps create halos around him. He’s a cerulean angel, you realise, one that’s tired and exhausted from the divine lifestyle. 

For the first time in three years, you can hear something other than the vinyl. If you stop to think about it, you think it’s your pulse drumming impatiently in your ears. But that would be absurd. 

Everyone knows that when you die, your heart shrivels cold and hard. 

You've died several times over. A pulse is impossible.

‘I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.’

From the very beginning in the Execution Squad, you’re taught two fundamental rules. The first is that though these creatures may appear human, you should extricate any and all pity you may have for them. 

The second fundamental is that doppelgängers work alone. Amongst apex predators like these, they hunt alone and live alone. These truths were observed when they first arrived, and you don’t question them. As a Captain, you’ve repeated the same tenets to your subordinates dozens of times, and they have served you well. 

That is the ‘routine’ you’ve created. Nothing good comes from its mutations.  

Don’t feel pity for these creatures. They’ll take your weakness and slit your throat with it. 

It’s supposed to be a simple operation. 

Use their lack of cooperation amongst themselves against them. A natural rivalry is present in the species.

You’ve grown complacent. It seems you don’t remember the most pivotal tenet of them all. 

But don’t expect this species to remain constant. 

You’ve already sent your Lieutenant back to base on your foolish assumption that this is just a simple extermination job. 

“Two confirmed doppelgängers in the vicinity, may be more in hiding,” you mutter. Your pistol is strapped to your thigh, whilst your shotgun rests heavy against your back. It’s a comforting weight. 

It’s also a false security. 

No one can deny your experience. You know your subordinates inside and out; you’ve eliminated their doppelgängers countless times. You shoot their faces. You watch the viscera drip from your sleeve. You tuck away your weapon. 

The bile stops rising eventually when you use enough bullets. 

That’s enough reminiscing. 

When you light the stick, you’re under the eaves of a crumbling factory. Rain drizzles from forlorn clouds – it’s winter, and you’re starved for warmth. Anything will do, even if it’s the hot blood congealing off your body in dense rivulets. 

It’s sickening, but you’re sick in the head and have been for a long time now. 

It’s not bloodthirst, but a cold detachment. Even without the nicotine, you think you could stay compartmentalised enough to face hordes of doppelgängers. 

Slightly nutty, moderately sweet. A note of sourness, you appreciate. 

You can sense several figures moving around in the factory. Even though they appear closer to each other than usual, you don’t think anything of it. 

After all, this is your ‘routine’. 

When you stub the smoke out into the soaked pavement, you know it’s time to move. Though there’s some unease lingering in the back of your throat, you dismiss it. 

You shoot the lock open. Your dark coat whirls behind you as the door clicks inwards. 

Several pairs of eyes swing towards you, and you freeze. 

How could you not?

These aren’t the people you’ve spent each day with for the past few years. These are your parents, your siblings, your cousins.  

No one warned you about this. 

This wasn’t in the manuals you read. 

When they say your name, you crumple like the building you’re in. Your tears cascade like the rain outside. 

You know their faces. They’re real, breathing mementos of long-gone humans. You want to believe; you can feel your precious tenets disintegrating with each step you take towards your family. 

Your family.  

Through blurred eyes, you can’t examine them in detail. They croon towards you – hushed murmurings of love and comfort – and you cannot help but give in. The gun at your thigh, the gun at your back; they’re there because of them, your family. 

Those compartments in your mind. They’re gone, burst open as though they were floodgates. 

You’re held for the first time in a decade. Human warmth envelopes you, before it starts suffocating you. 

Give in, it says. 

You want to. You want to, damn it, more than anything. 

You lied when you said you didn’t want death. 

You crave it the most. 

“I’m sorry,” you plead. “I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” they coo, and for a minute it feels wrong to imagine otherwise. It feels like betrayal to think of them as anything other than kin. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeat through sobs. Your guns are drawn, and you aim at the faces you wanted to see again more than anything. 

This is love, you think. You bear this pain because you love your family. You love them, to the point where you shoot them so they can finally rest beyond the veil. You love them, to the point where you point your gun at yourself and drop it wretchedly when it’s out of bullets. 

You love them, to the point where you’d rip your heart out of your chest to quell their sadness. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Salty tears drip from your face as you shoot for the last time in your career. 

When your Lieutenant finds you, you’re drowning. You’re curled up inside the abandoned factory, bodies strewn around you as you clutch your mother’s face for the last time. It’s not a pretty sight – brain matter and blood drips from you in oceans. They bled like me. They bled like my parents.

You’re choking on the waves. You’ve gotten your revenge. 

You’ve gotten your warmth – the blood and tears and rain scald you. Devils burn when exposed to such liquids, after all; you’re too impure to carry on living. 

Your cries strangle you. Even when you gasp and heave, no oxygen enters your desperate mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeat. Over and over, over and over, over and over, over and over, over and over, you repeat the same syllables. Even when the tears stop, your eyes are curiously blank and you continue the mantra. 

The lack of tears doesn’t matter anymore. The sky cries for you; weeks after the incident leave the area with relentless downpour that doesn’t cease even long after you’re taken away. 

I’m sorry. 

Revenge wasn’t meant to be like this. You had clear expectations; the doppelgänger was never meant to be family. You’d imagined a faceless creature. You hadn’t imagined this at all. 

I’m sorry. 

Episodes like this happen to even the most experienced within the unit. No one can shoulder this burden forever.

I’m sorry.

You’re honourably discharged. As of May 7th, 1973, you’re no longer part of the Execution Squad. 

“Go,” they say. “You’re free.”

No one says anything when you tumble in from hell into a small town on the edge of the city. There, you’ve been given a blank slate. They’ve scrubbed clean the blood from it – it smells like bleach and a myriad of cleaning chemicals. 

You’re allowed to keep your pistol. Though you’re not a part of the Execution Squad any longer, your badge allows you to keep it for self-defence against doppelgängers as a former Captain. It’s less work for the D.D.D – you take on the vigilant role, while they don’t need to put you on the payroll. It’s a pity for them, however. 

You don’t plan on touching it ever again.

When you sign the job contract for a shitty diner that only plays the same record on repeat, you savour it. Though your looping letters still come out bloody, it’s from beef patties rather than doppelgängers. 

It’s a fresh start. 

Here, you’ll create your painfully ordinary, mundane ‘routine’.

It can’t mutate again. 

Please. You plead with fate. Not again.

You don’t plan on feeling hurt ever again. 

‘I’ve been up and down and over and out and I know one thing.’

“My name?” 

“Mm,” Mr Francis Mosses hums. His eyes lazily trace you, and you know he can see the name tag pinned neatly on your chest. You say as much, with as little emotion as possible. 

This is dangerous. Your stomach churns in what could only be nervousness. 

“I’d like to hear it from you,” he comments neutrally. Or not. If you’re not mistaken, the earlier impassivity of his has melted slightly into amicability. You hope you’re mistaken.

Even so, your name leaves your lips like a promise. 

I hate myself. 

If he notices the hidden loathing, he doesn’t say anything. 

‘Each time I find myself flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race.’

It happens on the eve of ‘77. Snow softly powders the welkin and the earth, yet everything is still blue. There appears to be no purity where you reside; just a sorrowful, mournful despondency trailing behind you like a grave shroud fluttering on the funeral pyre. 

You’re about to light your second cigarette when you hear that familiar hum of machinery. It sings to you, breaks your blood vessels and rebuilds them once more. 

You hadn’t expected him to come today – it’s a day that should be spent with family, not at some diner where even the most rambunctious couldn’t be found today.

The stick is left between your lips like a kiss. 

When he gets out of his van, he doesn’t move past you. You, the Cerebus of the underworld. You, the mad dog who can do nothing but guard. You, who couldn’t do even that, and failed in your duty. Your honourable discharge is anything but. You’re a disgrace.  

No, he doesn’t move past you. 

His jacket slips off his shoulders and wraps around you. You blink in surprise, sturdy muscles poised to act to this unknown danger. What is this?

He still doesn’t move past you – his nose is slowly turning red in the below zero Celsius weather, while his breath comes out in silvery plumes. It’s unfathomable. 

When he pulls out a lighter, you almost go into anaphylactic shock. 

But you don’t, because your body is a traitor who can’t even die properly. 

You bend obediently at the waist to receive the flame instead. 

This is new. 

It seems like your supernova was able to reach past his limits.

This gravitational pull – it has to be a black hole.

Your galaxies need a thorough reshaping once more, it seems.

“Go, Mr Francis Mosses,” you mumble. “It’s too cold out here for you.”

When he enters the warm diner with a small hum, you miss the small smile on his tired face. 

The heavy glass doors swing shut. You’re alone in the blue world, drinking in the menthol and tobacco and tar and all the flavours that exist on this pitiful planet. Yes, you’re a speck on the planet, and Mr Francis Mosses is at the centre of the orbit. It all comes down to him. He’s the sudden singularity that continuously tilts the axis of motion. 

You don’t think the belt of stars can ever be the same. 

When was the last time you felt like this?

He’s not in his usual space by the counter when you shoulder open the door. Instead, he sits at the booth closest to the record player – Sinatra’s mellow tenor can be heard clearest at the point where the sound waves reach their zero order. It’s a good spot, especially for the eve of the next year; it’s in direct sight of the digital clock that currently reads a quarter to ten. 

You step silently towards him, but there’s no use in that. He’s watching each pace, after all. 

You don’t know what he’s thinking. All this time spent among doppelgängers, and you’ve lost the ability to read humans in return. 

He’s unusual. 

What’s he scheming?

“What would you like, Mr Francis Mosses?” you ask instead. It’ll be an easier answer for you to bear, you think. 

This corner is particularly dim, lit only by the back glow of fluorescence from the reflective walls. You can easily pick up the dilation of his eyes as you move closer; with your sharp eyes, you can even pick up the reflection of you and that coat in his irises. 

He should’ve moved to a brighter spot, you think. You’re not particularly discerning when it comes to these matters. 

“I’d like to share a meal with you for New Years’,” his voice is husky-low with exhaustion. You pity him, having to work to the bone each day. “You can decide what we have.”

“Go home, Mr Mosses,” you reply. 

Maybe he’s like you. Alone, without a supernova to shift his axis. 

“I can’t,” he tiredly remarks. “You’re good company.”

This time when you cook, he keeps his eyes closed with the jacket covering him like a blanket. You’re damn sure it smells like any pack of Old Gold, yet he’s conked out like a baby nonetheless. 

You frown.

What’s with this guy?

He’s out for quite a bit – you watch the minutes drag out until it’s half to eleven. By then, you’ve painstakingly made waffles, generously topped with strawberries. There’s other dishes too from the diner menu: burgers dripping with onions and beef fat, fries coated in powdered spices, and a bottle of cognac you were planning on drinking on the steps tonight. 

It’s New Years’ Eve, after all. 

Your hand reaches out to shake him awake, but you freeze just before collision. 

What’s with this feeling?

Your stomach feels tight, but before you can react, your hand’s already clasped around his deltoid. It’s startling how warm it is; you can feel each steady thrum of his heart, each gasp of lifeblood as it oxygenates and pulses through his cells. 

“Mr Francis Mosses,” you rasp, low and just barely above the strains of swing music. The crackle of the record player seems to be louder than your hushed cadence, but the man awakes quickly regardless of your volume. He takes a moment to register his surroundings, before stiffening slightly upon spotting your hand still on his shoulder. 

You quickly retract it as though burnt. 

For the first time in a while, you can taste the food. It doesn’t go up in smoke, and it doesn’t go anywhere save your stomach. 

When you drink the cognac, Mr Francis Mosses drinks with you. His flushed face is something to behold, something that makes your solar plexus tighter and tighter. 

There’s a burning sensation that claws from your chest. You can’t be sure, but you don’t think it’s the alcohol. 

“Mr Mosses,” you say, glancing at the sky beyond the windows. It’s no longer blue – rather, the black firmament reflects nothing but neon motifs. You step outside, lighting a fresh stick as he follows behind you in a tizzy. 

“It’s midnight,” you exhale. 

“It is.” It is, and it’s the first time you’ve seen him smile like that. Eyes crinkled at the edges, teeth slightly on display. Your breath catches, and the cigarette in your fingers twirls, forgotten in that moment. 

“Happy New Year, Mr Mosses.”

Everything is supercharged. 

For the first time, you truly don’t know what the future will bring. 

[dadfemme]

Someone to Lose - Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 | The Next Victim

a03

She called it. That’s why they pay her what they do after all.

Another body showed up on the property of a local farmer and horse trainer– Ana Hurley.

Emily went straight to the scene with Alvez in their rented SUV. After a half hour drive outside of town, the agents arrived taking note as they pulled into the gravel drive that they were the last to get there. Sheriff Hailey and the other three officers had already arrived, going by the brown truck in the driveway. Alvez got out of the car first to meet up with the other boys around the scene. Emily’s plan, once her docs met ground was to seek out Ana Hurley, and likely the Sheriff by default.

Prentiss hadn’t not thought about the town’s sheriff after she went back to her hotel room last night. The strong-willed, steadfast sheriff. In some ways it reminded her of herself, but also decidedly not in the way this woman was so confident at her age. How old was she when she joined her team? She was so unsure, so focused on fitting in. Maybe Jane felt the same.

Emily felt her brow furrow. Here’s this woman, so effortlessly leading her people. So confident in herself, so much so to speak up to her. That hadn’t happened in some time. Only her team back home had enough gall to speak to her like that. As Emily rounds the faded brown barn she’s pulled from her thoughts when she hears two feminine voices.

There stands Jane in her uniform, long hair tied up into a ponytail standing next to a woman, presumably Ana, dressed in denim jeans, cowboy boots, and a faded hoodie. Her long dark curly hair spilled over her shoulders like one of the horses in the nearby paddocks. She was closer to Emily’s age, and the picture of a cowgirl if Emily had to think of one. The woman was leaning close to Jane, talking quietly about her morning and how she came upon the corpse. Jane is listening intently, holding onto every word the woman said.

“Janie. I-” she sniffles, “I wasn’t ready to see that this morning. This is all so much.” Jane nods solemnly, “Thank you for talking about this with me Ana. I’m sorry you had to be the one to find them, but you made the right call to let us know right away.”

Ana steps closer. She was close before, Emily notes with a bit or irritation, but now the tips of her boots brush Hailey’s. Emily watches on as the woman reaches out a calloused hand to cup the Sheriff’s face.

“Are you taking care of yourself, Janie? Do you have someone to take care of you? This couldn’t be easy…this is your town in danger after all. I know you love your town.” Ana is looking at the sheriff, stepping closer to her as if there was any room to do so, ostensibly to offer comfort. Jane pauses, and after a beat begins to open her mouth to respond.

It’s at this point Emily decides she’s had enough. She clears her throat and steps in with her usual confidence, a grimace on her face the closest thing to a smile she can muster for this woman.

“Ma’am,” she grits, holding her hand out, “I’m Agent Emily Prentiss, FBI.” Ana reluctantly releases Jane’s cheek to shake it and if Emily’s grip is more firm than normal than that’s between her and Ms. Hurley, isn’t it?

The Sheriff takes a step back and offers a grateful smile to Emily.

Maybe things are going to start off on a better foot today. Especially if Emily can get whatever weird feelings she’s got under control, that is. Maybe she’s just tired.

“Prentiss. Thank you for making it all the way out here. I wish it were under better circumstances.”

*

The two of you are quick to peel away from Ana and start your way to the crime scene about a quarter of a mile out.

“You familiar with the townsfolk?” Emily asks, trying to keep it conversational. She’s almost able to keep the accusation from her tone. Almost.

You snort. How discrete. Of course this question came following whatever Prentiss observed of you and Ana.

“Most of them, yep. This is an elected position after all,” you answer quickly. Then add, “Ana, we…well. We had something once, but it wasn’t right. I assume you caught onto the…uh. History. Back there.”

You wave your hand vaguely and continue, “Anyone with eyes could,” you both breathe out a laugh, “she gets off on the attention.”

And is happy to get you off in return, but you kept that tidbit to yourself.

“From women,” Emily asks.

“From anyone,” you correct. “Ana aside, this happens sometimes with the women in town. Word gets around when you’re a woman’s woman,” you shrug and glance to Emily. Her smile matches yours by way of response.  

The two of you approach the body and get the rundown from Alvez and the boys. Both of you forget each other for the next several minutes to slip into what you both are best at. You nearly lose track of Emily as your eyes fixate on the body in front of you and all immediate surroundings.

“You’ve kept this from the public, right?” Lukes asks, breaking the silence.

“We’ve tried, but you know how people talk,” Garrett shrugs. “So far it’s just a quiet rumor. Everyone’s pretty on edge, regardless.”

-

You find yourself walking back to the car with Prentiss again, the two of you the last of the officers to leave the scene. Prentiss appears to want to say something, but you pretend not to notice. The silence is eventually broken when she directs her body toward yours and speaks up.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” she keeps looking at you while she walks. “I thought I’d worked on thinking before I spoke.”

You grin at her honesty. “It happens,” you shrug, looking down. You’re hesitant to let on how much the comment had stung. “I earned my spot here. I mean, I know that. Still a sore spot for me, I guess. It’s just been a while since someone so much as hinted I might not be capable for this job.” You keep your eyes down as hers haven’t stopped boring into you since she began speaking.

“I’m still sorry I said it.” She’s stops walking, catching your arm for you to stop in front of her.

“I know what it’s like being capable, knowing you’re capable. And still feeling like you have to be prepared to prove yourself at every opportunity. It’s exhausting when all you want to do is your job.”

She’s so sincere as she says it. Her voice is so steady, so earnest. As she talks you find yourself drifting deeper into her piercing gaze such that neither of you seem to register neither of you are speaking. Until a throat clears. The two of you were so caught up in the moment, you’d missed the boys approaching.

“Hailey!” Two pairs of eyes snap to meet Danny’s approach. “You have the keys. Hurry up we’re freezing our asses off out here.”

Emily starts walking first, but this time it’s you who catches her arm. She turns around to face you, dark eyes questioning.

“Thank you again. For saying that,” you say quietly, but you keep your mouth as if to continue. Something inside you wants to say more. More about what it actually meant for her to say that. How lonely it is to feel the way you have, and how good it felt for her to see you like that.

But saying that would be silly. To be vulnerable to her? This person you met yesterday? Absolutely not. So you drop your hand and offer a small smile before you square your shoulders and jog to meet up with the boys.

[sabraeal]

A Heart Like Stone Turned to Flesh, Chapter 1

[Read on AO3]

Written for @onedivinemisfit, who has been waiting quite patiently for this little birthday gift for a few months now 😅It was originally supposed to be based on one of her Frimmel artworks-- which, technically, it still is-- but I decided to include one of her other too, and the whole project grew into a multichap with a first chapter that addresses...neither of them. BUT I WILL GET THERE SOME DAY.

“Well.” Fog curls up from Sein’s mouth, sprawling into the same delicate lace as smoke. It's so familiar Frieren half-expects the cloying scent to follow, tobacco clinging to her clothes like a child does his mother’s sleeve. “I’ll give your friend this: that Himmel guy certainly got around.”

She has to crane her neck to catch his face— more than she ever did when he was alive. But this pinch is what’s more familiar to her now, habit narrowing her eyes to a squint against the sun. It’s him, alright; even with the morning light prying its way past her lashes, she can see the cocky tilt to his chin and the sly slant to his smile. “He liked helping everyone. It made him popular no matter where we went.”

Sometimes too popular. More than once she’d caught him sneaking out a window, just to avoid the crush of young girls lingering outside their inn, eager to meet The Hero they’d heard so much about.  He’d been shy about it, nervous those first few times— funny, for a boy his age; she’d always thought human adolescents were supposed to be eager for that sort of exploration, their short lifespans spurring them toward procreation before their brains fully finished developing enough to understand the consequences.

You won’t tell anyone? he’d asked, hanging there by the bedsheets, hair a haystack blown to the four winds. She’d only answered, who would I tell?

The girls, of course, which she did as soon as they’d crowded her at the door. And Heiter and Eisen, once she’d caught up with them in town. They’d laughed for a full quarter hour over it, winding down one moment only to work right up to a full guffaw the next. And when Himmel joined them, tunic sticking to his skin and lipstick smeared across his cheeks, thoroughly harassed— well, they’d started right back up again.

I didn’t say I wouldn’t, she would remind him when he turned those wounded eyes on her. And he’d only whine, I didn’t realize you were being hypothetical!

“If there’s one of these here, then the village must be nearby.” Fern furrows her brow— the way Heiter never would, not unless he was quoting scripture three sheets to the wind and tripping over one of those trumped up Empire words, like pervicacious or abnegation or, on one memorable night, copulation— and peers down the road. “Maybe those directions weren’t so useless after all.”

“See?” Sein thrusts out a generous hand, looking every inch the benevolent priest he isn’t. “Northern wisdom. No one knows this land like the people who live here. If you’d only let me finish talking to that nice older woman, then maybe we would have—”

“We still were wandering for almost three days,” she says, as cold as the mountain pass they’d trudged through trying to get to this valley. “Either that nice older woman didn’t know what she was talking about, or you were too busy staring at her to pay attention.”

Frieren rocks on her heels, just a little smug. “I think I know which one it is.”

One glance at her sends Sein sputtering, tripping over himself to insist, “I’m sure she said she knew a man who went this way once. A merchant, I mean. You know, a regular traveler.”

“I’m sure she did.” The chill in Fern’s tone could give a flame frostbite.

It certainly seems to burn Sein’s hide, since he hurries to add, “She’s given the same directions to other travelers too, and never had any complaints.”

“Complaints aren’t a bad thing.” Frieren tilts her head, gaze sliding up, up, until she meets Sein’s furrowed brow. Not a bad look on him, she has to admit. Thinking looks good on just about everyone; it’s a pity most people don’t do it more often. “It means the directions weren’t so terrible they couldn’t find their way back.”

“Well, sure,” he huffs, more steam rising from his mouth, consternation turning to storm before roiling away into the afternoon air. “But if they found their way, they wouldn’t come back either, unless, er…”

“They were just visiting?” It’s not that she enjoys seeing Sein squirm, it’s just— well, it is funny. A big man like that, a priest— the goddess’s chosen as they used to say— standing around and stammering, his cheeks discovering deeper shades of pink. Doesn’t really get old, no matter how many times she’s seen it. Or who she’s seen it on. “And then they’d be sure to come back the same way, wouldn’t they? To say thank you, at least.”

“H-huh.” His eyes squint— she wouldn’t have noticed, all those months ago, when they first began dragging him along behind them. But now his deflection is like an old friend, one fondly missed in all those years away. “Well, I suppose, uh…”

It’s impossible to meet his eyes— he’s head and shoulders taller than her for one thing, and not inclined to stoop down right now, for another— but she leans in, new snow crunching beneath the thick soles of her boots, and smiles. “Did she then? Have people come back to thank her for the good directions?”

“I didn’t inquire,” he sniffs, arms folded forbiddingly across his chest. “Her credentials seemed unquestionable.”

Fern snorts. “Her cup size, you mean.”

“It just seems like an odd place to put it, doesn’t it?” Stark says, sudden as always, his head still cocked to match his hero’s. “The statue I mean. Don’t they usually like to have a whole town square around these things? Put some garlands on and have a whole festival about it?”

“Not always.” Fern might not spare Himmel another glance, but she does fix one to Stark, for all that he notices. “I’ve seen plenty on roadsides, and more than a few in some glen or gully, all forgotten and worn down.”

“Villages move, plans change.” It’s her third time on this road in a century, and it never ceases to surprise her what things move, and what things carry on just the same, as if the years had never passed. “Especially this far north. People put down roots, and then a river changes, or the harvest doesn’t come in quite right, and they pull them right up again.”

Stark squints. “So this is where the village is supposed to be?”

“Who knows.” Frieren lets her eyes linger where the sweep of Himmel’s hair cuts across his forehead, the work so delicate she’d swear the barest breeze would ruffle it. “Maybe they just liked how it looked.”

“I’m just surprised they had someone around who could make a statue.” Sein’s hands hook behind his head; support for his surreptitious surveying. They’ve been missing that too the past few years— his casual curiosity, a welcome change from Fern’s weary antipathy and Stark’s unreliable attention. An eagerness to dig deep and turn up worms, instead of hurrying along to the next mark on their map. “Nice as some places might be up here now, we Northerners aren’t really known for our fine artisans, if you know what I mean.”

Fern stoops down, one robe-covered hand reaching out to wipe frost and years from the plinth, scowling when all she uncovers is blank stone. “Well it looks like he found one, at least.”

“You’d be surprised what you can turn up in these small villages. A girl who paints masterpieces on cave walls. An innkeep that single handedly slays demons before trudging back to serve his next pint.” She casts a knowing look toward Sein, her mouth taking a sly slant. “The best healer of the age.”

“And some farmhand sleeping in a barn who can sculpt like the great masters?” If he hears the compliment, Sein certainly doesn’t take it. He just snorts instead, shaking his head. “If there’s one thing that Himmel was, it was dedicated to being carved out of stone.”

She can still remember the smell of that workshop— wood shavings and clay, and some other sour note that stung her nose, clinging long after they left— and the way dust motes had eddied around Himmel’s cloak as he turned to her. I just thought I’d like everyone to remember me.

That would have been reason enough; humans were impulsive, short lived. They got tangled up in their sense of mortality, agonizing over legacy, over that second death, when a name is last spoken and all about them fades from memory. But Himmel— Himmel lets the light catch him, the ice of his eyes softening, melting as he tells her, but the biggest reason is so that you won’t be alone.

“Well,” she hums, lingering on the still familiar angles of his jaw, the delicate swoop of his nose. “He did like wasting our time. Almost as much as helping people.”

When her gaze drops, Sein’s is waiting for her, so amused— no, so fond that Frieren can’t help but wonder if he missed them all just as much as they did him.

“We should get going,” he says, both firm and gentle. Confident, maybe; knowing he’ll be heard. “Night’s not going to wait around for us, and I don’t have to tell you, it gets cold when the sun goes down around here.”

Frieren shivers just thinking about it. “Good point.”

Heiter might have teased her about her height— unfair, when Eisen was even shorter; size doesn’t matter when it comes to getting underfoot, that corrupt old priest would say, ruffling her hair— but it’s easy to tuck close to Sein when he walks, to let the heat that escapes even his thick coat warm her through hers. He’s a furnace compared to Heiter and his marble-cold hands— funny, she’d always heard drunks were warmer— and he complains less too, just stilling his arm with a sigh as she settles beside him. As long as the village isn’t too far, they might make it before he even—

Stops. Just like he does now, leaving her to lurch back on her heels to miss his elbow. “Stark?”

There’s tracks in the snow: four of them leading to the statue, making a muddle of slush around the base of it. But there’s only three leading away, the second largest set stuck beneath Stark’s thick boots, lingering right where they left him. Staring— no, squinting up at Himmel the Hero, jaw slack enough even snow might stick.

Fern heaves a sigh, arms folding into their most frustrated angles. “What’s wrong with you?”

Sein just barely stifles a groan. This, she suspects, he hasn’t missed.

“I dunno.” His head tilts, red and black shifting in its starburst. “Do you think…?”

“More than you, certainly,” Fern snaps. “Are you coming, or should we just leave you here?”

“Now, now, give the kid a minute.” Sein may put on his most peaceable tones, playing his priestly part to the hilt, but Frieren doesn’t miss the way his mouth curls, one side of his benevolent smile hitching to a smirk. “We all have our crushes now and again.”

“I don’t have a crush!” Stark yelps, whipping wide-eyes toward them. “It’s just— isn’t there something weird about this statue? You know, something different about it?”

It would be easy to brush off his concerns— Stark might be the strongest of them, but he’s the first to make shadows out of sunshine too, trembling right down to his boots at the smallest creak in the floorboards— but Frieren finds herself turning, blinking up into the late morning sun, tracing her eyes over stony flesh, counting two ears and ten fingers, hair artfully blowing in a wind eighty years gone.

“It looks like every other statue,” Fern informs him, utterly implacable. A fitting look for a mage of her skill— so long as it isn’t aimed Frieren’s way, of course. “Now let’s get going. My feet are going to get cold if we keep standing around in this snow.”

“But isn’t it…?” Stark squints up at the statue, stymied. “Isn’t it more, I dunno…detailed?”

Fern clicks her tongue. “Detailed?”

“You can see his mole!” One gloved hand swings out, jutting up towards a stony cheek. “Most statues don’t even bother with that. And his hair’s kinda all uneven in the back, like he cut it himself—”

“Heiter did.” They’d argue about it endlessly; Heiter, always too hungover to walk in a straight line let alone cut one, insisting that as an avatar of the goddess’s grace and kindness, his skills were unimpeachable, and Himmel, seized by an absurd and exacting bout of vanity, insisting that he try again, only actually good this time. “They were both hopeless with a pair of scissors. I don’t know why he never asked Eisen to try. He had steadier hands, at least.”

Stark juts a hand her way, pointed. “See?”

“Can’t say I see it,” Sein admits after a long moment, slanting a glance down to where she stands. “What do you think? You’re the expert on Himmel the Hero, here.”

The title pricks at her, like needles sinking into her skin. Expert, ha. That’s the whole reason they’re going north to begin with, isn’t it? Because she never really knew him at all.

She shrugs. “I can’t say. At this point, I’ve seen so many they all sort of blur together.”

But he’s right about the mole though. Most sculptors didn’t bother with the imperfections, fixing Heiter’s glazed over stare the mornings he showed up still soused to their sessions, or the kinks sleep put in Eisens beard, and sometimes even giving her one of those benevolent goddess smiles. This must have been a good one. Strange that she can’t quite remember it.

“Why are you spending so much time looking at these statues anyway?” Fern huffs as he finally tromps away, adding a fourth set of tracks beside their three. “It’s weird.”

“It’s not weird!” It’d be a better protest if his voice didn’t crack on the last word. “It’s obvious. Just because none of you have been paying attention doesn’t mean that I—”

Whatever he says is lost to the woods, swallowed up by the thickening firs and their hastening steps. Oh, she could hear them, if she wanted to— they’re not all that far away, and as Eisen always used to grunt, you don’t have all that ear for nothin’— it’s only…

It’s only when she looks at Himmel, she can see the way his mouth is just subtly open, poised not just to stand but to speak. As if he’s just one breath away from calling out to her, hand already half raised to greet her. As if all she might have to do it reach out, and stone might warm in her hand, becoming flesh, and she—

“Do you need a minute?”

She’s not the sort that flinches— never was, at least according to Flamme— but she does shake herself, like a sleeper shaking off a dream.

“No.” Sein lingers behind her, not close, but enough that she can see the furrow bridging his brow, concern burning as bright as any hearth. “Just thinking.”

*

The village isn’t much to write home about; just a smattering of houses that cluster up around a crossroads like nearly every other one they’ve seen since they strolled out of the Empire’s lands and into the deeper, bleaker North. It’s honestly not even too dissimilar from his own, though that’s a detail he’ll refrain from recounting when he finally does get to settle in and pen his letter back home. His brother may be a captive audience for the duration of three sheets of paper— even crossed, which Sein would consider a bridge too far himself— but he hardly needs to harp on the minutiae of being in a small village when that fool still lives in one.

No, he saves his spare inches for stories; ones he’s told by the toothless old men in taverns and the rotating roster of aspiring heroes he’s traveled alongside on his search for Gorilla. Ones he’s lived through himself, as well— nearly being flown off by some bird-monster took two pages of tightly-woven prose to relate, and wandering in some goddess-forsaken dungeon for three days with two hygiene deficient warriors had been a page and a half if only so he wouldn’t have to remember the smell.

The longest, of course, was the month they spent at the village on the Rohr Road, waiting out that cold spell.

I can’t take it much more, he’d scrawled, admittedly a little too deep in his cups. They might say that a little romance is the death of a party, but I’d take it over these two children dancing around each other, trying to find ways to twist the other into moving first! If I’d known I’d have to suffer a schoolroom flirtation, I might never have gone at all.

It’d been nearly four pages, front-to-back and crossed besides; every word of it spent venting his frustration at the futility of youth— and, more specifically, Stark’s inability to understand an implicit invitation. Not that Sein could blame him; Fern was just the sort of girl to roll up a welcome mat from under a man’s feet for nothing but the high crime of perceiving they could stand on it in the first place. He’d nearly burned the letter in the morning— who would want to read his drunken complaints about two romantically confused idiots they have never even met?— but…

He’d sent it anyway. They moved too often for him to get replies now that they’ve traveled beyond the civilized world— or at least, what he had always thought would be the boundaries of it, back in his small village, dreaming of bigger things. But Sein liked to think his brother enjoyed them, these letters from world’s end, smelly companions and luckless young lovers and all. That when he sat at the window of his parsonage, poring over letters by the morning light, he might smile and shake his head, wondering at the strange sights his brother saw.

It was the least he could do, anyway. Give a little of the world back to the brother who gave his up for him.

“That’s the headman’s house.” Stark hops up from his crouch, too young for his knees to creak the way Sein’s would. The lucky bastard. “Right there, on the corner. The big one.”

He thrusts out an arm, finger fixed to where a large log building sits, lintels well-carved and chimneys merrily pushing out smoke.

“That one, huh?” Sein squints, hands hooking on his hips. “I had that pegged as the village hall. Just look at the size of it.”

“Big family, maybe.” Frieren trots up to his elbow, hooking close like a child to their mother’s apron strings, afraid they might get lost on market day. But there’s no market out here, just children playing in the muddy streets and folk lingering at fence posts, wondering at the crowd of strangers that just rolled in. “I’m not sure, but Stark’s sources are unimpeachable.”

“Unim…?” Sein’s teeth snick shut as he traces the tilt of her smirk to find a knot of young girls giggling as they walk away. One waves, a corner of her pinafore caught up in her hands, and Stark hunches into his coat, the tips of his ears burnished a bright red.

“They made him play hero before they’d tell him,” she explains, voice nowhere near soft enough to escape Stark’s notice, no matter how much of a show she made of keeping it behind a hand.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” he says staunchly, giving the boy an encouraging nod. Around these two ladies, men like them had to stick together. “Stark already is one.”

For all his good intentions, Stark merely moans, sinking further into his collar. It’s Fern that clarifies, “They made him play hero to their forest lady. He had to pretend to get stuck in the mud and need saving at least three times before he begged them to let him go.”

“The hero needing saving?” That was certainly a new one, though by the smug little smirk on Frieren’s face, not unwelcome. “That’s not your friend’s usual narrative when he traipses through a town. You guys run into a little trouble here, once?”

“Not that I can remember,” she admits, and Sein doesn’t think he imagines the hint of disappointment. “But most of these northern towns blend together for me.”

“Really?” Fern tilts her head, wide eyes not curious but incredulous. “But you remember almost everything.”

“Not everything.” It’s Frieren’s turn to sink into her scarf, the ends of her ears twitching, like a cat well harassed. “We only went through twice, and I didn’t see the point of coming so far north, afterward.”

Their party might have a thousand year old elf, one of the handful of First Class mages on the continent, and a favorite of the goddess herself, but yet it’s Stark that thinks to say, “Did Himmel?”

Sein’s boots stutter beneath him, sinking into the muddy road as he turns to stare, stunned at the boy behind him. He’s hardly the only one; Stark shrinks back, hands raised like it might somehow shield him from a well-aimed Zoltraak. “W-what? It makes sense, doesn’t it? You were wandering around for fifty years, he was wandering around for fifty years…?”

“He does,” Fern starts, every syllable begrudging, “have a point.”

“It could be.” Those pale pigtails tilt, ribbons of silver slipping down Frieren’s coat before she shakes herself free of the thought. “I don’t think it’s likely though. It took long enough for us to get here the first time, never mind a return trip. Maybe it was some other hero. Plenty of them came up this way trying to get to the Demon King.”

But not many would have made it this far. “And what about the forest lady? Some local legend? A spirit we should be aware of?”

“Maybe.” Frieren slanted him one of her too-knowing grins. “Or it could be whatever survived of your goddess.”

He stares down at her, unamused. “Pardon me?”

“It happens sometimes, once you get far enough past the Empire’s influence.” She’s got a jaunty little spring to her step now, despite the mud splashing up the sides of her boots. “People settle, stories change, holy books are lost— if they were ever brought in the first place— and you get these sorts of spirits. Benevolent women living in woods and lakes and caves. One time, there was even a well where—”

“A well?” Fern frowns, as stern as Master Heiter never was. “I don’t think the goddess would live in a well.”

“Who’s to say she doesn’t?” Her smile is downright benevolent when she adds, “If church doctrine says that the goddess is everywhere, doesn’t that mean wells too?”

Sein sees the lightning before it strikes; Fern’s mouth furrows as deep as her brow, marshaling all of her best arguments together, a priest’s daughter, through and through—

“Don’t,” he murmurs, holding out a hand. “Trust me on this one.”

Now it’s him that her temper’s aimed at, glaring at the arm he’s held out in front of her. “What do you mean?”

“There’s no point in arguing doctrine with a person who predates it by a good hundred years.” His mouth tilts, only making hers furrow deeper. “Not unless you want her to start in on water closets too.”

The girl blinks. “Water…closets…?”

“We should go talk to the headman,” Frieren calls back, both her and Stark outpacing them now. “Are you two coming?”

Sein raises his hand in answer, hurrying to catch up to Frieren’s much smaller heels, but from behind him, he still hears the soft murmur of, “Water closets.”

*

“It gets colder from here,” the headman warns them, one hand digging into the thick pelt of his beard. He’s a hale man, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested— built like Master Eisen, only twice as tall. The sort of man who might have made a good warrior, Stark thinks, if only he’d been born in his village and not the back end of the world. “Hard to believe, I know, but even with all the snow on the peaks, we stay a good deal warmer than out past them.”

“It’s probably because of the mountains.” Frieren pops up on her toes, squinting toward the sky. Even lifts a hand up to shield her eyes, like she’s some kid trying to peek over her neighbor’s fence.  “They’re blocking you from the wind. This whole valley’s just a pocket of warm air.”

“I don’t know much about that,” the man— Gesund, he’d said, when he first started showing them around the place— says warmly. “But if you folks don’t want to brave the long nights and deep snows, you’re welcome to stay on for winter. We’ve got more than enough room.”

“Might not be a bad idea.” Sein’s got a speculative look on, taking in everything from the mountains peeking up above the tree line to the mud caking to their feet. Funny how they’d been walking in snow just this morning, and now that the day’s got a bit long in the tooth, there’s not a speck of it to be seen. “I don’t imagine there’s many other places around here to take us in.”

“Certainly not as nice.” The headman pats the side of one sturdy, log-hewn home, pride radiating off him. “There’s a few villages once you get out of the mountains, but the pass closes with the first frost.”

It’d already been harrowing enough getting through the first time; Stark shivers just thinking about another. A couple nights ago, it got cold enough for Sein to start talking about how some men in his village got lost wandering around their wood and gutted a fresh-caught stag for somewhere warm to sleep. Fern had scoffed, telling him to keep his gross old man stories to himself, but Stark—

Well, what bothered Stark was that it didn’t sound too bad. Not until morning, at least, which was way too long for him to be considering whether the goats around here might be just as warm, or if he’d have to kill two of them to fit.

“We don’t have much pocket money.” Fern’s mouth is strung as tight as their purse strings, voice pitched only to be heard by the four of them. “If we stay, there won’t be enough for—”

Snacks, that’s what she means to say. It’s the only sort of consequence Frieren understands, since time isn’t a limited quantity. But before she can eke out any kind of dire promise, Gesund says: “Don’t worry about that.”

A mistake on his part; worrying over their budget is one of Fern’s favorite pastimes. If anything, her mouth pulls tighter, brows dropping a dangerous degree. “Excuse me?”

Excuse you, she means, but if Gesund hears it, he waves it off with the rest of their concerns. “I’ve got a spare house. Built it for my son.”

He gestures to a boy who can’t be much younger than Stark himself, though he’s got a lot more limb, proportionally, and a lot less muscle. Nothing a few hard years working the land won’t change, but slower progress than throwing around an axe. Safer, though. By miles.

“For when he marries,” the headman explains, clapping the boy on the shoulder. The kid looks like he’d rather wither into the earth than sit through this particular explanation. “But no one’s caught his eye yet, and what young man prefers to keep his own house when he could have what his mother’s put on the table?”

It’s to Stark that Gesund turns his grin, as if this is some old chestnut all men his age must know: the sky is blue, water’s wet, and a bachelor never cooks his own dinner. And maybe it is; Stark wouldn’t know. He could barely remember his mother, honestly.

“As long as a few of you don’t mind pitching in a hand or two over the harvest, I’m sure it’ll all come out even,” Gesund assures them, the deep rumble of his laugh rolling over them like distant thunder.

“We have Stark,” Fern offers, catching him by the back of his coat. “He likes to lift heavy things.”

“What?” he squawks. “Why am I the only one getting volunteered?”

“You still have things growing?” Sein aims his furrowed brow down the road, as if he might be able to see them from here if he just squints hard enough. “We saw snow on our way in.”

“It’s the weather, I tell you,” Gesund laughs, leading them down the packed earth path. “It stays mild enough here that we can grow most of what we need up until the sun fails us. We’ve still got a week or two left before we’ll have to bring everything in.”

Sein’s frown pulls deeper. “One to two weeks…?”

“Come on then,” the headman says, smile bright as sun on snow. “Take a good look at where you’ll be staying. I’m sure we can work something out.”

*

It’s a nice little cottage, Fern has to admit; one made with quite a bit of thought and care. Even with a pace around the common room, she can’t find a single hint of a draft, nor one bit of the ceiling that might leak. The bedrooms seem fine too; just two— though there’s plenty of space for more, Master Gesund had said, quite pointed, should my boy see fit to fill them up— with windows sealed up tight. Glass, too— a luxury, all the way out here. It seems the headman does well for himself when he does make it down to the Empire’s markets.

“Can you imagine that?” Fern settles in front of the fire Sein helped her start, right before Gesund herded him and and Frieren right back out the door. To look at fields or some such. Adult things, she assumes, since the two of them have been left behind. “Having a house like this, and his son’s not even twenty.”

“I think what gets me is that he keeps talking like that kid should be married,” Stark sighs, heaving off his boots. They clatter beside the door, mud spattering over the towel Frieren left for them. “He’s even younger than us!”

Not even old enough to grow a beard, according to those bare cheeks of his. Or at least, not one worthy of the name. This far north, the length of the hair of your chin marked you as a man, and for someone to shave it off, well— it would have to be truly terrible. Fern had only seen the boy for a moment, eclipsed by the shadow of his father, but she can imagine it— piebald patches of red sprouting from under his chin, a wispy mustache. Nothing that would do his boyish face any favors.

“That’s how it is in places like this, I think.” She spreads her toes on the hearth, watching the wool of her stockings stretch between them “You get married young and start having kids to help out. More hands make quicker work, they say.”

“I guess so.” Stark shucks his coat at the door too, letting it slump to the floor like he’s some child fresh from playing in the snow. She’d scold him— honestly, they all have to live in this cottage together, he can’t just leave things places— but he pads over to her, the clinging fabric of his shirt stretching across his shoulders as he sits. “That’s kind of how it was in my village too. Well, as far as I can remember.”

He lays down— sprawls, really, like he doesn’t know how to keep his limbs all in one place without his coat to remind him they’re there. Another thing she could nip at, if she chose— he’s a buffet of problems, each one more meaty than the last— but Fern only tucks her chin between her knees, keeping an eye on where his toes curl, far too close to the flames. It’ll be his fault if he lets his stockings singe.

“They’d been talking about getting my brother married to some girl, you know?” She doesn’t, of course— how could she?— but she keeps her mouth shut, letting him settle into the warm stones. “At least, they were, before…”

Before. He lets the word hang, a warning and a wish all at once. “Was he very old?”

“Not really.” Stark shrugs, more hands than shoulders. “He was older than me though, by a lot. Maybe…fifteen? I don’t know.”

Her eyes jump to his, surprised. “Young.”

“I guess when you fight demons for a living, every day counts. Or I don’t know, something like that.” His head turns, gaze falling on her with bald curiosity. That’s how he always is, wearing his every thought on his sleeve, too much. “How about you? You’re from the south, right? Was it the same?”

“I…I don’t remember,” she mumbles into her knees. Even her memories of her mother and father are patchwork, a composite of a handful of half-formed moments and none of them clear. What her village had been like— her home, her life— might as well be a mystery. Or it would be, if she cared about remembering it. “I think Master Heiter would have been happy if I never married.”

It must have crossed his mind once, even as young as she was. That’s what little girls did, didn’t they? Grow up and become women who got married, became mothers. And yet he’d never said a word of it. Only encouraged her magic practice, luring her out a teacher with his advanced age and utter shamelessness in taking advantage of it. If it was a father’s job to plan for his daughter’s future, Master Heiter must not have seen one where a man would willingly take on a girl as sullen as her, as unnervingly silent.

“Yeah, I don’t think Master Eisen thought much about it either.” He shakes his head, grin clinging to the corners of his mouth. “Makes sense, I guess.”

Fern casts him a long look. “You think so?”

“Well, I mean, none of them ever got married, did they?” he asks, wide eyes finding hers. “Master Heiter was a priest, right? So that makes sense. But Master Eisen never did either. Or Himmel the Hero. And Frieren, well…”

Pigs might fly before she figures out how something as complicated as love works. Humans already had in the time it took her to figure out friendship. “So you’re saying we were doomed from the start?”

“What? No! That’s not it at all. It’s just…” Stark trails off, distracted. Just looks at the ceiling like if he stares long enough, he might see what fate’s carved for him in the stars. Or at least whether the thatch is leaking. “It’s kind weird to think that if I stayed…I mean, if everyone lived, and my father didn’t toss me out for being a complete disappointment”—Fern valiantly does not remind him of the fifty foot chasm he procrastinated into a cliff side— “that kid might be me right now.”

She lifts her eyebrows. “Not finding anyone you like?”

“No, no. I mean the getting married part.” Skin above his nose wrinkles, knotted up with thoughts, and he mutters, softer, “Well, maybe that too.”

Fern spares him an irritated glare. They’re sitting here, her hip practically touching his shoulder, only the fabric of her skirt and his shirt between them, and yet—

“What? Because it’s impossible that you could ever find anyone you’d like?”

“Yeah, I guess. Out there…” His eyes widen, and he rolls toward her, rising up on his elbow. “No, wait, that’s not, um…I mean, I wouldn’t—”

Fern sweeps up to her feet, an itch scratching just under her skin where she can’t possibly reach. She’s heard quite enough. “You’re so stupid, sometimes, Stark.”

*

“Look at them. We leave them alone for a few minutes and already they’re not talking.” Sein huffs, breath steaming up from his mouth in a dragon’s lazy curls. He’d probably cross his arms for good measure, too, if they weren’t already walking at a brisk pace, trying to eat up the acres between Gesund’s house and his son’s. “They’re like children— siblings! Turn our backs and they’ve already started picking at each other.”

Fern marches along ahead of them, chin lifted high enough to make Frieren’s neck ache with sympathy, every line of her sharp, officious. All business, Kanne might have said with a laugh— that’s how they talked in the cities now, she’s found. Quick phrases that might have been kennings, were they born a few centuries earlier. She likes it, she thinks. It’s…nostalgic.

Stark, on the other hand, drags miserably behind. He might well be some sort of revenant for how he trudges along, arms limp and head bowed, groaning about how unfair it is to be ignored like this. Frieren hums, muffling her smile in her scarf. “I don’t think that’s the problem here.”

“What? Well, of course not!” Sein snaps, whisper pitched low enough to be kept between them. “Obviously the problem is that they both want to” —he gestures, though it looks more like an explosion, in her opinion, than any suggestion of sexual congress— “but just won’t, for some reason. I thought it might resolve itself in time, but honestly, I think it’s only gotten worse since I was gone.”

Frieren shrugs, just a twitch of her shoulders. It’s hardly her fault— she already told him she wasn’t an expert. “They have been better, mostly. But the winters…”

“Oh, of course. Everything’s fine and dandy when we’re traveling along, just palling around, but they start thinking about being cooped up together— about huddling for warmth, or sharing blankets, or what have you— and now they have to cause problems about it.” Sein tosses back his head and heaves a sigh so weary it settles in her own bones. “Don’t they know they can just have sex? They’re not children.”

If there was ever a time to lift one brow, it would be now. But Frieren never learned, and so she raises both, fixing him with her mildest expression. “Is that something a priest should recommend?”

He presses a hand to his chest, paper-pale in the autumnal chill. “My foremost concern is keeping the goddess’s peace. And she knows full well we won’t be getting any of that until they figure themselves out.”

Frieren settles herself deeper into her scarf and tucks into his side. “They will in their own time.”

“Well, it better be in time to behave at dinner,” he says, louder as they approach the door. “Otherwise I might have to take things into my own hands.”

He spares the both of them a warning look as he knocks at the door, stern as any father— or at least, so she assumes. Frieren doesn’t remember much of hers, and what she does is…distant. A soft presence, if at times disinterested. Like, after all, repels like.

Fern sniffs, turning her chin away from Stark’s desperate, “But—!”

But whatever case he means to make for himself is cut short, the door swinging open, to reveal—

Not Gesund. Not even an adult. Sein drops his gaze and his knees, crouching to meet the rounded eyes that peep around the door’s edge.

“Hello there.” It’s a charming smile he cants the young girl’s way, the kind that says, I mean no harm at the same time it says, but I’m no stranger to trouble. The way Heiter used to— only without the last part. Both priests may have their vices— had their vices— but Heiter’s had always been alcohol, and Sein’s was…everything else. “My name is Sein. I believe your father invited us to dinner?”

Her eyes widen further, white all the way around, and with a gasp, she slams the door in his face.

“Well,” he mutters, rubbing at his nose. “That’s not quite what I expected.”

“I can’t blame her,” Frieren says mildly. “I think I’d do the same thing if you smiled at me like that.”

Her grin must be peeking out over her scarf, since Sein scowls at her as he stands. “There truly is no accounting for taste.”

*

“You’ll have to forgive her.” A smile tugs at the headman’s mouth when he has them seated all around his table, aimed fondly at where his daughter sits, trying to disappear into the bench. “Scheu isn’t much used to strangers. We don’t get many people who travel up this way.”

“And even fewer who stay on long enough to be seen,” his wife adds, a smiling woman who calls herself Froh. They’re all no better than strangers at this point, but when she shakes the bread basket in his direction, urging him to take another roll before it travels around the table, Stark finds himself liking her already. “You’re the first guests we’ve had for a good while.”

Scheu might be shy, hiding behind her hair now that there’s no door to do the job, but the rest of her siblings are loud, squabbling over everything from the best cuts of mutton down to the last bread in the basket. There’s five of them by his count, starting with the kid they met earlier— a younger, ganglier, beardless copy of his dad— and ending with the skittish Scheu; well-behaved bookends for what seems to be a rowdy crew.

It’s…a lot, he’s got to admit. He’d never thought of himself as a quiet kid— not when his father spent most of their dinner reminding him he had to stay seated if he wanted to eat the meal, and Master Eisen learned to distill all that scolding down into a single, disappointed yet devastating glance— but Stark watches one of the girls grab a fork straight out her brother’s hands and eat off it, and well…

Maybe he’s a little more well behaved than he thought. And if he is overwhelmed, then—

Fern’s stiff beside him, plate half-empty and hands knitted neatly in her lap. The picture of poise, the poster child for manners, but— her eyes are all wide, darting between every dish, unable to get a word in edgewise and too polite to just grab. He nudges her— just the littlest bit, one knee knocking gently into hers— and smiles. Maybe if he can help her, she’ll—

“Excuse me,” she says, the steel in her voice hiding its quiver. “Do you mind passing the turnips?”

The kid across from her— a boy, part of what looks to be a matching set— stops bickering with his sister long enough to stare. She nods, encouraging, and he pushes over the dish, jaw slack the whole time. Fern dollops a pointed spoonful right next to her greens before passing it back.

“Hey,” he murmurs, ducking his head down to his shoulder so she might hear. “Good—”

She wrenches her head away with a sniff and asks, pointed, “Master Sein, do you think you could pass me the beef?”

Ah. Stark slumps. So he’s still not forgiven. For…well, whatever he said.

“Gesund says you’ll be here for the harvest,” Froh says, looking him over with an appraising— and approving— eye. “Good for us, I say. We’ll have plenty to bring in.”

Stark swallows down his dinner and shoves a smile on his face. “G-great. I, er, love picking stuff up and putting it down. A bunch.” At least it’ll give him something to do besides wonder just how he screwed up this time. “Is there, uh, someone I’m supposed to talk to…?”

“Well, usually that’d be me, but this year Rustig’s running it. My eldest here.” Gesund elbows the boy, who only startles under his attention. “The one whose house you’re staying in. May be young, but he’s got a lot of experience under that belt of his. He’ll be well-established when the day comes to take a wife, won’t he?”

Stark glances at the kid—still withering the longer his father goes on— and tries a real confident, “Sure.”

“You’re giving him every opportunity to grow,” Sein slides in smoothly, wearing his most benign smile; the one that doesn’t look like a smirk or a grin at all, but just…priestly. “I’m sure he’ll be a real catch for whatever young lady has the pleasure of drawing his eye.”

It’s impossible to say if his father ever puffed with pride over his brother the way Gesund does over his son; Stoltz was younger, his natural talent expected rather than discovered, another illustrious warrior-to-be in their family’s long line of demon killers. If there were marriage talks, there must have been some frank discussion of what Stoltz would bring to the table— other than an eventual mangled corpse— but Stark can’t picture it. Not his stoic father, boasting about his son, his prowess, the home he could give them provided he lived long enough to make it to the altar.

“Well, I’m glad to hear you say it, Master Sein,” Gesund laughs, pounding his boy on the back. “He’ll make a fine husband one day, I can tell. Now Miss Fern”—the headman swivels his great head toward where she sits, interest quivering like an arrow— “Mistress Frieren tells me you’re a first class mage. Even worked in the Empire!”

“Yes.” She sets her utensils gently aside, hands folding over her lap, every inch a proper young lady. All those lessons at Vorig must of have paid off, at least in Stark’s opinion.  “For a short time.”

Gesund nods, impressed. The way anyone would be, faced with a girl like Fern. “Always like hearing about young ladies with an occupation. Getting some experience out in the world.” He clears his throat, stroking a hand over the burly bush of his beard, “You thinking of settling down in the Empire, when all’s said and done, or would you be open to somewhere a little more out of the way?”

Fern coughs. “Excuse me?”

“Well, you’re young yet,” Gesund says, working his way around to some point, Stark’s sure, even if he can’t figure out just what. “But in a few years—”

“That’s a fine statue you have outside of town,” Sein breaks in with a strained smile. “We noticed it on the way in. Just about knocked me out of my boots to see such a good depiction of Himmel the Hero all the way out in these parts! You must have had quite an artist here, and only a few generations ago.”

“Oh, well, it’s only to be expected, isn’t it? The hero did our town a great service.” Gesund draws himself up, proud. “Not just killing the demon king either. Oh no, we had a bit of our own problem, the kind that takes more than just a few good men to go hike out and solve.”

Sein’s shoulders don’t quite sag, but they do drop; a small ceding of ground to relief. “Is that so? We hadn’t heard.”

“Near around eighty years ago, some boy got stolen off by some monster that lived right out of town.” The headman juts his chin toward where Frieren sits, smiling. “Just our luck that the Hero’s Party showed up only a few days earlier and hadn’t yet moved on. The Hero went off in search of him one evening, and came back the next morning with child in tow, none the worse for wear.”

Stark glances at her, waiting for Frieren to get that faint smile she always does whenever someone mentions Himmel’s name, but instead—

Instead, she seems…concerned. “Did he?”

“So you recognized Frieren, did you?” Sein lets his mouth hook into its most compelling smirk. “I wasn’t sure if you had, but your offer to stay for the winter was so generous…”

“Recognize is a bit strong,” Gesund laughs, waving a humble hand. “I wasn’t around then, that’s for sure, and can’t say I’d have picked her out of a crowd. But when an elf comes wandering this far north, knowing all about the road through the mountains, well…I may not be a scholar, but I can string a few lines together.”

“You might have said something,” Fern says, not sharp but conversational. “Most people do, when Mistress Frieren comes through. If they know her, that is.”

“Ah, well, sure, but it was years ago now.” It’s strange to see a man so tall, so broad turn bashful, but the tips of his ears go as red as his beard. “I thought it might be too long to remember. It was just some boy, and the hero went off by himself—”

“That’s not how Paw tells it.”

It’s strange how sometimes all it takes is a soft, little voice to break right through the noise. Scheu sits on her bench, every inch of her quivering from the effort of speaking up, brow knotted up right above her button nose. “He always told me that it was—”

For a big man, Gesund’s gentle as he says, “That’s how it went.”

“But—”

“Scheu.” Froh glances at her husband, uneasy, before turning back to her daughter. “Looks like Paw forgot to come down to dinner again. Do you think he might be gettin’ hungry around now?”

The girl frowns. “I guess so.”

“Why don’t you go bring him somethin’?” Froh grabs a plate, loading it up with meat and turnip. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.”

Scheu doesn’t seem even half-convinced, but her small hands stretch out dutifully, taking the trencher between them. That’s the thing about being that young— it doesn’t matter what you know or what you think, you just have to do it because someone said so.

“It was your father that Himmel saved that day?” Sein asks, once the girl’s tromped out of the room, her tiny feet thundering up the steps to the second floor. “The one that was stolen by the monster?”

“Grandfather,” Gesund sighs, the force of it rattling his lips. “So as you see, Mistress Frieren, we owe you quite a debt. None of us would be here if you all hadn’t come into town when you did. Well, except my Froh here.”

He makes to pinch her cheek, but it seems the headman’s wife is practiced at fending off his affection, waving him away with a laugh and a flush of her cheeks. Sein, however, isn’t as easily put off.

“Your grandfather is still with us?” He sets down his spoon, eyes wide. “He’d have to be well over eighty years old.”

Gesund shrugged, his enthusiasm banked. “Nineties, the last time anyone bothered to count.”

Sein lets out a jaunty laugh, the way men do when they’ve been telling stories over emptied mugs. “Then he must be as hale and hardy as you are!”

“In body, yes.” Gesund grimaces. “In mind…he wanders. And sometimes that means the rest of him goes along with it.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” Sein's not often priestly, but right now he practically shines with sincerity. “It’s hard when that happens.”

“That it is, that is it.” Gesund shook his great head. “The man practically raised me after my parents died. Sometimes now, it feels like I’m raising him.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Frieren says suddenly, as welcome as a draft blowing through a window pane. “If you don’t mind.”

“It’s not his best time,” Froh’s quick to offer, darting off a concerned glance toward her husband. “In the summers he can be quick as a whip, but once autumn rolls around, and we start losing the daylight…”

Frieren cocks her head, considering. “Well, we are staying until spring.”

“That you are,” Gesund says with a sincere, if stiff smile. “I suppose there’s time.

*

In the end, she doesn’t have to wait long at all. Funny how things work out like that sometimes.

Well, not for the sheep, really. But as Eisen used to say: sometimes you had to break a few bones to make a good hamburger steak.

Just, er, with sheep this time.

[lesmisletters-daily]

Madame Victurnien’s Success

Les Mis Letters reading club explores one chapter of Les Misérables every day. Join us on Discord, Substack - or share your thoughts right here on tumblr - today's tag is #lm 1.5.9

So the monk’s widow was good for something.

But M. Madeleine had heard nothing of all this. Life is full of just such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit of almost never entering the women’s workroom.

At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster, whom the priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence in this superintendent,—a truly respectable person, firm, equitable, upright, full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having in the same degree that charity which consists in understanding and in forgiving. M. Madeleine relied wholly on her. The best men are often obliged to delegate their authority. It was with this full power, and the conviction that she was doing right, that the superintendent had instituted the suit, judged, condemned, and executed Fantine.

As regards the fifty francs, she had given them from a fund which M. Madeleine had intrusted to her for charitable purposes, and for giving assistance to the workwomen, and of which she rendered no account.

Fantine tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood; she went from house to house. No one would have her. She could not leave town. The second-hand dealer, to whom she was in debt for her furniture—and what furniture!—said to her, “If you leave, I will have you arrested as a thief.” The householder, whom she owed for her rent, said to her, “You are young and pretty; you can pay.” She divided the fifty francs between the landlord and the furniture-dealer, returned to the latter three-quarters of his goods, kept only necessaries, and found herself without work, without a trade, with nothing but her bed, and still about fifty francs in debt.

She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison, and earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that she began to pay the Thénardiers irregularly.

However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she returned at night, taught her the art of living in misery. Back of living on little, there is the living on nothing. These are the two chambers; the first is dark, the second is black.

Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to give up a bird which eats a half a farthing’s worth of millet every two days; how to make a coverlet of one’s petticoat, and a petticoat of one’s coverlet; how to save one’s candle, by taking one’s meals by the light of the opposite window. No one knows all that certain feeble creatures, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can get out of a sou. It ends by being a talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent, and regained a little courage.

At this epoch she said to a neighbor, “Bah! I say to myself, by only sleeping five hours, and working all the rest of the time at my sewing, I shall always manage to nearly earn my bread. And, then, when one is sad, one eats less. Well, sufferings, uneasiness, a little bread on one hand, trouble on the other,—all this will support me.”

It would have been a great happiness to have her little girl with her in this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then! Make her share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt to the Thénardiers! How could she pay them? And the journey! How pay for that?

The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.

There are many such virtuous people in this lower world; some day they will be in the world above. This life has a morrow.

At first, Fantine had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out.

When she was in the street, she divined that people turned round behind her, and pointed at her; every one stared at her and no one greeted her; the cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated her very flesh and soul like a north wind.

It seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath the sarcasm and the curiosity of all in small towns. In Paris, at least, no one knows you, and this obscurity is a garment. Oh! how she would have liked to betake herself to Paris! Impossible!

She was obliged to accustom herself to disrepute, as she had accustomed herself to indigence. Gradually she decided on her course. At the expiration of two or three months she shook off her shame, and began to go about as though there were nothing the matter. “It is all the same to me,” she said.

She went and came, bearing her head well up, with a bitter smile, and was conscious that she was becoming brazen-faced.

Madame Victurnien sometimes saw her passing, from her window, noticed the distress of “that creature” who, “thanks to her,” had been “put back in her proper place,” and congratulated herself. The happiness of the evil-minded is black.

Excess of toil wore out Fantine, and the little dry cough which troubled her increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor, Marguerite, “Just feel how hot my hands are!”

Nevertheless, when she combed her beautiful hair in the morning with an old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk, she experienced a moment of happy coquetry.

[bisluthq]

I fucking hate it when people say Taylor looks like Karlie K. I'm sorry but Taylor is WAYYYYYYYYYYYYY prettier than Karlie. // Also the company Karlie keeps kind of makes her ugly to me. I mean she had Dasha Zhukova at her wedding who at the time was dating someone very high high up in Putin's circle and Wendi Deng Murdoch was also where which now Ex is responsible for the mess of fox news. She also was just recently in Costa Rica with Jared and Ivanka

well Jared and Ivanka are legit her family and you don’t pick family (I WISH YOU DID) and in like Jewish families/our culture you can really not like one another but still spend time together. I don’t like half to three quarters of my family but they’re… my family. And I think I’ve said here once I had like a third cousin (idk what the English term is actually properly, he’s my grandpa’s cousin’s grandson?) visit Cape Town and like I took him out a bunch and when I visited London the last time (which is where he lives lol) he took me out a bunch too and so I think he spent more money overall (and my friends would think that’s a crass thing to acknowledge but that’s what happened and I think he thought about it too because we’re ex-Soviet so money idk matters). So I get the Jared and Ivanka stuff. That’s Joshlie’s kids’ auntie and uncle. It is what it is.

the other people you mention like yes Karlie’s a dodgy ass person lol.

[cowboyjen68]

Heya Jen,

So I feel like if I were a dude, people wouldn't look down on my clothing choices so much. Maybe it's just because people tend to, quite frankly, give less of a shit about what men wear and how they look in general while, and by contrast, focus a lot on a womans appearance.

I'm not quite butch in my own opinion, but I do tend to wear a lot of men's clothes, and even the women's clothes I wear tend to be quite practical. I like having my own sense of style. I like what I wear, but it doesn't seem to matter to other people, I guess it just seems like I throw on any old clothes to them.

I definitely tend to get this attitude more from women and, more specifically, my aunt. She's told me that I look like I've walked right off of a farm before, and while if anything I took it as a compliment, she certainly didn't mean it that way. In the past, her comments were more harsh, so it's an improvement. At least now it's not outright homophobic, i.e """asking""" me if I want to look like a lesbian or a boy in a rather condescending tone. It's more so a "THAT'S what you're wearing?" Thing. I even get the impression my queer friends just think I don't care about my clothes at all, and while I'm no fashionista, I do like putting together what I consider nice outfits.

Also, admittedly, like most people I do some days, just throw on clean clothes, I just don't see why, regardless of how I dress, it seems more worthy of comment and criticism. I don't see men's outfits commented on or criticized half as much, if at all, and we basically wear the same things.

This is just a very long-winded way of asking if you've gotten this sort of attitude too and how you deal with it? It's not like when I was younger and pushed me to try and wear more feminine clothes, though it still irritates me though I wish it didn't.

Thanks in advance for reading this whole long thing and being an open and out older lesbian who is willing to take time out of her busy day to answer so many questions from young lesbians and queer people alike.

I was never very well tapped into the fashion of the day. In my younger years I would put on what I wanted with no regards to what others might find proper. My mom gave up after on getting me to wear matching dresses and shoes or shirt and shorts outfits. Dad was fine when I came out of my Raggedy Ann themed bedroom in red cowboy boots, jean shorts and an orange shirt (with the bottom cut off) that said "10-4 Good Buddy".

In high school the one think my mom would not let me have was a three quarter length sleeved white shirt with a rainbow. She said I would get it too dirty and my shoulders were too wide for the fit. (she was not wrong in either case). So I tended to go with sweatshirts, t shirts and jeans. I was HORRIBLE at trendy clothing because I mixed and match too many things that just did not go together. I wanted overalls but knew that they were too "manly" for me, a girl. I went to the mall and spent my hard earned money on the closest girl thing, a peach colored pair of overalls for girls that were also kind of pedal pushers. It was NOT a good look.

Whenever I tried to be trendy I would bed it to be more what I wanted but not committing to "boys" clothes and it always went sideways in the worst way.

College saw me stick with t shirt and jeans but it was the 80's and everyone wore just that. Finally, a time in fashion where fashion was the same for everyone. Utilitarian and simple, at least in small midwestern college towns.

My mom would say to my young self. "are you sure that is what you want to wear?" or "Do you want help picking out clothes?" In retrospect she was trying to save me from drawing attention or getting picked on but just eventually figured I would either learn or live with it.

I know exactly what you mean about people assuming that me wearing what I was comfortable in as an adult was me just tossing any old thing on. My first girlfriend helped me by expanding my confidence and wardrobe. Custom made suspenders, men's dress pants and white button down for men instead of women's clothing that sort of mimicked men's style. After we broke up (7 years later) I still struggled a bit but slowly learned that the important thing was I felt good in what I wore and not what others had to say about it.

Men get a pass because I think is it often assumed they just don't have the need or capacity to dress themselves beyond simple and what is on the floor. This is, of course, also an unfair stereotype. Many men lack the confidence to stop out of the easy and simple to try and dress better for public consumption so they get in a routine. AND women are assumed to always want to look good for others so when we don't fit the expectation of our culture we "just don't care".

NOW I rarely dress up because of my jobs. I wear "work clothes" most days because I know within an hour of getting dressed I will be dirty. But I am most confident and comfortable in my work clothes. When I do dress up to go out I finally am like my young self (wear what I want) with a little more awareness of what others see. I shop at estate sales and find vintage western style shirts and unique belt buckles to wear. I feel good, have my own style and i think others see my confidence because I am less concerned about what others think and just happy to be wearing what I love.

People start to see confidence over aesthetics as you become more comfortable in clothes you love.

Hope this help. You are not alone and i think many women (even some men) will understand this feeling you have.

[estel-of-the-eyrie]

When I went to watch LOTR in the cinemas for the first time last week, my brain kept catching new details I'd never noticed before. One of those in TTT was the broken statue at Helm's Deep by the stairs. Which then spawned this little fanfic moment I wrote in the car home at midnight for Myths of Its Own:

Tagging @tathrin @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras @scyllas-revenge (purely as I think you might like a read? )

Groups of refugees from across the nearby hamlets and towns were still coming through the front gates of Helm's Deep on a regular schedule, though their numbers were gradually dwindling as time between safe travel and a siege in progress narrowed. Wren had helped where she could with Edoras' displaced civilians before seeking a quiet corner for her to sit and wait for news.

Her leg swung back and forth, back and forth, back and forth counting the seconds when there was no news from any quarter. She hoped that the small warning would have been enough to prevent anything else changing; the life of one man was enough - if it ended up being an exchange of one life for another...

No, she shook her head. Now is not the time to spiral.

So Wren let her eyes wander. Over the crowds of people were the walls of stone that had remained standing for so long, and three tall stone statues. Each had their backs to the main keep, looking outwards, ready for an attack.

From her seat Wren could make out most of the closest pair - though the one closest to her was damaged and broken, only surviving up to the waist. The blade of a sword was still distinguishable up to the hilt, well designed and very Rohirric though less grand and not identical to its sibling statue on the other side of the walkway.

Wren idly wondered who they were. Many of the statues mentioned in Tolkien's work were grandiose and their histories long and storied, but these were small, quiet, everyday reminders passed by on daily watches or sheltered beneath in the afternoon sun.

"My lady-" a voice from somewhere to her left startles Wren out of the trail of thoughts; pushing away from the wall, she turns to see one of the riders. He was perhaps not much older than herself, somewhere in the late years of his second decade or the early ones of his third, and looking at her beneath his helmet with some consternation. "Are you well?"

"Oh um ... yes, thank you." She's taken aback, trying to stand gracefully despite almost certainly standing on her cloak several times and nearly toppling over the small outcrop on the third instance. "I was just wondering about the statues."

The unknown rider frowns, his head tilting to the side a little. The spray of white hair from the top curls around his shoulder.

He gestures to the one standing taller towards the front. "Of Helm Hammerhand." A gesture to the pair flanking the stairs. "And his daughter and son."

"But I thought ... that Helm only had sons?"

His laugh is light, and for a moment Wren panics thinking she has caused offence (or just generally made herself seem a fool) but the responding smile is understanding.

"So say the bards -" the rider stands a little and turns to muse over the broken statue for a moment. "-but the tales miss out most of the truth I find. Haleth, she was styled. The name afore has not been remembered but that is well. For the one that is," the rider pauses and smiles down at Wren, half a foot shorter. "Is far more suitable for a Shieldmaiden of the Mark."

"Shieldmaiden," Wren turns the word over in her mind. Coupled with the look that this rider was giving her, it seemed that he was making many connections between her, himself, and the broken statue of the woman.

"Names are a grander weight here, my lady, than it seems you are aware of. But one thing is certain that all agree upon. That, were it possible, she would have been a Queen that the entire realm would have loved."

She knew what he was trying to say, in a different language with different words, but she had read historical texts to have caught onto the implications - the tales hidden in plain sight. The hidden rainbow flags waving in the breeze.

It just led to more questions about the broken statue that she was afraid to know the answer to; Rohan and its people had been nothing but genial since the Five Hunters had arrived. It would not do to shatter the illusion now, so close to the siege.

[roccoparondi]

Vague Concern (Michael Corleone x OC)

Summary: Three o’clock in the morning sneaks up on you in Las Vegas. Gloria found that out not long after she got there on little more than a whim and the loose promise of a drunk friend. But she had a job. Hard work but good pay that made for even better play on her days off.

Note: I don’t know what the hell possessed me to write this. I don't even know what the title has to do with this. Bruised Fruit-verse, pre-relationship, psychosexual debauchery.

Warnings: Pre-relationship, semi-anonymous phone sex, masturbation, infidelity?

1954

Three o’clock in the morning sneaks up on you in Las Vegas. Gloria found that out not long after she got there on little more than a whim and the loose promise of a drunk friend. But she had a job. Hard work but good pay that made for even better play on her days off.

Then she got a promotion a few months later. Shifted around was more like it, but her hands weren’t pruned anymore. Putting out place settings, collecting the exorbitant waste after each crowd that showed out to see the one and only Johnny Fontaine came and went. 

Half-smoked cigarettes shoved in half-eaten steaks. 

Used napkins soaked up the remnants of champagne in their glasses. 

Viva.

The lead up to four o’clock in the morning was what dragged on like bringing an old carpet to a dumpster, but she finally finished her shift. Seven to four, Thursday to Sunday. Meant she worked Johnny’s eight, ten, and one o’clock shows with a long break at midnight. Got paid extra to work her shift. 

It was a weekend when Michael Corleone was in town, which meant Fredo was high-strung, so her supervisor was on her ass a little more than usual, and Gloria expressed her frustration by scraping plates clean and throwing stained table cloths into laundry bins with a vengeance. 

Gloria had only ever spoken to Michael once, but he made one hell of an impression on her. Handsome, nice enough to entertain her questions about the old Life magazine article. She’d taken another look at it when she got home after their conversation. Admired his photo. Read the tale of exploits with a new perspective. Hadn’t seen much of him since.

She returned to her apartment at a quarter past four. The first place of her own. Small, but all hers, except when something went wrong, and it was squarely the landlord’s.

Her purse landed on the couch with a soft thud as she kicked off her heels and took off her dress. Something simple she reveled in was being able to walk right into her apartment and leave her dress and whatever the hell else she wanted at the door. She’d eaten during her break, so little sounded better to her than a hot shower and jumping straight into bed.

Until the phone rang. She furrowed her eyebrows. The only people who called her were her parents, and it would be about seven o’clock on the East Coast. Not unreasonably early for them to be up, but a strange time to call. Unless it was an emergency.

She picked up, twisting the cord between her fingers. “Hello?”

Soft breathing on the other end of the line.

“Who is this?” she asked.

A faint tapping, then an inhale. The other line was smoking.

“What do you smoke? I usually smoke whatever I can get my hands on,” she said. “One of my bosses smokes Luckies. I can tell by the smell. It mixes nice with his cologne. Probably something expensive and Italian, like him.”

More silence.

“If you’re expecting me to do all of the talking, you can’t blame me for where the conversation goes, alright?” she said.

She heard the tapping again. A smile pulled across her lips. “I’m still clothed—mostly. But I’m sure you have an active enough imagination, don’t you? I mean, you must be some kind of pervert to be doing this,” she accused. “But I am too, since I’m entertaining this—you. And you must know me, which puts me at a disadvantage. I guess I can be a good sport for you.”

Fabric ruffled on the other end of the line. She strained to hear it—clothes, or sheets?

“The slip I wore under my dress today was cream. It usually is. And cotton. I sweat a lot at work. That’s not very sexy." She sighed. "I was going to shower and then change into something else before you interrupted, so I’m talking to you in my sweaty old slip instead of nice and wet with a fresh towel wrapped around me.”

A sharp inhale. 

“Are you scared of me? Is that why you’re not saying anything? I promise I’m nice enough. If you were here with me, you’d see. We’d be in my bedroom, and I’d lay out on the covers for you.” She bunched up her slip around her thighs and shimmied her panties down as best as she could with one hand. “I’m going to tell you a secret, because that’s how nice I am. I’d want you to be rough with me.”

She slipped her fingers between her folds, not surprised to find she was already wet. Her nails had to be short for work, but her blunt index fingernail scratched against her clit. A soft moan escaped her lips.

“I like men who know what they want. You want me, don’t you? Isn’t that why you called? Why you’re still hanging on my line?” She leaned against the wall, her chest heaving as she pumped her fingers in and out of her aching cunt. “I’d let you do whatever you wanted to me. Only you. Even if you made me cry. Maybe you would, you’d hold my hips so tight that there’d be no way I could forget you in the morning.” 

A soft, barely discernable “fuck” came from the other end of the line. Then she came. Loudly, on her own fingers, never more grateful to live alone.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

Silence, punctuated by heavy breathing.

“This was fun, but we shouldn’t make it a habit.”

There it was, the tapping again. Cigarette on an ashtray. Maybe it was morse code all along. She resisted the urge to giggle at herself.

“Goodbye, whoever you are. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

[wiiildflowerrr]

HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: '5 Seconds Of Summer' by 5 Seconds Of Summer

Distorted Sound, 27 June 2024

'5 SECONDS OF SUMMER split the rock world in half ten years ago when they appeared on the cover of Rock Sound Magazine. Some hardcore rock fans dismissed them as a boyband best known as the support act of ONE DIRECTION, who were arguably the biggest boyband of the early 2010s, and for creating a song about American Apparel underwear that you couldn’t escape from every time you turned on the radio or were at the supermarket. But Rock Sound believed that the quartet from Sydney, Australia could turn dutiful teenage pop fans into curious listeners of rock music. Did 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER even classify as rock?

The answer is yes – to a certain extent. Formed in the Sydney suburbs, lead singer/guitarist Luke Hemmings, guitarist Michael Clifford, and bassist Calum Hood gained a substantial following on YouTube posting cover songs. Drummer Ashton Irwin joined the band after Clifford messaged him on Facebook as the band were going to play their first show and 200 people were going to be there. The reality was that the band ended up playing their first show at the Annadale Hotel – a pub in Sydney – on December 3, 2011 to only twelve people. But since that day, they’ve maintained the same line-up, working hard and growing an audience online and in person after extensive touring. After getting noticed by Louis Tomlinson from ONE DIRECTION in 2012, 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER were propelled to dizzying heights of fame after supporting ONE DIRECTION on their Take Me Home tour in 2013, and again in 2014 on the boyband’s Where We Are stadium tour.

Whilst 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER‘s breakout hit, She Looks So Perfect, might’ve been bubblegum pop, it’s also very guitar-driven, opening with a guitar note before leading into the catchiest ‘Heys’ ever put to music. Throughout their self-titled debut  album, there are elements of rock mixed in with sugary sweet pop, whether it is the paint-by-numbers pop-rock of Don’t Stop, or the guitar-driven Good Girls.

5 SECONDS OF SUMMER might not have been reinventing pop-rock by any means, but then again, the band were only three years into their career, having formed in late 2011, and three-quarters of the band were still in their teens at the time of this album’s release. Yet, there is also an undeniable charm about this album, with lyrics about wanting to escape town with a romantic partner (Kiss Me, Kiss Me), crushing on someone older (18), or wishing that you could commit to a relationship after a break-up (Everything I Didn’t Say). Admittedly, this is where the album falters sonically as the production is less inspiring and leans more into pop.

However, everything changes when Beside You comes on. This is a song that has been in 5 SEONDS OF SUMMER‘s discography since their debut 2012 EP Somewhere New. This re-recorded version breathes new life into the song, and it’s become a staple of their live shows and a fan-favourite. End Up Here is a fast-paced pop-rock song that namechecks both KURT COBAIN and Livin’ On A Prayer by BON JOVI. Whilst Long Way Home and Heartbreak Girl are mostly forgettable, the cheeky English Love Affair brings the album back up to speed. The standard edition ends with Amnesia, an acoustic break-up song that is easily one of the best written by the band.

Interestingly enough, the band’s more rockier sound is heard on the extended edition of the album. Social Casualty is a drum-heavy rock song that talks about leaving town to escape the past, Never Be is a mid-tempo song in the same vein as Beside You. Whilst Voodoo Doll is so overproduced that it threatens to burst your eardrums, the acoustic version of Don’t Stop is a good antidote. There is also a good foundation throughout this album that is further extended upon in their second album Sounds Good Feels Good (2015).

Critically, 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER‘s self-titled earned favourable reviews, with The Guardian calling the album ‘lyrical mischief’ and rating it 3/5, whereas AllMusic gave it 3.5/5 and said that the album is 'packed with immediately hummable melodies that anyone over 30 will probably feel slightly guilty for remembering'. The album sold 259,000, and hit Number One in fourteen countries, including America and Australia. It reached Number Two in the UK.

Overall, ten years on, it’s interesting to listen back to this album. Whilst the band only played four songs from the album on their most recent tour The 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER Show, and their third album Youngblood (2018) and fourth album Calm (2020) saw them swap their pop-rock sound for synth-pop, their fifth album 5SOS5 (2022) saw them return back to their roots in a mature way. Lyrically, their self-titled album is more risqué than anything that ONE DIRECTION ever released. Sonically, the album mostly works well thanks to the brilliant production by John Feldmann, although some of the songs do sound too clean cut and sometimes leans more into pop than rock. But this is an album that shows that 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER could break out of the shadow of the biggest boyband and shine on their own. They might’ve never reached the heights of fame ONE DIRECTION did, but this album did show a generation of teenage fans that there is more music out there than what’s on the radio.

'5 Seconds Of Summer' was originally released on June 27, 2014 via Capitol Records.' X