#and complains about sand in his converse for weeks even though billy offered him some flip flops

[cicadasketch]

Here’s a bunch of silly messy little sketches for the mungrove peeps

[brooklynislandgirl]

Beth,

I hope you like this, I wanted to get one with a shark, but I didn’t think any of them looked very good and like sharks and that’s just disappointing. I thought this one was maybe neater anyways because it’s different kinds of shell and pearl, but shiny! So, it made me think of you. Because you are also beautiful and shiny, obviously. But not literally shiny, I mean. In the way that you are the most wonderful person.

BE thought it would be good to leave you a gift too, but since it was his artistic stylings of dug out litter art, I politely told him to just sign the card instead.

We love you very much,

Anakin & BE

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Christmas had always been a bizarre amalgamation of traditions growing up.

 Those years that the Admiral was home for the celebration it was a very by-the-numbers type affair. Many perfectly wrapped gifts under a large fir bedecked and baubled in almost monotone schemes, the kind of thing one would find in a Fortune Five-Hundred Magazine. As if anyone was going to judge a well-connected physician who was also a captain of the Navy and could buy and sell the islands twice over, in true conquering imperial fashion. All accompanied by snide comments about how things were done back in civilisation, with snow and staff and things that she has no real truck with.

When it had only been her mother, the sea and ships claiming her spouse, it was a more riotous affair. The tree smaller, the ornaments hand-made by children’s hands be it her own or extended clans of cousins. The baked goods were closer to island food than gingerbread. Everything mismatched and colourful. Stories of Santa and Elves became the kindness of Lono and the work of the menahune.

And eventually that became Andy doing everything in his power to keep her believing in Santa Claus, tracking in sand that he would vacuum up as soon as the gifts were open and stockings plundered, all very middle of the road between their parents.

When Billy came back to them, they added traditional English aspects to the Irish and Hawai’ian and it all worked in it’s weird way, despite there being so many differences between the three siblings. Beth liked to think that it was love, the spirit of the season that made it all possible. And if she were to talk about it, which she doesn’t, she’d be keen on recalling faces; the way Jay laughed with her hand in front of her mouth, full of some succulent treat, Andy waving a spatula around while wearing a flour covered apron, Baz fiddling with the lights so that they blink in tune of the music, Billy sitting behind her, head on her shoulder. Father Vincent perched on a couch arm going over the keen points of the four masses he’d preform in the twenty four hours starting at midnight.

If there was ever true magick, those were moments of it. Nothing spectacular. Just warmth and love and kindness for all. It was all Beth really wished for, deep down. And she missed those New York City holidays. She missed her cabal, her family.

Though she has to admit, Anakin had been a champion in the last couple weeks. Taking her to all the unique New Orleans celebrations, not once complaining about too many people, the bustle and crowding. He didn’t complain over volunteering at various shelters, of helping her deliver clothes and food to those who are not as fortunate as they are, playing with the children as she made arrangements with some parents. Covering a bill here, declining payment for a medical expense there.

Beth knows she is fortunate, even blessed, and to her the best way to handle it all is to make sure as many people as possible could experience even a fraction of what came to her through other people’s labours. Of course that’s not to say she didn’t enjoy the smaller and quieter moments, the ones that had been meant for just them. She will dream in the days to come of Anakin stretching impossibly thin and putting those ridiculously long limbs to good work hanging the more breakable ornaments high in the tree that she couldn’t herself reach all with promises that no, of course, Bugs will not climb up there to knock them down. She has had to replace at least five ornaments every year with the same or similar thanks to Houdini and his fantastically elaborate heists to do just that. She gets to show Anakin a picture of her cat when Uncle Luis sends her a card featuring both feline and not-actually-blood-relation sharing cocoa against the Manhattan skyline. 

She will dream in the days to come of Anakin sitting on the floor with her, bowls of cranberries and bowls of popcorn, stringing them with needle and thread that end in half-strung massacres with broken kernels in their hair, berry juice staining fingers and lips, both of them laughing so hard that they can hardly catch their breath, having rolled around in mock combat, carols playing in the background and Bug Eater watching in true feline disdain from one of the couch arms {having thrice been turned away from trying to steal the finished strings when he thought no one was looking}.

And she will dream in days to come of things that didn’t happen either. The way there were moments when she wanted to bury her face in his neck, which wouldn’t be easy to do, and sway tightly pressed together under the snow that doesn’t fall in New Orleans without a hefty and not very coincidental at all dose of storm-wife rotes. Hot chocolate kisses. A little too much cheer in his eggnog and how sweet it lingers in a softly exhaled breath. Not that she wants this because she feels he owes her something, not even close to that.

And she would be horrified if he did think that. No matter how close they have become, no matter how their continued comfort with one another makes it hard to think of them as separate entities. Which brings into question if they are friends, if they are master and apprentice, if they are some nebulous other that exists without boundary or definition, and which strews emotional landmines everywhere she can think to step.

And straying too far one way or another, it would make her feel like the people she despises. The ones that use Anakin for their own purposes, who have roles that they want him to play for them without any thought as to what he might want, what he might feel about things.

So no, she doesn’t act on her impulses, though at times it’s difficult.

Like this one.  The box is not proportional to the amount of nervous energy he exudes, nor the way his normal day-to-day twitching and fluttering of fingers, toe-tapes, an entire pervasive and subtle language all of his own, comes so loudly after he bestows it on her that even she, who sometimes misses verbal cues and instructions and entire conversations, can misjudge it. Which in turn makes her nervous too, because she doesn’t especially know what side of the line he falls on. If it’s anxiety because he doesn’t particularly like what’s in the box or because he likes it too much and fears what she will make of it. After all, there are only so many things that can fit inside it’s shape and size and she takes a breath to fortify herself for whatever it might be. And in the anticipation of a multitude of different delights and disappointments so keen that even in her own mind she has to err on the side of alliteration, she sets the box on her knee, and takes her time to unwrap it at a snail’s pace. She can feel the weight of his gaze on her. It’s a wonder that something so soft, so airy, so delicately blue should feel like a sack of bricks on her bones. She almost offers to go into another room to open her gift, if that might make him feel any more relaxed but she knows doing so would only make him feel worse, and deprive him of the honesty of her reaction. Beth has, of course, no real ability to lie. She cannot hide the things she feels even in the presence of her father, which is why she hasn’t seen the man since Andy’s funeral. And she feels that honesty is important because no one enjoys feeling as if they’ve had something hidden from them. No one likes to think they are being taken advantage of or misguided even in the sake of kindness, and she thinks with Anakin it is doubly so.

The wrapping paper parts sometime before the turn of the century before it’s folded up carefully and tucked into the pocket of her robe. The ribbon is taken and tucked carefully into her hair. It doesn’t matter to her if it clashes with her pyjamas, she thinks it’s delightful. And she has no intention of changing into real clothes. Or putting on make up. Or any of a dozen other things, she’s cozy as she is. A flicker of green rises to his face and falls again back to the box. Which she opens now only to find…another box. Her lips crinkle in the beginnings of a grin, the faint tickle of amusement as if wondering ~teasingly of course~ if this is going to be a series of smaller and smaller containers. She lifts the lid of the next one and…

…and time stills, entirely.

The subtle music fades completely out, drowned into and perhaps eaten entirely by the sudden spiking pounding of her heartbeat, that pulses hard enough that it can be seen, were one to look closely enough, shaking the scoop neck of her pyjama top. And with it comes a bright flush spilling across her cheeks, neither in embarrassment or shock but in genuine surprise, followed a plethora of other emotions not so easily distinguished.

Even by herself.  Parts of her recognises the gift for what they are, a beautifully breath-taking necklace that will look stunning against her skin. She recognises the abalone, the gold, the fresh-water pearl. They are all elements of the sea, true and tangible. Even the hasp that keeps the pendant parts has a feeling of the ocean to it. She has no words for it, not ones that would make sense, and her features for a moment become slack, entirely without any discernible cause, complaint, query.

Little by little it comes to life again. In the way that her nostrils flare as she takes and expresses a single breath. The way her throat rises and falls with a slow swallow that doesn’t quite make it all the way down. The sting prickling the backs of her eyes for what she interprets laying there against fluffy cotton, perhaps more meaningful that even Anakin can really understand. “Oh, Anakin.”

Because it isn’t a necklace.

He has plucked Mahina from the sky and captured Her in a gown of gold that lets Her shine pale and milky in warm embrace. Mahina who married a mortal man and lived happily together until ʻAikanaka died of old age.

He has brought too Manaiakalani, the great fish hook of Māui. And reminds her of the connection to all things; for it was baited with the wing of Mahina’s pet bird, the ‘alae, when he tricked his brothers into dredging up the islands. He told them to paddle as hard and fast as they could but to never look back. Of course one did and the line snapped, throwing Manaiakalani into the heavens, though the islands remained. And he has given her, too, her childhood, which sees tears lining the rims of her eyes at the near overwhelming sensation. Memories that she’d forgotten or rather… misplaced. Because as her fingertips follow the wavering lines of shell that remind her of kelp and shells and other things from home, real home, she can’t help but recall almost the first song that she’d learned to sing, one her mother would sing all the way back to the crib. It’s little more than a whisper now, trembling at the edges of the words, hardly even a song. Anakin and the cat are probably the only people who have heard it in a good twenty years or so.

“Kahuli aku, Kahuli mai, Kahuli lei ula, Lei akolea.” A smile starts to blossom. Quirking the corners of her lips as the second verse takes on a bit more substance than the previous. “Kolea, kolea, Ki’i ka wai, Wai akolea.” She doesn’t close the box when she picks up the card, needing a moment to not exactly distance herself, but to collect all her feelings and figure out a way to put them into her appreciation, her thanks, her everything that seems to fall short and unsuitable, unworthy of his gift to her.

She scans the words he’s written her. Her eyes skip over the grammar and spelling mistakes because hey, everyone has challenges, and hers and his so happen to be the spoken and written word respectively and she’s not going to take him to task over things she doesn’t even really notice. Besides, every bit of it is genuinely Anakin. The heights of his enthusiasm, his native sense of self worth {and sometimes lack there of} and it just makes his gift even more perfect than it could already possibly be.

The bit about Bug Eater’s contributions and the smudged paw print only tie it all together. The love he declares, the thoughts behind it all. And it makes her heart feel a hundred times heavier than before. Still and solid in her chest. The note gets secreted into another one of her pockets for the time being. Eventually she’s going to put it in one of her scrapbooks that live in her room away from prying eyes ~not that she wouldn’t share them with him, if she thought he’d care to see them~ so that when she needed this moment the most in some unplanned and yet to be created future, she could easily find it there, sorted by year. Her hands still shake a little as she picks up the necklace, the box occupying the space she had just been sitting in. Several measured steps bring her inside his personal space and them more so as she wraps her arms around his waist and buries her face into his chest. There might have been something about mahalo a couple dozen times, repeated like her rosary in countable decades. Or she could have been weaving a curse upon his house for a million generations of bastard cat sons, it’s really hard to tell when she’s muffled and not even speaking pidgin but pure Hawai’ian. Eventually though, definitely before Epiphany ~which they would be making a king cake for~ she finally pulls away from him and takes his good hand in hers, laying the necklace against his palm. Her chin rises and brings green in line with blue, and every bliss and joy and ounce of nostalgia is there, naked in those depths. “Anakin, I…” Love you. You’re wonderful. I can’t tell you how much I adore this because words aren’t enough. She turns. Gathers up the heavy fall of dark hair and holds it just so. “It’s perfect. Beautiful. I…I need help putting it on.”

[wickedlittleoz]

so i know i haven’t been writing a lot lately---who am i kidding i’ve barely been online at all. and i’ve no excuse other than, life’s got me so exhausted all the time that i have no energy to dedicate to the stuff that i actually enjoy. like i did mean to write more stuff to the taking chances series, i wanted to bring you a valentine’s day fic. but that didn’t happen either. so honestly i’d like to apologize and thank everyone who’s stuck around even though my blog has been kinda inactive and messages are queuing up and i’m an undeserving asshole.

that said, this morning i woke up with this whole scene played out in my head. and because i have no idea if/when i’ll ever write something else to go with it, i decided to share it with you as is. mind you, this is the second time i write it because earlier, at work, power went out the moment i was about to hit ‘post’ on the first version and i lost everything. it took me the whole afternoon, but here we are again.

this is sort of post-season 3. don’t read it if you haven’t seen it.

Steve breathes deeply as the medicine spreads through his system, knowing he'll be sleeping easy tonight.

He slowly slips into a state of calm where he feels like he's hanging, suspended above reality, or maybe floating on water. Of course he hasn't been in a pool since Barb, but right now he doesn't worry, doesn't trigger, doesn't shrink away from the pleasant warmth engulfing his body, and instead lets himself enjoy it.

Except that he's not in a pool, he realises. There's no chlorine in his nose, no pungent smell of the the slime that grows on the rocks at the quarry, either. What he smells is salt in the air, what he hears in the crashing of waves and the cries of seagulls, what he feels is the prickle of the sun on his exposed skin. Steve has never been to the beach, but he recognizes this place as if his very cells can remember being made from the same stardust that once formed the sand he's lying on.

With a content sigh, he stretches and rolls into a warm body, opens his eyes to stare at Billy Hargrove's side profile. Billy's arm wraps around his shoulder and Steve's hand nestles itself on his muscular chest. His skin is hot as ever, more as they sunbathe, enough to maybe melt (oh, but what a way to go, Steve thinks). Nothing feels wrong or out of place. He's exactly where he belongs.

"I'm so happy you're back," he murmurs into Billy's skin as if picking back up a conversation they'd stopped minutes ago. "Thought I'd never see you again."

Billy's voice rumbles through his chest like an earthquake under Steve's palm. "Couldn't go another week without seeing you."

As the waves crash on the shore behind them, a wave of fondness crashes into Steve and he smiles into Billy's neck. Pushes his elbow into the sand and hovers over the boy's face, close enough to count the freckles on his cheeks. "Don't let Dustin hear you say that," he jokes, grinning cleverly.

Billy flips them, then, hovering over Steve now. His hair falls like curtains on both sides of his face, tickling Steve's cheeks with the damp ends of his curls; his hands on either sides of Steve's head, planted firmly on the sand. Steve allows himself to stare into the oceans of his eyes, as blue as the one stretching horizontally behind them. Allows his hands to slide up Billy's back and feels the tickle of sand in his palms, but presses in, keeps him close.

"I thought your friends liked me," he says it as a joke, but Steve can see through it. Can see the fear of being rejected after trying so hard to win their trust, to show them he's changed and he's better. Especially Max. Steve remembers how Billy spent two months driving around town with an ugly dent on the Camaro's right side, from an encounter with a drunk Neil Hargrove sporting a baseball bat, only to save money to buy her a bike.

"That's the problem," he says, softly now, and the tips of their noses bump when he pulls Billy closer. "They like you too much now. You're in the party."

Billy rolls his eyes dramatically and Steve has to bite his lips to keep from laughing. It's endearing, all of him is. "Look what you've done, pretty boy, I'm a nerd now," he complains, but there's no bite in his tone.

"How is it my fault?" Something akin to anxiety starts to break through the calm that had protected him, but it's the kind that makes him shiver as his eyes lock on Billy's.

"You're the one who kept offering to drive them to the arcade, then teach them to drive, then--"

Billy stops him, seeing that Steve is only teasing. "Yeah, but I only did it because I love you so much."

Silence stretches between them, even the waves seem to have calmed down some. Steve can't help the smile the spreads on his face, so wide it literally hurts, and even close as they are he can see the moment when Billy realises what he said, can see the blush that taints his cheeks before he rolls back onto the sand.

Steve's chuckling now when he turns to Billy, holds his chin and makes sure he looks into his eyes. "I love you, too, you buffoon," he says, affection dripping from his words like honey, and leans into Billy's space. His lips are warm and sweet, and again he feels like he's lost his footing, like he's hanging, existing in the tiny space between two pages of a fictional book, and the only thing that's real and palpable is Billy.

Again, Steve thinks, what a way to go.

He pulls away suddenly and it takes Steve a while to ground himself. "I have to go," Billy says, looking over his shoulder at the ocean. Dark clouds are starting to form on the horizon, the water itself has gotten darker. So have Billy's eyes, he notices when the boy turns back to him. The atmosphere of calm and security that had surrounded Steve until then is gone now, shaken by the oncoming storm.

"But you just got here," he tries to say, but the wind is howling and the waves are crashing ferociously now. When Billy pulls himself up, Steve makes to follow, but the boy holds his shoulders, pecks his lips for a fraction of a second and pushes him back into the sand.

"You have to do me a favor," Billy says and Steve only nods, too dizzy to say anything. He looks to Steve's left and he follows. Running towards them, laughing and clutching onto a surfboard, is Max. He hadn't seen her there before, wonders why she hadn't made her presence known earlier. She shouldn't be left unwatched in the ocean, should she?

"Take care of Max for me," Billy's voice brings him back. He's walking backwards to the ocean now. The clouds have reached the shore and it's become dark enough that he starts to disappear before Steve has the time to process that he's actually leaving. He realises that the electricity he felt before, the anxiety, was expectancy for this storm. Not the one that brings them together, but the one that separates them instead.

"Say you'll take care of Max!" Billy insists and again Steve can only nod. It's all he waits for; he turns around and disappears into the storm, and no matter how loud and how hard Steve calls for him, sand and salt and pain tearing into his vocal chords, Billy doesn't come back.

Steve wakes up with a start.

Outside, a storm has broken; he'd left the window open and now both him and the bed are completely soaked. But the wetness in his eyes isn't rainwater.

Billy's voice is still echoing in his head.

Pretty boy. I love you. I have to go.

Take care of Max.

He jumps to his feet and goes for the walkie-talkie Dustin gave him ages ago, fusses with the thing until he finds the right frequency, then radios Max.